Ocean Drive, page 19
“Sure. I’ll be there in ten, Liz, okay?”
“That would be great. I’d really—”
The phone cut off. Meghan dialed back, dialed as she hurried into her clothes, dialed as she drove across town.
* * *
The lights were off inside the Garrick house. As Meghan tried the front door she realized the incidental lights were off, too. No Christmas lights, no computer flicker from upstairs or pale fluorescent porch lamp. Not even the muted orange of the door buzzer. Someone had cut the power. Meghan unsnapped her holster as she walked around the side of the house.
The glass of the pool room had been turned opaque with smoke. Peering inside she could see only vague shapes—the diving board, an overturned white plastic chair. A form on the ground.
“Possible fire at the Garrick home,” she radioed in. “Persons injured.”
The door was locked but Meghan knocked out the pane with the butt of her pistol, turning her head as smoke billowed out. Working the lock and handle from the outside, she pulled in a deep breath and entered, approached the direction of the form, nearly tripping over the body.
She felt legs and took hold of ankles and dragged, her breath easing out, the strain causing her to suck smoke into her nostrils. Coughing. Her carry form was wrong, she wasn’t protecting the victim’s head at all, but her eyes were watering and she pulled both legs, lost her grip and held tight to one wet calf, dragging, clearing the building and collapsing onto the lawn.
Air. Her eyes cleared.
The figure was Bob Sutter. The towel that had been wrapped around his body had come loose and was now grass-stained and bunched beneath his head. Meghan checked his pulse and examined his airway, directed a breath down his throat. Pumped at his chest, one, two.
Nothing.
Meghan wiped her mouth and leaned back, away from the corpse.
A headache was cleaving her skull. Meghan stood up and looked into the pool room. The smoke seemed to hang over the water like a fog. But it wasn’t spreading.
She radioed again, emergency, and tried the handle of the house’s side door. It wasn’t hot and it wasn’t locked. She drew her gun and entered.
No smell of smoke in here. She headed down the hall into the high-ceilinged foyer. Heard footsteps from upstairs.
The main entrance led to a living room on the right, a curved staircase on the left. Meghan scanned the stairs and the landing above before slowly ascending, her footsteps nearly silent on the carpet.
Glass smashed from the end of the upstairs hallway. Meghan took the rest of the flight and moved forward, checking the bathroom, the guest room.
A pale form in green lay on the floor of the master bedroom, face shrouded in silver-black hair. Meghan rolled her over and felt for a pulse. Liz Garrick was breathing.
The door to the balcony was ajar. Banging it open with the toe of her boot, Meghan looked out. A figure had slipped down the roof and was slithering toward the overhang. Male, dressed in dark clothes.
Meghan shouted at him to halt. Then dashed down the stairs, toward the back.
Bursting out of the solarium door, she saw the figure hit the ground five metres in front of her. She yelled, “Hands up, police!” and drew a bead as he began to run.
Her first shot went wild as the figure sprinted down the back alley that led to the beach. She fired again as the gate swung and heard someone scream and a light go on in the house across the alley. She could hear a convergence of sirens now, fire and police.
“Pursuing on foot toward North Crescent,” she radioed, following through the gate into the alley. Across the road, over the tracks. The figure had stumbled on the beach and was pulling himself up, darting west toward a parking lot.
Meghan jogged down the shoulder of the tracks, saw the figure running and fired, smashing the headlight of a Jeep at the edge of the lot. The figure turned. Meghan made eye contact.
Then Cameron Shaw bolted through the treeline, and was gone.
* * *
When Katy Qiu and Auxiliary Officer Ted Sommers arrived, Meghan was sitting near Bob Sutter’s body. The white cups from the AED machine still clung to Bob’s chest, staring at Meghan like pupil-less eyes. Emergency had taken Liz Garrick away.
“Do you smoke?” she asked Ted.
“Well, sometimes…” The auxiliary stumbled.
Meghan held out her hand. “Let’s have them.”
She lit up one, a Camel Light, and watched as the beach breeze carried the smoke toward the water.
The fire team swept through the building and said there were no other people inside.
Meghan knew, if Bob had been over, then Max Garrick was probably staying at a friend’s house, or with a sitter. But she let out a sigh once the house was cleared.
Dale and Emmet walked out of the house, Emmet waving to her. He removed his fire helmet, noticed she was smoking and shook his head. “Old habits die hard, huh?”
“Where’d the fire start?” Meghan asked.
“Sauna,” Dale said. “That’s a new one, isn’t it?”
Meghan shrugged, not up for black humour with Bob Sutter lying dead and naked on the grass.
Emmet explained that the fire had started close to the sauna. Bob, trapped inside, had inhaled the fumes, struggled, had freed himself only to collapse. A heart attack brought on by arson. Greg Grewal would have his hands full.
Once the arson investigator arrived, Meghan said, “Careful with this one, we’ve got a suspect.”
“I’m always careful,” Greg replied. “Should tell the thousand other people trampling through.” He looked down at the former detachment commander. “Poor old Bob.”
“Cold out here,” Dale added, pointed at the dead man’s shrunken pubic mound.
“He had to pick January, huh?” Emmet said.
Meghan walked away, telling Katy and Ted to follow her.
* * *
Sukhi answered her door in drawstring pants and a blue silk kimono. Her hair was up. “What do you want,” she said.
“We‘re gonna talk,” said Meghan.
“I told you I don’t know anyth—”
“In my car or on your lawn. You choose the venue.”
Once Sukhi was in the back seat of the Interceptor, Meghan turned in her seat, staring at the young woman through the safety guard.
“Any bullshit, Sukhi, and I’m holding you as an accessory. Where can I find Cameron Shaw?”
“I don’t know—” She caught the look Meghan was giving her. “He has a place in Surrey.”
“Is he there now?”
“How should I—I mean, I don’t know.”
“Phone him,” Meghan said.
Sukhi dialed and waited through six rings before saying, “He’s not answering.”
“Where’d he go if he’s not at home?”
“I dunno, maybe Tito’s?”
“Tito DaSilva?”
“Yeah.”
“Address?”
Sukhi told her.
“Where else?”
“I don’t know anything else.”
Meghan pointed at Sukhi’s phone. “That stays off tonight.”
* * *
Tito DaSilva was rousted out of bed, tossed down on the carpet of his living room. Meghan quickly searched upstairs and waited as Tito tried to talk her out of checking the basement.
“Don’t you need a warrant or something to do that,” he said weakly.
“Reason to believe you’re harbouring a dangerous fugitive,” Meghan answered. She signalled the other officers to follow her down.
Bats, pistols, League of Nations flags and shirts. Hash pipes and a baggie of what looked like crystal meth. No one was hiding in the basement.
Back upstairs, she handcuffed Tito and pulled him up so he was sitting on his heels. “Lots of bad shit in plain sight,” she said.
“Plain sight my ass, basement door was closed.”
“Difference of opinion. Where’s Cameron Shaw?”
“No idea.”
“Tito,” Meghan said, making a tsk-tsk noise as she pushed the man back to the floor. “Know what happens if you don’t tell me where he is? I’m going to walk out of here.”
She waited for Tito to puzzle through this, and ask her, “And what?”
“And nothing. Certainly not arrest you. Fact, I’ll tell people to make sure to steer clear of our buddy Tito, that his residence is off limits.” She smiled and patted his shoulder, enjoying the way his head swung back and forth. “We‘ll look out for you, buddy, I promise.”
“I’m not a rat,” Tito said.
“Of course not. I will personally tell everyone that. Loudly.”
“You’re fucking killing me,” Tito said. Then figuring out what she wanted. “Cam might swing by. He sometimes does.”
“And what’ll you do?”
“Tell you.”
“What else?”
“Keep him here?”
Meghan patted his head. “Attaboy, Tito. Now tell us five other places we can look.”
* * *
Surrey PD had an alert out for Cam. He wasn’t at his apartment or at work. They’d alert his parole officer and check the regular League haunts.
Only one place left to look. Meghan drove along Crescent Road to where it met the Nicomekl River. She pulled into a small house with a sagging porch and weathered stairs.
A rental car sat at the edge of the drive. The driver’s side window was cracked.
Meghan clambered onto the porch and knocked on the door. She heard the house awaken, footsteps and muttering, the lock being snaked back. Pete Shaw greeted her with a bleary-eyed nod.
“You just missed him,” he said.
The old man sat on a milk crate on his porch and lit two cigarettes, handing one to Meghan.
“’Scuse my lips. Cam took my work truck. Wouldn’t say where he was heading.” Adding, “We‘re not on speaking terms these days.”
“But he came here. You lent him your truck.”
“Couldn’t stop him taking it.”
“Couldn’t or didn’t, Pete?”
He shrugged. “He was my apprentice.”
Meghan heard a metallic clang from inside the house and shoved Pete aside, quick-drawing her weapon. The old man put his hand up, tried to say relax, but Meghan was moving past him.
“Don’t,” Pete said. “The gun. Please. You’ll frighten him.”
The interior was small and the lights were off. Meghan moved toward the kitchen, clearing the living room, seeing a light on and hearing the burble of a toilet tank replenishing itself.
The door opened and a child walked out, dressed in blue pajamas with glow in the dark sharks, their mouths open in gleaming smiles. The kid had a blue gob of toothpaste stuck to his left cheek, an aluminum toilet paper roller in his hand. He stared at her before smiling.
“Hi Mrs. Police,” Max Garrick said. “We’re out of tee-pee, Uncle Pete.”
Meghan holstered her gun, feeling Pete’s hand stroke her shoulder.
“Guess there’s a few things I should tell you,” he said.
Fifteen
It had all gone to shit in two hours’ time.
Cam had followed Bob Sutter’s sedan into the rich area near the east end of the beach. He remembered the house, thinking of the additions he and Uncle Pete had made. They’d framed and wired the pool room, tiled the kitchen, re-grouted the bathrooms after the Jacuzzi tubs had been installed. The most beautiful house in the city, owned by the most beautiful couple. Something surreal about it, even now.
Bob had let him in the front door with a key.
Elizabeth Garrick’s voice carried down from somewhere above the double staircase. “Come on up,” she said. “Bob, would you give us a few minutes?”
The old cop had nodded and muttered something about a schvitz, glaring back at Cam. “Don’t make trouble for the lady,” he said.
Mrs. Garrick appeared, leaning one hand on the banister at the top of the stairs. She was dressed in a black robe of some soft material, her feet embedded in thick pink slippers. She smiled at him. Cam suddenly felt younger and smaller, and deeply uncomfortable.
“Your face,” she said, making a sympathetic frown.
He touched the scar on his brow. It had been a while since he’d thought of it. “Work accident,” he said.
“Let’s talk upstairs.”
Cam hurried up the stairs and followed her into the bedroom. It was nothing like he remembered from his time working on the house. She’d removed the wallpaper and the crown moldings, expanded the balcony so that the room looked out on the lawn. You could see all the way down through the skylight to the aquamarine of the pool.
“It’s somewhat ironic it would be you,” Mrs. Garrick said. She was kneeling at the entrance to her closet. “Frankly I’d rather deal with the person my husband did—I believe his name was Tequila?—but Bob tells me things are up in the air with that organization. Yours is more stable.”
Cam nodded, not sure what she was getting at.
“Change is overwhelmingly positive when it comes to business. We have to be willing to grow.” She turned back and smiled at him, a tight, mean-spirited smile. “Thrive or die, I believe is your motto.”
Cam tried to speak but found he was tongue-tied. “I always wanted to apologize,” he said.
“Of course. You didn’t mean to kill him any more than I wanted him to die.”
She lifted something out of the closet and stood up.
“I imagine we’ve both spent a great deal of time living with our regrets. But Roger is dead despite them, and I’ve decided to forgive myself. This, Cam, is what I want for his legacy.”
She held up a glossy brochure and unfolded it. A nighttime landscape of White Rock beach, aglow with smiling faces strolling the promenade, walking into and out of a large neon-lit sphere. The Paragon Casino and Resort would be right on the water, serving a cross-border, international clientele, offering fun games of chance, gourmet restaurants, and the very best entertainment from around the globe.
Cam pointed at the brochure. On the beach a nuclear family stood smiling, watching something leap out of the water. “Is that an orca?” he asked.
Mrs. Garrick smiled. “Artistic licence. The zoning will go through, and financing is secure. All we need is for the violence to stop.”
She held out something plastic-wrapped and vacuum-sealed. Money, four stacks of fifties.
“Twenty thousand dollars, to be used to calm the waters,” she said. “If more is needed we can come up with more—within reason, of course.”
Cam took the money and tore a corner of the plastic away. The currency looked real. He said, “What exactly are you buying?”
“Peace,” Mrs. Garrick said. “Violence over the next two years could put the project in jeopardy. I don’t care how, but something must be worked out.”
“Can’t promise anything,” Cam said.
“Just tell your people. This would be a start. A down payment of sorts.”
“All right.”
“But the violence stops. That’s non-negotiable. And whoever murdered Alexa and this other young man, they’re to be handed over to authorities.”
Cam thought about Tequila, saw him in the second before Harv fired. Remembered the weight of his ashes.
“Might be difficult,” he said.
“If it’s possible the person isn’t in a position to be handed over, I’d understand.” Mrs. Garrick’s eyes lingered on Cam’s, making sure the point was driven home.
“I’ll tell them.”
“Excellent.” She ruffled his hair, running fingers over his scar. “I always knew how you felt,” she said. “How you used to watch me.”
“Everyone watches you.”
She didn’t deny it. Her index finger brushed his mouth, chin. “Roger thought you were a threat to me. He didn’t want you in the home when he wasn’t there. He was silly-sweet with his jealousies.”
The lights in the room wavered and Mrs. Garrick’s smile turned to a look of concern. Then they were in darkness.
“Bob,” she called out to no answer. Again, louder.
“Someone else here?” Cam asked.
“There shouldn’t be.” Her phone lit up the room, her face determined, half in shadows. Walking toward the bedroom. “Please check, would you?”
Cam moved to the staircase, looked down and saw a man press his face into the bevelled glass of the front door, then come around to the window and look through. Not seeing Cam, he continued along the perimeter of the house. His forehead was covered in fabric—too dark to make out the colour, but Cam guessed purple. What were the Vipers doing here?
What was he doing here?
He crept down the stairs, searching for something he could use as a weapon. Where was the kitchen? The place had been renovated and his orientation was off. Cam held to the banister and slipped along the hallway.
Steam was coming from the back of the house. No—smoke.
Cam stepped into the parlour and peered out. A man in a purple snapback stood in the entrance to the kitchen. He coughed and spat. Smoke teased out from below the door to the pool room. Another man joined him from the opposite hall, dragging a pry bar along the floor.
For a second they stood there looking at Cam, and Cam at them. They started toward him and Cam bolted to the stairs, rushing upward, hearing them behind.
Ducking into the guest bedroom, he heard the men pass by him. Knocking, then banging on the master bedroom. Maybe he could sneak past, down the stairs. A kick, a splinter of wood. They were after her—
In a panic he looked around the room for something solid. He heard Liz Garrick scream and abandoned the search, grabbing the second man just as the first breached the entrance.
