The Drop Zone

by Bob Kroll

  “You know she’s not here,” Fultz continued, “yet you still roam the streets looking for her. You still hit the bars. You think I don’t keep tabs on how you’re drinking yourself crazy? You’re a cop for Christ’s sake! You know where your daughter is. You had half the department tracking her down. So why don’t you go look for her in Vancouver? Take a vacation. You haven’t had one in years. Take a fucking break, and give me a rest.”

  Peterson searched the weedy base paths for a place to hide. Slipped over the painting’s horizon into an ugly shade of blue.

  Fultz sighed in frustration. “I want you to go back to Carmichael. You still need help, probably more now than ever. That’s an order! And no cutting it short. Not this time. You don’t miss a session. You don’t leave early, and you don’t show up late. You’re lucky I don’t have you riding a desk until Carmichael hands me a clean bill on your mental state. You’re back on probation, Peterson. Screw up with the shrink, screw up with anything, and I’ll suspend you.”

  Peterson turned to go, but Fultz wasn’t letting him off just then.

  “And here’s another thing. One word that you’re not doing the job, and I’ll have you walking a beat. And that includes your partner if he so much as waltzes in here with some goddamn line about the two of you being the dynamic duo.”

  Peterson nodded. He could tell Danny a hundred times not to stick up for him, but Danny still would, no matter what. They had a history together.

  Peterson left Fultz’s office. Andy Miles was waiting for him to pass by. He moved from behind his desk as Peterson neared, put on a smile, and said, “There it is, Peterson. You run with the stray dogs, sooner or later you’re pissing with them.”

  Bernie saw it coming and was around her desk and between the two of them as Peterson’s fists balled and anger flashed across his face. She saw his right arm cock at the hip. She looped her arm into his, as though they were out for a Sunday stroll, and ushered him around a couple of desks toward the back-to-back he shared with Danny.

  “Don’t add to it,” she said, offering Peterson a dusky, sympathetic smile.

  When they reached his desk, she unhooked her arm. “This belong to you?” she asked Danny.

  Danny looked at them both and shook his head. “Mental health is two desks over.” Then, feigning a second thought, he added, “But what the hell. Dump him here! I’ll see he gets a straightjacket and heavy chain.”

  Peterson slumped behind his desk.

  “So?” Danny asked.

  Peterson scowled. Danny left it at that and passed him a handwritten sheet of paper. “Fifty-five members of St. Jude congregation, not counting the riffraff that wander in to get warm.”

  “Many of those?”

  “Daniel Hearn thinks so. Seventy-eight years old, head of the Holy Name Society. He said half of the regulars at mass aren’t on that list, and they change with the weather.”

  ”That means we scour the street.”

  Danny raised his shoulders, pretending defeat.

  “Anything from Crouse?” Peterson asked.

  “Fingerprints and blood. The prints she’ll run through the database, but the blood analysis and everything else are days away.”

  “How about the film cartridge?”

  “Dated 1962.”

  “The undeveloped film?”

  “Waiting on it.”

  “So where was Father Boutilier in 1962?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  Peterson frowned. “The blood ritual confuses it.”

  “You’re not buying Satan worship.”

  “I’m not writing it off. We check out satanic groups, witch covens, every weirdo group in the city.”

  Danny smiled. “That include Masonic Lodges, Knights of Columbus, and every holy-roller church we can track down?”

  “The usual weirdos will do. You got an address for Mrs. Harding?”

  Danny flashed a shit-eating grin. “Like you don’t know Mrs. Angela Harding?”

  “Too upscale for me.”

  “Yeah, well, you should shower and shave before you go calling, otherwise neighbourhood watch are likely to think the street lice are back.”

  Chapter

  FIVE

  Swanky south-end neighbourhood. Crescent-shaped drive­way. Red paving stones. White two-storey with Doric columns and a bevelled-glass front door. A house built to show off wealth. So it surprised Peterson that the lady of the house answered his knock herself. He recognized her right off: big woman behind a big smile, pretty, blossoming beneath a dark blue wrapper, an extra large size that fits all.

  He held up his badge.

  “Mrs. Harding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Detective Peterson. Can we talk?”

  “Yes,” she said, not sounding surprised a cop had come calling. She led him to a front sitting room, furnished for several small groups to gather for conversation. They sat in matching pink damask armchairs.

  “This is about Father Boutilier, isn’t it?” she asked. She had a whispery voice fit for a commercial.

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Not at all. I attend mass three evenings a week and on Sunday. He said mass, served Communion.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “I had no reason to like him or dislike him. I attend mass. It comforts me. We never spoke. He made no effort, and neither did I.”

  “Why not a church closer to home?”

  Her eyes brightened. “You mean a church more appropriate for my social standing.”

  Peterson shrugged.

  “I get that all the time. I grew up in that parish, at a time when the neighbourhood was more respectable. My husband did as well. Call it a debt of gratitude, if you like.”

  “Open wallet?”

  “I contribute handsomely.”

  “Last night at mass, did you notice anyone unusual, someone not a regular?”

  “They’re all unusual, Detective, at least to me. I started back at St. Jude’s a few years ago, and I always sit in the same pew, second from the front, on the left. I have learned not to take notice.”

  “You go there alone?”

  “You mean in that neighbourhood?”

  “It does get rough.”

  “I don’t drive and I refuse to have a regular driver. My housekeeper goes with me. Not Catholic. She sits in the back.”

  “A housekeeper?”

  “Agnes DeLorey.”

  “A long time?”

  “Nearly twelve years.”

  “Devoted?”

  “What are you getting at, Detective?”

  “Protects your privacy?”

  “That goes with the position.”

  “Did she ever notice that you often leave your shawl behind?”

  She locked eyes with him and offered a tired smile. “The confessional serves those without resolve. And as to your next question, yes, last night I left my shawl for Father Ronny to find. And he paid me a visit shortly after.”

  Peterson rose to leave. “For three hours?”

  She smiled again, this time for her own benefit. “Does that surprise you?”

  She did not see him to the door.

  Chapter

  SIX

  Peterson and Danny sat opposite each other across a table in a cramped meeting room.

  “Most in the congregation are no-shows for daily mass,” Peterson said, flipping through his notebook. “They contribute to the church out of charity, for old times’ sake. And those that do attend don’t have a bad word for Boutilier. Some thought he was too strict. But over all he came up roses.”

  “Father Ronny?”

  “The jury’s still out. Some think he’s likable, others too liberal. Because he works other parishes, most don’t know him that well.”

 
; “Prime candidate, then.”

  “He screws another guy’s wife,” Peterson shrugged. “If that makes him a killer, half the male population would be up on murder charges.”

  Danny leaned over the table. “Love usually brings out the worst in us.”

  “You got that first hand?”

  “You never know. I may have found the one I’d kill for.”

  “You think Father Ronny found his?”

  “Maybe,” Danny said. “And maybe Father Boutilier threatened to blow the whistle.”

  Peterson acknowledged the possibility then shook it off. “It doesn’t explain the torn altar cloth, candles, black-face statue, the blood, and possibility of amniotic fluid.”

  “A way of throwing us off,” Danny said.

  “Yeah,” Peterson scoffed, “he got forty-year-old Mrs. Harding pregnant just to throw us off.”

  “If it’s amniotic fluid.”

  Peterson stood to stretch his neck and back. “I think Father Ronny isn’t long for the priesthood, and Boutilier going public would only hasten his departure. No threat there.”

  “I doubt she’d want her rich hubby finding out.”

  “Still too elaborate a cover-up.”

  “Priests would know about weirdo rituals.”

  “All right,” Peterson conceded. “He stays on the list. But my gut tells me it’s something else. Someone was in the church performing some sort of ritual, and Boutilier caught them.”

  “Satanists then,” Danny said. “Or witches. The black arts. Some weirdo group using the church for a ritual.”

  Peterson sat down. “But they didn’t break into the tabernacle for the hosts,” he objected.

  “Do they have to?”

  Peterson fell silent. After a moment, he lifted his eyes. “You’ve talked to some of these people, what do you think?”

  Danny threw back his head. “Post-grads from a ring-around-the-rosy class playing evil.”

  “The game could have gotten out of hand,” Peterson said.

  “There’s one guy, named Fisher, that takes it for real. I didn’t talk to him, but two girls that work for him made Fisher out as over the top.”

  “Fisher?”

  “Midfifties. Owns a hair salon. Lives in back. You want weird?”

  “Previous?”

  Danny flipped a few pages in his notebook. “Beat up his girlfriend two years ago. Did a month of community service and one year probation. And he’s been into this Satan shit for a while. At eighteen, he and a girl dug up a grave in Burton, New Brunswick. They took the skull.”

  “Do time?”

  “Are you kidding! The prosecution thought it was a lark, and the judge slapped their hands and told them to be good.”

  “What happened with the skull?”

  “The record doesn’t show. But this is good. A woman I talked to, Janis Low, was a member of Fisher’s cult until two years ago. Then the rituals got extreme. Screwing on demand. Offerings of menstrual blood. That kind of stuff. She said Fisher once said human sacrifice was the ultimate. A black mass in a church.”

  “Bragging turns to action,” Peterson suggested.

  “And the priest catches them playing with their lucky charms. Should we bring him in?”

  Peterson shook his head. “I’ll go to him. I like weird places.”

  The door opened and Crouse came in. She sat down beside Peterson.

  “Father Boutilier and Father Ronny’s prints were everywhere,” she said, “including the baptismal font, the altar, the tabernacle, and throughout the sacristy. There were two sets of unidentified prints in the sacristy. One presumably belongs to the altar boy.”

  “We can clear that up pretty quick,” Danny said.

  Crouse continued, “The other unidentified prints were on the baptismal font, the statue with the blackened face, and on the floor beside the body.”

  “What about the flagstaff?” Peterson asked.

  “They were on that too — the only ones. It looked like the person held the shaft with both hands. The same prints were on the ciborium,” Crouse said. “We still have to do an autopsy.”

  “When is that?”

  “Yours is second in line.” She rotated a page from the report so they could read it. “The blood in front of the statue was not the priest’s.”

  “That complicates it,” Peterson said.

  “When is it ever neat and tidy?” Crouse smiled, then she rotated another page. “And the puddle beside the font was not amniotic fluid.”

  Peterson shut his eyes.

  “You were hoping it wouldn’t be,” Crouse said.

  Peterson looked at her. “Weren’t you?”

  Chapter

  SEVEN

  The oak door whispered open, and Peterson walked into David Carmichael’s office, already on the defensive. From their previous sessions, Peterson knew Carmichael was the kind of shrink who tried to slip through the cracks in his patients’ psychological defenses and look behind their many disguises.

  There was nothing mood settling about the office. The windows on the exterior wall were heavily curtained, darkening the room even during daytime and accentuating the puddle of light in the centre, where two overstuffed armchairs faced each other. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase, the shelves heavy with books, lined the wall opposite the windows. A desk was set diagonally in one corner, the flanking walls bearing framed diplomas and certificates.

  Carmichael sat in one armchair. Peterson squirmed in the other.

  “Are you still dreaming?” Carmichael asked. His casual tone matched the casual way he was dressed: checked sport shirt and chinos. Midfifties, youthful spirit, and liberal minded.

  Peterson shrugged. He was bored, tired, disconsolate.

  “Is it the same one?” Carmichael pressed, studying Peterson’s reaction. “You were fitting together different pieces from different puzzles. And crying.”

  “I don’t cry,” Peterson protested.

  “I meant in your dream. You are crying in your dream.”

  Peterson got up to avoid answering. He circled to the back of the chair, then stopped at a curtained window and peeked out.

  In the sliver of light through the cracked curtain, Carmichael could see the futility written on Peterson’s face. He watched and waited. Picked his moment.

  “What was it that made you cry?”

  Peterson fixed a smile on his face. He knew the game of interrogation — ease around a confidence for a trickle of truth. He made his way back to the stuffed chair in the puddle of light and leaned over its back. “Do you always ask questions you know the answers to?”

  It was Carmichael’s turn to smile. “Sometimes. It helps me understand what you say.”

  “Then you know I buried it.”

  “Is that what you think you did, buried it?”

  The sarcasm felt like a fingernail ripping through a scab.

  “Stop me if I’m wrong,” Carmichael said, “but I remember our last sessions ended with you walking out the door. Slamming it. If I check my notes, I’ll give you ten to one I can find the question that set you off. Should I look? Should I ask it again now?”

  Peterson flushed, straightened, and turned away from the psychiatrist. He made his way along the wall of books, scanning the titles. He wanted to bolt, but couldn’t. Deputy chief’s orders.

  Carmichael broke the silence, “Why don’t the puzzle pieces fit?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you do!”

  “Different puzzles. The pieces come from different puzzles.”

  “And you try to make them fit, force them to fit?”

  Peterson nodded.

  “The way you tried to stuff all your wife’s dresses into one suitcase.”

  “That was different.”

  “How wa
s it different?”

  “I had to get rid of them. What the hell would you do? They were just hanging there, on her side of the closet. I kept seeing them. Seeing her.”

  “And when they wouldn’t all fit, what did you do?”

  “What the hell difference does it make?”

  “Tell me.”

  Peterson avoided Carmichael’s eyes. “I hung them back up.”

  Carmichael said nothing, let the silence stretch. He watched Peterson stir uneasily. A minute passed. Two. Then Carmichael said, “Tell me about the puzzle.”

  “Forget the puzzle!”

  “Was it a picture of something?”

  “I said they were different puzzles!”

  “But you tried to make them fit.”

  Peterson closed his eyes. “They seemed to go together.”

  Carmichael waited.

  “One was a road,” Peterson said. “A dirt road. Country road.”

  “A familiar road?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Peterson kept his eyes closed. “There was a path that led from the road to the river and a big rock and a deep pool reflecting the overhanging trees.”

  “Another puzzle?” Carmichael asked.

  Peterson nodded. “I wanted to go out on one of the branches and drop into the pool.”

  Peterson fell silent.

  “But you didn’t,” Carmichael coaxed.

  Peterson shook his head and opened his eyes. “I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Afraid of nothing. It doesn’t matter. I don’t dream it anymore.”

  Carmichael watched Peterson. Waiting.

  Finally, Peterson said, “What do you want me to say?”

  “What do you want to say?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “Always.”

  “This is bullshit. I had a dream. So what? Everybody dreams. I stop dreaming one dream and start dreaming another. What’s so different about that?”

  “You tell me what’s different about it.”

  Peterson clammed up.

  “You’ve been dreaming a new one, you said.”

  Peterson said nothing.