The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

daughter is going around saying you’re a murderer, Truman. Why is that?”
    “Because she’s a whore!” The barrel of the rifle began to shake in Truman’s hands.
    As wired as I was on adrenaline, I was beginning to have second thoughts about the wisdom of confronting him like this. “All right,” I said, holding my hands up. “Let’s just calm down here.”
    Charley didn’t seem to hear me. “Truman,” he said, “what really happened to your face?”
    The question seemed to catch him off guard. It certainly caught me off guard. He touched the stitched red line on his cheek. “My face?”
    “How’d you really get that scar?”
    I had no idea what Charley was getting at. But I was afraid to look away from Truman.
    “Chainsaw broke on me. Got me across the face.”
    “I don’t think that’s what happened.”
    “You calling me a liar?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    “Charley,” I said.
    “This is my house!”
    Charley didn’t speak. He remained absolutely still.
    Truman raised the barrel of the rifle until it was pointed at the old warden’s sternum. “Who the fuck are you, calling me a liar in my house!”
    “We’re leaving.” I took hold of Charley’s biceps. The muscle felt like a steel cable. “Come on.”
    “You’d better be careful who you point a gun at,” said Charley in his quiet voice.
    “You ain’t a warden no more!” said Truman.
    “No,” Charley said. “But this man is.”
    Truman glanced in my direction. The barrel of the rifle wobbled.
    I said, “Threatening an officer with a firearm is a felony. So why don’t you put that gun down?”
    The rifle stayed where it was. “This is my house,” said Truman. “You’re trespassing. You get out of here.”
    “All right,” said Charley finally.
    “Go!”
    I felt behind my back for the doorknob and got the door open. We backed through the lintel onto the staircase.
    “We’ll talk again,” I said. But it was an empty threat.
    Truman just slammed the door.
     
    My heart was beating hard as we made our way down the stairs and back to the car. A faint breeze was blowing from the west. I felt it through my perspiration-soaked shirt. The muscles in Charley’s neck stood out like cords.
    “What the hell was that?” I said.
    “You’re the one who wanted to interrogate him. Did you hear what you wanted to hear?”
    It was a good question. More than anything I was just shocked at how quickly I’d forgotten everything I knew as a law officer about keeping a situation from escalating out of control. Maybe Kathy Frost was right: My judgment these days really
was
fucked. “He might have shot us.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “What was that you were saying about his scar? You think my dad gave it to him.”
    “I’m not sure it has anything to do with what happened last week.”
    “It sounded like you thought Truman might’ve actually done it. Killed those men, I mean.”
    “He’s capable of murder.”
    “So you think Brenda was telling the truth.”
    “No,” he said, ending my half-second of hopefulness with a single word. “Just because Truman’s a dangerous man doesn’t mean he’s guilty of those par tic u lar crimes.”
    We climbed back into the Plymouth, and Charley started the engine. I felt a growing heaviness in my limbs as the adrenaline left my bloodstream. “I didn’t like being in there without a pistol.”
    “It would’ve been lots more dangerous if we’d been armed.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Having the only firearm in that room made Truman feel like he was in control of the situation. I couldn’t have pushed him like that if we were also armed. He might’ve got spooked.”
    “You mean you deliberately tried to piss him off?”
    “Of course,” Charley said, smiling as he settled his shoulders back in the seat. “How was I supposed to learn anything useful otherwise?”
    He turned the wheel, and we started back toward Flagstaff. The shadows of the trees had grown longer across the road. Dusk was coming fast.
    “So what did you learn?”
    He grinned. “That I’d better not piss him off again.”
    “Do you deliberately provoke everyone you meet?”
    “Everyone? No, not everyone. Just ninety percent or so.”

 
     
    24
     
    I t was still afternoon, but just barely. The sun was still shining, but as soon as it dipped behind the mountains I knew it would be fully dark. The few houses we passed along the road had turned on their porch lights in anticipation of dusk.
    I’d had my