Chapter Five

“How many dogs?” Doc Meijers barked.

Six hours later Doc and Sam sat in Ed’s bar, a checkerboard on the table between them, Sam’s acorn-brown Resistol cowboy hat on the seat beside him. It was crowded tonight, despite the weather, and Sam had to lean forward across the battered wood table to be heard. “Well, figure fifteen mushers with eight to ten dogs each…”

He shrugged, sitting back in the booth. Doc could do the math well enough himself.

The Coot Lake police chief was in his early sixties and had a bit of a paunch and the sort of well-weathered, scowling face that frightened everyone but very small children who hadn’t the brain cells to know any better yet. Little kids loved Doc Meijers.

Doc muttered something, but the jukebox started up with Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” and his words were lost in the wave of feminine hostility.

“Yup,” Sam replied because he was pretty sure he knew the gist of what Doc had said.

Carrie complained about restroom cologne—which, as it happened, Ed made sure to keep in stock—and Sam drank Sam Adams and watched Doc bitch to himself as he captured two of Sam’s men.

By the time the song had wound down, so had Doc.

To a degree, anyway. “Goddamn fool, that Karlson,” he shouted into the sudden lull in sound.

Fortunately, Ed’s was the kind of dive where no one looked up. Ed had taken the former VFW post—fake wood paneling and all—run a counter across the back, bought some secondhand tables and chairs, mounted a stuffed bobcat on the back wall, and called it a day. No one knew what the bobcat was for—wasn’t like there were any live ones locally. Sam had always figured the bobcat was Ed’s idea of decoration. Either that or he’d gotten it free.

Ed’s was the only place open past eight on a Friday night in Coot Lake, so if you didn’t want to drive a ways—and who wanted to in a blizzard?—Ed’s was it. Right now there was a table of women of a certain age to the side of the room. Becky the dispatcher was one of the women. She’d recently got a new dye job that was an eye-popping purplish red, even in the bar’s dim lighting. When asked, everyone said it looked real good on her—especially when Becky gave them the squint-eye. The ladies were sharing a plate of Ed’s microwaved nachos and a pitcher of beer, and they looked scarier than anyone else in the room.

That was saying something, because a bunch of big guys in plaid and Sorels were at a back booth—probably some of Karl’s musher friends. Tick, one of the two other Coot Lake policemen besides Sam, had returned from his aunt’s in Fergus. Tick had the night shift, though he was taking his dinner break right now. He was leaning his skinny ass on a stool at the bar, talking away to a bored-looking Ed as he ate his greasy burger-and-fries dinner. Tick had recently grown a soul patch below his bottom lip and seemed pretty proud of it, despite Doc muttering that it looked like a spider had died on his chin.

The final member of the Coot Lake police force, Dylan Rorsky, was off duty and on what passed for a dance floor at Ed’s, along with Haley Anne, one of the waitresses at the Laughing Loon Café. Dylan was only twenty-three, with a face so fresh and unlined it made Sam feel ancient—especially with what Dylan was doing with Haley Anne on the dance floor. Haley Anne wasn’t even a year out of high school. She had pink streaks in her dark hair and a ring through her bottom lip that bobbled when she smiled. Sam was trying hard not to look too long in their direction, because last time he had he’d been kinda scarred.

“You’d think after that last fiasco,” Doc said, still harping on the mushers, “Karl would’ve thought ahead to getting a permit.”

“Not sure Karl does much thinking ahead.” Sam jumped one of Doc’s men and took it off the board.

“Say that again.” Doc grunted moodily and took a sip of his Schell’s—the only beer Ed kept on tap. He nudged one of his pieces forward. “And he’s not the only one. Didya know Tick confiscated a whole bunch of firecrackers from some teenagers last week and just yesterday was asking if he could set them off in the municipal parking lot?”

Sam winced. “He’s not so bad.”

“And Dylan.” Doc shook his head as if the youngest member of the Coot Lake police force had only days to live. “That girl he’s with is a menace. Only a matter of time before Dylan forgets the condom and we wind up with a shotgun wedding.”

Sam shrugged. “He could do worse than Haley Anne.”

The outer door opened, blowing in freezing wind and snow and May Burnsey.

Sam randomly moved a piece.

Doc grunted and took his only king. He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder at the door when he asked, “That Maisa Burnsey just came in?”

Nothing he could reply would gain him anything but embarrassment, so Sam took another sip of his beer. She’d made it very clear that she didn’t want to see him tonight. Only a jerk would assume she’d come in just for him.

May was stomping her boots, looking around the room. She caught sight of him and even across the room he could see her eyes narrow. Sam nodded at her. She started weaving through the tables, and it kind of looked like she might be headed in his direction, but as she passed the group of middle-aged ladies Becky caught her. May leaned down to say something.

“I heard you stopped Maisa this afternoon,” Doc rumbled.

“Becky gossips too much.”

Doc raised a pointed eyebrow.

“She was speeding.” Sam checked, but he was pretty sure he didn’t sound defensive.

“Son,” Doc said, using his heavy paternal voice, so Sam must’ve been off on his self-assessment. “That woman isn’t for you.”

Sam raised his Sam Adams to his lips rather than say something he might regret later.

May had shed her jacket. She wore a soft sweater that outlined and cupped her breasts. Every man in the room—excepting Doc, who still hadn’t turned—had his eyes on her.

“She’s city.” Doc looked at him significantly. “And she’s George Johnson’s niece—and you know darn well what George is.”

Sam winced, thinking of the crude tattoos Old George sported on both hands. Each knuckle—the ones he had left anyway—had a Cyrillic letter and a symbol of some kind. There were ornate crosses, strange Xs, skulls, and half circles that looked like moons—and those were only on the parts of his body they could see. God only knew what he hid beneath his clothes. Tats were pretty popular nowadays, but generally not the kind that George sported.

The kind that meant he either was or had been Russian mafiya.

“We have no proof,” Sam said low, because even though the jukebox had started into Styx—Ed’s musical tastes were kind of all over the board—he didn’t want to be overheard. “For all we know Old George was a victim of communist Russia and spent time in the gulag.”

“Then what’s he doing with a last name like Johnson?” Doc grunted and pushed one of his men into the last row on Sam’s side of the board. “King me. Bet on it—he’s in hiding from something or someone.”

Sam grimaced—both because he was losing the checkers game and because this wasn’t the first time they’d discussed Old George, his Russian accent, his mafiya tats, and his odd choice of retirement place. Hardly anyone moved to Coot Lake unless they had some kind of tie to the community. It wasn’t like Coot Lake was on the Most Scenic Small Towns list.

He glanced up and found May watching him. She hastily looked away, smiling at one of the women at the table. Someone had found a chair for her and she was sipping a half-full plastic cup of beer. What was she up to?

“You gonna move?” Doc growled.

“Sure.” Sam took another of Doc’s men, making the older man scowl. “Did Becky happen to mention the wreck up on 52?”

“Guy went into the ditch?” Doc asked without really asking. “Becky said it happened right in front of you.”

“Yup. Definitely speeding. Nearly took me out when he went by. But,” Sam said hastily as Doc opened his mouth, “that’s not why I brought it up.”

“Then why?”

“The driver had a Russian accent.”

Doc jumped four of Sam’s men, starting with the one that Sam had just moved and effectively ended the game.

“Well, shit,” Sam said, staring down at the ruins of his defenses.

Doc shook his head and began gathering pieces. “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: Can’t get too attached to your pieces. Sometimes you gotta sacrifice a man. You play afraid and you’ll never win any game.”

Sam flinched at the thought of sacrificing a man. He took a sip of beer to cover.

Doc eyed him, but didn’t ask. He never did, which Sam appreciated. He glanced at the ladies’ table, but May was determinedly looking away from him.

Tick zipped up his parka, waved farewell to the room at large, and left, presumably to tend to the wrecks up on 52. The jukebox started playing something slow Sam didn’t recognize. One of the mushers broke from the pack, the others catcalling and slapping him on the back. He started toward May.

Well, that just wasn’t happening.

“ ’Scuse me.” Sam drained his beer bottle and stood.

Doc muttered something behind him, but Sam ignored him.

He had his sights set on an ornery little brunette.