Blood Games

    ‘Anyway, there were these families. They lived near here and they were hill people. They lived in shacks. They didn’t have much to do with the outside world. They hunted and fished and kept to themselves.’

    ‘Probably some terrific banjo players,’ Abilene said. ‘Apparently, there was a lot of inbreeding.’

    ‘Halfwits and harelips,’ Cora said.

    ‘I thought we were supposed to shut up and listen,’ Finley reminded her.

    ‘And don’t you forget it,’ Cora said.

    ‘I was behaving.’ Finley leaned back and braced herself up with stiff arms. ‘Go on, Helen.’

    ‘Well, Cora’s right. The inbreeding did result in some abnormalities. The book didn’t go into much detail about it, just that some of them were retarded and some looked kind of freakish. But they minded their own business, and generally tried to keep their distance from the lodge. They were in the woods all around here, though. So when guests from the lodge would go out fishing or hunting, sometimes they’d spot one or two off in the distance. They used to make jokes about bagging one. How they could have the head stuffed, and hang it up in the lodge along with the other trophies.’

    ‘These lodge guests sound like charming people,’ Abilene said.

    ‘Hunters are all like that,’ Vivian said. ‘Macho bastards.’

    ‘You’ve known some?’ Abilene asked.

    ‘Hell, my father was one.’

    ‘I thought he was a neurosurgeon.’

    ‘He was that, too.’

    ‘I thought doctors only played golf.’

    ‘My dad played Daniel Boone. He made me help him dress out a deer when I was ten years old.’

    ‘What did you dress it in?’ Finley asked.

    ‘A Tipton shirt,’ Cora said, and laughed.

    ‘I didn’t dress it in anything. I had to cut off its head and gut it and…’

    ‘Jesus,’ Helen muttered.

    ‘I can’t picture you doing something like that,’ Abilene said.

    ‘Well, I puked all over it.’

    ‘That I can picture.’

    ‘He would’ve fit right in with a crowd of guys who think it’d be laughs to plug a hillbilly. He and his pals were all a bunch of gun-toting assholes.’

    ‘Guys and their guns,’ Finley said.

    ‘Anyway,’ Helen went on, ‘they did end up shooting one of those people.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    ‘It wasn’t on purpose, though,’ Helen said. ‘Three guys from the lodge were out deer hunting. They were over near that lake I mentioned. Something moved in the trees, and they opened fire. Then they went over to it, and what they found instead of a deer was a teenaged girl. Only she wasn’t dead. She was hit in the shoulder, is all.’

    ‘Not only assholes,’ Finley said, ‘but lousy shots.’

    ‘It’s not funny,’ Vivian muttered.

    ‘One of the hunters wanted to take the girl back to the lodge and get her to a hospital. At least that’s what he claims, and there was nobody left to refute him. Henderson. He told the whole story to the police later. He said the girl would’ve been all right if they’d gotten her some medical attention. But the other two were against it. They said there’d be hell to pay if it got out about them shooting her.’

    ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it?’ Abilene said.

    ‘Sure. And they figured they’d be all right with the authorities. What worried them was the girl’s family.’

    ‘Her kinfolks,’ Finley said.

    ‘Right. When something happens to blood relatives, people around here go nuts. They believe in an eye for an eye. They wouldn’t rest until they’d gotten their revenge, and they wouldn’t be very picky about who they nailed. The hunters were here with their families. Henderson had a wife and two little daughters back at the lodge, and the other two guys told him that nobody’d be safe. Especially daughters. But everything would be all right if the girl they shot could just disappear. That way, nobody would blame people from the lodge. Maybe she just got lost, or ran afoul of some wild animals. One of the other families might even get blamed. Apparently, there was bad blood between some of the clans, and the hunters knew about it.’

    ‘So they’re discussing all this,’ Cora asked, ‘while the poor kid is lying there bleeding?’

    ‘I guess so.’

    ‘What a bunch of bastards.’

    ‘They were hunters,’ Vivian said. ‘What do you expect?’

    ‘A little decency.’

    ‘Fat chance.’

    ‘The girl couldn’t hear them anyway. She was a deaf mute.’

    ‘Terrific,’ Vivian muttered.

    ‘Henderson says he told the guys they were talking about cold-blooded murder, and how this eye-for-an-eye stuff was no excuse to kill an innocent kid. She couldn’t exactly tell on them.’

    ‘She could point them out,’ Abilene said.

    ‘And grunt.’

    ‘You’re seriously disturbed, Finley.’

    ‘They told Henderson she had to be eliminated, but he didn’t listen. He knelt down and opened her shirt so he could get at the wound. He started to cut off one of her sleeves to use as a bandage, and that’s when one of the other guys clobbered him. Hit him in the head with a rifle butt. He says it knocked him out cold, so he didn’t have anything to do with what happened next.’

    ‘There’s a likely story,’ Finley said.