Ice Lake

by John Farrow

  Then more gunshots, which he heard strike his woodpile and the garage at his back.

  He punched the emergency number on his cellphone and quickly went through the drill, not waiting for a response. “X-ray Yankee Zulu. Cinq-Mars. Cinq-Mars. Officer under fire. Officer under fire. Crank it up. Crank it up. Out.”

  He heard a snowmobile’s start-up roar then, muffled by the rabid wind, and it seemed to come from the same direction as the gunfire. Had it been four shots, five, six? It seemed to Cinq-Mars that he had actually felt a bullet miss him, then strike the garage, all before the sound of the blast had registered. He told himself that he must have imagined it. He thought to fire the shotgun in the general direction of the roaring, invisible snowmobile but feared that that might panic his wife even more. The last thing he wanted was to find her out in the storm searching for him.

  Then a roar, and a faint blur, crossed to the front of his house, and Cinq-Mars moved from his hiding spot. He unfastened the double safety on the shotgun he’d had retrofitted for Sandra’s sake.

  Two shells to fire. Two triggers. His one chance to massacre these bastards.

  Their escape route was away from his position and, cleverly, on a line passing between the corner of his house and his vehicle. Cinq-Mars had to scamper to the Pathfinder and crouch by the front tire there, listening to the diminishing bedlam of the machine. The snowmobile had been specially rigged to travel with its lights off, which was not normally possible. He still had a shot, but he worried now that his vehicle might have been wired so that the explosion could be triggered by remote control. What if the intruders were out there waiting for a sign that he was standing alongside it, breathing his last breath next to dynamite?

  Having nothing more than retreating noise to fire upon, Cinq-Mars cracked the shotgun.

  He jogged back around, collected Sally, and beat a full retreat into his home. He locked the doors behind him. Leaving the lights off, he ran upstairs, with the dog at his heels. In the side-room where he had left her, Sandra stood limply in silhouette, the phone in her hand held waist-high.

  “Sand?” he queried.

  She did not respond.

  Cinq-Mars jumped to the window and pulled the curtain across. Only then did he consent to turn on a table lamp.

  Before him his wife leaned against the edge of the desk with the phone in her hand. She was looking at him. At first she seemed shocked, dazed, but as her eyes focused, her expression turned to one of terror. “Emile,” she said, as tears sprang up.

  “Sand?” He took the phone from her and spoke into it. “Hello? Hello?”

  Dead air on the other end, and his wife was shaking her head.

  “They killed her,” Sandra said.

  “What? Who?”

  “Somebody shot her. I was talking to her on the phone. Emile, I heard a pop. Like a shot. This small sound—a gasp—then her body hit the floor. I heard it!”

  He moved across to his wife and held her, stooping to bury his face in Sandra’s neck, kissing her gently. Cinq-Mars took a step back. He put the shotgun down on the desk and touched her face with his right hand while the fingers of his left located the digits to press on his cellphone.

  “X-ray Yankee Zulu. Cinq-Mars. Turn me over.”

  Seconds later he heard, “Cinq-Mars, ETA two minutes. Status.”

  “Attack thwarted. Intruders, at least two, fled southwest by snowmobile. My vehicle could be wired with explosive. Haven’t checked in the dark. Officer safe. Repeat, officer safe, intruders repelled.”

  “Wait.”

  Cinq-Mars hung on while the information was dispatched to the officers speeding toward his home at that moment.

  “Roger that.”

  “Action—my home phone line is open to an outside number. Party at the other end believed to have been shot. Injured or dead. Find out the address of that location.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Give me a call-back on my mobile. Over for now.”

  The computer would give the officers his phone number, just as it had given them his address. Sandra hung on to his sleeve while he punched another number on his cellular.

  “Hello?” The voice was croaky with sleep.

  “Bill? Emile. Ready on. We’ve got something. I’ll be back with the details.”

  “You all right?”

  “Long story. Call you back.” Punching that call off, he promptly sent another. “It’s Emile,” he said, upon receiving a sleepy response. He listened to the other person rouse himself with complaint and vitriol. When it seemed as though the other party was sufficiently awake, he said, “Forget about all that. Just tell me what’s known about an SQ, sergeant named Charles Painchaud.”

  Cinq-Mars was informed that not much was known but that the sergeant was considered to be a good man. Something was murky. Not much. Vague rumours about connections. Possibly, his rapid advancement was related to nepotism.

  “That’s the worst thing said about him?”

  “So far.”

  “I need his home phone, ASAP. Call me back on my mobile only.”

  While he waited for information to come his way, Cinq-Mars held his wife in his arms. “What else did you hear?” he whispered.

  “I couldn’t tell. Odd sounds. Like they were moving furniture.”

  “They?”

  “No voices, but I heard more than one set of feet. At times, they might’ve been on different sides of the room simultaneously. I heard heavy breathing, grunts, as if men were exerting themselves.”

  He reached behind her to pull the curtain open, and behind himself he switched off the table lamp. In the distance, at the edge of his property, Cinq-Mars spotted the flashing blue and red cherries of a squad car. The cruiser’s slow speed suggested that the storm had completely obscured the driveway.

  “Take it easy. It’ll be all right,” he tried to assure Sandra.

  “She said her name was Lucy. She didn’t give me a last name.”

  As much as she endeavoured to stifle her tears and sniffles, not much worked, and in the end Sandra slid down from her husband’s embrace and clasped Sally by the neck. She sat on the floor and squeezed her dog instead. After kissing the top of her head, Emile Cinq-Mars returned downstairs, switching lights on along the way.

  Fearing dynamite connected to the ignition, a method of execution favoured by local gangs, the detective was unwilling to start his Pathfinder. The young officer from the St. Lazare Police who’d been first to arrive on the scene volunteered to check it out for him and soon pronounced the car safe.

  “How much do you know about bombs?” Cinq-Mars drilled him.

  “Not a whole bunch.” A red-haired, freckled, affable man, mildly plump, the officer stood in the mudroom with the outside door open at his back. Snow blew inside. The cold air mixing with the warmth of the house made the breath of the men visible and frosted the windows.

  “Is it your particular area of expertise?” Cinq-Mars continued to press him.

  “No, sir.”

  “They go boom, right? Do you know much more than that?”

  The cop was accepting the inquisition with a sense of humour that Cinq-Mars could not quash. “Sir, your car was entered by the side door. Slick entry. Either that or your door was unlocked. Was it?”

  “Could be.” Cinq-Mars jutted his chin as if to accept a blow earned by his carelessness.

  The officer nodded, gaining confidence. “The snow under the car is undisturbed, sir. On this side, there’s the imprint where you crouched down. On the other side, it’s easy to see where he got in and out by the passenger door. He was hoping you’d step into the car on the driver’s side without noticing his tracks. Either that, or he expected the storm to smooth them over by morning.” His words were underscored by a cockiness he didn’t wish to hide, as though he wanted to impress upon the senior cop that he would not be intimidated by his reputation. “I checked under the door, sir, just to be safe. I checked under the car and around the wheel wells. I checked the moto
r. I checked the ignition and under the dash. I looked below the seats. Nothing’s been disturbed. The trunk’s clean. There’s no bomb. No loose wires. You must’ve intercepted him before he had the chance to do anything. In the cold, in the dark, he was working slowly. When he ran, it’s a good guess that he took the bomb back with him. If there was a bomb.”

  “A bomber, on the run, in the dark, takes his dynamite away with him?”

  The cop shrugged. “Valuable stuff. His choice.” He then coughed, and deliberately repeated himself, as though to introduce an alternative theory. “If there was a bomb.”

  Cinq-Mars wasn’t interested in hearing any other suggestions. He’d felt a bullet whiz by his head. Five or so had been fired at him. That an intruder had dared penetrate his property, with the intention of killing him, had him more enraged than frightened. Keeping himself under control was a battle. This was a new level of combat and he did not welcome the escalation.

  “So,” he asked, relenting somewhat, “you believe my vehicle’s safe?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.” The cop was a handsome young man, probably in his late twenties. Women loved him, Cinq-Mars suspected. He didn’t look the type to marry young, or if he did, he wouldn’t fare well in the role. He was a risk-taker, that kind of cop, not a homebody.

  Cinq-Mars held up his keys. “Are you volunteering to start it yourself? Just so you know, you don’t have to.”

  The cop laughed and accepted the keys from his superior’s hands. “I’ll be back in a minute, sir.”

  “Make a point of it.”

  Cinq-Mars watched. As confident as the officer had been with his preliminary investigation, now that his own life was at stake he double-checked everything. In the end he sat up in the driver’s seat with a determined grin, stuck the key into die ignition, and boldly gave it a twist. The engine kicked over immediately, and the young cop revved it up high before turning the vehicle off.

  By the time he came back to the house, other policemen were following the first set of tire tracks up the long drive. Local cops, Sûreté du (Québec, and Montreal Urban Community Police converged. Without a Ski-Doo of their own they had no hope of trailing the culprits, and Cinq-Mars told them not to bother calling for one. Snowdrifts would hide the trail during the delay, and shortly the bad guys would connect to miles of intersecting trails, where their tracks would be indistinguishable from hundreds of others being covered over by the blizzard. Cinq-Mars asked instead that the SQ give him an escort, that the Montreal officers stay put to guard his wife until his return, and that the local cops drive the country roads and report any suspicious activity. All agreed.

  Cinq-Mars returned upstairs to apprise his wife of the situation, to hold her, and to say goodnight. Although disturbed, Sandra was not fragile, and they hugged one another as though the strength of their squeeze was sufficient to ward off the world. He loved her and loved the scent of her, loved that they were getting along so well these days, and hated this turn, for marital pressures inevitably followed such an episode.

  Back downstairs, he strapped on his holster and issue and retrieved his wallet and shield. Before he left the house he made and received several calls, including one to his partner and another to Sergeant Painchaud, now that he had his number. A call came in with the trace on the phone call, and he was given an address for a Lucy Gabriel, near Oka. Then he was outside in the blizzard again, starting his new vehicle for himself. He followed the flashing lights of the SQ, cruiser onto the country road and, eventually, eastbound along the highway.

  On the passenger side of the Pathfinder, snow carried in on the boots of the intruder slowly melted away, a reminder of his trespass that made Cinq-Mars angry all over again. Only as the cab warmed up and the snow vanished did he feel that he was alone in his vehicle, speeding behind the cruiser, headlights shining on the ferocity of the storm. The highway was difficult to discern. He drove hard. He assumed that if the cruiser ahead of him hit the ditch, or rammed a pole, that that would be his cue to swerve, brake, or prepare to crash.

  Driving actually gave his nerves a chance to settle—he could reshuffle his anxieties, concentrate on the road—and he had time to think things through.

  The cumulative effect of the events of the past fifteen hours indicated, if nothing else, that he was missing something. Apparently there was a gap in the spectrum of his knowledge that could be lethal. A woman had called offering information. He had travelled to the rendezvous. A man in the vicinity had been found dead, shot and submerged under ice. The woman had not shown up, but had telephoned again and, during the conversation, possibly or probably, had been gunned down herself. His property had been invaded, he’d been fired upon, his vehicle had been entered. No bomb had been planted on the Pathfinder—presuming that the brave young cop hadn’t been duped in some way, that no remote-controlled plastique was under his rump at that very moment. But a bomb was still his first choice when ascribing purpose to the trespass. Most of the really bad guys on his turf, notably the biker gangs, were bombers. The woman had cited his fame as her primary reason for choosing to call him and not just any cop—whatever it was that she knew had gotten one man killed and perhaps her own life snuffed—but none of that explained a sudden interest the bad guys might have to want him dead.

  Unless they assumed, or were worried, that the unknown woman, or Andrew Stettler, the floating corpse, had managed to divulge their secrets to him. Cinq-Mars followed the cruiser off Highway 40 onto Côte St. Charles Road, which led into the town of Hudson. The route took him past farmland dotted with old and handsome rickety barns, then into an area of modest cottages on large properties. Before leaving home, he had arranged for others to meet him in different locales, and now he got back to Bill Mathers. They were travelling from opposite directions.

  “What’s your ETA, Bill?”

  “Fifteen, twenty. I’m behind a plough. Which beats being in front of it.”

  “I’m ten, maybe fifteen minutes in this snow. The gatekeeper is being dragged out of bed as we speak. See you soon.”

  The street ended, and he turned east along Main Road. Here the homes were larger and occupied expansive waterfront properties. His cellphone rang. Charles Painchaud, coming from the northeast, was already on the opposite side of the Lake of Two Mountains, as he lived over there. “Trouble,” Painchaud warned.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’m searching for the house. I’ve left Oka. I’m now on Indian land.”

  Cinq-Mars swore under his breath. “Are you in a cruiser?”

  “Personal vehicle, sir. Thank God.”

  “Uniform?”

  “Civvies,” Painchaud assured him. “Nevertheless.”

  “Right. Better call it in.”

  “Will do,” Painchaud said. “See you when I see you.”

  So far, Cinq-Mars had four police departments involved in this escapade, MUC cops were guarding his house. St. Lazare Police were trolling the countryside, looking for a shooter and a mad bomber on a snowmobile. The provincial police were providing his escort, and Painchaud, also a member of that force, was operating on the opposite side of the lake. He had asked the Hudson Police to alert the gatekeeper for the ice-bridge. Now there’d be a fifth police force involved. The Kanesetake Mohawk Peacekeepers would not take kindly to foreign officers on their territory.

  Something was going on. He couldn’t quite smell it, he couldn’t put any of it together, but his intuitive and intellectual senses were definitely being stirred.

  He drove hard, keeping the lights of the cruiser ahead of him in view. Main Road in Hudson took him through the commercial centre of the village, then dipped and swerved as it ran alongside the Lake of Two Mountains. Earlier in the century, many of the homes here had served as summer cottages for the affluent of Montreal. Now, with the advent of fast cars, adequate bridges and express highways, the town was a bedroom community for those who commuted the other way and in all seasons. For more than a century, the lake had been circled by the three founding
peoples of the country, native, French and English. Hudson was peculiarly English, and Emile Cinq-Mars was feeling like an obvious outsider.

  At a quiet junction, he spotted the revolving blue light of a police cruiser where an officer from Hudson awaited his arrival. In summer, a ferry service operated from this location, small tugs shunting vehicles on barges between the towns of Oka and Hudson. In winter, the ferry operator used his private access on both sides of the lake to maintain an ice-bridge. The local police had awakened an employee to open the gate kept locked overnight. In turn, he had summoned a snowplough operator. The three men were waiting for Cinq-Mars as he pulled onto the property and stepped from his car into the teeth of a gale.

  “Sir,” the Hudson cop greeted him, in French. He seemed an amiable man, no doubt a job requirement in such a nice town. “Great night to be out for a drive.”

  “Couldn’t have picked it better. Thanks for your help on this.”

  “No problem, sir. I have to warn you, though, the gatekeeper’s feeling ornery.”

  At that point, the Sûreté du Québec escort who had followed Cinq-Mars from his house joined them. “Might as well call it a night,” Cinq-Mars advised the SQ officer. “I’ll take it from here. Thanks for everything.”

  “I don’t mind going across with you, sir,” the tall young man maintained.

  “Think so? Turns out we’re headed for a house on Indian land. Are you sure you want to drive a flashbulb cruiser over there?”

  He was immediately less certain.

  Apart from cheap American smokes, inexpensive contraband liquor and reserve-grown marijuana, native criminals had one other product they brokered with success. They provided armaments procured in the United States to interested parties. Grenade-launchers. Submachine guns. Automatic pistols. Rifles. Dynamite. The reserve was no place for outside cops.