by Alex MacLean
Audra sat in a visitor’s chair, holding Daphne’s hand and speaking to her in hushed tones. Daniel stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, his head down.
The day outside was dreary. Sheets of rain swept past the window, and at times, gusts tossed the rain against the glass.
Allan caught Daniel’s eye, and he looked at him, made a “psst” to Audra. She glanced over, then laid Daphne’s hand on the sheet.
“I’ll be back, honey,” she whispered. “Just have to step out for a couple of minutes.”
She stood up and steadied one hand on the windowsill. To Allan, Audra looked dead on her feet. He wondered if she’d slept at all since the tragedy had happened. Her face was drawn and stripped of color. She carried herself to the doorway with the composure of a warrior torn apart by unimaginable sorrow and struggling to hold it together.
“How is she?” Allan asked.
Audra flinched. “I don’t know. They can’t give me any answers. Her prognosis depends on how long her brain went without oxygen. She might have permanent brain damage. If she even pulls out of this.”
“I’m sorry this happened to you.”
Audra leaned a shoulder against the wall and crossed her arms, dropped her gaze to the floor. A moist film appeared in her eyes.
“I talk to her,” she said. “I read to her. I hope she can hear me. They tell me she might be able to even if she can’t respond.” She looked up now. “This never should’ve happened. I saw the signs, Al. I saw them. But I got so wrapped up with work.”
Allan peered into her ravaged face, felt her words stir emotions he found hard to bear. He reached out and touched her arm.
“Don’t blame yourself for this.”
Audra tilted her head. “You know I found her?”
Allan removed his hand, quietly shook his head.
“Yeah, I did.” Audra nodded, and her eyes grew distant, haunted. “Right before I left the house yesterday, Daphne was acting weird. She came into the den and kissed me. Told me she loved me. She never did that before. I went out to the car, and I could feel it in my gut as I drove away. This sickening feeling.” She touched a fist to her stomach. “Maybe it was mother’s intuition. I went back home, and I could hear this banging, banging, banging upstairs. I called out to Daphne, but she never answered. I went up to her room.” Briefly, she stopped, her voice choked. “And there she was...my baby hanging in her closet. The banging was coming from her limbs convulsing against the floor and wall.”
That drew a mental image Allan winced at, and he quickly threw it out of his mind.
“You saved her life,” he said at last. “Where would she be if you hadn’t gone back home? Where would you be?”
Tears fell on Audra’s cheeks. “I’d be burying her. Then they’d be burying me.”
She came off the wall, squaring her shoulders. With a heavy heart, Allan watched her pull a Kleenex from a pants pocket and dab at her face with it.
Suddenly, someone let out a piercing wail in one of the rooms on the other side of the nurses’ station. Moments later, a team of doctors rushed in and a young woman came staggering out, hands pressed to her face, sobbing.
Audra shook her head and turned to Allan.
“I hate this place,” she said.
Allan gave a nod. “Me too.”
Audra shoved the Kleenex into her pocket. “My files are down in the car.”
“Let’s go.”
Audra poked her head into the room and held up a hand, splaying her fingers to Daniel. “Back in five.”
Then she and Allan took the elevator down to the main floor and went outside to the parking lot, where she retrieved her briefcase from her car.
“Everything is in here,” she said, handing the case to Allan.
“Any leads?” he asked.
“I have someone on surveillance video. I’m sure it’s our guy. But he never lifts his head or even glances toward the camera. Not for a second.”
Allan paused. “As if he knew it was there.”
“Oh, he knew it was there,” Audra said. “Wait until you see the video. There’s a copy in my files. It was pouring rain that night, which just makes matters worse.”
Allan considered that. “Wonder if that was deliberate? Picking such a messy night?”
Audra shrugged. “Possible.”
“Where was this camera located?”
“You know Atlantic News, right beside Dory’s apartment building?”
Allan nodded.
“They have an outside camera on the back corner of the building, facing the sidewalk on Morris. It showed the man coming from Birmingham Street. He crossed Morris and came up the sidewalk toward the camera. He had his head down the whole time, and as he got closer, he actually reached up and pulled the hood of his raincoat down and kept his hand there in front of his face. That’s when I saw the gloves he had on.”
“He came prepared,” Allan said.
“Exactly.”
“Did he walk past the camera?”
Audra shook her head. “He cut through a parking lot behind the building. From there, all he had to do was go up a small hill and he would’ve been right at Dory’s back door.”
“Was he on camera coming back?”
“Yeah. Roughly forty minutes later.”
Allan paused, tipped his head back. “He spent time with Dory.”
“Yup,” Audra said. “The scene struck me as personal. Filled with a lot of rage.”
“How so?”
“Dory was murdered with an axe. And it wasn’t pretty.”
Allan raised his eyebrows. “An axe? Wow.”
“The suspect also wrote the word ‘corpse’ on the axe handle.”
“‘Corpse’?” Allan frowned. “Hmm.”
Audra folded her arms, leaned against the car. “I know. It’s weird.”
Allan lowered his gaze. He found his mind spinning around the mystery word. Did it serve some psychological purpose of the suspect, a glimpse inside his warped circuitry? Or was it a rhetorical message to the police or the media or even to the other members of the Black Scorpions?
“Feel like a coffee?” Allan asked. “I know I could use one.”
Audra hesitated. “Okay. Sure.”
They went back inside the hospital and headed to the Goldbloom Pavilion, where they grabbed a table away from everyone else. Audra sat down, looking beat and detached from her surroundings. Allan laid the briefcase on the table then bought each of them a coffee at the Tim Hortons kiosk. When he set the coffee in front of Audra, she peeled off the lid and gripped the cup in both hands as if to warm them.
“The suspect had a shotgun with him,” she said. “Coulter found evidence of it during the autopsy.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“A muzzle stamp on Dory’s cheek. The diameter matched that of a twelve-gauge. Swabbing confirmed the presence of GSR on the skin.”
“The shotgun wasn’t fired at all?”
“No,” Audra said. “I think the suspect used the shotgun to force his way into Dory’s apartment. Then used it further to control Dory while he bound him to a chair and put duct tape over his mouth.”
“All that before killing him?”
“Yes.”
Allan drank some coffee, mulling that over. Why not just shoot Dory once he opened the door? The longer the suspect stayed, the greater his chance of being caught at the scene.
“Doesn’t make sense,” he said. “You’d think he’d want to make a quick getaway. Why go through all that trouble?”
“He made it personal.”
“Revenge.”
Audra nodded. “That’s my guess. There were no signs of robbery. We found drugs, money, and a Sig in Dory’s bedroom. None of it touched.”
“Did the Sig turn up in the Registry?”
Audra shook her head, took a small sip of coffee.
“Black market,” Allan said.
“Yup.” Audra set her cup down and stared at the wisps of steam lifti
ng off the coffee, her eyes far away. “The woman who found Dory was having an affair with him. I first suspected the husband. What if he found out? What if he’s the insanely jealous type? His background even turned up a prior for assault two years ago.”
“Not him?” Allan asked.
“No. His physicality doesn’t match the man in the video.”
“After all the shit Dory has done over the years, the list of people who hate him is probably long. Same with Kaufman and Higgins.”
Audra looked up from her coffee. “I wonder if they’re at risk?”
“Hard to say.”
“I don’t think either of them know who did this. Or else they would’ve done something by now.”
“Have you interviewed them?”
“Kaufman.” Audra paused and her chin wrinkled. “I was heading out to interview Higgins yesterday when this happened with Daphne.”
Allan watched as she lowered her gaze to the tabletop and began pulling on her fingers. Around them came the murmur of voices, the scrape of chairs across the tile floor.
“Kaufman was a waste of time,” Audra said at last. “What an asshole.”
Allan drained the last of his coffee. “Trust me. Higgins is an even bigger one.”
Audra nodded. Then she grimaced and pushed her cup away. “I can’t drink this, Al.”
“Leave it.”
She needed to be at Daphne’s side, Allan knew. Not down here talking shop. He got up and walked over to the trash bin, dumped his cup inside. He went back to Audra, reaching out his hand to her. She blinked at it and gave him a broken smile.
“Go be with your daughter,” he said.
When she took his hand, Allan could feel the tremor in her light grip. She rose to her feet and hugged him.
“Thanks, Al.” She pulled away from him. “I know what you sacrificed to come back. It was Thorne’s idea to call you. Not mine.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Audra’s eyes grew sad. “Are the rumors true?”
“What?”
“That you’re leaving us?”
Allan stared at her, stilted, not knowing what to say. This past week with Brian had given him a new lease on life. He’d felt it in his soul. That freedom. That happiness. That love.
He said, “It might be time to move on. Pass the torch to someone else.”
Audra searched his face. Then she reached out and touched his arm.
“You know I’ll miss ya. But I understand.”
She turned and walked across the lobby to the elevators, pressed a button, and waited. In moments, the doors slid open with a chime. Allan watched her step inside, a woman carrying more burden than he wished to think about. She looked out at him as the doors closed on her.
I’ll miss you too, he thought.
31
Halifax, June 13
3:55 p.m.
It greeted Audra like an unwelcome guest the moment she opened the kitchen door—the stillness, the emptiness, the sense of something amiss. She stood on the threshold and inhaled a deep breath.
After Allan had left the hospital, Daniel told Audra to go home for a few hours to clean up and get some rest. Even the nurses were getting worried about her. Last night, each time she had dozed off, she snapped awake in a panic, thinking something bad would happen to Daphne if she fell asleep on her. Audra hadn’t reached the point of delirium, but she could feel herself becoming unfocused and clumsy.
She told herself Daphne was in good hands. If her condition changed, Daniel would call. Still, it didn’t lessen the guilt or worry.
Audra tossed her keys onto the counter, went to the refrigerator. She ate some fruit and yogurt, steeped a cup of tea. When she headed for upstairs—her footsteps growing slower the closer she got to the top—she found herself unable to face Daphne’s empty bedroom. She just wasn’t ready.
She went to her own bedroom first, straight for the master bathroom, where she stripped off her clothes and jumped into the shower. Closing her eyes, she raised her face to the hot spray then lowered her head and let the pins of water massage the back of her neck.
She thought of Daphne rubbing her shoulders in the den, kissing the top of her head.
“I love you, Mom.”
Her daughter was really saying goodbye. That realization tore Audra apart. She felt the urge to cry again, to sink to her knees, and empty that physical pain building inside her. Let it all flow down the drain with the wastewater and out to the sewer system to disappear forever.
When had she first noticed those changes in Daphne—staying in her room all the time, appearing sad and withdrawn, even jumpy? Had it been four weeks? Six? Longer?
Tired as she was, Audra couldn’t narrow it down. She shook her head and clenched her teeth, angry with herself. She should’ve been more vigilant, more active in her daughter’s life. It killed her inside knowing she might’ve had a chance to prevent this whole disaster from happening.
Blindly, she grabbed for the soap, lathered herself up. After she finished showering, she threw on a robe. Her walk down the hall to Daphne’s bedroom was hesitant. When she reached the doorway, she just stood there, looking in, seeing flashes of yesterday: Daphne hanging in her closet; Audra frantically performing CPR; the ambulance racing off to the hospital.
There were clothes and hangers on the floor of the closet. The bed sheets were rumpled, the comforter kicked to the side. The piece of electrical cord lay against the far wall by the dresser. Audra didn’t see a note or letter anywhere.
She stepped inside the room and began to tidy up. She made the bed. She brushed off the fallen clothes and hung them back in the closet, spread out the hangers on the bar so everything looked neat. A shiver rippled through her body when she picked up the cord. She wrapped it into a tight coil and placed it on the bed to toss in the garbage.
Audra sat down at the desk, fanned through the pages of a Suzanne Collins novel, a dictionary, a math book from school. Torn-up paper filled the wastebasket. The pieces had writing on one side, made by black marker. Audra looked some over but couldn’t make out any words.
Daphne’s laptop was closed. Audra and Daniel had given it to her as a Christmas gift last year, and it came with a set of rules: don’t participate in any chatrooms; don’t protect it with a password. They had wanted access to go in at anytime and monitor what she did online.
Audra opened the laptop, turned it on. She went on the Internet first, checking the browser history. Nothing there but a long list of YouTube links. Audra clicked on one, and it brought up a video of a pretty girl named Riley, using note cards to tell her story of bullying. As Audra watched it, she became heavyhearted, full of pity. She found it hard to see a young girl of just fifteen in such distress. The pain she exuded in the video was palpable. For Audra, it conjured up the disturbing image of a twelve-year-old girl crying alone in bed, and she quickly banished it from her mind.
She clicked on another link. Different girl this time, similar tragic story. Same with the third video and the fourth. She couldn’t bring herself to click on a fifth one.
Already, a terrible understanding began to take shape in Audra’s brain. Shutting her eyes, she sat back in the chair and leaned her head over top of the seat. She had considered it. She had feared it. Daphne was being bullied at school. It made Audra angry, heartbroken, and sick to her stomach.
She wondered what the kids had done to her daughter, what names they had called her. When had it all started?
Again, Audra tried to remember the first time she’d noticed changes in her daughter, cursed herself for not being able to.
She stared at the shredded paper in the wastebasket, then at the built-in webcam above the laptop monitor. Had Daphne made her own video? Audra couldn’t believe her daughter—as shy as she was—would upload a video of herself to YouTube for a world of strangers to see. But she had to be sure.
She went to the website, typed Daphne in the search bar. It brought up a bunch of songs, Scooby Doo videos. Audra
tried Daphne Price bullying video. Nothing there but a long list of other bullying videos.
Audra knew Daphne had a Facebook account. Much to her chagrin, Audra had allowed her to have one provided Daphne never listed any personal information or used her own picture for the profile. There were simply too many pervs and weirdos out there preying on children.
Audra and Daniel had never bothered with any social networking; they couldn’t see any purpose in it. Pick up the phone if you want to talk to someone, write a letter or an email. The Internet made the world a smaller place, drew people closer together, but it also came with risks.
Audra logged into Daphne’s Facebook account. A box at the top of the page welcomed her back. So Daphne had gotten rid of her Facebook account. When? Why? Were kids tormenting her online too?
There were no messages. Audra noticed Daphne’s list of friends had diminished to only three. Tabitha Landes, her best friend since fifth grade, was gone.
Audra logged out. Next, she checked Daphne’s emails. A new one came in from Facebook; again, welcoming her back. Audra saw a second one there from Facebook and it read: You have deactivated your Facebook account. The email was dated June 8. Last Tuesday, she realized. The same day the school had called her about Daphne playing hooky.
Audra dug deeper into Daphne’s computer. She looked through her folders, and that’s when she found it—a video file titled My Story.
Audra inhaled, felt herself tense. Part of her didn’t want to watch it, afraid of what she might see, what she might learn.
Still, she clicked on it.
A black screen popped up, then the webcam turned on. Daphne appeared, sitting back from the laptop and staring straight into the camera. She wore her favorite pink sweatshirt, and her eyes looked sad and puffy as if she’d been crying.
Riveted, Audra watched her pick up a sheet of paper from the desk.
“Hi,” it read. “I’m Daphne.” She gave a small wave. “I’m fourteen, and I’m in the eighth grade.”
She set the paper aside and picked up another sheet. Like the girls in the YouTube videos, she used them to tell her story.
“I used to love school. I never had a lot of friends, but the few I had were close to me. Everything was fine until April. That’s when it all began to fall apart. Kids started spreading rumors about me, calling me names in the hallways, before school and after. Gross. Stinky skank. Smelly pig.” Daphne licked her lips, held up another sheet of paper. “It shocked me at first. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Why were they doing this all of a sudden? I never did anything to anyone.