Storm Front - eARC

by Robert Conroy

  Chapter 9

  The frightening and unexpected sound of the doorbell chiming froze Raines in his tracks. He stared at Tower in shock and dismay as the chimes rang melodically. Who the hell could it be? They’d only been in the house for an hour and Raines had hopes of staying there all night. It was large, empty, warm, and had a refrigerator full of food and a dozen cans of beer. It was dark out and the snow was continuing to pile up. How the hell could anyone even make it to the house? He knew it wasn’t the Avon lady, so it had to be a do-gooder neighbor.

  The ringing was followed by a loud pounding on the door and the muted sound of voices. Raines broke from his trance and picked up a gun. One of the few areas where they’d managed to help themselves while looting houses was in firepower. If they couldn’t find much money, then they did find some excellent weapons. He’d concluded that the people of Sheridan seemed to be well armed, although cashless. One of the places they’d plundered contained several highly illegal fully automatic weapons and a lot of ammunition, and they’d helped themselves. It amused him that the owner was unlikely to report the theft to the police. He would be in deep trouble himself.

  Raines had a full clip in his stolen M16, and the safety was off. He was ready. Tower was similarly armed. His face twitched in either nervousness or excitement. Raines could never tell.

  A muffled voice sounded through the door. “Hey, Phil, we know you’re in there. We saw the lights. What gives? Talk to us, buddy.”

  God damn it, Raines muttered. He had yelled at Tower to keep the place dark, but that was after the idiot had already turned on a couple of lights. The fucking troll was afraid of the dark. Raines had switched them off as quickly as he could, but they’d obviously been noticed. It was too late for regrets. Now what? Blast your way out or bluff your way out? Or maybe stay silent and hope the neighbor would go away. Not a chance. They’d obviously seen the lights go on and off.

  Tower went to a window and peered through the drapes. He signaled that there were at least two men outside that he could see. Finally, the little jerk was doing something right.

  First try to bluff, Raines thought. “Sorry guys, but I can’t come to the door right now,” he said in a deep voice that he hoped would pass for the homeowner’s. “I’m all wet and I’m changing. You know how it is.”

  There was a pause and then laughter from outside. “Yeah, we know all about that. We’re freezing our asses off. Are Lisa and the kids home yet? Marie and our kids are worried.”

  Who the hell is Lisa? A wife? A child? His wife, he decided. “Nope, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s gonna be home for a long while.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? Well, when you get yourself settled, come over and let’s talk. We’re setting up ways to protect the neighborhood from whatever comes along. No way we can’t drink some beer while we’re doing it.”

  “Sounds great,” Raines answered with what he hoped was the proper enthusiasm.

  Raines crept to a window and looked out. He could make out two men on snowshoes walking away with an awkward shuffle. To his dismay, they had shotguns over their shoulders. The logical assumption was that this “Phil” had snowshoes as well; otherwise the neighbors wouldn’t think he’d be able to move around at all.

  “Fooled them, didn’t we?” said Tower happily, unconcerned that his mistake had caused the dilemma.

  “We wouldn’t have had to fool anyone if you’d kept your hands off the lights.”

  Tower looked hurt. “How’m I supposed to see without lights? If I can’t see, this is as bad as prison. At least we can stay here with the lights on now that they know we’re here.”

  He had a point about prison, Raines thought. Freedom, though, was more than turning on a switch when you wanted to. A thought suddenly jarred Raines. He ran upstairs to the room the owner used as an office. A desk in the corner was covered with papers. He turned on the light and searched through the papers. There it was, the homeowner’s bank statement. The name on the account read Philip and Amy Jakobowski. He checked for photos and found an adult man and a woman. No child. He checked the other rooms and only the master bedroom was lived in. That meant there was no Lisa and no kids! Oh, Christ! The fucking neighbors had tricked them. Damn it.

  “Grab our shit and get moving. We’ve gotta leave,” he yelled.

  “Why?”

  “Because there ain’t nobody named Lisa and there ain’t no kids, and they’ll be back soon with cops and guns.”

  Already, Raines could visualize cops on snowmobiles surrounding the house, while citizens on snowshoes helped them. In moments, the two criminals were ready and on their remaining snowmobile. They’d stashed it in the family room to keep it out of sight and free of snow. It made a mess when they’d opened the double doors, but they hadn’t cared. They weren’t going to clean it up. They quickly topped off the tank with gas from a container in the attached garage.

  Raines had already plotted an escape route. Exiting the back, there were fences to his right and rear, but not to his left. The rear fence would prevent him from cutting to the street behind. He thought the snowmobile might clear the fence if he gunned it, but he couldn’t take a chance. Raines was an amateur driver and knew it. Jumping a fence was something you saw on commercials or in movies, not in real life. Lose their one remaining snowmobile and they would be hoofing it as wanted men in a strange town in the middle of a blizzard. Assuming, of course, that they weren’t hurt in the crash.

  He drove the snowmobile out and swerved to his left, nearly overturning it. He drove down several back yards and gunned it left again towards the street. To his astonishment, several men stood directly in front of him. They were as surprised as he and scattered, allowing him to drive through them and turn away. One of them had a rifle or a shotgun. Tower fired a wild burst from his M16 that ripped through the night, and the men threw themselves into the snow. Someone howled in pain as Raines turned to the right and down another street.

  Not good, Raines thought as they roared away from near disaster. Not good at all. But at least they were away from immediate danger.

  * * *

  Mike Stuart looked around the conference room. Where was Chief Bench, he mouthed as a question to Detective Hughes. She shrugged. The mayor was there, and he looked tired and frustrated. Well, that fit a lot of people, Mike thought.

  “Chief Bench isn’t with us tonight,” Mayor Carter said. “He’s not feeling well.”

  Mike suddenly understood. The chief was drunk, just like DiMona had said. Wonderful. Now he and Hughes were the senior officers present in the building, if you didn’t count a couple of elderly sergeants in supplies and records. Obviously, the mayor didn’t either, or they’d have been invited to the meeting.

  “Detective Hughes,” Carter began, “do you believe the two men on snowmobiles who shot up Almond Street are the same people who killed those people in the motel?”

  The calls had come in a few minutes earlier. No one had been hit in the shootout, although one citizen had fallen over an ornamental boulder and broken his ankle. The real shocker was that the criminals had used automatic weapons and scared the hell out of the citizens. How they’d gotten them and from where was a moot point. They had them and that made the two shooters even more of a threat, especially if they actually were the motel murderers.

  “Probably one and the same, or two and the same,” Hughes said. “They left the motel with two snowmobiles, but they may have damaged or dumped one of them. Either way, they fit the profile and the rough description we now have. It ain’t perfect confirmation, but logic says it’s them.”

  She’d just come from the site of the abortive shootout on Almond Street and had spent fruitless minutes looking for shell casings, before deciding that they wouldn’t be found until the snow melted, sometime around July. Another cop remained at the site and was lifting fingerprints from inside the house where the suspects had been hiding.

  Earlier, Hughes had sent fingerprint information from the motel to the FBI
and gotten a quick response because of the savagery of the murders. They identified two criminals named James Tower and William Raines. They were from Oklahoma and were suspects in a series of violent crimes, and had each been in jail for several years. Until recently, they had assaulted, robbed, and beaten, and there was a suspected rape, but they had not killed. Nor did they have any known drug problems. At least the Sheridan Police were not dealing with half-crazed addicts looking for their next fix. But that was scant comfort, because Tower and Raines had now killed. They’d crossed a new threshold of violence and that made them infinitely more dangerous.

  Of course, knowing who they were and finding Tower and Raines were two different things. The two suspects had made a mistake in turning on the lights in a house that was presumed to be vacant. It was highly unlikely they would make the same mistake twice. Mike had little respect for the so-called mind of the criminal. Most people stole and killed because they were too stupid or uneducated to do otherwise, and, so far, he’d seen nothing to indicate a higher level of intelligence in either Tower or Raines.

  Of course, that did not mean taking them for granted. Tower and Raines were now desperate and remorseless killers. The chatter of full auto guns made them extremely dangerous, stupid or not.

  “Does anybody have any good news?” Carter asked.

  There was silence; then Mike spoke up. “I can give a little highly qualified good news. We do have a couple of snow removal teams in action with more to follow.”

  Carter raised his hands high in mock joy. “Hallelujah. Finally. Now, what do you mean by teams and why is it qualified good news?”

  Mike explained that he, Public Works Director Dom Hassell, and their counterparts in the county government had decided on a way to begin to clear the roads. This, of course, was the main reason that Hassell wasn’t at Carter’s meeting. That Hassell couldn’t stand Carter was another.

  First, they used the snowmobiles to get snowplow drivers to their vehicles. However, the plows could not operate alone. With the roads clogged with abandoned cars, it was necessary to first find a place to put the empty cars. Thus, tow trucks had to drag abandoned cars someplace where they wouldn’t be in the way. Usually this would be a temporary site, like a nearby lawn, or median. Once a path was cleared, plows would then go off-road and clear some of the parking lots that were empty as a result of businesses sending people home early. The tows would again drag cars into the lots and leave them.

  “We’re making progress,” Mike said, “but it’s progress measured in feet per hour rather than miles per hour, and the snow is continuing to come down. At least, though, it gets the roads cleared so we can plow again.” And again and again, he thought.

  Patti Hughes laughed. “How are the good citizens taking to our towing their cars? I’ll bet we’re killing a lot of transmissions and causing tons of other damage.”

  Mike grinned wryly. “How can I argue? Of course we are. What’s funny is that some of the people who’ve abandoned their cars see us doing the work, and they believe they can hop in and drive home, and we’ve got to tell them otherwise, which pisses them off. At least we can get those people to put their cars in neutral and save on repair jobs.”

  Carter shook his head in anger. “That way’ll take forever, damn it. Can’t somebody think of something else? I’m going to get crucified if this can’t be cleaned up promptly. What the hell went wrong? Why weren’t we prepared?”

  Mike was tired and didn’t feel like playing nice. “Mr. Mayor, we were as prepared as we could be, especially since nobody predicted any snow in the first place. Look, this isn’t Buffalo or some town way up north or out west in the ski country, like Denver, where they deal with huge amounts of snow as a matter of course. A foot of snow in this town can close almost anything, and we’ve got more than three feet on the ground, and that’s on top of what had fallen last week. And it really hasn’t even begun to slow down. Add to that the fact that it started during a workday and caused everybody to get stuck in traffic and you have a better feel for the mess we’re in. Sir, if you have a better idea, we’d all love to hear it.”

  Carter pulled back as if slapped. “If I had, you’re right, you’d hear it. I’m frustrated, pissed, and angry, Sergeant Stuart.” He softened slightly, although his expression showed residual anger. He didn’t like being talked back to. “I guess we all are. Do you know how many people we’re warehousing here in this civic center compound? No? Well, I’ll tell you. Four hundred plus. And would you believe that some of them are complaining about the facilities? We’ve got some food in here from some of the closer restaurants and stores, although the vending machines are now empty, but there’s no satisfying some people. Would you also believe that a couple of assholes have complained that I didn’t have bottled water brought in instead of food? When I told them to drink from the drinking fountains, you would’ve thought I’d asked them to commit incest or turn cannibal. Jesus!”

  Mike laughed ruefully. “I guess you do have problems, sir.”

  “We all do, Sergeant Stuart,” Carter said grimly. Mike winced. The honorable mayor had not forgiven Mike for his outburst. Someday he might regret being blunt with Carter. Tonight, however, he just couldn’t care.

  * * *

  “Governor,” Wally purred. “What a pleasure to hear your sweet sexy voice.”

  Governor Lauren Landsman chuckled. “You are so full of bullshit, Wally. You should have been a lawyer or a politician, or both, like me. No, you had to be a weatherman type and lie to the world on a daily basis. I only have to do it when it’s time to get re-elected or otherwise politically expedient.”

  “Thanks for putting things in perspective, Lauren.”

  “Seriously, Wally, how are you doing?”

  Wally took a deep breath. Usually, he gave a generic answer to a question like that and said he was doing fine, thank you. He couldn’t do that to someone like Lauren.

  “It still hurts. God, Lauren, it hurts. Some days I think I’ll make it, and other days I just don’t know how. They say it gets better, but I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, I’m over my feeling sorry for myself and I really am doing better.”

  “I’m so sorry, Wally. You know Ellen was one of my best friends, too. I just wish I could have made it to the funeral.”

  She had been in Japan on a trade mission drumming up business for the state when Ellen died.

  Lauren Landsman and Wally’s late wife had been roommates in college. Wally had actually dated Lauren and the relationship had been quite serious, even intimate, until Lauren dumped him for someone else. He had dated Ellen on the rebound and it had blossomed into a long and successful marriage. As to Lauren Landsman, the guy she left Wally for was long forgotten. She had never married. Instead, she’d gone to law school and become a career politician, rising from state representative to state senator and then governor. Governorship of the State of Michigan was the obvious high point of her life to date, although there were rumors that she’d consider running for the U.S. Senate the next time around. Term limit legislation said she would be through as governor. Throughout the years, she, Ellen, and Wally had remained in contact and continued to be friends.

  Lauren Landsman was still slender and extremely attractive for a woman her age, and Wally found himself thinking about the great physical fun they’d had when they were young and lithe and limber. Then he wondered if either of them was anywhere near as limber as then.

  “Wally, what’s happening to us with all this snow? And don’t tell me the world’s ending.”

  Wally smiled. “Not hardly. What we have here, Lauren, is a meteorological stalemate. We have two weather fronts in collision with each other and neither one will budge. It happens all the time, but it usually doesn’t last very long and, sooner or later and generally sooner, one of the fronts gives up and is pushed away. This stalemate is lasting an ungodly long time and I don’t know when it will end. Maybe it’s our turn, though.”

  “What do you mean by that happy th
ought, Wally-man?”

  Wally smiled. She used to call him that when they were an item a century or so before. “Well, let’s see. California has earthquakes, brush fires, and storms off the Pacific, all of which makes one wonder why anybody would want to live there. Florida has hurricanes, gators, snakes, and a swamp that burns, while Kansas has tornadoes that take little girls to Oz. New England has Perfect Storms, and the Mississippi and Missouri flood all over the plains. What do we have in Michigan? Nothing. Oh, we get an occasional tornado that generally finds a trailer park, but nowhere near as many as other areas. Compared with other places, our weather picture is really very sedate. So, maybe it’s our turn for Mother Nature to zap us and remind us who’s really in charge.”

  Lauren Landsman sighed expansively. “Wally, I cannot go before the people of Michigan and tell them what’s happening is our turn and we should learn to love it. They’d tell me to shove it, and with a snow shovel no less.”

  “Lauren, I’d love to tell you it’s going to end soon, but I can’t. Sure it will end—I just don’t know when. The stalemate could break in five minutes, although not bloody likely, or it could break in five hours. Or maybe not for five days.”

  “During which time it keeps on snowing.”

  “You got it.”

  “And other meteorologists agree with you?”

  “Yep,” he said with a degree of pride. It was small comfort, but Wally was now the acknowledged prophet who’d been proven correct. He would not get the Isaac Cline award, although his warnings had come too late and against an astonishingly strong storm to be much help.

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to tell everyone that this whole thing is your fault, and that they should send all their cards and letters to your home address, which, of course, I’ll provide along with your home phone number.”

  Wally laughed and remembered how close they’d been in college before he’d met Ellen. “You do that, my dear governor, and I’ll tell the whole world that I’ve seen you naked.”