Finishing School Read Free

again .’’
    Billy blinked. ‘‘What can’t be happening?’’
    Abner and Tweed shared a look, but Billy couldn’t read it. The guide’s face was as white as the bark on the surrounding aspens, and tears began to dribble down his cheeks. Neither man said a word, their silence speaking volumes to each other, but meaning nothing to Billy.
    â€˜â€˜ What can’t be happening again?’’ he repeated.
    Tweed shot him a look. ‘‘Billy, just shut the hell up, okay? For once, just shut the hell up.’’
    Billy began to respond anyway, but another sharp look from Tweed stopped him.
    Not knowing what else to do, Billy sat down on a nearby fallen log and stared at the dead thing sticking out of the ground, as if waiting for the body to climb from the snowy ground and say something.
    Tweed squatted and reached for what was left of the hand.
    â€˜â€˜Whoa up there, Logan,’’ Abner said, pulling his cell phone out of a pocket. ‘‘You can’t do whoever-it-is any good, at this late date. Best leave this for the cops.’’
    Cops .
    The word cut through Billy like the arrow he’d fired through the buck. Suddenly, breathing grew difficult, and despite the chill, he could feel sweat popping out on his brow.
    Just like everything else in Billy Kwitcher’s life, even shooting the buck was going to end up turning to crap.
    Â 
Lewis Garue wore many hats: husband, father of two, member of the Red Lake Band of the Chippewa Nation, and today, detective—driving his own 2003 Toyota Land Cruiser in lieu of a Beltrami County Dodge Durango.
    A deputy for nearly twenty-four years, and a detective for the last fifteen, the fifty-year-old Garue was stocky, his neck a short, efficient swivel for a block-sized head. His wavy black hair, worn much longer back on the rez as a kid, had gone mostly gray, and pouches had formed in his cheeks.
    But any criminal who ran into Garue would testify that he was still a man not to be trifled with. After a four-year hitch in the Army, where he had been an MP, Garue attended Bemidji State University as a wrestler. He graduated with a degree in criminology and immediately got on as a deputy with Beltrami County. Married to Anna Yellow Hawk, his childhood sweetheart from the nearby Red Lake Indian Reservation, north of Bemidji (where they both grew up), Garue had settled into what was, for him, the ideal life.
    The sun was still low in the southern sky, noon at least a couple of hours off. Garue’s stomach was already growling. His wife always insisted he and their two kids start each morning with a ‘‘good, healthy’’ breakfast. Unfortunately for Garue, over the last twenty years, Anne’s idea of a good, healthy breakfast had shifted from bacon, eggs, and pancakes to muesli, yogurt, and fresh fruit. Seemed like the detective was hungry all the time now.
    He had been eating breakfast at home when he’d heard the dispatch call over his walkie. Three hunters had found something in Bassinko Industries forest number four, southeast of Bemidji. ‘‘Something’’ was as far as the description had gone. . . .
    Now, two hours later, the call had come in that the deputies on-site wanted a detective. Sheriff Ewell Preston had naturally wanted his best investigator, and sent Garue.
    The detective was supposed to be on comp time today, to make up for the overtime he’d put in on a series of meth lab raids over the last two weeks, but the discovery in the forest had changed that.
    Though a plainclothes officer, Garue was not in his usual work attire of shirt and tie and sport coat. Well, the jeans were normal, but the rubber-soled black Rockys he wore on the job were replaced by boots, and his regular button-down shirt had been left on the hanger this morning, in favor of a Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt. Used to the just-above-freezing temperatures this time of year, he wore no