The Evil That Men Do

by Michael Blair

  “Shut up.” I knelt by Thomason again. “Hang in there, Lawrence.”

  “Pull it out,” Thomason said again. His breathing was rapid and shallow. Blood spilled from his mouth.

  “You’ll bleed to death if I do that.” He might bleed to death, anyway. “Better to wait for the medics.”

  “Stupid bastard,” Chaz Brandt said. I didn’t know, or care, if he was referring to Thomason or to me. “How much would it take for you to let me go?”

  “More than you’ve got,” I said. “Lawrence. Where are Terry and Rebecca?”

  “They’re … ” Blood gurgled in his throat. “Oh, Christ. It hurts.”

  “I heard you tell Brandt you had them. Where are they?”

  He didn’t answer, shook his head, swallowing blood, gagging on it.

  Harry came back into the stateroom. “Cops and paramedics are on the way,” he said. “I gotta go to the main gate and let them in.”

  “All right. Take Addy with you.” Addy Shay sat on the deck in the head, trembling, greenish under her tan, holding a bloody hand towel to her shoulder.

  “What about him?” Harry asked, indicating Brandt.

  “I can handle him,” I said.

  Harry went into the head, helped Addy Shay to her feet, and the two of them went above.

  “I made sure I wasn’t followed,” I said to Thomason. “How did you know Brandt was here?” Perhaps he had got to Marie-Claire Cloutier after all. “Did Marie-Claire tell you where to find him?”

  Thomason didn’t seem to understand the question. I repeated it.

  “No.” Thomason swallowed, tried again. “You … ”

  He coughed, spouting blood, and moaned. Tears leaked from his eyes, diluting the blood around his mouth.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Don’t try to talk. The medics will be here soon.”

  “I think … too late,” Thomason said, voice barely audible. “M-m-m … ”

  “Don’t talk,” I said.

  He struggled to draw a breath, choking. He coughed. Blood gushed from his mouth, spattering my shirt and jacket. His chest convulsed. He was drowning in his own blood. His eyes pleaded and he clutched at my arm.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do for you. Just try to hold on till the medics get here.”

  He gripped my arm with a terrible strength, then his grip relaxed. His eyes glazed over as, with a burbling sigh, his body went limp, seeming to collapse in on itself as the life flowed out of him. He became deathly still.

  “Stupid bastard,” Charles Pearson Brandt said.

  “Shut up,” I said, standing, cold inside, numbed by a sense of desolation. Years before, I’d had the misfortune of being caught on the fringes of a nasty little civil uprising in Indonesia, so Thomason’s wasn’t the first violent death I’d witnessed. But I’d never had anyone die in my arms. It was an experience I could have lived without. At least Thomason hadn’t shit himself.

  “I didn’t mean to shoot him, you know,” Brandt said. “That damned thing has a hair trigger.”

  “Tell that to him. And Addy.”

  “Who the fuck are you anyway? The dimwit couldn’t remember your name.”

  “I work for Terry’s lawyer. I knew her a long time ago. My name’s Riley.”

  “Riley,” Brandt said. “Yeah. She told me about you. Said you were an asshole. She was right.”

  “I suppose she was,” I said. “Now just shut the fuck up, okay?”

  Chapter 29

  The police and paramedics arrived. The paramedics laid Thomason out on the deck and pronounced him dead. They left him where he was, crossbow bolt protruding from his chest. As the police untied Brandt, hauled him to his feet, and handcuffed him, he kept telling them they were making a mistake, that he hadn’t killed Thomason, that I had, that they’d find my fingerprints on the murder weapon. I explained that while I’d been the last one to touch the crossbow when I’d disarmed Brandt, they wouldn’t find my fingerprints on either the bolt in Thomason’s body, the one in the crossbow, or on the crossbow trigger mechanism. Mrs. Shay, when she calmed down, would corroborate.

  “She already has,” the bigger of the two West Vancouver Police officers said. His partner was still below, waiting for the major case detectives, the medical examiner, the district coroner, and crime scene investigators. “We’ll still need your statement, though.”

  “Of course,” I said. I hadn’t had any sleep the night before, and I didn’t expect to get much sleep that night, either.

  “Let’s go,” the officer said to Brandt. I followed as he led Brandt off the boat and along the float toward the ramp.

  The flashing lights of the police cars and ambulances on the embankment lent the marina parking area a carnival atmosphere, and more vehicles were arriving every minute. Despite the lateness of the hour, a crowd was beginning to gather. As I went through the security gate behind the officer escorting Chaz Brandt, I took out Zach Jardine’s iPhone. The cop loaded Brandt into the back of a waiting squad car, then stood beside the car. Adrianna Shay sat in the open door at the back of an ambulance, bandage on her upper arm, talking to a bulky man in rumpled suit. When she saw me, she pointed me out to him. He talked with for a minute more, then shook her hand and walked over to me. He was about fifty, with shaggy brown hair and a face that was as rumpled as his suit. I put the phone away as he introduced himself as Detective Martin Baranovsky of the West Vancouver Police.

  “I swear to God,” he said, looking in Addy Shay’s direction as a uniformed officer handed her into a squad car. “Don’t let that woman get you alone anywhere. If I’m any judge, she can hardly wait to bestow upon you the classic hero’s reward for saving the fair damsel’s life.” A smile deepened the creases of his face. “Unless, of course, you like your damsels tough and well done.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “But she’s exaggerating. I didn’t save her life. She was just very damned lucky.”

  “She thinks differently.” He consulted a notebook. “She doesn’t remember your name, but Harry Zylstra says it’s Riley. First or last?”

  “Last,” I said, showing him my passport and my Quebec investigator’s permit. I also gave him a business card and filled him in on my particulars.

  “She says you came aboard her boat earlier today—yesterday morning, actually—and spoke to her about the man sitting in that squad car. She doesn’t remember the name you gave her but she knows him as Andrew Kimball.”

  “His real name is Charles Pearson Brandt.” I started to tell him about Brandt and his Ponzi scheme, but he interrupted me.

  “We’ll get to that,” he said, watching a pair of crime scene technicians go down the ramp carrying aluminum briefcases and dragging a large, wheeled equipment case. “I want to take a look at the crime scene first. Well, I don’t want to, really, but it comes with the territory. Can you come with me, walk me through what went down? You okay with that?”

  “I’ll manage,” I said.

  I accompanied Baranovsky back to the Mariposa II. We waited in the galley while the crime scene technicians went below with their equipment. Before going below, one of the techs had given Baranovsky a handful of blue booties and gloves. Baranovsky handed me two of each. I slipped booties over my shoes and tugged gloves on over the blood on my hands.

  “While we’re waiting,” Baranovsky said, “tell me what you know about the vic and the perp. The alleged perp.”

  “The victim’s name is Lawrence Thomason. I guess you’d call him a small-time con man. Beyond that, there’s not much more I can tell you about him. It looks like he was involved in the abduction of Brandt’s ex-wife and her daughter, though.”

  “Where?” Baranovsky asked. “Here?”

  “No. Montreal.”

  “I don’t suppose he told you where they were before he died.”

  “N
o,” I said, voice tight. “He didn’t.

  “What about Brandt? Tell me about him.”

  I filled him in on Brandt’s Ponzi scheme, plus what little else I knew about him. I also told Baranovsky how Brandt and Marie-Claire Cloutier had absconded from Montreal with the stolen money, how I’d traced them to Vancouver, and how Marie-Claire had gotten cold feet about testifying and had taken off.

  “We’ll touch base with the Montreal police, of course,” he said. “But homicide trumps fraud. What about Thomason? How did he find this boat? By following you?”

  “I don’t think so. I was pretty careful. Before he died, I asked him if Marie-Claire had told him about this boat, but he said she hadn’t. I’m not sure how well he was tracking, though.”

  “What about Brandt’s ex-wife? I mean, was she in on the con?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  A crime scene tech called up that it was okay for Baranovsky to come down. Baranovsky put on his booties and gloves and preceded me down the companionway. The techs had set up a pair of floodlights on stands in the master stateroom. Thomason’s body was starkly illuminated, somehow looking even more dead. Baranovsky’s knees cracked as he squatted next to the body. He lightly touched the flight of the crossbow bolt protruding from Thomason’s chest.

  “Ouch,” he said. He reached out a hand to one of the techs, who hauled him to his feet. “My knees are shot,” he said. “Too many moguls too many years ago.” He flipped to a new page of his notebook. “So tell me what happened here.”

  “I didn’t actually see Brandt shoot Thomason,” I said. “I was at the top of the companionway when I heard the twang of the crossbow and Mrs. Shay’s scream. Thomason was using her as a shield. I don’t think Brandt cared if he hit her or not. As it is, he clipped her shoulder.”

  “As you said, a lucky lady. So you came down the stairs … ?”

  “Thomason was more or less where you see him and Brandt was trying to reload the crossbow. I took it away from him and threw it on to the berth.” It was still there. “When Harry Zylstra came below I told him to call 911 then take Mrs. Shay to the office. I stayed with Brandt and Thomason. Thomason died a couple of minutes later.”

  “You seem to be handling it okay.”

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” I said.

  “All right,” Baranovsky said. “Let’s let these chaps get on with it. The coroner will be here soon, too, to remove the deceased.” As we left the boat, Baranovsky said, “Assuming that Thomason was after the money Brandt and his girlfriend stole, did he expect Brandt to just hand it over?”

  “Thomason told Brandt he had Brandt’s ex-wife and her daughter. Brandt said he didn’t care. Thomason then threatened Brandt’s sister and her children. He said the same thing, that he didn’t care.”

  “Is Brandt a sociopath? Many con men and Ponzi scheme hucksters score pretty high on the psychopathy scale.”

  “Thomason too, probably. Although perhaps not as high as Brandt.”

  “So why did Brandt shoot him?”

  “He claimed it was an accident, that the crossbow has a hair-trigger, but I think he just got tired of talking to him.”

  “Okay,” Baranovsky said, as we climbed the ramp to the embankment. “That should do it. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”

  Baranovsky gave me his card and told me I would need to come to the West Vancouver PD headquarters and sign my statement. “I’ll write it up,” he said. “You just need to stop by the shop to sign it. Can you give me an hour?” I told him that was fine. We shook hands and he got into his car and drove away.

  I went into the marina washroom, where I ditched the blue booties and gloves and washed Thomason’s blood off my hands. My travel jacket and shirt were probably unsalvageable, but the marina had a laundry room and I had the time, so I scrounged some detergent from Harry Zylstra and washed them in cold water, hoping for the best. Harry gave me back the Thunderbird Marina T-shirt. While I waited for the washer to do its thing, I got out Zach Jardine’s phone. I was sitting in the laundry room, looking at the phone in my hand, when Harry came in.

  “I didn’t know cellphones had got to where you could just think at them and they’d dial a number.”

  “I’m trying to figure out how Lawrence Thomason found his way here. I know I wasn’t followed. I thought maybe he had some way of tracking my phone, but this one isn’t mine. Mine ran out of juice so I traded phones with my companion.”

  Marie-Claire had told me that she hadn’t used her cellphone to call Terry because she was afraid Brandt had installed eavesdropping software on it. Could Gil Maxwell have installed similar software on the phone he’d lent me? He could have, but why would he? And what good would it have done Thomason? Unless Thomason and Gil were working together. It made no sense to me, but I wasn’t tracking very well myself at that point.

  I woke up Zach’s phone. The screen clock read 2:22 a.m. Pacific Time. With the three-hour time difference, it was 5:22 a.m. Montreal time, more than forty-eight hours since I’d had any proper sleep. No wonder I felt as though every joint in my body was lined with broken glass.

  I brought up the dial pad and started to key in Nina’s number. I hesitated. I didn’t think it likely that Zach’s phone had been compromised, but who knew, maybe the eavesdropping software could be installed remotely.

  “Harry. I need to use your landline to make a long distance call.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  I accompanied him into the office, sat down at his desk and dialled Nina’s landline. She answered on the third ring.

  “Whoever this is,” she growled, “it better be good.”

  “It’s Riley.”

  “Riley. Are you back? No, I see you aren’t. Where the hell’s the Thunderbird Marina?”

  “West Vancouver,” I said. “Near Horseshoe Bay. Are you awake?”

  “Hell no. What’s up?”

  “Thomason’s dead,” I said. “Chaz Brandt shot him with a crossbow. You awake now?”

  Chapter 30

  “Jesus,” she said, after I’d filled her in on what had gone down on Addy Shay’s boat, “that must have been awful. Are you okay?”

  “Me? Sure, I’m fine.” I wasn’t, though, not entirely. I hadn’t known Thomason well, or liked what I knew, but that hadn’t seemed to matter as I’d watched the life drain out of his eyes. I supposed the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach would go away eventually. “There’s something else. How much money did Gil Maxwell’s father lose to Brandt’s Ponzi scheme?”

  “I don’t know. He wasn’t a wealthy man. Maybe a million, not counting his house. All his life savings, anyway. Why?”

  “I’m looking for motive,” I said, thinking that Nina’s definition of wealthy was different from mine.

  “If money is the motive, there are people who lost a lot more than Gil’s dad.”

  “But if you add means and opportunity, plus Gil’s money problems, it moves him to the top of the list.”

  “Top of the list for what?” Nina said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I think Gil may have planted eavesdropping software on the phone he lent me. Maybe on the phones Lawrence Thomason gave Terry and Rebecca, too. There may also be a bug on Terry’s landline.”

  “Do Thomason and Gil know each other?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Somehow Thomason has been one step ahead of us ever since we got here. He got to Marie-Claire’s boyfriend, and to Marie-Claire, before Zach and I did. He didn’t get to Brandt before I did, but maybe that was because the battery of my phone died and I traded phones with Zach. But I phoned Zach yesterday and told him where I’d found Brandt’s new girlfriend. A few hours later, Thomason showed up.”

  “Couldn’t he have followed you?” Nina said.

  “I was pretty careful.”

  “All right, but what
about Terry and Rebecca?”

  “Before Brandt shot him, Thomason told Brandt that he had them. I asked him where they were, but he was in pretty bad shape and couldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t have brought them to Vancouver with him, though. He must have an accomplice in Montreal.”

  “Gil? C’mon. He’s such a fucking wuss. I can’t believe he’s got Terry and Rebecca locked up somewhere … ” Her voice trailed off. I knew what she was thinking.

  “Brandt stashed the money offshore,” I said. “He refused to give the account numbers to Thomason. If Gil thinks Terry knows the account numbers, he has to keep her alive.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “There’s no point speculating about it now,” I said. “I don’t believe Gil is a killer. In fact, I think he’s probably kept a firewall, so to speak, between himself and Terry and Rebecca’s abduction. Perhaps there’s a third party. If there’s no direct connection between Gil and Thomason, maybe there’s someone they have in common. Another of Brandt’s victims. You must have a list. Can you go through it and try to find someone with a connection to Thomason? Even the most tenuous.”

  “I can think of one right now,” she said. “Fredrick Strom. The guy Larry beat up outside the hotel in Hudson. I thought it was kind of fishy he was at my launch. His mother was one of Brandt’s victims, so Gil probably knows him through the class action a group of Brandt’s victims are hoping to file against the bank Brandt used.”

  “That’s tenuous, all right,” I said, remembering Frank Gendron telling me that Fredrick Strom had been ejected from a meeting of Brandt’s victims for causing a disturbance and uttering threats. “Okay, start with him. Look for something other than the fight outside the hotel, though.”

  “And if I find something that Larry and Fred Strom—or whoever—have in common?”

  “Use your discretion. But be careful.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to pick up Zach at Marie-Claire’s boat and head home.”