The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (6 page)

“Is there any question the remains are the Patel boy’s?” Harvey demanded.

“Not much,” I said. “We haven’t found the skull yet, but the shoe is the brand and size described by the family and the blood type’s a match.”

“Why haven’t you . . . found the skull?” Harvey asked, glancing around the savaged ground as though my officers and the state police CSI team had overlooked it somehow.

“This isn’t the original dump site,” I explained. “My partner and a conservation officer are backtracking it now. Most likely the body was ditched out near the shore highway. The coyote pack found it there, tore it apart, then carried the pieces back to the den.”

“I thought coyotes were afraid of people,” Harvey said.

“That was before the Internet boom, when folks realized they could do business anyplace you can plug in a laptop. The population along the north is exploding, Harve. We’re crowding onto their habitat, and coyotes don’t read Darwin. As they get used to seeing us around, they lose their fear. If they find us dead on their turf, we’re lunch. Like roadkill, chickens in a coop, or a fawn frozen in the snow.”

“Coyotes didn’t kill this boy,” Bemis said grimly. “We both know who did this.”

“Actually, we don’t. Whatever the time frame for the killing turns out to be, I guarantee you Carl Novak’s going to have an alibi the KGB couldn’t break. A family reunion, a christening? He was there, surrounded by fifty witnesses.”

“Then he hired it done!”

“You’re exactly right. He did. And we helped him.”

“Helped him? What—?”

“Novak was working two jobs just to keep his daughter Julie in school, Harvey. He didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Then she was killed and Avery wrote him a check. Tipped him like a bellhop. Two hundred thou for his daughter’s life. And now?” I gestured at the savage clearing. “Look what a backwoods boy can accomplish with a few bucks.”

“He’s not going to get away with this,” Bemis said furiously. “Alibi or no alibi, I want that sonofabitch arrested! I want him hauled into the House in cuffs—”

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean I’m not going to bust him, Harvey. He’ll just lawyer up, and we’ll get nothing. Novak’s not the one I want anyway.”

“Of course he is! What are you talking about?”

“His daughter died in the snow, and nobody was held accountable. And now we’ve got another dead kid, or what’s left of one. We gave Novak money instead of justice. So he used our cash to buy his own justice.”

“He bought
murder!
”

“Damn right. And that’s the guy I want. The sonofabitch who killed this boy for money. And Novak is going to give me his name. Because he’s angry and hurting, but most of all, because he feels
justified!
He thinks he bought retribution. When I tell him the truth, that he killed the wrong boy, he’ll unravel like a cheap suit.”

“But you can’t tell him! It was revealed in confidence!”

I almost decked him. It was a near thing. I snatched up a piece of Derek Patel’s shattered femur instead, and dragged the jagged end of it across Harvey’s new parka, smearing his coat with blood and slime.

“What—? What the hell are you doing?” Bemis stammered, staggering back, horrified.

“Take a deep breath, counselor. That’s what justice smells like in the deep woods. Avery cut Novak a check for his daughter and expected him to take it. I warned you it would blow back, and now it has. I helped make this mess, so I’m going to fix it, but I’m done playing games. I’m going to tell Novak the flat-ass truth about what happened. And he’ll give me a name and I’ll bring that bastard in. It won’t be justice, but I’ll have to live with it. This,” I said, tossing the bone at his feet, “is the part you have to live with.”

As I turned away, Bemis grabbed my arm.

“Just a damn minute, LaCrosse—”

Pure cussedness on my part. As he jerked me around, I used the momentum to slap him across the face. Harder than I meant to. He went down like a sack of cement, staring up at me in stunned disbelief.

“I’ll—I’ll have your badge for that!”

“No, you won’t. I’d love to tell a judge about this mess, Harve, but your boss wouldn’t like it. And just so we’re clear? If you ever lay hands on me again, I’ll break your goddamn jaw. C’mon, get up.” I offered him my hand, but he brushed it away angrily and staggered to his feet.

A black carrion beetle the size of my thumb was working its way through the muck on his overcoat.

“You’ve got a bug,” I said, pointing at the beetle.

“What?
Oh!
” he gasped, horrified. He tried to brush it away, but the beetle clung stubbornly to the fabric, scarfing its lunch.

Harvey plucked it off and cast it aside, but his fingertips came up smeared with Derek Patel’s remains. It was too much. Stumbling into the brush, he dropped to his knees in the snow, retching up everything but his spleen.

I almost felt sorry for him.

But I couldn’t spare the time. I needed to get to Novak fast.

To tell him the truth. And destroy him with it.

I picked up my partner at the shore highway, where patrolmen were taping off the original dump site. Racing back into Valhalla with lights and sirens, we crossed the river to Poletown, to Carl Novak’s run-down double-wide.

I carried the femur with me. Technically it was evidence, but the forest den wasn’t really a crime scene. The coyotes were only guilty of being coyotes.

When Carl Novak answered my knock, I simply handed him the savaged bone, explained what it was and where I’d found it. And what had actually happened the night his daughter died.

It took a moment for the horror of it to sink in. But when it did, Novak sagged against the doorjamb like he’d been slammed across the knees with a Louisville Slugger.

And then he gave us the hired killer’s name.

A familiar one.

Joni Cohen was right. When you do police work in your hometown, you’re bound to run into people you know.

“Holy crap,” Zina said, scanning the screen of her laptop. We were in my Jeep, idling in Novak’s driveway, waiting for a prowl car to show, to take him into custody.

“What have we got?” I asked, keeping an eye on Carl Novak, as he said his goodbyes to his wife and remaining kids on his porch. Dry-eyed now, but he looked decades older. In utter despair.

“Oskar Sorsa, Big Ox,” Zina read. “Six foot seven, two-eighty. Two-time loser, both busts tied to the meth trade, three years on the first fall, four more on his second. Ganged up in prison with the Aryan Militia. The LEO lists him as a violent offender. Presume to be armed, approach with caution. Paroled to Valhalla after his latest hitch. Elkhart Road? I don’t recognize that address.”

“It’s in the state forest. His grandfather had a cabin back there.”

“You know this guy?”

“I used to see him around logging jobs, back in the day. Never worked with him. He had a rep as a bad-ass then. Sounds like prison made him worse.”

“How do we handle him?”

“
We
don’t,” I said, swiveling in my seat to face her. “He’s a wood-smoke boy, a survivalist. If we go out there with an army, he’ll rabbit into the backcountry and we’ll be chasing him for a year. If I talk to him one-on-one, maybe he’ll come in peacefully.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“If I’m alone, at least he won’t run.” I shrugged. “You wait here with Novak for the prowl car. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

“So you can go after Sorsa alone? You’re making a mistake, Dylan.”

“At least I’m consistent. I’ve botched this thing from the beginning, Zee. I’m going to close it out.”

She was right. Going alone is always a mistake. And I knew it.

But I was past caring. I needed this done.

Elkhart Road trails off into the bottomlands east of Valhalla. Low swampy ground, only fit for ducks and muskrats.

And poachers. When I rolled into the overgrown yard at Sorsa’s backwoods cabin, he was dressing out a deer.

The swamp buck was hanging from a large pine, spread-eagled and eviscerated, eyes glassy, its tongue lolling. Ox was peeling off its hide like a bloody blanket, rolling it down from a circular incision at the animal’s throat. He straightened slowly as I stepped out of the Jeep. Still holding the dripping skinning knife.

I’m six-one in my socks, but the Viking type facing me was nearly a foot taller, dressed in grimy coveralls, his hands and wrists streaked with gore from the gutted buck.

Forty or so, his sandy hair was a wild tangle around the edges of a greasy engineer’s cap. Hard gray eyes. His narrow face was permanently reddened by the wind and prison hooch, and marked with a striking set of scars. Three vertical gashes in one cheek, livid as war paint. Gouges from a chainsaw kickback. Savage and ugly. And not uncommon in the backcountry.

He eyed my back trail uneasily a moment, expecting an army to come roaring in behind me. When he realized I’d come alone, he relaxed a bit. Probably figured he could handle me. Maybe he was right.

I checked out the yard as I stepped out of my Jeep. A rust-bucket white pickup was parked beside a cabin so warped and faded it looked like a natural part of the forest. Cords of firewood were stacked neatly along the outer walls. A trio of antlered deer skulls were nailed over the door. Trophy bucks. None smaller than ten points. A Model 94 Winchester lever-action was leaning against the doorframe.

“Who are ya?” Sorsa demanded. I could smell whiskey off him six feet away.

“Detective Dylan LaCrosse,” I said, showing him my shield. “Major Crimes.”

“I ain’t done nothin’ major.” He gave me a screwball grin, showing broken teeth, stained meth yellow. “Nothin’ minor, neither.”

“Rifle season closed December first, Ox. That buck’s illegal.”

“Ain’t no season on roadkill. Found this bastard dead in a ditch. Kilt by a truck.”

“Then the truck must have shot it in the eye. I can see the bullet hole from here.”

Sorsa frowned at the deer, then jammed a thumb into the bloody eye socket, obliterating the wound by gouging out the flesh.

“C’mon, LaCrosse, the DNR don’t care if a man takes meat off-season to feed himself. You gonna rat me out?”

“I don’t give a rip about the deer, Ox. I’m here about a boy. Derek Patel.”

He didn’t say anything. But his eye strayed to the Winchester on the porch. Figuring his odds. The gun was only a few yards away. Loaded? Damn straight. He’d only used one round to kill the buck and probably reloaded that one immediately. Out here, weapons stay loaded. Plus, he was still holding the skinning knife. I could practically see the wheels turning in the big guy’s meth-fried mind as he mulled over the geometry of murder. It was painful to watch.

I could have pulled on him then, taking control of the situation. But I didn’t. I waited instead.

“I got nothin’ to say about no boy,” he said at last.

“I don’t need a confession, Ox. Carl Novak already gave you up, chapter and verse. But you can still do yourself some good. Did you do the killing alone? Or did you have help?”

He thought about saying nothing. Or go screw yourself. Same answer, really. But we were past that now. And we both knew it. He edged sideways a half-step. Casually, like he was relaxing. But it moved him a foot closer to the rifle on the porch.

“I didn’t need no help,” he spat in contempt. “The kid was mud people.”

“Mud people?”

“Brown people, or black. One of them low races. Not like us.”

Low races? This snaggle-toothed Neanderthal, butchering a buck like a freaking caveman, actually thought he was superior—I took a breath.

“Okay, you took him alone. How’d you manage it?”

“Easy. I pulled up next to his car, asked him for directions. Clocked him with a sap. Not hard really, but he was already bandaged up. Sap put him down, all the way. Never moved once on the run out to the woods.” Ox edged sideways, another step nearer to the gun. Maybe two yards to go. A single stride for a guy his size. I let him do it, more interested in getting the absolute truth now. Keeping him talking.

“Where did you dump the body?”

“On state land, near the highway. Lot of coyotes around there. I zipped him open. Scavengers will shy away from the scent of people, but if you slit the belly open, spill the guts out on the ground? They don’t smell like people no more. Just guts. Coyotes freak out, fight each other to rip it up. They’ll eat anything if you open it up first. Even mud people.”

He said this last inching over the final half-step, watching my eyes. When I didn’t react, he nodded. He knew then that I wasn’t going to.

“Last question,” I said. “This one’s important, Ox. When you zipped that kid open and left him for the coyotes? Was he dead? Or just unconscious?”

Sorsa grinned at that, shaking his head. Almost ready now. Not caring that I knew it.

“To be honest, LaCrosse? I can’t really say for sure. What’s the difference?”

“It matters. To me.”

“Nah, it don’t,” he said, shaking his shoulders, loosening up. “All that matters now is, I ain’t goin’ back to prison.”

“No,” I agreed. “Probably not.” But I kept my hands at my sides. Made no move for my weapon.

Making it his call. Either way.

The wind was picking up, swirling snow devils across the yard, twisting the gutted buck slowly at the end of its rope, dark blood oozing down from its body cavity, pooling beneath it. I felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the wind. Only the emptiness in Sorsa’s eyes—

He glanced toward his truck—but it was a feint. Flipping the bloody knife at my head with more force than I thought possible, he lunged for the rifle.

Instinctively I ducked away from the flashing blade. Too late! It banged off my forehead, slashing it open, stunning me. Dropping to one knee, I clawed for my weapon, pulling it just as Ox rolled to the rifle on the porch.

He threw the Winchester to his shoulder just as my gun came up, both of us cutting loose in the same split second, our shots nearly simultaneous. I couldn’t tell who fired first.

His rifle slug burned past my cheek, so close I felt the heat of the muzzle blast. My first round flew high and wide, blowing a chunk out of the doorframe.