Ragged Lake

by Ron Corbett

  “How you doin’, Bobby?” asked Yakabuski.

  “Doing well, Yak. You?”

  “Just hangin’.”

  “Better be careful what you say. Don’t want to be giving Tommy any ideas.”

  They laughed. A good-natured, long-day-in-the-bush sort of laugh. Yakabuski had arrested O’Shaughnessy five years ago, right outside the Silver Dollar, after a black street dealer was found burned, castrated, and trussed to the chain-link fence surrounding the Nosoto Projects. Yakabuski had found O’Shaughnessy with gas cans in the back seat of the car he was driving, the dealer’s wallet open on the passenger seat, and the dealer’s girlfriend bound and gagged in the trunk. Bobby’s lawyer got him off after he had all the evidence from the car tossed. Even the dealer’s girlfriend. Car didn’t belong to Bobby. His client had no idea there was someone in the trunk. Bobby Chance. It was a good nickname.

  These men were part of a serious crew working on tight deadlines, so it was possible they would have no time for the gratuitous stuff. Good news for Yakabuski. Good news for the waitress. Wouldn’t mean much of anything in a few hours, but a good break to have right then.

  “That lab must have been supplying meth and ecstasy to cities all the way up and down the seaboard,” said Yakabuski. “You and Sean taken on new partners, Tommy?”

  “People come, people go; you know how it is, Yak. Always somebody new kicking around. Some of the new boys would spin your bohunk head.”

  “Takes a lot to spin my bohunk head. Why you say a thing like that?”

  “’Cause they’re whacked. Just fuckin’ whacked. There’s this one dude, he travels around in a mobile home he’s got all tricked out. Cutting tables, meat hooks, Sawzalls. You never want to take a ride with that dude.”

  “He from around here?”

  Bangles laughed and pushed strands of hair away from his face. Then he ran his fingers through his hair and pinched out a piece of ice trapped there. He threw it across the bar so it landed in the service sink, making a sound that reminded Yakabuski of sleigh bells.

  “It’s hard to say where anyone comes from these days, Yak, don’t you think? Not like when we were boys. You had the bohunks from High River, the French on the other side of the river, the Irish in Cork’s Town, the Cree and the Algonquin up here. Now everyone moves around too much, don’t you think?”

  “I think you’re full of crap.”

  Bangles laughed, found some more trapped ice, and threw it into the sink.

  “So, what happened to that squatter family?” asked Yakabuski. “They found out about the lab and so you had to kill them?”

  “Don’t know ’bout that one. Bit of a mystery, actually. I’m just here to do a scrub.”

  “So you’re denying it. I guess that poor family got itself killed by one of those boogeymen you’re talking about.”

  “Ain’t boogeymen, darliiin. It’s true gen. How many times I got to tell you that? By the way, if it were up to me, I’d just shoot you in the head and be done with it. The boogeymen want something more. It ain’t personal with me.”

  “I don’t even know them.”

  “Bad luck then.”

  . . .

  Bangles and Chance had a couple of shots at the bar, then zippered their parkas and headed outside, leaving Holly to guard the prisoners. The guide sat at the bar with Yakabuski’s Sig Sauer in his lap. No trouble holding anyone’s stare. Not an ounce of shame to him.

  Yakabuski heard two snowmobile engines turning over in the cold. Bangles and Chance were on their way to scrub the lab. Yakabuski knew commercial grade bleach would be in the cargo bins of the snowmobiles. Ready to burn away fingerprints if the fire hadn’t already done the job. Some jaws and lower clefts were about to be smashed in as well.

  He listened carefully to the sound of the engines. Revving high in the cold, neither driver bothering to ease up on the gas. Not caring about the machines. He listened as the sound of the engines began to blend and became one high-pitched, single note, growing fainter and fainter before finally fading away. Listened until he was sure.

  Just the one sound. They were travelling together. Gone to check and scrub just one location.

  Yakabuski didn’t bother smiling. Or feel much of anything at all. About a dozen other things still needed to go right.

  . . .

  “You don’t understand?” John Holly spoke from where he sat at the bar, a rock glass with two fingers of Canadian Club in front of him. “I’m surprised it would confuse you, Detective Yakabuski,” he continued. “You don’t have to stare at me all afternoon. Go ahead. Ask any question you want.”

  Yakabuski met his eyes. They had the time. “Why did you do it, Mr. Holly?”

  “Ahhh. You’re disappointed in me?”

  “You murdered a police officer. Disappointed isn’t the word I would use.”

  “Tommy’s told me a bit about you. You’re from here. So I really don’t understand your attitude. Do you read any history?”

  Yakabuski stared at him but didn’t speak.

  “It always amazes me how ignorant people are about their own history. At the top of Mount Royal, you have the heart of a Jesuit priest who was tortured and quartered by the Iroquois. We wiped the Beothuk off the face of the earth. Why should anyone in this country be surprised by violence? I could never figure that one out. Maybe it’s common for frontier countries, this denial of what you are, the way you were raised, always trying to tidy up your house, clean your hands. I never looked into the psychology of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me any if that were the case.”

  Holly stopped to take a sip of whisky. Looked at the four people handcuffed to chairs in front of him. A captive audience. He laughed and continued talking. “I tell people sometimes ’bout the first winter Champlain spent in Quebec City. The oldest city in the whole damn continent outside of Mexico City. Tell them how there was this plot to kill Champlain and sell the city to some Portuguese fishermen, which is funny in a way, to think how far we’ve come, knowin’ there was a time when the country was almost sold to a bunch of Portuguese fishermen. But Champlain learned about the plot and arrested the traitors, held a trial acting as judge, and decided the best punishment for the ringleader was to have him killed and quartered and his head put on a pike by the front gates of the city. The head sat there all winter, a hard winter that saw Micmacs starving to death outside the walls of the fortress and carrion birds blackening the sky.

  “You tell people that’s how this country started, and they just flat out don’t want to believe you. What am I doing right now that’s any different? I’m just trying to survive. Like we’ve always done around here.”

  Yakabuski looked at Holly and before letting too much time pass, he said, “You are one seriously fucked up guide, Mr. Holly.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “I’m staring at it now.” Tommy Bangles looked at the burned-out bunkhouse, marvelling again at how hot the fire must have been, how anything that was wood was now ash, anything glass turned to what looked like clear toffee, anything plastic a sludge that pockmarked the snow around him.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing but ashes,” he said into his cellphone.

  “Have you been inside?”

  “I’m not going to risk it, Sean. I can see the two other bodies. Everyone is accounted for. I want to be gone in two hours.”

  “Who do you have detained?”

  “I’ve got the tree-marker who found the bodies. I’ve got a waitress. Some Sport guy. And you’re going to love this, Sean — I’ve also got one fat bohunk dick from Springfield.”

  There was silence for a second, and then Sean Morrissey started laughing.

  “Who isn’t in Ragged Lake today? This is getting odder by the minute, Tommy.”

  “Isn’t it? I phoned our friend, and he said to take a video. We may get some sort of bounty from Papa.”
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  “We might. And that’s it?”

  “No. The guide is still here. Our friend thinks we should leave him to give the cops a story so they don’t drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what happened here.”

  “He may be right. The police may like a good story. Otherwise this is one big cockup, no?”

  “One big motherfuckin’ cockup. I don’t even know how many bodies are lying around here anymore. I’m losing track.”

  “So maybe give the police a story. Be kind to them, otherwise they’ll search for years — the big mystery of Ragged Lake. Give them a story and be done with it. Can our guide be a hero?”

  “He already thinks he is.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t like the guy. I say let the cops work.”

  “Your call, Tommy.”

  . . .

  Bangles and Chance were back in the bar in ninety minutes. They didn’t bother brushing off snow before walking in. Didn’t kick off their boots in the lobby. They trudged in with giant balls of snow caked to their feet, poured rock glasses half full of Canadian Club, and stood there drinking, letting the snow melt away to puddles around their feet. They carried a disinfectant smell with them, and the tips of their fingers were blanched and wrinkled.

  “Anyone else inside the building?” asked Yakabuski.

  “Two you didn’t see,” answered Bangles. “It was flares, right?”

  “It was flares.”

  “Yep, François should have had someone on the windows. That was a fuck-up.”

  “It was a fuck-up as soon as that squatter family got killed. How did you expect to keep everything secret after that?”

  “Don’t know shit ’bout any squatter family. I already told you that. You need to talk to François. Oh, right—”

  He laughed. Bobby Chance laughed. Holly laughed. Then Bangles slammed the rock glass on the oak countertop of the bar, hiked up his pants, and walked outside. The people handcuffed at the table saw him walk onto the porch. He came into view with a white bleach bottle in his hand, dragging the body of the cook. He bent over and poured bleach over the cook’s hands. Then he ground the hands under his boot heels. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then he poured bleach over the cook’s face. Opened the mouth and poured more bleach. With his boots he smashed the jaw, the lower cleft, the teeth. Stomp. Stomp.

  He repeated the process for the bartender. The two-thunderbolt enforcer. Chance sat at the bar, drinking and looking out the window along with everyone else.

  “You don’t help?” asked Yakabuski.

  “Nah, Tommy likes doing this part.”

  Yakabuski nodded but didn’t say anything. Stared at Holly, but the guide didn’t notice him looking, just kept watching out the bay window at what Bangles was doing, as though mesmerized, as though staring at an act of carnage and savagery he had only had the chance to read about before.

  It was time.

  . . .

  It was a gamble, and Yakabuski was no fan of gambling, but he could not avoid it. The best signal was a gunshot. There was no way you could argue it. Anything else had a good chance of being missed. Or never happening. So it was the ultimate gamble, what he was about to do. A game of Russian roulette played with John Holly. Neither man holding the gun that would kill one of them.

  Yakabuski had expected the bikers to leave shortly after he and the others had surrendered. With all belligerents detained and accounted for, they would go to the next phase and scrub the lab. He had estimated two hours. He had noted the time when they were tied to the chairs and when Bangles had returned from the porch, sat between Holly and Chance, and resumed drinking. When the clock had measured off exactly two hours, Yakabuski yawned and said, “Are we going to get on with this, Tommy? I’m starting to get a kink in my back.”

  “You sore, Yak?”

  “Every morning. Wait for it. It’s coming for you.”

  “Not me. I’m never sore.”

  “You’re going to be surprised. So, you’re finished with the scrub?”

  “Think so.”

  “You’re not forgetting anything?”

  “No.”

  “You’re done? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  Yakabuski looked at Holly and laughed. Holly, not knowing how to respond, laughed back at him.

  Bangles looked at the guide, shook his head, and said, “Fuck off, Yak. I just poured myself a drink.” He turned on his bar stool and stared at Yakabuski. A leer spread across his face. He pushed hair off his face, the teardrop tattoos catching the light from the overhead bulb behind the bar.

  “I’m not trying to cause you any problems, Tommy,” Yakabuski said. “I’m really not. You tell me you’re done, then you’re done. You know what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t know how Papa put up with you.”

  “I’m not trying to rush you, Tommy. I’m just checking to see where we are.”

  “Not trying to rush me? You saw me pour a drink.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did. You’re right about that. So maybe I’m just getting tired of sitting around watching your sad ass perform. Are you done scrubbing or not?”

  “You really are an asshole.”

  With that, Tommy Bangles took a handgun from his parka pocket, put it against Holly’s head and pulled the trigger. He was reaching for the bleach bottle on the bar when Yakabuski began his dive.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Yakabuski let his body go slack and pitched forward, hoping he would hear another gunshot right then, knowing he would be dead within seconds if he did not.

  He heard it. A retort that reverberated through the room with a loud metallic blowback sound that echoed and droned and brought everyone’s attention to the front entrance of the restaurant, where Bobby Chance was standing, looking in surprise at the blood mushrooming from the front of his parka. Another gunshot, and he was flying through the air. He landed with a thud, coming to rest against the foot-rail of the bar. A bloody bubble of mucous formed around his mouth. His eyes were vacant and stupid-looking. Bobby Chance. How he looked when the luck ran out.

  Yakabuski saw none of it. As he pitched forward, he slid his hands under the legs of his chair and kept rolling, snatching up Chance’s AR-15 but never stopping — a continuous somersault that saw him throw off the chair, grab the gun, and keep rolling. It was a move that looked as effortless as it had been the last time he’d done it, nearly thirty years ago, when he was handcuffed and held captive in the back room of a cousin’s cottage on Lake Kamiskasing. That time, he’d grabbed a bat to chase the cousin from the room.

  Unless you were using military-grade handcuffs fastened to something rooted in poured concrete, Yakabuski always liked his chances of getting free.

  Bangles stared at the body of Bobby Chance and then at the front entrance of the restaurant, where Anita Diamond was standing with her shotgun in her small hands. Bangles’ mouth moved but no sound came out. Just beginning to realize where he had gone wrong. Where he had been lazy.

  . . .

  When the tree-marker had stood and surrendered, Anita Diamond had snuck in the back door of the lodge and hid in a closet. Yakabuski had told her to estimate two hours for the signal. Use common sense and manoeuvre as close as possible to the bar. Wait for the signal.

  So many things could have gone wrong. They could have been killed the minute they surrendered. Bangles could have shot him instead of Holly. That was perhaps the riskiest part of the plan, but Yakabuski had figured the odds were slightly in his favour. He couldn’t imagine Bangles liking John Holly.

  Bangles reached now for the handgun he had placed on the bar only seconds earlier, as Diamond pumped the shotgun, ejected the casings, took the two shells she had clenched between her teeth, and started to slide them into the breach.

  But she was too slow. The old hands not as quick as they had once been.
Bangles’ first bullet caught Diamond in the upper chest, and her shotgun fell uselessly to the floor. The next four landed near the first, lifting the old woman in the air as though on puppeteer’s strings.

  Yakabuski was late as well. He tried to aim at Bangles, but the rifle kept slipping in his manacled hands, slipping, slipping, until he pulled the trigger in frustration, not bothering to aim, sticking the gun over the edge of the table he was hiding behind and firing blind, an unnatural thing for him to do, not expecting good things to happen from being so reckless.

  But he got lucky. One of the bullets clipped Bangles’s ankle. The biker screamed in pain and fell, his handgun skittering across the floor.

  “You motherfuckin’ bohunk! You don’t get this lucky. No fuckin’ way you get this lucky!” Bangles twisted on the floor, reaching for his gun. “You fuckin’ piece of shit. You lying, motherfucking—”

  And that’s when Yakabuski ended it. Rose from behind the table, and when Bangles slid his fingers around the gun, he lay down a line of fire that caught the biker flush in the stomach and slid him backwards on the floor, like a hockey player in one of those old children’s games with the slotted tracks. Yakabuski fired until Bangles smashed into the far wall. Offside by a country mile. After that he slumped over and, without bullets to support him, without purpose or future, he slid to the ground, and that was the end of him.

  . . .

  Yakabuski walked over to Anita Diamond. Bent to look at her wounds. He saw immediately that there was no sense fashioning a tourniquet. He would never be able to staunch this much blood. She would lose consciousness in a couple of minutes. Would bleed out and be dead a few minutes after that. He held the old woman’s hands.