John Irving - Last Night In Twisted River

“Ketchum goes to Toronto for Christmas?” Carl asked the Canuck.

“For as long as I can remember,” Croteau said, which wasn’t very long-not in the cowboy’s estimation. Croteau was in his early twenties; he’d been changing tires only since he got out of high school.

“Does Ketchum have some lady friend in Toronto?” Carl asked. “Or a boyfriend, maybe?”

“Nope,” Croteau replied. “Ketchum said he’s got family there.”

It was the family word that would change everything. The deputy sheriff knew that Ketchum didn’t have a family-not in Canada, anyway. And what family he’d had, the old logger had lost; everyone knew that Ketchum was estranged from his children. Ketchum’s kids were still living in New Hampshire, Carl knew. Ketchum’s children were grown up now, with kids of their own, but they had never moved away from Coos County; they’d just cut their ties to Ketchum.

“Ketchum can’t have any family in Toronto,” the cowboy told the dumb Canuck.

“Well, that’s what Ketchum said-he’s got family there, in Toronto,” Croteau insisted stubbornly.

Later, Danny would be touched that the old logger thought of him and his dad as family; yet that was what gave them away to Carl. The cowboy couldn’t think of anyone whom Ketchum had absolutely taken to-or had seemed at all close to, in the manner of family-except the cook. Nor had it been hard for the ex-cop to follow Ketchum’s truck, unnoticed. That truck burned a lot of oil; a black cloud of exhaust enveloped following vehicles, and Carl had wisely rented an anonymous-looking SUV with snow tires. That December, on the interstate highways of the northeastern United States -they would cross into Canada from Buffalo, over the Peace Bridge -the cowboy’s car was as nondescript as they come. After all, Carl had been a cop; he knew how to tail people.

The cowboy knew how to stake out the house on Cluny Drive, too. It wasn’t long before he was familiar with all of their comings and goings, including Ketchum’s. Of course the cowboy was aware that Ketchum was just visiting. While Carl must have been tempted to kill all three of them, the deputy probably didn’t want to risk going up against the old logger; Carl knew that Ketchum was armed. The house on Cluny Drive was never locked during the day, or at night, either-not until after the last of them, usually the cook, had limped home to go to bed.

It had been easy for the cowboy to get inside and have a good look at the house; that way, Carl knew who was sleeping in each room. But there was more that he didn’t know.

The only gun in the house was the one in the guest bedroom, where it was clear to Carl that Ketchum was staying. The cowboy thought it was an odd gun, or at least an unsophisticated weapon, for Ketchum to be carrying-a youth-model Winchester 20-gauge. (A friggin’ kid’s shotgun, Carl was thinking.)

How could the deputy have known that the Winchester Ranger was Ketchum’s Christmas present for Danny? The old logger didn’t believe in wrapping paper, and the 20-gauge, pump-action shotgun was loaded and stashed under Ketchum’s bed-exactly where the cowboy would have hidden a weapon. It never occurred to Carl that the 20-gauge wouldn’t be going back to New Hampshire with the veteran river driver, whenever it was that Ketchum eventually returned to Coos County. The cowboy would just wait and see when that would be-then make his move.

Carl thought he had several options. He’d unlocked the door to the fire escape in Danny’s third-floor writing room; if the writer didn’t notice that the door was unlocked, the cowboy could enter the house that way. But if Danny saw that the door was unlocked, and re-locked it, Carl could come into the house through the unlocked front door-at any time of the evening, when the cook and his son were out. The cowboy had observed that Danny didn’t go back to his third-floor writing room after he’d had dinner. (This was because of the beer and the red wine; when the writer had been drinking, he didn’t even want to be in the same room with his writing.)

Whether Carl entered the property via the third-floor fire escape or walked in the front door, he would be safe hiding out in that third-floor room; the cowboy only had to be careful not to move around too much, not until the cook and his son were asleep. The floor creaked, Carl had noticed; so did the stairs leading down to the second-floor hall. But the cowboy would be wearing just socks on his feet. He would kill the cook first, Carl was thinking-then the son. Carl had seen the eight-inch cast-iron skillet hanging in the cook’s bedroom; of course the cowboy knew the Injun-killing history of that skillet, because Six-Pack had told him. Carl had amused himself by thinking how funny it would be to be standing in the cook’s bedroom, after he’d shot the little fucker, just waiting for the kid to come to his dad’s rescue with the stupid skillet! Well, if that was how it worked out, that would be okay with the cowboy. What was important to Carl was that he kill them both, and that he drive across the U. S. border before the bodies were discovered. (With any luck, the cowboy could be back in Coos County before then.)

The old sheriff was a little worried about encountering the Mexican cleaning woman, whose comings and goings weren’t as predictable as the cook’s-or the no-less-observable habits of his writer son. Compared to Lupita suddenly showing up to do a load or two of laundry, or compulsively attacking the kitchen, even Ketchum’s routine was reasonably consistent. The logger went to a Tae Kwon Do gym on Yonge Street for a couple of hours every day. The gym was called Champion Centre, and Ketchum had found the place by accident a few years ago; the master instructor was a former Iranian wrestler, now a boxer and a kickboxer. Ketchum said he was working on his “kicking skills.”

“Dear God,” the cook had complained. “Why would an eighty-three-year-old man have an interest in learning a martial art?”

“It’s more mixed martial arts, Cookie,” Ketchum explained. “It’s boxing and kickboxing-and grappling, too. I’m just interested in finding new ways to get a fella down to the ground. Once I get a guy on the ground, I know what to do with him.”

“But why , Ketchum?” the cook cried. “How many more fights are you planning to be in?”

“That’s just it, Cookie-no one can plan on being in a fight. You just have to be ready!”

“Dear God,” Dominic said again.

To Danny it seemed that Ketchum had always been getting ready for a war. Ketchum’s Christmas present to the writer, the Winchester Ranger, with which Danny had killed three deer, appeared to emphasize this point.

“What would I want with a shotgun, Ketchum?” Danny had asked the old logger.

“You’re not much of a deer hunter, Danny-I’ll grant you that-and you might never go back to hunting deer,” Ketchum began, “but every household should have a twenty-gauge.”

“Every household,” Danny repeated.

“Okay, maybe this household especially,” Ketchum said. “You need to have a quick-handling, fast-action gun around-something you can’t miss with, in a close situation.”

“A close situation,” the cook repeated, throwing his hands in the air.

“I don’t know, Ketchum,” Danny said.

“Just take the gun, Danny,” the logger told him. “See that it’s loaded, at all times-slip it under your bed, for safekeeping.”

The first two rounds were buckshot, Danny knew-the third was the deer slug. At the time, he’d handled the Winchester appreciatively-not only to please Ketchum, but because the writer knew that his acceptance of the shotgun would exasperate his father. Danny was adept at getting Ketchum and his dad riled up at each other.