The Boy Must Die (2 page)

“What?”

The shape stopped, turned part of itself towards Darren.

Darren puffed up his chest. In words set far back in his mouth, he quietly uttered “
Mene Mene Tekel
.”

He knew he must hurry, do it right or start again. His pants came off over his boots. His black T-shirt was next and dropped on top of his pants. Naked, he turned three times to his right, three times to his left, chanting the words, sure of the power of the song. When he stopped, he brushed cold sweat from his forehead.
Keep your mind pure, like Cody said.
Out of the cloth bag he slid a long glimmering knife and laid it beside the sacred text, its pages open to the picture of the tongue and the star. He’d memorized the words and repeated them now: “Naked come I, pure and ready for thee.” Stroking his bare chest and thighs, he let the sacred words swirl in his mind. Then he stopped. A few feet from where he stood, a noise. Then he heard another. And one more again.

Darren slowly raised his head. His mind warned him:
Hide the knife! The book!
It came closer. Reached the doorway. Darren stepped back, his boot scraping the knife over the concrete. The creak came again and sounded like screaming in Darren’s ears. A heavy footstep, a whiff of body odour. A click, then a whirring sound. Darren stumbled. His eyes darted frantically. He cupped his hands over his penis.
Find a corner, grab the knife!
As he opened his lips, panic froze his vocal cords. His knees began to shake as a flash of light exploded into the room.

“Who the fuck’s there?” he whispered, the floating red from the flash blinding him to the huge shape lumbering towards him from the dark doorway.

Billy Yamamoto shivered in his thin cotton pyjamas though the June air was warm. He was sitting on the steps of his wind-worn back porch waiting for the dawn to brighten the distant butte of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Before him stretched open ground covered with wild bergamot and gently waving spear grass. The line of barbed-wire fence to his right ran west into foothills and stone outcroppings. What always came to him at this dark hour of sleeplessness were childhood memories. This morning he was recalling winters in the 1950s skating at the Kinsmen’s rink. No wonder you’re cold, he thought.

Billy turned east to ponder the gold band along the horizon. The light stirred other memories. Three weeks earlier. His father in the white room, yellow edging the lowered blind. Arthur’s cold face a shrunken version of its former self. And then the vista of the Coaldale cemetery surrounded by a green haze of barley standing like blades in the nearby prairie. Billy heard again the Anglican minister intone the final prayer. He stared again at his older half-brother. Toshiro held his arms tightly at his sides, his face bent in solemn obeisance towards Arthur Yamamoto’s pine coffin.

The first shafts of daylight were streaking the plain as Billy got up and walked back into the house. Saturday was shaping up to be another long, lonely day. He was tired of reminding himself why he’d taken early retirement, leaving his job of twenty-five years as a detective inspector with the Vancouver city police force. Seven months now since he’d last picked up a day roster for his team and assigned squad duties. He headed into the bedroom, knowing his pounding mind would not let
him off easily. He climbed into bed. Should he take Ativan and grab a few hours?
For Christ’s sake. Pull yourself together.

After a while, he flicked open his eyes. He had fallen into a dreamless sleep. The throaty, desperate howling outside the window sounded like a cougar. He sat up. The red letters on the digital clock glowed: 5:47. So it was only for a moment or two. It was like suffering a persistent back ache, this bloody insomnia. He cautioned himself not to blame Arthur’s illness for finally prompting him to move back to the Prairies. True, a respectable pension and full medical benefits were nothing to scoff at. Even so, Billy couldn’t help conjuring up the face of Harry, his former homicide partner. Billy and Harry Stone had worked side by side for eleven years until the cold, wet April night one year ago when the salt breezes off Juan de Fuca shook the cherry blossoms in backyards from English Bay to Shaughnessy.

Billy grinned at the memory of him and Harry sitting in the unmarked cruiser on East Hastings. They’d been keeping tabs on a Triad that peddled twelve-year-old girls out of the Stanton Hotel. Most of east-end Vancouver was a warren of sad avenues lined with dollar stores, crack houses, and hookers. Harry suggested getting coffee at an all-night greasy spoon; he climbed from the cruiser, and four Triad goons jumped him. In the ensuing scuffle, Harry got shot in the stomach; Billy’s left knee took a second bullet, but he was still conscious when the goons tied him with a red bungee cord and shoved him blindfolded into the back seat of a Mercedes. Later, weak with blood loss, he met kingpin Robert Lau, who greeted him like a lost twin, held him for a moment in mock embrace, and then watched as the goons rammed their fists into his stomach and kidneys. “That’s only a warning, brother,” Lau said. The next day Harry died. In court, Billy testified and sent two of the goons to the pen for killing an officer. But Billy read the signs. Soon after, his apartment windows were regularly smashed. His car was ditched and set ablaze. Doors all over Chinatown were slammed in his face. Lau was into contraband as well as heroin, and he wasn’t about to turn friendly with cops he couldn’t bribe.

Billy took in a breath. Was memory the only exciting thing he had left? He rubbed the scar on his left knee and was thankful it hadn’t pained him lately. He carefully lifted the top sheet, trying not to yank it. Amazing how old habits persist. Cynthia hadn’t lain beside him for years, sleeping like a baby, her arm thrown over her eyes. As if the night were not dark enough, he thought. The old pine floor creaked. Billy pulled on a robe and padded quietly around the foot of the four-poster. Sun cut through the space between the curtains and began to outline the shapes of the meagre furniture. Billy made two fists, lay facedown on the dusty floor, and started his push-up routine — one hundred with fists closed, one hundred with splayed palms turned inward. Counting, he held his breath for every five and let his mind feel the burn, then exhaled.

His spirits felt better after his workout. From the bedroom, Billy walked barefoot down the narrow hall into the kitchen. How regular these early mornings had become. Not like Vancouver days, sleeping until eight-thirty, taking a quick coffee before leaving for the office at nine. Billy filled the percolator and made his first pot. He drank a cup, sitting with his legs crossed at the small metal table he used for meals. Around the kitchen were the tools of his early retirement: garden shovel, hoes, drill kit for roof and porch repairs. On every side-table in the front parlour lay the mysteries and biographies he’d started and then sworn to pick up again. Be proud of one project, at least, he thought. The honour garden in memory of Arthur. He’d drawn a good design; he’d researched traditional Japanese dry gardens. The turned sod and pressed sand foundation were only the beginning.

Billy listened to the old wood cracking in the rising warmth. He poured a second cup and thought about the time he first described his grandfather Naughton’s ranch to Harry Stone. “A small spread,” he said to him, “by Alberta standards. No more’n five hundred and twenty acres of grazing pasture and hayfields.” The day he drove east from Vancouver into the Rockies, Billy swore to himself: “I have no intention of raising horses on granpa’s ranch. I intend to stay calm in my retirement.”

Billy was now pacing the kitchen linoleum. He clicked on the radio. Nothing but classical music and weather at this early hour.

A male coyote was standing five feet from the back steps as Billy opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch.

“You old rascal,” Billy whispered. “You keep early hours. What was it you were howling over? Some hawk steal your breakfast?”

The coyote turned its head away. Along its spine and haunches, its coat still carried the thick hair of winter. A skinny male, not young, but not sickly. Granpa Naughton had taught Billy how to tell a mangy rabid specimen from a healthy one.

“Go on, you.”

The coyote loped away towards the concession road, a long winding cut of gravel bordered by more barbed wire.

The coffee needed reheating when Billy sauntered back into the kitchen. Crows were cawing on the rooftop of the house. A flock of angry sparrows flew up from a willow outside the sink window and startled him. Billy sighed and looked up. The ceiling plaster sagged near the light. The tin mouldings and borders cried out for fresh paint. To hell with them, he thought. Back in the bedroom, he changed into his gardening sweats. He stared at his five-foot-six frame in the mirror. It was his mother’s Scottish ancestry that had shaped his square forehead. He was still holding fast to one hundred and sixty pounds. At fifty-four, his thighs were hard and his stomach flat. When he and Cynthia were married, she always said she loved the hazel of his eyes and the deep rich black of his hair, as thick on his head now as it was the day they divorced.

Billy glanced at the digital clock. It was 6:45, and he decided to pull out his mat. He sat down, crossed his legs yogi style, clearing his mind for the
za-zen
and the wave of calm. After ten minutes, he climbed back into bed.

Later, when a car turned from the concession road and clanged over the Texas gate leading into the ranch house yard, Billy sprang up from the mattress and shook his head. It was 10:05.

“Damn,” he said. He rose and went to the window. A trail of dust
swirled by the fence posts. Running into the kitchen, he saw a blue-and-white city cruiser pull up to the back steps. The driver honked once and then jumped out of his seat. Billy recognized him and walked out onto the porch.

“Royce. What brings you out here so early?”

“Chief didn’t get a hold of you yet, sir?”

“Come in, Royce. I can put a fresh pot on the range.”

The young sergeant pulled off his sunglasses and walked into the kitchen behind Billy. He waited by the screen door as Billy filled the percolator with fresh water.

“Don’t bother about me, sir.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t take coffee, sir. Or tea.”

“I beg your pardon. You Latter Day Saints?”

“No, sir. I have an allergy to caffeine.”

Royce blushed at his own words and shuffled his feet. After he’d ventured a pause, he spoke up.

“Chief said you’d been having trouble with your Pontiac, so he wondered. . . .”

“You came out here just to tell me that?”

Royce took a step back.

“No, sir. Chief said he was going to call you and let you know I was on my way. He said he’d explain the whole matter to you.”

“A case, you mean?”

“I’m not sure, sir. You on contract with us?”

“Well, your police board thinks I should be put on per diem stipends if and when I’m called in. But only as a part-time deputy. Not much call for homicide back-up in the city.”

Royce nodded and seemed to show interest.

“My last case was that stabbing in April. A couple of rednecks from Montana decided to ass around with Bobby Weasel Woman.”

“He got convicted.”

“Yes. It wasn’t easy.”

Royce crossed his arms and stood more at ease. Billy had met him a couple of times with Chief Eddy “Butch” Bochansky. Royce was polite, no more than twenty-five, and curious. He’d asked Billy once about his work in Vancouver. Small talk among policemen, certainly, but Royce had a sincerity about him that Billy had liked from the start.

“Chief is lucky to have you.”

Billy stood quiet for a moment. Nothing was worse than the loss of his father. But then to have to spend days grieving in an empty house full of empty hours. Well, he was lucky
he had Butch
.

Billy counted the rings as he headed towards the hallway. The black rotary phone hung in a corner by the kitchen door. Above it was a tarnished wall sconce in the shape of a tulip, made of brass and smoky glass. Billy clicked the switch on the plate of the sconce. Ring seven. No need to guess who this was. He pulled in a breath and grinned. He wondered for a second, his hand poised on the receiver, just how long Butch would let the phone go before hanging up. Billy knew his old friend well enough to figure he’d ring it a hundred times and keep on ringing it until he got an answer. He rubbed his hand through his rumpled black hair, cautioned himself. Ever since February, he and Chief Eddy “Butch” Bochansky had met once a week to drink Colombian, Butch claiming he liked to talk over police business. This kind of call had come many times before, but as he lifted the receiver on ring sixteen, Billy sensed he was not going to spend the rest of his morning on the ranch.

“Get you out of your easy chair, buddy?” Butch’s voice sounded tired and edgy.

“I was digging up sod, Butch. Or planning to. You having a slow morning?”

“Is the pope Catholic? I wish! Young Royce make it there?”

“Right on time, Butch.”

“I got held up,” Butch coughed. “I need a favour.”

“Go.”

“We had a juvenile case last winter. Just before you moved back. Around Christmas. A fourteen-year-old boy was found hanging in Satan House.”

“Satan House?”

“The old Bartlett place on Ashmead. The press got hold of the story, discovered the local kids called the house that, and the nickname stuck. Evidence put the case down as teenage suicide. No foul play. Coroner Hawkes uncovered no proof to the contrary. Now, I know you’d rather be at home staring at the view, but we got us a messy plate of worms this morning. Satan House again. Same basement room. Another male of fourteen. But this one smells like homicide.”

“When did you find the body?”

“About an hour and a half ago. The kid was strung up and mutilated. Around Friday midnight we figure.”

“How bad?”

“Surface knife wounds. One cut in the shape of a pentacle on the chest area. Also, both wrists scored.”

“Anything else?”

“I need your experience, buddy. Sergeant Dodd has asked to be on the case. He and I don’t quite see eye to eye. Let’s say he’s a bit slow on the uptake. You ever met Dodd?”