NIGHT MOVES: The Stroll Murders

by Gar Mallinson

  That got another sly smile, and Red sat up, leaned forward, and started.

  “Bet I can guess what you were doin’… Okay, okay, like I was at this party over on Davie, well, close anyways. An’ I seen the chick those guys had a picture of, you know? I been there before, sometimes you can score real easy for free, you know, so I like to go. Everybody does everybody there, you know, I mean it goes on all night. You hang around, you even get fed, you feel like food. Anyways, I seen this chick, you know, she’s like maybe a teenager, and she’s hot. Everybody wants her, and she’d get her share except this other chick, tall blonde, grabs her and they play some. I watch ‘cause I sort of like the chick myself, you know, but she makes out with the blonde. Rest of the night, I’m busy, so morning, I see her again. I’m on a couch and she’s like getting dressed in the middle of the room. She’s tiny and she’s stacked just the right way. She’s dressed like she belongs on the strip, you know, so I follow her out. Last I saw, she grabs a cab on Davie. I watched for her, you know, but she didn’t come around, least not down our end. That’s it, right? Don’t know why that’s so fuckin’ important I gotta get treated like this.”

  “You see her anywhere else, you remember?”

  “Maybe, maybe night before that one, she’s like at another party I’m at with a guy picked me up. But we’re pretty blasted and he’s an animal, so I’m like busy a lot. But I think the little chick’s there, different outfit, but man she was hot, guys all over her. That’s all I got. Didn’t see her leave, but we were out of it, you know. Didn’t leave ‘til like after lunch some time.”

  “She have any friends you know about, anybody seem close to her? I mean beyond the obvious. She have any relationship with the people who throw the parties?”

  I don’t know nothin’ about her, just that I saw her and she was hot, you know, and who the hell knows who throws the parties, we all just go. Everybody knows about them. Like guys an’ chicks come from the clubs, and sometimes we go, ‘cause we get picked up by guys goin’ there. That’s all I got, that’s it, Sabina. Can you get me the fuck outta here?”

  “I don’t see why not. Just sit tight for a few and I’ll see.”

  She left Red and Harry and talked to the young man leaning against the door frame in the hall. He took her back to Mamma Jing, who smiled and crooked a finger. She listened quietly to what Sabina had to say, then nodded.

  “I be pleased, Wei, we know more now. That be good. I send red devil girl back with men.”

  Mamma Jing nodded to herself as if fitting the information with what she already knew, and Sabina was certain she knew a lot.

  “Wei go with, keep red one calm, give if good.” With that, she handed Sabina an envelope she scooped up from her ample lap. Sabina bowed and left her there, returning to the back room.

  Red was already up and in the hall with one of the young Chinese, Harry right behind her. There were two others waiting at the back door. Sabina nodded and held up the envelope. No one said anything, not even Red.

  One of the men opened the door, and Sabina saw the inside of the van. It had been backed up to the rear entrance so that only a sliver of light separated its interior from the hall. Two of them lifted Red in and sat with her on a series of cushions. Sabina followed. Harry shrugged and jumped in too.

  The ride back to the stroll took over an hour, the van turning often, running fast and long for a while before accelerating and stopping regularly. Finally, it pulled to a stop and the back doors were thrown open to reveal the corner on Cordova at the bottom of the hill just a short block past Campbell.

  Sabina knew the area well since from here up to Campbell and back to Glen and under the Hastings overpass was the trannie stroll. This corner was the center.

  One of the men helped Red down and Sabina followed. After a quick chat, Sabina gave her the envelope from Mamma Jing.

  On their return, Harry and Sabina talked to Mamma Jing once more. She was, as always, in her large dragon chair. Harry had seen her out of it only twice, and both times were dangerous and critical.

  The matriarch seemed pensive, quieter than normal. She motioned for them to sit on large cushions around a low table in deference to western customs. As they sat, one of the many who inhabited the place scurried out in that shuffling way with the inevitable tea. The intricate ceremony completed once again, she began to speak.

  “One Sigh, Wei, red-hair devil girl back home now, she be watched. Mary devil too I bet, very bad for parents, I not tell all to them. Singapore girls like her not talk to me. I know anyway.” A smile crossed her face but was soon lost in the frown that followed.

  “One Sigh, I be very happy you find man. He not bother Chinese girl again.”

  “I’ll try my best, great lady, but he is clever and careful so the journey will be long and difficult. But you know that.”

  Mamma Jing smiled that dangerous smile of hers, tapped her fingers on the arm of the dragon chair, and nodded slightly. But there was no chuckle shaking her massive bulk. “When he found, he be mine, One Sigh. He take from me, I take back.”

  She raised her head and smiled again, this time with pleasure. “You go now, One Sigh, I wait. Wei? Remember river and green fields.”

  The car was not where they’d left it. It was waiting for them in the back alley. It had been cleaned and on the back seat was a large cooler. Harry knew what was in it. She’d done this before. He lifted the lid gently and smelled. Sabina took a peek. It was filled with Chinese delicacies, ones the great lady knew Harry would like and she thought he should have. He looked at Sabina, who was staring into the box, fascinated.

  “What do you suppose this stuff is, H?”

  “Specialty items. I wouldn’t look too closely at some of them. Mamma Jing likes to expand my culinary experiences. We can make the nine o’clock if we don’t dawdle.”

  “Brace yourself, we’ll be there in plenty of time.”

  She was out Georgia and across the Lions Gate Bridge before Harry could relax.

  ◆◆◆

  It wasn’t until ten the next morning that Sabina visited Sinini’s law office. Olivia met her at the door and took her to an empty library-cum-conference room. A polished walnut table was surrounded by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. A long window, one of the old sash types, sat on the end wall. The whole room was painted a deep forest green. It was an elegant, powerful room and very quiet.

  “We won’t be interrupted, and the room has been soundproofed. A lot of confidential interviews go on in here and we can’t afford any breach of confidentiality. My boss knows about Mary and will give me what time I need, so we can talk here as long as we like. That detective was here a while ago, the homicide one, Alan something. He didn’t stay long, just wanted to know if I’d thought about anything else. He seemed frustrated and disappointed when he left.”

  “I know. They have to check everything they can, and they often redo interviews just in case. It’s often disappointing. Actually, that’s what I’m doing too. We have a different approach to things and we’re not as tied by regulations as they are, so together we make a good team. Thanks for taking the time to see me. We’re trying hard. It will help us a lot to know as much about Mary as we can. Personal stuff. I know you’ve covered this with the detective, but I’d like to go over it again. Would you do that?”

  Olivia sat back, nodded, looked down at the table, her hand brushing off imaginary dust, and nodded again. “She’s seventeen, so that tells you a lot. She’s just as secretive as I was at her age, but we’re a lot the same. I can tell you what I was like and how I saw her over the last few days. I really have no specifics. I let her run as she wished and tried to keep tabs on her. I told the detective that much, but personal stuff, well, I can’t talk to him the way I can to you. To make Mary do what I wanted her to do would have met with a lot of resistance and she would have done what she liked anyway. I always did.”

  Olivia paused for a few moments, gathering her thoughts. “She’s a bit wild, experimenting sexually.
Like I did, she does it all under the radar. We have strict parents, but they’re a long way away. I had a hard time keeping them there when I called.”

  She paused again, took a deep shuddering breath, and continued. “Here’s what I know about her trip here. She likes nights, she loves clubs if they’re filled with well-off kids and good music. She doesn’t like the clubs here, and she doesn’t like Victoria much. Not enough going on in either place. She used my car every night, and I know she bought a couple of very provocative outfits. I saw the sales slip and I know the shops. Here’s what I suspect. She was on the strip up Victoria Road up from Glow, the hooker part. She’d go to where the action was, I’m sure of it. It’s what I would have done at her age. And she might try it herself, I don’t know. The stores she bought from sure suggest something like that.”

  Sabina reached across and took Olivia’s hand.

  “We know she was on the stroll, and we know she did try it. We have a girl who saw her there on a couple of nights, and a street person who saw her get into a pickup on the night she didn’t come home. We’re pretty sure that pickup is the one, but we’re not certain. Whoever was in the truck might be her abductor. That’s all we’ve got, a dark blue pickup, dented fenders, lots of mud, cracked windshield, one, maybe two inside. The guy who saw Mary get in was pretty stoned, so we’re not even sure about the description. Does that truck mean anything to you?”

  Olivia shook her head. “But it’s who you’re looking for, isn’t it, the guy in that truck?”

  Sabina nodded. “We think so. There could have been others, and our contacts on the street aren’t the most reliable, as you can guess. I think that truck is the key, but there are so many of them, and all we have is the colour and some mud. It doesn’t help much and the RCMP haven’t been able to find it, and they’ve sure looked. They’ve stopped dozens of dark blue, dented, muddy pickups with chipped or cracked windshields, but every one of them has been cleared.

  “Now what we’re doing is looking at Mary rather than the guy to see if there’s some kind of trigger there. What you’ve told me so far suggests that her appearance and her manner might well have been what triggered the abduction, but we’re not sure. We see similarities to another girl who disappeared recently, but she was not dark-haired nor provocatively dressed. She was, however, sexually active. We’re now looking at the possibility that the key is the signals the girls gave out.”

  Sabina paused, looked out the window for a moment, and continued. “Do you think it would help us to approach people in the family or friends in Singapore?”

  Olivia shook her head. “The family wouldn’t know anything; they’d be the last to know. Her friends wouldn’t tell you because it would reveal their own inclinations. No, Singapore won’t help you. Mary’d be like me and a lot of the other well-off kids. Whatever they were into was theirs and they’d not let on they were anything but good private-school girls. What you need about Mary you’ll find here, not there.”

  “Anything else that you remember, anything at all?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it when I was able to think at all, and the clubs and the stroll are where I’d look. Who she met, where they went together.”

  Olivia ran both hands up her cheeks to her forehead and shook her head. “I can’t believe she’s not back.”

  Sabina gently touched Olivia’s shoulder. “We know she didn’t go anywhere with anyone at any of the three clubs. But the stroll, that’s the center for us and for the cops. We’re better there than they are. We have contacts, we know the girls, and they don’t clam up with us the way they do with the cops. We have the girls watching.”

  Sabina paused, looked up at the massive bookcases and the rows of heavy black- bound law books. She wondered if anyone ever used them or if they were just for show. Probably for research. They were a bit daunting. Maybe that was the purpose. The power of the law. She turned back to Olivia.

  “We’re pretty certain she’s been abducted. And we think that whoever’s doing this is clever and careful. We have to be the same if we want to catch him. The press is going to be all over this; they are already. If reporters approach you, don’t give them anything. Call us instead, and we’ll try to deflect them. If anything at all comes to you, though, will you call me, day or night? Just call and we’ll be on it.”

  Olivia nodded. “They’ve been at the front desk already, but they don’t get anywhere there. I leave by the back door and they haven’t caught me yet. When they do, I’ll call. I know you guys are trying your best, and I want you to keep trying. My husband agrees. Don’t let money hold you back. We have lots. I’ll call you, but I don’t think there’ll be anything new. I just don’t know anything else.”

  She rubbed her scalp again and bowed her head. Sabina left her there.

  XIV

  In the early morning, with a cup of hot coffee in hand, the foreman opened the door of his trailer and looked up at a sky filled with scudding clouds driven by high winds. Patches of sunlight appeared and disappeared as the cloud cover broke up. At ground level, the wind was light out of the south-west but strong enough, he thought, to have started a drying trend. The track would be dangerously soft, but the salal would be dry enough to cut. He went back inside and called the driver.

  His crew met him at the bottom of the lane into his trailer park. Maki Road ended down past the new Rona store at a gravel turnabout around which stood stone posts and a security gate. There was room to park a few cars near the gate, and they would wait there for the stake truck. The men sat around on the rail fence, some smoking, some talking quietly. The foreman stood apart a little, talking on his cell with the driver. It was eight in the morning now, later than usual for them, but early enough to allow a full day’s harvest. The truck finally appeared around the corner at the light, and the men grabbed their backpacks and waited.

  Once in the rear of the truck, they pitched their bags up near the cab and held on. The truck ran down thirty kilometers of highway before it turned off south of Chemainus. After that, the asphalt quickly turned to gravel and ran inland. Two one-lane bridges later, the truck turned again onto a patchy, poorly maintained road full of potholes. That road turned west in a half kilometer toward an old wrecking yard. The truck kept straight ahead on what was little more than a single-lane dirt track. The driver avoided as many water-soaked sections as possible by riding on the edge of one side, but at times, he had no option but to simply plow through in low gear. The men held on to the sides with both hands to avoid being thrown about by the violent swaying.

  The truck reached a stream before nine and the men disembarked. The depression was now slick with mud, the stream brown and running fast. The men waded across carefully and began the trek up the road. All of them had come prepared for work in rubberized pants and waterproof boots that would keep them reasonably dry in a forest still wet underfoot.

  With this protection, they walked in the two parallel tracks of the road. The tread marks they had encountered a couple of days before were no longer visible. When they reached the area they had previously cut, the men waited for the foreman to lead them up the ridge to the new cutting area that lay on the other side. The salal was still wet, of course, but the upper branches were dry enough for the cutting could begin.

  The clearing beyond the ridge was small and uneven, the footing a little treacherous, but the salal continued beyond it into the trees as far as the men could see. It was a good find, and they set to work energetically, knowing it would not take a day to harvest a truck load. Perhaps by lunchtime or a little after, they could go home and get out of their rain gear.

  As the canvas sheets filled, two of the crew were set as runners and carried the bundles to the staging area, leaving them on the large vinyl tarps the truck had brought.

  The work continued in this fashion until noon when the men broke for lunch. Another hour or so would see them finished for the day, and the prospect of an early end kept their lunchtime short.

  A half hour later, t
he men returned to work. The foreman was working the area farthest away and was well into the trees when he yelled. Work stopped.

  The men moved toward him, first slowly and then more quickly when he didn’t appear. Two of the men entered the trees and stepped next to him, then followed his eyes to the ground. One of the men turned and vomited.

  The others, growing curious, began to enter the woody area, but the foreman waved them away.

  He took out his phone.

  ◆◆◆

  Under one of the great firs in the center of a small rock-edged depression lay the body of a girl. She was tiny, dark-haired. She looked like she’d been there for a while. She had bite marks on her. The breeze that morning, light but steady, had carried the odour in the other direction, and although the men had had a sense of something dead in the air, that wasn’t unusual in the bush.

  The men bundled what they’d cut, carried it out, and waited by the stream. The police would be some time, the foreman was sure, so he called the driver, told him what they’d found, and asked him to wait for the cruisers and give them directions.

  The men talked among themselves, ill at ease and apprehensive.

  After roughly an hour, they heard a truck and saw blue and red reflected off the trees. Shortly after that, a black, wide-bodied Humvee-like vehicle appeared, straddling the track and riding on the shoulders. The men watched silently. The police truck stopped at the depression, and the driver along with a couple of uniforms got out.

  The foreman waded across the muddy depression to meet them. The men continued watching. While they waited by the stream, the foreman led the two uniforms along the road and past the salal his crew had harvested. Then he took them up the ridge to the clearing. He pointed across the salal field to the woods beyond, led the officers across, and stood by while they moved up to the site.

  They remained there for a time, not moving, and the foreman realized they were calling for reinforcements. One of the officers backed off and came down to stand with the foreman. The other began to tape off the area with crime scene tape, yellow and foreign in the forest. He strung it between the trees, blocking off a large circle around the small depression under the fir. When he was done, he joined the foreman.