Ragged Lake

by Ron Corbett

“He’s dead?”

  “Yeah, he’s dead,” said Yakabuski. “Would have been dead before he hit the snow.”

  He sat on his haunches and rotated his feet so he could make a complete turn without standing up. He took in every angle. Every sight line. When he was finished, he rocked back and forth on his haunches a few times and did it again.

  “How far do you figure the Mattamy is from here?” he asked the tree-marker.

  The boy looked before answering, then said, “A hundred yards maybe. Probably a bit less than that.”

  “I’m going to say eighty.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with you.”

  Yakabuski calculated the angle at thirty-five degrees. It was a bad storm, so there was no sense leaving a marker, and not knowing what else to do, he turned down Buckham’s eyes, wrapped his scarf around his face, and turned his body into a fetal position, back to the wind. With luck, the drifting snow would leave a small pocket of air before Buckham’s face. So he wouldn’t be buried twice. A dignity that could not possibly matter to the dead, and Yakabuski wondered why he was bothering, even as he was positioning the body and sweeping away mounds of snow.

  The tree-marker, crawling over a drift twenty yards farther on, nearly bumped into Garrett. The Sport was no more than twelve inches away — his face, anyway, what was left of it. The boy screamed in surprise and terror and did not stop until Yakabuski wrapped a massive mitt around his mouth.

  “Calm down, son,” he whispered. “We don’t want to let people know where we are.”

  He hugged the boy, waited until his tremors had passed, until the shallow breathing had turned full again, until the whimpering had stopped, and then he waited another minute so it wouldn’t be the last thing they heard.

  “Sorry,” the boy said, when he was released.

  “Nothing to be sorry about, son. This is fucked up. You’re right to scream about it.”

  Yakabuski looked at Garrett. Crawling up on a sight like that would have scared anyone. The back of the Sport’s head was little more than a butcher’s slab, a thing lacking such distinction it could only be called meat. He had landed chin-first in the snow, so the bottom half of his face was buried and only his nose and two surprised eyes could be seen, like some grotesque Harlequin mask.

  Ten yards beyond Garrett was the biker, lying on his belly, his legs splayed upward, a small ring of blood pooling around his head.

  Two dead men. Both shot from behind. That was quite the trick.

  Yakabuski pushed the tree-marker to the ground, then lay beside him for several minutes not moving. Eventually, he took his binoculars from a pocket of his parka and started to scan the ground in front of him. The windrows and furrows. The parked snowmobile atop a drift. The dead biker. He was making a second pass of everything when he found him. No longer hiding behind the snowmobile. Standing up. Raising his arms. Waving them in.

  “He’s not dead,” said the tree-marker in surprise.

  . . .

  O’Keefe did not appear frightened or panicked when they reached him. He pushed back the hood of his parka and calmly answered questions, sitting on his haunches as Yakabuski had done a few moments earlier.

  “Constable Buckham stood up when Constable Downey was shot and ran toward the lodge,” he said, looking directly at Yakabuski and ignoring the tree-marker. “It was not a smart thing to have done. The biker who was talking to Constable Downey turned and shot him. With a handgun he pulled from his pocket. It was rather an impressive shot.”

  Yakabuski looked back to where Buckham was lying. Almost eighty yards away, he calculated. Erring on the short side. Using a handgun and hitting Buckham square in the forehead. That was more than an impressive shot. That was genius.

  “You saw it all happen?” asked Yakabuski.

  “We both did. The officer was with us, then he was running toward the Mattamy, then he was shot. Garrett and I saw it all.”

  “What did the biker you were watching do when all this was happening?”

  “Nothing. He kept his position. He was better trained than your young officer, I am afraid.”

  “You know something about police training, Mr. O’Keefe?”

  “I know when emotions get the better of a man. I mean no offence.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well . . .” and here O’Keefe hesitated a second, a thing that did not seem natural to him, that seemed to confuse him. Eventually, the trace of a smile came to his lips, fled just as quickly as it appeared, and he said, “I think I made a mistake. That’s what happened next. I asked Mr. Garrett to check on the fallen officer.”

  “Check on him?”

  “That’s right. It didn’t seem right to leave Constable Buckham lying there. Maybe he was still alive. Even if he wasn’t, it didn’t seem right to just leave him there.”

  “So you sent Garrett out to inspect the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “I wish now I had.”

  “The biker you were watching, he saw Garrett moving toward the body.”

  “Yes. I told Garrett to be careful. But we figured the biker would have his attention on the Mattamy.”

  “You and Garrett figured that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the biker saw him and crawled up behind him. To get a good clean head shot.”

  “Yes.”

  Yakabuski looked to the biker, then Garrett, saw the sightlines measure up. Saw the furrow of packed snow where O’Keefe would have been positioned. Saw how perfectly everything would have lined up for him.

  “He didn’t know there were two of you,” Yakabuski said quietly.

  “I think you’re right about that.”

  O’Keefe looked sad right then, although he seemed to have trouble holding the emotion. It waxed and waned. Battled with other emotions that twitched the corners of his mouth and danced across his eyes. A sad-happy man he seemed right then, a thing so incongruous Yakabuski kept staring at his face, waiting for it to fall to one side of the spectrum.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Yakabuski glassed the Mattamy. Still no lights. No sign of anyone moving inside. The tree-marker had another pair of binoculars and was watching possible approaches behind them — the shoreline of the lake, the lake itself. Yakabuski told him twice not to forget the lake. It would be smart to come in that way.

  For the longest time no one spoke. O’Keefe had asked what he could do, and Yakabuski had told him to sit there and do nothing. A nerve in O’Keefe’s left cheek had started to twitch, and it wasn’t hard to figure out that the Sport was used to giving the orders. Saw a role for himself in any situation greater than that of passive observer.

  When it looked like he was going to complain, Yakabuski said, “Absolutely nothing. I don’t want you even moving without checking with me first. Are we clear on that, Mr. O’Keefe?”

  Both cheeks started twitching, but O’Keefe nodded his head and stared out at the Mattamy, wishing he had a pair of binoculars, but not saying anything.

  They waited more than an hour before Yakabuski finally saw a man with long hair pass before a window of the lodge. It was not the sort of day when you would be happy about anything, so relief is the better word to describe how Yakabuski felt right then. Relief to know the bikers were inside the lodge. Not outside hunting them down. Relief that was pretty close to happiness.

  The feeling lasted only seconds. As Yakabuski watched the Mattamy, the front door opened and Tommy Bangles walked outside. Yakabuski could see his face easily with the binoculars. Could almost count each teardrop tattoo. He had suspected, but now he knew.

  Tommy Bangles unzipped his parka, pushed back his hair, and yelled out, “Yak! It’s been a while. Why don’t you come in for a beer?” He started laughing. Stared down at the body of Matt Downey and gave it a little push. “Take a sho
t at me right now and everyone in this lodge is dead,” he yelled, still looking at Downey. “Everyone with you is dead. They will be hunted down and quartered over a cook fire. Are we clear on that, Yak?”

  Bangles raised his head and stared into the storm. Seemed to rise on the balls of his feet and cock his head. Then he turned to look at the front door of the Mattamy, gave a wave of his hand, and continued. “This is the drill, Yak.” When he said that, John Holly walked through the door, pushing Gaetan Tremblay in front of him. The old man’s hands were tied behind his back. His John Deere cap was missing and his head was bald except for wisps of grey hair around the edges that blew in the wind.

  Bangles walked up to the old man and placed his hands upon his shoulders. Bent to talk to him, a gesture that seemed almost gentle. After talking a few seconds, Bangles braced the man and pushed him down, forcing him to his knees. Than he drew a handgun from the pocket of his parka, and walked behind him. Stroked the old man’s head, another oddly gentle gesture.

  “It’s a one-hour drill, Yak,” he shouted. “I think I’m being generous.” With that, Bangles’ hand twitched almost imperceptibly and Tremblay pitched forward. The old man fell with drill-parade precision, his two legs flipping up at a forty-five-degree angle so precise it looked geometric. Then the old man’s legs lost inertia, collapsed to the snow, and the symmetry was lost.

  Bangles gave a little salute with his gun hand and strode back inside the lodge. Holly followed him.

  . . .

  The tree-marker was in shock. Yakabuski wasn’t sure about O’Keefe. It was hard to tell with him.

  “You can’t lose it, gentlemen,” he hissed. “Cannot lose it. That’s what they’re hoping for. You cannot give them an easy win.”

  He put his arm on the tree-marker’s back to make sure the boy did not rise and do something foolish.

  “Can’t lose it, gentlemen,” he said one more time. “We can’t make it easy for these bastards. I’m not going to let you make it easy.”

  No one spoke for a moment, and then O’Keefe asked, “What did he mean, it’s a one-hour drill?”

  “He means we have one hour before he brings someone else onto that porch.”

  “One hour?”

  “Fifty-five minutes now.”

  Yakabuski laid out his plan. The tree-marker didn’t understand how the cop’s instructions could be so detailed, how he could not ask any questions, or hesitate even once, everything said in a low whisper that did not change pitch so much as half a tone, that did not inflect or add drama, that could have been reciting the best way to reach a nearby grocery. When Yakabuski finished talking, he began to crawl away, leaving the tree-marker and the Sport hiding behind the snowdrift.

  . . .

  Yakabuski had seen a one-hour drill once before. In a farmhouse in the Laurentians. It was the sort of drill used by bikers and criminals for the most part, not so much by warlords and mercenaries. In war zones, you played for some distant endgame, with politics thrown into the mix, so there were advantages to holding onto a captive, sometimes for years, before you executed them.

  Bikers either were interested in retribution and intimidation or needed to know something right away. So everything was a little hopped up. In that farmhouse in the Laurentians, seven men were locked in a bedroom. They were the full-patch members of the Sherbrooke Popeyes chapter, and after numerous transgressions and outright breaches of the Popeyes’ code of conduct (all seven were intravenous drug users), Papa Paquette had issued a cull order against the chapter.

  They could have been lined up and shot together, but Papa wanted to know where they had been buying their heroin, so the one-hour drill was held, one man brought out of the room every hour.

  The executions happened in the living room of the farmhouse, a dump of a room with overstuffed furniture and overflowing ashtrays, a lacquered pine floor that had long ago lost its sheen. Each man was forced to kneel before Papa on the dung-coloured floor. Late afternoon sunlight through the spruce and red pine that surrounded the farmhouse cast long thin shadows across the floor. Each man pled for his life, had walked into the room believing he could strike a deal with Paquette, that his life mattered, that God would make an exception — believing this even though the dead bodies of the men who had gone before were lying by the kitchen door, stacked like cord wood, waiting to be weighted down and thrown into the lake.

  Not one of the captured men had known the supplier; the only one who had was the head of the Sherbrooke chapter, who had been tipped off about the cull order and had flown to Mexico the day before.

  Yakabuski had sat in that living room for all seven executions. It was the crime that would send Paquette away for life when Yakabuski, sitting behind a green screen with his voice altered, testified via video about what he had seen. Not that any of the precautions had made a difference. Paquette had known his true name and identity within six hours of being arrested.

  During cross-examination, Yakabuski was asked repeatedly, by Papa’s lawyer and then by each lawyer for each of the six men charged with him, how he could have sat there and done nothing during the Sherbrooke Cull. As though they would have done something different, would have stood up in the middle of that farmhouse living room and said, “I’m a cop, I can’t let this continue.”

  It was a stupid argument and Yakabuski had said as much on the stand, careful to let only a little of his anger show — not the seething anger he felt when he heard the question, for it was one of the few good questions any of the lawyers had to ask.

  How could he have sat there and done nothing? Even though it was seven bikers who were killed, each one deserving to have that as his final chapter, and even though he had been trained in the Third Battalion for just such situations — human shields and civilian executions being the norm for a while in Bosnia and Afghanistan — the question wouldn’t disappear the way logic said it should.

  Yakabuski ran a little faster through the snowstorm. Logic would be no help to him that morning if he were late. He knew the next person to be executed was not a biker but an elderly Cree woman, widowed for less than an hour.

  . . .

  Yakabuski had been surprised to find her at the end of his run. Sitting in her Morris chair, rocking back and forth, a pair of old binoculars in her lap. She had been watching what was happening at the Mattamy and knew he was coming.

  Bangles should have gone and collected her. Or killed her where she lived. Yakabuski ran the entire distance, not knowing if he was wasting his time, and when he reached the cabin, he was panting and couldn’t speak for a minute.

  Finally, he said, “We need your help, Madame.”

  “You will need my gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I get dressed?”

  “Please.”

  She didn’t say anything more. Pulled her gnome-like body up and out of the Morris chair, padded in her woollen socks to the closet, and took out the shotgun Yakabuski had seen there the day before.

  Anita Diamond slid her child-sized feet into a pair of mukluks and took down her parka. As she was doing all this, she listened to Yakabuski explain what they needed to do, already knowing for the most part what he was going to say. Not the details. Not names and places. But what had happened, what needed to be done now — in every way that mattered, she knew.

  The tough days had returned. It was a simple enough story to understand. Returned along with the tough decisions that always accompanied the tough days. As she put on her coat, Diamond remembered a cousin who had been making the fall migration down the Francis River one year, leaving the summer fishing beds, going to the inland village of Kashawana. His three sons went with him in the sixteen-foot locked-oar skiff. Halfway home, a rogue wave capsized the boat.

  Her cousin had been the last boat out that season. There was no one coming behind them. And there was a six-day hike ahead of them to reach Kashawana. In the fast-moving
river, her cousin rescued one son, then a second, but when he swam for the third boy, his dry-goods sack popped up from the river, directly in front of him. Without that bag — which had their fresh water, kindling, flint and food — they would likely die before reaching Kashawana. He reached for it. Knowing it needed to be done. Trusting there would be time to rescue his last son.

  But there hadn’t been. Her cousin had watched the boy drift away, listening to him call his father’s name until the boy’s voice could no longer be heard. Her cousin’s heart became so heavy, he had trouble walking to Kashawana. Needed to be supported by his other sons every step of the six-day hike.

  The day they reached the village, her cousin killed himself with his favourite hunting rifle. Diamond believed her cousin had known what he was going to do as soon as he grabbed the dry-goods bag. On a good day, she believes the young boy knew as well.

  She zipped up her parka, put a toque on her head, pulled the hood of her parka over the toque, and hoisted the shotgun over her shoulders. She looked at Yakabuski and nodded.

  “Thank you, Madame,” he said.

  “There is no need,” she answered.

  . . .

  O’Keefe and the tree-marker were crouched behind the snowdrift staring at their watches when Roselyn Tremblay was brought outside. Unlike her husband, the old woman had her arms free. She walked unescorted with short, purposeful steps to where her husband lay. She knelt and turned over his body, held his hands and bent to kiss his face. She paused here, then leaned back and raised her head to the storm.

  Behind the old woman were Bangles and Holly. Bangles had a smile on his face. Holly now wore a black balaclava against the storm.

  “You just cost me money, Yak,” Bangles yelled. “I bet John here that you would have the balls to come in before we killed this old woman.”

  Tremblay did not flinch when Bangles said it. Bangles’ smile grew larger. He looked over at Holly, pointed the gun at the old woman’s head as if to say, “Will you look at that?” and continued talking.