by Bob Kroll
He nodded at the body. “Who has that one?”
“Jamie Gould. He already has a suspect in custody, a twenty-two-year-old, second time around. Left his prints all over the two-by-four.”
Crouse emptied the bag onto an empty metal table across from the one with the body. The jacket tumbled out in a tight ball. From one pocket, she pulled a pointed object.
“You playing games?” she asked.
Peterson shook his head. Crouse held up the find.
“A crucifix,” she said.
Peterson shook his head. “Not quite. That’s what Father Ronny called a Chi-Rho.”
Crouse laid it on the metal table and pulled something else out of the same pocket.
“What’s that?” Peterson asked.
“A flash drive,” Crouse said, holding it up. “It’s covered in blood.” She dropped it into an evidence bag.
“Maybe the dead do talk,” Peterson said.
“They talk to me all the time, only not with words. You can have the drive after I do a blood analysis and take the prints. But I think we already know the results.”
Peterson picked up the bag with the flash drive and took it into the outer office where he sat at Crouse’s desk. He laid the bag down and stared at it. His fingers played a soft tattoo on the desktop.
Crouse tidied up the cutting room, stored the old man’s body, and joined him.
“You looking a gift horse in the mouth?” she asked.
Peterson nodded. “It came unwrapped with no ribbon. Not quite the perfect gift.”
Crouse turned toward the dressing room to change from her scrubs. “Murder never is.”
Peterson raised his head. “Why the ritual? Why the rag doll? Why the candles? And the cloth letter on the floor of the church? The letter was in a pool of blood and circled with candles. What the hell was she doing?”
He took a deep breath and steepled his fingers under his chin.
“I know she was at Stoddard,” he continued. “I know she was crazy and that crazy people do crazy things. But usually there’s an explanation for why they’re crazy and for the crazy things they do.”
“Why was she at Stoddard?”
“Paranoid schizophrenia.”
Crouse went back into the cutting room. She returned with the Chi-Rho in a plastic evidence bag.
“I think she used this on herself,” she said. “A ragged incision, mid-pelvis and deep into her uterus.” She shuddered. “She was cutting herself for some reason. Cutting herself up. Or cutting something out.” She thought for a moment then said, “Maybe she was cutting out what wasn’t there.”
Peterson cringed and closed his eyes. He remembered the girl’s bloodstained jeans when she stood facing him in the Broken Promise. He remembered the way she drew the piece of glass across her wrist and opened an artery.
Crouse pulled a medical volume from a bookshelf — Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. She thumbed through the pages until she found what she was looking for.
“Pseudocyesis,” she read. “Phantom pregnancy. A condition in which a patient has nearly all of the signs and symptoms of pregnancy such as enlargement of breasts, weight gain, cessation of menses, morning sickness, but is not pregnant. Usually seen in women who are either very desirous of having children or desperate to avoid pregnancy. Treatment is usually psychiatric.”
Chapter
TWENTY-FIVE
Monday morning, Danny and Peterson were sitting across from each other at the same small table in the same small undecorated meeting room. The space wasn’t much wider than the arm span of a seven-footer, but it was longer than a coffin. It was close like a coffin too, stale and humming with the feisty smell of a late night with a bottle.
Peterson was irritable. Danny couldn’t figure him out.
“You cracked a murder case, for Christ’s sake,” he said.
“Backed into it.”
“You got lucky, so what? We don’t step in it and half of them go unsolved. So what else is eating you?”
“She bolts from a john and ends up in church. Why? None of what the skinhead told us explains that. The black face on the statue, the candles, the rag doll, it doesn’t explain any of that.”
Danny frowned. “She wasn’t playing with a full deck.”
“That still explains nothing.”
“Are you thinking whores at a private party in a hotshot neighbourhood end up dancing in church?”
“I don’t know what I think. A loose end bothers me.”
“We don’t have time to tie bows,” Danny said. “We’ve got another drug hit and an old man dead with somebody playing sniper.” He tapped the Father Boutilier murder file on the desk. “And this one’s out of our hands. We know who did it. We just don’t know her name. And that makes it a problem for Missing Persons. You want the worst of it?”
“I heard already. The grapevine is a sieve.”
“You know how happy that makes me,” Danny said. “I could be working these cases on my own.”
“You got that from Fultz?”
“No. I got it from the same source as you, only I listen better. You give Fultz a case of the ass, and your shrink just handed him another reason to stand you in the corner.”
“The shrink told on me?”
“Looks that way,” Danny said. “And that means they might not let us play together any more. I’ll be working the drug hit and sniper shooting, and you’ll be home in pyjamas, tying up loose ends all by yourself.”
Peterson caught what Danny was driving at. “If it comes to that, we keep the link between the girl and the Posse to ourselves. And that goes for Teabag and Sylvester.”
Danny arched his eyebrows. “I ain’t talking. Are you talking?”
Peterson cracked a sleazy smile.
Danny grinned. “But the skinhead might.”
Peterson shook his head. “He blows the whistle for police brutality and the Posse will figure it out. He won’t risk that.”
“His girlfriend?”
Peterson shook his head again. “He’ll stretch out the hit and run as far as it will go. She’ll buy it.”
“Then there’s always the small matter of time,” Danny said. “You’re strung out to breaking, and I now have a drug hit in the Square and the Cove Road sniper.”
Bernie knocked and walked in. “I have what you asked for,” she said to Peterson.
Crouse blew through the door close behind. Danny made room for Bernie to sit, and Peterson slid over for Crouse.
“Who’s first?” Peterson asked.
Crouse pulled rank. “It’s just what we had suspected yesterday. The girl’s fingerprints match those on the flagstaff, the Chi-Rho, the ciborium, and a dozen more we found in the church. My educated guess is …” She beat a drum roll on the tabletop. “The girl, in the sacristy, with the flagstaff.”
“Blood match?” Peterson asked.
“In a couple of days.”
Danny pointed at Peterson. “Sourpuss wants to know why the ritual.”
Crouse laced her fingers under her chin and flashed an angelic smile. “Thankfully, I skipped Criminal Behaviour 101.”
Bernie slid the flash drive to the centre of the table.
“Eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds of bad video of five naked girls.” She looked at Peterson. “Your girl from the Broken Promise was one of them. It’s been heavily edited to shots of the girls stripping down to nothing, fondling themselves, and masturbating.”
Peterson squeaked back his chair. “No other people? No johns?”
“That’s what Billy thinks was edited out. And from the background, it looks like it all took place in the same location.”
Crouse gathered her files and stood to go. “You three can look at dirty pictures. I have a hospital death to tend to.”
Peterson wa
tched the video of all five girls with his teeth clenched and fingers chiselling fibres from the editing console. Bernie sat on one side of him, her chin in her hands, and Billy sat on the other, playing the keyboard and mouse to stop and play, reverse and fast forward. Danny stood behind the others with his back against the wall, watching Peterson as much as the images. Each girl came on the screen and did her thing. They all looked the same: underage, awkward, stoned. Faking it for the camera. Posing the pouty way the models do in the wall murals in Victoria’s Secret.
Peterson studied the face of the girl from the Broken Promise. He got Billy to freeze-frame her more often than the others. Robotic. Going through the motions. Doing what she was told.
“Let’s print photos of all of them,” Peterson said. “If we can ID any of them, maybe we can get them home.”
The next time through, they studied the background. The camera revealed little more than the plum-coloured armchair that all five girls sat in to masturbate. It was in a corner of a room. One wall was painted a dark red, the other midnight blue. Part of a painting showed on one wall, out of focus.
“Not much to go on,” Billy said. “They shot it so tight, we can’t see a lot.”
“Little things,” Peterson said. “That right there!”
Billy hit pause on a shot of the painting. The camera had drifted off the girl to reveal more of it.
“Abstract art,” Peterson said. “Geometric shapes. Bright colours.”
“I like paintings that you know what it is,” Billy said. “They paint this shit to screw up your mind trying to figure it out. Who has that kind of time?”
“You like simple,” Bernie said.
“My mind’s messed up enough working here. I go home, I have blank walls painted that tan colour. Nothing complicated. A calendar on the fridge. One chair, my laptop, and a TV.”
“Don’t get married,” Danny said. “You wake up one day and wonder how the hell a department store got inside your house.”
“Like you know,” Bernie said.
“I dream about it,” Danny said. “Nightmares!”
Peterson was studying the monitor, only half listening.
“These guys like it kinky weird,” he said. “Surround themselves with it. The girls they choose. The place they take them to.”
“Liking weird doesn’t make them weird,” Danny said. “Regular Joes and important people sometimes like it kinky too.”
“You making a confession?” Peterson said.
Danny smiled. “Twenty-something on the job, five in Vice. Weirdos don’t have a monopoly on kink. Concentrate on weird and we could miss most of the potential suspects.”
Peterson nodded. “What was it Sylvester said? Something about private parties and room service for important people.”
Danny pointed at the monitor. “Abstract art has upscale written all over it.”
“Provincial capital, university town, medical centre,” Peterson said. “How many rich art-collecting mucky mucks you think there are?”
“How many of them like kinky sex?” Danny countered. “Problem is, not many in Who’s Who make the pervert list.”
“Maybe I should make the rounds,” Peterson said. “Stir the pot and see what scum rises to the top.”
Danny smiled his approval. “You won’t get yourself any deeper than you already are.”
The door opened and the deputy chief’s secretary poked in her head. “You’ve been summoned,” she said to Peterson.
Chapter
TWENTY-SIX
Fultz’s office. Peterson was getting used to it. He stood, hands behind his back, trying for contrite but coming up with obstinate.
Fultz tossed aside the file he was reading. “If you were starving, you’d screw up a free meal. Your shrink thinks so too. He didn’t say it like that, of course.”
He reopened the file and thumbed for a document. “He thinks you need a rest. ‘A relaxation from duty,’ he called it. His report says you are, and I quote, ‘unwilling to explore the pivotal problem and circumstances for your anger and psychological instability.’”
Fultz put away the document and addressed Peterson with as much frustration as disappointment. “You’re chasing ghosts, Peterson. But from now on, you’re chasing them on your own time. Suspension with pay. No time limit. And you either keep seeing Carmichael, or you’re out on your ass. Your call.”
Peterson stopped at his desk to grab his personal items. Case files covered the desktop. He opened the top drawer. Inside was an unopened package of notebooks, a micro-cassette recorder that his wife had given him and he had never used, a photograph of his wife and daughter in a silver frame. There was also the usual assortment of pens, pencils, paperclips, and the bits that accumulate over the years. He made a face and closed the drawer.
Danny met him as he turned to go. “And?” Danny asked.
“I’m a basket case,” Peterson said.
“You needed Fultz to tell you that?”
“I needed myself to tell me that. Fultz just said indefinite suspension.”
“We figured it was coming,” Danny said.
Peterson looked over the large room buzzing with people. “That doesn’t make it any easier.”
Danny smiled sympathetically. “You might have the brass up your ass, but there’s a few in this building who have your back.”
Peterson shifted his eyes back to Danny. “I left my badge and gun on his desk,” he said as he reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out the badge, “but I copped it when he took a phone call.”
Danny wagged his finger. “That’s not playing nice.”
“You know what they say about nice?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “Bottom line is not getting caught. Let’s hope we get away with getting you everything else.”
“What’s everything else?”
“Billy’s running dubs of all the videos and Bernie’s scanning files.” Danny looked over to Fultz’s office and saw the deputy chief locked in a phone conversation. “But there is something you should see before you get escorted from the building.”
Peterson followed Danny into the editing room. He could tell by the greetings he received on the way that word of his suspension was travelling fast.
Billy looked up as they came in. “We got a flash frame,” he said. “I was jogging the video back and forth when Bernie picked it up.”
“What the hell’s a flash frame?” Peterson asked.
“I’ll show you.”
Billy moved the cursor backward on the timeline and hit play. Peterson watched intently. Nothing.
“What the hell am I supposed to see?” Peterson said.
Billy moved the cursor again, this time farther back. Then he double-clicked the mouse and advanced the video in slow motion.
The girl they were watching was empty-eyed. Expressionless. Her mouth slowly opened and closed as though whispering something to herself. Then Peterson saw it. A flicker from a sudden change of scene.
“Flash frame,” Billy said. He took the video back one frame at a time, so slow the girl’s facial movements were almost imperceptible.
“There!” Billy said. “Whoever edited this left in one frame of video they wanted to cut.”
“Explain.” Peterson said.
“They have a master recording, and from that they edit out scenes or parts of scenes they don’t want. In this case the edit isn’t precise enough, and a single frame from a scene they cut stayed in.”
“That’s what I’m looking at?”
“A single frame, like a photograph.”
“And you’re saying there’s more that’s not on this flash drive?” Peterson asked.
“Yeah,” Billy said. “This was cut from a hard drive with the master recording. Just looking at all the edits, you know, five girls, multiple sessions with the same girl,
different times of day …”
“You can tell that?”
“Sure! Some shots with the same girls have daylight mixed in with the lights they used. Other shots don’t. They were at it with these girls day and night. So we’re talking a sizable file, probably stored on an external drive.”
Peterson went back to the freeze frame, the image of a man with his back to camera humping one of the young girls from behind.
“She’s grimacing, isn’t she?” asked Peterson. The young girl had her head turned to camera and a pained look on her face.
“It’s a wider shot than the others,” Billy said. “We can see more of the room. The painting is soft focus, but you can make it out.”
“There’s a glass case with figurines,” Bernie said, pointing.
“And check this out,” Billy said. He isolated the section of the screen that showed the man’s left shoulder. Then he played the keyboard to enlarge the image.
“A tattoo,” Peterson said.
“Yeah,” Billy said. “An animal.”
“Look at the curved horns.” Bernie traced what was clearly the head of an animal with thick rounded horns. “It’s a ram. Look at the horns. Here’s a guy that’s full of himself.”
Peterson took a closer look at the monitor then leaned back and swivelled his chair to face Danny. “You know who the girl is?”
Danny flattened his hands against the back wall. “Yeah.”
Bernie and Billy now focused on the young girl’s face. They recognized her too: the girl from the Broken Promise.
Chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN
Peterson drove to the home of a former cop on the drug squad who had been dismissed for working undercover with his hand open. His name was Jesse Overton. He lived outside the city in a bedroom community where bungalows crowded up against bungalows in a maze of courts, circles, drives, and cul-de-sacs, a tract development that the Canadian Housing Design Council once identified as the national example of how not to develop a community.