Hunter's Moon, Chuck Logan [i am reading a book TXT] 📗

I just talked to Mike Hakala in Maston County—”

“Yeah?” Becky gritted her teeth.

“No formal charges have been brought in the deaths of your mother and Cox. In fact, they haven’t even made it public yet. The sheriff’s deputy you guys had the run-in with? Hakala said that was just a family misunderstanding. He said that the best thing for you and your family would be for the both of you to go back there.”

Becky shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said.

“Good,” said Hollywood. “Hakala wants me to formally depose Mr. Hector Cruz, get it on tape this time, and send it back with you.”

“What’s going on?” asked Harry.

“Local jurisdiction. Time is standing still in Maston County, Minnesota. They have Maston sealed off at his house, HUNTER’S MOON / 383

no phone, no wheels, and no official explanation,” said Hollywood as he moved to the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Harry.

“Out of earshot of the rest of this conversation.”

“Mom talked to Bud in the hospital right after he got shot and he accused her and Cox of trying to kill him. But they were stuck with it, he said, and nothing had changed, the deal was still on. She should get mad and wreck up the lodge and take money out of the bank and communicate through you, Harry. He knew that you couldn’t let it lay, that you’d come back.”

“Do you think this is some damn game where if you figure out the pieces you win, Becky? Are you really that smart?” said Harry.

“Indeed she is,” said Randall.

“You mean, for a kid?” Her smile was elemental, catlike. “It goes deeper than that. Miss Loretta says, you shouldn’t try to build a road through the forest. You should look for the path that’s already there.”

“Quit fucking around, Becky, this is serious shit were in,” said Harry.

“The problem is, if I talk to Mitch’s father, there’s enough to arrest him on suspicion,” said Becky very deliberately. “But I’m not a good witness, am I? Bud would make it all sound like it was part of the blackmail thing. And he has pictures of me with my clothes off. And he’d show those pictures to people in court too. Well, wouldn’t he?”

“Very likely,” said Randall.

“So if it gets to court, a jury wouldn’t believe me. Never in a million years. And who will they believe now that Jay’s dead? That guy Hector or poor rich Bud?”

She turned to Harry. “Juries believe facts. Jerry Hakala will have to put his hand on a Bible and say who he saw come out of the trailer with the gun in his hand. Not what he might believe but what he saw. They’ll ask Mitch and me what we saw when we drove up.

Harry again, all bloody, spaced out in

384 / CHUCK LOGAN

the Jeep with the gun.” Becky raised her chin as Randall and Harry weighed the full weight of her words.

“The law—” Harry insisted.

“Law’s for right and wrong. He’s evil,” she charged, standing up straight.

And Randall, with his pale eyes that loved secrets and his wisdom that could be as ruthlessly practical as locks and keys—and as cold—smiled his bland, accommodating smile. “Bud missed the obvious thing that can literally kill him, isn’t that so, Becky?”

Desert sunset laved the darkened room and Becky raised her face from shadow and stole a Moment of proud beauty from the red rock light. In simple sentences, she showed Harry the way out.

61

It was last day of hunting season. A stream of vehicles with deer carcasses lashed to their roofs or trundling behind on flatbed trailers traveled south. Harry drove north on Highway 61

in the rattling Ford. The .45 was back in his waistband, making a steel angle in his lap. He wore soft buckskin gloves.

In his rearview mirror Harry could see Mike Hakala hunched in the front seat of his Bronco, talking to Randall.

Becky rode with Mitch Hakala behind the Bronco. Jerry Hakala, who’d apparently patched up his differences with Mitch, brought up the rear.

No one in Maston County law enforcement had slept much the night before.

Harry had declined to clean up and his hair stuck at odd angles and his face was a grease of sweat, lumped nose, livid scars, and dark stubble. His eyes were bloodshot behind Jesse’s sunglasses.

The caravan turned up Highway 7. About a mile from the lodge, Hakala flashed his headlights. Harry pulled over.

HUNTER’S MOON / 385

Hakala parked on the shoulder in back of him. Mitch raced on up the slope with Becky. Jerry followed them. Mike Hakala walked up and Harry rolled down the window.

“Give Becky about an hour to get in place. You go in in thirty minutes.”

Harry nodded.

Hakala scanned the chilly pine crowns. “You, ah, want to wait back with us?”

Harry shook his head. He wanted to be alone.

Thirty minutes later, Randall leaned out his window and sliced his hand forward. “Go!” Harry took a last drag off his Camel and hotboxed it until his throat was raw as a scream. His gloved fingers shook as he flicked the butt out the window. He hadn’t slept on the flight back from Phoenix. Past fatigue. They all were. In the grip of that extreme moral dimension where…

Fuck it.

He put the car in gear and drove the last mile to the lodge. Two County Blazers blocked the turnoff, their windshields faceless oblong mirrors full of clouds. They pulled back to let him pass. Bud’s rental Trooper was stranded, all four tires flat, in the driveway, Bud sat in a rocking chair, in front of the lodge. He hadn’t changed his clothes except for trading his wing tips for Sorel boots and his overcoat for a heavy down parka. He held the 12-gauge across his thighs.

Harry got out of the car and removed the sunglasses in case Bud thought there might be mercy in his eyes.

The chair creaked, rocking back and forth. “I been thinking,” Bud mused. “This is what Teddy Kennedy must have felt like after