Iced (John Wads Crime Novellas Book 1)

by Jerry Peterson

  TWELVE

  WADS, HIS SHOULDERS sagging beneath his mackinaw, shambled into The Library, his shift at the convenience store over.

  “How you doing, big guy?” Larson called to him from behind the bar. She dipped a shot glass in sudsy water as she gave him a smile that said I’ve got something special for you. “Want to use my tub again?”

  Wads came up to the bar. He leaned on it and beckoned Larson in close. “Your tub? Hell, no. One night of sex on the bathroom floor is all I can take.”

  “We can move to my bedroom.”

  He threw up his hands.

  She pointed to a man in a corner booth, his back to them. “You’ve got company.”

  “What’s he drinking?”

  “He says Baptist gin.”

  “Damn, it’s Zigman. Gimme a Coke–”

  “And your usual, I know.” Barb brought a can of Coca Cola and a bottle of Muscle Milk up from the under-bar fridge. She handed them to Wads.

  He took them and went over to the far booth where he slid onto a vacant bench seat. Wads shoved the Coke across the table. “Thought you might need a new one.”

  Zigman, as cadaverously thin as ever, grinned. “Ahh, you warm my heart.”

  “You do know what that stuff’s doing to your plumbing, don’tcha? I use Coke to eat the corrosion off battery terminals.” Wads made a fizzing sound, his fingers dancing up in an imitation of a cloud of smoke rising.

  The sheriff’s detective sipped from the can, then smacked his lips as he resumed his grin. “Like it anyway. Understand a man with a gun came into your store tonight, my friend, after the gorilla stole your big banana. Saw that last one on YouTube.”

  “You?”

  “My kid told me about it. So the gunner, you’ve got something he wants, don’t you?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “City cops told me what they saw on your videotape–black Mercury, no license plates, man with a cap pulled down. This is a pro. He knew he was going to be on camera.”

  Wads chewed on the inside of his lip.

  “So what is it? Evidence of some kind, have I got that right?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Thumb drive? Don’t look so surprised. Barb let it slip.”

  “Zig, if I were to give the drive to you or the city cops, you’d screw it up. I’ve got to take this to the state attorney general. We dated once. I’ve already called her.”

  “I could get a search warrant.”

  “Do you think I’ve stashed it anywhere where you could find it?”

  Zigman worked his fingers over his chin as he studied Wads. “So when and where do you meet with the A.G.?”

  “And have you there?”

  “I could tail you.”

  Wads laughed. “After a hard night at the store, buddy, I needed a little humor.”

  THIRTEEN

  WADS CHECKED HIS CELL for the time as he came out of his apartment building–four o’clock. Overcast, the feel of snow imminent. He pulled the collar of his mack up around his ears, protection from the norther whistling down the street.

  He unlocked his truck, and, just before he got in, gave a wave to a rusty brown Chevrolet a half-block down the street.

  Wads luxuriated in the warmth of the cab after he settled in, giving a silent thank you to the dealer who had insisted he get a remote starter on his then new truck. Fire up the engine while you’re still finishing your grapefruit, he had said.

  Wads drove off. He adjusted his mirror as he did, and the brown Chev–the sheriff department’s stakeout car, he’d seen it before–was there, following. He knew who had to be at the wheel–Zigman.

  Wads waited until he passed the city limits sign on the road to Lake Kandiyah before he stepped the gas pedal to the floor. The driver of the brown car had to have done the same. Wads chuckled as he watched the image in his mirror. And there was a second image further back, no more than the size of the tip of his little finger–a second car, black.

  For Wads, it was all in the timing. Ahead, the lights on a railroad crossing gate began to flash. He held his speed. Wads shot across the tracks as the arms came down and watched Zigman slow and swerve between the crossing arms, falling behind in the chase.

  Wads tapped his brakes. He let his speed play off as he came up on a curve, then powered through, through that one and the next. Wads hit the brakes, this time hard. He skidded his truck off onto an unplowed township road that led into a thick stand of burr oaks.

  A drift. He slammed into it, and the air bags burst out of their restraints. They pinned him as the truck rocked to a stop. The moment the bags deflated, Wads threw open the door. He grabbed a coil of rope from the floor on the passenger side, slung it over his shoulder, and plunged off into the deep interior of the woods. There he found it, the Arctic Cat he’d driven in a dozen hours before. A twist of the ignition key and the engine came alive. Wads mounted up. He rode the Cat out of the woods at an easy speed, took his leisure as he drove toward the shore of Kandiyah Lake. Zigman would find his truck, Wads knew it. He would hear the snowmobile and back out to the county road and come after him. Part two of the plan.

  As Wads rolled out onto the snow-covered ice, the brown Chev barrelled down toward the lake at a helluva speed. Wads saw it and twisted the throttle full wide, the Cat responding, throwing up a rooster tail of white as it tore away into the gloom, out onto ice blown free of snow.

  He hazarded a glance back and lost his pea cap to the wind for his effort. The Chev was there, closing the gap.

  Wads hunkered low. He fought the blast ripping at his face and hair, zeroed his focus on a dark band ahead–open water he’d seen the previous day. The band veered to either side of his course. He’d never done it before, but Crazy Bill had–told him about it over root beers at the Kwik Trip. At the last moment, Wads stood up. He hauled up on the handlebars, believing maybe it would help, and he and the Cat found themselves over the water, the Cat’s engine howling, the snowmobile’s track spinning free of any hard contact with a solid world.

  The Cat hit the water like a skipping stone, skipped three times and out onto the ice on the far side.

  Wads braked. He threw his snowmobile into a sideward slide and watched the brown Chev go into a slide of its own on the Jimmytown side of the open water, watched the car laze into a three-sixty and swoosh in.

  The driver burst from the door.

  Wads grabbed his rope. He ran to the edge of the ice, planted himself, and spun the loop end of the rope out like a lariat. He let the loop float out and down around the sheriff’s detective flailing in the black water. Wads gave a jerk that tightened the loop, then, pulling hand over hand, hauled Zigman to solid ice and out.

  Zigman spat water. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Saving your life. You can’t swim any better than a rock. Jeezus, man, I figured you knew about the water and would go around. And I’d lose you good.”

  Zigman, shivering, shucked himself out of the rope. He threw it aside and twisted back to the water, its surface roiling with great bubbles of air escaping from the sinking car. “How’m I gonna explain this to the sheriff?”

  “I’ll help you, but not today.” Wads aimed a gloved hand at the shore they’d left behind, at a black car parked there, its running lights on. “Bad company. Let’s get outta here before he figures out what to do next.”

  He hurried Zigman to the snowmobile. After he helped the soggy, chilled detective onto the rear of the seat, they roared off for the far shore, the Cat’s engine screaming.

  The first flakes of a new snow–the flakes small and buckshot hard�
��came out of the clouds. The norther drove the pellets at a slant, and they stung the side of Wads’s face. He squinted his windward eye tight shut and held course until the snowmobile shot up on the far shore, into an open area near a lake cabin. Wads stopped the machine by the door and helped Zigman off, Zigman moving with the stiffness of an old man.

  “End of the line for you, buddy.” Wads reached above the door ledge, the reach producing a key. He unlocked the door and horsed Zigman inside. The place smelled of must and rancid bacon fat. “Netty Testaman’s shack. Not exactly a neat housekeeper she. You get yourself a fire going and call someone to come for you.”

  Wads laid his cell on a table as shabby as the cabin, but before he could turn, Zigman’s quaking hand clamped onto his arm. “Where you going?”

  “Zig, you know I can’t tell you that.” He pried Zigman’s hand away. Wads ran for the door. He slammed it behind him and jumped aboard the Cat.

  Wads sped off, back out onto the ice. He paralleled the shore for a quarter of a mile before he turned off a second time. Wads plowed the Cat up onto the shore, toward a structure that was little more than a shanty with a lean-to attached. He drove the Cat under the covering, cut the engine, and slogged away through snow up to his knees.

  After some minutes, he came out on a county road. A Suzuki X-90, older than he, sat idling on the shoulder. The window rolled down, and Barb Larson leaned out.

  “Going my way, big boy?”

  Wads shoe-horned himself into the passenger seat. A spring prodded his butt, and he rounced around until he got comfortable. “Some car you got here. My granddad’s city brother had a Nash Metropolitan. I ever tell you that? This car isn’t any bigger than his was.”

  “On a bartender’s salary this is all I can afford, so don’t complain.”

  “I’m not.”

  “All right. Where to?”

  “Madison.”

  Larson stepped down on the accelerator, and the engine coughed a couple times before it smoothed out. She twisted the wiper switch to ON. That set the wipers to thumping away at the snow pellets bouncing off the windshield.

  Wads peered at his driver, her face illuminated by the glow from the instrument panel. “I gotta ask.”

  “The answer is yes,” she said.

  “You haven’t heard the question.”

  “The answer’s still yes.” Larson grinned through her concentration on her driving. “So when do you want the wedding?”

  “Barb!”

  “That’s not the question?”

  “No. Those pictures of kids in your bathroom.”

  “Oooh. My boy and girl.” She flicked on the clicker–the turn signal–slowed, and turned onto the Interstate entrance ramp. She again stepped down on the accelerator. “I lost them in the divorce. The judge didn’t think much of me being a bartender.”

  “So you see them?”

  “One weekend a month.” She peered up into the mirror at headlights behind her. “Come on, fella, you can pass me.”

  Wads twisted around. He stared out the back window. “He is kinda close.”

  “Just came up on me when we got on the I-road.”

  “So pick up your speed.”

  “Huh-uh. I don’t even like driving this fast when it’s snowing.”

  “All right, slow down then. Force him to pass you.”

  Larson took her foot off the gas pedal. “He’s slowing, too.”

  “Guess we’ll have to live with him then.”

  She resumed her speed.

  Wads, rather than settle back, continued to watch over his shoulder. Lights at a truck weigh station ahead radiated out through the snow. “Now we’ll see who he is.”

  The Suzuki passed under the lights as did the car behind.

  “Oh shit.”

  Larson, startled, glanced at Wads.

  He drummed his fingertips on the dash. “Bad company.”

  “What bad company?”

  “The guy who killed Shatha and shot at me. That’s his car.”

  “You sure?”

  “No license plate, at least not on the front.”

  “Well, my car’s got all the oomph of a motorscooter, so we’re sure not gonna out-run him.”

  Wads raked his fingers back through his hair. “You got your cellphone?”

  “Sure, in my purse.”

  He hauled Larson’s purse, the size of a valise, out of the gap between the seats. Wads mined for some moments, his desperation increasing as he sorted through makeup, spare clothing, and the booty from a quick stop at the video store. At last, he came up with the phone. Wads punched in Seven-Seven-Eight and waited through a couple buzzes before a gravelly voice said, “State Police.”

  Wads glanced over his shoulder as he jabbered at the phone. “The missus an’ me, we’re on the Interstate, a couple miles north of the Stoughton Fifty-One exit.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My God, man, you’re not going to believe us, but there’s what looks like a black Mercury ahead of us, northbound. And he’s weavin’. That’s durn dangerous in this snow, you know. We’re thinkin’ maybe he’s drunk.”

  “I’ve got a car near there. I’ll dispatch him. Who is this?”

  “A couple concerned citizens.” He clicked off and put the phone back in the purse.

  Larson kept her focus on the patch of road showing in her headlights. “Wads, you lie.”

  “Hey, it’s the best I can do on short notice.”

  Blue lights ahead lit up the southbound lanes. A state trooper car shot by, tore through the median, and come roaring northward through the driving snow.

  Wads laughed as he rubbed his hands. “I do love it when the cavalry arrives before the settlers get scalped.”

  The trooper car and the Mercury fell back, their headlights sliding off onto the shoulder.

  Larson relaxed her grip on the steering wheel. “What if it isn’t him?”

  “Then it isn’t. We’ll never know. When we get on the Beltline, mind cutting off at South Towne?”

  “You need something?”

  “A new cell.”

  “What happened to yours?”

  “Oh, I gave it to Zigman. His kinda got drowned.”

  “Do I want to know why?”

  “Some night he’ll tell you over a Baptist gin.”

  WADS TROTTED OUT of the Walmart, a Trak phone in hand. The wind hit him and he kicked up his pace, hurrying on to Larson’s Suzuki idling in a handicapped spot. Something stopped him when he came around the rear of the car, to get to the passenger’s door, something silver dangling from beneath the rear bumper.

  Wads hunched down. He grabbed hold of an errant strip of duct tape and ripped it away. A small black object with a short antenna attached came with it. He opened the door and held the thing out to Larson.

  She stared at it. “And I’m supposed to know what that is?”

  “A transmitter. That’s how the bastard tracked us to the Interstate. Bet there was one on my truck, too.” Wads threw the miniature down. He crushed it hard under his boot heel and got in the car.

  “Well, we’re rid of that,” he said, gesturing for Larson to take off.

  She let out the clutch and zipped away, nodding to the side. “Black car there.”

  Wads turned. He gazed out the back window. “Mercury, all right, but a Romney/Ryan bumper sticker? I don’t think it’s our villain.” He settled back with his new cell, and, as he did, someone rose up in the driver’s seat of the Mercury.

  Wads tapp
ed away on his cell’s keypad. “I’m gonna program your number into my phone and mine into yours. If we get separated, we can still be in contact.”

  Larson slowed for traffic, then slid onto the entrance to the Beltline. “You think that’s gonna happen?”

  “Boy Scout motto, be prepared.” He keyed his number into Larson’s cell. When he finished, he dropped it in her purse and pulled his military nine-mil out of his shoulder holster.

  Larson stared at the gun, but only for a moment. A semi passed her, its wind blast buffeting her car, she wrestling with the steering wheel for control. Only when the driving smoothed out did she ask, “What’s that for?”

  “This?” Wads held up the pistol. “This is for growed-up Boy Scouts.” He jacked a round into the firing chamber, clicked the safety on, and chucked the gun back in his holster.

  Larson guided her car onto John Noland Drive. “I’m not going to get shot at, am I?”

  “No.”

  “Can I hold you to that?”

  Wads checked the time on his cell–five forty-five. “Nice thing about going to the Capitol at this time of day, not much traffic.”

  “I usually go the long way around, to East Washington and up.”

  “Today, how about you save a couple minutes? Cut off on Broom. A block to Wilson, a block to Hamilton, then shoot to the Square.”

  Larson nodded. She wheeled the Suzuki through the turns and up to the Capitol Square where she eased into the thin stream of traffic rounding the Square. She slipped across to the inside lane. “Where do you want out?”

  “Other side.”

  As Larson concentrated on making the first turn, Wads glanced to his right and sucked wind. A black car was there, the barrel of a gun thrust out the driver’s window.

  Wads whipped his foot across to the brake pedal of Larson’s Suzuki. He stomped hard.

  Larson, thrown forward, clung to the steering wheel. “You crazy?”

  The black Mercury whistled past and spun around.

  Wads shot a hand at the Capitol building. “Buck over the curb! Get me to a door.”