by Mike Knowles
“I would, Vlad, but it’s late and your card game is the only place open right now. Besides, you hear things the cops don’t. I bet you know about a lot of things before they even happen.”
“I have my eye on everything,” Vlad said. “I am like the sun.” Vlad ran a hand through his hair and puffed out his chest. He was still trying to sell himself to the men at the table. From the looks on their faces, it wasn’t working.
“You’re more like a sewer, Vlad. Everything winds up running past you eventually.”
“You’re a clever nigger, eh boy?”
Os sighed. “Back to that, Vlad?” He brought the revolver up and put pressure on the trigger an ounce at a time. The hammer crept back until Os held it at its zenith. Three chambers had been empty, leaving a one in three chance for Vlad.
The Russian stared frozen at the gun aimed at his left eye. His hair fell strand by strand until it hung in a clump over his sweaty forehead.
Bang!
The bullet whizzed past Vlad’s head, grazing his ear.
“Fuck!” The Russian jumped out of his chair and away from the table cupping his ear in an effort to keep the blood from leaving his body.
Os got up and tucked his chair back in. The old man with the egg head stared hard at Os. Os stared back. He had been given the evil eye by scarier people, but the old man held his own.
Os showed the revolver to the old man. “Lucky it pulls to the left,” he said.
The old man didn’t move; he just kept eyeballing Os. Os put the gun in his coat pocket and walked out of the bar.
Vlad hadn’t known anything; Os was sure of that now. He had no choice but to check. Every avenue had to be investigated—even the ones that you couldn’t come back from. Things were over between Os and Vlad and there would be fallout. The Russian could come after Os in any number of ways. It didn’t matter—there were more important things now.
Os went home to his apartment and drank. He had backed off Julie because that was what she wanted.
Os threw a lamp against the wall.
If he was being honest with himself, he hadn’t backed off because she asked him to. It wasn’t a break-up; it was an ultimatum. She forced him away and he went along with it. He went along with it because it was what he thought he wanted, but now he knew it had been a mistake. If she had been with him, if he hadn’t driven her away, this wouldn’t have happened—not to her and not to the baby. Os owned it—all of it. There was no going back and no making things right for Julie, but there was still a chance to save his daughter. That was something, and Os grabbed onto it with the desperation of a drowning man. He would find her. He had to find her.
He stared at the clock and thought about the baby. Each movement of the minute hand brought the kid closer and closer to death. He called Jerry’s cell every hour and asked about the Amber Alert. Nothing credible ever came in. He had more beer and kept staring at the clock. The beer didn’t get him drunk; it kept him occupied. He wanted to be outside tearing the city apart, but without a lead he was crippled. The beer slowly let the alcohol in; it dulled his edge and weakened his guard enough to feel his loss and fear without letting it overwhelm him. By five in the morning, he was throwing up; by six, he was eating with the other detectives; and by eight, he was driving to Central with Woody following close behind. No one had brought the baby to the hospital overnight, confirming what Os felt in his gut all along. The baby wasn’t a kidnapping—it was a message.
Os knew Woody was pissed off; he didn’t care. Dennis was going to get in the way if he wasn’t put in his place. Woody could fuck off too. Os knew Julie’s death was going to be leading to some dark places and Woody’s Columbo routine wouldn’t work on the hard cases in their own backyard. The rulebook had to go out the window for a while, and if Woody couldn’t get on board, he could go too.
14
Dennis was sitting in a small waiting room at 8:30 a.m. The receptionist’s desk was empty and the lights were off. Dr. Kelsey worked in a medical building that held numerous other doctor’s offices as well as a blood lab. The doors to the building were open so that people could access the blood lab, and Dennis found his way into Dr. Kelsey’s waiting room without any interference. He guessed that the building custodian opened the doors in the morning when he or she was cleaning up, and left it that way.
Dr. Kelsey’s office was small; Dennis predicted the practice matched. Dennis had thumbed through the appointment book on the receptionist’s desk when he came in. The last heading for a bipolar group session was two days ago. There was no list of names under the heading—just the title of the session and the time: 4 p.m. Dennis flipped the pages back and saw that the group met on a regular basis a couple of times a week. There were other group sessions with different titles, but only one for bipolars.
Walking to a chair, Dennis caught his reflection in the glass panel beside the door. He looked terrible. His hair was sticking up at the back and his shirt was wrinkled. On the plus side, he looked thin. Dennis ran his hand over his shirt, feeling his stomach. His gut felt like a beach ball and he was able to grab handfuls of flesh with some left over. He didn’t feel thin. He had a feeling there was some sort of optical illusion at play. Something like those Magic Eye posters that everyone used to have. Dennis once spent a whole afternoon staring at one of those things until he decided it was a fucking scam. No one ever totally agreed on what they saw, and they usually said they saw it after someone asked, “Do you see the rocket ship?” It was all bullshit.
Dennis gave up on the reflection and read a few dated Chatelaines until a petite woman opened the door. She had a round face underneath a meticulously trimmed haircut. The style left her with bangs down to her eyebrows that were cut in a perfectly straight line. When she turned to close the door, Dennis saw that the back of her hair had been cut in another perfect straight line along the base of her neck. The woman wore a purple dress under a black knee-length coat and heels that had to be at least four inches high. Her hands were loaded with a large purse and an insulated lunch bag. She put everything down on the counter and walked back to the light switches by the door. Each switch brought several panels in the ceiling to life until the whole office was lit. When the woman turned back from the door, she saw Dennis and screamed.
The scream was a bit over the top, but he liked surprising her. It made him feel good to be scary, especially after Os pulled that shit at breakfast. He had felt like a little girl, getting choked like that in front of all those people. And the way Os just sat back down and started eating again like it was no big deal. He thought he was so cool—well two could play that game. Dennis dog-eared the page he was reading about low-calorie lasagne and closed the magazine.
“Who the hell are you?” the woman yelled.
Dennis got up, folded the magazine in half, and tucked it under his arm while he opened his coat and went for his wallet. He saw the woman see the gun and her eyes went wide. He pulled his badge and flipped the case open so that his shield fell forward like a heavy dog tongue.
The woman looked at the badge, and then said, “I’m calling security.”
Maybe she didn’t recognize it. “Lady, I’m a cop. I outrank security.”
“You’re breaking and entering.”
“What? You think I’m after last November’s issue of Chatelaine?”
“There are valuable things. I have medication.”
“You do or the doctor does?”
“I am the doctor, asshole. Now tell me why you’re in my office.”
Dennis was speechless for a second. He had never thought that the doctor was going to be a young woman. He had pictured her old and wrinkly.
“You’re Dr. Kelsey?”
“I am, and I want to know what you are doing in my office.”
“I’m here to speak with you about one of your patients.”
Dr. Kelsey laughed. “Does the word confident
iality mean anything to you? I couldn’t tell you anything even if I wanted to. And I don’t by the way.”
Christ, she was a ball buster. “This patient is dead, Doc, so I don’t think she’ll mind.”
Dr. Kelsey’s eyes softened a bit. “You’re here about Lisa O’Brien? Why would you come to me about a traffic accident? Is this about identifying the body? I thought with getting her name, you would have been able to locate family to do that. I know her mother lives in Toronto. They’re estranged, but she would be the best person to contact.”
“Lisa O’Brien is dead?” Dennis was shocked.
“You didn’t know? The police called me last night. They found a woman dead. She had no identification, except for a prescription in her pocket. The prescription was from me. The detective who called me described the woman and told me what the prescription was for. It was Lisa.”
Hearing that the person who seemed to know Julie the best just died shut Dennis up. His brain was going over the list of things he would no longer be able to find out through Lisa when he noticed the doctor staring at him.
“If you didn’t come to talk to me about Lisa, why are you here?”
“I’m here about Julie Owen.”
Dr. Kelsey’s jaw went slack as she processed the news. “My God. Julie is dead? How did it happen? Was it the baby?”
Dennis didn’t answer straight away.
“She wasn’t on any meds,” Dr. Kelsey said. “She went off them during her pregnancy. Nothing I prescribed could have harmed her.”
“She was murdered,” Dennis said.
“Murdered?”
Dennis nodded.
“Who? Why?”
“She was a patient of yours?”
“Yes, for almost nine months now. She had come to me wanting to go off her medication because she was pregnant. It is incredibly hard to do. I helped her cope.”
“Explain cope.”
Dr. Kelsey looked away. Dennis could see her biting the inside of her cheek.
“Listen, I already know she was bipolar. I’m just trying to get an idea of what was going on in her life. That’s how a murder investigation works. We tear her life apart and examine each and every piece. Everything is important—everything. Some details can seem like nothing on their own, but they become something when they are added to the other pieces of the puzzle. Julie was a cop; we want to get whoever killed her, so please just tell me what you know.”
Dennis watched the doctor watch him. She was evaluating him in the way that shrinks do. Long stares that wait for you to get nervous and say something first. They wait for you to blurt out something and then pounce on whatever you said. Problem was, Dennis was a cop. Cops had been using the stare since before there were shrinks. Dennis’s father was a cop. Worse still, a drunk cop. Dennis had been stared down, cursed down, and beat down by the best. Dr. Kelsey had nothing up her sleeve that could make him flinch.
Dennis had grown up listening to his old man’s stories. He’d wake up in the middle of the night because he heard loud voices roaring with laughter. Dennis would walk down the stairs, sit on the floor beside the garage door, and listen. His father would be three sheets to the wind and so would the other cops who had come by. The men in the garage would talk for hours about the job, the perps, the asshole brass, even the typists. Those overheard conversations taught Dennis everything about being a man. Sure, he got in trouble at school when he called his principal a cunt. But she was acting just like the woman who had put in a complaint about his father. He took a beating at home that night, but he took it like a man. Just like his dad took his sergeant’s shit at work. Dennis was old school; he talked the talk and put enough bad guys away for everyone to be sure that he walked the walk. After work, Dennis forgot about being a cop and he forgot about his father. He couldn’t be his dad twenty-four seven.
Dr. Kelsey came to a conclusion. “She was under a lot of stress.”
“Because she was bipolar?”
“Do you know about the illness?”
“A little.”
Dr. Kelsey shook her head. “Then, you don’t know anything. People throw around the word like it has some kind of standard textbook definition, but it doesn’t. Everyone has their own personal battle. They usually try all kinds of medication, often they are over medicated, and they spend a great deal of their lives being unhappy.”
“The medication doesn’t fix it.”
“The medication often leaves them feeling slow and exhausted. Most can’t put up with the side effects, and they end up going off their medication. But that doesn’t solve it; they still hate the way they feel so they usually start self-medicating with booze or drugs.”
“That what Julie did?”
“No, no, I’m only speaking in generalities.” Dr. Kelsey looked at her watch. “I have a patient soon. Perhaps we could schedule an appointment to discuss this further.”
“You have a ten thirty and it’s only . . .” Dennis looked at his own watch, “nine fifty-five.”
“How do you . . . you looked in my appointment book? That is an invasion of my privacy and my patients’. How dare you.”
Dennis took a breath and then spoke. “I got a dead cop and a missing baby, so forgive me if I opened a book.”
“She had the baby?”
Dennis said nothing.
“You said she had the baby.”
“I said the baby was missing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone cut it out of her and took it.”
“Oh my God! Why would someone do that?” The colour drained from Dr. Kelsey’s face.
“That’s what I need to know. Now tell me, was Julie one of those self-medicators?”
“I need to sit down,” she said.
Dennis gestured to the seat he had been sitting in, but Dr. Kelsey shook her head. “No, my office. I want to sit there.”
Dennis followed the doctor into the next room. She wobbled on her heels as she walked, but Dennis didn’t reach out to steady her. He doubted she would welcome his touch. Inside, the office was a shade of dark green that wasn’t too dark or too light. There was a window beside Dr. Kelsey’s desk and a couch in the centre of the room. Beside the leather couch was a chair. Dr. Kelsey chose the chair; Dennis opted to stand.
Dr. Kelsey pinched the bridge of her nose and took several deep breaths. When she was ready to speak, she looked at the ceiling instead of at Dennis.
“She’d been a self-medicator in her youth, but when I met her she was only on prescription drugs. She had changed doctors and medications many, many times, trying to find the Holy Grail that would make her feel normal. Then, she got pregnant. Julie was smart; she read the warning labels. She was worried the medication would be harmful to the baby, so she decided to go off.”
“You agree with the decision?”
“Pregnancy doesn’t mean medication has to end, but Julie was not interested in staying on her meds while she was pregnant. She was very firm about her decision and so I worked with her to devise a plan that she was comfortable with.”
“Meaning?”
“Therapy—both group and one-on-one—eating right, exercise. Julie even got acupuncture on a regular basis. She did everything she could to maximize her chances of success.”
“Did it work?”
Dr. Kelsey looked away from the ceiling. “Bipolar disorder isn’t like an infection you can fight off with antibiotics. You can do everything right and still never keep the illness at bay. It has a lot to do with brain chemistry. That’s where the medication comes in. Without that, it was an uphill battle.”
“Fine,” Dennis said. “Was she winning the uphill battle?”
“Yes, she was.” The words were firm. Decisive.
“What can you tell me about her? Did she have friends in group?”
Dr. Kelsey gav
e Dennis a fed-up look. “I can’t divulge any patient information.”
“I know Lisa O’Brien and her were close, but I can’t talk to her again. You’re the only lead I have right now.”
“I’m sorry, I have to think of my patients.”
Dennis waved a hand through the air. “Fine, fine, let’s stick to Julie. What do you know about the pregnancy? Who was the father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh come on, doc. That’s not privileged. It’s about her and no one else. Not telling puts the baby in danger—if it ain’t dead already.”
“I mean it. I don’t know. Whenever we broached the subject, Julie just shut down. She always said she would rather think about the good things ahead instead of the bad stuff behind.”
“So what did you talk about?”
“Lately, her mother. She has . . .”
“Alzheimer’s,” Dennis said.
“You know more than you let on.”
Dennis smiled. He knew he was one of those tough-guy cops that people wrote off as an ox. No one ever suspected the sharp mind underneath until, like Kojak, Dennis put everything together and solved the case.
“I know some things.”
“Julie was terrified of ending up like her mother. The Alzheimer’s has been getting worse for her. Julie already hated her own mind; to think that it could possibly get even worse was terribly difficult for her to bear.”
“Where is her mother?”
“St. Joan of Arc on the mountain.”
Dennis knew the Arc—it was the kind of place where people off-loaded elderly family members who were the last of their generation. Dennis fished for more from Dr. Kelsey until the ten-thirty appointment showed up and the doctor showed him out. He gave her his card and told her to call him if anything else came to mind, but he knew she wouldn’t. She put the card in a desk drawer without looking at it and led him out. St. Joan’s was the only place to go.
15
The gangs, assault, narcotics, and guns unit was a special unit that had been established to combat the rise in gang related activity. Detective sergeant Ken Raines had been with the unit since its inception and he had chosen each of the team members himself. Woody and Os met him in his office at eight thirty. He had kept them waiting outside while he was on the phone. Woody guessed it was with someone upstairs. When they finally got into the office, they each took a chair in front of the detective sergeant’s desk. Raines had three empty Styrofoam cups around his desk like wayward satellites.