Badger Games (24 page)

Joe could find nothing in the vehicle except for the paperwork in the glove compartment, which said it had been rented to one Harry Hart, of Atlanta, Georgia. Joe took that and stacked hay bales around the car to further hide its presence. Then he went into the house.

Paulie and Frank had gone to bed. Joe was not sleepy. He was excited. Frank had described his security system in greater detail to Helen before retiring. She explained that Frank's fence was electronically sensitive for all of its extensive perimeter. Already tonight Frank had shown her the electronic signature of a deer leaping the fence. They were fairly secure, for now. A careful and measured attempt to breach it could be accomplished,
especially in some of the more distant reaches, where it was little more than a single wire strung over rocky outcroppings. And there were approaches from the backcountry, where no wire could be strung. But you would have to be more thorough and careful than Boz to find those places.

“I don't think there's much to worry about tonight,” Joe said, “if the nut has found someplace to crash. Pardon the expression,” he said with a snort. “He'll be wanting to sleep, that's for sure. But we don't know how badly wounded he was. If he's not too bad off he'll go back to his motel, or whatever, and rest. With any luck, the bastard will die in his sleep. That'll be a problem if the truck is connected to him, and then to Frank. But we should be so lucky.”

“If I knew where he was, I'd kill him myself,” Helen said. She was serious. Joe knew that she was capable of doing it. “Joe, why are we fooling around with this? Let's call the colonel.”

Joe explained why that wasn't such a great idea. He filled her in on what Paulie had told him about Kosovo, about the cave. “I don't know what the colonel really wants here,” he said, “but my gut tells me that Paulie won't come out of it whole. I'm not just thinking about Paulie. The potential for us is great here, if we can only hold it together for a few days. I'm not ready to give up on it. But we've got to locate this bastard and get to the bottom of this.”

They discussed it further, in more detail, but he could see that she was about out of it. He convinced her to go to bed. He would stand guard until daylight. He found a warm jacket and went out to patrol above the house, on the ridge.

Well before daylight, Paulie came out, bringing coffee. “I can't tell you how grateful I am,” he told Joe. “If it hadn't been for you, we'd all be dead. I owe you an explanation.”

Joe let him go at it. The whole story of Ostropaki and Boz came out. Paulie was glad to unburden himself, at last. In the end, he opined that Boz was driven by at least two factors: he thought
Paulie might have more “goods”—he had demanded as much, in the time before Joe had gotten back from Basin. But there was something else. Paulie had figured out that Boz knew that Paulie could finger him for the cave massacre, to the war crimes tribunal. The people he worked with in Serbia had probably made it clear to Boz that he had to get rid of this witness. Paulie endangered them all.

Joe wasn't so happy to hear this angle. It meant, if he judged Paulie right, that Paulie would be going back, cooperating with the tribunal. That could have a big effect on Joe's plans. The press would be interested in what Paulie had been doing in Butte, where he'd holed up, and so on. Beyond that, he wasn't sure what the colonel's take on it would be. Maybe, he thought again, Helen was right: it was time to bail. But no … it was too soon for that. First things first. Find the man.

Joe probed Paulie carefully. “I understand what you want to do,” he told him.

“What I have to do,” Paulie corrected him. “I should have come forward before, but … I wasn't ready. Now, I have to do it. For all of them, especially for Fedima.”

“You don't even know what happened to Fedima,” Joe pointed out. “When we get Boz we can find out that much. For all you know, she's still alive somewhere. A guy like that, he could have sold her into slavery. This might be her one chance to be liberated, you don't know. Once we learn that, we can figure out what to do next. You'll go back, don't worry. I'll see to it. But we have to work out the best way to do it.”

Joe was already thinking of a plan. Maybe Paulie's Butte background could be kept quiet. He could be provided with another history, possibly. It wasn't relevant to the tribunal. Only his activities in Kosovo meant something to them. The colonel could help there, and he'd be eager to do so, Joe felt. But first things
first. He got Paulie's agreement to keep this confidential, for now at least.

This government work was dicey, Joe thought. But interesting.

When dawn came, Joe and Paulie went in to find that Helen and Frank were up, looking rather awful but at least a little more rested. Joe got them fed. There was no television in the house, Joe learned, but there was a radio. He was eager to find out if the news had gotten on to Boz, for any reason. But there was nothing about him. The sensation of the day was a double murder in Butte, overnight. A man and his wife. The police were not releasing names, yet, “until they'd notified family.”

Within a half hour there was a new crisis. An uncle of Frank's called. Had he heard? Gary and Selma had been murdered by a burglar. The sheriff wanted to interview anyone from the family. Funeral arrangements were being made. Frank and Paulie would have to come in and be interviewed. The officer the uncle had talked to was Jacky LeBruyn. Frank remembered Jacky, didn't he? Jacky wanted to talk to him. The uncle had told Jacky that he'd get hold of Frank—he knew Frank wouldn't want a bunch of cops knocking on his door.

“You've got to go in,” Joe told Frank when the uncle rang off. “You don't want the cops out here. Paulie will go with you.” The question was, What would they say? It was immediately apparent to both men that their uncle and aunt could have been the source of Boz's information about where to find “Franko.”

Frank seemed dazed. “I don't know, man,” he said, running his hands through his hair ceaselessly, tugging at his unruly beard. “What'm I gonna say? They'll see my face. What'll I tell them, man?”

Helen started to go to him, to comfort him, but Joe shook his head to warn her off. Joe leaned against the counter and let the man ramble in near panic for a moment or two. Then he said,
calmly, “Well, you'll just have to belt up, Frank, and do what you think is right.”

Frank stopped pacing and stared at Joe. So did the others. Joe hadn't spoken unkindly, but with confidence.

“But what
is
right?” Frank asked.

“You'll figure it out, Frank. You always do. I'm sorry about your aunt and your uncle, but for all you know this has nothing to do with Boz. If the cops thought it did, if they suspected anything, they'd have been out here by now, don't you think? I imagine they've been looking for an excuse to visit you for some time, anyway.”

Frank thought about that and nodded. He seemed a little calmer. “Me and Paulie will have to go in, the sooner the better, I guess. I could always tell them I fell, digging a trench, or something, and banged up my head.”

“That's right,” Joe encouraged him, “and Paulie helped you fix it up. You could even tell them you wanted to run over to the doctor's office, or the hospital, to get it properly looked at.”

“Yeah, that's good,” Frank said. Paulie agreed. It would probably relieve Frank of any serious grilling, if any such thing were contemplated by the cops.

Not likely, Joe thought, but didn't say so.

“You ought to clean up, look your best,” Helen suggested. “I could trim your hair and your beard.” That offer was gratefully received.

While they were gone, Joe counseled Paulie. “Remember, you and Frank don't know anything about Boz. There was no mention of a suspect on the radio, or from your uncle. Just tell them what you know, which is nothing. Frank had an accident. You're his witness, and he's yours. You were both out here, all night—hell, you've both been holed up here for weeks. It's nothing. Don't panic. In the meantime, Helen and I will get after Boz.”

“But what if the cops find him?” Paulie said. He seemed calm. “What if they find the truck? Frank's truck?”

“If Boz was involved in that killing,” Joe said, “he had to be driving the rental car. If they're on to that, they're not on to a man driving a pickup truck. If, somehow, they're looking for Boz and they find him and connect that truck to him, well you didn't even know it was missing. You'll know if they ask about the truck. Tell them that, as far as you know, it's still parked down by the gate, where Frank was doing some work. But that's all just speculation.”

Joe could see that Paul was looking a little worried now; he was imagining complications. He hastened to cut them off.

“The cops don't know anything about Boz, even if they have him in the tank. He's not the kind to cooperate with them. He won't be talking. I know his kind. He's seen the inside of jails before. He'll have a lawyer in no time. But why speculate? I'd be very surprised if they have any idea who killed those people. It's much too early. All you and Frank have to remember—and be sure to discuss this with him on your way into town—is that, in truth, you don't know anything about the murder of your aunt and uncle. You can't really help them. You're bereaved. Frank needs some medical care. This other thing, your missing truck, that's your private business. Right now, your main concern is with your family.”

Helen had done a job on Frank. He didn't look so bad, after all. His hair and beard trimmed and combed, an insignificant patch on his forehead, a little makeup to disguise some bruises and the hint of a black eye, clean clothes and regular shoes—the medical story might not even be necessary. His nose was sore but not broken, after all. And he seemed in much better spirits, which Joe attributed to the tender care and attention of Helen.

When they had gone, Joe talked it over with Helen. “We've got a few hours,” he said. “After that … who knows? It depends on the cops, and Boz. But we've got to find him. It could get complicated
for Frank and Paulie,” he conceded, “but they're in no danger from the police. They don't know anything about what happened with their aunt and uncle. If they keep their mouths shut about Boz, they'll probably be all right.”

“What do you think happened?” Helen said. She was not so sanguine.

“Boz killed them,” Joe said. “But they're dead. So are a bunch of other people. Time to find Boz.”

The first thing they did, after they left Frank's, was to cruise the parking lots of both motels in Basin, just in case. The truck wasn't there. They checked other motels as they drove into Butte, with no success. Joe hadn't expected to find Boz that way, but it was worth doing.

“The smartest thing for Boz,” Joe said, “would be to simply drive off on one of these back roads and take a snooze. But we don't know how bad that gunshot wound was. It may have been nothing, just a graze, but he could be in a bad way, in pain, in shock from loss of blood. He could have panicked and gone to a hospital, more likely in Helena than Butte. But I doubt it.”

“If he was really smart,” Helen said, “he'd be driving somewhere out in Idaho, or Washington, by now.”

“Do you think?” Joe said.

“No,” she said. “I'm thinking he probably didn't have much money on him, and he was unarmed. He's going to want a gun and some money. He probably left both with his gear in a motel, in Butte. He'll want to recover that, even though he probably doesn't want to go near Butte. I'm assuming, like you, that he killed those people. Even if there's no gun or money there, there's always something incriminating.”

Joe agreed. Beyond that, he reckoned that Boz would feel that he had to accomplish what had brought him here in the first place. He would not go too far from Frank's, or not for long.

“If you think that,” Helen said, “why are we going to town? Why don't we just lie up and wait for him to come to us?”

“We've got some time,” Joe said. “He won't be back before night. The wound is the unknown factor. But we've got a chance to find him first.”

“How do we do that? Check every motel in a fifty-mile radius?”

“No, I've got some contacts in town,” Joe said. “And you can attend to some other business.”

“Like what?”

“Find this Fedima,” Joe said.

Helen was taken aback. “How do I do that? Through the colonel?”

Oh no, Joe cautioned her. They had to keep the colonel in the dark, for now at least. But it was true, they had to report in. He might have some information that would be helpful. As for Fedima, he thought it might be time for Helen to call her late father's faithful lieutenant, Roman Yakovich. He was now retired and living in Miami. He'd been helpful to Joe in the past, and he was devoted to Helen.

Helen couldn't see what use Roman would be.

“Roman's a very resourceful guy,” Joe said. “Once he gets on to something, he carries through until he's satisfied. He'll know something about Balkan refugees, or know someone who knows.”

B
oz fought sleep. He fought waking. His mind wanted neither. But another program decided that sleep was no longer an option. So Boz woke up. He opened his eyes, tried to focus. It was dark. He could hardly make any sense of where he was. His first impression was jail. A dungeon, in fact.

He sat up, too fast. He groaned. His head hurt. He swore, a long, rambling curse that took in gods, alcoholic beverages, his
mother, and, finally, fate. He held his head for a moment and then looked about him.

He
was
in a dungeon, he thought. Walls of stone, a low ceiling, rough support timbers. “Where the fuck am I?” he said aloud, but not to anyone but himself.

Nonetheless, a voice answered: “Seven Dials, pardner. Remember?”