by Gerald Lynch
“As I said, DeLint and Mother —”
“No. Could DeLint have been embezzling Omphalos funds for the latest Duvalier dictatorship there? Could DeLint have needed more and more money, more than he could get from Omphalos?”
“Dad, where are you going with this? I’m going to have a talk with Frank Thu.”
His eyes were still closed, he was still shaking his head. “Okay, dear. One last thing: what was your own orientation at Omphalos like? Did you ever get the feeling they were especially interested in you as Kelly Beldon?”
“Kevin, are you, uh, factioning? Stop and consider rationally: Frank may be right. Maybe you shouldn’t be on this DeLint case. I mean, after what happened last year.”
“That won’t work with me, Kelly. I don’t have to invent connections, they’re all there: Omphalos, Haiti, Eugene DeLint, the Widower stealing all that money, and even you, a Beldon. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know one thing: I’m still the only one who’s going to solve the Widower.”
She crowed: “And there it is! Kevin, you are on the Eugene DeLint case!”
His face prickled, his heart ramped up. “There is only one goddamned case for me, Kelly. Your mother killed herself. That made me the fucking widower! As our boy Bill so delicately observed at her funeral. I was the last victim in the series and no one else recognizes that or seems to give a good goddamn!” He retained enough self-possession to wish he’d not cursed, and then to regret the whining self-pity.
Cool Kelly lost no self-possession. “Dad, just pause for a second and listen to yourself, please. This isn’t detective work, this is obsessive-compulsive paranoid delusion. Mom used a gun, your gun, and your bank accounts are still intact. Not the Widower M-O, right? If you still can’t accept that you made mistakes in the Widower case, who knows what you’re capable of? I mean, by way of hurting yourself. You’re letting DeLint’s murder undo months of Ewan’s good work.”
He overcompensated with a soft reasonable tone: “But I can accept that I made mistakes. I made a mistake with you, dear. I should have paid more attention. You’re my daughter and I…I love you.”
“I do not want to hear this!”
He pressed on, just as Dr. Randome had told him he’d have to with Kelly. “But I also lost out in our relationship, you know.” Too late he heard again the pleading self-pity in that (and made a mental note to mention the problem to Dr. Randome).
“Dad, I was talking with Bill just this morning about this very issue, and he agrees with me: you just cannot deal with defeat, and you must learn to.”
He hated himself already for being relieved to halt the emotional display and assume their familiar ironic tone: “True enough, I’m not one of those who actually enjoys defeat. But good, good. Bill is such an unbiased witness.”
He could see her smile.
“Kevin, we weren’t putting you on trial. Everything is not about you, you know.”
If he was not careful he’d crack a tooth. “I know, dear. I’m being narcissistic.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t start making connections that are too ridiculous even for bad vid.”
“I hear you.”
“Now you’re patronizing me.”
“No. What did Bill have to say for himself?”
“Bill’s not defending himself either, Dad. But he is planning to contract his services to the Haitians.”
“The Haitians!”
“Against all international treaties, they’re fracking again with unstable nuclear power on what’s left of the Antarctic shelf, and with zero expertise. Unlike some others who shall remain nameless, they don’t give a red rat’s arse whether Bill has a Ph.D. or not.”
He had to laugh. “Those Haitians, they’ve always somehow had shitloads of money out their own ruby wazoos. But where’s Bill staying? Why does he have to leave the country for work? Aren’t we still exploring huge potential in Labrador? Three months, that’s all it would have taken to finish the Ph.D., that’s what Nora — Professor Goldstein said. And then Bill could have written his own ticket, Nora said.”
“The Mighty Turnip.”
“That was always cruel, Kelly.”
“But accurate.”
“Bill?”
“He’s staying with me while he’s in town, of course. It’s his house too. You insisted on transferring the deed to both of us jointly, remember?… He’s out now, and he’ll be here for only a couple more days. It’s the first time he’s slept at home since Mom’s death. That’s why I want you to come over for supper tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“I will soon though. You know how quickly a trail goes cold. And I have a hunch this trail is leading back to…”
“If you say the Widower one more time, I’ll scream out the window that the great Detective Beldon has lost his great fucking factioning mind because he is unable to accept defeat!”
“I owe it to your mother.”
“If you had the sense of a child-molester you’d realize that what you owe Mom is dinner with your children!”
“A what?… Kelly?… Kelly?…”
But she was gone. He detached the encryptor, shoved it in his pants pocket, and walked away.
He wanted to talk again with Dr. Randome, but knew now he must talk some business with the self-same Professor Nora Goldstein. If she was still talking to him. Not by communicator but in person…eventually, because by now Brigid Ertelle would be worried waiting.
He smiled, amused that the thought of Brigid waiting worried for him was comforting.
Chapter 10
The large rectangular operations room was the twin of DeLint’s office, taking up another quarter of the seventeenth floor. Here, though, the two exterior walls of PANOGLAZ looked on the Rideau Canal to the southwest and across to the campus of the University of Ottawa to the east, where Kevin Beldon had done his master’s degree in criminology. Whenever he took a break from reviewing vids, Kevin passed time gazing regretfully at his alma mater. For a time he’d cherished the life there, had worked willingly under the scholarly rule of the place. He’d discovered that the methodology of academic work was something like detective work, and wondered if he’d found a more accommodating home for his peculiar gifts and skills, had even dreamed and schemed how he might make his temporary leave in academia permanent.
He’d done very well in his courses, won a provincial graduate scholarship for his final term in the master’s program, was planning more seriously to pursue a Ph.D., talked of a dissertation subject with his favourite professor, Dr. Etienne LaFlamme. Kevin had even composed a thesis title, complete with the colon they all favoured: “Improbable Cause: Eliminating the Possibles.” The thesis would use his own experience for case studies, his idiosyncratic investigative procedure as a methodology, and his belief in the rule of law as a sort of theory. After months of pumping him for information, Professor LaFlamme had coined the infamous term factioning.
And then the good professor had published the damnable article, “Factioning: A Case Study in the Added Value of Intuitive Procedures in Criminal Investigation.” He presented Kevin with a copy of the journal at the beginning of a lab on blood-splatter patterns. In the tiled and stainless-steel room of the Chemistry bunker, his younger classmates stood about in the glare of over-lighting, in green rubber smocks, plastic safety goggles, even white safety helmets, apparently withholding judgment, apparently knowing something. Slowly Kevin began to feel as if his smock had come undone behind and he was wearing no pants. He grinned toothily, flushed red, and nodded for too long at the pulpy grey periodical he held like an awkward gift. Definitely, his classmates snickered a bit.
At the break, he’d gone off to the parking lot and concealed himself behind a delivery truck at one of the old grey-brick houses where the university’s founding Oblate priests had lived. A quick scan of the
article relieved him that he didn’t appear by name, only as “an exceptionally successful detective inspector.” Mostly he was “the subject.” But the subject was him and all that he’d told Professor LaFlamme about his method. As he’d read slowly, more and more he envied the uniformed man removing containers of hazardous waste. A feeling like nausea grew, as at the news of a cop’s killing. Exposed, or rather betrayed, that’s what the original of “the subject” soon deduced he’d been. The meaningless complications and outright distortions that so-called Dr. LaFlamme made of his so-called factioning! The pseudo-science of LaFlamme’s own methodology was way worse than Macro so-called “investigative journalism.” More crime than criminology scholarship!
That article had taught him only one thing: that the professors he’d dreamed of emulating were little better than the Macro stringers who pestered detectives and, when they weren’t indulged, just went ahead and made up sensational stories. Or worse than those deadline reporters. Because the professorial researchers took forever and were just too inept or lazy to be good investigators. The alleged facts of the article had been as invented as selected. The wildest conjectures were given as logical consequence — therefore, however, thus, it goes without saying, it follows then. Tabloid academics! Written in a prose that worked hardest to distract the reader from the truth that it had zero contact with the real world, and in a language as impenetrable as granular fog. Who indeed did the greater violence to truth, Macro reporters or these tenured pretenders?
Only Dr. Nora Goldstein, Bill’s thesis supervisor, had called to offer sympathy, to attempt to dismiss the article, and, contradictorily, to suggest filing a formal grievance. Kevin was having none of it. His course-work master’s degree completed, he had hurried back to more authentic crime and Frank Thu, who had managed to make staff sergeant in his absence.
At the O-R window now he shifted his focus from the inner-city campus to the ghostly reflection of his own eyes. Something was up with Frank. He wasn’t being straight in this DeLint case. In the past two days Kevin had been unable to hold Frank’s eye. He turned away from the window and headed for the door.
In the architecture of Omphalos, the interior corners of this room and DeLint’s were separated by only a few feet of hallway, with the two symmetrical spaces taking up half of seventeen in a rectangular figure eight (the rest of the floor was empty space, storage prohibited, because DeLint would not trust the proximate company even of inanimate objects). At the door end of the room there were two comfortable cots as big as single beds, one rumpled, the other made to military tightness. At the business end there was a table covered by three big tilted monitors like a tribunal of Easter Island heads. Of course there was no spiral iron staircase back of the table (though on first entering, Kevin had checked the ceiling for a trap door). But piles of old silver mini-discs, vid coins, spilled like some dragon’s treasure in reflection of DeLint’s pistachio shells. The mess on the floor was made worse by Kevin’s cigar butts like droppings of one of the larger rodents. “Pure filth,” Brigid Ertelle had said on first sighting his leavings. She’d taken to doing a fake fist-cough of protest when he lit up and she stood away from the monitor.
Kevin insisted on keeping the door closed on the wide hallway connecting the twinned rooms. Sometimes, after Ertelle stepped out, he’d reconnoitre the hall to see if the two mismatched security (one tall and bony, one short and dumpy) were posted and alert. They were there 24/7. Kevin wanted back into DeLint’s office without the watchdogs following him to the door, as Frank would have instructed them to do. He could already feel his feet on the iron steps of that black spiral stair hanging from DeLint’s ceiling like the Devil’s own dreadlock. If the opportunity didn’t present itself soon, he would try cutting his way into the Dome through the ceiling of this room. First, he would have to get rid of Ertelle on some trumped-up call. Although he suspected he could grow to like her even more, he’d be a fool to trust Ertelle in this. He would need a powerful cutting tool for bellium steel, if there even was such. He knew nothing of lasers. Could Nora Goldstein help him there too?… But for now, the hallway.
When he leaned out the doorway, he saw not only the two guards but Frank Thu and Brigid Ertelle. Frank and Brigid were in close communication, with Frank turned away from Kevin. Ertelle, facing Kevin, saw him and raised her eyebrows for Frank’s notice. But Frank continued jabbing his finger at her chest. Even for that, Frank had to point upwards a touch, which made Kevin smile at Brigid. Frank misread Ertelle’s raised brows as questioning whatever he was admonishing, because the finger jabbed more pointedly and his volume increased and Kevin heard Beldon. Ertelle waved. Frank froze, turned briefly and saluted with a grin as frozen, and walked stiffly to the elevator in that staring way of trying to put distance between oneself and an undeniable mistake.
That would be the first time Frank had ever avoided pleasantries with Kevin.
Ertelle strode down the hall, with a clutched white paper bag held out like a severed head: “Supplies!” Way too dramatic.
When she arrived he said, “What’s Frank on your ass — case about?”
“It is my ass. He says I’m not to complain about your smoking.”
“Really? Then he should take his own advice.”
Ertelle laughed and slid past him. Again: that laugh had been exaggerated. He pulled the door closed with force and listened like a bird with tilted head.
“What are you doing, Detective Beldon? No, wait: you’re listening to the echo. Checking what someone would hear from behind one of these doors.”
“Am I? But DeLint’s door was always left open. And if I am listening, you shouldn’t have spoken, Sergeant Brigid Ertelle.”
“Uh-oh, sorry. But MYCROFT’s already told us the exact decibel level necessary for detection from where DeLint was sitting, in the atmospheric conditions of his office at that time, allowing even for the drugged state DeLint was in. Supposedly he would have heard a cat fart.”
“What’s a decibel level sound like, Sergeant Ertelle? And drugged state? Is that a fact now?”
“MYCROFT’s confirmed the pistachio shells were contaminated with some fast-acting compound, a unique synthesis of mineral and latent-gas compound. MYCROFT’s still doing the full work-up, molecular structure and sourcing, even as we speak.”
“That’s slow.”
“MYCROFT’s finding it a challenge. Like I said, a unique, powerful compound, as made from scratch as scratch can be, so precise sourcing of the ingredients is probably out of the question. But we can deduce that some pretty fancy expertise was required.”
“Is there an electromagnetic doughnut for partner MYCROFT in that bag? A jam joule from Starbuck’s?”
She deflated and exaggerated a pout: “You were doing something else at the door just now? I’m sorry.”
Why did he suspect she was acting all the time now, that a big fat lie underlay their partnership? That’s investigative death from the get-go. He held out his left hand: “The Panters?… Thank you, Sergeant Ertelle; trusting you had no trouble finding Mags & Fags. MYCROFT profile the perp?”
“Guess what? It’s perps, two of them, just as you’d immediately suspected, Frank said.”
She smiled indulgently and tapped her tablet. “Here it all is: DeLint was decapitated by a left-handed person, given the molecular increase in raggedness of cut left to right. But the cut was still too clean to determine height, no angle whatsoever, so an expert machete-man, it would seem. The killer is male, given his stance and impressions in the blood, and there’s a seventy-percent likelihood that the accomplice was male as well, given stride and pelvic rotation, though certainty in his gender profile is compromised by weight estimate. And in the pattern of an apparent struggle between the two. Very interesting, wouldn’t you agree, Kevin?”
“That leaves a thirty-percent chance that a female was involved. Which seems a wide margin of error for the mighty MYCROFT. First slow
on the composition of the poison, and now only a likelihood? Why, that’s almost human!”
Ertelle pinched the bridge of her nose and slid the fingers down like she would seal her nostrils (had she picked that up from him?). She looked older than her twenty-eight years, did Sergeant Brigid Ertelle, with her dark helmet of hair making him think of some wearied Joan of Arc. If her face weren’t so long, and her nose less so too, she might be conventionally pretty. He’d been wrong, though, she was nowhere beside Kelly. How could she be that old and still act like such a silly girl? He didn’t like her anymore. What was wrong with women?
He returned to their business table and recommenced viewing vid records. He felt like a fool, a boy, a kid. What was wrong with him? He’d been too long from the company of women.
Ertelle was wandering the room when Frank entered. He tried hard, but Frank was not himself.
“Well-well, what has my best new investigative team turned up so far?”
“Nothing,” Kevin said, scarcely turning from the monitor, “and I’m getting computer creep: I stopped thinking an hour ago. We’re about to conduct some interviews in the real world.”
Frank looked quizzically at Ertelle, who avoided his gaze. He moved to the window and stared out.
Kevin said, “No material evidence anyway, Frank. But DeLint’s executive assistant, Don McNicol, looks to be the best place to start the interviews. It’s most likely an inside job, as we speculated. And” — he turned back to the monitor — “yes, McNicol’s left-handed, I see. Hmm. It says in the manifest here that he stayed home today, though he’s listed as essential personnel. Not looking good for Mr. McNicol, I’d say.” Kevin was concealing some rising excitement.
Brigid Ertelle tensed up and looked icicles at Kevin.
“Then we’d better move on Mr. McNicol, Kev, and pronto. But quietly, just you and Ertelle. MYCROFT has positively confirmed: those pistachio nuts were bathed in an inert neuroanesthetic that alone would eventually have killed DeLint. It has no name, but a neural agent that would have made the poor bugger feel like he was spontaneously combusting, MYCROFT says. If it was this McNicol — and I’m getting a Beldon-like gut about him — we should be able to backtrack his contacts for access to such a level of chemical contraband.”