Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller (42 page)

Hart released his pressure when the flow of blood appeared to be stemming, and turned his attention to the makeshift wound dressing. Somebody watching his steady, sure fingers would have no idea how hard he was working to keep them that way. He searched within himself and tried to come up with something from the way he was before he left—but didn't know what. Old Hart and New Hart were both incredibly abstract concepts to him. At last he settled on something—the excitement he'd always feel just before a fight.
Pretend I'm brawling for cash again
, he thought,
pretend I'm about to floor some guy.

He let that feeling flow through his veins, and in one tense instant of which he would later have almost no recollection, raised Alex's leg, wrapped the bandage around the bullet hole and tied it off tightly.

He felt suddenly as if something great had been lifted from him; and he sank back in the snow, letting the smile form that wanted to form. After allowing himself a moment, he returned to thinking about the greater problem—how to get Alex to the nearest town…to Sawtooth.

His first idea was that Ordoñez had to have used a car to get here, but that thought soon faded when Hart realized that the keys would be at the bottom of Cold Lake. Deprived, once again, of options, he decided that the best course of action would be to search the woods, and began to drag his feet through the snow in the direction of the cliff.

The snowstorm was weakening, but visibility was still fairly low; and Hart knew the dangers of navigating in a whiteout. He therefore touched the rough rock of the cliff face with the palms of his hands, and used it to guide him, knowing it would eventually lead him to the forest path.

His foot caught on something, and he lost his balance, landing face first in the snow. He brushed it out of his eyes, trying not to think about how stupid he probably looked. As he moved to get up, his foot struck something again; and he had to admit that it didn't feel like a rock or a fallen tree.

Slightly curious now, he turned around and brushed the snow from a large pile beside the cliff. He revealed a surface of something—it was a pinkish color, almost flesh-toned.

It was somebody's corpse. To anyone but Hart—and perhaps Anthony—the sight of a dead man buried in a snowbank would elicit surprise, fear, and a full-scale investigation. To Hart, the reaction was all about trying to piece it together—who was this man? How did he die?

Did he have a car?

Excited now, Hart began to dig feverishly through the snow—perhaps his keys had fallen when he died?

In his digging, he unearthed something else—a rock, lying on its side. It looked strange, and although Hart had to admit that it looked remarkably like the flesh of a face, he couldn't believe that there could be two unexplained corpses lying side-by-side.

Then, he brushed more snow away, and looked upon the face.

For a moment, Hart didn't register exactly what he'd seen. Some part of his brain forgot to tell him that he had not always known who was lying dead at the base of this frozen cliff in the Canadian wilderness. The second he realized it, he tried to forget, clasping his hand over his eyes and holding back the urge to weep, to wail so that his scream would be heard echoing between the trees and rivers, to cry out from beneath the weight of his redemption.

"Christ…" he murmured. "How am I gonna tell Alex?"

He dropped to the ground and lay there for a long time, unsure of what he was expecting to happen. At last, he managed to force himself back up onto all fours, knowing that nothing would save him or Alex other than continuing his work. He continued to push the piles of snow back and forth, looking halfheartedly for the sight that would set his mind off again. But with every snowbank he turned inside out, the less confident he grew, and the more his thoughts strayed to the numb face, her closed eyes…

In frustration, he cried out and hurled the man's body onto its stomach. It crashed several feet down into the snow, and as Hart surveyed the fruits of his labors, his eye caught something that did not belong, but definitely did.

Working rapidly, he pushed the snow aside, and clutched in his dirty, freezing fingers, a small ring of keys.

"Well done!"

The voice came seemingly out of nowhere, and Hart thrust his hand to his pocket, only to remember that he'd brought no weapon.

"Sorry, Hart," Anthony said, grinning repulsively. "I'm holding the guns this time. I'd say you've earned one, though," he added, tossing Hart one of the pistols he was holding. Hart caught it in both hands. "Careful with that. We've only got two left."

Hart could not speak. Who was Anthony? Did he fit into any part of the night?

"Thanks for going after Sarah," Anthony went on. "I wish you'd waited for me, but neither of us like to wait for commands, I know. That's what I like about you."

Hart was still numb. Did Anthony understand that Alex was at this moment dying? Did he know that Sarah was dead? Would he care in either case?

"Where is she, anyway?" Anthony's tone changed, and he looked around the field. "And why the hell are we standing out here? Let's find someplace warm."

"Anthony," Hart croaked, "I can't leave."

Anthony's face hardened. "What's the matter with you?"

I can barely put it together.
"Alex—and Ordoñez," he said.

"You met Ordoñez?" Anthony looked Hart in the eyes, and Hart knew that in the depths of his soul, Anthony wanted to know everything. "Hart—where is he?"

Hart pointed mutely to the lake.

Anthony broke into a smile. "Are you
serious
!? You got him? Way to go!"

Hart thrust out his hand and pushed Anthony away. "It was Alex. Not me."

"Alex. You're joking." All trace of mirth left him. "Where is he? Is he still alive?"

"Not much," Hart said. "But still a little." He extended his arm in the direction of Alex's recumbent form.

Anthony walked grimly over to the body and crouched on the ground beside Alex's head. "Remember what I said?" Not waiting for an answer, he continued. "When he left I said that I'd shoot him in the head if I ever saw him again."

Hart ran, his feet pounding in the snow, and came to a stop by Alex's feet, standing at his full height. "You don't keep promises."

"Maybe," Anthony said, softly. "But I think this time I might like to try."

"Anthony, no! You don't—aren't—"

Anthony extended the arm with the remaining pistol, and turned the chamber with his thumb, making it click solidly. "Dead weight, Hart!" he shouted, his words unreadable, masked with fury. "Good for nothing but slowing us down. Wouldn't you like him to be gone? For good?"

"No!"

Anthony placed the barrel against the side of Alex's head. "I don't know if you can hear me in there, but goodbye, Alex!"

"
No!
" Hart had aimed the pistol unconsciously, in a split second, directly parallel to where Alex lay. He fired blindly, and the cold handle of the gun was the last thing Anthony knew before he was lifted backwards off his feet and flung through the air, coming to rest at last in a drift of snow.

Hart swung his arm in a wide arc, and let go of the gun, letting it spin through the air. It dropped to the snow, where the wind began to cover it. Then, just as Alex had himself done, Hart lifted the body onto his shoulders, and began running, carrying Alex across the frozen remains of his consciousness.

He tore for the forest, not daring to stop until he saw his salvation, placed his hand on the cool window, slid the keys in and out of the doors, and laid his burden carefully across the back seat.

CHAPTER 28

The End of the Road

There was no fanfare when they crossed the line. Hart kept his foot to the gas pedal all the way in, only easing it off when he saw that they had arrived in the center of town. As quickly as he could, he shut the car off, kicked open his door, and wrenched open the back. He looked wildly around the street.

"Hey!" he called out randomly. "We need help!"

Alex retained none of the ride. His only recollection was a vague sense of having woken in the middle of the crossing into Sawtooth, Saskatchewan, barely able to see the sign rolling past the window before descending again into the dark.
That's good,
he thought sleepily.
That's good.

Roland Johnson's body was found two days later, in a ditch beside Interstate 81. A passing vehicle noticed a strange object beside the road, and, possessing that uniquely human mixture of curiosity and suspicion, the population of the car, a man, woman and young child, parked and went to check it out. It didn't take long for the wife to realize that there was a man's leg in the ditch and beat a quick path back to the van, making sure to shield the baby's eyes and leaving her husband to uncover the rest of the corpse and report it to the highway patrol.

Later, the man would testify that Roland's skin was frigid to the touch, and his wife would swear she saw his face frozen in a last look of determination, as if he had forced himself to keep walking even as the interior and exterior of his corporeal form succumbed to the elements. The coroner's report found Roland "unequivocally" dead from acute hypothermia.

"Madness," said one of the police who arrived at the scene. "He'd have to be crazy to hike into a storm like that."

"Either there was some heck of a prize ahead of him," he said later in his deposition, "or there was hell behind him."

Machry folded his paper shut, crumpling it at the crease, and handed it to Dave. "Here," he sighed. "I've read it a hundred times in two days."

Dave eagerly grabbed the local section and began perusing the article,
Local Entrepreneur Found Dead
. His eagerness vanished by the second paragraph, replaced by a furrowing of his brow. Machry watched him as he read, slightly amused at the progress of emotions across his friend's face. When he was finished, Dave folded the newspaper more neatly than Machry and set it down on an empty spot of the table. "They certainly took some liberties with the details, didn't they?" he said, disappointed and bemused.

"Truth," Machry said, by way of a reply, "is different from fact." Dave shook his head slowly, looking up at the ceiling. "Are you going to sit?" Machry asked. "I hate it when people stand up. Makes me feel like I don't deserve to sit."

"For Pete's sake, Henry, it's your house," Dave replied, drawing a chair to the table and picking up his cup of rapidly cooling coffee. They were in the spacious kitchen of Machry's home, populated by a coffee table, a dominating refrigerator, and white-painted walls lined with kitchenware—a toaster, a blender, a mostly unused stove.

"You said you had something to tell me?" Machry asked, draining a quarter of his coffee mug it one gulp.

"To show you, actually." Dave reached into the back pocket of his pants and drew out a clipped article.

Machry groaned. "More newspaper?"

"You haven't seen this one, I assure you," Dave said, evidently happy at his ability to surprise Machry. "It's not in the local paper. Front page of the New York Times, though, yesterday. Go on, read it," he insisted, pushing it across the table to Machry, who took it and examined the headline:

OTTAWA POLICE RAID MEETING OF SUSPECTED REVOLUTIONARY GROUP

At approximately 11:51 yesterday, special police units in Ottawa, Quebec, surrounded a downtown office building serving as the headquarters for a terrorist organization known as the Moose Killers. After a spokesman for the group refused to surrender, the police approached the building and were fired on by armed members of the militants. One Ottawa police officer was killed and four wounded, one critically.

According to police, three gunmen were fatally shot, and none were found wounded. Much of the Moose Killer force was apparently able to escape the standoff. Four, including the spokesman and ringleader Edmund McTavish, were arrested at the scene.

Initial investigation into the Moose Killers, who operated from behind a shell corporation called The McTavish Group, portrayed them as an organized crime family. However, more recent surveillance has turned up a complex plan to seize national power.

"The plan was elaborate, but almost airtight," said special unit chief Michel Rodin. "It's scary to think of how easily it could have been pulled off."

The raid on the McTavish group was authorized by decisive testimony from a witness and former operative, Ramon Gutierrez.

Machry skimmed over the rest of the article, then looked up at Dave. "They're not gone, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"It's hardly over. Just because the Moose Killers are on the run, doesn't mean they'll just go away."

"Henry—" Dave said, before cutting himself short. "Can you ever be happy about anything?"

"I can't say there's much to be happy about. Not right now."

"Henry…" Dave began, sounding genuinely concerned. "How are you? I mean, really? That police work can't have been good for you. You've been acting so strange at work lately. It's like…" he paused, searching for a word, "like you're not content to live your life anymore. Like you used to be, and now…you're just not."