Creep

by R. M. Greenaway

  “Your good friendship.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Good friendship. Which I’m sure is quite finished by now. Was it wrong of him to be pleasant to me, to come over for dinner, chat? Is he not allowed to have a personal life outside the force?”

  “Of course he is. But if he questioned you, even if nothing came of it, he shouldn’t be getting personal with you, not until the case closes. That’s all.”

  “I know, and he told me exactly that. He feels so bad about it. But I don’t see why. We had one dinner together. Mostly we talked about food.”

  Her eyes could not just bake bread, but light candles. Of all the liars Leith had interviewed over the years, this young woman took the prize.

  Following the fingerprinting procedure, he thanked her, warned her to remain contactable at all times, received her solemn promise to do so, and saw her out the door. When she was gone he returned to the interview room, where Dion was still seated, no longer adding to his notes, but drawing what looked like a mean-faced daisy in the margin.

  “Nice woman,” Leith said.

  “She is,” Dion said. “Not too bright, though, sleeping with strangers.”

  Leith sat and faced him, and the interview was now between themselves. “And the strangers aren’t too bright themselves, are they, Cal?”

  Maybe Dion got the direct hit, or maybe not, but he agreed wholeheartedly that any stranger who slept with Ms. Jordan was not too bright. “You think she’s involved in Stirling’s death?” he asked, finally looking up.

  The real question being, How deep in it am I?

  Leith shook his head. “I don’t think so. And even if she was, you’re right, you couldn’t have known. Still, you should have kept your distance. And it’s got to end now.”

  “I know that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You brought her in soon as you learned of her involvement, and that’s all that matters now. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you,” Dion said, before closing up and leaving the room.

  The sir was new. Leith saw it as just another way of putting distance between them.

  * * *

  On his way to the parkade, something pinged in Dion’s mind, a task or errand he had forgotten to take care of. It was important, maybe critical, but what was it? He tried to count back through his thoughts and locate the buzzing fly, but it eluded him.

  What was he forgetting? He would go back through his notes and search, but the chances were slim that he had written it down.

  “Write everything down,” he scolded himself, as he made his way to the stairs. He passed a group of constables on graveyard, and they were watching him. “And stop talking to yourself,” he added, as the fire door closed.

  In the dark cavern which was the car park, he beeped his Honda Civic open and dropped into the driver’s seat. Where was he going? He couldn’t even remember that. He ran his hands over his face and skull, and he could almost feel it caving in, bone and brain tissue. Whatever glue they had used to put him together was breaking down. He had another assessment coming up in two weeks — and the tests were getting harder.

  He had two weeks to answer one scary question. Fail or quit?

  Or to put it another way — quit or fail?

  Twenty-Seven

  DEMONS

  The nightmare always took place on a straight, woodsy road. Dion was driving. Though the day was bright, the car’s interior was dark. Looch Ferraro was in the passenger seat, staring ahead in silence. There was always someone in the back, and the moment of terror would come as the thing leaned forward to speak, never showing its features, a paleness looming forward in the rear-view mirror.

  The dream came often, and Dion felt if he tried hard enough, he could take charge, one of these nights, and stay in the moment. He would not wake up, not look away. He would name the back-seat passenger, and in that way kill the dream.

  He tried now, and it was painful. He looked at his friend beside him. “Looch?”

  Looch didn’t speak, but the demon in the back seat did, in a glassy shout. “Brooke is here!”

  Dion shouted, too. He had flipped over and slammed the blankets with his arm. The demon was gone, his heart was racing, and he was looking at dust motes twirling in a stream of shuttered sunlight. Brooke? Brooke was Looch’s long-time girlfriend. Dion had left town without saying goodbye, or better yet, Sorry for killing the love of your life. Just bang, gone, and there he’d been, up to his knees in the northern snow.

  His cellphone rang. This being his day off, he considered letting voice mail kick in. On the third ring he rolled off the mattress and fought with the pile of clothes on the floor, untangled his trousers, located the phone and answered just in time. “Yes?”

  The clock radio said 6:45.

  “’Morning.” Leith’s voice was glum in his ear. “It’s going to be another of those days. What’s this memo about Troy Hamilton?”

  “What memo?”

  “The memo you left me.”

  Dion looked at the window, the haziest glow shining through the plastic slats. Morning had broken some time ago. He couldn’t recall any memo.

  “Jesus,” Leith said, correctly interpreting his silence. “Want me to read it to you?”

  “I’m just trying to remember —”

  “It says, ‘Troy Hamilton, brackets, ten, says he knows werewolf,’ and you give a bunch of details I can’t read. ‘Hamilton,’ something about three houses, ‘Stefano Boone,’ S slash B, follow-up.’”

  Dion now recalled what he had been trying so hard to remember last night. So he had taken steps — at least left a memo. That he couldn’t remember leaving the memo, let alone writing it, wasn’t good. “What part don’t you understand?” he said. “Troy Hamilton lives three houses away from Stefano Boone, and it should be followed up.”

  “Yes, I got that. We spoke about it earlier, and you were making inquiries. Thing is, Stefano Boone is nowhere to be found, and neither is Troy. The kid’s mother just called. Says she looked in his room this morning to roust him out of bed for school, and he’s a no-show. His coat and boots are gone. She doesn’t know how long he’s been missing. She’s worried, but says it’s probably nothing. Apparently he’s gone AWOL before.”

  “And Boone?”

  “We went to pick him up for questioning this morning. He’s not home. Nobody’s home. Doesn’t mean much. For all we know they’ve all gone to Disneyland.”

  “Disneyland …”

  “Anyway,” Leith said, “I thought you might know something more, but you don’t, so that’s fine. See you later.”

  “Wait!” The fuzziness of sleep had vanished, and Dion was sitting on the edge of his bed, putting the pieces together. “You’ll put out a search for the Hamilton kid, right? Because maybe it’s nothing, but with Boone gone, too, there could be something going on here.”

  There was something going on. The truth was gathering overhead like a storm cloud, and his own act of leaving a memo instead of taking immediate action now struck him as gross negligence. “I’d start with the park. Right? The Headwaters. You’ll do that?”

  “I’ll put the word out.”

  The promise sounded genuine, but not sharp enough. It lacked urgency. Dion stood up to make himself clear. “No, don’t just put the word out. Make sure it happens. I’ll come in and assist.”

  “No need. Stick to your schedule, unless you’re advised otherwise. I’ll talk to Monty about setting up a search. Thank you.” Leith hung up.

  Dion got dressed for the long, cold day ahead and left his apartment.

  * * *

  Surprisingly, he found a search was getting underway when he arrived. He was told if he hurried, he could catch a ride in one of the two SUVs headed out to the Lynn Valley Headwaters.

  He jumped into the back of the Chev driven by Corporal Montgomery and found himself sitting n
ext to Jackie Randall. She was dressed like him, in a hastily thrown together outfit of jeans, solid muck-proof boots, sweater, and lightweight RCMP jacket. She told him she too was pulling extra duty. “This is a big one in my career,” she told him. “Chasing demons.”

  Dion wasn’t feeling up to returning her grin. If the Hamilton kid was dead because of his own inability to foresee this happening, the day was going to end in tears.

  Up front, Montgomery was in conversation with other members. He sounded cheerful. His mood had improved since Halloween, and he seemed to have bounced back from whatever had been bothering him, which was probably that thing called overwork. Would Randall notice? Would she take it as a good indication that her suspicions were unfounded, and lay off her private investigation?

  Dion hoped she would. She had not called him with updates lately, nor stopped him in the hallway demanding his help. Maybe she had taken his advice and dropped it — or lost interest, or faith, or found herself busy enough with real-life responsibilities.

  They were on Mountain Highway now, no lights or siren, doing the limit. Dion wished they would spike it, move, but his worry didn’t seem contagious. One of the men in the front seat was asking Montgomery if a wedding date had been picked yet, and where was the ol’ stress level at. Next to Dion, Jackie Randall leaned forward to hear. Dion did, too.

  “No date yet,” Montgomery told his colleague. “Stress level: zero for me, eleven for Tori. You know girls, every eyelash has to be perfect.” He raised his voice to carry. “And by the way, everyone in this vehicle is on the guest list.”

  Most of the crew hooted. Dion caught Montgomery’s eyes in the mirror, a flash of blue. The eyes weren’t looking at him so much as seeking out the person beside him, Jackie Randall, who had just snorted. “Ugh,” she said. “Does that mean I have to dust off one of my two dresses?”

  Arriving at the Lynn Headwaters, the same park where Aldobrandino Rosetti had met his end and where two boys had spotted a werewolf, Montgomery pulled the SUV in near several other police vehicles. Members gathered around Montgomery as he flattened a map on the hood of a cruiser and set out search zones with a highlighter. Dion looked for Leith within the group, but didn’t see him. He and Randall were assigned a swatch of paths lower in the Mesachee that followed Lynn Creek.

  “It’s not the wedding day that’s stressed her out,” Randall said, as she stood with Dion, waiting for final instructions. “It’s that moment she can’t backspace out of existence. The Halloween joyride from hell. But I’m not so sure it was a joyride. I’ve found out something that’s very interesting.”

  She hadn’t given up, then.

  “You’ve been prying?”

  “I wanted to give it one more try. I drove by, but again, no sign of her car. I was going to keep going, but she popped out the front door, dressed for running. She saw me and flagged me down, and I had no choice but stop. She asked what I was doing there. I told her I was here to see Monty about something. She didn’t believe me, so I skipped ahead to Plan B and told her what I think happened.”

  Dion winced. Montgomery was out of earshot, but he lowered his voice. “You’re in for it, Jackie. Tori would have told him you were out there harassing her.”

  “Or not. At the end of our conversation, she said she wasn’t going to pester him with this bullshit. I still thought she would for sure, but in fact, I don’t think she has. At least, he doesn’t seem to be bothered and is just as nice to me as ever.”

  “Let’s hope it stays that way. What happened next?”

  “After yelling at me for a while, she opened the garage and showed me the car.”

  The garage had been stacked with boxes and sports gear when Dion had been at the house. So between then and now, the couple had cleared it out and parked the Acura in there instead. But there was nothing sinister about that. It was just the natural progression of rearrangement as two people settled into their new place.

  “Tori’s car has a few dings and scratches, for sure,” Randall went on. “That plastic strip under the front is cracked, and there’s a dent on the rear left quarter. But there’s also a faint indentation on the nose, left front.”

  Dion raised his brows. A front left indentation was what the traffic analyst predicted, following the Sunset Boulevard set of indicia.

  “I pointed it out to her,” Randall said. “Asked her again if she had hit a trick-or-treater on Halloween. She denied it. My ears are still ringing. So I said to her, if you didn’t hit the kid, then of course you won’t mind me hauling this off to the shop for a forensic examination, right, just to rule you out completely? And she called me a crazy bitch and kicked me off the property — I’m talking a literal kick, but luckily I dodged it. Anyway, I guess we’re on to Plan C.”

  Dion didn’t want to hear what Plan C was, and he didn’t have to, as Randall was looking down the parking lot, frowning. “What’s that?”

  The day was dark, the area blurred by a low mist, but Dion recognized the figure that seemed to be inching toward them. “Ray Starkey.”

  “A friend?”

  Hardly. Starkey was the old guy who had come along to ask questions as Dion had stood with Montgomery outside the Greer house. Starkey had pointed out his own place for them, a little green-roofed house down the block. He had also told Montgomery about some kind of super-wolves lurking around the neighbourhood, and had cast accusatory stares at Dion, as if he were one of them.

  The little figure gathered form as it moved closer through the mist.

  “You look spooked,” Randall said. “Who is he?”

  “I’m not spooked,” Dion lied. Starkey passed them, hunched and slow moving. He proceeded through the group of men and women in their bushwhacking clothes, straight to Corporal Montgomery’s side. Montgomery looked around and down, and Randall and Dion moved closer to hear what Starkey was saying.

  “’Scuse me, sir. What’s happening here, mind me asking?”

  Dion saw recognition in Montgomery’s eyes, followed by irritation. Unlike that day outside the Greer house, he was multi-tasking now, and not up for a PR chat. “A child’s gone missing,” he told Starkey, and huffed out a breath as he looked around his crew, asking who had that photo of the missing boy. He was handed a copy and showed it to Starkey. “Troy Hamilton. Ten years old. Know him?”

  “No, sir,” Starkey said. “Don’t know the boy.”

  “Right. Well, we’re going to be searching the woods hereabouts, so if you don’t mind —”

  “It’s the wolfs, hey?” Starkey said.

  “There he goes again,” Dion said. Arms crossed, he smiled down at Randall.

  “We don’t know what it is,” Montgomery said. He turned to carry on where he’d left off, addressing the team, but was tapped on the arm.

  “Except they’re not wolfs,” Starkey said. He dropped his voice so low that Dion had to step closer to hear. “I know what it is what’s doing it.”

  Montgomery raised his voice, punching up the pace. “Yes? What’s doing it, sir?”

  Everyone was watching the old man now. If nothing else, he was a good storyteller. “It’s nothing you can catch by the tail.” He gazed around himself at the men and women of the search party and spoke up for all to hear. “It’s nothing you can look in the eye, and nothing you can name. It’s not wolfs as such. It’s evil spirits, is what it is, and listen to me good, you boys go into them woods, you’re not coming out alive.”

  Beside Dion, Jackie Randall murmured, “O-kay, get out the butterfly nets.”

  Some in the team worked at not snickering, but Montgomery stood deadpan. He said, “I’ll tell you what, sir. Spirits or no spirits, we’ve got a job to do here. But later today, when he has a moment, this nice young man over here” — he indicated Dion — “will come by your place and get a full and proper statement from you. Just give him your address before you leave. Okay? Thank you, sir.”


  Either Montgomery had not noticed Starkey’s anti-Dion attitude at their earlier encounter, or he had made the assignment as a bad joke. Starkey was looking as alarmed as Dion was feeling. Randall had been paying attention to all the actions and reactions, and said, “You two have some kind of history, do you?”

  “There’s something about me he doesn’t like. Don’t ask what. I didn’t do anything to him. I didn’t even speak to him.”

  “Maybe you’re an evil spirit.”

  The secretive murmuring between Starkey and Montgomery was taking too long, and Montgomery seemed to age a few years as impatience wormed across his brow, his smile lines furrowing the wrong way. But he gave Starkey a last word, which seemed to satisfy the little messenger of bad tidings, who turned and went shuffling away down the road, shoulders pulled together, avoiding Dion like a pollutant.

  Dion watched him shrink back into the shadows, toward the long road that would take him back to town.

  “He thinks you’re First Nations,” Montgomery called out, grinning. “Said he’s got nothing against ‘Indians,’ but he’d rather deal with a white man. Like me. I told him you’re whiter than he is, but he didn’t believe me.”

  Dion wasn’t sure of his lineage mix. He had dark eyes that in the mirror sometimes looked roundish, and other times almond-shaped, depending on how mean he was feeling. These days it was mostly almond, which gave him an aboriginal or Asian look. Some research would end the mystery. Maybe someday.

  “What did you say that put the big smile on his face?” he asked Montgomery.

  “You’re off the hook, Cal. I spared him having to deal with you. Said I’d stop by his place after we’re done here, chat about wolves and Windigos to his heart’s content.” Montgomery turned to address the team with some last instructions. Police dogs would be called in next, along with extra crews of volunteers, but they might be a while, so for now they were on their own. He gave a double clap of the hands and told them to go get the kid, double quick. “Let’s save our volunteers the trouble and get this done before they can even get their boots on.”