by Joe Clifford
“Michael said no guns—”
“I don’t give a shit what Michael said. He’s not here, is he? And in a few minutes neither will we.” Bernstein pulled his gun, pointed it at my gut. “What’s it gonna be, smart guy.”
Didn’t take long to decide. Wasn’t much choice. A nudge encouraged me to hurry. The glint of a barrel added to the urgency.
The first step onto the ice, I felt the buckle. The second, I heard the crack. By the third, I accepted my fate was no longer in my hands or beneath my feet. The Universe, God, some other Great Decider would cast judgment and let me know soon enough. By the fifth, twelfth, twentieth steps, I began feeling better, almost confident. This was out of my control. I let go of caring. That surrender, coupled with sleeplessness and rarefied air, conspired to create an almost dizzying euphoria.
“Hurry up!”
“What the hell’s taking so long?”
“Just put a bullet in the back of his head.”
“Harder to explain a bullet hole than bloated body that floats up with the spring thaw.”
“The lake never gives up her dead.”
“True to a bone to be chewed—”
I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, words receding into the howling ravine, nothing discernable above the echo of the canyon. Deep cracks rivered the ice, kaleidoscopic trees branching out, cold water burbling to the surface. I eyed the beach on the other side. I decided then to take back my fate and make a run for it. I’d outrun splintering floes and escape this watery grave. I took off, pumping my legs. I looked down and saw I hadn’t moved an inch. I’d been running in place.
I felt the pain in my leg before I heard the gunshot, teeth clamping to the bone, like I’d stepped into a bear trap. I dropped to the ice and saw the long shard that had torn through my jeans and punctured my flesh. The muscle shredded, deep tissue flayed, blood gushing from a primed spigot. I hadn’t been shot. The surface had split open before the undercurrent slammed it back shut, trapping my lower leg, hermetically sealed. A jagged spike impaled my calf, rupturing a vessel, which hemorrhaged, shellacking the ice red.
A captive audience, I watched the gunfight erupt on the shore behind me. Turley crouched behind his police car. Exposed on the banks, the Longmont cops, without cover, marched forward, unloading clips, peppering the cruiser’s doors, window, and roof. Turley waited out the attack, timing his moment. As the cops refitted their clips, Turley popped over the hood. Two quick shots, like distant firecrackers on the 4th of July. Both men dropped to the ground.
The ice fractured all around me, spreading outward.
“Hold on, Jay!” Turley shouted from the strand. “I’m coming.”
Water bubbled up through the cracks. I tried to pry my leg free, but the more I tugged, the deeper the blade plunged, slicing ligament and sinew, cold lake water rising, me sinking.
Turley scrounged around the brush and pond detritus, wrenching free a frozen, fallen branch, stepping onto the ice. I was a good forty yards away.
“You won’t make it, Turley. You’re too . . . heavy.”
He kept coming at me, forked branch extended like some mystic searching for the spring. I tugged on my knee, tried to wriggle free, retrace the grain of the hook back through the meat, but the pain was excruciating. I’d lost a lot of blood. I felt like I was going to lose consciousness.
Turley wouldn’t heed my warning, undeterred, relentless. He’d gotten within twenty feet when I saw the man behind him stagger to his feet and train an unsteady gun. I tried to hold up a hand to make him stop, scream for Turley to turn around, but I couldn’t do either fast enough.
The bullet tore through Turley’s shoulder, blood blowing out the other side. Pistol pulled, Turley spun, report reverberating with a perfect response between the eyes. The man fell. And so did Turley. Into a hole in the ice, sucked down into the swirling black waters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I WRAPPED BOTH hands around my knee and, fist over fist, jerked and yanked until the razor sawed through the muscle, exacting a sizeable chunk of circulatory and sinew, a glob of honeybee guts sacrificed to the stinger. But I was free.
The cold air cauterized the wound, or at least stopped the worst of the bleeding. Some of the pain abated, mostly because I couldn’t feel my leg anymore. Not like my leg was dead or asleep. It wasn’t working. It wouldn’t move on its own, flopping like a boneless chicken. But I still had the other one. I hopped toward the hole, dragging the dead weight of my useless appendage behind me.
Staring into the abyss, I couldn’t see Turley. Nothing moved below in the murky depths. I grabbed the branch he’d been carrying and jabbed it into the hole, poking around, blind. The shore was right there. Both Longmont cops were dead. Two cars sat with keys in the ignition. I could get to the hospital. Maybe save my leg. I could get out of here. But I wasn’t leaving without Turley.
I screamed into the darkness for him to grab hold, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me in the deep.
He’s gone. Let’s go. You’re hemorrhaging. You won’t last much longer out here. You’ll get hypothermia. If you don’t bleed out first—
I’m not leaving without him!
I jabbed the stick farther into the void, poking, shaking, stabbing. At first I thought I’d snagged some milfoil or that the branch was tangled in coontail. But when I tugged and felt the tug back, I knew I’d hooked something much larger. Hobbled on one leg, with no way to gain traction on the ice, I twisted my torso, all arms and upper body, drawing on my days baling hay on the farm. A bloody hand broke the surface, followed by a gasp for air. Then Turley lost his grip on the stick and slipped back underwater. I dropped the branch and flopped to the ground, reaching in the cold lake, sweeping for his hand. I pushed my arm far as it would go, and then I pushed farther, past elbow and shoulder, frigid waves slapping against my neck. I swallowed water. I hadn’t been fast enough.
It’s too late! He’s gone. You can’t save him!
Shut up! Turley! Turley! I extended farther, submerging half my body until I was in danger of drowning too. I felt fingertips, and then a hand close around mine. I gripped the ice edge, arched my back and pulled. Turley bobbed out of the water gulping air like a trout in a shallow bucket. I grabbed the back of his sheriff’s coat. He yelped when my thumb found the bullet hole. He splashed and flailed, a drowning man pulling me down too. I didn’t let go.
Drifting in and out, present, cognizant, knocked out, awake, asleep, water, sky, hard earth. Turley’s arm wrapped around me, carrying me past the dead cops. Black, blue, solid blocks of gray. Wound tied off, still no feeling in my leg. Next thing I know I’m staring up at the interior roof of a police car as Turley whisked us off the mountain. I propped myself up. He told me to lie back down. He was soaking wet, shivering, his skin an unnatural shade of purple.
I padded my coat for my cigarettes. “Hey, man, you got a light?”
“What are you talking about? You can’t smoke, Jay. What the hell is going on? What were you doing out on the ice? Why were those men trying to kill you?”
My Marlboros were drenched anyway. “The Lombardis don’t like me any more than I like them.”
“Huh?”
I stared at my leg, which was wrapped in Turley’s sheriff’s coat. I fumbled to untie it.
“Let that alone. You need a tourniquet. You cut something pretty bad in there.”
I saw why Turley was shivering. He’d wrapped my leg in his shirt, too. He wore only the wet tee. “You’ll get hypothermia.”
“I got the heat on full blast. I’ll be fine. Are you going to tell me who those men were?”
“You talked to them.” I was getting lightheaded. I’d lost a lot of blood. “Cops.”
“Cops?”
“You said a couple Longmont cops. Looking for me.”
“Yeah. A pair from IA. I had to leave them at the station when I got the call.”
“IA?”
“Internal Affairs.”
“I know w
hat it stands for. I mean why does Internal Affairs want me?”
“How the hell should I know? You’re the one running all over town, half-cocked, causing trouble, acting like a wackadoodle.”
“We have to get Charlie’s car.”
“Don’t worry about Finn’s car. Highway patrol spotted it behind Duncan Pond. Already sent one of my men to retrieve it. We have bigger problems. There are two dead men on the banks of Echo Lake. Two men I had to put down because they were trying to kill you and me. There is going to be an investigation. Now ain’t the time to play cute. I need you to come clean.”
I wished I could explain. I tried to coax the words out. Maybe saying them aloud would make this all real, and we’d stumble on the truth together. But my tongue swelled, gray matter sopped up. I could feel myself slipping. I was going under, consciousness surrendered to the white noise of the car’s heater.
* * *
I woke in a white room. White lights. White walls. White dressing gown and sheets. Took me a second to appreciate I wasn’t dead and only laid up in a hospital bed, the sweet relief of morphine pumped direct into my vein. Turley stood over me.
“IA filled me in,” he said. “No wonder you ran. I wish you’d come to me.”
“Sorry about your tires,” I said, my voice slow, thick as syrup.
“I’ll send you the bill. We couldn’t find your phone to call Jenny. No one’s answering the landline at your house—”
“No,” I said. “Don’t call her.”
“She’s your wife, Jay. She needs to know.”
“My cell phone’s in pieces somewhere on the mountain. I don’t want Jenny worrying. She’s half a state away. Please. It won’t help my cause. Only hurt.”
Turley grabbed a chair and slid it beside my bed. I could see where they’d bandaged up his shoulder.
“Got lucky,” he said when he caught me staring. “Bullet went right through.” He gestured at my leg, which I now saw was suspended in traction. “In addition to puncturing your saphenous vein, a shard of ice severed a nerve in your calf. Which is why your leg went numb. Doc says the sensation should return. Eventually. Until then, it’ll feel like your leg’s asleep.”
“How’d you know I was on Lamentation?”
“A woman called the station. Anonymous tip. Said you were in trouble.”
“And you just knew to look on the mountain?”
“I know you find this hard to believe, Jay, but I’m actually good at my job.” He made sure he had my full attention. “Thank you.”
I brushed him off.
“I was a goner. Shot. Under the ice. Left for dead. You were wounded. The car was there. You needed to get your ass to the hospital. Doc was shocked when I told her you were able to pull me from the lake with the amount of blood you lost. Shouldn’t have been possible. But you stuck around, risked your life to save mine. I know we’ve had our issues—”
“Let’s not get too sentimental. If you didn’t show when you did, I’d be on the bottom of Echo Lake right now.”
“I guess we’ll call it even, then.” Turley extended his hand. The shake meant more than evening a score.
Turley pushed himself up out of the chair. “You sure you don’t want someone calling Jenny—”
I shook my head.
“Well, Charlie’s on his way here now. And those two IA cops are sticking around. Those boys from Longmont were a couple real bad apples. You’re lucky to be alive. Been investigating them for a while. IA’s insistent on talking to you. You’ll need to do that eventually. But if you need more rest, I can have them come back later—”
“Send in the clowns.” I realized I was slurring my words, the morphine making me loopy.
A few minutes later, Turley returned with two men wearing suits off the rack. Pencil pushers with soft bodies, gray at the temples, this pair hadn’t seen the front lines in a long time. Turley introduced them as Investigators Ludko and Lotko with Internal Affairs, which might’ve been funnier had I been in the mood to laugh. I quickly lost track of who was who.
“Are you up to give a statement?” Ludko or Lotko said.
“About what?”
“The police officers who assaulted you in Longmont,” the other one said.
That did make me laugh.
“Morphine,” Turley whispered to them.
“Aren’t they both dead?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“This goes deeper than two dead cops. Snelling and Bernstein had a long track record of this kind of violence. We think it may be connected to something bigger.”
“Like what?”
“A bounty program. Carrying out the orders.”
The other investigator cut his partner off. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Charlie and Fisher walked in the room.
Turley turned to them. “You guys mind waiting outside a moment.”
“Let them stay,” I said. “We’re all in this together.”
Turley looked to the two investigators, who nodded it was okay.
“Roberts,” I said.
“Judge Roberts?”
“Longmont County judge.”
“We know who he is.”
“Kids are being shipped to diversion programs, padding numbers. Out of state. North River. It’s all about trying to get that new private prison built.” I was too tired to reiterate the rest. “Talk to Jim Case,” I said. “He’s a reporter with the Monitor. He’ll fill you in on the details.”
“Would you mind answering a few more—”
“Look at him, man,” Charlie said. “I think he’s had enough for now.”
“Finn’s right,” Turley said. “Jay’s been through the wringer. He can probably use some rest.”
Just then the doctor walked in, a young Asian woman half my age. “Yes,” she agreed. “Jay needs to sleep. I’m going to have to ask you all to leave and come back later.” Then to me: “How are you feeling?”
I shrugged through a dopey smile, feeling blissed out and stoned.
“Morphine will do that.” The doctor tapped the tube running from an IV bag to the crook of my elbow, before reading blips on a machine. “Vitals look good. But you really should rest.”
Everyone turned to go.
“Hey,” I called out to Charlie and Fisher, the doc. “Can I get a minute with my friends?”
“Sure,” she said. “But make it quick.”
Ludko or Lotko gave me their business card and said they’d be in touch.
Soon as they left, Charlie asked what happened.
“First,” I said. “I need to apologize.” I made sure Fisher saw I was looking at him too. “These last few days. This last week. I don’t know. I mean, I’m hooked up to this machine, my leg is shredded cheese, I’m pumped full of painkillers, so this could be the drugs talking. But I finally feel like myself again.”
Charlie pointed at my leg. “What happened out there?”
I gave them an abridged version of the events that transpired after I borrowed Charlie’s car without permission—the reporter Jim Case, Nicki’s betrayal, Michael Lombardi’s surprise visit, the two Longmont cops dead on the mountain.
“Holy hell,” Charlie said. “Michael Lombardi?” He looked toward the door, where no one stood. “Why didn’t you tell those two investigators?”
“Because it would sound nuts. Especially now. After how I’ve been acting. A state senator? I gave that reporter everything we had. When they read those papers, they’ll glean what’s really going on. It’ll make more sense if they see it with their own two eyes.”
“Except Nicki sold us out.”
“Only on the smoking gun. If those two IA cops are serious, there’s plenty else to get started. They’ll have UpStart dead to rights.”
“How much money did Lombardi pay her?” Fisher asked.
“No idea,” I said. “I’m guessing a lot. Can’t blame her.”
“You mean that?” Charlie asked.
<
br /> “Sure. Why not?”
I knew it was Nicki who had placed that anonymous tip to Turley, saving my life. Since she’d been the one to jeopardize it in the first place, we were talking sideways move, at best. She’d chosen to cash out instead of pursuing a dead-end cause. I had no interest in excuses or apologies. But I understood the decision.
“I wish we knew why Lombardi wanted that photocopy so bad,” Charlie said.
Fisher slapped his shoulder. “Let Jay sleep. This will still be here tomorrow.”
I tried to wave goodbye but could feel that morphine dream pulling me back under.
I proceeded to pass out for the next nineteen hours.
* * *
It was all over the news the next day. Soon as I woke in the hospital bed, something told me to click on the TV set.
The Kids for Cash Scandal raged across every station, footage of Judge Roberts being led out of the courthouse, shackled, head hung in shame. Details tickered across the bottom of the screen. Roberts’ attorneys offered neither steadfast denial nor ten-cent words to obfuscate the facts. I waited for allegations of baseless, egregious, politically motivated witch hunts. Something. But there was nothing. From the looks of it, Roberts was willing to hang himself out to dry all by his lonesome.
I caught glimpses of Michael Lombardi milling about with the rest of the talking heads in the background, glad-handing, mugging for the cameras, milking the photo ops.
My hospital phone rang.
“You watching this?” Charlie asked.
“Got it on now.”
“You see Michael Lombardi? What the fuck?”
“I don’t know, Charlie.”
“You catch the interview?”
“What interview?”
“Lombardi’s taking credit for the whole thing.”
“What?”
“Claims his office put a task force together to investigate. Been months in the making. All his doing.”