“Maybe.” He picked up a page he had set to one side. “Take a look at that.”
I shrugged off my jacket, wiped my wet hand on the inside of the sleeve, and took the page. It appeared to be notes written by one of the investigating detectives, followed by a more formal typed report incorporating those notes. The notes covered the top third of the page and were almost illegible — a doctor’s prescription on steroids — so I skipped down to the report itself …
I took a call at 4:28 p.m. from a female caller, it was a 911 call rerouted through our dispatcher. The call was from a Rosalyn Meers — she was somewhat hysterical but I was able to ascertain that she had discovered her next-door neighbour, Lionel Hilmer, lying in the living room of his home just inside the front door and that Mr. Hilmer was unresponsive and there was a lot of blood. I asked Ms. Meers if she had touched anything, she indicated she hadn’t, I had her give me the address — the 2200 block of Capri Avenue NW. I told her to go back to Mr. Hilmer’s house but not to enter and not to let anyone else enter. I was on my way to the scene within a couple of minutes of her call. Kinley was in with the Chief Inspector and I didn’t feel it was appropriate to wait for him so I left a note on his desk and left the building en route to the crime scene.
I was at the Hilmer home approximately 26 minutes after the call came in. An ambulance was on scene — one paramedic had gone inside only to check the vital signs and was able to ascertain that the victim was deceased. The paramedic was back on the front porch waiting alongside his female partner. I gloved up and opened the front door; my initial observation confirmed that Mr. Hilmer was deceased. I called the Medical Examiner’s office, then questioned Mrs. Meers, who informed me that the victim lived alone, that she had gone to his home to invite him to have dinner with her and her husband, that the front door was unlocked and when he didn’t answer the bell she got worried, tried the door, looked inside and discovered the body.
Once the Medical Examiner personnel and Detective Kinley were on scene, Kinley and I split up and did a rough search of the grounds around the house. Found nothing but, of course, the search was cursory and a more detailed search was undertaken later by two more detectives, Linder and Snead, and three uniformed officers. Detective Kinley and myself went to the house on the other side —
“How far are you?” Cobb interrupted my reading.
“They’re just going to one of the neighbouring houses.”
“Spoiler alert. They learned nothing, so you might as well quit reading. Instead, tell me what you make of what you’re seeing on the page so far.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean look at what he wrote and tell me if you see anything interesting.”
I stared hard at the page, read each word again. “It’s a murder; I guess that makes all of it unusual.”
“Okay.” Cobb shook his head. “I apologize. I’m not trying to play Sherlock Holmes and I’m damn sure not trying to make you look silly in any way. It’s not the content I’m interested in. Look at the time Maughan says the call came in.”
I looked again, then up at Cobb. “Four twenty-eight. How is that unusual?”
“Now look at his notes up above, he notes the time of the call there, too.”
I looked again. “Four twenty-eight. Exactly the same time.” I was beginning to wonder if Cobb was behind on his sleep.
“Now look at the numbers themselves. Anything?”
I stared at the numbers, first in the handwritten notes, then in the typed report. “You mean that they’re smudged?”
“Yes, but is the whole number smudged?”
One more look. Then closer. “No, it’s just the middle digit in both numbers. It’s like maybe … maybe someone erased that digit once.”
“Right, so let’s think about this. Faith’s school dismissed every day at three thirty. That’s noted in the first homicide file. Let’s say it took even ten minutes, which is pretty fast, for the girls to get out of school and walk to her friend Jasmine’s house. Even if everything after that happened very quickly in terms of her being lured into the backyard, murdered, and covered with the plywood and the perpetrator making his escape, it is virtually impossible for all of that to take place and for the killer to get to the police station by four twenty-eight to take that call.”
“Meaning Jarvis Maughan couldn’t have been the guy.”
And then suddenly I saw where he was going. “But if that smudged number was changed —”
“Right,” Cobb said. “Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that the original middle digit was a four or maybe a five, making the time of the call four forty-eight or four fifty-eight — now it becomes much more feasible for the time frame to work. And don’t you think it’s odd that only one of the three digits looks smudged and it’s the middle digit in both cases — one handwritten and one typed?”
“That seems like an unlikely coincidence for sure. But let’s think about it. Is there another reason the digit could be smudged in both instances that doesn’t point to deliberately altering the report to reflect something quite different from what actually happened?”
“Well, if Maughan was sitting here I’m sure he’d say he just made a mistake, realized it after the fact and changed the number to reflect the actual time the call came in.”
“But you’re not buying that.”
He shrugged. “All I’m saying is that if that time was altered to show an earlier time than was actually the case, it’s more of the same kind of evidence we already have, all of it circumstantial and all of it pretty damn flimsy.”
“I agree that it’s circumstantial, but I’m not sure I’d agree that it’s flimsy. Maughan could have known Faith, either through his visits to the school or through his son, who we do know was acquainted with Faith. We’ve got a cop with a past record of using his power and position to sexually assault women and who lived within a short walk of Faith’s house. And through all of this, there’s been his alibi, which has always been in his favour. If there’s a possible hole in that alibi, it feels to me like that could be a game-changer.”
Cobb smiled. “Now that’s the optimism I like in my partner. Okay, there are a couple of things we need to do. I’ve written down the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the three witnesses Maughan, and maybe Kinley, spoke to that day. It’s a long shot, but maybe, if we can find them, one might recall the actual time that the call was made to the police or maybe the time when Maughan arrived on scene, which he indicates would have been between approximately four forty-five to four fifty-five p.m. And I’ve got the last known address of Terry Maughan. Four years ago he was living on McKenzie Towne Gate. So we’ve got a couple of things we need to pursue. Let’s divide them up. You want the ladies or Maughan?”
“You have a preference?”
He shook his head.
“Okay, I’ll take McKenzie Towne. There’s a good pub out there somewhere, I think.”
He closed up the folder, slid it into the top drawer of his desk. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m glad we have some lines to follow up on. I need to get my mind off things.”
He stood up. “Good. Let’s roll.”
SIXTEEN
I was right. The house Terry Maughan had lived in was within a block of the Kilt & Caber Ale House. I passed it on my way to the address on McKenzie Towne Gate.
I went first to the house. There was a Honda Odyssey, the ultimate kid packer, in the driveway, and with deductive powers that would have made Holmes (and Cobb) proud, I guessed there might be children in evidence. I rang the bell and a midtwenties redhead with a baby on her hip opened the door a crack and looked out at me, the door bound by the chain I could see dangling between it and the frame.
“Ma’am, my name is Adam Cullen. I’m working with a private investigator on a matter, and we’re hoping to determine the whereabouts of a former resident of this house, Terry Maughan. I was hoping you might be able to help me.”
I passed a business card through the openin
g and she stared at it for a few seconds. “I can’t let you in the house,” she said, not in an unfriendly way.
“I absolutely understand and I’m happy to stay here on the front step. Did you and your husband buy the house from Terry Maughan?”
She paused and looked off, thinking. “I think that was the name. We never met the people. The house was vacant when we bought it and we went through a realtor.”
“Do you know if Mr. Maughan, if that’s who it was, had a family?”
“I think so. Again, we never met them, but Jay Keeling across the street, I think he was kind of a friend of his, he said there had been three people living here — the couple and one child.”
“Which house does Mr. Keeling live in?”
She pointed with her free hand. “That storey-and-a- half over there, the brown one.”
The baby apparently saw that as his cue and began crying. A small child, maybe three years old, arrived at that moment and peered around her mother’s legs at me. I smiled at the woman and said, “Looks to me like I should get out of here and leave you to take care of these guys. Thanks for your help. Do you know if Mr. Keeling is around?”
“He might be. He travels sometimes — he’s got a sales job, I think — but I don’t know if he’s in town right now or not.”
I thanked her again and headed across the street to the Keeling house. A newer Chevy Equinox was in the driveway, but that didn’t mean he was home. My repeated knocking and doorbell ringing confirmed that no one was at the Keeling residence. Just to be certain, I looked the number up on my phone, called, and reached a voicemail. I left a message explaining that I was trying to locate Terry Maughan about a matter dating back several years and I’d appreciate it if Mr. Keeling could call me when it was convenient.
Things went downhill from there. I canvassed the houses on both sides of the street. A number of people weren’t home, and the lone resident I did speak to had lived in the area for only two years and hadn’t known the Maughans. I hoped Cobb was having more luck with the witnesses.
I decided I deserved at least one beer and stopped off at the Kilt & Caber for a Stella.
The place was almost empty, so I sat at the bar. The bartender looked to be around thirty and was tattooed to within an inch of his life. He handed me the Stella and a glass, took the money I’d set on the bar, and smiled when I waved off the change.
“How long has this place been here?” I asked.
“Opened in ’99.”
I looked around, let him know I liked the layout of the place, which I did. “How long have you been working here?”
“I started in ’05, left in 2008. Came back for a second tour of duty in 2012. Been here ever since.”
Two twenty-something women came in and took a table on the other side of the bar. He moved off to serve them. He returned to the bar, got their drinks, a glass of red wine and a Scotch and something, then visited with them for a couple of minutes after delivering the drinks. He got back to me maybe five minutes later.
“Ready for another?”
I shook my head. “A friend of mine used to live around here. Terry Maughan. He might have come in here. You know him? He moved away about four years ago.”
The bartender moved a cloth around the bar in front of my drink.
“You say you were a friend of Terry’s?”
“Yeah. I’d like to catch up with him again. Haven’t seen him in a while.”
“I didn’t know Terry had any friends.”
I immediately regretted my lie, realizing it would restrict what I could ask. A friend would know, for example, where Maughan worked.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
The bartender shrugged. “He still came around once in a while even after him and Carly split up and they sold the house. Haven’t seen him for at least a year, though, maybe more.”
“Yeah, that’s about when I lost track of him, too. You hear anything after that?”
“Hear anything? Like what?”
I shrugged. Keeping it casual. “I don’t know … where he got to, what he’s doing now, that kind of stuff.”
“Well, you know Terry, doing as little as he could, always a new scam — he’d call it a business opportunity. I think the latest one was furnace cleaning — not door to door exactly, he had some woman in an office call ahead, or maybe he’d call himself, then he’d come by, driving a van that looked kind of official. I figured the thing was borderline illegal, but like I said, that was Terry.”
“He actually clean the furnaces at the places he made appointments with?”
“Sort of, I guess. Change the filter, fuck around a little, stuff you and I could do.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head like someone wishing good ol’ Terry would get his shit together. “Weird though, the guy just up and disappears, that’s pretty nuts even for him.”
The bartender gave the bar one more wipe, was now looking at the two women, who clearly were more appealing conversation partners than I was. “I guess,” he said. “Who knows, maybe he’s in jail. Wouldn’t surprise me. Sure you don’t want another?”
“No, just the one for now. Got to get back to work. Not like Terry, you know?” I chuckled.
“Yeah. What do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Writer,” he repeated, clearly puzzled. Probably didn’t talk to a lot of writers. “You mean like insurance?”
I didn’t even know what the hell that meant. Underwriter maybe? “Yeah, something like that.”
Outside I called Cobb.
He came on right away. “How’s it going?”
“Not bad. You?”
“Not good. One of the women they talked to that day passed away four years ago. One moved away — the Maritimes, nobody’s exactly sure where. And Mrs. Meers, the one who called it in, was very pleasant and wanted to help but couldn’t remember anything related to the exact time she made the call or when Maughan arrived on scene. So I hope you did better than me.”
“Maybe,” I said. “A couple of things. Terry Maughan’s wife’s name was Carly. They split about four years ago. That’s why the house was sold. But maybe she’s still in Calgary, and if she is, maybe we can find her. Terry was still around, part of the local scene up until about a year ago, then pretty much disappeared. But before that he was doing some kind of quasi door-to-door furnace-servicing thing. Sounds a little scammy, but the thing I wondered about, could it have put him at or maybe even in Kennedy’s house?”
Cobb was quiet for a long minute. “That’s certainly a possibility. Hard one to check though, with Kennedy gone.”
“Any chance we could get back in the house, go through Kennedy’s back bills and receipts? I mean, I know it’s a long shot, but might be worth a look.”
“Leave it with me,” Cobb said. “I’ll talk to Landry. Don’t know if the place is still vacant or if it’s been sold.”
“It looked dark and pretty vacant last time I was there.”
“Could be the cops haven’t released the place yet. I’ll do some checking. Why don’t you see if you can find Carly Maughan.”
“Okay. One more thing. The bartender threw out that Terry was a bit of an outlaw. Maybe we should make sure he’s not in jail.”
“Bartender?”
“Yeah, this research gig is a hard, hard life.”
“I see that. I’ll find out if Terry’s languishing in prison somewhere. Let you know.”
“Okay. I’ll get going on Carly.”
“You might have to drag yourself out of the bar to do that.”
“Damn, you sure can spoil a guy’s fun.”
Cobb laughed. “Later.”
It felt good to be back doing something, though I wasn’t at all sure how effective what I was doing actually was. Still, it was a lot better than sitting around moping.
To further solidify the good feeling I was enjoying right then, I found Carly Maughan in less than five minutes. Courtesy of Facebook, the world’s biggest time
-waster but, every once in a while, the source of quite useful information. I searched her name, found it, went to her timeline, and, because she was selling some kind of beauty products in what sounded to me like a pyramid scheme, I came to a couple of posts that gave me an address — a high-rise apartment not far from Mount Royal University in southwest Calgary — and a phone number.
I thought about phoning but changed my mind and decided to try for a face to face with the former Mrs. Terry Maughan. As I drove across town, I thought about what I’d say to her. I knew I couldn’t suggest that her former husband may have been an accomplice in a murder twenty-five years ago and that her former father- in-law may have been the murderer. I finally decided to fall back on my favourite introduction — that I was working on a story — this time the story was looking at the children of cops: how difficult was growing up when the kids knew what their mom or dad did; how many became cops themselves; and how many went in the opposite direction altogether and stumbled into a life of crime. As her ex had been a policeman’s son, I’d like to get her perspective on how she thought he turned out. Not altogether bullshit; in fact, I was very interested in her thoughts on Terry Maughan.
I refined my cover a little during the drive, and by the time I was parking on the street in front of her solid sixties apartment — not upscale but far from a dump — I was feeling good about my chances if I could actually get an audience with the former Mrs. Maughan.
Once in the ground-floor entrance, I buzzed apartment 816, waited thirty or forty seconds, then buzzed a second time, getting an almost instant response. A younger voice than I expected, pleasant, maybe even friendly. I laid out my spiel, ending with a plea that she give me just a couple of minutes of her time. I heard her speak to someone else, and finally came a cautious though not altogether reluctant agreement.
I rode up the elevator to the eighth floor. When I got to apartment 816, the door was ajar, as if Carly Maughan were inviting me in, but I knocked anyway. I’d pictured in my mind the woman who went with the voice, and those things are almost always terribly wrong. But not this time.
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