by Ritu Sethi
Gray reached the massive boulder and to its left, almost hidden in the dark, lay an unexpected near-vertical drop into a ravine.
Gray’s foot slipped.
He caught himself by wrapping his arms around a maple, feeling its deeply-grooved bark scratch his face, smelling the musky, dense scent.
The lichen-coated rocks and ground slid under his feet, and it was all he could do to hang onto dead stumps jutting out of the ground, to move further from the ravine’s edge before making his way to the boulder – and from there an incline eventually leading back towards the road.
But out here in the shrouded wilderness, only things immediately within the flashlight’s beam remained visible. Anyone might lurk in the blackness – behind, to the right, to his right or left – ready to push or stab or strike.
He listened intently. He knew this terrain – its pulse, its beat, and its guts. This was his mountain. He’d grown up hiking here, and many a night, Gray had slipped away to lie alone and bask underneath the pine-framed starry sky.
But now, he followed The Stitcher, a ruthless adversary capable of anything.
Gray decided to go straight ahead before climbing the incline back towards the road and Seymour.
Each crunching step was felt rather than heard, the black oblivion to the left – probably only twenty feet down before curving back up the mountain – a death trap nevertheless.
Gray stopped and switched off his torch. His breathing sounded heavy and loud; blood pounded through his ears.
A faint glimmer bobbed in the distance, so faint he barely saw it, but it left a fleeting impression on his retina in the otherwise pitch dark.
If he switched on the torch, he’d lose the distant glow. But without knowing where he stepped, something far worse could happen.
A clump of damp leaves from a Bigleaf Maple suddenly touched his face; their clammy surface slid across his cheek as he passed.
Deciding on compromise, he turned the torch on for a few paces, and then back off to identify the position of his target again.
Of course, that meant the killer tracked him, too.
This procedure led him about fifty feet away from the boulder, and now, the distant torch shone from above the incline to Gray’s right. The killer was making his way back towards the road.
Meaning what?
Was he headed to a parked car, ready for his escape? Or would the Stitcher head back to the farm and Emmy? Possibly meeting Seymour along the way.
Gray’s heart jumped in his chest. He had to catch up, fast.
Two green lights suddenly came towards him. He leapt back, nearly going over the edge of the embankment but instead catching himself on a tangled branch.
Eyes – green and wild – lit up in his torch beam. An animal flung by him, narrowly missing his head and thumping down onto the muddy edge. Gray fell to the ground.
Another followed. Along with an ear piercing howl.
Wolves.
Gray gripped the muddy dirt with his fists. It could have been a bear. Up here, that was as likely as anything.
Best to get back to Seymour. The man Gray chased was likely out of reach, and any moment, he would hear the sound of an engine starting, and the shriek of tires as the car raced away.
The steep slope lay immediately to his right.
By digging numb fingers into the dirt, he pulled himself up the forty-five-degree incline, feet sideways, the torch strap dangling from his mouth.
A foot at a time, he made his way up until a ledge appeared in the blackness, and the taste of dirt falling into his mouth was replaced by bile. Gray swallowed it down.
The road must be only a dozen meters or so ahead. If the killer had circled back, was he headed back to the farm?
Now the damp smell of pine and mulch felt overwhelming, claustrophobic even. The distant rotting corpses felt as though they were close to his face, exuding a caustic scent. All those maggots and curdled flesh had seared their mark on his nostrils. Even as Gray ran, he imagine them encircling him in darkness.
He got about half-way up the incline until – a punch sent him flying backward.
His feet slid out from under him, and he flipped and fell down the muddy incline – as black branches flew past and snapped…a trunk nearly within reach, but he missed it…and then something strong yanking his coat back. Stopping him from falling.
“Got you!” Seymour said.
His dark head hovered over Gray, who now lay on the very edge of the ledge. “I wanted you to solve the case, James, not kill yourself in the process.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” Gray’s voice came out hoarse and cracked. He pushed himself up. “And thanks. Now I’m doubly glad I invited you to stay for Christmas.”
“I don’t know,” Seymour said. “You wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for me.”
“Did you see him…or her?”
“I saw something whiz through the trees, but unlike you, I’m not brave enough to go chasing a demented killer in the dark.”
Or Seymour was more concerned about finding his friend than catching the culprit. But Gray left that unsaid.
They climbed up to the road. Seymour panted as he tried to keep pace.
“What’s the rush,” he said.
Gray had to know who that figure was, the identity of this Stitcher. He had to know right away.
“Okay, spit it out,” Seymour said, now completely out of breath. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
His bony hand dug into Gray’s arm, and they stopped. With the forward facing torch, Seymour’s face lay shrouded in darkness, the pear-shaped outline of his large head seemingly backlit.
Overhead, the surrounding swaying pines danced to a tune Gray couldn’t hear. For the first time, he felt excluded from his childhood haunt in these mountains, an innocence lost. But the rustling of the trees also reminded him of another time, another night such as this one – when a similar thing had happened.
“’The Stitcher,’ John –” His voice sounded low and foreign to his ears. He rarely used the doctor’s first name, despite their growing friendship – perhaps because so many of their interactions revolved around cases, corpses, and crime scenes, perhaps to keep a professional distance. But he used Seymour’s first name today. “That’s what the press called the killer fifteen years ago. This scenario that Emmy described – strangulation, sutured lips – has occurred before. And the killer was never caught. Our quaint little community has a colorful crime history. If your Emmy is withholding information, her life could be in danger. I want to get back to the cabin quickly.”
Seymour’s face fell, the shadowed jowls tight and grim. An unnatural silence fell, as the rain suddenly ceased, but water glistened off Seymour’s lashes under an emerging new moon peeking through spent clouds.
“You’ve been looking for something,” the doctor said.
Was it safe to share that information with Seymour? Gray didn’t answer.
“Could this be a copycat murder?” Seymour said, as they resumed their brisk walk back to Emmy’s cabin.
Maybe, Gray thought – by an uninformed copycat who hadn’t replicated the death precisely because they had no access to the original police file.
Seymour moving profile looked pinched. “I assume you investigated this original Stitcher killing, fifteen years ago.”
“I’m a cop. I was then, too, albeit a green one. We have to catch this ruthless killer. Or there will be another victim, soon. I have to speak to your friend again, if she’ll talk to me.”
“Now that you’re not yelling, I’m sure your Bond-like slickness will smooth the way.”
They reached the cabin. All seemed quiet.
A wonderful warmth hit Gray when he entered the cabin, but within seconds of heating, his soaked clothes felt like they were stuck on with glue.
He threw off his coat and noticed Emmy wiping down the tables and bookshelf – surfaces which looked like they hadn’t seen a speck of dust in months.
<
br /> Seymour took off his scarf and rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” She lifted her chin.
“We’ll find you a hotel,” Seymour said.
“No. I can’t leave the specimens.”
“But –“
“No!” Her head turned towards Gray and then back to the bookshelf.
Gray kept his distance, but his instincts told him she had more to say. And he had to procure the information without a repeat of his earlier debacle.
Seymour held out his hands. “Emmy, we saw someone out by the road. He ran away, but the killer could return. How are you going to sleep here tonight?”
After some wavering, she faced Gray. Her body shook as she took two steps towards him.
“You won’t get upset if I tell you something,” she said.
“I’m sorry about earlier. I promise, I won’t.”
Emmy relaxed and let out a sign. “Then, I’ve remembered something else about the body, Chief Inspector. Something you should know, and something even the killer might not have noticed.”
CHAPTER THREE
I T STARED BACK at her from her pubis.
The unbelievable nerve!
Her electric razor had shorn a path across her thigh, chomping like an inadequate lawn mower over dry summer grass before reaching her bikini line – and there it was: smack in the middle.
A solitary gray hair.
Farrah Stone saw red.
How could this happen to her? Other people yes, but not her.
Turning forty-five wasn’t for the faint-hearted, not when looks had once been a currency which now threatened to become defunct. She might still pass for thirty-five – on a well-rested day – but for how bloody long?
Outside, a few rays penetrated the inveterate winter sky. She kept her bathroom extra hot, not quite a dry sauna but close – if only to protect her from the bone-chilling dampness omnipresent on the West Coast – where clouds became trapped between mountains and spat on her personally on a regular basis.
Salty air leaking through a crack in the window touched her nostrils and mingled with her guava infused body lotion, rose hand cream, and a multitude of bath oils.
This upcoming Christmas Eve, on her birthday, she will have officially outlived her father.
People often asked if she lacked for presents as a child. Farrah rarely answered.
Her father had never given her a present for either Christmas or her birthday, and his love hadn’t grown from the day she was born to the moment of his death.
Yet he had left her the one thing she valued the most. And she would always cherish it.
Farrah’s mother, on the other hand, was a closed book, best left closed.
That both her parents had keeled over during their morning run (on separate mornings) was also something not to be contemplated in depth.
She reflected on this superficially and unemotionally, thinking she’d sidestepped her parents’ atherosclerosis by virtue of regular fasting and exercise; every subsequent moment that she would outlive her father’s forty-five years outlined how she had won.
Farrah finished shaving. Then she smoothed a palm-full of lemon scented lotion over each slim leg in long, slow caresses. Cool lotion over hot skin. Sensation. The feeling of being alive – it gave her life meaning and purpose.
It also made her think of Gray James, who was back at Searock for Christmas – the dark, contained type you’d eagerly open your legs for and probably not kick out of bed afterward.
It made her think of sex and the visceral, full-body reaction she’d experienced when she saw him last week. Those striking emerald eyes of his looked intense enough to see through her clothes. The black hair, cut to perfection would feel great between her fingers. Incredible as it grazed the insides of her thighs –
Farrah opened her legs, spread the lotion upward. So sexy, that deep baritone voice –
A clanging ringtone from her cell made her start.
Damn that stupid phone.
Teddy had given it to her as an early birthday present, and she hadn’t had time to change the ringtone to something more Zen. Perhaps she’d choose the trickle of raindrops or a faint monastery bell.
Amazing how so small a detail highlighted their inherent incompatibility. But Theodore Roland Atkins, self-proclaimed squire of the village, magnanimous to everyone, most especially himself, wasn’t the one calling her.
She put away the razor and carried the phone into her bedroom. The caller’s voice got garbled with the sound of footsteps shuffling outside her door.
“What are you saying?” Farrah hissed into the phone. “No! That’s nonsense. Now, stop calling me.”
She hung up; her pulse beat fast. Donning her gold-trimmed, satin robe, she pulled the collar tight across her neck. “Who’s there? Why are you hovering outside my room?”
Matisse opened the door but didn’t meet her eyes. His birth name had been Samuel, but she’d quite rightly changed it.
Farrah relaxed her shoulders. If he’d heard the call, he’d want an explanation, but as her adopted child, he had no right whatsoever to expect it.
“Come and help me brush my hair, will you?” She turned and sat before the vanity. The cushion sank firmly beneath her bottom. She reached for her pearl choker and latched it on.
His lanky form shuffled towards her in the mirror, hunched, the multitude of white-tipped pimples on his forehead, nose, and cheeks, practically popping out of his face, reminding her of miniature volcanoes.
Sighing, she shook her head; he paused mid-step. He was so sensitive, always watching her every gesture and expression for signs of reassurance and approval, almost as though he needed her blessing to exist.
How exhausting. Thank goodness she’d never inflicted that selfishness onto her father when she was twenty. He had always compared her beauty to the reclining white stone sculptures at his gallery – faceless, nude, and cold. ‘All art is life,’ he’d tell her, believing himself to be a connoisseur of both.
On this milestone birthday, a realization came to mind: any casual approach to life got you to forty-five; but afterward, each person awoke alone in the morning, struggled in the deep end of a pool, flailing, ready to grab whichever lifeline could keep depression and age at bay. And who you were inside, began to show.
Matisse came closer and stood behind her, smelling of chewing gum and wafting foot odor.
He reached for her silver-handled brush and began a hundred strokes she’d taught him when he’d first arrived thirteen years earlier. She closed her eyes and held back her head. The bristles massaged her scalp.
“Mom, can I speak to you about something?”
“Hmm?” Farrah replied. The brush skimmed her forehead and moved down inch by inch. She felt bathed in sensation.
“It’s about Delilah.”
That yanked her out of the moment, and she whipped her head around. The boy ruined everything. She hated acknowledging Teddy’s daughter, much less talking about her.
“What about her?”
Matisse’s oval and chinless face bore down on her; he chewed the gum like a cow.
“I kinda like her,” he said. “Is that okay? I mean, since you’re gonna marry her dad, and we’d become brother and sister. But we aren’t really related, and with both of us adopted there aren’t any blood links.”
He waited, expecting something, always hoping. Delilah hooking up with Matisse? That vibrant, and let’s call a spade a spade, slutty skank associating with Farrah’s pathetic boy?
She didn’t mask her lopsided smile. Turning towards the mirror, she said: “You and Delilah? You think she’d want you?”
The top button of his shirt was fastened. “Pull out that shirt, Matisse. How many times do I have to tell you not to tuck?”
His face grew red; he stiffened and stopped chewing. The miniature volcanoes on his nose threatened to erupt and spurt their goo onto her, and instinctively, she pulled back.
Sometimes, she scarce
ly recognized him as the boy she’d brought home. Sometimes, he took the form of a stranger who didn’t like her, didn’t love her. No one loved her.
Farrah forced herself to relax.
He was only a child under that grown form – in need of a mother, and she’d been harsh. She of all people should know that any affection stroked a child’s soul, even artificial affection.
What did real love feel like? She’d read about it studying liberal arts at UBC, a lifetime ago. She’d awaited its embrace all these years, but it had yet to come.
“I’m sorry,” Farrah said, reaching for his hand. It was warm and clammy, but she hid her cringe. That’s what mothering was. Concealing your real feelings for the benefit of your child.
She caressed his hand, and this seemed to help. His slumped posture returned, the lower full lip quivered. Empty pools of wanting stared at her from behind his square-rimmed glasses. So needy.
“You don’t believe Delilah and I would make a good couple?” he said.
“I didn’t say that, Darling. It isn’t what I believe that matters. What does she have to say?” Farrah felt proud of her response. Any mothering site would approve.
He shuffled toward the door. Good, he’d leave soon. The discussion was boring her.
“She hasn’t said anything.”
“But you’ve told her how you feel?”
Farrah planned to use the mansion for hosting weekend parties for art gallery clients and generally ensconce herself as resident Queen. She wished both children would act their age and move out.
“She doesn’t know,” he said.
Farrah smiled again, this time concealing the smile under her hand.
He seemed reticent to leave. Farrah picked up a pencil and expertly applied liner to her eyes, her hands as steady as when she’d worked as a makeup artist in the Vancouver film industry – years ago, before she’d taken over her father’s art gallery.
“Delilah’s going out with Sergeant Slope,” Matisse said. “Teddy knows about it, and he’s fuming.”
Perhaps, it was for the best. Why not have Theodore Atkinson’s fake blue blood mix with the common local constabulary? She could see no loss to herself. It may even provide some amusing anecdotes to supply to her future house guests; at Teddy’s expense.
