Rehab Run Read online

  Laurence leaned across the table and grabbed Sarah’s pack of cigarettes, shot her one of his smiles, lit one for himself, and another for her. Sarah gazed at him like she wanted to eat him for breakfast. With whipped cream.

  “Richard Doyle is one of the most gentle people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and would never – could never – hurt anyone. He built this place to help people. Not only would he never kill anyone, he would not disappear from his home like that, knowing I was coming to visit. With, by the way, dinner still cooking. He’s very sensitive to the feelings of others, particularly since his wife died. If you are making him your only suspect, instead of looking for him as a, I don’t know, hostage, or a victim of this madman who’s killing and dismembering people, then you are lazy and even more stupid than you look.”

  Ouch. I may be a hothead, but even I knew that was going a bit far and wouldn’t do anybody any favors. Fortunately, I was pretty sure it wasn’t against the law to call a police officer stupid and lazy. Reckless and counterproductive, abso-fucking-lutely, but illegal, no.

  One of the other cops in the room cleared his throat, and I looked up from the table, where I had been curling and uncurling a bamboo placemat instead of running around turning the house upside down in case some previous addict-slash-resident had left a wee rock of crack lying around. It was a novelty for me, not being the person in the room who went too far. I snuck a glance at our new cop friend, but he was looking at the door.

  “Thank you, Mr. Cleary,” Des said. I didn’t know how long he had been standing there; my hearing loss in one ear made me miss sound behind me sometimes, and there was noise still coming from the open basement door. “I’m sure you’ve given Staff Sergeant Lester a lot to think about.” He looked like he was trying to hide a flicker of amusement, and I got the impression he and Lester weren’t beer buddies. But more, he looked haggard, and even possibly a little scared. “For the time being, Mr. Doyle is a missing person. Not a person of interest. At this time,” he added. Person of interest. Cop speak for suspect.

  Lester looked like he wanted to belt Des, but he said nothing.

  Laurence stood up. He was white. “What did you find?” he said.

  Des shook his head slightly, and spoke to the group in the kitchen, the residents – and I didn’t know if anybody else was upstairs; there had been a dozen of us before I’d found the hand in the mailbox. Probably some people had already cleared out.

  “Thank you all for your patience. We know this has been a horrific and trying time for all of you.” He rubbed his forehead. He looked exhausted. “The house has been cleared – there is no one here that shouldn’t be, and you can rest assured that there will be a police presence inside and on the grounds in the days to come, both from local detachments and from our Major Crime Unit.” I didn’t know about anybody else, but I was glad to hear it. Unless the police presence was going to include this Lester character, in which case I might be happier pitching a tent in the woods, killer or no killer. “We’ve gotten initial statements from those of you who are here, but I’m afraid there will also be formal statements taken at the station in the next day or two. We’ll inform you of that schedule tomorrow. Those of you who have other places you can stay in the area are free to do so, as long as you give that information to one of the men here and you don’t stray too far.”

  So much for my sober-living companion back in Toronto.

  “Ideally, we would put you all up at a local hotel, but as you may be aware, there’s no room at the inn. Inns,” he said. He almost laughed. One of the cops did; a short yelping giggle which made him go red. “This is the number one tourist holiday of the year in the Valley here, with the Apple Blossom Festival on. So while this is a crime scene, we would ask you to confine yourselves to your rooms and the bathrooms and what have you, the kitchen here. And the dining hall, of course. The other buildings will be off limits for the time being. Your meetings or group… things, perhaps you could hold here in this room, or in the living room.

  “Needless to say, the, uh, cellar is off limits.”

  “No worries there,” one guy said. He had tattoos on his neck and a thick Australian accent. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him speak before. He obviously wasn’t good at Sharing either.

  Des clapped his hands once, a meeting-over gesture. “Thank you all for your cooperation, and as I say, you’ll all be safe. There’ll be law enforcement everywhere you look, and no doubt this situation will be resolved lickety-split.”

  People started to slowly rise from chairs, and the counsellor – Janet, that was her name – herded some of the residents into the living room for a chat. I declined. Laurence was still standing, still looking at Des for answers.

  “Go upstairs, would you, and have a look around,” Des said to the uniforms. “Answer any questions, be visible.” They looked relieved to have something to do.

  Lester, Laurence, Des, and I remained in the kitchen.

  “What happened?” Laurence said again. “Please.”

  Des motioned for us all to follow him outside onto the back porch. It was much colder now, and late. Laurence put his arm around me, and I leaned into him. I hated the reason he was here, but was grateful he had come.

  Des pulled a pack of American cigarettes from his breast pocket. He lit one and looked at the sky.

  “I know Dickie Doyle myself, you know,” he said to Laurence. “Not well, not like you do. But back in the day, my wife Sheila and his Rose became friends. They used to swim together at the Acadia pool.” I could tell Laurence wanted to hurry him up, and I pressed his arm and shook my head a bit. “Four of us used to go camping sometimes, down to Keji. Canoeing, bonfires, the whole bit. Never knew he went to Bennington.” Lester looked like he was trying to suppress a yawn. Theatrically.

  “Anyway, I’ve seen Dickie without his shirt on, when we were out on the lake. I’ve seen his tattoo.”

  “I didn’t know he had a tattoo,” Laurence said. “It never came up. I mean, I haven’t seen him with his shirt off since we roomed together.”

  “Well, it would have been since then. He got it when he married Rose. A big letter R, right here,” Des said, and indicated his chest, over his heart. “Sheila was after me to get one, and I said, ‘Honey, why do you want me to get an R on my chest?’” I smiled at him. I knew something bad was coming, but I smiled at Des. You had to like him.

  “We found that tattoo tonight, Mr. Cleary,” Des said. He cleared his throat. “We found it, and a good chunk of flesh around it, stapled to the sign at the end of Dickie’s driveway at the lake.”

  Oh God. “The ‘Rose’ sign,” I said.

  “Yes,” Des said. “‘Rose’, with skin tattooed with the letter R stapled neatly underneath.” Nobody moved. I felt like I couldn’t breathe for a minute. “And you want to know the oddest goddamn thing? When the crime scene techs came out there, they photographed everything, including that sign on their way in. They’re damn anal, those people. And that’s good, they’re supposed to be. It wasn’t until I was leaving to come here that something made me turn around and look, and I saw it.” He lit another cigarette off the first one.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I said. “So when all those cops and everybody was there…”

  “How’s that for you?” Des said. “Bold as brass. I got the forensic people out there right away and in the meantime I must have taken a dozen pictures of that thing. And I looked at the photos they took a while earlier, and sure enough, the damn thing wasn’t there. Checked it myself.”

  “Fuck me,” Lester said, and it sounded like the least snarky thing he’d said all night. He looked up at Laurence, who was about a foot taller than he was. “You okay there, sir?” He reached for Laurence’s arm.

  Suddenly I was supporting some of my brother’s weight. “No, but thank you,” Laurence said. “And I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you earlier.”

  He started to cry, quietly. I realized I had never seen anything make Laurence cry. Not w
hen our parents died. Not when Ginger was murdered. But this had. Dickie Doyle had.

  TEN

  By the time my head hit the pillow, the sky was starting to turn from black to a faint gray. I lay still and listened to hear if Laurence’s breathing had changed, whether he was asleep yet.

  He had called the B and B and told them he wouldn’t be coming, but told them to bill his credit card anyway. In the end, he phoned them again and transferred it to Sarah the dancer, with his compliments. He and I were going to stay together, and apparently at the inn they only had one queen bed per room. I love my brother, but sharing a bed with him, unless under duress, was pushing it. At Rose’s, I had a large private room – all the rooms were private, each with its own en suite bath – but we wheeled in a bed from one of the abandoned rooms. When we were sure we were settled in for the night, Laurence moved his bed length-wise against the door and fiddled with the castors so it wouldn’t move, all without a word.

  I wasn’t complaining. In the last two days I’d seen and heard enough to know that Rose’s Place was about as safe as a psychiatric hospital during a power cut. Police presence or not, I had no gun and no idea who I was up against. My big brother barring the door and a purloined screwdriver, snatched from a drawer in the resident’s kitchen before bed, tucked into a fanny pack under my t-shirt made me feel a bit better. A nice little automatic handgun would have done the trick even better. Though considering what we seemed to be dealing with here, perhaps something with a blade was the order of the day.

  Note to self: See where one could buy a machete in town.

  Of course, unlike some of my past adventures, this time it didn’t feel strictly personal to me – whoever killed Evan and the man in Dickie’s cabin – not to mention maimed Dickie – could probably have taken me out before now if I was a target. Instead, I got a head hurled in my direction and – was my newly clean brain playing tricks on me? – almost kind-sounding words about going home. But whatever was going on, it was centred around Rose’s Place and Dickie Doyle. Not only was I a resident of Rose’s, but my brother was one of Dickie’s oldest friends.

  “You asleep?” Laurence said.

  “No.” I stared at the ceiling in the dark, deciding whether to go downstairs and have a cigarette on the porch.

  “It’s not what you think, Danny,” he said. I saw something blue glow in the dark. Laurence was using my e-cig.

  “Isn’t it?” I said. “Larry.” And for some reason I started giggling. I turned over onto my side, facing his bed.

  “I really wanted the Mustang,” he said, and started laughing too. It felt so good to hear him laugh. Then I thought of Evan, and the laughter seemed to die in my throat.

  “Did you and Dickie ever fool around?” I asked quietly. Laurence was quiet. “You know. Back at Bennington. Some drunken night, sharing a room.” I thought of his tears. I wondered.

  I heard him sigh. “Straight people seem to think all gay people want to have sex with them, all the time.” I didn’t say anything, just watched the blue end of the cigarette and waited for my brother to talk. “No. That’s not fair. Dickie actually wasn’t like that. Back at school, I mean,” he added quickly, and I knew what he meant. He didn’t want to refer to Dickie in the past tense. Bad juju. “For a guy coming from such a blue-blooded family, a guy who played rugby and all that, he wasn’t what I expected.”

  “So. Did you ever…?” I wouldn’t normally be so delicate, but this was new territory, and as we lay in our beds on Dickie Doyle’s property, where earlier tonight, a couple of floors below us, a young man’s headless body had been discovered, the chances of him still being among the living seemed slim indeed.

  Particularly after the news about the R tattoo on the sign.

  “God, no,” my brother said. “Danny, it’s not like that. Really. I don’t love Dickie like that. Not sexually.” He sat up. “Is that really what you were thinking? You know I have a type.”

  “Old?” I said.

  “We don’t get to choose what turns our crank, little sister,” he said.

  “True.”

  “But I do love him. Almost… romantically.”

  “Jesus, Laurence. Do you want to spoon him? What? I don’t get it.”

  “Romantic, as in the knights. With a k,” he hastened to add. “Just let me— Look, Dickie and I were in a class together first year. Or no, it must have been second. Whatever. Chivalric romance, medieval notions of courtly love and so on. Feudal bonds of loyalty and tribalism and staying true in adversity.” It was getting lighter in the room, and if you could ignore the horrific events of the past days, there was something comforting about this, lying in the early dawn light, listening to my brother – not the most forthcoming of creatures – talk like this. We were both propped up on our elbows.

  “I remember the class itself less than I remember Dickie and I sitting up talking about it,” he said. “We were both outsiders in our own ways, and this idea of two men being bonded by something like honor and fealty, loyalty in the face of any adversity – well, for whatever reason it resonated with both of us. Filial love.”

  “Like family,” I said.

  “Like we see family,” Laurence said. “Most families aren’t like us. Especially like you.”

  “And if you choose someone, when you’re young like that, and make a pledge to them or whatever it is you and Dickie did – I get it,” I said. “I think. It could be even stronger than family, especially if you’re not close to family. Or stronger than a marriage, since there isn’t a sexual component, so this loyalty, this bond, is a choice. A test of your word and your worth as a man.”

  “Like men who go into battle together,” Laurence said. “Look, the point is, I’m glad you understand. If anybody should understand loyalty, it’s you, Beanpole.”

  “Suppose so,” I said quietly, looking out the window. I didn’t want to think anymore. I wanted to go to sleep, and not see blood. Anyone’s blood. Or bloody human skin attached to signs in the woods. I sighed, closed my eyes.

  “Bean,” Laurence was saying. “Do you trust this Murphy guy? Des?”

  “Mmm,” I said. I wanted to be fully asleep before the room became any more light, and my circadian rhythm told me it was time for my run. “Think so.”

  “Because Dickie – he’s been sounding paranoid lately. Well, I thought he was paranoid. Apparently not. He told me he’s been seeing Rose,” he said. “At the lake. And feeling like he’s being followed, like I said.”

  I could feel blessed sleep crawling into my body. I’m still recovering, I wanted to say. I wanted to say it to Laurence, to the police downstairs, to the person who threw a dismembered head at me. I’m still recovering. I’m in rehab to get better. I’m supposed to sleep ten hours a day, and eat healthy food, and go for easy runs and do bad art projects. I’m supposed to get used to my leg being in pain, and not being able to take anything for it. I’m supposed to get used to the fact that I can only hear properly on one side. That my twin sister is dead, and my husband is dead, and I’ve killed people, and I’m not supposed to be able to smoke crack anymore to escape any of this.

  No, I thought. For probably the first time in my life, I wanted to cover my ears against my brother. I just wanted to be left alone, to sleep, to escape. If I couldn’t sleep to escape, I was going to need drugs. Simple as that. It came into my head just like that, almost with a cartoon light bulb. If anyone expects me to handle any other fucking thing, I am going to need crack to do it. Otherwise, world, leave me the fuck alone to recover.

  Here I was, in rural fucking Nova Scotia, and this shit had found me here. Where did I have to go to get away from blood and death and murder? Iceland? Ant-fucking-arctica?

  “Bean?” Laurence was whispering. I played dead. I breathed deeply and let sleep take me. Someone else could stand watch over the dawn. This wasn’t my fight. But I would help. I would help tomorrow.

  * * *

  When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky.

  S
omeone, somewhere, screamed. I sat up.

  Laurence was up and out; his bed was neatly made and moved out of the way of the door.

  Footsteps were coming for my room, and I could tell they were too light to be my brother’s. It sounded like they were trying to be quiet. They paused outside the door, and I waited for a knock.

  Instead, I saw the doorknob turn.

  ELEVEN

  Laurence had locked the door behind him.

  I patted my waist to make sure the screwdriver was still in the fanny pack, and went for the window silently, barefoot, grateful that I had removed the screen on the first night, when I wanted to sit in the window to smoke, not wanting to sit outside with the others to socialize.

  I swung myself out of the window and hoisted myself onto the steeply pitched dormer arch above it, my feet quickly getting hot from the shingles. All I had on was a Joy Division t-shirt and an old pair of Jack’s boxers that I liked to sleep in. And a fanny pack. I perched on my hands and knees then, and for one hysterical moment I realized how ridiculous I must look, trying to surf the roof barely clothed, thinking a screwdriver was going to be lethal enough to defend myself against whoever was cutting people’s bodies up.

  I looked at the ground. For one mad second, I just wanted to take a header. I wasn’t high enough to guarantee anything but broken bones any other way but head first. Then again, even a header from the second floor might just mean a broken neck and a lifetime of eating all my food through a straw. I had had enough of this, of adrenaline and death and wondering if someone was trying to kill me, or worse, the people I loved. Of struggling through my days without Ginger or Jack. Or crack.

  No, Danny. Fight.

  Ginger’s voice, as clear as if she was perched next to me.

  I felt shame, then, as though I had run from a burning building, leaving people inside to die. I closed my eyes and felt it again, the rage that had gotten me through my time in southern California, my time in Maine, when Ginger and Jack were dead and I had to find the boys. I couldn’t be sure that what was happening right now wasn’t my fault, somehow. Would any of this be happening if I hadn’t come here? So far it didn’t seem like it, but this was the place that my family had sent me. Pain and death followed me, this I knew. This was a fact. And my brother needed me, not only to help find Dickie, but possibly to save his own skin.