Last of the Independents

by Sam Wiebe

  “Get what off?”

  “You’ve been waiting two years to say it. What an asshole I am.”

  “You are an asshole,” I said. “You’re a shithead. Why would you do something like that to someone who was your friend?”

  “Like if you were in my place you wouldn’t’ve done the same thing?”

  “No I wouldn’t. Because I’m not a shithead.”

  The parents at a nearby table glanced at us, a tut-tut expression on the woman’s face. Their kids paid us no mind.

  “You beat the holy hell out of Theo Atero,” Fisk said. “Eager told me he visited him in St. Paul’s. Three broken ribs, a broken finger and a sprained wrist, plus the concussion.”

  “He’s in a rough line of work,” I said. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “You beat him up, didn’t you?”

  I pointed to my cast as if that was proof I wasn’t complicit. “Maybe he fell down some stairs. Twice,” I added, unable to help myself.

  “So how are you better than me?”

  “I never thought that,” I said, “until you slept with the woman I was engaged to. Things were a mess between her and me, but at least Mira apologized.”

  “Is that what you want from me, an apology?”

  “I don’t want anything from you except to find the Szabo kid and go home.”

  We each picked up our books.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  When I looked up his face was buried in the page.

  “Did you say something?”

  “No.”

  “Just checking.”

  “Who the hell is Garrick?” Fisk asked after a few minutes of reading.

  “In the book? One of the guides.”

  “I know that. Why does Hemingway call him that?”

  “Name of a famous actor, I think.”

  “Guess that makes sense.”

  I read a little about boxing.

  Before I’d left I tried to talk to Amelia Yeats, but her phone went straight to message. She wasn’t at Enola Curious, and nobody answered when I rang the bell at Yates Manor.

  Sunday night she emailed me. With her spelling corrected, this is how it read:

  Hey.

  I’m in Reykjavik right now, helping my dad record this heavy metal band that hasn’t played together in forty years. They got offered a million dollars to re-form for the European festival circuit. Some of them haven’t picked up their instruments in all that time. I guess there will be a lot of disappointed Europeans next year. But then most people go to shows to see a group, not to listen to them, so maybe no one will notice.

  I think if you took everything we said to each other and everything we did, and separated them, there would be two different relationships. I think some people talk out of fear but act out of love. I think we’re both like that.

  I’ve attached that Hooker’N Heat album we talked about. I have the vinyl at home, but I downloaded this copy illegally. Don’t hold it against me.

  The band and my dad are back from the pub. In Iceland they have this drink called Glögg. It’s hot wine with cloves in it, served with raisins and almonds. Sounds gross, but once you get used to it it’s really quite horrible. The bass player Nils is in Narcotics Anonymous. Some of what he says makes sense. Don’t get your hopes up.

  Anyway, I have to go. I hope you find Cliff’s son. I miss seeing them.

  Love.

  She hadn’t signed it, just love. Love was enough.

  The van’s glove box yielded a treasure trove of demo CDs. Fisk and I listened to them as we drove. Most lasted about thirty seconds before Fisk hit eject and Frisbee’d them out the window. We listened to a passable metal band and a live recording of a his-and-hers folk duo who sung “Wade in the Water,” “I’ll Fly Away,” and an original that had a call-and-response structure. The man would ask some sort of hippie-drivel question and the woman would answer “Yes, Yes.”

  Do we wish all people loved each other?

  Yes, yes.

  Do we wish more people hugged each other?

  Yes, yes.

  “Put a fucking bullet in me,” Fisk said.

  Do we believe that we can change, that governments don’t have to fly their planes of destruction,

  O destruction, let me hear you sing it now,

  Yes, yes.

  The other verses were even worse.

  Prosper’s Point was named for a hill rather than a coastal feature, and located in the interior of the island. We drove through Nanaimo (“Would be the easiest city to police,” Fisk said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s built on a slope; all the criminals would run downhill.”) and north through pasture. We passed isolated ranches whose barns, long empty, had been allowed to weather artfully but not fall into disrepair. In one fenced-in meadow a trio of Bay horses grazed. All three were wearing capes to ward off the chill. It gave them a kind of regal appearance but also looked stupid, like dogs in pink sweaters. We passed the turnoff for a trailer park

  (“I’d be shocked if there were less than three meth labs in there,” said Fisk.) and turned on to a narrow road that cut through the Douglas Fir leading us to the top of a small rise. On the other side lay Prosper’s Point.

  The main strip had a McDonald’s and a Country Cabin Motel, two gas stations and a selection of bars. The thoroughly modern glass-and-plastic RCMP station was sandwiched between a coffee shop franchise shaped like a teepee and a solid-looking blue brick building that housed the Prosper’s Point Library, City Hall, and Chamber of Commerce. I pulled into the parking lot, climbed out of the van and stretched.

  Fisk said, “How ’bout I go track down this twit Delgado while you get us a coffee?” I was too busy yawning to argue. He went inside the station and I walked over to the teepee. A heavily-freckled redhead and a dark-haired boy, both wearing yolk-yellow T-shirts carrying the franchise’s logo, stood behind the counter. They looked about seventeen, the girl maybe older, in the full flush of her beauty, the boy gangly, acne-pitted, and awkward. He was in the middle of an anecdote that had put a smile of questionable sincerity on her face. The sum total of their relationship, and indeed their lives, was written in that tableau for any stranger to see.

  The boy noticed me and put his arms on the counter. “How,” he said.

  “Please tell me your boss makes you say that.”

  The girl grinned. So did the boy, but only after checking her face and then only enough so she wouldn’t think him jealous. His nametag read STEVIE, hers ABIGAIL.

  “Guess a London Fog’s out of the question,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  There was no bill of fare posted in the small shack, just urns of coffee and hot water and a display rack of shrink-wrapped pastries.

  “What kind of tea do you have?”

  “Tetley’s and Rose Red,” Abigail said.

  “Cup of hot water and a Double Double,” I said. “That’s coffee, two cream two sugar.”

  “I know what a Double Double is,” Stevie said. He went about putting the drinks together. Abigail remained perched on the back counter.

  “That your van?” she asked.

  “Just bought it this weekend,” I said. “Used to belong to a record producer-slash-engineer. He accepted it as payment from a bar band for doing their demo.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Stevie put the drinks on the counter and made change from my twenty.

  “In fact,” I said, “were you to inspect the back of the van, you would find a piece of plywood. If you were to lift this plywood up, you would find a hole drilled in the floor of the van.”

  “What for?” asked Abigail.

  I unwrapped my Twinings bag and dunked it in the water. Stevie seemed agitated that I hadn’t left. I didn’t want to cause him grief by wooing his girlfriend with tales of musicians and exotic beverages, but I felt that if anyone noticed who came and went in Prosper’s Point, it would be her.

&nbs
p; “The hole,” I said, “is for a funnel and a hose.”

  “Like a beer bong?”

  “Much like a beer bong, except it’s used to get rid of fluids. When you tour Canada by van, you can’t stop every time someone needs to piss.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “If you can abandon your post for a moment I’ll prove it.”

  She hopped off the counter and came out the back entrance. I didn’t need to look back at Stevie to know his expression.

  I put Fisk’s coffee on the roof, opened the back doors and pulled back the plywood. “One hole as promised. Now you can go to your grave having seen everything.”

  “Not quite,” she said.

  I sat on the floor of the van with my legs hanging out and patted the bumper for her to join me.

  “My name is Mike Drayton and I’m a private investigator from Vancouver,” I said. The last two words made her face light up. “I’m looking for three women who came here in March or April, either passing through or to stay.”

  “Why, what’d they do?”

  “Do you want me to lie to you, or can I just say it’s important to find them?”

  “Mysterious,” she said.

  “They would’ve had a boy with them, maybe twelve years old.”

  “And they looked like what?”

  “Blonde, mid-thirties named Barbara. Brunette named Dawn or Dominique. No description on the third one.”

  She shook out a cigarette from a pack she kept in the back pocket of her jeans. She offered me one, lit hers and blew out a mouthful of smoke with what passed for cosmopolitan nonchalance in Prosper’s Point. “Three you said?”

  “Any number, if they were traveling with the boy.”

  “The boy I don’t know about,” Abigail said. “I remember two women in a Jeep. They’d get gas across the street and one of them would come over for coffee and danishes, enough for three people. The weird thing was, it was the same woman who pumped the gas that got the coffee. The other one just sat in the car.”

  “Who got the coffee? Was she blonde?”

  “Both brown haired, I think.” Abigail flicked her cigarette butt into a puddle near the curb, disturbing the rainbow scum of oil. “The one in the car was a mousy brown, kind of thin. The one that got the coffee looked about forty. On the fat side, no makeup, only these really fake drawn-on eyebrows. You know those racist cartoons from World War Two, where Asian people’s eyes are drawn as upside-down V’s? That’s what her eyebrows looked like.”

  “This is in April?”

  “April and May, yeah.”

  “How many times did you see them?”

  “A few times. I think they were living around here.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “No clue,” she said.

  “Would Stevie know?”

  “Why would he?”

  “Different question: are there prostitutes in town?”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “If there were, which bar would they frequent?”

  Abigail thought it over. “Big Dave’s is where the old people drink. Ace’s is more upscale. Cops drink there. That leaves the Palatial. Lot of fights break out there. They even had a shooting two years ago. Yeah, I’d say the Palatial.”

  “’Preciate it,” I said, handing her a twenty-dollar bill and a business card. “Think of anything else, let me know.”

  She folded the money and tucked it and the card inside the packaging of her cigarettes.

  “Tell Stevie I didn’t mean to step on his turf.”

  “You didn’t,” Abigail said. “And it won’t matter, he’ll be jealous anyway.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you’re more interesting than him,” she said. “He’ll sulk and then talk shit about you when I get back. So predictable. We hooked up like a year ago and he’s obsessed.”

  “Probably not a lot of alternatives,” I said. Then realizing how insulting that could be taken: “Not that you’re not worth obsessing over.”

  “I’m eighteen in less than two months,” she said. “New Year’s Baby.”

  “Are you planning on leaving?”

  “I want to.”

  “Then you should,” I said. “Go waitress in the Big City. Be broke, live in squalor. Don’t wait for some guy to take you out of here.”

  She tore one of the flaps off the cigarette pack, wrote something on it, and placed it on the plywood before hopping down and heading back to the teepee. I looked at the paper and saw it was a phone number and email, and her name, the i dotted with a heart. I left it on the floor of the van, locked up, and headed into the station.

  When I asked where I’d find Sergeant Delgado, the receptionist said, “Willie’s down in the morgue talking with Dr. Boone and somebody from the Mainland. Want me to page him?”

  “If you could just give me directions,” I said, showing her my credentials. A private eye license does not grant admission to an autopsy room, but either she didn’t know that, or Fisk had already cleared me. She pointed to the elevator and told me I wanted Basement Two.

  The coroner’s office was on the right hand side of the hall as I came out of the elevator. The door was open. Inside sat Gavin Fisk, a ponytailed older woman in a suit, and a tall man in the dark blue RCMP uniform. Fisk looked up at me as I handed him his coffee.

  “Mike Drayton,” he said to the others. “Formerly VPD, hired by the father to make sure I dot my P’s and Q’s.”

  The Mountie stood up and extended a big hand. “Willie Delgado,” he said. “This is Beth Boone, our corpse doctor.”

  “Pleased, Mike,” Boone said, extending her own well-moisturized hand.

  “Beth was telling us that the official identification will take at least a week on account of the lack of personal effects.”

  “Who’s the deceased?” I asked. “I mean what’s the description?”

  “Unidentified woman, mid-thirties, black hair,” Delgado said.

  “Barbara Della Costa?”

  “If they knew her identity, Mike, she wouldn’t be unidentified,” Fisk said. “’Sides, Barbara was the blonde.” Before I could retort he added, “Not that she’d have any difficulty buying a tube of black dye, or that black couldn’t be her natural colour.”

  I asked Dr. Boone, “Were her eyebrows drawn on V-shaped, very severely, maybe oversized?”

  “She died several months ago, so that’s hard to say. I can tell you for sure, though, that her face was regularly depilated.” Her hand traced along her own silver eyebrows. “Faint razor scars, too. Only noticed them when she was on the table. I’ll finish my coffee and get to the autopsy.”

  “Where was she found? What body position?”

  “Upright behind the wheel of a late nineties LeBaron,” Delgado said. “Parked in the shed on Lester Rusk’s place. Lester’s been dead eight years. His niece sold the spread to a Japanese concern. No one really goes there.”

  “You found her?”

  “’Fraid so,” he said. “Not my finest hour, I must admit. My new neighbours got this dog, which has been taking an interest in the rabbit hutch my daughters keep. A fence seemed like the solution, but I didn’t own an auger — that’s a tool to dig fence holes.”

  “I’ve used an auger before,” I said, wondering why I felt the need to tell him that.

  “Anyway, these days, who’s got an auger? Then I remembered that Lester had all sorts of tools, ’cluding at least one auger. Man liked his flea markets. He used to leave his tools all over the yard, but after the sale, all that crap was thrown in the shed.”

  “Should I be writing this down?” I said, thinking, a policeman should be able to pick out a pertinent detail.

  Delgado smiled. “Anyway, a couple months ago I head over to the Rusk place. The shed’s been padlocked, but all the tools and whatnot have been piled along the side. I take the auger and think nothing of it, ’cause it’s not like I’m technically ’sposed to be there anyho
w. Then the other day when Mr. Fisk phoned about that missing boy, I thought to myself, that shed could only have been emptied out ’round the timeframe he mentioned, March–April-May. See, I’d been to the shed before that to return a little hand-cranked cement mixer.”

  “Sure,” I said, hoping to cut the anecdote short. “So you took off the padlock and the car was inside.”

  “How it happened, pretty much.”

  I turned to Fisk. “Should we check out the Rusk place?”

  “Unless the sarge has any leads on who killed her.”

  “What, not who,” said Dr. Boone. “From first glance I’d say carbon monoxide poisoning. Looks to me like she killed herself.”

  XXIII

  The Ostrich Man

  “I don’t like this Delgado,” Fisk said. “I don’t like this town. I don’t like the coroner sitting on her ass when that body might tell us something.”

  We were following Delgado’s Interceptor up a gravel logging road. The road was so narrow that when a car approached going the opposite way, we had to stop and pull over so that the right-side wheels rested on the ribbon of grass separating the road from an algae-covered ditch.

  “We know one thing,” I said. “Barbara and Dawn came here for a reason. They weren’t hiding out here at random.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Delgado turned left onto a strip of hard-packed dirt. He parked in front of a weather-beaten homestead, its ancient porch a gap-toothed smile of sunken and missing planks. Behind and to the left was a rusty aluminum shed, white with red trim, its doors hanging open. Police tape and an official notice were secured to the door.

  I said, “If this was just a stop-over, Barbara would have bought the fishing rods here, then sold them somewhere else. Tofino, maybe. But she stayed here to try and sell them, meaning this was her base. If she did herself in, whatever was here was something she couldn’t outrun or escape.”

  “Doesn’t bode well for the kid,” Fisk said.

  “No it doesn’t.”

  “She kills him, then kills herself?”