Читать книгу She Felt No Pain - Lou Allin - Страница 9

TWO

On my way,” Holly said. On the temperate south island with snow and freezing temperatures rare as walruses, the homeless lived in “paradise”. The truth was that the brutal, uncompromising rains of winter made life equally problematic. Green moss or black mould grew on everything that didn’t pulsate and much that did. In Sooke, with more population and resources, the homeless had a better support system. One of the churches served a weekly meal, the Salvation Army pitched in, and the Salvation Army provided cheap clothing, gear and blankets. People said with humanitarian pride that they knew their “street people” by name, and they were usually harmless, trundling bottles or cans for returns to the supermarkets and basking in July sunshine on the green near the BC Liquors.

She collected Marilyn, filled a jerry can with gas at the Petro-Canada and put it in the trunk, smiling off the woman’s twenty-dollar bill. “Your tax dollars at work,” she said with a grin.

Ten minutes later back at the Shirley turn, they filled the tank, and the engine started purring immediately. Once again, riding a wave of sorrow, Marilyn’s lips quivered as she offered a departing wave of thanks. “Bless you.”

Holly watched the dowager silver Audi make steady progress down the road, disappearing over a hill. Everyone handled grief differently, but Marilyn seemed to have a core as strong as the muscles common to her trade. Then Holly covered the next few kilometres to the detachment at tiny Fossil Bay. Set in a community of only a few hundred, the outlier post of three officers handled policing another fifty kilometres of blacktop west to Port Renfrew. From there a logging road looped back up to Lake Cowichan, home of yet another of the 126 detachments in British Columbia’s E Division, the largest in Canada with over six thousand employees.

The white frame building with a cedar-shingle roof was a refurbished cottage with an entrance room, where Corporal Ann Troy and rookie Constable Chipper Knox Singh had their desks, filing cabinets and computers. Remaining were Holly’s office, a lunchroom, a small bathroom, and dark and drear interrogation room. Suspicious of the black mould that lurked under the old linoleum, Holly hoped to update when the budget allowed. The furniture consisted of castoffs from larger detachments, with chipped corners and mummifying duct tape. Holly had made some progress in getting the rooms painted and put up a few landscape prints, but here was the equivalent of Fort Zinderneuf on a day off. Truth was that the post would probably be disbanded before it was remodelled.

Coming through the squeaky front door, she left her hat in the closet, where three sturdy black umbrellas were planted in a stand. With the rains of winter and spring over, they had now entered the dry season. The danger of forest fires replaced floods. Holly took a reusable plastic cup of water from the cooler and sipped. “Tell me more about the complaint, Ann. I checked Bailey Bridge last week. Just an old fire pit and a dozen beer bottles. Did our volunteers report anything recently?” A squad of retirees and youngsters on bicycles made their job easier by reporting suspicious vehicles and property damage. A small percentage of the citizens of Fossil Bay operated their homes as mere summer cottages, so the occasional break-in often went unnoticed.

Ann rose to stretch her aching back as the palsied arm of the wall clock shuddered to nine on the dot. Degenerative disc disease hastened by a daring rescue during a convenience-store robbery had forced her to give up an active career just as she had made corporal. Instead of heading up the detachment by replacing retiring Reg Wilkinson, she drove a desk. The RCMP tried to make accommodations for its staff, especially since they were moved from post to post after only a few years and subject to morale challenges. “Last week Sean Carter said he spotted the first...guest. When you came last fall, the homeless had already moved back to winter quarters in Sooke or Victoria. With that large parking area and the sheltered places under the high bridge, the Bailey fills up fast in the summer. Get used to the minor annoyances and an occasional fight. It helps to set down the rules right off the bat. That’s what I di...used to do.”

“Better than gang wars, I suppose.” Holly felt questions worm themselves around her temple. The more she learned about her turf, the better. Proactive beat reactive. Trouble was easier to head off when anticipated, rather than fighting a defensive action.“But they don’t have vehicles. Where do they get their food? They’re not eating at Nan’s, and the gas station carries mostly junk food and picnic supplies.”

“Some have old bicycles. And it’s easy to hitchhike on the island. People are more laid-back and trusting. Pick up simple groceries like bread, peanut butter, tuna, soup, stuff that can be eaten cold from the can. Pastor Pete does a sandwich run with the Helping Hands van weekdays on his way home to Jordan River. We’d rather he didn’t, since it only makes it easier for them to stay. But try to tell him that.” Ann spread her large hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“Enablement is a problem everywhere, and a tough call. Are they all drifters? What’s the profile? Are drugs involved?” Ann and Chipper had come the year before Holly had arrived. As post leader, she was in the initial throes of trying to identify her team’s strengths and build upon them. Rivalry did not belong in the cards. But if she’d been Ann, she would have had a tough time adjusting to being second in command, especially to a leader ten years younger.

“It’s usually a pretty harmless group. At least they’re not hanging around schools like in Victoria, moving in at night with sheets of plastic and sleeping bags, leaving needles and human waste behind. A few older regulars know how to work the resources. Some even have small pensions. Reg said that until a few years ago, there were full-time shacks at Sombrio Beach.”

“That was in my time. Sort of an old hippie hangout. Malibu North. Everything changed when the Juan de Fuca and West Coast Trail system got going. The authorities cleaned house for the tourists.” Holly leaned against the wall and folded her arms. “Sounds innocent enough. I don’t want to come down too hard. Usually it’s live and let live around here. But the panhandling complaint worries me. It was a man, I’m presuming. Was he particularly aggressive? Any charges possible?”

Ann plunged into a slim “in” pile on her desk and consulted a paper. “There was no contact. The guy backed off.” She gave a bark of a laugh. “Wish you’d seen the complainant. About fifty, dressed head to toe in Tilley gear, hat that went through the guts of an elephant, jungle jacket, belt knife. Aluminum water bottle in a case around his shoulder.”

Holly smiled at the picture. “No pith helmet?”

“Do knee socks and shorts count? You know the kind. He didn’t feel that beggars belonged in his dream vacation spot. He’d had enough of that sightseeing in Vancouver and Victoria. ‘Are there no workhouses?’ he asked. ‘Then throw the bastards in jail.’ I don’t know how I kept my big mouth shut.”

“We rarely enforce vagrancy laws out here, unless assault’s involved,” Holly said. “Sounds like a malcontent who expected Disneyworld.”

They heard loud music coming from the parking lot as a car door slammed and bootsteps came toward the door. “Morning, ladies, I mean officers.”

Constable Chirakumar (Chipper) Knox Singh gave them a winning smile as he entered. At over six feet in his light-blue custom-made turban, he was Bollywood handsome, a trim beard adding a few years to his boyish, café au lait face. Chipper had entered the force nearly twenty years after Baltej Singh Dhillon had become the first Sikh to wear the turban as a member of the RCMP. Nearly two hundred thousand disgruntled Canadians took the case all the way to the Supreme Court and lost in a landmark decision. The five symbols, including the turban and a symbolic wooden dagger, were becoming familiar to people in the land of multiculturalism. She suspected that he took some grief for his career, and that as they got to know each other, they’d swap stories. She remembered the Playboy cartoons and tampons taped to her rookie locker. It was a broad and dangerous path between waving the white flag and showing some ovaries, so to speak.

Chipper placed his hat in the closet, opened his jacket at the neck and took a seat at his desk, swinging around to face them, the lightest scent of sandalwood drifting their way. “The traffic’s heating up out there, even with gas prices. Guess if you blew two hundred thousand dollars on a diesel RV, what’s a few more bucks?” The provincial government’s two-and-a-half-cent carbon tax, returned in a one-time, chump-change rebate, had seemed negligible when the oil prices soared and now was as irrelevant as a male mosquito.

Holly gave him a nod. In contrast to the more serious Ann, Chipper had at twenty-eight a sunny personality. The fact that he awarded her more respect than did many silverback males gave her confidence in their generation. Women had only been accepted into the force in officer positions in the late Seventies. One had recently climbed to the top in the B.C. forces. “Any contributions for our provincial coffers?”

“A Ducati motorcycle passed me where I was set up with the radar near French Beach. He was doing 150 kmh. Sweet ride, though.” He kissed his long, tapered fingers and mimed a handlebar flourish. “Wish I could afford one. Dad would be fine with it, but I doubt Mom would agree.” Chipper lived at home with his parents over their small store in Langford, closer to Victoria. Speaking of coddled, his mother still starched and ironed his shirts and made his lunch.

“You caught him before he could exit the gene pool, taking someone along, no doubt. Good job. The next all-you-can-eat pizza buffet is on me.” The long and winding road to Port Renfrew attracted motorcycle runs every weekend, especially at the Gordon’s Beach strip, where the speed limit rose to 80 kmh. She didn’t look forward to scraping someone off the pavement on a hairpin turn where the highway had been patched one too many times. The latest cheap-fix method of smearing asphalt on the cracks not only crossed drivers’ eyes but left slippery spots for even experienced riders.

“Back atcha, Guv,” he said, suppressing a wink and knowing that she preferred it to Ma’am, which made her feel older than Ann.

Holly told him about the report on Bailey Bridge. Chipper nodded. “Reg told me that the place attracts in the summer. Last year they were pretty quiet, though. We had a cold, wet summer, so not many came out. This year, with the sunny days, they’re back in business. I’ve only stopped by once. An older guy runs the show. He called me over to take in a teenager sloshed to the eyeballs at noon. We had a bulletin on the kid, turns out. A runaway from Nanaimo. Lucky he barfed before he got into the backseat.” He steepled his hands in a prayer gesture.

“Guess we’d better schedule regular drive-bys,” Holly said, making a mental note.

Chipper stuck out his lower lip and shook his head confidently. “I know that creek. Another month, and it will be dry stones. Everyone will have to move on.”

“Problem solved, but I need to check it out. I’ll take the car,” Holly said. They were limited to an older Impala with a Sooke decal on top of the trunk for air identification, and an ancient Suburban for winter driving in the high hills where snow could lurk. Keeping it full of gas was like pouring water into a sand dune.

* * *

She drove east from the sheltered enclave of Fossil Bay. Still tenanted by many former loggers and fishermen, its grid of streets had attracted a new crowd. Spying lower prices west of Victoria, retired boomers from Ontario and points east bought its more modest houses and occasional doublewides. The old clapboard grade school from the turn of the century had been refurbished and took students from Otter Point. Shopping was marginal, only a gas station cum convenience store and Nan’s restaurant. Recently a few home businesses had opened, a hair salon, dog kennels, wood salvagers, or personal services like Marilyn’s.

Holly rolled past the unmarked town limits and headed to Bailey Bridge, only too aware of the hazards of gaping at the world-class scenery as a gravel truck rolled around the blind curve, taking the centre line under the laws of physics. She eased off the gas and felt her heart skip several beats.

At this time of year, Bailey Creek was one of the last still flowing in salmon country. It would be a different matter in spawning season. “The persistence of Nature,” said romantic philosophers, but nothing seemed more brutal than battered cohos pushing their way up their natal creeks, flopping shadows of their former iridescence. Short of an emperor penguin wintering five months without food on ice floes with a lone egg incubating between his feet, their ritual sacrifices were heroic.

“Please protect our resource,” the signs at each spawning creek asked. On one side was an entrance to a public beach accessible only at low tide, and on the other, Bailey Creek followed circuitous paths up into the hills. She left the Impala in the sandy lot and headed under the bridge. A generous hollow of concrete held an assortment of shelters on the alluvial plain. The campsite was self-limiting, as Chipper had indicated. But though the rains had ceased, the fruit was oncoming. The salmonberries were emerging, which would draw hungry bears, tired of their spring-grass feed and down for the summer roaming the temperate rainforest. Later would come thimbleberries and finally the hardy Himalayan blackberry with thumb-thick thorny branches.

A grizzled old man with a handsome carved walking stick bearing a fierce eagle on the handle levered his body from a tippy lawn chair and approached her. He wore cut-off jeans, a t-shirt and flip-flops. A healthy tan testified to days outdoors and a shiny metal peace sign hung around his neck, though his salt-and-pepper hair was cut military short. Aging draft dodger? His arms were lean and muscular, though he wore a knee brace. In one discordant note, his left eye, irritated and red, sported a purple bruise. “Morning, officer. Fine day, isn’t it?”

She held out a hand and introduced herself, tucking her cap under her arm. “And you are, sir?”

“Bill Gorse. Formerly of Gorse and Broome.”

This made her arch an eyebrow at mention of two of the island’s most tenacious plants. “Sounds like an old family company.” She wondered if he were joking, like the Dewey, Cheatham and Howe firm in the Click and Clack Tappet Brothers radio show across the pond in Washington State.

“Pshaw,” he added, emphasizing the “p” as her father had when he was in his Gay Nineties period. His sigh was palpable and self-effacing. “It’s a law firm. Still is, for those not partial to corporate ethics. My late father, the Major, and two brothers. I squandered my youth with the family compact, but my nose couldn’t take it. When they started chasing the dollar by representing goddamn mining polluters up north, I said adios. Wrecked Muse Lake with their diesel spills and got off with a paltry five-thousand-dollar fine.” He flicked at a midge, whirling in its vortex. “Couldn’t stomach it. Anyhow, now that we know each other, what can I do you for?”

A lawyer with principles. So much for the jokes sending them to the bottom of the sea to poison the sharks. Why didn’t he pursue the prosecutorial side? Perhaps he was a true maverick and regarded the law itself as an ass. “There was a report of panhandling here.”

He gave an unimpressed cackle then coughed into his hand. “Thought you were into something serious. This is yee-haw land, not the prissy streets of Victoria.” The local area was notoriously casual, the home of bearded Santas driving ancient Westphalias, llama and alpaca shepherds, and small organic farms. The elderly ladies in Sooke and Fossil Bay had mid-afternoon coffee at home instead of tiffin at the Empress Hotel with the blue-rinsed bluebloods. Unless they worked in the city, few people in the Western Communities went to Victoria without a shopping mission.

Holly gave an apologetic shrug. “It was reported, Mr. Gorse. I have to check it out. What’s the story?” So far he’d been the only person she’d seen, but the gear indicated signs of others. She tried for concerned, not intrusive.

He tapped his chest, a few curly grey pelt hairs peeking from his v-neck. “Listen. I’m the old fart boss around here. I try to make a few rules so’s we don’t get into each other’s faces too much. No stealing. Can the noise after ten. Pick up after yourself. Don’t shit where you live, in every sense of the word. Not much different from that guy’s book about kindergarten rules.”

Suppressing a smile at the candor, Holly saw a neat pile of crushed beer cans in a clear plastic bag. “What about drinking or drugs?”

“Hell, drinking’s legal last I heard.”

“Not on the street. We have open-container laws.”

He planted his feet and folded his arms. “We’re not bothering anybody, not about to take a piss against a building. This is where we live. And it’s public land, belongs to the people. Doesn’t say ‘no camping,’ does it? Be reasonable.”

Holly shifted her feet, feeling like a bully. She glanced at her watch. According to the schedule, she had this sunny afternoon off for a change. With the small population, the three-man post kept hours only between eight a.m. and six p.m. Any emergencies were routed to Sooke, a detachment of fourteen with round-the-clock service. “You’re being a wee bit evasive about the drug question. Do I take that as a yes?”

His lined face grew sober and he scratched at his ear, where a silver loop dangled, giving him a pirate look. “I can’t see that you have probable cause for a search, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you turned up some wacky tobaccy. Personal use only. Hard drugs I don’t tolerate.” It was a cliché that the law in Canada ignored pot smoking, but Holly held up a placatory hand and adjusted her posture to official, not combative. She didn’t want this to escalate. No needles or paraphernalia were in view, and no children would be hanging around under Bill’s watch. “No worries, then. If you’re not bothering anyone, stay as long as you want. But let’s get to my reason for coming, the panhandling complaint.” She arched an eyebrow in a 60-40 serious look.

Bill sat down with a grunt on an overturned blue recycling box and flexed his knee. “I’ll tell you straight. Any guy around here pulling any of that crap answers to me. I don’t want problems with the law. We mind our own business. That one asking tourists for money like some bridge troll, I told him to quit it. Next morning he showed up with a camcorder. Said he won it in a card game at the Legion, the liar. It was a high-end Sony.”

Her interest was piqued. One strand led to another in law and society’s tangled webs. She gave a light laugh. “Nobody gambles with camcorders. Probably he stole it. Is he around?”

“Went to hock it, ask me.”

Holly frowned as possibilities tumbled through her mind. “It’s too far to Victoria. More likely he sold it to a kid on the street, or for nothing at a junk shop. What’s his name?” She took out her notebook.

“Says he’s Derek Dunn. I don’t ask for IDs. Hell, sometimes I change my own middle name. Dick used to be an ordinary handle. Now...” He reached down for a bottle of an over-the-counter painkiller, shook out a few, and showed her one. When she blinked, he washed it down with water from a plastic jug.

Dating a fresh page, she wrote down the name and got a brief description, including a shortened right index finger which Derek said had been cut in a table-saw accident. “Thanks for the information. I’ll check on it. For the record, how many...people are staying here now?” She could see at least four makeshift tents of tarps, branches, and plastic sheeting, more for privacy than rain protection, since it was dry under the bridge. All she could smell was the briny tang of the ocean. Where did they take their garbage? And where did they do their business? In the woods? She’d peed on her shoe in the bush more than once. If it were a crime to drop trou in the deep and dark, ninety per cent of the province would be in jail.

He said, “Varies a bit, more on weekends. I draw the line. Should have been a social worker. If a kid tells me he’s been abused, I know where to send him. A youngster didn’t even start shaving came last week. Said his parents were okay with his travelling, but I sent him packing. So...there’s three, counting Joel Hall.” He nudged a thumb toward a sleeping pad on cardboard beside the concrete bridge support. “Haven’t seen him since last night when we had a bit of an altercation. Could be he’s found a lady friend with a soft bed. He’s past fifty but a charmer when he wants to be. You want to hitch into town, any guy with a pickup will stop.”

Holly gave the scene a final scan. Recently a surprising legal decision had cities scrambling. When the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that since the number of shelter beds was “insufficient” for the area’s needs, the homeless had earned the right to erect tents and sleep overnight in parks. Officials were outraged, since they had just spent tens of thousands cleaning up a camp hidden deep in the dense bush of Mill Hill Park, a wild green space in a millionaire community. The next week, a number of homeless people in Victoria had pitched camp in legendary Beacon Hill Park, managing to squash rare flowers. In a renewed game of push and shove, the city responded by counter-ruling that no fires would be tolerated and that tents had to be taken down by seven each morning. The issue of impromptu bathrooms went unmentioned. In the moral outrage and confusion that followed, suddenly another forty-five shelter beds materialized. Out here, far from civilization and away from most eyes, things were different. As long as they kept relatively out of sight, cleaned up their mess, and remained peaceful, people were left alone. They weren’t displacing lawn bowlers or frightening carriage horses in front of the legislature.

“Thanks...Bill. I appreciate your honesty and sense of responsibility,” she said, shaking his hand. “But there is one final important thing.” Timing was critical in policing, and she had learned this technique from her father’s Columbo tapes.

His light green eyes crinkled in suspicion. “What’s that, officer?”

“The dry season is well underway. You’ve seen those signs prohibiting open burning. Even in provincial parks, fires aren’t allowed. We may be rainforest, but the undergrowth gets like tinder. A cigarette butt tossed out a car window can do it. And with those winds off the strait...” She gestured to a colourful para-sailor skittering down the bay.

He gave a cooperative nod. “I hear you. But we gotta boil our water, like for coffee. We don’t want to get sick. It’s hard to haul plastic gallons around. We don’t exactly get deliveries from Culligan.”

“Understandable. Just keep it under the bridge and very small. Leave plenty of clear space around.” As cars whizzed overhead, she looked up at the noisy belly of the bridge. “Sparks won’t travel far under here. A small propane stove would be easier for cooking, though.” She wondered about the black eye but didn’t want to press her advantage. Men were more likely to let the hormones surge. Women had their ranks among the homeless, but they wouldn’t strand themselves so far from services and safety. Even so, in Vancouver during a savage winter, a woman had burned to death trying to light candles for warmth under her overturned shopping cart.

She left him with a card. “Not that you have a cell phone handy, but any problems or questions, we know each other now.” “Have a good day” wasn’t a phrase she could tolerate. “Glad we could talk” made more sense.

* * *

Her shift over, Holly continued east, passing Gordon’s Beach, a thin strip of land with a dozen tiny properties on limpet lots, from tumbledown shacks to half-million-dollar Hobbit houses with rounded doors, mullioned windows, and driftwood sculptures. The Beach Box. Four hundred thousand dollars worth of cute. She turned up from West Coast Road onto Otter Point Road then turned left again, climbing into the hills. In the nineteenth century, nearly every acre of the island had lain under timber-company rule, one western god of commerce. Then came the settlers with their agriculture. Only twenty years ago, the street had been farmland, parcelled off in lots of a third of an acre. One bonus was that everyone on the dead-end road knew everyone else’s business. When the police blotter in the weekly Sooke News Mirror listed action, Otter Point Place never made the Hall of Shame. She passed a llama farm, a pottery, and several B&Bs before slowing as two horses clopped down the narrow verge, their young riders wearing equestrian helmets. Some kind soul usually arrived with a shovel and biffed the road apples into the berry hedges as fertilizer.

At a time when she had recently tasted independence in her seven years with the force, Holly found herself living at home, a modern reality for which she made no apologies. With housing prices skyrocketing, few rental opportunities, and relocation every three or four years, she had little choice but to move in with her father. Paying him a nominal fee for bed and board eased her conscience. As well, she mowed the lawn and took out the recyclables and garbage. He cooked. She cleaned. Fair trade.

She parked next to his sassy blue Smart Car in the driveway of the white-sided villa. Except for its cedar-shingle roof, it would be more at home in the Aegean than overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The mighty peaks of the Olympics faced her, snowpack still spilling from the uppermost ranges like vanilla ice cream onto the purple peaks below. From eleven to seventeen kilometres wide, the strait was a living creature whose face changed with the prevailing winds. In summer, with the warmer water, fog banks began the morning, first on one side then the other, clearing to blue skies in the afternoon. “It must be June. I can’t see the street,” her father joked.

Floppy-leaved banana plants nearly seven feet high grew by the house. An irrepressible and stinky kiwi climbed its hairy way to the front deck. In the side yard next to a vacant lot overgrown with alders and the occasional bigleaf maple, muscular canes of Himalayan blackberries began to snake over the fence. A hot tub with a gazebo and purple and pink clematis vines completed the spa image, but summer was not its time, rather an icy January when a few snowflakes melted on your head as steam rose around you.

The family hadn’t always lived here. It had been her father’s surprise as she entered high school to move them from dark, secluded East Sooke to this sunny hillside. But it hadn’t helped the rocky marriage. What had brought Bonnie Rice and Norman Martin together in university hadn’t lasted the decades as their personalities diverged with a vengeance. Bonnie had been gone ten long years. The tiny holly bush she had planted for her daughter by the kitchen window now bore eight feet of shiny, prickly leaves, awaiting its star turn before Christmas. Did its growth seem like a reproach to them both?

Holly let herself in and was immediately greeted by a black-and-white forty-pound jumping jack, a streak of “paint” down his face. “Hello, Shogun,” she said to the two-year-old border collie, his gay tail held high and his soft muzzle shovelling her hand. As a rescue, he’d been Hogan then Logan, answering to anything as long as he wasn’t called late for dinner. The dog gave her father a focus other than his consuming research. He had taught Popular Culture at the University of Victoria for the last thirty years and had published countless journal articles as well as a book on Victorian children’s board games.

Shucking off her boots in the foyer, she took the circular oak staircase to the master suite he’d given her, retaining for himself the other two bedrooms and bathroom. Or was it because he didn’t want to remember the king-sized marriage bed and its six-piece matching cherry furniture? At first she felt awkward lying where her parents had once slept like knight and lady on a tomb, but sometimes when Shogun and his jittery feet joined her in the night, she welcomed its space. A small balcony gave the house’s best view, though all of the front rooms, including the kitchen, overlooked the water.

“Bye, bye, Miss American Pie,” drifted from the CD player in the solarium. She searched her memory, the quiz games she’d played with her father. Now he was in the Seventies, one of the best periods for food, television and music. He submerged himself in the decade he was teaching. Last fall it had been the Fifties, too far removed from her mind set. She took off her duty belt, placed the Glock in a drawer and put on shorts and t-shirt. Free from the Kevlar corset, she flexed her shoulders.

In the kitchen, she saw her father gazing out the window across the strait to Washington. Though no individual houses were in sight at such a distance, she felt mirrored by the Americans. The population was smaller, and a great chunk of the land was protected in the Olympic National Park by a country which had greater foresight. Across Puget Sound lay the shopping and airline metropolis of Seattle. Waves were bobbing the fishing boats on this sunny day. Great loads of shrimp, halibut and salmon would fill the nets. Far out, a container ship headed out to sea. She picked up the field glasses and read “Hanjin”.

“What’s up, old pal?” she asked. Norman Martin, never Norm, turned his cool, azure-eyed gaze to her. He topped six feet, and he was slim, his silvery blond hair trim and smooth. Lately she thought she’d imagined a slight stoop, though the adjective courtly fit him well. He scorned bad language and tsked at her occasional “fuck”. Social-services lawyer Bonnie had cursed like a trooper at the unfairness that life dealt those who sought her aid. “Your father can’t help it if he lives in an ivory tower where it’s so quiet that you can hear yourself age,” she had told Holly. “I hope you choose to live in the real world and make a difference.”

“I’m glad you’re back early. I have instructions about dinner.” Norman ruffled the silky fur of the animal, its flagging tail knocking from side to side and its feet dancing in anticipation of a walk.

“Are you going somewhere?” Though he’d taken one summer course for the extra money, recently he’d been going to dog agility shows and had begun training Shogun. Much of this was a result of his new friendship with a lady up the hill on Randy’s Place. Madeleine Hamza, Swiss-Swede and the divorcée of a mysterious Egyptian engineer-millionaire, was allowing him to use the expensive agility equipment on her lawn. “I live alone. My dogs are my life,” she had said when they’d first met.

The friendship was a healthy sign. Holly wondered if her father had been involved with anyone during his years alone. What about the departmental secretary who baked him blackberry pies on his birthday? He’d never filed for divorce or even probated her mother’s will, to her knowledge. Did he, like Holly, believe she was dead? He never said as much but ran an ad at intervals in the Times Colonist seeking information. If anything had developed, he never mentioned it. Any avenues she might pursue with her connections to solve the mystery of Bonnie’s disappearance had best be kept to herself until she was certain. In the months she’d been home, she hadn’t found out much.

“Maddie and I are off to Wiffen Spit to cut broom,” he said, brandishing a shiny pair of expensive secateurs, a Christmas gift from her, and fastening it into a leather holster on his belt. “Fifteen of us are going. Some red hat society she belongs to. We have to cut these pernicious bushes before the flowering is over. Root and branch. Do or die!” He referred to a showy but invasive plant of the pea family. Since being brought across the oceans by homesick Scots in the nineteenth century, it had elbowed out local favourites with its atomic tangerine blossoms, prolific seeds and woody stems. The sentimental favourites of Garry oak meadows were in particular peril. A yearly campaign run by zealots as serious as crusaders called for its eradication on the prized curvilinear finger of land which sheltered Sooke Harbour. Dog walkers loved the Spit and appreciated the free poop bags at the brass-gated entrance.

Dressed in a tie-dyed rainbow shirt he’d made himself, baggy knee-length khaki shorts, and his prized Vietnam War sandals with tire-tread soles, Norman primed a shoulder pack with a thermos and packages of peanut-butter crackers. “Dinner’s all ready, so you needn’t worry. This period is a cinch. Convenience is in, but weird food fads haven’t arrived. I’m planning a quiche with tuna. The crust is baked. Coleslaw’s in the fridge. It’s a winner in every decade, bottled dressing or that boiled version I make for the Oughts period. Cabbage is versatile because it keeps.”

She laughed but ignored the real-man quiche joke. “Our ancestors thrived on it,” she replied. The hobbyhorse of the popular culture themes grounded him. Only sixty, he’d never retire unless they closed the university.

“And later we’ll watch the first year of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

“Surely not the entire year.” Once the sitcoms started rolling, she couldn’t shake the theme song from her head. “You’re going to make it after all.” The Minneapolis skyline. Why couldn’t he just watch hockey and drink beer like a normal Canadian man?

“Keep it up, and I’ll play The Partridge Family.” He glanced at the dog. “Maddie’s bringing a backpack for Shogun so he can carry a few jerky treats. It’ll be a good time to teach him the down-and-stay command.”

A toot from a black Kia SUV sounded in the drive, and Shogun erupted in the signature deep-throated barking which had earned him his latest name. Down the hill he charged as Bentley, a venerable Corgi and dog of the day from Madeleine’s four-pack, urged him on from the vehicle. The feisty woman waved a medieval metal claw apparatus, which Holly recognized from Home Hardware as a Pullerbear. This was all-out war.

The late afternoon passed quietly as Holly basked on the deck while a swallow swooped back and forth, building a nest in the small birdhouse swinging from the oak. Clearly, she needed to get a library card. Her father’s current reading selections covered the patio table. The Exorcist. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Watership Down. Fear of Flying? Shaking her head, she went inside to the bookshelf and chose L.R. Wright’s The Suspect, the first and only Canadian mystery hardcover to win the coveted American Edgar award. In high school, she’d given a book report on it. Now she was living the life of an RCMP officer.

Life had changed when her mother had disappeared. Holly had been committed to a career in botany at UBC. Then she had switched to criminal justice, completed her degree, and joined the force. After the six months of training at the Depot in Winnipeg, she’d been mentored in The Pas, then posted to Port Hardy up island, and finally to Fossil Bay when she made corporal. It was close to her home but not enough to disqualify her, since the force didn’t want officers working in their own neighbourhoods. The Fossil Bay detachment had only been activated ten years before to monitor the road west to Port Renfrew. Domestic disputes, speeders, drunk drivers and teens with six-packs led the docket. In the summer, car break-ins increased at parks along the Juan de Fuca Trail. Overnight hikers were advised to use the seasonal shuttle buses.

She cracked open the book and was immediately drawn to the unconventional plot of the concise and imaginative novel. In a quirky but daring twist, the murderer was known from the beginning and shared the point of view. The denouement was simply a cat-and-mouse game involving maddening clues and the question of motivation. The more she worked at her trade, the more Holly wanted to know why, not just how. But if she wanted to play detective, she’d have to move to a larger post.

An hour later, she went inside for a dry cider, sipping it on the deck. Though the view was panoramic, it was far from quiet. Secondary growth aspen and maple on the slopes below separated her from West Coast Road, but in a bandshell effect, the traffic noises revealed the critical artery. The guttural roar of a motorcycle gearing up for the change from sixty to eighty kmh blended with the shriek of jake brakes on a truck heading the other way. The single-lane road, the only east-west connection, was a worrisome fact for those who saw development as inevitable.

As she closed the book, leaving a few tempting chapters, she heard a car crunch gravel. The KIA, packed with dog crates for Madeleine’s brood, raced up the slope, skidding to a dusty stop at the back porch. Holly waved and called, but the limber little woman, her flyaway reddish hair blowing in the breeze, hurried to Norman’s side. She opened the door, then stood, hands on her hips with a worried frown. Holly left the porch and came around to the back deck as Shogun leaped out, backpack swinging. Her father was crouched in the front seat, his lean face contorted. In reflex, she put her hand on her chest in panic. Surely not a heart attack. He never talked much about his health. Her family had skated free of illness, pure luck that she’d taken for granted. Had fortune changed her mind?

“Dad, what happened?” She considered the car, pristine and uncrumpled, windshield intact. Not an accident, then. Nor something so serious as to call an ambulance or drive straight to Victoria General. “Did you fall?” The elevated spit embracing Canada’s southernmost port used sharp rip-rap for its breakwater and could be dangerous if they had left the gravel path to uproot the stubborn broom. She searched his knobby knees for signs of damage. Not a mark.

“Ooooooo,” he said with an undisguised wail, wincing as Holly and Madeleine helped him from the car, each putting an arm under his and heaving at the count of three. “It’s just a wrench. I did it one year starting the damn mower. That’s why I gave you that job, Holly.” With a bitter laugh, he turtled forward.

“Enough self-diagnosis. Let’s get you inside,” Holly said.

For a woman in her late fifties, the wiry Madeleine had muscles from her daily clear-cut hikes with her pack. They maneuvered him with difficulty up the winding Tara stairs to his bedroom. Norman was soon safely tucked in with a very large rum. Straight up. No ice.

“Hot pack or cold?” Holly asked, her first-aid course a dim memory. Tossing a mental coin, they set up a heating pad.

Sipping an orange juice, Madeleine sat on the deck with Holly as they tried to wind down. From past the greenbelt, their neighbour’s time-challenged rooster announced his superiority. “This type of injury is not serious, since it’s merely muscular, but it can last several days, and you know your father. He is very stubborn and independent.” Madeleine’s charming accent replaced th with z.

“I’m no caregiver. What am I going to do with him?” Holly was thanking the gods that he had class only twice a week. And what about that quiche? Stress was giving her an appetite.

Madeleine pursed her lips together. “Men are very stubborn, but at heart they are babies with pain. It might be a good idea if he got a massage. Or two. And as soon as possible.”

“I’m not sure he’ll agree. They’re expensive,” Holly said. Norman could squeeze a loonie until it laid an egg.

To his egalitarian credit, he’d always cooked for the family. Once he had sprained his ankle and couldn’t get off the couch. Her mother, whose motto was “Suffer in Silence”, had clashed swords with him about his meal plans, by default her responsibility. “For Christ’s sake, can’t you make an exception? One frozen pizza or a TV dinner isn’t going to kill us.” A small-time lawyer turned full-time advocate for women’s rights on the island, aboriginals in particular thanks to her Coastal Salish heritage, Bonnie spent much of her time travelling the province in her battered Bronco, snacking on fruit, nuts, cheese and bread. Meals were an inconvenience she often forgot. Rather than watch her parents continue to bicker, Holly had stepped in at fourteen and made the meat loaf, mashed potatoes and carrot coins for his Forties feast.

Holly saw concern but a no-nonsense approach in Madeleine’s glacial Scandinavian eyes, more than a passing resemblance to an older Garbo. She was proving to be a good friend to the older man. Whenever Holly had called on Sundays before her return, he’d been having a “quiet dinner”, presumably alone. Now not only did he have Shogun, but he was laughing again, chatting on the phone with Madeleine like a teenager. “Odd timing, but I met a masseuse this week,” Holly said. Had Fate stepped in to lend a hand?

* * *

At ten the next morning, Chipper was doing mental calculations about how long it would take before he could afford an apartment and a sharp new silver Mustang convertible. His salary was bumping up big-time this year, but he had a ton of student loans. Living on the Prairies had been so cheap. True, his basement bachelor suite had been small, and the oil furnace woke him when it kicked in during cold winter nights. There wasn’t anything in a hundred miles to spend money on anyway. It would take him hours to drive to Regina, see a show and go to a club. Then on Sunday he’d have to return to work.

At Bailey Creek, Chipper slowed as a man waved him over. He pulled to a stop in the parking lot and got out, making sure the doors were locked. Kids liked to peek into the windows at the shotgun on the console. He adjusted his duty belt to ride easily on his slim hips.

The man was drinking a can of soda. Watching from a nearby van was a young family.

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?” he asked with a friendly smile. Maybe the guy merely needed directions.

“There’s a body in the bush.”

“A body…” He could hardly push saliva past his Adam’s apple as he answered three notes above his usual range.