LITMIR.BIZ

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no doctor, but he’d dealt with enough deaths over the years to know when a being wasn’t coming back. He nodded at Mercy, and she said, “Could you please put him out on the back deck for me?” She crossed the room to an exterior door with a small square window and held it open for him. Dion lifted the dog again, wrapped in its blanket, and took it into what turned out to be a small, enclosed verandah. “Put him there,” the woman said, pointing to a place on the floor between a chest freezer and a basket chair. “I’ll call somebody to take him away. Can’t bury him here, his home, unfortunately. Ground’s too hard. Poor Coal. I rescued him from the pound, you know. Just hours before he would have been put down.”

      Dion laid the dog down where she indicated and stood, rubbing his mucky hands on his mucky jeans. For the first time Mercy looked at him, and she gave a start, and reached out both hands, as if she wanted to either grab him or keep him at bay. “Oh no, you’ve got blood all over you.”

      He stepped back. He said, “It was a pickup, with a raised suspension, I think. Dark, quite new. Know anybody around here drives something like that?”

      They were staring at each other, like two actors from two different plays on the same stage, confused but determined to get through it. She raked her hands through her hair, blinking. “Everybody,” she said. “And everybody drives crazy fast on this road. You’ll never catch him.”

      Dion wondered if the truck had veered to avoid the dog or was gunning at himself. He wondered if its bumper had smeared any identifying evidence into the snowbank. Jayne Spacey drove a little Rav, so it probably wasn’t her. Her ex maybe, Shane. He could do some checking, but wouldn’t. Not enough data and not enough interest to bother.

      He followed Mercy to a bathroom, and she left him to wash off at the sink. The bathroom was large and its fixtures had once been grand but had become loose and rattly, the finish rubbed flat. The toiletries looked pricy and the towels were white and fluffy, too good for a filthy man to be washing off dog shit and blood, so he filled the sink with hot water and used his palms to scrub his face and neck. He used the hem of his T-shirt to dry off.

      When he came out she was in the living room, and she had a tumbler of Scotch in each hand. She held out a glass and said, “You look like you need this. I know I sure do.”

      He took the drink and drained half the glass. He was studying her face, looking for signs of trauma. He’d never owned a dog, but Looch had, once. It was a terrier. The dog had died of old age, and it was the only time Dion had seen Looch break down and bawl. It had taken at least a week for the man to regain his spirits, but he’d never wanted another dog, that’s how painful it had been.

      Mercy seemed depressed, but he had the feeling she’d been depressed before he kicked the door. She said, “I put some more wood in. I’m already running low and rationing. This is my first real winter here, and I thought two cords would be plenty. It’s impossible to keep this house warm. It’s impossible to stay warm anywhere in this horrible place.” She gave a shiver and then frowned with what he took to be anger at herself. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I didn’t mean to insult your hometown. You’re from around here?”

      He wasn’t offended. He wasn’t actually listening, much, his mind still full of headlights and tail lights, and a dog in pain, a dog gone quiet, facing its own death but looking up, making contact in its last moments. He was still thinking of Looch’s terrier, and close to tears, and hating himself for it. He hadn’t cried in his life till waking from coma, and now look at him. Disgusting. Weak and weepy and afraid of everything, he couldn’t get through a day without his eyes welling up, sometimes without warning. Sometimes out of the blue.

      To hide the tears, he looked at the walls, fixing on the photographs, all those people and their instruments. Mercy featured in many of the photos. There she was in an outdoor shot, a casual but posed group photo. She stood between two men, an arm around each. The lighting was strange, not quite natural.

      He was touched on the arm by icy fingers, gave a start, and looked aside, down, into her eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you want to sit down?”

      He finished his Scotch and handed her the glass. “No, thanks. I need to call a cab. I don’t know the number.”

      “Oh, of course, you mentioned you were walking back to the highway.” It was about all she knew of him, which way he was heading. She didn’t know his name or that he was with the police, and since he actually was no longer with the police, it didn’t really matter. She had a cellphone in hand, ready to call that cab for him, but paused and said, “I’m getting the feeling you’re from elsewhere. What’s your name?”

      He didn’t answer, distracted by her stare. It was unsettling. She was attractive, somewhere in her forties. She had clear skin and well-defined features, but most startling were her probing grey eyes. She was concerned about him, he could see, but the concern was scientific. She said, “Have we met? You look familiar.”

      “I doubt it. I live in Smithers.”

      “And what are you doing on this lonely road in the Hazeltons in the middle of the night?”

      “Just finishing a job,” he said.

      “Oh. Who do you work for?”

      “Odd jobs,” he said, admiring his own ability to lie on the fly. Better yet, to lie without actually lying.

      “That’s kind of serendipitous,” she said, with a lift of her brows. “Because as you can see, I’m in desperate need of an odd-jobber. I’m tackling this house on my own, and not too well. Maybe we can work something out.” She didn’t allow him to answer, moving on to a more immediate problem. “You’re still quite dirty, you know. And you stink. You’re welcome to have a shower. You’re welcome to stay the night, if you’re in no big hurry to leave.”

      True, he stank, and he took her words at face value. There was nothing scientific in her manner now, only concern. She said, “Sometimes a person can be more traumatized than he knows. I think you’re traumatized. I probably am too, it just hasn’t hit me yet.”

      He had a shower, but he didn’t stay the night, though she offered again, almost insistently. Instead she drove him back to the hotel in a silver Beamer that might have been glamorous once but now had a cracked windshield and a great dent on one side. She kept her eyes on the road the entire way, as if enemies might pounce, and he wondered if her nerves had been shot by a recent MVA. Like his. She repeated her suggestion of hiring him to help with the renos.

      “Also, I’ll need Coal taken care of,” she said. “Poor Coal. How about it? There’s at least a month of work for you, with that drywall. You could stay at my place, of course. It’s huge. You could have the whole top floor to yourself. I’ll pay well, better than what you usually get.”

      “I don’t think I’ll be back this way,” he said.

      Her profile looked tense, angry. She said, “Still, take my number, in case you change your mind. And give me yours.”

      “I saw some ads on the bulletin board at the IGA, men looking for work.”

      “Hm,” she said. “Okay.”

      At the parking lot of the Super 8, she idled the engine, wrote her number on the back of an old business card, and handed it over. He didn’t offer his number in return. Then he climbed out and the Beamer scudded off, slithering on the entrance to the highway. One thing was for sure, he thought, watching the tail lights disappear: her send-off of Coal was about as moving as the flick of the fingers.

      Ten

      The Run

      MORNING BROKE, WET and drizzly. A new document was up on the board when Leith arrived in the office, a large-scale aerial shot with a line arcing across in crooked formation. Giroux and Bosko stood in front of the board, talking about departures. Bosko was saying he was due back on the Lower Mainland in a day or so but would keep in touch; he just had to know how it all panned out.

      “What pans out?” Leith said.

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