Smugglers Notch

by Joseph Koenig

  He tested the surface and brought his foot back quickly as a gray slab disintegrated under half his weight. Thirty feet away he tried again. The ice fractured, but didn’t give, and he put down the other foot and moved cautiously from the land. Tin-tracked snow muffled his steps, absorbed some of the shock of 200-pound footfalls. When he looked back, Conklin was studying footprints on the beach, then stuffing the guns in his pants and trying the ice, walking with his arms out from his sides like a highwire artist over a lethal drop.

  Though he tried not to, St. Germain thought of Mackie Pike, who had spent fifty winters on the rock-solid ponds of the Northeast Kingdom carving the bluish blocks that were packed in sawdust and then shipped to the icehouses of the Carolinas and Georgia. Even on days when the temperature stood at 40 below, it was not rare for someone off by himself to fall through a thin spot over an inlet. The old ice cutter had told him he’d never worried much about it. If you let those things bother you, he had advised, better stay off the ice.

  But St. Germain had no choice. He ran for the mouth of the cove, trying to step lightly. Another shot echoed behind him, closer than the last, the boy announcing that he was resuming the hunt in earnest. St. Germain tried to calculate how many bullets Conklin had left, but knew it didn’t matter. One, not very well placed, would be enough to bring him down.

  He twisted his ankle where the ice had buckled, and shook off the pain to catalogue with the rest. A quarter-mile out, a rocky promontory marked the boundary of the cove. He swung around it blindly, praying for ice on the other side, picking up speed when the hard surface didn’t evaporate beneath him. In the distance he made out the boxy silhouette of a dilapidated hut the size of an overgrown outhouse standing at the edge of land. As he neared the beach he saw a dozen like it and then many more, and decided that he had been running in a circle, hooking back toward the ice fishing village he had passed on his way to the Conklin place.

  The boy was well behind when St. Germain stepped onto land again, weaving through a Main Street three feet wide, studying the shacks and losing himself in their comforting sameness. At a hut of brown particle board built on wooden runners he stopped for a second look and then forced open the door. His lighter caught the first time he tried it, showing a dented minnow bucket beside two round holes in the floor and not much else. He turned the pail upside down and squatted on it, resting as much of his weight as he dared against thin walls that groaned in the wind. His teeth began chattering and he played the Zippo to rummage in a rusted footlocker for a blanket or scrap of cloth to put between himself and the cold. The best he could do was a stack of year-old newspapers. He pulled off his shoes, stuffed the yellowing treasures inside, and warmed his numb toes in his hands.

  Christ, but he was cold, colder than out on the lake. And the humiliation of what he was being put through by a boy not even old enough to drink—the kind who’d hang outside a liquor store begging you to buy a pint of wine for him to get sick all over himself—more chilling than that. He stood up to beat his arms against his chest and, when that generated little warmth, to chink up the spaces around a window of orange Plexiglas with the last of his newspaper. His stomach was demanding attention, too. The Zippo revealed a wall shelf stocked with a ketchup bottle plugged with green mold and a battered can of corned beef hash. He had no opener; along with his keys, Conklin had taken his Swiss army knife. Frustrated more than starved, he would have pounded his fists against the walls if the particle board looked as if it could stand up to the punishment.

  He pulled the wadded newspaper from the wall, afraid of what he would find. The shore was cloaked in a low cloud nibbling on the moon as it swept over the lake. Then the cloud was swallowed by Burlington’s distant brightness, and he saw the boy not a hundred feet away, peering behind a blue door and shutting it, opening another to look inside a hut with silver walls.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Conklin sang childishly.

  St. Germain’s throat caught as Conklin backed out and began moving down the street, methodically poking inside every shack.

  “Chilly out here, Larr. Least you could do is invite me in out of the weather.”

  Whispered words told Conklin where he could go. St. Germain remained at the chink in the wall, searching his imagination for a plan and the strength to put it into effect. Another cloud buffeted the moon and he considered a dash through the darkness. But how far could he expect to get before the boy took up the chase again, and this time shot him down? No, he would make his stand here. With Conklin careless enough to lead with a gun, he wouldn’t have much trouble wrenching the barrel away and turning it on him before the other came into play. …

  Fantasy land, he told himself. If that was the best he could come up with, it was all over but the eulogies and the cortege with flashing domes.

  Without a conscious command from his brain, St. Germain carried the bucket behind the shack and stood on the pitted bottom. A bent stovepipe protruded below the peak of the roof. Guessing that it would support him, he used it to hoist himself onto rough planks. He waited. After several minutes his leg fell asleep and he shifted his weight to his other side, not daring to raise his head. He tried to put himself in the boy’s place, wishing the boy were in his, and was relieved when he could think of no reason to look on the roof. If he lay still, Conklin would miss him. If not, he wouldn’t have to worry about a bullet in the back.

  The clouds fell apart and metallic light rained down, leaving him naked and exposed. Watching his shadow swell in the snow, he pressed himself into the roof till he saw it shrivel again. A door slammed so hard that the vibrations stung his cheek, and then Conklin stepped into his narrow field of vision, close enough to tousle the spiky hair.

  “Home free all,” the boy said, tapping his gun against the brown slabs. “How about if I hide now and you try and find me?”

  St. Germain squeezed harder against the planks. He ignored a splinter that pierced the skin under his eye, fascinated with the shadow that grew still smaller as though it reflected a shrinking body. His knee slipped, and the wood conducted a scraping sound that filled his head. But Conklin was laughing out loud and didn’t hear.

  “You want to play some more?” the boy said. “Fine by me. I’ve got nothing special for tonight.” He hammered the door with his heel, and St. Germain heard the wood explode and the boy cursing as his foot snagged in the broken boards.

  It was a piece of cake now. Conklin was stuck, perched on one leg as he tried to kick free, his back a vulnerable target. Just drop off the roof and drag him down, that was all, put him in a choke hold and forget to let go. But with only one good arm there were no guarantees, and St. Germain felt uncomfortable with the odds. He couldn’t remember the last fight where his size hadn’t made him a winner before the first punch was thrown.

  “Hang on, Larr,” Conklin called out as he struggled to extract his foot. “I’ll be right after you.”

  Panic had St. Germain by the balls and he fought it with short, silent breaths. He suspected that other men had conquered fear by developing antibodies with each exposure. But he had gone too long without really being afraid, and now, like an adult in the grip of a childhood disease, he was defenseless.

  A low rumbling like approaching thunder percolated through the village, making St. Germain wonder what the boy had cooked up next. He looked down at Conklin bent over a rolled-up pants leg with his head tilted toward the sound. St. Germain recognized a light truck or four-wheel-drive vehicle pushing across the beach, no doubt Conklin’s brother summoned to the hunt. But as the engine quit, the boy darted behind the shack, and there was only the certain beat of heavy boots plodding toward them.

  “What’re you doing in here?” a voice called out.

  It was a man’s voice, middle-aged or older, St. Germain decided, and in no mood to be trifled with.

  A yellow beam pierced the dead street. It followed the flattened snow around the corner of the shack and found Conklin huddled against a wall.
r />   “I said, what are you do—”

  “What’s it look like I’m doing, Gramps?”

  The light traced shapeless contours, taking in the ruined door. “Looks like you’re fixing to torch these shanties, like they done last week up to North Hero.”

  St. Germain saw a man in a wool jacket like the one Conklin had worn, with tufts of white hair sprouting from under a billed cap of the same checked cloth. An older version of the boy, who should know better than to go easy on him.

  “Go away, old man,” Conklin said. “You’ve got no business bothering me.”

  “I’ll say I have.” The flashlight settled below Conklin’s eyes. “These shanties belong to me, to me and my friends. If you don’t get your ass out of here, you’ll see what a bother I can be, all right.”

  St. Germain wanted to applaud. He moved closer to the edge and saw Conklin’s fingers playing impatiently on the gun.

  “Now get,” the old man said.

  Conklin seemed to relax. St. Germain couldn’t. Trapped behind an invisible barrier, he watched powerlessly while the boy began to bring the weapon around, freezing—as everyone did—when another voice reached them in the night.

  “Millard? Millard, who are you talking to?”

  It was a woman asking, a woman about the same age as the man, St. Germain guessed, and angrier with Millard than Millard was with the boy. Conklin tucked the revolver against the small of his back. He moved away from the shack, showing his empty palms like a child seeking approval for clean hands.

  “It’s no one, Peg,” Millard called back. “Just some little bastard out to burn the shanties.”

  St. Germain peered over the village, trying to track the voice to its destination.

  “Hold your water,” Conklin said. “I’m not trashing anybody’s property. I’m looking for a friend, that’s all.”

  “A friend?” Millard stifled a laugh. “What would your friend be wanting in a place like this?”

  Conklin walked around the white-haired man, scanning the shacks one last time. “Playing hide-and-seek,” he said. “Prett’ soon it’s my turn to hide.”

  St. Germain watched Millard shepherd the boy down the street until they were lost in the gloom.

  “Millard?” The woman did not sound pleased, did not sound as if she ever were. “What in Heaven’s name was that about?”

  “Now, Peg, don’t get all—”

  The rest was lost in the whine of the transmission as the heavy vehicle retreated across the beach.

  St. Germain pushed himself up on his elbows. He could see almost to the end of the village now and Conklin was nowhere in sight. It seemed unlikely that Millard had offered him a ride, yet why had he gone to the trouble of flushing the boy out only to leave him there? St. Germain thought it over, glad for the excuse not to move. He lay back, hearing only a whistling in his nose and the occasional moan he was unable to suppress. Sick of the sound of himself, he clambered down and ducked inside the brown hut. He stood at the chink in the wall, watching moonlight dilute the night. For no reason that he could think of, he put his badge in his pocket and went outside again, walked slowly down the center of the street.

  6

  MARLOW TILTED THE REMOTE at the man with the perfect smile, listening with a sense of accomplishment as the perfect baritone fell silent by degrees. On the next ring he reached for the phone. “Marlow, here,” he said without taking his eyes off the picture.

  “Sheriff,” the voice at the other end said, “it’s Ed.”

  “Yes, Ed.”

  “Sorry to be disturbing you at home, but we got a call I thought you’d want to know about. Chittenden sheriff’s says the Brown Bomber’s been found off the road in some woods near Malletts Bay. That’s on the lake, north of Burl—”

  Marlow took aim at the screen again. When the perfect smile refused to fade, he carried the phone across the bare floor and slammed the TV with the side of his hand. “I know where it is,” he said, backing through the darkened room. “Did they tell you anything about Jeffcoat?”

  “They say he’s hurt.”

  “How bad?”

  “Don’t know. Hurt’s all they have on him.”

  “What about Larry?”

  “Didn’t say anything. I don’t think they know he’s there. Fact is, they were asking what one of our cars was doing in their county without their being told.”

  “I’m starting to understand,” Marlow said. “Call Vann and Gray, wake ’em if you’ve got to, and have ’em meet me at the office. Tell ’em we’re going out to see what we can do for Jeffcoat and to help Larry, whether he needs it or doesn’t. Then call ’em both back and remind them to hurry. Will you do that, Ed?”

  Marlow replaced the receiver and bent to lace his shoes. When he sat up again, his wife was standing over his easy chair with his gun belt and his coat. “There’s been some trouble, Martha,” he murmured, an actor running through his lines for the thousandth time. “I don’t know when I’ll be getting back. Be a good idea if you didn’t lose any sleep waiting.”

  The woman tugged a flannel dressing gown across her bony shoulders. “I’ll keep a pot of coffee on,” she said where her part came in.

  When he pulled into the lot, Marlow recognized Artemis Gray’s Buick beside the loading platform. A red Trans Am raced in on two wheels, and Dick Vann slid out, fastening the collar button on his uniform shirt.

  “Fancy piece of driving,” Marlow said. “Why don’t you save it for the road?”

  “Ed said, ‘On the double.’” Dick Vann was a dark-haired man three years older, a couple of inches shorter, and twenty pounds lighter than the lieutenant who had supplanted him as the sheriff’s favorite. Marlow made it no secret that he liked his deputies big, as if sheer size were enough to keep the populace of Cabot County in line, and during St. Germain’s rookie year Vann had gone in seriously for weight lifting, attempting to regain his place in the sheriff’s esteem by outbulking the new man. Fifteen pounds of knotty muscle had attached itself to his upper arms and thighs, where he needed it the least, giving him the muscle-bound stoop that Marlow believed projected a Neanderthal image the department could do without. Telling no one but his wife, Vann twice had taken the exam for appointment to the state police and was waiting for word from Montpelier. “When I heard about Wally,” he said, “I wasn’t going to screw around getting here.”

  “Wally and Larry, both,” Marlow said. “I sent them to Chittenden County to pick up Becky Beausoleil’s killer.”

  “Wally? For a job like that? No wonder things got loused …” Seeing Marlow’s eyes narrow, he caught himself. “Cancel that, John, it was uncalled for. What happened?”

  Marlow prodded the big man up the concrete stairs. “Don’t know yet. Chittenden authorities’ve got only sketchy details.”

  Art Gray, wearing a green shooter’s vest over wide-wale corduroy pants, was waiting for them in the corridor. At thirty-five, he was the veteran of Marlow’s staff, an officer of few aspirations save putting in the twenty-two years remaining to collect his pension.

  “This is swell,” Marlow said, taking the green wool between his thumb and forefinger. “Did you think I was inviting you to gun skeet?”

  “Ed caught me as I was about to drive the baby-sitter home,” Gray said without apology. “Bonnie and I’d been to the movies, and I didn’t have time to change.”

  Marlow let the cloth slip from his hand. “Doesn’t matter.” He was holding the door with his heel, and now he kicked it all the way open. “You fellows ever been to Malletts Bay?”

  “Nope,” Vann said.

  “Same here.”

  “We’re looking for a place called Sturgeon Cove,” Marlow said. “I’ll lead.”

  Dick Vann’s new Trans Am was a distant second as Marlow set the pace across the interstate. Instinct, luck, and a Chittenden County map brought him toward the shore. As he hunted for the Conklin place, his headlights picked a black Ford Escort out of the pigweed and mustard, and on the opposite s
houlder a green-and-white tow truck. Marlow was wading through the brush before his deputies had braked their cars.

  The Brown Bomber was flush against a stone wall, the undercarriage dug into the snow. Two men stood a respectful distance away, as if they expected it to start moving again. One was wearing a loden coat with horn buttons over stiff new blue jeans, the other in the soiled uniform of a Malletts Bay wrecking service.

  “Are you a doctor?” Marlow asked the man in the loden coat.

  “He doesn’t need a doc. You from the county?”

  Marlow walked into the dim glow feeding off the Brown Bomber’s dying battery. The man in the loden coat stepped after him, saying, “You took your sweet time getting here.”

  Vann moved quickly to head him off. “He’s the Cabot County sheriff. We’re his deputies. The officer there, so’s he.”

  When Gray and Vann caught up, Marlow was fifteen feet from the Brown Bomber, looking into a depression in the weeds. Jeffcoat, staring back through filmy eyes, was sprawled on his back with his left hand across his bare chest. A trickle of blood had congealed beneath his nostrils; more blood darkened his chin. Between his parted fingers a ragged splotch above the nipple marked the exit of a bullet that had flattened after it was fired high into his back. Marlow reached inside the car and killed the lights. When he turned around, the deputies had backed away and were standing with the others.

  “I’m Gordon Hall,” the man in the loden coat told them. “These woods belong to my dad, most of them. I was driving by when I saw the cruiser off the road and went in for a look. I phoned Malletts Bay police and they said they’d call the county. But all that’s come by is the wrecker, and there’s not a whole lot he can do for anybody, is there?”