THWACK!
The blade of the axe sank into the soft wood. The tool hit its mark dead centre—perfectly placed in the middle of the bullseye. The surrounding rings of red and white, on the giant-sized, sanded, and smoothed wooden cookie served as the axe-throwing target. There were more dents, splits, and cuts than I could count where axe blades had pierced and pummeled the pine.
I stood behind and to the left of Harland “Hot Saw” McGraw, in his blind spot. He was a good fifteen feet away from his target. I watched as he pulled one axe after another from the stump in which over a dozen hatchets, cleavers, and tomahawks stuck out at an angle.
With each new tool he yanked free, he flipped it in the air, caught it by the handle, and began his wind-up routine. He was shorter, but bigger than Jasper, and around five-foot-ten. I made him for at least a burly two-hundred and twenty pounds, with a meaty build and arms and legs of a girth similar to the many logs lying everywhere in the competitive woodcutting pit. A shock of bright, flat-top, platinum-blonde hair sat atop his head and his chiseled jawline and posh, sleeveless, grey-and-white camouflage track suit, made him look like an upscale, urban militia survivalist.
“McGraw,” I said, as I approached him in-between his practice throws.
The man better known as “Hot Saw” turned to face me with an axe in hand. The steel blade glinted so brightly in the sunlight it made me squint for a couple of seconds.
“How’d you get back here?” he asked.
“I need a word,” I said, as I approached him.
“Hey, I ain’t got no loggersports hookups, okay? You’re a big boy though, show up at the next try-outs and I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
McGraw sighed, then turned and flung the axe at the target.
Bullseye again.
In fact, he hit the target so perfectly the blade of the axe clanged against the one that was already in the centre red circle, which caused a spark from metal on metal, before the two hatchets rested side-by-side in the worn-in wood.
He placed a big black boot upon a stump and unzipped a front pocket on his camo pants, then retrieved a small notepad and a pen. He flipped through the pages until he found a blank one.
“Who do I make it out to?”
“Excuse me?”
“The autograph.”
I tried not to let slip a chuckle. I had given more than my fair share of autographs over the years, but not once was I ever so audacious that I assumed someone would want it without asking first. I decided to play along.
“Jed Ounstead,” I said.
“Ounstead. Is that with a ‘w’ or a ‘u?’”
“It’s with a PI.”
McGraw stopped writing and looked up at me, confused.
“PI?”
“Yeah, you know. Short for private investigator.”
“What? Why are—who the hell are you?”
“Just a guy working a case. This one being the murder of Jasper Adams.”
McGraw didn’t like that one bit.
“Fuck off,” he said, putting his notepad and pen back into his pocket.
“I know you were just cleared by the Mounties. But since you and Jasper were both up for the STIHL sponsorship, that makes you a person of interest.”
“I said fuck off!” yelled McGraw. “I don’t have to talk to you, and even if I did, do you think I’m stupid enough to do it without my lawyer present? Hit the bricks, Shithead.”
McGraw stormed over to the throwing target and angrily ripped his hatchets out of the bullseye. He shot me a dirty look as he marched back to his throwing perch and plunked the axes back into the stump housing the others. He selected a particularly large axe and pulled it free, then began practicing his swing like a golfer before a drive. I watched in silence as he threw the bigger blade with two hands, its forward rotation slicing through the air, before landing dead centre in the red circle yet again.
McGraw continued throwing axes and paying me no mind. I hesitated before leaving, instead reviewing the facts and what I knew to be true to this point.
Jasper was murdered by an axe to the back of the head.
Pippen confirmed McGraw was not in the loggersports pit at the time of the killing, a point on which the rcmp likely concurred since they released him from custody so quickly.
McGraw came from a wealthy family.
Kooty made it clear that McGraw wanted the STIHL sponsorship.
But unlike Jasper, McGraw couldn’t have desired it for the money. Which meant his motivation must have been the prestige associated with the title and honour of repping STIHL. If he didn’t need the dough, and if McGraw’s family already had a lot of it, was it just a coincidence Declan and I had found a bag full of bills stuffed inside Jasper’s locker that up until now only we knew about, save for Sykes whom I had told and, apparently, Kelly Lewis? How many people did Jasper know, let alone those who worked at, or were associated with, a country fair, who would be able to get their hands on that kind of cash?
Dots connected quickly in my head, and while it was certainly a gambit, it wasn’t a thought without merit. I didn’t see a downside to my spur-of-the-moment theory since McGraw had shut me down and clearly wasn’t going to talk to me anymore. So, I figured what the hell.
“Okay, ‘Hot Saw,’” I said. “You win. But if you’re not going to talk to me, then I guess I have no choice but to go to the RCMP and tell them about the big bag of cash you used to pay off Jasper so he would withdraw from competing for the STIHL sponsorship.”
My words landed harder than any axe McGraw had flung. He jerked upward so quickly mid-throw that his two-handed axe flew wildly, flipped blade-over-handle at twice the speed I had witnessed earlier, before soaring ten feet over the red-and-white mark and beyond.
His cheeks flushed crimson, and when he looked at me, I could see the fear appear on his face faster than it took one of the axes he had been hurling to hit its target. We stood in silence staring at one another, and while his mouth was agape, I did my best to keep mine from curling into a satisfied smile.
“Bullseye,” I said out loud.