by Alex MacLean
“I’ll get a box,” Jim said, heading for the doorway.
He came back moments later with a firearms evidence box and a handful of clear bags. Opening the box, he set it on the mattress along with two nylon tie-downs to hold the pistol inside. Audra picked up her notebook again and stepped into a narrow bathroom. It needed a desperate cleaning with Comet and warm water, maybe even a power steamer. Dirty laundry was piled on the floor. Dried-up toothpaste spit covered the end of the sink faucet.
Audra noted the lifted toilet seat, another latched window. She walked to the shower stall and looked at the towel hanging over the door. Dry, with no bloodstains. She opened the door. The shower floor was dry too.
She carefully picked through the dirty clothes on the floor. Finding nothing of value, she took out a small LED flashlight from a pouch fastened to her belt and directed the beam down the sink drain. Jim and Harvey would check the drain and trap, but Audra doubted the killer had come into the bathroom. The other rooms seemed undisturbed and apart from the murder scene in the kitchen.
A toilet flushed upstairs, and she could hear the water gurgling through a pipe somewhere in the wall. Neighbors. Would any of them have information? Would they even be cooperative? Soon, they’d all be getting a knock at their doors.
Audra returned to the bedroom. Jim had the SIG strapped into the box and its magazine secured in a separate evidence bag.
“Magazine was a fifteen-rounder,” he said. “Had fourteen rounds in it, plus the one in the chamber.”
Audra shook her head. “Illegal gun and an illegal mag.”
“Want to check under the mattress now?”
“Yes.”
Audra moved the comforter and pillows out of the way, then she and Jim hefted the mattress. Under it lay a single box of ammo. Audra shot a photograph.
“Golden Sabers,” she said. “Twenty-five rounds.” She picked up the box and opened it, counting the bullets in the tray. “Ten left.”
Jim nodded. “Math is right.”
Audra closed up the box and handed it to him to process. She moved to a corner of the room, opened her notebook to a blank page, and began to sketch out the floor plan of the apartment.
As she drew the stick figure of the victim, she felt her cell phone vibrate against her hip. She plucked it from the case attached to her belt and held it up to read the display. She didn’t recognize the number, so she let the call go to voice mail. Moments later, a chime notified her a message had been left.
Audra continued her sketch until she finished. Then she took out the cell phone again and listened to the voice mail.
The woman on the message introduced herself as Barbara Lowe, vice-principal of Gorsebrook Junior High, and as she explained the reason for her call, Audra felt a lump of worry take shape in her chest.
5
Halifax, June 8
12:06 p.m.
Audra pressed the end button on her cell phone. Daphne had missed the last two days of school? That couldn’t be right. Audra had dropped her off at school both days, just like she did every morning on her way to work. The school must be mistaken.
Audra looked up and caught Jim staring at her.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Think so,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
She went into the kitchen and noticed Harvey had pulled out a waste bin from under the sink. With diligent care, he set out paper trash and food scraps on a sheet of polythene he’d put down on the floor. Audra slipped the Tyvek booties off her shoes, turned them inside out, and placed them on the floor by the doorway. Then she continued outside to the rear parking lot, where she pulled the mask off her face, thankful to breathe in a lungful of fresher air.
Doctor Richard Coulter, the medical examiner, was on the scene talking to Malone. He wore coveralls and gloves. A black bag hung from his hand. His face seemed exhausted and sad. Dark crescents inked the skin under his eyes, and his salt-and-pepper hair looked a shade lighter than it had a week ago.
Audra could feel the battle inside him. The Lawrence Sodero fiasco had taken its toll. Details of that investigation had been kept from the media to protect not only damaging the case and the emotions of the grieving families involved but also the reputation and credibility of the medical examiner’s office.
Even though no one blamed him, Coulter knew all of his colleagues understood what had happened—he’d hired the crazy man who affected so many innocent lives. The embarrassment had to be killing him.
Next to him stood his new assistant, Eric Lefevre. He was thirtyish and had a linebacker’s build like Jim—blocky shoulders, thick neck and chest, but shorter and softer, with a moon-pie face and watchful eyes.
Audra walked over to the picket fence on the edge of the parking lot and checked her watch: 12:47. Still lunch break at Gorsebrook, so Daphne might have her cell phone turned on, if she was there.
Audra dialed her number. The call went directly to Daphne’s funny Clint Eastwood voice mail. “Go ahead,” it said, “make my day. Leave a message.”
At the beep, Audra said, “Hi, honey. I just got a call from your school. They told me you haven’t been there for the past two days. Is this a mistake? Please let me know so I can straighten this out. Love you. Bye.”
When she hung up, she waved to Coulter, who had started toward the scene.
He lifted a hand in reply, gave a crack of a smile. “Morning, Detective.”
“Morning,” she called over.
Coulter and Eric stopped outside the doorway and donned anti-putrefaction masks before disappearing inside. Audra headed toward the scene again when she felt her cell phone go off. It was Daphne’s number.
“Are you at school?” Audra asked without preface.
Seconds passed before Daphne said, “No.”
Audra squeezed her eyes shut. “So where are you?”
“At the park.”
“Which one?”
“Point Pleasant.”
“Who’s there with you?”
“Nobody.”
“You’re at the park by yourself?” Audra puzzled.
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t you in school?”
A longer pause. In the silence, Audra imagined the worst—her daughter involved in drugs or alcohol or being bullied—and it left a chill on her skin.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Daphne’s voice sounded small and shamed.
“Don’t be sorry. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing.”
“Did something happen at school?”
“No.”
“Then why are you playing hooky?”
“I hate school. It’s boring.”
Audra struggled to understand. She knew it was something more than that. Daphne had always been a paragon of common sense. She had never complained about school before. She always finished her homework assignments, always had her nose buried in a book.
Maybe it was her age, Audra reasoned, a phase of life. At fourteen, Daphne had entered that troublesome stage of adolescence in which many teenagers break the shackles of parental control, are prone to stunning mood swings, and behave in foolish, impulsive, and dangerous ways without considering the consequences.
“Honey, stop and think about what you’re doing,” Audra said. “You’re a smart girl. Education is important, and summer vacation is only two weeks away. Why would you risk failing now?”
“I know. Are you mad?”
“No, I’m not mad.” Audra softened her tone. “I’m worried about you.”
Again, Daphne became quiet on the other end of the line. Audra waited a moment then asked, “Do you have your house key?”
“Yes.”
“Then get your butt home. I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe.”
Daphne sniffled. “Okay.”
“Call me the second you get through the door, and use the home phone.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“We’ll talk about this later tonight.”
> Audra pressed the end button with a sigh. She tried to recall any change in Daphne’s behavior lately, any emotional ups or downs. Her daughter had been a little quieter than usual, that was it. But then again, Audra hadn’t been home enough to really notice, and she cursed herself for it.
Heart heavy, she headed back to the kitchen entrance. Inside, she found Coulter standing near the body, a digital thermo-hygrometer held up in his hand to measure the ambient temperature and humidity. When the device displayed its results, he recorded them in his notebook. Eric stood next to him, photographing the severed ear.
“Ever encounter anything like this, Doctor?” Audra asked from the doorway.
Coulter gave a small shake of his head. “No, it’s rare. And you don’t usually find the weapon in situ in the wound like this.”
“Think the axe will be hard to remove?”
“Shouldn’t be. I’ll try levering it out with a bar. I’m wondering what condition the skull is in.”
“That axe is a valuable piece of evidence for us,” Harvey chimed in.
“I know,” Coulter said. “I’ll be careful with it.”
Audra picked her booties from the floor, turned them outside in, and pulled them on again. As she walked into the kitchen, Coulter took out a probe thermometer from his black bag. He lifted Dory’s blood-soaked T-shirt to expose the abdomen.
“Weakly developed posterior hypostasis is present,” he said, referring to the reddish-purple discoloration in the skin along the edge of the back where stagnant blood had settled. “It would be more pronounced if the body hadn’t lost such a significant amount of blood.”
He pressed the end of his finger into the darkened skin, held it there for several seconds, then removed it. “No blanching,” he said, as if to himself. “Hypostasis is fixed.”
Audra watched as Coulter pierced the abdomen with the probe of the thermometer and inserted it deep into the liver. After a moment, he pulled it back out and recorded the core temperature reading in his notebook.
“Do we know if any windows and doors were open prior to the body being discovered?” he asked no one in particular.
“All windows were closed,” Audra offered. “As well as the front door. No one has managed to get a statement from our witness yet, so we don’t know about the back door. We’ll know shortly.”
“Okay. For now I’ll assume it was closed.”
Jim appeared with the firearms box and several bags containing the other items found in the bedroom. The cell phone was secured separately inside a Faraday bag. He carried everything to his field case and stowed it inside.
Coulter gingerly rolled the dead body onto its left side, while Eric kept his fingers just below the axe in case it fell out of the skull. It didn’t budge.
“There’s blanching across the backs of the hands and forearms,” Coulter said. “Wrists are tethered to the chair.”
Audra stepped in for a closer look and saw white zip ties lashed tightly around Dory’s wrists and the spindles in the back of the chair. His right arm bore a black and gray sleeve tattoo—spider web on the elbow, a skull sitting in a bed of barbed wire with a snake coiling in one eye socket and out the other. An indistinguishable design worked off that and rose up the arm beneath the blood and T-shirt sleeve.
The kitchen walls lit up with flashes as Audra, Jim, and Eric took close-up photographs of the zip ties. Harvey walked over with a wire cutter and two evidence bags. He snipped each tie opposite the locking device.
As he bagged and tagged them, Jim tried to pull the chair away from the body, but Dory’s arms remained frozen in place around the back.
Coulter held up a hand. “Hold on.” He tried flexing the right arm. No give. He moved to the legs, checking for stiffness in the joints. “Rigor is fully established.”
He directed Jim to pull on the bottom of the chair and slide it out from between the arms. Carefully, Jim did that and managed to work the chair free. He gave it to Harvey to examine.
Coulter placed paper bags over Dory’s hands and secured them in place with new elastic bands. Then he and Eric rolled the body over to its back again.
“Are you guys going to pull your van up to the door?” Audra asked. “We have an audience outside.”
Coulter glanced at her. “Oh, yes. We’ll put up screens along the sides too.”
“When will you do the autopsy?”
“As soon as we get back. I have nothing on tap this afternoon.”
Audra felt her cell phone vibrate. She read the display, saw her home number flashing. Excusing herself, she slipped into the living room out of earshot.
“Hi, honey,” she answered. “You made it home.”
“Yes,” Daphne said.
“There’s some leftover stew in the fridge. Heat it up for you and your father for supper.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“I’ll be home later tonight.”
“What time?”
“I don’t know. It’ll be late. I’ll try to get home before you go to bed. We need to talk.”
Daphne paused. “Okay.”
“Love you. Bye.”
Audra shut off the phone. Back in the kitchen, she noticed Coulter and Eric examining Dory’s head and neck wounds, discussing details with each other in hushed tones. Harvey was working on the countertop, applying black powder to contrast against the white Formica. Jim was processing the eight beer cans.
There wasn’t much else for Audra to do at the scene. She shed her respirator, gloves, and booties and left them for Jim and Harvey by the back door.
She started off to canvass the neighborhood, banging on doors, hoping someone had witnessed something and wasn’t afraid to volunteer information.
6
Toronto, June 8
12:25 p.m.
The cabby knew where he was going, gliding east on the 409 from the airport. Allan sat in the backseat, watching billboards, road signs, and other vehicles whip past. Classical music, low and relaxing, drifted from the speakers behind his head. The taxi itself was clean, but the carpet and fabric seats gave off an odor of stale cigarettes. He could already feel his nose begin to itch.
“First time in TO?” the cabby asked.
Allan looked over, met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Second,” he said, and winced at the memory of him and Melissa driving through Toronto eight years ago on their way to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon.
The cabby bobbed his head several times. He was a slight man with wheatish skin and a South Asian cast to his face, yet he spoke without a trace of an accent.
“Where you from, buddy?” he asked.
“Halifax.”
“Here on business?”
“No. I came up to see my son.”
“How old is he?”
“He’ll be seven on Thursday.”
The cabby took a hand off the wheel and wagged a finger. “Ahh, you’re here to surprise him?”
Allan smiled. “He knows I’m coming.”
“Okay. Long time since you saw him?”
“Nine months.”
The cabby skipped into the left lane, shot past a tractor-trailer, then pulled over in front of it.
“You must be excited,” he said, flicking another glance to the mirror.
Allan nodded. “I am.”
“And your son too, I bet.”
“I hope so.” Allan chuckled softly. “What about you? Any kids?”
The cabby held up two fingers. “Two sons. Maruf is fourteen. Shahin is eleven.”
“Cool. Have you always lived in Toronto?”
“Been here thirty-eight years. I came over with my mother and brother in seventy-one when the war with Pakistan broke out.”
Allan thought a moment, didn’t know offhand what war he was talking about. “I think I need to brush up on my history.”
“Bangladesh,” the cabby said.
“Okay, yes. Now I remember.”
“Much hardship then. Still is.”
“Y
ou must’ve been young. I mean, you don’t look that old.”
“I was five. My father...he martyred himself for our independence. Two of my mother’s sisters were killed. Bad, bad times.”
Allan frowned, shook his head. “War is hard on everyone.”
“Sometimes war is necessary. Most times, not.”
Allan nodded and left it at that. He looked at the digital display on the meter and raised his eyebrows at the price. Already $34 and they were maybe five minutes out of the airport.
Through the windshield, he could see the flourish of high-rises against Toronto’s blue skyline. A huge LED sign over top of the roadway pointed out the exit for Weston Rd./Black Creek Dr. Just past it, the road swung up to the left, then to the right, and it came down on the other side to merge with the 401—a bustling and confusing quartet of expressways and collector lanes all divided by concrete barriers.
The cabby made a shoulder check and shifted over a lane.
“How long are you here for?” he asked.
“Not sure. I booked a room for a week. Work kept me from coming up sooner. I had wanted to take my son to see the Blue Jays. They just came off a three-game home stand against the Yankees. One of those games would’ve been nice to go see.”
“They went two for one against the Yankees.”
Allan nodded. “Yeah, I heard. Now they’re on the road for the next ten days. Won’t be back until the eighteenth.”
“Your son is a big Jays fan, huh?”
“More a big Leafs fan than anything. I thought it would be something nice to take him to.”
“Leafs?” The cabby snorted, rocked his head back and forth. “Bad, so bad.”
Allan laughed. “Yep.”
“There’s a lot to see in TO.”
“I have a couple of things on my agenda. The Hockey Hall of Fame. The Toronto Zoo.”
“The zoo, yes.” The cabby held up a thumb of approval. “Been there a couple times with the family. Big place. Monkeys, big cats, rhinos. You name it.”
“Is it far from my hotel?”
“Twenty-minute drive. Thirty, if traffic is bad.”
Allan considered that. He wondered if he should rent a car, if he should even try to tackle the busy roadways of Toronto, which made the ones in Halifax seem tame by comparison. He had chosen a hotel close to Brian’s street address. At least on a map, it looked to be a walking distance away.