Starvation Lake Read Online Free PDF Page B

had been Darlene Bontrager, but later she married a minor-league hockey player named Esper who suffered a mysteriously chronic back ailment and now spent his days playing video golf at Dingman’s Bar. Darlene Esper was the sheriff’s deputy who had called me about the snowmobile in Walleye Lake.
    I’d gone off to Detroit so that someday I might be able to come back to Starvation and walk up to Elvis and tell him, “Why don’t you go to hell, so what if I lost a stupid hockey game years ago? Look at me now, a big-city reporter, a Pulitzer Prize winner.” But there I was, just another local loser who worked at the little paper across the street with the shaker shingles over the door and the sign in the window that read, “Peerless
Pilot
Personals Will Put You on the Path to Pleasure and Profit.” Screaming would have felt great. Instead I managed a tight smile and said to Joanie, “What’s all the interest in the coach?”
    “The snowmobile,” she said. “Looks like it could’ve been his.”
    “Weren’t you out to Walleye last night, Gus?” Elvis said.
    “Yes, but I—”
    “We heard they found a pair of Jack’s old skates inside, all rusted out.”
    Joanie scribbled furiously in her notebook. This was just what I had feared. If I didn’t get her out of there fast, by nightfall we’d be hearing about sightings of Jack Blackburn, and maybe the other Elvis, too.
    “Sounds like you all know a lot more than I do,” I said. I put a hand on Joanie’s shoulder. “We need to get the paper out.”
    She shrugged my hand off and stood. “Come on back, Miss Joanie,” Elvis said. “I’ll buy you a cup.”
     
     
       The door had barely shut behind us when she turned to me, florid with anger. “Why did you do that? I was getting good color.”
    “Color for what?”
    “For the snowmobile story you told me to do.”
    “Blackburn died on Starvation Lake,” I said, “not Walleye.”
    “Whatever. The cops think it might be his.”
    “
Might
be?” I noticed Elvis craning his neck to see us through the window.
    “They got the registration—part of the registration number—and it matches. I mean, part of it matches what’s—”
    “Part of it? Did Dingus confirm it?”
    “No. D’Alessio.”
    Pine County sheriff’s deputy Frank D’Alessio was young and dumb and a notorious skirt chaser. “I’ll bet it’s not on the record, though, huh?”
    “So?”
    “So you’ve got part of a number and the word of a deputy who won’t go on the record. You don’t really have a goddamn thing, do you?”
    “Watch your language, please.”
    “This is a small town, Joanie. Asking questions about stuff you don’t know to be true is no different than gossiping to everybody here.”
    “Well, maybe this town’s too small.”
    “Maybe. Just don’t bring me this stuff until you have it nailed.”
    “OK, boss,” she said. She veered to cross Main without me but had to wait for a car to pass. She spun to face me again. Her hair had fallen across her eyes. I knew D’Alessio. He’d be all over that.
    “What about the Bigfoot story?” she said.
    “What about it?”
    “Do you need anything more?”
    “Not right now.”
    “Meaning?”
    I glanced away. Soupy’s truck was parked in front of Enright’s. “It’ll run next week. Got to have it lawyered first.”
    “Lawyered? Bullcrap! They’ll cut out all the stuff about the grants and all the crap Perlmutter’s been peddling all these years. And you can run the usual little piece of crud instead of a story that might turn a few heads.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “But you know, don’t you, Gus?”
    I watched, speechless, as she turned and darted into the street, holding up her hand to slow an oncoming pickup.
     
     
     

five
     
     
       No way was I going back to Audrey’s for lunch. I walked around behind the
Pilot
and climbed the wooden stairs to my apartment.
    I took bologna and ketchup from the fridge, a frying pan from the dish drainer.