Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (36 page)

How do you gauge what lies ahead? How do you choose?

Sometimes,
Craig Killingworth had written in his diary,
I think the only things that matter are the choices we make, for better or worse, for right or wrong
. He had chosen the love of his sons and walked into the open arms of death. As sad and unfair as it was, nothing could change that. Craig Killingworth had let duty — an all-consuming duty of fatherhood coupled with a love for his sons — kill him. He'd tried to escape his fate and walked right into it. And here, twenty years later, Dan Sharp walked his dog across a bridge in one of the world's largest metropolises, contemplating his future. His own choices. He, at least, could still make them. And they would be as wrong or as right as could be. There was no telling until he made them.

The man and dog passed over the Don Valley Bridge. Snow fell lightly. Below, a flow of red taillights winked and twitched its way up the constipated fracture that divided the city. A river of flame that would be cold as ash tomorrow. A river of escapees. Those who couldn't take the city any more — this place that was supposed to be friendly and safe, a haven for like-minded souls who wanted to live together in peace and harmony — were slowly making their way to a new land, leaving behind the tyranny of mob rule. Somehow in the course of the last century, as the city became a garbage bin for the tortured and angst-ridden, the uncaring and soulless, the promise had all gone wrong.

Dan heard voices and turned to watch three kids cutting across to his left, sharing some childhood joke. There were two boys, one black and one white, running alongside an Asian girl, laughing as they went. Citizens of the new century. The very essence of diversity.

Well, maybe not all wrong, then. Somewhere there was hope.

Thanks to Navigator Shane McConnell, Captain Russell Sergiates, and First Mate Timothy Pinnell of the
Outward Bound,
for that eye-opening trip to the Bay of Quinte, Fisheries Officer Brian Round for his explanation of marine rescue operations, Constable Lyn Nottingham and Sergeant Mark Round for their advice on policing strategies, and Group Manager Barbara York for shedding light on the intricate mysteries of banking protocol. Any errors or inaccuracies in such matters are of my own purposeful and fanciful invention.

Thanks are also due to Peter Hawkins and Arnon Melo for inviting me on their lovely, non-fatal wedding cruise, Richard Armstrong and Peter Nosalik for having me as a guest in their charming Forest Hill home, Dean Gregory and Drew Elvin, each for their own brand of west coast hospitality, Bob MacGregor of FSA Toronto for helping me sort out my own messes, Kevin Hartley and Eric Wegler for enlightening me on the perils of being a gay dad, and the delightful and ever-lovely Gail Bowen for her additional insights into parenthood.

Cheers to Michael Carroll, Allister Thompson, Margaret Bryant, and the team at Dundurn for making me feel welcome. As well, I salute my boyhood friends Johnny S, Ed T, Joan M, Sharon W, Harris G, Jamie V, Gail and Brenda R, Lynn and Gary D, Junior and Rachel T, aunts Shirley, Elsie, Evie, Kathy, and Helen, uncles Don, Edgar, and Jim, grandmother Evelyn, and cousins Susan, Judy, Steve, Barb, Diane, and David, each of whom contributed something of value to my wayward Sudbury years. And finally, to the memory of Allen Brooker, whose struggle to be with his sons tragically led him to take his life.

This Little Piggy

Darkness gripped him like a vice. The faint light filtering through from outside made everything black on black, broken here and there by minute variations in grey. Uniform, minimalist. Against a far wall the outline of a girder dipped down from the roof, warped and twisted like a giant DNA strand or a blackened starlit stairway to heaven. The shell of a processing unit stood off to one side, vaguely threatening like some obscure technology on a low-budget sci-fi set, impossible to say what it was if you didn't know which planet you were on or what series you'd landed in.

Dan sniffed the air. The scent of smoke lingered, a disquieting odour, though it was more than two years since the fire that gutted the slaughterhouse's interior. The hush inside the room was as soothing as a hand run over velvet. An eerily hypnotic movie theme ran through his head:
The Exorcist
. He laughed silently and took a step forward. From off to the right came a curious grinding noise, like a pebble crushed underfoot. Maybe it was just his imagination.

He froze.

“Darryl Hillary?” he called out. “My name is Dan Sharp. I'm a missing persons investigator. I've been hired by your sister.”

More silence.

It was just past 1 a.m. on a hot, humid August morning. Not the best weather for sleeping, though almost any bed would be better than this. Not the best weather for prowling around empty slaughterhouses in the dark, either. Dan's eyes searched for movement. He felt no fear at being there. It occurred to him that he was more at home in darkness than in light.

After fifteen years in the business, he was still surprised where he might end up looking for a client.
During his first week on the job for a previous employer, a lifer with a big mouth informed him of the likelihood that a) he probably wouldn't last a month, and b) he would never be able to predict where the job might land him on any given day. He'd long since proven the first wrong, but the second prediction had shown itself right time and again.

As anonymous tips went, this one had seemed routine. A little past midnight, his cellphone buzzed, registering a phone booth. Dan heard what sounded like a fast food outlet in the background — orders being called out over the din of communal eating in a room echoing with restless diners. In the foreground, a voice of indeterminate sexuality — it could have been a young man, pitch notched up by nervousness, or a woman who'd smoked herself into a good baritone — puffed out the details of where he'd find his prey: a man named Darryl Hillary.

Dan knew better than to ask the caller for personal details. He'd long since learned that the bearer of these messages often had something to hide or to gain by passing along the intelligence. You seldom learned what it was, but the information was usually good, when it wasn't downright crazy or just implausible. But hey, it took all kinds.

“That guy you're looking for? Hillary? He's hiding out in the old slaughterhouse near Keele and St. Clair. He's there now.”

Dan's mind went into overdrive: something about a suspicious fire, a big investigation into arson, allegations of insurance fraud involving unpaid government loans.

Play dumb
, he told himself. “Didn't that burn down a couple years ago?”

“Yeah, North York Pork. That's the one. But the building's mostly still there.”

“What's he hiding from?”

There was a pause. He shouldn't have pushed. That was all he'd get. He'd lost whoever was talking.

“Don't you know?”

“Maybe, but I wondered what you could tell me.”

“Nothing. That's it.”

The line went dead, the food court dying with it.

In his mind, Dan followed the trail backwards: fast food outlet, supermarket, meat distributor, slaughterhouse, and, finally, the farm. This little piggy goes to market. A curious connection, but ultimately meaningless. He recalled the newspaper photos of the fire engines, hoses turned skyward on a bleak winter day, as well as a humorous sidebar showing the char-blackened
pork sides prepped for processing, now permanently overdone. If it was arson, then whoever set it at least had the good sense to do it after the slaughter, rather than get the animal activists riled at the thought of an abattoir of live pigs going up in flames.

Dan's connections with his sources were obscure almost to the point of being nonexistent. Sometimes the contact of a contact would phone or send him a message — for cash, of course. If there was news to be
had, there was a price tag to go with it. What you learned after paying your snitch fee was anybody's guess, and where the tip came from was nobody's business. That wasn't Dan's concern. Finding his client was. As long as the information put him in touch with the right person it was all the same to him. With some, you could never tell. A tip leading to an abandoned slaughterhouse might be just the ticket or it could be a blind lead.
The only way to know for sure was to follow it.

Dan waited in the darkness, conscious of the smell of burnt everything. Before entering the grounds he'd checked for guard dogs, tossing a few well-aimed rocks inside the fence. Nothing stirred, growled, or snarled. Nothing that he could see, at least. Burned-out building or not, he was technically trespassing, so better not to get caught by some rabid canine pulling your pants down around your ankles as you hoisted yourself over a fence.

Just inside the entrance, his nostrils curled at the smell of stale urine. Vagrants then, or at least a few ravers. Maybe even a couple of do-it-yourself journalist types. Cities abounded with the latter. Dan kept a couple on his payroll as occasional providers of obscure but useful information. Astonishing what someone living off the grid might turn up. There was nothing like a gung-ho would-be activist for sniffing out the dirt on your street that everyone else overlooked. One man's garbage was another's hot tip.

Darkness swallowed him again as he slid into a large open space. It was like being gradually submerged in different depths of water. As he moved farther into the room, his eyes grew accustomed to the negligible light. Here was where the meat would have been conveyed along assembly lines, waiting to be packaged and branded. He could just make out the curlicue of hooks overhead. Underfoot, the wire grills set in concrete would have kept the floor drained of blood and guts. He imagined freshly killed carcasses swinging from cutter to cutter, lurching down the line till what started out as a whole pig made the cut from pork loin through bacon on its way to becoming sliced baloney.

He stopped for a moment to consider the call that had sent him in search of his quarry. When he'd asked what his prey was hiding from, the voice had responded by turning it around on him:
Don't you know?
Hard to say what was hidden behind that question in answer to his question. People disappeared for a lot of reasons. Often money was behind it,
but just as often you could find traces of fear, shame, desperation. It was hard to say.

The movie theme was running through his head now. That's when he heard the pebble.

“Darryl Hillary?” he called out. “My name is Dan Sharp. I'm a missing persons investigator. I've been hired by your sister.”

Dan strained to see, but nothing distinguished itself in the blackness. He took another step and the ground gave way underfoot. He pitched backward. The misstep may have saved his life. Above him, the air parted with a swishing sound as though something hefty had been swung at his head, barely missing it. Senses heightened, Dan felt more than he saw the shadowy figure skipping nimbly away toward the entrance. Someone whose eyes were far better adjusted to the light.

The attack had come so quickly he barely registered the adrenaline surging in his veins. Now it set off panic alarms as he lay on the floor waiting to be sure he was alone and no longer in danger of having his head bashed in. Whoever it was wanted to get away more than finish him off.

“Darryl Hillary?” he called after the vanished figure.

There was no way of knowing whether his would-be attacker was Hillary, or even male, though he suspected it was. If it was Hillary then he'd probably thought whoever he was running from had finally caught up with him. Whatever horrors dwelled in his head waiting to spring out at any moment, he likely felt justified taking a swing at someone calling his name in a burned-out slaughterhouse.

Dan got to his feet and brushed himself off. It was plain stupid to be stumbling around without his flashlight. He'd been too busy congratulating himself on not being afraid of the dark, like some ten-year-old daring to walk through a haunted forest at midnight. Except in this case there'd be no one to brag to when he emerged, exhilarated, after not being eaten by goblins or ghouls or wicked stepmothers.

Steadying himself, he felt in his pocket for the Mini Mag that accompanied him everywhere he went, the way others were married to their Swiss Army knives. He twisted the knob and aimed it dead ahead. Obscure shapes sprang forward in a silvery gloom, as though he were underwater. Everything else stayed obstinately black just outside the range of the beam.

Something tickled his cheek. He put a hand up to brush it off, catching his fingers in the straying light.

Red.

Blood.

Not mine.

Dan swung the light overhead and a sense of revulsion overtook him. His stomach reeled. The body was trussed like a pig and hanging from a rusty meat hook.

A sound issued from his throat, half-gurgle and half-yell. Then silence rushed in to fill the vacuum that nature was said to abhor.

With his unbloodied hand he reached for his cellphone, keeping the flashlight trained on the monster dangling above. He punched in the three numbers. The alert voice on the other end seemed to have been awaiting his call:
Ambulance, fire, or police?

Only for what it was worth, this tip wasn't destined to be anonymous.