Smugglers Notch

by Joseph Koenig

  “Do it now,” Conklin said.

  St. Germain stumbled to the side of the house, saw himself doing it as if he were being forced to act in a pornographic movie. Conklin scarcely watched him; he dug his instep under the rod and levered it into his grip, then swung it around his head in widening circles with the cool hiss of an iron whip. St. Germain went all the way into the yard. He waved his arms till an engine coughed across the water and the Brown Bomber moved out of the trees, its bobbing lights probing the tortured route to Sturgeon Cove Road.

  5

  JEFFCOAT NAVIGATED CAUTIOUSLY, WORKING the pedals with both feet. The Brown Bomber was unpredictable in snow and one of its balding tires seemed to have gone soft, so that each time he hit the brakes he had to tug the wheel to keep the road. Twice in the first quarter-mile he checked his hair in the mirror. If St. Germain wasn’t kidding about photographers (and with the lieutenant’s reputation as a publicity hound he saw no reason to believe that he was), it wouldn’t hurt to be all spiffed up when they brought Conklin in. Tomorrow he would sneak off duty half an hour early for a few beers with Manny Lockwood, an old high school buddy who worked in the Free Press circulation department and who would know enough to save a dozen papers for him if he made the front page.

  A sign put where it was most likely to be missed showed the way to the Conklin place. He came down hard on the brakes and backed up to make the turn. No need to rush. From what little he had seen from his vantage point across the cove, St. Germain was well in control. Probably had the boy cuffed in the backseat of the turbocharger. Else why had he signaled so slowly, almost as though he were waving him away.

  Jeffcoat lined up his wheels with the double row of ruts. Steering with one finger, he let gravity bring him toward the lake. The last house before the road bent from the shore was splashed brownish red. In the drive was St. Germain’s cruiser beside a dusty van. He flicked on his brights and saw the lieutenant leaning against the side doors, motionless, boredom coming in for the kill. Or was it just a pose, getting it right for the cameras waiting for them at headquarters?

  “Quiet here,” Jeffcoat said out the window. “What did you want me for, a wake-up call?”

  St. Germain didn’t answer, didn’t move. He was looking toward the Brown Bomber without acknowledging that it was there, as cool in his own way, Jeffcoat thought, as John Wayne watching the cavalry arrive after all the Indians were dead.

  “Where is he?” Jeffcoat asked.

  St. Germain started to say something, but the words were slurred and low.

  “What’s that, Loot?” Jeffcoat said. “I didn’t catch—”

  St. Germain stepped away from the van. As he came into the Brown Bomber’s light, Jeffcoat began breathing through his mouth, bunching great gulps of air. “My God,” he said and hurried out. “What happened to you? Your face—”

  Then something crashed into him from behind, hit him so hard that he would have gone headfirst into the van if St. Germain hadn’t blocked him with his body, kept him on his feet with arms that seemed exhausted by the effort. At his back a voice warned, “Keep hugging. Either one takes his hand off the other, you’re both dead and buried.”

  Above a sudden silence Jeffcoat heard only his accelerated breathing. His foot tangled in St. Germain’s, nearly toppling them, and as they struggled for balance he felt a hand on his revolver. His own hand came down to swipe it away, but froze at the unmistakable pressure of a gun at his spine, the same disembodied voice saying, “I guess you don’t believe me.”

  The .38’s report filled his head, dissolved into ringing louder than the shot. He moved closer to St. Germain, to collapse in his arms when the pain and darkness overtook him. He felt metal in his body, could have described its path into his chest. But then the voice was saying, “If you sweethearts can tear yourselves apart, we’ve got things to do.” The hand was on his shoulder, prying him away from St. Germain, and he realized that the bullet had gone into the air, the terror and the message it was meant to convey so real that he’d have crawled into his grave if someone had seconded the notion he was dead.

  The boy came around and stood at the edge of the light. There wasn’t much to him, Jeffcoat decided, but the big guns magnified what there was. When he stuffed one in his pants, it was as though he were cutting himself down to size. Jeffcoat started to relax.

  “Careful,” St. Germain was saying, the words not very distinct. “You don’t want that to go off now.”

  “I guess not.” Conklin grinned and tilted the muzzle away from his crotch. “This your mascot?”

  Jeffcoat didn’t think it was funny. He slipped his hands from under St. Germain’s shoulders and both men stumbled back.

  “I asked—”

  “Tell him who you are, Wally.”

  Jeffcoat spit in the snow. He barely looked at Conklin, as if to say he’d been through worse before.

  “His name’s Jeffcoat,” St. Germain answered for him.

  Conklin nodded and touched the deputy’s gun to an imaginary hat brim. “You don’t mind if I borrow this.”

  “What are you going to do with us?” Jeffcoat asked. He turned toward St. Germain, who was barely recognizable behind a purplish mask, and who blotted at his swollen face with a handkerchief.

  Conklin shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you guys want to do?” He backed against the Brown Bomber’s grille, put his heel on the bumper and vaulted onto the hood, sitting with the chrome ornament between his legs. “What say we get out of here, go someplace we can have fun?”

  Jeffcoat squinted into the high beams. The boy was so slight, so … ordinary, it seemed impossible he could have bloodied the lieutenant. He looked around, expecting to find the other Conklin hidden behind two more guns.

  “You,” Conklin said to St. Germain. “I want you in the driver’s seat.”

  Jeffcoat stepped forward until the light was out of his eyes and he felt it blazing against his forehead. “It’s my car,” he said. “It’s tricky if you’re not used to it. If we’re going anywhere, let me drive.”

  “You’re the boss,” Conklin laughed.

  St. Germain went to the passenger’s door. Jeffcoat watched for a signal, wishing they had worked out a code more articulate than flashing lights.

  “You need a special invitation?” Conklin said.

  Jeffcoat trudged after St. Germain and took the wheel, and then Conklin slithered behind them. Once, wire mesh had extended from the headrests to the ceiling, so that police dogs could be penned in back. But the partition had been removed two years before, when the coldest winter of the century took the fight out of the shepherds and sent them into semiretirement with the Tampa PD. Conklin pulled himself up against one of the old support posts and dropped the keys over Jeffcoat’s shoulder. “You left these in the ignition,” he said. “You should know better than that.”

  Jeffcoat’s breathing had returned to normal. He felt calm, calmer than usual, the way he did when he had to address his Cabot Community College speech class, the tension building all week and then dissipating two words into his talk so that he wanted to hold the audience forever. He turned slightly toward St. Germain, who seemed lost in thought. No way the lieutenant didn’t have something up his sleeve, something to make the skinny boy sorry he was born.

  “Well,” Conklin was saying, “what are we waiting for?”

  “We’re waiting for you to tell us where we’re going,” Jeffcoat answered.

  “Just drive, huh?”

  The Brown Bomber backed out of the yard and climbed away from the lakeshore. Overhead, the moon had taken all the light in the sky for itself. In its glow the pines threw ragged shadows that the heavy car tore up as the tires slipped out of the ruts.

  “Hey,” Conklin shouted. “Slow down.”

  Jeffcoat slammed the brakes and Conklin came forward so sharply that his chin smacked against the headrest. “Drive like you know how,” he said. “I’m warning you.”

  Jeffcoat brought the car to the end of
Sturgeon Cove Road and stopped under the sign. “Know where you want to go yet?”

  “Keep straight.” Conklin leaned back, rubbing his jaw against the back of his gun hand. “We want Smugglers Notch.”

  “Can’t,” St. Germain mumbled. “Road’s closed … you should know. Won’t be open till snow’s gone, in May.”

  “Don’t I know it,” the boy said.

  Jeffcoat held the cruiser with his foot off the brake, the rear wheels churning angry ribbons of slush. “Maybe you’d like to make sense before we ride all the way out there for nothing.”

  “It won’t be for nothing.” Conklin raised his gun hand until Jeffcoat caught sight of it in the mirror and the Brown Bomber lurched forward again.

  The wheels gathered traction as the lane went to crushed rock, and Jeffcoat prodded the needle to thirty. St. Germain leaned back stiffly, not saying anything as he craned his bruised neck away from the headrest. Jeffcoat didn’t need a signal to tell him what was on the lieutenant’s mind. The thought was a shared one: soon they would be on Route 108 where it snaked around Spruce Peak through Smugglers Notch. Only there, a two-hour hike back to Stowe if they didn’t freeze to death first, would Conklin feel safe enough to let them go.

  “We ain’t got all night,” Conklin said.

  Jeffcoat felt the boy’s breath against his ear. “I thought you said to go slow.”

  “Kick it, it’s getting late.”

  “Late for what?”

  The Brown Bomber climbed a gentle rise and Jeffcoat touched the brakes again. A snowmobile burst across the road between gaunt hardhacks, leaving a trail of slushy droppings like a giant snail. Jeffcoat scanned the trees for another Skidoo, but saw only a blunt furrow in the snow. When he glanced into the rear seat, Conklin was pulling the second gun out of his pants and balancing it in his lap with the other.

  “Late for you,” the boy said.

  “You’re going to kill us there?”

  St. Germain mumbled something that wasn’t clear. To Jeffcoat it sounded like, “Don’t waste … talking. Nuts.”

  “It’s good a place as any,” Conklin said. “We’ll take this heap into the mountains as far as it’ll get us and then go for a walk. I’ll shoot you in a pretty spot and bury your bodies in the snow where they won’t be found till spring. My brother doesn’t live too far. He can pick me up and get rid of your cars while I beat it out of Vermont, which I was gonna do anyway. How’s that sound to you? Be honest.”

  Jeffcoat put more pressure on the brakes. “What will you gain by killing us?”

  “Satisfaction,” Conklin said.

  “The satisfaction of having every police officer in New England after you?”

  Conklin thought about it for a while. “In the place where they kill the burnt offering,” he said, “shall they kill the trespass offering; and the blood thereof shall he sprinkle round about upon the altar.” He was smiling. “Leviticus. Chapter seven, verse two.”

  “You’re right, Lieutenant,” Jeffcoat said, spinning the wheel all the way to the left. “He’s out of his skull.”

  Conklin fell across the seat as the Brown Bomber left the road. It skidded over a frozen ditch into sparse brush, Jeffcoat tromping down on the gas, bracing himself as a tree stump took off the muffler and the engine bellowed in pain. Then the ball joints shattered and, as the front end collapsed, a stone fence came out of the darkness and broadsided them.

  St. Germain’s face struck the window and he felt blood on his jaw again. Beside him Jeffcoat was pushing uselessly at his door. The inside panel had buckled, revealing sprung hinges behind the imitation leather. Conklin lay on the floor in back, the guns under his body as he struggled to his knees. St. Germain wrenched open his door and swung his feet into deep slush. “Slide out my side,” he shouted to Jeffcoat, hoping he’d be understood.

  He ran along the fence, feeling his way with his hand. Where a section of stone had crumbled, he climbed into a field enclosed by old growth timber. Wet snow dragged at his legs like frozen quicksand, and he tugged his pants around his hips and raised his knees higher. Without stopping he looked over his shoulder for Jeffcoat, but saw only his own shadow chasing him into the trees.

  He opened his mouth for more air, but pain accompanied each breath till he clamped his jaws and again fed his burning lungs through his nostrils. Above the hammering in his chest he heard two quick shots. Using energy he hadn’t known he had, he pumped his legs harder. The trees were less than a hundred feet off when he heard a third shot, heard it still when he staggered against the trunk of a red maple.

  As his breathing grew less labored, he became aware of something advancing slowly in his direction. Deer, perhaps, or maybe one of the rare moose migrating through the valley en route to the Adirondacks. Then the rhythm of footsteps grew distinct and he moved around the maple, putting its gnarled bulk between himself and whoever was out there. He backed deeper into the trees. Crouched behind a rotted oak that was balanced between two boulders, he glimpsed a shadow meager enough to be either Jeffcoat’s or the boy’s. He raised himself till he saw a figure in the brown shirt of a Cabot County deputy and nearly went limp as the adrenaline drained from his blood.

  “Wally,” he cried, and jumped up from the log.

  The figure in brown stopped moving, cocked an ear.

  “Wally. Over here. Christ, am I glad to—”

  Branches parted and St. Germain saw a cap two sizes too large, shirttails hanging loosely outside twill pants. Beaming, Conklin squeezed off a shot that went into a basswood behind St. Germain’s head. He lunged forward with bullets probing the way.

  St. Germain slipped, twisting around, and gashed his knee on a boulder. As he struggled to his feet, a shot ripped his left arm below the elbow and put him on his belly again. He picked himself up and dashed into the trees with the boy so close that he could hear the wind rattling in his throat. He was offering an easy target now; with every step he expected a slug in his back or, if he was lucky, not to feel the one that would shatter his head.

  Another shot rang out. When he didn’t hear the bullet thud, he realized Conklin had lost him and was shooting blindly. He hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself small, cursing the broadness that was his pride. As he snaked through the hardwoods, the forest opened on a brushy tangle where tree poachers had taken a chainsaw a decade before. Hiking up his pants, he hurtled into the undergrowth, snapping twigs like mortar fire at his heels.

  Quit worrying about Jeffcoat, he told himself, for all the good it would do. If Conklin had his cap and shirt, no way he’d left him alive. Because the thought seemed to weigh him down, he tried to force it from his mind. Guilt kept it where it was. But Jeffcoat was dead, had to be, and there was nothing to be done for him now. And if he was wrong, then why in God’s name wasn’t Wally doing something for him? Funny idea, wishing Jeffcoat would pull his chestnuts out of the fire.

  Woody debris had been collected in bales among the tree stumps. St. Germain dived into the largest one, clawing at branches and twigs and then pulling them in after him, wallowing like a beaver in a dam. Though he held his body still, his heart was loud enough to home in on, like a radiosonde programmed to self-destruct. He promised himself that if Conklin fired into the pile he would take a bullet without making a sound. The crackling of dried leaves dictated an immediate change in plan, and he burst out of his nest without seeing the family of raccoons whose foraging he had interrupted.

  The undergrowth was thicker deep inside the old clear-cut. The perfect spot to lose himself was somewhere in here—if only he could find it. Looking, he went too far and the scrub returned to hardwood, a thin stand ending in a field where scattered cornstalks stood like minutemen against intruders from the woods. Still listening for the boy, he hurried into the corn, unwilling to ask himself what he hoped to find there.

  A spurt of optimism came with his second wind. But the burning in his lungs relocated in his arm and then his whole body rebelled. He put his head down and ran harder,
and when he took his bearings he was in sight of the lake, at a cove that gouged a craggy wedge from the cornfield. He stopped there with nothing left, turned his back on the water to take on the boy’s guns with his fists. But then Conklin came out of the trees in a miler’s graceful lope, and St. Germain dropped his challenge while it was still unannounced and began racing along the beach.

  He had never been a runner, his size a drawback when speed was what counted. Now, with the boy gaining on him with fluid strides, it was everything. Reaching deep inside, St. Germain pushed himself along the water’s edge, looking back over his shoulder like a swimmer sucking air with each stroke. Somewhere in the woods Conklin had lost Jeffcoat’s hat, and the moonlight in the boy’s face revealed a determination to match his own.

  “Give it up,” Conklin called out to him. “You can’t win. Why knock yourself out for nothing?”

  As though it were the answer to a trick question, St. Germain imagined Annie between soft sheets, summoning him to bed.

  “Quick,” Conklin was saying, “easy, over in a sec. … Be doing yourself a favor.”

  Maybe the boy was right. The idea alone was enough to sap his energy, and, angry with himself, St. Germain picked up the pace as best he could. A shot rang out well away, as if Conklin were firing out of range. Gambling that it wasn’t a ruse, St. Germain slowed to look back once more and saw the boy drop behind, clutching a stitch in his side.

  Drawing on unsuspected reserves, St. Germain set out for the shadows behind the cove. With Conklin weakening, he would take his chances in the trees again. He cruised toward the finish line, thinking less about the boy and his guns than of his own feet chafing in sodden shoes. But where the beach was tunneled into a narrow strip of land, there was no forest rising out of the pebbly soil, only a stone outcrop extending into the shallows offshore.

  Exhaustion bent him nearly double. He rested his hands on shaky knees and gulped air in spite of the pain, spotted the boy before he was able to start back for the cornfield. Without knowing it, Conklin had cut off his retreat, so that all that was left was to submerse himself in the blackness and hope the boy would go home before the frigid waters took their toll. Shielding his head against a freshening wind, he crept to the lake under the cover of the bedrock that rose out of the sand like a mossy wall. But when he stopped again to cup an ear for tiny waves lapping against the beach, he heard only his own forced breaths as they came back to him off the rippled crust that capped the still cove.