The Ambitious City

by Scott Thornley

  He hit Print and, copy in hand, went over to her. “Okay, read it quietly to yourself, and focus on the words—they can be tricky.”

  “Ah, I love a challenge.”

  “I know you do, but this isn’t that. This is just to read, pronounce each word softly to yourself and, if necessary, read it a second time.”

  He gave her the paper and went back to sit on the sofa. She began reciting the words, slowly at first and with too much articulation, as if she was making fun of the whole exercise. But by the time she reached “Nether Swell” and “Uley Bury” her pace had slowed significantly and her voice was a whisper. He heard her yawn then and waited for “Lord Ribblesdale,” but it never came.

  After ten minutes more of silence, he walked quietly over to the bed. The sheet of paper was still in her hand, which was lying flat on the bed beside her. Never fails, he thought, and clicked off her light. He felt his way back to the sofa, where he waited for another ten minutes. Then he crept to the door, cushioned the latch to keep it from making a sound and left the hotel room like a fifth-storey burglar.

  Settling into the Chevy, he took several deep breaths before turning on his cellphone and the radio. He only had time to start the engine before both buzzed. He answered the cell. “MacNeice.”

  “Wallace. Wherever you are, get to a land line and call this number.”

  MacNeice wrote down the number on a scrap of paper, pulled over at a Main Street doughnut shop and walked over to the wall-mounted phone. Wallace answered on the first ring. First he wanted to know what shape Aziz was in, and then the specific details of what had happened in the furnace room, since Williams either didn’t know or wasn’t telling.

  “He doesn’t know.”

  MacNeice gave the Deputy Chief the top-line story of what had happened. He told him that Dance had ignored his call to drop the weapon and had started unwinding a blow that would have split her up the middle, just like his two previous victims.

  “You fired the fatal shot.”

  “I did.”

  “And the other two?”

  He was tempted to ask whether Wallace wanted an honest answer or one he could sell to the media. But then he decided to simply tell the truth. When he was done, he added that he’d seen first-hand what Dance could do—and what he’d already done to Fiza.

  “Mac, she shot him in the mouth and the crotch. So what was it? Retribution, revenge? What?”

  Probably both, MacNeice thought, letting a silence fall. But it might also have been simply to wipe that sick grin off his face and to let Dance know that stripping her and running the blade between her breasts had been a bad idea that came with a cost. There may have been another reason too, though it was one MacNeice decided he wouldn’t talk about with anyone. MacNeice believed Aziz had misjudged her ability to defend herself, even though everything she had done to provoke Dance depended on it.

  Wallace broke the silence, taking MacNeice’s non-response as a yes on both counts. “It would have been better for everyone if you had done it, Mac. You could easily claim it took three rounds to knock that nutbar off his feet.”

  “I’ve got no comment on that, sir,” MacNeice said. “But you might consider asking the mayor to conduct an independent inquiry into how a torture chamber could be set up in the basement of a division packed with cops.

  “Shit, Mac, if you left the force you could get a job in public relations.”

  “I’m a cop—I am in public relations.”

  “Despite what’s going on internally,” Wallace said, “Aziz has become something of a media darling with this investigation.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “The kinky details of what happened down there are gonna be catnip for those fuckers …”

  “Sir, all you have to say is that the matter is before the Police Board and you have no comment.”

  “Mac, you should be doing this job.”

  “Absolutely not. All I really want to do right now is my own job. But first I need some sleep.”

  52.

  WALKING DOWN THE basement corridor to Richardson’s lab the next morning, his pace slowed as he came closer to the big stainless steel doors. He dreaded opening them and finding Dance naked on the table; he’d seen enough of him clothed. Anyway, MacNeice had never been interested in the raw gore of an autopsy. He hesitated, took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Richardson was in her office and waved for him to come in.

  Junior was wheeling out a gurney, the body—mercifully—under a white plastic sheet. The floor was wet and the ancient drains were sounding their last gurgling protests against what had been flushed through them.

  “You already know the worst of it, Detective. His mouth and groin were smashed by a different calibre bullet than the one that tore through his chest. The latter was yours, I understand. It disconnected his aorta and shattered his heart. I assume, then, that the others were from Aziz’s weapon. Please sit down, Mac.”

  He was aware of the Goldberg Variations playing softly as he sat down. She kept the light level in her office low, even intimate, in contrast to the ultra-white light of the lab.

  “I can’t fudge this report, Mac,” she said. “The shots fired into his mouth and groin were unnecessary. If they were a coup de grâce, you’ll have to explain the reasons. The best I can say is that they had nothing to do with the outcome. This young man was dead with the first shot.”

  “I know.”

  She could hear the weariness in his voice. Somewhat out of character, she offered, “Let me make you a spot of tea. I believe there’s nothing so tragic or devastating that it cannot be improved by tea.”

  “I’d love a cup.”

  Richardson went over to a small counter that included a sink, bar fridge, electric kettle and teapot. He watched her as she conducted the lifelong ritual with ease and precision. He let himself drift with the music, wondering if it was Glenn Gould or some twenty-first-century player he didn’t know—the sound was turned too low to hear Gould humming along with the piano.

  “He was otherwise healthy, you know. Of course, I cannot speak for the blown fuses in his neural circuitry; his brain has been removed for others to study that. But he was a healthy young man. Milk and sugar?”

  “Just milk, thanks.”

  She returned with the tea. The cups and saucers had small blue flowers on them.

  “Bluebells …” he said.

  “Bluebells and daffodils made spring bearable for me in England. No matter how much rain fell, one couldn’t be gloomy when they were in bloom.”

  “We spread Kate’s father’s ashes on a carpet of bluebells in an ancient forest over there.”

  She put down her cup and glanced at her report, the business at hand reasserting itself. “Mac, I will emphasize that Mr. Dance was already dead when she fired those two rounds. I’m sorry I cannot do more—I have no doubt he deserved it.”

  “He did. And I could have stopped her. But I felt I owed her the chance to restore her sense of dignity.”

  “Professional detachment was absent, then, for both of you.”

  “You saw those women, Mary. You know what he was about to do to Aziz.”

  They fell silent then and drank the rest of their tea listening to the music. When he’d emptied his cup, Richardson offered more, but he declined, stood and shook her hand. “Thank you, Mary. You’ve been a good friend to my department.”

  “I’m a good friend of yours too, Mac,” she qualified. “I cannot imagine anything you could do to alter that. When I testify, I will add a postscript to my report. I was a battlefield surgeon in the Bosnian war, and I’ve seen enough chest wounds to know that Dance was dead instantly; no amount of triage brilliance could have changed that. Therefore, Aziz’s actions—which may be regarded as causing indignity to human remains—were irrelevant to that young man.”

  “Even though he was still smiling at her?” MacNeice needed to ask the question.

  She sighed and put both hands on her knees. “When
I was a child growing up in Wales, my grandfather raised chickens—mostly for eggs, but also for dinner. I was often in the barnyard when he chopped off their heads … You can see where I’m going, of course. Their bodies would run around crazily before dropping and the eyes in their severed heads would blink up at me and their little beaks would open and close … but they were most definitely dead.”

  “Very vivid.”

  “Death is vivid … and the dinners were divine.” She smiled and stood up. Teatime was over.

  53.

  VERTESI AND WILLIAMS were removing the images from the whiteboards when MacNeice walked in. They wanted to know how Aziz was, and then they wanted to know whether this would scare her away from police work.

  “Quite the opposite, I think.”

  Vertesi stuffed the images and Aziz’s torn clothing into a banker’s box to be forwarded to the inquiry, and he and Williams rolled the whiteboards to the storage room. Ryan and MacNeice sat in silence, watching as they disappeared from view.

  As MacNeice turned to his desk to write up the meeting with the coroner, the ground-floor admin clerk appeared with her cart. She said, “This came in for you by courier this morning, sir.” She handed him a box and continued down the corridor.

  It was neatly wrapped, and above his name and title it was sealed with a label that said KT COURIERS. MacNeice stood up sharply, put the box on his desk and stepped back.

  “You okay, sir?” Ryan said, spinning around in his chair.

  “I am. Though I feel as if I’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “What’s up?” Williams asked as he and Vertesi returned.

  “Dance just sent me a present.” He pointed to the package on his desk.

  “Sweet Jesus, what now? Should we be calling the bomb squad and evacuating the building?” Vertesi said.

  “No, that’s not his style. He was an up-close-and-personal killer. Anybody got a camera?”

  “I’ve got my point ‘n’ shoot here, sir. It does a decent video too,” Ryan said, reaching into his knapsack.

  “Video it is.” He waited for the nod from Ryan, then checked his watch. “The time is 5:18 p.m. Package arrived in the office mail distribution. Has been in the mailroom—I’m reading the department stamp—since 9:34 this morning. Dropped off likely by William Dance himself.”

  He took scissors to the top edge of the box and cut through the duct tape that surrounded it, leaving one side to act as a hinge.

  “That suggests he would have spoken to at least two people: one to ask for the mail room and the person at the desk who took the package and signed for it,” Vertesi said, pulling up a chair.

  MacNeice spoke in a monotone for the video. “I’m taking off the KT label that reads ‘DS MacNeice, best wishes from your S.S. friend,’ which I assume is a reference to Hitler’s S.S.”

  “That or your secret Santa,” Williams deadpanned.

  “You can’t help yourself, can you?” Vertesi said, shaking his head.

  “No,” Williams countered. “I subscribe to the dictum ‘No gag goes unspoken.’ ”

  “Right. So the meaning is open to interpretation,” MacNeice said, attempting to focus his team. He put the label on the desk and lifted the lid. “Inside there’s an envelope addressed ‘MacNeice.’ ” He took it out and placed it next to the label. “Underneath there’s a memory stick on a black lanyard, a DVD and a handwritten address card for 8 Harold Crescent with a key taped to it. Below, a folded card with handwriting in capital letters—’A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS.’ And finally, a packet of photographs held together with a rubber band.”

  He passed the memory stick to Williams and the DVD to Ryan, then picked up the envelope, opened it and began to read the letter. Ryan stopped recording.

  Dear Detective MacNeice

  I’m sorry about your Detective Aziz but you know as well as I do she had it coming. It’s not a pretty sight I know. No let me correct that—IT’S AN AMAZING SIGHT! The flesh just separates like you’re cutting through caramel pudding. You’d never think it but it does. It’s so beautiful. Not to you—I can understand that. You and Aziz had something special going on.

  You were probably surprised that I made no attempt to escape or surrender, but consider this: all great movements begin with sacrifice—in this case hers and mine. And of course the other two. I knew both she and I would die swiftly so at least that’s merciful.

  You’re a good cop MacNeice, but I’m a better killer. If I wasn’t—and this is an extremely remote but nonetheless real possibility—I will be dead and Aziz will not. The odds however are so slight that they don’t bear further consideration.

  As for my “crusade” I’ve done enough for it to take hold—trust me—the demographics will prove me right. I have struck a match in a very dry forest. It’s unnecessary for me to stick around and watch the blaze catch hold. It may not catch hold tomorrow or even next year but it has begun. Crackle and burn. There’ll be millions of people around the world cruising the net to see pictures of your gutted friend and me. Mine will be like Che. Not the politics of Che—just the pictures of him dead. I won’t mind if you want to have your picture taken with a finger in one of my bullet holes like that Bolivian soldier did with him.

  If I have one request it would be that henceforward I be referred to as the “White Assassin,” because—quite justifiably I think—I removed several of the leaders and potential breeders that came here from the developing world. People like them will soon outnumber whites in this country. Check my research and you’ll see I’m right.

  I have left a few bibelots, some nuggets of wisdom, but other than that—nothing.

  Goodbye

  William (Billie) Dance

  The White Assassin

  “Spreadsheets, sir,” Ryan said, staring at his screen. “They’re titled ‘Racial Projections Based on Empirical Evidence,’ and they seem to be indicating, by race or country of origin, how this country will … in fifty years … let me scroll down to the conclusion … Here we are—that the country will be left with a population that’s only eighteen percent white, and twelve percent of those people will be in the Maritimes.”

  “Anything else on it?”

  “There’s a source list of his references and some kind of graphic modelling, province by province, as to how it’s going to happen. Ontario and British Columbia lead the way, followed by Quebec, Alberta and so on. Whoa, he’s even got a default. It says, ‘If climate changes continue unabated, then Nunavut and the Northwest Territories will enter the equation and hasten the decline of the already small white populations in those regions, providing a differential reduction of 1.5 years on the forecast.’ This guy was intense, man. Even if he wasn’t a homicidal freak, he would still be a freak.”

  The clerk appeared at the cubicle again, looking as if she didn’t want the task of delivering these particular four white business envelopes. She hesitated, not sure which detective she should hand them to.

  “What are they, Carol?” MacNeice asked.

  “SIU preliminary inquiry schedule, sir …”

  “Give them to me, thank you.” MacNeice looked at the names on the envelopes: DS MacNeice, DIs Williams, Vertesi and Aziz. Rather than passing them out, he tossed them on the desk.

  “The memory stick is a diary of his attacks,” Williams said as he scrolled down the document, “right up till last night. It ends with some gibberish about the Knights Templar having two hundred years to do what he’s accomplished in less than a month, and that is, quote, ‘to create a legendary movement intended to set things right.’ ”

  “Knights Templar … KT Couriers,” MacNeice said, glancing over at the label.

  “What’s in the letter, boss?”

  MacNeice handed it to Vertesi and picked up the package of photographs. There were several scouting trip photos of Taaraa and Samora. Taaraa at the hospital, crossing the parking lot, walking along the street with Wendy Little, coming and going from the house at 94 Wentworth; Samora arriving at the Burg
er Shack, serving food and drink across the counter, at the end of her shift walking with a tray of food and her books to the breakwater where she would die. A piece of blank card separated these from images of the killings themselves—hastily shot close-ups of their staring faces in the dying moments of their lives, and two each of the wounds.

  Then came another separating card, this one with a handwritten note: Close Calls. Research photos of Lea Nam running, stretching or leaving the gym after her workout, and several of Narinder Dass getting out of a Mercedes, walking to an elevator in an underground parking lot, or entering a building.

  MacNeice checked his watch. “After the press conference, Montile, get over to”—he picked up the address card with the key and handed it to him—“18 Harold Crescent. I assume it was where he was living. Call Forensics and have them follow you there.”

  “No problem.” Williams put the key and card in his jacket pocket.

  54.

  TWO WEEKS PASSED quickly. Far from retreating back to academe, Aziz took the plunge and arranged for her stuff to be moved back from Ottawa. Her old apartment was still empty, so she moved back in, grateful for once that the economy had been slow, especially in Dundurn. They kept her away from the media, which continued pushing the story of William Dance until at last it began losing ground to the upcoming launch event for the Museum of the Great Lakes. By coincidence, the launch and the inquiry were on the same day.

  Wallace and Dr. Richardson had their interviews the day before MacNeice and his detectives were to be called. Though it was neither requested or required, the mayor had expressed his support of MacNeice and his investigative team by way of a written deposition, placing particular emphasis on the heroism of DI Aziz.

  MacNeice was to go last, after Vertesi, Williams and Aziz herself. He looked at his watch—11:57 a.m.—and began making his way to the inquiry room two floors above. There was a uniformed officer standing at ease outside the door. “It won’t be long, sir. So far they’ve been sticking to the schedule.”