Seaweed in the Soup by Stanley Evans Page A

rods had been taken down and searched. The toilet’s tank lid lay in small pieces on the bathroom floor. Photographs had been removed from their frames. But that was all incidental. We only half-noticed such things at the time, because the woman we found in the lounge took our minds off everything else.
    It was another grisly bloodbath.
    The woman was fastened to a fake-leather recliner by yards of duct tape. Her blue woollen dress and the recliner she sat in were drenched in blood, as was the carpet beneath her. Flies buzzed around the corpse. More duct tape had been wrapped around her head, covering her mouth and anchoring her arms to the chair. She had been badly beaten. Her face and body were swollen and bloated beyond recognition, but a folded wheelchair leaning against a wall and the corpse’s muscular arms and useless, atrophied legs told us that this was Bradley’s wife, Maggie.
    Maggie’s fingernails had been ripped out. Her dress had been slit open down the front, exposing her sagging breasts and her groin area. And Maggie’s glistening entrails. Gripped by primeval dread and disgust, I touched Maggie’s skin. It was still warm, and rigor had not yet commenced; she had been dead less than three hours. The scene was so ghastly that for a few seconds I experienced involuntary skin-crawling sensations.
    â€œThe guy who did this is a maniac,” I said unnecessarily. “A stark raving lunatic.”
    We went out to the backyard together; children’s laughter echoed distantly in the school playground.
    When Bernie finished phoning Serious Crimes, I said, “I’d like to know where Lightning is.”
    Bernie took a deep breath. “Think he did it?”
    â€œNot a chance.”
    â€œHe might have done it,” Bernie insisted, his face flushed. “Lightning’s job was on the line and it must have preyed on his mind. He might have gone over the edge. If he did, I’m responsible.”
    â€œThat’s crap, Bernie. You’re talking nonsense.”
    Bernie’s head snapped back as if I’d slapped him. After that we barely spoke to each other until Serious Crimes showed up minutes later.
    Bernie laid down the law. “We’ve got to keep the lid on this business,” he told everyone sternly. “A complete silence, I want the press kept out of it as long as possible.”
    I didn’t see any particular need for it, but I didn’t argue. Bernie turned his attention to the foot soldiers, some of whom were already stringing yellow Crime Scene Police tape around the house.
    When I got home, I removed every stitch of my clothing, put it in a garbage bag, and secured the bag with a twist-tie. Then I went out to the backyard shower and scrubbed myself with deodorant soap until my skin felt raw. The smell of death was in my mouth and in my nostrils; I couldn’t wash it away.

CHAPTER SIX
    First Woman—who brings rain to Vancouver Island—had been smiling instead of weeping for weeks, and Victoria was hot. It was two in the afternoon, and I was hot. My office was hot. The city was hot like August in Tucson is hot. Last week, CFAX’s weatherman told us that Victoria’s present climate is the way it was in northern California 50 years ago. I’m beginning to believe it. Local farmers are ploughing up their potato fields now. Planting grapevines and calling themselves vintners. People grow peaches instead of apples in their backyards.
    I looked at Pandora Street through a slat in my closed office window blinds. A narrow bar of bright afternoon light spilled inside. A fat bald taxi driver, hunched over his steering wheel like a Buddha as he waited for the traffic lights to change, was casting lascivious eyes at a young prostitute, skinny as a desert rat, who was lurking outside Swans pub. A street-person of indeterminate sex was collecting discarded bottles and cans from a garbage gobbler. I brought out the office bottle,