Automatically, he reached for the Colt.
Jerry Hakala climbed out of the police Blazer and, with a noticeable sag to his usually athletic gait, his boots crunched through the broken glass and creaked up the porch boards. His square fist banged urgently on the door. Harry yanked it open.
“Now what?”
“Hold it there. Harry…” The cop had never called him by his first name and it conveyed a peculiar vibration of alarm. “You didn’t answer the phone.” Jerry wasn’t good at looking contrite. His eyes swept back and forth at knee level. “Just wanted to check on you.”
It hurt when Harry tried to grin.
Jerry chewed his lip. “Yeah, well, we got a problem. Larry’s loose.”
The words had the laconic brevity of correctly gauging the approach of a typhoon. Harry nodded. Their eyes agreed. They’d just as soon be somewhere else.
“We sent a deputy out to Cox’s trailer. Put another out on the road in front of here. Just a precaution.”
Harry grimaced. “You should put a sign at the edge of town.
Caution: Sheriff Dangerous When Drunk.”
“Think it could be a little more serious than that.” Jerry toed the porch boards with a polished boot.
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“What happened?” Harry asked and realized he’d been standing there with a cocked pistol hanging in his right hand and Jerry hadn’t mentioned it. His eyes scanned the black treeline.
Jerry inhaled, held the breath. “Took him home, cleaned him up.
Looked like he was coming out of it. Then he went to the bathroom.
He was butt-naked in a towel…and…” Jerry clicked his expensive bridgework. “Bathroom had two doors. Breezeway goes to the garage. Musta had a pack with hunting gear stowed out there. From the garage was boot prints. So, ah, he’s on foot. Near as I can tell he’s up Nanabozho—”
“Armed?”
“Be my guess.”
“Great.”
“Harry. Me and Uncle Mike need you to look at something.”
“What? Now?”
“I need your help, man. Get your coat on,” said Jerry firmly, hooking his thumbs in the thick leather belt that supported his 9-mm Glock, cuffs, spare ammo, and can of Mace. “Just been crazier’n hell with the funeral and Jesse and Maston getting divorced like they are…now this.”
Harry queried Jerry’s intelligent, uncomplicated, powder-blue eyes, and saw duty there, durable as a coat of paint on a wooden soldier. Neat silver badge. Thin blue line. All that good shit.
The wooden soldier dropped his eyes.
“What is it, Jerry?”
“You know how to use that piece?”
Harry nodded. Jerry cleared his throat. “Well, better bring it along.
He shows up—if he’s like he was last night—and for some reason he gets past us…don’t take any chances.”
“Jesus? Where we going?”
“Back to his house. Shake it up.”
314 / CHUCK LOGAN
Now the snow comes down as quiet as a separate peace and inside the speeding Blazer the dash lights leak gloomy lime bubbles across Jerry’s face.
“Mitch was in a fight. What about?” asked Harry.
“Ah, that was high school stuff. Kid made an off-color remark about Becky. Mitch lunched him.” Jerry drove in silence for a few minutes, then he said, “Uncle Mike ain’t exactly been candid.”
“No shit.”
“He’s been covering for Larry. Not calling the grand jury wasn’t for Maston. That was to go light on Larry for babying Chris.” Jerry ground his teeth. “Weird thing is Larry wanted the grand jury.
Wanted to grill Jay Cox and Karson. And you. That threw us.”
“Mitch told me about the scene in October. Chris threatening Bud.”
“You gotta know the history, Harry. He loved those kids and suddenly everybody’s taking them away from him. Now this is just between you and me, but around Labor Day it looked like Jesse had given up on Maston and was putting out feelers to go back to Larry.
He got antsy about Cox, said something wrong was going on out at that lodge and he had to get Jesse and the kids out of it.”
Jerry grimaced, the Blazer skidded through a turn too fast. “Then she does a one-eighty and decides to marry Maston. That’s what the big fight was about. The kids thought they were going back with their dad. After the wedding, Chris started acting up and took a gun to school. Larry stepped in and made Uncle Mike back off. Had this idea he could work with Chris, go hunting together, get close to him again after everything that’d happened. But then Chris turned it around, after Larry taught him to handle a rifle, he decided to go out with Maston.”
“Or Emery talked him into it, for obvious reasons.”
“Hell, we knew it stank to high heaven and then you came back to remind us and Don Karson was running around playing Johnny One Note about the Duluth stuff. And word getting HUNTER’S MOON / 315
around about Jesse’s big divorce settlement. But goddamnit, there was nothing solid.”
“Where was he that morning?”
“Exactly. He was in the police station, getting ready to go out hunting, standing next to the dispatcher when the call came in about Maston.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t talk Chris into it.”
“Yesterday I’d a given you an argument.” Jerry shook his head.
“Figured it was too sloppy and obvious for Larry, putting Chris, fucked up like he was, in the middle. Hell, he’d of found a way to have Maston eaten by a bear or break his neck climbing a tree. Now, I don’t know. Could be Don Karson is right.” Jerry exhaled. “Normally Larry doesn’t spend all day in the woods and all night in a bottle.”
“He’s in the woods after Becky. She knows what happened. If he’d use his son to commit murder, he might make his daughter disappear. It’s about Jesse and the money. And if Bud Maston dies before the divorce is final, we’re talking a lot of money.”
“I don’t
