“Go for it,” Monty said.
The full team filtered in over the next hour. The rain tapered to a light drizzle. Beyond the fence, Leith knew, the neighbourhood was wide awake now. The more inquisitive neighbours would be hanging about, coats and gumboots over their pajamas, asking questions and trying to get a glimpse through the gates. Here in the yard, the night sky was blotted out by the glare of the LEDs. Jack Dadd arrived. The grisly sack was tugged into view. The army-green canvas was soaked at the bottom, dry on top. Inch by inch, it was transported on its tarpaulin-cum-sled to the shelter. Dadd gave the okay to open the bag.
Some of those present wagered on a Halloween prank even to the last moment, until the heavy canvas was peeled back and what lay within killed all conversation. The corpse was stiffened into a twisted huddle — male or female, it was impossible to say. The camera flashed as the body, released from its bondage, slouched into a gentler curl against the tarp.
Even uncurled, the head remained tucked into its chest, as if shying from their prying eyes. The internal organs would be soup, seeped into the duffel bag’s fabric and the sand below, the rest gutted by bugs. No eyes visible, a mouldering nose, a fine gold chain around its neck.
“Female,” Monty guessed.
“Male,” JD said.
Leith was thinking male, too. The corpse had to have been a young man. Fair-sized in life, probably, but shrunken in death. The head was shaved almost to the scalp but for a bisecting flop of dark hair, flattened and brittle, the modernized Mohawk style. He wore faded black hipster jeans that were shredded in places, a mouldy-looking hoodie, also black, and one dark-blue running shoe. The body had brought with it that foul smell, dissipated by the open air, but unmistakeable. It was that odour that had caused the citizen’s complaint that had brought out the uniforms. Those first responders had made some calls, cut the padlock, entered the lot. Their flashlights had picked out the hump of bag in the crawl space, and they had decided it was sinister enough to call in GIS. And here they all were.
“She was young,” Monty said. “Time of death, Doc?”
Coroner Dadd was the only one present not huddling and grimacing at the rain, his grimace reserved for the fate of the victim before him. “It’s John, actually, not Jane. I’d guess two months, three at most.”
“Two to three months ago? How come we’re only getting complaints now?” JD said.
“The big rains only started this month,” Leith pointed out. “If the crawl space flooded recently, and the body was lying in water for the first time, it could have released the odours in a bigger way. A wet dead mouse smells a lot worse than a dry dead mouse, believe me. Also, we don’t know when that hatch came down. If it was recently, that could be another reason.”
JD looked at the house and the high fence that surrounded it. “October, September, August. Whoever dumped this guy knew the area, knew this place was sitting empty.”
Leith had to agree. It wasn’t a busy neighbourhood. Whoever had done this had lived close by long enough to observe that the house was up for grabs. Possible, too, that whoever had done it was an out-of-towner driving in random circles. That person might have driven by and noticed the Do Not Enter signs posted around and thought to himself — or herself — Aha, nice.
But what about the locks on the gate?
Looking around, he suspected the fence marched in an unbroken rectangle all around. Nothing but a shrubby lane ran along the side of the house and, maybe, continued around back. Must check for a weak link first thing. Or a weak board, in this case.
The concert roadie constable who should have been a detective — Cal Dion — approached from the area of the driveway. He looked both soaked and overheated, his cap removed and jacket unzipped. He skirted the corpse on its tarp, not even glancing down, as if to show how little he cared. He nodded briefly at JD and Leith and told Monty, “We’re done here. Constable Randall wants to know if it’s all right to go get a full statement from Mr. Lavender now.”
“Mr. Who?” Monty said.
Dion pointed south. “Mr. Lavender. Lives across the road there. He reported the smell.”
JD made a noise that Leith heard as a snort of laughter, while Dion clarified his request to Monty. “Jackie Randall and I were first on scene. We talked to Lavender and said we might be back. Randall wants to finish up with him. She also wants to start canvassing the neighbourhood. I told her we need permission.” He looked at JD as if daring her to laugh again. “So I’m here.”
Monty shrugged at Leith. “Want to weigh in?”
“Somebody else can deal with Lavender,” Leith said. “And we’re certainly not canvassing anybody this time of night. The body’s been down here a while. Another few hours won’t matter. Thanks, Cal.”
Leith had first met Dion on a case in the Hazeltons earlier this year, but it was a complicated working relationship, the kind he felt was best left at a comfortable distance. He got the distinct sense that Dion felt the same, only more so.
Though Dion nodded a yessir without argument and walked away, the story didn’t end there. A minute later, a shorter, stouter figure came squishing across the lawn to challenge Monty on the same issue, but with a lot more pepper. This was a constable Leith didn’t recognize. Young, probably new to the job, but already taking charge. “Constable Jackie Randall, sir,” she informed Monty. “Half the neighbourhood’s out on the sidewalk, so it seems a good time to ask questions.”
“Last I looked, the neighbours cleared out back home. Nothing to see,” JD said.
“All the more urgent to get knocking on doors,” Randall shot back at her. “Before lights out. And I do want to hand in a full report, which means completing my statement from the man who called in the complaint.”
“Anybody can talk to the man who called in the complaint,” JD said.
“I’m not anybody.” Randall was a head shorter than JD, but a few decibels louder. “I was first on scene.”
Leith opened his mouth to deliver his final no, but Monty beat him to it with a compromise. “If Mr. Lavender is willing, go talk to him, but leave the canvassing for now. As Dave here has just advised your partner, another few hours isn’t going to change things. The first forty-eight is long gone.”
Randall opened her mouth, but Monty made a motion like a magician sending his assistant up in smoke. She gave a brisk shake of the head that said, Wow, I’m working amongst idiots, and tramped away.
“What a little fireball.” Monty grinned. “That girl’s going places.”
There came exclamations from the area of the tent, and JD jogged over to hear the news. Leith and Monty followed. The dead male had been shifted over to expose his bad side, and his body on display was now speaking out — or screaming, more like. The left arm had been amputated at the elbow, and the face was mostly gone. Not taken by rot, but like flesh had been ripped from bone. The mouth gaped as though whatever agonies the man had suffered still coursed through him, showing a set of teeth chipped and knocked from the gums.
“Here’s the arm,” somebody said.
The severed limb was lodged between the dead man’s knees.
Leith wondered about the significance of the crude packaging. A deliberate insult, or a matter of disorganization? It didn’t strike him as either symbolism or panic, but it did point to a certain spontaneity.
He turned away from the body and its attendants, taking a break from the view. He had been through some scary cases in Prince Rupert, and in other postings during his years in the service. Transferring down to the metropolis sure hadn’t gotten him into a better class of crime. But whether in Prince Rupert or North Vancouver or Happy Valley, horror happens.
Some days ago he had told Alison — maybe trying to convince himself more than her — that down here in the big city, there was at least a better support system. The more mules, the lighter the load, right? He had told her as well that his Nort
h Van workmates seemed like an exceptional bunch. Broad-minded, empathetic, and smart.
Beside him, Monty said, “Hoo-boy, that’s some bad mincemeat job. Almost enough to turn you vegan, eh, Dave?” and laughed.
Four
CHARMED
Considering the length of Constable Randall’s interrogation of Mr. Lavender, Dion wondered if she had eyeballed the man as her prime suspect, instead of a harmless retiree who had called the sanitation department to report a vague stink on the breeze. The sanitation department had told Lavender there wasn’t much they could do about it, so Lavender had called 911.
On his climb up the front steps, Dion had predicted five minutes of conversation, at most. But five had turned to ten, and Randall was still harping at Lavender about wind direction, garbage removal days, troublesome neighbours.
Lavender seemed to enjoy having late-night visitors. He drew out every answer and ended it on a hook. Dion began to feel it was strategic. When Lavender invited them to move from the porch where they stood to somewhere more comfortable within, Dion decided he was one cop too many and told Randall he was going back to the vehicle to catch up on his notes. When she didn’t object fast enough, he left.
Out in the rain, he looked back at the house, at Lavender’s closed front door. Maybe Randall was right, and Lavender was now pulling out the machete and chasing her around the living room. But then there would be the sound of police-issued 9 mm gunfire — and a whoop of triumph, probably.
Jackie Randall could take care of herself. All Dion had to worry about was getting from here, under the covered archway at Lavender’s front gate, to his parked cruiser down the road without getting soaked. The neighbourhood looked sound asleep. The sky had reneged on its ceasefire and was doubling its efforts to drown the planet. Water drummed down, hit the pavement under lamplight, and crawled toward Dion like a league of ghosts. Randall’s flood had arrived with a vengeance.
It was probably her flood that had flushed the odours out from under the abandoned house and set the alarm bells ringing, leading to John Doe. He thought about the body lying on the tarp and reeking.
He hadn’t stopped to look, because that death smell had a way of coating a person for days, and getting stuck with the smell was no longer part of his job description. All he could guess from what he had seen in passing was that the body had been there a long while.
Randall was more explicit. She had looked and listened, and then reported to Dion what she knew. The body was a young male, and far from fresh. Monty had told her the first forty-eight was long gone, but so what, she argued. In a way, it had just begun, now that there were police buzzing about the scene, advertising their presence in a big way. It changed the game, and somebody in one of these apparently sleeping houses could be hastily doing god knows what. Packing their bags, making a call, flushing the evidence.
Dion thought Randall had a good point, but he wasn’t going to encourage her.
He walked down the road, assaulted by the pouring rain. On the other side of the bushy spur named Greer, a house facing Lynn Valley Road stood out like a beacon, and he stopped to look at it. Unlike its neighbours, this one was lit up. It was one of the older homes, a double A-frame, painted maroon with cream trim. Clapboard siding, conventional landscaping, but not so well maintained, as if the homeowner had lost the will to trim those laurels. There was a driveway and a carport off to the side, a little white car parked within. The gutter spouts drizzled noisily.
He could almost see into the main floor of the place, as the heavier drapes were hooked back, leaving only a gauzy screen to obscure the view. White-gold Christmas lights sparkled everywhere, strung across the window and sparkling like stars amongst the foliage. It looked like the kind of place he could walk into and never want to leave.
Somebody standing behind those drapes was returning his stare, he realized with a start. He turned to go, but the front door opened, and the woman who had been watching him called out. “Hey you, hello!”
He called hello back to her. She was oddly dressed for a cold October night in baggy shorts — maybe boxers — a plum-coloured cardigan, and tall rubber boots. She was a dark-skinned woman with a mass of goldish-black hair. She stood blurred behind rain falling from the eaves like a flickering bead curtain. Dion knew that from where she stood, he must be a human bead curtain himself.
“What’s happened over there?” she asked. “Was somebody hurt?”
A reasonable assumption. The commotion of emergency vehicles, lights, and noise made it obvious enough. He pushed open the gate and walked to the bottom of the stairs so he wouldn’t have to shout, but even here he had to project his voice over the din of rainfall. “There’s an investigation underway.”
“At the Greer house?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, thinking she was more a hippy than a ma’am. She was around his own age, near the thirty mark. Her casual clothes and her tangly hair and her unkempt garden all pegged her in his mind as some kind of poet.
“Don’t ma’am me,” she said. “Or I’ll sir you. Who got hurt? Is it serious?”
“There’s been a death, so there’s going to be some activity around. Just letting you know.”
“A death? I’m sorry to hear that. How awful. I did wonder, a bit.”
From the bottom of the stairs, he watched her. A follow-up question sprang to mind, but that would be somebody else’s task. “If you’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary happening over there in the last few months, we’d appreciate hearing about it,” he said. “Somebody will be around tomorrow to get your statement. Just let them know, if you could. Anything’s helpful.”
She didn’t seize the opportunity to wish him good night and return inside, but stayed where she was and gazed down at him, as if she had something to add. He couldn’t help wondering what it might be. “Unless there’s anything you can tell me now, since I’m here?” he asked.
“Well, why don’t you come in.”
The golden lights twinkled all around her. He looked up and down the block as he radioed Randall, letting her know he was talking to a witness who had volunteered information. He gave the address and hoped Randall would not race over to join him.
Randall ten-foured him.
Dion ran his hands along his gun belt, just checking, then climbed the stairs and followed the hippy inside. She shut the door behind him as he glanced around the dark interior. Something strange about the place, a noise …
But it was just the forced-air heating rumbling through the ducts and blasting out the vents. He needed the warmth that gusted down. He was an ice block after the hours he’d spent outside the Greer house, setting up lights and tents. It hadn’t been smart, stripping down to his shirt sleeves in the October rain, but he hadn’t seen this far ahead, didn’t know Randall’s overblown work ethic would have him canvassing the neighbourhood after hours.
Inside the house, the woman didn’t wait for his name and ID, as she should have, but removed her rubber boots, slipped her feet into sandals, and went whisking down the dark corridor. She called back at him, “Holy moly, I’ll make some tea, warm us both up.”
She had disappeared to her right. He followed her into a brightly lit kitchen, where he saw nice appliances and expensive but unenthusiastic furniture, none of it matching up with the woman, somehow. She gestured at a clunky table to one side, next to a window. From here he could see a hallway leading to a living room, with more furniture that didn’t seem to be hers. Here and there on the pale-grey walls were darker squares and rectangles where pictures must have once hung — for years, maybe decades.
“I know,” she said, as if reading his mind, but missing the point. “This place needs a serious makeover, doesn’t it?”
She put on a kettle and went about preparing cups. She moved with brisk energy, despite the hour. Dion sat at the table and unzipped his jacket halfway. He flattened his notebook and asked the woma
n for her name. “Farah Jordan,” she said, and spelled it for him.
He occupied himself filling in the details of the interview. Then he glanced around, still trying to understand the disconnect. Centered on the table were porcelain salt and pepper shakers shaped like bell peppers, one red and one green. There was a jar containing chopsticks and teaspoons, a sugar bowl, a vase with assorted flowers that had died and dried some time ago. Unlike the rest of this place, they all seemed to belong to this woman. Maybe she was a boarder.
The window at his side was open a crack, and cold air seeped in. On the sill sat an ashtray, and in the centre of it was a single crushed-out roach. He glanced down and over at the woman’s bare legs as she worked at the counter. “Who else lives here?” he asked.
It was a question that might have alarmed her, if she followed the news and realized the lengths to which some rapists would go to get past a woman’s door. A phony police uniform was one of the oldest tricks in the book.
“Besides me, just Radar.” She took the chair across from him. “My cat.”
Just her was hardly the answer he expected. The furniture, the colour scheme, even the air — all seemed mannish to him, as though a middle-aged, cigarette-smoking bachelor occupied the space, not a hippy and her cat.
“Are you going to show me your ID?” she asked. She said it lightly, as if she was more curious about police ID in general than the bona fides of his presence.
He dug out his wallet and showed her his identification card. She inspected it with interest and handed it back. He explained again who he was and why he was here, then asked, “Have you lived here long, Ms. Jordan?”
“If you have any urge at all to call me Farah, I’d be more than happy if you gave in to it. I’ve been here since May.”
Half a year, he thought. Then it clicked. She had inherited the house from an older male relative, a father or grandfather. One she had not been too fond of, if the first thing she did was to take down his favourite pictures. Her face was kind, so the male relative was probably unkind. She poured tea as if they had all the time in the world. He couldn’t decide whether her overly relaxed manner was suspicious or nice. Probably it had something to do with the roach in the ashtray. “You had something to tell me?”
Creep Page 3