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

Chris about drug use. And, yes, Chris looked tense the night before. But it was hard to tell with hindsight fractured by the shooting, meeting new people, driving up through the storm. Harry let them guide the questions. Jesse’s name did not come up. And no one mentioned his police record in Detroit. Harry had been grilled by law enforcement types before. This was a walk in the sun and it was the first time he’d been in a roomful of cops with the powerful intuition that everybody present, not just him, had something to hide.

At the conclusion of the statement, Jerry, who now clearly HUNTER’S MOON / 101

had the role of watching Emery, shepherded his charge from the room. Harry stood alone in the hall with Hakala.

“That’s it for now, Harry. You’re free to go. The coroner and I agree. Open-and-shut justifiable homicide,” said Hakala with an appropriate touch of officious remorse in his voice.

“So I just walk?” asked Harry, pushing it a little.

“You’re a pretty stable citizen. Sound work record. Good people vouching for you—Ah, look. Some reporters from Duluth TV showed up. We could go to my office. Maybe they’ll go away.”

Harry smiled. He was still scared being in the same building with Emery, but he was curious now about the links between Jesse and Emery and their crazy kid.

“Actually, there’s a favor I’d like to ask…privately,” Hakala said blandly.

“Sure,” said Harry. Hakala led him in back of the sheriff’s office and down another corridor.

“You know Houston’s son-in-law, Tim Randall, the writer?” kib-butzed Hakala.

“We go back a ways,” said Harry.

“Always meant to read his Pulitzer book.” Hakala nodded and stopped in front of a doorway with his name and title on a thin plastic strip. “He knew Kennedy, didn’t he?”

“He met Kennedy. He knew Matt Ridgway.”

“Who?” Hakala smiled politely.

“Forget it.”

Harry entered a corner office. Meager light filtered through glass brick. Hakala turned on the overhead lights. A new computer looked out of place among the antique furnishings. The desk was an enormous oak table. Everything was big, including the twelve-point buck mounted over the desk.

Harry inspected a broad, framed photo on the wall, set between Hakala’s academic degrees and a picture of the governor. Another antique. John L. Lewis, the bushy-browed president of the United Mine Workers, addressing a Depression-era crowd at the dedication of the monument to the Stanley Massacre.

102 / CHUCK LOGAN

Hakala sat in the swivel oak chair behind the desk and motioned Harry to take a seat. Then the beefy prosecutor turned and took a glass pot from the Mr. Coffee machine behind his desk. He poured two cups and placed one on front of Harry. “How’s the face?” he asked.

Harry smiled gamely and sipped his coffee. “Tell me, do you usually let someone involved in a shooting go so quick?”

Hakala assumed a dignified posture behind his enormous desk and gave Harry the official word. “Specific conditions must occur to excuse or justify the use of deadly force, Harry. The killing must have been done in the belief that it was necessary to avert death or grievous bodily harm. In this case, your judgment that Bud was exposed to grave peril has to be reasonable under the circumstances.

And your decision to kill must have been such as a reasonable man would have made in light of the danger apprehended. This incident matches the statute almost verbatim. A second-year law student would make me look like a fool if I were to charge you. Especially with Bud as a witness…and Chris’s history.”

Harry tried to see the morning in terms of a cut-and-dried legal diagram. His left hand moved to his right bicep and massaged the tender spot where the rifle had kicked into the muscle.

Hakala steepled his thick fingers. “Bud tells me you’re his best friend. And you’re a reformed alcoholic. He discussed Chris Deucette’s drug use with you. What about his own drinking?”

“We’re just talking? Right? Nobody has given me my rights.”

“Relax. Look, I’ll give it to you straight. Bud’s in a sticky situation.

When Don Karson refused to marry Bud and Jesse Deucette, I took Bud aside and told him not to do it. Hell, I tried to talk him out of shacking up with her in the first place.” Hakala sighed. “Trying to talk to the drunken millionaire who owns the county is like trying to talk to a gorilla. He does what he wants.”

“His drinking was that obvious?” Harry asked.

“Started to stink in the summer when he put on all that HUNTER’S MOON / 103

weight. People would coffee up in the bait shops and talk of little else between welfare checks.” Hakala shook his head. “We knew Jesse would blow up in his face. But not…this way.”

Harry kept his voice cautious. Let him do the leading. Don’t offer anything. “I took one look at him and decided he belonged in a treatment center.”

Hakala came forward in his chair. He rubbed his thick palms together and lowered his voice. “I’d go discuss it with him. In fact, let me lend you a little leverage.” Hakala leaned back, resteepled his fingers. “Let’s say I’ve received a little incentive to work this out.”

“Yeah?” said Harry.

Hakala rotated the swivel chair to the wall and studied the autographed portrait of the governor—a fellow Iron Ranger. Then he swung back to face Harry. “If Bud agrees to go inpatient and complete a treatment program, I’d be less inclined to a grand jury. I mean, if the guy sobered up…” Hakala’s smile was an effortless blend of concern and self-interest. “And put all this behind him in the right way—you know, humble, wiser for the pain—he could get that House seat. Maybe even make a Minnesota senator someday.”

Harry smiled. “As long as he observes a decent interval. And remembers who his friends are, huh, Hakala?” He stretched in the chair and connected the dots. Gene Houston to Bill Tully to someone in the governor’s office who made the call to Hakala. Bud and his prodigal millions were being brought