by Chuck Dixon
Out on the deck, Levon followed the slipper prints through the snow and down a set of steps. He had the SKS to his shoulder and traversing the field of fire left to right over the triple path left by Danni and the kids that followed the wall of the house. She was leading them home. Like an animal panicked in the hunt and heading for the safety of its lair.
He dropped to the snow and followed the trail of the Fentons up the slope. At the corner of the wall he stepped clear of the turn with the rifle raised.
Danni Fenton lay unmoving in the snow. Carl knelt by her, the bloody bundle of his right hand resting on her hip. Backing away from them was a young man in a coveralls. A man with Arab features. An Algerian maybe. A puckered scar on his chin. He had Giselle in a chokehold, a handgun pressed into the curve of her neck.
“Je pistool. Laat het nu,” the man said. Eyes wide. Teeth clenched in a feral grin.
Levon stepped forward, rifle to his shoulder, the ring tang at the end of the barrel trained on the man’s face.
“Je pistool! Laat het! The gun! Nu!” The man’s voice rose an octave. Giselle stiffened as he jammed the gun tighter against her collar bone.
Levon continued his steady walk forward. The man high-stepped backward through a drift mounted against a wall of the house, dragging the petrified girl with him. He slipped. A knee began to go out from under him. He righted himself, yanking Giselle tighter to him.
“Je pistol laat! Motherfuck!” His eyes were wide, fixed on business end of the rifle.
Levon stalked closer. The barrel unwavering in his fists.
From the rear of the house the cries of the wounded man reached them.
The young man turned his head for a glance behind him.
Levon fired one round, taking the man high on the forehead. The man was flung backward, taking Giselle down with him into the drift. She screamed and kicked, fighting to free herself from the arm still grasping her.
Levon came at a rush, rifle trained on the man. Giselle freed herself and rolled away. Levon put three rounds into the man’s chest. He stood over him. The top of the man’s skull was blown off. He was dead from Levon’s first shot.
Giselle was up and scrambled to her brother and mother. Levon backed toward them, rifle up, eyes searching for movement.
“Are there more men?” he said to the kids as he swept the line of fire before him for targets.
“There was a guy with a plaid cap. And a guy with a messed up face,” Carl said.
Three total. One of them on the fly. His count was off by one.
Levon turned to Danielle Fenton who was sitting up with the help of her children. Strands of her hair were frozen stiff with black blood.
“What happened?”
“He hit her.” Carl nodded toward the dead man. Giselle was hugging her mother, head buried in Danni’s shoulder.
“Danielle? Can you hear me?” Levon said, an arm at her back to support her.
“My head hurts like hell.”
“Are you nauseous? Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?”
“No. Help me stand.”
They pulled her upright, the kids supporting her either side. Levon gently pulled down the lid of one of her eyes with a thumb and examined it. The pupil dilation looked normal and focused.
“I’m going after the last one. Unless you want me to stay with you.”
“The one with the white eye? Go. Go after him,” Danni said in a weary voice.
“One of these men will have a radio on them. Keep trying it until you reach someone. Find a weapon for yourself. Arm yourself. And pack those fingers in snow.” Levon turned and was away at a run.
Jan Smets had managed to turn on his belly to crawl for the closest snow machine. He was leaving a scarlet trail behind him on the snow.
Levon fired three rounds from the rifle into his head.
Levon chose the only remaining machine that was not hitched to a sled. The fuel gauge was at three-quarters full. They hadn't come far. Under ten kilometers. He mounted the snow machine and started the engine. It came to life with a sharp snarl. He was off in a blue cloud of exhaust, leaning from the saddle to follow the furrows left by the fleeing man.
One to go, by the count of the man he’d questioned at the Fenton house. One of the men could be a woman. The female half of the artist couple. Did she count as part of the team?
The one driving into the woods ahead of him was Levon’s primary target.
41
The twin tracks ended where the snowmachine lay on its side in a gully four miles up the trail through the trees.
Levon slowed and stood with feet planted in the snow either side of his own machine. He trained the rifle down at the dead machine then to the surrounding woods to the north. There was clear sign visible where someone had climbed from the gully using hands and feet for purchase in the deep snow.
He sniffed the cold air. The tang of gasoline was rich in the gully. One of his shots had holed either the engine or gas tank. His quarry was on foot now.
Levon motored around the gully until he crossed fresh tracks in the snow. They continued north into the trees as far as he could see in the pre-dawn haze. He climbed from the machine and crouched by the tracks. The snow was tinged pink in the impressions made by a boot sole. Right boot. At least one round had found flesh.
The man was still moving at full stride. The left print was deeper. He was favoring that side. Blood loss or pain or both would slow him. He might just decide that an ambush was a better option than a dead run.
Levon cut the engine of the snow machine. He stood, eyes on the trees ahead. He took in a breath and held it to listen. No sound but the soft brush of one bough on another high over his head.
Wounded animals and wounded men moved downhill. They took the fastest route. The path of least resistance. These tracks led toward rising ground. His quarry wasn’t running away from him.
This man was running toward something.
Levon double-timed, eyes on the tracks leading into the shadows of the pines.
The stride of the man grew shorter as the incline increased. There was more blood on the snow. The man’s effort increased the blood loss. The left boot print deepened as the right grew shallower. The prints on the right turned eventually to a snaking trough. A leg wound. He was starting to drag that foot. There was blood on the bark of a tree where the man had reached out for support near the top of the ridge.
Levon came on the man on the downslope of the ridge. Levon had moved off the trail, making a wide curve away to the right and watching for chokepoints and possible ambush sites. He first spotted the man as a puff of vapor from behind the bole of an old growth spruce. Just a wisp of blue smoke against the gray.
He moved down and around on a buttonhook approach. Levon came upon the man seated with his back to the tree. The man's one good eye squinted at Levon through the trail of smoke rising from the cigarette clamped between his lips. One hand was clamped tight on his right thigh. The snow was sodden red beneath the leg. Levon's round had torn through the meat of the leg. An exit wound the size of a fist gleamed black midway between the hip and knee.
A handgun rested in his lap. With finger and thumb the man plucked it up by the end of the barrel and tossed it aside. His face clamped tight with the effort.
Levon moved up, the rifle raised, the barrel trained on that milky eye glaring sightlessly back at him. The man was speaking.
“A treasure. An obscene amount of treasure.”
Levon was two paces away.
“And do you know what I thought of, all I could think of, as we pulled it from the vault?”
Levon said nothing.
“This cigarette.” The man let a stream of cream-like smoke flow from between his teeth.
“Eight men. Your crew had eight men,” Levon said.
“Seven and a woman.” His skin had a waxy pallor all over now. His lips were turning white. He was bleeding out through the shot to the thigh.
“Lily.”
/> “Was that the name she used?”
“You made it a long way with that leg.”
“I could make it further. With your help.”
“And why would I do that?” Levon said, no real curiosity in his voice.
“If I may?” the man said and reached his left hand up to tear open the Velcro strip on the pouch pocket at the front of his coveralls. Levon stood where he was, eye on the front sight of the rifle trained steady on the man’s face.
The man removed a padded envelope. His glove smeared it with fresh blood.
“Do you know what this is? It is a simple flash drive. On it are the numbers for some very, very secret accounts at some very, very discrete banks all over the world.”
“And I can have half if I help you get out of here in one piece?”
“Hundreds of millions in untraceable funds.” The man smiled weakly with the half of his mouth that allowed for expression. His good eye glistened black now, the iris opening wide. The envelope dropped to his lap as his fingers lost their grip.
Levon watched the life drain away from the good eye. Until it was as fixed and unblinking as the milky orb set in the ruin of dead flesh drooping from his skull on the opposite side.
Levon drew close enough to kick at the man’s right boot. Wouldn’t be the first time he saw a dead man take a few others to the grave with a final surge of will born from fear or evil or both.
The man slumped sideways, limp and unmoving. His dead hand fell away from the wound. It was no longer bleeding.
Levon crouched by him. He plucked the envelope from where it had fallen to the snow. He shook it. Something shifted inside. He stuck it in the chest pouch of the snowsuit. He searched the other pockets of the coveralls and found a key ring with a car key and remote on it, a blood-smeared pack of Players, a gold lighter and two more magazines for the discarded Sig Sauer. He took the keys, lighter and the mags. He retrieved the tossed handgun from where it lay in the snow.
The cigarettes, the last desire of the dead man, Levon dropped atop the body before turning away to follow the hillside to the bottom.
Three miles down the long slope he came across a fire road cut through the woods decades before by one of the lumber companies. The passage of the snow machines the night before was still visible as parallel depressions in the snow that covered the road surface. He followed these back until he found a semi-tractor parked on the verge of the road. Snow was drifted up over the wheel wells. It had a long, empty flatbed trailer hitched to it.
Behind it was a pair of Suburbans with Toronto plates and strap chains fitted on the tires.
Levon tabbed the remote he’d taken off the man he’d left dead on the slope. Blinkers flashed front and back from one of the SUVs. He got in and started the engine and turned the heat up to full. Using a low branch cut from a pine, he brushed enough of the snow from the windows for minimum visibility. He rocked the SUV back and forth a few times until the wheels broke out of the snow. He pulled out onto the fire road, looped around and headed east for the intersection with the county road, chains slapping down the crust that had formed overnight atop the open snow.
42
An eight-foot berm of plowed snow blocked the county road at the south end of the intersection with Mohawk Road. The road north was plowed flat, the remaining snow churned by the passage of the police convoy that followed the plow in.
The sun was well over the horizon in a clear cloudless sky. Glare off the snow was already painful.
Levon pulled around the high berm along the shoulder, the tail of the Suburban swaying as the wheels fought for purchase in the snow piled either side of the single plowed lane. He left the motor running on the lot of the Bellevue Market. A body lay in the snow, covered over with an Indian weave blanket. He pounded on the door which sprung open under his fist.
Merry was in his arms as though launched from inside. He buried his face in her hair, pulling her tight to him.
“The police followed the plow to the lake,” Cecile said from the open doorway.
“How long ago?” Levon asked.
“Five minutes ago. Less maybe,” Cecile said.
“We need to go,” Levon said. Merry nodded.
“Might be best if you stayed here. They’ll be back with questions. I have coffee on,” Cecile said.
“We need to go,” Levon repeated and guided Merry to the waiting SUV. She climbed over the driver’s seat.
“They’ll be blocking off the road,” Cecile called after them.
“Thank you,” Levon said and got behind the wheel.
Cecile watched the SUV leave the lot, turning south onto the unplowed stretch of road. It built speed, vanishing in the contrail of crystalline haze left in its wake.
She wondered if anyone would ever tell her what the hell was going on.
“I ran away,” Merry said after a while.
“You did the right thing,” Levon said to her.
“I left my skis behind.”
“You’re not going to need them where we’re going.”
They rode a while, not speaking, down the arrow straight white road. Levon pulled way off to the shoulder to allow a northbound plow to get by. The bighorn blared as it approached and blasted by. The angled plow cut a channel, leaving a miles-long drift along the roadside opposite of where Levon was parked. State and county police cars raced by after the plow as if pulled on a tether. An emergency response vehicle and several ambulances and unmarked cars followed a minute behind. Lights flashed and sirens yowled.
Levon didn’t pull out until the road was empty. Ten miles down the road he came to a gas station at the edge of the town of Jedidiah where he stopped long enough to top off the tank and pull the chains from the tires. He left them on the concrete island at the pumps.
A teenaged boy was at the counter when Levon went in to prepay for the gas.
“You see all those cops?”
“Passed them on the way here,” Levon said. He poured himself a hot coffee. He pulled a couple of Snickers for Merry and a Payday for himself from the steel rack of candy. He added two bottled waters to the pile on the counter.
“You know where they were going?”
“North, right? I didn’t pass any accidents or fires on the way here.”
“Forty-eight fifty,” the kid announced.
"You have a restroom?"
The boy pointed to a door in the back of the store.
In the tiny bathroom, Levon pulled thick wads of bills from the pockets of the snowsuit and set them on the edge of the sink until he had a stack eight inches in height. He found a banded pack with twenties in it and pulled a thousand dollars from it. Then he replaced the bundles in his pockets.
Back out in the store he put three twenties on the counter and waited for change.
"You been snow machining?" the counter boy said, pointing at his snowsuit.
“Yeah. I like to get out early,” Levon said, heading for the door.
“Me too. Get out and make some noise.” The teenager pumped his fist and grinned.
They made it to State Road 201 and turned east, following signs for Interstate 95. There were no roadblocks yet. Levon wanted to put as much distance as he was able between them and the lake community. The car was good for another few hours. At least until the evening when they could change rides.
“There’s a Wendy’s ahead.” Levon nodded toward a sign along the verge of the four lane.
“Okay,” Merry said without enthusiasm. She hadn’t spoken since the gas station. She hadn’t touched the candy bar or taken a sip of water.
“You have something you need to ask me, honey?”
“I’m afraid to.” She played with the frayed end of the belt of her robe.
“Mrs. Fenton and the kids are okay. They’re alive.”
“And Mr. Fenton?”
“I don’t know, honey. I didn’t see him,” Levon said.
“Those men. Who were they?”
"I don't know. Bad men. But they won't h
urt anyone anymore. The police are there."
“Cecile shot Lily.”
“That’s who was under the blanket?”
“Yes. Lily was going to kill me. She had a gun.” Merry’s hands grew white where she gripped the belt of the robe.
Levon said nothing.
With a wet gulp, Merry broke into tears. She turned to him, her face stricken with pain, mouth twisted.
Levon pulled to the side of the road. He reached over for her and she came into his arms, her face pressed into his shoulder. Her body heaved with sighs. He patted her hair and made wordless noises of comfort into her ear.
The Suburban rocked on its springs as car and truck traffic roared past.
43
Bill Marquez didn’t need GPS to find the place.
There were two salt-crusted state cars parked on the lot of a pokey little gas station and market. Ribbons of yellow tape were strung from the pump island to the front of the store. Media was here as well — local and networks. Vans pulled along the road on either side. Dish towers extended from the rooftops. A few intrepid talking heads braved the cold to stand in the slush in the glare of camera lights to keep the public informed of what little they knew.
Another statie flagged him to a stop at the turn onto Mohawk. He showed his ID and was waved in. The trooper assured Bill that he’d radio ahead to let them know Special Agent William Marquez was on his way.
The road in and around the lake was plowed clean. There was yellow ribbon everywhere, marking homes as active crime scenes. State cars and trucks were parked in the drives before those homes. Hand printed signs were stuck in the snow before each home with the street address in block letters. He passed a big state CID trailer — one of their mobile crime labs.
The center ring of the circus was the Blanco house. Unmarked cars and trucks were on the road and in the drive. An RV was by the house with power lines run inside to share electrical service. Yellow tape created a maze around the house. Numbered markers were stuck on poles here and there in the snow, denoting places where evidence was located.