Decker frowned. “You’re not sure?”
“I’m sure I’m exhausted.” Keller put some bite in her tone. “I’m sure I didn’t know him personally. That doesn’t mean I’m sure I never ran into him before. But I doubt we moved in the same circles.”
“He was a history professor at the U of C.”
Keller laughed. “Sorry.” Her smile vanished and she ran a hand through her hair. “I did a BSc there but I avoided history courses like the plague.”
“When were you there?”
She looked up and squinted. “Started… September 2002, finished 2006. Paramedic school after that.”
“Herzog retired in 2008.”
Keller shrugged. “I guess I might’ve passed him in the halls. I have no idea.”
“You think Herzog killed Staci Jensen?”
That’s it. First the push, then the pull. Keep them dizzy.
He might not even care about the answer, just watching her for her reaction.
“I have no idea,” she said.
Decker shrugged. “Supposing he was a pedophile, like Oakes? Wouldn’t be surprising if someone wanted him dead.”
“I don’t suppose it would.”
“You sure you didn’t know anyone who knew Herzog, even remotely?”
“No, I don’t.”
Decker nodded as if it had been a formality. “How come paramedic school, if you don’t mind me asking? Seems like such a change.”
Is he really asking why I’m not a cop like my father? The remaining vestiges of her energy went out of her. “The last year of university, my dad died. Heart attack.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked genuinely anguished for her, and she saw a slight movement of his hand—a stifled impulse to reach out? “I didn’t work with your father, obviously. But he had a solid reputation in the unit.”
“I’ve heard. Thanks.”
“He ever talk about cases?”
Was he asking her if she had learned how to commit the perfect murder? Fatigue might be making her paranoid now. The answer wasn’t exactly going to paint her in a less suspicious light, but she wasn’t going to lie about her father. Not ever.
“All the time. He brought home files sometimes; caught me digging through them once when I was a kid.” She laughed, enjoying the memory of her father’s horrified expression when he’d found her sifting through crime scene photos. The horror had changed to fascination once she began commenting on them. “Later, in my teens, he’d ask me about them sometimes, talk things over with me, tell me what he saw and ask me what I thought.”
Decker looked surprised at her candour.
Caught you off guard for once.
He recovered quickly, though. “So, when you saw Herzog’s fingers…”
Keller let loose a laugh that was halfway a sob. “That might be more down to Mr. Ishmael.”
Decker looked confused.
She was crying and laughing at the same time now, weariness and loss crashing together to break down her defences. “Grade nine. Mr. Ishmael was the best math teacher I ever had. Wicked good at geometry.” She took a long breath. “All those fingers? It was like a vector algebra problem.”
Decker leaned back, laid the pad aside, and spread his hands apart. “All right, so the million-dollar question—”
“You should’ve let me look in the garage.” She summoned the strength to stare hard at Decker.
His mouth twisted. “I have some photos being sent to me. Maybe we’ll take a look at them, but let’s leave that aside for a moment.”
Keller kept staring at him, then gave it up. “Million-dollar question: Why did Herzog’s killer leave me a thank-you? How did he even know I’d be there?”
“The answer to the second question, we know a little about. At around 1000 hours this morning, someone hacked into both police and ambulance dispatch and redirected units all over the city.”
Keller felt shock bloom on her face. “Kate was right. When we were responding, she saw it happening. Every unit in the northwest was being sent somewhere else.”
“That’s an understatement.” Decker looked at his pad again. “Three major incidents were called in, all in the deep south. A gang fight and two major motor vehicle accidents. All were assigned multiple police units and all occurred about two minutes after you left Foothills Hospital. At the same time, our dispatch system was hacked and crashed. In effect, we were blind for nearly twenty minutes. During that time, there were exactly three ambulances available in all of Calgary.”
“Not too bad,” Keller said.
Decker frowned at her. “Are you serious?”
She let loose an exhausted chuckle. “Code reds—no ambulances in the city—happen every day. Nobody hears about it because dispatch draws units in from surrounding towns—Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks—emptying them. They call it the vortex, the big suck.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like magic, no code reds and Calgary always has ambulances available.”
Decker shook his head, some mix of resignation and disgust on his face, then continued. “Almost the moment you booked yourselves clear of Foothills, the other two ambulances were routed south by an EMS software system.”
“Proxima.”
“Right… Then, there was the call to Herzog’s house.” He looked up at her. “Somebody knew where you were and arranged for you—you specifically—to be at Herzog’s place.”
“Somebody who hated Herzog and people like him.”
“You know anyone like that?” He was watching her closely.
“Everyone I know is like that, I hope.”
Decker half shook his head. “But who do you know who really liked what you did to Oakes? Admired you for it. I bet a lot of people told you they did. Hell, I admire you.”
“Bullshit.”
He leaned forward slightly. “No bullshit, Ash. You did what you had to at Oakes’s farm. You were a hero.” He tapped a finger on the table for emphasis. “You did what you had to do. You saved those girls.”
Not all of them. Robin’s out there alone. Staci’s dead. Kayla’s still alive, but in the end, I just mostly saved myself.
Decker went on. “It was a desperate situation that night. But Louis Herzog wasn’t. It’s looking like he was a really awful person, but he could’ve been arrested, tried, and thrown in prison.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anyone who would’ve killed him.”
“Take a moment to think about it. Sometimes it takes a little time with an idea, probably like when you were looking through files with your father.”
She felt blood rush to her face. “I don’t know anyone who would do this,” she snarled, “and you can leave my father out of it.” She watched Decker watching her as she responded, and this did nothing to cool her temper.
Exhaustion and grief had prodded her into rage now, and she thought that had likely been Decker’s goal. Her father must’ve done the same thing with a hundred different suspects over the years. He’d talked about it, told her about it.
Get a grip. Don’t let him run you.
Decker raised his hands in an attitude of surrender. Again she saw some measure of anguish on his face. “I’m sorry. Like I said, I have nothing but respect for your father.”
Keller slumped back in her chair and rubbed at her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
She admitted to herself now what she’d been denying since she first saw Herzog’s body.
I need a hit.
Just a lick. Less. A taste. Just a little tiny sip of fentanyl and she’d have that Cool Smooth shield back, that beautiful fuzzy layer of euphoria that would keep her from feeling all this.
You don’t need it. You just want it.
Decker was still watching her, waiting.
“I didn’t want to save anyone and I didn’t want to goddamn kill anyone, then or now. And I don’t know anyone who would.”
One little taste.
She had deleted Glasgow’s number from her phone but it was still etched in her memory
. Two steps out of here and she knew the temptation would be overwhelming.
After a few seconds Decker said, “I believe you.”
She tried to tamp down her emotions, letting the exhaustion take it all away, letting it drain her. “You’d say that anyway. You’d say that either way.”
He sighed. His face held a dark look, but this time it might have been directed inward. “I do believe you. We’re still checking things out, but I do believe you. It’s my job to poke, lift the scab. I’m sorry.”
When Keller spoke it was in a whisper. It felt as if all she had left inside her were whispers and tears. “Well, I don’t believe you now… And I want to go home.”
“All right. We’ll have a cruiser drive you back.” Decker’s face was drawn. “And I really am sorry.”
“I don’t want one of your cruisers.” She looked pointedly at Decker. “You let me out of here and I’ll call Kate.”
Decker took that in. “There might be reporters looking for you. I’d rather have you in a squad car till you’re back at Stonegate.”
“I’ll be safe with Kate.” It’s just that she’s not safe with me.
Decker looked about to further argue the point but thought better of it. He peered up at the camera and brought a hand up to his ear to mime a phone call.
“It is all connected, isn’t it?” Keller said, the wheels turning in her head. “Someone who saw what happened to Oakes and thought…” She trailed off.
“You’re probably right, but we keep our minds open,” he said, watching her closely. “People don’t always get killed for the worst things they did.”
She’d regained some of her composure. “What about the garage?”
Decker looked from Keller down to his phone. Almost expressionless, he tapped at buttons. “We don’t have to do this now…”
“What?”
“Best I can do is a couple of pictures.” He held the phone out and Keller understood this was another test, which she could pass or fail in his eyes, but she didn’t care anymore.
She felt nearly dead inside. But she could be all better, be at Glasgow’s within an hour and be high a few minutes later.
She took the phone and held it close to her face, aware with every fibre of her being that Decker was watching her as she scrolled through three different pictures.
All had been taken from the perspective of someone standing a few feet outside Herzog’s garage. Inside, storage racks lined each wall, holding gardening gear and cardboard storage boxes, one overflowing with soccer gear and basketballs, others stacked with Christmas decor. The car occupying the space was a pale-blue Fiat Spider convertible.
She forgot about Glasgow because looking at such photos made her miss her father.
Wonder what Philby would think of that?
“See anything?” Decker asked.
“Give me a minute.”
Obligingly, Decker eased back into his chair.
Over the years she’d looked at hundreds of crime scene photos and had gotten pretty good at sorting anomalies from the chaos of “normal,” so she could hardly avoid doing so now. If there was an anomaly. But there had to be. Herzog’s fingers had been arranged with great care and precision.
“There…” she whispered.
“What?”
She handed him back his phone. “Your guys been through the car?”
“Sure. Cursory look for now, around the cab; popped the trunk and hood. Nothing in it or in the boxes. So far, anyway.”
“Okay”—she forced some steel into her voice—“you’re going to want them to push the car out of there.”
Decker frowned. “Why?”
She locked eyes with him. “It’s a one-car garage. Pretty small. See the drain?” She pointed. “The grate in the floor? Right in the centre, at the lowest part?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. There’s a second one. See? Just forward of the left rear tire?”
He used two fingers to magnify the image on his phone. “Okay.”
“The second one’s way off centre, four or five inches higher than any water would settle. It’s fake.”
Decker scrutinized the photo. When he looked up at her, astonishment was crowding doubt from his face.
“What all those fingers were pointing to, I bet,” Keller said.
Decker rose and held the door open for her, pointing. “Seats are just up the hallway. Call your friend, but don’t leave yet. Please.” His expression was indecipherable. “I’ll be right back.” He strode fast down the hallway.
Keller gulped down the last of her water and followed. Her soul felt raw, scraped bare with a knife.
God oh god, I need a hit.
Forty-Five
Kapp watched Dennis Hunt stride out of the bathroom in his white velvet bathrobe. His hair, normally a well-coiffed comb-over, looked like a pile of straw disturbed by the wind. His skin, just a shade darker and less carroty than his hair, was freshly spray-tanned by the distressed-looking college girl from Metro Tan who followed him out, her own hair suspiciously askew and her spray-tan equipment clutched against her chest, as if it was armour against what she had just endured.
Goddamn idiot did it again.
In the main room of the luxury Heritage suite, Hunt cast a casual glance out the window toward the setting sun. From the twelfth floor of the Palliser Hotel most of western Calgary was visible, one small portion of what would soon be Hunt’s domain… and Kapp’s.
If Hunt could focus on becoming prime minister instead of feeling up girls forty years his junior. If he could cut himself loose from his hideous predilections, ones he would be forced to give up anyway if he actually won the election.
The Metro Tan girl reached the door of the suite, struggling to hold her tanning accessories with one hand while she jerked on her shoes with the other.
Jaw tight, Kapp dug into the pocket of his jeans. He could see by the depths of fear and annoyance on the girl’s face that an excessive tip would be necessary to keep her quiet about whatever Hunt had said or done while having his tan “freshened,” something he did every week to appear “young and vigorous” at his rallies.
As the girl grabbed for the doorknob, Kapp raised a hand to slow her and proffered three hundred-dollar bills. She paused as Hunt looked on, an almost beatific smile on his face, then took the bills with a trembling hand, blinking hard, before opening the door.
“Wait, walk with me.” Kapp ushered her into the hallway and past Gavril Sechev’s hulking form. The bald gorilla watched balefully as Kapp walked with the girl toward the elevators.
“Give her a nice tip.” This from Hunt, his voice echoing from the room. “She did great.”
The girl’s pace quickened and Kapp was hard pressed to keep up. She punched at the elevator’s Down button as Kapp tried to assemble a kindly smile on his face. He placed an additional two hundred dollars into the girl’s hand. She took it, blinking hard at Kapp, her eyes wet.
“My card is in there too.”
The girl’s gaze snapped down to her hand, where, indeed, a card stuck out from between the bills, on which only a generic Gmail address was written.
“I bet you’re saving for college,” he continued, praying she wouldn’t make the conversation even more awkward by denying this. “We’re big supporters of education. You send me a confirmation email and I’ll make sure you get monthly payments throughout your college years.” Or at least till I can get Hunt’s hacker friends to dig up some dirt on your computer or phone, and then we’ll each have something no one wants anyone else to know about.
The girl’s face took on an expression of mollified disgust. But she disappeared into the elevator without a word, leaving Kapp to hope she was greedy enough to take him up on his offer.
He returned to the suite, steering wide of Sechev, who stared straight forward like a golem as Kapp closed the door firmly behind him.
Hunt glanced up. “Isn’t she wonderful? Such a little princess.” He said it in the same tone he
used at rallies, praising his sycophants. He looked down at his freshly bronzed chest, then held up his hands to inspect them. “She did a great job. Subtle, right? That’s the key. You don’t want anyone thinking, ‘This guy’s got it too good, vacationing in the sun all the time.’ Just a healthy glow.” He turned his arms back and forth. “Just perfect. We’ll have to use her again.”
Kapp tensed his mouth to keep from laughing. She might take our money but she’ll run a mile before she ever gets near you again.
At the same time Kapp knew that whatever Hunt had done or said today was nothing compared to what he was capable of. He had probably told the tanning girl what he imagined her doing with her lips—one of his favourite lines—or had simply groped her. Kapp thought he’d detected a trace of tanning solution on the girl’s T-shirt. Either way, she would never know how easily she’d gotten off.
“You can’t do these things anymore, Dennis.”
Hunt held his hands wide apart to show surprise at the heat in Kapp’s voice. “Tim, there’s nothing to worry about. Just told the girl how good-looking she is. A good thing, all right?”
It’s a good thing she isn’t ten years younger or you’d have had her bent over the sink.
Hard on the heels of that thought came the one he had every day now.
How the hell did I get into this?
Death by a thousand cuts. Five years ago he’d been a rising star in Dennis Hunt’s campaign for Conservative MP in Edmonton-Southeast. Two years in, Hunt declared himself “extremely dissatisfied with the descent of the Conservative Party into a swamp of political correctness” and resigned to sit as an independent. For anyone else, that would have led straight to political obscurity. But Dennis Hunt was rich… And not just any rich, but old-fashioned Alberta rich.
In the early 1950s, Hunt’s father—John Dennis Hunt—a newly married and newly graduated surveyor, had been riding horseback through the western Alberta wilderness charting the land and taking geological samples when he stumbled across one of the richest oil deposits ever found in Canada.
Within a year he was running his own company. By the time Dennis Hunt emerged squalling into the world in 1961, Daddy was already well on the way to being a multi-millionaire.
The Beast in the Bone Page 21