The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

my chest. “Did he say where he was?”
    “Canada somewhere. He wanted to talk with Neil.”
    I met my stepfather’s eyes. “About what?”
    “He wanted me to represent him.” Neil smiled a mirthless smile and shook his head. “Can you believe that? I’m a tax attorney.”
    When I’d suggested my dad find a lawyer, he’d laughed at me. I guess he’d had a change of heart. But did he really want Neil’s legal advice? The two men hated each other. Then again, how many lawyers did my dad know? “So what did you say?”
    “I hung up on him, of course, and I called the police. I spoke with that detective—Soctomah.”
    “What if he wanted to surrender? How do you know he wasn’t looking to give himself up?”
    “The man’s a murderer,” said Neil.
    “He was asking for your help,” I said.
    Neil laughed sharply. “It was probably some sort of ploy to find out if we were home. When I heard his voice, I was scared for my life.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    Neil looked at me as if he could not believe how slow-witted I was. “I thought he might come here. If he killed those two men, who knows what else he might do.”
    “We don’t know he killed anybody. He says he’s been framed.”
    Neil waved his hand as if to drive off a bad smell. “The evidence—”
    “What evidence? Did Soctomah tell you what proof they have?”
    “I was worried for your mother’s safety.”
    I was about to interject something about his selfless concern for my mother’s welfare, but she spoke first. “He wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, shaking her head.
    Neil said, “You don’t know that, Marie.”
    “He wouldn’t hurt me,” she said again.
    “Well, there’s nothing to stop him from hurting
me
. He threatened to kill me once. Or have you forgotten?”
    My mom glanced at the window as if she hadn’t heard him.
    Neil was looking at me now. “It was after your mother and I got engaged. He was waiting for me one night in the parking lot outside my office. He was drunk. He told me he would kill me unless I broke it off.”
    “He wouldn’t have killed you,” said my mother softly.
    “He showed me the gun!”
    “Jack says things when he gets drunk,” said my mother. “It’s just talk.”
    “Why are you still making excuses for him?” He glanced back at me again. “The man’s a murderer. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
    “You don’t know the first thing about him,” I said.
    “I know the type of man he is.” Neil rose to his feet, smoothing the front of his shirt. “I can’t believe how naive you both are. He’s still manipulating you, and you don’t even see it. I’m going to finish packing.”
    He left us there in that sunlit room. “Why is he packing?”
    “We’re going to Long Beach—to visit Jessica. Neil’s afraid of Jack showing up here. We’ve had reporters calling. I just want to forget all this has happened. It’s like a nightmare.” She removed a wadded tissue from her pocket and dabbed it at her eyes.
    So that was it. They were getting out of Dodge, leaving my dad to his fate. And if he had been thinking of giving himself up, Neil’s reaction would almost certainly have made him think twice about contacting another lawyer. “I can’t believe the bastard hung up on him.”
    “Michael!”
    I knew I was being too hard on Neil, who had been a decent guardian to me for much of my life. It was all so perverse. Until four days ago, I’d pretty much stopped even thinking of my real dad, and yet now that he was back in my life, I felt compelled to side with him. “I still don’t understand why he called you after all this time. It doesn’t make any sense.”
    “He still calls me,” she said. “He never stopped over all these years.”
    The admission shocked me. “What do you mean he still calls you?”
    “When he’s been drinking.”
    “But Neil—”
    “Neil doesn’t know. It’s my secret.”
    It was a revelation that left me just about speechless. I had been certain my parents never communicated except through me. “What do you—what do you say to each other?”
    “We just talk. I know he can be horrible, cruel, when he’s drinking, but there’s another side to him that people don’t see. He’s a lonely man who needs a woman in his life. He’s very passionate, and without a woman, he becomes lost. But his heart is good. When I heard that he was a suspect in those murders, I didn’t know what to think. Everybody’s so sure he did