Fire in the Stars (22 page)

True to his word, Willington turned off the highway in less than twenty minutes. His flashing roof lights made eerie haloes in the mist. Chris had just filled him in and given him the description and plate number of the suspicious truck when he spotted Jason's red truck trundling down the highway. The man had not turned on his roof cherry and his slow pace seemed almost insolent.
But maybe I'm imagining it
, Chris thought,
because I don't like the guy any more than he likes me
.

When Chris explained the situation, however, Jason was smart enough to recognize that he might have screwed up and to see a possible path to redemption.

“Yeah, I can remember where I saw him,” he said, peering at the detailed forestry map Chris had unfolded across the dashboard of Jason's truck. “Not sure exactly where it is on this map, but I'll know it when I see it.”

Chris snatched up the map and opened the door. “Lead the way. I'll follow.”

“Lights?”

“No. If this is a bad guy, I don't want to tip him off.”

With a final wave to Willington, the two vehicles set off in tandem down the Croque road. Jason drove slowly, dodging potholes and pausing at each curve and rise, presumably to match the terrain to his recollections. Once he slammed on his brakes to avoid a moose that ambled across the road out of the bush ahead.

Chris's heart was in his throat. He had nothing in the cab with him but the 9mm service pistol Noseworthy had provided and his old hunting rifle in the trunk. He didn't know what Jason had. Why the hell hadn't Noseworthy called him back?

About ten kilometres in, Jason pulled to the left side of the road and signalled to Chris to pull in behind him. Both men climbed out.

“This is where I stopped him,” Jason said. “He was driving toward the coast.”

Chris bent down to examine the gravel on the right side of the road. It was a faint hope, quickly dashed. Hundreds of indistinguishable treads had tracked through the dirt in the last few days, and all were blurring in the fine rain.

Chris straightened to study the road ahead. It was unremarkable. Just a road slicing a meandering path through the ubiquitous spruce and fir on either side. Every now and then, the boughs of a slender birch glistened white through the green.

“Did you watch him in your rear-view mirror?”

“Yeah, I did. He continued on and disappeared around that curve up ahead.”

“All right then, let's go see what's around that curve.”

Back in their vehicles, they resumed their hunt. This time Jason kept to the middle of the road.
Wise move
, Chris thought.
If the truck turned off the road or pulled over to the edge, there's a chance we'll spot the tire marks
.

Around the curve, more forest. More endless, potholed road winding toward the smudged silhouette of hills ahead. Rain streaked the windows. Chris leaned out his window to scrutinize the gravel shoulder as they drove past. Another hundred metres farther on, a thin, overgrown track led into the bush off the right side of the road. Jason stopped again and climbed out. When Chris reached his side, he was squatting at the edge of the road, peering at a pair of tire treads that were deeply carved into the wet gravel. Up ahead, the ferns, moss, and ground cover of the ATV trail had been flattened in twin parallel tracks.

“He drove the truck in here,” Jason said. “A brave man.”

Chris began to walk down the track, careful to stay clear of the tire marks. About a hundred feet in, the marks petered out, but when Chris scanned the dense brush on either side, a glint of metal caught his eye. He approached the overhanging boughs, pushed them aside, and stopped to stare.

“Oh fuck,” said Jason from behind him.

I
nstinctively, Amanda seized Tyler and stepped in front of the boy as a shield, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on the man with the gun. He was tall, but so thin that he looked as if he'd blow away in a brisk wind. His bony arms protruded from a ragged jacket that was two sizes too short for him, but hung on his skeletal frame. His feet were protected only by socks, and even through the caked mud, she could see the bloodstains. A toque was pulled down over his ears, but tufts of dark hair stuck out beneath it and a scraggly black beard obscured much of his face. His eyes, however, were extraordinary. Deep-set and emerald green, they stared at her with something akin to terror.

The rifle he pointed at her was almost antique. It looked like a lever-action hunting rifle that might just as easily blow up in his hands. Not that she was about to test that theory.

Huddled together behind him were two smaller men, one draped in an old quilt and the other in a thick, moth-eaten sweater that was too big for him. The one in the quilt looked glassy-eyed and unfocused, but the other stared at her fiercely as he tried to prop his companion up. He was shorter than the leader and his features were coarser, but his shoulders betrayed his strength. All three men were sodden from the rain.

These men are not evil
, she thought,
they are desperate
. She had seen desperation many times in her career. “Who are you?” she asked as gently as she could through her own fear.

Behind her, Tyler grabbed her arm. “That's the terrorists!”

The leader shifted his rifle toward Tyler. “No talking. Give food and the boat!” His voice was hoarse, the accent thick and guttural.

She squeezed Tyler's hand and shot a warning glance over her shoulder at him. “Now's not the time,” she muttered. She held out the pail with the rest of the berries. “There's not much, but we can pick more.”

The leader snatched the pail, looked inside with disgust, and swung his rifle toward Kaylee. “I shoot the dog.”

“No!” Amanda screeched, leaping to Kaylee's side without thinking. “This dog helps us. You will not shoot her!” Holding up her hands, she forced herself to calm down and lower her voice. “I know you are hungry. I will help you catch fish.”

The leader looked incredulous. The other two stood as expressionless as pillars, probably not understanding a word. Amanda reached into the boat for the fishing rod. The man's gaze wavered briefly as he looked at the rod. She thought she glimpsed a spasm of pain. Of recognition.

“I won't hurt you,” she said. “I can tell you are hungry and lost.” Steeling herself, she took a risk. “I know you are running away from bad people.”

The look of sorrow vanished, and the man stepped forward in alarm. “What you know?”

“I know your friend died on the ship and you escaped in a lifeboat that broke up on the rocks. You are running away, but you don't know where to go.”

The man was frowning. She had spoken slowly, but she suspected that, even so, he was struggling to translate.

“Let me help you,” she said. “We are lost too. We must find a way out of this forest and find help.”

Behind her, Tyler muttered his outrage, but fortunately had the good sense not to object.

“Not police! Want your boat!”

“You're in Canada. The police will help. We have laws to protect you if you are running away from bad people.” She cringed inwardly at her own lies, knowing the trio would more likely face detention or deportation, if not outright imprisonment for killing Phil. But one step at a time. First she had to gain the trust of the man with the gun. “I promise to help you. But first put down the rifle and help me catch some fish.”

“We not want kill him.”

Startled, she took a moment to collect her thoughts and consider the wisdom of opening up this discussion. She needed them to put aside the past — the difficulties they had been through and any loathsome acts they'd been forced to commit — and see her as an ally.

But Tyler couldn't resist. “Who?”

“Crazy old man. We want some food, he shooting us. Bullet hit Ghader on his arm.” He gestured to the man draped in the quilt, whose glittering eyes suggested fever.

“So what did you do?” Amanda asked softly, unable to resist.

“We hit …” He swung the rifle butt to imitate a blow with an axe. “Too hard. Very much blood. We have lots trouble now.”

She could hear the quaver in his voice. “I understand,” she said. “All you wanted was a new life, not trouble. What's your name?”

“Mahmoud. And this Fazil.” He jerked the rifle at the third man still standing at the sick man's side. Then he looked sharply at Tyler and his eyes flared with anger. He spat on the ground. “Not terrorist!
Kurde
.”

Amanda absorbed this with surprise. “You're a long way from home.”

“Our home is …” He shook his head. “Everybody is bombing. America bomb, Russia bomb, all from sky. DAESH bomb from streets. My mother and father killed in their house. Burn my city, burn my business. Shut the schools, the shops. So much suffer there, you cannot live there.”

DAESH, Amanda knew, was an Arabic term for the Islamic State, one of the many brutal players in the chaos of the Middle East. “How did you end up here?”

“My brother and I … we go to Turkey. No papers, no visa. We pay very much money to Russian man to make papers for … going to America in a ship. But work all day with shrimp. Very cold. Shrimp, shrimp, always shrimp. I hate shrimp.”

She wanted to ask more, but she could see Ghader about to topple over. His teeth were chattering. Only Fazil's strength kept him upright.

“What happened to you is terrible,” she said. “Those people will be punished. But right now I can see your friend is sick and needs help. I also want to check my dog. Please, give me the rifle and help me make a fire.”

Mahmoud stared at her a long minute, and she forced herself to hold his gaze and reach out her hand. Despite Fazil's hoarse protests in what Amanda assumed was Kurdish, Mahmoud finally lowered his gaze and held out the rifle to her. “It no work now. Bullets finished.”

As her fingers closed over the cold steel barrel, waves of emotion almost knocked her off her feet. Relief that the threat was over and outrage that he had deceived her about the gun. She held the heavy, alien firearm with a shiver of repugnance and forced herself to check the chamber. Mahmoud was right. The rifle was empty.

She led the small ragtag group along the shore to a protected overhang where they could build a fire and wade out into the shallows to fish. She gestured to the injured man to sit down, and as Fazil helped to lower him, the quilt fell from his shoulders, revealing a primitive bandage caked with blood.

Tyler was hovering near her, his fists clenching and unclenching in silent rage. “Tyler, can you get me some water while I light a fire?” she asked softly.

“What about Dad!” he hissed. “That wasn't an accident. Ask them about that!”

“Not now I won't. I want us all to get out of this alive. Water.”

Within a couple of hours, a measure of tense co-existence settled on the group. A healthy fire blazed, Ghader's wound had been cleaned and dressed to the best of Amanda's ability with the minimal supplies at her disposal. Some spruce gum and willow leaves had been mixed into a compress and held in place by strips of her thermal undershirt, which she'd decided was marginally cleaner than Old Stink's clothes. Kaylee had been lucky; a bullet had sliced her hip, but the bone had not broken. Amanda washed the wound, applied some spruce gum, and left it to nature.

Hot tea had been dispensed and both Kaylee and the injured man were now asleep by the fire. She knew the reprieve was temporary, for the man's wound looked infected and he might die within a week without proper help.

Fazil sat apart, staring sullenly into the fire as if he too realized this. Amanda moved closer to Mahmoud. “Are those two close friends?”

“Cousins.” He sighed. “We were six who come from Turkey. Now maybe soon only two.”

“Six? What happened to the others?”

“Ship captain promise we go down river to New York, but he lie. Working many weeks on ship at sea. Tired, cold, sick from the sea. At the morning I find my brother dead in his bed. They throw body in the sea, like rat in the night.” He spoke haltingly, supplementing his broken English with vivid hand gestures. “That night we take a lifeboat. One man afraid, his wife drown on little boat, so he stay on the ship, but we go. Four days after, find land, but very big waves.” More hand-waving. “Lifeboat break. Old man have more bigger boat with motor, but so much ocean! No cities! Boat sink, we have to swim to the land. But Fazil's friend not swim.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, rethinking Fazil's rigid stillness. “Then he must be doubly upset.”

“Is okay. Fazil is strong.”

She remembered the sad, desperate stories she and Phil had heard over the years. Stories of both incredible cruelty and resilience. “Tell him we won't let his cousin die. This boat can carry us all, and we will find our way to Croque. It's not a city, but it's a way out.”

Chris Tymko stood in the middle of the logging trail, listening for the distant drone of an ATV. He and Jason Maloney had searched the mystery truck, which was unlocked with the keys left in the ignition, but the only useful clues they had found were a couple of local maps, a brochure of restaurants and accommodations on the northern peninsula, and a ferry schedule. Behind the seats in the cab was a stash of blankets and warm clothes.

If the man was up to something nefarious, there was no sign of it. Nor of him. The woods were silent, except for the crackling static of Jason's police radio as he searched in vain for a signal.

“Worthless piece of shit,” Jason muttered eventually. “What happened to the fancy new system they bragged about, with coordinated coverage all across the island?”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Whoever designed it probably lives in Toronto. Why don't you stay here to keep the truck under surveillance while I go out to the road and see if I can raise a signal?”

Chris had to drive almost a kilometre up the Croque road toward the main highway before the signal was clear enough to call in. This time the comm coordinator must have sensed trouble because she switched to a private frequency and passed him directly to Noseworthy.

“Tymko, what the hell are you playing at?” Noseworthy snapped before Chris could get a word in.

Chris scrambled to regroup. “You mean checking out the unauthorized truck in the search area?”

“No, I mean blabbing confidential material about an active investigation to a reporter. Not just a local part-timer; a major news service! It's all over the goddamn Internet.”

“What is, ma'am?”

“Matthew Goderich. He's leaked the fact Cousins was murdered, even though we haven't even told his widow yet. He's hinted at the fact Cousins was suspicious of a smuggling ring. Possibly people smuggling. Twitter is fucking eating it up!”

Chris was dumbfounded.
Goddamn you, Goderich!
“I … I don't know where he got all that, ma'am.”

“He mentioned an anonymous police source.”

“I never told him a thing!”

“But you talked to him? You two shared a room in Roddickton.”

Chris held his tongue. He didn't even want to speculate how Noseworthy knew about his sleeping arrangements, and he suspected every protest he made merely dug him deeper into the hole. Because he needed the sergeant's co-operation for an even more crucial problem, he plunged ahead.

“He's just speculating, ma'am. But did Helen tell you about the unauthorized intrusion into the search area near Croque?”

Noseworthy was silent a moment. “This isn't over, Corporal.”

“I understand, ma'am. But did she?”

“She did. And I know you also asked her to run a search on the vehicle, while we're juggling reports in and out of the field at a critical phase of the investigation.”

“Well, we found that unauthorized truck hidden in the bush off a logging road. Driver and ATV missing.”

“What do you mean, ‘we'? What the hell are you doing away from your post?”

“Following up the lead, ma'am. Corporal Maloney and I.”

“I didn't authorize you to leave the roadblock, Tymko! What do you think I'm doing here, playing tiddlywinks? We need the perimeter secured!”

“I got Corporal Willington to relieve me.” Chris winced and held his breath. “I tried to clear it with you, but —”

“Corporal, get back to that roadblock!”

“Sergeant, just hear me out. The truck is registered to a seafood company and it's possible they're involved in this whole incident.”

“You're talking about a pickup truck on a logging road with an ATV in back.”

“Yes, which is now missing, along with the driver.”

Noseworthy's voice dropped several octaves. She sounded dangerously calm. “You're not from here, Tymko, so you don't know this is exactly how hunters do things. We bring a truck in as close as we can and then we take the ATV into the bush to get the moose. That seafood company probably owns a hundred trucks, and any one of its employees could have signed it out for his own personal use. You know this is the biggest hunting weekend of the season, don't you?”

“But he was ordered to evacuate the area —”

“And if I'd just bagged an
eight-hundred
-pound bull, I'd have ignored that order too. This is Newfoundland.”

Chris counted to three in his head and forced his shoulders to relax. He knew he was in deep trouble over Goderich and the roadblock, but he needed to find a way to rouse Noseworthy's police instincts. If the woman had any. “Ma'am, I believe it's a lead worth following. In St. Anthony, Phil Cousins was asking the trawler captain about working conditions and workers, but when I got there, the captain wasn't there. He'd apparently driven down to Corner Brook for a replacement part. In what? Maybe a company truck? Meanwhile a body is pulled from the sea and a lifeboat carrying foreigners wrecks on the shore just north of here. Maybe Matthew Goderich's speculations about people smuggling are not that far off the mark.”