Broken Through

by J C Paulson

  “How much work?”

  “New fuel pump, lines, injectors, spark plugs and filters.”

  “Ayoye. How much will it all cost me?”

  “Couple of grand, easy. Sorry, Miss.”

  Suzanne mouthed the amount to her mother, whose eyes flew open.

  “Merde,” Marie Genereux mouthed back.

  “And how long will it take?” Suzanne asked Dustin.

  “Day or two. Pretty busy here. Would Thursday be okay to pick it up?”

  “Yes, okay. Thursday or maybe Friday morning. I’m visiting my parents right now.”

  “Sure. We’ll have it ready Thursday afternoon, then.”

  “Bien. Ah, fine. Thank you, Dustin.”

  Suzanne hung up and released a stream of French and English curse words that would have horrified a less-relaxed mother.

  “What happened?” her mother asked, in French.

  “Apparently, I inadvertently put diesel in my car. I can’t believe I did that,” Suzanne said.

  “Désolée, Suzanne, ma jolie fille.”

  “Ça va. So it goes. I will survive. I hope never to do something quite so idiotic again.”

  *****

  “What I don’t get,” said Charlotte to Adam and James when they met by conference call in the afternoon, “is why the killer left Sherry Hilliard in the basement, or killed her at home at all. It must have been a bitch getting her through the trap door, and then down those rickety ladder rungs.”

  “He must have stunned her upstairs, and then finished the job downstairs,” said Adam. “Even so, if he knocked her out, she would have been a dead weight. It also may have been risky carrying her out of the house. How much did she weigh, incidentally?”

  “She was pretty small. Five foot two, if memory serves, and one-fifteen,” said James.

  “So it wouldn’t have been too hard for a large man, or a strong one,” said Adam. “Tricky, but possible. It was the wildest, noisiest night of the year; and the power was out, too, so killing her at home wouldn’t have been too hard. There was no hope of her turning on or flicking lights, or using the phone, if she managed to get away from him for a minute.

  “If she screamed or cried out, and Suzanne Genereux thought she did, it was unlikely someone would hear her. But he miscalculated that.

  “The fact he left her there tells me he didn’t expect her to be found until Monday, when she didn’t show up for work. Makes me wonder how much he knew about her; was she living a quiet social life, and was there a good chance she wouldn’t be expected somewhere? She had quit drinking. Do we know if she had a new boyfriend?”

  “As far as we know, she didn’t,” said Charlotte. “Neither Suzanne nor her mother knew of one, anyway. Nor Carol Hall.”

  “Maybe the killer was her new boyfriend, but she hadn’t told anyone about him yet,” Adam suggested. “Or an old one. And there’s Dunlop. What’s his motive? Revenge for breaking off their affair? Like he said, a blow to his ego. And his car, for Christ’s sake, is in the shop. We have to see that SUV. When are we going to get back at him? Has the lawyer called?”

  “Not yet. We’ll call him after our meeting.”

  “Where are we with the autopsy?”

  “McDougall says Thursday. And that’s with the chief poking him.”

  “We need to know if she had HIV or Hep C or any other diseases. The sooner the better, God damn it.”

  “They’ve all been checked out, but those things take a while to show up in the bloodwork,” said Charlotte. “It would sure be better if we knew she was clean.”

  “Keep me posted. Anything else?” asked Adam.

  “We’re talking to the woman who was attacked a couple of years ago. We’ll see what she can tell us. We’ll send you a report as soon as possible.”

  There was a knock at the door, followed immediately by Joan Karpinski.

  “Hey, team,” she said. “We have the dog’s autopsy results.”

  “Did he bite the killer?” asked Adam, unable to wait for Joan to roll out the news.

  “He sure did. It will take a while to get the DNA profile and see if we can match it up with an actual person, but it’ll be damning evidence once we catch this bastard, at the very least.”

  “Good dog, Argo,” said Adam, fervently. “Good dog.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The old man pushed his shopping cart, filled to the top with cans and bottles, over the bumpy dirt trail along the riverbank. His long, thinning grey hair spun about his head in a freshening breeze, obscuring his dimming vision.

  It was recycling day. If, as a bottle collector, you weren’t out by six in the morning, you’d miss the bounty within the blue bins dragged out in the wee hours by bleary homeowners. The old man was also bleary, but bottles and cans were critical to staying fed, so he was up and out of his filthy one-room apartment with the dawn, before the big trucks beat him to it.

  He was getting tired already. He’d done the burrowing and collecting, and now was taking the shortcut to the recycling depot. He stopped to brush the hair from his eyes, and sat heavily on a boulder by the active river. The whole damn city of Winnipeg sat on a flood plain, and there had been plenty of rain, as there had been upstream in Saskatchewan. The Assiniboine was rolling.

  His stomach growled. It was already three hours since his insubstantial breakfast. He had to get to the depot, deliver his goods, and get something in his gut; he already felt faint, and the depot was still blocks away.

  Heaving himself off the rock, he immediately lost his balance and stumbled toward the water. Bad idea to get caught in the current, he thought with a small thrill that brought on a slick of sweat. Shit, he swore, as he shifted his weight violently backwards, and landed on his ass in wet sand and rocks. His hand came down hard between two of the smaller boulders.

  He scraped and twisted his wrist on the unyielding rock, but his hand landed on something odd, both soft and hard at the same time. Swinging his head around, he saw a woman, her own arm caught by the rocks and soggy waterweeds.

  “Shit! Lady! Are you okay?” he yelled, as he scrambled to his knees and scurried on all fours around the larger of the two boulders, to see the rest of her.

  She was definitely not okay. She was white and blue, black hair twisted around her neck and face. Dead, if the old man knew anything about life and death. Which he did.

  *****

  Charlotte had gone alone to interview the sexual assault survivor, Deborah Clairmont. She and James had talked about it, and decided the woman might feel more comfortable with one, female questioner.

  The woman’s sister met Charlotte at the door, and brought her into the living room, where Deborah was sitting quietly. But her twisting hands belied the rest of her body language.

  “Deborah, I’m Charlotte Warkentin. I’m so sorry this happened to you, and we very much appreciate you’re willing to go over it again.”

  “It’s okay, Constable,” said Deborah. “I’m ready. It has to be done. I hope I can help you catch him.”

  Charlotte brought out her notebook and a tape recorder.

  “I’m so grateful, Deborah. Take your time. Whenever you’re ready.”

  With a deep breath, and after a gulp of water, Deborah began.

  “It was dark out, and storming. I had been out with friends until fairly late, and a thunderstorm came up. Nothing like what we had last week, but it was dark and hard to see in the rain.

  “I started to drive home, but my car quit. I drove through a pretty deep puddle and I thought it messed something up on my car. I don’t know much about cars. But I was stuck, down on Spadina Crescent by Victoria Park. I had my cellphone and called a tow truck; but of course tow trucks are slow to show up during storms.

  “I didn’t have the car door locked. I don’t know why I didn’t. All of a sudden, it was pulled open; I thought it would be the tow truck driver, but it wasn’t. It was a man wearing something over most of his face, like one of those wool caps with the eyes cut out. He grabbe
d me, pulled me out of the car and dragged me down the riverbank.”

  She paused, took another big, shuddering breath.

  “I struggled and fought, but I’m not very big and he was much stronger. He forced me onto the ground, and held my face in a puddle. I couldn’t breathe. Then he . . . “ Deborah looked down, then back up at Charlotte, her eyes full of shame and remembered fear.

  “Then he raped me, from behind. I thought I would pass out, or maybe die, from lack of oxygen. I was inhaling water and mud from the puddle.

  “Someone came along — an older man and his dog. The dog started barking his head off; it was a big dog, a . . . a German Shepherd, I think,” said Deborah.

  “What were they doing out there in the storm?” asked Charlotte.

  “He didn’t say. But the attacker took off and left me there. I came up from the puddle gasping for breath. The man with the dog was so kind. He helped me knock on doors until someone let me in to use a phone — he didn’t have a cellphone, and I lost mine somehow during the attack.”

  “You were able to call the police, then.”

  “Yes. They showed up pretty fast, then an ambulance.”

  “What were your injuries?” Charlotte asked.

  “I had some bruises, and was kind of torn up from the gravel and stuff on the path. Torn up inside, too,” she said softly. “Nothing was broken.”

  “Did the attacker say anything to you?”

  “Yes, but his voice was muffled by whatever he was wearing over his mouth and nose. It was a bit noisy from the storm, and I was terrified, but I think he said . . . ” Deborah paused and blushed. “He . . . he said, ‘I’m going to fuck you and then I’m going to kill you.’ Something like that. He said it several times.”

  Charlotte leaned closer to the witness.

  “I’m going to give you a hug, if that’s okay,” said Charlotte. Deborah nodded. “We’re going to catch the bastard, Deborah.”

  *****

  Don Dunlop’s lawyer, Richard Sealey, had weighed in very late on Tuesday. No, his client was not coming back down to the station. No, he was not answering any more questions. He had told them everything he knew.

  Except, of course, where the car was, noted James. And who he was with the night of the murder.

  James emailed this information to Adam, who was in the middle of yet another profiling workshop in sweltering Los Angeles. Adam left the conference room, stalked down the hotel hallway, went outside into the thick air and swore.

  “Terrific,” he responded, after he had calmed down a bit. “Call Sanj and get a warrant. Also warrant for dental clinic client list.”

  Now, first thing Wednesday morning, James was on the horn to the Crown prosecutor.

  “Sanj, it’s James Weatherall. How are you doing?”

  “Great, James. I hear you and Charlotte and Joan are running things down there. When’s Adam back?”

  “Tuesday, I think. He’s taking a couple of days off after the conference.”

  “Well, Saskatoon is in good hands. What can I do for you?”

  “Need a couple of warrants, Sanj.” James explained the Dunlop situation. “Adam also wants to go ahead with the warrant for the client list at his clinic.”

  “They won’t cough it up?”

  “Nope. They’re saying their clients would accuse them of breaching privacy. I guess I can see their point. If they’re forced into revealing the names, at least they can say they had no choice.”

  “Okay, James. I’ll get on it. Will you be able to come see the judge with me? Might help if she has questions I can’t answer.”

  “Of course. Just say when. I’ll be there.”

  “Cheers, James.”

  “Cheers, Sanj.”

  James hung up and headed over to Charlotte’s office.

  “Hey,” he said, flopping into her extra chair. “What’s happening? I’ve asked Sanj for the warrants. How did it go with the sexual assault survivor yesterday?”

  “It was pretty awful for her, but she was a powerful witness. I’m finishing up the report now. I thought I’d give you and Adam the basics when he calls this morning.”

  Charlotte and James were waiting in the conference room when Adam called an hour later.

  “Hey, Sarge,” said James. “Just about done with those meetings?”

  “Yes, thank God. One more session at eleven, lunch, then it’s over. Still, there have been some helpful workshops. I may have learned a thing or two. So give me updates. Where are we with the warrants?”

  “Sanj said he’d let me know when he had a date with the judge. He wants me to come along. He’s hoping this afternoon.”

  “Great. See if you can conference me in on that. Charlotte, tell me about the sexual assault survivor.”

  “Deborah Clairmont, age 26, lives in Wildwood with her older sister. Severely traumatized by her attack; it was very violent and completely out of the blue, and she hasn’t been able to do much since. She has only recently returned to work part-time.”

  “I don’t suppose she’s a dental hygienist.”

  “No, sorry, Adam; she’s an English as a second language teacher. She had just graduated with her certificate when this happened.”

  “Tell me about the attack.”

  Charlotte relayed Deborah Clairmont’s testimony of the night before.

  “Can I see the photo of her again?”

  “Yes. Here she is,” said Charlotte, holding up a snapshot enlarged by the tech department. “Pretty woman. Poor thing.”

  Smiling back at Adam was a petite, attractive, slightly shy woman. The photo had been taken before her attack, at age twenty-three. Long, dark hair. Brown eyes. Café au lait skin.

  “My God,” said Adam. “You’re kidding me.”

  “What?” asked Charlotte. “What, Adam? What do you see?”

  She turned the photo around, so she and James could look at it again. It hadn’t occurred to Charlotte, since Deborah Clairmont now had short, bobbed hair. But she and James saw it the minute Adam spoke again.

  “She could have been Sherry Hilliard’s sister.”

  *****

  The resemblance was striking. Could the man who raped Deborah Clairmont two years ago have killed Sherry Hilliard? Did he have a type — small women with long, dark hair?

  And why was he out in thunderstorms? Was there some specific significance to storms, or was it simply because the noise and confusion of bad weather helped cover his tracks?

  “Let me see those photos of the missing women again,” said Adam.

  Over the video link, he peered again at the pictures of eight missing women. One was blonde; one a redhead, possibly dyed; two had short, dark hair. Two were heavyset. And two had long, black or dark brown hair, were slender and appeared to be small-boned.

  “The two second and third from the right. Who are they, and how tall were they?”

  James opened the first file.

  “Third from the right. Alexis Ironstand, age twenty-four, five feet three inches, one hundred and seventeen pounds, went missing eighteen months ago. Originally from North Battleford. First Nations. University student in education, first year.

  “Second from the right,” James continued, then stopped. He choked up a bit, cleared his throat. “Only nineteen. Emily Martin. Tiny girl, only five-one, about one hundred and ten pounds. Missing ten months. From a farm south of Rosetown. English by descent. She was at a business school party before she disappeared.”

  James looked up from the files, trying to hide his emotions, only to see he wasn’t alone in being moved. Charlotte had tears in her eyes. Adam was staring into the screen, etched jaw set, full lips compressed; his colleagues could see his chest rising and falling as he took deep breaths.

  He dropped his eyes, and dragged a hand through his hair.

  “That makes four,” he said, looking up. “Suzanne Genereux would be five.”

  Adam asked James and Charlotte to start putting together developed cross-referenced files on the fo
ur women — one sexually assaulted, two missing and probably murdered, one in the morgue. What did they do in their spare time? Was there any occupational connection? Did they go to the same bars or restaurants?

  Where did Clairmont, Ironstand and Martin have their teeth cleaned? What was the weather like on the nights Ironstand and Martin went missing? Why were two of the victims Indigenous, but not the other two?

  “We have to look at the possibility of a serial killer,” said Adam. “Get Joan to help you. If you encounter any problems with staffing, let me know. I’ll deal with Pearson. Hell. We really need a missing persons co-ordinator.”

  “You’re right, Adam,” said James. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “I do too,” said Charlotte.

  “That makes all of us,” said Adam.

  He swallowed. Hard.

  “I’ll be on the first flight I can get,” said Adam, to the surprise of his colleagues. He hung up abruptly.

  Then he called Grace, his heart thumping.

  “Grace,” he said when she answered. “I . . . don’t know how to say this.”

  “I know, Adam. It’s okay. I know you have to come home. Some other time. We’ll get away some other time.”

  “Grace, I’m so sorry.”

  “Come home, Adam.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mary Sutherland, Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Saskatchewan, was reading the hastily-compiled request for warrant to arrest Dr. Donald Dunlop, dentist and black Porsche Cayenne owner.

  She glared over her glasses at Crown Prosecutor Sanjeev Kumar and Detective Constable James Weatherall. It was five o’clock on this steaming Wednesday afternoon in July. Detective Sergeant Adam Davis was on the other end of the phone, on the speaker function.

  “Why, gentlemen, is it so often necessary to present a request for warrant when I should be having a cold glass of white wine on my deck?” she asked.

  “With the greatest respect, Your Honour,” said Sanj, “you have been in court all day.”