Thin Ice (29 page)

Smith peered through the beam from his headlights and searched the gatepost for the number he was looking for, finding it in the sudden illumination of a lightning flash. He drove through the open gate as an earsplitting bang announced that the storm was directly overhead. As he followed the wandering driveway, he watched for falling trees as windswept branches slapped at the windshield and jammed the wiper blades. A few seconds later another bolt of lightning lit a clearing up ahead, where the outline of a large house burned itself into his mind before fading into the jet black that followed. His heart stuck in his throat as his headlights lit up Marshall's car in front of the house, next to Melissa's BMW. He stopped the car and shut off the ignition as he scanned the house for signs of life, checking his watch and realizing backup was still ten minutes away. He ignored the dire warnings Beaudoin had uttered on the phone when he had called in for help. He knew he couldn't wait and he was facing severe disciplinary measures anyway, his career being the least of his concerns right now. He still didn't know — and Beaudoin didn't either — why Marshall had decided to call on McAdam, but the midnight-blue BMW in the driveway could only mean that Quinn McAdam knew Smith was onto him, and now Marshall was in there with him.

Smith checked his Glock 10 and got out of the car, approaching the picture window at the front of the house from the side. He peered through the glass as an enormous fork of lightning lit the sky like a torch, and he saw clearly into the empty living room. The thunderclap was a second later this time, so loud as to shake the ground as Smith moved to the front door and tried the handle, finding it locked. He thought he heard a voice from inside, but the sound of the storm around him drowned out any remaining echo. As he strained to listen for confirmation, he moved around the side of the house to the patio. He tried the door and breathed a sigh of relief as it slid open. Stepping inside, his sidearm raised, he scanned the dimly lit kitchen and adjusted to the relative silence. He was about to move on when he heard a dull knocking from around the corner. He followed the sound to a hallway at the other end of the kitchen that led toward the garage. But as he passed another door off the hallway, he froze at the sound of a muffled voice on the other side. He readied himself with the gun in one hand as he flipped off the latch on the door with the other and whipped it open. Slumped on the floor in the near corner of the wine cellar, with her hands behind her back, Melissa looked up at him, her eyes wide with fear and her mouth covered in duct tape.

“Melissa?” He ripped the tape off her mouth and put a hand on her shoulder as he bent down to look at her, noticing a small cut over her right eye. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “It's Dad. He's …”

“He did this?”

“He … went crazy. I told him…. Oh my God!”

“Where's Marshall?”

“He's got him. He saw your car and he put me in here and … he said it was for my own good.”

“Are they in the house?” Smith looked instinctively behind him, then pulled at the tape holding her hands together.

She shook her head as the tape ripped and her hands were freed. “I heard them go out the back. I think they're going to the boathouse. It's down at the river, a hundred metres.”

“Look at me,” he said, taking her by the hand. “Backup will be here any minute. I want you to go out front and wait for them.”

“I want to go with —”

“No, you need to wait out front, and tell them where I've gone, and that your dad has Marshall. Are you clear?”

She swallowed hard, then looked up at him and nodded. “He's got a gun. I didn't even know he had one…. Be careful.”

Smith helped her up and pointed her toward the front door, then slipped back out through the patio door into the yard.

Smith ran through the driving rain, down the rolling lawn toward the water, finding the start of a crushed stone path in the glare of a bolt of lightning. He took the path and headed downriver for a couple of hundred feet, and as he neared the end of the path and made out a structure in the distance, he thought he heard the cough of a motor, muffled by a roll of thunder. He waited by a large tree for the next bolt of lightning, which lit the boathouse a few seconds later, fifty feet across a clearing in the trees. He waited and used the cover of thunder to drown out the sound of his footsteps on the gravel as he reached the rear door. He peered inside and saw McAdam standing at the controls of a large powerboat. Marshall was seated on the bench beside him with McAdam's gun trained on him.

McAdam turned to face the door, but kept the gun pointed at Marshall. “I guess we're not going anywhere, after all,” he said, his voice echoing in the rafters of the boathouse, which seemed eerily quiet compared to outside in the storm. “You can come on in, Detective Smith.”

Smith stepped through the door with his weapon raised.

“Put the gun down, McAdam.”

“So you can shoot me? I don't think so. You put yours down, or I'll put a hole in your partner.”

“It's all over. Half the police force is on its way. You all right, Marsh?”

“I'm fine,” Marshall called out, looking at Smith, then back at McAdam and the gun still trained on him. “Just take it easy, both of you.”

“I didn't think he'd cleaned out the fuel lines yet.” McAdam laughed, pointing to the open engine cover at the stern of the boat. “The neighbour's kid. I pay him to help out around the house. The one time he shows some initiative and does something on his own, and look where it gets me.”

Smith took a few steps closer. “Let's talk about this, Quinn.”

“Quinn now, is it?”

“We don't want to make matters worse here.”

“Like they're not completely fucked up already? Why couldn't you just leave well enough alone? You had Saunders. Only reason he didn't do it himself was he didn't have the balls. How'd you find out, anyway?”

“The birth mother.”

McAdam looked puzzled.

“But as you know by now, Curtis's adoptive parents fudged his birthday by a year, putting him in an unusual situation.”

“Of walking out the fucking door,” McAdam said. “He was gonna go to Toronto, can you fucking believe that? The little bastard was nothing but trouble.”

“I'm sure you were under a lot of pressure,” Smith said, as he thought he heard the distinctive crush of gravel under thick boots outside. He knew they were running out of time. “Mitigating factors that the Crown will take into account.”

“I don't think so,” McAdam said, adjusting his grip on the gun. Smith put a little more pressure on the trigger of his own weapon and tensed as he prepared to fire. McAdam glanced toward the house. “Tell Melissa I'm sorry.”

Smith yelled out as McAdam raised the gun under his chin and a shot rang out. A second later, McAdam's considerable bulk pitched back and fell over the rail of the boat, into the water inside the boathouse. Smith ran to join Marshall as he looked over the rail, watching as McAdam's body floated up to the surface, the water around his head a darker shade than the rest.

“We're all clear,” Smith said, turning to face the tactical team that had just entered the boathouse, weapons drawn. “The perp's down. We need a paramedic, and probably the coroner.”

He turned back to Marshall and ripped the tape holding his partner's hands together. “You sure you're okay?”

He nodded. “Thanks, buddy.”

“For what?” he said, looking down at McAdam's body being dragged out of the water onto the dock. “If it wasn't for me, McAdam would be in a cell right now.” He patted Marshall on the back and jumped down onto the dock to begin the walk back up to the house, where he would have to tell Melissa her father was dead.

Smith sat at the bar, nursing the last of his beer and debating another. It's not like there was anyone waiting for him, he thought, as he spotted the passing waitress. He decided to let her make the call for him, and when she smiled his way and pointed to his glass, he nodded.

He glanced at the television over the bar and noticed the banner above two sports talking heads whose banter was drowned out by the music and noise inside the bar: “Raftsmen to Rebuild.” Smith let out a grim chuckle at the suggestion that they had any choice in the matter. In the days following Quinn McAdam's death, Smith had found himself in the unusual situation of following media reports of what was going on, his forced leave preventing him access to frontline information. Marshall had kept in touch and given him the big ticket items, but as a private citizen he was puzzled and even amused by the wide range of conspiracy theories that had arisen as word got out that the Raftsmen's GM was dead. First it was a cop that had killed him, then a deranged fan. Smith eventually started tuning out conversations he overheard in bars or at the supermarket — reality was quite enough to deal with.

On that front, Beaudoin had resisted calls for Smith's immediate dismissal from the force, when the news of his affair with Melissa became more widely known. It still wasn't public, as far as he knew, but it was only a matter of time before a reporter found out. It was just too juicy to stay buried for long. With Tom Saunders still threatening a wrongful prosecution case, as well, Smith considered himself fortunate to be on paid leave while they figured out what to do with him. He had solved the case, after all, but there was the matter of his being instrumental in arresting the wrong man for the crime first, all while he was sleeping with the daughter of the murderer. Any way you sliced it, it wasn't good, but that's not what bothered Smith as he sat there waiting for a fresh beer. It was the look on Melissa's face when he had returned to her father's house on that rainy night and told her what she already knew. It was only then that he realized how badly his own judgment had failed him.

The last word from Marshall was that the Crown didn't want to proceed with obstruction charges against Melissa, and Smith hoped it stayed that way. She hadn't told him everything, it was true, but her failure paled next to his own. He imagined she would leave town and try to set herself up somewhere else, and he wished her well.

Lisa had offered to represent him in his upcoming hearing, and while he was grateful for her support, he knew she offered it only as a friend. He realized that any chance of there being more than friendship between them had passed and he was resigned to the fact, at least most days.

As he looked back at the television screen and an image of James Cormier, his thoughts turned to the owner's recent pledge to challenge the trades McAdam had made for Ritchie in the courts. Whether he would succeed or not was another thing, but the game would go on and the fans would still come out every winter. He thought of Bob and Joan Ritchie, and wondered if they ever would have imagined the series of events their little deception could have set in motion. Marshall had told him that a search of hospital and adoption records had confirmed that Curtis Ritchie had indeed been born Curtis Riggs, and that Joan Ritchie had done a good job of making the adjustment of his birth certificate virtually untraceable. In the end, it hadn't mattered. It was clear in piecing together the events of August and September that Curtis was on a collision course with just about everyone of importance in the Raftsmen organization, and he must have been as surprised as anyone to learn — unwittingly, via his birth mother — that his adoptive parents had given him an excuse to walk away. He could have worked it out with McAdam or Cormier, or even made a move to a team in another division. But his threat to go to Toronto seemed spiteful and, in the end, it had been too much for Quinn McAdam — even worse than Ritchie sleeping with his daughter. Now Ritchie was dead, along with McAdam and Riggs. It all seemed so pointless.

As for his own future, Smith sensed he was at a crossroads. He knew he could ride out whatever disciplinary storm was coming, but he wondered whether he had lost sight of what was important somewhere along the way. As the waitress arrived to deposit the beer, he smiled and took a sip, patting his jacket pocket again, feeling for the hastily scrawled resignation letter that had been there all day.

I would like to thank the team at Dundurn for their hard work and support, especially my editor, Allison Hirst, for improving the manuscript (and rescuing me from the slush pile), and Allister Thompson for championing the book. I am grateful to Ken Warren and Stuart Konyer for taking the time to read the manuscript and providing guidance and suggestions, whether on the ins and outs of rookie contracts and media relations (Ken) or the principles of criminal procedure (Stu). Any remaining errors are my own. Thanks also to Sergeant Dan Berrea of the Ottawa Police Service for showing me around the Elgin Street station and to Dr. Greg Brown for his help with all things medical. My friend and former colleague David Jacques also reviewed an early draft and provided comments and lots of encouragement along the way. Special thanks to Kate for her work on the website and all things technological (you rock!), and to Ben for making me laugh.

Most of all, thanks to Tanya — always my first reader and number one supporter in all the ways that matter.

Go Wildcats! Go Raiders!