Max Collins: Quarry's cut

Just Castile and his wife, Janet and me, and of course Waddsworth and Harry.

And then, later than I should’ve, I noticed something about the gun: it seemed light. I’d never used a nickel-plated gun in my life, and rarely used a revolver of any kind, so it took me a while to pick up on it, but just as we’d finished searching the basement, the last and most unsettling stop on our tour, I noticed the gun being light and examined it and said, with some irritation, “Castile… there aren’t any bullets in this fucking thing.”

“What?”

“Bullets. Those little lead things that come flying out when you squeeze the trigger, remember?”

“Let me see it.”

I broke the gun open and showed him.

“It was loaded,” he said. With a little desperation. “There’s a box of ammunition upstairs, in one of my suitcases.”

“Let’s get it.”

We went up to the room he and his wife had recently moved to, and the box of slugs was not there: not in his suitcase, not anywhere.

“Gone,” he said: “Someone… got in here and unloaded the gun, and took the bullets. Jesus!”

Enough of this bullshit. Time to go out to the shed and get the nine-millimeter.

“Castile,” I said, “you and your wife stay here. Janet and I are going outside for a while.”

Castile nodded.

“No,” Janet said.

“We’re safer paired off,” I said. “You’re coming with me.”

“I… I’ll need my jacket… and my glasses…”

“Okay.”

“My jacket’s in the front closet, but…”

“But what?”

“My glasses are… are… in with Harry.”

“I’ll get them for you.”

And I did, and we got our jackets from the front closet and went outside.

It was still cold, but the wind had died. Now, instead of pushing you around, the cold air was settling for cutting through you. Still, it was not an entirely unpleasant sensation, not unlike a splash of water in the face in the morning, waking you up, getting you alert; giving clarity to things.

The sky was clear, now, and stars were out, and the moon, illuminating the white landscape, making the snow glitter in places where the light reflected, giving the grounds of the lodge an aura of peaceful unreality, which was a little disconcerting, at the moment.

Janet huddled close to me, hanging onto my arm like she expected the law of gravity to be revoked any time now. She’d apparently forgotten about being pissed off at me and was concentrating on being scared. She’d glance up at me every few seconds, her eyes somewhat vague behind fogged-up glasses, but there was affection and something resembling trust in the looks she gave me, and I found that oddly reassuring. I liked her. Everybody else around here was weird or dead or both. She was just a little crazy, and pleasantly so. She didn’t belong here.

Me either, but that was beside the point. I was here, and Janet too, and so, it would seem, was Turner. I could only think of two possible scenarios for what had been going on here. First, as I’d suggested to Castile, Turner might’ve come in to talk to Harry, his partner, about the final details of the coming hit, and instead had found Waddsworth dead and possibly his partner the same way, and Turner, like any pro who wandered into a situation like that, would have turned tail and run, which is precisely what he seemed to have done, according to Castile. Or second, perhaps Turner had in fact killed Harry, out of displeasure over Harry getting involved in that Gay Lib love triangle and killing Waddsworth and messing up the contracted-for job; and this made a kind of sense, because once Waddsworth had died, a sheriff’s investigation was a foregone conclusion, and Turner might not have wanted to leave a live partner behind, to talk to the authorities and play plea-bargaining games and eventually involve Turner himself.

While the latter explanation was marginally possible, I just couldn’t see Turner using a knife or razor or whatever and cutting somebody’s throat. Too messy. Just not professional at all. I’d seen the tool of Turner’s trade back in his room at Wilma’s: that Browning automatic with the silencer built in by a gunsmith. And I was not entirely satisfied with the first scenario, either, as it seemed unlikely to me Turner would come into the house prior to actually making the hit. His telephone communications cut off, Turner would signal his partner somehow and then meet him outside for a talk… but inside the lodge? Didn’t make sense.

Neither did the tracks in the snow.

The snow had drifted and in places didn’t come up over my shoes and in other places was up to my waist and to Janet’s boobs. Over in the parking lot the snow-heavy cars were strange shapes amidst rolling drifts of white, while the stretch of ground between the lodge and its tool shed was barely a foot deep. And that was where the set of tracks was visible, two pairs of overlapping footprints leading away from the lodge, another set, a single pair of footprints, leading back. The tracks headed toward the shed but stopped about halfway, where someone had apparently fallen; then a smooth path had been made from that point on, as if by a sled, right up to the double doors of the shed.

Janet and I studied the tracks in silence for a while, then exchanged puzzled looks, and I said, “I’m going in there and have a look.”

“What do I do?”

“Wait here.”

“What… what if somebody’s in there?”

“Then somebody besides me may come out.”

“What do I do then?”

“Make a run for it, wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“You’re joking.”

“Yeah. Right. Me and Waddsworth and Harry’ll all have a laugh about it in the showers after the game.”

“Where… where would I run to?”

“I don’t know. Improvise. Down into the woods would be best. You’re just going to have to fend for yourself.”

“You’re a real comfort.”

“I’m going to work hard at not getting killed in there. That’s the best I got to offer you.”

“Jack…”

“What?”

“I’m just scared, that’s all. Shook up, is all. Jack.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go ahead. Go in your goddamn shed, will you?”

I walked toward the shed. The panel truck parked against it was engulfed in a drift and any thought I might’ve had about somebody hiding in the truck was immediately discarded. As I walked I checked my pockets for possible weapons. At one point I’d had wire cutters, but I’d tossed them away, after snipping the phone wires; I’d had a screwdriver, too, which I left in the shed. Terrific. Well, I had my car keys, and I slid each of three keys between my knuckles so that the jagged-edged little pieces of metal extended from the fist that seemed to be the only weapon I had on me.

I kicked the door open. Why fuck around. And I threw myself in, like you’d throw something down off a truck you were helping unload. The snowmobile stopped me. It’s what I knocked into, and bounced off of, rolling over against the wall and by that time I’d seen that Turner wasn’t in there, and neither was anybody else.

I put my car keys away.

Someone had been in here: apparently whoever it was had tried to start the snowmobile, because the tarp was off and lay bubbled over against the far wall.

I bent over the trunk-like tool chest and opened it and dug down, looking for the nine-millimeter. I came up immediately with the silencer, which I had detached and hidden in there separately, and kept digging and came rapidly to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to find it.

The nine-millimeter was gone.

I stood and indulged in a long sigh and went over and checked the other tool chest, the one with the garden tools, where I’d hidden the rotors from the cars, and checked the jar of nails, where I’d put the sparkplugs from the snowmobile and snowplow and everything was where I put it.