Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (2 page)

I was near the back of the line as it snaked over to one side of the room, and I found myself next to Arne Engstrom, retired cop and now the security guard for First National. Arne was sixty-ish, with thin gray hair and a solid Scandinavian face and build. He looked as sturdy as the bank building.

“Hey
,
Arne,” I said.

“Pastor,” he nodded. Arne went to the other Lutheran church in town, but he was a proper Norwegian, so he called me pastor anyway.

Arne's gaze lifted up over my shoulder, and I heard some kind of commotion behind me. I turned and saw that three people, dressed
all
in
black, were in the lobby. They had ski masks on, the old knit kind that fit over your head and then pull down over your face, with holes for your eyes and mouth. I felt a sudden rush of adrenalin
e
, and everything seemed to go into slow motion. There were several loud booms, and people screamed. One of the masked figures leaped onto the teller's counter of the bank. He waved a pistol at the tellers and shouted,

“Be still! This doesn't concern you,
but
if you move
,
I will shoot.”

The other two had pistols too, big
,
black automatics.

“Everyone on the floor!” shouted the largest masked man. “Get down on the floor! Face down!” People were complying, but I felt like I was locked in molasses. One
of
the masked robbers, a short, slight guy, waved his pistol at me.

Slowly, still looking around me, I got down on my knees, and then
lay
on the floor. I was the last one down, and Arne was lying next to me.

I heard talking and rustling. I looked up and saw that two of the three robbers were crouched over someone. They appeared to be searching the person. But almost immediately, the man standing on the counter shouted “get down!” and a gun fired. I put my head back down. A short minute later
,
I felt a hard cold object pressed into the back of my head. Hands were grasping me, searching my coat, pulling my wallet out of my back pocket.

“Get the duffel too,” said a strangely high, light voice.

“Shut up!” said another, deeper one. “Don't talk.”

They pulled at my duffel bag. Without thinking
,
I tried to hold on, but the pressure on the back of my head increased. “It isn't worth your life,” said the second, deeper voice. I let it go.

They moved on, and now that they were near me, I could see from the corners of my eyes that they were quickly and methodically robbing each customer.

I heard more rustling
and looked up again. A
rne stirred next to me
and started to get to his knees. A gun roared again, and Arne fell back as though he'd been kicked by an invisibl
e mule. I scrambled over to him
and found a red stain spreading along his lower right side, just above his belt. Just above his ho
lst
er.

I reached down to search the wound, or put pressure on it, or do something. I didn't really know what to do,
but
I couldn't
just
leave him lying there. Something slammed into my leg just as another gun boomed.

I looked up, and the three robbers were moving back toward the doors, two of them holding a big black garbage bag each, and one with my duffel. The small one fired his gun again, and I saw the chips fly off the floor near Arne's head.

I slid my hand down to Arne's holster. It was already unbuttoned. I pulled out his gun, which, lucky for me, was a revolver. I didn't know how to work an automatic. I lifted and fired in the same motion. The small robber fired back again. I pulled the trigger manically, trying for the small guy, but behind him, the robber holding my duffel bag stumbled, yelled, and then they were all out the door.

My ears were ringing from the gunfire. I dropped Arne's gun, and shouted, “Someone call 911.” Turning back to the solid Norwegian guard, I said, “Hang in there
,
Arne, you're going to be OK.” Arne Engstrom was the proud grandpa of six. I had no idea if he was going to be OK or not. I didn't really know what to do for a gunshot wound, or how serious it was. There was a lot of blood. I put my hands down over the area, one on top the other, and pressed. Arne groaned.

Around me, nobody much moved. I could hear a man saying
,
“Oh my God,” over and over again. A woman was crying, but quietly.

After what seemed like too long, I could hear sirens. The doors burst open with a blast of cool air
,
and there was a small stampede of uniformed people into the lobby.

“Over here!” I shouted, “He's been shot.”

Two paramedics knelt down beside me. One of them gently removed my hands, and said, “OK, we've got it from here.”

I leaned back against the wall of the lobby next to a potted plant. When I looked up, I saw Dan Jensen, Police chief of Grand Lake, walking towards me. Jensen was a big man, a little overweight, but still athletic. He was in his late thirties or early forties, with white
-
blond hair and piercing blue eyes.

“Shoulda known you'd be in the middle of this somehow,” he said. Then looked at me closely. “Oh jeez, you've been shot.”

Abou
t then, my leg started to hurt.

The wound was superficial, they said. That made me think I was a superficial kind of person, because it hurt like heck. One of the EMTs, a young guy, was bandaging me up. He was facing the door when suddenly he looked up very alertly. It reminded me of a hunting dog when it was pointing. He jerked on my bandage bit roughly, and I grunted in pain.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking back down at my leg.

I shifted my ga
ze to where he had been looking
and saw Leyla Bennett coming through the lobby. Her long
,
dark hair was caught up behind her ears, framing her high cheekbones and dark
,
almond
-
shaped eyes. She was wearing khaki pants that were flattering to her shapely legs, which generally needed no extra flattery anyway. The navy top and stylish brown coat showed her figure without showing it off. She was a well put together woman.

“It's all right,” I said to the EMT. “I still react that way myself every time I see her.”

He shook his head. Possibly ruefully.

I saw Leyla say something to Chief Jensen. They both looked over at me, and then Leyla came running over, with Jensen following more sedately.

“Jonah!” said Leyla. She knelt next to me
and
hugged me tight. She smelled nice. For a moment, I didn't notice the pain in my leg. Then suddenly
,
she released me and looked over at the EMT.

“Is he OK? Can I hug him?”

“It's his leg,” said the paramedic. “He'll be fine.”

“You can even talk directly to him, as if he were actually here,” I said.

She looked at me, and her eyes were watery. Her expression seemed to be crumpling. Without a word, she held me again, tight and long. Her hand stroked the back of my head. My cheek started to feel wet where her face was pressed against it.

The EMT made no objection. Neither did I.

At last, she let me go again, sitting back on her heels and wiping at her face with her hands.

“I heard on the police scanner,” she said. “They said two people were shot, and one was pretty serious. Then the officer outside said you
were one of the two
.” She took a shuddering breath. “And then they let me come in, and I see you leaning against the wall here, covered with blood.”

I looked down at my jacket. It was dark with blood.

“Arne Engstrom was the other one,” I said. “This is mostly his blood. It looked bad.” I looked at my EMT.

He shrugged. “I haven't heard anything yet. He was alive when they took him out a few minutes ago.”

Dan Jensen came over. “How is he?” he asked the EMT, nodding at me.

“What is with you people?” I said. “I wasn't shot in the throat. I can talk, you know.”

Jensen shook his head sadly. “No better than usual, I see.”

“I'm about done here,” said the EMT. “I'm sure you'll be fine, but you really ought to see a doctor. You'll be hurting, and I think a doct
or would get you some pain meds
and antibiotics.”

Chief Jensen thanked him, and he started to pack up his stuff. “Jonah, I'd like to hear your version of what happened here. When we're done, you two love birds can go on.”

He looked at Leyla and me. We didn't look at each other or him.

“Oh
,
no,” he said. “What's the matter? What's going on with you two?”

I glanced at Leyla, and found her looking at me. “
It's complicated,” we both said
at the same moment.

Jensen groaned. “You have got to be kidding.” He looked from Leyla to me like a stern elementary school principal. “When I was your age, you liked somebody, you dated. You didn't like 'em, you broke up. If you kept liking 'em, you kept dating, and eventually got married and had kids and everything. We didn't have any of this 'it's complicated' crap. What is
wrong
with you two?”

“Dan,” I said, “you're only like four years older than me.”

“Exactly my point,” he said.

The EMT was staring at Leyla in open admiration. Without turning to me, he said, “
S
eriously, dude, how complicated could it be?”

“Well,” I said “that's a good point.”

Leyla had the grace to blush very prettily.

The EMT finished packing up
and then left.

“Why don't you give me your story?” Jensen said to me. He looked at Leyla. “Sorry, but this isn't for the press ye
t. I let you in because of him
–”
he nodded in my direction “
– but
could you just give us a minute
,
please?”

Jensen had me tell him everything I knew, which wasn't much, while Leyla moved away and made a few phone calls. He took notes with a little notebook and pencil. His face tightened when I told him about the shootout.

“I suppose it's too much to ask for identifying features?” he asked when I was done.

“Other than the fact that they all called each other by their full names – including middle initials – and the lead
er had red hair, only one hand,
and
a
big scar on his face, there is no way I could ever identify them.”

Jensen chewed on his pencil for a moment. “You're going to need those pain meds in a minute,” he said.

“Sorry, maybe my problem is that I need them right now. No, they all wore black, all wore masks. One of them was a lot shorter and smaller than the others. One was medium sized. One was a pretty big guy. And one had a kind of high, light voice – I don't know which one. Not really anything to go on.”

“We think you hit one of them with Arne's revolver,” he said. “There was a bit of a blood trail going out to the curb.”

“One of them flinched and yelled when I was shooting,” I said. Honesty got the better of pride. “It wasn't the one I was shooting at.”

Jensen nodded. “Handguns aren't like rifles. Pretty hard to be accurate in those circumstances, especially without training. Normally, I'd chew you out for doing it, but with them shooting at you in the first place, it seems like maybe you did the right thing. Plus, if you did hit one, and he goes to a doctor, we'll hear about it.”

My leg had started to throb. In fact, I realized I could count my heart-rate by the pulsing pain in my calf. I thought about Ethel Ostrand's money, and noticed that my head hurt too. Jensen was looking at my face. Leyla had returned and was standing near.

“Probably about time you got to your pain meds. Why don't you two get your complicated
selves
out of here?”

He and Leyla helped me to my feet. With my arms around their shoulders like an injured football player, I hobbled into the brisk autumn air and over to Leyla's car.

“What about my car?” I asked.

“We'll figure it out,” she said.

I slid into the passenger seat, while Leyla stayed outside the car, talking to Jensen for a moment. I pulled out my cell phone and called the church. Julie answered.

“I don't think I'll be in the rest of the day,” I said. “I just got shot in the leg.”

“What,
again
?” she said.

There was a brief silence.

“I was expecting a bit more sympathy,” I said.

“Leyla already called and told me about it,” said Julie. “She said it wasn't serious, but that pretty soon you'd call me, and be whining and complaining like a little girl, and expect a lot of sympathy.”