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

want to believe he’d do that to his kids,” said Jerry.

They pulled into Emery’s driveway. Two more Blazers and a red Bronco were parked in front of the garage. A deputy waved them in. “Mike’s in the basement,” he said.

The first thing Harry saw in the hallway was a picture of Becky and Chris, younger, smiling. The place where Jesse should be was cut out. Night of the funeral, after the Battle of the Snowmobiles, digging in the basement—that picture…

“This way,” said Jerry. Months of dust cloaked the living room furniture and gave off a musty lived-in smell that turned piquant as they entered the kitchen.

“Phew.” Harry wrinkled his nose. Bags of garbage heaped against the stove. Spores of mold festered on fruit rinds. Opened cans. Pots gluey with leftovers on crusted burners. Jerry grinned tightly. “My dad always said you have the heart-to-hearts sitting at the kitchen table.”

A family album had been ripped apart, cellophane page 316 / CHUCK LOGAN

minders scattered and torn. Scraps of cardboard. Photos littered the grubby table and the woman’s face had been cut from all of them.

“I count four empty whiskey bottles,” said Jerry. He jerked his head ominously to the basement stairs. “It’s down here. When he split on me, I thought maybe he got into the basement, so I went down to take a look.”

The basement was divided into two areas. An unfinished utility area with the furnace, laundry sinks, washer and dryer, storage closets. The other half was a paneled den.

Mike Hakala hadn’t taken the time to get all the way dressed. He stood barefoot next to his kicked-off Sorels, in pajamas under his parka. Staring.

A couch and chair faced a fireplace and a small bar was built into the wall. Next to it, a broad workbench held a mounted apparatus Harry vaguely recognized as a reloading press. There were shelves with tools and firearm paraphernalia and two rifles lay on the bench.

A large abstract painting, six feet by three and a half, four feet, was propped on the top shelf over the bench.

A third rifle was secured by rubber bungees to a snow tire on a table at one end of the room. Sandbags wedged the table legs.

“Don’t touch anything,” said Mike.

Harry nodded and followed the direction of the rifle muzzle. At the other end of the room, a plywood frame held a backstop of thick phone books. Bud’s face, thinner, a poster from his stillborn political campaign, was taped to the phone books. A grid had been drawn with precision over his features with a red felt-tip pen. It exactly matched the grid on a sheet of paper taped next to it. Harry had seen the sheet of paper before. A target grid from an army instruction manual they used on the rifle range to zero M14s. Something about the trajectory being the same at 20 feet as at 200 yards.

“What the fuck?” Harry poked a finger at a tight group of six bullet holes a foot off the poster two o’clock high on the right.

“Don’t touch, just look,” said Jerry.

HUNTER’S MOON / 317

They went back to the bench. A plastic baggy containing a lump of smashed lead lay next to a bottle of Old Grand-Dad. Three unfired cartridges, all tagged. The tags labeled: CHRIS, MASTON, GRIFFIN.

Harry pointed to the old Remington on the counter. “That’s my rifle. I thought—”

“Yeah, so did I. All three guns went down to the BCA in Saint Paul for analysis. Larry got ’em back. What the fuck was he up to?”

Mike winced and looked away.

Harry gave his full attention to what leaned against the wall over the bench and his battered sinuses cleared and the hallucinatory after scent of whiskey and cordite that lingered in the basement became a witch’s brew of obsession.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

“Right,” said Jerry tersely. “You’re an artist. Give me an artistic opinion about that.”

Harry’s skin rippled as he sensed the brooding presence of Larry Emery all around him. A man who watched everything and missed nothing.

“It’s a photo montage,” said Harry quietly as his eyes roved and his knees got weak. He dropped to a stool and groped for a cigarette.

Jerry backhanded him on the arm, held out his hand.

“Huh?”

“Gimme one.”

They lit up and viewed the intricate wall hanging. Bud. Hundreds of pictures of Bud Maston. Meticulously cut out and fitted together with headlines and blocks of type. A public record of his shining life. Bud in his baby shoes. Bud walking with his father on the Stanley waterfront. At the funeral after his family died in the sailing accident. On the football team at St. Thomas Academy in St. Paul.

The debate team at Harvard. Grainy photos from the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes. Sleek black-tie snapshots from society pages.

Banquets. Dedications. Dates. The most recent pictures were from his political campaign. Gleaned painstakingly from dozens of publications over more than forty years.

318 / CHUCK LOGAN

Richard Nixon hanging the Congressional Medal of Honor around his neck at the White House.

Mike Hakala’s voice was quiet, glum. “How hard is it to make something like this?”

“Not the technique, Mike. It’s the time…assembling all the pieces.”

“Whaddya suppose that means?” Jerry pointed at a color picture of a muscled torso, male genitals. A portion torn from a larger picture. No face.

Harry strained air through clenched teeth. A sprig of cherries, drawn on, like a tattoo on the muscle of the left hip.

“These cherries all around?” Jerry pondered, indicating several large groups of cherries cut from glossy ads sprinkled over the montage along with Marine Corps insignias plastered next to a bold headline. LOCAL MAN WINS HIGHEST HONOR.

Harry shook his head. The thing dripped with cold patient pathological hatred. “I don’t know, man…”

Their eyes met. Jerry gritted his teeth and whistled. “So Larry coulda kept like a scrapbook all these years and then…after Jesse left him…been down here drinking and putting this together.” He clicked his teeth. “And Chris…somehow in on it?”

Mike Hakala’s voice rasped. “Not common knowledge but I saw