And On the Surface Die

by Lou Allin

  She stopped at the new mailbox pavilion. Nothing from Kevin in Nunavut. Why did she expect him to write? Even though they’d dated in Port McNeill, he’d made a deliberate attempt to keep their relationship casual. At first she’d been seduced by his gourmet Italian cooking and black belt in karate. Then, near the end, enter that new file clerk with the low-cut blouses and high-cut hemlines. He’d had such an odd look when she’d met them leaving the evidence lockers. After that, he’d been slow to return her calls, pleading the need to attend sessions of a court case.

  As she opened the box, Telus, Shaw and B.C. Hydro bills spilled from the metal cubicle. Obviously, her father had neglected to collect the mail for at least a week.

  Unlike the cottagey New England style of its demure neighbour, his was a white Greek villa, huge windows in the solarium, two decks, a hot tub, a rampant kiwi and a stand of banana trees. The lawn was dry and brown, even with the flushings from the septic bed. The monsoons couldn’t arrive soon enough. As she passed the peach tree at the side of the house, she smiled at the flourishing holly bush her mother had planted and her father had nourished. Tempting red berries protected by prickly leaves, a wry allegory for any independent woman.

  Norman Martin taught popular culture at the University of Victoria and steeped himself in a different period each semester. The concept anchored his life and removed him conveniently from the realities of the present. A savoury stew infused the hall as she entered, a mysterious ingredient teasing her nose. Her father loved to cook for his research, and she loved to eat. She blessed him for waiting for dinner. Reunited only a few weeks ago, already they had an understanding that if she wasn’t back by seven, unable to call due to her remote location, he’d chow down.

  “Get in here. Your old dad’s nearly faint,” he said, waving a wooden spoon from the kitchen. He wore a gingham apron over his chinos. Definitely not her mother’s. Bonnie Martin had never made a meal in her life. Food was a fuel to reach her goals, the simpler and faster the better, often no more than fruit, bread and cheese eaten on the go in her Bronco and washed down with cold green tea.

  “Let me climb out of this gear. The vest is smothering,” she said, taking the winding staircase to the upper floor. Oblivious to its view, his nose in books, he had given her the master suite, taking the two back rooms for his bedroom and study. It gave her an odd feeling to have her parents’ room, but its double occupancy had been short. Perhaps her father wanted a fresh start, too. For all she knew, he’d abandoned that room to far-off memories. But he hadn’t sold the house, though he knocked around in its sprawl. Did he hope Bonnie would come home?

  After a quick shower, she tossed on shorts and a T-shirt. At the pine table in a sunny, adjoining alcove overlooking the strait, she sat down to a Fifties meal. Shelves in the oak kitchen were lined with cookbooks, from Mrs. Beaton to Betty Crocker to Joy of Cooking to the Barefoot Contessa. He served a rich beef stew made with beer, boiled potatoes and a can of green peas. Starving, she dug into the meal, pausing only for appreciative nods and sips of the rough red wine he made at a local do-it-yourself vintner for three dollars a bottle. No need to make conversation. His commentary would be forthcoming.

  Norman blotted his mouth with a pure white cloth serviette. “If they couldn’t get to a market or raise their own, even in summer canned vegetables would be welcome. Birdseye had just brought in the frozen variety.” He scrutinized the soft, mushy pale-green balls. “A different animal, but I crave them from time to time. Takes me back to my boyhood in Sudbury. Had a friend in Little Britain there whose mother served them mashed with fish and chips.”

  Holly was transported to her childhood. “Mushy peas, I remember.”

  Norman, never Norm, Martin was closing in on sixty, but she knew he’d retire only when they wrenched the cold chalk from his dead hands. Whip-slim at six feet, recently his shoulders had assumed the beginnings of a stoop, and his sleek blond hair was shading to grey. She doubted that he got regular exercise, though Otter Point had many excellent walking areas, from residential streets to clear-cuts, and the shortcut to the beach. Except for his professorial mien, an off-putter for some, he was an attractive man. She could imagine him fending off advances from middle-aged female staff. Sometimes she wondered about the unmarried departmental secretary, Frances, who baked him blackberry pies and used to call in a worried voice when he was running late.

  Like companionable stablemates, they quickly slipped back into old familiar routines. “How did everything go, little freckle-pelt?” he asked. That curious lichen had been her pet name, a step up from the ubiquitous frog-pelt which Bonnie had showed her in the Plants of British Columbia guidebook, a gift for her twelfth birthday.

  On the stereo in the tiled solarium down the stairs, a CD of Kate Smith played “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain”, then “Be My Love”, and “Danny Boy” as she gave him an update. His tastes in music were as eclectic as his many rotating historical periods. One semester he was enjoying Scott Joplin, the next the Beatles. “That woman could belt them out,” he said, pumping his fist in an unusually assertive gesture. “Whenever I hear ‘God Bless America’, I could almost march off to war myself.” An incongruous comment from a peace-living NDPer who drove a Smart Car, she thought as she managed another swallow of ghastly wine. If it had been in the bottle three weeks, she’d be surprised.

  “Sorry, what did you say about the poor girl? That must have been a rough introduction on your first day. This is supposed to be a quiet place. I was relieved when you got the post. Never liked it when you were so far from civilization in that darn bush.”

  “Sometimes the bush is safer. Give me bears over brawls. We’ll know more when the medical examiner takes a look,” she said.

  He seemed pensive, shook his head and pushed the last pea to the side. “Terrible place for young girls. The morgue. So wrong. Any woman...” He paused and gazed across the strait to Washington State. A bank of clouds was dissecting the landscape, suspending a cruise ship in the air. Each year five thousand vessels used the passage. The possibilities for accidents were becoming exponential. Another Exxon-Valdez waited around every cove.

  She knew he was thinking of her mother. Ten years had passed since she had disappeared, past the legal time for a person to be declared dead, such an artificial line. She knew nothing about what life insurance the woman might have had. To ask would be not only crass but an affront to her father.

  Her mother had First Nations blood, growing up on a Coastal Salish reserve near Cowichan. When Bonnie had failed to return from a trip to the Tahsis area to start a safe house for abused native women, a search had started. At first they thought she’d driven off the road in a snow storm, but days had gone by, then weeks. Even when spring had revealed the landscape, her Bronco had never been found. The months that followed had been grueling. It had even been whispered that her father had played a role, not surprising, given the statistics in domestic killings. Normally he was peaceable, but her mother’s long absences in her social causes exasperated him, and the neighbours beside the eighty-foot lot had heard arguments, she suspected. Nor did Bonnie appreciate his career. “A waste of time,” she would say, considering the plastic black-cat clock he had found at a garage sale and mounted in the kitchen. “Why chew old bones? Do something for the living, for god’s sake.”

  “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to—” He’d retreated into professor mode. Fifteen-year-old Holly had been outside on the deck, but with the thin walls of the house, she heard every word.

  “Give me a break, Norman. I know all about the past...and so do the women I help. We’re trying to make a difference.” Bonnie left to answer the phone, one of many calls which arrived at all hours.

  Coming back inside that sad day and trying to feign ignorance, Holly had never forgotten his defeated look. With his tenure assured at last, he’d bought the Otter Point Place house for Bonnie, a sunny change from their dark A-frame in East Sooke, where the sun cast a fleeting gla
nce down through the dense firs, and lights burned in the daytime. But it hadn’t helped. She cared little where she hung her hat, straw in summer, a warm toque in winter. Holly supposed she got her contempt for fashion from her mother. Bonnie would have liked the freedom of the uniform. Imagine starting each day with a series of bothersome decisions about what to wear and what makeup might complement it.

  After dinner, they took their desserts and tea to the TV room for his favourite channels, Turner Classics or American Movie Classics. In keeping with his Fifties theme, they were watching River of No Return. Robert Mitchum was solid and upright for a change, even if he had killed a man in self-defense. Marilyn was buxom and casual, a wasp waist cinched in her blue jeans. Her scenes with young Tommy Rettig, Jeff in the Lassie series, were honest and touching. “Weren’t we watching this movie when I left for university?” she asked.

  “You can never see this couple too many times,” he said. “Mitchum wasn’t just the dope-smoking bad boy in the tabloids. He was talented in many directions. Did you know he composed a symphony that was played at the Hollywood Bowl? Orson Welles directed it,” her father said, a master of trivia.

  A sea change from Mitchum’s villainous roles. Even here in a quiet backwater, chances were strong that a sociopath lived within range, whether or not the person would ever act violently. “No return, no return, no return,” the theme song warned as she thought about her mother.Was he thinking the same thing? She shook her head and finished the prune whip. Not as good as his floating island.

  When the movie ended, she looked at her watch. “Damn.”

  Norman yawned and stretched. “What’s wrong?”

  “I should have written up my notes at the station. That’s going to take me at least an hour and a half.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “You always were a bit of a procrastinator. Unlike your old man.”

  She stuck out her tongue and headed upstairs to her bedroom, where a new Dell computer awaited. Once seated, she opened the palm-sized notebook. The routine had been laid down at the academy. Dates of each notebook on the cover, ink only, no erasures, any changes initialed. Crucial for a court case. Then the transcription into a formal report. No secretary for that, they were warned. Her handwriting wasn’t the best; she tended to think faster than she wrote. In university, she’d used a shorthand which helped her to take notes in heavy-content courses like Abnormal Psychology and Sociology of the Family. If she hadn’t memorized the Criminal Code, she could cite numbers on command. And not everyone realized that Canada didn’t have the official Miranda warning like on American TV shows, but a caution based on the Charter of Rights. Each notebook contained a glossary at the end, which included radio codes for incidents and other standard information.

  She was a long time getting to sleep. And the half moon was rising, not over the mountain like Kate’s, but across the water, pulling Orion and its triple-star belt in its numinous wake. Her mother had said that when it formed a C for coming, it was actually waning. She got up, slid open the patio doors, and walked onto the deck to contemplate the strait. Cruise ships took polite turns with freighters to ply their way west toward the Pacific or east to Puget Sound, the lights on their wires and superstructures like a mobile amusement park. Getting back into bed, she burrowed into the down pillow. Tomorrow wouldn’t be pleasant. She could take a pass on the autopsy, but how bad could it be? Telling the family was worse, and she’d leaped that hurdle today. She wondered how Nate Didrickson was faring. His daughter had seen her final moon.

  Three

  Boone called the detachment the next morning. “Daso’s got the autopsy scheduled for nine thirty. Just got around to checking my answering machine. Late night at the legion.” Holly washed down the thistle scratching her throat with bitter coffee. Chipper had arrived first, and apparently he liked his brew strong enough to trot a deer. “I’d like to be there. Do you think that—”

  “Hell, we can still make most of it. Traffic’s light now. Pick me up fifteen minutes ago.”

  He was standing in front of his doublewide behind the Kemp Lake store at the Olympic View Park when Holly drove up minutes later. The ocean-view spot catered to retirees, who owned well-kept modern units with elaborate porches or sheds, even a small plot of land. A white cat twirled around his feet like a fluffy fog. “Cassandra’s deaf,” he said, stroking its head. “Many white cats are. She doesn’t wander far. Knows she’d make a nice snack for a cougar.”

  “Apparently there’s a wounded one at large in the John Muir area. Nearly took out a chihuahua.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he said with a mock-worried look. “The old gal lipreads.”

  At the first stoplight, they turned left and cozied in behind a strip mall. Nestled there was the latest Sooke coffeehouse, the Stick-in-the-Mud. Run by trained barista Dave Evans, a neighbour of Holly’s, it sold the best java in town, not a bitter bean in a carload.

  The regulars were lining up, while others were in leather armchairs reading the Times Colonist or the free Monday tabloid with its radical Seventies flavor. Laptop computer keys clicked. While Boone went to the washroom (“prostrate,” he said with a chuckle). Holly ordered an Americano for herself, and a daily special, Kenya, for him, doctoring them at the depot. Then a raucous voice took her back to the past with the zing of a bungee cord.

  “Holly! Holly-O. Damn! And check that uniform. You look maaaaaavelous.” Valerie Novince kissed her manicured fingers and planted her hands on her broad hips. Her dark brown hair was now platinum blonde and teased. The dimples in her merry face cheered any room.

  Holly gave her a warm hug, flattered that Valerie remembered the “O” for Oldham, a family name dating back to their ancestral home in Devonshire. “Hello, friend. This is a wonderful surprise. What have you been up to?”

  Valerie explained that she had spent two years in the army, then returned for real estate training at Camosun College. A curvaceous eyebrow spoke pages. “I was a baaaad girl, but the army gave me discipline. Remember when I got expelled from ND for smoking?”

  Holly laughed. “Twice, wasn’t it? I was glad to see the back of that place, too. But how did the army survive your invasions?”

  “Hey, I made master sergeant on my riflery alone. Every time I went to the range, I had that ugly old gang of skanks in my sights.” She raised her arms in a shooting gesture, attracting some attention from a white-haired lady carrying a Pomeranian. “Pow, pow.”

  “Uh, Val, I think—”

  Valerie gave a thumbs-up. “Slim as ever, you. And I’ve gained the last ten pounds since I stopped smoking. Hey, do you still rescue banana slugs? Damn, that was funny.”

  Despite the stares surrounding them, Holly couldn’t help smiling. “To serve and protect has always been my motto.”

  “So it has, and you figured it out. We’ve got to get together.”

  Valerie padded wicked coral nails on her shiny lips. “Say, do you need a house? Meet Sooke’s top seller.”

  “You’re out of luck. I’m living with my father on Otter Point Place.”

  “Woo, woo. High rent district.” Valeria plucked a card from her elephantine purse. “If you ever want a place for yourself, short term, easy-sell, consider a mobile, uh, manufactured home. It’s an investment. I have one for only $79,000 in Wells o’ Weary. Right on the ocean. Lapping waves will sing you to sleep.”

  “And when the big wave comes?” Tsunami warning signs along the coastal road had made realtors furious and alarmed local businesses so much that they were removed within a few months. Now tourists could travel the road at their own blissful risk.

  Valerie elbowed her way into the lineup. “You’ll be the first one to know, so call my cell!”

  Back in the car, they passed the Log, a grassy meeting place, which anchored the town. A fifty-foot Douglas fir post displayed two carved loggers, one balanced with an axe on a springboard perch aiming at a cut above the thick butt and the other climbing to the top using a strap and cleats.

&n
bsp; The forty-five minutes into Victoria went quickly. Delayed only for a moment behind one of the signature red double-decker buses, they took Sooke Road, Route 14, through Milne’s Landing, skirting Metchosin and entering Langford, then merging with the Island Highway in View Royal.

  The Victoria Metropolitan area consisted of twelve municipalities with a total of 335,000 people. Long a retirement mecca, it also attracted tourists with its “More English than the English” atmosphere, or lately a controversial campaign promising better orgasms. Sadly, urban crime had made serious inroads in the small core of 74,000. The spectres of substance abuse and homelessness were more evident in the balmy climate than at the frigid corners of Portage and Main in Winnipeg. Low-cost housing had been a promise for decades, but only million-dollar condos were shooting their floors skyward.

  Then they followed narrow Bay Street east all the way to the venerable Royal Jubilee Hospital, serving the city since 1890, when the old Queen reigned. Leaving the car in the lot, they entered the front lobby and took an elevator to the basement to the morgue and autopsy rooms. “I left a message with Daso’s secretary. He’ll be expecting us,” Boone said.

  Holly had to remind herself that this was real, not a staged event. Anyone with a sense of humanity was never fully prepared. They pushed through into the office and were given green gowns, paper hats and shoe protectors by a young technician. Through a glass portal, a white-coated man waved.

  The room was large but low-ceilinged, a typical old basement. At least ten tables waited. Two held bodies, each covered with a large white sheet. Immaculate if claustrophobic, the room was cool. Fluorescent light banks lit the room, along with spots on angled arms at each site. She heard something frisky. Salsa music?

  As if preparing for an exam, she scanned the instruments on a side table and tried to recall their names and purposes. Scissors, but beginning with E? Enterotome, used for opening the intestines, the blunt bulb at the end to prevent perforation of the gut. Scalpels, rib cutters, toothed forceps, skull chisel, and the famous vibrating Stryker saw, which had revolutionized autopsies. Those tools on a white cloth were clean, those on the next rolling table bore the inevitable effluvium of the body. A third shelf held surgeon’s needles, Hagedorn by name, and heavy twine, coarser than ordinary suture threads, for the workmanlike closing. Realizing with embarrassment that she was moving her lips, she looked down and noticed that the floor was flecked with blood. She presumed that the organs had already been removed in some Russian-sounding method that escaped her. Once, a neighbour had gutted a deer that had crossed their path in untimely fashion. To her astonishment, once connections were cut, everything lifted out in a neat package.