by Mary Moylum
Halfway through dinner, Grace asked, “Have you heard anything from your cop contacts about the investigation into Crosby’s death?”
“I meant to tell you, Grace. It’s cold. It was a working day, and there were no witnesses. The cops have got nothing. Just one more unsolved murder this year in the nation’s capital. But one detective thinks it’s the work of a right-wing group.”
“A right-wing killer? Killing over ideology?”
“Don’t underestimate ideology, Grace. I see it every day at work. Why do you think lawyers judge-shop? They know which judges tend to take a hard line, and which ones have more liberal sympathies, like yourself. Naturally they try to manipulate the system to get the decisions they want.”
“I see it too. And I abhor selective justice. But there’s not much I can do about it,” said Grace. She ruminated on Ellen’s words and she shifted her weight in her chair, to better accommodate the plate on her lap. “Maybe you’re right. It’s just hard for me to grasp the taking of a life over an issue of ideology.”
“It happens. You and I have always tried to interpret the law in a spirit of humanity, even generosity, but a lot of people out there no longer agree with us. They don’t trust us. This country isn’t the nice, kind, sleepy place it was when we were growing up. Your ex-boyfriend, on the other hand, I bet right-wing coalitions just love him. They see him as some big white defender. Keeping the barbarians at the gate. I’ve met him. He appeared at the federal court on a case to deport an accused Nazi. He’s very open-minded. Not a racist at all. But there’re groups out there that think he is, because they themselves are. People see what they want to see.”
BJ and Harry watched as the Volvo took the last parking space on the street.
They rolled by slowly. BJ could see the two broads out on the porch, chatting and drinking wine. Something was cooking. The smell made him hungry. He knew she’d be there for several hours. He knew broads. When they started talking, it’d be an all-nighter.
They had almost decided to let her live, until they read in the newspapers about the refugee case she was hearing. It was about some nightclub owner who was implicated in three murders. One of the victims was an immigration officer killed in the line of duty. A white guy. To make matters worse, Harry had cruised the internet, and found that there was a list of left-wing lawyers and judges. Just like the list of abortion doctors. Yep, on the Net, there was a two-pager on the Hamas terrorist case she had tried. A member of Hamas had been involved in a terrorist bombing in Israel. Hamas did plenty of killings like that. Harry told BJ about what he read: how she had granted the terrorist asylum. He didn’t quite understand all the legal gobblegook or her arguments about there being a fine line between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. All he needed to understand was, some foreign terrorist was now a citizen of his country, enjoying the perks of that status when his wife and daughter were dead. Harry hated her and that was enough for BJ.
He was pleased with Harry’s decision. He hated left-wingers and the middle class. He wanted to kill the broad right now and move on. He had seen enough of her house and that fat furball. He leaned back in the front passenger seat, getting comfortable as he cleaned his .44 Smith & Wesson.
A little after eleven, she and Ellen said goodbye. Traffic on Bank Street was busy. It took forever to get onto the 417 and get out of the city core. As she finally got on the off-ramp for the Island Parkway that would take her home, she nearly ploughed into a slow-moving, 10tonne tractor-trailer hauling its produce. On a two-lane, dark highway, there was really no safe way to make a pass. She had no choice but to put up with driving at a snail’s pace. As she dropped her speed to fall two car lengths behind the rig, the blast of a horn behind her drew her attention to the irate driver on her bumper.
Damn it! Tailgating wasn’t going to get him to his destination any quicker. Through her outside mirror, she saw his flashing lights. Okay, the idiot was signalling to her that he was going to pass. Good luck, Bozo, driving into the path of oncoming traffic.
As she watched him pull out and begin to pass, the car swerved right into her lane, until it blocked her path forward. Lucky for her, her foot immediately hit the brakes.
The driver stepped out of his car and walked towards her. Window down, she yelled at him. “What the hell’s going on?”
She didn’t have a chance.
“Get out of the car!” The man raised a gun at her. I’m dead, she thought. Dead.
“Get out now!”
Reluctantly she climbed out of the security of her car. Pitch blackness whirled around her as her brain tried to process what was happening. A car jacking by an Asian thug?
“Here’re the keys to my car. Take it!”
“I don’t want your car.”
“If this is a robbery, I’m cooperating. Take my purse.” Grace held out her bag to her assailant. She got a good look at his face in the moonlight. There was something familiar about it. But what? For a brief second, she shifted her gaze and looked around her in the darkness. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to run.
“What do you want?”
“I have to kill you.”
“What do you mean, you have to kill me? What the hell have I done to you?”
“Move off the road … over there.”
Her vision was sharp and her heart kicked in strong. The last thing she wanted to do was to walk willingly into the woods to lie down and die.
As he came toward her, he reached into his pocket and came up with what looked like a large barrel of a suppressor.
Okay, what next?
Just as he finished tightening the suppressor to his gun, they both heard and saw the sound of a vehicle approaching.
Help was on the way.
She turned her head sideways and saw that it was a van — a white van! Maybe, as Ellen said, it was an undercover vehicle on surveillance duty. She waved an arm as the van approached. Two men climbed out. Undercover cops?
Almost casually, her assailant turned his hand and raised his gun at the man approaching closest to him. She heard a popping noise, and saw the man blew backward against the van. The sight of a man being killed in cold blood sent a shiver of fear and nausea through her. What followed next was an exchange of gunfire, several shots in rapid succession.
She ran.
Her legs pumped in rhythm with her lungs. She heard more shots, but she didn’t feel them hitting her body. She wished she had worn her running shoes, wished she could trade her Birkenstocks for a pair of wings.
Running forward into the darkness, she fell. She fell through the air for what seemed like an eternity. And then without warning, her body dropped down the embankment and slammed against shrubbery. Instinctively she spread her arms backward to catch her fall.
Ten feet above her, on the Parkway, she heard more shots fired. Footsteps running. She sucked in her breath.
Be still. Don’t let him find you.
Seconds later, she heard the sound of an engine backfiring before tearing into the night. Then the sound of the second vehicle speeding away.
With a gasp and a moan she rolled herself onto the ground. Pain shot through her body. She felt herself for the telltale wound and the wetness of blood. No bleeding but she couldn’t stand. She must have twisted her left ankle as she fell. Crouched on the ground, she fumbled into her bag for her cellphone, and dialled 911.
The important thing was not to get hysterical. Calmly, she explained to the 911 operator what had happened and her location. About fifteen minutes later, a police cruiser spotted her car on the side of the road.
“I’m down here!” she yelled.
It was only when the officer helped her into her car that she realized there was a dead body lying on the gravel by her back passenger door. The officers asked her about the dead man. She could barely understand what had happened to her, let alone explain it to the authorities. The cops found no weapon at the scene of the crime. And certainly found no weapon in her car. Her story of a carjacking by an Asia
n thug was met with a healthy amount of scepticism. After all she still had her car. She couldn’t understand it herself. But then, she was just happy to be alive.
By the time she was released from the police station and the hospital, she hobbled into her house and crashed into her bed. Despite her physical exhaustion, she had insomnia and lay wide awake staring at the ceiling. Her mind churned with the thoughts and images of the past few hours. Just as her eyes got heavy, she remembered why her Asian assailant had seemed familiar. It was the face in the police sketch of the man who was wanted in the death of that immigration officer. Why was he targeting her? What about the white van? Were they targeting her too? Nothing made sense. The world had gone mad.
After tossing and turning, she finally fell into a restless sleep.
chapter twenty-two
She dreamed. The exhilaration of speed and freedom filled her soul. She flew past undulating forests, over mountains a billion years old. As she flew north in a land of shifting tectonic plates, she could see the trees diminish in size and height until, finally, she saw open tundra stretched beneath her. Once upon a time prehistoric bison hunters had travelled here. Herds of caribou came thundering down endlessly each winter.
Look! Over there! Bogs and black-water ponds. Now she was flying over pre-Cambrian rock. She marvelled at the way the granite peaks ran from lake to sky. Here in the big, clean rivers, the pike, pickerel and trout swam in abundance. And the water was so clean you could drink it straight from the stream.
Now it was a warm summer night, and she was lying on her back on a carpet of reindeer moss, watching the northern lights, and the night sky filled with galaxies of stars. In the quiet of this northern landscape she could hear the earth breathe. Yes, in this beautiful, raw, exquisite place, she was home. Lord, let me stay like this forever.
Then the phone rang. Damn! She opened one eye and squinted at the clock. Past nine in the morning.
It was the RCMP calling, bringing back last night’s terror to her. “Ma’am, we identified the body. His fingerprints belong to a Harry Kitchin. Heard of him, ma’am?”
“No, never. Do you know why he was stalking me?”
“Ma’am, I’m getting to that. We have reason to believe that he killed your colleague Mark Crosby.”
“Oh, my God.”
“It seems that Crosby overturned a deportation order on a man who later killed Harry Kitchin’s wife and child in a highway accident. The drunk driver got off on a technicality. After that, Kitchin went to his house and killed the man. Kitchin was tried and sentenced to nine years at the Kingston Penitentiary. But he got out early on good behaviour.”
“I see.” Her mind churned with images of the previous night. “What about the other man who was with this Harry Kitchin? Both of them were stalking me. Do you think they were trying to kill me? Why?”
“Ma’am, at this point in the investigation we don’t have all the answers. We still don’t have a clear description of Kitchin’s assistant. However, we’ll comb prison records and talk to the warden. Don’t panic in the meantime. My hunch is, Harry Kitchin’s companion has taken off across the border. Put distance between himself and Ottawa. If we come up with anything, we’ll call you immediately.”
Long after the call had ended, she cradled the phone to her ear. So many emotions raced through her. The wretched incompetence of the criminal justice system had convinced this Harry Kitchin that it was his duty to mete out justice to the killer of his wife and children. In prison, he grew harder, angrier, and more dangerous. Crosby’s death had been a revenge killing by a man whose life had been ruined — and by what? By the court’s inability to prosecute.
She sat at the edge of the bed and reached for the knife under one of her pillows. She had double-locked her doors and windows last night, and gone to bed with the phone and a knife beside her. Now it was daylight and these precautions seemed a little silly, but…. Maybe she was overreacting. The man who had been stalking her was dead. Sure he had brought someone else with him, but that man had no motive to continue tormenting her. Or did he?
She hit the shower and then slowly got dressed, rubbing ointment on her bruises and scratches. Then she wrapped her ankle in a tensor. Hobbling downstairs, she looked out across the street for her Asian assailant and Harry Kitchin’s companion, even though she thought it unlikely they would show up in broad daylight.
As she made herself a breakfast of toast and eggs, she thought about Kitchin’s companion and wondered how much of a threat he was? She could see how Mark Crosby and Harry Kitchin had had a relationship of sorts, but there was no relationship of any kind between her and Kitchin’s companion. On the other hand, Li Mann had wanted to kill her. Why? What had she ever done to him?
Was last night’s incident connected to the Sun case? Hold that thought. If so, was it because Sun didn’t want her to hear his case? Why? Because he was afraid that she would see through his fraudulent claim and decline his asylum application. If so, then she should figure out a way to weasel out of hearing his case.
Wait a minute. Why should she let him and his goons terrorize her like that? To do so, would mean that he would’ve won. Fuck him! After all, she had survived last night’s terror. And she wasn’t the only survivor.
The world was full of survivors. People who had lived through hellish experiences, tragic losses, and dislocations. One only had to look at the taxi drivers in the city; they were all from somewhere else. The Pakistani who had journeyed through villages and evaded corrupt policemen, only to board a cargo ship for a month-long voyage across oceans and continents, who now worked fifteen or eighteen hours a day driving a cab in order to put food on the table for his family back home in some dusty village. Or the immigrant women she saw in Montreal, who worked in sweatshops, turning out clothes as fast as they could, because the more they sewed the better their miserable pay would be. The only difference she could see among such survivors was that some were changed for the better, and some for the worse.
She poured the last of the coffee into her mug and reflected on Wa Sing. Even he had survived terrible experiences, though you would never know it by his serene, expensively dressed exterior. Her mind turned to Sun Sui again. He was a survivor in a different way. Her mother had often said everyone in China had suffered some kind of persecution under the Communists. If you missed out on being persecuted by the government, just wait a few years she’d said; governments change hands. But those with money always find ways to accommodate the new political reality, Grace thought; particularly today, when money can buy almost anything. She saw it every day at work: the moneyed class everywhere simply left and bought citizenship in other countries. These people weren’t the only ones who had one foot at home and one abroad. Even her parents were a good example of that. Making the pilgrimage back to China and Israel every few years. Others wanted nothing to do with their past. To them it was the source of all of their troubles. Some went to great lengths to change their national and ethnic identities. Or converted to a different religion. But no one could shake their past. Worse, sometimes their past caught up with them.
Nick hated the thought of being bested by some Chinese gnome. Dubois’s words were still fresh in his mind as he yelled to Rocco, sitting outside his office.
“Drop whatever you’re doing. He’s left the country. I want to know when, where, and how. When you’ve located him, call me. We need to have plans in place to arrest him.”
“We have an immigration warrant out for his arrest,” said Rocco, taking a seat next to another enforcement officer on the lumpy sofa.
“We also have one on Li Mann. And look where it’s gotten us. Nowhere. I want you to put together a team and check every airport and every passenger manifest on every airline for a Wa Sing,” ordered Nick.
A couple of hours later, a call was patched to Nick that Wa Sing had already boarded a Cathay Pacific flight from Vancouver to Taipei.
“How the hell did he slip through our fingers?” Nick straddled a chair an
d crossed his arms over the back.
Two enforcement officers stared back at him. One of them said, “God only knows. Maybe he’s travelling on a false passport.”
“Rocco, call our embassy in Taiwan. Fax a photo of the old man. Let’s hope we can catch up with him when he lands in Taipei.”
Somewhere down the hall, someone was smoking. Nick could see a thin cloud of blue fog hanging over the lighting fixture. He was fine with that as long as it wasn’t in his office. His irritability about the cigarette smoke threw off his concentration, and allowed the other torment that was gnawing at him to flood into his mind again. Grace. The smell of her hair and the feel of her skin. No, he would not think about that now. She had lied to him about Wa Sing. Now the old man had slipped through their fingers. Walter was dead. Loong and Gee Tung’s name were added to the homicide list, and still the killer or killers of these men were at large. Sun’s refugee hearing opened in two days. If Sun won, Nick didn’t know what he would do.
His frustration mounted. He paced the office. Finally, he decided to make productive use of his waiting time. He concentrated on the stack of reports and files sitting on the side credenza. Now was as good a time as any to comb through them. Every month he made an effort to go through enough of a sample to give him a general picture of the arrests, detentions and removals of non-citizens across the country. As he read, he made notes on his desktop computer.
Several hours into his files, the phone rang.
“Our guy never got off the plane in Taipei,” said Dubois.
“How many stopovers before Taipei?”
“Two. Vancouver to Singapore. And another stopover in Manilla.”
“He could’ve gotten off either in Singapore or the Philippines. Son of a gun. I’ll leave it to you to alert the RCMP officers there.”