He eyed me every now and then — in the mirror mostly, discretely. He didn’t recognize me but he knew what I was. Had been, I corrected myself. Once learned, you never lose the identifying affectations. No one does. Like a permanent scarlet letter — or brand, not unlike what had been carved out of June.
He wasn’t my type but I could see why June had chased him — roughly the same age if not younger, attractive in a surfer bum way. The opposite of the husband who looked at home in a three-button suit as he pleaded on TV and in the papers for information on his daughter. Victor didn’t strike me as the kind of man a woman like June was serious about, more a tool to get a rise out of her husband.
I held up the empty soda glass and smiled as I figured out the best way to broach June and her baby, how to phrase it just right. It was harder when I wasn’t officially on a case.
I could lie, tell him I was one of June’s friends, or hired by her friends to find the baby. It was all over the news now. Usually Murray had these conversations, not me.
I’d half decided on lying when his eyes drifted to a spot behind me. Something about the way he frowned made me pause. He called for one of his coworkers to fill in before abandoning the bar.
Not wanting to give myself away, I shifted on the barstool until I got a good glimpse of the doors in the mirror. Between the bottles of Grey Goose I made out two detectives, one of which I recognized, Mike. He’d called me a parasite and worse to Murray on more than one occasion. They flashed their badges at Victor and though I couldn’t hear details, I could well imagine the line of questions.
I watched his face carefully as he responded. Great boyfriend he was not, but he wasn’t a killer. He didn’t have the markers for violence. Those I could spot, my other talent from a previous life.
The other detective started scanning the bar, his eyes in the mirror falling on my back. I left cash under my empty glass and nodded at the bartender who’d replaced Victor, before heading for the washroom to slip out the back.
I was past the kitchen, almost to the back door, when she appeared. Not the Asian woman in the calico-patterned dress, but June, wearing a white T-shirt over simple blue jeans. Her eyes were red, her expression angry. A grotesque welt, red and purple against her graying skin, burst across her cheek in the shape of the carved brand. She bared her teeth at me, like a wild animal.
I shut my eyes and counted to ten before opening them, but she was still there. They always lingered when my mind made them grotesque like that.
No, not now. I ran through her, hitting the door open with a bang. They aren’t real, they’re never real.
I raced the block back to my car and shoved the key into the lock. Come on. The door finally opened before either woman reappeared. I slid behind the wheel and scrambled to open the glove box. It was still there. I swallowed two of the Risperidones, hoping the high dose would drown them out faster. I’d taken too few over these last weeks, trying to strike a hard balance between crazy and vegetative. I shut my eyes and counted until the panic ebbed. The ghosts didn’t bother me here, not where I might kill myself driving. The ghosts had their own sense of self-preservation.
Once my heart stopped racing, I opened my eyes. She was gone. I turned the ignition over and headed back home before the Risperidone made me drowsy. As I drove I focused on what I knew: the boyfriend wasn’t the killer.
I waited until I was through the front door before checking my e-mail. It had been a half hour drive back, and I’d stopped twice to rest my nerves.
There was a single missed call from Murray. If Mike had recognized me, there would have been a lot more. Returning Murray’s call could wait.
The brand carved out of June haunted my thoughts. I searched my shelf for a yellowed plastic binder I hadn’t perused in years, one filled with details from a decade-old criminology class. The early West Coast had bred a different kind of criminal, specializing in vice: Shanghaiing unsuspecting travelers to fill crews, trading in Chinese slaves, Gold Rush scams of every which way and flavor.
I found it, and my fingers tripped over the pages until I reached the familiar passage. A group of Chinese shipbuilders and canners at the Britannia docks in the early 1900s had been some of the first victims. Later ones had included fishermen and cannery workers, Native and white. The murders had largely been ignored by the press at the time, only linked in later years by historians who found the circumstances curious. I remembered it vaguely, it having piqued my interest in class when described as one of BC’s first modern serial killings. The occult-minded of my classmates had been riveted by the circumstances.
I brushed my fingers along a grainy black-and-white photo. The same three parallel lines carved into June decorated the bodies in the photo.
That’s why my mind must have concocted the ghosts, a long-forgotten lecture resurfacing. Murray would have missed it. He hated the occult as much as he hated history. I snapped a picture and texted him: It’s not the boyfriend.
“That’s not what our guys think,” Murray said when I answered his call.
“Mike is a bigoted idiot,” I responded.
He sighed. “He’d vehemently disagree.”
“I know what the brand is.” I filled him in on what I’d discovered, omitting June’s ghost.
“It’s interesting, and I’ll be the first to say it’s suspicious, but all it points to is that the killer is either into the occult or a history buff.”
“Did you see the photo? Those carvings are the same.”
“They’re 120 years apart. And I didn’t hire you to look for a killer. I hired you to tap your old trafficking contacts and see if anyone was offloading a baby.” A slight pause. “Ricky, are you taking your meds?”
My meds. The only way Murray would talk about my condition — writing off my insights as an odd, useful quirk of a broken mind, not unlike the brand on the body. My finger paused over one of the pages, over a photo that stared up at me. The woman in the calico-patterned dress, the same brand on her arm still distinguishable in the grainy image.
“Ricky? You still there?”
“I might have found something, just... this isn’t one of my mad goose chases.” I didn’t give him the chance to interrupt me before hanging up the phone, hoping my mind hadn’t tricked me into lying once again.
I stared at the photo and the caption underneath. A cook who’d worked at the cannery, one of the Chinese shipbuilders’ wives—
There was a rap at my balcony window. I turned but there was no one there. I swore and folded the binder back up. I wasn’t that high up... it could be a burglar.
“Hello?” I called out. No answer. I swallowed. It’s not real. I searched my drawer for the Risperidone, thinking I never should have quit.
“Ricky?”
Marnie. I breathed a sigh of relief.
She narrowed her eyes at me as I stepped out onto the balcony. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just the case getting to me,” I settled on. I told her about the brand on June’s shoulder, and the historical connection — more to settle my own thoughts.
The glance she gave me was sharp as I passed her a mug of coffee. “Brands carved into the flesh? Like strips of bacon taken out for a frying pan?”
At the look I gave her she was quick to shake her head. “Just thinking about old stories — stupid ones, but...” She shrugged. “Your dead girl with that brand reminds me of one.” She jostled the baby, who was also examining me now. “Ever heard of a wechuge?” She pronounced it way-chu-gay.