Among the Departed

by Vicki Delany

  Winters peered out. The rain was falling so heavily he could scarcely see the massive trees ten feet away. “No hurry. We can do this tomorrow. It’ll be too dark before much longer anyway.”

  ***

  Nicole Nolte kicked off her four inch heels the minute she walked through the door.

  It had been a good night. A thousand dollar tip. Didn’t get that every day. He’d wanted the whole GFE—girl friend experience—expensive meal with excellent wine, starched white linen and candles on the table, a walk through the streets after dinner holding hands. Gooey expressions and soft touches and murmurs of sweet nothings.

  To spend the whole night at the apartment.

  That wasn’t going to happen. She’d mumbled something about her roommate coming home after finishing night shift. As if she’d have a roommate in a one-bedroom apartment. He wasn’t interested in reality, and bought into the story happily enough.

  There would be no point in taking pictures and rooting through that guy’s wallet. He’d love it if all the world knew he was screwing a woman like Nicole.

  She wondered if he would be worth cultivating. He was about as ugly as they came, cursed by a bad stutter, but eager to splash money around. As a bonus it took two seconds for him to come, which meant she could get him out the door in record time. They’d had dinner at the ungodly hour of six o’clock, and even with the walk and back to the apartment, she was home by ten. Nice to get an early night for a change.

  She dropped her clothes on the bedroom floor and dug into her drawer for the packet of white powder. Spreading out a line on the kitchen table, she called Joey to check in. He didn’t answer and she left a message.

  What to do about Joey? He wouldn’t like the idea of taking on a straight-forward client. There wouldn’t be much for him to do if Nicole was just screwing the guy. Joey liked to pretend he was in charge.

  Joey or no Joey it was probably not a good idea in any event. She had no intention of whoring for a living. She saw where that road led every time she drove through the Downtown Eastside.

  She bent her head over the line of cocaine and jumped when her phone rang. Not the cell she used to communicate with Joey, but the landline in her apartment. No one ever called her on that, and it was getting late.

  She looked at the call display. Restricted Number.

  That can’t be good.

  She considered not answering. If someone had her number they might have her address too, and come around in person. This was supposed to be a secure building, but all that meant was that political doorknockers and your neighbor who’d forgotten her key couldn’t get in.

  Anyone who wanted to could always find a way.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Constable Marian Singh of the Vancouver Police. I’m looking for Ms. Nicky Nowak.”

  That was a name Nicole hadn’t heard for a good long time. No point in pretending it wasn’t her. The police, like the taxman, had their sources.

  “I’m Ms. Nowak.”

  “Ms. Nowak, there’s nothing to be concerned about. I’m calling on behalf of Sergeant John Winters of the Trafalgar City Police. Sergeant Winters is attempting to locate you in regards to the matter of the disappearance of your father, Mr. Brian Nowak. If you could call Sergeant Winters in the morning at this number. It would appear your father has been located.”

  The woman could tell her nothing more. Nicole took down the number, said thank you, dropped into a chair.

  They’d found Dad.

  The woman didn’t say if he was dead or alive, but Nicole doubted it was the latter.

  She sure needed a hit now.

  Chapter Eleven

  It rained all day Thursday. Ray Gavin and his team did what they could to protect their site but the mountainside rapidly turned into a field of mud.

  “Might help release more of the bones,” Gavin said to Winters. “Save us some work.”

  “You’re such an optimist. More likely it’ll bury anything near the surface.”

  “I’m channeling Alison; she’s the optimist. I want to bring in a bulldozer and dump truck and cart the mountainside off to the office where I can work in comfort. Warm and dry.”

  “No point bringing Molly up there to have a look around today. It’s supposed to stop raining overnight and be sunny tomorrow.”

  “Let me know.” Gavin hung up.

  Winters looked out the window. Rain slashed against the glass. A woman came down the road, walking into the face of the storm. Her head was bent against the wind and her yellow poncho wrapped itself around her legs. As he watched the wind grabbed her umbrella and flipped it inside out. She threw it onto the ground and stomped on it.

  He turned from the window with a laugh.

  As promised, Doctor Shirley Lee had consulted with a forensic dentist and, after much huffing and puffing and declaring that he couldn’t be sure looking at photographs, and the remains would have to be examined in person, and even then they wouldn’t have a positive identification, he grudgingly admitted that the dental records were a reasonably good match to the teeth Gavin had dug up. Thus the case of Brian Nowak was now officially on Winters’ desk. A preliminary examination of dental records wasn’t proof positive, but close enough for now.

  He’d been told the last address anyone had for the daughter, Nicky, was Vancouver. She was long gone from the number her mother had, so he’d put in a call to the Vancouver police to try to track her down.

  They’d done so, and the woman had phoned him first thing this morning to say she would be arriving in Trafalgar later in the day.

  He looked back at his desk. It was buried in paper. When he’d first opened the old boxes, he’d merely flipped through the contents. Now that it was an official case, he had a lot of reading to do.

  He shoved aside a pile of witness statements to clear enough room to access his computer. He logged onto police databases and began a search for reference to Brian Nowak. A couple of claims of sightings, one in Fort Nelson, one in Atlin. About a year ago, a man came into the RCMP detachment in Dawson Creek claiming to be Nowak who’d only just recovered from amnesia. Considering the man had been known to the local police for more than twenty years for his penchant for digging up old newspaper stories and fantasizing that new information had come to him in a vision, the police did nothing more than make a record of his statement. Next month he was back with the breaking news that Princess Diana hadn’t really died in that car accident in Paris but was living with him in his off-the-grid cabin and had sent him to town to announce that she had decided to return to the world.

  Winters chuckled and turned to the next report.

  He found nothing worth following up.

  Not a surprise, as it would appear Brian Nowak had never left the mid-Kootenays.

  It might all be a waste of police time. Perhaps the man had gone for a hike and gotten lost. Unlikely, without taking his car or any hiking equipment—Winters made a note to see if Keller had thought to check if Nowak had bought anything from an outfitting store in the previous days or weeks—but you never knew what got into people’s heads sometimes.

  He’d have to interview Mrs. Nowak and her children. Go back to Nowak’s employers, his friends, anyone who’d made a statement to Keller about the man.

  Open up old wounds, potentially cause a great deal of pain.

  Cold cases could be very nasty things.

  ***

  Nicole Nolte had an errand to run before she could get out of Vancouver. She drove to Hastings and Main and found a parking spot, close but not too close to her destination, easily enough. It was early and most of the druggies and hookers hadn’t yet ventured out of the cheap hotels and rooming houses and back alleys to face the day.

  She skirted around a sleeping bag-wrapped shape on the ground beneath the barred window of a check-cas
hing shop. Almost against her will, Nicole glanced down. Wide brown eyes stared up at her. The face was round with remains of baby fat, the skin unlined, the black hair thick.

  Nicole hurried away. A policewoman was coming her way, heading for the child vagrant. The cop nodded politely at Nicole, nicely dressed in designer jeans, clean shirt, jewelry, new boots.

  Nicole smiled in return and quickened her pace.

  They’d found Dad.

  After all these years.

  She’d clung to her faith in him, long past any hope of his return. Her brother, Kyle, decided soon enough Dad wasn’t coming back and wanted to take over his study. Mom jumped every time she heard a sound at the front door, as if Dad would find his way home from the convenience store one day. Nicole remained in her mother’s house for three more years, and every evening Mom insisted the light be left on over the front door all night so Dad could find the keyhole in the dark. For all Nicole knew, her mom still kept the light on. Every day Mom cooked enough food for Dad, as though he’d walk through the door at six o’clock and pull his chair up to the dinner table.

  For three years, Nicky got the leftovers for lunch. To this day, Nicole wouldn’t eat anything not freshly prepared. She wanted her father to be dead, otherwise she would have to face the fact that he had abandoned her, but she still clung to some sort of vague hope that it had all been a misunderstanding. A year ago, she’d seen a man in Royal Park Mall. She’d been on the floor above and had glanced down the escalator stairwell and there he was. Accompanied by a slouching teenage girl, laden with shopping bags. Nicole recognized his walk, the back of his head, the way he held himself. She ran down the up escalator, yelling, shoving startled shoppers aside.

  The man turned, regarded her as if she were a psychiatric patient off her meds. He didn’t resemble her father in the least. She didn’t apologize, just walked away, her head held high, ignoring the teenager’s sneering laugh.

  A woman stood in the doorway of a pizza shop. The store was closed, the entrance cluttered with fast-food containers and crumpled newspapers and cigarette butts. The woman glanced up as Nicole approached. Her eyes were hollow, her face little more than bones covered by a thin layer of pock-marked skin. She wore a purple tube dress, barely covering the distance between her sagging breasts and non-existent butt. “Got some change?” she asked, in a tone that suggested she knew the answer already. She was missing two teeth and the rest were dark with nicotine and tarter. Her breath smelled like sour milk.

  “No.”

  “Bitch.” The woman stuck her middle finger into the air.

  Nicole kept walking, crossed against the light to reach her destination. A print shop, clean and well-stocked, smelling of ink and toner. A photocopier clattered and spilled out reams of paper.

  “Mr. MacDonald sent me to pick up his order,” she said to the clerk.

  The young woman smiled. “I’ll see if it’s ready.” She went into the back and came out with a large, bulging envelope. “Here you go. I think it’s all there.” She put the envelope into a shopping bag.

  Nicky thanked her, paid, and left. Outside, she peeked into the envelope. A stack of useless blank paper and a couple of baggies at the bottom each of which contained a few grams of white powder. She didn’t usually buy her own drugs—let Joey take those chances. But she wasn’t going to Trafalgar without a couple of days’ supply.

  As she came out of the print shop, a car crawled past. She watched as it stopped in front of the pizza shop. The woman in the purple dress stepped out of the doorway and went up to the car. She leaned over, her flat butt sticking out, said a few words, opened the door, and climbed in. A large blue and black bruise covered most of her inside left thigh. The car pulled away with a burst of speed.

  It was a black Lexus, sleek, clean, polished to a blinding shine. A child’s safety seat was mounted in the back. The hooker stared into Nicole’s eyes as they drove past.

  Nicole’s whole body shuddered.

  Was this what it would come to, in the end?

  She went to her car and headed home. To Trafalgar.

  Chapter Twelve

  Molly Smith woke with a start. Her heart was beating hard and her mind in turmoil, searching for what had panicked it. The sheets were twisted around her legs and the duvet on the floor. It was still night, the yellow glow of street lamps shone against the drapes. Her apartment was above a bakery on Trafalgar’s main street, and she could usually tell the time by the level of noise coming from outside. It was very quiet. The scent of the day’s baking wafted up from the ovens below, which meant Alphonse had started work.

  She kicked off the sheets and padded into the kitchen for a glass of water. She didn’t turn on any lights. She’d been raised in a house on the mountainside and spent a lot of time deep in the wilderness. She liked the dark. She was never afraid in the dark. Nothing bad had ever happened to her in the dark.

  When she thought about Graham, her late fiancé, he was always surrounded by light. Graham, raised in the land-locked middle of North America, loved the water. Swimming, boating, sitting on the ferry to and from Vancouver Island, merely being near water made Graham happy. She remembered water reflecting off his body as he pulled himself out of Kootenay Lake and flopped onto the beach, sizzling in the heat and light of the sun.

  Was it memories of Graham, fading so fast, that made her resistant to returning Adam’s love?

  If she’d met Adam first, would she be so skittish of commitment?

  She took her glass to the table and sat down.

  She and Adam had gone to the nearby town of Nelson last night for a concert by her favorite heavy metal band, Savage Blade. The concert had been great, and they’d left pumped and excited and happy. They went to a loud, crowded, cheap bar where they ordered pizza, chicken wings, and beer, laughed and kissed, and licked hot barbeque sauce off each other’s fingers, and Adam tried, and failed miserably, to pound out We are the Hammer on the scarred wooden table with the handle of his knife.

  They’d been walking through the quiet, rain-slicked streets back to the truck. Adam made a joke and Smith laughed and he grabbed her and held her close and kissed her deeply. And then… and then…

  His truck was parked outside a jewelry store. As she headed for the passenger door, Adam pulled her into the shop doorway. The baubles on display sparkled in the lights of the windows, a row of gorgeous engagement rings front and center.

  “See anything you like?”

  She looked up at him, a joke forming on her lips. The words collapsed back into her throat. His dark eyes were serious, his handsome face intent.

  She’d wondered why he parked on the main street when plenty of parking was available nearer the concert.

  “Molly,” he said, his voice very deep.

  She turned her head quickly. “They’re all beautiful. Dreadfully expensive I bet. Let’s go. I’m beat.”

  She dashed for the truck, and whatever he had meant to say remained unsaid.

  When they got back to Trafalgar the town was so quiet the traffic lights were flashing yellow, rather than alternating red and green. He pulled up in front of her apartment, turned off the engine, and started to get out. She put her hand on his arm and said, very quietly, she’d see herself up. She was tired and would be trudging all over the mountain tomorrow. He stayed in his seat, gave her a soft kiss, and watched her climb out of the truck with a long look.

  Why was everything so complicated? She loved Adam, in her way, but she feared he loved her more than she loved him. They’d been together for about a year and a half. He’d been hinting it was time she give up her apartment and move out to his acreage in the woods. She loved his place but simply wasn’t ready to take their relationship up a notch.

  Was he planning to propose?

  The thought terrified her.

  A wave of hot fragrant bread dr
ifted through the floor from the bakery. When she looked up, the sky was lightening.

  She hadn’t even decided what to do about her career, never mind a proposal of marriage. If she wanted get ahead in the police, she needed to leave the small, generally peaceful town of Trafalgar. Last year she’d been about to send out applications to big eastern cities when her dad died suddenly. Her brother and his family moved to Scotland, and Molly knew she couldn’t leave her mom all alone.

  Perhaps now it was time.

  She went back to bed to try to get a bit more sleep before she had to head out to Koola Park with John Winters to tramp around the mountain.

  ***

  “We came up here a lot,” Molly Smith said. “The campsite down at the bottom is good for car camping, and those going into the backcountry would use the main parking lot as their jumping-off point. It’s been maybe five, six years since I was last here, until the other night, and things have changed.”

  “In what way?”

  “They’ve moved the jumping-off point for one thing. The campground was getting over-crowded, and when the logging company stopped using their road, the park took it over for the use of backcountry people.”

  They were heading out of town toward the park. Winters had told Smith she’d be better off in her hiking clothes than risk ruining her uniform. It felt nice to be going to work in sturdy climbing boots, zip-legged pants, polyester shirt, nylon jacket. She’d pulled a baseball cap over her short hair. She wasn’t sure if she missed the comforting weight of her equipment belt, or felt freer without it dragging her down.

  He was dressed in his usual clothes of casual pants and light jacket over button-down shirt. The only concession to the expedition was the pair of running shoes on his feet. He’d have trouble maneuvering on the steep trails in shoes without much in the way of treads.

  She jumped out of the car the moment they arrived at the campsite. The steady driving rain of the past two days had sent the last of the campers scurrying home. Two marked RCMP cars and Ron Gavin’s forensic van were the only vehicles parked at the end of the road.