The camera cut to Hunt himself, standing at a podium in Winnipeg’s Investor’s Group Field Stadium. Investor’s Group Field? Really? As she watched, Hunt railed against corruption in government and roared about his post-election plans for cleansing the government, chasing out the criminals, and bringing back traditional Canadian values.
Keller doubted any of the people around him yelling about “traditional Canadian values,” all of whom looked to be Caucasian, were talking about Indigenous people, who pretty much had the best claim on the country’s first “traditional” values. But the people shouting back with the swastikas on their signs—even if they were crossed out—were just as alarming.
Keller knew little about Hunt’s platform but it sounded a little scary. She frowned… No, it was she who felt scared, just looking at him.
“Haven’t we all worked hard?” he shouted. “For our families? Our children? Aren’t they the most important thing? Our little princes and princesses? Don’t they deserve better?”
It wasn’t just that Hunt seemed to enjoy yelling a little too much. And it wasn’t just his face, with its blotchy, painted-on tan. When he waved his arms and shook his fist at the camera, some unnameable sourness came into her mouth.
She grimaced and worked the remote. Unlike real life, with TV escape was always possible. On the Space channel, Captain Kirk was facing down a cold-blooded dinosaurid Gorn after an unpleasant incident on planet Cestus III.
She knew reality did have to be faced eventually. All of her therapists had been consistently and annoyingly emphatic about that. She reached for her phone and swiped away the lock screen.
It seemed she was reasonably popular. Lang had phoned twice. Atchison once.
Decker, not at all.
Asshole. You could’ve made sure the witness to a homicide was okay.
Except of course the witness had strolled through the murder scene as if she were shopping at Walmart, then called Decker with nutbird theories at 3:00 a.m.
But they aren’t nutbird.
Cold light of day and all that hadn’t made any difference in what she knew. Herzog and Oakes had each worn the same ring. They were connected in some way.
Trek played on. Kirk had found the ingredients he needed to make a weapon, to defeat his enemy. Easy for him. His foe was readily apparent, easily identifiable.
Groot leapt onto the bed and rolled onto his back, and she scratched at his belly until he kicked at the air in canine nirvana. That accomplished, she had no more excuses. She dialled Lang. Would she be hung over, apologetic? Would she even remember talking to Keller yesterday? Three rings and she thought it would go to voice mail, then the line connected and there were fumbling sounds on the other end.
“Hey, kiddo.” Lang’s voice sounded far away. “How’s my little dickhead?”
Keller glanced at Groot. “He’s bogarting the bed, actually. No room for me.”
“How d’you know I meant the dog?” There was amusement in Lang’s voice, but it sounded forced. She was embarrassed, ashamed.
Keller understood; in fact, she’d been exactly where her friend was now.
Lang went on. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“That sounds like bullshit.” There was a slight lengthening in Lang’s words and Keller knew her well enough to gauge her two drinks in.
Again, or still? Keller was in no position to judge, but worry washed over her, guilt hard on its heels. “What about you?” she asked.
“I’m all right. Got the day off, just like you.”
“I know I fucked up yesterday, Kate. I—”
Lang chuckled. “Is that what Grainger told you? Yeah, I suppose you did.” Hurt behind the words.
You didn’t have to follow me in.
But that really was bullshit. They’d always had each other’s backs, through bad calls, bad men, divorce (in Lang’s case), right up to Keller’s brush with death on Oakes’s farm.
“I thought maybe there might be kids in—”
“I know what you thought.”
“Listen, Kate, why don’t I pile Grooty into the car and come visit? We can binge-watch something sordid and gorge on popcorn and pizza.”
A long silence. “I don’t think so, Ash. I’m in kind of a shitty mood right now. It’s not you,” she hastened to add, something Keller thought was another lie for her benefit. “I just need some time.”
“Kate…”
“I love you, kiddo, but that was bad shit yesterday. I can’t help but think if the guy had still been in there...”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I told you, it’s not you. Not all you, anyway. Ten years ago that scene wouldn’t have fazed me one bit. Now, I can’t stop shaking.”
Keller felt tears coming. “Kate, let me—”
“Don’t. Don’t cry, dickhead.” Lang chuckled. “Just want a little me time, okay?”
“Okay. How’s Tyler?”
“Too busy studying to worry about any of this, I think,” Lang said. “Going to go now, okay? I’m pretty tired. Tomorrow night maybe. Hey… you okay with the cops?”
Not exactly. “They weren’t too pleased with me.”
“What about Grainger?”
She told Lang about her new assignment and Lang gave her a sloppy laugh. “Fuck that, Ash. Call the union guy.”
“Don’t worry about me. Tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure.”
Keller heard the soft clink of ice falling into a glass.
Fifty-Four
On the way out to Keller’s acreage, the Fixer learned that her escapades the previous day had gotten her yanked from the street. This wasn’t optimal. He would’ve preferred her on ambulance, where stress might drive her back to pills or at least preoccupy her from musings about murder.
But today he’d just wanted to see what she was up to, get a feel for whether the same impulse that had motivated her to call a homicide detective the night before might provoke her to other things today. But whatever he saw, it now seemed certain Keller would bear monitoring. Given that she lived on a rural acreage, the best way to do that was to track her car, and so a miniature GPS tracker lay on his passenger seat. As soon as it looked like Keller was turning in for the night, he would creep up her drive and attach it to the undercarriage of her car. He’d already downloaded the corresponding app to his phone.
He’d driven through light evening rain and found her at home, her car out front and lights on in the house against the waning daylight.
The Fixer had investigated her neighbours when it seemed clear she might become troublesome. The acreage to the west was owned by one Mitchell Copeland, a wealthy man who spent the cooler seasons in Arizona, playing golf and sipping G&Ts, if his social media was any indication. The trees surrounding his acreage were beginning to shed their leaves, but they would still offer a decent degree of concealment. The Fixer pulled into the driveway as if he owned the place.
Now he sipped coffee and watched, confident the growing darkness and his vehicle’s tinted windows would keep anyone from seeing him. On the seat beside him was an Armasight Nightscope, and he lifted it to his right eye and saw Keller’s house flare green in his vision, magnified in stark detail.
The better to see you with, my dear.
Creepy much? But he was the wolf, wasn’t he? Keller and Hunt were both addicts—they had that in common. They were both weak, and that was why the Fixer would still be walking around a year from now, probably on some Costa Rican beach.
“Are you though?” the Fixer whispered. “Are you weak, Keller?”
She was certainly wary, either by nature or because of the events of the last few months. Except for the kitchen and dining room, which faced the fields rolling behind her, the windows all had their blinds drawn. He caught a glimpse of her now in the kitchen, clutching an energy drink. She was dressed in a loose T-shirt and shorts, revealing enough to arouse him, remembering the plans he’d had for her before she burned down Oakes’s farm.
/> Looks like you had a late start, Keller, but then you were up phoning detectives in the middle of the night.
As he watched, the back door opened and her dog galloped into the grass, roaming back and forth in between pauses to piss.
Speaking of which, time to piss Kapp off.
The Fixer tapped at his phone and listened as it rang.
“What do you want?”
His mood brightened. Kapp sounded preoccupied and irritated.
“It’s been a busy day,” Kapp continued. “This better be important. You got a bead on her?”
“I do. And it’s not important to me, but it might be to your boss.”
Kapp sighed. “We going to do repartee all afternoon or you going to tell me?”
“Keller seems to have spotted a connection between Herzog and Oakes.”
“What?” Kapp whispered. “How could she possibly—”
“Oakes wasn’t really a shining success, was he?” the Fixer said. “But he liked that big gaudy ring Hunt gave him, liked people thinking he’d gone to that expensive private school, am I right? Keller noticed it… and Herzog was still wearing his when she found him—or at least it was still on his finger.”
“Very funny,” Kapp said, voice taut. “You told me you got the ring off Oakes’s body.”
“I did. Long after she was in his charming company, though.”
“So? You also said she would fall apart and disappear.”
“I may have been wrong.” There was no point in pretending things were one way when they were another. “She’s smart and she might be dangerous, like you thought. It’d be better if this all went away sooner than later. Where are you on Herzog’s killer?”
“We’re narrowing it down,” Kapp said.
The Fixer wondered just how long the list was. Most sexual predators had needs that escalated over time. Hunt might have a lot of previous victims under his belt.
Now, Hunt had the Fixer to carefully select fostered girls with no close family so that they weren’t missed. There were something like eight thousand children in Alberta in some sort of care, the overwhelming majority Indigenous. Many went missing, at least temporarily, every year.
Now, Hunt had Gavril Sechev to dispose of the girls after he was finished with them. He knew Sechev sold most of these cast-offs to traffickers who smuggled them into the States or Asia. The Fixer didn’t want to know what happened to the leftovers.
But all that was now. Prior to Hunt’s ability to fund this kind of well-organized fishing operation, some of his victims must’ve been turned loose; or maybe one of the girls Sechev sold onto the streets of Vegas or Beijing had a relative who knew what Hunt and his friends had done.
“Narrow it down, then,” the Fixer said.
“We will. Going back a step…” Kapp seemed to be warming to the conversation and the Fixer regretted prolonging it. “I’m glad you agree that Keller’s dangerous. After what you just told me, you must also agree we’ll have to do something about her.”
The Fixer watched Keller, out on her back porch now, as she bit into a sandwich and tossed the dog’s ball. She had lithe, muscular legs and her shorts rode up whenever she threw the ball, revealing a tantalizing curve of ass.
Kapp eventually spoke into the silence. “This needs to be done.”
“Probably, but not right now. She’s too hot.” He glanced at the GPS tracker. “I’m keeping a close eye on her, I promise.”
“I think you’re just stalling.”
Kapp was misinterpreting his reluctance. It was true the Fixer had never killed anyone. Not directly, anyway. He had merely identified targets from youth criminal records and Human Services files, helped Sechev deliver girls, and occasionally boys, up to Hunt and his friends. No, he hadn’t killed, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t.
Keller finished her sandwich, the smile gone from her face as she looked back and forth, searching her surroundings. Looking for watchers? It was difficult to resist the urge to duck back despite the tinted windows and the concealing trees. Soon she was playing with the dog again, showing no outward sign of worry.
Except maybe she wouldn’t show it. Maybe she’s learned a thing or two from her old man. Maybe she even inherited some of his instincts.
“You still there?” Kapp asked.
“I am.”
“I don’t think we can wait. What else will she remember and connect? Are you up for this or not?”
The Fixer blinked, watching the dog dashing after the ball, never tiring of the mindless errand. Was that what he was? A dog chasing whatever ball Kapp threw for him?
Time to end it.
“If she disappears now,” the Fixer said, “it will look exactly like what it is. A reaction to Herzog. Wait a week or two and no one will notice. So—yes—I’m up for it. Then.”
“Not good enough. Sechev—”
“Sechev.” The Fixer snorted. “You told me Hunt’s going to go squeaky clean soon. You need things tidied up, properly. Sechev got careless, dumping that body in Kananaskis. You need a professional.”
“You, I suppose. How much for that?”
“Two hundred thousand. No arguments.”
Silence up the line. Finally Kapp said, “I’ll run it past him.”
The Fixer ended the call and continued to watch Keller as the daylight faded. The long hair, the lean, athletic body and flawless olive skin. That night at Oakes’s farm, he’d been planning on taking his time, having some fun with her.
Now at last it seemed he’d have the chance.
Fifty-Five
Keller phoned Lang several times through the afternoon and evening but every call went to voice mail.
She alternated between other activities—watching Netflix, digging into a novel, backyard ball-toss trysts with Groot—but she found she was increasingly unable to focus on any of them.
She excavated the layers of her freezer in search of some culinary fossil she could resuscitate into an edible supper. In the end, she fried up a butter chicken with lentils spiced to a degree that that the freezer burn was barely detectable, but she had little appetite. Groot appeared devastated when she threw most of it in the garbage.
“Saving your asshole, asshole.”
Around 2000, she was thinking of going for another run, maybe along her rural road this time, when Atchison called.
“You heard from Kate?” he asked once they’d gone through the hellos. He sounded distant, not that she knew him well, but she wouldn’t have blamed him for being worried, resentful, or both.
“I talked to her earlier,” she said. “Can’t get hold of her now.”
“She’s not picking up. I talked to her a little this morning. She was worried about you.” Emphasis on the you. He sounded almost jealous.
“Tyler, I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have gone in there. I—”
“You don’t have to apologize to me.” But his tone was thick with subtext. I’m not the one struggling with PTSD. She didn’t need this.
Then it hit Keller. His tone held something else. “Are you two…?”
Silence up the line for a beat and then a low chuckle. “We’re… She says I’m too young.”
By about ten years, if you thought about things in such terms. Keller smiled. “Who cares these days?”
A low sigh. “Well, I’m working on it.” His voice fell. “I’m worried about her. She told me she needed some time when I called this morning. What the hell does that mean?”
It means she doesn’t want you seeing her drunk.
“Go over anyway,” Keller said.
“Damn… I knew I should have. I can’t now. I have a shift tonight.”
“Grainger didn’t let you take a day?”
“He offered.” Atchison sighed again. “Technically I didn’t see anything so I’m not… you know, at risk.”
“Okay,” Keller said, “I’m on shift tomorrow but it’s a bullshit office thing. I’ll call in sick and we’ll—”
“Don’t. One o
f the other supes told me Grainger is going to grind you hard from now on. You call in sick, you’d better have a note from your neurosurgeon and your neurosurgeon’s mom.”
“All right, I’ll go in early and then fade early too. Around three sound good? We’ll go over together.” She grinned into the phone. “I promise you, if we show up on her doorstep with a pepperoni pizza, she’s not going to throw us out.”
“Okay, it’s a plan.” He sounded happier.
Keller hung up and looked at Groot. “True love blooming.”
The dog’s mouth dropped open in a smile.
“Well, at least I’ve got you.”
She thought of Decker and wished he would call, and was annoyed with herself for thinking it. After she finished clearing dishes away, she poured a glass of wine and settled back on the couch. Netflix was paused halfway through episode four of a British spy thriller, but she no longer cared much who the double agent was.
She flipped to a regular news show on cable, images of Dennis Hunt at a rally. Apparently a controversial militia group called the Two Percenters had given their endorsement to the CAP. A cut to Hunt speaking at another rally, more clenched fists and shouting about “Canadian values.” Keller was suddenly nauseated. The curry? No, it was Hunt himself, that heady reek of fascism coming off him.
She switched the TV off and gulped her wine down, already planning her sleep regimen as if it were a math equation: 1 glass of Pinot + 1 rapid release Gravol + 1 Zopiclone = 1 good sleep.
I hope.
Fifty-Six
October 11, 0005 hrs
Groot was uncharacteristically restless through the night, and around midnight Keller woke to find him barking at the bedroom door. One icy hand clutching at her heart and the other hand on her phone—9-1-1 punched in and her finger hovering over the “dial” button—she opened the door for the dog and followed him to the living room. He trotted back and forth by the front window, huffing and growling, but Keller saw nothing in the darkness beyond her porch lights. After a while the dog calmed, then grabbed one of his toys and spat it at her feet, an invitation to play fetch.
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