A Lifetime Burning in a Moment (3 page)
Read A Lifetime Burning in a Moment Online
Authors: Rick Mofina
“My God, John what are we going to do?”
Devlin had an idea and told her. They all climbed into their boat. The outboard rumbled as they cut across the water under a darkening sky. Taking stock of the forested hills and the vast lake, Devlin felt imprisoned and vulnerable but kept his thoughts to himself.
They had no other option.
It was a long time before they reached the Crossroads and the gas station where Devlin asked the attendant to send someone out to fix his tire.
“That’s going to take a couple of days. Jed’s got the truck and he went to the city. His wife’s having a baby. Besides he’s going to have to pick you up a new tire, too. We don’t have much stock here. I’d say, day after tomorrow is the soonest.”
Devlin saw worry creep into Elise’s face.
“Is there anyone else, or a spare, anything?”
The attendant shook his head. Devlin squeezed her hand.
“We’ll be fine.”
They returned to their cabin and continued their vacation without a single incident. Not even a chipmunk to startle them in the night. Relief came two days later when Jed, a twenty-something under-the-hood type, with a nice smile, arrived to fix their tire. It was perfect timing. While he worked, the Devlin’s packed. When he finished, Jed showed off pictures of his baby daughter.
“She’s brand new,” he beamed as Elise cooed. “We named her Ivy. She’s the good news that we need in the county, especially after what happened a few days back at the north end of the lake.”
Elise and Devlin looked at each other then stared at Jed.
“What’re you talking about?”
“That’s right, you wouldn’t know - being out here all isolated and stranded with your tire situation.” Jed went to the cab of his truck, came back and handed Devlin a newspaper,
The County Beacon
. The main story on the front page was headlined:
“
Triple Murder: Retired Doctor, Wife, Grandson, Slain At Cabin”
Devlin and Elise read how police suspected the killers had followed the doctor and his family to their remote lake property in what one source called a gruesome multiple homicide. “In all my years I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Devlin’s heart leapt when he read the next paragraphs. Investigators were seeking the public’s help locating a vehicle seen in the area at the time. “A dark, older model pickup truck with a damaged front fender, and a light colored cap over the bed. Two male occupants were seen inside.”
When they finished packing, John Devlin and his family drove for three hours to the RCMP subdivision.
Sergeant Lew Segretti of the Major Crimes Section, was one of the Mounties investigating the killings. He took careful notes. Another member brought coffee, juice and doughnuts for the kids.
“Your encounter with the men in the pickup, your description of the tattoo, could be a critical lead. We’ll keep you posted,” Segretti told Devlin.
They returned to the city and the routine of their quiet lives, trying and failing to put the incident behind them. Devlin scrutinized the newspapers and TV reports, but the story faded. Weeks passed, a month, then three until one weekend afternoon when Devlin got a call at home during the first quarter of the football game.
“Is this Mr. John Devlin?”
“Yes it is.”
“Lew Segretti, RCMP Major Crimes. You provided us information on the Cushing family murders at the lake?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Mr. Devlin, there’s been a break in the case, and it stems from your report. It led us to two suspects, Aaron Sikes and Daniel Johnson. Both dead now.”
“Dead?”
“They tried shooting it out with the ERT Team in a trailer in the foothills near Pincher Creek.”
Devlin’s pulse quickened.
“Mr. Devlin, we couldn’t tell you at the time, but your thorough description was the linchpin. It helped us identify them. Sikes and Johnson were a murder team. We’ve connected them to the three homicides here and four in Ontario. We’ve been working with police across Canada, tracking these men until they led us to K-Division.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Alberta.”
“Alberta. And you’re certain both are dead?” Devlin sat up.
“One hundred per cent. Johnson died at the scene. Sikes died in a Lethbridge hospital a few hours later.”
“In hospital?”
“Yes, but before Sikes died, sir, he spoke to one of our members, who took a declaration, a taped final statement. I think you’d better sit down. I have a transcript and he mentions your encounter.”
Devlin cast about the room. His wife was in the doorway holding a dish towel. Devlin swallowed.
“I’ll just summarize it, but Sikes told the Corporal that he and Johnson had selected you and your family.”
“Selected? Selected for what?”
Segretti hesitated. “To kill you.” The hairs on the back of Devlin’s hair stood up as the Mountie continued. “But you’d spotted the bottle, confronted them and somehow threw them off their game. That’s why they pursued the older couple, Doctor Cushing, which is horrible and our sympathies go to the Cushing family. But the point is, your action saved not only the lives of your family, but of seven more people.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Mr. Devlin, these men were psychopaths. They were not very sophisticated, not clever the way the movies make out. But they were extremely dangerous. They had targetted another family in Alberta, a single mother who lived with her six kids on a rural property in an isolated area near the Rockies around Pincher Creek and Cardston. They were about to move on her and her children when we locked on to them, because of what you did. You stopped them. We just wanted you to know that, sir.”
Segretti ended the call but Devlin sat dumbfounded with the phone in his hand for the longest time.
“John, was that the RCMP?”
“Yes, they got the guys. They’re dead. It’s over.”
“Did they tell you everything?”
Devlin nodded and his mind reeled, racing at the speed of memory back through the stand off at the Crossroads, back through his humiliation at the auto parts store, back to his youth and the beatings he took from other boys at the railyard.
The boys who’d said he would never stop them.
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From the anthology
Dangerous Wom
e
n & Desperate Men
Buy
DANGEROUS WOMEN & DESPERATE MEN
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Rick Mofina is a former journalist and an award-winning author of several acclaimed thrillers. His reporting has put him face-to-face with murderers on death row in Montana and Texas. He has covered a horrific serial-killing case in California and an armored car-heist in Las Vegas, flown over Los Angeles with the LAPD Air Support Division and gone on patrol with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police near the Arctic. He has reported from the Caribbean, Africa and Kuwait’s border with Iraq.
Rick’s true-crime articles have appeared in the
New York Times, Marie Claire, Reader’s Digest
and
Penthouse
while his thrillers have been published in 21 countries and praised by James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Michael Connelly, Sandra Brown, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Heather Graham, Peter Robinson, Allison Brennan, David Morrell, Linwood Barclay and Kay Hooper.
Rick is a two-time winner of The Arthur Ellis Award and the International Thriller Writers, Private Eye Writers of America and The Crime Writers of Canada have listed his crime fiction as being among the very best in the genre. For more information visit
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http://www.f
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THREE TO THE HEART
(Anthology)
DANGEROUS WOMEN & DESPERATE MEN
(Anthology)
