Hell and Gone: A Wakeland Novel

Hell and Gone

Hell and Gone

A Wakeland Novel

Sam Wiebe

Copyright © 2021 Sam Wiebe

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca,

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Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

www.harbourpublishing.com

Edited by Derek Fairbridge

Cover design by Anna Boyar

Text design by Carleton Wilson

Cover photograph by Carly Reemeyer

Printed and bound in Canada

Printed on FSC-certified paper with 100% recycled content

Supported by the Government of Canada Supported by the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council Supported by the Canada Council of the Arts

Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Hell and gone / Sam Wiebe.

Names: Wiebe, Sam, author.

Description: Series statement: A Wakeland novel

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210291842 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210291850 | ISBN 9781550179637 (softcover) | ISBN 9781550179644 (EPUB)

Classification: LCC PS8645.I3236 H45 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

Whatever I do with all the black

is my business alone.

—Don Paterson, Filter

You just live there and you keep your head down.

—Stephen King, describing his hometown

Part One:

Head Down

One

Black Masks

Fireworks let off indoors.

At first I thought I might have drifted off, and the sound belonged to the tail end of some already-dispersing dream. Five-fifteen in the goddamn morning, and I’d been up all goddamn night.

I’d driven back from Hope in the early hours, chasing down a scaffolder who’d moved north owing five months’ child support. He’d been drunk and quarrelsome, and it had taken some bare-knuckle convincing, but he’d paid. Instead of going home and waking up Sonia, I’d driven to the office. The plan had been to write up my report, make tea and fall asleep, in whichever order those things happened to come.

The half-finished document lay in front of me, and if I’d dozed off it was only for a second. The small office was still, the only sound the burble from the Zojirushi, heating water for tea. Quiet, too, outside, with dawn just breaking behind the new office towers of Chinatown. I could hear the diesel drone of a vehicle idling in the street, and the groggy gabble of commuters waiting for the first bus of the morning.

The office was on the third floor of a brick tenement on Keefer Street, surrounded by larger, newer pre-fab structures. The office window was wedged open with a copy of Kim Rossmo’s Criminal Investigative Failures. Over the frame, with its trench of pigeon spikes, I had a view of the six-storey office building across the street. Locals had christened it Gentrification Central.

A panel van idled to the left of the building’s entrance. Late nineties vintage, painted a lustreless black, exhaust dribbling from its tail. The engine made guttural sounds like the phlegm-clearing horks of a smoker. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see inside.

I looked for the Calendar Man, the only other person I’d seen this morning. I’d passed him walking up from the Korean market on Hastings, coffee in hand, dragging his cart of merchandise behind him. He hawked Light in Darkness calendars at the corner bus stop, catching early morning traffic from Chinatown to the Financial District.

Only this morning he wasn’t by the bus stop. Looking down I saw a pair of Asian women in heavy green coats zipped over dark skirts, a white man in a charcoal suit, and another with his back to me, wearing a tan fedora and a suede jacket, his head crooked to talk on his cell.

Movement on the corner up from the front entrance of the building, around the side. A figure in a battered peacoat knelt with one foot in the gutter, gathering up something in his hands. It was the Calendar Man. His cart was tipped over and dozens of shrink-wrapped calendars were spilled across the road.

He righted the cart with a sharp kick and hurled calendars into its basket. He was out of place. There was no foot traffic on the side street, no potential customers that far from the bus stop beneath my window. I wondered if the sound had come from him.

I heard it again, the muffled boom of fireworks, coming from inside the building across from me. Ripples of sharp bass echoes, erratic, that could be felt through the morning air. Then heavier sounds that grew louder till they shook the panes of the glass-fronted lobby. A shattering sound. Then nothing but the rev of the van and a chirp of confusion from the bus stop.

During the lull I noticed the fissures in the glass doors. Not fireworks. Maybe I’d known from the jump.

I have some experience with violence. I fetched my shoes from the front door and shut off the Zojirushi, abandoning my mug with the string of Twinings wound around the handle. As I laced one shoe, I glanced out the window and saw a figure emerge from the building, soon trailed by others.

Each of them was dressed in the same deep-blue janitor’s coveralls, their faces masked, thick gloves on their hands. The first figure out held a pump-action shotgun and walked calmly to the van, as if he were guarding it. He changed direction as he noticed the two commuters who’d ventured into the street.

Black neoprene covered the bottom of his face, the bleached jaws and fangs of a skeletal dog stencilled over his mouth. His exposed skin was dark and his hair dark brown and cut short. When he spotted the commuters, he swung the barrel of the shotgun toward them.

I felt the breath steal from my lungs.

The next out of the building was a woman, who opened the rear of the van and slung a black and orange hockey bag into the hold. She held an automatic pistol and tapped the shoulder of the man with the shotgun. All clear. The man nodded. The woman climbed in, joined quickly by a third figure, limping and cradling one arm.

The commuters, the man in the hat and one of the women, had walked into the street to see what was going on. Now they froze. The man slowly raised his hands.

A gunshot from inside, close, maybe from the lobby. A startled cry from the commuters below.

The last man came walking out sideways, shouldering the door of the building to throw it open. He swung around and crossed behind the man with the shotgun. Pale skin and blond hair atop the same dog mouth. He held a rifle of some sort. When he saw the commuters, the blond man didn’t hesitate. He swept the barrel up to aim at the closest of them.

Wait—

The barrel jumped and flashed fire. The man in the fedora made a horse-like whinny as he dropped backward. His hat miraculously remained on his head during the fall, but tipped back under his neck as he struggled, limbs flapping desperately. The other woman ran and the blond man fired at her back. A ghastly black smoke bloomed from the gun.

The man with the shotgun discharged his weapon, an explosive noise louder than the rifle. My eyes closed reflexively. When they opened, the man was sprinting to the van’s side door.

The blond man fired into the small crowd by the bus stop, emptying the rifle, the black mist rising around him. Maybe thirty rounds. Then he walked to the door and the door slid closed and the van drove off.

The commuters had first made a communal sound, almost a swoon, that in the aftermath broke into separate sounds of panic and agony and fear. A male voice stuttered and sobbed as a keening rose up from the street. A sharp slurp of breath from someone in pain.

During all of this I hadn’t moved from the window. One shoe still dangled stupidly from my fingers. I became aware of it, blinked, let it fall to the office floor. I muttered to myself, words that felt empty and inadequate even as I mouthed them.

Oh,

shit,

what am I going to do?

I have some experience with violence. Nothing like this. I forced myself to breathe.

Then I went out the window.

Two

Catch Your Breath

This is so fucked up.

With trauma your mind spins. Collects arbitrary data and makes decisions a sane person would question. I could hear whimpers of pain from the sidewalk below. There were key-operated doors at the top and bottom of the office staircase. I’d save maybe a minute using the fire escape. It seemed like a precious minute.

I struggled out the window, slicing my thighs on the bed of pigeon spikes. The fire escape took my weight with a moan. I clambered down the stairs to the edge and swung down, dropping to the concrete.

This.

Is.

So.

Fucked.

Up.

I landed badly, pain jolting up my legs. I hobbled over to the bus stop.

The man with the fedora lay in the middle of the street, unmoving. The pair of women had crumpled by the gutter, one face-down and the other on her back. The moans came from them.

The smoke from the rifle still loomed over the street, a corrosive smell, rust and piss. The man in the suit sat on the curb near the women, his blazer placed beneath the seat of his slacks to shield them from the grime of the concrete. The left arm of his white shirt was bloody.

I was on my way to the Financial District, he said to me. His fingers prodded the wound.

Keep your hand tight on that, I said.

His cellphone lay on the curb beside him. Should I call someone?

Nine-one-one, maybe.

Right. Hey, yeah, right. Financial District looked at the phone blankly, then picked it up with the fingers of his injured arm.

The woman nearest me had fallen forward, almost toward the other woman. A protective gesture. She was maybe in her fifties, hair cut short and a patterned dress beneath the coat. A leather file tote nearby. I touched her shoulder, moved her purse, noticed the stain below her shoulder blade.

Miss, I said, I know a little first aid. I’m going to help you. That all right, Miss?

My daughter first, she said.

The younger woman next to her stared at the sky, blinking slowly. Her left hand was draped over her stomach, rising with each slow breath.

Your daughter’s okay, I said. You need it more than she does. Let’s get you onto your back.

I turned her, supporting the head. How’s this go? Airway, then breathing, then cardiac. The first aid course all but useless, coming back in pieces and broken mnemonics.

The entry wound was just above the woman’s left flank. The exit wound was a frothing hole a palm’s width from her navel. She’d been shot from behind.

I bunched her dress as I turned her, setting the excess fabric over the hole in her back.

My name is David Wakeland, I said as I worked on her. What’s your name?

Diane. Diane Cui. Pronounced "Tschway. My daughter…"

Yep, I said, tearing her dress, your daughter’s gonna be fine. Where do you work, Diane?

Sinclair Centre. I’m CPA.

An accountant? That’s really interesting work. Hold still.

Jingjing—my daughter—she work—works with me.

Oh, that must be nice. I had her dress open at the belly, exposing a grey sweat-stained bra and below that, the wound. Blood burbled out of it with her breathing. I closed my eyes tight to fight off a fizzy wave of nausea. Pressing my hand over her wound, I shrugged one arm out of my flannel shirt.

It’s nice to work with family, isn’t it? I said. Though it can be— I switched hands—it can be stressful too.

Yes. Diane Cui’s mouth clamped shut as a groan escaped her throat. Beside her, her daughter coughed.

My sister Kay works with me. Half-sister, I guess, if we’re being technical. Most of the time it’s great to have her there. Will you do me a favour, Diane, and put your hands over mine?

She did, crossing them over her belly like a corpse posed in an open casket. There wasn’t much force in her hands. I slid mine out and clamped them on top to add to the pressure.

I looked over at Financial District. They on their way? I asked.

Who? Oh, the ambulance. Yeah, on their way. He was staring at Diane and her daughter. Are they gonna die?

Nope, I said. They’re gonna be fine. Would you grab me some napkins, please, or paper towels? Maybe check that purse?

Diane groaned. The blotch near her shoulder had darkened and spread. Another bullet, maybe, or a fragment of this one. I hoped it hadn’t turned to shrapnel inside her.

Diane, I said, how long have you lived in Vancouver?

Nine—teen years, she said, the syllables tumbling out. Jingjing was born here. Vancou—ver General.

Wow, that’s where I was born too. With my free hand I tore at the fabric over the shoulder. It looked like a graze. There was blood on it. Blood everywhere, the smell like freshly turned earth and old coins.

Financial District passed me a wad of yellow Wendy’s napkins and I balled them and wiped off the wound. Diane seized up and bent forward, her head turning to look at her daughter. I shushed and lowered her.

No worries. What city were you born in?

Suzhou, she said.

Near Shanghai, right?

Not so near.

My partner was born in Guangzhou. His family’s still there, most of them, other than his cousin. That’s my work partner, not my partner-partner.

I moved her hands and kept pressure on the stomach myself.

My partner-partner doesn’t have much family. Me neither. Maybe that’s why Sonia and I get along. How’re you feeling?

It hurts, Diane said.

That’s good, right? It means the body’s still sending signals.

Are you a doctor?

I’m a private investigator.

A police? She tensed.

No, I work for people that hire me, like you do. Do you like your job, Diane?

I like to work, she said. My hus—band, he died with no money. I went to school af—ter.

That’s good. Sure it was. Hi, how are you, where are you from? The absurdity struck me along with another bout of nausea. My mouth had gone cottony but I managed to say, Education, right? Without education—

We heard the sirens.

Sirens, Financial District said.

About fucking time. To Diane I said, You hear that? Just a little longer, Diane. You’re being really brave.

Jingjing, she said.

Yep. You just hold this in place—my shirt over the stomach wound—tight as you can, all right? And I’ll check on Jingjing.

When I looked up Financial District was pointing at an ambulance, approaching from the intersection. They’re waiting, he said. Just sitting over there.

Behind them was the number three bus, parked, its destination sign reading not in service. The driver stood out front leaning on the bicycle rack, his phone out, watching us.

Waiting for the cops, I said. Protocol to a shooting is to make sure there’s no threat to the EMTs. Did you tell the operator the shooters had left?

I honestly don’t remember. Sorry, man.

Okay, I said. Flag them over here.

The ambulance crawled forward, parking diagonally in the middle of the street. The paramedics came out with the gurney. I was kneeling and I shuffled back as they approached Diane, making the same judgment about the body in the street that I had.

Gunshot to the abdomen, I explained. Blood loss but no respiratory problems. Another nick to the shoulder which could be a fragment.

Thanks, we got it, the EMT said brusquely. She removed my shirt from the wound. Diane moaned.

They’ll get you to the hospital, I told Diane. You did really great.

My arm. Financial District thrust his bloody cuff under the face of the EMTs, who ignored him while they finished transferring Diane to the gurney.

Jingjing, Diane said, her head moving as she was lifted up. The EMTs moved to either side of her.

I looked at her daughter’s crumpled form, at the ruined pulp that had been the back of her head. At the blood in the gutter, running past cigarette butts and trash.

She’ll be fine, I told Diane. We’re all going to be just fine.

Three

Insides

Keefer Street was a mess. Traffic had bottlenecked between the stalled bus, the ambulance and the arriving patrol cars. A Lexus crossed into the opposing lane and tried to weave around. The driver saw the bodies in the street, backed up and turned down the side street, the cars that had followed him forming a perfect jam.

Speaking of the side street, I looked for the Calendar Man. At some point he’d disappeared, along with his cart and merchandise. Good for him, I thought.

I bummed a cigarette from the bus driver, let her light it for me, no sense bloodying her Zippo. My hands felt gummy, like they’d been spattered with paint.

Eventually a patrol car got through, swinging to park across both lanes. The officers conferred. No doubt the situation was already spinning out of hand. Traffic, evidence, first aid, witnesses. To make matters worse it had begun to rain. Finally one officer moved to hold back the crowd of cars and passersby, the other watching over the bodies.

I threw the cigarette butt away and crossed behind the bus to the opposite sidewalk. Whatever this was, it had started within Gentrification Central.

In front of the entrance I saw cartridge cases, a dull steel colour, and the red plastic tube of a shotgun shell. I opened the door gently, avoiding the handle, and slipped inside.

The lobby was unadorned except for a large black and white photograph over the reception desk. A horse at full gallop, ridden by a helmeted and bent-backed jockey. Passing the desk, I looked down, saw an elbow, a bent arm, orange fingernails. The body of the receptionist lay awkwardly behind the desk, as if in the midst of turning over in her sleep.

The polished metal staircase swung up from the rear of the lobby. On the landing I looked down. A few smeared footprints in the centre of the white tile. Others close to the reception desk.

I thought of Shuzhen. My partner’s cousin had been Wakeland & Chen’s first receptionist. Shuzhen was now a law student, but she was only a few years younger than the dead woman below.

The thought sobered me enough to question what I was doing in here. Satisfying a perverse curiosity? Collecting more mental images I wouldn’t be able to forget? Or worse—did I think I could do something?

In truth it had been reflexes and nothing else. I’d started toward the building and no one had stopped me, so in I’d gone.

Upstairs. The hallway walls were bare and coated in primer, masking tape framing the outlets. The doors were metallic green with small inset windows. A few fresh stains matted the dark carpeting.

Halfway down the hall, a man lay on the floor in a jackknife pose, forming an L that barred my way. He looked to be Chinese, in his twenties, dressed in tailored jeans and a silk shirt, a thick, gold, segmented chain circling his neck. His face was frozen into something like disappointment. Not how things should have turned out.

As I stepped over him, I noted the black automatic pistol by his knees.

The door behind the body was wedged open a fraction by what I realized was a foot. I touched the door with a knuckle and it swung open. A stench of cigarettes and fast food, copper and excrement and flesh.

This had been the start of it.

The room was small and unfinished. Bare wires hung down from missing tiles in the ceiling grid. The stray foot belonged to a body that lay near the outstretched legs of another. Both had been shot multiple times, leaving blood on the walls, dark pools on the carpet. More cartridge cases, a mix of brass and the dull steel from the blond man’s rifle. Amidst those were trash bags, rubber bands, McMuffin wrappers, flattened cans of 7up and Wong Lo Kat. A broken currency counter, the machine’s cord still plugged into the wall, its tray crushed into clear plastic shards. And money—US and Canadian bills around the legs of a collapsible table, now overturned.

In the corner behind the table was a dark, bloody something. A fourth man or woman, face-down, wearing a shredded garment that looked put on backward. White athletic strings hung off the collar, and I realized it was a man, and he was face-up. Or rather, faceless. The drywall behind the form had been nearly destroyed. Peach-coloured powder and crumbs coated the clothes and the body’s dark red no-longer-insides.

You wanted to see this, didn’t you?

You wanted to know.

Well. What do you know?

How much more sense does it make? How much better will you sleep with this rather than questions?

Face it. You are so fucking far out of your depth, Wakeland. You don’t belong here.

I took the fire exit down, nearly colliding with two uniformed officers. My hands went up without being asked.

The hell are you doing here? one said. You were outside.

Thought maybe someone was alive in here and I could help.

And?

I shook my head.

Both officers looked young, and the one who spoke was sweating. Not a time for provocation. I didn’t resist when they near-dragged me outside.

The scene had become further cluttered since I’d gone in. Both ends of the street were blocked off by patrol cars, traffic rerouted down Gore. A crowd had formed near the front end of the stalled bus, white lights from cellphone cameras strafing the scene.

A support van was nearby. One of the VPD’s forensic technicians carefully placed white letter markers on the concrete. Another tech documented the scene with a camera. Uniformed cops at either end of the street. The illusion of order, of everything under control.

The cops escorted me up the street toward a Dodge Charger parked halfway up on the curb. The word supervisor was decaled in blue on the white side panel, above a swooping Coast Salish design. The back door was open and a woman sat with her legs in the street, drinking a coffee and chewing on some sort of protein bar.

We found him, the perspiring cop said. Inside. The guy the shirt belongs to.

Does it? the woman asked me.

For a moment I was confused. A flinch of self-consciousness hit me. I was in jeans and a Soundgarden T-shirt, one shoe on. My flannel shirt had been used to stanch a wound in Diane Cui’s chest.

If it’s faded blue-green it’s mine, I said. The blood’s not.

The woman stood up. She was thickset, a shade below my height, her hair silver and trimmed short. If she was perturbed by the bodies or the hectic action around her, it didn’t show. Her gestures were friendly, her handshake warm and firm.

Superintendent Ellen Borden, she said. This is quite an ordeal. From what I’ve heard, there’s a woman going to the hospital that has you to thank. Very heroic.

Basic first aid, I said.

And modest too. Her expression was somewhere between mocking and sincere, but I was too tired, too something, to parse it. Can I get you anything? she asked.

I told her a cigarette would be heavenly.

Four years quit myself, Borden said. What we’re going to do is get a medic to look at you. Then we’ll need to talk to you at the station. We can scrounge up a smoke for you there. Sound all right to you?

Not much to say, I said. I got here after.

Borden’s head canted to the side in a shrug, we’ll see.

A Black officer approached us and informed Borden in a Québécois accent that there were four more inside the building, on the second floor. Borden drank the last of her coffee and told the officer, Sergeant Dudgeon, to hold on a second. This fellow was inside. She pointed at me.

You disturb anything? Dudgeon asked me.

No.

Why you go in, then?

See if I could help anyone.

You know what’s inside? You maybe see it happen?

Images of the shooters coming out the door cycled through my mind. Their masks. How the man with the shotgun had tilted his head in the moment before the shooting. Giving an order to the blond man? Warning him off? Or just a meaningless tic?

I said to Borden, My office is across the street, third floor. That one there with the open window. I keep a pack of Gauloises in the desk drawer. You mind? Otherwise I might throw up.

We’ll get you sorted in a sec, Borden said.

Across the street, a pair of forensic technicians were sweeping the