When the Flood Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  Mick! He had overheard Dee yelling at Jake during the hockey party. Everybody talked to their spouses, even police officers who should know better. Even lawyers as canny as Dee, who definitely should have known better than to discuss Lacey’s lone indiscretion with that slimeball, Neil. Yes, Mick would have told his wife that his and Jarrad’s conversation might have been recorded. Camille, having killed Jarrad twenty-four hours earlier, would have been horrified to learn that her secret — whatever it was — was not yet safe. A chance recording of a sunny afternoon’s conversation might well reveal her motive. Nothing Lacey had heard in the hospital was a motive. Before moving the ladder to its final position, she pulled the little recorder from her pocket and settled down with her tea to listen to the whole thing.

  The recording began as she remembered: Jake talking to the dogs, his car leaving, the scrape of that patio chair when the other men arrived. Jarrad sounded so concerned for his mentor. A kinder, gentler Jarrad than Lacey had seen at the pre-gala reception.

  “You know I love you, Mick,” said the dead man’s voice. “You and Camille are my family. I don’t want to pull a dance on you. But I need to figure out who I am. Get it all out in the open, deal with all my feelings. Then I’ll know.”

  “Sounds like a Dr. Phil episode.” Mick took a few wheezy breaths before asking, “You been talking to somebody about this?”

  A long pause followed. The wind blew mournfully through the spruce trees. A hawk shrieked.

  “Anonymous online group. No names, no details.”

  Lacey tried to picture Jarrad’s face. In an interrogation, during a long pause, there would be body language to show his state of mind, whether he had taken that time to decide whether to lie or to tell the truth. Which was it? Had he spoken to someone else? And about what specifically?

  “Jesus. Anybody could have traced your email address.” Was she hearing a trace of panic or was it her imagination?

  “I had to risk it. I needed something, or I’d have killed myself.”

  “My poor boy. I had no idea it hit you so hard.” Mick breathed a few more times and coughed. “Maybe you do need to talk to somebody. A doctor. I’ll pay for one. But you should keep this private until you’re back on firm ice. A media shitstorm won’t help anybody.”

  “Keeping it quiet got me cut from my team. Going public could get me another chance. It worked for Fleury.”

  Even hockey-blind Lacey knew what Theo Fleury was latterly famous for: a book about having been sexually abused as a young player. Things were falling into place.

  “You’re not a thousand-game NHL star,” said Mick. “The press’ll tear you apart. Only way to save your career is to buckle down and work hard. In a year this will all be behind us. You’ll see.”

  “It’s not about the contract.”

  “Then what?” Mick sounded less fatherly, more … angry? Scared? “You’re going to destroy all our lives, humiliate Camille in front of the whole world, and for what?”

  Camille. Lacey lifted the recorder closer to her ear.

  “For love.” Jarrad sniffed. “I was so young when we started. How can I be sure I love Chris now when I’m not even sure if I’m gay?”

  Mick sighed like a leaky air mattress. His voice dropped, all the heat gone. “I’d never want to deprive you of love, boy. You do what you have to.” More breathing. “Only, can you wait until after the weekend? Camille worked really hard for tonight, and I don’t want this to spoil it for her.”

  Camille again. She had the key card, the knowledge of the killer rack, the timing, and now here at last was the real motive: protecting herself from charges over the sexual abuse of a minor. Just how young had Jarrad been when she first seduced him?

  “Sure, Mick.” Jarrad’s voice betrayed relief, and maybe a little fear. Coming out with this would have been difficult even with Mick’s support. Victims of sexual abuse were still too often judged as having asked for it, and many people found it incredible that sex between a teenage boy and a walking sex-bomb like Camille qualified as abuse. “Two more days won’t matter. But … thanks for your support, for putting me first this time. You sit still. I’ll go get my car.” His feet pattered away as the sound of a vehicle engine rose on the recording. The vehicle receded. The next sound after that was Mick’s harsh sob. Lacey let the recorder play on in case there was more conversation, but it was only Mick gasping and the wind whispering in the spruce boughs. The revelation that would humiliate his wife had only been deferred. Camille was a scant decade older than Jarrad, but she’d been almost a stepmother to him while he was billeted in her house. A media shitshow whether it went to court or merely to the newspapers.

  Jarrad had thanked Mick for “this time,” implying there had been other times when Camille’s desires had taken priority. Perhaps Mick had condoned the abuse, maybe thought he was doing Jarrad a favour by giving him experience with an older woman. And yet, at the last, he had agreed to support Jarrad in going public.

  Had he warned his wife when they reached the museum that evening, unwittingly precipitating Jarrad’s murder?

  Thinking back, Lacey was sure Camille had been her usual sleek self during the pre-show schmoozing. She must have visited her husband in his lonely box before the show. Her shrill voice on stage: was that stage fright, or the strain of pretending to adore the man who was about to ruin her?

  All through Lacey’s musings, the recording was clicking off to silence, clicking on again for sounds: the Corvette’s throbbing engine, the dogs barking at times during the evening. Then her own voice. “Because you’re shorter than me.” And it spooled out from there, doubtless carrying on right up to the moment she’d turned the recorder off inside the baggie, in the living room, after she’d realized it was still recording during her argument with Dee. She wouldn’t erase any of that; it was all evidence now, though it would probably never be worth introducing in court.

  By the time they discovered the bug, Jarrad was three hours dead already.

  So much had happened since that moment, and all stemming from an accidentally taped conversation on a porch between two people who would never normally have sat there. The homicide investigators would need to hear this. It pointed right at Camille for murder, attempted murder, and burglary. Wouldn’t Jake Wyman be floored when he had to explain to the RCMP how he’d happened to make this recording? But there was no protecting him now.

  Fishing out the lead officer’s card, Lacey left him a voice message that she had new evidence in the Fiske murder. She dropped the phone into her light tool caddy with the crimpers and put the little recorder back in her pocket.

  She was up on the ladder by the loading bay doors, hooking up a camera to the new cable, when faint clunks rattled along the corridor. This building was too new to have ghosts. Was loose ductwork vibrating as the air conditioning started up? She put the last twist on the cable connection and angled the camera to approximately where it should be facing. Then she climbed down the ladder and stood under the nearest air vent. Nope, no airflow. The clatter came again, sounding like tools. Another tradesman finishing up? For her own peace of mind, she would identify who and where.

  The clatter increased as she headed along the studio corridor. Her tool box, which should have been sitting by the elevator, was gone. Now the sound was more metallic, echoing like someone was tossing pop cans into an empty dumpster. The only metal container that big was the coffin-sized sink in the clay room. In the muted light from the stairwell, the window reflected her own wide-eyed gaze. She shielded her eyes and pressed her face against the glass.

  Mick Hardy stared back at her from the far side of the immense sink. Her tool box was tipped on its side, with pliers and screwdrivers strewn over the galvanized steel. Screws and washers tinkled, rolling toward the huge drain hole. She made a mental note to tell Rob about the incursion of metal objects into the special clay-trapping drain and walked into the room.
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  “Hi, Mr. Hardy. What are you doing with my tool box?”

  The man’s bony shoulders drooped under his golf shirt. His collarbones stuck out like the hips of a dead horse. If ever he had been a brawny hockey player, it was all gone now. “Miss Lacey. You caught me red-handed. I was going to borrow a screwdriver.”

  “If you need something fixed, I’d be happy to help. But please don’t mess with my tools. They belong to my boss.” Screwdriver? Like hell. Nobody searched for a screwdriver — which was kept in the top tray, in plain sight — by dumping the whole box out onto the nearest flat surface. If Camille had come seeking the recorder, it wouldn’t have been a surprise, but sending sick old Mick? He must have her new key card. Did she know each use was recorded? “What really brought you here on a Sunday afternoon when the building is closed?”

  Mick leaned both hands on the metal sink, his breath wracking his chest. “Helping out a friend.”

  “You want a chair, Mick? I can bring you one, and then you can tell me all about it.”

  “I’ll sit here.” Mick edged half his scrawny butt down on the sink’s wide lip.

  Lacey perched on the opposite lip, more than an arm’s reach away. “I’m listening.”

  “Right. Well, I had lunch up at Wyman’s place today. Jake is a very old friend. To put it bluntly, he said you had something of his, something that was likely to cause him some bother, but he was honour-bound not to try to take it back because Dee would be angry. We all know he’s sweet on Dee. First nice lady he’s courted since I don’t know when. D’you know how she thinks of him?”

  “I’m not here to matchmake. Let’s go back to Jake saying I had something of his. You came down here to see if you could find it for him?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “It’s one of those little dictation machines. Goes on when you talk to it.”

  “Did he tell you why I have it?”

  “He put it on Dee’s window, hoping to catch his ex-wife phoning her.”

  “He told you that? I thought he was determined never to tell anyone else.”

  “We both made mistakes with women. Can’t hold that against each other.”

  Mistakes with women. That had the ring of truth. He was making another mistake right now, by trying to cast the blame onto Jake.

  “I don’t think he did tell you, Mick. I think you’ve known since you heard him and Dee arguing at that hockey party last week. And I’ll bet you’re not looking for the recorder to give it back to him.”

  “I’m not?” Mick stood.

  Lacey stood, too. “You’re trying to protect your wife, aren’t you? Jarrad was going to expose her for sexual abuse of a minor. Surely you know it’s gone way beyond that now. She must have killed him.”

  A shiver ran over Mick’s bony shoulders. He clutched at the sink. “Then it’s all for nothing. My poor boy.”

  “When did you guess?”

  “I came down after the performance to congratulate them, but I missed them backstage. They were just getting on the elevator when I came around the corner. I waited for it to come back and took it up to my chair. I never saw my boy again. Then the detectives came and asked where she was right after the gala. That’s when I knew. My poor boy.” Tears got lost in the creases down his cheeks. He groped his way to a corner and leaned there, pretending to study a miscellany of wood chunks left behind by some contractor.

  Lacey’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, saw Jan’s number, and let it go to voice mail. Nothing short of a police return call was as important as keeping Mick on track. He had to tell the whole truth about the night Jarrad died, for his sake as well as Jarrad’s. His poor boy, indeed. Poor Mick. He had probably come downstairs hoping to prevent a premature, too-public confrontation between his wife and his protege. Missing them had been one more failure in his relationships with both Jarrad and Camille. This time his failure had proven fatal.

  Those constables would surely have asked the pro actor if he was with Camille after the performance ended, but did they realize he’d still been on stage after she left it? He could have lied for her, same as Mick. What was it about that woman that made men willing to perjure themselves for her?

  After a long minute, Mick blew his nose with an old-fashioned hanky and hobbled toward her, using a sturdy piece of dowelling as a walking stick. “I guess I’ve gotta tell the truth, huh? Do we just phone the RCMP, or is it better to go down there? I don’t think the post in Cochrane is staffed on Sundays.”

  “It would be the Major Crimes investigator, anyway. I’ve got the number. Can you get to the office okay? We can wait in comfort until they get here.” She went around the sink to lend him an arm.

  “Can’t you phone from here? If I take any more stairs today, I’ll have to be carried out again. No elevator, you know. It’s still locked up.” His left hand, clutching the stick, was tucked against his chest as if holding his ribcage together. He shivered, his face as grey as the walls. Would his heart conk out even with the pacemaker? “Can you pass me my jacket? It fell off the tap.”

  Although he looked harmless, he might yet be an even bigger fool for love. And he was holding a big stick. Lacey kept her eye on him as she dragged up the dusty black windbreaker.

  “Say, Mick, when the elevator came back, was anybody in it? If someone else saw Camille and Jarrad together at that particular time, they could testify.” She didn’t add “instead of you.” Why rub in the humiliation and grief he must be feeling?

  “It’s a good thought, and I thank you for it, but the elevator was empty.”

  Lacey thought back to her intense study of the log covering those crucial minutes after Jarrad left the stage. The elevator had gone from this floor down to the vault and stayed, presumably unable to move while the vault door was open. Its next move had been straight from there up to the top floor. All on Camille’s key card. It had not stopped at this level again until after the presentation to Jake. Mick misremembering, or a lie?

  “How long did you have to wait for the elevator?”

  “Not long.”

  “Less than a minute?”

  “About that. Why?”

  A second lie. The elevator had sat on the vault level for nearly five minutes, by the log. If he was lying about the elevator, was he also lying about seeing Camille with Jarrad? Was he trying to get her arrested?

  Mick looked so frail standing there. Yet he had been physically fit all his life until very recently. He had pleaded with Jarrad to delay any action until after the weekend. He could have learned about the oversensitive racks via Camille. He could have lifted his wife’s key card at any time. He could have lured Jarrad to the vault, tricked him into the narrow slot somehow, and been back in his chair upstairs, genuinely exhausted and grief stricken, by the final applause.

  The rest of the week rushed back at her: Mick on Dee’s deck last Sunday afternoon, asking if that was Jake he’d seen driving away. There was no independent confirmation that Jake had been to the house at all. Mick probably had spare keys to Jarrad’s car. He could have come straight to Dee’s after the hit and run, searched for the recorder while Lacey snoozed on the deck. No wonder he looked so ill that day; he’d been a busy fellow.

  Then visiting Dee at the hospital while she was sedated. What luck that they had not been left alone together! Telling Lacey how ruthless Jake could be. That same evening, Dee’s laptop was stolen, mere hours after Lacey had told this man she would be staying in the city overnight. Poor, feeble Mick with his wonky pacemaker. Everybody overlooked him. And now she was alone with him in a deserted building.

  Well, she had taken down larger and fitter men than him without incident. Just let her get within reach.

  “Do you want your windbreaker?” she asked, and held it out. Keeping one eye on his hand that was clutching the dowel, she took
a step forward.

  The dowel’s bottom end tangled between her legs. Mick’s shoulder slammed her in the ribs, sending her backward. The sink lip caught her thighs. She landed with a crash, her back bending painfully over the tool box. The far lip of the sink smacked her temple, stabbing streaks of red through her vision.

  The red mercifully faded.

  So did everything else.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Jan took a glass of water from Terry and rinsed down the crumb of pill. She lay back on the couch, waiting for her face to flush and her heart to pound. If Camille was the villain of the piece, she wouldn’t be going after Dee as long as she was at the museum. Lacey would not turn her back on that woman. She would two-step all over the building to keep a potential murderer in sight. Two-step. Dance. Back to that problem: what did dance and hockey have in common? The drug crept toward her brain, agitating nerve endings. Her legs and arms tingled, like ants crawling up the insides of her veins. Please let this be worth it.

  Not dance. Dants. Now the cylinders were clicking. Dants had played for the St. Louis Blues a few years back, overlapping with Jarrad by one season. What about him? Had he played for the Calgary Flames or Hitmen? No. He’d hired a hit man.

  “Rob, could Chris have said ‘pulled a Dants?’ D-A-N-T-S, not D-A-N-C-E.”

  “I dunno. What’s a D-A-N-T-S?”

  “Not what. Who.” She had him sorted now. “Mike Danton, a.k.a. ‘Dants,’ was a promising young hockey player with a troubled personal life who hired a hit man to try to kill his agent. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.”

  “God, how do you remember this trivia when your own name is irretrievable some days?”

  “My entire social life for the past five years has been Jake and his hockey players.” Jan bounced upright on her cushions. “Dants and his agent, though. Danton pleaded guilty to the attempted hit, avoided a trial, and wrote to the press from prison, professing his agent innocent of any wrongdoing.” She shivered. “But the FBI was absolutely sure that Mike Danton had wanted his agent killed.”