Returning Fire

by Frans Harmon

  Anstice urged Mace apart but kept an arm wrapped around his waist. With sheepish smiles, they exchanged positions with the waiting workers. A round-headed senior with a ring of gray hair whispered to Mace. “They have rooms available at the Guardian Marriott.”

  Chapter Fifty

  When they returned with the coffees, Dorian was drumming his fingers on a desktop, his eyes fixed on a live feed from one of the Search And Rescue helicopters. “Bout time you two, they have to grow the beans first?”

  “The elevator,” Mace said.

  “We…uh, we had a lot of stops,” Anstice said.

  Dorian craned his head around, knitted brow conveying his irritation. Mace grimaced. “Where are we?”

  On the screen, an intense white ball of light doing a jittery dance over a wooded landscape shrouded in snow. “Just started their approach to the wilderness area from Sawmill Lake Road,” Dorian responded, turning his attention back to the screen.

  All eyes followed the bouncing ball of light from the chopper. “Those tire tracks?” Anstice asked.

  “Faint, but I think they are,” Mace said, “have SAR follow them, let’s see where they lead.”

  Emmitt nodded to the communications technician, and the light did a zig-zag trace over the tire ruts. “Only one set, not two. They must still be in there,” Gavin said.

  “Could be, but with wind and drifting, maybe Sar didn’t count on the depth of snow, and he had to back out,” Mace said.

  “We’ll see soon enough,” Dorian said.

  The tire tracks stopped, and so did the light. “Emmitt, have them scan further up the same heading,” Mace said.

  The bright disc of light moved slower, nervously continuing along a line in the same direction as the tire tracks.

  “There,” Anstice said, “the snow has been kicked around, looks wet.”

  “That fucking monster,” Gavin said, ‘he put her under the ice.”

  “Her?” Dorian asked.

  Gavin ran a hand through his close-cropped hair and stared away from Dorian for a second, then he faced him. “Coria Brien, she’s my daughter.”

  “What? I would have never let you… argh, between you and Mace, it’s a wonder I don’t have an ulcer. But we’ll have to deal with that later.”

  “Dorian, we can’t put divers under that ice until daylight,” Emmitt said.

  “I understand,” Dorian said, nodding, “how long can search and rescue one remain over the scene?”

  Emmitt looked at the screen with the weather display. “What’s doppler radar projecting?” A technician next to him tapped his keyboard and storm travel vectors, looking like small wave patterns, extended from several low-pressure nodes along the front towards Ortonville. “Sixty minutes tops,” said the technician, “before high winds and heavy snow close over the area.”

  Dorian slapped an open hand on his desk. “We need to secure the site before then. SWAT ready to roll, Emmitt?”

  “It is.”

  “Good. Sergeant Behrenhardt could DPD give us a rapid escort out of the city?”

  Anstice forwarded Dorian’s request through her communicator. “You’ve got it, Director.”

  Dorian took a sip of his coffee and stood. “Good. Emmitt inform SWAT we are on our way down. Mace, Sergeant, Gavin walk with me” They grabbed their coats and left the JOC. They all boarded an elevator to the basement parking area. “Mace, Sergeant Behrenhardt, you’re riding with the SWAT commander in SWAT one.

  Gavin, you are staying with me. We’ll update the lieutenant governor and the situation.

  “But director, my daughter.”

  “Precisely why you’re not going. And Sergeant, inform your friend in Brandon Township that we will take him up on his snowmobile offer. Mace see what it looks like up there. I don’t want to put divers in frigid water under ice if I can avoid it. I trust your judgment, I always have.”

  The doors opened, facing two snarling MRAP vehicles. Dorian gave his instructions to the SWAT team commander designating Mace as Tactical Command.

  * * * *

  Headlights approached State Route Fifteen and Oakwood Road. Two state patrol cars formed a blockade funnel, their vehicles angled across each side of Fifteen, their lights beaming toward the oncoming vehicle. Troopers shouldering shotguns stood to the rear of their cars as light snow swirled around them. Two officers standing in the narrow apex between their cars held up their hands as the massive vehicle approached.

  Its diesel engine panting as if a beast straining for the hunt, it stopped a few feet short of the officers. Mace emerged from the passenger side. “Anything?”

  “No, just Chief Thompson and a load of his Arctic Cats,” the closest patrolman said, “word of this weather is keeping everyone off the roads. Entrance you want is about a mile down, look for the parting in the trees on the left, only way you can find it.”

  Mace thanked him and remounted into the MRAP, and the two vehicles proceeded to the rendezvous.

  Three large men in tight-fitting black snowmobile jackets and fur-trimmed trapper hats greeted the MRAPs. Their three idling units flooded the road ahead in a penetrating glare of light. Mace and Anstice exited with Anstice quickly striding over to the center man and embraced him. “Uncle Steve, thanks for the quick response. This is Mace Franklyn, Tac Comm.”

  “Chief Steve Thompson reached out to Mace. “What do we have here?”

  “Good question. Could be a wilderness search and rescue Op, could be a recovery. Should be about a mile into the wilderness area.”

  “That would be Mud Lake,” Chief Thompson said, “hunt here all the time.”

  “Okay, let’s go, and if you see anything out of place, a box, briefcase, anything at all, give a yell and keep clear.”

  Mace and Anstice each doubled up with a Brandon officer, Chief Thompson took the lead, and the phalanx dashed ahead of the lumbering MRAPs. The ruts left by Sar’s vehicle were filling rapidly with drifting snow. They stopped twenty feet from the end of the furrows and dismounted.

  Mace led the group toward the lake. “Chief, could you have one of your men bring up a unit and focus their light just ahead on the lake.”

  The chief motioned to one of his men. Mace heard the snarling MRAPs behind them. “Ask SWAT to bring up a metal detector.”

  “To find the phone?” Anstice asked.

  Mace nodded. “It or anything else.”

  With the snowmobile in place, they could see footprints leading to a disturbed area in the snow and a barren area of newly formed ice beyond. Other depressions that could have been footprints, before the snowfall, led beyond. They approached with the officer holding the metal detector at the point. A sensor chirp had everyone focusing their high-intensity flashlights near the bare ice.

  The officer bent down slowly, the ice beneath his feet popping and cracking a rattler's warning. He lifted an object from the snow. “Phone.”

  Mace signaled him back.

  With gloved hands, he tapped the screen and power button, but it didn’t respond. “See if you can get some power to this.”

  The officer nodded and turned toward the closest MRAP to do just that.

  “I see something,” Anstice said and moved toward the lake.

  “What, Anstice, wait, it’s not safe.”

  “I’m the lightest. It is just beyond where the trooper picked up the phone, see that spot of red?“

  Mace focused his light on the spot where Anstice was pointing with hers. But the swirling snow, its pace heavier, all but obliterated where she was looking.

  ‘Wait,” Chief Thompson said and motioned with rope in hand for Anstice to backup. He tied the line securely around her waist. “That’s three or four feet of water and twenty to thirty of black muck, under that ice. Why they call it Mud Lake. You fall through, you will never see light to return to. I’m not about to start a recovery operation for my own niece.”

  With the rope around her and tethered to two beefy SWAT team member, Anstice shuffled her feet forward t
oward where she thought she saw the spot of red. In the few minutes it took to secure the safety rope around her, the outsized flakes of snow cascading from above had blanketed the ground with a half-inch of new snow cover. She slid her feet over snapping ice. She removed her gloves and swept a bare hand through the snow. The ice groaned just as her hand sensed something more substantial than snow. She picked up the item, examined it for a moment, and then retreated.

  “It’s a napkin from a Little Italia’s Pizza,” Anstice said.

  “Trash,” Mace responded, the sustaining adrenalin rush drained from his body.

  Anstice grabbed his shoulder. “Mace—"

  He held up his hand. “Thanks, Chief, get your boys back and warm. We’ll wait out the snow in the MRAPs and advise the JOC.”

  The chief signaled his men back.

  “This is more than trash, Mace.”

  “I realized that as soon as you unfolded it. But if Sar has been monitoring police chatter, and I’m guessing he has, letting him think we took the bait could give us the advantage.”

  “But, the divers, it will be incredibly hazardous.”

  “The weather will keep them out of the water and safe until mid-morning. We need to get to Brok and these napkins DNA tested. Chief, any chance…”

  His words were cut-off by the chief’s shaking head. “Snow-cats can get us to Oakwood, but driving further even in one of those MRAPs would be risky, likely end up rolled in a ditch. Daylight is in a few hours, best wait till then.”

  Mace nodded, he realized the chief was right, as they squeezed back into one of the large SWAT vehicles.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Anstice and Mace ended up in the lead MRAP’s front cab. Mace sat behind the wheel, and with only the yellow pall of the interior lights, examined the plastic-encased paper. Cut from coarse-textured paper, the square napkin, stamped with Little Italia’s logo in orange outline, had a large swath of what looked like pizza sauce covering half of it. “They’re not here.”

  “You don’t know that, Mace. Could have been from a hungry hunter or road crew on their break.”

  “You have that restaurant searching APP on your phone? Where is the nearest Little Italia’s?”

  Anstice tapped her phone and did the search. “Ann Arbor, thirty miles away.”

  “This was intentionally dropped by one of the women,” Mace said.

  “To let us know they were here, and now under the ice? Or something else?”

  “Okay, forget we are out in a blizzard on the shores of Mud Lake,” Mace said, handing her the napkin, “close your eyes and then open them again, and tell me the first thing that comes to mind looking at this piece of evidence.”

  Anstice took the napkin and did just that. “Hotel,” she said.

  “What?”

  “One-half red, well, just about, and the other white. Reminds me of a signal flag for the letter H, phonetically spoken as hotel.”

  Mace jerked back like cold water had been thrown at his face. “Good, makes sense, Sharlene owns a powerboat, keeps it at the Saint Clair marina.”

  Mace drummed his fingers on the wheel. “We need DNA, and we need it fast. If I’m right, the women aren’t out there, and they are certainly not under the ice.”

  “You can’t be sure,” Anstice said, shaking her head, “even with the DNA. I mean, why bring them here at all if he wasn’t going to kill them?”

  “Diversion, he wanted us, all our resources focused here, out of the city. No, they are not here. Doesn’t make sense to kill them in the middle of nowhere. Where’s the statement in that? And why now? He has had Coria for a year, Trina for months, and Sharlene for almost a month. He could have killed them anytime.”

  Mace flipped on the windshield wipers, which, after several sweeps, cleared the glass. A dull gray glow revealed the snow had weakened to flurries with an occasional stiffer gust. A burst of communications on the MRAP’s radio signaled that Dorian, Emmitt, and Gavin were on their way following plows clearing Sawmill Lake road.

  “You going to tell them?” Anstice asked.

  Mace stared out the windshield at the pristine white fluff draped over heavy limbs of pine. “I’m not sure.”

  “But, Mace, the divers. It’s going to be very dangerous; you can’t let them go in for nothing.”

  “Assuming Sar wanted us here, he is going to be monitoring comms. If we call off the search, he’ll know, and we will lose our tactical advantage.”

  The lake in front of them became awash in white light generated by additional arriving MRAPs. Mace and Anstice exited along with the chief and SWAT team. They met everyone, including a three-man dive team, in front of the arriving MRAPs.

  Dorian, dressed in a long black wool coat complete with a wool newsboy cap, led the group. “Where are they?”.

  Gavin, bareheaded, in an open long tweed coat, came alongside Dorian. His red eyes and a grim frown told Mace Gavin was determined to be here for his daughter.

  “Break in the ice is about twenty feet from the bottom of the sloping ground just beyond our vehicles.” Mace said, “but, I don’t think—"

  “The ice is very thick,“ Anstice boomed in completing his words, “it’s not thick at all, it cracks and pops even under my weight.”

  “All right then,” Dorian said, “SWAT leader, we brought portable lights, have your men position them as close to the break as possible. Let’s get this recovery underway.”

  “Dorian,” Mace said, “Anstice and I aren’t going to be much use here, could we get a lift back to Lansing? I’d like to have Brok take a crack at Sharlene’s phone.”

  “Yeah, sure. Gavin will give you a lift, he drove his SUV here.”

  “I’m staying,” Gavin said. His somber stone face making it clear he was not changing his mind. He extended his keys to Mace. “Take my Suburban if you like, but I’m seeing this through.”

  The SWAT technician handed Sharlene’s phone back to Mace, and he accepted the keys from Gavin. Mace and Anstice walked towards the rear of the line of vehicles stacked in front of the lake. Emmitt directing the SWAT team, grabbed Mace’s arm as he passed. “Last time you walked, I was left with a lot of explaining to do, Mace. You sure the bodies are below the ice?”

  “No, I’m not, but it’s the only move I can see right now.”

  “I’m not done with you. I lose a diver, the only policing you will ever do is mall cop.”

  Mace’s eyes followed Emmitt as he worked his way toward the lake. He caught sight of Gavin leaning against a vehicle, a hand rubbing his forehead, and light snow mixing with steam rising from his thinly cropped head. “Gavin,” he yelled, “before we go. I need to talk.”

  Gavin pushed off from the truck and began walking back to Mace.

  “Mace,” Anstice said, “you can’t say anything. He’ll break down, pop-off with some Welsh epithet, and, I mean, they are all detectives.”

  Gavin stood next to Mace; his reddened eyes boring through him. “Look, I’m in no mood for chit-chat. What is it?”

  “I need to show you something, but… the light is still bad out here, how about we go into your truck.”

  Gavin rolled his eyes and said something in Welsh, that, Mace figured was not complimentary, and probably had something to do with sheep.

  Anstice slid into the second row of seats, Mace the front passenger seat, and Gavin got behind the wheel. “They’re not out there, Gavin.”

  “What? That’s the big news flash? Another one of your theories?” He grabbed the door handle and shouldered the door open.

  “Wait, Gavin, wait.”

  Gavin glared back at Mace.

  “Close the door, McIlrath. I don’t know if your daughter is alive or not, but she is not under the ice.”

  Gavin jerked the door shut. Mace explained what Anstice had found, and the need to get a DNA reading as quickly as possible and to keep the recovery effort going. Gavin massaged his beard. “You’re betting lives. Those divers get into trouble, it’s on all our heads. Why not
just tell Dorian and keep up the chatter?”

  “We’re are not talking about actors or writers here,” Mace said, “the people on both sides of the comms deal with real-life situations. Soon or later, Gavin, it would sound fake. Sar would know and make his next move. We would lose our tactical advantage.”

  Gavin made a slow head rolling grimace. “What you are saying, we need to get DNA before those divers are in the water.”

  Arching his eyebrows, Mace nodded.

  Gavin held out his hand for the keys. “Buckle up then, because this is going to be the quickest ride to Lansing from here ever recorded or not.”

  * * * *

  Anstice and Gavin went to Gavin’s office to develop a list of Little Italia franchise locations next to hotels. Mace arrived at Brok’s FSD lab just as he was entering.

  Brok was punching- in his access code and stiffened at the unexpected voice behind him. “I need your help,” Mace said.

  Brok pivoted, facing Mace. “What’s up, guy?” He said with a quizzical scan of Mace’s all-nighter disarray.

  Mace took stock of his crumpled clothes and ran a hand through his hair with little effect. “Been a long night, uh, but look, I know you have a boatload of cases, but I need you to run something through your Rapid DNA Processor for me.”

  “RDP technology’s new, you know you can’t use it in court yet.”

  Mace nodded as he followed Brok into his lab. “I realize, but I need to verify this came from Sharlene, and your RDP can tell me that,” he said, holding up the napkin.”

  “A napkin? Good pizza there, though.”

  Mace explained where they found the item, and with the divers beginning their search, the urgency. Brok started to switch on lights and electronics. “I have her reference sample, but the best I will be able to do is an eighty-five percent match, and it will take a couple of hours.”

  “Thanks, Brok. You can reach me at Peter Mock’s office.”

  Mo was already at his desk, stacked with cold case files. He looked up, raised eyebrows and pursed lips telegraphing his surprise. “Rumor was you were in lockup. The way you look must have been true.”