Paul, though capable of more speed than I, chose to slide along beside me, apparently not as ready as I’d been to act as though this were our jurisdiction. “Damned if I know. Terrain’s wilder on the other side of the bridge-maybe he’s hoping to escape into the woods along the shore.”
He put the phone to his ear and updated whoever was on the other end. Within minutes, we saw the festive police lights rearranging themselves, moving like a herd toward the bridge. Simultaneously, we heard the distinctive whine of several snowmobiles firing up behind us and saw their jittery headlights spring forth from the dark shoreline as they headed onto the ice. Slowly but surely, the cordon was tightening around the eastern end of the river.
Abandoning our short-lived detachment, we both began jogging toward the bridge as well. The urban cowboy had almost reached it by now, and two strings of uniformed cops, advancing from either abutment, had just set foot on the frozen water. With high-pitched screams, a couple of snowmobiles sped by, hoping to grab him before he vanished under the bridge’s archways.
But it wasn’t to be. As suddenly as they’d come to life, the machines slid to a halt a few hundred yards from their target.
Paul had the phone to his ear again. “They’re holding off because of thin ice,” he told me. “The water moves so fast from the bridge to the first dam, they don’t want to risk their men.”
We came abreast of the frustrated snowmobile riders glaring into the gloom under the arches. To the right and left, the people who’d gained the river’s surface from opposite sides of the bridge were very slowly feeling their way toward the middle, roped together like mountain climbers. Paul and I, lighter than the machines, continued cautiously up the middle.
Suddenly, the darkness before us vanished as in a lightning strike. The police had rigged portable lamps along the railing overhead, facing downriver, illuminating the entire scene as if it were an enormous barren stage-and the man in its glaring midst a trapped intruder.
A loudspeaker crackled. In contrast to its bellowing metallic voice bouncing off the hard surfaces around us, Paul’s quiet translation sounded like the whispers of a prompter.
“This is the police. Move back toward the bridge. You are on thin ice and could break through at any moment. Do not go any farther.”
For a moment, it seemed the man might follow orders. He twisted around jerkily, his body slightly bent as if both fearful and spring-loaded, but then he obviously saw what looked like a better option. His feet slipping initially, he began running toward the darkness and the faint but ominous rumble of falling water, heading for the quasi-wilderness Paul had mentioned earlier.
But things didn’t work out for him. It looked like he stumbled at first-he seemed to go down on one knee. But as he struggled to rise, we saw his pants clinging wetly to his leg, and realized he’d broken through. He took a couple of more steps, went down as before-but deeper this time-and tried to push himself back up with his arms. Then the other leg vanished from sight. Momentarily, almost playfully, his dark-clad torso stayed level with the ice’s hard, even plane, and we suddenly saw the pallor of his face as he plaintively looked back over his shoulder at us all before disappearing from sight as if through a trapdoor. Instantly, the river’s surface became as bland as before-pale, cold, and impassive-with no trace or memory of the man it had just swallowed whole.
“So much for finding out what that was all about,” Paul said softly.
Chapter 20
“I’m sorry about this,” I told Gilles Lacombe. “I couldn’t wait around for a bunch of medical types to do this the official way. And I’m getting pretty good at thawing myself out anyway.”
I was lying in my tub back at the motel, immersed in water so hot it limited visibility. Lacombe was sitting on the toilet seat beside me, slowly removing layer after layer of clothes, hoping to get comfortable.
“It is not a problem,” he said politely, pulling off a sweater. “Is it working?”
“I can move my hands and feet again, but I can’t say I’m toasty yet.”
He laughed weakly. “You are lucky.”
Paul was leaning against the doorjamb. “I read somewhere warming yourself up like that can cause a heart attack-all the cold blood from the extremities rushes back to the core and drops its temperature further down than it is.”
“I guess this is your chance to see if they were right,” I said testily, having no intention of getting out. “I take it the cowboy didn’t survive his midnight dip.”
Down to his shirt now, Lacombe shook his head. “We have not found the body. If it went over the dam, it will be under the ice now. We will not find it until the spring. This has happened with fishermen and skaters. We know he did not make it to the shore.”
“What about his car?” I asked.
“We are looking at it. In the computer, the registration says the man is a muscle-for-hire. He worked for several of the bars and clubs on Wellington Sud.”
“Any affiliation to either the Angels or Deschamps?” Paul asked.
“The two of them,” Lacombe told him, squinting through the steam. “And people who have nothing to do with them.”
“Great,” I said. “Maybe he has a note in his pocket, signed by whoever hired him.”
“Better be in waterproof ink,” Paul said.
“I am afraid I have some questions about this,” Lacombe added. “I do not understand how this man knew where you lived in this motel.”
“Take your pick,” Paul suggested. “It’s not like we’ve been undercover.”
Lacombe nodded. “Oh, that is true, of course. But how he knows the room number becomes a little problem. Also, why try to kill you, and why try to kill you right now? What have you done that causes worry?”
The next day Willy looked at me from across the conference table back at the Stowe police department and seconded the question. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What the hell do you know that deserves a bullet?”
The whole team had been pulled out of Canada, except for Kathy Bartlett, who was still fighting with her Canadian opposites to get Marcel extradited.
“We were rattling a few offbeat cages,” I told him. “We must’ve hit the right one.”
Tom Shanklin looked unconvinced. “The World War Two angle? How’s that make sense?”
Paul Spraiger had been sitting back in his chair, seemingly half asleep, and now stirred himself to say, “It doesn’t, necessarily, but this attack followed right on the heels of our digging into Antoine’s death.”
Gary Smith sounded doubtful, too. “You don’t kill a cop because he’s getting close to something-another just takes his place and everyone’s a whole lot more pissed off.”
“That’s if you’re thinking,” Paul persisted, speaking on my behalf, since I had no more to contribute than anyone else.
“If you’re feeling cornered and you tend to lash out by nature,” he continued, “shooting a cop might seem like a no-brainer.”
“So we pick out the suspect who’s an idiot with a short fuse?” Willy asked.
“More realistic would be to keep on the pressure,” I suggested. “If it hadn’t been for that literal thin ice last night, we might’ve had a pathway back to this creep-there’s no reason to think he won’t try again, especially if he feels I’m after him personally.”
Sammie could see what I was driving at. “You think the grand plan is to knock off the top cop and throw the troops into confusion?”
“That’s crazy.”
“Makes sense to me,” Smith disagreed. “Look at the IQ’s of most of the jerks we go after. Plus, opening the World War Two can of worms wasn’t the only sudden change here. Assuming Marcel was framed for his father’s death, that plan just went down the tubes, too.”
“All right, all right, but so what?” Willy persisted. “It’s not like we can tie the boss like a goat to a tree.” He suddenly laughed. “Not that it’s a terrible idea.”