Skin and Bones by Doiron Paul

Author:Doiron, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

9.

Ora awakened when Charley returned home. She sat up in bed. Her hair was mussed in the way he found attractive. She listened to him narrate the events of the past hours as he undressed.

“Where are you with this?” she asked.

“Nowhere.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.”

He appreciated his wife’s willingness to serve as both a sounding board and a spur to action.

“Tim hasn’t been seen since Tuesday night when he made that call to Ricki Tripp outside the den of iniquity. My gut tells me Tomer Elmut saw him there. The odds are good that Elmut is the man who was buying Tim’s illegal game.”

“Do you think he might have hurt the boy?”

“Elmut talks like a revolutionary, but I don’t know if he’s ever spent a night in jail for his hijinks. I doubt he would’ve hurt Tim if it meant risking Ed Grindle’s wrath. But if he knows what became of the young man, he isn’t telling.”

“So where might Tim have gone?”

Charley drew his service revolver from its holster and slid the gun into the nightstand drawer. Then he unbuckled his heavy Sam Browne belt and hung it in the closet beside his uniform.

“Well, he would have known that his brother was in lockup and the house was empty. So he might have walked home through the woods for his things and whatever money he had in his squirrel cache. He’d mentioned stealing his brother’s snowmobile to Ricki. I should have asked Ed if his sled was missing.”

“So call him again.”

“Ed won’t talk to me, assuming he’s even conscious. I’ll have to go over myself in the morning to see firsthand. If the sled’s gone, I’m not sure what it means. If the sled’s there, then I’d better start searching the woods between Bigelow and Pickle Hill for Tim’s frozen corpse.”

“You reported his disappearance to the state. Why isn’t Human Services making him a priority?”

He unbuttoned and unzipped his wool pants and stepped out of them. “You’ve had students like Tim, Boss.”

“Don’t call me that, Charley,” she said, trying to hide a smile because she secretly enjoyed the nickname. “Tell me more about this Tomer Elmut.”

He turned from the closet in his boxer shorts, his welterweight’s physique crisscrossed with scars he’d received in the war. “Tomer thinks of himself as a political activist, but he’s more like one of those yippies who went around throwing pies in people’s faces in the sixties. I’d bet a penny he’s behind all those health and safety violations at the Den. He’s trying to sabotage his loathsome employer’s business. How Levasseur hasn’t cottoned to the truth is a mystery.”

“Tomer Elmut would do those things even if it means losing his job?”

“He doesn’t care two cents about that. The man is what a buddy of mine from Wyoming used to call a professional saddle spur.”

“And you’re certain that he and Tim were acquainted?”

“He admitted that the boy had asked him for taxidermy lessons.”

“In exchange for supplying illegal pelts to mount as some sort of protest against federal protections?”

Charley shrugged.

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