Instead of becoming a ghost town, Elmbury grew. The county was blessed with rare pasture land, and where forests had been denuded, sheep farms had sprung up. There were two provincial parks nearby, three enormous tracts of Crown land, the local Ojibwe Reserve where Two-Trees had grown up, and a few private hunting lodges that had been around since the 1930s. In 2005, hobbyists had managed to restore a steam train and part of the old CP Rail spur that used to shuttle summer tourists up from Toronto. Then, a couple of mid-sized factories moved in and stayed, attracted by low taxes, nearby chemical and mineral processing plants, and an overabundance of job seekers who’d settle for lower wages than might be found in the Golden Horseshoe, if it meant staying out of the Golden Horseshoe. Corporations like Styroforma, Pritchard Antiseptics, and Hemadoro Tires employed half the town. To support them, the rest of the town worked in malls, doctor’s offices, government offices, schools, and day cares—everything that a self-sufficient and expanding community might need.
The only thing Elmbury really needed was sidewalks. It was laid out like an old country town, divvied up by streets marked “Halo County Road #17” and “Range Road #3”. What the receptionist had called a three-block trip turned out to be a half-hour hike along weedy plots of land that smelled of sumac, overripe black currants, and watered-down dog shit. Here, the overnight snow had mostly melted, though Two-Trees could see patches of it where the sun had failed to reach. The road itself was neglected but serviceable, and the loose gravel at the sides had evidence of bicycle tracks and footprints.
He passed an unmarked cinderblock building covered from the bottom up in bindweed, and from the top down in graffiti. This place is perfect for a lycanthrope to hide in. Halo County was close enough to civilization to take care of all his human needs, yet it was a short drive until he was lost in abandoned farmland. Lycanthropes didn’t, by nature, flock to the woods. Old growth forests had little ground cover. Ancient trees grew to cathedral heights, blocking out the sun, meaning little new growth, which in turn meant few places to hide. Caves were rare and dangerous, prone to collapse and flood.
But towns like these were ringed with long-lost homesteads that had been shorn of their trees and grown over by sumac colonies and invasive deciduous species. Wells that had been sunk in the 1890s could still be used in the 2010s, so clean water was rarely a problem. Abandoned farm houses, barns, silos, and factories functioned as perfectly respectable places for the homeless to live in. Sometimes they even had functional septic tanks, and fire pits where a lycanthrope could burn last night’s fur.
And it’s a real challenge, finding a body in reclaimed land.
By the time Two-Trees arrived at the little strip mall, the first thing he wanted was an asthma inhaler. Six years crisscrossing this country in a modified Chevy Suburban doesn’t give you much time to hit the treadmill. He decided very definitely to think about maybe planning to go back to the gym, possibly, once this job was over.
At one end of the mall, detached from everything else, there was an independent gas station. Between that and the Beer Store there was a grocery store, a flower shop, a hardware store, a pharmacy, and a restaurant that had an enormous early bird special breakfast for five bucks between 5:30 and 8:30, Monday to Friday. He was in luck. It was just past 7:30. However, seeing that the pharmacy was open from seven to midnight, and given that sweat had only made the itch all the more maddening, he went to the pharmacy first. That way, he figured, he could use the restaurant bathroom and apply the itch cream.
He barely had his head inside the pharmacy’s front door before the cashier bid him a happy good morning, and as he passed through the cosmetics department, down the shampoo aisle, and past the stomach remedies, he was greeted by two more employees. He stood in front of a modest selection of skin creams for no longer than fifteen seconds before the pharmacist herself asked if he needed any help. He didn’t, but he thanked her anyhow.
He was trying to determine best price by volume when a young man apologized, reached across the full width of Two-Trees’ chest and grabbed hold of three “value-sized” tubes of diaper cream. Two-Trees made room for him, because clearly this was a diaper rash emergency.
It was the tan lines that gave Two-Trees a start. They were faded now, but they were distinct: two parallel tan lines across his right cheek. This was a boy who’d spent most of his summer outdoors wearing war paint.
And now he was buying diaper cream.
“Sorry,” the kid said again. He turned without a look or another word and jammed his hands, diaper cream and all, into his coat pockets.
Interesting. Five-seven, hazel eyes, dirty blond, no scars, ears slanted backwards but not pierced, narrow nose, sharp cheekbones, no sign of fang-shadows.
Small town policing instinct told him to find the nearest and quietest path to the pharmacy’s front door to confront the little thief as he tried to leave. Yet age and experience told him pockets were a great way to hide an embarrassing purchase before the buyer reached the counter. Next to condoms and feminine hygiene products, diaper cream wasn’t something a young man liked to be seen carrying around.
But Wyrd instincts told Two-Trees to follow jungle punks wherever they might go. Three had already shown a fondness for human skulls. One more might lead Two-Trees back to another body dump site.
So, playing up the part of the bumbling old fat guy, Two-Trees hummed and hawed in his aisle, listening for the young man as he moved further toward the cash register. And as long as Two-Trees lingered, the boy lingered. Two-Trees grabbed a bottle of no-name calamine lotion and turned toward the back of the store, near the dispensary, not because he needed drugs, but because there was a fish-eyed mirror attached to the wall.
The kid lashed out a hand and took more things off a shelf with so much speed and so little care that boxes fell off the shelf, and then he made a run for it. Two-Trees could have caught up, maybe even tackled him, but for now he was playing the part of potbellied old fart. The cashier chased after the kid as he burst through the door, over-ringing the merry chimes as he did. Two-Trees, on the other hand, took his time going up the aisle toward where the kid had claimed his five-fingered discount. On his way, he saw that other types of skin cream had been thieved.
Diaper cream, stretch mark cream . . . and hemorrhoid medication.
“Are you all right?” the pharmacist asked him.
“Me? Yeah, I’m fine,” Two-Trees replied. “Damn . . . I thought he was acting weird, but when he bolted like that . . .” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, even if I hadn’t been frozen up, I wouldn’t have been able to catch him.”
“No,” the pharmacist said. “It’s not your fault. Just glad you’re all right.”
All right . . . and gobsmacked. What the hell does a kid like that need with hemorrhoid cream?
Occam’s Razor dictated that the simplest answer was the likeliest one: the kid was someone’s baby-daddy, and in the absence of cash—or pride—he’d stolen what his girlfriend needed.
“I really am becoming a sentimentalist,” he mumbled. When the pharmacist asked him what he meant, he said, “Back in my day, we used to steal bubble gum and baseball cards!” He smacked his lips as if he’d forgotten his teeth, and the pharmacist laughed and mentioned a sale on denture cream.
AT THE RESTAURANT, Two-Trees left his briefcase and computer on the neighbouring seat, since breakfast took up the entire table. If he’d had company, they’d have had to stack the plates. He did have room left over for his iPhone, and there was enough reception for him to perform a few web searches.
There has to be something in the air. People sneezed in all corners of the restaurant. Two were scratching as badly as Two-Trees. One had a visible rash.
The waitress came over with the carafe to refill his mug. Her eyes were red.
“Hell of a bug going around,” Two-Trees said.
Two women in another booth sneezed when a younger waitress passed by.
“Bugs we can get better from,” the older w
aitress said. “This has been going for almost nine months!”
“Huh?”
“Nobody knows,” she said, with a shrug. She poured his coffee. “It’s bad all over town, but worse the closer you get to Styroforma. We figure it has something to do with the pollution. Maybe they changed chemicals or something. It’s been all over the news.”
“I’ve been out of town,” he said.
She uttered a dry laugh. “Maybe you should have stayed out.”
Once she was out of earshot, Two-Trees said he’d rather be anywhere in the world but back home, especially under these circumstances.
There were six high schools in Halo County. Two were in Elmbury, one was in Deer Fall Valley, one was on the Waabishkindibed Reserve, and the other two were on opposite ends of the county. The nearest was Waabishkindibed Secondary School, but the Preparation H Thief didn’t seem the type. Two-Trees had been wrong about these things before, but he figured it was more likely that the kid was a student of Elmbury North Heights, about ten kilometres to the south of the hotel.
A jungle punkish baby-daddy who stole diaper cream, Two-Trees figured, would be cool enough to know what was going on in his clique, but responsible enough to divulge leads and evidence to Old Uncle Hector. Since the theft had occurred well before first period, and given that the boy had left his war paint off for the day, Two-Trees figured that maybe the thief had planned to go to school.
All Two-Trees needed was a viable excuse to hunt the kid in his natural habitat.
Sometime between finishing his third pancake and starting his fourth sausage, Two-Trees dropped his fork and bonked the side of his head with his hand. The answer had been staring him in the face. He may not have had a good reason to go asking after individual students, but he did have a good reason to visit the schools.
But first, he’d need to score a colour printer and permission from the OPP.
Chapter Nine
“DEER JUMP FALLS,” the Padre muttered, as he filled the tank. He jammed his free hand into his coat pocket. “Elm Overlook Park. Happy Apple Gorge.” He snorted. “Forest bloody Parkway South.”
“You all right?” Ishmael asked.
The pump was already up to seventy-five dollars and didn’t show any signs of stopping.
“Oak Haven Drive,” the Padre said. “Pine Hill. Elk Run.” He took his hand out of his pocket long enough to smear a bulb of water from the end of his nose. “You see one damned tree anywhere around here? Or parks? Or elk?”
Ishmael smiled.
“Peach Grove Street. Mountain Ash Road. Foxrun Lane. Pretty damned sure we passed a Horny Moose Alley back there somewhere.”
A woman in a quilted pink and white parka was watching them with disgust. Ishmael wrestled his smile into a warning smirk. The Padre muttered to himself. He was saying something about ugly houses and shitting on dinner plates.
But so far, the Padre showed no signs of recognizing where he was. And despite all his complaints, the Padre did seem to be enjoying himself. He watched everyone coming and going, his eyes shining with a sense of wonder. “Everyone is so fat,” he mouthed.
Ishmael laughed. “Take this.” He gave the Padre Bridget’s Wyrd-issued credit card and spoke the PIN in the Padre’s ear.
“You really trust me with this?”
“If you can’t trust a Padre, who can you trust?”
“Where are you going?”
“Into the truck,” he said, and opened the door to prove himself right.
“Why?”
“Last time I tried to check my messages at a gas station, they shut the pump off. Just go pay for the gas, will you?” Ishmael climbed into the truck and shut the door beside him.
“And?” Bridget asked, once the Padre turned to the pump.
“Nothing yet,” Ishmael said. He made a show of looking at his phone, in case the Padre was watching from outside. “He was rhyming off streets that we passed, but only because he was trying to sound ironic.”
“So he doesn’t remember?” Bridget asked.
“Bridget, I swear he’ll be fine if we tell him.”
“He doesn’t remember what?” Holly inquired from the middle seat. Bridget gave her the highlights—how the Padre had been captured in Elmbury hours after tearing his own brother apart. She already knew about the Padre being one of a pair of twins, and that he didn’t know which twin he was. “And now we’re back,” Holly said. “Well that’s just fantastic.”
“Yeah,” Bridget replied. “Don’t try to prompt his memory either. The last thing we need is for him to flip out like he did the first time.” Bridget took a quick breath. “Can I see the map again?”
Ishmael took it out of the side compartment of his door and gave it to her. She blocked most of the front windshield when she shook out the map. “Where’s the Howard Johnson again?” She was asking herself. Burley had sent the address to her phone, not to Ishmael’s. She checked the address against the county map. It didn’t seem to be good news, whatever she was reading. “It’s about six blocks north of Pritchard Park, and twelve blocks east of the church.”
“Scene of the murder,” Ishmael asked, “and . . . where you picked him up?”
Bridget put her phone on standby and shoved it into the front pocket of her jeans. “Naked in a confessional,” she said, “shouting ‘oh God, oh God, oh God’. Yep.”
“Is that where he got his crucifix from?” Holly asked.
“Hell if I know. Probably.” She paused. “Okay, he wasn’t completely naked. God only knows how that damned chain managed to survive his ordeal . . .”
“Yeah, considering his glasses didn’t,” Holly said.
The gas pump clicked off, and the Padre tried a few times to squish in as much gas as possible. He hung up the nozzle. “You guys want anything?” he said through the glass of Ishmael’s window.
“No,” Bridget said, softly. Holly didn’t want anything either. Ishmael told the Padre that they were all good. Bridget rubbed the sleeve of her coat. Ishmael doubted she was cold. It had been a frosty morning, but the truck was warm enough for everyone else to ride around in their shirt sleeves. “I don’t like this,” she said. “Don’t let him out of your sight. Hell, don’t even let him see signs for Pritchard Park. God, this has got me on edge.”
“Any word on Dep or Helen?” Holly asked, of no one in particular.
“I’ve got nothing,” Ishmael said, though it was a little white lie. Gil had sent him a message, saying that Dr. Grey had scored a skin and blood sample from Dep, and that they were going to start analyzing Dep’s infection that same day. Gil was pessimistic. Just because they could identify how Dep’s virus differed from anyone else’s, no advance analysis would tell them what Dep was about to turn into. They could, at least, match it against Helen’s own altered DNA, so if Dep went first, they’d know what to expect for Helen. Ishmael was relieved to know that Shuffle had started working with Gil in earnest.
Aside from that, there was a message from Burley confirming their reservations at the Howard Johnson, and some spam from Expedia. As for the kitten video, no news from his allies in Gdańsk, no word from Manila, and no updates from St. Petersburg. Nothing but dead air. Someone must have found them. Someone must have threatened them, or paid them to stall. Ishmael wondered if they’d been at a loss to find evidence of digital manipulation and so decided that the films were real, that he was guilty, and they were weighing their own options.
He turned in his seat and asked Holly to pass him his overnight bag. She stood, crouching under the ceiling, and rifled through the bags until she found the right one. She brought it up. Inside there was antiseptic hand wash, cleaning solution, and his contact lenses. He flipped down the sun visor and had to move Bridget’s map out of the way of the make-up mirror. Mismatched eyes like his weren’t inhuman in any way, but they were easy to remember, if a witness was pressed to identify him. He blinked the dark brown lens onto his green eye, then slipped the same colour lens onto a lighter brown eye. It was easier t
o make both eyes darker than to find lenses that would make the green eye match the brown, or vice versa.
“Wish you’d get a better colour,” Bridget said, though she wasn’t looking at him. “Makes you looked possessed.”
“I was going to get the ones that look like spirals, but they were on back order.” He winked and squinted his contacts into place as he folded up the sun visor.
“We should have asked for a newspaper,” Holly said.
“Shit,” Bridget said. “You’re right.” She crumpled the map and thrust it into Ishmael’s lap then rushed out of the truck and slammed the front passenger door.
“How much longer to the hotel?” Holly asked.
“Only another three kilometres, according to GPS. Why?”
“I’m trying to decide if I want to use a skanky gas station bathroom, a skanky restaurant bathroom, or a skanky hotel bathroom.”
“You’ve spent the last six years peeing in bushes. Why the hell are you worried about skanky public washrooms?”
“Because bushes aren’t infected with all sorts of embarrassing STDs.”
“Hover,” he said.
She said she could hold it a while longer. “So . . . tonight . . .”
“We’ve got budget enough for four rooms,” Ishmael said.
Her hopeful smile fell.
“Doesn’t mean we need all of them,” Ishmael assured her.
“Good,” she said. But the smile didn’t come back. “Because I hope it’s your face I see first when I wake up.” If she meant it to sound romantic, she failed. It sounded ominous.
“How did you manage to go this long?” he asked. “Without her coming back?”
The side door opened. “Goddamned lineups with goddamned loudmouth whiny-ass, stuck-up little soccer moms . . .”
“Do not,” Bridget warned the Padre, “disparage soccer moms.”
The Padre slammed the rear passenger door and grumbled all the way to the back of the truck, which rocked on its axles when he flopped into his seat. “They’ve got two damned murders on their hands, shit for leads, and the possibility of a brand new contagion—”
Helix: Plague of Ghouls Page 12