by Sam Wiebe
New York • London
© 2018 by Sam Wiebe
Jacket design by Kyle Kolker
Jacket images: © EB Adventure Photography/shutterstock
First published in the United States by Quercus in 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.
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e-ISBN 978-1-68144-067-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wiebe, Sam, author.
Title: Cut you down : a novel / by Sam Wiebe.
Description: New York : Quercus, [2018] | Series: A Wakeland novel ; [2]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017047022 (print) | LCCN 2017051279 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681440675 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681440668 (library edition) | ISBN 9781681440231 (hardback) | ISBN 9781681440682 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Private investigators–Fiction. | Vancouver (B.C.)–Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.4.W525 (ebook) | LCC PR9199.4.W525 C88 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047022
Distributed in the United States by
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.quercus.com
The sudden blow out of the darkness, which seems so far from inevitable, and which strikes down our reviving hopes for the victims of so much cruelty, seems now only what we might have expected in a world so wild and monstrous.
—A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy
You must expect to receive some damage in any fight.
—Don Pentecost, Put ’Em Down, Take ’Em Out!: Knife Fighting Techniques From Folsom Prison
FOR CARLY
Contents
Book One: Old Flames
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Book Two: Dead Romantics
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Acknowledgments
BOOK ONE
Old Flames
One
Vancouver spent its brief summer hemmed in by wildfires. Smoke from the Island and north from the interior gathered over the city, throttling us, pinning us down beneath a pale orange sky. For days the streets had been emptied, the skyline dissolved into sauna-scented ash. Even now, weeks into a damp September, the breeze carried faint traces of End Times scuzz.
In my cramped and undecorated office, I fetched my father’s Maglite out of the tool kit on the floor.
“Something up?” Kay asked, watching me head to the staircase. My sister had also heard the shouting from below.
“Mugging, looks like.”
She dropped her paperwork and followed me out of the office, down to the street.
Outside, a man and woman were locked in a tug-of-war over a crocheted book bag. The woman had a tight grasp on its handles, the straps cutting into the pale flesh of her wrists. The man’s dirty tattooed fingers tore at the bag, so that a pair of thick textbooks threatened to spill out onto Pender Street.
The man was a neighborhood regular. As the woman pulled, he staggered forward, his gaze apologetic, hands still groping the bag. For her part the woman seemed out of place, oddly genteel amid the gray hustle of downtown.
Welcome to East Vancouver, I thought. Expect no mercy.
I approached them, casually tapping the flashlight against my thigh. “That’s all right, Gary,” I said. “Everything’s all right.”
Gary didn’t look at me. He was standing still, which for him meant constant dipping and swaying, rolling the neck and shoulder muscles, as if the joints of his body had been replaced with gimbals. My free hand touched his shoulder. He unthreaded his fingers and shrugged.
The woman cradled her bag and inspected its new perforations. She unwound the straps from her wrists and studied the red marks they’d left. Gary lurched toward her. The woman looked up but didn’t give ground.
I stepped between them, speaking calmly. “You’re not a purse snatcher, Gary.”
“No,” he said, pointing with his forehead at the woman. “Was trying to help her. She doesn’t realize. Trying to protect her.”
“And you did good. And I’ll take it from here.”
Kay handed him a twenty and led him to the crosswalk. The woman seemed baffled, her curiosity outweighing shock. “Did she just pay him for attempted robbery?”
“He gets confused,” I said. “A lot of people with mental illness don’t get the treatment they need, they end up wandering around here. Gary’s pretty harmless. But I can
steer you to the cop shop if you want to lay a charge.”
“Actually,” the woman said, “you could direct me to 1939 Pender Street. A Mr. David Wakeland.”
She hadn’t struck me as the client type—but then there was no type. Desperation wears a janitor’s one-piece as often as Harris Tweed.
“That would be me,” I said. I nodded at my sister. “My associate River, who goes by Kay now. Don’t ask me why.”
I opened the door and we marched single file up the narrow paint-peeled staircase. Inside were three chairs, a filing cabinet, and not much else. A small table with an electric kettle and a tin of Twinings assorted. I explained to our guest that the head office of Wakeland & Chen Investigations was in the Royal Bank Building on West Hastings, up the street.
“This was the address I had for you,” she said.
I retrieved my mug from the balcony and slid the door closed.
“This used to be my office,” I said. “When I partnered with Jeff Chen we set up in the nicer building, which is where I’d be now if it weren’t for the damn dress fittings.”
She smiled. “Your partner’s getting married?”
“And they have a kid on the way, and are high-strung to begin with. I’d rather stay out of their hair.” I looked at the unsheathed neon bulbs, the dust-covered floor. “This whole block is being demo’d next year, and the landlord gave me a deal. But anyway. What can I help you with, Miss?”
“Dana Essex,” she said. “I need you to help me find someone.”
“Appearances to the contrary”—I swept my hand over the shabby workspace—“that’s what we do here.”
Two
Dana Essex sat with her bag balanced atop her knees, holding its torn flaps together. She looked a few years older than me, mid- to late thirties, dressed in tweed and slacks and a pair of scuffed laceless shoes. Her hair was hacked simply to her jawline, unstyled. No makeup or jewelry. With her thick Clark Kents and mismatched clothes, she looked like she’d been dressed by the costuming department of a Canadian TV show. A background player, College Professor Number Three.
She accepted a cup of tea and didn’t speak for a long two minutes. Kay looked at me for a prompt, but I shook my head slightly. There are different types of silence; some are necessary precursors for speech.
Finally she said, in a halting voice, “The person I want you to find is a student named Tabitha Sorenson. I’m not sure if she’s missing, per se. But I’d like to talk with her.”
I wrote Tabitha Sorenson across the top of a pad of foolscap, added student below it. “What do you mean, you’re not sure if she’s missing? You’ve tried contacting her? Her family?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her; how on earth could I talk to her mother?”
“Let’s start with why you want to talk to her,” I said. This engendered more silence. This time I pushed through. “Was she a friend?”
Essex nodded. “A student of mine first, and then a colleague of sorts. She served in student government, and I was on a committee with her. Yes, we were friends.”
“Are you worried about her?”
“I’m worried about myself,” she said. “I’m thirty-eight, and—this is difficult to say.”
“Want me to leave?” Kay asked.
Essex shook her head. “Mr. Wakeland,” she said to me.
“Dave.”
“Dave.” Essex smiled. “Are you married? I was, for two years, to a very good man who I think tried his best to make me happy. I told myself what we had must be a type of love—why else would we have gotten married? If we weren’t as passionate or affectionate as other couples, well, I chalked that up to life running contrary to our expectations.”
“Everyone being different,” I offered, “who’s to say how it should work?”
She nodded. “After a while, though, we couldn’t kid ourselves. I realized I’d married out of fear—of aging, and of being alone.”
Essex rubbed her eyes and the bridge of her nose.
“None of which interests you, I’m sure. I’m sorry to burden you with it.”
Kay offered her a tissue, but Essex ignored it. She wasn’t in tears. Rather she seemed to have drawn inward, as if strategizing how best to unpack her heart.
“Tabitha told me when she finished at the college—Surrey Polytech—she wanted to go to either UBC or Simon Fraser. I’ve checked. She’s not registered at either university, or any other in the Lower Mainland.” She took a steadying breath, adding, “I don’t believe she’s at school anymore—anywhere.”
“Disappeared,” I said.
“I couldn’t locate her, at any rate.”
I marked up my note paper. “Tell me about her.”
Essex’s face softened. “She wasn’t the best student I’ve had. She was competent—she could take a poem apart as well as most undergrads—but more than once I could tell she hadn’t done the readings. Her heart was in econ and poli-sci; lit was merely an elective for her.”
“What was she like as a person?”
Essex frowned. “Didn’t I just say?”
“Outside of class.”
“Well, as student events coordinator she was diligent. She hadn’t wanted the job—Harpreet, the woman Tabitha replaced, had transferred to Dalhousie with two semesters left in her term. The president appointed Tabitha as interim coordinator. She did well, considering the circumstances. Even through the unpleasantness she tried her best.”
“Unpleasantness?”
“The scandal,” Essex said.
When she saw I was going to pursue it, she clarified: “There were allegations surrounding members of student government. Misappropriation of funds. There was a forensic audit. But Tabitha wasn’t involved. It started before and ended after her.”
“How much money was missing?” I asked.
“Millions,” Essex said. “I’m not sure of the specifics.”
I wondered how well Dana Essex knew Tabitha Sorenson, and how well she thought she knew her.
“A million dollars is a million dollars,” I said.
“Meaning?”
“People do a lot worse for a lot less.”
“Like ‘Gary’?”
“I doubt he was trying to rob you.”
Her eyebrows arched in ironic agreement. “Yes, he explained more than once that he was trying to help me. Yet he watched another man make off with fifty dollars of mine, and didn’t feel a Samaritan urge then.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“Just before he accosted me. A man in a wolf T-shirt asked me for change for the Skytrain. I opened my pocketbook but all I had was a fifty-dollar bill.”
“You showed it to him?”
“Only so he’d understand I was refusing out of circumstance, not out of tightfistedness. The man in the wolf shirt snatched the money right out of my wallet. He said he’d go make change and bring it back. I told him to stop but he’d already crossed the street. It was right after that when Gary took hold of my bag.”
“He probably thought you’d be safer if he carried it for you.”
“He watched me get robbed.”
“Cheated.”
“The distinction being?”
Before I could answer, Essex nodded. “Partial complicity,” she said. “One allows oneself to be cheated by misreading the situation, being ‘duped.’ Robbery implies force or coercion, implies unavoidability. I see.”
I looked at Kay. She was smirking.
“It’s not a mistake people make twice,” I said, pulling a standard Wakeland & Chen contract from the filing cabinet. “We’ll find Tabitha for you, if we can. Just know going in that there’s no guarantee.”
“There never is,” she said.
Dana Essex had parked three blocks away, in a multistory garage that charged a daily rate. There were cheaper and closer places to park, but I didn’t point that out. I walked her to the mouth of the garage. She cradled her torn book bag like an injured kitten.
I told her I’d upda
te her in three days unless I found Tabitha before then. She nodded and we shook hands. Her smile was perfunctory and timid, but she held it a second longer than necessary. She had something left to say.
“You’re talking to a coward, Mr. Wakeland. I like to pretend I didn’t know what I wanted until I’d lost it. But the truth is, I was simply too afraid. By the time I could accept my feelings and deal with what—whom—I wanted, she was gone.”
“Tabitha.”
“I just need to speak to her,” Essex said. “If nothing comes out of it, I need at least to know I tried.”
I walked back to the office, thinking about Dana Essex, who’d confessed more in an hour than most people manage in a lifetime. Who seemed out of her element in Downtown Vancouver, though Surrey was less than an hour’s drive. And I wondered what about Tabitha Sorenson had fired her with such passion that she’d brave the evil city to employ a private investigator to track her down.
Three
Essex hadn’t supplied a photo of Tabitha, but Kay found a few online. A high-resolution picture from the college website showed the student government, huddled together wearing the school colors. Behind them a red- and gold-tasseled banner exclaimed LET’S GO ORCAS!
The caption below the picture named the short man in the center Inderveer Singh Atwal, president. Flanking him were Sonny Bains, treasurer, a muscular man in a vintage orange and black Canucks jersey, and a svelte man in formal wear identified as Ashwin Dhillon, vice-president.
Tabitha stood at a slight distance from the others. An ill-fitting school T-shirt had been thrust over her black hoodie. Her face was narrow and hawkish, veiled with pale freckles, eyes reluctantly addressed to the camera lens. The photographer—or maybe the photo viewers ourselves—seemed to be wearing on her patience.
Ultimately, though, it was only a face. I imagined I could read embarrassment in its expression, sensitivity, a disdain for her surroundings. But it offered no clue as to where she had gone.
“Check this out,” Kay said, tilting her laptop so I could see the screen. “Her mother has a cooking blog.”
She scrolled down for me, showing the most recent posts of “A Mother of Two Cooks for Four.” There were many photos, all of food. Kay navigated to the “About” page, which displayed a short biography and several self-portraits.
