Undertow Read online

  Light and Shadow

  Blessedly, the Lonsdale barbershop had not changed at all in Dion’s time away. He stood in the entrance and took it all in with a smile. Music, mirrors, posters, and Persian bric-a-brac. There was the strong scent of aftershave that he hadn’t even realized he missed, till now. Nobody here but Hami in his white smock, busy tidying up his workstations.

  Hami turned and saw him. He did a double take. “It can’t be,” he said, Hami the ham, so shocked he staggered. “My God. You’re back. Long time no see!”

  Dion said “Salam,” about the only Farsi word he knew. “’Course I’m back, why wouldn’t I be? I didn’t make an appointment. Have time for a walk-in?”

  “Of course. Come, come.”

  Dion hung his leather car coat on a hook and sat in one of three vinyl padded chairs before the wall-length mirror. He waited for the barber to clip the cape around his shoulders and tuck it in around his collar. With cape secured, he checked out his world in the mirror’s reflection. Hami prepared scissors and razor and spray bottle, making small talk as if only a week or two had passed, not close to a year.

  All of it was pleasant, yet something was out of place. Dion fixed on Hami’s face and words, trying to ignore the slight skew.

  “Was last July, yes?” Hami said, eying him up for the cut. “I read about it in the paper, saw your name, couldn’t believe my eyes. They said there were fatalities, but said too that you survived. But me, I don’t trust the news. Then you miss your next appointment, never come back again, and I’m thinking for sure, man, my best customer is dead. The same?” he said, talking style.

  “Things happened,” Dion said. “Yes, don’t change a thing.”

  “So what things happened?”

  “I took a transfer. Went north to work till I got back up to speed.”

  “Aha. And now you’re back up to speed?”

  “Totally. Better than ever. Passed the tests with flying colours.” It was a white lie. There were no flying colours, but no signs of brain injury either, which meant no medical reason to shift him out of active duty. The initial diagnosis in layman’s terms of “shook up” remained, as far as Dion understood. He pointed and fired a bullet at his own reflected self, made a pewww noise. “Hit the target dead-on, near-perfect bull’s eye. BS’d with a shrink for a few hours, did the math, scenarios, memory tests. Whatever they threw at me, I passed, no sweat.”

  “Kudos,” Hami said, but vaguely. He had paused to stare in the mirror, comb and scissors in hand, like he was thinking of something more important as he studied Dion’s face. “Maybe you keep it long, eh? Such a good-looking guy, why you want the old fart look?”

  Dion’s dark hair wasn’t long at all, but it had relaxed over his year away. It flipped in at the eyes now, curled about the collar, and made him look younger than his twenty-nine years. But whether it looked good or not wasn’t the point. The point was to look exactly as he had the day before the crash that had nearly killed him. A hundred years ago, last summer.

  “Same cut,” he told Hami. “You remember, right?”

  Hami said, “Hey, buddy, short back and sides, boring as hell. I could do this with my eyes closed.”

  The radio was tuned to a Western rock station, and it struck Dion that this was the difference that bothered him. It wasn’t the usual upbeat Persian pop that his barber had always kept jangling. This was a U.S. band he should be able to name, but couldn’t.

  Didn’t matter. Musically speaking, Hami was leaving his culture behind, but that was okay, too, for everything else here was timeless. He watched himself re-emerge, the cut neat and close with only the bangs allowed to follow their natural cowlick. Not seamless, because he had lost weight and was still working at getting it back. But it wasn’t a bad likeness.

  For the first time since stepping off the Greyhound last week, he felt hopeful. It had been a tough haul. He had sat through the two-day bus ride like an android tourist, watching the landscape rise and fall. There were a lot of canyons, forests, and small-town depot sandwiches to get through, but at last he landed at the Main Street terminal in downtown Vancouver, and was cabbing across the bridge to home, the North Shore, straight to the most economical room he could book, the Royal Arms.

  On the day following his arrival came the tests and interviews, and he had done better than expected. But his first day back on the job would be the real test, and that was still to come.

  Today he was fixing himself up for a comeback. He’d gotten himself new clothes that shouted I’m the best, and now the haircut, and tonight he would probably spend an unhealthy amount of time in front of the mirror, trying on expressions. Illusion was a big part of success, after all, and as long as he looked good, he would be fine.

  A blur of motion caught his eye in the big barbershop window reflected behind him. Nothing specific, but an active chaos of light and shadow that thrilled him. Pigeons swooped and awnings flapped. Cars slid by or stopped, depending on the lights. But it was the people he watched. They walked past the glass and warped the spring sunshine, ducked through the fine, slanting rain, stood waiting for the bus. He knew now how vital they were to him, these perfect strangers who made up a city, and how vital he was to them.

  He was going to prove how vital he was in the days to come. He had been summoned back to GIS, the General Investigations Section, by one of the NCOs, Sergeant Mike Bosko, which meant they had faith in him. So what could go wrong?

  The cut was done. Perfect. He settled up, leaving the usual tip, and smiled at Hami, the smile and direct gaze all part of the plan. Smile at everybody, and smile big.

  “You want me to put you down for two weeks here, bud?” Hami asked at the counter, his appointment book open. “Wednesday still best?”

  Dion had forgotten that the trims were a standing order. They came at two-week intervals, and Wednesday had always been his day of preference. He had no idea why. He said, “Of course, Wednesday. Thanks, Hami. You’ve always got me covered.”

  Hami extended a fist, and Dion remembered this ritual, too. He bumped the barber’s knuckles with his own, and Hami said, “Great to have you back, my friend.”

  “Great to be back…. You’ve changed your music.”

  Up now was an old Beach Boys classic about a miserable experience aboard a ship. Hami was grimacing and rolling his eyes at the speakers. “I’m assimilating, man. Godawful noise, this.”

  On Lonsdale the rain had fused with the sunshine to become a dazzling mist. Several blocks downhill, the giant Q marked the Quay market and the harbour. Dion had no urge to go down there and look at the water, which was strange. Wasn’t that what he had been homesick for, the sound and smell, the magnetic pull of the sea?

  Maybe not. There was an order to things. Get back to work, see the crew, confront Bosko, and then call up Kate. Then he would go and look at the water. He lit a cigarette and walked along 3rd, which became Marine Drive, where the traffic was heavy and endless. A used-car lot twinkled into view.

  Cars and SUVs filled the lot, a variety pack of shiny metal. When he came to the bumper of the closest car, he stopped and took it in. A dark-blue coupe, a Honda Civic, poised at a dynamic angle, nosing into the sidewalk as though frozen in escape. A placard on its windshield advertised a price he recognized as decent. The windows were tinted. He peered inside and saw the interior was a handsome black, if not leather, then a good imitation.

  He hadn’t owned a car since the crash. In Smithers he had walked or cabbed anywhere he needed to go, except when on the job. The job demanded that he drive, sometimes at speed, occasionally on ice, so he had no choice but to get good at it again. Here on the Lower Mainland an off-duty vehicle was not optional. He needed a car, but he would never drive again just for the fun of it. No thanks.

  He read the stat sheets on the car’s window and saw the mileage wasn’t so bad. He circled the Civic again, and already a salesman was
approaching, hands in pockets. The salesman stopped and looked at the car, proud as a new dad. He remarked that Dion had great taste in wheels, and did he have any questions? Dion said no, he didn’t right now, thanks. He stood and drew at his cigarette and looked at the car, while the salesman looked at the sky and talked about the weather. The salesman segued from weather into suggesting a test spin.

  Dion smiled at the salesman. He wasn’t born yesterday. He knew what used sporty-looking coupes with great price tags meant, and the kind of people who fell for them. He was about to say so, but the salesman spoke first. “Whatcha got to lose?”

  He had a point. The man took his driver’s licence to make a copy and went to get the key and demo plates, and Dion stood on the sidewalk to wait. He looked south along Marine Drive at the city skyline, then northward, at the mountains. He thought about the highway that wove through them, and the long drive between this point and that, North Vancouver and Smithers. Strange how a part of him wanted to go back there even after he had worked so hard to be here. This was where he belonged, not there.

  The salesman brought the keys. It took a moment for Dion to remember why. “Thank you.”

  “You’re … all right?” the salesman said.

  Dion smiled at him, and smiled big. “Absolutely.”

  Three

  Crime Currents

  Each new day, Dave Leith had to look harder for that silver lining. For over a month now he had been living in a strange city, confined to a crappy little apartment that was costing him twelve hundred a month, plus utilities, and driving a rental car to an office full of strangers, none of whom he had managed to befriend. He asked himself now: when exactly in the recent past had this move to the metropolis struck him as a “great idea”?

  Last night from Prince Rupert, his wife Alison had given yet another long-distance reassurance: “You just need time to adjust.”

  “It’s not exactly what I thought it would be,” he had told her.

  “What ever is?” she asked.

  Sure, he would adjust — what choice did he have? But Alison didn’t get it, that adjustment for him was step two in a two-step process. First he had to get over the disappointment, and he had to do that in his own particular style, griping all the way.

  At least the daily commute from his apartment to the North Van detachment had become routine by now; he no longer tilted an ear to the GPS delivering her robotic instructions. He merged onto Highway 1 and joined another vehicular lineup. North Vancouver hadn’t failed in its promises in any big way; the bright lights were maybe not as bright as he’d imagined, but he had grown up in a small Saskatchewan city, and his thrill-meter was set fairly low. Really he was only disappointed in himself. Where was the handsomer, smarter, wittier Dave Leith that this move was supposed to have made him? A juvenile fantasy, of course, but still he would check the mirror as he shaved each morning and be chagrined to see no progress. He remained a tall, thickening, doubtful-looking forty-four-year-old with lumpy, blond hair beginning to recede, blue eyes too close set, nose and chin too big, mouth too thin and always clamped into a self-conscious smile.

  There was no wild nightlife here, either, at least not for him. He had made the effort and gone out drinking twice with the rowdier set of his new workmates, but the situation — it was mostly the noisy atmosphere that got him down — only made him antsy. Not that he would quit trying.

  He seemed to spend all his time commuting, burning frozen dinners in the apartment’s quirky oven, and studying up on the procedures and protocols of his new office. In an effort to impress his new superior, Sergeant Mike Bosko — the man he’d met on a northern assignment and who had made this transfer happen — he also brought his caseload home with him to mull over as he ate his burned dinners.

  He missed Prince Rupert. Missed his buddies and comfortable bungalow on its good-sized lot, which now had a big for-sale sign on the front lawn. He missed the morning fogs and the busy harbour, the locals and summer tourists. Alison was still up there, with the furniture and their two-year-old, Isabelle, waiting for Leith to get settled before coming to join him.

  Their foolish expectation had been that he would find a great little house, put an offer on it — stretching the budget just a bit — and they would transition smoothly from one residence to another.

  The expectation had hit a brick wall called the ridiculous price of real estate in North Vancouver. He was still reverberating from the shock. Some local staff were buying properties as far afield as Abbotsford, he heard. Which meant they spent half their lives commuting.

  He was off Highway 1 and driving down the spine of North Vancouver, Lonsdale Avenue, a gauntlet of traffic lights that each turned sadistic yellow as he approached. He had learned that pulling faces and swearing at traffic lights didn’t help. Didn’t help at all.

  Making it through the last light, he turned his car up 15th and down St. Georges and entered the underground parkade of his new detachment.

  The North Vancouver RCMP HQ was a modern terraced monolith, three above-ground levels of concrete and glass that looked more like a beached ocean liner than a building. He left his car and rode the elevator up to Level 2, walked down the corridor, and swung into the briefing hall where “A” watch gathered to learn of the day’s challenges.

  North Van was a mill of hot files, unlike laid-back Rupert, City of Rainbows, up there on its rocky shore. Some crimes were bad, others worse. Today’s was off the scale, horrific, and the point-form description, even without the graphic details, rattled Leith as Watch Commander Doug Paley laid it out. A mother and daughter found dead in their home, Paley was saying. Found by a concerned neighbour. Neighbour had seen lights on all night, heard music going, too, and no sign of the residents. She didn’t know them personally, not even their names. But the lights and music had struck her as odd enough that she had gone up the back stairs this morning and peeked inside.

  First-on-scene gave some details, describing the scene, the victims.

  One of the dead was just a toddler. Like Leith’s own little Izzy.

  * * *

  Leith rode in the passenger seat with Doug Paley. Paley was late-middle-aged, heavy set, and cynical. He didn’t speak throughout the drive, and only as he pulled in to the curb and yanked on the handbrake did he tell Leith what was what. He would talk to the first responders outside, then join Leith inside the house.

  The house was a modest one-storey with finished basement on the corner of 23rd and Mahon. Several squad cars and the crime-scene vans were ranged along the avenue. A crowd of the curious was gathering: neighbours and passersby. Constables kept traffic moving. At the back of a van, Leith zipped into anti-contamination coveralls. The home’s front gate was propped open, the egress path marked with crime-scene tape. He climbed cement steps to the door, identified himself to the constable at the door, was given general directions, and entered the house.

  Music played, soft rock. There was an unpleasant smell, but it wasn’t the worst he had ever worked at not inhaling. Inside the front door a flight of stairs led down, and another led up. He took the flight up, and the music got louder and the smell got ranker. From the top of the stairs radiated a hallway to what might be bedrooms and a bathroom. The place looked neat and clean. Kitchen straight ahead and a combo living room/dining room to his left. The bodies were in the living room, along with the first signs of chaos: a lamp knocked over, dry flowers strewn willy-nilly, a toppled high chair.

  Leith stood at the threshold and looked down on the strange tableau. The bodies. They were Asian, the child so like his own, but with downy black hair and ivory skin. She was on her stomach to Leith’s left, next to the leg of a wood-and-glass coffee table. A young woman lay ten feet away, face up, before the fireplace. She was slim, wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved sweater, bare feet. Her long, glossy black hair criss-crossed in swaths over her face, as though draped to hide her features.

 
The coroner moved in with his kit and an assistant, obscuring the view.

  The clothing of both victims seemed intact on first sight. No visible trauma, and aside from the upset furniture, no signs of violence, even. But all it took was a little imagination to hear the screams, to see the struggle, to feel the fear. Violence had swept through this house and left no sound but the music playing, an absurdly hopped-up pop song Leith had heard before somewhere, sometime.

  Mother and child had already been pronounced dead. They remained only to be studied, charted, photographed, and stared at by people like Leith, who should be doing his job and analyzing. But he wasn’t there yet. He was thinking again of the gross error he had made in transferring his family to this city. His big responsibility in life was to keep them out of harm’s way, and instead he was bringing them right into its embrace. The north wasn’t crime-free, by any means, but the victimology was more predictable. Down here, high density brought out the weirdos and the guns, no doubt about it, which meant anybody could be mowed down, at any time.

  This poor little thing was at the very same tottering age as Izzy, when the tiny legs were losing their baby fat and gaining muscle tone. She should have been learning to talk, too, stomping about with her eyes open to the wonders of the world. Leith looked sideways at Paley, who was done speaking with the coroner and now stood beside him, relaying the findings.

  “Strangled, he’s thinking.” Paley was staring down at the adult victim. “Looks like bruising around the throat. There’s that tea towel. Does that look like it’s been twined into a rope, to you? That might have done it.”

  “The hair over her face …” Leith said.

  “Yeah, yeah. The hair placement — that’s remorse, right? Or apology, or something like that.”

  “Looks more like insult to me.”

  The coroner stood and moved away, leaving the assistant making notes.

  “Or that,” Paley agreed. “As for the baby, she might have fallen and hit her head on that coffee table, we’re thinking.”