“You’re welcome.”
He slid the phone back into its holster on his belt and was just about to mount the idling Arctic Cat when he heard something, a distant, familiar whine above the rush of the wind. It was a sound that in the North Country in winter was as ubiquitous as the buzz of mosquitoes in summer. A snowmobile was speeding toward him on Becker Road.
CHAPTER 44
The little machine came from the west, from the place where the North Star Trail crossed Becker Road. The night and the heavily falling snow were like a wall, and Cork couldn’t see the snowmobile yet. He stood beside the Arctic Cat, trying to will his eyes to pierce the veil, struggling to construct a plan if it was Frogg who materialized.
The snowmobile appeared, skimming over the powder that covered Becker Road, its headlights diffused by the snowfall. As soon as it came in sight of the vehicles parked at the access to Hancock’s cabin, whoever was driving brought the sled to a halt. Cork hadn’t turned on the lights of the Arctic Cat yet. He pressed himself against the Tacoma’s rear bumper, trying to keep from being seen, waiting for the other snowmobile to make its next move. For ten seconds, the driver sat considering the situation, then suddenly cut a sharp U-turn on the road and tunneled back into the storm like a badger into its hole. Cork leaped onto the Arctic Cat and shot off in pursuit.
At the North Star Trail crossing, the snowmobile cut to the right, toward the river. Cork stayed with it fifty yards back. He wasn’t wearing goggles, and he crouched low behind the windshield to keep the bitter wind out of his eyes, so that he could see. The fugitive snowmobile slid onto the frozen surface of the White Iron River, shot east, and blew past the place where Hancock’s cabin stood among the trees on the shoreline. A few seconds later, Cork did the same. He didn’t see any sign of Deputy Bronson, who was supposed to be watching for Frogg. He couldn’t even guess what Azevedo and the others were thinking. If he’d had the time, he would have called on his cell to apprise them, but there wasn’t a moment to spare.
The Arctic Cat’s age was evident. The engine lacked the pickup of a younger, newer model. Cork figured he was able to stay with Frogg-he was certain it was Frogg on the other machine-only because the river was narrow and negotiating its twists and turns required a slower speed and demanded the man’s full attention. Maybe Frogg didn’t even realize that he was being followed. Two miles east, the river emptied into Iron Lake. Cork was trying to think of all the places where Frogg might leave the frozen riverway. There were cabins here and there, mostly seasonal, but the only major access was at the old bridge where County 7 crossed. Cork hoped Frogg would take that exit, because if he reached the wide-open expanse of Iron Lake, he could give his machine full throttle and Cork wouldn’t have a prayer of keeping up.
At the bridge, Frogg kept to the river. Cork had fallen back a bit because the Arctic Cat had begun to sputter. He didn’t want the engine to die completely, and he eased up on the gas. The lights of the other sled crept farther and farther ahead. Over the sound of his own machine and the wind whipping past, Cork heard the faint ring of his cell phone. He didn’t answer, couldn’t answer.
A couple of minutes away from Iron Lake he was still trying to come up with some plan that would keep Frogg within range. He wished that he carried a firearm but knew that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Although he was almost certain it was Frogg he pursued, when a gun was involved, “almost” wasn’t good enough. Then he considered what he’d do if he caught up with Frogg, who was probably armed. Cork didn’t even have Anne’s baseball bat with him. He decided he’d worry about that later.
As both machines approached the mouth of the White Iron River, Cork saw something ahead that gave him a moment of hope. Incredibly, from the ice in the middle of the opening onto Iron Lake came the flash of emergency lights atop an Interceptor Explorer, one of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department vehicles. Marsha, God bless her, had called in the cavalry.
The snowmobile ahead slowed. Cork came up on him rapidly. He saw the driver twist on the seat and eye him out of the oval of the hood of his parka. Then the driver turned back toward the emergency lights and gave his machine all the gas he could. The Polaris-Cork could see that the make of the snowmobile was the same as the one Hancock claimed Frogg had borrowed-shot directly at the Explorer. Cork heard a barked “Halt!” Deputy Reese Weber, who must have been called back on duty, loomed in the headlights of the Polaris. He stood at the rear of the Explorer, weapon held with a two-handed grip and aimed at Frogg. The Polaris bore down relentlessly, and Weber fired a single shot, well over Frogg’s head as a warning. The sled was on him before he had a chance to fire again. He leaped to the side and slammed his body against the rear bumper of the SUV. The Polaris veered sharply to the right and shot through the small gap between the vehicle and the shoreline. In the headlights of Cork’s Arctic Cat, Weber rolled and tried to stand, but it was clear the man was injured. Cork stopped where Weber sat in the snow, back against his vehicle.
Weber furiously waved him off. “Go! Go! I’m okay!”
Cork sped on, but he’d lost precious moments. The storm had swallowed Frogg, and Cork could no longer see the headlights of the Polaris. He killed the Arctic Cat’s engine and listened. He’d expected Frogg to flee into the great open of the lake. He was surprised when he heard the mosquito buzz of the engine heading south down the shoreline toward Aurora. He fired up the Arctic Cat and turned again in pursuit.
Frogg had made what Cork hoped would prove to be a fatal error, the error of a man who didn’t know Iron Lake as intimately as a native would. Even in the coldest of winters, Iron Lake didn’t freeze over completely. There were a couple of places where open water remained. Half-Mile Creek near Crow Point was one. The other was a kidney-shaped area adjacent to the old BearPaw Brewery. In the years the brewery had operated, the runoff had kept the water near the shoreline free from ice. The result was that waterfowl sometimes wintered there. When the brewery finally closed its doors, a vocal group of citizenry had succeeded in persuading the city of Aurora to aerate that small section of shoreline to keep the water open for the benefit of the waterfowl. It was an area clearly marked with barricades, and anyone familiar with the lake in winter stayed clear of it. Frogg must not have known the lake, because he was heading straight for the open water. If the storm hampered his visibility enough, the man might just fly right off the ice into the grip of Iron Lake, and Cork would have him.
Cork shot past the North Arm peninsula, barely able to see the lights of the big houses there because of the thick snowfall. Although Aurora lay along the shoreline ahead, all he could see were a million flakes blasting at him as he pursued Frogg. He couldn’t tell distances well and had no clear idea of how far he was from the open water. Once again, he halted his Arctic Cat, turned off the engine, and listened. He heard the Polaris up ahead. Then suddenly the sound changed to a kind of gargle and ceased. Frogg, Cork knew, had hit the water.
He moved the Arctic Cat cautiously forward. In a minute, in the headlights, he spotted an orange barricade on which was mounted a warning sign that read “Caution-Open Water.” He neared the edge where white ice met black water and where the tracks of Frogg’s Polaris ended. He stopped his own machine well away from the open water and directed the headlights at the place where Frogg’s trajectory and momentum would have taken the snowmobile. He knew the little machine would have skipped a bit, like a stone over the water’s surface, but it couldn’t have taken Frogg all the way across. He saw no sign of the snowmobile or Frogg. He thought that could have been simply from the cloaking of the heavy snowfall, so he slowly circled the big kidney of water. It was an area maybe fifty yards wide and seventy yards long. When he reached the far side, he spotted lights deep in the water, the headlights of the snowmobile still shining at the bottom of the lake. There was no sign of Frogg. Even if the man had managed to disentangle himself from the Polaris, in that ice-cold water, in heavy clothing that would have soaked up moisture like a thirsty sponge, his chances were pretty slim. Cork scanned the edge of the ice for any sign that Frogg had swum there and had tried to climb out. He found nothing.