Putting Lipstick on a Pig Read online

  “That’s all you have?” Leopold demanded indignantly.

  “Yeah. Gael ate the last of the Beef Wellington and pâté du foie gras.”

  “You’ve really got a lip on you, don’t you?” Leopold asked, his tone more bemused than threatening.

  “If you like. Take your pick of the food. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Just a minute. Stand right exactly where you are.”

  Gripping her left bicep roughly with his right hand, he jerked her around the confined space while he opened drawers and cabinet doors. He scooped handfuls of knives, forks, can-openers, and one corkscrew into the sink.

  “All right,” he said then. “Go ahead with the coffee.”

  After she had tap water heating in a saucepan on the stovetop, Melissa leaned her still tender fanny against the sink. She looked for a chance to grab the pot from the stove and hurl scalding water at him, but it didn’t come. He watched her too closely, made sure she knew he was aware of the risk.

  “Do you want me to make you a sandwich?”

  “I’ll take care of that part,” he said, laying the words out in a now-hear-this tone. “And of anything else that involves a knife.”

  ***

  Rep stamped his boots, slapped his gloved hands against his arms, and strode around the parking area surrounding the DNR post. On the back end of his ninth circuit a cabin across the lake, perhaps fifteen degrees north of a straight line from the post, caught his eye. He thought for a second it must be the one Melissa and Gael were sharing, but then he realized it couldn’t be. In the pale winter sun of late afternoon he could tell that all the cabin’s lights were on. He remembered Melissa worrying about having enough gas to keep the generator going, and knew she wouldn’t be squandering power like that.

  As he circled back to the front, headlights blinking rapidly on a quickly approaching vehicle startled him. He wondered whether the DNR was bringing a poacher in. Then the SUV came within fifty feet or so and he saw that it was Kuchinski’s Escalade. He hustled toward the road, and the behemoth crossed to the wrong side and screeched to a stop a few feet from him. Kuchinski already had his head out the window.

  “I thought you were going back to deer camp,” Rep said.

  “I was, but I ran into someone on the way.”

  “Hey,” a voice called from the passenger seat, “it’s sis’ mouthpiece. Sorry, shyster, you’re too late. I’ve beaten the rap all by myself.”

  “Don?” Rep asked. “Don Nguyen? What are you talking about?”

  “One of the grasshoppers found me this morning wandering in the woods with a rifle and no deer tag,” Nguyen said. “Also an ugly head wound, but he jumped to conclusions anyway. He hauled me halfway to Minnesota and his buddies spent six hours verifying that I actually had bought a deer tag before they decided I was telling the truth about being mugged.”

  “Who mugged you?”

  “Roger Leopold.”

  “Leopold?” Rep yelped. “He’s supposed to be down in Milwaukee, falling into a trap the police have set.”

  “Well, when my lights went out this morning he was up here.”

  “I came across Mr. Nguyen while he was trying to hitchhike his way back to the last place he saw his Harley,” Kuchinski said. “I heard Leopold’s name and figured we’d better hook up with you stat.”

  “He could be at the cabin right now!” Rep shouted.

  He clambered into the rear seat. As he pulled the door shut behind him, the lights on in the cabin across the lake winked again in his mind. So did his mother’s reference to Vlad the Impaler.

  “Wait a minute,” he said urgently. “Before we head out, can you pull this thing around to the back parking lot?”

  “You crazy? We have a forty-minute drive ahead of us.”

  “I’m not sure we have forty minutes to spare,” Rep said.

  “You haven’t been wrong yet on this trip, but there’s a first time for everything,” Kuchinski grumbled.

  Even as he spoke, though, the Escalade was rolling and turning. As soon as it stopped, at the back of the rear parking area and parallel to the lake front, Rep lunged across the back seat to gaze searchingly through the passenger side window at the cabin.

  “What in hell you doin’, boy?” Kuchinski asked.

  “Trying to figure out if there are two people in the window of that lit-up cabin across the lake,” Rep said, shading his eyes.

  “Hell’s bells, that’s twelve hundred yards off if it’s a foot. Natty Bumpo himself couldn’t make out two people at that distance. Try this.”

  Kuchinski fetched the Weatherby from an improvised rack attached to the back of the front seat and handed it to Rep. Rolling down the window with one hand, Rep accepted the rifle, rested its stock on the side of the door, and squinted through the powerful scope that cut two-thirds of a mile to less than a football field. At first he saw a gray blur. He adjusted the focus ring, first with futile haste and then more deliberately. With agonizing slowness, the image resolved itself into a frozen lake, some cleared space, and the cabin.

  But what was he seeing flickering past the cabin windows? One person? Two? Shadows?

  Well, he thought, shadows don’t move unless someone moves them. Rep sensed that Kuchinski was thinking the same thing he was. As he pulled the rifle back inside and spoke, his voice sounded absurdly deliberate to him, as if he’d popped a Quaalude.

  “I don’t know for sure. But I think that’s their cabin. And I think there are two people in it. Why don’t you and Nguyen go around the lake, in case I’m wrong? I’ll take the Sable.”

  “Bullshit, counselor,” Kuchinski said. “No way you’re cuttin’me outta this kill. Besides, you don’t even know where the best place is. Get your butt strapped in and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Rep obeyed. As he buckled up he noticed Nguyen putting loose cartridges from a box into his coat pocket.

  “Sure you don’t want out now?” Rep asked.

  “Do I look like I want out?”

  The Escalade lurched out of the parking lot and roared back up the road.

  “I think I passed a boat-trail a quarter-mile or so back this way,” Kuchinski said, gesturing at the windshield. “Keep your eye peeled for it.”

  Rep did, but Kuchinski still spotted it first and swung the Escalade violently onto it. The “trail” was scarcely more than a snow-covered gap between the birches, barely wide enough to accommodate a bass boat on a hitch and the car towing them. Down that path, though, Rep could see the lake and, in the distance across it, the cabin, glowing valiantly in the steadily diminishing light. All that lay between them and that cabin now, aside from a ten-foot incline and a wire-and-post fence, was twelve hundred yards of ice over at least five hundred feet of water.

  “This was their third hard freeze this winter,” Kuchinski shouted. “If that ice is six inches thick, it’ll support this truck with no problem.”

  Or to put it another way, Rep thought, if my theory about how Ken Stewart killed Vance Hayes is right, I can get to my wife easily. And if it’s wrong, I’ll freeze to death in the next five minutes.

  Kuchinski hit the gas. Pushed back against his seat, Rep braced himself as the Escalade effortlessly shredded the fence.

  “Was that a NO TRESPASSING sign we just pulverized?”

  “Under the Northwest Ordinance, all navigable waterways in the State of Wisconsin are owned by the public up to the mean high tide line,” Kuchinski said. “And that’s right where we’re headed.”

  ***

  The improvised snack bought Melissa another ten to fifteen minutes. When it had run its course, she grabbed a dish cloth and began wiping sticky fruit drippings from the counter.

  “Skip it,” Leopold said. “Back to the front room. We still have some time to kill, and what I have in mind will only take about seven minutes.”

  Melissa’s belly churned with revulsion, but she managed to keep the disgust off her face. She w
alked back into the main room and over toward the fireplace. She turned to face him. Whatever he did here he’d do with his back to the door and windows. He took the pistol out of his belt with his right hand and spread both arms away from his body in a gesture of grotesque invitation. His posture left no doubt about either what he wanted or what was going to happen if Melissa didn’t provide it. Stall or force the issue now? For a terrible moment she thought she was going to vomit, but the nausea passed.

  “Do you know why there’s no such thing as rape?” Leopold asked.

  “No.”

  “Because a girl can run faster with her skirt up than a boy can with his pants down. Zipper only. Get to work.”

  Stall. If I can kill a man to save my own life, I can do this to try to save someone else’s.

  She stepped forward and knelt down submissively in front of him. She glanced up at the pistol, well out of her reach but in perfect position to club her if she tried anything.

  She was raising her hands to his belt buckle and zipper when it finally happened. The accumulated drain of lights, computer, stove, and open refrigerator finally consumed the last drop of gasoline in the generator. It coughed to a sputtering halt. The lights went out.

  With a startled obscenity, Leopold snapped his head around, momentarily disoriented. Melissa rocked her head back and slammed it as hard as she could against his groin—well, approximately his groin—as if she were trying to head a soccer ball into the net from ten feet out. Leopold reflexively doubled over, bringing both arms down to cross defensively in front of him. With desperate ferocity Melissa sank her teeth into his right hand.

  Leopold howled and his gun clattered to the rough-hewn floor. Melissa grabbed it. An enraged Leopold viciously back-handed her cheek with his right hand, which sent her sprawling toward the window. Raising herself as much as she could, Melissa hurled the gun through the window with all the limited strength her awkward position allowed. It shattered the lowest pane and disappeared outside.

  “Nguyen, look out!” Melissa yelled at the blank whiteness that was all she could see. “He might have another gun!”

  Leopold froze in an instant of terrible revelation. His guts had gone through the window with his gun. He could run out and get it in seconds, or he could stay here and beat Melissa silly, but Melissa’s warning made him think he might be facing Nguyen either way. He’d had all he could do to overcome Nguyen this morning, with the advantage of surprise. He had no stomach for a rematch.

  Leopold’s face transformed in an eye-blink into a mask of fear and panic. Melissa rolled to her feet and headed for the front door. He could have caught her easily if he’d leaped at her at that moment, but he hesitated in desperate uncertainty. As Melissa slipped outside, Leopold began blundering toward the rear of the cabin.

  Melissa found the gun in the snow just outside the window and picked it up with quiet conviction. No agony of doubt gnawed at her now. Technical incompetence might keep her from killing Roger Leopold in the next five minutes, but moral qualms certainly wouldn’t.

  ***

  When Kuchinski had all four of the Escalade’s tires on the ice he gunned it again. The ice held. Rep felt the chain-girded tires bite into the surface as the Escalade lurched forward. Fifty feet out and moving steadily, Rep held his breath, waiting for a sharp CRACK! that would mean his life had entered its last ninety seconds. It didn’t come. They rolled along, one heart-stopping tenth-of-a-mile after the other. The opposite shore and the cabin drew closer, steadily but with maddening slowness.

  “What’s that?” Kuchinski asked when they were still a good hundred yards away. He pointed at a figure scurrying down the cabin’s sloping back yard, toward its dock.

  “Stop him!” a piercing contralto yelled. Rep saw Melissa with a gun, standing in back of the cabin. “That’s Leopold! Don’t let him get away!”

  Holding Leopold’s gun with both hands, Melissa pointed it at the fleeing figure and squeezed the trigger. In many of the mysteries she had to read Melissa ran across plucky heroines whose boyfriends or brothers or fathers were ex-FBI agents or cops who’d dragged them to the range for firearms training. Melissa had nothing so convenient in her background. Hitting a moving target some eighty feet away going downhill in fading light would have been a good shot even for a trained marksman, and it would have been pure luck for her. She heard the bullet ping! off the chain holding the tarpaulined sailboat above the dock. She had missed by at least eight feet.

  That’s just ridiculous, Melissa thought disgustedly. MAHATMA GANDHI could have made a better shot than that.

  Leopold reached the dock, clearly headed for the snowmobile stowed under it. It would take the Escalade at least another twenty seconds to get there. By that time, Leopold figured to have the snowmobile started and away, and they’d never catch him. Maybe the police would, but maybe not. Maybe he’d still be out there, a lingering threat.

  “This crate won’t go any faster on the ice,” Kuchinski said, “but I’ve got something that will.”

  He slammed on the brakes. The Escalade skidded to a stop five seconds later. Kuchinski leaped out with his Wetherby, knelt on the ice, and shouldered the rifle. Rep jumped out on his side, with Kuchinski’s Winchester.

  Nguyen, leaning out the front passenger side window, had already fired a shot that ricocheted off the ice two feet from Leopold as Leopold ducked under the dock and hopped on the snowmobile buried deep in the dock’s overhanging shadow and partially shielded by its pilings.

  “Stop or we’ll shoot!” Rep yelled across the ice.

  “Congratulations on complying with the Geneva Convention,” Kuchinski barked. “Why don’t you read him his Miranda rights while you’re at it?”

  His first shot coincided with the last syllable. It splintered a piling.

  Leopold jumped on the snowmobile. Rep fired. Worked the bolt. Fired again. Both bullets pocked the dock’s facing, well above where Leopold had to be. They could barely see Leopold in the flitting shadows under the dock. They had a glimpse of the snowmobile’s nose cone, but no more than that. The only thing clearly visible near the dock was the chain suspending the sailboat above it. The rays of the setting sun glinted brilliantly off the chain’s metal, emphasized by the sailboat, which had begun spinning lazily when Melissa’s first shot grazed the chain.

  The engine on the snowmobile caught, then sputtered.

  The top of the dock now hid Leopold completely from Melissa. She swore in frustration. The glimmering chain and spinning boat caught her attention.

  What the hell. I hit it by accident, maybe I can hit it on purpose.

  Melissa squeezed off two quick shots at the chain. She didn’t come close. Nguyen, however, saw what she was doing.

  “The chain!” he yelled. “Aim for the chain!”

  Desperately, Leopold jumped up and down on the snowmobile’s seat, putting all the weight of his body behind the effort to start it.

  Nguyen fed a cartridge by hand into the M-14’s chamber and closed the bolt. Kuchinski swung the Wetherby up and tried to put the scope’s crosshairs on the chain. Rep took a deep breath and pulled his muzzle up as well, willing his shivering hands to steadiness as the bead at the end of the rifle barrel jumped maddeningly to one side of the chain and then the other.

  The snowmobile engine caught and revved.

  Rep, Kuchinski, and Nguyen fired at almost the same instant. They never found out how many of their bullets hit the chain, but at least one of them did. As the snowmobile engine sent a sustained roar echoing across the lake, the chain snapped and the sailboat fell, smashing through the top of the dock and sending splintering wood and fiberglass onto Leopold and the snowmobile.

  “Hit the deck!” Kuchinski yelled. “Kiss that ice like it had tits!”

  For two terrible seconds, as Rep, Nguyen, and Kuchinski flattened themselves and Melissa recoiled against the cabin wall, plumes of black smoke billowed from under the ruined dock. Then a thudding explosion split
the twilight stillness and a bright orange fireball flecked with black burst upward. They watched in awed silence as the fire burned itself out on the ice.

  Epilogue

  December 2005

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  Rep didn’t have much time. A Realtor in Indianapolis, where the Pennyworths’ home was up for sale, needed a call back urgently. Then Rep had to get on the road to drive across the state and confer with Simeon David, who wanted to know about minimizing the risks of ever being involved in trademark litigation again.

  Even so, he took half-a-minute to review the few boxed lines on page seven of section B of the Indianapolis Star Tribune that Melissa had just brought by his office:

  IN MEMORIAM

  To the memory of Vance Hayes, Esq., who deserved well of his country. MacBeth, I, iv, 6-10

  He passed the folded paper back to Melissa.

  “Do you think Gael will look up the reference?” he asked.

  “She’ll know it without looking it up. ‘…nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.’ She’ll get it, all right.”

  “It’s not much.”

  “I guess not. They say there’s no sense putting lipstick on a pig. But sometimes that’s the best you can do.”

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