“What happened to you is terrible,” she said. “Those people will be punished. But right now I can see your friend is sick and needs help. I also want to check my dog. Please, give me the rifle and help me make a fire.”
Mahmoud stared at her a long minute, and she forced herself to hold his gaze and reach out her hand. Despite Fazil’s hoarse protests in what Amanda assumed was Kurdish, Mahmoud finally lowered his gaze and held out the rifle to her. “It no work now. Bullets finished.”
As her fingers closed over the cold steel barrel, waves of emotion almost knocked her off her feet. Relief that the threat was over and outrage that he had deceived her about the gun. She held the heavy, alien firearm with a shiver of repugnance and forced herself to check the chamber. Mahmoud was right. The rifle was empty.
She led the small ragtag group along the shore to a protected overhang where they could build a fire and wade out into the shallows to fish. She gestured to the injured man to sit down, and as Fazil helped to lower him, the quilt fell from his shoulders, revealing a primitive bandage caked with blood.
Tyler was hovering near her, his fists clenching and unclenching in silent rage. “Tyler, can you get me some water while I light a fire?” she asked softly.
“What about Dad!” he hissed. “That wasn’t an accident. Ask them about that!”
“Not now I won’t. I want us all to get out of this alive. Water.”
Within a couple of hours, a measure of tense co-existence settled on the group. A healthy fire blazed, Ghader’s wound had been cleaned and dressed to the best of Amanda’s ability with the minimal supplies at her disposal. Some spruce gum and willow leaves had been mixed into a compress and held in place by strips of her thermal undershirt, which she’d decided was marginally cleaner than Old Stink’s clothes. Kaylee had been lucky; a bullet had sliced her hip, but the bone had not broken. Amanda washed the wound, applied some spruce gum, and left it to nature.
Hot tea had been dispensed and both Kaylee and the injured man were now asleep by the fire. She knew the reprieve was temporary, for the man’s wound looked infected and he might die within a week without proper help.
Fazil sat apart, staring sullenly into the fire as if he too realized this. Amanda moved closer to Mahmoud. “Are those two close friends?”
“Cousins.” He sighed. “We were six who come from Turkey. Now maybe soon only two.”
“Six? What happened to the others?”
“Ship captain promise we go down river to New York, but he lie. Working many weeks on ship at sea. Tired, cold, sick from the sea. At the morning I find my brother dead in his bed. They throw body in the sea, like rat in the night.” He spoke haltingly, supplementing his broken English with vivid hand gestures. “That night we take a lifeboat. One man afraid, his wife drown on little boat, so he stay on the ship, but we go. Four days after, find land, but very big waves.” More hand-waving. “Lifeboat break. Old man have more bigger boat with motor, but so much ocean! No cities! Boat sink, we have to swim to the land. But Fazil’s friend not swim.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, rethinking Fazil’s rigid stillness. “Then he must be doubly upset.”
“Is okay. Fazil is strong.”
She remembered the sad, desperate stories she and Phil had heard over the years. Stories of both incredible cruelty and resilience. “Tell him we won’t let his cousin die. This boat can carry us all, and we will find our way to Croque. It’s not a city, but it’s a way out.”
Chris Tymko stood in the middle of the logging trail, listening for the distant drone of an ATV. He and Jason Maloney had searched the mystery truck, which was unlocked with the keys left in the ignition, but the only useful clues they had found were a couple of local maps, a brochure of restaurants and accommodations on the northern peninsula, and a ferry schedule. Behind the seats in the cab was a stash of blankets and warm clothes.
If the man was up to something nefarious, there was no sign of it. Nor of him. The woods were silent, except for the crackling static of Jason’s police radio as he searched in vain for a signal.
“Worthless piece of shit,” Jason muttered eventually. “What happened to the fancy new system they bragged about, with coordinated coverage all across the island?”
Chris rolled his eyes. “Whoever designed it probably lives in Toronto. Why don’t you stay here to keep the truck under surveillance while I go out to the road and see if I can raise a signal?”
Chris had to drive almost a kilometre up the Croque road toward the main highway before the signal was clear enough to call in. This time the comm coordinator must have sensed trouble because she switched to a private frequency and passed him directly to Noseworthy.
“Tymko, what the hell are you playing at?” Noseworthy snapped before Chris could get a word in.
Chris scrambled to regroup. “You mean checking out the unauthorized truck in the search area?”
“No, I mean blabbing confidential material about an active investigation to a reporter. Not just a local part-timer; a major news service! It’s all over the goddamn Internet.”
“What is, ma’am?”
“Matthew Goderich. He’s leaked the fact Cousins was murdered, even though we haven’t even told his widow yet. He’s hinted at the fact Cousins was suspicious of a smuggling ring. Possibly people smuggling. Twitter is fucking eating it up!”
Chris was dumbfounded. Goddamn you, Goderich! “I … I don’t know where he got all that, ma’am.”
“He mentioned an anonymous police source.”
“I never told him a thing!”
“But you talked to him? You two shared a room in Roddickton.”
Chris held his tongue. He didn’t even want to speculate how Noseworthy knew about his sleeping arrangements, and he suspected every protest he made merely dug him deeper into the hole. Because he needed the sergeant’s co-operation for an even more crucial problem, he plunged ahead.
“He’s just speculating, ma’am. But did Helen tell you about the unauthorized intrusion into the search area near Croque?”
Noseworthy was silent a moment. “This isn’t over, Corporal.”
“I understand, ma’am. But did she?”
“She did. And I know you also asked her to run a search on the vehicle, while we’re juggling reports in and out of the field at a critical phase of the investigation.”
“Well, we found that unauthorized truck hidden in the bush off a logging road. Driver and ATV missing.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’? What the hell are you doing away from your post?”
“Following up the lead, ma’am. Corporal Maloney and I.”
“I didn’t authorize you to leave the roadblock, Tymko! What do you think I’m doing here, playing tiddlywinks? We need the perimeter secured!”
“I got Corporal Willington to relieve me.” Chris winced and held his breath. “I tried to clear it with you, but —”
“Corporal, get back to that roadblock!”
“Sergeant, just hear me out. The truck is registered to a seafood company and it’s possible they’re involved in this whole incident.”
“You’re talking about a pickup truck on a logging road with an ATV in back.”
“Yes, which is now missing, along with the driver.”
Noseworthy’s voice dropped several octaves. She sounded dangerously calm. “You’re not from here, Tymko, so you don’t know this is exactly how hunters do things. We bring a truck in as close as we can and then we take the ATV into the bush to get the moose. That seafood company probably owns a hundred trucks, and any one of its employees could have signed it out for his own personal use. You know this is the biggest hunting weekend of the season, don’t you?”
“But he was ordered to evacuate the area —”
“And if I’d just bagged an eight-hundred-pound bull, I’d have ignored that order too. This is Newfoundland.”
Chris counted to three in his head and forced his shoulders to relax. He knew he was in deep trouble over Goderich and the roadblock, but he needed to find a way to rouse Noseworthy’s police instincts. If the woman had any. “Ma’am, I believe it’s a lead worth following. In St. Anthony, Phil Cousins was asking the trawler captain about working conditions and workers, but when I got there, the captain wasn’t there. He’d apparently driven down to Corner Brook for a replacement part. In what? Maybe a company truck? Meanwhile a body is pulled from the sea and a lifeboat carrying foreigners wrecks on the shore just north of here. Maybe Matthew Goderich’s speculations about people smuggling are not that far off the mark.”
He braced himself for an explosion, but instead Noseworthy chuckled. A smoker’s cough rumbled in her throat. “Quite the imagination, Tymko. Maybe you’re more suited to writing thrillers than police work.”
“But that lifeboat, and the body, are real! What theory is the RCMP working on?”
“All that stuff is being handled by security services in Ottawa, and they don’t tell me jack shit. That’s not my problem. I’ve got a civilian and a kid to find. End of story.”
“But —”
“I don’t give a fuck who killed Cousins, Tymko. Let Sergeant Amis try to pry some information out of the spooks and security freaks in Ottawa.”
“I understand, ma’am, but it’s possible someone from the seafood company is trying to find our missing persons too.”
“Then our job is to find them first, Corporal. One lone guy on an ATV against our ERT team, our dogs, and our aircraft? Our coordinated plan? Except you fucked up, opened up a chink in that plan. Vu needs to know that every single officer is fulfilling their part of the plan. So tell Maloney to get back to cover the roadblock, and you get your ass back in here, while I figure out what to do with you.”
As frustrated as Chris was, he knew he was coming within a hair’s breadth of being shipped back to his Deer Lake detachment, if not worse. He had no choice but to obey.
When he drove back to the logging road turnoff, however, Jason’s truck was nowhere to be seen. Since it had not passed him on the way to the main highway, he concluded Jason must have headed toward Croque. Had he seen something?
Chris knew he was on very precarious ground with Noseworthy already and if he didn’t show up as the woman had ordered, he might be kissing not just this case but his entire career goodbye. But what if Jason had seen something important? What if he was heading into danger, against orders, and without backup?
Cursing, Chris continued down the road toward Croque, searching the bush on either side. He had driven about a kilometre when Jason’s truck appeared over the rise, racing down the middle of the road. He slewed to a stop in front of Chris.
“I thought I heard an ATV farther down this road,” he called as soon as Chris pulled abreast. “But I lost it. Might have been the search helicopter out by the coast, flying really low to try to get below the clouds.”
Chris squinted through his windshield at the swirling mist that was already obscuring the treetops on the higher slopes. Unless the weather lifted, before long the air search would have to be called off altogether.
“Is Noseworthy sending in an extra team?” Jason asked.
Chris shook his head. “She’s seriously pissed off. Because we went against her plan, she’s going to ignore everything we found. Might even take me off the case.”
“You mean you didn’t clear it with her?” Jason stiffened and revved his truck. “Fuck, Tymko! I know her; she’s one tough bitch. If you’ve dragged me down with you …” The rest of his threat was lost in the roar of tires on gravel as he accelerated down the road.
Fuck you too, Chris thought as he turned his cruiser around to head back to the command post. You’re no prince yourself. He drove at a slow, thoughtful pace, reluctant to leave the mystery of the truck unsolved and even more reluctant to face Noseworthy. He wondered whether Jason would get to her first and put a spin on their adventure that would exonerate himself and place all the blame on Chris. He’d met men like Jason Maloney. Smooth, confident, and slippery as an eel, they always managed to make themselves look good at others’ expense.
Chris had never mastered that skill. Whenever he tried, he felt grimy. Right and wrong were important to him. He’d signed on as a cop not just to follow orders and uphold the law, but also to do some good. In the remote rural communities where he’d worked, that meant being a social worker and youth mentor, an advisor on all things medical to legal, and a catcher of stray livestock. Why people acted as they did intrigued him, and the behaviour of the mystery truck driver nagged at him. Put together with all the other small mysteries, he knew in his gut it wasn’t random. But now, his very job would be at stake it he tried to find out why.
He was still in a foul mood when he detoured briefly into Roddickton to check the latest Internet news. Sure enough, Matthew Goderich had managed to cobble together quite an imaginative tale based on supposition and hints, as well as an interview with Sheri Cousins. But tucked between the stories of smuggling and international intrigue was a poignant testament to Phil and to the tragedy of his death. On his blog, Witness from the Frontline, he recapped Phil’s heroic but ultimately tragic efforts in Nigeria, his struggles with PTSD, and his final sacrifice, which had left a young son fatherless and lost in the wilderness.
As he read, Chris felt his anger dissipate. Noseworthy was an insensitive, tunnel-visioned tight-ass. No matter how much of Matthew’s story turned out to be pure fantasy, at least he had put his finger on the human dimension. The spooks and the brass could freak out as much as they wanted; this was a story worth telling. Phil’s epitaph.
When he crested the hill above the village of Conche and spotted the little blue Fiesta parked outside Casey’s house, he had a flash of brilliance. He tucked his cruiser into a back lane and slipped through the backyards to Casey’s kitchen door. Matthew looked up at him from his makeshift desk at the table. His expression was unapologetic, but uncertain.
“You saw my piece?”
Chris nodded, working hard to keep a stern scowl on his face.
“Your bosses are furious.” Matthew grinned. “God, I love Canada. It feels great to be able to piss off the police and not get my head chopped off. I’m working on a follow-up, but I can’t get a word out of your Sergeant Noseworthy, or the head honcho in St. John’s. As for Ottawa — hah! But the public is eating it up! Someone has even started a Facebook page called Prayers for Tyler. Well, I can do without the praying bit, but the sentiment is nice. We have to keep the ball rolling. Have you got anything for me on the search?”
In spite of his vow, Chris couldn’t suppress a grin in return. The segue was perfect. “I may have a tip for you, but I’m going to need you to sit on it for a while.”
“Anonymous source, I promise.”
“No. Noseworthy will see through that in an instant. Two people’s lives are in jeopardy and I know you care about that. The risk has not been contained —” Chris broke off as he heard the cop-speak.
“You mean the bad guys are still out there.”
Chris laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. But there is something you can do to help, and in the end it will give you more material for your reports.” He paused to glance out the window. The command trailer and the police compound were out of sight up the hill, but as a precaution, he gestured to Matthew to come into the small front parlour, where the lace curtains and the rain obscured the window.
In brief strokes he related the story of the mystery truck belonging to Acadia Seafood and Phil’s interest in the foreign workers in St. Anthony. “I want to know who was driving the truck and what it was doing in the area. And I want to know more about the trawler. Does it employ foreign workers? Is it still in port and has the captain returned?”
Matthew’s pen raced across the page and he bobbed his head up and down s
o excitedly that Chris thought it would fly off. “Do the spooks — sorry, security — know about this?”
“I don’t know, but as you say, they wouldn’t tell us if they did. Whatever you can dig up, pass it on directly to me.”
Matthew nodded. He was vibrating with excitement as he prepared for a quick escape. Chris grabbed his arm.
“But remember. This guy, whoever he is, is out there in the woods and so are Amanda and Tyler. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I don’t want to panic him into damage control.”
“Mum’s the word,” Matthew said.
“I mean it, Matthew!”
With a tip of his fedora, Matthew was out the door. Chris sat in the house a moment longer, trying to calm his nerves. He had just ventured way, way farther out onto his precarious limb, with nothing to cushion him should the limb come crashing down. He had not only gone behind Noseworthy’s back and given confidential police information to a reporter, but he’d potentially endangered Amanda and Tyler’s life if Matthew didn’t keep his word.
His hands were still shaking when he parked his cruiser up beside Incident Command and strode resolutely inside, ready to face the firing squad. He was greeted by a buzz of excitement that raced through the entire room. Personnel were clustered around the wall map, consulting laptops and chattering at once.
Chris felt an overwhelming rush of hope. “Have they been found?”
Noseworthy swung around. The faint smile on her dour face vanished at the sight of him. “No. But the helicopter picked up a thermal spot and what looked like the word help drawn on the slope behind an abandoned outport. Weather conditions are risky, but ERT is sending a Zodiac up to verify it. It’s early days, of course …”
“But it’s a lead,” the coordinator burst out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Corporal Vu spent the next fifteen minutes trying to juggle assignments to move some of his teams from the more remote sections closer to this latest sighting. Chris sat quietly in the corner, keeping his ears open and his eyes on the screens. The helicopter camera showed very little but a big swirl of cloud, effectively blocking their eyes in the sky and providing no support to the ground searches. As Vu fretted over the assignments, Noseworthy worked on road patrols and pointedly ignored Chris until he could barely stand it.
Fire in the Stars Page 24