The head swiveled and Harry’s smile grew. He saw ears like signals sticking straight out, nose long but broad, eyes too close together, skin baby pink on a round cherubic face, chin weak, and lips fat and rubbery. The man rose, gave a goofy smile filled with teeth and a gap, and stuck out his hand.
“Father Grimson. I do hope you can help me. I apologize for misleading your lady out there, but I do need to be discreet.”
The voice was too high-pitched, not out of keeping with the face, but the man himself was big and well-proportioned, which added even more farce to the portrait. Harry recovered as quickly as he could and offered him a seat.
“I know, I know. My flock is small. You can understand why, but I try, and the bishop, well, he sticks me where I can’t do a lot of harm. The reason I’m here is I have vandals, strange ones, and I need to have them gone. They’re frightening away the few I have, especially the more superstitious Natives who still carry a hint of the old animism.”
“So tell me what’s going on. In the church, I presume?”
“Oh yes, it’s in the church. In the choir loft and altar especially. And at night. At least it must be, since I see nothing of it.”
“Can you describe what happens and tell me what you do about it when it does?”
“It’s very disturbing. The first time, a few months ago, it was one of our auxiliary ladies who discovered the desecration, unfortunately one of the ones with no ability to keep her own council. She was placing flowers on the altar. I heard her screaming and ran in from the vicarage. There were dead animals, entrails arranged around them, and blood on the altar itself with strange symbols drawn in it, nothing Satanic, just odd patterns. I cleaned up as best I could and held services. After that, I was careful to check before auxiliary members got in. It’s happened four times now, and even with the caretaker’s help, I’ve never seen anyone in the church. We’ve spent nights together watching, but nothing.” The man paused. “I do hope you can help.”
“You didn’t by any chance photograph things before you cleaned up, did you? It would help if we knew exactly what was done.”
“I never thought. I suppose I should have, but no, I didn’t.”
“Have you been to the police then, Father?”
“No, no, the bishop wishes to avoid gossip, you understand. We’ve talked, and we would like it kept private. The name of your organization appealed to us both. SHH Investigations suggests a degree of discretion. Will you help us? Your fees will be covered, have no fear. The parish is well funded in spite of dwindling concern for spiritual health, and my little flock gives so generously that we have substantial investments.”
Harry sat back and considered the man in front of him. “It’s an interesting case, Father, and we’ll help. We’ll have an operative on it today, so you can get some sleep for a change. We’ll keep you informed. Isabella will get your information and help you with the contract. We make no guarantees, but we’ll do our best, and we can review every week to see if you wish us to continue.”
With that, he ushered the man out and gave him back to Isabella with a grin.
Harry then cleaned up some paperwork, made coffee, and sat back waiting for the crew to show up.
He wondered about the church. Some kind of ritual desecration. Not vandals. No damage, nothing taken, just the patterns in animal blood and innards. Weird. Sounded almost primitive. Should be interesting.
◆◆◆
By four in the afternoon, they were in the office drinking coffee. Will still had the three kids under surveillance, Sabina was mining the RCMP data and working it with Jim, and Rory was still in the field on Bomber. Kylie had still not been seen.
“So let’s see what we got. Round table. You first, Sabina.”
“I’ve linked up with Jim, a hacker I know in Vancouver. He was a big help in our last case, and he’s on board for this one. He’s the best code writer I know. He runs his own data recovery company and works with a large group of programmers from Chinatown. He’s stationed in his lab in East Van and rarely budges from it, so we can always get to him. So far, he’s written me a string of code I can use to penetrate the servers at the RCMP, a highly illegal act if I use it, and I have. He’s also on board to sift whatever I get and send to him. That will be very useful. He’s much more powerful and much faster than I can be here. You go next.”
“I’ve got Rory tailing this Bomber guy as of yesterday,” Will said. “In fact, we both spent the night in the bush, me driving the concessions, him down at the biker’s place out at the river. Billy, Jen, and Jimmy were there most of the night. I tailed them in, then went back out. Rory’s still on Bomber.”
Harry picked it up. “I’ve been around the strip, both last night and early this morning. No Kylie. I’ve got a working girl name of Gloria who’s out there early mornings some days, nights others, working as a lookout. Kylie appears on the strip, I’ll know. Gloria’s got a throwaway and so does Sandy and another girl on Prideaux. That’ll get them directly to me.
“Some of Rory’s contacts are digging up whatever can be found on the biker, Bomber, and mining the street as well. Anything in the underbelly, we’ll get it. We’re funded in all of it. We have a retainer from Alicia, and she’ll continue until we find Kylie. Let’s move on to plans and assignments.”
For the next hour, the three of them discussed what steps should be taken next. Harry reminded everyone that reports had to be filed with Isabella at close each day. If anyone missed, Isabella would be after their extremities.
In the end, all they could do was continue the canvas, keep tabs on the biker, mine the street and the RCMP servers, and see what popped up. Mostly legwork and surveillance; boring but necessary.
This was the third day, and there were no breaks. They all worried about the fact that Kylie had been missing nearly four days while Alicia had dithered. They had nothing for the second day of their operation. Not good, and they knew it.
By five, the office was empty except for Sabina and Isabella, the former with her nose buried in the cloud along with Jim, the latter keeping the office running like a well-oiled machine.
◆◆◆
Cranberry and Cedar were two small outposts of Harbour City reached by means of a good two-lane off the main highway just where the highway met the new bypass. Harry thought them strange names until he discovered a cranberry farm on a side road and drifts of cedar in the mainly fir and redwood forests. Cranberry lay to one side of the road, Cedar the other. Once across the Mist River on the green steel bridge, the turn to Cedar was immediate and sharp. As the road curved up the hill, an old two-storey inn called the Cranberry Arms was stuffed between the rock face and the two-lane.
A little farther on, the town straggled along both sides of the road, skirting a large swamp full of cattails on one side and thick woods on the other. The houses on the woods side had carved out little enclaves fed by one-lane roads that curled about, never going far from the main road. Beyond the center of the small town past a swamp, a single road turned off to the left at ninety degrees, running off into forest. Harry turned onto this one and kept going.
The little church was one of the old ones built back when the community was a lot younger. It was an old clapboard with Gothic-style windows, a double front door, an atrium that gave the front some articulation, and the mandatory steeple. Churches like this one were all over the place on the island and even on the mainland—rustic, small, and still in use. High up in the front façade, above the doors and just below the roofline, was a small circular window, unusual for the structure. Harry couldn’t remember ever having seen a window like it in one of these churches.
He parked the car in a small lot near the equally small clapboard house that sat to the side maybe fifty meters away. There were no other structures nearby; the lot for the church and rectory was separated from the houses that had crept up near it along the single road that led to the church. A turnabout terminated the road at a tiny farm a couple of hundred meters away, a singl
e horse grazing in the little fenced meadow.
Down the side of the church lot away from the rectory ran a deep, heavily treed ravine carrying a stream. Past the rectory on the other side, set back a bit in the forest but visible, lay a shallow swamp, the surface covered in long sinuous floats of duckweed and the fallout from the trees that peppered its surface. The far end of the swamp carried the carcasses of fallen conifers, dead branches reaching up like curled fingers.
The church and rectory sat on a little hill that had been cleared along with the roadbed a long time ago. In front of the church, the single-lane road was humpbacked tarmac, crumbling on the sides with steeply pitched, narrow shoulders. Cattails, marsh marigolds, and skunk cabbage filled deep water-filled ditches. The whole thing was picturesque in good weather and a bit threatening in bad. Today, on a bright sunny morning, it all looked innocently bucolic.
Harry and Will stood beside the car looking around until the rector appeared at the door and beckoned them in. He took them to a small library-study on the ground floor and took out a decanter and some small port glasses. He poured three, sat back with a sigh, and nodded.
“You’re here to look inside, I assume, and—how does it go?—case the joint.” He smiled, and Will glanced at Harry before picking up his glass.
“Well Father, we’d like to see the inside, yes, but just as important, we’d like to know more about the events, especially the arrangement of entrails and the blood patterns. Do you think you could perhaps draw them for us?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t, I can barely read my own writing. But Jethro, the caretaker, was a builder before he hurt his shoulder, so perhaps he could help you. I’ll call him and have him meet us in the church.”
As he refilled their port glasses, Father Grimson talked to the caretaker and arranged a meeting in twenty minutes. “He’ll meet us in a bit. We’ll show you the church together in case you have any questions we can answer.” They sat companionably in desultory conversation until it was time to go.
Jethro met them at the church door, having walked up from the last house on the road.
Inside the double doors was an ample atrium with a small coatroom and some chairs. A wall with large openings separated it from a nave, with a center aisle and pews that were likely carved out of local wood. A raised choir loft and altar stood at the front. Above the altar was a rose window that was one of the oddest Harry had ever seen. Even Will seemed fascinated. It was large and circular as expected; its design, however, was anything but. It contained two triangles creating a six-point star, the ribs of the triangles made of thick wood.
Father Grimson seemed to expect their reaction. “It is unusual, isn’t it? When I first came here, I found it a bit disturbing, you know, since rose windows normally don’t look at all like that. But I’ve since learned that the triangles have some significance. They represent ambivalence and equilibrium, and their intersection, the human soul. They also suggest the cessation of movement and are thus linked to the creation of the world. Of course, much of the significance comes from the Greek and earlier, and it is a bit hard to rationalize in a Christian church. My parishioners don’t find it strange at all, but then, they’ve lived with it a long time.”
Father Grimson walked toward the altar and Jethro trailed behind. “It was just here we found the remains. Jethro can tell you more. It’s rather disturbing for me.”
Jethro pointed to the altar.
“We came in through the front doors and could see right away that something was on the altar. We got up here, and we found what I think was a fox. The entrails had been spread in a kind of circle around the body. It was a dreadful thing to find anywhere, but here, it was beyond belief. Then we found the altar had been desecrated as well. There was a pool of blood there, and we found a bunch of swirling patterns, as if someone had played in it with his finger. Except the patterns were carefully drawn. I’ve done the best I can with it; this is what I remember. I dug it up when Father Grimson called. I drew this after the first one.”
He handed Harry a sheet of paper on which he’d drawn both the fox and the blood patterns. It was much more than a line drawing, quite explicit and nicely rendered. Will looked over Harry’s shoulder. “That’s amazingly detailed. You’ve drawn everything beautifully, if I can say that about this mess.”
Jethro blushed and explained that as a builder he’d had to master drafting, and that had led to drawing classes.”
“Can we keep this for a while until we can copy it? I’ll return it to you, I promise.”
“You can keep it. I don’t want it back. It makes me angry just to look at it. I only drew it to help me get over the cruelty. It’s disgusting to see, even worse to imagine someone doing this, and there’ve been a few more since. Not always fox. Anything, I imagine, the sick bugger could manage to catch. Sorry, Father.”
Nothing further came of the visit. Neither Father Grimson nor Jethro had any more to add except that the violated animals had all suffered the same fate: entrails spread around, patterns in blood. Neither had seen the intruders, nor heard anything unusual. Whoever had done this, besides being dangerously disturbed, had not been seen by anyone. He was enough of a woodsman to have caught the animals, killed them, and brought them here.
◆◆◆
Will drove away from the lot next to the office, called Rory, who still didn’t answer, and threw the phone back on the messy floor. He stopped at the Tim Hortons in the south end down near the bypass junction, got a ham sandwich, and took the cut-off at Cranberry Road. He drove out Extension to River Road. When he got to the gravel switchback leading down to the house by the Mist River, he parked by the nearest gate. There were a number of gates along the road protecting tracks that led into plots of forest owned by the logging companies. He tried Rory again and got nothing. He walked down toward the house.
The house sat back on a wet slab of rock, mist curling up from the river, trees still dripping tendrils of green moss. The water’s roar was a constant as it plunged down the narrow gorge. There were no vehicles on the slab, no music drowning out the river, and no lights in the windows. Will approached carefully, slid around the side, and looked through the crack in the ratty curtains. No light, no movement.
He checked the perimeter thoroughly, then the front door. There was no sign that anyone had been there in the last day or so, and the door was locked. Will walked back up the switchback, got the car, and drove to the office. He took the other arm of River Road and entered Harbour City on Harewood.
Harry and Sabina were sitting at Harry’s desk when Will got there. Isabella had waved him through without comment. Spread out in front of them were reams of paper. Harry looked up. “Will, how’d it go? Any sign of Rory? Pick up anything on Kylie?”
Will shook his head. “I’m getting a bit worried about him. Phone’s active but everything goes to voicemail. That isn’t like him. He should have checked in by now, whatever he’s doing. Nothing out on the river. House’s locked tight, nobody’s been around. The three kids aren’t around, at least I didn’t see them, and I’ve got zip on Kylie. What you looking at there?”
“Printouts from the cops,” said Sabina. “Take a look. We’ve got the mispers report and the first filed reports from a pair of detectives who are looking into the disappearance. Whole thing’s been booted up to possible abduction. They’ve got what we’ve got: a whole lot of nothing. What we do have are their searches through the provincial and national data banks, their list of possibles in the area, one of whom is our friend Bomber. His real name’s Edward Gracey.”
“At least they’re getting serious about it,” Will said. “Abduction means at least one detective on it and a much more thorough review. Better expect a visit. These guys aren’t slow, and we’ve been around a good bit the last day or so. Then there’s Alicia, she’s bound to tell them we’re involved.”
Harry glanced at him.
“We got a signed contract, so we’re okay there. But these guys don’t share, so we better be ca
reful what we say since we’re privy to everything they submit. Would not be a good idea to get caught out. No sense of humour on the force, at least not one I’ve ever seen.”
Sabina got up and perched herself on the edge of the desk, swinging one long leg back and forth. “We get nothing in the next day or so, we’re screwed. If it’s an abduction, we got no sign of who’s responsible, except that fat biker. If he’s in it and she’s passed through the Angels’ system, she’ll be put out pretty damn fast. They’ll move her around, and we won’t find her unless we’re lucky. And if we are, there won’t be much left of the Kylie Alicia knows. The damage is pretty severe once girls are in the system.”
Harry nodded. They all knew Kylie had been gone too long unless she’d just taken off on her own, but that was becoming less likely. What was most worrisome was the missing Bomber. If he were still around and things were normal, they would consider a run at him. But he wasn’t, and things weren’t normal. That left abduction by the Angels, or worse. Nobody’s ID had been found, so that left them leaning toward Bomber and the trade.
“Let’s give it one more day on Alicia’s dime, then we’re on our own. We keep at it around other jobs. We let the detachment do the leg work and keep tabs. Will, you gotta find Rory. We get his stuff and it takes us nowhere, we’re stuck with what we got. Everybody okay with that?”
Sabina and Will agreed, so Harry went to other business.
“We need someone out at that church on nights, so let’s get one of Rory’s crew out there. If the creep’s done it a few times already, he’ll do it again, and I’d like to catch the bastard in the act. Will, can you look after that and keep tabs?”
The day closed with assignments on current jobs. Harry signed up Isabella’s two new customers, both referrals from lawyers, and Sabina spent time mining her sources. Will left early to look for Rory.
NIGHT MOVES: The Stroll Murders Page 8