Dead Frenzy Read online

  Silence. Not a leaf or a pine needle moved. The dog was busy chasing a squirrel at the far end toward the lake. Osborne looked past the fish hut through the stand of red pine that separated his property from old man Balser’s. The longer he looked, the more he was sure he had seen something, but it didn’t make sense. Ray lived on the other side of his place. And old man Balser was no baker of pies, that’s for sure. He spent his days going to yard sales, filling his tumbledown garage with junk. Osborne made a mental note to ask the old geezer again if he was interested in selling. He would love to have a buffer of land between him and the glut of year-round homes popping up around Loon Lake.

  With a shrug, Osborne turned away. He checked to see if the pie was cool enough to pick up. Slipping his left hand under the glass plate, he reached with his right to shove open the sliding screen door. This time he was sure he saw a flash of movement to his right. The dog saw it, too. Mike was up and nosing around the fence on the far side of the fish hut. He gave a low growl and crouched back. Someone or something was definitely there.

  “Hel-l-o-o, who’s there?” Holding the pie in both hands, Osborne walked over to the deck railing. No answer. He waited, Mike waited—then the dog snuffled off after something more interesting. Whoever, whatever, had moved on. Balser’s barricade of balsams along the road made it impossible to see anyone walking off to the east.

  Kids! Osborne gave up and walked back to his doorway. Normally he would have checked out any trespassers—he kept enough fishing gear on the little porch that he didn’t need youngsters nosing around. But not today. He had too much on his mind.

  The house was cool inside, the kitchen meticulous. He made it a point to keep it that way in case Lew dropped by. Setting the pie down in the middle of the kitchen table, he leaned back against the counter with his arms crossed. He wished he could think of some piece of advice, some … thing that would put Erin’s life back together. As if shoveling through a junk drawer, he reached back into the memories of his therapy sessions in rehab.

  Were there clues in the map of his own misguided emotional history that might help this daughter he cherished?

  He was concentrating so hard, he didn’t even hear the soft padding of moccasins across the deck and onto the front porch. Mike, used to those particular footsteps, didn’t bark.

  “Doc?” said Ray, looking toward the bedrooms as he stepped into the living room.

  “Out here, Ray,” said Osborne. He moved around the counter so he could see into the living room. “Thanks for the pie.”

  “What pie? I haven’t been baking pies—I’ve been digging graves since the crack of dawn. Don’t know what got into everybody, biting the Big One on a gorgeous day like today.”

  • • •

  Ray’s lope across the living room reminded Osborne of nothing so much as a young buck caught in the headlights: four limbs exploding in different directions simultaneously. At age thirty-four, Ray still found six feet five inches of height a lot to handle. The rest of him was better organized.

  This morning he was so freshly showered that moisture still glinted on the random gray hairs curling through his russet-red beard, a beard that had only recently been trimmed to a more civilized length of four inches from his lower lip. No such concession had been made for the crazed mass of curls on his head. Those he shoved behind his ears and hoped for the best. Ray had too much hair, true, but at least he kept it clean.

  Maybe more than clean. Osborne had good reason to suspect that Ray spent nearly as much time in the mirror as a teenage girl. And why not? Any guy would if he had what Ray had: a lean body, a deep tan, an engaging grin, remarkably good teeth, and the kind of eyes (according to his daughter Mallory) that women love to fall into. Actually, Osborne liked his eyes, too. They were honest.

  The only thing Ray lacked was steady income. But being in his early thirties, that could change. At least, that’s what the women always thought. People who knew him well knew better. All it took to make Ray happy was a few bucks in the wallet, no limit on his catch, and a place to sleep close to the water. He bragged to his clients that success was matching lure, weather, and the correct-weight monofilament to make for an excellent stringer of fish—be it walleye, bluegill, bass, or muskie. As he always said when he hooked a big one: “Life don’t get much better ‘n this.”

  “You didn’t leave this peach pie on my deck a few minutes ago?” said Osborne.

  “Nope, but I sure can help you out if it’s more than you can handle.”

  “Well, that’s strange,” said Osborne. “I wonder…. ”

  “The lovely Lew perhaps?”

  “I doubt that—but we’re fishing tonight so I’ll ask her. What’s up?”

  “Not much—need to borrow some flour. I’m all out and I got a mess of bluegills to fry up.”

  “Help yourself.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Ray walked into the kitchen and over to the cupboard where the staples were kept. An excellent cook, he was always short of something. Chances were good he knew Osborne’s kitchen better than his own. He glanced over at his friend as he reached up.

  “Doc, you seem preoccupied … is anything wrong?” he said as he pulled a tall silver canister down from the cupboard.

  Ray had an uncanny ability to read the weather—in the sky, on the water, and in a man’s face. While it might make him one of the premier fishing and hunting guides in the entire northwoods region, it was a talent not always appreciated. And right now Osborne did not feel like talking about Erin, not even to the man he considered one of his closest friends.

  “Nah, I was just thinking about that girl whose body they found across the road years ago, back in the stand of hemlocks. The one they pinned on Jack Schultz—remember that? Or were you too young?”

  “Oh, I remember that all right,” said Ray. “A bunch of us kids rode out from town on our bikes to watch the cops pick it up. I remember that like it was yesterday, those bones. The hands with the flesh falling off, y’know—and they were reaching up…. ”

  Ray mimicked what he’d seen with a sudden thrust of his own arms. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so desperate in my life.”

  “C’mon, you were a kid, you don’t remember all that.”

  “Doc …” Ray leveled his eyes at Osborne. “The stuff I remember most clearly is the stuff I saw as a kid. And I will never forget that night. A lot of excitement at home, too, because no one knew who the killer was, remember? Those days my folks never locked their doors and that night they were frantic—couldn’t find the key—and they sure as hell weren’t going to bed until every door and window was locked up tight. One of the Ginzl girls, wasn’t it? I remember you were living here in those days, Doc.”

  “Yep, we had just built this place.”

  “So why are you thinking about that today?” said Ray as he scooped a cup of flour into a plastic bag.

  “I never thought Jack Schultz was the killer. He was a patient of mine, we’d fished together once or twice … and I’ve just never thought he had it in him…. ” Osborne paused, then decided. “You know, I’m going to ask Lew if I can take a look at the file on that.”

  Ray turned and looked at Osborne, measuring cup in hand. “You didn’t answer my question, Doc. Why … are you … thinking … about that … today?”

  Ray had an annoying habit of stretching out his vocabulary when making what he considered a very important point or asking what he considered a very important question—making it impossible to ignore him.

  Suddenly, inexplicably, the inside of Osborne’s eyelids felt hot and wet. He bent his head to run a hand through his hair and hide his face.

  Ray reached for the pie. His voice softened. “Hey, you old jabone, you. Time for a good breakfast and a slice of homemade peach pie. C’mon,” he urged with a shrug of his left shoulder. “Whatever it is, Doc, you are not going to solve it standing here.”

  three

  “Some men fish all their lives without knowin
g it is not really the fish they are after.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  The walleye fillets were long gone, the butter mopped up with whole wheat toast, and the pie almost half-eaten when Ray pushed his chair back from the table, extended his long legs, crossed his arms, and gazed out the window at the lake.

  “So Mark changed jobs a year ago, huh?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Osborne knew he was well aware that Erin’s husband was no longer the district attorney for Loon Lake, the man who went a little easy on him when he was caught inhaling on the Willow Flowage.

  “Wonder how he likes private practice. He joined Chuck Kasmarek’s firm, didn’t he?”

  Osborne nodded with a grimace. He hadn’t said anything to Erin and Mark when that decision was made. They were so pleased with the huge increase in salary—and with three young children, they needed the money.

  “Now there’s a razzbonya.” Ray continued to look out the window as if the answer to Erin’s dilemma might roll in on the next whitecap. “Guided him and a bunch of his law school buddies out fishing muskie a couple years back. They hooked a big one all right. One of their own right in the schnozz.”

  “Emergency room?”

  “Nah, he didn’t deserve it. I whipped it out with my fish pliers.”

  “Ouch.”

  “He’d had so many brewskis, he didn’t even know what was happening. That’s a hard-living crowd in that firm, Doc. I know for a fact Chuck’s at the casino almost every night.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “Mark never talks about his work.”

  Ray was quiet again for a while. While his friend ruminated, Osborne stood up, picked up both their plates, and walked them over to the sink. The house trailer might appear small from the outside but indoors it was open and airy and kept as tidy as Ray’s boat, which was always in perfect order. Osborne felt welcome any time. He had his own chair at the old oak table with its blue-and-white-checked placemats, and his own coffee cup, white background sprinkled with trout flies. Ray had bartered for it with the owner of the fly-fishing shop up in Boulder Junction: one coffee mug for directions to a tiny private lake bursting with brook trout.

  Ray’s yellow Labs, Ruff and Ready, were sleeping soundly on the overstuffed couch in the living room. The aroma of fresh-caught fish sautéed in butter still hung lightly in the air, and a lake breeze fluttered the white cotton curtains framing the open window above the kitchen sink. Osborne turned on the faucet to rinse the plates, then set them on the drainboard and dried his hands. Yep, it was a happy, homey place all right. You just had to get past the rusty exterior with its humongous neon green muskie leaping at you.

  Two springs earlier Ray had used his downtime between the ice going out and opening day of fishing to paint the “fish of 10,000 casts” smack dab across the front of his trailer, positioning the monster so visitors had to enter through gaping jaws. Then, just before the arrival of a new guiding client, Ray would position himself behind his kitchen curtains and wait—ready to judge his new client by the expression on their face as they got out of their car.

  “Tells me everything I need to know about a person, Doc, everything.”

  “I don’t know about that, Ray—that’s before they’ve met you.”

  In Osborne’s opinion, the true test was when and if a new client agreed to entrust their life and the lives of their loved ones over deep and unfamiliar waters to the man who stepped out of that trailer wearing a stuffed trout on his head. And he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  Ray’s approach to a day’s guiding was a frequent source of commentary among Osborne and the rest of the guys in the big booth at McDonald’s. Meeting every morning from seven to eight-thirty or so, the six regulars, all of them experienced fishermen, relished a critique of the man who lived a life they envied. Most had fished with him; almost all had sent friends Ray’s way for guiding. While they admired his talent for locating trophy fish, they were well aware of his faults, not the least of which could be poor judgment in personal relations.

  To a man, they had nodded in agreement with Osborne when he said, “That client makes up his mind when Ray comes down those two stairs with that damn hat on—that’s the moment that tries the soul.”

  “You betcha,” said five guys simultaneously.

  But whatever the exact moment of truth, the reality was that if you were new to fishing with Ray, the outcome of your day was determined in the seconds that passed between the time you got out of your car and shook Ray’s hand. No smile and a thin lip line broadcast that you were worried over getting your money’s worth out of an individual who appeared to need electric shock treatment.

  Ray knew instantly what was on your mind and he would plan accordingly: If you looked tense—that thin lip line—you got textbook technique, not too many jokes, egg salad on wheat for lunch, and a decent stringer of bass and walleye. If you were a real pill, you got suckers. And he didn’t want to see you again either.

  “On the other hand,” he said to Osborne one night as they sat on Ray’s dock enjoying a peach and lavender sunset, “if the party at hand registers less chagrin—well hell, I’ll give him a day he’ll never forget.”

  He would, too, which was why, after all the discussion, the boys at McDonald’s would still book any visiting relatives they knew and loved for a full day of fishing with Ray. It was a day guaranteed to deliver two-word pointers that could change your luck (if not your life), a steady supply of “Ray jokes” (slightly off-color even if females were along), sautéed-in-butter catch of the day (lightly seasoned with fresh ground pepper), directions to at least one “secret” fishing spot (including advice on how to deal with the game warden if arrested)—and a whole lot more fish than the thin-lipped client ever imagined could be caught. The only fish Ray could not deliver on command was muskie but he’d sure as hell help you try—even set you up with a long-term plan you could do on your own.

  Ray was not stupid—he knew a happy fisherman when he saw one. He knew who tipped better and who was a heck of a lot more likely to come back even if the weather was lousy. That was how he handled his live clients.

  Summers, Ray split his time between guiding fishermen and digging graves for Loon Lake’s Catholic cemetery. Winters he spent ice fishing, shoveling snow, carving wooden muskie lures, and defrosting the ground for the internment of less lively Loon Lake residents. The coffee crowd agreed on one thing: Ray was a marketing genius; he could make a buck off anyone—living or dead.

  “I’m not sure Kasmarek’s the sharpest knife in the drawer, Doc.”

  “I wouldn’t argue that, Ray,” said Osborne. “But he sure as hell makes money.”

  “Easy money. Bought and sold by the mining interests moving in from Canada.”

  “You can’t fault free enterprise, Ray. He’s not the only one—but I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t have more than that going on.”

  Again Ray gazed out at the water. His tone was softer and thoughtful when he finally spoke. “Kasmarek is dangerous, Doc. He’s not very nice and he’s not very happy.” He looked away from the window to Osborne. “He’d be tough to work for … maybe old Mark is having a career crisis of some kind. He wouldn’t be the first to bring work problems home, y’know. He is a bullet head, Doc. We’ve agreed on that before—maybe he and Chuck locked horns.”

  “I’d like to think it’s that rather than something between him and Erin.”

  “Tell you what…. ”

  Ray pushed his chair back from the table, stood, and reached for the trout hat sitting on top of the refrigerator. Summertimes, he anchored the treasured fish to a baseball cap, the head and tail extending to the right and left over his ears. That way he could wear the hat backward and still get the same effect. He stepped down into his living room and looked into the mirror hanging over the sofa where the dogs were sleeping. Setting the hat carefully on his head, he tucked a couple rogue curls up under the sweatb
and, then tipped the stuffed trout slightly forward and to the right.

  Osborne waited patiently, watching Ray complete an act he performed many times a day and always with the same slow precision he used when casting for trophy fish. Frustrating as it was for friends and relatives, Ray did not rush through life. There was virtue in that, Osborne knew, but it did not make being around the guy any easier. At least watching him, you could see progress. A telephone conversation was something else: Punctuated with long pauses, the wait could be torture. At last, Ray was ready.

  “I’ve gotta go by the bank this afternoon, Doc,” he said, ambling past Osborne to open the screen door. “Kasmarek’s law office is right around the corner from the drive-in and one of the gals who works there is a real sweetheart. She wants a pup next time I breed Ready. I’ll stop by and chat her up a little, see what I can find out. You home later?”

  Osborne followed him out the door. “Lew and I are fishing the Wolf—heading out around five if she doesn’t get held up.” Even Osborne heard the lack of enthusiasm in his voice. Ray gave him a sharp look.

  “Now, Doc,” he coaxed, throwing his arm over Osborne’s shoulder as they stepped into the sunny clearing he used for a driveway, “lighten up. You can’t live Erin’s life for her.”

  “I know that…. ”

  “No, you don’t. I can tell from the look on your face you don’t. Doc … step back and look at the sit … u … a … tion.” He stretched out the word as he looked hard at his friend. “What’s … the worst … that can happen?”

  Their eyes met. They had shared too many sessions in the room behind the door with the coffeepot on the window. Osborne knew right where Ray was going and he knew it was exactly what had been bothering him since Erin’s visit that morning.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Ray. “It was Erin who got you into rehab, she’s the one who led the intervention. She’s taken the lead with Mallory. That’s one family tradition your daughter is not going to follow. Believe me, she’s not. So … given that, what’s the worst?”