“Truman’s rifle,” I said. “It didn’t make sense it was unloaded. You planted that rifle there to incriminate him.”
“How’d you figure it all out?”
“I remembered something you told me when I was a kid. You said the secret to trapping is covering your own tracks.”
He smiled a rueful smile. “I taught you a good lesson.”
“You didn’t teach me a damned thing.”
The smile went away. “You got your mother’s smart mouth, that’s for sure.”
I thought of my mom. We had both believed in him, both argued on his behalf against Neil. Now my father was bad-mouthing her. “How’d you know I’d come out here?” I asked. “You couldn’t have planned that. There’s no way.”
“We didn’t,” he said.
Brenda jumped in. “We just wanted the cops to go to Truman’s place again so they would start looking for him. Then, after Jack took care of things, I was going to call in them two killing each other. We never figured that old fart would fly you out here.”
The mention of Charley gave me a fleeting sensation of hope. He should be here soon, I thought. But was he bringing the police with him? Either way, I needed to stall them.
I looked my father hard in the eye. “So what did you plant at Truman’s apartment to make the cops think he was the killer? It couldn’t have been the murder weapon since you brought that here.”
“My boots, the ones I wore that night. I left them on the porch for the cops to find.”
“Not too subtle.”
“Yeah, well, Truman was an idiot. He’d do something that dumb.”
In my mind’s eye I saw the headless body again. “Everyone thinks you’re in Canada.”
“I know.”
“That’s why you called Mom from across the border,” I said.
“What’s he talking about?” said Brenda, slurring her words.
“I called Marie,” he said.
The muscles in her shoulders tightened. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I wanted them to keep looking for me in Canada.”
Her eyes blazed. “Now what are we supposed to do?”
My father reached into the pack on his belt. I saw Brenda flinch as if she half-expected him to produce a handgun to shoot her. But he only drew out a tangle of bloody rope.
“I’m sorry about this, Mike,” he said. “But until we can talk this out, it’s the only way.”
He tied my arms behind me with the same red-stained cord he’d used to bind Truman. I thought of resisting, but then decided not to. I’d seen what he’d done to Pelletier and Truman and Shipman and Brodeur-four men dead at his hands. But even now, I couldn’t believe he was really capable of killing me. Brenda, however, was another story. Adrenaline and alcohol had given her eyes a bigpupiled glassiness that worried the hell out of me.
Gently, my father directed me inside the lodge. He guided me back to the dining room, with its long tables and its view of the lake through plate-glass windows. Clouds darkened the sky above Holeb Mountain. “Sit down,” he said.
The smell of burnt coffee hung in the air.
Brenda perched across from me, sitting on a tabletop with her dirty feet on the bench and her denim-covered crotch level with my eyes, resting the heavy handgun on her knees.
My father found a bottle of whiskey in a cabinet and brought it out. He took a slug.
“I want some of that,” she said.
He splashed a little whiskey in a coffee mug and handed it to her. “You want a drink, Mike?”
“No.”
Brenda wiped her mouth. “So what do we do now?”
“That’s up to Mike.” He softened his voice. “I know this is hard for you, son. Hell, it’s hard for me. I never wanted any of this to happen, but it did, and now my neck’s on the chopping block. You think I could actually surrender without some pissed-off cop popping me first?”
My voice broke. “I believed you. I told everyone you were innocent. I came up here to prove it.”
“I appreciate that, and I’m sorry I had to mislead you. But I needed your help. I still do.”
“I’m not going to lie for you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He shook his head, sadly. “You don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand? You killed four men-one a police officer and three others just to cover your own tracks.”
He raised three fingers. “I killed three men. You killed Truman.”
“After you stabbed him.”
“But you were the one who shot him. Do you think the police are going to believe your story? They’re going to think you were part of this from the start, the way you ran around trying to pin the shootings on Truman and Pelletier. How do you think it’s going to look to them when we tell them you killed Truman.”
I felt like I’d been spat upon. “So now you’re trying to blackmail me?”
“I’m just laying out the situation so you see what’s in all of our best interest.”
“I’m not to going to keep quiet. I’ll tell the state police what I know. I don’t care how the hell it looks. And if you run, I’ll do everything I can to help them catch you.”
My father took his hat off and set it down on the table and ran his hand through his gray-flecked hair. I saw the exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders, the shadowed sockets around his eyes. Maybe I could capitalize on that exhaustion until help arrived.
“What I want is to know is why you did it,” I said.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters to Jonathan Shipman’s children.”
“Who?”
At first I thought he was joking. Then it came to me. “It was never about Wendigo. All this time everyone thought Shipman was the target. They assumed the deputy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it was the other way around. It was Brodeur you were after.”
He stood at the broad window with his back to us, the rifle slung over his shoulder, holding the liquor bottle and gazing out at the chop blowing across the lake. Gray, watery light streamed around his bulky silhouette.
“But why?” I asked. “Why’d you do it?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Brenda gulped down the rest of her bourbon.
“It was because of you, wasn’t it?” I said to her.
“Screw you.”
“Did you fuck Brodeur-is that it?”
My father turned around, his face dark with warning.
“That pig raped me,” she said.
“Just like Russell Pelletier tried to do?”
“Shut your mouth, Mike,” my father said.
“She’s lying.”
“I am not,” she said. “He raped me and he got what he deserved.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that’s what happened. I think that’s what you
“You’re full of shit.”
I spoke past her to my father. I knew I had his full attention. “She told you Brodeur stopped her one night driving back from the Dead River Inn, right? Sally Reynolds said she used to drive drunk all the time, and Brodeur used to stake out the inn. I bet she said he forced himself on her.”
“He did!” she said.
“No, I think what happened is you made a deal with him. He was going to arrest you for driving under the influence, so you offered to have sex with him. Maybe it became a regular thing after that for you two.” I glanced
