Cold Comfort

by Scott Mackay

  Matchett’s eyes drifted to a stack of ornate stainless steel serving dishes on a table behind the booth to the right. He was fighting with himself. He again rubbed the bridge of his nose, keeping his head turned, his long narrow face creasing in apprehension.

  “I guess it doesn’t make any difference,” he finally said. “I know she didn’t do it.”

  “Then she has a key?” asked Gilbert.

  Matchett lifted his Heineken and had a long swallow, contemplating Gilbert over the rim of his glass. He put the glass down and wiped the foam from his lips with the red linen napkin.

  “She has a key,” he said.

  Jane Ireland wasn’t home when her landlord opened the door for Gilbert, Lombardo and the rest of the search team. The search warrant stipulated any time, day or night; so they chose Tuesday morning, two weeks to the day Cheryl was found dead.

  Gilbert stood in the bedroom while Lombardo and the others methodically combed the rest of the spacious apartment. Directly across the street he saw Winston Churchill Park; to the south, a bit of the main turret of Casa Loma; to the north, St. Clair Avenue, where a red and white streetcar rumbled by. The sky was patchy with clouds, and for the first time since December the temperature had risen above the freezing mark. A robin landed in the bare maple branch outside the window, looked at Gilbert in perplexity, then dipped away toward the ravine, where the massed trees showed up grey against the snow. He shook his head. Patterns were emerging. And he didn’t feel particularly good about them. He turned from the window and looked at Jane’s dresser. A murder investigation was something you could never entirely control. There were never any tidy endings. And now he couldn’t stop the feeling that he was being manipulated. He took a glassine bag and a pair of tweezers out of his pocket, plucked a few hairs from Jane’s brush, and put them in the bag. Each step he took now seemed choreographed.

  He turned around and studied her bedroom. Rose-colored broadloom covered the floor. A dozen kinds of vitamins crowded the top of her dresser. She had one of those beds with the big brass head-rails. A photograph, enlarged, of Jane and a few other body builders at a weight-lifting competition hung on the wall. What made a woman do that to her body? He took a closer look a Jane in her slinky bikini. Her muscles bulged, her veins stuck out, she was so tanned she could have been black, and she was slick with oil. Where was the aesthetic? He decided he liked Regina’s body, soft, a bit plump, now that she was nearing fifty, but still with that pleasing hourglass shape. Making love to Jane would be like making love to a steel girder.

  He walked over to the closet and pulled open the louvered door. Power suits and silk blouses, the kind of clothes one would expect. Then a space, then a lot of Matchett’s shirts; at least he presumed they were Matchett’s. He looked to the floor of the closet. And he paused. A pair of men’s winter boots, black Sorels with laces, sat on the broadloom. Matchett’s boots, but here in Jane’s apartment. He lifted one of the boots, turned it over, and looked at the tread. A series of Greek-keys with cross-lines throughout. He knew he had a match, that this was the boot that made the print in the snow down at Cherry Beach. But why would Jane wear a pair of men’s snow boots? He lifted a pair of her half-inch heels from the shoe rack and held the boot and shoe sole to sole. The boot wasn’t that much larger. Jane had big feet, Matchett had small. And maybe she realized she was going to leave prints so wore the Sorels as a precaution. But if she was going to be that careful, wouldn’t she be careful enough to get rid of the boots afterwards?

  He put the boot down and walked out to the living room. Roger Pembleton, from the Forensic Identification Unit, had lifted the pillows from the couch and was reaching down behind. He pulled out a quarter and a penny and put them on the coffee table.

  “I’ve got a pair of men’s boots, size-nine Sorels, that have to be boxed in the bedroom,” he said. “Anything out here at all?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Roger. “I don’t think she’s here a whole hell of a lot.”

  Gilbert nodded. He looked around the living room, at the rowing machine, the treadmill, the exercise bicycle and the weights. He walked over to the bench, lay down on his back, and tried to press the barbell. He lifted it, but only with some effort.

  He was lowering it to his chest a second time when Lombardo strode down the hall from a back room holding a glassine bag in front of him.

  “Careful, Barry,” he said. “You’re going to burst a blood vessel.” He held up the glassine bag. “Look what Douglas found.”

  A .45 caliber round in the bag. And again Gilbert paused. He pressed the barbell back toward the brace, holding his breath with effort, and sat up.

  “I got to get to the gym more,” he said.

  “You know what your problem is?” said Lombardo. “You’re all wire and no muscle. You’re all sticks, my friend.”

  Gilbert took the bullet and had a closer look at it.

  “It’s a soft-nose, isn’t it?”

  “Same as Donna and Cheryl.”

  Gilbert stood up and gave the bag back to Lombardo. “Why would she kill Donna?”

  Lombardo shrugged. “We don’t know that she did.”

  “Where did Douglas find this?” asked Gilbert, nodding toward the bag.

  “Follow me and I’ll show you.”

  Lombardo led him down the hall to a small room at the end. Ken Douglas was carefully going through desk drawers. A ten-year-old PC, a Club American IBM clone, sat on top of the desk. Some old five-and-a-quarter floppies sat in a rack beside it.

  “We’ll take the disks. We’ll download anything she has on her hard drive,” said Gilbert. “See if we can find anything about the money.”

  “I can do that,” said Lombardo. “She’s got a fresh pack up there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ken, could you tell Barry where you found the .45 round.”

  “Sure,” said Ken. The big man walked around the side of the desk and lifted the edge of the broadloom behind a filing cabinet. “Right here. Wedged between the edge of the carpet and the quarter-round.”

  Gilbert stared at the spot. He tried to piece it together, how the bullet came to be wedged in that exact spot, behind the filing cabinet, so even if Jane were cleaning in here she probably wouldn’t see it, but he couldn’t come up with a plausible scenario.

  “What’s wrong?” said Lombardo.

  Gilbert shook his head. “I don’t know.” He nodded at Douglas. “Thanks, buddy.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his coat and looked at Lombardo. Douglas went back to the desk. “I’ll be interested to see if we get a match on the hair.”

  “Come on, Barry, we’ve got her. You know we’re going to get a match on the bullet.”

  “I guess no sign of the gun.”

  “No.”

  “Or any other ammunition.”

  “She was careful.”

  “I found the boots,” said Gilbert.

  “You did?”

  “They’re Matchett’s boots but they were in her closet.”

  Lombardo’s eyes lit up. “Then what more do we need, Barry? We’ve got her.”

  Gilbert shook his head. “Still too many variables to call it a game, Joe. What about the money? What about Latham and Scuba-Tex. And where the hell is Larry Varley? And how’s it all tie in with Donna’s murder?”

  Lombardo pressed his lips together. “We get the car this afternoon. Corning’s given us the go-ahead. Landry’s towing it to the garage at two. When we find Jane’s prints on the rearview mirror—”

  “She wore gloves, Joe. Remember how cold it was that night?”

  “Okay, so what if we find a soil match in the trunk?”

  “They probably clean those cars every week.”

  “We’ll go microscopic.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  “I’ll break arms if I have to.”

  Gilbert frowned. “Joe, you’re desperate.”

  “My fuckin’ job’s on the line, Barry. We need to make an arrest.”
r />   Gilbert looked out the window. Another robin, or was it the same one he saw before?

  “We’re not ready, Joe.” He rubbed his hand through his hair. “I see a few pieces, but I don’t see the whole picture.”

  Gilbert and Lombardo took the elevator down to the underground parking garage. At this time of the year, with the roads slushy and loaded with salt, no one much bothered to get their car washed. Toronto streets were always full of filthy cars at this time of the year. But the government Crown Victoria was spotless, immaculate, gleaming.

  “Where do we start?” said Lombardo.

  “Let’s open the trunk,” said Gilbert. “I’m sure they’ve vacuumed, but it’s worth a try. Did you find out who returned the car on the morning of the eighteenth?”

  “There was no one on duty. If you bring a car in after hours you just leave it there and slip the keys in the box.”

  “So no one saw anybody.”

  “Right.”

  Gilbert nodded. “Figures.”

  Lombardo took out the keys and opened the trunk. Midnight blue carpeting lined the trunk. As Gilbert had predicted, the trunk, at least to the naked eye, was as immaculate as the rest of the car.

  “I guess we’ll have to get Roger down here with his clippers and filter vacuum.”

  Gilbert climbed into the trunk. Lombardo looked at him as if he’d gone crazy. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  Gilbert lay on his side, curling his legs, fitting his tall form as best he could. “Remember the gash Cheryl had on the side of her hand?”

  “Sure. Where somebody bit her.”

  “I think she bit herself.” Gilbert manuevered right to the back of the trunk. He looked up. There it was, a huge smear of blood, next to the hinge of the trunk, hidden, where no one would ever look. Smart girl. He moved aside. “Get in here,” he said. “Take a look at this.”

  “You want me to get in there with you?” said Lombardo. “Gee, Barry, I think we should stop meeting this way.”

  “Get in here, you schmuck.”

  Lombardo got in the trunk and angled up next to Gilbert.

  “You see that?” said Gilbert. “She knew she was on the way out. She knew they probably cleaned these cars, and she wanted to leave evidence. So she bit her hand and smeared it up there.”

  Lombardo stared at the blood smear thoughtfully. “So this is the car.”

  “We’ll have to get the blood tested. You never know. We still have Larry Varley’s Crown Victoria to worry about. That blood could be somebody else’s but I doubt it.”

  “So what about Jane?”

  Gilbert took a deep breath. “I’m not sure about Jane.” He felt heavy with the gravity of what he was about to suggest. “I actually think we should take a closer look at Tom Webb.”

  Fifteen

  Terminal 1. Lester B. Pearson International Airport. Five o’clock and, wonder of wonders, there was still light in the sky. What a difference a few weeks made!

  Gilbert sat in one of the hard plastic chairs. Lombardo and Valerie stood in the slow-moving lineup, edging in fits and starts toward the security checkpoint, where guards scanned passengers for Lufthansa Flight 403 direct to Frankfurt with metal-detecting wands, and herded carry-on luggage through the X-ray unit. Gilbert watched Lombardo. Joe couldn’t smile. All this time Gilbert had been worried that Valerie would be the one with the broken heart at the end of it all. But Valerie was bright, cheerful, doing everything she could to cajole Lombardo. She cupped his chin in her hand and tried to lift his head, but Joe wouldn’t lift his head. Valerie was going home happy, with no regrets, glad to have her fun with Joe, but just as glad to say good-bye. The line moved forward. They were nearly at the barrier. And now he saw Lombardo pleading with her.

  Joe raised his hands in a gesture of entreaty, fingers extended, palms uplifted. Valerie shook her head, patted his shoulder, then…then actually pulled out a Kleenex and offered it to Lombardo. The renowned Don Juan of the MTPF was as soft as melted caramel inside. Gilbert looked down at his shoes, salt-stained brown brogues, and shifted in his seat, squirming on Joe’s behalf. The women Joe always fell in love with, deeply and truly, were the ones who never worked out. The ones he wanted to marry were the ones who always got away. Gilbert looked up.

  They were at the barrier now. Lombardo lifted his arms and hugged her. Tightly. His eyes shut. An expression of exquisite pain on his face. Nineteen years old, a neophyte when it came to matters of love, but she had conquered the Casanova of the Homicide Squad. She looked surprised, even astonished, by the way Lombardo hugged her. But then a look of pity came to her face. She smoothed Joe’s rakish mane of dark hair, gave him a kiss on the forehead, disentangled herself from his arms, offered a last few soothing words, backed away, smiling all the time, gave him a final wave, then turned around and disappeared through the security barrier. Joe just stood there, his back to Gilbert, so obviously a cop in his trench coat; stared at the security barrier for nearly a minute then finally turned around.

  He looked pale and the rims of his nostrils were red, like he had a bad cold. Only Joe never got colds. Lombardo’s face settled and he marched quickly away from the security barrier to the waiting area. Gilbert got to his feet.

  “You all right?” asked Gilbert.

  Lombardo swallowed a few times, as if he had just eaten something sour, nearly turned to look over his shoulder, but resisted at the last moment. He nodded toward the escalator.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The two homicide detectives walked through the crowded terminal toward the escalators. Gilbert put his hand on Lombardo’s shoulder and gave it a shake. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. They were more than partners, they were friends; and everything was understood.

  Lombardo’s mood lifted considerably when they got back to College Street and found the analysis results from Jane Ireland’s apartment waiting for them. The young detective took the reports out of the interoffice envelope and scanned the dot matrix printout.

  “What’s it say?” asked Gilbert.

  “Ballistics matched the bullet to the slugs recovered from both crime scenes,” said Lombardo. “A Winchester 230-grain on all three.”

  “What about the boot?”

  Lombardo glanced at the next report. “The tread is identical. They’ve matched the boot.”

  “And the hair?”

  Lombardo flipped to the next one. “The hair recovered from the suspect’s brush is identical to the hair recovered from the victim’s sweatshirt. Jane Ireland’s hair in both cases.” Lombardo put the report down on Gilbert’s desk. “Let’s go over to the Park. I think Lembeck’s working late.”

  “I don’t know, Joe.”

  “Come on, Barry. You can’t be serious.”

  He shook his head. “I just have a funny feeling about this.” He tapped the report. “Roffey’s like a wolf on this one. If we screw up now—”

  “We need a clearance. It’s the only thing that’s going to save my job.”

  “And if you arrest Jane, and she’s innocent, that’s going to save your job?”

  The corners of Lombardo’s lips turned downward as his face bunched in a frustrated frown.

  “So what do you want? Tell me what you want with this.”

  Gilbert shrugged. “I want elimination. I want answers to all the outstanding questions. Larry Varley. Latham. Scuba-Tex. The money. Matchett. Donna Varley. Bannatyne’s in the Bahamas looking at the money. We’ve got an APB continent-wide on Larry Varley. I’d say they’ll nab him within the next day.”

  “What are you telling me?” said Lombardo. “You think Jane was framed?”

  Gilbert stood up and looked out the window. “Did I tell you yet that Tom Webb does a lot of sailing in and around Freeport?”

  Lombardo joined him at the window and they stared at the evening rush hour, a line of cars spilling red glare on the salt-stained pavement.

  When Joe next spoke his voice wasn’t so strident, nor his tone
so insistent. If anything, it was penitential.

  “Patience,” said Lombardo. “You always tell me that, don’t you? And I always forget.”

  “It’s your fiery Mediterranean blood.”

  Lombardo slid his hands into the back pockets of his sporty pants.

  “So the mighty shall fall?” he said.

  Gilbert stared down at the statue of the small boy pulling the huge obelisk in his toy wagon.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But Jane didn’t get to be where she is by flying into fits of jealous rage and offing people with stolen weapons. And she didn’t get there by leaving a trail of evidence even a blind guy could see.”

  They got rain the next day. A cold drizzle that seeped into the snow then just sat there. Every street in the city was full of the noise of squelching tires and feet, and passing cars sent up huge curtains of slush onto the sidewalks, often splattering unsuspecting pedestrians. The temperature rose to about plus-2 Celsius and the snow steamed, filling the city with a thin fog. Fender benders tripled. Everybody was in a bad mood because it was so hard to get anywhere.

  But up in Gilbert’s office, Lombardo’s mood was again buoyant. They had the results back from the car pool Crown Victoria. And they were as damning as the results from Jane Ireland’s apartment.

  “We have her prints on the rearview mirror,” said Lombardo. “So she wasn’t even wearing gloves. At least not while she was in the car.”

  “This is what bothers me,” said Gilbert. “If she was going to kill someone, why would she leave prints in the car. Why the hell wouldn’t she take her own car? Why get one from the legislative car pool, where anyone with an IQ above fifty can look at the log and see who signed it out? I’m sorry, Joe, you’ve got your refried beans, but I don’t see any rice.”

  Lombardo held up his hand. “Hang on, hang on,” he said. “It gets better. They’ve run the blood at the Center.”

  “And.”

  “It’s Cheryl’s blood.”

  “So she’s the only smart one around here.”

  “Do you have to be so cynical?”