Hunter's Moon by Chuck Logan (the false prince series txt) 📗

“Don’t smoke.”

Harry hugged himself. “Cold,” he said.

“Hurry up with that coat,” the deputy yelled. Down below someone held up the coat. They were putting Bud on a gurney.

“I’d like to ride with him to the hospital,” Harry said.

“You just wait here, sir,” said the deputy. “Here comes your coat.”

Another county deputy jogged up the slope, staying outside the yellow tape perimeter. He carried Harry’s jacket, a blanket, and a Thermos. Harry put on his parka, pulled the hood over the cake of sweat frozen in his hair, and grabbed for a high-energy bar in his pocket. He tore at the plastic wrapper and his numb, blood-stained fingers spasmed. He dropped it. The deputy picked it up and opened it. Harry gobbled it down. The other deputy draped the blanket over his shoulders and held out the Thermos.

“Sheriff thought you might need this,” he said, screwing off the cup and pouring it full and steaming.

Harry took it and drank greedily and the warmth flooded 76 / CHUCK LOGAN

his veins and enlarged his throat and suddenly there was all this new room inside him. An involuntary parched “Ah,” came from his lips and he forced the cup away with both hands. He spat out the residue in his mouth as a smoky wind, one part coffee, nine parts whiskey, raced through him. He spat again on the snow and handed back the cup. “Booze in it,” he said, unable to stop the grin spreading across his torn face. “Not the day I want to lose ten years of sobriety.”

The cops exchanged glances and the one who brought the Thermos spoke apologetically. “It’s Sheriff Emery’s. He ain’t on duty today. Was going hunting.”

Harry nodded, found his cigarettes in his pocket, and lit up.

Tendrils of fire spun hot and lacy inside his fingertips and the whiskey washed the decomposed taste from his mouth. Huddled in the coat and blanket he felt stronger. He nodded down the slope.

“How is he?”

“Shock. Lost some blood, but you patched him up pretty good,”

said the second deputy. “That’s what the Smokeys say, anyway.

What happened to his face, Jerry?” he asked.

“Jesse and Becky went apeshit when Mr. Griffin told them what happened. Becky took a swipe at his face.”

The second deputy spit thoughtfully. Dark brown stain on the snow. Chewing tobacco. “Maston says he saved his life. That Chris was trying to kill him, which don’t exactly surprise me. I’d a never let that kid go near a gun myself.”

Harry started to ask a question, but something about the way the deputies were talking warned him to shut up.

“Larry shoulda done something about that Chris…the shit’s going to hit the fan now—”

“Sweet on Jesse and the kids,” said the one named Jerry. “Be sweet on her after Maston’s gone.”

Bud’s hasty marriage didn’t appear to be engraved in stone in Maston County.

“Yeah, but will he still be sheriff after this?” said the tobacco chewer.

Jerry toed the snow with his boot, the other cop spit his tobacco.

Any minute now one of them would start whittling, HUNTER’S MOON / 77

thought Harry. The hayseed schmooze routine didn’t fit with their otherwise highly trained style. Consequences, he thought, on guard.

If Jesse made good on her rape threat, how would his story look to these canny backwoods cops?

The second deputy inspected Harry’s face. “You should get back to town, have a doc look at that kisser. Need a tetanus shot for sure.

Lots of dirty stuff under a person’s fingernails.”

“It can wait,” said Harry. He had given his driver’s license to another cop who’d stayed back at the lodge. By now they’d made a radio call and he wondered what kind of picture the criminal justice system kept on Detroit Harry in its national computer.

The second deputy said, “I’ll be getting back down there, help them bring the stretcher up.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Harry.

“You best wait up here, sir,” said the second deputy. “Anybody in this county’s going to get first-class treatment, it’s Maston. He had the new hospital built. You just sit tight. Sheriff’ll want to talk to you.” He took off down the hill.

“Am I under arrest?” Harry asked.

“No sir, you’re under no legal constraints other’n we’d like you to stick around to help clear up some questions the county medical examiner might have. You weren’t planning on leaving, were you?”

Harry shook his head. It was interrogation. Keep the parties involved separate for questioning. Routine. Sensible. Different though, if you were in the middle.

“And if the medical examiner has…questions?” asked Harry.

“Well, then the county prosecutor gets involved and there’ll be an investigation. Gets to where two and two don’t add up…well, then we’re required to advise you that you might want to talk to an attorney…”

Harry started to ask another question. The deputy cut in polite but firm. “Just rest up, Mr. Griffin. Save it for the sheriff.”

78 / CHUCK LOGAN

They were bringing Bud up the slope. Six cops manhauling the gurney with a medic jogging alongside steadying an IV rig. More medics with bags and gear followed. Bud grimaced with every jerk of the stretcher and Harry pushed through to him and squeezed his arm through the blankets. “Hang in there,” he said.

Bud grinned wanly and fell back exhausted and the coppowered dogsled huffed and puffed down the trail and disappeared in the pines. A voice bellowed commands down by the swamp:

“Awright, we got the hurt guy outta here, so square away this clusterfuck, and be careful, people! Nobody go near that body till the medical examiner gets here. And the BCA are coming from Duluth. You know how finicky those guys are. Film it, but don’t be mucking up them tracks. An’ don’t fuck with them rifles. Or the packs. Leave ’em lay. BCA’s bringing their lab, so we gotta keep this place clean. I don’t want no dumb-ass hunters walking through.”

Out-of-place voice in the North Woods, with a lilt of Southern cadence.

Sheriff Emery plodded up the slope and Harry had an impression of butternut and leather and thought: he’d