Twenty-Six
Alberta Septembers were often a little bipolar, torn between summer and winter, but this year summer was holding on hard. The afternoon was hot, and while Keller launched Groot’s ball into the high grass behind the house, she thought about changing out of her jeans and into shorts. Maybe she would sit out and tan after Decker was gone.
“Nice place,” Decker said, coming out to join her at about the third iteration of ball toss.
“I think so.” She didn’t bother looking at him, focusing on the dog, the ball, the simple joy Groot felt in chasing it. She felt a pang of envy.
Her four-acre parcel was fenced off on three sides, the edges of each field lined with trees. Some of these had been planted by her great-grandfather and all of them by people who knew that the windbreak they envisioned would not be complete in their lifetime. Keller watched the leaves rustle in the breeze as she tossed the ball and wondered how the windbreaks in her own life had been breached so easily.
“Find anything interesting?” she asked. “My secret batch of pills? The room where I hide fugitives?”
“No,” Decker said. “No Batcave either.” There was no apology in his tone. “You’re pretty smart, Ms. Keller. I’m sure you understand—”
“You don’t have to explain.” She glanced his way and saw him watching her. “Want to see the outbuildings now?”
He looked to the stable and sheds, then back at her, his face expressionless. “I really have thought about buying an acreage someday.”
“That is just awesome.” She said it tonelessly and set off toward the stable.
She sensed Decker following a few steps behind but ignored him. Groot returned at regular intervals to drop his saliva-smeared ball at her feet, and each time she scooped it up and tossed it in a different direction.
“You said Oakes talked about a partner,” Decker ventured as they reached the stable and Keller slid the door open.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t dark enough—something like that. But ‘I’d do’ for him… or someone else maybe.” She ran a hand through her hair, irritation prickling her skin like sweat. “I told you, I don’t fucking know anything else.”
“But that was your impression.”
She stepped into the stable. It was empty of horses now, but when optimistic breezes blew through her mind, she imagined having one or two. Imagined a life occupied by routines of caring for an acreage full of animals, the comfortable repetitive rituals of rising each morning to feed and water and groom and exercise them.
“My impression, for what it’s worth.”
“Like I said, you seem smart. Might be worth something.”
“Too late for flattery, Detective.”
“I’m not kidding.” Decker looked the stable up and down. “You ride?”
“When I was a kid, a teenager. My grandpa always kept a couple of horses. He passed two years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He was ninety, and he died in the middle of that field.” She waved a hand toward the northwest corner of the property. “Face up and staring at the sun. How he’d have wanted it.”
“I get that.” Decker strolled into the stable looking here and there, giving the appearance of idle curiosity. “You form any other impressions about Oakes?”
Keller felt her headache spike. Her father would have liked Decker, would have admired his questioning technique. The push-and-pull mix of light praise and friendly inquiry. But Keller was tired of being interrogated while this man strolled around private pieces of her life.
“I formed the impression he was a child-raping asshole.” She faced Decker. “I haven’t got all day, Detective. There’s a storage shed you’ll want to see. That’s the end of the tour, I think.”
She walked away, out of the stable and into the sun, and again Decker followed her quick stride.
“Not everybody gets to die looking up at the sun, Ms. Keller.” Decker’s voice was harsh and Keller understood that his outrage, or part of it, anyway, was calculated to elicit a sympathetic response in her. “Whoever that girl in K-Country is, she and Natasha Janvier died cold and scared, and their killers dumped them in a ditch like garbage.”
“Ash.”
“What?”
“You can call me Ash. Or not. But Ash is fine.”
“Okay, Ash. If there’s anything else you noticed about Oakes, I’d appreciate knowing.”
They’d come to the storage Quonset and Keller pulled the door open.
An old tractor was parked at its centre, steel bones rusty and disintegrating like a derelict ship cast up on the beach. Surrounding it, lining each wall, were workbenches and storage racks laden with half-constructed pieces of furniture and various parts from disassembled engines. A welder’s torch and tanks, all canted northward like a sundial, sat in one corner.
“He basically lived in here after Grandma died,” Keller mused, more to herself than Decker. “A thousand things he wanted to build, carve, weld together. I haven’t had the heart to clean it up.”
“Hard to take something you love apart.”
“You’re quick on the uptake, too, Detective.”
“Harry’s fine.”
Keller was quiet, and true to his cop nature, Decker let the silence hang there, waiting to see what else she would say.
She’d thought about that night a million times. Everything Oakes had said, and the way he’d said it. Everything he’d done and hadn’t done. And the thing he’d been careless enough to let her do to him.
“Harry… I don’t think Oakes had a partner.”
“Is that right?” Decker’s expression never changed, as if he were endlessly assessing her.
“Yeah. I think he had a boss.”
Twenty-Seven
Out of sight of Keller’s place, Decker pulled the Taurus to the side of the road and dialled his partner. Renée Sanders answered with characteristic bluntness.
“How’d your drive in the country go? See some sunshine? Smell some cows?”
Decker chuckled. “It is nice out here.”
“You know it’s a myth that cow farts are contributing to global warming? It’s their burps. Saw it on TV.”
“I’ll make a note of it.”
“Anything about Staci?”
“Nothing immediately useful.”
“I’ll let Kline and Dural know.”
Rick Kline and Sai Dural were lead on the Jensen murder, with Sanders and Decker working side leads along with several other officers.
“All right,” Decker said.
“You sound bummed. Keller didn’t react at all?”
“Maybe for a second I thought there was something… She was pretty upset.”
Decker thought of the body lying in a cooler in the basement of the Calgary Chief Medical Examiner’s office. What he hadn’t told Keller was that despite the predations by scavengers and the need for DNA verification, it was pretty clear the body was indeed that of Staci Jensen. The foster parents had ID’d the clothes and the barrettes in her hair.
Technically Kananaskis was RCMP jurisdiction, just like the Oakes farm, but assuming this was Staci Jensen, the difference was that the predicate crime—her kidnapping—had taken place in Calgary, on CPS turf. It would get both a lot of police resourcing and a lot of media attention. The Chief and upper management wanted Homicide to close it before the media started playing the Ash Keller angle, working the irony of Jensen being saved only to fall prey to another predator, turning it all into a circus.
It had been a miracle the body was found at all. It had been dumped several hundred metres into the forest off Highway 40, far from any marked trail. A nature photographer had been following a bear in the area only to discover it browsing around the girl’s corpse.
“Pretty upset, but also pretty smart,” Decker said.
“Is that right?” Sanders sounded only vaguely interested. The detective running the case, Rick Kline, who was coordinating the ten or so investigators on the murder, ga
ve everyone wide latitude on what leads they followed and where, but he would expect they’d remain focused on what looked promising and chase leads down quickly. It meant Sanders, like all of them, was busy.
“She cottoned on right away that it was more than a missing kid, and that I was rousting her.”
“Uh-huh. Was she pissed?”
“Yeah,” Decker said.
“But nothing hinky about her?”
“Not using, not hiding anyone, from what I could tell. Anything new on your end?”
“Nothing on any neighbours’ cameras so far.” They were betting that Staci had been taken somewhere along one of several likely routes between home and school, and officers were canvasing the neighbourhoods hoping for recordings from home-security cameras. “Early days yet… Still have a couple of streets to cover.”
“I had a thought on that,” Decker said. “Once this breaks, we should put out a public ask for dashcam footage from anyone travelling Highway 40 through K-Country between likely dates.” This was a long shot and they’d pay for it with time spent reviewing video, but long shots occasionally paid off. That was why people bet them.
“I’ll tell Kline,” Sanders said. “Good thought.”
“I have them occasionally.”
“‘Occasional Decker.’ What I always call you.”
“And the interview with…”—Decker searched his memory—“… the Bishops. Anything helpful there?”
The Bishops were Staci’s new foster parents. Kind people, it seemed, who’d fostered kids for twenty years and were shattered by her disappearance. Naturally they’d been the first suspects. A little like the schoolyard taunt “he who sayed it, made it,” those reporting a missing person were often the ones who’d caused them to be missing in the first place. So far, though, the Bishops were as squeaky clean as they seemed.
“Story’s as good as it first was. Nothing new and records on both cellphones show they never left the house. Two cameras on their street with views either way, and neither of their vehicles moved.”
“What about Uber?”
“No taxis, no Uber.”
A hired vehicle was a stretch, but worth checking anyway. That didn’t completely eliminate them, of course. But Staci’s foster parents were looking like poor suspects.
“Chief came around earlier, asking how we were doing. I sent him to Dural.”
“Nice of him,” Decker said. He said it in a tone that he knew Sanders would take to mean Fuck him.
But Decker understood. This was going to break wide in the media. Foster Girl Given Second Chance at Life Murdered in Calgary—No Suspects, or something like that. It was the kind of thing that made police chiefs justifiably nervous, and rumour had it this chief was planning a political career, was just going through the motions this last year on the job to keep his badge shiny.
“Okay, I’ll see you when you’re back.”
“One more thing,” Decker said. “Probably not related, but… on the Oakes case, Keller got the impression Oakes was working for somebody.”
“Your drug addict a criminologist now?”
“She seems pretty steady.”
“Pretty steady or just pretty?” Amusement in her voice.
Decker shot her an exasperated sigh. “Hey, you’ve got a girlfriend. Can’t I have some joy in my life?”
Sanders had introduced Decker to her partner at lunch the month prior, a lawyer who worked in a downtown high-rise filing briefs for oil companies. But the running joke between the two cops was that neither had yet held down a stable relationship during their three-year partnership and when that did happen, it would ruin them.
“Nah,” Sanders said. “Someone’s got to be the caricature of a homicide cop around here and it sure ain’t me.”
“You can be the new-age caricature.”
“You can stay the old-age one.”
Decker laughed. He had been attracted to Keller, though. More so when she’d called him out on his reasons for visiting her, not that he’d be telling Sanders that. He realized he was already looking forward to seeing Keller again, if he could find a reason to, once they’d tracked down the man who killed Staci Jensen. “I’m heading back.”
“Good. Should have some more camera feeds to look through.”
He ended the call and thought about next steps. It was going to be a long day and a long night following. If he was lucky, he might get home by midnight and catch six hours’ sleep before heading back in the morning.
He’d been to a police conference in LA the year prior to give a presentation on the Garland murders, a grisly triple homicide that included a five-year-old victim and left the city reeling. The LA cops had been astounded at the resources the Calgary Police were able to throw at a single case. American police dramas generally depicted two officers working a homicide, which wasn’t far wrong. CPS, on the other hand, typically fielded eight officers, more if required. But one thing didn’t change no matter where you went: most murders were solved in the first forty-eight hours or not at all. Not necessarily with an arrest made but with a prime suspect identified and locked in. They were ticking on twenty-eight hours with this case, and the only tenuous lead they had was Ash Keller’s feeling that Darryl Oakes had a boss.
He checked his watch and dialled again.
“RCMP. Ressler.”
“Ross. Harry Decker.”
“Got your message, Harry. What can we do for Major Crimes today?”
Return my goddamn calls, for one. “Got your files on Oakes. Thanks.”
“Whatever we can do. You getting anywhere? Look like this’ll blow back onto Oakes?”
“Not so far,” Decker lied instinctively. He liked to have a framework to hang his hat on before speculating with anyone outside his own unit. “I wanted to ask, though… You ever have any suspicion Oakes had a partner?”
“You’re talking about the girls’ statements.”
Decker took in the view stretching out before him. The road ahead curved gently down a wide ravine with a stream winding through its base, and three deer were grazing near the water. The sun was fixed in a sapphire afternoon sky above the blue-white slashes of the Rocky Mountains. He found himself wondering how the sun would look from Ash Keller’s deck and knew he ought to feel guilty for the thought. It was a sun Staci Jensen would never see again.
“Couple of them talked about a second assailant,” Decker said.
“We could never verify that,” Ressler said. “Chased it around pretty good though. Oakes inherited the farm and a chunk of money ten years ago. Rented some of the fields to adjacent farmers and made enough that he didn’t have to work, except for his security job. The van with the victims’ DNA in it was owned by him—”
“No other DNA in it?”
“I’d have said if there was.” Ressler sounded aggrieved.
Decker ignored it. “He was a drunk, by the sound of it.”
“Everyone who knew him said so.”
“Pretty elaborate operation for an alcoholic, don’t you think?” This had been Keller’s point. She’d managed to escape and poison Oakes precisely because he was a fuck-up. “He drives to Edmonton and kidnaps four girls, all from foster homes. Gets them back to his little shack in Buttfuck, Alberta, without a smidge of trouble and no one sees a thing.”
“Without trouble?” Ressler said. “One of them escaped almost immediately, right into the arms of the paramedics. And he didn’t snatch them from their homes. Two of them, Kayla Innes and Robin Wolf Child, were runaways.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“It’s complicated. The foster parents of both girls said the children hung out downtown, were gone for days at a time, in with a bad crowd. Drugs, maybe even prostitution. It wasn’t like they were snatched from behind picket fences.”
Decker frowned and made notes. Staci Jensen had assuredly had friends in low places, according to her foster parents, and so had Innes. But his info on Wolf Child was she’d been a promising music student just r
unning away from an uncle’s abuse. If her Human Services file was wrong, if Wolf Child was involved in prostitution, it would be a place to start looking for her.
“You’re sure about this?”
“Human Services might not have sent the detailed file. Some of it might be underage stuff. They don’t always include it.”
“Right, thanks,” Decker said. “The girls know each other before any of this?”
“No.”
Decker grabbed a pad down from his visor and wrote Files for Innes / Wolf Child / Jensen. It would be worth looking through their records to see if they had any connection or, if they were working the streets, who their known associates or pimps were.
“Harry? You there?”
“Okay, so that’s the evidence. What was your feeling, personally… about the possibility of a partner?”
Ressler considered this. “Nothing pointed to it. Most pedophiles work alone, right? If they interact, it’s usually anonymous, on the dark web, circulating pictures and stories.”
“Right. Okay. Thanks.”
“I’ll be in touch if I hear anything.”
Decker ended the call.
Twenty-Eight
Keller ran through the trees in the flickering shadow play of the setting sun, Groot trotting alongside her. According to her GPS watch, her property was roughly two kilometres in circumference, and using this guide, she varied her runs from eight to ten kilometres, circling the fenceline. It was peaceful—bare breezes and the air warm in her lungs.
Groot had struggled to learn polite running protocol. It seemed he was used to walking off leash with Lang, sniffing and exploring as he pleased. When Keller first started running with him, he’d thought it part of a game and tried to catch her, nipping at her heels and even bringing her tumbling to the ground once. It had taken a few harsh words and a tap or two on the nose before he’d gotten the idea. Now he paced Keller on her left and just behind, panting in the evening air, a happy ball of energy.
Keller was just a ball of energy, trying to push Decker out of her mind. A nervy guy, coming out to quiz her on some pretext to look her and her home over. She went back and forth with some degree of anger about it, but never forgot the reason he’d come.
The Beast in the Bone Page 13