I didn't crouch forward on my ride back to the station. I sat like a tired tourist, with Val behind me hanging on around my waist. She was still in shock, and to get her talking I asked her about the station. What had happened that Sam hadn't worked his customary protective trick? She explained that Tom had knocked at the back door. Sam barked at him and he had called out through the door that he had the girl with him, she had to be gotten inside out of the snow, she was cold. Too cold to speak, he said, and had pretended to try to persuade her. Val had been hesitant about opening the door but he had reminded her that Sam would protect her, this was an act of mercy, she had to open up. And when she did, he came in gently and calmly with a live grenade in his hand. He had warned her that if Sam attacked him they would all die. The two prisoners had screamed and she had been afraid and finally she had done what he asked and put Sam in the cell.
The girl from the Legion had offered to go with Tom, anxious to get back into the action, but Tom had told her, "Stay here. You can't do as much good as this one can," and had taken Val with him. She had struggled, but he hit her a couple of times and she gave up.
I listened, nodding back over my shoulder but wondering what had happened to the grenade. I had searched the clothes of the two men before we left them in their prison cottage, but they could have hidden a grenade anywhere in the place and I wouldn't have uncovered it without a metal detector. Perhaps Margaret and her last disciple had taken it with them to the Legion. This thing wasn't over yet. It wouldn't be until I had those two women in my cozy little bucket. I was tired enough to grin at the pun, a whole cell in my two cells.
I decided to go first to the station. I could leave Val there and go on alone to the Legion. If that was where the women had gone, it was the only danger spot in town. She would be safe at the station even without Sam. I planned to put him in the skidoo trailer and pack him with me.
I didn't mention any of this to Val. Instead, I nodded a lot and reached back once or twice to hold her arm. And I pointed out that the snowstorm was slowing down, the worst was over now, the wind had dropped, and what snow was still coming down had no viciousness to it, it was like a scene out of Dickens.
Sam barked when we got back to the station but stopped at once when I whistled reassurance. I stood for a moment, enjoying the silence of the night for the first time. With the wind calm, the air seemed almost warm and there was no sound but the pinging of the engine of the snow machine as it cooled. I knew the skies would clear by morning and we would have a perfect picture-postcard day, clean as the birth of the world, while I tied up all the paperwork and gathered up the bodies tonight had left scattered. I almost forgot about the two women and my mission at the Legion Hall.
We went in and Sam bounded up to me and I fussed him and Valerie let the Carmichael girl out of her cell. And I filled the coffee pot with water. Val shucked her coat, not speaking, and set about making the coffee while I sat for a moment, rubbing Sam's ears and working out what to do first. I decided to check the Legion. I phoned but there was no answer, the busy signal buzzed and buzzed in my ear. Probably the line was down, or snow had blown into one of the external connections and shorted the circuit. I swore mildly and put it down.
Almost immediately it rang. I looked around at Nancy Carmichael. "Has it rung much while I've been out?
"I didn't hear it. Not once."
I picked up the phone. "Police Department, Chief Bennett."
The voice was high and old and frightened. "Come at once, there's a dead man on the stairs."
I almost laughed. "If you're calling from the Lakeside Tavern, I know about it. Who's speaking, and where are you?"
" Carmichael, at the Tavern. How do you mean, you know about it?"
"I put the sonofabitch there. He's the guy who kidnapped your daughter. She's here now. She's safe." I didn't say safe and sound. She wasn't sound, not in her own mind, anyway. It would take months, perhaps years of therapy before she reconciled herself to what had happened and her own part in causing it. As a policeman, I'm lucky. I just pick up the pieces. Other people have to put them together again.
"Can I speak to her?"
"I'll ask her." I turned to Nancy, who was leaning against the corner of a desk. She looked vague, detached. "It's your father, Nancy. Can you talk to him?"
She looked out of sky-blue eyes for an eternity. Then she reached out her hand for the telephone.
I did the tactful thing, went back out to the space by the cells where the coffee was perking briskly. Val followed me, moving as if she were eighty years old. "Want some?"
She nodded. "Thank you."
"There's mugs under the counter out front and I've got some brandy in the stationery cupboard. I think a slug of that would help." I went and fetched them, carefully not listening to what Nancy was saying to her father. It seemed for the most part to be single words, followed by long pauses while that thin, old-man's squeak came out of the earpiece. "There's coffee when you're ready," I told her. "No cookies, but I might be able to find you one of Sam's dog biscuits if you like." I winked at her and left. I didn't like what the phone call was doing. It sounded to me as if her father was unloading a parcel of blame. That wouldn't help anything, least of all her attitude.
Val poured the coffee and I slopped in some brandy. Just for her. I had one more call to make and I wanted to be as sharp as I could manage. If the Sumner woman had a grenade with her, anything could happen.
Nancy came back out as we were sipping and listening to the two prisoners ask very politely if they could have coffee, too.
"My father wants to speak to you," she said. I nodded and gestured to the coffee. "Have some, it will warm you up."
I could hear Carmichael speaking to someone else at the other end so I said, "Bennett here," in a businesslike voice and waited. At the other end he was telling somebody to wait upstairs, but she wouldn't. I imagined it must be the Iron Butterfly he had married. Then he spoke into the phone.
I was expecting a thank-you speech for saving his daughter, but he was too important to waste time on trifles like that.
"Bennett. Good. I wanted to talk to you."
"What's on your mind?" I didn't feel polite. My job involves keeping the peace in this backwater and except for his daughter's involvement in this crazy scheme I would have been in bed for five hours now. Instead I had been shot at, slapped, had my girl threatened with rape, and been obliged to kill a man. Just in the line of work, but it didn't make me very tractable.
"She said there was a woman called Margaret involved in this plan of hers."
"Yes, Margaret Sumner, maybe fifty-five, one-forty, around five foot four. Looks as if she might be an Indian."
"Is that her married name?"
That made me think. I hadn't noticed any wedding ring, but then, we hadn't met at a cocktail party. I'd been busy.
"I'm not sure. It's not an Indian name that I've heard in any of the bands up this way."
"Fifty-five, you say?" He was nervous. When he spoke to me first he had been scared, angry, but now he was nervous. His voice had the metallic tingle of tense people, heart attack candidates. And this was not much to do with his daughter, this seemed more personal.
"Around fifty-five. You know how it is with Indian people, they don't shrivel up like city folks. But they don't have face lifts, you have to guess. I'd say from fifty-two to fifty-eight would be right. Why are you asking?"
He cleared his throat, an unpleasant dry rasp in my ear.
"Well, thing is, I wasn't always in industry. I started out after the war in geology."
Save it for your memoirs! My mind was racing ahead, hurdling over the dribs and drabs of life story he was going to send my way. The fact was he knew this Margaret, or somebody very much like her. And from the sound of his voice, she had no reason to love, honor, or respect him.
"Look, I don't have time for all the details. Are you telling me that you know somebody who might fit this description?"
His voice rose in alarm, which he masked as indignation. "Now don't go jumping to conclusions."
"I am not prying into your private life. I'm just putting two and two together and coming up with sixteen. From what I read you used to work in the north, you knew a girl who would be the age of this Margaret. Is that right?"
He coughed again, like somebody easing the bolt on an old Lee Enfield rifle. "Yes. You could say that."
"And what was her name?"
A long sigh. "Her name was Peggy. Peggy Burfoot."
Burfoot! I felt a shock of understanding race up my arms from the fingertips and into my brain. I almost shouted at him "Burfoot? Did she have a baby? Would this have been back around nineteen forty-seven, forty-eight?"
"I don't know about any baby." He whispered it. I guessed his wife was standing over him.
"Don't jerk me around. This is important. Did you leave her knocked up back a couple of years after the war?"
Again the sigh. Bless me officer for I have sinned. "It's possible. I lost track of her. I moved away, down to Montreal."
And meanwhile a frightened, pretty Indian kid found herself pregnant. Her father would have been ready to kill her. He would have thrown her out. She would have headed for Toronto and had the baby, a black-haired, bright-eyed little bastard that nobody wanted. Those were the days when babies were a dime a dozen. People were marrying and moving to new suburbs and having three kids each. The baby would have been shunted from one foster home to another. By the time he was six or so the other kids would have started slapping him down and calling him a half-breed. I could see the whole pitiful pattern, the thefts, the sadness, the punishment, the bigger crimes, the penitentiary I had put him into. I felt humbled. If the nickel mine stope had collapsed on my father when I was eighteen months instead of eighteen years old, this could have been almost my story.
At last I said, "Mr. Carmichael. I think I've met your son. Why don't you get yourself a double shot of brandy out of the bar and settle down? I'll call you back later."
There was no answer and after an eternity the phone went down, as gently as the snow that was still falling outside the window.
I replaced the receiver and sat on the edge of the table. You can't afford to be sentimental as a policeman. Kind, yes. Merciful, compassionate, but never sentimental. The child Carmichael had abandoned was dead and buried under thirty-five years of grief and change. The man who had replaced it was pinioned in a snowbound cottage. I was only glad I had pulled that kick.
Valerie said, "What's the matter? You look terrible."
I tried a grin. "Old age, kiddo. This is a young man's occupation and I feel about ninety."
She smiled at me nervously. "It's not that bad," she said, but she didn't come over to me and put her arms around me the way she would have done eight hours before, when the world was a warmer, happier place. I could sense that I had lost her somewhere along the trails I had covered this night.
"I'll be fine. Maybe I'll have a touch of that brandy before I go."
"Go where?" Her voice rose in horror. "You're not going anywhere else, surely not?"
"I have to close the circle, tell the folks at the Legion that everything is all right." It wasn't the whole truth but I wasn't sure how much more she could handle. "I'll be back in half an hour. I'd phone but the line must be down."
Her voice was harsh. "You don't have to go out and do any more. Nobody expects that of you."
"Just my boss," I said, and explained what I meant by flipping one cocky thumb at myself. "Me."