It seemed to Joanna that she sensed the shot an instant before she heard it. It rang out like a thunderclap during a sudden summer storm. The coyote lurched sideways as the bullet hit it, then took two steps forward and collapsed.
Joanna glanced toward the side road and spotted Ben Dubois’s truck before she saw him. He came out of the trees, his gun in the crook of his arm, walking toward the dead coyote. He noticed Joanna in the yard as he approached. He gave her a quick look of dismissal. Even in the distance, she could see him smiling, knowing she’d been watching.
She had left the double doors to the storm cellar open when she’d retrieved the gardening tools earlier. She walked past the house to the edge of the property, waiting for Dubois to pick up the coyote before calling to him. He had the animal’s rear legs in one hand, preparing to drag it away, when he heard her voice. He hesitated, then started over, leaving it behind. When he was near enough, she gestured toward the storm cellar.
“You like to kill things. How are you with rats?”
Dubois looked wary as he approached, but now he smiled into the darkness of the cellar. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your way of thinking.”
“I just want it dead.”
“Rat’s no different than a coyote.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Joanna said. “Give me the gun. I’ll kill it myself.”
Dubois did so, liking the idea. When she had the rifle in her hands, she swung the stock as hard as she could, crashing it across his temple.
Later in the day she heard him yelling, and then calling out, promising vengeance before seeking conciliation, and finally pleading with her. She kept the radio on to drown him out. He was still making noise when she went to bed, alternating back and forth between dark threats and offers to bargain, before finally stopping. Joanna went to sleep; she assumed Dubois did too.
When she went into town late that afternoon, she heard that Ben Dubois had been reported missing. The police had found his truck on English River Road, two kilometers from the farm. There were no leads, although the prominent theory was that Dubois had suffered a heart attack while hunting, and was lying in the woods somewhere. When Joanna got home, she buried Dubois’s rifle in the heavy loam of the barnyard before going down into the basement to give him a bowl of water. He howled as he heard her come near, first calling her a fucking whore, then sobbing, begging for forgiveness. He told her he was starving and beseeched her to give him something — anything — to eat. She slid the water beneath the door and left.
A few hours later, she stewed some meat and gave it to him, along with a piece of bread. She could hear him eating from behind the door. The next morning, she went out to the smokehouse where she had hung the dead coyote. She hacked the back leg from the carcass and took it inside, where she cut the meat into pieces and made more stew. She figured there was enough there to last Ben Dubois a couple of weeks.
After that, she didn’t know.
The Crap Magnet
by Peter Kirby
L’île Sainte-Thérèse
My buddy Mike brought me over to L’île Sainte-Thérèse in his boat. It was two in the morning. Pitch black. The only light came from the stars. I needed a place to hide out for a while, and Sainte-Thérèse was the perfect spot. Only a ten-minute boat ride from Montreal, but it’s another world, a tiny island that no one controls, except the squatters who have been living there since the fifties. The police and the authorities gave up on the place years ago. Mike said the cottage was empty and I could stay there as long as I wanted.
That bastard cop, Luc Vanier, was pissed at me. He had me marked for a double murder, but couldn’t prove anything. So instead of letting it go and moving on, he put out word that I was cooperating, that I was going to make a deal with the prosecutor in exchange for a free pass and a spot in witness protection. In my line of work, that’s a death sentence.
That’s why I needed to drop out of sight. I needed to figure things out.
The first night, I took a quick look around outside but it was darker than a blacked-out basement. I locked the doors and put chairs against them. I slept in a sleeping bag under the dining room table but I didn’t sleep well.
In the morning, I took a good look around. The cottage was surrounded by trees that had been cleared back, like a bunker in a green parking lot. In two hours, I counted about twenty different ways people could approach the cottage through the trees. If you’re sneaking through the woods trying to find someone, you won’t be hacking a new path, and I wasn’t expecting Indiana Jones. If anyone was going to show up, it would be guys as freaked out by the forest as I was. I found a spot on the deck where I could see the approaches funnel into the clearing, a spot where it was still a short run into the woods if anyone showed up.
Mike’s father must’ve been some kind of handyman; he had a nice collection of tools in the shed. There was a wrench the length of a baseball bat, with most of its weight at the business end. There were a couple hammers, a mallet that could crush a skull, and an axe. I dropped them onto the forest floor, covering them with leaves and making sure I remembered where I hid them. I also hid two old baseball bats in the undergrowth beside some trees. I found a serious chef’s knife in the kitchen that I wrapped in a dishrag and stuffed into my pants. I had to cut a small hole in the pocket to get it to sit properly.
I kept the sleeping bag under the kitchen table. Every night after I finished eating in the last light, I would turn on the television in the living room and sit in the kitchen. Sitting in the dark isn’t much fun, but it’s safe, and when you’re looking out into the night from a dark room, you see everything. Guys who creep into houses at night always go for light, like moths. Most of the time they’re right; the target will be sitting in his La-Z-Boy, nursing a beer, watching Jay Leno, not a clue what’s going on until it’s too late.
It took me awhile to settle into the cottage. In the city, you develop a filter. You ignore all the normal stuff, noticing only what’s odd — like the guy trying too hard to appear drunk, or the fool who looks you in the eye but turns away a second too late. On the island, all the activity made me twitchy at first. Nothing stayed still. Shit was happening all over the place. Fat brown birds rooted around trees, making more noise than rats in a dumpster. Squirrels with stripes up their backs sprinted through the grass like they were trying to escape something awful.
Eventually I figured out the patterns, relaxed, and focused on the stuff that stood out.
Like the golden-brown flash that sliced through the trees. By the time the dog came bounding into the clearing, I was thirty feet into the woods. A red ball on a short rope went flying over his head, and he chased after it. It was a Labrador, I think. The dog grabbed the rope as the ball hit the ground, turned in a big circle, and headed back to the brunette behind him. Her hair was loose and curly, and she wore jeans and a white T-shirt. She had a farmer’s tan. She grabbed the rope and threw the ball in a slow arc toward the house. The dog took off after it. I scanned the woods behind her. She was alone.
I was ten feet behind her before she noticed me. She wheeled around to face me, terrified. I tried for a disarming smile and said, “Hi.”
“You made me jump,” she said, backing away. “I didn’t know there was anyone here. It’s been empty for weeks.”
“I’m staying here for a few days, maybe longer.” Before I could reach out for a handshake, the dog was sniffing my crotch. “I’m John Webster.”