Smoked

by Garry Ryan

  She shook her head. “You don’t know anything.”

  “You’re right. I don’t know very much.”

  “He always follows a schedule, a routine. When he first opened up the dental office, he’d dump his trash there because he wouldn’t pay for a cleaner. It was his routine. When he wanted to get rid of something, he’d use that dumpster. Once he gets something like that into his mind, it’s like he can’t think of any other way. When I heard Jennifer was missing, I went and took a look. I knew right then he’d killed her.” She leaned forward.

  “Are you going to be sick again?” Lane asked.

  “I don’t think so. You know, I tried not to fall asleep!”

  “You were drugged.” Lane kept his voice matter of fact, like he was ordering a cup of coffee.

  Madeline looked back at him. “Andrea gave me a bottle of water last night.”

  “Who gave her the bottle?” Lane thought, Keep her thinking, working this through to logical conclusions.

  “That asshole! He told me if I kept quiet about what he did to me, then he wouldn’t do the same to Andrea.”

  “You mean the abuse, and the pictures on the internet?”

  “You must have talked to my ‘guidance counselor’.” Madeline made no attempt to hide the disgust in her voice.

  Say this very carefully, he thought. “Actually, Herrence was arrested yesterday.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Lane shook his head.

  “Yes, my stepfather took those pictures. Have you seen them?”

  Lane shook his head. “No.”

  “Sick fucks!”

  “Who?” Lane asked.

  “Herrence. My stepfather. Kids at school.”

  “So, you made a deal with your stepfather to protect your sister.” We’re almost there, Lane thought.

  He heard a siren approaching. We haven’t much time.

  “He promised me if I didn’t go to the police, he wouldn’t hurt my sister.”

  “Then he hurt Jennifer Towers, and that changed everything.”

  “I had to let you know somehow. If the truck came and emptied the dumpster, then you might never know.” Emotion crept back into her voice.

  “Without your help, we wouldn’t have got this close to you and Andrea.”

  “Really?”

  There it is again, the voice of a child. “You said your stepfather follows a schedule. What’s so important about six o’clock today?”

  “I heard him talking on the phone. He has to cross the border just after six. It’s a scheduling thing or a timetable thing. I can’t remember which.”

  “Do you remember anything else?” Lane thought, It’s three hours to the border. He’ll leave before three o’clock.

  “He said that two would be crossing.” Madeline sagged. “I should have known.”

  Now is the time. “Let’s make one thing clear!”

  Her eyes were wary as she raised her head.

  “This is not your fault. This is his doing. Not yours.” Lane held her eyes with his. “What he did to you is wrong. What he’s doing is wrong.”

  Harper said, “The paramedics are here.”

  “Why are they here?” Madeline said.

  “You were drugged, remember? You need to be checked over.” Lane regretted the words when he saw the way Madeline’s eyes went wild.

  She shook her head. The movement was exaggerated by fear. “They’re not going to touch me! Nobody’s gonna touch me!”

  “Look, we need to cover our butts,” Harper said. “We have regulations we’re supposed to follow.”

  She pointed at Harper. “You’ve got your rules and regulations.” Madeline pointed a finger at her chest. “I’ve got my rules and regulations.” She pointed at the male paramedics. One sported a goatee and close-cropped hair. “Neither one of them is gonna touch me!”

  “Would you speak with a female paramedic?” Lane asked.

  Maddy thought for a minute. “How long will that take?”

  Lane looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes.”

  “Forget it. I’m fine.” Madeline stood up, then sat back down.

  “What’s the matter?” Lane asked.

  “I feel dizzy.”

  “When did you eat last?” Lane thought, She looks so damned pale.

  “Yesterday or the day before.” Madeline looked at the empty glass.

  “Do you want to get something to eat?” Harper asked.

  Madeline frowned before throwing up in the garbage can yet again.

  Lane insisted she have a shower and change of clothes. They waited in the adjoining room. A female officer waited outside of Madeline’s bathroom door. She was out in less than ten minutes. Her face was free of makeup. She crossed through the doorway into the adjoining room.

  Lane sat at the table. Maddy sat down across from him. Harper put a can of ginger ale in front of her. She sipped it carefully.

  Lane thought, Make sure she has a clear path to the bathroom. He cringed as he leaned over and bumped up against the wall. His shoulder was still on fire from where it had hit the parked car and the pavement.

  Harper sat on the end of the bed.

  Madeline turned to him. “You got hit by that truck.”

  Harper pointed at his partner. “He did. Where one bruise ends another one starts.” Harper’s stomach growled.

  Madeline smirked.

  “How about we order some coffee from room service?” Harper asked.

  Madeline shrugged. “Okay.”

  Harper moved across to the phone, checked for the number, and dialed.

  “How’s the head?” Lane watched Madeline sip her pop.

  “Still a bit dizzy.” Madeline looked out the window.

  “You’re calmer now.” Lane thought, Stay away from questions. Just state the facts.

  Madeline looked directly at him.

  Her eyes are clearer now, Lane thought.

  She said, “I know where to find him. We used to drive to the States every summer. We’d always cross at the same place at a certain time. And we’d always leave on time. I told you, he’s a creature of habit.”

  Harper put the phone down. “Are you going to tell us?”

  Madeline nodded. “Are you going to take me along?”

  “That’s not gonna happen,” Harper said.

  “I have to be there. Andrea needs me there. She’s my sister. I’m all she’s got.” Madeline lifted her ginger ale and looked at them as she drank.

  “I don’t understand your stepfather and what he’s doing,” Harper said.

  “He used to tell me it was something special between him and me. You have to understand I was a kid, and I trusted him.” She looked outside, seeing something way beyond the horizon. “Then a rumour started at school about me being on the Internet. After I saw the pictures, I didn’t trust him anymore. I heard my parents fighting about it one night. Mom made him promise it would stop, that he’d never do the same to Andrea. It did stop, but Mom was never the same. She liked the lifestyle good ol’ Jones gave us. Mom started to drink. Then she got prescription drugs from him. This isn’t her first trip to detox, you know.”

  Lane looked at Harper, who said, “We can’t take you with us.”

  “He won’t hurt her today. He’s distracted. He’s very fastidious.” Madeline set the pop down.

  “Fastidious?” Harper asked.

  “He thinks he’s a connoisseur. Calls himself a foodie. He wants everything to be perfect so he can savour it; to him it’s like food and cars. He wants it to be perfect with my sister.” Madeline’s eyes looked tired again; her voice was flat.

  “Savour?” Harper asked.

  “I saw it in the way he was treating Andrea last night. It was the way he treated me.” Her eyes were vacant. “But I fixed him for a day or two.”

  She sounds like a child again, Lane thought.

  “How?” Harper asked.

  “Stabbed him through the hand with a steak knife. He’ll still be bleeding and in p
ain. If he fucks Andrea now, it won’t be perfect. He wants it to be perfect when he films it.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  Harper got up and returned with a carafe of coffee and four cups. “That doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t coming with us. Besides the fact that it’s dangerous, there are so many regulations against it…”

  Madeline leaned forward and pointed at her chest. “I know the car. I know his license plate. I know where he’ll be and when. Either you take me with you, or I leave now and do this on my own.” She stood up.

  Lane smiled. “And leave us to drink all of this coffee by ourselves?”

  There was another knock at the door.

  Harper opened it.

  A female paramedic stood in the doorway with her carrying case.

  “Come on in,” Lane said. He and Harper waited in the next room as the paramedic examined Madeline.

  After ten minutes, she joined them in the adjacent room while an officer sat with Madeline.

  “Coffee?” Harper asked.

  She nodded, pushed black hair back from her forehead, and accepted a cup from Harper. “I’m not a doctor, you understand. I can’t make a diagnosis.”

  “I’m Lane and he’s Harper.” Lane reached to shake her hand.

  “Elaine.” She shook Lane’s hand and then Harper’s.

  Give her a chance to think this over, Lane thought.

  “I recommended that she go to the hospital. She refused,” Elaine said between sips of coffee.

  “I’m not surprised,” Lane said.

  Elaine looked at the detectives. “She told me she needs to find her sister. That her stepfather has the little girl?”

  Lane nodded.

  Harper said, “That’s correct.”

  Elaine inhaled. “If I were a doctor, and you understand I’m not…”

  “We understand,” Harper said.

  “If I were a doctor, I’d say Madeline’s severely dehydrated and in need of bed rest. She needs to push the fluids and get some food in her stomach when it’ll stay down. I’d also say I’d like to run some blood work to find out exactly what was used to drug her.” Elaine looked at the door and moved toward it. “At least that’s what I would say if I were a doctor.”

  ×

  “Detective Lane?”

  Lane recognized the voice on his cell phone. “Chief Smoke.” Lane nodded at Harper as they walked across the parking lot with Madeline between them.

  “You are making progress on the Towers case.” It was a statement of fact.

  Who has been talking to Smoke? Lane thought. Tell him only what he needs to know. “That’s correct. We are working on a tip and preparing to arrest a suspect.”

  “The suspect is?” Smoke asked.

  “Dr. Joseph Jones.” Lane walked around the Chev and leaned an elbow on its roof. You know, Joseph Jones — your drinking buddy.

  Smoke was silent for a full thirty seconds.

  Lane glanced at Harper, who was opening the back door for Maddy.

  Smoke said, “I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

  To Lane there was the hint of a threat in Smoke’s voice and something like gloating. Lane said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Any errors made in the investigation of this case will be attributed to you. I expect your report by the end of the day.” Smoke said.

  “Of course.” Lane closed his phone. He got in the car and turned to Harper. “It’s on my head, not yours.”

  ×

  They sat together in the Chev in the parking lot of the passport office next to Macleod Trail. Madeline glanced at the variety of unmarked police vehicles gathered around them. She heard Harper explain to the other officers what they were about to do.

  Lane groaned as he turned to look over his shoulder at Madeline.

  “I didn’t mean for you to get hit by that truck. I’m sorry, you know.” Madeline kept her eyes on the traffic whispering southbound along Macleod Trail.

  Lane handed her a pair of binoculars. “What’s the plate number?”

  “Not yet.” She adjusted the binoculars.

  “What colour is the Mercedes?” Lane asked.

  “Silver.”

  Lane picked up a two-way radio and passed on the information. His window hummed open. He breathed in the spring air.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Get Andrea back safe. That’s the first priority, then arrest Dr. Jones.”

  “What about me? Do I go to jail?”

  There it is again, the voice of a child. “What for? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like it’s my fault.”

  Lane looked at her. She glanced away from the binoculars for a moment. There were tears in her eyes.

  “What happened was done to you. You were used, taken advantage of. You were betrayed.” Lane watched her watching the traffic.

  “You can say that, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.”

  “What’s on the license plate?” Lane asked.

  Madeline looked through the binoculars. “Here he comes.”

  Lane spoke into his radio, “We’re on!”

  “The silver Mercedes. It’s him.” Madeline followed the car with the binoculars.

  Lane asked, “Silver Mercedes four-door sedan?”

  “Yep. I can’t see my sister.”

  Lane heard the tension in her voice. “Does she usually ride in the back seat?”

  “Yes.” She gave him the plate number.

  Lane spoke into the radio, “Silver Mercedes four-door sedan. Watch for a child in the back seat.”

  The police vehicles left the parking lot and accelerated south on Macleod Trail.

  Lane passed on the plate number and waited until the last vehicle, a blue pickup truck, left. He asked, “Buckled up?” Lane accelerated and followed the other vehicles.

  Maddy nodded. She kept looking through the binoculars from the back seat.

  “Will they hurt her?” Maddy asked as the police vehicles took up their positions in each of the three lanes.

  Lane watched the vehicles, knowing that Harper was driving the Ford full-sized van in the left-hand lane. “Harper will do a visual to see where your sister is, then they’ll set up and box Jones in so that it will be easy to extract her without him running.”

  “Won’t he recognize Harper?” She had shifted the binoculars to focus on the van.

  Lane glanced to his right. “He’s wearing a ball cap, sunglasses, and a bright red jacket, and the side windows of the van are so heavily tinted that it’s difficult to see inside.”

  Maddy looked at Lane for an instant. “I hope you’re right.” She turned her attention back to the Mercedes.

  They watched from at least one hundred metres to the rear as Harper closed in on the Mercedes. He waited for the moment when the car in front of him signaled and eased into the left-hand turning lane. Harper moved up directly on the driver’s side of the Mercedes, matched its speed for four or five seconds, then slowed until he was twenty metres back.

  Lane and Maddy heard Harper’s voice over the radio, “The child is in the back seat, driver’s side. Looks like she’s watching a movie. There’s a handgun on the seat beside the driver.”

  Maddy nodded. “He got the gun a few years ago on one of his trips to the States.”

  Lane watched the pickup truck and van move forward.

  The Mercedes pulled up alongside a city bus.

  Lane watched the vehicles brake for a red light. The unmarked pickup truck pulled up behind the Mercedes. Harper, in the van, positioned himself next to Jones. Driver’s side. Rear fender. The dentist’s blind spot.

  The light turned green.

  Lane caught motion to the right. “Oh no.”

  A white semi pulling two trailers filled with gravel was moving east. The driver sounded his air horn in warning. The horn died.

  Lane watched the heads of drivers ahead of him as they reacted to the wail of the h
orn.

  The noses of accelerating vehicles dipped as they braked.

  The silver Mercedes accelerated.

  Lane heard the jake brake slowing the engine of the semi. The braking wheels of the truck were shuddering and bouncing on the pavement. The weight of the loaded trailers pushed the semi into the intersection. The rear tires smoked and screamed. The flat nose and chromed bumper of the truck plowed into the front door of the bus.

  The bus skidded left and piled into the pickup driven by the police officer.

  Lane saw the airbag explode in the driver’s face.

  The pickup skidded left, hitting the right rear bumper of Harper’s van. The van spun to face the bus.

  Harper was now visible through the van’s windshield.

  Lane saw the airbag deploy in Harper’s vehicle when the van and bus butted heads.

  Vehicles behind the wreckage braked and skidded. The orderly lines of vehicles became a mass of metal and plastic scattered across the roadway.

  Some crashed into the main wreckage of the bus and semi. Others remained unscathed in the midst of crumpled vehicles.

  Lane stopped.

  He reached for the radio to give the location of the accident on Macleod Trail. “We need ambulances, fire, and police. This is a multiple impact collision involving a city bus.”

  “He’s getting away!” Maddy’s hand slapped Lane’s shoulder. Lane looked in the mirror. Her eyes were wild with fear, and the shock of defeat.

  Lane saw Harper step out of the van. He looked at Lane and pointed to the right lane. All of the wreckage had been pushed to the left side of the southbound lanes. The right lane remained partially open.

  Lane shoulder-checked, accelerated, and cruised past the bus. He braked, turned sharply right, and turned left to move around the second trailer hitched to the jackknifed semi. He looked up at the rear bumper as he eased between it and the curb on his right side.

  They squeezed through the gap without touching on either side.

  Lane looked left. Harper was running alongside the semi. “I’ll take care of this, you go!” He pointed south in the direction of the receding Mercedes.

  Lane nodded. He checked left and right, saw he was clear, and pressed the accelerator. The engine responded.

  “Keep your eyes on the Mercedes!” Lane looked in the mirror at Madeline. Her eyes met his before she lifted the binoculars and aimed them down the highway. “I’m going to keep well back. I need you to keep Jones and your sister in view.”