The phone call came screaming into Rawle’s bedroom at 5 a.m., forcing him to wake in the coldest phase of night, when it’s painful to be awake. He experienced a kind of mild depressive episode as he pulled his face up from the pillow.
“I hate you…”
The phone rang again.
Rawle fumbled for the plastic receiver that he knew was lying on the carpet somewhere beside the bed. There it is, you fucker.
“Hullo?”
“Rawle Powder? Good mor-ning. Did I wake you? Hahaha. It’s Brenda, from Search and Rescue. There’s a search. Are you able to make it?”
“Mmmm,” Rawle moaned, affirmative.
“It’s a married couple, missing since yesterday. We’re to meet at the parking lot at Sunken Lake. Do you know where that is?”
Rawle said ‘yes’ and then tiptoed down the narrow carpet staircase, trying not to wake Athan, or his wife, or the dog for that matter.
The bedroom doors in the Powder home consisted of bare crisscrossing boards screwed together by Rawle’s landlord, an amateur carpenter. They looked nice, but were very thin and as soundproof as a tuning fork.
Athan didn’t wake up when the phone rang. Thank God.
Rawle wrote a note on an empty telephone bill envelope and left it beside the coffeemaker, where Kelloway was sure to see it.
Call me on my cell, he wrote. I’m on a search.
His black Roots duffel bag was pre-packed downstairs in the hall closet. He looped a new skinning knife he’d got for Christmas on his fat leather belt. It had a thick rosewood handle and long curved blade.
Perfect.
It felt cold out, judging by the draft that was sucking at the front door. Rawle pulled on a pair of blue ski pants and took the Helly Hansen Sealord parka out of the closet and stepped into a pair of muddy black Sorels.
The Golf started after a couple tries and tumbled grumpily out the driveway with the engine freezing cold. The transmission started making brittle-sounding effort-noises every time Rawle forced it to change gears.
“C’mon, you pussy!” he shouted.
Timmie’s was empty this time of morning and the trip downtown to Main Street took all but two minutes. Well worth it for a hot extra-large double-single in hand as he reversed course and pushed the Golf all the way up Gaspereau Avenue, over the Ridge and down into the snowy Gaspereau Valley. Then Black River Road to the winter wilderness of South Mountain.
He cranked the volume on a new Eminem tune, “Oh the places you’ll go,” trying to pump himself up for what promised to be a long cold trek through the cold forest. The lyrics were taken from a Dr. Seuss children’s book: “Oh the places you’ll go.”
-No! That’s not for you! Somehow you’ll es-cape all that waitin’ and stayin’. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playin.’
It kicked ass.
At Sunken Lake, Rawle crossed the narrow hydroelectric dam on Corkum & Burns Road and pulled left into a badly pitted gravel parking lot near the public beach, pounding the Golf over bucket-size potholes. Bang, bang.
It was completely pitch black out.
Only the bright orange Search and Rescue Command Bus and three other cars had arrived before Rawle. One of the cars was Cst. Keith’s white interceptor.
Rawle pulled into the spot next to him.
Deep down, he always wanted to be a cop, a hero. A lot of reporters did maybe, but mostly they were too much a bunch of pussies.
Cst. Keith was sitting in the cockpit with a light on, appearing to be going over some paperwork for the upcoming search. His flat brow was furrowed and the rest of his wide, sperm-whale face looked either depressed or badly hung-over.
Rawle got out the Golf and rapped on the window with his fingertips.
The officer jerked his head up and he mouthed the words: “Oh shit.”
Cst. Keith quickly crammed all his papers, including several long rolls of fax print-out onto a clipboard and stepped out of the cruiser. His black boots made a loud scrunching sound on the ice-cold gravel.
Fuck it was cold. The weather had grown extremely cold overnight, much more like the seasons Rawle was used to having and loathing in the Maritimes.
“Rawle,” Cst. Keith said quietly, sounding either dead serious or joking.
“Rawle what?”
Cst. Keith was acting weird. Usually, he had an insult always at the ready. Rawle expected him to say: ‘Thanks for the coffee, Cheese-dick.’
“It’s your friends,” Cst. Keith said, instead, looking down at the gravel as he said it.
Rawle knew right away who he was talking about. The parking lot was less than a kilometre from Jack and Tee’s place, and Rawle didn’t have that many friends.
“Both of them, man.”
He clapped a chubby hand onto Rawle’s shoulder in the white Halogen glow of his cruiser lights. “I’m sorry. I tried to call you on your cell but it was turned off.”
“-Are you joking?” Rawle said. He knew he wasn’t, but he was just buying some more time to process.
Cst. Keith’s wide-set face held no hint of a smile underneath his policeman’s mustache. He moved his head back and forth. Of course not.
“I talked to Jack on Wednesday for Christ’s sake! Who reported them missing?”
“They’ve been missing since yesterday morning,” Cst. Keith said, looking down at his clipboard of papers. A couple senior search commanders from the bus, Big Orange, came over and everybody stood in the glow of the headlights.
Cst. Keith’s explanations to Rawle gradually became an official briefing, as more and more searchers arrived.
“Mrs. Lee’s mother reported them missing. Theyy were supposed to visit a family member in the hospital, Friday morning. They never showed. It was important they be there. They would not have missed it, not without calling. Nobody has seen them or heard of them. The Membership spoke to a neighbour up here a few minutes ago, on Black River.” Cst. Keith gestured to his right. “The last time the neighbour saw the subjects, Friday morning early, they were driving to this parking lot in Jack’s Jimmy. That’s a 1989 two-tone tan and white GMC Jimmy. Tan on th ebotom, white on top. Right?” Cst. Keith looked at Rawle for confirmation of the colour scheme.
Rawle nodded, frowning.
“Jack and Tamara bring their dog to these woods every morning. Members on ATV’s are searching fire roads and logging roads. Ground Search and Rescue’s job is to scour the forest. We’ll follow those telephone poles straight back into the bush.”
Enough searchers had arrived by now for the group to get started.
A vicious wind blew over the parking lot, like a vapour. Rawle felt like he was standing in the blast of an open freezer.
Cst. Keith jabbed his hands, one at a time, into his pockets. “The neighbour has it that on the morning they disappeared, Mr. Lee was wearing a blueberry blue jacket, a windbreaker and a wool winter hat, grey and blue. Mrs. Lee was wearing a light baby-blue coat and a brown winter cap… That’s all I have for clothing. Any questions? Terry?”
Search Commander Terry Killacky, himself a retired cop, stepped forward. He called roll, then divided the group into two teams, Team One and Team Two.
“The temperatures dropped below minus 25 last night,” Killacky said in his mournful smoker’s growl. “The winds were up to 90. Windchill temperatures below minus 35.”
He paused and looked gravely at the crowd of men and women. “It’s not likely we’re going to find our subjects walking.”
-Jesus Christ. Rawle felt his stomach drop.
Something Killacky had said a hundred times before struck below the belt, like an elbow in the dick.
As soon as Killacky said it, his deep-lined face drooped even further. He looked Rawle in the eyes.
“I mean, if they’re in here. I’m sorry, Rawle. Jesus! As many of you may know, Rawle is a friend of the subjects, so please watch what you say, for Christ sake! Let’s be respectful and professional. I just want to make clear… especially you new guys- this could turn out to be a crime scene. If you find something, please, one person take a look, the rest of you stay back. Fill out your task sheets. They might be supoended. If you find something and the IC’s not right there, tape off the area with your orange marking tape and mark the GPS coordinates. Questions?”
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