Shadow Tag, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  “I’m afraid we have bad news to share,” Emily said directly.

  Mrs. Basha turned her body so the mesh of her head covering faced the doctor.

  “Fadiya is pregnant, nine weeks now,” Emily said. “At this time, we’re unable to verify how it happened. There is missing CCTV footage from the lockdown unit. We believe the perpetrator came up the stairwell and through the fire door, thus avoiding the nurses’ station and the alarms on the elevator.”

  Mrs. Basha sat frozen and silent. Sam couldn’t tell if it was shock or some other emotion that rendered her paralyzed and speechless.

  “Did you know?” Aazar asked his mother.

  Her head swivelled in his direction. “Know? How would I know?” Her voice sounded choked and there was a hint of hysteria in its high-pitched tone.

  “Did you pay a geneticist to create a DNA match to me?” He fired the question at his mother, his voice rising. “Did you implant the embryo in my sister’s womb?”

  “Allah has commanded you to treat your parents with utmost respect, no matter the situation.” Mrs. Basha’s voice caught before she softly added, “Paradise lies under the feet of the mother.”

  “Don’t quote the Prophet Muhammad to me.” Aazar lowered his voice. “Please, Tāyi, answer the question.”

  “I did not do this awful thing you accuse me of,” she murmured.

  “Islamic jurisprudence does not encourage abortion, but there is no direct biblical prohibition,” Aazar said to Emily. He directed his next comment to his mother. “We will proceed with an abortion, yes?”

  “Islamic law recognizes a fetus in the womb as a human life,” Mrs. Basha stated.

  “One hundred and twenty days have not lapsed,” Aazar responded. “Many scholars allow victims of rape to abort before ensoulment occurs.”

  “No,” Mrs. Basha said. “The child of rape is a legitimate child.”

  “Rape is a violation of divine law,” Aazar argued. “Fadiya will have an abortion.”

  “No,” Mrs. Basha repeated. “I have spoken and you will obey my decision.” She turned her attention to Emily. “Aazar’s specialist will perform a test to ascertain whether the fetus is a match for stem cell transplant. We will pay all costs associated with transporting Fadiya to Princess Margaret Cancer Unit for the procedure.”

  The colour drained from Aazar’s already pale face. “You can’t do this.” His breathing was shallow, and he was wheezing from the exertion that it took to speak. “You will bring shame to her in our community. It will prevent Fadiya from marrying.” Aazar suddenly smacked his palm against the table, causing his mother to jump. “Fadiya will have an abortion now, before Islamic law prohibits it.”

  “No. You must survive long enough to conclude your research,” his mother said. “Allah has sent us this child, a child who may hold the power to save your life. Allah sent you to end cancer, Aazar.”

  “If it were Allah’s intent for me to eradicate cancer, Allah wouldn’t have given me leukemia,” Aazar argued. “Please, put Fadiya’s life ahead of mine.”

  “Allah sent Fadiya to save you,” she said stubbornly. “This is what your sister would want.”

  “You cannot believe Allah sent a rapist to violate Fadiya,” Aazar shouted.

  “The blood sampling may not support stem cell transplant,” Emily said reasonably. “How soon can you arrange it?”

  “I will contact our specialist immediately,” Mrs. Basha said.

  Aazar struggled to his feet, looping the strap of his oxygen backpack over one thin shoulder. “I will not consent to any medical procedure that uses any part of that child.”

  “Aazar, I—”

  He held up a shaking palm to silence his mother. “If I’m meant to finish my research, I will survive long enough to do so. I will not allow Fadiya or this child to be used as spare parts,” he said bitterly.

  Sam watched him exit the boardroom. The depth of his love for his sister and the sacrifice he was making to protect Fadiya awed her. She realized that Fadiya might feel the same way about her brother. Court ruling aside, the girl had the right to choose.

  They needed to tell her the truth. About everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Reece

  REECE DROPPED HIS heavy bags on the kitchen island and crouched down to unclip Pepin’s leash. The puppy scooted to his water fountain and eagerly lapped the cold water before collapsing onto the cooling pad in his crate.

  “Sorry, boy,” Reece said. “Too vigorous a walk on such a hot day.”

  He’d hoped that exercise would have sweated away the dismal sense of impending doom that shrouded him. It hadn’t worked. Maybe he should have hit the gym, but he wasn’t in the mood to suffer anyone’s company. He took his phone from his pocket and stashed it on the antique church altar by the front door.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  But he could still see it, sitting on the sloping top of the lectern like a black slug. He had to fight an intense desire to hurl it against the exposed brick wall.

  For a long time after his family died, he had used anger as a barrier to protect him from tumbling into the beckoning pit of depression. It had taken a lot of therapy to move through the stages of grief, but anger had continued to be there as a warm shelter whenever his life spiralled out of control. Reece had learned anger management tools, though, and the beast rarely pounced from its iron cage. Most people didn’t have a clue that he battled it more often than he’d like to admit. Today was one of those days.

  He’d expected Gretchen to be angry. What he hadn’t bargained for was the unprofessional personal attack that she’d launched at him with precise aim. The entire office had listened in as she’d browbeaten and insulted him. Reece had stood humiliated and furious at her offensive tyranny. The snarling black dog of rage had hunkered beside him, straining at its lead. It shamed Reece to admit that if security hadn’t arrived to escort him from the building when they did, he would have lost control of the beast. He would have made things a hundred times worse, and they were already bad enough.

  Reece unpacked his prep ingredients and neatly folded the cloth bags, tucking them under the sink. He breathed deeply, aching to talk with Sam. It had been a long time since he’d felt so unsettled.

  Word of his termination had spread rapidly throughout the courthouse, and the rumour mill was spinning with exaggerated versions of his assumed transgression. His phone had already begun to ring off the hook with curious ‘friends’ keen to hear the grisly details of his fall from grace. He’d finally had the common sense to text Sam that he had to turn off his phone.

  I’m coming home, she’d responded. We’ll figure it out together.

  Inexplicably, his eyes filled with tears. His emotional state was an aftershock of the adrenalin crash and exhaustion, he knew, but it infuriated him that he was this upset. He told himself again that he’d done the right thing, even though he’d known it would result in his immediate termination. If the Crown attorney’s office pressed charges, it could cost him his freedom. He’d leaked confidential material. Right this minute, Gretchen was meticulously preparing paperwork to have him charged. At the ensuing press conference, she would refuse to disclose to whom he’d given the information or why. The inference would be that he’d leaked it to felons to aid in their defence. The media would run with a juicy story of treason. The papers would allege that he had betrayed the blue brethren with whom he’d once stood. The court of public opinion would prosecute him.

  If Toronto’s frontline officers believed Gretchen’s trumped up charges and her lies, even Inspector Bryce Mansfield’s loyalty wouldn’t stop the thin blue line from turning their backs on him. Losing that allegiance was what hurt the most, and Gretchen had known that. She’d stuck her knife into the most vulnerable part of his heart and twisted. Everything Bryce had warned him about was coming to fruition, and Reece had only his unyielding principles to blame.

  Since exercise hadn’t help
ed settle his mind, maybe cooking would. He measured out his West Indian spices and dropped them into a cast iron pan to toast. As the kitchen filled with the heady fragrance of allspice and coriander, Reece felt a bit of weight lift. The black dog was skulking back to its iron cage. He ground the warm spices and dumped the powder into a glass jar. Next, he prepared his puff pastry. As the dough rested and the ground beef sizzled, he diced onions and scotch bonnet peppers. The filling for the Jamaican patties simmered, flooding the sunlit kitchen with scrumptious aromas. He felt the smothering caul of depression lift a little bit more as he worked. Maybe he was over-reacting and things weren’t as catastrophic as he feared. Maybe Gretchen would cool down and reconsider.

  Manic pounding struck the front door.

  Reece froze and his heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. His legs felt weak and his pulse galloped in his neck, causing white noise to fill his head.

  Pepin yelped and jumped out of his crate. He skidded across the floor, scrambled to regain his footing, and raced over to Reece. Whimpering, he leaped against Reece’s leg in search of protection.

  The pictures on the wall shuddered under another assault against the door, more aggressive than the first

  They’d come to arrest him.

  In stiff, robotic movements, Reece put the pastry in the fridge and turned off the heat under the meat filling. His mouth was bone dry and his hands shook.

  The relentless hammering continued nonstop against the heavy metal door. Pepin whined and cowered beside Reece’s feet.

  Careful not to accidentally kick the puppy, Reece picked up his wallet and his phone from the church altar, fumbling to turn on his cell. He needed to text Sam. He wouldn’t get another chance once they’d cuffed him. It could take hours before they’d let him contact anyone. The cell phone slowly rebooted, the icon swirling in a lazy sweep across the screen. He grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair. Stupid, but he’d feel more in control if he had it on when they took him. He should crate Pepin. He couldn’t remember if he’d turned off the stove. A hundred frantic thoughts spun through his head and he turned in a circle, trying to figure out what he should do first. He couldn’t concentrate with the violent pounding.

  He yanked open the door.

  Sam flew into his arms. “I took an Uber. I forgot my keys. Are you okay? You’re shaking.”

  He hugged her close, inhaling the scent of her lemon shampoo. “You hate Ubers,” he murmured into her soft curls. “You think half of the drivers are predators in disguise.”

  “Yeah, well, I pity any man stupid enough to tangle with me,” she said, and pulled out of his arms. “Why do you have your suit coat on?”

  He let out a shaky laugh. “You still have your cop knock down to a fine art. I thought I was headed to the slammer.”

  Her face paled and her freckles were stark against her ivory skin. “I didn’t think. Come on, sit down. You look wrecked.” She led him to the living room sofa. “I’ll get wine. You start talking.”

  As she opened and poured their wine, Reece told her about his meeting with Bryce. She listened without comment, waiting for him to get to the bad part. After he finished telling her what happened with Gretchen, she put her glass on the side table and hugged him.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said.

  “Giving Bryce the file was the right thing to do,” he said without conviction.

  “Not that.” A brilliant smile lit her face. “I’m proud of you for not smacking that bitch.”

  He laughed, and it felt great. “Well, I came close when she called me a snivelling swine and an embarrassment to law enforcement.”

  Sam rolled her eyes. “Oh boy. There’s something seriously wrong with that woman. Did you speak with anyone at the university?”

  “I met with my ethics professor,” Reece said. “Since Gretchen kept her inquiry off the official channels, he thinks a case could be made that the information in the file I gave to Bryce belonged to our PI agency.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Sam said. “Eli’s our employee and Danny is our consultant. Neither has any affiliation with the Crown attorney’s office. You interviewed Lydia at Cardoon Bistro using your PI licence, not your office credentials.”

  “Right, but I talked to Susan Taylor as a Crown attorney employee,” he said.

  “Okay,” Sam said slowly. “Would she remember? Our agency did the background check on her new tenant. Eli followed-up with her. Isn’t it possible she’ll associate you with McNamara Hash Investigations?”

  “You want me to ask her to lie?” Reece asked incredulously.

  “No, I want to rely on subliminal perception,” she said. “We go see her again, maybe to check in on the new tenant, and we show her our PI licences. We talk about how McNamara Hash Investigations is liaising with homicide to reopen her husband’s case.”

  Reece saw where she was going and his first instinct was to veto it out of principle. Maybe Bryce was right and his inflexible ethics would be his demise.

  “It will influence her to remember that she only saw the PI identification,” Reece said, swallowing his distaste. “If asked, she’ll say I interviewed her as a private investigator rather than a civil servant employee.”

  Sam shrugged. “Calling into question the validity of the claim that you surrendered confidential material,” she said. “It’s worth a shot. Danny can testify that she was operating in her consultant role when she wrote the algorithm that found the commonalities in the sudden-death cases. By the way, that algorithm is her intellectual property.” She paused in thought and sipped her wine. “Eli can testify that we were looking into Annalise Huang’s case because it didn’t sit right with us.”

  Rigid morals aside, it shocked Reece that Sam was calmly suggesting that Eli lie to authorities. Reece quashed a sharp retort to the suggestion. He rubbed his temple in a feeble attempt to mitigate a wicked headache that was burrowing into his skull.

  Sam squeezed his hand. “I honestly don’t think we’ll need to testify. But if Gretchen comes after you with a vengeance, we’ll circle our wagons around you.”

  Meaning they’d lie under oath. They’d commit perjury. Reece’s stomach roiled. How did doing the right thing result in people he cared about plotting the most effective way to break the law? He should have given it more thought before he’d righteously galloped toward justice, with a sword in one hand and a balance scale in the other.

  “The piece you’re missing is that Gretchen gave me the files. Our agency wouldn’t have had access to them,” he said. “She’ll probably accuse me of stealing them with the intent of leaking confidential material.”

  “They’re closing in on Gretchen,” Sam said with confidence. “She has bigger problems than manufacturing charges against you.”

  Reece shook his head doubtfully. “Between personal insults, Gretchen was clear that she would exercise every ounce of her power to cause a scandal ‘from which you’ll never recover’ as she put it,” he said with a grimace.

  Sam’s green eyes darkened to emerald stones. “Let her try. We’ve survived worse. Besides, I think the deputy attorney general will clip her wings before it goes too far,” she said. “We’ll plan for the worst but hope for the best. What about your law degree?”

  He shrugged. “I spoke with the Law Society of Ontario. There have been cases where a principal fired an articling student and the person went on to write the bar exam.”

  Regardless, it was inconceivable to him how a fired articling student could have a successful law career. The only thing worse than being terminated with cause, was having the law firm press criminal charges. Even the most gifted resume consultant couldn’t polish that turd.

  His headache slithered under his left eye, shooting barbs of agony into his cranium. “It’s my responsibility to find another placement to complete the term.” Reece braced for her response.

  “Jim Stipelli,” she said immediately. “He’s a senior partner in o
ne of the biggest firms in Ontario, and he’s Toronto’s most renowned defence attorney.”

  It was what he’d expected her to say, and she was trying to be optimistic and helpful, so Reece forced a smile. “Sure. That’s a great idea.”

  It was a terrible idea. He didn’t want her best friend’s husband to be his principal. He didn’t want to article with a defence attorney at all. His dream was to be on the prosecution side of the table, arguing for the people. Studying law was about supporting a justice system he believed in, not aiding criminals in weaseling out of serving time.

  “Jim’s firm has an impressive pro bono division.” Sam’s green eyes drilled into his. “Our legal system needs good people on both sides of the table to defend the downtrodden.”

  She was right, but it still wasn’t how he’d envisioned his future. It would be awkward and humiliating to be a friend’s subordinate.

  When he remained silent, Sam asked, “Will you think about it?”

  “Sure. I’ll give Jim a call,” he said with feigned enthusiasm. “Eli and Danny are coming for dinner. I’ve got a few more things to do before they arrive.” He stood and headed for the safety of the kitchen. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore and needed to be alone to sort out his thoughts.

  She jumped off the sofa and followed him. “What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing,” he said a bit too quickly. “I downloaded that movie you wanted to see. Why don’t you and Pepin snuggle and watch it?”

  She looked hurt by his rejection, but smiled weakly. “Okay. Holler if you need a clumsy sous chef.” She picked up the puppy and settled onto the sofa.

  Reece felt like a total dick. He followed her and picked up the remote to organize her movie. Once it was queued, he passed her the remote and leaned down to kiss her. “I love you. Thanks for being my rock.”