Ocean Drive, page 3
“Won’t be sure of anything till we spectrograph it, but sure smells like it.”
A Greg Grewal eighty percent was more certain than most people’s hundred. Meghan made a note, kerosene, on her pad.
“It has a higher flashpoint than ethanol,” Grewal said. “Less likely to catch fire accidentally.”
“Meaning it’s unlikely this fire was accidental.”
“I can’t be certain of that, Sarge, but it’s sure possible.”
“Putting aside certainties,” she said, “which I know for you is tough—are we looking for a professional arsonist?”
Grewal bent and peered at a section of carpet. “Hard to say.”
“I know it is, Greg. Why else would I ask the fucking arson investigator?”
He looked up, flustered, then barked out a laugh. Typical response of a male in authority to anything other than lovingly gentle correction. “Jeez, Meghan, put me on the spot why don’t you?”
“A pro, Greg? Or some kid with a camping stove?”
Grewal sighed and eased himself up to a standing position. Surveying the room, he said, “I’d be surprised if arson was the primary focus.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t burn enough, nor was it properly ventilated. A fire’s got to be fed. You need to stoke it, ’specially at first. A pro would’ve smashed holes in the drywall to expose the wooden frame. This never really got going. Fact, if there’d been more of a breeze last night, it might’ve put it out for us before we got here.”
“So an amateur.”
“At starting fires, I’d say so.”
“The doors were locked,” Meghan said. “It’s looking more and more like Alexa did this herself.”
“The poor girl.”
“Or someone targeted her, and wants to confuse things for us.”
* * *
Downstairs, Meghan glanced around the kitchen, noticing nothing new save the boot tracks of firefighters and cops. Bare cupboards aside from two boxes of a hippie-looking cereal. The kind of thing Rhonda would insist on buying, only to eat a bowl or two, then leave it to go stale in their pantry.
In her own house, since Rhonda left, it had been nothing but Shreddies, generic corn flakes and the odd box of sugary shit for Trevor.
She wanted a cigarette. Meghan headed outside to see if she could cadge one from the officer guarding the scene.
Passing the hallway and shoe rack, she noticed the low, beige, particleboard shelf had been moved away from the wall. An umbrella had fallen behind it, a cane. And a thin piece of corrugated plastic.
Pulling it out, she saw what it was: a For Sale sign. Chung Realty, a glamour shot of a fifty-year-old bottle blond, and the slogan Let Winnie Work for You!
Carrying the sign, Meghan walked outside and down the driveway. On the corner of the property, near a deep furrow caused by a swipe from the fire truck’s tire, was an L-shaped piece of white wood. The bottom was sharpened to a stake, dirty where it had been pitched in the lawn. The cross arm had been snapped off. The sign would have been posted here at one point.
She took a photo of the broken post, clutching the sign beneath her armpit to work the camera.
“Find something?” Greg Grewal said behind her.
Meghan showed him the sign.
“You think Alexa took it down?”
“Not sure, but looks that way, yeah.”
He looked at the pieces of white picket on the lawn. “What was she doing back here?”
Staying, Meghan thought.
* * *
The girl in the fire was Alexa Reed.
Meghan herself brought the dental charts from the clinic to the pathologist and waited while Dr. Sonia Varma made the comparison. Varma was the opposite of Grewal—autopsies and chemical tests would take as long as they took, but she was willing to hypothesize an answer to any question Meghan put to her. The doctor was young, slender and had great hair. Meghan fought to keep her resentment in check.
“Not a suicide,” Varma said. “Her neck is broken.”
“I thought bones sometimes break due to heat.”
“Sure do. But usually not before heat is applied.”
Varma drew back the plastic sheeting, exposing Meghan once again to the featureless burnt face of Alexa Reed. The pathologist turned the corpse, prodding the skin at what would have been the nape.
“See the hematoma? You can kind of make it out beneath the burn—see?” Meghan noticed a dark discolouration but it looked less like a bruise than a blotch.
“Her neck was snapped,” Varma said. “Probably with a weapon. Maybe a good shove into something with no give.”
“Like a windowsill? Edge of the bed?”
Varma nodded. “Hard, though—you’d really have to work to cause a break this clean.”
“Anything in her pockets?”
Varma set the body back down and craned her neck to read off her clipboard. “Haven’t paid as much attention to the clothes, Sarge—you did ask me to hurry.”
“But no metal,” Meghan said, “no keys.”
“No.”
Meghan stared at the body. Stripped and opened and now sewn up, Alexa Reed resembled herself more than when Meghan had first seen her. Parts of her hadn’t been touched by flame—a pale knee and thigh, a left ankle. That made the dark burns covering her face and torso that much more horrid. No mistaking this for the young woman Meghan had witnessed grow up, mature. Endure the pain of losing both parents. And all for this?
It didn’t make sense.
* * *
A call to the SUNY registrar told Meghan that Alexa Reed was on academic suspension. She’d missed several appointments with her graduate supervisor, and her last round of exams had been dismal. Meghan thought that wasn’t out of the ordinary, given what had happened to her parents. It had been a tough couple years for the Reeds.
Alexa’s social media presence was a low-visibility simmer of rage and sarcasm. She had few friends, liked or reacted to little and rarely replied to comments.
Her last post was indicative of her public style:
God, there’s so much going on here that passes beneath people. Worse even than when I was a kid. LITERALLY no one cares. No one pays attention. You wouldn’t believe it if you knew.
Believe what? Others had commented below the post. Either Alexa hadn’t had time to respond, or she’d chosen not to. “Vague-booking,” Trevor called it.
Scrolling back farther, a year, she saw the inane, happy posts appropriate for a young woman with so much going for her.
Last night’s concert was the dopest! Nick C. touched my hand!!!
God, I can’t believe what a homophobe this woman on Fox is. Gives blonds like me a bad name LOL.
Meghan tried to pinpoint the switch, then thought back to when Alexa’s father had passed. No, here she was sad, but eloquently so.
My father was buried today by me and Mom and a few of his friends. If I don’t respond to you guys right away it’s just I’m dealing with this. Thanks for all the good wishes.
A few months forward. There was nothing about her mother, only a short post about the terrible flight home. God, can’t they fucking see I am in NO shape for this fascist security gate bullshit!
Meghan knew social media was at best a distorted version of someone’s interior life. But something clearly had happened since her father’s death that had driven Alexa Reed into despair. And maybe gotten her killed.
* * *
The toxicology report finally came through. Blood and urine samples tested positive for caffeine, theobromine, mirtazapine, hydrocodone, fentanyl and morphine. Antidepressants, stimulants and heroin.
Meghan stopped what she’d been working on, read through the report again and placed her glasses down atop her desk. She’d known the girl all her life, and she had no idea who Alexa Reed was. The girl’s words came back to her.
There’s so much going on here that passes beneath people.
LITERALLY no one cares.
No one pays attention.
“I am now,” Meghan Quick said, surprising herself by saying the words out loud. Closing her office door, she added, in a murmur, “Sorry it took so long.”
Three
To Cam’s surprise he found he enjoyed the warehouse work. Liked the way his muscles ached at the end of the night. Liked speeding through the aisles of industrial shelving on the lift truck, dropping skids of dog treats, medical supplies, knockoff Red Bull. It was simple and hard and he was mostly left alone.
Doppler & Doppler Logistics was close enough to the port of Surrey that there was always work, as much as he wanted. Containers showed up and the receiving clerk assigned them to one of the twelve bay doors. Unloading them could take all night, sometimes into the morning. Pay was hourly, a dollar up from minimum wage.
No one cared that he didn’t have his forklift ticket, that he rarely wore his helmet. There were no inspections from Workplace Safety at night. He’d drink coffee or a syrupy energy drink and blast through it, sweating, until five when the buses started to run. Then home, a meal of canned whatever was in the house, and bed.
The men he worked with were like him—unemployables, ranging from undocumented workers, to reformed crack- and meth-heads, to ex-cons. A few smoked weed on their breaks. There was little talk. Usually the radio was on, either classic rock or a Filipino station. You found out right away who would work and who would fuck the dog.
“You hustle like one of them,” the skinny floor manager told him one day. Tyson Lee wore track pants and a ragged white T-shirt, had a salt and pepper goatee that sometimes melted into a playoff beard. He told Cam to slow down, no need to burn yourself out. He’d seen it happen to others.
Tyson and the designated forklift driver, Rashid Cole—Sheedy, Tyson called him—were close. Seniority gave them the pick of the cans. Sheedy had a bad back—scoliosis, he claimed—and regularly took pot breaks, using a vape pen unless Tyson rolled a joint. They were boisterous, loud, funny, and Cam didn’t mind partnering with them. They appreciated someone willing to do the lifting.
Keep clean, Cam told himself. Live clean, piss clean, ride out these years. It’s better than being back in Kent.
* * *
Two weeks in he noticed Tyson and Sheedy talking to one of the drivers in the yard. Something was slipped between them, the driver saluting as he climbed back into his rig. Cam thought nothing of it.
An hour later when he’d finished his container, Cam walked over to bay twelve and asked Tyson if he needed help.
“The fuck away from here,” Tyson said. “I want help, bro? I’ll ask.”
“Whatever,” Cam said.
Tyson shook his head and made a sharp, dismissive shushing sound. He walked back into the dark mouth of the container.
* * *
A few hours later, Cam was halfway through a can in bay four. Laptop parts. Sweat and Chinese-factory dust and the sound of ZZ Top from the warehouse floor. The rhythm of work. When he paused to string up the portable light at the mouth of the can, he noticed Sheedy, arms crossed, watching him.
“Need something?” Cam asked.
Sheedy stared at him. “Do you need something is the question.”
Drinking the last of his piss-warm Sprite, Cam noticed the forklift sidle up, Tyson in its cage.
“Break time, my man,” Tyson said. “Let’s us three go smoke a bowl.”
Cam didn’t argue with them.
Outside, in the corner of the yard, by a wet stack of pallets, was a splintery lunch table, coffee cans around it full of drowned cigarette butts. Tyson sat on the tabletop, huffed deep on the vape pen and offered it to Cam.
“Can’t,” he said.
“Fuck not? It’s legal.”
“Dude, he’s got to piss for someone,” Sheedy told his friend. Smiling at Cam. “Been there. What’d you do?”
Cam told them.
“That shit’s insane,” Tyson said. “Goddamn. You’re not fucking with us?” He said to Sheedy, “Dude here is a goddamn murderer.”
“It’s not like that,” Cam said.
“We’re not judging,” Sheedy said. “We’ve all done shit. I’m sure you did what you had to.”
* * *
One night he’d reached the end of a can and paused, voices heard through the metal. Tyson’s, louder than normal, and Sheedy’s, who never yelled unless he had to. And a third voice, louder still than the others.
Dropping his gloves, Cam walked outside. He saw Tyson and the driver standing chest to chest, arms out, goading the other to make a move. Sheedy off to the side, arms crossed. Tyson was yelling at the driver, who was backing slowly up toward his cab. “You cheap, trifling-ass piecesashit.” To Sheedy, adding, “Soft boy here thinks we’re gonna take this.”
“Dumb motherfuckers, you think I make the rules? Price isn’t fucking set by me.”
“Sure,” Sheedy said, “like that extra three hundred goes straight up the ladder, you don’t see a piece of it.” He was acting the more reasonable one, but both he and Tyson pressed closer to the driver.
“A piece,” the driver said. “An extra seventy-five. And you’re goddamn right, I’m the one on the fuckin’ security cameras. I got a fuckin’ union ticket to lose.”
“Unlike us poor minimum-wage fucks, right?”
The driver put his hands out as Tyson tried to advance. “It’s you and the fucking Hayes brothers gotta work this out. I’m just the goddamn driver.”
“Not tonight, bitch,” Tyson said.
He nodded at Cam, who was approaching slowly, waiting to see what would happen.
“Fuck does that—” The driver stopped himself as Tyson stepped onto the running board of his cab. “Get the hell off there.”
“Ours now,” Sheedy said.
Tyson swung the door open and leaned on it, looking ready to jump down onto the driver at the slightest provocation.
“That’s my fucking truck! You can’t take that, Tyson.”
“Buy another with your extra seventy-five,” Sheedy said. “Have it paid off in no time.”
“My stuff’s in there.” The driver spoke this more quietly, seeing Cam approach and realizing there was no fighting all three of them.
Tyson reached in and threw a thermos onto the ground, a tan jacket. The driver bent cautiously and retrieved them. He started moving backward toward the gate.
“You know they won’t let this end here,” he said. “They’ll come for the truck. And you too.”
“Big fucking mouth on a guy walking away,” Sheedy said.
“Just saying, not on me what happens.”
Tyson jumped off the running board and sprinted across the yard. The driver took off at top speed. When they were close, Tyson halted abruptly, wound back, and threw something that hit the driver’s shoulder as he dashed through the gate, losing his thermos, the jacket trailing across the ground.
Cam walked over to see what Tyson had thrown. He saw the plastic fragments of a novelty hula girl, the kind you suction cup to your dashboard. Tyson stomped on it again, crushing the girl’s head with a pop.
* * *
They didn’t discuss it that night. Cam went home and showered. He lay on his bed, thinking it over, his half-eaten bowl of mac and cheese abandoned on the floor next to the mattress.
He didn’t care what was in the cans. It didn’t take a creative mind to guess that it was illegal, which could mean bootleg smokes, or guns, but probably meant dope.
What bothered him was what the driver’s response would be, and how Sheedy and Tyson would react to them. If this got ugly, if the police were involved—
Somehow he doubted they would be.
So much of his time in Kent had been spent looking the other way. A survivalist policy, and goddamn if he wouldn’t have to adopt it again.
Nothing fucking changed. Inside, outside, there was no chance to drop your guard. Everyone had an angle.
What Cam needed to figure out was his own.
* * *
The next evening, he walked into the yard and noticed that the truck was gone.
Sheedy was off that day. Tyson, working the lift truck, gave him a chin-first nod and a terse “Sup, bro?” before dashing down one of the aisles with a skid of rattan chairs.
Cam wasn’t going to get answers. That was fine.
Bays two through five were loaded with containers carrying truss connectors. Cam’s least favourite cargo to unload. Plates of light-gauge galvanized steel, the teeth and edges on them could shred a leather jacket and draw blood. Cam had seen one carelessly wrapped skid topple, the plates slicing through a worker’s leg.
Cam got to work. Drop a skid, stack a layer of plates so that the teeth faced down or inward. Set the second layer in a slightly different pattern to add stability. Like bricklaying with knives, he thought. Every three layers you stopped and shrink-wrapped the stack. When you finished twelve layers you had to drive the skid over to the shelving, and be heart-surgeon careful lifting it onto the shelf. Each skid took three times the plastic wrap and five times as long as any other cargo.
After that the holiday season started. Cam worked eleven days straight. On Thanksgiving, the Dopplers left them a flat of Coors for when they finished. Sheedy broke into it early, he and Cam the only ones who’d volunteered to work the holiday. Their last two hours were spent drinking and working in relative peace and comfort.
In the parking lot, Sheedy swung a six-pack into the bed of his Mazda pickup. “Lift, man?”
He’d never offered before. Cam climbed in and told him where he lived.
Delta was full of swaths of undeveloped meadowlands. Early mornings, he’d hear the sound of shotguns, duck hunters on the other side of the highway. The industrial areas—the warehouses and factories—bled into strip malls, which in turn bled into housing, so that the entire city was a mix of grass and asphalt, concrete and prefab.
A Greg Grewal eighty percent was more certain than most people’s hundred. Meghan made a note, kerosene, on her pad.
“It has a higher flashpoint than ethanol,” Grewal said. “Less likely to catch fire accidentally.”
“Meaning it’s unlikely this fire was accidental.”
“I can’t be certain of that, Sarge, but it’s sure possible.”
“Putting aside certainties,” she said, “which I know for you is tough—are we looking for a professional arsonist?”
Grewal bent and peered at a section of carpet. “Hard to say.”
“I know it is, Greg. Why else would I ask the fucking arson investigator?”
He looked up, flustered, then barked out a laugh. Typical response of a male in authority to anything other than lovingly gentle correction. “Jeez, Meghan, put me on the spot why don’t you?”
“A pro, Greg? Or some kid with a camping stove?”
Grewal sighed and eased himself up to a standing position. Surveying the room, he said, “I’d be surprised if arson was the primary focus.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t burn enough, nor was it properly ventilated. A fire’s got to be fed. You need to stoke it, ’specially at first. A pro would’ve smashed holes in the drywall to expose the wooden frame. This never really got going. Fact, if there’d been more of a breeze last night, it might’ve put it out for us before we got here.”
“So an amateur.”
“At starting fires, I’d say so.”
“The doors were locked,” Meghan said. “It’s looking more and more like Alexa did this herself.”
“The poor girl.”
“Or someone targeted her, and wants to confuse things for us.”
* * *
Downstairs, Meghan glanced around the kitchen, noticing nothing new save the boot tracks of firefighters and cops. Bare cupboards aside from two boxes of a hippie-looking cereal. The kind of thing Rhonda would insist on buying, only to eat a bowl or two, then leave it to go stale in their pantry.
In her own house, since Rhonda left, it had been nothing but Shreddies, generic corn flakes and the odd box of sugary shit for Trevor.
She wanted a cigarette. Meghan headed outside to see if she could cadge one from the officer guarding the scene.
Passing the hallway and shoe rack, she noticed the low, beige, particleboard shelf had been moved away from the wall. An umbrella had fallen behind it, a cane. And a thin piece of corrugated plastic.
Pulling it out, she saw what it was: a For Sale sign. Chung Realty, a glamour shot of a fifty-year-old bottle blond, and the slogan Let Winnie Work for You!
Carrying the sign, Meghan walked outside and down the driveway. On the corner of the property, near a deep furrow caused by a swipe from the fire truck’s tire, was an L-shaped piece of white wood. The bottom was sharpened to a stake, dirty where it had been pitched in the lawn. The cross arm had been snapped off. The sign would have been posted here at one point.
She took a photo of the broken post, clutching the sign beneath her armpit to work the camera.
“Find something?” Greg Grewal said behind her.
Meghan showed him the sign.
“You think Alexa took it down?”
“Not sure, but looks that way, yeah.”
He looked at the pieces of white picket on the lawn. “What was she doing back here?”
Staying, Meghan thought.
* * *
The girl in the fire was Alexa Reed.
Meghan herself brought the dental charts from the clinic to the pathologist and waited while Dr. Sonia Varma made the comparison. Varma was the opposite of Grewal—autopsies and chemical tests would take as long as they took, but she was willing to hypothesize an answer to any question Meghan put to her. The doctor was young, slender and had great hair. Meghan fought to keep her resentment in check.
“Not a suicide,” Varma said. “Her neck is broken.”
“I thought bones sometimes break due to heat.”
“Sure do. But usually not before heat is applied.”
Varma drew back the plastic sheeting, exposing Meghan once again to the featureless burnt face of Alexa Reed. The pathologist turned the corpse, prodding the skin at what would have been the nape.
“See the hematoma? You can kind of make it out beneath the burn—see?” Meghan noticed a dark discolouration but it looked less like a bruise than a blotch.
“Her neck was snapped,” Varma said. “Probably with a weapon. Maybe a good shove into something with no give.”
“Like a windowsill? Edge of the bed?”
Varma nodded. “Hard, though—you’d really have to work to cause a break this clean.”
“Anything in her pockets?”
Varma set the body back down and craned her neck to read off her clipboard. “Haven’t paid as much attention to the clothes, Sarge—you did ask me to hurry.”
“But no metal,” Meghan said, “no keys.”
“No.”
Meghan stared at the body. Stripped and opened and now sewn up, Alexa Reed resembled herself more than when Meghan had first seen her. Parts of her hadn’t been touched by flame—a pale knee and thigh, a left ankle. That made the dark burns covering her face and torso that much more horrid. No mistaking this for the young woman Meghan had witnessed grow up, mature. Endure the pain of losing both parents. And all for this?
It didn’t make sense.
* * *
A call to the SUNY registrar told Meghan that Alexa Reed was on academic suspension. She’d missed several appointments with her graduate supervisor, and her last round of exams had been dismal. Meghan thought that wasn’t out of the ordinary, given what had happened to her parents. It had been a tough couple years for the Reeds.
Alexa’s social media presence was a low-visibility simmer of rage and sarcasm. She had few friends, liked or reacted to little and rarely replied to comments.
Her last post was indicative of her public style:
God, there’s so much going on here that passes beneath people. Worse even than when I was a kid. LITERALLY no one cares. No one pays attention. You wouldn’t believe it if you knew.
Believe what? Others had commented below the post. Either Alexa hadn’t had time to respond, or she’d chosen not to. “Vague-booking,” Trevor called it.
Scrolling back farther, a year, she saw the inane, happy posts appropriate for a young woman with so much going for her.
Last night’s concert was the dopest! Nick C. touched my hand!!!
God, I can’t believe what a homophobe this woman on Fox is. Gives blonds like me a bad name LOL.
Meghan tried to pinpoint the switch, then thought back to when Alexa’s father had passed. No, here she was sad, but eloquently so.
My father was buried today by me and Mom and a few of his friends. If I don’t respond to you guys right away it’s just I’m dealing with this. Thanks for all the good wishes.
A few months forward. There was nothing about her mother, only a short post about the terrible flight home. God, can’t they fucking see I am in NO shape for this fascist security gate bullshit!
Meghan knew social media was at best a distorted version of someone’s interior life. But something clearly had happened since her father’s death that had driven Alexa Reed into despair. And maybe gotten her killed.
* * *
The toxicology report finally came through. Blood and urine samples tested positive for caffeine, theobromine, mirtazapine, hydrocodone, fentanyl and morphine. Antidepressants, stimulants and heroin.
Meghan stopped what she’d been working on, read through the report again and placed her glasses down atop her desk. She’d known the girl all her life, and she had no idea who Alexa Reed was. The girl’s words came back to her.
There’s so much going on here that passes beneath people.
LITERALLY no one cares.
No one pays attention.
“I am now,” Meghan Quick said, surprising herself by saying the words out loud. Closing her office door, she added, in a murmur, “Sorry it took so long.”
Three
To Cam’s surprise he found he enjoyed the warehouse work. Liked the way his muscles ached at the end of the night. Liked speeding through the aisles of industrial shelving on the lift truck, dropping skids of dog treats, medical supplies, knockoff Red Bull. It was simple and hard and he was mostly left alone.
Doppler & Doppler Logistics was close enough to the port of Surrey that there was always work, as much as he wanted. Containers showed up and the receiving clerk assigned them to one of the twelve bay doors. Unloading them could take all night, sometimes into the morning. Pay was hourly, a dollar up from minimum wage.
No one cared that he didn’t have his forklift ticket, that he rarely wore his helmet. There were no inspections from Workplace Safety at night. He’d drink coffee or a syrupy energy drink and blast through it, sweating, until five when the buses started to run. Then home, a meal of canned whatever was in the house, and bed.
The men he worked with were like him—unemployables, ranging from undocumented workers, to reformed crack- and meth-heads, to ex-cons. A few smoked weed on their breaks. There was little talk. Usually the radio was on, either classic rock or a Filipino station. You found out right away who would work and who would fuck the dog.
“You hustle like one of them,” the skinny floor manager told him one day. Tyson Lee wore track pants and a ragged white T-shirt, had a salt and pepper goatee that sometimes melted into a playoff beard. He told Cam to slow down, no need to burn yourself out. He’d seen it happen to others.
Tyson and the designated forklift driver, Rashid Cole—Sheedy, Tyson called him—were close. Seniority gave them the pick of the cans. Sheedy had a bad back—scoliosis, he claimed—and regularly took pot breaks, using a vape pen unless Tyson rolled a joint. They were boisterous, loud, funny, and Cam didn’t mind partnering with them. They appreciated someone willing to do the lifting.
Keep clean, Cam told himself. Live clean, piss clean, ride out these years. It’s better than being back in Kent.
* * *
Two weeks in he noticed Tyson and Sheedy talking to one of the drivers in the yard. Something was slipped between them, the driver saluting as he climbed back into his rig. Cam thought nothing of it.
An hour later when he’d finished his container, Cam walked over to bay twelve and asked Tyson if he needed help.
“The fuck away from here,” Tyson said. “I want help, bro? I’ll ask.”
“Whatever,” Cam said.
Tyson shook his head and made a sharp, dismissive shushing sound. He walked back into the dark mouth of the container.
* * *
A few hours later, Cam was halfway through a can in bay four. Laptop parts. Sweat and Chinese-factory dust and the sound of ZZ Top from the warehouse floor. The rhythm of work. When he paused to string up the portable light at the mouth of the can, he noticed Sheedy, arms crossed, watching him.
“Need something?” Cam asked.
Sheedy stared at him. “Do you need something is the question.”
Drinking the last of his piss-warm Sprite, Cam noticed the forklift sidle up, Tyson in its cage.
“Break time, my man,” Tyson said. “Let’s us three go smoke a bowl.”
Cam didn’t argue with them.
Outside, in the corner of the yard, by a wet stack of pallets, was a splintery lunch table, coffee cans around it full of drowned cigarette butts. Tyson sat on the tabletop, huffed deep on the vape pen and offered it to Cam.
“Can’t,” he said.
“Fuck not? It’s legal.”
“Dude, he’s got to piss for someone,” Sheedy told his friend. Smiling at Cam. “Been there. What’d you do?”
Cam told them.
“That shit’s insane,” Tyson said. “Goddamn. You’re not fucking with us?” He said to Sheedy, “Dude here is a goddamn murderer.”
“It’s not like that,” Cam said.
“We’re not judging,” Sheedy said. “We’ve all done shit. I’m sure you did what you had to.”
* * *
One night he’d reached the end of a can and paused, voices heard through the metal. Tyson’s, louder than normal, and Sheedy’s, who never yelled unless he had to. And a third voice, louder still than the others.
Dropping his gloves, Cam walked outside. He saw Tyson and the driver standing chest to chest, arms out, goading the other to make a move. Sheedy off to the side, arms crossed. Tyson was yelling at the driver, who was backing slowly up toward his cab. “You cheap, trifling-ass piecesashit.” To Sheedy, adding, “Soft boy here thinks we’re gonna take this.”
“Dumb motherfuckers, you think I make the rules? Price isn’t fucking set by me.”
“Sure,” Sheedy said, “like that extra three hundred goes straight up the ladder, you don’t see a piece of it.” He was acting the more reasonable one, but both he and Tyson pressed closer to the driver.
“A piece,” the driver said. “An extra seventy-five. And you’re goddamn right, I’m the one on the fuckin’ security cameras. I got a fuckin’ union ticket to lose.”
“Unlike us poor minimum-wage fucks, right?”
The driver put his hands out as Tyson tried to advance. “It’s you and the fucking Hayes brothers gotta work this out. I’m just the goddamn driver.”
“Not tonight, bitch,” Tyson said.
He nodded at Cam, who was approaching slowly, waiting to see what would happen.
“Fuck does that—” The driver stopped himself as Tyson stepped onto the running board of his cab. “Get the hell off there.”
“Ours now,” Sheedy said.
Tyson swung the door open and leaned on it, looking ready to jump down onto the driver at the slightest provocation.
“That’s my fucking truck! You can’t take that, Tyson.”
“Buy another with your extra seventy-five,” Sheedy said. “Have it paid off in no time.”
“My stuff’s in there.” The driver spoke this more quietly, seeing Cam approach and realizing there was no fighting all three of them.
Tyson reached in and threw a thermos onto the ground, a tan jacket. The driver bent cautiously and retrieved them. He started moving backward toward the gate.
“You know they won’t let this end here,” he said. “They’ll come for the truck. And you too.”
“Big fucking mouth on a guy walking away,” Sheedy said.
“Just saying, not on me what happens.”
Tyson jumped off the running board and sprinted across the yard. The driver took off at top speed. When they were close, Tyson halted abruptly, wound back, and threw something that hit the driver’s shoulder as he dashed through the gate, losing his thermos, the jacket trailing across the ground.
Cam walked over to see what Tyson had thrown. He saw the plastic fragments of a novelty hula girl, the kind you suction cup to your dashboard. Tyson stomped on it again, crushing the girl’s head with a pop.
* * *
They didn’t discuss it that night. Cam went home and showered. He lay on his bed, thinking it over, his half-eaten bowl of mac and cheese abandoned on the floor next to the mattress.
He didn’t care what was in the cans. It didn’t take a creative mind to guess that it was illegal, which could mean bootleg smokes, or guns, but probably meant dope.
What bothered him was what the driver’s response would be, and how Sheedy and Tyson would react to them. If this got ugly, if the police were involved—
Somehow he doubted they would be.
So much of his time in Kent had been spent looking the other way. A survivalist policy, and goddamn if he wouldn’t have to adopt it again.
Nothing fucking changed. Inside, outside, there was no chance to drop your guard. Everyone had an angle.
What Cam needed to figure out was his own.
* * *
The next evening, he walked into the yard and noticed that the truck was gone.
Sheedy was off that day. Tyson, working the lift truck, gave him a chin-first nod and a terse “Sup, bro?” before dashing down one of the aisles with a skid of rattan chairs.
Cam wasn’t going to get answers. That was fine.
Bays two through five were loaded with containers carrying truss connectors. Cam’s least favourite cargo to unload. Plates of light-gauge galvanized steel, the teeth and edges on them could shred a leather jacket and draw blood. Cam had seen one carelessly wrapped skid topple, the plates slicing through a worker’s leg.
Cam got to work. Drop a skid, stack a layer of plates so that the teeth faced down or inward. Set the second layer in a slightly different pattern to add stability. Like bricklaying with knives, he thought. Every three layers you stopped and shrink-wrapped the stack. When you finished twelve layers you had to drive the skid over to the shelving, and be heart-surgeon careful lifting it onto the shelf. Each skid took three times the plastic wrap and five times as long as any other cargo.
After that the holiday season started. Cam worked eleven days straight. On Thanksgiving, the Dopplers left them a flat of Coors for when they finished. Sheedy broke into it early, he and Cam the only ones who’d volunteered to work the holiday. Their last two hours were spent drinking and working in relative peace and comfort.
In the parking lot, Sheedy swung a six-pack into the bed of his Mazda pickup. “Lift, man?”
He’d never offered before. Cam climbed in and told him where he lived.
Delta was full of swaths of undeveloped meadowlands. Early mornings, he’d hear the sound of shotguns, duck hunters on the other side of the highway. The industrial areas—the warehouses and factories—bled into strip malls, which in turn bled into housing, so that the entire city was a mix of grass and asphalt, concrete and prefab.
