Creep

by R. M. Greenaway

  He drew in his shoulders, chiding himself for letting the forest get to him. There was nothing more supernatural than delusion happening here. A young man with a hate-on for the world had flipped out, not for the first time, and not for the last.

  Of course there was another possibility to keep in mind: Boone was not the killer. But how likely was that?

  Leith was cold and tired. He wished he could stay and assist in the tracking of Boone, but he needed sleep. By the way JD was yawning, she did, too. They left the scene and parted ways in the parking lot. He drove home, and it only came to him when he was in bed next to Alison, when the lights were out, when she had fallen back asleep, and the noises began their usual creep through walls and joists, that awful word Bosko had thrown out so matter-of-factly: skinwalker.

  Thirty-One

  PUSH

  They were done at last, at least for now. Dion had been photographed in the chilly medical exam room. The scratches on his arms were documented, just in case they turned out to be defensive wounds, say, inflicted by Jackie Randall as she fought him off. The clothes he wore were taken, bagged, and labelled. Or seized, was the word.

  The physical exam — with a GIS constable named Frye looking on — was thorough. The doctor had asked questions, looked into Dion’s eyes, and swabbed blood off his hands and face, scratches that only now were starting to sting and throb. One slash on his neck got a few stitches. He couldn’t remember getting slashed on the neck. The underbrush must have been pricklier than he realized.

  He watched the bloody swabs being placed into tubes and labelled for the lab. Next came a saliva swab, also tubed. Finally the doctor toured around Dion’s mouth with a scope, asked how he was feeling emotionally, then folded the scope away and prescribed painkillers.

  Wearing borrowed clothes, as he had no spares left in his locker, Dion was next questioned by Montgomery. Montgomery audiotaped the statement, but deemed videotape unnecessary. Constable Frye sat in.

  Montgomery asked Dion what he was doing up in the Mesachee tonight.

  Dion said it all again, but with a slight difference. Now he had the complication of Randall’s private investigation to worry about, not least because the subject of her investigation was doing the questioning, and he had to watch his words.

  “I was going to meet Jackie at Denny’s. She didn’t show up, so I phoned her. We talked briefly. She wanted to postpone the meeting. Then she either disconnected or cut out. She might have walked out of range. It sounded like she was walking, and she mentioned it was steep. I thought she might be calling from the park, something to do with the Troy Hamilton case, so I went out to look for her. I didn’t think she was in trouble. Didn’t sound like it, on the phone.”

  “Weren’t you both off duty? Is there some reason for all this running around meeting each other?”

  “She liked to talk over cases. So do I. We get along. Got along.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Montgomery said. “She was a good cop. Damn shame.” No trace of tears in his clear-blue eyes now, and probably there never had been.

  Surprisingly, Montgomery didn’t pursue the fairly unorthodox unofficial talking-over of cases between two off-duty members, or try to explore whether Dion was responsible, even indirectly, for Randall’s death. The interview had no teeth, and was over within the hour. Maybe it was just a warm-up, but to Dion it felt more like a brush-off.

  At the end of the day, nothing was said about detention in barracks, so he returned to his apartment and bolted the door. He downed painkillers and a sleeping tablet on top of it, and some non-prescribed Scotch — to hell with the warnings on the pill bottles — but still couldn’t sleep. His thoughts kept turning over everything Randall had ever said about her hit-and-run investigation, how she began it and how she ended it. He had no doubt she would come to him in his dreams, burbling blood, but unless ghosts were real, she wouldn’t be able to finish the thought.

  He grabbed his laptop to watch the news, but instead pulled up a map and located Linnae Avenue. He had an idea it was down below Keith Road, but it wasn’t. It was just northeast of where Breanna had been killed, and not so far away.

  * * *

  In the morning, after a restless sleep, he was back in the hot seat. This time it was two internal investigations detectives, a man and a woman, with questions for him. The man was named Miles, super friendly, and the woman was named Morrison, super attentive.

  The interview was hellish from the start. They jumped topics often to rattle him. Their background investigation had been thorough, and they were curious about many things. His relationship with Jackie Randall, and with the witness, Jordan. They wanted to know about the head injuries he had suffered last year, how he was feeling these days. He said he was doing well. Yes, in spite of some disciplinary issues this year.

  The questions switched back to Jackie Randall and the discussions he’d had with her lately, as he had mentioned to Corporal Montgomery last night. Which cases, exactly, had they discussed?

  “Breanna Ferris, for one,” he said. “Hit and runs. She hasn’t been on the job so long, and it’s new to her, these things — DUIs, and speeders in the area, the inability to enforce the laws, kids getting killed, what should be done about it.”

  “So your get-togethers were, what, some kind of venting? Did you consider yourself a friend, a counsellor, to Jackie?”

  Before the crash Dion had been an excellent liar. After the crash, not so much. Now he could feel his body language giving himself away. He wasn’t sure how straight to sit, how much eye contact to maintain. When to smile, when to frown.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing like that. Just …”

  He closed his mouth and looked down at the table, his body language flashing fear, no doubt. He had just recalled Randall’s notebook, the little buff-coloured school tablet jammed between the seat and the console of her vehicle. Had the investigators found it, and was his own name embedded in there somewhere?

  He expected it to come out now, slammed down in front of him, but it didn’t happen. His hands found each other and clasped on the tabletop, their knuckles whitening. Miles asked him about the car crash in Cloverdale, what he remembered of the moments leading up to it.

  Dion gritted his teeth. Anybody who had read his file, as these two would certainly have done, would know he claimed to remember nothing on the day of the crash, or the days leading up to it. They would know all this. Miles was just pushing buttons. “How does my crash relate to Randall’s death?”

  Miles’s index finger pressed out three spots on the tabletop to enumerate how, and he was no longer being super friendly. “I’m interested in Jackie Randall, you, and where you’re coming from these days. That’s all.”

  Dion unclasped his hands and punched them into his trouser pockets. He tried to sound calm, but instead sounded like a shaky detainee. “Frankly, I don’t think about it much. Better to move forward, right?”

  “Of course,” Miles said. He took Dion back to the snowy Hazeltons and some bad choices he had made up there. Then back again to the Cloverdale car crash and Luciano Ferraro’s death. Then back to Jackie Randall, then a further switchback to Farah Jordan, and just when Dion was ready to bury his head in his arms on the table and sob, their questions ended.

  He sat back in a relaxed pose, timed his breathing in and out, and waited to be released.

  Morrison leaned toward him and softly asked, “Why do you get so angry when we talk about the crash?”

  “I’m not angry!” he said.

  They let it be the last word. The interview was over.

  * * *

  Still angry, he went to see Mike Bosko, but was told Bosko was out for lunch.

  Down the street at Rainey’s, he found the sergeant sitting alone in a booth, reading something on his phone and eating a croissant sandwich. Bosko looked at him with no show of surprise and gestured at the seat across
from him. “Good. You got my message. You kind of jumped the gun; I think I said three o’clock in my office, but that’s fine. Thanks for coming.”

  Dion sat across from him. “What message?”

  “To come and see me in my office at three o’clock,” Bosko said, with a slight edge. “But no worries. A wire must have crossed. Can I buy you a sandwich, coffee, anything?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Croissant flakes littered Bosko’s shirt front. He brushed at them, but missed a few. His tie was a dull, solid rose, not snugged too well against his collar. His longish fair hair was untidily ruffled, and there was a faded phone number in ballpoint on his palm. “I understand you’ve been talking to the internal investigations gang,” he said. “How did it go?”

  “I’ve been suspended with pay,” Dion said, almost hovering in indignation. “They seem to think I killed Jackie.”

  Bosko’s eyes were impossible to read behind the sheen of his glasses. “Did you?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Then don’t worry about it,” Bosko said, adding, “Don’t forget to breathe.”

  Dion sucked in air. “I’m not worried about it. I’ve got bigger things to worry about. Like why I’m here at all, in North Vancouver, when I’m dysfunctional. You know I’m not fit for the job. Everybody knows. Everyone’s wondering why I’m still coming to work every day. They look at me, not just Internal, but everybody. Why don’t you tell me why I’m here?” He lifted his face and waited. Whatever the answer was, it was bound to change his life, and he wanted to face the changes squarely.

  But Bosko had taken another bite of his sandwich, and his mouth was full. After munching for a bit, he put it down, cleaned his mouth with a serviette, and said, “When I was in New Hazelton, Serious Crimes down here in North Van was kind of scattering to the winds, and we needed to build it back up. You made yourself noticed, I’ll put it that way. I wanted you here, and I got you here, and that’s about all there is to it. You seem to want to shoot yourself in the foot. I’m hoping you’ll smarten up soon and come back to my section, in a more rooted kind of way. Stick around for a change.”

  “How about Luciano Ferraro?”

  Bosko straightened his spine, though not in a startled way. “What about him?”

  “Is that why I’m really here? Looch was a friend of mine. He was supposed to have died in a car crash, with me in the driver’s seat, but I’ve yet to see the proof. I’ve seen a tombstone with his name on it. That’s not proof. They say he’s cremated, but nobody wants to show me the death certificate. I got posted up north, where I didn’t do so well, then you come along and get me back here like some kind of promotion — which nobody believes, especially me. I can’t help thinking there’s a connection.”

  He stopped and listened to a replay of what he had just said. Put into words, the connection seemed to lose its glue. He dragged a hand down his face.

  Bosko said, “I have to say, your logic eludes me. Look, maybe just keep in mind one thing, Cal. You are not the centre of the universe, as you seem to think. It’s okay, we all slip into that groove. Just think before you make your next move. And keep your guns holstered. A’right?”

  Dion opened his mouth, but Bosko raised his salad fork to interrupt him. “That includes speaking your mind.”

  For nearly a minute, they sat in silence. Bosko went back to his food and reading. Dion said, “What did you want to see me about at three o’clock? Might as well deal with it now.”

  Phone and croissant went down. “Mostly I wanted to find out how you’re faring. Also how your meeting went, but you’ve coloured it in for me fairly well. I do strongly suggest counselling, though I hear you’ve turned it down. After what you went through yesterday, it’s almost a given it would be a good idea. You don’t have to say anything now,” he said, pre-empting an objection. “Just think about it and let me know.”

  Dion walked back to the detachment in the rain, thinking over the counselling suggestion. Everybody was urging him into it as a matter of course, because a cop doesn’t come across his fellow officer in the way he had come across Jackie and then carry on with life as usual. Morrison and Miles had made the same suggestion, off the record, and Dion had taken it as a threat instead of concern for his well-being.

  Smarten up, Bosko said. Maybe it was time to start doing that. But counselling was not what he needed to come to terms with what happened to Jackie, and neither was a leave of absence. The only therapy he needed was to help catch her killer.

  Thirty-Two

  INCOMMUNICADO

  A thought came to Dion as he stood looking up at his detachment — the madman Ray Starkey’s prophetic words, “You boys go into them woods, you’re not coming out alive.” Well, not quite prophetic, because most of the boys who had gone in there had come out alive, and Randall, the only one who hadn’t, wasn’t a boy. Still, Starkey might know something about Boone that could be useful, and he should be paid a visit. Not by Dion himself, because he was suspended, but somebody on the case.

  A voice behind him startled him from his thoughts. “What’s up? You casing the joint, boyo?”

  It was Corporal Doug Paley. He wore a dollar store transparent raincoat over his suit, hood up, no umbrella. He didn’t stop to get an answer, but kept on his way to wherever he was going. Dion called out to stop him. “Doug! Who’s lead on the Randall case now?”

  Paley stopped and squinted back at him. “Why? You’re incommunicado, right?”

  “There’s something I have to report.”

  Paley had moved back into speaking range. “Monty’s in charge, but he’s in meetings. What’ve you got?”

  “There’s this guy, kind of a crackpot, out in Lynn Valley, Ray Starkey. When we were searching for Troy Hamilton, he showed up with a tip.”

  “A tip, yeah. So let’s hear it.”

  A city bus charged noisily by, drowning Dion’s words.

  Paley asked for a repeat, and spun his fat fingers, telling him to get on with it.

  “He told us the thing we’re hunting isn’t human,” Dion said, knowing Paley would turn it into a joke. “He said it’s an evil spirit.”

  Paley’s eyes twinkled. “An evil spirit, eh? Did he give you a name to plug into the database?”

  “What he said was we won’t come out of the woods alive. Montgomery laughed him off. Everyone did. So did I. But that was before Randall was butchered. Somebody should follow up. Maybe Montgomery’s got it covered already, I don’t know, but I want to remind him about it, in case it slipped his mind.”

  Paley looked down the street, as if lunch was calling to him, then back at Dion. “I’ll pass it on for you,” he promised. “Now go do the incommunicado shuffle. Christ, it’s cold, though, isn’t it?” He flapped his plastic-coated arms. “I feel like a dick in a condom.”

  Dion went on his way, back to the underground parkade. He sat in his car, but didn’t start the engine. Montgomery had been Randall’s case, and now that she was dead, she was Montgomery’s case. He thought of the hit-and-run intrigue and its great honking lack of proof. In spite of everything she’d said, and in spite of appearances, he believed Montgomery knew that Randall suspected Tori. If so, was Dion also on Montgomery’s radar? Was Montgomery trying to buy him off with compliments, offering fast-tracking back to GIS?

  But there he was, falling into the trap again. Randall was simply wrong, and she had known it. That explained her change in attitude. Her clues, such as Linnae, hadn’t panned out. Maybe she was embarrassed by the whole thing. Even possible she had no intention of passing her notes on to Internal, and was just going to let it all blow away.

  Or maybe it was just the opposite, and she had found out something she wasn’t willing to share with him.

  The November chill grew chillier in his vehicle. He made up his mind, left his car, and went upstairs to GIS, where he was told Montgomery was in a meeting a
nd couldn’t see him right now. He went in anyway. Montgomery stood at his desk, occupied with both a phone call and several members asking him questions. Dion waited until the team dispersed and the phone was put away. Montgomery stared across at him. “You’re not supposed to be here, Constable. What’s the problem?”

  “I’m not staying. I just wanted to check with you on something, about Jackie. It’s important.”

  Montgomery sank into his chair and leaned sideways to wait. He looked colourless today, chin like silver sandpaper, bloodshot eyes. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  Dion remained on his feet, ready to say what he had to say, then go. “Ray Starkey — have you gone to check out what he had to say?”

  “What, the old guy and his flying saucers? No, actually I think I wilfully forgot. Why?”

  “Did you get his address? Aren’t you going to send someone out there, at least, get his statement?”

  “None of the above,” Montgomery said and made a shooing motion.

  Dion said, “Jackie Randall was there at the park. She heard what Starkey had to say. Maybe she wanted to follow up with him, do it on her own. She was like that, right?”

  “Yes, thank you, I’ll make a note of that.”

  “If you logged his info into the file, she could have got it from there, but if you didn’t, she could only have got it from you or me. She didn’t get it from me, so I’m wondering if she came to you, asking about him.”

  “She didn’t. Mystery solved,” Montgomery said. “There’s nothing to follow up, but thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

  “Regardless, Starkey might have info about Stefano Boone, where to find him. Also, Jackie could have run into him on the street. He seems to be out and about a lot. Maybe they got talking, and whatever he had to say sent her up the Mesachee. I just think you have to cover the possibilities.”