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

Harry had committed adultery, justifiable homicide, and now he was brokering a political deal. All before lunch. It was tranquil in the office. Sitting in the eye of Hurricane Jesse.

Hakala held up his finger. “If he won’t take a quiet vacation in a place like Hazelden, remind him that this wasn’t the first time Chris was mixed up in stolen guns and drugs. And the other time I erred on the side of leniency because Bud wanted to try straightening out the kid. That comes out, the press could blow this way up, start digging around. It could

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get messy for all of us.” Hakala stressed the “us,” inclined his head back, and looked at Harry down his nose. “Oh yeah, we looked you up in the computer. You, ah, did a little time.”

“County jail stuff, nothing serious, years ago,” Harry minimized.

“Couple of pretty serious assault charges…”

Harry casually opened his palm, a gesture of affirming the obvious.

“Just as soon let all that lay.”

“Fine.” Hakala smiled. “Then I see no reason to exacerbate the tragedy of an open-and-shut case by putting everyone through a grand jury.” His big hand waffled deftly. “You get Bud to agree and I’ll handle the vulture control with the media. Bud can take the cure and get on with his life.”

“So you think you have a motive?”

Hakala smiled briskly. “Do we understand each other, Harry?”

“Perfectly.”

“Off the record?”

“Sure.”

Hakala rocked back in his chair. “We have Bud’s sworn statement.

Chris said he’d never let Bud turn him in and then he shot him.

Bud’s damn lucky to be alive. He’s got a serious powder burn on his temple where Chris missed him point-blank the first time. And we have evidence. A small drugstore and an armory turned up in Chris’s room. The guns match the serial numbers of three handguns heisted from the Ace Hardware three weeks ago.”

Hakala shrugged. “Bud told me how he found that stuff and threatened to turn Chris in for violating the agreement we worked out the last time Chris got busted. But he was willing to give it one more try, bring you up here and do some kind of intervention. In his condition, he underestimated the kid’s capacity for violence with predictable results. This is what happens when civilians try to do the work the system is set up for.”

“Uh-huh,” said Harry, unable to hide the skeptical edge in his voice.

“Well,” Hakala knit his brows conscientiously, “we can’t HUNTER’S MOON / 105

read minds. But it looks to me like Chris figured that hunting season’s a good time to kill somebody…Kinda like a war. Lots of men with lots of guns. Accidents happen.”

Damn straight, Harry thought. Jesse, the instant bride and instant widow, might have been in line to inherit the farm; especially with a blind sheriff on the case.

Hakala sighed and ran his fingers through his fine hair. “Well, we’ll know some more pretty soon. BCA has a gizmo that does blood analysis. We’ll see if Chris was jacked up on something—”

“Another crazy kid hopped up on drugs, huh?” asked Harry.

“Probably not a good idea to take a kid like that deer hunting?”

“Up here, everybody goes hunting. Hard to sort out the crazy from the sane once they’re all dressed up in orange. Last season we had an engineer from 3M shoot three cows. Hell. We practically close the high school. Now that the mill’s shut down we got forty percent unemployed. These people live on venison most of the year.”

Harry stood up. “I’ve got the picture. Now I’d like to go talk to Bud.”

“Good. I’ll have Jerry run you up. Take you out through the garage. Avoid the vampires with the TV cameras out there.”

16

Bud wasn’t fine.

The IV was back in his arm and his green hospital smock was pulled to the side. A glass tube stuck from his wound to drain bullion gruel into a kidney-shaped pan and his stitched lower lip looked like a gob of purple sausage with flies on it.

But Harry wasn’t real long on sympathy at the moment. “You sorry drunk bastard,” he swore softly. “I had to hear from Karson who I just shot. The fucking sheriff’s kid.”

“Illegitimate,” Bud mumbled. “Jesse wouldn’t marry him.”

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“I should have known better to come up here with you when you were drinking. Randall tried to tell me.” Harry swung his head from side to side. Then he saw the stupid grin on Bud’s face. “What’s so damn funny.”

Bud ducked his head into his shoulders and said in a tiny apologetic voice, “It’s the Dilaudid. I’m stoned.”

“Great. Okay, look. They’re not charging me. I talked to Hakala.”

Bud nodded with dreamy eyes. “I really messed up…So much for playing Dad. Being married. It all came apart.”

Harry leaned down and whispered in Bud’s ear. “Not quite. The fix is in. Hakala’s been on the horn to Bill Tully down south and now he’s playing God. Here’s the deal. You agree to go to treatment.

No grand jury poking around in your life. That giant sucking sound you hear? That’s everybody lining up to drain you dry. You owe Hakala and Tully for the rest of your life.”

For the first time Bud noticed Harry’s face. His hand drifted up, nearly touched. “Christ, what happened?”

“Becky clawed me up when I told them.”

“You’ll be scarred,” said Bud. “Christ, I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this. I thought…” Bud’s voice cracked and his eyes brimmed with tears.

Harry pursed his lips and looked away. That’s right, go on. Lose it on me.

Bud sobbed and an enormous tear rolled down his cheek and trickled along the stitches on his lip. “I thought bringing you along would be good for everybody. You too. You know, if it worked out next year we could have done it again, the four of us…”

“Four of us?”

“You know, your boy back in Michigan—”

“Jesus, Bud. Get a fucking grip!”

Ashamed of his tears, Bud hid his face in his hands for a moment.

The shudder