Free Cooler Than Blood by Robert Lane Page B

He flashed me a fake smile and followed it with, “Have a nice day.” His right hand rested on his service revolver.
    “Will you reconsider having me assist you? After all, this will always be the first time we meet—our country song.”
    “Leave.”
    “Perhaps confer with Dasher and—”
    “Get the hell out of my county, son.” He fingered his gun.
    “When the elves unionize, Sheriff,” I said as I twisted into my car, “you’ll feel the power of the little people.” I threw Flintstone’s car into reverse.
    I know. Childish. Insipid. It didn’t even make the grade as a sophomoric retort, but he got to me. My chain gets yanked when people dislike me before I realize I dislike them.
    It was a little more than a half hour drive back into Greenwood. I should have asked Boone the name of the Orry’s friend who’d brought Zach with him on the boat last summer, but I didn’t think that would lead anywhere. No excuse, though. I stopped at an outdoor store that doubled as a munitions depot. It had a more extensive firearm and knife selection than anything I’d seen, in aggregate , during five years with the US Army. No foreign armed force (Kent State, 1970, was internal) had invaded Ohio since Morgan’s raid in 1863. But by gum, these Buckeyes were ready for the next son of a bitch to set foot on their land. I selected what I needed for the night and received directions to a campground. I hit a grocery store and a liquor store and killed time at a bar, where I was instantly recognized as someone no one knew. I drove back out to the Colemans’.
    Rudolph and the herd had pulled out. I approached the property from the back side and hiked through a few hundred yards of dying ash trees before I arrived at the house and the pole barn. A yellow police tape laced the barn as well as the house. A gray cat didn’t seem to mind as it sulked around the partially open sliding door. I wondered how many dead geckos Hadley III would have for me when I returned.
    The barn was clean. I assumed the sheriff had confiscated any equipment used in the clandestine chemistry trade. Stainless steel shelves and stained tables were all that remained from a lab that likely produced methamphetamine, commonly referred to as meth. Facemasks littered the floor. I strolled behind the barn but found nothing except dead grass in the circular pattern of barrel bottoms. The house was next. It was locked. I busted the window on the back door. I searched the rooms.
    The only items I found of mild interest were several brochures in a kitchen drawer beneath the silverware tray. I stashed the brochures in my pocket. As for the silverware, no one had bothered to keep the forks, spoons, and knifes separate from one another.
    Even though it was late, it was still light. I was a thousand miles north of home, and the curvature of the earth afforded me over an hour more of daylight, split evenly at both ends. I headed south on Route 33 and took a right at the Shell station, like the man with the lip ring at the munitions depot had instructed. I navigated cautiously, as he had warned, around the boulder that encroached upon the road and narrowed it to a nasty one-lane turn. A stoic crooked cross struggled to clear a clump of Queen Anne’s lace that swayed in the breeze; someone hadn’t paid attention. I pulled into a deserted campground. Lip Ring had said the owners of Camp Tecumseh didn’t have the funding to operate the camp for a full summer, and it wouldn’t be used until next week.
    Moses had planted the pine trees. A small pond with one shoreline curved like a woman’s hip centered the camp. Kayaks rested on its muddy bank. A dozen cabins circled the pond and battled the trees for airspace. A solitary male mallard paddled across the glassy water, and its wake followed without choice. My eyes are drawn to displaced water. I understand the physics, yet it retains a magical fascination to me. A dirt road disappeared higher into the wooded hills, where