by Ted Wood
The door opened on the Jeep and the man jumped out and ran. “Fight,” I shouted and Sam bounded over the ice.
“Stop,” Scott shouted. “Hold it or the next shot's through you.”
The man ran on but he was tiring and Sam was getting closer with every bound. Then he turned and this time he pointed at Sam. I didn't hesitate. I pulled the trigger on the Winchester and the man spiraled away backwards and lay still.
I ran forward, gasping with the exertion, as Sam ran up to the fallen man and stood over him, barking into his face in his trained, threatening voice. Behind me I could hear Scott swearing as he ran, the frightened formless cursing of a man in combat for the first time.
The light was growing, seeping into the landscape like water into a dry garden. As I ran, my eyes grew more and more accustomed to the gloom, and from thirty paces off I saw the man ahead of me writhe and reach both hands down to his thigh.
I slowed to a walk and trained the gun on him as I came up. The ski mask I'd noticed in the Jeep was still rolled down over his face. Sam was still barking and snarling at him. I told him “Easy.” He dropped back a step and fell silent, and I reached out and prodded the man in the chest with the muzzle of the gun. “Take that hood off.”
He groaned but I ignored it, prodding him again until he raised one hand and pulled the ski mask up over his eyes. It was Berger, the owner of the Headframe.
“Don't shoot me,” he whispered.
“Where's your gun?” I asked him. He moaned again and pointed off a few steps to the side. Then Scott came up, gasping for breath. He stood with his hands on his knees, bent over, looking down at Berger. Then he took a long slow gulp of air and straightened up. “Sonofabitch. What's going on?” he asked me.
“We'll know better when we've seen who the other guy is, back at the roadway.”
“He hit the chief square in the chest,” Scott said. “This is first-degree murder.”
“Let's get this guy back to the road. The doctor came with me.”
“Okay. I'll get his gun,” Scott said. “That's evidence.”
“It's over there someplace.” I gestured with the rifle, then crouched to look at the wound in Berger's thigh. It looked bad. The big muscle was shrunken and the injured leg was shorter than the other.
The only thing I had to use as a bandage was the sweatshirt I was wearing, so I propped the rifle against my leg and slipped out of my down jacket to remove the shirt. As I unzipped the jacket Sam barked harshly. I glanced up and saw Scott standing off four paces, holding a pistol, aiming it at my chest.
I dived sideways, trying to shrug back into the jacket as I shouted “Fight!”
Sam barked and lunged and the pistol went off, the slug snatching at the hem of my unfastened jacket. Then Sam's bark changed to a growl and I knew he had Scott by the gun hand. I stood up and watched as Scott tugged and swore while Sam hung on, forcing the gun in his hand down almost to the level of the crusted snow. Scott looked up at me, then back at Sam as he yelled. “What's going on for Chrissake? He made the gun go off in my hand. I could've killed you.”
It was the last straw. My anger boiled over and I strode up to him and punched him in the face, sending him flying backwards with Sam still anchored to his right hand.
He moaned and lay still. “Let go of the gun or I'll blow your goddamn arm off,” I told him.
He groaned again but did it. I called Sam off with an “Easy boy.” He dropped back, snarling quietly. I knelt down and fussed him, rubbing his head and telling him he was a good boy. Then I picked up the gun that Scott had dropped. It was an automatic, cocked, ready to fire. I held it on him and told him “Open your parka.”
He did and I dug under his parka with my left hand, keeping the gun trained on him. He was holding his own hands over his bloody nose. I took his pistol first. It was useless anyway, he had fired all twelve rounds he had with him. Then I took the cuffs and snapped one of them over his right hand. I yanked lightly on his hand and he came to his feet. I twisted his arm behind him, firmly enough to show I was in charge, and led him back the couple of paces to the fallen man. Moving carefully I crouched, keeping Scott covered as I handcuffed his right hand to Berger's left. Then I backed off. “Right. Pick him up and let's go.”
He looked up at me from his half crouch in the snow. “He's gotta weigh two hundred pounds,” he protested.
“He ain't heavy. He's your brother,” I told him.
He swore but did it, hoisting Berger over his shoulder in a fireman's lift. Berger groaned and I stood and took off the jacket, as I'd been intending, and ripped off the sweatshirt Frazer had given me. Then I put my jacket back on, picked up the Winchester and caught up with Scott. I levered out the last rounds from the rifle and used it as a splint for Berger's thigh. He passed out as I tightened it but the bleeding stopped almost immediately, and at least he was in no pain while he was unconscious.
By now it was bright and I could see Frazer standing on the edge of the road with a couple of other men. Up the road past the gold truck, facing towards it, was another car, the one they had come from, I guessed. Most likely it had blown a tire, like the truck.
Frazer and the men came down to meet us as we approached the edge of the ice. The doctor looked at Berger's leg, not interrupting Scott's slow walk towards the shore. “He's lost a lot of blood,” he said. “We could lose him if we don't hurry.”
“Right,” I said. “Hold it there, Scott.”
Scott stopped, sagging under the weight. The other man with the doctor took Berger's weight while I unlocked the cuff from his wrist and cuffed Scott's hands together.
“Now make a chair,” I said. He didn't even swear. He locked his hands with mine and the others loaded Berger onto us. We set off faster over the snow and onto the road.
When we got to the road Frazer ran for his car. He drove it up beside me and jumped out to open the rear door. “I'll take him to the sick bay at the mine. It's closer than town and that road's blocked with spikes anyway. This chap says there's a dozen cars back there with their tires torn up.” He pointed back at the two bodies lying on the road. “That's the chief of police and someone I don't recognize. There's nothing I can do for either one of them. I'll get the people at the mine to send their ambulance out.”
“I know who that is,” one of the other men said. “That's Jack Sheridan. He's head of security at the mine.” He looked at me, then Scott. “What the hell's goin’ on? Why's this cop in handcuffs?”
“For attempted murder,” I said. “Help the doctor get this guy into his car, will you? Come on, Scott, in the patrol car.”
We turned away as Frazer and the second man fed Berger's limp body into the backseat of the car and roared away.
I put Scott into the back of the cruiser, in the cage. He looked terrible. His nose had bled all over his parka and was still leaking. There were tissues in the glove compartment and I handed him the box before I shut him in. “Thanks,” he said humbly. “I'm sorry, Bennett. I've been dumber'n hell.”
“I'll get a statement later,” I said. “Sit tight.”
I left him there with Sam on watch outside the car as extra insurance, and I turned to look at the fallen men. The chief must have died instantly. He had two bullet holes in the front of his overcoat, heart shots. Blood had pulsed out in the last seconds of his life and the coat was matted with it in a stain the size of a dinner plate.
I stepped over him and looked at the man I had hit. He was sprawled backwards with a single neat hole in the front of the dark parka he was wearing. It was black-rimmed with seeping blood. Someone had pulled his mask up and I looked at him but did not recognize him. The two men who had helped carry Berger watched me without speaking. I ignored them, standing and rubbing my face, feeling the scrape of day-old beard against my hands, reliving that split second when my target had been the orange circle of the muzzle flash as this man had fired at me. Trying to do to me what I had succeeded in doing to him.
One of the men said, “The
doctor told me what happened. Don't feel bad. This guy'd already killed your chief. He was bad.”
I nodded, not speaking. I would have preferred to be on my own for a while, to get used to the idea of what I had done. But he didn't take the hint. “Good shootin’ buddy,” he said and stuck out his hand to me.
I looked at him, seeing the eagerness in his eyes, the blood hunger of a man with a war story to tell. “Are you with the gold truck?” I asked, just to change the subject.
“Hell no,” he said. “The guy got out of the truck but he jumped back in when the shooting started. He's still there, I bet.”
He led me on, the few yards more until we could see around the corner to where the gold truck was stopped, both front tires blown, kneeling like a camel waiting for a rider. I could see the white face of the driver at the side window. Beyond him I could see a half mile stretch down the highway. Along the whole distance there were vehicles, five or six, I didn't count, slewed each way, sagging sideways on flat tires.
I stood and worked out what had happened. The men in the Jeep must have driven towards the mine from town, sowing their spikes behind them as they approached the corner. They must have planned to take the gold away across the frozen lake in their vehicle.
I turned to the man beside me. “Listen. I don't feel so good. I'm going to sit down in the car. Just leave me, okay?”
“You sure you don't want somebody with you?”
“Positive, thanks.” I touched him lightly on the shoulder. “But, hey, if you wanted to do the town a favor, maybe you'd take a look for the spikes they dropped on the road. Could you? Pick ‘em up and save them for me.”
“Sure,” he said eagerly. “Hell, we ain’ goin’ nowhere with my front tires the shape they're in.”
I turned away from him, nodding my head without speaking, and went back to the police car. I sat inside, putting Sam beside me on the front seat. Scott tried to talk to me but I held up one hand and he stopped. “Save it all up for the OPP,” I told him. “They'll sort you out.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The keys were in the ignition and I started the scout car and sat there, ignoring Scott's snuffling from the backseat. After a while I picked up the microphone and called the station.
Levesque answered, his voice startled. “Who is this?”
“Reid Bennett, Al. I'm alive and working. I need some things done.”
“They said you was kill’ in the fire last night,” he persisted.
“Rumors. Can you patch me through to Walker at his house, please?”
“Sure,” Levesque said, but he had one final question. “Where's the chief? That's his unit you’ usin'.”
“He's dead. I'll explain later. Right now I want to talk to Walker, please.”
“Sure,” he said again. Thirty seconds later a woman's voice said, “Hello.”
“Mrs. Walker?”
“Yes, who's this?”
“Reid Bennett. I have to speak to your husband, please. Is he there?”
He was right beside her, still in bed. “Hi. What's happening? Is there an emergency?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The whole department's come unraveled.” I filled him in briefly and he listened without saying anything.
When I finished he asked, “What can I do?”
“Please. There's some urgent things to be done.”
He asked his wife for a pen. Then he said, “Go ahead.”
I spelled what I wanted done. First, I wanted him to inform the OPP and have them send in a team of investigators. Second, I needed a man out at the site to assist me. Next I wanted a snowplow or a group of workmen out to the roadway to scoop up the spikes and open the road again. Finally I wanted him to go in to the police station and take charge until I returned.
That was the only order that he commented on. “Thank you,” he said. “I'll call the OPP first, then the works people, then I'll go into the office. If you need me again I'll be there.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the microphone.
I left Sam on guard around the area of the scout car and the two dead men. Already some of the stranded motorists had strolled down to look at the bodies. They were standing off a little way, hands in pockets, puffs of frosty air gusting out of their mouths as they talked over the events. Some kind of professionalism from their own dangerous line of work had kept them back from the bodies far enough that they were not disturbing anything, but when I got out of the car they came over and showed me the spikes they'd found.
“Lookit. These were made special to tear tires up,” one of them said. “Ever seen anythin’ like that?”
I had, in the police museum in Toronto. They had been used to cripple police horses during a nailmakers’ strike a hundred years earlier, four two-inch prongs of sharpened steel welded together so that one spike was always vertical no matter how they fell.
“Ugly,” I said. “Did you get all of them?” They thought they had. One of them had cannibalized a wheel from a car similar to his own, making his car drivable again. They were about to head back to Elliot, if I was finished, they said. They were full of questions, but I told them the case was under investigation. One of them opened his thermos and poured me a cup of coffee. It went down well and I thanked him. “You're welcome,” he said. “You stayin’ on in town, are you? Now the chief's dead?”
“Nothing's certain yet,” I said. “We'll see after the investigation.”
He was a thoughtful, slow-moving man in his fifties. “Hope you are,” he said. “This town needs a good cop.”
“That's what you're going to get,” I promised. “Thanks for the coffee.”
While I waited for help to arrive I got the investigation kit out of the trunk. I chalked the outlines of the two bodies on the roadway, also the position of the shotgun that the guy I'd hit had been using. There was a slick of ice on the roadway and I had to scratch with my pocketknife to get down to the tarmac before I could chalk. But I did it. After that I paced off the distances to the bodies and the gun from the landmarks on the side of the road and noted them in my book with a diagram. Than I got back into the scout car and settled in to wait, leaving Sam to guard the bodies.
It was about a quarter of an hour more before the ambulance came out from the mine. By then all the stranded drivers had gone. I was torn whether to wait with the gold truck or follow them back to the mine site, but right on cue, Levesque came in, on foot, having jogged the last quarter mile from where the first car had its tire blown.
I briefed him and left him there while I drove the police car back to the mine, taking Scott and Sam with me. When I got to the mine site the gateman was expecting me. He directed me back to the security office where a young guy in uniform and a nervous-looking executive were waiting for me. The executive introduced himself. “My name's Lalonde, I'm the personnel manager. Security's my responsibility.” He looked anxiously at Sam, who was sitting in the police car.
“Bennett,” I told him. “I'm with the Ontario Police Commission. This man is under arrest for attempted murder and a bunch of other things. Do you have a cell?”
They didn't have a cell as such, Lalonde explained prissily. What they had was a “secure holding unit,” which was a cell by a fancy name. It had a bunk and a toilet. It was not a cage, but it had no window in the wall and the door was steel with a shatterproof glass panel in it. I took Scott's cuffs off and put him into it. He tried to talk to me but I told him, “Just make yourself comfortable, please, and wait.”
The executive was horrified by Scott's nose. “What happened to him?” he hissed at me when I'd shut Scott away.
“He ran into a reflex action,” I said. “Would you instruct your man to sit here by the door and keep his eye on Scott? If he attempts to harm himself, he's to call. Not to go in there, but to call for me. Can he do that, please?”
“Sure. You think this man will try to commit suicide?”
“He's already tried murder. You can't tell,” I said. “And there's another thing. Your gold is sit
ting on the side of the road about three K from here. Do you have a heavy-duty breakdown truck?”
“Yes,” he said promptly. “Why?”
“Get them out there and tow the truck back inside. If you've got spare security men, arm them and send them along.”
He looked at me, narrowing his eyes. He wasn't used to taking orders from people outside the company, but he nodded and picked up the phone.
Now the pieces were coming together. I could relax a hair. I went in search of Frazer and found him in the sick bay having a cup of coffee with a nurse. “Berger's going to be okay,” he said as I entered. “His leg's a mess but a good orthopod'll fix it.”
I didn't know whether an orthopod was a doctor or a truss, but it didn't seem to matter. “Have you called your house?” I asked him.
“Yes. I called a couple of minutes ago, told my wife to let yours know you were all right.”
“Thanks. I'd like to speak to her. She's been a little shaken up by all this.”
Frazer laughed. “Sometime soon she's going to have to sit you down for a nice quiet chat,” he said.
I frowned. I didn't like other men making jokes around my family that left me on the outside. “What's your number, please?”
He gave it to me and I dialed. His wife put Fred on the line. She burst out, “Reid! Are you sure you're all right?”
“Never righter,” I said. “Look, I can't talk now. There's people here. But you know what I want to say. I'll be there as soon as the t's have been crossed and the i's dotted.”
“I love you Reid. I'll be here,” she said.
It seemed a bit dramatic, but I was reassured. If something had gone wrong between us, it seemed fixable. I went back to the holding unit and waited. The uniformed man was watching Scott through the window as intently as if he were a hockey game. A couple of minutes later Walker phoned from the police station.
“I've got the plow out and a couple of guys on foot clearing the spikes,” he said. “I've also had a call from an Inspector Kennedy at the Police Commission. He says he's on his way to Olympia by air. He'll be at the mine by ten or so. He's bringing a senior OPP investigation team from Toronto.”