by Ted Wood
"She was murdered, strangled." I simplified the story for her. She didn't need all the details. I let her nurse her horror for another ten seconds and then told her, "These are ugly people you're involved with. I have to know everything you can tell me about them."
She didn't have anything extra to give me beyond what I already knew. She had come north to take Nancy Carmichael away from the beauty pageant. That was all she knew. She had met Nancy but did not know her whole name. Her group had been assured by Margaret, the same middle-aged Margaret my prisoner had met, that Nancy was sure to win. And then they would take her away and it would be a moral lesson to all the male chauvinist pigs who stood around and lusted for her beauty. And then Billie would strip and parade up and down to make the message even clearer. Billie had not wanted to do it. It had meant acknowledging to herself that she was as plain as a board fence, but she had overcome her reluctance and agreed, at Margaret's quiet insistence.
"Who was with you when they took your clothes?"
She wasn't sure. She had been driving the machine on which Nancy was a passenger. The other machines, one with two people on it, the other with one, had rendezvoused with them at the shelter. There had been no light except the headlights of the machines. She had only seen that the others were all wearing ski masks. She had simply fallen in behind them and followed obediently, through the woods and out over the ice. Then the lead machine had stopped and the driver had come back and asked her to strip. I didn't bother pressing for a description. It must have been the man Carl described. His assessment didn't fit either Nighswander or the two guys he'd had with him at the Lakeside. This was a fourth man. I wondered where the others were and if I should go back to the station and pick up a shotgun before I went after them. They were a murderous crew.
"You said they all undressed you. Did Nancy help?"
She thought about this for a moment. Probably her memory had slammed the door on the incident. She remembered it like a traffic accident, a sudden explosion of force and pain that had no edges to it beyond the dullness of the blows she had taken and the snatching of unknown hands.
"I don't think so. It was confusing, but I don't think she did. In fact, I'd say no." She rubbed her face with her left hand. "No, that's right. She stayed sitting on the machine where I'd left her, and then one of the other people got on in front of her and drove it away."
"Why did they do it? Were they punishing you for something? Had you done something to make them mad?"
She thought about it before answering. "I don't know," she said at last. "I just know I was certain I would die."
My own mind was bounding ahead. The only thing that fit my theory was that they had known I was following them and had wanted to slow me down. Any policeman would have done what I did, while they got away. I wondered only where they had been heading in such a hurry.
It was obvious that Nancy was to be hidden in a cabin or a cottage on the lake. My task was to find which one. The easiest way to do that was to try to round up help to assist in the search. I should call the OPP and have them seal the roads a few miles north and south of the Murphy's Harbour side road. Then I'd know I had the girl and the gang bottled up and I could look for fresh skidoo tracks at any cabin and go calling. I could find Nancy Carmichael by morning, with luck. But first I had to take care of this one. If the stove went out she would be dead in a couple of hours. She needed clothes and proper shelter. What I had done for her so far was first aid, nothing more. It didn't solve the major problems. She had to be dressed and locked in my nice warm slammer alongside my other prisoner before I could do any more hunting.
I explained it to her. "I want to take you to the mainland where you'll be warm. The first thing is to find you some clothes to travel in."
Her voice raced up into a near scream. "You're not going to leave me? Please? Please?"
"Just for ten minutes. There's a cottage on an island close to here. I'll break in and bring you back some clothes. Ten minutes is tops."
She was weeping again in panic. "What if they come back?"
That was when I made the decision to leave her my gun. As a professional, dealing with killers, I needed that gun, but this girl needed it more. "There's a gun in the right-hand pocket holster. Can you feel it?"
She dug her hand into the pocket and nodded.
"Good. All you have to do is point it and pull the trigger. If somebody comes back and tries any rough stuff, just do what I said and they'll go away."
If she was cool enough to point the gun properly they would go away for keeps, but most amateurs are too frightened of guns to use them for the money.
She shuddered, not a gesture but a deep-down tremble of dread. "I couldn't do that," she whispered.
"Remember what they've done to you, leaving you to die on the ice. If I hadn't come by, you'd be dead right now."
She lowered her face and I reached out and bumped her shoulder. "Don't worry. I'll be back before you can think."
She grabbed my arm. "Hurry," she said. "I'm frightened."
I left her squatting on the bench like a blue-coated monkey in some zoo. She thought she had problems. I knew I did. With no moon, nothing to steer by but the direction of the wind which had been steadily northeast the last time I'd had a chance to assess it against the shore line of the lake, I was gambling on finding a cottage soon. If I missed and began some crazy circling out of cold and desperation, I would be dead myself within an hour.
I stepped out, ballooned in warmth from the stove, but the cold knifed me within seconds. I had my gloves so my fingers were steady as I turned the key in the snow machine, but my teeth were clenched and about to chatter. Fortunately the machine started first click and I knelt in the saddle, pulling as low as I could behind the windshield, and headed slightly south of west toward the closest cottage on the lake, a big luxurious place built in the 1930s on an island about a quarter-mile from the ice huts.
I didn't force the speed. I was already getting rigid from cold and I didn't want to add a slip stream to the other problems. I kept the wind almost directly behind me, willing it to blow my machine down to the island, and I counted seconds. I figured I was doing fifteen miles an hour—that's four hundred yards a minute. I had counted to sixty-eight when the first rocks and trees flashed into the beam of my headlight.
I remembered that the cottage was on the southwest side of the island where it took the sun from morning on. I speeded up and zipped around, close to shore, thankful for the windbreak it made after I had rounded the southern tip.
The cabin was dark. I stopped at the foot of the wooden steps that led from the big stone dock to the verandah on the ground floor. By now I was so cold that my legs would hardly straighten. Like an old man I clambered slowly up, counting thirty agonizing steps.
The wind whistled across the verandah. I suppose I should have checked for footprints but my head was beginning to let me down. I was turning into a struggling survivor. Nothing mattered but warmth and shelter. I was ready to kill for it without thinking.
The door was covered by an old plywood screen door. I pulled it open and checked the door handle. It was secure, so I balled my fist inside my heavy glove and smashed the glass above the lock. I put my hand through and turned the handle from the inside. Something puzzled me as I did it, but I had no idea what it was and I pulled my arm back out and opened the door.
As I went through it I could feel a blast of warmth from the stove and I remembered a whiff of wood smoke on the wind outside. I should have worried, but I was too grateful for the heat until the languid voice said, "Well, aren't you a resourceful little nuisance."
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7
A match popped. In the tiny wash of light it spread over the room I saw a man, his back turned negligently toward me, hands raised to the propane light on the wall. He lit the mantle and the room filled with light, soft and white and kind, seeming to help the warmth of the room soak into my face. The man lowered his hands and turned
. It was Nighswander. He looked indolent, unafraid. I wondered if he was alone here or whether one of his friends was asleep in another room waiting to come to his assistance. Not that he would need much, not if he tackled me now. I was too stiff to react to an attack. He could break me like a china cup.
I decided to try a little bluff. It might buy me enough time to make my arms and legs supple again in the glorious warmth of the stove.
"Hey. Mr. Nighswander, right? Sorry about breaking in. I didn't know anybody was home." He looked about to speak but I pressed on, almost babbling. "You remember me from the Tavern, eh? I'm the p'lice chief. I don't generally go breaking windows but I gotta problem." I poured on all the northern Ontario roughness of accent. I wanted him to think I was a useless hayseed. Overconfidence on his part was the only break I could hope for if he swung at me. "Yeah, I gotta civilian out on the ice with a problem, came off his machine and broke his leg, it looks like."
He was still holding the match, letting it burn down almost to his fingers. Now he blew it out with a deliberate little puff. He turned and dropped the dead match on top of the stove, a square airtight Fisher. I edged closer, not into his striking circle but closer to the stove with its miraculous, softening heat.
"What happened to your parka?" He asked it in an amused tone, as if rehearsing the way he would tell the story to his friends later over white wine and squid and New Wave music.
"Shock. First aid, you know. I wrapped the guy up in it and came over to the nearest place to see if there's anything I can wrap him in, anything in the way of first aid stuff."
As I jabbered I was weighing up the room as a potential battleground. It gave me no advantages. There were couches along two of the walls and one armchair set close to the stove. Except for a bare coffee table and bookshelves, that was it. There was nothing to shove in his way, nothing heavy to throw, not even a rug under his feet that I could pull away. I looked him over, still grinning my big foolish grin. He was dressed as he had been in the Tavern, and I knew how he could move. His build was slim but square and hard. He worked out regularly, probably in a karate class. And besides, his muscles and joints were loose and limber. He would be hard to beat without the use of my gun, a quarter of a mile away in the ice hut.
I was about to go on but he held up his hand imperiously. "That's enough. I don't want to hear any more of this nonsense. I know why you're here. You're looking for the Carmichael woman."
"Howdya mean?" Being dumb was buying time and warmth. A high isolated corner of my mind considered his describing a seventeen-year-old as a woman and I decided I had been right. He had nothing to do with women.
"She's not here," he said. "But on the other hand, you are. You weren't supposed to get this far, Mr. Bennett. I'm going to have to stop you."
Slowly he took up his karate stance, moving as deliberately as if he were under water. I wondered if he was psyching himself to kill me.
I dropped the hayseed impression. "Stop me the way you stopped Katie?"
His pose slackened in surprise. "How did you find your way to her?"
"Easy. I just checked your room at the motel."
He sneered at me, as if I were slow. "I booked no room at the motel. I'm staying here."
"Well, somebody called Nighswander booked a room at the Muskellunge Motel, took a girl there, and killed her with a chop in the throat."
I was watching him but he gave no reaction. Instead he drew himself slowly up into the karate stance and nodded curtly to me.
"Don't try that judo crap," I warned him. "I'll shoot you."
He took a tiny step toward me. "Before you can draw your clumsy gun you will be unconscious." He said it through clenched teeth and I knew it was time to move.
I tried one last ploy, raising my left hand in a placating gesture while I sneaked my right to my back pocket and took hold of the knob at the top of my stick. "Hey, what's happening? I'm the police, you guys can't use that stuff to break the law."
It helped. He made his crouch a little more menacing, hissing between his teeth as he covered the next crucial yard between us. And in that first hiss I read the news that I could win. He was operating out of ego, not need. Break his ego and he would lie in a heap. I kept talking. I figured I had a chance against a studio player. He had never done this for his life. Pain would throw him.
I made a show of backing off a foot, keeping him advancing as I drew my stick and flicked it underhanded in one movement.
He threw up his hands instinctively, as I had known he would. A master would have ignored the stick and the pain unblinkingly, but this was an amateur. He was still good enough to kick automatically as he ducked. It almost connected, except that I had watched his weight shift and moved a half step to the left. As his foot flicked past my hip I followed through on my throw, forcing my arm forward and down into the center of his chest. He didn't even have time to groan. The dynamics of the action threw him away, twisting him back to his right from the doubled momentum of his kick and my counter. I knew the muscles in his groin and stomach would be torn. I had him beaten. But the fall took him into overkill, hammering his head onto the stove with a solid crunch that put him out cold.
I swore first but immediately thought better of it and allowed myself a grin. I was still stiff with cold. He should have minced me. But I had stopped him. I was proud of that much, at least.
I retrieved my stick and gave it a superstitious little pat with my left hand. I always respect things that help me. I wanted that stick to know I was in its debt again. Then I took out my handcuffs and cuffed Nighswander's right wrist to the wrought-iron log cradle. It was a solid piece of work, two four-foot circles of one-inch iron rod, one behind the other, welded together by a series of foot-long rods and loaded with heavy maple wood. He wouldn't get away from there until I came for him or his friends brought a hacksaw and took half an hour to saw him free.
Next I took my flashlight and searched the cottage. There was nobody there and no indication that anybody else had been there that evening. There was a snowmobile outside the back door but it was snowed in, and I judged Nighswander must have ridden here immediately after leaving the Tavern, which complicated the question of who had killed the girl at the motel. I didn't stop to ponder.
There was a good down parka, probably his, on a hook in the hall. I took it and a pair of snowmobile pants and a couple of blankets from the bedroom for the girl to wrap her feet in. Finally I brought water from the kitchen and bathed Nighswander's temples until he came around, groaning.
I knelt on his uncuffed hand while I questioned him, but he said nothing except to swear. After a few moments I gave up and went on with my biggest priority, rescuing the girl from the fishing hut. Afterward I would return here and find out more, but her life was in my hands, she had to be handled first.
I put on the parka, which was a little tight, rolled the blankets and pants together, and went back to the skidoo. I tucked my bundle under my right foot and knelt up to drive back along my tracks to the snow hut. It was easier to find than the cottage had been. The wind was as strong as ever and just as dense with snow, but as I headed into it I could smell wood smoke from the stove in the fishing hut. I followed it to its source in less than a minute and drove the machine up until its headlight was shining through the rear window. I came around to the door and crouched and called, "It's the police chief, open up." There was a long pause and I waited and did nothing. I didn't want to be shot with my own gun. At last the door eased open and the girl said, "Come in, Chief, I'm okay."
It was warm inside. She had been stoking the wood into the stove as fast as it could take it, acting out of fear and cold. I wondered how much longer her supplies would have held out. I pushed the bundle of clothes into her hands. "There's skidoo pants in there—put them on and give me my parka back." I turned away and wriggled out of the parka I'd brought from the cabin. I felt uneasy in the ice hut. It was too simple a spot for an ambush. If anyone wanted me stopped permanently, they could do it now
from thirty yards away in this snow and I would never know they were out there until the bullets ripped through the walls. As an ex-Marine, I know you never occupy known positions, you move on before you consolidate. That way the mortar shells come pounding in behind you, not on top.
The girl changed smoothly and modestly, slipping into the ski pants first, then turning away to shuck my parka and put on the new one. She turned to me then, crouched on her bench, her head almost scraping the center of the roof. "How's that?" she asked perkily.
"Very fashionable. Now wrap up your head in the blanket, then your feet, and I'll bring the machine to the front door." I turned away, glad to be wearing my own parka with the familiar weight of the gun in the right-hand pocket. If I needed more help tonight, the Colt would be there.
I chugged the machine around to the door, turning it back to face the mainland. The girl came out, almost on hands and knees, shuffling like a Chinese bride in her constricting blanket. I sat her side-saddle on the machine in front of me, then wrapped the last folds of blanket around her feet. She nodded and slid one hand free of her parka sleeve to give me a little thumbs-up signal, and I knelt up and drove slowly back to the nearest point of the shore line, almost due west. Now that I was no longer pursuing other machines, I was more careful. Skidooing over ice can be dangerous, particularly on our lake, which is part of an ever-flowing chain connected by locks. The ice is weak in places where the current is fast. And even the flat areas can heave in pressure cracks that sometimes drift open a few feet, wide enough to swallow a snow machine whole.
As I drove I watched for ridging that would warn me of a weak spot. When I found one I stopped the machine, leaving the girl hunched behind the windshield. "Stay there, I have to test," I said. Then I slipped my stick out of my pocket, keeping the strap around my wrist, and lay flat out on the ice to check the gap at arm's length. I tapped until I was sure there was a gap of only about six inches between the two surfaces and that the slick of new ice, perhaps an inch thick, was continuous between them.
