by Geonn Cannon
She ignored the debris and focused on the lock. She didn’t want to literally break anything if she didn’t have to, and the lock cooperated by being ridiculously easy to jimmy. She pushed the sliding door shut behind her to block out any nature smells that might have interfered with her smell-identification. She moved toward the couch and focused on the cushion that had obviously seen the most use. She sniffed as she went past, picking up a definite trace of the man who lived there. It was good, but she knew where the strongest odors would be lurking.
At the end of the hall, she found what was definitely the bedroom of a bachelor. Unmade bed under a window shaded by ratty curtains, clothes overflowing from the hamper in the corner, and a collection of porn on DVD next to the boxy television. It was nice to know some people were still relatively old-school when it came to getting off.
Ari closed the door and settled in the center of the room. It would be better if she was the wolf, but transforming would make escape nearly impossible if someone happened to come home. Her senses were heightened even when she was in human form, so she closed her eyes and focused on what she had smelled the other night in the parking garage. There had been dozens of scents and while, at the time, the wolf probably could have sorted them all out into individuals, she was working with faded memory and what was basically hearsay from a completely different side of her brain.
“There was,” she whispered, “cloves and cinnamon and perfume, cologne, body odor, pine needles, no that’s not important, there was… cigarettes, smashed under leather, and dirt and oil stains, oil from the cars, no, forget that.” She was barely aware she was speaking aloud. She breathed in and let the air out through her mouth. There was something, something small, something…
She opened her eyes and looked around the room. A glass jar of cologne called Creed Aventus. She’d never heard of it, but she sprayed a bit in the air and her mind instantly twigged back to the parking garage. “Oak moss,” she whispered, “vanilla, pineapple, apples.” She took out her phone and looked up the name. It was an extremely expensive cologne, she discovered, so the odds of a coincidence were incredibly small. Small enough that she was willing to discount the possibility entirely. She looked at the jar accusingly as if she could see Halphen in it.
“You were there. You were the driver, you son of a bitch.”
She was standing in the home of the man responsible for hurting Dale, and the urge to make him pay was almost overwhelming. She knew that doing so would only announce that she’d been there, and she didn’t want to tip her hand yet. She looked at the cologne, the three-hundred-dollar bottle of stinky water, and went into the bathroom. She poured half of what was left into the sink under running water to hopefully mask the scent, then refilled it with tap water. It was petty, yes, but it made her feel good as she returned it to the bedroom.
She spent close to an hour searching the apartment for anything that might clue her in to what Muldoon and the other four were up to. She still hadn’t definitively connected the hit-and-run with the group she’d seen at the Newton Rink, but the two were just unusual enough that she felt they had to be related. Halphen knew Oborin and now they were both employed by the Totems, and Oborin was having a secret meeting with the coach at an ice rink frequented by kids and suburban moms. She’d been hired to find something fishy in the team, and she had a feeling she’d found it.
Whatever was going on behind the scenes, there wasn’t anything in Halphen’s condo to enlighten her. She left through the front door just in case anyone was watching and trekked through the woods back to the car. Once she was safely behind the wheel, she took out her phone and called Dale.
“Bitches Investigations.”
“He’s the guy. Good job, Miss Frye.”
Dale said, “Awesome. I’ll give myself a gold star for the day!”
“Give yourself two.”
“Since I have you on the phone, I found something, too. Max Janus, one of the team’s goalies. Five years ago, a little girl with cancer asked Make-a-Wish for an autograph from him. He came through with a signed helmet, pads, a poster, and a pair of skates. He showed up at the hospital and watched a game with her. When the day was over, he pulled the parents aside and gave them a check to help with her treatment and their expenses. Media didn’t find out about it until a few weeks later when the parents wrote a Facebook post.”
Ari said, “Wow. That’s impressive.”
“Yeah. I just thought that after digging for the worst in all these players, you might be craving something that’ll make your soul feel good. Whatever Muldoon and his four cronies are involved with, there are some amazing people on the team.”
Ari closed her eyes. “Thank you for thinking of that, sweetie. It never even occurred to me, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.”
“Any time. So now that you know who came after us, what’s your plan?”
Ari thought for a moment before she answered. “Track Halphen, if I can find him. If I can’t, I’ll switch focus to one of the other Newton Five.”
“Be careful. They know what you look like and already tried to take you out once.”
Ari shuddered, suddenly grateful Cecily had loaded the office with extra security measures. “Watch your back, too. Hard to run with a bum ankle.”
“I’ll be careful if you are.”
“Deal.”
Ari put the phone down and drove back the way she’d come. At the moment she didn’t care about the Totems. She didn’t even particularly care about what Muldoon was up to or making herself look good for Cecily and GG&M. Her sole purpose for the time being was finding Halphen and making him pay for what he’d done to them. Once she’d done that, solving the rest of it would just be icing on the cake.
Chapter Nine
Once Dale was entrenched in the office, it was easier to stay in her chair and use the crutch as an oar to get around. Before she left for Tukwila, Ari had taken the whiteboard off the wall and propped it up so Dale could access it without standing up. She had pictures of every potential Totems player taped along the long side with a row of information they’d managed to uncover about them. Muldoon and the rest of what Ari was calling the “Newton Five” were grouped on the left-hand side. All of their info was written in red marker, while everyone else got a neutral blue.
She pushed her chair close and wrote under Halphen’s name: “A-hole SOB driver who hurt my foot!” She underlined it twice and glared at the picture she’d downloaded from the website. “Asshole,” she muttered. She put the rubber tip of the crutch against the wall and shoved off, using her good foot to steer the chair back around the desk.
Ari texted her when she got back into city limits to say she would spend the rest of the day sniffing around to see if she could find out what Halphen had been up to since arriving in Seattle. Dale didn’t envy her the legwork; it would involve talking to a lot of people who wouldn’t remember anything clearly, and that was only if she found anyone willing to talk.
Of course, Ari thought that Dale’s side of the investigations was mind-numbingly dull. It was anything but boring to Dale. Finding a hint of a trail somewhere online and following it through public records, then tying things together with a piece from this website and a bit from that website was like working a word puzzle that had been spread across the entire internet. It was fun and she found it exciting to build an actual narrative from the fragments she found.
Ari came back to the office for lunch. They talked about their respective progress in digging up facts - Dale had fleshed out a few more of the players, while Ari was still stumped about how Halphen had been filling his time since coming to Seattle - and Ari massaged Dale’s ankle.
“Have you called the police yet to tell them about Halphen being the driver?”
Ari shook her head. “I wanted to go to them with something more believable than matching his smell. Even if I told them that, I’d have to admit I’d broken into his place. If I don’t find anything solid by tonight, I’ll go to Diana. She
’ll help me figure out what to report.”
“Is she okay?” Dale asked.
“As far as I know. Why?”
“She’s sounded strange the past couple of times we talked.”
Ari said, “Tired? Strung out?” Dale nodded. “I noticed that, too. I’ll bring it up tonight if it’s not awkward.” She looked at her phone to see what time it was. “I should head out. Another few wonderful hours of talking to bartenders who won’t remember serving Halphen and knocking on doors of people who are still at work.”
“Poor puppy.”
They kissed goodbye and Dale went back to her work. Her next target was Yann Olsson, a big Scandinavian ruffian who looked like a cross between Thor from the Marvel movies and Seth Rogen. Olsson came to the Totems from the Senators, for whom he had played since graduating high school. He was twenty-three but built like a house, a monster with the bright smile of a five-year-old. He lived with his parents in Ottawa until he made the move to Seattle. No college, no criminal record, not even a DUI to his name. She went on Tumblr and found a devoted following dedicated to “Yummy Yann.” The first picture she found showed him crouching on a downtown street with his arm around a little girl wearing his Senators jersey.
“Yann Olsson,” she said, “welcome to the ‘good guy’ pile. Seattle will be lucky to have you.”
She made a note and looked at the whiteboard, scanning the names she had yet to dig deep on. Green, Hamilton, Campbell, Vlcek, Gladstone, Neely. There was a chance one of them would end up being a horrible monster but she had a feeling Ari had found the dark side of the team at Newton Ice Rink. Still, it was their job to clear everybody, so she picked one name at random and started over again.
#
It was after dark when Ari parked in front of Diana Macallan’s home. Their relationship with the detective was complicated. She and Ari had dated until Ari did something stupid to betray her trust. For a few years after their breakup, Diana kept running into Ari while she was half-naked in public looking like a strung-out junkie. She was positive Ari was an addict who refused to get help. Ari had finally revealed her true nature during the wolf manoth case and, in the year and a half since, Diana had become one of their strongest allies on the force.
Ari went up onto the porch and lifted her hand, but stopped herself before she knocked. The curtain on the window looking into the living room was open and she could see Diana’s wife, Lucy, slumped asleep on the couch with a book lying open on her chest. Knocking would wake her up and Ari didn’t want to disturb the household any more than necessary. She hesitated and then left the porch to walk around the side of the house.
The kitchen window was also open. Diana was standing at the kitchen counter with her back to the window. Ari tapped on the glass to get her attention. Diana turned and her shoulders jumped at the sight of Ari’s pale face looming out of the darkness. Ari put a finger to her lips and motioned with her head toward the front of the house. Diana rolled her eyes and started through the house. Ari walked back to the porch.
Through the window she saw Diana enter the living room. She looked toward the couch and saw Lucy asleep, and some of the irritation seeped out of her features as she walked to the door, turned on the porchlight, and slipped outside.
“That was kind. Thank you.”
“Of course.” The porch was too narrow for them to get very far from the window, so Ari gestured toward the street. “Let’s take a walk.”
Diana nodded. Ari looked surreptitiously at Diana, worried that she looked even more strung out than she’d sounded on the phone. She was wearing an old T-shirt, the collar stretched out around her neck, and she had more gray hairs sprouting from the center part than she had last time Ari had seen her. She also looked very, very tired. She kept her gaze forward as they reached the sidewalk and turned right toward the cross-street.
“So what’s going on?” Ari asked.
“A lot of stuff.”
“Okay. You don’t have to be more specific if you don’t want to, but…”
Diana pressed her lips together and swallowed. “Lucy hasn’t been feeling well lately. The past few weeks, in fact. I finally convinced her to see a doctor. Cancer.”
Ari grunted and reached out to touch Diana’s arm. “Is… what’s… h-how bad is it?”
“It’s one of the treatable ones, so at least there’s that.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She doesn’t want to draw anymore. The thing she loved more than anything, and she can’t do it anymore. And that frustrates her, so she takes it out on me. And I know why she’s doing it but it still pisses me off so I take it out on her and I feel like shit and…” She took a deep, shuddering breath and put a hand over her face. Ari moved closer and hugged her. “We’ve been fighting a lot. She’s going through the worst time in her life and I’m supposed to be her safe place.”
Ari said, “I know. When my transformations were hurting me so badly it looked like I’d be paralyzed in a few years, Dale and I had our fair share of fights. She would try to help me and I would accuse her of smothering me. She’d leave me alone and I would be mad that she didn’t care I was hurting. Stuff like this makes you feel weak and vulnerable and all you want to do is save yourself. So someone offering to help… sometimes it makes you lash out. I know that’s what I was doing, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. What I did realize, and what I remember about that time now, is how strong Dale was. I know it must have been hell for her, too, but she never let it take her down.”
Diana sniffled. “Dale’s a tough nut.”
“So are you. So is Lucy. Give Dale a call, talk to her about this. I don’t know if she’ll be able to help, but she’s been through it before. And sometimes it helps just to talk.”
“Yeah. Just telling you has felt like a weight off.” She wiped at her cheeks. “So… go ahead. Whatever you came here for, out with it. Background check? License plate?”
Ari said, “Oh. Actually I came here to give you some information.”
“Wow, that’s a change of pace.”
“Yeah. The truck that tried running me and Dale over the other night. The driver was named Vince Halphen. He has a condo in Tukwila.” She handed over the information she’d written down. She’d been cupping the card in her hand, all but forgotten after Diana’s news. “I’d like to be there when you talk to him. If that’s okay.”
Diana angled the card so it caught the glow of a nearby streetlight. “I’ll bring him in tomorrow. Thank you. Not just for this…”
“Any time. Anything you need. If Diana ever needs a ride to or from treatment, we’re just a call away.”
Diana nodded her gratitude and gestured toward the house. “We should head back before she wakes up.” They turned and started back. “So how much of the evidence against this guy did you get while you were on all fours? Oh, god. That sounded filthy.”
Ari laughed. “Actually none. There’s a slight matter of breaking and entering.”
“Of course.”
“And a good amount of my evidence against him would be hard to explain under oath. I do have an extremely acute sense of smell, but…”
Diana said, “Gotcha. The important thing is that we know who to look for. I’ll go over security footage tomorrow and see if I spot him. I’ll let you know if we get lucky.”
“Thanks.”
They were halfway back to the house when Diana’s phone rang. She smiled before she answered. “Hello, Lou.”
The street was quiet enough that Ari could hear Lucy’s response. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Ariadne came by and we went for a walk so we wouldn’t disturb you. We’re on our way back now.”
“Hurry.”
Diana’s expression turned serious. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just…” She trailed off.
“We’re almost there.” Diana’s voice was tender. “I can see the porch from here.”
“Okay. Love you.”<
br />
“Love you, too.”
When she hung up, Ari said, “I think you two are going to be just fine.”
Diana reached out and bumped Ari’s hand with hers. “When you and I broke up, it was because you were immature and self-centered. You used me for information on a case. But you’ve really grown up the past few years. I don’t even recognize the woman I went out with when I look at you.”
Ari said, “Dale’s influence. I think you and I both ended up exactly where we’re supposed to be.”
“I hope so.”
Lucy came out onto the porch as the approached the house. She lifted her hand in greeting to Ari, who returned the gesture.
“Evening, Lucy. Sorry for borrowing your lady.”
“Just as long as you bring her back in one piece.”
Diana turned to Ari. “I’ll give you a call when we track this guy down.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Ari waved to Lucy again and watched Diana head up the walk. She slipped an arm around Lucy’s waist and led her back into the house.
#
Ari picked Dale up at the office and drove her home. At the streetlight on Madison, Ari glanced over to see Dale seemed pensive.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine. I just…” She shrugged. “Usually when we’re both in the car, I drive. We never agreed on that or made it a rule. It’s just something that happens. And now because of my stupid ankle… I didn’t think I’d miss it, but I do.”
Ari reached over and rubbed Dale’s leg before the light turned green. “Lucy has cancer.”