The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

“Nice to do business with you, Mister Morrison.”

“It is nice to do business with me,” he made himself laugh. The secretary was on the line and I gave her the bank instructions and numbers. I drove to Menden’s office, twenty miles to get the maps, and then pulled into my bank. I told the head teller I was waiting for a transfer and I sat there. She came out from behind her desk an hour and a half later to tell me I was two thousand dollars richer. In the skim, checks are no good. You can’t put a stop payment on a wire transfer. And you can’t get it back, either. I withdrew all but two hundred of it and when I got home, sat and figured my bills. Three hundred was left when I got done paying. I was trying to live low. I was lucky. I went to sleep and dreamed of the site. Tried hard to dream myself up some tiger maple, a whole straight stand of them. My arms and legs hurt from the accident and beating and that night my back seized once. The pain pills helped, with a chaser. It wasn’t going to be easy cutting trees.

The next day on my way to the site, I stopped and phoned Dave, my cherry picker man. He was home.

“Hey,” I said.

“Shit,” he said. “Saint Peter hand you the phone or what?”

“I got hurt and ended up in the hospital.” He didn’t say anything. “Look,” I went on. “I’ve got a job.”

“It will have to be within the next three days,” he said. “Where is it?”

I told him.

“I’ve driven past that for years, used to be posted under the name Nolan. I’ve been up there hunting.”

“That’s the spot,” I said.

“Park your truck where I can see it from the road,” he said. “If I can’t see your truck, I’ll figure it’s off.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“See you then,” he said as he hung up.

“See you then,” I said to nobody.

Part of working in the woods means being able to see things and knowing how those things will impact the operation later. What soil will give way after a rain and heavy tonnage load of logs, bogging down equipment. I pulled my truck up an old dirt path, so I could pull it back down within sight of the road when I was ready for Dave. I took a can of red marking paint and drew myself a landing site on a slight hill and started to look the place over. Within ten minutes of walking, I’d found what I was looking for. Some of the best maple I’d seen in years. At least twenty of them, all straight up to the sky like God meant them to be. I tied some yellow area tape around them, then some orange, and when I got done walking the site, at least a couple of them were coming down today. I kept walking and making notes in my weatherproof book. It was always strange to me, to be doing an honest appraisal and keeping an eye out for trees to steal. I crossed a small stream and started up a rocky hill that had more timber behind it. This was a great spot and why Morrison wanted to sell was beyond me. It was funny that I hadn’t seen any deer yet, but I figured they must be deeper in the woods. I got to the top of the rocks and it looked like there was a trail ahead of me.

The man leaning against one of the trees held a rifle. It was a stainless steel, wood-grip lever action, with a short barrel. He wore a black work jacket.

“I’m up here on a timber appraisal,” I said. “For Morrison. He said anybody who knew Nolan was OK with him.” I tossed in the only local name I knew.

The man nodded. “Come here,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“Come here or I’ll shoot you and leave you there,” he said. I walked toward him and we started down the trail together, with me in front. As we went forward, I heard noise. I’d heard the same noise once before, in a logging camp in Quebec. Dog fights.

There was an old barn, half falling down, and a bunch of guys standing on an old concrete foundation, looking down in. I could hear the dogs ripping into each other, low growls, yelps, then a sound like strips of Velcro being pulled apart. Bodies hitting the concrete walls. And the scraping of claws on the concrete slab floor. They had a long handler’s stick set up and it looked like they yoked the dogs into a crate and then used pulleys to haul it up to the rim of the foundation. Nobody went into the pit except the dogs. That was the fight area.

A couple of the guys standing around were state cops, I sort of recognized them. A DEP cop stood right there in his uniform, giving his bet money to a man behind a makeshift desk in the barn. My escort with the rifle took me over to a fat guy sitting on a stool near the barn entrance. There was an old car there, a Plymouth Barracuda, light blue, and as I walked past, a pit bull slammed with everything he had against the window trying to get at me. I jumped back a few steps and the fat guy laughed at me. I looked at the chrome fish emblem on the car and thought about how barracuda are supposed to have rows of sharp teeth and the chrome brought me back to the surgical tools from the hospital. Fear made my mouth taste like hot metal.