by Sam Wiebe
I glanced up at the tall lamps that overhung the docks. Most were still on, even with the morning light. “Those two are out.” I nodded at two dead lights overhead. “She probably didn’t even notice. Who sounded the alarm?”
“Night guard heard shouting. Stepped out of the shed and swears he saw someone crouched over her. Took off before he got a closer look.”
I frowned as something metallic glinted just underneath her jacket, where metal shouldn’t have been.
I motioned for Murray to hand me a pair of gloves. “Search the area yet?”
“Mike’s bringing the dogs. If she’s like you said, chances are there’ll already be a report.” He added something else about searching social media. I half-listened, gingerly pushing open the lapel of her jacket.
A few feet away on the dock stood an Asian woman, black hair done at the nape of her neck and wearing a calico-print dress that would have been more appropriate on a woman in the twenties or thirties. She was staring straight at me. An exhibitor from the museum here early? I opened my mouth to interrupt Murray but the sunlight flickered with a passing cloud. The woman flickered as well.
Not again.
I shut my eyes tight, willing the woman to disappear. I was lucky to catch it so quickly, especially since cutting my meds in half. They made me so damn sluggish.
“Ricky?” Murray had crouched down beside me. “You having one of your—episodes?” It was impossible not to miss the hidden distaste and suspicion. “I thought the doctors said you were better now.”
“They did. I mean I’m—” I stopped my defense. The ghostly woman was back, this time hovering over the tidal flats, the edges of her old-fashioned dress tinged dark with water. She stared sadly, not at the strangled dead girl, but at me.
Best to ignore these slips. They couldn’t be helped, and worrying only made them worse. At best they were rabbit holes. At worst?
The woman vanished. I covered the momentary lapse with another drag from my cigarette, feigning concentration directed back on the body. If Murray suspected, he pretended not to. He’d always done that better than the other detectives. It was why I’d taken his call. That and my own curiosity.
I nodded at the strap and refocused the conversation. “Thing is, Murray, you aren’t asking the most important question.” I pulled the jacket the woman had been wearing aside, exposing the source of the metal glint. A strap, innocuous at first, unless you knew what it was. I glanced up at him. “If she was wearing a baby carrier, where’s the baby?”
Murray swore something foul but it was lost in the phone as he retreated to his car. I stole another glance at the tidal flats. The ghostly woman was gone.
I gave the dead girl’s possessions one last glance, but I already knew what was there—a mix of baby supplies: wipes, diapers, formula—all strewn across the dock and into the mud below. They held no more clues.
I paid attention to the docks instead, well lit for tourist season. Warm night, the watchman would have been looking for kids sneaking into the park. If it was premeditated, it hadn’t been well planned . . .
Opportunity? A chance encounter? Not impossible, but odd considering the remote location and the groceries. As if she was meeting someone.
Back to premeditated. But then why not dump the body in the water? Unless they intended for her to be found? An argument gone wrong? An accident? Or just inexperience.
Not something I was used to seeing. Not for the runaways, drug dealers, and trafficked prostitutes I consulted on. Without knowing who she was and why she was here, I had no motivation. A field full of rabbit holes.
“Ricky, I need you to do your thing,” Murray said, back from his call.
I swallowed and resisted the urge to take another drag. “I find teens and women. Missing babies are outside my social circle.” Verbalizing what it was I was good at always brought up a familiar ball of guilt.
“I’ll pay you the same rate as last time. Off the books.”
I bit back a hiss, taking in a mouthful of smoke. Of course off the books. There were some things you just couldn’t be forgiven for in the court of public opinion.
“No one finds people like you do, Ricky.”
Because I knew where they went.
“Get your forensics to canvas the docks,” I told him, avoiding a solid answer. “Then we’ll see.” I kept my eyes on the mud as I retreated to my car, an antique VW Bug that needed a key to open its dulled yellow doors, the necessity of it ruining whatever ironic fashionable veneer it had once held. I didn’t bother searching the lot for the ghostly woman and whatever it was my mind imagined she wanted. Instead, I stared at my hands until the engine in my car turned.
No rabbit holes this time, Ricky.
Cigarette still lit and without saying goodbye to Murray, I peeled out of the parking lot before anyone else arrived to find me at the scene.
* * *
An hour and another cigarette later, I arrived home at my condo in a refurbished heritage building on the edge of China and Gastown. My living space clashed with my income and what I alone could afford—or deserved. A peace offering from my father when he’d paid the deposit on an exorbitant North Van home, a wedding gift for my brother. Not wanting to break a streak in fairness, he’d purchased this place for me. The fact that it was now worth well over four times what he’d paid in the nineties just dug the knife in deeper.
I dropped my coat on the wooden stand by the front door and headed straight for my desk. I didn’t smoke inside—it was the one concession I’d made to my ex and the only lifestyle improvement I hadn’t been able to renege on. The ashtray was still out on the porch with a view into the gated alley–turned-garden two stories below.
I put the coffee pot on, then headed into the shower, something I hadn’t had a chance to do before Murray had called. It wasn’t until I was dry and had a warm mug in my hands that I checked my phone.
I was relieved not to see a text from Murray. Trafficked babies weren’t the same as trafficked girls. I had half a mind to go visit my brother for the weekend in North Van, just to avoid being useless.
The scrape of the metal gate outside distracted me.
Sliding my phone in my pocket, I took my coffee out to the porch, knowing who would be below.
Sitting on the rim of one of the large flowerpots was a woman in her fifties, face framed in a brown bob, with high cheekbones, tanned skin, and a slimness that hid or flattered her age well. I guessed First Nations, but had never gotten up the courage to ask, and she’d never brought it up.
This morning she had the same stroller I’d noticed last night squeaking down the sidewalk. Her other grandchildren had grown well beyond it, so this one must be new. I smiled as I leaned over the rail. “Marnie.” She was the only neighbor I knew by name.
“Ricky.” She offered me a warm smile and settled the baby on her lap—a girl in a pink outfit with black hair and expressive eyes that searched the courtyard.
The infant gave me a brief glance before fixating once again on her fingers, apparently much more interesting. I noted a darkened birthmark on her leg, exposed by bare feet.
“Haven’t seen you in a couple weeks,” Marnie said.
She had lived in the building since the eighties, before it was fashionable to live in Gastown. I had no idea what her financial situation was, if she’d been married, widowed. I’d never seen a man or her adult children, though they must have existed as she had three grandchildren. Two boys and now the girl. I had no idea what their story was. Marnie had never once asked me about the tabloid-like stories in the paper. Maybe that was why we were tentative friends—we didn’t bother each other with the usual details. Our acquaintance was centered around living proximity. No need to pollute it with the outside world.
“You going to show that coffee up in my face, or get your manners together?”
I headed back into my kitchen and filled a second mug, adding the cream and sugar Marnie preferred. She nodded in thanks as I passed it down.
Juggling the infant on one knee, Marnie took a deep sip, savoring the warmth. “How are things?” she asked. “More dead girls?”
That took me aback. Marnie had an unhealthy interest in my obsessions. There was something ironic in that—or comical.
She tsked. “The only thing that gets you out of your bed before noon is a dead girl.” The baby fussed and Marnie jostled her until she stopped. “Well?”
I shouldn’t tell her, in theory it was confidential with Murray . . . Screw it, I wasn’t even an official consultant anymore.
“False alarm so far—not a prostitute or a runaway.” Though that didn’t make it more or less tragic. I sipped my coffee. “Missing baby though.”
Marnie made a cross sign over her chest and out of reflex held the infant tighter. “That’s much worse.”
“Depends on whether the baby is still alive.”
I inclined my head as my phone buzzed in my pocket. Murray. I excused myself from the balcony and closed the door before answering.
“We found the SUV,” Murray said. “Empty car seat, no sign of the baby anywhere.”
So much for finding the baby. “Who was she?”
“June Xian. Kitsilano housewife, first kid born five months ago, named Blossom. June was born in Hong Kong, the husband and baby here.”
Despite my reluctance, my brain churned through the possibilities. “Suspects?”
“Husband. House and most of the cash is in her name. Her parents used her to invest heavily in real estate.”
“Money for motive?”
“According to the neighbors and a slew of noise complaints, the two have been fighting. Apparently she kept threatening to take the baby back to Asia.”
Money and children, common enough motives. “Affair?” I asked, completing the trifecta of domestic discourse. Still not in my realm, but closer.
“That’s what the husband claims.”
Maybe some of my old vice channels would prove useful. More rabbits ducked in and out of their holes. “Whoever killed June might simply have gotten rid of the baby—” I froze. The Asian woman in the old-fashioned dress was standing in my kitchen, her translucence unmistakable in the sunlight. She lifted a finger and jabbed it at me, her face, almost featureless, twisted in anger.
“Shit,” I said to myself. No, not here, anywhere but here.
“Ricky?” Murray’s voice on the phone.
“Yeah.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Where’s forensics at?”
“Waiting on the preliminary.”
“In the meantime I could tag my old contacts and dig up dirt on the husband.”
“Just—can you be discrete? We, ah, don’t need a repeat of last time.”
The professional thing would be to assure Murray there wouldn’t be a repeat. I decided not to jinx it and risked opening my eyes. She was gone from my kitchen. I stifled a sigh of relief while Murray carried on, as if lack of my response was normal. “I really appreciate it, Ricky.”
My goodbye verged on rude. It was almost eight a.m. now. I made my next call.
* * *
“You realize I’m Japanese?” said the young, attractive man in his twenties as he slid into the booth across from me. Today he was wearing waxed jeans and an expensively cut leather jacket, tattoos visible under the cuffs. Yoshi was more fashionable than I’d had any chance of being, even a couple decades ago.
“You realize I like the tea?” I said.
He snorted but didn’t protest further. It was the same every time. He thought I invited him here because I couldn’t tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese. I always insisted it was because I liked the tea—which I did. We agreed to disagree. I wasn’t changing the spot, especially if I was the one buying.
“Did you bring my payment?”
“Depends. Do you have what I want?” I silently chided myself. I wouldn’t be that snippy if it wasn’t for the Asian woman following me. I’d spent the entire walk here searching for her in the faces of passersby.
Yoshi didn’t care. He nodded and slid a tablet across the table to me. I slid an envelope to him.
Phone records, bank statements, e-mails, police reports highlighting domestic disputes, dates and times she’d crossed the bridge, locations where she’d opened her social media. All her life in painstaking detail. I glanced up at the preliminary autopsy report. “You’re not supposed to be able to access these.”
He shrugged. “I was already on their servers. Figured you’d appreciate it. Besides, I was curious. Girls like her don’t end up dead often.”
Death by strangulation, relatively healthy—I frowned at the mention of marks carved into her bare shoulder. Not a birthmark, not a wound. More like a brand, as if the skin had been filleted out. Three lines, too parallel and straight to be anything but deliberate.
I skimmed through the rest, but the symbol had my attention now. The rabbits didn’t want to let it go . . .
Credit cards showed she’d purchased the groceries at eleven thirty p.m., then crossed the toll bridge at eleven fifty p.m. Yoshi also confirmed the husband had been home, according to his phone and the voice-activated alarm system. I found the confirmation I was looking for in her e-mail. “An affair,” I said.
Yoshi arched an eyebrow at me. “You should see the texts, and the pictures. I didn’t know pregnant ladies—”
I shushed him and he fell silent. Where you had money and marital discord, you usually had the third. Still, it left a dry feeling in my mouth. Couples were assholes to each other all on their own, they didn’t need a third-wheel catalyst.
Yoshi of course had included the catalyst’s details, his name, Victor Miller, and his work and home addresses. He lived right near the Britannia shipyards. Well, now I knew what she’d been doing in the area. Miller worked downtown as a bartender. I finished my tea and tossed some bills on the table.
“What’s your hurry, Ricky?” Yoshi said.
“To find out just what June saw in this guy.”
* * *
I tapped the bottom of my soda on the bar as I watched Victor restock the bar, it being early in the afternoon and slow.
He eyed me every now and then—in the mirror mostly, discretely. He didn’t recognize me but he knew what I was. Had been, I corrected myself. Once learned, you never lose the identifying affectations. No one does. Like a permanent scarlet letter—or brand, not unlike what had been carved out of June.
He wasn’t my type but I could see why June had chased him—roughly the same age if not younger, attractive in a surfer bum way. The opposite of the husband who looked at home in a three-button suit as he pleaded on TV and in the papers for information on his daughter. Victor didn’t strike me as the kind of man a woman like June was serious about, more a tool to get a rise out of her husband.
I held up the empty soda glass and smiled as I figured out the best way to broach June and her baby, how to phrase it just right. It was harder when I wasn’t officially on a case.
I could lie, tell him I was one of June’s friends, or hired by her friends to find the baby. It was all over the news now. Usually Murray had these conversations, not me.
I’d half decided on lying when his eyes drifted to a spot behind me. Something about the way he frowned made me pause. He called for one of his coworkers to fill in before abandoning the bar.
Not wanting to give myself away, I shifted on the barstool until I got a good glimpse of the doors in the mirror. Between the bottles of Grey Goose I made out two detectives, one of which I recognized, Mike. He’d called me a parasite and worse to Murray on more than one occasion. They flashed their badges at Victor and though I couldn’t hear details, I could w
ell imagine the line of questions.
I watched his face carefully as he responded. Great boyfriend he was not, but he wasn’t a killer. He didn’t have the markers for violence. Those I could spot, my other talent from a previous life.
The other detective started scanning the bar, his eyes in the mirror falling on my back. I left cash under my empty glass and nodded at the bartender who’d replaced Victor, before heading for the washroom to slip out the back.
I was past the kitchen, almost to the back door, when she appeared. Not the Asian woman in the calico-patterned dress, but June, wearing a white T-shirt over simple blue jeans. Her eyes were red, her expression angry. A grotesque welt, red and purple against her graying skin, burst across her cheek in the shape of the carved brand. She bared her teeth at me, like a wild animal.
I shut my eyes and counted to ten before opening them, but she was still there. They always lingered when my mind made them grotesque like that.
No, not now. I ran through her, hitting the door open with a bang. They aren’t real, they’re never real.
I raced the block back to my car and shoved the key into the lock. Come on. The door finally opened before either woman reappeared. I slid behind the wheel and scrambled to open the glove box. It was still there. I swallowed two of the Risperidones, hoping the high dose would drown them out faster. I’d taken too few over these last weeks, trying to strike a hard balance between crazy and vegetative. I shut my eyes and counted until the panic ebbed. The ghosts didn’t bother me here, not where I might kill myself driving. The ghosts had their own sense of self-preservation.
Once my heart stopped racing, I opened my eyes. She was gone. I turned the ignition over and headed back home before the Risperidone made me drowsy. As I drove I focused on what I knew: the boyfriend wasn’t the killer.
* * *
I waited until I was through the front door before checking my e-mail. It had been a half hour drive back, and I’d stopped twice to rest my nerves.
There was a single missed call from Murray. If Mike had recognized me, there would have been a lot more. Returning Murray’s call could wait.
