by Sam Wiebe
“Why isn’t our website this straightforward?” I asked.
Instead of answering, Kay called up a picture of a frizzy-haired woman enfolding a young girl in her arms.
“It’s the only shot of Tabitha on her mom’s site,” Kay said.
Tabitha in braces and barrettes, hinting at the sullenness of her later self. The caption read, “Tabby and Me.” Below that, pictures of an older Betsy Sorenson, still wide-grinned, posing with sunglassed men in kitchen smocks or three-piece suits.
“Celebrity chefs,” Kay explained.
“We’re really at the end, aren’t we?”
“Of the pictures?”
“Of civilization.”
I closed my MacBook. It was four o’clock and I’d promised Jeff I’d check in before the end of the day. My partner had something he wanted to ask me in person.
“How about the scandal?” I asked.
“The forensic audit report is on the college website,” Kay said. “It’s three hundred pages.”
“Guess what we’ll be reading tonight,” I said, slinging my coat over my arm.
Kay’s nod held less reluctance than I’d anticipated. After three months of apprenticeship, the allure of investigation still hadn’t worn off. That spoke to her upbringing more than the job. My half sister had spent most of her life in a prairie town that held the national record for most churches per square mile. She’d moved to Vancouver for college, changed her name, convinced her family that what she was doing was work experience. Necessary for a career in accounting, or hotel management, or whatever she’d told them. The truth was, Kay loved the work and was good at it.
To be in the city, to be in pursuit—it hadn’t yet become routine to her.
As it hadn’t yet for me.
“Tomorrow I’ll tackle the parents,” I said. “See if they know where Tabitha is. You’ll ask around the school. Tabitha strikes me as the kind of person, never walked into a room she didn’t feel she was the smartest one in it.”
“Reminds me of someone,” Kay said.
The head office of Wakeland & Chen was a far cry from the run-down Pender Street address. Classy in an old-money way, oak paneling and brass trim, solid construction, doors that took effort to open. I wished I felt more comfortable there.
When we’d first partnered, Jefferson Chen laid out a plan to expand from investigations into corporate security and counterespionage. He’d achieved that and more. Wakeland & Chen was now an empire, kept together by Jeff’s salesmanship and drive.
I went along because I didn’t have a vision to compete with his. There were fewer missing-persons cases, and the ones I had took longer and longer. That myopia irked him. The hours I’d poured into the Jasmine Ghosh case alone, with no results and no bills sent to the girl’s family, flew in the face of even the most obvious business sense. The search for Chelsea Loam had cost us even more. But the cases that did solve brought the firm acclaim and goodwill, and I felt the corporate work subsidized the other.
As I passed reception, Ralph scooted out from behind his desk and flagged me down. Jeff’s cousin had gone off to law school and been replaced by a series of retirees, Ralph being the latest.
“A young lady was looking for you, Mr. Wakeland.” It felt odd to hear someone thirty years my senior call me mister. Ralph passed me a yellow slip covered with pencil markings that could have been runes in some Tolkienesque language.
“Her name was Sonia or Sara something,” he said. “She asked for you and I said you weren’t here and she said when will he be back, meaning you, and I said I didn’t know, and did she want to leave a number, and she said no that’s fine, she’d check back later.”
“Sonia Drego? Police officer, dark complexion, my age give or take?”
“That’s her.”
I studied the note. It didn’t become more legible, or explain why Sonia had been here. I handed it back to Ralph and opened the door to the boardroom.
“Jeff around?” I asked him.
“With Marie. In your office, actually.”
“Of course he is.”
With the baby coming and the wedding approaching, Jeff’s fiancée had commandeered my workspace for a fitting room. The sacrifices we make for our friends. In truth, I’d been glad to temporarily set up shop back on Pender Street.
I sat in the glass-enclosed boardroom and watched the printer spew pages of the audit report. I hadn’t seen Sonia in a year, maybe two. We hadn’t been close in six. Not since my exit from the police department. She was a lifer, dedicated to the department, and I’d become a civilian—worse, a deserter. Our relationship couldn’t endure such a gulf.
More than that, though. Some people just have your number and always will.
When I’d boxed, there were opponents who’d had me figured from the opening bell, whose own movements seemed to me patternless, unanticipatable. It’s a hollowing feeling, to be predicted, to be known, as if there should be more of you to contend with. Our relationship had been like that, only more protracted, slightly less one-sided, infinitely more damaging.
I wondered how she looked.
Jeff opened the door to my office, escorting Marie out to the elevator. I followed them. Marie kissed his cheek, and in turn Jeff placed his hand lovingly over her slightly protruding belly. He watched as she disappeared behind the brass doors of the elevator.
I tapped his shoulder and asked if he’d seen Sonia in the office today.
“Just to wave to. It was a busy morning. Why, what’d she want?”
“Thought you might know.”
Jeff used the mirrored brass to adjust his tie. “Would you say we’re friends, Dave?”
“Far as I have any I’d count you as one.”
“Then would you mind doing me a favor? My best man’s having visa problems. Doesn’t look like he’ll make the wedding.”
“Guess I could rent a tux,” I said.
“Good. Because my backup best man is ready, but I’d feel better with a backup-backup.”
That was Jeff Chen.
I sat in the boardroom while everyone left, reading through the audit report. I’d assumed that since student government was politics in miniature, the scandal would be similarly proportioned. But the numbers kept increasing, far beyond simple greed or incompetence. The ruling party controlled the election budget, the health and dental fund, a number of scholarships, and the events account. Millions cycled through the Surrey Polytech coffers every semester.
And the regulations governing it were weak already, and had been shredded to ribbons. Withdrawing funds had required three signatures, then one. Money had been loaned out on promissory notes with no collateral. The auditors had found no records, their offices in disarray.
What had ultimately ousted the party was chicken feed—thousand-dollar cell phone bills, the kids phoning relatives overseas. But the audit uncovered more than bad record-keeping and overindulgence. The charter forbade high-risk loans, but since risk was determined by the governors, money went everywhere—short-term deals with family friends, renovations that never occurred. Some of the governors even incorporated themselves and paid out money to their own companies.
Where Tabitha Sorenson fit in this financial mire was hard to figure. She’d spent six months as part of the student government, yet she wasn’t named in the audit, and nothing specifically pointed to her. Although she had control over the events budget, so did the others. And with no records, who could say who’d been responsible for what? Complicit or oblivious, she’d remained unsullied by the scandal.
When I looked up from the report I saw a woman watching me through the blinds. I stood and opened the boardroom door.
“You were always a fast reader,” she said. “Do you retain any of that?”
“Most,” I said. “I can tell you how many RBIs Pat Borders hit for the ninety-two Jays, or the lyrics to ‘Jesus Christ Pose.’”
“So when I asked you to run errands for me, pick up dry cleaning or groceries, and you’d sa
y you forgot, you were—”
“Lying my ass off, Sonia.”
“I suspected,” she said. “It still amazes me how someone so concerned with truth can be so dishonest.”
“I’m just exceedingly humble,” I said. “If I didn’t throw in a few I-forgots, you’d think I was perfect and develop an inferiority complex.”
“Ah, I see.” An exaggerated nod of her head, as if everything was finally clear. “Does your generosity extend to buying me a drink?”
I followed her into the elevator, neither of us saying anything on the ride down. Sonia was in civilian dress, her cream-colored Burberry buckled tight around her. In the reflection of the doors I studied her face. Worry. Apprehension. Something desperate behind the eyes.
Outside it was dark and the pavement gleamed with fresh rain. “Where to?” I said, shrugging into my jacket.
“Your choice. My car.”
“The Narrow, then.”
Four
Down a flight of stairs, in the basement of a furniture shop on Main, the Narrow Lounge was a small, unadvertised, dimly lit oasis. Its decorations blended chandeliers with hunting trophies and blue neon. The bar would’ve pleased the set designer of Blade Runner.
I set two bottles of Kronenbourg on our table. James Murphy’s vocals on “North American Scum” weaved through a dozen conversations. Sonia and I clinked bottles and drank.
“You came by the office earlier,” I said.
“I wanted to talk.”
“There are phones and e-mails and such things.”
“Does seeing me bring back sad memories?”
“It brings back memories,” I said. “You look older.”
“Your hairline’s not exactly where it was four years ago.”
“Didn’t mean you don’t look good,” I said. “Just tired.”
“It’s an exhausting job. You know that. Or knew that.”
“Ouch,” I said. “One thing I don’t miss about being a cop, the verbal abuse.”
Sonia tested the strength of the stool before setting both feet on the rung. “I am tired,” she said, sounding it. “Be honest, Dave. When you were forced out, you must’ve been relieved.”
“Not at the time.”
“No? You never told me the truth about what happened, but part of you must be happy how things’ve turned out.”
“I don’t know I’d change anything,” I said.
Once I was gone from the department, it was inevitable Sonia and I would end. I was finding my footing as a PI, still thinking the right case or enough acclaim would restore my sense of self. It would take years to accept where and who I was, and I’d need to serve that sentence alone.
So I disengaged from her. I threw myself into work. I hardened her. And the result stared back at me with eyes like unsettled concrete.
I realized I’d begun stripping the label from the bottle.
“You know, I read that’s a sign of sexual frustration,” Sonia said.
“So?”
She smiled. “Unflappable as ever.”
“Sonia, it’s good to see you and all, but what do you want?”
“Who says I—”
“I do,” I said. “And don’t start with the who-says-I-have-to-want-anything shit. Out with it.”
Sonia scanned the doorway and the tables nearby. Our fellow drinkers ignored us, caught up in their own intrigues. The bartender looked up to see if we needed another round, then went back to her playlist. LCD Soundsystem faded into Sleater-Kinney, “No Cities to Love.”
Sonia said, softly, “I’m worried about my partner.”
“I’m not a couples counselor.”
“My work partner, Dave. You know Chris Chambers?”
“By reputation,” I said.
I’d seen Chambers at someone’s retirement party, hadn’t spoken to him. I’d been new on the job, relegated to a back table with Sonia and Ryan Martz and the other rookies. Chambers had worked the room. He was a clubhouse politician, a backslapper, one of the boys. Connected. Martz told me Chambers was the only constable to regularly patronize the top-floor officers’ club of the Cambie Street police station. Normally, if you didn’t have your sergeant’s chevrons, you couldn’t even gaze through the window, let alone drink with the department’s upper crust.
I remembered him as a tall blond man with pale eyes and a gunfighter mustache. Always a woman in tow. Idolized by most of the rookies. I seemed to remember him dancing with Sonia at that party.
Everything else I knew about Chambers was second-hand. I’d heard how he’d picked up his nickname. In his second year he’d been escorting two quarreling drag queens into a holding cell. As he walked away he heard a whoop from the cell and turned to see one of them remove a bent syringe from the other’s eye. The rowdies in the nearby cells were cheering. “No-Frisk Chris” had been disciplined, and had never risen above constable first class for that reason. Most cops in that situation would’ve been eased out. Chambers, despite his lack of promotion, had flourished.
“How long’ve you been partnered with Chambers,” I asked, “and what do you mean by ‘worried’?”
“A few months. He’s a good patrol officer. I’ve learned a lot.”
“Like, ‘taking pointy things away from people is optional’?”
Sonia didn’t smile. “Chris has a good rapport with people. He knows downtown. He actually reminds me of you.”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“No, and go fuck yourself for asking.”
“So what do you care what he does?” I stuffed the label down the neck of the bottle. “Better question: what do you expect me to do about it?”
The grooves in the tabletop were commanding Sonia’s attention. She ran her fingers over them, and drank, and glanced at things that didn’t glance back. Eventually she said, “I’d like you to follow him for a couple of days, see if there’s something wrong, and tell me.”
“You tried asking him?”
“He won’t say.”
“This is more reckless than I’ve seen you.”
“I know,” Sonia said, “I hate to ask.”
“No, I like it.”
My grin went unreciprocated.
“You don’t understand what this is like,” she said. “Chris is senior partner. He has the ear of people above. If whatever this is starts to affect his performance, and I have to report him, it’s his word against mine. He’s white and male and connected and I’m none of those things. I don’t even have my ten years yet. I need to know what’s going on.”
“You want I should ask him?”
“No. I don’t want him to know.”
“I could—”
“Chris knows we’re close. He might suspect I put you up to it.”
“All right,” I said. “Give me his schedule.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“You couldn’t afford to,” I said.
She glowered at me before saying thanks. I realized it would have been a kindness, allowing her to pay. Easier for her than accepting a favor.
“You could do something for me in turn,” I said. “You could run Tabitha Sorenson through CPIC, tell me if she’s got priors, her current whereabouts and the like. Spelled S-O-N.”
“That would be wrong,” she said demurely.
“Well, you have to ask yourself if wrong in the service of a higher good—”
Sonia broke in. “You are half-smart, Wakeland, and not nearly smart enough to finish that sentence.” She added, fingers starting to tear at the back label of her bottle, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Five
Betsy Sorenson resided in a pastel-colored duplex in North Surrey. The neighboring properties were constructed from the same kit, the same brick-patterned facades, tile roofs, satellite dishes anchored beneath the eaves. Her lawn was a strip of sculpted mulch, giving forth exotic arrays of color in the morning light. Herbs grew in gray casks near the kitchen window.
Tabitha’s mother looked to be around fifty
, a soft-featured woman in full makeup and heels. Her professionally cheerful smile would have been the envy of any realty office. The smile diminished when I mentioned her daughter.
“I’m trying a new recipe,” she said. “If you don’t mind me dashing to the kitchen every now and then, I can spare a few minutes.”
“All I need, Mrs. Sorenson.”
“Ms., please, and it’s Betsy.”
She saw me situated in a high-backed chair in the living room before returning to the kitchen, promising she’d be back in a jiff.
I smelled garlic and poultry and faded potpourri. I spotted an old-fashioned cordless phone on its own stand near the door. My fingers touched the ficus in the blue urn near my feet, verifying it was plastic.
Betsy Sorenson came back with a silver tea service, cups, saucers, and doilies. She poured chai out of a squat copper saucepan. Seating herself across from me and taking up her cup, she said, “You mentioned you’re from her school.”
“I’m an independent arbitrator hired by a representative,” I said. I’d buttoned my flannel shirt to the collar and carried a black raincoat, and looked reasonably trustworthy if not all that prosperous. Betsy Sorenson smiled and nodded. “I need to talk to Tabitha about some of the recent events.”
“You’re referring to the scandal,” she said.
I gave her a series of gestures that could be interpreted as a yes.
“Not that we think she’s involved,” I said, “but she’s uniquely placed to tell us just what went on there.”
“I don’t see why you wouldn’t.”
“Pardon?”
“Think she’s involved,” Betsy Sorenson said. “The auditors practically accused her.”
“Well, I’m not associated with them,” I said. “I’d like to make up my own mind. And that entails talking to her.”
“You’re welcome to try.”
“When did you last see your daughter?”
Betsy Sorenson sighed. She lowered her blue eyelids and regarded her cup of tea. I waited expectantly.
“Tabitha has decided not to stay in touch,” she said. “It was just before the audit. Early January, a few weeks into her semester. She told me I was a—she said some bad things.”
