Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends (22 page)

An hour after the sun peered over the peaks back to the
east, I crouched behind a thick tangle of understory vegetation, studying the house.

Smoke drifted up from one chimney.

Staying out of sight of the spacious log house, I circled
around back, searching for an ideal spot to set my traps.

Millennia earlier, the forces of nature had shifted the
massive tectonic plates beneath the surface, thrusting masses
of granite into the air. The granite separated, leaving a
thirty-foot-wide strip of soil a hundred yards in length between forty-foot upthrusts.

A well-used deer and elk trail wound through the pine
and cedar filling the short pass. Around a bend in the trail, I
set my first trap. Doubling the rope, I knotted it around a
young pine, and then inserted a branch between the ropes
so I could twist them, gaining leverage to bend the pine
into an arc.

As a youth in the Louisiana swamps and prairies, I’d set
more traps than I could count. All I had to do with this one
was make it larger than a rabbit trap. I chuckled to myself.
Someone was in for one heck of a surprise.

Dragging a ten-foot-long dead log to the far side of the
trail, I tied a rope to either end, and then fastened them to
the tip of the pine. I rigged a trip rope, a length of grapevine
I’d cut from a nearby tangle, and covered it and the rope
with pine needles.

I stepped back and studied the trap. In theory, it should
work. Once the trip vine was hit, the pine would spring up,
yanking the log across the trail and slamming it into whoever had been unlucky enough to trip the vine.

Drawing a deep breath, I glanced back toward the cabin.
I’d planned another trap, but I’d used all my rope.

Moving on up the trail, I studied the almost perpendicular granite walls on either side, searching for a spot to build a
rockslide. Finding nothing, I turned my attention to locating two or three means of escape or hiding spots should my
trap fail.

I found exactly what I was looking for where the trail
made a sharp bend to the right. Back to the left was a fissure
in the wall leading to the top of the ledge. Quickly I scrambled up, pausing at the top and looking around. “This’ll do
it,” I muttered to myself, drawing in a breath of frigid air. If
my trap worked as planned, I could hike back along the rim
to the log house.

My stomach growled. I patted my pockets and discovered a small pack of carrot salad. I shook my head, muttering, “What I wouldn’t give for a steak, or even a bowl of
soup”

Opening the packet of carrot salad, I popped some in my
mouth as I clambered back down the fissure. Now all I had
to do was figure out how to get Hymie to follow me.

I didn’t have to worry.

Alex took care of that for me.

After reaching the base of the cliff, I headed back down
the trail to the house. Rounding a bend, I jerked to a halt.
Less than thirty feet in front of me stood a massive deer
with antlers that would score sky-high in Boone and Crockett. He was sniffing at my trap.

I started to shout. That’s all I needed, a lousy deer tripping the trap. But as soon as he spotted me, he bounced ten
feet in the air and flip-flopped directions. When he landed,
he was another thirty feet down the trail and streaking
through the pines like a gunshot in the direction of the log
house.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I skirted the trap and headed
to the cabin, pausing just inside the forest at the edge of the
clearing.

Quickly, I scanned the log house. The porch remained in
shadows. I studied it when, suddenly, sunlight reflected off
glass.

I don’t know what prompted me, but I dropped instantly
to my knees and rolled behind a pine as the booming roar
of a deer rifle broke the silence, and a two-hundred-grain
slug tore a chunk from the pine that I had been standing
beside.

Alex shouted, “Hymie! It’s Boudreaux. Out back. Quick!”

My pulse was racing from the close call. For a moment, I remained frozen, trying to figure out how he’d spotted me
so quickly. Then I realized he’d probably seen the spooked
deer and grabbed his rifle, hoping for a shot.

Well, he got his shot, and no pun intended, but I dodged
the bullet.

I turned and raced up the trail. Just before I sprinted
around the first bend, I glanced back. Alex was halfway
across the clearing, and Hymie was storming down the
porch steps. Maury was nowhere in sight.

Slowing as I approached the next bend in the trail, I
waited for Alex. I wanted to keep him on the trail, not go
wandering off into the pines on either side.

When he spotted me, he threw the rifle to his shoulder,
but I vanished. I grinned when I heard him cursing, “I’m
going to nail your hide, Boudreaux!”

Ahead, I spotted the trap. I crossed my fingers as I
leaped over the trip rope and raced to the next bend. Before
I reached it, a deafening gunshot echoed down the trail. A
small pine at my shoulder exploded and fell across the trail
behind me.

Alex whooped. “Next time, Boudreaux. Next-Yahhhh-”
A startled scream cut off his words as the whooshing of the
pine whipped through the surrounding trees.

I didn’t break stride until I cut off the trail and scrambled
up the fissure to the top of the ledge.

From down below came screams of pain mixed with impassioned cursing. I plopped down on my belly and peered
over the rim.

Alex lay on the edge of the trail, the heavy log resting on
his chest. He was screaming, “Hymie! Get it off. Get it
off “

But every time Hymie touched the log, Alex would
scream again. “Easy, easy. My ribs are busted. Take it easy.”

“Shut up,” Hymie growled. “Once I get it off, it’ll stop
hurting” With that, he gripped one end of the log. “When I
lift it, scoot out”

Alex bobbed his head once. “Hurry.”

“Here goes” Hymie started to lift the log, but his fingers
slipped on the wet bark, and the log fell back on Alex, who
shrieked in pain, and then broke into a stream of curses.

Scooting away from the rim, I headed back to the cabin.
For all I knew, Maury was dead, still buried in the snow, but
I had to somehow get one of the cars. Behind me, I heard
the screams and profanities spewing from the two goons.

I approached the massive log house from the rear, slipping onto a closed-in porch that opened into a spacious but
rustic kitchen. The house was cold, and I realized the generator wasn’t running.

I tiptoed to the door on the opposite wall and peered into a
large room, the same one in which I first came face to face
with Hymie. An almost overpowering silence, more fitting to
a mausoleum than a vacation house, filled the room.

Straining for the slightest sound, I heard nothing.

Suddenly, the ceiling above my head squeaked. I froze.
Someone was on the second floor. I looked around for some
kind of weapon. Beside the fire pit sat a wrought-iron tool
set. I grabbed the poker and headed for the stairs, which
were, as I remembered the layout of the house, in the next
room.

I paused to glance out the window. Still no sign of
Hymie and Alex.

Opening the heavy slab doors a crack, I peered into the
next room. It was empty, so I quickly hurried to the stairs
and slipped up to the second floor. The upstairs hallway
looked down on the spacious room below.

Easing along the thick puncheon floor, I paused at each
closed door and listened. At the third door, I heard a groan,
and then the bed squeaked.

I caught my breath and closed my eyes in an effort to
still my racing pulse. I flexed my fingers about the poker,
and then slowly turned the knob. The door opened soundlessly. I peered inside and spotted Maury Erickson lying
under several tousled blankets, his eyes closed, a sheen of
sweat glistening on his face, and a soft moan on his lips. A
half-full bottle of bourbon sat on the nightstand.

I eased inside, the poker drawn back over my head.

The floor creaked.

His eyes opened. A thick glaze covered them. He stared
at me, seeing nothing. “Hymie? Is that you? You got to help
me, Hymie. My leg’s busted. I can feel the bone sticking
out. I got fever from infection. I gotta have a doctor.”

I lowered my voice to match the tenor of Hymie’s.
“Yeah. Okay. Just sleep”

Quickly, I searched the room for Maury’s .44 magnum,
but found nothing. I had turned to leave when I heard the
front door slam shut.

Hymie!

Moving quickly, I opened the door a crack and peered
down below. My heart skipped a beat when I spotted Hymie
climbing the stairs. I looked around, frantically searching
for someplace to hide. I glanced at the closet. Before I could
move, his footsteps stopped just outside the door.

I gulped when the doorknob turned. With the poker above
my head, I backed up against the wall behind the door as it
swung open.

Hymie growled. “We’re back, Maury.”

A moment of lucidity swept over Maury. “Hymie?
But-But you was just here”

That was my signal to get out of there.

I leaped past Hymie into the hall, slammed the door behind me, and pressed up against the wall by the door. The
fat was in the fire, as they say, and the next couple of minutes would see if I lived or died.

Hymie pounded across the floor, jerked open the door,
and barged into the hall waving his automatic.

I slammed the poker down on his hand, knocking the
piece to the floor and sending it skittering over the edge of
the hall to the room below. Unfortunately, the impact jarred
the poker from my hand, and it followed the automatic to the
floor below.

Hymie cursed and grabbed his hand. He glared at me.
“I’m gonna bust you in two” Though the cold-eyed killer
was a couple of inches shorter than me, he had me by fifty
pounds, and I couldn’t see an ounce of fat on him. He doubled his fists and charged me, swinging both arms wildly.

I ducked under his charge and, making both hands into a
single fist, slammed him in the back, driving him into the
log wall.

He bounced off and hit the floor, blood pouring from his
flattened nose. His eyes blazed as he struggled to his feet.

Fighting is not my forte. And to me, “fair fighting” has to
be the world’s number one oxymoron. As he tried to stand,
I hit him in the forehead with my fist. I grimaced, figuring I
had broken something, and not his hard head.

He fell back on the floor, rolled onto his stomach, and
pushed to his feet. Blood continued streaming from his nose,
staining his rumpled jacket. He bared his teeth and snarled, “You’re a dead man, Boudreaux” And he launched his
muscular body at me.

No way on earth could I have stood toe-to-toe with
Hymie Weinshank. He was a bull, and an enraged one at
that. Your own blood covering the floor will do that to you.

He threw a right that rocked me back on my heels. A
gleam of triumph filled his eyes, and he hit me with a wild
left that spun me back into the rugged log walls. My head
banged off the wall and stars exploded behind my eyes.

For a moment, the blows raining on me stopped. I shook
my head, trying to clear it. Hymie had turned from me and
was searching the hallway floor for his automatic. I stepped
forward and, grabbing his arm, spun him around, at the
same time throwing as hard a straight right as I could.

I caught him on the tip of his chin. His head jerked back,
and I swung a left, aiming for his exposed throat, but I
missed. My momentum spun me around, and when I looked
back, Hymie had lowered his bull-like head and lunged at
me. I tried to step aside, but I slipped in his blood and fell.
His impetus carried him over me. He tripped on my leg.

And he disappeared over the top of the stairs.

I jumped to my feet and ran to the stairs, ready to throw
myself at him if he were trying for his automatic. I jerked
to a halt and gaped at the motionless body lying at the base
of the stairs.

Jeez, I told myself instinctively, I hope I didn’t kill the
guy.