“I’m alone,” Dan said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The boy put the unfinished hamburger down on the wrapper and reached into his pocket. Dan could just make out the knife.
“I’m not armed,” Dan said, holding up his hands.
“Fuck off.”
“I just want to talk to you.”
“You came here before.”
Dan was shaken. The kid must have been hiding somewhere when he picked the lock and entered.
“You’re with the police.”
He had only the slightest of accents. Pfeiffer had been right in saying that kids from Quebec were ahead of the bilingual game when it came to their English counterparts.
“I’m not with the police,” Dan said. “Are you afraid of them?”
“They’re going to kill me!” he screamed. “You came here to kill me!”
“That’s not true,” Dan told him. “I just want to talk.”
Dan watched the hand wielding the knife, saw how it waved erratically when he spoke.
“What do you want?”
“All right. I’ll be honest with you. I know who you are.”
The boy made a whimpering noise.
“It’s Gaetan. Am I right?”
The boy’s body tensed.
“I know what happened to you at the church. I’m on your side.”
The knife slashed the air.
“Get the fuck out or I’m going to kill you.”
“I know this sounds crazy, but there are people who want to help you, Gaetan.”
He shook his head. “Why would they?”
“Because they believe what happened to you was wrong. They want to help you get your life back.”
“My life back? I died in that church!”
He lunged. Dan backed off. The knife tore at empty air.
“You didn’t die. You survived. Whatever they did to you, you survived.”
The kid shook his head. “Bullshit!”
“You survived. And you’re still here to talk about it.”
“What the fuck do you care?”
“You can tell people what happened to you so it won’t happen to someone else.”
The boy sneered. “I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true.”
“Why should I care?”
His breathing was erratic. Dan saw there’d soon be no reasoning with him. He was approaching a state where people did inexplicable things. They lunged at armed police officers, challenged authority, doubted everything. And when they got shot or stabbed or jumped off the edge of a building twenty stories up, everyone said they had it coming. Dan wasn’t going to have any of that here.
He recalled Trevor’s question when he’d accepted the bodyguard job: Will you carry a gun? The outcome today would determine whether his choice had been a wise or a foolish one.
He tried for a casual tone. “Who were you talking to just now? Was there another boy here?”
Gaetan advanced with the knife held forward. “Fuck you. You don’t know anything!”
Dan put his hands in the air. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
The blade slashed and Dan jumped.
“Get out or I’ll kill you.”
Dan’s mind flashed quicksilver, his synapses working at the speed of light. What were the chances he could wrest the knife from the kid without hurting either of them? Flash! In his state, the boy was capable of doing a lot of damage. Flash! Better to leave it for the police. Flash! On the other hand, if he could stop Bélanger here and now, he might prevent other deaths. Flash! Flash! He thought of Trevor’s admonition. He thought of Ked growing up without a father. Why be a hero? he wondered, even as he tried to think of a way to outsmart a desperate teenager with a knife.
Flash!
The boy lunged. He was quicker on his feet than Dan expected. Dan felt the jab as he stumbled back into the hallway. The door slammed shut.
Dan waited a beat then called out, “I just want to help you.”
No response. He placed his hand against the rib where he’d been cut. He thought of Darryl Hillary’s bashed-in face and missing ear. He thought of tomorrow’s sensational headline featuring his picture: Missing Persons Investigator Becomes Fourth Mutilation Victim. A scrabbling sound came from inside the room. Before it could register, Dan heard a crash followed by a trickling noise. Nothing further reached his ears. He opened the door and peered in. The air was dense and musty.
It’s like he just disappears into thin air, Domingo had said.
If nature abhorred a vacuum, how did a boy simply disappear?
Then he saw it. A cloud of dirt belched from a closet doorway. Debris covered the floor. Dan had his Mini Mag out as he reached in and began to dig. The dust filled his lungs and made him cough. He pulled his T-shirt over his nose till he could breathe freely again then turned back to the hole. The beam picked out a tunnel leading upward. Gaetan wasn’t trapped. He’d triggered a collapse of bricks and drywall. Obviously, he’d been prepared for an ambush.
Dan looked around. The blazer and cap were gone. His disguise. He raced up the stairs and around to the back, searching for the end of the tunnel. He spotted it across the yard: a shed with a door flapping gently.
Dan glanced at the fence that led to the wrecking yard. Beyond it lay a maze of urban streets and back alleys. By the time he hoisted himself over, there’d be no telling which way Gaetan had gone. He suddenly felt exhausted. He crouched to catch his breath, spitting out dust and dirt.
Back in his car, he leaned his head on the steering wheel. The cut wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. He pulled the first aid kit from his glove compartment, unwrapped a bandage, poured antiseptic on it, and applied it gently to the wound.
He’d been foolish to come alone. Still, nothing
terrible had happened. Or had it? He’d just alerted a murder suspect that someone knew where he’d been hiding out. You could strike that shelter off the list. Which left about five or six hundred other possibilities, unless he scrammed out of the city for good. For that, however, he’d need a car or a bus ticket. Buying a ticket meant risking public exposure. If so, the police would need to cover the bus and train stations. But would they be looking for Gaetan Bélanger or Little Boy Blue?
Dan parked his car down the street from Germ’s bunker and walked over to the entrance. When Germ didn’t respond to the buzzer, Dan got out and waved at the camera. No blinking lights, no crackling speakers. Odd. Then again, even underground activist geeks had to sleep and eat and use the bathroom sometime.
He took out his cell and dialled Germ’s number. Germ picked up in seconds.
“I’m outside,” Dan said.
Germ mumbled something Dan didn’t catch. The latch clicked and the door unlocked. Dan entered and pulled it closed behind him. The elevator rumbled down like a bumpy spaceship, banged to a landing and reopened onto a jumble of misplaced objects, smashed and broken. Glass and DVD shards covered the floor. Germ glowered from across the room like an angry charwoman, a push broom in his hand to complete the portrait.
“No way,” was all Dan said.
“Way,” Germ contradicted.
“Who?”
Germ shrugged and kicked at the load of debris by his feet.
“Guy in a mask.”
“No ID?”
“No, dude. You think he’s gonna come in here and make a mess like this and identify himself so I can hang him out to dry afterward?”
Dan glanced over at the console. All its screens had been bashed in. Dan felt his stomach clutch.
“He smashed all the fucking monitors.”
Germ nodded.
“Why?”
“So I couldn’t track something, is my guess. He made me show him the tapes. I think he recognized some of the sites.”
“Wait a second. You mean he wanted to see footage from your hidden cameras?”
Germ nodded. “He even knew which locations. He was furious when he saw Little Boy Blue on scr
een. Guess he figured we’d been holding out on him.”
Ed’s warning about Pfeiffer’s rogue ways came to mind.
“Describe him for me. Big? Small?”
Germ looked up from his broom. “On the short side. Not big. Coulda taken him out with one arm, if he hadn’t been holding a crowbar.”
“Did you catch his eye colour?”
“Yeah, green, I think. I wasn’t exactly gazing into them with love or anything, but they struck me as being green.”
“That sounds like Pfeiffer.”
“Who’s that?”
“The cop who followed me the other night. It’s got to be him.”
Germ gestured around at the studio. “Why would he do this?”
Dan looked at the destruction and shook his head. “Clearly, whoever it was came here to destroy something.”
Germ nodded. “What I wanna know is how the fuck he found me. I’m as off the map as it gets. Plus you’ve been using a different cellphone, so we know he can’t have hacked into it.”
“I don’t know,” Dan said softly. “Maybe he already knew everything before I switched phones.”
“No one is safe from the System,” Germ proclaimed gloomily.
Dan saw his smashed laptop lying off to one side. “He destroyed the master copies of the files?”
“’Fraid so.”
Dan suddenly remembered why he’d come. “That’s a problem. I wanted to ask you to keep a close eye on the camera feeds in the next little while.”
Germ set his broom aside and came over. “Fill me in, dude.”
Dan updated Germ on his encounter at the retirement home. When Germ saw the blood on Dan’s T-shirt, he rolled a joint and insisted Dan take a toke. Dan relented.
“But just this once, okay?”
“Fair enough,” Germ told him. “Better than the Red Cross any day.”
Dan continued his account of his meeting with Gaetan, pointing out the existential question: were there two boys or just one? “When I got there, I thought I heard two people talking. It sounded like a conversation, but when I found Gaetan he was alone.”
“Talking to himself?”
“Could be. As far as I could tell, Gaetan arrived alone. Maybe the other person was already inside the building and left before I saw him. In any case, he’s not going back there. I hoped you could tell me where he ends up.”
Germ grinned. “No problem with that. The cameras are still in place. The only problem is displaying them. I need to get a few new screens first.”
“Get what you need and send me the bill,” Dan said.
Germ shrugged. “Not a biggie. I’ll put in a call to a friend. I use second-hand monitors, so they’re cheap. I should be able to grab some by tomorrow.”
Dan looked around and shook his head, thinking how deep he was getting in and wondering who else might get dragged down with him.
“I’m sorry, Germ. I never meant to put you or Velvet Blue in range of these people.”
“Yeah, good thing Velvet wasn’t here,” Germ said ruefully. “Or maybe too bad. She would have taken him out before he knew what was happening.”
Dan checked his watch. He was going to be late for dinner. Worse, he’d have to explain to Trevor where he’d been. It wasn’t going to be an easy talk. So far he’d managed not to sabotage this relationship, but lately he’d been pushing it to the limits.
“Gotta go,” Dan said. “You want to report the break-in to the police?”
He saw Germ’s face and laughed.
“Yeah, right. What an idea. Report the System to the System.”
“Then I’ll leave you with it,” Dan told him.
He strode back to the elevator. It had stayed waiting for him with its doors open.
Twenty-Four
Keeping Mum
Trevor was up and gone before the dawn light. Something about a special order cabinetry installation and busy tradesmen coming to the house early. Dan got up an hour later, exhausted and unsettled by his confrontation with Gaetan Bélanger and the break-in at Germ’s underground fortress the night before. No sense going back to bed, he could tell it wouldn’t help.
The bandage on his right side had seeped through in the night, leaving pinpricks of blood on the sheets. He rinsed the sheets and left them to soak in the basement sink. The night before, he’d managed to get to the bathroom and clean himself up before Trevor noticed. If he wondered why Dan had come to bed wearing a T-shirt, he hadn’t said anything. Sex was going to be tricky for the next few days, however.
He was just trying to decide between having coffee and reading the newspaper at home or going out for a bite when his phone rang.
“It’s Jags. I’m on the island.” He sounded unusually subdued. “Can you come over?”
Dan hesitated. “I’m just getting going here. Do you mind if I grab a shower and a bit of breakfast before I head out?”
“This can’t wait.”
“Something happened?”
“You could say that. Someone just tried to kill me.”
Dan’s mind leapt at the possibilities. “Are you all right?”
“For now. Just come over.”
“I’m on my way.”
Dan put down the phone, cursing the man for living in the one spot in the city that was inaccessible by car.
He swung down to the water. The ferry would take too long. He caught a water taxi directly to Algonquin Island then headed over to Jags’ place. The sun was just climbing over the branches. The air felt hushed and expectant.
He knocked. Jags furtively opened the door and beckoned him in.
“You need to get an airlift service over to this place,” Dan told him.
His eyes travelled around the room, searching for signs of a problem. He didn’t see anything unusual. At least nothing unusual for a rock star’s island retreat.
“Did you see it?” Jags asked, closing the door behind him.
Dan gave him a blank look. “See what?”
Jags sighed and shook his head. “Come here.”
Dan followed him to the nearest window. Jags pointed off to the right.
“Right there.”
Dan’s eyes followed his hand. He found it: an arrow embedded in the wall of the porch.
“I take it that’s not a decoration? Not one of your ‘props’?”
Jags’ eyes darted warily from cottage to trees and back again. His voice was strained. “No, Dan. It’s not a prop.”
“When did you find it?”
“I didn’t find it. It nearly found me. It whizzed past when I was out watering my garden this morning. Let’s just say it came very close to hitting me.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“I saw a kid running away.”
Dan’s eyebrows shot up. “What did he look like?”
“Nondescript. A schoolboy. He had on a cap and …”
“A blue blazer?”
Jags nodded. “Does this have anything to do with that ear photograph I got last month?”
“I think so,” Dan said. “In fact, I’m afraid it probably does.”
He turned to the window and looked up and down the street. The nearest house was set off through the trees at the end of Jags’ lot.
“Pretty isolated here. Did anyone else witness this?”
Annoyance spread across Jags’ face. “Are you fucking kidding me? Look at this place.” He shook his head. “It’s like this all day long,” he said, a little more subdued.
Dan looked around the room. With all the windows, it was possible to see right through the cottage from outside. Hard to hide in an aquarium like that. The glass might prove a deterrent against an arrow, but sooner or later Bélanger would come up with a gun.
“Are you sure you didn’t recognize the kid?”
Jags shook his head impatiently. “No, I’m telling you …”
“And you’re sure there’s nothing you’re leaving out? Some detail you need to tell me?”
“Fucking hell, Dan! Do you
think I’d be holding out on you with someone shooting arrows at me?”
“Okay, okay. But if anything comes to mind, you need to let me know immediately.”
Jags was exasperated. “What kind of things? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that Gaetan Bélanger just tried to kill you.”
“This kid they’re all looking for?” Jags’ mouth hung open.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “The same one who sent you the ear photo. Just that.” He looked around again. “Ok. I think it’s time to go.”
Jags stared after him. “You’re leaving me again?”
“No, you’re coming with me. You need to get off this isolated island and stay in your penthouse where you have professional door staff to weed out unwanted visitors. Either that or you should leave town for a while.”
Jags nodded. “Okay. Give me a minute to grab a few things.”
Dan opened the door and looked around before stepping out. He scrutinized the scenery, wondering if Gaetan Bélanger was hiding in the shrubbery.
Jags returned with a small bag.
Dan said, “We’ll have to tell the police about this.”
Jags shook his head. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“You have to be kidding me.”
“I don’t want the publicity. It’s not a good time for it.”
“For fuck’s sakes,” Dan said. “This was a murder attempt. You have to let someone know.”
Jags sighed. “Okay, okay. Just give me an hour. I need to let my publicist know what’s going on. She made me promise to pass everything by her first.”
Dan rolled his eyes and looked at his watch. “An hour,” he said. “Now let’s get back to the city.”
Dan dropped Jags off at his condo and watched him go inside, after making him promise to report the incident to the police.
He sat in his car, thinking over what he’d encountered. So far, all roads seemed to lead straight back to Jags Rohmer. Jags with his fame and his fancy cars. Jags with his auto-erotic asphyxiation. Jags with his mysterious, isolated cottage on Algonquin Island and his Blue Mountain sanctuary. And, most of all, Jags
Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 59