Blood Wine

by John Moss

  Morgan’s Glock semi-automatic was at home in the Annex, secure in a locked drawer of his desk. Miranda’s was in police custody at Headquarters. They were not used to firing weapons — they were not used to being fired at. Homicide is about dead people, at least the kind of homicide they usually investigated — which were crimes that might draw public attention, murders among the depraved, the very rich, the irretrievably disadvantaged.

  “Now what?” said Elke.

  Morgan rose to his feet and peered through a slit by the door. “I’d say, given how the bullets hit the frame, they were coming from the direction of the house.” There was another explosion and he ducked. A new hole appeared within inches of where his head had been.

  “Do you think they know you’re the police?” said Elke.

  “If they do, I’d say we’re just part of the clean-up on their way out the door,” said Miranda. “They’re closing down business.”

  “And if they don’t?” asked Morgan.

  “Well, same thing, I guess.”

  “Either way,” said Morgan, “they’d rather we weren’t here.”

  “I think they’d rather we were dead,” said Miranda.

  “I don’t know,” said Morgan. “So far, they’re just shooting to announce their presence — and to test for return fire. I suppose if they did want to get rid of us, there’d be room to dump us in there with your —” He stopped. He was about to say glibly, “your friend.”

  Miranda caught his eye. She smiled and threw him a mock kiss. “Okay,” she said. “How’re we going to deal with this situation? You’re the action figure role model, the testosterone kid. You lead us, Morgan. We’ll follow.”

  “Where’s job parity when we need it?”

  “You two aren’t taking this very seriously,” said Elke, sweeping her blond hair away from her face. “You may be used to being shot at, but I’m a civilian.”

  “I’ve never been shot at before in my life,” said Morgan. “Not intentionally. And I’ve never shot anyone.”

  “Great,” said the blond. “So am I in charge, then?”

  “We’ll handle it,” said Miranda. “We’re just thinking how.”

  Morgan peered out through the crack, scrunching his face against the wood to get the best view. “They’re coming, they definitely want us dead. Three of them. Two are carrying rifles. One’s a machine gun of some sort, the other’s an assault rifle.”

  “Oh my God, my God,” said Elke.

  “Praying, Morgan. Not swearing.” Miranda smiled. “You got any ideas?”

  “They’re stopping at the car, opening the doors. They know it’s a cop car. They’re looking over here. One’s motioning to the others to circle around.”

  “The back door, is there a back door?” said Miranda.

  “Too late,” said Morgan.

  “No,” she said. “Open it.” She reached over and took the blond woman by the arm. “Come on,” she ordered. “Up here.”

  Morgan swung the back door ajar, then scrambled up the steel stairs after the two women. Miranda lifted open the hatch in the top of the tank.

  “In you go,” she said to Elke.

  “No.”

  “You go, Miranda, I’ll lower you,” said Morgan. Miranda held out her arms to him and he dropped her slowly into the fetid gloom of the tank, letting her go when he could reach no farther. There was a splash and a single cough.

  “Okay,” she said as she pushed away the dead man, who had been drawn close by her body’s displacement of the murky fluid.

  Voices outside were closing in fast. Elke grasped Morgan’s arms and let herself be lowered until she dropped into the wine, totally immersed before surfacing beside Miranda. They were both sculling to stay afloat.

  Morgan swung over the edge, and hanging from one hand he pulled the hatch cover down before letting himself drop beside them in the darkness.

  He was just tall enough that his feet reached the bottom, and as they heard the shed door crash open he took one of the women in each arm and held them still with their heads just above the surface.

  Suddenly a machine gun shattered the air. Crashing sounds, deafening. The firing was random, in anger. The men out there thought they had escaped through the back door. The machine gun rattled like chains in a bucket, and light holes appeared all around them. The body of the man with the gold ring thrashed about. They could hear wine gushing, splashing, more holes opening up beneath them in small disks of light.

  They huddled with the corpse in the bottom of the tank as the wine level dropped to a brackish pool in the bottom, and then the splashing stopped. There was silence, then they could hear the roaring of an engine. A plane was landing or taking off.

  Morgan whispered, “I think they’re gone. You two all right?”

  There was no answer. He shook Miranda. She looked at him in the mottled light and smiled wanly.

  “I think I’ve been hit.”

  “No!”

  “How’s Elke?”

  The blond was staring at them in stunned disbelief. Then she whispered softly, “I didn’t know things like this happened.”

  “They don’t,” said Miranda. “Not usually.”

  Morgan checked her over in the stray shafts of light that seemed to be dancing in the fetid air, so that the stainless steel walls flashed eerily, like the inside of a furnace.

  “Flesh wound,” he said, looking at the raw tear on her thigh. “You’re just grazed, you’ll be okay.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “What a pain. At least it’s antiseptic, you know, the wine …”

  “I think we’re on fire,” said Elke.

  Faint columns of smoke were wafting through the holes in the stainless steel.

  “We’re on fire!” said Morgan. “They’ve set the shed on fire. Let’s go, let’s get out of here before we’re roasted alive.”

  “Steamed,” said Miranda, correcting him. Inane quips. It was a way of dealing with the adrenalin rush.

  “Yeah. Here, I’ll have to boost you up. No, your leg — Elke Sturmberg, you get to be hero.”

  Miranda tried to help brace Morgan as the other woman shinnied up over his shoulders.

  “I see England, I see France,” said Morgan.

  “Morgan!” Miranda snapped. “This is serious.”

  His head poked out away from Elke’s skirt.

  “I am serious, damnit.” He shifted his attention to the woman on his shoulders. “Reach. It pushes up, no straight up. Give it a whack. Another.”

  “I can’t reach, Morgan.”

  “Hang on,” said Morgan. “Miranda, steady me.”

  Smoke was streaming in through the holes, and rays of bright yellow light danced against the walls and over their saturated clothes and wine-drenched flesh.

  Morgan leaned against Miranda and stepped up onto the corpse, which let out a grisly moan.

  “I’ve got it,” Elke yelled as light flooded in from above. “Push!”

  Morgan heaved and she swung up and in a flurry of legs clambered over the edge. Immediately she started coughing. She braced herself and draped her upper body down, reaching for Miranda.

  Morgan lifted Miranda. When he clasped around her thighs, trying to hoist her up, she screamed involuntarily. He had squeezed her wound. The corpse rolled and they both fell on top of it.

  “Please!” the young woman shouted. “Hurry! Miranda!”

  On the second attempt, Morgan got a better grip and hefted Miranda high. Elke caught her hand. They hoisted her up and over the edge.

  Elke reached down again, farther this time, Miranda holding her from falling. Morgan stretched but fell short of her grasp. She wouldn’t be able to take his weight anyway.

  “Get the hell out of here,” he shouted. Both women were choking from smoke. Flames raced through the rafters just over their heads. Debris was falling, some of it past them into the tank, where it sizzled and popped. The heat inside the tank was almost unbearable. “Get out,” he shouted again. “Miranda! Go!”
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  He sank down against the corpse.

  “Morgan, grab!”

  He looked up. Miranda’s slacks were dangling through the smoke.

  He stood up, stood on the corpse, balanced, shouted, lunged, grasped the blood- and wine-soaked cotton, snagged his fingers into the fabric until his nails seemed to pull out of his flesh. The two women pulled with everything they had. Suddenly, he felt a hand on his wrist. He could not relinquish his grip on the slacks. Two hands on his wrists, drawing him over the edge.

  The three of them tumbled their way down the steel steps and raced out the open back door, Miranda running in spite of the bullet wound on her leg, Morgan choking on smoke. The young blond was laughing hysterically at the unexpected achievement of being alive. They fell together in a huddle on the ground. Morgan and Miranda picked up the laughter and they all were laughing, lying on the ground, with billows of smoke drifting overhead.

  Then, in a break in the smoke, they heard a turbulent roar separate from the fire and looked up to see a plane immediately above them. It banked, circled, and came back low, swooping so close they could feel the wind off the prop. Bullets riddled the earth all around them, none finding its lethal mark. Then the plane flew up, and waggling its wings, soared over the escarpment into the setting sun, and they were alone with the dull roar of the fire as the smoke in the stilled light of evening spiralled high into the air.

  5

  Mr. Savage

  “We nearly drowned. We nearly suffocated in wine fumes. We nearly burned to death. We’ve been riddled with bullets. Miranda, your leg has been riddled with bullets. We’ve nearly been decapitated with a propeller. What’s next?” Morgan looked cynical, smug, and wretchedly dirty.

  They stood by the open trunk of the car. Miranda was being helped into the slacks she had bought for Elke after having water from a plastic bottle slopped over her wound, which was just a graze but quite bloody, and then having alcohol and a bandage applied from a first aid kit. The two women changed into the extra T-shirts. Morgan took off his shirt and tossed it in the dirt, retrieving an old police windbreaker from the depths of the trunk.

  He slid into the passenger seat to call for help. Undoubtedly neighbours would have already phoned 911 and volunteer firefighters would be on their way. He wanted to make sure the police came as well. He wanted to make sure Spivak knew what was happening; he felt the need to be grounded in a world he knew.

  Miranda opened the driver’s side and turned with her injured leg stretched away to lower herself onto the seat. Elke had a grip on her shoulders. Just before contact with the seat, Morgan lunged, reaching out and twisting in the air so that he lifted against her with one of her buttocks in each of his palms. She squealed indignantly as she reeled away into Elke’s arms and the two women staggered backwards.

  “Morgan, you fool! Have you lost it?”

  “Stay back,” he yelled.

  “Damn, that was undignified, Morgan!”

  “Back off,” he declared vehemently as he strode around the car. “Over there.” He pointed to a picnic table a couple of car-lengths away. Both women were frightened by his weird behaviour. “Over here,” he repeated, walking to the table himself and flipping it onto its side.

  When all three were behind the table, he picked up a brick-sized boulder and heaved it towards the car, swinging underarm. It fell short. He picked up another, the same size. Stepping out well in front of the table, he put all his weight into the throw, and while the boulder was still in the air he dove back over the table. There was a split second pause, then the boulder hit the driver’s seat and there was a teeth-jarring explosion as the car lifted into the air and disintegrated, descending in a rain of fiery debris.

  “That’s it,” said Morgan as the raging din subsided. “That’s enough for one day. You guys okay?” Neither woman said anything as all three rose to their feet and surveyed the damage. Morgan was still in wine-stained pants and Elke in a wine-stained skirt. Miranda’s clothes looked a bit dusty but clean, in stark contrast to her face and arms, which, like the exposed flesh of the other two, were smeared with wine residue, filth from the fire, and particles of exploded stuffing from the car seats.

  “No wonder they flew off unconcerned about whether they shot us,” said Miranda.

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “They didn’t leave much to chance.”

  “Morgan …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t say ‘what’s next?’”

  They could hear a siren off in the distance, coming from somewhere down near Lake Ontario. They turned and walked toward the house. Morgan needed a phone, Miranda wanted to sit somewhere comfortable and wait for medical assistance, Elke was anxious to clean up. They were sure the house was abandoned. People don’t fire off machine guns and torch sheds or explode police cars and then go back to the dinner table.

  They were astonished, then, when as they reached the garden gate that opened onto a lawn in front of the house, the main door slowly began to swing open. All three dropped to the ground, rolling to the side for cover behind shrubs, which of course would not stop bullets but might obscure the shooter’s view. They waited. The door seemed to groan on its hinges, although it was a massive slab of glass framed in cedar. There were no shots. The cicadas in the meadowlands between the lawn and the vineyard trilled loudly in anticipation of nightfall. Flames from the fires behind them had subsided, but the car remnants and the crumpled shed smouldered, and columns of smoke rose straight upwards and pooled in clouds overhead.

  There was a sudden blast and the burning shed exploded in a renewed swirl of smoke and flames.

  A creaky voice called over their heads. “Hello…?”

  Morgan glanced across at Miranda under her shrub, massaging her thigh above the wound. She nodded.

  “Hello…?” he called.

  “Is that you, Mr. Savage?” The timbre of an old lady’s voice, ancient but strong, shaped the words in the air, but still no one appeared in the doorway.

  Morgan stood up behind his small cover of greenery, head and shoulders exposed. “No ma’am, it’s us.”

  “Well, who’s us,” said the old woman, stepping into the light so she was framed by the door opening. She was diminutive, stooped, but with her head tilted erect. “Who is it?”

  “You don’t have a gun, do you?” said Morgan.

  “Yes, I do,” came the answer, then a pause. “It’s upstairs. Do you need it? It’s only a shotgun to scare away birds.”

  Morgan stepped out onto the walkway.

  “You stay there, now,” said the old woman. “I’m not to have visitors.”

  “Well, could you step down here, ma’am, a little closer. We’re the police.”

  “You look like filthy rag-tag brigands,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Morgan, “but we’ve had a bit of trouble.”

  “And haven’t we all,” said the woman. “Do I smell something burning?” she asked, moving out under the trellis in front of the door. “Where’s Mr. Savage?”

  “Could you come down here where we don’t have to shout?” Morgan asked.

  “You don’t have to shout, young man. I can hear you.”

  “Could you come down here, please?” said Morgan patiently. Elke helped Miranda rise out of the shrubbery and they stood by his side.

  The woman slowly made her way to confront them, feisty but anxious, and to ease her anxiety they stepped back outside the gate, then pulled it shut between them. She seemed unconcerned by the fires down the slope that had leapt now from roof to roof, so there was an awesome conflagration, with flames and smoke obscuring the eastern horizon.

  “Did they fly away?” she said.

  “Who?” Morgan asked. “Was that Mr. Savage, is Mr. Savage your son?”

  “Oh, no, dear, I wouldn’t call my son Mister,” she said, smiling radiantly. “We don’t have any children.”

  “You and Mr. Savage?”

  “No dear, Peter and I, we don’t have children.”
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br />   “Peter is your husband?”

  “Yes, dear. Peter passed away. Mr. Savage looks after me.”

  “Really,” said Miranda.

  “May I go in and clean up?” Elke asked the old woman, reaching over the gate and taking her by the hand. “I really need to use your bathroom.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. Mr. Savage said I wasn’t to leave the house.”

  “But may we come inside?” said Miranda.

  “Mr. Savage didn’t say not to come in. He told me I wasn’t to leave.”

  Sirens wailed in the background as fire trucks bumped over country roads, tracking the fire by sight. Cars were pouring down the long laneway as volunteers arrived before their equipment. Several had already pulled up but kept their distance from the fiery sheds, their headlights redundant in the clear evening air. The house was to the west of them, in shadow with the setting sun glaring from behind the escarpment. From down by the fire, no one could see the curious group negotiating by the garden gate.

  “You see, my husband died after we tore up the orchards. It broke his heart. But Mr. Savage insisted. Mr. Savage owns the property, you see. It was in my husband’s family since 1791. But we have no children — are you all right, dear?” She interrupted her narrative on seeing the bloodstain spreading on Miranda’s thigh. “Perhaps they can help you.” She indicated the activities down by the sheds. “I never know what’s going on down there. I don’t leave the house.”

  “Mr. Savage doesn’t like it?” suggested Morgan.

  “No, he does not.”

  “And where is Mr. Savage, now?”

  “He told me to stay in the house,” said the old woman. “I’m Mrs. Peter Oughtred. Peter was a Haun on his mother’s side.”

  Miranda felt dizzy with pain and blood loss. Elke helped her to sit down on the grass outside the gate. Morgan’s concern for her reflected in his voice.

  “You’ll have to let us in, Mrs. Oughtred, my partner needs help.”

  “What was all the noise, was that you? Did you make those loud noises? I heard explosions down by the winery. I stayed in the parlour. I was watching television.”