LITMIR.BIZ

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you can tell me now, since I’m here?” he asked.

      “Well, why don’t you come in.”

      The golden lights twinkled all around her. He looked up and down the block as he radioed Randall, letting her know he was talking to a witness who had volunteered information. He gave the address and hoped Randall would not race over to join him.

      Randall ten-foured him.

      Dion ran his hands along his gun belt, just checking, then climbed the stairs and followed the hippy inside. She shut the door behind him as he glanced around the dark interior. Something strange about the place, a noise …

      But it was just the forced-air heating rumbling through the ducts and blasting out the vents. He needed the warmth that gusted down. He was an ice block after the hours he’d spent outside the Greer house, setting up lights and tents. It hadn’t been smart, stripping down to his shirt sleeves in the October rain, but he hadn’t seen this far ahead, didn’t know Randall’s overblown work ethic would have him canvassing the neighbourhood after hours.

      Inside the house, the woman didn’t wait for his name and ID, as she should have, but removed her rubber boots, slipped her feet into sandals, and went whisking down the dark corridor. She called back at him, “Holy moly, I’ll make some tea, warm us both up.”

      She had disappeared to her right. He followed her into a brightly lit kitchen, where he saw nice appliances and expensive but unenthusiastic furniture, none of it matching up with the woman, somehow. She gestured at a clunky table to one side, next to a window. From here he could see a hallway leading to a living room, with more furniture that didn’t seem to be hers. Here and there on the pale-grey walls were darker squares and rectangles where pictures must have once hung — for years, maybe decades.

      “I know,” she said, as if reading his mind, but missing the point. “This place needs a serious makeover, doesn’t it?”

      She put on a kettle and went about preparing cups. She moved with brisk energy, despite the hour. Dion sat at the table and unzipped his jacket halfway. He flattened his notebook and asked the woman for her name. “Farah Jordan,” she said, and spelled it for him.

      He occupied himself filling in the details of the interview. Then he glanced around, still trying to understand the disconnect. Centered on the table were porcelain salt and pepper shakers shaped like bell peppers, one red and one green. There was a jar containing chopsticks and teaspoons, a sugar bowl, a vase with assorted flowers that had died and dried some time ago. Unlike the rest of this place, they all seemed to belong to this woman. Maybe she was a boarder.

      The window at his side was open a crack, and cold air seeped in. On the sill sat an ashtray, and in the centre of it was a single crushed-out roach. He glanced down and over at the woman’s bare legs as she worked at the counter. “Who else lives here?” he asked.

      It was a question that might have alarmed her, if she followed the news and realized the lengths to which some rapists would go to get past a woman’s door. A phony police uniform was one of the oldest tricks in the book.

      “Besides me, just Radar.” She took the chair across from him. “My cat.”

      Just her was hardly the answer he expected. The furniture, the colour scheme, even the air — all seemed mannish to him, as though a middle-aged, cigarette-smoking bachelor occupied the space, not a hippy and her cat.

      “Are you going to show me your ID?” she asked. She said it lightly, as if she was more curious about police ID in general than the bona fides of his presence.

      He dug out his wallet and showed her his identification card. She inspected it with interest and handed it back. He explained again who he was and why he was here, then asked, “Have you lived here long, Ms. Jordan?”

      “If you have any urge at all to call me Farah, I’d be more than happy if you gave in to it. I’ve been here since May.”

      Half a year, he thought. Then it clicked. She had inherited the house from an older male relative, a father or grandfather. One she had not been too fond of, if the first thing she did was to take down his favourite pictures. Her face was kind, so the male relative was probably unkind. She poured tea as if they had all the time in the world. He couldn’t decide whether her overly relaxed manner was suspicious or nice. Probably it had something to do with the roach in the ashtray. “You had something to tell me?”

      “Did I?” she said.

      “I thought you did.”

      She poured tea into a second cup and smiled at him brightly. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just you looked so cold out there. All I wanted to do was bring you inside, warm you up.” Her teeth were white against her dark skin, and her blue-grey eyes were hypnotic. Suddenly he wasn’t sure who was doing the luring.

      “Here’s sugar, if you like,” she said, and he said no, thank you, worrying that this was more of a tea party than an interview. He had told Randall that he was speaking to a witness who had info to offer. He imagined Randall’s inevitable question, What was Ms. Jordan’s intel? and his inevitable answer, Actually, she just wanted to warm me up.

      Must work at building a better foundation for this visit. “I’m wondering,” he said, “do you know anything about the house across the road — who owns it, who lived there, anything like that?”

      “No, I’m sorry, it’s been vacant as long as I can remember. But will you tell me what happened there? Was it an accident?”

      He told her he couldn’t say anything more than that a body had been found, sorry.

      “I understand,” she said, but apparently didn’t, as she added without pause, “Man or woman? Not a child, I hope. Children seem to like getting into places.”

      “Well, like I say.”

      “Sorry, yes,” she exclaimed. “You just finished telling me you can’t divulge anything, and then I go and ask for more details.” She sipped her tea and looked wistful. “About how long would you say it’s been there, though? Not long, I’m sure. I just started noticing this kind of bad smell last week, but I thought it was somebody’s garbage. Oh rats, I’ve done it again, and you’re starting to look exasperated. I’ll just have to wait for the news, I guess.”

      Something banged. Dion looked around to see that a cat had just slipped through the cat flap in the back door. It walked into the room and studied Dion. It was slim, dusky grey, with bright-green eyes. It looked a bit like its owner.

      Its owner seemed delighted to see the animal and enticed it over with a ksk-ksk noise so she could stroke it from ears to tail. “They’re such snobs,” she told Dion. “But you have to love them. And every time she comes home, I’m so grateful, as there are coyotes out there. They’ll go for cats. Do you have any pets?”

      When he had lived with Kate, she had a tabby. A fat cat that ate, slept, complained, and damaged furniture. He had never seen the point of it, himself. “No, I don’t. I’d like to have a dog.”

      He blinked in surprise at his own words. He hadn’t meant to say anything so personal.

      “Me, too,” Ms. Jordan said. “Not so big, not so small. A rescue mutt!”

      And now they were talking about dogs. Dion described sitting in the park this fall and watching dogs and dog owners at play. It seemed like a good, safe, amiable relationship. He told her about the coal-black pup he’d seen at the SPCA the other day, in the course of his duties, how tempted he’d been to sign the adoption papers and bring it home. He had imagined the pup following along on his heels and curling up by his feet at night.

      But having a pet wasn’t practical, and neither was sitting here talking about it with a witness. He asked, “Do you recall what day you first noticed it, the bad odour you thought was garbage?”

      “I couldn’t give you a date. It came and went.”

      “That’s fine.” The other question

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