by Gary Coffin
“He never told me,” Elliot said quietly as he looked at the floor.
“The disease was just starting to manifest itself when I last talked to him. He was experiencing periodic headaches and blurred vision,” Baldwin said softly.
The doctor could see that Elliot was taken aback by the news. “Elliot, it’s common for someone in your father’s position to withhold information from those closest to them. They don’t want to be a burden and are not comfortable with the attention they will attract. Since there was nothing anybody could do about his condition, he chose to live his final months as normally as possible.”
Elliot needed to process what he just heard; he dismissed himself without further questions. “Thanks for your time, Ray. I should be going now.”
He sat in the car to absorb what he’d just heard.
I can accept Baldwin’s explanation about why Dad would not have confided in me, he thought to himself. It sounded exactly like the way Dad would handle the situation. It’s still a shock to hear that he was dying, but it put new perspective on his murder. Perhaps Dad’s death was something he orchestrated or at least set in motion. If Dad knew that a crime had been committed but did not have evidence to support his theory, it’s conceivable he would confront the supposed perpetrators, to poke the bear as the saying goes, to see if he could elicit a response. He’d also know that the response might be extreme, but with his death already imminent he might have been willing to take that risk. It also meant that he was expecting, or at least hoping, that someone would take notice and investigate the murder. That someone would be me, his son.
Elliot checked in his rearview and noticed a black SUV a few hundred yards back, and it triggered a memory of a similar vehicle in his rearview earlier this morning. He turned onto Queen Mary and watched to see if the SUV would take the same turn. It did. He tried to convince himself that he was being paranoid but needed to put it through the litmus test. From Queen Mary, he took the Decarie southbound and kicked his Mazda into cruising speed moving into the far lane. He saw that the SUV had followed him onto the southbound Decarie but lost sight of it when he had gunned his car. Taking no chances, he exited at St Jacques and continued along through Little Burgundy and then into St Henri, his childhood stomping grounds. Eventually, he found himself on Selby Street, a one-way street that ran in the shadow of the elevated Ville Marie Expressway. He pulled over and watched his mirror to see if the black SUV pulled onto the street behind him. Five minutes without seeing the black truck told him he was not being followed. He chalked it up to paranoia.
Elliot looked over toward the expressway and the unused area beneath. He thought about how he had spent many days in his youth playing in similar ad-hoc playgrounds that can be found in the nooks and crannies of a city. To Elliot, the expressway marked the border between two vastly different classes of Montrealers. North of the border was the upscale Westmount neighborhood, and south of the border, across the train tracks and underneath the expressway, were the much less affluent boroughs of St Henri, Little Burgundy, and Griffintown. In recent years, these less prosperous boroughs were taking long strides toward respectability and had become a preferred living destination for young families, but Elliot knew that the separation was not only physical but cultural. The peoples on the two sides were oil and water; they would never mix.
The stanchions supporting the overhead expressway were embellished with graffiti from generations of teenagers, each generation over-writing the previous generations' graffiti with artwork of their own. Between the stanchions lay unused areas that served as gathering spots for teenagers. The unused areas that were paved served well as basketball courts or skateboard parks. Elliot was never much of a boarder, but his height made him a valuable commodity when teams were being drawn for pickup basketball games.
He shook himself from his childhood recollections and drove off, still unconvinced that the SUV had not been following him.
When Elliot arrived at the office, Rivka was already back from her morning expedition. Based on her still flushed face, she had probably run up and down the mountain and must have only recently arrived.
Rivka was the picture of wholesomeness. She was tall and athletic, and when they walked together, Elliot often felt as if he were a member of a celebrity’s entourage, not because she was famous or well known; she wasn’t. It was because of the attention she attracted, particularly from the opposite sex. Her looks couldn't be classified by routine descriptions like cute or gorgeous since they all implied a degree of feminism and delicacy that would be unfitting. She was a fascinating woman with a strikingly unusual and different look to her, and there was a swagger in the way she talked and walked that bordered on entitlement. He concluded this must be the confluence of a lifetime of growing up with her God-given attributes coupled with the years she spent on the force walking the beat backed with a badge and an attitude.
“Morning, Chief.”
“Morning, Riv.” He settled down into his chair and watched her fiddle around with a zipper on her backpack without saying anything. Experience told him that she’d tell her story when she was good and ready and not before.
“I had an interesting morning,” she finally said.
Elliot looked at her with arched eyebrows. “And...”
She pulled out her notepad. “I interviewed thirty-three people.”
“Nineteen walkers, eleven runners, and three bikers. Of the thirty-three, twenty-one were not up on the mountain that day or don’t remember.”
“Of the twelve who were on the mountain, seven don’t remember any vehicles parked, two said they saw a tour bus in the lot, and three said they saw the bus and also a white panel van. One of the people who remembered the van also recalled two men getting into the van at about 8:40. She remembers the two men because one of them was freakishly large. She thought at least six and a half feet tall and more than 300 pounds. She also gave me a general description of the clothing on both men.”
“Great work, Riv.”
“One more thing. The person who saw the two men was also interviewed the day after the murder by the police investigators and she gave the same account to them.”
“Interesting,” Elliot replied. “Were you able to get that copy of Dad’s case file? I’m curious to see what else they may have uncovered in their investigation that they haven’t told us about.”
“Stella has it ready and will drop it off at my place tonight after work,“ she replied.
“Let me summarize where I think we are with the case,” he started. “There are no parking meters nor are there any security cameras on the mountain. That means we’re not going to get a plate number for the white van that way, agreed?”
“Go on,” she replied.
“The two men knew when Dad was leaving on his morning walk, so he must have been under surveillance. It makes sense that the white van parked near his house, watched for him to start his walk and then drove up to the parking lot on the mountain to meet him at the top of the trail where it is most secluded.”
“Agreed.”
“What do all stakeouts survive on?”
Riv didn’t even have to think about it. “Duh. Coffee.”
“Bingo. If I was getting up that early to sit in a van for hours, I’d need coffee. Okay, Riv. Can you start canvassing drive-thru coffee shops in and around the Westmount area and see if you can get footage for early that morning and also the four previous mornings? Focus on the main routes in and out of Westmount. These guys are almost certainly not Westmount residents, so they’d be coming in along a major route like Sherbrooke or Atwater. If they didn’t stop along a major route, they either stopped close to where they came from, which could be anywhere on the island, or they don’t drink coffee.”
“On it, Chief.”
Elliot had some time to kill. He headed back to his father’s to talk to Anne Simmons. Before knocking on the door to the in-law suite, he went upstairs to get something to drink. He put his pack on the table, to
ok a bottle of water out of the fridge and when he glanced out the patio door he saw Anne relaxing on the deck. Anne was a good looking woman, some would say exotic, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason why she sometimes looked strikingly beautiful and other times rather ordinary. She had dark, shoulder length hair, and when she moved her head, the ends of her hair teased the nape of her neck in a way that made Elliot wish he knew her better. From a profile view, she had too much face and not enough chin, but it somehow worked for her. She wore the thick framed, rectangular glasses that were in fashion, and they gave her an air of sophistication that added to her allure. From his oblique angle, Elliot noticed a ray of sunlight reflect off her right eye, and it was the first time he noticed their color, like the deep blue of a clear, sunward sky thirty minutes after sunset. He wondered why she hid them behind glasses.
He opened the patio door. “Morning, Anne.”
Anne flinched. “Elliot. You startled me!”
“Sorry. I was wondering if we could chat for a few minutes.”
“Yes, certainly. Have a seat,” she said putting her book down on the table.
“It’s about Dad.” Elliot sipped his water and waited until he had Anne’s full attention. “I’m not convinced his murder was as random as the police have led us to believe, so I’ve started my own investigation. I’m quite convinced that there was someone waiting at the top of the trail for him. Consequently, I’m trying to reconstruct what Dad was doing in the days and weeks leading up to his murder.“
“Wow, are you sure? It’s hard to believe that anyone would want to hurt your dad.”
“That’s the standing theory that I’m trying to prove, or not. Do you remember him talking about anything he was working on, or looking into, recently? Some of the things I’ve found in the house point to him researching a pharmaceutical company named Biovonix. Does any of that ring a bell?”
Anne bit her lower lip with a look of concentration and waited to let an overhead jet pass until its dull roar faded. “I don’t remember him ever mentioning anything about that company. Elliot, our conversations were light. We both loved mystery books, we bitched about Quebec politics and gossiped about the neighbors, but we never talked about anything too personal or worldly.”
Anne was quiet, and Elliot could tell she was reflecting on something. He let the conversation lag until she was ready to speak again.
“I have to say that he had not been himself for a few weeks,” she finally said. “I sometimes joined him on his walks up the mountain and also spent a good deal of time back here on the deck with him. He seemed distracted for a few weeks prior to his death, so much so that I asked him a couple of times if there was anything wrong. He never admitted to anything, but in my mind, he was clearly struggling with a weighty issue. Then, the week before he was killed, he seemed like his usual self, as if he had resolved whatever conflict he’d had. Maybe you know what it was?” she asked.
Elliot’s cheeks reddened. He’d just heard that his father had been struggling with a huge decision for weeks, but he knew nothing about it. “No, I wasn’t aware that he was stressed about anything,” he replied quietly. He sat back and sipped his water thinking about which way to steer the conversation next.
“Did you know that there was a theft in the house in the past couple of weeks?”
“No! When? What was taken?” she said sitting up in her chair to face Elliot.
“I don’t know exactly when. It was in the past two weeks. As far as I can tell, they only took his computer and maybe some files.”
“How did they get in? Should I be worried? Did you call the police?”
“Slow down. There’s nothing to worry about. I think the robbers had a key."
“Good God. Murder. Theft. What was he involved in?”
“You know Dad. He wouldn’t spit gum on the sidewalk for fear of breaking the law. My theory is that he became privy to information; maybe he saw something or heard something that he shouldn’t have that ended up putting his life in danger. He knew he was in danger, but he didn’t reach out for help. Instead he continued on and felt it was more appropriate to leave me a few obscure clues.”
Elliot stopped talking and thought about how much he should tell Anne. He didn’t want to involve her to the point where she might also be in harm's way, but his father may have inadvertently told her something that would be valuable to the investigation. He continued.
“I know that Dad met with an executive at Biovonix the week before his death. Did he mention someone named Alex Banik?”
“No, I don’t recall ever hearing that name before,” she replied casually, but when he said the name Alex Banik, Elliot noticed a slight intake of breath through her nose, imperceptible if you weren’t looking for it, but he was. He didn’t push the point but filed the information to reflect on later.
“Have you ever seen a vehicle in the neighborhood with someone in it as if they were on surveillance?” he asked.
“You mean like a stakeout? No. Do you think he was being watched?” she asked.
“The killer had to have known when Dad started his hike up the mountain so he could meet him at the top. It only makes sense that someone was watching him.”
“No. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“It was a long shot that you would have noticed anything, but I had to ask,” he said as he sat back, closed his eyes and waited for Anne to direct the conversation.
He’s a good looking man, Anne thought as she looked at Elliot relaxing. He didn’t have the chiseled outdoorsy face that she preferred in men, but there was a refined quality about him that she found attractive. Physically, he would never be mistaken for someone who labored for a living, but he kept his tall frame in good shape and had just enough rough spots that he wouldn’t be considered soft. What drew him to her was his natural, easy-going manner that invited relaxed conversation. She thought that he must be popular with his students.
“Elliot, have you decided what you’re going to do with the house? If you plan on selling it, I’ll need to find a new apartment; if you do decide to sell, could you ask the real estate agent if my continuing to rent the basement is still possible? It may even be a selling point to have a reliable renter already lined up.”
He could tell she was nervous by the way she sped through her spiel. She’d probably rehearsed it flawlessly a hundred times in front of the mirror. It made her seem that much more vulnerable in his eyes.
“I haven’t decided yet, but when I do, I’ll give you as much time as possible,” he was leaning toward selling the house, but dealing with it now was not a priority. A squirrel caught his attention as it peeled across the telephone line like a four-legged circus performer on speed. His eyes dropped down when the squirrel disappeared behind the pole, and he noticed the fishing boat sitting in the corner of the yard just inside the fence. Last year’s grass was growing around the trailer wheels and up around the axles. His father had named the boat “Sea of Tranquility IV” and painted the name at the back of boat on the flat portion where the motor mounted. He thought back to the good chuckle he and Jake had shared when they saw the name and had to ask the great Captain Hubert what happened to I, II, and III. It occurred to him at that time that he’d include the boat when he sold the house.
They sat on the deck without talking for a few minutes, and Elliot realized that he felt totally content for the first time in a long time. This feeling was not the result of being relaxed and having no pressing matters on his mind. Au contraire, although he was faced with a situation that was consuming his every thought, he was finally doing what he was meant to do. After a lifetime of preparing himself to serve Lady Justice, he was actually doing something about it, and all it took to get me started was the murder of my father, he thought.
The deck they were sitting on was “L” shaped with the bigger area spread across the entire width of the back of the house. The lesser portion of the “L” was an alcove on the back right of the house
where the patio door was located. Even though there were houses on each side as well as behind the house, it was a private, even intimate setting. The few noises from the city around them were swept away by the warm spring breeze that percolated through the trees in the yard, and when Elliot closed his eyes, he could easily imagine he was somewhere far away from humanity and the problems in his life. He heard Anne pick up her book but didn’t let it interrupt his peace. He pushed the case out of his mind, concentrated on nothing and allowed himself to skip off the surface of sleep until he eventually heard the rustle of fabric as Anne repositioned herself in her chair. He opened his eyes and saw that she was holding her book but looking at him. He had to suppress the urge to reach out and touch her hand. She had a peculiar look on her face that reminded him of the way Sarah sometimes looked at Jake when he was napping as a tyke. He could have sat there all afternoon, but duty was calling like a distant voice on the wind. He forced himself back to the present.
He noticed the book Anne was reading, a James Lee Burke novel called Purple Cane Road.
“I haven’t read that one. Is it good?” he asked.
“Yes, I love the Dave Robicheaux novels,” she replied. “I like the way he captures the atmosphere of the Deep South. The way he describes the New Orleans area and the people who live there tells me that there are still places where people can live the simple life. Free from all the corruption and depravity we see in the city.”
”I agree. Burke is a master,” he replied as he got up to leave. To his surprise, Anne got up with him and gave him a hug. It may have been his imagination, but it seemed that she hung on to the hug just a little longer and little tighter than protocol called for.
Walking through the house to go to the car, Elliot thought back to her comments about the book; her cynicism had taken him by surprise. Although he didn’t know Anne well, he didn’t expect her to have such a jaded interpretation of the world. There was definitely more to Anne than he imagined, and he’d be interested one day to hear her story.