Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (32 page)

“The Sioux?” April looked puzzled.

“Sault Ste. Marie. That’s where I grew up. They call it the Soo.” He explained that on the rare occasions that Tag’s brother got a letter for him at his home in Sault Ste. Marie, he’d bring it with him on his next trip to Whitehorse.

“Not exactly express mail,” said Hunter. “Where were the letters from? Any return address?”

Tag took off his ball cap and ran a sleeve across his forehead before putting it back on. “If I remember right, they came from somewhere in Ohio. Salinas, I think. No, that’s not it.”

“Maybe your brother would know. How can we get in touch with him?”

“Passed away ten years ago. Colon cancer.” He nodded his thanks for Hunter’s apology, then added, “If it’s any help, the letters must have been from a relative, because they had the same last name. His real last name, that is.” He snapped his fingers. “Salineville. That was it. Salt town, I guess.”

“His real name wasn’t Blake, was it?” Hunter thought that this might finally confirm Martin Blake’s true identity as Grant Sanford.

“Blake was his real name, alright, but not his last name.” Tag bent down and scratched one of the dogs, which appeared to be part golden retriever, behind the ears. “Blake was his first name. His last name was Michaels.”

Sorry noticed the fuel gauge on his old mustard colored Volvo was hovering around empty and cursed himself for wasting that five dollar bill on Doughboy’s beer. He checked all his pockets, then the glove box and was relieved to find a crumpled twenty and some coins he’d carelessly stashed there before he’d lost his last job. He was happy to have made it through the day without being fired. It wasn’t like it was a common occurrence, but he’d been fired on the first day before. If he wanted to keep Mo happy, he’d have to stick this job out for a long time, maybe even a couple of years unless something better came along.

He wasn’t much given to introspection, but for some reason, he wasn’t feeling in a hurry to get home. He hated to admit it, but he was scared. Scared of how Mo would behave toward him today, and scared of how he would behave toward her if the atmosphere was as chilly as it had been last night. “Keep your eyes on the prize,” he muttered to himself.

He bought ten bucks worth of gas on King George Highway and figured he might as well stop in at a nearby bike shop to follow up on that guy Hunter was looking for. The owner was an old friend of his, from back when the Black Cobras first started out. His name was Paul but they called him Winston because he had jowls like Winston Churchill’s.

“Hey, Winnie, how’s it hangin’, man?”

They shot the shit for a couple of minutes, covering mutual friends who were now dead or in jail, before Sorry asked him if he knew of any mechanics in town who grew up in the Yukon.

“Damn right. Guy was looking for work here a couple years back, and I sent him down the road.” Winston pointed with his right hand. It seemed to Sorry that he was pointing at a naked woman on a calendar that hung on the wall behind the cash register.

“You told him to fuck off? Why?”

Winston shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Down the road, man. The ricer shop a couple a blocks that way.” He hawked and spit into a greasy rag, then stuffed the end of it into his back pocket. “He’s still there, comes in from time to time to get parts for his Harley.”

It was almost closing time so Sorry didn’t waste any time going down the road to a shop with Yamaha and Suzuki banners plastered all over its front window.

“You mean Jimmy?” asked the sales guy manning the counter.

The guy ushered him into the back of the shop, where a native-looking dude was kneeling, working on an old Honda CB350, a classic Jap bike that even Sorry could recognize.

“You Jimmy?” he asked.

The guy glanced up at Sorry and took his time answering. “Yeah. What can I help you with?”

“You from Whitehorse?”

The guy wiped his hands on the greasy coveralls he wore and slowly got to his feet, looking Sorry up and down. Jimmy was about five ten, wiry and strong. Sorry was taller, broader and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. “I don’t believe I know you,” Jimmy said.

“I got a message for you, Jimmy.” Sorry laid a hand on the guy’s shoulder, and the guy pushed it off. Sorry smiled. He considered it his hardass smile. “About an old dude looks like Santa Claus.”

The guy’s face clouded. Sorry knew he had the right man.

“What about him?”

“You know he’s in jail, eh? Old Orville.”

“Jail? For what?”

“What do you think?”

Sorry was pretty sure it was fear that flashed across Jimmy’s face. He wondered if Jimmy took him for a cop.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

Another hardass smile.

“You know–?” Sorry began, then sniffed, stroked his moustache and sniffed again. “I wouldn’t have much respect for a brother who would let another brother take the rap for him, let alone an asshole who would let his old man take a fall for him. You know what I mean, Jimmy?”

“He’s not my old man,” Jimmy replied.

“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck –“

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Besides, what’s it to you? Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

“Give your head a shake, Jimmy. You got a chance to do the right thing here.” He noticed Jimmy’s hand reach around to slide a wrench off the workbench behind him. “And that ain’t it,” he said as he grabbed the guy’s shoulder and spun him around with one hand, got him in a headlock with the other. When Jimmy tried to cow kick him, Sorry lifted him off the ground and thrust a hand under the guy’s crotch to grab his balls. “You ain’t gonna win here, pal. Let’s just talk nice, okay?” He started to squeeze.

The guy squirmed a few seconds and then gave up.”Let go of me,” he managed to choke out, then as Sorry loosened his grasp, “Okay, okay. Let’s talk nice.”

Sorry heard the sales guy open the door behind him. “What’s going on in here? You okay, Jimmy?”

Sorry glared at Jimmy until he answered. “Yeah. I’m fine, Mike. Thanks.” He was straightening out his coveralls as he spoke.

When the sales guy had gone, Sorry hustled Jimmy out the back door of the shop into an alley. He held Jimmy up against the wall with one hand while he fished a cigarette out of his tee shirt and put it between his lips. “You gonna be a good little injun now, James?”

Jimmy sneered and spat on the ground but he didn’t try to leave.

Sorry lit his cigarette and took a deep drag. “So what is it you want out of life, Jimmy? Money? Fame? A good woman? Kids? A happy family? Where do you see yourself in five years, ten years, best case scenario?” Jimmy looked at him like he was crazy. “Dig deep, man. This is heavy shit. I wish somebody had made me take a close look at myself when I was your age.” In fact, somebody had. Sorry had been on a fast track to doing hard time when he’d had the good fortune to be arrested for assault by Hunter Rayne about a dozen years earlier. A cop who cared about him as a person. Who knew?

He grabbed Jimmy by the collar. “Speak up, dude. This is fucking important.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, man.”

Sorry took a pull on his cigarette and blew the smoke in Jimmy’s face. “Easy question, just answer it. Okay, look at it this way. Who’s your hero? Who or what do you want to be when you grow up? If you don’t give a shit, you might as well jump off a bridge. If you do give a shit, then you’re the one who’s got to make it happen. You can’t sit on your ass waiting for it to be handed to you on a silver platter.” Sorry gave him a couple of minutes to think it over.

“I like to work on bikes. I like to ride. That’s my life. That’s all I want to do. I work on bikes at the shop, I rebuild bikes in my garage, I eat take out, I watch TV and fall asleep. What else does a guy like me have to aim for?”

“What do you mean, a guy like you? “

“I’m a half breed with a grade eight education. What do you expect me to do?”

“You shithead. Nobody gives a fuck if you’re a half breed unless you wear it on your shoulder and dare the world to knock it off.”

“Nobody gives a fuck about me, period.” The guy kicked at a stone, pouting. Sorry almost laughed, the guy reminded him so much of little Bruno when he’d been scolded for sneaking the green vegetables off his plate and feeding them to Doobie. He hoped Bruno would never feel the way this Jimmy guy felt. He never would, if Sorry could help it. Come to think of it, Orville must be worried the same way about Jimmy.

“Nobody? What do you call the old man who’s willing to take a murder rap for you?”

Sullen silence.

“Look, you got a choice here. You can do the right thing and feel good about yourself for the rest of your life, or you can keep on making excuses why you’ll never be a real man and never amount to anything. If that’s the case, I suggest you go find yourself a bridge.” Sorry dropped his cigarette butt and smashed it with the toe of his boot. “Your choice, man.” It sounded a lot like what Hunter had said to him, way back when.

“And what? Spend the rest of my life in jail?”

Sorry snorted. “Give your head a shake. This is Canada, man. You plead to voluntary manslaughter, self-defense or whatever, you’re put away in medium – Matsqui, maybe – with three squares a day, gym time and an education program for a few years, then you’re back out with a high school diploma and maybe even a cute social worker hanging on your arm.”

Jimmy looked puzzled. “What’s it to you? Who are you, anyway?”

Sorry couldn’t resist saying, “Who was that masked man?” This struck him as so funny that he burst out laughing, a big belly laugh that made Jimmy wince. “Never thought of myself as the Lone Ranger type.” He noticed the guy wasn’t laughing. “You never watched the Lone Ranger as a kid?”

The guy just glowered at him. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“So I’m doing a favor for a friend, or maybe you could say, a friend of a friend. Where I come from, we don’t like to snitch to the cops. I still haven’t decided whether I’ll be telling my friend where to find you. You want to live looking over your shoulder, go ahead. But if I was you, I’d go bail out the old man and get my life back on the rails.”

With that, Sorry grabbed Jimmy by the scruff of the neck and pushed him back inside.

April had been able to book a room at the Edgewater for the night. “I hate eating alone in restaurants,” she said as Hunter helped her down from the passenger seat of the Blue Knight. “You hungry?”

Hunter hesitated a moment. The place would bring back memories, but then again, so did being with April. Maybe it was fitting that he and April spend this last night in Whitehorse at a place that had been special to the one friend they’d had in common back then. “Sure,” he said.

The place looked somehow different enough, or perhaps he’d been away long enough, that it didn’t feel as familiar as he expected. There was a free table by the window, so they sat down and soon had ordered drinks and dinner. There were a few unanswered questions about April that had been nagging at him, and as soon as their drinks were delivered – red wine for her and a beer for him – and he saw her start to relax, he took advantage of the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity.

“So how did you end up in Oregon?”

She let out a long breath. “I was looking for a safe place.” She took a sip of her wine and set it down, staring at the stem of the glass as she spun it gently on the polished surface of the table. “There was a straight kind of guy from high school, a friend of my brother’s, who had a crush on me. I knew he was studying at Portland State and I thought I’d look him up.”

“You didn’t go back to see your parents?”

She shrugged. “They were divorced. My mom ran off with the Fuller Brush salesman when I was just fourteen and my dad was a mean drunk. I left home as soon as I finished school. No reason to go back.” She took another sip of wine, swallowed it and stuck out her jaw defiantly. “Ever.”

He was struck by how her cheerful, easy going nature back in 1972 had belied what she must have been through before she left her home in Michigan. Abusive father. Abusive boyfriend. It made him sad. “You found the man you were looking for?”

“He’s my rock.” She smiled wryly. “We have three kids and a dog, just your typical middle class Pacific Northwest family. One kid is away at college, two still at home. How about you?”

“Two girls. Young adults, really.” He had more questions for her, but before he could speak again, she interrupted his train of thought.

“What about your friend? You said he passed away. What happened? Cancer?”

Hunter looked down at his hands. He didn’t want to answer, but he felt he had to say something. “Accidental discharge of a firearm.” He managed a pained smile.

She nodded, her expression sad.

“Do you remember the date of the attack on you and Martin?”

She lifted her shoulders and showed her palms in a helpless shrug.

“We had no way of knowing for sure when it happened,” he told her, “except that it was before the snowfall. I was hoping you could help.” He locked his eyes on hers. “Didn’t you ever wonder what happened at the cabin after you left?”