The Mad Dog's father had been a trapper in the Yukon and by the age of six Rabidowski was able to take the eye out of a squirrel with a.22 at 100 yards. It was Rabidowski who had picked off the Albanian sniper in Ottawa sent from China by way of Hong Kong to assassinate Soviet Premier Kosygin on his Canadian state visit. The incident had kicked off the Mad Dog's rise to fame. Then for the last five years straight he had taken the trophy for both pistol and rifle marksmanship in the RCMP annual competition. When he wore his uniform jacket, both rifle and handgun insignia — each surmounted with a crown to denote a distinguished marksman — were displayed prominently on one sleeve. At the present moment, however, Rabidowski was stripped to the waist.
"Mark my words," the Mad Dog continued, "a lawyer with a bum-face always goes to the bench."
"Come on!" the woman said.
"Excuse me," Katherine Spann said, interrupting the conversation. "May I please get through?"
"Oh no, not another broad," the Mad Dog sighed in disgust. "This place is crawling with them!"
"Makes you long for the old days, don't it?" Spann said sarcastically.
"Don't it ever," Rabidowski replied, being completely honest.
Spann let it go. Just as she had with Scarlett. For the truth of the matter was that since her initial day of training in Regina in 1974, this internal attitude had come along with the job. And that was to be expected. 1974 was the first year that the Force had recruited women: for a hundred and one years previously it had been an elite male club. Even today most men did not want to work with a female partner; for in the back of their minds they feared being caught short if there was something physical needed or there was a firefight. A woman just couldn't cut it. Every man knew that.
It was not, of course, as though in day-to-day police work this anti-female attitude was blatant in its manifestation; indeed most of the men bent over backwards to accommodate the women. And that, more than anything else, was the real root of the problem.
But then Rabidowski was different: his thoughts on the subject never went unspoken. "You're Scarlett's partner, aren't you?" the Mad Dog asked of Spann. "Do the man a favor, eh. Try not to distract him. He'll have work to do."
As he finished speaking Rabidowski put a cigarette to his lips and lit a match with the nail of his thumb.
As the phosphorous flared Spann turned to the other woman in the group and said: "This guy's a 'matcho' man."
The other woman grinned and asked: "Is he always such a jerk?"
"Always," Rick Scarlett answered. He had just come down the stairs to join the bottleneck at the bottom.
"Hi. I'm Monica Macdonald."
"My name's Katherine Spann."
"This is Rusty Lewis. We've been paired as partners on one of these flying patrols."
"So have we," Spann said. "Me and the guy who just
came down the steps."
"My name's Rick Scarlett," Scarlett said, shaking hands all round. "How you doing, Mad Dog? Long time no see."
"As well as a working cop can when he's inundated with broads."
" 'Inundated,' " Spann said. "That must be a pretty big word for someone like you."
"I see you've met the Mad Dog," Scarlett grinned.
"Where'd he get the nickname?" Macdonald asked.
Katherine Spann said: "It must be all the hot air — it makes him foam at the mouth."
"Broads!" Rabidowski snorted.
"We used to shorten Rabidowski down to Rabid," Scarlett said. " 'Mad Dog' came from 'Rabid.' And believe me, he acts it."
"I'd never have guessed."
"Don't sell the man short," Rick Scarlett added. "He just might be the best marksman this Force has ever had."
"I doubt that," Spann said. "I hear DeClercq was better."
Rabidowski guffawed. "You call a bow a marksman's weapon!"
"A crossbow," the woman corrected. "They say at one time he almost made runner-up to the Olympics."
"Yeah, well crossbows went out with the Middle Ages."
"Amazing!" Spann said to Monica Macdonald. "The guy knows history too."
"When it comes to weapons, lady, I know a lot more than you."
"Try me," Spann said sharply.
"Don't make me laugh."
"Hey, wait a minute," Monica Macdonald said. "What's this about DeClercq? You mean our Superintendent?''
"Of course," Rick Scarlett said. "Come on. You must know the story. The man's almost a legend."
"Is a legend, I should think," Spann corrected.
"All right. Is a legend."
"Will someone fill me in?" the other woman asked. Beside the blonde woman she looked positively plain. Her hair was brown and tied back in a bun. Her eyes were brown and warm and her figure was round. She stood five inches shorter than Spann. Physically her only striking feature was her full and sensual mouth.
"Broads!" Rabidowski repeated, as if all this was to be
expected. What did women know about the glory of tradition? What, indeed?
Rick Scarlett said, "The year was 1970, a bit before our time. The Quebec October Crisis. Anyway, by then DeClercq was recognized as the best homicide man in the entire Force. In terms of success, his name was up there with Steele and Walsh and Blake. When the FLQ kidnapped Cross and Laporte and then killed the Labour Minister, DeClercq was called in. It was he who located both the Chenier and Liberation Cells."
"How did he do that?"
"No one knows. But he had a lot of contacts in the Montreal underworld. A lot of informers. But in light of what happened subsequently he never revealed his source."
"What happened?"
"A gang of punks got both his wife and daughter," Katherine Spann said.
Macdonald turned to her. "Killed them you mean?"
"Do you really not know any of this?"
"No, I don't."
Spann was a bit surprised, but then the legends of the Force had been in her family for years. "You tell her," she said, speaking to Scarlett.
"Two weeks after Cross was released and the Chenier Cell went to Cuba, three men invaded DeClercq's home while he was up in Ottawa. They murdered his wife on the spot, ripped her up with a machine pistol. Then they carried off his daughter. She wasn't very old. Five or so, I think.
"At the time everyone assumed that it was an FLQ revenge operation. But in the end it turned out to be just a group of Montreal thugs caught up in the groundswell of the Quebec independence movement.
"Anyway, DeClercq, of course, was banned from the case because of personal involvement. Shelved with a leave of absence. He didn't like the orders and he didn't follow them. He went on his own and did a rogue investigation. Using the same underworld grapevine that had helped him find Cross and the murderers of Laporte, he managed to discover where the gang was holding the girl. It was in a cabin out of the city in the Laurentian backwoods. DeClercq went out alone, determined to get her back."
Monica Macdonald's eyes squinted slightly. "And he didn't," she said.
"No," Scarlett stated. "Not alive."
Rabidowski said: "Story is he killed five people getting into that cabin. Picked off the first guy when he came out for some wood. Got three more when they came out looking for him. Took them all down with a crossbow, if you believe it. Because it's silent, I guess.
"They say he killed the last man with his hands as he was coming through the door and after the guy had stabbed him. But he didn't save his daughter. Two other punks had joined the original three, and there had been a dispute over what to do. The winning group in the argument had broken her neck that morning."
Monica shook her head.
"So that's why DeClercq was retired," Rick Scarlett said. "He'd contravened orders and you know what that means."