The Drop Zone

by Bob Kroll

  “The doctors said it was gibberish.”

  “Her last words. You heard her!”

  “I don’t know what I heard.”

  “It was in her eyes. You saw it. The way she looked when she said it.”

  “It wasn’t any language. It was gibberish.”

  Anna was on her feet, shaking. Peterson reached to console her, but she pulled away, knocking over the folding chair and stumbling to the door. She grabbed the doorjamb to steady herself, then looked back at him.

  “You’re wrong. Listen to her. Listen to what she said.”

  Chapter

  NINETEEN

  Peterson sat in the same blue vinyl booth as he had the night he saw the girl crossing the six-lane. He felt as though a gash in his side had broken open. The cup shook in his hands and spilled coffee on his fingers. His eyes welled, and he was worrying his lower lip with his teeth. He had always been moody, sullen mostly, but in the past three days, after that night in the Broken Promise, his mood had been swinging uncontrollably from a deadened emptiness to a tumult of emotions. He had lost focus on his regular police work, so much so that Danny was handling the murder of Father Boutilier pretty much on his own, with nothing to show for it.

  Last night, to avoid the loneliness of his house, he had driven to a dead-end street overlooking the harbour. He saw how the city lights made streaks on the water that shimmered with the tide. He heard music from a house on a nearby street, an acoustic guitar being gently strummed. Then all of a sudden his feelings erupted, choking his throat and threatening to leak from his eyes.

  He had tried not to let the job get to him. But it had, a long time ago. The people too, every one of them, poking out their heads whenever his mind was still. Staring them down day and night. Faces of people he couldn’t ever bring home to his wife and daughter.

  Now Peterson was so lost inside himself that he didn’t notice Danny pulling into a parking spot facing the window in which he sat. Nor did he notice Danny breeze through the door and slide into the booth.

  “You don’t stay home much,” Danny said, snapping Peterson from his thoughts. “I called both numbers last night.”

  “I wasn’t answering.”

  “Just me, or everyone?” Danny asked.

  “She knows it bothers me when she calls.” He faked a laugh. “But at least I know she’s alive.”

  “You have other ways to know she’s alive.”

  Peterson looked away. “A closed door would be harder to take than her calling and not talking.”

  “Yeah, well, I got a call from Joe Christmas. He had a name. A linguist named Piet Fromm.”

  “Joe doubting himself?”

  “No. He thought this guy might be able to tell us what language it was.”

  “Then we should talk to him.”

  “I did. You weren’t answering your phone last night, and you weren’t behind your desk this morning.”

  “I had the Mountie from the Gowanus Road on stand-by.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Tell me about Piet Fromm.”

  “Overly polite. Big words. University type — shaggy hair, a beard. He gave me a lecture about languages. Then he listened to the video and said the strange words the girl spoke weren’t part of any language he was familiar with. He said it was gibberish.”

  “That’s what Bettis said.”

  “But this guy said something else.” Danny referred to his notes. “He said the few English words she spoke sounded like the West Country dialect in England, maybe even a combination of that and the dialect from southeast Ireland. He figured the girl was from Newfoundland, and if he was a betting man, he’d bet on the Western Peninsula.”

  Peterson signalled the waitress for more coffee. “New­foundland?”

  “That’s what the man said.”

  Peterson thought for a moment. “She freaks out at home for whatever reason and runs away. Where to?”

  “The ferry at Port aux Basques.”

  “Then she gets off the ferry and hitches a ride, or she hitches one while on the boat. Either way she’s in a vehicle heading this way.”

  “Does she hustle the ride? Pay for it with herself?”

  “Maybe,” Peterson said. “And maybe a trucker picks her up and she won’t put out.”

  “So he drops her off or dumps her on Gowanus Road.”

  “Hunters find her in the woods spaced out. She ends up in Stoddard and after eighteen days, she escapes.”

  “And stays in town. Then goes under wraps for almost ten months. Why?”

  Peterson turned to the window and the traffic passing on the Strip. He pointed across the six lanes.

  “She walked down from over there and crossed to the Broken Promise. Where was she coming from?”

  “There’s not much back there,” Danny said. “A crack patch. A hobo jungle.”

  “She could have been holed up there.”

  “Not for months. She had to scrounge food from somewhere, and probably drugs. Beg the streets. Turn tricks. Squeegee. Some cop would have had a line on her one way or another.”

  Peterson toyed with his coffee spoon. “The Mountie thought she was a crackhead. He did what he could to ID her, but she was talking nonsense. So she ends up on a psycho ward and runs away.”

  The waitress stopped at their table to refill their mugs. After she left, Danny said, “So where does a teenage runaway end up?”

  Peterson avoided looking Danny’s way. He pulled a napkin from the dispenser and wiped up a coffee spill. “Same story, same ending,” he said. “The street looks better than going home, and the pimp always wears a halo.”

  Danny knew where Peterson was coming from. “You and pimps don’t mix real good. Not since your daughter left. If you want to talk to a pimp, you don’t do it alone.”

  “You suddenly turn into a babysitter?”

  “Guardian angel. You can’t get your daughter out of your head, and a face-to-face with a pimp might just churn you up.”

  “That come from on high?”

  Danny’s grin hung off his earlobes. “You think they care about you? You’re a fifty-year-old liability to anybody upstairs.”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “Yeah, well that makes you easier to pension off.” He got up to leave. “I’ll line something up for tonight if you promise to play nice.”

  Peterson almost laughed. “Only if he does.”

  Peterson sat there thinking. Then he followed a hunch to the downtown Sally Ann thrift store. A thirty-something brunette sized him up for a cop before he was ten seconds in the store. She knew all about the priest murder and why the cops had been combing doorways and side alleys, pestering those living on the street.

  “I doubt the priest had anything the street wants,” she said, after Peterson showed his badge and before he even asked a question. “Money maybe, but I heard he wasn’t robbed. And I heard whoever killed him made a big deal of doing it, candles and shit and fucking up the altar. You’re pulling the wrong end of the string.”

  Peterson agreed.

  “Then why are you here?”

  He showed her a morgue photo of the girl from the Broken Promise. “Have you seen her before?”

  “You ran that in the newspaper. She looks familiar, but then again, between here and dishing out food at the Cottage, I see so many. They run away, and the street is no easy way to live.”

  The last bit had a heartfelt ring to it, as though she knew first hand what she was talking about.

  “Most don’t make it home,” she continued. “They live hand to mouth for years. I get old women coming in here that turned tricks thirty, forty years ago. But you can’t tell the young ones that. You can’t tell them nothing.” She looked at the photograph again. Shook her head. “I don’t think so. No, I don’t know her.”

  He
made it to the station just as the day staff was leaving. He settled at his desk and checked his messages. One from Central Dispatch referred to a callback from 911.

  Peterson entered the glass cubicle of Central Dispatch. The female dispatcher, a different woman from a few nights before, signalled for him to give her a minute. She finished doing what she was doing, then turned to Peterson and removed her headphones.

  “Sarah left a note for me to contact you.”

  “Sarah?”

  “The dispatcher from the other night. She had another 911 call. A screener thought it was the same voice that called before. Sarah left a time code number for me to bring it up. It’s only a couple of seconds. You want to listen?”

  Peterson nodded and the dispatcher handed him the headphones. She opened the recording and hit play.

  “Nobody,” the girl said, sounding more drunk than stoned to Peterson’s ears, and maybe not drunk. Definitely out of it, but straining to hold it together. She muttered something and then shouted, “I can’t have it! I can’t!”

  The girl whimpered and hung up.

  Peterson asked the dispatcher to play it again. In the background he heard traffic noise and two male voices. The first one asked, “What number?” The second said, “Seven.” There was a pause, and then the first voice said, “It should be here in a couple of minutes.”

  Peterson returned the headphones. “When did this come in?”

  “Zero one thirty-seven,” the dispatcher said.

  “Last night?”

  “Most don’t turn around that fast.”

  “Then how long ago?”

  “It could be three or four days.”

  Peterson scowled. “And I’m getting it now!”

  The female dispatcher smiled faintly. “The number of bullshit calls to 911, you’re lucky to get it at all.”

  The Investigation Unit had all but cleared out by the time he returned. Some clerical staffers were still tidying up their desks, and three robbery detectives were standing around a desk near the windows with their heads together. By the incident reports and mug shots spread over the desktop, Peterson figured they were wading through the details of the latest masked-man stick-up at a rural Credit Union. As Peterson neared, he realized they were talking about Bernie, sitting twelve desks away, their voices raised, unconcerned whether she heard. One comment stood out loud and clear, “I’d take her on just to break my back.”

  As Peterson passed the threesome, one of them, Archie Allen, lifted his square head and pointed his nose Peterson’s way.

  “Bandana mask, short croppy hair, and big-ass belt buckle,” Archie said. “Ring a bell?”

  “Leigh McGovern,” Peterson answered, without stopping. “Hit half a dozen Cineplex Theatres after showtime. Up for six, probably out in two.”

  “He’s out.”

  Peterson stopped and turned.

  “Same dress code,” Archie added, “only prison must have taught him where the real money is. Credit Union heist.”

  Peterson took it in then said, “His grandfather had a cabin on a lake down the east shore. And he had a girlfriend that did a year for aiding and abetting. Brittany something or other.”

  “Burpee.” Bernie chimed in, making no bones about having heard every word.

  “All ears and legs that one,” Archie said, nodding at Bernie.

  “But a damn good cop,” Peterson said. He leaned toward the three detectives as though he meant to whisper, but he spoke at the same volume. “Any idea how to find Brittany Burpee?” The threesome drew a blank at the suddenness of the question. Then over his shoulder to Bernie, he said, “Tell them!”

  “Parole officer,” Bernie said.

  Peterson beamed at the three detectives. “It doesn’t take much, does it?”

  Bernie was standing beside his desk.

  “Don’t look so happy,” Peterson said. “That wasn’t for your benefit.”

  “That’s not why I’m happy. I made a connection. Two hits, same shooter, at least that’s what I think.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Another cold case,” Bernie said. “Three years old. Jarvis Owens, a black kid, twenty-four, an art college grad, working at Astral Animation. He was moonlighting as a pizza delivery boy to pay off a student loan. Gunned down making a delivery in the Square. The woman at the door saw the shooter. Dark clothes and a skull mask.”

  “You’re thinking same shooter as the accountant hit.”

  “Double-barrel shotgun,” Bernie said. “Two in the chest. He picked up the casings and took his time to find the wads.”

  “No other witnesses?”

  “None that will talk.”

  “Investigating officer?”

  “Andy Miles,” Bernie said.

  “He worked both cases and never put it together?”

  Bernie shook her head.

  “You ask him about it?”

  “He wouldn’t talk about it.”

  Peterson smiled. “Connect the dots in these two cases and you’ll be sitting at my desk.” He held his arms open with pride, as though the dusty confusion of files, notebooks, and slips of paper was something to be sought after. He lost the smile. “Big question: who in this city hires a hit man?”

  “The hire might not be from here. I found out the convenience-store owner is based in Moncton. And Moncton has strong ties to Montreal.”

  “You told Miles that?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And he wouldn’t answer. But the coffee room crew said my digging has his shorts in a knot.”

  Peterson loved it. “Tie it to Montreal and the case goes to the Mounties.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “They have more staff and more resources. Besides, the pat on the back isn’t why we do it.”

  “Auld Lang Syne” sounded from his jacket pocket. It was Danny.

  “Don’t book yourself a heavy date,” Danny said. “My main man is home and sitting tight.”

  “Give me a couple of hours,” Peterson said. “The Bone Man’s sniffing out the Airport Road call, and I got to feed him something new.”

  Bernie hadn’t moved. She had been studying his face while he was on the call. He looked distracted. His creases deeper, and his brown eyes more inward looking than out.

  He pocketed the phone and caught Bernie looking. “What?”

  “You want a coffee?”

  Peterson waved it off. “Hot date.”

  Peterson tracked Bony Walker to a west-end house gutted for renovations. Peterson cross-beamed the empty house and excavated side yard until he spotted Bony with a shopping cart loaded with a three-foot-diameter coil of plastic tubing.

  “Am I going to lose my badge for not reporting this?” Peterson asked.

  Bony shook his head. “The contractor owes me big time. And I bring back what I don’t use on a plumbing job I got.”

  “What do you know about plumbing?”

  “What’s there to know? No copper anymore. No soldering. With this plastic pipe, you don’t need a big gut and ass crack to be a plumber. You just need this crimping tool.” He pulled the tool from his back pocket. “Nowadays even a skinny shrimp like me can plumb a house.”

  “How far you going?” Peterson asked.

  “Gainer’s Pub.”

  “Throw it in the trunk and I’ll give you a lift.”

  Bony canned the shopping cart behind a neighbour’s tree and loaded in the plastic tubing.

  “You got something for me?” Bony asked, as they headed north.

  Peterson nodded and told Bony about the second 911 call and the background conversation between the two guys.

  “That narrows the busy intersection to the number seven bus route,” Bony said.

  “My guess is she was walk
ing the north end,” Peterson said. “And ten to one the dead girl on Airport Road was another hooker. A friend. They may have worked these sidewalks together.”

  “She said a name in that first call,” Bony said.

  “I’m not sure it’s a name, ‘Tee fie’ or something like that.”

  “This is close enough,” Bony said, gesturing for Peterson to pull into the parking lot of an army–navy store about half a block from the pub. They unloaded the coil of plastic tubing from the trunk. “A few girls use Gainer’s to wash up and get off their feet. I’ll ask around. I’m in here for a couple of days.”

  “Careful!” Peterson warned and looped the coil over Bony’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry. I know whose ass is on the line.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY

  Both of them knew the way. This had been their beat, when they had prowled these scummy streets in uniform.

  Peterson carried a flashlight that he used only when he needed to. Now he aimed it at a dark blue dumpster cornered against a brick wall. The light caught Little Bo-Peep, her mini-skirt hitched, her legs spread, and a startled middle-aged john grinding out his loins.

  “Give it a rest, hotshot,” Danny ordered.

  The john fumbled with whatever he had left and pressed his back against the wall.

  Danny went close and whispered so only Bo-Peep could hear, “Teabag’s waiting on us.”

  She flicked her head toward a closed door, indicating Danny and Peterson should enter.

  Danny leaned into Peterson. “She doubles as Teabag’s security. How’s that for multitasking?” He grinned then turned to the john. “You’re still paying full price.”

  They found the door and climbed the dimly lit stairs to the second floor and a suite of trashy rooms featuring smut for wall art and furniture from Walmart. Teabag, a twenty-something with a dome head and thick neck draped with more bling than a show horse, was waiting for them. He sat like King Tut, gleaming in an overstuffed red leather Moroccan armchair.

  Teabag recoiled when Peterson filled the doorway and entered the room. He looked to Danny for an explanation.