Murder on Ice (13 page)

There was a jumble of prints against the back door. I stood there a moment, weighing alternatives. Then I pulled off my snowshoes, laying them flat, out of harm's way, and grasped the handle of the door. With my guts clenched into a tight ball I slammed the door open and threw myself for the corner of the cottage, rolling as I fell, curling my body around the corner out of the way.

I had a whole second left. I waited, pulling tight into the snow, aware of the nonstop hissing of the new snow drifting down on me. Nothing happened. I waited thirty seconds, then stood up. This time I opened the door calmly. Then I pulled my flashlight and checked the crack in the door for any sign of a trip wire connected inside. I couldn't see one. It seemed to me that was the way they would have set the trap, using a string which would be tightened as the door opened. There are other ways, better ways, but trip wires are the closest thing to foolproof.

When I was sure there was no trip, I lifted the flap on the right side of my hat, leaving the ear exposed, drew my gun, and pushed the door open another foot with my knee. Nothing happened. No metallic click alerted me to dive for safety. Moving quickly, I slid in around the door and dropped into a low crouch.

I was in the kitchen of the cottage, in darkness except for the beam of my light. There was nobody here. Under the door I could see the faint orange wedge of lamplight from the room where I had left my prisoner. I pushed the flashlight back into my pocket and opened the door slowly and carefully, checking for devices. There was nothing to see and I slammed the door wide open and jumped in, crouching low.

My prisoner was in the room, still cuffed to the log box. He did not move and there was no sign of anyone else in the room. I kept my gun at the ready and searched the cottage, bedrooms, closets, everything. There was nobody there but me and the prisoner, who still had not moved. I put my gun away and went to look at him.

His head was turned away from me, lying with one cheek on the stones surrounding the stove. I didn't like the look of him. He was too still. Had I hurt him more badly than I thought?

Still wary, I crouched and knelt on his free hand, then rolled his face toward me. He was dead, but it was nothing I had done. Someone had battered him with a log from the box. He had a massive injury over one eye and a second wound, a depression in the region of the temple. Blood had seeped out and matted, drying on the stones and sticking his hair to the surface.

I checked for a pulse automatically, even though I've seen enough corpses to know that this battler had thrown his last karate chop.

|
Go to Table of Contents
|

I
did the only thing that made any sense—unlocked my handcuffs and put them back in their pouch. There was nothing to be done for the dead man, this side of an inquest, anyway. I had nothing to gain from staying here. I pulled the curtains over the window in case there was a sniper out there waiting for a clear shot at me. It didn't seem likely. They would not have drawn a bead. They would have thrown another grenade through the window once I was inside. If they had any more. But I was nervous and I did the only thing I could to protect myself.

There was a telephone on the kitchen wall. Not surprisingly, most of our island cottages are owned by wealthy people. They can afford the luxury of a phone cable even when they still go along with the anachronism of oil or gas lamps. A phone line is cheap, hydro lines for adequate power cost thousands to install. I picked up the phone and dialed the emergency number of the Ontario Provincial Police.

The voice at the other end said, "Corporal Reinhardt," and I felt better at once. I knew Harry Reinhardt. He was the station officer who contacted me when there were missing kids or stolen cars that might end up in a backwater like Murphy's Harbour—routine stuff. I'd struck up enough of a phone friendship with him to have had him and his family fishing up here last fall. He was a steady guy.

"Harry, this is Reid Bennett at the Harbour."

"Hi, Reid. Hell of a night, what are you up to?"

"I'm up to my axles in trouble, is what. I've still got that kidnapping and homicide I called you about, but now I've got two more homicides to report."

"Two more?" His voice went up an octave.

"Three altogether. The strangling, a blast victim, Irv Whiteside, the guy who runs—make that used to run—the Lakeside Tavern, and now a guy who called himself Nighswander, blunt instrument."

"Jesus Christ." He took a deep breath. "What in hell's going on?"

"It would take all night to explain but it started with the kidnapping. I need some troops, and I need 'em bad."

"Listen, Reid, we've got nothing moving right now, but I'll put you through to Parry Sound. Talk to the Inspector, he's the senior man tonight."

I thanked him and waited and another voice said, "Inspector Anderson."

"Chief Bennett, Murphy's Harbour. Inspector, we've got big trouble here." I gave him the outline and he asked a few questions—good questions that made me admit I had no idea what was going on or where it was likely to end, but that it could go on some more and maybe leave us with another corpse—the Carmichael girl. I didn't add that it might leave me dead in the snow. He would think I was overdramatizing.

He paused and I bored in. "I need your help, Inspector. I need a roadblock on the highway, north and south of the turn-off to the Harbour. And I'd like a check of motels for a vehicle towing an empty snowmobile trailer. It might give me a lead on the people involved."

He snorted an officious little laugh. "So you need help. You're into something you can't solve with a gun and you come crawling to the proper authorities."

"I'm not crawling, I'm following authorized procedures." I could guess what he was going to say and I wanted it over so we could go back to being two policemen on parallel courses instead of haughty parent and delinquent child—me.

"Authorized procedures are for me to be responsible for my own region, not for some Wild West war hero who stirs up a mess and then comes running."

"Let's skip the editorials. I'm doing the same as you—my best. I've been chasing down the disappearance of a girl. Now it's gone beyond one man's ability to handle and I'm asking for expanded help."

"Just like you did last summer, when we had to come up and bail you out."

That finally made me mad. "You couldn't bail out a leaky punt. Your men arrived in time to find me with all the troublemakers laid out like cordwood. All they did was get their names in the goddamn paper."

"That's it." He was gleeful now. "That's what you're after, publicity, glamor. You're not a policeman, you're a goddamn amateur."

"Cut the crap." It is not the way to speak to OPP inspectors, but he was way off limits. "I've carried out my duties here to the limit of my abilities. Now I'm asking you for the extended care you're paid to provide. Are you going to do it or not?"

"Who the hell do you think you're talking to?"

I had never met Inspector Anderson, but I could imagine him at the other end, veins swelling in his neck above the clean white collar he hadn't had to soil by climbing cabins and fighting with potential killers. I could see his clerk, some OPP constable, looking on respectfully while he thundered.

"I think I'm talking to a professional peace officer who has sworn the same oath as I have to uphold the same laws and to assist other police departments as requested. Is that true or isn't it?"

That got through. It was all kosher. Once the murderer left my patch he was the target of all policemen. It was this man's duty to help me, no matter how much he resented the publicity I'd gotten the year before for sorting out a problem singlehanded.

After a long pause he came back more calmly, still not apologetic. "If you stop and look out of the window, you will observe that it's snowing."

"I'm at a homicide scene on an island. I arrived here five minutes back by snowmobile."

That silenced him completely, and he went on more reasonably when he began again. "Then you should appreciate that the highways are closed. Nothing's moving. I've got three cars out and they're all snowed in at gas stations. The snowplow driver has been pulled off the road for the night. He'll start again when it stops coming down."

That much was good news. It meant we were sealed off from the rest of the world. The only way out was by skidoo, and even that wasn't certain. The kidnappers wouldn't move the girl far tonight. By daylight, when the roads opened again, it would be different. A fresh inspector would be on duty with the OPP and he would do what I needed, instigate a search of all cars leaving our area.

The Inspector cut into my planning. "Are you still there? I said the snowplow is off the road."

"Thank you for your information. I'll call back at daylight." I hung up and rang Harry Reinhardt back to talk police work.

"Harry, Reid again. I heard about the highway. I figure my rounders were heading for Toronto, but they'll have to wait. Can you do some phoning for me?"

He could and would. With nobody on the road he had no radio work to carry out, and all the law-abiding people of the region had been in bed for hours. He was glad of something to do.

"Fine. I need a check of the motels within a few miles each side of us, maybe the first dozen each way. Have they had any arrivals since eleven or so. If they have, descriptions. If you make a note for me, I'll call later and chase down any likely ones as soon as the plow's been through."

With all that accomplished I turned out the gaslight and left the way I had entered. I made a point of jumping out of the door, but nobody shot at me so I clipped on my snowshoes and went back through the never-ending snow to my skidoo. I was glad to feel that the wind was dropping and the weather seemed a fraction less savage.

The machine started first pop and I headed back, keeping well north of the crack in the ice I had seen earlier, checking all the time to my right to be sure I wasn't closing on it. I was very anxious about Nancy Carmichael but I decided I would hit the mainland where I could and head back to the station, hang my little trailer behind the skidoo, and bring Sam with me for support. I would carry the station shotgun and head back to check all the cottages on this side of the lake. When I saw any signs of people coming and going, I would storm in. No law-abiding soul would have gone further than his woodpile tonight. Movement would mean intruders, which might mean Nancy and her gang.

These people must have thought they were clever, lifting her in Murphy's Harbour, but now they were locked in until the snow let up and I planned to use that time to nail them.

A ridge loomed in the ice ahead. I should have gotten off and tapped around it, making sure it was safe. But tired and preoccupied like I was, I didn't. Instead I opened the machine full bore and went over it.

I was twelve inches off the snow when the bullet zinged off the metal at the front of the machine.

My military self took over. I pushed the machine to the right and rolled off to the left. The ice was hard and I rolled three times before stopping, coming up with my gun in my hand. I lay for a second staring ahead through the snow and the darkness until I saw the muzzle flash of a gun.

It was forty yards ahead of me—about twenty from the skidoo, which had stopped when I released the throttle. That's a lunatic range for a handgun even if you can see the target clearly, which I couldn't. I ran forward, stopping every five steps to roll down and sideways, first left, then right. There were no more shots and I was halfway to the place where I had seen the flash. I stayed low, my gun pointed at the place. I saw the muzzle flash again, an oval blast of flame that let me know he was aiming at the machine, three-quarters of the right angle away from me. I knelt and fired, two handed. My gun only clicked. I fired again. Another click. That had never happened to me before with any weapon. I was lucky this wasn't any of the ambushes I'd encountered in Nam, otherwise some medic would be stuffing me into a body bag a minute or two from now.

I pulled the trigger a third time. Nothing. And as I realized that the girl on the ice must have emptied the gun, I saw a jet of sparks from the exhaust of a snow machine. The ambusher was getting away. Groping in my pants pocket for my spare shells, I ran after him, opening the chamber of the Colt as I ran, thumbing in a couple of bullets and snapping it shut. Before I could stop to aim, the sparks were snuffed out. I stopped and swore, then kept walking, gun held at the ready. And then I heard the cry. It was a man, terrified, drowning. His machine had gone into the cut.

I moved on slowly, pushing my gun back in my pocket. Through the teeth of the snow that needled my eyes I could see the black split in the ice surface. That was all, but I could hear the whimpering cry of a man in his last moments. I lay flat on the ice and squirmed forward toward the crack. With my weight spread, I should be safe enough to pull him out. And I wanted him. I wanted him badly. I shouted, "Over here. Kick! Kick!" and he spluttered something that I couldn't make out. He was five feet from me, buoyed up by the fancy down parka he was wearing, but by the look of him he couldn't swim. I knelt and took off my parka. The ice creaked under me and I dropped flat at once. I took out the gun and slipped it into the waistband of my pants, then flicked out the end of the parka to him. He grabbed it and pulled himself to the edge of the ice. I let him come, then, as he was trying to grip the ice surface, I whisked the parka away from him and he yelled again—a terrified squeal like a stuck pig.

I edged forward another foot or two until we were at arm's length. He stuck his hand out to me frantically but I didn't take it. "Where's the woman?"

He couldn't answer anything so complex, could hardly speak. "Please. I can't swim in these clothes. Help me." He made a weak attempt to pull himself up but I said nothing, just pulled on my parka, grateful that only the outside had gotten wet.

"You'll freeze and sink in about one more minute," I told him, and he screamed again, a choked, breathless wail of panic.