Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  Dion was searching his workstation, and it wasn’t here either. Of course it wasn’t, because he took it with him everywhere. He heard his name and turned around. He saw the notebook fluttering in the air, attached to Spacey’s hand, being held up and flickered like a taunt. She was standing within punching distance, grinning at him.

  “This is great stuff,” she said. “My god, I didn’t realize you were so good at listing things. All kinds of things that are so good to remember, like the names of the people you work with every day. There’s maps to help you get around this very complicated village. Even a cute little diagram here, how to tie a tie. I thought you were dumb, but you’re a very smart little boy, aren’t you?”

  He held out his hand, said, “Give it to me.”

  She flipped a page, searching. “I bet you’ve got instructions on how to make toast, too.”

  He grabbed for the book, and she stepped backward, but he was faster, and stronger, and had her wrist in his grip and was pressing her arm back, ready to break it if that’s what it took. With a cry, Spacey let it fall. Dion shoved her hard, another bad call in a string of bad calls, and she crashed against a desk and from the desk to the floor. The clerk Pam popped her head around the corner and rushed over to help Spacey to her feet, but Spacey seemed winded, unable to move. I broke her back, Dion thought, dazed. Down the hall a door opened, and a man appeared saying, “What’s going on here?”

  Dion leaned to pick up his notebook where it lay near Spacey’s shoulder, but was pulled upright by his arm, spun around, and propelled away, back against the nearest wall with a thud. Constable Leith had him pinned and was staring at him, close-up and angry, asking him what the hell was he was doing.

  Spacey was back on her feet, supported by Pam, and he stared at her, knowing he hadn’t broken her spine but finding no comfort in it. “He tried to break my arm. Look.” Spacey exposed the pink friction burn on her wrist that was already starting to bruise. Dion twisted out of Leith’s grip and looked with longing at his notebook on the floor. Not that it mattered now. She’d read it, she knew, and she’d tell everyone.

  “You going to press charges?” he heard Pam asking her. It sounded not so much a question as a recommendation. He looked at Spacey and saw her face twisted like a gargoyle.

  “Hell no, I’m not going to press charges. I’m going to have you crucified, that’s what, fucking maniac.” She scooped the notebook from the floor and thrust it at Leith. “I found this. I opened it up to find out who it belonged to, and he went berserk. Pam saw it all.”

  Leith took the book and shook it at Dion. “Is that right?”

  “No,” Dion said. “She —”

  “You want me to read you your fucking rights?” Leith’s finger was pointed at Dion, in case he wasn’t clear enough who was in trouble here. He said, “Better yet, get out. I’ll book you tomorrow. You’re fired. Get your shit and go. Guns, keys, badge, on the table, now.”

  Still damp and gritty from the mountain, Dion unloaded the key to his cruiser, his .22 Smith & Wesson, his RCMP ID card, on the desk in front of Leith, punched the front door open, and left the building. His face was wet with sweat and the tears of frustration, and the wind coming off the mountain seemed to turn him to ice as he crossed the highway to the Super 8.

  * * *

  Actually, Constable Leith had no authority to fire him, Dion knew. It was just a hotheaded temporary suspension. But it hardly mattered. The real shit would hit the fan over the next few weeks, and he wouldn’t work another day. Criminal charges were unlikely, but the notebook would be examined, and the investigation into who he really was would be long and painful. He should have known, should have backed off, taken early retirement when it was offered. It wasn’t just a matter of rebuilding muscle and reconnecting the synapses. It was his mind, not a missing limb. He’d lost depth, and now he finally understood that depth could not be restored at will.

  He changed into his civvies and left the motel. His mind was oddly blank and carefree, or maybe he’d just blown a fuse. After some wait, he flagged the town’s lone cab on the highway. There were only a couple of bars in the area, and he directed the cabbie to the one out in Old Town, which he’d stepped into briefly once before. The Old Town bar wasn’t a cop hangout. The customers were mostly native, mostly young, all strangers. The music was too loud and too country, but he didn’t care. The cavernous interior smelled of beer and deep-fried everything. He was eyed as he passed through, as if they sensed who he was or what he represented, but that didn’t matter either. From experience he knew that if he ignored the world, the world returned the favour.

  He chose a small round table near a side exit, where a low dividing wall and a fake palm tree buffered some of the noise, far from the pool tables where the brawls usually broke out. He had a simple contingency plan if a fight should break out: he would pick up and go.

  With a double Scotch on order, he sat back to study the beer coaster. When he’d done with the coaster he watched the big-screen TV, which was tuned in to curling. The sound was muffled, so he couldn’t hear the play-by-play or catch the rules, but the object of the game was simple enough: get the thing to land in the bull’s eye.

  He was on his second double, still fixed on the curlers, when Scottie Rourke slung into the chair beside him, a mug in his hand of that pale gold draft that everyone up here seemed to favour.

  Rourke said, “Hey!”

  “Evening,” Dion said, not pleasantly. He hadn’t expected company and didn’t want it except in the most hands-off way. But company had found him, and he hadn’t sunk low enough to get rude and tell Rourke where to go.

  “Firstly,” Rourke said, “I gotta tell you, I don’t hold it against you personally, pulling in Frankie like you did. It’s that SOB Leith out fishing. Gotta find his bad guy at any cost, right? Guilt or innocence? What’s that? Nothing. It’s the bottom line that matters.” He waved his beer glass about, and he’d had a few already, by the looks of it. “You ran out of worthwhile leads, is that it? Just wanted to harass the locals, show you’re earning your keep?”

  “Maybe,” Dion said. Flatly, to show he wasn’t playing.

  Rourke snorted. “And in the end you had to let him go, no charges laid, right? Well, am I right?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Know what I think? I think you pulled him in just to stir things up. You were desperate. Maybe he’d crack under pressure, or maybe he’d confess just to get you off his back, hey? And who cares if he’s innocent. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. Well, am I right? Am I?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Dion spoke with the huskiness of rising anger. “Could I just sit down and have a drink for once in my life?”

  Rourke flipped his hands in startled surrender. “Okay, okay. Don’t shoot, Officer.”

  “It’s okay. Just don’t grill me.”

  They sat quietly for a minute. Then Rourke wanted to know if Dion wanted to play some pool. Dion didn’t, thinking sooner or later the man would get bored and leave. Instead, Rourke sipped his beer and looked settled. After a bit more silence he said, “How’s the ticker?”

  “Dead.” Dion showed him his new multitasking miracle of technology. “Fifty bucks. Works like a charm. Should have done it in the first place, like you said.”

  Rourke frowned as he leaned forward, booze gusting out on his breath. “Gosh, no. I’m sorry. I really am. That thing means a lot to you.”

  “It’s not your fault. Can’t put the fucking thing on life support, can we? I threw it in the river.”

  Rourke was thrown back in his chair again, he was so shocked. “What? Why? You shouldn’t have done that, man. That’s kind of an antique. Maybe somebody else could have fixed it. And even if they couldn’t, you could have got a few bucks for it, for its historical value or whatever.” He sighed and dug in his pocket, bringing out his wallet, drawing out bills. “Here’s your
money back. No, I insist. I’ve been accused of a few things in my life, but I’m an honourable man.”

  “Keep your money,” Dion said. “I don’t care.”

  “No, hey —”

  “I said forget it.”

  “Then I’ll buy you a goddamn drink, how’s that?”

  “Fine.”

  Rourke bought a round and raised a toast. Then he sulked. Then he said, “Totally wrong place to throw something you love, the river.”

  “Seemed kind of poetic to me.”

  Rourke shook his head with conviction. “People say the river’s beautiful, and it is, like a woman. But it’s also a mean, dark bitch. Just try to step into it, even in midsummer. It’ll freeze your nuts off then rip you to pieces. No, you want a good send-off, go upward. There’s so much paradise around here to inter your loved ones, if you know where to look. You want somewhere open to the skies. The Gates of Heaven, that’s where my ashes are going when my time comes.”

  On Dion’s good days, he caught glimpses of paradise here in the north, but mostly he found it cold, badly lit, and monotonous. His own ashes, he had hoped, would sail out from the balcony of his North Vancouver high rise and join the city smog, and maybe a few molecules of him would drift farther out and be taken away by the ocean. But that wasn’t going to happen. Even unemployed, he didn’t have the heart to return to the Lower Mainland. He’d stay in the north, get some shitty job, end up in a no-name urn, buried in a grotty little graveyard in Smithers. “Gates of Heaven,” he said. “What’s that?”

  “It’s self-explanatory is what it is,” Rourke said shortly, and Dion didn’t care to pursue it. To take the small talk in a less tedious direction, he asked how come Evangeline hadn’t come out barhopping with him.

  Rourke swiped the air dismissively. “Evie’s not the catch you seem to think, bro. She’s a Calgarian whore, and I’ve told her to pack her bags, get the next bus back to Cowtown.”

  “That’s a bad idea. Whatever kind of catch she is, she’s probably your last.”

  Rourke was pleased, maybe because he too wanted off the topic of failure and death. Or maybe because fielding insults was more up his alley. “Fuck you too.”

  “So you picked her up in Calgary?”

  “God, no. She was hitching through to Rupert to visit an aunt, so she says, and I gave her a lift, and she asked if I could spare a few bucks while I was at it, and I said ‘Not for nothing, my dear.’ So she came along to my trailer, and lo and behold, has been here ever since. But like I say, she’s leaving. The thrill is gone. Brains of a chickadee, but she eats like a horse. And you’d think she’d pick up a broom once in a while and give the place a dust. No, I can’t afford to sustain a duchess on my wages. Anyway, cheers. Here’s to girls.”

  They clinked glasses.

  “She’s free then?” Dion said, half joking. “Single, available? Up for grabs?”

  “All of the above. But if you hook up with her, take my advice and lock up your valuables.”

  It was getting late. Dion had come to the bar by taxi, and Rourke, who said he was temporarily without a proper vehicle for reasons he’d rather not get into, had come on his bicycle, a regular old one-speed of metallic blue. The two men stood outside the front doors around midnight, parting ways. The rain had let up by now, and for once the night was not so bitterly cold. Rourke said he could feel spring in the air. Dion said he couldn’t. Rourke pushed off through the puddles on his two wheels, spraying mud and slush in his wake, and Dion started toward town on foot. He had enough cash for a cab ride back but felt he could use the walk.

  Half an hour later he didn’t feel like he could use the walk anymore, and had his phone out to call for the town’s sole cabbie, but realized he didn’t know the number. His was a regular cellphone, not a 3G with a brain that could pull information out of thin air, so he was stuck.

  He continued walking until headlights coming from behind fanned a glare over the road ahead. A dog started to bark somewhere in the darkness, racing closer, a territorial warning but not aggressive enough to worry him. He turned to stick out his thumb at the approaching vehicle, the raised headlights of a large truck, the lights on high beam expanding at a speed that said it was going faster than anybody should be travelling on this kind of backroad, especially with a pedestrian here glowing like a jack-o-lantern.

  The dog came pelting out of a driveway, and the truck veered away from the dog and straight at Dion, and his instincts already had him heading for the shoulders of the road. Drenched in light, he scrambled up the high snowbank, and the truck’s bumper sheared off a great swath inches from his leg, straightened out sharply and kept going, fast.

  Dion watched its tail lights disappearing. He heard a yelping and looked at the road and saw blood.

  He stood over the injured dog, a shaggy black animal, middle-sized. The dog was no longer yelping, its eyes rolling at him sadly. The damage was bad. There were guts and crushed limbs, and he had his phone out to call 911. But you don’t call 911 for animals, do you? You bundle them in your car and take them to the vet. Or as a last resort, you shoot them in the head.

  He crouched down. An injured person shouldn’t be moved, but did the same go for dogs? Out in the middle of the road like this, it posed a hazard. He scooped his arms carefully under the creature, embraced it, and with difficulty got to his feet, smelling feces and blood, feeling its rear end hanging heavy. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, rushing up the driveway from which the dog had appeared. The house at the end of the driveway was a tall A-frame with lots of fancy detailing, its front smothered in oversized, soggy looking bushes. The windows were lit with cold white light. He had no hands free, so he gave the door at the top of the steps a thump with his boot. A medium-strong thump, loud enough to be heard, not so loud as to frighten.

  The door opened, and a woman looked out at him. She looked at his face, and then at the dog dying in his arms. “Oh my god, Coal,” she said.

  * * *

  He knew who she was, Mercy Black-something, who managed the band. Coal lay on a blanket in the living room, beyond help. The woman was of average height, and slim and elegant, even in a thick bathrobe over long johns. Her long hair was light brown, clean and shiny and combed sleek. She knelt over the dog now, murmuring what sounded like a prayer.

  The dog was no longer squirming and lay still. Dion looked around at the large, fairly bare living room. There was a two-seater and an armchair of white leather and chrome, which belonged more in a West Vancouver condo than a dilapidated Victorian in a tiny northern village. Three of the rough walls had been partially stripped down to show thin strips of wood nailed up at a diagonal, and the battered wood floor was strewn with old plaster. Sheet plastic lay here and there, and there was the strong smell of some kind of chemical in the air, varnish or paint stripper or glue thinner. A small wood stove crackled, but the room was cold. Or maybe it was just him, chilled by his close call with the truck, his horrific experiences with the dog. He looked from the woodstove to the one unmolested wall. A series of black-and-white photographs were up in frames, hanging over the blocky white-leather-and-chrome seating. The photographs were a series of some kind, some group shots, some showing individuals posed for the camera, and at a glance he knew they weren’t family photos but stills from her professional life. The musicians she had managed in her past, probably.

  The setup confused him. She’d been active and prosperous. She’d left the city with her furniture and photos, so she was here for a prolonged stay. It wasn’t a happy stay, judging by her drawn face, yet she was undertaking renovations. By the looks of it, the renos were a DIY project and not gone at with any kind of expertise or organizational skill. Didn’t she have the funds to hire a pro? From his quick scan, it felt to him like a mild form of madness.

  “He’s dead,” the woman said. She stood.

  Dion went to crouch down by the animal and double-ch
eck. He was no doctor, but he’d dealt with enough deaths over the years to know when a being wasn’t coming back. He nodded at Mercy, and she said, “Could you please put him out on the back deck for me?” She crossed the room to an exterior door with a small square window and held it open for him. Dion lifted the dog again, wrapped in its blanket, and took it into what turned out to be a small, enclosed verandah. “Put him there,” the woman said, pointing to a place on the floor between a chest freezer and a basket chair. “I’ll call somebody to take him away. Can’t bury him here, his home, unfortunately. Ground’s too hard. Poor Coal. I rescued him from the pound, you know. Just hours before he would have been put down.”

  Dion laid the dog down where she indicated and stood, rubbing his mucky hands on his mucky jeans. For the first time Mercy looked at him, and she gave a start, and reached out both hands, as if she wanted to either grab him or keep him at bay. “Oh no, you’ve got blood all over you.”

  He stepped back. He said, “It was a pickup, with a raised suspension, I think. Dark, quite new. Know anybody around here drives something like that?”

  They were staring at each other, like two actors from two different plays on the same stage, confused but determined to get through it. She raked her hands through her hair, blinking. “Everybody,” she said. “And everybody drives crazy fast on this road. You’ll never catch him.”

  Dion wondered if the truck had veered to avoid the dog or was gunning at himself. He wondered if its bumper had smeared any identifying evidence into the snowbank. Jayne Spacey drove a little Rav, so it probably wasn’t her. Her ex maybe, Shane. He could do some checking, but wouldn’t. Not enough data and not enough interest to bother.