Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller (35 page)

Ordoñez glared at the inexorably passing lines dotting the highway, getting faded and less maintained as the third hour of driving wore into the fourth. On an impulse, he pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and, leaving the engine idling, devoted himself to his thought.

There was one thing he wondered most—on more than one occasion he could have shot Alex and left him to bleed to death, like he had with his annoying friend. But he hadn't. At first he was following Roland's orders—Alex was to be returned to him alive. But then he received a call telling him that Roland's wishes were to take a backseat to those of the MK. After that, what had kept him from shooting? Lack of confidence in his own skill? Could that be why he had enlisted Levache?

Or was it something deeper? Ordoñez pounded the dashboard with his hand—he despised Alex for doing this. He'd put his soul behind him a long time ago—why could the boy not have just let it rest as well? No, he had to keep evading him, to keep ruining him. Ordoñez clutched his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Alex had carried his dying best friend out of a building with an angry mob yards behind him. Alberto would have done the same. But Ordoñez…he never would have.

He thought then of Alex and Alberto together—and then tried instantly to stop.
We killed our mothers while they gave birth to us. We fled from our fathers with dreams to go everywhere, do everything. Even the initials are the same.

He started the car again to forget what he'd thought and continued driving along the fading yellow line. Alberto had been shot before—and if Alex needed to die so Ordoñez's soul could finally be buried, then his life was nothing more than a necessary sacrifice.

Ordoñez allowed himself a small smile. The next time he saw Alex Orson, his firing hand would not be stayed.

A week after returning from the church, filled with new revelations, Machry found himself once again lying with his head in his arms on his desk. Pieces of paper, some crumpled, some open, some that had been crumpled and opened again, littered the surface of the table. The whiskey bottle, uncapped and drained to half its capacity over the course of the week, stood monolithically over the scene.

He knew it; he knew exactly what was going on. The same ideas were scribbled and reiterated time and time again across the scattered papers. The problem was that he was powerless. He, nothing more than a social worker, was unable to alter the course of events. He could do nothing about the machinations of Roland Orson, determined to ruin a boy's life for the sake of his own purchased redemption; nothing about Ordoñez, at that moment driving east and deciding the best part of Alex's body to shoot him in; nothing about the faceless Moose Killers, sitting in Ottawa, planning god-knew-what.

He heaved his head off of the desk, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the clock. The rest of the office had gone home, and the lights were all off except for those directly above Machry's desk. Gleaming through the soft illumination of his table lamp, the red numbers spelled out 6:54. He was considering giving up—again—and going home for the night, when he heard jarring footsteps pound through the hallway leading to the large room that held Machry's desk along with five others. He got to his feet in time to see Dave swing the door open, and hurry past it, allowing it to fall shut and slam back into its frame.

"Henry," he panted, without greeting, "you won't believe what I just saw. You need to come and see this, right now. Get in your car—"

"Dave!" Machry said emphatically, holding out his palms. "Take a couple of deep breaths. What did you see?"

"I—I was driving through town to my house, and I turned onto the street that leads to my street—didn't think anything of it—and then I saw flashing lights, and this one house surrounded by police cars and—"

He stopped, inhaled deeply, and exhaled again. Then, he continued, as though ripping off a bandage in one motion. "Henry—Irving Edbrough's dead."

It was as though Machry had been struck in the stomach and head simultaneously, and as though he had never felt those feelings before and did not even know what it meant to be struck. This was it—the final nail in the coffin of his case, the only man with near the reach to put his knowledge into action; gone, pulled from the world like a rug from under his feet. His hangover from the day before, maliciously throbbing toward his thought-center all afternoon, resurged, causing him to clutch his head, and subsequently clutch the desk to keep from falling. His stomach had been weighted with stones, his mind was clouded.

"What happened?" he asked at last, straightening up.

"You should go over there," Dave said. "It's near my house, like I said. Gary—you know, my brother, the homicide sergeant—he's in charge of the whole thing. I can't guarantee what he'll let on, though." He gestured to the door, realized that both he and Machry knew where it was, and shifted his hands behind his back.

"It's the best chance I've got really," Machry said, sighing as he shook his head back and forth slowly in another attempt to clear it. "You drive. Use your car; mine's about to cave in. And I think I'll need a drink of water—I'll catch up. See you in the parking lot."

Fifteen minutes later they turned onto the street in Woodsbrook's residential district that led to Dave's home. The aforementioned police cars, with their lights now turned off, were parked in a semicircle surrounding a two-story house painted a color of white that might have blended with the clouds on an overcast day. Machry had long admired the residential areas of Woodsbrook as one of the few things with which to recommend the town. The city planners, adapting to the perennially wintry conditions, had lined all the streets with evergreens, which would cover with snow in the cold months and produce an atmosphere which would lift your spirit to look at it. The most interesting part of it, to Machry, was that the houses did not seem to have been produced on an assembly line but dreamed into being by their inhabitants, whose lives and living habits you could often see with a cursory glance. Edbrough's house, however, seemed to have been built to match his mind—orderly, dull, functional purely due to its rigid structure, and presumably with nothing much on the deep interior to recommend it either.

Dave shifted his automatic transmission into park, then glared at Machry, whose impatience manifested itself with a tendency to leap out of cars before the engines had stopped running, or before they had even fully halted. Machry recognized Gary from their previous meeting, standing at the open door of the house, calling out orders. He strode hastily up to the yellow crime-scene tape and called out. "Sergeant Henderson!"

"There'll be a press release issued for you by tomorrow. In the meantime I'll ask that you not interfere with the investigation," Gary barked without turning around.

"Gary," Dave shouted, running toward the tape boundary. "We need—"

"Dave," Gary began, turning around at last and speaking in a tone reminiscent of a cross between a disciplinarian and a kindergarten teacher, "I
know
we're brothers but I'm trying to lead an investigation here. If I let you know anything more than what I told you already it'd be a serious breach of protocol. You can read it in the newspaper tomorrow like everybody else."

"It's not about that, Gary. Well—you've met Henry Machry, right?"

"I remember him, yeah," Gary replied. "Wanted to use the handwriting analyzer."

"I just need you to tell him what you told me. Trust me, he needs to know more than I do."

Gary sighed and approached the gate. "No more favors," he said, glaring at Dave. "Mr. Machry," he said politely, steadying his face and adopting the stoic demeanor Machry remembered.

"Sergeant Henderson," Machry said, nodding back. "What is there that you can tell me, legally?"

"Let's see…" Gary counted on his fingers, "no evidence, no suspects, no reasons for suspicion, none of our procedures, and most of the forensic stuff is off-limits too."

"What's left?"

"Here're the bare facts. The victim apparently left work early today. Time of death was around 4:30, reported by some neighbors who heard the gunshots. Edbrough was shot three times in the chest, no signs of a struggle, and not much blood either."

Machry voiced a wonder he'd been nursing since hearing the news. "You don't think it might have been suicide…?"

Gary smiled. "You're sharper than Dave." His brother cast him a dirty look, and he went on, "Well, if you want to kill yourself, you're going to want to do it quickly, right? This guy, though, just like I said—" he extended the thumb and forefinger on his right hand and mimed firing a gun held at his waist, "three times in the chest. Anybody can figure out that he didn't off himself."

"So who—"

Gary held up his hand warningly. "I remember saying something about
no suspects
."

Dave turned to Machry. "Does that help at all?"

"No," Machry replied sourly. He opened his mouth again and realized that he had nothing to say. Without a word to Dave or Gary, he turned and began striding purposefully toward. After a few yards, this melted away, and he began to wander aimlessly to the side. It was over—he knew it now for a fact.
Alex is dead. Edbrough is dead. Ordoñez is gone. The Moose Killers are untouchable. And Roland Orson…Johnson…

Suddenly, he was no longer wandering aimlessly. Dave and Gary were no longer watching him quietly and sympathetically, but rather with surprise—he turned around quickly and rushed back to the gate, stopping abruptly and stumbling awkwardly.

"Sergeant Henderson," he said hurriedly, as he righted himself, "I know who killed him."

It had been two days earlier than this when Edmund McTavish entered his employer's office and found Jean le Potard donning a heavy coat and clutching a piece of paper in his right hand. As he pulled his right arm into the jacket's sleeve, the paper slipped through his finger and drifted to the floor. He cursed. "Get that, would you, McTavish?" he said, noticing his second-in-command standing near the doorway, unsure of himself. McTavish dutifully strode over to Potard, knelt on the plush carpet, and retrieved it. He held it in front of his eyes for a moment longer than he should have and began, against his better judgment, to examine it.
Air Canada, First Class, nonstop to Calgary—

"I don't recall asking you to read it," Potard said tersely, snatching the ticket away.

McTavish recoiled slightly and stood up. "You summoned me, Monsieur Potard?"

Potard, momentarily occupied in lifting a cumbersome suitcase onto his desk, turned to face McTavish. "I did. Edmund, I'm going to need you to take over stewardship of the Moose Killers for a short period of time. Perhaps three days. A trifle—" he waved his hand nonchalantly, "—to one of your seasoned leadership ability, Edmund. Simply keep the gears turning and make sure nobody gets killed."

McTavish hesitated; considering their trade, this was a formidable task.

"Sir, if I may ask—"

"You may
not
ask!" Potard spat, again causing McTavish to recoil. "But I have to admire a hungry mind, so I will pacify you by saying that I have decided to locate our dear Alberto."

This struck McTavish as an unusually rash action for their relatively levelheaded commander. "But why—"

Potard took his suitcase off the desk, turned up the collar of his coat and made for the door. "Because, McTavish, I have become bored of defeating you at chess, and desire to play another match with my old sparring partner," he said amicably.

McTavish had never considered himself to be in possession of a particularly sharp mind, but he could sense that there was something behind these cryptic words. Wary of another direct attempt to get Potard to reveal his objective, he went at it from the diagonal. "But sir, why go yourself? We have numerous operatives, hired for the exact purpose of—"

Potard dropped his suitcase in the doorway, stepped over to McTavish, and placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. "Edmund, Edmund…losing in the same ten moves as you always do, I would not expect you to know; but there is a time when it is necessary for the king to release himself onto the board. Rest assured I have considered the implications of this several moves in advance. And I am quite certain that the bishop," he removed his hand from McTavish's shoulder and pointed it at him, "will have no trouble keeping the pawns in line."

He turned around, his coat sweeping behind him, picking up the suitcase and striding out the door, swinging it shut.

So it happened that, two days later, the newest meeting was called to order by Edmund McTavish, who predictably found himself explaining the reason behind the sudden departure of the operation's leader. His own surmises were intermixed with the words received from Potard.

"…I wasn't expressly told this," he said to the silent room, "but I believe that Potard thinks he can find the boy by finding Ordoñez. It would seem so. If I were in his place my mind would be addled with revenge. However, I also believe that our leader is entirely correct." His voice took on a more upbeat tone. "From what I've heard of your work, the boy and all that surrounds him are all that stands between us—and the final goal!"

The room erupted. The men shook hands, applauded and cheered raucously, waving their fists in anticipation of ultimate triumph. McTavish shouted, trying unsuccessfully to calm them and berating himself for adding the phrase to the address. When some of the cheering at last died down, a voice began to cut through it. All heads turned to look for the source.