Dead Meat (23 page)

“Good. Damn good, Thurl. You oughta try it sometime.”

“Keep meaning to. Like to get into some of them salmon. I would.”

Tiny and Harris chatted in that vein until we entered the lodge. At that point Danforth took over. “We want to talk to whoever saw the accident,” he said to Tiny.

“That’d be Brady, here, and Bud Turner. They were the only ones.”

“Who’s Turner? I don’t remember him.”

“Our cook. He and Brady were out on the porch when it happened. Far as I know, no one else saw it.”

Danforth glanced at his wristwatch and frowned. “Well, let’s get to it. We’ll use your office.”

Tiny shrugged, and Thurl Harris followed me and Danforth into Tiny’s little cubicle. We sat as we had the previous time, with Danforth behind the desk and Harris and me side by side in the straight-backed chairs.

“Tell me what you saw, then,” said Danforth without preliminaries.

“First,” I began, “I had a conversation with Gib last night. I was going to fly out with him this morning, but—”

“Just tell me what you saw, please.”

“If I say something else, you will instruct the jury to disregard it, is that it?”

He waved his hand. “You can say whatever you want, Mr. Coyne. But first, describe the accident, will you?”

I did, as well as I could. When I finished, Danforth said, “Would you say that the explosion came first?”

I shook my head. “It all happened so fast…”

“Or did the plane flip and then explode?”

I hesitated and closed my eyes. All I saw was that orange flash and the cartwheeling airplane, caught in a still frame in my mind’s eye. “I think the explosion came first. But I’m not sure. It all seemed to happen instantaneously, do you understand?”

He nodded. “It exploded first, then.”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

“It makes a difference, Mr. Coyne.”

“I know.”

“If it exploded first, then he didn’t hit a snag or something. We can surmise that the engine was the cause. If he flipped first, then we would assume he hit something and that was what caused the explosion.”

“Which,” I said, “would make it an accident.”

“Either way it could have been an accident. I just want to know what kind of accident.”

I sat forward. “Listen. Don’t forget that there has already been one murder up here. Quite likely two. This could be the third.”

Danforth fussed with the knot in his tie. “I know of one murder,” he said carefully. “We believe we know who did it. He is nowhere near here. And there is a missing person.”

I shook my head. “This doesn’t change your opinion on Woody, then?”

“Not at all.”

I took a deep breath and let it out loudly. “I believe Gib intended to fly to Greenville this morning to talk with the sheriff.” I glanced at Thurl Harris, whose face revealed nothing. “I believe Gib knew something about Rolando’s murder. Maybe about the other Rolando’s disappearance, too. He asked me to go with him. To give him legal counsel. I believe he was killed so that he couldn’t talk.”

“You believe,” said Danforth.

I smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“That’s interesting, Mr. Coyne. And with beliefs as firm as those, you must also have a belief as to who this murderer is. So let’s have it. Who did all these killings? Who arranged for this airplane to explode this morning?”

“I have no idea whatsoever.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to speculate.”

“Right. I wouldn’t.”

“Is there anything else you think I should know?”

I thought of telling him about the true identities of the men who called themselves Ken and Phil Rolando. I decided to hold on to that information until I could make some sense out of it. It was irresponsible, I knew. Irresponsible, as an officer of the court, not to be forthcoming with any information relative to a felony. Irresponsible to allow my feelings for Danforth to cloud my professional judgment.

The hell with it. I didn’t like Asa Danforth. I didn’t trust him. And I wanted to talk with Charlie McDevitt before I talked to anybody else. Charlie would give me hell. I deserved it. But Charlie could help me make sense of it all, and I’d be damned if this abrasive power seeker Danforth was going to climb into political office on my back.

“No,” I told him. “That’s it. That’s all I know.”

Danforth spoke to Harris. “Get the other one, the cook, in here, then.” He lifted his eyebrows at me. I took that as a dismissal. I stood up. “Appreciate your help, Mr. Coyne,” said Danforth, flashing me his well-practiced smile, as polished as the buttons on his Master’s jacket.

I tried to think of a suitably sarcastic rejoinder. Finding none, I walked out without saying anything.

I took up my favorite Brumby rocker on the porch, and I was still there a half hour later when Harris and Danforth came out of the lodge, accompanied by Tiny. They stopped beside me, and Danforth looked down at me. “Thanks again for your help,” he said.

In the intervening half hour, I still hadn’t come up with a reply. I lifted my hand. “Anytime,” I said.

Tiny walked with them down to the dock. I got up and went inside. Nobody was in the dining room. I found Bud Turner in the kitchen.

“What did you tell them?” I said.

Bud grinned crookedly. “Same as you, I imagine. Gib’s plane blew up.” He shrugged. “They didn’t seem that interested.”

“I had the same feeling.”

“They want it to be an accident,” said Bud.

“What do you think?”

“Oh, I s’pose it was an accident, all right. What else could it be?”

“You know.”

“Ah, hell, Mr. Coyne. They got old Woody put away somewheres. He’s the only one killing folks around here.” He lifted his eyebrows at me, and I nodded. I didn’t agree with him, but neither did I care to discuss it.

“When will you be driving into Greenville next?” I asked him.

“Two, three days, I guess.”

I frowned.

“You need to get to town?”

“Yes, I do.”

He nodded. “That’s right. You were flyin’ out with Gib this morning, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. Listen, Bud—”

“Let me talk to Tiny. No reason I couldn’t go down a couple days early. I’ve got a feelin’ that until he finds somebody who can drive airplanes in here, we’re gonna be doin’ a lot of truckin’.”

“I’ll speak to Tiny myself, if you want.”

“No problem,” said Bud. “Check with me after dinner.”

I wandered out of the kitchen, wondering if there was anyone at Raven Lake who hadn’t known that I was scheduled to be on the airplane with Gib.

It was easily arranged, and after breakfast the next morning Bud and I climbed into his pickup, bound for Greenville. Turner had just got the engine going when Fisher, the young man with the Adam’s apple and the blushing bride, came running to the truck.

“Hey, wait,” he huffed.

Turner leaned out the window. “What’s up, Mr. Fisher?”

“Are you headed for town?”

“Ay-yuh.”

“Well, I—that is, Mrs. Fisher—we’d like a ride.”

Turner shook his head. “Sorry. No room. Tiny’ll have another plane up for you in a day or so.”

Fisher’s young face beseeched Bud Turner. “You don’t understand. My wife won’t fly. She—she heard the explosion. And there was Mr. Rolando who got murdered. She’s in our cabin now crying her eyes out. She’s petrified. I have to get her out of this place.”

“I can’t take you in the truck.”

Fisher looked at me. “Why not? He’s going.”

“Mr. Coyne works for Mr. Wheeler.”

Fisher’s shoulders slumped. “Oh.”

“Sorry,” said Turner.

Fisher shrugged and turned back to the cabins. His first marital conundrum. I silently wished him luck. “We could have put them in the back,” I said.

Bud Turner shook his head. “Tiny wouldn’t like it. Dangerous. Roads’re too rough. No way to treat the sports.”

“They haven’t been treated all that well, anyway,” I said.

Turner grinned and put the pickup into gear.

The crude logging road cut a dark, cool tunnel through the thick forest. The tangled blowdown along the roadside looked as if it must harbor fierce animals. It reminded me of a film I had once seen in which a pair of men traveled by canoe into the headwaters of the Amazon, seeking its source. These Maine woods seemed equally trackless and hostile, and I was grateful for Bud’s nonchalant company and comforted by the presence of his rifle and shotgun in the rack behind us.

“One of these trips I gotta have this thing tuned up,” he observed, breaking a comfortable silence between us. He drove the twisting, rutted road easily, one elbow cocked out the window, drumming on the roof with his fingers to a tune that played in his head. “Hear that?”

“Hear what?” I asked.

“Listen to the engine. There. Hear it? Keeps missin’.”

I focused on the sound of the truck’s engine. “I can’t hear anything,” I said.

“Plugs all fouled up. Hate like hell to have her die out here. Long ways from triple-A tow trucks.” He grinned sideways at me.

I tried to listen more attentively. The closer I listened, the worse that engine began to sound to me. I could hear the pings and wheezes, coughs and burps. It sounded like an old man gasping for breath.

Or perhaps it was just the power of Bud’s suggestion. I couldn’t tell.

He coasted to a stop. “Gotta take a look,” he said to me. “You just sit tight.”

He yanked up the emergency brake, opened the door, and climbed out, leaving the engine idling. Then he reached behind the seat and came out with a long-handled screwdriver. I stayed in the cab while he went around to the front and lifted up the hood. After a moment he called to me, “Slide over, there, Mr. Coyne, and give her a little gas.”

I did. Then he yelled, “Okay. Ease off now.”

He played with it for a minute or two, making the engine race and then slow down. “Turn her off now,” he told me. I obeyed.

He came back and reached in behind my seat. “Gonna try somethin’,” he said. He found a small wrench and returned to the front of the truck.

By the time we had been sitting still for five minutes or so, the blackflies and mosquitoes found me, and I was swatting and scratching and swearing under my breath when Bud stood to the side and said to me, “Okay, Mr. Coyne. Try and start her up.”

I turned the key and gave it a little gas. It chugged, sputtered, and died.

Bud frowned. “You flooded it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He ducked under the hood, then reemerged. “Try her again. Keep your foot off the accelerator.”

I did as instructed. The engine caught, and Bud revved it from under the hood. Then he slammed down the hood and came back. I slid over to the passenger side. He stowed his tools behind the driver’s seat and climbed in. “Sounds a little better, huh?”

I nodded doubtfully. “I guess.”

But by the time we had traveled another mile or so, it became apparent that something was wrong under the hood. There was a rhythmic screeching sound, as if raw metal were scraping across raw metal. Bud gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and he drove hunched forward, a frown cutting deep creases into his long face.

“Well, shit, anyhow,” he finally muttered. He stopped the truck and got out again. He left the engine running. The screeching sound subsided into a faint whisper. But it was still there.

Bud took the screwdriver around to the front and once again lifted up the hood. I remained in the truck, feeling useless.

A minute later he came around to my side of the truck. “Want to come out here and give me a hand?” he said.

“Sure.”

I climbed out and followed him to the front. “Let’s try something else,” he said. He leaned in and pointed into the innards of the engine. “Look here. See this little screw?” I bent in beside him. He handed the screwdriver to me. “Hold this here. When I tell you, rotate it a quarter turn clockwise. Okay?”

I nodded. I fit the business end of the screwdriver into the slot. He went around to the cab of the truck. “Okay, now,” he called. “Give her a little slow twist.”

I did, and the engine raced. The screeching noise was deafening.

“Okay. Back her off, now,” he yelled over the din.

He came back and stood at my shoulder. “Keep her there, now, Mr. Coyne. Gonna do one more thing.”

I was leaning awkwardly into the truck. The heat from the struggling engine caused sweat to burst from the pores in my forehead and trickle into my eyes. I didn’t dare try to wipe my face, because I didn’t want the screwdriver to slip.

I believe that in addition to the standard five senses, there is a sixth. Perhaps it’s sensitivity to another person’s electromagnetic output. Maybe it’s a subconscious sensitivity to the odor of someone’s rush of adrenaline, or possibly we can detect subtle changes in air pressure as another moves into our personal space.

Maybe it really is extrasensory perception.

Whatever it is, I felt it suddenly as I crouched under the hood of Bud Turner’s truck, and it caused me to duck away reflexively, just as a big Stilson wrench whistled past my ear and smashed against the front of the truck. I stumbled to the ground and rolled awkwardly away.

“Damn!” muttered Turner and he came at me, the heavy tool raised over his head.

I scrambled to my feet as he swiped at me again. I staggered backward and fell against the mound of boulders and earth at the edge of the road. The wrench was heavy enough to cause Turner to lose his balance momentarily as he followed through with his swing, and it gave me enough time to scramble over the boulders and duck into the thick undergrowth beside the road.

The land sloped acutely away from the road, a precipitous drop of a hundred yards or more. It was grown thick with scrub pine and birch saplings and brier, all interlaced with the uprooted old trees and big rocks that a bulldozer had shoved down the slope when it cut the logging road into the side of the hill.

I crawled, slid, and stumbled down the slope. Get away from Bud Turner. Get deep into the jungly forest. I could think only of escape. I barely felt the briers and the broken stubs of old trees catch and rip my clothes, scratch and gouge my face and arms. Saplings slapped my flesh. Sweat burned my eyes. I fought blindly, panicked, through the thicket until I reached a narrow, fast-moving stream at the foot of the incline.