Badger Games (20 page)

“… do you? I mean, privately?” Paulie asked.

“Privately?” Joe said. “Well, yeah, basically. I always worked for large outfits. This deal with the colonel is private. That is, I'm not a government employee. Just a contractor. Contract for Service, that's me.” He smiled. “But I'm not like a private detective, with an office, taking clients who walk in off the street. What'd you have in mind?”

“Bazooka,” Paulie said.

“I thought you didn't want anything to do with all that, just peace and quiet,” Joe said, recalling the story he'd half-listened to.

“I've had the peace and quiet. Now I'm able to think about it again. Just talking to you has cleared up my thoughts on it,” Paulie said. “But I can see I'd been coming to this. I made a mistake getting
involved over there, but once you intervene it seems like you have a responsibility, to see it through. I was thinking we could work out a deal—for the land, I mean.”

“I thought the deal was I wouldn't say anything to the colonel, about finding you.”

“That's for openers,” Paulie said. “We haven't discussed how much land you want, or where. An acre by the gate? Ten acres up in the woods? On the creek? There's lots to talk about.”

“So, we're talking,” Joe said. “No hurry, the colonel can wait. I was just thinking … what if you didn't really want a fixed living site—just to move seasonally? Low-impact kind of thing. How much land would that entail?”

Paulie didn't know. He said it would depend on how comfortably one wanted to live. A person could drag a trailer from one site to another, put in some minimal facilities like solar-power support, maybe septic tanks. But he wasn't interested, Joe could tell.

“What about this other guy?” Paulie asked.

Ah, thought Joe, that's what's bugging him. “You thinking it might be this Bazerk character?”

“It sounds kind of like him,” Paulie said.

“Why would he be looking for you? Isn't it the other way around? You want to find him?”

“Yeah,” Paulie admitted, “now. You're right, it wouldn't make sense for him to come looking for me. You'd think I'm the last guy he'd like to see.”

“I'll say,” Joe cut in. “The guy screws up your act, waltzes off with your goods …” Joe hesitated. Paulie's story hadn't quite gotten to that point. It seemed headed that way, though. You don't ever want to leave a guy alone with your goods. “Did he?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, he took the goods,” Paulie said. He got up and went to the tent flap. He stepped out, partially, listening. “You hear something? I thought I heard the dogs. I hope they're not running deer.”

Joe hadn't heard anything. “Maybe it was Strix, the owl,” he said.

“Maybe,” Paulie said, but he didn't come back in. “He killed them all,” he said. He spoke it to the wind, to the night.

Joe wasn't sure he'd gotten this right. “The people in the cave, you're talking about?”

Paulie came back inside. His face had a new look. It was haunted, but determined. “It took a long time to get that out,” he said. “Another mistake. I tried to hide it, even from myself. It's a shameful thing, to be a part of that.”

“You weren't a part of that,” Joe said. It irritated him when people took responsibility where it didn't belong to them.

“I left him in the cave,” Paulie said. His eyes were glowing. “Those people were there because of me. Because Fedima thought they'd be safe, with me. He butchered them.”

“All of them?” Joe was surprised to find that his breath felt short.

“All but Fedima. He took her with him,” Paulie said. “I don't know what happened to her. He probably killed her somewhere on the mountain, or he may have traded her to brigands, to help him get out. There are a number of possible scenarios. I've had a while to think them all out.”

I bet you have, Joe thought. “Are you sure
he
got out?”

At that moment they heard the shots.

“Uh-oh,” Joe said. He followed Paulie out of the tent. They looked off into the night. There were no further shots, but there was barking, very urgent barking with a keening sound.

Paulie grabbed the bike, but Joe stopped him. “Forget it,” he said. “You can't go rushing back there. It's better if we go together. Have you got a gun?”

Paulie had a shotgun. He fetched it hastily. “Maybe you should take the bike,” he said. He was leaping with impatience.

“No, you lead the way,” Joe said. “I wouldn't get twenty feet on that thing in the dark. But watch that light. We don't want to be seen.”

They set off as fast as Paulie could go, with Joe loping along behind. Clouds had moved in, at least partially obscuring the stars and diminishing the available light. That slowed their progress, considerably. Both fell more than once, but they quickly ran on. It took them at least twenty minutes, Joe estimated, to reach the crest of the meadow, from where they could see the house. They'd had to douse the light earlier, so as not to alert anyone to their coming.

From the crest they could see lights on at the house, including the orangish-pink yard light that Frank had turned on when they left. Nothing seemed amiss, except that one of Frank's vehicles was gone. Joe thought it was the older pickup that had been parked next to where Helen had pulled up the Durango. Paulie noticed it too.

“Somebody must have shown up at the gate,” Paulie said. “Frank must have gone to check.”

But the shots? That gripped both their minds. They raced to the house, but as they approached, Joe held Paulie back. “Wait,” he said. “I'll check it out. You cover me from here.” He pointed to another of Frank's vehicles.

Joe didn't like entering the ring of light provided by the yard light, but he felt he had to arm himself. He raced to the Durango and rolled under it. He peered at the house and surroundings. There was no sign of any activity. He crawled to the back of the vehicle and opened that door as quietly as he could. He dared not open one of the side doors, as that would turn on the interior light. The back of the SUV was jammed with gear and Helen's damned chain-saw sculptures. But he found his canvas gun satchel and dragged it out.

He scurried back into the shadows, away from the car, and extracted a couple of favorite pieces. One, a nice flat Smith & Wesson .380 automatic, he jammed into his waistband at the small
of his back, after making sure it was loaded. The other, a big, hulking Dan Wesson .357 magnum, he carried in his hand.

Joe crept around the house, keeping to the shadows, moving cautiously. He was almost to the greenhouse part when he thought he saw something inside the house. He sat and watched, praying that Paulie would not become impatient and do something stupid. At last what he took to be a human figure moved enough that he was sure it was Helen. She was standing against one of the huge posts that supported the beams. She was in shadow, but he could see a gleam of metal in her hand, held down along her leg. Very smart, he thought. It was also encouraging. It indicated that she was alone in the house, that she was not under the control of another, hidden, person. The problem was to prevent her from firing at him, if he appeared.

He picked up a pebble and tossed it at a window, well away from himself. Helen instantly turned her head. He tossed another pebble. She understood. She said something, or at least her mouth moved, forming an “O”. He thought it was his name. But she hadn't said it aloud, or the heavy, double-glazed windows had muffled her exclamation. Joe felt it was safe to show himself. He stepped into the light, just for a second, long enough for her to see him, and then stepped back.

A moment later she was out of the house and around the back. Joe called to her softly. They embraced briefly. She quickly filled him in.

The alarm had sounded, she explained. Frank had come to where she had already turned in. He had still been up, puttering with his plants. The dogs were out. Normally, he'd have put them in the pen to keep them from running deer at night, but they had gone with Joe and Paulie, so he'd assumed they were still with them. On the monitors he'd seen a man inside the gate. The lights at the gate had gone on automatically. Just a guy, apparently alone, and no car. Maybe a lost drunk.

“A drunk?” Joe said, skeptically.

“Well, he was staggering, Frank said. The dogs had come up and attacked him and the guy had shot one and clubbed another. Frank took the pickup to go sort it out.”

“Did you watch the monitors?” Joe asked.

“Yes. I saw Frank go down there, to the gate. He got out and talked to the guy. On the speakerphone I could hear them arguing, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. They were too far from the mike. But it looked like they calmed down. I could see Frank was angry. He put the dead dogs in the back of the truck. Then the guy got in the truck and the two of them went out through the gate.”

“What about the other two dogs?” Joe asked. Helen said they were still out, down by the gate.

Joe decided they should go in the house. He called to Paulie, and when they met on the porch he explained what had happened. They went into the house and checked the monitors. The two other dogs were standing at the now closed gate, looking down the road beyond.

“What do you think?” Joe asked Paulie.

“It sounds like what Frank said,” Paulie replied. “Some drunk got on the wrong road, probably ditched his car, and stumbled on the gate. But …” He looked worried.

“You're thinking it's your pal Bazooka,” Joe said. Paulie nodded. “What did this guy look like?” Joe asked Helen.

“They weren't that close to the cameras,” she said, “and the light wasn't that great. He seemed big, much bigger than Frank, wearing a dark coat. He looked excited, pacing around, but not threatening or anything. I didn't see the gun. Frank didn't seem very leery of him, once he'd calmed down. I'd say the guy was drunk. He tried to pick up one of the dogs when Frank was picking up the other, but he looked clumsy, dropped it. Frank just came
back and put his hand on his arm, then picked up the dog himself. Then they stood and talked for a few minutes, gesturing back toward town.”

“What do you think?” Joe asked Paulie, who shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it's been a half hour, at least. We better go see,” Joe said. “Do you know how to switch off those lights? Good. It'd be safer for us without them.”

Helen stayed at the house, where she could watch the monitors. She could maintain contact with Joe and Paulie by cell phone, or with Frank, if he should call—although the phones didn't always work that well.

Joe and Paulie drove down to the gate in one of the other four-wheel-drive pickups, a big old Dodge Ram—Joe thought it better to leave the Durango for Helen, just in case, and the pickup had the key in it, which was customary out here. There was a broken vodka bottle lying by the side of the road. They got out to check, and the dogs came eagerly. Paulie ordered them back to the house and they withdrew, but he didn't think they went far. Paulie had brought an electronic opener for the gate. The dogs didn't attempt to follow them, and the gate closed behind them, automatically. They drove on toward town.

In a few minutes they came upon the rental car, down in the ditch. But there was no sign of the pickup, nor the two men. It appeared that they had stopped—there were two sets of footprints in the road.

Paulie and Joe discussed it as they drove on, slowly but steadily. The best scenario was that the intruder was, in fact, a lost drunk—the broken bottle on the road bolstered that notion—and Frank had decided that it wasn't a good idea to try to help him extricate his car from the ditch. At any rate, it was down so far that it really required a wrecker. In this scenario, Frank might have elected to drive the drunk to town, or even home.

“An armed drunk, out here?” Joe said.

“You have no idea how many guys go armed in these parts,” Paulie said. He seemed hopeful. “It's so common no one even discusses it. He may not have been carrying it on him, just had it in the car, but when he had to get out and walk, at night … most of the guys I know would have taken the gun out of the glove compartment. Bears, you know, and mountain lions.”

Joe thought Paulie might be trying to convince himself of the innocence of the incident. It had a plausible feel, but Joe was skeptical. He didn't say as much to Paulie, just cautioned him that they shouldn't proceed as if it were simply a road accident. Paulie accepted that.

They cruised around the village, searching for anything that might look out of the ordinary. There was a gas station, but it was closed, as was Frenchy's bar. Paulie said the nearest town where there would be a wrecker was Basin, ten miles down the interstate. There were no lights burning in the town, except for a few yard lights of the type that go on at dusk. But Paulie didn't think there was much point in calling the road service in Basin: Frank could have called them, if that was what he had in mind. No, he was leaning on the theory that Frank had driven the drunk home—which could mean as far as Butte. Possibly, Frank had recognized the guy.

“Is there a bar in Basin?” Joe said. He glanced at his watch; it was getting toward two
A.M
., official closing time.

There was a bar. Paulie called Helen and told her what they were planning. She said no one had called.

“I don't know,” Joe said. “If Frank had to drive the guy home, wouldn't he have called? Just to reassure Helen?”

“Maybe he thought it wouldn't take long,” Paulie said. “And if it was an acquaintance, his fears would have subsided.”

Joe nodded. “Maybe you should stay here, in case Frank comes back. If we both drive down to Basin we could miss him.” He left
Paulie pacing on the dirt road to the upper Frenchy's Fork and headed for Basin.

The road was a four-lane freeway. At times the opposing lanes diverged fairly widely, due to the difficult mountain terrain—one couldn't always see the other lanes. Joe caught a distant glimpse of a couple of vehicles headed the other way, but he couldn't make out what they were, just headlights in the distance. Joe was fuming. Here he had all but sealed a deal for what looked like his dream retreat. Only if anything happened to Frank or Paulie, the deal was blown. Anything, that is, that couldn't be easily concealed or conveniently explained away. It was too cruel to contemplate.