“All right. I’m here because of the knife. It’s the only piece of evidence that leads the police to believe you murdered Diana, and of course, the hiatus of seven months while you were deployed. How do you explain your weapon getting into someone else’s hands?”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Did you know it was missing?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A month ago. Thought I’d lost it on a mission. Wasn’t a big deal.”
She knit her hands together. “It’s a big deal now, isn’t it?”
“Appears so.”
Mattie exhaled and sat back in her chair.
“Did you enjoy the drink?” he asked in a sensual voice that made her quiver from head to toe.
His masculine aura radiated power, self-control and worst of all, mind-numbing sensuality. The kind that grips a woman’s attention so completely she’d walk into a light pole strolling down the sidewalk. “Yes, thank you.”
Lieutenant Commander LaPierre didn’t seem overly concerned or agitated at all over this. Was he sure of his innocence or did he not care? The latter struck her with more questions. Why wouldn’t he care? He would be charged seven times over and tossed into the penal system for the rest of his life, named one of Canada’s most prolific imprisoned killers.
“Don’t you care about your life?” she asked, verbalizing her thoughts.
Instead of answering the question, he tilted his head at her. The same sexy, inquiring tilt he’d given her the other night. “Are you scared of me? Maybe wondering if I’d come to your table the other night, whether or not you’d be the seventh victim instead?”
His question sobered her thoughts, but when she chose to be brave and look in his eyes, she saw a glint of amusement. “Maybe. You left the bar sometime after two-thirty. Diana was found at three. The coroner says she was killed between two and three a.m.”
“Which gives me a thirty minute window of guilt or innocence. I left at two thirty. Am I guilty in your eyes?”
He’d been staring into hers without fail since she’d sat down. He should know she had her doubts. “That’s what I’m going to try and find out. Do you have any family other than your brother?”
“Our parents are still alive.”
“Why do the police think your childhood plays a part in this?”
Finally, Greg broke his stare and lowered his gaze to the table. “Our father was an alcoholic for many years.”
She nodded and glanced around the visitor’s room. The guards were starting to clear out the inmates. “Spousal and child abuse?”
He nodded.
“And your brother?”
“He had some problems. Mostly because of PTSD.”
“Mostly?”
“His issues have no bearing on this.”
“But they have a bearing on you. He went to the Unites States and broke his parole. Was it to see someone?”
“Yes. His wife. Now his ex-wife.”
“Did he abuse her, too? Did she run away?”
“Listen,” Greg said, standing up. “If you want to earn some stars for your career as a journalist, find out who murdered those women. If you do, I’ll be released.”
She stood and faced him. Broad shoulders and his height made her feel small, which didn’t happen often. “Lieutenant Commander LaPierre, I intend on doing that. I’ve been reporting on this case since it began. You are the only suspect they have detained. I know you told the police that Diana had left you for someone else, but you don’t seem all that broken up about it or her death.”
He pushed the chair up to the table. “I liked Diana.”
“Liked but not loved?” she said before thinking. Truly, she wondered what being loved by a man like LaPierre would be like. Men like him only existed on Facebook memes of ultra-hot guys. Not that she wasted much time on fantasies, but she spent a lot of time researching and came across them once in a while.
His rigid jaw flexed again. “I was very fond of her, but I could see she was happier with the man she left me for. I have to accept that. Just like I have to accept death. I’ve seen a lot of it during my career. Too much.” His brow tightened and he looked at his hands. “Too damn much blood. I don’t need to see more when I come home from a mission.”
“I have more questions.”
“Time’s up,” he said.
“Will you talk to me again?”
“The police haven’t found anyone to corroborate my departure time from the bar.”
“What if the coroner is off by thirty minutes?”
“What if he is?” He nodded and gave her a quick glance before he walked to the door and knocked on it.
As the mysterious Lieutenant Commander disappeared from her view, one thought swirled in her head and it had nothing to do with her pulse-pounding attraction to his primal sexuality.
He’s innocent.
Chapter Seven
Mattie gripped the wet railing, the cold metal biting her skin, and traipsed down the stairs leading into Market Square. Steady rain wet the pavement and darkened an already dark night. By ten p.m., only shadows hunkered against the buildings dating back to the late 1800’s. Victoria was not only tourist central because of its recreation of old England. Ghost hunters sought out regular paranormal sightings.
The saloons and brothels were long gone from Victoria’s core, but historians recorded in great detail how the town was built from the paychecks of men who frequented the establishments during the gold rush. The most famous ghosts in Market Square being Charlie Kincaid, whose throat had been slit, and his girlfriend, Belle Adams, who’d committed the crime out of a jealous rage. Old Charlie had announced he was dumping his sex-trade working girlfriend and heading to Vancouver with a new gal. Poor old Charlie never left a nearby hotel alive. In a city exploding with a puritanical population, Victoria had a very lively and robust red light district back in the day.
The Square seemed kind of pitiful to Mattie at this time of year. There was an Indian cuisine take-out window. A vegan restaurant and a couple small tourist shops. The square didn’t have the energy the rest of Victoria’s tourist area exuded.
At this time of night and being November, no one ventured here. One end of the yellow crime scene tape had come undone from a nearby bench and snapped at the mercy of the cold wind. Keeping alert, she walked in that direction. She didn’t expect whoever killed Diana to return.
Half of Market Square was covered by a high roof and protected the dark bloodstain where Diana’s body had been found, from the rain. Mattie stared and then knelt. Her fingers traced one edge of the unmistakable void. It ran between where Diana’s neck had probably been, down to the end of her torso. Constable Yates, Mattie’s police contact, said the victim had been cut from thorax to groin. Some of her organs had been removed and placed beside her.
Diana had been romantically involved with a doctor. He’d be the first person Mattie would have investigated. The police had brought him in for questioning but released him based on the fact he had witnesses. The hospital staff vouched for his whereabouts the night Diana was murdered.
Mattie sniffed and rubbed her runny nose. Turning on her heel, she viewed the entrance to the square. From this position, she couldn’t see the stairs leading to Pandora Street, or the covered breezeway that led to the parking lot behind the square. How had Diana gotten here in the first place? The gates were normally locked at that time of night.
Diana had worked at the Royal Jubilee Hospital. As a nurse, she had two day shifts followed by two night shifts. The police still didn’t have an answer to exactly how she disappeared. Constable Yates said Diana wasn’t a partier. She worked and had some close friends. An upstanding young woman who paid her bills on time, didn’t have bad habits nor connections to any seedy characters. She loved to read and spend time with her extended family. She’d been taken four days before being found here.
The sound of footsteps palpitated Mattie’s heart and she whirled arou
nd.
“Hey, lady. You got spare change? Need some food.”
“Sure.” She pulled a couple toonies from her pocket and placed them in the homeless man’s gloved hand. The mittens only covered his aged fingers to the first joint, revealing yellow nails and a hard life.
He mumbled his thanks, then coughed with a wet, congested bark.
“Do you hang out here a lot?” she asked.
He nodded, his eyes partially covered by the wool hat pulled low over his ears.
“Did the police talk to you about what happened here?”
He shook his head. “I hid.” He coughed again and then spit.
“From the police? Or…” she paused. “Or while it was happening?” Her heart galloped with hope that she had just found a lead.
“I’m hungry,” he mumbled.
She waited for him to answer the question. Slowly, he raised his weary eyes to her. “Both.”
Mattie unzipped a side pocket on her purse and pulled the first bill she touched. She held the twenty out to him. “Please, tell me what you saw.”
His hand trembled as he reached for the bill, as if he thought it might be a trick and she’d pull it away.
“Take it.”
“They brought her in here. She was scared.”
Mattie’s heart pumped a notch faster. “They?”
“Two of ‘em,” he gruffed.
Two of them! Two killers. “Can you describe them?”
“Black coats. Warm coats.” Attacked by a coughing fit, he stopped, wiped his mouth, and looked at her.
“Tall? Short?”
“One was tall, dark hair. Big guy.”
Mattie didn’t like where this was going. It sounded like Greg. “And the other?”
“Shorter, not by much.”
“What kind of coat?”
“Wool, somethin’ a rich guy has.”
A rich guy would be a relative term, based on his status in life. “Could you hear them? Did they talk?”
“Didn’t say much.” The old man shuffled as if a little antsy to get away from her.
She dug in her purse and pulled out a ten. “Please, what did you hear?”
The old man took the ten. “Taller one had a voice like sandpaper. Said something like, he had no choice. Said he’d gone for a drink and thought about it.”
Sounded like a psychopath to her. It also worried her because Lieutenant Commander LaPierre had sat for hours in the Irish Times deep in thought, mostly ignoring the beautiful women who’d tried to pick him up.
The old man’s eyes, sunken and etched with broken blood vessels, gazed at her. “She said something like he’d deceived her. For a minute, I think she thought he’d let her go.” He pointed at the ground. “He was fast. Slit her throat and then laid her down and started cutting her up.”
“What did the other guy do?”
“Watched. Smiled.”
Mattie sniffed, the cold wind made her nose drip faster.
“He hummed to himself while he was doing it.”
That had a creepy sound to it. “Did you recognize the song?”
The homeless man nodded. “When I was a lad back in Britain, me father taught us sea shanties when he was home. Recognized the tune right off.”
She blinked away the rain. “What was it?”
“The Black Ball Line.”
She didn’t know the words to the song. She’d have to look them up later. “The police found a knife near her body.”
The old man nodded. “They got interrupted. Didn’t think they heard them youngins coming, they was both intent on their bloody work. The guy cuttin’ hummed while the other watched on his knees. When them kids came into the square, they saw each other and the men ran, ducking their heads beneath the collar of their coats.
“Which way did they go? Through the breezeway or up the stairs?”
“Back toward the parking lot. The gates are locked on Johnson Street and in the breezeway after eleven. He must have had a key and left it open when he and the other fella ran. Kids didn’t know what was going on until the boys ventured a closer look.”
“So the murderers didn’t mean to leave the knife?”
“No, ma’am. Don’t think so. His hands were busy pullin’ out her innards when they got interrupted.
“Did you see either of their faces?”
“Not really. Both white, I can tell ye that.”
“Age?”
“They weren’t old. Not the way they run outta here. Maybe in their thirties.”
“How many kids interrupted them?”
“Four. Probably been drinking at the bar. They was loud and laughing, least until they saw her body. They backed away pretty fast, the boys grabbing their terrified girlfriends.”
Mattie’s brow scrunched together concentrating on the blood stain again. The forensics team must have seen the voids if both men kneeled next to the body. “Thanks. Go get something to eat and something for that cough.”
He nodded and began to trundle off. “Lady?”
She looked up.
“They was enjoying what they was doin’.”
She swallowed thickly. “If I gave you my number, I don’t suppose you could find a phone and call me if you ever see them again?”
The old boy thought about it for a second. “You buy me dinner again?”
She nodded and pulled a card from her pocket, and he tucked it into one of the many on his tattered coat.
Mattie surveyed the windows in the buildings facing the square. No one lived in any of the old apartments on the second floor, so no one could confirm what the old man had just told her, but those four kids could. Two killers. It was rare, but not unheard of. Standing in the rain, she let out a deep breath wishing Diana’s apparition would appear.
Two men bring Diana here. Did they know her? Maybe she’d been in the wrong place at the right time. Maybe she’d gone out for milk or muffins one night, and they’d taken her. Diana’s boyfriend, the doctor, had been working night shifts, which gave him an alibi.
The old man had just given fresh wind to her investigation, but it carried a migrating flock of questions with it, and it didn’t necessarily clear Lieutenant Commander LaPierre.
Mattie turned to look at the stain and startled, then let out a little laugh as the seagull squawked and flapped his wings, his webbed feet standing dead center of the morbid reminder. The city was famous for its ghosts, turn of the century hangings, and now a Victorian killing re-enacted in a city reminiscent of England. She shivered against a gust of moist wind. There were no more answers here.
She walked briskly up the breezeway that led to the small parkade behind the market. When she reached the parking lot, she turned in a circle, hoping to see a security camera. The lot didn’t have many spaces. With a steep slope from the road to the breezeway, Mattie’s thighs burned walking to the ticket machine. She jotted down the number of the company that ran the lot. Maybe they’d done their rounds during the time the car had been parked here or maybe a roving attendant had seen something. Yet, at that hour of the morning, it was unlikely anyone came around. She’d call and find out. Hoofing it up the incline of Pandora Street, where she’d parked her car, she looked forward to a much needed hot bath.
After parking in the underground garage of her complex, she popped the trunk and lifted her laptop case wedged beside the spare tire. She and Mary had been roomies in UVIC University of Victoria while working toward their degrees. When they graduated, leasing a place together seemed like a good idea. That was eleven years ago. They’d moved four times. Every time one of them got a better job, they moved a little closer to an ocean view. They were both thirty-three and both had good-paying jobs, but affording oceanfront in Victoria Harbour was way past their pay grade. They’d leased this condo from a Japanese guy who owned it but lived overseas and wanted long term residents. It overlooked the Coast Guard base and an open view to the harbour.
Mattie fumbled with her keyring till she separated the little gold
key for the post box and retrieved their mail. Mary never picked up the mail nor took out the trash, but more times than not, Mattie would come home late and there would be a plate of dinner left for her in the oven. They took care of each other that way.
Mattie’s brothers lived in Alberta. Both had joined the RCMP like their father. Charlie, her oldest brother, married last year. Connor still liked a different girl in his bed on the weekends. Mattie’s parents left town for six months of the year snow-birding in Arizona. They’d just left at the beginning of October and wouldn’t return until April. Mary’s folks retired in Sooke, and that’s where Mattie had spent the last five Christmases.
Mattie ran the three flights of stairs to her condo and slipped the key in the door. Pushing it open, she listened for a minute, relieved no one was howling for God.
Mary’s beau worked for the RCMP, not the Victoria city police. Like many of the bigger cities in Canada, Victoria had their own force. The RCMP, however, reigned supreme over other smaller cities in the outlying reaches, like Langford, Colwood, or Sidney. The RCMP and the city cops were always jiving each other but when it came to law enforcement, both were dedicated to bringing in the bad guys.
She plopped her bag on the table and peeled off her soaked leather jacket, hanging it in the bathroom. Still no sounds from down the hall. Maybe they’d gone out on the town? Mary and her huge boyfriend had become a regular item for the past six months.
Stooping in front of the oven, her prayers were answered with a plate covered in tin foil on the middle rack. Using a pot holder, she pulled it out. Flipping up an edge, she sniffed the goodness. Mary had gone all out for Brandon. He wasn’t a bad guy for being a cop. He loved his fitness. Mary wasn’t fussy about increasing her cardio, instead she power-shopped as a national sport. Brandon liked camping. Mary wanted room service.
Mattie chuckled to herself. No matter their differences, everyone agreed Mary was a great cook, and she filled her mouth with a piece of steak and groaned, her stomach joining in.
Pouring a glass of red, she looked up when the front door cracked opened.
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