Starvation Lake (35 page)

“It was never going to run anyway, was it?”

I chose not to answer.

“Gus, this is a scumbag who insists he has a pile of Bigfoot crap. Now because he happened to know your dad, we’re going to trust him?”

I grabbed her elbow and steered her away from Perlmutter’s window to the edge of the porch. An automatic security lamp flashed on over our heads. The beam illuminated the ground through the trees all the way down to a corner of Walleye Lake.

“Yes, he’s a liar,” I said, speaking as quietly as I could. “But he’s capable of telling the truth. If he lies about Blackburn, our deal with him is immediately off, and I’ll fight like hell to run your Bigfoot story, I promise.”

“He’s
capable
of telling the truth? You know, it’s one thing to steal voice mails from a bunch of liars. It’s another thing entirely to make deals with one.”

“Cheap shot,” I said. It didn’t matter at the moment that she happened to be right. “Look, I’m going back in. You can wait in the truck if you want.”

“Whatever.”

   “OK,” I told Perlmutter. I was sitting on the arm of the sagging chair. Joanie stood next to her peeling one. “I can tell you—and I shouldn’t be—that we’ve written our story on your so-called museum, and the lawyers don’t like it.”

“What good’s that do me?” Perlmutter said.

“Look, Clayton,” I said, “if Joanie and I go back and do some screaming, we’ll turn the lawyers around.” Joanie nodded on cue. “Or we could just stay on the Blackburn story, if we have something fresh to write. Anyway, Joanie’s going to be leaving the
Pilot
soon, and that’ll pretty much assure your story will die.”

“Where’s she going?”

Joanie blinked twice but kept her gaze on Perlmutter. “Who knows?” I said. “Someplace bigger. She’s the one breaking all these Blackburn stories. If it wasn’t for her, we might not even have had an arraignment today.”

“Huh,” Perlmutter grunted. “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”

“Anyway,” I continued, “it was nice chatting about my family, but if you aren’t going to help us, we’re going to go do some screaming.”

It wasn’t the most ethical way to go about things, but I’d done worse. Anyway, if the people of Starvation Lake and the fools in the state capital who had showered money on Perlmutter wanted to think he was running a museum, maybe they deserved to get ripped off.

Perlmutter gazed at Shep for a long minute. He undid the top two snaps of his vest and produced a black-and-white photograph that he handed to me. Joanie got up and looked at it over my shoulder. Through a thicket of trees, the blurry shape of a man appeared on the shore of a lake. He was bent over another, indistinguishable shape, hidden in shadow. The perspective was similar to the one from Perlmutter’s porch. The trees were lush with leaves. A dull streak of moonlight glimmered on the water’s edge. “You took this?” I said.

“Yessir.”

“But this wasn’t
that
night?”

“No, sir. That was spring, couple of months later.”

“But what did you see
that night
?” Joanie said. “You said you saw something.”

Perlmutter ignored her, pointing at the photo. “You recognize the guy?”

“No,” I said, squinting.

“Here’s a hint. He was one of the four I saw at their little bonfire that night.”

“Four?” Joanie and I said in unison. “No,” Joanie said. “It was just Blackburn, Redpath, and Campbell.”

“That’s all I’m saying about that,” Perlmutter said. “Look at the picture.”

I knew it couldn’t be Blackburn. It was too bulky to be Soupy. “Leo?” I said.

“Give the man a cigar,” Perlmutter said. “Yessir, old Leo snuck down to the lake to dispose of a little something.”

“Blackburn’s snowmobile,” Joanie said.

“Another winner,” Perlmutter said, holding his beer up in salute. “Old Shep was just a puppy that spring, and Redpath wasn’t making that much of a racket, but Shep about tore her chain off the house, didn’t you, girl?”

“So,” I said, “you’re saying Leo killed Blackburn—or Blackburn killed himself—and then Leo waited a few months to dump the snowmobile and, presumably, Blackburn.”

“No,” Joanie said to me. “Remember what he said on the answering machine.”

“Hey, maybe I’m all wet,” Perlmutter said. “Try this.” He held out his hand. Lying in the palm was a .22-caliber bullet. “Found it out by their fire,” he said.

“When? That night?” I said.

“The morning after.”

“The morning after the fire, after Blackburn died?”

“In the winter, yeah.”

He handed me the bullet. I examined it and gave it to Joanie.

“When I heard about the snowmobile dunking on the squawk box”—Perlmutter jerked a thumb at the police radio—“I got myself out to their campsite for a look-see. The cops were still messing around at Starvation. It was a sunny morning, and I caught a glint of the bullet, stuck in a tree.”

“In a tree?” Joanie said.

“Fourteen of my steps from the fire pit.”

“Must’ve been buried pretty good,” I said.

“Yep. Took a little work to dig it out.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Joanie said.

“Maybe I did. As I think you know, missy, I am nothing if not opportunistic.”

“Amen,” she said. “I’ll bet you’re the one who called the cops last week when the snowmobile finally washed up.”

“You never know.”

She held up the bullet. “We have to take this.”

“Not a chance.”

“This could be anybody’s,” Joanie said. “The cops have to look at it before we could write about it.”

“Ain’t going to happen,” Perlmutter said. He leaned forward, his hand open. “I’ll take that picture too, if you please.”

“Joanie, give him the bullet,” I said. The cops eventually would come for it anyway. “But let me keep the picture, Clayton, just for a little. I want to look at it some more in some better light.” If Delbert blew it up, we might be able to tell if it was a fake. Or it might actually give us a little leverage with Dingus. And maybe it could help Soupy, too, though it was pretty flimsy as court evidence went. “It will not appear in our paper unless you yourself give me permission, I swear on my father’s grave.”

“Your daddy’s grave, huh?” he said, chuckling. “Let me think about it.”

“Joanie,” I said.

She handed him the bullet. “So,” she said, “we’ve got a Bigfoot-like photograph and a bullet that could’ve come from Kmart.”

“Hah,” Perlmutter scoffed.

“Clayton,” Joanie said. “The cops say there were only two bullets—one in the snowmobile, one in Blackburn’s head.”

“But they ain’t got no bullet from Blackburn’s head, now do they, missy?”

The police radio sputtered to life. I heard Darlene’s static-riddled voice, calling for assistance at a fire.

“This bullet doesn’t mean diddly, Clayton,” Joanie said. “Who was the fourth guy?”

“I don’t remember saying it was a guy. Anyway, I think I’m done talking for now, missy. Obviously you ain’t smart enough to figure it out. I think I’ll just hold on to what I got until I know I’m not going to get crucified in the paper.”

Joanie turned to me. “We’re wasting our time.”

Perlmutter looked at Shep and shook his head. He looked as disgusted as he did amused. “The little missy’s just plain young, girl, but what do you figure is
his
excuse?”

He was trying to tell me something, but I was straining to hear the police radio. “Listen up,” I said. Darlene, louder now, was calling all available deputies to the old Blackburn property. Fire trucks and ambulances were on their way. A man had ignited some buildings and appeared to be trapped in one, but he was to be considered armed and dangerous nevertheless. I hoped it wasn’t who I thought it was. “Let’s go,” I said, jumping up. I must have spooked Shep, who leaped up snarling from where she lay and lunged at me, jaws agape, just as a fat black cat sprang from my right, flying straight at my head. My arm instinctively shot out and whacked the cat out of the air. It screeched as I drove my right boot into Shep’s ribs and yelled, “Get the hell away!” Shep yelped and skittered toward Perlmutter, who grabbed her collar while shouting, “No, down, girl, down!” I raced out the door behind Joanie and kept running off the porch and into the darkness, grabbing her by the arm as we struggled through the knee-deep snow, saying, “Go, go, go, before he realizes I have the picture.”

   What a load of crap,” Joanie said. “We traded a perfectly good story for that?” My truck bounced along the snow-covered gravel road two miles from Blackburn’s old place. “Third bullet, my butt. Probably just another drunken miss.”

“We got the photo.”

“I bet it’s rigged. And this fourth guy—or girl, or, heck, maybe it was Bigfoot—why didn’t he just tell us? I’ll tell you why. Because he didn’t see a thing. He was working us.”

She looked at me for a reply, but I was going over what Perlmutter had told us while dreading what we might find at the old Blackburn place. Yes, his “third” bullet could have been a fake. But the photograph intrigued me; the figure in the photo seemed to have that hunch Leo had in his shoulders. As for a fourth person, I didn’t want to think about it too hard without knowing who it was. Boynton? Dingus? Elvis Bontrager?

“Did you ever find out anything about Blackburn’s family?” I said.

“Nada. If he had a brother-in-law in Kalamazoo, he isn’t there now.”

I swung the truck onto Route 571. A dim orange glow pulsated in the sky ahead. “How about the property?” I said. “Who owns it now?”

After Blackburn’s death, the county had boarded up his house and the billets and declared the property off-limits. Now and then some kids would break into one of the billets and have a party. It had all since been purchased, or so the rumor went, by an out-of-state real-estate investment firm.

“Some company in Virginia,” Joanie said. She flipped through her notebook. “It’s in my backpack. Something like Richards Incorporated or Richards Company.”

“You got this at the clerk’s office?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you get past Verna? Vicky?”

“Yeah—holy crap!”

We crested a hill and in the clearing below orange flames and billowing black smoke leaped into the sky through the falling snow. Swirling police lights painted the bare trees in scarlet and blue while the fire hoses etched silver arcs of water catapulting over Blackburn’s house and the three billets.

Everything was burning.

I stopped the truck on the horseshoe drive that looped in front of the cabin, where our parents had parked their cars when we were kids playing at Make-Believe Gardens. A cluster of deputies swung around and pointed flashlights our way. “Stay back,” one said, but it was only Skip Catledge, so I moved ahead of Joanie into the reek of charred wood and gasoline.

Catledge turned and shouted to another deputy, “Tell Sheriff the press is here.” He turned back to me and said, “Not another step, buck.”

“What the hell’s going on?” I said.

“Judge never should’ve let him out.”

So it was Soupy, as I had feared. This was how he put his affairs in order. “Where is he?”

“One of the little houses in the back. Said he isn’t coming out, but the firefighters are going in before the smoke kills him.”

I tried to move past Catledge, who put a gloved hand firmly in my chest. “Back off, Gus. If this isn’t evidence of guilt, I don’t know what is,”

“Come on, Skip, I’ve known the guy for thirty fucking years.”

“I’ve known him just as long, and he’s an idiot,” Catledge said. He turned around and surveyed the scene, then grabbed me by my jacket shoulder. “All right. Come on.”

We trotted up to within fifty yards of the billets. The heat and smoke stung my face and the inside of my nose. “Far enough,” Catledge said. “Stay here.” He jogged off toward the fire.

Cops and firefighters encircled the burning billets. I imagined Soupy crouched inside, the fire and smoke closing in on him, his idiotic bravado vanished. I thought of his estranged daughter in Flint and how even though she hadn’t seen him in years she would be crushed to hear how her daddy had died. I wanted to run into the burning buildings and punch him to death. And I wanted him to come out, sputtering for breath.

Just then a firefighter, followed by a second one, burst from the front door of the nearest billet. They stumbled awkwardly off the porch into the snow, hefting a body wrapped in a blanket. Two paramedics rushed past us with a stretcher.

“They got him,” Joanie said.

I walked in a daze of fury and relief toward the paramedics. They laid the body on the stretcher and unwrapped the blanket. It was Soupy, all right. His eyes were shut. He was limp and motionless. A flap of thick hair fell over one side of his face. The hair on the other side was singed off. Charcoal smears blackened his nostrils and upper lip. Dingus emerged from the smoke to our right. He was waving and yelling something I couldn’t make out. He saw Joanie and me approaching and held up a hand as if to stop us. Catledge jumped in front of us. “You’re gonna get me in trouble,” he said.

“Is he alive?” I said.

“No idea. Get back.”

The paramedics closed around Soupy, blocking our view. All I could see was Soupy’s arm dangling lifelessly off the stretcher. In all of our years of playing hockey, I’d never seen him on a stretcher, not even close. He was lucky that way. Other things didn’t hurt Soupy. Mostly it was Soupy who hurt Soupy.

One of the paramedics leaned away and I saw Soupy’s arm jerk up and down, once, then again. Then Soupy’s head rose a few inches off the stretcher. He coughed a moist wad up on his chest. He leaned over the edge of the stretcher and spit more in the snow, struggling for breath. I felt myself exhale before the anger rushed back in.

“Soupy,” I yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

Dingus pushed in front of me. “Deputy, get them out of here.”

“Trap,” I heard Soupy say. “Trap. Man, I’m so, I’m so sorry, man.”

“Deputy!”

Catledge put his hands on my shoulders. “Let’s go, buddy,” he said. He pushed me back a step and I stiffened.