by Ted Wood
I gave up and concentrated on the older woman. "You must be 'Margaret.' What's your last name?"
"Sumner." That meant she would be Mrs. I've never met a Sumner on any of the Indian reserves. We have lots of Sinclairs, no Sumners.
"Mrs. Sumner. You understand that this Tom character has killed two men—one with a booby trap, the other one beaten to death. He may also be the person responsible for killing your own group member under the name of Katie at the motel."
"All this is assumption," she said quietly.
"I also know that you and he wrecked Carl Simmonds's house."
She looked away from me, gazing at the stove as if it were a Rodin sculpture. Her profile was toward me and I could see how she had impressed these younger women. There was strength and dignity to her that looked classical.
"I'm not proud of what we did. I just wanted those negatives."
"That's a great comfort to him as he cleans up the damage."
"I'll pay." She glared at me, nostrils pinched. "I'll compensate the little faggot, don't worry."
That surprised me. It was the first heat she had shown. Was she herself a fag-basher? Most women aren't, only insecure men need to thump homosexuals, but there was real hatred in her voice. No, the wild card in the deck was Tom. I turned the topic back to him.
"I need to know where Tom has taken the girl. She's in real danger."
She said nothing and I tried a new tack. "He has already killed, and he nearly killed another one of your group, that girl he stripped on the ice and left to die." That was when Mrs. Sumner laughed at me, a big, genuine laugh right down to her gut, shaking her whole body, making her let go of her head and dangle her arms helplessly.
"You predictable, chauvinist bastard. Don't you understand? He didn't strip her. She volunteered."
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13
My astonishment opened her up like a book. She couldn't tell me fast enough what a fool I'd been. They had seen me overtaking them across the ice, my headlight bobbing along behind. Margaret had been in front and she had stopped close to the fishing huts and made her suggestion to the girl. The plan was for them to leave her where they were sure I would find her, then press on with the lights out, Margaret in the lead. I guess she had the knack of finding her way in the dark better than most people can follow street signs. They would have their lights out, although she had bet that I wouldn't come after them even if I saw their lights, not with a damsel in distress to rescue.
So I had done my Sir Galahad impersonation and they had gotten away and Irv Whiteside was dead. The girl had done her own part by unloading my gun when I left it with her so I would be at a disadvantage next time I needed it.
The two women and the kid in his towel all had a good smirk at my predictability, but I ignored them. If people can still get my attention by expecting me to act humanely, I have nothing to be ashamed of.
When they had made their point, I acted a little humble. It worked. Margaret gave me her version of the story. She was serious about feminist action. They had planned this kidnapping as a rehearsal. They knew about my service in Viet Nam, but with the feminine equivalent of arrogance they had ignored it as a threat. To them it made me some kind of knee-jerk trigger-puller with no brains. I was obviously no match for a subtle group of women. The only fly in their ointment was Nancy's failure to understand she was just the cheese in a mousetrap, not the star of the show. She had bragged about the plan to some boy and he had let it slip to somebody else, and finally a member of this crazy Guard group had heard and wanted in. It would give them some cheap and easy publicity. And even more important, it would give them leverage in their struggle against the arms race. As I already knew, Nancy's father was the president of Astro-Control Systems, the Toronto outfit that made guidance systems for American missiles. Some wild-eyed group had already bombed the plant. Now this new outfit was planning to do by stealth what the others had failed to do with dynamite.
At least that was my guess, and it made me sure that the Carmichael kid was dead if I didn't get her back tonight.
I asked how C.L.A.W. had reacted to the news that Nancy had done everything to blow security short of writing an editorial for the college paper. Apparently like all democratically run lunatic fringes they had taken a vote and decided to proceed. They had counted on the Guard group to give them what Margaret described cryptically as "firepower."
The dead girl at the highway had struck up a romance with one of the Guard people, I couldn't find out which one, and that had intensified the complications.
"Doesn't it bother you that this Katie is dead? And the same guys who killed her now have another member, young Nancy? Don't you care?"
Margaret Sumner looked at me with something like amusement. "No," she said.
The other girl protested. "We don't want anybody harmed, we're a peaceful group." But Margaret Sumner had the last word.
"We don't care," she said.
I gave up and asked the last, hopeless question. "Why did you set this particular heist up? What have you got against Carmichael that you'd put his daughter in this kind of danger?"
She looked at me impassively, the true believer talking to the heretic. "You don't need to know. It's personal."
I gave up. None of them knew enough about this Tom character to suit me. He was the wild card in the deck, unknown even to the kid who had fired at me. I wondered what kind of zealot he was. These Guard groups spring up from time to time, mostly made up of spoiled rich kids doing something about their Oedipus complexes by opposing the church or corporate profits, anything, right or wrong, with more seniority than they've got. Mostly they just march and sing. They're harmless and their members grow up to be teachers and newspaper columnists who vote Socialist.
But this man sounded different. Elliot's description of him was the key. He had described him as "around thirty-five." By that age he should have shucked his activism along with his acne. I was worried, but too tired and stretched to know what to do about it.
In the end I left them all there. There was no way to take them back in. If I put them on another skidoo in front of mine they could break for it. I didn't want to waste time chasing them down. It was even too much of a problem to bring in Elliot, so I handcuffed him and left him nude except for his towel. It would prevent his getting dressed, which meant he wouldn't be bothering me before the weather warmed up. I'd be back by then. In the meantime I would be free to chase down the skidoo tracks that led away from here.
I considered tying up the women, but instead immobilized them by taking all their outdoor clothing and the plug lead from the snowmobile outside. I also tore the phone out of the wall. It was primitive and illegal but I had no choice. Two men who had killed before were outside somewhere, waiting for me. I didn't want them to be reinforced or even warned from here.
I took the outdoor clothes with me out to my snow machine, which was covered with snow by now. Fortunately it started easily, and I headed out behind the cabin onto the roadway. It was drifted in and I had to curtsey around the edges of the worst drifts, but I could see the track of another machine ahead of me. I followed it, pulling my face down into my collar, longing for a chance to curl up in a corner out of the snow and sleep like a dog.
The bite of the snowflakes that fluttered around the windshield kept me from dozing. I drove along the stale track up to the edge of Murphy's Harbour proper, around the curve that matches the curve of the bay, past the bait store and past the point where the track turned off, toward the side door of the Lakeside Tavern.
I was wide awake now, but I didn't pull in. Instead I did the clever thing, winding up the throttle and passing the place at a roar, heading up and over the hump beside the bridge above the lock and around the first corner toward the police station.
That's where I stopped, slipped on my snowshoes, and tramped back, keeping off the center of the road although the light on the bridge was so obscured by flying snow that nobody could have seen me fro
m the Tavern. The side door was locked, but this is a small town. Irv Whiteside once showed me where he kept the key, in a coffee can under one of the beams that supports the side of the Tavern on pilings over the water. I think he left it there in case any friends want liquor. They took what they wanted and paid him on Monday when he opened again. That way he wasn't bootlegging—they were breaking in.
I took the key and opened the side door, very softly. My snowshoes were propped outside in a drift. It's an old building and it creaks in the wind. I hoped the wind would cover the sound of my entrance. There is another door sealing off the inside so that my entrance wouldn't be announced by a blast of cold snowy air.
I went up the stairs. I knew Irv had a couple of rooms he rented, two he used for himself. I tried his room first. It was locked, of course, but the simple Yale slipped in a moment to my knife blade. I squatted low to the floor and shone my flashlight around. The room was neat. There was a TV set and some comfortable furniture, including a double bed, but nothing more. The adjacent room was filled with stores, mostly liquor. I went back out, locking the door again.
The next door was also locked and I went through the same procedure. A quick search showed it was the room occupied by Nancy's parents. It was empty except for their clothes and toiletries.
As I touched the third door I heard a low sound inside, muffled, half scream, half burble. It made the hair prickle on the back of my neck. It sounded as if someone had a woman held hostage, one hand over her mouth, the other very probably holding a gun that would be pointed at the door. I stood to one side of the door frame as I slipped the lock with my left hand, eased the door open with my right. When I had it open a millimeter past the catch point I drew my gun and hurled myself inside, rolling away from the door as I landed. I collided with the end of the bed, but not hard enough to bother me. I lay perfectly still for a half second. The sound persisted but there was no scuffling of feet, nothing to indicate a struggle, only the squeaking and rocking of the bedstead against my shoulder.
I crouched, moving a pace to the left and holding my flashlight over my head at what must have looked like chest height. Nobody fired at me. I flashed it over the bed. In the beam I saw the shifting pattern on the bed, white flesh and black shadows writhing like snakes. I scuttled around the bed and into the bathroom. There was nobody there. Only then did I come back into the bedroom, still wary, and switch on the light.
Nancy Carmichael was tied to the wooden bedstead. She was naked and spread-eagled, her ankles and wrists tied to the corners. She had a scarf around her head, the folded thickness of it jammed into her open mouth. Her eyes were rolled toward me like those of a frightened horse. I went to the bed and patted her ankle. "I'll be back, I have to search the place."
She moaned again. I could read the anguish but I had to be sure there was nobody downstairs, and I believed there was. There had been no tracks away from the building.
I turned off the light so I wouldn't be silhouetted, then advanced, gun drawn, to the head of the stairs. I was crouching automatically, as I've crouched a thousand times in enemy areas.
It saved my life again. As I reached the top of the stairs a bullet came out of the darkness, an inch high over my head instead of through my throat. I fired at once down the muzzle flash, then again, lower, not even stopping to think.
I heard the rushing collapse of a falling body and the clatter of a dropped gun. I fell to the floor and held my light above me, shining it down the stairs.
The first thing I saw were feet. Then the foreshortened length of a man's body lying head down on the staircase. I could see nothing moving beyond. It didn't mean he was alone. I stood up, still crouching carefully, and ran down the stairs. There was a handgun, some kind of automatic, lying beside the body. I booted it away but did not stop until I was through the doorway at the bottom and had rolled sideways against the bar.
I crouched, listening. The only sound was the creaking of the building under the northeast wind and the sand-storm rustle of the tiny brittle snowflakes against the windows. I switched on my flashlight and flicked it over the room. It seemed empty. Moving carefully, I went back to the doorway and found the light switch.
The lights fluttered for a moment, then settled down, and I could see that the place was empty. Gun in hand, I searched the rest of the lower level. It was deserted. There was a bottle on the counter and a half-filled glass. I looked at it in disbelief. My gunman had been relaxing over a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream. Jesus! They don't make hoodlums like they used to. He was trained enough or scared enough to keep the lights off so nobody could see him in the bar. Perhaps he had been expecting me. Well. Now we'd met.
I went back to him, first switching on the stairway light. He was lying as I had left him. One bullet had caught him through the chest. That must have been my first shot at the muzzle flash. The second had hit him in the left eye. He had no pulse in his throat. I had closed off any chance of getting information from him, even though he might have been as useless as Elliot back at the other cottage with the C.L.A.W. women.
I picked up his handgun. It was a Walther P.38. I slipped it into my pocket and went back to Nancy's room. As I entered and switched on the light she squirmed with fear, then relaxed as she recognized me. I took out my pocket knife and cut the scarf from her mouth. Words poured out of her instantly. "Did you shoot him? Did you?"
"He's dead, Nancy." I cut the two belts that held her wrists to the bedposts, then the stockings that tied her ankles. She sat up, sobbing. "It was awful. Gross."
"Did he molest you sexually?"
She put her hands over her pretty mouth, pressing her lips against her teeth, speaking through clenched fingers. "He raped me. He made me … do things. It was terrible." She ran out of words and sobbed helplessly.
"Come to the bathroom." I handed her a blanket and she stumbled to her feet and came with me, tugging the blanket around her shoulders. I took a handful of tissues from the dispenser. "Wipe your mouth out with these." She did it, not looking at me, not knowing what I was doing, then hunched over the sink and vomited dry bile. I handed her a bottle of Scope. "Use this." While she was busy I folded the tissues she had given me and put them in my tunic pocket. Her blanket had slipped but she did not care. I wasn't a man. I was an act of God, blind as the snowstorm that raged around the Tavern, keeping me from driving her fifty miles to the nearest hospital and the help she needed.
When she had gargled and spat a couple of times she straightened up and looked at me. I told her, "It's important that you wipe yourself inside and save the tissues. Can you do that for me?"
She looked at me blankly, not replying, but I handed her more tissues, then closed the door and waited. I had never felt so inadequate in all my life. She needed a doctor to check her, a woman to comfort her. I was neither. I was a rough-and-ready copper trying to compensate for the crime and the criminal ugliness of the weather.
I looked around the room for something to put the swabs into. Without going through her luggage there was nothing obvious. I called through the door, "Save the swab. I'm going downstairs," and I went down, stepping over the body without looking down at it.
I searched the place again from end to end to make sure there was nobody hiding in a beer cooler or behind empty crates. When I was sure, I went to the bar and took down the Black Velvet. It had never tasted better. The purity of the taste thrilled me and it went down like soft fire, spreading out through my whole body. Then I picked up some foil wrap from the kitchen and went back up.
She answered nervously when I knocked. "Who is it?"
"Chief Bennett."
She opened the door for me and stood back, not speaking.
She was wearing the bottom half of a brown pants suit and a white brassiere. I said, "I'll wait outside while you dress," but she shook her head silently so I picked up the swab she had left on the dresser and wrapped it in some of the foil. Then I took out the other and wrapped it. The move was probably unnecessary. The guy on the stair
s was most likely the culprit. But if he weren't, we would need this evidence when I brought the guy in, and I intended to. Rape is the worst crime in the book, for my money. I asked her, "Do you have a lipstick I can borrow?"
She looked at me in surprise, wondering if she had heard right, and I tried a tiny laugh to let her know that the world was still rotating on its axis despite what had happened to her tonight.
"Not for me—I doubt you have my shade. I just want to mark these."
She said, "Oh," in a faint voice, and looked in her purse. The lipstick was very pale but it marked on the foil. I marked the appropriate one "Oral" and put both in my breast pocket.
She was fully dressed by now, in a fawn sweater and the jacket of her pants suit. I sat down on the bed and gestured for her to take the chair. She did, and I told her what had to happen.
"You can't stay here alone. What I'm proposing is that I take you back to the station. There's a policewoman there and you'll be safe until your parents get there. I guess they're still at the dance."
She began to weep silently, only the movement of her shoulders giving away what was happening. I stood up and squeezed her shoulder. "It's all over. You're going to be okay. Tomorrow morning, soon as the snow is cleared, your folks will take you to the hospital in Sunbridge. If they prefer they can ship you right down to Toronto on one of your dad's helicopters."
She snuffled quietly and I told her, "First off, you'll need your outdoor clothes. I've got a snowmobile just up the road. It's cold outside."
She stood up automatically and looked for her boots. They were lying beside the bed. So were her other clothes—blue jeans, the Irish sweater, and her underwear. The panties were torn. I picked them up and put them in my pocket with the swabs. More evidence. She watched me without speaking. I didn't like that. She was in shock and I didn't want her going catatonic on me. I was glad Val would be waiting at the station.