Murder on Ice (20 page)

"You didn't see if they had a skidoo?" The thought must have been preying on her—she blurted it out, then looked away.

"No need to worry, they can't get apart and the kid can't get dressed so they won't be going anywhere even if Tom ever gets his wind back." I winked at her and turned away. Dammit. I should have immobilized that skidoo. It was just simple common sense, but I hadn't done it. I'd been too busy soothing Val.

I didn't wait any longer. Sam came when I whistled and I took him out and connected up my little sled behind the skidoo. He jumped in on command and I left for my last chore of the night, a security check. That was all it would be, if I was to have any luck at all this night.

There was a time when I would have rushed up there and burst in. But tonight I was a policeman, not a Marine, and I wasn't going there to kill anybody, even Margaret. I was there to carry out my sworn oath, to protect life and property and maintain the Queen's peace. I wondered how to do it best.

There were a couple of choices, neither one practical. One was to try and sneak in through a window so I would have the drop on anyone causing mischief. That would have worked in a house, but the Legion was the standard northern Ontario social hall, built to keep out the cold. The windows were small and high and double-glazed. The door behind the stage was another option, but it was locked. Somebody would have to press the crush bar on the inside or I'd have to use an axe. No. Subtlety was out. I would walk in the front door with my gun in my right hand, half drawn, and my stick up my left sleeve. Sam would come with me. If anything was going down, he would help defuse it for me.

So that's what I did. The snow had drifted across the front door of the hall, but it was trampled where somebody had entered within the last hour. I prepared both weapons, called Sam after me, and went in. I was quiet, but anybody inside would have heard my snow machine. There would be no surprise.

The lobby was empty and there was no sound, no music, no talking or laughing. I pushed the door open and went in, Sam like a shadow at my heel.

The hall was full of people all sitting on the floor, legs crossed, facing the stage. Women were weeping silently and men were trying to soothe them. And on the stage sat Margaret Sumner with Rachael next to her holding a shotgun on Walter Puckrin, who was standing in front of the stage.

Rachael looked at me when I came in, flashed a quick look at Margaret, then back at me. But she didn't level the gun at me. If she had, I would have shot her, taking the chance on beating her to the reflexive action on the trigger, but I couldn't do that when it was a civilian who would be at risk. Fifty feet is chancy range for a revolver. I would need two seconds to aim and fire. In that time Puckrin would be dead. So instead I ambled forward, moving around the edge of the crowd, keeping myself isolated in case she did swing the gun toward me. I moved clumsily, the big dopey copper ready to trip over his own feet, a joke. If she would only relax long enough to laugh at me I could take her. She didn't laugh, didn't speak. It was Margaret Sumner who told me, "Put your hands on your head, Bennett."

I shrugged, let the gun slide back into the holster, and did as she said, but Margaret was onto me. "I know your gun is in your right-hand pocket. Take it out very carefully with your fingertips and drop it."

"Jeeze, Margaret, have a heart. I'm supposed to be a symbol to these people, how does this make me look?" Lesson one in hostage negotiations, don't let the person with the hostages build themselves a line of action. Whenever you can, change the subject, keep them wondering what you're talking about. Obey, if you must, but don't go along with everything unquestioningly.

"No more talk. The fat man dies if you screw around." She was cool, unimpressed. I took the gun out and lowered it to the floor, then pushed it with my toe away under the stage where nobody could reach it without crawling for twenty feet on hands and knees.

"Can't just drop it, it might go off," I said. Then before she could repeat her warning I said, "Oh, sorry. No more talking."

I had my hands up and I kept coming. The stick was still up my sleeve. The right swing of my arm would send it cartwheeling at Rachael. She would raise her arms to protect her head and I would have my two seconds to close in. If Margaret didn't have that grenade.

Margaret said, "Make your dog lie down, then sit and put your hands on your head."

I stroked Sam's head. "Down. Good boy." He obeyed, but he whined in his throat. He could smell the fear around him. He knew he was needed. He was baffled.

I turned back to Margaret. "I prefer to stand up. I've been on and off that damn snow machine all night."

She almost lost her cool. "I said sit!" she snapped, but I shrugged. "Gimme a break. I'm saddle sore." I was ten yards from the gun. If I could close to five I could win. Once I sat, the chance was gone. At last she shrugged. "So stand."

I was at one side of the hall. There were about eight couples sitting on the floor in the line between me and the woman with the gun. That had to change. Whoever got killed tonight, I would be the one blamed. After the arrests were made and the inquests held and Margaret and Rachael put in the Women's Penitentiary at Kingston, people would still go over what had happened here tonight and they would come back to blaming me. I was responsible for enough deaths. I didn't want any more at my door.

Margaret was watching me, still making up her mind whether to force me to sit. I spoke to her, my voice totally serious now. "Can we have a word in private?"

"I don't want to hear you talk any more," she said. Her face was as rigid as a Roman emperor's. In another minute she would turn her thumb down and Rachael would swing the gun around on me and it would be all over.

"I have a personal message for you."

"From whom?" Maybe an English professor, not political science, I thought.

"You wouldn't want me to say, not in front of all these people." Her eyes narrowed and I inched forward another pace.

"I know your background, Bennett. You're supposed to be resourceful and dangerous. I'm sure you've spent hours in classrooms preparing for scenes like this one. Just shut up and sit down or my friend here will pull the trigger on the fat man."

Walter Puckrin looked around at me. He said nothing, but he was afraid. It was forty years since he had won his medal, fighting against straightforward, businesslike enemies whose job it was to kill. He didn't understand this generation. He had learned their techniques from the TV news and he knew they had pulled triggers on people a lot more valuable or pitiable than he was. I looked back at him and then to Margaret.

"Please. My message is from Tom's father."

For a moment I thought I would have my chance at Rachael. The barrel of the gun wavered as she flicked her head around to look at me. I figured she was putting her own two and two together and wondering at the new architecture her group had developed since Margaret first approached her. I wondered if she would be disenchanted suddenly, if she might turn the gun on her leader instead of a bystander. But she turned back to stare at Puckrin with the old unflinching gaze. My country, right or wrong, my leader, single or married.

Margaret took her time before speaking. "You have no message. You have no knowledge. But I am beginning to believe you have seen a certain member of my group and I hope, for your sake, that he is well."

"Fine. Just fine." The right tone, apologetic, the response to someone who has trodden on your foot and is making polite inquiries. "The person I'm talking about is a former geologist, related to another person in your organization." All around me people were turning to one another, wondering what I was talking about. And wondering why I wasn't acting like a TV S.W.A.T. team, blowing people away from the muzzles of guns instead of talking to them in a rational tone of voice.

Margaret said, "You have a very active imagination. I'll grant you that. I guess you spend a lot of time watching TV."

I didn't mind the sneer. She was loosening, becoming personal when she should have been detached and distant. Insults were a crack in the wall. With work I could chip a hole big enough to climb through.

"TV, eh? Try this plot on for size. Young war hero comes out of college in the forties. Comes north to a place so remote you can get there only by float plane or canoe. Stays for a summer and starts romancing a local girl." She said nothing, but it seemed to me that some of the stiffness in her back and neck was softening out. She was listening.

"How am I doing so far? Anyway, hero is called back south and leaves a problem behind him."

She snapped, addressing Rachael, not me. "Keep that man covered. I have to talk."

She bent, put one hand flat on the stage, and slipped gracefully down to my level. She pointed at me. "You. Put your hands on your head and turn to face that wall."

This time I complied. It would make it next to impossible for me to swing and grab her, making her a shield and turning this scene into a Mexican stand-off. I didn't think Rachael would shoot while her leader was menaced. And I would menace her. I know holds that could snap her neck like a carrot. I turned, dutifully, standing two feet from the wall with room enough to swing around. But she was ready for that move. "Nose and toes to the wall."

I did it, moving in slowly. There was a crack in the plaster and it ran north and south through my consciousness, as raw as the Grand Canyon.

"Now." She said it very softly, from a couple of feet behind me. "I'll hear that message."

I ran through all the possibilities. It was like playing chess in a blindfold. I didn't know which pieces were important or what the reaction would be. I had to make this count. It was the last card in the hand.

"He was in tears." I let that dangle, but there was no reaction. I invented as quickly as I could, but kept my voice calm, just the messenger. "He was sent to Brazil. He got down to Montreal and they sent him off at once. He thought he was coming back up north again but instead they sent him overseas and when he got back it was too late to do anything. He wants to see you. He'd lost all track of you, and now he wants to see you."

This got a reaction. "And how does he propose to do that, with that blonde bombshell he's married to hanging around? What's she—number three, is it? Number four?"

I turned my head slightly and when she said nothing I turned my whole body to face her. I could see Rachael, over her head, still pointing that shotgun at Walter Puckrin, but watching us jealously. That was the emotion in her face. She loved this woman and I was certain in that moment that she would fire the shotgun as fast as she could pump new rounds into the chamber. I had to cool her out.

"He was in tears. And I don't think he's a man who does much crying. He wanted you to know that his life has been miserable."

There were many angry, vicious responses possible but she did not make them. She looked at me and said, "Miserable? How does he think his son has been? Foster homes, prison. Miserable! He doesn't know the meaning of the word. Misery to him is not making money fast enough, not laying the pretty girls fast enough, not drinking the good cognac and smoking the Havana cigars. He's miserable about things most people never even get to dream about."

My chances were improving. I could feel it. All I needed was time and quiet so I could be the sympathetic, understanding friend. People don't menace friends with shotguns. Soon the gun would be lowered and the menace would be over. Given time and a never-failing gift of gab.

"Your own life has been successful. You're an educated woman. You've got money. You're a credit to yourself."

"To my people," she corrected ironically. "That's the proper degree of patronage. As if an Indian were somehow incapable of being educated, especially when she starts off at the Salvation Army Grace hospital with a white man's baby in her belly and no money."

"I'm not patronizing you. I haven't lifted myself the way you did and I had all the breaks an Indian boy wouldn't have had. My father had a good job with INCO, I finished high school."

She looked at me unblinkingly. "You could have done it. You're tough enough to be Indian."

"I've had to be tough, but not that tough. I settled for three square meals a day and the uniform."

"Were there any Indians in the Marines?" It was an honest question and I was able to lower my arms as I answered. She was beginning to trust me. I was afraid she might wonder about her son. If she suspected I had put him down in a fight, had injured him and left him handcuffed, all this human interest, hearts and flowers mood would flash away like magnesium and turn into a white heat that would leave her capable of killing me. I had to tread a line to get some concessions now.

"One Pima, in my platoon. He lived through it. Last time I talked to any of the guys I heard he was running a gas station in New Mexico." All lies. He had come home in a body bag, what we found of him. I held out my hands pleadingly. "Margaret, these people here are frightened. Why don't you let them go?"

Her expression did not change but it seemed that the light in her eyes became less bright. "Have you been telling me the truth?"

"Every word. But I'm worried about these dumb people. The civilians. They don't know where anything's coming from. Turn them loose."

Rachael must have heard me, perhaps even read my lips, I swear my voice was no louder than a whisper. She shouted suddenly, "Don't listen to him. Action on behalf of women, that's why we're here."

I grabbed it, any reaction was better than nothing. "Fine, then. Let the women go. Keep the men, that emphasizes your point. Why don't you do that?"

Margaret looked at me a long time. I felt like the prisoner waiting for the judge to pronounce sentence. Would it be a year, life, or a dismissal? At last she spoke, calling out loud enough for all the people in the hall to hear. "The women may leave. No men. Just the women."

The hall broke out in a babble of talk. Rachael's voice rose over all of it, shrill, bitter. "It's a trick. Don't trust him." Margaret locked her eyes on mine, uncertain, wavering for a moment, and I took my cue. "No tricks. Women only, prove your point. I'll help you."