"Name?"
"Pete Trytko. Boston private eye."
The crime scene was cordoned off with yellow tape repeating caution police do not cross in black. The pit beyond resembled an archaeological dig. Crisscross arcs lit the grave as bright as high noon, sheening one side of the earth and timber heaps around the rim. A backhoe and other mechanical beasts lurked in the dark, spooked by the skeleton wrapped in torn plastic with tatters of flesh and cloth clinging to its moldy bones. A skeletal arm reached from the shroud like a zombie summoned to walk with the undead. The crushed skull peeking through the tear reminded Robert of Lindow Man in the British Museum. Dressed in white coveralls with boots and hood attached, Ident cops staked the pit with a crosshatched rope grid to guide their forensic hunt. Those who made murder their business—coroner, pathologist, exhibit man, file coordinator, field investigator, body removal grunts—stood on the rim cracking
jokes about fleshing out the case while plumes of condensed life curled from their lips. Athletic and lean, with short brown hair, a clipped brown mustache, and muddy brown eyes, Corporal Rick Scarlett was the NCO in charge. Like Tipple, he was a veteran of the Headhunter Squad, partnered back then with Katherine Spann as one of the Flying Patrols. Spann outshone him, so she made Special X, and Scarlett returned to duty with GIS. When Craven became an X-Man during the Ripper case, the corporal replaced him at North Van Detachment.
tfc Rick."
kt Chief."
"Thanks for the call. What have we got here?' r
"Skull crushed. A dozen blows. Hammer most likely. Backhoe ripped the plastic when it dug up the corpse, baring a trench coat pocket at one end of the tear. In it, we found these."
Sheathing his piano-player hands in latex gloves, De-Clercq opened the plastic pouch Scarlett offered him. Stuck together when the corpse decomposed, a wallet and small black notebook fell into his palm. A laminated PI license issued to Pete Trytko by the State of Massachusetts was tucked in the wallet. The book contained jotted notes. Reading between the lines, DeClercq grasped the who and why of Trytko's death. The last entry was December 4, a year ago. . . .
Bo wen Island, British Columbia Friday, December 4, 1992
Damn airlines, Luna thought, hammering one of the small wheels on the bottom of her suitcase back into line. If they don't lose your bags, they wreck them. Hers had been damaged on a recent cross-country junket, a quaint Canadian custom where taxpayers fund CanLit authors Ottawa thinks they should embrace but no one buys. Surviving in the marketplace is strictly for the States.
Someone knocked at the door.
Mainland residents had learned to triple-lock their homes, adopting the bunker mentality that comes w'th "world-class status," but here on rural Bowen that wasn't the practice yet. Luna walked from her bedroom
to the porch door, and swung it open to face a stranger on the dripping deck. He raised a Polaroid camera and flashed it in her eyes.
•Hey!" Luna grumbled, raising the hand without the hammer to shield her face, the hammer hidden by the half-open door. "What gives, man?"
"Luna Darke? Lenore Dodd? Nona Stone? Name's Pete Trytko. Boston private eye."
Luna froze.
The man on the porch backed by rain smelled of last night's booze, his eyes as bloodshot as the label of Johnnie Walker Red, quaffed no doubt as a bracer to ward off this harsh Canadian cold. In that regard he fit the Hammett/Chandler archetype, but everything else about him said the guy was a wuss. The dandruff on his trench coat. The face like Elmer Fudd. He even wore one of those dorky hats with flaps hanging over the ears. "Chiclets" replaced several teeth knocked out by a philandering husband caught in the wrong bed. Compared to him, Columbo was a dude.
"I'm Luna Darke," Luna said, "but not the other two. You've mixed me up with someone else."
Trytko withdrew a composite drawing from inside his trench coat. The likeness was Luna, take away fourteen years. "Snatching a mother's baby burns your features into her mind. Game's up, lady. I wanna see your kid. If she doesn't mirror my client, I'll eat my hat."
Tough guy, Luna thought, with a tiny cock. "Katt's not home."
"Fourteen years to find her, I got time to wait. Police gave up eventually, but not Mrs. Baxter. First you cost her kid, then her accusing husband: 'How could you be so trusting, you naive bitch?' Eighty thousand bucks she's paid, working herself to the bone. That kinda fee and commitment, I wait till Hell freezes over."
"Get off my property, or I'll call the cops."
"Call 'em, lady. Makes no difference to me. No way you're disappearing until the kid's informed. I want the question in her mind if you try a bunk. No matter where you go, she'll want the answer. Jig's up, Nona. Get it off your chest."
"What'll it take to prove you're wrong?"
"Nothing short of a DNA test on the kid. You or Mrs. Baxter? Who will her genes match?"
Cat and mouse, a Mexican standoff, they stood eye to eye. Then a single tear rolled down the woman's cheek. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, said Trytko's smirk. "How'd you find me?" Luna asked.
"Snatching a baby, no ransom, is a nutcase crime. Gotta be a woman who desperately wants a child. Gotta be a woman who can't have one of her own. Flashed the composite in every ward on the East Coast. Finally got a lock on you in Maryland. Traced the car you rented to Washington state, then your marriage of convenience up here. Citizenship, huh? Before you dumped the guy? Only thing not recorded was your daughter^ birth. Storks don't bring babies in my world."
Another tear.
"So where's the kid?"
"In the front room. Watching TV."
The PI stepped into the kitchen, easing Luna aside, her right hand visible, her left behind the door. "Let's get this over with," he said.
"Yes. Let's," Luna agreed, whirling like a Cossack with the hammer in her hand, striking the man's forehead as hard as she could, the nose of the weapon punching through his skull in a crunch of bone, ripping splinters with it as she yanked the hammer out, Trytko dropping to his knees like a penitent before God, as "Yes. Let's," repeated, another blow cracked his skull, Luna bringing the weapon down in both hands like an ax, the metal snout caving in his crown like a volcano, spewing red lava in an eruption of blood and brains, hitting the walls, spraying her, raining down on the floor, Trytko shaking like all that booze had brought on the d.t.'s, one leg banging in counterpoint like a hoedown foot, the third blow driving his head splatl against the tiies, a pool of blood spreading crimson red across the white, as "Yes. Let's. Let's. Let's," Luna mashed his skull, flattening his brain like a pancake until his death shudders stopped.
Luna dropped the hammer.
Her breath came in gasps.
Then she looked at the kitchen clock.
Katt would soon be home.
What time was she off school today for that damn rotating strike?
Fucking teachers.
So afraid of work.
Pull yourself together.
Got to clean up this mess.
First she fetched a plastic sheet from the broom closet, always on hand in case a "Squamis^' sprung a leak in the roof, then she wrapped the corpse in it and tied the shroud with twine. Humping the bundle to a cleaner area of the floor, she wiped the plastic of blood and humped the body again, repeating the process until it left no telltale trail. Stripping, she washed her skin of blood with a dishrag from the sink, then opened the cellar door and dragged the corpse downstairs, bumping it like Christopher Robin lugging Winnie-the-Pooh. The body stretched out on the earthen floor, she returned to the kitchen.
Working frantically with a mop, brush, and pails of water, Luna scrubbed, wrung, and rinsed until the blood was gone, then scoured the floor with ammonia, vinegar, and Comet. Some of the tiles were cracked from the hammer blows.
She washed herself again.
Wrapped in a rubber raincoat like a lobster fisherman, with rubber boots on her feet and gloves on her hands, Luna descended the cellar stairs to dig a makeshift grave. Thank the Earth God
dess pioneer homes were built on dirt foundations.
Pick . . .
Shovel . . .
Pick . . .
Shovel . . .
Four feet down . . .
Then Luna rolled the plastic bundle into the underground hole, filling it in to stomp on the mound until it looked like ... a grave.
Think, girl, think!
Up the stairs and out the door, she sloshed to the side of her home, and there unlocked the slanted chute that once fed wood to the cellar. The ramshackle house clung to the slope south of Snug Cove, this side gazing across the incline toward Point Grey and the States, both now swallowed up by the hungry storm. Down was to the
left, up to the right, with runoff collecting in a trough parallel to the wall, before it tumbled below to Queen Charlotte Channel. Across the strait, Lighthouse Park winked through the rain.
On hands and knees, Luna built a dam across the trough.
Soon the rain rivulet was diverted down the chute, gurgling into the cellar where it inundated the floor, smoothening the mound of the grave into an even layer of silt.
Luna dismantled the dam.
Then relocked the chute.
Then went in, shucked off her clothes, and took a long, hot shower.
Everything bloody was in the washer when Katt returned home, Luna drying her hair by the stove. The kitchen was spick-and-span with no trace of murder about. A day or two and the cellar would be dry, its floor the same flat layer of earth it was before the killing. Until then Luna didn't want Katt poking around, alone in the house while she was gone for the Mystery Weekend.
"Mom, you look spooked. Like you've seen the Devil himself."
"Pack a bag, Katt. We've got a ferry to catch. You're going to help me win fifty thousand dollars."
Wednesday, December 8, 1993
For a year DeClercq had wondered why Luna Darke took Katt to Deadman's Island. The teenager wasn't on the guest list found at Ravenscourt. Reading Trytko's notebook, he now knew why.
Corrine Baxter.
The name of the Pi's client glared from the page.
He glanced from it to the zombie clawing from the grave.
The skeletal fingers reached for Katt.
SUICIDE CLUB
Cloverdale, British Columbia
The Moaning Steer was yer vintage Canuck country and western bar. Log shack at the crossroads, sawdust and spittoons on the hardwood floor, pool table over which honky-tonk women in tight jeans bent, brass boot rail, horns mounted over the doors. Johnny, Willie, and Merle wrung few tears from the jukebox here, elbowed out by k.d., Anne, and Stompin' Tom. "Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray'' played, lang's howl cuttin' through smoke as thick as dust. Dust gathered on bourbon bottles behind the bar, while VO, Canadian Club, and Crown Royal sold by the case. Yer Bud Man, yer Marlboro Man were booted out the door, kicked by Moosehead and Kokanee. Shots of the Calgary Stampede back when and the Cloverdale Rodeo now hung askew from the logs, joined by Western legends like Sam Steele, "Bub" Walsh, the Mad Trapper of Rat River, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew." The only Yank welcome here was Big Clint, for having the sense to shoot Unforgiven in Alberta. Patrons of The Moaning Steer knew you couldn't find the West in America no more. Yanks were too enamored with pretty boys in big hats.
The man shooting Scotch by himself was yer typical cowboy Canuck. Big hands, wary eyes, weathered leathery face. Plain shirt, cuffs up, worn jeans, and boots. The way he hunched over a shot glass said he was in a funk, oozing the warning he'd kick yer teeth down yer throat if you bothered him.
All heads but his turned when the Slicker entered the bar.
Stranger on the farm.
The Slicker paused at the till to pay the barkeep off, flashing a BYOB brown bag while slipping her a fifty,
covering drinks the Slicker wouldn't buy. Then the stranger crossed to Cowboy Canuck.
"Mind if I join you?''
"What do you want?"
"Company."
"Fuck off. I'm in a foul mood."
The Slicker placed the brown bag on the branded table and peeled down the wrapper in a slow striptease. Johnnie Walker Red? No. Johnnie Walker Black? No. Johnnie Walker Bluel
After the sixth shot, Wayne Tarr opened up. The Slicker heard about his days with the rodeo, breakin' broncs and rasslin' steers and nuttin' ornery bulls. He told the Slicker how his wife left him for a lawyer, saying she couldn't stand the stress of ERT assaults, he rammed the doors in, he corralled the punks, he shot it out if necessary, and she broke under the stress? No "Stand by Your Man" in that bitch, and no "Little Bitty Tear" let him down.
After the ninth shot, Tarr began to rail. "Yanks crossed the border to build Fort Whoop-Up and sell whiskey to the Reds, so we raised the Force, marched West, and they ran for the States. Almighty Voice tried a last war cry, so we cornered him on a bluff, fired one cannon east, another cannon south, and blew him to pieces. The Mad Trapper shot some cops and holed up in the North, so we tracked him by plane with tear bombs and blew his ass away. That's how men with spurs handle punks.
"Now look at us.
le country's overrun with foreign filth. People of color squawk and people of pallor run for the hills. Some Negro . . . some black . . . some Afro-fucking-not-even . . . some African-fucking-not-even-Canadian waves a gun at me—Shit, they're like greased pigs in the rodeo. They change the name so often you can't get a handle on what they are—some jig kid points a gun at me in a dark room, and I'm suspended while the Public Complaints Commission considers charges. I put my life on the line for them and that's the thanks I get. The Force backs squealing jigs over me! I oughta ... I oughta . . . 1 oughta shoot myself at the Red Serge Ball, that's what I oughta do."
Unknown to Tarr, this was the first meeting of the Suicide Club.
MIDNIGHT RAIN
Coquitlam
Racism, sexism, jingoism: only now did Rachel Kidd fully grasp how her future hung in the balance, for if Nick's mom's blood wasn't on his Red Serge, any or all of those isms would have a politically correct front to freeze her out. By seizing Nick's tunic, she'd cast the die of her fate.
Still in her clothes, Rachel lay lights-out on the bed in her top-floor flat, staring up at the rain that snaked across the skylight, lost in thought while waiting for Der-mott Toop.
"Make your case," Tipple had said, so now that she was committed to her kamikaze run, tonight the case had taken a bizarre twist.
Watching the rain, Rachel puzzled it out.
Schreck escaped from Colony Farm near Dora's home. Around the same time, Nick beat his mom to death before the RCMP dinner. Schreck—a known cop hater—followed MacDougall from Dora's house to Min-nekhada Lodge, there clubbing and disemboweling him in the parking lot. Nick had an alibi for MacDougall's death—he was talking to Members down on Colony Farm—but finding the letter to his mom cast suspicion on him, so tonight he linked the Schreck MO to his mother's murder. Nick broke into the mortuary and disemboweled her body, so the combination of clubbing and gutting would match MacDougall's death, for which Nick was alibied. With a madman on the loose, that's a madman's act, so the implication is—for some psychotic reason—the same lunatic committed both mad crimes.
Very clever, thought Kidd.
The apartment door opened, closed, and was locked.
Footsteps creaked the floor of the hall approaching the bedroom. Dermott Toop entered, switched on the lights, and tossed The Vancouver Sun onto the quilt.
"See that?" he fumed.
Squinting, Rachel waited for her vision to adjust, then scanned the offending article on the paper's front page:
ARREST OF 2 BLACKS DEFENDED ON BASIS FEW OF RACE IN CITY
A Vancouver Police Board report saying it is okay to arrest blacks as suspects based on their race alone means "open season" on the city's black community, says the Congress of Color.
"I think the situation with blacks is unique since you don r t see that many blacks in the city," states one board member, defending the ruling police did nothing
wrong in arresting two blacks at gunpoint for a robbery they didn't do.
"It is not merely disturbing," warns the Congress. "It's absolutely frightening. Why is it acceptable that black men in the area when a crime is committed are, by being black, automatically suspect, while whites nearby aren 't targeted when whites commit a crime? Is that not clearly a double standard?"
Rachel put down the paper.
"You didn't finish reading."
"Derm, I've a lot more on my mind than racial politics that don't hamstring me. If the blood of Craven's mom doesn't test out on his tunic in three weeks, the story in the paper will be:
CANNING OF BLACK DEFENDED ON BASIS ALLEGATION FAILED
Let's make the world outside go away for now."
"Talk about stereotyping us!" Toop raged. "Whoever backs that report has no idea what discrimination is! How visible must a minority be before such bullshit is ruled out? Since when does human dignity have anything
to do with the presence of your race in numbers? As a black South African. I thought I was in a country where apartheid doesn't exist. Race! Race! Race! No matter where we go, a black man's gotta hide. Just once I'd like whitey to see what it's like at the shitty end of the stick!"
"'Derm." Rachel sighed. "Let it be for tonight. Did I not hear boastful talk at the Lab about someone being royally fucked? I'm here. The bed's here. Are you going to love me or not?"
Toop loosened his tie. He swept the paper aside. "You know it, °irl. I guarantee someone's going io set roy-riicked."
West Vancouver
"It's like I'm living Kafka's Trial," gasped Nick, still breathing heavily from sex with Gill. Above them. Pacific rain drummed the roof. "Someone must have been spreading lies about Nick C," he recited, "for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning ..."
"You're not arrested," Gill said, snuggling in the dark.
"I would be if some had their way. It is like The Trial you know. The bank clerk in that novel. Having to ius-myself against phantom charges, and influence those who may effect acquittal, while not knowing what I've done, what I'm guilty of, or why I've been singled out for judgment."
Evil Eye Page 15
