Bonegrinder (5 page)

When Wintone turned back to his desk, he saw protruding from beneath a stack of file folders Doc Amis’s report on the Larsen boy. Wintone picked up the report and crossed the office to file it with his own scanty report on the Larsen incident.

As the long file drawer slid smoothly shut on its metal rollers, Wintone wondered for an uneasy moment just how the boy had died. Probably he’d never know. The incident would be one of those bizarre cases that would eventually fade into half-believed, half-remembered Ozark folklore. Like some of the stories his grandfather used to tell. And his greatgrandfather …

During the next week, calm settled again over Colver, a slipping back into the time-worn way things were. Wintone had only minor problems to deal with, and at Mully’s the talk turned to how good business was, to fishing.

Whatever roamed the darkness beyond Colver, where the night was blacker and things nocturnal stirred to the cacophony of frog and cricket, was fading from the town’s consciousness as Wintone had hoped.

T
WO MILES OUT OF
Colver a portable gas stove cast a faint, shadowy glow about a makeshift campsite. A blackened aluminum coffee pot sat off-center on the stove’s burner, and while the three men about the stove waited for the coffee to brew, they passed a quart bottle of Jim Beam bourbon among themselves. Beyond the campsite, through a slope of thick woods, an occasional glimmer of moonlight on black water, like an eye winking through the trees, was the only sign of their proximity to the lake.

Brian Colby sat hunched on one of the folding cots. His two companions, Les Matson and Dave Larker, were crouched animal-like on their haunches.

Colby was a tall, lean-faced man with long brown hair brush-combed sideways in a careful arc across his forehead. He sat checking the small .22 revolver that he’d used that day to plink at squirrels from the boat.

“It’s darker than I thought it could get,” Larker said, gazing into the blackness of the surrounding woods and passing the bottle to Matson.

Matson was short and thick-bodied, with a round face that expressed his uneasiness while reflecting the stove’s glow like a small, dissatisfied moon. He took a pull on the bottle and wiped his lips with the wrist of his plaid shirt. Colby had talked him into coming on this trip, and while Matson had enjoyed the day’s fishing and the recent dinner of fried bluegill that represented the day’s catch, the complete isolation and darkness of the woods seemed to dredge up all his boyhood fears.

“There are things moving out there,” he said. “Hear them?”

“Of course there are things moving,” Colby said reasonably. He was the head of accounting where the three worked at Vector Enterprises, and in a subtle carry-over from work, he considered himself the leader of the group. “There are day animals and night animals.”

Larker grinned his broken-toothed grin. “You must have learned that from one of those television nature programs.” He belched lightly, with almost a polite delicacy.

Matson took another pull on the bottle, passed it up to Colby.

“Think of it this way,” Colby said. “The darkness wouldn’t bother you if you were out here with some chesty blond.”

Matson shrugged. “I look around, I don’t see one.”

“What I mean,” Colby said, “is then you’d be thankful for the darkness.” He raised the bottle to his lips and tilted back his head. “It’s relative, like everything else.”

“I’m a lights-on man, myself,” Larker said. “What did you do with the remains of our supper, Les?”

Matson motioned with his thumb. “Threw it back there in the woods. Those night animals Colby talks about are probably feasting on it right now.”

“You think you’re kidding,” Colby said. “That’s probably what you hear.”

Matson frowned. “I hear things from the other direction.”

“What about that kid who was killed here last week?” Larker asked. “Supposed to have been killed by some kind of lake creature.”

“Lay off the bullshit,” Colby said. “The kid was probably mauled by an animal. These stump jumpers around here are superstitious.”

“Pass me the bottle,” Matson said. “I don’t think I want any coffee.”

“It’s not ready anyway.” Larker inserted a toothpick in his mouth, focused liquor-dulled gray eyes on Colby. “They say whatever killed the boy rose up out of the water.”

Colby took another swig of bourbon and handed the bottle down to Matson. “They say!” he repeated disgustedly. “Half these yokels will say anything because they know the other half are dumb enough to believe them.”

Matson raised his right hand for silence, like a traffic cop signaling
stop,
his moon face intent. “I hear something,” he whispered. “I know I do!”

After awhile Colby said, “Coffee’s ready.”

“Don’t turn the fire off!”

“Easy, Les. We’ll light the lantern.”

“There’s something comforting about fire, though,” Larker said. “Goes way back.” He realized he’d drunk just enough not to be afraid and was enjoying his advantage. “Either way’s okay with me.”

“Fire then,” Colby said. “And the only lake creature out there is the bass that snapped my line this afternoon.”

Matson glanced up, catching the hitch of anxiety in Colby’s voice. He licked his lips.

“Christ!” Larker said. “Three grown men—”

He stopped when he heard the loud snap of a branch behind him, from the direction of the lake. Every sound in the black woods ceased, even sounds the three men hadn’t realized they were hearing.

“Squirrel, probably,” Colby said, quickly raising his pistol. “Give me the flashlight; maybe I can plink him.”

“Leave it alone if it’s a squirrel,” Matson said hoarsely. “You had enough luck shooting them illegally from the boat today.”

“I’d have paid your part of the fine.”

There was another sound now, the rhythmic thrashing sound of something moving through the woods, something approaching.

Matson’s round face twisted with fear, and Colby stood up from the cot.

Larker suddenly pointed toward the darkness. Between themselves and the dull sheen of moonlight off the lake, something was moving toward them through the trees.

Matson started to say something, but with a sudden dance of black shadows from the stove’s glow, the thing was upon them.

“Shoot it!” Matson cried. As he stood his foot caught on the stove, tipping the pot of scalding coffee onto Colby’s ankles. “Shoot it, for Christ’s sake!”

Colby yelled in pain. Larker bumped into him, backing away. The pistol cracked four times.

From the woods came a wheezing, enraged screech.

“Again!” Matson shouted. “Again!”

Colby emptied the pistol in the direction of the screech, at the darkest of shadows near the base of a tree.

In abrupt silence the three men stood still as the night, their breath hissing. Then Colby sat back down on the cot and clutched at his ankles.

“Jesus, my legs!” he moaned. “My feet! It went down my shoes!”

The other two men ignored him, their eyes unblinking and wide.

“Let’s go,” Larker said, still chewing on his toothpick. “Let’s go see what it is.”

“Maybe it’s not dead,” Matson said, following Larker toward the motionless shadowed form.

As if to accommodate them the clouds shifted from the face of the moon, and in the faint yellow light filtering down through dark leaves they saw that it wasn’t dead. The one agonized eye that was visible rolled aimlessly, then lost expression and was still, as if fixed by moonlight.

“What was he doing walking around out here in the woods at night!” Larker snarled at fate.

“A man,” Matson said in a soft, dumbfounded voice. “God, Colby’s shot a man!”

“His name was Charles Jenkins,” Wintone said, “from Joplin.” He replaced the man’s driver’s license in his wallet and laid the wallet alongside the body. “Any of you know him?”

The campsite was illuminated by several gas lanterns now. A dozen or so men stood about with set, unrevealing faces.

“Of course not,” Matson said. “None of us ever saw him before. We thought he was that lake creature you people talk about, that killed the boy last week.” He glanced about and lowered his head, stuffing his hands into his pockets as if to hide them. He knew he sounded ridiculous now, in the light of the gas lanterns.

“He shouldn’t have been walking in the woods at night,” Colby said through his pain. He was still seated on the low cot, hunched over with his head resting on his knees.

“He shouldn’t have been shot, either,” a man near the body said.

“Jenkins was down at the lake giggin’ frogs,” Wintone told the three men. “He’s got four of ’em in a plastic bag.”

“How were we to know?” Larker asked. “He should have shouted, let us know who he was.”

Old Bonifield stepped forward from the knot of men near the portable stove. “They been juggin’, Sheriff,” he said, pointing to the quart bourbon bottle.

“Less than half a bottle between us,” Matson whined. “Nobody was drunk.”

Bonifield looked at Wintone, worked his chewing tobacco.

“… An accident, I swear it was!” Colby moaned between his knees. There was little conviction in his voice.

Wintone was suddenly sorry for Colby, stood for a moment watching him in the moth-shadowed yellow light. After telling the other two men to sit on the cot next to Colby, Wintone walked back to the patrol car and radioed the State Patrol.

When he returned, the three men were seated exactly as he’d left them. “State Patrol will be here soon,” he said. “You can repeat your story to them.”

There was movement, then voices nearby, and Doc Amis, wearing neatly creased slacks and a blue canvas jacket over an undershirt, stepped into the light. He was accompanied by Joe James.

“Dead over there,” Wintone said, and watched as Doc Amis bent over Jenkins’s body and searched futilely for vital signs.

After a while Doc Amis stood and looked questioningly at Wintone, his gaunt face younger but just as wise in the yellow lantern glow.

“This one’s burned,” Wintone said, motioning toward Colby.

Still without a word, Doc Amis went to Colby and knelt before him, slit his pants legs and skillfully worked off his shoes.

Colby’s eyes were clenched shut and his lips were pale. Occasionally he let out a short, sibilant moan, as if to release some unbearable inner pressure. Doc Amis cradled Colby’s bare feet one by one gently in both hands and examined them as if they were injured creatures with lives of their own.

Colby leaned back on his elbows on the sagging cot, opened his eyes to stare up at the night sky. He seemed to be searching for something that wasn’t there.

“I’d better take you in to my office,” Doc Amis said.

“Best let the State Patrol decide,” Wintone interrupted. “He’s the one shot the fella over there.”

“How’d you get the burns?” Doc Amis asked Colby.

“Coffee … spilled on me when the pot tipped over.”

The doctor had Larker and Matson stand. Then he skillfully swiveled Colby so that he was lying on the cot, covered his upper body with a light blanket. For the first time Wintone noticed that Colby was shivering.

“They’ll get you to a burn clinic,” Doc Amis told Colby. He quickly filled a hypodermic needle and injected something into Colby’s arm. Then he walked over to Wintone.

“Second-degree burns from the knees down,” he said. “Some of it went into his shoes. Why’d he shoot that man?”

“He thought he was the lake creature.”

Doc Amis snorted with something like unbelieving contempt.

“He was scared,” Wintone explained. “The three of ’em were.”

“By the looks of the dead man,
he
didn’t have time to be scared.”

“Twenty-two-caliber bullets,” Wintone said. “A couple of ’em hit right.”

“Lake creature!” Doc Amis snorted again and shook his head sadly. In the unsteady yellow light his hair appeared almost blond.

Wintone looked through the trees to where gleaming pools of moonlight lay like rich syrup on the water. He heard sirens, surprisingly loud in the clear night air, and he turned his head and within a few minutes saw a red flickering light winking through the woods. A car door slammed. Another. A man’s voice sounded, made incoherent by distance.

The State Patrol had arrived.

Wintone felt some relief at having the sad affair taken off his hands.

T
WO DAYS AFTER THE
Jenkins death Wintone was forced to realize that a box of trouble had been opened.

“McKenna,” the white-haired, heavyset man who’d entered the sheriff’s office said by way of introduction. “Saint Louis
Globe Dispatch.”
He shut the door behind him without looking at it. “It always this hot around here?”

“It’ll get hotter,” Wintone said. “We been needin’ rain for a while.”

“You could have used some rain to prevent that fire up north. Hell of a thing.”

“It was that.”

“I wonder, Sheriff, if you’d give me a few words on the lake creature.”

Wintone leaned back, gazed across his desk top at the man. McKenna was about fifty, with a face like a sackful of rocks and gray seen-it-all eyes. “Lake creature?”

“Sure. Whatever it was that Charles Jenkins was mistaken for and shot. I understand this what’s-it killed a boy here on the sixteenth. I talked to the doctor, some of the people around town, and they said you might be able to help me further.”

“I don’t believe in any ‘lake creature,’ Mr. McKenna.”

“Neither do I, necessarily. But something killed the boy.”

Wintone couldn’t dispute that. He sat regarding McKenna, listening to the distant, sputtering drone of a motorcycle apparently being ridden in circles. Against the otherwise complete silence the sound was somehow relaxing.

“Doctor Amis let me read the autopsy findings,” McKenna said. “It took time; the boy was badly mutilated by something powerful. And they say some of the larger bones looked as if they’d been worked back and forth in a vise.”

“Doc Amis could tell you more about that than anyone.”

“He says he doesn’t know what caused the damage.”

“Neither do I.”

“What condition was the boy in when you saw him?” McKenna asked.