The Devil's Dust - C.B. Forrest A Charlie McKelvey Mystery

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is a door to the right. Nolan nudges it open with the fingers of his left hand. His light shines against a washer and dryer, clothes folded or piled on the floor, a shelving unit stacked with cans of apple juice, jars of jam, preserved vegetables. He turns and moves down the hall which opens up to a family room. There are two couches set out in an L-shape; a large TV sits in a corner. The floor is littered with pop cans, bowls of Cheezies and chips, candy wrappers, pillows and clothing, a few sleeping bags knotted and twisted. He spots a coffee table and steps closer with the light trained. The table is covered in squares of burnt foil, ink pens that have had their stylus removed in order to be used as pipes. Nolan reaches out and picks one up, turns it in his hand. So this is how they do it. The emptied pen is scorched at one end from the constant flame. He raises it to his nose, curious, and flinches at the strength of the caustic residue. He tries to conjure an image of Travis Lacey sitting in the darkness, smoking drugs around the clock; his parents in Florida, oblivious.

      What makes a kid in a decent family do this, he wonders. The cause and effect of this fascinates him, truly. Is it the availability of drugs that make them desirable? Is it the forbidden fruit that tempts us? In the absence of evil and danger, what is it we shall seek for thrills?

      Nolan sets the pen on the table and straightens up. He wipes the light across the rest of the room. His breath stops, his knees go weak. He hears himself emit a sound. There, in the far corner, hanging from an electrical cord, is what remains of a small dog. It appears to have been skinned. And on the wall behind the dead animal words and strange symbols are scrawled in what can only be blood. Circles and triangles, crosses and arrows. Nolan feels sick to his stomach, out of place in the semi-darkness, this strange basement. It is as though in this instant he forgets he is a cop, why he is here, witness to something that seems so private and closed. He squints in an attempt to decipher the writing as though he is truly an explorer who has discovered hieroglyphics on a cave wall. His mind floods with ideas of what he must do next. Take the boy into custody, radio the Chief and Younger, get a psychological consult from Dr. Nichols up at the medical clinic …

      So there is no friend in the basement after all. Travis has conjured an illusion with his drug-addled mind. Images, incantations, whispers in the darkness. Nolan hears footfalls and he swivels with the light, startled by Travis’s sudden appearance — as though he simply appears from vapour. Nolan attempts to reconcile the youth standing before him with the hideous acts committed in this basement.

      “You found Jenny,” Travis says in wonderment, and he points.

      “Back up,” Nolan says, but his voice sounds unsure even to himself.

      Travis turns a twisted-lip smile and he is gone up the stairs. Nolan’s body surges with endorphins, fear and excitement, panic and exhilaration. He takes the stairs three at a time, the flashlight heavy in his hand like a sidearm. There is only time to think this focused thought: I am in a police foot chase …

      “Travis!” Bob Lacey yells from the hallway.

      The teen pushes through the front door, Nolan at his heels. The sunshine hits Nolan’s eyes and he squints hard. A world of whiteness, the snow reflects the light and makes his eyes water. Travis is in sock feet but this does not slow his sprint across the front yard, the snow reaching to just below his knees, this wild animal sprung from a trap. Travis careens to the left, disappears around the side of the garage. Nolan’s boots provide better traction and he gains his footing now. He catches a glimpse of the teen’s dark shirt around the side of the garage and he hears the boy’s mother crying from the front step. Nolan negotiates the corner of the building at the same moment the clearest thought enters his mind: never come around the corner of a building unless you know for certain what is waiting for you … approach with caution, approach low and slow …

      In the void of recalled training there is now a looping arc of blurred motion as Travis swings a snow shovel like a home-run hitter. Nolan does the only thing he can do in the short time he has to react, which is to raise a forearm to protect his face. It is the last thing Ed Nolan does just before the concussive connection, sounds of disembodied voices, his seemingly weightless body falling, falling.

      The cold burn of snow on his face.

      And then blackness.

      Two

      That first night off the Greyhound he takes a room at the Station Hotel, the only real hotel in town. The old guy behind the desk is watching a hockey game on one of those black and white TVs that also has a built-in radio. The arrival of a guest seems to catch him by surprise, and he looks up from the little TV with his mouth open. A quick scan of the room keys hanging behind the desk indicates the hotel has full vacancy.

      “Looking for a room, are you?” the old man asks.

      The disembodied sports commentator talks excitedly through the TV’s mono speaker. You can hear the threshing crowd, this rising sea of voices joined in passion. Players are in a corner, fighting for control of the puck. Someone is winning and someone is losing.

      “As long as it’s got a bed,” the visitor says, and sets his heavy duffle bag on the hardwood floor, straightens his back.

      The old man reaches behind for a room key. He places the key on the desk, licks his thumb, and flips a yellow invoice pad to a new page, looks around for a pen.

      “Forty-eight, tax in.”

      The guest pays the night clerk with the last of his American money, having come north in a meandering way through Michigan for no other reason than boredom and the availability of time.

      “You want a coffee or anything? I could brew a pot,” the clerk offers. His eyes tell the guest that he would welcome the company to pass the long hours.

      “It’s been a long day, thanks,” the guest replies, and then hefts his duffle and walks over to the broad staircase with its thick wood banister.

      The clerk nods. “You’re probably tired, don’t feel like talking tonight.”

      A wayfarer’s hotel, the hardwood of the Station is gouged and well worn from the heavy boots and hard lifestyle of its nightly occupants over the long decades, mostly miners coming in or going out, hydro workers following the power lines ever northward, and once in a while a platoon of soft-faced geologists or engineers from the head offices down in Toronto. The four-storey hotel sits across the street from the old train station. The train comes through town just twice a week now, Tuesdays and Saturdays, but at one time, back in the 1970s, it arrived like clockwork each morning.

      The only thing keeping the hotel in business these days is the one-room tavern located off the west wing of its main floor. A pool table sits out front near the big window with the faded neon sign advertising Labatt 50, four round tables and six stools at the bar, a dartboard in a dark corner. The felt on the pool table is bald and torn, and the urinal in the men’s room often clogs and overflows, sending a slow cascade of piss trickling down the hall. The place is only ever a third full at best if there is a good hockey game on, but the business is regular and can be counted on. The draft beer is cheap, and Terry, the owner and bartender and janitor, isn’t averse to letting a regular’s tab grow beyond what might be considered prudent in these tough economic times.

      Room 27 is small, spare and simple. A twin bed with a handmade afghan folded over the bottom half, a desk in front of the window looking out on Main. The street at this hour is bathed in the false yellow of street lamps, still and empty. Nothing to do in Ste. Bernadette on a Friday, let alone a Sunday night. Dead of January. Dead, period. The guest sets the duffle by the foot of the bed and closes the faded curtains to mute the street lamps and the silver glow from a nearly full moon.

      There is an old calendar from a tool company tacked to the wall near the bathroom, stale-dated by four months. Someone has circled October 15 and scrawled the words Out of Ste. Bernadette! It is underlined not once but twice. He figures he knows how the author must have felt in this town, in this little room: the walls closing in, the town itself shifting inward, smothering, growing smaller by the hour. It plays tricks with a man’s head.

      He unties and kicks off his boots then goes and takes a long piss.

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