by L E Fraser
“Good. She’s working on her clinical practicum at Serenity Clinic over in Parkdale.” Reece bit into his hotdog.
“Once she has that PhD, I hope she reconsiders her options. She’d make a hell of a great criminal analyst.” Bryce shoved the second half of his hot dog into his mouth.
“Resigning from Toronto Police Services wouldn’t be a great recommendation,” Reece said.
“Water under the bridge,” Bryce mumbled through a full mouth. “The work you guys did on the Frozen Statues case was stellar.” His upper lip lifted into a sneer as he chewed. “Too bad your boss didn’t have the common sense to check the status of that cabin. It would have resulted in fewer deaths.” Bryce jammed his last four onion rings into his mouth.
Reece’s lunch suddenly tasted like sawdust. He dropped his leftovers into the bag with the garbage.
“If you’re throwing out half a Fancy Franks dog, whatever’s going on must be earth shattering,” Bryce said.
Reece reached for a file on the other side of the bench. He passed over the folder.
Bryce licked his fingers and took it from Reece’s hand. “What’s this?”
“Gretchen Dumont asked me to look into closed sudden-death cases,” Reece said. “She was auditing police due diligence.”
Bryce wiped his mouth and crushed his napkin in his fist. “That sounds like her.”
“My sense is that she has a grudge against Toronto Police Services,” Reece said, unwilling to bring Harvey into the discussion. “I don’t know why.”
“She’s still trying to get out from under that cabin debacle by blaming us.” Bryce waved the folder at Reece. “So, I ask again, what’s this?” There was suspicion in his dark eyes.
“I found something that would be easy to miss,” Reece said tactfully. “Different divisions caught the five suicide cases I’m looking at. You remember Danny, Eli Watson’s sister?”
“Yeah. The computer genius. What about her?” Bryce opened the folder.
“She set up an algorithm of some sort. It found a weird commonality between at least five of the sudden-death cases,” Reece explained. “I did a bit of legwork and have a theory. I want your opinion.”
Bryce read in silence for a few minutes, then closed the folder and placed it on the bench. “You think a vigilante stalked these folks with a drone and executed them.”
“Yes.”
“You’re saying these are homicides.” Bryce stared across the lake, his body tense. “And every investigator involved missed it.”
“They landed at different divisions. They appeared to be legitimate suicides,” Reece said. “If I’d been the lead on any one of them, I wouldn’t have made a connection either. It’s when you look at them together that you see a pattern.” He paused. “I’m positive there are more. Not just suicides, but accidental mishaps.”
“And what does Ms. Dumont say about it?” Bryce asked tersely.
“Here’s the thing, Bryce.” Reece turned on the bench so he could speak directly to him. “I took an oath of office when I joined the provincial police. I still live by that vow.” He pointed at the file between them. “These cases need to be reopened. It’s the right thing to do for the victims and their families. I refuse to let politics get in the way of the public service promise I made years ago. I’m taking a leap of faith by involving you.”
Bryce sighed and removed his sunglasses. “I’m assuming your boss told you to drop it. That’s why I’m here.”
“She told me to use our PI agency as a cover to gather evidence,” he said.
“Evidence that would discredit the officers who handled these cases,” Bryce said bitterly. “So, the rumours are true. She’s fabricating misconduct and dereliction of duty charges against respected officers.”
“I don’t know what she’s doing,” Reece said truthfully. “But these cases need a second look. Your homicide unit has the skill and manpower.”
“Reece, you have rigid principles. Some might even call you sanctimonious. Your fixation with the moral high ground is blinding you to the personal consequences.” He held up the folder. “This isn’t just insubordination; it could be construed as breach of confidentiality. That’s an indictable offence. If the Crown attorney’s office presses charges and can prove you liable, you’re looking at prison time.”
“I know.” The magnitude of what faced him was daunting, but Reece straightened his back. “It’s worth it if you can stop a killer.”
“You’re that certain these cases are homicides?” Bryce asked. “You’re willing to throw yourself in the lion’s den over this?”
“Someone has deemed himself judge and executioner and has committed multiple murders,” Reece said passionately. “The killer has to be stopped and brought to justice before more people die.”
“Contemptible, abusive people who are guilty of gross indignities against society,” Bryce countered.
Reece understood he was playing devil’s advocate, but it still angered him. “You know as well as I do that no one, under any circumstances, deserves to be murdered. Are you going to reopen these cases? Are you going to find this damn vigilante or not?”
Bryce sat quietly for a minute, gazing across the still water. He sighed and turned to face Reece. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll run with this, but I’ll keep it on the down-low and off the deputy attorney general’s radar. In the event he finds out, or Gretchen Dumont guesses, I won’t involve you. I’ll say I ordered an audit of random closed cases and we found a possible connection.”
Reece shook his head. “I won’t be responsible for you lying.”
His dad had been a Supreme Court judge, and Reece had learned his ethics at his knee. The measure of every man’s character was his integrity and commitment to duty. Reece had breached his boss’s trust and violated a non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement for the sake of justice. He would face the consequences, knowing his father’s spirit would stand proudly by his side.
Bryce stood, tucking the file under his arm. “Our flawed legal system only survives because the noble stand to fight another day,” he said. “I don’t agree with you throwing yourself on your sword. That bitch will destroy you and possibly save herself in the process.”
If Reece were lucky, the deputy attorney general would fire Gretchen before that happened, but he knew it was a pipe dream. Gretchen already suspected that the vultures were circling. She was a malicious and vindictive woman. She’d ruin him before she fell and hope his stained reputation cushioned her fall.
“Doing the right thing often comes at a high cost,” Reece said.
As they walked to the parking lot, Bryce asked, “What are your plans?”
“I’ll talk to Gretchen and then go to the law school.” He was dreading both conversations. “My advisor might see a way to salvage my legal career.”
At his car, Bryce held out his hand. “Thanks for the invitation to your wedding,” he said. “Alice is chirping about seeing the famous Pietre estate on Millionaires’ Row.”
Reece shook his hand and forced a smile. “It’ll be a wonderful day.” Assuming he wasn’t in jail.
Bryce removed his sunglasses and held out the folder. “You’re sure about this? If what I hear is true, they’re closing in on her. I can forget we talked, you know.”
“This vigilante has been watching, judging, and executing for years,” Reece said. “I feel it in my gut. The longer he stays hidden in the shadows, the greater the risk of escalation.”
“When the shit hits the fan, Reece, if there’s anything I can do to help, you know where to find me,” Bryce said.
“Find this killer and it’ll be worth whatever is coming my way.” Reece got in his car before he changed his mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Journal
LIFE SELDOM UNRAVELS the way we hope or plan. There are so many little details that we fail to grasp in the heat of battle. Looking back, I see with perfect clarity that my f
irst mistake with Virgile was that I lacked a methodical and skillful execution style. Back then, I held the capacity to appreciate the finality of my conduct and to feel moral doubt. Without cold-blooded detachment, one makes mistakes.
The gators did not take Virgile’s body. I hadn’t pushed him far enough into the Teche. He drifted less than ten yards downstream before coming to rest in a nest of cypress tree roots. A bayou tour guide found the body the next day. Within a week, the media reported that the coroner’s ruling in Virgile Landry’s death was homicide by gunshot.
I had meticulously cleaned the gun and returned it to the shed, but I feared forensics could match the bullet. I had to dispose of the weapon. Should the sheriff trace licenced .45 semi-automatics in the parish, my father could honestly say he didn’t know what happened to his gun. The last he’d seen it was the night of Hurricane Rita, the night before he fell off the wagon and had succumbed to the blissful oblivion of morphine.
My father had painstakingly climbed back on that miserable wagon and was now shrugging the monkey from his back again with fierce resolve. He claimed he had the flu—a determined bug, he said with a smile when I voiced concern. His complexion was sallow and his bloodshot eyes rheumy as he continually snuffled into a damp tissue. Perspiration coated his forehead and neck, but even in his customary long-sleeved shirts, his arms trembled with chills. I recognized the symptoms of withdrawal from the previous time he had gone cold turkey. I could do nothing to minimize his physical pain and depression. Only time would ease his suffering.
For a reason I didn’t understand at the time, my father tore off the southeast-facing wall of the shed and rebuilt it. There was no opportunity to fetch the weapon I desperately needed to dispose of. He worked long into the night and I cared alone for my mother the best I could.
Every night, I’d lie beside Pearl’s tomb, sleep an elusive craving, and fear would seep into my heart. My certainty that no one had seen me with Virgile began to wane. In lucid dreams, my semi-conscious mind would narrate in Virgile’s rasping drawl his vile tale of rape and violence. I would jerk awake with an uneasy feeling that I had missed something, but I couldn’t grasp the threat my subconscious mind insisted was there.
Until Pearl whispered the truth.
One night, we spotted your sister outside.
I had disregarded the pronoun at the time, consumed by the horror of Virgile’s satisfied confession.
Too bad we won’t get an encore, he had said in response to learning of her death.
Someone had accompanied Virgile on his midnight expeditions to our bayou oasis. Someone had been with him the night he raped Pearl. That person knew I had a motive to kill Virgile, and I had no way to protect myself from this faceless stranger.
A week into his ‘flu’, my father woke me early and suggested we sink some crawfish traps. He had a hankering for étouffée, he said. He was a shadow of his former self, yet a ray of hope flickered in my heart. It was the first time since Pearl’s death that he’d exhibited an interest in anything other than the poison he religiously pumped into his veins.
He treated the infection in my mother’s fingers from her compulsive gnawing and wrapped snowy gauze around them in thick mittens to prevent her from tearing at the swollen skin. He dressed her in a blue shift and brushed coconut oil into her long hair until it shone silver in the morning light. As he tucked her into the mud boat and pushed it through the shallow water, my tiny ray of hope blossomed into a warm sunbeam. Without Pearl, our family would never be whole again, but I naively believed on that beautiful day that we might rise like phoenixes from the ashes of our misery.
Late that afternoon, I was heating oil in a pot to fry hush puppies when a sheriff’s car drove into the dirt yard. My father paused in stirring a simmering pot of crawfish étouffée and wiped his hands on a dishrag. Basile Landry climbed from the passenger side, circled the cruiser, and joined a uniformed sheriff at the base of our front steps. My father’s expression was difficult to decipher, but I sensed acceptance and a coiled readiness that escaped my understanding.
“Stay with your mother,” he told me, and walked to the door, his prosthetic clumping unnaturally on the wood floor.
As the two men climbed the steep steps, my father stood waiting on the wraparound porch. I dawdled by the open window, hovering in the deep shadows out of sight. Basile’s complexion was pale, as if bleached by sunlight, and grief had aged him unkindly. He was fat as a prize hog, and dark perspiration stained the pits of his short-sleeved white shirt.
My father shook his hand. “I was shocked to hear about your son,” he said. “Deepest condolences to your family, Basile.”
The man’s lip curled into a snarl of contempt and he grunted a few incomprehensible syllables.
“Remy, you look unwell,” the sheriff said, removing his hat. “I apologize if we caught you at a bad time.”
My father brushed aside his concern. “We have the flu in the house. Been running its course.” He tugged down his long sleeves and wiped his nose with the knuckle of his forefinger.
“Lord, but it’s hot for this time of year. How’s the wife?” the sheriff asked politely.
“No complaints. She and Pearl are—”
“We’re here about my boy,” Basile interrupted. “You own a .45 semi-automatic, right?”
My father nodded. “Did. Don’t anymore.”
Basile’s smirk was incredulous. “You saying someone stole it?” He turned to the sheriff. “Stolen gun requires reporting, doesn’t it?”
My father held up his hand. “Rita took it, along with half my work shed and pretty much everything inside.”
My father knows what I did, I thought from behind the safety of the window glass. He got clean and set about manufacturing a plan to protect me. I had no idea how he had discovered my crime or why he hadn’t confronted me. White-hot panic flooded over me as I continued to eavesdrop.
The sheriff mopped his sweating face with a grubby handkerchief. “Well, that howling bitch Rita took a chunk of St. Martin Parish with her. But why didn’t you let me know?” he asked in a bemused tone.
My father shrugged. “Figured y’all had enough to worry about. Lots of folks suffered worse. What’s this all about?”
Basile blew air through his puckered lips. It was a gesture so similar to his deceased son’s mannerism on the night I’d killed him that my heart skipped a beat.
“Someone shot my Virgile with a .45 semi-automatic, and it’s pretty convenient yours is missing,” Basile declared. “Is Blu at home?”
My father ignored him and spoke to the sheriff. “You can’t be suggesting I shot Virgile. Why would I?”
The sheriff shuffled his feet. “Well, it seems the afternoon before Rita made landfall, Virgile and Blu had words outside the hardware store. Witnesses say it got ugly. I’d appreciate a word with Blu just to ease Mr. Landry’s mind.”
My father called my name and I took a steadying breath before joining them on the porch. From ground level, Pearl’s crypt under the cypress tree looked like an odd but innocuous garden decoration. From the high porch, though, it looked exactly like a tomb. If either of them glanced behind them, there would be more questions to answer.
“Go ahead and tell the sheriff what happened with my boy back in September,” Basile ordered me. He puffed out his chest and planted his fists on his thick waist. “Before you get to lying, you remember I was there.”
“Nothing odd happened,” I replied passively. “I don’t want to speak poorly about your son, but what you overheard him saying to me was nothing out of the ordinary. Virgile was a straight-up bully.”
From my peripheral vision, I glimpsed a slight nod of agreement from the sheriff.
Basile’s piggy eyes narrowed until they all but disappeared into the rolls of fat on his face. “You were at that dogfight. You gonna deny that fact?”
“What dogfight?”
“The one my Virgile attended on the night he was m
urdered!” Basile yelled. “It was just over yonder from here. Folks say they saw you.” His chin tilted slightly and the tip of his tongue flicked over the corner of his lips.
My biology teacher had claimed that the human brain contains a reptilian throwback gene that enables us to decipher imperceptible nuances in body language when survival instinct heightens our senses. I believed I had indisputable evidence to prove that hypothesis, because I was certain Basile was lying. I hadn’t recognized anyone. Ergo, no one had recognized me. It was such a childish conclusion to reach, I realize now, as if I could close my eyes and become invisible.
“I’m not into blood sports, and I’ve got no interest in associating with people who get off watching them,” I retorted.
“Blu,” my father murmured, and put a hand on my shoulder. “Basile, I can’t express how sorry I am about your boy. No parent should suffer the loss of a child.” His voice was thick with emotion and he swiped at his eyes. “Especially not to violence.”
“I want to see that shed you claim Rita took,” Basile stated.
My father nodded. “My leg is acting up some, but you help yourself. You’ll see I had to rebuild two walls.”
“I’ll meet you down there,” the sheriff said, patting Basile on his wide back. “I’d like a private word with Remy and Blu.”
Basile marched down the stairs, throwing a scathing look over his shoulder. From the ground, he shouted up to me, “I know you killed my boy.” He pointed a sausage finger at me. “Mark my words, you and your family will pay for what you did. I’ll see to it.”
The sheriff sighed. “Blu, you sure you weren’t around that dogfight? Maybe heard the ruckus and went to see what was going on?”
I shook my head. My tongue was thick and dry with fear.
“Virgile’s brother claims you accused him of raping Pearl,” the sheriff said with another sigh. “What you said about Virgile being a nasty piece of work is true. Did that miserable son-of-a-bitch touch Pearl? I know she’s expecting. Saw her at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival back in the spring.” His eyes drilled into mine and I saw not an ounce of compassion toward my sister, regardless of the slight he’d made against Virgile’s character.