Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) (5 page)

6

He went south on the lake road and headed into town.
Stony, population 3415 according to the green sign at
the edge of town, stood on the southern bank of Stony
Lake. The year-round people lived in modest wood-
frame houses, and most of them worked at the
Hedman Paper Mill twelve miles to the east. The rest
lived off the tourist trade in the summer and collected
unemployment checks all winter.

Two miles out of town he stopped at a small tavern
nearly hidden by a dense stand of birches. Behind it
the lake glittered. A neon sign blinked from a window,
bright green:
jack be nimble’s.
Gun parked in the lot
and walked inside. The walls were knotty pine, darkly
golden in the weak light.

Behind the gleaming mahogany bar stood a man in
a black crew cut. He was short and looked like a rough
bust of a Roman patrician, stoic, not a soft feature in his face. On the wall behind him hung a lighted glass
shadow box with a pear-shaped bear paddling a canoe
on a brilliant blue lake. In the sky above the bear,
clouds spelled out the words Hamm’s Beer.

“Earlier than usual.”

“I came to talk, Jack, not patronize.”

“You still gotta pay.” Jack set a cup of black coffee
on the bar. “Twins beat your Tigers, see that? Ten-
five.”

“With a staff ERA pushing five they
better
keep hitting.”

“Sour grapes.”

“You seen Mazy the last couple days?” Gun asked.

“
Yeah, day before yesterday, in the evening.
About seven-thirty.”

“Alone was she?”

Jack opened his mouth, froze for an instant, then
shook his head. “Geoff,” he said.

Gun stared ahead into the mirror behind Jack’s assortment of bottles and didn’t like what he saw. His
eyes, dark above the high cliffs of his cheekbones,
made him look like a man older than himself, a man
not quite in control of his faculties. He felt a stab of
anger in his chest, and to stifle it he squeezed the
heavy mug of coffee in his hands. Something snapped.
He looked down at the mug, in two clean halves now.
Coffee spread on the ebony bar. He opened his
fingers—they hadn’t been cut—and let his friend take
away the broken pieces.

Jack mopped up the coffee with a towel, replaced
the cup with a new one, and leaned forward, resting
his forearms on the bar. “Let’s hear about it,” he said.

“Mazy’s gone.” Gun told him about Carol’s visit, and when he’d finished, pressed his palms together,
matching finger for finger. “It just looks bad,” he said.

Jack wiped at a spot on the bar with a rag, squinting.
“Damnit, Gun, I didn’t think much of it, Mazy and
Geoff together. Just figured she was getting her story

together for the paper, pumping him for the inside
stuff.”

“I’m sure she was. But how did she seem? You know
her. Was she in control?”

Jack pointed across the room, behind Gun. “They
were in that booth there. Hedman looked pretty eager,
sat up straight as a little pup. Bought some nice wine,
the most expensive stuff I keep. I saw him reach for
her hand a couple times, that sort of thing.”

“And Mazy?”

Jack shook his head. “Friendly enough to keep him
talking, cool enough to keep him honest, is how it
looked to me. Gun”—Jack lifted a blunt finger— “if
I’d thought for a second that she was having any
trouble with him, I’d have broken his ass.”

“I know,” Gun said.

“I figured Mazy knew what she was up to. Didn’t
want to put the chill on her interview
.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure everything’s fine.” Gun
shifted on his stool and tapped his white coffee cup on
the bar. “Think I’ll take a little drive out to Lyle’s place.”
He
finished the last of his coffee and got to his feet.

“You need any help and you know where to look,”
Jack said.

It was the year after the accident, Mazy sixteen and
spending the summer with Gun, that he paid his first visit to Lyle Hedman. On that August night
Mazy was having a party in the woods north of the
house, and Gun had put up a big canvas Army tent for the
girls to sleep in.

At one in the morning Gun woke to screams,

high-pitched girl screams that he could feel between
his ears like razor-sharp wires, stretched and shiver
ing. He pulled on his pants and ran outside. The night was warm and clear and the sky shimmered with heat
lightning. The tent was several hundred yards north of
the house, and Gun was almost there when he saw a
flash of movement in the trees. He flattened himself
belly to ground and scuttled forward.

The tent was pitched in a clearing the size of a
softball diamond, and Gun stopped at the edge of it.
There were no sounds coming from the tent, no one moving inside it. Then a shout came from Gun’s left
and three young men in swim trunks and Halloween
masks charged from the trees. They ran straight for
the tent, throwing what looked like tomatoes or apples
as they came. The missiles thumped the canvas. The
girls inside screamed. One of the boys yelled,
“Sharon’s turn!” and all three of them pushed through
the tent’s canvas doorway. After a few seconds of
scuffling, the boys emerged with one of the girls,
Sharon Turner, whose voice rose like an ambulance
siren, so high and piercing Gun could almost see it.
She was overweight and wore white pajamas, and the
boys had her by the arms and legs, her bottom
dragging on the ground.

“Hey, Geoff!” This from a boy wearing a rubber Frankenstein mask who flicked on a high-intensity
flashlight and aimed it toward the trees. Like magic, a
naked body appeared, jumping, twisting, and goose-
stepping over the grass. The streaker wore a Jimmy
Carter mask and headed for the tent and the shrieking
girl, veering off only at the last instant and disappear
ing into the trees.

Gun stood and sprinted for the boys, who were
laughing and still holding onto Sharon Turner. When
they saw him they dropped her and ran. He knew
where they had most likely parked, and when he was
sure the girls were all right, he set off for the dead-end
gravel driveway. He followed the shortest possible route, sliding down a twenty-foot embankment then
fording a narrow stream, and intercepted the boys just
before they reached their car. Three of them fled on
foot, but Gun managed to hang onto the fourth,
grinning Jimmy Carter, and tore away the mask. It was Geoff Hedman, twenty-year-old son of Lyle. The
car parked on the dead-end drive was his—a new Jaguar. Gun found the keys in the ignition and told
Geoff to get in, he’d drive him home. Geoff scrambled into the backseat, his head down, and shucked into his
clothes.

Hedman’s main house was a painstaking copy of an African hunting lodge. From its low-hanging eaves the roof extended steeply to a high peak and was thatched with long yellow grasses imported from Kenya. Lining
the drive were gas torches mounted on bleached
wooden poles carved to resemble large bones. That
night the torches were all lit, and the flames wavered
in the breeze off the lake. The windows of the lodge
blazed. Cars were parked bumper to bumper along the drive.

Gun pulled up beneath a flickering lamp. He spoke
for the first time since he had started the car. “We’re going in together, and you’re going to do something for me
.”

“I swear, Mr. Pedersen, it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t
want to do it. I’m sorry, I really am.” Geoff had been
apologizing nonstop for fifteen minutes. “We were
just out for some fun, trying to scare them a little.”

“You scared them, all right.  And now
you’re going to have some real fun. You’re going to tell your old man what you and the boys were doing out there.  And I’ll be listening to make sure you tell it right
.”

Geoff’s eyes watered in surprise. He shook
his head quickly.

“You heard me.”

Without knocking, Gun opened the door of
Hedman’s lodge, nudged Geoff inside ahead of him, then walked in himself. They stood on a woven cane welcome mat, Gun gripping Geoff’s upper arm
. Geoff
crouched and cowered, but Gun held him
up straight. In the
center of the room a stuffed African elephant was
frozen in what appeared to be mid-beller, tusks lifted
toward the ceiling. Beneath the elephant Hedman and
his wife held court from the seat of a leather couch, nodding and smiling at a pressing cluster of guests.
Throughout the big room groups of people formed
intimate knots, arms draped around each other, heads moving agreeably with drink. For a full thirty seconds
no one noticed Gun and Geoff standing there. Then Hedman’s eyes
wandered toward the door and flashed open wide. His
wife, then the people near him, and finally the whole crowd turned to look.

In the silence Geoff moaned.

Gun spoke quietly. “Lyle, your kid and his pals have been on
my property, and now he wants to tell you
what he was doing there.”

7

So this was Gun’s second visit to Hedman’s place
, the first in daylight. He turned off the
lake road about six miles northeast of Stony, at a black
sign shaped like an elephant with tusks lifted. The
white letters of the sign said
kenya drive
—
private.
A hundred yards in, a gate with iron bars blocked the drive. Gun stopped his truck and got out. The gate hadn’t been here nine years ago. Neither had
the twelve-foot-high chain-link fence that reached
away in both directions, sealing off Hedman’s prop
erty. Maybe Lyle was as paranoid as Tig said he
was.

On the other side of the gate stood a young man
wearing an orange sleeveless jumpsuit—probably sleeveless because the man’s upper arms were too big
to fit inside a shirt. Gun estimated his height at
five-ten, his weight at 230. He had the kind of body
Gun had noticed on lots of young men recently, bulky
and smooth and designed for the rather limited task of

moving heavy barbells up and down. At the man’s
side was
a.
38 in a
holster with a safety strap.

As Gun walked toward the gate, he took from his trouser pocket a receipt for two hundred-pound bags
of cement he’d purchased from Darwin’s Lumber in Stony. He folded the receipt twice.

“Hello,” said Gun.

“You call ahead?” asked the guard.

“No reservation, sorry.”

“Then I guess you’re out of luck. Hedman doesn’t have time for walk-ins.”

“Fine, I’ll just give you a note for him.” Gun moved
up to the iron gate, reached his hand through the bars
and offered the folded receipt. “Make sure he gets it,”
he said.

The guard’s fingers touched the receipt, and quick
as a northern pike slamming a spoon, Gun seized the
man’s wrist, yanked him off his feet, and pulled him
hard against the bars. The man’s head knocked the
iron like a block of wood. Gun let go of the wrist, took a handful of hair, and maintaining a steady pull on the
guy’s head, he reached between the bars with his free
hand. He unsnapped the holster strap, palmed the
gun, and let the man go.

The guard fell backward on his rear end, cradling
the top of his head in his elbows. His eyes were
clamped shut and he cursed in violent whispers, like a
young boy trying valiantly not to cry.

“Open the gate,” Gun said.

Rubbing his crown with one hand, the guard shoved
himself up to his knees. He sorted through the big
circle of keys hanging from his belt and opened the
lock.

Gun swung the gate open wide. “Now,” he said, “if you want to look like a monkey in front of your boss,

you can come with me. If not, start running toward
Stony. It’s that way.” He pointed.

The orange-suited guard glanced up briefly at Gun,
then rose unsteadily to his feet and began trotting
toward the road.

“I said running,” Gun called out, and the guard
picked up his pace.

The winding drive cut through a forest of mature
white aspen, then up a steep hill onto a small field of
grass and wild daisies. Finally it tunneled straight into
the deep shade of a thick pine woods before breaking
through into a clearing of manicured lawn. Once more
Gun saw the huge lodge, its thatched roof twitching in
the strong breeze like the stiff hair on a dog’s back.
Beyond it was Stony Lake, choppy today, blue-black
waves capped with gray foam. He parked the truck
and was about to walk to the front door when he saw
Hedman down on the long floating dock. He was stowing gear on one of his boats and didn’t look up until Gun stepped onto the dock, rocking it slightly.

Hedman finished tightening the cap on a red fuel
tank and smiled without adjusting the muscles of his
face. All that happened was the thin line of his mouth
lengthened insignificantly. “Hello, Gun,” Hedman
said. He picked up the tank and stepped into the black
and gold bass boat. A long, skinny man, his move
ments flowed like water.

“Lyle,” Gun said.

Hedman stood on the floor of the boat, hands on
hips. He wore a safari shirt and pants that were
tailored to fit snugly around his tubular arms and legs.
His fleshy, self-indulgent face belonged on a heavier body, and he kept it cocked to the left, showing Gun
only the right side. “You going to shoot me?” he said.
He was looking at the.38 Gun was holding.

Gun tossed it to him. “You’re not an easy guy to
drop in on.”

From the prow of the boat came a low rumble. A huge Irish wolfhound sat there perfectly motionless,
its face bearing an expression of intelligence and
gravity. The dog’s eyes were the same color as
Hedman’s, very light, the shade of watery beer.

Hedman laughed. “Don’t mind Reuben, he’s very obedient.”

“I bet.”

“And about the weapon”—Hedman held up the
.38 delicately with two fingers—”believe it or not, we
need them here.” He spoke in an easy sibilant tone.
“We’ve had trouble with vandals.”

“Funny,” said Gun. “I heard the same thing from
Tig Larson a couple days ago and Carol Long this
morning.”

Hedman smiled thinly again. “A beautiful woman,
Ms. Long. Stunning, wouldn’t you say?”
  He
brought his hands together.
“What brings you out here? You’re a man known for
preferring his own company.”

“A visit.”

“Well, I’m going fishing. Come along?”

“You like to talk on the water?”

“Untie us,” said Hedman.

Gun undid the lines and stepped into the boat. In
five minutes they were anchored off the northwest shore of Hambone Island, out of the wind and a few
yards from a stand of rushes. Hedman was casting out
and reeling in smoothly, the rod like an extension of
his thin arm. As he worked he got careless, and Gun
saw why he was hiding the left side of his face. The flesh around the eye was proud and discolored be
neath a heavy application of tan makeup powder. The
eye itself didn’t look so good either. A bloody red flag extended from the yellow iris all the way to the outer
corner.

“Somebody hit you?” Gun asked.

Lyle’s quick laugh wasn’t convincing. “Hit myself.
Had my truck up on the lift, changing the oil. The
wrench slipped on the goddamn oil plug. Hurt like a
bastard, I’ll tell you.”

“Always change your own oil?” Gun asked.

“Damn right!” Hedman flared. “Anything wrong with that?”

“Admirable,” Gun said.

Lyle glared at him, then looked suddenly toward his
line and set the hook mightily. The fish didn’t put up much of a fight. It was a hammerhead pike and Lyle
threw it back in.

“You know what I’m here about,” Gun said as Hedman rebaited his hook.

“Why don’t you just tell me and then I’ll know for
sure.”

“My daughter seems to be missing, and I hear she
was with your kid the other night.”

Hedman’s amorphous face didn’t show a thing. His
beer-colored eyes blinked a couple times. He took a
deep breath. “Gun, I’m sure you remember the night
you brought Geoff home, naked.” He laughed and
swung his line into the boat to remove a weed from
the hook. “I was damn unhappy at the time, I don’t
mind telling you. But after I found out what had
happened, what Geoff had done to those girls—after I
cooled off a little—I realized that what you did to my
kid was just what he needed.” He cast his line
again, then reached out and patted Reuben’s large
head.

“Mmm,” said Gun.

“No, I mean it. You did the right thing, and I
learned a lesson, a mighty hard lesson.”

“Mmm.”

“I learned it’s pretty damned hard to recognize the
fact that you’ve lost touch with your own kid.”

“That’s real nice, Lyle, but I came here to talk about
Mazy, and I haven’t lost touch with her.”

“Just a minute now, hear me out. The fact is, last
night Geoff and Mazy did go out together, and it
wasn’t the first time. Not by a long shot.” He smiled,
flashed his eyebrows. “Gun, our kids—”

“You and I both know that Mazy was on a story.
Nothing more, nothing less.”

Reuben made his presence known with a rumble,
and Hedman stroked his neck.

“You’re grievously mistaken, Gun.” Hedman’s eyes
slid to starboard, where a Frisbee-sized turtle swam
parallel to the boat, five or six feet away. He picked up
a landing net from beneath his seat, eased it into the
water behind the turtle, and thrust forward, snaring the turtle in the nylon netting. He dumped it upside
down on the floor of the boat. Its underside was waxy
and mottled in a geometric pattern of Halloween
orange and sea green. Its legs clawed at the air.

Hedman looked up. “No, Gun. You’re simply
wrong about Mazy and my son. And as for Mazy’s
interest in Loon Country Attractions, I have nothing
to hide. She was free to look at all my records, and I
might add that her understanding of Loon Country’s economic implications far exceeds yours.”

“Well, that’s good. Where the hell is she?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t know where Geoff is
either. But I sure could guess who he’s with. Look, last
week my son told me things between him and Mazy
were . . . heating up. He didn’t come right out and announce anything, but I’m sure it was his way of
sounding me out.”

“Cut the crap.”

The dog growled again, low muscular thunder rising
up from its massive chest.

“You don’t have to believe me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fine. But Geoff hasn’t been home since yesterday.
Haven’t seen or heard a thing. My bet is that your
daughter and my son have run off together.” With his
toe Hedman nudged the turtle, which had managed to
right itself.

“If my daughter ran off with your kid,” Gun said,
“it’s not because she wanted to. And if this thing has
something to do with your development scam, you better believe I’m going to find out.”

“I’ll believe whatever I please,” said Lyle, a little
smile on his lips. “In fact, my inclination right now is
to believe that you and I are relatives.” He reached
down and flipped the turtle upside down again. It
tried to turn itself over with its head and legs, but
Hedman took a toad stabber from his fishing box and
sliced the turtle’s craning neck from shell to mouth.
Then he tossed the turtle into the water and it sank in
a red cloud of its own blood. Reuben the dog whined,
and bumped his nose nervously against the gunwale of
the boat.

“Always hated turtles,” Hedman said. “One bit me
once, right here.” He held up his right thumb for Gun
to see a tiny white scar.

Gun said, “How about cats, you hate them too?”

Hedman looked at him quickly. “Depends on
whose cat it
is.”
Behind the automatic smile, Lyle’s
face glistened with an emotion that looked for all the
world like fear.