Coldwater Revenge

by James A Ross

  “To the foreign exchange student?”

  “That’s right. The one you sent your brother to talk to. In Montreal.”

  “Dr. Hassad?”

  “Whatever his name is. Mrs. Ryan recognized him when he stopped at the Quick Mart on his way to the funeral.”

  Joe released another cloud of astonished breath. “And you think he and Susan are involved again?”

  “I think they never stopped.”

  “What?”

  “Opposites attract, Joey. It’s the only explanation for most pairings.”

  He felt his mouth open and head wag.

  “Oh she’s had other lovers, of course. She’s a big girl and all that.” Joe felt her eyes search for his. “But my guess is that dark foreigner has had her heart all along. That she’s always done anything he’s asked and always will.”

  “Wow!” was all he could say.

  “Exactly. And the sooner your brother realizes that, the better. It’s not something he’ll be grateful to be hearing from you, I know. But it’s not something he’ll believe at all from his mother.”

  Joe sat up straight in bed. “Why didn’t Dad say something to Tommy? Or to me? I would have talked some sense into him. Why would he let his son get sucked into something like that?”

  “It suited his purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  “Your father felt that your brother wasn’t cut out for the family line of work. He was wrong about that. But until Miss Pearce came along, he was worried that your brother was too smart to be allowed to hang around it much longer. ‘An experienced piece of timely distraction,’ was how he put it. The romance solved both families’ problems.”

  “That’s cold, Mom.”

  “And what would you have done? How long did it take your brother to figure out that herb garden business… or your moonlight frolic over Billy Pearce’s dead body?”

  “Okay. So he’s a bright boy.”

  “So are you. Your brother just spent too much time with that priest when he was young, that’s all. He’s an innocent, still. And that’s what’ll get him and you hurt.”

  Joe raised his eyes and chin toward the ceiling. “Do you think it’s possible that Susan has been in contact with this Dr. Hassad all along? All those jobs in university labs and bio research companies?”

  “I imagine that someone in his line would find those associations useful. But the romance had to be genuine, or Susan would have sensed it and moved on long ago. A girl like that doesn’t lack for attention.”

  He felt that one too and winced. Partly to cover, he asked, “I wonder if there was also a connection between Hassad and Billy? Or was Billy just driving Frankie’s cars for pocket change when Susan came back to town and brought him into a bigger game?”

  “Mmmm,” said Mary, without enthusiasm. “It’s past the time to be worrying about who did what to Billy Pearce. It’s your brother needs minding now. Or you’ll both end up in the soup.”

  But he had to finish the thought. “And if Billy didn’t have a connection to Hassad, then bright boy’s theories of who did what to whom and why, are full of….”

  “Holes,” snapped Mary. “Which is why you’re going to talk to him before he falls into one and drags our family down with him!”

  CHAPTER 29

  When the Feds let Tom go, he returned to Joe’s empty cabin, collapsed into bed and drifted through twilight vignettes staring Susan Pearce, Frankie Heller, the New York Attorney General and a red headed French lawyer he was certain he had never met but would certainly like to. In the more coherent snippets, he found himself noting that when one’s life fell apart, there was not necessarily a visible bottom. Or would there be a final warning just before the god-awful splat?

  He might have laid there forever wallowing in the imponderable, had not two hundred decibels of AH-OOGA!! blasted him back to consciousness. Rolling from the mattress to the split-log floor, his first thought among the dust motes and carpet hairs was that Joe’s gun was not outside in the truck. He held his breath and remained still. An innocent visitor—even one of the stenciled windbreaker boys—would soon be shouting apologies and knocking on the sliding glass doors.

  AH-OOGA!!

  Or maybe they had, and he had not heard them.

  He crawled to where he could peer through the gap between the peeled log wall and the heavy slat curtains. Outside, oblivious to halogen light and klaxon horn, two visitors stood tearing rows of plants from the wooden boxes on top of the waist-high railings. One snorted blasts of frosty air through dripping nostrils. The other stepped noisily along the row of wilted plants. One had antlers, both had hooves.

  Releasing a blast of compressed breath, he pulled the louvered curtains from the window and peering cautiously outside. The visitors did not look up. The first snow of the year was falling.

  He punched the security code into the wall pad and slid the glass doors open. The klaxons stopped and halogen lights dimmed. Stepping onto the snow-covered deck he inhaled deeply. The two intruders eyed him petulantly before bounding onto the lawn, their heart-shaped hooves pressing a scattering of Valentines into the new snow.

  After the horn and light show, the sound of compacting snow was almost, but not quite, inaudible. He turned his head. The sound was heavy, not delicate… Big Foot, not Bambi. As the crunch came nearer, he squinted through a curtain of snowflakes. A figure in a hooded parka strode through it, one snow-flaked fist gripping a silver cell phone and the other a large black handgun.

  “Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” said the voice inside the hood. “I was beginning to get chilled out here.”

  * * *

  Hassad backed Tom into the cabin, drew the curtains and sat him on the couch next to the table phone. He had no small talk.

  “Listen carefully,” he ordered. “I want you to call Miss Pearce and arrange for her to meet you on Pocket Island. Communicate the rendezvous in a way that will not be understood by anyone who might be listening.”

  Tom didn’t move.

  Hassad pointed the gun at Tom’s chest. “Don’t make me persuade you.”

  “What if she’s not home?” The sound of his voice seemed unnaturally high and hollow.

  “Then you are of no use to me.”

  “What about after the call?” It came out almost a whisper.

  “I need a boat to take me to Pocket Island and to help with certain tasks once I get there. Understand that I have no reason to keep you alive if you refuse.”

  Tom picked up the phone. Though he had known the number by heart since he was a teenager, he fat-fingered it twice and had to hang up and start over again. Hassad held the gun impatiently at the level of Tom’s chest. The sound of the phone’s ringing reminded him of a dentist’s drill.

  “Pick up, Susan,” Tom murmured.

  “Pray that she answers, Mr. Morgan.”

  The ringing stopped, followed by an audible click.

  ‘Hi. You’ve reached 628-4952. No one is able to come to the phone right now….’

  “Susan, it’s me.”

  ‘… but if you’ll leave your name, number…. ’

  “Susan! Pick up!”

  ‘… and a brief message, someone will get back to you as soon as possible.’

  “Susan! I have to talk to you. Now!”

  Click.

  Hassad raised the gun to Tom’s forehead. “Bad luck for you, Mr. Morgan.”

  Tom lifted his hand and lowered his voice to an intimate whisper. “Hey, sweetie, it’s me. Can’t sleep. Just me and the sheep. Remember our Rubaiyat readings? Wish you could join us there now. Lady might have a ride if you need one.”

  He waited. Hassad motioned him to replace the phone. “Explain,” he ordered.

  The answer came in breathless gulps. “‘Lady’ is Our Lady of The Lake church. There’s a rowboat at the church dock. And a runabout in the boathouse. Susan used to borrow them sometimes to sneak out to Pocket Island at night. There’ll be watchers at her house. She’ll need another w
ay to get to the island.”

  “And the other reference?” Hassad demanded.

  “‘Sheep? ’ That’s you. Line in a nursery rhyme. She’ll get it.”

  “How clever.” He sounded more peeved than impressed. “But if Miss Pearce doesn’t play that message within the hour, it’s of no use to me. Or to you.”

  “She’s already heard it.”

  “Explain.”

  “I could hear her,” he lied. “She picked up the phone as soon as the message tape ended. She just didn’t say anything. Maybe there was someone there.”

  Hassad pointed the gun at Tom’s face. Tom watched Hassad’s eyes. Each held tight to the whirligig of his own suspicions.

  * * *

  From the passenger seat, Joe watched Bonnie’s headlights making bas-relief of the tire tracks that patterned the long, snow-covered driveway. At first he assumed the tracks had been left by Tom, and he braced himself for what had to come next. But he abandoned the idea when he saw that the tracks ended beneath a rusty, blue sedan parked out of sight of the cabin. The car was a stranger. Tommy of the hamburger hands and knees would not have parked so far away.

  “Bonnie, stop.” Joe reached into the glove compartment and retrieved a pair of binoculars, training them on the front of the cabin. There were footprints in the snow leading around back. “It’s probably nothing. But I want you to take the kids to Mary’s and wait for my call.”

  “Joe, please call for help.”

  “I will.” He did not look at her face.

  When the car disappeared down the driveway, Joe climbed into the woods above the cabin, feeling as jelly-limbed as he had after the first weekend he’d spent in bed with a girl. The temperature had dropped sharply since they’d left the hospital. Snow fell heavily and the wind gathered strength. Part way up the hill, he leaned against a dry patch of tree trunk and trained the binoculars on the landscape below. Maybe Tom was inside with a visitor. But there were no lights. And where is my truck?

  Joe turned the glasses on the security pad beside the front door. A small green light would be lit if the system were armed—a red one if it had been tripped. He could not see a light. But then he remembered then that he had shown Tom how to turn the system off, but not how to re-arm it.

  Crossing the face of the hill, he had a clear line of sight to the back of the cabin. The wind from the lake carried his small noises into the woods above him. Falling snow muffled the rest. He steadied the glasses on a chest-high branch and examined the back of the cabin. The curtains behind the sliding glass doors were drawn and the room behind them was dark. A group of does browsed the yew hedge near the deck, grabbing an easy last meal before the snow covered everything. Nothing else moved. No lights showed.

  He retraced his steps until he was opposite the windowless north side of the cabin. Deer browsed the bushes nearest the deck and snorted when he broke the tree line. A pair of motion activated cameras under the eaves followed him as he approached. White tails lifted and hooves stomped, but they did not retreat.

  Boot tracks in the snow against the cabin had only a light dusting of flakes in the tread. The tracks led to the deck and from there to the sliding glass doors. The security pad next to the door was dark. Beside it, warm air leaked into the great outdoors. He reached to his waistband for a handgun that wasn’t there because they made him send it home from the hospital. Curtains rustled a warning. He slid the glass door open and entered the room.

  Three thousand square feet of open space lay in front of him, surrounded by a perimeter of peeled log wall. Not by accident, there was no place to hide. Joe stood with his back to the wall, motionless and alert. If someone was here, he would soon know. If it was his security-disarming, door-left-ajar, wet-behind-the-ears brother, the sanctimonious brainiac would be moving out in the morning. This wasn’t a drill he cared to put his family through more than once.

  Minutes passed in quiet the opposite of tranquil. Falling snow muffled the ordinary sounds of outdoor evening and amplified the tics and hums of the living house: appliance clocks, ventilation fans, contracting timbers and soft, regular billows of the listener’s breath. He looked at his watch. He’d known professionals who could keep still for hours. But anyone else would have made a sound by now. Moving quietly along the interior walls and up the split log stairs to the loft took only seconds. The cabin was empty.

  A trail of wet led from the deck to the couch opposite the fireplace. A puddle fronted the wing back chair beside it. Booting the computer, Joe logged onto the security system where digital flickering showed the date and time the alarms were triggered and when they were shut off. He downloaded images from the security cameras and screened them twice.

  Tommy was one brave comedian.

  The images from the outdoor cameras showed him stepping onto the deck, hands in his front trouser pockets, turning to face the camera and then slowly pulling his pockets inside out. A tall figure in a hooded parka pressed a gun to Tommy’s face. Tommy arched his back, moved his hands to his rear pockets and calmly pulled them out as well. The camera followed him and the hooded figure across the deck and down the steps until they disappeared around the edge of the cabin. A few frames later there was a flash of black monster truck racing down the driveway. Before he was out of range, Tommy had managed to turn out the pockets of his jacket as well.

  “I got it the first time, brother. Pockets. Pocket Island.” He had to admire Tommy’s perseverance. And his courage.

  Grabbing a 12 gauge from the gun locker, Joe ran to the patrol car and fish-tailed down the driveway and the mountain to Skippers Marina. On the way he thought briefly about his promise to Bonnie to call for help. There was enough of it around now. But the more people you add, the more ways there were for things to go badly. And each one of them ended with Tommy dead.

  Joe followed the double line of tire tracks across Skippers’ unplowed parking lot to where they ended beneath his truck abandoned at the edge of the seawall. The patrol car headlights held the truck and the two-foot swells that lifted the empty wooden docks beyond it, like a scene in a winter snow globe.

  He’d left the Coldwater patrol boat tied to the inside of the T at the end of the dock where it would be protected from waves and easier to get in and out of the marina. But the police slip was as empty now as the rest of the marina, and the islands beyond Wilson Cove had already disappeared behind a thick curtain of windblown snow.

  * * *

  Gusts of northwest wind pressed clouds of swirling snowflakes into horizontal sheets. White capped swells pushed the bow of the Coldwater patrol boat twenty degrees above the horizon and then dropped it stern-first into the trough that followed. Visibility was fifty feet. Tom did not try to keep the boat inside the channel. A low speed collision in the surrounding rock garden wouldn’t put a hole through the hull. But a propeller might sheer off, and that would be just fine. Disabling, but not hypothermic.

  Avoiding the visible rocks, he maneuvered the boat through places where they waited just below the surface. The hull scraped some and the skeg caught more. But the boat remained stubbornly intact and the engine undamaged. When the hull ground over a particularly lengthy patch of submerged rock, Hassad lifted his gun and aimed it at Tom’s chest. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “Steering,” Tom answered, waving a hand at the curtain of falling snow. “There’s channel stakes somewhere, but I don’t see them. Do you?”

  Hassad moved closer and pressed the gun to the back of Tom’s head. “Maybe this will improve your vision. If we hit anything more, it goes off.”

  Tom lifted the skeg until the prop rode just below the water’s surface and they hit nothing else. Once outside the cove, he checked the compass mounted above the wheel. Hassad clung to the overhead and kept his gun at the back of Tom’s head. “How long will it take to get to the island?”

  “Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. If we don’t miss it.”

  Hassad’s eyes widened and the end of his pistol found Tom’s ne
ck. “Make sure that we don’t.”

  Tom removed a hand from the wheel and waved it at the curtain of snow that surrounded them. “Then you let me know if I miss a turn.”

  Pocket Island wasn’t large, maybe a half mile long and a quarter wide. It would be easy to miss in weather like this, except for the windbreak effect of the bluff that rose seventy feet above the waterline. When wind and wave began to subside, cut off by the bulk of the not yet visible island, Tom eased back on the throttle. “We’re close. I’ll look for a place to bring us in.”

  “No,” said Hassad. “I want you to take us to the cove on the other side of the island”

  “That’s not going to be easy. There’ll be some nasty water outside this lee. Worse than what we just came through. The church boat Susan’s coming in isn’t big enough to make it to the other side in this weather. I don’t know that we’re big enough.”

  Hassad shoved the barrel of his pistol hard against Tom’s head. “Do as I say.”

  Tom swung the wheel to port and followed the compass south. Pieces of island drifted in and out of view fifty yards to the starboard. As they neared the end of the island, six foot waves began to crash against the bow.

  “This is going to get worse in a minute. We can still pull in here.”

  Hassad shook his head.

  Tom pressed the throttle and eased the boat out of the lee. Wind and water seized the thirty-foot craft and spun it like a top. Hassad shouted. But Tom’s entire attention was on trying to keep the boat from keeling over while it completed a series of counter-clockwise pirouettes. When the waves split the bow, he held the boat against a wall of water that swept from the west like a phalanx of barbarian horsemen. “Hang on!” he shouted. “I’m opening it up. We’ll swamp if I don’t bust through this!”

  Three yards of bow rose halfway to vertical and the rest slid into the trough. Two tons of boat pitched like a toy in a bathtub. Hassad’s mouth contorted and the sound that came out of it blew like a cork from a bottle. “Go!”

  Tom slammed the throttle. Hassad lurched into the well of the cuddy, somehow retaining a grip on his gun. The thirty-foot craft rode the hills of water like a rocking horse. Twice it spun in gut emptying circles. Each time Tom fought to hold the wheel and bring the bow to face the oncoming waves. Hassad crouched in the well of the cuddy, his gun tracing zig zags in the direction of Tom’s torso.