Cut You Down

by Sam Wiebe

  “Thanks for meeting with us,” Kay said.

  He shook our hands. “Sure. There’s probably not much I can tell you, though.”

  Inderveer Atwal wore beige slacks and a custard-colored polo tee, and had grown a patchy beard since the scandal had broken. He led us through the kitchen, maneuvering around piles of flyers and recyclables to reach the dining room, where his father, Sameer, was already ensconced. The older Atwal regarded us with suspicion.

  Seating himself at the far end of an oval dining table, Inderveer brought out his cell phone, monitoring it as we talked. His father sat between us and his son, like a defenseman protecting a goalie. Sameer wore a similar business casual ensemble.

  Hellos and offers of beverages out of the way, Sameer said, “What would you want with my son?” making it clear we’d be talking to him. Inderveer’s eyes flitted glumly between his father and his phone.

  “We’re trying to get hold of Tabitha Sorenson,” Kay said to Inderveer. “You worked with her at the school.”

  “He doesn’t talk to those people anymore,” Sameer said.

  “Could you tell me the last time you talked with her?”

  Inderveer looked to his father, looked to Kay, and shrugged.

  “Did you choose Tabitha to replace Harpreet as events coordinator, or did someone else?”

  Inderveer shrugged again, but followed up with, “Ash Dhillon sorta knew her. They grew up together.”

  “Ashwin Dhillon? Were they close?”

  “She wasn’t really close to anyone. Just did her work, didn’t hang out.”

  I showed him the picture. Inderveer shook his head. He had no idea who the people next to Tabitha were, or who had been cut out.

  “We’re trying to find out where Tabitha is,” Kay said. “Any ideas?”

  “Why do you want to find her?” Inderveer asked.

  “Just to talk to her. Don’t worry, it has nothing to do with money or the school.”

  Sameer’s eyes perked up. His body language shifted toward hostile.

  “My son isn’t involved,” he said with finality.

  “I’m not interested in any of that,” Kay said, swiveling between them. But there was desperation in her voice now, which meant it was time to go.

  Sameer stood up to show us out. Kay placed a business card on the table and said to Inderveer, “If you think of anything.” Sameer swept up the card and herded us toward the door.

  As we headed down the driveway he called to us, “My son did nothing wrong.”

  “I understand,” I said, turning back.

  “This woman, she’s hiding?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “We’re not hiding,” Sameer said.

  I tried to look past him, but his shoulder moved to block the doorway. By that time, his son had disappeared into the house.

  As Kay started the van, I asked her what she’d done wrong.

  “Brought up the scandal,” she guessed.

  “You had to mention it sooner or later.”

  “Answered his question instead of sticking to mine?”

  “Maybe, but it’s rude to ignore a question.”

  “What then?”

  “Who were you talking to? Who were you developing an emotional connection to?”

  “Oh,” she said. Kay was a quick learner. “But his dad was eye-fucking me.”

  “He was doing that before. Once you addressed the father you accepted him as intermediary. You handed him the power to kick us out.”

  “So I should’ve ignored him, concentrated on Inderveer?”

  “No guarantee, but that’s what I’d’ve done. Jeff wrote a long and unpublished book on interview techniques which, if you annoy me some day, I’ll make you read.”

  “Please no,” she said. “Is Sonny Bains up next?”

  “If we can find him. Inderveer is probably texting him and Dhillon that we’re coming.”

  Bains worked at a car dealership on Scott Road. He lifted weights at the gym nearby. We missed him at both places, but the gym receptionist said he was at the Mumbai Sweets around Newton Exchange, drinking with two of the trainers.

  The restaurant was dimly lit, televisions flashing from each wall. A pleasant smell of cumin and cloves wafted out from the kitchen. I spotted Bains. He was lounging in a corner booth with two men in track pants and tank tops, watching hockey highlights. Empty shot glasses cluttered the table like pieces of an abandoned board game.

  Bains was thickset and muscular, buzzed his hair short on the sides, wore a Canucks jersey and cutoffs. His sandaled feet stuck out from the booth. There was a slow anger lurking behind his gaze. “Indy said I shouldn’t waste my time.”

  “He’s a different person than you,” I said with exaggerated tact. “He’s lucky to have a father that cares so much about him.”

  “He’s a daddy’s boy,” Bains said. “Rich kid.”

  I sat down across from him. “Ten minutes. All the beer you can drink.”

  “I can drink a lot in ten minutes.”

  Bains told his friends he’d be right back. Kay and I followed him to a table across the restaurant. I ordered two pitchers of whatever Bains was drinking and told him I was looking for Tabitha Sorenson.

  “You’re like a private eye?”

  “The best private eye.”

  He smiled. When the pitchers came he poured us each a glass of yellow beer. Slow pour, no head.

  “I haven’t seen her in forever, since I left all that school shit behind. She was all right, Tabitha. Smart. Didn’t want to get into trouble.” He drank, wiped his mouth. “Guess I shoulda been more like her.”

  Bains kept talking as he refilled.

  “Y’know, I didn’t even want that responsibility. I only did it for the résumé and ’cause Indy and Ash needed someone else on the slate. Politics wasn’t my thing. Now, ’cause of them and what they did, I can’t get into UBC. My parents are fucking crushed.”

  “People who don’t take responsibility,” I prompted.

  “Fuckin’ right.” He drank and dropped the empty glass. “I mean, they gave me a company cell. Was every call I made on it business? It’s not like I was making loans like Indy to my daddy’s friends.”

  “Tell me about Tabitha,” I said. “You get along with her?”

  “Ash knows her better,” Bains said. “They hooked up at one point.” He realized what he’d said, and looked accusingly at the beer glass. “Shit. Don’t tell him I told you.”

  I showed him the photo. Bains barely glanced at it before shaking his head.

  “Other than Dhillon,” I said, “was there anyone else Tabitha was close to? Anyone she might ask for help, she was in trouble?”

  “Whatshername,” Bains said. “The professor. They organized Welcome Week together. Don’t remember her name.”

  “Dana Essex,” I offered.

  Bains put down the empty pitcher. “Sounds right,” he said. “Not bad looking, but cold. Her thighs’d give you freezer burn.”

  Nine

  Ashwin Dhillon was busy being screamed at when we found him at the returns counter of a clothing outlet in the Guildford Mall. He was the assistant manager, a dapper young man in a brocaded vest, silk shirt, and heavy gold watch. The customer waved an opened package of underwear in his face.

  Once he was free, we approached him and asked if we could talk about Tabitha.

  “My break’s at two,” Dhillon said. “How ’bout I meet you at the food court?”

  Kay and I found a four-seat table between a Manchu Wok and a New York Fries. She read over her notes while I studied the passing crowd. Seniors, teens, workers on their break. All food courts are lonely places, even—especially—when they’re busy. Life’s lowered expectations brought you here. The underlying subtext to all such places is, Let’s get this over with.

  At ten past two Dhillon walked over to our table, asked us to wait while he ordered a mango Julius. He returned with his drink and sat down.

  “I really hope Tab�
��s all right,” he said, punching his straw through its paper wrapper. “I feel bad for getting her involved with this, because you could totally tell she didn’t want to be. She was asked to take over events, she never ran for it.”

  “We were told you had something to do with Tabitha getting picked,” Kay said. “Why her?”

  “We suffered through high school together. We weren’t friends, but when we both ended up at Spew—that’s what we called Surrey Polytech—we got closer. Started carpooling.” His brow fell and he smiled thinly. “You talked to Indy and Sonny, right? They prob’ly told you we hooked up.”

  Kay said, “That’s your business. We just want to find Tabitha.”

  “We were together for a little while, but that’s not why I asked Indy to bring her in. She was an econ student, and I thought—” He shrugged.

  “Thought what?” Kay asked.

  “She could help right the course,” I said.

  Dhillon nodded. “Indy knows business but he only really cares about himself. Sonny’s a nice guy, but he had no business being treasurer. It was a mess.”

  “Did she try to change that?” Kay asked. “Clean things up?”

  “Tab took care of events just fine, but events were never the problem. The problem was, Indy set a bad example.”

  He removed the lid of his drink and stirred it with his straw. Behind him, four construction workers jockeyed for table space with their trays.

  “Indy should’ve never handed out company phones,” Dhillon said. “That gave everyone an excuse. Every time he tried to get hold of things, people’d just point to his own crazy-high phone bill. ‘Well, you can run up that much, why can’t I?’ And when people found out about the loans, and the money he was making—”

  Again he didn’t finish his thought. He stared at his drink and the hands clutching it, his gold watch and gold ring.

  “I’m not saying I was any better,” he said. “I know I’m the kind of person who fits in with whatever is around. Put me in with good people and I’ll be good—and the opposite. I thought Tab as an econ student would be responsible, and she’d help keep us on track. But she was so quiet, just did her job and left. Like she didn’t want to associate with us.”

  “Who ended it between you?” Kay asked.

  “I did.”

  “But you stayed friends.”

  “Friendly, yeah.”

  “Were you disappointed she didn’t speak up about the scandal?”

  “At first. Now I see how it must’ve been for her. Maybe she thought there was nothing she could do. And maybe there wasn’t—I mean, we’d messed things up pretty good by the time she got there.” Dhillon placed his empty cup on an adjacent table. “But now I’m trying to take responsibility,” he said.

  “Did Tabitha have other friends at the college?”

  “She didn’t socialize with a lot of other students,” Dhillon said. “She liked to follow her teachers around—I think she thought that made her more mature. She liked Dana Essex, the English teacher, and she spent a lot of time with her poli-sci prof, Paul something. Italian or European-sounding last name, I forget.”

  “Mastellotto,” Kay said, shooting me a sideways grin to show she’d done her homework.

  “Right,” Dhillon said. “You should talk to them.”

  I held up my cell phone and showed him the torn photo of Tabitha and her friends. “Recognize them?” I asked.

  “Harv and Gurv,” he said, grinning. “High school friends of ours. Damn, that was a while ago.”

  “Was she close with these two?”

  “Not really, no. Back then she mostly hung out with—” The nostalgic grin faded.

  I tapped the corner of the photo, the T-shirt and arm. “Any idea who got cut out?”

  Dhillon studied it. Something clicked into place for him.

  “I should get going,” he said.

  “Who’s the T-shirt belong to?”

  Instead of answering, Dhillon turned in his seat to inspect the people surrounding us. Not spying any obvious threats, he slumped in his chair, elbows sliding forward across the table.

  I asked him again who it was.

  “One of the Hayes brothers.” Dhillon said the name warily. “Guess it’d be Cody, he was a couple years ahead of us.”

  Dhillon looked like he wanted to walk away from the table. He sighed. “I’m only telling you to help Tab,” he told us, and himself.

  “Of course,” Kay said. “Goes no further than this table.”

  “You read about the murders in the tower last year?”

  I nodded, suddenly appreciating his fear.

  For Kay’s benefit, Dhillon said, “One of the new high-rises near Surrey Center. Four guys our age, low-level dealers, were all found shot to death in their apartment, along with their neighbor from across the hall.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Kay said. She crossed herself on reflex.

  “You have to understand,” Dhillon said. “In school we knew Cody as just another kid. We’d see his brother around town, Dalton, driving his Porsche. We didn’t put it together till later, they were League of Nations.”

  “Meaning they dealt for them?” I asked.

  “I mean they are the League,” Dhillon said. “Dalton Hayes is the guy that started it, him and his friends. Cody’s right up there, too. That kid was always big, he was top weightlifter at the school, but afterward he got scary-big. ’Roid monkey, y’know? They call him Baby Godzilla now.”

  “And they knew the people in the tower?” Kay asked.

  Dhillon shook his head. “Rivals. Rumor is, Dalton’s the one that did it.”

  “And his brother knows Tabitha,” I said.

  “Not sure how close they were, but yeah, they knew each other. We were all neighbors.”

  Dhillon looked relieved when I put the photo away. “Do you think they did something to her?” Along with fear, I heard genuine concern in his voice.

  “Wouldn’t put it past them,” I said. “Would you?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past the Hayes brothers. Cody especially. That kid’s capable of anything.”

  Ten

  I let Kay off at the Hastings office and swapped the van for my Cadillac, then drove up Cambie to the police station. At the front desk I asked for Ryan Martz of Missing Persons and was told he’d be right down.

  I waited, avoiding the placards by the elevator, the smiling photos of dead police. My father—foster father—would be on that board. Matthew Wakeland, a twenty-six-year veteran who’d been killed off duty in a hit and run. No great glory or mystery to it, other than a general why-him, why-now.

  In my brief time as a cop it had felt good, walking through that lobby beneath his photo. Now it only reminded me of a promise I’d broken, the breaking of which had made me better and happier, though not without a lingering sense of shame.

  Ryan Martz didn’t bother to step off the elevator, just held the door for me to join him. He grunted his version of a hello. We went up to the third floor and walked to his cubicle.

  “So who’s it today?” he said. “You ever gonna find somebody who’s still alive?”

  “Could ask you the same thing,” I said.

  Martz’s workspace was cluttered but negotiable. The neighboring cubicle had photos of women taped to the fabric-covered walls. I recognized some of the faces. The harsh lighting and stony expressions made them look like mug shots. A person passing by might think they were perpetrators.

  He sat and gestured toward the chair jutting out of his neighbor’s cubicle. “Which lovely lady are you here for today?”

  “Sorenson, first name Tabitha.” I produced a piece of paper with her particulars, which I passed to Martz. “Student out in Surrey, family hasn’t heard from her.”

  He looked relieved. “Surrey’s not part of our mandate. That’s a Mountie case. Talk to Surrey RCMP.”

  “I was hoping you could enter her details, see if anybody’s found a Jane Doe corpse matching her description.”

&n
bsp; “Sure,” Martz said. “Not like I have any actual police work to do. Anything else? Because a public servant lives to fuckin’ serve.”

  Stuffed into his cubicle, Martz resembled a shaved bear from some east Caucasian zoo, adapting to its confines as best it could. His scalp gleamed unnaturally under the rails of neon light. There were elements of the police life that made me wistful—access to information, authority, use of force—but I’d never once visited Ryan Martz and come away wishing for his job.

  I asked him how Sonia was doing.

  He shrugged. “Like she’d tell me. Job’s a bit rough on her.”

  “How so?”

  “She’s a tiny brown girl in a department of big white devils like myself. She got offered all kinds of details—you can imagine what the brass’d do to have her in Public Relations—but she chose to stay on the street. Constable for life. She’s definitely dumb enough to fit in ’round here.”

  “Who’s she driving with?”

  He grinned. “No-Frisk Chris, the legend himself. Prob’ly got her panties hanging from the mirror of their Interceptor.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Still got the mustache. Still friends with some of the higher-ups. Still’s prob’ly fucked half the female recruits that come through here. You should see his girl—some twenty-year-old model, tight little heart-shaped ass.”

  “Yeah?”

  Martz called up a picture on his computer. A waif in PVC vinyl, spaghetti-strap heels. She was posed looking over her shoulder, pouting, sucking in her cheeks.

  “Misha Van Camp,” he said. “I actually worked out a dollar figure, down to the penny, what I’d pay to have her use my tongue as toilet paper.”

  “How’d they meet?”

  “Some possession bullshit. Chris offered to walk her through the process. Lucky sonofabitch. Women I meet are all the mothers of dead people, and they all hate me for not saving their kids from their own bad choices.”

  “It’s tough,” I said diplomatically.

  Martz’s co-worker entered the opposite cubicle. I gave him back his chair. He looked over at Martz’s computer and hung his head.