Lang hissed assent and pushed the bear spray into Keller’s hands.
The stairs led downward to what was probably intended as a basement storage room. Down here, acoustic tile lined every surface. There was a sharp scent that Keller knew to be old blood. Along with a damp sourness that suggested mould lurking in the walls.
A yellowy light illuminated the room beyond, and Keller turned a corner in the staircase and descended into a familiar-looking nightmare.
The room was windowless, a black hole except for two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. A chain-link cage was anchored into one corner, with a cot, sink, and porta-toilet enclosed within it. The cage was empty now, but there were clear signs of occupants at one time or another. The sleeping bag on the cot was stained and torn. Not so the sheets on the mattress on the floor outside the cage. The sheets there looked fresh and white as bone except for a bloody spot right in the centre of the mattress.
“Ash, you okay?” Lang called out.
“All right,” she yelled up the stairway, conscious of a curious absence of echo as the acoustic tile smothered her words.
She moved closer to the mattress. Herzog’s thumb lay on the sheets. Set just so, like all the rest.
A Euclidean puzzle.
She ran back up the stairs two at a time, brushed past a bewildered Lang, and headed straight for the patio door.
“Ash, what the hell?”
She whipped the curtains aside.
There was a second garage behind the house, but it was partially obscured by the bulky form of a police officer standing in front of the door. Startled by Keller’s appearance, he raised the pistol in his hand to point at her chest. She dropped the bear spray and lifted her hands.
“EMS!” Lang screamed it from behind her, pointedly turning her shoulder flash toward him. “Medics! EMS!”
The cop blinked, mouthed a curse, and lowered his gun. He was young, maybe early twenties, and Keller guessed that for the rest of his career he would be telling the story about the two idiot paramedics he’d nearly shot at a crime scene.
“Police. Don’t move, you two.” The voice came from a second officer on the stairs behind them. This one had the shoulder flashes of a sergeant and hair tinged with grey. His weapon was also out, but he held it pointed downward. He looked pissed.
Keller didn’t care. She pointed toward the backyard, past the younger cop. “You need to look in that garage. Right now.”
Puzzlement replacing anger on the cop’s face.
“Ash, what the fuck?” Lang said, her hands still half raised.
Keller ignored her, focusing on the cop. “All those fingers cut off? You saw them, right?”
The cop blinked at her.
“They’ve been arranged. They’re pointing at something.” Keller said. “Something in the garage.”
Forty
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Decker stood toe-to-toe with Keller in Herzog’s front driveway, between the ambulance and the house, far enough back that the news crews gathered behind the police perimeter would probably not notice that one of the paramedics attending this obviously serious crime scene was Ash Keller.
Lang was being interviewed in one of the large black police vans nearby. Atchison, too, had been sequestered to tell his story.
“There could’ve been children in that house,” Keller said.
Did you really believe that or were you just trying to solve a math problem?
Philby was right about her, it seemed. But no point in admitting any such thing to Decker. “The last place I was in, you might remember? Someone tried to burn it down.”
“No sign of that here.” Decker’s partner, a thin blonde with closed-cropped hair named Sanders looked at Keller with undisguised suspicion. “Is there?”
“Hindsight,” Keller said as she turned to look around them.
In a staggered line, uniformed cops were walking the grassy lawn, eyes down, searching for anything that might be evidence. Two more homicide detectives were inside, supervising other uniforms in an attic-to-basement search of the mansion, as well as several forensic technicians teasing evidence from carpets and blood-splatter patterns and anything else that would be remotely useful in revealing the story of the murder.
“You’re taught to exit a scene the second there’s any danger,” Sanders said. “It’s not your job to search for—”
“Look, I’m sorry.” Keller said it in a tone that clearly conveyed the opposite. She glanced toward the black van where Lang was no doubt walking a fine line between truth and protecting Keller, but Keller had no intention of leaving even an iota of blame for her partners to bear. “This is all my fault. My two partners wanted to retreat out of there immediately. Did retreat.”
“No,” Sanders said, her eyes boring into Keller’s. “Not Ms. Lang. She stayed with you.”
“She was worried about me.”
“For good reason, I’d say,” Sanders said. “Too bad she couldn’t talk some sense into you.”
Keller glared at her. “I’m kind of stubborn.”
“No kidding.” Sanders held her gaze, her mouth widening in a tight grin that said, Don’t even try and stare me down, amateur.
Keller looked away. “So she couldn’t have talked me out of anything. It’s my fault. Just so that’s clear.” She looked at Decker. “Have your guys looked in the garage yet?”
“We have,” Decker said.
When he didn’t continue, Keller growled. “I guess, since you didn’t want to tell me about scoping me out at my house or that Staci was dead, I shouldn’t expect much from you now either, huh?”
A flash of something in Decker’s eyes, some shadow of guilt, maybe. “I’m sorry about that”—he traded glances with Sanders—“there’s a certain way we have to do things. It’s not always nice.” He paused, grimaced. “So far we haven’t found anything in the garage.”
“I want to see.”
Sanders stifled a laugh. “You kidding? That’s not happening. You’ve already contaminated most of the crime scene.”
“Then give me some of your plastic booties. I want to see.”
“We have detectives and forensic guys going through it all right now.”
“Would they have picked up on the fingers?”
Decker frowned at her. “Full marks for that, if there’s anything to it.” There might’ve been admiration on his face, but it could just as easily have been an affectation. Stroke the suspect’s ego, get them talking about themselves, her father would have said. “What do you think about that message on the wall?”
So relaxed, how he said it. As long as you’re so bright, what do you think of the murderer thanking you?
Keller felt chilled and numb. She wanted to be home hugging Groot and taking an endless hot shower. She shuddered and clasped her hands over her arms.
Maybe Decker noticed. He opened his mouth as if to say something but let the question hang in air. No homicide cop in the world had ever heard of an “uncomfortable silence.” Silence got most people talking, exactly what they wanted.
“I have no idea what to think about it.” And that was the truth. Mostly.
The complete truth was that she was still turning things over in her mind, but there were undeniable conclusions about the murder, the scene, and the message. One was that the murderer seemed to have killed someone with the same revolting proclivities as Darryl Oakes. Second was that he had been ruthless about it. The third, that he knew Keller and liked her… because she’d killed Oakes?
“You seem pretty smart,” Sanders said. “You must have some thoughts. Maybe you know someone who was outraged by what happened to you? Someone who thought they were doing the right thing here.”
It seemed as if every cop she met was telling her she was smart, even after she’d done a hideously stupid thing. Ash Keller, you are one smart paramedic. You sure you can’t think of anything? But Sanders didn’t quite pull it off as well as Decker. The word smart almost caught i
n her throat.
“I want to see inside the garage,” Keller repeated.
“Sorry, Ms. Keller,” Sanders said, “it doesn’t work that way.”
“There’s something in there,” Keller persisted.
Decker nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll see. You can be sure we’ll go through it thoroughly.”
The door on the side of one of the black vans opened and Atchison stepped out, followed by a balding Asian detective who shook his head at Decker and Sanders.
Decker looked to Sanders. “Can you go check on Ms. Lang?”
Sanders gave Keller a jaundiced look, nodded, and walked toward the other van.
Decker turned back to Keller. “Guessing you know you won’t be going back on shift today.”
“None of us will be.” She felt the nervous energy she’d had earlier leaking out of her. “Traumatic incident. They’ll book us off the whole tour if we ask for it after this kind of shit.”
Keller looked at the house, thought about the dead man inside and what hobbies he might have practised in his personal dungeon.
Decker cleared his throat. “I know what you’re thinking. Kayla’s fine as of ten minutes ago. I checked. And as far as I know, Robin’s still in the wind.”
“Thank you.” She bit her lip, wondering when she would find time alone to text Robin again, warn her about what had happened. Although she probably wouldn’t have to—Killer Paramedic Discovers Murder Scene seemed like a headline that would be trending within hours on Google News. “But either way, this is all wrapped up in what happened at that farm.”
“So you do have some thoughts.”
She shook her head. “Too many…”
As if reading her mind, Decker went on. “Your father worked homicide.”
“His last fifteen years on the job, as I’m sure you know. You should keep checking on Kayla, and you have to find Robin. They’re not safe.”
“You know that how, exactly?”
I just do.
But articulating a precise reason wasn’t easy. She opened her mouth to try, but by then Sanders was exiting the van where Lang was being questioned. She, too, shook her head at Decker.
Decker looked up at the gathering clouds and said, “Getting cold out here. Why don’t I run you up to the station and we’ll chat some more. Don’t worry, I’ll clear it with your supervisor.”
He looked perplexed at her answering laugh.
“My supervisor will be quite happy I’m not going back on shift.”
Decker caught the undertone. “Like that, huh?”
“Oh yeah. It’s like that.”
Forty-One
They let Keller have a moment with Lang and Atchison.
Atchison gave her a hug and whispered, “Hang tough.”
Lang pulled her aside, far enough from Decker and Sanders that they wouldn’t hear. She was pale and drawn. “You sure know how to liven up a shift, shithead.”
“I’m sorry I dragged you in.”
“You didn’t.” Lang looked so drained suddenly that Keller was worried. “You thought there might be children down there?”
“I’m sorry.” Keller sighed. “I’m not sure what I thought. Please forgive me.”
Lang wrapped arms around her. “It’s all right.”
“I should’ve—”
“Shut up, asshole. Think I was going to let you be a hero all by yourself?”
Keller blinked away tears and eased out of the embrace.
“Call me when you’re done with them.” Lang nodded at Decker and Sanders. “I’ll come get you.”
“They’ll—”
“No. You call me. I’ll come get you.”
Endlessly loyal, Lang would never forget that Keller was the one who interrupted her hard walk toward suicide. It made Keller feel even worse about what she’d put the other woman through.
“All right, sis.” They hugged again and Keller walked over to Decker, who was holding the back door of his Taurus open for her.
She turned back to the house one more time, and images flashed through her mind: Herzog’s body, the dismembered fingers, the dungeon. As she slid into the back of Decker’s car, she wondered how many years of bad dreams she’d bought herself—and Lang.
Sanders eased into the driver’s seat as Decker took the passenger’s, and they threaded their way around police vehicles, then a pool of news vans and reporters. Keller stared out at the inquiring faces peering at the car.
“Windows are tinted,” Sanders said. “They can’t see in.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Keller said. “They’ll find out everything soon enough.”
Sanders said nothing. Keller found Decker’s eyes in the rear view mirror, but his expression was unreadable.
***
The Calgary Police Investigative Services Section was housed in an impressively bland building situated in the midst of a mostly industrial area in the city’s northeast.
It was nearly 1730 by the time Decker and Sanders walked Keller into what the sign on the door called a “soft” interview room. It had grey walls, grey leather easy chairs and a wooden side table with a box of Kleenex and a People magazine lying atop it. The cover of the magazine promised revelations about Megan Markle and Prince Harry on page three. They left her with a coffee, and told her they’d be back in a few minutes.
Keller was well pretty sure that (a) they would not be back in “a few minutes,” (b) the three cameras on the ceiling of the room were active, and (c) that Decker and Sanders would be watching, getting a feel for her while they decided on a strategy for questioning, as her father would have.
She doubted either detective thought she was guilty of anything other than rotten judgment, but poor judgment lived on a sliding scale with guilt and criminal activity in a multitude of human activities, and good cops would not be satisfied until they knew where precisely on that scale she fit.
She leaned back in the chair and waited for Decker to come back, thinking about how she had made a murderer grateful.
Forty-Two
The Fixer felt anger spike deeper into his gut as the phone in his hip pocket vibrated for the fifth time.
Asshole. He had told Kapp never to call him while he was on shift, and sure as shit to never try more than once. But that wasn’t good enough for the rich and powerful, and the Fixer had known that when he agreed to the job. Of course his employers were panicked. He was too.
Talk about the shit hitting the fan.
He exited the back door of the station, got into his car, and pulled out his phone. There was never any kind of real privacy in a police building, so no one would question a cop retreating to the relative privacy of his personal vehicle to scream at his ex-wife or shout at his lawyer or some such thing, because sooner or later, they all did. The job took a toll.
The Fixer checked his call log. As he’d guessed, five calls from a private number and no messages.
He dialled, and Kapp picked up a mere half-ring in.
“Fucking Christ, have you—”
“Shut up,” the Fixer said. “I know all about it.”
“What’s the story, then? We want any potential exposure cut out of the picture.”
“Good for you, but you know I can’t affect that. This is a huge. That fucker left a message scrawled on the wall thanking Ashleen Keller. You need to duck and cover. No more fun for Hunt, no more parties, no more fucking Sechev trying to fix past mistakes. It all has to stop.”
“No.”
“What?”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the advice, but we pay you to fix any damn thing we want.” Kapp growled it, then paused for effect. “Any thing. We decide what—”
“That kind of talk might work for you in a boardroom, but it doesn’t mean fuck all to me.”
Kapp’s voice softened. “You know that Oakes was a choice I argued against.”
“Not well enough. Argue better when you tell Hunt to put on his big-boy pants and behave himself for a while.”
“No, I haven’t. But if I had, I’d be keeping tabs on her from a long fucking distance—nothing else. The one at home’s too cautious, too well protected. You might be, too, if someone put you in a cage. Either way, it’s stupid, obsessing over them.”
“He… Hunt doesn’t like loose ends.”
“The risk isn’t worth the reward,” the Fixer said. “Leave them alone. They’re a dead issue.”
“Not dead enough.”
The Fixer rolled his eyes. “Give me a break.”
“Everything’s a dead issue till it’s not,” Kapp persisted. “The person that killed Herzog was a dead issue. Till today, till he wasn’t.”
“Does that mean you know who it was?”
“We’re going through possibilities.”
Translation: My boss has been a rapist for a such long time he can’t remember all of the people he’s hurt.
The Fixer wondered how he’d arrived at this moment. A long time ago, he’d been a rookie cop with concrete ideals and morals, ambitions to make the world a better and safer place. But it was hard to focus on such things when your wife kicked you out of your own house and took everything you had. Ideals and morals didn’t solve those kinds of problems. Money did.
The Fixer gritted his teeth. “Whoever killed Herzog’s a hacker, or he has one working for him. He did a number on a shitload of ultra-secure computer networks. Police and ambulance dispatch servers. And he guided Keller’s ambulance straight to Herzog’s house as if it was an Uber.”
“We’ll have a couple of our people looking.”
“That’s great, get more people involved in this conspiracy.” He shook his head. “I’ll do my best to finish this for you. Then I’m out.”
Kapp drew a long breath. “That’s not how it works. We decide when you’re done working for us. Don’t forget that. My employer goes after people who aren’t loyal, you know? They always regret it.”
Heat rose in the Fixer’s face. He looked to the back stoop of the station and saw a uniformed cop and an admin assistant sharing a conversation while they smoked, casting occasional glances at him. Both probably thinking, Dude looks angry, wonder if it’s his wife or girlfriend or both.
The Beast in the Bone Page 19