Vantage Point

by Scott Thornley

  “Those tall cedar hedges and evergreens outside don’t help. They make it what the Scots would call dour.” Fiza turned to face MacNeice. “I thought you were headed up north today.”

  “I was. I’ll go up later, possibly in a few days. Show me what you’ve got here.”

  * * *

  On the hardwood of the second-floor landing, a well-defined bloody boot print stood out. Studying it, MacNeice could see fold lines in the print that suggested the killer had worn plastic bags over his feet. He wondered why, since they didn’t obscure the sharp definition of the sole’s tread.

  Vertesi was watching. “New work boots, size eleven or twelve. The killer doesn’t care if we identify them; he just doesn’t want to clean them.”

  Stepping around pools of congealed blood, MacNeice stood by the bedroom window to survey the scene. His eyes landed on Matthew Terry’s body. “Interesting,” he said quietly to himself. If he was murdered in the basement, he hadn’t just fallen out of bed on the second floor. And yet, it looked as if Matthew Terry had slid off the bed, like a drunk startled awake in the night, taking with it the grey duvet now stretched taut under his butt. His head, turned slightly to the right, had dropped awkwardly to his sternum in a position that would have made breathing difficult — had he been breathing. A nightcap had slid back from his forehead and was held in place by the duvet. An overturned armchair lay wedged between the bed and his left shoulder. His legs splayed outward past the hem of his blood-soaked nightshirt.

  Vertesi pointed to the young man’s bloodied chest. “There aren’t any bullet holes through the son’s nightshirt, but Father Terry took two through his. Guessing from the blood near the doorway, he was shot there and then dragged over here.”

  Father Terry lay on his back in a blood-and-urine-stained nightshirt, near the overturned chair. His eyes were wide open and his mouth agape, as if he were about to say something.

  Aziz joined MacNeice at the window. “The old man must have put on that nightshirt before he was killed — or he was forced to.” She shook her head, adding, “I can’t believe either of them actually owned these things. They’re very heavy, rough cotton; you’d suffocate in them.”

  Protruding from under Matthew’s body was a doll in a tiny white T-shirt. Its soft plastic head had been split open to reveal blood-red cotton wadding spilling over its blonde curls onto the plush white broadloom, where it merged with the real blood from Matthew’s chest. One of the doll’s glassy blue eyes gleamed above its puckered smile. It appeared blissfully unaware of the gaping wound in its head.

  In the shadows to the left, a female mannequin lay on its back, wearing a nightshirt that matched those worn by the Terrys. Its streamlined, featureless feet were mere inches away from Matthew. Like the doll, its pouty face appeared unperturbed by the knots of red cotton gore gushing from the twin holes in its chest.

  The bed’s blue-striped pillow sagged like a bloated sausage over the edge of the mattress. The same bloody boot prints they’d found elsewhere were scuffed about on the white carpet, suggesting that the killer had worked hard to arrange the bodies. Something about that didn’t make sense to MacNeice. Matthew Terry, a man of medium height, perhaps 160 pounds, had been carried from the basement, not dragged up the stairs. It was clear to MacNeice that his weight hadn’t been an issue. The killer had carefully arranged the bodies, but for what purpose?

  “Who wears a nightshirt and a nightcap in the twenty-first century?” asked Aziz, tugging her latex gloves on tighter.

  “These two guys.” Vertesi glanced down at the younger man. “And that mannequin. It’s like a religious order. Everyone’s in sackcloth.”

  Aziz turned her attention to the bed. “And this bedding also looks out of time, like something you’d use if you didn’t have central heating and it wasn’t spring.”

  * * *

  On the carpet, a few feet away from the bodies, was a small brass letter V. It looked new. There weren’t any other letters, or anything from which a brass V could have been removed. In fact, nothing about the room — the paintings, the furnishings, the Inuit soapstone carving perched on a stately dresser — suggested that the Terrys were interested in one-inch brass letters.

  MacNeice was squatting over the letter, trying to get a closer look, when Vertesi asked, “What’s with that V, you think? Is the killer trying to send us a message? Victims, vengeance, Volvo . . .”

  “Venality, violation, vanquished . . .” Aziz was looking at the doll. “And then there’s the baby doll and that shop mannequin.” She gestured to the figure in the shadows.

  “Maybe V’s for a name.”

  “A name? Perhaps, but not theirs. I think the doll and mannequin complete a tableau — like theatre.” MacNeice scanned the scene. “They’re all actors playing parts. We’re supposed to name the play.”

  MacNeice took out his digital camera and began photographing the V on the floor. He asked Aziz and Vertesi to step aside so he could take horizontal and vertical shots of the bodies and the room. Looking at the images on playback, MacNeice became even more convinced that the letter’s placement was intentional. “I think the killer is telling us the best place to stand to view the murder scene. Like tourist vantage points at Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon.”

  Looking through the images on the small screen, MacNeice had a vague sense that he’d encountered the scene before. It was like a shadow passing by on the periphery of one’s sight, so quickly that it leaves you wondering if it was there at all. Not enough of a thought to seize and hold, but too much to let go.

  Vertesi straddled Father Terry’s body and lifted the open collar of the nightshirt with his pen to examine the entry wounds. With a sucking sound, the cloth surrendered and gave way. “Nine millimetre, I’d guess. Small burn circumference — the muzzle of the weapon must have been close. He was probably using a silencer.” He stood up and turned. “But why not leave him over there in the doorway? Why move him here?”

  “Exactitude. He was put there for effect. He’d be out of place over there,” MacNeice said, pointing to the door.

  “Like this is a scene of a crime scene? He’s matching this to something he’s seen or done before?” Vertesi’s tone was respectful but incredulous.

  “Possibly.”

  [3]

  At eighty-three, with all his aches and pains and a ­malignant tumour growing at the base of his skull, Father Howard Terry would have prayed for an end to his suffering, had he still believed in the power of prayer. He wasn’t a priest any longer; if anything, “Father” was just a ceremonial title now. The members of his flock had long since died — leaving him standing over their gravesites — or had quietly abandoned his fledgling breakaway church.

  Father Terry’s New Catholic Congregation was positioned to the left of the Church of England and to the extreme left of Roman Catholicism. Terry called it “God’s home for liberal-minded Catholics.” What that meant in practice was a complete absence of Latin liturgy, statuary, grand Gothic arches, a high altar, stained-glass windows, a building fund, great fonts for holy water, a choir loft, and an imported organ. There wasn’t a need for the last two because Father Terry felt the only instrument required was “God’s choir” — his congregation. At a time when every penny was being counted, the elimination of these Vatican trappings had also reduced his costs. This frugality might have left the impression that Father Howard Terry had a strong grasp of the financial realities of religion. He did not. In fact, he didn’t have a clue. However, his wife, Harriet, who didn’t give a fig about God but was nonetheless happy to accept the status that came with being a priest’s wife, did care a great deal about money, and she guided Terry in all aspects of its deployment.

  Although he was ordained as an Anglican priest, Terry’s faith had been slowly eroding for years. Even after he broke with the Church of England and established his New Catholic Congregation, he had found it harder and harder to s
ummon the fire to convince anyone of his mission, least of all himself. Terry had never renounced his faith. It was much simpler than that — it had just evaporated.

  He’d kept the doors open for thirty-one years, slowly burning through the inheritance his father had left him. In his last decade, the only joy he took from his duties was the summer camp he ran for inner-city boys out on Long Point, Lake Erie — two groups of twelve, each at camp for a month. Leaving the smoke and smells of Dundurn behind and seeing the boys live free had made it all seem worthwhile.

  More than once he’d wondered, as men do in old age, what path he would have followed if he could do life all over again. When he was his campers’ age, Terry had wanted to be an explorer. His father, an Anglican bishop, had persuaded him to follow another path, one he said would offer more certainty and spiritual reward. However, Terry wasn’t willing to forgo completely his dreams of adventure. They were fuelled and sustained by two books that he returned to time and time again: Arabian Sands and Desert, Marsh, and Mountain: The World of a Nomad, both by Wilfred Thesiger.

  Terry longed to follow in Thesiger’s footsteps to the “Empty Quarter” — an enormous swath of desert in southeastern Saudi Arabia. Had he done the research, he would have discovered that much of what Thesiger described no longer existed. On some level Terry had suspected as much, but he preferred to keep faith with Thesiger until the end. That dreams are untethered from the cold, dark stare of reality is surely their true value.

  * * *

  Two days after his sixty-third birthday, Father Terry took off his clerical collar, folded his cassock, vestments, and ceremonial robes, and dropped them into a large cardboard box. He placed his black Canterbury cap on top gently, with some reverence, like a man returning a baby robin to its nest. He surveyed the few things he wanted to keep: the heavy Bible he’d been given by his father following his ordination, and the silver Communion chalice, which he put in a white plastic bag. The Communion wafer box, two silverplate collection bowls, two ornate gold candlesticks, and a cross bearing Jesus, rendered in alabaster, he placed in their own box. Someone from St. Thomas Anglican Church would come by to collect them. Then he nodded half-heartedly towards the altar and left, closing the painted plywood doors for the last time.

  Once outside, as if the weight of the chalice was too much for him, he placed it on the curbside and walked to his car. As he drove away, it sat like a tiny trophy of failure, glittering in the sun as the plastic bag sagged shamelessly down its silver stem.

  Eight months later, Terry sold the church building and property for development; he never inquired about what became of the pews, altar, chairs, or his heavy oak desk. A year after that, giving in to his wife’s demands, he sold the thirty-acre beachfront camp property on Lake Erie. That was the cruellest cut.

  The Terrys moved to Mount Hope and never went to church again. He made several attempts at writing a memoir, but each found its way into the trash. Though life continued to unfold in glorious ways, it did so only in his head, a part of his anatomy he quietly referred to as his own Empty Quarter.

  Years later, Terry’s son Matthew was a successful lawyer and investor and engaged to be married. As he and his bride were both agnostic, they could have had a civil wedding, but they chose to be married in a Unitarian church. Matthew did so not because he gave a damn about faith; he was clever enough to spot that hypocrisy in his father. For Matthew, it was a business decision — a conclusion borne out by the guest list and the number of luxury cars in the parking lot.

  They didn’t see much of their son after that, as Matthew’s law practice and investments seemed to consume all of his time. On the few occasions when the younger couple came to the house, it wasn’t for Harriet’s home cooking or affection; it was out of obligation. Even before he pulled into the driveway, it seemed that Matthew regretted the impulse to visit. Those awkward get-togethers ended when, six months later, Harriet sat up in her bed and then fell back, dead of a heart attack.

  As far as Howard Terry could tell, Matthew’s marriage mirrored his own, never rising to the level of love and affection. It ended in divorce after just four years. Following that, months would go by without so much as a phone call. So it had come as a surprise when Matthew invited Terry to move back to Dundurn. “It’s a big house and I’ve got a cleaning lady,” he’d said. “You and I will have our own spaces. I don’t want to worry about you keeling over up there, left for dead on the mountain.”

  Who could resist such an invitation?

  [4]

  Vertesi looked out of the master bedroom window to see the orange-clad haz-mat team walking along the ­narrow passage between the driveway and a towering cedar hedge. Each was carrying a backpack and a black metal case. “Forensics is here, boss.”

  MacNeice scanned the scene one last time. “Fiza, I’d like you to lead the interview with Luisa. We’ll do it back at Division.”

  “With no forced entry, do you think the killer might have been known to the family?” Vertesi asked.

  “Possibly, but it could just as easily have been someone with a delivery,” Fiza said.

  “Someone with a lot of gear. The nightshirts, pillows and duvet, the mannequin and doll . . .” MacNeice stepped over the bloody threshold to the landing. “And wearing size-twelve boots.” He picked up a silver-framed photograph of Matthew Terry from a table on the landing and passed it to Vertesi. “See if you can find one of Father Terry as well. We’ll release them at the news conference.”

  Three members of the forensics team were making their way up the stairs. MacNeice stepped aside. “Michael, take two of the uniforms and start a thorough house-to-house. Let’s see what the neighbours know.”

  As he left the house, Mary Richardson, Dundurn’s chief coroner, was approaching, running a hand lightly along the yellow tape. “Hello to you, Mac. Two males, dead of gunshots — correct?”

  “Correct. Though, as you’ll see, it’s complicated.”

  “It was ever thus, Detective. Good to see you. Tio Pepe awaits.” A breeze caught her silver hair as she passed by, obscuring the smile he knew was there, before she disappeared inside.

  MacNeice knew that Tio Pepe would take the edge off viewing what Richardson’s assistant, Junior, referred to as an M&M, or “meat on metal.” Though he preferred grappa to sherry, it was mostly tea and digestive biscuits with Mary. A somewhat austere woman in her sixties, the chief coroner carried herself like a British aristocrat — if that aristocrat had a sharp, black sense of humour that often led to brilliant insights. For so many reasons, MacNeice was always on his toes with Richardson.

  The black Mercedes beeped. MacNeice swung around to see a young woman in a haz-mat suit emerge, holding the keys and a metal case.

  Two more units had arrived to block off Amelia Street and redirect traffic. As he made his way around them, MacNeice’s cellphone rang. Before answering, he turned back to the forensics team member. “These tracks in the driveway look wider than a sedan. Get all you can from them.”

  He looked at the call display. “MacNeice.”

  “Wallace. You up north, Mac?”

  “No, I’m on Amelia. Double homicide.” It seemed as if everyone in the division knew he was going to visit Kate’s grave. “I’m just heading in to interview the cleaning lady who was first on the scene. We’ll also announce a press conference.”

  “Good. Let’s get ahead of this one. I don’t know Matthew Terry, but I’m told he’s fairly wealthy and his father’s a minister.”

  “A retired priest.”

  “Yeah, okay. It’s a double homicide in a neighbourhood full of doctors and lawyers. This kind of thing makes them very nervous.” Wallace didn’t need to say more.

  MacNeice put the cell back in his pocket and looked around as Aziz came down the front steps. “Mac, I was wondering what had happened to the clothes those men were wearing. They weren’t in the bedroom with the bodies, so I
went looking for them. I found them in the old man’s bedroom closet, neatly stacked as if the cleaning lady had been. The men’s pant pockets hadn’t been emptied; folding money, coins, and tissues were still in them. The rest of the clothes were crisply folded and in more or less the same order: Matthew’s pants, socks, T-shirt, and sweater — all bloody, of course — and pants, socks, undershirt, shirt, and cardigan for Father Terry.”

  “What do you make of that?” MacNeice asked.

  “Honestly, my first thought was that our man must work in clothing retail, hospitality, or a laundry.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Maybe he’s just neat.” She smiled. “Give me the keys. I’ll get Luisa settled in your car.”

  MacNeice stopped on the sidewalk to study a dusty tire track. There were slashes and small chunks out of the tire’s well-worn surface. They were as unique as a thumbprint and suggested a utility vehicle or something you’d find in the construction and renovation trades. He snapped a photo.

  [5]

  Weeks before, when the rain finally stopped, it was as if every living thing in Dundurn had been forgiven a dreadful sin. Each morning, steam rose from waterlogged lawns, pavement, and sidewalks. After a week had passed, teens in T-shirts and tank tops were strutting stuff not seen since the previous fall. And no one could find a plumber. They had been dealing with all the flooding, clogged drains, and sewage-filled basements, making their money the hard way. Within days of it being over, people assumed they’d all gone on vacation to someplace where it never rains.

  Next in the line of exhausted services were the funeral parlours. There were several funerals a day now — three-month-old bodies taken out of refrigeration, eased into their coffins, and sent off to the cemetery, where the water table had at last receded enough to lower them safely into the ground. While many of the families had been frustrated by the delay, the story of Wally Ecclestone was enough to keep them quiet.