Open Season (42 page)

“Stop where you are. Police.” I began running the rest of the distance to the treeline, straight to where I’d seen that one bright flicker of color.

Just before I entered the woods, I glanced back to see the two parallel blacktop ribbons, my car, its exhaust pluming smoke in the crisp cold air, and the body of the deer. From this angle, the animal must have presented an almost irresistible target, its muscular outline highlighted against the black of the road and the pale horizon, a temptation only decency and sportsmanship might have stilled, and obviously had not.

I hadn’t walked ten feet into the woods before I was utterly enveloped in its dense, dark embrace. I stopped, listening. The hunter had bolted late in my approach, and could only have covered a short distance before I’d reached this spot. I scanned the dark curtain of trees before me, aware of only the absolute stillness, and of the sound of my own heart beating from the exertion of the run.

“I’m a police officer. Come on out.”

The vapor from my words hovered briefly about my face and then vanished in the answering silence.

I looked to the forest floor, hoping to see some tracks, but tracking wasn’t one of my strengths, at least not in the woods. All I could see was a tangle of twigs, rotting leaves, and frozen brush.

The sudden, blinding combination of a third rifle shot and the explosion its bullet made in the tree trunk next to me threw me to the ground before I could think, my combat-born instincts suddenly as keen as they had been many years earlier.

My face to the ground, breathing in the damp mustiness of the near-frozen earth, I waited for the ringing in my ears to fade. Behind it, fading also, I could hear a body crashing away through the forest.

It had been a warning from a hunter whose initial purpose had not been sport. That deer in the road had not been shot for a trophy and some bragging, as I’d imagined. It had been meat, a hedge against the winter, a hungry and self-sufficient man’s necessity for survival, as he saw it. He had not missed killing me; he had warned me to back off.

I got up slowly and brushed myself off. Ahead of me, some one hundred and fifty feet away, I saw an orange hunting jacket hanging from a tree branch—a single bright beacon in an ever-darkening, cold, and silent world. It was another warning; he was a hunter no longer, but a man with a gun, dressed to blend into his chosen environment. He could now stand with impunity next to a tree, invisible beyond fifty feet, and fill his rifle scope with my chest.

I was now in Vermont’s so-called Northeast Kingdom—poor, isolated, thinly populated by people who had chosen to put their independence and wariness of the rest of the world above the hardships of living here. The man watching me had no interest in killing me, but he did want it known that he would if he had to.

I stood absolutely still, watching, listening, aware now that my movements were my only relevant spokesmen. A line had been drawn: I could die defending the rights of a dead deer, or I could retire and leave the field to my unseen opponent and his more ancient, instinctive code of moral right and wrong. It wasn’t my kind of debate.

I returned to my car, as depressed as I’d been angry when I’d left it in outrage. It had been a short and violent reminder of the limitations of legal authority. Here, in this high, cold country, the law had less to do with rules, and more with personal honor. Often, they were one and the same, but not always.

I got back behind the wheel, drove around the carcass, and continued north.

Over the years, Archer Mayor has been photographer, teacher, historian, scholarly editor, feature writer, travel writer, lab technician, political advance man, medical illustrator, newspaper writer, history researcher, publications consultant, constable, and EMT/firefighter. He is also half Argentine, speaks two languages, and has lived in several countries on two continents.

All of which makes makes him restless, curious, unemployable, or all three. Whatever he is, it’s clearly not cured, since he’s currently a novelist, a death investigator for Vermont’s medical examiner, and a police officer.

Archer has been producing the Joe Gunther novels since 1988, some of which have made the “ten best” or “most notable” lists of the
Los Angeles
and the
New York Times
. In 2004 Mayor received the New England Booksellers Association book award for fiction.

Find him on the web at
ArcherMayor.com
.

Open Season
Borderlines
Scent of Evil
The Skeleton’s Knee
Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
The Dark Root
The Ragman’s Memory
Bellows Falls
The Disposable Man
Occam’s Razor
The Marble Mask
Tucker Peak
The Sniper’s Wife
Gatekeeper
The Surrogate Thief
St. Albans Fire
The Second Mouse
Chat
The Catch
The Price of Malice
Red Herring
Tag Man

Open Season
was first published by Putnam in 1988.
This digital edition (v1.0) was published in 2011 by
Gere Donovan Press
.

If you downloaded this book from a filesharing network, either individually or as part of a larger torrent, the author has received no compensation. Please consider purchasing a legitimate copy—they are reasonably priced, and available from all major outlets. Your author thanks you.

Copyright © 2007 by Archer Mayor.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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