A twig cracked. I froze but it was too late. Something cold and hard pressed into the back of my neck.
“Get up.” The voice was muffled, like he was wearing a mask over his face. I crawled out and began to get up, feeling the ache in my arms and legs. The hard object was a pistol and as I rose it moved from behind my head to the small of my back.
“Go to the car.” The words were so low and indistinct that I could barely make them out. I stepped toward his motor.
My brain was revving at the speed of sound. If I was going to get out of this alive, I had to do something right here and now, within the next few seconds. All I knew about my attacker was that he was holding the gun right-handed.
I raised my arms in the traditional surrender pose, at the same time pushing my shoulders back so that I was pressing against the weapon. In one swift motion, I pivoted until I was facing him and trapped his gun hand under my left arm, hugging it tight to my side. At the same instant I swung my right arm around, bending it so that my thumb was touching my chest, and hammered the sharp point of my elbow into his face. The blow was eighty percent body rotation and twenty percent shoulder. The power came all the way up from my hips.
My elbow connected with his left cheek and nose, and he collapsed like a felled tree.
I stood over his body, but he didn’t even twitch. His breathing seemed faint and I was pretty sure he was out cold. He was wearing a black balaclava over his head, leaving only his eyes and nose exposed, and his hand was still tightly clenched around the pistol with his finger on the trigger. I decided not to touch him or the gun. Dialling nine-one-one seemed a much better idea.
My cell phone was up in the room. I walked to the front entrance of the building, rubbing my elbow and glad that it was all over. As I pulled open the door, I took a look back.
My attacker had rolled over onto his front and had crawled under the security light. Blood was pouring from his nose and he looked shaken and stunned, but the blow obviously hadn’t been as hard as I’d thought and hoped.
I watched in paralyzed horror as he got up on his knees and stared at me.
Chapter 20
I had no car with me and the chance of a taxi waiting around was close to zero. By the time I called for one, I’d be dead. Buses didn’t run on this route late at night. On one side of me was the broad, deep Fraser River; on the other was low ground and small airfields. What the hell was I going to do?
Rachel. I made for the Winged Moose and ran into the room at the back where I guessed she’d be. It was a small office. She looked up from some papers as I entered breathlessly. I closed the door behind me. No sign of my pursuer yet. It would take him a few minutes to get his act together. It had to.
“What’s the matter?”
“I need to borrow your car. Emergency. No time to explain.”
She gave me a piercing stare then a little nod as if she’d made up her mind.
“Okay. Here. Beige Toyota Corolla in the far corner.” She reached into her bag, took out a bunch of keys, and quickly slid one off the ring. I took it greedily.
“Thanks, I’ll get it back to you later.”
“Tomorrow morning will do. One of the guys here can drop me off home tonight.”
“Great, thank you.” I turned.
“This way goes straight out to the car park,” she said, pointing behind her.
I went to the door she indicated, unlocked it and slipped out. Stopped where the concrete path ended and the car park began. The night air cooled the sweat on my forehead as I looked around, spotted the Corolla. Ran over to it, got in, switched on the engine.
My hands trembled on the steering wheel and it wasn’t from fear of Hoodie. It was the Beaver experience all over again. Heart pounding, pulse racing, body sweating. “No!” I barked the word angrily out at myself. I had always loved driving, almost as much as flying a plane, and I was bloody good at it. This has to stop. I have to get my act together, right now, this very second. A couple of deep breaths. Still no sign of Hoodie.
I pulled out of the car park and turned left, which was the direction I needed to go. Big mistake. I had committed myself before I spotted the trap. The white Mercedes was directly ahead, sitting sideways onto the narrow road. I could still get past him but something told me he would never allow that. Smashed bodywork would mean nothing to him. Sure enough, as soon as he saw me approaching, he pulled all the way across the road, completely blocking it. I would have to ride up onto the grass verge in front of the Mercedes to pass him. Side on, he’d have a good chance to take me out with his automatic.
I had a better option. One that I’d practised in quiet car parks late at night when I was a teenager in love with speed and the machines that could give it to me. Now I just had to summon up the confidence to attempt the manoeuvre, remember the sequence of steps correctly, and co-ordinate them perfectly.
With my left arm over the steering wheel in the twelve o’clock position, I increased speed to about thirty-five mph. My right hand was on the emergency brake release button and as I approached the Mercedes I pulled up the brake handle as hard as I could. As expected, my rear wheels locked and the tyres began to audibly slide.
Next, I jogged the steering wheel slightly to the right to upset its balance, then immediately twisted it hard left to the six o’clock spot. The next few seconds would decide whether I wrecked Rachel’s car or not.
The Toyota began to rotate one hundred and eighty degrees. As it did so, I removed my right hand from the emergency brake lever, getting both hands back on the steering wheel, and pressed down on the accelerator. It was tempting to floor the pedal but I knew I mustn’t do that.
It worked. Not using the foot brake prevented the front tyres from sliding and skidding, which warded off any loss of momentum. The heavy, engine-bearing front of the vehicle didn’t degrade or “sink” as it would otherwise have done. In short, the vehicle pivoted nicely in a classic J-turn.
Well, fairly nicely. I hadn’t been quite aggressive enough with turning the steering wheel. I wondered if Rachel kept her tyres regularly pumped up at gas stations. If their pressure was too low, the tyres would roll right off the rims. I held my breath and prayed.
Thankfully, the car rotated the full one-eighty. The car steadied and I roared away down the road, leaving the Mercedes, and hopefully a very angry Hoodie, in my dust.
I sped along Russ Baker Way, making for the bridge to Vancouver, expecting Hoodie to follow me. It wouldn’t take him long to catch up in his Mercedes. Accelerate alongside, wind down his window, shoot me, take the next flight out of here . . . I checked the mirror. No sign of him so far. It wouldn’t be long. I stepped on the accelerator and raced for my life.
At the next intersection I joined Grant McConachie Way and mixed with the heavy flow of traffic coming from YVR airport. Taxis weaved their complicated in and out pattern all around me, saving vital seconds for their impatient customers riding in the back. I dreaded one of the weavers turning out to be the Mercedes and checked all movements both left and right of me, my head jerking around as if I’d contracted a nervous tic.
On the other side of the bridge, I took a series of random left and right turns, not caring where it led me, checking the mirror again and again. Still no sign of the white Mercedes. Hoodie must have considered the risk of open pursuit too great and abandoned the chase. I breathed a bit easier, but I still had to decide where to go. Hoodie knew where I lived, so why would I go there? Trouble was, I had nowhere else to go. After a lot of thought, I decided I had little choice but to double bluff him. After all, for all Hoodie knew, I could have called friends, even police by now.
When I got home I parked on the street. There was no white Mercedes awaiting me. I flew into the house like an Olympic sprinter and slammed the door behind me. Checked all the windows, switched on the alarm. Spent a restless night lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and jumping at every little noise.
I called Rachel early the next morning and thanked her. The sound
of her voice was a gift of precious normality in my now, once again, very abnormal life. She still didn’t ask for an explanation and I could have hugged her for that alone.
“Look, if you’re in some sort of trouble, call the police,” she said.
Smart girl. Last night I’d thought long and hard about doing that very thing. In the end, I hadn’t. Schuller would have come around and grilled me, demanding evidence and witnesses. Of which there were exactly none. If I pressed charges I would get nowhere – Hoodie, and his Mercedes, would be long gone – and it would be my word against Joe Donnelly’s. What Joe had done made me very angry indeed, and yet somehow, I couldn’t feel revengeful. Sure, I could get the police to visit him, question him, take a statement. It would make yet more headlines in the newspapers and internet sites, and that would hurt me more than it would bother Joe. Any publicity is good publicity, right? For at least a short while, the Winged Moose might have some extra customers. None of this would shake off Hoodie or get him away from me.
“Thanks for the advice,” I told Rachel, and I meant it sincerely, “Where do you want me to bring you the car?” She told me her address and we agreed to meet at a café on Number Three Road not far from her apartment in Richmond. I could catch a bus back.
I switched on the house alarm, looked all around me, and locked my front door. Rachel’s Toyota was parked across the street. As I walked to the car I noticed a homeless man, dressed in filthy clothes, sitting propped up against a white picket fence across the road. His cap was lying on the sidewalk in front of him. It was a strange place to sit begging. Not many people passed along this quiet residential street. I’d never seen this before.
As I looked at him, his coal black beady eyes watched me. I approached the driver’s side, stooped low and shone a flashlight underneath the car. There was nothing attached or otherwise odd, as best I could tell. I pulled slowly out, observing the homeless man in my mirror. He reached deep into the many folds of his clothes and extracted a cell phone, pressed a number, held it to his ear.
A homeless guy with a cell phone?
I eased away with my eyes still fixed on him. Now I knew how Hoodie could keep track of my movements so successfully. He didn’t have to be around all of the time. The hired help, and there were probably several of them, would keep him informed.
I had an uncomfortable ride to Richmond, alone with my thoughts. When I got to the coffee shop and sat down with Rachel, I exchanged her car keys for the few items I’d left behind last night.
“Thank you,” I said, “Good to have this stuff back, especially the Kindle.” I forced a grin. “I only got halfway through the thriller I’m reading on it.”
“You life seems to have more twists and turns than any thriller, Cal.”
I wondered how much she’d seen going on last night and was relieved when she didn’t follow up her remark with any awkward questions. In my currently confused state, I wouldn’t have known what to say. Instead, she explained that she had to get to work, gave me a last concerned look and quick peck on the cheek, and left. I drank a double espresso, glad that I hadn’t had to dance around my situation with Rachel. When the time came, if it ever did, I wanted to be dead straight with her.
The bus was crowded on the way home. My eyes scanned each and every face. I told myself to breathe easy, Hoodie would never do anything in a crowded, confined place like this. It didn’t help. My stomach was a tight ball of tension, my nerves taut like piano wire. All I knew was, this situation was destroying me. It had to end soon.
When I got back to the end of my street, the homeless person was gone. I waited until some teens turned into my block and followed close behind them. Loud, crude, and with their cell phones out to text and take selfies, they never even noticed me. When they passed my house, I dived inside the gate, key in hand, and rushed inside.
Chapter 21
Stillness and silence reigned. Then, slowly, María began to groan and I opened my eyes.
“It’s stopped,” I said.
María nodded. Blood poured out of a gash on her forehead, blinding one eye, and an enormous bruise darkened the side of her otherwise ashen face. She looked to be in shock.
“Are you alright?” I asked stupidly.
“Pain here, in my side,” she replied, holding her hand over it.
I smelled aviation fuel and began to panic. “We have to get out of here,’ I said. I twisted in the narrow space and undid her seatbelt. My door was stiff and wouldn’t open until I threw my whole weight against it.
I tumbled out of the plane and found myself up to my knees in snow. All around me were glaring white snowdrifts and gray-white mountains on three sides. The plane had come to rest with a forward tilt, facing down a valley filled with murky clouds. It was bitterly cold, subzero for sure, and I was wearing a light jacket over a short-sleeved shirt. The scene was utterly desolate but I had no time to think about it. I hurried around to the other side of the plane.
The tiny trip exhausted me and I wondered where all my strength had gone. Then I realised that, even without pain in my chest and elsewhere, the thin air of the mountains made every physical task double the normal energy and effort.
María seemed even more tightly jammed than I had been. I pried her out carefully, dragged her over the snow away from the plane and laid her down gently. Using a clean tissue, I wiped the blood out of her eye so that she could see and then ran back to the plane. Inside it I found our two bags and the first aid box and hauled them over to María. From somewhere deep inside, she mustered up the beginnings of a smile.
I rucked up her blouse and felt her ribs. Immediately her smile vanished and she moaned as my hands moved. I couldn’t find any protrusions or dents.
“Not broken, just bruised,” I said as confidently as I could.
I rooted around at the bottom of my travel case where I’d put a big plastic bag for laundry. Not ideal but it would do. I took it out and filled it with handfuls of snow then laid it on her ribcage.
“Keep this pressed tight and refill with fresh snow when you need to,” I instructed her, though I barely knew what I was doing. “Where else are you hurt?” I said.
“My left leg,” she replied, “It’s burning.”
“What happened to it?”
“The seat broke up under me, trapped my legs tight, pinned me against the front.”
I eased her pants leg up to her knee and took a look. Her left calf seemed oddly out of place, twisted to one side. Without giving her any warning, I took hold of it and pushed it around to its proper position.
María screamed.
I bound up the leg with a bandage from the first aid box and tugged her pants leg back down over it.
“That’s as much as I can do,” I said, aware that I had yet to radio for help. And if help couldn’t come until tomorrow, I’d need to get us some shelter before nightfall. With all the clouds around, the sky was already overcast and gloomy.
Back at the plane I sniffed the air and couldn’t smell fuel anymore and, with the doors wide open since we’d crashed, I was pretty sure it was safe to go back inside. I squeezed into the pilot seat and tried to get the radio going.
Nothing doing; the transmitter was completely dead. The nose of the plane had concertinaed into the snow bank and none of the electronics remained functional. I made my way slowly back to María.
She summoned another smile from somewhere when she saw me.
“Rescue is coming?” she asked.
I stopped and looked down at my feet. “Radio won’t work.”
“Our cell phones. We have cell phones.”
“No signal up here,” I replied, nearly laughing though there was nothing funny about it.
She refused to accept it. “But help will still come. They will. I will still see my father before he dies.”
I looked into her eyes and shook my head sadly.
“No, María. No-one knows we’re here, remember?”
Chapter 22
María started
bleeding through her nose and kept asking me for water. All we had were a couple of half-litre bottles, one of which was only partly filled. I tried giving her soft snow but she said it froze her mouth. In the first aid box I found a tiny packet of six paracetamol and gave two to María. She swallowed them down with water and that meant one of our bottles was now empty.
I finished clearing the plane of everything that was removable and tried our cell phones again just in case. Both were completely nonresponsive. By now the sky was darkening and nightfall couldn’t be far off. The temperature had dropped to well below freezing.
I picked María up and carried her to the plane. Somehow, she squirmed herself into the back where there was just enough room for both of us to lie down, her on the backseats and me on the floor. I shut both doors but the somersaulting wing had knocked a sharp, jagged hole in the tailpiece, through which an icy wind chilled us to the bone.
The bitter cold increased along with the gathering darkness. I got out and blocked the open gash with a towel from one of our travel bags but as soon as I went back inside the improvised plug fell out.
We used everything we’d brought with us as additional clothing, including wrapping towels around our bodies and covering our hands with spare socks, but still felt freezing cold. I huddled up close to María, careful not to press against her injuries, and we gently massaged each other for warmth.
“Go down to the corner store and get me a Diet Pepsi, will you?” María whispered in my ear.
I stifled a laugh so as not to hurt her. “I’ll get a couple of chocolate bars while I’m at it,” I replied.
Despite the intense cold we drifted in and out of sleep but it was a long, pitiless night. Several times I awoke to the sound of María’s low moans and felt frustration that I could do nothing more for her.
Shadow of a Killer Page 7
