by Craig McLay
“I know you,” he said. “You wrote that story about Devries gettin’ his car towed.”
Colin was surprised. “Yeah. Didn’t think anyone saw that one.”
“He didn’t manage to pull all of ‘em,” the man said. “‘Bout time somebody stuck it to that asshole. Keith Abernathy.”
The man finally released his grip on Colin’s hand. “You’re not a fan of our esteemed college president, then?”
Keith tossed the towel he was using to dry his hands over the edge of the sink. “My wife’s got Rifkin’s disease. Ever heard of it?”
Colin shook his head. “Sorry, no.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Abernathy said. “That asshole cut our medical benefits last year, so now I’ve gotta pay for half the fuckin’ drugs myself. And it ain’t cheap, believe me.”
Colin decided not to ask about that. If he did, he could be here all day. There was no need to tap into a tirade that wouldn’t get him any closer to what he needed to know. Better to get to the point as quickly as possible.
“You ever deal with a student named Terrence Devane?” Colin asked.
Abernathy looked at Colin for a long moment and then smiled. “Oh yeah. He was one of the phantoms.”
Colin frowned. “Sorry. The what?”
Abernathy took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and motioned for Colin to follow him out through the open bay doors. The wind was blowing and it took him a minute to light his cigarette. Colin tried to stand upwind.
“You have any idea what the wait list is for this program?” Abernathy said, his first puff of smoke vanishing from his lips like an object thrown out the window of an aircraft.
Colin honestly had no idea. “No.”
“Two years,” Abernathy said. “The economy turns to shit and suddenly everybody wants to be an auto mechanic. The program’s partially funded by the government, see, so we only take in so many students each year. College just can’t boost the enrolment whenever it feels like it, the way they could with computer programming or whatever. Least, that’s the way it was until last year.”
Colin wondered if he should turn on his recorder and decided against it. It wouldn’t pick up anything but the wind anyway. “What happened then?”
“We got a new class list less than a month before the start of term,” Abernathy said. “Three times as big as the old one. And most of the names on it were brand new.”
“Brand new as in not on the waiting list?” Colin asked.
Abernathy nodded. “You got it.”
“So where did they come from?”
Abernathy shrugged. “No idea. We were told not to ask.”
“But Devane was one of them?”
“Sure was,” Abernathy said.
“You called him a phantom,” Colin said. “What did you mean?”
Abernathy took another long drag on his cigarette. “We nicknamed ‘em that ‘cause most of ‘em appeared maybe once and then vanished. And the ones that stuck around…well, most of us wish they hadn’t.”
“Devane was one of the ones who disappeared?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“He was involved in some sort of incident that got him kicked out of the program,” Colin said. “Do you know what that was?”
“Devane was a pain in the ass,” Abernathy growled. “We caught him once with a flick knife in his toolbox. Apparently he’d been using it to threaten some other student. Poor little kid from Trinidad or somewhere, and his English wasn’t the best. We reported him to security, but of course they didn’t do a fuckin’ thing. They never did anything when we ran into problems with those guys. But when he crushed that other kid’s hand in the lift, that they couldn’t ignore.”
“Was it an accident?” Colin asked.
“Hell no,” Abernathy spat. “Little prick knew exactly what he was doin’. Almost took the guy’s first two fingers off.”
“So you called security?”
“Nope. I called a fuckin’ ambulance. Security showed up later.”
“Who showed up from security? Do you remember?”
“Ludnick,” Abernathy said. “It was about the only time I ever saw him not sitting down. He said they were ‘taking care of it’.”
“Did the cops get involved?”
“Nope,” Abernathy said. “Security labelled it an accident and the whole thing got filed away.”
“What about the student who was injured?” Colin asked. “What happened to him?”
“Dropped out,” Abernathy said. “Wouldn’t’ve been able to do much, anyway. Not with his hand in a cast for the next twelve weeks. Then probably rehab after that. Poor bastard.”
“And after that, Devane was kicked out.”
“Supposedly.” Abernathy finished his cigarette and flicked it high into the air, where the wind grabbed it and pulled it far down the access road. “The weird thing is, his name’s still on my class list.”
“When did this all happen?”
“Back in March,” Abernathy said. “I asked the department head why Devane’s name was still on the list for September and I got the same answer I did the first time.”
“What was that?”
Abernathy grinned sourly. “Don’t ask.”
-31-
Betts was extremely excited.
Magdalene Woodsley, the president of the Historic Beekman Lofts Condominium Association, had called in a tip about a suspicious man seen leaving one of the units earlier that day. Mrs. Woodsley had called in many tips about suspicious individuals coming and going from that unit over the course of the last 12 months. She was convinced something untoward was going on in there and was keen to develop a paper trail of incidents to make a case to get the owner of that unit kicked out. Police had followed up on the first couple of tips—had even interviewed the owner and done a casual walk-through of the place—but had found nothing out of the ordinary. Her subsequent tips had been taken but not followed up, a fact that infuriated Mrs. Woodsley to no end.
This time, police had sent a patrol car because she claimed that the man she saw leaving the premises was carrying a gun. Officers had responded to find the back door of unit 108 open. When no one responded to knocking or calls, they had proceeded inside to find the body of Seth Reznick more or less attached to his dining room wall. A preliminary search of the premises had also turned up an athletic bag containing a variety of drugs, including marijuana, methamphetamine, rohypnol, cocaine (both crack and powdered) and others with an approximate street value of $120,000. Upstairs they had also located a safe containing three times that amount, half in cash and half in negotiable bearer bonds.
Mrs. Woodsley, it seemed, had been right all along.
Giordino was assisting with the search of the upstairs office when Betts came panting up the stairs.
“Old bag’s been watching through her window for a long time,” he said, his cheeks flushed red from the exertion. “Says the guy got into a late model Dodge Charger and took off like his ass was on fire. She got us a description of the guy, but even better, she got the licence plate.”
Giordino waited. Betts didn’t make many breakthroughs and liked to draw out the moment to accentuate its importance. Even if, as in this case, it had involved no detecting skill on his part whatsoever. “And?”
“Plate matches one Charles Peter North, alias C-Note,” Betts said, reading off his notepad. “Mid-level dealer. He’s done time for assault and possession. Had him on trafficking, but couldn’t make it stick. I pulled his mug shot and showed it to Miss Neighbourhood Watch. She confirmed it was the same guy she saw leaving the place in such a hurry. I put the word out to get everyone looking for him.”
Giordino nodded. “He might have seen something.”
Betts balked. “C’mon! This is our guy! We found some of the same drugs at the Devane apartment. This ties the two of them together.”
Giordino glanced at the tech officer who was assisting with the search of Reznick’s computer. This wasn’t a conversa
tion she wanted to have in front of her, but Betts had already rendered the issue moot by disagreeing with her. Betts had a tendency to forget that he wasn’t the primary, particularly when there was an audience.
“Does what we found downstairs really look like the work of a mid-level drug dealer to you?” she asked.
Betts waved her off. “Gimme a break! Half the time, these guys are high on their own stuff. There’s no end to the sick shit they’ll pull. Reznick was selling for him. He probably thought the guy was skimming or something. Wanted to send a message.”
Giordino didn’t buy North as a suspect. Based on the evidence, it seemed far more likely that he had wandered in, possibly to drop off or collect, found the body, then run off in shock or surprise. “And then just walked out in the middle of the day waving his gun around for the world to see?”
Betts adopted the pose of the weary veteran. It was one he used a lot. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not exactly dealin’ with Nobel prize winners, here.”
Giordino sighed. The fact that she was not dealing with the best and the brightest was not something that had escaped her notice, either.
-32-
Colin opened the door to let Janice in.
Along with her backpack, she was carrying a takeout bag from Joe’s Gourmet Sandwich Shop. Students nicknamed the place “Horny Joe’s” because the owner had a reputation for ogling his more attractive female customers. The food, however, was generally considered to be good enough to put up with the slight creep factor.
“Hope you haven’t eaten yet,” she said, pulling off her boots. “I got a chicken parm and a Montreal smoked.”
“No on both counts,” Colin said, taking the bag. “What can I get you to drink?”
Janice hung up her jacket and looked towards the kitchen. “Whaddya got on that wine rack in there?”
Colin perused the rack while Janice dropped the bag on the dining table and took out the sandwiches and spiced potato wedges, for which Horny Joe’s was justly famous.
“That depends,” he said. “Do you like red or white?”
“Yes on both counts.”
Colin grabbed an Australian shiraz, thought better of it, then grabbed a Coppola Rubicon instead. What the hell.
“I found something interesting,” Janice said, putting her backpack on the floor next to her chair. “But I think I’ll wait until after we’re done eating to share it.”
Colin grabbed a corkscrew out of the draw and set about opening the wine. “Is it more about our friends, the Knights?”
Janice nodded. “You never said which sandwich you wanted. You mind if I take the smoked?”
“Be my guest.”
Janice pulled the wrapping off her sandwich and tore into it in a way that reminded Colin of a National Geographic special he’d once seen about the uneasy relationship between lions and hyenas. “Sorry,” Janice mumbled as she chewed. “I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“Don’t apologize,” Colin said. “I’d hate to see you pass out under my kitchen table.”
He poured two glasses of the wine and sat down to start on his sandwich.
“Did you see the cops might have found another victim?” Janice said, grabbing her glass and taking a gulp. “Mmm. That’s good grape-flavoured beverage.”
“I did,” Colin said, thinking back to the lead item he’d seen on the 6 p.m. news. “Hopefully there’s no connection between the fact that Seth didn’t show up today and the cops were parked in front of his building.”
Janice gaped. “Are you serious?”
Colin nodded. “They didn’t release the name or confirm that there’s a link. But they did say they were looking to question a local dealer that some witness saw leaving the scene. On the surface, it looks like just another drug homicide, but that’s not the vibe I’m getting.”
“Do you really think it was Seth?”
Colin shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich. “It’s a possibility. I thought about calling, but if the cops answered, it would be a little difficult to explain, especially since I’ve already had the pleasure of spending time in one of their interrogation rooms twice.”
“But why would they go after Seth?” Janice said.
Colin wondered whether or not he should tell her his suspicions. After all, it wasn’t like he had any proof of any of it. Everything was purely circumstantial. He decided he had nothing to lose.
“Seth always seemed to have more money than he did legitimate explanations for how he made it,” Colin said. “If he was working as a dealer, it wouldn’t come as a big shock. The guy the cops are looking for has a pretty substantial record, according to the reports. It might be him, it might not. It might just be a drug thing. It might not.”
“You don’t think so,” Janice said, eyeing him closely.
“If it is Seth and he was selling drugs, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he could have sold them to a guy like Terrence Devane. And, if a group like the Knights got a hold of Devane, it’s not inconceivable that they could have extracted quite a lot of information out of him before he died. If they were looking for other perceived evildoers, that is.”
Janice looked nervously at the window. “What if they’re out there right now watching us?” she said nervously. “This is starting to give me the creeps. Maybe we should tell the cops.”
Colin chewed thoughtfully. “Keep in mind we still don’t know anything for sure. Least of all whether these guys are real. We found that building, yes. But it burned down a long time ago. It’s your call. If you want to go to them with what we’ve got, I’ll go along.”
Janice took another sip of wine and started slowly back in on her sandwich. “I guess you’re right. I’m just a bit freaked out.”
“We’re trying to catch a thousand-year-old murderous secret cult,” Colin said. “If you weren’t a little freaked out, you wouldn’t be doing your job.”
“So what did you find out today?” Janice asked. “Anything more on Devane?”
Colin nodded and told her about his encounter with the automotive teacher. Her face grew more and more puzzled as he talked.
“So Devane was part of this big group of students that just came out of nowhere and then he disappeared again?” she said.
“Looks that way,” Colin said.
“So what do you think it means?” she asked. “Do you think there’s any connection between that and what happened?”
“I have no idea,” Colin admitted. “Abernathy said most of the students on the list never even showed up and the ones that did were less than model citizens. Drugs, weapons, you name it. Security turned a blind eye to all his complaints until Devane crushed some kid’s hand in a lift.”
“Those complaints have to be somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Colin said. “My guess would be the catch bin of the document shredder in Ludnick’s office. It seems to be the only piece of technology he knows how to use.”
“I had to interview him once,” Janice said. “A student on the girl’s floor hockey team was at a house party. She fell asleep in one of the bedrooms and woke up with the vice president of the student association lying on top of her with his hand down the front of her panties. Ludnick said, ‘What’d she expect? She stripped down to her underwear and climbed into his bed, didn’t she?’”
“I don’t remember seeing that quote in the final story.”
“I didn’t have it on tape,” Janice said. “I ran it by Hal and he said that if I wasn’t 100 per cent, it was probably better to leave it out.”
“That’s his motto,” Colin said. “If he were managing editor of the New York Times, the newspaper would be nothing but ads and a banner headline on the front page saying ‘Nothing Happened Today’. If they ever opened a theme park in Mogadishu, he would be the one to write the press releases.” Colin finished up his sandwich and threw the wrapper in the garbage. “So what’s this thing you dug up?”
Janice also finished up and started rooting around in h
er backpack. “I found this online today. “I still have my research account for the British Library archive and the one in Alexandria. I started looking through them yesterday for anything I could find on the Knights of the Holy Thorn and any of the other, more obscure military religious orders. This is what I came up with.”
She pulled out a stack of about 25 printed sheets and handed them to Colin. On the front page was a slightly washed-out reproduction of a faded and extremely ancient-looking document. All of the text was in Latin, but the image in the middle was unmistakable: a cross surrounded by an intertwining wreath of thorns.
“What is this?” Colin asked.
“It’s the grand decree of the Holy Order of the Sacred Knights of the Holy Thorn,” Janice said. “Not the original, obviously. That’s in a museum in Budapest. It’s kind of like their mission statement and how-to manual for new members.”
Colin flipped through the pages. Most of them were dense blocks of text. Even if he could read Latin, which he couldn’t, the quality of the image was so poor it was impossible to make out most of the words. The illustrations, however, were a different matter. What they lacked in artistic skill, they more than made up for in gruesomeness. The one he was looking at was a six-panel cartoon depicting a man being nailed to a cross, his genitals coated with pitch and set on fire before being amputated, and then a large spike inserted into the wound. The spike was driven up by an elaborate set of pulleys and winches until the tip emerged from the top of the victim’s head. The rest of the images were worse.
“Yeesh,” Colin said. “No wonder you wanted to wait until after we ate.”
“Yeah, some of it is pretty nasty stuff,” Janice agreed.
“So you think whoever’s out there right now also has their hands on this handy little guide?”
“It’s possible,” Janice said. “It’s not just floating around out there, though. At least, not that I could find. I was only able to find it because I had research access to the archives. I got the account in university and kept it active after I graduated. Not really sure why.”