Gun Lake (6 page)

“Look,” Kurt said, “let’s all shut up for now.”

Kurt wished he could see the adrenaline-pumping hothead who was itching to get out of this crawl space and go upstairs. He’d known from the beginning that Lonnie was a mistake.

It’s part of the deal
.

Kurt had initially told Sean he wouldn’t even go with the group if Lonnie went. Sean had convinced him otherwise, though none of them had any affection for the convicted rapist. Lonnie had arrived at Stagworth with a long list of priors, but the last aggravated sexual assault had netted him sixty years. He often bragged about his exploits before coming to Stagworth, of other women he’d “managed.” That was what he called what he did. Managing them. Said they had it coming. They deserved it. They wanted it. Whatever his reasons were, they were as black as his heart.

You’re just as guilty as he is
.

In the end, Sean had told him they needed Lonnie. Lonnie worked with them in the maintenance department. If he didn’t join them, he needed to be handled. Sean had figured they had better odds with five guys instead of four.

Now, as Kurt held on to his automatic and listened for any motion coming from Lonnie, he kept remembering the name of the woman Lonnie had brutally shot in the sporting-goods store.

Vicki

Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. Kurt waited and kept one hand on the weapon.

He didn’t want there to be any more Vickis. Not tonight. Not again.

“HEY, DON, WHERE’S the wife tonight?”

“Shut up, you ol’ fossil,” Donald Hutchence snapped at the old-timer stopping by his booth.

“She still gone?”

“Maybe you should mind your own business.”

“Only if you buy me a beer.”

Don looked at Alfred and shook his head.

“Kay. Give this coot whatever’s wrecking his liver,” he said. “And I’ll take another one too.”

The Joint was a crummy bar and restaurant about five minutes from the northern tip of Gun Lake, on a side road not too far from one of the golf courses and the recreation area. Only locals came here. Don had started coming here several years ago after they first opened, stopping by on the way home for a quick bite to eat and a few late-night beers. It had become a habit, a comfortable habit that he knew he could break if he really wanted to.

Collette didn’t think so. Obviously. Maybe the Joint was one of the reasons she decided to leave him. He didn’t know. He just knew he’d rather be here now than in the empty house without her and the boys.

It was ten thirty, an hour and a half before the weekday closing time. Don sat in his regular booth, a red vinyl seat that could fit two thin people, watching the bar and sipping on a Budweiser and smoking a Marlboro Light. These were the two constants in his life now—Budweiser in a bottle and Marlboro Lights. He’d
defected to the Lights a few years back when he started coughing up dark brown chunks. Before that, he smoked twice as many Marlboro Reds. Now in the mornings he enjoyed a couple of smokes with his three cups of coffee. He never ate breakfast, but he ate a decent lunch from the deli down the road from the station and then usually had something greasy on the way home from work.

It wasn’t exactly a healthy lifestyle. He knew that. Yet, in this booth, right now, there was a calm. That slight buzz, a full stomach bulging over his belt, the chatter at the bar and the occasional call out to him—it was familiar and strangely comforting. This was his life. And he wanted to feel good about it.

“You okay?” Kay asked.

The bartender was a big girl. Not fat and not unattractive either, but big-boned. Tough, too—she could probably take down a lot of the men that strolled through here. He had his revolver to lay down the law. Kay had her brawn—along with her attitude.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Don said, taking the bottle from her. “Why?”

“Hitting it pretty good tonight.”

Was he on his fourth beer? Or his sixth?

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it,” Kay said.

“I’m just dog-tired.”

Kay walked back to the bar and handed Alfred his beer. The old guy usually showed up five sheets to the wind and started feeding dollars into the jukebox so he could dance. The music he played always surprised Don. Alfred liked rock music, Led Zeppelin and Lynard Skynard and music like that. It didn’t fit the way he looked, but when the liquor moved in him, so did his quarters and his feet. Tonight, at Kay’s urging, Alfred had chosen a softer selection—Fleetwood Mac’s entire
Rumors
album.

Don slid out of the booth and walked up to the bar. He took a seat as Kay watched with friendly but suspicious eyes.

“So what’s up?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. That’s what’s up.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“About as exciting as gutting a trout,” Don said.

“Hey, don’t complain. You could be behind this bar.”

“I guarantee you see more action than I do. Being a deputy in Barry County ain’t exactly
NYPD Blue.”

“You want it to be?” Kay asked.

“Probably not. But sometimes I wonder.”

Don knew he could be doing worse, that he was actually well suited to his job. Coasting around Gun Lake in his unit. Coasting through this existence. Watching other people fly past like speedboats on the water, leaving his little rowboat in their wake.

Was Collette one of those speedboats? He didn’t know.

He missed the boys—Jeff and Todd, aged eight and ten. And he wondered what they were thinking about all this, how they were acting, what Collette was telling them.

She probably had a right to tell them bad things about him. He knew she had a right to leave. But he just couldn’t get used to it. Every night for the past two weeks, he had come home expecting to see the lights on and Collette’s car in the driveway. He was prepared to come in and see the boys sleeping in their room, hear Collette in the bedroom getting ready for bed, and finally breathe that wonderful and frightening sigh of relief. He was still waiting to do that. Instead, he went home every night to a dark house and a silence that no amount of noise could muffle.

“Have you talked to her?” Kay asked. “You oughta talk to her.”

Apparently it wasn’t hard to read his mind.

Don took a long drag and shook his head and let the smoke out. Collette would have complained about the cigarette and about that slight aftertaste on his breath.
Women are put on this earth to nag their husbands
, he thought. Even the estranged husbands they claim to no longer want to see.

“She’ll calm down,” he said.

Like she had the time he drove home late from the bar and accidentally broke the garage door. He
was
a little gone that night, although he could have sworn he pressed the button and saw the door begin to open before he drove in. The new garage door cost several hundred bucks, and touching up the chip in the garage
frame required a trip to Home Depot and a Saturday afternoon. But it wasn’t that big of a deal. It had been a cheap door, anyway; the new one was better. And even though Collette went ballistic and took the boys and stayed a couple of days with her parents, she still came back. She always did. This time she was simply taking a little longer.

He shifted and felt the cell phone on his belt clank against the wood. The cell phone for emergencies. All the horrific, dramatic emergencies that occupied his time here in the boondocks of central Michigan.

He had wanted to be a cop ever since he was a kid. He remembered watching all those great cop shows—Dirty Harry,
The French Connection
, even Kojak and Baretta—and knowing he wanted to be the law. He could see himself walking around with a handgun and an attitude, catching bad guys, upholding the peace. But what happened if the peace was all around you and you couldn’t get away from it?

Sure, there was the occasional drunken idiot on the lake. Some mild domestic disputes to handle. Or some obnoxious tourists in a cabin somewhere who needed to be calmed down. Traffic accidents and randy, goofy mishaps, like the time Wayne Murphy got hit in the head by a golf ball from the driving range close to his house. All petty stuff, lightweight stuff. In fact, the biggest pain in Don’s rear these days came from that smug, smiling, backstabbing Alex Connelly. What could you do if the biggest bad guy in your life happened to be your boss, the county sheriff who never came into the office? Who was more of a politician than a law officer. Who seemed dedicated to making sure Don never got any further in the department than where he already was.

Don wanted more than that for his life. But what did “more” mean?

Collette and the boys, to start with
.

It was like poison ivy on your skin. He wanted to rub it raw, this feeling inside of him. But he couldn’t touch it. There was nothing he could do about it. And the more it remained untouched, the more it seemed to grow.

He hated feeling desperate, feeling the need to call Collette and ask for her forgiveness. He wasn’t good with apologies, with the whole “I’m sorry, sweetie, and I love you, and I will change.” He knew Collette probably wanted to enroll him up to go see that doctor fella who used to be on the
Oprah
show. What was his name—Dr. Steve? Dr. Phil? Don could see Collette dragging him there and the doctor berating him in public, in front of a national audience.

“How could you say you love your wife and then treat her like that?”

That’s a crock
, Don thought. He hadn’t treated Collette badly. He loved Collette. He supported his family and had just had a bad stretch as of late. A bad stretch of months. Some bad habits. Bad tendencies. All men had such habits, and sometimes they got a little out of control. But he was doing better now. And sooner or later, he knew, Collette would see that and come home and they would move on. She had to.

When she left, she told him she needed time to reflect about her life.
Her life
, he thought with amazement. It wasn’t just her life. It was their life. Their family’s life. She would take him back soon. She would come back. And things would start looking up for him.

Don was getting tired of Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox. It was hard not to think of Bill Clinton as “Don’t Stop” played. And it was hard not to think of Collette when “Go Your Own Way” started up. Maybe it was this music making him melancholy, making him wistful and sad. A slow ballad sung by one of the women in the group played next, and Don felt downright depressed. He felt awful. Led Zeppelin didn’t make him feel awful. It made him feel alive and made him want to drink more Bud. Some music does that. Some makes you want to curl up in a bed and whimper yourself to sleep.

“The Chain” began, and at least the tempo picked up.

This life of his, where had it gone wrong? He was only forty-three. His boys joked that he was an old man, and sometimes he felt that way, but he wasn’t. He could still call up some of that same attitude he’d had in his twenties, when he was in shape and
Colleen thought he was great and life was as open as the blue sky above the lake on a summer day. The question was, how did he get from there to here? A few jobs here, a few moves there, some assorted mishaps and mistakes, a marriage, a couple of kids—and suddenly he was sitting in the Joint cursing to himself and wondering where it all went. Listening to Fleetwood Mac and watching old Alfred dance by the bar and seeing Kay grin and sip on the beer she had served herself.

Is this everything I have?

He didn’t want to answer that question.

“Listen to the wind blow …” the singer sang.

And that wind said something, told him something, whispered stuff in his ear he didn’t want to hear.

Perhaps this was all he wanted. All he’d ever have. All he’d ever dream of being.

He tipped up the cold bottom of his bottle, drank the remains, and stood up. The music began to grow louder, as though Kay had turned up the volume when the guitar solo really began to crank.

He threw down a tip, waved at Kay, headed out the door, and wondered what he would find at home.

WHAT IS HE DOING NOW?

“Get back up here.”

A curse answered his order.

“Lonnie, I swear … I said get up here.”

Kurt spoke in a deliberate whisper. By now his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he could make out Lonnie’s tall figure and crew-cut hair.

“Why don’t you make me?”

Kurt shifted his body while balancing on one hand. The other
hand held the Glock 26, which he speared the darkness with as he approached Lonnie. He slipped off the ledge of the crawl space and used the gun barrel to locate Lonnie’s side, then waved the gun upward, making contact with Lonnie’s head.

Lonnie let out a garbled curse that sounded like “Cherrruggh.”

Then he was down, keeled over, his hands holding his head, while Kurt aimed the gun at him.

Who do you think you are?

“Get back up there. In the crawlspace.”

“Or what?”

“I swear, Sean’s hearing about this. If you go upstairs I’ll use this.”

“I wanna see you do it.”

“It’s either that or let you do something stupid.”

A brief pause, then a lighter, quieter voice said, “You guys are being really loud.”

Lonnie must at least have been contemplating his options. This was the second time Kurt had lunged at him. Kurt figured there probably wouldn’t be a third.

“Pistol-whipping in the dark,” Lonnie said, coughing. “You always fight like that?”

“I don’t fight,” Kurt said.

His mouth tasted dusty and dry. His heart beat fast.

The couple had left them in pitch black twenty minutes ago. They hadn’t looked around much in the crawl space. If the husband had climbed up on the ledge, he would have spotted the three of them. Kurt didn’t know what would have happened next, but he didn’t have to think about that anymore. The homeowners were upstairs, moving around, talking. He could hear the television and the occasional murmur of voices. And small, fast footsteps. The children.

Craig whispered something that Kurt didn’t hear.

“What?”

“Try the window over there.”