The Watch

By Tyner Gillies

“First class...riveting...I made the mistake of opening it and I didn't get a lick of work done until I'd finished it.”
–Jack Whyte, Internationally Best Selling Author.

“...[a] thrilling story...a page-turner right to the end. Tyner Gillies presents his debut novel with a fresh voice—an exciting new Canadian talent!” – kc dyer, Author and Director of the Surrey International Writers’ Conference

Will the Guardian Awake before the Demon Rises?

Resolution Cove was a small, sleepy tourist town, or so Constable Quinn Sullivan thought when he transferred there after spending five years in a crime infested city. It was to be the perfect place to consider his future career; low crime, nice people, easy shifts, and finding the girl of his dreams. What more could he ask for?

Something is happening in Resolution Cove.
Violent crime, committed by sane, reasonable people is on the rise. There is no discernible connection between the crimes except for insane ramblings of ‘eyes in the dark.’

In a house, in the south end of the city, stirs an ancient darkness that threatens to destroy the tranquility of Resolution Cove. Feeding upon its victims’ terror, it must eliminate the emerging Guardian or else be banished into the netherworld to await a new time and place to strike.

Autumn Donnelly knows what is plaguing the city. Her family has helped previous Guardians destroy the beast in times past. Now she must convince Quinn of the truth before evil blankets Resolution Cove, destroying the sleepy town in a confluence of Hell on Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: darkdragonpublishing
• Release date: May 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9780986763397

Book preview

The Watch

by

Tyner Gillies

"…[a] thrilling story…a page-turner right to the end. Tyner Gillies presents his debut novel with a fresh voice—an exciting new Canadian talent!"

– kc dyer, Author and Director of the Surrey International Writers’ Conference.

First class…riveting…I made the mistake of opening it and I didn't get a lick of work done until I'd finished it. –Jack Whyte, Internationally Best Selling Author.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Watch

Copyright © 2012 by Tyner Gillies

ISBN: 978-0-9867633-8-0

eISBN: 978-0-9867633-9-7

Epublished by Smashwords

Cover Illustration and Design © by Evan Dales

WAV Design Studios

www.wavstudios.ca

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of Dark Dragon Publishing and Tyner Gillies, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The cover art of this book may not be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including, photocopying, scanning or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of Evan Dales.

Dark Dragon Publishing

313 Mutual Street

Toronto, Ontario

M4Y 1X6

CANADA

http://www.darkdragonpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America.

For more information on Tyner Gillies

http://www.tynergillies.com

To Ewa.

You are the end to every road I have ever walked.

Acknowledgements

There are two people who have influenced my writing life more than any others:

kc dyer

Who has been a source of friendship, guidance, support, love and, above all, belief.

My Dear Uncle

Who first taught me the importance of learning the language, and then taught me it’s okay for a man to be a man.

And, not to be forgotten;

To Kathy Chung, and all the staff and volunteers, who make the Surrey International Writers Conference possible. Without you the conference would not go on, and without the conference I would not have the tools to write this book.

Chapter 1

CONSTABLE QUINN SULLIVAN crouched behind the engine compartment of an ancient Ford truck and scrabbled at his duty belt for a full pistol magazine. Dropping the spent magazine from his gun, he slammed the new one into place and racked the action to load a bullet into the chamber. He gritted his teeth and hunched his shoulders as he heard a blast of automatic gunfire, and the thud of bullets punching into the side panel of the old Ford.

He took a deep breath and tried to stop himself from shaking, gripping the pistol in both hands as he’d been trained, then popped up and fired three rapid shots at the deranged man across the parking lot. Quinn was a good shot, all three bullets hit the screaming vagrant in the torso, but the hollow point rounds did not even make the man flinch. He continued to fire his fully-automatic pistol in Quinn’s direction.

Quinn ducked down again, cursing, his heartbeat thumping somewhere at the back of his skull, as more bullets slammed into the truck, sending showers of broken glass into the air and onto the back of his neck.

Why wasn’t the guy going down? he asked himself in his reeling mind. He grabbed the shoulder microphone of his portable radio and screamed into it for a second time. "Resolution, this is Charlie One. I’m ten thirty-three. I’ve got shots fired and I need some goddamned cover." Ten thirty-three, the code for a cop in distress, would bring his watch mates running, and hopefully they were quick about it.

The call had been routine; an aggressive panhandler in the mall parking lot bothering people. Quinn had arrived and saw Scooby, a local homeless man who derived his name from the giant purple Scooby-Doo doll that he had strapped to the handlebars of his bike. Despite the fact that he was deeply schizophrenic, and had losing arguments with trees, Scooby was generally good natured and posed no danger to anyone. Quinn had spoken to him dozens of times in the six months since he had moved to British Columbia’s central coast and been posted to Resolution detachment. The man had never been anything but kind, albeit a little confused. But today, as soon as Quinn pulled up in his marked police vehicle, Scooby had pulled a black machine pistol from the depths of his filthy over-coat and strafed Quinn’s car with bullets.

Blaring sirens announced the arrival of backup. A white Ford Crown Victoria, with the emblem of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the side, drifted around the corner of the main street and into the mall parking lot. Dave McLeod, Quinn’s friend and partner, skidded to a stop behind the truck, threw open the driver’s door of the cruiser, and dived to the ground as Scooby fired wildly. Several bullets hit the side windows of Dave’s car, and more glass littered the concrete.

What the fuck, man? Dave shouted as he crawled up to Quinn and took cover beside him. Is that Scooby?

Quinn nodded. I don’t know what happened. He started shooting as soon as I got here.

Are you hit?

No. But I think he dropped a couple of people at the shoe store.

There was a momentary lull in the gun-fire and Quinn heard the clatter of an empty magazine hitting the ground.

He’s empty, Quinn said. On me, now. He ducked around the front of the Ford in a crouch, pistol held at eye level ahead of him. He did not have to look back to know Dave was on his heels.

Scooby was furiously trying to get a full magazine out of his tattered coat, looking down as he dug in his pockets.

Drop the gun, Scooby! Quinn yelled, his voice hoarse and jagged.

Scooby glanced up; a snarl twisting his grizzled, unshaven face, then went back to work. He had a magazine in his hand now and was struggling to fit it into the handle of the machine pistol.

I said drop it, Scooby! Quinn yelled again. Do it now! I don’t want to shoot you.

Scooby screamed in reply. He finally fitted the magazine into the gun and closed the action, chambering a bullet. As he brought the gun up in the direction of the Mounties, both Quinn and Dave opened fire.

How many bullets did you fire, Constable?

Quinn looked up at the Major Crimes sergeant who stood over him in a cheap suit, a large black notebook in hand.

Uh, I’m not sure, Sarge, Quinn replied, trying to remember the man’s name. I emptied my first mag at him after he started shooting, and I don’t know if I hit him or not. Then, I think I fired three more rounds before Dave got here, and five more before Scooby finally dropped.

You think?

Yeah, it happened in kind of a big fucking hurry, so I wasn’t actually counting my rounds.

The sergeant closed his notebook with a snap and held up his hands in a gesture of placation. Don’t get defensive. I’m just trying to get the details down.

The sergeant fell silent as a massive, hairy knuckled hand clamped down on his shoulder. Corporal Charles Raife spun the man around and looked down at him. How ‘bout you give the boy a couple minutes of peace before you start interrogating him? Raife, Quinn’s boss, was a giant of a man and, despite being a lower rank, commanded the sergeant’s attention by sheer physical presence.

The sergeant nodded. Yeah. Okay, Raife. I’m not here to hurt your guy. It looks like a justified shoot, but we need to get his statement soon. All right?

Raife smoothed his thick, black, handlebar mustache with a thumb and forefinger. I’ll see that he comes to see you as soon as he’s had some rest and has spoken to a division representative.

Fair enough, the smaller man said, and walked over to a cluster of other plain clothes investigators who had been called to the scene.

Raife turned back to Quinn. You all right, son? Raife considered the constables who worked for him as his children. He also had very little tolerance for anyone who had given up the uniform for a suit and tie. He glared at the huddled group of major crime investigators. You don’t need to talk to that desk jockey right now if you don’t want to. I know this sucks, and if he or any of those other ass clowns give you any trouble, let me know and I’ll handle it.

In the five years I worked in Surrey, I never got shot at once, Quinn said, as he stood up from the car bumper he had been sitting on. He ran the fingers of one hand through his short brown hair, catching several shards of the same broken glass littering the ground. I’ve been in Resolution Cove for six months, and this is the second time—the second time in less than two weeks. I know this is what I signed up for, but it isn’t nearly as much fun as they make it sound in the brochures.

Days before Scooby shot up the strip mall a kid from the local high school had lost his marbles and brought his father’s gun to math class. He had wounded two students and killed the school janitor before the Mounties arrived. Just like with Scooby, there was no talking to the kid. He refused to put the gun down and kept shooting, and Quinn had no choice but to kill him. The last thing any cop wanted to do was take a life, and now Quinn had done it twice.

Raife reached out an arm as thick as a coffee can and wrapped it around Quinn’s neck, pulling him close. This is not your fault, son, the burly corporal said, his mustache tickling Quinn’s cheek, his aftershave filling Quinn’s nostrils. If you hadn’t put Scooby down, he would have killed you, or someone else. We’re lucky he only wounded that lady.

Quinn looked over to where a pool of blood lay in front of a store. A young mother, out shopping while her kids were at school, took a bullet in the shoulder and another in the wrist, as she stepped out into the parking lot when Scooby started shooting at Quinn.

How is she? Quinn asked.

She’s gonna need some surgery to patch up the bullet holes, and years of counseling to ease the nightmares she’s going to have, but she’ll be fine.

Did anyone else get hit? Dave McLeod asked as he walked up to Quinn and Raife. Dave had bandages around both his lean forearms where he had torn off several layers of skin while diving from his car.

No, Raife said, shaking his bald head. All the employees in the stores hid once Scooby started shooting; although they’re going to be pulling Quinn’s bullets out of the drywall for the rest of the week.

Quinn crossed his arms and looked away, embarrassed. When the homeless man had started shooting he had pulled his own gun and cranked off shots in Scooby’s general direction as he dove for cover. I’m probably lucky I didn’t hit any bystanders myself.

Dave clapped him on the arm, and showed him a broad, even-toothed smile. Don’t worry about it, dude. If I’d been first on scene I’d have promptly hidden under my car and shit in my pants. You’d have had to pull me out when you came to save me.

Where did Scooby learn how to use a fully automatic weapon? Quinn asked, trying to change the subject.

More importantly, where in the sam-fuck did he get a gun like that? Dave asked, as he reached up one bandaged had to brush at the glass still stuck in his short, black hair. That’s a serious piece of hardware: a full auto Glock, forty-cal, with a thirty round magazine and a compensator. That’s a grade far above the run of the mill pea shooter we usually find in Resolution. Dave was previously in the military and an avid gun enthusiast, and he had a good look at Scooby’s pistol after it had been seized by the major crime investigators. That’s the kind of gun you use to invade a small country, not find on a crazy homeless guy.

I don’t know, boys, Raife said. But, those aren’t questions that are going to be answered by us standing out here in the cold.

Quinn looked up at the gray sky and rubbed his own arms. It was barely the first of October and the weather was already turning frosty and miserable. Bloody coastal towns.

You boys get back to the office and write up your occurrence reports, Raife said. Then you can go home. Steve is calling in a couple of guys from ‘A’ watch to cover the rest of your shift.

Quinn nodded, knowing that Staff Sergeant Steve Faulk, who was in charge of the administration and operations of the Resolution Cove detachment, would see they were taken care of.

Quinn, Raife said, you ride with me. Dave, we’ll meet you back at the house.

Quinn looked over at his car. The windshield was riddled with bullet holes and the front tires were flat. It would not be driving on its own steam any time soon. Okay, boss.

As Quinn was climbing into the passenger side of the Chevy Suburban that served as the Supervisor’s vehicle, he saw a figure at the barrier of the crime scene tape, and he paused, standing on the running board of the truck. An attractive woman, maybe in her forties, with a huge mop of blonde hair tied back with a scarf, stood looking at Quinn. He was sure he recognized her, and looked back, their eyes meeting for a moment. The place where he had seen her before moved through his mind, just out of grasp of his consciousness, and he struggled to remember. She was watching him, her gaze intense, to the point where it made him uncomfortable.

He turned to Raife. Hey, boss, do you know that woman?

Raife looked at Quinn over the roof of the truck. What woman?

Quinn jerked his chin towards the blonde woman. Her.

Hmm...don’t know her. Probably some looky-loo trying to get a peek at a crime scene.

I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere before, I just don’t know where from. You know, like deja-vu.

Raife looked at him skeptically. Deja-vu? You’re not losing your shit on me, are you, son? Maybe all this crap in the last couple weeks has shaken something loose in your head. We better make you an appointment to see the force shrink. The big man climbed into the truck, making the springs squeak, and slammed the door.

Quinn looked back to the edge of the crime scene. The blonde woman was still there. She looked at Quinn for another moment, then turned and walked down the sidewalk. Quinn watched her go as he climbed into the truck and pulled the door closed. It stabbed at him that he did not know who she was, since her face was so poignantly familiar. He was still trying to remember as Raife dropped the Suburban into gear and drove out of the parking lot.

Resolution Cove was a moderate sized community on the central coast of British Columbia, in the Caribou-Chilcotin region. The town had started out as a tiny fishing village at the mouth of the River’s Inlet, and had blasted, literally overnight, into a relative metropolis when gold was discovered in the surrounding mountains in the late 1800's. The gold vein had eventually been tapped out and fishing and logging became the main industries, with tourism doubling the population during the summer months.

Quinn had completed his first five years of service in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Surrey detachment, the largest in Canada. Like most people sent to Surrey, he’d been ‘volun-told’ to go, and once his first five years were up he could be released from his posting and start looking for other places to work. He had talked to the detachment staffing members and placed a request for a transfer on his file. It wasn’t that he minded working in Surrey, but he found himself getting restless working in the same place, seeing the same faces and hauling the same assholes to jail, and was ready for a change. Only weeks after he had made it known he was ready to move, a corporal from the staffing unit had called and offered him Resolution Cove, as they were short members and urgently needed an experienced constable. He had heard that Resolution was a sleepy tourist town and thought it would be a good place to decompress for a couple of years before looking for another transfer. He had accepted without hesitation.

He quickly discovered that Resolution’s reputation as ‘sleepy’ was not at all deserved. It was a small town with big city crime, and the RCMP detachment, with its compliment of less than thirty members, was sorely undermanned and overworked. Quinn did not mind being busy—he had not joined the force to sit on his ass, eat donuts, and take the Queen’s money—but all the members in the detachment were run ragged, and he was tired of getting shot at.

The media would have people believe that Surrey was the asshole of world, with more crime, and more violence than any other city, but, in five years working there, he had never been shot at. In Resolution, people had tried, with great sincerity, to kill him twice in the last six months.

Resolution’s detachment sat beside the city hall and the attached courthouse, on the corner of Third Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street, on the north end of the city, a few blocks away from the waterfront.

As Raife pulled into the parking lot, Quinn saw a tall, thin Mountie standing outside the back door of the detachment, waiting for them.

Staff Sergeant Steve Faulk grasped Quinn’s hand as he got out of the truck. How you doing, pal? You okay? The lines around his eyes deepened as he looked at Quinn, concerned.

Yeah, Staff, I’m fine, Quinn replied. A little tired, I guess.

It’s the adrenaline dump, Faulk said. You’ll probably feel a little rough for a couple of days. Faulk was a force options expert—an authority in police defensive tactics and the applied use of force—and had a wide variety of experience in various aspects of the psychology of police combat. He had also said exactly the same thing to Quinn after the school shooting. You write up your portion of the incident and then go home. Don’t worry about giving the formal statement right away. You can do it tomorrow. If those pricks from Major Crime give you any flack for it, you send them to me.

Thanks, Staff.

Quinn used his electronic fob to open the magnetically locked back door of the detachment and walked inside. The office was a long, red-brick rectangle, with a flat, tin roof the colour of mashed peas. The cell block—small concrete shoe boxes, with uncomfortable bunks built into the walls and steel doors—sat to the right of the rear entrance. He stopped for a long moment and looked at the five empty cells.

You all right, Quinn? Raife asked as he came through the door behind him.

Quinn turned his head to look at the bigger man, and then back at the cells. I was thinking of all the times I’d brought Scooby in here.

The homeless man had been a regular guest of the Queen, and enjoyed the hospitality of Her jail on the occasions when he had too much to drink, or when the weather was too cold for sleeping outside and the shelter refused to take him.

Makes me wonder how he got to where he was, Quinn said. Was he always off his nut? Or did he have a life before Resolution?

Raife folded his arms across his massive chest and leaned on the door jamb. I heard he was a high school English teacher, which is probably where he learned all that poetry and Shakespeare that he was always yelling about. Went nuts in the early 90's—schizophrenia—and lost his job.

Does he have any family? Someone should try and call them.

Raife nodded. He’s got adult children on the Island somewhere. I saw a few names on his medical records as emergency contacts when I took him to the hospital for an assessment once. I’ll talk to the Major Crime guys. See if they’re willing to do anything besides ask you foolish questions.

Quinn nodded. He had taken Scooby to the hospital, when Scooby had an especially bad episode, more than once himself. Always they had medicated and released him, stating he was not a danger to anyone and that they did not have the space to keep him.

The staff at the hospital was right about one thing; Scooby was not a danger to anyone. Quinn would have never thought he had it in him to intentionally hurt someone’s feelings, let alone try and kill a bunch of people. Being a street cop for almost six years gave Quinn fairly good instincts and a reasonable ability to judge character. He was sure it was not in Scooby to do what he had done. Quinn had to wonder what drove him to it.

He turned away from the cell block and walked down a short hallway into the general duty pit; the area where the constables did their paperwork and kept their working files. Sandy Harding, the lone woman on Quinn’s team, sat at her desk typing rapidly. When Quinn walked into the room she looked up at him and spun her chair away from her computer.

How you doing? she asked, her brown eyes wide, her slender face turned down in a look of concern.

I feel like I’ve been dragged through a knot-hole backwards, he said as he ran a hand over his clean shaven face, and dropped into a chair.

I still can’t believe this happened, she said, as she pushed a stray strand of her brown hair over her ear. Out of all the people running around the streets of Resolution, Scooby was the last one I ever thought would do something like this.

Quinn nodded in agreement. I can’t believe it either. I can’t believe I had to kill a man I honestly liked.

I’ve been working it over in my head, and it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been here for two years and I’ve never seen Scooby get violent with anyone. People would get scared of him, sure, when he was arguing with the trees in the park or yelling at that stuffed toy of his, but he would never hurt another person. I’m sure of it.

No, Quinn said. He wouldn’t. But he certainly did today.

Raife stood at the entrance to the pit, his bulk filling the hallway. The next watch has taken over scene security while the forensic identification unit plots out the scene. The Major Crime guys want to have a debriefing. Boardroom. Now.

Quinn and Sandy stood from their desks and followed Raife down the hall and into the detachment board room. Sitting at the wide hardwood table was Dave McLeod, his angular form bend over his notebook, Staff Sergeant Faulk, the Sergeant from Major Crime and his entourage, and the detachment commander, Inspector Donald Green.

Have a seat, Quincy, Inspector Green said with his broad, political smile. He was the only one who ever called Quinn that. Quinn hated it, but Green was not the kind of man you corrected.

Inspector Green wore the white shirt and uniform of a commissioned officer of the RCMP, but had stopped being a cop years ago. The short, rapidly balding man had made a stark transition from police officer to politician once he had been given his commission and made a detachment commander. The welfare of his members and the general public came a distant second to his polished image and aspirations for a political career once he was done his policing service. He was either ignored, or despised, by his members, and it was widely known that Steve Faulk was the one who actually ran the detachment.

I want to commend you and McLeod on your action today. Nicely done, but could you break fewer windows next time? That’s gonna come out of my budget. Green chuckled at his own attempt at a joke, but no one else at the table laughed. There was nothing funny that Quinn could see.

Green looked around, cleared his throat, and put his serious face back on. This is Sergeant Bill Davis, from the federal major crime section in Nanaimo, he said, indicating the sergeant who had spoken to Quinn at the scene. Sergeant, give us what you have so far. Green leaned back and grinned, appearing to be extremely pleased with himself.