Anarchy Read Online Free Page B

off two alternatives with a thumb. “You catch up with her, put her back in a cell, nothing happened, it’s nobody’s problem. Or she shows up somewhere, you were the duty officer, it’s your problem. That’s how it’s going to be.”
    â€œSir.”
    â€œAnything else?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œGood. Twenty-nine hours.”
    â€œPlenty of time,” she said, suddenly tired of being dutiful. “Sir.”
    He frowned. Her being spunky wasn’t in the script. “Yeah,” he said, groping for a rejoinder he wasn’t quick-witted enough to find. “Let’s hope it is.” But he closed the door on her quickly, as if he wanted to escape before she could answer back.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    No one had seen anything. If Alice had been a different kind of town she might have suspected that people were holding back, closing ranks against an outsider. But the conversations generally went like this:
    â€œGood morning, ma’am. I’m sorry to trouble you at home. I’m Constable Maculloch with the RCMP. Would it be all right if I asked you a couple of questions?”
    â€œOh, you’re the new Mountie!”
    â€œThat’s right, ma’am. I—”
    â€œHey! How d’you like it up here?”
    â€œIt’s good. Could—”
    â€œQuiet, eh? Heh heh.”
    â€œSure is.”
    â€œSo they sent a girl up, eh? We never had a girl Mountie before. Can I offer you a coffee?”
    â€œThank you, ma’am, but I’m just making some inquiries—”
    â€œSomething going on? That makes a change. Heh heh. Sure about that coffee? I made hotcakes.”
    â€œCan you tell me if you’ve been outside in the last hour, ma’am? Or even looking outside?”
    â€œYou mean like in the yard? What’s going on? I didn’t hear anything.”
    â€œIt’s just a routine inquiry, ma’am.”
    â€œWell, you certainly have nice manners. Bit of an accent there, eh? You sound like a French girl. Yeah, I probably looked outside once or twice. Think I saw the other side of the street. Heh heh.”
    And so on. She gave up after a while and left the door-to-doors to Jonas, but by that time word had gotten out that the police were looking for someone and she couldn’t get out of the patrol car without people zeroing in on her to ask about it. By the time she drove up to the mill the security guy had already heard there was a dangerous vagabond on the loose. He stared down the road, narrowed his eyes like Clint Eastwood, and nodded to himself as he reassured her. “Yep. If he comes this way I’ll get him.” It was his hour of need. He tucked his shirt in accordingly.
    She thought about the possibilities. It was less and less plausible that the kid was hiding out in town somewhere. But where else could she have gone? And this bugged her the more she thought about it, why?
    â€œShe ever try to escape before?”
    â€œMan, I dunno. Not that I ever heard.”
    â€œShe wasn’t in custody all along, was she? I heard they sent her home for a while, right? And there was that deal with the First Nations band, they were going to put her on an island or something. Like tribal justice.”
    â€œYeah. They tried that.” Jonas was back in the patrol car, at the bottleneck, coffee on the dashboard, windows rolled up to deter the curious.
    â€œSo it wasn’t exactly maximum security.”
    â€œGirl’s never been convicted of anything.”
    â€œWhat I’m saying is, if she wanted to run for it, she could have. Any time.”
    â€œNowhere to go, man. Nowhere to go.”
    â€œThat’s what I mean. So where’s she gone now?”
    Jonas wasn’t the sort to waste his carefully hoarded thinking energy on hypotheticals. He didn’t even bother to shrug. Goose understood why he loved fishing so much. Waiting, waiting, until the fish took the bait all by