Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) (22 page)

40

He released himself into motion, clamped the fingers
of his right hand on Horseley’s belt, used his own
weight as a fulcrum. Horseley came up like a feed sack
over Gun’s shoulder and into Hedman’s face. The
needle flew. Berg lifted his shotgun but Gun brought
up his knee, and the giant bent double over a ruined
groin. Gun sprinted for the boat. He was three strides
back of Jack, one behind Mazy and Carol. Geoff was
on his back on the ground, a red lump growing under
one eye.

Fraser was still in the boat. Gun saw Jack get there
first, rifle fire lighting the air, and launch a flying cross-body. Then Fraser’s feet were pointing straight
up and his body was hitting the water and Jack was yelling “stay low” and throwing the women into the
bottom of the boat. Gun freed the tie line and jumped.
Jack throttled wide open and swung the bow into the
fog. Gun couldn’t see more than fifty feet.

“Damn this motor!” Jack yelled. He had it full

throttle and was messing with the lean-rich dial,
trying to coax out more power. Mazy and Carol lay in
the center of the boat. Gun sat on the rear seat next to
Jack, their weight pulling the bow off the water for
speed.

Behind them the headlight beam of Young’s run
about swung like a long pole across the water, then
flared into a spot.

“The islands,” Gun said.

Jack nodded. The town of Stony was five miles to
the south, too far. But the cluster of four islands lay
only a mile due west and offered hundreds of places to
hide: small bays lined with overhanging limbs, old
abandoned cabins, hollow caves in the washed-out shorelines. If they could beat Hedman to the islands,
they might elude him till morning.

A rifle shot rang across the water and whined
overhead. Gun and Jack slid off the seat to the floor.
Jack kept his hand on the stick and his head just high
enough to hold a straight line. The runabout was
coming on in a hurry. Gun could already make out the
silhouettes of the men on board. Five. A second shot
ripped into the stern, not a foot from Gun’s face.

The islands were a couple hundred yards off when the big boat came roaring up alongside. Berg raised himself over the windshield of the runabout, shotgun
in hand. Jack threw the Alumacraft into a steep bank,
straightened out again. The runabout stayed right on
them. Again Berg positioned for a shot, and again Jack
banked, this time in the other direction. Berg fired. The shot was like thunder, and pellets sprayed the
boat’s high-riding side. Jack kept the port gunwale
running flush on the water, the starboard high in the
air, and scribed a tight circle in the water. Horseley
followed with the runabout, drawing a close line
around them. They were near enough for Gun to see
Geoff’s bloodied face at Berg’s shoulder.

After two complete circles Jack rammed the stick all
the way over. The bow hopped out of the water,
lurched around like the arm of a crane, and broke off
in a wild tangent directly toward the broadside of the
runabout.

On impact the bow of the Alumacraft split wide
open. The little boat stood up on the water proud as a
pine tree. Gun landed free of the wreckage, headfirst.
When he surfaced his boat was lying behind him,
upside down on the water. Ahead, the runabout’s light
bent toward him in a fast arc, coming hard. He
couldn’t tell if anyone was still in it. Then in the boat’s
lighted path he saw the head of a swimmer, heard a loud thump as the head went down before the charg
ing prow. He dove deep, his own heart crashing in his
ears.

The boat passed overhead and Gun surfaced. He
swam hard toward the bobbing lump in the water. He didn’t allow himself to think. Somewhere behind him
there was splashing, a man’s scream, a low grunt that
sounded like Jack. Gun reached the floating body in a
dozen fast strokes. The head was facedown, long hair
fanning out on the water. The skull had been cleft
open like a notched melon. No blood, only sharp
white bone and spongy-looking brain. Gun lifted the
face and looked into the staring eyes of Fraser. His sunglasses covered his mouth.

“Thank God,” Gun whispered. “Mazy! Jack! Car
ol!” he yelled. No answer. Just more splashing, la
bored breathing, a curse. It seemed to come from
behind the turtled Alumacraft. Gun swam toward it, then stopped dead in the water as the sound of the
runabout started growing louder again. He looked up. The boat was returning, slowly now, and a tall figure
stood behind the wheel. Lyle Hedman. As the boat
came on, Gun could see where Jack had rammed it.

The gash was in the middle of the port side, well
above the waterline.

Gun kept his arms and legs moving steadily and
held his head low. He prepared to dive again. Then a
face appeared above the water, just a dozen feet away, in front of the tipped Alumacraft. Jack? Gun couldn’t
tell. The boat’s light came closer and sharpened his
vision. It was Horseley in the water, and his eyes were
fastened on Gun. The headlight moved in. Gun saw
Horseley’s .45 on the surface of the lake, saw the small
round hole of the barrel. Then a shadow appeared
from behind Horseley and a line of bright silver
flashed beneath Horseley’s chin. A stream of blood
arced from his neck. The shadow withdrew beneath
the boat. Horseley slipped out of sight. Gun locked air
in his chest and dove away from the runabout, re
membering the fish-cleaning knife. Carol.

Hedman’s shotgun boomed. Pellets hit the water
and rattled off the aluminum hull of the capsized boat.
Gun dove deep and pushed hard for the sound of
Hedman’s slowing motor. He kicked his feet violently, thrust his arms forward and back, forward and
back. His lungs burned. The runabout was barely
moving now, the engine idling. Gun swam beneath it
and came up on the other side, sucked his lungs full without making a sound. He fastened his fingers on
the gunwale and pulled down with everything he had.
The boat rocked hard and Hedman fell toward the
rear, managing to hang onto his shotgun but landing
facefirst in the twisted snarls of anchor rope.

Gun vaulted over the side and landed off balance on hip and elbow beneath the steering wheel and throttle
lever. Hedman tossed off coils of rope and pushed himself to his knees. Both men reached their feet at
the same moment. Hedman—just eight feet away, a circle of rope hanging from his neck—held the shotgun at his waist, barrel toward Gun’s chest.

Gun said, “It was a nice idea, Lyle.” He felt behind
him for the throttle, found it.

“This part is still nice,” Lyle said. He smiled.

Gun jammed the lever to full power and threw
himself free of the boat. Hedman flipped backward
into the water and blasted a red hole in the sky. Gun
swam toward him as the boat charged away. He
reached him, put a hand on his shoulder, then Lyle’s
neck popped like a cork and the rope yanked him into
the air. The motor roared a moment’s resistance, then
Lyle was gone, horizontal on the water, flying, arms
and legs bouncing on the surface of the lake like empty
cans thrown from a speeding car. He was heading straight for town.

Gun swam toward the wreckage of his old boat. He
couldn’t hear the splashing anymore. “Mazy!” he
called.

“Dad!”

He tried to pinpoint her voice. It came again.
“Dad!” Then he could see her, swimming toward him
in the foggy darkness. She had two heads.

“Mazy . . .”

Now Gun could see she was swimming arm-in-arm
with Jack, helping and being helped, the two of them
negotiating a sort of double sidestroke. Jack’s face ran
with blood. Gun met them beside the capsized boat,
at the place where Horseley had gone under.

“You’re all right?” Gun said.

Jack was breathing hard, but he forced a smile and
showed Gun a new black space in his top row of teeth.
“Wouldn’t be, if your girl hadn’t clubbed that cave
man with an oar. He was too much for me. Hell, it was
like trying to drown an island.”

“He got away, took off swimming that way,” said Mazy, pointing. Then her eyes went black with fear.
“Where’s Carol?”

“Carol’s fine, I believe. Isn’t that right, Carol?” Gun
said, lifting his voice.

A soft splash sounded from underneath the boat,
and Carol surfaced between Mazy and Gun. Wet hair
covered her face like a striped mask. Gun pushed the hair from her eyes, then lifted her right arm into the
air. In her fist she held the fish-cleaning knife with
the slender, curving blade.

41

It was two days later, Thursday morning, seven
o’clock. The sun was clean white and shining through
the trees. A storm had passed through in the night, leaving the air calm and purified. Gun finished his
morning swim and walked ashore. He was wearing
only a pair of gray longjohns. Stony Lake was still very
cold.

He took a towel from where it hung on a dock post and dried his chest and shoulders. He was rubbing his
hair dry when he heard Carol’s voice.

“Still in your longies, I see.”

Gun looked up and saw her in the outfield grass.
Even from twenty yards he could tell her green eyes were rested. Her black hair shone. Beside her was her
son Michael, whom Gun had met the day before. He
had his mother’s long legs and someone else’s face, a
rugged face, wide cheekbones, a bony nose. Gun
joined them on the grass and shook hands with
Michael.

“We’ve got some news,” Carol said. “They found Berg, and Geoff too.” Berg and Geoff had been the only two unaccounted for since the other night. The search had been large and well-publicized.

“Together, were they?” asked Gun.

“Far from it. Berg was hiding in Nick Faris’s barn,
up in the haymow. State police bloodhounds found him last night, about eleven-thirty.” Carol touched
Gun’s arm. “We’d better get you inside, you’ve got
goose bumps.”

“What about Geoff?”

Michael put an arm around his mother’s shoulders.
Carol said, “Geoff washed up on the town beach.
Early this morning.”

Gun turned toward the lake. “That was a strong wind we had. Came straight out of the north.” He
pictured Geoff’s face, bloated and tanless, forced it
out of his mind.

After a moment Carol said, “Michael and I were wondering if you and Mazy would like to go out, get
some breakfast.”

“Can’t you smell anything?” said Gun, turning
toward them again. Carol and Michael put their noses
in the air. “That’s Mazy’s bacon frying.”

Four plates of bacon, eggs, and hash browns later,
they sat at Gun’s pine table sipping strong stove-top coffee. Yesterday they’d all been obliged to tell their
stories over and over again—to investigators from the
FBI and the state crime bureau, to media folks of
every stripe. Mazy had phoned an exclusive to the
Tribune,
which had appeared this morning under a
headline an inch tall. Today was a breather. There had
been several minutes of silence when someone belted
Gun’s door, boom boom boom, and an enormous
voice bawled, “Gun Pedersen, you home?”

Mike blinked at his mother, who lifted her shoul
ders. Mazy said, “Beats me.” Gun smiled, took a long
plug

of coffee and stood from the table.

Bowser was clean-shaven and round-headed, grin
ning. The bottom several buttons of his red flannel
shirt were missing and his big hairy belly looked like
somebody’s naked rear end backing out of a tent.
“Went into that cutesy barber shop of Loretta’s last
night,” he said. They were standing next to home
plate. Behind them a celebration of summer birds
swirled in the white pine. “Went in and sat down and
told them, I don’t want bald but I want its first
cousin.”

“You’re improved,” Gun said.

“Talk in town is all Gun Pedersen,” Bowser said.

“Great.”

“You done a job on ‘em,” said Bowser. His left eye
held respectfully on Gun’s face while the right went
wandering off toward the lake. “Done a job on
Hedman, may he fry on the Big Griddle. Done a job
on the old Loon Mall. I’m admiring of that, Gun.”

“Come in for breakfast?”

“Naw. You got folks over.” Bowser stood in the bird-wild noise of the morning, hands in his pockets,
breathing easily. A swell of far-off laughter came from
the house, Mazy and Carol and Mike.

“I felt real bad about missing your dad’s funeral,”
Gun said. “I thought about it a lot that day.”

Bowser shifted his weight from one thick leg to the
other, shot a stream of saliva at home plate. “Hard to be in two places at once. And you didn’t miss a hell of
a lot. Arnie Quinn at the funeral parlor don’t waste no
time. A couple of tunes and a prayer, and Arnie and
his helper roll ‘em right out to the limo. Best thing
about it all was the taps at the graveyard. That
trumpet player, now, he knew how to make a pretty
sound. I loved that.”

They were quiet. Bowser took one hand from his pocket and peeked at the dirt under his nails, then
looked evenly at Gun. His eyes almost seemed to
focus on the same point, nearly came together to
function as a matched pair. “You’re welcome at the
home place, Gun. Anytime.”

“Thanks.”

The kitchen was relaxed and gold with sun when Gun stepped back inside. Mike was leaning into the
refrigerator, reading a buttermilk carton. Mazy rested
back in her chair, eyes closed. Carol folded the
newspaper she held and looked a question at Gun. He
raised his arms and held them out from his sides,
palms up.

“Happy day,” he said.