“Little late in the season for fishin’,” Puck yelled. “Where’d you get that junker?”
“Bought it up the shore. We’ll keep it tied up with a For Rent sign on it. A real small one—” He broke off, startled by a splash fifteen yards offshore.
“What the hell?” Splinters leapt out of the roof a few feet from Shea.
“Get down off there,” Beau yelled. “Somebody’s shooting!” The first echo of gunfire rolled across the water like distant thunder as Raven scrambled out of the boat. Shea was already dialing 911.
“Did you actually see anybody firing at you?” Constable Chabot asked doubtfully.
“Hell no,” Shea said. “It was coming from the far side of the bay. Come on up top, I’ll show you the damn bullet holes in the roof.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve got a few dings up there. This is hunting country. We get stray-round complaints every year, nothing unusual about it.”
“Balls,” Puck said. “This wasn’t no accident, son. He ranged us. First shot barely missed, next three didn’t.”
“I admit it might look like that, but it could just as easily have been some guy sighting in a rifle who overshot his backstop. And even if it wasn’t, take a look at the far shore. Forty square miles of timber and only a few logging trails in and out. We’d never find anybody in there.”
“Especially if you don’t look,” Beau said.
“Look, Mr. Raven, I got myself and two part-time officers to cover the whole township. Normally, we manage just fine. An occasional B and E in a vacation home, drunks on Saturday night. No real trouble. Until you and your Mohawk buddy showed up. Now it seems like every damn day there’s some new hassle. So I’m sorry your building caught a few stray rounds—”
“Stray?” Puck echoed.
“That’s how it’s going in my report unless I get some indication that it’s anything more.”
“When one of my men stops a slug, you mean?” Shea asked.
“You knew what this job was when you took it, Mr. Shea,” Chabot shrugged. “Maybe you should ask for combat pay. I’ll look into this, but I wouldn’t expect too much. Probably just a hunter.”
“That kid had one thing right,” Puck said after Chabot left. “He’s not gonna find anything.”
“What do we do?” Shea asked. “I can’t keep men working with lead flying around.”
“Give them the afternoon off,” Beau said. Grabbing several short pieces of scrap one-by-two lath, he scrambled up the ladder to the roof with Shea right behind.
“Show me the bullet holes.” Flicking open a butterfly knife, Raven quickly whittled down the ends of the lath into round dowels. Shea pointed out the gouges and Raven plugged a lath into each of them. When he’d finished, the three sticks pointed back across the bay like accusing fingers.
“There,” Raven said. “He was somewhere just beyond that little notch. Probably fired from the beach. Must be twelve hundred yards. Pretty fair shooting. Know anybody around here who can shoot like that, Mr. Paquette?”
“Hit a building at twelve hundred yards? Around here, grab any six guys off the street, half of ‘em could make that shot. As I recall, there’s a logging road that goes through that area.”
“Think you could find it?”
“You bet. And I believe I’ll bring my old 30/30 deer rifle along. Just in case we run into any more stray rounds.”
“What makes you think he fired from the beach?” Shea asked. They were in Raven’s Escalade, snaking along a rutted trail through the hills on the northern shore.
“The first shot splashed wide right. He corrected for windage with the next round so he must have seen the first one hit. To do that he’d need a decent scope and a clear view of the fish house. Had to be on the beach or just above it.”
“It’s a long shoreline.”
“And a pretty one. Odd name, though.”
“You don’t know about the Wolf Woman?” Puck asked. “I thought you were Ojibwa.”
“Half. I think my mom told me the Wolf Woman story but it’s been a long time. Tell it.”
“Story goes, back in the Ojibwa days, a woman lost her husband and went mad with grief. Tribal custom was to protect crazy people, but the woman was beautiful, and in her madness, she would dance naked, drive the young bucks wild. Naturally, this made the village wives unhappy, so one day while the men were off on a hunt, the women drove the madwoman into the forest.
“A pack of wolves found her there, dancing. But instead of ripping her apart, the boss wolf carried her back to his den, made her his mate. But her wolf pups were mad like their mother. Foaming at the mouth, attacking any man they met. To this day, you still see ‘em in these hills, sometimes.”
“Rabies,” Shea said.
Raven nodded. “Every Ojibwa tale has a point. You see a wolf foaming at the mouth, you remember the story, get him before he gets you.”
“Kinda like we’re doing today,” Puck agreed. “How will you know the spot?”
“When we can look back at the fish house and see the tips of the three dowels I stuck in the bullet holes, we’ll be there.”
“You seem to know a fair amount about shooting at folks.”
“It used to be my trade, Mr. Paquette. Like construction is yours. Rough guess, it’s not far now.”
Leaving the Caddy in the middle of the trail, they shouldered through wind-blasted clusters of jack pines down to the stony shore, then turned north along the beach. Coppery autumn light glittered off the gentle swells of the bay. With Puck carrying his ancient Winchester and Raven scanning the far shore with binoculars, they could have been a hunting party from the last century. Or the one before that.
“Right here,” Beau said, lowering the binoculars. “All three rods are lined up. We must be near the place. See any signs?”
“Up there,” Puck gestured with the rifle, trudging up the slope to an old stump at the edge of the tree line. Picking up an empty brass cartridge, he squinted at the base, then tossed it to Raven. “I can’t read it. What is it?”
“Seven-millimeter Magnum.” He sniffed it. “Fresh. Good eyes, Mr. Paquette.”
“Yeah, but that’s about all we’re gonna get,” Shea said. “The logging road is about forty yards farther on. The shooter parked there, came down through the trees same way we did.”
“Probably used this stump for a shooting rest.” Raven nodded. “It’s a perfect spot. Which makes him a local, right? Only somebody familiar with the area would know it was here.”
“Not necessarily,” Puck said. “There are clearings like this all over these hills. Black walnut stumps, most of them a hundred years old and more.”
“How can you tell how old they are?”
“See the gouges across the top? Two-man crosscut saw. The scorch marks mean it was dropped before the Great Fires burned through here back at the turn of the century. This one was a big tree. Near two foot across. Won’t see walnut that size again in this life.”
“If it was cut a hundred years ago, why hasn’t the forest grown over it?”
“Walnut sap is toxic, carries a poison called juglone. Kills bugs, grapevines, anything that might injure a tree. Gives it growing room. Nature’s insurance policy. So our shooter didn’t have to know about this particular stump, he could have stopped anywhere.”
“Are there any tire tracks on the trail?”
“Not anymore,” Shea said. “A skidder’s been through here, a big log hauler. If there were any tracks, it wiped them out.”
“Unless our guy was driving it,” Puck countered. “I see more skidder tracks farther along the beach. Somebody must be logging near here.”