Cross Country Murder Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

its holster and went inside the little gas station and rang up their bill on an antique register. It pealed into life as rows of coloured tabs with dollars and cents written on them sprang into view.
    He had wondered about hunting so late in the season. It was getting colder and before bears went into hibernation they scavenged and hunted for food (he’d read in a magazine) with a sometimes startling ferocity. Lot quicker than you think too, the guy at the store had said, regarding their bright, newly-bought hunting tunics coolly. They left, gunning the engine on their hire car, and headed towards the town on the lake. The endless-looking lake actually spanned a time zone so that the ferry either deposited you on one side at approximately the time you left the other or threw you a little way into the future as you landed. The hunting was across the water in the forest of pine that covered the glacier, a dense blanket of uniform trees that changed from bottle-green to dark brown as it followed the lip of the mountain.
    They’d flown north to an area outside of Waterloo that was dotted with private airstrips and exclusive golf resorts and offered weekend hunting packages for customers from the southern cities who wanted a taste of the wilderness. As they came through the clouds to land the airport looked like it was waiting just for them. It was hectic all summer long, though the miniature terminal felt like a ghost town after September. Waterloo was set on the lake, a small, idyllic-looking town that had grown up on the logging industry. These days the local kids were caddies on the weekend and skiing or snowboarding when winter came in. Waterloo had been made briefly famous in Steve Martin’s Roxanne, his cinematic reworking of the Cyrano De Bergerac legend. On the first night there they’d had to get used to cab drivers and locals pointing out plastic awnings dotted on bar and hotel windows and telling them how and where they’d featured in the film.
    Steve Martin, what’s he like? He a dick? he’d asked one cab driver.
    Uh-uh, he said with a firm shake of his head. Real gent, and he didn’t acknowledge the pair again even as they left his car, pressing a generous tip into his hand.
    Daylight hours were short so the next morning they set out early, catching the first ferry across the lake. Cars honked and queued below them as they sat on the deck admiring the view. Ahead of them gently sloping hills rose out of the water and disappeared into the low sky.
    Dope farmers all along there, said his companion, gesturing with his arm towards the horizon made jagged by tightly packed fir trees.
    Dope farmers? he replied. Who told you that?
    A friend of my brother’s used to work for the DEA, he replied. They would take small spotter planes and fly grid lines over the mountains trying to spot crops. They’ve got camouflaged fields up there, huge barns filled with lights, they give off heat, helps them grow.
    Nah, he said, warming his hands on the cup of coffee he was holding.
    It’s true, said his friend, a passenger plane crashed up there last winter and they sent a team in to search for survivors and stumbled on a farm; they were threatened with guns. This guy, my brother’s friend, his team went in and closed it down. The guy got ten years for growing all that weed.
    What happened to the other farmers? he asked. He couldn’t help himself, his interest was piqued; he imagined leaving his job in the city, casting off the shackles of corporate life (he wouldn’t have been able to identify a shackle if someone held one three inches from his face, but his fantasies weren’t there to be hindered by reality) and giving himself over to toiling his illegal acres, his one man crusade against the war on drugs. He imagined the sweet smell filling the air, fresh dope every night, strong coffee every morning. He pictured himself walking the hills carrying some kind of staff, ducking