Bad Axe County Read online

  Angus watched what the barge crane was recovering. Half the car was up, spewing muddy water, before he understood that it was another sheriff’s cruiser. In fact it looked like the hopped-up Charger with the bully bar that Gibbs used to drive. Did the new sheriff, the lady, drive that now? Drive it into the river? The towline from the shore crane began to draw the Charger toward the bank.

  Lund hung up his radio. He strode over, belly first.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit about coming home for your dad. Some dumbass with a big blue bag just like yours busted into Clausen Meats. He’s on camera. What’re you, about six one, two hundred, dark sweatshirt, muddy boots? What’s in the bag, dumbass?”

  “Gear,” stammered Angus. “Luggage. My stuff.”

  As Lund once more headed around the back of the truck, an oncoming driver hesitated to rubberneck at the scene, leaving a gap that Angus first saw beyond Lund in his rearview mirror. As that gap widened in front of him and became about half enough for the truck, he stomped the gas and barged into the line. With the southbound traffic, he accelerated away.

  He never saw how Lund reacted. A few hundred yards downriver, he nipped up Bible Coulee Road, headed toward Lost Hollow, and never looked back.

  30

  “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

  As she appeared in the doorway to the old farm kitchen, the kids left their cereal at the breakfast table and charged her. A spoon clanged to the floor. A chair tipped over. Long-striding Ophelia hip checked Dylan into a pile of muddy boots. In the same fluid motion, the sheriff’s daughter stiff-armed the other twin, Taylor, into the side of the washing machine. Both boys were howling protests by the time their daddy appeared with a fistful of yellow daffodils.

  “Hey, monsters! Is that what we practiced?”

  They settled down as Harley handed her the daffodils.

  “I rescued them from under the snow. OK, kids, hit it.”

  They sang her the “Belly Breathe” song, the one she had taught them, about relaxing under stress, with some new choreography by the twins. Still smiley and teary eyed as they went back to their breakfast, she fit the daffodil stems into a vase and dropped her wet clothes into the laundry sink. She glanced out at Yttri, waiting in his cruiser. Coming up behind her, Harley said quietly, “Hon, can I talk to you?”

  Her pulse was up before he closed the bedroom door.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Um,” Harley said, and he seemed to count to ten. “You’re so fine you put a gun to Randy Brundgart last night.”

  She stripped off her duty belt, almost too exhausted to bear its weight. She dropped her new dry trousers and stepped out of them. If Harley was surprised to see her nude underneath, he didn’t show it. She felt him looking at the bad bruise above her ankle. Then he watched her shirt come off, exposing the purple-green contusion where the zombie struck her with his sturgeon wallop. The arm moved stiffly as she maneuvered into a bra.

  “Look at you. And Randy Brundgart, Heidi. He’s about as dangerous as Elmo. What’s going on?”

  “He was driving drunk. He ran from me.”

  “But that’s not like you, to be all chasey and gun happy. And then later you end up in the river? How did that happen?”

  “I’m just getting dry stuff on. I’m not going to talk about it.”

  “Heidi, last night the kids and I had dinner at Culver’s—”

  “Aren’t you doing that too much?”

  “Please don’t change the subject. We were eating at Culver’s and Don Webb comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, what’s the deal? I hear your wife’s suing Crawford County.’ What can I say? Hell if I know, she’s just my wife. What is the deal?”

  “The deal is gossip. I just had a little discussion with the county clerk, that’s all. But listen,” she said, “when you played for the Rattlers four years ago—”

  “I still do. Please don’t change the subject.”

  “No. Listen. In 2012, when we lived in Middleton, right after the twins were born, you were driving out here for games, staying overnight with friends. You guys played the Dells in a regional playoff game. You pitched, you lost, nineteen to three—”

  “Hey, hold on.” He put his hands up. “First of all, you hate it when I change the subject.” He took a breath to slow himself down. “Secondly, the kids and I, we can’t lose you, Heidi. Your job is dangerous enough. If you’re out there chasing ghosts from the past . . .”

  Standing at the dresser, weaving with fatigue, she chose fresh underwear from the dresser. She had to sit to put them on.

  “You pitched in that game, and you lost, nineteen to three.”

  “I hardly gave up nineteen runs in a season, let alone one game. I quit pitching the year my ERA broke 2.5. I don’t know why we’re talking about a baseball game. Let’s talk about why you were at Ralph Dunleavy’s farm the other day, asking about a guy who used to milk for your dad.”

  “How could you not remember losing nineteen to three?”

  “Because that never happened. Can we talk about suing Crawford County?”

  “Why, four years later, would somebody be interested in that game?” A detail from the box score came to her. “Some guy named Greengrass hit six home runs off you.”

  “It didn’t happen.”

  “Six home runs. You could not possibly forget that.”

  “Exactly.”

  She shut the bathroom door in his face as he attempted to follow. What the hell was going on? She put on the fan and ran the water. Why would he deny playing in the game? Her guts cramped hard. When she finished on the toilet, she washed her face, applied lotion and lip balm, rebraided her hair and repinned it. Coming out, she said, “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “So let’s try again. You gave up nineteen runs, six dingers to one guy, and you don’t remember?”

  “Why does it matter, Heidi, when we almost lost you last night?”

  “Last night?” She gritted her teeth as she snapped and buckled and belted. “Last night, two people, a man and an underage girl, came into the library looking for information on that game. The man punched Harold Snustead after Harold found the box score in a book of old newspapers. Nineteen to three, losing pitcher Kick. Walt Beavers was at the library. He literally closed the book on that game. Later someone beat him with a baseball bat and nearly killed him.”

  Harley hung his head a moment, then he looked at her.

  “I wasn’t at that game.”

  “You’re in the box score.”

  “I’m in the box score because I wasn’t at the game. Pinky Clausen gave me all the shitty stats to punish me for not showing up.”

  “Why didn’t you show up?”

  “I promise you it doesn’t matter. It was a small mistake I made. And I have no idea why anyone would care about that game, or beat up Walt Beavers over it.”

  He held her gaze. She had been on leave, in recovery from giving birth to twins. She had been breast-feeding, leaking everywhere, and fighting postpartum depression. Was her husband telling her not to ask what kind of trouble he could get into, the kind of “small mistake” he could make, when he drove back to the Bad Axe for Rattlers games? When he “stayed with friends” overnight?

  “I promise you,” he repeated.

  Now he was showing her a thumb drive.

  “Back on topic. You left this in the desktop.”

  She put her hand out.

  “Heidi, you’re investigating a twelve-year-old closed case in another jurisdiction. There is a spreadsheet on this drive, names, dates, criminal histories, guys you think might have killed your parents—am I right? You started this after the Bishops Coulee murders? You can’t be doing this, sweetheart, for so many reasons. You could lose your job, you could lose yourself . . .”

  She kept her palm open, staring him down.

  “You want to promise me? Then let me promise you,” she challenged him. “I’m fine.”

  He put the thumb drive in her hand.
They faced each other silently for a long moment until he hugged her stiffly. Then he sighed. “So let me fill you in on what’s happening around here. You’re supposed to be off today—”

  “You have no idea—”

  “I know. So I asked my mom, and she—”

  “No. We agreed. Your mom does not watch the kids.”

  “We also agreed you’d take Saturday mornings off, no matter what. Once today’s game was canceled, I scheduled practice on the parking lot, freshmen, JV, then varsity. Nine, noon, and three. So I asked Mom—”

  “Harley, please.”

  “She came at four a.m. so I could go see you in the hospital.”

  The upstairs floor creaked. Next the stairs. Then a coughing fit racked the house.

  “Hon, Mom slept over. She’s already here.”

  “Long time no see,” Belle Kick greeted her. “Look, kids, it’s your mom.”

  The jab hit her like the cup of coffee that she craved.

  “Whoo-ee,” Belle followed up. “I woke up, looked out the window, and just about broke my neck looking at the man in uniform out there. He oughta run for sheriff. He’s got the filly vote for sure. Did you catch the jerk who did the bomb threat?”

  Harley passed through. “Home about five. Thanks, Mom.”

  The kids followed him out. Meanwhile, Granny Belle had found her purse and was shaking out a cigarette.

  “Belle, I really wish you wouldn’t.”

  Harley’s mom waited with her wild gray eyebrows arched as if to say, You wish I wouldn’t what? Then she shrugged, stuck the cigarette behind her ear, and pulled a folded sheet of paper from the purse.

  “This was under the flag on your mailbox when I drove in at dark-thirty this morning so Harley could go to the hospital.”

  The sheriff unfolded a photocopied page from a Blackhawk High School yearbook. She was startled to see, circled in red marker, a headshot of her eighteen-year-old husband-to-be rocking a mustache-and-mullet combo. The caption said Harley Kick, Lady Killer.

  “He was so handsome, so popular,” his mother reflected, touching the photo with a tobacco-stained finger. “Charm the Jesus off a nun, that boy.”

  The sheriff bit her tongue. What the hell? She twisted to look out the window. Harley’s truck was already at the far end of the driveway, crashing through the flooding ditch. Yttri was in his Tahoe talking on the radio. The kids were petting one of the barn cats, the pregnant gray one with white socks.

  “Who would drive out here to put this on my mailbox?”

  “Oh, some woman,” Belle said, “for sure.”

  “Why?”

  Belle’s chest rumbled and she coughed. “Kind of like a bomb threat, isn’t it? Get you all stirred up over nothing?”

  The sheriff stood from the table. Her arm throbbed, her calf had stiffened even more. Leaning over the laundry sink, she searched the pockets of the wet uniform for the Come Back Saloon coaster that Calvin Fanta had bought for a hundred bucks. She set the coaster on the windowsill to dry.

  OK. Sure. Go with Ladonna. Double Ladonna. But this is over something, not nothing.

  * * *

  “Beautiful spot to raise a family,” Yttri said awkwardly when she came out. The kids were throwing wet snowballs at the pasture fence. “You guys nailed it.”

  She hardly heard him. So Ladonna figures out I know about the stag party. She calls in a bomb threat to stop me from getting there. Then she trolls me with a picture of my husband, Lady Killer? Why? And why now?

  “Anyway, Sheriff, breaking news.”

  Yttri sounded solemn. She noticed he wasn’t getting into his Tahoe. She stopped at the passenger door. He said, “They got your Charger out of the river.”

  “That’s good.”

  “But there was a problem.”

  “Sure. What was the problem?”

  “It looks like you hit something.”

  “I see.”

  “There’s a huge guardrail swipe on one side, and the back end is crunched in. The headlights are smashed out, and your Taser was in there, discharged.”

  “Really?”

  “So . . . yeah. Then, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Chief Deputy Lund says he found a bottle of booze in your glove box.”

  She laughed. “Sure, he did. What was I drinking?”

  “Mr. Boston butterscotch schnapps.”

  “Ah. Of course.”

  “They took some of your blood at the hospital for routine tests earlier, I guess. I’m supposed to pick some up and take it to a lab down in Prairie du Chien for a BAC test.”

  Olaf the Handsome blinked too quickly for a moment.

  “Sheriff, I’m really sorry, but apparently Marge Joss has the power to suspend you . . . and she did. I’m not even supposed to let you back in my car.”

  She felt her breath burst. So first Ladonna. Now Boog Lund was messing with her, and it all seemed to start at the library last night, continue through the stag party, and involve the assault on Walt Beavers.

  “Works for me.”

  “No. What I’m saying is you’re suspended,” Yttri repeated. “No badge, no gun. Off duty.” His posture had stiffened, his expression clouded. But suddenly she felt the sunshine. She was free to turn a rock over now, stomp a zombie as he scuttled after darkness.

  I will find you.

  “Works just fine for me,” she said.

  31

  To Pepper’s question at sunrise about Tianna’s money—What I gotta do to make her hundred too?—she has heard no answer. Reasking it, reasking it, she finally gets from the camera troll a sideways response.

  He says, “OK. You dang-darn betcha. Real good.”

  “Does that mean I get it?”

  She keeps asking because if she can get $250, then she can eat on the Amtrak and bring gifts. Or $300—what about $300?—then she can eat and bring gifts and take a taxi from Whitefish to Hungry Horse. She won’t have to hitchhike. Or steal a horse. Ha!

  Tianna is long gone and they are taking a break. Pepper sits cross-legged on the studio floor wrapped in a beach towel, a little chilly, shivery but still floaty high. He sits before a desktop computer working with photo files. Talking to him, she thinks, is like talking to a talking doll. You ask a question, pull the string in his back, and he says, You betcha. He says, Real good. He says, No worries.

  “I mean, like Tianna said, I’m not eighteen. So maybe you ought to pay me extra.”

  “OK, you betcha, no worries, I will make your dreams come true, everything you ever hoped for, real good, then.”

  “Dude, shit. I’m not asking you to marry me. Just get me to Montana.”

  “The Big Sky. The mountains. Very nice.”

  “You mean I already earned $250?”

  “Not a problem,” he assures her.

  “Do you think my acting’s good? Because I’m sorry, that Tianna was kinda gross. But do you think I pulled it off?”

  “Your acting? Not a problem. Not a problem at all.”

  Right this instant, below Pepper’s belly button, a hard cramp rockets through her guts, totally pops her floaty bubble. What the hell? Her period? Has she not even crapped since she left home last week? She has lost track of her body. Suddenly she can’t stand up straight.

  “I think I have to use the bathroom.”

  He nods at a closed door. “And to the left. Put some clothes on? How about?”

  “Oh,” she gasps. She is naked. “Right.”

  The door leads into a reception area, furnished with a desk and a phone and a sofa and samples of his photography on the walls, brides and grooms, senior portraits, kiddie soccer teams, family holiday shots, prize-winning livestock. Pepper is surprised by full daylight at the window. The sky is bright blue and everything is under snow and ice, prettily trapped like bottle caps under the surface of a bar. She can see where Tianna went, out a long driveway to a highway where a milk tanker sends water splashing high into the sunshine. Next on the highway a black buggy appears pulled by a gleaming
black horse. A second cramp buckles Pepper. She hurries into the bathroom.

  She waits on the toilet. The photographer decorates. Seashells. Driftwood. Cork and nets. Her gut cramp does a peekaboo. It jabs like a hot knife against some cincture inside her, threatens to split her in half. Then it retreats, vanishes, no release, not even gas. She counts to ten and forgets why. She decides that she is fine. All she needs is $250.

  She comes out of the bathroom to find that a handsome Amish boy, about her age, is standing in the reception area. He looks a little hungry. His hands are large and raw. He wears a sweat-stained straw hat, a navy-blue jacket with thready cuffs, pants with ass patches. He has holes in his boots. Pepper might see him from a distance and think poor guy, but up close he looks like young Brad Pitt playing an Amish dude. Hand-some. Written on his face is exactly the same fragile rapture that Pepper, with the cramps gone, seems to be feeling. She flirts.

  “I thought you people didn’t do photographs.”

  He smiles remotely. She wows her eyes at him. She winks.

  “But I can take a mental picture, right?”

  He’s got blue eyes and pink cheeks, exquisitely scraggly facial hair on tender skin that makes her want to grab him down there. She comes closer like she needs to see through the front doorway, check on something outside behind him. He smells like soil, horses, leather.

  “Will that horse and buggy make it all the way to Montana, you think? Can I hire you?”

  Same smile, looking her in the eye, not rattled, cool.

  “He’s pretty, what’s his name?”

  He shrugs. She laughs. Right? She’s not after the horse.

  “Can I marry you?”

  At last he speaks—a weird little accent.

  “Could you move, missus, please?”

  Pepper feels startled—missus?—but she gets out of his way. He takes another step in, half closes the door. Behind it is a clear plastic sack with crushed Diet Coke cans inside. He picks up the sack, like five hundred cans that the camera troll emptied, fits it through the doorway, drops it into a wooden bin at the back of his buggy. He climbs aboard, snaps the reins on his horse, and never looks back.