Survival

Chapter Three

Absalom liked to chase the sun. Every morning before work, no matter how late he stayed up the night before on dating apps or out at a bar, he always rose just before the sun did so he could start his morning run in the dark and usher dawn into existence.

The family house he’d grown up in was at the top of a hill. He’d started each one of his runs—back then, all in preparation for the high school track team—in the early dawn when his father was returning from his night shift at the hospital and his mother had just woken up to make coffee. Dawn in his parents’ Scarborough town house was a magical time; his parents kissed and caught up while he shot from his sneakers in a fury.

Running down the hill was easy. The speed made him feel like flying; he’d often imagine ambient clouds behind him marking his pathway. The uphill climb, though, showed him what he was really made of. His legs throbbed like an open wound; sweat covered his brow. But the feeling of elation, the sun peeking over the edge of the hill, was enough to make him stick with it.

His mother sometimes called the hill they lived on “the mountain.” With her bad back becoming worse every year, each slight incline took on an Everest-like quality, each step in their house a nightmare, a mountain inside of a mountain. Soon, she didn’t leave at all. Young Absalom, “Abby” to her, doubled his efforts to run in the morning. He’d climb the mountain for her, just to prove that he could.

When Absalom moved to Peterborough, the hardest adjustment was its flat and narrow roads. Almost no hills, save for the one in the centre of the city. Part of the university campus was set on top of Parkhill Road, making it the ideal spot to run whenever he could. The area was almost forty minutes away from his place on foot, though, so it was a once-a-week indulgence. Until those mornings, Absalom contented himself with chasing the sun in the blocks around his town house. By mid-spring, that meant rising at approximately five in the morning, so he could start in darkness.

He’d already taken one corner by the time sweat beaded on his forehead. His lungs ached. He and Sandra had broken up a bar fight the night before when the cops on duty had needed backup. There had been so much smoke in the place, the cloying kind from cigars and the sweet kind from vapes. Absalom still tasted the fuzzy scent of strawberries on his tongue, even though he’d brushed his teeth at least three times before heading to bed. He spit as he ran. He pushed himself. Harder and harder. Dawn was just breaking. He needed to feel this sense of accomplishment before going back to the unit and staring at his case files of unclosable robberies.

Because that was what they were: unclosable. Not merely unsolvable or cold or anything else that encoded hope in its very naming. Robert Stack wasn’t going to emerge and beg for audience help in solving these mysteries. There was nothing that a stranger through a TV or a switchboard could give him because there was no solution here. Was something really taken if nothing was reported missing? Could you steal potential objects? How did you take something no one owned?

These were existential questions, not legal ones. In all his other cases, he’d run a description of stolen goods through pawn shops and hope it turned up. Maybe find a geographic profile and stake out the next obvious house. There was nothing to do for these ones, and even if they found the person breaking and entering, it was a weak case. They would never be able to link him with the other breaking and entering cases because there was nothing to link him to. Taking something revealed motive. Taking something illuminated a criminal mind—and with nothing missing, there was nothing there. Kerri’s insight had helped—at least they weren’t looking for a budding psychopath—but it still left Absalom chasing ghosts, or even worse, chasing concepts. At least on his runs, he could chase the sun and catch it by morning. Sure, it wasn’t real, but it felt real, and that was good enough for now.

By the time dawn finally emerged in full bloom, Absalom was only a two-minute run from Parkhill.

Elation and adrenaline coaxed him towards the steep incline. It would be murder on the way up; the lactic acid in his limbs already made him ache. He told himself he’d walk up, pace himself, and not fly down like he had as a kid. But he smiled as he launched down the hill, knowing that his youthful memories would win out. He may have been thirty-four, his mother may be dead and his father washed up in a home in downtown Toronto and the house on the mountain gone to decay, but Absalom was still that fourteen-year-old “Abby,” and he still wanted to dream.

At least until he got to work.

His heart was swallowed and smothered in his lungs by the time he reached the bottom. The crosswalk lights at the bottom of the hill told him to wait, so he swerved into the trail behind a community centre. Lush green trees provided him shade as he took a respite. Some of the old university dormitories blocked him from traffic and acted as a sound barrier. For a long time, all he could hear was his own panting and elevated heart rate.

Then the rattling sounded.

He’d been breathing with his face between his legs, but now his back was straight. Cop instincts kicked in.

Another rattle came from behind one of the old dorms. Could just be racoons, garbage being collected, homeless men looking for change. All not uncommon and all not crimes. But a sinking feeling plagued Absalom. He stepped towards the dorms.

A man popped out, sudden and tall as if he was squatting before. He wore all black. His dark hair was ragged, definitely in need of a cut. He had a bit of a twitch to him, too, a facial tic as if he had Tourette’s or was continually singing a song under his breath without realizing it. In every other circumstance, Absalom would have thought the all-black attire meant he was a burglar in the middle of a job. Early dawn, in spite of what people thought, was actually the most common time to hit a house. So many people were busy on their way to work and willing to turn a blind eye if something looked strange. But missing were the tools of the trade—a crowbar, a hammer, bolt cutters. The man had nothing in his hands. His palms were open, facing upward, as if in supplication. This man was in the middle of something, but Absalom was sure it wasn’t sinister. He was about to turn and run back up the hill when the two of them made eye contact.

“Hello,” Absalom said. His voice was booming. Cop voice. He didn’t mean to sound so authoritative, but he couldn’t help it. “Can I help you? Are you having trouble getting inside the building?”

The man tilted his head. They were far enough away from each other that his face remained obscured, only a composite of dark features and kinetic twitches. The man turned away just as suddenly as he appeared. He grabbed a bag from behind a trash can and darted into the woods, a rattling sound as his echo.

Absalom stood in the centre of the pathway for a long time. Red flags waved in his mind, but he wasn’t sure what to do. There was fear in the man’s movements, but fear for what? Absalom may have spoken like a cop, but he wasn’t in uniform—yet the guy had been spooked. Maybe it was a black man running. He rolled his eyes. His mother had always warned him in Scarborough. Black men don’t go jogging; they run from the police. He’d become the police to prove her wrong, but he still saw the way some people freaked out as he ran down the street. No amount of Adidas headbands or gym shorts would change that.

Absalom examined the garbage around the dorm’s back entrance. Nothing had been jimmied, no windows broken. Nothing. One garbage bag had been torn open and quickly discarded. Since the holes were tiny s***h marks, it seemed more likely to be animals than humans. Newspapers had been delivered on a back porch, which had also been torn apart. Long strips of newsprint remained on a step, like makeshift streamers.

Absalom paused. That didn’t seem right. It was one thing for garbage filled with all kinds of smells to entice animals, but newsprint? Odd. When Absalom looked through the torn shreds, he found the remains of paperback novels also tattered among the detritus. Brightly coloured covers were written in, undecipherable, and the spines of other books had been snapped in half. When he nudged one book with his hand, he found half the written pages inside looked to be redacted with long black lines. Odd, sure. But nothing illegal.

Absalom wandered around to the front of the dorm building, memorizing its name and university affiliation. The sidewalk then connected him to the lights, which now said it was safe to walk.

So, Absalom decided to walk home.

The entire way, he repeated the strange interaction in his mind. He glanced over his shoulder periodically, swearing he felt a set of eyes on his back. No one was there. By the time he had arrived home, showered and changed into his plain clothes, he was nearly ten minutes late.

“You okay?” Sandra asked when he got into work. She set down a black cup of coffee for him. “You look spooked. Bad date last night? Any teenagers where they shouldn’t be?”

“I’m fine.” Absalom sighed as he regarded another case file for an unclosable burglary on his desk. The address was ten minutes away from Parkhill. The mountain was heading towards decay, like all mountains did. “Let’s just get to work.”