The Beast in the Bone

by Blair Lindsay

  “I see.” Grainger’s expression was that of a man who’d gulped down a mouthful of spoiled milk. He looked at Keller. “That’s all very well, but she—”

  “I should also caution you, sir”—Decker’s voice was louder now, surely enough that Dell and the others in the adjacent corridor would hear it—“that I did witness an assault.” He reached out and poked Grainger in the chest, just as Grainger had done to Keller. “Seems silly, doesn’t it? You hardly touched her, but technically that could be construed by a police officer as assault.” He chuckled, no humour in it. “But I’m sure no one here today is thinking about pressing charges. Things get a little heated when it’s one of our own, am I right?”

  “Sure. I guess so.” Grainger looked defeated, his puzzled gaze flitting back and forth between Decker and Keller. “Keller, I guess your shift’s near enough over. Given everything that’s happened, I guess you can—”

  Keller turned and walked away, still half blind with rage, still feeling the heat where Grainger’s fingers had touched her chest.

  She pushed past bodies dressed in scrubs and EMS blues without seeing faces, then burst eventually into the ambulance bay, finding it miraculously deserted. Heart fluttering, she found a window and looked out at some ambulatory patients standing outside the main doorway, shadowy skeletons cloaked in blue hospital gowns, their IV poles clutched in one hand to steady them. Smoking was prohibited, but several were taking surreptitious puffs while security wasn’t around, medication flowing into their arms from their IVs as smoke breezed out from between their lips.

  Aren’t we all just trying to die, except maybe each in our own comfortable way?

  She ached for fentanyl like she hadn’t in months, longing to be high, to feel a tablet on her tongue, the tang of it jetting into her system.

  Footfalls behind her.

  Please, God, not Grainger.

  But she wasn’t that much more pleased to see Decker when she turned around.

  “I didn’t need your help back there,” she said.

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “I doubt anyone fools you.”

  “Ash.” Decker said it in a transparently calming way that she found infuriating.

  “Don’t.”

  Decker looked at the floor, his face thoughtful. “The way he behaved… That looked personal, like a habit. Has he ever—”

  “Don’t…” Keller struggled to hold it all in. Don’t make me tell you how I fucked that up, too, how I should’ve reported him. What if I let him hurt someone else by not saying anything? “I don’t need your help,” she finished.

  “In another couple of seconds back there you would’ve needed a lawyer. Good thing you’ve got friends.”

  “Okay, then. Thanks. That better? Thanks for driving. Thanks for staying.” She nodded back toward the ER, despair washing through her. “For saving me instead of arresting me. But I want to be alone now.”

  Decker blinked at her. “I drove you here, remember?”

  She swept her arm around, indicating the garage full of ambulances. “You think I can’t hitch a ride? What kind of detective are you?” She smiled as she said it, taking some of the bite out of it.

  Not enough. Decker stood back and said nothing.

  Fuck, Keller, you’re a grade A asshole sometimes.

  She held a placating hand up, running the other through her hair. “I’m sorry. I really am. Can you take me back to Stonegate? To my car?”

  “Sure.” He nodded. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Any other time, she would’ve liked how he said it. Anywhere you want to go. But behind all her anguish about Lang and her hate for Grainger was the knowledge that to Decker, she was just an angle on a murderer to him. She felt like a nerve scraped raw.

  “Anywhere, huh? ’Cause you like me so much?”

  “Not so much right now.” He half smiled.” And anywhere local. Hawaii’s still off the table.”

  It should have been charming. Any other time she would’ve laughed.

  “My car will do.”

  Sixty-Four

  1445 hrs

  The Fixer’s phone rang as he was on his way home and he glanced down at a number he didn’t recognize. Not like that hadn’t ever happened before, but it would both irritate and worry him if it was Kapp, switching phones. It would mean Kapp didn’t trust him anymore, or that he was getting increasingly worried about them being exposed. Neither was a good sign. He debated not answering but that wasn’t really an option.

  “Go.”

  “Hello.” The voice on the other end was not Kapp’s, but it was vaguely familiar. Then he placed it. Hunt—the man himself. A sour feeling came into his stomach. Something was very wrong.

  “I didn’t expect to be talking to you.”

  “Likewise. I’m calling because I have a job for you and it’s urgent.”

  “Is that right? Keep in mind you and I might have a different view of what’s urgent.”

  A sigh of irritation. “Kapp is dead. Murdered. By the same man who killed Herzog.”

  The Fixer’s blood froze. Things were coming apart.

  You knew this would happen.

  His thoughts flashed to the bug-out bag in his trunk. Costa Rica. He could be at the airport in thirty minutes.

  Hunt went on. “Sooner or later he’ll be coming after me.”

  Well-deserved. But that wouldn’t do as a response. “And what is your plan to avoid that? Have your people tracked him down?”

  “Sechev saw the man leaving. We have a license plate. We want you to run it.”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone for you.” But was he so sure about that? Of course he would kill at this point, if it meant he didn’t have to run.

  “Who’s talking about that?” Hunt said. “We need the plate run. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  Meaning Sechev would. Was that acceptable? Wouldn’t the Fixer do a better job? Definitely, but what he needed now was distance from all this.

  “It’ll cost you. One hundred thousand.”

  “You’re joking. For a license plate?”

  “For the license plate of a man who’s going to be dead soon.”

  Silence on the other end, then, “I’m not sure you have the right attitude.”

  The Fixer nearly laughed. “You sound like my fifth grade teacher.”

  Another long pause. “The money will be in your account in a half-hour.”

  “Give me the plate.”

  Sixty-Five

  1700 hrs

  Free of the Stonegate facility, Keller drove home.

  Nearly.

  A slight detour. The scenic route. As it happened, the scenic route led through her dealer’s neighbourhood. And it was very scenic. So much so, she drove by Glasgow’s house five times, circling like a predator, but never worked up the courage to knock on the door… or was brave enough not to.

  Depending on your point of view.

  It was nearly 1800 by the time she got to her own house. She set Groot loose in the backyard in the dimming autumn light and watched him frolic, snuffling the ground and chasing errant windblown leaves.

  Dogs were such simple, peaceful things. A dozen of them would be perfect, a pack surrounding you. Protection and unconditional love, forever.

  Too bad humans craved other things.

  She strolled through the kitchen and called out to her Alexa, “Pink Floyd.”

  If she plays “Comfortably Numb,” it’ll be the universe saying its okay to go back out and get a hit, just a little one. Can’t argue with a sign, can you?

  She heard Gilmour’s strat sizzling in the air, the long bluesy intro to “Coming Back to Life,” and shook her head. Can’t catch a break.

  She poured a large glass of wine, let Groot in, and collapsed onto the sofa.

  Outside, clouds were coming in from the west, drawing a grey shroud over the afternoon sun. She checked her phone. It was blank of messages but the weather app informed her snow was coming�
�� or rain, or both.

  Are you really thinking about the weather?

  She put down her phone, finished the first glass of wine, poured another…

  And woke four hours later, still on the sofa, cotton in her brain and mung-mouthed. Groot barked at the door and she let him out again and watched him trot to the stable under a darkening sky, where he liked to hunt mice, not that he caught any that Keller knew of. She checked her phone again and found a text from Atchison.

  She’s in ICU. Stable thank god. Not awake yet.

  Come see us in the morning?

  If she could look either of them in the eye.

  Groot looked to have hunkered down in the stable and when she tried to call him in, he barked at her—“You come out and play.”

  “Not tonight, you big dough-head.”

  She gave up. Maybe he needed some alone time. Fair enough. He’d bark to come in when he was ready. She undressed and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, then grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, unwilling yet to go to bed. Who knew what dreams awaited her? She needed some kind of distraction to settle her mind.

  Andromeda was on the Sci-Fi channel. Not her cup of tea. She switched to the news and saw two talking heads discussing Dennis Hunt’s upcoming rally in Ottawa. They then cut to footage of the man himself, waving his arms and shouting recycled calls for the electorate to “protect your children, your princes and princesses, from people with no idea about what it means to be a real Canadian.”

  That’s a hard no.

  The King’s Speech was on the movie channel. Geoffrey Rush had just been summoned to Buckingham Palace to prepare Colin Firth for an important wartime radio address. That one was nearly over. Next channel.

  Turner Classic Movies had Lawrence of Arabia on offer. Not a tropical vacation, but lots of sand and sun. She settled in with a third glass of wine as O’Toole sparred verbally with Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal, O’Toole delivering what she considered his classic line.

  “What do you think about Yenbo?” Faisal says.

  “I think it is far from Damascus,” Lawrence replies.

  She sipped at her wine.

  What do you think about abstention?

  I think it is far from sobriety.

  And what do you think about living?

  I think it is far from happiness.

  She could admit it to herself now. The real reason she hadn’t stopped at Glasgow’s house was she might have bought not just three tabs of fentanyl but thirty… and taken them one by one, washing them down with Pinot.

  No one would find me till tomorrow. No more nightmares, no more pain, no more hurting other people.

  On the screen, Lawrence was setting out across the vast emptiness of the Nefud desert. There were fifty men with him, but he was nevertheless quite alone.

  Sixty-Six

  2015 hrs

  Arcand jerked awake, unsure if the noise he’d heard was real or some remnant of a dream. Since he’d murdered Herzog, every night had brought nightmares featuring an attacker or attackers chasing him, much as the man today had pursued him from Kapp’s apartment.

  Brain afire with a mix of anger and disappointment, he’d collapsed on the sofa upon arriving home, and after tossing and turning for an hour, his body shaking with adrenalin hangover, he’d finally fallen into an uneasy sleep. Now he rose to his feet and shook his head to clear it.

  The noise, a muted and stealthy thump—if it was real—had seemed to come from the lower level of his condo, the garage maybe. As he listened now, though, all he heard was the soft rush of air through the vent by his feet.

  Given his recent activity, he could hardly call the police. He stepped toward the stairwell, in the grip of a dilemma. Up or down? One floor up was his safe room. He could lock the door behind him, assured that no one else could possibly enter without a hydraulic ram. Safe behind steel, he could hide through the night, endlessly wakeful while wondering if there was a killer outside. What then, though?

  Or… he could simply retrieve his pistol and check downstairs, where he would probably find nothing, and buy himself enough reassurance that he might get some semblance of a good night’s sleep.

  He stood motionless and listened, taking slow, shallow breaths, letting the silence stretch out, and still heard nothing except the rush of air from the vent and a sudden hum from the kitchen as the fridge went into a cooling cycle.

  A soft chuckle escaped his lips as he took measured steps toward the alcove by the stairs, where he’d left his pistol atop a side table. When he turned the corner and saw that the surface of the table was bare, his initial thought was that he’d misremembered where he’d left the pistol.

  Then he felt a cold tickle at the back of his neck as the barrel of a gun was pressed against the base of his skull.

  At the metallic click of a trigger pull, Arcand had a fraction of a second to realize he’d lost. Though not quite. Not entirely. He’d made certain of that.

  Last, fleeting thoughts. Then the fabric of his reality exploded into darkness.

  Sixty-Seven

  October 12, 0010 hrs

  Keller woke again just after midnight, a bleary feeling in her brain and the TV still on, O’Toole and Sharif blowing up Turkish trains with Anthony Quinn. But she’d been dreaming about the other movie, about Colin Firth at Buckingham Palace and the young Princess Elizabeth and… Why had she been frightened?

  She rose, feeling cold and tasting nausea at the back of her throat. She trembled violently suddenly. Where had that come from? But that was a silly question. She knew enough about nightmares to know the blackest of them often left hangovers.

  She shook her head and headed for the back door to call Groot in. Surely he was done hunting mice by now.

  She froze, gooseflesh rising like a wave up her back.

  Buckingham Palace. Princess. Hunting. Hunt.

  Not “palace cunt.”

  Palace Hunt.

  Her laptop still lay on the coffee table and she raced to it and levered it open, Googling “Dennis Hunt,” then selecting Images. There were plenty to choose from, everything from the carefully posed ones on his website to those taken at his rallies, but most were too small for what she wanted to see.

  She reset the search to queue up images over eight megapixels. These were better. She clicked on one with Hunt shaking hands with a hockey star, another man standing behind him. There was a caption.

  CAP Leader Dennis Hunt and advisor Timothy Kapp discuss the playoffs with team captain Greg Dalton.

  Kapp. Herzog’s contact info had listed Kapp and Associates—a law firm housing political operatives.

  She reset the search for “Dennis Hunt” + “Timothy Kapp” and hit Return. After several seconds she got an error page with a pixelated dinosaur saying No Internet Connection.

  “Jesus Christ. Now?” Time to reset the router again. But she hit the reload button anyway—worth a try—and went back to the picture, opening it in the photo viewer app.

  There was Hunt, face red with outrage and hand raised. Keller’s stomach was churning as she magnified the image, sliding it around so Hunt’s hand remained the focus.

  On the third finger of his right hand was a thick, metallic ring. She zoomed in closer and saw the pixelated vestiges of the letters inscribed on it: HCA.

  Harrow-Charterhouse Academy.

  “Oh, my god…” The laptop was still not accessing the internet and so the larger picture would have to wait, but it didn’t matter. It was without question the same ring Herzog and Oakes had worn.

  Was she being crazy? Lots of people must’ve gone to that school over the years. Oakes had said something about “crooks in high places.” It could’ve meant anything, but wouldn’t most people think it meant a politician?

  Palace Hunt.

  Keller opened another tab on the browser and typed Palace Hunt but was again rewarded with a message saying the internet was inaccessible.

  She got to her feet, running hands through her hair. Should she
call 9-1-1? What the hell would she tell them? Decker’s number was still in her phone, so she dialled it.

  Call Failed.

  Weird. She walked to the back of his house and saw the flutter of a one-bar signal. She dialled Sanders. It rang this time, once, twice, a click of the phone connecting… then her phone beeped.

  Call Failed.

  She tried again… Still no luck. She was sweating now. She dialled 9-1-1.

  Call Failed.

  Outside, Groot was barking.

  Something’s wrong.

  A sound behind her. She whirled, her heart in her throat.

  The front door was open and a man was standing just inside it, but Keller focused on the pistol he held, its black maw pointed directly at her.

  Sixty-Eight

  0015 hrs

  Adrenalin lit Keller up, driving any lingering effects of the wine from her brain.

  The gunman was squat and muscular, like a power-lifter. His head might’ve been a cue ball, hairless and pale, with the thin white line of a scar arcing up from his neckline and across his right cheek.

  “Alexa, phone 9-1-1.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do that right now.”

  Cue-ball scowled at the Alexa, then turned back to Keller and shook his head. “Don’t move.”

  An accent—European, maybe. Odd what things the mind centred on in life-and-death situations. But this choice was easy. Keller had grown up seeing bloody crime scene photos of women who hadn’t run.

  She ran.

  Around the corner into the dining room, still clutching her phone. She immediately heard swearing and the clomping of feet behind her. Clumsy-sounding, but fast enough.

  Front or back door? If she went for the back, Groot would crash in and probably attack Cue-ball while she escaped, and Cue-ball would shoot the dog and then follow her. By then she’d be in the folds of shadows pounding across the field, her runner’s legs driving her rapidly beyond any trailing foot pursuit.