Shadow Tag, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  Confused, Sam said, “She lives in Parkdale and eats there a lot.”

  “You aren’t listening,” Danny retorted. “She witnessed Annalise shove the barista. When the woman’s prosthetic gave out and she fell, there was this murderous look on Ophelia’s face. She left a full meal on the table and bumped into Annalise on her way to the exit.”

  “Okay…” Sam said slowly. “Ophelia can be passive aggressive. Intentionally bumping into a bully was probably retaliation.”

  Danny growled low in her throat and her body stiffened. “Ophelia was there when Harold Taylor went off on the server with Down syndrome. Again, she had this scary look on her face. She left her coffee and pastry untouched on the table and caught up to Harold just outside the bistro doors.”

  Sam realized what was bugging her. Doug had said he didn’t know who the police were looking for, but then he’d speculated that Ophelia hadn’t latched the door and the ‘rich kid’ had walked out. Doug had nothing to do with the patients in lockdown, and he hadn’t even been in the clinic when Eli had been admitted.

  “Remember that woman who mowed down the pregnant mother and her toddlers at the grocery store?” Danny was asking.

  Sam shifted her attention back to Danny. “Sure, she appealed a ten-year licence suspension because she deemed it too harsh a consequence for killing two kids.”

  “There’s video of Ophelia chatting with her at the counter at Cardoon,” Danny said. “If the bistro is the vigilante’s hunting grounds, Ophelia is the common denominator with all the victims Reece was investigating,” she said with utter certainty. “And she was the last person who saw Eli.”

  Emily Armstrong rushed over before Sam could respond.

  “Sam, this is an unmitigated disaster. Saul told me Bethany is also missing.” She wrapped her cardigan protectively across her chest. “I talked with the police but I’m utterly useless and haven’t a clue what’s going on in here.”

  Saul and a police officer joined them. “Dr. Armstrong we need access to the sub-basement.”

  The officer lifted his hand to silence Saul. “First, we need to understand why you have a toxic substance warning on the door.”

  “Public Health deemed the area unsafe because of mould and coal dust,” Emily said. “What’s this all about?”

  “Security tells us they can’t open the door,” the officer said.

  Emily nodded. “It’s on a locking system that we separated from the rest of the security system. No one can open it other than me and my partner, who, by the way, I also can’t find.”

  “What about Ophelia?” Sam asked. “She told me she worked with the contractors and decorated before you opened. Does her keycard access the sub-basement?”

  Emily frowned. “Well, it did, but I thought we changed her access after we opened the clinic.” She paused and chewed her lower lip. “Maybe we didn’t. I can’t recall.”

  “Do we need to bring a bio-hazard team in prior to entering?” the officer asked.

  “That isn’t necessary.” Emily headed to the stairwell. “I wouldn’t recommend staying too long without protective equipment, but you can search it.”

  They followed her down the stairs to a rusted metal door a flight below the basement and underground parking access. Emily flicked her card against the reader.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the officer said, and he reached for the radio on his shoulder.

  Danny barrelled into him, jostled him to the side, and raced through the door, screaming Eli’s name.

  The officer cursed under his breath and chased after her. Emily hesitantly stepped through the door. Something moved in Sam’s peripheral vision, and she stepped around Emily to peer into a narrow corridor behind the gigantic boiler.

  “What is it?” Emily asked, leaning over to see. She gasped and staggered back with her hands pressed against her mouth.

  Halfway down the aisle, a body swayed gently from a noose attached to a ceiling beam. A naked bulb behind the body cast long shadows against the wall. The body spun in a macabre pirouette and came to rest facing Sam.

  Ophelia.

  Danny screamed for a doctor. Emily jerked away from the gruesome sight of her head nurse and hurried down the wide corridor alongside the front of the boiler. Sam quickly followed.

  In a low-ceiling alcove in the old cellar, Danny held Eli in her arms, murmuring to him as she wiped blood from his face.

  “I don’t think he’s breathing,” Danny sobbed.

  Emily tore her eyes from Mathias’s dead body and knelt to check Eli’s pulse. She shoved Danny out of the way, flung aside a notebook, and straddled Eli. Her shoulders pumped as she began CPR.

  Mathias Beauregard lay in a pool of blood beside Eli’s feet, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Severed ends of muscle tissue were visible through a yawning wound across his neck.

  The officer was calmly calling for an ambulance as Reece charged into the cramped space.

  “There’s a defibrillator and Epinephrine upstairs,” Emily said briskly. “He’ll die if I don’t get supplies.”

  Reece rushed over and relieved Emily, his face grim as he counted chest compressions.

  Sam moved out of the doorway to let Emily by. She spotted the leather-bound notebook that Emily had tossed off Eli’s lap. Sam bent down and grabbed it. She turned her back to the room and read a paragraph. It appeared to be a journal, and she recognized Ophelia’s neat handwriting from Fadiya’s chart. Sam flipped to the last page. The final words made it clear that Ophelia had chosen to take her life, but Sam had no idea why. She turned a page and saw her name. She read the paragraph and realized that Ophelia had recorded her life story. For some reason, she’d wanted Sam to read it.

  The journal was evidence and Sam knew she had to turn it over to the police. She glanced over her shoulder at Reece and the officer who was gently restraining Danny. Everyone’s attention was focused on Eli, and it seemed that no one had noticed her pick up the notebook.

  One line that Ophelia had written stood out in Sam’s mind—sometimes, to achieve justice and bend the string closer to the side of humanity, one must have the courage to embrace immorality.

  Sam had tried but had failed to bridge a relationship with Ophelia. Yet, the woman had entrusted her story to Sam’s hands. She’d quickly take photos of the pages and then give the journal to Bryce.

  Without weighing the wisdom of her decision, she tucked the leather-bound journal into her waistband and pulled her blouse over her slacks.

  Emily returned with a nurse and two orderlies. She charged the defibrillator and Reece stood, coming over to stand beside Sam.

  As they worked, the officer gently restrained Danny, telling her that Eli was in good hands. Reece steered Sam out of the doorway to let the paramedics pass.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Reece said.

  Sam couldn’t speak over the lump in her throat. As she watched the herd of medical personnel working on Eli, tears burned in her eyes. This was all her fault. She never should have agreed to Eli’s reckless plan. She should have protected him from himself.

  “It looks like severe head trauma.” Reece’s voice was detached. He’d automatically switched into ‘cop’ mode during the crisis. “Someone must have struck him from behind. Emily thinks he has a subdural hematoma. The brain bleed could have put him into cardiac arrest.”

  “We need to help Danny,” Sam croaked. “What will happen to her if Eli dies?”

  Reece held her close to his side. “He’s young and he’s strong.”

  “There could be brain injury,” she whispered.

  Reece’s arm tightened. “Or he could be fine. We have to stay positive.”

  The paramedics had Eli on a stretcher and they were gathering their equipment. Above the oxygen mask, Eli’s eyes opened and a rush of relief turned Sam’s legs to jelly.

  As they rolled by, Eli fumbled to remove the oxygen mask. His face was grey and his eyes were bloodshot.
There was a blue tinge to his lips, but Sam recognized the determined expression on his face.

  His fingers weakly reached out to her. She clasped his ice-cold hand between hers.

  “It’s going to be okay, Eli,” she said. “You’ve got this. Keep fighting.”

  “It was not him,” Eli whispered. “It was not his voice.”

  She leaned closer. “Who?”

  “Dr. Beauregard was not the fox.”

  “The fox?” Sam echoed.

  “I tried to rescue Bethany. Ophelia found me. She thought it was Mathias but he was not the fox.”

  A paramedic replaced the oxygen mask. “We need to take him.”

  Sam reluctantly let go of Eli’s hand and stepped back. As she stood still in the shadowy light, everything came together in perfect clarity.

  She knew who the fox was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sam

  ELI WAS SITTING in bed with his computer in front of him. The tip of his tongue was poking out from the corner of his lips, and reverberations of gunshots emanated from the computer speakers.

  Sam entered the private hospital room with a smile. “That doesn’t sound like your game,” she said. The video game he’d sold to Microsoft was strategic; Sam had played it once or twice. From the cacophony, it seemed Eli was playing a war game.

  He looked up, and grinned. “My game is boring. I know the tricks.” He tapped on the keyboard and blessed silence filled the room.

  She sat on a chair beside his bed. “Makes sense since you developed all the cheats and Easter eggs. Where are your folks?”

  He closed the laptop and shoved the table with his computer to the side of the hospital bed. “They left this morning for Yemen. With the humanitarian crises, they need to help.”

  His father was a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders. His mother was a social worker who had returned to school for nursing when Eli and Danny were in high school. They were good people, and Sam had enjoyed meeting them.

  “Reece is on his way,” she said. “He had another meeting with the deputy attorney general.”

  Gretchen Dumont had stepped down from her position when the noose had tightened. Documents in Mathias Beauregard’s office safe proved that he had given Gretchen, his lover, video evidence of Ophelia’s crimes, including Annalise Huang’s murder. In her eagerness to humiliate Detective Martina, who had caught Annalise’s sudden-death case, Gretchen had withheld the evidence. Detective Martina had worked the Frozen Statues case and had testified against Gretchen at the subsequent inquest. Her hatred toward Toronto Police Services, and Martina specifically, had blinded her to anything but revenge.

  Gretchen’s efforts to sully Reece’s reputation had also failed. The Crown attorney’s office had received a slew of letters from all ranks of the city’s police department that had pled Reece’s case. The thin blue line had stood behind him with pride. With five sudden death victims deemed as homicides so far, those families finally had closure. Annalise Hung’s mother had cited Reece a hero, and her story had gone viral on social media. Reece wouldn’t be welcomed back to finish his articling at the Crown attorney’s office, but they weren’t pressing charges. That was something, at least.

  “I hope Reece brings food,” Eli said, pulling her from her reverie. “The doctor has not given me any dietary restrictions, but Danny is being a food Nazi.” He blew his breath out in an aggravated sigh.

  Eli had suffered an acute subdural hematoma from the multiple blows to his head. A neurosurgeon had operated to relieve pressure on his brain, and Eli appeared to be recovering well. Although doctors would carefully monitor him for the next few months, his surgeon had agreed that he could go home tomorrow. Sam wasn’t certain if Eli understood how lucky he was that he hadn’t sustained permanent brain injury. His sister did, and Sam sympathized with Danny’s need to control as much as she could in Eli’s recovery.

  Reece popped his head through the open door. “I bring food.”

  “Jamaican patties?” Eli asked hopefully, kicking aside his blanket.

  Reece raised an eyebrow with an exaggerated shudder. “I have no intention of laying eyes on a Jamaican patty again, homemade or otherwise.” He tossed a greasy paper bag to Eli. “But I’m learning your culinary preferences. I believe this is one of your favourites.” He winked at Sam.

  Eli rummaged eagerly in the bag and grinned when he pulled out a Fancy Franks corn dog. He squirted ketchup over it, took a large bite, and cracked open a Mountain Dew.

  “Any news on the sex trader?” he asked Reece.

  “Police apprehended Doug Sullivan at Pearson International Airport trying to board a flight to Heathrow,” Reece said.

  Doug’s slip about knowing Eli was the patient the police were searching for was the primary reason Sam had suspected him. The frightened reactions of the girls she’d questioned in the withdrawal unit hammered it home. Doug was their primary therapist. When Sam had asked Doug’s permission to speak with Bethany after the staff meeting, he’d refused and turned hostile. Ketamine had been Bethany’s drug of choice and her threshold was high. He hadn’t given her enough, and she’d witnessed him abduct her friend Serena. Doug knew Bethany could identify him, and so he’d taken her.

  Sam handed Eli a paper napkin. “One of Saul Koen’s security officers had requested straight nights. Saul knew the man had IT chops and a gambling problem,” she said. “He told the police and they arrested the guard, who copped a plea in exchange for testifying against Doug.”

  Reece carried a chair around the bed and placed it beside Sam. “Doug cracked under interrogation and gave them the location of the storage unit that held the girls,” he said. “The Human Trafficking Enforcement Team has five men in custody.”

  “Are the girls okay?” Eli asked through a full mouth.

  Reece caught Sam’s eye, silently asking her to answer Eli’s question. He was trying to be less rigid, but outright lying wasn’t in his wheelhouse.

  “They kept them drugged on heroin,” she said. “The physical side effects and detox will be rough. They’ll need extensive therapy to deal with what happened.” She hoped her answer satisfied him and he’d drop it.

  The truth was that the girls had suffered brutal sexual and physical assaults while awaiting auction. Their captors had denied them water and food. Police found one of the six victims dead. She was fourteen. Serena had died on the way to the hospital. The other three were in critical condition. Bethany—having only been in captivity for twenty-four hours—was recuperating physically. Mentally was a different story. Some people recovered from horrendous trauma and learned to live with appalling memories. Others didn’t. For the ones with the capacity to recover, it took a lot of work and support. Bethany’s family had abandoned her, and she had a hard road ahead of her.

  Bethany’s moniker ‘the fox’ was not only a perfect description of Doug’s sly and deplorable behaviour, it was an accurate depiction of his physical characteristics. His sharp features, red hair and beard, and strange eyes were reminiscent of the animal after which Bethany had named him. In Sam’s eyes, Bethany was a hero, but she knew the girl’s sense of worthlessness would be her greatest obstacle during recovery. Sam hoped that one day a therapist could lead Bethany into seeing herself as the strong and courage young women she truly was.

  Wanting to change the subject, Sam asked Eli, “Where’s Pepin? We went to your place last week to pick him up and Danny said he wasn’t there. She wouldn’t tell us where he was.”

  Eli sipped his soft drink. “You are not nice to Pepin,” he said.

  Sam felt heat rise to her cheeks. “That’s not true. I love the little guy.” She realized it was true and that she missed Pepin’s rambunctious shenanigans.

  “Pepin reminds you that Brandy is dead,” Eli said frankly. “That is why you are mean to him.”

  “That’s not fair,” Sam said.

  Eli shrugged. “It is the truth.”

  Was it?


  Sam remembered locking Pepin out of Brandy’s crate and being angry with Reece for refitting it for the puppy. She’d never given poor Pepin a chance, busy as she’d been comparing him to Brandy and finding him wanting. Eli was right and shame swelled in her heart.

  “I miss him and I want him to come home,” she said truthfully.

  “He graduates tomorrow,” Danny said from the doorway.

  Eli quickly jammed the last bite of his corn dog into his mouth and thrust the crushed paper bag at Reece.

  Danny rolled her grey eyes at him. “You really think I didn’t see you stuffing your face with that processed crap?”

  Confused, Sam asked, “Graduates from what?”

  “Puppy boot camp,” Eli said. “I hired one of the best dog whisperers in Toronto to work with Pepin.”

  “It’s a wedding present,” Danny added and sat on the side of her brother’s bed, fluffing Eli’s pillows as he squirmed and swatted at her hand.

  “Pepin is ready to walk down the aisle with the rings at your wedding,” Eli announced with a grin.

  “Like Brandy did at Lisa and Jim’s wedding,” Sam said softly, remembering her best friend’s ceremony. “That’s what bothered me about the wedding you and Mother want,” she said to Reece.

  He put his arm around her. “Danny figured it out. She showed me a picture of how posh Brandy looked trotting down the aisle with the pillow on her back. As soon as I saw it, I knew she was right.”

  Tears welled in Sam’s eyes and she looked over at Danny. “Thank you.”

  Colour flushed Danny’s round cheeks. “Whatever,” she mumbled.

  “Are we interrupting?” a voice asked.

  Fadiya and Aazar Basha stood in the doorway. Fadiya held a gorgeous bouquet of white hydrangeas, green orchids, and white roses.

  Eli’s mouth dropped open as he stared at her, and Sam stifled a snicker. The girl was stunning. Her dark hair hung in shiny waves across her slim shoulders and her huge chocolate eyes were clear.

  “These are for you,” she said and put the vase on the table beside him. “May I sit?”