The Ambitious City

by Scott Thornley

  17.

  STEPPING INTO THE Hughes house, Vertesi could see immediately how difficult keeping it all together had been. The carpet, which must have been there long before they rented the place, was frayed from the front door through to the kitchen at the back. On the door frame of the kitchen, three sets of short horizontal lines in red, blue and green marked the heights of each child. On the living room wall their wildly coloured paint and marker sketches shared space with a large reproduction of a painting of a barn on a windswept hill. There was a television that predated flat screens by at least twenty years, and the French provincial blue upholstered sofa and chairs had deflated under the onslaught of bouncing kids.

  Sue-Ellen brought a tray with mugs and a teapot, milk and sugar and four chocolate-covered cookies. She went to set it down on a small circular end table covered with magazines and children’s books. Vertesi rushed to get them out of the way to make room for the tea, standing there with his arms full until finally he just set down the pile on the floor. He settled himself in a pressback rocking chair with a knitted cushion cover as Sue-Ellen, dreading what she was about to hear, sat down and held her knees.

  MacNeice had been right about her. Not long after accepting his cup of tea, Vertesi was giving her the short version of what had happened to her husband. She immediately wanted more information, and he retreated: “I’m sorry but I’m not authorized to say anything more.” For a moment her face flashed with anger, and then a deep sadness set in. Feeling awkward, he wrote MacNeice’s phone numbers on the back of his card and put it on the table. The oldest son, who looked a lot like his father, appeared at the kitchen door with the younger ones close behind. He seemed to understand what was happening and took them out into the yard to play.

  Vertesi thought about what he’d told her—that her husband had been murdered and mutilated and that his body, encased in concrete, had been dumped off a wharf into Dundurn Bay. She raised her mug, but her hands were shaking so much she put it down and didn’t touch it again. Vertesi, on the other hand, welcomed the distraction; though he didn’t like tea, he helped himself to a second cup. He was also grateful to MacNeice for the question about the scar on Hughes’s lower back, as it seemed to distract her from the word mutilated.

  “Gary was a wild kid,” she said. “At seventeen he was in a gang. On his eighteenth birthday he was leaving a convenience store when a rival gang drove by and shot him. Gary recovered, and a few months later he went down to a recruitment centre and enlisted in the army. I met him not long after that.”

  The same photograph as the one on the whiteboard in Dundurn was on the mantel over the gas fireplace. Beside it were several of Hughes and the family after his discharge. She gave three of them to Vertesi.

  Sue-Ellen stood in the doorway of the small white frame bungalow, holding the screen door open, all three kids around her, and staring at Vertesi as he backed out of the short dirt driveway. He waved before pulling away; the little girl was the only one to wave back. Sue-Ellen had a brother and sister-in-law nearby and had promised to call them when she’d pulled herself together. Vertesi drove off slowly, looking forward to a cold beer at Old Soldiers.

  When he’d gone a few blocks, though, he pulled over and studied the photos. In one, the eldest boy, Luke, was in an above-ground pool. He was wearing a mask and snorkel and appeared above the bright blue metal rim as if he had been diving for pearls. Hughes was wearing a white T-shirt and knee-length green shorts. He had the infant Sam in his arms and appeared to be pulling Jenny, aged four or so, along the wet grass as she hugged his leg. She was laughing hysterically; her swim goggles fallen around her neck. Hughes, his hair in an army buzz cut, was looking into the camera and grinning—he seemed intensely happy. In another snapshot, Sue-Ellen and her husband were in the garden; she was on his lap in an Adirondack chair. It was sunset and both had a glass of white wine in their hands. Sue-Ellen had said it was their fifteenth anniversary.

  The third image was Gary—long-haired, bare-chested—in shorts, assembling a swing. It was easy to see why he was considered a lethal weapon. His body, though not over-packed with muscle, was finely defined and highly tuned. He was applying a wrench to the swing’s A-frame support, the tattoo on his forearm clearly visible—his division’s shoulder patch, an Indian chief in a war bonnet contained in an arrowhead. Gary was wearing a wedding ring: a mate, apparently, to the one Sue-Ellen was wearing as she wiped away tears and blew her nose.

  Pulling into a large, mostly empty parking lot, Vertesi circled around a pizza restaurant, a used-furniture store and a hardware emporium and slowly drove by Old Soldiers. Three Harleys were parked outside. He chose a spot in the middle of the lot, facing the service road he assumed would take him back to the highway.

  Vertesi called MacNeice and gave him an update. “I can pretty much guarantee that he wasn’t leaving that woman, as the army suggested,” he said. “She’s beautiful. And I don’t think she’s gonna believe it’s him till she sees him—though that’s just a guess.”

  “If she chooses to see him, she’s owed at least that.”

  He told MacNeice what she’d said about the tattoo on Hughes’s head, that he referred to it as a bar code, as if he was a commodity. He was most proud of the tattoos on his arms—his battalion crest on the right and the names of his kids and Sue-Ellen on the left. Vertesi also told MacNeice about the family photos he was bringing back, and ended by saying he was sitting outside Old Soldiers.

  “Describe it to me.”

  “From the outside it’s all Harleys and hurtin’ music. Other than the neon signs for Pabst and Michelob, it looks like a set for a western movie. Okay to show them the official portrait of Sergeant Hughes?”

  “Yes. You’re an old friend and you lost track of Gary when he left the army. Someone told you to check Old Soldiers.”

  “Will do.”

  Vertesi’s visit lasted less than a half-hour. He nodded to several men sitting near the darkened window; none nodded back. Standing at the bar, he ordered a light beer and tried to open a conversation with the bartender. That didn’t go well—the man moved down to the end of the bar to talk to two men sitting on stools, smoking and drinking Jack Daniels, the bottle between them. Vertesi drank half the beer in one swallow and finished it with the second. Five minutes passed and the bartender came back, retrieving the empty glass. “One more for the road?” he asked. Vertesi took the question to mean that he should leave, but he ordered another. When the bartender put down the beer, he showed him the photo of Hughes. “Know him?” The man made a show of studying the image before saying “Nope.”

  “Strange. He used to come here all the time. Are you new?”

  “Nope.”

  Vertesi tried again. “You don’t recognize anything about him?”

  “He’s a master sergeant, Second Infantry Division, served with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “Nope. I know how to read a uniform and service honours.” There were coughs of laughter from the smoky end of the bar.

  “You made me.”

  “Wasn’t hard, bud. You local, state or federal?”

  “Neither.”

  “Then I don’t have squat to say to you, other than ‘Will that be all?’ ” More raspy laughing and coughing.

  Vertesi finished the beer, put money on the bar to cover it, waved a salute towards the end of the bar, nodded to the bartender and left Old Soldiers.

  18.

  OTHER THAN THE rapid tap of the Falcon’s keys and the irritating squeak when Ryan used the joystick, he was a quiet addition to the unit. MacNeice sat looking back and forth between the wharf and Taaraa Ghosh whiteboards. Ryan had taped Taaraa’s high school graduation photo next to the one from the mountain. He felt as though the investigation was in a waiting phase—for the videos, the interviews, the forensics to arrive on the fresh oil stains from the abandoned driveway and the similar stain found across from 94 Wentworth—all he could do was wai
t.

  He looked at the portrait of Hughes and the photo he’d taken of his body on the rail cart. Below that was a photo of both his and Bermuda Shorts’s concrete columns. On a hunch, MacNeice dialed Swetsky’s number. He heard the line engage and Swetsky’s big voice bark something, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

  “Swets, is there any indication that the D2D boys were in the concrete business?”

  “No, but there’s all kinds of industrial equipment here. I guess there could be a cement truck hidden somewhere, but we ain’t found one. Why? Whaddya got?”

  “Just two men who’ve been in concrete for two years—at the bottom of the bay.”

  “Sorry, these guys preferred plastic-wrapped stiffs buried in the dirt. Concrete’s too much work.”

  “How is it going?” He was staring at the photo of the mutilated body on the whiteboard.

  “We’re almost done searching and cataloguing. There’s still a lot of work, including finding the guys who are above ground. But the forensics unit is shutting down—I guess the Mounties want their van back. The ice-cream truck will leave with the bodies late tonight. I heard you’ve got another case.”

  “A bad one, yes.” Sergeant Hughes was looking back at him from his distant hill. “Swets, tell me how the bikers died.”

  “Which ones? There were the three we found above ground. Recent kills—that’s how we got here in the first place. They were all shot—executed basically—in their cars.”

  “What about the older ones who were shrink-wrapped and buried?”

  “Two snapped necks, which is no small thing—these musta been huge necks. One had his skull caved in by the heel of a boot; there’s a half-moon on his forehead—the dweeb in the van says it’s a size twelve. The last one, his head was almost removed with one cut; again, not an easy thing to do, given the size of the neck.”

  “Impressive.” He was still looking at Sergeant Hughes.

  “No shit. The interesting thing with all of them, they weren’t worked over. Just bingo on the necks, thwack with the boot, zip with the blade—not a scratch otherwise. Very smooth.”

  It was the answer to the next question that had MacNeice running out of Division and speeding up the mountain towards Cayuga, the Chevy’s red cherry clearing the way. As he sped along the concession road, he took in the immensity of the property for the first time, and all of it surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. There was a cruiser at the gate blocking the road into the site. Spotting MacNeice, the uniform in the cruiser flashed his lights and moved his rig out of the way. As he came alongside, MacNeice rolled down his window. “Swetsky?”

  “He’s expecting you, sir. He’s in the first barn. Forensics knows you’re coming too; they’re waiting in the black van.”

  MacNeice drove down the road to the barn. Lit by a large grid of mercury vapour lights, the vast space had an eerie blue sharpness to it that he found vaguely unsettling. “Swetsky, where are you?” he called.

  “At the back. Just keep walking.”

  MacNeice made his way between the rows of equipment and emerged into a large open area at the end of the barn. He shook Swetsky’s hand and looked around to get a sense of the space. Running along the length of the wall was a workbench; above it a metal grid was mounted on the wall, supporting everything from motorcycle tools to heavy equipment wrenches the size of baseball bats, crowbars, hammers, huge rubber mallets and chains. Mounted on the walls at either end were jackhammers (three), chainsaws (four), nailguns (four), a brushcutter, leaf blowers (two) and drills of various makes and sizes.

  “Clearly they can’t resist a hardware store.”

  “The way hookers like skimpy underwear. Okay, here’s what I’ve found so far. Do you know exactly what you’re looking for?”

  “Not exactly, but I’ve seen what it can do to a man’s body.” MacNeice looked at Swetsky’s collection lying on the bench. Three smaller chainsaws, but the blade teeth were too chunky to have sliced a skull so finely. There were two electric carving knives, the kind you cut a turkey with, but they wouldn’t have the strength to cut through bone, and neither box had been opened—the clear tape that held them shut was untouched. At the end of the line was a machine with a green-and-black gas tank and narrow triangular teeth on both sides of its long, flat steel shaft. “What’s this thing that looks like the snout of a sawfish?”

  “A hedge trimmer.”

  MacNeice put on his gloves and picked up the machine. “Have you seen any hedges around here?”

  “Just chain link and razor wire. Do you think you’ve found what you’re looking for?”

  “I think so, but I’ll get this downtown to Forensics to study its cut against what was done to the body.” He put it down gently on the bench.

  “It’s yours. I’ll log it out for you—one Chinese-made hedge trimmer. That it? Do you want to look around some more?”

  When Swetsky finished filling out the paperwork for the hedge trimmer, he looked over at MacNeice, who still hadn’t answered his question. He was studying the concrete floor. It sloped slightly from the sides to the middle, where there was a large metal drain cover.

  “Got a Phillips screwdriver and a flashlight?” he asked.

  “Sure, what size flashlight?”

  “Big and bright, and a small Maglite as well.” MacNeice knelt down on the floor beside the grate and waited. “Is this place on septic or connected to the town’s sewage system?”

  “The town. Small blessing, too—these guys are all built like Brahma bulls, and their shit must be bull-size too.”

  Once he had unscrewed the grille, MacNeice took the flashlight and lit the insides of the drain. It fell two feet or so to a plastic trap that sat several inches below the horizontal runoff drain. He took off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeve, turned on the small Maglite and put his arm as far as he could down the drain. At the bottom of the trap there were pebbles, and among them, several white fragments the size of corn kernels, one larger than the rest. “Suction.”

  “Suction?”

  “Are there any vacuum cleaners on those shelves? Any that haven’t been used at all?”

  “Any particular brand? I’ve got six of them still in their boxes. I’d go with the English one; it’s got great suction and you can see right away what’s inside—it’s clear plastic.”

  “English, please. Attach the long, narrow extension.” He shone the light along the sides of the drain; it looked clean and was probably rarely used.

  When Swetsky had assembled the vacuum and plugged it in, MacNeice asked him to check that the container was completely empty. It was.

  “Give me the nozzle but don’t turn it on till I tell you.”

  “Okay.” He handed MacNeice the nozzle and watched as he inserted it into the drain.

  MacNeice positioned the nozzle right above the kernels. “Power.” The suction was tremendous, pulling the end of the plastic nozzle down to the bottom as the white bits and grey pebbles disappeared and rattled up the hose into the chamber. “Right, shut it off. Let’s open the canister.”

  Swetsky lifted the vacuum onto the workbench and opened it up as MacNeice tore off three sections of paper towel, laying them flat on the bench. “Okay, shake them out of there.”

  Several pebbles bounced onto the towel. “Shake harder.”

  “Said the bishop to the actress.” Swetsky shook the canister and rotated it so that anything caught on the lip would fall free.

  “That’s it,” MacNeice said, and leaned over to get a closer look at the small chunks of white. “What do you make of these?”

  “What do you want me to make of them?”

  “Bone. I want them to be bone. Skull bone.”

  “Christ—you’re connecting this place to the two in concrete!”

  “I’m just following a hunch.”

  “Lemme get one of the nerds,” Swetsky said and headed off towards the black van.

  MacNeice walked down the second lane of the ba
rn, where there was more equipment, appliances and furniture, all of it new. Two fibreglass mid-engine boats sat shrink-wrapped in white plastic alongside the industrial shrink-wrapping machine that had been used for more than covering boats. Stacked off to the left were six shiny slat-backed chairs made of steel. He picked one of them up and walked back to the drain, setting it down beside the hole.

  “Talk to me, Hughes,” he said softly.

  Swetsky brought back a man wearing tan cargo pants and a madras short-sleeved shirt. He offered his hand; in the other was a beer. “Dennis Turnbull. Great to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you. Sorry for the casual attire—we’re wrapping up tonight.”

  “No problem.” MacNeice walked over to the paper towel.

  “What have you got?” Turnbull asked.

  “I’m hoping you can tell me.” He pointed to the largest of the white kernels.

  Turnbull leaned over. After a few moments of silence he put down his beer and said, “I’ll be right back.” He ran down the aisle and was gone.

  “I haven’t seen him move that fast since we got here,” said Swetsky.

  “Think skull bone.”

  “I am. That’s exactly what I’m thinking, you macabre fuck.”

  Turnbull returned a few minutes later wearing latex gloves and carrying a large microscope. “Woulda been easier to carry that bit to the van than bring this here, but you know, a couple of beers and we all do wacky things, right?” He set down the heavy instrument, plugged it in and pulled a pair of tweezers from a case he carried in his pants pocket. With his head bent over the microscope, he focused the lens. “Hmmm. Yeah, yeah. Pretty neat. Pretty fuckin’ neat.” He stood up again. “Where’d you find this?”