Blood Country (27 page)

She couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her, but she didn’t want Bruce to kiss her, so she leaned into him. “I just don’t know—” she said, her face muffled in his clean, pressed white shirt.

At this slight hint of acceptance, Bruce grabbed hold of her and pulled her close. “I have the whole morning off,” he told her.

She hugged him tightly and then gently extracted herself from his grip. “I wish I did, but I don’t I have to go check out this other case I’m working on—I told you about the murder case.”

Bruce tried to pull her back in to him, but she resisted. “Come on, Claire. Don’t play with me.”

“I’m not playing. I’ve never played with you. I have only ever been honest and true to you. Yes, I have strong feelings for you. But I need to be a whole woman again. I need to understand what has happened to my husband. Don’t you understand that?” She tried to speak calmly, but the anger and fear she had felt for the last day kept spilling into her speech.

“What do you want me to do? Can’t we see each other again?”

“I can’t think of anything else but who took my sister and threatened my daughter. If you can find that guy, maybe we can start over again. I’ve gotta get going now. I need to be up in Durand by noon.”

“I’ll check out this guy for you. I think you might have something here. Then you won’t ever have to worry about him coming after any of you again.”

“That’s what I want, Bruce.”

He stood over her, took her head in his two large hands, and then leaned down and kissed her.

After a moment, he pulled away and held her tightly by the shoulders. “Well, I want you, Claire. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from the moment I met you. I’d do anything for you.”

Claire wondered how far he would go; she was afraid of what the answer could be. Would he kill her husband to get her? Would he hurt her pregnant sister, have her daughter kidnapped? If so, he would stop at nothing.

He walked out of the house and left her sitting at the table. She didn’t move until she heard his car pull out of the driveway. Then she stood up, went to the sink, and leaned into it, feeling sick. Turning the water on full force, she washed her face and hands. A shriek came out of her, and she spun around. “Not Bruce. Please, not Bruce.” After grabbing the coffee mug he had used off the table, she hurled it to the floor. Black drops of coffee speckled the floor in a gunshot pattern.

29

R
ed cracked open another hard-boiled egg and popped the whole thing in his mouth. He ate eggs that way because it reminded him of that gritty scene from
Cool Hand Luke
where Paul Newman swallowed fifty hard-boiled eggs. Red never pushed himself to see how many he could swallow; he simply ate them that way as an homage to the man. He didn’t really like eggs, but he knew they were full of protein, so when he was dragging he’d swallow a couple eggs whole. That way he didn’t have to taste them.

Unfortunately, they did kind of remind him of what happened to him in jail, having to go down on a couple guys, and sometimes that memory would make him feel like heaving the egg back up, but he’d tough it out. He wasn’t ever going to jail again. Hawk had promised him that if he did what Hawk asked, he’d be safe.

That’s why it was making him a bit tense to have Hawk snapping at him and telling him to get out of town. The last conversation he’d had with Hawk, Hawk gave him the deadline of Tuesday to leave town. Not possible, he had told him, he had a big shipment coming in, which Hawk knew. Hawk was in this thing up to his neck. Plus, didn’t they want to finish off that Claire’s sister, Bridget?

“You stay away from her!” Hawk had freaked on him. They were talking on the phone, but Red felt like he could see the veins popping out on his neck. He had once felt Hawk’s hands around his neck when a deal had turned sour, and he never wanted to be there again. The man had the strength of a Mack truck.

“Jesus, what’s with you?”

“I want you outta here, or I might need to take you down.” Hawk had sounded like he was playing the tough-guy cop in a movie, but he certainly had the deep, gravelly voice for it.

Red didn’t say anything for a while, let Hawk hang on the line like a fucking hooked walleye. What the hell did he think he was doing, threatening him like that? Didn’t he know that they were deeply in this thing together?

Red thought maybe it was time to remind him, so he said, “Who’s going to take who down?” He waited a beat, then another, then spit out the words. “I’ve got more on you than you would even want to think of.”

“Who’d believe you?”

Then Red used the one name that he knew could send Hawk over the edge. “Claire. She’d believe me.”

“Don’t you ever—don’t even think—”

Before Hawk could completely blow sky-high, Red cut in. “Hey, I would never do that. But I also know you gotta understand that I got a deal happening here. After it’s over, in a couple weeks, I’ll clear out of here. I promise, man.”

“You little slug, don’t you ‘man’ me.”

“Hey, hey, hey—”

“Make it as fast as you can.” Hawk ground the words out. Red could tell he was trying not to lose it again.

“Will do.”

“Stay away from those women.”

“Absolutemento.”

Red hadn’t known where he had come up with that last word, but he liked it. He was going to try to work it into conversation from now on. It could be like his signature. Hawk had hung up, and Red had needed to eat a few eggs.

R
ICH CALLED CLAIRE
and heard the phone ring and ring. It was after six in the evening, and he thought he would find her there, making supper for Meg. He hadn’t talked to her since they had had a few drinks together, and he didn’t want that conversation left dangling in the air too long. It needed a follow-up, even a simple “How are you?”

That’s what he had planned on asking—only, How are you? no presumptive, Do you want to get together? But when she didn’t answer the phone, he started to worry. This was a very foreign feeling to him, but Claire was a woman walking around with more troubles than anyone he had ever known.

Growing up in this small town on a big lake, he had always had such a strong sense of security, that nothing could harm him. That didn’t mean people didn’t die or fight or drink—but this was different; he had a sense of real danger shimmering around Claire and Meg. He wanted to put them in a bubble, like that man in a TV show when he was growing up. He wanted the two of them safe.

But no one was there, and Claire didn’t appear to have an answering machine. The phone ringing on and on was a sad sound, so he hung up the phone. He sat at his kitchen table and wondered about dinner. He could always have pheasant, but he was more than tired of it A hamburger was what he wanted, with all the fixings—tomato, lettuce, even a strip or two of bacon. A big hamburger that he could sink his teeth into and feel like the meat was going straight to his muscles. They would enlarge simply from the protein burst.

That’s what he had thought as a teenager, but he had also thought that you found one woman when you were twenty, you had sex, and you got married in some kind of order, and that was that. No way did he dream that when he was in his forties, counting his chicks as they were hatched, he would find a woman fraught with trouble who would fill him with passion. But it had happened, and maybe a hamburger would help—make him feel he was up to what was now on his plate.

“B
RUCE, I’M GLAD
I caught you.” Claire’s voice sounded close over the phone line.

Bruce was glad too. To hear Claire’s voice at the end of his day was a real treat. “What’s up, babe?”

“I think I found the guy.”

What was she talking about? He had looked up more information on the Tyler sheet he had taken. The guy looked perfect for a setup. He was out of town, but had been here and not in jail when her husband had been killed. “I think you picked the right guy, all right. It all checks out with that Tyler guy.”

“It’s not him. Bridget remembered some more. It’s that other guy, Red. I got on the phone, and I think I located him.”

Bruce looked down at his watch. He had to fix this, and fix it fast All of a sudden he wondered if he had enough time. He needed to get to Red before Claire talked to him. “Claire, are you sure?”

“Bridget remembered his name. It all fits. I arrested him six years ago, and he’s pissed at me. Bridget said he’s been carrying a thing for me. He was out of jail when Steve was killed.” Claire stopped for a moment, then she added, “And he told Bridget there was some other guy in on the deal.”

“Oh?” Bruce held his breath.

“Yeah, a guy named Hawk. The big man in their drug deals. I think that’s who we were getting close to when Steve got killed.”

“Hawk, huh?”

Claire talked fast and punchy. “I think we should move on this, Bruce.”

“Where are you?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I’m still down in Fort St. Antoine, but I’m on my way up. I found Red’s most recent address through his parole officer. He lives in Minneapolis. Can you meet me there?”

Bruce held his breath. “Where is that?”

Claire told him. “North Minneapolis. Buchanan and Hennepin.”

Shit, thought Bruce, she knows where he is. He had to stall her, put her off the trail long enough to take care of everything. “Yes, but let’s not meet there. How about the Union Bar on Hennepin? We can figure out how we want to handle this. I’d actually like you to stay out of it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Claire agreed. “What do you think? It’ll take me about two hours to get up there—do you want to say eight o’clock?”

“Yeah, I’ll meet you there at eight.” That gave him enough time to take care of the situation. He should have done this long ago, and now it was being forced on him. That goddamn Red was going to have to go. In many ways, it would be a total pleasure, and now he could come out looking nothing but good.

“Great. I have a good feeling about this, Bruce.”

Bruce leaned back in his chair and smiled at the tone in her voice. She sounded like the old Claire, the woman he had fallen head over heels in love with when she would saunter into the office and say just such a phrase to him. “I have a good feeling about you, babe.”

C
LAIRE HUNG UP
the phone and slumped against the side of the phone booth. “Mike loves Cheryl to suck him off,” she read, etched into the glass. Nice neighborhood. She had called from the Dairy Queen two blocks away from Red’s house. He was in the house right now, some old beater car in the driveway. Now all she had to do was wait She had rented a car so Bruce wouldn’t recognize it Rental cars were not unusual in this neighborhood. She wore a black jacket over her deputy uniform and a painter’s cap with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Cops were not particularly welcome in this neighborhood, but at the right time, she would shed her disguise and become a cop. She needed the security of her uniform to try to pull off what she was going to do.

She had thought very seriously about going to the police about this, tell them what she suspected, but she knew nothing would come of it. She could pin Bridget’s kidnapping on Red, but she needed to find out what Bruce had to do with all this. Red had more to fear from Bruce than he did the legal system, so he’d never give him up. She had nothing concrete that tied Bruce to Red. Sure, he had been an informant, and Bruce had lied about that, but he could easily claim he simply didn’t remember right then. What proof was that? All she had was her own deep, dark suspicion that had grown like a lake inside of her, flooding all avenues of hope. She had become clear about what she needed to do.

Claire parked down the block from Red’s house, shaded by some trees that allowed her a perfect view of the house. She would wait and see if Bruce drove up. If he did, she would follow him into the house. The three of them could have it out together.

It could turn out one of two ways: either she and Bruce would bring in Red and find out who this guy Hawk was, or she would bring Bruce and Red in. She had surprise and powerful anger on her side. She also had the belief that Bruce would never hurt her.

She thought of Meg for a moment and hoped she was having a good time with Bridget. Meg had looked at her so gravely when she had tried to act cheerful about her mini-vacation with Bridget and Chuck. After Claire had gotten done telling her how much fun she would have, she looked at her mom and said, “Just be careful, Mom.”