by Ron Corbett
“Have you stopped to think how odd this is, Tommy?”
“’Bout every minute.”
“Of all the places for Lucy to try and hide.”
“She must have had the same idea we did.”
“Looks that way. She never had much luck. If the cook hadn’t run up such a fuckin’ debt, you never would have had to go up there and see him. What are the odds?”
“It’s a freakish thing. I hear what you’re saying, Sean.”
“Do you think it was François?”
“He says no. Says he was just keeping an eye on her, like we asked.”
“If he had a good look at her, that might have been all it took.”
“I was thinking that, too.”
“Did she look the same?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
Tommy Bangles didn’t say anything for a minute. He had known Sean Morrissey since memory began — never a time in his life when Sean had not been there protecting his back. He stayed silent, knowing a dark shadow was passing across his friend’s heart right then.
“What were the orders Cambio gave you, Tommy?”
“Full op. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Any special instructions for Lucy?”
“No. You can leave her where she is.”
. . .
When Tommy put the phone in his pocket, a man approached him. He came cautiously, stood a distance away before saying, “It has to be tonight, Tommy?”
“The cops are there now, Bobby. It looks like they’ve shut down the lab.” Bangles kept his back to the man, staring down the trail they would soon be travelling, the headlights of the four snowmobiles the mechanic had lined up by the trailhead illuminating the way.
“Shut it down? What does that mean?”
“We’re not sure, Bobby. One of the reasons we have to go up there.”
“But the cops are there for sure?”
Bangles stretched his body to its full height and cocked his head. Took some deep breaths of air. If he had been a forest animal, you would have thought he was trying to detect a scent right then. Slowly, he turned, and as he did the headlights from the snowmobiles caught him full in the face.
The other man gasped in spite of himself. He knew Bangles well. Had looked into his eyes many times. But the teardrop tattoos running down both cheeks would never seem familiar.
“Yes, the cops will be there, Bobby. It is the full op tonight. Are you up for it?”
“I’m always up for it, Tommy. We should take scalps.”
Bangles laughed and slapped the other man on the back. “Time to go, my brother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Along the east wing of the Mattamy, people stayed in bed late that morning, in no hurry to start their day. Roselyn and Gaetan Tremblay embraced, the old man’s legs tucked into the back of his wife’s legs, his right arm thrown over her chest, his head buried deep in her long black hair.
“It is evil,” said Roselyn one more time. “Can you not feel it, Gaetan?”
“It feels no worse than any bad day, Roselyn.”
“Any bad day? There are people dead, Gaetan. One of them was a little girl.”
“A very bad day, then.”
“It is evil. There is someone in Ragged Lake who is nothing but evil.”
Gaetan pushed his nose a little deeper into his wife’s hair, enjoying the smell of the oils with which she bathed, the sweet talcum with which she powdered, the fine ridge of the powder dusting her shoulder. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the day. He would be surprised if there were only one.
Tobias O’Keefe had risen early and had already done one hundred push-ups, fifty sit-ups, and a dozen near-perfect chin-ups from the doorframe of the bathroom. Which wasn’t that much for him, but he had worried about the wood splintering. He had showered and dressed while Garrett slept — either real or feigned, O’Keefe didn’t know or care. Garrett was right to assume he had no interest in talking to him. The mere sight of the man had begun to repulse O’Keefe. The whiteness of his skin. The fatness of his body. So much fat there were rolls on the backs of his legs.
O’Keefe did not understand how a man could let himself fall apart like that. Become as weak as that. Not through the actions of an enemy, but by his own hand. His own sloth and banality. His father had done a hundred pushups every morning until the day before he died, so the story went — might even be true. Certainly, he was doing them well into his eighties. There are two secrets to success that only successful people know, his father had once told him. The first: success comes only to certain people, to those who are special, who can make the tough decisions you need to make to reach a goal. The second, and this was just as important: never feel guilty about being special, about being better than other people; never waste time feeling sorry for people or wondering why most people are losers. That’s just the way God planned it.
O’Keefe turned from the storm and stared at Garrett asleep in his bed. He had thought, when they had first arrived, that he might find some pleasure there, but he had never warmed to the idea. That happened sometimes. He did not know why. He stared at Garrett and wondered how many days his father could have shared a hotel room with this man before starting to think of ways to get rid of him.
John Holly was also staring at the storm, marvelling at the strength of it, at a wind that came in fast and mad across miles of clear ice and then crashed into the forests and buildings of Ragged Lake with such force the trees seemed to shake and the buildings trembled. The snow was thrown around in patterns he had never seen. Funnel formations that spiralled either up or down, he wasn’t sure.
He laughed once he realized he was looking out a window trying to figure out what was up and what was down. Freakin’ Divide. No other place like it in the world. Holly laughed again. He was anxious for the day to begin.
The waitress lingered in her shower, enjoying the steady stream of hot water. The showers in the staff cabin were never warm. When she was finished, she dabbed herself dry with a plush terrycloth towel and examined her body in the full-length mirror. She was nineteen and had nipples that pointed upward from the shower, a curve near her buttocks that had collected a small pool of water, long legs that let the water course down her skin when it finally dropped, a lazy track that curved and twisted and touched as much skin as possible.
She was thinking about the tree-marker. They had talked for nearly two hours the night before, a strange conversation, speaking to someone through a wall, yet she could have spoken all night. He was from Buckham’s Bay and she had struggled to find an image of him in her memory, thinking back to group events, hockey games, street parties . . . but nothing came. She was surprised. The tree-marker was handsome.
When she had this thought, she felt a pang of guilt. It did not seem right having a pleasant thought right then. She told herself to think of the day ahead, a trick that normally settled her mind. But not this morning. When she finally sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in her waitress uniform, waiting for a police officer to knock on the door and collect her, she decided it was all right to think about the tree-marker. If that kept her from thinking about other things.
The cook lay in his bed, grunting and coughing and trying to dislodge a thick, coppery ball of phlegm from the back of his throat. He was on his stomach. His head hung over the edge of the bed. He spat into a soup bowl.
The cook spit until he started coughing and then the cough turned into a dry heave. He kept his head over the bed and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. His stomach started to convulse. His limbs twitched. Finally, he rolled onto his back, gave one last great cough, and looked at his watch. Quarter to six in the morning. He sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed. Started to dress. He was hoping he could sneak another bottle out of the bar while he was making breakfast.
/> William Forest was in the first room of the east wing, a standard room but with a few extra square feet, and so it had a bay window. He had spent most of the night in a chair pushed in front of that window. The light by the wharf allowed him to see the storm, and he sat transfixed. That storm would kill an unprotected man in . . . what would he give it? Two hours? Less than that?
The bartender had respect for power like that. Such indiscriminate power, too. That blew him away. It didn’t matter who you were, what you had done with your life, who your friends might be, how much money you had in a bank account or how much you had stashed from the bastards at Revenue — you went into a storm like that and you were dead. Any geographic location. Any person. Dead. That was mission certainty you just never saw. One hundred percent guaranteed balls-out devastation. The bartender laughed and marvelled at what he was seeing. Occasionally, he would bend over and use a bar straw to snort from a plastic bag he had perched carefully on his lap. Then he would light a cigarette. The bartender was pretty sure he and God could be friends.
. . .
The tree-marker awoke feeling better than he had in days. No longer hungover. No longer frightened. He lay in bed remembering his conversation with the waitress. Searched his mind for an image of her standing somewhere in his hometown. You would think such a thing could be done. She was beautiful.
He quickly felt bad for what he was thinking. How could you have a happy thought on a day such as this? The boy got dressed and ran the problem through his mind. Decided eventually it was all right to think about the waitress. Didn’t rationalize his decision the way she had, by telling himself it would help him get through the day. Figured there was probably not much he could do to stop thinking about her anyway, so why fight it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Yakabuski waited until everyone had left their rooms and gathered in the restaurant, until the cook had finished breakfast and the waitress had started to clear the tables. Then he walked to the bar, pulled his service revolver, and pointed it six inches from the face of the bartender.
William Forest said nothing. Yakabuski gave the gun a small wave and the bartender started to back up toward the kitchen. Heads in the restaurant turned, one by one, as they passed their tables. The cook was the last one to see it. Standing with his back turned, pouring rye into his coffee cup, turning like a fool with the bottle clearly visible in the pocket of his jacket when the bartender backed into him. The cook stared at the gun in Yakabuski’s hand. At the gun in Downey’s hand, who had also come into the kitchen.
“I haven’t been able to figure you boys out,” said Yakabuski, who seemed neither perplexed nor worried by this failure. “I suspect I’m not going to have much time to work on it today, so we’re just going to park you boys somewhere.”
“Are you fuckin’ whacked?” said the cook. “I haven’t done anything.” The man’s right hand was now trying to hide the bottle of whisky.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave the bottle behind too.”
“Now I know you’re fuckin’ whacked. No fuckin’ way that’s going to happen.”
Yakabuski fired his gun. Three quick shots, because the gun was a semi-automatic and why waste a thing like that? The bullets hit a toaster on the counter and it flew through the air before clattering across the floor and then landing with a metal thunk against the back door. “Bit of a hurry, boys,” he said, pointing the way with his gun. The two men started moving.
On his way back from the storage closet, Yakabuski banged on the freezer door and heard a lusty “fuck you.” He didn’t bother checking any further.
He went back to his coffee. Sat at the table and stared out the bay window. Then out the back window. At the biplane dock. It was hard to see much of anything because of the falling snow.
“The train won’t be coming today, will it?” he said. He looked at Holly, not sure why he had bothered to ask the question.
“No. It won’t be able to get past the first gorge outside High River. It’ll come the day after the storm ends.”
Yakabuski needed to phone O’Toole. But as he got up from the table, the lights went off in the restaurant. Behind the bar. Out by the biplane dock. At the same time, there was the sound of machinery shutting down in the lodge. The hot-water tank stopped burbling. The furnace fan went silent. A machine somewhere made a loud knocking sound, like the busted rods of a car engine, a clanking that extended and extended until it faded away, leaving everyone listening for one final clank that never came.
“You missed your phone call,” said Holly. “How’s your satphone working?”
“Not at all.”
“Didn’t think so. This is a bad storm.”
“You always lose power during a storm?”
“Not usually.”
“The power comes in on a trunk line running down the S and P. Is that right, Mr. Holly?”
“That’s right.”
Yakabuski looked at his watch. Refreshed his coffee. Zippered his parka and walked outside. Stood on the front porch and stared through the storm to where he knew the S and P line ran.
Maybe it was nothing. How could you be surprised at losing power in a storm like this? Or maybe it was exactly what the adrenaline coursing through his body told him it was.
. . .
He saw it shortly after 10 a.m. At first it was nothing more than a slight disturbance in the snow. An anomaly so small and distant he couldn’t say with certainty it was even there. And if it was, maybe it was nothing more than a difference in wind speed. A difference in the density of falling snow. But slowly the anomaly grew, coalesced, took shape and definition, and before long Yakabuski was looking at a white orb.
He tracked his line of vision back from the orb, heading west, and soon he saw another pinprick anomaly. Then another. And another. The rest of the men inside the Mattamy had by now gathered on the porch to stand beside him, and each man found himself looking at the same thing. A line of headlights heading toward the lodge.
“I thought the cops were coming on the train,” said O’Keefe.
“They are.”
“Then who the fuck are these guys?”
Yakabuski didn’t answer. Kept staring at the line of headlights. He watched in silence when the headlights stopped a half mile away from the lodge. Peering through his binoculars at the far-off cluster of shimmering lights, he started counting the seconds. He had not reached ten when two sets of headlights veered away from the main group. One heading north. The other south. He stared and tried not to let fear show on his face.
A planned deployment. Executed in less than ten seconds. In a blinding snowstorm.
“What is going on, Detective?” asked Garrett, the younger Sport. “You seem to know something you are not telling us. You knew these people would be coming?”
“I suspected. I wasn’t sure.”
“Who are they?”
“They’re bikers. Or they work for bikers.”
“Why have they come out in a snowstorm like this?”
“They’ve come to get rid of that lab.”
“Get rid of it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Garrett.”
“But you’ve already destroyed it. There’s nothing left to get rid of.”
Yakabuski put down his binoculars and turned to look at the men surrounding him. There was no sign of fear yet, so he knew they had no clue what was happening.
“That’s not completely true, Mr. Garrett.”
A flash of surprise passed over Garrett’s face. It was the other Sport who said, “The guy sitting in the meat freezer. He’s still left.”
“That’s right, Mr. O’Keefe.”
“They need to get rid of him.”
“That’s right.”
Yakabuski didn’t say anything else for a minute. Kept staring at the set of headlights heading north, a far-off light shimmering
in the falling snow, disappearing whenever the snowmobile dipped, reappearing when it crested a drift. Would the man driving the machine be smart enough to go all the way to the shoreline? Yakabuski needed to think. The men with him needed to think as well, needed to realize how a door had just opened and they’d been shoved outside into a world probably none of them knew even existed. Where the spinning building blocks, the subatomic things, were different, came together to create a deadly, remorseless alternate world.
By now each man had fear on his face. Downey and Buckham, who had not asked a question, not wanting to appear out of the loop, looked as fearful as the others. It was the tree-marker who finally spoke.
“They need to get rid of him? What do you mean?”
“They’ve come to kill him, son. And anyone else who worked at that lab.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid so. Someone has decided to shut down this operation. The guys coming would have blown up the lab if we hadn’t done it already. They want nothing left. No equipment. No witnesses. It’s a complete scrub today. That’s the only reason you’d come out in a storm like this.”
“How could they keep something like that a secret from everyone else in the village?”
“They have no intention of keeping secrets.”
Fear grew on their faces. But it was the wrong fear — the kind someone has when he sees a dangerous animal in the distance, or the photo of a mass murderer in the newspaper. A detached fear. Wondering what might have happened to you if that grizzly had crossed the river one day and come toward you. If that killer had been walking in your direction one night. No ownership.
It was again O’Keefe who figured it out. Yakabuski knew it as soon as every muscle in the Sport’s face tightened as though he had just been given a cortisone shot.
“They don’t want any witnesses at all,” he said.
“That’s right.”