Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (17 page)

The old summer cottage had been painted the cheerful, vibrant
hue of dandelions by the original owners; it was now a chipped,
yellowish mess, looking like a giant had carelessly spit out a tooth that was no longer cutting it. My sisters Claire and Rowena shared the rent, although, according to Carrie, Claire was studying marine biology in British Columbia for the year. Most of the other cottages had been renovated, not simply repainted, back in the eighties; Rowena’s was still a ramshackle dump. One of the back windows was boarded up and covered with heavy black plastic. The lights were all off in the house, except for a bare bulb over the back step. It swung back and forth in the vigorous wind, casting shadows haphazardly as it dodged the snatching limbs of the neighbor’s denuded willow tree.

I wondered if Rowena was home. I wondered if I’d be welcome. I wondered if she knew I was here, if the rest of the family had told her. I hadn’t seen Rowena since I left Virgil, Ontario for Seattle, when she told me she had no intention of contacting me ever again unless I was willing to “make things right” and give Harry over to Dad, as if Harry was some sort of preternatural prize and had no say
in the matter. I didn’t, of course, and she’d kept her word. Two hundred feet of sand and a chain link fence separated us, but she
may as well have been on the opposite side of the Niagara River gorge.

Batten had mentioned hunting a revenant in this area, when
we'd shared a rare moment with our walls down. I stared back out at the lake to try and see it through his eyes. This was where he’d lost his grandfather, Colonel Jack Batten, in a raid on the lair of Aston Sarokhanian; it was no surprise he hated this place. To me it was a scene from childhood picnics by the lake in the summer, of walking along the sand in search of beach glass, and if the bacteria levels weren’t too high, wading in up to our knees and splashing about. I tried to imagine how cold the water was tonight, and the sound of
the ice drove me away, back to the shelter of Mr. Merritt’s
unassuming BMW sedan.

I popped back into the car, not bothering to turn on the heated seats, and cruised up by the pollution treatment plant, where I
parked again and finished my coffee, because I am a total pro at choosing scenic tour destinations. Ellie had lived two streets over when we were kids, and we’d spent most of our youth goofing off in
what
we’d called “the Woods Way,” a seam of naturalized forest
separating
Port Weller from the Welland Canal, loping down the paths that
weaved through the brush and trees; I'd told Sheriff Hood that I wasn't afraid of running through the darkened forest during our early-morning exercise sessions, and this strip of greensward was a big part of why. The two pathways that the public knew about were cordoned off by
yellow tape, twisting gently in the night breeze, and the quiet
community that lived here didn’t seem to notice. Porch lights were out. Curtains were closed against the night. The flickering blue glow of TV sets lit upper windows of bedrooms and dens. Here and there, chimneys leaked wood smoke.

When I got out of the car, bringing my little brown paper donut bag with me in case I needed a snack, I heard distant radio chatter to my right, and knew there was probably a uniform stationed near one of the paths. The trick would be choosing my route carefully, using the less-active trails to get through the small forest to the canal, paths known only to locals, which that didn’t look like much, and that, in summer, ended in thick, stinking bogs, and filled up with snow this time of year. They wouldn’t be impassable, but it wouldn’t be an
easy trek. I used my iPhone's flashlight to lead the way as I cut through from the subdivision to the spot by the sand piles where
Schenk had been parked earlier.

I glanced up the road. It was still blocked off, and two squad cars
were sitting driver’s-to-driver’s side, in case the officers keeping
warm inside wanted to chat, or pass a thermos or a smoke. They were too far away to notice little old me standing in the dark by the tree line. As long as I stayed out of the puddles of light offered by the street lights and kept my own light's visibility to a minimum, I probably wouldn't be noticed.

My Doc Martens crunched ice and ground grit, and I thought
hadn’t I been waiting for this sound?
Then:
This sound is awful
. I reached in and took a bite of my donut for comfort, then let it slide with a crinkle back into the bag. The wind had picked up, and was making a
squeal-ting
through the rigging of the tied-up boats, rocking the yachts at the pier on the other side of the canal. The sound of it made the skin at the nape of my neck crawl, and under my cheerful frog hat, my scalp prickled with goose bumps. My frozen bootlaces ticked
against the leather. Despite the few empty trucks parked behind
chain
link fence just beyond the sand piles, and the cops just one loud
bellow away, it felt lonely down here.

Except when I got closer to the canal, I no longer felt alone.
Probably, that was my imagination.
My stupid, stupid imagination
.

From where I lurked, I could watch the black water in the canal
move ever so slightly, more a shift than a ripple. At the lake the wind had bullied the water around, but here, in the shelter of trees,
sand piles, and cement walls, the water in the canal was far less disturbed.
The surface tension glittered in one spot, forming an imperfect, sparkling oval, a stick-figure head drawn by a child. I blinked and squeezed my eyes shut, sure they were playing tricks on me, while
my
imagination offered up a list of aquatic monsters that could have been displaced and living in the locks, munching unsuspecting
swimmers: nymphs and naiads, sprites and sirens, mermaids, kelpie, selkies, Shellycoat, the Kraken… I had to venture out of the shadows to peer
into the water. Two steps closer to the canal. Four steps. Five. I attempted to estimate the water’s depth with nothing to go on except
the size of the ships that passed through.
Deep enough to host Leviathan?
Not likely; besides, the Keeper at the Hellmouth would have boiled the water.

Scraps of her shirt,
Schenk had said
. A leather shoe.
That ruled out the kelpie, now that I thought about it. In my overdue expert
opinion, a kelpie would have eaten the shoe. Kelpies love the taste of cured skins. I made a mental note to stock up on pork rinds if I ever had a case where one was in the vicinity.

Forgetting about cops and news helicopters for a moment, I looked again for the glittering ice sheet, but the water was only
showing a
uniform bed of ripples in the freshening wind. I had probably
imagined the oblong surface disturbance.

Or maybe I hadn't. Two feet closer to me, a sheet of milky white crystals was breaking apart. A few feet to my right, another patch began to form before my eyes, crystallizing and then dissipating. It looked like an invisible ice dragon was leaving tip-toe footprints as it crept toward me on the surface of the water.

For a second I thought I saw a wiggling, teasing flicker, a white worm of light within the black depths. I leaned forward to squint
past the reflection of the streetlight above, ignoring the new ice
forming close to the edge, trying to see deeper into the water, thinking it was
unlikely that any light source was down there, but holding my
breath
with genuine expectation of seeing it again. A diver’s helmet? No,
marine rescue divers had finished with this area and were safely in a group at the lake-end. There couldn’t be anyone down there alone, right?
Not any
one, my annoying brain piped up.
Any
thing. No, there shouldn’t be any
thing
either. But there was. Part of me was sure of it.
I felt myself leaning further and further forward, as far as I dared, ready to dart backward if a hand or claw or tentacle lashed out at
me.

That’s when I discovered that a scuffle behind me can make me squeal like a toddler on a kiddie coaster. I spun around, readying my fists of fury in case I had to fist and fury my way to freedom. My sudden spin caused my frog hat to flop forward into my eyes and I
shoved it back desperately with the aforementioned furious
fistitudes. Without punching myself squarely in the kisser, even.

Schenk stood there with his arms crossed, looking like an unimpressed but surprisingly well-groomed yeti. His eyes were calm
and blank, but his lips wanted to do that upwards twist-pucker they did. This time, I couldn’t tell whether he wanted to mock me or demand answers. Probably both.

I slapped a gloved hand over my hammering heart and accused, “I thought you were a ghost.”

“Ghost, eh?” he repeated.

“Or an invisible ice dragon.”

“Ice dragon in a leather jacket?” he clarified.

“I know, right? How scary would that be?”

He shook his head. “You snuck onto an active crime scene without police authorization.”

“Well, erm…” I squinted up a foot and a half at him, and made it a question. “No?”

“How are you trying to pull off a ‘no’, eh? You’re here.” He
demonstrated my here-ness by waving a hand in front of my face.

“Are you sure?” I stepped back two full steps. “Maybe you’re only imagining me here. You’re a man, you’ve probably imagined me all sorts of places: bed, shower, hockey rink—”

He interrupted me. “I caught you at my crime scene.”

“
Caught
is such a loaded word. How about 'bumped into' or 'joined'? It’s friendly to join. It’s also friendly to bring your cop a
donut.” I held the brown paper bag up.

He gave me a withering glare. “I don’t eat donuts.”

I didn't even need the Blue Sense to call him a liar; nobody went to a donut shop and walked out with just their coffee every time, no matter how good the coffee might be. I just nodded solemnly, like he had me totally convinced.

“What kind?” he asked.

“Maple dip.”

“
You’re
a maple dip,” he told me as I handed up the bag. He looked into it. “There’s a bite out of it.”

“Ghost did it.”

“Mmhmm. Remind me why I put up with you?”

“Your boss said you had to?” I guessed, beaming him my best smile. “Malashock owes me one. Besides, she likes me.” I shrugged. “She doesn’t
hate
me, anyway.”

 He rolled away the tension in his shoulder and studied the black water of the Welland canal. “Here to do your thing?”

I grimaced, and said reluctantly, “I was thinking about it, yeah.”

“This work the same as it did at the café?”

“Unfortunately for me, it’ll probably work better,” I said. “Impressions of violence stay pretty vibrant. You’ve got your scene
reconstruction sketched out, right?”

Schenk made an affirmative noise but made no move to show or tell me anything. I nodded once; I preferred not to know any details before I started. In this case I knew a little, but it would have to do. I removed my gloves and stuffed them in my pocket. The night air nipped at my sensitive hands and I felt it right through my knuckles.

“Now I tell you how it really happened,” I promised.

“Not too close,” he growled, hooking me by the hood of my parka.

“Gotta go where she went, Constable FunTimes. Not all the way, but…” I shot him a look up over my shoulder. “I
have
to
get close. That’s my job.”

He considered me for a long beat then released my hood. “I
don’t want to fish you out of the drink.”

I looked at the canal where another icy patch was just breaking up. “Yeah, that’d be bad.”

He did something with his right hand; I didn’t realize what he was up to until the handcuff closed in on my right wrist. He linked the other end to his left wrist with a jingling click.

“You’re pretty quick with those things,” I said. “Is magic your hobby?”

“Nope. Told you, I knit.” He smirked liked he was joking, but the Blue Sense disagreed; there was a thread of the truth, there.
Interesting.
But I’d investigate that later.
Horrible end-of-life stuff always comes first.
Because that’s how awesome my life is. I'm handcuffed to a giant cop, and my libido has nothing to say about it. Now I've seen everything.

I took a moment to pull cold air deep into my lungs and relax. Until this moment I hadn’t given much thought to Britney Wyatt as a
living, breathing person; I’m fairly good at staying emotionally detached during a case. I’d let my mind flit upon how cold her dive
into the canal would be in November, especially
this
brutal
November, but when the thoughts got too grim, I’d let my mind shy away and get clinical.

There would be no shrinking back, now. If the Groping worked as well as I was expecting, I’d share whatever happened to her just
before
she went into the drink. If her boyfriend shoved her, I’d share her surprise, confusion, sense of betrayal. If something snagged her,
something unnatural, I’d share her terror, her desperation to escape it, her fight to live. I’d read disturbing things on objects many times
before. I’d Groped the wedding ring of Chief Deputy Neil
Dunnachie,
who had been accidentally raised as a zombie; I’d felt his unholy
hunger, his faint recollections of life, a bare trace of his own self
remaining trapped
under the strong urge to devour flesh, and his horrible, one-track thoughts (“
Eat wife. Eat Paula.”
). I’d Groped through the entire apartment of another Paula, Paula McKnight, survivor of a serial
killer, to find her when she’d gone missing from witness protection. I’d felt panic and hatred and despair. This wasn’t going to be any better, I feared.