Джеффри Дивер - The Best American Mystery Stories 2006

The kid half-smiled and then got serious. “No power, right, you got no power, no juice?”

I snapped the light switch back and forth. The kitchen ceiling light stayed off. “No juice,” I said. I had rented the cabin from the Cooleys for two months now and the power was always steady, which is rare in the mountains and deep woods. It tends to flicker. A single light came from the Cooleys’ house, further above me on the hill. “You got lights, though.”

“Jap generator,” the kid said. “Pop put it in a year ago, hard-wired it from out in back, so they couldn’t cut power on us.”

I sat on a folding chair at the card table in the kitchen. “How am I going to have coffee, Kid?”

The kid pointed at the rusted set of blue, white, and black camp pots hung behind the stove on what used to be the fireplace. “Pop says you got to give us a ride today. Pop says we’re the soldiers and he’s the general.”

His father was standing right outside the kitchen door and raised his voice from there. “I did not say that, I most certainly did not, nobody has to give us a ride anywhere. I said catch him before he left for work if he was working today and see what he said. That’s what I said.” He cleared his throat as he came into the kitchen. “Seems we were vandalized in the night, somebody cut the tires on the Jeep and the power’s out.” The Cooleys used an old Jeep with its stick on the column to get around. The back fender was rusted except for a bumper sticker, MARINE SNIPER: YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU’LL JUST DIE TIRED. Pop had been in the Corps, with Vietnam action under his belt. He mentioned it when I first moved in and saw the sticker. Pop’s father, Elmer Cooley, had been involved in the white gangs that live in the Pacific Northwest. Elmer had been murdered, he said, in the woods of Eastern Washington, near the Columbia River. Elmer was buried up the hill, in the family plot near the house. Elmer had lived in the cabin I was renting and I knew Pop kept alert.

“Did you hear anything in the night?” I asked. “Did the dog go after anything?”

“I had the dog inside with me because of those big bears coming around lately, too close to the house,” Pop said. “I didn’t want Cannon getting mauled.”

“Sure,” I said. “Where do you need to go today?”

“Spokane,” he said. “To the train station.”

“What’s going on there?” I asked.

“My younger brother’s coming home,” he said. “He just got done doing ten years of federal time. He maxed out.”

“That’s a long time,” I said.

“I don’t think they could give Jack enough time to beat him,” he said. “When he was a kid, eighteen really, he did five years here state time for some shit. Now he’s done ten more and he won’t be forty until August. You’ll see when we pick him up. Jack’s a stone house, inside and out. Always has been, always will be.”

“Hey, Snider,” the kid said. “Let me wear your bulletproof, since we’re going into the big city.”

He had tried on my vest before and loved it. “Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t want anybody to mess with you. Big city of Spokane, tough town.” I tightened it on him, made sure he was comfortable.

We climbed in my truck, heading south through the woods and mountains, under the eyes of hawks and eagles, two hours to Spokane.

The lines were down because I’d dropped a limb on them. The tires were flat because I’d cut them. I wondered if Pop, somewhere in his mind, didn’t suspect this. He wasn’t a stupid man, when it came to hunting and fishing and fields of fire and decoy interest. All manner of blinds, lures, and smoke to fool the enemy. He talked hunting to Peeler as we drove. If he suspected, he never let on. He needed to get to Spokane and I was the only man available for the job, I had made myself that way, cut myself to fit. Purposefully become a piece of the puzzle. Cold sweat ran down over my ribs and bled into my T-shirt all the way to the train station. Jack Cooley wasn’t a Girl Scout, He’d started out with the Hammerskins and moved up to the elite Eighty-eight Dragoons. Federal law enforcement blamed the Dragoons for a host of crimes, but most recently tied them to a shoot-out in Wyoming where five officers died raiding a meth lab and supposed Dragoon safe house. I knew any information I got out of Jack Cooley would be all George Beck needed to loosen his own state-held noose. George Beck had been in the woods of Eastern Washington the day Elmer Cooley died, and although they couldn’t prove he pulled the trigger, they were applying pressure. When it comes to law enforcement, they prosecute deaths of their own kind hardest. Everybody else is just a scumbag to them anyway, or was involved in stuff that they deserved to die for. We didn’t catch you at it, but you’ve got to be guilty of something, something you did before or something we don’t know about.

The train station in Spokane is brick, a mix of new and old. Jack Cooley wasn’t there yet; his train was late. The kid rode up and down on the escalators and had a soda. Pop sat on the wood benches and watched the people with their luggage, buying tickets. When I went to sit next to Pop, there on the bench was a small smiley face and Peeler written underneath. The kid went down the escalator again, back up. Then the train arrived.

Jack Cooley was one of the first ones to come out of the arrival door and start walking toward us. He was an inch taller than I was and broad in the shoulders. He wore an old army jacket and jeans and work boots. The kid went right over to him and hugged him and Jack hugged him back.

“Peeler,” Jack said. “Fucking little Peeler. Jesus Christ.” He hugged the kid again.

Pop went over and shook hands with Jack and hugged him with one arm. He introduced me. “This is Ed Snider, he’s renting Grandpa’s house while he does some contract logging over on the edge of old Freleigh’s property. He drove us today.”

Jack Cooley looked me up and down. “Thanks,” he said. He motioned at Pop and the kid. “These are nice people to be nice to.”

“Glad you’re out,” I said.

“You’re never out after that long,” Jack answered. “The cell just gets a little bigger.” He looked around at the vending machines and pay phones by the door. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get up in those mountains. I’ve been dreaming about them for ten years. Are they still there?”

“Nothing’s changed,” Pop said, “Nothing’s changed.”

The kid stopped to take a piss before we got in the truck and when he came out, he had another can of soda with him. He shook it before he got in my truck. He cracked the can open and sprayed Jack with the soda and Jack was laughing and shaking his head soaking wet. “I’ll clean it,” the kid said. “Pop told me we shouldn’t use champagne, so I used soda.”

“Peeler,” Jack said, “you should never sleep too heavy.” He was laughing as he said it.

I drove the Cooley family back to the tip of the Idaho Panhandle. By the time we got home, it was snowing lightly and the three of them walked up the hill to their house while I reloaded my woodstove for the night.

The next morning I had been up for a while when Jack Cooley came down for a cup of coffee. He was still wearing the old army jacket.

“How’re you doing?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said. “Same as always.”

“How was it inside?”

“Brutal,” he said and left it at that.

“Where’d you do most of your time?”

He sipped his coffee. “Kentucky. Pennsylvania.”

He was right across the table from me, so I had to ask. “Pop said you might come out and go after some people.”

Jack shook his head. He rubbed his chin. “I’m not doing anything to anybody up here, not a thing. I’m not involved in anything other than my own life.”