They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico . . .
On black plush in the lower half lay a Zulu knobkerrie two feet long. Atop the stout handle was a round polished knob, its striking surface nestled facedown in the plush. Looped around the handle was a snakeskin pouch, which Nick opened and turned upside down in his palm. Ten knucklebones tumbled into his hand. Carved on each bone was an Evil Eye.
"Nicholas!"
Oh, oh.
"What are you doing up here!"
The scratch of a needle on vinyl cut Johnny Horton off midwail, ruining the record like those trashed by outraged Brits in 1957. Mom crossed to the trunk and loomed over him. Thanks to Johnny, he hadn't caught
the sound of her car returning or footsteps creaking the stairs.
"Well?" Mom said. "You know the rule/*
The best defense. Nick figured, was self-attack. "Did Dad shoot himself because of me?"
"Oh, baby." Mom sighed, shaking her head. "No way. honey. What gave you that idea?"
"He died the night I was born."
"Who told you That 0 "
"I overheard you talking with Aunt Eleanor."
"What'd you hear?" Eyes narrow, frightening him.
"She asked if I knew Ted died the night I was born 0 You said no, and you'd never tell me. She said best to let sleeping dogs lie. Why'd she call Dad a dog. Mom?"
"Just an expression. Where were you?"
"Playing James Bond behind the couch. You and Aunt Eleanor were Russian spies."
"Anything else?" Mom eased the gun from his jeans.
"She told you the doc who predicted twins had died from a heart attack. He was a quack proved wrong by my birth, you said. He died from drink. Aunt Eleanor said, so that was that."
"I'm listening."
Nick shrugged. * 4 You left to make tea. Aunt Eleanor went to the bathroom. And I reported to M."
"M?"
"Gee, Mom. Don't vou know James Bond?"
"Who's M?"
"Monty. Our cat." Nick laughed.
She took the bones from his hand and refilled the snakeskin pouch. "Is that Dad's medal?" he asked as she closed the box.
"No, your great-granddad's." said Mom. reopening the lid. Unpinning the medal, she pointed to the name, rank, and regiment engraved on back of the laureled clasp. Etched in a circle on the medal's reverse was the date 22.1.79.
"What is it?" Nick asked.
"The Victoria Cross. Your great-granddad won it for bravery in the Zulu War. Because today is Victoria Day. you're off school."
"I know," said Nick, reciting the chant of British Empire school kids:
"Hip, hip hoorah,
The 24th of May
Is the queen's birthday.
If you don *t give us a holiday
We'll all run away.
"Why is the queen's birthday called Victoria Day, Mom, when Elizabeth is our queen?"
"Good question," Mom said, sitting her son down on the floor and cuddling him like she did when it was Story Time^ like when she read him The Jungle Book, and Pugnax the Gladiator, and Biggies Defies the Swastika, and Prince Valiant Fights Attila the Hun, and Freddy and the Clockwork Twin. . . .
"The odd thing, Nick, is Britain doesn't celebrate Victoria Day. Which proves the adage Colonials are more British than the British."
"Are we Colonials?" Nick asked.
"Yes, and proud of the fact. For last century when Victoria was queen, it was true the sun never set on the British Empire. . . .
"You said the club was facedown?" Knight queried Nick. "Did you take it out?"
"No," he said.
"Too bad. I wish we knew the club had a zigzag on the knob."
BUM RAP
Clover dale
Electric drums from the concrete jungle boomed in this room, 2Pac's "Crooked Ass Nigga" loud as could be, a wall of sound with gunshots and siren noise included, a drug dealer on a rampage with a 9-mm gun, a cop yelling "Freeze. 1, ' popped in the knees 'cause he didn't shout "Punk, please!", and Ice-T's "Cop Killer" blaring a f ter that, the speed metal band Body Count driving the
words home, then "Crooked Ass Nigga," then fct Cop Killer/' then "Crooked Ass Nigga" again, the CDs a gift from Evil Eye to pump up the cop, Tarr clenching his teeth tighter as each "coon rap" drilled into his brain, a brain reeling from five, six, seven Scotches too many, How dare those fuckers blackball me for one jig kid. . . .
It takes a special kind of cop to volunteer for an ERT team, some because it's an action test of balls and machismo, others because they yearn to play with all those kick-ass toys and feed off adrenaline, and one or two like Tarr because they could get killed.
Latent suicides.
For them, the problem with suicide is it's seen as a coward's exit, instead of the ultimate brave act that Tarr thought it to be. The past year he'd suffered from the mental illness of chronic depression, which led him to the ERT team as a death wish, the pump of adrenaline quelling the blues for a while if he survived, as death crouched waiting for him behind the next door, or maybe the next, wax enough doors and odds were one would have your number, Valhalla ahead for the Viking who died in battle, not a coward's spat-on grave.
How dare those fuckers blackball me for one jig kid
A kid who probably jigabooed to coon rap like this shit . . .
Crooked ass nigga, my ass . . .
Cop killer raps. . . .
How dare those fuckers suspend me for such a bum rap. . . .
Stealing my chance at glory. . . .
The drapes in the living room were drawn against the day. The Sports Network flickered silently on the TV. Fuck, don't white guys play basketball anymore? His hand reached for the bottle of Scotch on the table that propped up his feet, the surface marked with rings from too many glasses of slopped booze, papers tumbling from it to pile up on the floor, one a divorce petition from The Bitch filed by the law firm of her shyster hump, surrounded by newspaper pictures of Tarr and jig group spokesmen calling for his badge. Shit, I might as well be a cop in fuckin' L.A.
"Did you mean what you suggested the first time we
drank?" the Slicker had asked Tarr in The Moaning Steer on New Year's Eve. "About having the guts to kill yourself at the Red Serge Ball."
"Why?" he answered.
"Seems like a weak way to make a point if the only death is yours."
"What point's that?"
"The point that you don't blackball a gutsy cop to suck the joints of p.c. fools who pander to cop-killing crooked ass niggas."
"You got a better idea?"
"As a matter of fact I do."
So Tarr had listened to the idea, agreeing to join the Suicide Club, unaware of how deep the depths of his depression sank, or how suicidal blue he'd get the longer he was weaned from the adrenaline rush that pumped the ERT team.
Tarr grabbed the .38 off the table propping up his feet.
He flipped open the cylinder and emptied it of six shots.
He fed the cylinder one bullet, gave it a spin and snapped it shut.
He cocked the hammer and placed the muzzle to his temple.
'Did you mean what you suggested the first time we drank? About having the guts to kill yourself at the Red Serge Ball"
"You bet," Tarr said now. "If I last that long."
He pulled the trigger.
THE IRREGULAR
Vancouver
Thursday, January 13, 1994
"They must be treating you well in here, from the grin on your face."
"Actually, it's hell. But the company is cool. The other
inmate in seg is a cannibal. Well, maybe not. Eat stomach contents but not the stomach itself, does that qualify as maneater? Pancakes won't look me in the eye. He stares at my belly."
'Then why the grin?"
"As Gallows the Guard brought me down to Visiting, I remembered Mom taking me to the PNE when I was eight. Every detail is as vivid as if it were today. Cla
nking through the turnstile of the Exhibition. Pausing at the stockyards to see horses, pigs, and cows. Mom hustling me away when a stallion got a hard-on two feet long. Best of all was the midway, of course. The Hall of Mirrors that stretched me thin as a toothpick. A glance at the Girlie Show when Mom turned away. Riding the Octopus and Tilt-a-Whirl. The reason for the grin is what happened next. We were in the gauntlet lined with games of chance, barkers importuning us to step right up and win a prize at ball toss, balloon darts, or topple the milk bottles, me pestering Mom to play, Mom warning me every game was a scam suckers lose, me telling her that was wrong 'cause look at the guy ahead of us with a stuffed bear, Mom replying he was a shill paid to stroll around and lure dumbos in, me wheedling, 'Come on, Mom, can't we play, huh, can't we?' until she stopped and demanded, 'Nicholas, give me a quarter from your allowance.' "
"Lesson time?" augured DeClercq.
"The game was called Toss Until You Win. The goal was to lob a rubber ball onto a plywood sheet drilled with holes the size of the ball without a smidgen to spare. You had to hit them directly or the ball bounced off. The barker running the game called the prizeman 'Doctor.'
" 'Nicholas,' Mom told me, while slapping down the quarter, 'the world is full of cheats out to steal your money. Half your weekly allowance bought a toss of this ball, and like that'—she threw it at the sheet—'you are a poorer boy.'
"Next thing we know there are lights and bells going
off all over the place. 'Bring out a ham, Doctor!' the
• barker yells. The prizeman opens a fridge and pulls out
a leg of pork half the size of me. 'See what you've done,'
Mom says. 'Now we have to go home. Carry ham all
day in this sun and it'll go bad.' So home we went to eat pork every meal for a week."
DeClercq laughed, and suddenly knew—if there was doubt before—Craven was innocent.
Silence filled Nick's "office."
Finally broken when Robert said, "You asked to see me?"
"I didn't kill her, Chief. I loved—still love—my mom. It's like I'm trapped in a Hitchcock movie. The Wrong Man is me."
"And her blood?" said DeClercq.
"How that got on my cuff I don't know. I picked my Red Serge up from the dry cleaners and changed before I went to Mom's and the Regimental Dinner. Following the murder, Kidd refused to let me near the scene. Assuming she didn't plant it to frame me after seizing my tunic—she did have access to Mom's blood from the autopsy—all I can theorize is the killer crossed the old bridge after the crime, then I followed and unwittingly picked up some of her blood."
"Why would Kidd frame you?"
"Her ass is on the line. Nail me and she's heading for sergeant. Fail and there's backlash. Maybe she's a black who secretly hates whites."
"That's what you think happened?"
"No," said Nick. "It answers the blood but not the letter." From the pocket of his green prison shirt, he withdrew a crumpled photocopy and smoothed it on the table. For the umpteenth time, both Mounties reread the Mother letter:
December 2, 1993 Mother—
It's taken my lifetime to uncover your whitewashed secret. Discussing it face to face on my birthday seems fitting. I'll call on the 7th.
"Why type this letter if I was planning murder? If the killing was spur of the moment, why send it to Mom when she's near as the phone and I see her weekly? Why would Mom—if it was from me—store it in her monthly mail file? She'd kept a file in that drawer since 1957. Knowing that, if I killed her, why leave such evi-
dence of motive behind? I might as well put a noose around my neck."
"Who do you think sent the letter? Is it a frame, too?"
"You won't laugh. Chief?"
"This isn't a laughing matter."
"When I was born, I fear Mom delivered twins. That explains the letter—sent as an introduction—and the birthday mentioned being the same as mine. If something was wrong with the birth—what I have no idea— might that not explain my dad shooting himself the night I— we —were born, and why my brother or sister was put up for adoption?"
"Any evidence?"
"Not concrete. There's no record of a second birth in any registry from here to Manitoba. My new lawyer is checking the rest of Canada. I do know a doctor who saw my mom predicted twins, from a conversation I overheard her have with my aunt. My aunt—now dead— was midwife for delivery. Mom said the quack was proved wrong by my birth. Aunt Eleanor said he died from drink, so that was that."
"Anything else?"
"I've been having dreams. Mom and my aunt conspire while Dad shoots himself. A voice behind me gloats, 'He shot himself because of me, brother.' When I turn, no one's there."
"Dreams may be mirages."
"Or buried memories." So Nick told the chief about the relics taken from Dad's trunk and the file cabinet gone from Mom's attic. "Who but a twin would steal that combination of loot?"
"Perhaps your mom emptied the trunk years ago?"
"No, dust at its bottom outlines a recently taken box."
"Have you told Coquitlam?"
"No," said Nick. "A twin sounds like a lame excuse to explain the Mother letter. The only proof of what is missing is my word, and obviously what I swear means sweet fuck-all to Kidd. Convicting me will balance out racial politics. I'm a scapegoat for the politically correct. Chief, I'm living a nightmare and I'm begging for your help. How can I defend myself locked away in here, when my only hope is answers to questions out there?
All I'm asking is a fighting chance. I need a cop investigating to clear me."
"Nick, I'm under orders to keep out of your case. So is Special X."
Silence reigned again until Robert knocked for the guard. "You know what they call you in the ranks?" Nick said to the sound of the key.
"I shudder to think," the chief said as the guard released him.
"The Last Honest Man," Nick said as the door slammed shut.
"I know the paranoia in being framed," said Zinc, sipping coffee in DeClercq's office at Special X while he recounted his meeting with Nick. "I still shudder at what Cutthroat did in Hawaii."
Though newer investigations dominated the Strategy Wall, the Schreck-Craven case remained pinned up to one side. The official line was Schreck killed the deputies and Jack MacDougall during his psychotic war with Bone Police. Ramming the funeral certainly linked him to the latter crime. Smoke-screened by Schreck's attacks, Nick clubbed his mom, then later disemboweled her to tie his matricide to Schreck's MacDougall murder for which Nick had an alibi. DeClercq remained unconvinced the jigsaw pieces meshed, so the Schreck-Craven puzzle remained up on the wall.
"Schreck killed the deputies. No doubt about that, agreed?"
"Case closed," Zinc confirmed.
"The question before us is who killed Dora Craven? Nick says he's innocent and my gut believes him. Accept that as true in considering the question. We also know Nick didn't kill Jack. His alibi for that crime is airtight, agreed?"
"Agreed," said Zinc.
"If Nick killed neither Dora nor Jack, the obvious suspect for both murders is Schreck. But how, given the facts we know, did he do that? The Corvette that rammed Jack's funeral was registered to a Port Coquit-lam punk named Bud Beck. A search of Beck's home near the Indian Reserve revealed his skull-crushed body in the cellar. His watch was broken and crystal shards
were found just inside the front door. Schreck fled from Colony Farm at ten after five. By timing how long it takes to go north up the Coquitlam River to Beck's | home, GIS says Schreck arrived at the time on the bro-i ken watch. If so, he had no time to detour and club Dora."
"Unless the time on the watch was wrong," Chan-| dler said.
"Drugs were found in the cellar and a pusher meets f clients on time."
"If Schreck fled north and hid in Beck's house, no way did he later go south to Dora's through the manhunt searching Colony Farm."
"That's why the dogs didn't track him up to Dora's door. He didn't club her
."
"Schreck killed the deputies, but not Nick's mom. Nick killed neither his mom nor Jack. That," said Zinc, "begs the question, Did Schreck kill Jack?"
"Beck's neighbor swears the Corvette wasn't driven the night Jack died. He's bedridden from a work injury. The only time the Corvette rumbled out was the morning of the funeral. So if Schreck followed Jack from Dora's house to Minnekhada Lodge, what car did he drive that night?"
"If Schreck didn't kill Jack, why'd he ram Jack's funeral parade?"
"He wasn't after Jack. He was after us. The parade offered him a chance to crush the Bone Police in mass. The funeral route was mapped on the front page of the newspaper found in the Corvette. The paper was a local rag delivered to and missing from Beck's Port Coquitlam home."
"So Schreck hid in Beck's house from the time he left Colony Farm until he drove to Richmond to ram the funeral?"
"The dragnet was intensive. That's how he slipped through."
"Schreck killed the deputies, but neither Dora nor Jack. Assuming Nick didn't kill Dora, and knowing Nick didn't kill Jack, we're looking for someone still loose out there."
"Nick's twin," said DeClercq.
"You believe that?"
"Hypothetically. Assume Dora delivered twins: Nick and X. For some reason, the births caused Nick's dad to shoot himself. For some reason, Nick was kept and X was sent away. A child who fears becomes an adult who hates, and X lived in fear growing up. Now an adult, he or she comes looking for Mom. X finds Dora, and sends her the Mather letter. After Nick leaves the birthday party for Minnekhada Lodge, X approaches Dora's house along the back path. Remember the dogs tracked a scent coming and going there? When X raps on the back door, Dora admits her hateful abandoned child. X is searching for his/her roots, so Dora shows the twin his/her dad's trunk. Hate explodes so X hits her with the club in the trophy box, then empties the trunk of relics and leaves by the same path."
"With the file cabinet slung over his/her back?" doubted Chandler.
"X didn't steal the cabinet. Much easier to empty it of files."
"In your hypothesis, who killed Jack?"
"X," said DeClercq. "Using the club and bayonet in the trophy box. Unfortunately, the zigzag mark the club imprinted on Jack's scalp was shredded when X dragged him into the shadows."
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