I wondered if Reeny’s new fiancé liked opera, but I didn’t wonder about it for long. I fell asleep halfway through the disc and didn’t wake up until a couple of minutes past eleven. Feeling masochistic, I turned on the television to catch the remainder of the eleven o’clock news … and there was Baz Tucker, in living colour, rifling the tourist’s video camera out over Broker’s Bay. I stabbed the remote and went up to bed.
chapter twenty-one
Greg Matthias came by the studio at 9:00 Thursday morning. “They’re releasing Bobbi this afternoon,” he told me. “I’m going to pick her up, if that’s all right with you.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Just checking.”
“Well, it’s fine with me. I’ve got plenty to do around here.” I waved toward the machine. “The coffee’s fresh. Cups in the cupboard.”
He poured himself a cup of coffee, slurped it noisily, pronounced it drinkable. Then he said, “Is your sister around?”
“She’s upstairs. What’s up?”
“I need to ask her some questions about her husband’s relationship with Anna Waverley.”
“He’d met her and her husband at some fundraising events. I think that’s about the extent of it.”
“I still need to talk to her.”
“Should I get her?”
“In a minute.” He drank some more coffee, then said, “Firth and Tucker are in some serious hot water over what happened yesterday.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“The other cops, too, but mostly Firth because she was senior officer on the scene and Tucker because he did what thousands of cops have wanted to do since the Rodney King fiasco.”
“They coped the best they could with a bad situation,” I said. “That old man is strong as a truck. And he’s more than a little bit crazy to boot. They may as well have tried to catch an elephant with a butterfly net.” I told him what Mabel had said to me just before it had gone bad.
“Yeah, and Loth’s lawyer, some grandstanding civil rights hotshot who specializes in wrongful imprisonment cases, is going to do everything he can to see that she pays for it. I just hope the bosses don’t hang her out to dry.”
“They won’t if they call me and some of the other people on the quay as witnesses. Not just the tourist whose camera Baz Tucker chucked into Broker’s Bay.”
“Don’t count on it. Another thing. Have you seen Norman Brooks lately?”
“Not since the night of his run-in with Loth outside Bridges. Why?”
“Bobbi’s worried about him. He hasn’t been to see her since she woke up.”
“I hate to say this, but maybe he’s gone on a bender.”
“Let’s hope that’s all it is,” Matthias said. “He’s been making a nuisance of himself since Bobbi was hurt. He still has connections and it looks like he may have used them to get access to the case files. But he’s been more than a little out of control lately and it’s possible he’s stirred up something he couldn’t handle.” He drank some more coffee, then speared me with a look. “Speaking of nuisances, I understand you’ve been playing detective, asking around about Anna Waverley.”
“Yeah …?”
“Learn anything useful?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.” I told him what John Ostrof had told me about the man he’d seen arguing with Anna Waverley on the quay.
“Lovers’ tiff?”
“Or marital.”
“Could it be the guy who came to your studio?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The description doesn’t fit.”
“Any idea who it does fit?”
“No. It was a bit vague. But he also said he thought he might have seen him at parties on the Wonderlust.”
“Would he be willing to sit down with a police artist, see if we can come up with a reasonable facsimile?”
“I think so. You might also try talking to Loth again. If anything he says can be believed, he’s apparently been spying on people in their boats. Maybe he’ll make more sense when he’s back on his medication.”
“Loth’s a peeper? It’s hard to imagine a guy that size creeping about and peering through portholes.”
“Who’s peering into whose portholes?” Mary-Alice asked as she came down the stairs from the office. She dimpled at Matthias. “Hi, Greg.”
“Uh, hullo, Mrs. Paul,” Matthias said, standing.
Mary-Alice’s eyes narrowed. “Mrs. Paul?” she said warily, glancing from Matthias to me and back to Matthias again.
“I’m here on official police business,” he said.
“Okay …?” she said.
“I understand your husband knew Anna Waverley,” he said.
“He’s purchased a couple of objets d’art from her husband’s gallery,” Mary-Alice said. “And Mrs. Waverley was a supporter of Elise Moffat’s Children in Peril Network, as is David. I wouldn’t say David knew her, though, except very casually.”
“We examined the Waverleys’ phone records,” Matthias said. “There were a number of calls placed during the evening from the Waverleys’ home number to your home number last month, as well as two calls to your husband’s office number.”
“Maybe Mr. Waverley was just trying to sell David more art.”
“That would explain it,” Matthias agreed. “Did you speak to Mr. Waverley when he called your home?”
“No.”
“Were you acquainted with Mrs. Waverley?”
“No. I’d never met her. Although I’m sure we were at a couple of events together.”
“All right, thanks — Mary-Alice.”
“Are you going to be speaking to David?” she asked.
“Yes,” Matthias replied.
Mary-Alice nodded curtly and went back up the stairs to the office.
Matthias gulped down the dregs of his coffee. “Duty calls,” he said.
I walked him to the door. “David isn’t a suspect, is he?”
“Just about everyone who knew her is a suspect. That’s how it works.”
“I knew her,” I said.
“But you appear to have neither motive nor opportunity. Anyone who has both is automatically moved to the top of our list.” He paused, then said, “I’m picking Bobbi up around two. She wants to go home, but I’m not sure she should be on her own right now. She may still be at risk. We can post a car outside her apartment house and a police officer inside, if she’ll let us, but it’d be a lot easier if she could stay with someone till she’s ready to come back to work. She won’t stay with her father. I don’t blame her. Nor does she want to go to her mother’s in Nanaimo. I suggested she could stay with Isabel in Pemberton, but she just accused me of trying to start up a harem. Could she stay with you?”
“Sure,” I said. “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s bunked with me. She might not agree, though. We work together all right, but living together is another thing altogether. Evidently I’m not the easiest person to live with.”
“I’m sure she can put up with you for a while,” Matthias said dryly.
Claiming she didn’t want to be a burden, Bobbi had Matthias take her home rather than bring her to my place. She agreed to the cops leaving a car outside her building, but she adamantly refused to allow a police officer to stay with her. I was disappointed she’d chosen not to stay with me; I could have used the company. As it happened, it was a fortuitous decision.
At eight that evening, while I was taking a week’s worth of clean dishes out of the dishwasher, the phone rang. I lifted the cordless handset off the wall cradle, held it between my chin and shoulder as I continued emptying the dishwasher.
“Hello?”
“McCall?” a man said.
“Yes.” The voice had a familiar ring, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Who is this?” I stopped putting the dishes away.
“It isn’t important who I am,” he said. “It’s what I know that’s important.”
“And what’s that?” I recognized the voice then. It
belonged to “Joel Cairo.”
“For one thing, I know who killed Mrs. Waverley,” he said. “And who beat up your girlfriend.”
My heart thudded and my skin prickled. “Who?”
“I’ll tell you. But not on the phone. Meet me in the parking lot of the Safeway at 4th and Balsam in an hour. Alone. Don’t call the cops. I see any cops, or anyone else at all, I’m out of there.”
“How do I know this isn’t some kind of trap? How do I know it wasn’t you who beat up Bobbi and killed Anna Waverley?”
“Meet me or not, it’s up to you. But if you don’t, you’ll never know, will you? It’s eight-ten now. I’ll wait exactly an hour. Not a minute longer.” He hung up.
It took three tries to put the phone back into the cradle, my hand was shaking so much. My first impulse, originating in the ancient reptilian part of my brain, scaly and savage, was to go, find out who had hurt Bobbi and killed Anna, so I could avenge them both. The Safeway at 4th and Balsam was less than ten minutes away by car, maybe twenty on foot. Then the kinder, gentler mammalian part of my brain shrieked, Don’t be stupid! My mammalian brain was right. I was being stupid. I had no idea what I might be walking into. I should call Matthias. Surely the police could shadow me, cover me in such a way that they wouldn’t be seen. If they even let me keep the appointment. They might not be willing to put a civilian at risk. Which was just fine with me.
I found Matthias’s card and called his cellphone.
“Matthias,” he growled after the second ring.
“Greg, it’s Tom. I just got a call from someone who claims to know who killed Anna Waverley and beat up Bobbi. I think it was Joel Cairo. He wants me to meet him in an hour.”
“Where?” he asked. After I told him, he said, “All right. Sit tight. Don’t do a thing. We’ll handle it.”
“Okay,” I said.
I hung up just as someone knocked on the door. I went to the door and peered through the peephole I’d had installed to avoid unwelcome surprises. I couldn’t see anything. I checked the switch by the door that controlled the porch light, but it was in the on position. The bulb must have burned out, I thought, as I opened the door.
Dumb move.
A horse kicked me in the chest. At least that’s what it felt like when “Joel Cairo” jabbed stiffened fingers into my solar plexus. I fell backwards, diaphragm temporarily paralyzed, unable to speak, fight back, barely able to breathe. He stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind him.
“You called the cops, didn’t you?” he said, standing over me. “I figured you would. It doesn’t matter. Here, let me help you up.” He helped me to my feet. His hands were hard and he was extraordinarily strong. “Sorry about that,” he said, brushing non-existent dust from my non-existent lapels. “I wanted to make sure I had your attention. It’s amazing how pain focuses the mind, isn’t it? Here, let me give you another demonstration.”
He gripped my elbow, steely fingers probing. Pain lanced though my arm, as if every nerve ending from my armpit to the tip of my second finger was on fire. My hand cramped into a claw and felt as if a spike had been driven though my palm. The pain was so intense my mouth gaped, but the only sound that escaped was a strangled squeak. He released me and I collapsed to the floor, arm tingling painfully, eyes burning, body bathed in cold sweat, breath ragged in my throat.
“Have I got your attention?” he asked, squatting in front of me. “Have I? Answer me!”
“Yes,” I croaked, trying to sit up.
“Good. Now listen carefully. Are you listening? Shit, you’re not listening, are you?”
He drove the heel of his hand into my left chest just below my heart. My vision went black and I thought my heart had imploded. Feeling as though my chest were being squeezed between the jaws of a steel vice, blinded by tears of pain and fear and anger, I crawled away from him, flopped like a stranded fish down the two steps from the hall into the living room, and lay gasping and shuddering on the cold, hard wood of the living room floor.
Something blunt and hard prodded my ribs. “Sit up.” A harder prod. “Sit up!”
Pain shooting through my chest, certain I was having a heart attack, I rolled over and clawed myself into a sitting position, back against the end of the sofa. I breathed in short, shallow gasps that hurt. He squatted on his heels in front of me, face close to mine.
“I have a message for your girlfriend,” he said. His cologne was sharp and his breath smelled of peppermint. “Are you listening?”
I didn’t have to be asked twice. “Yes,” I rasped. “I’m listening.”
“Good. Here’s the message. She keeps her mouth shut about what went down on that boat. She keeps her mouth shut or everybody she cares about — her old man, her mother, you, your sister, the guy that works for you, everyone — will feel pain ten thousand times worse than what you just felt. Tell her I’ll hurt them so bad they’ll beg me to kill them. And when I think they’ve begged enough, I’ll oblige them. Then I’ll come see her and kill her. I’ll have some fun with her first, though.” He slapped me. Not hard. Just lightly. Flicking the tips of his fingers across my face. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I ground out between teeth so tightly clenched my jaw creaked and my teeth ached.
“Tell me what I just said.”
Rage and terror waged war within me and I could not speak. I knew, though, that if I didn’t speak, that if I didn’t do exactly what he told me to do, he would hurt me again. So I choked the words from my throat, forcing them through my teeth. Each word burned like acid. And as I spoke, repeating what he’d said, I knew for the first time in my life what it felt like to want to kill someone. I wanted to kill this man, needed to kill this man, to choke the life out of him, smash him to a pulp, stomp him into a grease spot, erase him from existence. But I couldn’t move a muscle.
“If she talks … you’ll kill everyone … she cares about. Then you’ll … kill her.”
“That’s the gist of it,” he crooned softly, gently stroking my cheek. “But it lacks nuance, don’t you think? It will have to do, though. I don’t have any more time to waste on you. Goodbye, Tommy-boy. Here’s a little something to remember me by.”
His hand dropped to my crotch and he squeezed once, sharply and horribly. A scream locked in my throat as the pain exploded though my groin. I convulsed as though I’d been hit with a massive electrical current. He left me folded in a fetal ball on the floor of my living room, hands clamped between my thighs, breathing in short guttural grunts, any previous pain he’d inflicted forgotten in the exquisite agony that pulsed through me.
I don’t know how long I lay there before I slowly and carefully unfolded myself, gasping and nauseated, straightening first one leg, then the other, until I lay on my back, breathing through my mouth, breath catching at the start of each exhalation. After a few minutes, I rolled over onto my stomach and levered myself up onto my knees. I sat on my heels for a while, bracing myself on the arm of the sofa as a wave a dizziness washed over me, almost making me vomit. The pain diminished somewhat; it felt as though I’d been struck by only a small truck. Shakily, I got to my feet and hobbled into the kitchen, walking as though I had a soccer ball between my knees. I took a hot/cold gel pack out of the freezer compartment and almost suffered actual cardiac arrest when I shoved it down my pants and cupped it beneath my inflamed gonads. The relief was immediate, albeit not complete. I lifted the cordless telephone off the wall cradle and took it into the living room. Lowering myself carefully onto the sofa, I found Matthias’s cellphone number in the phone’s redial memory and speed-dialled it.
“Matthias,” he answered.
“It’s Tom. Where are you?”
“I’m just about to leave Bobbi’s and go to meet your friend. What’s up?”
“I just had a very unpleasant visit from him. Very unpleasant indeed.”
“Are you all right? You sound funny.”
“I don’t feel funny. I feel bloody awful.”
“What h
appened?”
“In simple terms, he beat the stuffing out of me.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Do you need paramedics?”
“No, I don’t think so. A bag of frozen peas should do the trick.”
He disconnected and I put down the phone. I laid my head back and tried to find a more comfortable position on the sofa. The effect of the frozen gel pack was wearing off and a dull throbbing ache was spreading through my lower abdomen. I thought about getting up and taking a couple of Tylenol, but it seemed like too much trouble, and they probably wouldn’t have done much good, anyway. I must have fallen asleep then, because no sooner had I decided it was too much trouble to find the Tylenol than Bobbi was leaning over me, hand on my shoulder.
“Tom?”
“Umph,” I said as I sat up, gritting my teeth in anticipation of the pain I knew the sudden movement would cause. I was profoundly relieved when all I felt was a distant achy discomfort.
“Are you all right?” she asked. She gaped at my crotch. “Holy shit, you’re all swollen.”
“Oops,” I said, reaching into my trousers and extracting the warm gel pack. “Pardon me,” I added as I cautiously rearranged myself in my trousers.
Greg Matthias stood in the hallway, his cellphone to his ear, listening. “All right,” he said, and flipped it closed. He looked so smooth and cool as he did it I thought I should get one. “You don’t look any the worse for wear,” he said, descending the steps into the living room.
“He did things that inflicted a godawful lot of pain,” I said, “but didn’t leave any marks or do any lasting damage.” I giggled. “I hope.”
Depth of Field Page 21