Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) (19 page)

34

“Did they hurt you?” Gun said, on his back. Mazy
was dabbing at his ragged side with a cloth, which
made him pinch his words.

“I’m all right. Believe me.” She kept her eyes on the
wound. “This is ugly. What did he shoot you with, a
cannon?”

“A .44, and I’m glad he was in a hurry,” said Gun.
Jack had doused the gutted stove and opened win
dows to clear the smoke. Gun was on the bed.

“I didn’t have any choice, Dad. I hated all the lying.
They had me, was all.” Mazy gripped Gun’s wrist for
a moment, suspending the rag above the ripped skin.
“But you knew that. You could tell.” Gun reached
up and ran a finger along Mazy’s cheekbone. She
stopped it with her hand. “Couldn’t you?” she
asked.

“You could’ve been less convincing.”

Mazy wiped hair from her forehead with the back of
her hand. “It must have been rough on Barr’s ego,

coming to you and spilling it like that. All part of the
production, just to get you out here.”

“What about the rest of it? You and Geoff.”

Mazy shrugged, a slim-shouldered gesture like her
mother’s. “Marriage
papers
are real enough. But
there’s no marriage. No baby, either.” Her face went
from relief to anger. “Won’t Lyle’s family doctor be
surprised.”

“Will be, when he gets back from the Riviera.
Where’s Hedman?”

“Might be anywhere. He drove out of Stony behind Geoff and me. Annison drove separately. Always does.”

“Annison?”

“Lyle’s wife,” Mazy said, pausing for a glance at
Geoff, whose face was dark. “Geoff’s mother.”

“Sounds like a headache pill,” said Jack. He ragged
his hands free of ash on a corner of bedspread. “We
had it figured, about the setup.”

“You came, though,” Mazy said. Gun glared at
Geoff, who was sitting up straight now, his arrogance
returning.

Mazy rinsed the cloth in a basin. When Gun’s side and legs were clean and wrapped in layers of cotton,
the four of them walked away from the cabin toward
the road.

The Jeep pulled into the Calgary airport at eleven
p.m.,
midnight in Stony. Gun booked four one-ways
on American to Winnipeg. Then he went to a pay
phone on the wall next to the flight desk. He reached
Carol at the newspaper office on the ninth ring.

“Where in heaven or hell are you calling from!” she
blew. “No. Don’t tell me. I think I know.”

“What did you expect?” Gun said.

“Damn it, Gun, you like doing this!”

“Mazy’s all right. So is Jack. So am I.”

“You’re more than all right,” Carol said. “You
sound like a kid who’s been out playing cavalry.”

“I guess we have been,” Gun said calmly. He told
her about Barr’s confession, about the sudden flight,
about the cabin in the woods with Mazy inside it. He
didn’t mention the small war and its casualties.

“If Barr told you all that just to set you up, then how
did you get out of there? And with Mazy?”

Gun shut his eyes, inhaled.

“Did you get hurt? Did anybody get hurt?”

“Carol, three of them are dead. None of them were
Hedman.”

“My God.” Gun imagined Carol biting her emerald
ring.

“I need your help now. All of us do.”

“What can I do?”

“Is it possible to put out a special edition of the
Journal?
Can you fire up the presses a little early?”

“I can if I need to. I’ll have to do it without my
regular help.”

“It’s important, Carol.” Gun gripped the phone too
hard, and his palm, red as fire, opened without
permission. He caught the receiver with a forearm
against his chest and juggled it back to his ear. “We
have two witnesses now, Geoff Hedman and Barr.
First you’ve got to secure Barr. Get him out of
commission.”

“Out of commission.”

“Lure him in, knock him out, lock him up. Some
where. Keep him cold until we get back. We’re going
to need him.”

“I’ll try.” Carol sounded winded. “What about the
paper?”

“I want you to write an article. News, editorial, call
it what you like. People read your paper. Tell them
how their good reverend got his buddy Rutherford to
set up Tig Larson, and then let him go down under
Hedman.”

“Hold it, Gun.” Carol was scribbling audibly. “If I do this, if I print this, all of it had better come out. In
court. If one fragment of this isn’t proven, I’m throw
ing twenty years of news work out a high window.”

“It’ll stick,” Gun said. “If you’re afraid, don’t write the article and we’ll get through it another way. But
Lord, Carol, it might make the difference.”

“Difference in what? You’ve got a witness with you.
Bring him home.”

“The difference might be whether Hedman goes to
jail, or I do. And Jack. We just left a few of Hedman’s
pals out in the woods, but he has a lot more. In
strategic positions, I’d bet.”

Carol bit her ring. Gun could see it.

“If you write it,” he said, “include everything.
Don’t leave anything out. Only the unabridged ver
sion will do.”

Carol’s voice was dark and sharp, obsidian. “When
will you get back?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. We’re flying to Winnipeg on
American. We’ll drive from there.”

“Drive fast,” Carol said.

35

The DC-10 touched down in Winnipeg at one-thirty.
The sun was starting to burn a hole through heavy
skies, a silver drizzle was angling down before a
clearing west wind, and Carol Long was waiting at the
airport. She was the first person Gun saw as he and
Mazy stepped from the debarking tunnel. He was
surprised at the rush of joy he felt at seeing her. She wore a bright red sweatshirt. Her hair looked coal
black. Her face was drawn and pale. She swept past
Gun and threw her arms around Mazy. Then she
pulled away and touched Mazy’s chin with the finger
tips of both hands.

“And you came through it fine,” Carol said. “Thank
God.” Her eyes were dry and steady, but there was a
slight tremor in her chin.

Jack came down out of the tunnel flattening back
his greasy crew cut with both hands. He smiled at
Gun, then at the women. Geoff stood looking at his
feet.

Gun said to Carol’s back, “How’d it go last night?”

“Just fine,” she snapped, turning. “I did everything
exactly as requested.” Her glare was brief and freez
ing.

They stopped at a gun shop to replace the dead
Ithaca, then headed south for Minnesota. Gun and
Mazy rode in Carol’s car, Jack followed with Geoff in Gun’s pickup. By three-thirty they’d been on the road
half an hour and Mazy was curled sleeping in the
backseat. Gun was driving, holding the wheel as
lightly as he could because of the burn blisters on his
hands. He sipped at a giant Styrofoam cup of coffee
he’d picked up at the airport. The coffee was cool but
jumping with caffeine. He could feel it in the back of
his head, a soft, pulsating pain, and though his body
was exhausted, his eyes felt like mechanical shutters
stuck wide open.

Carol was silent and staring out the passenger
window at the long, greenish-brown reach of Manito
ba prairie. So far Gun had honored her apparent wish
to be left alone, but now he decided her silence
seemed self-indulgent. He cleared his throat.

“So you don’t feel like talking,” he said.

She ignored him.

“And it’s because I left without telling you what was
up.”

Carol leaned toward him. “Your daughter’s trying
to sleep,” she said.

Gun looked sideways at her, rubbing the unburned
heel of his right hand against his two-day stubble. He said, “Do you think I would have done what I did if I thought there was a better way?”

Carol looked at him, and their eyes met for an
instant before she turned away. “Probably not. But I
don’t think that says much for your judgment.” She brought up her feet and curled herself into the seat,
facing the passenger door.

“Fair enough,” Gun said.

The sky had cleared as much as it was going to for a
while. The drizzle had stopped, but the sun was still
nothing more than a dull yellow beach ball in the gray
sky. Gun could tell by the arch in Carol’s shoulders
that she wasn’t anywhere near falling asleep, and her
left hand, resting on her leg, was a hard white fist. He
said, “Carol, maybe you ought to tell me what hap
pened last night. This isn’t over yet.”

“I suppose I’d better,” she muttered into the win
dow. She twisted around in her seat, pulled herself
upright. “I wrote the article, took it to the printer, and
locked up Barr in a safe place.” She spoke quickly,
then clamped her mouth shut.

Gun blinked. “You actually locked him up,” he
said. He saw Carol start to smile.

“He’s in your new boathouse,” she said.

He smiled and swung into the passing lane to
overtake a truck pulling a hay rack loaded with scrap iron. He laughed, trying to picture it: Barr in his stiff
black-and-white collar and his carefully pressed pants,
sitting there in the dark on the dirt floor, or maybe in
the old Alumacraft, on one of the life cushions. He
was probably getting some good practice in sincere
prayer. “How’d you get him in there, anyway?”

“I had good help.” Now Carol smiled in spite of
herself. “My son showed up last night, at supper-
time.”

“No kidding. From California.”

“He wanted to see the ‘rugged north country.’”

“Turned out to be more rugged than he expected, I
bet.”

“I’d say so, yes.” Carol’s voice had lost its tightness,
sounded natural again. “Mike and I drove over to
Barr’s house. No one was home, so we tried the
church. There was a light in his office. I left Mike in
the car, and he covered up with a few blankets and
coats in the backseat while I went to Barr’s door and
knocked. When he saw me he lit up like a Christmas tree. You know his capacity to gloat—here it was the
night before the referendum, victory just hours away,
the new cathedral probably cementing itself together
in his fantasies—he was thrilled to see me. Asked me
in for coffee. I told him thanks, but we had something
to discuss. Someone had leveled serious charges
against him, and I wanted to hear his side of the story
before I wrote it up.” Carol paused, gave Gun a
self-satisfied smile. “Believe me, I was winging it. Had
no idea what I was going to tell him. I just wanted to
get him out to the car. Finally I said that one of
Hedman’s people, the cook, had phoned me up with a
story about bribes and collusion. The reverend so
bered up in a hurry. I said I’d arranged to meet the
cook at my place, and would he like to come along. So
off we went.”

Gun swallowed the last of his cold coffee and
grinned into the cup.

“Then we took Barr out to your boathouse. I think
Mike’s still in shock. His mom, the conspirator.”

“How’d you get the boathouse open? I had it
padlocked, I think.”

“Before Mike and I went over to Barr’s, we stopped
at old man Calvert’s, borrowed his lock clipper and
bought a new one.”

“So Barr’s just waiting for us, then.”

“He’s waiting, all right. The question is how we’re
going to reach him.” Carol sighed, then looked at Gun
hard, her pupils bright as knife points. “This is the
part I haven’t told you yet. Hedman’s got roadblocks
on every road leading into the county.”

Gun could almost feel his brain notch into gear and
start spinning off possibilities.

Carol said, “My paper hit the stands at eight-thirty
this morning, and you’d better believe it caused a stir.

Hedman called me at a quarter to nine, just before I
left. He threatened to have me arrested.”

“For what?”

“He wasn’t too specific.”

“Tell me about the roadblocks.”

“Like I said, every road leading into the county.
Highways, township roads, everything. Tar and gravel.
The official version is that ‘suspected felons’ are in the
area; Sheriff Bakke loves his sweet ambiguities. But
Hedman’s had every one of his paper-mill workers
deputized. He’s taking no chances.”

“I’m flattered,” Gun said.

They drove on under overcast skies, crossed
through customs without incident and continued
southeast, the low marshland of the northern counties
stretching out on both sides of the road, the real pine
country still a hundred miles off. Half an hour beyond
the border, Gun pointed at a green sign that said,
hope,
5
miles.
“There’s a good little cafe there,” he
said. “Anybody hungry?”

“I am,” said Mazy from the backseat. She sat up
and leaned forward, pushing her face between the
bucket seats. “You two look nice together,” she said.