Dark Tiger (11 page)

“I had a good pilot,” he said.

“That must be your dog,” said Dunlap, jerking his head in Ralph's direction.

“His name's Ralph,” said Calhoun.

“This is my son, Robert,” said Dunlap. “Robert, come here and meet Mr. Calhoun.”

Robert Dunlap had black hair and pale blue eyes and neatly trimmed black stubble on his cheeks and chin. He was a few inches shorter than Calhoun but stocky and strong looking. His green shirt was identical to Marty's.

Robert held out his hand. The anger and tension Calhoun had seen in him a few minutes earlier was gone. Now he was smiling. “Welcome to Loon Lake, Mr. Calhoun,” he said.

Calhoun nodded. “You can call me Stoney.”

Robert nodded. “Sure.”

There was a golf cart parked on the dock. Marty Dunlap went over and spoke to the young man who was sitting behind the wheel, a lanky redheaded guy who looked like a college kid, also wearing a dark green shirt with the triple-
L
logo over the pocket. The young guy nodded and steered the cart over to where the Twin Otter was parked, and he and Curtis Swenson began unloading supplies from the plane and piling them into the little wagon that the golf cart was towing.

Marty Dunlap came back to Calhoun and said, “Let's show you your cabin. You can settle in, get your gear stowed away. Dinner's not for a couple hours. Robert, let's help Stoney with his stuff.”

Robert gave a little shrug, then hefted Calhoun's duffel onto his shoulder. Marty took a couple of gear bags. Calhoun carried the bundle of fly rods and the last gear bag, and they all trooped off the dock and along a path that followed the rocky lakeshore past a big boathouse to the cluster of cabins.

All of the cabins had screened porches across the front. Marty pushed open the screened porch door of one of the cabins. The porch was furnished with a small square table and chairs plus two comfortable-looking rocking chairs, and there was a wood box full of cut and split firewood.

Robert opened the cabin door and they went inside. It was a single big room with a kitchen area at one end and a bed at the other end and plenty of windows. On the back wall was a woodstove with a sofa and some chairs clustered around it. Under a double window on the front wall was an eating table with four wooden chairs. There was a big closet in the back corner by the head of the bed, and a chest of drawers sat at the foot. A bookcase in the corner was packed with paperback books.

Marty opened a door on the back wall. “Bathroom,” he said. “You got a toilet and a shower and plenty of hot water.”

“All the comforts of home,” said Calhoun.

“No TV,” said Robert.

“I don't have a TV at home, either.”

“No telephone,” said Marty, “and no cell phone reception, I'm afraid. We've got a satellite phone at the lodge that our guests can use for emergencies.”

“That's the way it should be,” said Calhoun. “Place like this, up here in the howling wilderness.”

“Wilderness, all right,” Robert said. “Though it doesn't exactly howl. Electricity from our generators and hot running water and flush toilets. Not to mention gourmet food.”

“It's wilderness enough,” said Marty.

“Sure,” said Robert. “Luxury wilderness for the rich dudes.” He jerked his head at the door. “Come on. Let's let Stoney get himself settled in.”

“Right.” Marty nodded. “Dinner's at six in the main lodge. Use the back door. Guides' dining room'll be right there on your left.”

After the Dunlap men left in their matching khaki pants and green shirts and their quiet father-son tension, Calhoun found a bowl, filled it with water, and put it on the floor next to the sink. Ralph drank half of it, then lay down on the braided rug in front of the woodstove and went to sleep. Calhoun opened his duffel on the bed, hung his shirts and pants in the closet, and dumped his socks and underwear in the chest of drawers. Then he took his fly boxes and reels and other fishing stuff out of the gear bags and laid it all out on the table. He stuck his Colt Woodsman .22 in the drawer of the table beside his bed, and he propped up the aluminum tubes holding his fly rods in the corner.

He turned on his cell phone, saw that there was no service, turned it off, and stuck it in the bureau drawer where he'd dumped his socks. He put his deputy's badge in that drawer, too.

After he finished unpacking, he lay down on the bed, laced his hands behind his neck, and closed his eyes. He thought about Kate. No phone service meant he wouldn't be able to talk to her while he was up here. Marty Dunlap had been pretty clear that his satellite phone was for guests with emergencies, by which he meant that it was not for guides, whether or not they had emergencies. Not that most people would think talking to Kate would constitute an emergency, but it felt fairly urgent to Calhoun.

It had been sweet of her to come to his house last night to try to patch things up between them, even if it didn't work out. She'd wanted something from him that he couldn't give her, which was nothing new. So she went home madder than when she'd arrived, and now he faced a month without any chance to patch things up with her.

If he'd played it differently, if he'd defied Mr. Brescia and made Kate promise not to say anything to anybody and then hinted to her, at least, about why he had to come to Loon Lake, she might've kissed him before she left, might've even stayed for a sleepover . . .

He drifted off, thinking about Kate, the smell of her hair in his face, the feel of her skin against his, and then he was easing along a jungle path holding a machete in both hands. There were shouts coming from behind him, and he tried to run, but the path was muddy, and his bare feet kept getting sucked down. When he came to a bend in the path, he saw a woman's face peering out from a box with bars made from thick twisted vines. She was naked, and through the leafy vines Calhoun
caught a glimpse of a breast and a bare leg. He stood there ankle deep in the muddy pathway holding his machete like a baseball bat. The woman was whispering to him in some foreign language he didn't understand. She seemed to be laughing and crying at the same time. He tried to move closer to her, but his feet were stuck in the mud, and then she began shouting at him, and he tried to tell her that he was going to save her, but the words stuck in his throat. He swung his machete at the bars that imprisoned her, but he couldn't reach them, and the shouting from behind him became louder. They were shooting at him, and cannons were going
boom
,
boom
, and then the woman's face disappeared . . .

Even as he dreamed it, he knew this was one of his old nightmares. As he forced himself to wake up, the cannons shooting in the dream became a fist pounding on his cabin door.

He sat up, rubbed his face, and tried to shake away the disorienting remnants of his dream.

There were several variants to this dream, but they always featured the same woman, and she always needed to be rescued, and Calhoun always failed. He wondered who she was. Somebody from his unremembered life, he was sure of that. Someone he'd once loved. He knew that from how he felt about her in his dreams.

He blew out a breath and called, “Come on in. It ain't locked.”

The door opened and a tall, lanky man stepped into the cabin. He had a long, deeply tanned, creased face, dark eyes, and black hair pulled straight back into a ponytail. It was hard to guess his age. He could've been forty or sixty.

Ralph uncoiled himself from the braided rug and went over to sniff the man's cuffs.

“That's Ralph,” said Calhoun. “I'm Stoney. Stoney Calhoun.”

“I'm Franklin,” said the man. He reached down and scratched the back of Ralph's neck. “Franklin Delano Redbird. Your fellow guide. Sorry if I woke you up.”

Calhoun shrugged. “That's okay.”

“I came to take you to dinner,” said Franklin Delano Redbird. “Your dog, too. He's welcome in the guides' dining room. I can show you how things work around here, if you want.”

Calhoun went over to where Franklin Redbird was standing inside the door and held out his hand. “That's very generous of you,” he said. “I accept. I appreciate it.”

“I got the day off tomorrow,” said Franklin Redbird. “We can take out a canoe, do some fishing, give you a feel for the lakes, if you'd like.”

“You must have something better to do on your day off,” said Calhoun.

Franklin shrugged. “I got no interest in driving down to St. Cecelia, picking up a woman, getting drunk, gambling away my paycheck. That's the other option. I'd rather go fishing.”

“Well,” Calhoun said, “thank you. I'd love to go fishing with you.”

“It's a date, then.”

“Excuse my manners,” said Calhoun. “Come on in. Have a seat.” He gestured at the chairs by the woodstove. “I don't know what I've got here to offer you.”

Franklin went over and sat down. “There should be a six-pack of beer and some Cokes stocked in your refrigerator,” he said. “I'll have a Coke.”

Calhoun went to the refrigerator and took out two Cokes. He went over, handed one of them to Franklin Redbird, then sat beside him.

Franklin talked about the fishing, which had been good, and the food, which was always excellent, and the sports, who
were mostly rich and powerful and demanding. Once in a while you'd get a client who really loved fishing, but most of them already had so much excitement in their important lives that catching a few fish, even wild native brook trout and landlocked salmon, didn't seem to matter very much, although if you couldn't put them on some fish, they wouldn't hesitate to let you know that they didn't like it. “Well,” he said, narrowing his dark eyes at Calhoun, “you're a guide. You know how it is.”

Calhoun nodded. “Lately I've been trying to guide only people whose company I think I'll enjoy.”

“You won't have that luxury at Loon Lake.”

He shrugged. “I'm only here for a month. Six weeks at the most. I'll do what I have to do.”

Franklin nodded. “It was odd, about Bud.”

“Bud,” said Calhoun. “The guide whose place I'm taking?”

“Yes. One day he's out guiding, the next morning he's in the Cessna and Curtis is flying him home. No warning, nothing. He didn't even say good-bye to anybody.”

“I heard he had a sick child at home,” said Calhoun, although he knew the whole thing had been orchestrated by Mr. Brescia to create the opportunity for Calhoun to come up here and figure out what McNulty had been up to.

Franklin nodded. “That's what they told us. A sick child. It just seemed kind of fishy to me.”

“What else could it be?”

“I don't know. It was almost as if they wanted to get rid of him.” Franklin shrugged. “Bud was lazier than most guides. Maybe that was it. Though if that was the case, I don't know why they didn't just fire him.”

“He'll be back,” said Calhoun, “and when he comes back, I'll be gone. Doesn't sound like somebody they're trying to get rid of.”

“Peculiar,” said Franklin. “That's how it seemed to me. Something's not right.”

“This all happened right after McNulty got killed, didn't it?”

Franklin snapped his head around and looked hard at Calhoun. “What's your interest in McNulty?”

Calhoun shrugged. “Nothing. I just heard about this guy named McNulty who was a guest here and ended up getting killed.”

“No connection to Bud Smith at all,” said Franklin, “and if you want my advice, you won't mention anything about McNulty and that girl getting shot. It's a sore subject.”

“Embarrassing, huh?” said Calhoun. “Bad for business.”

“I'm serious,” said Franklin. “Forget about McNulty.”

I don't see how I can,
Calhoun thought.
Finding out about McNulty is why I'm here
.

“Okay,” he said. “I get it. Thanks for the advice.”

Franklin stood up. “Dinner's in an hour. I'm headed back to my cabin, get cleaned up. See you there.”

Calhoun nodded. He stood up and held out his hand. “Thanks for everything. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.”

“Me, too,” said Franklin Redbird. Then he walked out of the cabin.

 

 

 

 

Dinner was thick slices of pork tenderloin with homemade applesauce, boiled red potatoes drenched in butter and sprinkled with chives and parsley, fresh peas, tossed green salad, and hot biscuits, all served family style on platters and in bowls, with big slabs of warm apple pie for dessert. Calhoun couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten such a delicious meal.

The food was delivered by a young woman who Calhoun guessed was a college student. Her name was Robin. She wore a green T-shirt with the Loon Lake Lodge logo over her left breast and snug-fitting blue jeans and sneakers. She had short blond hair and long legs and a pretty smile. When she saw Ralph lying beside Calhoun's chair, she went down onto her knees and bent her head close to his and patted him and talked to him for a minute. Then she went back to the kitchen. When she returned, she had a bowl of dog food for Ralph.

She put it on the floor near him. He scrambled to his feet and attacked the food bowl.

“Thanks,” said Calhoun. “On behalf of my dog, whose manners could stand some improvement.”

“Does he like breakfast, too?”

Calhoun nodded. “He'll eat anytime, all the time. He's a dog. I generally feed him in the morning and evening.”

Robin smiled. “We'll take care of feeding him when you're here, if you want. Just bring him with you. He's a sweetie.”

The guides' dining room was right off the kitchen. It was a pleasant wood-paneled space with a wall-sized window on one end overlooking the lake. A mounted brook trout that might've weighed eight pounds and a salmon that must've gone close to six, plus several antlered deer heads and a bearskin, hung on the walls.