by A. J. Aalto
“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” he said.
“Good. Even if it is a ghost, it can’t hurt you.”
“Neither can your left hook, apparently.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “I had to do something, dude. You were all Easter Island, gazing stolidly into the watery abyss and whatnot. You gonna book me for assaulting an officer?”
He rolled his eyes and didn't dignify that with a response. Since he'd already un-cuffed me, I had my answer. After a moment of silent thought, he stuck his key in the ignition and turned the car on to warm up. “Can it feed off of fear?” he wondered. “Like in the movies?”
“No, that’s ridiculous. Fear isn’t a source of energy.” But thermal energy…
“Nine forty-eight.”
I let out an involuntary squeak and then took a shaky breath, glaring at the dash clock. This canal business had rattled me, and it shouldn’t have, damn it. Still pondering the possibility of thermal energy and ghosts, I let thermodynamics stew on the back burner and gave my focus to Schenk. “So, you can set the clock, but not shut it up? I'm only kinda-impressed here, Thag.”
He sighed heavily and remained on task. “When I don't have a ghost clouding my senses and conning me into thinking you’re in the canal, and that I should go in after you, yes, I'm smarter than the car.”
“A ghost can’t do that,” I said firmly. “It can’t mess with your head that much. But if you tell yourself that’s what it can do, you’re gonna fuck with your own mind.”
“Right,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. He tried again, nodding this time. “Right. Thanks for snapping me out of it.”
“That was only part of what pulled you back. Whatever it is, a ghost can't force you to do anything you don’t want to do. Ghosts do not have mind control. Remember that. They're like hypnotherapists with lame hours and terrible ideas.”
“Don’t know the way back to Cumberland, eh?” I got Schenk’s version of the side-eye, complete with lip pucker. It cheered me to see it. Longshanks was himself again.
“It was plausible,” I said, working up half a smile for him. “There’s a lot of shit I should know but don’t.”
Schenk snort-laughed and turned the sound up on the radio. The Tragically Hip informed us that New Orleans was sinking. Longshanks didn’t want to hear it so he turned the dial until he found a sportscaster discussing the hockey game. The clock, thankfully, shut up when the radio was on, which was a small mercy.
“It’s late,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right. Tomorrow.”
I climbed out of the car, gave him a little wave, and went back to the BMW. I had to brush a dusting of snow off the windshield; Schenk stayed in his Sonata, pretending to amend his files while I did so. He waited until I pulled onto Grandview before shadowing me down Arthur Street to Lakeshore; he followed me across the bridge at Lock One before turning into a parking lot and doubling back into St. Catharines proper to go home. I smiled in the rearview mirror at his taillights and made my way towards the winter-quiet vineyards of Niagara-On-The-Lake.
CHAPTER 11
IT’S A WHOLE different world in the little room behind the two-way mirror, a secret, mysterious place where, not only could you eavesdrop, but you were expected to. And it was a place I truly wished I was in. I’d been in the little rooms before, in older precincts where space wasn’t yet a concern, and I’d felt like a spy lurking in the gloom, unseen. It made me want a slouchy hat, a cigarette, and a rumpled suit, so I could go all Mickey Spillane on a mook with some moxie. Or maybe I just needed to park my ass in front of the tube with a bucket of popcorn and watch Matlock and Columbo reruns.
Instead of standing behind Mirropane, I was crammed in Constable Schenk’s brightly-lit office, watching one of the two computer monitors. On the screen, Father Scarrow, in full black cassock, comforted a distraught Simon Hiscott in an interrogation room. The heat was oppressive, blasting audibly from the vent directly over the desk. I had my parka off and my frog hat sat discarded on Schenk’s desk. His space was crowded but organized, with papers sorted in neat piles next to labeled boxes and a desk caddy full of pencils. I could imagine him sitting in here with his taptaptapping like a clockwork drummer in a shop window.
The door opened and Schenk ducked in. “Thanks again for last night,” he said, putting a cup of coffee in my gloved hand. “Good thing you don’t respect police tape.”
I shook my head and tentatively tasted the coffee. Bitter, high-test brew, just as I expected. “Like I said, you had it under control. You didn’t need me. But you’re welcome.” I advised with a cheeky smile, “Next time, take me wherever you go. I’ll be your security guard, Tough Guy. I’m the muscle, eh?” I flexed.
He grunted at that without comment and pointed at the left-hand monitor. “Hiscott asked for a chance to see Father Scarrow. I wasn’t going to allow it, but the good father insisted ‘the boy be allowed the comfort of speaking to a priest during this difficult time.’” Schenk making air quotes looked like the Abominable Sloth-man.
“And you thought you'd give them a chance to work on their story?”
Schenk gave me a look that said I should know better. “Everything said in that room is being recorded, and they know it. Scarrow asked for the privacy of a confessional and I told him he’d have to get that elsewhere, on his own time, and he'd have to post Simon's bail to get him there.”
“I gotta say, this is some bullsh– rimp,” I said, displaying my unhappiness with the state of his office.
“What is?”
“Where’s the little room behind the two-way mirror? I want the little room. I love the little room!”
Schenk tapped a thumb on his desk, taptaptap, to emphasize his warning. “I could put you in a little padded room for a seventy-two hour hold if you’re not careful. You want to watch or not?”
“Send Scarrow in here when he’s done with Simon?” I suggested. “I’ll do some interrogating of my own.”
“I’d prefer to be present for that,” he said.
“I’ll be all casual and shit,” I promised, waving my iPhone at him. “Unofficial. Off the record. But, you know, I’ll record the whole conversation, just in case.”
After a moment’s consideration, he nodded. “You want to watch the security video from the canal. It’s loaded to play on the other monitor, there. Don’t touch the box.” He pointed at me. “What did I just say?”
“Watch the video, don’t touch the evidence.”
“I never said it was evidence.”
“I know an evidence box when I see one,” I said with a snort. “The scrap of tape on the side that says 'EVIDENCE – DO NOT TAMPER' was my first clue.”
“No sticky fingers.” He gave me a stern look, and I rolled my eyes.
“I know, I know. Chain of evidence. I won’t swipe anything.” He looked at me doubtfully. “I work for the bloody FBI; if you can’t trust me, who can you trust?”
He nodded and crossed the office in two long strides. “Coffee’s down the hall to the left, second door on your right. Back in a bit.”
Schenk left me in his office; a minute or so later, I saw him on the monitor as he popped into the interrogation room with his file folder in one hand. Scarrow reached across the table and took Simon's shoulders, patting them in an encouraging fashion. Then he stood in a brush of floor-length black robes, pushing back the chair. His movement from the room forced a memory of the minister at my Grandma Vi’s funeral, solemn and slow and sweeping; to distract myself, I poked at the lid of the evidence box. It slipped to one side and I eyeballed the contents, all separated into sealed, labeled bags: an olive green purse, a matching wallet, a tiger-stripe compact, a mauve lipstick and a peppermint Chapstick, a crystal vial on a necklace, an Android phone, a peanut butter protein bar wrapper, two pens with a black and white skull motif, and a round, pastel, multi-colored birth control pill dispenser.
As soon as the cop took the priest’s place, Simon began recounting
for Schenk the events of November fourth, when his girlfriend apparently swan-dived into the canal for no reason. Simon had regained some composure; his hushed and urgent conversation with Father Scarrow had calmed him enough that the frightened vibrato had left his voice. There was a quiet, polite knock at the office door. I tried to slip the lid back on the box firmly before Scarrow came in, but it ended up a little crooked.
“So…,” Scarrow started, closing the door behind him with his elbow. He handed me a mug, and noticed I already had one beside the keyboard. "I made you a coffee."
“Just like you to poison an innocent woman,” I said, putting the new coffee aside for later, noticing the beginnings of a giggle building in my tummy already. Dammit. I swallowed my bizarre mirth and focused. “I already have one, roofie-free. I've learned my lesson about taking hot drinks from strangers.”
His mouth turned down at the corners. He had a can of root beer in his other hand, which he cracked open with a hiss. “I understand you’re coming in officially as a, what, exactly? Debunker?”
“Of course. But you knew that. You know exactly who I am.” I finished my first coffee and put the mug down in the one square inch of clear space left beside Schenk’s keyboard. “I'm a scientist first. A preternatural biologist. I take fact versus fiction very seriously. I agree that something fishy is going on at the canal, and it probably ain't the fish. Whether or not the data supports your hypothesis, that it's a ghost affecting the physical realm, remains to be seen.”
“You haven’t seen all the data yet,” he countered. “Jumping to conclusions isn’t very scientific.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “That’s fair. Make your case. Wow me with your findings, Professor von Pimpenstein. What kind of data have you been collecting?”
“Temperature drops,” he said.
“Temperature drops,” I repeated, trying not to sound too condescending, with only minimal success. “At the side of the canal.”
“Significant drops.”
“Significant temperature drops. Outside. In November. In Canada. You’re beside one of the Great Lakes, eh? Fluctuations in temperature are not supernatural. They are absolutely natural and to be expected.” My memory nagged at me with circles of ice floating on the surface of the canal, suddenly crystallizing atop that dark, murky water and then breaking apart.
Father Scarrow ticked off number two on his fingers. “Unexplained lights.”
I’d seen the underwater flickers he was talking about. I wasn’t prepared to concede they were anything unnatural, but I wanted to hear his explanation. “At night the water reflects all the lights from the street lights and ships,” I suggested, though I knew that wasn’t what he was getting at.
“I’ve seen them beneath the surface,” he said, “and have seen radiometric images of humanoid forms with a thermal imaging device.”
“Humanoid forms?” I winced. “We talking UFOs and aliens next?”
“No, I assure you, my sole interest is in ghosts and their remains.”
“Are you so married to your pet theory that you can't be swayed by doubt? Tsk, tsk, that's hardly scientific of you.” I said, digging out my mini Moleskine and pencil from my coat pocket. “Dear Diary: Today, I discussed light-emitting, frost-farting human remains with a ghost-hunting exorcist who was astonished that Canada gets cold in November. Obligatory ‘eh’ inserted here. Love, Marnie.”
“You work with the FBI, right? You could get us some equipment that I don’t have the budget for. A very nice thermal imaging rig runs about nineteen hundred dollars. Digital EMF and EVP voice recorder with a static energy proximity detector would be a good idea. There’s a place I need to run more accurate thermal sweeps for cold spots.”
“No way, man,” I said, “I’m already in deep sh– eepdip for the flamethrower.” I held up a shushing hand as Simon started to cry on the monitor, and turned up the sound.
Schenk waited out Simon’s tears in respectful silence across the table, and then made his next question gentler. “How do you know Renfield Scarrow?”
“Brit found him through some ghost hunting website. She was always scouring the internet for information. She called it her ‘research,’ but most of the time she was just reading ghost stories and posting on forums. When she found Father Scarrow, she said it was fate, since he was right in St. Catharines. She said that the fact he lived right by the canal was a sign.” He tried to make a mystical gesture, or maybe just air quotes, with his hands, but the five point restraints hindered his movement, so it looked more like he was making bunny puppets argue in his crotch.
“A sign of what?” Schenk asked.
“I dunno,” Simon said, hanging his head. “She was always going on about signs and destiny and messages from the other side. Ever since her folks died, she was all-in, you know? Obsessed with the occult. Especially ghosts.”
“You didn’t believe it?”
“I believed it made her happy to believe it.” Simon dried tears off his chin by rubbing it on his shoulder. “I don’t know anything about life after death. I just know mine sucks after hers.” His breath caught. “I just wanted her to be happy.”
Changing course for less troubled waters, Schenk asked, “Had you met Marnie Baranuik before yesterday?” When Simon shook his head, he asked, “Were you aware that Britney had Miss Baranuik’s business card?”
“No.”
“When did you first meet Renfield Scarrow?”
Simon thought about this. “Couple months ago. Britney had been dragging us to all these old graveyards and stuff to do readings and wanted to ask Father Scarrow about his dogs, and maybe have him come along.”
“Did he?” Schenk asked, while he wrote something in his notes.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He had his own stuff going on, you know? He didn’t have time for amateur ghost hunters, maybe. He struck me as real serious. Brit said he lectured her on the ethics of speaking with spirits.” Simon hesitated. “Then, a couple weeks ago, Brit had become positive she was being harassed by a spirit. A dark spirit, she said. It moved shit around, she said. I never saw it. She’d point out stuff in the bathroom and say it was in the medicine cabinet, then it was on the sink, then it was on the floor. Once, two light bulbs both blew at the same time, but I didn’t think that was weird. I mean, we put them in at the same time, so it made sense to me, but not to her. She went to see Father Scarrow again, to see if he could…” He tried to make another gesture and the cuffs clattered against the table. “Exorcise it, or whatever.”
“And did he?”
“He didn’t even try,” Simon cried, and gave Schenk an anguished, pleading stare.
“Were you there at the time?”
“No, but Britney told me he was really abrupt with her, sent her away, but—“ He shut up suddenly, and shook his head. “It’s just, maybe if he'd helped her then, you know, maybe she’d still be here.”
“Yesterday, when you were at Renfield Scarrow’s home, did you say, ‘I’ll expose you?’” When Simon nodded, Schenk asked, “What did you mean by that?”
“Just that a real priest would have helped her,” Simon said, “and Scarrow should have spent less time looking at Brit’s tits and more time listening to her words.”
I felt my eyebrows creep up and I shot Father Frisky a look.
“We need to talk,” Scarrow told me. “Alone.”
“We are alone,” I said, wary of the imminent return of the giggles.
“I’m serious.”
I gave him a doubly sour look. “If you’re going to save my soul, you’re about a decade too late. And if you're planning on looking at my tits, it won't take long, even if I don't pop you right in the yap. Why didn't you help her?”
“Miss Wyatt had no interest in saving souls,” Scarrow said. “She wanted to keep them here for her amusement, for entertainment.”
“Don’t you do the same thing? Keep them here to serve your purposes?”
“I release eve
ry spirit I can, and only train the dogs on the stubborn spirits who will not be persuaded to go.”
“Some exorcist you are, if you can’t be the anti-Pokemon and dispatch 'em all, if you ask me.” My sniggering was only partly due to the mental image of Scarrow stuffing Pikachu into his bowling bag, but most of it still seemed to be wafting around me like a cloud of pungent ridiculousness.
His serious look attempted to banish any doubts I had about that, but the doubt remained. “There are aspects of this case you will not be able to discuss with Constable Schenk.”
“Like your sleazebaggitude?” I made like I was playing with my iPhone pictures, and thumbed it to record. “Pretty sure he knows about that already. Can’t pull much over on the big guy.”
“He won’t accept a paranormal explanation.”
"There is no paranormal explanation. You're a perfectly normal sleazebag. Or at least, there's nothing supernatural about your bags of sleaze. Also, there’s nothing paranormal in the canal." Don’t be so sure, I thought, again thinking of Schenk’s blank stare at the underwater lights. “As far as the investigation goes, I don't see any reason to suspect the supernatural until the data supports it, either.”
“You are at least open to the possibilities. Schenk is not.”
“You can’t blame him for looking to the mundane first. Don’t sell him short. He’s not entirely close minded, like some other cops I’ve worked with.”
“In the end, Marnie,” he said, gazing at me a bit too intently, “it will be you and me.”
I quelled a shiver, because something told me he was right. I’m not precognitive, and I can’t see the future, but the gooseflesh on my arms said there would come a time, near the end of all this, that it would be just me and Scarrow. And maybe not in a good way. The silly, inappropriate giggles threatened to return full force and I tightened my guts to keep them at bay. “You think so?”
“The sooner you shut him out, the easier it will be to maneuver around him,” he advised smoothly. It made me think of the snake offering Eve an apple, and I didn’t like it at all; despite my attempts to keep that off my face, the priest must have seen a flicker of concern, and he rushed to explain.
