The Big Law pb-2

by Chuck Logan

  Intent on the raging water, she tugged at her wedding ring.

  Tom threw one look over his shoulder. Nothing but the snow and trees. He scrambled down the slope to the ice bridge and forced himself to cross it fast. She saw him then 118 / CHUCK LOGAN

  and stopped tugging and held up the ring hand for his inspection.

  “He proposed to me here, you know,” she yelled in a hollow voice. Tom James couldn’t hear. He was dizzy with the power of the place. The moment.

  “I talked to Broker, he doesn’t think you should go into Witness Protection. He has a better idea,” he shouted.

  She smiled. Beamed. “How is he? Does he look well?”

  “He gave me something for you.” He wondered if it hurt, her face beat up like that and smiling so much.

  A crooked trident of chain lightning connected the snowy forest to the Armageddon clouds. Thunder ricocheted off the boulders. Dazzle. Witchery. The snow was a frenzy of drunken killer bees.

  “Thunder snow,” yelled Caren happily.

  Magic.

  “Yes.” Tom floated. Maybe the boulder pulsed red beneath them.

  Act.

  For the first time in his life, he experienced the electric current of perfectly merged thought and action. Rockets ignited in his arms. Fired into his hands. He extended his arms stiffly, almost ceremonially, and felt the jolt of her sternum under his palms. Wide-eyed, in total surprise, Caren flew backward. For a second, her shoes slithered for purchase on the lip of rock. No blood, no struggle, no mess. Almost an accident.

  Her jacketed arms protested in manic circles. Her feet pumped in a desperate uphill sprint through midair. The eerie scream ended abruptly when she was sucked out of sight in the blowing snow and the wind, into the foaming pit.

  Holy shit! “I did it,” crowed Tom James.

  Time spun its wheels, grinding adrenal sparks that wove him a hot new skin. His right fist extended over his head.

  He half expected more waves of thunder and lightning.

  Huh?

  She was still screaming? Over the sound of the wind and the water. Tom felt the surge of new survival instincts. He turned. And hey-it wasn’t her screaming…

  Through chattering fevers of snow he saw Keith Angland, overcoat flapping, sprinting down the trail. A berserker’s rage quavered from his hideously open mouth.

  Angland’s powerful quarterback’s right arm shot out and threw sparkles from a black pistol. Particles of granite spattered Tom, beads of blood bloomed on his right wrist, stinging through his glove.

  A fast zipper of wet, red hurt slit the trouser along his left calf. He growled, amazed, baptized and born again in a fiery Jordan of pain.

  Common sense jerked him. He ran like hell.

  Instead of chasing him, Angland went to the spot where Caren had stood on the snow-swept boulder. Tom watched, panting, from the trees and waited to see if Keith would continue the chase. He took off his gloves, pressed them against the wet rip in his trouser leg.

  Angland scrambled out of sight, down into the ice-girded rock face around the pothole. Tom was paralyzed with doubt.

  What if she hadn’t gone in? Was down there, and Keith was going to her.

  No, no. He’d seen her disappear.

  After a full minute, when Keith didn’t reappear, he shook off the shock and staggered through the stunted pines, marveling at the brilliant, delicate red stipple of his own blood on the fresh new snow. Smeared on his bare hands. Thinking clearer now. Being shot would make it more believable. Still had the magic going for him. He circled back around the falls, emerged from the pines and started back down the trail, lurching alongside Keith’s faint filling-in shoe prints. It was time to do some reporting.

  He took out the cell phone and called 911. Nothing happened. Get higher on the ridge. Ignoring the pain in his leg, he scrambled up the slope, slipping and falling, crawling on all fours. Finally he stood above it all, under the furious sky. He called again. A voice answered. “Help!” he screamed.

  “He killed her. He pushed her in. He shot me.”

  “Where are you, if you’re calling cellular I can’t track you,”

  the urgent controlled voice said back.

  “In the woods. In the woods.” Despite the throbbing pain, Tom covered his mouth with his shaking hand to keep from laughing. In the woods. What a great 911 one-liner in northern Minnesota.

  “Where in the woods?” yelled the voice.

  Tom James collapsed in the snow and realized he couldn’t remember the name of the river rushing in the gorge below him. The clerk had said…

  “Sir. Sir…” squawked the telephone in his bloody hand.

  “There’s a waterfall up a trail from the highway,” he blurted.

  “What waterfall is that?” The operator came back.

  For the first time, Tom registered the reality of the wound in his leg. His own blood was leaking from his body. The new, hot, runny adrenaline garment he’d discovered deserted him in the cold wind. A hydraulic press squeezed his lungs.

  Shock. He began to shake. Then, like a miracle, he saw two tiny police officers below him, running in the snow, coming up the lower trail.

  “I see them,” he yelled into the phone.

  One carried a long gun in both hands, swinging in front.

  He disconnected 911. With great concentration, he pulled out his wallet. His numb wet fingers fumbled among the business cards. He found the one he wanted, stabbed the number in the phone, and as it rang he laughed, giddy. It was perfect after all.

  “FBI,” said the cool omnipotent voice from faraway, inside a marble air conditioner.

  “It’s Tom James,” he gasped. “Angland killed her. He shot me. Where’s Garrison.” Tom heard them tipping over chairs.

  Yelling.

  “Wait one,” shouted the agent in a controlled voice. “I have to patch you through. He’s in Duluth.”

  Time plodded. Tom watched the cops climb. Maybe a minute. C’mon. C’mon.

  Garrison’s voice was on the line. “Right here, Tom. Tell me exactly what happened and where you are.”

  “There’s cops coming. I think I’m all right.”

  “Who shot you?”

  “Angland. He went crazy. Wait, uh, get ahold of the sheriff’s department in Grand Marais…” Tom could hear background commands.

  Garrison said, “Tell me where you’re hit.”

  “Leg. Below the knee.”

  “Is the blood seeping or pumping?”

  “No, no, don’t worry. Not that bad. Not that. Look we gotta…” Tom swooned and woke up a second later coughing snow.

  “Steady,” said Garrison.

  “I’m good. There’s cops. Hey. The tape?”

  “The one Angland’s wife made?”

  “Right. Listen, we gotta make a trade. Got her killed. It’s not safe for me.”

  Garrison talked to somebody, then he came back up. His voice had changed. Closer somehow. Real focused. “We’re in contact with the sheriff’s department in Grand Marais.

  Angland assaulted the county sheriff. They say they have a deputy and a state patrolman climbing some trail looking for you and Angland’s wife. They saw the cars and talked to a motel clerk. Wait. They say they heard shots.”

  “That’s me, that’s me.” Tom vigorously nodded his head.

  “Where’s Angland, Tom? I can patch it through and alert the officers. He’s up there armed, right?”

  “Pushed his wife. Went down into this waterfall thing.

  He’s not up here now. I think it’s safe.” The two cops were about two hundred yards below him. Tom heaved to his knees and waved.

  Garrison was off the line for a moment. Then back. “The cops see somebody above them. A tan parka. If it’s you, wave one hand slowly.”

  Tom grinned, raised his right hand with the phone and slowly swung it back and forth. Beauty queen wave.

  “Okay,” said Garrison. “They have you. Hang on.”

  “I want a trade,” ins
isted Tom. “I just saw him kill his wife, man. They’ll get me if I give you that tape.” Tom’s voice rose hysterically, a quavering shout that tumbled, echoing against the snow-draped pines. The cops below him reacted, crouched. One of them raised the shotgun.

  “Easy, easy,” said Garrison. “We can protect you.”

  “Bullshit, you can protect me. This is big. I want to go away. I want a deal.”

  There was a moment of silence. “He wants the Program,”

  stated Garrison, as if he were inspecting the thought coming from his lips. Words were exchanged in the FBI office far away. Garrison said carefully, “If what you have is good, it can be arranged.”

  “No, no. I want it all spelled out. In writing and notarized.

  You fuck people all the time in Witness Protection.”

  “Calm down, Tom. We’ll take care of you.”

  Tom swooned again. “Promise,” he said in a thready voice.

  “Absolutely, I promise,” said Garrison.

  Tom blinked. The cops were just yards away. One was square, muscular, with a neatly trimmed black mustache.

  Same uniform as the county sheriff’s, at Broker’s house. He carried a crackling radio. The other wore highway patrol maroon and had the shotgun. Tom transferred the THE BIG LAW/123

  phone to his left hand and grabbed his leg and felt the blood go warm and sticky between his freezing fingers. With a groan he pitched forward. His victorious smile wore a beard of sticky white snow.

  Then the county cop was bending over him, turning him, doing something to his leg where it hurt. Cutting his trousers.

  Some bandage. The other one squatted with the shotgun, peering into the woods. The first one finished tying on the compress and gently took the cell phone from Tom’s cramped fingers.

  “Deputy Torgerson, Cook County,” he said into the phone.

  “We have him. Right. Not bad. Flesh wound, left calf, just broke the skin. Shock. No sign of Angland or the woman.

  We have backup coming. Thank you much for the assist.”

  Tom pawed feebly for the phone. The deputy handed it to him.

  “Garrison,” Tom said softly. Dreamily.

  “Right here.”

  “If I go into Witness Protection can I choose my own name?”

  And Lorn Garrison laughed, a discharge of tension. “Well, as long as it’s, you know, ethnically compatible. Can’t be Gomez.” Har. Har.

  An idle snowflake landed on the tip of Tom’s nose.

  He composed the lead to the biggest story he would never write in his life: St. Paul Police Lieutenant Keith Angland, the target of an FBI investigation, apparently killed his wife, Caren, because she was threatening to turn an incriminating videotape over to federal authorities.

  Perfect. A million bucks for seed.

  He offered a muffled laugh to the beautiful chaotic snow.

  Gomez. That’s funny, Garrison. Then he raised his bloody hand to his mouth and it tasted like the sea and tears and dirty pennies. He licked his lips and smiled.

  It was going to be great.

  23

  “Pretty. Pretty.” Kit, her choking episode forgotten, jumped on the porch. Her first real snow floated down with indifferent wonder. Cheryl Tromley, the closest neighbor, hovered in the cabin doorway.

  “Pretty. Pretty.” Like Caren’s epitaph.

  Cheryl had to come over on foot because her car was in the shop. Jeff and Broker rushed through changing the rear tire on Jeff’s Bronco. Keith. Bastard had punctured tires on both their vehicles.

  Jeff didn’t have spare manpower; he’d flagged his men to the Kettle. Now he placed and hoisted the jack. Broker cranked off wheel bolts and replaced the spare while a stoic cop voice crackled over the police radio.

  “That’s what the wounded guy said. She went in the Kettle.

  Angland shoved her.”

  Broker compartmentalized, functioned. But he was hearing and seeing through a constricting tunnel. He spin-tightened the wheel bolts. James shot. Caren gone. He and Jeff had misread it. Let it get by them.

  Their eyes met. Silently blamed themselves. Our fault.

  And Caren. Gone. Broker blinked. The word formed in his mind: Gone. Sucked down into crushing turbines of ice water. Drowned. The oxygen exploded to jagged crystals in her lungs.

  Stopped. Ended. Dead.

  Jeff ratcheted down the tire jack and kicked it away. He slammed Broker’s shoulder. “C’mon, c’mon.” Broker snugged up the bolts, flung the tire wrench and scrambled into the passenger seat.

  The cop on the radio kept talking in an eye-of-the-storm Chuck Yeager voice that reminded Broker of the army: Keith had climbed down into the Kettle spillway and clung to the icy rocks next to the pothole. In a bizarre turn, James had been in cell phone contact with the FBI field office in Duluth.

  “I told her to come here and I left her out there alone with that idiot James,” said Broker. He trembled at a sudden chill.

  “There’s something wrong about that guy.”

  “We’ll question him, hold him if I have to,” said Jeff, driving in a controlled fury, wearing steel bracelets that Broker had nipped with a bolt cutter. He expertly corrected a four-wheel skid. Bad snow and he was doing sixty. He reached behind the seat, pulled out a wool blanket and shoved it at Broker. “Wrap up.”

  “What?”

  “Cover up. You’re in mild shock.”

  Broker threw the blanket over his shoulders, shook his head, disbelieving. “Keith’s capable of a lot of things. But not killing Caren. Not up there. Christ, he proposed to her up there.”

  “Keith’s a bastard,” Jeff reminded him.

  “Right. A cold, efficient bastard. This is too sloppy, especially with a doofus like James for a witness.”

  Jeff ground his teeth. “James could be confused.”

  Broker nodded. “Maybe they got into it again, struggled and Keith’s pistol went off. Caren got in between and slipped. That’s plausible in this weather.”

  “Doesn’t add up. Kit choking,” said Jeff. Broker had told him about the incident. “What happened to that piece of money?” he asked.

  Broker grimaced. “Dropped it. Now with the snow…”

  “Worry about that later. One thing at a time,” said Jeff.

  More radio traffic. They listened to cop blank verse and tried to piece it together.

  A highway patrolman responding to Broker’s 911 call had spotted Keith’s Ford and James’s station wagon at the lodge across the highway from the park. While he waited for backup, he’d grilled the Naniboujou clerk. That’s when James’s 911 call came into the dispatcher, in Grand Marais.

  But James hadn’t given them a location. By then, two cops were headed up the ridge acting on the clerk’s story.

  And suddenly, the FBI pops up on the phones, into their radio net and are in phone contact with James. They worked a radio relay with the officers through Grand Marais.

  The feds threw a long shadow of big-time, big-city trouble across Keith Angland.

  The state trooper and a Deputy Torgerson found James, wounded, on the trail. Torgerson had put a call into Devil’s Rock First Responders when he went in after James. The medics came in by a shorter back road and stretchered James out. Angland was now the focus of the rescue. Possibly injured, suffering shock or remorse, stuck down on the lip of the Kettle. The only qualified police climbers were hours away in Duluth or up in Ontario. No time. The medics had brought a rope. Torgerson, who had a lot of water rescue time in the coast guard, went down after Keith.

  James was already en route by ambulance to the clinic in Grand Marais when Jeff wheeled into C. R. Magney. Cruisers from Cook and Lake Counties and the state patrol were slewed at odd angles, motors still running. Silently rotating police flashers lashed the thickening snow and streams of exhaust. Lurid swipes of blue and red.

  Before they had time to get out, the radio crackled. “At the Kettle, say again,” said Jeff.

  “Jeff, we got him out. Lyle’s about
froze. We’re bringing them out the back way, by the gravel pit.”

  Jeff keyed the mike. “Meet you there.” He wheeled the Bronco into a fishtailing U-turn and aimed back for the highway.

  “But I don’t want anything for the pain,” insisted Tom James, who had avoided physical pain all of his life and now was catching up fast. Tom made the doctor nervous; the way he sat up, supporting himself on his hands, staring at his bare legs stretched out on a gurney in the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic. And the way he held his coat in a death grip in his bloodstained hand.

  The doctor removed the soaked compress the paramedics had tied on his left calf. Angland’s bullet had gouged a small trench from the fleshy muscle. There was enough concavity for him to see tiny bits of veins in the welling blood, threads from his pants.

  “I’d better freeze it,” the doctor said. “This is going to hurt when I clean it out.”

  “No,” said Tom. He stared into the doctor’s blue eyes and saw them waver ever so slightly. Sweat formed on the physician’s upper lip. Tom had a sudden insight that the doc was uneasy, working on someone who wasn’t numbed.

  More new knowledge.

  “Tell me everything you’re doing,” said Tom.

  “What?” said the doctor, blinking sweat.

  “I want to watch,” said Tom.

  They hauled Keith Angland out strapped in a Stokes rescue stretcher. He still wore the sodden dark wool overcoat under a blanket. Ice polyps swung in his blond hair thick as Pops-icles. With his arms crossed rigidly across his chest, he looked part embalmed pharaoh, part demented yeti.

  Snow blazed point blank. A group of cops huddled to form a windbreak for Lyle Torgerson. Out of stretchers. Lyle had to walk. “Damn tricky,” Lyle chattered from his blankets.

  “What happened to his pistol?” asked Jeff.

  “Dropped it in the Kettle,” said Torgerson.

  “He say anything?” asked Jeff.

  Torgerson shook his head. “Just keeps staring at his hand.”

  Broker envied him. Growing up, he’d always wondered what it would be like, going down there into the Kettle.

  Broker knelt to the stretcher. “Keith, what happened?”

  Keith stared. Jellied eyes. His face looked like something bird-eaten and dead a month on the beach. Broker looked away, but an eloquent controlled horror in Angland’s fixed gaze seduced him back.