Sioux Lookout: Confidential

By Richard Schwindt

It's 1994 and eight years have passed since the horrific events at the Silver Birch Housing Project, recorded in Scarborough: Confidential. At the urging of his girlfriend Brenda, vodka soaked social worker Tony Price has decided to take a vacation in Sioux Lookout, Ontario. Far from home, Tony stays with local hunter and social worker, Colin Kowlchuk. All he wants to do is drink, smoke, fish and forget everything else. No such luck. Something evil has appeared in the boreal forest north of town. Something that will leave a bloody trail of death until stopped. Aided by Colin, an aboriginal Shaman, and a comely cryptozoologist from Leipzig, Tony sets out to destroy the monster. Once again, horror, hilarity, serious drinking and social work converge in the second volume of the Tony Price: Confidential trilogy

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9780993861093

Book preview

Copyright 2016, Richard Schwindt

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-0-9938610-9-3

All characters in Sioux Lookout: Confidential are fictional. They are not based on, or intended to resemble anyone, living or dead

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

John Muir

Sioux Lookout: Confidential

The Author

One hundred and twenty kilometres north of Sioux Lookout, Ontario, Canada

September, 1994

Locals claimed there was nothing as beautiful as a pathway, littered with yellow aspen leaves on a bright September morning. It was chicken season and local hunters and imports flocked to these paths with small bore shotguns in search of stupid grouse and gourmet dinners. They were right; it was lovely and serene. I could hear the soft lapping of waves from some unknown lake ahead.

Scattered body parts belonging to William Tucker junior, late of whothefuckknows, Kentucky tarnished the peaceful scene. My companions were, like me, frozen with horror. I had thought that torn limb from limb was only an expression. I needed vodka.

Scarborough, one month earlier…

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

Hunter S. Thompson

Brenda Martin M.S.W., C.S.W., ace social worker, wonderful human being and my sometime girlfriend lay naked on the bed in my apartment idly sketching something, possibly case notes, into the sheets with her index finger. I had just wandered back into the bedroom and was enjoying the view but felt compelled to speak.

This isn’t like you, Brenda. I would have thought you’d be racing back to the office by now. I loved these lunchtime liaisons but she was strict around the time frame. Work called; it always called.

As if noticing me for the first time she sat up and pulled the sheet over her body. She looked unbearably cute when she did that. I imagined even the cockroaches were sneaking out for a peek.

I was talking to Chris Allard yesterday, she said. Well, this was an odd segue. He had an idea I wanted to share with you.

If it’s a threesome, I’m in.

Honest to goodness, Tony, he made one mistake. He’s not some kind of pervert. I was reminded once again why I loved Brenda so much. How did that much goodness reside in one attractive body?

Chris Allard was once everything I hated in a social worker: brilliant, accomplished and esteemed. He wasn’t a bad guy but I resented his social-worky wonderfulness. Then Mr. Perfect fucked a client, lost his job as Director of Social Work at Metro General and his teaching position at the University of Toronto.

I liked him better now.

Chris thinks you should take a fishing and hunting vacation in Sioux Lookout.

Brenda, you’re not serious? Oh yeah, Chris had taken a consulting job in that northern gothic backwater and been caught up in a series of ugly murders. He’d nearly died and was now back to being unemployed in Scarborough.

(Authors note: for more on this debacle check out The Death in Sioux Lookout Trilogy)

He says it’s nice this time of year.

Has it snowed yet?

Tony, you have been working for almost a year without a break. Getting away would do you good. You might come back less of a foul mouthed asshole.

I can’t leave the housing project right now. There’s a new gang trying to muscle in and everyone is scared shitless. Dysfunction and substance abuse reign, along with other inappropriate expressions of fucked upness.

This seemed like a bizarre scheme. Why on earth would I go a million miles north for a vacation?

Do it for me.

Sheesh, did she think that lame line would work?

Sioux Lookout, two weeks later…

Ho! Ho! Ho! To the bottle I go

To heal my heart and drown my woe

Rain may fall, and wind may blow

And many miles be still to go

But under a tall tree will I lie

And let the clouds go sailing by

J.R.R. Tolkien

It was as bad as I imagined; drunks, and cheap