“Resuscitation?”
“I tried. I did it all . . . but he’s gone.” Napier was sobbing.
“Where are you?”
“Yeah . . . uh . . . you know Lancaster, down near the waterfront? We’re in an old building near there. It’s got a rusty yellow Clark loader or some shit machine outside. There’s two orange cones beside it.”
“Stay where you are.”
“Okay, Sarge. . . . I’m so sorry.” Napier was crying.
“Napier, leave that pipe alone.”
“Yup . . . yeah. I’m so sorry. We fucked up, Sarge.”
* * *
The last time he had seen Wozinsky was in Afghanistan. Like so many of his men, the muscles on his chest, back, and arms had been covered with tattoos. That had become a tradition among the Allied forces in Afghanistan — maybe for every warrior, going back to the Greeks. It was part male narcissism, part boredom and memories. His theory was that it fed a desire to be supermen, not fearful young men. Somehow the muscles and the tattoos would make them faster and stronger, able to terrorize the Taliban as fearless fighting machines, able to detect IEDs and dodge bullets, able to get home in one piece.
But they didn’t guarantee a thing, though in some cases the tattoos helped Records identify their remains. Nothing was certain in Afghanistan save the climate and the terrain, the goat-like abilities of their enemy, the improvised explosive devices, the inability to distinguish friend from foe. When he’d left to be trained for Intelligence and black ops, it was Wozinsky he’d depended on to take his replacement from theory to the practice of asymmetric warfare. So many had died the previous year that it was hardly a send-off party. He was keenly aware that the action that had led to his promotion and transfer was one in which three of his men had died.
* * *
Turning off Lancaster, he eased the van up to the security hut. It was empty, and judging by the padlock on the door, it had been decommissioned and gutted a long time ago. It didn’t take him long to find the rusting hulk of the Clark. He put on his ball cap and the same Oakley shades he’d worn in-country. He slipped his weapon into the waistband of his cargo pants and stepped out of the van.
He stood there, listening and looking. He didn’t like it. There were too many sightlines, all converging on his back. His senses were twitching, so he gripped the weapon and released the safety. Sparrows called from the roof, but he was listening for something else.
Seconds later he heard a high-pitched whistle and could suddenly put a face to Napier’s voice. In the field he’d hear him whistle like that to signal his position, that Taliban were approaching, or just to request a bottle of water. He had once asked him what bird he was imitating. “Yellow warbler, Sarge. They’re thick as flies where I grew up.”
He looked up. Napier’s vaguely familiar head was peeking out of a partially boarded-up window. In a whisper loud enough to be heard fifty feet away, Napier said, “There’s a ladder down the side in a metal cage thing. Come up.”
Stepping inside, he was immediately hit by the smell of dead air and urine, of oil sludge buckets and ancient dust that would rise in clouds if you sneezed or stomped the floor too hard. There were two foam mattresses, yellowed by grime and sweat, surrounded by butts that looked like minnows trailing dinghies. Squashed up at the end of each mattress were rolls of toilet paper that doubled as pillows. The piss pot was a large plastic pail. There’d be a honey bucket somewhere, but mercifully it wasn’t on this floor. Say what you will about vets, he thought, they’re professionally trained to live rough, like elite hobos.
Wozinsky lay partially on his side, as if someone had just told him a joke and he’d fallen over laughing. He was wearing what looked to be the same fatigue pants he’d worn in Afghanistan. He had on a dirty white long-sleeved T-shirt and his jean jacket was folded neatly beside him. A folded bucket hat was on top of that. His boots — military-issue — now had strings for laces, but only enough to go through four eyelets. No socks. That was a very bad sign; every soldier knew the importance of clean, dry socks. His upper body was in shadow, but he looked like he’d barely break a hundred pounds.
He didn’t need to feel for a pulse, but he squatted beside Wozinsky’s head and felt for it anyway. Then he stepped over to the window where he’d first seen Napier. He scanned the ground below and the windows of the adjacent building. He took in a deep breath of fresh air and turned back to Wozinsky.
Napier stayed silent. He was pacing around at a distance, like a worn-out lion in a bad zoo. With their scraggly hair and beards, both men looked like they belonged in this cold, abandoned shell. But once, and not long ago, they had been gods with bodies of steel, boasting hell-yeah tattoos guaranteed, they thought, to mess with Afghani heads.
“How’d you two connect when you got out?”
Fidgety, taking hiccup-steps towards him, Napier said, “Moss Park Armoury in Toronto.” Napier was bobblehead-nodding in Wozinsky’s direction. “I’m from Cornwall, Woz is from here. I tried goin’ home but couldn’t cut it. Woz wanted to come home, so we walked down the highway to Dundurn. We pan all day an’ come here at night” — he looked around — “to our ‘luxury loft.’ That’s what Woz called it. He was one funny fucker all right.”
“Did you smoke that pipe after Wozinsky?”
“No, Sarge, I swear. I woulda, yeah, but it’s killer.”
“Who’s your supplier?”
“Red Toque. That’s all we know him as. A lanky redhead fucker with a topknot that makes his hair like a hat with a ball on top. He hangs around the bus station.”
“Christ.”
“The Terminal, man . . . That’s the drain peeps like us fall through.”
Wozinsky’s wallet was worn thin by despair. It contained his health and social insurance cards, and a faded snapshot of a black Labrador rolling on its back in the grass. Tucked into the folding-money slot was a long-decommissioned one-dollar bill with a crude drawing of a bathing beauty that obscured the engraving of the Ottawa River and the Parliament Buildings. Under it he’d written Jenna. There was also a small piece of paper with a drawing of a cobra, its jaws open to reveal impossibly long fangs — some kind of giant sabretooth-tiger cobra.
Seeing it, Napier smiled and nodded several times. “Woz was gonna have that tattooed on his back if we ever got the scratch.”
The sergeant considered whether to take Napier with him. But he couldn’t think of a reason beyond pity, and that would be an insult. The man had walked to Dundurn from Toronto; he wasn’t looking for a ride or a handout. Napier just wanted to help his brother.
The sergeant took the boosted phone and destroyed the SIM card. Napier didn’t seem to mind.
“Let’s get him down to the van.”
As he pulled away, he looked in his side mirror to see Napier slamming his head with his fists. He thought about stopping, about taking him to a detox centre, but he knew better. Napier and Wozinsky were lost, doing the long dead-walk. And the short of it was, whether diagnosed or not, they had both drowned in PTSD.
His thoughts went to the first fish he’d ever caught, a pike. It did its flippy-floppy in the boat until it was still and gasping. Gasping for what? he’d thought at the time. As pike live in water, he decided it must be gasping for life submerged, so he dropped the anchor on its head. Judging by Wozinsky’s emaciated frame, he’d been done with gasping long before he died.
Napier was faced with a choice: get clean or get dying. It might be that in his drugged-out, fuzzy squirrel brain, sucking a pipe and smiling before dying wasn’t such a bad way to go. They’d both been on a first-name basis with violent death for years. They could tell who was going to make it and who wasn’t, in spite of the heroics of the trauma unit. Wozinsky’s exit had been peaceful.
Somewhere between Napier and York Street, he decided to leave Wozinsky at the entrance to Woodland Cemetery. He’d get there around midnight and turn
on the van’s flashing amber dome light, which would effectively render the van invisible. He’d lay Woz to rest where he’d be found the next morning. As he passed Woodland, he noticed the statuary, the angels with wings. That’s when it struck him. He glanced behind him to Wozinsky on the van’s floor. “Woz, I’ve just found Jesus.” He smiled and headed for home, convinced that if Wozinsky were alive, he’d double over and bust a gut laughing.
He started calculating the logistics. Rigor mortis would set in within the next three or four hours. For his purposes, Woz needed to be limp, not stiff, but that would mean waiting another eighteen hours or so. He could make that work.
There was a lot to do in the meantime, but he felt energized to get on with it. “We could be heroes, Woz, just for one day.”
[53]
Two Chevys turned onto Valens Road. It was 8:07 a.m. Anyone might wonder at two cars moving at moderate speed with barely a length between them. Though there wasn’t a lot of traffic on Valens at any time, those that did pass were generally in a hurry to get somewhere else. The lives being lived in the modest farms along the way mattered as much as the clouds of road dust that trailed behind them.
MacNeice slowed to check the mailbox at the edge of the road. 2010 Valens Road. He spoke into the cellphone. “Here we are. Keep the phone on but stay out of sight.” Swetsky laughed.
MacNeice felt certain that the bright yellow and red Sun Solar Systems sign would do the trick. He drove slowly down the treed lane, hoping that anyone looking out would think nothing of it beyond how to get rid of another salesman. As he swung around between the garage and the front door, he left enough room for a quick getaway. He shut down the engine and reached for his folder and tablet.
A screen door opened as he got out of the car. He turned to see a young couple standing on the stoop holding an infant and smiling back at him. “Good morning, folks. My name is Sam Smith,” he said.
“Good morning, back atcha.” The woman with the baby was smiling and squinting in his direction.
Her husband was looking at the sign on the side of the Chevy. “You here to sell us solar, Sam?”
“That’s the idea. Why, have you considered it?”
“All the time,” he said. “Not on the house though, but in that field to the east.”
“Great idea. Have you decided?”
“James is dreaming, sir. We just bought this house. We don’t have the money for solar.” She wasn’t peeved; it was just a fact — the sun may rise and set, but the money is gone.
“You know,” MacNeice said, “you might be eligible to sell your solar power back to the provincial grid. And that means your farm would basically have solar power and a cheque from the province every month.”
“Oh yeah. What are the chances of that?” James asked.
MacNeice walked up to them and shook their hands. They introduced themselves as Carol and James Wismer. He opened the brochure. “We’d have to do a study, starting with how many people live here.”
“Just us, Sam, and Mabel. She’s our ten-month-old,” Carol said, still smiling.
MacNeice realized his intuition had led him to the wrong place. He opted for another approach. “Do you know anything about your neighbours on either side? If they have solar or are planning it? That might affect your ability to get on the program. The government only lets so many in, you see.”
The two of them looked at each other before answering. “Well,” James said, “there’s another farm just along the way you were heading. You can’t miss it — it’s identical to this one. Apparently, back in the early 1920s, two brothers bought these properties, and because they didn’t want to pay double for design and construction, they put up identical buildings.”
Carol added, “And the other way there’s the park, the lake, and beyond that an industrial farm. Nobody we know of has solar round here.”
“And is it a young family like yours at the other farm?”
“No, that one sold privately last year. As far as we can tell there’s just one person. He keeps to himself.”
“And that’s just along the way, you say?”
“Yep, it’s the next one over — 2020 Valens. Maybe five hundred yards or so along the road.”
“We’d like to get solar if we can get on that plan,” Carol said.
“Well then, thank you both.” MacNeice closed the brochure. “I’ve been sent out to assess interest. And so, with your permission, I’ll have one of the senior advisors make an appointment to walk you through it. Really, you won’t be disappointed. Solar is the future.”
“That’d be great,” James said, nodding to his wife.
MacNeice shook their hands and turned to leave.
“Wait, don’t you need our phone number?” Carol asked.
“Whoa, and don’t I need another coffee. Yes, please.”
He wrote down their phone number on the brochure, along with their names and address. He waved from the car before leaving.
“Is the phone still live?” he said, manoeuvring the car.
“Loud and clear,” Montile responded.
“I’m going to turn right. Give it some time before you follow me. We’re not going to stop at 2020 Valens. I want you to take photos of it from the moment it comes into view.”
“Roger that,” Montile said. “I’ll take a video as we go by.”
“Through the window — don’t open it. Michael, do the same on the opposite side. I want to know what natural cover there is. Time your recording so that the images match up.”
“Will do.”
“Sounded like you were starting a second career there, Sam,” Swetsky said.
“Well, maybe if this doesn’t work out.”
* * *
By 10:30 MacNeice had developed a police alert for the print, broadcast, and online media, as well as the department’s website. In it were several photographs of “a person of interest in the murders of six people.” He included the names Patrick Manserra and David Allan Muller as aliases and added two sentences in bold type at the end, just above the contact information: This individual is considered armed and dangerous. If you see him or know his whereabouts, do not attempt to make contact — CALL 911.
When he called the Deputy Chief to update him, Wallace asked if he needed a drone over the farm. “No. I believe this man is professionally trained to spot them. He’ll know when he sees the alert that we’re looking for him, but a drone might send him underground.” He said they were going to review the footage from the drive-by and check the aerial photography. “If it’s possible to remain undetected, we’ll use a spotter. But knowing what we do about this man, he’s capable of producing a high body count. We want to avoid adding to it.”
“You’ve got decent photos of him?”
“No, but Swetsky’s got a lead with the Department of National Defence that may provide better ones.”
“How certain are you that he’s in that farmhouse? Why there and not a factory or a shed in town?”
“It began as a hunch, but now it’s quite a bit stronger. The man is a phantom. He’s smart, never reveals his face. Coming and going from a factory or a shed in Dundurn would make that difficult. If I’m right and he’s five hundred yards from his closest neighbours, it makes this an ideal location. The only way to find out, sir, is to pay a visit.”
“Not without Tactical you won’t.”
“Can we discuss that?”
“We just did. They go in first. No offence, Mac, but I don’t want another Paradise Road.”
MacNeice hung up and turned around as Aziz walked in. They had a second to smile at each other before everyone else greeted her. MacNeice went to make coffee, and when he returned, Aziz was studying the whiteboards. He handed her a coffee and said, “I’ve got an idea. We’re both convinced this man intends to exhibit his work, right?”
“Yes.”
“Correct.”
“Where would it be?”
She took a moment to think about it. “A private gallery in Amsterdam, Berlin, or Paris. It would likely be viewed by appointment only and might not be shown publicly.”
“Assuming that it will be open to the public,” MacNeice said, “can you see if there are any exhibitions opening in the next few months by a Canadian artist or photographer? I don’t know who to ask.”
“I’ll work that out.” She looked around the room. Williams was sitting at her desk, shoulder to shoulder with Vertesi and Maracle. MacNeice’s desk was in the corner, jammed against the filing cabinet.
“Welcome to the slums, sister,” said Montile. “We can make room. Take my chair and I’ll get one from Swetsky’s.” When he returned, he placed it between Aziz and Vertesi. “Cozy.”
Ryan swung around in his chair. “I’ve split-screened those videos on the Falcon. They’re synched to begin together, so you’ll see what’s on the left and right sides of Valens. In real time it runs forty-two seconds, but I slowed it down a bit.”
They ran it several times, pausing at various points to study the cover. A tall cedar hedge hid more of the farmhouse than its twin down the road. MacNeice was watching Maracle; his brow went from furrowed to something suggesting surprise.
“What are you seeing, Charlie?”
Maracle asked Ryan if he could take over the toggle. Moving the images forward and back, he settled on one that looked directly down the entrance lane. Trees stood like a colonnade leading from Valens. On the right, a large cedar hedge ran all the way from the road to the garage.
Taking a pencil, he made an air circle around the trees. “A couple of things, sir. If this guy’s first-class — and I think he is – this road and the property are probably spooked.”
Vantage Point Page 23
