Started writing this, but I’m not sure what it is yet.
Red and blue light shone intermittently on a sparse treeline. Barren branches cast distorted shadows that surged and waned—a sort of potential energy for darkness in a cyclical dance of advance and withdrawal.
In the manufactured twilight, silhouetted figures trapsed a grid across the uneven ground of a field between the treeline and a winding two-lane highway. The rutted ground seemed to lead a hundred small rivers toward the roadway and decades worth of freeze and thaw had punished the asphalt into a splintered, grey Kintsugi piece. Its cracks spilled over with melt that cascaded like cold tears across a wrinkled face.
As the figures lumbered in the near dark, the receding snow caught the light in such a way that the bulging furrows recalled a mountain range dotted with rocky enclaves. Flashlight beams pierced the illusion here and there, but couldn’t fully dispel a sense of heavy tension. For a long time, the only sounds were the shuffle of feet, the occasional squawk of a two-way radio, and the gentle rustle of heavy snowflakes patting the ground. There was a mesmerising, unreal quality to the whole thing, like driving through blinding snow.
“I’ve got something over here!” a voice called, breaking the spell.
Flashlights duelled briefly as they searched for the source: “Hey! Get your asses over here.”
There was a short, stout man bent on one knee a short distance up the field. His hair and light jacket were soaked through with wet snow.
“What the hell is it?” a voice from behind him said.
The man pushed himself back up to his feet.
“That, officer, is a rubber boot. Looks like it’s been stuck for a while, it’s still frozen in there pretty good. Mark it, let’s keep looking.”
A flashlight traced a line of indents leading from the boot toward the trees.
“Looks like the tracks continue up here. Did anyone see tracks leading here?”
The question prompted nothing but silence.
“Everyone back to your gridlines, we don’t want to miss anything,” the stout man said. He pulled a hand across his soaking hair and exhaled a thick breath that seemed to linger as the crowd dispersed.
“Jesus, Andy, how long have you been out here?”
The voice was familiar, but he was shocked to hear it.
“I don’t know, doesn’t matter. What are you doing out here Inspector?”
“My question, Polliver, is what the hell are you doing out here? You’ve got half the squad and a shitload of volunteers out in the wet cold. Why?”
“Got an anonymous tip. Definitely worth a look,” said Polliver. “Well, less a tip, more a hunch. “There was a stolen car found a few days ago along this stretch. This is the only place that isn’t lined with thick trees in this area.”
“And so that means what?”
“It means if someone was going to dump a body, this could be it. Our missing girl was last seen in a car that matches the stolen vehicle,” Polliver said. He twisted at the hips, arching his back as if in pain.
“Look, Andy, I know you think you’ve got something to prove,” said the Inspector. “Unsolved cases piling up, but this is a huge expense of resources.”
“Hey, you didn’t answer me. What brings you out here?” Polliver asked, redirecting the conversation away from that raw nerve.
“Holly called. She was worried, said you didn’t call.”
“She knew where I was going.”
“She says it’s been more than 24 hours.”
He stopped to ponder the information, it didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t be sure. That sense of unreality returned.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. Go home, Andy. We’ve got this.”
He drew a breath to protest, but all at once the fight left him; he was soaked, exhausted, and freezing. Sapped, the thought crossed his mind to simply curl up on the ground where he stood for a few minutes. Instead, he exhaled sharply, waved goodbye to the Inspector, and headed toward the dozen or more police cars lining the side of the highway.
When the car pulled into the driveway the sun was over the horizon. Andy Polliver exhaled deeply as he looked into his sunken, tired eyes in the rear-view mirror. He could see the garbage and recycling bins were toppled in a heap at the curb and this was a more appealing sight than then enduring dread behind his eyes.
He propped the bins up against the garage and walked across the muddy, yellowed lawn to the front door of his red brick bungalow. He half considered knocking, but thought it might come off as passive aggressive. Besides, despite running the heater on full blast the entire drive home, his body still felt arctic. In the field he felt detached from everything but the task at hand—at least until the Inspector appeared—but now he felt devoid of all heat. He felt weak. He felt shame.
Holly was sitting at the kitchen table sipping a coffee when he walked in. Her bath robe was open, her woolen pajamas visible, and there were five or six cigarettes in an ashtray in front of her. She looked as tired as he was. His guilt flared.
“Andy? Oh my God, are you okay?” She rushed into his arms and squeezed him, then pulled away and slugged him across the chest. “Where the hell were you? What happened?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
His eyes lowered and he wiped across his brow again. Now he felt flush, his hand came back wet with sweat. He shook his head and looked into Holly’s angry, concerned eyes.
“Can we talk later?”
Her demeanor softened some, but Andy knew his wife.
“Andy, I know there are times where you can’t or don’t want to tell me things. But you’ve never, never done this. What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
For a moment he thought she might let it go, but it wasn’t in her nature. A twinge of irritation reared inside him. It was a trait he may have found cute in their youth—her unwillingness to leave anything unsaid between them—but today it was more than he felt he could stomach.
“Andy, just te—”
“I can’t!”
He didn’t mean it as harshly as it came out, but it was too late. He had a bulldog on a leash and his grip slipped. She pulled away, bitten.
“What is going on with you?”
“She’s dead.”
“Who? Who’s dead, Andy?” She asked, leaning in.
The genuine concern in her eyes made it all the more horrific to him. Would she still love him if she knew? Would it erase the two decades they’d spent together? Would it negate all the love he still felt for her? He couldn’t risk it.
“Nobody, I’m sorry. Just a girl, er, young woman. It just hit me hard, that’s all.”
Holly hugged him and pulled his lips to hers. Andy eyed the living room window and, beyond it, the deserted cul-de-sac that was usually teeming with children and parents. The twig hands of a half-melted snowman reached longingly for the overcast sky, torso sagging into the soggy ground below.
“Do you want something to eat?” Holly asked.
“No, I need some sleep and a shower. I have to head back to the scene this afternoon.”
“Really, Andy? Aren’t there other cops?”
“This one’s bad. All hands, you know.”
“It must be. Usually you’re in bed before Jeopardy finishes.”
“I thought you were quitting?” Andy said, eyeing the ashtray. He needed the subject to change.
“I was, but then my policeman husband didn’t come home for two days and didn’t call.”
“I suppose that’s fair. I’m sorry, Holly.”
And suddenly it was like nothing happened.
*
Mid March turned to May, but Spring was something from the past, almost legend. Instead of a dial, the seasons were now a switch that abruptly flipped between summer and winter. Temperatures pretty much hovered around 30 degrees most days now and it would only get hotter.
Despite being air conditioned, the station didn’t provide much respite from the heat. At least not for Andy. A slick of sweat seemingly soaked his collar perpetually and he made a habit of keeping extra shirts in his car. A small fan buzzed and flipped the edges of loose papers about his crowded desk. They tapped continually at the glass of a framed photo of he and Holly at a Leafs game which was front and centre amongst the piles of file folders and assorted forms.
One bright red folder, conspicuous in colour and placement, perched on its own above the fray. He eyed it as he tapped sporadically at a keyboard. His skin prickled with goosebumps. Pushing away from the computer, he picked the folder up, spun around in his chair so that his back faced his cubicle, and examined the contents.
The rise and fall of Andy’s chest picked up pace when he saw the photo of the rubber boot. He stared at the photo, willing something to jump out at him—dreaming that he’d see the key to unlocking the truth. The unanswered questions replayed over and over in his head. They couldn’t even say for sure how the boot got there or when. But the fact was, the tracks led into the woods and they led straight to her body.
He hadn’t been there when she was found. Maybe it was for the best. Definitely it was. He’d already been a mess. How could he have hoped to cover up the fact that he knew her? Every cop there would have seen it in his face. It had been him that had found the boot. It had been him that suggested they take another look at that field. He’d have gone from lead investigator to lead suspect. Andy couldn’t risk that, just as he couldn’t risk Holly finding out.
He flipped to the next photo and traced his finger across the name Jane Doe. He almost didn’t recognize her. Her body was naked and distorted, laying in an unnatural heap. Her hair was matted and caked with mud. It slashed in clumpy strands across her face and her formerly blue eyes shone white through them, her expression locked in eternal terror.
Andy returned the red folder to its place and wheeled around in his chair to face the blinking cursor once again. It hung upon the precipice of a sentence that ended with the cliff of “resignation” but hadn’t yet received the punctuation that in Andy’s mind would make it real—official. That period would send him over the edge, to a future he couldn’t picture and didn’t really want, but one that he felt compelled to embrace nonetheless.
“Detective Polliver?”
Andy hit the period key.
“It’s Andy,” he said.
A woman with a petite build and black hair eyed him from across his cubicle. Her eyes were barely visible above the wall and as he rose to speak with her he noticed bruising below the cheekbone beyond her black-rimmed glasses. A small cut suggested another pair might have shattered from some impact. Her green eyes matched the shade of the fastener that held her ponytail in place. The whites of her eyes were red as if she’d been crying, but her voice didn’t waver.
“Are you not Detective Polliver?”
She turned to the officer who’d escorted her to Andy’s desk. He was giving Andy a confused, mildly annoyed look.
“Yes, sorry, yes I am. How can I help you?”
“My name is Charlotte, Charlotte Walsh.”
“Nice to meet you Charlotte, you want to tell me what happened to that eye?”
“No, that’s nothing. That’s not why I’m here.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“Like I said, it isn’t why I’m here,” she said, glancing around Andy’s cluttered cubicle. “What’s with all the paper? It looks like the ‘80s in here.”
“I don’t much like computers.”
“I can see that in you,” she said with her scrutinizing eyes darting from his head to his toes and a smirk forming at the corner of her mouth.
Andy cleared a box of files from a chair next to his desk and motioned for her to sit down. As she sat, Andy noticed some scrapes across her knuckles. She looked into his eyes confidently as if she were sizing him up and she didn’t seem impressed. Her eyes strayed from his to the computer screen where the cursor blinked next to a freshly-typed period.
She scoffed, “You had enough of cops too?”
“Strange place to be if you don’t like the police, or did I pick you up on something and I don’t remember?”
“I told you, it’s not about me, it’s about my sister,” she said. For the first time Andy could see cracks in her stony façade. “I think maybe you…you found her.”
Andy’s eyes unconsciously wandered to the red folder. Charlotte eyed it and looked back to him. It was too neat, it couldn’t be.
“What makes you think I found your sister?”
“She went missing a over year ago—this was out in Grey County, near Feversham—but I know she was seeing someone from here, or at least she was making trips here weekly. Maybe she just liked the drive, I don’t know. We don’t—didn’t—talk much.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“A few months ago you found…someone. A body. That couldn’t be identified.”
“And you think it could be your sister?”
“I hope it’s not her, but I’m realistic.”
“Why wouldn’t you come forward sooner?”
“I mentioned it in the original missing person report. They said they’d follow up. I never heard anything about it since. Guess I know why, now,” she said.
Her face was flushed and her hands were clenched into fists. Andy could picture what had happened to her scraped knuckles, but that still didn’t explain the eye. He took a moment to consider. It was a very thin lead, but it was the only one he had. He picked up the red folder.
“You know, if this is who you think it is, you’re not going…this isn’t going to be easy.”
She nodded and he plucked a photo from the folder. Andy avoided looking at it again as he handed the photo to Charlotte, but those dead, white eyes hung perpetually behind his and he needn’t scan the photo to recall every terrible detail.
Charlotte covered her mouth and her flushed face bled its blush. She thrust the photo back to Andy, but she was shaking her head.
“It isn’t her,” she said, rising. “I’m sorry.”
She wavered slightly, as if she might collapse, righted herself. She thanked Andy and, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, exited the station.
“Another successful date, Detective?”
There was a smattering of groans amongst the officers in earshot.
“Shut the fuck up, Mark. Jesus, you’re a prick sometimes.”
“Whoa, Christ Andy, what crawled up your ass?”
“You want to impress someone with your smart aleck comments, you’ll have to find a dumber audience. Is your mother home?”
“You son of a bitch, don’t fuckin’ talk about my mother.”
“Cool down! Both of you!”
Andy glanced back at the Inspector who was leaning out of his office.
“Yeah, cool down, Polliver.”
Andy glared at Mark and looked back to his computer. He hit print and left.
*
Andy considered his inherent flaws standing stark naked in front of the bathroom mirror. Pudgy. Portly. Obese. All of these terms had been used to describe him at one point or another. He’d be lying if he said these words hadn’t affected his life — they had. Growing up as the fattest kid in school is bound to leave an impression, scars even. But these flaws, which had caused wounds both mental and physical, weren’t inherent. They were acquired; they were battle wounds that served to harden his skin into rhinoceros hide. The inherent flaws, those were the ones that had been exposed as his hardened shell fractured into deep fissures. They had fractured his foundation, and years of packing on emotional mortar only served to hide the extent of the damage.
“Hello, handsome,” Holly said.
“Sure,” was all Andy said as he shook his midsection, observing ripples in the mirror. She seemed not to notice.
“Do you ever think about life,” Andy said dazedly.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about an old episode of Twilight Zone, the famous one with Burgess Meredith where he survives the apocalypse and all he wants to do is read, but he breaks his glasses.”
“Okay, what about it?”
She was disinterested. Andy could tell. She played with her hair distractedly, asking the question, but not really listening to the answer.
“Do you ever think about if it’s worth it? Is life worth the pain? Is it worth living if you can’t do things you enjoy?”
Finally, she turned her head to look at him.
“Are you okay? Maybe you should talk to someone, I mean, the department has to have someone, right?”
Andy’s mind went to the clack of keys and of the blinking cursor next to the dangling period.
“What is it you think you’re missing out on?” she said as Andy looked off into the empty space in front of him and beyond.
“Nothing, I just—”
“Andy, I don’t know how to help you if you don’t say something. Tell me what is wrong. You haven’t been the same since that girl was killed, you mope around, you’re irritable. And now you sit there ignoring me, looking in the mirror and saying you’re missing out on something. So what is it? A woman?”
“No, it’s not, it’s—”
“Just tell me what to do,” her face reddened. The corners of her eyes glistened, but Andy recognized them as angry tears.
“I just fear that I don’t enjoy anything anymore. I feel like—er—like my brain can’t even process happiness,” Andy said. “I’m spent. I just feel completely spent and empty. It’s like being trapped in plastic. I can see the world, but I can’t feel it anymore.”
“If there’s something I’ve done to make you this miserable, please tell me. All you care about is your goddamned job and it makes you miserable. Nothing I ever do or say ever makes a difference to you. Why can’t you just cheer up?”
“Don’t you think I want to feel better? It’s not about you!”
“That’s the problem. It’s never about me, about us. It’s all about Andy and Andy’s wants and needs. You don’t touch me, you don’t even look at me. Do you even love me anymore?”
Andy paused. In truth he had never doubted his love for her, so the question stung him. All this time his feelings had been eating him from the inside out, but he hadn’t fully considered what they had done to her. She stood by him when plenty of others may not have; when he was moody and distant and when he felt so dark and low he didn’t know if he’d ever get out of bed again, she was there. Now he’d repaid that love by staring, agape, as she questioned the whys of their existence together. By the time Andy tried to speak she’d already left.
It was a long time before she spoke to him again and when she did it was to hand him papers.
“Read these. Sign them.”
He did as she asked. It wasn’t the content of the letter that led him to believe it was the right thing to do, it was the tone. The tone said her decision had been made and there was no going back. Andy sobbed quietly, alone, and he kept sobbing in solitude until rational thought faded and his subconscious took over. Dreams of milky white eyes and happiness that would never be felt again descended upon him and he embraced them.
*
Without Holly, Andy felt a little lost. They’d settled into their routine years ago and it had been so comfortable that he imagined neither of them realized how deep the rut they were in had become. Their life together had become so much about going through the motions: How was your day? What’s for dinner? Are we going out this weekend? Definitely not. Andy usually didn’t have to ask — each day was on its own track and he and Holly both knew what station they were going to stop at by sundown.
Andy began to notice small things at first. Holly would meet a new friend at work. She’d go out a few weeknights, then a few weekends in a row. She’d forget where she left her wedding ring. She’d only taken it off to wash her hands, where could it have gone? Once Andy was sure he smelled cologne on her when she got home. Holly was beautiful—he knew men would be interested in her. Hell, probably some women too. And, from what Andy could tell, Holly was interested too. He ignored the signs, partly because he wasn’t so innocent himself.
Hitting on women while having a couple of drinks with the boys at The Port Tavern was a cheap thrill. He was guilty of that. So no, not so innocent. But he still felt he had the moral high ground. In his heart he knew the women were just humouring him and he was just having fun. Not like Holly. With her, there was intent. It was almost like she wanted him to find out. After a while he’d catch her texting late at night. He didn’t bother to ask who it was or what they were talking about. Andy had seen more than enough evidence to know she was cheating, he just refused to acknowledge it.
Deep down he didn’t blame her. He’d let himself go. He wasn’t an athlete anymore. He wasn’t the hotshot rookie cop who met her during a friend’s wedding and jokingly promised he’d marry her if she wanted. He wasn’t the guy who’d shown up to her university in a police cruiser to propose. He was sad sack Andy Polliver; he was a hundred pounds overweight, emotionally unavailable, and unwilling to change. So he didn’t blame Holly for looking somewhere else for what she needed. The divorce was a long time coming. He understood, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry.
For the first week after Holly left, Andy stayed in bed. He had no job, no wife, and she was already talking about selling the house. His anger simmered, threatening to become a furious boil. He didn’t let on to her. At least she was willing to share everything evenly with him. Andy thought maybe that meant there was some love left—or, at least, feelings other than contempt. Regardless, he needed some outlet.
It was Saturday, 11 a.m. Not that the days of the week mattered now. After laboriously wrenching himself out of bed, Andy set a pot of coffee to perk and flicked the basement light on. It was an old house and Andy had never got around to applying any of his carpentry skills to any of the old projects he promised he would. The stairway to the basement was lined with pockmarked pine bannisters that were loose. The matching pine panelling covering the walls, long ago painted brown by a previous owner, was chipping and peeling in spots. A single lightbulb at the bottom hung brightly from a length of wire that descended two feet from the ceiling.
The weirdest part was the stairs. For some reason, instead of the usual treads and risers, the stairs were arranged in offset square steps of unequal distance. Andy carefully navigated the steps—left foot first, then right. All the way down. They were that tricky. When he got to the bottom he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the washing machine. They’d lived in that house five years together. Andy had done laundry once. He recalled how often Holly would complain about those stairs. He sighed hard. He was lucky she hadn’t broken her neck—or his.
The rest of the basement was unfinished with bright pink insulation visible behind clear plastic sheeting. One thing Andy had proudly done was improve the lighting. Well, he paid the electrician, anyway. Once he reached the bottom of the stairs he flicked on a second switch which illuminated the entire basement in white LED light. In the corner a weight set and treadmill served as a rack for old winter coats as well as a home for cobwebs and, Andy was sure, the occasional spider.
He cleared exercise equipment of clutter, packing the coats in a tote and setting it aside while he organized the chaos surrounding them. Across from the weight set he spied his old punching bag. Man had that thing been through some shit. The middle was wrapped with duct tape, a makeshift bandage for years of wear. He vaguely recalled he and his brother smashing it with a baseball bat when they were kids. After scolding them thoroughly, Andy’s father had taught them both to box a little. Andy kept practicing for years, but gave it up. Now was a perfect time to get back into it.
Andy wrapped his knuckles and wrists, pulled on his gloves, and took a couple of lazy swings. He inhaled deeply. Clearly, he was going to need to work on his cardio.
*
In fits and starts Andy began to work out over the next few weeks. He started slow, walking for about 20 minutes before mixing in some weights. Hitting the bag, weightlifting, walking on the treadmill—at first, they were a place to direct his anger. Now the activity seemed to take his mind off of things. He could turn on a podcast and walk for an hour, dazedly thinking about nothing in particular or everything. He started listening to guided meditations. It was nice to dream, but what Andy really wanted to do was escape (the white eyes).
“I’m seeing someone,” she said.
“Why?” Andy looked at the table in front of him and shook his head.
“What do you mean why?”
“Why tell me? Why now? I know you’ve been fucking seeing someone. I’ve known for a long time.”
At this, Holly’s face turned red. She looked both shocked that Andy knew and angry that he would call her on it.
“I don’t need a lecture from you, Andrew. I know what you and your buddies get into.”
“Listen, I’m sorry. I really am. I might not seem like it now, but I am. You deserve to be happy. But so do I. And I realize now that I wasn’t for a long time. And I didn’t want to hurt you and so I just ended up hurting myself. But, frankly, I don’t care if you’re seeing someone.”
*
It took Andy a little over a year to lose the 70 pounds, but he knew he’d been adding lean muscle as well. Looking at himself in the mirror, he still didn’t exactly like what he saw, but it was admittedly easier to look at than in the past. The 70 pounds, Holly, the job, they were all in the past now. He felt reborn.
For months after the divorce Andy had been a bit of a employment nomad. He worked jobs for a few weeks at a time before moving on. He moved across the province a couple of different times, but ultimately discovered he couldn’t leave home. It just didn’t feel right to him. With his background and recommendations he’d easily been able to score a few different gigs—working festival security for a few weekends in the summer, half a dozen retail security posts, and a couple of weeks tracking down porch pirates for a friend for which he was paid in cash.
It was the latter that had given him the biggest thrill, and a new idea for employment, but one that also set off a pang of regret within him. He’d grown up wanting to be a cop. He loved it, at first—until the monotony and baggage (the milky eyes) overwhelmed him. After leaving the force, he’d resisted the urge to become a private detective—probably just because of the cliché alone—but his mind kept going back to the job. As a private detective, he could choose his own assignments. He could avoid (milky eyes) certain things.
Every time he thought of the job, images splayed across the silver screen in his mind. Larger than life, the haunting visions of death and terror towered in front of him. He took a breath, wiped the cold sweat from his brow, and stepped away from the mirror.
Andy boiled himself an egg while he listened to the news. He overheard something about a shooting and switched the channel to sports. As he sat down to eat, he flipped open his laptop. A quick google search revealed the provincial requirements for private investigators.
