Ghost Mortem (Bordertown Chronicle Book 1)

  “True. We don't know,” I said. “But you're certainly not going to stop him from jail. So let’s just get his remains back in the ground, and then we can all go home and figure this out together.”

  Dad nodded. He took one more long look at the skull before dropping it unceremoniously back into the hole he's dug up. Then he took to filling the hole back in.

  “You know what the really ironic thing is?” dad said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “If there's one thing I really hate, more than anything else, it's corrupt cops.”

  All I could do was nod.

  I mean, sure, I saw the irony. But still, I didn't wholly agree that dad was a corrupt cop. I mean…sure. Technically, maybe he was. But would I have done anything differently, under the circumstances? Would Vikki? Would you? Would you kill a man if he threatened your family? I think any good father or mother probably would.

  I don't know. I guess I can't speak for anyone else. But if I thought something was going to happen to Raven, or my mom and dad, or Vikki, or Danny, or, heck, even a complete stranger…I want to believe I'd do whatever it took to make sure that didn't happen. Even if it meant doing something like this. But that's something I guess no one can know for certain without facing those circumstances.

  ****

  Half an hour later, dad and I were dirty from shoveling the dirt back into the ground, back in our black sedan, and heading back to Bordertown. Vikki drove back separately in her cruiser, a little ahead of us. We thought it most appropriate if I rode back with dad. And by 'we', I mean Vikki. Although I also figured, under the circumstances, my father shouldn't have to drive back alone.

  Dad and I rode in silence most of the way. I spent a fair bit of that time staring at the Vikki's cruiser ahead of us, thinking about what to say to her when we get back. I kept almost saying something to dad, but then stopping myself. There was so much I wanted to say to both of them. I wanted to tell my dad that, not only did I understand why he did what he did, but…I was actually proud of him. I wanted to tell Vikki I loved her, not just because I think she's beautiful inside and out, but because she's sticking up for my dad now too. For better or worse, the three of us were now in this together. Neither Vikki nor I could unlearn the dark secret we helped my dad re-bury tonight. Instead, we needed to figure out how to make all this right. There was a way. I knew there was. But one painful fact was bothering me.

  “Dad,” I began. “How did he get Jessica's body into Bordertown? In plain sight? I mean it can't even have been entirely dark yet. What was it, like six o'clock when it was called in? I mean, how does somebody just sneak into Bordertown like that?”

  “I don't know, Gavin,” he replied wearily.

  “I mean we needed…what did you call it? A Konami code…just to get into the outskirts of the town.”

  My dad nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

  “He's in Bordertown right now, isn't he? Whoever he is. Whether he's the real Darius Danko, back from the grave you left him in, or a copycat. He's there. We've probably…”

  “We probably passed right by him,” my dad said. “And he knows exactly who I am, and where I am.”

  Chapter 38

  We got back to Bordertown without saying much else. I supposed for now there wasn't much else we could say. There was just too much to process.

  Dad pulled into our driveway. Vikki pulled over a little ahead of us, and dad and I got out to talk to her. Vikki stayed in her cruiser.

  “Jack…” she said.

  “Vikki,” he said. “I'm sorry. About all this.”

  She shook her head. “Just don't do anything rash tonight, all right? Maybe we can start fresh with a clear head tomorrow?”

  He nodded. “You got it, partner.”

  She nodded. “Good night, Jack. Good night, Gavin.”

  “Vikki, wait,” I said.

  She turned eyes to the road, looking pensive. She shook her head.

  “I don't know what else to say to you right now.”

  I nodded. “I just…”

  She shook her head. “Gavin, if it's about the other night. Can it wait?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Just…Gavin, is it true what they're saying? That you're writing an exposé on…you know…”

  “What? No. Vikki, I'd never do that to you. I'd never do that to anyone. But especially not you. You know that, right? I want people in this community to respect you as much as I do.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  She seemed somewhat placated. Had that really been bothering her?

  “There is something else though,” I said.

  “Okay. What is it?”

  “I was mentioning to my dad that, um…”

  I moved a little closer to Vikki. At first Vikki seemed to almost pull away. That hurt a little. But I think I understood.

  “Vikki whoever left that body here…”

  Vikki nodded. “Lives here,” she said quietly. “I know. I don't like it, but…it's the only explanation.”

  I nodded. “What are we going to do?”

  She shook her head. “I think we all need time to think,” she said.

  I nodded. She was right.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We gave one another a slight nod. Then Vikki drove home. I wasn't really sure where she and I stood, but for now, I decided that wasn't a priority. We had a deranged killer to catch.

  Once dad and I got into the house, I looked around for Raven. She still wasn't home. I hated that she was avoiding me like this. Even more so, given recent developments. I had half a mind to track her down and yell at her, but I knew that wouldn't solve anything. All things considered, my own bruised ego seemed petty compared to the danger facing Bordertown now.

  I resolved to forget my complications with Vikki, and my frustration with Raven, and brewed a big pot of coffee for me and dad.

  “Okay, dad. Start telling me everything you know about the case. I want to know everything. And I mean everything.”

  Dad gave me one of his reluctant, defiant looks, but instead of dismissing me, or arguing, he slowly nodded, took a cup of coffee from me, and we got started.

  Dad and I stayed up talking until the wee hours of the morning. I think it may well be the longest and the most we've ever talked. It was three in the morning when he finally nodded off on the couch. I still couldn't sleep, so I just kept working.

  By dawn, I'd compiled countless pages of timelines, victims, and other persons of interest. I started following not only my father's theories, but those held by other reporters and conspiracy theorists. I figured, given that I live in a town full of supernatural creatures, no theory was too weird. I created a Sherlock Holmesian corkboard of names, dates, maps, timelines, pictures, and news articles.

  The primary theory, the one officially held by police and the mainstream press, was that Darius Danko had acted alone. He was clever enough to elude the R.C.M.P. for ten years, while he trolled the Saskatchewan highways, picking up female hitchhikers. They would disappear for periods ranging from several days to several weeks. Then, one day, they would reappear in a field somewhere, or on the side of the road, as a scarified, enucleated, many-eyed scarecrow. The victims were almost always female. One of the few exceptions had been my father's partner, Gary Albrecht. And then, his body had never been found. Victims were usually—but not exclusively—ethnically native. Only five of the victims were white, two were black, one was Asian, and there were four ethnic mixes.

  The victimology suggested a preference for Caucasians. My dad had been the first to piece this together, many years ago, during his initial investigation. It was part of how dad had built a profile for Darius Danko, long before Danko was even a suspect. When the unsub took a white woman, he’d keep her alive for far longer, often by a factor of weeks rather than days. Dad argued our killer was likely white himself, and had a specific appetite for Caucasian women. He kept them longer, so he could “enjoy” them longer, though he wasn’t necessarily good at act
ually finding them. Statistics suggest that white women are the least likely to trust a stranger to give them a ride anywhere, although to be fair—and as racists as this seems—it turns out that Caucasian women are the least likely to have to face the economic circumstances which would facilitate having to hitchhike across Saskatchewan to begin with.

  Then I found something interesting during an internet search. I'd wanted to alert my dad's attention to it, but, seeing him asleep, looking almost at peace for once, I decided to read on without him.

  One potential would-be victim—not an actual confirmed victim, but rather, only a self-assessed “close-call“—had made a call to the police, but no formal connection was ever made to the Nefarious Darius case. This woman was, at the time—back in 1996 that is—a blond-haired 22-year-old beauty waiting by the side of the road with her broken-down 1987 Chevy, waiting for her boyfriend to get back. They’d been low on fuel for a while, had misjudged the distance to the next gas station, and the gas tank had run dry. Her boyfriend had gone off with a truck driver they’d flagged down. The boyfriend went off alone with the trucker while he told the blonde to wait in the car with the doors locked, so the car didn’t get burgled, and not to open it until he got back. She had tried heeding his advice, but it was a hot summer day, so she got out for some fresh air. She was fanning herself off when an R.C.M.P. cruiser pulled up beside her. She spoke to a man she described as tall, thin, middle-aged and with a moustache who got out. She said he looked like a cop, but somehow, she got the sense he wasn’t a cop, like she could just tell something was off in her lizard brain.

  I have the benefit of hindsight, so I can tell you this much. Darius Danko actually was a cop. He was an R.C.M.P. officer, just like dad, though he lived and worked in Moose Jaw at the time, so while he and dad were theoretically colleagues, they'd never actually met.

  Anyway, this woman reported that she was accosted by two large cops, who both insisted she’d committed some kind of infraction. They apparently cited her with a parking violation, and reckless endangerment along the highway, although she looked it up and down and saw almost no one for miles. It was one of those straight highways you can see down for miles in either direction. She apparently tried to debate with them, but one moved behind her and was trying to put her in handcuffs, and hoist her towards the police cruiser while she kicked and screamed. Fortuitously, that’s when her boyfriend returned with a different trucker who’d been going the other way. He got out, and he and the two large cops exchanged words. The boyfriend asked what they wanted, and all of a sudden, they seemed to have lost interest. The cops took off her cuffs, and left as quickly as they could. Years later, this police report would resurface when it became apparent that the description of the two cops seemed to match Danko almost exactly.

  So here’s the interesting part. The blonde and her boyfriend were only ever able to give one physical description of the cops who tried to detain her. Because of the extreme stress of the encounter, the girlfriend had blocked out the entire incident almost completely from her memory by the next day. So only her initial report to the police bore a description of the people who—at the time—who were not thought to be cops, but charlatans posing as cops to track down helpless victims in the road. It wasn’t initially thought related to the Nefarious Darius case until much later. And by then, the details of the case had become “inconvenient,” when it came to closing the case on Darius Danko. The problem was the girlfriend’s initial description couldn’t be repeated later. Like I said, she’d blocked it out. This can happen when someone is under tremendous stress—they can end up losing up to an entire day of memory. I've read a number of cases of this, so I'm inclined to believe her.

  The boyfriend, on the other hand, remembered the incident almost photographically. In fact, he insisted the cops looked so much alike, they had to be brothers or something. He said he recalled making a joke about her being attacked by the Mario brothers, though when she didn't laugh he'd apparently apologized. But that jape nonetheless made it into the police report, which had been promptly forgotten. The trucker, who’d stayed in his truck when he saw the police, claimed he didn’t see much, so he wasn’t much help. That meant only the boyfriend—who’d perhaps only seen them for all of about twenty seconds—was the only real witness. And he himself admitted the men had actively been trying to mask their faces once he showed up. But he was sure of it, he insisted; they looked so alike he thought they had to be brothers.

  The problem with this theory was Danko himself. Danko fit the profile perfectly, and his D.N.A. had been linked to nearly a dozen of the victims. The periods of time Danko would go off-grid in his cruiser also matched the estimated times of the abductions. The one problem was that he wasn’t known to have any siblings, let alone a twin his own age.

  The Dankos had been a blue collar family living in Moose Jaw. His father had been a steel worker. His mother had been a housewife. The profile suggests one or both parents abused him, though there are no official records of this happening. There were, however, apparently early warning signs, according to the people who grew up with Danko.

  One boy in his elementary school claimed Danko used to torment the younger kids, himself included, hold them down, spit into their mouths, pinch their nipples and make them repeat humiliating phrases.

  By high school, Danko had graduated to stalking girls he found attractive. At one point, he'd allegedly cornered a sixteen-year-old girl in the library after hours and forced her to strip for him and perform fellatio at knife point. To this day, her claim has been unsubstantiated. But again, I believe her. Honestly, I don't see why she'd lie.

  One old woman claimed some of her cats went missing, and that at one time, she saw a boy matching Danko’s description trying to lure one of the cats from her yard with cat treats and a burlap sack.

  In his twenties, Danko became a security guard for a year or so before more complaints stacked up against him. One woman claimed that, now and then, she'd find him peering through her window, snooping through her things.

  Somehow, even after all this, Danko joined the R.C.M.P. I take a little comfort in the fact that the R.C.M.P. does rigorous background checks now, to avoid this kind of potential threat on the force. But back then, things had been a little different, and it seemed even a man with a history like Danko's could get in. To be fair, he’d never been formally changed with anything.

  A few years later, Saskatchewan women began disappearing, only to be discovered later as macabre, enucleated, many-eyed scarecrows. I still didn't understand that part of it. It was just such a strange—horrifying to be sure, but also just really strange—way to torture, disfigure, and dispose of his victims.

  After spending an entire night immersed in the facts around this case, I can see why my father had so many recurring nightmares about Danko.

  The fact that a witness had identified Danko, and even picked him out of a lineup, was somewhat at odds with his insistence that Danko had a twin. All other evidence pointed towards Danko working alone. Darius didn’t have a twin. He didn't have a look-alike anywhere on the force, either. So they’d left this part out of the prosecution, and it had been promptly forgotten. For the most part. Until now.

  I tried looking up the forgotten witness recently—the close-call's boyfriend. Unfortunately, all I found was an obituary from 2008. So that was no help. Still, I was sure there had to be something to this. I ruminated on the possibility of tracking him down in the netherworld. I supposed a phone call to the netherworld couldn't hurt. But then again, people don't always seem to make it there.

  I vowed to ask my father about him first. But for now, I'd let him sleep a little more. I was sure dad must have considered this same angle. Heck, he’d probably hate the idea, since, in his mind, he’d found the right guy, and brought him to justice. Or tried to. But I had to wonder…the wounds on that victim we found in the corn field were all inflicted with a knife. Like, a real corporeal knife, as if it was wielded by a human being. I was pretty
sure of that. The specter of Darius Danko may well still be out there. We can't rule that out. But more and more, I was beginning to think we were looking for a living, breathing, corporeal monster. A human monster.

  Having researched Danko until the dawn, gross fatigue finally set in, and all I could think about was how badly I wanted to crawl into bed and close my eyes.

  Chapter 39

  I must have been exhausted, because by the time I awoke, it was already two in the afternoon.

  I called my dad to see how he and Vikki were doing. He said they were on patrol together, and I could catch up with them later. I spent a little more time organizing my notes, and then took a walk to clear my head.

  It was dusk when I found myself in Doc’s end of town, where I crossed paths with Raven. She’d been walking back to Doc’s house with the Doc. They looked like they were talking shop—something to do with some small electronic devices they were holding.

  So that's where Raven's been hiding, I thought to myself. Figures it would be with the Doc. It's like she's his companion or something. All that's missing is a blue police box that's bigger on the inside.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  On the other side of the street, Raven glowered at me from over the Doc’s shoulder.

  “What the hell is this?” I continued. “Have you seriously been hiding out with Doc this whole time, just to avoid looking me in the face? Am I really that low on the food chain for you?”

  Raven scratched her stump and gave me a sick look.

  “Listen, boychik, maybe we don’t do this outside. You’re making a shanda.”

  “Oh…schmeckle-feckle with your shandas!” I snapped. “God damn it, Raven. That note you left. For…fuck…fuck you! You and the high horse you ride around town on. All the god damned time. You always have to rub my face in it, don’t you? What makes you the fucking queen of what’s proper and what isn’t?”

  “Stop it,” she shouted “Stop yelling at me. You…Gavin, do you even know what you made me sit through? I was right there! For all of it! You don’t know what it was like, just balling up in my room, trying not to hear what you were doing all over the house. You don’t know what I heard that night.”