Sometimes the Wolf (30 page)

They hadn’t talked yet about the crib or the way Sheri seemed to be packing the house away little by little. She had only asked him to clear the room, to put the things away in the garage. Drake thought about this as he set the table. He thought about Patrick’s bed in there and how he’d break it down after dinner and put it away with all the rest. Leaning it against the crib. And for a long time he looked away into the darkness out back of their house, trying to locate the small dirt patch where their child was buried, but he didn’t see it and Sheri called his name and told him to pour two glasses of water and grate a small block of cheese before she brought the pasta over.

They sat in silence and ate the food. Neither had had much to say the entire day. Several times now Sheri tried to speak but the words failed her and she looked away again or twirled her fork through her pasta.

“Is this the life we wanted?” she finally asked, the pasta gone from Drake’s plate and the red sauce all that remained against the white porcelain.

He looked up at her and there was nothing to take away from her face. The eyes steady as they appraised him, her chin held tight and the lips solid and unmoving.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking around at the house they’d made their own.

“Is this the life
you
wanted?” she asked.

Drake didn’t know what to say, but he knew if he asked the same question of her she would have an answer for him. Somewhere along the way it had all gone crooked for them and he stared back at her and knew what his answer would be, and he hoped it wouldn’t take them long to find their way back to where it all went wrong.

ANDY WAS AT
the front door in the morning, and Drake rose from bed and pulled his boxers on and then some sweats. He got to the door just as Andy started down the steps to go around and try the back door.

“Gary says he wants to see you,” Andy said after Drake had the door open.

“What about?”

“Don’t know, he just got me on the radio and told me to tell you to go into the department.”

Drake looked behind him into his house, the living room still in shadow and the door to their bedroom left open slightly. “Sheri’s still sleeping.”

Andy looked past Drake like he might see her back there but then when he didn’t he raised his eyes and told Drake not to worry, he’d be just outside.

Drake wore his deputy browns and his star. He drove into town in his own patrol car and put on his belt just before coming into the department. He wore his hat and he didn’t even have time to take it off before Gary called to him from the back office.

The first thing Drake noticed was Agent Driscoll sitting in one of the seats before Gary’s desk. Gary motioned to the other one and Drake sat, taking his hat from his head and placing it in his lap.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Seattle?” Drake asked.

Driscoll sat up a bit in the chair and put a hand to his side, wincing for a moment and then recovering. “That was before someone broke my rib with a rubber bullet. I was just telling Gary here all about it.”

Gary looked over at Drake. “Someone jumped Driscoll and an officer just as they were taking your father out of holding.”

Drake looked from Gary to Driscoll. “He’s gone?”

Driscoll smiled. “Let me get down to it.” He was still holding his hand to the injured rib.

“Please do,” Gary said.

“One of the officers who brought Patrick back to holding after he made his statement let Patrick make a phone call.”

Gary watched Drake’s face and said, “Driscoll says Patrick called over to the Buck Blind.”

“Well, your father made a call into the bar specifically, not the restaurant,” Driscoll said. “You two know all the regulars down there, don’t you?”

“You’re talking about half the town of Silver Lake,” Gary cut in.

“Weird thing about it is the rubber bullet. They’re used by city police for riot control.”

Gary shifted and fixed Driscoll with his eyes. “I don’t like what you’re saying. I don’t know why you’re talking to us about this. Just go by the bar and see who answered the phone.”

“You’re right, Sheriff. After I got out of the hospital last night I called over there and got no answer.”

“It can get busy down there,” Gary said.

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I was wondering. I worked in a restaurant when I was a kid. Some little Italian place, and I remember how it was. You start juggling too many things at once and eventually you’re going to drop something. I guess the bartender just dropped that phone call.”

“Do you even know if Patrick talked to anyone?”

“The officer said he did but he wasn’t close enough to hear who he might be talking with.”

“So you think it was some regular down there? One of Patrick’s old smuggling buddies?”

“That’s the guess.”

Gary laughed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his hands over his belly. “You just love this place, don’t you,” he said. “You’re almost a regular as it is. I expect you’ll be buying your lake cabin soon enough.”

Driscoll smiled back at Gary. “We could have one of those old-time cabin-raising parties. Isn’t that how it’s done around here? We help each other. You’d help me, wouldn’t you, Bobby?”

“Sure I would, Driscoll.”

“Agent Driscoll living in Silver Lake,” Gary said. “Sounds like fun.”

Driscoll tried to laugh, but just ended up wincing and putting a hand to his ribs again. “Feels like someone is kicking me every time I try and take a breath,” Driscoll said.

“I bet,” Gary said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

“Don’t I know it, at close range the bullet lifted me right off my feet.”

Drake nodded. He was trying to catch a break between the two men but he hadn’t been able to find it yet.

“I’d never been hit like that,” Driscoll was saying. “I imagine it looked like one of those big boxing swings we used to see on television when me and you were younger. You know, the big heavyweights going at it. One punch and the guy’s bottom jaw is up in his brain and his feet are sailing into the air. Lifting him right off into outer space. Man, I miss a good fight like that sometimes. Now we have all these featherweights dancing around the ring.”

“It’s true,” Gary said. “Things used to be different. No one can take a hit like that anymore and any time I watch a fight these days they always end up hugging on each other.”

“The young fighters have some finesse. But they’ve got nothing behind their punches. No offense, Bobby.”

“No offense taken,” Drake said. “I’d rather watch finesse any day than see two big guys slamming away at each other.”

“Yeah, well, to each his own,” Driscoll said. “What I wanted to get down to here is who Patrick called and how they got their hands on rubber bullets made specifically for the police.”

Drake could see Driscoll looking around at all the hunting pictures that lined the office. Gary holding up the head of a big buck. Gary kneeling next to a moose somewhere up in Canada.

“You shoot, don’t you, Sheriff?” Driscoll asked. “You probably work in a variety of different situations. You might even know where someone would be able to buy that type of bullet.”

“Agent Driscoll, you’re getting real serious all of a sudden.”

“Try getting shot, it will switch your whole perspective around.”

“I’d prefer not to,” Gary said. “I like my perspective just the way it is.”

Driscoll didn’t say anything for a while. He was staring at the wood backing of Gary’s desk. “Where were you last night, Gary?”

“I was actually at the Buck Blind for most of the night.”

“One more thing for me to talk to the bartender about,” Driscoll said.

“For fuck’s sake, Driscoll, just come out and say it.”

“Last night you shot me with a rubber bullet and helped Patrick escape custody.”

“Can you prove any of this?” Gary asked.

“I hope you have some sort of alibi for last night,” Driscoll said.

“You’re flying too close to the sun,” Gary said.

Driscoll winced and stood, his hand to his side. He looked around at Drake. “You should know who you’re working for. He’s just as bad as your father only he hasn’t been caught.”

Drake held Driscoll’s gaze for a long time before looking away. He heard Driscoll turn and go, the department door closing a few seconds later.

Drake ran his eyes over the office. No one but them. “How much of what Driscoll said is true?” Drake asked.

“About your father and me?”

“Yeah.”

“Not a word of it,” Gary said.

“You were at the Buck Blind last night?”

“Most of the time.”

“What does that mean?” Drake asked.

“I mean I got up to piss and I went home at some point and ate a Lean Cuisine,” Gary said. “What else do you want me to say? We’re like family, aren’t we, Bobby? You know you can trust me.”

Drake gave him a hard stare and then stood. He took off his belt and then his badge. He put them on the desk. “No offense, Gary, but I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

THREE DAYS AFTER
Drake turned in his badge, he and Sheri went back east of the mountains for Morgan’s funeral. The town came out and the reception was held in the only restaurant, a barbecue and burger joint on the county highway with a single room and outside a front patio underneath a tent. Drake and Sheri shook hands with everyone and thanked them for coming. An older woman tried to give Sheri a novel she’d borrowed from Morgan but Sheri didn’t think Morgan would mind if she simply kept it.

“It was a heart attack?”

“Yes,” Sheri said. She thought of the old man she’d only met once. There and then not there at her wedding. She tried to think if she knew much more than that but nothing came.

The woman held the book for a time, sitting across from Sheri on one of the benches. And then when Drake came over to tell Sheri they were going on to the property, the woman said, “He just seemed so alive.”

“He was,” Drake said.

ALL OF MORGAN’S
things were still there in the cabin when they stopped off, and Sheri watched as Drake went through the possessions. From what Sheri knew of Morgan he’d lived alone, simply, with nothing more than the woodstove and a few pots and pans to keep him company.

She watched Drake and while he read through one or two of the letters sitting out on the dinner table, she walked back into the bedroom and leafed through the books. A whole wall had been dedicated to them and the color of the bindings gave the uniform wood tones of the cabin a special quality that nothing else on that prairie seemed to have.

When she came back out of the bedroom, Drake was boxing the letters away. “You okay?” she asked.

He looked up. “I thought this place would feel different. But it feels the same.”

“Isolated?”

“Yes, I feel like Morgan is just going to come up out of the cottonwoods any moment.”

She looked away at the fields outside. The door and the window had been patched with pieces of plywood. “You worry what’s going to happen to this place once we leave?”

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

“And Patrick? There’s been no word?”

“He’s not coming back here. Morgan’s will left this place to him. It’s Patrick’s and I don’t know where he’d go but it wouldn’t be here.” He picked up the box and brought it out to the car.

While he was gone Sheri started to collect what dry goods she could find. A box of baking soda, a jar of flour, a can of Crisco in one of the cupboards next to a hidden bar of Hershey’s chocolate.

Outside she heard the car door clap shut and then a second later the split of a log. She came out onto the porch and for the next hour she watched Drake break down a collection of cottonwood sections, stacking them up in an even pile at the rear of the cabin like Morgan might come up out of the cut to use them.

It was night by the time they left. The letters the only thing they took with them.

FOR A WEEK
Drake cleared brush from their orchard, pruning back the dead branches and forming the apple trees. In the mornings or in the afternoons he gave Sheri rides to work with their only car and then waited through the day for the call telling him she was ready to be picked up. Occasionally, Luke and Andy came by the house, though they didn’t have to anymore.

The two deputies helped Drake to take down the remaining bits of the old alder fence Patrick hadn’t gotten to. When they finished they helped Drake stake metal posts and run barbed cattle wire. At the front where the drive met the lake road they installed a wide metal gate that sat on a hinge and had to be unlocked with a key.

Besides the trips Drake took to the Buck Blind he didn’t speak much with anyone. Only occasionally seeing Gary when Drake came and went. It was Gary who told him about the dead calf one night while Drake sat eating a burger at the bar. The wolf didn’t kill the calf outright; it had nipped and bitten at the calf’s flanks, leaving the calf bloodied and weak by morning. The rancher noticed it all too late and the calf was dead by noon that same day. “It’s a shame about that wolf,” Gary said. “They’re saying they’ll have to shoot her now.”

“Who’s saying that?”

“Fish and Wildlife. They’re telling Ellie to use the collar and track the wolf down. But she won’t do it.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Drake said. He ate a couple more fries and then pushed the plate away. Gary sat watching him and after a while asked, “What are you doing out there at your place? Building a compound?”

“Just getting the place in order. Trying to do something with the land.”

“You’re going to sell the apples?”

“Yes.”

“And the fence Luke and Andy helped you with?”

“After everything I thought it would be nice to feel safe again. For Sheri to feel safe.”

“I can put a car out there again. If that’s it.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Drake said.

Gary looked at him and shook his head. “Talk to Ellie,” he said.

RAIN KEPT THEM
out of the mountains for two days and then when the sun came out on the third day they tracked the signal up an avalanche chute, white in places with snow. The sound of the spring melt running underneath the rock. They came up onto the open ridge with sweat stains on their shirts and their thighs aching from the ascent. The GPS telling them the wolf was somewhere in the valley beyond.