Ted Wood - Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

"How come you and Nancy Carmichael are so close? Are you getting next to her?"

He folded at the shoulders and crossed his legs guiltily. "Hey, come on, Chief, get real. Me an' a kid like that?"

"Well, how much was she going to pay you for looking after her?"

"Nothing." He muttered it, not looking at me.

"Nothing? You don't work for nothing, Irv. I've seen your sheet, don't try to snow me."

"This was a favor." The rawness of his longing for the girl was painful to watch. "I mean, she's a pretty kid. I'm a man of the world. You know. I'd be shut up here with her a couple days. You never know what'll happen."

I slumped down in an armchair, weary beyond belief. "You mentioned pouring a snort. Is there any more around?"

"Yeah! Sure. You want some?" He was on his feet at once, desperate to please. He found the bottle. It was J & B.

"Sorry it's not Black Velvet, Chief. I'm a scotch man."

"Sounds good," I said. He found a couple of coffee mugs and poured a solid belt into both.

He gave me mine, then raised his and said, "Chimo!"

"Chimo yourself." I toasted him and sipped. It went down smooth and spread out into my tired body like fresh blood.

Now he was setting his drink down and feeling in his pocket for cigarettes. He found them in his side pocket, crushed flat from his exit through the window. He extracted one, rolled it gently, and lit it with a stick of kindling he then threw into the stove.

"Now." I sipped again and set down my drink. "You probably don't need me to say it, but I have to. You're in trouble up to your ass. For openers, you're a part of a conspiracy to commit a felony." I looked at him to see how he was taking it. The kidnapping was nothing more than a case of public mischief and that's just a misdemeanor, but I wanted him scared. And besides, the caper involved a murder now.

"What's more, you attempted to murder a peace officer." He put his drink down on the floor and spread his hands like a crucifixion victim. "Come on, Chief. I told you what was goin' down."

"You know as well as me that story wouldn't last a minute in court."

He said nothing, just sat staring at the floor. Slowly he lowered his hands and brought the right to his mouth for a drag on his smoke. He cupped the cigarette in his hand. He had never been in the pen but he had worked for men who had. He knew the drill. No J & B, no Friday night women, just noise and fear and the chance of ending up as somebody's punk if you didn't hit any guy who looked at you sideways.

I took pity and got to the point. "So we'll scratch the shooting. I've been shot at before, by experts."

He looked up now, his eyes narrow as he considered the thin slice of hope I'd handed him. "And you're no part of the conspiracy, so we can scratch that as well… for a price."

"You mean you'd forget about everything." His voice was quiet. He spoke almost without moving his lips, a criminal again.

"I'm ready to."

"I'll pay whatever wants payin'." He made a half swoop toward his wallet but backed off when I looked at him.

"You know me better than that. What I need is some help. Hang in with me until this is over and I'll forget the rest of this nonsense."

He reached out his hand automatically, forgetting the cigarette butt. As his fingers extended, the butt fell to the floor and he stepped on it firmly. I shook his hand. "This is going to be hard," I promised him. "These are tough bastards. They've already killed one woman and tried to kill another."

"Killed a woman?" His horror was genuine.

I filled him in briefly, including the bit about the girl on the ice, then asked, "Waddya say?"

"Let's get 'em," he said.

"Okay. First thing, I want to know all you can tell me about the plan. Start talking, give all the names and facts you've heard, all the details. So far, none of it is making much sense. Maybe you can put the pieces together."

There wasn't much. He had known about the plot for three weeks. Nancy had come up alone and stayed over at the Tavern, ostensibly to go cross-country skiing. She had confided in Irv. She thought the thing was a big joke and hoped there would be plenty of headlines because it might help her when she reached the Miss Toronto contest. She would go into that contest, as she had ours, because her father owned houses in both places.

I stopped him here. "She has to be nuts. Doesn't she know the Miss Toronto is always chosen at the Police Games? No copper would vote for a dingbat like her."

"She's no dingbat." Irv was just the safe side of angry. "She's real smart. She's already in college, at seventeen. She speaks French better'n Jean Arcand at the bait store."

"She's got a thirty-eight bust, Irv, and you never looked any further. She's also got a big mouth. If she was letting you in on this dumb plan of theirs, she must have told half the world. She's likely got a whole lot of other people involved, people with no connection with this C.L.A.W. outfit."

He said nothing. I guess he knew I was right, that he wasn't the only one with the kid's secret. But that's not what he wanted to hear. I believe he was in love with her. I softened my approach. I wanted him to help me from choice, not anger.

"Did she tell you anything about this group of hers?"

"She said they were a great group of women."

I set down my empty coffee mug and sighed. "That shows it's wide open. There's at least one guy with the group, maybe more. And the one you saw is a tough, mean sonofabitch."

Irv stood up, convulsively clenching his fists. They were big, a fighter's fists. I was glad he was on my side. "I'd like a couple o' rounds with that bastard."

"You'll get them," I promised. "And we've got to find him. Unless I'm badly off base, he's the guy who murdered the girl at the motel and left the other one to die on the ice. He pulled a gun on you. We've got to stop him."

Irv was pacing, making small chopping punches with both hands, working out his anger as if this were a gym and he were honing himself for a bout.

"Did Nancy say anything about her group, what it was for?"

"Not much." He was still chopping punches that could have cracked ribs. "Only thing she said was, it was a feminist outfit."

"Feminist, not just a women's group. You're sure?"

He frowned. Subtleties of politics weren't his line. "Sure I'm sure. Feminist is what she said."

That made a difference. Feminist groups drew support from left, right, and center, all the shades of political color there are to the left of the Ku Klux Klan. The thought made me angry. I'm supposed to keep the peace here. It's not in my charter to hammer people into the ground or shoot them or open their mail or any of the other things that activists worry about. But on the other hand, I am a one-man band, and if she was calling on some heavy-duty troublemakers I would have to break some more rules and earn some more bad black ink. It would be the only way I could prevent somebody from doing worse to some helpless member of the public. They would justify their actions in the name of "The People," whoever the hell they were, but mine would be the actions of a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary.

I stood up and pulled on my scorched and smoky-smelling hat. It didn't improve my mood. "All right, so security is shot full of holes. She's been talking and there's a good chance she's got some wild-eyed radicals on her side. We've got to get hold of her before they do anything crazy."

"Tonight?" Irv was startled. His plans had been for a couple more scotches and a few hours sleep, helping me with the rough stuff by daylight if he had to.

"Tonight." I confirmed his fears for him. "The weather's too bad for them to make a run for it down the highway. She will still be here in some cottage until the snow stops. After that, they could take her cross country on a skidoo and meet the road someplace."