Walt

by Russell Wangersky

  Chief Adams had learned from other peoples’ mistakes and he wasn’t going there. Dean knew the chief had a career of playing everything exactly by the book. So he sat, waiting for the chief to speak.

  “Arson’s not in your area, and neither is the Cape Shore. That’s the RCMP’s jurisdiction.”

  The chief was long enough in the tooth to sometimes call the RCMP the horsemen, but that didn’t mean that a phone call from high in B Division, the Newfoundland RCMP section, couldn’t rattle him.

  “It’s related to a file here in the city, Chief. A couple of files,” Dean said. Scoville sank down lower in the chair on Dean’s right. He’d brought his own paper cup of coffee from downstairs. The chief waved his hand dismissively.

  “Just following stuff up,” Scoville said.

  “Nothing from you, Scoville,” the chief said. “You’ve been nosing into another fire investigation in Cape Broyle — yeah, I know about that, there’s not much I don’t hear about, and that was none of your concern. Not your jurisdiction, not your fire. Not your business.

  “And you,” he said, turning back to Dean, “you’re going to have to come up here and convince me first before we go traipsing out into their turf. You should know that, Inspector. You should know that real well, and you should have talked to me before sending that release out. Got your own little team and you’re getting too big for your britches, don’t you think?”

  Dean didn’t say anything — didn’t say, even though it was right there ready to burst out, that his “little team” had been the chief’s own idea, not his.

  “I think I’m making myself pretty clear,” the chief said. “Aren’t I?”

  Dean and Scoville both nodded.

  “There might be good fishing down there, but we don’t do fishing missions.” The chief stood up, smiling coldly at his dry little joke. “It’s time to start getting some measurable results, something I can take to the media. Something a little more than the fact that my team — not the minister’s any more, no, they’ve got it stitched to me now — really likes to be on the road.

  “You’ve put a lot of mileage on the unmarked cars you’ve signed out, Inspector Hill.” His voice was almost conversational, but threatening, too. “A lot of mileage for not much in the way of results.”

  By then, he’d walked around the desk and over to where Dean was sitting, slapping an oversized hand down on Dean’s shoulder like he was making a friendly point. Dean couldn’t help but turn slightly, his eyes falling on the broad expanse of the back of the chief’s hand, the tufts of ginger hair springing up next to the rough skin of occasional scars. There was, Dean thought, nothing friendly about it.

  The chief put his face down close enough to Dean’s ear that Dean could feel the warmth radiating off of the other man’s skin.

  “Fuck with me and I will be the last person you ever fuck with,” the chief said quietly, his tone light but the meaning obvious. “Keep that in mind the next time you’re tooling around out on the highway.”

  Dean and Scoville didn’t talk until they were back on the elevator and the big silver doors had pulled shut.

  “You lost him twice?” Dean said.

  “First time, I was taking a piss. Five hours in the car, a whole Thermos of coffee, sometimes you gotta take a piss.”

  “The second time?”

  “Fog to the floor. But Walt had a place down there — and I think he burned it.”

  Dean looked at Scoville. Scoville put his hands out.

  “I’ve been doing this for years. I know fires. And I smelled it — I know that smell. If it hadn’t been so damned foggy, I would have seen it, too. All I’ve got to do is find it. If we can find the place, I’ll find what we need. You know he was down there — I know he was down there. We just didn’t see where he went in. And he’s left something somewhere. If I have to spend every single day off I have left this year stomping around that godforsaken bog, I’ll do it.”

  Dean smiled.

  “Didn’t you already have this conversation with me? The evidence leads us to the criminal, not the other way around? Playing by the rules?”

  Scoville scowled.

  “You could just shut the fuck up now,” Scoville said. “Sometimes I think I liked it better when you were pining for Julie and taking off without me, all by yourself.”

  “That’s over and done with,” Dean said. “And if you decide to take off anywhere, you’d better not let the chief find you.”

  Chapter 41

  Elsie Tucker – #234

  Clear liquids

  Chicken broth

  Jello

  Apple Juice

  PRE-OP

  That was on a rectangular card, the paper slightly heavier than ordinary bond paper. Perforated edges, top and bottom, where it had been torn off a roll of hundreds of similar cards. Something that looked like it had come out of a solid old computer printer with a bunch of cards just like it, each one waiting to be split apart and matched up with the right meal, the right patient. PRE-OP was typed in red as well as in caps, the rest in black.

  It was from St. Clare’s, and I picked it up on the fourth floor, where it had dropped from one of those rolling meal racks. An orderly comes in with a plastic tray, those heat-trapping heavy trays from the central kitchen that all look the same, slides it in front of you on a bed-table, whips the top off, and you have a look and decide if it’s something you feel like eating. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you do. No other choice, though. Dinner is dinner. Dinner is served.

  I could imagine the one small piece of tape coming loose, the note catching the air as the orderly picked up the tray, that same orderly — exasperated, overworked, both hands full — watching the paper float down, already knowing whose meal it was anyway. So why stop to pick it up?

  Too many meals left to hand out, and besides, there’s someone whose job it is to pick stuff like that up.

  Someone like me.

  If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s how to look like a janitor. I’ve been rehearsing for years. Being inconspicuous. Focusing on the job. I took a trip to the hospital on a weekday afternoon, just to see what colour clothes the cleaning staff wore.

  Went back a week later, wearing the right colour. The important thing is to walk and keep your eyes purposefully low. Carry a cloth and a spray bottle for marks on the walls, and just keep doing stuff with it, even if you’re the only one who sees anything like a mark.

  The most important thing of all? That official-looking plastic ID card, the one almost everyone in the hospital keeps clipped to their pants pocket, so low down on their hips that it’s hard to make out whose face is on the card unless you practically bend down to stare at their crotch or make a big thing about asking someone to show it to you. Half the time, it’s flipped around backwards anyway. And everyone’s busy, everyone’s moving.

  Hospitals are big, anonymous places. Just like grocery stores. A regular tide of customers, of patients, moving through, ebb and flow.

  Come in the front door of the hospital, after hours, when there are people milling in and out with flowers and food for visiting hours, and you can make your way downstairs and hardly be noticed. Down in Diagnostics, where there’s nothing to steal anyway, the hallways are pretty much empty, and if you walk with enough purpose, the few people you do run into leave you alone.

  Down in the basement, in a hallway with half the lights turned off for the night and at least four of the remaining sets flickering in that abandoned-mental-hospital-scary-movie way that the back corners of institutional buildings always seem to have, I found a utility room. Easy to find, really, because it was the only door on the hall with the familiar yellow glow of an incandescent light bulb lipping out from underneath it.

  It’s a dead giveaway, even in newer buildings.

  Whatever kind of lights everyone else has, the janitors always get
that single harsh 100-watt bulb sticking out of the most basic kind of screw-in socket. Sometimes there’s a wire cage around the bulb, protecting it from attacking mop handles. Sometimes there isn’t.

  It’s always a bare-bones cramped little box of a space, cinder block or concrete walls, sometimes painted but often not. A big stained stand-up sink, stacks of cleaning supplies on real basic metal shelving. Sometimes, a single wooden chair that’s clearly been brought in from home or liberated from storage. To me, those spaces, the ones with the chairs, always feel like they actually belong to someone, despite the official starkness. Pin-ups, but not so often any more: people go out of their way to crane their heads inside and have a look, just so they can be officially offended and you can get a letter put in your file. They used to be expected, pin-ups, proof that you were one of the good guys, because honest libidos need a great set of cans arced right out toward the camera. But like I said, not so much any more.

  Sometimes the rooms are locked: it depends more on the temperament of the cleaner than it does on anything else. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind people coming in and helping themselves to more toilet paper when they need it or to those big brown rolls of paper towels when they run short, you leave it open.

  If you want to have the absolute last word on whether or not people are going to have to dry their hands on the front of their pants, then you lock it, play everything by the rules, and check and reload the paper towel dispenser when you’re downright good and ready.

  The basement room at St. Clare’s wasn’t locked, and there was a cart in it, packed right in tight between the sink and the door, hardly a scrap of extra room. There was a jacket hanging on the back of the door — which probably meant someone on break and not all that far away. And there was another bonus as well. The janitor had his ID clipped right to the big garbage bag holder on the front, probably left it there full-time and didn’t even think about it any more, so I had a quick look around, unclipped the tag, and took it with me.

  I closed the door, went back upstairs and went home, because I wanted to get there before Mary got back.

  I didn’t go up to Emergency at all that night, didn’t go searching to see what she and Dr. Patterson were up to.

  You have to take your time: if you rush things, they are always going to go wrong. You’ll leave something behind, you’ll make yourself too obvious, you’ll generate too much attention. And when you do, if you do, suddenly you’re not invisible any more.

  You’ve got to scope things out, step back from your emotions, and have a good, clean objective look at the circumstances. I saw an armed robber, a guy who held up a convenience store, interviewed on television once, and the reporter was asking him, “What were you guys planning?”

  And the guy said, “Well, I’d taken twelve Valium, and we’d run out of beer.”

  See, that’s not a plan.

  That’s just a circumstance. And when you let your circumstances make your plans for you, you’re going to fall into whatever hole they leave behind.

  Chapter 42

  August 1

  Cold case squad goes cold?

  (St. John’s, NL) — The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s new cold case squad has gotten a chill: case statistics obtained under access to information legislation show the squad, an offshoot of the Criminal Investigation Division, has closed only a handful of cases in the last six months.

  But RNC Chief Winston Adams says he’s satisfied with the team’s work: “This is complex investigation, involving the review of files that are in some cases over a decade old. We’re not going to put it on the clock.”

  Adams was not willing to talk about whether the section’s results are going to be reviewed.

  “We monitor all our investigative divisions on a regular basis, and ensure they meet our internal standards.”

  Adams would not discuss what those standards include.

  “There are several in his area. Joy Martin on Signal Hill Road might be one. There’s another nearby, an Alisha Monaghan, both stalking complaints. And Monaghan also thought someone had been in her house. Investigating officer left a note on that one: ‘disgruntled ex-boyfriend — interviewed, not co-operative.’ That sounds like a domestic,” Scoville said.

  “Well, pitch it for now. Keep Signal Hill Road. We’ve got enough already.”

  “Surprising how many there are.”

  “Sure is. We’ve got a lot of footwork to do. We’ve either got a nest of peepers or just one particular guy. I think we know which guy.”

  “Think so,” Scoville said. He squinted, looking across at Dean. “Everything okay?”

  “Never better,” Dean said, and meant it. It was all the case now, whirling around in his head when he was driving, when he was on the edge of falling asleep. He’d put the house on the market, paid off the pile of bills, was looking for an apartment. Close to downtown: close to the station.

  Chapter 43

  From the desk of Julia Peyton

  Spinach

  Coconut

  Pears

  Sour cream

  Cream cheese

  Bread Stix

  Feta

  Rosemary

  All of it in light blue ink, on unlined paper — every first letter lined up exactly in place with the one below and above. Precise, every o and a with its belly perfectly round.

  Across the road from my house, Ms. Peyton never seems to come outside. Or at least she never seems to be outside for long, as if the outside air is somehow dangerous or corrosive and she needs to protect herself from it. She lives in the house next to Tom and Ev’s old place. She has a small green car, a four-door, although the driver’s door is the only one that is ever used, and she has a front light on her porch that never, ever goes out, whether she is in town or not. She is out of town a lot.

  And every time I look at the front of her house, the curtains are exactly, precisely the same. Perfectly spaced, every round fold of them even, as if they’d been measured with a ruler and nudged just so.

  It makes me unreasonably angry, the formality of all of it. And I know it’s unreasonable — see, I get that. I’m not just boiling all the time like some pot left on the stove, the dial turned up to high and the burner glowing orange under there. But she can make me boil, just the same.

  I don’t know why: perhaps because her poise is something most people never achieve. There is some particular frustration in the fact that I could be upstairs in the front room, looking out and across the road but standing well back in the shadows where I couldn’t be seen, yet I could never even catch so much as a hint of someone looking out of her house. And I can’t help but think that if she had any humanity at all, I would have been able to catch her at least once. Just to prove there’s some small shred of human curiosity in there. That’s all I really need.

  Just her looking out of her house, me looking out of mine: all I really need is that one little sideways look, that one little captured-moment catch of the eye that would let me know that, deep down, she and I and everyone else are just the same.

  It’s not some kind of one-upmanship, that she’s over there pretending to have something on me — the fact is, it actually feels like she’s somehow better. As though, every day, nothing outside her own house even matters — and, well, every single day that bothers me.

  That power to simply never put a foot wrong, to never get caught out — I can’t tell you how much that makes me want to reach in and mess it all up.

  It’s like that kid you knew in grade nine with the perfect hair and that kind of smile people used to describe as “winning,” the simple in-your-face perfection that grade-nine you absolutely had to find a way to damage, with a hand pushed into that hair to mess it up or a timely shove in the back from the top step. That kid who didn’t ever do anything but exist and hold their head at that irritating upwards angle when they w
ere talking to you, like they were looking at you, all right, but at the same time, somehow deeply and intimately connected to heaven or something. To more important things. So they don’t really have to pay attention to anything you’re saying. And God help them if they happened to absentmindedly smile then, too.

  Meet someone like that and you’ll understand immediately what I mean, that whether they mean to or not, they have a way of lording things over you.

  I mean, people shouldn’t be able to do that.

  I find myself wanting to settle with them once and for all.

  She comes out and gets in the car, and sometimes Tom used to come out first and shovel her driveway in that big-chested, I’m-a-man, look-at-me kind of way that was meant to say how great he was.

  It didn’t matter. It still doesn’t matter.

  She comes out, slides the key in the door, and then the brake lights and the white reverse lights come on, both of them exactly the way they are supposed to. If it’s snowing, she makes sure every single flake of snow is brushed off the roof and away from the lights first, the brushing done in short, precise motions, each one the same economical length, the same effort every damn time. I watch her from upstairs, and I know what every single brush stroke will look like, how much snow it will push off the car, how carefully and precisely the next arc of the brush will curve through the flakes.

  If she came outside while hapless shovelling Tom was digging away, her car keys already in her right hand, if she stopped next to him, and put the palm of her cool left hand on his shoulder for just a moment and then drew it away — not took it away, no, that would be too crass, but drew it away — that motion would capture every inch of her. Lady and servant. But usually, he would have already left, and she would climb into her car like, well, like royalty, like she absolutely expects the driveway to have been cleared and doesn’t have to give it another thought. Tom never got it at all. Just one more thing he didn’t seem to be equipped to comprehend.