was probably her flood that had flushed the odours out from under the abandoned house and set the alarm bells ringing, leading to John Doe. He thought about the body lying on the tarp and reeking.
He hadn’t stopped to look, because that death smell had a way of coating a person for days, and getting stuck with the smell was no longer part of his job description. All he could guess from what he had seen in passing was that the body had been there a long while.
Randall was more explicit. She had looked and listened, and then reported to Dion what she knew. The body was a young male, and far from fresh. Monty had told her the first forty-eight was long gone, but so what, she argued. In a way, it had just begun, now that there were police buzzing about the scene, advertising their presence in a big way. It changed the game, and somebody in one of these apparently sleeping houses could be hastily doing god knows what. Packing their bags, making a call, flushing the evidence.
Dion thought Randall had a good point, but he wasn’t going to encourage her.
He walked down the road, assaulted by the pouring rain. On the other side of the bushy spur named Greer, a house facing Lynn Valley Road stood out like a beacon, and he stopped to look at it. Unlike its neighbours, this one was lit up. It was one of the older homes, a double A-frame, painted maroon with cream trim. Clapboard siding, conventional landscaping, but not so well maintained, as if the homeowner had lost the will to trim those laurels. There was a driveway and a carport off to the side, a little white car parked within. The gutter spouts drizzled noisily.
He could almost see into the main floor of the place, as the heavier drapes were hooked back, leaving only a gauzy screen to obscure the view. White-gold Christmas lights sparkled everywhere, strung across the window and sparkling like stars amongst the foliage. It looked like the kind of place he could walk into and never want to leave.
Somebody standing behind those drapes was returning his stare, he realized with a start. He turned to go, but the front door opened, and the woman who had been watching him called out. “Hey you, hello!”
He called hello back to her. She was oddly dressed for a cold October night in baggy shorts — maybe boxers — a plum-coloured cardigan, and tall rubber boots. She was a dark-skinned woman with a mass of goldish-black hair. She stood blurred behind rain falling from the eaves like a flickering bead curtain. Dion knew that from where she stood, he must be a human bead curtain himself.
“What’s happened over there?” she asked. “Was somebody hurt?”
A reasonable assumption. The commotion of emergency vehicles, lights, and noise made it obvious enough. He pushed open the gate and walked to the bottom of the stairs so he wouldn’t have to shout, but even here he had to project his voice over the din of rainfall. “There’s an investigation underway.”
“At the Greer house?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, thinking she was more a hippy than a ma’am. She was around his own age, near the thirty mark. Her casual clothes and her tangly hair and her unkempt garden all pegged her in his mind as some kind of poet.
“Don’t ma’am me,” she said. “Or I’ll sir you. Who got hurt? Is it serious?”
“There’s been a death, so there’s going to be some activity around. Just letting you know.”
“A death? I’m sorry to hear that. How awful. I did wonder, a bit.”
From the bottom of the stairs, he watched her. A follow-up question sprang to mind, but that would be somebody else’s task. “If you’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary happening over there in the last few months, we’d appreciate hearing about it,” he said. “Somebody will be around tomorrow to get your statement. Just let them know, if you could. Anything’s helpful.”
She didn’t seize the opportunity to wish him good night and return inside, but stayed where she was and gazed down at him, as if she had something to add. He couldn’t help wondering what it might be. “Unless there’s anything you can tell me now, since I’m here?” he asked.
“Well, why don’t you come in.”
The golden lights twinkled all around her. He looked up and down the block as he radioed Randall, letting her know he was talking to a witness who had volunteered information. He gave the address and hoped Randall would not race over to join him.
Randall ten-foured him.
Dion ran his hands along his gun belt, just checking, then climbed the stairs and followed the hippy inside. She shut the door behind him as he glanced around the dark interior. Something strange about the place, a noise …
But it was just the forced-air heating rumbling through the ducts and blasting out the vents. He needed the warmth that gusted down. He was an ice block after the hours he’d spent outside the Greer house, setting up lights and tents. It hadn’t been smart, stripping down to his shirt sleeves in the October rain, but he hadn’t seen this far ahead, didn’t know Randall’s overblown work ethic would have him canvassing the neighbourhood after hours.
Inside the house, the woman didn’t wait for his name and ID, as she should have, but removed her rubber boots, slipped her feet into sandals, and went whisking down the dark corridor. She called back at him, “Holy moly, I’ll make some tea, warm us both up.”
She had disappeared to her right. He followed her into a brightly lit kitchen, where he saw nice appliances and expensive but unenthusiastic furniture, none of it matching up with the woman, somehow. She gestured at a clunky table to one side, next to a window. From here he could see a hallway leading to a living room, with more furniture that didn’t seem to be hers. Here and there on the pale-grey walls were darker squares and rectangles where pictures must have once hung — for years, maybe decades.
“I know,” she said, as if reading his mind, but missing the point. “This place needs a serious makeover, doesn’t it?”
She put on a kettle and went about preparing cups. She moved with brisk energy, despite the hour. Dion sat at the table and unzipped his jacket halfway. He flattened his notebook and asked the woman for her name. “Farah Jordan,” she said, and spelled it for him.
He occupied himself filling in the details of the interview. Then he glanced around, still trying to understand the disconnect. Centered on the table were porcelain salt and pepper shakers shaped like bell peppers, one red and one green. There was a jar containing chopsticks and teaspoons, a sugar bowl, a vase with assorted flowers that had died and dried some time ago. Unlike the rest of this place, they all seemed to belong to this woman. Maybe she was a boarder.
The window at his side was open a crack, and cold air seeped in. On the sill sat an ashtray, and in the centre of it was a single crushed-out roach. He glanced down and over at the woman’s bare legs as she worked at the counter. “Who else lives here?” he asked.
It was a question that might have alarmed her, if she followed the news and realized the lengths to which some rapists would go to get past a woman’s door. A phony police uniform was one of the oldest tricks in the book.
“Besides me, just Radar.” She took the chair across from him. “My cat.”
Just her was hardly the answer he expected. The furniture, the colour scheme, even the air — all seemed mannish to him, as though a middle-aged, cigarette-smoking bachelor occupied the space, not a hippy and her cat.
“Are
