by Alex Barclay
‘Jo and him seem to take toilet breaks at the same time …’
Ren glanced over at Jo, who had her bare right foot up on her left knee, dirty sole out. She was bent low, running a fingernail under each toenail. Jesus Christ. Ren watched the guy in the mirror behind the bar. He had the look of a man who was not choosy. Which made her smile when she caught his eyes on her ass. His gaze then slid over in Jo’s direction, a slow, heavy-lidded leer. A shiver ran up Ren’s neck. This guy is wrong. He smiled with his mouth closed, his chin raised and a slight nod. Soon he was back staring at Ren’s ass. Jesus Christ. There’s a mirror, idiot. She looked back at Billy. He was looking at her. He quickly looked away. Her heart flipped. Oh, no.
‘Do you know what he drives?’ said Ren.
‘The green truck out front.’
Behind her, Salem had taken Misty by the leash and walked to the window.
‘I feel like we’re in a snow globe,’ he said, tracing a finger in circles like the snow falling outside.
‘Snow globes are pretty,’ said Billy. ‘People want to look at what’s inside.’
Aw.
The sleazy guy got up behind them, zipped up a light ski jacket and gestured to Salem that he would give him a ride.
Ren glanced over at the corner. ‘I’m amazed he didn’t take Jo …’
‘No go for Jo da Ho,’ said Billy.
Ren laughed. ‘OK, Billy at da Filly. I’m done here. Thank you.’
‘Any time,’ he said.
Two magnetic men walk into a bar … one repelling her, the other drawing her in. There is no punchline. This is not funny.
29
Colin and Robbie were in the office, quietly working at their computers. Ren walked in and dropped her bag at the desk. ‘I have a shaggy dog story.’
Colin didn’t look up. ‘If it is relevant to Jean Transom’s murder, I’d love to hear it. If it’s a sidebar from the CNN website –’
‘Don’t be a dick,’ said Ren.
‘Tell me your story,’ said Robbie. ‘I don’t care.’
‘I will admit,’ said Ren, ‘that it may be as irrelevant as a human interest story, but anyway … Remember the day I came back here after the autopsy in Golden? And there was shit on my boots from the autopsy? Salem Swade, the vet up the mountain – his dog sat down and started barking at me when I walked into reception. But she didn’t react that way to anyone else –’
Colin raised an eyebrow.
Ren rolled her eyes. ‘Anyway, I thought about it. And thought, hold on a second, cadaver dogs are trained to react to putrescine – eau de mort.’
‘Oh de what?’ said Colin.
‘Do you always have to be irritated by things you haven’t come across before?’ said Ren.
Colin said nothing.
‘Eau de mort – I made it up, OK?’ said Ren. ‘Anyway, I remember Cliff saying the cadaver dog that day on the mountain sat down and barked to show he’d picked up the smell. I called his handler and she filled me in – said that was something a lot of cadaver dogs do. Then the handler rewards them with a treat. Which I didn’t do, obviously, with poor Misty, so she kept barking. She stopped eventually, but when I came out again, there she was …’
‘Love the sound effects,’ said Robbie.
‘Thank you,’ said Ren. ‘Anyway, Misty was normal last night when I met her with my new boots on. So there you go.’
‘OK,’ said Robbie. ‘But –’
‘What is the point?’ said Ren, ‘I know.’
‘The point is – guess what? It’s all about Ren,’ said Colin.
‘You know what?’ said Ren. ‘You’re really going to have to go fuck yourself at some stage.’
‘’Cos you won’t be doing it with her,’ said Robbie, pointing to Ren.
‘We don’t all want to fuck Ren Bryce,’ said Colin. ‘That’s your special fantasy, Truax.’
‘Leave him alone,’ said Ren. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Yeah,’ said Robbie. ‘And unlike you, Colin, I would know how to treat a lady.’
‘Oh, I know how to treat a lady,’ said Colin. ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em –’
‘Repulsed,’ said Ren. ‘Back to the matter at hand – remember the paw prints up on Quandary that were in your photos, Robbie? I think someone who knew about Misty’s little gift took her from Salem Swade’s cabin – he wasn’t there that night – and brought her out to look for the body. Which Misty may or may not have found.’
Colin nodded. ‘OK, that’s interesting.’
‘Is it now?’ said Ren.
‘But who could know that about the dog?’ said Colin.
Ren shrugged. ‘That? I don’t know.’
‘And who knows the dog well enough to be able to get her away from the cabin like that?’
‘Strikes me that the whole town knows Misty,’ said Ren. ‘And she is one very friendly dog. Especially considering what her secret talent is. And she is a food whore. All the restaurants feed her. A nice steak would have her out in the snow right away. And snow is hard to sniff a corpse out in.’
‘My photos rock,’ said Robbie.
‘Update number two is on Caroline Quaintance,’ said Ren. ‘Turns out she was a friend of Jean’s from the animal shelter Jean worked at as a weekend volunteer. Caroline was seen outside Jean’s house last night. She told me she was looking for Jean’s cat in case he was still there or wandering the neighborhood or whatever. I think she was telling the truth about that. She said Jean and her had been friends for about a year. The animal shelter is in Rifle. It’s called Homeward Friends. I have one of the detectives here getting a list of the employees, so between us we can go talk to them all. And hopefully I can get to the bottom of what it is that Caroline Quaintance is lying to me about.’
She walked out into the hallway and saw Todd Austerval up ahead. She called out to him. He stopped.
‘Hi,’ said Ren, ‘I just wanted to say. I don’t know if you heard Gressett and me talking … that time in Glenwood when you came in from your run.’
‘I did hear,’ said Todd. ‘And what I was guessing was that Gressett was telling you I didn’t make it through the undercover program?’
‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘But –’
Todd shrugged. ‘He loves telling people that, for some reason. I guess it makes him feel –’
‘Not so Tiny?’
Todd smiled. ‘And you were right. I am lucky I didn’t make it.’
‘You do have a touch of the White Supremacist about you, though. You could have pulled it off …’
Todd laughed. ‘Anyway, don’t worry, you didn’t say anything to offend me.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m not that sensitive.’ He smiled. ‘Hey, I put up with that prick all day.’
When Ren got back to the inn that night, the lights were dimmed and the fire was dying. She went in through the main door and lay back on the sofa in the living room. She pulled a cushion to her side. She expected more people to be up, but then she remembered they would be heading to the slopes early. She closed her eyes. The front door banged shut. She opened her eyes. But whoever it was went straight upstairs. She thought of Billy Waites. What was his story? How did he end up where he was? How did any of us?
Her eyes closed again. Her body struggled to keep her awake. But for a while, in the darkness of her mind, she was somewhere she did not want to be; she lay on dried earth. A boot was pressing hard on her jaw. Before her, several faces, swelled by humidity, seemed to change expressions like the images on a one-armed bandit. Their eyes bore into her. She didn’t know what configuration of ugly, haunting looks would take shape. She wanted to wipe the dirt from her lips, but she couldn’t move. Saliva leaked slowly from her mouth, the skin on her neck was tight with heat. Her heart pumped harder.
Ren jerked awake. She breathed in and out slowly, slowly. Through the window, she could see snow falling hard. She forced her feet on to the floor. Everything ached. She checked the time – eleven thirty p.m. She wo
ndered had anyone come in and seen her. She wondered had she cried out.
She wondered if she could ever dream gently.
30
Ren went into the office the next day and asked Bob for the Mark Allen Wilson file. She could not admit she considered the possibility of a link to both crimes. He would think she was nuts.
‘Indulging Ollie Haggart?’ said Bob.
‘Maybe,’ said Ren. ‘I just want to take a look, at least.’
‘Why?’
‘Look, I understand where you’re coming from about Ollie Haggart’s motivation. But you know when something’s at the back of your mind? It’s bound to put a little pressure on the front. So if I can get rid of it …’ She shrugged. ‘It’ll take me a half-hour.’
‘Don’t waste your time.’
‘I can spare a half-hour,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it out of lunch.’
‘I haven’t seen you eat once since you’ve been here,’ said Bob.
‘Excuse me? I had one of your Jolly Ranchers.’
‘Knock yourself out. Talk to Mike, he’ll get you the file,’ said Bob. ‘You looking to distract yourself from something?’
Ren stood up. ‘Miaow.’
Ren drove to Main Street, parked and walked a few blocks to the Crown. It was one of her favorite places in Breck – a café up a short flight of steps in a strip of red-brick stores. The eighties entrance led into a totally different world – frescoes, chandeliers, antique wall lights and comfortable chairs.
The seat by the fire was free. Ren rushed to the counter to order. It was the same every time: the Cinnamonster, like a Cinnabon. It was cinnamon, it was monstrous, it was a cake covered in something she could never find the words to describe. She grabbed a black coffee, got the waitress to throw two espresso shots in it and made it back to the fireside chair before anyone had taken it.
She opened the Missing Persons file on Mark Wilson:
Case Initiated
At 4 p.m. on February 12th, I, Undersheriff Mike Delaney, received a call from Hal Rautts at Reign on Main reporting that Mark Wilson did not attend a job interview that they had scheduled the previous week. He failed to reach Mark Wilson on his cellphone. On hearing that Mark Wilson had been in an altercation with Terrence Haggart the previous Saturday and had been last seen badly beaten, Rautts called to the Cheapshot Inn on Ridge Street where Wilson had been staying. Wilson had not been seen there since the day before the altercation with Haggart. Rautts then called the Sheriff’s Office to report Mark Wilson as a missing person.
Case Investigation
I interviewed Terrence Haggart who acknowledged the incident, which had happened at the Brockton Filly on Saturday, February 10th at 11 p.m. They had been arguing about money. Haggart said Wilson owed him two thousand dollars. Terrence Haggart said that the last time he saw Mark Wilson, it was in the parking lot of the Brockton Filly. Haggart admitted that Wilson was very badly beaten by him, but was standing when Haggart left him to go back into the bar. It was confirmed by Billy Waites, bar manager at the Brockton Filly, that this was correct. He also confirmed that Mark Wilson had been drinking steadily from 4 p.m. that day.
Terrence Haggart left the Brockton Filly at 1 a.m. to drive home. Mark Wilson had not re-entered the bar since the altercation outside. Wilson had hitch-hiked to the bar that afternoon. He did not have a vehicle to drive back to Breckenridge in.
Ren skimmed through the rest of the file – all the obvious parts, the witness statements that added nothing to the overall picture. Every time Billy Waites’ name appeared, she got a sensation she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
She stopped skimming to get a sense of who Mark Wilson was.
Social History:
On February 14th, I spoke on the telephone with Mark Wilson’s mother, Diane Wilson. She confirmed she had not heard from her son, but stated that she ‘never’ heard from him. He grew up in Iowa and had developed a drug and alcohol problem in his late teens. His family made several attempts to rehabilitate him, all of which failed. He had been estranged from his family since he was twenty-three years old, but had made intermittent contact over the years, according to his mother, ‘looking for money or sympathy’.
Wilson had worked different jobs since he left home, mainly in factories, on farms and in manufacturing. He had moved to Breckenridge one month before his disappearance …
Ren slumped back in her chair. It was amazing what people would commit to in a legal document, what awful words they would allow to be attributed to them. Mark Wilson – a tragic man, a troubled drunk, did not deserve to have his disappearance described, she read, by his family as ‘another pathetic stunt’.
31
The windscreen wipers did little to help the visibility. Ren drove a thin line between patience and urgency. Adrenaline and a can of Red Bull were pumping through her. Main Street was like the ghost town it had never become. The lights twinkled brief joy before the dark roads ahead. She passed a handful of cars on the way to the Filly. She pulled in behind the green, filthy truck she was hoping she would find there. The reverse-Minotaur guy. She glanced in the window and saw a mess of papers, coffee cups, a box of NoDoz, some hair gel. She moved on.
He wasn’t there when she walked in. But he walked out of the men’s room not long after Jo.
‘Another pitcher, please, Billy,’ Jo called out across the bar. ‘Hey,’ she said, waving to Ren. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Good,’ said Ren. ‘Good. How you doing?’
‘Super.’
Ren went to the bar. Billy was sitting behind it reading a book.
‘Working hard?’ she said, smiling.
He smiled back. He put the book down. ‘I have to be here to take care of the kegs that have just come in. And I have not sat down all evening until about five minutes before you came in.’
‘Oh, OK, then,’ said Ren.
‘I actually love my job,’ said Billy.
‘Do you?’ said Ren.
‘Yes, I do. Do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘I did different things when I was younger that didn’t suit me, but now, I know I’m in the right job.’
‘Yup, because you have no life,’ said Billy.
‘I … do have a life,’ she said. ‘I’m just wondering exactly where it is.’
Billy smiled. ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t very nice.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘So, what are you reading?’
‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon.’
‘That is one of my favorite books.’
He nodded. ‘Me too. It’s just so strange. And so beautifully written.’
‘Show it to me.’
He frowned. ‘OK.’
He walked toward her and lay the book on the bar. Ren leaned in to look at it, but whispered to him: ‘Could you take our friend’s beer bottle, so I can run his prints?’
‘Sure,’ said Billy. ‘Now?’
‘Well not, like, right now, no.’ She smiled. ‘But yes – tonight.’
‘Sure.’
After finishing his beer, the guy finally left. Billy waited a while, then went to his table. He put a napkin around the top of the bottle and took it into the back room behind the bar. He stayed back there a while. Ren started flicking through the book. When she turned around, she realized the bar was empty. She could hear Billy rolling kegs of beer somewhere. She caught a glimpse of him through the doorway. The last confidential informant she’d dealt with had been an ever-moaning man – five-foot nothing and fought the world to gain a few more inches in height.
‘Are you OK out there?’ Billy shouted.
‘Yes. I’m fine.’
‘I’ll be out in a little while,’ he said.
Why am I still here? ‘OK.’
She wandered around the bar, looking at the photos on the wall, the madam’s ‘girls’ dressed up to look older and primmer than they may have been. She started to read the yellowed newspaper cuttings about them being run out of Boston to Denver and finally settling in their
famed out-of-town spot by Quandary Peak. Billy came down to join her when he was done.
‘Can I ask you about Mark Allen Wilson – the missing guy?’ said Ren.
Billy frowned. ‘Sure.’
‘What happened the Saturday night between him and Terrence Haggart?’
‘Wilson came in here in the afternoon and started drinking. A couple of hours later, Terrence Haggart came in – he was a regular.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Terrence Haggart thought the world owed him a living. He’d get aggressive with lottery tickets that didn’t have the right numbers printed on them.’
Ren smiled.
‘He was always disagreeing with people about sports or work or women. He would just pick the opposing view of whoever he was talking to. I’d see it played out in front of me every time. I used to hope he’d meet someone who would take him from his bar stool to a booth, so I wouldn’t have to listen to his bullshit. He was ignorant.’
‘Can I guess that you served him hard liquor?’ said Ren.
‘What – as opposed to soda?’
‘No. I just heard he was charming, depending what kind of alcohol was coursing through his veins.’
Billy rolled his eyes. ‘Sure, whatever. I guess in the early stages of an evening, yes. But it was the later stages that left the lasting impression on me. I mean, he had a party guy rep, but he’s not the kind of guy I’d want to party with.’
‘And what was Mark Wilson like?’
‘A heavy drinker, but a harmless one, from what I saw. He’d only been here once or twice before the night he disappeared.’
‘So what happened that night?’
‘I got the impression they knew each other. So it was all friendly until Haggart had one of his lottery-ticket meltdowns. Wilson started laughing at him. Haggart went ballistic and said if Wilson hadn’t owed him so much money, he wouldn’t have been in such a desperate need of a lottery win.’
Ren rolled her eyes. ‘God, alcohol sucks people into the most petty bullshit.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Billy. ‘Anyway, they start punching the crap out of each other. I try and get between them. I break it up for a little while. Then Wilson starts calling him Terrence Jackpot Haggart. Haggart loses it, pushes him out into the parking lot, kicks the shit out of him and leaves him there. He comes back in for a few drinks. And a couple days later, we hear Wilson’s disappeared.’
