by Sam Wiebe
“I can’t, it’s my job.”
“You’d open up, the place was on fire, right?”
He thought about it and nodded.
“So tell Mr. Tsao you saw smoke. Then you can take this lady’s money and sleep the sleep of the righteous.”
A moment later we were standing in Dana Essex’s apartment.
Forty-Six
The maintenance man and Mr. Good Neighbor waited in the hall. Sonia and I walked into the dark kitchenette. I felt for a light switch.
No dishes in the sink. Walls bare except for a framed master’s degree from Carleton University. Cheap table and chairs, a paisley love seat, and a small television.
“What are we looking for?” Sonia said.
“The other case I was working. The target was murdered. This woman, Dana Essex, she’s a part of things.”
“Meaning she’s your client,” Sonia said.
“And my friend.”
Passing behind me, Sonia said, “Is there anyone you won’t lie to, Dave? Because I’d really love to meet that person.”
I opened the bedroom door. A mattress and box spring rested on the floor, the box spring still in its plastic. A hamper. A closet full of muted tones, olives and oatmeals and tans. Behind the door, a pressed-wood bureau. I opened the top drawer and rifled through.
“Panty sniffing?” Sonia asked.
I moved to the hamper and lifted the lid.
“Of course,” she said. “Why sniff the clean ones?”
I moved to the washroom and checked under the sink. In the closet, I pushed aside a peacoat and some bulky rain gear.
“She’s gone,” I said, “and she left on her own steam.”
“Underwear and toiletries,” Sonia said to herself, nodding. “Is that what you hoped?”
“I hoped I’d find her,” I said. “But after my run-in with Nagy tonight, I think the best thing she could do is get away, lie low. Wait till I sort this thing out.”
“Since when are you detailed to Homicide? And what exactly happened with Nagy?”
“Thanks for your help,” I said, moving to the living room.
Books dominated the space. Crates of them were piled against the lengths of wall not taken up with bookcases. One case was dedicated to fiction, one for criticism and philosophy, the middle case double-stacked with slim handbound chapbooks and multivolume anthologies. A single space amid her Ishiguros where When We Were Orphans had sat.
“Find her?” the neighbor said as Sonia and I exited. He looked a tad disappointed when I told him no.
“You can lock it up,” I told the maintenance man.
He did. He shuffled his feet. “There’s the matter of the, ah, money.”
I looked at Sonia. “Nagy took my last forty,” I said.
She held up three twenties. “Anybody have a ten or two fives?” Then sighed, “Of course not,” and handed it over.
Outside I thanked her and walked to my car. She followed me.
“You don’t get to do that,” she said. “Ask me for help and then not tell me what it’s about. Should VPD be looking for this woman, to make sure she’s safe?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
She seized my arm. “Tell me.”
“Sure,” I said, “after you tell me why you wanted Chambers followed.”
She bit her bottom lip and moved as a pair of bicyclists came down the center of the road, tires hissing on the rain-soaked pavement.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I figured it out a couple days ago. You weren’t worried for Chambers. You didn’t suspect he was corrupt. You knew. You saw the same thing I saw. You saw him tune somebody up.”
She wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“You have firsthand proof he’s strong-arm muscle for Qiu, and you weighed that against what it would cost you career-wise to speak out against him. Not enough sense of justice to stand up, just enough to send your ex-boyfriend on some half-assed errand, to see if I’d do what you wanted without you having to say a word.”
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she said, her voice breaking.
I said, “Chambers arranged to bump into me in the street. He offered me ninety grand from Qiu to end all this. I took the check, Sonia. Couple hours ago, Nagy held a knife on me and took it back. Guess Qiu thought if I hadn’t cashed it by now, I was holding it against him as proof of a bribe.
“Truth is,” I continued, “I was on the fence until I figured out the game you’ve been playing. Then, honestly, I was inclined to take the cash. If the Sorenson case hadn’t got in the way, I might’ve done it. Now I’ve got a gangster and a beat cop and a couple of goons to watch out for, on top of the homicide dicks who probably think I knifed her or know who did. So thanks, Sonia, next time just put a gun to my nuts and—”
She struck me on the face with the baton. The steel crossed the bruises Nagy had left, sending a shriek of pain through my skull. One eye lost focus. I looked up to see Sonia backstep, sobbing, then turn and run to her car. I watched her taillights disappear over the hill.
My head knew what I’d said to her was true. My heart told me something else. That of all the people I’d driven away from me—and that list would be Dostoevskyan in length—here was someone who I’d spurned when she’d needed me most. You can be right and still find yourself sinking, and your rightness will not raise you up.
Forty-Seven
I woke to pain and sunlight. I was on my couch, still dressed. I’d passed out spinning my father’s old country albums. I dropped the needle and made breakfast to Merle Haggard, “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You.”
Dana Essex would call today, I was sure of that. In the meantime I needed to figure out what to tell Triplett and McCurdy.
At ten o’clock I was parked in an uncomfortable chair in the reception area of Shauna Kensington’s law office in Gastown. Above and behind me was a panorama watercolor of Burrard Inlet, the jagged tops of the Coast Mountains looming in the painting’s background. The office was underground, the windows offering a view of legs clipping over the Water Street concrete. The receptionist told me Shauna was booked solid, but could probably spare a moment before lunch.
“That’s why we generally make appointments,” she said cheerily, before turning her attention back to her computer.
At ten thirty-five the inner door opened. The receptionist waved me through the assistant’s annex into a high-ceilinged office replete with plush furnishings, the floor a minefield of Duplo and Richard Scarry. Shauna’s youngest was sitting on her desk, his mother concerned with unwrapping a straw and using it to puncture the foil target on a juice box.
“Dave,” Shauna said. “That’s a hell of a shiner.”
“She’s a hell of a woman.”
The kid tromped off to play in a yolk-yellow plastic igloo. “Adorable,” I said.
Shauna Kensington smoothed out her blouse. She was broad-shouldered and heavyset, spoke rapidly, and had a habit of rubbing her eyes when she sensed you were bullshitting her. Whenever we talked she’d be dressing or feeding or grooming one of her offspring, her responses precision-targeted though her gaze turned elsewhere.
I told her about Tabitha Sorenson and Dana Essex. She read the news reports on her computer. Her kid walked over to read with her, but lost interest and picked up a gold-plated fountain pen set, tomahawking it through the air. Without looking up, Shauna took it out of his hands.
“What do I do about the police?” I said.
“Depends what your client wants to do. And more importantly, how far you’re willing to go for your client.”
A good question, one I hadn’t resolved. I said, “She went off the radar last night. I broke into her flat. She’d packed before leaving.”
“You think Ms. Essex is connected to this murder?” Her attention left the pen set in her hand long enough for the child to snatch it back and run to his fortress, giggling.
“I think she’s running for her life,” I said. “This was a friend of hers who e
nded up murdered in her own house.”
“So you haven’t talked to her since the incident?”
“Briefly on the phone yesterday. We set a meeting that she didn’t make.”
“What was her state when she called?”
“Upset. Calm.”
“Which?”
“We only spoke for a moment. She was whispering, or next thing to it.”
“But not crying, not audibly upset?”
“She’s introverted,” I said. “She’s not a rending of garments type person.”
“Or an afraid for her life person?”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Oh, I see that.” Shauna smiled, massaging an eyebrow with her thumb. “You and this woman have a closer than usual relationship, correct?”
“We slept together. I was consoling her, we were drinking.”
“What’s funny,” Shauna said, “is you would be the first person to see this if you weren’t in the center of it.”
“See what?”
“You call this woman, tell her the news. She agrees to meet you later and then doesn’t show.”
“She got scared,” I said.
“That is entirely possible. But let’s look at what else is possible, Dave. What do you know about her?”
“Like I said, she’s introverted, bit of a romantic—”
“Do you know those things, Dave, know-know them? Or is that what she told you?”
“I’m pretty good at reading people. That’s an important part of what I do.”
“Sure.”
“And I wouldn’t’ve taken the job if I’d got a sense she was violent, or after money.”
“Your pride is hurt.”
“She’s not fucking involved,” I snapped.
Shauna’s kid looked up, looked at his mother and then grinned at me. The grin said, you’re in trouble now.
I apologized. Quieter, I said, “The night of Tabitha’s murder Essex and I were together. She ended up in bed with me. She was drunk and upset, and horny—is horny okay to say?”
“Horny,” the kid said, giddily. “Horny.”
“Sorry. The point is, I was with her, so I know she didn’t do this herself, and she wouldn’t hire it done, not out of jealousy, definitely not for money. I’d stake my reputation.”
“You might have already,” Shauna Kensington said. “In that case, isn’t Ms. Essex lucky to have you as an alibi?”
Forty-Eight
From the phone bank in the lobby of Shauna’s office building I dialed Surrey Polytech, looking for word of my client. The head of administration knew nothing, and suggested I call the Arts and Social Sciences director tomorrow at nine. I thanked her and said, “Sorry to be a bother, but could you tell me please what times Ms. Essex’s classes run?”
“This semester?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“All our class schedules are available on our web site.”
“Yes ma’am. Next time I’ll check there, and thanks for looking it up.”
As I cradled the phone, out on the street, the Gastown steam clock tolled. Usually there would be tourists to capture it on video, but today there was no one. Thunderstorms were forecast for tonight, though so far the day was dry.
The receptionist came back on the line. “You did say this semester.”
“Yep.”
“Because Dana Essex has no scheduled classes this fall.”
The gears of invisible machinery started to uncouple, derail, spill onto some nonexistent engine room floor.
“She’s contracted for two sections of One Oh Three in the spring,” the receptionist added.
“Thanks for your time.”
There was a bench along the wall by the door. I sank down onto it, but immediately stood up. I needed air and solitude. My office on Pender Street was eight blocks east.
I made it without incident. Once inside the stairwell, though, I felt it all coming apart.
Caught in the flap of the mail slot, along with the usual flyers for Safeway and the Army & Navy, was a plastic parcel envelope with no address. I took it and the flyers upstairs to my office.
I put the envelope down on a chair. Judging from its heft and the deck-of-cards shape of its contents, it held some sort of electronic device. A bomb wasn’t a far-fetched possibility. Whatever it was, I knew I wouldn’t like it.
I punctured the envelope with my car key, tore it open, and dumped a cell phone into my palm. A cheap burner, the kind we used at the office. I fired it up and listened to its tinny jingle.
A dozen numbers saved in the contacts, including my own, Kay’s, the office line, Jeff’s. Photos were stored on the phone, candids of Jeff and Marie outside the office, Kay and Greg in the van, Kay standing in front of my apartment.
The message had to be that whoever took it could get to us. Message conveyed. I wondered if Tabitha Sorenson knew exactly who she’d been running away from, what kind of people. And Essex: if she wasn’t who she said she was, how far had she been pulled into this?
Penned on the inside flap of the envelope was an eleven-digit number. I punched it in and heard it ring. No one picked up.
I thought of calling Sonia and trying to unburn that bridge. I touched my bruised and swollen eyelid, winced. As I tried to think of someone else to call, the phone jumped. A different out-of-town number appeared on the display.
I opened the phone and said, “Hello, Dana.”
Forty-Nine
“I owe you a profusion of apologies,” she said. “If it hadn’t been necessary—”
“Why’d you kill her?” I asked.
“I was with you, Dave. From the bar to your apartment. All night, I never left your arms.”
I said nothing.
“You performed perfectly,” she said. “In your profession, I mean. Although the other was enjoyable, too.”
“Was it really just money?” I asked.
“Not to me.”
“Then explain it. ’Cause I don’t get why you’d go to such lengths, not to mention ruin your career and make yourself a fugitive. For a couple hundred grand?”
“You’d find it more acceptable if it were billions?”
“More understandable.”
“What if it can’t be understood, Dave? Must there be a history of tortured animals and forest fires in my past, do you think?”
I leaned into the wall, my eyes fixed on the door. “What did Tabitha do to you?”
“I’m not going to give you a motive,” she said. “I’ve decided I like the idea of you circling around me in your mind, thinking of me as a mystery, a—what do you call it, that hackneyed term? A femme fatale.”
“You’re just dressing up a common mugging in words,” I said.
A pause. “I will tell you something. Two things, actually. I did not lie to you when I said money wasn’t the deciding factor. You’d be surprised by how little I lied to you.”
“Bullshit nobility. You had Tabitha murdered for money.”
“You won’t provoke me through feigned disbelief. Would you like to hear the second thing?”
“No.”
“I didn’t lie, but I heightened certain aspects of myself to give you the image you wanted. What you’d react strongest to. A damsel in distress. You came striding up the block that morning to save me, and I knew you’d want to save me again.”
“Skip to the fucking end,” I said.
“There’s a connection between us. In spite of everything, I haven’t felt as close to anyone in a long while. Which is why I regret that the burden of silence falls on you.”
“If you think I’ll stay silent,” I said emptily.
“You’ll have to, Dave. You’ve seen the photos? Imagine others for your partner’s family, your friend Sonia, yourself if need be.”
“And you’d be fine with that.”
“I have very little sway over the man who’d do it. The steps have been taken already. All that holds him back is your silence.”
“The
police—”
“Can be lied to or ignored. I imagine you’re an expert at that. Mentioning me wouldn’t help you much, anyway, since I’m your alibi as much as you’re mine.”
“You confessed.”
“Little that you didn’t already know. And who knows what you confessed to, in bed, about other matters? Who but us could say how complicit you really are?”
I was preparing retorts, vows of revenge, all of them dying before I could speak them. Essex’s voice was kind. Sisterly, even.
“Let things rest, Dave. Your livelihood will suffer, but you’ll soldier through, I imagine, once you accept there’s no profit in pursuing this further.”
“You know I can’t.”
“My father once said to me, we don’t win every engagement. It took Tabitha’s betrayal to teach me that. For the sake of everyone who knows you, let this be the end. Accept that it’s over. Please. Don’t make us harm you.”
I put the phone down on the desk without hanging up. Then I smacked it off. It hit the wall. I stomped on it. When it was in pieces I tossed the desk into the wall, leaving a deep gouge. I busted the chairs to splinters and left spiderwebs on the window. When there was nothing left to break I kicked at the steel doorframe. My kicks went wild and I tripped, falling back onto wood shards and broken glass. I lay there for a while, panting.
Eventually I sat up. Then, when I could stand, I walked to the window. I looked through the cracked pane at the gray-yellow sky, at the clusters of people shuffling up the block.
The world would have been more tolerable if it had been raining. Rain is a great equalizer, falling as it does on the just and unjust. It says so in the Bible, I believe, or maybe in Shakespeare. But it was dry, dry and darkening, and after a while I went home.
BOOK TWO
Dead Romantics
One
The poster in the display case read:
TONIGHT ONLY
FROM THE CLOVERDALE FAIRGROUNDS
LEGENDS OF THE RING IN ACTION
“DANGEROUS” DAN DOOLIN