Grave Concern (34 page)

Nicholas scurried back to the road to meet the ambulance attendants. Kate, assigned to stay with Buck, sat listening as his words, one by one, were replaced with breathy heaves, then quiet sobs. Poor old Buck, thought Kate. First, he shoots himself in the foot and then does it again, only higher up.

The next day, Kate returned home from visiting Buck in hospital to a few emails, several of which looked like spam. She went to delete the whole lot when a rogue brainwave made her hold back. She double clicked on the second-last message. It was Leonard, writing from Vietnam!

Kate, did you wonder where I went? Hope so. We got word my aunt, my mom's sister here, died suddenly, of what we gather was a brain aneurysm. She was quite a bit younger than my mom, only 63. My mom was pretty close to Auntie Hue when they grew up, so she's devastated. Must be weird for her and Dad — the funeral, of course, and visiting family they haven't seen since the 70s! They were glad to have me along. You know how it is on long flights. Or maybe you don't. There's much I don't know about you — I realize that now. It all happened too fast to give you a call before I left. Emotions running high. We'll be here about two weeks. Maybe you've seen the note at the store? Or maybe you've been too busy to notice! Looking forward to a good movie and some Carmenere (sp?) when I get home. Leonard

Kate hit “Reply”:

Leonard. So sorry to hear about your aunt. Please give my condolences (for what they're worth — haven't had the famous meeting yet!) to your mom and dad. Ongoing excitement of small town living overruled worries re your absence. Cougar has been possibly sighted (fuzzily, on tree-mounted camera). Buck (now known as Buckshot) Miller has been shot in the groin (as opposed to foot) by, it turns out, someone else. Likely culprit Bill (Lord High Chamberlain) Chambers, who's now in deep doo-doo. Despite the doo-doo, the blackflies have settled down quite a bit. So, depending on how you cut it, you've either missed a lot or not much. Call when you get back. Kate

There was a kind of logic to it. She was already on the computer, her fingers were warmed up. Before she could change her mind, Kate punched “Extraordinary Wayne” into her search engine. On the screen, something flashed and disappeared so fast Kate didn't have a chance to read it, let alone click the link. She poked “Enter” again. No tantalizing flash this time, just
Extraordinary Love
, a downloadable song by someone she'd never heard of.

“Down ya go!” Foxy commanded.

“Fuck off.”

“You're skinnier. I could get stuck.”

“Fuck off. This was your idea.”

“Yeah, I'm the brains. You're the brawn. Get in.”

Nicholas looked doubtfully at the black hole.

“Look, how far can it be?” said Foxy. “Six feet at most. Just turn around, put your hands on the ground like this and stick your feet in first. Lower down till your arms are straight. Then let go. Piece o' piss. For sure you'll land on your feet.”

“Did you even bring a flashlight?” Nicholas asked.

“Does it look like it, moron?”

“Got a lighter, at least?”

“Have you ever known me to smoke?”

“Not cigarettes.”

But Foxy fished around nonetheless and came up with a pack of matches. “Hey, you're in luck.”

He tossed it in the air. Nicholas caught it and stuffed it in the pocket of his cutoffs. “Okay, here goes!”

By doing as Foxy had suggested, Nicholas found himself hanging by his hands from the lip of the coal chute in total darkness. The inner wall of the cellar was cold on his bare belly, exposed by his bunched-up shirt. He couldn't last long hanging here, he knew. His feet felt around for purchase. Besides the wall, nothing.

“I'll count to three,” said Foxy helpfully. “One, two — ”

“Fuck off,” said Nicholas. “I'll go when I'm friggin' well ready.”

“Yeah, well, don't take all night!”

“Hey, I just had an idea,” said Nicholas. It was getting harder to breathe.

“What?” said Foxy, world-weariness in his voice.

“You go.” But just then, Link's grip weakened. He had little choice but to let go. He landed heavily and fell back on his bum, bumping his head quite hard on a wall.

“Shit!” He sat with his head in his hands. For a minute he thought he might throw up. It felt like the time back in Peewee hockey when he got the concussion. Then, he'd had to lie in a dark room for a week, no TV or books or even stereo allowed. No school either, though — the only bright spot in an otherwise unpleasant week.

“What's going on? You still alive?” shouted Foxy.

“Fuck off!” Nick shouted back. He stuck out his hand and felt around in the dark. Concrete, concrete, concrete. He was entombed in a concrete cell with no exit but the coal chute, straight up.

“What's it like?” Foxy yelled down from the hatch.

“Dark.”

“Light a match, stupid!”

“Oh. Yeah.” Dazed, Nicholas reached into his pocket, pulled out the matchbook, tore one out and zipped it along the striker. The match flared, and Link began to laugh. The concrete “room” was indeed tiny, but the walls were only chest-high. Some kind of coal-holding arrangement.

“What's so funny?” Foxy called down.

Nicholas ignored him. The match went out, and he lit another. Turned in a slow circle. Every inch of the coal pen's walls was soot-black. But — what was this? A door-like gap big enough to walk through. Slowly, he got up and brushed himself off. He felt dizzy and nauseous, but shuffled forward nonetheless. The second match went out. His toe bumped against something hard. He brought his other foot forward, and it too hit some obstacle, forcing his knees to buckle. Recovering his balance, he lit another match — a four-inch concrete lip between the coal pen and cellar floor he could easily step over.

As he did so, a shaft of light and noise shot down from above. A flight of stairs took shape in the light of an opened door, and a disembodied voice boomed, “Hold it right there, honey, I'll be back!” A stocky man, the source of the voice, was silhouetted at the top of the stairwell. Nicholas quickly shook his match out. He stood completely still as the man clumped down the stairs.

Though not thinking totally clearly, Nicholas was nevertheless moved to step back into the coal pen and hunch down. Sure enough, a switch was flicked, and the basement flooded with light. Some mutterings, clinking, heavy sighs and a couple of coughs — the barman getting more bottles to restock the bar. Nicholas had never been religious, but he prayed now. He prayed that stupid Foxy would not start yelling down the coal chute. After what seemed like ages, the light went out again, and the heavy man heaved and puffed up the dimly lit stairs. The door above closed, plunging Nicholas back into darkness.

Now what? With the aid of another match, Nicholas made his way over to where the man must have stood, an L-shaped jog in the room, lined with shelves. Bottles and bottles were indeed stored there. But how was he to get them out? Had Foxy, self-proclaimed head of this operation, thought of that? Nicholas walked back over to the coal pen and stage-whispered up the chute.

“Foxy!”

“Yeah!”

“There's bottles here. How the fuck do I get them out?”

“Isn't there some kind of back door?”

“Down here? No.”

“Upstairs, dimwit.”

“Oh yeah, and just how am I supposed to manage that?”

“You're tall, you could be twenty-one.”

“Right.
And
no ID.”

But how else was his nightmare ever going to end? Nicholas looked around for a box or bag. He found a case with two bottles of wine left. He removed the wine and filled the cardboard slots with rye, some Johnnie Walker, Captain Morgan's and, for the girls, a couple of bottles of Baby Duck. He took a huge breath, picked up the case and inched his way through darkness to the stairs.

As he climbed, he came up, at each stair, with a new excuse in case he was nabbed.
Ah, I'm just the go-fer around here. My parents are friends with the owner — they're having a party tonight. Some customers out back waiting for their off-licence.
The worst would be if he ran into someone he knew, or worse, who knew his parents. At the top of the flight, he supported the heavy box on one leg while he found the doorknob.
Please, please, don't be locked.
But the door opened smoothly.

An assault of light and sound. The steady thump of the bass resolved into an oldie — mostly the words
oh Donna
repeated over and over
.
Link peered through the door crack. He was in some kind of backroom/kitchen behind the bar. A couple of waitresses whizzed in and out. An older woman with red hair sat on a low stool out of patrons' sight, eating a soggy sandwich. Not ten feet away, his back to Nicholas, the stocky barkeep was pouring a highball. A stringy-haired patron grinned at something the barkeep said.

If either saw Nicholas, he'd be totally screwed. He continued to stand on the second-to-top step, peering through the crack, waiting for some change in the human arrangement. At one point, the barkeep moved toward him, and Nicholas instinctively pulled back, nearly toppling down the steps with the weight of the booze. But the man moved past the door, around a corner. Nicholas heard a fridge door open and close. With his knee, Nicholas nudged the door open another quarter inch. As far as he could see in any direction, there was no exit.

Judging by the size of the headline in the
Pine Rapids News
, Buck Miller's wounding commanded even more interest from Pine Rapids's denizens than fuzzy cougar sightings. Of the “persons of interest” identified by police, Bill Chambers, as evidenced by Nicholas's camera, had emerged as most interesting by far. Less clear was whether the shooting had been accidental or deliberate. If accidental, what possible excuse could Chambers have for swanning about with a gun so far out of hunting season? And if deliberate, what was the motive? Whichever proved to be the case, the chief of police was quoted as saying, there was going to be trouble —
with a capital T
.

Quoted too was Prakash Gupta who, as reeve of the area in which the shooting occurred (although everyone really considered it part of the town), gave out some suitably shocked drivel. But it served to remind Kate of Gupta's visit to her office. What had he said about the vigilantes?
Some are going one way, some the other.
Had the rivalry over the cougar's fate really come to this — a shooting, attempted murder, even? Kate's thoughts turned further back to what Leonard dryly proclaimed the
social event of the year
. She played the scenes in her living room over in her mind. Who had beaten on whom? After some thought, she came up with a kind of “team” list: Bill Chambers, Foxy Raymond, and Ron Anonymous versus Buck Miller and Prakash Gupta. Nicholas somehow figured into the mess, but as a wild card. Not especially liked by either side.

Kate was wrenched from this reverie by a raucous knocking at the door. Kate hated raucous knocking. There was a perfectly good bell. Why couldn't people teach their children to behave like civilized citizens instead of storm troopers? She got up and opened. Nicholas swayed on her doorstep, as wild-eyed as when they were teens, exuding a keen stench of whiskey.