Fear The Reaper – David Housewright

By then the downstairs bar was filling up nicely, yet it wasn’t so packed that Nina felt compelled to release the table to her paying customers. Nor was the crowd as noisy as usual and I credited that to Umland’s stage presence. He seemed to have an extensive repertoire. At Terrible Timmy’s he was playing mostly country-western and pop rock, covering artists like Johnny Cash, the Beatles, and Prince.

Today he was leaning toward jazz vocalists, singing standards made famous by crooners like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, and even Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Umland was just finishing a nice version of Ray Charles’s ‘Georgia on My Mind,’ when Nina leaned toward me.

“He really knows how to read his audience, doesn’t he?” she said. “I’m going to have to bring him back. Maybe take him upstairs.” “Too bad he can’t play ‘Summertime,’” I said. And, as if he was waiting for a cue, Umland began to sing Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high … He seemed to be smiling at me when he did and I smiled back and then I stopped smiling and closed my eyes.

“What?” Nina asked. My psychologist friend Dr. Jillian DeMarais called it a “spontaneous memory”; a memory that comes to mind without conscious effort. I wasn’t even thinking about it, yet in that moment, I knew exactly what connected Dave Umland to Tucker Landau. I pulled my smartphone from my pocket, except I realized that I needed something more substantial.

“May I use your computer?” “What is it?” Nina asked. “Maybe nothing.” Nina and I left the table and moved to her office. I circled her desk, sat in her chair, activated her desktop computer, typed “mncourts.gov,” added a slash and the words “access-case-records” and hit execute. After a few more key flourishes, I imputed the name “Koski, Ross” and I was presented with all the man’s civil court cases. It took me only a minute to find what I was searching for.

I recited aloud the fifteen digit case number followed by the case title —“EverTech Industries versus Koski Enterprises, Incorporated”—before adding the case type—“Breach of contract.” “Dave’s wife, Colette, is a bigwig at EverTech,” Nina reminded me. “Yes, she is. Just a sec.” The website was light on specifics. Fortunately, MinnPost, the online nonprofit news site, filled in the details. “What happened,” I told Nina, “EverTech leased property from Koski to use as a testing area for its equipment.

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OceanofPDF.com ONE The gunman was dressed as if he had just finished cleaning his garage and was now running a few errands before tidying up for dinner. He left his truck—an eighteen-year-old Ford F-150—in the driveway of the winery, the driver-side door open, and the engine running. His personal belongings were boxed up and sitting on the truck bed and the passenger seat. This would become a point of contention later.

Certainly, he wasn’t behaving like a mass shooter. Plus, there was the cheap burner phone he left on the dashboard. Its memory revealed that he had received only one text message. It read: Terrible Timmy’s three P.M. I had arrived at Terrible Timmy’s Terrific Wine Club an hour earlier along with a party that included my wife, Nina Truhler, Bobby Dunston and his wife, Shelby, and Bobby’s parents, Patty and Gene Dunston.

It was Patty’s idea that we visit the winery. Apparently, it was one of her favorite places because she carried a “preferred guest” card that the owner happily perforated with a heart-shaped hole. One more punch and Patty would be eligible for a free bottle of wine. Terrible Timmy’s was located just off Highway 77 in northwestern Wisconsin near Danbury, population 172, that I later discovered was “an unincorporated census-designated place,” whatever that meant. The winery was about thirty minutes from the home that Patty and Gene had built on the Minong Flowage, a 6.8-mile-long lake that was created when the state dammed the Totagatic River in 1937; the word “Minong” meaning “Blueberry Place” in the Ojibwe language.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,613,520 bytes (4.4 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 267
• Language: English (en)

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• Total Words: 81,080
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• Average Words per Page: 303.67
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