Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller (43 page)

Machry sighed again, and turned his head to look out the window, fixing his eyes on a scattering of sun rays bursting through the usual clouds of early spring. "I'm afraid to say you may be right, Dave. I'm calling in sick today anyway. I've got some decisions to make."

"At least you've got time," Dave said. When Machry looked back at him, he was surprised to see Dave's face. It was always difficult for Dave to do anything quietly, subtly, in the shadows. However, what Machry saw on his friend's face was nothing but the tail of a lingering smile; it cast Dave in an altogether different light. "I've got one more article for you."

When Hart opened his eyes, he realized that he had slid forward and was in danger of collapsing onto the floor. Grunting, he heaved himself back up and looked at the clock hanging on the opposite wall: 6:40 A.M. It hadn't felt at all like he'd been asleep for the last two hours—he didn't even remember closing his eyes—but it had been a strange night in the extreme.

Alex had been saved by the chance of a passing insomniac, a citizen of Sawtooth taking a late-night walk on the wide main street. He had said that he knew the location of a small clinic, which served as the town's hospital, and Hart let him take the wheel of Jean le Potard's car. They arrived after five tense minutes, and, with help from the stranger, Hart carried Alex into the ward, where a doctor and nurse were working the night shift. The doctor examined the wound and the nurse changed the blood-soaked bandage, but the doctor admitted that he didn't have the tools to remove the bullet.

"You call yourselves a hospital!?" Hart remembered shouting.

The doctor rubbed his eyes slowly, and looked up, his face filled with pain. "We're not a hospital. Just a clinic. You must have noticed—we're too isolated out here to have up-to-date medicine."

Hart had shouted, and was considering a resort to intimidation when the doctor said he'd radio an ambulance helicopter from the nearest hospital. The helicopter arrived a short time later, and the doctor told the pilot that he was "relatively sure" Alex would survive the trip. Hart hadn't even considered the possibility that Alex might not wake up. It was a one-outcome situation for him—anything other than his friend's recover was simply outside reality.

After watching the helicopter take off from the roof, the flattest surface the pilot could find, Hart thanked the insomniac and stepped back into the car. The cool leather seats and fancy dashboard struck him as garishly out of place in the night and his entire life. Potard's rented silver Mercedes was something he would never have approached, had he been given the choice. Even so, he allowed himself to ease slowly into the driver's seat before starting it again.

The Sawtooth doctor had shown him a map and pointed out where to go if he wanted to follow the helicopter—the town of Cold Lake, on the opposite side of the water from where they had been. It took Hart about two hours to arrive there.

And so, there he was, getting intermittent reports as Alex was moved from surgery to the ICU. Now that he was awake, his thoughts began drifting again, inevitably sailing back to the bloody field beside the lake, to the body he had left lying there.

He had almost begun to doze again when he was startled into wakefulness by a gentle shaking of his shoulder. Irritated, he looked up into the eyes of a masked surgeon.

"Can you tell me what's going on?"

"We can," the surgeon said, lowering his mask. "He's going to live."

Hart was unaccustomed to the feeling of relief, but could only describe it as one of the greatest feelings he'd ever experienced. Relief was different from happiness—it had nothing to do with leaping for joy, smiling, thinking good thoughts. Relief was the happiness of someone who knew exactly what was behind him, and ahead, and welcomed the good news wearily.

"We did some repairs to the bone and patched up the skin as best we could. He'll need to stay here for another day, though. But you can go and visit him now," the surgeon was saying. "Right down that hall, in the recovery ward."

"Yeah," Hart said. "Thanks."

"You know, kid, I really admire what you've been doing," the surgeon added. "Bringing him here, waiting all this time. Are you two brothers? Cousins or something?"

"No," Hart replied, standing up. "I met him a week and a half ago." Then he left, leaving the bemused surgeon in the waiting room to puzzle over this parting phrase.

Alex, wearing a hospital robe and with an uncomfortable-looking IV in his arm, appeared to be asleep when Hart entered the room. Not knowing exactly what he should do, he contented himself with sitting in the cushioned wooden chair between the two beds, the other of which was unoccupied. He shifted in the chair and wondered how long he would have to wait. As he watched, however, one of Alex's eyes opened slowly, then both of them. He caught sight of Hart, who looked back uneasily.

"Where am I?" he murmured, barely coherent.

"You're in a hospital," Hart said, "in Cold Lake. The town."

"My leg—" Alex whispered, his voice suddenly clear with worry.

"It's all right," Hart told him, trying to sound calm and gentle. "They got the bullet out. You'll be fine."

"What about—Sarah!" he breathed, tensing. "And—Anthony—he's not here, is he?"

"They're all right too," Hart told him. He hadn't made a conscious decision to lie; he just knew by instinct that Alex was in no condition to take bad news. "They're in Sawtooth."

"Sawtooth," Alex murmured, testing the word on his tongue. "Sawtooth. I can't even remember how long I've waited to hear that." He let out his breath and relaxed his muscles. For a moment Hart thought he was going to sleep again, but then he muttered faintly, "Why did you help me?"

For some reason Hart did not fully understand, this greatly annoyed him. "Should I have left you there?" he said irritably.

"It's not—" Alex made a feeble attempt to rise, but dropped back onto the mattress. "It's not that I don't appreciate it. I just want to know why."

Hart was silent.

"I mean, I never trusted anybody. You trusted Anthony, and you trusted me…how does that kind of mind work? What was it that made you help me?"

"Want the best answer I have?"

"Anything helps."

Hart fidgeted in his chair. "I wanted to pay you back."

Alex pushed his pillows backwards against the headboard on the bed, and sat himself up against them. He smiled wryly. "What for?"

"I owe you…" Hart hesitated and trailed off. "…everything," he finished.

Alex was taken aback. "All I did was let you follow me."

"That's all it took. So I saved your life, and we're even."

Alex let himself slide gradually into recumbence again. "So now you don't owe me anything. Are you going to go back to being Anthony's goon?"

Hart scowled. "I wouldn't kill someone in a hospital bed. Maybe Anthony would, but I wouldn't."

"No," Alex said, thoughtfully, "no, I don't think Anthony would."

They sat in silence for a while. Finally Alex said, "When do I get out of here?"

"A day, the doctor said."

"One day," Alex said to himself, almost contemplatively. "Just one day…and…then I'm going to Sawtooth.
We're
going to Sawtooth. I'll see Sarah again…and maybe I can even patch things up with Anthony, if he'll listen."

"Then it's on to building a new life?" Hart asked, with a pointed note of facetiousness.

"Hardly," Alex replied. "After that, we surrender to the cops. I'll face however many sentences they want to give me. It's just…I don't know. After all that's happened…jail doesn't sound so bad."

He turned onto his side, facing away from Hart, who was left to close his eyes and wonder when he was going to tell the truth.

"It's also from today," Dave said, searching under the pile of papers littering Machry's table. "In the back of the local section. I take it you haven't looked there?"

"I never do."

"All right, well, here it is. Page 6, right at the top." Dave finally extracted a pile of paper and handed it to Machry, who flipped through it.

Dave hadn't needed to tell him the location of the article—it caught him instantly as he was paging through, and he began to read carefully, taking in every word.

ALEX ORSON FOUND ALIVE IN SASKATCHEWAN

Alexander Matthew Orson, 13, the fugitive and murder suspect believed to be dead by police, was seen early today entering the town of Sawtooth in northeastern Saskatchewan. After traveling down the town's main street, he surrendered himself to police. One companion, Hart McGee, 14, was with Orson, but did not surrender and was not arrested.

Orson was previously suspected in the murders of three people in Canada's southeast. He stood trial for this, along with two suspected accomplices, in Ridge City, Ontario. The proceedings were disrupted before the jury could deliberate. The case will be considered today in a Regina courthouse, and a judge will decide whether or not further trial is necessary.

Orson's companions, Sarah Jones, 12, Jacob Harwell, 13, and Anthony Anderson, 13, were not present. Their current whereabouts are unknown.

Word of Orson's survival had previously reached many people in the area, as he underwent an unknown surgical procedure yesterday morning in the nearby Cold Lake Regional Hospital.

Sawtooth, Saskatchewan, is famous for controversial laws allowing minors to take up residence in the city.

Machry read no further. By the time he looked up from the paper, tears were already sliding from his eyes, rolling in slow processions down his face. He laid the paper down on the table.

"Henry," Dave said, quickly, "Henry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"It's okay, Dave." Machry got up from his chair, and slowly paced across the room, to the window. Even though it was 55 degrees outside, he undid the latches and pushed it open. He took a long sniff of the crisp air, gulping it in. "Everything I knew," he said. "Everything I learned, everything I did…I was just trying to distract myself from failure. I failed Alex. I left him to fight for himself. And even once I knew everything, I couldn't help him."

"Henry, it's all right," Dave said softly. "It wasn't your job to save him."

"It's my job to save people!" Machry snapped, whirling around and causing Dave to start backwards. "That's all I'm here for," he said, his voice raised, "and I even screwed that up. How can I call myself a social worker?"

"We didn't sign up to fight society, Henry!" Dave shouted. "We don't work to destroy cruel systems, or fight for justice, or whatever it is you think you should be doing. The only purpose of social worker is to do whatever he can to make things right. And you…you did that. You did it exceptionally."

Machry stood silently for a moment. Then, he reached atop the cabinet nearest to him, and brought down a clear, half-full bottle of scotch. He placed it carefully on the thin windowsill.

"You can't be serious, Henry," Dave said, sounding disgusted. "Not now. It's not even nine yet."

"Like I said," Machry replied, "I've got some serious decisions to make. You might not see me at work for a while."

With one finger, he tipped the bottle over and out the window, letting it shatter cacophonously on the slick patio below, leaving glass strewn across the stone walk, and a puddle of scotch sprayed over the frozen gray.

Alex, his leg still in pain, sat in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, holding his pair of stainless steel crutches across his lap. As they drove, the uncomfortable arrangement caused Hart to be jabbed repeatedly in the side, until finally Alex agreed to stand them upright between his knees.

Nothing that had occurred, that night, the night before, or any other, could have prepared them for what they saw as they drove into Sawtooth the day after the surgery. Alex's mind was on the reunion with Sarah and Anthony, and what awaited him after he submitted to the law. Hart, having been told by Alex that he did not need to surrender as he was not under suspicion, was thinking about the unpaid hospital bill and what would happen to him next, after Alex was gone.

On the outskirts of town, Alex pointed toward something by the side of the road. "What do you think they're here for?" he asked, after recognizing that it was a crowd of people, bundled into winter clothing, admiring the blue skies, watching the road. Suddenly, one of them broke from the rest and pointed directly at the car, shouting something. All of the others instantly broke into raucous cheers.

"I think they're here for you," Hart said.

Alex turned to Hart. "Did you give the doctors my real name!?"

"I might have."

Hart slowed to a stop at the center of town and parked alongside the road. The crowds, which by now seemed to include the entire population of Sawtooth as well as some others, had already lined up along the sidewalks. The thing that was most distinctive about this crowd, Alex thought, was the fact that it seemed to be made up of a disproportionate number of children and teenagers; possibly about a quarter of the people there. Several of them, Alex could see, were waving signs; some had started chanting his name. He opened his door and carefully placed the tips of his crutches on the road. The crowd surrounded him immediately, shaking his hand and slapping him on the back, until finally he had to call for them to back away. He had no idea why they seemed to support him so aggressively, but he had to admit that the sight was making his heart swell, even as he searched the crowd desperately for the sight of one single face.