John tended to eat breakfast most days at the Spearfish Lake Café, out on the corner of Central and the state road. It was good for business – a casual question or two about taxes or something could often lead to a consultation at the office and the fee that went along with it. He considered it advertising, although he never had quite been able to justify it as a business expense on a tax return. Candice usually didn’t eat breakfast there, a holdover from when she’d had to get the boys off to school. As the boys had gotten older, they needed her hanging around and pushing them less and less, so if she felt like having more than a bowl of cereal at home and a cup of coffee the shop, she occasionally went with him.

The Spearfish Lake Café was a breakfast-lunch place that mostly catered to working people and retirees, even though the hours had been expanded mostly to be able to take care of breakfast and lunch for the employees of the plywood plant, the town’s largest employer. It was very typical for such a place; there is one or more of them in virtually every small town in the country. Locally owned, it had a rustic, used appearance. It didn’t have the slick decor of a chain place; the walls were decorated with mounted fish and stuffed deer heads, and between them hung calendars and sports schedules, sometimes for seasons long expired. It was a “down home” place in every sense of the word.

In almost every such restaurant, there’s a large table seating a dozen or more, usually toward the back of the room. There was almost always a bunch of regulars there, their comings and goings predictable to nearly the minute, depending on when they started work. When John was by himself, he headed for the table, because it was there that most of the gossip and storytelling went on. When Candice was with him, they’d often eat at a table by themselves, but this morning, without any discussion, they decided to both sit at the big table.

The timing was such that the normal crowd that John was used to was already at the table. There were a couple seats side by side, and he and Candice headed to them. They wound up sitting across the table from Randy Clark. “Morning, John,” Randy said. “Didn’t expect to see you here today.”

“You heard what happened, then, I take it?”

“Yeah, I there, the paramedic on call last night,” Randy reported. “It was a mess. I have to say that I was real impressed with the way Cody handled himself. That Lufkin girl was out of her mind and hysterical, but Cody kept his cool and calmed her down enough to where we could get her set to be transported. It wasn’t until we were almost out the door that he let himself collapse. If you’re going to do it, that’s the time, rather than when it’s going down.”

“Charlie Wexler said something about that,” John nodded.

Candice smiled. “Somehow, that strikes me as Cody all over. When he sets out to do something, he’s all business until it’s over with.”

“How was he after you got him home?” Randy asked, a little more quietly.

“Pretty distant, not that I blamed him,” Candice said. “Then Gil Evachevski showed up not five minutes after we got home, and I think he got all of us calmed down.”

“Gil is good at that,” Randy commented. “He’s had to talk me down a couple times. Not for a while, though. That stuff sits on you, but after a while it clears up. I just wish someone was going to be there for the girl. She’s going to have it tough for a while.”

“I wondered about that,” Candice said. “My God, it had to have been traumatic for her.”

“No shit,” Randy nodded. “I was in back with her while Fred Piwowar was trying to get some information out of her. I mean, he didn’t push her, but she kept saying she thought she was dead and it hadn’t quite got that far yet. And then an avenging angel comes along from out of nowhere, saves her, and extracts justice with a couple head shots. I don’t blame her one damn bit for being hysterical. I’ll tell you what, she did not want to let Cody go. Hell, she was half hysterical all the way to Camden, wanting him there with her.”

“So how bad was she hurt?” John asked. “About all we got from Charlie was that she was a hell of a mess.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a good description,” Randy told them. “Bruised up pretty bad, several cuts and contusions all over, a couple of them pretty bad bleeders. Concussion, broken ribs, a broken arm, some teeth missing, and that’s just what we saw. We didn’t hang around Camden General long, but it wouldn’t surprise me any if there were internal injuries, possibly even more broken bones than we found. I don’t know if her father and brother really planned to kill her, but if they weren’t they were well on the way anyway.”

“My God,” Candice said. “The poor girl!”

“No shit,” Randy agreed. “Nicole and I talked about it some after I got back last night. She says the kid is real quiet in school, and that she obviously wasn’t a happy camper all through her classes. With a father and a brother like that, I can understand why. I guess when her mother died things really went to hell. Now she doesn’t have anybody, and when you get right down to it she’ll be better off in the long run.”

“Yeah,” a guy from down the table said. “Jack was an asshole all his life, and Bobby didn’t fall very far from the tree. I guess it wasn’t too bad while Rachel was alive, but without her around there was no one to keep things under control. It’s no surprise that they were running a meth lab. Actually, the only surprise was that either of them thought of it in the first place.”

“They were not the sharpest nails in the box, that’s for sure,” Randy agreed. “Six will get you two that when they run the blood test at the autopsy they’ll find out that both of them were higher than snot.”

“Damn good thing someone did something about that,” the guy said. “John, Candice, tell your son from me he done good.”

“I sure will,” John said. “He was still asleep when we left, and I hope he stays out for a while yet.”

“You might want to think about one of you being around when he wakes up,” Randy suggested.

John let out a sigh. “Yeah, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he agreed. “I get so used to getting up and going to work in the morning it’s hard to not do it when I know I should.”

“I for sure know how that works,” Randy said. “You got a good kid there; you want to make sure this doesn’t mess him up much.”

After they finished up at the Spearfish Lake Café, John and Candice got back in the minivan and headed for home. “Tell you what,” John said, “I really don’t have to be at the office this morning, although I should show my face there some time today. Why don’t I stay home this morning? Cody ought to be up by noon, and we can go from there.”

“It sounds all right to me,” Candice agreed. “I can probably get Tiffany to fill in for me if I have to, but with two preschoolers it takes a little time for her to arrange it. As far as that goes, I can just shut up shop if I have to.”

“OK, just drop me off at the house.”

“Don’t bury yourself in the basement,” she suggested. “Cody might not discover you down there when he wakes up.”

“I think he knows that’s where he’s likely to find me,” John protested.

Back when they first moved to Spearfish Lake and Candice had started to get wrapped up in outdoor activities like kayaking and dogsledding, there had been a little tension over John only having limited interest in those things. Finally, Candice had suggested that perhaps he ought to have a hobby interest of his own, one that she didn’t participate in. John thought it was a good idea, but said he had no idea what it could be. Things rested at that for a while, until one evening when they’d been having dinner with Josh and Tiffany. Josh was involved with the management of the local short line railroad, the Camden and Spearfish Lake, and had been an engineer there for years. They were talking about when they were kids, and how much fun they’d had messing around with their old American Flyer toy trains on the living room carpet. Josh had made the comment that they’d always talked about how they wanted to build a real, permanent model railroad someday.

Lightning struck instantly, helped by John having the perfect place for it, a large, dry, clean and largely empty basement. Largely empty at the time, anyway; it was now packed pretty full of a model railroad that was continually expanding and even now seemed a long way from completion. Although John did other things, if Candice couldn’t find him around the upper floors of the house in the evenings and on weekends, she knew to look in the basement, where he would likely be wrapped up with something model related, with Josh often helping. Everyone thought that was a little ironic, considering that Josh ran a real railroad.

“Yeah, true,” Candice smiled. “That’s if he knows you’re home at all.”

“Point taken,” John nodded. “Oh, well, I’ve got some reading I want to do.”

“A book or something?” she asked with mild curiosity.

“No,” he shook his head. “I’ve got three or four things I want to look up in some old Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman magazines. I keep thinking there ought to be a way to build a working log flume involving real water for the logging company scene.” When he and Josh had started the railroad, it had the theme of a modern day Camden and Spearfish Lake, but after a while they’d decided it would be more interesting if they tried to re-create the railroad as it had been a hundred years before.

“Boys,” Candice shook her head. “Boys and their toys.”

“Women and their dogsleds,” he grinned. “At least I don’t freeze my butt with my hobby.”

An hour or so later, John was sitting in his favorite chair in the living room with a stack of model railroading magazines on the floor next to him and an empty coffee mug on the other side. The idea of building a working log flume sounded like it had some potential, but it also sounded like it could be a pain in the butt. Water doesn’t necessarily scale down accurately, and it was clear that there was going to have to be quite a bit of experimentation to figure out how to do the flume before actually going ahead and building it. He was sitting back trying to make up his mind if it was going to be worth the trouble, when he heard Cody coming down the stairs, still wearing his clothes from the night before. “So how are you today?” he asked.

“OK, I guess,” he said listlessly. “I’ll be better when I wake up. What are you doing home?”

“Your mother and I decided that one of us ought to be home when you got up, just in case, so I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out this log-flume thing. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yeah,” Cody replied. “I was just coming down to get some going before I went and took a shower.”

“I just made a fresh pot and was getting set to get some myself,” John said as he got out of his chair. “I take it you slept all right?”

“Amazingly enough, it wasn’t bad,” Cody said as he followed his father to the kitchen. “If I dreamed about what happened last night, I guess I don’t remember it.”

“Can’t ask for much more than that,” John observed. “Your mother and I slept pretty well too, and under the circumstances we didn’t have any room to complain. Let me get you some coffee.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Cody said as he sat down at the kitchen table. “I guess I’m just slow to pull myself together this morning. I’m sure glad I didn’t go to school today. I’d have had people all over me, and I just don’t know how I’d have dealt with it.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, your mother and I went out to the Café for breakfast this morning, and the general opinion out there is that you did pretty darn good under the circumstances. Randy Clark said that he was really impressed with how you kept your cool.”

“I had to,” Cody shrugged as his father set a coffee cup in front of him. “There was no one else there for her, and she needed someone.”

“Yeah, Randy said she was in pretty bad shape, but that they think she’s going to be all right,” John replied as he sat down across the table with a fresh cup of coffee of his own.

Cody shook his head. “God, I feel sorry for her. She sure has had a string of lousy breaks. Her mother dying, then to have to live with assholes like her father and her brother. Then this. God, she’s got to be down there in that hospital knowing there isn’t anyone around to see her, to take care of her. I mean, I saw her there on the floor last night with her clothes mostly ripped off, her father and her brother lying with their brains blown out next to her, and I felt . . . well, I can’t say what I felt, other than how fucking pitiful can you get? Charlie said last night, out at the range before this all came down, that if I went to him with my concerns about her, I was likely the only friend she had.”

“Maybe you’re right,” John said. “Randy commented that she seemed to think that you were some kind of avenging angel who came out of nowhere to rescue her. He said that she seemed like she was afraid to let you go.”

“Hell, I wanted to go to the hospital with her so bad it wasn’t funny,” Cody shrugged. “But I knew damn well that I was going to have to stay there so Charlie could do his thing. I still can’t believe I’m not in jail.”

“It does seem like he went a little easy on you,” John observed, “But I suspect we haven’t seen everything that’s going to happen as a result of this.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Cody agreed. “Like I said, there’s no telling what’s going to happen when I go back to school. You can’t believe some of the horseshit that goes on there. The worst part is that Janice is going to catch hell too, just because it’ll bring people’s attention to her.”

John shook his head. “I don’t quite get what you’re saying.”

“You know what kids in school are like,” Cody shrugged. “There’s always a few looking for anything they can find to put other people down, just so they can think they’re better than everyone else. Some people don’t get picked on a lot because they’re athletes, and more often than not it’s the athletes who are the assholes. Shay was never an asshole like that, but no one messed around with him, either.”

“Does it happen with you much?”

“Not a lot,” Cody said. “Up till this year I’ve always sort of been under Shay’s wing. If someone wanted to be a real asshole they knew that it could come back on them. Even though he’s gone it’s still mostly working for me. Janice was a pretty decent kid when she was in elementary school, but after her mother died she, well, she just faded. I mean, it’s like no one notices her.” He shook his head and let out a long sigh, then continued, “Shit, I didn’t notice her. It wasn’t until after I noticed yesterday that she looked like someone had beat her up that I realized that it wasn’t the first time I’d seen her like that. I mean, she’s really been beaten down, but I was too dumb to notice, not that there was anything I felt like I could do.”

“Do you like this girl?”

Cody took a sip of his coffee and let out a sigh before answering, “I can’t say that I do and I can’t say that I don’t. I’ve known her for years, but I’ve never really been a friend to her. We’ve always gotten along, but that’s always been about it. I guess I think that she could be a lot more than she’s been, if you know what I mean. Who knows, maybe if someone gives her a bit of help, then last night will prove to be a blessing in disguise for her.” He took another sip of his coffee, drained the cup and set it down before continuing. “I guess after yesterday I feel a little responsible for her, right or wrong. I think I’ll go take a shower and get on some clean clothes, then go down and see her. I think she needs to know that she still has a friend.”

“Don’t forget you have to clear it with Charlie Wexler first,” John pointed out.

“I know,” Cody nodded. “I’ll go see if I can find him after I get my clothes changed.”

“Would you like me to go with you?”

“No, you don’t have to,” Cody said slowly as he got up from the table. “I think . . . hell, I don’t know what I think, but maybe I’d better do it by myself.”

Charlie Wexler proved hard to find. He normally worked the evening shift, but with the Chief gone and the Regional Drug Task force in town he had little choice but to do what needed to be done. He hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before; he and Sheriff Stoneslinger, aided by Fred Piwowar, had been at the scene until after one in the morning taking photos and gathering evidence before he released the bodies to be taken to Camden for autopsy. He’d managed to get a few hours sleep before getting back at it.

Bea Hollingsworth, the elderly woman who held the desk part-time, was in the office and told Cody that Wexler was out at the Lufkin house, and said she knew he was pretty busy.

Cody wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stop him just then, so he got into the Escort and drove back out to the house. It seemed different in the daylight, almost not like the place he’d been in last night; there were several police cars parked out front, along with a big state police Suburban lettered for the drug task force. There was yellow crime scene tape all over the place, something Cody didn’t want to cross under the circumstances, but no one was outside. It was still overcast and windy, and he stood at the edge of the tape with the feeling that the wind was blowing right through his jacket, which was lighter than it should have been.

Finally, a deputy came out of the house and saw Cody standing there. “You want something, kid?” he asked.

“Yeah, I need to talk to Sergeant Wexler,” Cody told him.

“Is it important?” the deputy asked. “Something about this?”

“Kinda,” Cody admitted.

“What’s it about?”

Cody didn’t like the feeling he was getting from the deputy, who he didn’t know. “Something we talked about yesterday,” he replied, without getting any more specific.

“Well, OK,” the deputy replied. “I’ll go tell him someone’s looking for him.” He turned and went back inside.

Wexler came out by himself a couple minutes later. “Oh, Christ, Cody,” he said as soon as he set eyes on him. “If the state guys knew you were here they’d be all over your ass. They can’t get the idea out of their heads that the shooting was a drug deal gone bad. Beat feet while you still can.”

“I want to go down and see Janice. Is that all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, no problem, but don’t be surprised if some state guys are waiting when you get home,” he replied. “I went down and got a better statement out of Janice this morning, and it pretty well backs you up. I talked to the prosecutor this morning and he doesn’t seem inclined to issue a warrant, but that won’t be official until all the paperwork is done. That’s still the first of the week, maybe longer with these jokers around.”

“How is she?” Cody asked.

“Reasonable, but she’s scared,” Wexler told him. “Really scared. She kept asking for you.”

“All right,” Cody said. “I’ll get out of here. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’ll either be at home, at the hospital, or somewhere in between.”

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.