Day Into Night by Dave Hugelschaffer Read Free Book Online Page A

your crew?”
    “He was the buncher operator. That was his machine.”
    There’s a heavy silence — the implication unavoidable. Brotsky sets a leg against a stump and looks upslope. Rachet and his crew are clustered around something, squatting like a group of tired hikers. They stand and one of the men begins to string yellow ribbon — more human remains. I look at Brotsky in profile. His jaw is clenched.
    “Why would Hess have been the only one here?”
    Brotsky shrugs, watching the Mounties. “Came in early I guess.”
    “It happened during shift change, right?”
    Brotsky nods.
    “What exactly do you guys do at shift change?”
    “We shut down, check the machines for loose hoses, stuff like that.”
    “What about a mechanic? Anybody come in for routine servicing?”
    Brotsky gives me a troubled look, like he should be able to recognize me. Without an official capacity beyond a drone with a spare pair of eyes, I’m not sure how far to push this. But he doesn’t seem to mind talking about it now. “The last operator didn’t notice anything unusual and his machine wasn’t due for service for a while.”
    “How could a person check that?”
    “Each machine has a service log in the cab.”
    I glance upslope. There’s a service log that’ll never be checked.
    There’s a lull in the conversation. I’m in no hurry to find more fractions of Ronny Hess. Neither is Brotsky. We linger at the low end of the cutblock, watch the action — a few parked vehicles, a black lump of metal and a scatter of men wandering apparently at random. My eye keeps drifting toward a cluster of little blue flags. From here, they look like a patch of blueberries. It occurs to me that whoever planted the bombs must have been pretty familiar with the operation. To blow up three pieces of equipment several miles apart in the space of a half-hour takes some planning. You’d have to spend a few days watching the operation to establish a pattern to the shift changes. Or you’d have to work here.
    “Any of your guys have a grudge against Hess?”
    I’m hoping the Lorax slipped up and can somehow be traced. But Brotsky gives me a strange look. “A grudge?” He pulls a tin of chewing tobacco from a back pocket, takes his time working a lump of black goo under his lower lip. “We’ve got a good bunch here,” he says, his lip bulging. “If somebody’d had a problem that serious, I think I would have known about it.”
    “What about Hess? Was he easy to get along with?”
    Brotsky looks thoughtful, working up a eulogy. “He was a new guy. Didn’t really know him. Good worker though — could really handle a machine. Real asset to the operation.”
    “How long did he work here?”
    “Couple of months.” Brotsky spits a glob of oily sludge, glances uphill toward the epicentre of the blast. “Fuckin’ environmentalists,” he says bitterly. “Bad enough they harass you and drag you into court, but now when you go to work you gotta worry that some nutcase is going to pop you off.” He spits again, uses his boot to rub the mess into the end grain of a tree stump. “It’s getting so a guy can barely do his job out here anymore.”
    I think of Nina. “I know what you mean.”
    “I don’t understand those people,” he says. “Bunch of hypocrites —”
    He rambles on for a few minutes: the typical hatred for meddling environmentalists.
    “You notice anything suspicious when you arrived?”
    “Other than my damn equipment was blown up?”
    “You pass any unfamiliar vehicles on the way in?”
    “It was dark.”
    “Any headlights?”
    He thinks for a minute. “Not that I recall.”
    He’s tiring of my questions and begins to search, kicking branches, walking with a slight limp like he’s got a bad hip. We work our way along the timbered edge of the cutblock, past fluorescent blazes on the trees. I keep within a dozen yards of him.
    “How many people have access to this area?”
    “Everybody,” he snorts. “This place