Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller (11 page)

"He's fine," Sarah said, with an obvious tone of sarcasm, "nothing like getting shot to liven up your health."

"He didn't get shot."

"Oh, okay. And I suppose that gash just appeared there by itself. Maybe his cat scratched him."

"Shut up. I don't know anything about that kid, and I don't trust people I don't know. For all I know, he could have gotten stabbed in a drug war."

"That's ludicrous, Alex. How can you say that after what he did on the boat? He saved our lives with that chain!"

"You're idealists. You and Jake—irretrievable idealists. You look for the good side in something when the evil side is staring you in the face. You have here," he gestured toward Anthony, "a kid who gave you styrofoam when you were desperate for food. A kid with a mysterious knife wound. A kid who refused to help me when I had to run into that parking lot, infested with police."

Sarah's expression changed quickly from anger to surprise. "You…you tried to rescue me?"

"I rescued the backpack. Currently, it's contributing more than all of you. Now, is there a reason you came over here, or do you just think you haven't pissed me off enough tonight?"

Sarah looked at him angrily. "I think it's time you told me what your big plan was."

Jake was becoming increasingly exasperated. Not only were Alex and Sarah bickering again, but he had spent the last half-hour trying unsuccessfully to pacify individual members of the crowd. He decided that, as the case usually is, the only way he could people to listen by shouting. He clambered up to the middle branches of a tall, sturdy tree.

"People!" he called, getting the attention of about half the crowd. "My name is Jake Harwell, and I know what's going on. Now, as far as I know, you are all victims of police brutality."

Another quarter of the crowd looked up at him. "The Niagara Police Department is quite overzealous, most likely from boredom, but possibly from extraneous circumstances," he went on.

"Circumstances like what?" someone shouted.

"We don't know. It's possible that one of you is a suspect in a crime. A murder case, or something worse." As if on cue, several people began to angrily interrogate whoever was next to them. Jake sighed. People could be real idiots sometimes.

"Now, I need you all to stay calm. A boat will probably be here to pick you up in a few minutes." With that, he jumped down from the tree, and walked to a spot several yards away from the crowd, where Anthony was. Several people had been kind enough to help him sterilize his cut, and he was binding it now.

"Hey, Anthony."

"Kid! How's the crowd?"

"Unmanageable," Jake said, adding irritatedly, "and my name is Jake, not kid."

"What about Sarah and Colin?"

"His name's not Colin, it's Alex. Alex Orson. And the way those two are getting along, I'm surprised they haven't killed each other yet."

"Listen, Jake," Anthony said, "could you do me a favor?"

"Depends on what it is."

"Could, ah…" Anthony faltered for a moment.

"Could I what?" Jake said, beginning to get annoyed.

"Could you get me a cigarette? I haven't smoked in an hour and I'm not feeling so great."

Great,
Jake thought.
The last person we need with us, an underage nicotine addict.

"Maybe. Alex runs this show, so you'll have to ask him."

Just as Jake said, Alex and Sarah were on the verge of violence. Alex began to explain his plan, with a hint of hesitation in his voice.

"Now, the reason I was so angry when you showed up at the tree house—and why I still am—is because I planned this whole thing out to the minute. Where we would be every day, how far we would go, and how we would spend our money."

"Get to Niagara already. I want to know why we had to go to that stupid grill."

"Will you let me finish?" Alex said angrily. "Even with just me and Jake, I knew the two hundred dollars I stole from Roland would never be enough."

"Were you going to get a job?" Sarah asked, not believing it was true. From what she knew of Alex, he would never be that ordinary, especially in something this big.

"No! The three of us would eat a huge meal and pay a lot of money. Once they had begun to like us from that, we would ask the waiter if we could go into the manager's office and tell him how much we liked the food."

A horrible truth began to form in Sarah's mind. "You were going to hold up the restaurant!?"

"Shut up, please! Why would I do something like that? The police would be on me even more than they already are."

"So, what were you going to do?"

"I was going to ask if the manager wanted to donate a bit of money to a charity for starving children."

Sarah was obviously disgusted. "Just like you, Alex. Win people's confidence, then play off their kindness."

"It's an easy way of getting things done," Alex said casually. "Rather than adhere to an arbitrary moral code, you can bend the rules a bit and get a few privileges."

"Such as what?"

"Such as not dying! Such as eating, and sleeping, and wearing clothes, and having money!"

Sarah sighed. "This is ridiculous. Who do you think you are? Some kind of rebel? I'll tell you who you are. You're a kid. You're a jerk. You're arrogant and worthless. You have three lives riding on you, and no idea what to do with any of them. You nearly got three dozen people shot. You make me sick."

"That makes two of us. Go away, please."

It was another half-hour before Jake decided to abandon his crowd-control efforts. A boat appeared to be preparing to leave on the other side of the river, and he assumed there would be several policemen on board. He clambered down from the tree and walked over to where Alex and Anthony appeared to be engaged in a very vehement debate.

"I don't care!" Alex was shouting. "It'll waste our money, it'll waste our time, it's going to kill you, and to top it off, it smells really bad!"

Jake almost had to smile at the last comment. Anthony must have asked Alex about cigarettes.

"It's chemical," Anthony replied, with the air of somebody explaining prepositions to a kindergartener. "You smoke once, you get hooked. After a while it becomes a necessity of survival."

"Please. That's your fault, isn't it? Besides, I don't think going cold turkey will be that painful. You might get a headache or two. Deal with it." Alex turned after finishing the sentence and spotted Jake. "Oh, hi, Jake. Hey, could you go find Sarah? She's off sulking someplace. I need to talk to everyone."

It was a subdued trio that Alex stood before. The ferry incident seemed to have significantly dampened everybody's spirits, and Sarah was still angry with him.

"Okay, people, I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want first?"

"Bad news first," Jake said. "It's easier to handle if you know that good news is coming."

"Good choice," Alex replied. "Okay, the bad news is that the cop boat is going to be here inside of fifteen minutes."

"God damn it…" Anthony muttered.

"Okay, fearless leader," Sarah said angrily, "how do you plan to get us out of this one?"

"I'm getting to that! The good news is that the cops, desperate as they are to catch us, probably won't check the crowd for us until they're back on the other side of the river. They'll put everyone in custody, just to make sure we didn't escape."

"You've got a point," Jake said. "If we leave now, we could get as much as," he did some quick math on his fingers, "forty-five minutes' head start."

"Congratulations on figuring it out, Jake, but it means we have to go right now. Problem is, they have cars, and we don't. So, even if we were hours ahead, they could easily catch us."

"Yeah," Anthony cut in. "I was meaning to ask about that…"

"That, Anthony, is where you come in."

"Why me?"

"I know your type," Alex said. "Delinquents. Petty criminals. You probably know more about this kind of thing than the three of us combined. Do you know how to drive?"

"Sort of." Anthony was quickly starting to believe that he was in way over his head.

"Great," Alex said, smiling. "You're in charge of getting us wheels."

"It occurs to me," Anthony retorted, "to wonder why I'm helping you at all."

"Because," Alex smiled even wider, "you are an accessory. Also, you are already on the wrong side of the law, so the cops won't think twice about tossing you in jail. It's your choice. Get us a car, or go to juvie."

Anthony swore and ground his teeth, then began to lead them along the side of the highway.

The gas station was an old place. The pumps were all rusty, and the letters on the sign, which had evidently once read "Transit Quality Fuel" had fallen and been vandalized beyond recognition. The convenience store, in a small building beside the station, looked fairly modern, but was deserted. The only sign of life was a man on the edge of the lot, wiping down the windshield of his car. This, however, didn't do much to relieve the cloud of decay that hung over the area. The owner probably spent a lot of time cursing the corporations for ruining his business.

All of them wondered why Anthony had suggested they come here. The one car was occupied, there were no real foods for sale in the store, and they didn't exactly need gas. Sarah was starting to believe that Anthony was leading them to a shady deal with one of his criminal friends. After his backpack-swapping trick, she didn't trust him in the least.

The center of attention for the group as they entered was none of these things, but a much stranger discovery. There was a spit of grass on the left side of the lot, separating the station from the road. There were no pumps on this side, probably as a safety measure. About halfway up, Alex noticed something odd: the remnants of what looked like police tape. Near the tape, a chalk marking had been made on the asphalt. It didn't take them long to know that it was the outline of a body.

Alex knelt to examine the marking, noting as he did that it appeared to be fairly old—the police must have visited a while ago. The man had been of average height, and slightly overweight, but other than that Alex could see nothing special.

"Jesus…" Jake said. "What a place to die, huh?"

"Who do you think it was?" Sarah asked.

"I don't know!" Alex said. "How should any of us know? It could have been anybody."

Anthony was not looking at the outline. He had seen them before, and it brought back bad memories. In fact, it brought things to the surface of his mind that he hadn't seen in years: the sound of a gunshot, the shout of a dying man. He walked away from the others to clear his head.

Alex, deciding that nothing more could be learned from studying the former crime scene, began to wander the lot, his eyes resting on the car on the far side. He loitered by the pumps, watching the owner. He had finished wiping the windshield, and was now working on the driver's side window. It was pointless work, as the car was covered in dirt, and no amount of wiping could get it clean.

"Anthony," he called.

When they were close enough to speak confidentially, Alex whispered, "That's our car."

Anthony was understandably surprised. "That piece of crap? That won't get us to Ottawa. I bet we could walk faster."

"Yes, but you realize that would require us to
walk
. More than a thousand miles."

"Whoa! Whoa! I never said I'd come with you for the whole trip."

"Listen. We've been over this. When you got on that boat, you signed on for the long haul. Any questions?"

"God damn you…I'll get the car."

"Good." Alex turned to face Sarah and Jake, still knelt over the death site. "Hey, if you two are finished gawking, we have a job to do."

The man who owned the car, Wayne Eidson, owner and operator, Transit Quality Fuel, was watching the kids with unease. Sure, they were only kids, but he had a bad feeling about them. Two of them were talking by pump seven, and the shorter one appeared to be the leader. Possibly because of his overall possessiveness of the car, or because of his general paranoia, but he thought they had designs on his vehicle. The way they were talking, as if scheming. He supposed he was just still jumpy, as he had been ever since that guy got shot in his parking lot. The police had thought it was a bunch of kids who killed a lady in Quebec City, although he was at a loss as to how they did it.

They did, eventually, come to talk with him. Two of them, the leader and the girl, told them they wanted to buy something from the store, and they followed him inside. Indoors, he remembered that he had left his car door open to wash the interior window. This didn't help his premonitions.

Alex and Sarah immediately saw that they were going to have some problems. The selection of goods inside the store was meager, so they could only buy five minutes, at most, for Anthony to work on the car.

Alex perused the food aisle, looking up and down, not moving toward making a decision. If Eidson got impatient he would have to make a choice—and then they would lose their decoy. Sarah was looking at a rack of batteries.
Good call
, Alex thought.
There are a million different kinds of those.