Blindshot Read online

  “So, pretty much everyone in Beaufort?”

  “Pretty much.” A wave of emotion came over Catherine. She buried her face in her hands, only an instant, then shook it off, taking a deep breath. Tom waited quietly, ill-equipped to comfort her.

  “Is there anyone you can talk to, family, anyone who could come over to be with you?”

  “They’re here—my sons,” was Catherine’s answer, looking back at him as if it were obvious.

  Tom sat down at the table and, with sincerity, forced out his best manner. “Do you read tea leaves?” he asked. Catherine shook her head, realizing she had been staring deeply into her cup.

  “No, but I’m wishing I could.”

  “My father knew this lady that could read tea leaves, or who claimed she could. When times got tough, he would go see her and ask her to read his future.”

  “How did that work for him?”

  “She told him he would live old and prosperous. Neither came true, so I guess either the tea leaves were wrong or she didn’t know how to read them.”

  “Which do you think it was?”

  “You can never really know. This fortune-teller also told him he would have a hit song one day, you know, in the top 40.”

  “Really? Could your father sing?”

  “Not to save his life. Couldn’t even whistle. He was a cop like me. A good one.”

  “Was he awkward with people too?” asked Catherine.

  “I thought I was doing pretty well?”

  Catherine mustered up half a smile for his benefit. He noted her effort.

  “No, that part’s all mine alone. My father, he had the gift of the gab. But I respect that you call it like you see it, Mrs. Carignan. I make no excuses.”

  “It’s Catherine.”

  “Catherine, if I can also call it like I see it, you don’t look fine. I mean you look fine, except you look frazzled, is what I mean.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Well, you’ve just come back from your husband’s funeral and you walk into this mess. No one would expect you’d be fine. That’s all I mean. I’m sorry this happened at all to a good family. Beaufort’s a hard place sometimes, and I’m sorry about that.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “It is, in a way.” Tom reached to the table to right a pair of salt and pepper mills that had been knocked over. One of them had a loose cap, and he tried tightening it, but it fell apart, dropping its contents onto the table. He brushed peppercorns onto a napkin, but they scattered in every direction.

  “Thought you weren’t trying to be funny?”

  Tom put down both mills, which were in worse shape than they’d been when he had picked them up. Catherine saw his disappointment.

  “Doesn’t matter, leave them,” she said. Deep down, she thought he was rather cute, but she found him irritating, too. She wanted the whole world to go away, everyone except her boys. Since she had walked back through the doors of Valhalla, since her husband had caught a stray bullet right outside their home, she’d been filled with contempt for everyone except her children.

  “Will you need help, maybe a local contractor, to clean all this up?” he asked.

  “I have contacts.”

  “Right, you’re an architect. Of course, I forgot.”

  “And engineer. Real estate developer.” Catherine wasn’t trying to impress him.

  Tom knew he was making things worse. He held back any more words, walked to the kitchen counter, found the kettle, picked it up, checked if there was enough hot water, and poured the steaming water into her cup. She noted a long, straight scar on his hand.

  Catherine nodded her thanks and observed him as he returned the kettle to the counter. His strong presence was calming, she admitted to herself. She didn’t welcome his awkwardness and his attempts at gentleness but she accepted them. Turning back from the counter, he caught her looking at him.

  “We’re almost done here. I’ll take one last look around, in case we missed anything. Sergeant Hanes should be done from his end. I’ll get a copy of our report to you first thing tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday,” said Catherine, “isn’t it? So, you don’t have to.”

  “It is Saturday, but that doesn’t matter. I want to get our report in your hands as soon as possible.” Tom heard himself say this, and he hated it. Hated the fact that an administrative response was the best they could do. What justice was there in a paper report? But, that was the process, and it was necessary for an insurance claim. Small comfort to Catherine, he figured.

  “If you need anything, just call.” He scratched his number with a pencil on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She took it, looking at his scarred hand again. He tried to smile, but he was obviously out of practice. For an instant, he looked happy and handsome, but this quickly disappeared, and his serious face returned.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She answered with a slight nod, and Tom turned and left. She watched him go through the living room. Despite herself, her circumstance, her fatigue, the disaster around her, she observed his movements, his solid physique, as he disappeared. There was no sense in being attracted to a local policeman, she thought. That would go nowhere, and she wasn’t interested in beginning anything anyway. She had buried her husband today.

  She gulped her tea, emptying the cup, its heat soothing her. She lifted the tea bag by its string. There were no loose tea leaves in her cup. It was empty. Even if she knew how, it was impossible to find any implied significance in the soggy bag of leaves. She dropped it back into the cup, wishing she had some idea what the world had in store for her next.

  Jack and Noah, having changed back into jeans and hoodies, were running through the Beaufort woods. They made their way to Zeph’s house in the lower plain of the valley that gave onto a small lake called George’s Pond.

  They often joked about who George might have been, but nobody really knew. Noah thought about that whenever he went with Jack to Zeph’s house. For some reason they rarely walked there, it was always a run. Noah thought that his father would have been able to tell them about George, and if he didn’t know off-hand, he would have loved to find out. It was the type of historical enigma his father enjoyed.

  Noah wasn’t quite sure what Jack had in mind, going to Zeph’s now. It was strange to think that their home had been broken into and vandalized. They’d always thought Valhalla was a fortress, and it was. His mother, with everything she’d had to deal with, had forgotten to lock the back doors properly. It had been a mistake.

  Zeph was expecting them. Jack had phoned Zeph to let him know they were coming over, which never happened, for the boys normally communicated online, but the game player was now in pieces on their living room floor.

  When they arrived, they walked right in by a side door and shouted for Zeph. Zeph’s parents were out, as usual. Zeph never complained much that they were like that because it did give him some freedom, but Jack and Noah knew that deep down he felt left out of his parents’ lives.

  But Zeph had a way of always being in good spirits. He greeted the two brothers with a great pat on the shoulders and a handful of chocolate chip cookies for each of them. They exchanged greetings through mouthfuls of cookies.

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Jack. “Do you have it?”

  “Yup,” said Zeph, swallowing the last of a cookie, getting hiking boots on, and wrapping a jacket around his wide shoulders. Noah was always impressed with how big and muscular Zeph was. He towered over Noah and seemed three times as wide. Was that what had made Jack and Zeph such good friends, that they were both so big and tall for their age? “I got it,” said Zeph, reaching over to a carved wooden bench and pulling up a black air rifle.

  “What do we need your BB gun for?” asked Noah. “What are we doing?”

  “Did you ever see it shoot? It’s the most powerful BB ri
fle out there. Shoots just under five hundred feet per second! It’s awesome!” said Zeph, throwing a small box of BBs to Jack, who pocketed them.

  Using the eastward trail through dense woods, the three boys walked to the top of the ridge overlooking the Henley property, coming close to the spot Jack and Zeph had been on the night of Paul’s shooting. They crept up to the edge, hidden by the brush, and peered to the home below. Jack asked for the BB gun. Zeph leaned in next to him, taking the powerful toy off his shoulder and loading it with the pellets.

  “Hold your horses, you Noofarg,” he said. Then he cranked the air pump, shouldered the rifle and aimed toward dense trees, bracing himself. “Fire in the hole,” he warned and squeezed the trigger. The shot went off quietly, but with impressive speed, nicking a tree, scattering pieces of dry bark with a succinct knock.

  “Woah!” said Noah, echoed by Zeph, who was proud of his rifle. Zeph pulled it down off his shoulder and handed it to Jack. “Pump it first,” he said.

  Jack did so and then, lying flat in the brush, he braced the rifle against his right shoulder. He brought the black rifle barrel through the branches around him to aim down at the Henley property.

  “Jack, what you doing? Don’t aim down there,” said Noah.

  “Why not?” said Jack, cool and vengeful, squinting his right eye into the sight.

  “Lots of reasons. Come on.”

  “Ugh, careful there, bud,” said Zeph, beginning to get worried.

  “No worries, guys,” said Jack, tightening his hold, about to pull the trigger.

  The front door of the house below swung open. Mrs. Henley let out the dog. Jack relaxed his grip on the rifle and settled back a bit. The other two boys let out a mutual sigh.

  “You almost shot Mrs. Henley!”

  “No, I saw her!”

  “Right you did!” said Noah. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Below, at the Henley property, the dog paced at the base of the ridge. Thick brush and rocks kept it from moving upwards, but then it began barking.

  “Crap, the dog knows we’re here,” said Zeph.

  Jack pumped the air crank on the rifle and shouldered it again, aiming down. “I’m not leaving without taking a few good shots at these bastards.”

  Tall Mr. Henley himself came through the front door, yelling at his dog.

  “Don’t shoot Mr. Henley, Jack! Come on!”

  “He deserves it, don’t you think? Eh? He was one of them that night. He’s a friend of Jeffrey Lennox and those other fuckers. He deserves a shot in the belly, just like our dad! Don’t you think? No?”

  “Bud, if you’d told me that’s why you wanted to come out here with my BB gun, I wouldn’t have come. Let’s get the hell out of here! Come on!”

  “Not without a couple shots,” insisted Jack. There was an edge in his voice neither Zeph nor Noah had ever heard coming from him.

  “Okay, take a couple shots. Don’t hurt anybody, or the dog! Okay? Don’t shoot the dog either.”

  “They deserve to get their shot.”

  “Jack, you don’t know who shot your dad. You don’t know!”

  “They did. They all shot him. They’re all fucking responsible. Do you get that! They’re all fucking responsible!”

  “You’re going to shoot them all? Tonight? With my BB gun? Makes no sense! Take a few shots, okay, I get it! Get it out of your system, bud. But don’t shoot anyone! Shoot their freaking cars, or that metal rooster hanging from the roof!”

  “It’s a wind chime,” said Noah.

  “Yeah, shoot the wind chime! I hate those things. But that’s it, okay?”

  Jack aimed the rifle and shot. The BB hit the roof of the Henley house. He cranked it again and steadied himself for another shot. He took it. The metal BB rang out against the ornament. The dog grew even more agitated, continuing to bark in both the direction of the rooster and of the ridge where the boys hid. Jack cranked the rifle again.

  “Come on,” said Zeph, “that’s enough!” Jack was preparing to shoot again. Henley, intrigued by his dog’s behaviour and by the clanging sound he had just heard, walked along his porch toward the wind chime.

  Jack braced himself for the shot. Zeph reached down and pulled the rifle up and away from him. The butt of the gun inadvertently hit Jack on the side of the face, touching his bruises. He winced and put his hand to his face.

  “Crap, Noofarg, you hit me with it!”

  “I know you’re angry, Jack, buddy, I know, but this isn’t right. I know Henley and Lennox and Davis are all fuckheads and they may be the ones who shot your dad, but did you think that maybe they’re not the ones? Eh? You don’t know for certain! You don’t know for certain! Are you going to start shooting them all?”

  “Zeph’s right, Jack,” added Noah. “Come on, let’s get out of here before Henley gets his own rifle, with real bullets, and shoots up this way. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Fine,” said Jack, his chest heaving with anger and frustration. “Fine!”

  Jack wasn’t fine. His anger was deeper and greater than he could handle. He had no solution for himself, and stood there, paralyzed. His brother and best friend took him by the arm and pulled him back from the edge of the ridge. They walked slowly, with little said, from the Henley property back to Zeph’s house. Every once in a while, Jack picked up a rock, gritted his teeth and launched it at some abstract target, sometimes connecting with a tree branch, a trunk, or the plain, hard, unforgiving earth.

  CHAPTER 7

  MONSTERS

  Tom Doran left the Carignan house with feelings he hadn’t expected. There was something stirring in him for this sad woman. He felt like telling her everything would be okay, that he had some sort of solution for her, protection to some extent, perhaps even justice, but he knew that wasn’t either true or possible. He couldn’t offer her any of those things. That’s the way he saw it.

  On the other hand, it was his duty to look at recent events from a logical point of view. There were many unknowns surrounding the death of Paul Carignan. Everything about it deserved a second and third look, the extra consideration that might make sense of it all. His professional savvy told him key pieces of this Beaufort puzzle were obviously missing, and that a bigger picture would reveal itself, if he looked in the right places. Still, on a basic, primal level, he had all the information he needed to come to certain conclusions.

  When he had left Catherine in the kitchen, he had returned to the living room and found no new clues. He had then circled the large home several times, with Hanes taking photos of the point of entry, the rear vestibule, and pertinent boot prints. As was his habit, Tom had then paced around the scene yet again, on a wider arc, and this time came to the woodpile where Paul Carignan had caught the bullet that took his life. Tom inspected the area again, and was sniffing in the air, intrigued by a particular scent, when Mark Hanes caught up to him, curious about what he was considering. Tom asked him for a match, and Hanes, an avid camper and mildly obsessed survivalist, obliged, giving him the small pack of waterproof matches he always carried in his waist pouch, next to his gun. Tom struck a match.

  “Watch this,” he said, and tossed the match amongst some of the logs that had been knocked over. A fireburst, blue and orange, roared up before the match hit the ground, then dissipated to a thin blaze covering less than a square metre.

  “What the hell was that?” Hanes had been caught off guard by the flash.

  “Birchmore. Single Malt,” said Tom, sniffing the distinct caramel whiskey aroma, watching the remaining small flames vanish. “Smell that?”

  “Are you about to tell me some victory joke?” Hanes said.

  Tom gave Hanes a quizzical look.

  “The movie! Apocalypse Now!” said Hanes. “Kilgore, on the beach! You never saw it, did you?”

  Tom said nothing.

  “Brooder, you’re such
a caveman. Do you even have a television?”

  “No, I don’t, Mark.”

  “What do you do with your time, write poems? That’s it, isn’t it, you’re secretly a poet? That’s what you go off and do in your church-house? Lethal cop and a poet!”

  “Listen, lunkhead. Did you recognize that smell? I mean, it’s faint, but I smell it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Birchmore Whiskey. Smells like fermented rat piss. Who can ever forget? Sells for cheap, but I’ve never seen anyone actually drink the shit. Wonder what the Carignans, who can afford a goddam mansion like this, would be doing with Birchmore Whiskey? They would be premium all the way, no?” said Hanes.

  “Yeah, they probably would,” Tom agreed.

  But Tom, whose powers of observation were more refined than his colleague’s, knew who drank that brand in Beaufort. Jeffrey Lennox stank of Birchmore Whiskey. A brutal drink for a brutal man.

  “Who do you think did this?” asked Hanes. “The Gagnon kids? They’re just down the road. They’re animals, rich and wild. And they’ve done this sort of thing before.”

  “Maybe,” said Tom, but he knew it was Lennox, sure and certain, as retribution for the message Chief Bernier had passed on to him. The damage, the boldness of it, the brashness of the act—and the whiskey spill over by the woodpile. He could imagine Lennox, tired after unleashing such vandalism, maybe celebrating, sipping at his bottle, belching out his idiot opinions and perhaps spitting out the hard alcohol, just because he could. Lennox was laughing in Tom’s face, and Tom knew it.

  Hanes shut off his digital camera and took it from his neck. “Well, if your magic show is over, I’ll head back to the office and put these shots on the server file for your report.”

  “Thanks, Mark,” said Tom. “I’ll see you later.”

  “You’re not heading back?”

  “No, I’ve got a stop or two to make first. Catch up to you later.”

  Hanes left Tom at the woodpile. Tom crouched and touched the ground, taking another sniff of the Birchmore Whiskey, as if to confirm what it was. He looked off toward the house and watched as the Carignan boys returned from their trek in the woods. They ran in through the broken rear entrance. He saw the younger boy run to his mother and the older one, Jack, run past them and upstairs, out of sight. He saw Catherine hug the younger boy.