In the Shadow of the Glacier

by Vicki Delany

  “His fans won’t see it that way,” Keller said.

  “I don’t imagine there’s anything that could make them see the situation any other way than how he intends them to see it.”

  “Probably not. Good of you to stay, Jim. Molly. A couple of minutes of your time, John.”

  The office door clicked shut behind Smith and Denton.

  “When’s Lopez back?” Keller asked.

  “Next week.”

  “You getting anywhere with Montgomery?”

  “No.” Winters decided to keep his suspicions about the bike thief and his apparent relations with Molly Smith to himself for now. They’d found a correlation between the times she was on the beat and the stealing of bicycles from the downtown area. Unfortunately, not only did that not bring him any closer to finding the thief, there was no guarantee that even if they found the guy, he’d know anything about the Montgomery murder.

  “I have to ask the Yellow Stripes for help with this park business, John,” the Chief said. He picked a pen off his desk and ran it between his fingers like a baton twirler. “People have been arriving all day, taking one side or the other. There’s likely to be serious trouble on Wednesday when the damned fool we have for a deputy mayor announces the council’s decision. And as long as I’m asking for the Horsemen’s help, I’m going to ask them to send someone from IHIT as well. We need fresh eyes on the Montgomery case, John.”

  “I agree,” he said. Although it burned him, deep inside, to say so. He was supposed to be the hotshot homicide detective from the big city. Blessing the minuscule Trafalgar City Police with his presence. And he couldn’t solve the first murder that had happened in this backwoods town all year. He’d come here to escape from the memory of his own failure. And now he’d failed again.

  □□□

  The wheel of the shopping cart caught in a rut in the parking lot. Lucky wrenched it free with a curse. When she looked up a man was standing beside her car, arms crossed, watching her. Her heart leapt into her throat. It was a midweek afternoon; the parking lot was full, people were coming and going with their groceries. A red-faced woman dragged a little boy by the hand. He was screaming and trying to fall down. She swatted him on the bottom.

  Lucky stopped walking.

  “Mrs. Smith,” the man said.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Of course I do, you’re Brian Harris. Come to Trafalgar to make trouble.”

  “The way I see it, Mrs. Smith, you’re the one making trouble. You and that ridiculous committee.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk,” he said with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. He wore a blue baseball cap and the corner of his left eye twitched.

  “We have nothing to talk about. I have to get these groceries home before the ice cream melts.” She tried to calm her breathing. Surely Harris wouldn’t attack her? In the middle of town in the middle of the day. He stepped toward her. She gripped the handles of her shopping cart and made sure it was between them: the shield of a twenty-first century warrior.

  “No one wants trouble, Mrs. Smith.”

  “Then go away and leave us alone. This is our town.”

  “You’re part of a larger world. Although you peaceniks don’t seem to be able to see the big picture. Peacenik—isn’t that what they called you back in the day, Mrs. Smith?”

  “And we were proud, still are, to be on the side of peace.” She felt some confidence returning. It had scared her, badly, to see him watching her, arrogance written all over his pinched face, letting her know that he could find her any time he wanted. But she was on her own ground, and he was just a young punk who thought he was tough because he didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  “Get to the point, please.”

  “The point, Mrs. Smith, is that you’ve lost. My contact on the town council tells me that they’ve voted to end the project outright and return the property to O’Reilly’s estate. What happens to it then will make a lot of lawyers rich.”

  She tried not to let her dismay show. Could she believe him? He might have someone on his side in the town council, just as Barry had been anonymously warned about the meeting last night. “We’ll await the formal announcement,” she said.

  He grabbed the front of her shopping cart and leaned forward. Shocked, Lucky stepped back; he moved in tandem. She was aware that the toddler was no longer screaming, that traffic in and out of the parking lot had stopped, that no one was chatting to their friends or talking on cell phones. In all the world, there might only be Lucky Smith and Brian Harris. Facing each other across a cart piled high with a week’s worth of groceries.

  “Now that I’ve got your attention,” he said with a laugh, releasing the cart. “As I said, no one wants trouble. You’ve lost, so give up before someone gets hurt.”

  “I’m not about to hurt anyone.”

  “Dangerous job, a cop. Should be left to men and women who look like men. Not pretty girls with delicate bone structure and long blond hair.”

  “Are you threatening my daughter?”

  “Just making an observation. In anticipation of tomorrow’s announcement by the town council, we’ll be gathering tonight to express our support. Better if you and your bunch aren’t there. Because I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Remember this, that uniform is designed to make the wearer stand out in a crowd.” He winked at her, shoved the shopping cart toward her, hard, and walked away.

  Lucky’s knees buckled. Surely the bastards weren’t going to harm Moonlight? She was a police officer; if anyone came after Moonlight, they’d have every cop in the British Columbia Interior, in the whole province, to deal with.

  Her hand shook as she fumbled in her purse for her cell phone and punched up the number. Voice mail answered. “Barry, it’s Lucky. There’s going to be trouble tonight at the site of the garden. Call me.”

  She hung up. She looked at her hands. She was gripping a shopping cart. It was not a shield.

  Who was she kidding?

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Why anyone would think that a name like The Potato Famine would attract bar patrons, Molly Smith couldn’t imagine. But everything Irish was fashionable in the world of imitation pubs.

  A group of men tumbled out of The Potato Famine, a cheap bar at the far end of town. One of them caught sight of her, and shouted to his friends. They whistled and made obscene gestures. She stuck her thumbs through her gun belt and stared them down. They carried on up the road, leaning on each other for support, shouting drinking songs into the night. She let out a puff of breath and her fingers loosened their grip on her belt.

  The radio at her shoulder crackled. “Report of a disturbance on Primrose Street,” the night dispatcher said. “Constable Smith, report your location.”

  “Outside the Potato Famine on East Street.”

  “Wait there. A car will be around to pick you up.”

  She didn’t have to wait long. A marked SUV pulled up beside her. Dave Evans was driving. She jumped in. “Trouble?”

  “Looks like it. Saw you on TV, Molly. You shouldn’t let them get to you.”

  “I’m sure you’d have handled being ambushed by the press much better, Dave.”

  “Natch,” he said, flicking the switch to bring on lights and sirens.

  She clenched her teeth. He’d been in the constables’ room when she arrived for the start of her shift. Barely able to control his smirk at seeing her returned to the beat.

  “You’ve got to try not to be so emotional, Molly.” He turned into Front Street, barely managing to keep two wheels on the road. “This is a tough job. It needs tough players. No one else need apply.”

  She looked out the window. The stores and restaurants of downtown turned into late-nineteenth-century houses, then, as they climbed the hill, the big old houses changed into compact Fifties bungalows, larger Eighties homes, and finally twenty-first-century edifices of brick and glass. They might have been traveling in
a time machine rather than a police car. By “tough players,” Smith knew that Evans meant men. “No one else” was, of course, women.

  “You would’ve punched his lights out, eh?” she said.

  “If he insulted my mother like he did yours, count on it.”

  She had a moment of silent satisfaction thinking about Evans being kicked off the force for beating up a journalist.

  They could hear the disturbance before they saw it. A low murmur, growing as they drew closer. An RCMP car blocked the road. Evans slammed his foot onto the brake pedal and avoided a collision by inches.

  Macho idiot, Smith thought, getting out of the vehicle.

  There were about a hundred people on the sidewalk in front of the park. And maybe three times that across the street. A single Trafalgar City cop stood between them. It was Dawn Solway, and her face lit up at the sight of reinforcements.

  Two Mounties got out of their car. Streetlights reflected on the yellow stripe running down their trouser legs, the source of their nickname. “We just got here,” one of them said. “I’m Tocek and this is Chen.”

  “Evans and Smith.”

  “Looks like there might be trouble,” Tocek said.

  Solway came over. “I’m so glad to see you. The mood’s getting ugly.” It must, Smith thought, have been terrifying being the lone cop standing in the middle of the street between the two factions, listening to the murmuring discontent grow.

  Lucky Smith was beside the park gates. Her hand tucked into the right arm of her friend Barry, his left arm an empty sleeve. Faces Smith recognized from around her kitchen table stood behind them. Michael Rockwell held Lucky’s other arm. He said something into her ear. Lucky looked into her daughter’s eyes.

  Smith returned the look. Strength, she thought, Mom’s sending me strength.

  As if orchestrated by an invisible conductor, the crowd across the street began to chant. “Cowards” and “traitors” were some of the words Smith caught. She turned away from her mother. “We need more people,” she said to Tocek.

  “Yeah, you do, but right now we’re it. You handled a riot before?”

  “No.”

  “You?” he asked Evans.

  “No.”

  “I have, so until help arrives I’m in charge.” He didn’t look to be much older than Smith or Evans, and he was only a constable, like them. She didn’t know what Evans thought, this guy barging onto their patch and taking over, but she was glad that someone was.

  The five officers fanned out across the middle of the street. Smith’s heart was beating so hard she feared it might burst out of her chest, like the alien in Alien. She touched her nightstick, just to feel its solid weight under her fingers. She felt her mother watching her.

  “I saw her on TV,” someone screamed. “That cop. The blond one in the middle. She said she’d do whatever was necessary to see the garden built.”

  It took Smith a moment to realize he was talking about her.

  “You’re crazy,” a voice shouted from the garden side, “if you think the cops are with us.”

  Something broke on the pavement beside Smith’s feet. She looked down to see thick brown glass. A beer bottle. What the hell am I doing here?

  The line of protesters edged forward.

  “Do you think they’d laugh if I held your hand, Molly?” Solway said in a small voice.

  “Not as much as if I ran for my mommy. Who, unfortunately, is standing right behind us.”

  Tocek stepped forward. “Why don’t you folks all go home.”

  “Go home. Go home.” The garden side began to chant. Smith thought that she could hear her mother’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure. What would she do, if it broke into a riot? Save her mother and abandon the other citizens of Trafalgar? This couldn’t be happening. She saw Rich Ashcroft’s cameraman at the edges of the crowd. The red light in the front of his camera glowed. Ashcroft himself was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t doubt he was moving through the crowd, whispering agitation, rustling up good footage.

  Her radio crackled. Dispatch was asking every officer to report in immediately to the station and pick up control gear. The Mounties’ Emergency Response Team was being called. That unit was too far away to be of much immediate help, but some Mounties lived in Trafalgar; they’d come. Just knowing that all available resources were on the way helped to quell some of the panic churning through Smith’s stomach.

  “Disperse,” Tocek said, in a voice so calm he might have been instructing a toddlers’ swimming class. “There’s nothing more to be gained here.” He turned and faced the group at the park entrance. “And you too. Go home. Nothing can be settled tonight.”

  Smith was facing the anti-park group. They shifted and muttered amongst themselves. People at the back began to slide away, trying to look as if they hadn’t really been part of all this. The pro-park people, including her own mother, for heaven’s sake, were behind her. She heard similar mutterings, people suggesting that they just leave.

  Tocek’s shoulders relaxed. Chen let out a healthy breath.

  “Stay in your place!” Brian Harris stepped to the front of the line. His right hand was buried deep in his pocket, ball cap low over his eyes. “You heard that pig bitch on TV. The cops are on the side of the appeasers’ park.” He grabbed the shoulder of a man who was retreating back into the crowd. “Are you running away? Like they did?”

  The man looked at the line of police—all five of them, young, inexperienced, terrified, trying hard not to show it—then he looked at Harris. “No way,” he said. He spat in the general direction of Solway’s feet.

  “Peace now!” someone yelled. It might have been Barry Stevens, Lucky’s friend. “Come on,” he said, “show us. Are you on the side of peace or war? Only one way will get us all killed.”

  “Killed. I’ll kill you, you traitor.”

  A rock flew over Smith’s head. A woman cried out.

  A stone, about the size of a pea, hit Chen in the chest. He watched it bounce off and fall into the street. A brief shower of pebbles fell on them. Smith lifted her hands to shield her face. Somewhere behind her, glass broke.

  The front line was swaying, moving from one foot to the other. All they needed was a reason to rush forward.

  She turned to look at the line in front of the park. Robyn Goodhaugh, who’d protested at the Grizzly Resort in a wolf mask, jumped up and down, like a baby confined to a Jolly Jumper, throwing torrents of verbal abuse across the street.

  “Mom,” Smith yelled. She looked at the row of faces. Most scared, some exhilarated. “Mom?”

  “I’m here.” Lucky stepped out from behind a bush. Michael was holding her arm.

  “Please, Mom,” Smith said. “Go home. I do not want to have to worry about you.”

  Lucky’s eyes moved.

  “Mom?”

  “She’s right, Lucky,” Michael said. “We’ve made our point.”

  “Barry, Jane, everyone,” Lucky called to the people surrounding her. “This is out of our control. Let’s go.”

  “Retreat is not always a dishonorable action,” Barry said. Michael tugged on Lucky’s arm, and she turned to follow him.

  Now all Smith had to worry about was protecting the citizens of this town and herself.

  “See that guy,” Tocek said. “In the blue cap. He’s inciting them. Follow me, Solway. Hey, you,” he called, walking forward. “Let’s talk, buddy. Time to calm this down.”

  “Talk is appeasement,” Harris shouted. He waved his left hand toward the people behind him. His right was still in his pocket.

  Smith heard sirens coming from all directions. Vehicles pulled up and doors slammed, men shouted and dark shapes were all around them. Cops with helmets, riot shields, tear gas.

  Smith ran her eyes over the crowd. Fucking Ashcroft’s fucking cameraman was filming everything.

  She turned back to the mêlée. People, those with a sliver of common sense, were running in all directions. A good number of the anti-park crowd h
eld their line. Rich Ashcroft came into sight: he said something to his cameraman, and the red light of the camera turned toward her. All Smith could do was to ignore it.

  Robyn ran across the street, straight toward the camera. She threw something. The cameraman ducked, pulling his equipment with him, and a brown beer bottle shattered at his feet. A couple of demonstrators from her side followed her, and people who’d been standing in Ashcroft’s vicinity surged forward to meet them.

  Relieved that, for once, her mother’d seen reason and was hopefully well out of the way, Smith gathered what scrap of courage she could find and gripped the handle of her truncheon. Before she could make a move to try and separate the warring packs, her radio crackled. Police not wearing riot control gear were being called back. She couldn’t see the two Mounties nor Solway. Evans was slightly behind her, telling park supporters to go home. A line of police in black riot uniform moved toward the protesters, banging batons on shields, trying to be as intimidating as possible.

  Streetlamps and lights from police vehicles lit up the protesters’ faces. A man threw a punch at Robyn Goodhaugh. Blood streamed from a cut on his forehead, and his face was contorted with rage. She staggered back, but didn’t fall, and a man dodged in around her to deliver an uppercut to the bleeding man’s jaw. They clashed and twisted and turned, pulling at each other’s clothes, scratching at faces, like dancers gone mad. Goodhaugh charged toward the TV camera.

  On the radio, Sergeant Peterson was yelling for Smith and Evans to state their location. She didn’t know what to say. In the street?

  She began to back away. Leave this to the people with the right equipment. “There’s the cop bitch,” someone yelled. “Get her.”

  Were they talking about her? Smith saw people she knew. People she passed on the street every day, who shopped at the Safeway or Alphonse’s Bakery, and greeted her with a smile. But most of them were strangers, outside agitators. Like Brian Harris.