The Last Quarry Read Free

rather cut off my dick than insert it in any orifice of a repulsive fat slob like Harry Something. But, hey, that’s just me.
    Now while I’m as naturally curious as the next guy, I’m sure as hell not nosy, not even inquisitive, really. But when a faggot buys Tampax, you have to wonder why.
    “Excuse me,” Harry Something said, brushing by me.
    He hadn’t seen my face (had he?)—and he might not recognize me, in any case. Ten years and a beard and twenty pounds later, I wasn’t as easy to peg as Harry was, who had changed goddamn little.
    Harry, having stocked up on cookies and chips and Tampax, was now buying milk and packaged macaroni and cheese and provisions in general. He was shopping.
    Stocking up.
    And now I was starting to get a handle on what he might be up to....
    I nodded to surly Cindy, who bid me goodbye by flickering her eyelids in casual contempt, and went out to my car, a steel-gray Jag I’d purchased recently. I wished I’d had the Lodge’s four-wheel drive, or anything less conspicuous, but I didn’t. I sat in the car, scooched down low; I did not turn on the engine. I just sat in the cold car in the cold night and waited.
    Harry Something came out with two armloads of groceries—Tampax included, I presumed—and he put them in the front seat of a brown rental Ford Taurus. Louis was not waiting in the car for him.
    Harry was alone.
    Which further confirmed my suspicions....
    I waited for him to pull out onto the road, hung back till he took the road’s curve, then started up my Jag and glided out after him. He had turned left, toward Brainerd. That made sense, only I figured he wouldn’t wind up there—he’d likely light out for the boonies somewhere.
    I knew what Harry was up to, vaguely at least. He sure as shit wasn’t here to ski—that lardass couldn’t stand up on a pair of skis. And he wasn’t here to go ice-fishing, either. A city boy like Harry Something had no business in a touristy area like this, in the off-season...
    ...unless Harry was hiding out, holing up somewhere.
    This would be the perfect area for that.
    Only Harry didn’t use Tampax.
    He turned off on a side road, into a heavily wooded area that wound back toward Sylvan Lake.
    Good. That was very good.
    I went on by. I drove a mile, turned into a farmhouse gravel drive and headed back without lights. I slowed as I reached the mouth of the side road, and could see Harry’s taillights wink off.
    I knew the cabin at the end of that road. There was only one, and its owner only used it during the summer; Harry was either a renter, or a squatter.
    I glided on by and went back home.
    I left the Jag next to the deck and walked up the steps and into the A-frame. The nine millimeter Browning was in the nightstand drawer. The gun hadn’t been shot in months—Christ, maybe over a year. But I cleaned and oiled it regularly, because you never know.
    It would do nicely.
    So would my black turtleneck, black jeans, black leather bomber jacket, and this black moonless night. I slipped a spare .38 revolver in the bomber jacket right side pocket, and clipped a hunting knife to my belt. The knife was razor sharp with a sword point; I sent for it out of the back of one of those dumb-ass mercenary magazines—which are worthless except for mail-ordering weapons.
    I walked along the edge of the lake, my running shoes crunching the brittle ground, layered as it was with snow and ice and leaves. The only light came from a gentle scattering of stars, a handful of diamonds flung on black velvet; the frozen lake was a dark presence that you could sense but not really see, the surrounding trees even darker. The occasional cabin or cottage or house I passed was empty. I was one of only a handful of residents on this side of Sylvan Lake who were staying year-round.
    But the lights were on in one cabin. Not many lights, but lights. And its chimney was trailing smoke.
    The cabin was small, a traditional log cabin of the Abe Lincoln and syrup