A Stolen Season

Chapter Two

Two months earlier, a fine day in May, the snow finally gone and spring officially in the air. You could feel it. That was her last day in Blind River, as we packed up the old house forever.

There weren’t a lot of happy memories there, but it was the only home she ever knew. It was the very same house I had found my way to on a cold and snowless New Year’s Eve, five months before, driving up across the International Bridge and following the shore of the North Channel until I finally arrived in this little town. An old logging town with a statue of two men hooking logs in the water. I came that night with a lump in my throat and no clear idea of what I was doing, or if this woman would have any interest in seeing me on her doorstep.

Natalie was her name. Natalie Reynaud.

She was a police officer, a member of the Ontario Provincial Police Force. I had met her when I had come up to northern Ontario with Vinnie, to look for his brother. The results of that search were tragic for everyone involved, Natalie included. She did the one thing that no cop is ever supposed to do. She walked away from a case while they buried her partner.

It doesn’t matter what the circumstances might be. Who’s at fault. What you could or couldn’t have done. Your partner’s life is your greatest responsibility as a cop. If he ends up dead, you failed. Simple as that.

I knew this myself. I knew it all too well. On a different police force in a different country, in a different time. Back in 1984, in Detroit, just before crack cocaine made its big debut, when the auto industry was still in a severe slump, the local economy in ruins, when the summer days were too hot and the nights gave no relief. My partner Franklin and I, responding to a simple nuisance call, an emotionally disturbed man who was bothering everyone at the hospital, hiding behind the plants in the emergency room. We found his apartment on Woodward Avenue, sat down with him at his kitchen table, tried to talk to him man to man. The aluminum foil all over the walls, that was our first clue he had precious little connection to the planet Earth.

He had the gun taped to the underside of the table. An Uzi automatic with a. 22-caliber conversion kit, retrieved from the Dumpster in his alley. A minute, maybe two, an eternity as we tried to talk some sense into him. Rehearsing my draw in my head, over and over, waiting for the right moment to shoot him in the chest.

He shot Franklin first. Then me. The purr of the automatic weapon, no louder than a sewing machine. Both of us on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. No aluminum foil on the ceiling. I remember that.

Franklin dying next to me, the light going out in his eyes. The hospital, the recovery. Three bullets in my body, the shoulder, the top of the lung, the cavity behind the heart.

The bullet behind my heart still there. It was too dangerous to try to take it out. Whenever I think about it now, it’s a constant reminder of my failure that night. Franklin is in the ground, a wife and a daughter left behind. I walked away from the force and right into a liquor bottle. It’s not a terribly original story, and certainly not something I’m proud of. On top of that, I developed a preoccupation with painkillers. To this day I’ll still get little cravings for that codeine buzz. The warm embrace that makes you feel like nothing can ever hurt you.

It took a long time for me to be myself again. Or at least something resembling a real human being. I came up here to Paradise to sell off my father’s cabins, this lonely place at the mercy of a cold inland sea. The desolation, it somehow felt like home to me. I’ve been here ever since.

The years passed, each one much like the last. I rented out the cabins to people from downstate. Tourists in the summer, hunters in the fall, snowmobilers in the winter. I chopped wood and kept the cabins clean. That plus the disability checks from the Detroit Police Force, it was enough to live on. I spent my evenings at the Glasgow Inn.

That all changed when I got talked into being a private investigator. Trying it on for size, anyway. As an ex-cop, I was qualified in the state of Michigan. I tried it, it blew up in my face, and it’s been one trouble after the next ever since.

Until Natalie.

The first time I saw her, she was jumping out of a moving float-plane as it came in to dock. One simple movement and I could see that this woman was an athlete. It turned out she was a hockey player back in college. A hockey player who led her team in penalty minutes-that summed her up pretty well right there.

She has green eyes. She has a little scar on her chin. What hockey player doesn’t have scars? She has brown hair, and she usually has it tied up. When she reaches up to unpin it and it falls down to her shoulders…Well, let’s just say the image stays with me for a while.

She was a good cop until her partner was killed. Then she took a leave of absence. At the time, I felt like maybe I was the only person in the world who could understand exactly what she was going through. Which is why I showed up at her house on New Year’s Eve with a bottle of champagne in my hand.

It was cold outside. Neither of us wanted to be alone. We ended up on the floor of her guest bedroom. That was the beginning.

Things happened after that. Her own past caught up to her, much as mine had. When we finally got through it, it was like we had more in common than ever. I was starting to imagine what it would be like to spend the rest of my life with her. A miracle in itself, that I’d even think that. But then it came time for her to make a choice.

It was time for her to decide if she was ever going to go back to being a cop.

Her commanding officer was a man named Henry Moreland. He was a staff sergeant in the Ontario Provincial Police, stationed up in Hearst. He was the one who sent her out on leave, and now he was the one who was asking her to come back. He believed very strongly that if she didn’t do it soon, it would never happen. That if she waited too long, she’d never again be the kind of person who could wear that badge.

Staff Sergeant Moreland and I had had our differences: he seemed to think I was at least partly responsible for all the trouble Natalie had been through. But this was one thing we could agree on. I knew he was right in this case. Even more, I knew the cost of not going back. I didn’t want it to happen to Natalie. I didn’t want her to lose that part of her life forever, and to always wonder if she should have tried to be a cop again.

I wanted her to go back. I hated the thought of her going away, of not knowing how long I’d have to wait to see her again. I hated it, but God help me, I told her to go. I told her to go.

So one more trip out to Blind River, to help her finally close up the house for good. The place was sold. A few last boxes to load up, then she’d say goodbye to it forever.

We went back upstairs one more time, to the room where we first spent the night together. The room was empty now, a sad, late afternoon light streaming through the window. We lay on the floor, just like the first time. But the air wasn’t cold now. We weren’t feeling desperate and lost, and unsure of what we were doing.

It was slow this time. A couple of hours later, we went outside and looked around the place one more time. We didn’t go into the barn. There weren’t any good memories there for either of us. No need to relive them.

When it was finally time to go, neither of us knew what to say. Toronto was a long haul. That’s where Moreland was assigning her-about as far away as she could go and still be in Ontario. I couldn’t help wondering if it was intentional. Hell, if she were a Mountie, he’d probably be sending her to British Columbia, or the Yukon Territory.

I didn’t know if this would work. I didn’t know if I could still be a part of her life if she was five hundred miles away. All I did know was that, while being alone was something I had grown accustomed to, now it would feel different. Every day, I’d wonder how she was doing. How the job was going. How she was dealing with the city.

We’d talk on the phone every night. That was the promise. I said goodbye to her and told her to take care of herself. I told her not to drive like an off-duty cop all the way to Toronto. “You always drive too fast,” I told her.

“Yeah,” she said, “look who’s talking.”

I kissed her and told her to get on the road.

I watched her get in her Jeep and start it. She looked at me for a long time. I thought she was going to roll down her window, but then she seemed to change her mind. She pulled down the driveway and turned onto the main road.

I got in my truck and followed her. I never caught up to her. She was driving too fast.

It was a beautiful day in May. It was beautiful enough to make you believe that summer was right around the corner. That was the promise.

That was the hope.

She called me that night, as soon as she hit Toronto. She was lonely already, she said. She had no idea what she was doing there. She called me again the next night, after reporting in to the station. Things were a lot different. Toronto’s a real city, after all. There’s traffic, and noise, and tall buildings. Like any other city, there are good parts and bad, the streets with good food and music and everything you could want, and the streets you don’t walk down alone after dark. Coming from Blind River, it must have felt like a different world.

She wanted me to come out to see her. I said I would. Eventually. My gut told me I should wait a little while, let her get settled, let her find her own place before I came and made things more complicated.

But God I wanted to see her.

I talked to her every single night for a month straight. She was working the day shift in the center of the city, right next to Chinatown. The precinct was right on Queen Street. She was doing foot patrol, getting to know the place.

Then June 21, the first official night of summer. The sun hadn’t shone in Paradise yet. The temperature hadn’t even cracked sixty yet. But it was early still. There was plenty of time for summer to arrive. At least that’s how it felt then.

No, it wasn’t the weather that got to me that night. It was the fact that she didn’t call, for the first time since moving to Toronto.

I called her number. The phone rang a few times. I hung up and went to bed.

The next day, I was surprised by how bad I felt. I didn’t want to admit that the phone calls were so important to me. I didn’t want to feel like I was depending on them. That they were the only part of the day that really mattered to me. I was starting to think, maybe it’s time to go pay her a visit.

She called that night.

“Alex.”

“Natalie, what happened? Are you okay?” The words coming out too strong, before I could stop them.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m sorry about last night. A bunch of us, we went out for drinks, and it got kinda late.”

“I understand,” I said. “It’s no big deal.” I was starting to feel a little off balance. I held on to the phone tight, listening to her quiet voice from five hundred miles away.

“We got talking about what kind of work we’d all done before. I had a couple of beers in me, you’ve got to understand.”

“Yeah?”

“Normally I don’t make a big deal about it, but I started telling everyone about the undercover work I did up in Hearst.”

“You never told me you did undercover work.”

“It was just the one time. This was years ago, when I could still pass for young.”

“Oh, come on, Natalie.”

“I’m serious. On this assignment, I had to be a biker chick.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. There was a gang I tried to get close to.”

“A Canadian biker gang?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I’m picturing a really polite version of the Hell’s Angels.”

“Alex-”

“With mufflers on their bikes so they don’t make too much noise.”

“How about making crystal meth in a bathtub and selling it to teenagers? Is that polite enough for you? How about beating the hell out of people with metal pipes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You guys in the States,” she said. At least she was starting to sound a little more like herself again.

“Go on with your story.”

“There was this woman, she was riding with the leader of the gang. They called him rabbit or weasel or something. Some kind of rodent. Anyway, the idea was that if I could get close to her…I mean, it was so hard to keep track of these guys. They were always on the move. But if I could help pin them all down on a buy, you know, a definite place and time. We’d nail them.”

“So what happened?”

“Nothing. The guy died on his motorcycle, just about tore his head right off his body. The woman lived for a few days before she finally died, too.”

“So no bust. They never suspected you were a cop?”

“I don’t think they ever did, no. I guess I was pretty good at it.”

That was the night, the first night I heard about Natalie’s talent for undercover work. I had no idea, although it shouldn’t have surprised me. If there’s anybody I’ve ever known who could pass as a biker chick…

Yeah, I would have paid to see that one.

I could tell she was tired, so I let her go. She told me she missed me. I said the same. She told me she was going to work crowd control at some big summer festival the next day. The most boring assignment you can draw, moving crowds of people around like cattle, except cattle have better manners. It’s even worse than writing parking tickets.

Little did she know, the next day she’d hit the cop jackpot.

In Paradise, it was the second day of a summer that hadn’t arrived yet. In Toronto, it was the biggest day of Natalie’s professional life. I thought about her all day, as I finished the roof on the cabin. I sat in the Glasgow and watched the clock, and I said to myself, this is not a good thing. You sitting here and waiting for it to get dark so you can go home and wait by the phone. This is not the right state of mind.

I couldn’t help it.

She called at ten o’clock that night. I could tell something was up. There was a certain energy in her voice. Something I hadn’t heard since she moved out there.

“I told you, I was just going to do crowd control today,” she said. “I was ready for the longest day of my life.”

“I remember.”

“I get to work, and my CO says I need you to go up to the Mounties’ office on Yonge Street. I’m thinking, what the hell is this? What did I do wrong now?”

“The Mounties…I thought they only worked in provinces without their own police.”

“No, they have a regional office here. For anything national. Or international.”

“What did they want with you?”

“That’s what I’m getting to. I go up there, and they take me to the operations room. There’s about thirty people in the room, all sitting in chairs. There’s a podium up front, a big projector screen. The whole works. They’re obviously right in the middle of something. They’re showing pictures of people on the screen. But as soon as I go in, everything stops and they’re all looking at me.”

She paused for a moment. I didn’t say anything. I listened to the faint hum on the line, the sound of the distance between us, until she spoke again.

“The man up front, his name was Keller. He’s some kind of special operations commander for the Royal Mounted. He introduced himself, and then he says to everybody in the room, he says, this is Natalie Reynaud of the OPP. She has a certain talent I think you’ll all be interested to hear about. I’m thinking, what the hell is going on here? I felt like I’d been called down to the principal’s office.”

“I imagine.”

“He says to me, tell us about your previous undercover experience.”

“The stuff you were talking about last night.”

“Yes. He says tell us all about it, so I gave him the whole story. How I had hooked up with these bikers in Hearst. First through the woman and then the leader and everyone else…How it never amounted to anything.”

“Because they ended up dead.”

“Exactly. But somebody I was drinking with last night, they must have tipped off Keller, because he got on the phone to the Mountie who had run that operation up in Hearst, way back when. That guy must have given me quite a recommendation, because all of a sudden I’m a natural-born undercover agent.”

“I’m not surprised, Natalie. I’m sure you were great at it.”

“I don’t know about that. But next thing I know, they turn on the projector and there’s this woman’s face on the screen. She’s really attractive. Just killer. They say her name is Rhapsody. Which is such a perfect name, isn’t it? Doesn’t that make her sound like somebody who should be answering the phone at a beauty salon?”

“Sounds more like a stripper to me.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Appearing in the lounge tonight, ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’”

“I take it that’s not what she did for a living?”

“Apparently not. According to Keller, she’s hooked up with a man named Antoine Laraque. And Laraque is the reason why everybody’s in that room.”

“Drugs again? Like the biker guy?”

“No, not drugs. Guns.”

“In Canada?”

“I’m telling you, Alex. You wouldn’t believe it here. This whole city is going crazy with guns right now. All these gang members, especially in Rexdale, Scarborough…It’s like they’re catching up with the American cities all of a sudden. It’s like they picked up Detroit and dropped it in Ontario.”

“Hey, that’s my old hometown you’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry, but you know what I mean.”

“Sad to say…But yes, I do.”

“In fact, as it turned out, half the people in that room were from the States. There’s this big joint operation between the ATF and Royal Mounted. Because, of course, you know where all the guns are coming from.”

“Of course,” I said. “But this sounds like big-league stuff. What exactly do they want you to do? You’re not telling me this whole group got together just because you-”

“No, no. The operation’s been active for a good two months now. They’ve got this one Mountie, a guy named Don Resnik. He’s a real undercover pro. They were thinking they’d try to use him to make some kind of contact.”

“But then what? You came along? All of a sudden they’re changing the plan?”

“They think I’ll have a better shot at it. I’m a new face in town. Nobody will recognize me, and they said if I have this ability to make a connection with another woman…Maybe if I have the right kind of backstory to work with…Like maybe I’m here in town trying to set up some kind of deal.”

“Natalie, doesn’t this sound kind of far-fetched to you? Do you think these people are going to fall for this?”

“We haven’t gotten that far yet. Right now, it’s just a little test, to see if I can make the contact. But if you think about it…I’m the perfect cover, aren’t I?”

“How’s that?”

“A woman gun dealer…Who’s going to suspect she’s really a cop? It’s the ultimate double fake-out.”

“Women cops work undercover all the time. Everybody knows that.”

“Yeah, and it’s usually what? A hooker working the corner, right?”

I thought it over for about two seconds. I hadn’t seen many solicitation stings back in my own day, but hell, prostitution was usually the least of our problems in Detroit. In any case, I knew she was right. I couldn’t think of one single time a female officer had posed as anything else.

“So when does this happen?” I said. “When do you try to connect with Rhapsody?”

“Tomorrow.” I could hear the excitement in her voice. And the nerves.

“Just like that? What are you going to do, start talking to her at the supermarket?”

“Actually, it’s a coffee shop. She stops in there every morning. I’ve got this whole script made up. I better go over it again before I go to bed.”

I had a mixture of feelings that night. I was proud of her. I knew how important the operation must have been to everyone involved. If so many guns were really flooding the city, I knew what the effects would be. I knew that all too well. Beyond that, I was envious. She was getting into the kind of police work I would have killed to do myself, back in the day.

But more than anything else, I was scared to death.

Another cold day in Paradise. Jackie was starting to get a little cranky about it. I got my first cancellation. I was almost done with the roof. I wasn’t much use to anyone, though, because all I could think about was Natalie going undercover in Toronto, trying to connect with this woman named Rhapsody, and then, beyond her, with a network of international gun smugglers. I had to try pretty hard to imagine a worse group of human beings to fool around with.

I think I hit my fingers with my hammer about four times before Vinnie finally stopped by and asked me what the hell was wrong with me. I gave him the quick version. I was up on the ladder, finishing up a row of wooden shingles. The sun was trying to fight its way through the gray clouds, finally giving up for the day. Summer was still on back order.

“She’ll be fine,” Vinnie told me. “You know they’ll be right behind her.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I know that.” Like I really believed it. Right behind her. Tell that to my old partner.

When we were done, we had dinner at the Glasgow. We sat by the fire. My hands were sore from the cold and the hard work and from hitting them with the goddamned hammer. When it was late enough, I wished everyone a good night and went back home. The phone was ringing when I opened the door, so at least I didn’t have to sit there again like a high school kid.

“Alex,” she said, “tell me what you did today.”

“Never mind me. What happened with the undercover thing?”

“Please. You first. I want to hear about you so I can clear my head a little.”

“What’s there to say? I worked on the cabin with Vinnie.”

“Tell me everything. What did you do?”

She wasn’t going to let me go, so I told her the spellbinding tale of how we nailed on some more wooden shingles.

“Is it still cold there?”

“It’s unbelievable,” I said. “I’ve never seen it like this before. It’s almost July.”

“It was actually kinda nice here. It was a great day for making new friends.”

“How did it go down?”

“Good, good. I think. I don’t know.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I was in the coffee shop. I was sitting at a corner table, with a laptop. We had one car parked on the street outside, couple of guys in plain clothes. One with a newspaper, the other with a cell phone. She usually stops in around nine or nine thirty, so I was there at eight thirty, just to be sure.”

“Were you nervous?”

“No, not at all. Terrified, maybe. But not nervous.”

“I got it. So go on.”

“I was sitting there for an hour. By nine thirty, there was no sign of her. I kept sitting there, waiting. I was thinking maybe she wasn’t going to stop in today. Or maybe, hell, it’s crazy but I was wondering if she made us before she even opened the door. Just smelled something funny and kept walking.”

“There’s no way.”

“I know. I’m just saying, it’s the kind of thing that goes through your head. Anyway, it was almost ten, so I figured we’d have to shut it down. Then she came in. You should have seen her, Alex. She had this white jacket on, black skirt, this blouse that was sort of like a Dalmatian print. Like that woman in the movie. What was her name?”

“What movie?”

“With the Dalmatians. Cruella De Vill. Like her. Except younger. And better looking.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Black-and-white shoes. She even had a white streak in her hair. She was just so…put together. Like it was almost too much but not quite. Somehow it looked good on her.”

“What were you wearing?”

“Oh, I was all in black. They bought me this nice black suit, with a short skirt. Black stockings, shoes, the works.”

“I’m trying to picture that,” I said. I had a strong suspicion she looked pretty great dressed like that. It gave me a hollow feeling in my gut.

“They got me a real Coach bag, too. Black, of course. The idea was to show a little flash, but I don’t know. Seeing her walk in, I felt totally outclassed.”

“There’s no woman on this earth who could outclass you, Natalie.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Well…”

“Keep going.”

“She generally doesn’t spend much time there. She gets her coffee and leaves. So I made like I was coming back to get a refill. I was standing right behind her. You should have smelled this perfume, Alex. It smelled almost like Opium, but the top note was different.”

“You’re losing me now.”

“Sorry, it’s just that…I mean, it’s funny how much you notice when all your senses are on red alert, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I waited a few seconds, and then I said, ‘You’re Rhapsody.’ She turned around, and she said, ‘Do I know you?’ She was pretty cold about it, too. Like she wasn’t sure if I was wasting her time. I said, ‘I hit Kingston right around the time you left. I saw you around for a few days.’”

“Kingston?”

“The women’s penitentiary. In Kingston, Ontario. It’s closed down now. But the backstory was that I was going in the same week she was going out. Like five years ago.”

“What were you in for?”

“Jailhouse etiquette is not to ask that question, even when you get out. But if it came up, I was in for grand theft and assault.”

“I can see that.”

“Yeah, thanks. Anyway, the whole point of today was for me to just say hello, let her know I recognized her. So maybe the next day, if I was there again-”

“You could strike up another conversation.”

“That was the idea. But she came right out and asked me what I was doing in town, if I lived there now. I told her no, I was just in town for a few days, working on putting a deal together.”

“A deal?”

“Yeah. She asked what business I was in. I said, ‘Personal protection.’”

“Very nice.”

“Then I said, ‘How about you?’ She said, ‘Oh, I’m into all sorts of things these days. It’s good to be diverse, don’t you think?’”

“She said that?”

“She was so smooth, Alex. And here I am with my knees knocking together.”

“Natalie-”

“I had a good exit line, though. As she was leaving, I said to her, ‘Nice shoes.’ You think Resnik would have thought of that?”

“Natalie, are you sure about all of this? I mean, what’s supposed to happen next?”

“Eventually, if we get to it, I’m going to be there in Toronto, trying to move some guns across the border. I’ll have a supplier in Michigan, and I’ll be trying to connect with the right person so I can put a deal together. I’ll be staying at the downtown Hilton with my muscle.”

“Your muscle?”

“Yeah, Resnik gets to play that part. He’s about six foot five, and he looks like he could wrestle a grizzly bear. He’s a real good guy, though. Ordinarily, you’d expect him to resent me for coming in and taking over the lead role. But he’s been fine with it.”

“Natalie, I’m sorry, but this all sounds crazy to me.”

“You sound like my CO now.”

“Your CO thinks it’s crazy, too? Oh, that’s a good sign.”

“He’s just looking out for me, Alex. A few days ago, I was the new kid on the block. Now I’m going undercover.”

“You’re undercover, all right. If this goes any further, you’re gonna be about as deep undercover as you can get.”

“They’ll take over a whole floor of the hotel, Alex. There’ll be men in the rooms on both sides, and across the hall. Cameras, microphones, the whole deal. I’ll be the safest woman in Toronto.”

“Yeah, until the bad guys show up.”

“They had another homicide today,” she said. “Out in Regent Park, with a gun from the States. That’s twelve already this year. Twelve people shot dead and it’s not even July yet.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but-”

“They told me I could keep the clothes when we’re done. Not bad, eh? What do you think?”

What I thought was that she was making jokes about it because she had no idea what she was getting into. That she was even more scared than I was, if that were even possible.

“Natalie, for God’s sake. Are you gonna be careful?”

“Of course I am. When we’re all done here, you’re going to come out and visit me, right?”

“Sure. Of course I will.”

“I’ve got to go to bed now, Alex. I need to meet with everybody again first, then get ready for another meet at the coffee shop.”

“You’re gonna call me tomorrow night?”

“I honestly don’t know. I’ll try to call if I get a chance. But things might happen fast here. Once I get in the hotel, we’ll be pretty much working this thing around the clock. It’s like my whole life will be on hold for a while.”

“I understand. Call me when you can.”

“I will. Just don’t wait up for me, okay? It’s going to be hard enough.”

“Hard enough? What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry. That sounds bad.”

“Just tell me.”

“I’ve got to do this, Alex. Okay? I’ve got to do this the only way I can. I can’t be thinking about anything else tomorrow.”

“All right,” I said. “I got it.”

“I wish you were here right now. I really do.”

“Me, too.”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

I didn’t want to end the call like that. But I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want to put any more pressure on her, didn’t want to add any more weight to her burden. I said good night and that was it.

A week later, and I still hadn’t spoken to her. She’d leave a message every couple of days. Always during the day, never at night. I’m okay, she’d say, things are moving fast, talk to you soon. I couldn’t call her back, of course. At any moment she might have been in character, with Rhapsody or God knows who else right there in the room with her.

Seven days, and the only time I wasn’t thinking about her were those few minutes on the night of July 4, when I was pulling those guys off the sinking boat. Otherwise, no matter what I was doing, working on the cabin with Vinnie, sitting at the Glasgow, lying in my bed and staring at the ceiling, she’d be right there in my head and I’d be wondering if she was safe.

Seven days with me going quietly insane while Natalie put her head in the lion’s mouth.