actually waning. She got up, slid open the patio doors, and walked onto the deck to contemplate the strait. Cruise ships took polite turns with freighters to ply their way west toward the Pacific or east to Puget Sound, the lights on their wires and superstructures like a mobile amusement park. Getting back into bed, she burrowed into the down pillow. Tomorrow wouldn’t be pleasant. She could take a pass on the autopsy, but how bad could it be? Telling the family was worse, and she’d leaped that hurdle today. She wondered how Nate Didrickson was faring. His daughter had seen her final moon.
Three
Boone called the detachment the next morning. “Daso’s got the autopsy scheduled for nine thirty. Just got around to checking my answering machine. Late night at the legion.” Holly washed down the thistle scratching her throat with bitter coffee. Chipper had arrived first, and apparently he liked his brew strong enough to trot a deer. “I’d like to be there. Do you think that—”
“Hell, we can still make most of it. Traffic’s light now. Pick me up fifteen minutes ago.”
He was standing in front of his doublewide behind the Kemp Lake store at the Olympic View Park when Holly drove up minutes later. The ocean-view spot catered to retirees, who owned well-kept modern units with elaborate porches or sheds, even a small plot of land. A white cat twirled around his feet like a fluffy fog. “Cassandra’s deaf,” he said, stroking its head. “Many white cats are. She doesn’t wander far. Knows she’d make a nice snack for a cougar.”
“Apparently there’s a wounded one at large in the John Muir area. Nearly took out a chihuahua.”
“Keep your voice down,” he said with a mock-worried look. “The old gal lipreads.”
At the first stoplight, they turned left and cozied in behind a strip mall. Nestled there was the latest Sooke coffeehouse, the Stick-in-the-Mud. Run by trained barista Dave Evans, a neighbour of Holly’s, it sold the best java in town, not a bitter bean in a carload.
The regulars were lining up, while others were in leather armchairs reading the Times Colonist or the free Monday tabloid with its radical Seventies flavor. Laptop computer keys clicked. While Boone went to the washroom (“prostrate,” he said with a chuckle). Holly ordered an Americano for herself, and a daily special, Kenya, for him, doctoring them at the depot. Then a raucous voice took her back to the past with the zing of a bungee cord.
“Holly! Holly-O. Damn! And check that uniform. You look maaaaaavelous.” Valerie Novince kissed her manicured fingers and planted her hands on her broad hips. Her dark brown hair was now platinum blonde and teased. The dimples in her merry face cheered any room.
Holly gave her a warm hug, flattered that Valerie remembered the “O” for Oldham, a family name dating back to their ancestral home in Devonshire. “Hello, friend. This is a wonderful surprise. What have you been up to?”
Valerie explained that she had spent two years in the army, then returned for real estate training at Camosun College. A curvaceous eyebrow spoke pages. “I was a baaaad girl, but the army gave me discipline. Remember when I got expelled from ND for smoking?”
Holly laughed. “Twice, wasn’t it? I was glad to see the back of that place, too. But how did the army survive your invasions?”
“Hey, I made master sergeant on my riflery alone. Every time I went to the range, I had that ugly old gang of skanks in my sights.” She raised her arms in a shooting gesture, attracting some attention from a white-haired lady carrying a Pomeranian. “Pow, pow.”
“Uh, Val, I think—”
Valerie gave a thumbs-up. “Slim as ever, you. And I’ve gained the last ten pounds since I stopped smoking. Hey, do you still rescue banana slugs? Damn, that was funny.”
Despite the stares surrounding them, Holly couldn’t help smiling. “To serve and protect has always been my motto.”
“So it has, and you figured it out. We’ve got to get together.”
Valerie padded wicked coral nails on her shiny lips. “Say, do you need a house? Meet Sooke’s top seller.”
“You’re out of luck. I’m living with my father on Otter Point Place.”
“Woo, woo. High rent district.” Valeria plucked a card from her elephantine purse. “If you ever want a place for yourself, short term, easy-sell, consider a mobile, uh, manufactured home. It’s an investment. I have one for only $79,000 in Wells o’ Weary. Right on the ocean. Lapping waves will sing you to sleep.”
“And when the big wave comes?” Tsunami warning signs along the coastal road had made realtors furious and alarmed local businesses so much that they were removed within a few months. Now tourists could travel the road at their own blissful risk.
Valerie elbowed her way into the lineup. “You’ll be the first one to know, so call my cell!”
Back in the car, they passed the Log, a grassy meeting place, which anchored the town. A fifty-foot Douglas fir post displayed two carved loggers, one balanced with an axe on a springboard perch aiming at a cut above the thick butt and the other climbing to the top using a strap and cleats.
The forty-five minutes into Victoria went quickly. Delayed only for a moment behind one of the signature red double-decker buses, they took Sooke Road, Route 14, through Milne’s Landing, skirting Metchosin and entering Langford, then merging with the Island Highway in View Royal.
The Victoria Metropolitan area consisted of twelve municipalities with a total of 335,000 people. Long a retirement mecca, it also attracted tourists with its “More English than the English” atmosphere, or lately a controversial campaign promising better orgasms. Sadly, urban crime had made serious inroads in the small core of 74,000. The spectres of substance abuse and homelessness were more evident in the balmy climate than at the frigid corners of Portage and Main in Winnipeg. Low-cost housing had been a promise for decades, but only million-dollar condos were shooting their floors skyward.
Then they followed narrow Bay Street east all the way to the venerable Royal Jubilee Hospital, serving the city since 1890, when the old Queen reigned. Leaving the car in the lot, they entered the front lobby and took an elevator to the basement to the morgue and autopsy rooms. “I left a message with Daso’s secretary. He’ll be expecting us,” Boone said.
Holly had to remind herself that this was real, not a staged event. Anyone with a sense of humanity was never fully prepared. They pushed through into the office and were given green gowns, paper hats and shoe protectors by a young technician. Through a glass portal, a white-coated man waved.
The room was large but low-ceilinged, a typical old basement. At least ten tables waited. Two held bodies, each covered with a large white sheet. Immaculate if claustrophobic, the room was cool. Fluorescent light banks lit the room, along with spots on angled arms at each site. She heard something frisky. Salsa music?
As if preparing for an exam, she scanned the instruments on a side table and tried to recall their names and purposes. Scissors, but beginning with E? Enterotome, used for opening the intestines, the blunt bulb at the end to prevent perforation of the gut. Scalpels, rib cutters, toothed forceps, skull chisel, and the famous vibrating Stryker saw, which had revolutionized autopsies. Those tools on a white cloth were clean, those on the next rolling table bore the inevitable effluvium of the body. A third shelf held surgeon’s needles, Hagedorn by name, and heavy twine, coarser than ordinary suture threads, for the workmanlike closing. Realizing with
