by Giles Blunt
He staggered to one side, nearly toppled, but finally managed to right himself.
“The sooner I get you to that highway,” Nikki said, “the sooner I can get back and curl up in front of that fireplace.”
The old man turned to face her. “If we were really going to the highway, the obvious way to go would be the road. There’s a plough blade on the front of the Range Rover, you know.”
“I’m not old enough to drive.”
“I am.”
“We’re going this way.”
“Even on foot, the road would be faster.”
“For the last time, we can’t take the road. Papa will be coming back that way, and if he sees me helping you escape, it’ll be game over for both of us. Jack could come back that way too, and I don’t want to die, Mr. Kreeger, do you?”
Papa said the old man had to die but how she did it was up to her. So she had come up with this phony escape plan. There was no reason why the guy should die miserable. This way he would go out happy at least. He thinks he’s finally free and boom, she shoots him in the back of his head and puts him to sleep.
“When did your so-called Papa go out? I didn’t hear him leave.”
“You didn’t hear the fight? He booted Jack out and then he took off himself.”
“Uh-huh. Drove out into the blizzard, did he?”
“As a matter of fact, someone came to pick him up. Guy in a Jeep.”
The old man looked at her and shook his head in disgust.
“Yes, sir. They took off right after Jack did. Guess those Jeep tracks got covered pretty fast. I have no idea where they were going or when they might be coming back, but this is the first and likely only time I’m gonna be on my own with you, so would you please for Christ sake take advantage of it and keep your skinny butt moving? I thought old people were supposed to be wise.”
“That’s right. And young people are supposed to be innocent.”
“Okay, so we’re even.”
The old man kept looking at her. His face was thin, elongated, and his papery cheeks were blotchy from the cold. He put Nikki in mind of a rabbit, and she was about to yell at him to turn around when he finally did so. Turned and took a step through the snow, then another, wide-legged, duck-like.
“See, it’s not so bad,” Nikki said. “We’ll have you on that highway in no time. Someone’ll come by and pick you up.” She knew it didn’t really make sense. What possible reason could she have to send him safely into town? She’d made him solemnly promise that he’d wait a day before he called the police, but obviously he’d call them first thing. He must know Papa was at the house waiting for her to come back and announce she’d done it. Meanwhile she was terrified of bumping into Jack. Jack clearly inhabited the boundary line between the kind of craziness you can live with, and the kind you can’t.
The old man stopped. Even through his heavy parka she could see his shoulders heaving. He turned to her again.
“Dude, are you on crack? We have to keep moving. Or have you just not noticed we’re in the tail end of a blizzard?”
“How old are you, young lady?”
“I’ll be fourteen in February.”
“Fourteen in February.” He smiled, long rabbity teeth amid cheeks of high pink. “In February I’ll be seventy-six years old.”
“OMG, we have such a lot in common! Would you keep it moving, please.”
The old guy didn’t move, intent only upon her, the hunting rifle in her hands-in case she saw a pheasant for dinner, she’d told him. “That man isn’t your father.”
“Yes he is. In every way that counts, he is.”
“Raised you, did he? From the time you were a baby? Changed your diaper? Got you into school? Made you do your homework? Read to you at night? Taught you to read and write, and how to get along with people? Raised you like a dad?”
“Raised me, no. Rescued me, yes. I was one death-bound fuck-up, Mr. Kreeger, and Papa saved me from the solid brick wall I was smashing my head into.”
“You were living on the streets?”
“Anything bad you can imagine, I was doing it. Now get moving before I become hostile.”
“I wouldn’t call where you are right now rescued.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t call the place where you find yourself right now being rescued.”
“You don’t know the place I was previously.”
“And I wouldn’t call Papa anything resembling a father.”
“You don’t know the man.”
“Have you looked in the bunkhouse, Nikki?”
“I had no reason to.”
“You mean you were told not to.”
“I don’t care what’s in the bunkhouse.”
“Not what-who. His name was Henry. He was an Indian-a First Nations person, though he always referred to himself as Indian. He’d be about forty-four, forty-five. Younger than your self-styled Papa by quite a bit. He was probably about your age when he discovered he was alcoholic. Just couldn’t let it go. He had some pain raging inside of him that only alcohol would stop. Imagine that. Only alcohol could stop it. But it also made it worse.”
“Uh-huh. And I’m supposed to care about this drunkard why?”
“Imagine having a constant pain. A burn, say-your skin feels like it’s on fire. Or maybe not so dramatic. You just feel that your heart is breaking. All the time, every day, for no reason-and the only time this pain stopped was when you were drunk. That was Henry’s life. It rendered him uncongenial and unemployable. It got him thrown off the reserve. It got him thrown in jail countless times. And all the time, that burn, that heartache. He got himself sober for a time. By some Herculean effort of will, he managed to do that. He even got himself married and got a job. The job didn’t last. The kind of work he could get never does. So he started drinking again. His wife left him.”
“A loser. What you’re describing’s a loser.”
“What I’m describing is a human being. Henry quit drinking. And no, it didn’t happen overnight. It took him many tries and many setbacks, many failures, but the man stopped drinking. Sober, Henry was good with his hands, a skilled carpenter. He did some work on the house. How I met him. He knew lots of things: electricity, plumbing, hunting, fishing. And he was a big reader. Liked books. Liked a good story. Liked a good joke. Nice sense of humour. Kinda dry.
“He came to work for me. Just doing whatever needed doing. I don’t pay him much-didn’t pay him much-but his rent was free and he liked the quiet. Liked the woods. I think maybe he even liked me. Seemed to, anyway. I asked him once what he did about all that pain, where it went, and he told me it never went anywhere. It was still there. Every day. He just didn’t do anything about it anymore. He just let it be, and sometimes he forgot about it. He had a hard life. Incomprehensibly hard to someone like me, a lucky person. But he found a way to smile now and again. A way to laugh. And he took pleasure in small things-making breakfast, hanging a door. In keeping an old man company. I can’t say he was a happy man, Henry, but he was a good man, and he thought that little bunkhouse was the finest place he’d ever lived. And now he’s lying dead in it with a bullet hole in his forehead because your so-called Papa preferred him that way. There was no reason for it, and that was the end of Henry’s life.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. So do you.”
“The highway’s that way, Mr. Kreeger. Would you turn around, please?”
He turned and took exactly one step and stopped again and looked at her. “Is this really who you want to be?”
“What I am is not something I have any say over.”
“But what you do-what you do is under your control.”
“If you’ve got such a rosy view of life, why are you having such trouble believing anything I tell you? Just keep your head down and keep those snowshoes moving one step ahead of the other and we’ll get you to the highway safe and sound. I know, how about maybe we sing a little bit? You wouldn’t happen to know any
snowshoeing-through-the-woods-type songs, would you? We sing those the rest of the way, we’ll keep warm and cheerful, and I can’t think of a better way to get us through, you know… whatever.”
40
Keeping low, Cardinal made it to the edge of the ravine and jumped. He slid down, hidden rocks chomping at femur and tibia. The line of trees above would give him some cover, unless whoever was shooting at him slid down into the ravine too. You got yourself into it this time, he told himself. You got Delorme into it too.
The ravine bottomed out at a small creek that was only half frozen. Swift black water, silver where it splashed over the rocks. Cardinal hunkered behind some thick brush and tried his phone again. Stone dead. Practically crawling, he made his way back toward the cabin, praying that Delorme was still alive.
This time the shot actually creased his arm, tore through his parka sleeve. It didn’t hit bone or even muscle, but ripped a hot line in the skin just above his elbow. He lay flat and peered through the bush toward the top of the ravine. The sniper was a ghost, a wraith out of Native folklore wafting soundlessly through the forest.
If it was the man who had bluffed his way into the cabin, either Delorme was already dead or she had forced him out into the woods. Another shot tore through the branches just above his head. Cardinal plunged back the way he had come, away from the cabin. If he could get to the Kreeger house, he might be in a stronger position to deal with this maniac, then come back for Delorme. It was not an idea that would withstand analysis, and he didn’t submit it to any. He just kept moving through brush and rocks and water.
A little farther on, the wide white platter of a lake opened up and across it Cardinal could see the house, a dim outline behind diagonals of falling snow. A crack of thunder split the air and lightning sparked wide over the trees. If whoever’s behind that rifle comes down this way, I don’t want to be out in the open, Cardinal thought. I really don’t.
Keeping well inside the tree line, he moved clockwise around the lake. That would take him behind the house and provide some cover. By the time he made it to the trees behind the house, the lightning had come west too, as if it had personal business with him. Several bolts lashed at the trees and the thunder sent shock waves through his diaphragm. It set off a car alarm in one of the snow-covered vehicles out front.
The snow had now changed almost completely to rain. Cardinal’s parka was not waterproof. Within minutes, icy water glazed his shoulders.
He moved farther around until he could see the side door of the house. To his left, a bunkhouse. If you were holding a hostage, he asked himself, where would you be most likely to keep him?
He got to the bunkhouse and scanned the trees in either direction. No sign of the rifleman. The car alarm still throbbing. He stepped up to the back window and peered inside. He was looking into a bunk room. Unoccupied and not much of anything in it. Beyond this, a table. It was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t make out a body lying on the floor. He could see enough to know that it wasn’t Lloyd Kreeger and that whoever it once was had been dead some time. There wouldn’t be anybody else in the bunkhouse, not with that.
He stepped back into the trees. Rolls of thunder, moving off now, rain soaking through to his back, his chest. His arm stinging. The car alarm shut off and the rain was louder hitting the bunkhouse, the trees. He scanned the woods once more and ran to the side door of the house.
He tried the handle. Unlocked. He pushed the door open.
Dim interior. Table right in front, living room beyond, a bedroom or two off a mezzanine to the right. It was the kind of test scenario they might set up for you at the academy in Aylmer. Be ready to shoot, and if you do, shoot to kill-but know that it could be a victim or a bystander coming through any one of those doors.
Cardinal moved into the kitchen area, acutely aware of the stairs in the corner behind him, the basement they would lead to. The bathroom was empty. He got to the first bedroom door and opened it and checked inside. No one. He stood listening, the shiver in his knees only partly from cold.
He moved on toward the last door at the end of a short hall.
A voice behind him said, “Put the gun down.”
Cardinal whirled and dropped to his knee in one motion, Beretta at the ready.
“Very impressive,” the man said. He was in his late fifties. Bigger than Cardinal by a lot. Short hair and a military look to him, a shotgun at his shoulder-a shotgun being the exact tool for the situation. Fill a room with buckshot and no one gets away.
“Curtis Winston,” Cardinal said.
“It doesn’t matter who we are. It only matters what we are.”
“I know what you are, and you’re under arrest.”
The man came closer. “Cop,” he said. “Society’s lackey. Lickspittle. A no-account backer of the status quo.”
“Somebody has to take out the garbage.”
“Garbage is just material you don’t personally value. Others might take a different view.”
“Put down the weapon.”
“No.”
“You’re not getting out of here.”
“You might want to recalculate those odds. Shotgun versus pistol. Pathetic little cop versus… what? A force of nature. A united family.”
“A family is not what I’d call you.”
“What would you call us?”
“Just put down the weapon.”
“Negative. What would you call us?”
“I don’t see any us. I just see a gangster minus a gang.”
“Family, not gang. Our loyalties run deep. Now drop the Beretta.”
A hooded figure came in from the side door. “It’s the girl you have to worry about,” she said to Cardinal. “Not Papa.”
“Hello, Donna,” Cardinal said.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
The man called Papa did. “Christine,” he said, keeping the shotgun trained on Cardinal. “Christine, what are you doing here? Have you forgotten the rules?”
“I know the rules,” she said. “‘You leave the family, you leave for good.’” She turned to Cardinal. “How’d you figure it out?”
“Mendelsohn. You killed him because you knew he was going to recognize you. You took the photos from his file. What I don’t understand is why you killed the kid at the ATM.”
“He wouldn’t tell me where Papa was.”
“You kill a kid? To have Papa bear all to yourself? You’re that desperate to run with this guy again?”
“Not run with him. Kill him.” She pressed her gun to Papa’s head. “He won’t shoot. Papa never shoots anyone.” She lifted the shotgun out of Papa’s grasp and stepped around him. He stared at her with hatred. “You’re not the easiest man to find,” she said.
“You led a cop here? Are you that much of a traitor, Christine?”
“It was the other way around,” Cardinal said. “She followed me. Tried to shoot me, too, if that’s any consolation.”
“To warn you away,” Donna said. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
“That is true,” Papa said. “Meet Christine Rickert-best shot I ever saw. Best tracker, best fighter, best I ever trained. It broke my heart when you quit the family.”
“Family,” Donna said. “Always family. What a joke.”
“What do you want, Christine?”
“I want my life back, Papa.”
Papa laughed. “I gave you your life back. Years ago. What were you? A juvenile delinquent. A petty thief. Drug dealer, street slut, a human spittoon. We took you in, gave you a home, something to belong to. Something to believe in. You could have become anything-special forces, undercover cop, the failsafe assassin. We trained you until you were the absolute best you could be.”
“Trained me to kill without mercy.”
“You were good at it. You were the best.”
“Trained me to believe that the slightest discomfort could be solved with a bullet.”
Winston shrugged. “So you threw it
away. Now what are you?”
“Daddy’s girl.”
“You’re nothing. You’re a zero.”
“You made me in your image. Trained me for slaughter. I never learned any other way to meet the world. What are you supposed to do when your lover upsets you? You kill him. What do you do when you don’t get the job you want? You kill. What do you do when your husband isn’t a saint? You kill him. I just spent eight years in fucking prison, Papa.”
“Not for anything you did with me.”
“It was the culmination of everything you taught me.” She looked at Cardinal. “That’s right, John. My husband didn’t leave me. I sent him on his way.” She gestured with the gun. “With this. It’s one thing when you kill a stranger. That’s relatively simple to get away with. Unfortunately, when you shoot your husband in a fit of rage, you tend to get caught.”
Cardinal spoke quietly. “How did you know where to find the ATM kid?”
“Papa here’s a creature of habit. Always tells them to hit the first ATM again. After the second one. Every time. Kid wouldn’t tell me anything. But like I say, Papa’s a creature of habit. I don’t know how far Mendelsohn got with this, but you check back, you’ll find that aside from his habit of beheading people who annoy him, Papa likes to storm someone’s house and drain every dime out of every account they ever opened. As soon as you said Kreeger was wealthy, in the fur business, I knew he’d be here. The kid didn’t tell me a thing. Just stood there waiting for it. He knew if he got into his car I’d follow him.”
“Lemur was loyal,” Papa said. “Unlike you.”
“And look where it got him,” Donna said. “Are you proud of your children, Papa?”
“Donna-Christine,” Cardinal said. “Whatever you have in mind now, don’t do it.”
Donna laughed. “He took my life. Why shouldn’t I take his?”
“If not for me,” Papa said, “and the family I gave you, you’d have been dead at fifteen.”
“You’re an assembly line for murderers. You’ll just keep turning out more like me. Taking you down will be the one good thing I’ve ever done.”