by L E Fraser
Reece was late and couldn’t address the issue now, but he needed to talk to Sam. Sneaking down and locking the puppy out of the crate was cruel, and it was so out of character for her that Reece didn’t know how to initiate an open dialogue. In the five years they’d been together, he’d never known her to be passive aggressive. He understood that she’d had the luxury crate custom built for Brandy, but if Sam disagreed with his decision to move the puppy into it, why hadn’t she talked to him?
He went out to his car and continued to think about it as he drove across Queen Street to University Avenue. Three months ago, when they’d brought the puppy home, Sam had been disappointed that the built-in crate was too big. They’d bought a smaller puppy crate, but she’d quickly begun griping about how difficult the latch was to operate, and had said many times that she couldn’t wait for Pepin to outgrow it. What had changed? All this was completely unlike her.
As he hunted for street parking, it occurred to him that maybe Sam herself didn’t understand what was troubling her. Perhaps she was as confused about her feelings as he was so she was hiding her pain and trying to work it out alone. Whatever the reasons, he knew a supportive talk was definitely in order.
He found parking off Grenville Street and walked to a café near Women’s College Hospital where he saw a blonde woman in her early twenties sitting alone at a counter by the front window. Reece recognized Denise from her pictures on social media. She wasn’t as tall or as glamorous as her online photos had suggested. In real life, Denise was maybe five feet tall and a bit chubby with bleached hair that hung in waves to her waist. Her eyes were an unnatural shade of bright blue, probably thanks to tinted contact lenses, and her eyeliner was too dark for her complexion. Her beige skirt was a bit too tight and a bit too short. The heels of her flesh-toned sandals were high enough for Reece to wonder how she managed to walk in them. She struck him as a woman uncomfortable in her own skin.
Reece entered the air-conditioned restaurant and smiled. “Denise? I’m Reece Hash. Thanks for meeting me.” He held out his hand. She stared at it for a moment before offering her own for a moist, limp shake. “Can I grab you a coffee?” he asked.
She shook her head with a sullen expression. The coffee smelled wonderful and he’d have loved a cup, but his instinct told him that Denise would bolt if he turned his back. He sat on a counter stool beside her.
“I have to be at work in fifteen minutes,” she said. “My boss can’t get a glass of water by himself. He’ll phone if I’m not at my desk by eight fifteen.” She fidgeted on her seat, avoiding his eyes. “I talked to the cops three months ago when Annalise died. How come I have to talk to you?”
“I’m just tying up some loose ends,” Reece said pleasantly. “You went out with Annalise Huang the night she died, correct?”
Denise picked nervously at the cuff of her white blouse. “Yeah.”
Maybe he could put her at ease with a few general questions. “How did you two meet?”
“She was my roommate in university. The residence put us together. We didn’t get to pick,” Denise mumbled.
Not the enthusiastic response he’d hoped for. Perhaps they hadn’t been such great friends, but she’d told police they were close. It struck Reece as an odd thing to lie about.
“In your statement, you said Annalise was depressed,” he said. “Any idea why?”
She chewed on a long pointy fingernail covered in tiny pink rhinestones. “A breakup.”
“Her mother told police that her daughter’s ex stole some money from her,” he said.
Her head snapped up. Colour flooded her cheeks. “He didn’t steal anything,” she retorted. “It was his money.” There was a genuine spark of anger behind her passionate response.
“Why would Annalise accuse him of emptying her bank accounts and maxing out her credit cards?” he asked.
Denise laughed bitterly. “Because nobody left Annalise. When you figured out her true face, it was too late to get out in one piece. She treated Ronnie awfully. When he left her, she flipped out and told terrible lies about him.” Her eyes were intense as she folded her arms protectively over her chest. “You should have seen the garbage she put on social media about him. That was her game, you know. If you pissed her off, she destroyed you.”
Reece watched her closely. “They were engaged and he cheated on her, right?”
Denise dropped her eyes and sucked on her bottom lip. “I guess.”
“With you,” Reece stated amicably.
Her eyes flew to his face. “How did you know?”
Because you wear your guilt like a shroud, Reece thought.
He deflected her question with one of his own. “Did Annalise know?”
Tears filled her eyes. “I was going to tell her, I swear, but after she attacked that woman in the bistro I couldn’t.”
“What did she do?” Reece asked gently.
“I don’t want to say bad things about Annalise,” Denise said. “She’s dead. I don’t want to be a total bitch.”
“I just want you to tell me the truth,” he said. “What happened?”
She sighed. “Annalise said this random woman was Ronnie’s new girlfriend, but that wasn’t the reason for what she did. She wasn’t a nice person, you know?”
“I don’t. Tell me.”
“She, like, used to go to this bistro and say mean things about the people who worked there.” Denise licked her lips in nervous little flicks. “She’d do it at malls, too. She’d sit on a bench and make nasty comments in a loud voice. Like how fat or ugly someone was. She’d berate homeless people for fun. But the things she said to that server were beyond mean. Annalise called her a ‘gimp’ and a ‘cripple’. She made the woman cry.” Denise lowered her head. “Customers were staring. I felt like a monster because I was with her and I didn’t stop it.”
“If it wasn’t about her ex, why did she do it?” Reece asked.
Denise shrugged. “Because the woman’s leg was gone below the knee. Annalise was super nasty to people with mental or physical differences.” She gnawed on her lower lip and smears of blood streaked her bottom teeth. “She believed civility was wasted on the weak, at least that’s how she put it. She referred to people as ‘deformed’ and ‘retarded’. Anyone who didn’t fit her standards was a target.”
“Why were you friends?” Reece asked.
“She wasn’t my friend. She used me because my folks have money. If I’d tried to ghost her, Annalise would have turned on me. She bullied a girl at university until she dropped out of school.” A fat tear rolled down her cheek. “Annalise was brutal and she preyed on the weak.”
An alarm bell went off in Reece’s head: that was how Susan Taylor had described her husband. It couldn’t be a coincidence that both these purported suicide victims had been cruel bullies.
“Annalise told her mother that a drone was following her,” Reece said. “She believed it was her ex. Do you know anything about that?”
Denise pursed her lips in disgust. “More bullshit drama. If there was a drone—and that’s a big if—Ronnie didn’t have anything to do with it. The police talked to him after she died. They found out he didn’t have a Canadian permanent resident card, so immigration sent him back to the US.” She wiped her eyes, smearing black mascara across her cheek. “Wherever she is now, I bet Annalise is laughing her ass off. If there’s any justice, she’s roasting in hell. I know how that sounds, but she was an awful person.”
“What’s the name of the bistro where she harassed the server?” Reece asked.
“Cardoon,” she said. “It’s on Queen Street West, east of Jameson Avenue.”
That was in the Parkdale district, where Susan Taylor lived.
“The food’s amazing,” Denise said wistfully. “I’ll never be able to show my face in there again. Guilt by association, you know.”
“You could talk to the woman,” Reece said. “You can acknowledge her feelings without taking the blame
for what Annalise did.”
Denise shook her head glumly and looked at her feet. “I just stood there. Doing nothing is just as bad as bullying.” She picked up her oversized pink bag and climbed off the high stool. “I gotta go. I don’t want my boss to flip out on me.” She took a step, and then turned back to Reece. “If you talk to the woman at the bistro,” she said softly, “can you tell her the ugly fat girl is sorry?”
Reece got to his feet and held open the door for her. “You’re neither ugly nor fat, Denise,” he said sincerely. “Thanks for talking to me.”
They stepped out into the sunshine together, and she turned to look up at him. “I lied to police about Annalise being depressed.”
“She wasn’t?”
Denise shook her head. “Annalise was an entitled bitch. People like her don’t kill themselves, Mr. Hash. They have too much fun torturing other people.” She walked away, teetering on her sky-high heels.
Reece watched her disappear into the morning crowd. It seemed he had evidence of a victim connection—entitled cruelty. He pulled out his phone and called Susan Taylor.
“I was going to phone to thank you,” she said cheerfully. “A polite young man who helped clean Harold’s palace wants to rent the outbuilding. He brought over his wife and two-year-old twins to meet me. For a discount in the rent, he’s going to repair all the problems with my house.”
“I hope you set a fair rent,” Reece said, worried that this ‘polite young man’ was preparing to take advantage of a vulnerable old woman.
“Well, I guess I didn’t, because he insisted on paying more. Brought over some rental listings for places in the area to show me what a two-bedroom apartment rents for,” she said.
Reece smiled, relieved. “That’s great news.”
“I guess if your job is to clean places where people died, you don’t worry about ghosts, eh?”
He chuckled. “I suppose not. Susan, do you remember the name of the restaurant Harold used to go to?”
“Oh, the place he met the thug who sold him the gun.” She thought for a moment in silence. “It’s named after a prickly plant. Harold went on about the name one time because he said the people they hired were useless thorns choking out the flowers of society.”
Cardoons were late fall vegetables, alternatively referred to as artichoke thistles. Reece had cooked them a few times. You had to be careful of the small thorns.
“Cardoon,” he said.
“That’s it.”
“Listen, Susan, I’m sure your new tenant is an honest man, but I’d feel better if my PI agency ran a background check,” he said.
The woman had suffered enough in her life. Reece wanted to make certain that her new tenant wasn’t planning to cook meth in her backyard.
Thanking him profusely, Susan gave him the man’s name. After they said their goodbyes, Reece stood on the bustling sidewalk in the morning sunshine. Pedestrians scurried to work, focused on their own agendas and oblivious to those around them. Was it entitlement or a lack of situational awareness, he wondered, that made a woman blind to a man with a cane whom she jostled out of her way? Hectic lives, crushing schedules, and a society that communicated through technology seemed to be stripping people of basic courtesy. Watching the self-absorbed masses, with their eyes glued to their phones, Reece wondered when society had become so rude. In his mind, a shadowy victim profile materialized and a sinister motive took shape.
He knew what to look for in the sudden-death files, and a chilling premonition warned him he’d find more homicides.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Journal
THREE MONTHS AFTER the brutal attack on Pearl, we received word that my father was stateside. An IED in Kunar Province had claimed his leg. He served no further purpose to his country, so the military discharged him with a cheap prosthetic and an insatiable craving for morphine.
Any hope of a career in medicine vanished along with his pride. He did carpentry jobs around the parish and made furniture, earning just enough for essentials, and his persona reflected serenity. But occasionally I’d find him in the work shed, frozen on a stool with his left hand resting on his stump and surgical tools positioned neatly on a blue-lined tray. Immersed in the smouldering ashes of his dreams, he wouldn’t notice my intrusion and I’d furtively observe him from the shadow of the doorway. Without the mask he placed between himself and the outside world, his gaze was vacuous and my heart would ache. As he caressed each instrument, I would be acutely aware of everything he’d sacrificed for our country.
Pearl had withdrawn into a secret world of order and predictability. She would spend hours sorting every object in our house into sets of matching colours and shapes, counting and re-counting as the afterglow of the sun bathed the white walls in tones of pink and orange. Late at night, she would stand motionless in the river, the hem of her white nightgown floating like an open lily on the stagnant water. Her long platinum hair, a sheet of iridescent silver in the moonlight, would lift in the breeze and her fingers would flick to the beat of the cicadas’ songs. Effervescent fireflies would pierce the darkness with motes of brilliance as they twirled to the vibrating croaks of the frogs’ symphony.
I’d gaze at her from the shadow of our cypress tree and time would slow into lethargic increments. Grief, so potent that my breath would catch in my throat, would transmute the space between us to a gaping chasm I could not cross. We would stand, frozen in time, until the hollow slap of a gator’s tail or an owl’s hoot would break the spell that nestled Pearl in the bayou’s arms and she’d come to me. As I led her back to bed, I would weep over my inability to mend what had broken within her.
My father had not blamed me for the wickedness perpetrated against Pearl, but he mourned the loss of our childhoods and my mother’s unadulterated love could not restore the light to his eyes. She would perch on his lap, with her supple body contoured to his, and he would sing to her in his dulcet baritone. But a resounding sadness had leached the joy from the harmonious lyrics and his eyes would spontaneously fill with tears that would trickle slowly down his gaunt face.
Even my mother’s utopia of sprawling plantations could not banish our dismal reality. Pearl’s assailant had broken our spirits and left us bleeding in the river’s mire.
In May, my father agreed to take Pearl and me to the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival. She had longed to go, and neither of us could deny her. I craved the simplicity of the past with a painful intensity, aching to witness my sister’s childlike wonder and to hear her laugh again. My father longed to restore a semblance of normalcy to our dismal reality. Yet, in our hearts, we both knew that our lives had been irreversibly changed and happiness was now an unattainable dream.
Pearl’s swollen belly was an inexorable reminder that moored us to the bleakness of our inescapable nightmare. Her beautiful face had grown pale and pinched as the alien inside her greedily slurped the nutrients she struggled to consume. Above her flip-flops, her ankles had bloated to elephantine proportions, and rarely did a day pass without her suffering excruciating headaches. She had stopped sorting and counting and visiting the bayou. She spent hours sleeping, waking only when the pain became unbearable.
My father and I had taken her to the free clinic, but the doctor had dismissed our medical concerns and focused on Pearl’s cognitive impairments. When we refused to discuss the baby’s father, the doctor had studied us with stony contempt, oblique accusation hardening his eyes. He’d scoffed at my father’s medical expertise and refused him the prescription he requested to lessen Pearl’s suffering until the baby was born. We couldn’t pay for the doctor’s recommended tests, so he’d dismissed us as unworthy of his attention. We had skulked away, burdened with undeserved shame and without the medication that would ease Pearl’s misery.
On the day we took my sister to the festival, my mother couldn’t accompany us. We couldn’t risk the public’s negative reaction to her fantasy-prone behaviour. Too many people attended the c
elebration now, and people were the enemy. As long as my mother remained sheltered in the bayou, we could protect her from authorities’ meddling interference.
We arrived in the early afternoon, and Zydeco music rose from the festival grounds and hundreds of people swarmed around us. The cloying odours of fried crawfish, boudin pies, and jambalaya permeated the muggy air. Within an hour, rivers of sweat poured down my father’s face and he hobbled in pain from the chronic ulcers that bubbled on his stump above the cheap prosthetic. His scuffed loafers and khaki shorts drew attention to the mechanical rods and it shamed me to wish he’d worn long trousers. A melee of drunken attendees jostled us on their staggering way to the band stages. The rasping scrape of a vest frottoir grated against my ears, and my eyes stung from the greasy smoke that wafted from the cooking booths.
As the afternoon wore on, Pearl became more and more upset by the chaos. She stopped abruptly in the middle of a crowded path, staring wide-eyed at a tourist booth. She clutched her hands against her ears and rocked her body. The hordes parted to pass her and their snickers fuelled a rage inside me so pure I could taste acid on my tongue.
A man suddenly leaned in and stroked Pearl’s arm, his long fingers lingering against the paleness of her flesh before he stepped away with a gentle smile. Beside him, his companion’s swinish eyes fell to my father’s unsightly prosthetic and then rose again to Pearl’s distended abdomen. He laughed outright and began to hurl insults at the ‘gimp’ and the ‘preggo retard’. My body tensed and I took a step toward him, but my father snatched my hand.
“Let it be, child. They’re Basile Landry’s sons,” my father muttered.
I followed his eyes to where Basile Landry stood with another man under a tree beside the tourist booth. Landry’s hand rose in greeting but mine remained curled into fists as his sons and their friends lumbered across the parking lot to herd into a black Hummer. I knew the youngest, Virgile, but I didn’t know his brother—the man who had stroked Pearl’s arm as gently as one would pat a newborn kitten.