The Furies (11 page)

Ariel Fury. His sister.

NINE

The temperature dropped below freezing that morning—unseasonably cold, even for northern Michigan. They ate another meal of trail mix and Slim Jims, and then Ariel told John to drive to the nearest Walmart. He found one in the town of Alpena, and she gave him a list of items to purchase: a down coat, a scarf, a pair of slacks, a pair of sunglasses, and a makeup kit. Ariel waited in the car while he shopped, and then they drove across town to a medical supply store, where John bought an inexpensive wheelchair. Afterwards, while they were driving north on Route 65, Ariel explained her plan.

“It's a disguise,” she said. “I'm going to bundle up and make myself look like an old lady.”

John couldn't picture it. “You? An old lady?”

“I've done it before. When I'm wearing the scarf and sunglasses, only the lower half of my face is visible. That's where I apply the makeup. Lots of lipstick and rouge.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “And you think this disguise will get us through the roadblock on the Mackinac Bridge?”

“No, the cops are checking the cars pretty carefully. And they'd be especially suspicious of anyone in a Kia. But we're not going across the bridge.”

“How will we get to the Upper Peninsula then? By boat?”

“Exactly. We'll take the ferry to Mackinac Island. Ever heard of the place?”

John shook his head. He was baffled.

“It's Michigan's biggest tourist attraction,” Ariel said. “Located in Lake Huron, between the Lower and Upper Peninsulas. It's famous for its fudge shops. People come from hundreds of miles away just to buy a slice of fudge there.”

“I don't see—”

“There are two ferries that go to the island, one from Mackinaw City on the Lower Peninsula and one from the town of St. Ignace in the U.P. We'll take the Mackinaw City ferry to the island, then get on one of the boats that's going back to St. Ignace.”

Now he began to understand. “So it's like a detour? A way to get to the Upper Peninsula without crossing the bridge?”

She nodded. “There are no car ferries to the island, because they don't allow automobiles on Mackinac, so we'll have to take the passenger ferry and leave the Kia behind. But once we get to the U.P., I'll find a car to hot-wire. And from there, it's only a forty-mile drive to Haven.”

John thought it over, searching for flaws in the plan. “But what if the cops are watching the ferries, too?”

“It's still better than going across the bridge. The ferries are busy this time of year, so we can blend in with the crowd.”

“Blend in? I don't know about that. You can't walk, for one thing.”

“I'll be in the wheelchair. You'll pretend you're taking your poor old mother on a day trip to Mackinac Island. Perfectly ordinary.”

He was still skeptical but didn't want to argue anymore. Instead, he focused on the road ahead, which ran straight as an arrow toward the lakeshore. Meanwhile, Ariel opened the makeup kit and started slathering rouge on her face.

After another half hour they approached Mackinaw City. John was amazed to see the calm, blue surface of Lake Huron stretching for miles and miles to the east and north. He'd never visited this part of the country before, never imagined that the Great Lakes could be so huge. In the distance he saw the Mackinac Bridge arching toward the wooded shore of the Upper Peninsula. Squinting, he glimpsed flashing lights at the far end of the bridge. This was the roadblock, obviously. Then he glanced to the right and spotted a smallish, green island about ten miles away. A ferryboat was scudding across the lake about halfway between the island and the docks of Mackinaw City.

“Make a right,” Ariel said. Without lifting her head from her makeup kit, she pointed at a parking lot next to one of the motels on the lakeshore.

“We're still pretty far from the docks.”

“If the troopers are at the ferry, they'll be looking for an old Kia. So we should park as far away from there as possible.”

John made the right turn and parked at the far end of the lot. He gathered all their remaining cash and stuffed it in his pockets. Then he looked at Ariel again and did a double take. Her face was caked with beige makeup. She'd already wrapped the scarf around her head and zipped up the down coat. When she put on the sunglasses she looked like an old woman, an ailing, shriveled, sallow biddy dressed against the cold.

“Wow,” he marveled. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks, sonny,” she said in a quavering voice. “You don't look so hot yourself.”

Shaking his head, John retrieved the just-purchased wheelchair from the trunk and helped Ariel into its seat. Baggy pink slacks covered her bandaged legs, and a pair of cheap Walmart tennis shoes completed the outfit. She thrust her hands into the deep pockets of her coat, as if she were freezing, but John knew she was hiding her Glock in the right pocket and could draw it out at a moment's notice. In the left pocket she hid the small, leather-bound notebook.

He locked the car and spent the next twenty minutes pushing the wheelchair toward the docks of the White Star Ferry Line. As Ariel had predicted, the place was busy. John didn't see any state troopers as he headed for the ticket booth, but hundreds of tourists were lined up at the wharf, most of them shivering and stamping their feet to keep warm. He bought two tickets, then parked the wheelchair at the end of the line.

He bent over so he could whisper in Ariel's ear. “So far, so good.”

She nodded. “Just keep your eyes open.”

Five minutes later the tourists started boarding the ferry. The name
OJIBWAY
was painted in big black letters on the boat's hull. The ferry was maybe thirty yards long, with a dozen rows of hard plastic seats on the lower deck and another hundred seats behind the pilothouse on the upper deck. As John pushed Ariel toward the gangplank he saw two people shepherding the crowd: a pudgy woman taking the tickets and a man in a green uniform eyeballing the passengers. He wasn't a state trooper—the uniform was the wrong color—but he was clearly an authority of some kind, maybe an officer with the Harbor Patrol. He had salt-and-pepper hair, cut short and neat, and his eyes were cold blue. He looked like a real hardass.

John tried to act natural, but he could tell that the officer was scrutinizing him. The hardass narrowed his eyes as John handed his tickets to the pudgy woman. Then the man stepped forward and moved in front of Ariel's wheelchair, blocking their way. John braced himself, getting ready to tackle the guy. But Ariel calmly kept her hands in her pockets and looked up at him. “Can I help you, young man?”

To John's surprise, the officer smiled. “No, ma'am, I'm here to help
you
,” he said. He pointed at the nubbly steel of the gangplank, which was wet in some spots and icy in others. “It's a little slippery here, and I don't want you to go sliding. Is it all right if I grab the front of your chair and help you across?”

“Why, certainly.” Ariel didn't miss a beat. “That's very kind of you.” She twisted around in her seat and looked at John. “Isn't that kind, sonny?”

His pulse was still racing. “Yeah, definitely,” he managed to say. “Thank you, sir.”

As the officer guided the wheelchair across the gangplank, John got a closer look at his uniform. The stitching on the left side of his shirt said
CAPT. BURT DUNN
,
WHITE STAR FERRY.
The guy didn't work for the Harbor Patrol after all. He was the captain of the
Ojibway
.

“There you go, ma'am,” he said once Ariel was safely aboard. Then he turned to John and pointed at the left side of the lower deck. “You should park your mom's wheelchair next to that window. You'll get a good view of the island from there.”

John thanked him again and pushed Ariel toward the window. He wasn't accustomed to all this Midwestern friendliness. It made him nervous.

After another five minutes the boat was fully loaded and ready to go. It backed away from the wharf and slowly cruised out of Mackinaw City's harbor. Once it reached the open water, though, the engines revved, the bow tilted upward and the boat accelerated. Soon they were speeding across Lake Huron, going at least forty miles per hour.

John bent over the wheelchair again. “Hey, this isn't bad,” he whispered. “We're really moving.”

“It's a hydrojet ferry,” Ariel whispered back. “Very fast and maneuverable. The boat has pump-jets that suck in water and spew it out at high speed.” She pointed out the window. “Look, you can see the water jetting out of the stern.”

He turned toward the back of the
Ojibway
and saw a high rooster-tail of water leaping into the air and crashing down on the boat's wake. They were already a couple of miles from shore and rushing past the Mackinac Bridge. John glimpsed the flashing blue lights of the police roadblock again, and this time he felt a surge of satisfaction at the sight.
Suckers! We're going right past you!

After a while he turned to the front of the boat and stared at Mackinac Island, which was growing larger by the second as they zoomed toward it. Just past the island's wharves was an old-fashioned Main Street lined with two-story wooden buildings. A steep bluff loomed behind the street, rising about a hundred feet above the harbor. Perched atop the bluff was a cluster of buildings with a wall around them and a tall flagpole.

“That's Fort Mackinac,” Ariel said, pointing at the island. “Built in the eighteenth century by the British, then taken over by the American army. It was a very strategic location in those days. A cannon positioned on that bluff could fire at any ship passing between the Lower Peninsula and the U.P.”

“Is the army still there?”

“No, it's a state park now.”

Within minutes they reached the wharves in the island's harbor. The
Ojibway
sidled up to a long wooden pier, where a crew of White Star Ferry employees fastened the boat's lines to a pair of bollards on the dock. As the passengers rose from their seats, anxious to disembark, John peered through the window at another wooden pier about a hundred yards away. A boat that looked very similar to the
Ojibway
was docked at the end of that pier, and a line of people stretched down the wharf, waiting to board the vessel.

Ariel noticed it too. “That's the ferry going to the U.P. As soon as we get off this boat, you'll push me down Main Street to the other wharf.”

“Then we'll buy our tickets and get in line?”

“If we hurry, we can be in Haven in a couple of hours.” She pointed at the gangplank, where the other passengers were already swarming ashore. “Go on, sonny. No time to lose.”

Burt Dunn, the
Ojibway
's captain, stood at the gangplank again, this time saying goodbye to everyone. He smiled when he saw Ariel. Without hesitation, he helped maneuver the wheelchair onto the wharf. Then John started pushing Ariel down the pier, heading for Main Street. The other passengers rushed past them, eager to hit the town.

As John maneuvered the wheelchair through the crowd, he gazed down the length of the pier and surveyed the traffic on Main Street. Although there were no cars on the island, dozens of cyclists cruised down the street and hundreds of pedestrians crowded the sidewalks. Several horse carriages clopped down the street as well, carrying tourists and their luggage to the island's hotels. Another carriage was parked halfway down the pier, waiting for passengers. The carriage's driver was nowhere in sight, but the horse was so tame it just stood there, untied, on the dock's wooden boards, its nose pointed toward Main Street. It was a big, brown horse, like one of the Clydesdales in the Budweiser ads. John admired the animal as he pushed the wheelchair past it, then faced forward and focused again on the Main Street end of the pier. Up ahead, the ferry passengers branched off to the left and right, heading for the island's fudge shops.

Then John spotted a tall, young man in a black leather jacket. Even from two hundred feet away, John could tell that the guy was trouble. He was eying each of the disembarking passengers, craning his neck to make sure he didn't miss anyone, and checking their faces against a photograph he held in his left hand. He wasn't a cop, though—he was too unkempt, too sketchy. And his hair was bright red, the same shade as Ariel's.

John slowed to a crawl. Ariel looked up at him, and he could tell from her expression that she'd spotted the Rifleman, too. “Shit,” John whispered. “We're screwed.”

An instant later the guy saw them. He stared directly at John, then at the photo in his hand. Then he stepped forward to get a better look, dodging the tourists moving in the opposite direction. He seemed puzzled at first by Ariel's old-lady disguise, but after a couple of seconds he saw through it. He started barreling through the crowd, knocking aside everyone who got in his way.

They were trapped on the pier. There was nothing behind them but Lake Huron. John glanced at Ariel, expecting her to draw her Glock from her coat pocket, but she shook her head. “I can't shoot. I might hit someone in the crowd.” She looked over her shoulder, scanning the pier. Then she pointed at the horse carriage. “Turn around and get behind that thing.”

“What? What are you—”

“Just do it!”

John spun the wheelchair around and ran back to the carriage. He heard footsteps and shouts behind him, the sound of the Rifleman barging through the crowd of tourists, but he didn't look back. Dashing past the horse, he pushed Ariel behind the carriage's back end, which shielded them from view. But by peering under the carriage and looking past the wheels and the horse's legs, John could see the Rifleman. He'd broken through the crowd and now stood less than a hundred feet away, with no one on the pier between him and the carriage horse. The man reached inside his jacket and pulled out a Glock that was identical to Ariel's.