Blindshot Read online

  Jack needed no crosshairs to line Lennox up. He needed no technology to fire. He himself was the gun and the projectile, and he threw himself at Lennox with all the force he could muster. An instant before colliding, he instinctively ducked his head down like a football player, crossed his arms and locked them together.

  Bang! Lennox fired the rifle an instant before the impact threw both of them to the ground.

  Lennox tumbled forward, completely caught off-guard. The gun flew out of his big hands, flopping into the brush. Jack landed on top of Lennox, tumbling onwards in the dirt. Lennox let out a guttural grunt and rolled himself to an upright sitting position, shaking off the shock and pain of impact.

  “What the fuck?” he shouted at Jack.

  A sour smell of whisky mixed with Lennox’s body odour repelled Jack, and he crawled away. His arms and his forehead were sore and bruised. Jack was strong, but he was still just a kid, whereas Lennox was a physically imposing man. Lennox had gotten to his feet, and he was coming for Jack. Jack couldn’t get himself moving fast enough, and then a kick to the stomach from Lennox sent him reeling. He fell on a clump of dry earth and rocks, doubling the pain.

  “What the fuck’s the matter with you, eh?” shouted Lennox.

  Jack didn’t hear the question. He was rolling in pain, then felt himself yanked up by the seat of his pyjamas. Lennox was holding him up like a rag doll.

  “Put my brother down!” he heard from behind him.

  Lennox turned to see Noah charging him, followed by Catherine, who was raging.

  “Put him down!” Noah said again.

  Lennox threw Jack as far as he could. Jack flopped into the dirt, groaning.

  Catherine came right up to Lennox, afraid of how he might react, but led by her anger.

  “What’s the matter with you! He’s a teenager!”

  “He’s a crazy teenager,” said Lennox.

  Jack sat up, holding one arm with the other. “You shot my dad, you motherfucker!”

  Catherine turned to her son. “Jack! Don’t talk like that!”

  “He did! He shot my dad and he should pay!”

  “Crazy kid. I didn’t shoot anybody!”

  “Who else? He’s always here, Mom!” shouted Jack, his voice cracking with the effort. “He’s always on our land or shooting from his truck! Who else do you think shot Dad?”

  “I don’t know,” she said to Jack, trying to calm him. “I don’t know.”

  Catherine picked up Lennox’s rifle, which had fallen close to where she was standing. She held it with both hands. Her anger was too much to contain.

  “You want your rifle back?”

  “Yeah. Give it to me!” blurted Lennox.

  “I’ll give it to you!”

  Catherine spun on her heels and took off toward the road. The boys exchanged a quizzical look, wondering what their mother was up to, but rather than stand there, they took off after her. Lennox did the same.

  “Give me my rifle!” he shouted after her, not sure how to go about intercepting this angry woman. He strode alongside her, keeping pace.

  “Get in your truck!” she ordered.

  “What?”

  “You want your rifle, then get in your truck! Right now,” she continued, striding toward the pick-up. “I’ll give you your rifle, but you take it and you never come back.” She stopped in her tracks, her face flushed red, gritting her teeth. Lennox stopped too, staring at her, staring at his prize possession she was holding onto, the Winchester 70 he desperately wanted back in his own hands.

  “You get in your truck and you never come back here! You understand? Never come back!”

  Catherine, despite herself, caught up in her anger, aimed the rifle up in the air. Lennox stood little more than three metres away from her.

  “There’s no round. I just fired it!” he clarified, standing his ground. Even if there had been a round in the rifle’s chamber, he would have been unafraid of shots going over his head. Lennox had been around guns and rifles his whole life. His father, a life-long truck driver and hunter, had taught Jeffrey to shoot, and shoot well, when he was only six years old.

  Catherine realized her mistake, and it only made her angrier. She took off again toward the truck, wielding the rifle like a club, with Lennox in pursuit and the two boys trailing. They all crossed through the tree line and found themselves on the dirt road. Lennox resigned himself to Catherine’s odd, feisty behaviour and walked to his driver door, opening it.

  “Get in!” shouted Catherine.

  Lennox did so and started the engine. Catherine moved closer and threw the rifle with all her strength into the truck’s rear payload box. The rifle clunked against the metal with a noise loud enough for Lennox to know that it was time for him to drive off.

  Catherine watched the pick-up disappear down the road. She took a breath for what seemed the first time since she’d left the house. It bent her over with fatigue, but she was worried about Jack. She reached for her boys, looked them both over. Jack held his arm still.

  “I’m alright, Mom. I’m alright.”

  “You don’t look alright. Are you hurt? Look at your face. What’s with your arm?”

  “I’m okay, Mom, really.”

  “Let’s get home. Come on.”

  They walked slowly, careful to take the smoothest, easiest path for the boys’ bare feet. Catherine wondered what kind of parent she was to have let her boys run off like that, barefoot, in their pajamas, after a brute like Lennox. She kicked herself for not doing a better job of taking care of her sons.

  “What were you thinking, running off like that?” she asked her oldest boy.

  “I didn’t think. I just did what I thought was right,” he answered. “That asshole deserves a lot worse than getting pushed.”

  “The mouth, Jack! Yes, he is, and perhaps he does, we don’t know for sure, but it’s not up to us to take matters into our own hands. Got me! Don’t you ever do that again!”

  Jack was silent the whole way back to the house.

  Noah broke the silence. “It wasn’t dead.”

  “What?” asked Catherine.

  “The deer,” Noah said. “It wasn’t dead, just wounded. It ran off.”

  “Really?” asked Jack.

  “Yeah,” confirmed Noah. “Want to check it out after?”

  Jack gave his brother silent affirmation, a simple look in the eyes, barely a nod. Brothers’ speak.

  Catherine, Jack and Noah went indoors. Catherine took a shower and let the hot water clean her spirit. Jack and Noah changed quickly and met up at the vestibule.

  “One sec,” said Jack. He ran to his father’s workshop, in the garage, rummaged through a rack of camping gear and found his buck knife. He tucked it into a side pocket of his cargo pants, got back to Noah and together they ran across the field to where Lennox had shot at the deer. Noah estimated its escape path.

  “That way, I think,” he told Jack.

  Jack considered this, then headed off in the direction Noah had suggested, followed by his brother. They walked into the forest until they could no longer see where they had entered it. The wooded interior was a luminous orange stabbed by thin rods of light, many of them unbroken from forest ceiling to forest floor. The ground was as soft as a mattress and was covered in layers of multi-coloured leaves. A white and beige chipmunk streaked by, frightened by the invaders.

  “Did you see that?” asked Noah, captivated by the chipmunk.

  “Sshhh,” said Jack, putting his arm out to stop Noah. “Over there!” he whispered, lowering his sore arm again.

  “He hurt you, didn’t he,” said Noah.

  “I’m fine. I think I see it.”

  Noah also spotted the deer on the ground about twenty-five metres away, in an area shadowed by denser trees. The boys moved silently toward it, expecting it at an
y moment to scurry off, but that never happened. The deer lay there, moving only its head, occasionally rolling its eyes and scraping its muzzle and its antlers against the ground—it seemed to be writhing in pain. When Noah and Jack were ten metres from it, they looked at each other. Jack put his index finger to his lips, and they both moved closer.

  The deer had two bullet holes in it. One, likely Lennox’s first shot, was in the lower neck. Since it continued to live, the projectile must have missed the buck’s vitals and arteries. The other wound, caused by Lennox’s second shot, was in the upper rear thigh. The poor placement of that bullet must have been due to Jack’s interference. The buck appeared to be weak, maybe weakening.

  “It can’t move.” Jack spoke softly, as he and Noah moved closer. The deer stirred, but couldn’t lift itself. Its body was failing, blood trickling out. It resigned itself, flattening itself out on its bed of leaves.

  Jack and Noah crouched next to the wounded animal. It turned its head away from them in its last act of survival, of defiance, but it couldn’t complete the manoeuvre, instead finding itself with one of its eyes looking directly up at the sky, up at the two boys that hovered over it, its antlers jabbing the fallen leaves and black earth. One of its front legs moved and the hoof scratched feebly at the ground, then stopped.

  Jack and Noah sat next to the deer and watched it patiently.

  “Do you think it’s hurting bad?” said Noah.

  “It’s a good thing it’s dying,” said Jack. “No point living if you’re that hurt.”

  They hated that they couldn’t do anything for it, but both boys were captivated, compelled by the gentle animal’s death. Jack knew there was something to learn from this moment, something they needed to respect. They watched the deer’s life leak away into the black earth, its body going perfectly still, its eyes dimming. They watched the whitetail until a shiny blue fly landed on it and walked across its fur.

  Jack took out his buck knife and began cutting into the deer.

  Tom Doran was working on replacing broken runs on the main stair of his church-house. It wasn’t difficult work, but Tom was far from the best carpenter in Beaufort. There was much learning as he advanced in the work, and sometimes he stopped altogether, just to research how that particular joint or assembly had best be done.

  Unlike most residents of Beaufort, Tom didn’t have Internet at his home, not even a computer. He learned carpentry by trial and error, and when that didn’t work, he’d find himself in detailed conversations with Frank Walden, at Construction Levy, from whom he bought most of his supplies. Walden was helpful, almost too helpful, which made for long conversations, during which both men sketched out details on scraps of paper in an effort to understand each other. It all took time, but Tom was in no hurry. Technically, he was not permitted to renovate, but he didn’t care and moved forward in his attempts to make the place livable for himself, at least.

  Tom was cutting runs of oak, at an outdoor workbench, when he saw the van come up the road. His church-house was on Chemin Stavan, a short looping road off Chemin Van Kleet, about a kilometre and a half away from the Carignan house, and his property was only one of three along the road, so traffic was rare and he paid attention when the van slowed at his gate.

  Laying down his circular saw, he yanked off his glasses and watched Jack Carignan step out of the passenger side of the van and walk over to him. As the van moved off, the driver waved to Tom. It was Alain Jolicoeur, a property owner in the area. Alain and his wife, Claudine, were both successful commercial real estate agents, the friendliest people Tom had ever met. It was no surprise a kid like Jack could catch a lift from them.

  “Hey kid, what brings you around here?” asked Tom, doing his best to smile. Tom’s dog circled Jack, sniffing.

  Jack barely responded, as serious and moody as Brooder himself.

  “If you’re looking for daily mass, you got the wrong church. There haven’t been priests at this one in more than forty years, so I’m told! This church … well, it’s closed to sinners, other than me, I guess. This church is … well, it’s broken!”

  Jack just looked at him. Tom saw that his clothes were full of dried blood. Again. Tom’s thoughts were clear and the question didn’t need to be asked.

  “It’s not anyone’s blood. It’s from a deer.”

  “Good. Well, at least you didn’t drive yourself over.”

  Jack dug into a small pocket of his dirtied cargo pants. His hand brought out a shiny, used bullet that he held up to Tom, as if Tom would automatically understand.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a bullet from Jeffrey Lennox’s rifle. He shot another deer on our land this morning.”

  “The guy needs a new hobby,” said Tom, but he could see that Jack was still dead serious.

  “And you took it out of the deer? Oh, I see,” said Tom, beginning to understand the purpose of Jack’s visit. Tom took the bullet from the boy’s fingers, inspected it. It was what remained of a .30-06 calibre bullet, standard for deer hunting, if on the heavy side, and it was crunched and scarred from having been fired. Some hunters preferred a lighter calibre. Tom led Jack to his front yard and sat at an old picnic table that had survived many seasons. He held the bullet in his palm.

  “There’s no bullet to compare it to,” said Tom. “We didn’t find any, not in your father and not at your house. It happened right next to very dense woods.”

  Jack pondered the information. It looked to Tom like the statement hurt him.

  “How’s your father doing?”

  Tom respected Jack’s silence and didn’t press for an answer. Words finally came.

  “You have to investigate.”

  “We are, kid. I know things aren’t proceeding like you might want, but this is the way it is. Investigative work is pretty slow business.”

  “It’s attempted murder, isn’t it?”

  “It could be. Or it could be an accident. Not that that’s any better. But there are no witnesses. No one’s pressed charges against anybody. We don’t know how it happened. It’s anyone’s guess.”

  “Is it so hard to find out?”

  “Actually, it is. We’ll talk to everyone that could possibly have anything to do with it. To really know, without actually having been there—and prove it—isn’t so easy.”

  “It’s Lennox.”

  “Could be. Yeah, it could be Lennox. Or it could be any number of people, for any number of reasons, or for no reason at all. We don’t know. I’m sure it wouldn’t be news to you than your father might have had a few enemies in this county? Yeah, he helped a lot of business folks, and we know that too, but he made enemies.”

  “Why?”

  “That part, kid, I don’t know.”

  “But, I saw them all at Henley’s place. With my friend Zeph. We were witnesses. They gathered in a pack that night and went into the woods, all of them carrying rifles. They were drinking, some of them, most of them, and they walked off into the woods. Aren’t there regulations you could enforce, to interrogate them all?”

  “Where did they go from Henley’s?”

  “We didn’t follow them. Zeph and I were hanging around the ridge but then we walked to Zeph’s house, not in the direction Henley and his friends were taking.” Jack paused, biting his lip. “I could’ve stopped them, knowing they were all drunk.”

  “Don’t second-guess yourself, kid. None of this is your fault. Maybe none of those guys had anything to do with it. You don’t know for sure. Almost everyone in Beaufort has a deer rifle, even the Mayor, and I’ve heard she’s a good shot.”

  Jack saw in Tom’s face that there wasn’t much he could do. This was so frustrating.

  “Look, kid, I know Henley a little bit. I don’t like him, but I know him. I’ll talk to him. See what comes. Okay?”

  “Your boss and Officer Korb were with them too.”

/>   “I’ll talk with both of them. But I don’t want to build your hopes. These things aren’t simple like on some TV show. It takes time and sometimes nothing comes of it. An accident remains exactly that, an accident, and usually nobody steps forward and takes responsibility. People are generally gutless, is what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “It isn’t right,” said Jack, his voice cracking with emotion.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Tom wished he could make the pain stop for the boy, somehow comfort him, but he just looked him right in the eyes and held up the small, crunched bullet.

  “Can I hold onto this?” said Tom.

  Jack nodded, then turned away, staring up at the truncated spire of the little church. He clenched his teeth hard, making his jaw muscles ripple. Tom’s nameless dog licked the dried blood on his dangling hands. The dog’s soft, wet tongue snapped Jack out of it. He pulled his hands away. The movement sent pain up his arm.

  “What’s the other guy look like?” said Tom.

  Jack barely smiled back, pulling his arm close to his body, rubbing it with his other hand.

  “Let me give you a ride back,” said Tom, with as much compassion as there could be in his coarse, dry voice. “Hospital or home?”

  “Home,” said Jack.

  Jack and Noah went knocking on Zeph’s door, looking for help, which he quickly volunteered. They used his aluminum, four-man snow sled to pile on shovels, work gloves and a small, plastic camping cooler filled with half-a-dozen soft drink bottles. The three boys dragged the sled into the woods to where they had left the fallen deer. Two blackbirds were taking an interest, and the boys threw pebbles at crows to make them go.

  They set themselves to digging a hole for the deer. Jack had some difficulty with his sore arm. Zeph and Noah tried to compensate for that. It took the threesome nearly an hour to make a hole deep enough to cover not only the body, but also the antlers. Luckily, the antlers were more modest than those of more mature, larger bucks.