Willows and Parker Box Set

by Laurence Gough

  “You shot me, you dink. And you ruined my fuckin’ pants.”

  “Jesus,” said Paterson, “it was an accident.”

  Randall leapt at him.

  Paterson yanked the trigger three times and then managed to regain control. Randall was rolling around on the floor clutching his knee, screaming.

  There were shouts in the hallway.

  Paterson jammed the Ruger into his pocket, climbed the rest of the way through the shattered window. Blood bubbled from a long cut on the side of his thumb. He started down the fire escape towards the black hole of the alley.

  Behind him, Randall had stopped screaming and started shouting. Wood splintered. The light was blocked as someone leaned out the window. Paterson’s foot slipped on one of the metal rungs. He snatched at the railing with his left hand, felt a sharp, dizzying spasm of pain.

  Rusty metal trembled. He looked up. There were two of the bastards, and they were coming after him.

  The fire escape stopped about ten feet above ground level. The ladder had a fold-down section but it was stuck. Directly below him there was a dumpster. He let himself drop, hit sheet steel, fell to his knees, jumped to the asphalt. The dumpster was small, and had wheels. He gave it a push and it rolled down the alley, away from the fire escape.

  The alley was in the shape of a T. Hastings Street was less than a hundred feet away. He turned to run. The lights of a car parked in the mouth of the alley switched on, blinding him. He went left, into darkness. There was the roar of an engine, a shouted oath, the screech of brakes. The alley was flooded with light. A man came around the corner. He shouted incomprehensible words and extended his right arm.

  Fifty feet down the alley a solitary house was squeezed in between a row of featureless flat-roofed brick buildings. Paterson ducked into the back yard, ran past a rusty Datsun pickup truck, up a flight of wooden stairs to the back porch. The door was locked. He heard footsteps slam down the alley. A narrow stairway led upwards. He began to climb. There was a tiny door under the peak of the roof, something from Alice In Wonderland. He tried the knob, kicked hard. The door was solid, unyielding.

  The beam of a flashlight lanced upwards. He got a foot on the doorknob, reached up and levered himself on to the steeply-sloped roof. A loose shingle fluttered into the darkness.

  “Get the bastard!” Randall’s voice. Paterson felt a shudder of relief; he thought he’d killed him.

  Crouching low, he crept along the roof to the front of the house, then let himself slide down until he could jump across the foot-wide gap between the house and the adjoining building. The beam of the flashlight wavered in the air, as if celebrating an uncertain event. He trotted across the flat, tar-and-gravel roof to the far side of the building. There was a false front, a narrow ledge about two feet high. He peered over the ledge. The car was a black Lincoln. The lights were off but the engine was running.

  Paterson moved away from the car, towards the far end of the building. About halfway down the length of the building a telephone pole stood within a few inches of the wall. A tangle of loose electrical wire made climbing impossible, but there was a black plastic drainpipe next to the pole and when he yanked on it he found that it was firm, fixed in place with metal bands and steel bolts.

  He hesitated, then swung his legs over the parapet and started to shinny down the pipe. His pants snagged on something. He glanced down and saw that the lower part of the pipe had been wrapped in barbed wire. He yanked his leg free, got set.

  Jumped.

  The shock of impact ran all the way up his body. His head snapped forward, chin on knee. He tasted blood.

  The Lincoln’s brake lights flashed red. He broke into a run, his shadow spilling behind him across the cobbled lane, overtaking him as he passed beneath a streetlight.

  He reached a cross street, Cordova. The warehouses and office buildings on either side were dark, deserted. To his left there was an apartment. He sprinted across the brightly-lit street. The door to the complex was locked. There was a list of tenants, an intercom. He slapped at the small black buttons.

  No response.

  He turned and ran up Cordova. The Lincoln slid out of the mouth of the alley on the far side of the street. He ran down the alley, heard a squeal of rubber, turned sharply left and ran past the rear of the building.

  His foot hit an empty pressurized Lysol can and sent it clattering down the alley. A part of his mind remembered reading somewhere that skid-road alcoholics mixed the liquid with Coke and then drank it and often died.

  Behind the apartment block there was an open, grassy area. A tall, white-painted metal fence had been built to keep out the Lysol drinkers. He climbed the fence and dropped. Lights shaped like giant question marks made pools of light on the grass. Lungs aching, he ran towards a second, smaller block of apartments, and an exterior stairway surrounded by metal scaffolding that led all the way to the top floor. Behind him there was a shout of triumph. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the Lincoln speeding towards him in reverse. Two men were climbing the gate. A third was crouched on the far side of the alley.

  He heard a sound like someone spitting. A bullet hit one of the lights, whined into the night with the sound of a mechanized mosquito. He stood motionless, in shock. A bullet smacked into the brick wall of the building. He thought they’d been shooting at his legs, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  One of the men on the fence dropped to the ground and trotted towards him in a shallow arc that kept him out of the line of fire.

  Paterson scurried up the stairs, climbing as fast as he could. His hand throbbed. His chest was on fire. He stumbled, fell, picked himself up.

  He reached a landing and tried the door. Locked. A man walked down the hallway towards him. He pounded on the door, leaving splashes of blood on the glass. The man stopped in front of an apartment door, produced a key. The door swung open and in the brighter light that came from within, Paterson saw that he was carrying a portable tape player equipped with earphones. The man disappeared into the apartment, shut the door behind him.

  Paterson could hear his pursuers climbing towards him, closing the gap. He hurried up the stairs to the next landing. Two more storeys and there’d be nowhere else to go, he’d be trapped. He reached for the door, saw as his fingers touched the metal handle that it was slightly ajar. He yanked the door open and slammed it shut behind him, heard the click of the automatic lock.

  He hurried down the hallway. His hand was bleeding badly, leaving a spoor of blood on the floor behind him. He found the stairway. Above and behind him he heard glass shattering, shouts. He hurried down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, lost his balance and automatically threw out his arm, painted a wide smear of blood on the white-painted wall.

  A few moments later he reached ground level. The front entrance was about twenty feet down the hall. He hurried to the door and looked out. The Lincoln could be anywhere. He pushed the door open and went outside. Moonlight shone on the complex of railway tracks on the other side of Alexandria, and in the distance he could hear the snort and whistle of a diesel engine.

  Clutching his injured hand, he ran down the concrete steps to the street and hurried across Alexandria, past a small white building, a tiny restaurant. To the left of the restaurant there was a Hydro junction box with a big red sticker on it that said DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE. He got up on the box and clambered awkwardly over the chain-link fence that separated the road from the railway tracks, jogged across gleaming streaks of metal towards a squat two-storey building.

  There was a shout from the street. The Lincoln swung in a half circle, headlights carving an arc through the night. He crouched, ran headlong into another fence. He stumbled, fell to his knees. A sign on the side of the building read PORTS CANADA POLICE. He veered away from the building and across a paved access road, up a grassy slope.

  He was at Crab Park, the only waterfront park that serviced the city’s East Side. A block away, the Lincoln sped over the steeply-sloped bridge that ran
from the foot of Main Street over the train tracks and parallel to the harbor. Paterson trotted across the grass towards the glistening black expanse of water.

  He heard voices, but couldn’t tell what direction they were coming from. It occurred to him that he had been running in a straight line since he’d crossed the road. He swerved left. In front of him there was an area of low ground, thicker darkness.

  He ran a few more yards. Stones beneath his feet made a sound like teeth grinding together. He had stumbled upon a small pond, was surrounded by tall, gently rustling bulrushes. Behind him, silhouetted against the lights of the Ports Canada building, were the blurred shapes of three running men.

  He crouched down. The beam of a flashlight swept low, was quickly extinguished. His heart lurched. With the light, they could easily follow his trail across the dew-laden grass.

  He glanced warily around. The run had left him feeling as if a knitting needle had been driven between his ribs. He blinked, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. The harbor was off to his left. He could double back the way he’d come but if they saw him he’d be trapped. He decided to go west, follow the waterfront.

  He took a deep breath, stood up and began to run.

  On the far side of the pond there was a parking lot the size of a city block. He hurdled endless rows of white lines, heels thumping on the asphalt. He jumped a ditch, struggled across a field of mud. A hundred yards in front of him there was a chain-link fence and lights that shone down from tall orange and white striped poles. Mud sucked at his shoes, tried to drag him down.

  Shoes squelching in the soft mud, he turned towards the railway tracks.

  A diesel engine thundered slowly down the track. He started running again. Off to his right, green and red lights rippled on the water. The lights were from the commuter ferry that crossed the harbor from the old CPR terminal at the foot of Granville to North Vancouver’s Londsdale Quay. He realized he was only a few hundred feet from the terminal.

  Behind him there was a flash of orange light, that spitting sound again.

  He saw the fence a fraction of a second before he ran into it, hooked his fingers into the mesh and began to climb. His shoes were slippery with mud. He managed to hook a leg over the top. Something clutched at his ankle. He kicked blindly out. There was a cry of pain, thud of a body hitting the ground. He let himself drop, rolled to his feet and ran for his life, wheezed across another stretch of muddy ground.

  There were two sets of double glass doors in the corrugated metal wall of the Seabus terminal. A sticker on each door declared EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY, NO ACCESS.

  Paterson stepped back and kicked the glass panel with all the strength he had left in him. The glass exploded in a greenish-white froth. He stepped through the door. A number of people riding the UP escalator that serviced the enclosed walkway spanning the railway tracks stared at him in mute disbelief. Passengers, he realized, from the boat he’d seen in the harbor. He ran towards the dock. Turnaround time was very fast; the ferries stayed in berth for only a few minutes. If he didn’t make the connection, there was nowhere else to go.

  He ran down a long, gently descending ramp towards the smell of the ocean, diesel fumes. The ferry’s access doors were still open. He was only a few steps away when they began to close. He yelled his dismay. A fat kid wearing frayed jeans, a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket stuck out his booted foot. The shiny plate-glass doors banged against the boot and then rebounded, sliding open again. Paterson threw himself across a short metal ramp. The kid had a James Dean haircut. He gave Paterson a cheerful grin. The doors slid shut.

  Paterson sat down in a seat made of molded gray fiberglass.

  “Holy shit,” said the kid.

  Paterson lifted his head. There were two men on the ramp. One of them was trying to pry the doors apart. His face was twisted with the effort, and his palms and the pads of his fingers were white on the glass. His companion had a gun, a black pistol. He pointed it at Paterson and gestured with his free hand, telling him to stand up, come towards him.

  The engines throbbed. Hydraulics slowly began to raise the ramp to a vertical position. The men were forced to jump down to the dock. The one with the gun fell to his knees, clutched at his companion. He stood up, trotted alongside the ferry as it moved out of the slip towards open water.

  Paterson was frozen, immobile. He sat motionless as the man with the gun followed him all the way down to the end of the dock. The ferry moved into open water, began to pick up speed. The gunman aimed at Paterson and then smiled and waved goodbye.

  There were only about a dozen passengers on board the Seabus. No one seemed to have noticed anything.

  “How long till we get to the other side?” Paterson said.

  “They had a fucking gun!” said the kid, and giggled shrilly.

  Paterson grabbed a leather-clad arm, squeezed hard. “How long is it going to take us to get across, Jimmy?”

  “I dunno. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”

  Paterson nodded. He’d lost them. For the time being at least, he was safe.

  12

  Jerry Goldstein was in his late thirties but still had a full head of curly blond hair, the complexion of a choir boy, a smile that resembled nothing quite so much as a cheerful jumbled landslide of sharp white teeth. Virtually everyone who met him was reminded of a young Paul Newman. His resemblance to the famous American actor was largely due to his intensely vivid blue eyes, which were artificially — and secretly — enhanced by tinted contact lenses. Unlike Newman, however, Goldstein wasn’t color-blind.

  Today, for the first time in his working life, he wasn’t wearing his contacts. The effect was little short of catastrophic. The lively, sparkling blue of a summer sky had faded overnight to the washed-out color of a pair of raggedy old jeans. It was as if Goldstein had changed his name to Dorian Gray. Overnight, his eyes had lost their lustre, their lust for life.

  Willows, leaning against the desk in Goldstein’s dusty, lidless glass box of an office down at the far end of the crime lab, got straight to the point. “Lose your contacts, Jerry?”

  The worn crochet cushion shifted beneath Goldstein’s buttocks; his captain’s chair squeaked in dismay. He critically scrutinized his cuticles, drummed his knuckles on the steel surface of his desk. Finally he said, “I decided not to wear them anymore.”

  “Why not?” said Parker.

  “Too dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” said Willows. “I remember reading about a guy who was attacked by a contact lens.”

  “You know how many times a day the average person blinks?” said Goldstein. “Thousands. And every time you blink, your contact lenses shift across the surface of your eyes. Know how far the average lens travels during the course of a single day?”

  Willows and Parker exchanged a look. Willows could tell by the way Parker’s eyes were squinched up that she was trying not to laugh. “A long way, I bet,” Willows said.

  “The length of a football field,” replied Goldstein promptly. “More than a hundred yards. Constantly moving back and forth, back and forth. Think about it. What do we get when two surfaces rub against each other?”

  By way of example, he pressed his palms together and made a brisk scrubbing motion, his watchband gleaming in the overhead fluorescents.

  “Heat?” said Parker.

  Goldstein smiled. Parker blushed.

  “Friction, Claire. And when you’ve got something as hard as plastic pressing up against something as soft as the tissue of a human eye ... You wear contacts, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Parker.

  “Your eyes are naturally that dark?”

  Parker nodded. Goldstein stared at her as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind whether to believe her or not. He’d replaced his contacts with a pair of heavy, black-plastic framed glasses with lenses thick as a TV screen, that looked about twenty years old. He took the glasses off and polished them with a Kleenex. There were red marks on the bridge of his nose, little pressure
indentations on his cheekbones in front of his ears. Behind him, the brain of a famous mass-murderer floated benignly in a jar of cloudy liquid. Parker remembered reading somewhere that the brains of all creatures, including humans, had the same caloric rating — about 150 calories per ounce. Why would she bother to remember such a useless piece of information, instead of, say, her postal code? “The shooting down at the foot of Granville Street,” she said. “What have you got for us?”

  Goldstein replaced his glasses, got them aligned to his satisfaction on the bridge of his nose. He leaned forward in his chair, consulted a pad of lined yellow paper.

  “I assume the situation is static, that we’re still looking for a corpse?”

  “High and low,” said Willows.

  “There was only one blood type in the Pontiac,” said Goldstein. “O positive. The brain tissue was human, and the bone fragments probably came from a human skull.” He paused. “I can’t be certain about that last point. A guy named Waters, physical anthropologist out at UBC, has agreed to take a look. He’s one of the best in his field. Said he’d know if the bones were human by the day after tomorrow. If it is, you’re looking at murder. No one could survive that kind of wound.”

  “We’d assumed from the start that it was something a little more serious than a nosebleed,” said Willows.

  Goldstein nodded. “There was quite a bit of hair in the car, some of it attached to flesh. The victim was Caucasian, definitely a male.”

  “Can you give us an approximate age?” said Parker.

  “Not with what we’ve got. If I had more bones, the rest of the skull or part of the spinal cord, I might be able to do something.”

  “Prints?”

  “Nothing. That car was wiped cleaner than a ...” He trailed off, glanced at Parker, looked quickly away.

  “What else?” said Willows.

  “From my point of view, Jack, the first thing you should do is find the body. The body would definitely be an asset. Judging from the crime scene, I’d say the shooting was done at point-blank range. It turns out the body’s in good shape, I’d expect to find evidence of smoke particles, lubricants, grime from the barrel.”