Creep

by R. M. Greenaway

  Bad, he thought. “We can talk about it later,” he said. “For now I need you to answer my questions.”

  “All right.”

  The recorder was on again. Leith got through the preliminaries, then asked her how Boone had come to be in her house.

  “Probably through the back door,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to replace the lock. He was just seeking refuge with someone he knows. We know each other. But you’re aware of that, aren’t you, that Stefano and I both work at the Greek Taverna?”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

  “I think he trusts me. Or trusted me. I doubt he’ll trust anybody now, though,” she said, biting her lip reflectively. “Poor Stef,” she added.

  Grin and bear it. “Just go through tonight’s events for me in your own words. In as much detail as you can recall, then I’ll have some questions for you. Just start from the beginning, please.”

  She opened her mouth to begin, but Leith’s cellphone trilled in his pocket, almost knocking off his mantle of forced patience. He took the call briskly. “Leith.”

  “Chris Wallace,” the caller said. Wallace sounded doubtful, as if puzzled by its own name. “Do you have a minute?”

  Wallace’s story was he had just received a call from Cal Dion, who was complaining of, what? Being locked in a basement somewhere in Lynn Valley?

  Wallace was oblique at the best of times, but he was outdoing himself here, trying to describe what had to be some kind of miscommunication. Leith apologized to Jordan. He took the call out to the hallway, then apologized to Wallace and asked for a repeat.

  “He called, like I say, just minutes ago. Isn’t he suspended?”

  “He called and said what?”

  “I’m not sure. He was babbling. Going around in circles. Seemed excited. And then he just hung up on me.”

  Babbling and excitable wasn’t the Dion that Leith knew — but he didn’t know Dion all that well. “And he was babbling about being locked in a basement?”

  “Yes, in Lynn Valley. On Cromwell Street.”

  Leith closed an eye and failed to locate a Cromwell in his sketchy mental map of the area.

  Wallace continued, “He gave me a name, and I thought I had it written down, but I — hang on, I have it here on my — no, I don’t. But if you give me a moment. Oh, yes, I’ve got it here. Is that an S or a B? Must be a B. Barkley. Yes, Ray Barkley.”

  Leith gripped the phone under his chin to jot the information into his notebook. Ray Barkley, Cromwell St. “And then he hung up on you, sir?”

  “Hung up cold,” Wallace said. “I think I offended him.”

  Leith apologized again to Farah Jordan, telling her something had come up and he would have to finish this conversation later. If he couldn’t return in person to get her statement, he would send someone in his place.

  Outside, he dropped into the driver’s seat of his Crown Vic on the now quiet avenue and tried calling Dion’s cellphone. It went to voice mail. He then logged in to the onboard computer and worked at finding a Ray Barkley in the area.

  There was no Ray Barkley in Lynn Valley, and neither was there a Cromwell Street. There was a Barkley Street in Port Alberni, and a Cromwell Road in Victoria, and plenty of people named Barkley everywhere, as well as plenty of Rays, but no Ray Barkleys — or anything close — in this area, which was all that mattered.

  He tried Dion’s number again. It went to voice mail, and Leith was left where he had started fifteen minutes ago, sitting in a parked car outside Farah Jordan’s house with a cry for help he couldn’t answer. Cal Dion was lost — sucked into the cracks of Wallace error.

  He dispatched two cars to look for any sign of Dion or his vehicle in Lynn Valley — a fairly new dark-blue Honda Civic, neatnik owned and driven. No, he could give no coordinates besides Lynn Valley, but would provide updates soon as they came in.

  He called the detachment and spoke to the operator who had patched Dion through to Wallace. She told him that Dion had tried to contact him, Leith, and had been transferred to Wallace as an alternative. Dion was in a hurry because his phone was low on battery, and though she wouldn’t call his demeanour babbling or panicked, he did sound stressed. She also suggested Leith try server disk array.

  “Try who?” he asked.

  Telephone monitoring records, she told him. “It’s all recorded. Right?”

  He told her to, yes, please, track down that call for him. Val said she couldn’t do it herself, but would contact the technical department.

  As Leith waited for the IT people to find the recording, he looked up Dion’s car registration on the database. Then he contacted the two patrols en route to Lynn Valley with his instructions narrowed down, to grid search for Dion’s Civic — HVK 995 — keeping eyes out not only for his car, but anything out of whack in the neighbourhood.

  He placed another call to Chris Wallace. He asked the corporal to scour both his memory and notes for any more particulars on Dion’s SOS, as the name Ray Barkley and the address Cromwell Street seemed be incorrect.

  Wallace took offence and said any errors must have originated from Dion’s side of the conversation.

  It didn’t matter. The techies would locate that recorded call soon enough, and hopefully therein the answer would lie. Leith set down the receiver and once again looked over his map of Lynn Valley, scanning for street names that audibly resembled Cromwell. Or, failing that, remotely resembled Cromwell.

  Constable Lil Hart called to say she had spotted only one blue Honda Civic parked in someone’s driveway, but this Honda was dirty and plastered with decals. It also had a different plate.

  “Want us to check anyway?” she asked. “Licence plates can be switched.”

  “But dirt and decals?” Leith said. “Forget it. Just keep looking. Thanks.”

  A man from IT called to tell Leith he had located no call from Dion, but he had discovered an hour of silence overlaid with odd noises. It happens from time to time, the IT guy said. It’s called system failure.

  Leith knew it was something more sinister. It was called Cal’s luck.

  Thirty-Six

  GLITTER

  With the dimming ray of his penlight sweeping floor and walls, Dion explored the basement from corner to corner. In the process he discovered what looked like a spattering of old blood dried to black in a nook behind a laundry tub, and more on the adjacent wall. But it didn’t matter right now. It was nothing but a waste of battery power.

  The basement was twenty feet by forty, with a ten-foot ceiling. Near empty, with all the clutter of storage boxes and old automobile tires and whatnot stashed in one corner. Under the stairs he found a pantry of sorts. There were jars of homemade jam, bags of potatoes growing pale arms, onions sprouting tails through mesh. And at the back, one workbench with no work on or around it except for one obnoxious jack-o-lantern, badly carved and caving into itself.

  Some carpentry tools were scattered about. He looked them over with interest. Having no firearm, he equipped himself with the best weapons he could find in the collection: a fully loaded manual staple gun, which he test fired at a wooden support post; a large flathead screwdriver; and a small, blunt hatchet that couldn’t do much damage to lumber, but would easily knock a little shit like Starkey on his ass.

  Potential escape routes: nothing but the door at the top of the stairs and a tiny window high on one cement wall. He discovered how solid the door was by driving his body weight against it. Didn’t even quiver. Smashing the dull blade of the hatchet against the wood only nicked the surface.

  The second option, the basement window, was far too small for him to crawl through. He stood on a rickety kitchen chair and smashed the glass out, anyway. He shouted through the jagged opening, “Hey! Help! Anybody out there?” The only response was a keening of November wind, then the frenzied yapping of a neighbourhood dog somewhere beyond his view.

>   The barking gave him an idea. He scribbled a note, then whistled out the window in an encouraging way, hoping that a dog would come running. He would attach the note to the animal’s collar, shoo it off, sit tight, and wait for the owner to find it.

  But even if his plan had any brains, the bylaws kept dogs from running free these days, and after whistling his lips numb for two minutes, note in hand, no dog came running. There was some reply, though. A whistle. No, not a whistle, but a high, wavering cry. He stood on the chair and listened.

  It was the wail of a child coming from within the house. He looked up and around, cupping his ear, but the sound had faded. He called out to the child, but received no answer.

  He picked up the meanest shard of glass he could find from the broken window and added it to his arsenal. He stepped off the chair and stood collecting his thoughts.

  “Wallace got the message,” he told himself. “Help is on its way.”

  He didn’t believe himself, because too much time had passed, and Wallace was Wallace. He had transposed enough letters that the search would circle the block for weeks. He kicked the rickety chair across the basement.

  Daylight was dimming, but he was reserving his flashlight for the worst-case scenario — being trapped here all night long. As darkness flooded the basement, so did the cold. Hardly an hour had gone by, and he was shivering, bewildered, and now hungry.

  Still not worried, though. He had worked out in his head why he was here. He had fed Starkey’s assumption that he was First Nations, and Starkey, who was clearly paranoid and a complete mental turnip, had locked the enemy in his basement. It was a case of self-defence, and Starkey would now call 911 and get the cops over to deal with the problem.

  What a laugh they all would have when the door flew open.

  There had been nothing but silence from above, but now came a distant thump. Dion bounded up the stairs to the landing and banged at the door with his fist. He stood with hands and forehead against the door and tried to hear what was going on. Sounds of movement in the house, distant footsteps. No voices. He shouted Starkey’s name, then a list of Criminal Code sections the man could be charged under, along with minimum sentences, if he didn’t open up right now.

  Nothing.

  He was getting scared. He tramped back down and stood in the centre of the basement, armed with nothing but a crappy collection of carpentry tools and some broken glass. A sound or motion caught his attention, and he looked up. From between the joists came a faint glow. He walked closer and shone his light up at a three-inch hole bored through the wood, a spot he would have tried hacking open with his hatchet, if he had noticed it sooner.

  The light blotted out and Dion jumped back in surprise as an eye appeared.

  A human eye, staring down at him as he stared up. Starkey.

  He shouted at the eye, “Open the door, Starkey, before you’re in this so deep you’ll never get out. I’m a police officer. Doesn’t matter I’m off duty. The consequences are going to be just as bad — worse — if you don’t cut the crap and let me out of here.”

  The answer was odd. “You want light?”

  “What?”

  “Light. Little flood lamp under the stairs.”

  The spying eye disappeared. With a soft thud, the hole went dark.

  In the makeshift pantry, along with potatoes and onions, Dion found a dust-encrusted flood lamp wrapped in its cord. He felt better now. Starkey didn’t want to harm him, it seemed, offering the comfort of illumination while they waited for the cops to show up. Illumination would be welcome. He plugged it in on the workbench and it flared to life, stabbing his eyes, bright-lighting at least one third of the dungeon and spreading a muted glow into the corners.

  He then wasted more minutes up on the rickety chair, hacking at the floorboards around the hole — floorboards that weren’t half so flimsy as they appeared — until a new set of sounds from above distracted him from his work. He stood still, breathing hard. A series of taps, like beads spilling across linoleum, but in a steady rhythm, not random. And moving.

  Claws.

  Police dogs? No, there were no businesslike voices or thudding police boots. Just the swift clacking of a single animal. Heavy but energetic, moving from here to there overhead. Something wrong with the picture. He remained standing on his chair, hatchet in hand, heart pounding. He heard a fumbling, and then a faint whoosh with a squeal as the door at the top of the stairs eased open.

  Open!

  He left his chair and lunged, but skidded to a stop as he saw what was happening.

  Now he got it. The pieces snapped together. He had been given a cellmate.

  The door was closed again and locked, and his cellmate sat on the cramped landing at the top of the stairs: a big squat dog in dark silhouette against the paler planes of the door.

  The dog remained facing away from him, interested only in the door that had just closed on its nose. It growled at the door. Tried whining. Scratched at the door’s base impatiently, first with one paw, then with both.

  The door didn’t open, and the dog began to look around for other options. Dion dropped into a careful crouch and picked up the hatchet. The dog’s bulky head swung to sniff the air, catching the scent of something exciting — human fear.

  Some dogs took fear as a sign to protect, but this was not that kind of dog. This was the attacking kind. Dion took another step back as the animal’s wide-set eyes glittered to and fro in the darkness. They fixed on him, and stayed. The dog flattened its small ears against its skull. It drew back black lips to bare its teeth, made a purring noise. Not a purr, but a moan of loathing.

  “God,” Dion said.

  Thirty-Seven

  DOG FOOD

  Leith left the canvassing of Lynn Valley to others and worked on backtracking through Dion’s difficult day.

  The day started with a grilling by internal investigations. The meeting ended in suspension, pending further investigation. Then Dion had met briefly with Mike Bosko at Rainey’s, where — as Bosko summarized it — Dion was told he’d better keep his cool and behave.

  Leaving Rainey’s, Dion had spoken to Doug Paley on the street outside the detachment. This Leith knew because a fellow GIS officer had seen the two talking in the pouring rain, and it hadn’t looked like a friendly chat. Leith tried Paley’s number and it went to voice mail, which seemed to be the theme of the day.

  More digging revealed that Dion had dropped into the detachment for another short and heated conversation, this time with Corporal Montgomery — according to eyewitnesses — before completing his vanishing act.

  Leith needed to talk to Montgomery and find out more about that conversation, but Montgomery seemed to be away from his desk and not answering his calls. Leith left yet another voice mail, again underlining the urgency of a fast reply.

  He then revisited Mike Bosko’s office to hammer down more details on the conversation at Rainey’s. Bosko agreed that Cal was upset by the end of it.

  “And no mention of what he had planned for the rest of the day?”

  “I’m afraid not. Sorry, Dave. Keep me apprised.”

  Doug Paley returned Leith’s call, apparently from his home, asking what was up. Leith told him about Dion’s disappearance. Paley wasn’t one to fret much, but he was fretting now. “I’ll come in. Be there in ten.”

  “But first, tell me what he talked to you about on the street this morning. I’m trying to figure out every move he made today.”

  “He was standing in the rain looking like a lost tourist, so I asked what he was up to. He wanted to know who was lead on the Randall homicide. I told him Monty, and he gave me a message to pass on to him about some crackpot in Lynn Valley. This crackpot had a tip about evil spirits, and he wanted me to remind Monty to follow up. I didn’t do it, Dave. I didn’t take him seriously, and I forgot. “

  “A crackpot. Did you ge
t name, address, anything?”

  “Now, what the hell was that fucking name?”

  “Ray Barkley, or thereabouts?” Leith said, and the name Ray Barkley rang a distant bell in his own mind. Just couldn’t quite pin it down. “Cromwell Street?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  A stretch of silence on the line, and Leith could hear that Paley was on the move, boots crunching on gravel. He heard a car door beep open. “For some reason I’m thinking Hutch,” Paley said. The door thumped shut, an engine fired up. “But that can’t be right. Ask Monty. He’d know.”

  “I’m trying,” Leith said. “Thanks.”

  Montgomery finally got back to Leith, saying he was on his way in. “Is there a problem?”

  “A big one. I told you this is important. I almost code-redded you.”

  “Sorry, Dave. Can’t talk now, but let’s meet at my desk in two minutes, is that cool?”

  It wasn’t cool, and it was more like eight minutes before Montgomery showed up, sat at his desk, and popped the lid off his Starbucks coffee. “Whew, what a crazy day. What’s happening? Your message said something about Dion? He’s missing, you say?”

  “Yes, and it could be serious,” Leith said, because Montgomery was grinning. Leith had run down enough false alarms to know that, at the end of the day, grinning could be in order. But not right now, with Cal at the wrong end of that alarm. “He was in here earlier, talking to you, and I need to know what he said. Doug says it was about a crackpot in Lynn Valley. Mean anything to you?”

  “Crackpot,” Montgomery said, thinking hard. “Sure! The old guy who approached us when we were mustering at the base of the Mesachee. You weren’t there. Actually that’s the second time I met him. Much like the first time, he rambled about wolves and evil spirits in the woods. Cal came in this afternoon saying it should be followed up. I begged to differ. He left. You’re thinking he went out there on his own?”