The Big Law (1998)

by Chuck Logan

  Guilty of something.

  "What's going on?" Broker demanded; fast eyes, fast study. His strong hand twisted on the collar, shutting off wind.

  The baby screamed. Tom wanted to scream. Then somebody yelled, a hoarse male voice, furniture tipped over; trouble, inside the house. Broker released his grip and turned.

  "Don't move," he ordered. But he had started to jog toward the sounds of struggle in his home. The second Broker's back was turned, Tom ran for the car as fast as he could.

  21

  Broker had to let James go. All hell was breaking loose in his house. Running, hugging Kit, half thinking: Choking. Really shook him. She was still panting, gagging, trying to catch her breath. The protective instinct fired afterburners more powerful than adrenaline. It was…

  Just powerful. So powerful he…

  Heard Tom James's car door slam, engine start. Gravel clattered off car doors as James peeled up the driveway. Keep going. Jeff was in trouble.

  He vaulted the steps and stepped into the empty living room. Stopped. The odd quiet set his neck hair on end. Then he heard a muffled thump from the bathroom. At the same time he felt the draft from the ajar door leading to the deck.

  Clutching Kit to his side, he threw open the bathroom door and—aw Jesus—a very angry Jeff sat, arms extended behind him, cuffed to the water pipe under the sink. He had a washcloth stuffed in his mouth.

  Broker yanked out the rag. Jeff yelled, "I don't believe it. He's nuts. He pulled his weapon the minute we got inside."

  Keith's car door slammed in the yard. Kit began to cry louder.

  "Shit," hissed Broker. "Where's the key?"

  "They're his cuffs. He's got the key."

  The Crown Victoria's engine revved. "Shit," said Broker again, tensing. Maybe he could run down Keith before he made the road. Then what?

  Kit held him back. The fear leaped again when she turned bright red in midwail, holding her breath. Not choking, scared.

  Jeff studied Broker's turmoil. "Let him go. Leave it to us." He bounced on the floor, furious. "Call nine-one-one. Give them Keith's car."

  Goddamn fucking kid. How was he going to explain the money in her mouth? Tom rotated the pill bottle in his fingers as he drove. Side effects. Had his own side effects to worry about. There could be a regular landslide of side effects. He crushed the plastic bottle in his fist and slammed the debris on the dashboard.

  Tom winced, remembering Broker's suspicious eyes, questioning the piece of currency, putting it together. Tom and money.

  I'm going to get caught.

  Just say I took some of the money to show the FBI. That might work. All that buried money. He almost cried. Okay. Get past it. Needed Caren now, to vouch for him.

  He parked the station wagon in front of the motel office, headed into the dining room. The clerk called to him.

  "She isn't here. She said to tell you she went for a walk."

  Tom was confused. "Where? It's freezing out."

  "In the woods, up the ridge."

  "Great." Tom grimaced. Finding people in the woods was not his specialty. "Did she say where she was going?"

  "She uh, went up the trail to the Devil's Kettle. It's a waterfall a little ways up the Brule River."

  "Waterfall?" Tom was incredulous.

  "It's pretty unusual, mysterious actually," said the clerk. "Half the river disappears in this enormous pothole. Over the years they've run experiments. Dumped in red dye, bobbers, hundreds of Ping-Pong balls. None of them were ever seen again. It's bottomless."

  "Where's this trail?" Tom sagged, resigned.

  "Right across the road. There's a path this side of the bridge. Otherwise, you go in through the park. It's clearly marked, can't miss it." The clerk pointed.

  "Okay," said Tom. He shook his head to clear it. His hand squeezed the shape of the cellular phone in his jacket pocket. "Do cell phones work up here?"

  "Have to be on top of the ridge. There's a new tower they just built."

  He opened the door and stepped outside. Roiling clouds grumbled, tiny snowflakes zipped, stacks of urgent whitecaps ripped across Superior. Across the road, the ridge rose in ominous pine thickets, black and green, like serrated teeth.

  "Thunder snow," offered the helpful clerk. "Something you don't see very often." Tom nodded as he handled his cell phone, making sure the battery was socked in tight. Sheets of icy wind sheared off the lake. Shivering, he stuck his hand in his pocket and felt the locker key.

  He wanted to kill her, of course. And her crazy ex-husband. And the damn kid. But he needed her. To explain the money.

  With a rueful smile, he realized he hadn't thought about the story for hours.

  He pulled on his light gloves. Should have brought mittens. Couldn't find his hat. Not dressed warm enough but he had to get it over with. He got in the car, drove it to the end of the drive and braked out of habit, to check both ways.

  The growl of the big engine preceded the speeding Crown Vic. Keith Angland skidded around a turn and came straight for the Subaru.

  Seeing that car coming directly at him, Tom panicked. He kicked open the door, jumped out and darted across the highway. Where's the damn trail? Running. Found it. Cold air seared his lungs. But he kept going through a knee-deep slush of frozen grass until he'd gained enough high ground to overlook the highway through a break in the trees.

  Saw Angland park at the lodge, hurry into the office. He came out a minute later at a dead run, jumped back in the car and came up the drive, heading right for the spot where Tom had disappeared into the trees.

  Tom gripped the cell phone in his pocket. Call for help. But he couldn't move, paralyzed by fear. Angland was loose. After him.

  But then—

  A hot, loud cheer shoved aside the detached, reasoning voice that had guided him through twenty years of journalism. Take a chance, Tom.

  Angland was after them. Terror whittled his imagination to a lethal sticking point. He saw the way out.

  What if Keith threw her in a frozen river and she drowned?

  It would be his word against Angland's. But he had the tape. Got to try. Angland was out of his car. Three hundred yards away. Tom sprang forward and ran for his life, up the trail, into the spiky black forest.

  22

  The wind swung an ax. Frozen sweat clicked in his hair. Snow pecked his face. He shuddered, hunched his shoulders, gasped for breath, and his lungs crunched the ice-cold air.

  Tom didn't care. He prayed to his Jackpot God: Please, let me have this one thing and I'll never ask for anything else.

  Signs. C. R. MAGNEY STATE PARK. To his left, a deserted campground, some brown buildings, a footbridge across the lower stream.

  The trail skirted the edge of a river gorge carved through raw rock. Curtains of mist twinkled in the chill air. From the corner of his eye he saw rushing brown water, dirty ivory froth, curling between ice swirls.

  All uphill, tricky footing on ladders of landscape timbers furred with frost and frozen mist. Brilliant green mats of Arctic moss bunched in crannies. Weird trip roots. Rocks. He paused. Gulped air. Heard—brush crackling behind him. With a sob in his lungs, he bolted on.

  The low subterranean grumble of surging water animated the canyon. His breath came harder. His calves burned. His thighs burned. Up more slick-timbered stairs. A sign. DEVIL'S KETTLE. Arrow to the right. Running now, along the lip of the gorge the ice-choked river a hundred feet below. Down. Up again. Then he was slipping and falling down the longest cascading flight of rugged wooden

  stairs he had ever seen, out in the middle of nowhere.

  With a silent pop—the ice gray day mushroomed into Snow City.

  Tom's white tortured breath exploded. A million snowflakes filled the world and dropped a gauzy net of sticky flakes. Every surface—coated. The mangy undergrowth had its Cinderella moment, transformed. Delicate white-encrusted coral lines graced the hillsides. Even Tom was struck with the gentle sorcery of first snow.

  Soon a white, soft si
lent cushion absorbed the thud of his shoes. All he heard was the blast of his own breath. And the muted torrent up ahead. Then he breasted the slope, passed an observation platform of stout timbers and saw the falls below. The Brule growled, hidden beneath a petticoat of ice that pitched down a fifty-foot drop.

  Granite boulders divided the river into two channels. To the right, the solid ice sheet masked the falls. But on the left the ice was open. The left channel spun on the brink, spiraled in a tight roller-coaster turn and boiled like a runaway black sprocket between the glassy skirts. Down, out of sight, into a granite cavern.

  Seeing it, Tom believed it was bottomless.

  And he saw Caren. A pale, blue denim figure poised—dangerously—on the huge slippery boulder that divided the river. He saw how. She'd crossed an ice bridge that linked smaller boulders to the shore. Through breaks in that ice Tom could see the streaking white water mark the velocity of the current as it rammed the boulder. Bare-headed, ghostly in the thick snow and mist, snowflakes sequined in her black hair, she stared into the exposed pothole.

  Intent on the raging water, she tugged at her wedding ring.

  Tom threw one look over his shoulder. Nothing but the snow and trees. He scrambled down the slope to the ice bridge and forced himself to cross it fast. She saw him then and stopped tugging and held up the ring hand for his inspection.

  "He proposed to me here, you know," she yelled in a hollow voice. Tom James couldn't hear. He was dizzy with the power of the place. The moment.

  "I talked to Broker, he doesn't think you should go into Witness Protection. He has a better idea," he shouted.

  She smiled. Beamed. "How is he? Does he look well?"

  "He gave me something for you." He wondered if it hurt, her face beat up like that and smiling so much.

  A crooked trident of chain lightning connected the snowy forest to the Armageddon clouds. Thunder ricocheted off the boulders. Dazzle. Witchery. The snow was a frenzy of drunken killer bees.

  "Thunder snow," yelled Caren happily.

  Magic.

  "Yes." Tom floated. Maybe the boulder pulsed red beneath them.

  Act.

  For the first time in his life, he experienced the electric current of perfectly merged thought and action. Rockets ignited in his arms. Fired into his hands. He extended his arms stiffly, almost ceremonially, and felt the jolt of her sternum under his palms. Wide-eyed, in total surprise, Caren flew backward. For a second, her shoes slithered for purchase on the lip of rock. No blood, no struggle, no mess. Almost an accident.

  Her jacketed arms protested in manic circles. Her feet pumped in a desperate uphill sprint through midair. The eerie scream ended abruptly when she was sucked out of sight in the blowing snow and the wind, into the foaming pit.

  Holy shit! "I did it," crowed Tom James.

  Time spun its wheels, grinding adrenal sparks that wove him a hot new skin. His right fist extended over his head. He half expected more waves of thunder and lightning.

  Huh?

  She was still screaming? Over the sound of the wind and the water. Tom felt the surge of new survival instincts. He turned. And hey—it wasn't her screaming…

  Through chattering fevers of snow he saw Keith Angland, overcoat flapping, sprinting down the trail. A berserker's rage quavered from his hideously open mouth.

  Angland's powerful quarterback's right arm shot out and threw sparkles from a black pistol. Particles of granite spattered Tom, beads of blood bloomed on his right wrist, stinging through his glove.

  A fast zipper of wet, red hurt slit the trouser along his left calf. He growled, amazed, baptized and born again in a fiery Jordan of pain.

  Common sense jerked him. He ran like hell.

  Instead of chasing him, Angland went to the spot where Caren had stood on the snow-swept boulder. Tom watched, panting, from the trees and waited to see if Keith would continue the chase. He took off his gloves, pressed them against the wet rip in his trouser leg.

  Angland scrambled out of sight, down into the ice-girded rock face around the pothole. Tom was paralyzed with doubt. What if she hadn't gone in? Was down there, and Keith was going to her.

  No, no. He'd seen her disappear.

  After a full minute, when Keith didn't reappear, he shook off the shock and staggered through the stunted pines, marveling at the brilliant, delicate red stipple of his own blood on the fresh new snow. Smeared on his bare hands. Thinking clearer now. Being shot would make it more believable. Still had the magic going for him. He circled back around the falls, emerged from the pines and started back down the trail, lurching alongside Keith's faint filling-in shoe prints. It was time to do some reporting.

  He took out the cell phone and called 911. Nothing happened. Get higher on the ridge. Ignoring the pain in his leg, he scrambled up the slope, slipping and falling, crawling on all fours. Finally he stood above it all, under the furious sky. He called again. A voice answered. "Help!" he screamed. "He killed her. He pushed her in. He shot me."

  "Where are you, if you're calling cellular I can't track you," the urgent controlled voice said back.

  "In the woods. In the woods." Despite the throbbing pain, Tom covered his mouth with his shaking hand to keep from laughing. In the woods. What a great 911 one-liner in northern Minnesota.

  "Where in the woods?" yelled the voice.

  Tom James collapsed in the snow and realized he couldn't remember the name of the river rushing in the gorge below him. The clerk had said…

  "Sir. Sir…" squawked the telephone in his bloody hand.

  "There's a waterfall up a trail from the highway," he blurted.

  "What waterfall is that?" The operator came back.

  For the first time, Tom registered the reality of the wound in his leg. His own blood was leaking from his body. The new, hot, runny adrenaline garment he'd discovered deserted him in the cold wind. A hydraulic press squeezed his lungs. Shock. He began to shake. Then, like a miracle, he saw two tiny police officers below him, running in the snow, coming up the lower trail.

  "I see them," he yelled into the phone.

  One carried a long gun in both hands, swinging in front.

  He disconnected 911. With great concentration, he pulled out his wallet. His numb wet fingers fumbled among the business cards. He found the one he wanted, stabbed the number in the phone, and as it rang he laughed, giddy. It was perfect after all.

  "FBI," said the cool omnipotent voice from faraway, inside a marble air conditioner.

  "It's Tom James," he gasped. "Angland killed her. He shot me. Where's Garrison." Tom heard them tipping over chairs. Yelling.

  "Wait one," shouted the agent in a controlled voice. "I have to patch you through. He's in Duluth."

  Time plodded. Tom watched the cops climb. Maybe a minute. C'mon. C'mon.

  Garrison's voice was on the line. "Right here, Tom. Tell me exactly what happened and where you are."

  "There's cops coming. I think I'm all right."

  "Who shot you?"

  "Angland. He went crazy. Wait, uh, get ahold of the sheriff's department in Grand Marais…" Tom could hear background commands.

  Garrison said, "Tell me where you're hit."

  "Leg. Below the knee."

  "Is the blood seeping or pumping?"

  "No, no, don't worry. Not that bad. Not that. Look we gotta…" Tom swooned and woke up a second later coughing snow.

  "Steady," said Garrison.

  "I'm good. There's cops. Hey. The tape?"

  "The one Angland's wife made?"

  "Right. Listen, we gotta make a trade. Got her killed. It's not safe for me."

  Garrison talked to somebody, then he came back up. His voice had changed. Closer somehow. Real focused. "We're in contact with the sheriff's department in Grand Marais. Angland assaulted the county sheriff. They say they have a deputy and a state patrolman climbing some trail looking for you and Angland's wife. They saw the cars and talked to a motel clerk. Wait. They say they heard shots."

  "
That's me, that's me." Tom vigorously nodded his head.

  "Where's Angland, Tom? I can patch it through and alert the officers. He's up there armed, right?"

  "Pushed his wife. Went down into this waterfall thing. He's not up here now. I think it's safe." The two cops were about two hundred yards below him. Tom heaved to his knees and waved.

  Garrison was off the line for a moment. Then back. "The cops see somebody above them. A tan parka. If it's you, wave one hand slowly."