Chuck Logan - Homefront

Center down. Wait and see. Don’t jump to conclusions.

So he let his eyes track the snowy landscape to either side of the road. Glacier County was aptly named; a white place on the map, just this long skinny ditch the last ice age had gouged into the map and filled with moraine and melt. Wedged between Thief River Falls and the Red Lake Rez. It had always been remote, and now it had pulled ahead of Broker’s native Cook County as the least populated county in the state. In the winter. The population quadrupled in summer. Broker smiled ruefully when he came around a bend and saw the construction site of another lake house going up. The flimsy yellow sticks thrusting at the pines and snow. A bundled work crew swarmed over it. Hola . Mexicans, by the swarthy faces peeking from their headgear and the amused grins. Yesterday they had been wearing shirtsleeves. But they were swinging their nail guns, working like hell. Even up here they were starting to build the fast Pac Man houses that ate the woods.

He took another deep breath. Up ahead, over the tree line, he saw the town water tower pinned against the gray sky. The city council had tacked a tinny round cupola on top and painted it red and white like a fishing bobber to promote their main resource, the chain of Glacier Lakes. The tower stood like a wish, to lure the tourists to come with their boats to fish in summer. And the snowmobile crowd in the quieter winter.

It was an uphill fight; Glacier County was off the main track. North of the lakes it consisted of a long stretch of jack pine barrens. The barrens led to the spooky Washichu State Forest and the Canadian border, where no one lived but the wolves. After Labor Day you couldn’t get a cup of Starbucks in the whole sparsely populated county. No local newspaper. Hardly any cops. The two gas stations closed at 8:00 P.M. in the winter, so you had to mind your gas gauge. Which suited Broker just fine and was, in fact, the reason he’d brought his family here.

He came into town south on County 12. Crossed the railroad tracks and went past the population sign: 682. He paused for the town’s single stoplight near the old railway depot, where 12 intersected Main Street. Turned right. The elementary school was on the west side, past the two blocks of business district; a durable two-story cube of Depression-era redbrick. Just a traprock driveway and the traffic circle that he’d wheeled around this morning when he’d dropped Kit off.

Decided to drive her every day. Didn’t want to put her on the bus.

A brown extended-cab Ford F-150 was parked skewed at the curb by the front door. Stylized cursive type in white on the door: “Klumpe Sanitation.” Same colors as the local garbage truck. Broker braked his Tundra halfway up the drive, more alert when he saw the green-and-white Glacier County Sheriff ’s Department Crown Vic parked behind the Ford. No one behind the wheel, it idled empty in a low cloud of creeping exhaust.

Another deep breath. Coincidence? Flags going up? Forcing himself to approach very slowly, he parked behind the cop car, got out deliberately, walked to the school, opened the front door, and-

“Little bitch attacked my Teddy, that’s what!” The shrill voice came from a woman whose gaunt beauty was almost painful to look at; early thirties, dark eyes flashing, long dark hair in motion. She wore snow boots. A ski parka lay on the floor behind her.

Biiig diamond ring.

Oh-kay. Easy does it. Broker’s eyes swept past her, taking in the fact that even undernourished, she’d up the temperature in a room. But his gaze faltered, snagged on the broken intensity of her eyes, the way they seethed in the sockets like two nests of bluebottle flies, feeding off something ugly. Her eyes buzzed at him, her facial expression flitted. Her carefully applied mask of cosmetics barely kept up.

She held a digital camera in her right hand.

The husky cop who belonged to the car outside wore green over brown. He had short-cropped sandy hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses that seemed to emerge naturally out of the tired lines of his oval face. He stood patiently, arms loosely extended, palms out; but a little up on the balls of his feet too, like he got stuck with trying to cover a particularly nasty point guard who was way too fast.

“Now, Cassie, just calm down here,” the cop said. Then he saw Broker come through the door, sized him up fast, and waved his arm to get someone’s attention in the office. Broker, having been announced, turned left, opened the office door, and went in.

There was a counter with three desks behind it, storeroom at the back, three doors on the left. A TV bolted to the wall was tuned to the Weather Channel.

The room was full of women and one tall, thick blond guy wearing a brown jacket; color and white type on the chest matching the truck outside. He seemed not all the way awake, with a stubble of beard gilding his red cheeks and jaw and his short hair sticking up. Broker made his own fast assumption and figured the guy belonged to the woman in the hall; they both had the same manic twitch to their eyes. His blue eyes were several notches lower in velocity than the woman’s; about the ratio that separates a bluebottle from a hatched larva. Both of them unpleasant to the touch.

Okay.

So let the hick games begin. First the cop, now this guy checking him out. Broker held the guy’s sticky scowl for a fraction of a second; enough to absorb the murky heat of someone barely under control. Then the guy jerked his attention into the far door. The one with “Nurse” printed on a sign over the top. Broker anchored down on another slow deep breath. Way more tension poisoning the air than an elementary school office deserved at ten-thirty in the morning.

Then, like the next cue in a choreography the cop in the hall had set in motion, one of the women broke away and approached. She was a tidy fast mover in faded jeans, a snug white sweater, and Nikes. Wheat brown hair cut in a pageboy swung clean above her shoulders. She took his arm with quiet urgency as her direct brown eyes stated simultaneously and emphatically, “I’m here to help, so don’t mess with me.”

“Mr. Broker, right?” Perfectly timed bright smile, expertly smoothing an edge. He nodded. She pressed his arm and guided him toward the other office door to the right. “Kit is fine, she’s in the conference room with a teacher’s aide. Could you come with me, please?”

Broker was led from the office down a side hall, but not before he saw the group move away from the nurse’s office. The guy in the brown jacket had his arm around the shoulder of a stout little boy who raised his arm to wipe tears from his eyes.

He had a spray of fresh blood stippled down the front of his beige SpongeBob T-shirt.

“Oh, honey, look at you. Does it hurt?” said the woman in the hall. She raised her camera and started snapping pictures. Then the end of the hall blocked Broker’s line of sight, and he turned to face the women who’d escorted him from the office and eyed her left hand on his arm. She removed her hand. Out of old habit he noted: no wedding band. As her fast eyes gauged him, the angry female voice started up again around the corner.

“At least this time you’re not blaming him, that’s a switch. You know how they’re always trying to trip him up. You should have more help on the playground to watch out for sneaky little bitches who like to hit people. This is not the end of this.”

“Sneaky little bitch, huh,” Broker said in a neutral tone.

“Hold on. We wait until they leave the building.”

“Uh-huh. So why the cop?”

“That’s Cassie Bodine you hear out there.”

“I see ‘Klumpe’ written all over everything?”

“She’s married to a Klumpe, but she’ll always be Cassie Bodine. The last time we had a scene with her, she threatened the principal…” She knit her smooth forehead. “It’s a special needs case.”