The Children of Eli

by Mike Cranny

  THE CHILDREN OF ELI

  A Novel By Mike Cranny

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing In Publication Data

  Cranny, Michael

  Children of Eli

  ISBN 978-0-9920349-1-7

  I. Title

  © Michael Cranny 2013

  A Cranberry Ridge Communications Publication:

  Michael Cranny

  mcranny@shaw.ca

  For Valerie

  CHAPTER 1

  Archie Stevens didn’t like it. Cal Fricke wasn’t going to give him a case. That was obvious. Archie figured that Fricke was sending him a message — Archie was supposed to take the hint and quit. He thought about it, seriously considered it. Then he happened on an open file in Cold Cases and took it on — all on his own. It was something to do while he made a final decision about his future. The case concerned abalone poaching. Fricke laughed when Archie told him about it, and gave his okay. That was a signal too.

  The file didn’t contain much on the surface: abalone poaching, a midnight beating and death threats, a suspected gang link — no names on the report sheets in the folder. Archie called Fisheries and learned nothing new — besides the fact that abalone poaching was a problem in the area. It was one of those cases that should have been followed up at the time. Now, it was a phantom of a case, retrieved by a phantom detective, himself. Even the original investigating officer was dead. Detective Robert Wilkins, aged thirty-eight, Archie’s age, died too young — killed when he lost control of his vehicle on the Bastion Highway.

  Archie learned as much as he could about abalone. He visited seafood restaurants and seafood suppliers. He asked lots of questions. Then he moved on to marine supply shops, marinas and boat yards, and did the same. He got nothing. His case was fading away. His last hope was Nick Donaldson. Donaldson had a dive shop outside of Harsley. The Harsley Police Department, Archie’s own, had arrested him for fishing infractions over the years — some poaching too. No surprise there. Nick was an old, out-of-work, cold-water diver who needed to make a living. Likely, he was still poaching or knew who was. Archie finished reading the old reports he had been studying. It was almost dark when he left the station and headed for Nick’s.

  Archie wondered how he would open the conversation with a man he’d once been on friendly terms with. Nick might even pick a fight. Archie had no idea what he would do if that happened. He wasn’t particularly good at holding his temper. Then again neither was Nick.

  Archie slowed his 4Runner so that he wouldn’t miss the overgrown access. The road-marker reflectors showed suddenly — high up in the screen of old-growth hemlock. He braked, took the tight right, eased his car over the culvert and started down twinned tracks that passed for a road, saw that the pivot log gate was up indicating that Nick might be home. The forest pressed in close on both sides, giving Archie a sense of oppressive desolation, and of the death of the Nick’s hopes and dreams.

  A quarter of a mile in, he saw something lying beside the road and stopped the car. A deer lay on the verge, broken and still. Archie got out and shone his light. The eyes were flat and unseeing; fresh blood still dripped from the nostrils and pooled on slick, brown, fallen leaves. Sad — the driver of the car that had killed the deer hadn’t even stopped. Archie returned to his vehicle, tossed the Maglite beside him. He touched the accelerator and continued on, fighting the wheel as the 4Runner slipped in and out of deep, muddy ruts.

  At last, he emerged from the dense forest. The road turned to smooth hardpan, curled down over the shingle drift and ran in a straight line along the beach towards the little cliff-backed harbour where Nick had his dive shop. Archie passed the painted board with its red diver flag. Ahead, he made out the outline of the dark shapes of the low, barn-like buildings that were Nick’s shop, his sheds and boathouse plunked out in the treeless no man’s land, unchanged and unimproved.

  A line of stored fish boats, the fleet high and dry, with the same faded “For Sale” signs on each, formed a wall of wood and fiberglass hulls going nowhere. Nick likely never went anywhere near them; he’d just let them rot on their trunions.

  To Archie the boats represented dreams gone sour. He had tried that life, back when he needed a lifeline, when he needed a direction. He had fished on his Uncle Tony’s boat “Wasko”. Archie had tried hard to see a future in fishing. But he didn’t want to end up like the owners of these boats with their long-expired licenses still fixed to the flaking walls of their pilothouses.

  He parked a short distance from the shop, his headlights resting on a four by eight plywood sign decorated with amateurish pictures of wolf eels, octopus, starfish and awkwardly waving kelp. The faded sign announced Dive Adventures’ offerings; package deals, wreck dives, big animal dives, deep adventure and catered lunches.

  No lights showed in the shop or the attached house. Archie figured Nick was away, but it was hard to tell. He remembered that some rooms didn’t have windows.

  He hesitated and then shut off the engine. He leaned back in his seat and tried to relax, trying to suppress the feeling of aloneness that seemed to be his default state of mind. He reminded himself that he had nothing to lose; the Abalone Case would be officially dead in the morning. He opened his door; he felt the cold damp air. He listened, hearing the muted hum from the highway more than half a mile away, the wind in the hemlocks, and the chattering of beach stones as the surf rattled through them in the darkness.

  He tried to imagine what might happen if he caught Nick red-handed and had to make an arrest. Not that that was likely to happen. More likely he’d finish up with his little, nothing case and put the final nails in the coffin of his unlikely career.

  With his Maglite in hand he began to walk towards the shop. As he walked he glimpsed Nick’s Jeep parked back of the refill station.

  Archie sensed that something wasn’t right. It occurred to him that Nick hadn’t turned on the lot lights. With all the vandalism that was happening out that way, a motion-sensor setup would have been prudent; but Archie’s arrival hadn’t triggered any response.

  He shifted his SIG Sauer from its holster to his jacket pocket as he strode across the gravel to the shop.

  His foot slid as he tried to quickly climb the four broad steps to the low-roofed porch. When he regained his footing and started up the stairs again, broken glass crunched under his foot. He turned on his Maglite and hooded it with his hand and saw that the front window was smashed. The front door was open too, the lock displaced and the sash splintered around the striker plate. He realized he’d been holding his breath and exhaled.

  He took his pistol from his pocket, eased back the slide and released it slowly. He felt the jacketed bullet nose softly into the chamber. Then he took a position to the left of the door and listened for sounds. Procedure required that he call in and wait for backup, and he thought about it. But Archie Stevens had a hard time calling for help even when he should. There was no guarantee that he would get any anyway.

  He made spit to moisten his dry mouth. Then he slipped his long body through the doorway. He put his back to the wall, held the Maglite away from him and snapped the beam inside.

  The shop was deserted, but somebody had hit the place hard. Display stands were turned over, dive gear scattered, air tanks rolled across the floor and into corners, and there was more broken glass — a lot of destruction that seemed to have no purpose, as if somebody had targeted Nick for some special and punitive vandalism. The smell of wet neoprene, of oxidizing metal and damp canvas, lingered.

  He let the beam of his li
ght wander as he tried to make sense of what lay before him. He saw long, wet, black streaks on the linoleum and his heart leapt in his chest.

  Again he thought about backing out and calling in, but he didn’t. He had to see for himself, out of pride, or friendship, or something. Pistol at the ready, he followed the blood trail down the narrow hallway towards the back. His thoughts were focussed and clear. His movements were purposeful. He passed a freshwater tank filled with dive gear, passed the pay showers and stopped at the door of the change room at the rear of the building. He caught himself holding his breath again. But the palm that gripped the SIG Sauer was dry.

  Nick’s body was bunked up against a row of lockers. Archie stared at it for a long time. Profound sadness threatened to envelope him but he pushed it down. The body didn’t look like a person at all, more like a bundle of discarded clothes, with the skin shining linen white in the beam of the Maglite and the blood pooling black and gleaming on the scuffed plywood floor.

  Archie angled around until he could see the face, the body so curled up that the head was almost under the shoulder, the throat cut right through and gaping. The face was older than he expected. He coughed against sudden nausea. To fight the squeamishness, he busied himself with procedure — checking rooms, making mental notes, taking care as he moved, preparing the scene for forensics. When he had done enough, he went outside and called the station. He couldn’t shake the image of the corpse. He felt faint, walked to the edge of the parking lot and threw up.

  CHAPTER 2

  The conference room was off square. At some point a contractor had used swamp green paint on the walls. This had a tendency to pick up grease and smudges; it now resembled botched camouflage. People meeting in the conference room wanted to get out as quickly as they could. Cal Fricke, who hated meetings, hadn’t done much to improve the décor. Not a damn thing hung on the walls. It was close to midnight, an hour and a half since Archie had left the murder scene in the care of two patrol officers and he was still wired.

  Cal Fricke rumbled in at last. He sat down heavily, laid a thin file folder on a work surface marked by boot heels, pens, burins made of paper clips or other fragments of metal, and cup rings. Archie wasn’t sure who’d actually organized the meeting on Nick’s murder but it likely wasn’t Fricke who had been at a card game somewhere downtown and seemed none too pleased to be chairing a midnight briefing.

  Archie waited to be called on. He was supposed to go over his impressions of the murder scene with whichever detectives Delia John had been able to contact late in the evening. He had no idea whom among them would lead the investigation, just that it wouldn’t be him. That being the situation, he wanted to give his report and go home to bed. He was suddenly profoundly tired — shock likely. Fricke ignored him and everybody else, leafed through the file folder and made notes on a yellow legal pad. Ray Jameson shambled in five minutes later. The set of his long face told nothing but then it never did. Jameson seldom smiled. Jason Humber and Chad Reddin, two detectives who dealt mostly with robbery, followed close behind. Humber was Jameson’s buddy and often seconded him. He grinned constantly no matter what the conversation. Body-builder Reddin was relatively new and had transferred from some other force. Archie had a limited read on him. None of them acknowledged Archie nor did he offer them any greeting.

  Fricke grunted something. Archie, who had been sitting on the edge of the table, picked a vinyl-seated chair at the far end and dropped into it. He had hoped that Thomas Lee, one of the few cops who had been at least half friendly to him, would be there. Lee would be senior enough to take over the investigation and probably would be amenable to Archie being on the team. That wasn’t likely to happen with any of the others, particularly with Jameson. But Lee hadn’t shown yet; most likely, the case would go to another.

  For a few minutes, the other detectives chatted about nothing important. Archie was wondering what they were waiting for when Fricke suddenly alerted him to the fact that that they were waiting on Archie, that he was supposed to be briefing the room on what had happened and that he’d better get on with it.

  Archie’s mouth went suddenly dry. He nodded and stood up like a school boy making a presentation. To his surprise, everyone, including Jameson, stopped talking and made to listen.

  “I’ll start with time of death,” he said. “The coroner hasn’t been at the scene and won’t be for a few hours because she’s attending elsewhere at the moment. Personally, I figure it was about 4:30 in the afternoon, give or take a half hour.”

  “So, you figure it was still light out when he died?” Fricke asked.

  “It’s definitely possible and I think it’s likely.”

  “How so?”

  This was from Jameson sitting at the end of the table closest to Cal Fricke.

  Archie paused. “The shop lights weren’t turned on.”

  “The killer could have turned them off,” Jameson said. “You think about that possibility?”

  “Yes, I thought of it. It’s possible that whoever killed the victim could have­ turned the lights off, but I doubt it. Anyway, there are other factors.”

  “No kidding. Like what?” Jameson asked.

  “Blood and other things,” Archie said.

  Jameson shook his head. Archie knew his attempt at exposition must have sounded lame. Still, it didn’t make any sense that the killer, or killers, would turn the lights out, not out in the sticks where Nick’s shop was located. Why bother? Also, he had discovered that the lot lights and their remote sensor were controlled from a panel in the back that didn’t look at all like what it was supposed to be. It had been closed, and Archie had had a hard time finding it.

  He was too nervous to defend his position further. He struggled through a description of what he had seen, about the position of Nick’s body, about why he’d been at Nick’s in the first place, and his immediate observations. Going through the straight observation part, the facts, somewhat settled his nervousness. He finished off by saying that the site was secure, ready for whoever would lead the investigation, but Jameson wasn’t finished with him.

  “I admire the way you figured out the time of death. I just wanted to tell you that. Nobody left the lights on. Cute.”

  He laughed and looked at Humber and Reddin who chuckled in agreement. If he’d had more confidence, Archie would have said that he had figured time of death mostly because the blood on the floor had lightly skinned over and that he knew from hunting how long that took. Or he would have told them about the dead deer and when he figured a vehicle leaving Donaldson’s had hit the animal, and when it had died. But he didn’t care to get into more discussion with Jameson, so he just sat down and looked straight ahead.

  Fricke grunted something like “thanks for the roundup”, and then hummed and hawed for a time about budgets and manpower. Archie half-listened, trying to stay focussed on the details. He was anxious to leave. He thought again about quitting the force, wondering if there was much point in staying. The earlier exhilaration he had felt had gone and now he felt drained. He hadn’t eaten for many hours, which further complicated his mood. It still seemed unreal that Nick was truly dead. He would have left the room if he could have done it without losing face.

  As he thought about Nick he lost track of what people were saying until he heard his name repeated with swearing following it.

  “You can’t be fucking serious, Cal!”

  Ray Jameson was not happy.

  Fricke was on his feet now, thick arms folded on the curve of his belly. He looked amused, like he’d just pulled a prank.

  “You’d normally be the lead on this Ray, but you’ve got your plate full. Gorton is on extended leave. Humber’s going on holiday in a few weeks and Reddin’s got no experience with this kind of thing. Stevens has the courses and the training”

  “I don’t give a shit. I can handle this,” Jameson said. “This is goddam politics, Cal, and you know it.”

  Fricke’s face reddened.

  “Don’t gi
ve me any of that crap, Ray. You got complaints you can see me private. We’re going to let the kid have a chance on this one. It isn’t a high-profile case — dead-beat murdered out in the boonies, end of story. The media’s going to forget about it in a day or two; there’s no glory attached to it. Why would you even want it?”

  Jameson didn’t say anything. Instead he stood up and stalked out. Humber watched apparently amused, his grin unchanged.

  “Doesn’t sound like I’m needed,” he said.

  “You can go,” Fricke said. “And take Reddin with you.”

  The words were barely out of Fricke’s mouth when Reddin was on his feet and gone too. Humber followed him, laughing. Archie could hear them talking all the way down the hall. He had never felt so uncomfortable, or so trapped by circumstances. Fricke sat back down and looked intently across the table at him. Archie couldn’t read anything in the gaze.

  “There’s truth in what Ray says,” Fricke said. “There’s always politics in my job. The thing is that it don’t change nothing. Thomas Lee has some personal issues so he can’t really take the lead right now. Ray is busy; Reddin’s busy; Humber’s Humber. There isn’t anyone else but you unless I bring in somebody from Rochville and I may have to do that anyway. I don’t want to do it, but I will if I have to. Clear?”

  Not exactly a vote of confidence, Archie thought. The old Archie would have known what to do, which would have been to tell Fricke to go fuck himself and then quit. But he was tired of that road; tired of letting pride and resentment torpedo any chance he might have of success. Anyway, he didn’t have any cause to get prickly. Fricke was being frank and was giving him an opportunity that wouldn’t come again. Straight talk was always good. He watched Fricke rub his eyes with his short, thick fingers. Then Fricke looked right at him.