Immortal Remains: A Tim Reaper Novel

by Sean Cummings

  “Perfect,” I grumbled as I walked out through the marble archway and back onto Grafton Street. I reached for my cell phone as I dodged the oncoming traffic and climbed into my truck. I hit the speed dial as I slipped my pickup in gear and pulled out of my spot, nearly clipping the car in front of me. The phone rang three times and then Detective Sergeant Carol Sparks picked up.

  “Reaper – what’s going on? Why are you calling me? Have you picked up a new lead?”

  I stomped on the gas and headed up Quinpool Road, racing through a yellow light. “Yeah – in about two minutes you’re going to get a call from the Archdiocese of Halifax. Someone killed Father Butler in his office and it looked like a professional hit.”

  “And you know this … how?” she said in a suspicious voice.

  “I’d planned to ask him about the whole demon thing – he knew more than he was letting on. Someone shot him through the window in his office and I found his body lying on the floor when I got there. It gets worse, by the way.”

  “How worse?” she said, her voice sounding almost cryptic.

  “Worse as in the building was empty when I decided to pay a visit. Worse as in they’ve got me coming into the aforementioned empty building and leaving twenty minutes later on their security cameras. Why the hell does the Catholic Church need security cameras, Sparks? It’s the frigging Church for shit sake!”

  “Jesus, Reaper!” she almost shouted into the phone. “Where are you?”

  “Heading up Quinpool Road – we need to meet.”

  She exhaled heavily. “Reaper, you have to come down here and report this. Dammit, you should have stayed put and called it in when you found the body! Where’s your brains? You’re going to be-”

  “The prime suspect?” I clucked. “Someone set me up, Sparks. Whoever killed Butler knew I’d be paying him a visit. Shit, whoever tried to take me out last night was probably tailing me for days. They knew I’d be armed – I might as well have just gift wrapped myself.”

  “Reaper,” she barked into the phone. “I have an obligation to bring you in – for all I know you could have killed him.”

  “Really, Carol?” I said, barely containing the anger in my voice. “You don’t trust me after all we’ve been through together the past couple of days? Dead angels? A self-immolating demon corpse and an attempted hit on me last night? You know there’s a guy gunning for me – you saw it for yourself!”

  The line went silent for a short moment and I could hear footsteps and then a door closing in the background. “Reaper, I don’t know what the hell you’ve sucked me into here, but I’ve been doing paperwork all night trying to cover your ass from what happened at the cemetery. Listen – if there’s someone trying to take you down, you’d be safest if you came into our custody. If you didn’t kill Father Butler- “

  I cut her off. “I didn’t kill him, Sparks! Look – you saw what I did to the earth and the trees and those birds. This tidy little investigation into a bunch of dead angels has morphed into something bigger than anything that’s ever hit this town.”

  “I … don’t know how to handle this stuff, Reaper,” she said in a cold, harsh voice. “Why the hell did you pick me to dump all this end-of-the-world crap on?”

  I jammed on the brakes to avoid ploughing into a little old lady at a crosswalk. “Call me a generous prick, Carol. Listen – something bad is brewing. Something way bigger than anything you or the Halifax City Police could ever hope to dream up. You’re a professional investigator and I’m just a fuck-up nine times out of ten. I can’t do this on my own – please just meet with me, alright?”

  The line went silent for again and then Sparks emitted a loud groan. “Alright – dammit! You need to get as far the hell away from that crime scene as you can. Christ, you should get yourself as far the hell away from Halifax as possible for that matter, but-”

  I cut her off just as I hit a pothole and bounced hard in my seat, smacking the top of my head on the ceiling of the cab. “Rainbow Haven Beach – the parking lot near where they found Elaine Lahey’s body.”

  “It’s going to have to wait, Reaper. I’m getting paged and it means that someone probably reported your dead priest. You need to go to ground fast – I’ll be in touch.”

  “Shit!” I protested. “How long will that take?”

  “As long as necessary!” she snapped. “It’s a murder investigation so you’ll forgive me for doing my frigging job. Just get your ass out of the city and do it now!”

  I tore up Robie Street and headed back to my flat. “Sparks, thanks for running interference on this.”

  “I’m not running interference, you moron,” she growled into the phone. “If I detect even a whiff that you had anything to with that priest’s murder, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  ***

  I made it back to my flat in less than ten minutes and Amy was busily folding laundry when I stormed through the door.

  “Get your shit in gear and be ready to move out of here pronto,” I barked.

  She gave me a surprised look. “You’re ditching me so quickly? I thought we sort of connected last night.”

  I trotted past her and down the hall to my bedroom. “Yeah – we connected, whatever,” I bellowed as I began stuffing socks and underwear into a duffle bag. “I gotta disappear for a few days and that means that you can’t stay here because people are going to be looking for me.”

  She appeared in my doorway and said, “This sounds serious, is there anything I can do to help?”

  I shook my head as I reached into the top drawer of my dresser and pulled out three boxes of nine millimeter ammunition, tossing them on my freshly made bed. “There isn’t much help you can offer, Toots. Like I said, I need to disappear and that means that you need to disappear, too.”

  She sat down on my bed next to the duffle bag as I went into my closet and pulled out the oak box containing my one remaining nickel plated .357 Magnum Desert Eagle. (I’d gifted the other to a pain-in-the-ass sorceress in Calgary a short time ago.) I opened up the case and pulled out the enormous handgun, cocking it and then chambering a round.

  “Jesus!” Amy choked. “Are you expecting an invasion or something? That gun is huge!”

  I engaged the safety and slipped it into my duffle bag. “Honey, I’ve been stalked by someone, shot at by a sniper and set up for a murder I didn’t commit all within the span of twenty-four hours. Where I’m going there’s bound to be more gunplay and I like to be armed to the teeth.”

  “A murder?” she made a choking sound.

  “Yeah, a murder,” I said, tossing boxes of .357 magnum ammunition into the bag. “You don’t know squat about me, Toots, but this is my life. You liked bad boys, well there are bad boys and then there’s me. There’s enough shit flying around me right now that you’ll wind up getting you killed, so, you know, maybe heading to Toronto might be a good idea for you right about now.”

  “If only I had the cash,” she said in a somber voice. “I have maybe fifty dollars to my name.”

  “The bus is cheap,” I grumbled, as I tossed a fresh pair of jeans on the bed. “Can’t be much more than a hundred bucks for a Greyhound to the big smoke. I’ll spot you the other fifty bucks.”

  “It costs two hundred and ten dollars for a ticket – I checked it out online. And then there’s the issue of whether my family hasn’t written me out of their lives entirely by now.”

  I zipped up the duffle and slung it over my shoulder as I looked at her. She wasn’t packing. Hell, she wasn’t even getting off the bed for crying out loud. I swallowed hard, trying carefully to select the next sentence I was going to use because if she started doing something stupid like crying, I’d lose my temper and start yelling – my all-purpose knee-jerk reaction to extreme female emotional outbursts. That invariably leads to an ugly scene with more crying, more yelling and then the cops showing up on my doorstep.

  “Amy … I can spot you a few bucks, I told you that. We need to leave … now.”

  “I
could go with you,” she said. “I actually need to go with you.”

  I blinked. “Come again?”

  “I said that I need to go with you,” she said, hopping off the bed. “You think your life is complicated, try mine out for size some time.”

  I slung the duffle over my shoulder. “Complicated how?”

  “Well … Emil has been parked outside your building for the last two hours waiting for me to come out.”

  I did a double take and then raced to the big window in my living room that overlooked the street below. Emil Vachon’s Cadillac was parked with a clear view of my building’s entrance, and I could see the French prick had a cigarette in his mouth and was slurping away at a Coke. I grated my teeth together in frustration because I’d parked behind my building and entered through the back. Had I gone in through the front, I’d have spotted Vachon’s car and we’d have had words.

  The kind of words that generally leads to gunshots, cops and hell of a lot of unwanted attention.

  It was out of character for the French prick to do something so brazen as to stake out my flat and I decided that one of his girls must have told him where I lived. I could see his thug seated next to him but the tinted windows on the limo concealed anyone sitting in the back seat, and I just knew that for Vachon to stake out my place, he’d have brought some backup.

  “This day keeps getting better and better,” I groaned as I turned to face Amy. “You know, you’re more freaking trouble than you’re worth.”

  She shrugged hard. “You’re the one that came to my rescue, or did you forget that? I didn’t exactly force you to intervene last night. It’s your fault that Emil is out there, not mine.”

  “If I hadn’t,” I said, half-surprised by her nonchalant reply. “You’d be in the hospital with a messed up face, Toots.”

  It was at this point that the sound of someone pounding at the door to my flat filled the air. They continued pounding so hard the walls shook.

  “Nobody screws around with my property, Reaper!” shouted Emil, his voice nearly shrill.

  Lovely. So much for my quick and stealthy exit. Vachon was at the door and he probably had about three thugs with him. I rushed over to the peephole and started right into the barrel of a gun.

  “Son of a bitch,” I snarled, as I pulled out my Beretta and knelt down to the mail slot. “Toots, we’re leaving. Stay low and follow me!”

  I slid the barrel of my gun in through the mail slot and fired off two quick shots. The bullets hit Vachon square on the kneecap and he howled like a skinned cat.

  “Get behind the sofa!” I barked as Amy dove for cover. The door flew open and there was Vachon, lying on the floor clutching his right knee. Three of his thugs raced over his crumpled body, guns blazing. I dove behind the couch, landing on top of Amy. I peered out from underneath the couch to see that I had a clear shot at another thug’s foot, so I blasted a pair of rounds and the next thing I saw was his face hitting the floor like an anvil.

  I dashed across the living room, firing both guns as the third thug flew over his wounded comrades firing a sawed-off shotgun. A lethal spray of pellets blew a dinner plate sized hole in my plasma TV, knocking it off its stand as I grabbed one of my three-inch thick end tables by one of its legs. I placed it in front of my chest hoping it would make for a half-decent shield against the shotgun blasts and I kicked a gun out of the hands of one of Vachon’s thugs who was applying pressure to his leg wound. Thug number three fired another two rounds that hit the end table like a battering ram. Splinters of wood filled the air temporarily blinding me, as I ducked behind what I thought was my big easy chair. I dropped the end table and ran my forearm across my eyes, trying desperately to clear my vision enough to see what I was shooting at. In seconds my eyes began to focus through a stinging film of tears and then I heard Amy scream.

  “I got your honey, asshole!” shouted thug number three as I poked my head above the top of my easy chair. “Toss out your guns or I’ll pop her pretty little face like a zit.”

  I grated my teeth together and could hear Vachon groaning something in what I assumed was French. He was lucky I didn’t blast him between the eyes because no I was officially pissed. It’s one thing to come into my flat with your guns blazing and it was another thing entirely to use an innocent woman as a human shield.

  I surveyed my surroundings looking for something I could possibly throw that would distract thug number three long enough to blast a pair of nine millimeter slugs in his legs, but outside of throwing the chair at him, I was shit out of luck. This meant that someone was going to get killed in the next thirty seconds and there was nothing I could do about it. As soon as my two Berettas were out of my hands, I knew that thug three would shoot either Amy or me and it was at this point that I decided to think outside the box. I reached into my boot and palmed my blade as I threw one handgun over the top of my easy chair. It landed on the carpet with a heavy thud as I slowly stood up, my one remaining gun in my left hand.

  “Toss it on the floor, asshole!” snarled thug number three, his right arm clamped tightly around Amy’s neck and in his left hand, a .38 Special pressed against her temple.

  I nodded slowly and said, “Alright, fine … just don’t hurt the girl. Do what you want with me, but let her live.”

  “Screw you, Reaper, you sack of shit!’ snarled Vachon from the doorway. “You take what’s mine and you expect me to bargain? Shoot him and shoot that bitch!”

  Things went into slow motion at this point. I could see thug number three’s finger begin to press against the trigger as Amy struggled to free herself. Her eyes looked up to me pleadingly as I hurled my boot knife at the thug, the cold steel tearing across the room in a straight, sharp trajectory. It flew into his right eye and he screamed as I spun around and fired two quick rounds at Vachon just as he reached for of his thug’s stray guns. The first round clipped his right ear and the second flew right through his mouth, entering the right cheek and exiting the left. He clawed at his face as thug number three reeled backwards, tripping over an upturned coffee table, so I sprinted down the hall to my bedroom and grabbed my duffle bag. I was back in the living room less than ten seconds later, so I grabbed Amy by the wrist and raced through the doorway. She could barely keep up as we flew down the back stairs and across the parking lot to my truck.

  I jumped in the cab and my truck roared to life as Amy climbed in beside me. “Looks like you’re coming with me after all,” I said, catching my breath as I slipped the truck in gear. I could hear the wail of police sirens in the distance and I knew they’d be on my tail as soon as someone from my building identified me as Thomas Waxman. They’d tell the cops what I looked like and what kind of truck I drove, but I smiled contentedly when I considered that Emil Vachon would have some explaining to do himself – once his face healed up enough for him to start talking. I glanced at Amy through the corner of my eye as my truck raced up Robie Street and onto the MacKay Bridge into Dartmouth.

  “Looks like you and me have a lot more in common than I’d originally thought.” I said, my hands gripping the steering wheel tightly.

  “Like what?” asked Amy, shrinking in her seat.

  I fished a cigarette out of my pocket and slipped it between my lips. My eyes panned over to the rear view mirror and I emitted a weary sigh as I lit my cigarette.

  “We’re both homeless now,” I said.

  15

  When you’re in my line of work, you needed back-up plans. Hell, more often than not, you needed a back-up plan for your back-up plan and another one on top of the first two. Because nothing ever went the way you wanted it to.

  A basic rule of anyone who does odd jobs like me was to have a safe house complete with everything you needed to do a long-term disappearing act. I’ve actually seen some pretty elaborate safe houses owned by guys who made me look like an amateur. They ranged from a high-tech subterranean bunker complete with trip wires and land mines aplenty to a secluded forest fire tower overlooking dozens of squar
e miles of pristine woodland.

  My safe house was decidedly low-tech. It was completely off the grid right down to the portable generators I used for electricity so that I didn’t have to tap into any government-owned utility. Das Bunker as I liked to call it was an old coastal defensive position on the outskirts of Three Fathom Harbour, about an hour east of Halifax. It was one of dozens the Ministry of National Defence built to protect Canada’s shores from the German Fleet during the Second World War, none of which, by the way, saw any action. In order to access it, you had to drive cross-country through thick, horse fly-infested bush land that led to the concrete and steel entrance doors nestled deep inside a cave that was positively crawling with rattle snakes. I liked cats, but I hated snakes. Like, a lot. Probably one of the reasons that I only used the place on three separate occasions in the past ten years. The bunker itself was constructed of reinforced concrete and came complete with firing slits and a million-dollar view of the Atlantic Ocean – that was, of course, assuming you cut down the trees that had grown in front of the monstrosity over the past seven decades.

  I kept to the speed limit as I steered onto the highway leading to the airport, glancing through the rear view mirror every few minutes because I’d actually been expecting a high-speed chase with the police. I had to ditch my pickup as quickly as possible, but I wasn’t about to steal a vehicle – that was mistake number one when you were on the lam. Instead, I made a beeline for Layton’s Self Storage – a mini-mall of storage garages about ten miles outside of town. I had a fee-free super-sized unit that I acquired after helping the owner deal with some bad dudes who used the place to fence stolen goods (did I mention that biker gangs and I don’t exactly get along?) and I had access to the place twenty-four hours a day. No questions asked.

  The sun sat high in the sky as I pulled into the secure compound and wheeled my truck around a pair of large aluminum buildings with more than sixty garage doors on either side of a gravel road. My unit was at the very end and I manoeuvred my truck over a series of ruts until we parked about twenty feet from the door.