She Felt No Pain (20 page)

Chipper introduced himself to Paul Bouchard, then looked pointedly up and down the street. “I think it would be better if we spoke inside. Perhaps at the kitchen table? I may need to take notes.” The television roared again, and Chipper allowed himself a slight flare of his nostrils.

Paul reached around his son and pulled the door open, leading with his shoulders. They went down a hall into the kitchen. Chipper was surprised to see everything clean and polished, dishes and cutlery put away. All except a table where a box of fruit-coloured cereal sat beside a bowl, spoon and a quart of two per cent milk. Paul Bouchard disappeared into another room, perhaps a den. After another few minutes the TV went quiet, and as he returned, in slow deliberateness he grabbed a pop from the fridge, opened it and took a long drink.

Chipper waited until they were all seated. Bouchard lit a cigarette and pulled over a saucer, and his son slumped in a chair, his knobby elbows on the table and a sullen look on his face.

Bouchard said, “Yeah, so. What’s this about?”

“Your son has been spraypainting the sidewalk on Sea Breeze Avenue. Writing nasty notes in front of a home owned by an older woman.” For security’s sake, he didn’t add “living alone”.

“Huh, that’s bull,” Scott said, but a muscle twitched at the edge of his mouth. He picked up a can of soda and took a drink.

“Says he didn’t do it. There must be a mistake here,” Bouchard said.

“We have witnesses.” Including a ferret, Holly had said.

The father narrowed his eyes into slits. He might have been handsome at one time, before the onset of early middle age had layered fat onto his body like a snowball rolling downhill. He gave his son a light cuff to the head. “Are you lyin’ to me?”

“Honest no, Dad.” Scott pulled in his head like a turtle.

Chipper put up a warning hand. “Enough of that, sir.”

“Who’s causing all the trouble, then?” the father asked. “Some have a problem with riders?” His son sat quietly. To Chipper he didn’t look like he was beaten on a regular basis, but he certainly was no stranger to a swat.

Officers were advised never to reveal more names than necessary at this stage. Vendettas had a bad habit of multiplying. “They’re adults. Trustworthy sources. Your quad was described to the last detail. How many others around here have those distinctive markings?”

The boy shrugged, his chin jutting out. In a decade he’d be a clone of his roughneck father. “Did you lend it to anyone?” Paul asked.

Scott be confused about the merits of each option. He stammered without making sense, never looking his father in the eye.

Paul’s fists gathered like a boxer’s ready to brawl. “You’d better not be...that motherfucking bike cost me—”

“No, Dad. I swear!” Scott shrank in his chair, and his voice cracked into a higher register. Perhaps he and his father communicated at opposite ends of a belt after all. “What’s the big deal over some paint on a road? Why doesn’t that old bit...” He swallowed, and his lips whitened, “get a life and leave us kids alone?”

The father tossed the can into the sink then smacked the table with his meaty hand. “Watch that trashy language, you little shit. Your mom will hear about this. You’ll be lucky to get back on that bike by next summer. I bought it to go deer hunting anyways.”

Chipper took a deep breath. Easier than he had thought. Three men could sort it out. Some resolution was needed at this critical point. What did they say on those U.S. shows? Time to man up? End on a positive note. “Are you sorry you did it, Scott?”

An insincere nod. “Sure. What’s going to happen now?”

“If you make restitution, we’ll consider it a lesson learned.”

“What’s restit—”

“The pavement can’t be cleaned. Not enamel spray. So you’ll have to get some black driveway sealer and paint over it.”

Bouchard waved off the suggestion as he scratched his armpit. “We have some in the garage. Scott will get right to it, won’t you, you little bugger? I’ll drive him over and make sure it’s done by this afternoon. And stay out of trouble now that school’s out. There’s a cord of wood back of the house needs chopping. Make some kindling, too.”

For Chipper, the appeal of parenthood was fast fading. Then he remembered his father. The product of a Scottish orphanage in India, Gupta Knox had added the traditional Sikh name Singh when he’d emigrated to Canada with his wife. Decades of hard work had taken their toll. “It’s past eleven o’clock,” his mother would say in a musical voice. “Your poor father must have dozed off. Go down and shut up the shop, then bring him upstairs. I have a hot bath and tea ready. And hurry, hurry.” She clapped her pudgy hands, clinking her silver bangles. “You need your sleep, too.” And there his father would be, sitting on a stool with his head on the counter at their convenience store.

“An apology to the lady would be the best way to finish. I suggest you go over in person. And remember, those quads aren’t street legal. If you want to drive them in the clear-cuts or on private property, you have to transport them. In cases where hunting out of season is concerned or disruption of a salmon stream—”

A worm of a pulse began beating on the father’s temple. “No sweat there. My buddies and I get our deer up north.”

“The vehicle can be impounded. Confiscated. You know better than to drive on roads now, don’t you, Scott?” Chipper flashed a dazzling smile.

Bouchard blew out a long stream of smoke through his wide nostrils. “He’d damn well better.”

Scott stayed silent except for a slight nod. Then a gleam appeared in his soulless eyes as if he had remembered something useful. “Know what? I heard her in a big fight a couple of weeks ago. Some guy was yelling, and things were getting smashed.”

A knot tightened beneath Chipper’s shoulder blades. Things had been going so well. Now the blame game was starting. He refused to get sidetracked as he stood and closed his notebook with a decisive slap. “Arguing isn’t against the law. Defacing public property is.” Still, it didn’t jibe with what Holly had told him about the woman, a masseuse who tended to her clients and minded her own middle-class business.

Back at the detachment over doughnuts late that afternoon, Chipper filled Holly in on his semi-success with Scott. “Good job. I knew he’d respond better to you,” she said, resisting the urge for a second chocolate dip. “We don’t want a major incident, but the kids need to know that not only is graffiti not acceptable, that threats can get them into worse trouble. So he agreed to apologize?”

“He’ll probably scrawl a misspelled note and put it in her mailbox. But it should put an end to the nonsense. And I don’t think he’ll be driving the quad on the roads after seeing his father’s reaction. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave the kid a whack. I felt like it myself.”

“You said your father never raised a hand to you.”

“But my mother wielded a wicked wooden spoon.” Chipper paused for a minute. “Something weird, though, about Ms Clavir. When you were writing up your notes this morning, you told me Joel visited his sister, didn’t you? Sounds like there was some family trouble there.” He told her what the Scott had said about a fight.

Holly took a serviette to wipe icing from her mouth. “She admitted that he came by, that she gave him money. We didn’t go into much detail because it didn’t seem relevant at the time. It seemed sad to me, because I was an only child, and I might have liked a big brother.”

“I’m an only kid, too. Big brothers can stand up for you, but look at it this way: you had to learn to stand up for yourself. Good training for the job.” He looked out the window to where an eagle soared in the distances, its peeping cry belying its noble reputation.

“But what about Scott? Do you think the kid made up the fight to shift attention from himself?”

“He might have heard something. You know how they embellish. But it was the perfect way to shift attention, if you think about it.”

“I’d check with Marilyn again, but what’s the point in opening old wounds by asking her if they had a brawl? It’s kind of embarrassing.” She shuffled a few papers. “Did anything ever surface on that Fentanyl check?” Making sure that the deadly drug was not circulating in their territory was still a concern.

“I made a couple of calls. Nothing yet.”

“No news is good news where drugs are concerned.”

That night, Holly stood on her bedroom deck as a large brown moth battered around the light. Across the black strait, pinpricks of bright red fires on the Washington side lit the night. Surely they wouldn’t be burning off the clear-cuts in this dangerous drought. And was that smoke she smelled on the breeze? A forest fire had closed Route 20 in the North Cascades National Park, the news had reported. Suppose her area was threatened. Everyone was on wells, so there were no hydrants. Behind the parallel streets of development lay tinder-dry brush. The strait, from seven to eleven miles wide, was a buffer zone, and prevailing winds blew from the south, not north. As usual, the single coastal lifeline from Victoria to Port Renfrew made her uneasy. Where people went, fires followed.

* * *

The next morning, Holly passed Bailey Bridge on her way to work and saw Pete’s rusty van with the Helping Hands logo. He was about to close the rear hatch when he looked up and waved a large bag of bagels. Stomach rumbling, she pulled in and rolled down the window.

“Have breakfast on me, officer. They’re day-old but top drawer. Cobs Bakery donates their leftover goods. I even brought cream cheese.” He held up a tub and rattled a bag of plastic knives.

Clichés like the cop taking a free doughnut flashed through her mind. But yesterday’s bagel? “Very generous. If you have a spare, that would be great.” Why hurt the sweet man’s feelings? Though the “pastor” name was merely honorary, Pete spent his spare time making sure the homeless and poor had enough to eat. His food-bank drives cleaned out shelves in every house, and he made sure the supermarkets donated turkeys for a real spread at Christmas. Last year, Holly had helped serve and pass out toys to the kids. A crowd favourite, Shogun had attracted hugs and performed for treats.

“Is Bill around?” she asked, spreading the cream cheese and tucking in. Cobs was King of Victoria when it came to baked goods. Their artisan bread and cinnamon rolls were legendary, though pricy.

“Bill took his breakfast up in the hills to pick salmonberries. He’s the last one left here...since...” He fingered the simple cross hanging around his broad neck. The man had the build of a Brahma bull and a bigger heart. His unstinted dedication to his community and reverence for humanity gave him deserved respect. In yet another initiative last winter, he had assembled kits for the homeless, a waterproof poncho, tent, clothes and boots, and distributed them at the Evergreen Mall.

“Since Joel Clavir was found.” Holly completed his thought. “Did you know him? He also went by Joel Hall.” The drifter hadn’t been here very long, but Pete made regular rounds.

“Met him once, a very uncommunicative man. Not unfriendly, but taciturn. I saw right off that he would be a challenge. The readiness is everything. If the pitcher isn’t open for the water of life...” His voice trailed off, leaving the homily unfinished.

“I couldn’t handle your job, Pastor. You must run into resistance, especially with substance abusers.” She finished the bagel, then reached into the car for her portable coffee cup.

“That’s the odd part. I came by one morning with sweet rolls and juice. He asked me to keep something for him. For a week or so.”

“Money? Valuables?” What about that three hundred dollars? Carrying that much cash was risky. How much had Marilyn given him? It wasn’t Holly’s business. But her radar went up with this new twist.

Pete shook his head and shifted his stance. A short and bowlegged man, he’d had a childhood operation on a clubfoot which had left him with a slight limp. “I see where you’re going, and I wondered, too. It was a plain white envelope, business size, not that I did more than look at it in his hands. Couldn’t have held more than a few sheets of paper. Smudged. Dusty. It’s hard to keep everything clean when you live like this.” He spread his arm toward the bridge’s underbelly, where whorls of dirt spun in the erratic air currents. A squirrel scolded from the cedars, annoyed at the humans preventing it from foraging for crumbs.

“Did he say what it was?” She appreciated the problems of the homeless, who guarded their belongings in shopping carts and refused to abandon them to enter shelters. New initiatives for the ongoing problem included lockers. “That’s stolen property,” opponents of a move to allow the carts inside would say. “You’re enabling thieves.”

“No, it seemed intrusive to ask.” Pete scratched a shaggy ear. Regular haircuts were not of concern to him. “Maybe it was a keepsake, or even his will.”

“Why would someone like that even
make
a will?” But she remembered that he had learned recently that he had a son.
Someone
like that.
She sounded like a snob. “An insurance policy?” Police work involved being in tune with details. How many scientific breakthroughs came when someone said, “That’s funny” instead of the cliched “Eureka”? Might this explain Joel’s shadowy past?

“I’m no expert on insurance, but don’t you have to keep making payments? That would have been hard without a regular income. Anyway, it’s a moot point. I didn’t feel comfortable holding something valuable. People are in and out of our building at all times of the day, coming for a coffee, getting out of the rain. We don’t have locks even for the cupboards. I hated to turn him down, but...” He shrugged. “I told him to take it to a lawyer or rent a safety-deposit box.”

Holly gave him a skeptical look as she mused. It didn’t sound like Joel had planned to stay, nor was he reconciling with his sister. Was he ill, returning like a sick animal to die in a familiar place? The autopsy had demonstrated neglect more than signs of serious health problems. Where had the envelope gone? They’d checked his belongings. Had Bill taken it? Derek, the video-camera thief? She’d put nothing past that opportunist.

A call later from work to the arresting officer, Corporal Barb Cottingham at the Sooke detachment, confirmed that Derek had had no envelope with him when he was apprehended in front of BC Liquors. For all of his travelling light, Joel seemed to be a man of many secrets. What about that suggestion from Derek that he had a ready source of money? Not Judy, though. She had total contempt for him. His sister’s lottery win? He must have been drinking serious Kool-Aid if he thought she’d deflate her dream for him. Maybe that explained what Scott had said they were arguing about. Holly looked at her latest boring traffic reports and petty-crime statistics. Mourned by no one, Joel had died of an overdose, at the end of a self-destructive life. But the envelope intrigued her.