Deer Season (24 page)

“True,” said Ray, remaining silent for a few moments as he thought about how he mighthave reacted if he had been confronted with this situation.

“Tell me about the early days, Ben. When you were first in the department. What was it like with Dirk and his brother?”

Ben didn’t respond immediately.

“It was a culture shock in thebeginning. I was young, just a few years out of college with a degree in criminal justice. I spent a year in Detroit before getting a job with the Birmingham department. We had sort of settled in to our life down there. Maureen had a teaching job in Royal Oak; we had a real nice apartment and were starting to look for a house. Then Maureen’s father got lung cancer; we had only been married about a year. We were driving up here every weekend or two to help out. This city boy had to learn about fruit farming. The sicker her dad got, the more they needed our help. Orville was a friend of the family and offered me a job. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but Maureen was very close to her dad and felt needed. Our original plan was to be here for a year or two and then go back to the city, but we sort of settled in. Maureen got a teaching job and then got pregnant. It was just sort of natural the way we ended up here.”

“How about your job?” asked Ray.

“It was awful. I was trying to figure out how I could pick up a teaching degree or do something else.”

“What was going on?” Ray asked.

“I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it, but I know you’ve heard a lot of stories over the years. Even though Orville had sort of gone into retirement while still on the job, he got re-elected every four years. Dirk, his brother Danny, and Kenny Obermeyer ran the department. They were all ex-military and started in the force when they came out of the service. They weren’t happy when Orville hired me, and they did their best to isolate me and make me feel unwanted. I think they were hoping I would quit.”

“But you didn’t,” said Ray.

“I ended up working nights, so I didn’t have to deal with them.”

“So what was going on in the department?” Ray asked

“I can’t say that my knowledge is first hand. Like I said, they isolated me. They seemed to figure out right from the outset that I was a straight arrow.”

“How were things organized?”

“There was Orville, and then those three were the undersheriffs. They gave themselves the rank of captain. And like I said, I didn’t see anything, but ….”

“I’d be interested in hearing your take on things,” pressed Ray. “What do you think was happening?”

“Well, roughing up people at traffic stops and arrests, womanizing, entrapment, drugs—you name it. And then there was that thing with Kenny Obermeyer getting shot.”

“What did you hear about that?”

“It was in the summer, late July as I remember it. I wasn’t on; it was a weekend. The story Orville put out, the one fed to him by Dirk and his brother, was that Kenny was shot during a routine traffic stop. I heard they picked up the body in a field way off the road, and Kenny was not in uniform. Some traffic stop.”

“So what do you think happened?”

“I’m not sure, there were so many stories. I just know the three of them were spending a lot of money, many times their salary. Right after the shooting, Orville took back the day-to-day operation of the department and cleaned house. He turned out to be a lot more with it than I thought.

“Danny supposedly quit; he moved his family north, and Dirk disappeared for a while, and when he came back he was on road patrol. Orville made sure the investigation of Kenny’s death didn’t go anywhere. Today you couldn’t get away with that, but things were a lot looser then.”

“Tell me about Danny?”

“He’s Dirk’s kid brother, cut from the same mold, only much bigger and tougher. He was a violent person who loved to fight. I can remember a couple of instances that first year where he stopped bar brawls; his technique was to go in and beat the hell out of combatants and then drag them to jail.”

“So Danny was this tough guy, but when Kenny got killed, he wasted no time getting out of town.”

“They had gotten into something really bad. And the people they were involved with didn’t hesitate to blow one of them away to make a point. I was glad to see Danny go. He was dirt.”

“You said they had a lot of money then?”

“For a few years they had all the toys: new cars, trucks, and snowmobiles. They were living high on the hog. Danny and Kenny seemed to blow it all. Dirk was better at hanging onto some of it. I don’t understand how he’s done it. I mean, he’s gone through a couple of divorces, he’s got kids from previous marriages he’s had to support, but he always seems to be in the chips.”

“Any ideas?”

“I know he’s got some rentals, he owned a pizzeria early on, and he’s been doing some moonlighting.”

“I’ve heard about the moonlighting,” said Ray, “but I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what he does. And he will never take any overtime.”

“He’s told me he does consulting. When I’ve pushed him on it, he’s said something about designing security systems.”

“Interesting,” said Ray. “Ben, over the years has Dirk ever been involved in domestic violence?”

“Like Dirk as the perpetrator?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I can give you a good answer. When I first moved here, the three of them really covered for one another. And all of them were pretty good at slapping people around. Whether that extended to Dirk’s wives and girlfriends, I don’t know. Now Danny, on the other hand, was pretty physical with his girlfriends. But like I said, they covered for one another.”

They sat in silence as Ben drove through the snow-covered landscape. Ray looked out at the neat rows of fruit trees in the orchards, gray and dormant against the gently rolling blanket of fresh snow. He absorbed the beauty of the moment before allowing his focus to come back to the bleak business at hand.

As they came around the corner at the top of the drive, they saw a second pickup parked on the apron in front of the garage next to Dirk’s truck.

“That truck looks familiar,” said Ray.

“It’s Donna Bateman’s. Seems like she’s not spending every night at home supervising young Clay. Perhaps Dirk’s going to replace Gavin Mendicot as the homme du jour.”

“What do you know about Gavin?” asked Ray.

“He’s had a fewrun-ins withlaw enforcement over the years,” Ben said.

“Remember to tell me about him when we’re heading back. I’ve become sort of curious about him,” explained Ray.

“Will do. You’re going to do the talking when we get inside?” asked Ben.

“Yes,” answered Ray.

“Good,” said Ben as he started to unfold his tall frame out of the car.

After ringing the bell and hearing the Westminster-like chime from the interior, they stood for thirty or forty seconds before Ray pushed the button a second time. After a second interval, he pushed the bell a third time. Finally they could hear a voice, followed by the sound of the deadbolt being withdrawn. The door opened to the length of the chain, with Dirk peering out.

“What do you guys want?” he asked.

“We need to talk to you,” answered Ray. “Let us in.”

“Did Lynne….”

“No, Dirk. But we need to talk to you,” said Ray.

The door closed and they could hear the chain being released. Dirk opened the door and they followed him into the living room. He was wearing a heavy terrycloth bathrobe and, it appeared, little more. Ray saw Dirk set the revolver he had been holding in his right hand when he opened the door on the fireplace mantle. He motioned them to sit; he remained standing with his back to the fireplace.

“If nothing happened to Lynne, what’s so important that you have to come barging in here so early in the morning,” Dirk asked, putting an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

“It’s your brother, Danny.”

“What about him?”

“We had a call early this morning from the sheriff’s department up there. He was killed in a snowmobile accident.”

Dirk pulled a kitchen match out of the pocket in his robe and lit it with the flick of his thumb. He inhaled deeply, tossed the remains of the match on the cold coals in the fireplace, looked over their heads, and slowly exhaled.

“What else?”

“That’s all I know, Dirk.” Ray looked over at Ben.

“They said thecause of the accident is still under investigation,” added Ben. “It happened during the night. They were going to do a more thorough investigation this morning. The body has been sent to Marquette for an autopsy.”

“Dumb bastard,” Dirk said, his gaze still way above their head. “I told him he shouldn’t be riding all the time.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ray.

“Danny owns this bar. In the winter he rides his sled to and from work almost every day. It’s the going home after he closes that I was worried about. Most nights he’s real tired and probably had too much to drink. Fifteen, twenty miles of back roads and two-tracks—a breakdown, an accident, or even running out of gas—you’d fucking freeze to death before anyone found you.”

“Danny got a wife?” Ray asked.

“Yeah, but he’s been living with a girlfriend. That’s why he was traveling so far. He’s got a house just down the road from the bar.”

“Anything we can do?”

“No. But you asked me to stay around town. When I know about the funeral, I’d like to go up there for a day or two.”

“We’ll work something out,” said Ray

“I need to be alone, now,” said Dirk, finally looking directly at Ray. “Thank you for, ah, coming to tell me.”

Ben and Ray let themselves out of the house. Once they were settled back in the car and Ben was starting to maneuver out of the drive, he observed, “Over thirty some years I’ve done a fair number of death notifications. I think this was the most unusual.”

“How so?” asked Ray, wondering if Ben’s response was similar to his own.

“No affect,” he paused. “That’s not quite right. There was some emotion, but it seemed more irritation than anything else. Maybe we interrupted some good lovemaking?”

“Were Dirk and Danny close, back in the old days?”

“I think so, but I always got the impression it was a really strange, violent family.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t make your life so miserable that you quit,” said Ray.

“They gave it their best shot,” Ben said as he pulled onto the snow-covered county road. “One night during my first summer in the department they lured me up to this place near Bass Lake; it was an old farm that Kenny had bought at a tax sale. I could see that they had all been drinking heavily. They told me they wanted to show me something in the barn, and as soon we got into this empty old building, Kenny says something like, ‘College boy, we’re going to show you a few things you didn’t learn in school.’ Then he takes this real clumsy swing at me.”

“What did you do?”

“Well Ray, you know I’m an old-line Detroiter. My grandfather—who spent his working years in the steel mill at the Rouge—was a semi-pro fighter, my father was a Golden Gloves champ, later a coach. I boxed until I was in tenth grade, when I made the Fordson High basketball team. You should have seen me back then; I was so tall and skinny.”

“You’re still tall,” Ray joked.

“Yeah, it’s the other dimension that I struggle with.”

“Did you play basketball in college?”

“I didn’t get a scholarship, but I was going to try to make the team. Then I met this exotic woman, she was a fencer, and I followed her to practice. The coach, this really incredible old Hungarian, looked at me, told me to hold out my arm, and said I was born for the epee. So I fenced for four years. My hoop dreams were replaced with a sword.”

“What happened to the exotic woman?”

“She was an art major. Did one of those junior years abroad in Paris. I went to visit her once at Christmas break. By spring she had fallen madly in love with a painter. She stayed over there. Last I heard she was living in Spain.”

“Were you crushed?”

“Truth be told, I had met someone also.”

“So back to the barn,” said Ray. “What happened?”

“So Kenny and Danny started after me. I knew I couldn’t take on both of them, so I said something like, ‘Don’t you guys have enough balls to fight me one at a time?’ I took off my gun belt and handed it to Dirk who was just standing there watching. Danny came after me first. He was big and strong and tough. But he was also drunk and clumsy and didn’t know how to box; he was strictly a brawler. With my reach he was never able to get close. And luckily for me, he had a glass jaw; I put him away fast. Kenny was a bit more challenging. I had to close one of his eyes and push in his nose before he decided he wasn’t having much fun.”

“How about Dirk?” asked Ray.

“He stood on the sidelines. Finally he asked Danny and Kenny if they had had enough. Then he gave me my gun back and walked me to my car. Before I left he said something to the effect that it would be best if I didn’t mention what had happened to anyone.”

“Did you?”

“From that point on they left me alone. I had decided I would hold onto the job until I could find something else to do with my life. But before I found a new position Kenny was dead and Danny was gone.”

“What did Maureen say?”

“I never told her. It would have really frightened her.”

“So you never told anyone?”

“I didn’t see the point in it,” said Ben. “Before we went in you said you wanted to know about Gavin Mendicot.”

“Yes.”

“Well, like I started to tell you. He’s been picked up on a couple of DUIs in recent years. Back in the ‘80s he was a wild kid, came from a family with lots of money. He had piles of speeding tickets. He might have been one of the kids the musketeers roughed up in their local behavior modification program. Then he was in the military, a couple of tours in Iraq, I think. When he came back he was pretty screwed up. But, who knows, he might have been pretty screwed up before he went. And I think he and Donna have been a couple on and off the last year or two, but it looks like she’s found a new man, at least for the moment.”