The Bone House - Brian Freeman [37]
He drove to the very end of Port des Morts Drive, where he parked in a sheltered turnaround. He got out of his Tahoe and walked up a muddy dirt driveway toward Peter Hoffman's log home. It was a small house on a large lot that was thick with mature oak trees. Pete had lived there since he and Reich returned from Vietnam together. His friend kept it impeccably maintained; the house was his hobby and his passion. There was not much else in Pete's life, not since the loss of his wife to cancer seven years ago. Not since his retirement.
Not since the fire.
Reich rang the bell, but the quietness of the house told him that Pete had left for his morning hike. He knew where to find him. He got back in his truck, retraced his path for a quarter-mile, and turned toward the water at Kenosha Drive, which led into the county park. Toward the end of the short road, he could see the bay through the grove of towering spruce trees, and under the dark sky, the water was so blue it was almost black. He parked in the dormant grass, where remnants of snow clung to shaded patches of earth. Ahead of him were two gray benches, angled toward the water. Sitting on one bench was Peter Hoffman.
Reich climbed down from his truck. He could see his breath. The morning was cold, with a gusty breeze that had tossed the island ferry like a whale heaving up and down through the waves. Even in summer, it was cold here, but he never felt the cold himself, or if he did, he shut it out of his mind. At sixty years old, he woke up every morning with a bone-deep aching in his limbs, but he didn't let it stop him from the chores of the day: shoveling his island driveway, splitting and chopping wood for the fireplace, or lifting weights religiously in his basement gym. As far as Reich was concerned, he may as well have been forty-five.
He wore a brown sheriff's department uniform, which fitted perfectly and was pressed into sharp creases. He hadn't gained a pound in years. His badge glinted like gold on his chest, and he shined his boots to a high polish every night, cleaning off the grime of the job, which took him into muddy, dusty corners of the county. His white hair was cropped to a half-inch length and was as flat as it had been in his Marine days. He wasn't tall, about five feet eight, but he had fought and beaten men who were thirty years younger and fifty pounds heavier over the years. He figured he still could.
Reich watched the water with a grim expression. You could live here your whole life, as he had, and find something different in the colors of the waves every day. On the horizon, he saw the rocky outline of Plum Island and, beyond it, the low shelf of Washington Island, where he'd bought his home in the 1970s and stayed there, alone, unmarried, ever since. He felt a kinship with the island and the rocky passage to the mainland, but he was no romantic about it. Every season, they fished out the bodies of those who underestimated Death's Door.
Not saying a word, Reich sat down on the bench opposite Peter Hoffman, who didn't look at him. Tree stumps dotted the clearing around them. Spidery shadows from the birches made a web in the grass. Pete drank coffee from the plastic cup of a Thermos, and Reich could see steam clouding above the mug. He could also smell whiskey on his friend's breath.
'Pretty early for the sauce, Pete.'
Pete held out the Thermos. 'You want some?'
Reich shook his head. He liked to drink, but never on duty and never when he was flying or driving. And