Harry sat on the sofa, still wrapped in his quilt, and drank tea while staring out at the morning through the glass wall. Underneath a rising mist, Ice Lake was a mirror. Harry fantasized that it was a giant portal to another world, a world where this was his house and his son was sitting beside him snuggled up under the quilt… But he had learned long ago that thinking like that was the route to madness.
He used the quiet and the picturesque view to attempt a meditative state of mindlessness that one of his old hippy girlfriends had tried so hard to get him to obtain. Harry had only ever achieved leg cramps. Although he never got to the desired mindlessness, he often found that thinking about thinking cleared his mind and allowed him to organize the problem at hand. But he just didn’t have enough information about the problem of who killed Big Bill to even theorize anything.
Since it seemed like a sacrilege to allow the screech of a TV to disturb the calm, he slipped on a tracksuit and running shoes. With a circumference of just over a mile and a half, Ice Lake was a perfect morning jog. Harry decided on a counterclockwise route and even at this early hour he found himself nodding hello to half a dozen pedestrians, joggers, and dog walkers. At three-quarters of the way around Harry was looking for an excuse to rest and found it when he saw the bakery truck pulling out of old Todd’s Ice Lake Café.
* * *
This time old Todd was behind his counter to greet Harry – if not in the friendliest way.
“You still around?”
“I was lured by the scent of fresh donuts.”
“Yeah, happens all the time. I think they put the same addictive drugs in them that they put in cat food.”
Harry tossed a couple of bucks in the chamber pot and was surprised when Todd waited on him. He poured a cup of coffee and plopped a donut on a paper plate.
“So you’re a conspiracy theory fan?”
“I bought a bunch of that gourmet shit for my cat and now she won’t eat anything else.” Todd licked the glaze off his fingers. “I like a good theory if it fits.”
“Maybe she just has expensive tastes.”
“She’s a fucking cat.”
The donut was fresh and sticky. Harry, too, found himself licking his fingers. “So, Todd – you don’t mind me calling you Todd?”
“What else would you call me?”
“Right, so Todd, do you know anything about fracking going on around here?”
“Yeah, they’re doing it up at the old stone quarry.”
“You seen it?”
“Tried to but they got shitloads of security up there. They’re worried some hippy treehuggers will sabotage it. I hope they do.”
“Not a fracking fan?” Harry said.
“Something that causes earthquakes can’t be a good thing.”
“You think fracking causes earthquakes?”
“I fucking know so. Never had one here until that shit started. I’ve felt two since.”
“You sure it was an earthquake? There’s a train track nearby, could have been a heavy freight train.”
“I grew up in California, Philly boy. I know what a fucking tremor feels like.”
“Did you hear about them planning to open up a fracking well at the Horseshoe?”
Todd placed his coffee cup back on the counter harder than he meant to. “No. Where’d you hear that?”
“A hippy tree-hugger told me.”
The door of the store opened and Mayor Boyce walked in.
Todd saw him and said: “More bad news.”
“Hiya, Mr Cull, you enjoying the cottage?”
“Very much so, Mayor.”
“Please call me Charlie.” The mayor sat and placed two dollars in the chamber pot and helped himself to a coffee and a donut. Todd didn’t wait on this customer. “So what’s the other bad news, Todd?”
“Did you know about fracking up at the Horseshoe?”
If the mayor tried to hide his surprise at the question, he didn’t do it fast enough. “Where did you hear that?”
Todd pointed at Harry.
“Mr Cull, how did you hear about this?”
“Big Bill told some of the local kids the night before he was killed. You knew about it?”
“I can’t comment,” the mayor said.
“Confidentiality clause?” Harry asked.
“Something like that,” the mayor said.
“So are you the broker?”
“Again,” the mayor said, “I really can’t—”
“Of course he’s the fucking broker,” Todd interrupted. “Charlie here’d sell a blind man’s dog if it’d make him a buck.”
The mayor, who usually seemed amused by Todd’s animosity, shot the old man a look that could kill.
“Can you at least tell me who owns the land the Horseshoe is on?” Harry said.
Before the mayor could answer, Todd said: “Shit, I can tell you that for free. All that land was bought up by old man Thomson.”
“Big Bill’s father?”
“Grandfather,” Todd said.
The mayor stood. “I really must excuse myself from this conversation.” He picked up his donut and began to walk out of the store.
“You mean you have to call your oil company buddies and tell them that the cat’s out of the bag?” Todd called after him. When the door closed the old guy added, “Two-faced political corporate fuck puppet.”
“You know, Todd,” Harry said, “you really shouldn’t hold your feelings inside so much. You should say what you mean.”
Todd then did something that surprised Harry – he smiled, a perfect white-denture smile. “How about I fry us up some Spam sandwiches?” he said.
* * *
Harry walked back to the cottage. MK drove up behind him in her pickup truck. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform.
“Aren’t you supposed to be running if you are dressed like that?” she called from the driver’s window.
“Just had one of Todd’s McSpam sandwiches. Thought maybe running was a bad idea.”
“Wow, you got Todd to cook for you? He only does that for pretty girls. He must be sweet on you.”
“Yeah, but he’s not my type.”
“And what is your type, Mr Cull?”
“I like nurses.”
“And here is me thinking you liked strippers.”
“Only the ones dressed like nurses.”
“You boys find any of those last night?”
“Trooper Ed and I didn’t have much fun last night – trust me.”
“Yeah right.”
As she put her truck into gear Harry quickly asked: “Can I buy you clams at the Hillside tonight?”
MK crinkled her nose and said: “What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“It’s chicken wing night.”
“Well, can I buy you some wings?”
She smiled, and Harry’s heart beat just a tad faster. “I’ll meet you there at seven.”
* * *
The lake was icy but the shock was quicker than the slow pain of the cold shower Harry felt he needed. He didn’t stay in long and was dressed and towelling his hair dry when Cirba walked into the house.
“Don’t you need a warrant to just barge in like that?”
“The Big Hat allows me to do anything.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true.” Harry poured two cups of tea from the pot and passed one over to the trooper.
“Don’t you have coffee?”
“Tea is the drink of kings.”
“Didn’t we fight a war to get rid of kings?”
“All is forgiven – didn’t you watch the royal wedding?”
“My wife made me watch it.”
“I rest my case. Hey,” Harry said, “I found out that the Thomsons own the land the Horseshoe is on.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“I got a cup of coffee this morning at the store and old Todd told me. And guess what else? The mayor is the broker on the land deal to the natural gas people.”
“So, let me get this straight, I just spend all morning writing out orders and invoices, forcing bureaucrats to come in on the weekend so they can get paid double time and sort through mountains of deeds and survey maps – and you get the same information just by buying a cup of coffee?”
“Imagine what I would have discovered if Todd served tea?”
“Come on,” Cirba said. “I think it’s time we talked to Frank.”
* * *
Frank Thomson’s home, and the headquarters of Thomson’s Construction, was on a single lane track that spiked off the lake road into the forest. If the road had once been paved then that was a long time ago. Frank’s place was about two miles in and the only house on it. It was a good thing there were no other houses around because no one would want to have Frank for a neighbour. The place was a cross between a bachelor hermit’s house and a timber yard operated by chimpanzees. Everywhere you looked there was timber, bricks, sheet wall covered with flapping industrial plastic, and all sorts of rusting metal. A large corrugated-steel-roofed garage housed a workshop where Harry and Cirba could see the sparks of someone arc-welding through the never-been-cleaned windows.
In a parking area there was a collection of six cars and pickup trucks in every state of repair from pristine to fossilized. Cirba parked his car next to them and together he and Harry walked to the garage door.
The cop opened and knocked on the door at the same time. “Frank, it’s Ed Cirba.”
Inside was no neater than outside. A large man in coveralls was welding two large pieces of steel into a right angle. The beams were precariously balanced on various towers of junk. Harry thought if he sneezed the whole operation would tumble to the ground.
The man turned off his torch and flipped up his face guard. He was the spitting image of the photos Harry had seen of his brother, Big Bill, except with twenty-five more pounds, and grey hair at the temples.
“Did you catch the bastard that shot my brother?” he said, removing his face guard and gloves as he weaved his way through the clutter towards his visitors.
“No. Can we talk to you for a bit?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Frank said, stopping at an old round-cornered refrigerator and taking a can of beer out for himself without offering one to Harry or Ed.
They walked outside and around to a spot that overlooked a horseshoe pit. Underneath a tattered canopy, a bunch of folding beach chairs were arranged in a semicircle. Harry found one that looked as if it would support his weight and sat.
“Frank, this is Harry Cull,” Cirba said. “He’s working with me on this. Like I said the other day, I’m sorry about your brother.”
“I don’t need sorry, I need you to get your finger outta your ass and catch his killer.”
“So you have no idea who could have done it?” Harry asked.
Frank looked to Cirba and said: “I told you all this before.”
Harry sensed that there was too much history between Frank and Cirba for the trooper to do a proper interrogation, so he stepped it up.
“You may have told him but you haven’t told me. Is there anyone you can think of that wanted to do Bill harm?”
“No,” Frank said incredulously.
“Before we figure out who killed Bill we have to figure out why. I understand you were thinking of selling the land out by the Horseshoe for natural gas mining.”
“Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me, is it true?”
Frank looked to Cirba, who said: “Answer the man.”
“Yeah.”
“How come you didn’t tell me this before?” Cirba asked.
“I-I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. They made me sign a paper sayin’ I wouldn’t.”
Harry thought about what one of the teenagers had said at the late-night kegger and decided to make a guess. “And Bill didn’t want to sell?”
“Well the gas people wanted to buy the mineral rights. Granddad bought a hundred acres back there years ago and the gas guys were offering 220 dollars per acre and a percentage of the profits. Bill didn’t like the idea, but I thought I could bring him around. Anyway, I went to the mayor for advice. He got in touch with the gas people and organized a deal where we could sell the land outright and get two million for it.”
“And Bill didn’t want to sell?”
“No! I couldn’t fucking believe it. He kept talking about how much he loved the woods up there and how he felt up his first girl at the Horseshoe and shit like that.”
“And you two had a big fight over that?”
Frank stopped for a moment. “Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who told us,” Harry repeated, “it just matters if it’s true.”
“Wooh whooh,” Frank said. “You think I killed my own brother?”
“Two million is a lot more money than a couple hundred bucks an acre,” Harry said.
“Ed, who is this prick?”
“Frank,” Cirba said calmly, “try not to call my colleague a prick. Just answer his questions.”
“Did you and Bill have a fight about this?”
“Of course we had a fight about it. It’s two fucking million dollars, for Christ’s sake. Who gives up that kind of money so kiddies can get drunk in the woods and shoot at beer cans?”
“Why didn’t he want to sell?”
“He went on about how Granddad took him shooting there and all sorts of sentimental shit. And then there was some bullshit about old man Jeric getting conjunctivitis. If you ask me, it was that stripper filling his head with crap.”
“Like what?”
“She got him reading books and talking shit about making it on your own and how success has to be earned. She’s a fucking stripper, for Christ’s sake.”
“Where were you Wednesday, late morning?”
Frank looked again to Trooper Cirba, who raised his eyebrows back. “I-I was here most of the time. Hey, I didn’t kill him. Nobody kills their own little brother.”
“Actually, Frank, if you read your bible you’ll see that killing one’s own brother is how murder began.”
“Were you here by yourself?”
“Yeah, I’m working on old lady Nowak place. Hey, I went over there. She saw me.”
“When?” Cirba asked.
“’Bout noon.”
“Your brother was shot about eleven,” Harry said. “You got a shotgun?”
“Aw you gotta be shittin’ me,” Frank said, standing and rubbing his face with the palms of both hands. “Of course I have a fucking shotgun. I got three.”
“You mind if we take them with us for a couple of days.”
“No, take ’em.”
They followed Frank to the house until he came to a glass-fronted gun cabinet that contained the three shotguns as well as four rifles and two handguns.
“That’s quite the arsenal.”
“Shiiit,” Frank said, “around here this is nothin’.”
Cirba looked at Harry and nodded in agreement.
“Come out to the car, Frank, and I’ll give you a receipt for these.”
As Cirba put the shotguns in the trunk of the car, Frank said: “You have a good look at them.”
Harry walked right up to Frank and looked him directly in the eyes. “So if you didn’t shoot him, who did?”
“I don’t know. If I did, I’d shoot the fucker. Hey, he did have a beef with the guy that owns the titty bar. Bill told me he sicced one of his bouncers on him one night, and I know Barowski was hassling Billy. He hauled him in last week for like three hours.”
“Why would Officer Barowski be hassling your brother?”
“Over that stripper. Shit, Barowski is in that titty bar guy’s pocket. Everybody knows that.”
* * *
Cirba drove in silence until the end of Frank’s drive. He looked both ways at the deserted intersection but didn’t move. Finally, he said: “I think I need to have a chat with Officer Barowski.”