Hunter’s Dance (21 page)

“So what have we got here?” Guibard looked at the lipsticked inscription on Marvin Wall's chest. “A killer is it?”

Marvin must have rallied indeed. The punch he landed on Guibard's chin left the elderly physician flat on his back in a pile of shattered glass.

***

It was past two o'clock when Cecil Newman showed up to cart Marvin Wall, in a pair of Guibard's gabardine trousers, off to spend the night in the county jail, sleeping off his excesses and awaiting the doctor's decision on whether to press assault charges. The boy had taken all McIntire's strength and ingenuity, as well as his keyless handcuffs, to subdue.

McIntire watched the tail lights of Newman's Ford disappear. The clouds had blown off and the night had turned from chill to cold. Frost transformed each blade of grass into a miniature silver sword. He postponed his own trip home long enough to walk to the end of Guibard's dock. The lake lay smooth, reflecting the cold green fire of a spectacular display of northern lights.

How had he come to this state? Why had he allowed this magnificence to be subjugated by ugliness? He'd let his dream of a life with a nominal amount of meaningful work and extensive leisure, conducted in a realm of woods and water, turn to a nightmare of petty errands and wasted time. And all for some nebulous goal of being accepted, being a good guy. Showing his father that you didn't have to be Jack Dempsey Junior to be liked. Now here he was, reduced to Colin McIntire's terms, alternately playing nursemaid and strong-arming drunks, and not doing a very good job of either. Even Ross Maki had enough sense of dignity to get the hell out of this sordid episode and head home when he had the chance.

Ross Maki. Why had the kid come for McIntire? At the same time, stubbornly sticking to his conviction that Marvin Wall had killed his friend? Maybe Ross knew the side of Marvin that showed itself tonight. But Marvin Wall sure as hell hadn't pieced together that message from magazines he'd picked up while lounging about the Shawanok Club lodge. And McIntire didn't think the butler did it either, or Bonnie Morlen. But now he had a pretty damn good idea who had—and why.

XXXI

But it was not their lot to sleep in peace and quiet until noon, as you and I might have done, if we had been awake till four in the morning, and our limbs ached with fatigue.

As McIntire had predicted, it seemed his eyes were barely closed when a second caller pounded on his door. He slipped from the bed, grabbed up his glasses, and staggered to the window. Adam Wall's pickup sat coughing next to Mia Thorsen's van. Bad news travels fast. Maybe not all that fast; the sun was high, and the clock on the bedside table showed that even Leonie might be up soon.

McIntire took his time answering the door.

“Come on in and have a seat while I stoke up the fire.”

“I'll only take a minute of your time.” Adam didn't preface his statement with any “Good morning,” but then, neither had McIntire.

“I'm not standing in the doorway, freezing. Get in here.” McIntire turned without waiting for Wall to enter and descended to the cellar. He opened the furnace damper, stirred up the embers, and threw on a few sticks of wood. When he got back up to the kitchen, Adam Wall still stood stiffly by the door, which was mercifully closed.

“Coffee?” McIntire asked. He began running water into the pot to rinse out yesterday's grounds.

Wall shook his head. “Don't bother. I just came to thank you for getting my brother out of that fix last night.” Wall was never easy to read, but nothing about the frozen features said
grateful
.

“And,” he continued, “to ask why, when a kid gets beat up and left in the woods to freeze to death, you throw him in jail. What kind of horseshit is this? Where are the fun-loving boys who tortured my brother? How much time have you and Baby Face Newman spent rounding
them
up?”

McIntire was cold and groggy and in no mood to be told off in his own kitchen. “Your brother assaulted a seventy-year-old man. He was looped out of his mind. He needed to be put somewhere for his own protection.”

“His
protection?”
Wall shouted. At the uncharacteristic display, McIntire put down the coffee pot and gave his guest his full attention.

“Marvin was a filthy mess,” he said. “He was naked, he was sick, and he was violent. Would you rather I'd brought him home to your mother in that shape?”

“Better that than the shape he almost ended up in.”

“I don't think those kids would have left him out there. If Ross hadn't come somebody else would have.” McIntire wasn't sure about that at all.

“So you really haven't heard?”

“I guess I probably haven't. What?”

Wall gripped the back of the chair McIntire had shoved his way. “Sometime last night, while he was in jail where you so kindly put him for his own protection, my brother used that seventy-year-old man's belt to hang himself.”

McIntire felt a buzzing in his ears and his heart pounding. “Marvin is dead?”

“No. No, he's not dead. No thanks to you. The kid screwed that up, too. Guibard's belt was a little longer than he figured. When he jumped off the bunk, his feet hit the floor. The noose didn't pull tight enough to block off his windpipe, only enough to keep him trapped there until Mrs. Koski came with his breakfast. Gave her quite a shock.”

“Please, sit down.”

“Sit down?
Sit down!
I tell you that because of you, Marve nearly died, and you politely invite me to have a seat? Planning to offer me a spot of tea, are you?” Wall wrenched open the door. “I want my brother out of that cell! And get him to a doctor that won't treat him like some lower form of life. If that's possible. And I won't be stopping for tea, thank you very much. I'll be out taking care of the assholes that tried to kill my brother!”

***

McIntire's yard was beginning to look like a used car lot, and he decided that Siobhan's Lincoln would suit him nicely. The Studebaker could use a spot of tidying up.

As he passed the Thorsens', he caught sight of Mia standing at the foot of a ladder leaned against her house. He might as well let her know where her truck was, and maybe find out if her
tête-à-têtes
with Bonnie Morlen had led to anything interesting.

Mia wasn't particularly concerned about the whereabouts of her vehicle, and it seemed that Bonnie had given off fretting over her son's missing articles.

“The woman is completely.…” Mia made circles with her forefinger in the vicinity of her right ear. “I know I should be sympathetic to what she's going through, and I am. Really, I am. Maybe the drugs are affecting her, but she's so strange, kind of sneaky. And that baking! The house is full of doughnuts. For who? She seems to be alone all the time. Where the heck is that husband? I'm beginning to think he doesn't exist. She says she's planning to divorce him, doesn't want him to get his hands on Bambi's money, and, by the way, Bambi is not—”

She broke off. “John, I don't like doing this. I don't know if I feel like a spy or a dupe, maybe both, but I don't like it.”

“So, how do you think
I
feel?”

Mia burst out laughing. “John McIntire, who do you think you're kidding? You are just about the nosiest person I ever met!”

“Well, it's starting to wear off.” McIntire guessed that he'd have to postpone asking if Mia knew anything about Mark Guibard's possible love life. “But if you think Bonnie Morlen knows something that might make a difference, I hope you'll tell me.” He'd heard enough about the Morlens and their troubles himself, and decided to change the subject. “What're you doing here?”

“Storms.”

McIntire looked up at the high, and large, windows. Mia lugging those things up a ladder and putting them in place? Mia, who became woozy standing on a chair to reach a shelf? “Mind if I watch?” he asked.

“I notice you don't offer to help.”

“Not me. I'm saving myself to do my own.”

“Well, if you're nice, I'll teach you my system.” She climbed a few rungs up the ladder. “See this?” She pointed to an eye bolt screwed to the backside of the storm window's frame. “I throw a rope out the upstairs window, tie it on, pull the window up from the inside, and tie the end to the bed, or whatever's handy. Then—
voila!
—all I have to do is climb the ladder and shove the window into place. No lifting.”

“Esko Thomson would be proud.”

“Esko Thomson. They'd make a great pair, Esko and Bonnie. Both lunatic hermits.” Backing off the ladder, she stumbled and McIntire instinctively reached out to steady her. When his hands touched her shoulders, Mia froze like a startled rabbit. Her arms were as thin as they'd been when he'd last held them thirty years before, but now had a surprising layer of muscle. Her hair smelled faintly of lemons. For the shortest time imaginable McIntire tightened his grip. At Mia's quick intake of breath he dropped his hands.

“Mia,” he groped to break the awkwardness, “what were you starting to say? About Bambi. You said, ‘by the way, he's not.' Not what?”

She kept her back turned, scraping a few flakes of white paint off the window frame. “I was talking about Wendell. He's not Bambi's father. Bonnie got pregnant by a married man, and Wendell was paid off to marry her.”

It gave McIntire something to think about, something other than Mia's shoulders, as he sought out Ross Maki.

***

Finding Ross was easy. McIntire spotted him splitting firewood. Catching him was something else. The boy looked up as McIntire drove into the yard and ducked into the outdoor privy.

McIntire waited. Ross couldn't stay in there forever. As time ticked by, McIntire began to wonder if perhaps he
could
stay forever, or if he might have tunneled his way out. He walked over and rapped on the door.

“I'm not feeling so good.”

“You'll feel a hell of a lot worse if I have to set fire to this thing. Out! Now!” Sheriff Koski himself couldn't have done it better.

Ross finally crept out, but clung to the door as if ready for a quick retreat.

McIntire beckoned him to a more aesthetically pleasing location near the woodpile.

“Ross,” he said. “I'm disappointed in you. I don't think you've been quite truthful with Sheriff Koski, or with me.”

Ross shrugged and reclaimed his ax.

“I found the mine,” McIntire went on, “and the sheriff has the magazines that were used to make the ransom note. Bambi's car was seen in Chandler the night he died.”

Ross swung the ax and embedded it in a maple log.

“It was Bambi's idea.”

XXXII

People have often been cruel and tortured one another with greatest hardness when they have trembled for their souls.

“It was Bambi's idea.” Ross Maki said again before his freckled face crumpled in a single convulsive sob. He dropped his head to his hands. Pete Koski lit up a Camel and waited.

They were the first words Ross had spoken since their original iteration in his parents' yard. On the forty-minute trip into town he'd turned to the window and made no sound other than the occasional throat clearing. In the car, McIntire had been able to switch on the radio. Here, the silence was like a physical barrier.

Ross lifted his head at last, drew a stiffly crumpled red bandana from his pocket, and blew his nose. “He said it was
his
money. His grandmother left it to him. He didn't want to hang around home until he was twenty-five, and he didn't want to go to college. He was fed up with his old man pushing him around. They gave him a big allowance, but he wanted to get some of the money so he could move out. An advance. Not the whole amount. He only wanted enough to live on. His grandpa would of gave it to him, too, and he could've talked his ma into it, but his old man threw a conniption.” He wiped the bandana across his nose. “He said it was none of his old man's business. The money was from his grandma, and Wendell didn't have anything to do with it. Can I have…?”

Koski shoved the cigarettes and matches across the table. It took three tries for Ross to light the match, but his hand was steady as he held it to the cigarette's tip. He inhaled, coughed into his sleeve, and went on. “He knew if he was held for ransom, his folks'd pay up. And it was his money anyhow.”

It was pretty much what McIntire had figured, but that was about as far as his conjecturing went. “So why try to pin it on the Walls?” he asked.

“We weren't trying to pin it on anybody. When it was over, and Bambi had the money, everybody would know Bambi wasn't really kidnapped. His old man was dickering over some land for the Club, and Adam Wall was fighting it somehow. Bambi thought it might be funny and a way of getting back at his old man, if we asked for the same amount of money the Club had to pay.”

Koski stubbed out his cigarette. “So why the fight with Marve?”

“We didn't plan that. We were going to fight with each other. So we'd get kicked out, or, if that didn't work, we'd act like we got mad and leave early. We didn't know Marve would be there. When Adam Wall and Marve came in, I told Bambi who they were. He said how we should pick the fight with them to make it look really good.”

“The both of them?”

“Bambi wasn't scared of anybody.”

“But the fight was only with Marve.”

“Adam wasn't there very long.” Ross fidgeted in his chair. “Bambi said something to him.”

“To Adam? Said what?”

“He asked him how many teepees he could put up on a hundred-sixty acres.”

Bambi wasn't only not scared, he'd obviously had a death wish all along.

“And what did Adam say?”

“I don't know. I got the hell outa there. I told Bambi I wasn't going to have anything to do with getting on Adam Wall's….” Ross turned white. “Oh, God, he's gonna kill me.”

Neither McIntire nor the sheriff had words of comfort. The boy's assessment was very likely correct.

“So how did it come about?”

“What?”

“How did Bambi lure Marvin into the fight?”

“Shit, that wasn't hard. Marve's got a nasty temper.”

“How?”

“Bambi got something from Karen Sorenson's purse. She didn't want to carry the purse around, so he said she could leave it in his car. Bambi took something from it and gave it to me. One of those little boxes that opens up and has a mirror inside, and some powder.”

“A compact.” This time it was Koski who supplied the technical term.

Ross shrugged, “I don't know much about girl stuff.” He took another pull on the cigarette. “I gave it to Marve and told him to give it back to Karen. Karen started asking where he got it, and Bambi jumped in.” He looked at McIntire. “You know the rest.”

“Did you never stop to think about what all this might do to Marvin?” McIntire took the opportunity to ask his own question.

“After we got the money and got away, we would of let people know we were okay. Nobody'd of gone to jail.”

Koski gave McIntire a meaningful look and dragged things back on track. “So Bambi got in the fight and got kicked out. What did you do then?”

“I went with him. He dropped me off home.”

“What time was that?”

Here Ross stuck with his original story. “About eleven-thirty. I put a fire going in the sauna and changed my clothes, so when Ma saw my coat and shoes she'd figure I was in bed. I sacked out for a couple hours, then I walked to where Bambi left his car.”

“He left it?”

“We planned it all out ahead of time. We didn't dare have him come back to get me, in case Ma and Pa were home. So Bambi hid the car in that old garage where the blacksmith shop used to be. Then he walked across to the hall and went up into the attic of the woodshed.”

“He wouldn't have gone back to the hall until everyone had left.”

“Yeah, well there might still be a few people hanging around, but he could sneak in. I don't know what time he went back. Maybe everybody was gone. I was at home then.”

“Still, if he dropped Karen off an hour or so after you, he must have had some time to kill before he could risk going back to the hall.”

“I guess.”

“Any idea how he might have spent that time?”

“No.”

“Okay, go on. You went to Bambi's car….”

“I drove it into Chandler to mail the note. We didn't want to mail it in St. Adele.” He looked up quickly. “The car was still kinda warm when I picked it up. Bambi hadn't been gone long.”

The sheriff exchanged a glance with McIntire, then asked, “What if somebody saw you? Asked what you were doing? Wasn't that taking a pretty big chance?”

“Only if they could tell it was me, and not Bambi, driving. Then I was going to say that Bambi had disappeared, and I was looking for him. Anyway, I went on the old roads through the reservation. It was late. I didn't even see another car.”

“Was Bambi planning to sit up in that woodshed until you collected the money on Wednesday?”

“We had a place for him to hide, back in the woods. We had food, and a stove, and sleeping bags.” Ross looked at McIntire again. “You said you saw it.”

McIntire nodded. “It was a long walk in.”

“It ain't so bad if you take the old road that goes in by the sawmill. You have to walk through some water but it's shorter. But we didn't want to leave his car anywhere near there. Bambi figured it all out. While I was gone to mail the letter, he was planning to wait for me in the garage, but when we were at the dance, he saw the woodshed and thought it would be a better place. It was warmer, and we sneaked up with some food and a lantern. I was going to come back and pick him up and drop him off at the sawmill. He could walk on the old road in the dark, and by the time he had to cut through the woods it'd be getting light. After I left him off I was going to dump the car. But when I got back, Bambi was….”

“We'll get to that,” Koski said. “After you picked up the money, what was the plan then?”

“I had to make a delivery for Mrs. Thorsen. To Dearborn. Bambi was going to hide in the back of the truck, and when we got there, we'd take the train to Denver. We were going to split the money, even up. Bambi wanted to go on west, to California. I figured I could come up with some excuse and come on back home when things settled down. And we'd of left a note in the truck saying we were okay. We didn't want people to worry.” He looked up. “I was going to deliver the clock case first.”

Koski was evidently not impressed with Ross' devotion to duty. “So you mailed the letter, then what?”

“I went back to the hall to get Bambi.” Ross' chin began to quiver again, and he bit his lip.

“Did you take anything from the car?”

“No!” It was a yelp. Then he added, “Like what?”

“Like Karen Sorenson's purse?”

“She forgot it. I put it in their mailbox.” A note of defiance crept into his voice. “Bambi gave Karen a ride home, too.”

The sheriff leaned forward. “Is that the reason you killed him?”

“I didn't! I didn't kill Bambi!”

“Okay, don't get your water hot.” Koski lit another cigarette himself. “Just tell me what happened.”

“There was nobody left around the hall, so I put the car in back of the woodshed. It was pitch black inside, and I didn't have a flashlight. Bambi had one, and I thought he'd hear me coming and shine it down for me, but…he didn't. I had to feel my way to climb over the wood and up through the trapdoor. He didn't answer when I said his name. I thought he must not be there, but maybe he'd left a note or something to tell me. So I crawled up through the door. There was a lantern. It was turned down really low, so it barely made any light at all, but it made enough.”

The sheriff handed Ross another cigarette. This time he lit it for him.

“Bambi was sitting at an old desk. I thought he was asleep. I tried to wake him up. But he didn't wake up.” He faced Koski with a pleading look. “I never saw a dead person before. But I knew right away Bambi was dead. I could tell.”

The sheriff nodded. “And then what?”

Ross took his time responding. Trickles of sweat made muddy tracks down his neck. “I didn't know what to do. I knew I'd be the one blamed. We left the dance together. I was driving his car. I mailed the note.” He frowned. “I didn't see how he could be dead, sitting there with his head on the desk like that. He looked…normal, but he wasn't breathing…and his eyes didn't move. He was
dead
.”

McIntire could keep quiet no longer. “He looked normal? What about the…cuts on his head?”

Ross closed his eyes and puffed the cigarette. His voice was barely a whisper. “I did it.”

Koski's chair gave a screech as he sprang to an upright position.

“I didn't know what to do!” Ross looked frantically from one of them to the other. “I didn't want to go to prison! I knew Marve or Adam must have killed him after all, that the joke got turned around. I wanted them to get caught. Everybody knew about the fight, and the letter was in the mail. I couldn't get it back. There were some old window shades. I took the cords and tied him up.”

Sheriff Koski only stared. It was McIntire who went on, hardly believing that he could say the words. “Then you wanted to make it look really good, so you scalped him?”

“Just a little. It was only a little bit. I didn't want anybody to think I was the one killed him. He was dead. It couldn't hurt him. Bambi was my best friend. I wanted Marvin to get caught. I looked at the spot on his head and not at the rest of him. I tried to think like it was a rabbit or a deer. I cut some of the skin from Bambi's head. I did it
for
him.”

“You mutilated Bambi Morlen's body because he was your friend?”

“I didn't want to. It wasn't easy. I couldn't make myself do it at first. I had to.… Bambi had a fancy bottle, a flask, he called it. We had brandy in it. I drank some.”

And likely got a dose of
Lobelia inflata
in the process. McIntire swallowed. “And the hole?”

For the next few minutes the only sound in the room was the boy's tortured sobbing. When it quieted, he didn't raise his head, but spoke into his folded arms. “Greg told us about it. That ancient people all over the world drilled holes in people's skulls, and nobody knows why. But in the United States only the Indians in Michigan did it. So if Bambi had a hole, everybody would think it had to be Indians that made it. They'd never think it could be me.”

That was true enough. Even hearing it from Ross himself, McIntire still couldn't believe it.

Ross lifted his head. “I wanted people to know it was Marve that killed him! There was a bit and brace in the toolbox. I tried to make a hole, but the bone was too hard…. I threw up.”

Koski came back to life. “Then what?”

“I left.”

“What'd you do with the drill?”

“It's in the wall.”

At the sheriff's questioning look, McIntire explained. “The floor in the attic doesn't go all the way to the wall. There aren't any inside walls, only the bare studs. So if you drop something down, it's gets caught between the outside and the inside walls below.” Such construction was the source of several of McIntire's frustrating childhood experiences, having lost a ball or two, and once a shoe, that way in the hay mow of the barn.

Koski nodded. “And then?”

“I dropped off Karen's purse. I tried to wipe it, in case of fingerprints. Then I drove the car in the ditch to make it look like Bambi'd been run off the road. After that, I cut through the woods to get home and did the milking. Ma and Pa got up late. They thought I'd been there all along.”

A new crop of sweat beads erupted on Ross Maki's forehead. “Are you gonna tell my ma?”

Koski was apparently rendered speechless once again, and McIntire was himself dumbfounded. Was this boy truly so naive that he did not know he'd committed a serious crime? Any number of serious crimes?

McIntire recovered first. “Where is Bambi's camera?”

“I don't know. I didn't take it!” There was a fair amount of irony in Ross' indignation at being suspected of petty theft.

“What did you take,” McIntire continued, “from Karen Sorenson's purse?”

Ross looked confused. “I told you, that…thing you said. Bambi took it.”

“I mean before you left the purse in Sorenson's mailbox.”

“Nothing!”