Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 4, 5 & 6 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

  I manage to get to the end of my story without any further fumbles.

  “Thanks Cal,” says the chairman. “That about wraps it up for today. There’s coffee and snacks at the back to compensate you for missing lunch to come to a meeting.”

  He winds up the meeting in usual fashion and I start to head out. I want to check in with Stammo and find out what he’s learned about Annalise Lamarche and I need to find out if Damien has got anywhere with that encrypted file. Plus I need to—

  “Excuse me, Cal.” I turn and face the speaker. It’s the woman who looked into my soul. Up close, I see how beautiful she is. She’s almost as tall as me and she emanates an aura of calm and warmth. She extends a slim hand elegantly. “My name’s Tina. Do you have a second to answer a question?”

  I really don’t. “Yes, of course.”

  We are both still shaking hands. Her hand feels almost insubstantial yet her grip is firm. I feel a little pang of regret as we unclasp our hands; I wonder if she felt the same.

  “Full disclosure,” she grins. “I’m a journalist and I know we’re not the favourite profession of cops and ex-cops.” She’s right but I find myself making reassuring noises. “I just got back from Ottawa; I was covering the bombing. But I’m also working on a long-term project about unusual killings in Canada and I was wondering if I might interview you about the case you mentioned. It can be on or off the record; your choice.”

  The thought of rehashing all of the case that culminated in Em’s death churns uncomfortably in my gut. It really is absolutely the last thing I want to talk about ever again. I shake my head as I look into her eyes but say, “Sure, but if I help, what do you promise me?” Did I just say that? She looks taken aback. “Sorry,” I say, feeling myself flush. “It’s a line from All’s Well that Ends Well. It just popped into my head. I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to imply…”

  She comes to my aid by bursting into laughter. “I as free forgive you, As I would be forgiven,” she says. “Any cop who quotes Shakespeare gets a pass from me.”

  I am too amazed at her quotation to speak, but she fills in the silence. “I promise you a good dinner for your help, Master Constable. How does that sound?” She hands me her business card.

  “How about this evening?” Oh my God, I’m sounding too eager.

  “It’s a deal. Seven o’clock at the Lift?”

  “’Tis in my memory lock'd.” I say, but then my memory catches up with the instant attraction I have to this woman. “Oh, wait a minute, I have to do a surveillance this evening.”

  “Oh.” She looks disappointed.

  Awkward silence.

  She says, “Maybe some—”

  “You could come with me.” I am the eager beaver today. “Surveillance is usually a lot of sitting about in cars waiting for something to happen. You could ask me about the case and we could maybe have hotdogs or something.”

  “Sounds like a plan. You could pick me up from the address on my card. What time works?”

  “I’m going to follow her from work. I doubt that she’s likely to leave work much before six but to be on the safe side, I need to be at her office by five.” I look at her card. It’s an address in Coal Harbour. “If I pick you up at four forty-five that should work.”

  “Done.” She shakes my hand again.

  Without letting go I say, “I’d better get going. See you at four forty-five.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “Me too.”

  As I leave, I think of Em and the sting is not as sharp.

  The withdrawal pain however is as sharp; in fact, sharper.

  I feel twitchy and shivery sitting opposite Ghost. I’m not too optimistic that I’ll get much out of this meeting, he’s had more booze than usual for two in the afternoon and he’s a step or two away from full coherence. His sidekick Freddy is not with him.

  The withdrawal pains are bad and I need to stay away from the downtown east side in case I succumb to the lure of the dealers there. Ghost feels out of his element in the Railway Club and he’s getting some odd looks from the clientèle.

  “Tha’s a good beer, Rock,” he slurs. “Freddy’ll be pissed he didn’t get any, eh.”

  “Listen, man. You remember that memory card we found in that box of Wily’s?”

  “Yeah. Little plastic thing with photos on it, right?”

  “Yeah. Except it wasn’t photos on it, it was computer files. There were two of them.”

  “Makes sense. Wily knew all about computers. I dunno nothin’ about computers but he was a fuckin’ genius. He used to go to the library every day and use ’em for email an’ stuff like that.”

  He finishes his beer and looks at me expectantly. It’s a fine line: I buy him another one and his dwindling compos mentis disappears; refuse and he clams up. I wave our server over.

  “Listen Ghost. I’ve been looking into Wily and I tracked down his sister, Annie.”

  “Fuckin’ great, Rock. I knew you could do it. Roy always said you was the best. She gonna pay for his funeral and all?”

  “Thing is… she was killed in the bombing in Ottawa last week.”

  His eyes do a pretty good imitation of saucers.

  “You’re kiddin’ me.” he slurs. He misses the significance of the fact that they both died on the same day. “Fuck!! I don’t wanna see him go without a funeral.” A big tear forms in his eye and trickles down his aged-beyond-his-years face.

  “Don’t worry, man,” I say. “I’ll see he gets a good send-off. I promise you.”

  He switches to maudlin. “You’re a good man, Rocky. Roy always thought the world of you, you know that. He loved you, man. I love you too, you know that, right Rocky, right?”

  The server saves me from having to answer by bringing our beer. She’s nice. She gives Ghost his beer without any judgement in her manner. Again, out of the blue, I think of Damien Crotty’s t-shirt. Does old Ghost have any control over the choices he has made in his hard life?

  Ghost takes a deep draft of his beer to relieve the reality of his life as a homeless man. I take a deep draft of mine to help numb the physical pain.

  “So Ghost, what do you know about Wily’s life before he came to live on the streets?”

  “I dunno. He was kinda private. I’m pretty sure he had something to do with computers. Like Freddy said the other day, he talked about all sorts’a stuff we din’t un’erstand.” His coherence is slip-sliding away.

  “What about his family? Did he ever talk about them?”

  “Fambly, yeah. He loved his sister, Annie. Wot’j’a say happened to her Rock?” He doesn’t wait for an answer; he just shakes his head and continues, “She was the only one gave a fuck about him. His parents disowned him. They was upper-class pricks. His Ma was French, from Québec, a real old fambly, datin’ back to the sixteen hundreds. And his ole man was some Limey, Sir somethin’ somethin’.”

  That doesn’t sound right. His last name was Lamarche; that’s more a québécois name than an English one.

  “Are you sure about that Ghost?”

  He drains the last of his beer in three big swallows. “Yeah man,” he says and lays his head down on the table. “Yeah.”

  This is going to be tricky. Stammo is not a fan of the pro bono cases I take on from time to time but I really need his help with this one.

  “So Nick,” I say in my most humble tone. “I need your help with something.”

  “Oh yeah?” Not too encouraging.

  “It’s the Denis Lamarche thing.”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “I’d really appreciate it if you could take a look at his family background. There’s something doesn’t make sense.”

  “You do realize that’s a pro bono case. We’re getting paid diddly-squat for it. Right?” His face is set in a frowning mask.

  “Yeah. It’s just that… well… you’re good at researching stuff and I—”

  He bursts into laughter. “Your face. Priceless. What do you think I am? A money-grabbi
ng business guy? I’m a cop for Chris’sake. I may not be ready to call in the Mounties yet, but there is no way that it’s a coincidence Denis Lamarche and his sister died on the same day. I may have had an attack of sarcasm this morning but I’ve been looking into it for sure.”

  He looks at my face and starts laughing again. The relief is so great, I join in and we are soon in hysterics.

  Adry walks into the main office. “OK, boys. Settle down. What’s so funny anyway?”

  If I say, ‘We’re laughing because Annalise and Denis Lamarche died on the same day,’ she’ll think we’ve lost it. So I just wipe the tears from my eyes and say, “It’s nothing.”

  Adry shrugs and turns back towards the reception area.

  “Hang on Adry,” Stammo says. “You should sit in on this.”

  He wipes the tears from his eyes and I think that since we started Stammo Rogan Investigations he has laughed more than he ever did as a cop. “After you left this morning Adry and I decided that this whole Denis and Annie thing was just too weird to leave alone. So we did some digging. And do you know what we found?”

  I just shake my head.

  “A big fat nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s a cipher. She was a middle level manager in the Department of National Defence. She did procurement administration or some such stuff. Not married. Had a handful of friends on Facebook but as far as I could find out she wasn’t active on any other social media. Her Facebook posts didn’t indicate any romantic attachments and she never mentioned her brother. She didn’t have a lot of Facebook friends but she had a lot of interactions with a Sally Hyde who also worked for the Feds. We called her personal assistant at the DND but she said Annalise had no family, said her parents were dead. I specifically mentioned her brother but she said they had no record of him. It just felt wrong. So I thought I’d try and contact her friend Sally. I called the Public Service Commission to see if they could tell me where I could find her. They said they had no record of her.

  “But what I can’t shake is that both brother and sister were killed on the same day, three and a half thousand kilometres apart. That is not just a weird coincidence. So I called Steve at VPD. Asked him about Denis’ murder and it just doesn’t feel right either. He’d been tortured before he was killed. Who the fuck tortures a homeless man before killing him? Steve just put it down to someone with a grudge but I don’t buy it. Something just doesn’t add up. And it’s driving me nuts.”

  “You’re right, Nick,” I say. “Something’s not right. I took those files over to my old school pal, Damien, and he says that the one named ‘docs’ is probably an encrypted file. You remember what it said in the hint file? ‘garter is the key. you’ll know what it means annie.’ That tells me that Denis was the one who encrypted the file.”

  “So what’s in the file?” The frustration is plain in Stammo’s voice.

  “Dunno. Damien said he’d try and decrypt it with what he called brute force decryption, whatever that is, but without the key he’s not too optimistic.”

  “Did you come up with anything else, Cal?” Adry asks.

  “Just one thing. Denis’ friend, Ghost, said something that didn’t make sense. He said that Denis’ and Annalise’s father was from England, some sort of an aristocrat or something, and that their mother was from Québec. But Lamarche is a French name. Why would they use the mother’s name? Maybe it’s nothing; maybe Ghost was too drunk to be thinking right, but I don’t know.”

  A depressed silence settles on the office. It’s the more-questions-than-answers depression that occurs in some cases. I like it. It means that we’re about to make a breakthrough. What can I say? I’m an optimist.

  This feels weird. It’s just a little too intimate for a first date. Is this even a date? We are sitting, just inches apart, in the seats of the Healey in the Telus Garden car park. We are illegally parked in the spot designated for someone called Royce Hill. It gives us a good view of the blue BMW M3 owned by Susan Grey. Her husband said that she often took her nocturnal excursions on Wednesdays, so here I am with my new friend, Tina, about whom I know only two facts: one, like me, she’s an addict and, two, she’s a journalist; and if I reflect on the nature of knowledge, she may be neither. However, I have no reason not to believe her. We have done the family-background-where-were-you-born-do-you-have-any-brothers-or-sisters thing and are on to the serious stuff. She got into coke at Carleton, where she was studying journalism. A friend said it would help her study through the night before exams. And it worked, she graduated top of her class. Problem was: she graduated, the coke didn’t.

  I’ve told her the story of Roy and my descent into the world of heroin. We each listened to the other’s story without judgment which was nice. More than nice. Maybe only an addict can view someone else’s addiction without judgment.

  Being with her is helping me cope with the increasingly insistent need for a fix.

  “So, who do you journal for?” I ask, proud of my cute turn of phrase, if not the actual grammar.

  “I’m the Canadian reporter for the Daily News Hound dot com.”

  I’m impressed. They are a force to be reckoned with in the world of new media. The suspicious side of me makes a mental note to check that out… except…

  “I don’t even know your last name.” I say.

  “It’s Johal.” She grins. “Yours is Rogan.” She examines the puzzlement on my face and says, “I googled the details of your case back in the summer and found Stammo Rogan Investigations and, hence… you.”

  “You should be—” I stop in mid-sentence. Susan Grey is getting into the blue M3. “Game on!” I growl.

  Tina laughs. “I like a man who loves his work.”

  The Healey starts on the first turn of the key, not a given in fifty-something-year-old English sports cars in winter. A random thought intrudes: I wonder if Denis Lamarche’s English father also had a predilection for sports cars of the 1960’s.

  Susan’s M3 pulls out of its parking spot and I follow, glad that Tina is sitting beside me. A man and a woman in a car look less like a surveillance team. But that’s not the only reason I’m glad. We follow Susan’s M3 out of the Telus Garden parking and on to Richards.

  “Where do you think she’s going?” Tina asks.

  “Not a clue. My partner thinks she’s having an affair but I don’t. I’ve got a two hundred dollar bet with him.”

  “How come you’re so sure? Or do you guys gamble over everything?”

  “I used to date her, when we were in first year at UBC. I just don’t think cheating’s her style.”

  Susan’s car turns right on Davie. We stop two cars behind her at the lights at Granville. I point to the Two Parrots, one of the places cops like to hang out for a good, cheap meal. “Have you ever eaten there?” I ask.

  “I have,” she says. “I interviewed a couple of cops there one time.”

  “We should go there sometime.” I say it without thinking.

  “You’re on.” She says it without any hesitation.

  Suddenly, I find myself tongue-tied.

  The lights change and we follow Susan west on Davie. We cross Burrard and the only place she can be going is the West End. I’m guessing she’s heading for a restaurant. Maybe Stammo’s right; maybe she’s going to meet a lover for dinner. I feel a deep sense of disappointment… right up until she does a right turn and starts to weave her way through the residential streets. As I follow I’m right behind her. I’ve lost the cover of having another car between her and me. If she looks in the mirror she might well recognize me. I can’t really slow down to put distance between us because, like all cars driving in this part of the West End, she is crawling along at less than twenty klicks. After several turns, she parks outside a large, three-floor house; it’s the last parking place on the street. I drive past her, pushing myself back in the seat so that if she looks at my car as we pass, the only one she’ll see is Tina. I have to turn left at the end of the block bec
ause of the weird way the streets are blocked off to discourage people from driving through the residential areas. I stop immediately and, leaving the car double-parked, I jog the ten paces to the street corner. I slide my head forward and look down the street. Susan Grey is walking up the front steps of the house outside of which she parked.

  With a long sigh, I turn and walk back to the car. I start to shiver. For a moment the thrill of the chase drove away the rising pain of withdrawal.

  “Did you see where she went?” Tina asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to try and find somewhere to park.”

  “No need. I know what her problem is.” A sadness settles on my shoulders. When Stammo and I were still cops, I went undercover into the house I just saw Susan entering. Nothing good can come of her being there. I don’t even feel good about winning my bet with my partner.

  “What is it?” Tina turns in her seat to face me as I get back in the Healey. “Are you OK?” She touches my arm.

  I shiver again. The need has gone from insistent to screaming. “No. The withdrawal pains are getting bad.”

  She squeezes my arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you through this.”

  Nick

  Thursday

  There’s a lot of things I like doing that I never knew I’d like when I was still a cop. Running meetings is one of them. I was never that ambitious when I was on the job. My ex pushed me to try for a sergeant’s job but I never wanted to do it myself. But I kind of like running a company and chairing meetings is a part of it.

  “So Cal, what’s new with the Susan Grey case?”

  He purses his lips. Uh-oh. I can tell this is not going to be good news. He kind of flexes his shoulders. I wonder if that’s something to do with the withdrawal pains he’s getting. Or has he dealt with them by taking a fix. I’ll never know again whether he’s clean or not. The thought churns my gut.

  “Do you remember Dominique Dufresne?” he says.