Dead in the Water (16 page)

I listened to the quiet. I could hear bullfrogs larrupping away, and a whippoorwill flogging away at his old complaint, but not a car, not a human voice. I cursed the councilor who had sold the township this piece of wasteland for a police office site. We should be on Main Street, where we could be useful to tourists and vice bloody versa. I had an idea. At least seemed like an idea at first. I took out my whistle and blew it in three blasts, over and over. All it did was make Sam roll hurt eyes in a mute plea for me to stop. That, and wake Eddy Crowfoot from his well-earned drunken sleep to swear at me in a flood of mixed French, English, and Ojibway. He stood up and pounded on his bars like your friendly neighborhood bear. By now the booze was wearing off and he could see what was going down. He immediately claimed the glory.

"Hey. I beat you, huh?" He reeled with laughter, holding onto the bars to keep upright, pointing at Sam as if he was the funniest sight in the world. "Him too, eh? eh?" He stopped to vomit. "Goddamn whiskey," he said cheerfully, as if talking about the weather, then went back to his laughing and cheering, ending up by favoring us with a full-blooded war whoop that made up for the pain I'd caused him by whistling. He stopped and pointed his index finger at Sam, cocking his thumb like a little boy playing guns. "Bang," he said jovially. He's rabid, Reid, lookit that, he's foamin'. You should shoot 'im."

There was nothing for me to do but sit quiet and wait for him to go to sleep again, then wait for a hungover Murphy to come in tomorrow morning and let me out of my problem. For the moment I was only worried about Sam. He was in danger of dehydrating. I tried to think of some way of helping Sam get to his feet and come in to the cell and lap himself some water from the toilet. Eddy didn't help. He kept up his chant like the drunk at the lodge meeting who wears the lampshade and his wife's coat. "Hey, lookit that dog. Worse'n me. Why you don't lock 'im up, Chief? Hey, Chief, lock 'im up."

I managed to coax Sam to move over to me. His legs were rubbery and he almost fell over a couple of times in the ten feet. And once he reached me, he didn't know what to do. There is no snappy command you can give any dog to find himself some water and drink. No matter how well trained, he's like a baby when you get him off the information he knows how to handle. He looked at me in a puzzled way and heaved some more. I pushed him toward the cell door but he didn't get the message, just lay down again and went on retching.

Eddy was howling with laughter, having the time of his easy-to-please life. It went on until I had stood all I could. I was almost ready to threaten him with my pistol. And that's where everything snapped into focus for me. It was time to be a soldier again. Police tactics had gotten me nowhere. I was outgunned, outmaneuvered, outnumbered, and so far, outthought. It was time to throw the book away and use all the weapons I had instead of giving the other people all the breaks the law said they should have.

I started by turning to Eddy and staring down his eyes until he wound down the volume, dropped his eyes, and went back to his bunk, and eventually to sleep.

Almost two hours passed. Once I thought I heard movement in the front of the police station and I was torn between the urge to shout and call for help and the fear that it might be somebody going over the ruins one more time, looking for the envelope. If it was the heavies back again, I'd just as soon not draw attention to myself. So I sat very still and waited and after a while became certain that I was mistaken, nobody had been there.

Sometime after midnight I heard a car pull in beside the station. I took up my gun and waited. It was the same old heart-hammering wait I'd been through before. You can work out the whole scenario before it happens. You see the door fly open and the bullets coming at you like hailstones. You duck and twist but they reach out and catch you, curving like baseballs to find you and deliver their message. No matter how many villages you search, how many times you are point man in the tall grass, how many times you search a building that has been broken into, you can always anticipate the action. I turned sideways to the door, making myself as narrow a target as possible, and waited.

The door creaked open, an inch at a time, while my life shortened. And then the scared, honest face of young George appeared. "Christ, Reid. What happened?"

"Chemical warfare. I'll tell you later," I told him. "First thing, take a look under the gun rack on the floor in the other office. There's a spare set of keys, including cuff keys."

He shook his head and vanished through the door into the office. I heard him swear once, then nothing, except for his feet crunching over the papers and mess. He was back in a minute with the spare key chain.

I took it off him and shook it around until I got the tiny cuff key, then I unlocked my right wrist and stood and rubbed it for a moment. The cuff had been tight enough to cramp into the bone and now that I no longer had to live with it, I allowed myself the luxury of remembering how much it had hurt.

I unsnapped the cuff from the cell bar and put the handcuffs back in my pouch. Then I stuffed the keys in my pocket, holstered my gun, and said "thanks" again.

"Welcome," George said. He was checking everything with his eyes. He looked like a Sioux in one of those old Remington paintings. I wondered if his eyes could see something a white policeman would miss. He said, "Can you tell me what's going on?"

"Some guys worked the station over, looking for evidence in the case."

"Well, they're too late. I took it all to T'rannah."

I didn't spoil his illusions. The more people thought the envelope was in the city, the safer we would all be. I stooped down and took Sam's collar. "C'mon boy…" He came with me to the seatless toilet in the second cell. It was spotlessly clean. I do a Marine Corps job of housecleaning. I flushed it for him and dipped my hand into the water so he'd get the idea. Gently, groggily, he began to lap. I told him "easy boy" and left him lapping. He seemed able to understand me, coming back to life inch by inch, the way Eddy Crowfoot would the next morning. His respiration seemed normal. I figured he would be all right in time.

Only we didn't have much time.

George asked, "What are you gonna do?"

I looked at him, young, fit, even eager. "It depends a bit on you," I told him. "Could you stick around for a while and help?"

"Of course," he shrugged his slim shoulders. He had already driven four hundred miles at illegal speeds to do me a favor. He had to be back at work the next morning at eight, but he was on my side all the way. At some point I would have to make sure the township recognized what he had done.

For now I said, "Great. Lemme tell you what needs doing." I filled him in very briefly on what had happened, while I dug through the ruins in the office for the ledger I needed. I found it. "In here you'll find the home address and phone number of everyone with a cottage in our district." He looked at me without speaking, every inch the Hollywood Indian. "And we know that Pardoe came up here to visit someone."

"So?" He was mystified.

"So let's see if we've got any cottages belonging to people who live in New York, that's the city."

"Just New York?" A tracker's question—just marten? not fisher or beaver or lynx?

"For openers, but make a list of any Americans, we'll call them all if we don't hit the right guy from New York."

"Seems like a long chance," he said, but he was already looking about him for a paper and pencil.

"It
is
a long chance. But that's the only kind you get in this business."

I went to the large-scale map we kept on the wall. It had been ripped off at the top and was hanging down from one pin at the bottom. I took it over to the counter top and spread it out. My head was still hurting, but I found that I could clear it by concentrating hard. I studied the map until everything else was gone. Using my thumb and forefinger as a pair of dividers I drew a circle on the map that took in all the territory within a twenty minute's drive of the Canadiana Motel excluding places that lay up or down the highway. She would have traffic sounds if she had driven there. It added up to something more than a semicircle with a five-mile radius. Then I eliminated all of the areas close to major roads or waterfalls or anything else that would have made a noise Angela Masters would have remembered. I cut out anywhere close to a lake big enough to have powerboats. And finally I cut out any place that did not have open fields close by.

It left a hell of a lot of territory open to me. Next I drew the same kind of circle with Main Street as its center. It cut down the possible area by a lot more.

I stood looking at the space in front of me on the map and did another mental debriefing on what she had said to me while she was here. I remembered carpet. She had mentioned carpet on the floor of the place she was kept.

I picked up the phone book off the floor and got the home number of the town building inspector. It took ten rings to wake him up. He sounded out of it. I told him, "Chief Bennett, Murphy's Harbour police. I'm sorry to bother you at this time of night but we have an emergency."

"Emergency?" His voice juggled the word like an unexploded grenade.

"Yes. I need some help in finding the person who murdered Boss Winslow." It always pays to play a high card early. This time I got the distinct impression I was talking to my own armpit.

"Ross Winslow?"

"Yes. I need some information from the town files and you're the man who has it. Can you open up the office for me?"

"Tonight?" His voice ran up and off the top of the scale.

"Right away if possible."

There was a blustering noise, muffled by bedclothes as he explained to his wife what kind of chowderhead I was. Then he came back on. "It's not possible. This is the middle of the night, Saturday night. The office doesn't open till Monday."

I had stood still long enough. I needed help, the whole of Murphy's Harbour needed help. I was going to get it. "Before you get too cute, let me tell you that if I have to wait until Monday I will call your wife on Monday morning and tell her where you and your secretary park your car during the lunch hour. Okay?" I thundered out the "okay" like a gunshot, both barrels. I let him sit there with the sound ringing through his startled head for a couple of seconds, then I dropped to a conversational tone and said, "Ring me from the office, in no more than ten minutes. Got that?"

Another pause, a defeated sigh, a face-saving line. "If there's anything I can do to help catch them bastards, I'll do it. I'll call from the office." I hung up and checked on George.

He had four numbers for me. All were from New York State. Only one was from the city. I added more requests. "Better put the location and lot number against the phone numbers, they might fit with the other thing I'm looking for. Meanwhile, I'll call this guy." I rang the number and waited while the phone did its long-distance sighing and clicking, then rang.

A man picked it up, an angry man. "Who's this?" he wanted to know.

I told him and listened while little squawks of disapproval come burrowing down the phone line to my ear. "I've got a murder investigation going on and I need to know if you have been up at your cottage this weekend."

"Murder?" That put him in a different gear. "No, we haven't off'cer."

"And is anyone else using your place in your absence?"

Nobody was. It any sonofabitch was hanging around there I had his permission to kick his ass.

I thanked him, hung up, and drew a line through his name. The next number was the same. I was about to try the third when the phone rang. It was the building inspector.

"What did you want to know?" he asked, very civilly.

"Thank you, Lloyd. I have reason to believe that a man I want to talk to is staying at a summer place in our area. I'm not sure where, but I have some indications. Maybe you could help."

He said, "I'll try," but left it an unfinished sentence, and then tailed it off in a rush. "Listen, you won't phone my wife, eh, there's nothin' in it with my secretary. She just likes to get out of the office, ya know."

"Forget about it. All I need is some help," I told him. It wasn't a time for compassion, just high-handedness. This time, I was out to win.

"Thanks, Chief." It was like dealing with a child.

"You're welcome. Now … what I have is a list of locations that this place might be. Have you got a map there?" There was a pause while he found one, then I gave him some more details. "I've narrowed it down to about five sections of highway. Got a pencil?"

He needed one, which took more time. I looked up and found George studying me as if I had just discovered radium. I winked at him and he dived right back into the ledger. Lloyd found his pencil and I read off the names of the highways and the approximate sections. "What I'm looking for is a bigger place, set back away from the main road, somewhere quiet."

"Gotcha." He was so anxious to please I could hardly finish my instructions.

I choked him off. "And what's going to make it particularly great is if this place has a farm next to it, or is on a farm, for that matter."

His anxiety to please was fighting a losing battle with reality. His voice was quietly despondent. "Hell, that's not a lot to go on."

"I've got more, but it's not much."

"Yeah?" He sounded like a swimmer who has just made the length of the pool—underwater.

"Yeah. This place has carpet on the floor, broadloom. That should make it a fancier grade of place than most we have around here."

"I've got carpet wall-to-wall in my summer place," he told me. The line breathed in and out while I considered telling him that not too many of the public had the ability to pass out building permits, and so many builders anxious to please them. He caught the silence out of the air like a football. "Of course, my place
is
kinda fancy."

"It's beautiful," I told him, in a tone pitched exactly right for the second level of message, the collection of the debt he owed Murphy's Harbour. It paid off.