The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  At the top of the second to last hill before you hit our gate, you could see the house off to the left. Right across the valley and up top of the opposite side. It was made of cream coloured clapboard, with a row of pine marching away down the drive towards the road.

  The bottom line was that I could handle the woods as well as I could the city. I was taught how to milk a cow, and how to hunt rabbits. My grandfather made sure of that. I was given my own rifles at the tender age of eight. A Cooey single shot .22, with which I used only long-rifle shells, and a monster double barrel side-by-side 12-gauge shotgun. These gifts didn’t come without a price. I was lectured and trained and lectured and trained and… well, you get the drift. All of this took place before I ever got my first bullet. A dirty rifle barrel is more dangerous to the hunter than to the hunted. That was the first of the lessons. Cleaning and oiling and storing. How much responsibility came with gun ownership, that was the second. If your rifle was fired in such a manner as to injure person or property, even if you weren’t there when it took place, this was somehow your fault. I had to work on that one.

  In the end, it was pretty clear. You didn’t buy more ammunition than you intended to use at one time, and you never kept the ammunition anywhere near the rifle until you were actually using it. And you never wasted bullets. Not when you were hunting. That was what target practice was for. Wasting all the ammo you needed to, so that when you went hunting, you never wounded an animal. You killed it. First time every time. Any other result sent you back to basic training. A soup can killer.

  My grandfather and I would walk out from the house to the fence posts about four hundred feet straight out from the front porch, and fifty feet from the ravine. Then we would set up our soup cans, nailing them to the sides of the post, near the top. Then the trek back to the front porch, and the ritual of loading and firing. We both used my Cooey. We’d do five shots each, then trek back downfield to the fencepost. My grandfather had the eyes of an eagle. He always had five holes in his can, some so close together you had to check the exit point to verify the count.

  In the beginning, my cans had nothing to fear. I even voiced suspicions about the dubious quality of my bullets, until I finally started getting the hang of it. The magic of it was that once I did get a grasp on the whole issue of aiming, in a single summer I became a crack shot. Just like my grandfather. I never missed. I also gave up on the shotgun after one outing. That thing was a real cannon. My shoulder hurt for a week after the first time I fired it.

  But my very first gun, now that was another matter altogether. When I was about six years old I received my first one. It was a government issue Colt .45 Automatic handgun. I never did get the bullets for it. I got to keep it in a special drawer in my grandfather’s dresser, which I later suspected was where it had resided all along. My grandfather made a big deal out of the presentation, and it was on one of those days when only he and I were home at the farm. We were just wandering around together at the edge of the forest, walking and talking. We did that a lot. I asked a question, he answered, he asked a question, I answered. It was something we both enjoyed. Sundays, we read the Bible together. He would get me to read a passage to him, then we would talk about it. What it meant. In my view, in his view. In the Pastor’s view. He always took me seriously, so I tended to think about the answers that I gave, so as to treat the questions with respect.

  The relationship we shared had been special all of my life, which although at that point wasn’t overly extensive, seemed like a long time to me. My old man, my dad, had made it back from Europe. He had been part of the Canadian crew that went north after hitting the beaches on D-Day, up the coast to finally liberate Holland and all that. He’d done alright for himself, as had the rest of his regiment, medal-wise. At least he got to get his awarded in person, because the way it worked out, most of the guys had to have their wives or parents receive theirs for them. Every mile they took back from the enemy was paid for in blood. Anyway, when I was about thirteen years old, he was killed in the line of duty.

  Fighting a fire in Old Montreal, down in the financial sector. Nothing in that area was younger than a hundred years or so. Damned building just collapsed without warning. Taking out my old man and a couple of his firefighter pals when it did. The building was a four-story stone and oak beam number, built in 1756, and served as office space to a legal firm tied to banking, with roots they could trace back to the founding of the city in 1642. That would be the French founding of the city, naturally.

  They knew how important that location was the first time they saw it. It took the English 118 years more to figure out the same thing, and then devise a plan for capturing it. The plan turned out to be pretty simple, of course. The only hard part was all the soldiers who had to die in order to implement it.

  As history shows, the English, or as they were known in my hometown, Les Anglais, never actually had a problem with the body count when it came time to plan the conquer of another slice of the planet. The weird thing was, even back then, they had a lineup at the recruiting stations. The Brits felt an immense sense of pride associated with their armed forces, which extended down through the ranks to the lowliest digger of latrines.

  My personal theory is that it was so bloody boring in small-town England that even getting blown up by someone who didn’t speak your language, and couldn’t explain to you why you were at each other’s throats if you were both given the chance to discuss it, was preferable to staying home and being exploited anyway. Also, I’m positive that the occasional rape & pillage had always been a motivation to join the army in the days of old.

  That and the fact that it was mostly the only job on the market unless your family was already at the top of the food chain. In those days that meant you could waste your life away boozing and whoring and all, and receive only the occasional familial reprimand. Unless you were really obvious about it, and caused the good family name to be blemished in some manner or another.

  The punishment at that stage was usually a stern talking to by the Pater, or Mater as the case may have been, and then being shipped off to the army, with a letter of introduction—asking the higher-ups to try not to get you killed on your first outing, as a personal favour to the family, which carried with it the recompense of the day—and a commission. The commission was bought and paid for up front by the family, and the higher the commission the less likelihood that you wouldn’t make it back to the family estate at the appropriate time to take over family duties. This also worked the other way around, where the lower the commission, the less likelihood you would make it home. So, even being a well-named and wealthy wastrel had its tricky bits.

  My grandfather and I became very close after the death of my father, and the Colt .45 was just one of those special things we shared. The thing weighed about the same as me at the time I first got my hands on it, and it was a bitch practicing my quick draw. I had to strap the belt and holster across one shoulder, being too small in the waist, which further hampered my draw. But I managed to do away with many a bad-guy nonetheless. In fact, I was constantly amazed at the sheer volume of bad-guys in need of being done away with who were showing up just when I had my Colt strapped on and ready for action. Desperadoes appeared to be as dumb as they were numerous. What did I know? I was only six.

  Still, in the end I’m not a person who likes guns. I don’t hunt anymore, haven’t done since I was about eleven years old now.

  I’ve had occasion to use a gun a few times since those early years, but not in so innocent a manner. The gun that I use, or I should say guns, because I actually use two of them, based on the more the merrier philosophy, is the modern equivalent of my very first gun. The good old Colt .45 Automatic. When I need them, I use them, in twin shoulder holsters. I’d rather not have to, but there it is. It’s a crazy world out there, and it gets stranger with each passing full moon. The problem with a handgun is that it has only one purpose. It’s designed as a man-killer. When you pick up a loaded handgun, that’
s what you have to remember, and if you’re not willing to pull the trigger with someone at the other end of the barrel, you have no business touching one in the first place. When I have used a gun, it has always turned out to be very ugly.

  The Colt .45 automatic has bullets the size of torpedoes, and in a pinch, you could probably sink a small ship with one. Each clip carries ten rounds, with one in the chamber that makes eleven. And each round makes a difference. Then the strap that holds the holsters on has six loops across the back and sides, and each loop holds another clip. Eleven times two. Plus sixty. Eighty-two bullets that left holes big enough to drive most Japanese cars through. People were always impressed. If I was going to accept the emotional trauma of having to shoot someone, then I figure I must have a pretty damn good reason for it, and I wanted them to know for sure that they’d been shot. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The .45 managed to do that quite well.

  I pulled the guns out of the safe and set them carefully on the desk. Then I went back for the clips and the boxes of ammunition, and set about loading the clips. After that, I went to the bedroom and got the holsters and the cleaning kit out of my footlocker at the end of the bed and came back to the office. I methodically loaded the extra clips and locked them into the snaps in the belt, and loaded the two remaining live clips into the butt of each pistol. Then I racked the slide, chambering one round in each. After that I removed both clips again and replaced the chambered rounds, and reloaded the clips into the guns. Now each gun was live, with a full clip, and one in the chamber. That’s the way I carry them. I took off my jacket and shrugged into the holster. It took a few minutes to get comfortable, then I picked the loaded pistols up off of the desk and holstered them. I took a fresh box of one hundred .45 shells from the safe, and a smaller box of fifty .22 calibre shells, then closed and locked it. I walked over to the bookcase, and pulled out my copy of ‘Ancient Weapons of the Roman Age’, and right behind it was a soft cloth, wrapped around a .22 calibre, Phoenix HP22A, ten-shot, semi-automatic. It was fitted into its own clip-on holster, like a leather belt case for a cellular ‘phone, but the gun went on the inside, not the outside. It fit neatly into the hollow at the small of my back. This one was kept loaded as well as clean. You never knew when it might be a handy thing to put your hands on in a flash. It was small enough that it could be palmed without being noticeable. This type of gun is commonly referred to as a ‘backup piece’. Grabbing my jacket, I walked down the hall to my carry-on bag, and slipped the two boxes of shells into a zippered pouch, one at each end. When I stood up, I put my jacket back on and did up one button. Glancing into the hall mirror showed me that a sharp eye could tell that I was carrying, but the casual observer would never know. The holsters for the .45’s had been custom made for me years ago, and were worth their weight in gold as far as I was concerned.

  I walked back into the kitchen and nodded to George. “Let’s roll.”

  He gave me a funny look. He knew me well, and had for a long time, but he didn’t know everything. When it came to my guns, I heeded the words of my long-gone grandfather. I was responsible for the damn things, and if anyone was going to handle them, even just to carry them, it would be me. I patted my side. “I’m all packed, George. What do you say we get the show on the road?”

  George was feeling a little bit uncomfortable, I could read it in his manner. He had asked me to give him my guns, and instead, I had strapped them on. He needed some reassurance. “All of the paperwork is in order on my end George. Don’t make an issue out of it, Okay?”

  “Okay. I won’t. It’s still your call at this point anyway, but when we get to headquarters…”

  “Yes, when we get to headquarters.” I knew what he wanted. He wanted to give the guns to one guy in forensics in order for him to ‘print’ the barrels of each of the Colts. And the backup, if he asked. That’s accomplished by firing a few rounds into a deep and soft cotton padded wall, pulling the slug, and using microphotography, create a ‘ballistics fingerprint’, in order to be able to say conclusively at some future point in time, that the bullet under investigation came from, or did not come from, a particular gun. It was as much for my protection as for procedure. That seemed to satisfy him. Therese was looking at the both of us, not quite sure what we were talking about.

  George rose and indicated it was time to go. Therese raised no objections, and grabbing my bag from the foyer where I’d put it after getting dressed, we left for the downtown HQ. The van stayed in the garage, and I placed my life in Len’s hands. I hate being a passenger when I’m in a car. I’d rather be the driver. I probably wouldn’t make a very good billionaire. I’d never have a chauffeur. It wasn’t something that kept me up at night though.

  The drive downtown was strange. The city was almost ready to come alive, and a few people were waking up. You could see the lights on in the occasional window, but mostly they were dark. The streets were dark. The car was dark. The sky was mostly dark, but false dawn was showing at the eastern edge of the sky. Of course, it was still misting. Not quite rain, but wet enough to put the wipers on with a bit of delay. Every five seconds, whoosh-whoosh… whoosh-whoosh… whoosh-whoosh…, and nobody said anything. I think it had all been said tonight.

  ~

  Chapter Nine

  T

  he new headquarters building was straight out of the pages of the commercial section of Architectural Digest. I kind of missed that whole period of major brownstone design for the municipal buildings of the city. But I’ve always been sentimental.

  What we had here was a beautiful failure to communicate. It was mirrored. It was open steel beamed. It fooled the eye into seeing it tilted at odd angles. It was thoroughly modern. A masterpiece of urban conceptual design. What it wasn’t, was comforting.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t make it feel like a place of justice, a place where you knew right away the police could be found, and depended upon. The old waiting rooms with wooden benches similar to the ones you get in church, standing ready at the top of the wide stone steps, and through those two big doors. The surly-but-kind desk sergeant, a veteran of at least three administrations, shouting greetings and admonitions at each new arrival to the melee of flotsam and jetsam washed up from the sea of human drama onto this rock of justice. Oh well.

  The lobby was the centerpiece of the design, rising the full five floors in the centre of the building, to a magnificent skylight about two hundred feet across, that domed the lobby like a window to the stars. Which we couldn’t see because of the cloud cover and the lights of the city. There were small trees, potted and hanging plants, laid out over all the various levels. With all the arboreal add-ins and flying around space I was constantly on the lookout for birds. I figured there was no way not a single bird in town had heard about this opportunity. Plus, it didn’t get cold in the winter. On the down side, it would be a bitch getting in and out of the front doors every day to go foraging for food. They were the revolving kind.

  George’s office was on the third floor, with a large window running along one wall overlooking the central building well. On a sunny day he would have a good deal of natural light, with the blinds open. At this particular moment in time, they were closed. Therese had been taken to one of the women’s lounges, and was presumably being made comfortable by the female officer assigned to her. I had larger issues on my mind just then. George hadn’t been kidding about the paperwork. I handed my passport over to the administration people, and started in on the documentation. There was a veritable mountain of it, and it seemed that each and every page being generated requiring my signature in one or more places. And that was just where it started.

  I was photographed. I was fingerprinted. I was DNA’d. That was a new one on me. I was lectured. I was lectured some more. Then the Feds arrived. Two very large gentlemen in expensive suits with attitudes to match. They didn’t bring my new Federal sidekick with them.

  The man in charge was a Chinese-Canadian, Jack Hong by name, and a Commander by rank. He
gave me his card, then sat back for most of the show. He looked and acted like he had come from a family that had settled in nicely several generations back.

  His partner was harder to pin down background-wise. Caucasian was as close as I could get. He had a trace of an accent, but it was one that I couldn’t identify. He had a dark complexion, with grey-blue eyes, and hair black as coal at midnight. In a buzz-cut, no less. He had as extreme an attitude as the Commander, but his mannerisms gave him away as a Montrealer. His family probably immigrated to Canada when he was knee-high to a grasshopper, settling in Quebec. He carried that open casualness of the Quebecer that you just can’t get rid of once it’s attained. I got his name and rank, and another card to add to my collection. ‘Inspector Kelchasa, call me Rick’, was the one who did most of the talking. He was direct, and didn’t elaborate or embellish on any of the items we discussed. My side of the discussion was limited to indications of my comprehension of orders, or not. No room for lively repartee.

  Then I was photographed again. I was fingerprinted again. All of this required trips to various offices and levels. The opportunity to meet more of the staff working at headquarters than I had ever had in the past was a good one. I chatted lightly with everyone we interacted with, from the techs in the labs to the on-duty photographer. At the forensics department in the second sub-level I handed my two Colts over to the technician and was reassured that they would be back in my possession within a half-hour. For some reason I couldn’t fathom at the time, I didn’t pull out the small automatic I had in my back belt holster. They didn’t mention it, so neither did I. There was a small voice in the back of my mind saying, ‘Isn’t that odd?’, but I paid no attention to it. I’d see soon enough whether or not that proved to be a mistake.