Shutterbug

by Laurence Gough

  April pinched a teardrop of melted wax from the candle, and squeezed it between her finger and thumb until it was flat as a coin. She peeled it away from her finger and admired her perfect fingerprint.

  Lewis said, ‘It’s a victimless crime. Birks is a huge store. They’ve got lots of money, and anyway, they’re totally insured!’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Lewis lay there for a moment, passive, catching his breath. He said, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘Oh. Okay, fine.’ She gave him a brief, uncertain smile. ‘I should have thought of that. Going potty. I mean, who doesn’t?’

  A silver key hung around her neck on a thin silver chain. She made as if to unlock a handcuff, had second thoughts, and pulled back.

  ‘Oops!’

  ‘I won’t try to get away,’ promised Lewis.

  ‘Yes you will, you liar!’

  April flounced up off the bed and skipped out of the room. She was back in less than a minute, armed with the Taser.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’

  Lewis shuddered.

  ‘Good.’ April pulled the silver chain over her head. The key twinkled merrily in the light.

  She said, ‘I’m going to unlock your left hand, and then you can do all the rest of the unlocking yourself. But I’m warning you, if you try anything stupid, I’ll zap you full of high-voltage electricity. Understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Lewis. He noticed at last that she was wearing the Rolex Lady Datejust.

  April glared down at him. ‘This thing’s no toy. Back there in the parking lot, all you got was half-power. Right now, it’s cranked up all the way. If I use it on you, it’d hurt like anything. Who knows, you might even die.’ April waved the Taser around, as if on the hunt for a target of opportunity. ‘Wayne used this thing on a family of raccoons that was always getting into the garbage. It was as if they’d been hit by lightning bolts. They burst into flames, Lewis. Into flames! It was really unforgettably awful.’

  Lewis nodded. He said, ‘I bet it was.’

  ‘I was looking at their little bandit heads sticking out of the garbage can, thinking that they were cuter than Tickle Me Elmo, and then Wayne zapped them, and all of a sudden they looked like a bunch of great big oversized Christmas puddings, all blue flame and flambeau.’

  April levelled the Taser at his heart and unlocked his left wrist. She dropped the silver chain in his hand. ‘I don’t want to turn you into a Christmas pudding, even though I bet you’d be the tastiest pudding I ever met. But you better believe I’ll do it if I have to.’

  Lewis concentrated on staying absolutely rock-still.

  ‘Its okay, go ahead. Set yourself free. I don’t know what kind of a person you think I am, but I’m not the least bit kinky, no matter what Wayne tells you. As far as I’m concerned, urine-soaked beds are not the least bit alluring.’

  Lewis wanted to be sure he didn’t make any mistakes. He said, ‘I can unlock the cuffs?’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  It took only a moment. April retrieved the chain and key. Lewis lay there on the bed, flexing his muscles, trying to work out the kinks. His head throbbed.

  ‘The bathroom’s right over there.’ April pointed at a mirrored door. ‘It’s an en suite. There’s a window, but it’s barred, because Wayne doesn’t like the idea of some low-life creep sneaking into the house under cover of darkness, so he can take advantage of me.’ April smiled. ‘I think he was talking about my friendly nature, but I’m not sure.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘And also, to be perfectly honest, there was a time not so long ago when I was seriously thinking of splitting. Wayne didn’t want me sneaking out of here any more than he wanted some unknown creep sneaking in.’

  Lewis swung his legs over the far side of the bed, so he had his back to her.

  April scurried around the bed as he dropped lightly to the floor. She kept pace with him as he padded across the floor to the bathroom. As he neared the mirrored door she said, ‘You sure have a nice body.’

  ‘Is that why you brought me here?’

  ‘Partly. Wayne likes to say that the world isn’t so ugly if you fill it with pretty things.’

  ‘Wayne’s your boyfriend?’

  April laughed, delighted by the question. She had a sudden urge to tell Lewis all about Wayne’s grandiose plans to violently wrest the city’s network of organized dealers from the liver-spotted hands of ageing and therefore vulnerable crime kingpin Jake Cappalletti. But wisely, she held her diamond-studded tongue.

  Lewis put his hand on the faceted, crystal doorknob. He pulled open the door, and turned so he was directly facing her. Full frontal nudity. He cocked his hip. ‘You coming in with me?’

  ‘Not this time, loverboy.’

  Lewis nodded, went inside and shut the door. The window was high up on the wall, a rectangle of dirty grey light. It was permanently shut, protected by two sets of sturdy steel bars, one interior and one exterior. It was almost full dark outside. He’d been unconscious for hours.

  He found the wall switch. There was a tub-shower combo, a toilet and a vanity with double sinks, all the enamel in a putrid, pea-green colour. Too many lights, too many mirrors. His wrists had been chafed by the handcuffs. He combed his hair with his fingers. He didn’t look half-bad, considering.

  He locked the door, and sat heavily down on the toilet.

  April, sounding anxious, called to him through the door. ‘Are you okay, Lewis?’

  No, he wasn’t. His bladder felt as if it was full of sawdust. The way he felt right that minute, he doubted he’d have to piss again if he lived to be a hundred years old.

  Which seemed increasingly unlikely, despite recent breakthroughs in the impenetrable fields of genetics and cloning. They’d cloned a sheep, or so they said. A sheep! Why bother? More to the point, how could they tell?

  Lewis sat there on the ugly pea-green toilet, enjoying his dumb little joke, chuckling like a brain-bruised fool. Gut-twisting terror had squeezed the sweat out of him. He smelled of naked fear, and pepper spray, and he couldn’t say which was worse. One thing for sure - he was in desperate need of a shower. Had anybody told him it was forbidden to shower? Nope. April had the hots for him. Hadn’t she more or less come right out and said so? Women liked clean men. To hell with April. Who cared what she craved. Not him. He didn’t smell bad. He stank. If he wanted a shower, he’d take a shower.

  Lewis took a long hot shower. He dried himself with a purple towel, wrapped another purple towel around his waist and exited the bathroom.

  April didn’t look happy to see him. She said, ‘I don’t like your hair like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Slicked back.’

  Lewis turned to look at himself in the mirrored door. He said, ‘It’s wet, that’s all.’

  ‘Dry it.’

  ‘With what?’

  April playfully poked at the towel with the Taser. ‘With the towel, silly.’ She smiled. ‘Or there’s a hair dryer in the bathroom, if you’re feeling shy.’

  Lewis was definitely feeling shy. Uncharacteristically shy. Or at least modest. He wasn’t sure why this was. Maybe he should just put it down to the unusual circumstances.

  Or the Taser, and his memory of the sharp, lightning-like crack! the wand had made when it touched him, and the sudden feeling of intense heat, an internal searing and sizzling, the unwelcome sensation that his bones had turned to rubber, the muscles and ligaments of his joints melted into a soft and useless mush.

  There was also the fact that he had a strong hunch that Wayne, whoever he turned out to be, was lurking in the middle distance, crowbar in hand, waiting for his unwelcome guest to make a wrong move, or any kind of move at all…

  Lewis used the dryer on his hair, fluffed it up with his fingers the way he always did. Was this what she wanted? He teased his hair this way and that. Was that right? He hoped so. He turned off the dryer and slipped it back into its wall mount.

  He came back out of the bathro
om to find that April had turned on a massive 54-inch rear-projection Hitachi that was wedged into a corner opposite the bed. A chrome kitchen chair with bright yellow Naugahyde upholstery had been placed in front of the TV.

  April told him to sit down.

  He sat.

  She told him to cross his right ankle over his left thigh. For some reason he got it backwards. She didn’t seem to mind - not that he trusted his judgement. Following her directions exactly, he handcuffed his right wrist to his left ankle.

  On the TV, a mass of water fell at least a hundred vertical feet to a glassy calm lake.

  April said, ‘Just a minute.’

  She fumbled with the remote, turned up the sound until the sound of the waterfall was a steady roar.

  Lewis concentrated on the waterfall as she walked slowly around him, lightly touching him, exploring his bone structure, musculature. She told him to open wide, stuck a finger up under his gums and bent to examine his teeth.

  She asked him to neigh like a horse.

  Lewis eyed the Taser. He hesitated just long enough to let her know that he was no wimp. Then he did what he was told.

  ‘Louder.’

  Lewis whinnied like a whole corral full of stallions.

  She kept circling him. She asked him increasingly personal questions about his employment history, age and education, health, family background. Did he have any brothers or sisters? No. Were his mother and father alive? He couldn’t say. Was there anyone in the whole wide world who’d miss him, if he decided to take an extended holiday from his life?

  Lewis knew where she was heading - straight for the intersection of Missing and Permanently. His mind raced. He almost mentioned Liz, aka Elizabeth, his partner in crime. But no, he wouldn’t do it. What was the point? Liz couldn’t help him. If this woman, this Wandmeister, wanted him badly enough, Liz’s life wouldn’t be worth a bag of stale donuts. He wasn’t going to sacrifice her, not when there wasn’t anything to be gained. Or even, he told himself, if there was. He just wouldn’t.

  He said, ‘Nobody’d miss me.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  He nodded.

  April said, ‘I didn’t think so. Know why? The Ontario plates on your van. And also, I hate to tell you this, but I saw the way your girlfriend kissed you, for luck before the big Birks caper. As if she didn’t care one way or the other what happened to you.’

  But there was another, even simpler reason April had snatched Lewis. It was because she was running out of time, and there he was, exactly when she needed him. Hell, she was getting so desperate she’d have grabbed the Pope, given the opportunity.

  The picture on the big screen shifted, the camera zooming in for a closeup of the foaming lip of the waterfall. Something moved among the trees.

  ‘Watch,’ said April.

  A burly man wearing jeans and a black-and-green lumberjack shirt and a black balaclava strolled out of the woods. He was carrying another man over his shoulder, carrying him as effortlessly as if he were a loaf of bread.

  ‘That’s Wayne,’ said April, ‘Cool mask, huh? He took it off an ERT or a SWAT guy, I forget which.’

  Wayne lifted the man high over his head, held him there for a moment, and then tossed him into the river. A few seconds later, the man’s head, all eyes and mouth, rose up out of the foaming water.

  Freeze frame.

  Then the man was swept over the lip of the waterfall. He fell, and kept falling. The camera followed him all the way down to the lake. He made quite a splash.

  Lewis waited for him to come bobbing to the surface. It never happened.

  April squatted in front of him. She had papers, a plastic baggie of fine-cut marijuana.

  ‘You smoke dope?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘This time being sometime,’ said April, ‘I guess you’re going to smoke some now.’ Her long white fingers made quick work of the fixin’s. She lit up with a heavy table lighter, inhaled deeply, coughed, and lightly thumped her chest.

  ‘Yummy. Your turn’

  Lewis accepted the cigarette, toked up. It was a lot more fun than being zapped. Or so he thought.

  ‘Ever chase the dragon, Lewis?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  April smiled a smug, smug smile. The marijuana had been laced with heroin, and Lewis had unwittingly taken that crucial first small step towards addiction.

  Lewis, stressed to the max, didn’t need much urging to smoke the joint down to his fingernails. Soon enough, he was basking in a sensation of great serenity and contentment.

  Chapter 6

  Inspector Homer Bradley leaned back in his burgundy leather chair. His feet hurt. Both of them. During the weekend, he’d bought a pair of expensive Italian shoes. He was wearing them for the first time since trying them on. They pinched his toes. Was that because they were Italian, and therefore somewhat licentious? Why had they felt so comfortable when he’d worn them in the store? He had no idea. Maybe he’d been wearing thinner socks. In future, he would have to remember never to shop for shoes while wearing thin socks.

  Parker and Willows were standing there in front of his desk, looking serious. What was it they’d wanted?

  He said, ‘Sorry, I must have drifted off.’ Should he tell them about the shoes? No way. A detective’s life was too frivolous as it was. He smiled up at Parker. ‘Would you mind repeating that?’

  ‘Just reminding you that we’d arranged to take some personal time, Inspector.’

  Bradley checked his watch. He’d missed lunch. He was starving, but he didn’t want to go anywhere because of the damn shoes. He said, ‘Both of you, right? Didn’t we already talk about this?’

  Parker nodded.

  Willows said, ‘Claire’s lease is up. She has to be out of her apartment by midnight.’

  ‘You weren’t evicted, I hope.’

  Parker smiled.

  Bradley didn’t ask where she was moving to. He didn’t need to, because he’d find out soon enough. Departmental regulations demanded that she immediately notify him of any change of address.

  Willows said, ‘Claire’s moving in with me.’

  Bradley grunted. He tried to think of something appropriate to say, but his feet so nagged at him that it was hard to think clearly. He reached down and untied and loosened his shoelaces.

  Was that better? Not that he noticed, no.

  ‘No?’ said Parker, startled.

  Had Bradley been thinking out loud? If so, he hoped it was for the first and last time.

  He said, ‘Your desks clear?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Parker. The murder business had been slow, lately. Vancouver is the crime capital of Canada, and her citizens are proud of it, even if they’re too bashful to say so. But demographics, the black art of numerologists, play a big part in crime rates. Vancouver’s population was ageing. It’s hard to work up a whole lot of enthusiasm for an eight-hour shift of breaking and entering when your arthritis is absolutely killing you. Much nicer to stay in bed.

  ‘Have fun, kids, but don’t turn off your beepers.’ Bradley waved them out of the office, and swung his chair around so his knees were clear of his desk. He grunted as he removed each shoe; first the left and then the right. On any level, nothing felt quite so luxurious as release from captivity.

  He wriggled his toes. The shoes had cost him two hundred and eighty bucks, the pair. Maybe he could take them back. No, he couldn’t. The right one was irreparably scuffed. A sour bile rose in his throat. In the department store, his old shoes tucked in the new box, he had veered away from the escalator, thinking he would take the elevator down to mall level, and buy his ex-wife a box of chocolates, a token present to mark her sixtieth birthday.

  A pale woman carrying an umbrella had crowded into the elevator when it stopped at the next floor down. The woman was expensively dressed. She smelled expensive, too. She was in her late twenties, had red hair and green eyes and the sort of complexion usually encountered in a television commercial. Bradley knew
the moment she stepped inside the elevator that she was one of those unfortunate women who live off their beauty, and consequently lack character.

  Someone else had got on, a sopping-wet bicycle courier. The red-haired beauty had shuffled sideways to get away from him. She’d leaned the point of her umbrella onto Bradley’s shoe and put her weight on it. He was certain it was an accident. Even so, the pain had been nothing short of excruciating. Tears had sprung to his eyes. He had ground his teeth, and almost cried out, as he jerked his foot away. He might have whimpered; he wasn’t sure. The pain, and attendant shock, had made him suddenly feel the weight of every single day of his age. The woman had muttered a hasty apology, but in such a way as to subtly convey her disinterest. She hadn’t even bothered to glance in his general direction, and had gotten off right away, at the next floor, eliminating the opportunity for a caustic, withering remark.

  The damn umbrella had slashed deeply across the top of the shoe, scarring it for life.

  Bradley smiled sourly down at his stockinged feet.

  No wonder the damn shoes didn’t fit properly. How could they, when they were so heavily freighted with unpleasant memories.

  *

  Parker wore a snug-fitting black leather jacket, black jeans, and a pair of knobbly street/hiking shoes that were extremely comfortable but made her feet look at least two sizes larger than they actually were. On the job, shoes were always a problem. Her superior officers expected her to look reasonably well-dressed when she was in plainclothes, but at the same time it was crucial that she be able to engage in a hot pursuit, should the opportunity arise. Most of the time she wore sensible flats, or running shoes. Never heels, unfortunately. Police work was anything but glamorous, so that side of her never came out, except when she was off-duty.

  Willows wore a scuffed brown leather jacket that had seen better days, a pair of faded Levi’s, and white Reeboks, sparsely trimmed in a coarse-grained khaki-coloured fabric. The Reeboks were almost brand new. It had taken him a few days to break them in, but now they were so comfortable he was hardly aware that he was wearing them. He did wish they weren’t so startlingly, blindingly, uncompromisingly white. But at the same time he knew they wouldn’t remain pristine as a pair of mobile snowfields for very long. Running shoes were like people; they aged imperceptibly, but inevitably, and shockingly quickly.