Bookshots Thriller Omnibus Page 7

  Chapter 22

  My first instinct is to play dumb. Sharon’s first instinct is better. She touches my hand.

  “Where’d we go wrong?” I ask.

  “Apart from the obvious indicators, you mean?”

  “I should tell you that before I joined Crane, I designed a program to streamline communications between all the authorities in this hemisphere for RCMP headquarters in Ottawa.”

  “You were a Mountie?” Sharon asks.

  He wrinkles his nose. “I never cared for the nickname; but yes, in an administrative capacity. Anyway, the American authorities usually make contact with all the investigative agencies up here when there’s an international connection. I’m surprised we weren’t included in the alert. Unless your local law wasn’t informed of the Canadian connection,” he adds. “That would explain everything.”

  I open my mouth to fess up—only to snap it shut when Sharon lays her hand on mine and squeezes the bones tight enough to hurt.

  “There’s a reason for that,” she says. “You see, I’m Gabby’s godmother; she confides in me, things she’d hesitate to tell her parents. She was suddenly pushing for a family vacation to Saskatchewan, and I could tell it was about school. I pressed her and got the feeling that one of her teachers had done something inappropriate to her…but he’s got her scared out of her mind to tell anyone.”

  “Any report she made should have been to the police. They know how to handle these things.” MacBride’s tone is as blue-edged as ever. He’s not buying it.

  “That’s what I said. She turned white as a sheet and wouldn’t tell me anything more. He’s got her so frightened that if she says anything, he’ll say she came on to him for a grade; she even thinks her parents might accept his side of the story. She’s just fourteen, Mr. MacBride. I told Ray, who went to the house to talk with her parents. But they were gone. So I asked him to come with me, find the family, and bring it all out into the open. I’m sure Kevin and Margo can make her see the sense of putting it in official hands.”

  “You still should have reported it to the police.”

  Is it my imagination, or has an element of self-doubt crept into his tone?

  “Maybe so, but I felt I’d be betraying Gabby’s confidence. She’d never trust me again.”

  He turns his face on me. How did I ever think that moon-shaped countenance was gentle? “I get one story from you, another from her. Which one of you is lying?”

  This time I plunge in before Sharon can say anything. “She’s telling you the truth. It was my idea to make up that other story. She didn’t have much faith in it, but I thought—”

  “You should have let her do the thinking.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure we can do business. Telling lies is part of the work, but I don’t appreciate it from the people I’m trying to serve.”

  The phone on his desk rings just as Sharon’s grip tightens again, the two things acting in concert to keep me from digging our hole deeper with a foolish remark. I can make nothing from the conversation, just some meaningless figures he repeats and scribbles onto a yellow legal pad. “Okie-dokie.”

  He cradles the receiver and returns his gaze to us. It seems less steely, but every bit as keen. “We charge forty-two dollars an hour American, plus expenses, which in this case will be mostly international calls; the first eight hours up front. We report daily, so you can decide whether to proceed.”

  Three hundred thirty-six dollars a day. I hesitate; Sharon doesn’t. She draws a checkbook from her pocket. “Halfsies,” she says to me, and I produce mine.

  He glances at the checks, puts them in a drawer. “Pictures?”

  I give him one from my wallet, taken last summer of Kevin, Margo, Josh, Gabby, and me at a backyard barbecue.

  “Attractive family. Heights and weights?”

  I provide as accurate a set of descriptions as I can manage; Sharon gently corrects me on Margo’s weight.

  “Any identifying marks? Scars, moles, tattoos?”

  “Not—” I begin.

  Sharon interrupts. “Margo has a vaccination mark on her right upper arm.”

  “Right.” MacBride taps his pad with his mechanical pencil. “Where can we get in touch?”

  We answer in unison. “The York Windsor.”

  “I thought you Yanks preferred the Hilton.”

  Sharon says, “You shouldn’t generalize.”

  Chapter 23

  Sharon takes the wheel for the trip to the hotel. She notices I’m staring at her. “What?”

  “How did you ever come up with a story like that right out of the blue?”

  She colors slightly. “The Lifetime channel. Only there it was Nebraska, not Saskatchewan.”

  “How did you know he’d buy it?”

  “I didn’t. I had to come up with something fast, and that was the first thing that popped into my mind. It was just sordid enough to be believed.”

  “What if he checks the story?”

  “I’m sure he will. I also think he’ll be discreet about it. That much of an impression I got of the way he works. Meanwhile he’ll put people on the case. With any luck he’ll find the Moores before he finds out what a big fat liar I am.”

  “You’re not big or fat.”

  She laughs.

  The York Windsor is almost refreshingly Old World: slightly seedy, with a foot-traffic pattern in the carpet in the cramped lobby, and a well-fed sixtyish woman behind the desk wearing a stretched-out cable-knit sweater, her silver hair in waves as permanent as a flash-frozen sea. She wears jet buttons in her ears and silver-framed glasses with a chain attached to the side-bows.

  “Right,” she says, consulting the anachronistic computer screen on the desk. “Gillett, double room.”

  “No, we asked for two rooms. Adjoining, if possible.”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s only the one available. Most of our residents are permanent, and we’ve reserved a block of rooms for—”

  “Don’t tell me,” I say. “A convention. What is it, fly-fishing or bear-hunting?”

  “A family reunion. The Parkinsons, from Chicago.”

  “But we reserved two rooms.”

  “The other girl must have been on duty. She works hard, but she isn’t much of a listener. Will you take it or not?” There’s something about Canadians that makes an impatient question sound like a warm reception.

  “Ray, we’ve shared a room before,” Sharon says.

  “Are there two beds?” I ask.

  “No. It’s what you Americans call a queen.”

  I’m about to suggest we try another place when Sharon says, “Two keys, please.”

  The elevator is about the size of an ancient steamer trunk and smells as musty. With the pair of us and our bags aboard, there’s not enough room to turn around. Sharon says, “We told Randy MacBride to contact us here. We’ve already had one miscommunication, with ‘the girl.’” She squeaks the words like a teeny-bopper. “I don’t want to take any more chances, do you?”

  “You can have the bed. I’ll sleep in the tub.”

  But instead of the claw-footed antique the rest of the place has prepared me to expect, our bathroom, just slightly larger than the elevator, contains only a tiled shower in addition to a three-cornered sink and a toilet with a tank mounted high on the wall and a chain flush. The bedroom is a shoebox, with a doorless closet and barely space to walk around the bed.

  I stare at the bed, piled with pillows and tasseled cushions six deep, my cheeks getting hot.

  Sharon laughs.

  I join her in a full-out, window-shaking gut-buster.

  She recovers first, gasping. “I’m not even sure there’s room for us to wear pajamas.”

  I think she’s joking. Right?

  “You won’t hurt me.”

  I’m in bed already; under the sheet, in my sleep shorts. The lamp is off, but the light outside leaks around the edges of the curtains on the window, illuminating her long T-shirt, silhouetting the curvature of her body.
<
br />   You won’t hurt me; a statement, not a question. Just where in this crazy, ridiculous, ill-advised journey she decided she could trust me, I’ll never know.

  I shake my head. I’m not even sure if she can see the movement, but it makes the pillowcase rustle and I know she can hear that; the silence is like a third occupant of the room. There is a pause, then, moving swiftly, as if to prevent a change of mind, she pulls aside the sheet and slides in next to me. I reach for her tentatively, and in that moment of hesitation she slides up onto one hip, crosses her arms, gripping the T-shirt by the hem, and slips it up and over her head.

  Our arms wind around each other. Her skin is cool, then warm, then hot, her lips hotter still. I slide a thigh between hers, and—

  And the telephone rings. It’s Randy MacBride, asking me if I’m up for a drive.

  Chapter 24

  “Buffalo Run, where’s that?” I ask.

  “About eighty kilometers. Back when you Yanks finished slaughtering the big shaggies below the border, the hunters pitched camp there and brought the hides and carcasses by wagon to Regina, or ‘Pile O’ Bones,’ as it was called back then, from debris left over from the skinning and butchering. I don’t suppose you were aware of that.”

  “I wasn’t aware of Regina until I made this trip,” I say.

  I’m riding next to the detective in a late-model Chevy. Five minutes have passed since he picked us up at the hotel. The city’s well-lit streets slide past at the legal speed limit. No one in this country seems to make so much as a token attempt at even bending the rules.

  “Anyway”—with a frown at my ignorance regarding his country—“it was a thriving camp in 1870, but now it’s just a sleepy resort town. The lake was fished out decades ago, so it’s populated only about three months of the year. I use the term ‘town’ advisedly; the community never got around to incorporating itself.”

  Sharon leans forward from the backseat, gripping the back of mine. “You’re sure the Moores are staying there?”

  “Positive. The Mounties always get their man.” He smiles briefly at the windshield. “One of our operatives stopped in at their regional headquarters with a copy of the photo you gave us, and the post commander checked with the troopers assigned to routine patrol. Your friend Kevin had asked one of them for directions to the Bison Inn, a lodge in Buffalo Run. The trooper recognized him from the flyer. He was driving a blue Chrysler minivan with a rental plate, and there were a woman and two grown youngsters in the other seats. Our man went there and saw a vehicle answering that description outside the Bison.”

  “Did he talk to them?”

  “No, but he got the number of their bungalow. He’s waiting for us in the parking lot. I didn’t want to risk frightening them into flight and the chance of losing them in transit. Confronting them with a pair of friendly and familiar faces instead of strangers is the safer way to go.”

  Sharon asks, “What sort of place is it?”

  “Rustic: No cable or air-conditioning. The tourist season’s just under way, but there are only three bungalows hired out of eight. Most Americans prefer the more modern facilities; the ones that provide all the things they piled into the car to get away from.”

  “Not us, Mr. MacBride,” I say in defense of Yanks.

  His smile this time lasts longer. “Please call me Randy.”

  After an hour we enter the Moose Jaw city limits. For me the name evokes a place built of logs with the bark still on, but by now I’ve learned to expect the usual chain restaurants and big-box stores.

  We stop for a light. “Please don’t think I’m being patronizing, Randy, but I’d give just about anything for a glimpse of just one prospector. A lumberjack would do.”

  “Actually, if you go deep enough into the territories, you might see one or two diehards looking for places overlooked during the Rush, although they’re more likely to be on ATVs over donkeys. The First Nations people who hunt and trap in British Columbia maintain many of the old ways, though. Some of those rivers are navigable only by dugout and birch-bark canoe.”

  I glance back at Sharon. “We should go up there sometime.” I’m counting on the darkness inside the car to mask any expression of desperate hope.

  She smiles in the glow of a passing streetlight. “When we’re not on a rescue mission.”

  “Just don’t venture too far off the beaten path.”

  “Indians?” I ask.

  “Drug dealers. The less-populated places are ideal for growing marijuana and cocaine and cooking meth. The men you’re likely to encounter are more apt to welcome you with Uzis than western hospitality.” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, the dash lights glittering off the iris. “You wanted primitive.”

  We resume moving. In a little while we leave Moose Jaw, pass through some open country—seeming more sinister after Randy’s warning—negotiate a roundabout, and run out of pavement after a quarter-mile; but the rural roads here are better maintained than those back home. We roll smoothly over packed limestone, and abruptly a huge shaggy beast leaps into the headlights looking like something from the Book of Job. I stifle a gasp. It’s a tree stump some six feet tall and carved by an artist with a chainsaw.

  “Welcome to Buffalo Run,” Randy says. “Bison Inn next stop.”

  And if there’s any mercy in the world, the Moores at last.

  Chapter 25

  The Bison Inn is two stories of curved cedar siding stained dark honey with four-paned windows and its name burned into a lintel above the front door. With four miniature one-story replicas lined up on either side, the place looks like a midcentury architect’s idea of a settler’s log cabin that’s given birth to a litter. A sign mounted under the lintel reads OFFICE in orange-pink neon.

  “Wait here.” Randy, who’s parked on the edge of a lot containing a scatter of cars and pickup trucks, gets out and walks past the office to a Chevy, identical to his except in a different color, at the lot’s far edge. I see no sign of the Chrysler minivan the Moores were supposedly spotted in.

  After a minute bent to the driver’s side window, Randy comes back. Behind him the other car’s motor starts and the car backs around and follows the driveway to the road. Under the security light I recognize the young man in Dockers from the Crane reception room.

  “Stevens is our most patient op,” Randy says, climbing back under the wheel. “He’s been here three hours, and he actually looked disappointed when I said I’d spell him.”

  “Did he see anything new?” I ask.

  “Josh, the boy, went to the lodge for ice about eight-thirty. He was back in number three in five minutes. Nothing since.”

  I look at the clock on the dash. Almost eleven. “Which one’s three?”

  He points at a bungalow two doors down from the lodge. There’s no light in the windows.

  Sharon asks, “What now?”

  “As I said, I don’t want to alarm them with a strange face in the middle of the night. I’ll wait here while you knock on the door.”

  “Which one of us?” I ask.

  “Both. They might not recognize you from the window, and most people are less threatened by a visit from a couple.” His teeth catch the glow from a security light mounted high on a pole. “You’ve got a mobile?”

  Sharon passes her phone across the seat. Randy takes it and adds a contact. “I just took over the top of your favorites list. If you have doubts, ring me and I’ll come running.” He returns the device, then reaches past me, pops open the glove compartment, and removes something in a holster.

  “Do you really need that?” My voice is a whisper, although no one can overhear us from outside the car.

  His laugh is a surprised cough. “I’ve found it comes in handy when someone calls me.”

  I see then that the object is a phone in a protective case with a belt clip.

  “You were expecting a gun? Even lecherous high school teachers don’t usually come heeled.”

  I can’t make out his expression in the gloom
, whether it’s as guileless as his words or whether he’s giving me the opportunity to come clean.

  “I suppose you’re right,” I say.

  Sharon and I get out, she carrying her phone.

  The night is crisp, smelling of pine. We walk with our hips nearly touching, our footsteps audible on the packed earth. The traffic from the Queen’s Highway, a mile or two distant, seems almost as close as if we’re standing on its apron.

  “Do you think we should have told him the truth?” Sharon whispers.

  I whisper back.

  “Our story got us this far.” I express confidence I don’t feel.

  “You mean my story.”

  “We’re in this together.”

  In response she winds an arm inside mine.

  The numeral three is fashioned of twisted twine, fixed to the door with square horseshoe-type nails. There’s no peephole. Behind us something thumps, probably a guest in one of the other occupied bungalows stepping outside for ice or fresh air. I feel exposed then; but my fist is already raised. I tap my knuckles three times rapidly before I can change my mind.

  No response. No sound from inside.

  “Try again,” she says.

  Still nothing. I look again at the dark windows, feeling a sinking disappointment in my stomach. “They’re gone. What now?”

  “Randy will know what to do.” She steers me away from bungalow number three, and we walk back toward the car.

  Ten feet from the car I freeze, throwing out my arm to stop her.

  “No, he won’t.”

  The overhead light glitters on a kaleidoscope of fissured glass in the window on the driver’s side, pushed into a bulge by the impact of Randy’s head.

  Chapter 26

  “How do you know he’s dead?” Sharon’s voice has returned to level, but with a thread of panic running through it. We’re hanging in the shadows at the edge of the light.

  I maintain my whisper, hoping she’ll take the hint. “I doubt he slammed his head into the window on a whim.”