“There’s cops coming. I think I’m all right.”
“Who shot you?”
“Angland. He went crazy. Wait, uh, get ahold of the sheriff’s department in Grand Marais…” Tom could hear background commands.
Garrison said, “Tell me where you’re hit.”
“Leg. Below the knee.”
“Is the blood seeping or pumping?”
“No, no, don’t worry. Not that bad. Not that. Look we gotta…” Tom swooned and woke up a second later coughing snow.
“Steady,” said Garrison.
“I’m good. There’s cops. Hey. The tape?”
“The one Angland’s wife made?”
“Right. Listen, we gotta make a trade. Got her killed. It’s not safe for me.”
Garrison talked to somebody, then he came back up. His voice had changed. Closer somehow. Real focused. “We’re in contact with the sheriff’s department in Grand Marais.
Angland assaulted the county sheriff. They say they have a deputy and a state patrolman climbing some trail looking for you and Angland’s wife. They saw the cars and talked to a motel clerk. Wait. They say they heard shots.”
“That’s me, that’s me.” Tom vigorously nodded his head.
“Where’s Angland, Tom? I can patch it through and alert the officers. He’s up there armed, right?”
“Pushed his wife. Went down into this waterfall thing.
He’s not up here now. I think it’s safe.” The two cops were about two hundred yards below him. Tom heaved to his knees and waved.
Garrison was off the line for a moment. Then back. “The cops see somebody above them. A tan parka. If it’s you, wave one hand slowly.”
Tom grinned, raised his right hand with the phone and slowly swung it back and forth. Beauty queen wave.
“Okay,” said Garrison. “They have you. Hang on.”
“I want a trade,” insisted Tom. “I just saw him kill his wife, man. They’ll get me if I give you that tape.” Tom’s voice rose hysterically, a quavering shout that tumbled, echoing against the snow-draped pines. The cops below him reacted, crouched. One of them raised the shotgun.
“Easy, easy,” said Garrison. “We can protect you.”
“Bullshit, you can protect me. This is big. I want to go away. I want a deal.”
There was a moment of silence. “He wants the Program,”
stated Garrison, as if he were inspecting the thought coming from his lips. Words were exchanged in the FBI office far away. Garrison said carefully, “If what you have is good, it can be arranged.”
“No, no. I want it all spelled out. In writing and notarized.
You fuck people all the time in Witness Protection.”
“Calm down, Tom. We’ll take care of you.”
Tom swooned again. “Promise,” he said in a thready voice.
“Absolutely, I promise,” said Garrison.
Tom blinked. The cops were just yards away. One was square, muscular, with a neatly trimmed black mustache.
Same uniform as the county sheriff’s, at Broker’s house. He carried a crackling radio. The other wore highway patrol maroon and had the shotgun. Tom transferred the THE BIG LAW/123
phone to his left hand and grabbed his leg and felt the blood go warm and sticky between his freezing fingers. With a groan he pitched forward. His victorious smile wore a beard of sticky white snow.
Then the county cop was bending over him, turning him, doing something to his leg where it hurt. Cutting his trousers.
Some bandage. The other one squatted with the shotgun, peering into the woods. The first one finished tying on the compress and gently took the cell phone from Tom’s cramped fingers.
“Deputy Torgerson, Cook County,” he said into the phone.
“We have him. Right. Not bad. Flesh wound, left calf, just broke the skin. Shock. No sign of Angland or the woman.
We have backup coming. Thank you much for the assist.”
Tom pawed feebly for the phone. The deputy handed it to him.
“Garrison,” Tom said softly. Dreamily.
“Right here.”
“If I go into Witness Protection can I choose my own name?”
And Lorn Garrison laughed, a discharge of tension. “Well, as long as it’s, you know, ethnically compatible. Can’t be Gomez.” Har. Har.
An idle snowflake landed on the tip of Tom’s nose.
He composed the lead to the biggest story he would never write in his life:
Perfect. A million bucks for seed.
He offered a muffled laugh to the beautiful chaotic snow.
Gomez. That’s funny, Garrison. Then he raised his bloody hand to his mouth and it tasted like the sea and tears and dirty pennies. He licked his lips and smiled.
23
“Pretty. Pretty.” Kit, her choking episode forgotten, jumped on the porch. Her first real snow floated down with indifferent wonder. Cheryl Tromley, the closest neighbor, hovered in the cabin doorway.
“Pretty. Pretty.” Like Caren’s epitaph.
Cheryl had to come over on foot because her car was in the shop. Jeff and Broker rushed through changing the rear tire on Jeff’s Bronco. Keith. Bastard had punctured tires on both their vehicles.
Jeff didn’t have spare manpower; he’d flagged his men to the Kettle. Now he placed and hoisted the jack. Broker cranked off wheel bolts and replaced the spare while a stoic cop voice crackled over the police radio.
“That’s what the wounded guy said. She went in the Kettle.
Angland shoved her.”
Broker compartmentalized, functioned. But he was hearing and seeing through a constricting tunnel. He spin-tightened the wheel bolts. James shot. Caren gone. He and Jeff had misread it. Let it get by them.
Their eyes met. Silently blamed themselves.
And Caren. Gone. Broker blinked. The word formed in his mind:
Stopped. Ended. Dead.
Jeff ratcheted down the tire jack and kicked it away. He slammed Broker’s shoulder. “C’mon, c’mon.” Broker snugged up the bolts, flung the tire wrench and scrambled into the passenger seat.
The cop on the radio kept talking in an eye-of-the-storm Chuck Yeager voice that reminded Broker of the army: Keith had climbed down into the Kettle spillway and clung to the icy rocks next to the pothole. In a bizarre turn, James had been in cell phone contact with the FBI field office in Duluth.
“I told her to come here and I left her out there alone with that idiot James,” said Broker. He trembled at a sudden chill.
“There’s something wrong about that guy.”
“We’ll question him, hold him if I have to,” said Jeff, driving in a controlled fury, wearing steel bracelets that
