When the Killing Starts (7 page)

I frowned. "Can I use your telephone, please?"
 

"Help yourself." He pointed, and I sat on the desk and hooked the phone off the cradle.

"Thanks." I dialed out and asked the operator to connect me with the North Bay police. She put me through, and I was talking to Constable Dupuis. Good. I knew him. "Bonjour, Marcel," I said, and then rattled to him in French. He's bilingual but prefers French, and I'm fluent, so I paid him the courtesy. "Flight seventy-six from Toronto is coming in very soon at North Bay. There're three people on it I'd like detained. One is a bail jumper from Toronto, name of Wallace, K. Wallace." I described him. "He's from Georgia, talks like Gomer Pyle. He's on bail for a knife assault, so watch how you handle him. The kid I want is a J. Michaels, twenty, rich, five ten, dark hair. Can you hold them?"

"I'll try, Reid. We've only got one car on duty this morning. Maurice will be out at ten, but he's at mass right now." Maurice Gagnon was their detective sergeant.
 

"Can you try to get him out there after church? And make sure he's got his gun with him. Wallace can be ugly. In the meantime, can you have the uniformed guy check the airport, detain them? I'm on my way up there on the next flight."

"For sure," he said. Then he chuckled. "We heard you were on vacation with that actress lady."

"I am. But this came up, and she's working on a movie, so I'm at loose ends."

He made a frank French comment, and we both laughed, me dutifully, him with real amusement. Then I added the wild card. "The third guy who may be with them is called Dunphy. He's a dangerous SOB, but hold him if you can. He's wanted for assault." I gave him a description, and he wrote it down.

"Who did he assault?"

"Me," I said, and he laughed and broke into his accented English.

"'E assault you, an' 'e get away. You slowin' down, Reid. Good t'ing your lady workin' for a while."

"I'm fighting fit this morning. I'll be there as soon as I can."

The clerk had been listening. Like most Air Canada people, he was bilingual. He had gotten so wrapped up in my conversation that he hadn't kept track of his nasal drip. I handed him the tissue box off his desk. He took one and blew his nose. "I heard what you said about getting the next flight. I'm sorry to tell you, Chief, there's nothing else before six o'clock tonight. Get you to North Bay around seven."

"How about the other carriers?"
 

He shook his head. "No, there're a couple of flights early tomorrow, but nothing before that. I'm sorry. You want a seat?"

"No, thanks. I can make it up there by two if I bend a few laws," I said. "Thanks for the assistance. Please keep it all confidential. This is a police investigation."

"No problem," he said grandly. I left him rooting for more Kleenex.

Broadhurst was eating another doughnut, not making any progress with his photograph. I told him to keep on checking. I was just following a hunch about Michaels. I asked him also to call Mrs. Michaels and fill her in. Then I went back to my car, spent half a minute fussing with Sam, and left.

Traffic was thickening up. Sunday brunchers were heading for one another's houses. Families with kids were taking them out to the conservation areas that hang around the fringes of Toronto like a big jade necklace. Everyone was headed somewhere. Some of the moms and pops were obeying the law too closely for my schedule, so I drove across the 401 then headed north on the 400 Highway, three lanes each way, a freeway that really is free. About twenty miles north of Toronto we finally shook loose from Sunday drivers, and I tucked in behind a Corvette that was humming down the outside lane about twenty miles an hour over the limit. We were both pulled over at a radar trap half an hour later, but the guys let me go when I flashed my ID and told them what the rush was.

The 400 ends at the two-lane highway that runs up past Murphy's Harbour. It was thick with traffic, and I debated whether to stop, but finally I pulled off and into the lot of my little police station. The place was locked. I had left it in the charge of George Horn, an Indian who is a law student at the University of Toronto, home on vacation. He's helped me in a number of cases, and if he weren't off getting more education than he needs for the job, I would nominate him to replace me. If I can convince myself to quit.

He was out back, sitting in the stern of an aluminum johnboat, holding a fishing rod with an old-fashioned casting reel on it, watching a red-and-white bobber far out in the lake. He had one of those remote telephones with him and a minnow pail of bait.

He jumped up when he saw me, rocking the boat as he reached for the oars and pulled in the fifteen paces to shore. "Hi, Reid, what're you doing back here? Don't you trust me?"

"Where would Tonto have been without the Lone Ranger?" I asked him, and he laughed and shook his finger at me.

"Beware, racist, I know the statutes you just broke there. You're messin' with a lawyer here."

"I will live to rue the day. Mind if I open up? I need a couple of things from inside."

"Su casa is still su casa," he said, and turned as the reel on his fishing rod started paying out line. He picked up the rod and held it, unmoving while the bobber pulled out of sight for two more seconds. Then he struck, and the rod bent. "There's a pike out there, twenty, twenty-five pounds," he said happily. "This is thirty-pound test."

"Keep a tight line. I'll be inside," I said, and took out the station keys.

The first thing I did was phone North Bay. Marcel had good news and bad news. The flight had arrived early, and according to the clerk on the ticket desk, the three men I was looking for were on it. The bad news was that they had walked out and got into a waiting vehicle about two minutes before the police cruiser arrived.

"The clerk didn't get a make on the car, of course?"
 

"You know 'ow it is, Reid. We was lucky 'e see anything."

"Well, at least we know that they're in town. That's good." I said. "Thanks, Marcel, I'll be up there in about two hours."

I hung up the phone and thought for a while. Then I decided to bend the law a little. I'm licensed to carry a gun while I'm in the Harbour or on duty elsewhere. Technically, it belongs in the office safe if I'm off duty. But these guys were rough. If I came up against Dunphy again, I wanted some backup. So I unlocked the safe and took out my.38. It's a modest little piece by American police standards. Half their men carry heavier weapons, Magnums sometimes. But in Canada the possession of a gun is usually enough to cool a situation out. A.38 is as good a totem as anything else. The safe also contained the shoulder holster I'd used as a detective in Toronto. I don't like it. You take too long drawing your weapon. But then again, you should be enough on top of things to have the gun out in lots of time.

In this case, I might not be. The Freedom for Hire guys were probably armed with the guns they would use in the bush. Most likely the M-16 I'd used in 'Nam. Or if they were wealthy enough, the new automatic weapons that elite squads use these days. Either way, my.38, with its effective twenty-yard range, wouldn't be enough firepower. So, after some thought, I unlocked the station rifle from its stand. It's a Remington.308, and I'm accurate with it at 400 meters, probably farther than they would teach kids like Jason Michaels to shoot accurately in the time they had him up there, wherever they had taken him.

George Horn came in as I was loading the rifle. He was carrying a pike so big that its tail trailed on the floor as he stood there with his arm crooked against the weight.

"You got yourself a keeper," I said.
 

He grinned automatically, but his eyes were on the gun. "Yeah," he said, then, "I guess you know it's not hunting season, Reid."

"It may be where I'm going." I finished loading, put the safety on, and picked up the box of shells.

"You on a case?" He straightened his arm, and his fish trailed half its length on the ground. He was looking at me very straight, an athletic, good-looking kid who would have made any marine recruiter snap out of his lethargy. He wanted to come with me but was too proud to ask.

"Not a case exactly. I'm looking for a kid who's run off with a bunch of crazies. It's just a favor to his old man, not a police case at all."

"Then why the weapons?" He was turning into a lawyer right enough. A year ago he would have said guns.

"They're armed. And, like I said, they're a bunch of crazies."

"If that's the truth, why aren't you working through the police? Your jurisdiction only extends over the Harbour."

I laid the gun on the counter, pointing away from both of us. "Well, it's sort of borderline." He didn't say anything, but I could tell from his expression that he wanted more. He deserved more. He'd helped me out a number of times in the past, and he was twenty now, adult and sure of himself, getting good grades in a class filled with bright kids with expensive educations behind them.

"Okay." I gave in at last. "I'll tell you. I'm dealing with a crowd of mercenaries. They've scooped up this kid, and they're up outside North Bay somewhere holed up, teaching him how to fight. They they'll ship him out someplace and he'll get his dumb head blown off by some very capable Cuban-trained revolutionaries."

"What makes you say that? Maybe he'll be on their side." The lawyer emerging again.

"No, that's not how it works. The revolutionaries are fighting for a cause. They despise mercenaries. And with good reason. Most of them are psychos, misfits who can't hack it in civilian life. They're happy to get paid for killing people."

He frowned at me, thinking back to the law libraries in Toronto. "If they're hired here and shipped out, I don't see what laws they're breaking."

"Nor me. The only one I can dream up, if they train here, is possession of automatic weapons."

"Yeah." He nodded. "That would stick, but it wouldn't be much of a penalty. They'd lose the guns, get a fine, that's all."

I picked up the rifle, slipped out the magazine and put it in my pocket. Then I worked the action once, to be sure it was unloaded, and crooked it into my left arm. George watched me silently.

I broke the impasse. "This isn't something you should get mixed up in, George. It's only borderline police work. You've got a job to do here and a career to go back to in September."

He sighed. "This job looked good until I'd been doing it for a week. If it wasn't for fishing on my noon hour, I'd go crazy."

"Look, it could get exciting fast if the bikers came back into town. We need you here."

He grinned. "I'll try and remember that. It'll help keep my eyes from closing in the long afternoons."

"Make the most of the leisure. The line of work you're in means seven-day weeks, twelve—fourteen hours a day." I thought the idea might not have occurred to him before this, but he grinned like a kid with a new bike. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it does, an' I love it."

He picked up his pike. "For now, I'm gonna run this across the lake to my mother. She thinks I've forgotten how to fish since I went to school."

"That'll change her mind for her," I said, and then, because his eyes showed he was hungry for more information, I told him what I was planning to do. It wasn't complex. I would drive up to North Bay and ask around, see what signs of the Freedom for Hire people I could come up with. Somebody would know something. Maybe a gas-station attendant, maybe the barman at one of the beverage rooms, maybe the manager of the local bushplane service. I would follow up as far as I could.

He asked the obvious question. "How will you follow them, always supposing you can trace them?"

"I'm just going up to my house to throw the canoe on the car. Anyplace they're hiding I can reach with a canoe." He didn't say anything more. He just stuck his hand out to me and we shook. "If anybody needs me, Marcel Dupuis at North Bay will know how to get hold of me," I said. Then I thought about Sam. "Listen. One other thing. I can't take Sam with me. I'm going to have to move quietly. One bark out of him and we're both gone. Will you take him for a couple days?"

"Yeah," he said, Indian again. I knelt and fussed over Sam, rubbing his big head so that he squirmed against my hand eagerly like a puppy. I would miss him where I was going. George watched without saying anything. He feels the same way about my dog. We both know how good he is in support.

At last I stood up, raised a finger to let Sam know that this was official, then went through the handing-over procedure. When I'd done it, George said "Come," and Sam went to his side. George nodded to him, then shook my hand and wished me luck and I was on my way, alone. My house was still the way I'd left it. The soil is sandy and thin, and in August it's too hot for grass to grow, so you couldn't have guessed it was three weeks since I cut it last. I unlocked the house and dug out my backpack. I keep it ready to go, sleeping bag, fly dope, pot, plate, billy can, and a bare minimum of supplies. On impulse I threw in a couple of extra cans of meat and a bag of flour, which I slid into a plastic bag. Anything can happen in a canoe. Your gear had better be waterproof.
 

That was it. I paused for a moment in the kitchen, checking there was nothing else I needed, then took my combat jacket down from behind the door. It seemed silly now, in eighty-five-degree heat, but if I did head into the bush, the nights could get cooler fast. Besides, it was appropriate wear for the occasion.

 

 

 

FIVE

 

 

I drove into North Bay around one-thirty, past the doughnut shops and motels that reach out down the highway to greet you. It's not a pretty town, but it's prosperous, as mid-north Ontario towns go. There's a military base close by, and the town has a good sand beach on the north shore of Lake Nipissing, which is the size of a small sea. Now, in late August, the holidaymakers were everywhere, happily storing up sunshine on their skins to take back to the office and brag about.

I went directly to the police station and found Marcel Dupuis at the counter, tying trout flies. When he heard the door open, he scooped everything into the open desk drawer in front of him and leaned against it, but I knew about his hobby, so I just grinned.