The Flight of the Hogs (excerpt)

Tami hated how women with a million dollars in the bank rolled up to the cashier at the Goodwill Store pushing a cart crammed full with two thousand pairs of used underwear—on half-price day. It meant she had to wait in line for forty-five minutes to pay for one solitary used computer keyboard being sold for a buck ninety-nine.

She hated how men in ten-thousand-dollar suits went up to the counter at Starbucks to order a tall mild, saw that the barista had left one-eighth of an inch of room at the top for cream, and barked at her: “Fill it up all the way!” They sure were afraid of being ripped off for one-thousandth of a cent worth of coffee. Maybe that was why they wore ten-thousand-dollar suits. But it meant that Tami couldn’t get her coffee the way she liked it, with a full inch of room at the top for a lot of soy milk; the baristas were too traumatized by the guys in the suits to hear her request.

She also hated the people downtown, where she worked, marching like soldiers on speed drill from their after-work exercise session to Union Station so they could catch the next GO Train home to Oakville. Sure, they had lots of friends in Oakville, but Tami lived in Toronto; and because of them, she hadn’t been able to make a single friend downtown in ten years.

Plus she utterly despised the thousands of junior lawyers at the big downtown law firms, who sat at their desks fantasizing about making the real bucks in New York City, and probably played with themselves under their desks during the fantasy. It wasn’t like they were turned on by men—or women.

Not that things were any better outside downtown. Tami didn’t want to be racist, and was herself Asian, but it seemed like every donut shop in Toronto was operated by some reformed goatherd who hired only his female cousins, confiscated their paychecks and porked them once a week in order to let them keep their jobs. Totally different from the donut shops in the smaller communities outside Toronto, which were run and staffed by sweet people. The Toronto experience had scarred Tami so badly that she could no longer bring herself to enter even the Timmy’s in Fergus—and Tami adored the owner and staff of the Timmy’s in Fergus, not to mention three-quarters of the regular customers.

But online was the worst. You could go online and meet someone from the Philippines, Myanmar or the Netherlands Antilles and make a new friend. Try doing that with someone from Toronto and they were guaranteed to give you the cold shoulder, every single time. Tami had an online friend in Lagos who had quit the scam business in disgust. She didn’t have a single online friend in her own city after having used the internet for seven years.

Out of desperation, she had tried joining a Scrabble club in Toronto. On her third visit she had tried cracking a polite, friendly joke, and people had looked at her like they thought she wanted to shove a knife into their rectum for sexual purposes. She had never gone back.

Tami hated Toronto so bitterly that she wished she could nuke it. More realistically, she needed to get out, move to a smaller community. But all the jobs were in Toronto, and Tami didn’t want to start living on welfare.

So she was stuck.

And, one day, she decided to do something about it.

#

Pat inched along patiently in the three o’clock afternoon traffic. She had long ago decided that it was no use being impatient; if you lived in Toronto, you got used to rush hour lasting twelve hours a day, and if you were smart you took public transit. Pat didn’t have much choice about driving. She wished she could just slap a light on her hood and make everyone get out of the way, but such things were not given to informal consultants.

When she finally arrived, she was surprised everyone hadn’t left already. A dainty cop who looked like her belt would pull her down through the pavement into an early grave walked up to her window. “You can’t park here, Ma’am.”

“For pete’s sake, it’s Pat Vermont!” Pat said. “Do I have to go through this crap every single time?”

The cop clearly didn’t like it. Pat realized that, despite her size, the cop probably knew how to wrestle a horse to the ground. She wasn’t worried about the cop’s integrity, but also didn’t like to make enemies.

“It’s okay, Rebecca!” a booming voice called from beyond the barrier. Pat flushed with relief. Candace to the rescue yet again.

The cop, presumably Rebecca, directed Pat to where she could leave her car and then escorted her through the barrier. Pat walked toward Candace, who was no longer paying attention to her. Candace Carp was tall, rangy and square-shouldered, with a prominent Adam’s apple. Any other cop who was heard making rude jokes about it was automatically suspended without pay for two weeks, and they all knew it. Not that Torontonians were generally jerk enough to let such jokes go through their minds. All the rednecks lived in Hamilton.

When Pat reached Candace, she found Candace staring at a bare and ordinary spot on the ground. Pat couldn’t see what there was to look at.

“What have you got?” said Pat.

“Pretty much everything,” said Candace. “They hauled him away about half an hour ago. Beefy Somali guy, late fifties. His wallet was still in his pocket with all his ID and a bunch of cash. Looked a lot like a garrote.”

“Garrote?”

Candace looked at Pat. “Yeah, you get a thin, tough string and tie two heavy pieces of wood or metal to the ends. Then you put it around his neck and swing the wood or metal pieces around fast. Breaks his neck, guaranteed.”

“Okay. What do you need me for?”

Candace held up a small object in her palm. “This is his wedding band.”

Pat kept her breathing regular. There were some things about Candace she didn’t like accepting. Pat was an atheist and a skeptic, and that would never change for any reason, but being a true skeptic meant you accepted what was real. If something did happen, then the fact that it was impossible made no difference, and you didn’t waste time wondering how or why it was possible. You dealt with it.

“You getting too much stuff off the ring?” said Pat. When Candace got too much information off a personal possession, she could get unfocused and scattered, and that was where Pat came in. Her unpaid job, which nobody else knew about, was to keep Candace pulled together.

Candace’s eyes became unfocused, and her pupils turned different sizes. “I know who she is, Pat,” Candace whispered. “I know way more than I can explain. Or prove.”

“Okay, Candace? Candace? Give me the band. Just hand it to me. Hand it to me right now. Right now, Candace.”

Candace slowly complied. Pat shoved the wedding band in her pocket. Her hand was already clammy from having held the miserable thing for a split-second.

Candace’s eyes focused again, and her face became impassive. “Thanks, Pat. Remind me to buy you some Snausages.”

Pat chuckled. “Okay, who is the ‘she’ you were referring to?”

Candace looked like she was trying to remember. “Oh. The killer. I know exactly what she looks like. I don’t know her name, because the victim didn’t know her, but I can describe her perfectly. But that’s not the problem.”

Pat thought Canadace maybe wasn’t totally recovered yet. She wasn’t talking like herself. “What could be the problem?”

“The way her face looked when she killed him. She doesn’t know it yet, but he won’t be her last. Not nearly.”

Pat’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, shit. What, in Toronto?”

“Yep. Our very first honest-to-goodness serial killer. And nobody except you knows that I can figure out these kinds of things, or how. I’m lip-deep in doodoo.”

[end of excerpt]