Fool's Gold (17 page)

"I think we should take a party back into the bush. We'll use Kinsella's chopper, lift in you and one of my guys and maybe that dog of yours, and see if we can come up with him."
 

"Not much sense going back in tonight, there's only a few hours of daylight left," I said, and Gallagher grinned.

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't want anybody to miss any rest. We'll go in tomorrow first thing. That way we can hear what the quack says about Prudhomme. Could be that the bullet wound didn't kill him." He snorted at that one. "Yeah, I know that's bull roar, but we have to listen to the doctor."
 

"He might be able to tell us how long Prudhomme's been dead," I suggested.

"Don't hold your breath," Gallagher said. He turned and pointed accusingly at the gray corpse on the table. "The only way you can ever assess the time of death is if you know for a fact when he ate his last meal. And we don't know boo-all about this guy except he got laid two weeks ago."
 

"Well, anyway, let's fingerprint the canoe, see if we come up with anything. And after that, we can check those claim numbers and see who registered them," I said. "That will give us some kind of a motive, at least."
 

We left it like that. My chore was to call Montreal and find out whose number was on Prudhomme's list. After that I was nominally free until the next morning, when I would head into the bush with one of Gallagher's men, looking for anybody who was in the area where we'd found Prudhomme. In between there was all the opportunity I needed to hang around Gallagher while he investigated. I wasn't keen to, but I knew I would, even though I'd done what I'd set out to do, however awkwardly. I'd proved that Prudhomme was dead. So I arranged to meet Gallagher at his station later. He nodded without speaking, and I left.
 

Kinsella was out front still, with his nurse, chuckling and talking quietly with her, leaning over the counter as if it were a neighborhood bar. I told him we would be flying to the lake the next morning and to keep us the necessary booking on his machine. He responded with a negligent wave, the kind of hand signal any serviceman would give another when he was making good time with a girl. I didn't wait for anything more formal, but walked out into the pale afternoon sunshine to find a cab back to the motel.
 

Alice was in the office, talking on the telephone. When she saw me she winked and held up one hand to let me know she wouldn't be long. Then she wrapped up the conversation, hung up, and stood to lean over the counter close to me for a kiss. I squeezed her shoulder and said, "Hi."
 

"Hi yourself," she said. "We missed you, didn't we, Sam?" She turned to look down at Sam, who was wagging his tail and looking at me like a kid waiting to be let out of class.
 

"Turn him over to me," I asked, and she did. Sam whisked himself up on top of the counter and down beside me, wagging his tail off. I patted him and fussed him for a minute, then settled him down and straightened up. "I guess you heard what happened."
 

She nodded. "It was all over the town as soon as you reached the hospital. I just hung up from the second person to call me. What's it all about, anyway?"
 

"I'm still not sure, but the thing is, I'm going again tomorrow morning to look for whoever's out there. In the meantime I have a call to make and then I have to go down the station again for a while. After that I'm all yours to work your wicked way with."
 

She grinned, but not so widely as I would have liked.

"What's up?" I asked. "You look like I just disappointed you."

"No. I'm glad you're here overnight. I'm just not crazy about your going up there tomorrow. There's some nut out there with a gun. He could shoot you before you even saw him."
 

"Not with Sam along," I promised. "Come on now. I've been shot at before, they always miss."

She bit the tip of her left thumb, not looking at me. "Men," she said at last. "You're a bunch of damn kids. You're off to play cowboys and Indians while I sit here waiting."
 

"I've told you, don't worry. The whole thing's probably an accident. Somebody's gun went off by mistake. They hit Prudhomme and we found him. Meanwhile they're only concerned with getting a fire going and waiting until we show up to rescue them."
 

She wasn't convinced, so I changed the subject, and just because I'm a longtime policeman, I asked her about the guests registered. I wondered if any of them might be out of the ordinary run, maybe far enough out of it that they had brought a rifle up here to take out Jim Prudhomme for keeps.
 

She wasn't eager to play but she did go through the list. A couple of guys were here for the first time, including the one from Buffalo I had seen the night before. But there was nothing concrete, so I went down to my room and called Montreal. I reached the station, only to find that the man I wanted was off duty. That figured, but I pushed my luck and asked for his phone number. Maybe it was because I spoke French, but the policewoman at the desk took my number and offered to call the man and have him call me. I poured myself a smash of my Black Velvet and lay back, wondering how I was going to break the news to Carol Prudhomme.
 

Normally you don't phone news of a death. You call the local police and have them send someone around. It's painful for them as they stand there twisting their cap in their hands, but it prevents the person at the other end from thinking she's being fooled by somebody with a Halloween sense of humor. The difference this time was that Carol already considered herself a widow. I thought about that as I sipped on my rye. On the night I'd seen her playing cozy with Henri Laval I'd wondered whether Prudhomme might have disappeared because of her affair. Maybe they'd set it up between them so she could have his company life insurance and he could get a fresh start. She had acted jumpy enough to ring a little guilty to me. And if she was, she was going to be startled to find herself widowed for real.
 

I compromised by phoning my ex-wife. After all, it was her fault I was up here in the first place. She was closer to Carol than I had ever been or would ever be. I reached her in her office. She sounded brisk and businesslike, probably taking me for a client. "Amy Bennett."
 

"Hi, Amy, it's Reid, how are you?"

Give her marks for couth. She still didn't treat me badly. She hated the work I do but she wasn't bitchy to me. She was as polite to me as to a stranger. What more can you ask?
 

"What's going on? Are you still in Olympia?"

I filled her in, not painting any pictures, just playing out the facts like a man dealing the cards for solitaire. She listened, as she always listens, and asked the practical question. "What can I do?"
 

"I'd like you to call her and break the news. I figure she thinks I'm a bit of a heavy. The news is bad enough without coming from somebody you don't like."
 

She agreed, and we talked a minute or two more and I gave her my phone number in case there was anything Carol wanted me to do, and she hung up.
 

Almost at once the phone rang again. This time it was my drinking-buddy copper from Montreal. He was at home, cooking the dinner for his kids while his wife had her hair done, he explained, but what could he do to help? I gave him the telephone number to check and he did it while I waited, just by digging into the phone book. "
Oui
, 'enri Laval, like you say. In the book like 'e got nothing to 'ide," he told me. There wasn't anything else so I thanked him and hung up and sat there for a while, finishing my drink and thinking about going on patrol again the next day, out in the boonies looking for a man with a gun. It would be like Viet Nam, all over again.
 

 

 

 

14

 

 

I called the station and found out that Gallagher was down there. Because it was daylight and Alice didn't need the support, I took Sam with me. He's too well trained to show much emotion, but he was glad enough to be with me again that he sat up straight in the front seat instead of snoozing as he usually does when I drive with him in the car. I reached over and fussed him with one hand as I drove. He's a good buddy and he was going to save me a lot of wasted motion in the morning when he went with me into the bush.
 

He came with me into the police station, pacing quietly, his standard six inches behind my left heel. I guess Gallagher's clerk was a little house-proud about station cleanliness. She tutted when he came in but didn't say anything. I just waved at her. "The boss in?"
 

"Out back, in his office," she said briskly and went on typing as if Sam were a mirage and she didn't want to admit to seeing it.
 

I lifted the counter flap and walked down the short corridor. Gallagher was hanging up the phone. "Hi. D'you get anything from Montreal?"
 

"Yeah, that's Laval's home number on Prudhomme's list. Any luck tracing the others?"

Gallagher got up and came over to pat Sam, who stood for it patiently. "I gotta get myself a dog," he said. "Not as fancy as this guy. Just something that'll be glad to see me when I get home. Even if it's just because I feed it."
 

"Should I get out my violin?" I ribbed, and he scowled and straightened up.

"Smart-ass. You youngsters are all the goddamn same." He sat down again and picked up his notebook. "I checked the other numbers, came up with some surprises," he told me, referring to his list. "The first belongs to a woman in Thunder Bay who has the same last name as everybody's favorite animal stuffer. Sallinon."
 

I whistled. "Now there's the kind of coincidence that makes coppers get suspicious."

"Right." Gallagher nodded grimly. "As soon as I've cleaned up a few things here, I'm heading up to see him. In the meantime, I'd like to track down Laval and have someone we trust have a word with him. You think you could talk to your contact again?"
 

"I can ask him. He's a bit of a loser, but I made friends with him the other night; he'd do it. What's on your mind?

"I'd like to ask Laval why Prudhomme had his phone number in his possession," Gallagher said. "I mean, he wasn't alive anymore, not officially. He was supposed to be this Wagoner guy, but he still had Laval's number. They were still in contact. That means to me that Laval knew he was alive. I want to lean on the sonofabitch a little. He might just open up for us."
 

"I doubt it. He's a lawyer, he knows all the reasons there are for not saying anything. He's also slick as a whistle, he isn't likely to bend because some detective comes knocking on his door."
 

"Well, let's try it anyway." Gallagher rubbed his face thoughtfully. "Looks to me like he's in this up to his armpits, it wouldn't hurt to stir him up and see what comes of it."
 

"All right, I'll call my man. What else is there?"

Gallagher sucked his teeth. "Not a lot until the claim office opens on Monday and I can get a man in there to start looking up those numbers. That may give us a lead to the company that's registered them and we can chase up the members and see what their tie-in with Prudhomme could be."
 

"Well, if it was somebody from town who shot Prudhomme in the back, he'd have needed a flight into the area. We could check on that."
 

"I'm ahead of you there," Gallagher said. He fumbled in his in-basket and pulled out a sheet of paper. "I've talked to all the chopper companies in the area. None of them flew anybody into the bush yesterday. Or"—he waved one hand brusquely—"make that none of them flew any strangers anywhere near where you found the body."
 

"From what I saw of the terrain, he'd have needed a chopper to get in there that quick," I said. "It's a good thirty miles away and the river's got some rapids on it, so he couldn't have taken a powerboat in. He'd have needed a canoe, and then needed to portage about three miles through the bush. That's a solid day's traveling, even if he had an outboard on his canoe and even if he was used to lugging it over a portage."
 

"That's what I figured," Gallagher agreed. He made a face and rolled his chewing gum between his front teeth and threw it away. "This stuff doesn't keep its flavor like it used to when I was a kid," he complained, and took out a fresh stick. He stuck it in his mouth, then swung his feet up on his desk luxuriously.
 

"So that's another suggestion that's not going to help us," I said, and he nodded. We looked at one another for a while, realizing the case wasn't going to solve itself just because we'd proved we were right about Prudhomme. Finally I asked him, "Okay, so what did you learn about those other phone numbers?"
 

"Ver-r-ry interesting," Gallagher allowed. "Three of the others are pay phones. One of them is in Thunder Bay, another is in Timmins, and the third one is in the Soo."
 

"Anything in common about the locations?" It was the kind of question you ask without having any particular reason, just trying to narrow the focus of your search. But he had an answer for me.
 

"Yeah. They're all in the bus station lobbies, all three of them."

"Well, maybe he had a schedule, maybe he called people there at certain times. A guy could come into town, walk into the bus terminal all casual and wait around the phone box at set times. Then when the phone went, he stepped in and the contact was made."
 

"That's the way it looks to me," Gallagher admitted. "Only I was wondering why he'd have three towns so far apart, and why he wouldn't have a more personal number for these guys. I mean, who doesn't have a telephone? Everybody does. And there's no check on incoming calls, we couldn't trace where a call was coming from, not like if a guy dialed out and had the number on the phone company record. Why would he go to this kind of trouble?"