The Evil That Men Do

by Michael Blair

  “Serendipity. It’s a custom 12-metre motor yacht. Kinda dumpy and old-fashioned looking.”

  I thought for a moment, then said, “Listen. If you want to call Jackie and give her a heads up we’re on our way, go ahead.”

  “She’s not answering her phone,” McKenny said.

  “Well, if she does, tell her not to let anyone aboard until we get there. Tell her we’re here to help her work out the deal she spoke to Terry Jardine about.”

  “She’s on her own, man. I don’t want anything to do with this.”

  Chapter 24

  We drove across the Burrard Bridge and through the Saturday evening traffic to Coal Harbour, the bay separating the downtown West End from Brockton Point. Coal Harbour was home to a number of marinas, as well as the Vancouver Rowing Club and an extension of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. As Zach Jardine and I walked down the ramp to the Harbour Ferries Marina docks, a float plane was taxiing across the harbour toward the Chevron fuelling platform out past the HMCS Discovery naval station on Deadman’s Island.

  The section of the marina to which we were directed by the man in the marina office was home mainly to sail craft, and the Serendipity stood out like Tupperware amid Royal Doulton. Unlike the majority of powerboats in the marina, it did not have a flybridge, which indeed imparted to it a slightly dumpy look. It was only a few years old, I estimated, but already showing signs of neglect.

  “Not very pretty, is it?” Zach said.

  I rather liked it. It had a sturdy, utilitarian quality that appealed to me. I stepped aboard, on to the covered afterdeck, and peered through a plate glass door into the deck cabin. The blinds on the side windows were down, but enough light filtered through for me to see that the cabin had been thoroughly ransacked. The settee cushions and backs had been slashed, stuffing strewn about. The contents of the storage lockers had been dumped on to the deck.

  Movement to the left of the helm caught my eye. A woman was sprawled at the top of the companionway down to the forward cabin. I slid open the door and went to her. She was wearing a bra top and shorts and there was blood on her back and legs. She cried out as I placed a hand on her shoulder, and tried to scrabble down the companionway steps. Marie-Claire Cloutier, I presumed.

  “Easy,” I said. Her short, dark hair was clotted with blood from a gash above her right ear. “Miss Cloutier, I’m a friend of Terry Jardine’s.” She stopped struggling. I turned to Zach. “Call 911.”

  “No,” she said. “No p-police. I’m all right.” She struggled to sit up.

  “Are you sure?” I said, helping her up.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  “Do I or don’t I?” Zach said, holding up his phone.

  “I guess you don’t,” I said, realizing that if we called the police or paramedics it would be a while before we would be able to talk to her. “At least let me take a look at you,” I said.

  I helped her down the companionway to the belowdecks cabin. It contained the galley, head, and a utility area, complete with a washer/dryer combo. It had also been thoroughly searched, as had the master stateroom in the bow. I shifted what was left of the double berth mattress back into place, and Marie-Claire sat down on the foot of the berth. Blood oozed from her scalp wound, partly coagulated. I went into the head and ran warm water into the basin and soaked a couple of hand towels.

  “See if you can find a first-aid kit,” I said to Zach.

  “There’s one upstairs by the steering wheel,” Marie-Claire said.

  Zack went to get it and I began cleaning the blood from Marie-Claire’s face and neck. She winced as I blotted the blood from her hair around the injury, but she endured it in silence.

  “I might have to cut some of your hair to see how bad the gash is,” I told her.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  Zach returned with a red plastic first-aid kit the size and shape of a briefcase. “What do you need?”

  “Scissors, to start,” I said. Marie-Claire was shivering. She muttered “Thanks” when I wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. I began to clip the hair from around the injury. “Do you feel up to answering a couple of questions?” I asked as I worked.

  “Sure,” she said. “But if you’re going to ask me who did this, I can’t tell you. I never saw the guy before, and he didn’t introduce himself.” She flinched as the scissors, which could have been sharper, pulled her hair.

  “Sorry,” I said. I described Lawrence Thomason.

  “Yeah, that sounds like the guy,” Marie-Claire said. “Who is he?”

  “His name is Lawrence Thomason and it’s a good bet he’s after the money you and Chaz Brandt stole.” I didn’t think he’d be satisfied with the 10 percent finder’s fee. “We suspect he’s also involved in the abduction of Terry Jardine and her daughter. You haven’t seen her, have you?”

  “Terry? No.”

  “He paid your friend Mace McKenny a visit earlier today, too.”

  “Who told him where to find me, I suppose?”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “When we spoke to him he told us he’d given Thomason the address of your condo, but said nothing about this boat.”

  “Maybe this Thomason guy followed me from the condo. It’s not far from where Mace lives. I was there this morning.”

  “He made a hell of a mess searching your boat,” I said.

  “That was mostly me,” she said. “I didn’t cut up the cushions or the mattress, though.”

  “I can guess what he was looking for. What were you looking for?”

  “What do you think? The same thing he was looking for. Money. Chaz—he’s Andrew now—always keeps some cash around for emergencies.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “No.”

  “Did Thomason?”

  “Probably not. I don’t think there’s any to find.” She closed her eyes, opened them again. “My head’s starting to hurt a lot.”

  Her injury wasn’t as serious as I’d first thought—head wounds bleed a lot, and there was very little swelling—but I told her a stitch or two would help it heal with less scarring and offered to take her to the nearest ER. “They can give you something for the pain, too.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But if anyone asks what happened, I fell and hit my head, all right? That’s more or less what happened, anyway.”

  “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  “No.” She rubbed her right knee. “My knee hurts a little. I guess I hit it, too, when I fell. And my chest, where he punched me.” She spread the edges of the blanket. There was a fist-sized bruise forming between her breasts.

  I placed a sterile pad over the gash above her ear, securing it with a couple of turns of gauze around her head. “Can you make it to the parking lot?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” She stood, wobbled a little, then steadied. “Can I change first?”

  Zach and I waited in the utility area while Marie-Claire changed. I insisted she leave the door open a crack lest she attempt to escape through the forward hatch in the ceiling of the stateroom. A few minutes later she emerged wearing pink drawstring pants, a pale blue hooded sweatshirt, and high-heeled espadrilles. She had a big red leather bag slung over her shoulder. Blood was seeping through the bandage above her ear.

  “Okay,” she said, carefully donning a wide-brimmed straw hat, tilting it over the injured side of her head.

  Zach and I helped her up the companionway and through the lounge to the afterdeck.

  “Do you need to lock up?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing worth stealing,” she said. But she slid the door closed and locked it with a key from her bag.

  Supporting her between us, Zach and I walked her along the floats and up the ramp to the car. It was not quite 6:30 p.m. I remembered from my time in Vancouver that the nearest ER to Coal Harbour was St. Paul’s, at Burrard and Comox
: we’d passed it on our way through the West End. After dropping Marie-Claire and Zach off at the entrance to the ER, I went in search of parking. Ten minutes later, when I got back to the ER, Zach was sitting alone in the waiting area. Well, not alone, exactly. The room was crowded with people waiting to be seen, men and women and kids, some bleeding, some wearing masks, some attempting to cough their lungs out, most grumbling about the wait time.

  “They took her pretty quick because it was a head injury,” Zach said.

  I spoke to the triage nurse, who, after making me wait a further fifteen minutes, allowed me into the examining room. Marie-Claire sat on a gurney wearing a hospital gown. The bandage had been removed, and the area around the injury had been shaved and painted with antiseptic.

  “I need a CT scan,” she said. “But the doctor doesn’t think I have a concussion.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “I’ve never had stitches before,” she said, with a nervous smile.

  “I’ve had plenty. It’s not a big deal. Do you want me to stay with you?”

  “Nah. I’m a big girl. Or are you worried I’ll run away?”

  “It had occurred to me.”

  “I won’t, I promise,” she said. As if her promise meant anything. “By the way,” she said, lowering her voice, “the name on my Medicare card is Jacqueline Kimball.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  Two hours later, an orderly wheeled her into the waiting room. She had a small bandage above her ear, and her colour was better. Zach sucked in his belly when she smiled at us, and I realized that she was a remarkably pretty woman. I offered to bring the car around. She said she was feeling fine, but by the time we’d walked half a block, she was staggering. She sat on a bench at a bus stop with Zach, her wide-brimmed hat tilted over her bandage, while I retrieved the car. She climbed into the back seat and was asleep within seconds.

  “Is it all right to let her sleep?” Zach said.

  “I think so,” I said.

  When we got to the marina, she was able to walk to the boat more or less under her own steam, but her hands were shaky as she tried to insert the key into the deckhouse door lock. I took the key, unlocked the door, and put the key into my pocket.

  “Shit,” she said, when she saw the mess.

  Zach and I tidied up. Her contribution was to sit at the chart table with a glass of wine and point out where things went. The only real damage was to the settee cushions and mattresses. When the Serendipity was more or less shipshape again, I sat at the table across from her. Zach sat in the pilot’s chair with a can of beer. The evening was clear and calm, and the lights of the marina glinted off the water of the harbour. Classical music was playing somewhere. Mozart, I thought. Marie-Claire looked ready to fall asleep.

  “I need to ask you some more questions.”

  “Sure, as long as they’re not too hard. My head feels like it’s stuffed with—melted cheese.” She giggled. “I was going to say poutine.”

  “Did you tell Thomason where Chaz Brandt is?”

  “No.”

  “But he asked?”

  “Sure he asked. Threatened to tear my ears off if I didn’t tell him. Go ahead, I told him. Wouldn’t make any difference, since I didn’t know where he was and I couldn’t tell him something I didn’t know, could I?”

  “And he believed you?”

  “I guess. I still have my ears. Look, I haven’t seen much of Andrew—Chaz—lately. Last week he was supposed to be in Seattle, but I don’t think he was.”

  “Why not?”

  “I found his passport. His Andrew Kimball one, anyway. He might have another one by now, though.”

  “Under what name?”

  “I don’t know. How did you find me, anyway?”

  “Mace didn’t tell Thomason about this boat,” I said. “But he told us.”

  “Yeah, but how’d you find Mace?”

  “When you called Terry Jardine’s landline on Friday morning, you didn’t block his caller ID.”

  “Yeah? Shit.”

  The more important question was how Lawrence Thomason had found McKenny.

  “When you spoke to Terry,” I said, “she told you to call her back the next day, after she’d had a chance to speak to her lawyer. Did you?”

  “I tried a couple of times. She told me to call her back on her cellphone, but when I did, some guy answered or I got her voicemail. I hung up when the guy answered and I didn’t want to leave a voicemail message.”

  “Did you remember to block Mace’s caller ID?”

  “I think so. Yeah.”

  “So you haven’t spoken to Terry since the first call?”

  “No. I was getting worried, so I decided to try her landline again. Another guy answered, so I hung up again. I thought I’d blocked the caller ID that time, too, but I guess not.”

  “Why did you use McKenny’s phone? Don’t you have a cellphone?”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said. “Did, anyway. I threw it overboard. I think Chaz had some kind of eavesdropping software or something on it.” Her smile was weak, self-deprecating. “I don’t think he trusts me. That’s okay.

  I don’t trust him. I had to wait till Mace was out or asleep, though, before I could use one of his phones. He’s got three I know about. On account of his business. He’s a dope dealer.”

  “I’d never have guessed,” Zach said.

  “Terry spoke to her lawyer,” I said. “She’s agreed to represent you. Do you still want to testify against Brandt?”

  “Sure,” Marie-Claire said. “But what good would it do if you can’t find him?”

  “We’ll find him,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “Why did you decide to testify against him?”

  “Like I said, I don’t trust him. I’m pretty sure he’s planning to dump me. For a while I was even afraid he was thinking about killing me. That’s why I’ve been staying on this boat. He’s got another girlfriend, too, I think.”

  “Any idea where we can find her?”

  “No,” she said, eyes swivelling away.

  I didn’t push it for fear she’d shut down. “But you figure he has another exit strategy?”

  “Exit strategy? I like that. Yeah, I think he does. Wish I did.”

  “Besides his passport, did he leave anything else behind at the condo? A phone, perhaps?”

  “No, but I didn’t look that hard.”

  “Do I have your permission to go take a look?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But I really don’t want to go back there.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “Just tell me where it is and give me a key.”

  She paled. “You can’t leave me here alone. What if he comes back?” Did she mean Thomason or Brandt/Kimball?

  “I don’t think he will,” I said. “But Zach will stay with you, if you like.” I glanced at him.

  “Oh, sure,” Zach said.

  Chapter 25

  Both shores of False Creek, from the Burrard Bridge east to the Cambie Street Bridge, are lined with condominium developments, interspersed here and there with manicured green spaces and sprinkled with marinas. The address Marie-Claire had given me was on Lamey’s Mill Road, a short walk from where I’d parked on Granville Island. Overlooking Sutcliffe Park, the fat neck of land that joins the largely manmade former industrial site to the Kitsilano mainland, the Farnham was a combination townhouse and nine-story tower development. Brandt’s suite was on the seventh floor of the main tower. The stepped design of the tower must have afforded the suite a spectacular, and no doubt expensive, view of False Creek, the West End, and the coastal mountains.

  I had an uneasy feeling when I saw the police car parked in the entrance court. I let myself into the building using Marie-Claire’s keycard. When I got off the elevator on the seventh floor, a man was standing in the hall outside
the door to Brandt’s suite. He was about fifty, with long, unkempt hair and a biker belly, and dressed in baggy pants that looked like pyjama bottoms and a

  Hawaiian-style shirt with a sailboat motif. He seemed agitated, and his eyes were wary as I walked up to him.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “Is this the Kimball suite?”

  “Yeah,” he said. I noticed that the door appeared to have been jimmied. “Who’re you?”

  Before I could answer, a uniformed police officer came out of the apartment.

  “Sir,” she said, giving me a guarded look. “Can I ask you what your business is here?”

  Her manner, though businesslike, was polite, almost friendly. She was a brawny, big-boned woman, eyes almost level with mine, and her Kevlar vest and equipment belt made her look even more imposing. Her name tag read “E. Franks.”

  “My name’s Riley,” I said, handing her a business card and showing her my investigator’s permit and ID. “The law firm I work for represents the ex-wife of a man who is alleged to have operated a Ponzi scheme in Montreal until three years ago, when he disappeared with fifty million dollars or more of his victims’ money.”

  “Yikes,” Franks said. Another cop emerged from the apartment. A male, shorter and younger than Franks. Stringy and tough-looking, his nose was even more battered than my own. His name tag read “I. Davydov.”

  “His name is Charles Pearson Brandt,” I said. “If you check with your HQ, you’ll find that there’s a Canada-wide warrant out for him. He’s going by the name of Andrew Kimball now and is the owner of this condo.”

  “This is a rental property,” said the man in the Hawaiian shirt. The cops and I stared at him. “Well, it is.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up,” Franks said.

  “Are you the manager?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Bill Smithers.”

  “May I show Mr. Smithers a photograph?”

  “By all means,” Franks said.

  I showed Smithers the photo of Chaz Brandt. Franks and her partner peered over his shoulders to look at it, too. “Is this the man who rents this apartment?”