by Lou Allin
“That’s a holy place. You’ll love it. I’m going to get out to Avatar Grove in Port Renfew, too,” Holly had told her, glad that the girl had not lost heart about the wilderness even though it was doubtful that she would tent alone again.
In her old camping days, Holly had always had a German shepherd by her side, the best deterrent short of an Uzi. Norman’s protests were overturned by Bonnie: “We know where she’s going, and we know when she’ll be back, Norman. The bush is her friend. In my culture, boys younger than Holly went on vision quests. Our daughter deserves an equal opportunity to learn about herself. And not just because of her Salish blood.”
On one such weekend so many years ago when her mother had revealed Holly’s deer totem, they’d been camping with the Bronco at remote Hadikin Lake in Carmanah-Walbran. During this female bonding ceremony, they ate what nature provided — trout, berries, miner’s lettuce — but cheated with sweet bannock from Great Aunt Stella’s recipe.
Chipper was overdue from his routine traffic check. Neither he nor Holly enjoyed that duty, which consisted of holing up with the cumbersome radar gun and reading bulletins when the road was quiet. In addition to erratic tourists, craning their necks for ocean views, and locals who hit 110 kph on the straightaways, West Coast Road was jammed with logging trucks from the increased cutting. That summer a truck had dumped its load in a giant pick-up-sticks accident at a wicked curve by the Seventeen Mile Pub. A century ago, horses had pulled eight-foot-thick giants past that 1895 Tudor-style watering hole. Now a busy liquor store takeout and Adrenalin Lines Adventure swelled the number of turnoffs. It was pure luck that nobody had been hurt or killed. The infrastructure was being pushed to its maximum.
Chipper’s father Gopal had been raised in a Scottish orphanage in the Punjab. Along with his wife Ishar, he had emigrated with a single suitcase and a single purpose: to build a new life in a land with more opportunities. Two decades of menial jobs had finally bought them a convenience store and ethnic grocery in nearby Colwood with a second-floor flat as their living quarters. Chipper complained about having no privacy, but with the high rents on the island, he was sacrificing his personal life for his savings account.
Four years younger than Holly, Chipper sometimes flexed his masculine muscles to assume the role of an older brother. Being the only man at a post with two females of superior rank demanded the patience of Gandhi, though when cornered by both, he turned his eyes upward, placed his hands together in prayer, and whispered, “Women.” He had the neatest desk and the most meticulous handwriting, making up in precision what he lacked in experience.
At last he came through the door, looking subdued. “Your turn tomorrow. Can’t be soon enough for me,” he said, sitting at his desk. He glanced at the last paper from the inbox, signed it, and moved it over to Ann’s desk.
“What’s the matter?” Holly asked.
“I hate giving tickets to women. The older ones remind me of my mother and my grandmother. The younger ones, brutal.”
“Softie. You can’t let everybody off with a warning if they smile at you, pretty girls or not. We’ve all had our turn, so suck it up. This post hasn’t had one complaint yet, and I intend to keep it that way,” Holly said with a mild tease. As if anyone could find anything wrong with Mr. Perfect. As an officer, he was a dream walking. Holly had no doubt that he planned to go up the seniority ladder as fast as he could. A B.A. in sociology with a 4.0 grade-point average testified to his academics.
His answer was to crack his knuckles loudly. “Huh.” Then he stuck out his lower lip, as close to pouting as he’d ever come.
“Poor baby. Tell Mom all about it. Auntie Ann can get you a hankie.” Holly gave him a light push on the shoulder.
He loosened his protective vest as he sipped cold jasmine tea left from the morning. His small nose flared slightly and he drummed his fingers on the desk. Usually his mild face was an open book. While she and Ann had their crabby days, Holly couldn’t imagine him losing his temper. He’d once confessed that he came close to decking a guy outside of Saskatoon who had split his pregnant wife’s lip with a bullwhip when she objected to his spending his pay check on rye and lottery tickets. “Then she bailed him out of jail, crying ‘My man. My man.’ Go figure,” he had said, baffled and frustrated.
His sleek eyebrows warred with each other, and he picked up his citation book. “Maybe I’ll feel better telling you guys. I was on a roll. Got a timber truck with an unsafe load. Caught another guy for using his engine brakes on the Shirley hill. Two speeding tickets. No one was drunk, but it was only eleven in the morning….”
“Every hour is happy hour for some,” Holly said.
Checking out another page, his expression grew stormy, and he slapped the book on the desk. “Then came the last one. I was more than ready to go off-duty when I saw her. My ears are still burning. What a garbage mouth. If looks and words could kill, I’d be a dead man. This girl was just plain nuts.”
Reminded of many a distasteful traffic stop, Holly grew intrigued. If Chipper nearly lost it, she must have been a pistol, in her father’s historical vocabulary. “A girl? A teenager? Are you serious?”
“She was hell on wheels. I pulled her over down at the Pike Road mailboxes. Where the salal goes way up the hill.”
Ann had amusement on her face. She and Holly exchanged womanly glances. They’d all hidden in that corridor. It was a perfect spot.
“Don’t stop now, man. This is getting juicy. Did she threaten to hit you with her purse?” In Holly’s experience, women were the deadlier of the species. Over the last fifty thousand years of walking upright, they developed wily tactics in place of brute strength. No wonder men couldn’t figure them out. Some fought dirty and had no scruples about using tears as a weapon.
“They don’t call it trash talking for nothing.” He stabbed a finger on the form. “Not only was she twenty clicks over the limit, but driving without an adult in the car. She had an L sticker. Seventeen according to her licence.” The province’s graduated system was one of the strictest in the nation. Learners were mandated to have one qualified chaperone. The large green letter on the back of each car caught the attention of the law.
Holly leaned forward and folded her arms. “So what did you do? Make her leave the car where it was?” Once up island, she let a teenager drive home because there was no alternative. But he hadn’t been drinking, and she followed him the ten kilometres on the bush roads. A good officer knew when to be flexible and when to toe the line to the exact millimetre.
He flicked a piece of lint from his shoulder. “I let her call her father on her cell phone. Luckily we were far enough east that she got a signal. I didn’t need any more complications. I wanted her out of my life fast. If Mom ever heard me talk like that, I’d get my mouth washed out with soap.”
“Was she a local?” With so few people in Fossil Bay, Holly was on her way to knowing all their names, including the family dog and cat.
Chipper gave a snort. “Negative. I know every teenager in town. The dad had to take a taxi all the way from Victoria so that he could drive the car back. We had to sit there for an hour and a half. One dude went by with his truck fender flapping, and I had to let him pass.”
“A four-hour round trip. Ouch. And I suppose he had to leave his job. That must have been one mad father.” Her own dad she could have talked into anything. Luckily her mother held the line.
“But that’s the protocol. You’re not saying I should have let her drive back to the city, are you?”
“Of course not. That traffic’s harsh. What was she driving anyway? An old beater?” Cars lasted forever in the island’s mild climate and unsalted roads. Classic ’57 Chevys, Elvis Caddies, even Rolls and Bentley owners had their own clubs and Sunday parades.
“A gold Toyota Solara. Two seater. Creamy leather from top to bottom with a sound system to blow your ear canals. The plate read ‘SAMMIE.’ There’s forty grand.”
Ann groaned. “Ouch. All my son Nick h
ad when he went to university was a three-speed bike.”
“With the double fine, that’s an expensive lesson.” Holly gave him a thumbs-up. “Hey, you scored. She should have known better. Now she’ll have to re-qualify. With the backlogs, she’ll be off the streets for one heck of a long time.”
Chipper sharpened a pencil but said nothing. Two tiny lines were forming on the bridge of his nose. For him, that was serious.
“You’re whining about that? You’ll never make corporal with that kind of sensitivity, laddie. You need to buck up.” Ann was on her way to the closet to get her coat. A spattery rain had begun to pock the windows.
Holly saw that something was very wrong with Chipper. “Go on. Tell us the rest.”
“To be honest, I never saw it coming. First she was kind of flirty, trying to talk me out of it. Then when she found out I was for real, she turned nasty big time. Like she was used to getting her way, and I’m not talking about her brains.”
“With her looks, you mean?”
“Push-up bra with plenty on display. Eyelashes out to here. All the bells and whistles. For some, maybe, but she’s not my type. Personality counts, too. This one was a biotch, as they say on the Net.” He passed a glance at the women. “No offence, ladies. Just a psychological observation.”
“What does ‘turned nasty’ mean? Physically, or …” Holly’s eyes narrowed at this departure from the norm. “Did she make racial comments? Is that where you’re going?”
Canada had very strict hate-language laws. An effort had been made to take back the Order of Canada from a man who had issued anti-Semitic slurs. In another case, an American arch-conservative pundit had been warned to curb her language while speaking at the University of Ottawa. It was no secret that Chipper had been called a Paki, a generalized and ignorant slur for all East Indians. The taunts had started young, and tempered the steel in his backbone. At twelve in middle school, he’d been teased for carrying a curry lunch, he’d said. But his height even then and his leadership qualities brought others to his side. Holly and Ann knew the drill. They’d had their own shares of good-old-boy club jokes, tampons taped on lockers, and water-filled condoms. Women had come a long way and were finally entering upper management ranks.
He dismissed that idea with a wave. “Are you kidding? She was more subtle. ‘Too many of you in this country. Go back where you came from.’ That could be interpreted a couple of ways.”
Ann blew out a contemptuous breath. Holly had a feeling that Chipper was almost like a son to the older woman. She suspected that Chipper opened his heart to Ann more than he did to her, his contemporary.
“Weasel words. I hate that. So Daddy came and collected the little witch? I wouldn’t have a problem smacking her on the bum. It worked for Nick through high school,” Ann observed.
“Daddy’s little girl. Isn’t that always the case? Some people should be licensed to have children, so my parents used to say,” Holly added. “Did he make her apologize on the spot?” That would have been the first step in her household.
“You won’t believe it, but he tried to get me to admit that I had scared her and chased her down. Big bad man. Entrapment. Legal terms were flying. Never mind that she had been poking me in the chest with six-inch nails that looked like she had taped Chiclets to her fingers. Kevlar saved the day.” Chipper’s voice had been rising. Sitting back, he snapped a pencil in two.
“This is making ugly sense,” Ann said. “Legal terms, eh? So he was a lawyer, or, worse yet, a politician?”
“Administrator at UVic. VP, he said. Sure has some opinion of himself.”
Holly’s spine felt a tremble of liquid mercury, like a thermometer rising. Even if he’d been a mere professor, trouble had walked in the door. Who would have thought that a quiet little post would attract this kind of negative attention? If this escalated, fraud though it was, the public attitude would be “Not them again. What do you expect?” Every time she read about another RCMP blunder she felt personally guilty, as if the force needed to take back its reputation one step at a time. Then again, if the parent had blown off some steam, they might not hear about it again.
“What’s his name?” Now and then her father mentioned a few people, but usually only in his area. As far as she knew, there were several VPs.
Chipper didn’t have to look at the form. “Leo Buckstaff. Think your Dad knows him?”
“Rings no bells with me. UVic’s a pretty big place, and people come and go. Biggest problem in the last few years has been the bunnies.” One Easter, someone left a few pets on the campus green, and they made themselves at home on the tasty turf. Over four hundred rabbits dug burrows and polluted the grass with their pellets. To neuter or not. To cull or not? To be fricasseed for the homeless? With no foxes on the island, they all ended up trucked to a Texas ranch. Such were the usual problems in Canada’s Caribbean.
Ann was never one to waste time. “What’s the address? Assuming she’s living at home at seventeen. That might tell us more about the family.”
Chipper pursed his lips as he read. “2202 Saanich Road.”
Ann Google-mapped it in seconds, then whistled. “Jesus Lord. They have four acres on the Georgia Strait with a view clear to Mount Garibaldi. We are talking huge money. Their taxes must run close to fifteen thousand a year.”
“And the girl’s name?” Holly asked.
“Samantha. No surprise that she put on a crying show when the father arrived and not one second before. Cocky as hell and then boo hoo. You’d think she’d been beaten. A regular drama queen.”
The women exchanged understanding glances. “Typical girl tactics. Right, Ann?” asked Holly.
Ann gave a sardonic smile. “Major criminals aside, I’d rather deal with a male. Guys come right out and tell you what they think. Girls can be sneaky.” She checked the regulator clock on the wall as its hands tipped to five. “You handled it like we would have, Chipper. She was way out of line. Stop worrying. I doubt you’ll hear any more about it.” She’d told Holly that her own efforts with her teenager Nick had once led her to threaten to leave him at the Children’s Aid. Now the reconditioned son was a teacher near Prince George.
Chipper seemed to relax, though a certain storminess in his face worried Holly. “I’m not so sure of that. He asked for my name, rank, badge number, superiors, you name it. All the way to HQ in Vancouver. Sounded like a federal case. Like I’d used the stun gun on her, and I don’t even carry one. But it would have given me great satisfaction.”
“You said she touched you?” An attack like that could be grounds for serious matters. Then again it might be he-said, she-said.
“She was pounding the hell out of the steering wheel. I made her get out of the car and do the usual walk to make sure she hadn’t been drinking, not that I smelled it or anything. That’s when she shoved me, not that it knocked me off balance or anything. I saw a pack of cigarettes on the dash and checked it for doobies.” A typical toker trick, but it gave him grounds for a further inspection.
Ann asked, “Do you think drugs were involved?”
“She wasn’t slurring her speech. There was no paraphernalia in the car or in her purse. The old man was really mad about the search. Lord of the manor kind of thing.”
Well aware of the occasional bout with people overwhelmed by their own importance, Holly avoided the temptation to sound the alarm. “Academics have a sense of entitlement. Life in the ivory tower makes them little gods. Even my father can be a bit of a snob sometimes. My mother used to bring him down to earth with one sharp look.”
“Go home and forget all about it,” Ann suggested. “Take yourself out for a large pizza loaded with the kitchen sink. Have a couple of beers at your local. Meet a girl. Whatever happened to that Mindy you were dating? Sounds to me like you need to settle down with a good woman.” That finally coaxed a smile from him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pirjo’s short article in the Sooke News Mirror was to the point but politic, caution without al
arm. “A failed attack on a young girl at French Beach at night suggests that women should be aware that a possible predator is in the area. Although the girl escaped without serious injury, women are advised not to camp alone in the park system until an arrest has been made.”
Holly put down the paper. The problem was, only locals read this weekly. Anyone coming from outside the area, either Victoria or beyond, wouldn’t get the warning. Still, she had done what she could. The number of people who still camped at this time of year was decreasing exponentially.
She yawned in the late afternoon torpor as three o’clock rolled around. It had topped 20°C, nearly a record on the island’s Three Bears porridge meter: neither too hot nor too cold. Air conditioner salesmen did little business.
She was looking forward to a run with Shogun, a shower, and her father’s Betty-Crocker cookbook corned beef hash. Coleslaw had better appear this time instead of boiled cabbage, no matter how much he claimed that crucifer was a staple of the Depression. She popped a stick of peppermint gum into her mouth to stave off hunger pangs.
Chipper was due back in an hour. Then the phone rang. Since Ann was doing mat exercises in the lunchroom, she took the call herself. Her stomach woes ratcheted to ten as she heard the first few sentences. She snapped to attention, all drowsiness gone.
It was the secretary of the chief superintendent in Nanaimo, district commander of the island. Had they read the news story and connected the dots? Who else would have tipped off the press? Whatever they wanted, it couldn’t be good. Tiny outliers like Fossil Bay never were contacted by HQ any more than a storefront church got a call from the Vatican. Higher than this meant Vancouver and E Division itself. The Deputy Commissioner. Holly waited until the secretary made the connections. Microseconds passed like minutes. Suddenly she knew what people drowning meant when they saw their entire life pass before their eyes. She wasn’t even aware of her own breathing until she had to suck in air.