Red Rover, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  “You can. In the event you set up a private therapy practice when you’re awarded your PhD, which you will not obtain without help, you’ll need money.”

  “Because of our past, it’s a huge conflict of interest.”

  He nudged the cheque closer. “Private investigators are not limited by the same regulatory rules that bind the hands of police officers and lawyers.” He smiled. “And doctors.” He reached for the bottle again. “I have every confidence in your ability to remain impartial. Speak to Reece. It isn’t a conflict for him. Talia will get her DNA test. Reece will savour the satisfaction of honouring Abigail’s wish and achieving yet another golden token for admission through the pearly gates of heaven.” He looked up at her. “And you, my dear, will receive what you’ve desired since you caught me with Heather years ago. I’ll stop treating patients.”

  She chewed on her lower lip and considered the offer. “If we agree to investigate Graham Harris’s murder, you’ll have to take the DNA test right away.”

  He shook his head. “To quote the illustrious Stephen King, ‘No bounce, no play.’ Apropos, considering my life has become content for horror fiction. The DNA test is my only guarantee Reece will toil diligently to establish my innocence.” He again poured from the bottle and waited for her to respond.

  When she didn’t, he added with a knowing smile, “I understand you’re far too high-minded to be coerced by personal gain.” He gazed at the garden against his fence. “But that PhD you’ve lusted after for years is tough to ignore.” His eyes shifted back to hers. “How satisfied you’d be to gain your doctoral degree before your mother’s Alzheimer’s renders it a futile achievement. Perhaps you’ll eke out a nod of approval from a woman who has always viewed you as her greatest disappointment.”

  You dick, Sam thought bitterly.

  “I never thought I’d descend to this,” Roger remarked. “I’m sincerely remorseful, but this is survival.”

  Sam glared at the rhododendron and azalea bushes. They were in full bloom, and she’d admired their beauty when she’d arrived. Now they were garish.

  “At some point, you’re going to have to admit you treat people like shit to push them away before they follow your father’s example and abandon you.” She struggled to keep the pain from her voice. “You may know me and all my crappy family history, but don’t forget I know you. I know what you did to your sister. I know what you’re capable of doing to protect yourself.”

  Roger stood unsteadily, put the bottle of whisky under his arm, and picked up his glass. “The gate locks behind you,” he said haughtily. “Call me with your decision.”

  Chapter Seven

  Reece

  REECE WAS FIFTEEN minutes early for his meeting with Bryce Mansfield, the staff inspector of the homicide squad. He’d planned to be early so he could admire Eldon Garnet’s Serve and Protect sculpture collection outside the Metropolitan Toronto Police Headquarters. He circled the building’s exterior, enjoying the warm spring sun and pausing at each piece of art. His favourite was the granite block pyramid and brass police officer sculpture. Something about the focused expression on the constable’s face as he leaned over the pyramid with his trowel touched Reece and made him proud to have been a cop.

  He wasn’t sure what he thought of the postmodern building though. Officers referred to the twelve-storey, octagonal structure as the “pink palace.” There were a few less complimentary nicknames, such as “pink whorehouse.” The colour reference was due to the rose granite cubes used to construct the structure. Reece stepped onto the sidewalk and viewed the building from a different angle. He shaded his eyes against the sun and studied the high elevator tower capped with a blue dome. Artistic, he supposed, but the neo-eclectic angles of the front entrance and the multi-levelled tiered roofs looked like haphazardly stacked building blocks. The architecture was unique, but a tad chaotic for his taste.

  He held the door open for a woman with a baby and then strolled toward the elevators, admiring the ten-storey-high atrium flooded with natural light.

  Behind him, he heard a voice. “Reece, you’re early.”

  Turning, he found Bryce strutting toward him, balancing a large tray of Starbucks coffees. Reece always felt uncomfortable greeting Bryce, who was demonstrative. They exchanged an awkward bro-hug, complete with manly thumps to the back, and Bryce led the way into the elevator and then to the homicide division.

  They crossed the bullpen, Bryce distributed coffees, and Reece chatted with a couple of detectives he’d met over the course of his year in Toronto.

  Instead of a sense of belonging, he felt like a guest who was happy to visit but eager to go home. It gave him pause because it was the first time he felt certain he didn’t want to join the squad. Police work was in the past. The epiphany saddened him and made him anxious about his future.

  Once they settled into his office, Bryce asked, “What brings you in? Have you decided to join the homicide squad?”

  “Considering it.” The lie stuck in his throat but now wasn’t the time to reject the offer. “Today, I need your help with something.” He squirmed and crossed his legs. Abigail’s sad eyes filled his memory and he soldiered on. “A friend of Sam’s is a person of interest in a York Regional homicide case.”

  Bryce leaned back in his chair. “North of my jurisdiction.”

  “It is, but I thought you might have some insight. Have you read about the ballerina who committed suicide?”

  Bryce straightened in his chair, looking confused. “Are you saying Abigail Schwartz had something to do with a homicide?” There was disbelief in his voice.

  Reece shook his head. “Not that I’m aware. Abigail was a close friend of Sam’s from childhood. Now, well, another of the group has some trouble. You know Sam. She copes better with information.”

  Bryce was nodding. “Yup, she sure does, which was one of many things that made her a good cop. I was sad to read about Abigail’s suicide,” he said. “No reason you’d know, but my partner and I were first on the scene fourteen years ago after her attack. Hell of a thing.” His eyes darkened, but he didn’t elaborate on the effect it had had on a young cop to find a woman brutally beaten and gang-raped. “I met Colin McNamara because of his personal interest. He was a good man and a great detective.”

  Reece uncrossed his legs and cleared his throat again. “Well, I understand this is unorthodox, but I was wondering if you could look up the details on York Regional’s case and let me know what they have.”

  “You’re right,” Bryce said. “It is unorthodox.” He studied Reece solemnly and tapped a pen against the side of his desk. After a minute or so, Bryce dropped his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “What’s the case?”

  “Graham Harris, the ex-Argonauts player.”

  Bryce typed on his keyboard and picked up the phone. “Let’s see what the lead detective at York thinks.”

  After a bit of back and forth, Bryce turned to Reece. “Detective Alston is asking who you know in connection to the case.”

  “Dr. Roger Peterson.”

  Bryce relayed the answer, listened intently, and covered the phone. “Reece, how about you step out for a minute.”

  Reece nodded, and then left the office. He stood outside the door, shuffling his feet and avoiding the sideways glances of the curious detectives. He had the ridiculous feeling of being a high school student again, waiting outside the principal’s office to explain some juvenile indiscretion.

  A few minutes later, Bryce opened the door. “Thanks. Come on back in.”

  “Bryce,” Reece said directly, “I’m uncomfortable asking, and it’s understandable if York is holding their cards close to their chest.”

  Bryce studied him solemnly. “I’m not sure you’re aware of how stellar your reputation is. Going after Mussani in Australia after that cult horror garnered you professional support. Sam, well, she was a good cop. She got a raw deal.” Bryce lowered his eyes. “Her father was a great man and a respected detective.”


  “I wish I’d met him before he died.”

  Bryce nodded, circling his desk to the chair behind. “Colin would have liked you. If Dr. Peterson is a friend, are you and Sam taking the case?”

  Reece took the seat he’d previously occupied. “I don’t know if he’s hiring private investigators or not. Sam’s talking to him now.”

  “Okay, Detective Alston has agreed to share a few facts.” Bryce pointed his finger at Reece. “But if you two investigate, he expects the information road to run both ways.”

  “It always does, but you have my word.”

  Reece knew that the police would soon disclose to the media whatever information Bryce chose to share today. They weren’t really offering Reece confidential details on the investigation, just giving him early access. It didn’t matter. At least he’d be ahead of the game.

  Bryce typed on his keyboard and read the monitor. “Okay, the eighteen-year-old son, Jordan Harris, called 911 after returning from football practice to find his father dead in the basement. The wife, Brenda Harris, suffers from mental illness.” He caught Reece’s eye. “I suppose you know that.”

  Reece nodded.

  “Well, that isn’t Dr. Peterson’s only connection, but I’ll get to that in a minute,” he said. “First officers and paramedics believed the cause of death was electrocution. Mr. Harris was wading around in water trying to fix the wiring to an old sump-pump. Power to the house wasn’t cut.”

  “Can you tell me why it’s being considered a homicide?”

  “Autopsy showed feces and urine in his lungs as well as the electrical burns on his body.” Bryce crinkled his nose. “Sewage had backed up from the septic to the main water line and through the overloaded basement drain. The electrical burns showed the entry and exit points and the pathway of the current. Nasty but not deadly.”

  Reece leaned forward and put his elbow on the desk. “If he fell into the water after the shock, it makes sense.”

  “It would, except for the bruising pattern on the back of his neck.” Bryce took a sip of his coffee. “Size eleven rubber boot imprints.”

  Reece tried to image persnickety Roger wadding around in sewage and holding an ex-footballer’s face under water. It was a reach. Not because of the size difference between the two men—the electrical shock would have incapacitated Graham, rendering him unable to defend himself. Reece’s issue was with the unpredictable method of the homicide. Perhaps it was a fatal accident during a vicious disagreement rather than premeditated murder.

  “Any sign of a struggle or a fight?” he asked.

  “In the kitchen, and there were smears of blood in the stairwell leading to the cellar.”

  Reece pieced together the scenario Bryce was outlining. “So, Graham fought with someone in the kitchen. Then he went downstairs to fix the sump-pump. He must have seen the other person leave the house and thought the fight was over.”

  “Unless the perpetrator lived in the house,” Bryce said.

  Based on the bit of research Reece had done, Graham’s property was worth a chunk of change. He didn’t have the details of the estate but assumed Brenda Harris inherited. Money ranked high on the motive list, and spouses high on the suspect list.

  Bryce continued to read the file, clicking now and again to switch pages. “Graham’s uncle lives next door. He claims he was in his field behind their barn when the lights went out. Graham has old lights mounted on ten-foot posts around the barn, wired to the house. The uncle noticed because he’d told his nephew not to fool with the existing box and to get an electrician, even offered to lend him the money.”

  “Would the shock generate a power surge that fried the box?”

  “Maybe, but the power was on when EMTs arrived, which is why they assumed he’d failed to disengage the main switch. The house has an ancient fuse box without a ground fault circuit interrupter, and Graham had overloaded the box by tying new receptacles into existing circuits.” Bryce threw his empty coffee cup into the trash. “He must have thought the sump-pump issue was with the receptacle. He’d taken it apart.”

  Reece frowned. “You’d have to be an idiot to work with live wires.”

  “And the box wasn’t damaged. There was no reason the lights would go off, unless Graham had shut off the power.”

  “Someone turned on the power when Graham was in the water,” Reece said. “Where’s the box located?”

  “Landing on the stairs. It’s a split staircase. The first half runs from the back door foyer to the landing. To the left of the landing, a second staircase leads down into the cellar, which was the flooded section. The killer could access the box without being in the water and without Graham seeing.”

  Reece got up and paced the small office. A good lawyer could argue manslaughter, based on impulsively flicking a switch under duress and without forethought. Going into the water to check for signs of life and using an ulterior method to ensure death made it premeditated first-degree murder.

  He stopped pacing and faced Bryce. “Any motive?”

  “Several and that’s where your friend enters the party.” Bryce waved at him to sit down. “Pacing makes me nervous,” he said with a chuckle.

  Once Reece had sat, Bryce continued. “The uncle nearly sideswiped a car entering the Harris farm about an hour and a quarter before the cops got the call. He got a good look at the car and a partial on the plate.”

  “Roger’s car,” Reece guessed.

  Bryce nodded. “The son, Jordan, ran into Dr. Peterson when he came home from school. Claims he caught him ‘creeping around the house,’ and there was a bouquet of yellow roses in the garden with Dr. Peterson’s fingerprints on the wrapping. He’d bought them on his Visa from a Vaughan florist ninety minutes before the 911 call.”

  “Putting Roger on the scene,” Reece said with a sigh.

  “Peterson doesn’t deny that he went to the farm on the day of the murder but claims he didn’t enter the house. His explanation for his fingerprints in the stairwell is that he was in the house in the past.” Bryce spun the pen between his fingers. “Cops recovered a rusted pipe buried under some renovation waste in the backyard. Your friend’s bloody fingerprints were on it.”

  The blood confused Reece. “Wait a minute. If the perp electrocuted Graham before drowning him, where did the blood come from?”

  Bryce studied him with a professional lack of emotion. “Best guess, Peterson. According to Alston, your friend had a facial wound when he was interviewed a couple of days after the murder. He refused to volunteer a blood sample. Alston is waiting for a judge to sign a warrant.”

  Reece’s mind flashed to the cut on Roger’s forehead and the nasty scrape on his arm that he’d noticed when they’d had lunch. The day after the murder. He considered the evidence. Roger wasn’t a person of interest. He was a prime suspect. He had opportunity and means, and there was sufficient direct evidence pointing at him.

  One thing didn’t make sense. “What would his motive be?” Reece asked.

  “The daughter, Jordanna—Jordan’s twin—told police that Dr. Peterson was a regular visitor when her father wasn’t around.”

  “If Brenda and Roger wanted to be together, why didn’t she leave the marriage?” Reece asked.

  “The property Graham inherited last year is worth millions because of the land,” Bryce explained. “Extended family told us his wife wanted to sell but Graham refused. Under the terms of his grandparents’ will, if Brenda filed for divorce while Graham held title, a prenuptial agreement protected the physical property from inclusion in a divorce settlement. But if Graham sold while cohabitating with his wife, the capital gains reverted to a family asset, divided if they divorced in the future.”

  People could set up clauses in their wills to cover anything they liked, but it made Reece curious why the grandparents felt the need to protect their ancestral land from Graham’s wife. If Roger was the culprit, something else didn’t make sense.

  Leaning across the desk, he said, “Roger Peterson is weal
thy. He didn’t need to kill a man to steal his estate.”

  “Well, the wife might,” countered Bryce. “Family claims the marriage was bad, and the financial analyst says Brenda doesn’t have any money of her own. Graham received a monthly stipend from a trust his grandparents left, but the prenuptial protects the trust. If she divorced him, spousal support would be based on his income, which was negligible.”

  She had the means, the opportunity, and the motive. Boot size meant nothing. She could easily have slipped on a pair of ill-fitting boots. But evidence put Roger on the scene, which made him a probable witness or an accomplice to murder. It was tough to believe the arrogant, self-centred man would risk his freedom to help a lover commit murder. It was possible Roger had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could have stumbled onto the murder unawares.

  “What does Brenda have to say?” Reece asked.

  Bryce shrugged. “Not a thing. She’s still at Mount Sinai, catatonic. EMTs found her sitting on the basement stairs, soaking wet. She hasn’t moved or spoken since. Her primary psychiatrist says she suffers from,” he glanced at the monitor, “schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. Episodes of catatonia aren’t unusual, if she’d stopped taking her meds.”

  Or she was a hell of an actor and—with a little help from her psychiatrist lover—was faking the catatonic state. Reece squirmed in the office chair, wishing he could walk around. He always thought better on his feet.

  “Just the twins or do they have more kids?” he asked.

  “Jennifer, she’s sixteen.” He frowned and read something on his monitor. “Alston made a note that Jennifer was at her great-aunt’s house. They talked to her, but Rachel Harris, the great-aunt, wouldn’t leave and censored the questions.”

  “Where are the kids now?” Reece asked.

  “At the farm. With the twins over the age of majority and family next door, Children’s Aid felt it best for Jennifer to stay at home and in school.” Bryce glanced at his watch and stood. “I need to get to a budget meeting.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Reece. “Here’s the name and number for the lead detective at York. He’s not fond of PIs, so if you and Sam end up investigating this, give him a courtesy call.”