Paul Doiron - Bad Little Falls

“It won’t be the first mistake I’ve made.”

“But it might be the last,” said Kendrick. “My crystal ball says you’re headed for a bad end, Warden.”

Just then a dog barked. I heard it over the telephone line but also through the window.

There was a click and then nothing.

I pressed *69 on the keypad. No one picked up, but eventually an automated voice answered. It was my own cell phone.

Maybe Kendrick had heard me give away my location over the police scanner and rushed over on his dogsled. Or maybe he’d arrived independently, planning to confront Doc again, and just happened to see me drive up in my patrol truck. In any case, he’d been watching the farmhouse.

He had seen me leave Lucas behind in the cold cab with his notebook and his headlamp glowing. As soon as I was inside, he had slid quietly up to my vehicle. What he’d said to the boy, I didn’t know, but it was hardly surprising that Lucas, of all kids, would be enchanted by a man driving a real-life dogsled. Had Kendrick simply asked to borrow the cell phone, which I had left in the cup holder? That was quite the ballsy move: threatening me on my own BlackBerry.

I rushed to the nearest light switch and plunged the room into darkness.

Doc rose unsteadily from the sofa. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to see my truck.”

“Kendrick’s outside the house?”

“Yes.” How could I have been so stupid as to leave Lucas alone? “Does he usually carry a gun?”

“He has a big Smith amp; Wesson revolver.”

I parted the curtains carefully. My eyes needed time to adjust, but slowly the snow-covered landscape sharpened into focus. I saw the periwinkle drifts piled against the stone wall and the gray trunks of the elms. Farther down the hill was the dark silhouette of my patrol truck. I squinted but couldn’t make out the glimmer of Lucas’s headlamp.

Stepping away from the window, I dialed the state police dispatcher in Augusta, gave my call numbers, and reported a possible ten thirty-two, which is the code for man with a gun. “Suspect is a white male, five eleven, one hundred and seventy pounds, approximately forty years of age. His name is Kevin Kendrick, of Township Nineteen. He may be accompanied by a twelve-year-old boy and driving a dogsled.”

It wouldn’t have surprised me if the dispatcher thought I was pulling her leg. Instead, she asked if I had any identifying information on the boy. I described Lucas to her as best I could.

I handed Doc his cordless phone. “Stay away from the windows,” I said. “If you hear gunfire, tell the dispatcher an officer is down.”

Through force of will, Doc Larrabee was trying to restore himself to sobriety. He worked the muscles around his mouth like a person trying to wake up from a deep sleep. “Mike, what the hell is happening?”

“Kendrick just called me on my own cell phone from the end of your driveway. A twelve-year-old boy is in my truck down there, and I believe he’s in danger.”

“Why would Kendrick? — He has no reason to harm a child.”

“If he really did murder Randall Cates, and he’s afraid of being caught, then he’s going to do what he needs to do to defend himself, even if it means holding Lucas Sewall as a hostage.”

I drew the heavy SIG from its holster and reached for the doorknob.

“I’m so sorry, Mike.”

“Now’s not the time for apologies,” I said. “Tell the dispatcher if something happens to me.”

Taking a deep breath, I swung the door open and sprang down the steps, throwing myself so hard against the base of the nearest elm, I bruised my shoulder.

I listened but heard nothing. No voices, no barking dogs, no gunshots. Just the sighing of the wind through the leafless branches over my head. I rose to my knees, pressed my hand against the scaly bark, and peered down the hill at the snowbank piled along the road. The night sky was a patchwork of stars and clouds. Every few minutes, the moon would appear, almost like a flare going off, lighting up the blueberry barrens that trailed down to Bog Pond.

I rose to a crouching position, getting ready to run in a zigzag pattern to the nearest snowbank, where I hoped to get a view of my truck, when I heard the sound of barking and saw a flash of light. It was the briefest wink, as if someone had turned on a flashlight and then quickly switched it off again. A shadow was moving across the white field behind the farmhouse.

The dogsled.

Kendrick was headed down to Bog Pond. Once he crossed the frozen expanse of ice, he would be at the edge of the Heath again. We would need a plane with a night-vision camera and thermal imaging system to find him in that maze of beaver ponds and tote roads.

The sled was moving rapidly. I heard the happy baying of the dogs as they gave their full effort. On foot, there was no way I could catch Kendrick.

I thrust my pistol into its holster and scrambled up the snowbank on hands and knees. When I saw the passenger door of the truck standing open, I realized that the flash of light I’d seen had been Lucas’s headlamp. Kendrick had taken the boy with him.

By the time I reached the truck, I was breathing heavily and sweating under the arms. I reached across the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. I pushed the gearshift on the steering column into reverse and stepped on the gas. It was only when I hit the plowed asphalt again that I realized something was wrong.

Kendrick had slashed one of my tires.

The thump-thump-thump of my rapidly flattening tire sounded like a drumbeat. At this rate, I’d be driving on the metal rim in no time. I’d be lucky to make it to the base of the hill. Below the slanting blueberry fields was a ramp the local ice fishermen used to drive their pickups and four-wheelers onto the frozen pond.

Somewhere in the darkness, a dogsled was racing along on a parallel course. If something were to happen to a child placed in my care… That was it, I realized. Kendrick knew that my desperation to rescue Lucas would compel me to take foolish risks. He was betting on my reputation for heedlessness, gambling I would make another stupid mistake.

Ahead, at the fuzzy edge of the beams, the sign for the boat launch parking lot came into view. If I turned, I could drive onto the ice and maybe cut him off before he crossed the lake. I grabbed the radio mic and hit the push-to-talk button. “Twenty-two fifty-eight, I have a ten-thirty-three on Route 277 and the Bog Road. Suspect is driving a dogsled across Bog Pond. He has a twelve-year-old boy with him, and he may be armed. Request immediate assistance at the Route 277 boat launch.”

Dispatch copied me. Units were on the way.

The turn approached. I braked hard, feeling a shudder go through me as the bad tire ripped loose, bounced in pieces against the undercarriage, and tumbled away in my brake lights. The shriek of the steel rim on the asphalt pierced me like a dentist’s drill.

I bumped into the empty parking lot and rolled down onto the snow-covered ice, forcing myself to go slowly. Hit it too hard, too fast, and no matter how thick the ice was, I could go through. My high beams fanned out across the pond, finding the rectangular shapes of vacant fishing shacks in the distance. I scanned for movement but saw nothing.

Had Kendrick pulled a U-turn and gone back up the hill?

No.

Instead of heading straight across the open expanse, Kendrick was moving parallel to the shore, following the ragged edge of trees and brush. I could catch him easily if I accelerated now.

I was turning the wheel to follow his trail when a warning went off in my brain. Rivard had cautioned me there were glacial boulders in the shallows of this lake, some as big as boxcars. In places, the tops of the huge rocks bulged through the snowpack, looking like pressure ridges in the ice or harmless mounds of snow that a vehicle could easily plow through. The edge of the pond was studded with those hidden traps, and if I struck one, even at thirty miles an hour, I would crash headlong across-and probably through-the lake ice.