by Jon Redfern
Billy glanced at the digital clock. It was 6:45, and he decided to pull out his mat. He sat down, crossed his legs yogi style, clearing his mind for the za-zen and the wave of calm. After ten minutes, he climbed back into bed.
Later, when a car turned from the concession road and clanged over the Texas gate leading into the ranch house yard, Billy sprang up from the mattress and shook his head. It was 10:05.
“Damn,” he said. He rose and went to the window. A trail of dust swirled by the fence posts. Running into the kitchen, he saw a blue-and-white city cruiser pull up to the back steps. The driver honked once and then jumped out of his seat. Billy recognized him and walked out onto the porch.
“Royce. What brings you out here so early?”
“Chief didn’t get a hold of you yet, sir?”
“Come in, Royce. I can put a fresh pot on the range.”
The young sergeant pulled off his sunglasses and walked into the kitchen behind Billy. He waited by the screen door as Billy filled the percolator with fresh water.
“Don’t bother about me, sir.”
“You sure?”
“I don’t take coffee, sir. Or tea.”
“I beg your pardon. You Latter Day Saints?”
“No, sir. I have an allergy to caffeine.”
Royce blushed at his own words and shuffled his feet. After he’d ventured a pause, he spoke up.
“Chief said you’d been having trouble with your Pontiac, so he wondered. . . .”
“You came out here just to tell me that?”
Royce took a step back.
“No, sir. Chief said he was going to call you and let you know I was on my way. He said he’d explain the whole matter to you.”
“A case, you mean?”
“I’m not sure, sir. You on contract with us?”
“Well, your police board thinks I should be put on per diem stipends if and when I’m called in. But only as a part-time deputy. Not much call for homicide back-up in the city.”
Royce nodded and seemed to show interest.
“My last case was that stabbing in April. A couple of rednecks from Montana decided to ass around with Bobby Weasel Woman.”
“He got convicted.”
“Yes. It wasn’t easy.”
Royce crossed his arms and stood more at ease. Billy had met him a couple of times with Chief Eddy “Butch” Bochansky. Royce was polite, no more than twenty-five, and curious. He’d asked Billy once about his work in Vancouver. Small talk among policemen, certainly, but Royce had a sincerity about him that Billy had liked from the start.
“Chief is lucky to have you.”
Billy stood quiet for a moment. Nothing was worse than the loss of his father. But then to have to spend days grieving in an empty house full of empty hours. Well, he was lucky he had Butch.
Billy counted the rings as he headed towards the hallway. The black rotary phone hung in a corner by the kitchen door. Above it was a tarnished wall sconce in the shape of a tulip, made of brass and smoky glass. Billy clicked the switch on the plate of the sconce. Ring seven. No need to guess who this was. He pulled in a breath and grinned. He wondered for a second, his hand poised on the receiver, just how long Butch would let the phone go before hanging up. Billy knew his old friend well enough to figure he’d ring it a hundred times and keep on ringing it until he got an answer. He rubbed his hand through his rumpled black hair, cautioned himself. Ever since February, he and Chief Eddy “Butch” Bochansky had met once a week to drink Colombian, Butch claiming he liked to talk over police business. This kind of call had come many times before, but as he lifted the receiver on ring sixteen, Billy sensed he was not going to spend the rest of his morning on the ranch.
“Get you out of your easy chair, buddy?” Butch’s voice sounded tired and edgy.
“I was digging up sod, Butch. Or planning to. You having a slow morning?”
“Is the pope Catholic? I wish! Young Royce make it there?”
“Right on time, Butch.”
“I got held up,” Butch coughed. “I need a favour.”
“Go.”
“We had a juvenile case last winter. Just before you moved back. Around Christmas. A fourteen-year-old boy was found hanging in Satan House.”
“Satan House?”
“The old Bartlett place on Ashmead. The press got hold of the story, discovered the local kids called the house that, and the nickname stuck. Evidence put the case down as teenage suicide. No foul play. Coroner Hawkes uncovered no proof to the contrary. Now, I know you’d rather be at home staring at the view, but we got us a messy plate of worms this morning. Satan House again. Same basement room. Another male of fourteen. But this one smells like homicide.”
“When did you find the body?”
“About an hour and a half ago. The kid was strung up and mutilated. Around Friday midnight we figure.”
“How bad?”
“Surface knife wounds. One cut in the shape of a pentacle on the chest area. Also, both wrists scored.”
“Anything else?”
“I need your experience, buddy. Sergeant Dodd has asked to be on the case. He and I don’t quite see eye to eye. Let’s say he’s a bit slow on the uptake. You ever met Dodd?”
“Not yet.”
“This body we got now is a different barrel of minnows. And I’m not so sure I know where to stick my hand in.”
As Billy’s excitement grew, doubt and concern cut in to warn him to go easy. He always thought of himself as cautious, and Butch was a man who liked to run things his own way. Billy didn’t want to spend his time stepping on toes.
“I’ve got trees to plant, Butch. Rocks to move.”
“Listen. I’ll arrange a per diem like last time. You can hedge your bets. If it’s simple, you’ve only wasted a day. I buy you a sandwich at the canteen, give you a tour of our new facilities — you’ve never seen the new offices, have you? I spot you a couple of coffees, then you’re home for supper and a good three hours of gardening before the sun goes down.”
“Second body in six months in the same locale?”
“Take a look.”
“You sure you need me? Sounds like you’ve tagged this one. Once you’ve done the cutup, you’ll see if there are parallels to the first. I’d look into what the kid was doing with his peers. A lot grab onto Satanic hocus-pocus through their music.” Even as he said the words, Billy sensed he’d lost an opportunity to go to town.
“I thought about all of that. But the site has a couple of problems. Real quirks. If you’ve got the time, I’d appreciate your take.”
“Well, you know I can’t refuse canteen food, Butch. But I’m going to have to find some time this weekend to get at the garden before all my plants shrivel up.”
“Thanks. I’ll count on you to be in my office at what time?”
“How’s Dodd going to feel about this?”
Butch’s comment about Dodd seemed out of character since Billy had the impression Butch respected his staff. He always spoke of them during their coffee talks as loyal, hard-working people.
“Don’t get me wrong. He’s a good man, Billy. He rubs me the wrong way is all. His manner, I guess. I asked him before I called you if he or any of the other men would feel put out if you came in for a while to look around. He’s fine with it. So, it’s a yes, then?”
“As soon as I get dressed and put the Pontiac in drive.”
“Hell, catch a ride with Royce. That’s what I sent him out there for.”
“If it’s all the same with you, Butch, I like to come and go on my own time and gas.”
“Get in here, then.”
Billy hung up. He told Royce to head back into town and apologized for taking up his time.
“No problems, sir. You got a fine piece of land out here.”
The two men shook hands, and Billy watched as Royce steered the cruiser out of the yard towards the Texas gate. He then walked into the bathroom, where he turned on the water in the shower. He placed his sweats o
n the new hook he’d screwed into the wooden door, then eased his way under the pelting force of the showerhead, his mind leaping forward, timing how soon he could finish shaving and dressing before he climbed into the Pontiac. The drive into Lethbridge could take thirty minutes, maybe longer if traffic was slow, it being Saturday and the highway crowded with half-tons and mini-vans coming in from towns like Fort Macleod, Monarch, and Kipp. Out of the shower, Billy dried himself, quickly shaved, put on a white shirt and his clean blue suit. Mixed with his anticipation was foreboding: it wasn’t like Butch to insist as he had unless things were bad. “Real quirks,” Billy said to himself.
In the kitchen, he picked up a couple of Bic pens from the table, checked the stove, and rinsed out the percolator. He then walked onto the porch and decided not to lock the door. He was in the country now. There was nothing to steal from the house. Hearing the screen door slap shut, Billy felt sudden joy. He took in a deep breath. The sun was hanging hot and yellow in a cloudless blue dome of air. He put on his aviators and crossed the yard of wild oat grass, climbed into the Pontiac, and cranked the engine. He backed out and braked. Beside the porch sat two fir trees in their burlap sacking. The honour garden needed water. But he could let it go for one more day. He pushed the gear into drive. The Pontiac moaned, its innards rattling as Billy manoeuvred the car towards the concession road.
Staff Sergeant Richard “Ricky” Dodd opened the door carefully. In his left hand was a tall Styrofoam cup. The coffee was at the rim, and Dodd was trying not to spill it on his wrist.
“Morning, sir.”
“Morning, sergeant.”
Billy glanced at the clock on the sergeant’s desk: 10:48. He’d made the drive and found his way into this office in record time.
“Sorry about all of this.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“He’s got a couple of hysterical people in there with him. The mother is right off her hinge. She’s brought along her boyfriend. Chief is trying to calm them down.”
“Understandable.”
“It was with milk, wasn’t it, sir?”
“It was.”
“Chief tells me you used to be with the city force in Vancouver. Detective inspector. Headed vice and homicide.”
“Homicide. Twelve years. Before that, general investigation, drug squad, some sexual assault.”
“That so?” Dodd shook drops of coffee off his left hand. He scanned Billy Yamamoto’s face.
“I took early retirement from the Vancouver unit seven months ago.”
Dodd did not move but licked his lips. “Chief tells me you lost your dad a while back?”
“Three weeks.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Thank you, Dodd.”
“You retiring to the coast, then? Out where balmy breezes blow?” Dodd grinned, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
“No, I’ve moved back to an acreage west of here, outside Fort Macleod.”
“You like it? You’re from around here, right? Originally?”
“Yes. And, yes, I love it.”
Billy Yamamoto crossed his legs. He stared down at the beige liquid in the Styrofoam cup. It was the usual hot coloured water, no worse than the brew he’d swallowed for twenty-five years in the offices at 52 Division on Granville Street in Vancouver. Driving into Lethbridge this morning, Billy had been impressed by the new station and understood Butch’s pride. The building’s red metal canopy faced the 1910 post office clock tower. Two miles east from the parking lot, Billy had seen the city’s single giant grain elevator, its eight round silo bins painted a gun-metal grey. Billy recalled the old wooden brewery that once stood where he was now sitting. One summer, at age nineteen, he’d worked stacking bottles and loading beer crates onto CPR boxcars in the basement. He gazed at the clean blue rubber tiles under his shoes and wondered what his father, Arthur, had been like at nineteen, isolated from women, having only brutal field labour to keep him occupied.
Dodd got up and pulled open a drawer. Spoons rattled as he lifted out a box of sugar cubes. “You want any of this?”
“Never touch it, thanks.”
A rest should come between us, Billy thought. An old lesson of Rinzai: “Let silence speak.”
“Chief should be out soon, sir.” The sergeant softened his voice, giving it the tone of an apology.
Ricky Dodd topped six-one, had bushy light brown hair, and wasn’t bothering to hide his paunch. Billy surmised he was one of those clean-faced young men you meet in most small towns in rural southern Alberta. Men brought up by strict Protestants who worked hard with their dads on a ranch or in a two-room store. Dodd suited this small police station. It had only two patrol teams, two canine units, and a general investigation branch with a revolving roster of three sergeants. Dodd was Staff Sergeant, Criminal Investigations. Chief Eddy “Butch” Bochansky had explained to Billy that most of the crime in the city was property theft. Murder and drugs were occasional, not on the scale of Vancouver by any means. Butch handled the murders himself. He didn’t want the cable TV people and the religious radio shows riling up the public against the police for not doing their duty. “Murder scares people,” Butch had said. “And scared people like to blame the law for not keeping order and peace.”
Dodd sat down at the table across from Billy; behind him the computer screen saver twisted and turned: a wave of palm trees undulating in front of an ocean of stars.
“When did you get the call?” Billy asked.
“Around eight. Dispatch sent over a constable to Satan House, then he called the chief and me around eight twenty-nine. We got to the site at nine.”
“A neighbour? Someone in the house?”
“You mean who called in? The tenant. She leases the place. A woman, name of Bird. Sheree Lynn Bird.”
“How old was the boy?”
“Fourteen or fifteen. Similar case happened last winter.”
“How similar?”
“Juvenile, too. A hanging.”
“Butch said it was suicide.”
“Yes, sir.” Dodd slid a notebook out of his upper right pocket. He flipped it open and read over the scrawled lines on the page. “Miss Bird knew this kid. And the other one. She called this kid’s mother and informed her. Bird said she’d been helping him. Talking to him. She’s some kind of part-time psychologist. Used to be with family services. Her home was a sort of halfway house for these two boys. Cody Schow and Darren Riegert. The kid’s mother sure as shit took it bad. She’s been wailing at the chief now for an hour. She says there’s no way her little boy should’ve been in that house.”
“Anything unusual at the site?”
Billy found himself automatically falling into the old routine: drinking coffee, grilling the staff sergeant. Dodd didn’t seem to mind. He leaned back in his chair.
“I did the walk-around upstairs before I viewed the corpse in the basement. The place was run-down. It’s been changing hands for years. I’d always heard it was a flea trap. Chief and Tommy, our medic, were examining the victim’s body, strung up on an old steel heating conduit. Blue nylon rope. The kid was naked, with a kind of drawing on his chest — carved with a knife point. Star shape. Crosses on his wrists. Star scrawls on the walls. Chief thought they were done in latex paint. Candles. Some kind of cult thing.”
“Cult?”
“I guess. From the looks of the book we found by the body. One of those Satanic jobs. What my dad calls a false bible. And the candles too, in a circle at the kid’s feet. The last kid, Cody Schow in December, he had the same book with him. Seems these kids, according to Miss Bird, were buddies at school.”
“So, you figure there’s a tie-in?”
“Chief won’t say for the moment. But I guess that’s why you’re in on this.”
“Well, we’ll see, Dodd.” Billy’s interest piqued. “How do you read Sheree Lynn Bird?”
Dodd looked puzzled for a moment; then he blushed. “She’s real something, sir.”
Billy blinked and
on examining Dodd’s face understood that his question had embarrassed the young sergeant. “Dodd?”
The sergeant sat up in his chair. “Sorry, sir. I figure she’s on the level. Responsible.” His voice trailed off.
“Was she upset?”
“Yes. She’d been crying by my reckoning.”
“How many boys and girls did she counsel in this halfway house?”
“As far as we know, it was just the two of them.”
“And both of them are dead.” Billy held Dodd’s gaze for a second before he went on. “The knife turn up?”
“No, sir.” Dodd seemed uneasy about this and moved his eyes down as he spoke.
“Fingerprints?”
“Johnson is there now.”
Billy downed the rest of his coffee and stood.
“You known the chief long?”
“Since high school. We’re old buddies.” Dodd grinned. He rose and hiked up his trousers.
Billy folded his cup and dropped it in the waste basket.
“I can get you a refill, no problem.”
“What I need is a washroom.”
“Right through here, sir. It’s the chief’s private toilet.”
Billy waited as Dodd took out a key from the desk, strolled to a door at the back of the room, turned the lock, and switched on the light.
“Yamamoto. That’s Chinese, right?”
“Japanese. Canadian born and bred. My mother was Scottish.”
“That so?” Dodd nodded, lifting his eyebrows.
“We got some good Vietnamese restaurants here in town now.”
“Thanks, Dodd.”
As he washed his hands, Billy wondered what Dodd was thinking back in the computer room. Billy knew how territorial sergeants and bureau chiefs could get about their precincts. And their jobs. From what he could tell, Dodd was a man at ease with a retired big-city detective poking his head into a local case. So far so good, but old anxieties were beginning to surface. What did Dodd see when he looked at Billy? A wiry middle-aged guy with a Jap name? Skin not quite white?
