Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (20 page)

“He won’t accept a paranormal explanation.”

"There is no paranormal explanation. You're a perfectly normal sleazebag. Or at least, there's nothing supernatural about your bags of sleaze. Also, there’s nothing paranormal in the canal."
Don’t be so
sure,
I thought, again thinking of Schenk’s blank stare at the
underwater
lights. “As far as the investigation goes, I don't see any reason to
suspect the supernatural until the data supports it, either.”

“You are at least open to the possibilities. Schenk is not.”

“You can’t blame him for looking to the mundane first. Don’t
sell him short. He’s not entirely close minded, like some other cops I’ve worked with.”

“In the end, Marnie,” he said, gazing at me a bit too intently, “it will be you and me.”

I quelled a shiver, because something told me he was right. I’m
not precognitive, and I can’t see the future, but the gooseflesh on my arms said there would come a time, near the end of all this, that it would be just me and Scarrow. And maybe not in a good way. The silly, inappropriate giggles threatened to return full force and I
tightened my guts to keep them at bay. “You think so?”

“The sooner you shut him out, the easier it will be to maneuver
around him,” he advised smoothly. It made me think of the snake offering Eve an apple, and I didn’t like it at all; despite my attempts to keep that off my face, the priest must have seen a flicker of
concern, and he rushed to explain.

“If you show him your cards, he won’t need you anymore, Marnie.”

Instinct told me to correct him, to maintain a wedge of distance. “Miss Baranuik.”

His eyes were hypnotizing, dark pools of salvation and sin, a cocktail of heavenly delights and devilish temptation
. Soul savior
, my mind teased.
No rash today, eh, Marnie?
“I need him to need you,” he said. “You’re my foot in the door. I need continued access. That means limiting his exposure to our work.”

Our work.
“I see.”

“Do you, Marnie? This is a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to explore a real poltergeist.”

Right case, wrong problem
. “Britney Wyatt is missing.”

“Britney Wyatt is already dead.”

“Can you save her?” I said, alarmed at how soft my voice had gone, as though he and I were sharing secrets in the little office. I
cleared my throat and sat up straight. “Her soul, I mean?”

“I will try,” he promised. “But we must first release her from the clutches of the poltergeist.”

“Why would a poltergeist want Britney Wyatt dead?”

“That, you should ask Simon.”

I cast a pointed look at the monitor. “Schenk's asking Simon. I’m asking you.”

Uncertain thoughts marched behind his brown eyes in military fashion. I wanted to believe he was as he appeared, just an ex-holy man with a touch of kink, trying to do good deeds with the spirit world. “You understand, I cannot divulge what is told to me in confession.”

My guts were still doing a happy jig and the invigorating zing in my veins tried to persuade me. Was this the Blue Sense trying to tell
me something in a new way? “You're so full of shit, you squeak going into a turn. Priests take confession, not ex-priests. Some
defrocked quack doesn't get to invoke the sanctity of confessional privilege,” I challenged. “So, tell me something, Ren Scarrow.”

He leaned back, unruffled by my offensive. “Yes?”

“Why did the church
really
boot you? Because you’re a perv, eh?”

“I can’t save souls if I don’t know how,” he said. “The church
does
not want to learn and evolve. It does not want to challenge old
beliefs. I
was finding my research restricted, but I was willing to work
together with them to find a middle ground. They were not.”

“Will you…”
Save my soul, too? Wait! No!
“Would you…”
Get him alone, Marnie.
“Wanna go bowling?”

His eyebrows twitched up together, soon followed by a curve of his lips. “Are you asking a priest on a date?”

“Ex-priest,” I said. “And it's bowling. Unless we're on an episode of
Roseanne
or you're secretly the Big Lebowski, I don't think this qualifies as a date. I'm just going to pump you for information and smack you with some ugly shoes.”

“I don’t bowl.” The Blue Sense caught the rank untruth, hitting me in the side of the brain the way a sour note on a violin hurts the ear.

“Liar,” I said. “I spent too long getting lied to by a frigging Leprechaun, and I'm not above taking it out on your skinny-jeaned butt.
Besides, you
gotta see me in a bowling alley, I’m totally awesome. We can do what you said before: get drunk and discuss the afterlife, minus the naked bit.”

“Fine. Tonight,” he said, moving to put his root beer can down.

His aim was bad; the can hit the full mug of coffee, slopping it
off the desk and into my lap. I yelped and jumped out of the rolling chair, which didn’t go so well for me, since the wheels were locked. The chair started tipping, wheels clattering, and I abandoned ship in
a flurry
of reports, files, and matching airborne slashes of hot brown coffee and root beer foam. Scarrow was quick to rescue several items from the desk, turning to set them variously around the room in safe
locations. I
grabbed at the soggy papers and flapped them, more concerned with saving Schenk’s paperwork than the liquid seeping into the lap of my jeans.

Scarrow straightened and reached for a box of tissues on a filing cabinet. “Here. Sorry.”

“Well, aren't you slick.” I snatched the tissues from his hand and began cleaning up his mess. The Blue Sense reported a shutdown of
feelings, a shielding measure like the pulling of drapes against the
glare of the sun. For a moment, I caught
he meant to do that
, followed by,
to cloud the investigation?
But that didn’t feel quite right. I couldn’t quite get a handle on his motives.

“Slick as a handful of goobers,” I muttered, dabbing Schenk’s pencil work delicately, my giggle fit effectively squashed.

“Then we make a great pair. Tonight,” he said, backing toward the door, laying one hand on the doorknob. “My place first. Come alone.”

I didn’t agree, but he seemed to take my silence as acquiescence. He left, and I turned my focus back to cleaning up, half-listening to
the voices coming from the left hand monitor. I bent to retrieve the evidence box from the dry spot on the floor where Scarrow had tucked it.

The lid was on.
Of course it is. He just tidied it when he put it down.
Did he?
What do you think, he stole something? He’s a priest.
Ex-priest
. I
peeked in the box. Everything seemed to be there. Purse, wallet,
lipstick, junk. I put the lid back on, feeling stupid and paranoid, and hoisted it onto the desk, putting it kinda-exactly where it had been. I’d have
to mention all this to Schenk, of course, and apologize for his messy papers. If he needed me to do data entry later, I’d volunteer,
although to be fair, Father Scarrow should get his skinny butt back here to do it. He was the klutz this time, not me.

“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” Simon was saying in the interrogation room. Schenk’s ever-present pencil went
taptaptap.

“Let’s go through it again, from the beginning.”

I sat back in Schenk’s damp swivel chair and sighed, tossing browned tissues in the garbage pail. It was going to be a very long morning, and I was going to have to let the wet spot on the crotch of my jeans dry before I snuck into the station’s lunch room for a refill. My gloves smelled like coffee and root beer.

I loaded up the Seaway’s security video on the second monitor,
and watched on repeat, in grainy detail, as Britney Wyatt stepped
away from her boyfriend. Over and over, I watched as she stared down at the
water for a good two minutes, ignoring him as he tried to get her
attention, before diving head-first into the cold, black depths of the Welland Canal. I must have watched the clip more than a dozen times, each time wishing for a different ending, a happy ending. A
last-minute rescue.
Even a tearful proposal while medics treated Britney for
hypothermia would have been better than the real outcome. Each time I watched, of course, it concluded the same way. Simon Hiscott crumpled at the edge of the canal.

Britney Wyatt did not resurface.

AFTER WHAT SEEMED
like an endless session of looking through files, watching security videos, listening to Schenk grumble about
the messy paperwork, and researching poltergeist theories and
sightings, I
went back to North House to try and relax. I couldn’t shake the
feeling
that Scarrow was hiding something more than a penchant for
boinking short, dorky skeptics in funny hats.

I’d just removed my parka, handing it to Mr. Merritt, and had started untying my frog hat when Schenk’s call came.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I was considering a prolonged and shameless pursuit of
hedonism,” I told him, smoothing my frizzy ponytail.

“Translation?”

“Pizza, porn, and Dr. Pepper,” I said. “Not diet. I don’t do diet pop anymore. Aspartame melts magic herb-encrusted zombie
hybrids, so
who the heck knows what it does inside the living?” I gave Mr.
Merritt a wink at
heck
. He returned it with a tolerant smile.

Schenk silently digested this for a moment then asked, “This is your idea of an ideal afternoon?”

“It sure beats spelunking in the hoary pus caverns of Hell’s fifth circle.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” he said. “I need you at the
Welland
Canal Overflow Pond by the Twin Flight Locks. Park at New Red
Hook Cemetery. Need directions?”

“Nope. I’ll be there, Longshanks.” I gave Mr. Merritt a long sigh and he held up my parka so I could put it right back on again.

“Before you go, madam, your boyfriend called again on Skype. I told him I’d let you know.”

“Whoa,” I said with a laugh, zipping my parka up to the neck. I gave the elastic on my wrist a preemptive snap. It didn’t work, and I
allowed myself the briefest recollection of Batten’s long, deep, dizzying,
après
-sex kisses. “Agent Batten is
not
my boyfriend. As if Harry would let me have a real boyfriend.”

Mr. Merritt opened his mouth to say something, and then
decided
against it. I lifted my eyebrows to prompt him, and he said,
“Begging your pardon if this is not my place to say, but Mrs. Santonen had many admirers.”

“Grandma Vi?” I felt my jaw hang open and snapped it shut. “Grandma was here? With Harry? And she had boyfriends? Didn’t it bother him?”

“It certainly never seemed to, madam, but I shouldn’t like to presume to know Lord Dreppenstedt’s thoughts on the matter,” he
said, “nor am I an expert on the workings of his Lordship’s heart. I only mention it because it was a regular occurrence. Mrs. Santonen often visited with
a beau on her arm. As a pair, they were very…
laissez-faire
about
such things.” The Blue Sense did not pick up on any condemnation in the little old man, only affection tinged with nostalgia.

Damn. Grandma got her some
. “I, uh…” I made sure my frog hat
was tied up tight under my chin and reached for the doorknob. “I don’t know what to say about that. Thanks. For the info. Kinda
blowing my mind, Combat Butler.”

“You have her spark,” he said warmly, “if you don’t mind me saying.”

Again surprised, I gave my head a dazed shake, waved at him, and hurried back out to the garage.

***

After a harrowing drive through increasingly strong and swirling winds — during which I had to contend with increasingly
strong and
swirling images of Batten as potential for-realsies boyfriend material
— I reached the cemetery and parked behind a bunch of news vans. I
took one last desperate slurp of my coffee, trying not to dump it down the front of my parka as I simultaneously lurched from the
front seat and crammed the lid back on, leaving the empty husk in the console cup holder. The cops were vigilant at the perimeter, and had backed it off all the way to the entrance to the newer cemetery.

The former town of Red Hook, once settled between what was now Thorold and Niagara Falls, no longer existed, but the two cemeteries remained, new on the hill, and old down below close to
the overflow pond, connected by a road long forgotten by maintenance crews. The two graveyards served as the final resting place of Lutherans and
Anglicans for more than two hundred years. Headstones here still had familial ties to names I’d heard my whole life growing up in this region; the cemeteries were littered with wobbly, broken, moss-covered limestone headstones dating back to 1790. Epps, Stones, Steeles, Ridouts, McKenzies and McClintocks, Donnellys and Adsits, Bundells and Bowens, all lay with their names slowly eroding under
tall, spreading maple trees, now bare branched and coated with ice that clicked with every frigid gust of wind. I tied the green chin straps of my frog hat tighter and tucked my mouth into the neckline of my parka to keep my chin warm. As long as a couple of Italian plumbers didn't come bounding across the graveyard to land on my head, I felt fairly safe.

A matching pair of Niagara Regional Policemen were
maintaining
the integrity of the scene, facing off against the media with stern faces. The Blue Sense stirred to the clamor of excitement in the
reporters
around me, buzzing like a swarm of blowflies on a corpse, voices lost in a chorus of questions and demands. The cops were carefully shuttered, hiding their tired frustration. It was easy to pick out
Schenk’s towering
form bobbing through the mess of officers inside the perimeter, headed in my direction. I didn’t move to meet up with him until he was at the yellow tape. He said something to one of the officers and
they waved me through in unison.