Hunter’s Dance (3 page)

He started up the Studebaker and made for home and his fly rod.

IV

How much quieter are the bright sunny days than the dark nights under whose wings beasts of prey hunt and owls hoot.

Fullkomlig.
Done to perfection. Inge Lindstrom leaned on the Misto mop and allowed herself a moment of unabashed pride. The previous night's dancing had loosened a year's worth of grime from the narrow maple floorboards, and Inge had come back that morning to attack it quick, before it could settle back in. Better than three hours she'd been here, sweeping and scrubbing, waxing and polishing. Now the sight of the tall windows mirrored in the glassy perfection of those beloved planks made her forget her burning knees and lobster-claw hands.

The town hall floors were Inge's own special territory. Not that she needed to beat off the other ladies with her broom. When she'd left them gabbing at the back of the church that morning, only Grace Maki had offered to help. Inge resisted suggesting that Grace's time might be better spent tending to the scuffed linoleum in her own kitchen and assured her that she could handle it by herself, as usual.

She smoothed a few straggles of hair into the bun at the back of her neck, took a quick glance out the windows, slipped off her shoes, and waltzed the mop across the gleaming expanse to stow it in the closet. Humming to herself as she straightened the “Please Wipe Your Feet” sign, she left the hall, lingering in the doorway for one last look. It wouldn't be this way long. Like a field covered in the first snow of the year, pure and bright and glorious, it would soon be trampled to ruin by the feet of people who had no consideration for the labor that went into such handiwork, be it God's or Mrs. Lindstrom's.

“Well,” she lifted her eyes ceilingward and spoke aloud, “it'll look halfway decent for a day or two, anyhow.”

Backing the dusty Chevrolet down the drive, she caught sight of the woodshed door standing partly open. One good blast of wind would rip the thing right off its hinges. She sighed, turned off the engine, and climbed out of the car.

Before hooking the door, she peeked inside on the chance that she might be locking in some critter who'd wandered in looking for a winter home. Or, more likely, a liquored-up Norwegian sleeping off the effects of the last night's over-doing.

The space was about half filled with split and stacked maple, nowhere near enough to supply both the hall and the school for the winter. Somebody'd better get off their backside. There was nothing else, and no one else, that she could see. She was about to close things back up when she noticed that the trap door leading to the attic storeroom also hung open. The door was in a far corner and could only be reached by clambering up and over the stacked wood. Which was just the kind of thing that would appeal to youngsters looking to hide out for awhile for one reason or another. Inge was tempted to pretend she hadn't noticed. She had her own home and her men to take care of, after all, and she didn't much like climbing woodpiles even when her knees hadn't been torn to ribbons by scrubbing floors all morning. But, in the end, conscience forced her to yank up her skirt and mount the shaky pile to make her way to the opening. If kids had been up there, who could say what they might have left behind to attract mice or even rats? Or to build up a head of steam and explode, for all she knew. Arnie Johnson had once told her about a jar of sauerkraut that blew up and cost his mother's cousin her right eye.

Standing on the wood, Inge could reach just high enough to poke her head through the opening. The air was still and warm as bath water and, as she had feared, filled with a sour odor that might be spoiling food or—she stiffened her jaw—vomit. The rectangular vent up near the roof peak let in a narrow shaft of light. The heavy buzzing told her it also let in plenty of flies looking for a warm spot on this fall day. Probably bats, too. She pulled her kerchief forward and knotted it more securely under her chin.

It was dim in the attic, almost dark. As her eyesight adjusted, she made out a kerosene lantern on the floor. Beside it an enameled tin plate held a pile of crusted-over baked beans and a few curled shreds of ham, and next to that—Inge rubbed her eyes and looked again—a pair of oxford-clad feet, ankles crossed and twisted with a length of heavy cord.

She sucked in her breath, grasped the makeshift ladder that was nailed to the wall, and hoisted herself through the opening. Keeping her face turned away from the feet, she skirted a pile of discarded textbooks and torn window shades to reach the wide double doors at the end of the room. The padlock on the hasp hung open. She threw it aside, wrenched the iron handles and gave a vigorous shove, jumping back to keep from sailing out through the opening.

The doors swung open with a clank. Mid-afternoon sunlight splashed across four decades' worth of collected junk. In its midst, a young man sat slumped forward in a cast-off double desk like some dozing student of bygone years. But Inge could see that no ringing of bells was going to wake this loafer to send him scrambling for the door and freedom.

The cord that bound his feet ran up his body like a growing vine to coil about his wrists, wind several times around his waist and bind him to the seat. A red bandana was tied around his head and stuffed between his jaws. It pulled back his lips to show a row of gleaming white teeth and pale gums. But the most ghastly thing, the thing that she would forever see in her nightmares, was not this grotesque grin or the staring brown eyes. It was his head above that knotted handkerchief. Where it rested on the desk, short reddish-brown curls fanned out over the scarred wood, but the other side, the part turned up to the honey-colored sunshine, was only a ragged patch of blackened blood, crawling with fat blue flies.

V

Weary are the ways of men's wanderings over the earth.

“Bambi.”

Dr. Mark Guibard suspended his ardent probing to look up. “What's that?”

“His name, if he was to be believed, and I don't know why anybody'd lie about a thing like that, is Bambi. Bambi Morlen,” McIntire told him. “He was here last night. At the dance. He…left early.”

They were the first words McIntire had uttered since he and the coroner had climbed the ladder into the stuffy attic. He struggled to hold the kerosene lantern steady while keeping his arm extended to its full length. In his other hand he held his less than immaculate handkerchief, flicking it periodically in a vain attempt to keep the flies at bay. The sight of the arrogant youth, his smugness stilled forever, filled him not so much with horror as with an agonizing sadness. How could it happen so quickly? How could a moving, breathing, annoying member of the human race become, overnight, decaying food for flies?

Guibard grunted and bent to roll back a trouser leg, revealing one of the bound ankles. “He doesn't look familiar.”

“He said he's from Connecticut. His family's been spending the summer at the Club.”

“You've talked to him then? I take it he was mixed up in that scrap with Charlie's kid.”

“He's the one broke Marvin's nose,” McIntire said, “and now he ends up dead and…”

“Scalped,” Guibard stated. He inserted a forefinger under one of the cords. “You think Marvin Wall did this?”

“Well,” McIntire hesitated, “it kind of seems improbable that it would be only coincidence…but I took Marve's knife.”

“There are plenty of knives around.”

“That's what
he
said.”

The doctor bounced up and pirouetted around to face his reluctant assistant. Neither advanced age nor the most trying of circumstances could dampen Guibard's aura of Fred Astaire
savoir faire
.

“John, believe me when I tell you that neither the Walls nor the tribe from which they descend has a history of lifting people's hair.”

As usual, McIntire wasn't quite sure if Guibard was verbally slapping his hand or laughing at him. Somehow the doctor always managed to reduce him to a state of subservient defensiveness. He half expected to be addressed as “Johnny.”

“I'm not a total moron, Mark, but it was Marvin Wall's being a ‘redskin' that was at the bottom of the fight, and a kid could get the idea…you know,
You want a redskin, I'll show you just how redskin I can be!
Sort of an adolescent version of poetic justice. Marve was pretty steamed. Although,” he let his gaze drop to the blood-caked curls for a brief moment, “this hardly looks like a kid's prank.”

Guibard prodded the ragged edge of skin around the wound in a manner that made McIntire wince and look quickly away. “John,” he said, “Marvin Wall's been skinning out mink and muskrats since he was knee high to—I don't know what—a mink or a muskrat. He wouldn't have done this kind of half-assed job.” He motioned for McIntire to move the light nearer.

“I had his knife,” McIntire repeated. “Maybe he had to make do with what he had.”

“And I'll tell you something else,” Guibard went on, “head wounds generally bleed a whole lot. It looks ugly, but there's really not much blood to speak of here. This pitiful scalping was done some time after death.”

“Well, I sure as hell hope so!” McIntire nearly retched at the thought of such mutilation being inflicted on a living victim. “He had to have been already dead. Even trussed up like this, the kid would hardly have meekly laid down his head to have his hair surgically removed.”

Guibard didn't comment on McIntire's hysterical stating of the obvious, only gave a delicate sigh, and went on, “When his heart quit beating, he would have stopped pumping blood out, but, even so, if the skin had been taken off before the blood started to congeal there would have been more than this. I'm saying that this looks like it was done a considerable time after he died. And if you look closer—”

“No thanks.”

“If you
did
look closer, you'd see that there's more than just the scalp removed. There's a kind of hole here.”

“A what?”

“A circular depression. Scraping down into the bone. Like someone tried to make a hole in the skull.”

“Tried to…?”

Guibard stooped until his nose was nearly touching the wound. “It's not drilled all the way through, but it looks for all the world like somebody gave it a good try.”

“Christ! Why? How—?”

They both looked into the shadows where a wooden toolbox sat balanced atop a leaning three-legged chair. Its hinged lid lay open, and a tray containing rusty nuts and bolts was pulled aside to reveal a few hand tools.

“Christ!” McIntire said again.

Guibard once more bent over the corpse. He pushed back the drooping lids to expose glazed eyeballs, shining his pencil-sized light into their depths. “The scalp wound is the only trauma I can see, and like I said, that wouldn't have killed him,” he continued. “But it does really look like…well, I'll be able to tell more when I get him into the morgue.”

“Too much to drink?” McIntire asked, glancing at the pool of dried vomit..

“Could be. It wouldn't be the first time a kid died from alcohol poisoning, but that doesn't explain the ropes and gag… or the scalping.”

McIntire waved the lantern toward the pile of discarded window shades. “Looks like that's where the cord came from. Maybe kids fooling around, and he choked to death?”

“And they tried to revive him by drilling a hole in his head?”

Their conjectures were interrupted by a growl of an engine that might belong to a Sherman tank. Guibard and McIntire looked at each other. Guibard nodded. A car door banged shut, then another, followed shortly by a screech of twisting wood issuing from the ladder they'd placed against the outside wall. Such a vehement protest could only mean that it was being subjected to the weight of Sheriff Pete Koski. McIntire felt a momentary urge to lunge for the doors, shutting out the sheriff and everything he represented. Somewhere inside him a tiny spark lived, a vague idea that any drama needed the cooperation of all its players. Maybe if he and Guibard simply closed the door and walked away, refused to enact their roles, the ugly event would disappear, and this conceited boy, who had not been a part of their lives when alive, would not be allowed to inflict his dead presence upon them.

The moment passed, the outside light was eclipsed, and Koski's bulk appeared in the doorway. He ducked into the room, bringing the world with him and ensuring that the show would go on and dozens of lives would be changed forever.

The sheriff was followed by his baby-cheeked deputy, Cecil Newman, trailing a length of electric cord and carrying two trouble lights.

Koski remained near the door, huffing slightly, for some minutes before he turned to Guibard. “You through here?”

The doctor nodded. “I've pretty much done all I can. Leave his coat on and the gag in. No obvious cause of death. There'll have to be an inquest, of course.”

“Got an I.D.?”

When Koski heard that the victim was a “kid from the Club,” he sucked in his breath, but his only response was, “Well, we'll look things over and take a few pictures, then he's all yours.” He motioned Newman forward and took one of the lights.

McIntire blew out the flame on his lantern and moved toward the door. Dying wasn't a township offense. The sheriff's department and the state police could take over from here. Thank God the victim wasn't a local resident. If it turned out to be homicide they might get lucky and the murderer wouldn't be either. There'd been plenty of strangers around last night.

Koski froze in the act of reaching to hook his light on a convenient nail. He stood arrested, lamp raised aloft, looking toward the open doors. A thin and distant wail grew until the blare of sirens ripped through the air. The sheriff lowered the light and gave a resigned groan. “Oh, shit, nothing like announcing things to the world.” He turned to McIntire. “Wanna try and head off the crowd, Mac? And chase Mrs. Lindstrom out of here before she starts getting badgered for gossip. Tell her not to say a word to anybody, and let her know I'll come over to her house later.” He hung the light and switched it on.

The shell that was Bambi Morlen appeared to shrink with illumination—a forlorn heap slumped at the sheriff's thighs. McIntire felt the sadness again. Here was somebody's son, maybe somebody's brother. A young man at the center of a circle of people; people who loved him, possibly people who disliked him, maybe even hated him; people who wouldn't recover from his wounds any more than Bambi himself had. Koski seemed to read his thoughts.

“Keep a lid on who this is 'til I get hold of the family,” he said. “Clubbers, are they? Maybe you could ride along? I'd better leave Cecil here to keep an eye on things, 'til the state guys show up, and I'm short a deputy since Billy Corbin went back to selling shoes. Besides, you probably speak Club better'n I do.”

He reached into the dead boy's rear pocket and extracted a brown leather wallet. He flipped through a small sheaf of bills. “Scratch robbery as a motive, anyway.”

McIntire descended to the ground just as the ambulance screamed up to the door. He waved the driver to stay put and crossed the grass to where Inge Lindstrom sat hunched in the passenger seat of her car. McIntire's wife was behind the wheel. At his approach, she rolled down her window and stated in a voice that showed she was leaving no room for argument, “I'm taking Inge home now, John. You tell Mr. Koski if he wants to talk to her he can come to her house.”

McIntire waited while the sheriff finished his business and the yard steadily filled with the curious, the fearful, and those who “just happened to be driving by.” McIntire informed them each that, “Yes, there had been a death,” and “No, it wasn't anybody from around here.”

It was just as well that they'd come. It took a half-dozen men to lower the body, shrouded and strapped to a stretcher, to the ground.