Authors: Grant McKenzie
CHAPTER 48
The private five-acre parcel crowned the summit of a steep hill within a mile of the Pacific Ocean. A partially-constructed, two-
story house sat in the middle, surrounded on three sides by dense clusters of windswept and rain-battered cedar.
The fourth side had been logged a quarter way down the hillside to open up the spectacular westerly view. The logs, Mr. Black knew, had been milled on-site and used to build the house. Two benefits in one.
On Mr. Black’s cellphone, the satellite image of the clearing resembled an old-fashioned keyhole.
The house’s sprawling front deck was designed for lazy afternoons. A place to settle into your favorite Adirondack chair, share a drink with a lover or friend and take the time to absorb the sheer majesty of nature’s ever-changing canvas. From this vantage point, panoramic sunsets, more spellbinding than any Fourth of July fireworks, were enough to make even a devout atheist believe in God.
Today, however, the ocean was invisible beneath a heavy blanket of fog.
As the vehicle crested the hill and bounced along a slippery dirt road in four-wheel drive, a cold dampness splattered the Lincoln’s windshield like fat, skinless bugs. Behind the wipers, Mr. Black studied the house.
It was definitely in worse shape than on his previous visit, a mere eight months before.
The main floor showed the concern and attention to detail that its owner had planned to lavish on the whole structure. The lower half was finished in natural red cedar with large picture windows and matching trim. Anchored beneath every window was a cedar flowerbox so that from inside the house, no room would be missing the sight of nature’s ever-changing color and ever-lasting life.
The owner had completed the ground-level first, so that he and his family had a place to live while he worked on the upper floor.
The construction was solid, but now the flowerboxes sat empty, unattended and barren.
The entire second story of the home was unfinished. Bare, unprotected walls were grey with damp and streaked with menacing fingers of black and green mold. Large holes covered in rotting particle board marked where additional windows and sliding glass doors had been intended to be installed.
The ribs of an upper deck, offering an even superior view to the lower, protruded from the walls. But they were simply rough beams with no supporting slats to allow anyone to stand or sit.
Mr. Black shook his head. Too much time had passed. The whole floor would have to be stripped back to its studs and started again. Even that might not be enough if the damp had seeped down to the lower quarters.
What a waste
.
He parked the Lincoln beside a burgundy clone that sat in front of the framed skeleton of what had once promised to be a detached double garage. Without a roof, the garage couldn’t even keep off the rain.
When he climbed out, the screen door at the rear of the house clattered with the wind. Loose. Unsecured.
The owner must have been watching him drive up, but didn’t bother to wait and make sure he was alone.
Mr. Black shook his head again. In the sand, the man had been paranoid about security. It was one of the things he admired most. Locks and bolts and a well-oiled gun. Lessons of survival. Lessons to live by.
Mr. Black stomped up a small flight of wooden stairs. Blistered paint flecked off under his boots to expose rot underneath. He scraped the mud off his soles on a jagged metal grate anchored to the top step and opened the door.
Sgt. Douglas Gallagher sat at a round kitchen table with a mug of coffee cradled in his distinctive right hand. The middle finger had been severed at the second knuckle; the ring finger beside it, at the first; the pinkie was missing entirely.
“Fuckers missed the most important one,” said Gallagher when Mr. Black first found him. His hand was bloody and raw with stark white bone jutting from ripped flesh. He wiggled his trigger finger. “Give me a fucking gun.”
Gallagher’s left hand was out of sight under the table, but his arm was moving restlessly back and forth, giving his nether regions a nervous scratch.
Mr. Black barely recognized him. He had lost too much weight. His hair was thinning in an odd, clump-like pattern and had turned a shade closer to puddle grey than the smooth coal black he was known for. His face was puffy, retaining water, the skin riddled with an unhealthy pallor.
Mr. Black sniffed the air; tasted a sour whiskey tang.
His sergeant looked old and tired
— except for those eyes. Blue-green glacial ice and nearly as hard, they dared him to comment.
Mr. Black said nothing as he removed a package from under his arm and tossed it onto the table. Wrapped in brown butcher’s paper and tied with string, it was a flat square the size of an extra-large pizza.
“What’s this?” asked Gallagher.
“A present,” said Mr. Black.
He placed the Zippo lighter on top.
“This, too,” he added.
Gallagher brought his scratching hand up from beneath the table to reveal a massive .44 Magnum Desert Eagle pistol. The Israeli-made weapon had enough stopping power to make regulation-issue body armor as useless as plastic wrap.
Mr. Black smiled thinly. Still paranoid. The eyes didn’t lie.
Gallagher laid the gun on the table and picked up the lighter. He rubbed its smooth gunmetal surface between his fingers before flicking it open and thumbing the flint wheel. It sparked and flared with a gentle orange flame.
“I lost this,” he said, “during the last mission. Where did you get it?”
“Desmond’s.”
Gallagher’s eyes narrowed. “Huh.”
“He always was a sentimental bastard.”
“Was?” asked Gallagher.
Mr. Black nodded at the brown package.
Gallagher eyes narrowed further as he tugged the string’s neatly-tied bow. The waxed paper opened in slow motion like a blossoming flower.
“Jesus Christ!”
Gallagher leapt to his feet, spilling his coffee as he scrambled back from the table.
“Desmond’s tattoo,” explained Mr. Black.
Gallagher’s lips curled into a snarl, but he remained mute. His eyes were wide and angry and, if possible, even harder than before.
That alone was worth it, thought Mr. Black. His old sergeant looked alive again.
Mr. Black produced the guard’s cellphone from his pocket. It was a perfect match to his own. He laid it on the table beside the ragged patch of skin, careful to avoid the spilled coffee.
“Nothing to lead back to you,” he said. “Clean. Unsentimental. What I do best.”
Gallagher swallowed, his gaze transfixed by the tattoo. It had shrunk since Mr. Black removed it from the guard’s muscular frame. Headless and without the bony ridges of the man’s spine to wrap around, it now resembled the severed tentacle of a mythical sea monster rather than a snake.
“Yeah.” Gallagher swallowed dryly. “What you do best.”
Mr. Black smiled. That’s all he ever wanted. A simple show of appreciation.
Gallagher moved back to the table and righted his coffee cup. He couldn’t take his eyes off the slab of rendered flesh.
“I can’t believe that bloody driver not only made it back across the border, but he bested Desmond, too. He was a damn fine Marine.”
“Wallace had help,” said Mr. Black.
“Oh? Who?”
“I don’t know yet . . .” Mr. Black reflexively reached up to touch the back of his head. The bump was prominent and tender. “But I will.”
Gallagher snorted, but it was less out of disgust than an effort to clear his nasal passages.
“How did this fucker even find out about Desmond? He was ordered not to have contact?”
Mr. Black told Gallagher about the police detective and his theory that Wallace must have tracked him down only to arrive at the same time Desmond was tying up loose ends. While monitoring the scanner, he had heard the police mention Desmond’s Mustang parked outside the detective’s house. It was only a matter of time before they arrived at the condo and discovered what was left of its owner.
“So what’s his next move?” asked Gallagher.
Mr. Black was confident Desmond hadn’t talked. He had also gleaned another interesting tidbit from the police chatter.
“Someone called 9-1-1 from the detective’s house and left the phone off the hook. I assume it was Wallace. He wanted the detective alive. That’s his only lead.”
Gallagher nodded and reached out a hand to hover a fraction of an inch above the frightening square of flesh.
“Desmond loved that fucking tattoo,” he said. “Hate to think of him being buried without it.”
“He should’ve held on tighter, then,” said Mr. Black dryly.
A reluctant smile fluttered across Gallagher’s dry lips. “You’re a sick bastard.”
“You should know.”
Gallagher’s smile vanished. “I don’t want Wallace hanging around down here. He’s already caused too much trouble.”
“I could stake out the hospital,” said Mr. Black. “He’s bound to
—”
“No,” said Gallagher sharply. “We make him go where we choose.” He furled his brow and curled his lips into a sneer. “It’s time to get him back onto the path we set. I want him rotting in jail. Alone and without hope. I want him to fucking suffer. To never know
—”
A noise from the other room made Gallagher blanch. He pointed at the parcel. “Put that the fuck away. Quick.”
Mr. Black carefully refolded the brown waxed paper and retied the string. He had just finished when a strikingly handsome woman entered the kitchen.
Mr. Black had seen her before, but never up close.
She had long curly hair the color of a sunset.
CHAPTER
49
Wallace stood alone in the middle of the deserted shopping mall. His voice was hoarse from shouting; his ears rang from the devastating hollowness of no reply.
A giggle. A footstep. The shadow of two boys running down an empty corridor.
“Wait!”
He raced after them. Reached the end. T-junction. Two more corridors. He swiveled his head. Left and right. Both deserted.
Another giggle.
Behind him.
He turned.
He was no longer in the mall.
Two boys, not his sons, were sitting together on a familiar vinyl bench seat. They had some kind of paperback comic book in their hands. The interior illustrations were black and white. The writing on the cover was Japanese.
Other seats were filled with passengers. Tourists, mostly, but also daily commuters returning from work.
Wallace turned around. He was driving the bus. The windshield wipers were moving rapidly. An unexpected summer storm stripped leaves and branches from the ancient cedars in historic Stanley Park and turned the gutters into churning rivers.
He had been reassigned from his usual route in North Vancouver to help with increased traffic across Burrard Inlet. He didn’t mind the change, although he was always nervous during the first trip on an unfamiliar route.
He drove the #257 Horseshoe Bay Express that shuttled commuters and tourists from downtown Vancouver through Stanley Park and across Lions Gate Bridge to West Vancouver. After a quick stop at popular Park Royal Mall, he would carry a full load to Horseshoe Bay where B.C. Ferries would sail his passengers to either the tranquil Sunshine Coast, Bowen Island or across the Strait of Georgia to distant Vancouver Island.
He drove past the turnoff to the aquarium and headed into a narrow three-lane tunnel of trees that led to the seventy-year-old suspension bridge. As one of only two routes across Burrard Inlet, the center lane of the bridge needed to change direction several times per hour to accommodate traffic patterns. At its most congested, it could take over twenty minutes to cross the five-thousand-foot span. When traffic was light, it took less than two.
Wallace kept to the right as traffic was heavy and the rain was fierce. The green light above the
center lane was flashing, indicating that direction of traffic was about to change. Wallace checked his mirrors. Cars in the center lane were begrudgingly falling in behind him, clearing the way for the imminent rush of oncoming traffic.
The light in the
center lane turned red and for a moment there was some elbow room. An entire lane empty of traffic on his left. While to his right, a narrow sidewalk, short concrete barrier and metal railing was all that separated him from a deadly two-hundred-foot drop to the busy shipping lanes below. Yellow phone boxes blurred past, a recent pilot project that offered direct access to a Crisis Center for those yearly dozens considering the final leap.
Wallace glanced in the mirrors again. His heart skipped and began to race.
A small red car was roaring up on his left, taking advantage of the empty lane, its windshield wipers moving so fast they were a blur. Behind it, a dark SUV had made the same dangerous move, egging the little car on and giving it no room to fall back.
Wallace quickly glanced forward. Two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic were baring down like an invading army of snarling, supercharged mechanical beasts.
The little red car wouldn’t make it. It didn’t have the muscle to fight the wind, the rain and the rapidly narrowing gap.
Wallace couldn’t brake. In this weather, with a hundred impatient drivers chewing each other’s bumpers, a multi-car pileup was a certainty.
Wallace shoved open his side window and stuck out his arm. He waved it about frantically, trying to warn the car to brake and pull in behind him.
The driver didn’t notice or couldn’t see him through the blinding rain.
Suddenly, the driver downshifted and the little car’s engine squealed in protest as it attempted a final burst of speed to squeeze by Wallace’s massive front bumper.
“Hold on!” Wallace screamed to his passengers.
He pumped his brakes and felt the bus lurch, but it was too late. He saw the two occupants of the car as it swerved in front of him. For a moment the picture froze in high-definition clarity. A woman, her face as white as death itself, clutched the steering wheel. In the back seat was a young, dark-haired girl, her mouth stretched in a terrified scream, pink tonsils vibrating at the back of her throat.
The small red car crunched against his front bumper, but it didn’t have the momentum to stop from being swallowed whole. The front of the bus lifted off the ground, its tires bursting and massive rims spinning like buzz saws as the two vehicles crashed through the barrier and slid over the edge of the ancient bridge.
Wallace woke up screaming — the nightmare,
the too-real memory
, still playing in his head.