by A. J. Aalto
I didn’t believe that for a second. “I think you’re lying to me. What kind of priest lies?”
He just shrugged with that infuriating smile. The wind tousled his hair back from his face, and he noticed me noticing, which further irritated me.
“Had you met Simon before Britney went missing?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s it? Just yes? Would you care to expand on that?”
“You’re not a cop.”
“I’m not a cop,” I agreed. “I’m a paranormal investigator. And you’re an exorcist, apparently. Got your Red Flag?”
“Why?” His eyes gleamed, and the Blue Sense reported that he liked me a whole lot more than I was comfortable with. “Are we playing bullfighter and angry bull later?”
“Don’t flirt with me, priest.”
“I’m not flirting,” he said, “I’m suggesting we fuck.”
My mouth popped open in a perfect O. “Holy crap! What kind of priest--? Are you off your--?” I struggled for more words and the urge to giggle returned full force. I pinched my lips together hard until it settled enough to talk. “You know, life isn’t all about divin’ in the muff.”
His smile tilted toward lewd. “Oh, I beg to differ.”
“You might be the worst priest ever,” I told him.
“Is that why you’re laughing inside?”
“You don’t know what’s going on inside me.”
“Yet,” he said. “But I could certainly make some suggestions on what goes there.”
“Holy motherfluffer! You’re filthier than me.”
“And none of what you just said qualifies as a no, so I guess I’ll be seeing you later,” he said. “Bring wine. We’ll get drunk and naked and discuss the afterlife.”
I stammered around a million replies. “I can’t fuck a priest, I’ll go to hell! And if that trick with my wrist is any indication, I'd be arriving with the worst rash ever.”
“Without my help, sweetheart, you’re already going to hell,” he assured me, and dropped a wink before shutting the door in my face.
***
I stomped to Schenk's car, not bothering with anyone else’s foot tracks and leaving a fresh trail through new snow up to my shins. Just my luck; finally offered free, weird sex and it was by a freaky-ass priest. Dude wanted to save me… with dick. Was this a joke? Was the Green Man enjoying Himself up there, having a good laugh at my expense? I was stuck imagining the rash I’d get you-know-where if I tried getting naked with him, which I totally wasn’t picturing. Besides, how would I get him out of those skinny jeans? No, wait! I wouldn’t! Would I? No! My instincts told me he was dangerous, my personal life told me he was absolutely off-limits, and everything else inside me said Fiddle-dee-dee! Apparently, everything else inside me had gone clownshit crazy. I gave the sky my serious-est stink-eye, hoping the Dark Lady and her oh-so-funny Consort were watching, and muttered at Them, “Hysterical. Soooooo funny.”
Still, I had to admit, I felt like I’d just gone for a vitamin B shot; lightened, refreshed, with a bounce in my grudging stomp. I should have felt drained, what with the brush with death and all, and reluctantly equated my surge of stamina with the aftereffects of Father Scarrow’s semi-holy presence. I snapped the elastic band around my wrist, brushed the snow off my calves, and stamped my feet before getting into the Sonata.
“Wait.” As I buckled up, Schenk held his fingertips to his temple. “I must be getting psychic. I can read your mind.”
Fuck, I hope not. “Dazzle me, copper.”
“You’re going to say ‘Time for a Timmy’s run.’”
“Fancy-brains detective.” I almost melted with relief, grateful that he was way off. “Think you’re so smart.”
Schenk had his casebook out and was scribbling notes. “I bet you also owe more money to the swear jar.”
I scowled and did some mental arithmetic, sighing inwardly. “That guy’s a priest,” I said. “Did you know that?”
His reply was a grunt.
“That’s your ‘I’m not sharing all my info with you’ grunt.”
Grunt.
“No, I was wrong,” I said. “That’s your ‘I’m hungry’ grunt.”
Snort-laugh.
“And that’s your ‘stay out of my head, weirdo’ snort. See? I’ve got you all figured out, too, Longshanks.”
“Fancy-brains psychic, eh?”
While Schenk scribbled his notes, I took out my mini Moleskine diary and a golf pencil, and pretended to write while I read aloud, “Dear Diary: Constable Schenk is a big ol’ doody head. Also, I don’t like his tie. And his accent is starting to make me want to go oot and aboot for some poutine.”
“I’m not wearing a tie.”
“Dear Diary doesn’t know that.” I scribbled some more. “Dear Diary: Constable Schenk thinks it’s too soon for me to sass him like we’re old friends, but Constable Schenk is wrong. Sass, sass, sass.”
“Must you, while I’m trying to think?”
“I’m not going to comment about how hard it must be for you to think at the best of times, so you’re welcome.” I played with the aim of the heating vents. “Did you feel anything weird in that rectory?”
“Weird how?”
“You know when you’re at a funeral, or you’re sitting in church and the minister starts talking about something super serious, and you know it’s the worst time to laugh, and you’re not even thinking about anything funny, but it just bubbles up in your throat and you have to slap your hands over your mouth?”
“I thought you had to pee,” he said, shooting me a smirk. “Wriggling and fidgeting the way you were.”
“Hey, I was subtle,” I said.
His lips did that yeah, right pucker. “You’re saying Father Scarrow gives you the giggles? Is this going to be a problem?”
“I’m sure it was the building, not the man,” I said, not entirely sure of that at all. I changed the subject, fiddling with the radio station and various dashboard buttons. “What’s going to happen to Simon Hiscott now?”
“Don’t push my buttons.”
“Your buttons or the car’s buttons?”
“Yes,” he said distractedly, and his pencil went taptaptap on the steering wheel as he paused to think. “Either. Both.”
His clock started flashing at me, blinking 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, and a digital voice reported pleasantly, “Twelve.”
Schenk paused in his writing to sigh. “What did you just do?”
“Your clock tells you the time out loud?”
“Well, now it does,” he said, whacking my gloved hand away from the dash. “Don’t fiddle.”
“I wasn’t fiddling,” I said, “I was mucking about. There’s a difference.”
“Well, fix it.”
“Don’t harass me,” I grumbled, scratching at a spot on my wrist. “I just had a gun shoved in my face and I’m fairly certain the exorcist gave me a rash. Is that a bump? That looks like a bump.”
Schenk squinted at my wrist. “Nothing there.”
I pulled my wrist up to my face. The rash was already gone.
“Twelve,” the car said.
“Shit,” I said, punching random buttons. “How do you put it back to the way it was?”
“I don’t know,” Schenk said low, swatting me away again to stab at it randomly himself. “Do the opposite of what you did to fuck it up in the first place.”
“That almost never works,” I told him.
“Twelve.”
“Take your gloves off before you push my buttons. You probably pushed a combination of things that we’ll never figure out without the manual.”
“I can’t take my gloves off! I’m a Groper, and this is a cop’s car. Do you have any idea what images probably lurk on your dashboard? It'll be all bad lies, alibis, and donuts.” I tried to open his glove box but it was locked. “Where’s your manual?”
“Twelve.”
“Bought the car used, the manual was long gone.”
I
pinched my lips together and shot him a look to judge his level of irritation. It was hard to tell; maybe he wanted to toss me out of his car on my ear, maybe he just wanted to clobber me. The Blue Sense suggested it was a toss-up. “And you never bothered to look for a replacement. Typical caveman. Thag know car things.”
“Thag knows it's a long-ass walk to anywhere you want to go, unless it's back to quote-unquote talk to Scarrow.”
“Twelve.”
I ignored my instinct to defend my motives, and instead asked, “Does Bad Habits still have the best wings in the city?”
“Yup.”
“Let’s hit that sh—not.”
“Shnot?” Schenk shook his head. “You’re bad at not swearing, eh?”
“Twelve oh one,” the clock agreed.
CHAPTER 8
BAD HABITS HAD always been my favorite restaurant in St. Catharines; laid back atmosphere, cheap beer, fast lunches, dark corners, clean bathrooms, and music that wasn’t too intrusive. A back booth was open, and Schenk made sure I grabbed it before he headed off through the crowd to the bathrooms.
I shoved my frog hat in the pocket of my parka, thinking it was more a nuisance than anything, ordered a root beer from a cute redhead, changed my order to include a shot of vanilla vodka, and tried to relax. It’s not every day I have a gun shoved in my face. It made me think of all the things I’d miss most, and maybe I was being stupid and proud and stubborn about most of those things, including the yummiest one.
There was only one picture of Mark Batten in my phone’s photo album and the urge to peek at it was too strong to resist; seeing his face was reassuring. I allowed myself a single soft sigh under cover of the noise of the lunch crowd, and tilted my phone close to my face so no one would see.
It was a quick shot, in profile, taken on impulse on a hot, sunny morning late in August, after our last big case. He’d been yelling at some schmuck from the CDC about zombies and head shots, and I had thought, at the time, that the intensity in his face was so kneecappingly delicious that I had to capture it for later enjoyment. The picture was fantastically crisp; I could see the gleam in his eye and some nifty fury froth in the corner of his mouth. Fighting with Batten was always arousing. Probably, that made me a weirdo. The heat he stirred in me was a sick fever, but one I craved. One I was craving badly, now, in the aftermath of a brush with death. Kill-Notch made me feel alive.
Unexpectedly, Simon Hiscott’s sad, desperate longing for Britney returned like a calving iceberg, weighing down my shoulders. Life’s so short; Simon thought they had all the time in the world, and they should have. Schenk’s grim concern for his missing person, bordering on the hopelessness that came from experience, rushed in to join the party. Father Scarrow’s desire to dominate me, whether it was to swat or fuck me, came tumbling soon after to add some confusion. My coat seemed to suddenly weigh a hundred pounds and I shrugged out of it, letting it fall behind me on the seat like a blanket for my bum. The waitress brought my drink and I ordered another before she could escape into the push of bodies.
Fighting with Batten was always a great way to deflect and blow off steam. I really wished he was here. I wondered how he was, how Wes was, how Harry was faring at North House, though it was still daylight and certainly he was at rest. I glanced again at Batten’s picture and considered texting him.
Heavy boots thumped hardwood behind me, Schenk’s even stride. I put my phone face down on the table before he swooped into the bench opposite me, but not fast enough.
“Something you don’t want me to see?”
“I don’t like to get caught mooning over some jackass like a school girl with her first crush, is all,” I said. “I have my pride.”
He didn’t argue that, which I appreciated. “So who is he? She? It?”
“He’s nobody special,” I lied.
He flipped open a menu. “Love him, eh?”
“Nosy,” I said. He didn’t look up from the menu, giving me just enough freedom from his inspecting gaze to admit, “Trying real hard not to.”
He nodded like he completely understood. “Too scared?”
“Too smart.”
“What do you want?”
“Wings, nachos, and privacy. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Honey garlic?” When I nodded, he asked, “Nachos with the works?” After my second nod, he asked, “What do you want where he’s concerned?”
I thought about that. “The freedom to love him like he’s never hurt me. But I’m not that stupid.”
He looked up from his menu. “Maybe he won’t hurt you again.”
I showed him my as-if face. “He’s got all the emotional sensitivity of a pile of rocks.” That wasn’t entirely accurate, or entirely fair, since I had the approximate emotional maturity of a three-year-old.
“If he’s a shit, why do you like him?”
I dropped my menu. “You know how when you pull out of the gas station on Glendale, and you pass the ice cream shop at the plaza, and the flutter in your belly goes ‘gimme gimme gimme,’ and your brain goes ‘we don’t need that, we came for gas,’ and then the flutter wins and you find yourself at the counter fogging up the glass in front of the cheesecake ice cream?”
“So he’s beefcake ice cream?”
I gave him a knowing chuckle of agreement. I steadfastly did not picture Batten's ass covered in hot fudge and sprinkles. Just a little whipped cream. “Sad, eh?”
“Sure that’s all he is?”
I wasn’t, but I nodded, and stabbed my ice cubes with my straw. “Of course.”
“Well,” he allowed, “we all have our weaknesses.”
I turned my head so I could give him a proper side-eye. “Big tough guy like you has a weakness?”
“Yup.” He looked up as the waitress approached, ordered enough wings and nachos for two, and handed her the menus. “Golddiggers with pretty toes.”
I chuckled. “A foot fetish?”
“I don’t knit ladies’ socks for nothin’. But your weirdo psychic powers already told you that.”
What the—a sock knitter? I couldn’t keep my bemusement off my face. “Not even a little.”
“Damn, confessed for nothing.”
“This just became fun. Got anything else to confess?”
“Nothing at all,” he lied smoothly.
“Aw come on… I’ll be your best friend. I’ll let you make me socks.” I showed him my heavy Doc Martens.
“Fuckin’ boots.” He shook his head and looked out the window. “Winter’s a total cockblock.”
My jaw dropped and I erupted into a full belly laugh. Schenk seemed surprised at what had come out of his mouth and joined me in the laugh. Heads turned. Apparently, something hilarious was happening at our table, and people always want to be a part of that if they can. The Blue Sense reported a polite, reserved brand of curiosity that felt classically Canadian, and for a moment, I was very glad to be home.
“Golddiggers, eh?” I smirked. “Out of curiosity, do you carry your gold in ingots, or old-school nuggets like the panhandlers did?”
He dug in his jacket pocket and came up with a guitar pick, a handful of nickels, and a snack-sized Twix bar. “Neither.”
“Looks like you might need to revise your fetish downward to nickel-diggers.”
“Now that we have the future of my love life established,” he said, opening his folio and taking up his pencil, he slid out a business card, offering it to me. It was one of mine. It looked brand new, crisp, and hardly touched at all. “This was in Britney Wyatt’s wallet. She left her purse in the boyfriend’s car while they went for a walk along the canal.”
“Why the hell would they be walking there at nine o’clock on such a horridly cold winter night?”
“Hiscott said it was a walk they did often. Gut feeling, though? I think there’s something else he’s not telling me. Once he dries out, he'll have a lot of questions to answer.”
I removed my gloves to take my business card in hand. It was coo
l and smooth and gave me no flickers at all, not even a minor impression from the big, troubled cop who handed it to me. “This card must have been in a box for the last ten years to still look so new. Maybe one of my sisters still had some?” Or Ellie, my brain piped up, but how would Ellie know Britney Wyatt? And if she had, she’d have mentioned it when she found out why I was here, right? “Where did Britney get this card?”
“Hiscott didn’t say, but again, there’s a lot he’s not telling me.”
“You a mind reader, now?”
“I’ve been a cop for twenty years.”
“So, yes.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Hiscott says he doesn’t know why Britney would need a psychic, and that doesn’t sit right, either.”
“She was obviously going to contact me,” I said, not really a question.
“Wanna hear the funny thing? Scarrow had your card, too.”
I felt my mouth drop open. “So, wait, Father Frisky already knew who I was?” That hurt my head. “He acted like he was just figuring me out, being all Mr. Mysterioso. Why would he need to talk to me? You know, I don’t think I trust him very much.”
“He’s an ex-priest, what’s not to trust?”
“Ex,” I repeated, leaning forward, ignoring the waitress as she brought our food. “Why ‘ex’? And how 'ex,' exactly? Did he leave the church, or did they boot him?”
Schenk sat back and looked at the food. He settled on eating instead of talking for the moment. While he decided whether or not to discuss Scarrow with me, I told him, “That guy thinks I’m something that needs to be put in its place.”
Schenk sucked honey garlic wing sauce off his thumb. “What did he say to you before you left the rectory?”
I felt a guilty jolt and then remembered that, for a change, I hadn’t been the one to be inappropriate. I took a healthy pull of my drink, got a mouthful of ice, and crunched. “He made a sexual suggestion.”
“Want me to shoot him?” Schenk offered.
I choke-laughed on my ice chips. “That won’t be necessary, but can I borrow your handcuffs?”
“Gonna get kinky?”
“I just want to make sure I know where his hands are next time I question him.” I tasted the nachos. They were even better than I remembered, and I was suddenly famished. “Make no mistake; we’re not done with that priest. Ex-priest. Exorcist Ghost Hunting Dog Trainer Guy. Whatever he is. His bowling ball wasn’t in his bag.”