Stain of the Berry (36 page)

"How long has Richie been gone?"

"I don't know. A couple hours I guess. I thought it was him when you knocked. I'm worried about him."

"Why? Where did he go? I want you to tell me exactly what is going on between the two of you."

"Nothing, really, man. Richie and I have been hanging out for a while." Hanging out-also known as dating, unless, that is, you're a gay guy still pretending to be straight. "We met during the bus trip to Regina, and, well, you know."

Yeah, yeah yeah. "You're sleeping together." Keep the story going, buddy.

"Trying stuff out, man." The manly-man voice coming out of Guy Marcotte was deeper and gruffer than ever.

"That's beautiful, man. I'm happy for you." Perhaps a little smarmy. Then louder, "Now tell me what's going on!"

"Richie did come over here last night. It was really late. He'd had some kind of fight with Kim. She's a friend of his. He said there was some kind of detective who.. .hey.. .that was you, wasn't it?"

Stellar bit of deduction. I just stared at him.

"All along, Richie has been trying to figure out who this boogeyman-fuck is who's been doing all this shit to him and Kim. Then he heard from this other guy, Duncan, that another two girls they knew were dead and that some guy, pretending to be a detective, was after him. Then Duncan disappeared. This really scared Richie. He thought this detective-you-was the boogeyman. So he tried to get you before you got him and Kim. Then last night when you turned up, he began to believe that you weren't the boogeyman either. But if you weren't him, then who was? I guess you started talking about who could be responsible, and you brought up the bus driver-me-and the choir director. Well, Richie knew it couldn't 152 of 163

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have been me."

Oh really? I wasn't quite so convinced of that myself yet. "So Richie thinks Frank Sadownik is behind all this?"

Guy nodded. "At least he did when he got here last night. He was really freaked out when he got here and I settled him down and finally I got him to sleep."

"He slept here last night?" I wasn't trying to embarrass the guy, just confirm suspect locations.

He nodded. More toe studying.

"When I came over this afternoon, was Richie here? Why all the 'going to pick up my girlfriend'

garbage?"

He shrugged a little, abashed. "Richie was here. I was just...I'm just a little shy about this stuff, eh?"

"So are you saying Richie borrowed your car to go see Frank Sadownik? And he's still there?"

Guy shook his head. "No. That's what he wanted to do. But after we talked about it, he realized it didn't make sense, that you were wrong."

Ah, wait a sec, I wasn't wrong about anything. Yes, I brought up Frank as a possible suspect, but I was just rustling bushes, that's all, looking to see what might fall out; that's how this detecting shtick works sometimes. I didn't need to explain myself to this guy. Instead I just scowled mightily and let him speak.

"But the idea of the whole boogeyman thing being related to that night in Davidson, when we were all stranded in that hotel, made sense to Richie. You see, something did happen that night."

According to Kim Pelluchi, that's exactly what Richie told her last night before he stomped off.

Something happened that night in Davidson that he couldn't tell her about. I was beginning to think that

"something" was his hooking up with the butch bus driver. But maybe that wasn't it at all. Had something else happened that night?

Guy kept on in his lightly French-flavoured voice. "He didn't think much of it at the time, kind of forgot about it actually, until you brought up the possible connection between the harassment and that night in Davidson."

"Tell me what happened," I instructed as a teacher might a not-too-bright student. "I want you to start at the beginning, when you realized you'd have to pull off the road and stay the night in Davidson."

"You wanna beer?" Guy asked, moving toward the fridge.

It was broiling in the trailer. I did want one, but I was feeling paranoid. Did he have a gun in there?

Richie Caplan's head? I shook my head no and watched carefully as he pulled open the fridge door, reached in and pulled out a can of Great West. He pulled back the tab and took a deep pull before continuing on.

"We all had supper together in the hotel restaurant, with drinks, lots of drinks for some. They invited me to join them, which was nice. After all, I wasn't part of their group, just the bus driver. Afterwards, someone, I think it was Kim, suggested we all go to one of the rooms and play a game."

"Game?"

"Tequila Pigs."

My stomach lurched at the memory of a game I know well-or rather, used to know, in my younger 153 of 163

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days. The entire game consists of three bright pink plastic pigs with red hooves, each no more than two centimeters long and one high. I was first introduced to Tequila Pigs by Pat, one of my more mischievous, bad-influence, university-era friends. It is, simply put, a drinking game. The players sit in a circle and each takes a turn tossing the porcine trio. Depending on the positions in which the pigs land, points are accordingly awarded and the player with the highest roll downs a shot of tequila. The names of the various positions in which these pigs can land are rather inventive: Rashers, Pork Bellies, Back Bacon, Rooters, the Canadian Bacon Lean and everyone's favourite, Makin' Bacon. It's a silly, immature, hoot-hollering, sooouuuuuu-eee good time, and often ends with one or more players having to excuse themselves for a quick dash to the bathroom or nearest potted plant.

"It was fun at first," Guy told me, "but people were drinking way too much and way too fast. Some people were getting high too. So someone came up with the idea to change the rules. If you won a toss, you could either drink or pick someone to play Truth or Dare with."

Truth or Dare. Another potentially dangerous game (and a fairly decent Madonna documentary). The Pink Gophers were definitely playing with fire that night.

"At first it was pretty innocent. People were asked about stupid things they'd done when they were younger, childhood fears, dreams, stuff like that. But then things started to get personal, too personal. On one of Richie's turns, he chose Duncan for truth or dare. Duncan chose a dare and the dare was for him to French kiss the nelly guy."

"Jin Chau?"

"Jinny, yeah, that's him. Everybody began to hoot and holler and Jin was playing it up, all coy-like but puckering up, getting ready for it. Duncan got all mad and refused. Then right after that, one of the gals wins a toss and calls on Jin and he chooses truth. It was one of the dead girls, I think..."

"Tanya? Moxie?"

"I guess. Anyway, one of them asked Jin who in the circle did he most want to sleep with. He chose the model dude."

"Jared." Just saying his name gave me a pang of sorrow. How was he? What was happening at the hospital? I realized how grateful I was for the distraction of the case and, hopefully, I was doing something that would bring his attacker to justice. "He's a friend of mine," I whispered.

"Yeah, Jared, nice guy. Well, anyway, everyone just about fell over, pissing themselves laughing, particularly those two girls, Tanya and Moxie. Not your friend. I must say, he was pretty decent about the whole thing. But Jin, oh man, that guy just went cold. He got up and walked out. That pretty much brought the evening to an end, right there."

"What happened then?"

"Well, we decided it was time to go to bed. A lot of travellers were stuck in Davidson that night, so there were only four hotel rooms amongst the thirteen of us. So we had to split them up as best we could, based on whether the rooms had two beds or one and who wanted to sleep with who. Everyone else kind of doubled up, but no one wanted to sleep with Jin and he ended up in the same room as Richie and me.

There were two beds in the room, and even though Richie knows Jin, he asked if he could sleep in my bed."

I gave Guy a look that was meant to say, "Who do you think you're fooling?"

He had the sense to blush. "There was something sorta going on between us already," he admitted.

"During Tequila Pigs, when Richie was asked who in the circle
he
wanted to sleep with, he said me, even though I was straight. So, I kinda figured he liked me and when we got into bed and the lights went 154 of 163

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off...well, we sorta did stuff."

"In front of Jin?"

"Well, he was in the next bed, asleep we thought.. .or hoped. I guess we didn't much care at the time, and like I was saying, we'd been drinking and toking."

Jin. He'd been humiliated by the game; the others laughed at him, his lust for Jared was revealed and turned into a joke, and then, to top it off, like curdled icing on a sour cake, he'd had to endure the lovemaking of two of his tormentors in the bed next to his. Just the thought of it was horrible. I could empathize with the feelings of mortification and self-loathing and hatred that must have begun to fill him but to seek systematic revenge against the perpetrators in the way that he had, that was an act of pure lunacy. Was Jin crazy? Was he taking revenge on everyone who'd humiliated him that night? When I'd gone to his apartment, he'd certainly come off as a colourful character with strong opinions about how the world should work, but was he a psychotic killer, desperate for justice as he saw it, seeking harsh judgment against those who'd shamed him, rebuffed him, made a laughingstock of him? I could not answer that. I'd only spent a short time with the man. All I knew was that if he was the boogeyman, he was also a masterful liar and schemer.

When I stepped out of Guy Marcotte's trailer that night, I was grateful for the slight breeze that had come up while I was inside, adding a cool edge to the sweltering hot summer night. The air was still pungent with smoke from whatever ritual madness the locals were undertaking half a block away, and the darkness hid a million crickets who serenaded me with their cyclical song as I hurriedly made for my car.

I slipped into the low-slung driver's seat and locked the door behind me. I had felt an unmistakable sense of foreboding when I'd first arrived in Hagar's Heath, and my time with Guy Marcotte had done little to quell the sense that I was not safe-and neither, I feared, was Richie Caplan. He'd borrowed Guy's car to go over to Jinny's apartment, to confront him with his suspicions, to try to put an end to the harassment once and for all. At least that's what he told Guy and what Guy told me. I didn't know who to believe at that point, but before I went galloping off to find the truth, I needed to cover my ass. I used my cellphone to call the police department and was routed through to Darren's office. It was late, but he was still hard at work. I asked if he'd had any further news of Jared's condition. He hadn't. I told him what I'd learned from Guy and that I was now heading over to Jin Chau's apartment and invited him to join me there if he felt like it. He did. I hung up and got set to start the car. I turned the key but nothing happened.

The silence in place of the expected whizzing of the Mazda's rotary engine coming to life was deafening. This had never happened before. Sure, the car is old, but it's as reliable as the day is long. Had it finally given up the ghost?

I unlocked the door and swung it open. I pulled the hood-release latch and stepped out of the car. It was hot, dark, quiet. Even the crickets were taking a break. I took a step toward the front of the vehicle but stopped when I saw something unusual out of the corner of my eye. It looked like a big red donut on the hood of my car. I frowned and moved closer. What the heck...? It looked like...paint...someone had painted a big red circle on the hood. Stupid Hagar's Heath hoodlums! But wait, next to the first red round circle was another and.. .I began to twist my head to see the design more clearly. That was when the dog began to growl, maybe even the same dog as before. The crickets resumed their chirping madness, fast and furiously loud. I froze, not from the night creature's warnings, but something much more sinister. To the left of the second "O" was another symbol, a letter, also blood red. The letter "B."

BOO.

I heard the whistle of something moving swiftly through air and then nothing.

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I awoke with a weight on my chest so oppressive it felt as if my lungs were clogging up with cotton batting and even one more breath might be the last I could manage. My brain screamed: What's happening to me? Is this a heart attack? Am I in a hospital?

The truth was worse.

I was still in Hagar's Heath. Still hot, still dark, still the growling of the dog and crazy cricket chirping.

But something was different. I wasn't standing by my car anymore. I was on the ground. I'd been moved-dragged?-into a narrow, dank corridor, somewhere between two trailers and behind one of those big, black, plastic garbage disposal bins. I knew I must have been pulled by my feet because my shirt had ridden up to my shoulder blades and my back felt tender from where the skin had rubbed off against gravel and who knows what else. I was lying on my back. My hands were tied together, as were my ankles. Definitely not in a hospital. The weight on my chest pinning my arms was a person. A person I recognized. A person who was staring down at me and, seeing that I was awake, smiled a broad smile and whispered, "Boo."

I beheld the face of the boogeyman.

It wasn't until I'd collected my thoughts and an appropriate four-letter-laden comeback that I realized I was also gagged.

"Helloooooo handsome," Jin Chau purred. "Happy to see me?"

Jin was wearing skin-tight jeans and a white top that looked more like a blouse than a shirt. His face beneath the gaudy orange-pink of his hair was a mushroom-coloured canvas made perfect thanks to thick layers of concealer and dim lighting. He was wearing too much of a nose-choking, flower-scented perfume. One of his slender hands was poised coquettishly on his sparrow chest and I saw that his long nails were freshly painted luminescent silver.