Finishing School (2 page)

The trio spread out and slowly scanned the ground as they moved through the new growth of trees, in no rush. The forest, aspen trees, naturally grew back after a harvest, and that meant the lumber company did not have to plant new stems. Aspens were the backbone of the Minnesota lumber industry, their white trunks lining the two-lane highways that ran between many of the small towns up here, a good four hours north of Minneapolis.

Around them, the land rolled gently in easy hills, making the walk through the new growth fairly easy. Each man kept his eyes glued to the ground until one spotted a drop and would sing out, ‘‘Got one!''

They combed the terrain for half an hour. The trees in this part of the forest were barely taller than Billy himself and similarly scrawny, the bigger ones only slightly larger in diameter than the hunter's wrist.

No one had said anything for over five minutes, and Billy worried they'd lost track of the buck, and the hunter's stomach knotted as he worried they'd forfeited his prize.

Finally, he had done something right.
He
, Billy Kwitcher, had bagged a deer. Except the goddamned thing had disappeared, and Billy was beginning to wonder if he'd dreamt the whole damn thing. . . .

He bent lower, eyes flitting as he looked for any sign in the patchy snow or on any of the dead gray foliage.

Then his eyes started to burn and Billy had to bite his lip to keep from crying. Nothing had gone right for him since he had moved to this miserable frozen hell two and a half years ago. This deer hunt, this day,
finally
something had gone his way and now, goddamnit, it was turning to vapor. If the poachers he'd imagined earlier had gutted his kill, at least the carcass would be there, so he could have his buddies know that he had actually killed the damn buck. . . .

Now, he knew, they were both thinking that dumb ol' Billy had just winged the thing, then lied about his kill shot. More big talk, just like he always did down at Sully's Tap, Billy always wrapping his insecurities in braggadocio and, even as he knew he was doing it, powerless to stop himself. But this time, this one fricking time, he had actually done something worth
talking
about—except finding the proof was harder than nailing the buck in the
first
place. . . .

A glint of something red caught his eye.

He froze.

His eyes retraced their route and he saw it again:
a spot of blood
. They were still on the trail! He wanted to jump up and shout. He used his sleeve to swipe at his cheek, wiping away the tears. Of joy, this time.

Forcing himself to stay cool, Billy swallowed thickly. Next, he tried out his voice in a whisper, and it seemed to be working. He got up his nerve, took a deep breath and yelled, ‘‘Got a drop!''

‘‘About damn time!'' Tweed yelled back, already narrowing the distance between them.

From the other direction, Abner took a couple of tentative steps closer, then resumed moving forward.

Billy focused long and hard on the scarlet droplet, relishing the feeling of triumph he got from the dot of deer's blood. Then something on the ground next to the drop caught his attention, something sticking up and out of the snow and packed leaves, like a weird mushroom.

No, more like a
stick
. . . except it wasn't a stick—Billy knew that at once. Though the coloring was similar to the bleached bark of the aspen trees, he could tell it wasn't something from one of them.

This looked different.

Kneeling down, looking at the pale little cylinder, Billy realized that whatever it was, it had neighbors: two on the left and one on the right, pudgy little sticks similar to the first one.

They were dirty and some of the surface had been scraped clean. Something had, he realized, gnawed the meat off. Stunned, Billy jumped back.

Abner called over, ‘‘What is it?''

‘‘A hand!'' Billy yelled back, as his two companions drew closer to see what all the fuss was about.

‘‘What?'' Abner asked.

‘‘A hand, a goddamn
hand
!'' For all its volume, Billy's voice was quavering, his eyes locked on the bony fingers that seemed to be trying to dig their way out of their isolated grave.

The other two pressed in close around Billy and looked down at his macabre discovery.

‘‘Oooooh, shit,'' Tweed said, turning away.

‘‘What the hell?'' Abner asked. He looked at the fingers. ‘‘No goddamn way! This
can't
be happening
again
.''

Billy blinked. ‘‘What can't be happening?''

Abner and Tweed shared a look, but Billy couldn't read it. The guide's face was as white as the bark on the surrounding aspens, and tears began to dribble down his cheeks. Neither man said a word, their silence speaking volumes to each other, but meaning nothing to Billy.

‘‘
What
can't be happening again?'' he repeated.

Tweed shot him a look. ‘‘Billy, just shut the hell up, okay? For once, just shut the hell up.''

Billy began to respond anyway, but another sharp look from Tweed stopped him.

Not knowing what else to do, Billy sat down on a nearby fallen log and stared at the dead thing sticking out of the ground, as if waiting for the body to climb from the snowy ground and say something.

Tweed squatted and reached for what was left of the hand.

‘‘Whoa up there, Logan,'' Abner said, pulling his cell phone out of a pocket. ‘‘You can't do whoever-it-is any good, at this late date. Best leave this for the cops.''

Cops
.

The word cut through Billy like the arrow he'd fired through the buck. Suddenly, breathing grew difficult, and despite the chill, he could feel sweat popping out on his brow.

Just like everything else in Billy Kwitcher's life, even shooting the buck was going to end up turning to crap.

 
Lewis Garue wore many hats: husband, father of two, member of the Red Lake Band of the Chippewa Nation, and today, detective—driving his own 2003 Toyota Land Cruiser in lieu of a Beltrami County Dodge Durango.

A deputy for nearly twenty-four years, and a detective for the last fifteen, the fifty-year-old Garue was stocky, his neck a short, efficient swivel for a block-sized head. His wavy black hair, worn much longer back on the rez as a kid, had gone mostly gray, and pouches had formed in his cheeks.

But any criminal who ran into Garue would testify that he was still a man not to be trifled with. After a four-year hitch in the Army, where he had been an MP, Garue attended Bemidji State University as a wrestler. He graduated with a degree in criminology and immediately got on as a deputy with Beltrami County. Married to Anna Yellow Hawk, his childhood sweetheart from the nearby Red Lake Indian Reservation, north of Bemidji (where they both grew up), Garue had settled into what was, for him, the ideal life.

The sun was still low in the southern sky, noon at least a couple of hours off. Garue's stomach was already growling. His wife always insisted he and their two kids start each morning with a ‘‘good, healthy'' breakfast. Unfortunately for Garue, over the last twenty years, Anne's idea of a good, healthy breakfast had shifted from bacon, eggs, and pancakes to muesli, yogurt, and fresh fruit. Seemed like the detective was hungry all the time now.

He had been eating breakfast at home when he'd heard the dispatch call over his walkie. Three hunters had found something in Bassinko Industries forest number four, southeast of Bemidji. ‘‘Something'' was as far as the description had gone. . . .

Now, two hours later, the call had come in that the deputies on-site wanted a detective. Sheriff Ewell Preston had naturally wanted his best investigator, and sent Garue.

The detective was supposed to be on comp time today, to make up for the overtime he'd put in on a series of meth lab raids over the last two weeks, but the discovery in the forest had changed that.

Though a plainclothes officer, Garue was not in his usual work attire of shirt and tie and sport coat. Well, the jeans were normal, but the rubber-soled black Rockys he wore on the job were replaced by boots, and his regular button-down shirt had been left on the hanger this morning, in favor of a Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt. Used to the just-above-freezing temperatures this time of year, he wore no coat.

Garue took U.S. 2 south out of Bemidji, then turned east on a county road leading to another two-lane running south through Bassinko's forest number four. The road was wet, the flurries from last night having melted off in this Indian summer day. Ahead, on the right, a service road cut back to the west, and Garue saw three squad cars lined up on it; behind them was a van from the regional office of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension—the state crime lab.

As Garue pulled in, a deputy stepped forward to hold up a hand in ‘‘stop'' fashion. Garue braked to a halt, then powered the window down as the deputy approached—a broad-shouldered blond kid, a rookie named Swenson.

The deputy smiled at Garue. ‘‘Sorry, sir—didn't recognize your car.''

‘‘Just doing your job,'' Garue said. ‘‘These are
my
wheels, son, no reason you should make 'em. . . . You first on the scene?''

‘‘Yup,'' Swenson said with a nod. ‘‘Me and Sergeant Condon. He was right behind me.''

‘‘When did the crime lab get here?''

‘‘About half an hour after us.'' Swenson checked his watch. ‘‘Make that a little over an hour ago.''

‘‘They find anything?''

Shrugging, Swenson said, ‘‘Dunno. I been out here. . . . Park on the side, would you, and you can just follow the crime scene tape. Should take you right to 'em.''

‘‘Thanks, son,'' Garue said.

The detective pulled in behind a squad car, climbed out and started tramping up the service road into the woods. He had gone maybe fifty yards when he saw crime scene tape wrapped around the trunk of an aspen.

The forest wasn't as thick here. This plot had been harvested within the last ten years; the Bassinko outfit cut down plots of forty to eighty acres at a time, then allowed the plot to grow back over the next forty to sixty years before harvesting there again.

Looking deeper into the woods, Garue could see a strip of crime scene tape on another aspen ten yards on, then another, and another.

He was almost a quarter of a mile into the woods when he heard voices on the other side of a small hill. Over the short rise, Garue found a handful of men spread out in a semicircle, backs to him, and off to one side, three men in camouflage, obviously hunters, with a deputy. Those four men turned to see him as he approached.

The deputy, tall, rail-thin with hair as white as Garue's, wore no jacket despite the chilly morning. The tan shirt, with the three-tiered stripes of his rank, and brown uniform pants were freshly ironed, his shiny silver badge reflecting the sunlight.

Craig Condon was old enough, and certainly had enough time in, to retire. He hadn't, though. His wife was ill, and Condon needed the health insurance that came with the job, so he stayed on. Maybe longer than he should have, Garue thought.

Condon bestowed a solitary nod in the detective's direction—more greeting than he gave most people. The deputy's pinched face and long chin made him look serious, even on those rare occasions when the sergeant found something humorous. Today would not likely be one of those rare days.

Next to Condon stood the human cannonball that was Daniel Abner, and seeing Abner gave Garue a sick feeling, damn near a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the breakfast his wife had served him.

Fifteen years ago, the disappearance of Abner's ten-year-old daughter, Amanda, had been among the first cases Garue had drawn as a detective. Garue and the entire Beltrami County Sheriff's Department, the Bemidji PD, and the regional state crime lab had worked ceaselessly for over a year before the little girl's body had been found buried in the crawl space of a house on the edge of town.

The house was owned by Abner himself, but had been rented to a former mental patient, Herbert Berryman, who had just up and left town about six months after Amanda's disappearance. No one, not even the federal boys, had ever tracked the man down.

Garue nodded toward Abner, but the guide, cigarette dangling absently, was staring into nowhere. Lewis Garue got the sense he wasn't going to like whatever these hunters had found here today.

The semicircle of men hovered around a device that looked like Rube Goldberg's idea of a push mower. Out front was a single tire that might have been appropriated from the BMX bike of Garue's twelve-year-old. A three-foot shaft ran back from the wheel and rode about a foot off the ground. A frame at the rear end attached atop the shaft, and within the frame were two boxes. Running up at an angle from the frame was a T-shaped handle. Garue had seen the contraption before—ground-penetrating radar.

The man running the machine was tall, broad-shouldered and in his mid-thirties—Fletcher Keegan. A graduate of the National Academy at Quantico, Fletch had been at the Bemidji office of the regional crime lab for the last four years. He and Garue were friends as tight as the aspens across the edge line of the forest.

Two of the other guys were also crime lab, though Garue didn't know their names. Two more were deputies, a kid whose name Garue had not learned yet, and Andy Salyard, a seven-year vet of the force.

When Keegan saw him, the crime scene tech waved, then shot Garue a no-rest-for-the-wicked glance, and went back to running his machine. Garue nodded to the rest, then joined Condon, who stepped away from the hunters to meet him.