Creep

by R. M. Greenaway

  “Did I?” she said.

  “I thought you did.”

  She poured tea into a second cup and smiled at him brightly. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just you looked so cold out there. All I wanted to do was bring you inside, warm you up.” Her teeth were white against her dark skin, and her blue-grey eyes were hypnotic. Suddenly he wasn’t sure who was doing the luring.

  “Here’s sugar, if you like,” she said, and he said no, thank you, worrying that this was more of a tea party than an interview. He had told Randall that he was speaking to a witness who had info to offer. He imagined Randall’s inevitable question, What was Ms. Jordan’s intel? and his inevitable answer, Actually, she just wanted to warm me up.

  Must work at building a better foundation for this visit. “I’m wondering,” he said, “do you know anything about the house across the road — who owns it, who lived there, anything like that?”

  “No, I’m sorry, it’s been vacant as long as I can remember. But will you tell me what happened there? Was it an accident?”

  He told her he couldn’t say anything more than that a body had been found, sorry.

  “I understand,” she said, but apparently didn’t, as she added without pause, “Man or woman? Not a child, I hope. Children seem to like getting into places.”

  “Well, like I say.”

  “Sorry, yes,” she exclaimed. “You just finished telling me you can’t divulge anything, and then I go and ask for more details.” She sipped her tea and looked wistful. “About how long would you say it’s been there, though? Not long, I’m sure. I just started noticing this kind of bad smell last week, but I thought it was somebody’s garbage. Oh rats, I’ve done it again, and you’re starting to look exasperated. I’ll just have to wait for the news, I guess.”

  Something banged. Dion looked around to see that a cat had just slipped through the cat flap in the back door. It walked into the room and studied Dion. It was slim, dusky grey, with bright-green eyes. It looked a bit like its owner.

  Its owner seemed delighted to see the animal and enticed it over with a ksk-ksk noise so she could stroke it from ears to tail. “They’re such snobs,” she told Dion. “But you have to love them. And every time she comes home, I’m so grateful, as there are coyotes out there. They’ll go for cats. Do you have any pets?”

  When he had lived with Kate, she had a tabby. A fat cat that ate, slept, complained, and damaged furniture. He had never seen the point of it, himself. “No, I don’t. I’d like to have a dog.”

  He blinked in surprise at his own words. He hadn’t meant to say anything so personal.

  “Me, too,” Ms. Jordan said. “Not so big, not so small. A rescue mutt!”

  And now they were talking about dogs. Dion described sitting in the park this fall and watching dogs and dog owners at play. It seemed like a good, safe, amiable relationship. He told her about the coal-black pup he’d seen at the SPCA the other day, in the course of his duties, how tempted he’d been to sign the adoption papers and bring it home. He had imagined the pup following along on his heels and curling up by his feet at night.

  But having a pet wasn’t practical, and neither was sitting here talking about it with a witness. He asked, “Do you recall what day you first noticed it, the bad odour you thought was garbage?”

  “I couldn’t give you a date. It came and went.”

  “That’s fine.” The other question that had cropped up meanwhile had somehow gotten away from him. He wondered if she could smell death on him. The tea scent pluming up from the cup in front of him was doing a good job of overriding the crime scene stench that lingered in his nostrils, but it didn’t quite do it, and still the idea of eating or drinking made him queasy.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it, the bergamot?” she asked.

  “Bergamot?” he said.

  “These weird hours,” she said. “Do you always work this late?”

  The solidity of the question brought him back to earth, and he picked up the cup and gulped the tea she had gone out of her way to make for him. It was nice, warm, comforting. “I’m on nights,” he said. “Seven to seven.”

  “How awful.”

  “Not really. It’s usually quiet in the shop. A good time to catch up.”

  Randall’s voice came over the radio, saying she was done and at the car — did he need assistance? He replied no, he’d be out in a minute. He apologized to Ms. Jordan. “It’s really late, and you must be wanting to get to bed. Thanks for thawing me out.”

  “It’s okay. I work quite late myself. I’m used to the hours. I work at the Greek Taverna, down on Lonsdale.”

  “Really?” He was happy for an excuse to carry on the conversation. He didn’t want to leave, go back to Jackie Randall and reality. “I’ve had dinner there. Quite a few times.” Though not lately, and not in this life. “Great food. You’re a waitress?”

  “Head chef, actually,” she said.

  He watched her smile and wanted more. The low-grade lust he felt was nothing new. He was single, hungry, and easily infatuated. But of course nothing would happen. It was time to go, and he put his final question to her. “I know it’s none of my business. But this house, is it an inheritance?”

  “Yes, exactly. My mom died when I was little, and my dad’s been here for the last fifteen years. He got ill in May, so I gave up my Lonsdale apartment and moved in to take care of him. Now it’s just me. He passed away last month.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Dion said, and mentally kicked himself. What a completely unnecessary, insensitive question. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. And thank you. Yes, it’s strange to hear him shuffling about upstairs, looking for something. We’ll all end up like that to some degree, I guess. Looking for something.”

  An odd statement, and an odd woman. He had the feeling Ms. Jordan was a little mad. The wind wailed, the ducts roared, the house creaked, and out in the car, Constable Randall would be growling. As they walked to the front door, he told Jordan to call if she could pin down the dates any further of when she had first noticed the smell across the road. It could be helpful.

  “Yes, I will,” she said, opening the door. “What’s your name again?”

  “Dion,” he said, and the question he had forgotten popped back into mind, a more particularized version of his first remarks while standing out in the rain. “You must have a pretty good view on the Greer house from here. Have you noticed any activity over there since you moved in?”

  “It’s got a high fence,” she said. “Isn’t there some kind of bylaw saying fences can’t be more than five feet tall? That one’s at least six.”

  He didn’t like the question. She wasn’t the kind of person who measured fences and lodged complaints, so what could it be but a deliberate diversion? He tried again. “I thought from upstairs, you might be able to look across, see if there’s anyone moving around inside?“

  She shook her head, shrugged an apology.

  He could think of nothing else. Standing on the front porch, he searched his wallet, found a business card, and handed it over. “Well, if you do think of anything …”

  She seemed to find the RCMP crest — gold and blue, with its honourable motto — funny. It turned out it wasn’t the crest she was laughing at, but his name. “Calvin,” she said. “That’s so nice. Where’s Hobbes?”

  Calvin and Hobbes was a popular comic strip, he knew. He was still trying to think up a reply — though what could he say to that? — when she spoke again, more seriously. “I shouldn’t laugh. This is obviously not the time for that. It’s just, I feel like we’re in a movie. You say, ‘If you think of anything …’ and now the bodies start piling up, and you save my life, or I save yours, and we end up falling in love. Isn’t that how it goes?”

  He said, “That’s for sure. Good night.”

  Randall watched him drop in beside her. He wa
s still swearing at himself. Farah Jordan had all but offered herself up nude, and his response had been That’s for sure.

  “What’s the matter?” Randall said. She had ridden shotgun earlier, but was now behind the wheel, looking about ready to drive off without him.

  “Nothing.”

  She started the engine. “Get anything good?”

  “No. You?”

  “Nope.”

  A lot of time and one big embarrassment for nothing, then. They headed back to the city lights, leaving Lynn Valley and its secrets behind.

  Five

  MESACHEE

  In the late morning, Leith and JD accompanied Corporal Michelin Montgomery back to the crime scene, the derelict house on Greer where a body had been stuffed so unceremoniously some months ago and removed so carefully last night. The Ident people had been working the grounds since daybreak, and the house now sat temporarily empty but for a small crew and a rotation of auxiliary constables to guard the scene.

  On approach, Leith saw that daylight redeemed the place. Stepping inside, he found that even with the main floor windows boarded up, sunlight seeped through enough cracks to expunge the horror. “Not so spooky now,” he remarked.

  Monty cheerfully disagreed. “Still horrifying to me, Dave. We’re just in the day-before-all-hell-breaks-loose scene. Lots of ominous music and the promise of things to come. What d’you say, JD?”

  JD said she found the place freaking scary, considering a faceless killer had been crawling around here not long ago, dragging a dismembered body into the blackness underfoot. If that wasn’t spooky, what was?

  Upstairs the windows were unboarded, but murky behind a buildup of wind-blown dirt. Leith stood in what once must have been the master bedroom. The floorboards were raw plywood, as someone had removed all the carpeting. The drywall was marred with nail holes and splotched with mould. All the fixtures were either gone or broken.

  “If only I was a movie director.” Monty was still on topic. He stood with arms crossed in the centre of the room, staring at the floor. “What a setting. Even my shadow looks creepy.”

  True, Monty’s shadow was creepy, a stiff-shouldered, bullet-headed shape stretched across the rough flooring.

  “I’m told there might have been squatters in here at some point,” JD said.

  “Squatters who left nothing interesting behind,” Monty replied. “A huge make-work project for the lab folks, is what it is. Food wrappings, cigarette butts, liquor bottles, and other assorted necessities of living. Nothing recent. Probably just kids.”

  “And a girl’s bracelet,” JD told Leith. “On a windowsill. Fake gold, a dime a dozen.”

  “Woo-hoo,” Monty called experimentally, maybe expecting an echo.

  The results were oddly flat, Leith noticed. He moved to one of the two windows in this upstairs bedroom. From it he could see houses, mostly obscured by trees. Only one home would have had a clear line of sight to this one, but for the branches of a large evergreen. One of its upstairs windows was clearly visible, and if someone stood at that window, they would be able to see him in this one. They would also be able to see down into the lot, if they craned. He studied the scraggly orchard below, and in his mind’s eye he saw a figure dragging a heavy bag across to the foundations. Since this was his imagination at work, he made it a moonlight scene.

  What a shock that would have been, if it had been spotted. It would surely have been reported. He put the question to JD, just to be sure. “That place has been canvassed?”

  She peered across at the big maroon house behind the branches. “Of course. That whole block’s been checked off. Nobody saw anything.”

  No surprise.

  Monty left the room to explore the rest of the upstairs. Leith followed. On the west side was a child-sized room, also denuded of its carpeting. A peel-and-stick wallpaper border, Shrek motif, ran around its perimeter, unpeeling and unsticking. In a corner of the room Monty discovered a set of deep gouges in a small section of the plywood flooring. He squatted down for a closer look, pushing at the wood with his knuckles.

  Leith crouched, too.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say these were the scratch marks of a large Canis lupis familiaris, better known as dog,” Monty said, shooting back to his feet with an ease Leith envied more than the Latin. He rose, too, slowly and with a twinge of knee pain. Alison was right; it was time to get out the jogging gear, stop making excuses.

  “But it’s not,” Monty went on. “Too aggressive, too acute. Some kind of tool, maybe. One of those gardening claws? Interesting. Get a picture, Dave. Somebody should check under that board, too. It’s got flooring nails, but it’s loose. Classic hidey-hole.”

  Ident would have gotten a shot of the gouges, or they would soon enough as they continued to scour the place, but Leith took the time to snap a few shots for reference. When he was finished making a note of the details, he looked around and found JD and Monty were gone.

  Their silent departure was strange. Not so much for JD, who walked like a cat — but Monty was the noisy type. Whatever he did and wherever he went, he seemed to emit a whir of enthusiasm.

  Leith was quite sure he liked Monty. He had been out for drinks with him and the crew a few times since Monty’s arrival in September — because how do you say no to an invitation that comes with a hearty slap on the back?

  The reasons for liking Monty were virtually endless. He had an impressive curriculum vitae and thrilling life stories that he seemed only too happy to share. Far from being self-centred, he was curious about his workmates and wanted to hear their life stories, too. If he found out you had kids, he wanted to see your wallet photos. If you were short of pocket change, he’d pay for your beer. He was also going places. With the force for thirty-plus years, he’d spent the past seven of those just over the bridge, in Surrey, the province’s largest detachment. North Van was just a stopover, he had told the gang at Rainey’s the other night, as the International Operations Branch would be taking him overseas within the year. Where exactly, he wouldn’t or couldn’t say, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be boring.

  In short, everybody liked Monty. He had verve, and charisma, and brains. Unlike Leith, he lit up the room when he walked in.

  Actually, correction: Leith didn’t like Monty. Because how much verve can a person stand, in the long run?

  Leith was working on banishing these uncharitable thoughts when he left the child’s room, turned the corner, and froze. A corpse floated in the dim light at the end of the hallway, its head twisted, eyes rolled back, outstretched hands frozen into hooked claws.

  Of course it wasn’t a corpse, and it wasn’t floating. It was standing on its toes and just kidding. Monty was whooping it up now, not a man in his fifties, but a teenager who had just pranked a buddy. Leith’s arms had gone up in self-defence, and they came down now in fists of anger. “Jesus, Monty!”

  JD climbed the stairs to see what the commotion was.

  “Sorry, but I couldn’t resist,” Monty laughed. “I mean, look at this place. When will I ever get the chance again?”

  He maybe saw something in Leith’s face that said not cool, and his grin faded. “C’mon, man. It was a joke.”

  Leith brushed past him and stomped down the stairs. JD shadowed him. Out in the light of day, Monty’s apologies took on a note of impatience. “No harm done, right? So what’s the problem?”

  The problem wasn’t Monty’s verve, really. Leith’s problem was Leith. He was homesick for the prairies, the togetherness of his once-large extended family, now scattered across Canada. He was sick of the North Vancouver traffic. He was sick of renting. He was socially awkward, mysteriously guilt-ridden, and on top of it all, inexplicably lonely.

  “Better get used to it,” he told Monty. “I’m a natural-born stick-in-the-mud.”

  “He is,” JD confirmed.

  But Leith w
asn’t done. “Frankly,” he said to Monty, “if our ranks were reversed, I’d tell you a thing or two. I could have shot you. You know that, right?”

  “You didn’t reach for your gun, I noticed.”

  “I’ve seen enough movies. You can shoot a zombie full of holes, but you won’t kill it.”

  “Sure you can kill it. You just gotta aim for the brain.”

  “What brain?”

  Leith smiled at his own snappy repartee. Their nonsense had popped the tension, and the rift was mended. In a better mood, the three of them went on to explore the boundaries of the lot, looking up into the tree branches and down into the shrubbery. They went out the back gate into the alley — more of a weedy mule track running between woods and home — that had once provided a place for long-ago residents to store their junk, judging by what remained; old car parts and appliances sat heaped along the fence.

  The gate at the back, like the one at the front, had been securely chained and locked against trespassers when the police had arrived on the night of the call-out. The chains on both gates had been cut and were now left unlocked for investigative purposes. Whoever had used the property for squatting had apparently gotten around the difficulty of chains and locks by stashing a shabby old stepladder in the woods behind the house. Inside the fence, shoved in amongst the lilacs, were a couple of plastic milk crates that had probably done the job for getting back out. Ident had seized ladders and crates and taken the lot of it in for analysis.

  “Wasn’t just one quick visit, then, was it?” JD said. “Or kids finding a hangout to smoke pot. Somebody was living here, coming and going, for a while. Same people who used it for a body dump?”

  Leith walked along the back fence, looking along its top for wood scuffs and dents that might tell him where the ladder had leaned. “Here,” he said. The marks looked relatively fresh and ladder-width apart. The story was starting to come together. But, as JD had said, did the squatters have anything to do with the murder?