Fool's Gold (24 page)

I felt the same kind of tingling anticipation I used to know in Nam. I knew this wasn't the same. Tonight it was just transportation, a ride back to the place where a long night of work would start. But there was something about that sound that stirred responses I had thought were buried. Without conscious thought I clicked off the safety catch on my rifle. I was ready for anything.
 

It seemed to me that the sound hesitated somewhere downriver. The slow, steady Doppler effect of the approach lagged for a moment. I wondered whether Kinsella had seen something on the ground, some natural luminescence that had made him think he was on target. I waited with mounting tension, not knowing why I felt so strained. And then the chopper ambled into my section of sky and hovered, about eighty feet up, well above the treetops.
 

I went to the flashlights and picked one of them up, using it as a signal, flapping the light down to the ground, then waist high, then down again, calling him down. The down-draft was washing all around me, kicking up all the debris that had been loosened in the earlier arrivals. I clenched my eyes shut and listened until I could hear the changed beat on the blades and feel the slipstream intensifying as he let down, almost on top of me.
 

I set the light down and moved to one side, kneeling, automatically facing away from the chopper as it descended, my rifle at the ready. I could have laughed out loud at myself except that instincts stronger than laughter had taken hold of me. I was alone on patrol and the night fears that I had kept off while I was alone were rushing in to haunt me.
 

Behind me something clattered on the ground. I turned and saw it, the rescue collar, lowered from the chopper. Kinsella wasn't coming all the way down. I wondered why he didn't put his lights on and come down, but guessed he was fighting his own personal demons. I hung one strap of my pack over my head so the load hung in front of me, out of the way, then slipped the collar over my head, put my arms through it, and tugged the loose section three times.
 

At once it started to crank in and I rose from the ground, swinging like a kid's puppet. And as I climbed, by inches it seemed, a light shone from the edge of the clearing, playing on my swinging body.
 

My instincts saved me. Without thinking I fired, in front of the light and low, but close enough to scare whoever was holding it so that his answering shot just missed me, thumping harmlessly into the backpack as I swung sideways to his line of fire under the recoil force of my rifle. Then my shoulder bumped the edge of the skid and I hooked one leg over it and banged on the plastic side of the chopper with the muzzle of my rifle.
 

Kinsella got the message. He stood the machine on its side and howled away, over the trees, out of sight of the man in the clearing. I fired again as he flew, just banging away to make noise and keep the guy's head down, two more shots, then slung the rifle and clambered into the open door, pulling it shut behind me.
 

Kinsella's face was stretched by the light from his instruments. He looked impossibly Irish. I couldn't tell whether he was horrified or laughing.
 

"Sonofabitch," he shouted. "I thought we left all that bullshit behind us in Nam."

 

 

 

19

 

 

I shrugged off the harness and my pack, dropping them on the coil of rope that lay in the backseat, then strapped myself in and sat very still, staring blankly ahead, clutching my rifle with the same kind of superstitious force I had hugged my M16 in an earlier day. It had saved my life— it, and my own Marine's instincts. I had been as good as dead. If the guy on the ground hadn't flashed his light to be sure of my position, if I hadn't fired so quickly, if Kinsella hadn't acted like a trained combat pilot—if, if, if.
 

Kinsella called Olympia tower and told them he was taking me direct to the police station, to let Gallagher know. They rogered and he spoke to me for the first time since I'd settled in. "Who the hell was that?"
 

"Answer that one and we've got this case bagged," I told him. I was still jumpy. I haven't been shot at so many times in a day since I came back to Canada after the war. I was shaken.
 

Kinsella took his left hand off the controls and patted his side pocket, coming up with a heavy pewter flask. He handed it to me and said, "Take a taste of this."
 

I did. It was good Irish Whisky and I filled my mouth and swallowed slowly, taking it in like fresh confidence. Then I held it out to him, but he shook his head. "Not yet. When I'm down I'll finish it for you."

He came in high over Olympia and followed the main road down from the Trans-Canada to the police station. Gallagher had closed off a section of the street, setting two flashing police cars at each end of a fifty-yard stretch. It was well lit and clear and Kinsella set me down gently as an egg in the center of it.
 

I unsnapped my harness and reached over to shake his hand. "Thanks for moving so fast, Paul, it's all that saved me."

He laughed, the high, hectic laughter of a man who has been badly scared. "What's this 'me, paleface'? I figured it was my ass I was saving."
 

I ducked out, bending back in to pick up my pack, then pushed the door shut. He took off at once and headed back to the motel where he housed his bird.
 

Gallagher was in one of the police cars and he swung it back beside the station and came over to me as I walked in through the door. "How'd it go?"
 

"Not good. The guy we want is up there in the bush. He fired at me as we took off."

"He did what?" Gallagher roared in surprise. "Jesus God. I thought we'd checked that area earlier. There was nobody close to that clearing."
 

I held up my pack. There was a bullet hole in one side. "Believe me now?" I asked him.

Gallagher waved me inside, bursting with anger. "Sonofabitch! We went over that area with a fine-tooth comb. Sam checked it out and everything. It was clean."
 

"Sam hadn't checked it out for three hours, not that side of the river. Whoever it was snuck back and waited until I was hanging out of that chopper like a yo-yo on a string. He shone a light on me and I fired first, otherwise you'd be checking my butt for bullet holes right now, instead of me checking this pack."
 

I set the pack on the counter top and started going through the contents. My fingers found my billy can. It had an explosive hole punched in the side of it. And inside, where I had packed my spare can of beef, there was a mess of spilled meat. But the bullet had been slowed by the meat and metal and had spent itself in denting the other side of my pot. I took it out and tipped it into Gallagher's hand.
 

Gallagher took it and whistled. "Okay. I believe you. Now come and sit down a minute and get a coffee while I holler for some help." Sam was lying on the mat behind the front desk of the station and he rose to his feet and wagged his tail when I noticed him. Gallagher went through the routine of handing him back to me, then poured me coffee, adding sugar, which I don't take but needed right now. I thanked him and sat and went over the events again. He heard me through twice, then lifted the phone and called the OPP detachment at Wawa. I listened, still shocked into the near-apathy that settles on survivors when there are other people around to take up the slack for them. I knew that if Gallagher hadn't been in charge, my adrenaline would be running and I would be doing all the things he was doing now, but in the warmth of that station with coffee in the cup, I felt like sleeping.
 

He hung up after ten minutes. "Good, that's taken care of. They're sending reinforcements at first light. A team of guys with tracking dogs and SWAT gear, the whole manhunt paraphernalia. They'll comb the bush, starting there, circling until they know he's not in the area, then beating the river back down to my men." He stopped talking long enough to light a cigarette, quickly and without ceremony, showing he was back on the weed as badly as ever. "We've got the bastard in a vise. The river's the only road out for him."
 

I downed the last of my coffee and stiffened my shoulders to come back to the land of the living. "Not necessarily. He could walk out through the bush if he chose. It would take him a week maybe, but he's only thirty miles from the highway. He could come out anywhere."
 

Gallagher shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "You've seen that bush. If he could make a mile a day he'd be doing well. He won't want to put himself at risk that long. It's my bet he'll make it out at night on the river. Only there's gonna be my guys waiting for him a couple of miles from the highway, just when he might try to get cute and cut out through the bush."
 

I nodded. I didn't share his horror of the bush. It was no worse than the terrain I'd humped through in Nam and we'd covered eight, ten klicks a day, carrying an eighty-pound pack and watching for enemy all the way. But at least he had a plan that made sense, and that was something to be glad about. "So what about Tettlinger? Have you questioned him yet?"
 

"I've started. But he's playing it cagey. Wants to see a lawyer before he'll say a word. The guy who fronted for him after he took a swing at you is out of town for the weekend, so I'm waiting for a ringer to drive in from Thunder Bay. Along with all the bloody media people in the world. Two murders in a day has got everybody churning. Anyway, the lawyer ought to be here by midnight. We can start then."
 

"Maybe I can have a word with Tettlinger, off the record," I suggested. Gallagher looked at me, breathed out a stream of cigarette smoke, and shook his head.
 

"No. For two reasons. First, you're in shock. You need a break from this bullshit. And second, it may queer it for us if he doesn't have a lawyer there at the time, even though you're not a cop in this town." I said nothing, and he said, "Okay?"
 

I nodded wearily. "If you say so. And what are you going to do with your time?"

He butted his smoke purposefully and stood up. "I'm going back to Sallinon's place to ask him some more questions."

"Need company?" I wasn't sure I wanted to go with him. I'd had enough of direct violence for one day. I didn't feel up to the fencing and evasion that Sallinon was going to stage for us.
 

Gallagher solved it for me. "No," he said firmly. "But I'll bet Alice Graham could stand a little company. She's heard the news about the shooting of Onyschuk. She may give you hell, but she'll be glad you're back. Meanwhile, I'll have ballistics check out the slug you gave me."
 

I nodded and stood up. I was drained, ready to call it a day and head home to lie down, too weary to contemplate going to bed with Alice. I needed time to get my head back together. But one last thought nagged me and I gave it to him. "You know, I figure this guy, or guys, whoever they are, have got air support."
 

He frowned. "What makes you say that?"

I told him about the winnowed ground where the body had been found. "Somebody had let down there with a helicopter. I know the signs. And another thing. He, or they, whoever it is, moves too fast in the bush to be doing it alone."
 

Gallagher stood up slowly and looked at me as if I were a mirror and he was practicing his thoughtful face. "Did you hear anybody up there, while you were waiting?"
 

"No." I shook my head. "No, but that doesn't mean it wasn't happening. We know there's other choppers in this area. If Laval and whoever is in the bush has a line to one, that's all they need, we can't police all the comings and goings."
 

Gallagher took out his notebook and opened it at the back, writing himself a quick unofficial note. "Maybe we can't," he said, "but I can sure as hell check the log books of all the aircraft in the area. I'll get on it first thing in the morning. But for now, go and sleep awhile. I need you bright-eyed and bushy tailed tomorrow."
 

He offered to drive me to the motel, my own car still being out at the helicopter home base, but he had only one man to spare so I called a cab. The driver looked at Sam warily. "You blind, Mac?"
 

"No. He's not a Seeing Eye dog, he's a police dog, trained to a hair. Let's go."

He shook his head. "It's in our rules, no dogs." He hesitated. "Wanna see the book?"

I was too tired to play games. I just shook my head. "You wanna see his teeth?"

He flinched. "No. I don't want no trouble."

I sat down wearily and patted the seat beside me for Sam. The interior was old and scuffed and smelled of vomit and pine-scented disinfectant. "Good," I said. "Head up to the motel beside the highway and I won't make any."
 

He still shook his head officiously so I told Sam "Speak," and he filled the cab with terror.

The driver held both hands up and shouted "Okay," and drove me to the motel without another word as I quieted Sam and sat back, patting him gratefully.
 

I got out at the motel office, not sure if Alice had kept the room open for me—I had told her I would be away overnight and she probably needed the space. She wasn't in the office. Instead, there was a card propped up against the locked door. "Manager in the dining room." That made my shoulders droop a little. I needed a shower and change of clothes before I was fit for human company, but I walked over to the dining room anyway, still carrying my pack and rifle. I set them down in the shadows beyond the circle of light around the doorway and told Sam "Keep," then went inside.
 

Alice was standing with a tableful of customers—noisy, cheerful men wearing leather coats with cloth sleeves and sports-club insignias or Legion badges on the pocket and hats with the crests of their companies. Men in the north put their hats on as they shave in the morning and take them off for bed, so I knew these were all locals.