The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

could do to keep hold of the gun. He had the barrel by both hands now, trying to wrench it away. I brought a knee up between us, wedging us apart, pushing against his wounded gut.
    He let out a howl and punched me hard in the nose. Lights flashed in my eyes. He was fighting for his life, struggling for control of the gun. I drew my knees up again, but he just kept coming.
    Hands slick with blood, I felt myself losing my grip.
    I don’t know which one of us pulled the trigger.
    It all happened in a millisecond. The recoil drove the shotgun hard into my stomach. Through a blue haze that burned my eyes I saw him jerk back, as if in super-fast motion, and in that same instant I was splattered with blood.
    The smell of cordite hung in the air. My ear drums ached.
    Oh, God, I thought.
    Somehow I was on my feet, breathing hard, pointing the empty, shaking shotgun at his motionless body. Half of his head was gone. Above the jaw there was nothing I recognized as a human face, just blood and tissue and scraps of skull.
    I had to brace myself against the truck bed to keep from collapsing, trying to swallow down the taste of vomit. How had this happened?
    Truman’s hunting rifle lay in the dirt near the front tire of the truck. I stared at it dumbly. Why didn’t he just shoot me as I came up on him? Why had he played dead? None of this made sense.
    His shirt had rolled up and I could see the clean stab wound through his soft gut. With a gash like that, he’d been bleeding to death even before I shot him. As if that absolved me.
    I knelt down beside the man I’d killed.
    I’m not sure how long it took me to notice the bruises. Five minutes might have passed before the wounds around Truman’s wrists caught my eye. Then it came to me what the raw-looking marks were, and the recognition had the force of someone stomping on my chest.
    I grabbed Truman’s rifle and ejected the magazine.
    The rifle was a bolt-action Remington 30-06—the same caliber that Soctomah claimed had been used to kill Shipman and Brodeur. I was almost certain this rifle had also been used to kill Pelletier less than half an hour ago. From the smell alone I knew it had just been fired.
    But there were no bullets in it now. Pelletier had been killed by a single gunshot to the chest. It didn’t make any sense that Truman’s rifle should be unloaded. And why were there rope burns on his wrists?
     
    The sun was playing hide-and-seek behind dark clouds as I sprinted back to Pelletier’s cabin. The air had become heavier, and a breeze now stirred the leaves along the road.
    Outside and inside the cabin I searched frantically for clues I might have missed the first time. The story told itself in blood: Tru-man Dellis and Russell Pelletier had an altercation in the cabin. Pelletier stabbed Truman with a hunting knife, and Truman, somehow, improbably shot Pelletier through the chest, using the same rifle with which he’d killed Jonathan Shipman and Bill Brodeur. The co-conspirators had eliminated each other. There was no apparent explanation for their quarrel, but it offered a tidy resolution to the murder investigation with only one question left unanswered: Where was my father?
    I needed to call the police.
     
    When I came around the corner of Pelletier’s cabin, I found Brenda standing in the lodge doorway, holding a long-barreled Ruger revolver in one hand. I stopped in my tracks.
    “What happened?” she asked, gaping at the blood on my skin and clothes. “I heard a shot.”
    “It was Truman,” I said.
    “Is he dead?”
    I nodded. “I’m sorry.”
    “I’m not.” Her mouth tightened into a sneering smile that scared the hell out of me—even more than the Ruger.
    I was out in the open with nothing to hide behind and no shells left in my shotgun. “Where did you get that pistol?”
    “Pelletier’s safe. I know the combination.”
    I took a step toward the door. “I need to call the police.”
    “They’re on their way,” she said quickly.
    “You called them?” I tried to hide the disbelief in my voice.
    “Yeah.”
    “I should talk to Detective Soctomah myself.”
    She refused to move aside. “What are you going to tell him?”
    I kept my eyes on the revolver. If it was the gun Russell had showed me once, it was chambered with a .44 Magnum round for bear hunting. “Pelletier and Truman killed Shipman and Brodeur. I don’t know why. Maybe they thought they could scare off Wendigo, make them change their plans for Rum Pond. They