Read Online Anarchy by James Treadwell - Free Book Online

on. She’d stopped doing it. If her case file told you anything, it told you that. Logic said she had to go somewhere to eat, but then logic said a lot of stuff. Jennifer didn’t say anything.
    Goose wasn’t cut out for watching and waiting anyway. She’d never been any good at sitting still. Better to get it over with, she decided. She made her way to the station in Hardy to face Cope.
    Take away the flagpole and the patrol cars parked in front and the station could have been a small-town community center, or even an unusually large and ugly house. It looked like it might have been shipped from Ottawa in prefabricated sections, to keep the budget down.
    â€œMorning, Marie.” Janice took the idea of first names very literally, or so it seemed, or perhaps she’d just been flustered by Goose’s full name and fastened on the only element she was confident of pronouncing; for whatever reason she couldn’t be persuaded to use “Séverine,” let alone anything as far beneath her dignity as a nickname. But then her own official title was “front office support staff,” which actually meant “receptionist,” so Goose tried to be sympathetic.
    â€œMorning, Janice.”
    â€œYou’re not on rota today, are you?”
    â€œI wanted to have a word with the sarge.”
    â€œOh. He’s out. It’s been crazy crazy this morning. Crazy crazy crazy. Six calls already. Can I get you a— Oh, would you look at that.” She flicked a switch in front of her and settled her mouth into a receptionist smile for the benefit of her headset. “Hardy Police, how may I help you?” Goose turned away as Janice listened, wondering how to occupy herself for the next hour, and was about to head back out to the car when she noticed the receptionist waving urgently.
    â€œOkay. All right. Let me note that down.” Janice made big eyes, and mouthed something at her. “All right. We’ll get an officer over there as soon as we can. All right, Margaret, dear. All right. Bye. Marie, would you be a dear?”
    She would. Some actual work would come as a relief. “What’s up?”
    â€œVandalism. Rupert. I’m sorry, everyone else is so busy. Did you hear that the plane couldn’t come in? It’s these problems they’re having. I’m sure it won’t take you more than a moment. That was Margaret Sampson. Some damage to the artwork outside the hall. I can’t say the name properly. Do you need the address? You know, the big hall in Rupert. It’s the Band building.”
    Goose had only been to Rupert once, but she knew. Rupert was smaller even than Alice.
    â€œShe sounded kind of upset,” Janice said, cautiously.
    â€œI’ll be nice.” Goose had the impression that Janice had been looking forward to the arrival of a female officer, and was more than slightly disappointed when said officer had turned out to show no obvious aptitude for her vision of empathetic, tactful, X-chromosome policing.
    If Hardy was the back end of Canada, Rupert was the back end of Hardy. The whole town was on a meager square of reservation land tucked against the next bay south. It amounted to a long crescent beach of grey sand and pebbles, two rows of houses on either side of the shore road, and a hectare of trailer homes on the slope above. It had its own tiny store for coffee, cigarettes, and DVDs. Goose hadn’t even thought about keeping an eye on it. Everyone would know within minutes if Jennifer showed up in Rupert. It was her hometown and, by the perverse law of celebrity, she was probably its most famous inhabitant ever.
    Margaret Sampson turned out to be the small round liaison officer Goose had already met. She was one of a group of four small round women all aged and dressed more or less the same, standing unhappily outside the Band hall. The building was much more impressive than the RCMP station in Hardy, a pleasantly