A Hard Case Read online

  A HARD CASE

  by Ron Hess

  Genre: Thriller

  Kindle: 978-1-58124-291-1

  ePub: 978-1-58124-469-4

  ©2012 by Ron Hess

  Published 2012 by The Fiction Works

  http://www.fictionworks.com

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  “This is no cozy crime novel. It is masculine and hard edged, with plenty of action and even a bit of sex along with its mystery. The author shows rare skill in balancing the thrilling with sensitive subject matter.”

  — Shana Loshbaugh, Kenai Peninsula Clarion

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The boy had seen her doing it with Billy . . . he had run, but knew she would be coming, fast.

  He stopped running, turned and scanned the village and the path running down to it. Martha was coming, though he couldn’t see her. Off he went again, shirttail flying, his tennis shoes padding softly on the dusty path.

  “Jimmy, I’m gonna cut your tongue out!”

  This time he saw her, coming up the hill. Such a big fuss, that he had seen her and Billy doing it. Mother would be mad if she knew, so Martha would slap him around then make him swear he would never tell.

  Where could he hide? She could climb hills better than he could, and he didn’t have enough of a lead to get lost in the woods. He ran on, making no effort to be quiet. Dust sprayed from his shoes slipping on the steepening path.

  Then he saw the shed in the small grove. Hidden in the stunted spruce, he’d nearly forgotten it, with its door and maybe a door latch. Maybe he could keep his sister from catching him or at least hold her off until she got over her mad.

  He stopped at the shed’s door, and took a last look. He couldn’t see her, but she was coming. The door opened easily, and best of all, it had an inside latch.

  Relief was short-lived. His feet stopped moving as his eyes swiveled upward. Hanging by a rope from a rafter above him, was a man. It was the white postmaster, his head twisted funny, slack-jawed, slowly swinging back and forth in the draft coming through the doorway. His arms hung straight down with his hands curled into fists. As usual, he was dressed very properly in a white shirt and a conservative brown tie. His glasses were tilted on his head while his eyes stared blankly into space.

  The footfalls sounded louder on the path. Caught between the living and the dead, Jimmy froze.

  “Jimmy, I swear you’re not going to live to see the sunset.”

  A hand clamped his shoulder.

  “Jimmy, why did you? Oh, my God, it finally happened.” After a few seconds, a tug came on his shoulder. A gentle tug, with no anger in it.

  “Come away Jimmy. This is not for us.”

  Chapter 1

  I stood at the edge of the gravel runway, my suitcase getting heavier every second, and watched the small plane disappear into the morning sun. It was probably a mistake, coming here.

  “Here” was Howe’s Bluff, a western Alaskan village in the middle of nowhere, a place I had never heard of until yesterday. The plane trip was uneventful enough, except for a pilot a little bit on the surly side and a few flashbacks. But getting here was the least of my troubles.

  The Postal Service is like the military in some ways. You go where they send you. I tended to get sent new places when my drinking got out of line. Yesterday, or was it the day before, my boss in Anchorage called me into his office then sat for a while glaring at his unlit cigar while I stood, shifting from foot to foot. Finally, cigar back in his mouth, he threw his feet up on his desk and leaned back.

  “Bronski, what am I going to do with you?”

  I maintained my upright position and remained quiet. There’s a time to be quiet and right then was that time.

  “Bronski, the line has been awful slow, lately. You’re the line supervisor. Why have you let it get that way?”

  He gave me a hard look, and I returned it. He was right about the line, but it wasn’t my fault. A lot of people had been sick and he knew that. But you can’t punish someone for drinking unless their performance suffers. The line was an excuse.

  “Well, because of your fine work, I’m going to give you a rest. I’m sending you off to this place out west that’s so small it’s barely on the map.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope. “Here’s your instructions and airline ticket. Now, get out and try to be at the airport on time.”

  So, I had turned on my heel and left the office with no idea where I was going.

  The plane disappeared and I was left watching the dust settle and getting warmer by the minute. My old silver wire-rims were dusty so I took them off, and gave them a good cleaning, which let me see the heat waves coming off the runway. It was August, the temp in the upper seventies, and in Alaska, that’s almost hot. I pulled off the jacket I brought along just in case I started sweating.

  As I did so, an out-of-place noise disturbed the quiet I thought was normal in a place like this.

  I watched an old green Chevy pick-up dart around the ruts in the road and wind its way to the one-room shack near the end of the runway. It came up to me and shuddered to a stop, enveloping me in a cloud of dust. A big native guy in a black uniform got out. My five-feet eleven-inches felt small beside him.

  “Hey!” he said, “You Leo Bronski?”

  I nodded and started coughing.

  “Hey, sorry about the dust,” he said with a smile. It gets pretty bad around this time of year. It’ll change to mud before long though.”

  Like hell, he was sorry. Having fun at a white man’s expense was probably the local pastime.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll get over it.”

  He gave me a clap on the back and smiled at my glare. It was a good thing I was going to be here only a month.

  “You gonna be the new temporary postmaster?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “You want me to carry your bag?”

  “No, I got it.” I tried to say this as casually as I could. The truth was, I had five whiskey bottles mixed in with my clothes and I didn’t want the village constable to know. This was a dry village.

  “Okay, suit yourself.”

  He ambled over to the driver’s side of the old pickup. I walked around to the other side and nestled the suitcase in the rear, hoping the bottles wouldn’t break before I got to my room, or wherever it was I was to stay in this Godforsaken place. After we climbed in on our respective sides of the truck, he shifted a camera with a telescopic lens to the middle of the seat and stuck out a hand.

  “By the way, my name is Charlie. Charlie George. I
guess you can tell what I do here by my uniform.”

  I stopped coughing, turned and shook hands with him; mine lost in his huge ham.

  “I gather you’re the guy that tries to keep the peace in this place.”

  “That’s me, although there’s some who say I ain’t been doing a very good job, seeing as how you’re taking the place of a man who committed suicide a few weeks ago.”

  “So I heard. Hopefully, I’ll last a month until the permanent postmaster gets here.”

  He started the truck and gave me a smile.

  “You’ll do fine. Unless you let the place get to you.”

  Before I could figure out if this was a warning or friendly advice, we were off in a drag start, back wheels spinning, causing a dust cloud to form behind us..

  We rattled down the road into town at all of twenty miles per hour, which was plenty fast since Charlie seemed to hit every bump he could. The truck put up with him, like an old dog with a young pup.

  I braced my feet on the floorboard, grabbed for a handhold and worried about the bottles in my luggage.

  Outside, beyond the dust cloud, there wasn’t much to see, just alders and brush. Then around a curve we spotted a girl who waved enthusiastically. I turned to see her still waving before she disappeared in the dust.

  Charlie gave me an elbow on the arm. “That good looking piece of tail is Crazy Mary.”

  “She looks good, all right,” I answered.

  And she did. Despite the dust I was able to make out the almond shaped eyes, light brown skin, and short haircut. Jeans and tight sweatshirt completed the picture.

  I turned to look at Charlie.

  “Is she the village girl?”

  He took his eyes off the road to meet my gaze squarely. “Only if she wants to be. She’s eighteen, but if I were you, I’d keep my hands off. She has a kind of boyfriend.”

  The old truck jumped a bump as if to add emphasis to Charlie’s admonition.

  “Fine.” I said. “Anymore do’s and don’ts?”

  I muttered this, looking out the windshield so Charlie would understand I didn’t really want to hear any more of the town’s problems. I was only going to be here a month, for God’s sake.

  “Yeah, but we’ll handle them as they come along.” He slapped the steering wheel and laughed a big belly laugh, like he had me pegged, ready for darts, on the town’s wall.

  We turned at last onto the town’s dusty gravel main street, which paralleled a fair-sized river churning along in deep-cut banks. There were about twenty buildings on each side of the road, mostly older one-story brown-colored houses. Halfway down on the left—the river side—was a Russian Orthodox Church, what looked like a store and then what must have been the community hall. On Main Street, Charlie really put the old pickup to the test, pushing it to an even thirty for a few seconds. Then he backed off on the gas pedal and stomped on the brake, sliding to a stop in front of a small gray building on the right side of Main with a flagpole in front.

  “Okay, Mr. Postmaster, here’s your new home. Fancy, huh?”

  I turned to Charlie and smiled a smile that could be best described as insincere.

  “Thanks, Charlie, thanks for everything.”

  I bailed out of the old truck and extracted my suitcase from the rear of the pickup with a prayer. And praise be, no telltale leaks, no clinks of glass for an inquisitive village police officer to notice. Suitcase safely in hand, I looked up to see Charlie with a big smile on his face. Within two-seconds flat I found out why, because the old pickup took off, spinning its back tires.

  I stood there in the dust and listened to Charlie’s laughter as he drove on down the street. This was not a good beginning. To hell with him, at least my suitcase was intact.

  Chapter 2

  The building in front of me boasted a small sign that noted this was a United States Post Office. For once, the sign made me proud, because even here in Nowhere Land, the United States was represented. So what if I had been banished like a misbehaving Roman nobleman to some remote part of the empire. Howe’s Bluff was still the United States and I was part of it.

  I walked up the three steps to the front door and almost dropped my suitcase, because the most beautiful woman I had seen in a long time came swinging out with a small package in hand.

  She was a native, but she looked liked she belonged in a big city mall; black shag hairdo, with big gold hoop earrings. The right height, too, because the top of her head would just about hit me in the nose. It was the dark blue eyes that completely stunned me. When she looked at me, all my senses came to a stop, the world no longer existed and I was hers.

  “Good afternoon,” she said in a low contralto. This was not some young snippet, but a woman in her prime.

  “Afternoon,” I stammered back. If it had been the Old West I would have tipped my hat and added a “ma’am,” for this was a sophisticated woman. She went by me. I noticed her brown knit sweater and light brown slacks that weren’t too tight, but tight enough to show a nice pair of buns bunching back and forth like cats in a bag. I shook my head, sighed and hoped she got a lot of mail.

  There was a tug on my sleeve.

  “Sir?”

  I looked down to see a couple of what I guessed to be close to middle-aged native women dressed in Levi’s and sweatshirts. Twins. They too were well proportioned and I began to think I had stumbled into Nirvana. They must have guessed my state of mind because they gave each other meaningful looks. It did not take much to imagine what they were thinking.

  The woman with the gold earrings had done it again.

  I pulled myself together. “Yes?”

  “My name is Jean,” said one.

  “My name is Jeanette,” said the other. “We work here.”

  “Great.” I shook their hands in a solemn official manner. I couldn’t help wondering how these women, not much more than five-feet tall; could heft the required 70 pounds.

  “C’mon inside,” said one. I’d figure out the names later.

  “We’ll show you around,” said the other. Without further word, they herded me into the post office.

  It was bright and cheery with posters and signs. There were the usual sections of numbered boxes and a counter with cable anchored pens. Except for an old man propped in straight-backed chair before a stove in the middle of the lobby, it was a miniature of U. S. Post Offices everywhere.

  “Your lobby looks nice,” I said, looking around as if I knew what advertisements and posters were supposed to be up.

  “We try to make it just like he wanted us to,” the one I thought was Jean said.

  “And who might that have been?”

  “Mr. Justus,” said Jeanette, as she slipped the suitcase out of my right hand.

  “Oh, you mean the previous postmaster?” I asked, temporarily forgetting the bottles stowed in my case.

  There was no answer from either of them. Only a certain measure of sadness passing over their faces.

  “Hello, how are you?” a low voice said.

  The old man stood up from his chair by the stove and slowly moved toward me. His eyes were locked onto mine and I had the feeling of facing a corporate C.E.O., one who barely came up to my chest. He shook my hand in a prolonged iron grip. I sensed being measured, as to whether I had the right stuff. He gave no sign whether I had passed or failed.

  “My name is John Ermoff,” he said.

  “I’m Leo . . .”

  “I know who you are.” He turned slowly and walked back to the chair beside the unlit stove.

  I looked at the woman I thought was Jean.

  “His chair.” She said this as if it had always been so and that it was his by right.

  Jeanette pulled my sleeve. “C’mon, we’ll show you the back room.”

  I smiled to myself. Gulliver, being led by the Lilliputians.

  The back room did not surprise me. Again, a larger postal facility in miniature with a sorting bin and a couple of tables arranged in a neat orderly fashion. Post
master Justus may have been out of the mainstream, but he knew how to keep a facility. So why had he committed suicide? Boredom? Not enough to do? The hopelessness of living in an isolated community? A lot of questions with no answers. But these were questions I did not have to answer, I would be here for only a month.

  Another tug of the sleeve. “Sir? What do you think of our post office?”

  “Uh . . . very nice. I especially like the position of the tables in relation to the sorting cases and the box section—shows organization.”

  The sisters smiled, probably relieved I knew my business, and wasn’t just another white man with a handsome face, serving time here as a punishment for past wrongs.

  Jeanette shifted my suitcase from one hand to the other, and no doubt noticed my staring at the old cloth bag that held so much of my life and the security I needed. I imagined her wondering how it could weigh so much.

  “You would like to see your room?”

  I nodded. “Just show me the way and I’ll let you two get back to work. We have the needs of the service to think about, don’t we?”

  Jean looked at her sister and sighed. I had sounded like a manager. That old phrase, “the needs of the service,” had been used by postal management since before the Pony Express.

  They led me through a back door of the main room into a smaller room painted the same lime-green color as the rest of the building. There was an oil stove in the middle, which divided the bedroom—a double bed and a dresser; from the kitchen—a table and two chairs, an electric stove, and a small sink with a rusty five gallon can to catch whatever went down the sink’s drain. Thank goodness, there were two windows, one over the sink and one by the back door. The almost mandatory T V and VCR sat in a corner by themselves, and there were a few cabinets for food storage attached to the walls in various convenient places.