I paused only a second, but in that time I could read what had happened in the expressions on the faces of the two women. The thin one from the Legion was smiling a thin, smug little smile. The other girl was close to tears. I knew then that Val was gone. I went through the obvious drills anyway, kicking open the door to the front of the station and jumping in, gun drawn, to search it. There was no one there. The teletype was clacking under its plastic cover, the gun rack still held two guns, the same empty Coke bottles stood under the counter where the public could not see. But Val was gone.
I put my gun away and came back to the cells. Nancy Carmichael had come in and was looking at the two women with a gaze that must have told them everything that had happened to her that night. They were silent. I let Sam out of the cell and fussed him and told him he was good, then I turned to the prisoners. "What happened?" The thin one said, "Find out, pig," but the other one said, "He came for her, Chief."
"Who is he?" I had a hundred questions, including how had he gotten into the station without being pinned to the floor by Sam, but for now I wanted some facts.
"The others called him 'Tom,'" the pretty girl said. I remembered she was Freddie.
"Did he say where he was taking her?" I could imagine what he would do to Valerie, was perhaps already doing. She had come to this place trusting me, trusting the whole system of Canadian law to keep her as safe as she would have been in Toronto, and now she was the hostage of a hoodlum. I knew this was no revolutionary group. Terrorists don't rape, it's a bourgeois crime. They maim and kill, but they don't rape. Bikers rape. This Revolutionary Guard talk was a smokescreen. These were personal crimes being carried out and I hadn't seen it until now, when it was too late.
"Where would he have taken her, Freddie?"
She opened her mouth to answer but the thin one cut in, her voice tingling with excitement. "Somewhere you won't find her." I reached through the bars and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her against the bars, not savagely but too close for comfort. "Stay out of this, you don't know what these people are like." Then I shook her arm away and repeated my question.
Freddie said, "I don't know, Chief. He didn't say." And the thin one added her own message. "He said you had one hour and then he was going to show her a good time."
The blood roared in my ears. I took Nancy by the shoulder and led her to the cell. "You'll have to wait, Nancy. I'll call your parents in a little while. First I have to attend to this new business." She went into the cell without speaking and I locked the door. Her face was deadly white. She sat on the wooden bunk, not looking at the others. I could understand her fear but I was more concerned about Valerie's safety.
Sam was keening as if he could explain how he had been outsmarted but I had no time to find out now. I patted his head and told him "Keep" and left him while I went into the front of the station and unlocked the shotgun from the rack. I knew it was loaded but I pumped the action one time to load the chamber and pushed another round into the magazine. Then I scooped a half-dozen extra shells out of the box and slipped them into my pocket. With that gun I was the equal of fifty men.
I took the time to top up the fuel in the snow machine. I didn't want to run dry a mile from my destination and waste even more time trekking up there in snowshoes. The snow was still falling, although it seemed that the wind was slackening. I was glad of that. I had some tracking to do.
The tracking was easier than I had expected. The skidoo had followed the road almost to the bridge in town, then turned east through the trees. I followed it, keeping my speed as high as I could, ducking under branches, showered with dumps of snow from those I could not miss completely. It occurred to me that they might be setting me up for an ambush. I shouldn't be barreling down a red-ball road like this. I would never have done it in Nam, but here I didn't care. I had heard enough about this Tom to believe he meant what he said. He would want to take his revenge on me by violating Valerie. The thin girl from the Legion had told him about our relationship, I could count on that. Now he would punish her for helping me, punish us both, punish the world. Unless I got there first.
A quarter-mile north of town the tracks swung back onto the lakeshore road that serviced all the cabins along the east shore, and I began to guess where he had gone-back to the cottage where I had left Elliot and the women. I patted the shotgun that lay under my knee on the saddle of the machine. I would need it now with four people against me.
The tracks turned off on top of those I had left earlier and I slammed up beside the cottage door and jumped onto the snow, clicking off the safety from my shotgun. I opened the back screen door, not even checking to see if it was wired, and fired my first round up through the glass of the back door into the ceiling above. I heard a yell of alarm from inside and I reached in and unlocked the door.
The Elliot kid was standing facing me. He had his pants on, but the cuffs had kept him from dressing further and he had a towel over his shoulders. There was no sign of anyone else.
"On the floor," I told him. He got down, but slowly, sneeringly. I knew I was in the right place. I prayed I was still in time. "Who else is here?"
He grinned even more broadly, half bowing mockingly. "Simply everybody," he said, and I heard a woman's voice shriek, "Reid! He's holding a knife on my neck."
Two sounds blended. One was a cackle from Elliot, the other was a man's voice telling me, "She's right, Bennett, put the gun down."
I kept the gun, swinging it toward the voice, which came from upstairs. "I'm putting nothing down until I see my policewoman is all right. If she isn't I'll blow your legs off." I tried to keep my voice even. I was a businessman making an offer.
"We're coming down now," the voice said. I heard the stairs creak, then saw Valerie coming toward me. I was debating whether to drop the shotgun and draw my pistol, hoping for a shot at his elbow on the arm he must be holding up to menace her throat. But he was too clever even to give me that opportunity. He was holding her hair, pulling her head back, and the knife and his arm were out of sight behind her. "He's got it in my back now," Valerie said. Her voice was high and scratchy. I could see a thin red line along her throat. He had marked her, letting her feel the sharpness of the knife. "Put the gun down," he said again from behind her.
"What if I say no?"
"Then the next thing that happens is I push this shiv into her." He let that hang before going on, "Not to kill her. I'll hit her in the neck so she'll be a basket case. You want that?" I looked at Val. She had shut her eyes and her lips were moving softly. I knew what I had to do. If she had been a policeman or another Marine in the same situation I would not have surrendered, but she was a trusting woman in a situation she could have avoided by staying at the Legion and leaving me to play copper on my own.
"All right. You win." I pointed the gun at the floor and worked the action, spilling out the shells on the floor. "There." I tossed it aside and Elliot jumped past me to grab it, then grovel for the shells, stuffing them back into the magazine.
"One's enough. Cock it and hold it on him." The man had straightened up now behind Valerie. He was dark, with an unkempt beard, but his clothes were expensive. I judged him to be five-eleven, two hundred pounds, and he looked mean. He pushed Valerie to one side and she sprawled away from him onto the couch. Then he flipped his knife, a neat little motion that made it circle once and thunk into the panel wall.
Elliot was holding the gun on me, aiming at my stomach. The other man came forward, staring at me as if I were in a zoo. He stayed clear of the gun. I had no chance to swing him in front of it and throw him at Elliot. I kept my arms by my side. "The kid's back with her parents," I told him. "It's all over."
He snorted. "All over. Hell, it ain't hardly started yet." I studied him, trying to make out the face to compare it with the photographs of terrorists and most-wanteds that the R.C.M.P. put out. I couldn't recognize him. I could see that he had a slabby usefulness to his build. He had been a manual worker at one time. There were tiny black pits on his face. I figured he had worked in the coal mines but I couldn't pick out any regional accent-not Nova Scotia nor Alberta nor any of the Yankee states.
He reached out to the kid. "Keep the gun on him, Elliot, but bring it here." Elliot handed it over, never letting the muzzle waver. I had no chance to move. When the older one had the gun he said, "Put your hands on your head, Bennett."
I did it, slowly, wondering why he was using my name. He might have learned it in a briefing before all this began, but in a normal situation like this he would have called me "pig" or "copper." This was almost personal. I wondered why, and how the news could help me.
He told the kid, "Look on his belt, he'll have keys for them cuffs." Elliot took a step toward me but Tom stopped him. "Work from behind him, this is a mean one, this is a real he-eero."
Elliot wasn't smirking now. He came behind me and felt around under my parka until he found the key ring on its chain. I felt the tugging as he uncuffed himself. "Now put them on him. Crank 'em up good, we wouldn't want him getting too comfortable, would we?"
I hoped he would cuff my hands as they lay on top of my head-that would mean I could bring them down in front of me, a tiny advantage, but Tom was too clever for that. "Hands behind you, Bennett," he said.
I lowered them and Elliot snapped the handcuffs over my wrists. I was splaying my fingers, pulling my hands up into my sleeves, but he carefully pulled the sleeves back and clamped the metal on my bare arm tight enough to cut the flesh.
"Done," he said triumphantly. It hurt but I was grateful that he had not cuffed me around something. I would be mobile, at least, handicapped as I was.
"That's good." The dark guy grinned, a humorless parting of his lips, a crinkling of the small amount of skin I could see outside his beard. His eyes stayed cold as the night outside. Now he pushed the gun under his arm as if he was going hunting. I weighed the odds. It would give me an extra second but I needed more. He was eight feet away and I was slowed by the handcuffs, they pulled my shoulders back and dulled my edge. I knew he would step back a pace if I moved and cover me, perhaps even shoot. I had to wait for a better chance. I needed a clear kick, at least.
He reached behind him for a chair and sat down, gun on his knees, looking at me. "You don't remember me, do you?"
"Should I?"
"Yeah. I think you should. You cost me six years of my life, you know that?"
I fed his face through my memory again. How many men have I sent to prison? How many of them looked like this man had, years earlier?
"Six years. In Millhaven, mostly. And that ain't no summer camp, you know that."
Now I remembered. My heart thumped hard. Millhaven, Canada 's toughest maximum-security prison. Tom? Tom Burfoot. He grabbed ten years on an extortion charge. Extortion, nothing. It had been a dynamiting group. The year I joined the Toronto Police Department after three with the Marines. They put me undercover, infiltrating a group that had started up to copycat the successes the F.L.Q. had scored in Quebec. They had claimed they were revolutionaries, but that story was a scam. They were booked for straight violence, bombing restaurants and movie houses to collect money for their cause. None of the money was recovered. Tom had spent most of it on vacations and on betting at the track. They had been very skillful. Their bombs were dirty, filled with scrap metal and soaked in oil to tattoo survivors forever with black scars. Fortunately only one of the bombs had been set while people were in the restaurant. Only one man had been wounded seriously, the owner. He lived his last few years in a wheelchair, fewer years than this man had spent inside.
"Yes, I remember you."
"Ever been in Millhaven?" He asked it casually. I shook my head. The longer he talked, the looser he would be, the more chance I might have to rush him.
"Yeah. It's where they put the bad-asses, all of them. There's a bunch of bikers in there. They hang together, run the drugs, hand out the punks."
There was nothing to say. He went on, rambling. "Hell of a place. Looks like a furniture factory from outside. Inside, it was the worst place in the world." He looked over at Elliot and grinned the same cold grin. "You would've dug it, Elliot. Five, ten guys takin' turns."
Elliot lowered his eyes and said nothing. Tom turned back to me. "I was lucky. I guess I looked mean, a little ugly even. Nobody wanted me real bad." He cleared his throat and spat on the carpet. "An' if you didn't go for that stuff, nothin'. No tail for six stinkin' years." His anger was building. "No women. So when I got out I had me some catchin' up to do."
I glanced at Elliot. He was flushing. I guessed that he and Tom were lovers. Or that was his reading. To Tom, Elliot was just another object for casual sex, a vehicle for the tastes he had built up during his six years, tastes he still didn't want to talk about. I fed him a question.
"How come you killed a good thing like that Katie? Way I hear it she was crazy for you."
He snapped alert. "Who said I killed Katie? That wasn't me. That was Nighswander."
"Yeah, well, the room was in his name, I know that."
He grinned again. "Cool, eh? I bring the broad up here an' she books the room using his name, like I told her."
"And he killed her for that?"
He spat again. "No. He killed her for me. He was jealous of her. He figured I wouldn't want him no more once I got hold of her."
"You kick with either foot?"
He snorted. "After six years in Millhaven you take what's there. Men, women, I don't care." He said it proudly, the vicious, biker's pride in shocking normal sensibilities. He didn't know that my capacity for being shocked was long since overloaded and burned out.
"So is that how come you beat his head in when you found him in the cottage on the island?"
He looked at me for perhaps half a minute. Then he laughed. "Hell, why not? You ain't going nowhere. What's to lose? Yeah. I found him there, where he couldn't do his pantywaist kickin' an' flickin' and I asked him about the broad and he said what happened an' I pounded him one or two with a log."
"Hear that, Elliot? That's what happens to old boyfriends on this circuit." I spoke to the kid but he still looked down at the floor, flushed and humiliated. If throwing a tantrum would help me get free, I could count on him. Otherwise I was still alone except for Valerie, and she seemed frozen with fear. I did not dare look at her, I didn't want to remind Tom of her presence.
I had no need to. He spoke again. "So, anyway, big shot. You know why I came up here?"
"No, Tom. I don't." Lull him, soften him, get him off guard. Maybe Val would make a grab for the gun. She didn't even have to reach it. All I needed was a clear kick. Two seconds!
"Tom!" he said jeeringly. "That's nice. You wanna be friends again. Kiss an' make up, right?"
I said nothing and he swung around suddenly, pointing the gun at Val. "I came up here because I was gonna get at you, an' I know the best way." I looked at Val. Her face had shriveled. She was frozen with fear. I knew she could not help me.
He turned back to me, smiling again from the cheekbones down. He came a little closer, but still out of range of a leg sweep. And he still had the gun in both hands, ready to aim and fire.
"You know what I'm gonna do? Big shot?"
He moved still another step toward me. His hatred was boiling up. I wondered how I could stoke it further, make him concentrate on me first. Then Val would have a chance, we both would. I'd been in places as bad as this before.
"I know you're a big-mouthed dip-stick and you'll talk it up first, whatever it is," I said, trying to sound bored.
It worked. A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye and he clenched his hands on the gun. "You think so? Is that what you think? Well, you'll see what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna bang this broad right here on the rug where you can watch. You made me miss a lotta tail. Now I'm gonna cut me a piece of yours. And when I'm done, Elliot can have her."
I did not look at Valerie. Her fear filled the room like white sound. She was helpless with fright.
"You're a gear box," I sneered. "You don't go for women. You ball punks like this one, pretty little Elliot with his dyed hair."
Elliot gasped with shock and strode toward me, but again he didn't take the final vital step in front of me. He stood off to one side and threw a light punch at the side of my head. I ducked and it grazed the top of my crazy, burned leather hat.
Tom said, "You'll see. You'll see if I'm a gear box. I've been saving this one. I could've screwed her an hour ago but I didn't. I wanted you watching."
"Takes you that long to get it up, does it?" It was working. Both of them were angry. Foam was balling in the corners of Tom's mouth. I spat at him. It didn't quite reach, but it angered him and he lost the rest of his control. He glared at me for a few seconds, then told Elliot, "Undo his belt and pull his pants down."
The kid jumped to do it. He was chuckling. I guess he thought there was some kind of sexual indignity to the action but I knew better. It's an old gypsy trick. With my pants around my ankles I couldn't kick, couldn't run. I would be immobilized.
I was right. When my heavy uniform trousers slid down past my knees, Tom turned and laid down the gun across the chair. He came up within arm's length of me, beyond the reach of my hampered feet. Without saying anything he slapped me, slamming my head left to right, right to left, perhaps a dozen times. It jangled my brain, but the leather cap saved my eardrums and I was able to keep control. "Still think I'm a faggot?" he asked, breathing heavily. He was out of shape. In a fair fight I could take him.
"Right." I spat again. It was the only thing to do. It might give Val the impetus she needed to go for the gun. If she did, we could win. Tom was the only one to fear. But she stayed on the couch, hunched back on it, making herself as small as she could.
"Tough guy," he said and slapped me again, but more contemptuously. It was lighter, easier to bear.
"You're a jailhouse punk," I told him. "I'll bet you put out for candy bars."
That hurt him. He stepped in and slammed his knee at my groin, but I anticipated and turned. He bumped my thigh but not hard enough to paralyze the leg. And then, as he drew back his knee to try again, I head-smashed him full on the nose with my forehead. I knew it would buy me no more than a second. I ducked and grabbed the waistband of my pants, straightened up, legs free again, and swung a clean kick up between his legs into the testicles. He groaned and doubled over and I kneed him in the face, then turned on the kid. He backed off, holding his hands in front of him fearfully, but I roared the way that Parris Island instructor had taught me and followed him into the corner, kicking him in both knees. I was wearing heavy padded skidoo boots. A soldier would have ignored the kicks but he collapsed, more afraid than hurt, and I stamped on his left shin for good measure.
I didn't wait any longer. As I turned I could see Tom clawing for the shotgun and I covered the ground in two strides, putting the third stride into a kick square in his abdomen. He oomphed and fell backward, gagging for air. I sat down on the gun and shouted to Valerie, "Quick, unlock me. The key is on my belt."
She came alive at last, trembling and slow, far slower than I wanted, but she found the key still on its chain on my belt and unlocked me and I clipped one cuff over Tom's wrist. I rolled him onto his face and twisted the arm up his back. Then I turned and called the kid. "You, get here." He came like a whipped puppy, trembling, stooping to rub his shins. I cuffed him to his partner and then stood all the way up, opening my parka so I could tuck my shirt in and zip up my pants and fasten my belt.
Valerie was weeping helplessly and I held her for a moment, patting her on the back. "It's okay, Val, don't cry. You did well, we beat them." She still sobbed and my mind left the room and the present and raced in pursuit of the other two women. Where had they gone? How had they gotten there? What were they doing? They were the only missing pieces in the whole puzzle. With them in place, I could take Valerie back home and soothe her, slowly, calmly. She stopped sobbing, a sudden, conscious strength that made her straighten up and draw in her chin. "That's right," I told her. "It's all over. Don't worry any more."
I patted her a few times more until I could feel her straighten up, picking up the slack in her body. Then I let go of her shoulders. "Sit down a minute and then we'll go. I just have to talk to this kid."
She sat down and I bent to look Elliot in the face. He was sitting with his legs out straight in front of him, staring into the middle distance. He looked like a runner who has just finished a marathon without placing in the money. "Where did the two women go?"
He didn't answer, didn't appear to notice me. I snapped my fingers in front of him and he shook himself like an animal and looked at me. "The two women, Rachael and Margaret, where did they go?"
He sighed heavily, as if the air were thick and it was an effort to take it up. I told him, "Look, I'm not interested in your Mickey Mouse little slap at me. The only charges against you are for being involved in this plot to kidnap the girl. Tell me what you can and I'll do what I can for you at the trial." He looked at me through wide eyes and I went on with the part of the story he wanted to hear. "If you help me, you won't go to jail, you won't have to go through the kind of stuff Tom talks about."
That turned him on like a light. "They said they had business to finish." He paused for a moment. "I asked them where and they wouldn't say."
"They must have said something, given you some kind of hint."
Tom was beginning to stir. He tried to move but collapsed again, holding his stomach. I didn't know if he was injured. Even in the moment I was kicking him, I had been a policeman, not a Marine. Had I wanted, I could have killed him, but I had drawn the kick marginally, winding him rather than crushing his internal organs completely. I guessed he would be able to move within an hour. I was glad he was handcuffed to Elliot. He wouldn't go anywhere dragging the kid.
Elliot scrubbed his hair with the flat of his hand. "They didn't say much of anything."
"All right, try it another way. How did they get clothes to leave? I took all their parkas with me."
"When Tom came, he lent Margaret his parka and she went to another cottage and broke in and got clothes for her and Rachael. And she came back and said there was a skidoo there. Tom went and hot-wired it for her and brought it back."
"That means they had clothes and a machine. What did they say to one another when they went?"
Elliot looked at me, into my eyes, with an innocent, pleased grin. "I remember. Rachael was laughing. She said to Margaret, 'Come on, old lady, put on your dancing shoes and we'll go.'"
I stood up, grinning with him. "Well, I'm damned. They've gone back to the dance."