Almost Criminal: A Crime In Cascadia Mystery Part 21

Randle worked his lips as he stumbled, "You're letting emotion take over." Emofum. "Think of the money you make from my channels."

"I am your channels. You have no channels but me. You thought you could deal direct, cut me out? Get up, you little t.u.r.d. You like the border so much, I'll show you the border."

Bullard spun Randle so they were face to face and dead-lifted him, grabbing his legs so Randle collapsed at the hips, folding over Bullard's shoulder and hanging face-down. His head bobbled as Bullard turned and jerked a thumb at me. I squeezed my eyes shut, please, no, but followed, trying to block out the clacking of Randle's gums as he swung against Bullard's back all the way to the helicopter.

The chopper's idling downdraft fanned the charred surface into embers, whipping the smoke away as quickly as it fed it. Bullard tossed Randle in the helicopter with no visible effort, and tilted a quick sideways nod at me to get inside. This was it, I realized. I stood there, my mouth open to the cloud of dust and ash, blood running from my nose, my arms still half-useless while Ivan watched from just outside the shadow of the blades. All those plans of escape, gone. I clambered aboard and Bullard leapt up behind me, eager to get in the air.

Bullard reached out and Ivan pa.s.sed him a grey metal briefcase. Then he clapped the pilot on the shoulder and the blades spun up, lifting the loaded helicopter with a lurch. Bullard put a hand on the helicopter's open doorframe and leaned out into the vortex of smoke, bark, and flying clumps of mud.

Below us, Ivan's headlights flashed over the dead, white limbs of uprooted cedars. I huddled behind a protruding bale of weed, as far from Randle's writhing body as possible, while the chopper pitched and swung, up and away.

The weed was crammed from floor to ceiling, and even after Bullard slid the door closed and took a seat beside the pilot, there wasn't much floor s.p.a.ce. Using his elbows, Randle seal-squirmed against a stack of weed and worked himself into an awkward sideways squat. His hands were still strapped, and his gaze never left Bullard.

Every time the copter lurched I b.u.mped against the metal bulkhead, until I gave up and slid nearer to Randle, until we were side by side, as far from the open cargo door as possible. Once I was settled, the pain behind my eyes returned and I probed my nose again, feeling for breaks. Everything from lip to eyebrow felt soft, swollen, and tender, and my hand came away sticky with blood.

Beneath me, the chopper's floor was gouged and scarred with knife-sharp curls of aluminum. Ridges and boltholes marked where equipment and seats were mounted before the medivac was stripped to maximize cargo capacity.

Randle's eyes sought mine, but I pulled my glance away.

Bullard paid no attention to either of us, perched beside the pilot, chewing gum relentlessly, a headset to one ear. The pilot increased speed and raced, clinging to the mountain valleys toward the border. The air in the cabin cooled, but never lost the cloying smell of green. Twenty minutes pa.s.sed, maybe more. I lost track of time as we dipped and swung, almost grazing the treetops, dozens of feet from steeply rising rock faces that dropped to black chasms below. We had to be in America by now, somewhere in the Cascade Mountains. I could barely form a thought in the unrelenting throb of motor and blades.

Then things changed. Bullard pushed his microphone to his mouth and yelled a command. The pilot nodded and the helicopter's angle altered as we lost momentum. The change in engine speed alerted Randle, and I a.s.sumed a crouching position, palms flattened on the floor in readiness for something. Holding us motionless in the air, the pilot turned to Bullard, who gave him a thumbs-up confirmation and we began to gain alt.i.tude.

Bullard swivelled the co-pilot's chair toward us, and, lurching down onto one knee, made a quick grab for one of Randle's legs. Caught, Randle arched his back and kicked the free leg at Bullard's face, making heel contact above one eye. We were far above the valley floor now, and still rising. Bullard's mouth shaped the word f.u.c.k! and his eyebrow split, spurting blood, but he held on, on both knees now, tugging Randle's leg as he scuttled closer to the cargo door. Randle bucked, and Bullard used his superior weight to twist the leg knee-downward - it looked excruciatingly painful for Randle, who was forced belly-down. Bullard pinned the leg under one armpit while he leaned out to pull the latch and slide the cargo door wide. Our ascent had stopped. All I could see outside was a starry sky. Below, I knew there was nothing but crags and creva.s.ses above impenetrable forest. I clung to the bales of gra.s.s, as far from the other two as possible.

Understanding his situation, Randle made a full-body twist with a wrestler's flexibility, breaking Bullard's grip, and pulled his legs away from the door, kicking me as he landed. His elbow struck a sharp-looking f.l.a.n.g.e of metal that punctured the skin, and he curled and hooked both wrists over the bloodied f.l.a.n.g.e, sawing the plastic strap over it with frenzied energy. Bullard, his eye closed and bleeding, seemed to say, enough, and dropped his full weight on Randle's torso, pinning him to the floor and wrapping an arm around his chest. With surprising ease, he slid the squirming Randle away from the sharp-edged f.l.a.n.g.e and back to the gaping doorway. Bullard flipped Randle face-down and dropped a knee onto the small of Randle's back. With Randle pinned, he straightened and took hold of the door frame for balance. He swiped blood from his eye and signalled me to come close.

I shook my head, not as a gesture of brave resistance, but in sheer terror. Bullard's good eye narrowed and he pointed a dripping finger at me. I couldn't refuse. I crawled as close to the open blackness as I dared, and Bullard found my collar and heaved me to the door's edge. The medivac shuddered and lurched, and I could see nothing but blackness far below, as Bullard screamed my orders. I couldn't hear a word, but his spittle was hot on my cheek. He took me by the face and repeated it, his lips shaping, Out! Put him out!

Then he pushed me away, and I tripped on Randle's torso and fell back to the safe side, away from the terrifying depths. I rolled up to a stable kneel, my eyes on Bullard, not Randle, as he returned to the co-pilot's seat, from which he watched me and waited, one eye closed and b.l.o.o.d.y, the other red and streaming from the high-alt.i.tude wind. The pilot kept his eyes front, his hands and feet on the controls that held us in position.

There was a moment of pause when Randle realized Bullard wasn't attacking, and rea.s.sessed. He contracted into a fetal position and rolled to a half-seated crouch, his strapped arms facing me like a doubled fist. I backed off, unwilling to do as ordered and unprepared for what it meant.

Randle must have known that it was useless to take me out when Bullard was waiting to finish the job anyway. But he was an animal now. Immediate survival was his only goal.

I was not a fighter. I didn't have the coordination, the motor skills, or the confidence, and I had no idea what to do. I grabbed the loose wrapping of a bale of weed and held on to it so I wouldn't slip on the floor-deck. Then I kicked and pushed - just hitting at any part of him I could put a heel on, no matter how clumsily or awkwardly - since he was right at the lip of the door and any b.u.mp might be all it needed. He was having none of it - unlike me, he was strong - and he dodged and twisted, getting a grip on the doorframe and shoving off it to slip-roll back inside to a safer position. He paused and put his strapped palms outward, fingers splayed in a gesture of peace. Hang on, his b.l.o.o.d.y lips shaped, and I slid back, uncertain.

He wriggled forward, worming for position and staring fixedly at me. Then he curled his torso and twisted his forearms in a burst of strength and a pained grunt that I heard over the chopper's thunder. The weakened zip-cuff snapped and his arms flew apart. With two hands for balance, he crouched like a coyote and angled his head to me, then to Bullard, who was looking out the window, bored. Let's take him, his look said. His grey skin quivered with a fierce energy, the dried blood filling the lines in his face like warrior paint.

I stood, without losing grip of the bale of bud behind me, and angled myself toward him so we could work out a plan - I was still lost and inadequate, with no idea how the two of us could attack someone like Bullard, who might turn at any second, if he wasn't already watching us out of a corner of his eye.

Randle lunged at me. He grasped my shirt and cracked his forehead into mine. I was stunned and blinded with pain and in a second I felt metal floor panels on my back. He was dragging me to the door. Shock and rage took over and I kicked upward with both knees bent, hard, and one of my knees. .h.i.t something soft and he lost his grip for a second. I reached above my head and found Bullard's suitcase. I threw it at Randle with both hands, hoping to knock him out. The medivac shook as Randle fell back, slamming into the edge of the door, while Bullard jumped up to grab the case. I spun to a sitting position and kicked. Randle lay on the floor, legs out and torso in, and I kicked again and again, heels first, with all the force in me. Bullard landed a kick as well, and returned to his co-pilot's seat to watch. Every blow struck something, and I tried not to look at his eyes but they were there, bulging, seeking mine. But he didn't move. He'd found something outside the cabin, probably one of the medivac's stretchers, where he could latch a foot or a knee. He steadied himself and stretched one long arm back inside, not looking for a hold on the metalwork, but clutching at my ankle. He wanted to pull himself in by dragging me out. I began to slide. I stomped with my free foot, aiming for his fingers, and kicked again. His arm pulled back and I kicked my heel hard at his lying face and Randle was gone. The chopper shuddered and swooped upward with the sudden release of weight.

My ears were ringing and my blood pounded, and the helicopter's noise muted to silence. I squatted, almost fainting, looking down, expecting his face to reappear like a vampire or alien. I felt hot. I felt cold. There was a thick flow of blood coming from my nose. I put my head between my legs and vomited, and vomited again.

The rest of the flight, and the return to Canada, pa.s.sed in a senseless daze. I crawled to the farthest corner of the helicopter and watched Bullard's back. I was certain that he'd come for me when he was ready. Time pa.s.sed in stop-action moments. The helicopter descended into a fairy ring of headlights in a tall, dense forest somewhere in the Cascades. Thick-bodied shapes came and went, unloaded and loaded. On the floor I saw a b.l.o.o.d.y fingernail, caught in a sharp curl of aluminum. Then it was crushed under a boot. Again, I saw Randle's wide-open toothless mouth fall away into the dark.

Chapter 23.

The next day, I was dragged behind Bullard, shuffling along wherever he took me. I didn't speak to anyone and no one spoke to me. At any moment I expected him to turn and hit me, or drive into the bush and leave me dead in a ditch. But he didn't. He laughed at me as we drove to the Devils' clubhouse. Laughed about what I'd done. How I was a murderer now. I couldn't disagree.

I'd never seen the clubhouse before, a cinderblock building surrounded by a razor-wire fence, with its entire front wall hand-painted with their horned-devil logo and a banner reading the DEVIL'S OWN MOTOR CLUB, FRASER VALLEY. Non-members were not permitted inside, so I stayed in the truck, his little trophy. He brought some of the boys out for a viewing, and boasted of my last kick, the final humiliation for the j.a.c.k.o.f.f who'd started a war that they were now going to finish.

He was there to make plans and to hand out a new a.r.s.enal of weapons that last night's exchange had brought over the border. It was justice, he said, that Randle's weed had paid for the extra firepower they'd use to blow those Americans back where they came from.

It was evening before Bullard was ready to leave the clubhouse and drive Ivan and me to the country. Originally Ivan was going to take his own truck - along with a half-dozen other senior bikers who rode behind us - but Ivan suggested that I might jump out of a truck if I was the only pa.s.senger, so he was ordered in with Bullard and me, to sandwich me in. Jump out of a moving vehicle? I hadn't thought if it, but it was not such a bad plan. I'd only have had to remain conscious long enough to tell a paramedic about the bikers. Too bad I hadn't come up with it myself earlier in the day.

Bullard was pumped. He jabbered about battling Sammy Jay's bikers on the streets and the highways. I slumped silently between him and Ivan. My nose throbbed, and every time I moved my hands, the gashes in my palms and forearms reminded me of Randle.

"Sammy Jay's smartest move would be to pack up and go home," Bullard stated with authority. "Now that Randle's gone. He might think he's bigger than us, that he's got friends, but so do we. This thing's only going to get bigger, unless we stop it right now." He scratched at the bandage on his bad eye. "If he goes for the clubhouse he'll be sorry. I'll withstand a military a.s.sault. Stocked with ammo and supplies for a week-long siege. Just let him try to go for the clubhouse."

Bullard's war room was the living room of his ranch, a rambling spread overlooking the gra.s.sy flatlands of the Fraser Valley. Windowed on three sides, the building had a four-car carport on the fourth. He'd set up a table at the longest window, where he and his lieutenants could make their plans with a clear view of anyone approaching. The land was uncultivated and featureless, with a barbed-wire boundary and a long dirt road that forked outside the ranch gate. A mile to the east, buses and trucks rolled along Highway 1.

As soon as we arrived, Ivan tossed me into a locked bedroom. I heard someone ask Bullard why he was bothering with me. "First we deal with Sammy Jay and his crew," he said.

An hour or two later, when Ivan looked in on me, I'd leaned the bed and mattress against the window and built a squatting s.p.a.ce in the corner farthest from the door, surrounded by an upturned dresser and TV table.

"Defending yourself." He shrugged at the uselessness of it. "It makes you feel better, why not?"

He laid a cold takeout burger and a can of beer on the dresser - probably the same as they were eating - and switched on the TV, which sat ignored on the floor.

For one last dig at me, he found a children's station. "There you go. Pa.s.s the time."

I ignored the food, and him, and waited, shivering. I didn't care who won this gang war, I just wanted it to be over.

It was a few hours after midnight - the kid's channel had gone off air and the TV's empty screen lit the room blue- and the muttering, and, sometimes, yelling in the war room had peaked and then waned. I hadn't been awake, but I hadn't slept, either. I was afraid of what dreams might bring.

News channels run all night. I watched the national, then local news as they cycled through current events, sports and weather, and back to current events again. There was no word about a missing person in Wallace - not Randle, not me. Of course, Beth wouldn't report anything, I'd told her I was in hiding. Nothing about a sudden influx of bikers in the valley. Where were the reporters? What about the police I'd called to Sadie's? The Washington channels had nothing on a gruesome discovery in the Cascade Mountains.

Sleep must have finally overtaken me, because I was jarred out of it by the throbbing pulse of a helicopter. My head snapped up in terror, triggering a b.l.o.o.d.y flood from my nose, and I realized the sound was low and tinny from the TV screen.

A newscopter was pointing its shaky camera down on Commercial Drive, zooming and panning from Cafe 420 to Da Kine to a phalanx of police cars. Farther down the street, dozens of early-morning pedestrians surged angrily against a row of black-clad police.

A banner scrolled along the bottom of the screen: LIVE - VANCOUVER POLICE SWARM STOREFRONT MARIJUANA OPERATIONS "Randle," I called. "You've got to see this."

A half-dozen officers emerged from Cafe 420 holding a ragged-looking, handcuffed Dan, and I raised the volume to hear the newsreader's voiceover: "- the Solicitor General applauded the raid, which is still in progress. He is on record condemning city politicians for their lax stance on the open sale of marijuana."

"Randle!" I called, louder. Then I remembered.

The image cut to the Legislature and a soft-faced politician. "I can't understand why it's taken them so long," he said, quivering jowls overflowing his collar. "People are going to Commercial Drive to smoke marijuana and then driving back home again, under the influence of drugs. It's completely intolerable."

The announcer again. "NewsLine has discovered a pot-shop employee who narrowly escaped being apprehended. Laurie Posner is on the scene. Laurie?"

A headphone-wearing journalist nodded to the camera and poked a microphone at a pale-skinned South Asian woman with cornrows. She wouldn't identify herself, but I remembered her. She'd helped me unload the truck. Angela.

"We'd just opened, and it was busy like usual. I was near the door checking medical forms and the lineup stopped. It was weird, we were full, but n.o.body else was coming in, so I took a look outside. The street was empty too. That was really bizarre, 'cause this is the Drive and there's no traffic, right? So I walked outside to see what's up and this huge m.o.f.o with a rifle elbows me out of the way and runs inside yelling Everybody on the floor! I thought we were being robbed, so I took off."

The announcer smiled at her naivete. "But this was no robbery, was it?"

The journalist on the street described how dozens of squad cars placed a cordon around a four-block radius before the SWAT team stormed the illegal drug operations in full body armour with weapons drawn. The street was still closed, although curious neighbours and marijuana activists were gathering.

The visuals cut to jerky footage of an angry crowd facing a shoulder-to-shoulder row of black-clad police. Alli from Benelux was leading a cheer.

A police representative intoned, "These operations have been serving thousands of customers, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars weekly for local crime bosses -"

I switched it off. Would Bullard want to know? I didn't care.

Someone had heard that I was awake. Ivan cracked the door and tossed in a towel. Five minutes to wash up, the boss wanted me.

"They gotta eat and they gotta sleep," Bullard was saying as Ivan gently prodded me toward the command table. "That's how you find 'em." Then to me, "You. Time to pay for your keep."

I waited to hear what the next punishment would be, while he sat and worried at a pencil that was nearly hidden in fat fingers. His eyes were speculative.

"There's only a couple highways around here." He was speaking to me. "You troll the trailer parks and campgrounds and eventually it pays off."

Sitting around the room on recliners, a sofa, and a.s.sorted kitchen chairs pulled from somewhere, the council of senior Devils waited for the boss to finish.

"You've got something none of us do. You're a kid."

"This is a bad idea." Ivan said quietly.

Bullard replied, "You're in no position to discuss. I saw what he can do, you didn't."

He gestured to me, poking thick fingers on a map. "This where they are. This is where I need a pair of eyes."

Ivan seemed uncomfortable in the outside pa.s.senger position, where once again he was keeping me from jumping by trapping me in the cramped centre seat. Keech drove Ivan's truck, shrugging on a Kevlar vest and yelling into a cellphone.

Behind our heads the gun rack was loaded. Ivan was explaining my orders while Keech argued on the phone. Sammy Jay's gang had been found at a roadside motel and Ivan and I were headed there. Keech was dropping us off, and then dealing with another issue - somebody had missed their half-hour phone-in, and the team that had gone to check were reporting a road blockage at a gas station, with ambulances, fire trucks, and smoke.

When a group of little Kia Rios came up the narrow dirt road, Keech laid on the horn and held the centre lane, forcing them into the shoulder. "Tourists!" he spat.

Keech slowed for a sidelong look as we pa.s.sed Hidden Springs Log Cabins and Suites, and on through the little unincorporated town centre, but didn't pull over until he was past a blind curve.

"This is it for you. Time to walk," Ivan stepped down to let me out and handed me a cellphone. There was a motel restaurant, he said. I was to find a seat with a view of Sammy Jay's cabins and sit tight, and speed-dial the ranch whenever anyone came in or out.

"Before you get any ideas about walking to freedom," he said. "I will be in the woods on the far side of the motel, just in case they're sneaking out that way. I'll have my eye on you."

He glanced at Keech, whose eyes were on oncoming traffic, and leaned in closer. "Get out of here," he whispered. "As soon as the truck is gone, walk away. Call a cab, whatever. Just get out."

He climbed back into the cab as Keech revved the engine, and glanced back down at me. He made a pistol with his thumb and index finger, pointed it at me and dropped the thumb in a shooting gesture. "Go!"

The truck pulled a U-turn and I crossed the highway to the motel.

Chapter 24.

There was an available booth with a good view of a row of motorbikes. I counted fifteen and saw room for more.

Through the street-side window I checked the surroundings: across the highway, a donut shop and service station with a couple of pumps out front and a garage behind, advertising repairs and oil changes. Everything else was forest, and in the forest, Ivan. With a rifle, probably. What was he going to do if he found anyone back there, shoot them to earn his patch? More likely he had a bead on me right now, waiting for me to follow his advice and run.

I sat and waited. The cabins were dark, their curtains closed. Throughout the motel, nothing moved, only the waitress and me, and she was taking pains to avoid my gaze. I'd been there for half an hour, looking at an empty cup of coffee that she wouldn't refill. It was the swollen, crooked nose, I realized, and the black eyes that I'd seen in the mirror this morning, the unwashed clothes. She thought I was going to rob the till.

I felt the phone in my hand. Even if Ivan was out there watching, he couldn't know who I was calling. I dialled 911. I told the emergency operator about the bikers and that some kind of battle was planned. I gave all the addresses - the ranch, the motel, the clubhouse, all of it. I didn't identify myself, no matter how much she insisted.

Beside the gas station, someone was hosing down a blue Kia with a Budget sticker on the b.u.mper, and soaking a row of empty parking slots marked BUDGET CAR RENTAL.

"Oh, Lord," the waitress broke into my thoughts. On the overhead TV, a plume of black smoke rose above fire trucks, ambulances, and a raging blaze. "That's the Esso, just this side of Sumas."

She picked up the remote and thumbed up the volume.

Three Kias, I remembered, two silver and one in that pale bronze colour, champagne, all heading in a neat little row down the dirt road to Bullard's ranch. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize them as our jacked-up pickup forced them aside. Were they filled with thick-necked pa.s.sengers, several sizes too large for an economy rental? I hadn't seen, or couldn't remember, but I was absolutely certain that each car's b.u.mper was badged with that familiar orange-and-white sticker.

A shocking daylight attack has left two men severely beaten and clinging to life. Eyewitnesses report that the men, wearing the leather vests of a well-known motorcycle gang, were fuelling their motorcycles when they were surrounded by four, some said six, members of a rival gang. The outnumbered men were swarmed, knocked to the ground, and beaten with baseball bats - I closed the door on the restaurant and ran up the highway, keeping close to the trees, just in case. The police were sure to pay attention now. They'd be at the ranch in minutes, if they weren't there already. If I could just see them take down Bullard, I'd hand myself in, no regrets.

Even though I had the road name and the six-digit number for Bullard's ranch, the cab driver got lost twice. At last, we rounded a bend and there was the fork in the road, and the ranch house rising above the swaying, untended gra.s.s. The driver yanked his wheel with an exclamation in Punjabi and hauled to a stop.

"First aid kit!" he cried.

I sat blankly in the pa.s.senger seat. I'd seen the slumped figure before he had, lying crumpled at the barbed-wire gate. The driver fumbled with his keys and his remote and the trunk popped open, and he gestured to me in panic as he ran toward the dead man. Murph, his name was. Full patch, but a lower-ranked Devil.

He screamed at me. "Bring it, first aid!"

I couldn't register the driver's pointless urgency. I hadn't felt shock since Randle flew out the medivac, and I wondered what his broken body looked like now, somewhere in a creva.s.se in the Cascades. Couldn't the driver see, as he tugged at Murph's clothing and ripped at packages of bandages, that it was a waste of time? He was trying to fit a few inches of gauze over a stomach wound that would fit a cantaloupe. There was already more blood on the ground than a human needs to survive. It was obvious. I watched as the realization finally came to the taxi driver and he collapsed in frustration and despair.

I left him fumbling with his phone and trying to bring help, his accent thickened by emotion. I picked my way carefully over the barbed wire and approached the silent house, stumbling over the ruts in the drive. No little Korean cars had come up this way. They'd have bottomed out if they'd tried. Where were the police? Where was anyone? Bullard's truck hadn't moved. If Sammy Jay were in control, I'd have been shot already.

The front door hung open. I felt no sensation at all as I lifted my foot over another face-down, lifeless Devil. In the kitchen sink, water trickled over dishes and beer bottles, like someone was getting ready to wash up. It was peaceful.

There were bullet holes and a watery smear of blood by the side door, leading to a sheltered path and toward the garage. The door was propped open by a foot - its body lay outside. They'd come in here, it looked like, sneaking up in the blind spot thrown by the garage. Crawled in the long gra.s.s like commandos, approaching from the windbreak row of trees that lined the side road. All they had to do was take out the lone guard watching the side door, and they were in. Despite a clubhouse that could withstand a military siege.

There was a quiet, murmuring voice in the front room. I wasn't afraid of anything by now. I was numb to worry or concern. I saw the blood first, a sticky pool flooding the room, and then the man, lying half under the big table. Maps and chairs were strewn everywhere, sticking in the drying goo, and there were other bodies, but Bullard was the only one moving. He lay on his side, his legs and one shoulder twitching like he wanted to roll on his back but couldn't, and his arms pumped rhythmically in time with his words. His eyes were open, one of them half-masked by that drooping bandage, and he was looking right at my face, but there was no focus to the eyes. The rhythm of his arm and legs was steady, slow and unchanging, a tattooed arm and its meaty hand holding a tiny-looking gun, swinging up and down, up and down. He didn't see me. I was just standing in the way.

There was a hole in his shoulder, a b.l.o.o.d.y, pulpy cauliflower, and he must have been hit somewhere lower on his belly, but I couldn't see where because the red flow was fresh and the lake of blood grew with each pump of his legs and arm. I saw a dog lying on the road once, hit by a car. Its legs were running, running, running even when half its brain lay spread like maggoty jam across the pavement. I stooped down and leaned close to make out his words. In the distance, faint sirens cut through the rustling breeze.