by Jeremy Bates
Tucking the flashlight beneath an armpit, he lit up another cigarette. He would miss his police work when he retired in two years’ time, he mused, cold, wet nights included. He would only be sixty years old, but he wanted to spend more time with Nancy and Zeph. Go camping on the weekends. See more of the province. Hell, maybe even more of the country. Travel like that was never an option when you were on duty seven days a week.
Paul would have preferred to spend the rest of his days in the police station’s constable quarters. He had lived there his entire life. But the old have to make way for the new; that was how the cookie crumbled. If his son Joseph had followed in his footsteps and became the next police chief, Paul and Nancy might have remained put. But Joseph had not followed in his footsteps. Not even close. He had chosen to walk the other side of the law.
Paul often wondered where he’d gone wrong with the boy. He had been a good father, he thought. Certainly better than some of the other fathers in town whose kids had turned out all right. So why did Joseph turn out so rotten?
Drugs were the easy answer. Joseph got into them after high school when he went to work as a snowboard instructor at Whistler Blackcomb. A lot of partying went on there among the staff, many of whom were backpackers from as far away as Europe and Australia. Most kids experimented with drugs at one point or another in their adolescence. Some decided they weren’t for them and steered clear in the future. Some continued to use them recreationally. And some, unfortunately, developed a habit. Joseph got a taste for heroin. Within a year of leaving home he was nearly unrecognizable from his old self. Gaunt, pale skin, puffy eyes, pinpoint pupils. Paul confronted him during the Easter weekend when he came back to visit, which was probably the wrong tactic, because Joseph never returned again. Instead, he turned his efforts to building himself a pretty extensive criminal record. Then he went off the radar for six years before turning up in the news as one of two suspects charged with a string of burglaries in the Okanagan Valley. He was found guilty and spent the following two years in prison. Over the next decade he rose through the ranks of a well-known criminal gang until he was sent behind bars once more for cocaine trafficking, and then again, most recently, for smuggling weapons across the border.
If his son ever wanted to turn his life around, Paul would be there for him, but this seemed like wishful thinking, and Paul had long ago decided he would not waste any more of his time worrying about someone who clearly did not worry about anybody but himself.
A few minutes and another cigarette later, Paul came upon the Ryerson’s driveway. It was completely overgrown with weeds and scrub and bush. Paul only knew it was there from memory. He played the flashlight beam over the trees before stopping on a dilapidated white slab of wood nailed to the trunk of a cedar. The black, hand-painted letters spelled THE RYERSONS. He aimed the beam in the direction he knew the cabin to be. He couldn’t see it through the thick vegetation.
Ahead, down the road, he spotted a flash of light.
In the next instant it disappeared.
Despite Paul standing statue-still for a full minute, it didn’t return.
His imagination? The reflection of his flashlight beam off the lake, or an old road sign?
Someone else out here with him?
Who? Rex Chapman? But why would he be skulking through the woods at this hour?
Paul resumed walking. The Chapman’s cottage was still more than a kilometer away, and suddenly he wanted to get this courtesy call over with as quickly as possible.
CHAPTER 9
“There it is,” Rex said, pointing to the rusty red pickup truck parked out in front of the Williams’ dilapidated cabin. They were standing fifty feet away from it, to the side of the road, hidden in the shadows of the trees.
“Are we going to drive it?” Bobby asked.
“If I can find keys, bud,” he said.
“It looks scary,” Ellie said.
“It’s not scary, sweetie,” Tabitha said. “It’s just a truck.”
“It looks scary, like a ghost truck.”
“You and Bobby are going to stay here with your mom,” Rex told her. “I’ll go check it out, make sure there are no ghosts. When the coast is clear, I’ll wave you over. Got that?”
“Look in the back seat too,” Ellie said. “That’s where I sit.”
“Will do,” he said. Hunching over, Rex hurried toward the truck, trying to make as little noise as possible. Nobody should be in the cabin. Only Tony and Daisy had been in the pickup truck when it passed them on the road. There were no other vehicles parked out here. Still, too much was at stake right now not to be extra cautious.
He stopped at the truck and tried the passenger door. It was unlocked! He swung it back with a groan of metal and hopped up on the bench seat. The cab smelled of engine oil and grease. No keys dangled in the ignition. They weren’t behind either of the sun visors. He checked beneath the seats and in the glove box with little hope. If Tony had left the keys in the truck, it would have been for convenience’s sake. He wouldn’t be hiding them, not out here.
Unsurprisingly, all he discovered was an empty Mountain Dew can, the vehicle’s logbook, and some tools.
He exited the truck. Looking back the way he’d come, he couldn’t see Tabitha or the kids. It was too dark. Regardless, he knew they were there, watching him. He waved them over.
Shadows moved. Then Tabitha materialized, holding kids’ hands.
“Did you find them?” she whispered when they reached him.
“No,” he said. “They must be inside.”
Her face fell as she looked at the cabin. He looked too. It featured a shingled roof, clapboard siding, and an overgrown garden. Candlelight illuminatd the windowpanes.
“I’ll go get them,” he added. “You guys wait in the truck.”
***
Sitting in the front of the pickup truck, behind the steering wheel, Ellie snuggled closer against her mom’s warm body, breathing in the familiar smell of her perfume, which made her feel safer.
She wished they had never come to T-Rex’s stupid cabin. It had been fun for a bit, but now it wasn’t fun at all. She would much rather be back in her house, playing with her Barbie dolls on the carpet in her bedroom. She had just gotten Barbie’s Dreamhorse for being good when her mom had to run errands on the weekends and Ness had to look after her. The horse could walk and nod either yes or no when you asked it questions. You could also feed it the carrots that had come in the package (but not real carrots, she’d discovered). And when she got bored of the horsey, she could play with her Lite Brite. Right now she was making a picture of a train, but she was missing some of the pegs to finish it. They might be under her bed. That’s where everything that didn’t want to be found seemed to go. Last time she had been under there she had recovered two of her black-and-white penguin bath toys.
“I want to go home,” she murmured.
“We’ll be going home soon, sweetie,” her mom said, kissing the top of her head.
“Can I have ice cream when we get there?”
“Sure.”
“In a cone?”
“Okay.”
Her mom sounded strange, and Ellie looked up. Her face was sad, and she was crying.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” she asked, concerned.
“Nothing, hon.” She kissed the top of Ellie’s head again. “I’m happy.”
“But you’re crying.”
“It’s happy-crying.”
Ellie frowned. Happy-crying?
“Like when it rains when it’s sunny out?” she asked.
“Yes, like that. You’re such a smart little girl.”
“Smarter than Bobby?”
“You’re both very smart.”
“But I’m smarter because I’m older—”
“Ellie!”
“What?”
“You know what.”
Ellie didn’t. Really, she didn’t. But she stayed quiet anyway.
Her mom might start angry-crying, and s
he didn’t want that.
***
When Rex stepped inside the Williams’ cabin, he expected to find evidence of a violent struggle in the form of overturned chairs, splattered blood, and a general air of helter-skelter. To the contrary, however, the scene that greeted him seemed perfectly innocuous. A half-dozen candles flickered silently, while embers glowed warmly in the stone fireplace. The sturdy log pine furniture was all upright and where it should be. The rustic décor—everything from the heavy curtains to the well-worn rugs that covered the knotty wooden floorboards incorporated wildlife motifs—appeared undamaged. A bear-sculpture end table held a spread of crackers, cheese, olives, and dips. On the dining table, a bottle of wine chilled in an ice bucket, next to two half-filled champagne flutes and a deck of Bicycle playing cards, dealt into two hands.
All the trappings of a romantic evening, Rex thought—so what the hell happened to change that?
He didn’t waste time speculating. Instead, he moved quickly through the room, eyes darting to and fro, each passing second feeling like a knife twisting deeper into his gut.
If he’d been wrong to come here…
If Tony caught up to them…
Shoving aside these thoughts, Rex entered a narrow hallway. The first door on the right opened to a small bedroom. The single bed was neatly made, not slept in. A dated Tom Clancy hardback novel, a bookmark protruding from the pages, sat expectantly on the night table, as if waiting for the absent reader to return and pick up again where he or she had left off.
He didn’t see keys or a phone anywhere, so he moved on.
The next room was locked.
Rex drove his shoulder into the door to no avail. He looked up. All of the interior walls rose only three-quarters of the distance to the open rafter ceiling. The unusual architectural decision was likely made so the heat from the fireplace could warm every room in the wintertime.
In any event, it would allow him access to the room.
Rex proceeded to the kitchen. Vegetables waiting to be sliced and diced sat in a bowl on the roughly hewn countertop, along with a package of croutons, a head of lettuce, and a jar of pasta sauce. A glance inside the pot on one of the stovetop burners revealed a clump of cooked spaghetti in about an inch of boiling water.
He clicked off the gas to prevent a fire, then grabbed a chair from the set around the drop leaf table. Back at the locked room, he set the chair against the wall and stepped onto the seat. His head was now level with the top of the partition, though he couldn’t see over it. Tucking the flashlight inside his jacket, he hooked his arms over the top beam and tried to hoist himself up, kicking his legs feebly. This didn’t work, and he touched his feet back down on the chair seat. On his second attempt he placed one foot on the brass doorknob, using it as a step.
This time his head and shoulders cleared the partition, and he peeked into the locked room.
CHAPTER 10
“Hello?” Paul called, sticking his head inside the Chapman’s cabin. “Rex? Rex Chapman?” he added, not expecting an answer. Empty residences emitted their own uniquely forbidden vibe, and he was feeling that vibe right now.
Paul turned around, looking down again at Daisy Butterfield, who lay in a pool of thick blood on the porch. When he’d removed the quilt that had covered her a few moments ago, he’d expected to discover the body of Rex Chapman, or his lady friend. Not poor Daisy, who Paul had known since she was a kid selling lemonade from a handmade stand out in front her house on Hangman’s Lane. She left Lillooet after high school, earned a teaching certificate from the University of Victoria, and found work in a private school in West Vancouver. When her mother, Darla Butterfield, had a stroke four years ago (widowed a year or so before that when her husband, Joe, died of natural causes in his sleep), Daisy returned to Lillooet to become her fulltime nurse while also teaching at the elementary school.
Paul pulled his eyes away from Daisy and surveyed the wet, black night, fighting the urge to flee back to the patrol car. It wasn’t finding the body of someone he knew that was spooking him so badly. It wasn’t even that the body had been opened up like a can of beans, though this was certainly unnerving. It was the fact the body was on the doorstep to Rex Chapman’s cabin, where Rex Chapman’s family had disappeared so mysteriously almost forty years earlier.
Could that be a coincidence? If so, it was one hell of a big one, and a lifetime of policing had made Paul cynical enough to not put much stock in coincidences.
Which left…what?
A sicko playing games?
A copycat killer?
Tony Lyons?
Paul focused on that last thought. Tony Lyons. Sure—why jump to outlandish conclusions when nine times out of ten the culprit of a domestic murder was a spited spouse or lover.
Tony Lyons had wandered into Lillooet a little over a year ago, and he’d been keeping company with Daisy for maybe half that time. Paul had taken an immediate disliking to the man. For starters, Tony had one of those bulldog faces that made him look as if at any moment he might hit someone. And his terse personality didn’t help his image. Unlike the majority of residents of Lillooet who were more than happy to stop and have a yak with Paul when they saw him around town, Tony never offered a word or even a nod of recognition when they crossed paths. This had led Paul to believe the man might be prejudiced toward cops, perhaps due to a criminal past, and so he ran Tony’s name through the National Canadian Police Information Center, discovering he had a laundry list of misdemeanor convictions, as well as three felonies for aggravated animal cruelty, mail and wire fraud, and sexual assault.
Which made him a prime suspect in what happened here tonight.
Moreover, Paul thought, Tony would be somewhere in his mid-fifties, which, in 1981, would put him in his late teens.
Plenty old enough to commit kidnapping and murder.
“Jesus and Mother Mary,” Paul mumbled. He set the flashlight on the porch railing and took his cell phone from a pocket. British Columbia contracted policing responsibilities in small villages and rural towns, and even some of the larger cities, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The nearest detachment was in Whistler. They could be here inside of three hours.
Before Paul dialed a single number, however, a whining, buzzing noise from behind the cabin froze him stiff. It sounded like an electrical tool, a circular saw, perhaps, or a drill.
It lasted for maybe two or three seconds, then abruptly stopped.
Swallowing the hard knot of fear suddenly clogging his throat, Paul shoved the phone away and snatched the Streamlight from the railing. Gripping it as you would an ice pick, he held it beneath his pistol so his hands were back to back and the flashlight and weapon were aimed in the same direction—toward the back of the cabin.
“Tony? That you?” he asked, working saliva into his mouth. “It’s Paul here. Police. I’m armed. Best thing to do would be to come out with your hands up.”
Paul forced his legs to move, taking one cautious step after another. He stopped at the corner of the cabin. He listened. He didn’t hear anything aside from his quick, susurrate breathing.
Now or never.
He stepped around the corner, sweeping the flashlight and pistol from side to side.
Nobody there.
He had not imagined that sound—
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Looking up, Paul’s eyes bulged and he opened his mouth to scream, but a black terror the likes of which he had never experienced muted his voice, and all he issued before the attack came was a pitiful, wheezing, “No…”
CHAPTER 11
Bobby kept his eyes glued to the pickup truck’s window, which looked directly toward the rundown cabin. On other more normal days, he would have found it really weird sitting next to Ellie’s mom in such a tight space like the front of a car. In fact, he couldn’t think of many times when it was just Ellie’s mom, Ellie, and him, without his dad around too. There were nights like when Ellie’s mom tucked them in at bedtime, but he didn
’t have to speak to her then because he always pretended he was already asleep. He didn’t have to speak to her now either...but the other really weird thing was that he sort of wanted to speak to her. He felt sick on his inside—not like when he had a cold; more like when he knew he was going to get in trouble for something—and he thought maybe by talking to her, that sickness might go away a little.
He looked down at his hands fidgeting in his lap. “Ellie’s Mom?” he said, not knowing what else to call her. He didn’t have a nickname for her, like Ellie did with his dad.
“Yes, Bobby?” He felt her eyes on him, though he wouldn’t meet them.
“Is Barry coming after us?” he asked.
“Barry? Who’s Barry, sweetheart?”
“The man who crashed his car in the woods.”
“What man, Bobby?”
“He crashed his car a long time ago. My dad showed me the car, remember? It’s all broken and everything. So maybe Barry couldn’t get home and is still in the woods?”
“I think your dad was just telling you a story, Bobby.”
“But I saw the car!”
“Didn’t your dad say it was close to a hundred years old? That means whoever once owned it—this Barry—died a long time ago.”
“Is he in heaven, Mommy?” Ellie asked.
“If he was a good man, yes,” her mom replied.
“Is he watching us right now?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“He probably has other things he wants to do.”