Buzzard Bay (7 page)

Alf and Metro came back towing the van. They reported it immobile; the front end smashed and the radiator broken. Ginter told them to park it in the shop where it would be out of sight. “Henekie and I are going to get those three snow machines we saw on Bill Shonavon’s trailer. Keep your eyes open around here till we get back. I don’t trust that crazy bastard out there.”

They jumped into Green’s pickup and drove over to Bill’s yard. The snowmobiles were already hooked up to the back of Bill’s pickup truck. Henekie traded vehicles putting Green’s truck in the shop, and they took off with Bill’s truck and trailer. They stopped at the hotel and while Henekie emptied out their rooms, Ginter went in and told the lone night clerk they were checking out.

“Tell the outfitter we hear there’s a storm coming, so we’re leaving early,” he told the girl. Now with their tracks covered, they headed back to Green’s place.

By the time they got the machines unloaded, there was a streak of red to the east. Ginter tied a rope to Albert’s ankle and to the back of his snowmobile then took off over the hill finding a place far enough from the house to leave him.

“Let’s go guys,” he shouted when he returned.

Henekie could tell Ginter was enjoying this; he didn’t mind it so much either now that it had warmed up. Not that it mattered; these machines had all the gear with them including fancy suits and face masks. They started out going around on the road that crossed the bridge and then climbed the hill on the other side of the valley. This way, they were able to come in behind where Green had fired at them. They found no tracks until they reached the edge of the valley. There they found shell casings and then tracks following the hard snow along the top of the valley. It was frustratingly slow going. Sometimes they couldn’t see his tracks at all and had to watch to see that he hadn’t taken off down into the valley.

oon, they saw a bluff of trees ahead. “Looks like an old farmyard,” Ginter told them. They could see the road leading to it wasn’t snow plowed so they assumed it to be abandoned. They came to a row of trees with a cut through them that looked like a road or entry to the farmyard. Alf was behind Henekie, so Ginter sent them around to see if they could find a way to come in from the back. Ginter and Metro drove up the cut line through the trees until they could see some buildings. Ginter’s heartbeat quickened.

“We have him,” he thought. He could hear Henekie’s machine behind the buildings. He watched in anticipation as he saw Henekie and Alf come around the edge of the closest shed.

“I don’t think he’s here!” yelled Henekie.

“There are fresh snowmobile tracks here. Better check the shack anyway!” Ginter yelled back. “Can you get to it?”

There are no windows on this side,” Henekie said. “I think I can get there. Alf, cover me.” Ginter watched Henekie cautiously approach the shack. When they heard him kick open the door, they all rushed the shack. It didn’t take long to search the place.

“He was here all right. Left in a hurry, must have heard us coming. I don’t think he’s far ahead of us,” Ginter said, climbing on his machine and finding Green’s snowmobile tracks. He felt almost happy that Green hadn’t been in the shack. It would have been too easy. Even the others seemed to be enjoying the hunt. Well, this Green had made the trip worthwhile. Ginter wished he had met him earlier in the week as he had the others. He liked to talk to his victims before he killed them.

They broke out of the trees onto an open field; they all knew the black spot they saw crossing the field ahead of them was whom they were after. Now they could open up these machines and have some fun. They gained on Green pretty fast, thinking for a while they could catch him before he made the bush on the other side of the field; but at the last minute, Ginter realized Green’s luck held. He was about one hundred yards ahead of them when he disappeared into the trees.

Ginter put his hand up, holding Henekie back; but Metro, who was slightly ahead of them, didn’t see this. He went right on in after Green. They watched as he disappeared into the trees right behind Green. Instantly, there was a rifle shot, some cracking noise like trees breaking. Henekie couldn’t understand why Ginter had held them back. It was as if he wanted to kill this man in hand-to-hand combat. Suddenly, they heard a bullet buzz by followed by the sound of a rifle shot. Instantly, they were all down behind their machines returning the fire. Ginter took off for the trees while they covered him.

Once he reached the cover of the trees, he began throwing lead toward Green covering Henekie and Alf until they got into the trees behind him. From there, they could see it wasn’t that far through the trees to the other side of what seemed to be a creek with no water in it.

“Henekie, you and Alf get your machine onto the other side of the trees,” Ginter told them. “Sooner or later we’ll flush him out, but be careful. We’ll go on foot if we have to.”

They had hesitated to use their radios. One never knows who might be listening on the channel. Now that they split up, they would have to. Henekie and Alf had just made the other side when they heard Ginter on the radio.

“I can hear him. He’s making a run for it on his machine.” Henekie and Alf had just begun to hustle up their side of the trees when they heard the shot.

“Did you get him?” Henekie asked into the radio. He called again, still there was no reply. Alf swore under his breath, and then they heard a machine heading away from them.

“Let’s go,” Alf said.

Ginter sat on his machine waiting for Henekie and Alf to get into position when he heard the machine somewhere in the bush taking off. He quickly told Henekie what was happening and took off. He could smell the kill now. The end of the hunt was near. He hurried along the edge of the trees. At the last second, he saw Green in the bushes. He’d met his victim; it was the last one he’d ever meet on this earth. Henekie and Alf’s fears were confirmed as they crossed the run. They came upon Ginter’s headless body immediately.

“There he goes!” shouted Alf, pointing toward Green who was moving fast across the open field. “Let’s get him! I want to kill him with my own hands.”

Henekie would have liked to check on Metro; he could hear the sound of a motor running in the trees, but if they did, they would lose Green. Henekie took off in pursuit. He didn’t think he could catch Green with two of them on the machine, but to his surprise they started to gain. It took only a few minutes for them to realize they were going toward town.

“If he thinks he’s safe there, he’s in for a surprise,” thought Henekie. Ginter’s death had agitated him so badly; there was no common sense left in him. He wanted Green dead, nothing else mattered. Just on the edge of town, Henekie thought they had him. They were right beside him when he saw Green look back. The front of Green’s machine lifted in the air as he tried to gain speed.

“Shoot him, Alf. Shoot him!” Henekie shouted, but Alf was busy hanging on with one hand and trying to shoot with the other.

He fired his rifle, almost taking Henekie’s head off. The distraction caused Henekie to narrowly miss the snow piled up on the divider separating the lanes on Main Street. Green had narrowly cleared it to the right. Henekie had no time to correct but kept going although on the wrong side of the street. This didn’t matter much at his current speed of close to 75 mph. Things were happening too quickly to worry about traffic direction.

At this speed, Henekie knew Green had no option but to go straight ahead. This was confirmed at the first intersection they came to. He was just ahead of them to their right, but there was too much traffic, and at this speed too dangerous to change lanes. The intersection flashed by; Green was hidden by the divider again.

They were almost to the second intersection when an object came at them from over the divider. It was Green’s machine, missing them by inches and disappearing behind them. Henekie applied the brakes, and they skidded through the intersection, the machine slowing down drastically, but the street was icy. They started to spin then hit the snowbank against the divider, spilling both of them into the snow. Henekie shook the snow off and stood up. He noticed Alf doing the same. Neither of them appeared hurt.

“There he is,” Alf pointed in among some cars in a car lot. Henekie couldn’t see him but took Alf’s word for it. He too pulled off his rifle and started to run toward Green. The cop car seemed to appear from nowhere. It skidded to a stop in the intersection almost directly between them and Green. Both of them started firing, dropping the cop and scattering some people coming out of the building behind him. Another cop car pulled up behind the first one. This cop didn’t fool around; he started shooting at them.

On reflecting back, Henekie thought they could probably have killed the cop and then got Green, but who knew how many more cops were on the way. Henekie wasn’t ready to die just yet. Both he and Alf tried to change directions at the same time; Alf slipped and fell, but Henekie grabbed him, helping him up. They headed back toward their machine, got on, and took off.

A car was coming right at them. The driver slammed on the brakes, apparently oblivious to what was happening farther up the street. Henekie managed to climb the divider high enough to avoid him, and then another car hit the first one from behind snarling traffic all the way down the street. Henekie turned around and took the first cross street he came to and headed out of town. Soon they were in open country.

“Where we goin’?” Alf wanted to know.

Henekie’s problem was that Ginter had always done the thinking, but Ginter wasn’t here.

“We’ll head for the farm and burn the bodies in the house,” he told Alf. This had been Ginter’s plan so far, as he was concerned this was what should be done. Green would have to be dealt with later.

EIGHT

R
OYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED
Police Constable Larry Reich was twenty-three years old and had been on the force for just over a year. This was his first posting, a quiet little town on the tree line in Northern Saskatchewan. Their territory was thinly populated but huge. It consisted of native reservations to the north to small farm towns in the southern parts.

Larry had always wanted to be a cop and knew he would be a good one, but already he found the tedious work of handing out speeding tickets and spending time in court boring. He had applied for a transfer, hoping to get a position in the city where there might be a little more action. Hell, there weren’t even any women in this one-horse town. Since this office covered such a large area, the detachment consisted of fourteen officers plus support staff in the office. This was a fair-sized detachment for a reasonably quiet area, but because of the vast distance to police in such a remote region, the officers were often overworked and forced to patrol in single rather than two-man teams.

Larry came in to the office a little early for his three o’clock shift. He planned on having a coffee and going over some desk work before he took over the patrol car. He was on rural patrol this week; as he checked his desk, he saw a report that someone had stolen some gas from some farmer’s fuel tank. He’d check that out first, he thought as the sergeant appeared beside him. He looked agitated.

“Larry,” he said, “there’s been a hunting accident out in the Cherry Ridge area. You’d better go out and see what’s happened. The phone call came from Gus Helek’s farm. He claims they were out hunting, heard some shots, went to see what was going on, and found a body that had obviously been shot.” The sergeant reiterated. “Do you know where the Helek farm is?”

“Yes,” Larry said, happy to have something out of the ordinary to do.

“I’ve phoned the homicide boys to come down,” the sergeant went on. “It will probably take them three or four hours to get out here. It’ll be dark by then. You make sure nothing’s touched and see if you can piece anything together as to what’s happened.”

Just then the dispatcher called out. “Sergeant! Officer Jennings has two men on Main Street with rifles!” The sergeant immediately turned his attention to the radio, listening to Officer Jennings’s excited voice telling them there was an officer down. The sergeant told all patrol cars to converge on the area with care. Larry asked him if he should go to the scene.

“No,” the sergeant replied, “you’d better go out and investigate the shooting.”

“How should I get there?” Larry asked. It was obvious that his patrol car would not be in as it was after three. The sergeant told him to take the four-wheel drive.

“It’s already hooked up to the snowmobile. Just take the unit to Helek’s yard and unload it, but leave the snowmobile for the homicide unit. They get upset if everything isn’t ready for them when they get there.”

“There’s no way we can drive out to the scene?” Larry asked, thinking of the four-wheel drive.

“No,” the sergeant told him, “they say you have to go by snowmobile. They have to show you where the body is anyway. They’ll take you out there. I know the Heleks have at least two machines on the farm.”

With that, the sergeant turned back to the radio, leaving Larry to make out on his own. It was only a twenty minute drive out to the Helek farm. There were five men waiting outside for him when he arrived. They gave him a hand unloading the snowmobile off the trailer, and then they all went inside where, over a coffee, the men told him what they knew. The five men had been out hunting when they heard some shots, they told the constable. The shots had sounded close and seeing the Heleks hadn’t given anyone permission to hunt on their land, they went to see who it was. They had come upon a man lying in the snow with his head shot off. A couple of the men were very pale. Mr. Helek stated it was a very gruesome sight. Two of the men, including his son, had been sick to the stomach.

Mr. Helek concluded by saying there had been no one around that they could see, but there were two snowmobile tracks. They hadn’t wanted to disturb anything, so they had all headed back to the yard.

They all wanted to go with Constable Reich to show him the body, but he told them he would prefer that just the two Heleks went with him; too many people wandering around might cover up evidence.

“Besides,” he said, “the rest of you guys can show the homicide people how to get there when they come.”

One of the guys asked him why they had sent only one officer. “There’s a problem in town,” he told them. “Two guys with rifles wounded an officer on Main Street.” He went on to recap what he had learned on the radio scanner coming out to the farm. “Apparently now they’re looking for a third man on a snowmobile who was badly hurt. They all seem to have gotten away. It’s a real muddle. All the officers are looking for these men, and no one even knows what they look like. They apparently took the officer who was injured to the hospital. They think he’ll be all right.”

Larry jumped on behind the younger Helek, and the three of them headed out to find the body. It was a gruesome sight all right; Larry had trouble keeping his stomach down when he saw the headless body.

“This guy definitely shouldn’t have been hunting,” Larry said to the Heleks. “He’s not dressed in whites, which is mandatory for hunters here. Also, they have to wear a red hat. This man must have been out snowmobiling when someone shot him by mistake and ran.”

The older Helek spoke up. “Then if that’s the case, why did the man have a rifle?” It was barely visible in the snow beside the body. Constable Reich walked closer and saw indeed that there was a rifle.

“Could be the gun that shot him,” Larry stated.

The three of them walked farther down the tree line to where they could see more snowmobile tracks. Young Helek was the first to see the wrecked snowmobile piled in the trees. As they came to the bank of the run, all three stood in shock; another body lay in the snow. Larry went on down into the run to check the body. His helmet was still on. Larry pulled it off; the helmet was full of frozen blood, and the man had a huge hole in his throat. Larry heard the young Helek getting sick and realized how traumatic this must be for a sixteen-year-old boy. Then he got sick too.

“Sorry,” he said to the older Helek. Larry was down on all fours, puking his guts out. “I know I’m a RCMP officer and shouldn’t be doing this, Mr. Helek,” Larry managed to gasp out.

“Gus, call me Gus,” the older Helek told him. “Get it out of your system then you’ll be okay.”

Gus helped Larry up then guided him to the lip of the run where the younger Helek was sitting. They all sat for a few minutes; Gus spoke first. “They sure made a mess of that machine. Looks like it was pretty near new.”

“I can’t figure this out at all,” Larry answered. “That other machine over there is smashed too, but the strangest thing of all is that the body is wearing a bulletproof vest.”

Gus looked over at Larry. “Only one reason for a man to wear one of those,” he stated. “They plan to get shot at.”

The younger Helek got up and went for a walk. When he came back, he was carrying a spent shell casing. “Back in the field,” he pointed, “there must be twenty or thirty of these.” He showed them the 30.08 shell casing.

“That’s why we came here in the first place. We were curious about all the shots,” Gus said as he went over and picked up a spent casing he saw along the bank, a .270 Winchester.

Looks like these guys were shooting at each other all right. Constable Reich decided it was time he started to conduct his investigation the way he had been taught. Four machines had come here and only two left, which made sense because there were two machines in the bush.

“That means,” Larry deduced, “that two men have fled the scene.”

Young Helek disagreed. “I can see two sets of tracks beside one of the machines,” he said. “I think by the way the spent cartridges are spread that there were two men on the one snowmobile.”

All three men were getting into it now, trying to piece together what happened here only hours before. Constable Reich radioed the office and gave the dispatcher all the information he had gathered. The dispatcher told him the homicide unit would be a while, when Reich asked to talk to the sergeant. The dispatcher told him he was out supervising the search for the suspects uptown.

“They’ve set up roadblocks, and there are more constables on their way,” the dispatcher told him. “Just hold down the fort, the coroner and homicide will be with you in about an hour.” Larry figured it would be dark by then; the wind had picked up, and it looked like snow. Well, there was nothing he could do about that. If it did snow, a lot of the tracks would be erased, he thought.

“Gus,” Larry said, “I’d like to take one of your machines and follow these tracks back a ways.” Gus said they would go with him. Larry said, “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think you should stay and wait for the coroner to get here in case I don’t get back in time.”

Just then they heard the sound of other machines coming. Larry hoped it was the Homicide guys, but it was locals. Word had spread, and people were coming to see what had happened. Larry was worried that something would get touched, but he also was afraid that if too many snow machines got running around, they could obliterate the trail the suspects had left.

“Can you keep them back away from here,” he asked the Heleks.

“Don’t worry,” Gus told him, “we know these guys. We’ll keep them away.”

Larry waited as five snowmobiles came to a stop a few yards from him and the Heleks. The snowmobilers were full of questions, but before anything else, Larry asked them to help the Heleks keep people away, and especially try to make sure they didn’t cover the trail. It made them all feel important to help; none of them wanted to go any closer to the body anyway.

Larry pulled his helmet down over his face as he started Gus’s machine and took off. He made good time. The tracks were easy to follow across the open field and then through the wooded area until he came to a shack where it was obvious someone had spent the night. Here, the constable found tracks going in all directions.

The shack was surrounded with footprints; the front door was left open so he walked in, finding the inside a shambles. The stove was turned on, an empty can of beans and dirty pot sat on the cupboard. The constable guessed by the open oven door that someone had tried to heat the place and had eaten here, but other than that, he could see no other clues as to what had happened.

He checked the shed, finding some gas cans and spilled gas in one, suggesting someone had needed fuel for something. Someone had hidden a snowmobile in here, he guessed, and had gassed it up. He took his radio out to call in what he had found in to the office. There was a constant chatter among the officers in town; one of them had found a snowmobile abandoned in a back alley fitting the description of the one the two suspects were riding. They were all converging on the area. He decided not to interfere.

“Really,” he thought, “I still don’t know what’s happened here.”

Constable Reich nearly turned back before he found a trail that actually seemed to go somewhere. The tracks seemed to lead along the top edge of the valley, sticking to the hard snow. As he went along, he began to notice footprints. These didn’t mean much to him until he came to the spot where shots had been fired. Here, there were obviously many footprints, and he found empty .270 shell casings in the snow. From here, the footprints went straight over the high pile of snow he was standing on and down into the valley.

On the other side of the valley, he could see a farmyard. It was starting to get dark. The wind was blowing, now sifting the snow around. He knew he should be getting back, except that he felt that he was very close to something. It was snowing harder all the time; these tracks would be gone forever if he didn’t follow them now. Besides, these tracks pointed directly to that farmhouse and somehow he felt they were connected. Starting over the edge of the valley was the tricky part. He got stuck in the soft snow and had to get off and push his way through, but once he started downhill there was no stopping. All he could do was to try and avoid the bigger trees. He picked up the set of footprints once he was in the flat at the bottom. He crossed a river following the tracks across the ice into another flat; he didn’t go much farther when he found the blood.

Henekie and Alf had both worked up a sweat. Henekie figured the police would have Green. He’d have told them about the farm, and they would be checking it out shortly. They were busy carrying the bodies from behind the shop to the house. They would burn the shop, the van and any evidence they might find in it.

He had left Alf to dump the bodies out of the bags while he stripped the van of its license plates and serial number. Alf didn’t see why the bodies should be taken out of the body bags, but Henekie told him the plastic would stick to the bodies as they burned. This would be detected by the forensic people.

Henekie was walking back to the house from the shop when he heard the sound of a snowmobile motor. It took him a second to locate where the sound was coming from, and then he raced to the edge of the valley and looked over. Through the trees, he could see a lone machine stopped where Albert had been shot. Quickly he ran to the house.

“Alf,” he called, “there’s a snowmobile in the valley bottom. We’d better go down and seen who it is.”

“I’m all done here,” answered Alf. “Do you want me to burn the house?”

“No,” Henekie told him. “Let’s see to this first.” They both headed down into the valley on the run, hoping the snowmobile wouldn’t leave before they got there.

Constable Reich could see that something or someone had been shot here. It’s someone, he thought, as he could see where the person had crawled in the snow from that point. He pulled out his radio and called in to his detachment office. He couldn’t hear anyone on the radio now, just a bunch of static. No one answered his calls; must be the high banks of the valley, he thought.