by Lee Gregg
When Sam opened her eyes, she refocused, letting the market in the distance blur as she watched light snow fall against the glass and slowly turn to water upon contact. She took a bite of bread and after seeing her own reflection in the window, wiped another tear from her eye. A mound of restlessness and sorrow weighed on her chest and lodged in her throat.
“Tomorrow is a big day. We’re meeting a key suspect who is definitely involved in the kidnapping,” Penelope explained to George. “But first, we should verify Steve and Aiden’s story with Terry at the Garden so we can cross them off the list of suspects. Right, Sam?”
Sam nodded and pulled her lips tight in a failed attempt to smile. Steve and Aiden were sleeping in the cold now, not because it was a fun adventure challenge, but because they had nowhere else to go. They were unfortunate casualties of Sam’s search for vindication. As painful as that was to admit, she wasn’t ready to give up on her mission to prove her innocence. She took a sip of water and tried to wash down the lump in her throat, worrying that there would be more casualties to come.
33
Rain poured down on Glacier Village the morning of Ryder’s funeral. Big, heavy drops pounded down on rooftops, demanding that villagers wake. Sleet bounced off the streets and trails, washing away the town’s salt, sand and grime. Water gushed into the gutters and swished down into the sewers, cleansing the village’s system of dirt and waste. But by eight o’clock, the rain stopped, just in time for the funeral.
Sam walked to North Ice Park alone and weaved her way through the dense crowd of black-clad villagers. The turnout was larger than expected. Most of the shops were temporarily closed and mourners spilled out of the park and onto the streets.
As she approached, she could see Lorne on stage next to a giant screen projecting images of Ryder. “Always with a smile on his face and a hand extended to help,” Lorne was saying into the microphone as Sam felt a tap on her shoulder. Penelope squeezed in to stand beside her.
“You okay?” she whispered into Sam’s ear. “Just ignore them.”
Confused, she turned her head to respond to Penelope, but her eyes rested on a woman standing a few feet away instead. The woman was glowering at Sam, her eyes full of venom. Sam could almost feel poison being injected into her, disseminating through her system and spreading to her skin, leaving the hairs on her arms standing on end. She broke eye contact with the woman and looked at Penelope, who was now watching the screen. Did that woman give Pips the same look, she wondered? She followed Penelope’s lead and tried to focus on Lorne’s speech, watching the slideshow of touching moments throughout Ryder’s life.
“Ryder joined our small community only three years ago as a prairie boy from Alberta, but he became one of our most active and beloved members almost immediately,” Lorne continued from the stage.
“Sam, look!” Penelope said in a loud whisper. Sam followed Penelope’s tilting head and, after seeing only a wall of black jackets, shook her head. Penelope’s eyes opened wider as she tilted her head further. Sam looked again but saw nothing. Penelope pulled Sam over so she could view the crowd from her perspective. Then she saw it. A hooded man wearing a black jacket was standing a few rows in front of them. On the back shoulder of his jacket was a small logo. The double “B” of Ben’s signature symbol.
Sam motioned for Penelope to circle around the man wearing Ben’s jacket. Penelope nodded and negotiated her way through the crowd with her shoulders hunched, ready for action.
Sam inched forward, squeezing her way between people to edge closer to the man. A large, hulking man stood directly behind him, blocking Sam’s path. She looked for Penelope, but she couldn’t spot her in the sea of black. Where had Penelope gone and why was she taking so long to circle around, she wondered?
“I know I’ve gone on a bit long now, so thank you for listening to my stories,” Sam heard Lorne say to the crowd. She looked up at him and saw him folding the piece of paper he had been reading from, preparing to leave the stage.
Was the funeral over? Sam chewed on her lower lip, worried that the crowd would disperse, enabling the man wearing Ben’s jacket to disappear in the chaos. She had to make her move now.
She reached around the large man and tapped the shoulder of the man wearing Ben’s jacket. She could see his hair moving as his head turned, but his hood blocked his face. Half of a blue eye stared at Sam for a split second before the man turned his entire body around and lunged at her.
* * *
Dan had worked at his desk and listened to the rain for hours before he found the right opportunity to sneak into the supply closet without anyone noticing. With a tiny flashlight in his mouth, he retrieved the trash bag — stolen from Ervin’s cart — from the back corner of the closet, where he had stashed it the day before. He opened the bag and inspected the empty donut box. The tiny device was no longer wedged inside the folds of the box. Where was it? He could only come up with three possibilities. The first was that the device had fallen out of the box but was still in the trash bag. The second was that the Chief had discovered the listening device and was now conducting his own secret investigation into its origin. And the third was that the microphone had fallen out of the box and was still in the Chief’s office.
Of the three possibilities, he hoped it was the first. With gloved hands, he began picking through the garbage in the bag, carefully inspecting each item and placing it into a pile. He rotated apple cores, uncrumpled papers, deconstructed half-eaten sandwiches and pulled apart disparate pieces of junk. After taking everything out, he peered inside, hoping to see the bug. There was a bug, but it was the kind with six legs and a mouth that wanted its peanut butter and jelly sandwich back.
Dan threw the garbage back into the bag and evaluated the second scenario carefully. The Chief had been appointed to his position two years ago by the mayor and the city council. He had apparently come from a small town in Manitoba where he had been a constable and had solved a high profile murder by securing a confession within two days of the crime. He had joined the profession later in his life, but he was considered a rising star, a prize catch for any Canadian police force and Glacier Village had been lucky to net him.
The Chief was well liked immediately. He was good natured, easygoing, almost carefree. Given the low crime rate and lack of serious offenses in Glacier Village, any chief constable would probably have the same disposition. But when Elaine was killed during the robbery in September and the Chief had insisted on being the primary investigator, Dan expected something to change. He wasn’t sure exactly what, but he thought that the case should have impacted the Chief’s demeanor, or his work schedule, or something that would have reflected some sense of pressure or urgency, given the severity of the crime and how it had personally affected a member of the force. But Dan hadn’t witnessed any of those things. As the days passed without any progress on the case, he began to doubt the Chief’s abilities.
It wasn’t just Elaine’s case either, it was his handling of the Black case too. How he had left his notebook open with a suspect in the room. Albeit, the suspect was Sam and, therefore, not really suspect. Regardless, the mistake pointed to sloppiness, to a lack of attention to detail, to improper training.
There was also the Ford case where graffiti had been discovered at the Ford residence. The Chief had just been appointed and had asked to shadow him on the case. While Dan spoke with the Fords, the Chief had circled the residence to inspect the scene of the crime. He had been out there for thirty minutes on his own, but not once in that half hour had he noticed the discarded spray paint bottle under the nearby bushes.
The Chief just didn’t seem like a “details” kind of guy. Given all that, and the fact that his desk always looked like it had just been hit by a natural disaster, the second scenario on his list wasn’t the likeliest, Dan concluded.
That left the possibility that the bug was still in the Chief’s office. Ervin had only emptied the trash, but the cleaners would come to sweep and vacuum on Sunday n
ight. That left him two days to recover the device. Dan had planned on going to Ryder’s funeral, but since almost everyone would be there, it would also be the perfect time to retrieve the bug.
After throwing the trash bag into a dumpster, Dan returned to his desk and found the station nearly empty. Only Carl and the Chief were still around.
“Going to the funeral, Dan?”asked the Chief.
“Thought I’d catch up on some paperwork today, sir.”
“Good man. They asked me to say a few words today. I should wear all black more often, don’t you think? Slimming.” The Chief patted his stomach and walked out the door.
Dan smiled as the Chief walked past him, but the smile wasn’t for him, it was for the Chief’s office door, which had been left ajar. Now he just had to get rid of Carl.
* * *
“Sam,” Ben whispered, hobbling on one leg with his right arm stretched out towards her. The large man moved aside and Ben took a small hop closer. Losing his balance, he leaned into her heavily, wrapping both arms around her tightly. Sam stiffened instinctively, not fully registering that it had been Ben all along. But after a moment, she returned his embrace and was surprised by the length and warmth of the hug. She felt Ben’s head resting against hers and could smell his fresh, clean scent. It was the first time a boy had ever held her that way. As stunned as she was, a sense of comfort overcame her and she relaxed into his arms.
After he released her from the hug, she could feel the warmth of his hand still holding onto her arm. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, but his lips didn’t move.
“Ben!” Penelope exclaimed in a hushed voice. Ben turned and gave Penelope a hug. Her eyes wandered down to his cast. “Oh my goodness, how are you?”
Ben pointed to his crutches leaning against the tree he had been standing next to and Penelope grabbed them for him. “Thanks,” he whispered.
“And with that, I’ll hand the mike over to Verna, Ryder’s mother, who traveled from Alberta to be here,” Lorne announced from the stage.
A short woman walked across the stage and took the microphone from Lorne. She cleared her throat into it and pulled her head back as the speakers released a painful, high-pitch squeal.
“Hello. My name is Verna Conway and I am…I was…Ryder was my son,” she said, her voice cracking. The projector now had a live video feed of Verna’s face and the crowd watched in complete silence as her chin trembled and she wiped tears from her eyes. They flowed too quickly though, and as soon as her hand was off her cheek, a new stream of tears poured down her face.
“Ryder was my son. My only son. My only child. He…was an irreplaceable member of our family. He was a favorite nephew, a favorite grandson, a favorite great-grandson. Everyone loved Ryder. And Ryder loved everyone. He loved his family. He loved his friends. All of whom made the ridiculously long trip to be here today, thank you everyone.” Hands waved up in the air in response.
“He loved the mountains and he loved helping people. He gave his life to help people he didn’t even know. But he shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t be dead. He should be alive right now because he shouldn’t have been on that mountain to begin with. He was trying to save someone who had been kidnapped. Ryder should be alive right now because saving people from kidnapping wasn’t his job. And Ryder would be alive right now if it wasn’t for her! Samantha Shepherd!” Verna pointed directly at Sam.
With that statement, Verna peeled off her coat revealing a white sweatshirt underneath. On the big screen, everyone could clearly see the three lines of text on her sweatshirt, written in large, black print:
#JusticeForRyder
#ShackleShepherd
#JusticeForBen
The crowd responded with a rumble. Villagers gasped and whispered and pointed while a large group of people — Ryder’s friends and family — removed their jackets to reveal identical white sweatshirts.
Sam’s face exploded with heat as she looked at the crowd around her. It felt like the entire village was staring at her with hatred in their eyes.
34
Sam found herself in Penelope’s bedroom, still in a daze. She vaguely remembered Penelope’s arm around her shoulders, guiding her through an angry mob of people wearing white sweatshirts. Sitting on Penelope’s bed, she looked into a full-length mirror and saw a pink-cheeked stranger staring back at her.
“Sam! Are you there?” Penelope asked. “Sam!”
“Sorry.” Sam wondered how long Penelope had been standing at the door and how a glass of water had ended up in her hand.
“Seriously, are you okay? I didn’t realize there were so many of them. I wonder how long they’re planning on staying in town. I wish I could just bus them out of the village right now, but we need to get ready to meet Cara’s seller. And sister, you are not going to be able to go out looking like that.”
Penelope grabbed her hand and pulled her into a room at the end of the hall. A row of floating, bodiless heads greeted Sam at the door.
“What the—”
“This is Mum’s makeup and costume design studio. That’s the hair section you’re looking at. Extensions, facial hair and tons of other stuff are underneath in the drawers. Latex, silicone face materials over here. Body, and then wardrobe, over there. But Mum’s doing a major project with her costumes right now, so we’d better not touch those,” Penelope explained as she pointed to different areas around the room.
“Wow, Pips. This is incredible.”
“I know, right? Winning Halloween costume contests at school is such a joke, but the contests here at home? Mum kills it every time. Although with William and Harry, I’ve come close. So, who do you want to be today?” Penelope asked with a grin.
* * *
Sam had to smile when she looked into the mirror. An elderly woman with curly, silver hair, a large nose, double chin and thick, black-rimmed glasses looked back at her. “Pips, this is amazing!”
“I think we should call you, Ethel,” Penelope said with a laugh. “But Ethel, you need to go home and change your clothes. It looks like you’re trying too hard to recapture your youth. For goodness’ sake, lady, you need to dress your age. Or at least stop wearing such tight clothes.”
“We’d better hurry, Pips. It’s almost time to meet Cara’s seller.”
Sam broke out in an uncomfortable, cold sweat as they walked away from the safety of Penelope’s home, but as they passed more and more people, her confidence grew. The village seemed to be crawling with Ryder’s family and friends and they crossed paths with several out-of-towners wearing the printed white sweatshirts. In her disguise, Sam didn’t receive a second look from anyone, even Wesley, who was proudly wearing one of the now infamous sweatshirts. They arrived at Sam’s home without incident. The disguise had worked its magic.
Sam opened her front door and almost stepped on an envelope that had been slipped through the mail slot. Turning it over, she saw that it was sealed and unaddressed. “Give me five seconds,” she said to Penelope as she ran to her bedroom, tearing the envelope open along the way. She pulled out the note and when she saw the cut-and-paste newspaper letters, like a classic prop from a thriller movie, she came to a dead stop in her bedroom. It looked like a ransom note, but there was no demand. Instead, there were only six words: “Your mom’s death wasn’t an accident.”
Sam’s legs buckled under her and she sat on the floor, reading the note over and over. Questions flooded into her mind and swirled around in dizzying circles. What did it mean? Was Mom murdered? Was there any truth to it? Who had sent the note? Was it one of Ryder’s relatives? And why would anyone do this, now of all times? Was this serious? Sam read the note again. It had to be a joke, she thought. A very bad joke.
A spark of rage flared up in Sam’s chest. Everything that had happened in the past few months had taught her that the truth didn’t matter, that life wasn’t precious, that justice didn’t exist. They were going to extremes to kill Trax without due process, but nobody seemed to care that her mom’s
killers were still roaming around free. She was done hoping for the best, or praying for things to work out, or wishing for others to step up. Hopes and prayers and wishes were for those who stood by silently and watched evil spread. She promised herself that she would no longer be one of those people. Sam looked at the photograph of her mom on her nightstand and made a vow. Things were going to change in Glacier Village.
* * *
With Penelope by her side, Sam walked along the Ice Bridge in her Ethel costume with a new perspective on the village, as though she really had transformed into Ethel, an older, wiser, action-oriented, no-nonsense kind of gal, who wouldn’t take crap from anyone. Sam spotted her reflection in the storefront windows and smiled. Her new persona was strangely liberating and empowering.
“I’m going to stay back here and get everything on video,” Penelope said, ducking behind a post by one of the shops.
Sam carried on by herself and sat next to Cara, who was waiting at the meeting spot beside the gazebo in the park. “Hello dear,” Sam said, doing her best impression of Granny Givens’ crackly voice. “Nice day, don’t you think? Did you go to the funeral today?”
“Hello,” Cara said with a shy nod, shuffling away from Sam to the edge of the bench. “Yes, I did. It was nice, except for….” She drifted off without finishing her sentence.
“Hmm? What’s that, dear?”
“Just that Ryder’s family, they maybe got the wrong idea. And what they did with the shirts….” Cara shook her head. “I just know that my friend didn’t do what they think she did.” Her face was full of sincerity and worry when she looked at Sam.
“Yes, dear. You might be right about that.” Sam felt a spot of warmth spread inside her. The way Cara had defended her, to a total stranger, no less, had come as a bit of a surprise. Cara, who was so meek and reserved. Cara, who was a total stranger one week ago. Cara, who was unable or unwilling to even defend herself. She watched her new friend check her phone, clearly nervous as she clicked it on, scrolled to a screen, refreshed it a few times, then clicked it off, only to repeat the process thirty seconds later.