by Ted Wood
“Good. Levesque made it out to the site. See if you can dig out some diversion signs for him to put around the chalk marks I've made. He's to stay there until the OPP have investigated.”
“Will do, chief,” he said.
“You're jumping the gun. I'm just the sergeant.”
“I'd rather you were chief,” he said, and I guessed he was hankering for the stripes for his own sleeve. Well, a lot would happen over the next little while.
Scott was lying on the bunk in his cell with his eyes closed and his hands clasped. He seemed to be praying. I went looking for Lalonde again. He was on the phone. “Good,” he was saying, “have them deliver the truck to the side door of security.”
He hung up and nodded to me. “The tow truck's on its way.”
“Fine. When it gets here, have your mine manager present. I want to check that load.”
“Now listen.” He bristled, standing up and doing his best to look important in his nice gray suit. “That's company property. It's nothing to do with the police.”
“Two men died trying to steal it,” I said. “Have your manager here or the OPP are going to wonder why you didn't.”
He huffed but he sat down sulkily and after a moment he picked up the phone. He dialed and when it rang he swung his chair around so he was facing away from me. I shook my head and left him.
The gold truck arrived half an hour later. I put my parka back on and went out to check it. The executive came with me and then Kemp arrived, coatless.
“Why do I have to be here?” he demanded angrily when he saw me.
“I want this load checked,” I said. “After what's happened, it's policy.”
He pursed his lips but said nothing. The front end of the van was hoisted up, but the driver was still inside, looking out at us, not opening the door. I wondered if he intended staying there until he took his pension.
Kemp held up some kind of ID and the man peered at it, then unlocked and stepped down. “Tell your partner to open the back,” Kemp said.
The driver leaned back into the cab and spoke into an intercom. There was a clatter at the rear door and it opened.
“You can get out,” Kemp said curtly. “It's safe now.”
The driver looked shaky. He was holding a shotgun and I held out my hand for it. He looked at Kemp, then shrugged and handed the gun to me. I stood and waited while Kemp stepped up onto the sloping floor of the van. I followed him in. The shipment was in a solid oak crate which was strapped to the bulkhead behind the driver. It was sealed. Kemp checked the seals and said, “It's fine.”
“Open it up. Let's check the load itself,” I said.
“What for? That load was put in under my supervision, yesterday,” Kemp said.
“Call me nosy. I want to see that the gold is okay.”
“By whose authority?” He was spluttering with anger now. He turned to call out to the executive outside. “Mr. Lalonde, I want this load replaced in the vaults, right away.”
“Open it or I'll blow the seals off with this shotgun,” I told him.
He turned now and bellowed at the executive. “This man's mad. I want him off the site.”
He was trapped in the van. I was between him and the door. I reached back and pulled the door shut. “Open the box, Kemp,” I said.
“You are mad,” he said. But his voice was failing him.
“I think I know what's in there,” I said. “Open it.”
He reached in his pocket for his Swiss army knife. He opened it, looking at me as if he wanted to jam it into my stomach. I kept the shotgun pointed at the deck between us, bracing myself against the wall of the truck to compensate for the slope of the floor. Finally he opened a screwdriver on the knife and inserted it into the metal seal, twisting it open. Then he broke the other seal and stood back, bracing himself against the rear wall of the truck.
“Open the box and let's see the gold,” I said.
He was past arguing. He pried up the lid of the chest and reached in. The contents were in small canvas bags. Each one was sealed. He changed to a blade on his knife and cut the seal off, tipping out the gold billets loose over the top of the other bags, not looking at them, looking at me. “Happy now?”
“Not quite. I want you to scratch one of them, like you did with the one in your office yesterday.”
He locked eyes with me and then folded his knife and put it away. “No,” he said. “This has gone far enough.”
“Not quite.” I raised the shotgun, keeping it trained on him as I reached down and picked up one of the billets of gold. I kept my eyes on him as I gouged it against the metal strap that had sealed the box. The gouge showed gray underneath. “Nice try,” I told him. “Let's go into the office.”
I opened the door and stepped down. “Lock this truck and seal it until the OPP get here,” I told Lalonde. “Don't move it out of my sight. Mr. Kemp and I are going to wait inside.”
The man looked at Kemp without speaking until Kemp nodded and turned away. I went with him, through to the office. The two security men from the truck came with me. I knew they were armed and I wondered whether Kemp might try to call on them, so I said, “I'm with the Ontario Police Commission. If you have sidearms, please put them on the table and sit down. The OPP are coming to conduct the investigation.”
They looked at one another without speaking. I was still holding the shotgun, negligently, but up where I could use it if they played rough. The guy who had been driving said, “You got some ID?”
“Yes,” I said but I made no move to get it out. He waited a moment then reached under his coat and pulled out an automatic. He laid it on the table and backed off a pace.
The other guy cleared his throat. “That shotgun is it for me.”
“Thank you. The load you took out is intact,” I told them. “I'd appreciate it if you could wait on the site here until the OPP team arrives to investigate.”
The driver swore. “I wish I knew what was goin’ on here,” he said. “The hell with this job.”
“Let's go get some breakfast,” his buddy said. He looked at me sharply. “That be okay?”
“That would be fine. Just don't leave the site, please.”
They nodded and walked out; I didn't mind. They weren't vital to the investigation anyway. Only Scott was, and Kemp.
I turned to Kemp. “The OPP are going to be here soon. Until they arrive you are in my custody on a charge of theft of gold bullion,” I said. “I'm going to charge you and give you your rights but after that I'm afraid I can't let you talk to anybody until the other men arrive.”
“Save your breath. This is all a mistake,” Kemp said. But he didn't try to leave. He just sat down wearily in a chair across the room from me and settled in to wait. I stood up and collected the pistol the guard had put on the table. I put it in the pocket of my parka, then took off the parka and sat down.
It seemed endless, but Kennedy arrived a few minutes before ten. He had three other OPP men with him. The first thing I did was head for the john, then I came back and took Kennedy into the next room and laid out the whole sequence of events for him.
Kennedy listened and asked a few questions, then said, “We've got enough to go on for a while. Why don't you go get something to eat, maybe see Fred.”
“I'd like that,” I admitted. “I'll be back around one.”
“Yeah.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “Take your time. See if you can pick up some new threads without smoke on them. Being around you is like sitting next to a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound kielbasa.”
“Thanks for the kind words.” I winked at him and left, taking Sam with me.
Back down the highway I found Levesque still on duty guarding my chalk marks, but one of the OPP men was with him so I stopped to answer his questions and to give him the shotgun Sheridan had been using.
I pulled into the driveway of Frazer's house in the scout car and Fred burst out of the side door and hugged me. It was the first time in what seemed like years that we we
re back on the honeymoon footing we'd brought to town with us.
We hung onto one another while all the neighbors peered through their lace curtains, and then I said, “Let's go somewhere private. Where's your coat?”
“I'll get it.” She craned up to kiss me and trotted up the steps. I put Sam in the cage at the back of the car and opened the passenger door for Fred. She came back out in her down jacket. It's some kind of green that goes great with her red hair. I felt as if my heart was going to burst my chest as she came down the steps. She kissed me again and got in the car. I shut the door and went around to the driver's side.
I backed out and drove aimlessly out of town. She didn't speak. She just reached over and held my hand. It was as if none of the horrors of the last weeks had happened. I squeezed her hand in return but said nothing until I'd driven out to the side road where Nunziatta had tried to kill me. I pulled into the same clearing, swinging the car around so it faced into the road. Then I pulled her to me across the seat and hugged her very tight.
“Look, Fred. A lot's been happening to put a strain on us. I'm sorry. I just want you to know that nothing's as important to me as you are.”
She eased back from me, starting to smile, but I went on. “Can we get back to where we were, before all this happened?”
She went on smiling, then she tried to look stem. “Impossible,” she said, in what I call her actress voice.
I could sense she was kidding but I was too shaken up with everything that had happened to be able to appreciate it. “Why?” I asked helplessly.
“Because you're going to be a father, you big lunk,” she said. “There's going to be three of us to worry about.”
“You're pregnant?” My mouth fell open as I realized how dumb I'd been. “I should have known. Sick in the mornings.”
“That's the part I'm not wild about,” she said. “But aside from that I'm ecstatic. How about you?”
I couldn't even answer. We just kissed again and then sat there hugging one another. Eventually I said, “Frazer knows, doesn't he?”
“Yes. He confirmed it, day before yesterday,” Fred said. “All the time you two have spent together, I thought he might have told you.”
“Everything but,” I said ruefully. “I was starting to wonder if you two were, I don't know, shutting me out, anyway.”
“Twit,” she said softly. “I told you we're a team, Reid. Only now we're bringing in a new player.”
I just shook my head at my own dumbness and Fred laughed again. After a while, because that's what you have to do, we drove back to town to get on with our lives.
She came with me to the town's only clothing store and picked out some clothes for me. The storekeeper didn't want to take anything for the clothes because of my antics in the fire, but we settled on a solid discount for me and a nice warm feeling for him. Then Fred and I went back to Frazer's house, where I had to take a tub. Showering was out for a while, until the cuts on my chest had healed.
After I'd cleaned up and changed I wanted to get back to the mine to check on the investigation, but Alice Frazer had prepared a fancy lunch and it would have been impolite to duck out. So we ate. Alice made nice noises about the baby and asked what we were going to call it.
“If it's a girl I refuse to call the poor kid Freda,” Fred said firmly. “I've hated the name from the first time I heard it. I think we should call her Anne after my mother, or Louise, after Reid's sister.”
“And if it's a boy?” Alice asked.
“It's up for grabs,” I said. “I'd like to call him Jack, after my dad.”
“Wasn't his name Reid?” Alice asked. “It's such an unusual name, I figured it must be a family name.”
“It is, but not our family, except for me,” I said, “My dad was a Brit. He served in their commandos with a guy called Tom Reid. They were in some hot spots together, and they made a pact. If one of them didn't come through it, the other one would christen his first son with his buddy's last name.”
Fred reached out and held my arm. I looked at her and saw tears in her eyes. “You never told me. But that settles it. A son will be named Jack Reid Bennett.”
TWENTY-SIX
As soon as I could, I went back to the mine. Kennedy had set up his investigation center in the security office. He was sitting at the desk Lalonde had been using, talking to one of the OPP guys. For once he didn't have his feet on the desk, but he was tipped way back in his chair as if he were flirting with the idea. When he saw me he said, “That's one hell of an improvement, Reid. Fred pick the duds out for you, did she?”
“What else?” I said.
Kennedy laughed, then made the introduction. “This is Bert Grange,” he said, indicating the other man. “He's Detective Sergeant Grange, stationed in Toronto. He's their finance expert.”
Grange was short for a policeman and excessively neat. He looked as if he could slip right into a banker's office without raising anybody's eyebrows. He stood up and shook hands. “Hell of a job you've done here, Reid. How did you guess about the gold being fake?”
“I wasn't sure.” I sat down and put my feet up on Lalonde's desk. Kennedy sighed with relief and did the same thing.
Grange sat back down like a job applicant, back straight, knees together. He frowned as if in pain when he saw our feet go on the desk top, but he said only, “Why did you even suspect it?”
“Well, Kemp was awful quick to prove that it wasn't his gold that was circulating in Nunziatta's pockets,” I said. “Weighing it like he did seemed like an extreme reaction. The evidence pointed to theft, and he didn't sit still for that. Instead he told me how easy it would be to make up a dummy batch.”
“But why heist the goddamn stuff if it's phony?” Kennedy insisted. He fumbled in his pockets and came up with a pack of White Owl cigars. He took one out and unwrapped it pleasurably and lit up. There was no ashtray on the desk but he hooked the wastepaper basket closer with his left heel and dropped the match into it.
Grange answered the question. “That's easy,” he said. “Kemp had been skimming the production, getting it out a few ounces at a time for months, him and that security guy of his. Now it was truth or consequences time. There was no way to cover what had been taken. And the moment the fake gold got to the mint the game was up. But if everybody thought it had been stolen, then Kemp and his buddies were home free. Why, they could even have gone on stealing and taken another six or seven million dollars’ worth.”
“Where would they have hidden it?” Kennedy knocked the ash off his cigar on the edge of the waste can. “They'd have had the same trouble as they would with real gold.”
“No, that was the sweet part of the deal,” Grange said. “They didn't have to find the stuff again, just lose it. According to Kemp, Sheridan had an ice fishing hut on the lake. They planned to drive out there in the Jeep and drop the ‘gold’ through the hole. They knew the chief would be dead and Scott would lead the chase off in some other direction.”
“Your people would have seen the tire tracks in the snow on the lake,” I argued.
“We wouldn't have been out there looking until later than this. By that time Scott would have muddied up the scene for them, running tracks all over the ice. We'd have searched as far as we could, but it would have been dark, and there's more snow expected tonight. They'd have been home and hosed after that.” He paused, marshaling his other facts. “You have to remember that they were winging it, thanks to you, Reid. They'd counted on having four men to handle the snatch. Nunziatta was in on it. He was the one who had the mold to pour the phony billets for them. And Ferris was in on it as well. According to Scott, he was the one who brought him into the plan in the first place.”
Kennedy parted his feet so he could look straight at Grange. “You got all of that in a statement?”
Grange nodded happily. “Two statements. Kemp sang his heart out as well. He told us that Scott killed the sergeant because the guy was chickening out. He wanted to turn the other conspirators in as p
art of a deal to get off that attempted murder charge. Kemp's afraid of getting charged with conspiracy to kill the chief of police. He says he didn't do anything wrong himself, except for the misappropriation of the gold. He wants to turn Queen's evidence in return for some light time. I've promised we'll do what we can for him.”
“He'll probably get six years instead of twenty,” Kennedy said. “Be out in a couple if he keeps his nose clean.”
“I think Scott's the guy who's going for the big fall,” Grange said. “He's facing the charge of trying to shoot you, Reid, plus maybe we'll find it was his gun killed Ferris, once the ballistics boys have checked it. He wouldn't offer anything on that, nothing at all. He says he figures that Ferris shot himself because he thought that hooker would testify against him.”
“I think he shot Ferris, but it may be hard to prove. He could have used a throwaway gun,” I said. I was enjoying myself. All the answers to everything that had haunted me in town were here in front of us, all we had to do was pick them out of the pile, one by one.
“Anyway, there's more than Ferris to worry about. There's that woman who was strangled,” Grange said.
“Like I said, Scott says Ferris did that,” Kennedy said easily. “Says Ferris was the big bad corrupt policeman and he was the little innocent who got swept up in it all.”
“We may hear the truth when the woman comes out of her coma,” I said. “But what else does Scott have to say about the corruption?”
“Not much,” Kennedy said. “Not yet, anyway. He sang a couple of choruses, then he asked to have a lawyer present. I figure we're going to have to spend a lot of time with him.”
“The best guy to lean on might be Berger,” I said. “He's in this deeper than anybody. It looks to me as if he and Ferris were in cahoots. That was even before he bought the hotel. In fact, he may be the reason why Ferris killed the previous bar owner. That's going to need looking into.”