Harry Griffin drove toward his house nearer to town, on the south end of the lake, something Broker said sticking in his mind. He just couldn’t see Jimmy coming in stealthy through the woods on skis. Jimmy was strictly a tub-of-guts, snowmobile kind of guy.
Have to think about that. Then he turned his attention to Broker. Edgy, sure, but above all, a measured control freak. Throwing that choke hold on Jimmy in a schoolyard in front of the sheriff? That was looking like a loose cannon. Very un-Broker-like.
Harry knew that Broker believed in walling off his ghosts and personal monsters in a system of compartments. Well, it looked like the locks on his control method were starting to go.
In Harry’s estimation, Broker had been running damn near thirty years of rope. And now he had reached the end of his tether. In fact, Broker’s life had come to resemble a proof of the old Chinese adage: be careful what you wish for. You might get it. He had wanted to reunite his splintered family ever since Nina returned to active duty after Kit was born. Now he had. And look what it was doing to him.
The quiet snow-cloaked woods slid by, his asylum and buffer to a world spinning out of control. Being in proximity to Broker the last three months had started to pry at Harry’s own system of controls. The life choices he’d made.
He had walked away from the madness. Broker and Nina were still out there trying to fix it.
And Broker had that judgmental cop streak; never actually came out and said it, but sometimes Griffin got the feeling Broker thought he had turned tail and run.
Griffin swung into his driveway, drove past the pole barn that housed a rock splitter and the long attached shed with bins for fieldstone and masonry sand. Coming up on the house, he smiled and shook his head when he saw Susan Hatch’s tan Honda CRV parked at his back door.
Susan, his on-again, off-again girlfriend. Broker said she’d taken him aside at school this morning. Damn. The woman was more curious than a cat. Her ex-husband had taken their daughter to visit his parents in Bemidji, where he now lived. Susan had the night off.
He went inside, removed his boots and parka on the mud porch, and entered the main living area; one long vaulted room with a kitchen at one end and a massive stone fireplace at the other. A stairway led to another level below, built into the bluff overlooking the lake.
Susan rose from a chair by the hearth to greet him. She’d built up the fire, burned some incense, and made herself comfortable, stripping out of her school clothes and pulling on the shiny threadbare black silk kimono he’d picked up in Bangkok a long time ago. He could almost feel her earnest energy throb across the room; big brown eyes wide open, ears alert for new information.
Susan glided through the firelight playing off the pine paneling with a swish of silk on bare skin. Her eyes and the way she moved always said it the same way: Old wolf like you is never gonna get another chance like this…
She capitalized on her lean, angular physicality, a type Griffin had always found irresistible; what she lacked in padding she made up for in extra-fast-fire nerve clusters packed close to the surface. She had discovered that Harry Griffin, tight-lipped, rugged to a fault in all the other areas of his life, had a pillow-talk Achilles’ heel.
“How’d it go?” she asked, casually shaking out the snare of her curiosity.
Susan knew a little about the Brokers, the new folks in town and therefore a focus of gossip. She knew Broker and Harry had been in Vietnam together for a long time. She knew Broker had been a cop. But she knew virtually nothing about the mysterious “Mrs. Broker.” Now, like all the women at the school, she was anxious to hear more.
Griffin shrugged. “We’ll get it fixed. Keith’s doing his peacemaker number, filling in the background on Jimmy. Why he’s a hair-trigger mess. Took Broker out and showed him the Bodine house, explained about Cassie and the Sweitz kid. The fire. The pollution mess. The skeleton house.”
“Did Keith tell him Gator Bodine burned the place? With the town’s blessing?” Susan asked.
“C’mon, that’s hearsay. Nobody knows for sure; all the flammable crap they had in there, anything could have set it off,” Griffin said, mouthing the official line.
Susan wrinkled her nose. “Right,” she said. “Ruled an accident. No real autopsy. Not what Jeff Tindall said…”
Jeff owned the hardware store and was a volunteer fireman.
Susan continued. “Jeff says the people in that house got real confused because they crammed themselves into this tiny, centrally located bathroom. Stoutest room in the house. Good plan for a tornado. Not so good for an exploding meth lab. Jeff found them stuck together”-she wrinkled her pert nose-“layered, kinda like lasagna.”
Griffin made an effort to ward her off with his eyes, like he always did, for starters.
“Everyone believes it was Gator, avenging that little girl. He always hated his cousins, going way back. Maybe he saw it as sticking up for his wronged sister, like he always does-”
“Small-town gossip,” Griffin said.
Susan didn’t even pause. “He went over there, saw what happened, called Keith to get the children out and went back that night and killed his own kin,” she said, moving in close. “You know that, like Keith knows it. Everybody knows they have a deal. Since Marci Sweitz died, Keith keeps Gator out there, stalking down anybody cooking that stuff. In return he lets a felon have guns and hunt in the woods. You know that just like you know a lot of things about your pal Broker and his wife-don’tcha.”
She eased up and nuzzled his throat, following the angle of his chin with lips and tongue, bit his earlobe, and then moved on to his mouth.
Harry pulled back. “C’mon. I been sitting in the Jeep chain-smoking and pounding down coffee for two hours. I gotta brush my teeth-”
“Or,” she whispered, pressing against him and tilting her face up, bold, “you could dip your face in something sweet…”
For Susan, sex was merely prelude to the talk that followed. Griffin had come to think of these long talks as the job interview for the open position of long-haul partner and stand-in father figure to Susan’s daughter. Trust was an important part of the negotiation.
And trust was achieved through the sharing of personal information.
Griffin sat naked on the rug in front of the hearth. Susan reclined in front of him, firelight tracing the curve of her hips and good legs. Legs crossed, he worked with a needle, thread, and some stuffing from an old life jacket. Squinting, he methodically ran the needle in and out, repairing the blue-and-white bunny. Good with his hands. At fifty-eight, he could lay stone all day, come home, go belly to belly with a woman twenty years younger, and still thread a needle.
“You know,” she said in a dreamy voice, “you and Broker are kinda the same size from a distance. Anybody ever have trouble telling you apart in the dark?”
Griffin ignored her. He recalled a TAC sergeant in Ranger school who used to call them “Heckel and Jeckle,” but damned if he was going to tell her.
“So you gonna tell me what you’re doing?” she asked with one of his Luckies hanging from the corner of her mouth.
“Nope.” It amazed Griffin, how she could stretch out naked on the rug and smoke just one cigarette. He fluffed the toy, inspected the restored proportions, and decided Kit would never know her bunny had been disemboweled by a ski pole. He set the bunny aside.
“Code of the West? Post-Vietnam Lost Boys Sacred Oath?” Susan arched an eyebrow. “Just what is your pact with Phil Broker?” She leaned forward and trailed her fingers over the thick blight of withered scar tissue that wrapped the muscle above his left knee. “Does it have something to do with this?”
He removed her hand, reached over, plucked the smoke from her lips, and took a drag. Gave it back. “What’s the point?” he asked.
Susan studied the burning cigarette between her fingers, looked up. “Maybe I can help.”
Griffin grumbled but did not break eye contact. Encouraged, Susan continued. “I’ve been watching Kit Broker at school. She plays alone. She’s way too self-contained for an eight-year-old. She’s learned how to distance. Knows how to deflect any questions about her family, her past. It’s like she’s being…coached. That’s masking behavior…stuff you might see in kids with abuse at home, or criminal activity.”
Griffin uncrossed his legs, recrossed them, reached for his own cigarette, lit it. Stared at her.
“What’s Kit got at home?” Susan asked. “What’s the big deal? You tell people he works on your crew, but he really doesn’t. He hardly ever shows up. You’re providing sanctuary. Why?”
Griffin stared at the fire and thought about it. After Nina had her head-on collision with depression, Broker had called in some chits. He’d just been up for deer hunting and knew the house on the lake was unoccupied for the winter. It was the perfect remote retreat for Nina to tough it out…
He engaged the concern in Susan’s eyes. True. They had not considered Kit as a factor. Figured she’d go along as obedient baggage. Now Susan was raising flags. He turned from the fire and faced her.
“You’re asking a lot,” he said.
Susan shrugged her bare shoulders. “What I see is the kid. Especially after she punched out Teddy Klumpe. She’s way too tough for eight. That could come from carrying too much weight. Like she’s wearing armor. Somebody should say something to the parents. Is trying to stop a kid from getting damaged asking a lot?”
“Broker and his buddies do have a code,” Griffin said. “The main part of it has to do with loyalty.”
“Okay,” Susan said. “That’s for them, cops. Ex-cops. Whatever. Not you. Or is this because you were Army buddies back in the day?”
“Jesus, you don’t give up,” Griffin said.
Susan grinned and poked his flat stomach with her finger. “Nope.” She scooted closer, rested her elbows on his knees. “C’mon. Who are they?”
“I thought you were concerned with Kit.”
“Sure, and I’m thinking, my Amy’s the same age. We could get them together for a play date, for starters. That way I could meet her mom, get it going back and forth,” Susan said.
“They didn’t come up here for play dates and coffee with the moms. Pretty much the opposite,” Griffin said. His voice sharpened and Susan saw the fast warning shadow pocket his face.
Sensing she’d hit a boundary, she sat back, folded her arms across her modest breasts, and gave back a little challenging edge of her own. “You’re overdramatizing, as usual.”
“Listen, Susan; they’re not going to be here long enough for Kit to get damaged,” Griffin said.
“You sure about that? He’s your friend. You should help him.”
True. Which got Griffin thinking…
Susan waited patiently. She’d been North Woods raised on the big lake and was a seasoned angler. She knew when she felt a nibble, knew the proper time to play out a little more line.
Except Griffin was now thinking about the other thing; how no way Jimmy could come into the place on skis. So somebody else could be in this. Somebody who played real rough. Finally he said, “Look, it’s complicated…”
Susan took a last drag on her one cigarette, twisted, and flipped it into the fireplace. When she turned back, she took her time, letting the firelight play over the very serviceable curves of the only intelligent eligible woman in Glacier Falls who would take a chance on a silvertip loner like Harry Griffin.
Griffin started over, speaking carefully. “It’s like this with Broker and his wife. You know how when there’s a crisis-say a building catches fire-everybody runs. Except there’s two people who go back into the fire to take care of the casualties…”
Susan sat up straight. She had never felt his eyes range in on her quite this way, like hard iron sights. She nodded her head slightly.
“Well,” Griffin continued, “it’s good we have people like that around when all hell breaks loose. But maybe it’s not such a good idea if they get married to each other and have a kid.”
Deliberately, Griffin stood up and stared at her, to let it sink in. She knew him as an intense guy; and now she’d hit a new wall in him. Macho guy loyalty. Whatever. She sobered a bit, seeing the warning frown in his eyes. Shucks, so much for afterglow. And he was standing in a certain way, this quiet power stancing, cautioning her away from the subject. Then he turned and walked from the main room toward the bathroom. A moment later, Susan heard the shower start to run.
Susan hugged herself in front of the fire. She looked down and saw a faint tickle of goose bumps rise on her forearms. It was the first time he’d revealed a part of himself that actually worried her.