“You’re disappointed in me, though, aren’t you?”
“It has nothing to do with me. Hal needs you, Maureen. More than he needs me or Rachel or our parents. If you abandon him, he’ll probably die in prison. But if you tell him you’ll stand by him, he’ll see it through, especially if he knows you’ll be waiting for him when he gets out. Can you do that for him, Maureen?”
“If that’s what you want me to do.”
“It has nothing to do with me,” Shoe said again, an edge on his voice that brought her close to tears.
A plain grey Sebring pulled up in front of the house, followed by two Halton County patrol cars. Hanna Lewis got out of the passenger side of the Sebring and her partner got out of the other. Four Halton County constables got out of the two patrol cars.
“Mrs. Schumacher,” Hannah Lewis said. “Is your husband here?”
Maureen looked at Shoe. “I can’t do this,” she said. Shoe watched Maureen walk stiffly to her car, open the door, and get in. She started the engine. The brake lights flared and the backup lights lit as she put the transmission into reverse, but the car did not move. She sat with her hands on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead.
Lewis looked at Shoe. “We found Timothy Dutton,” she said quietly. “He was in the trunk of his Audi, wrists wired together and a .22 bullet hole in the back of his head. A witness saw a man with long grey or dirty blond hair set fire to the car then drive away on a motorcycle that burned oil. We have a bulletin out on Joey Noseworthy.”
“You’ll understand if I don’t wish you good luck finding him,” Shoe said.
“We also got the final autopsy report on Marvin Cartwright. He was a dead man walking, according to the pathologist. He had an advanced inoperable brain tumour. He probably didn’t have more than a few weeks left. The pathologist reckons he must’ve been one tough son of a bitch to even be walking around, but likely a lot of what he said wouldn’t have made a lot of sense.”
Shoe and Lewis both turned as Maureen shut off the engine and got out of her car. She looked at Shoe, then went into the house.
“My brother’s inside,” Shoe said to Lewis. “He’s waiting for you.”
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the following people for helping make this a better story: Alan Annand, Marc Cassini, David Hanley, and Mark Mendelson. Thanks also to Barry Jowett, Alison Carr, Marja Appleford, and the rest of the staff at Dundurn Press. I take full responsibility for all literary thuds, grammatical clangs, and factual and procedural errors. A heartfelt thank you, too, to Pam Hilliard, for her love, support, and endless patience. Lastly, I dedicate this book to my father, Hugh Fairlie Blair, who shared with me his lifelong love of the printed word. If there’s a heaven, it’s a library filled with books he’s never read.
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