Last of the Independents (25 page)

He got the keys from Katherine on Tuesday, telling her that a present had arrived for me and he wanted to put it up as a surprise. Ben had pushed me to buy an Orson Welles poster for the office wall. When I reminded him what he'd said about
Citizen Kane
and
Speed
, he brushed it off as if it had never happened. One day he told me he was ordering a poster for me whether I wanted it or not. He pulled up the website on his PDA. He said I could choose between
Touch of Evil
and
The Stranger
.

“He's a corrupt cop in
Touch of Evil
,” I'd said. “What is he in
The Stranger
?”

“An escaped Nazi.”

“Settles that, doesn't it?”

Inside, he thumb-tacked the poster crookedly and without smoothing it, so it hung off the wall like a sail full of wind. He made himself an instant hot chocolate with those vile de-moisturized marshmallows. He sat down at my table, to do what I don't know. I can guess. Before I'd left, I'd taken care to lock the Loeb file in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. When I returned to the Mainland and saw the damage to the office, I noticed that the bottom drawer was still locked, though the cabinet itself had been overturned. Parts of Cynthia Loeb's life had been strewn about the office, torn, crumpled, pissed on, along with other files and furniture. I suspect Ben opened the cabinet and was reading through the file when Theo Atero and the others broke in.

I'd told him in the first few days when we met that finding people was less about deduction than diligence. Even something as ephemeral as luck was in fact brought on by hour upon hour of intense scrutiny, legwork, brainstorming, list-making, canvassing, and conversation. The more time that went into the case, the greater chance of something new turning up — a witness's memory dislodging a vital detail, a surveillance tape popping up showing little Cynthia Loeb and whoever was with her when she disappeared. I told him, even if the connection between hard work and luck isn't apparent, it exists. I do believe that.

Maybe he had the file out hoping to strike gold, and maybe he had it out to add a few more hours' study to the case. Maybe he simply missed his sister, and reading through that mountain of recollections and facts was a way to connect with her, the spirit of her, if only in its absence. His attention wasn't on the surveillance monitor. He didn't hear the door chime. The first inclination he had about what was to happen was when Theo Atero's people broke down the upstairs door.

Theo was the first into the room. He already had his gun drawn. Ben stood up, the backs of his knees pushing the chair against the wall. He stood there as Theo took three steps into the office, creating space for the others to file past him. It was possible the others had guns, but they were wielding a tire iron and a camping hatchet and a lacrosse bat.

Theo recognized Ben. Ben recognized Theo. Both recognized the situation.

“Nothing funny you want to say? No other actors you want to compare me to? Say something, schoolboy.”

“I can't think of anything,” Ben said.

“Where's your friend?”

“Not here.”

“Where's your friend?”

“I don't know. He's out of town.”

Theo swept the computer to the floor with his bandaged hand. The Mac's mouse and keyboard clotheslined the Loeb file, spilling it across the table. Theo pointed the gun at the surveillance monitor and the two recent arrivals began disassembling it and Katherine's computer with the tire iron and hatchet. Theo ripped the phone from the wall socket and leveled the gun at Ben. David Chou overturned one of the file cabinets. The sound inside the office caused Ben to flinch. This made Theo laugh.

“Not so brave without your pal,” he said. “Do you like to ambush people too?”

“No.”

“Like to kick people when they're down?”

“No.”

“So you're all talk, right?”'

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I'm all talk.”

“You're a fat-titted schoolboy. Say it.”

“I'm a fat-titted schoolboy.”

“Who talks a big game but doesn't have the balls to face a person one on one. Say it.”

“Who talks a big —”

“Say it.”

“I don't remember it all.”

“Say it.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Get that tape,” Theo said to the arrivals. To Ben he said, “Do you want the first one in the head or the heart?”

“Look, I'm sorry —”

“Take off your clothes.”

“Look, I'm really sorry —”

“Strip, schoolboy.”

Ben did, kicking off his shoes, then his pants, then his shirt and socks and finally his underwear. He'd begun to cry.

“Look at those tits,” Theo said, laughing at the sight of his obese, hairless body. Ben, blubbering now, couldn't respond.

One of the arrivals said something to David Chou and pointed at Katherine's computer. The three of them conferred. Theo made Ben walk out from behind the table. He told Ben to sit in one of the client's chairs. Theo kicked over the other and produced a role of tape.

“Problem, boss,” Chou said to Theo. “Camera application's backing up to an external hard drive.”

“So smash the camera and then smash the drive.”

Theo had taped one of Ben's wrists to the chair and torn off another piece with his teeth, which he put over Ben's mouth. The amount of mucous and tears kept the tape from sticking. He began ripping off a longer piece to wrap around Ben's head.

“I'd like to smash the drive,” David Chou said, “but I can't see it. Must be wireless.”

Theo turned to Ben. “Where's the drive?”

“I don't know,” Ben said, the scrap of tape falling from his lips.

“Where would your pal keep it?”

“I don't know. I don't know.”

The filing cabinet had been overturned in front of the stairwell door. When Theo crouched to look under the table Ben stood and turned, opened the sliding glass door and threw himself and the chair over the balcony.

He hit the pavement and broke his leg and sprained his wrist. He rolled off the sidewalk into the gutter. His vision was blurred. A car honked and slowed but passed him. He felt the rain pelt him. Another car stopped. The driver didn't get out but she phoned 911 and the next driver got out and asked him if he was okay.

Up in the office they gave up the search for the drive. They smashed the computers, pulled down the camera and overturned the other cabinet. Theo piled pages on the table and set them on fire. One of the arrivals threw parts of the camera into the puddle of piss where Ben and the chair had been. The papers burned but the table didn't catch and the fire was out before the four of them left. The driver who stopped saw them jogging up the sidewalk past the naked bloodied man in the gutter. None of this I knew at the time.

Specimens

T
he
realtor for the house on Third and Gardenia remembered renting to a Deirdre Hayes. She had paid the extra hundred dollars for multiple tenants. Fisk and I paid the realtor a visit early Tuesday morning.

Duncan Perry was “The Island's Number One Choice For Realty Three Years in a Row,” according to the ad on the back of the
Prosper's Point Free Press
. Perry's office was decorated with nautical memorabilia, including navigational charts of Vancouver Island and a lacquered oar in a display case. The office was cluttered and disorganized. Perry didn't seem to mind.

“Course I asked her who was staying with her,” Perry said. “I made sure to get a name and a SIN number.”

Fisk and I waited, arms crossed, as Perry dug it up. I noticed a ship in a bottle sitting on the window ledge. The ship had broken in two, the top of its paper sail no doubt part of the clutter on Perry's desk.

“Here we go.” He held up a neon pink sticky note. “Had her write it down for me. Dominique LaChanteuse. Social Insurance number Seven-Three-Four …” he paused. We looked at him expectantly. “Looks like there's only five numbers here.”

“Meaning you didn't look too hard at the information she supplied,” Fisk said. “Like checking to see does her SIN have nine digits.”

“Miss Hayes checked out fine,” Perry said. He continued to run his hands over the paperwork, less concerned with creating order than maintaining momentum. He was thin and had a ruddy face and a smile his mother wouldn't believe.

“So you figure why bother getting even a realistic alias from her friend?” Fisk took the piece of paper from him. “Dominique the singer? You fell for that?”

“So I don't read French good,” Duncan Perry said.

“What I want to know,” Fisk said to me, “was which one blew him?”

“My money's on Deirdre,” I said.

“Then too bad for him.”

“Why?” Perry asked.

“I don't want to get into anyone's venereal history,” Fisk said, “‘'pecially not one as long and storied as Deirdre Hayes's. It's a Russian novel. Her STDs have STDs.”

“You're bullshitting,” Perry said.

Fisk turned to me. “What was her nickname, Mike?”

“The Specimen Jar?”

“Specimen Jar, right. On account of the smorgasbord of diseases she — ”

“I only saw her friends the one time,” Perry said.

“Friends plural?” Fisk acted mock surprised. “Are you saying Dominique La Chanteuse was such a convincing alias you felt it covered two people? She must give some crazy head.”

“All she told me,” Perry said, “was that the other girl and her son weren't going to be there for more than a couple days.”

“And were they?”

“They might have been there a little longer.”

We waited for him to name a number.

“A couple months,” he said. “April and May. Maybe part of June. I meant to bring it up with Deirdre, but when I emailed her, she wrote back saying she was on the Mainland dealing with a family crisis.” The sound of his fists clenching and unclenching was audible. “I know you're lying about her,” he added. “Think I'm dumb enough to fall for that?”

I backhanded Duncan Perry with enough force to send him backwards into his chair. The move surprised all three of us. Perry looked up at me with “What'd I do?” scrawled on his face.

“I am sick of people like you doing the minimum and fucking things up for the rest of us,” I said, trying to justify the blow. “Fucking kid's missing and all you could think of is getting a free half-and-half. I should beat the piss out of you. In fact — ” I turned to Fisk “— how about getting a coffee and giving us a moment?”

“Easy,” Fisk said, inserting an arm between us. You know you're out of line when Gavin Fisk becomes the voice of reason.

“Easy hell,” I said, playing it up now. “The next thing out of this hump's mouth better be a lead on Dominique or I swear —” I took a step towards the desk and Fisk restrained me. Fisk turned to Duncan Perry, his expression saying, “Give me something to placate him with.”

Perry said, “The three of them, and the kid of course, they were gone by late June. I checked on the house then and it was vacated.”

“There's a case-breaker,” I said.

“Barbara I know was in town until June. I saw her a few times at the bars, late at night. I said
saw
. We didn't interact.”

“Keep going.”

“They weren't living in town but they were still around town, at least Dominique was. I saw her at the supermarket. This would be late August. Before she moved she was wearing skirts and tank tops, sexy stuff. When I saw her in August she was more covered up.”

“It's called fall.”

“It was more than that,” Perry said. “She was wearing this older-type clothing, like a frock, and she had her hair done Jackie Kennedy style. She had a fake pearl bracelet, costume jewellery.”

“Not real pearls?”

“I buy those for my wife, I know real pearls when I see them.”

“Did you say anything to her in the market?” I asked.

“That's the thing. I said hi and she kind of brushed me off, pretended not to see me. But I said hi again and asked about her friends. She said they were both fine. I said there was some paperwork to settle with Deirdre — waiver of deposit, lease-breaker, and so forth. She said Deirdre would be back next week and she'd settle everything then. Deirdre never showed. The paperwork's still around here.” He made a show of searching for it.

“And that was it?” Fisk asked.

“My wife was with me, I didn't want to pursue it too much.”

“Last you saw of her?”

“That was the last time, yes.” Perry's gaze fixed on the broken ship on the ledge. “One thing I thought was weird. You know how when you go through a checkout line you give the cashier your points card and the cashier repeats your name back to you? Like, ‘Thanks for shopping here, Mr. Perry?' ‘Have a good day, Mr. Perry?' That sort of thing? Well, when she finished, the cashier goes, ‘Thanks for shopping, Mrs. Meeker.' I'm behind her in line. I say, ‘I didn't know you were married, congrats.' Dominique nods like she doesn't want to talk about it.”

“What was she buying?” I asked.

He shrugged, what does it matter, but then the answer came to him and he said, “Bag of potatoes, bag of onions, canned goods, and prime rib roasts, which I remember were on sale that week because I bought a couple myself. The cashier asked if she wanted a hand out to her car and she said no. I was going to ask her but she just picked up the bags, no cart, and hoofed it. Hopped in the passenger's seat of a blue SUV and they drove off. I didn't get the plate, and I'm not good with makes and models when it comes to those big gas guzzlers. It looked pretty new, though.”

“Did you see who was driving?”

“A man.”

“Could you describe him?”

“He was wearing a coat.” Perry shrugged. “The windows were tinted.”

“Could it have been a woman?” I asked.

“Would have to be a large, manly-looking woman.” Perry shook his head. “No, it was a guy, I'm sure.”

“Let's get Delgado on that search,” Fisk said to me. “Thanks,” he said to Duncan Perry.

I nodded at Perry sheepishly.

“I could sue you,” he said, sitting a bit straighter now that we were leaving.

Fisk turned back and said, “You're lucky I don't arrest you for attacking my friend the way you did. You're a vicious animal and should be locked away.”

Perry watched us leave without moving from his desk.

B
efore meeting Delgado we tried the stores Barbara Della Costa had visited. The sporting goods store was under new management, having been bought by a franchise. The pawn shop owners remembered the transaction but couldn't recall any details, other than the woman was dark-haired and had severe eyebrows. “That was a fucking bust,” Fisk said as we walked back towards the main strip. “Talking to them was only the entire reason we came over here.”

Not the entire reason
, I thought.

D
elgado took the information and put one of his people on it. The three of us had an early dinner again at Ace's. Same gristly T-bone, undercooked fries and batter-soaked onion strings. Another few days of Prosper's Point cooking and I'd
be
Orson Welles.

“My thinking,” Delgado said through a mouth full of beef, “is that if Dawn Meeker was staying around here and wanted to avoid people, the logical place would be the Rusk home. It's isolated and it's where her friend was found. Plus we know someone was on the property.”

“I checked that house,” Fisk said. “Nobody'd been in there since it was boarded up.”

“Only empty building for a hundred klicks,” Delgado said.

“That tells us she's staying with someone,” I said. “Any other Rusks in the area? Any Meekers?”

Delgado shook his head. “Arthur Simons married Lester Rusk's sister. She's passed, but Arthur's still alive. Don't know where his son ended up. I could find out.”

“Know anyone who drives a blue SUV?”

“Only about everybody,” he said.

I
skipped out on drinking and went back to my room. I phoned Mira and she told me about Deirdre's empty apartment. She suggested that Duncan Perry and her real estate agent might have been twins separated at birth.

I phoned the number in Reykjavik that Katherine had found for me. The hotel owner spoke English with a halting accent that I assumed was Icelandic. The owner told me the Yates-Yeats rooms had a Do-Not-Disturb order on them. She asked if I wanted to leave a message. “Nothing,” I said. I wondered whether she took my meaning or she'd pass that on as the message.

I lay on the bed feeling homesick. There was an internet café down the block but the thought of staring at a screen made me nauseous. I put in my headphones and made myself a playlist, everything from Joni Mitchell to Memphis Slim, Hamza El Din to Isobel Campbell. Even music couldn't drown out my thoughts.

What if he's alive and what if he isn't and what if he is and what if he isn't?

I picked up the phone and dialed home. My grandmother picked up.

“How's the trip?” she asked. “This week's ‘sposed to be wet and cold over there. Are you dressing for it?”

“Layers and everything.”

“You always say that, but you're probably wearing one of those thin shirts under your coat. It's not enough, Michael. You need a scarf and toque. Maybe for Christmas.”

“Anything but that.”

“The season's right around the corner. Have you thought about what you want?”

“Not a thing. What about you?”

“My new wooden floor would be nice.”

“Chrissakes,” I said. “I'll deal with the dog when I get back, I promise. Could you put her on?”

“The dog?”

“Yeah, so I can say hi.”

“Be serious.”

I hadn't really expected her to hold the dog's head to the receiver. I wondered why I'd bothered asking. “Have fun at the casino. Say hi to the girls. Tell what's-her-name with the oxygen tank to go easy.”

“You come home safe,” she said.

I
ran Fisk down to the ferry, two hours there and back. There'd been no word on the SUV list. Arthur Simons was living alone. He was happy to converse with the officers and let them look around his place, just to break up the monotony of retired life. His son had died of pneumonia — another dead end.

I slung Fisk's gear out of the van. The two of us shook hands.

“Don't tune up anyone who doesn't deserve it,” he said. “See you back in civilization.”

I watched him and the other passengers walk up the covered gangplank and onto the ferry. One more goodbye.

As I drove back to Prosper's Point, I played the last of the demo CDs. It featured a girl singing blues licks over synth drums and electric guitar and a haunting, tremulous Fender Rhodes. I recognized the backup vocalist's voice. Amelia Yeats. She sang lead on the fourth song. I listened to it on repeat. The song was another sort of goodbye, letting me know I'd gotten everything I would get from her. There'd be no more. The end had been written into the beginning and what was left were merely stray sensations. At some point in the future that might be a comfort, the way the memory of danger survived makes a person confident in dealing with what's to come. But it was too recent, thinking about it hurt, and listening to the song was driving salt into the wound.

I gunned the van down the hill, blowing past half a dozen hazard signs and through a desolate intersection. The van didn't handle all that well. At high speeds it shuddered. I had a vision of crashing over the traffic circles and slamming into the beige-painted wall of the elementary school. Maybe punch through it and drive to the coastline and swim back to the Mainland. Cheery thoughts for a late night alone in Prosper's Point.

As I turned towards the motel I caught the glint of metallic blue in the rearview. Stadium lights lit up a row of trucks, some of them blue. Price tags in neon over the windshields. Another dead end in a case that had seemed like a string of them. The Ramseys, the Ateros, Crittenden, Dawn Meeker, and now an elusive blue SUV.

I pulled into the lot, half-thinking that I'd check out the new Camrys and see if they were unobtrusive enough for work, and half-thinking that I didn't want to sit in the Country Cabin Motel any longer than necessary. I contemplated checking out and sleeping in the van, parking along the side of the road and reclining the chair. Or not even bother checking out, just leaving. I had my suitcase in the back of the van. All I'd be out were a few appliances.

I strolled the aisles of the small but densely packed lot. The new Camry looked fine, but I knew I'd end up buying a used one with low mileage. In TV shows PIs always drive Mustangs or Porsches. Try tailing a deadbeat husband in a bright yellow 911 slope-nose through industrial Vancouver. Even so, it would be nice to drive something with flair.