The Specter

by Saul, Jonas

  She leaned down at the closest body and lifted the edge of the blanket. “Jan Elliot, age twenty-eight. Appears to have been asphyxiated. Bruising around the neck indicates strangulation.” She stopped and referred to her notes. “She worked as a stripper at the House of Lancaster. Hasn’t been seen in three days.”

  Folley noticed how flat the blanket was over her chest.

  “If she was a dancer,” he pointed at her breasts, “I’m not trying to be a pig here, but …”

  Angela nodded. “They were sliced off after she was killed.”

  Folley’s face tightened. “After she was killed?”

  “Yeah.” Angela walked over to the next body and exposed the face. “Frank Weeks, age forty-five. Stabbed in the heart at least five times. Worked at the Toronto Island Airport.”

  Folley nodded. He was all too clear on Frank’s place of employment. He suspected Gary would also be among the dead, too. Angela moved to the next body without pulling the blanket up. She pointed down as she read from her notes. “Gary Weeks, age forty-eight. Also stabbed in the heart. Worked with his brother at the airport.”

  Folley stepped back, his shoulder bumped the brick wall of the tower. “Wow.”

  “You okay, Folley? You don’t look good.”

  “It’s … this case just got a lot bigger.”

  “How so?”

  “I talked to a guy this morning that saw Gary get grabbed by two guys in a white van. He approached them, tried to stop it and reportedly got a gun shoved in his face for his trouble.”

  “We’re going to need to talk to this guy. What’s his name?”

  She poised a pen over her notebook. Folley knew the case just slipped through his fingers. No one challenged Angela. She made steel appear weak. But she did say, We’re going to need to talk to this guy.

  “Aaron Stevens.”

  She stopped writing and looked at him, one eyebrow cocked high on her forehead.

  “Stevens?” she asked.

  Folley nodded. Then he connected it. “Don’t tell me Joanne is here.”

  By the expression on Angela’s face, he knew that under one of the remaining two blankets lay Joanne Stevens, sister to Aaron Stevens. He wondered how Aaron would take the news. He remembered their conversation in his office that morning about how the system hadn’t worked for his family. Nobody ever stepped up to the plate for the Stevens’ family and now Joanne had been murdered. He didn’t want to be the one who told Aaron, but knew he would have no choice. It was his case. They would need a positive ID on the body from a family member.

  Or maybe homicide will take it from me.

  “You were working on the Stevens case.”

  It wasn’t a question. She knew. That’s why she called Folley in.

  “Yes. Aaron Stevens reported his sister missing a few days ago. He claimed to see Gary abducted at gunpoint this morning. He could even ID the perps. He said it was all connected. I guess he had no idea just how connected.”

  “I want to talk to Aaron, ASAP. Can you call him? Get him to meet us at the station?”

  “I’ll call him, but be prepared, he’s pretty fired up about finding his sister. Alive.”

  Angela nodded in understanding. “We’ve dealt with his kind before. But what I want to know is what led him to feel it’s all connected. Why was he at the airport this morning?” She stopped and stared at Folley. “How well do you know Aaron? Is there any chance he’s involved in any way, and when he talked to you this morning, was it a cry for help? Maybe he’s in over his head?”

  Folley thought about it for a second and then shook his head. “No way. He came in to the police station this morning because he was angry more wasn’t being done to find his sister. I don’t envy the person who has to tell him. How did she die? Any idea?”

  Angela studied her notes. “Joanne Stevens, age twenty-two, was beaten with something bigger than a fist. More like a baseball bat. Then she was stabbed in the mouth, the blade coming out the back of her neck. It was a thick blade, slicing into her spine from the front.” Angela said this without emotion, as if reading baseball scores from the daily sports section. She pointed to the fifth blanket. “Nancy Demeers, age thirty-five, stabbed in each eye and then after she was already dead, knifed in her vagina.”

  “Her vagina?” Folley asked, aghast. “What the fuck?”

  “She still has the knife inside her. Joanne is missing both breasts, too. They were sliced off after she died and Jan Elliot is missing all her fingers and toes. Whoever did this hates women because the Weeks’ brothers were just stabbed in the heart and left alone after they died.” She paused. “But there’s something else that’s strange.”

  Folley’s empty stomach turned, the crazy feeling of the Vick’s dangling from his nose making him think he looked like a warped clown. At least all the bodies were wrapped in blankets, otherwise he might have vomited if he’d seen what Angela had just described. Maybe that was why she handled homicides and he didn’t. It all came down to the stomach and how much it could handle.

  “What’s stranger than what you just described?” Folley asked.

  She slipped her notepad back inside her overcoat’s side pocket. “Each body had a crucifix placed on their chest, directly over the victim’s heart. It came across to me like it was a religious killing. But then we’ve got the anger toward women angle.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Stranger than fiction.”

  Folley wondered how Angela Wheeler kept it together to do her job night and day.

  “Hey, Folley,” she called after him as he headed for the stairs.

  “Yeah?”

  “You gonna talk to the Stevens guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll need him for a positive ID. How many of these people were your cases?”

  “Joanne and Jan. They both worked at the House of Lancaster. I have a feeling Nancy did too. Also, the Weeks brothers’ cases just hit my desk. I had plans to take Aaron’s statement tomorrow regarding Gary’s abduction this morning at the airport. So, I guess, all of them.”

  Angela coughed into her elbow. “We could use you on this.”

  “How? I’m not homicide.”

  “I know. But all these cases are—sorry, were—yours. You’ve met Aaron. You were going to call him about Gary. You’re pretty tight with this. So, what do you say? Help me out here. Get Aaron’s statement. Get him to do the positive ID on Joanne and then sweat him a little. Find out what made him go to the airport this morning. Report to me directly. I’ll file the request to transfer you for this case. Don’t worry, I’ll get the okay. You in?”

  Folley knew Aaron. He had seen his passion, felt his anger. Maybe he could insulate the tough homicide detectives from Aaron and vice versa.

  “Do it,” he said. “File the transfer. I’m yours, as Jason Mraz says.”

  “Jason who?”

  He was drawn into Angela’s gorgeous blue eyes. “You don’t listen to Jason Mraz?”

  “Never heard of him. I’m more of a Vitas girl.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Never mind. When can you get Stevens to the station?”

  “I’ll call right now. As soon as I get outside.”

  She punched at the buttons of her cell phone. Over her shoulder she shouted, “Calling in the request now, Folley. Get Aaron. We’ll meet at the medical examiner’s.”

  He started down the stairs, intent on making the call to Aaron that he didn’t want to make.

  Chapter 10

  The security camera’s disc from his sister’s apartment building sat in the passenger seat beside Aaron. He wondered what Folley would say now. Would the police finally get seriously involved? Now he had evidence. Now he had the kidnappers’ faces on camera. Folley and his cohorts had to do something. Maybe the system would work for a change.

  He chuckled ruefully. That’ll be the day.

  People walked hand-in-hand along the beach in front of his car. Not a care in the world, their worst angst was getting the re
nt in on time or wondering if their girlfriend was cheating on them.

  Life isn’t fair.

  As the sun dropped in the west, Toronto came alive. The clubs would fill up for the evening, and then they would empty after midnight and the rave parties would start, everyone enjoying themselves while their fellow Torontonians suffered. He’d lost his dojo because some asshole used his studio as training to hurt women. Because the guy Aaron beat was in a coma, Aaron had lost his freedom. As part of the bail conditions, he had to agree to not leave the Greater Toronto Area without first notifying his lawyer and within twenty-four hours of his bail he had been ordered to surrender his Canadian passport. It wasn’t fair. It simply wasn’t fair.

  If the system worked, that mother and her daughter would have had a place to go, a safe place. John Ashcroft, the man in the coma, would have been arrested and the system would have dealt with it. But instead the shit fell on Aaron’s doorstep and it cost him his dojo, his life’s dream.

  His not-guilty plea went along with the request to have a jury for the trial. Aaron’s lawyer, Anthony Garrett, said the jury would sympathize with Aaron’s plight. They’d feel sorry for the daughter and mother—some of them would even feel that Aaron was justified in what he did. At least that’s what Anthony was going to milk the jury for. Sympathy.

  Aaron turned on the car radio. Aerosmith’s lead singer, Steven Tyler, sang about Janie and how she had a gun. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. Joanne was still missing. She wasn’t answering her cell phone and he was thirty minutes away from walking into the House of Lancaster to look for whatever answers he could find. He wasn’t stupid. He knew there could be trouble, but he was tired of waiting to find out what was going on. It was too late to dabble. Someone at the club knew something. They had to. Maybe they have security cameras that had a story to tell.

  After three songs about failed relationships and insecure people, Aaron started his car and went to put it in reverse when his cell phone rang. He grabbed the phone, hoping and praying it was his sister.

  The screen read private.

  “Hello?”

  “Aaron Stevens?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Detective Folley here.”

  “You got something? Is that why you’re calling?”

  Aaron’s gaze followed a seagull as it swooped down onto the surface of Lake Ontario, snatching at something. He wished he could be that free.

  “We need to talk. I need you to come down to my office.”

  Aaron checked the dashboard clock. He had twenty minutes to meet Daniel and whoever else Daniel had gathered to go to the strip club.

  “How about tomorrow?” Aaron asked.

  “Not good. I need to see you tonight. Now.”

  “Now?” he asked. “Why? What’s so important?”

  “Just get here. We’ll talk when you come in.”

  “Are you ordering me to the police station or asking?”

  “Nothing so official. I just need to talk to you. I need your statement on Gary Weeks’ abduction. Something else has come up that I can’t talk about on the phone.”

  Aaron could hear exasperation in Folley’s voice.

  “What development could be so important that you can’t wait until tomorrow? I don’t remember you being too anxious to take my statement this morning.” Aaron watched the seagull as it fought with another one, midair. “Unless of course you’ve found my sister. Is that it? Have you found Joanne?”

  “Look, Aaron, it does involve your sister. Come to my office. We’ll discuss it here. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

  “You’re not giving me anything, but you want me to stop what I’m doing and come running. I need more than ‘we need to talk’.”

  “I can’t give you more on the phone.”

  “I’ve got something for you,” Aaron said.

  “What’s that?” Folley sounded spent. Like he hadn’t bargained for such resistance and was willing to let it go.

  If it was good news and Joanne was coming home, Folley would have told him. It had to be bad news. They’ve probably found her body and Folley’s the lucky dick who gets to tell him, but now that Aaron’s not coming in right away, he’s off the hook. For now.

  “You know the guys who nabbed Gary at the airport this morning?”

  “Yeah, what about them?”

  “I saw them again.”

  “What?” Folley sounded alive now. “Really? Where?”

  “On a security camera at my sister’s apartment building, escorting her out the front door the night she disappeared. I’ve got a copy of the recording on a disc here with me. I’ve actually got their faces on camera.”

  “That’s great. When you’re giving me your statement on what you saw this morning, you can also tell me where and how you came into possession of the recording. It’ll give us something to work with. Bring it in with you.”

  “I’m not coming in,” Aaron said, his stomach clenching at the loss of his sister. Something bad had happened to Joanne and now he was alone. He was sure of it by Folley’s evasiveness, his refusal to tell him anything over the phone. He didn’t want to realize this, but he had no choice. “Joanne’s been found, hasn’t she?” he whispered into the phone, closing his eyes on the seagulls playing in the falling light of the sun in front of his vehicle.

  He was met with silence. He waited as the tears came. The grief, unbearable and utterly paralyzing, swept over his body, imploded on his soul, making him scream on the inside at the injustice of life.

  How I loved you, Joanne. You were the best sister. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you in your darkest moment, but I will be there for you now. I will make them pay. Nothing is going to stop me.

  “Aaron?”

  He heard Folley as if he was in a tunnel. He turned his cell phone off and dropped it in the seat beside him. When he opened his eyes, the world wasn’t the same. It was darker, more ominous. The grief felt like a physical weight. One he couldn’t shake off. Nobody cared. Nobody really cared. Human life was something others could take with impunity.

  Everyone had roles. They were brothers, sister, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. Loved ones would miss their relatives that succumbed to death early. Murderers never concerned themselves with whether or not loved ones would be left behind to grieve. It didn’t matter. Whoever kidnapped his sister didn’t care about Aaron or his grief. All they cared about was their motivation for abducting Joanne and doing whatever it was they did to her.

  Maybe that was how the world really worked. Maybe people were supposed to just do whatever the hell they wanted and fuck the consequences. He could get used to that. Break the rules, see what happened.

  But that went against everything the five disciplines of Shotokan karate had taught him. Seek perfection of character, be faithful, endeavor to excel, respect others and refrain from violent behavior. How could he do any of those things and live in this world?

  “The ultimate aim of karate,” he said out loud, “lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of the participant.”

  He turned the car around and pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Fuck that. The perfection of the character is over. I’ve had enough.”

  His cell phone rang beside him as he headed toward the House of Lancaster.

  Private flashed across the screen.

  “Fuck you, Folley. You did nothing. Now it’s my turn.” He wiped his face. “Now it’s my turn.”

  He got on the QEW going west and floored it.

  “I’m sorry, Joanne. I’m truly sorry.”

  Chapter 11

  Aaron parked two blocks from the strip club on Morgan Avenue, and made his way to the back of the club from a side street.

  He spotted Daniel’s twenty-year-old camper van and headed over to it.

  As he neared, the passenger door lock clicked. Aaron swung the door open and hopped inside.

  “Daniel,” Aaron said, nodding at him. Alex a
nd Benjamin Russell, two brothers who were the smartest students ever to come out of his dojo, sat in the back. He loved the relationship they had with Daniel. There were days in the dojo that he couldn’t tell that Daniel wasn’t just another brother, the way the three of them horsed around.

  Having them here was an honor.

  “Tell us what you need, Aaron,” Benjamin said, “and we’ll do it. Just say the word.”

  He looked from Alex to Benjamin and back to Daniel.