Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) (10 page)

No one was parked at the bluff now, and no boats
were working the shelf. Gun and Carol walked to the
edge and looked over.

“What exactly are we doing here?” said Carol.

“I hope to God we’re wasting our time,” said Gun.
He shaded his eyes with the flat of his hands, squint
ing down into the water.

“What do you see?” said Carol.

“Nothing.”

“What are you looking for?”

“A county commissioner.”

“Yes,” said Carol. “God.”

Gun glared at the water for another two minutes.
Then he walked back to the truck and stood eyeing the
parking area in front of the bluff.

“You’re looking for car tracks,” said Carol.

“The rain wrecked any that might have been here. I think I can see where a set of tires bent down the grass
right there, near the edge, but I can’t be sure. Maybe
I’m inventing it.”

Carol said she couldn’t see the tracks. Gun said, “I
think we’d better check.” Kneeling, he untied and slipped off the Pony runners. He pulled off the loose
T-shirt he was wearing, walked barefoot to the edge of the bluff, hiked his eyebrows twice at Carol, and dove.

16

Stony Lake in May was clear and arctic. The depth of
the lake kept it colder than most, and the algae were
not yet in bloom. Two months ago a car driven over
Holliman’s Bluff would have crashed and burned on
thirty inches of pack ice. Now Gun’s eyes stung with cold as he opened them underwater, searching.

He found nothing on his first dive. The spring
runoff had been high this year, and the pull down to
the shelf felt farther than ten feet. He maintained a
depth of about six, his head humming from the
pressure, and kicked slowly, following the shelf off to
the left. He surfaced, blowing, thirty yards farther
along the bluff from where Carol stood.

“Anything?” yelled Carol. She bent forward over
the edge, the wind pushing her bangs aside and kiting
the cotton shirt.

Gun shook his head, panting to replace the air he’d
spent underwater. He floated easily, waving his numb
limbs while the oxygen penetrated. When he felt
strong enough he went down again.

He found Larson in his gray Buick Century another twenty yards along. The Buick was parked on the shelf
with the right wheels hanging off the edge so it tilted
like a car driven up on a curb. Larson was floating in
the confines of a seat belt and shoulder strap, only
lightly touching the seat. His heavy face was looking
straight up through the custom-installed sunroof of
the Buick, toward sunlight and air ten feet above.
Gun pushed away from the car and let himself rise to
the surface.

“He’s here,” Gun called to Carol. She had followed
his course along the top of the bluff, and because of the
slope, was now above him just twenty or so feet away.

“God, oh,” said Carol. Her hands were clamped
into fists, thumbs enclosed. She jammed them in the pockets of her shorts.

“I think I’d better bring him up.” Gun shook his
head to throw the water from his eyes, pulled in a
heavy lungful of air and bobbed under.

He reached the Buick again and opened the door. It
swung in slow motion, and he reached in and
unclipped the seat belt. Larson was stiff in his sitting position, and his knees whacked against the steering wheel when Gun snagged his collar and tried pulling
him out. The Buick rocked softly on the edge of the
shelf, and he realized the need for care. If the car went
over the side carrying Larson, it would take equip
ment and divers to bring Larson up. Not that it
mattered too much. But Gun eased his approach a
little. With the blood bumping in his arteries, already
almost airless, he reached forward and straightened Larson’s legs at the knees.

The commissioner’s hands floated an inch above
his lap, and Gun saw and barely registered that several
of his fingers were missing, cleanly nipped at the
second joints, thin petals of skin swaying out from the
stubs. Stony Lake had an eager population of turtles. Gun clenched the muscles in his jaw and closed his eyes.
Air.
He opened his eyes, put a hand out to take
Larson by the waving hair, and leaned him out the
door. He pulled hard. When the legs cleared the wheel
he yanked Larson clear, gripped a solid thigh and
shoved the body skyward. Larson drifted up through twilight, legs straight out in front, face turned up. He
looked like a child sitting on the floor, staring at a
spider on the ceiling. He spun slowly as he rose.
Air.
Gun pushed off from the shelf and broke the surface in
seconds, beating Larson to the top.

“Can’t you get him up?” Carol said, almost before
Gun’s head pushed up into the waves. A ruffling
breeze was coming from the northwest.

Gun was too busy refilling to talk. He motioned
with his head at a spot a few feet to his left. Larson was
unhurriedly surfacing there.

“Oh no,” said Carol.

“I’m going to look through his car,” said Gun,
breathing hard. “Then I’ll tow him in.”

“I’ll take your truck,” Carol said, “get the police.
God, does he have to
look
that way?”

“Wait,” Gun said. He shook white slaps of hair off
his forehead and blew hard through his nose. “Wait till I get ashore. For the cops.” Then he was down
again.

The glove box of the Buick held a Rand McNally
map of Minnesota with a detail of Minneapolis and
St. Paul on the reverse side. It held two empty bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol. A thin black jackknife with
a fold-out fingernail file. Nothing else. Gun’s lungs were fatiguing more quickly after several dives. He
sent a hand rifling under the front seat, found nothing,
then took the keys from the ignition and worked his

way back to the trunk. There was a rubber doughnut
and a jack, neatly screwed into place in the floor of the trunk. An empty yellow Heet bottle floated up and out
past Gun’s face. He felt heavy and sleepy in the brain.
Not bothering to close the trunk, he dropped the keys
over the edge of the shelf, bent over and grasped the
rear wheelwell, and heaved the Buick into a slow fall.
He didn’t stay to watch. There was no percussive
thumm
through the water when it hit bottom. Gun came up next to Larson.

“What took you so long?” Carol sounded angry. Her clenched hands were paper-white. “You were
down there forever.”

Gun shook his head, swam a tired stroke to Larson
and set off for a shallow slope of shore with the county
commissioner riding behind.

The Stony authorities had not been confronted with
a body for over two years, not since the last time
Funny Harbon Starling and his buddy Jerry had gone
sprinting over thin ice in Harbon’s Power Wagon. It
was something the two of them had done every
November for fourteen years, proving their manhood.
Finally the ice opened and swallowed them, burping
up the bodies in the spring storm wash. Sheriff Bakke
had turned white at the scene and threatened to turn
in his badge.

Bakke was at the bluff now along with two cops, and
blinking rapidly at Larson. “When was the victim last
seen alive?” he said. The blinks were magnified by
massive lenses in brown plastic frames.

Come on, thought Gun, find the right script. “I saw
him yesterday. At the public meeting. Most of the town did.”

“When did you locate the victim?” said Bakke,
scribbling with the steno pad close to his face.

“Thirty, forty minutes ago.”

“Thirty or forty minutes? Lord, Pedersen, why
didn’t you call right away?”

“I didn’t think you’d be able to help him,” said
Gun. Carol, at his side, was rubbing him down with
his shirt.

Bakke sighed. “The victim was in his car?” he
said.

“Tig was in his car,” said Gun.

“In a seat belt, you said.”

“One of those habits it’s hard to break.”

“Car’s still down there?” said Bakke.

“It was too heavy for me,” said Gun. Carol smiled.

“We’ll call you,” said Bakke. He turned and walked
to the two policemen, who were gesturing over the
body. “I don’t know,” he said to them. “I don’t know
about this job sometimes. Law enforcement.
Shit.”

“I need to get dry,” Gun said to Carol. The north
west wind was steady and the waves were getting
higher and farther apart.

“Your keys,” said Carol, holding them out between
thumb and pinky.

“You drive.”

At home Gun put on dry blue jeans, and sweat socks
under the running shoes, and a long green chamois
shirt to restore the body heat lost in the lake. Carol
poked through a
Baseball Abstract
on the kitchen
table.

“Do you need to get back to the paper?” Gun asked
her, returning to the kitchen.

“Deadline’s eleven o’clock tonight,” Carol said. She
smiled. “I’d better get back by ten.”

“Let’s take a drive, then.”

“Where to?” Carol leaned over the table at him, her
hair falling ahead at the sides.

Gun held up a small triangular wad of paper. It was wet and clumped together, but the words printed on it
were legible. He tossed it on the table.

“The Back Forty.” Carol looked up. “A bar napkin? I never heard of it.”

“I found it on Larson when you drove up to Podolske’s to call
the cops.”

“God. You searched the body. Shouldn’t you have
given them the napkin?”

“Given it to Bakke?” Gun shrugged. “He wouldn’t
have done anything with it.”

“What’s there to do? It’s a bar napkin. What good
does it do you?”

Gun shrugged again. “Don’t know. Are we going for
a drive?”

“Will we talk on the way?”

“If you like.”

“Let’s take my car then,” said Carol.

When they were in the car, both of Carol’s hands at
the bottom of the plastic steering wheel, she said,
“What’s with the Back Forty?” The front seat of the Horizon was pushed back to its outer limit. Gun’s
knees were against the dash. The Back Forty was
thirty miles to the south.

“It has a reputation,” Gun said.

“What sort
?”

“It’s a gay bar, Carol.”

“So?” she said.
 
Then
three miles later: “Why are we

following
Larson’s backtrail?”

“I can only think of one reason right now,” said
Gun. “Mazy.”

“I’m missing a link somewhere.”

“Hedman. What if he was threatening to expose Tig?”

Carol made a so-what sound with her lips. “Gun,
that’s ridiculous. Who would care?”

Gun said. “You’ve got to remember,
Larson was first elected commissioner twenty years
ago. Just a kid out of grad school. Folks were proud of
him. He had one
of those green ecology stickers on the back of his
Beetle. Caught the guy from the old Shell
station dumping used oil in the Woman River. It
made Tig a folk hero. And in Stony,
folk heroes weren’t gay. Not then.”

“But it hasn’t been a big secret, has it
?  For a long time?”

“Look,” said Gun, “in a small town it’s one thing
for everyone to think they know something
. It’s another altogether to shout it from the housetops
.”

“Okay, if I give you that point, can you show me a
connection to Mazy?”

“Hedman might be a swindler and a blackmailer,”
Gun said, “and maybe much worse. And he has Mazy.
I think that’s connection enough.”

Carol was silent. Gun said, “I should just go in. Go
in and get her out.”

“You haven’t given her a chance,” said Carol. “She
hasn’t asked for help.”

“Has she been able to?” Gun shifted his knees and
the red plastic dash bent and creaked.

The Horizon, engine racing at fifty miles an hour, passed a homemade sign.
the back forty,
it said.

SEVEN MILES AND TO YOUR RIGHT. SEE YOU THERE.