by H. P. Bayne
“What’s the problem?” Dez asked, allowing his amusement to play in his tone.
“I forgot to trim the beard this morning.”
“Since when did you care what you look like?”
“Since I started working for Lachlan. I’m not bartending anymore. I want to come off as professional.”
Dez snorted. “Suck up.”
Sully thumped Dez on the arm.
Norm lived in a two-storey house a few blocks from the main street, the type of 1920s-era home people used to order out of a catalog and assemble on site. Given Norm’s transgressions had likely cost him his job seventeen years ago, Dez guessed this place had already been paid for—and given the age of it, likely had been a long time ago.
The man who answered the door was significantly younger than the Davenports, although he appeared to be working on catching up. Years of alcoholism showed in his reddened skin and puffy face, and the odour rolling off him told Dez he’d been in the middle of tipping it back when his visitors arrived. Yet he was steady on his feet and his eyes remained focused, suggesting he had been drinking long enough for life to make him all but immune to the usual effects of booze.
“Yes?” The word was spoken clearly, no signs of slurring.
“Are you Norm Phelan?” Dez asked.
The man’s eyes shifted from Dez to Sully and back again. Suspicion personified. “I am. Why?”
Dez made the introductions. “Desmond Braddock and Sullivan Gray. We’re private investigators looking into the disappearance of a young man, and your name came up.”
“I don’t know anything about a missing man.”
“Boy, technically,” Dez said. “He’s just seventeen. Could we talk with you a few minutes about it?”
Norm didn’t close the door in their faces, which was a positive. But he didn’t step aside either. He crossed his arms and watched Dez, as if awaiting further explanation.
“Uh, could we talk inside?” Dez asked.
Norm seemed to be repressing a sigh as he stepped back from the door, making way for the two of them. That was as far as they were getting, though. Norm stationed himself in the gap between entryway and the hall leading to the main floor rooms, and it appeared this was exactly where he would stay. His arms had yet to unfold as he continued to regard them through eyes half-narrowed.
“What is it I’m supposed to know about a missing kid?” he asked.
“Nothing directly,” Dez said. “It’s more about who the kid is. Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable sitting down?”
“Nope.”
Dez shrugged. “Okay. The kid we’re looking for is named Gabe Pembroke, but he was born a Whitebear. His father died when Gabe was a baby. The man’s name was Tim Whitebear.”
The drop in colour on Norm’s face and the way his jaw muscles clenched told Dez no further explanation was necessary.
Norm put a hand out to press against the wall. His head and shoulders swivelled as if he were looking for a place to sit down.
“Are you all right?” Sully asked.
Norm didn’t answer. He instead stumbled a little as he left his spot by the wall and made his way into a room off to the side.
Dez exchanged a glance with Sully before deciding they’d need to follow. He slid his feet from his boots but left his coat on before tailing Norm into what proved to be a sitting room. The classic style of the home wasn’t reflected in its interior, old, beaten furniture and cheap, heavily worn carpet revealing little had been done to upgrade the place since at least the 1980s. Dez guessed Norm had inherited the place from his parents, but he wasn’t about to ask. Clearly, this wasn’t the moment for small talk.
“Mr. Phelan?” Sully asked.
“You’re pronouncing it wrong,” Norm said, weakly. “We’ve always said it Fay-lan not Fee-lin.”
“Sorry.”
Norm had dropped into a yet-upright recliner. He slouched forward, elbows on knees. “Haven’t heard that name in a long time.”
“So I don’t need to remind you?” Dez asked.
Norm’s eyes snapped to Dez’s face. “Remind me? I’ve spent the past seventeen years trying to forget.”
Dez took a chance at sitting on what looked to be a very rickety couch. It held, though he noted Sully opted to remain standing by the wall.
“It must have been a horrible experience,” Dez said.
“Can’t begin to tell you. One second, I’m coming around the bend in the line. Next, there’s someone lying there in front of me. Sickening feeling as all hell, pulling those brakes and knowing there’s no way to stop in time. Nothing you can do but sit there, waiting. Waiting for the inevitable.”
Norm’s eyes had lost focus, and Dez could only imagine he was seeing it again as it happened. Tim’s unconscious form on the tracks, drawing closer and closer in the bright light of the engine.
The very idea of it made Dez sick.
He debated whether waiting Norm out a bit was better than simply diving back in. He decided if it were him, he’d want to be pulled out of that image as soon as was humanly possible.
“Our intention isn’t to make you relive anything,” Dez said. “But we have some questions.”
“What would any of this have to do with a missing kid?”
“It seems he was out at the spot the last night he was seen. We don’t know for sure there’s a connection, but given we’ve got a young person’s safety to worry about, we’re not leaving any stones unturned. What do you remember about what happened to Mr. Whitebear?”
“Basically what I told you. I didn’t see him until it was too late. I pulled the brakes as soon as I realized he was there, but there wasn’t time.”
“And the fact you were intoxicated didn’t have any impact? Delayed reaction maybe?”
Norm fired Dez a glare. “No. It didn’t have an impact. Investigation cleared me on that count. Yes, I was drinking, and it was against the law and railway regulations. But the cops and the prosecutors determined—rightly so—even if I’d been sober, I wouldn’t have been able to avoid the situation. We had nearly seventy cars behind us and were going fifty miles an hour when I saw the guy. Those speeds with that load, you can count on a mile or more before you come to a full stop. That’s a long time to think about the fact you’re going to run over a man. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it, except blow that damn horn and pray.”
“Did you recognize him at the time?”
“Not until we came to a stop and got out to check on him. Even then, it was hard to tell at first. The state of him, well ....” His words hung in the air as he dropped his eyes to his lap.
Dez pictured the scene in his own head and promptly tried to push it back out. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve tried to forget about it. You just don’t erase that sort of thing. So you want to tell me again why you’re dredging this up?”
“Like I said, the guy we’re looking for went out there and now he’s gone.”
“So maybe he’s suicidal like his dad. Those things run in families, don’t they?”
Dez was debating whether to share or hold back that critical piece of information when Sully made the decision for him. “We have reason to think Tim Whitebear’s death might not have been a suicide after all.”
Norm found new reason to blanch. “What?”
“We’re just checking into it at this point, but there are definitely some questions.”
Norm held up a hand, as if to stop the conversation in its tracks. “Hold on, now. You’re not suggesting I ran Whitebear over on purpose, are you? Because if you are—”
Dez sat forward, cutting in quickly. “We’re not suggesting anything like that. We’re looking into the possibility someone put him out on those tracks so he’d be lying there when you rolled in. That’s it. I guess the question then becomes: Did you see anything that night? Anything suspicious? Anyone hanging around the tracks? Any vehicles nearby?”
“No. I sure didn’t. And I’ll tell you why. Even if s
omeone had been there, I sure as hell wouldn’t have noticed them. My vision was pinholed on his body lying on the tracks. Everything around him disappeared. Might as well have had blinders on.”
Dez nodded. Norm’s words rang true. Dez had been in a few tense situations during his years with the police, and he understood pinholed senses. When you were facing something that intense, everything else faded into the background. A war could be raging on one side, a brass band playing on the other, and all you’d know was that single, potentially life-altering threat right in front of you.
Dez exchanged a glance with Sully and received a nod in reply. They’d got about all they needed from Norm. Dez had been hoping he’d seen something—or someone—standing near the tracks, something to point them toward Tim’s killer.
No such luck.
Dez stood. “I think we’ve asked you all we need to for the moment, Mr. Phelan. I’m sorry we had to, as you said, dredge this up. We really didn’t have a choice.”
Norm nodded, but didn’t look up. Nor did he move as Dez and Sully put their boots back on in the entryway and left the house.
Dez dropped back into the driver’s seat of his SUV and keyed on the ignition to let the engine warm for a minute.
“I feel sorry for the guy,” Dez said to Sully. “Shitty thing to have to carry around with you.”
He sensed Sully’s eyes on him and turned to meet his gaze. Sully’s expression held a question.
“Something you saw before or something you experienced?”
“Not me,” Dez said. “Someone else, but it was horrible to see it happen. Not too long after I started with the KRPD, I took a call to a vehicle versus pedestrian on the freeway. I was one of the first on scene, and I was asked to get an initial statement from the semi driver who’d hit the guy. He was sitting there behind the wheel. Didn’t move, didn’t respond to questions. Just completely shellshocked. Took me a while to even get him to step out of the cab. Witnesses told us the pedestrian had been on the shoulder, and as soon as the semi got close, he stepped out in front of it. Suicide by semi. No idea how the driver is now, but I’ll venture to say he’s not driving truck anymore.”
“That sucks,” Sully said.
Dez grunted his agreement.
“I don’t know,” Sully said.
“Don’t know what?”
“How sure are we Norm’s intoxication didn’t impact his ability to stop?”
Dez pointed to the file, crammed into the spot between Sully and the centre console. “If you’ve got questions, the answer should be in there. From the quick look I had, I can tell you they had railway officials and experts involved along with the usual forensics members and crash scene investigators. Then everything went through the Crown’s office. A lot of eyes were on that file, and far as I can see, no one on board this thing was in a position to owe Norm Phelan a damn thing—especially since the dead guy was working at the company’s head office. They would have measured the distance from the curve to the Edge Creek crossing, and they would have done the speed-to-stop calculations. It’s not a matter of opinion so much as science. If the calculations are right—and there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t be—then that’s enough to prove it right there.”
Sully nodded. “Okay. I hear you.”
“Really, all our killer needed to do was figure out when the train was due and time everything so he could have Tim on the line when it reached that location. Not too complicated.”
“Something feels off to me. No idea what. Just something.”
Dez turned in his seat to better face Sully, draping his arm over the steering wheel. “What, exactly?”
“I have the feeling Pete Davenport is hanging around, and he isn’t happy with Norm.”
“Makes sense, right? I mean, there he was, stuck in a bathroom while his drunk conductor was running over a colleague. I can imagine that sort of thing might stick in a person’s craw.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Sully sighed heavily. “Not that I need more ghosts in my life, but there are moments I wish I could communicate with the non-homicides. It might answer a few questions, or at least let me help more.”
With nothing much to say, Dez settled for patting Sully on the shoulder. Then he turned back to face front, put the vehicle into drive and pulled away from Norm Phelan’s house.
Dez had planned a return home, but a call from Lachlan changed his plans.
“My cop buddy gave me some info on the graffiti incident,” Lachlan said through the SUV’s audio speaker system. “Meet me at my place.”
As usual, Lachlan didn’t wait on a reply, simply hanging up before Dez had an opportunity to ask questions or argue.
“Guess we’re not done for the day, after all,” Dez grumbled upon pressing the end button on his console screen.
Sully shrugged. “I’ve got no life anyway.”
“Fine for you,” Dez said. “I do have a life. Or I used to, anyway.”
Lachlan, seated on the sofa with a notepad in front of him on the coffee table, was his usual picture of impatience when Dez and Sully arrived.
“About time,” he said.
“We were clear across town,” Dez said. “You’re lucky we got here this soon. The traffic was cooperative for a change.”
“Whatever. Sit down.”
Dez took Lachlan’s easy chair, leaving the spot of the couch next to Lachlan for Sully.
“It sounds like Tim wasn’t the only one who was targeted with graffiti that week,” Lachlan said. “There were others—six all together, all people of colour. In total, three African Americans, two Asians and Tim being the lone Indigenous person. Like I thought, the vehicle taggings occurred during a visit to the city by a well-known white supremacist, guy named Wallace Becker. Becker had been taking a recruitment drive, going town-to-town on an underground speaking tour. He was hitting up known groups who shared similar ideologies: KKK, neo-Nazis, etcetera.
“At the time, Kimotan Rapids had a small, loosely grouped band of racist schmucks who called themselves Adam’s Children. They operated under some sort of religious ideology that Adam and Eve were the start of the human race. They believed both were white, and so represented the type of humanity God had envisioned when creating man. Everyone else was, in their warped view, an abomination—other races were created either through early mutations or crossbreeding with animals.”
The heat of anger built inside Dez. “If we need to deal with some asshole in this group, you and Sully are going to have to do it without me.”
Lachlan looked up from his notebook. “What’s the problem?”
Sully answered for Dez. “His wife is Indigenous.”
Dez leaned forward, fixing Lachlan in a glare meant more for the situation than his boss. “Which also means my daughter’s half. If someone starts spouting off racist shit around me, I’m not likely to respond well.”
“Surely, you’ve dealt with racists before,” Lachlan said. “Whether on the job as a cop or while in your personal life.”
“I have. Twice, my colleagues had to send me out of earshot of the bastards we were dealing with. Eva’s always handled that sort of garbage gracefully. I’m about as graceful as a drunk buffalo.”
“Noted,” Lachlan said. “Fine. We’ll figure out a way to deal with it.”
“Maybe we won’t have to,” Sully said. “I mean, it seems like a bit of a stretch at this point, doesn’t it? Even if our local racists were riled up at the time by some bigwig white supremacist, there’s a long distance to travel between vandalism and murder.”
“You’re right. But it still bears a look, given what I was told about the identity of one member of the local group.” Lachlan paused long enough to raise an eyebrow. “According to my buddy, word at the time was that someone working for Northern Rail was a member of Adam’s Children.”
“Who?” Dez asked.
“Don’t know,” Lachlan said. “But you can bet your ass I’m going to find out.”
12
&nbs
p; It was too late to head back out to Lindon Mills, so Lachlan called it a day—much to Dez’s relief.
“I still think it’s a stretch to think someone tagging cars with racist slurs would go so far as to kill someone,” Dez said.
“No stone unturned, Braddock,” Lachlan said before getting out of the SUV.
Dez dropped Sully off at his apartment before carrying on to his own house. Eva had made dinner, leaving a plate for Dez in the fridge.
“Sorry we didn’t wait,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be getting back, and I didn’t want to call in case you were in the middle of something.”
Dez popped the plate into the microwave and keyed in one minute. “No problem. Thanks for making this. God knows working for Lachlan doesn’t always mean time for eating.”
His food warmed, Dez carried it to the kitchen table. Eva brought them each a glass of water and sat next to him.
“Kayleigh’s running around with Pax in the backyard,” she said. “She’s really taken to him. Sully’s sure he doesn’t mind his dog staying with us?”
Dez finished his bite before answering. “I think he misses having Pax with him twenty-four-seven, but he also recognizes our job isn’t the most convenient life for a dog.” He took another bite and talked around a half-full mouth. “Honestly, I don’t mind. I always wanted a dog, and Pax is awesome.”
Eva took a sip of water then leaned forward, elbows on the table and eyes on Dez. “How’s your case going?”
“Honestly? I’m not happy about it. If dealing with a ghost wasn’t bad enough, it looks like we’re going to have to poke into the world of white supremacy.”
Eva smiled knowingly. “Are you going to be able to handle that?”
“Without busting heads, you mean?”
Her lingering smile formed her answer.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Not much choice, is there?”