On The Inside

by Ted Wood

  “Juliana says you was here. You an’ the chief, askin’ where I was. I'm sick of it. Understand?”

  “Yeah, well I can see how you would be. That's reasonable.” I might have been talking to a restive horse. The words didn't matter, just the tone, sweet and calm.

  He didn't answer but I could hear his breathing, amplified over the speaker of the radio.

  “I guess you heard me telling him to fill the car up,” I said. “It'll take him a couple of minutes extra but it was pretty low on gas.” I wanted him talking. While he was using the phone he wasn't using the rifle.

  “I heard. That was smart,” he said. Then he laughed. “You're a smart sonofabitch, Bennett. Not like them other dummies.”

  The chief was leaning down through the open door of the car, listening to every word. I saw his face darken at the comment. “Smug little prick,” he said. “What does he know about anything but pushing dope to kids?”

  “Ignore him, chief. Right now he thinks he's in charge.” I wanted to talk to Nunziatta, but not like this. I had a feeling he was connected with everything rotten in town, but I wasn't sure how. If he broadcast his secrets over the radio, my cover was gone.

  “No, Frank. They do their best. They just don't know how to handle a guy in the big time. Me, I've worked in Toronto. I've seen how the big-time boys do business.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. That was pretty smart, what you had me do last night. Pretty smart.”

  “What was that?” the chief snapped.

  I improvised. “I wanted to get a confession out of Sgt. Ferris. I gave Nunziatta my tape recorder and sent him into the station to tell Ferris what he'd done. I was out to get the sergeant for what he did.”

  “Why didn't you report this to me?” The chief's lean face had the white marks of anger flashing each side of his nose.

  “It went right out of my mind when I saw what had happened to Ferris,” I said easily. “It was too late for a confession.”

  “I don't like this,” he said. “We'll discuss this later.”

  “Yessir. I'm sorry. I should have mentioned it but I've been going full tilt investigating the sergeant's death.” I got back on the air. “Listen, there anything we can do to make you comfortable? Can I call anybody in Toronto for you?”

  “Stay out of it,” he barked. Then he laughed harshly. “You'd like that, wouldn't you? Know where I'm going and have half the goddamn Metro cops waiting for me.”

  “Hey, Frank. I'm sorry you feel like that. We've got a deal here. No strings, okay?”

  “Don't forget it,” he said. “I'm gonna get something to eat.”

  He let the phone drop and the clatter filled the car.

  The chief bent down. “Did he hang up?”

  “No. He's getting some chow. Looks as if he really thinks he's heading for Toronto.”

  “What will you do when the car gets here?”

  “I'll deliver it. My dog is here. We'll get the gun off this guy and lock him up. That's not the hard part. The hard part is waiting.”

  In the end it took another twelve minutes before Levesque got back with the car. I called Nunziatta on the radio, trying to get his attention but he wasn't listening. I guessed he was having his wife prepare food for the trip.

  “Okay. I'll drive up to the door. Leave it to me,” I said. I got out of the police car and led Sam along the block, on Nunziatta's side of the street, where he could not see me from the front window. I sat Sam at the house next door and went back to my car. The chief moved the scout car and I drove through and parked in front of the house. Then I got out and beeped the horn.

  The front window was shut and the lace curtain inside was flapping in the draft as cold air rushed in. It was impossible to see anything inside.

  Nunziatta called out, “Okay, Bennett. I see you. Put your hands on your head and back off.”

  “Whatever you say, Frank.” I had the car keys in my hand, but he didn't notice as I backed away an inch at a time.

  There was a clatter at the front door and his wife came out, carrying the baby, pushing the little boy in front of her. Her face was streaked with the red and white marks of a recent slap. Then Nunziatta came out, his gun at the ready, pointed at her.

  “Any shit and she gets it,” he called.

  “Hey, Frank. No problem. Take it easy, man.” I kept my voice calm. “Just get in the car and go. You've won.”

  “Back off.” He made a shooing motion with the gun but didn't swing it far enough from her to make it safe to rush him.

  He came out of the door, leaving it open, and shoved his wife in the back with the gun. She half screamed, then sobbed, but she ran, pushing the boy in front of her, and got into the car in the front seat, sliding over to the far side.

  He got in right behind her, then stood up, shouting, “You bastard. Where's the key?” His gun was held loosely, pointing up somewhere behind his wife's head.

  “Hey. I forgot. I always take it with me,” I said and took a step towards him, holding out the key in my left hand, ready to grab the gun with my right. Nunziatta looked at me with a snarl on his face, reaching his left hand over the gun to get the key. And then he slammed back against the open door, his face smashed by a bullet.

  I whirled and saw Levesque lowering a hunting rifle. “You crazy bastard,” I roared. “What did you do that for?”

  Nunziatta slid down the door of my car, the gun clattering from his dead hands. His wife screamed and clawed herself out of the car, bending to cradle his shattered head in her arms. The children wailed. I swore silently.

  Levesque was almost babbling with shock at what he had done. He had given up on English and was speaking in heavy Quebecois French. “The chief said to do it. The chief said. I thought he was going to shoot his wife. Honest to God.”

  “It's done,” I said, in French. “If it makes you feel any better, it's as if the chief himself pulled the trigger. You're clean.”

  Levesque lowered the rifle and dashed his cuff across his eyes. The chief came forward, a tight little smirk on his lips. “It had to be done,” he said. “The woman's life was in danger.”

  There was no sense arguing. I stooped and picked up Nunziatta's rifle, slipping the magazine out and working the bolt once to extract the last round. Then I dropped the gun and patted Nunziatta's wife on the shoulder. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Nunziatta. Your children were in danger.”

  She turned, tears streaming down her face and reached out to rake my face with her nails. I caught her hands and brought her to her feet. She struggled for a few seconds, then collapsed against me. I put both arms around her and held her for a moment, patting her back gently as she sobbed. Levesque was at the far door of the car, picking up the baby, taking the little boy by the hand.

  Nunziatta's wife pushed herself away from me and went to stoop by her husband again. I crouched with her, speaking softly. “Let's get the children in the house. It's cold for them.”

  She blessed herself and closed her eyes for a moment, tears squeezing out of the corners. Then she straightened and looked around in panic for the children. She took the baby from Levesque and touched her son on the shoulder and I shepherded all of them into the house.

  The chief was a pace behind me but he stayed silent. I led Nunziatta's wife into the sitting room and she collapsed on the couch, pulling the little boy to her, bending her head so her hair spilled out over both the children. Her shoulders shook.

  I turned to the chief. “We have to get the coroner over here.”

  “I know.” He lifted his chin in a little physical show of authority. “I'll thank you to remember who's running this department, Bennett.”

  Good. I had more to do than pick up after him and the mess he was making. “I know that, sir. What are your orders?”

  He glared at me, wondering whether I was being insolent. “Carry on,” he said and waved one hand.

  Levesque was at the door. He had composed himself but he looked shaken.

  I turned to him. “Al, are you ok
ay?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah.” His voice had the hard, tight ring you hear in people with heart problems, the vibrato of tension.

  “Right. I want you to get back to the station and call the hospital. Tell the doctor what's happened and have him come out here. Then call Mr. Roberts, the accountant at the mine, and ask him to get down here with his camera. Tell both of them it's urgent.”

  “Right.” He stopped for a moment, moving one foot nervously. “What about the rifle I used?”

  “Put it on the backseat of the scout car that you're not driving. When you've made the calls, come back here and seal off the other end of the street.”

  Mrs. Nunziatta raised her head and looked at him without speaking. He lowered his own gaze and turned away.

  The chief said, “Do you have a friend nearby, Mrs. Nunziatta?”

  “Natalie Foster is my friend.” She was deathly calm. I wondered how much she had hated her husband.

  “Where does she live?” Harding was speaking crisply, articulating every word with great care.

  “Thirteen Swallow Road. It's around the corner,” she said.

  “Bennett, go and get her,” the chief said.

  “Right.” I left the house. Sam was still sitting where I'd placed him, but when he saw me he keened at me and I patted my leg to bring him over. Then I walked around the corner between the four-foot high drifts of snow that the plow had left against the curb and on to Swallow Road.

  Natalie Foster was a round-faced blonde about the same age as Mrs. Nunziatta. She was at her side window and she came and opened the door as soon as I got to it.

  She was wearing expensive-looking clothes, a bright green sweater and a pair of good soft corduroy slacks. She didn't look as if her husband worked in the mine. “What's going on? I heard shooting. I called the station but no one answered. Then I saw the police car at the corner.”

  “There's been an incident at the Nunziatta's. Juliana asked me to bring you around. She needs help.”

  She reached inside the door and hooked her coat off a peg. “What happened? You still haven't said.” She pulled the coat on and shut the door, then walked with me, taking quick little steps.

  “There's been an accident. Her husband has been seriously hurt,” I said before we could turn the corner.

  “Serves him right,” she said viciously. “He treats that woman like dirt. She's worth ten of him.”

  “It's a fatal accident,” I said. “Be prepared, Mrs. Foster. We have to go past him.”

  She pressed her lips together as we came around the corner where a knot of women was gathering, their breath puffing white plumes in the cold air as they speculated about the car and Nunziatta's dead arm. One of them had just noticed it sticking out to one side.

  They turned and glared at me as I passed. One of them, a woman in her fifties, asked me, “What the hell's going on here?”

  “There's been an accident,” I said.

  “Like hell!” She looked around at the others. “Accident my foot. I saw that cop with the mustache shoot Frank Nunziatta in the head.”

  I ignored them and walked on, steering Mrs. Foster around the outside of the car, crossing to the inside so I would mask her view of the body. She glanced down at it fearfully but didn't push to stop and examine it. Behind me I saw the woman who had spoken advancing on the car. I opened the house door and ushered Mrs. Foster in. Then I took Sam back down the step and walked him around the car. “Keep,” I told him.

  He stayed there, watching the older woman coming towards him. When she crossed his invisible barrier he barked. She gave a yelp of alarm and backed off. Sam fell silent again.

  I went into the house. The two women were huddled together on the couch with the children on their laps. Mrs. Foster had her arms around Juliana. I left them there and went into the kitchen, where the chief was putting a kettle on.

  “Tea is good at times like this,” he said as if he'd just discovered something important.

  I looked at him sharply to see if he was being serious. “We have to investigate, sir,” I said. “There's no reason why the guy should have gone off his trolley the way he did. If he just wanted to get out of town he could have done it.”

  “His car's missing,” Harding said, speaking patiently, as if I were handicapped.

  “Right, but he could have got it back. This isn't making sense to me.”

  “Nor to me,” he said grimly. “I think I'll call Scott and Walker in, have them search the town for his car. It might tell us something we don't know.”

  “Good idea.” I nodded. “For now, can you tell me what happened? What brought all this on?” I was pushing again, acting as if he were only a witness and I was the one in charge of the investigation. But he didn't seem to notice.

  “Nunziatta called the station. I took the call, and he asked me what was happening. I told him you wanted to talk to him about Ferris's death. He just flew off the handle. He called you down and then me. Then his wife started talking and I heard him hit her. I warned him not to do that and he told me to go to hell. Said he had a gun and he didn't have to take any more crap from me or anybody else. Then I heard glass break and the rifle went off and we came on down here, Levesque and I.”

  Outside I heard Sam break into his warning bark. “Thank you, sir,” I said. “Sounds like the ambulance or the photographer is here. I'd better get outside.”

  “Right.” He stood at the sink, then slowly turned the tap and started filling the kettle as I left.

  The doctor was outside, trying to approach Nunziatta's car. Sam was patrolling the area I'd marked out, keeping him away. The doctor looked up and saw me. “Can you call him off?”

  “Easy,” I commanded, and Sam fell silent. I came down the steps and walked the doctor to the car, stooping to pat Sam as I passed him.

  The doctor squatted and took one look at Nunziatta's head. “Did you do this?”

  “No. I nearly had him cooled out. Then Levesque shot him from back off by the police car. Said the chief told him to.”

  “Was it necessary?” The doctor stood up, grim-faced, tugging his gloves on a little tighter.

  “Not in my opinion. I'd talked him out of the house, offered him this car, my car. Nunziatta had this rifle trained on his wife, but I was close enough to grab it safely. Two seconds more and it would have been all over. This was totally unnecessary.”

  “This may be enough to get Harding out of his office and out of town,” the doctor said. “Anyway. This guy's dead. The ambulance is on its way.”

  “Thank you, doctor. I'd like you to take a blood test. It sounded to me as if he was high on something, speed maybe.”

  “I'll check.” He shuddered and shrugged deeper into his down jacket. “I don't like the things that are happening,” he said.

  “Me neither, but I think tomorrow will see us through it all.”

  “I hope so. I'd better talk to Nunziatta's wife.” He paused. “Widow, I guess now, poor woman. How's she taking it?”

  “She blew up at first, tried to attack me. But she's kind of numb now. The chief had me bring her friend around to sit with her.”

  “Well at least he's done something right,” the doctor said. He nodded at Nunziatta's body. “You can move him any time you want. He's gone.”

  “Thank you. I've got the photographer coming.”

  “Good.” He nodded and walked up the steps and into the house. I bent over Nunziatta, seeing if there was anything more than his death to surprise me. I'm not sure what I expected to find. His face was caved in. There was blood in his nose and more had leaked through the wound into the corner of his right eye socket. Nothing I could see told me anything valuable.

  I crouched by his body for about half a minute, checking everything I could about his appearance. His right hand was sprawled back into the snow, the left was folded across his chest where he had fallen. And the pockets of his blue down jacket were heavy with something. Ammunition for his rifle I thought, and patted one of them.r />
  I was wrong. It was filled with something else, something heavy enough to drag the pocket sideways, something smooth to the touch as I ran my gloved fingers over the shiny fabric of his jacket. I tugged off my glove with my teeth and reached into the pocket, pulling back the Velcro that held it closed.

  The object I touched was chilly to my fingers and I could feel that there were a number of them there. I pulled one of them out and whistled with surprise. It was a little yellow metal billet the diameter of a quarter. It was about half an inch thick, flat on one side and lumpy on the other. I recognized it as a billet of partly refined ore. I had never seen gold in this form, but from my experience at the nickel mines I knew that this was the form in which nickel is shipped. This looked like the output of the smelter at the gold mine up the road.

  TWENTY

  I slipped the gold back into his pocket and secured the Velcro on the flap, then checked the other pocket and found it was filled the same way. I stood up and thought hard. He had about thirty of the billets, each one weighing about three ounces and worth roughly 1200 American dollars.

  A car squealed up behind me on the street and Roberts got out, carrying his camera. Sam bristled as he approached us, but I said “easy,” and Sam relaxed. Roberts gasped when he saw Nunziatta. “Good God! Did he do that to himself?”

  “No, unfortunately. One of the constables shot him, on orders from the chief. He was threatening his wife and children with that rifle there.”

  He gasped, then blew out a quick controlled gust of air and calmed himself. “Right. What can I do?”

  “Take a picture of his face, then a shot that shows him and the car as well. Try to cover everything you think of. Then go back to the police car there and take a couple of shots over the top of it. After that, take his front window, and the rifle down there and one or two of the damage to the car across the street.”

  “Okay.” He flipped his light meter open, adjusted his lens and started. I walked with him as he worked. Today he was more confident around the body. The horror of confronting violent death was not novel anymore, and he moved easily, clicking like a news photographer. Another couple of scenes like this and he would be cracking jokes like a veteran homicide officer.