Читать книгу Undertow - R.M. Greenaway - Страница 10

Shelter

Within the team at large was an amorphous clique that Leith was coming to think of as the crew, those who hung about post-debrief and went out pubbing, sometimes into the small hours, as if they couldn’t let go of the blues. Leith knew the feeling.

Tonight he joined them.

The crew was male-centric, probably because after-hours conferences like this were loaded with bad language and political incorrectness, and women had more sense than to put up with that kind of bullshit. JD Temple was the only female who seemed to tag along regularly. Maybe because she was accepted as just another guy. Maybe because she didn’t have any other life to live.

The crew’s hangout of choice was Rainey’s Bar & Grill down near the Quay, walking distance from the detachment. Rainey’s was a dark and classy joint, a good-time pub geared toward aging rockers. Lots of loud music, CCR and Doors and Rolling Stones, to make guys of Leith’s age feel right at home.

“Gimme Shelter.” Rape, murder — like they didn’t hear enough of it on the job. Leith took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and ordered whatever draft was on special. He phoned Alison in Prince Rupert to let her know he had made it through another day. Her voice was far away and not quite real in his ear. He told her it was too noisy here to talk, that he’d call again later.

Membership in the crew was self-regulated, and the rules were loose. Joining in the conversation — not mandatory. To Leith’s right sat Doug Paley, letting out a beery belch. To his left was JD, leaning across him to tell Paley what she thought of his manners. On the far side of the table were the big bruiser, Constable Jimmy Torr, and the handsome Viking-type, Sean Urbanski, scruffy because he was pitching to get into Special “E,” undercover ops.

There were two others here Leith hadn’t met before, general duty members Ricky something and Tara something else.

To everyone’s surprise, Dion showed up, too, taking a seat between Urbanski and Tara and joining in the conversation like one of the regulars.

Snacks were ordered and came, crowding the cluttered table with plates of hot, greasy calories. Leith couldn’t catch much of anything being said, amidst the noise of “Fortunate Son” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “New Sensation.” Mostly he talked with JD. He asked her what “JD” stood for, but she wouldn’t say. Paley overheard the question and supplied the answer: Joan Deirdre.

Somewhere on Leith’s third beer, he was thinking JD would have been pretty if she’d put some effort into it, but she interrupted the dangerous drift of his thoughts by crying out that if they didn’t play something from this fucking century, she’d shoot out the speakers.

Paley, Torr, and Dion were debating case notes, the missing bootie, the missing cellphone, and other developments. Ricky and Tara reminisced about today’s messy takedown at the Quay. Tara showed everyone the stitches on her elbow.

JD’s patience ran out in her usual showy way; she stood and pointed at the speakers, saying, “Fuck this pole-dance shit.” The pole-dance shit was a love song by Foreigner that took Leith back to many floorshows he had watched in his younger years. JD said she was going to catch a cab back to her flat to listen to the Hidden Cameras — if Leith heard right. She danced both middle fingers at Torr’s nose as she left. Torr made obscene motions at her back with his tongue until Tara lobbed something at him, a deep-fried zucchini stick.

The tossed zucchini stick was funny, apparently. There was a lot of laughter at this table of cops. “She’s kind of touchy, isn’t she?” Leith asked Doug Paley.

“JD?” Paley snorted. “You should see her on a bad day.”

Leith’s eardrums were going numb, and he was tiring of the fun. He had finished his third pint and was considering a fourth — because sometimes fun could catch a second wind — when Mike Bosko arrived. He sauntered up with a frothy stein in hand and was greeted warmly by the crew. Warm, Leith thought, but holding back, like they all felt, as he did himself, that this NCO was a little too good to be true, and maybe not really on their level.

Bosko took a chair. He nodded hello at Leith, then broadcast, “How’s it going?” to anyone who cared to answer.

“Not good,” Doug Paley said. “We’ve just debunked Locard’s principle. The killer took a bunch of evidence but left none behind.”

“Remind me, what did he take?”

“One of the baby’s shoes,” Dion said. “And Lance Liu’s cellphone.”

“Trophies,” Jimmy Torr offered, too drunk to hold his tongue in the presence of a superior. “Fucking baby-shoe trophy.”

Bosko was interested. “Well, at least they found the possible murder weapon, I hear, in the case of Lance Liu. I hear it’s big.”

Leith raised his brows, until he got it. The autopsy had shown that Lance Liu had been struck fairly hard by a tree. Or against a tree. Blood, skin, and hair had been found smeared about head-height on the pine that Lance Liu lay below. Leith now knew it wasn’t actually a pine, like everybody was calling it. It was a mature Douglas Fir, which was actually a spruce, or Pseudotsuga menziesii, none of which mattered. What mattered was the bark was dark and gnarly and held plenty of physical evidence. Ident members had searched for such evidence and found it. They had photographed and taken samples from the area of the tree in question, but hadn’t stopped there. A great slab of its trunk had been cut out with a chainsaw to preserve the smear for posterity.

Then there was the truck that had rammed the tree, its chassis covering its owner, its tires just touching Lance Liu’s chest. Neither head trauma nor truck had killed him, as Paley went on to inform Bosko. If not for the heart attack, the poor guy would be now sitting with a head swathed in bandages, telling them what the hell had happened out there.

The truck had been searched, of course, thoroughly. Nothing of great interest, except for a couple items in the glove box: a buck knife and a camera. The buck knife tested negative for blood. The camera was a little point-and-shoot Kodak. It looked brand new, and there was nothing on its memory card except three amazingly uninteresting street shots. JD suggested they weren’t photos, really; they were experiments, an owner trying out an unfamiliar gadget for the first time.

Leith said yes to that fourth pint as the waitress stopped by. He would worry about the calorie overload tomorrow. Bosko sat back and smiled around the table like these were his children. His eyes passed over Ricky and Tara, Dion with a phone to his ear, Jimmy Torr and Doug Paley in conversation.

But there was nothing abstract about Mike Bosko, Leith believed. He could seem spaced-out at times, and could drone on about matters nobody wanted to hear, and was too free with the smiles and compliments, which sometimes struck Leith as dishonest. But he was sharper than he looked. Like a heron in the reeds, Mike Bosko was patient, somewhat camouflaged, and probably deadly, too, when it came time to strike.

* * *

Dion covered one ear with his palm and listened to Kate with the other. “You disconnected me last night,” she said. “In the middle of a conversation. Kind of juvenile, isn’t it?”

He was happy that she’d called. It gave him hope, and already he was rewriting her back into his life. The boyfriend was just a stand-in, and she would now drop him. She would understand the crash was just a test, one they would have to work together to pass.

He told her he was sorry — trying for soft but failing in this impossible environment, and had to repeat himself in a near roar: “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be so … mean. Where are you? What’s the noise? At a club?”

He told her he was at Rainey’s and was leaving soon. She asked if he wanted to meet up. She was at the beach, at Cates Park. He listened, and now with a lull in the bar music he heard it, the waves and the ruckus of wind. He said, “What are you doing at Cates this time of night?”

“It’s stormy. Nice. Dramatic. I’m getting inspired.”

“You’ll get yourself murdered, that’s what,” he told her. He glanced around the table and saw Leith watching him. He stood ungracefully, clambering out of the tight-knit chairs. He walked away from the group, out to the foyer, where heavy doors would block the noise.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” he asked her.

“We’re not getting together tonight,” she said. “That’s why I thought you and I could meet.”

He checked his face in the glass of the doors. He hadn’t drunk much, not even a full pint, but he was tired, and looked it. “Where?”

* * *

She wore a loose black parka, pale jeans, hiking boots. Her long blond hair was loose and windblown. She wasn’t air-brushed perfection, as she had become in his mind. She was real, a solid physical form with a smudge of kohl under one eye, and the reality of her left him speechless.

Her arms were open. He hugged her, but briefly. They took a table in the back of the fast-food restaurant and told each other they looked great. She had a paper cup wafting steam. Tea. He went to buy a decaf, and finally they were seated, facing each other.

He said, “I started that off really bad last night. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for not writing.”

“Not writing ever, you mean,” she said. “It’s okay. You did what you felt you had to do. You were in serious pain. Everything changed. Looch was gone, and I was a reminder of all you’d lost. So you disconnected. I understand why. I was part of the problem. But did it help? Are you back?”

He didn’t like the control in her voice or the steadiness of her gaze, and he especially didn’t like her sympathy. Already his plan began to fall apart. “I’m not perfect. You know what would make me perfect? If I could fix what I broke, between you and me, and have you back in my life. That’s what.”

She didn’t answer right off. He watched her beautiful, oval face for clues. Other than the smudged eyeliner, she wore no makeup, and her skin wasn’t as flawless as he recalled. There was a crinkliness around the eyes and a brown sunspot on her cheek, freckles spattered across her nose. And one eye was slightly narrower than the other, unless it was just a tension squint. She didn’t seem tense, but she’d always been better than him at masking the subtler feelings.

She said, “I’ve got a boyfriend, Cal.”

A reflection in the window caught his eye: the best-looking couple on the planet, but their faces were shadowed. He thought of her in bed. With him. He said, “I know. So dump him.”

She said, “Tell me about the north.”

He stared at her hands, the way they encircled her cup, soaking up its warmth. Those artsy silver rings she wore, fingernails unpainted and not so clean. He tried to recall the pleasant things he should be saying to her now, but all he could think of was that man in her life. He needed details, name, occupation. Description.

“Cal?” Kate said.

He looked at her face and recalled the question. “What d’you mean, tell you about the north? That’s like saying tell me about life. It’s a big place. Anything specific you want to know?”

She was silent.

He said, “No? Tell me about your boyfriend, then. What’s he all about?”

Her answer, when it came after a long pause, was unresponsive. “About me, yes, I’m still at Emily Carr. I’m full time now, in the photography department. I love it. Love my students. Well, most of them. You should see the montage I’m working on, though. It would blow your mind. I’m preparing for a show —”

“I wasn’t asking about you,” he said.

Another pause, this time with analytical stare attached. “I noticed. So you want to know about Patrick. Why? Are you thinking of hunting him down and beating him up?”

Patrick. He crossed his arms. Already the beautiful couple in the reflection were backing into their corners. The light in here was bleak. He could see tonight ending in the coldest way. “What? No.”

“Like you did to Jake.”

Jake was an old incident, long forgotten, at least in his books. Fidelity had never been the strong point of their relationship, and their fights had been epic. “I didn’t hunt him down. And I didn’t beat him up.”

She took a last sip of tea and pushed the cup away. She said, “I’m glad you’re doing well, Cal. It was good to see you again. I hope you find your way back.”

Dion slapped the tabletop as she started to rise, bringing her back down. “I never loved you,” he said. Leaning forward, he saw surprise darken her eyes. “I tried. I watched all the movies, practically read the rule books. But it didn’t work. But that’s just because I wasn’t ready. Get this. I’m ready now. I’m really, really ready now, and you just have to tell me when I’m doing things right or when I’m doing things wrong, and I’ll listen. I’ll figure it out, but I need you with me.”

Her face was pinkening. She said, “I’m happy where I am. You’re just going to have to learn to be happy where you are. Oh, I almost forgot.” She leaned to dig into her backpack, and he realized she was shakier than he thought. She placed an object — black, squarish, and elegant, about an inch thick, tied with a silver ribbon — on the table before him. “It’s a present. Maybe you’ll hate me for it, but I put it together for you.”

He could see without opening it what it was. An album. He untied the ribbon, opened the cover and saw the first photograph, black and white. A group shot, him and Kate, Looch and Brooke, downtown, in front of a Vancouver nightclub, a loose line of friends smiling at the camera. What a genius fucking gift, he thought. Great memories. Kate was abandoning him, Looch was dead, and Brooke had never liked him much, frankly. There were more photos within, bulking out the pages. He glanced through a few, then closed the cover and put the book on the seat beside him. “Nice. Thanks.”

“You probably know most of those shots. One day you may want them.”

He was thinking he wanted to take this elegant black photo album full of moments he could never relive and pitch it at Patrick’s face. “I didn’t get you anything,” he said.

Kate said, “Happiness finds its level, you know. Just give yourself time.”

They discarded their cups and walked out into the illuminated plateau where the buses congregated. They parted ways at her parked car on Esplanade with no plans to meet again.

An hour later he was in bed, sleeping meds working through his bloodstream, and he remembered the gift. He had left it on the seat beside him. Hadn’t meant to forget it. She must have picked it up and kept it, instead of forcing it on him. She must have known he couldn’t stomach it.

He wished he hadn’t done that to her, reject her gift. He rolled over in bed and wrapped his arms around himself. He should have wrapped his arms around her, at McDonald’s, when he’d had the chance. Should have asked her all about herself, every last detail, and even blessed her new relationship. Should have sworn he’d never disappoint her again.

That had been the heart of the plan. So where had it gone wrong?