Stanton- The Trilogy

by Alex MacLean

  The family room he led Allan into was spacious, exquisite. Hardwood floors. Marble fireplace. Grandfather clock. Vaulted ceiling with recessed lights. A bank of arched windows looked out at the front yard. The furnishings were top-grain leather.

  An oil painting hung above the fireplace. Arranged in a traditional standing pose before a pastel background was Philip Ambré at a younger age, conservatively dressed in a gray suit, crisp white shirt, and red tie.

  A dark-haired woman Allan guessed was his wife, Carol, flanked Philip’s right side. She wore a blue blouse and a white pleated skirt. Two young girls, one with black hair, the other blond and a head taller, knelt in the foreground. Both wore matching flocked organza dresses.

  The resemblance between mother and youngest daughter was striking. Slender, china complexion, full mouth, streaming raven hair, and vivid green eyes. Comparing the beautiful girl Cathy Ambré had been to the image of the ravaged woman in her final moments, Allan winced at the disparity.

  Behind him, Philip said, “I had that done in 1993. Cynthia was ten, Cathy, six. The artist was Joseph Hoegg. Well known here in Halifax. He did that from a mere photograph.”

  “Impressive.”

  Framed pictures of the Ambré family were neatly positioned across the mantel. Studying them, Allan realized none contained the oldest daughter, Trixy. Many were of Cathy at various ages—a little girl sitting in a pile of autumn leaves, head thrown back in laughter; a junior-high student smiling for her yearbook photo; a high-school graduate in cap, gown, and honors stole. At the far end was an old black-and-white wedding photo cast in a sepia hue. Parents of either Philip or his wife, Allan guessed.

  “This is about Cynthia, isn’t it?” Philip asked. “Or Trixy, as she’s been calling herself? We read about her disappearance in the paper. I must admit your coming here has been something I’d been expecting for a long time.”

  For a moment, Allan closed his eyes. Then he turned around and folded his hands in front of him.

  Carefully, he selected his words. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Ambré. This is about your other daughter.”

  “Cathy?” A glint of fear sparked in Philip’s eyes. “What happened?”

  Allan deflected the question. “Is your wife here with you?”

  “She’s in bed.”

  “I think it best the both of you hear this.”

  Just then a female’s voice sounded in the room. “What’s going on, Philip?”

  Both men looked.

  The woman who stood in the doorway wore a white terry robe and matching slippers. She was the one from the painting, Allan realized, only older now. Staring at her, he saw the handiwork of time. Her black hair was gray streaked. Hard lines scored the corners of her mouth and eyes. As she regarded Allan, a combined look of surprise and apprehension came over her face.

  Silent, Philip crossed the room to her side.

  “Carol. This is...” He blinked and looked at Allan. “What’s your name again?”

  “Detective Allan Stanton.”

  Philip turned to his wife again. “He has some news about Cathy.”

  “Cathy?” The mother straightened. She put a hand to her chest, pulling the lapels of her robe tightly together. “Your being here this late tells me it’s not good news. Our daughter overdosed, didn’t she?”

  The question carried a nervous inflection. Allan knew there was no easy way to explain this.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “Your daughter Cathy committed suicide.”

  Tense, he watched his words register in the faces of both parents. All at once, Philip’s mouth dropped open. He stared down at the floor, his face a pantomime of shock. Carol blanched. Tears welled in her eyes. Her lips began to flutter.

  Half-choking, she stammered, “Not Cathy. Not that way.”

  Allan said, “I’m sorry.”

  Hand to her mouth, Carol stifled a cry. Then she fell into her husband’s embrace. In silent commiseration Philip put his arms around her, pulling her close. The only sound in the awful silence was the sobbing of Carol Ambré, muffled by her face being pressed into her husband’s chest. Philip’s eyes shut, and he whispered words into his wife’s ear that Allan couldn’t hear.

  Carol leaned back and wiped her eyes. “I need to call Mom and Dad,” she said brokenly.

  Philip took her hands. “There’s no need to burden them with this tonight. Call them in the morning.”

  She looked away from him. “No. They need to know.”

  As Allan listened, he found it deepened his own sadness. Carol pulled away from her husband and walked out of the room. Philip turned to Allan, his face ravaged.

  “We just spoke to Cathy on Monday.”

  Allan kept his voice soft. “How’d she sound?”

  “She was upset over Cynthia. But said she’d get through it. I never thought she would end up doing something like this.”

  Allan took a seat on the sofa. The leather felt cool through his clothes.

  “Suicide is never easy for family members to comprehend,” he said. “Don’t blame yourself for this.”

  Distractedly, Philip ran a hand over his chin. “Do you know when she killed herself?”

  “Sometime during the early-morning hours of Tuesday.”

  In the silence that followed came the mournful wail of Carol Ambré. Hearing it, Philip started. Allan leaned forward, lowering his head. All of this made him sick inside.

  “I know,” she was saying. “I don’t know why either.”

  A shiver seemed to run through Philip’s body.

  In a tentative voice, he asked, “How’d she choose to do it?”

  Allan considered how much to disclose. “With drugs.”

  With aching slowness Philip seemed to toil with the understanding. “Did she leave a letter?”

  “Yes. We need to have it examined for authenticity. After which, we’ll release a copy to you.”

  Philip’s jaw worked. “Did she explain why?”

  “I think your daughter has been dealing with inner demons for some time. Her addiction only compounded her problems and was probably conducive to her depression.”

  “I believe it contributed to all of her problems,” Philip said.

  “I think so,” Allan agreed. “Do you know how long she was using?”

  Philip rested his palms on the back of a chair. “At least a year. That’s what she told me in January. But I suspect most of her final year in university. When she came home for the Christmas break in 2008, I saw changes in her. But I chalked it up to the stress of her classes.”

  “She never finished that year?”

  Philip shook his head. “She dropped out in May of last year. She wouldn’t have graduated anyway. I tried to get her to go back last fall, but she refused.”

  “Did she explain why?”

  “The drugs, probably. Just like they were the reason she failed her final year. Cathy never had failing grades in her life.”

  “What’d she do for money?”

  “She went to work at a couple of retail stores. She lost the last one in November because of absenteeism. She didn’t work again until this past January when she got a job at a hotel.”

  Allan remembered the entries in Cathy’s diary. “When did you begin to suspect she was using?”

  “Late last fall.” Philip’s face became haunted now. “Cathy stopped hanging out with her friends. Began to stay in her room a lot. She was losing weight. Seemed tired all the time. And at other times she just seemed out of it.

  “Just after the new year, I found some spoons hidden under her mattress. I confronted her about it. That’s when it all came out.

  “No responsible parent would ever give their child a loaded gun to play with.” The quiet in Philip’s voice didn’t hide the tremor. “By continuing to give Cathy a place to live, food to eat, we were, in essence, funding her addiction.

  “I don’t think you realize what we went through. Imagine watching your own daughter kill herself. We could see Cathy’s
health deteriorating right before our eyes. But she couldn’t see it in herself.”

  Allan asked, “Did you try to get her help?”

  “I checked out rehab facilities for her. She refused to go. I practically begged her to get help. I tried to convince her that she had a bright future ahead of her, that she should go back to university. I didn’t want to lose another daughter. I thought I’d gotten through to her. She told me her problem wasn’t serious and she stopped. But later I found out that she was still using. She lied.”

  “She did try to stop, Mr. Ambré,” Allan said. “You need to understand that it isn’t that easy. You weren’t reasoning with your daughter; you were reasoning with her illness. Addicts are powerless to the drugs. Sometimes it requires tough love before they’ll admit they have a problem and seek help. It may not seem like it now or even then. But by putting her out, you could’ve been doing the best thing for her.”

  Philip’s mouth fell open. “You knew about that?”

  “She told me. Unfortunately, her older sister provided her with another safety net by taking her in.”

  Philip dropped his gaze to the chair. “It damn near killed me to put Cathy out.” His voice broke, then he recovered. “It was the hardest thing I ever did.”

  “What about your other daughter, Trixy? Have you seen her at all during the last while?”

  “Not in probably three years. Trixy...” He caught himself. “Cynthia was different than Cathy.” Memory entered his words now, slowing his voice. “Cathy was more of a reserved child, always focused on her studies. She was bit of a bookworm. Daddy’s little girl. Cynthia was the total opposite. When she hit her teen years, she became defiant, a bit on the wild side. I blamed it on the crowd of riffraff she ran with. She became bored with school, and her attendance dropped off. Teachers used to call me at work to tell me she’d been skipping classes.”

  “How were her grades?”

  “In high school they were borderline. She failed a lot of classes. It took her two extra years of grade twelve to get enough credits to graduate. Her just going back those two years surprised me.

  “Cathy, on the other hand, excelled in school. She graduated with honors.

  “After high school, Cynthia decided she wanted to go out and work instead of continuing her education. I offered to put her through university, but she would have none of that. She said she wanted to make money, to go out and live on her own. That nothing in university interested her.

  “Soon after that she landed a job. She told me it was as a waitress at a bar over in Bedford. She used to leave here at suppertime and not get home until four or five the next morning. I found out shortly afterward that she wasn’t working as a waitress, but as a dancer at a strip club in Dartmouth.

  “I confronted her about it, and she told me it was her life and she’d do what she wanted to. The money was too good to give up. She made more in one night than she could in a week somewhere else.”

  “Were drugs ever involved?”

  Philip shrugged. “Who really knows? I scarcely saw her during that time. I worked through the day, she at night. We never crossed paths much. I think she made every attempt to avoid me.”

  “How’d she make her way into prostitution?”

  “I don’t know that either. She left the strip club after dancing there for about two years. I don’t know if she left of her own accord or was fired. Maybe she was into prostitution even then. All I know is that her attitude seemed to worsen after she left the club. I found out about the prostitution when she got arrested one night.

  “I don’t know how to tell you what that was like to find out your daughter was a hooker selling herself on the streets. The strip club was bad enough.” Philip’s voice was low, shamed. “It nearly floored me. Especially how well I provided for her. I tried to talk her out of it. Offered her money to stop. But the more I tried, the more defiant she became.” His throat worked, and his eyes misted. “It’s like she hated me for something I did and was trying to get me back. I tried to raise both of my daughters properly. I don’t know what mistakes I made as a parent. I beat myself up over it for years since.

  “One morning I simply asked Cynthia to leave. And she did. We haven’t spoken to one another since.”

  Philip moved from the chair now. Walking to the window, he gazed out at the darkened street. For a long time he was silent, a prisoner of his own thoughts and emotions. Then he turned, and Allan saw the fresh concern in his eyes.

  “Do you think I’m a bad parent?”

  Allan stared at him. He knew there were no words adequate to lift this man from the depths of his guilt.

  “No, I don’t think you’re a bad parent,” he said. “Don’t blame yourself. We all want what’s best for our children. To keep them safe. We can only teach them positive habits and help them toward a better life. When they reach adulthood it’s up to them to heed all we’ve tried to do for them.

  “I think you did the best you could with the hand you’d been dealt. And I believe Cathy felt that way too.”

  Philip looked at him for a moment, then without another word, he turned to the window again. Allan rose to his feet. When he moved to Philip’s side, he saw the film in the father’s eyes, the grave expression on his face.

  Allan drew a breath. “We’ll need you to come down to the medical examiner’s office at some point for a positive identification.”

  Philip, he saw, wouldn’t or couldn’t look at him now. Only the faint nod of his head said that he had heard him.

  After a moment, Philip whispered, “Later.” His voice choked. “I’ll do it later.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” Allan put a hand on his shoulder. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Philip Ambré didn’t see him out. Allan stepped outside and shut the door softly behind him. As he walked back to his car, he saw Philip where he had left him, still standing in front of the living room windows, staring down at a handkerchief now in his hands.

  Allan slipped into his car and realized there were tears in his eyes. But he didn’t know for whom.

  27

  Halifax, May 16

  2:50 a.m.

  Print match.

  The ERT van was black and nondescript. It coasted slowly down Walnut Avenue. Behind it two radio cars parked diagonally across the south entrance to the street, closing it off. At the north entrance, two other police cars did the same. No residents would be going home just yet. More importantly, none would be leaving without being identified.

  Beneath a disconnected streetlight, the van pulled to the curb and stopped. Its male driver extinguished the headlights.

  There was no one around. The neighborhood was quiet, asleep.

  The man checked his watch: 3:00 a.m. His name was Sam Keating, commander of the Emergency Response Team. He wore a SWAT uniform. A black balaclava covered his face but for a strip across his alert green eyes. Beneath it a small earpiece was connected to a mike attached to the front of his Kevlar vest. On the passenger seat sat his ballistics helmet, complete with a mounted night-vision monocular.

  The neighborhood surrounding him was segregated only by its high income. The street was tree lined, the houses elegant, with sloping lawns and manicured hedgerows.

  From the dash Keating picked up a pair of night-vision binoculars and pressed them to his face. Up ahead, around the bend in the road, loomed the green-hued silhouette of the target house—a brick colonial with white pilasters and a peaked pediment. The stand of trees behind it was dark against the lighter shade of sky.

  Adjusting the center dial, Keating brought the home into sharper focus. All the lights were out. The BMW belonging to the occupant was parked in the drive.

  Disgusted, Keating shook his head.

  “Who says crime doesn’t pay?” he whispered to himself.

  On Wednesday afternoon the forensics lab had lifted four useable latents from the heroin packet retrieved in Cathy Ambré’s bedroom. All but one thumbprint was identified as hers. That on
e was entered into AFIS. A short time later, the identification system returned a match—Bernard Potter. He was a twenty-nine-year-old former resident of Vancouver who had amassed a long list of drug-related priors. It was anyone’s guess as to how he had slipped through the cracks in Canada’s justice system and ended up in Halifax to set up shop with anonymity.

  With a little extra legwork, Allan discovered Cathy Ambré had used Call a Cab the night of her suicide. The taxi company’s logbook revealed that she had been picked up at her apartment building, driven to Potter’s home, and then returned again.

  Armed with this evidence, a judge issued a search-and-seizure warrant. It was the job of the Emergency Response Team to carry it out.

  Once more Keating moved the binoculars over the property, considering the point of entry. There would be no dynamic breach. No shotgunning the door locks or hinges. No use of explosives or battering ram. At the briefing earlier, the team decided a stealthy entry would be more appropriate. The battering ram would be used as the backup if the initial plan failed. Potter was considered a high-risk, dangerous offender. His whereabouts in the home were unknown. Surveillance had also revealed there was a young woman in there with him.

  Keating put down the binoculars.

  Keying his radio, he spoke into the mike on his vest. “Check. Check. Radio check.”

  The response was instantaneous. “All clear.”

  With a sigh he picked up his helmet, opened the door, and stepped out. His nerves were tingling. This happened whenever he went out on these operations. One mistake could be disastrous.

  Keating put on the helmet and secured it by the chinstrap. He circled the van and opened the rear doors. Five team members were waiting patiently inside. The man closest to him held out a Heckler & Koch MP5. Keating checked it over and then slung it over his shoulder.

  “Are we ready?” he asked the team.

  In unison they replied, “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s move.”

  The weather was perfect for the operation—dark, overcast, and a wind stirring enough sound in the trees to conceal someone’s approaching footsteps.