Day Into Night (33 page)

I’m shopping at the Forest Service cache the next night. Not much selection, but good hours. For the limited selection they have, they make it up with volume. Everything comes by the crate like a wholesale grocery — all that’s missing is the oversized cart. I’m in an aisle where canned prunes come by the gross; the Forest Service has to start hiring younger firefighters.

“What about batteries?” asks Carl. “You need more flashlight batteries?”

I nod and he hands me a five-pound box. I take out four batteries, put the rest back.

“You should have come to me,” he says. “Never trust a reporter.”

“Journalist,” I correct him, as if there’s a difference.

“They both buy ink by the ton,” he says. “So they’re always right.”

He’s upset I went to Telson for help. “Friends take care of friends,” he says, but that’s exactly why I don’t want him too involved. He’s done enough already — taken too many risks smuggling me back in the helicopter. He could lose his job, end up in prison. Telson on the other hand is a professional, knows what she’s getting into. And she knows the Lorax as good as anyone.

“Think about it, Porter —”

Carl walks narrow alleys between high shelves stacked with fire pumps, hose, portable water tanks, axes and tents, shines his flashlight at what he thinks might interest me — Carl’s fugitive emporium. I’d need the stake truck to move most of this stuff, not the backpack I’m using.

“What’s her motivation?” he asks. “If they don’t catch the Lorax, she can still write a bestseller.”

I toss cans of beans and Spork into my backpack. “How are the cops making out?”

“They think you’re dead. Either in the fire or on the river. They found parts of a canoe and your jacket caught in a sweeper below The Meat Grinder. They’ve got divers out there, Search & Rescue — about 20 boats searching downstream and along the banks. Looks like the Canada Day Raft Race.”

“What about the Lorax?”

Carl shakes his head. “The cops seem a little distracted right now.”

“How did that fire start? Was it our buddy Red Flag?”

Carl shakes his head. “Abandoned camp fire.”

Creamed corn, a small campstove and a bag of rice complete the Porter Cassel survival kit. In the toiletries section I add a few rolls of posterior stationery; just because you’re a fugitive doesn’t mean you have to be barbaric. There’s a selection of cooking gear on a top shelf. I grab hold of a crossbeam and climb up, grab for the pots. They make a noise like a two-year-old with cymbals.

Carl flinches. “We better get out of here before someone notices.”

I’m just about to climb down when I see a stack of familiar cake pans.

“Since when have our cooks been baking?”

Carl shines the flashlight at me, blinds me for a few seconds. “Some of them do now that we’re using base camps again,” he says. “And we’re getting better cooks, who know how to do more than boil pork chops.”

“Did you know this is the same type of pan the arsonist is using?”

“Really?” Carl frowns. “Maybe our cooks are starting fires.”

A vehicle turns into the ranger station parking lot, headlights sweeping rectangles of light across the shelves, catching me like a convict on a prison wall. Carl kills his flashlight and I scramble down. “It’s the cops,” Carl whispers at a window. “Someone’s coming.”

“Is there a back door?”

“No.” He gives me a worried look. “I’ll take care of it.”

I watch from the corner of a dirty window as Carl leaves the cache, pretends to be locking the door. A beam of light suddenly fills the room — the cop’s flashlight — and I duck away from the window. The Mountie is close enough that I hear him ask if there’s a problem; Carl telling him he was just going home from the office, thought he heard something. But he did a thorough search — it must have been a squirrel or something that got inside, rattled some pots. The Mountie makes another pass with his flashlight, then shrugs. Carl walks him back to his cruiser.

I slip out of the cache as the cruiser pulls away, vanish into the shadows.

26

I SPEND THE SAY like a skunk, sleeping in the crawlspace under the burned-out old house. It leaves me smelling as appealing as a skunk, but at least it’s relatively safe under there. Around noon, a group of kids come over and wake me — I hear them clomping around, the floorboards creaking; watch from between cracks in the floor as they add to the graffiti in the living room, sit around and smoke a joint. But they quickly lose interest; there’s really nothing left to wreck.

By two in the afternoon it’s stifling under the old house. I’m ready to give in — arrest me, just put me somewhere cool where it doesn’t smell like mouse turds. I lie on bare dirt and stare at cracked boards. If this is anything like The Hole in prison, I’m doing my best to stay out of there. Night finally comes. I boil Kraft Dinner — yellow death, we used to call it — and drink a lot of apple juice. I clean up as best I can for my business meeting.

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea.”

“Relax Porter. No one stops an old Volkswagen.”

I’m nervous being in a car like this, on the road where the police could stop us. Telson picked me up at a pre-arranged location in a back alley. This time when I called her, I was a telemarketer wondering if she was happy with her cell phone service. She was, except for all the telemarketers. I offered her a call-screening package — the Just Say No program.

She said no; she’s learning already.

Tonight she’s wearing a bulky jacket, jeans and old army boots. No more shorts and halter tops — too hard to hide the big gun. I’m wearing what I’ve been wearing for the past several days.

Telson wrinkles her nose. “What is that smell?”

“That would be me.”

“Maybe you should ride in the trunk.”

Fortunately we don’t drive far. A narrow trail leads to a water treatment intake along the river. The road isn’t well travelled and has ruts as hard as concrete curbstops. The Bug bounces and rattles like a piñata at a birthday party — if I burst it won’t be candy that comes out. We park by a cinder block building with a pocked “Town of Curtain River” sign on the door.

I look around, nervous. “Maybe we should go somewhere else.”

“Relax, Porter. I doubt there’s much traffic down here.”

We get out of the tin can; I want to be able to look around and Telson is fanning a hand in front of her face, holding her nose. It’s a beautiful, dark, starlit spring night — perfect for fugitives, teenagers and vampires. We wander toward the dim block of the intake station as though drawn to a monolith. Telson leans against the brick wall, lights up a cigarette. Another surprise.

“When did you start smoking?”

“I tend to smoke under stressful conditions.”

“You weren’t smoking when you met me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she says. “I was chewing Nicorette.”

I glance toward the stars, wonder if Special “O” is circling somewhere up there in their Cessna Caravan, honing in on the glow of Telson’s cigarette. Can they fly at night? I sense invisible eyes and ears in the darkness around us. Next — the dogs will be spying on me. Then it’s a nice white room with daily doses of pharmaceuticals.

“You’re not really a vegetarian are you?”

“No.” She clicks shut a lighter. “Just makes it easier to infiltrate these groups.”

“They like vegetarians?”

“They like anyone on their end of the spectrum with extreme beliefs.”

“That what you were doing at the Mountain Guardian meeting?”

“Yeah. But they’re soft core, not worth infiltrating.”

I think of Reggie — he didn’t strike me as soft core — and it makes me wonder what kind of people she’s been hanging with that she needs to carry such a big gun. She takes a long drag, her cigarette glowing like a beacon. Enough small talk.

“So what did you find out?” I ask her.

“About your friend Alvin Brotsky? He’s a bit of an enigma.” A cloud of smoke drifts past my face. “Alvin was definitely in the military,” she says. “That part was easy. What exactly he did is harder to ascertain.”

“His tattoo said Airborne.”

“Getting chummy enough to compare tattoos?”

“You know I don’t have any tattoos.”

“Yeah,” she says. “You’re pretty much a skinny white canvas. Anyway, Brotsky injured his knees somehow and they offered him a desk job, which he declined.”

“Not enough action behind a desk.”

Telson finishes her smoke, the glowing butt arcing across the road like tracer ammunition.

“Watch where you flick that thing,” I say, annoyed. “It’s pretty dry out here.”

“Once a twig pig,” she says. “Always a twig pig.”

“Is Airborne involved in explosives operations?”

“I don’t know much about the military. I’ll need more time.”

“So you don’t really know anything about Brotsky.”

“The military are notoriously protective about their records, Porter. You remember the Somalia papers? I should have bought more stocks in the paper shredding industry before the Access to Information legislation was passed.”

“What else did you find out?”

“I looked into Curtain River Forest Products, into their environmental record, which, it turns out, is no worse than industry standard. It’s actually a bit better. This area has such heavy recreational use that they have to be more careful than most other companies. Forget a slap on the wrist penalty, they mess up here and it’s in the National Post the next day. Some vp has a stroke over his morning bagel.”

“So they’re good corporate citizens. You’ve been talking with Benji.”

“Faust? Yeah, I talked to him. He took me out for lunch —”

“You’re a cheap convert.”

“He’s not the only one I talked to.”

“But you turned on the charm. Everyone likes to talk to a pretty girl.”

A moment’s pause. Telson doesn’t like losing control of the conversation.

“Do you want my help or not, Porter?”

“Temper, temper. Remember the deal.”

She lights up another cigarette, her face visible for a second. She’s frowning.

“Anyway,” I tell her, “someone didn’t think they’re good corporate citizens.”

“That’s been bothering me,” she says, puffing hard for a moment, the tip of her cigarette pulsing like a warning light. “It’s not consistent. Like I said, their record isn’t that bad and it got me wondering if maybe there wasn’t something a little less obvious. I dug some more and it turns out the company’s safety record isn’t as sterling as their environmental record. In the past eight years they’ve had 423.”

“Four hundred accidents? I’d hate to see their Workers’ Comp premiums.”

“Most companies have a fraction of that many accidents,” Telson says. She’s pacing on the road now, sounds excited — the roving reporter on a scent trail. “The interesting thing is most of the accidents occurred after Whitlaw bought the company and built the new mill.”

“Four hundred accidents.” I still can’t believe it. “Why?”

She points a finger at me. “Production baby. For its size, this mill pumps out more lumber than any other mill in the country. Benji was pretty proud of that little titbit of information but it got me wondering if there was a connection with that many accidents. So I talked to a few workers. They’re stressed out, making mistakes. The machines are running so fast, they can’t keep up.”

I think of Leonard at Emergency, his fingers in his friend’s lunch bucket.

Gonna lose our safety bonus this week —

And Linda Hess, talking about her husband.

He got frustrated sometimes. So many people got hurt —

“I did a little investigating too,” I tell Telson. “Hess was concerned with safety.”

“But he worked in the bush, right? Not in the mill.”

“Yes — he worked in the bush, but there must be a tremendous amount of pressure on the bush operations to feed a mill that hungry. They’re not unionized, are they?”

“Bingo,” says Telson.

“You think Hess was talking union?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried. I found some old articles from the local rag. About a year after the mill was up and running a few guys decide to do a little union rousing and get fired faster than you can spit. So they take the company to court and get their jobs back. Wanna guess how long they stayed?”

I shrug — I don’t want to slow her down.

“Three weeks,” she says triumphantly. “I tracked down one of the guys and he told me he just couldn’t take the stress. The management and supervisors were all over him. He received threats — like what could happen to a man who fell into the de-barker. So he sold his house and got the hell out of Dodge.”

Telson is close enough I can smell her perfume. And her excitement.

“They killed him,” she says. “They killed Hess.”

I think of Petrovich — his record of assault. “Maybe Brotsky and Petrovich were working together. They were going to warn Hess, scare him a bit, get him to shut up. But Petrovich gets carried away, and suddenly they have a body to get rid of. A bit of C4 in Hess’s machine and a word spray-painted on a nearby tree, and they’re in the clear. Blame it all on the Lorax.”

“A plausible theory,” says Telson.

A theory that clears me of Petrovich’s murder but leaves me as far from catching the Lorax as the day Nina was killed. “Hess must have talked to someone about this.”

“That’s my next project.”

I picture Petrovich with his throat cut — someone tidying up loose ends at my expense. Ronald Hess distributed over several acres of logging slash. “Maybe you’d better go to the cops with this one, let them ask the questions.”

Telson shakes her head. “No way, this one is mine.”

“These people are killers.”

“Don’t worry.” She pats her jacket. “I travel with a big stick.”

“I can’t talk you out of this?”

“Not a chance.”

We look at each other, her face faintly luminescent in the starlight. I can’t think of anything more to say. “Can I drop you somewhere?” she asks, moving toward the car.

“I’m fine here.”

“Probably best.” She gives me a reassuring smile, but she’s already miles away. “You keep out of sight, Porter. Call me in a couple of days.” Then she ducks into her Bug and she’s gone, tail lights dancing up the rutted road. For as long as I can, I listen to the receding sound of the engine.

It sounds like loss.