Chasing a Blond Moon(131)

They collected their gear after eating, left some cash on the table, and walked out to their trucks.

“I’m going to put the dog in the evidence locker tonight, extract the slug tomorrow.”

McCants opened her cooler and took out an evidence bag. “What do I do with this?” she asked, holding up the gall in the plastic bag.

“Put it in the freezer. We might use it for a buy sometime down the road.”

“Always thinking,” she said.

Not long thereafter he was in his old cabin, taking in how barren it was. He peeled off his bloody, muddy clothes and dropped them in a heap. He grabbed a blanket and stretched out on the footlockers that for so many years had served as his bed. He no longer lived in the cabin, but kept it maintained year-round. A thin cushion served as the mattress, and tonight he could feel the hardness of the footlockers pressing against him, but he was tired and set his wristwatch alarm for 7 a.m. Discomfort was part of the job, always had been, always would be. It was fine to sit in an office talking on the phone and looking at a computer, but discomfort and pain told you that you were doing something real. Tonight he felt like he had done real work and he went to sleep almost immediately.

He awoke to the buzz of his watch alarm, heard and felt his knees and shoulder pop when he got off the footlockers and went into the shower, which was built against the wall on the ground floor in the main living area. The upper floor of the cabin remained unfinished. He stood in the shower under scalding water, watched his skin turn red. When he finished rinsing off the soap, he grabbed a towel he’d slung over the shower wall and stepped out, drying his hair.

“Geez-oh-pete, youse shoulda done that last time we talked, hey.”

He pulled the towel from his eyes and saw Honeypat holding up his blood-drenched pants and smiling. She was wearing cutoffs, and a charcoal gray tank top. Her hair stuck out at angles and badly needed combing. She wore ankle-high hiking boots that had seen a lot of use. She was dressed but looking more like the Honeypat of old.

His nose told him that coffee was brewing. He glanced over at the pot.

Honeypat said, “It’s stale, but what the hey. Good to start the day with a jolt. I seen youse at Guilfoyle’s last night.”

He had not seen her.

She made a face and dropped his clothes on the floor. “I like a man isn’t afraid ta get bloody,” she said with a lecherous smile.

“You saw me last night?”

“With McCants. But I’m gettin’ me a better look here, hey.”

“What do you want, Honeypat?”

She winked at him. “What I need youse ain’t gonna give up, so I’m tellin’ youse, word’s goin’ ’round some tootsie from Wisconsin killed Outi.”

“The radio said it was a suicide.”

“Youse were at da house, you seen her. Don’t it strike you a bit odd, a woman killin’ another woman just ’cause she give it up?”

Had she been watching his cabin? “I expect you have a theory.”

“What I know is ain’t many women gonna drive that far and use a pistol in cold blood. In ta heat, sure—pow. But cold blood?” She grimaced and shook her head.

“What do you care?”

“She was my friend and it worries me that maybe Limpy learned about us.”

Service considered confronting her with what Outi had told him, but held back to hear what else she would say.

Honeypat walked over to the coffeepot, blew dust out of a couple of mugs, filled one of them, brought it to him, held it out.

When he took the cup her other hand shot under the towel and pressed firmly between his legs.

“Oh, what I could do with that guy!” she said.

He tried to turn away, but she pivoted with him, kneading and laughing until he twisted away, spilling some of the coffee on the floor.

“You broke into my cabin.”

“Door was unlocked,” she countered.

Probably true. He rarely locked it. “Get out,” he said.

She pursed her lips, shook her head, and walked toward the door where she stopped and looked back at him. “Youse don’t use that guy, youse could lose him. That’s medical fact.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, following her. “I thought you were on the run from Limpy.”

“No way the old bastard’s findin’ me now. I been with him too long, know all his ways.”

He watched her get in the gray Honda and drive away. The license plate was missing.

He went to his truck, called all channels, asked for a BOLO on the plateless Honda, knew it was a waste of breath. She’d not be found, but it was worth the off chance of hassling her.

There was nothing to eat in the cabin. He dressed in fresh clothes he kept in the Yukon and told himself he had to get home to Gladstone. Home: The word made him smile. The cabin no longer felt familiar. It was the skeletal remains of a former life he had no desire to return to. Home was Gladstone. Walter? No time to think about the boy now.