“What—? What the hell are you doing?” Bemis stammered, staggering back, horrified.
“Take a deep breath, counselor. That’s what justice smells like in the deep woods. Avery cut Novak a check for his daughter and expected him to take it. I warned you it would blow back, and now it has. I helped make this mess, so I’m going to fix it, but I’m done playing games. I’m going to tell Novak the flat-ass truth about what happened. And he’ll give me a name and I’ll bring that bastard in. It won’t be justice, but I’ll have to live with it. This,” I said, tossing the bone at his feet, “is the part you have to live with.”
As I turned away, Bemis grabbed my arm.
“Just a damn minute, LaCrosse—”
Pure cussedness on my part. As he jerked me around, I used the momentum to slap him across the face. Harder than I meant to. He went down like a sack of cement, staring up at me in stunned disbelief.
“I’ll — I’ll have your badge for that!”
“No, you won’t. I’d love to tell a judge about this mess, Harve, but your boss wouldn’t like it. And just so we’re clear? If you ever lay hands on me again, I’ll break your goddamn jaw. C’mon, get up.” I offered him my hand, but he brushed it away angrily and staggered to his feet.
A black carrion beetle the size of my thumb was working its way through the muck on his overcoat.
“You’ve got a bug,” I said, pointing at the beetle.
“What? Oh!” he gasped, horrified. He tried to brush it away, but the beetle clung stubbornly to the fabric, scarfing its lunch.
Harvey plucked it off and cast it aside, but his fingertips came up smeared with Derek Patel’s remains. It was too much. Stumbling into the brush, he dropped to his knees in the snow, retching up everything but his spleen.
I almost felt sorry for him.
But I couldn’t spare the time. I needed to get to Novak fast.
To tell him the truth. And destroy him with it.
I picked up my partner at the shore highway, where patrolmen were taping off the original dump site. Racing back into Valhalla with lights and sirens, we crossed the river to Poletown, to Carl Novak’s run-down double-wide.
I carried the femur with me. Technically it was evidence, but the forest den wasn’t really a crime scene. The coyotes were only guilty of being coyotes.
When Carl Novak answered my knock, I simply handed him the savaged bone, explained what it was and where I’d found it. And what had actually happened the night his daughter died.
It took a moment for the horror of it to sink in. But when it did, Novak sagged against the doorjamb like he’d been slammed across the knees with a Louisville Slugger.
And then he gave us the hired killer’s name.
A familiar one.
Joni Cohen was right. When you do police work in your hometown, you’re bound to run into people you know.
“Holy crap,” Zina said, scanning the screen of her laptop. We were in my Jeep, idling in Novak’s driveway, waiting for a prowl car to show, to take him into custody.
“What have we got?” I asked, keeping an eye on Carl Novak, as he said his goodbyes to his wife and remaining kids on his porch. Dry-eyed now, but he looked decades older. In utter despair.
“Oskar Sorsa, Big Ox,” Zina read. “Six foot seven, two-eighty. Two-time loser, both busts tied to the meth trade, three years on the first fall, four more on his second. Ganged up in prison with the Aryan Militia. The LEO lists him as a violent offender. Presume to be armed, approach with caution. Paroled to Valhalla after his latest hitch. Elkhart Road? I don’t recognize that address.”
“It’s in the state forest. His grandfather had a cabin back there.”
“You know this guy?”
“I used to see him around logging jobs, back in the day. Never worked with him. He had a rep as a bad-ass then. Sounds like prison made him worse.”
“How do we handle him?”
“We don’t,” I said, swiveling in my seat to face her. “He’s a wood-smoke boy, a survivalist. If we go out there with an army, he’ll rabbit into the backcountry and we’ll be chasing him for a year. If I talk to him one-on-one, maybe he’ll come in peacefully.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“If I’m alone, at least he won’t run.” I shrugged. “You wait here with Novak for the prowl car. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”
“So you can go after Sorsa alone? You’re making a mistake, Dylan.”
“At least I’m consistent. I’ve botched this thing from the beginning, Zee. I’m going to close it out.”
She was right. Going alone is always a mistake. And I knew it.
But I was past caring. I needed this done.
Elkhart Road trails off into the bottomlands east of Valhalla. Low swampy ground, only fit for ducks and muskrats.
And poachers. When I rolled into the overgrown yard at Sorsa’s backwoods cabin, he was dressing out a deer.
The swamp buck was hanging from a large pine, spread-eagled and eviscerated, eyes glassy, its tongue lolling. Ox was peeling off its hide like a bloody blanket, rolling it down from a circular incision at the animal’s throat. He straightened slowly as I stepped out of the Jeep. Still holding the dripping skinning knife.
I’m six-one in my socks, but the Viking type facing me was nearly a foot taller, dressed in grimy coveralls, his hands and wrists streaked with gore from the gutted buck.
Forty or so, his sandy hair was a wild tangle around the edges of a greasy engineer’s cap. Hard gray eyes. His narrow face was permanently reddened by the wind and prison hooch, and marked with a striking set of scars. Three vertical gashes in one cheek, livid as war paint. Gouges from a chainsaw kickback. Savage and ugly. And not uncommon in the backcountry.
He eyed my back trail uneasily a moment, expecting an army to come roaring in behind me. When he realized I’d come alone, he relaxed a bit. Probably figured he could handle me. Maybe he was right.
I checked out the yard as I stepped out of my Jeep. A rust-bucket white pickup was parked beside a cabin so warped and faded it looked like a natural part of the forest. Cords of firewood were stacked neatly along the outer walls. A trio of antlered deer skulls were nailed over the door. Trophy bucks. None smaller than ten points. A Model 94 Winchester lever-action was leaning against the doorframe.
“Who are ya?” Sorsa demanded. I could smell whiskey off him six feet away.
“Detective Dylan LaCrosse,” I said, showing him my shield. “Major Crimes.”
“I ain’t done nothin’ major.” He gave me a screwball grin, showing broken teeth, stained meth yellow. “Nothin’ minor, neither.”
“Rifle season closed December first, Ox. That buck’s illegal.”
“Ain’t no season on roadkill. Found this bastard dead in a ditch. Kilt by a truck.”
“Then the truck must have shot it in the eye. I can see the bullet hole from here.”
Sorsa frowned at the deer, then jammed a thumb into the bloody eye socket, obliterating the wound by gouging out the flesh.
“C’mon, LaCrosse, the DNR don’t care if a man takes meat off-season to feed himself. You gonna rat me out?”
“I don’t give a rip about the deer, Ox. I’m here about a boy. Derek Patel.”
He didn’t say anything. But his eye strayed to the Winchester on the porch. Figuring his odds. The gun was only a few yards away. Loaded? Damn straight. He’d only used one round to kill the buck and probably reloaded that one immediately. Out here, weapons stay loaded. Plus, he was still holding the skinning knife. I could practically see the wheels turning in the big guy’s meth-fried mind as he mulled over the geometry of murder. It was painful to watch.