by Ted Wood
"I'd like to have the time," McKenzie said. He reached out to shake hands. "If there's anything else I can tell you."
I shook his hand and said, "No, I don't think so, you've been very kind." And then I dropped my next question, as casually as I could. "Oh, there is one thing. How did Prudhomme get in and out? Did he go by chopper?"
"Nothing but the best for Darvon guys," McKenzie said. "Yes, he flew in everywhere. Always used the same outfit, the guy who reported him missing."
Gallagher said, "Sure. I didn't give Reid all the details yet, I'll fill him in."
We left, Gallagher stopping to say good-bye to Sue warmly, like a departing uncle, and then we walked back through the corridor and out to the car.
"I thought it was in the report, about the chopper," he said as he unlocked the cruiser.
"It was, but I wondered if he ever got in and out on his own," I said. "Now we know he didn't. So maybe I'll go and talk to the chopper pilot while you put somebody on the claim search, try and find out if Misquadis is a registered owner."
Gallagher started the car. "And which of my minions would you suggest I use?" he asked. "I don't want the whole damn world to know what we're up to here."
"In that case the choice is limited," I said. "And I'm going to talk to the chopper pilot."
He checked over his shoulder and drove off, slow and careful, past a gaggle of miners who were getting out of a yellow bus, looking round-shouldered tired, the way a man looks after eight hours on the muckstick, raking broken rock. "I guess that's the way it is," he said. "You high-powered investigators have all the fun while we coppers do the work."
"That's life in the fast lane," I told him. "Can you take me to the chopper pad? Unless you'd rather take me back to get my own car."
"No sweat." He tapped his hat more firmly on his head. "No sweat, but say, if he starts offering free rides, ask him to show you where the body was found. Then, if Misquadis is doing business with the bears up there, drop in and ask him about the claims."
"Will do," I said. "Let's find the pad. Who knows, it could lead us to another six billion bucks."
12
I had thought the mining companies would have choppers of their own, but that wouldn't have given them the same tax breaks. Instead of owning birds, Gallagher explained, they were just plain folks, hiring as they needed them. Which meant that they did business with Olympia Lift Corporation, a helicopter company up at the big motel a further five miles east.
When we arrived there was only one chopper at home, on a flat gravelled area in front of the main motel building. Beside the landing pad there was an office, an army-type Ouonset hut with the name of the company painted badly on a sheet of plywood.
"This is it," Gallagher told me. "I have to get back. If you find anybody to talk to, wave from the window and I'll take off. When you're through, give me a call and I'll come back. You can get a beer at the motel while you wait."
I nodded and got out, taking a quick check of the chopper as I walked to the hut. It looked like the standard Hughes 500, the civilian version of the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse that I'd seen in Nam. They were small and quick and had been used only for scout work. I'd never flown in one.
I went into the building and was time-whacked right back into the service. Most of my flying had been done in the field, scrambling in and out of choppers in LZs in the boonies. But once, on my way out of Saigon, I had been in a flight office, carrying a message from the captain to the flight crew. This place was the same. There was the same smell of jet fuel, the same temporary, kicked-around look to the interior. The only difference was a counter at the front, about eight feet from the door. I walked up to it and called, "Anybody home?"
Somebody in a room at the back called "Yo" in a way that told me he'd learned his social skills in the same finishing school I had, or else he'd seen the same movies.
I waited and a man walked out. He was my age, fair, rangy, negligent-looking in his manner, but with the underlying toughness that comes from military training, from being sure of what you can do. He was wearing brown pants and a leather windbreaker with the company crest over his left nipple, where his wings would have been if he had still been in the service. He looked tanned and relaxed. "Yessir," he said in a voice that was friendly but not overenthusiastic. A vet, for sure.
I matched his grin. "Hi, you're the pilot."
"The very best," he said. "Looking for transportation?"
"Not right this minute." I held out my hand. "My name's Reid Bennett. I'm in insurance, looking into the death of Jim Prudhomme."
He shook hands. "Paul Kinsella. I'm the guy who was there when they found him. And I also flew him around in the fall of last year when they made the discovery. What can I do for you?"
I held up one hand for a moment and went to the door and waved Gallagher away. He nodded and drove off and I came back in. "Well, I'm not sure. I wondered if you could remember where all he went, what he did—just background stuff for my report."
He looked at me levelly. "You talk like a cop, not an insurance adjuster. This guy do something bad?"
"No, I just got roped in because of the crazy way he died. We never paid off on a bear mauling before and head office wanted to double-check everything."
He still wasn't buying, so I fed him another crumb. "And you're partly right. I used to be a cop, but the hours were lousy and I was never home, so I switched to this job. Smart, eh?"
Kinsella laughed at that and flipped up the flap on the counter. "I've got some coffee out back, wanna cup?"
"That would be great, thank you." I followed him into the little room. It was like a lot of other male domains. There were magazines everywhere, most of them a year or so old, a coffee maker with half a dozen dirty cups around it, ashtrays filled with butts, a deck of cards and a cribbage board.
He found a clean cup and poured me some of his coffee and then topped up a mug that stood by the most comfortable chair in the place. "What would you like to know?"
Like most of the other moves in an investigation, there was no quick answer to that one. I had to dig first and then look at what I'd turned up. "I'm not sure," I confessed. "Did you know him well, can you remember anything about him?"
He took the good chair and cocked one foot on the edge of the table. "Not a hell of a lot," he said, and sipped his coffee. "He was a geologist, sounded French. I'd say he was kind of an anxious guy, always double-checking everything. If we were leaving at seven, he'd be here at six. Always questioned everything you did. Stayed in Olympia, although he could have stayed here a lot more conveniently."
That all sounded like Jim Prudhomme. I nodded and sipped. The coffee was excellent. "Did you drop him on his work locations a lot?"
"Maybe half the time he flew with us. Frank, the other pilot, he used to take him when he was here. He's got the Bell, it's bigger. My usual machine is the one outside."
"The Hughes 500."
He looked up at me sharply. "You know the difference?"
"I was in the Marines. I've seen the Hughes used, but I've never been in one."
He took his foot down from the table and sat forward. "You were there?" He didn't have to say where.
"Two fun-filled years," I said, and he whistled. "Gung-ho sonofabitch, weren't you? Two full years there. Combat?"
"Most of the time. I was in Saigon for a month once and in the hospital for another couple. Aside from that, it was the boonies all the way."
He reached forward and shook my hand again. "Nice to know you," he said sincerely. "The only guys I've met who know anything about the war were in college in the World, organizing sit-ins to protest it."
"I wasn't. Which outfit were you with?"
He told me and we played old soldiers for a few more minutes, then got back to Prudhomme. Now, for a fellow sufferer, he took the trouble to remember properly. Most of Prudhomme's work had been carried out west of the main find. But they had drilled a test hole on the island where his body had been found. Kinsella had been
involved with transportation, lifting supplies in, lifting core samples out as the drilling progressed.
"Any chance you'd be heading out that way again, soon?" I asked innocently.
He straightened up and grinned an old sweat's grin. "You wouldn't be joshing now, would you? Like you wouldn't just be trying to hitch a free ride in my mo-sheen?"
I laughed at his hillbilly imitation. "Not really. But I'd like to look, if it didn't cost me an arm and a leg. Head office is death on expenses."
He looked at me and shook his head grudgingly. "You know what it's like with aircraft of any kind. Once it's airborne, the meter's running. I have to add the time to the log and somebody has to pay for it."
"How much would it cost to take me out to where Prudhomme's body was found? Like I say, I don't have deep pockets, but if it's just a half hour I could swing it."
He didn't answer at once. Instead he picked up his coffee cup and drained it. "Well, I have to admit I was having a little trouble with the radio earlier. I've switched the board in the set and it works okay on the ground. But maybe, for an ex-grunt, I could carry out an air test."
He went over to a tall cupboard at the back of the room and took out a bundle tucked into a big canvas bag. "Sleeping bags," he explained. "We've still got Indian summer, but the forecast is for colder and I wouldn't want you to freeze your ass off if we're forced down."
I picked up the bag and nodded and waited while he phoned somewhere to report he was going up to air-test the radio. Whoever was at the other end squawked a little but Kinsella stayed cheerful and a minute later was locking the front door of the office and we were walking out toward the chopper.
The Hughes is mostly glass in the body. It's a bit like a kid's soap bubble with the bubble pipe still attached. Kinsella opened the door carefully and we got in. He shut it again, just as carefully, something that marked him for a pro. It's part of the same plastic bubble, but worth about as much as a new car. You slam it at your own risk.
There was a headset on each seat. He put his on and pointed to mine. I put it on and he ran through his quick rosary of preflight checks and started up. The familiar whine and then the crack of the start and the steady whup-whup-whup of the blades put me into the same time warp I'd experienced in the hut. I had been in choppers a lot, always for the money—heading in on a landing somewhere, or out with a prayer in my heart and a hot situation behind me.
Kinsella looked at me and grinned. His voice was thin, filtered through the headset. "Takes you back, huh?"
"Right back," I told him, pressing the microphone button on the headset lead.
He reached down for the throttle on his left side and spoke again. "Hang in. It's easy this time, Charley's not out there waiting."
He wound up the rpm, lifted the stick, and we were away, slowly and gently. Whatever kind of cowboy he had been in Nam, he was a civilian now and his motion wouldn't have worried an old lady. When we were thirty feet up he shoved the control stick over and we swung left and away, still climbing, until the motel and the road were nursery toys on a green floor beneath us.
"I'm heading three hundred twenty degrees," he told me. "It's maybe twenty minutes from here."
"Wake me when it's over," I kidded, and he laughed and swung us sideways, onto his true bearing.
I stared down at the terrain, dark green with pines and spruce and occasional lakes. Somebody once said that Ontario is like American beer, nine-tenths water. This end of the province isn't typical—there is less water surface than land, but there are still plenty of lakes. We crossed a sizable river. In the past, before there were roads and trucks big enough to make it worthwhile, that was the main route for the pulp logs they processed in Olympia. Now it traced a band of smaller trees, second growth after the first generation had been sent down to the mill. And then we were in country so repetitious it was almost featureless: lakes, none of them big, the occasional high, bare outcropping, and never-ending trees.
Kinsella pointed down. "See that bare-ass rock there." I nodded without switching on my mike. "Yeah. That's the landmark for the lake where Prudhomme died. It's about three hundred fifty degrees from it, maybe three miles more, with three islands, two small ones together and a big one." I nodded again and watched carefully as he tilted the stick and moved to the new heading.
"There it is." I pointed and he nodded.
"Same place as before," he said, and we both grinned. "Hang onto your false teeth, we'll go down and take a look." This time he did show off his combat skills, dropping us like a stone, then tilting again to take us over the biggest island.
It was about a quarter mile long, half as wide, about thirty acres altogether, most of it rock. "Looks a bit small to have its own resident bear," I said.
"That was my feeling, but he'd sure as hell been chewed up and the doctor said it was bear teeth did it." Kinsella was enjoying himself, swinging the chopper along the shoreline all around the island. Down low the speed was obvious again. It was like driving a race car. For me, it was a memory of a lot of approaches to LZs I had known. I could almost sense the presence of the other guys, the smell of sweat and gun oil, the murmur of cursing and the occasional prayer. I found my fists were clenched tightly and worked at slackening them.
Kinsella grinned. "Now you remember," he said, and I nodded. He laughed, off microphone, and turned the far corner of the island, hanging almost sideways under the blades, like a weight slung at the end of a cord. My breath caught in my chest but we swung back vertical again and I relaxed, feeling a tingle of the old familiar exhilaration. And then I saw something floating ahead of us in the water. I switched on my mike but Kinsella had beaten me to it. He pulled us up and slowed the forward progress so we hung in the air, fifty feet from the object, thirty feet above.
"It's an aluminum canoe, like the one Jack Misquadis owns," I told him.
"Yeah?" Kinsella worked the controls, bringing us down ten feet above the canoe and a little to one side where we could see it clearly. "You mean the Indian who found the body?"
"That's the one. He was coming in today to shoot the bear. They put a bounty on it." I was staring down at the canoe, seeing that it was empty, sunk to within a couple of inches of being completely submerged, held up only by the Styrofoam buoyancy floats under the metal at the bow and stern.
"Well, I hope he was wearing a life jacket, because he's nowhere that I can see," Kinsella said.
He edged a little closer to the canoe, bringing it under my side. "Anything in it?"
I checked carefully. "Not a thing. That means he's either tipped it and everything fell out, or it drifted away after he'd made camp."
Kinsella sucked in his lower lip. "He didn't strike me as a drinker," he said, "and I can't think of any other way an Indian would get careless about tying up."
We looked at one another and I asked, "Can you bring me down on it? I'll tie the bowline to the skid and we can take it to the island."
He rolled his head thoughtfully. "I guess you've been in and out of enough choppers. Just be goddamn careful, all right?"
"I promise," I said fervently. He edged the machine closer and I unsnapped my seat belt and slid the door back. The downstream from the fans filled the cabin, taking my breath away. I fought hard to grab air, then eased out, keeping my head low, and stood down on the skid. The downdraft was boiling the surface of the water, flattening the slight swell that covered the lake, pressing the canoe deeper into the water. The noise was filling my head, it was hard to breathe. I was eighteen again, jumping into the unknown.
I forced in another big gulp of air and reached down for the edge of the canoe, keeping my left hand tightly around the upright support of the skid. The water was cold as it swirled around my hand and wrist but I didn't let go. I pulled the canoe along under me until I could reach the bow. The line running from the front eye was thin white nylon, strong enough to pull a powerboat. I found it, six inches under the surface, and pulled. It should have come easily, rolling up into my hands, its wei
ght neutralized by its buoyancy. Instead it was hard to move, snagged on something under the water. I hung on tighter to the upright and reefed on the rope as hard as I could.
Slowly, as if I were pulling in a log, the rope came up to me, six feet, twelve, fifteen. And then, through the black murk of the water I could see the end, snarled around something that was trailing reluctantly. I pulled harder and a moment later I found out what it had been caught on. It was a man's ankle and he was very dead.
I wrapped one leg around the upright and used my free hand to gesture to Kinsella. His eyebrows went up and he mouthed the words "Hang on." I took a tight grip of the man's cuff, sliding my hand up inside the trouser leg against the deathly chill of the swelling flesh beneath it. Then I hung on tight to the upright and fought for breath as Kinsella inched the chopper toward the island. There was a long flat rock on the shoreline, slipping gently down into the water. With my arms trembling from the stress I held on until we reached it, then hopped down, keeping low, let go of the stay, and let Kinsella lift farther up the rock clear of the water and cut the motor.
He was out beside me before the blades had time to stop turning. He grabbed the leg I was holding and we eased the body up the rock, turning it over so the face wouldn't grind itself against the surface. When I saw who it was I whistled with surprise.
"Holy Hanna. That's not Misquadis," Kinsella said. "That's Jim Prudhomme."
I nodded grimly. "You're right. And this is his second time at bat."
13
I didn't waste time searching the body or carrying out any kind of investigation. Kinsella and I folded it into the rear seats and then beached the canoe, drained it, and tied it to a tree. Kinsella had explained that he couldn't take it out with him. It would mess up the balance of a chopper; it would have to be flown out underneath a float plane. When I'd finished lashing the canoe securely, Kinsella got back into the chopper and started up. I got in after him, closing the door and buckling in. He lifted off vertically and swung back on a southeasterly course that brought us within sight of the plume of smoke from the mill within five minutes.
