Dead of Knight

by William R. Potter

  “So, you didn’t see this guy hit her or nothing?”

  “Nah, but I don’t need to be no rocket scientist to know he did her, man.”

  Rachael Gooch stepped in the door. “What’s this?”

  “This fuck pulled a piece on Degarmo, and he just described the same guy that Jim Dell said was a customer around the time Walker died,” Staal said.

  “Okay, let’s take him in. Looks like IHIT is ready to take it from here.”

  The rest of the door-to-door went on without incident and with little solid information. At eleven PM that night, most of the tenants were too busy with television, sex, or the Internet to be bothered by any commotion from the lane. The four cops stood in the lobby thumbing their notepads comparing information. Staal read out two names and numbers that Degarmo and Murdocco thought were important and needed checking.

  “Barnes wants us back at the house to write it up and then go home,” Gooch said to Staal.

  “I’m going to hang for a bit, check a few things.”

  “You need a ride?”

  “Nah, Jonesy’s tour is over. I’ll ride with him. See you at the house.”

  Drummond was still picking around the area where the body had lain. He picked and bagged gum wrappers, hype-needles, cigarette butts, and a shattered coffee mug.

  “Anything new?” Staal asked.

  “Two fresh Marlboro cigarette butts. She had an empty pack of Benson & Hedge’s in her purse,” Drummond held up a plastic evidence bag with a cigarette butt inside.

  “Shit, weren’t there a couple Marlboro butts around the trail where MacKay was killed?”

  “There’s a crushed out Marlboro over there as well,” Drummond pointed to the trash bins.

  “No pubic hairs so far,” Wong said. “I won’t know for sure until I get her into my office, but I saw no semen with the laser either. Got a black fiber, perhaps cotton.”

  A garbage crew arrived to pull and truck the two bins to the station house to be dumped and rooted through by IHIT detectives. Staal went back to the front of Jim’s dinner; the door was locked, but he could see Dell cleaning up inside. He knocked, and Dell opened the glass door.

  “That guy in black,” Staal said. “Did he smoke, by any chance?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, he did,” Dell said.

  “Do you think you could describe the guy for a sketch artist? Maybe pick him out in a lineup?”

  “Yeah, I think I could.”

  Staal nodded. “Several RCMP detectives will be in shortly, Jim. Tell them what you told me about the guy in black.”

  He thanked Dell for his time and left the restaurant for the lane. Fred Jones waived him over. He held his fists clenched and put them up in front of his face like a boxer.

  “Ready to go, Jack?” he asked.

  “Shit, yeah!”

  The media had left, happy with the story they received from Barnes. The citizens had vanished, bored, as there was no more blood to see. Jones and Staal ducked under the police tape. Staal lit a cigarette, then tossed it and crushed it out.

  “Big mess, huh?”

  Staal sat next to Jones in front of his patrol cruiser. “Yeah. Nasty.”

  “So you and Gooch just walk away from it now?”

  He paused. “Yeah, something like that.”

  Chapter 4

  Hanson B.C. is known for its camping and hiking trails, and its water sports on the lake. To best serve the rural city of 100,000, the police service is split into two precincts, East and West. The Major Crimes Section consists of a sergeant and four detectives. Staal’s squad worked out of 565 Broadway, also known as West Precinct.

  Staal climbed out of Jones’ police cruiser in the parking area for police vehicles. He carried a box of muffins and a tray with four large coffees and a tea. The Precinct house was a newer, concrete and glass, three-floor structure of mind-numbing architecture. The main floor held the offices, equipment storage, and roll-call rooms for the uniform cops. The detective squads and vice teams were situated on the second floor, while the crime scene labs were on the third. Eight holding cells filled the basement.

  Staal turned his back to the brass handled glass main door and pushed it open with his hip. He crossed the marble floor and checked his appearance in the mirrored elevator doors. The elevator car featured a female voice that said, “Second floor. Criminal Investigations Branch.”

  Staal liked the serene emptiness of this floor, but he knew the quiet of the detective squad room would soon be broken by the change-of-watch bustle. The corner designated for Major Crimes featured three double desks, each with three computer terminals. He set the food and drinks on his desk and opened his notebook. Some of his scribbling needed translating, and he wrote the important quotes on green 3x5 inch index cards. He would need to write an official report and then copy to Degarmo.

  Gooch moved in next to him at her desk, left her notebook open, and reached for a handful of cards. Gooch was Staal’s second partner in his short time with Hanson. He still kept in touch with all his former colleagues from VPD and communicated daily with Lesley Degarmo. However, he rarely socialized with Rachael Gooch off the clock and kept small talk to a minimum on the job. It was a union of respect, without the camaraderie of most partnerships.

  “Barnes wants to see us in his office,” Gooch said.

  “Yeah, grab a muffin on the way.”

  Gooch knocked and entered Staff-Sergeant Barnes’s office. Staal followed, and quickly noticed detectives Ken Fraser and Gina Hayes were already present. Staal nodded to Fraser, smiled at Gina, and motioned to them both to get a muffin after the briefing. Fraser had an exotic look, being the child of a black father and an Asian mother. He was six-five and 260 pounds.

  “Okay,” Barnes began. “Everything points to Birthday Boy?”

  Gooch nodded.

  Barnes said, “I don’t need to tell you that this is now a serial. IHIT will add at least another team; maybe two.” He made eye contact with each of the detectives before he spoke again. “I’ve got heat coming from all over on this. The press is going ape shit. We need a break, a suspect. Anything that makes us look like we’ve got a handle on this.”

  “But the IHIT teams have this,” Gina said. “Isn’t H out of it?”

  “Officially, yes—we’re out. But the Chief wants Major Crimes to keep a finger in this. Help out as much as possible. But...” Barnes stared straight at Jack. “You document and share everything with IHIT. And Staal, I don’t want to hear any shit about you and Corporal Chin. Is that clear?”

  Staal had to concentrate to keep from smiling. “Crystal, Sarge.”

  He and Donald Chin had a long-standing rivalry that had been aggravated recently when Staal managed to solve a murder case before Chin and his team could even assemble and start working the crime scene.

  “I know you guys got dick to go on. But I think this needs more manpower. Let’s take this guy down for HPS.”

  Max Barnes, like Staal, didn’t fully support the integrated ideal. Both men believed that Hanson’s Major Crimes Section could hold its own with the best and brightest from the RCMP.

  “So bring Gina and Ken up to speed, and keep me informed.” Barnes stood, then paused. “And for Christ sake don’t let your cases slip or the Inspector will have my ass.”

  Barnes answered to Inspector Benjamin Ross. The inspector was the officer in charge of Operations and third down from the top in the chain of command.

  “Sure, Boss,” Staal said.

  Gooch stayed with Barnes to inform him of what she, Staal, and the other detectives had found so far at the scene. Staal motioned to Fraser and Hayes to follow him to an empty office where a mobile strategy board stood just inside the door. The board was 8 by 12 feet and covered with cork.

  On its far left were pictures of the first and second victims and below their faces were colored index cards with names, phone numbers and important bits of information. Each victim had a section of the board divided by a tapeline.


  “When the hell did you set this up, Jack?” Fraser pointed to the board. “Aren’t you and Gooch working those uptown bank jobs?”

  “Degarmo copied everything that the team has,” Staal said. “She wanted me to take a look. We’ve gone over this board about twenty times together.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The tone in Fraser’s voice betrayed his surprise. The fact that Degarmo felt she still needed Jack’s opinion and help even though she had moved on to IHIT concerned him as well.

  “Man, I wish we had this case full time from day one,” Staal said. He shook his head.

  “No kidding,” Hayes said. “Who knows how bad Murdocco fucked things up.”

  The detectives shared a laugh.

  “Degarmo will keep him straight,” Fraser said.

  “We should wait for Wakamatsu, but fuck it.”

  Staal pinned up the photos he took of Kim Walker and the first few cards he had filled out. He pointed to the first row and said, “Stephanie MacKay, Gabriella Haywood and as of last night, Kimberly Walker. I don’t know if you guys have read the files, so I’ll start from the beginning.”

  “The Gooch gave us the rundown on Walker before you got in, and we’ve both glanced at the files,” Gina said.

  “I helped with the canvass at the Haywood scene, remember?” Fraser said.

  Staal nodded.

  “Okay, MacKay was 32 years old, answered phones at Duncan, Orser, and Pendleton. Degarmo talked to everyone at the firm. Nothing solid.” He glanced toward Hayes and Fraser and then continued. “MacKay was jogging in Discovery Park. The killer tied a length of heavy fish line about four feet off the ground, laid it across a trail, and waited for Stephanie to jog by. And when she did, he jerked up the line, which caught her across the throat, crushing her larynx. I think you know the rest.

  “Haywood was 31, sold real estate. No connection to MacKay through school, work or otherwise. She was working an open house. The killer waited until she was about to close up before he slipped in, possibly posing as an interested buyer. He hid in the home until the other customers were gone and knocked her unconscious with a baseball bat that he grabbed from one of the kids’ rooms.”

  “It says here Simon Taylor witnessed a guy in black in the park. He couldn’t give a better description?” asked Fraser.

  “Lesley thought she had something with Taylor, but the old guy doesn’t see worth shit.”

  Gina pointed to the cards below the victim’s photographs and said to Staal, “Each vic has a history of sexual abuse?”

  “Yeah, might be something there,” Gooch said as she entered the room.

  “With Mackay, it was her stepfather. Haywood, a friend of her brother and Walker’s sister says their Dad did them both,” Staal said.

  “What if they knew each other in a group therapy, or maybe they used the same shrink or something?” Gina said.

  “Sounds like a long shot, but maybe Paula Alexander, in Sex, can help look into that. She could put together a list of shelters, halfway houses and clinics,” Gooch said.

  “You’ve got Marlboro cigarette butts marked under MacKay and Walker, and black cotton fibers,” Gina said.

  “Yeah, we just got the results of DNA testing back yesterday,” Staal said.

  “The Mounties actually shared that with us? How nice of them,” Fraser said.

  “Yeah, we’ve got DNA from saliva on the cigarette filters of the McKay scene matching a sample from a hair found on Haywood. Unfortunately, nothing matches anything in any databank. The cotton fiber is denim, the kind Levi uses. Hopefully the fiber on Walker will be the same, and with a bit of luck, Drummond or the IHIT techs will be able to match DNA from the Marlboros at the Walker scene to the others.”

  “How do we know that he object-rapes the victims?” asked Fraser.

  “Wong says that the damage to the surrounding rectal tissue is severe, and he found a wood fiber in Haywood; a hickory fiber. Commonly used for hammer handles. He didn’t find hickory in Mackay, but he is certain that the same object was used. Also, I think Walker had the same injury.”

  “How long till we get anything from the lab on Walker?” asked Gina.

  Staal flipped out his phone and called James Wong at the Coroner’s Office. “I’ll see what they’ve got so far.” He pushed a button. “Wong. Staal. Got anything for me?”

  “Jack, buddy. This is an IHIT case,” Wong said.

  “Yeah, no kidding. Dickey Pitman wants us to help out until a third team can come on.”

  Staff-Sergeant Richard Pitman led the two IHIT team already working the Birthday Boy case.”

  “Uh-huh, news to me.” Wong sighed. “I think this guy just walked up and punched her in the throat. Then maybe kneed her in the face, fracturing her nose, before he used the belt like before. Also, positive for wood fiber. Drummond is checking the Marlboros for saliva. And I’m sending him the black cotton thread.”

  “Could she have broken her nose when she went down?”

  “Nope, no evidence of that. He either punched or kneed her.” Wong sighed again and then said, “These are all educated guesses, Staal. We’re just getting started over here.”

  Staal hung up and told the others about Wong’s preliminary evaluation.

  “Now what?” Fraser asked.

  “Pitman wants us to talk to Morgan and see if he saw more than he first admitted,” Gooch said. “Murdocco will call the husband, Ronny Matheson. I would love to handle it. Then the team will bring in Jim Dell to work with their sketch artist on a likeness of this ‘guy in black.’”

  “So, the next part that doesn’t include us will be the Walker home, right?” asked Fraser.

  “Yeah, I think the sister is taking the kids to her place, so the investigators can get in there.”

  “So, Staal, what do you think of this dude in black?” Fraser said a few minutes later as they walked from the office to the detective desks.

  “He’s the guy, Ken.” Staal said.

  Gooch walked past. “We can’t get near the Walker place, so let’s get on with our case load.”

  Staal sipped coffee and flipped through his files for the uptown bank robberies. It was difficult to turn his attention from a serial killer to a bank stick-up case. His cell buzzed. Degarmo didn’t say hello.

  “Wilson Drummond says there were two prints on the watch crystal; Kim’s and a Samuel Scott.”

  “Anything on Scott?” asked Staal.

  “A mechanic over in Surrey. Has a clean record, I’m gonna give him a call.” Degarmo hung up like someone had abruptly interrupted her.

  Cameron Wakamatsu stepped into the detective floor from the elevator and began his good mornings. Wakamatsu was new to Major Crimes after five years in General Investigation and the Target Team. He was 30, had short-cropped hair and the wiry build of a serious iron-man competitor, his favorite diversion.

  Staal nodded to Wakamatsu and glanced at his watch. It was ten minutes to seven. He decided to call Donny Matheson, Walker’s common-law husband, and got his machine.

  Gina moved to Staal’s desk. “Alexander’s making a list of walk-in and established groups and shrinks who work with abuse victims.”

  “Those types don’t give up names of clients easily. It messes with confidentiality,” Rachael said.

  “Stress to them that we’re trying to stop a serial killer. Maybe you ladies would be better at that than me, Fraser or Waku,” Staal said.

  Jan McGuire, a civilian aid, dropped a note on Staal’s desk.

  Staal read the note that said to call Jed Wilkinson, who was a local bar owner and a friend of his. Jed had gotten himself jammed up with an asshole street cop named Savage when Staal was in his rookie year as a detective in VPD. Savage had some incriminating photos of Wilkinson and an under-aged girl and informed Jed that he would put him in prison if he didn’t pay him 200 bucks a month. Wilkinson, a bartender in a Robson Street nightclub at the time, paid it for a few months until Savage upped the take to 250. Jed flipped and hit S
avage, breaking his jaw. Staal sorted it out, and Jed walked, while Savage’s career abruptly ended.

  Staal’s thoughts returned to the Birthday Boy case. Degarmo had informed him over beers about IHIT’s profilers working up a file on their unknown subject. He decided to call Lesley and pick her brain as much as she would allow.

  He called her cell. “Can you talk?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh, I’m on the can,” Degarmo said, not hiding her irritation.

  “Good. Everyone’s here, so I’ll put you on speaker.”

  “Jack, fuck! Who’s there?” A toilet flushed.

  “The profile, Lesley, is it out?”

  “Jack—I can’t...I mean.” She stammered.

  “Hey, you brought me in on this. I didn’t ask for any of it so don’t slam the door now.”

  “Well, just be careful...okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Staal had already promised Degarmo that he would be discreet about where and how he got his inside information. He stood and waved the others to follow him to the empty office. When everyone was seated he flipped the desk phone to speaker. He knew that Gooch had sent Wakamatsu down to holding to check on Allen Jeffrey Morgan. Neither Staal nor Gooch knew the newest member of MCS well enough to have him in for Lesley’s update.

  “We’re looking for a white male, 25-30,” Lesley began. “He’s not big; about five-eight, 170 pounds or less.”

  “That fits with the shoeprints at the Haywood scene,” Staal interrupted.

  “Well, we don’t know for sure if he’s small, but he is meek. With the first victim, he used fish-line to ambush her, instead of just overpowering her. With Haywood, he hid in the house and struck her from behind, whereas most men would have met her face to face. Both of these incidents show the killer isn’t secure in his ability to take his victims down with his own strength.”

  “That all changed last night,” Staal said. “He struck Walker in the throat with a weaponless fist. She was probable talking to him at the time.”