The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

right, leading first deeper into the woods and then veering back toward the camp road. Here and there, shafts of sunlight pierced through the canopy to the pine-needle floor of the forest. In those sunlit patches the blood drops were bright as rubies.
    Sweat rolled down into my eyes and stung like acid. I thought of the stories my father had told me of trailing gut-shot deer for miles, how often the deer ended up circling back because, even mortally wounded, they feared to leave the safety of their home territories, as if anything worse could happen to them. And I wondered whether the man I was tracking had circled back behind me and was even now aiming a rifle at me from some secret place in the trees.
    The trail angled sharply to the right. Up ahead a green wall of raspberry bushes grew along the shoulder of the camp road, blocking it from view. The bushes were very thick, and I knew I would have to bust my way through them to get to the road. When I stepped out into the sun, I would be an easy target for a man with a rifle.
    I paused beside a big pine and scanned left and right, looking for a way through the tangle of bushes.
    That was when I caught sight of the truck. It was parked up the road from the camp, thirty or so yards from me. All I could make out was a metallic flash of blue amid the forest-green. But I knew.
    It was a blue Chevy with an ATV in the bed.
    Truman’s truck.
    I felt a giddy, lifting sensation in my heart, as if I’d just taken a strong drink. It was Truman after all. He had killed Pelletier, he had killed Shipman and Brodeur. Charley had been wrong about my father. Everyone had been wrong.
    But where was Truman? Maybe he had made it to the truck and passed out. Maybe he was sprawled in the road, dead. Or maybe he had heard me coming and was waiting in ambush to shoot me even as his blood drained away.
    If he was waiting for me, it made sense that he was watching the road in the direction of the camp. He would expect me to come that way. In which case, the best bet would be to come around him from behind. I would need to circle a dense stand of firs to do that. The balsams were no taller than big Christmas trees, but they grew together so closely I couldn’t easily slip through them. I followed the outer edge of the stand deeper into the forest, stepping carefully over fallen trees whose branches rose into the air like spikes. The ground was very dry, and no matter how slowly I stepped, twigs snapped. I felt as stealthy as a freight train.
    A bend in the road hid the truck from view. My scratched and sweaty arms were powdered with dust, and my T-shirt was smeared red with raspberries. I wiped the perspiration from my hands on my pants and did my best to dry the shotgun grip with my shirttail. Then I filled my lungs full of air.
    I moved along the side of the road, staying in shadows as much as possible. Soon I could see the rear end of the truck. The bed was open. Truman was nowhere in sight. I crossed to the other side of the road to have a look at the driver’s side.
    Truman was slumped against the door, his legs out in front of him, holding both hands over his stomach as if he’d eaten too much. He wasn’t moving. Even from a distance of twenty yards I could see the puddle of blood under his legs. The rifle lay in the dirt a few feet away.
    I trained the shotgun on him and edged forward. “Truman Dellis!”
    He didn’t move.
    I drew closer, keeping the shotgun aimed at his chest. I’d seen so much death in my job, I thought I could always recognize it. But now I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
    Truman’s eyes were closed and his head lolled to one side, motionless. I saw the slash where Pelletier had stabbed him in the gut. His shirt bore the red handprints he’d made trying to keep the life from draining out of himself. The blood lay in a viscous puddle at my feet. I kicked the rifle away from his hand. He didn’t even twitch.
    I wedged the butt of the shotgun in the crook of my right arm to hold it one-handed, and then I knelt down to feel for a pulse in his throat. And as I did, Truman grabbed me.

 
     
    30
     
    I lurched backward, but his grip was too strong to break. Wild eyed, panting hard, with blood smeared across his teeth, he yanked with his free hand at the barrel of the shotgun. I tried to bring the butt up against his jawbone, but he threw his weight, and we both fell over onto the bloody ground.
    My breath exploded out of me with the impact, and it was all I