The Arx (34 page)

“Wait,” Frank said. “I’m not here to hassle you. I’m just telling you in case you’ve got any idea of taking the money and not making the delivery.”

The kid eyed him suspiciously, but relaxed a bit. Frank handed him the packet. The name ‘Sergeant Jack Reid’ was written plainly on it.

“Take this to the Vancouver Homicide Squad,” Frank said. “You know where that is?”

The kid nodded.

“Give it to this guy,” Frank said, tapping the name written on the front. “Him and only him, nobody else. He’s a heavy set guy in his fifties with red hair and a big mustache. If you get it to him he’ll give you another fifty.”

The kid’s eyes lit up.

“Do it first,” Frank said. “Before you do any of the others.”

“No problem,” the kid said, smiling now at the thought of his massive extra tip. He jammed his foot down on the pedal and took off.

“I should have checked that Reid was actually there,” Frank said to himself as he watched the courier weave into the traffic.

His cell was dead, and anyway, the Arx might be listening in. To his relief, he found a pay phone. He called the Squad, and asked for Sergeant Reid. The operator tried to slough him off until he said who he was. Suddenly he was immediately punched through.

“You should come in, Frank,” Reid said.

“Are the cops still after me?”

“Officially you’ve been released, but you’re still a person of interest in a murder investigation. Everybody here knows the murder thing is bogus. Maybe we can help you…”

“What about the kidnapping thing?”

“What kidnapping?”

“Come on, Sarge, don’t shit me. Somebody must have linked me to the kidnapping at Kits Beach.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Frank said. He explained the circumstances around his abduction of Rebecca, and that in the end she had willingly gone with him. Reid sounded skeptical but went along.

Frank wasn’t sure he could believe anything Reid said, but it didn’t matter; he had no intention of coming in. He didn’t want to spend too much time on the phone either in case they were tracing the call.

“I’m just calling to tell you to expect a package from a bicycle courier in the next half hour or so. It’s evidence of a criminal organization that you guys need to know about.”

“The one you were on about before?”

“Yeah, but when you see what I’ve sent…”

“You sure you’re alright, Frank?”

“Just look at it. It’s important. I’ll call you back later and see what you think. And don’t talk to anybody about it – nobody. You’ll understand better once you’ve read it.”

“Where are you? I can send a squad car to get you.”

“I’m gonna hang up now.”

“Frank wait…”

“By the way, I promised the courier you’d give him fifty bucks.”

“What!”

“Bye, Sarge.” Frank hung up the phone.

He picked up the suitcase and started walking. He wanted to buy some additional flash drives and backup some of Carson’s information. He also needed a smoke. The image of Carson hacking up pieces of lung was almost enough to make him quit cold turkey – almost.

He found a computer shop and bought the flash drives, as well as a new burner cell phone. In a dark corner of an out-of-the-way coffee shop he did the backups. A TV nearby had the news on. He watched for a while, mainly to see whether he was on it – he wasn’t. Copying the information reminded him how valuable it was. He couldn’t haul it along everywhere he went. He needed a secure hiding place. He had an idea, but it would involve taking a long Skytrain ride, and transferring to another bus.

Instead, he took a chance and rented a car. It was probably only a matter of hours before the Arx found him anyway. When they did, at least he’d be mobile.

As he drove he analyzed all Ricky had told him about the Arx, hoping to stumble onto some weakness that might improve his chances for survival. According to Ricky, each Arx Stronghold was dominated by an Alpha male. The Alpha held the power of life or death for all under him, and had his pick of sexual partners. Though a Stronghold might contain dozens of females, the Alpha would tolerate only a handful of submissive males.

The submissives acted as the Alpha’s lieutenants, and were granted some privileges, such as sex with females the Alpha had no claim on. Occasionally a submissive would challenge the Alpha for dominance and win or die. There was a constant shifting of power among the males of a Stronghold; the price of being Alpha was eternal vigilance.

If the males were the muscle behind the Stronghold, the females were its brains. Though as sexually active as the males, they deferred to them regarding sex, and used it to control them. They were rarely required to service aging or unattractive males, since the Arx tolerated no physical defects, and Arx males almost never lived past middle age.

The females managed most Arx affairs and looked after the Arx children. Male children were protected until puberty. After that, if not required as submissives, they either escaped the Stronghold or were eliminated by the Alpha as threats to his power. The purges made no sense in evolutionary terms, since none of the children were fathered by Arx males. The behaviour was wired into the collective Arx psyche by the deformities that defined them.

Expelled males were forced to fend for themselves in the Monkey world. They maintained ties to the Stronghold and their movements were closely monitored. The goal of these castoffs was to either establish their own Stronghold by attracting Arx females from an existing one, or mount an attack against an existing Stronghold, killing the Alpha male and taking his place.

All knew the importance of secrecy. If they ever forgot and jeopardized the Arx by drawing attention to themselves, they were eliminated.

There was no such thing as mercy in the Arx world.

And these guys have got money and power up the ying-yang,
Frank thought, shaking his head slowly.
I’m screwed.

After a long, circuitous drive and a brief walk he stashed the originals.

Reunited with the Team

Back in town Frank parked in a quiet alley in the West End. It was now just after three PM. His plan was to find a local library or Internet cafe and fire off copies of the most convincing of Carsons’s documents to as many newspapers and government agencies as possible. But first he needed to talk to Reid. He called and once again was immediately connected to the Sergeant.

“You get the package?” Frank said. “I know the whole thing sounds incredible…”

“Frank,” Reid interrupted him. “If a tiny fraction of what’s here is true, we’re looking at the biggest criminal conspiracy we’ve encountered in my lifetime.”

“You mean you believe me?” Frank’s entire body relaxed.

“Saying the story’s far-fetched is the understatement of the year,” Reid said. “But with the weight of evidence this Carson guy puts forward, along with his background, and your corroboration – I think we’ve got a duty to at least check it out.”

Frank exhaled deeply.

“You think these guys killed Stocker?” Reid continued.

“It’s possible. All I can tell you is I didn’t.”

“I don’t think anybody here believes you’re a murderer.”

“So what’s happening at the squad now that Stocker’s out of the picture?”

“I’ve taken over the Lead Detective spot until another candidate can be found,” Reid said. He chuckled. “Maybe you should come in and apply.”

“Yeah, right,” Frank laughed.

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Finally Reid said: “After looking over Carson’s stuff, we went back and had another look at Lawrence Retigo’s journal.”

“Yeah?”

“How much of it do you believe?”

“I think Retigo was on the edge, but I think the events he describes actually happened. Of course I can’t prove anything.”

Frank picked up his pack of cigarettes, thought better of it, and put it back down.

“Jack,” he said to Reid, “maybe you could do me a favour.”

“What’s that?”

“Get somebody to check on my sister Janet and make sure she’s okay. There’s no way I can go anywhere near her.”

“Sure, Frank,” Reid said. “I’ll get somebody on it right away.”

“Thanks. You guys got any kind of timeline for when you’re gonna look into the Savant thing?”

Reid said he wanted to pull a few others into the conversation and asked Frank to call back in half an hour. Frank was nervous. It sounded fishy. Reid swore up and down that he was on the level, and Frank had to take his word for it.

“Why don’t you come in, Frank,” Reid said. “You can even be involved – not officially, of course, but as a sort of a ‘Savant Expert’; a consultant.”

“Gotta go,” Frank said. “I’ll call you.”

“Frank…” Reid said. Frank hung up.

“Just like old times, eh, Frank,” Reid said when Frank called back at three-thirty. On speaker phone along with Reid were Art Crawford, and to Frank’s surprise, Terry Hastings, Stocker’s former assistant.

“I hope you’re not all just getting together to keep me occupied until the men in the white coats can track me down,” Frank said.

“We believe you, Frank,” Reid answered.

“You’ve still got friends around the squad, Frank,” Art said.

“And at the Academy, including me,” Terry put in. “We even studied some of your cases. A couple of the students wrote you off, but I never believed it. You’ve had a rough time, but you’re still a great detective.”

“Question is,” Reid said, “what do we do now?”

“The Arx, the people Carson calls the ‘Savants’, have operatives everywhere,” Frank said. “They virtually control Kaffir. They’ve probably infiltrated the force, so be careful.”

A shiver rippled through Frank’s body as he thought about Ricky in light of Carson’s warnings. He made a mental note to call and check on the quadriplegic.

“However big the threat is,” Reid said, “we start pissing off somebody like Arthur Dogan without iron-clad proof, the shit’s gonna fly. For now we’ll have to treat it like an exploratory expedition.”

“We need a way to get inside,” Terry said. “Maybe we’d see something to give us probable cause.”

“This is a pillar of the community we’re talking about,” Reid said, “not some stoned out crack dealer. And according to Carson’s stuff he’s got more brains than the lot of us put together. He’s not likely to leave anything lying around that would incriminate him. And if by some chance he does, he’s not gonna be dumb enough to let us in.”

“We’ll go over there and talk to them,” Reid said. “Right now, that’s all we can do.”

Frank scoured his brain for an alternative to Reid’s plan. He came up empty.

“And you’re not gonna go anywhere near the place, right, Frank?” Reid said. “I don’t want to have to arrest you – or shoot you.”

Frank hung up on him.

Rebecca Returns to Galiano

Rebecca had always assumed that Frank’s claims about the ‘conspiracy’ were at best an over-reaction, at worst a symptom of paranoia. Carson’s record of his time with Kaffir, and his chilling journal of the years he spent with Jimmy, the boy he finally butchered in cold blood, changed all that.

Now she glanced around her constantly as she pulled her moped up to the dock on Parker Island. There were few people around as she waited in a grassy area nearby for her chartered boat to Galiano. Even so, she interpreted every movement, every glance, every nuance of expression, as confirmation that she was being followed.

As she and Frank had agreed, she’d waited until two to head out, minimizing the time she spent away from the sanctuary of Carson’s cabin. There was intermittent cell phone service on Parker, forcing her to travel to Galiano to wait for Frank’s call at four PM.

The boat bumped at the pier on Galiano and the pilot helped her haul the moped onto the dock. She walked it to the gravel road leading from the marina, then took off for town.

She’d only gone a few blocks when a white van turned onto the street behind her. The van moved up to within a few meters of her rear wheel. She steered far to the right and waved the driver ahead. A hand waved in response as the vehicle passed her.

She pulled back to the center of the road, now following the van. There was no one else around. When they reached a heavily treed, secluded area, the van jammed on its brakes and skidded to a stop. The brake lights flashed and she hit her own brakes. She lost control and toppled to the ground, sliding just behind the vehicle’s back wheels.

Two men jumped from the van. Before she could scream an arm clamped a damp cloth over her mouth and nose.

Chloroform,
she recognized the smell.

One of the men opened the back door of the van. A foam mattress lay on one side. She struggled, but began to lose consciousness, nauseated by the stench. She felt herself hoisted inside and a metal door slammed behind her.