The Ambitious City

by Scott Thornley

  “I see. Well, goodbye, Sheilagh.” As he was leaving, he glanced at the skulls of Harry and Arthur and noted, like most other skulls he’d seen, they appeared to be smiling.

  9.

  RETURNING TO DIVISION, MacNeice discovered the researcher, Ryan, lying on his back under a desk surrounded by boxes. Above him was the most bizarre array of computers that MacNeice had ever seen. Together they looked like castoffs from Mad Max—found objects cobbled together with wire, tape and hope—but then the electric-blue screens came to life above the keyboards and the joystick on its plastic camouflage control platform.

  Williams was on the phone, pen in hand, and he looked up when MacNeice arrived. He nodded and slid his chair over far enough to kick Ryan’s foot.

  The young man bolted upright, nearly slamming his head into the underside of the desk. “Sorry, sir. I was just connecting all the bits and hooking into the division’s server. I’ll have everything up and running in about five minutes.”

  “Good to see you, Ryan. I understand you built this … what would you call it?”

  “I did, from scratch, sir, with a lot of orphan parts people thought were broken but were just misunderstood. You could call it a homemade supercomputer. I call it the Millennium Falcon, because it’s not pretty but will hit warp speed in no time at all.”

  “That seems like what we need. Is it legal?”

  “Grey area, sir. But I promise you she’ll do the job for us. I’ve saved a whack of gear from going to some landfill in Southeast Asia.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  When Williams got off the phone, he explained that even though he’d made his calls as a homicide detective, he hadn’t been able to determine the origin of the serial number. Since prisons were controlled by the federal government, he’d had to call Ottawa. After following up on several referrals, he discovered that the person who had the authority to answer the question was away from her desk. Trying the back door and calling the prisons directly hadn’t worked, as there was no way of confirming over the telephone that Williams was who he said he was. Going through channels would take time, but it was—as he was told more than once—the proper way to make such a request.

  When Williams had pointed out that all he wanted was confirmation of how many elements there were in a convict’s serial number and whether they were numeric, alphabetic or a combination of both, he was left with static on the line, so he finally hung up. “But I did look up someone I put in Kingston—seven digits, not eight—so No-Face wasn’t in our system. The Canadian military wasn’t any better: all requests have to flow through the Department of National Defence. So far, no one has returned my call.”

  “I might be able to help,” Ryan said from under the desk.

  “Do you know someone?” Williams asked.

  “No, but I’m pretty good at finding things out.”

  “You’re on,” Williams said, raising his eyebrows at MacNeice.

  “Vertesi called after his meeting at Mancini. He’s going to drop in on ABC-Grimsby.”

  MacNeice turned to the whiteboard. Williams had put up photos of No-Face and Bermuda Shorts, the couple from the Packard and even Archie the dummy. Photos for the two from the round columns would have to wait for Dr. Thomas, but MacNeice picked up the marker and added Two male skeletons, estimated 70 years in the bay.

  “Okay, I’m ready to roll,” Ryan said, climbing out from under the desk and sitting down in front of the trio of screens, each of which appeared to be blinking or processing different information. MacNeice handed him a sticky note with the serial number on it and went back to his desk to call Richardson.

  Behind him he could hear the young man’s fingers clicking rapidly on the keyboard. He listened, enjoying the rhythm of it, until Richardson came on the line. “Anything on Bermuda Shorts, Mary?”

  “But for the hole in his head, no other markings, scars, tattoos or even birthmarks. However, what he had eaten is a visual and olfactory match to the other chap. I’m guessing bacon cheeseburger and beer.”

  “Any indication whether he was tortured before he was killed?”

  “Negative on Bermuda.”

  “And the other one, can you determine the order in which he was mutilated?”

  “Actually, yes. I’m almost certain his feet were removed first, followed by his hands, the flesh on the forearms and finally his face.”

  “Christ almighty.”

  “Yes. There’s every likelihood he was unconscious by that time, from shock and blood loss.”

  “Every likelihood, but not a certainty …”

  “No. He may have had an incredibly strong constitution, and there’s also the possibility that the butcher moved quickly to ensure he’d be conscious. Why do you ask?”

  “I wanted to know if the mutilation was done after he was dead from the head wound, because that would suggest the rest was strictly a way to erase his identity.”

  “And if it wasn’t?”

  “Tells me that he’d done something or knew something that his killer believed warranted such butchery.”

  When he got off the phone, Ryan’s key tapping seemed to be going faster.

  “You should come and see this, boss,” Williams said, sitting to Ryan’s left.

  The central screen appeared to be scrolling several columns of information on its own—very quickly. Lines of text and numerals filled the screen from top to bottom before blinking and beginning again.

  “Here we are,” Ryan said.

  “Where? Where are we?” Williams asked.

  Ryan clicked the Return key. “Turns out it’s not Canadian—17712619 is a U.S. Army serial number.”

  Williams snapped his head up to look at MacNeice, who turned to the photo of the faceless man on the whiteboard.

  Ryan entered something else and again information started filling the screen. Less than ten seconds later he said, “The serial number belonged to Master Sergeant Gary Robert Hughes, a martial arts specialist of the Second Infantry Division’s Second Brigade combat team.”

  “With long hair, in a concrete column in Dundurn Harbour?” Williams shook his head in disbelief.

  “Keep going,” MacNeice said.

  Ryan dug deeper into files that MacNeice felt certain weren’t accessible to the public. The way the young man’s hands moved from the keyboard to the joystick reminded MacNeice of a musician working a Hammond B3 organ.

  “Hughes received an honourable discharge in 2008 after serving fourteen years. He was thirty-four years old.” More clicking, and moments later: “Upon discharge, his residence was in Georgia, near the Fort Benning base. But he moved to upper New York State that December.”

  “Is this legit?” Williams asked.

  “The information? Oh yeah, it’s legit.” Ryan nodded several times but didn’t look away from the screen.

  “Keep going,” MacNeice said.

  Ryan moved the joystick and clicked the keys several times, and suddenly the second screen lit up. “Last known address for Sergeant Hughes is 3245 Trail Road, Tonawanda, New York.” Click, click, click. “There’s his phone number.”

  “I’ll call from Swetsky’s office,” MacNeice said, wrote down the number and left the cubicle.

  Williams got out of his chair and went to the whiteboard. “Great work, Ryan, though we probably shouldn’t know how you did it …”

  Ryan said, “Thank you, Detective, but it wasn’t that hard, due to the fact that the military database security system is massively out of date.”

  “Meaning you broke through their firewall?”

  “More like I was rooting around in the files they store in the basement … But yes, I broke in.”

  “Let’s keep that down low.”

  “Yes, sir. In a minute I should be able to give you a photograph of what he looked like—I mean, with a face.”

  Williams wiped No-Face from the board and wrote Gary Robert Hughes below the image. Looking at Bermuda Shorts, he asked, “Can you disapp
ear the bullet hole in this guy’s forehead?”

  “Easy.”

  The phone rang five times before it was picked up. “Hi—sorry, I was out in the yard—who’s calling?” The woman was out of breath.

  “Who am I speaking to, please?” MacNeice asked. His pen was poised above a clean page in his notebook.

  “Sue-Ellen Hughes. Can I help you?”

  “Ms. Hughes, I’m Detective Superintendent MacNeice of the Dundurn Police Department.”

  “Dundurn … You mean, up in Canada?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Can you tell me your relationship to Gary Robert Hughes?”

  MacNeice could hear the woman take a deep breath and then there was silence, but for the sounds of kids playing in the background.

  “Ms. Hughes?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m here. Gary’s my husband.” He heard her take another deep breath. “What kind of detective are you?”

  “A homicide detective, Ms. Hughes. We’re interested in the whereabouts of Gary Hughes, as we believe he may have been a witness to a homicide here.”

  “I don’t understand. By ‘here,’ you mean up in Canada?”

  “In Dundurn, yes.”

  “But why would Gary be in Canada?”

  “When did you last see your husband?”

  He could hear that she had begun to weep. MacNeice waited patiently. Close to the phone, a child asked, “Mommy, what’s wrong?” She told the child she had something stuck in her eye and to please go back outside, that Mommy was okay. Then she was finally able to say, “Gary left two years ago, almost to the day. He was going to meet someone about a job, and he never came home.”

  “Do you know where the meeting was?”

  “Not far from here—a bar. I don’t know what it was about. Detective, please tell me what’s going on.”

  “You have a family?”

  “Yes … Yes, we have three kids, four, seven and nine. The youngest and oldest are boys, and Jenny’s the seven-year-old.”

  “What did Sergeant Hughes do for a living after he left the service?”

  “Not much. Gary chased all kinds of leads trying to get a steady job.”

  “He found it difficult to adjust, or to find work?”

  “Both. The army trained him, turned him into a weapon—he was a double black belt in two martial arts—but when he was discharged, they didn’t help him with any career advice … And what good is a killer out of the army?”

  “Did he have friends in Tonawanda?”

  “Only army buddies. He came here to get trained as a carpenter, and then the economy blew apart—not just for us, but for the guys he was going into construction with. It all just faded away.”

  “Would they get together at your house?”

  “No, only at Old Soldiers. It’s a roadhouse on the outskirts of Tonawanda. Gary never drank much in the army, but up here … Well, it was all different.”

  “Did you ever meet any of his friends or go to Old Soldiers with him?” MacNeice wrote Old Soldiers in his book and added two question marks.

  “No, my job is here with our kids.”

  “How are you getting by, Ms. Hughes?”

  “If you mean moneywise, terrible. V.A. cut off his pension because they believe his disappearance was voluntary, which means they think he ran off with another woman—”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Not Gary …” Her breathing was heavy again, and he could hear by the static that she was wiping her eyes or nose. “Are you on welfare?”

  “Yes. I had no choice.”

  “I apologize for upsetting you with this call.”

  “Please, Detective, I know you’re not being straight with me”—she was sobbing into the phone now—“Just tell me, what’s happened? Where’s Gary?”

  “I can’t say any more at the moment, but I promise you we’ll talk again soon.” Before he hung up he heard another voice, perhaps the eldest son, asking his mother what was wrong.

  MacNeice returned to the cubicle and briefed Williams. When he’d finished, he added Sue-Ellen’s name to the whiteboard, noting the three kids, below her husband’s. “As bad as that was, much worse is to come for Ms. Hughes.”

  “Here’s his official portrait, sir.” Ryan handed MacNeice a printout: a head-and-shoulders portrait of a soldier standing in front of the American flag.

  What struck MacNeice were the piercing eyes—dark and wise, absent of fear, malice or concern—studying the lens as if it were movement on a distant hill. His jaw was tucked in slightly and there was a clean leanness to him, the skin stretched tight over bone and sinew: a professional warrior. His mouth, while tight, betrayed neither hubris nor pride, nor a menacing suggestion of his abilities in combat. The uniform was crisp and impeccable.

  The sad irony of the Hamilton-Scourge Project suddenly struck MacNeice. It had begun with the death of American servicemen, and now it appeared to have something to do with the death of one more, almost two centuries later. He taped the image to the whiteboard. “Along with those skeletons of the crews on the bottom of the lake, I’d like my genie to arrange for Gary Robert Hughes to be repatriated with full military honours, and to see that his wife gets his pension retroactively.”

  “Might be tough if he was up to his eyes in dirty work,” Williams said.

  “History’s what gets reported. Depending on what we find, perhaps we’ll be able to report that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  10.

  AFTER MANY ATTEMPTS, Taaraa Ghosh had finally perfected her timing. She knew with certainty the moment her mother would appear at the top of the stairs. As well, she would speak to Taaraa before leaving the apartment to confirm that she was leaving right away. It wasn’t that she was worried about her mother or that the stairs leading down from the mountain were dangerous. She simply enjoyed sitting on the bench near the bottom, taking a few minutes to enjoy the sounds of birds, then looking up to see her mother crest the top of the mountain, waving to her in wide arcs as if she were flagging down a passing ship. That simple joy never failed to bring tears to her eyes. It was the certainty of seeing her, and being seen by her, that overwhelmed Taaraa.

  Her mother had experienced much pain in her lifetime, enough pain for several lifetimes. And although they shopped for food together and took the bus out to the big-box store for everything from rice to underwear, this was always the moment—the exact moment—she cherished most.

  Taaraa imagined her mother walking quickly to the threshold of the first step and hesitating till her daughter looked up from below. Once they’d seen each other, she would descend the stairs briskly. For some reason—her mother often asked why, but Taaraa couldn’t explain—Taaraa was always laughing when her mother arrived on the landing. They’d embrace and she would say, “Taaraa, daughter, why do you laugh?” The only answer that made any sense to her was “Life is funny …” and she’d continue laughing as they walked down the last few steps to the road.

  Climbing up the stairs to the landing on this day, Taaraa was already smiling at the absurdity of their ritual: the mountain that wasn’t a mountain, the Bangladeshi woman walking down and up and down hundreds of stairs to spend the day with her Bangladeshi daughter. Life is funny, she thought, and it couldn’t be more perfect.

  Vertesi had just finished briefing MacNeice and Williams about his visit to Mancini and ABC when a call came over his radio that a body had been discovered at the foot of the mountain, between the railroad tracks and the stairs on Wentworth. As he was just approaching Wentworth on King Street, he said he’d go up and check it out.

  MacNeice walked over to the whiteboard and drew a tree diagram. He put Smith-Deklin—Concrete Pouring at the top. Below it he drew three lines to the concrete suppliers: ABC, Mancini and McNamara. Whether it was politics, the aggressive schedule of the endeavour, or that it was too big for one supplier, he felt certain the deaths of Gary Robert Hughes and Bermuda Shorts had some
thing to do with the Hamilton-Scourge Project. Intuitively, he was also convinced that the answer was buried in the relationship among the three suppliers. To remind him later, he drew lines between the three suppliers and added two question marks.

  “You think they’re involved, boss?” Williams asked.

  “Just a thought.” He realized that if the contract had been split evenly, as Vertesi had confirmed, there was no obvious suggestion of mischief. On the other hand, the bodies hadn’t been wrapped in chains or dumped in the harbour inside a refrigerator; they were encased in concrete. Two of the competing firms had been American. Below Bermuda Shorts’s image he added: American? MacNeice put down the marker. He had long ago learned to trust his intuition, so he sat down at his desk to let the images speak to him. His cellphone rang. As he picked it up, he continued to stare at the whiteboard.

  “Boss, how fast can you get up here?”

  “Fast. What have you got?”

  “Bad—and there’s two fairly green uniforms.”

  “I’ll be right there.” MacNeice stood up and grabbed his jacket.

  “You need me, sir?” Williams asked.

  “No. Find out all you can about the Old Soldiers bar in Tonawanda,” MacNeice said. Then he left the cubicle and ran down the corridor to the stairs.

  Parking behind Vertesi’s car, north of the graffiti-covered railway hut, MacNeice surveyed the scene with surprise and concern. He got out of the car and slammed the door. Traffic was still passing by, going up and down the hill. The teenagers who had likely discovered her were lining the mountain stairs above the body, and two uniformed officers were standing by. One of them was Metcalfe, a second-year kid from the east end; he had one hand over his nose and mouth, the other resting on the grip of his service weapon. MacNeice didn’t recognize the second uniform, who was busying himself with keeping the traffic moving. Vertesi’s car was parked just ahead of the Chevy but he was nowhere to be seen. Beyond the unmarked car was a single cruiser with flashing lights.

  “Metcalfe! Clear that goddamn stair. Now!” MacNeice turned and signalled to the other cop, who was waving at the driver of a Buick to keep moving. “You want to be on traffic control? That can be arranged. This is a crime scene—close this street immediately. Secure the area. Where the hell are the paramedics? Where’s Vertesi?” The young officer, whose tag read CHANG, hurried over to him.