No response.
They intubated him. The oxygen began to flow. A quick head-to-toe check confirmed that Willows had no other visible injuries.
Parker hovered anxiously in the background while they gently laid her partner on a gurney and lifted him inside the ambulance. He was hooked up to a cardiac monitor. Parker climbed inside. The doors slammed shut and they got underway, the siren clawed its way up the scale.
“No signs of arrhythmia.”
Willows’ vital signs — blood pressure and pulse — were optimistic. A small flashlight was used to check his pupil reflexes. A few minutes later, he began to gag.
“Valium?”
“Don’t think we need it. His oxygen level’s climbing fast. Let’s pull the tube.”
Willows opened his eyes. He focused on Parker and then the intravenous line running into his wrist. “What the hell’s that for?”
“In case we needed to administer drugs.”
“Get rid of it.” Willows’ voice was thick, sluggish. He struggled to sit up.
“Take it easy, now. How’re you feeling?”
“I could use an aspirin.” Willows’ centre of gravity shifted as the ambulance turned a corner. “Where we going?”
“Grace. Be there in a couple of minutes.”
Willows glared at Parker. “What about Peter Lee?”
“He didn’t make it, Jack.”
“We gotta go back.”
“First things first, fella.” The paramedic smiled down at him. “We have to X-ray you, make sure we didn’t do any damage to your lungs when we stuck that tube down your throat.”
“Turn this thing around.” Willows yanked at the tape holding the intravenous in place.
The paramedic laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, I’ll do it.”
Up front, the radio crackled and the driver said, “Holy Christ.” Parker heard the phrase “shots fired”. She said, “What’s going on?”
“Couple of guys robbed an armoured car at Maple and Broadway. There’s four or maybe five people been shot, a gas station on fire, cars exploding all over the damn place.”
The radio crackled again.
“Fuckin’ Wild West shootout,” shouted the paramedic. “They’re wearing cowboy hats, high-heeled boots. Drove off in a black Cadillac.”
“Hit it,” said Willows. “Let’s move.”
It took them eighteen minutes to make the three-mile run through heavy traffic. The parking lot in front of the Safeway and liquor store was thick with police cars and fire trucks and ambulances. A temporary command post had been set up. The Emergency Response Team was in full war-paint and the dog squad was all bright-eyed and snarly. Reporters and photographers and mini-cam units from the local papers and radio and TV stations fought to interview or photograph anything that moved.
The gas pumps had been shut off and the fire at the 7-Eleven was under control, but still burning. The shrill screams of the wounded echoed across the street. Willows and Parker jumped out of the ambulance. Willows saw Bradley and a vice cop named Kearns standing by the armoured car. He and Parker hurried across the lot.
“What’s the situation, Inspector?”
“We’ve got five fatalities. Three Loomis people, a guy who worked at the liquor store, and an old guy who was in the wrong place when the pumps went up.” Bradley had an unlit cigar in his mouth. He spat a shred of tobacco in the general direction of a mini-cam crew. “The perps both got away. No wonder, a mess like this.”
A cop ran up with a message slip. Bradley read it and said, “Scratch one. They got him in a house on Point Grey Road.” Parker said, “How’d his partner get away?”
“On foot.” Bradley scratched his nose. “In all this slush, the dogs couldn’t track a can of Alpo.”
Willows surveyed the parking lot. It was almost a block long. There was a gardening shop at the far end, surrounded by a high wooden fence. At a guess, there were probably a hundred and fifty or more cars in the lot.
“The Tenth Avenue exit secured?”
Bradley nodded. “We’re waiting for the ERT guys to get their act together. In the meantime, we’ve got all these people want to go home and make dinner, watch themselves on the news.”
Willows turned to Parker. “Let’s take a walk.”
Bradley said, “What’s on your mind, Jack?”
“Nothing in particular. Just thought we’d take a look around.”
“I don’t think that’s such a hot idea. A couple more minutes, we’ll get organized.”
Willows said, “We lost the Lee kid.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“If we’d been a bit quicker, he’d still be alive and kicking.”
“In a cell,” Bradley pointed out, but Willows was already walking away.
Bradley searched his pockets until he found a match, fired up and lit the cigar. A kid in a black snowsuit tried to pet a police dog, and was snatched away by his mother. Better count your fingers, kid. Bradley blew out the match, pinched it between his fingers and dropped it in his pocket.
The parking slots were in a herringbone pattern; two double rows and one single. The yellow lines had been obliterated by the snow and slush, but for the most part the drivers had stuck to the pattern. Willows and Parker had each taken one double row, and were moving slowly towards the far end of the lot. Bradley saw a flash of light on Parker’s badge as she bent to look in a window. Most of the cars were empty, but exhaust fumes trailed from half a dozen vehicles. Probably the people inside were listening to the radio and wondering when the hell they were going to get out of there.
Not until we’ve got your name, address and telephone number, thought Bradley, grinning malevolently.
At the far end of the lot, a pale blue Volvo station wagon was parked up against a fence. There was something about the car that was wrong; a jarring note. Willows moved a little closer. His head throbbed. Parker saw that something had caught his attention and ran towards him.
Willows said, “The Volvo. There’s nobody inside, but the windows are fogged up.”
Parker said, “Could be the family dog, Jack.” She drew her revolver.
“Check the rear-view mirror,” said Willows.
The Volvo’s interior was dark, but Parker saw that the rear-view mirror had been turned at right-angles to the windshield, providing a view of the parking lot to anyone crouched down inside the car. She glanced over her shoulder. A hundred yards behind them, the ERT team and dog handlers were fanning out for a sweep of the parking lot. She waved, but no one looked up.
“Let’s just hold our position, Jack. They’ll be here soon enough.”
“Maybe not.”
Parker hurried to keep up as Willows walked briskly towards the Tenth Avenue exit. He said, “He can see out the side and he can see behind him, in the side mirror. But he’s blind at the front.”
“You hope.”
They circled around to the front of the Volvo and then crouched and moved towards the car. Parker knelt by the front bumper, her left hand pressing up against the chrome grill with its distinctive diagonal bar.
Willows continued along the side of the car, staying low. He made it as far as the driver’s door, reached up and got a firm grasp on the door handle. He glanced behind him. Parker nodded. He yanked open the door.
The woman was down on her knees in the cramped space between the gas and brake pedals and the seat. Her upper body lay across the seat. Her head was turned towards Willows but her eyes were closed.
Garret was on the floor on the passenger side of the car. The sawed-off barrel of the shotgun was pointed straight at Willows’ face. Garret’s eyes were wide open. He looked dead, but he wasn’t, not quite. Rivulets of dried blood, dark brown and glossy, trailed from his nostrils and open mouth, down his chin and chest and across the barrel and polished wooden stock of the gun.
Willows leaned into the car. He said, “Hi, Garret. We’ve been looking for you.” He pressed the barrel of his .38 lightly against Garret’s
upper lip. The shotgun’s safety catch was mounted in the trigger guard. Willows reached past the woman and flicked the safety on. He said, “Kenny Lee. You remember him?”
Garret blinked.
Willows pushed his revolver a little harder into Garret’s face. “You tortured that poor old man to death, didn’t you? Decided you liked killing people and making easy money, is that what happened? Five corpses back there, Garret. I hope you got enough of it to last a lifetime, because that’s how long you’ll be gone.”
Willows helped the woman out of the car. She began to cry. Parker made soothing noises, but was careful not to touch her.
Willows said, “We need an ambulance, Claire.”
But first he had to take care of that sharp thorn in every cop’s side, section 10(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights. He turned to Garret. “You’re under arrest. You have the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay. If you can’t afford a lawyer, legal aid will be made available.”
The woman Garret had held hostage began screaming, a terrible, keening wail.
Willows said, “I’ll tell you something. I wish to God that when I opened that car door, you’d tried to pull the trigger one more time. And I’ll tell you something else. Six months from now, you’re going to wish it too. Know why? Because you’re going to be real popular in the joint. Those cons are going to love you to death, kid.”
Garret blinked again.
Except for that single tiny movement, he was so still he might’ve been frozen solid.
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Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) Page 23