Omphalos

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Omphalos Page 12

by Gerald Lynch


  Ertelle turned squarely to Frank. “What about the man DeLint was writing to? He was high on the preliminary list MYCROFT gave us. What about the administrative assistant” — she checks her tablet — “this Anna Kynder? She’s not been seen outside her private office, where she’s holed up again today. I’ve checked.”

  Frank’s slight grin reflected thinly on the window. “Mark Prendergast? The kid was totally unaware that the spotlight of DeLint’s, uh, attentions was about to pluck him from obscurity. We will talk with Anna Kynder. Like you said, she’s in her office, and going nowhere without a tail. But you’ll be pleased, Kevin, to hear that MYCROFT has just confirmed your suspicion: McNicol is our prime person of interest. How you came to him so quickly is beyond me, per usual.”

  “Yes, our suspicions,” Ertelle said emphatically for Kevin’s benefit. “But the prime already? There’s still Kynder, and others, I would think. What about all the Omphalos Haitians? What happened to that scenario?”

  Frank squinted at her, as at someone who’s not following the script: “MYCROFT does say there’s a high probability that someone in the administrative secretariat is implicated, and yes, most likely Anna Kynder, administrative assistant. Mrs. Kynder appears exceptionally upset over DeLint’s death. But again, Sergeant Ertelle, as you said yourself: she’s holed up in her office, so going nowhere. Mr. McNicol we’ve been unable to get in touch with. Didn’t want to send a squad car out to his place. Contacted the neighbours by communicator, and they’ve seen nothing of him since yesterday, though he was spotted going into his house.”

  “Jesus,” Kevin mumbled to himself.

  Without having to look away from the window, Frank picked up on Kevin’s growing alarm. “There’s no record of very recent communication between Mr. McNicol and Ms. Kynder, but they could have used Omphalos MIST as a workaround.”

  “What about motive?” Ertelle asked.

  “Whatever the motive, it starts out there with McNicol.” Frank pointed: “Go, you two.”

  Kevin pushed away from the terminal and rubbed his palms like cardio-paddles. “The fun starts. Warrant?” His routine performance was an act; he was alarmed.

  Still with his eyes on his own in the window, Frank said, “Good thinking, Detective Inspector Beldon. I’ll have one issued summarily by your old friend, Judge Mender.” Frank turned from the window.

  “Then we’d better get out there.” Kevin handed Frank a slip of lime-green paper. “Frank, get hold of this guy, Sam-Man Bantry. He promised to look after Anna Kynder for me.”

  “You’re as full of surprises as ever, Beldon. Go.”

  “One more question, Frank. For MYCROFT, I mean, of course. How could McNicol, a lifelong glorified secretary, have got hold of the ingredients for such a sophisticated poison? Or the wherewithal to put it together? Or, for that matter, expertise with a machete?”

  “Didn’t Ertelle tell you? MYCROFT has confirmed it was a two-man job. McNicol might not have been the actual killer, way too much mess in there, and especially behind the desk near the stairs, for MYCROFT to determine which of the two actually swung the blade.”

  “I told him already!”

  Frank’s head did a small snap of irritation. “And McNicol and Anna Kynder, as MYCROFT has observed, have top clearance at Omphalos, so unlimited access to DeLint. Equals: op-por-tun-i-ty. There could well be a third accomplice, or just a contact inside Omphalos.”

  Kevin squinted. “Jake Shercock, the power-plant guy who found the body, watch him too.”

  “Am I a partner in this or what?” Ertelle complained into the air between Kevin and Frank.

  Frank ignored her. “The killers would have smuggled in the murder weapon, which MYCROFT ninety-seven percent confirms is indeed a machete. Again, bravo, Detective Beldon! And maybe snuck the killer in with it. As for the poison, there are enough whiz kids out of work, if you can go by the rise in hacker crime. But MYCROFT’s still working on sourcing the poison. One thing, Kevin,” Frank said, turning back to the window: “This is nothing remotely like any other poison we’ve ever dealt with. It’s a violent concoction all right, but nothing like anything else. Do we understand each other, Detective Beldon?”

  Kevin laughed his worst laugh. “Oh I hear you, my chief, nothing like!”

  Frank relaxed into the next command: “For now, kids, until we can provide our near-intelligent computer with evidence to the contrary, MYCROFT’s prime suspect is waiting out there — vamoose!”

  Kevin was moving. “You’re the best, Frank. Can you also get Judge Mender to subpoena Dr. Ewan Randome? I want his version of Omphalos and DeLint.”

  Frank followed the two of them to the door. “I will. But Dr. Randome has resigned from Omphalos as of tomorrow. I had a short talk with him already. He’s pretty shaken up, as I guess he and DeLint do go way back.”

  “Ewan resigned? But I was talking with him just hours ago and he said nothing! You will keep tabs on him, Frank?”

  “Of course, and on Anna Kynder, and the Shercock guy too, and on every Haitian employee from here to Montreal! Now move. Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Sandy Hill, nineteen-twelve Mariposa Street.”

  “Then away with yeh!” Frank laughed.

  And Kevin laughed truly, because he’d only ever told Cynthia and their children and Frank about his Mammy’s expression.

  A frowning Ertelle slipped ahead of Kevin, as if hurrying not to be left behind with Frank.

  Chapter 11

  Outside was glaringly lit by August’s midday sun, and the lower world stank of old and fresh garbage stewing in its waiting place for monthly collection. Breathlessly hot as a lungful of empty clothes dryer, the baking street scene. Putrid hot too, as if entering old-lady Gaia’s one-room apartment to investigate the neighbours’ complaints: Mars had reported no evidence of life from his blue-marbled neighbour, and Venus had noticed a…funny smell. It’s the odour of organic death on a planetary scale. Dog days indeed, these days of busy snout.

  Detective Kevin Beldon sniffed twice, closed both eyes and raised his brow, then sharply shook his head. Forget sleep, this foulness knitted up his nerves. This action in the corrupt real world.

  He’d had his whiff and was instantly on the fresh trail, if working backwards. He remembered the distraught McNicol at his monitor on the sixteenth floor the day before. McNicol went way back with DeLint. Kevin’s suspicions now found clear expression in statements he’d suppressed in Frank’s presence:

  This McNicol could be the last living link to the Widower.

  This McNicol could be the Widower’s next victim.

  This McNicol could be the Widower. (At his monitor he’d clearly lost something: DeLint, his fat golden goose?)

  It was still mad as Bosch hell at the entrance to Omphalos’s underground garage, with the crush of rubbernecks and their milky catareyes and the push of Macro reporters having swollen since Kevin had slipped out of the building that morning, all displaying skin-work from the rough beige of corner-store patching to the persistent pink sheen of costlier surgery. The whole dying world was dying for more and more morbid news. Sweeping batons, the patchy guards cleared a path for the maroon Crown Vic through the ragdoll tangle.

  “Nice wheels,” the first thing Ertelle said, still unsettled in her seat and anxious for the safety of the pressing crowd. “Forget eight cylinders, it’s impossible these days getting a permit for two. Old boys network, eh?”

  “Old boys,” Kevin echoed, staring straight ahead. “I pay the price just like everyone else.”

  She pinched her lips and went white-knuckled on her door handle. “And by the way, partner, thanks a fuck of a lot for springing all this McNicol and Shercock news on me. Are we partners or is it still just you and Frank?”

  He was hardly aware of her anger. “I have my reasons. It happened fast.”

  The flatness of voice distracte
d her from herself. “You look pasty, Kevin. It’s the change from purified air to this shitty heat. Take a moment to acclimatize.”

  For an instant everything pulled downward and inward, like he was the focus of an old funhouse mirror. He didn’t shake his head, but blinked. “No time.”

  “Aren’t you turning on the air?”

  “No air.”

  “How about I drive, partner?”

  “This isn’t a buddy movie, Sergeant Ertelle. It’s bad, I’m telling you, rotten.”

  “What is?”

  “DeLint dead, Omphalos, McNicol, Anna Kynder, Jake Shercock — the whole goddamned planet turning to shit, that’s what. And now Dr. Randome abandoning ship when I could really use his help. I could hardly contain myself with Frank back there, if you wanna talk withholding information, Detective Ertelle. Do you?”

  “What?” She touched the dashboard and whipped her head from Kevin’s face to the thinned crowd. She snickered her nervousness. “Did you see the horribly patched fat guy wearing the green umbrella halo like his own made-to-measure ozone hole? His face looked like some Frankenstein soccer ball!”

  He had lost all feeling for her and her sarcasm. He wanted a male assistant; DeLint had been smart that way. DeLint was dead. A real connection to the Widower had been cut. Like his father, dead, and Mammy too. And Cynthia. Everybody’s dead. Cyn slimed by this shitty dying world of crime he could no longer master, just as Ewan Randome had said. MYCROFT was a better detective than the great Kevin Beldon.

  Contain yourself.

  And he did.

  He could still make the world better for Kelly, and for Bill — And there it was again: Bill. Bill had nearly completed a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering. Professor Nora Goldstein had said he was brilliant. But no discipline, no ambition. Or no: differently ambitious, she’d said. What’s wrong with that? Everything. Just everything. Bill hated him. Bill was back in town.

  Fuck!

  He twisted his grip on the wheel and the noise was like a protesting stomach. “Mariposa’s off Laurier, right?”

  “Yes. Are you sure you’re all right, Kevin? Is your stomach upset or something? I’d have thought coffee and Danish and cigars constituted a healthy diet for an out-of-shape middle-aged guy.”

  Nothing.

  “Cherry?”

  “No cherry. We don’t want to alarm him more than is absolutely unavoidable. This is bad.”

  “What’s bad! McNicol? What is going on here, Kevin?”

  He swallowed his nausea: “I think McNicol’s either the Widower or the Widower’s next victim.” That had been like talking for the first time ever.

  “The what! The Widower? Are you…factioning?”

  He sipped air. “When I first saw him he looked distraught.”

  “When you first saw him? Where was I?”

  “Yesterday, on the sixteenth floor. He looked like he’d just got the note from his child’s abductor.”

  “That’s right, you began in Missing — watch out!… Jesus…”

  He knifed across three lanes the short distance to Laurier, bulled a left turn against oncoming traffic, and shot down the white line dividing two lanes. Horns had been blaring at them since they’d left Omphalos property, and when the car crossed King Edward on a red light screeching tires were added.

  Ertelle sang sotto voce to be heard: “We wouldn’t be getting all this bad attention if we’d used the cherry.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.” Her face was inflamed.

  He slowed towards the bottom of Laurier, and took a funereal right onto Mariposa. Stopped. Rolled forward. The street was a still life: no clouds filtering the merciless sun; no neighbours socializing on the glaring sidewalks emanating heat distortion; no children disturbing the dead air. The Crown Vic rubbed the curb and parked, shut off.

  “It’s one-nine-one-two, Detective Beldon, we’re only at —”

  “We walk from here. It’s the brown brick bungalow with the green porch three houses down. He lives alone. You take the front, I’ll take the back. Use the doorbell, and if there isn’t one, knock softly. Tell him —”

  “I know what to tell him.”

  He stared at her for the longest time, and they had no time to waste. He was alarmed because he was controlling the impulse to clamp the back of her head and slam her face into the dashboard.

  “Shut up and listen, Ertelle. McNicol knows what’s what, and I don’t, we don’t. So tell him who you are, say you just want to talk with him. You look like you’ve slept in your clothes, that’ll help. We must not alarm him. Tell him it’s routine interviews related to the death of Eugene DeLint and that we — or here you use my name — that Detective Kevin Beldon knows he’s innocent. Got that?”

  Her flaming face had toned down to blushing. “That’s because I have slept in my clothes, on a shade-porch at home.” She sniffed towards her armpit, winced and blushed more deeply.

  Kevin was a two-dimensional man, feeling as bled of colour as the sun-bleached cardboard scene before him. Yet this felt more real than anything in a long time.

  Ertelle tried her buddy sarcasm again. “So use your name, the great detective…”

  He was out of the car and along the sidewalk.

  She was just part of the buzz of all things that loved desiccation: grasshoppers, cicadas, dust and more dust unto dust everywhere in everything. He wanted to do damage. He wanted to hurt somebody. He wanted to get even. He suffered the impulse to hold some criminal idiot by the scruff and repeatedly smash his face into a stone wall. To…kill.

  He knew to stop himself and cover up, like a stunned boxer weathering the incoming blows, to control the instinct that would run him into another of the world’s straight right fists. He got his legs back under him. This was familiar territory, he finally remembered, just that it had been a bad while.

  Move now!

  “Do you carry?” Again he was speeding ahead.

  She hurried after. “Sometimes but not today. Kevin, your eyes back there —”

  “Don’t worry,” he said over his left shoulder, “you’re not going to need it. I just thought I might show a piece round back of his house, just in case.”

  “Just in case what? For Christ’s sake, Kevin, fill me in! Wait up! We need to coordinate better. I think I’ve earned that right!”

  He said normally into the still air, “We’ve no time, Brigid, we’re already too late.”

  She caught up just as he cut up the driveway, leaving her on the sidewalk.

  He slowed. The driveway was narrow and long disused, just two rutted paths of broken concrete with a balding patch of brown grass between. Proximity to downtown made these post-war dollhouses expensive renos. A once-white slat-wood garage slumped at the head of the driveway, one of its two swinging doors closed, the other stuck open and twisted forward, their upper panes like cubist eyes.

  He would like to enter that oily garage and lie down on its cool dirt, dream of Cynthia. Its collapsing space of multiple possibilities was so much more inviting than the narrow backyard he turned into, slipping between the garage’s corner and the small grey porch newly built to look old. Out there in the open he could be killed looking for his one solution, on that scorched yard narrow as an alleyway, before the right man was punished for…for the crime?

  He had to stop again and force himself to think.

  Criminals and bad cops are stupid. In action they forget to think. Think backwards always, remember: the murder of Eugene DeLint, Cynthia’s suicide, Omphalos, the Widower and all those murdered women. Yes. Think keenly and clearly in this heat before all is lost. This McNicol holds the key.

  He strode to the dip he knew would be halfway down the lawn like cropped straw: once there’d been buried septic tanks. He wished he was shorter. Halfway, he stepped down a small depression and turned. He pressed t
he fingers of his right hand flat against his left palm, held the two hands before him and angled downward, feet spread shoulder-width, and waited.

  He smiled thinly, in full self-possession now. He was the hidden accomplice again, waiting and watching, while a front-woman baited the mark. The world was at its window, nosing from behind a Mammy curtain. The sun withheld judgment. Time could take its own sweet time now.

  Kevin Beldon. Rule of law. He was again.

  Distantly the old-fashioned doorbell ding-donged. An interval of birdless silence…as on a late-morning Sunday. Good. He and Mammy, hungry from fasting for the second Mass, Communion wafer the only solid on their stomachs, paused on the sidewalk in front of just such a pitiable little house to listen to his father snoring through an open window. She cocked her tidy head cup-like and smiled to herself, placed a firm restraining hand on his forearm. He smiled in answer, hungry. That was love. The angelus bell from Ottawa’s own Notre Dame peeled through the bright moist air, deepening the silence of noon. Then: What will the neighbours think? The ould Jew. The ould Jew was a Dublin Jew who’d immigrated to Montreal with a young Irish wife. The ould Jew was a father who drank to unconsciousness every Saturday night, slept all Sunday morning, then spent the rest of the Lord’s Day hungover and cursing the Christian world blasphemously in Canadian French: Tabernac! Tonnere!

  The doorbell again. Footsteps thumping inside the house. Kevin rocked back on his hips, locked his elbows, phantom gun still angled down.

  Ertelle distantly: “Come back and open this door, Mr. McNicol! We only want — stop!”

  The back wooden screen door slammed open and McNicol stood on the small stage. His blond head was wild now; he’d been doing himself violence. He was wearing a dirty-yellow terrycloth bathrobe whose belt had loosened, exposing his torso; black socks sagged to his ankles, no slippers. Kevin thought him comical; McNicol might do a clownish turn, like the street mime who lived in the basement of Kevin’s apartment, Pant-O-Mime. Only, in his left hand, McNicol held a big revolver, an antique .44 it looked. He waved it loosely in front of himself like someone wondering what to do with a distasteful object. He glanced out at the yard and froze.

 

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