Bigelow never had a chance. The noon train arrived and somehow the sheriff never got up to meet it. The thing that awakened him was a sudden sharp twinge in his left arm, near the elbow. That sharpness, that pain, was the last physical sensation Joe Bigelow ever knew. He did not lose consciousness after awakening with that little jolt of pain — he merely lost all ability to feel, all sense of touch. Every muscle was paralyzed. Every nerve cell numb. The thin gold needle of Dr. Au had penetrated the Song of Sorrows meridian at a paralysis point near the elbow. Bigelow opened his eyes at the touch of the needle, and they remained frozen open, unable even to blink back the tears that formed and slowly found pathways down his cheeks and jaws.
Bigelow’s range of vision allowed him to see the two men in the room. Easy Snider stood watch at the door. Au P’ang Wei wandered in and out of Bigelow’s view, going through desk drawers and filing cabinets, apparently searching. Bigelow was still uncertain whether this was nightmare or reality. He was certain, though, it was indeed no dream, that he would rather be home helping Mrs. Bigelow run the motel and enduring her savageries. He was not aware that piss had discolored his pants at the crotch and was running down his legs.
Bigelow observed the Oriental man, dressed warmly in an expensive fur-collared coat, disappear into the back room. Then he heard Laszlo Plizit’s voice: loud, broken, with calls for help.
Bigelow heard the sound of a key scraping against the lock, and the screaming was almost ear-splitting for a second or two after that. Finally there was a resigned grunt, and the two men came back, the Oriental gentleman wiping the end of the needle with a cloth and placing it in a carrying case.
“Very well,” Au said.
“What about him?” Snider asked.
“Put him in the cell, Mr. Snider.”
“What if someone comes? It’s about ten minutes’ walk to where the plane is.”
“We shall take our chances. There is always risk.”
The thin man approached Bigelow, who, although he did not feel it, was aware that he was being pulled off his chair, dumped to the floor, and dragged to the back, into the cell beside Plizit’s body.
The man left. There was a brief silence. And then the strangely soothing vice of the Oriental man: “Perhaps the occasion should not be wasted. A simple ceremony is in order.”
Bigelow, who was lying twisted on the floor like a Raggedy Andy, saw the man approach, open his case, and pull out what looked like a long straight razor. Then the man disappeared from his view, moving somewhere down toward the direction of his legs. When the man straightened up, Bigelow could see red smears on the razor and on the gloved hands of the man.
When Klosterman and Sedyk arrived back, at about seven p.m., Bigelow, from the cell, could hear them cursing and complaining about what Klosterman referred to as “a wild-goose chase that asshole sent us on.”
“No wonder he wasn’t answering the radio,” he heard Sedyk say. “He ain’t here.”
“His car’s outside.”
“Where is the useless little tit, then?”
I’m in here, thought Bigelow, in the cell.
Bigelow, despite his blood loss, was still conscious and staring.
“Check to see if they fell asleep playing crib,” Klosterman said.
Then Bigelow heard steps, and then he saw standing above him the figure of Constable Gary Sedyk, his face white and contorted with shock.
“Oh, Jesus,” Sedyk said softly. “Oh, Jesus.” He kept repeating it, louder each time. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus!”
Klosterman, who had been pulling off his jacket in the office, heard Sedyk’s voice, and felt something thump him hard deep in the bowels.
He ran to the back, where an ashen Gary Sedyk was clutching the bars of the cell. There was the body of Laszlo Plizit. And there was Joe Bigelow, his pants down around his knees, recently emasculated, staring at him — grinning, in fact. Grinning vacuously from a pale and empty face.
Tuesday, the Twenty-first Day of March,
at Half-past Two O’Clock in the Afternoon
There were currently two Supreme Court judgeships open in the province, and Santorini suspected his name was high on the justice minister’s list of prospects. There was to be a reception for the deputy minister at the Bayshore Inn this evening, and Santorni had been cordially invited. That affair was central in his mind. But other matters kept intruding this day.
The day had already been a crazy-quilt of confused activity. Dr. Au had skipped bail. The word from the courthouse this morning was that Mr. Justice Horowitz had waited until the noon hour, and when finally Au did not appear, and no reason for this failure could be advanced by Smythe-Baldwin, the judge had issued a bench warrant for Au’s arrest, ordered his bail marked for estreatment, and discharged the jury panel.
So Santorini had been bouncing about in a hectic run of meetings and telephone conversations about the disappearance of Au and about the manhunt into which Detective Harrison demanded that every spare resource of the police department be poured.
Santorini knew that politically, for the attorney-general, there would be hell to pay. Mile-long line-ups, because of border checks at the main U.S. crossing near Blaine, Washington, had already caused a flood of angry phone calls to police offices, to the provincial government, and to the media. Respected members of Vancouver’s powerful Chinese community were complaining about door-to-door searches in Chinatown, and they were on the mayor’s back, and on the attorney-general’s back. Everybody seemed to be on Santorini’s back. And Santorini, appearing for the crown at Cudlipp’s bail hearing, was tired and bitchy.
Cudlipp was standing in the prisoner’s box, his eyes rimmed with red lines, listening to the clerk read the charges: count one, perjury; count two, obstructing justice; count three, accepting a bribe; count four, theft of a quantity of narcotics. A further charge alleging a conspiracy between Cudlipp and Au to obstruct justice would be held until Au’s arrest.
Bail was set by the provincial court judge at thirty thousand dollars.
Then Santorini returned to his office to return two calls his secretary had marked as urgent. The first was from Harrison.
“Jesus, Eddie, I’ve been trying for the last hour to reach somebody in the Tlakish Lake RCMP. No answer.”
“Oh, no.”
“Maybe I’m worried for nothing. The Mounties like their lunch breaks.”
“Yeah, maybe we’re all seeing ghosts. Keep after it.”
The other call was from a Dr. Jack Broussaud:
“Santorini, I think you have to do something to protect Foster Cobb.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m his headshrinker. Cobb’s.”
Santorini remembered. Broussaud had helped Cobb beat heroin years ago, and had become his friend.
“He came to see me this morning after the trial aborted. He told me Au threatened to kill him. He thought he might have been hallucinating, but I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s so simple.”
“What?” Santorini asked. He did not need more heavy news today.
“Au didn’t use words, he just gave Cobb a look, a message, drilled it right through his middle eye into the centre of his head. Maybe Cobb’s crazy, too, but he said he heard Au’s voice in his head.”
“Aw, come on!” What kind of bullshit is this? Santorini wondered.
“Okay, okay. You can’t go to the police chief for a twenty-four-hour guard because of some kind of esp threat. But I’ve been following the trial, and I’ve talked to Cobb a lot. I want you to listen to this: First, Au’s a psychopath. He’s got some sexual dysfunction I can’t put a handle on. Goes for the nuts. Who knows why. But he’s got an obsessive thing about reproductive organs. So you’ve got in this Au what’s-his-face some unholy kind of combination of obsessive-neurotic psychopath who has probably been undergoing a psychotic breakdown.”
<
br /> “I’m listening.” Santorini was doodling little arrows.
“This type of guy is prone to a reactive kind of psychosis. Shows up under stress. Like maybe he sees his defence fall apart in a murder trial, and he starts crumbling, and he starts looking for the most apparent enemy out there. Like the poor bugger prosecuting him.”
“Yeah, well, who can say?”
“Look, I know the field; I know the literature. Just take my word. Call him an obsessive-paranoid psychopathic personality. These guys all centre on some figure of reference, an enemy, a nemesis. I think that’s Cobb — the guy you hired to prosecute this crazy — if you don’t mind my laying a guilt trip. I mean — would you want to be responsible for Cobb’s death, Santorini?”
There was a pause at Santorini’s end.
“Think about it,” Broussaud said, “because I’m telling you he’s a dead man unless you do something.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll catch up to Dr. Au. He can’t do much from a cell.”
“Are you nuts, Santorini?” Broussaud yelled. “Au’s got more contacts than the pope.”
“Maybe we can send Cobb into hiding for a few weeks.”
“Santorini.” Broussaud began to speak in careful, measured words, as if lecturing a student in the slow class. “I could be wrong. But if I’m not wrong, you’ve been warned. Dr. Au is the kind of guy, he’ll wait for three weeks. Three weeks? Three years. Thirty years. Now, I’m going to tell you this, and listen carefully: Catching Au may not be good enough. He can reach outside. He will engineer Cobb’s death. Some way.”
Broussaud paused, then said: “He’ll kill Cobb. Unless someone kills him first.”
Santorini closed his eyes and seemed to meditate.
“I think you’re getting carried away with this, doctor.” Psychiatrists, in his experience, tended to be hysterical. “But I’ll get him some protection.”
Protection for the S.O.B. who’s threatening to ruin me? Santorini thought. Well, he hadn’t time to work on that right now. He had to get out of the office fast, have a shower, and meet the deputy minister for cocktails. He did not want to be late.
After returning from Dr. Broussaud’s office, Cobb went to his own. His secretary asked him if he would take a call from his wife.
“Hello.”
“Cobb, it’s lonely up here on the hill.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can I come down and talk to you?”
“I don’t want to talk. You can come down and get your clothes. I’ve packed them. They’re by the door.”
“I think we should talk.”
“I’m busy.”
“Let’s be civilized, Cobb, goddamnit.”
“You’ve got a key. Come down and get what you want.”
“I think we should straighten things out.”
“Come down when you want. I may not be home. I may be tied up.” There was a heavy pause. “It’s through, you know.”
“I know.”
He hung up. In those last few words they had spoken the un-speakable, and it was necessary to kill the pain. He locked the door, brought out his heroin and his outfit, and did up. After a few minutes he began to feel warm and secure, and a little braver, and he called the prosecutor’s office.
“Jennifer? Hi. How about joining me for a few drinks tonight? Let’s celebrate.”
“You are on, Mr. Cobb. You are right on.”
“Meet you somewhere?”
“Why don’t we just start up at your apartment, and see where we want to go from there.” Her voice was light and lilting.
“We may not get very far.”
“Who knows.”
It was eight p.m. Foster Cobb was in his shower. Jennifer Tann was in his bed, waiting for him, nervously sipping from a glass. She was exultant and frightened and high: It was finally happening. The phone on the bedtable was off the hook, and a bottle of champagne was beside it.
Deborah Cobb, suffering intermittent showers of tears, was packing her skis on the rack of her tr-7, preparing to drive into Vancouver and make her arrangements with Cobb.
Julius Katsknywch was washing down the day’s dirt from the front steps of the Cobbs’ apartment building.
Winnifred Fenwick, on the twenty-fourth floor of the building, just below the Cobb apartment, was in her nightie and curlers, settling down to watch Kojak.
Jean-Louis Leclerc, holding a sawed-off shotgun, was in the front seat of an old Chevrolet, borrowed for the night from a downtown parking garage. Beside him, at the wheel, was John Klegg. He had a handgun in his jacket pocket.
Honcho Harrison and Lars Nordquist were in the homicide office speaking excitedly to Constable Bob Klosterman by telephone.
Everit Cudlipp was in a city jail cell asleep, waiting for relatives to post bail.
Special Agent Jess Flaherty was on a 747 en route to the eastern U.S., getting drunk with a long-hair in the adjoining seat, laughing at his heroic tales of beating the system dealing weed.
Julius C. Katsknywch was the building manager, a handyman who liked tinkering with residents’ broken appliances. It was dark now. Katsknywch turned off the hose for a while to tease one of the young women tenants who was coming up the walk with groceries. He was too engrossed to notice the old Chevrolet that rolled slowly past the building and down to underground parking.
Harrison and Nordquist began making frantic arrangements for roadblocks on roads in the Chilcotin in the unlikely event that Au was fleeing by car. They also began phoning air charter operators to inquire about flights that day into Tlakish Lake. They were anxious to put Cobb into the picture, but his phone kept ringing busy. That made Harrison uneasy.
Cobb had just taken a cold shower, then a hot one, and after towelling himself, he came to the bedroom. He was about to switch off the light.
“Don’t,” Tann said. “Not yet.”
The bedroom was warm and Tann was naked. She had kicked off the covers and was under a single sheet, her hands over it, folded.
Cobb sat on the edge of the bed, his champagne glass raised in his hand. “I toast you — you were great working with,” he said. “Good job.”
They smiled and clinked glasses.
Cobb hoped the small hit of junk he had taken before Tann’s arrival would not slow him up. Then he looked down at Tann and saw her gentle smile, and felt a surge of desire.
And there was a sound at the lock.
He jolted back to a sitting position. Oh, God, it couldn’t be Deborah. It would be like her to select intuitively the wrong occasion to collect her things. Well, he thought, it would be a form of just vengeance if she walked in now.
Then it slowly dawned on him that the sound at the lock was a scraping noise. It did not seem to be the sound of a key. It continued for a strangely long time — twenty, thirty seconds. A little nut of fear stuck in Cobb’s throat. He felt his body stiffen and his prick soften, and he felt tension coming from Tann as she pulled the blankets back over her.
“Who is it?” she whispered.
“I’m not sure.” But in fact he felt danger.
“Listen,” she said, “I think someone is picking your lock.”
She was lifting herself from the bed when they heard the click of the lock releasing. This is crazy, Cobb thought. It’s just Deborah. She was having trouble with the key.
Then they heard footsteps and voices. Tann, in the midst of rising, sat back, grabbed a sheet, and wrapped it around herself. Cobb’s reaction was to reach for his pants on the chair beside the bed, and then suddenly he was frozen in time and space as the bedroom door, slightly ajar, crashed open.
Through the doorway protruded the two short barrels of Jean-Louis Leclerc’s twelve-gauge shotgun. The butt was braced against his shoulder. His feet were splayed wide apart. His face was in the shadows, but Cobb could see his mouth open wide in a chill
ing smile that displayed small and malformed teeth.
Leclerc uttered a high-pitched laugh. “Look at dis here,” he called to Klegg. Behind Leclerc, another face wandered into view. Cobb vaguely remembered Klegg from his visits to the courtroom with Leclerc.
Cobb was gripped by a kind of fear that kept each muscle rigid. He was still part way off the bed, and slowly, as his muscles released, he sat back down. He wondered whether he had the courage to die well. He knew he would find out.
Leclerc gestured at Klegg with his head. “The telephone,” he said. Klegg opened a jack-knife and cut the cord. He was young, thick-set, and bearded, and his eyes were ablaze from a heavy addiction. Leclerc was badly wired too, and both men knew they had to do Au’s bidding without question.
“All right,” Leclerc said, “get the little lady prosecutor out of here.”
“No,” she whispered.
“Leave her, Leclerc,” Cobb said.
“We’re not gonna do nothing to her,” Leclerc said, turning his head away from Cobb to wink at Klegg. “It’s you Dr. Au wants us to do business with, Mr. Cobb.”
Klegg reached down to the bed and tried to remove the sheet from Tann. She jerked it back from him and held it tightly to her chest. Her face was white. Cobb felt an immense caring for her, and wanted to hold her.
“You better tell her to go to the other room with my friend,” Leclerc said. “My orders are only for you, but if I get trouble, I got a license to do what I figure I have to do.”
“Leave me alone with him, Jennifer,” Cobb said. It would be just as well, he thought, to remove her as far as possible from the sights of Leclerc’s shotgun. But he suspected Leclerc, whatever Au’s orders, would not wish to leave any witnesses.
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