In the Shadow of the Glacier (38 page)

“No one’s going to pinch your truck, Duncan. And if they try, well they can’t get far, can they?”

The headlights were still on. Although they pointed straight ahead they shone a bit of light behind the truck, reflecting off beads of sweat that dotted Duncan’s forehead and upper lip.

“Why don’t we check it out anyway,” she said, reaching for the cover over the truck bed. “Can’t hurt.”

“Don’t touch that.”

This was getting seriously weird. “Why not? Don’t you want to see a cop in action? Let me have a peek and I’ll let you watch me play with my gun.”

His face slackened, and his pale tongue touched his lower lip, like a reptile taking scent of its surroundings. His grip relaxed, and she tore the cover back from the truck bed. All she could see was a jumble of bicycle wheels.

Understanding washed over her. Trips to Vancouver, the expensive truck, confrontation with Derochiers. “Duncan,” she said, “what have you been doing?”

“It’s none of your business, Molly. Forget you saw this. You’re off duty, right?”

“You’re snatching bikes when I’m about to come by. You’re playing me as if I’m some kind of musical instrument. You think I can forget this? Go to hell.” She headed for the passenger seat and her bag and cell phone.

He hit her, hard. She grabbed the door handle, missed and went down.

“God,” he said, “you are so hot.” He dropped to his knees and stuck his hand up her shirt. Clammy hands groped for a breast. “I want you, Molly, so much.”

She threw an awkward, backward punch into his stomach. He released her with a cry and she jumped to her feet. He stood. His breathing was deep.

“Give it up, Duncan. I’ve got you for theft. Don’t add assault to the charges. I’m going to get my bag and my phone and make a call, okay?”

“I’m sorry I touched you. Let’s forget about it. Look, the only reason I’ve hung around Trafalgar is you, Molly. I don’t make squat at your parents’ store, and the tips from the fat middle-aged women I take out on the river are a joke. I need extra cash, and figured if I pinched some bikes, you and I could have fun at the same time. It wasn’t my fault, you know, that I got kicked off the university football team, things just got a little out of hand, but after he got the charges dropped my prick of a dad cut me right off. Why don’t you call CAA, and we’ll both wait here. How’s that sound?”

“I’m not going to forget I saw those bikes, and I really don’t care how hard done by you are. Back off, Duncan. Do it!”

He took a step backward. The road fell sharply away into a ditch clogged with dead branches and knee-high weeds. She kept one eye on him and reached onto the floor of the truck for her shoulder bag. She couldn’t find it by feeling around, and had to turn her eyes away. As she touched the bag, he grabbed her ankle and pulled. She tumbled out of the truck, fingers holding nothing.

Her face slammed into the side of the truck. “You will not call the cops on me, Molly. I’m sorry I tried to kiss you. I won’t do that again, promise.” He held his hand on the back of her head. “I’m going to let go, okay? You can sit up and we can talk.” The pressure eased. A branch broke under Duncan’s foot.

Smith turned around. “Let me make the call, Duncan. You don’t have a record, do you? You said your dad got charges dropped?” What those charges were for, she could guess. Football team, things getting “a little out of hand.” Dad intervening to make it all right.

Duncan shook his head. The moon was rising over the tops of the forest behind him. “A few small charges, but I’ve never been convicted of anything.”

So good old Dad had finally had enough, and cut his son adrift. “Then you’re looking at a short sentence,” she said, “maybe not even that. They might give you probation if my mom testifies that you have a good job. But you assault a police officer, or restrain her, and that’s a whole other story.”

“You’re not a police officer now, Molly. You’re my girlfriend.”

She swallowed her indignation at the idea that he figured he could get away with beating her up because tonight she was his date. “You know I’m a cop. Makes all the difference.”

A car approached, illuminating his face. Then the light was gone. How could she ever have considered sleeping with him?

She stood up, keeping her back against the warm metal of the vehicle. “I’m reaching into the truck, Duncan. I’m getting my phone and calling for help. You let me do that, and I won’t tell them that you hit me and groped me.” She lied without a qualm. “Bike theft’s nothing. You’ll probably get probation.”
Not if I have anything to say about it.

She’d seen her bag, half under the seat. She kept her eyes on Duncan while her fingers felt for it.

He fell to his haunches. “They won’t find out about that guy, will they, Molly?”

“What guy?” She wrapped the strap of the bag around her hand.

“I just punched him. I didn’t even know he was dead till I heard about it on the radio the next day.”

“Oh, fuck. You’re telling me you killed Montgomery.”

Duncan straightened up with such speed she wasn’t ready. He knocked her backward into the truck and threw the weight of his body onto hers. He pressed something into her throat. For a moment she thought it was a knife, but it was only the broken end of a branch in his hand.

He stepped back, the branch against her throat. With one hand he unfastened his belt. “I didn’t actually kill him,” he said. “He had a heart attack or something.”

Duncan hadn’t noticed Montgomery’s brains leaking out of his skull?

“I don’t want to hurt you, Molly. I’m going to leave you here and go. I can snatch a car and be across the border in half an hour. Turn around.” He grabbed her arm and flipped her. Her face smashed into the hard metal of the truck.

She spat blood. Keep them talking, that’s what she’d learned in police college. “Tell me about Montgomery. It was a clean killing, but we thought it was an accident.”

“Jerk saw me snatching a bike. He wanted me to, like, put it back. As if.” He pulled at her bag and the strap broke. “You won’t be needing this.” She heard it crash into the undergrowth. He pulled her arms behind her and wrapped one end of his belt around her left wrist.

Another car. It slowed down, and she could see the driver checking them out. Then he pressed the gas and drove away. They must look like nothing but a couple who couldn’t wait long enough to get to a motel and were having a quickie up against the truck.

“I started to leave, but he pulled out a phone. He was gonna call the cops. I couldn’t have that, so I put the bike up against the wall, said he could have it, started to walk away. Then I turned and punched him good. Too damned stupid to go down, he grabbed at my head. So I hit him again. He was dumb to keep fighting, wasn’t he?”

“The dumbest. Why’d you stop him? I was the beat cop that night, I’m guessing you knew that. I’d have been the one on the scene.”

“I wasn’t ready to end our game, Molly. We were still having fun.”

Yeah, great fun
. “What’d you hit him with? We’ve been looking everywhere for the weapon.”

Duncan chuckled. “I had a propane cylinder in my pack that I needed to fill. I’d just gotten off a trip.”

“Clever.”

“I’d like you to come with me, Molly. But I guess that’s too much to ask.” He looped the belt over her other wrist.

“Too fuckin’ right.” She drove the stiletto-sharp point of her four-inch heel into his groin.

He screamed like a vampire in the night woods, and his grip collapsed. She whirled around, shaking her arms, trying to get that belt off. He hadn’t tied a knot yet, so it fell away. She grabbed one end and swung the length of leather at Duncan’s head. The impact was as loud as a gunshot. A line of red burst across his face as if she’d drawn on it with a fat crayon.

“You bitch,” he said. She swung the belt again, aiming for an eye. He ducked and she staggered toward the ditch.

Duncan ran.

Smith recovered her footing and took off after him, holding the belt as a weapon. But she wasn’t in police boots. The thin heel of one sandal broke, almost taking her to her knees. She staggered to a halt and kicked off the shoes. She ran on, barefoot.

Pain sliced through her feet. She concentrated on taking deep, cleansing breaths, reaching inside for something to push the pain aside, to keep her moving. But she knew that she’d soon fall to her knees.

“Don’t be a fool, Duncan. You can’t get away. Don’t make it worse.” If he went into the woods, she’d not be able to follow, not without shoes.

Duncan turned but kept running backward. River to one side, mountain to the other, ahead of him the highway took a sharp turn. “Think of me, Molly,” he yelled. “Because someday soon I’ll be coming back for you.”

Lights found the leaves and branches of the tall pines. Yellow eyes blinked in the undergrowth. A car was turning into the corner.

Smith yelled, “Look out!”

Brakes screamed. A cry. A dull thud.

An SUV heading out of town had struck Duncan full on. He crumpled to the roadway like an overcooked gingerbread man.

The driver tumbled out of her vehicle. “Oh, my god. He came out of nowhere. He was just there. I couldn’t stop in time.”

Smith fell to the pavement. She touched Duncan’s neck. “Trafalgar City Police,” she yelled. “Do you have a phone on you?”

“Yes.”

“Call 911. Fast.”

Chapter Thirty-two

This was one depressing book. Molly Smith tossed it on the table. Right now she did not want to be reading about the collapse of civilizations. Her mother had settled her into a chair in the family room, with a cup of fair-trade tea, oversized oatmeal cookies from Rosemary’s Campfire Kitchen, a pile of political magazines, and this book. Lucky had arranged music on the CD player, and the lush, romantic vocals of Il Divo washed over the room.

Constable Smith was not in a lush, romantic mood.

Her face ached, and she hadn’t dared look at herself in a mirror. Her heavily bandaged feet were propped up on the ottoman. Sylvester was curled up on the rug by her chair, snoring. His legs moved now and again, and she wondered if he were dreaming. Hopefully his dreams were better than hers had been of late. Dreams in which she’d been having sex with Duncan, locked to him, gasping with orgasm, staring up at him, as his eyes dripped blood.

Some cop she was—ready and willing to have sex with the perp in her first murder investigation. First and, probably, her last. She’d misjudged this one so badly, she didn’t know if she wanted to ever make detective.

“That was Christa,” Lucky said from the doorway. Smith reached for the phone on the table.

“I’m sorry, dear, but she didn’t want to talk to you. She called to let me know that she’s back home.”

“She blames me. She thinks I should have protected her.”

“She has to blame someone. Perhaps when Charlie comes to trial she’ll turn her anger on him, where it belongs, and realize that you couldn’t wrap her in cotton wool.”

Smith turned the page of her book to avoid her mother’s eyes. Christa might forgive her, but she herself didn’t know if she’d ever be able to.

The doorbell rang, and Sylvester ran to answer it, barking greetings. Lucky didn’t move. Anyone known to the family was welcome to ring and walk right in.

The bell again.

“I’d better see who that is,” Lucky said.

“Company,” she trilled a moment later, sounding as unlike Smith’s mother as if her body had been taken over by aliens.

Sergeant Winters stood in the doorway. Lucky plucked a bunch of peach roses out of his arms. “I’ll put these in water,” she said.

“Step into my office.” Smith made a wide sweep of her arms.

A smile touched the edges of his mouth. “Perhaps I will.” He glanced at Andy’s well-used recliner and settled for an arm-chair covered in plaid fabric.

Sylvester wandered over looking for a scratch. He was to be disappointed.

“How are the feet?” Winters said.

“Ready for replacements. I don’t quite remember all the ER doc told me she found in there. Twigs, pebbles for sure. Ground glass, car oil. Animal poop, that was charming. Thanks for the flowers.”

“My wife told me to bring them.”

“Thanks to your wife then.”

“You did good out there, Constable Smith. Very good.”

“Then why do I feel like a total jackass?”

“We’ve all been fooled at one time or another by someone who pretends to be better than they are.” A shadow crossed behind his eyes, and Smith looked away. She felt marginally better. “We located the family and they’re making arrangements to receive the body. Duncan’s father’s a provincial court judge in New Brunswick. He told me that he hadn’t spoken to his son in some time.”

Lucky returned, the roses arranged in a plastic vase. “Andy had to go into the store. With Duncan—” she stopped and took a deep breath— “gone, he has to find a good tour guide fast.”

“What about the investigation?” Smith asked.

“We found a propane canister in Duncan’s apartment. The lab found traces of blood on it. It’s been sent for comparison with Montgomery, along with a sample of Duncan’s hair to be compared with the ones found in Montgomery’s hand. But it’s looking conclusive—Montgomery’s wallet and cell phone had been wiped, but he missed a partial. The print matches Weaver.”

He cleared his throat, and his glance slid past her eyes to focus on the wall. “I hate to tell you this, Molly, but there were pictures in his apartment. Of you. All over the walls, the screen saver on his computer. The ceiling over his bed.”

A cold finger touched her spine. “Oh, no.”

“Nothing improper, don’t worry about that. You’re in uniform in all of them, around town, on duty, lining up for coffee, visiting your parents in the store, in a cruiser.”