by Ritu Sethi
“You and Holly found the spilled blood in the server room?” Gray asked.
Jimmy nodded, the hot chocolate cupped between his hands but left untasted. It’s dark and rich scent drifted forward. After looking into Gray’s eyes, he silently pushed the chocolate before Gray and got up to make himself another.
After he’d returned, he said, “I came here last night to pick up my laptop, and Holly was already here.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed, his cherub-like face bunched up, the pinky cheeks coloring.
“She’s scary, you know? I just stood there, shaking, and noticed the red spill on the floor nearby. I’m in the server room a lot, and it was clean a couple of days ago, I’ll swear. When I showed Holly, her expression changed.”
Blood pounded in Gray’s ears and the world swung into sharper focus. His pulse trilled under his skin, that same glorious trill he always got when he was on the right track. “How did it change?”
“She covered up her surprise... I think. I don’t know for sure because I don’t read people all that well. Holly told me to keep the spilled blood a secret, and she wouldn’t let me leave. When I heard someone prowling around outside the office, I ran – made it as far as the metro before turning back. That’s when I found her on the floor, bleeding.”
“Why did you come back?”
“I told you. I heard someone. I couldn’t leave her here alone, with the blood, with a stranger lurking.” His voice cracked. “Someone died in our server room, didn’t they – the victim you found on the beach? Was it Norman?”
“Why would anyone kill a Medical Advisor?”
Jimmy’s face went blank, his eyes widened.
The answer came out in a tremulous whisper. “Holly, Norman...”
A sense of urgency rose in Gray; the tick of an imaginary clock matched the blood pumping through his ears. He was close. He could taste it. “Yes? What about Holly and Norman?”
Jimmy wrapped his arms around his chest. The hands looked soft and delicate, like a child’s, and when his wide brown eyes met Grays, they immediately skirted away and up towards the TV, where close-captioned images of post-C-section scars now flashed across the screen.
“I can’t tell you more; I really can’t.” He still averted Gray’s gaze, continued watching the TV. His brow furrowed; the delicate mouth fell open.
“What can’t you tell me?” Gray demanded. “That Holly’s somehow involved in this case, but how?”
The young engineer’s words sounded distant and hollow. Distracted. “Someone killed Norman, took off his face, and hanged him by the river? Oh God.”
“We haven’t confirmed for certain it was Norman.”
The engineer's eyes glazed over; his pink skin went deathly pale. Gray had pushed too hard, been too impatient.
“Oh God,” Jimmy repeated.
“Are you alright?”
Jumping to his feet, the engineer gripped the edge of the table. Something had gone terribly wrong during their conversion, and urgency hit Gray like a shovel. More was now at stake than simply solving this case, much more. He could sense it and taste the acid coming up into his mouth.
“Calm down,” Gray said.
But Jimmy leapt off the stool and scampered out of the kitchen.
Gray caught up to him at the front door. “Where the hell are you going? I need your help. Please, before someone else gets killed.”
“I...I can’t.”
“What happened in the last few minutes? What scared you?” Gray held out his palms. “What did you remember?”
“That documentary – I have to talk to Mom or someone else, but not you – never to you.”
“Why not me? I’m here to help.”
“No. You’re the police. Don’t you see?”
Gray saw nothing except the desperate need to act. His heart raced, and a sheen of sweat coated his back. If he let Jimmy go, something terrible was going to happen – he felt it in his bones. “If you leave, I won’t be able to protect you, and a dangerous killer’s loose. Do you understand?”
“I...I can’t.”
“This interview isn’t over. Come back inside.”
A few employees came into the hall to investigate the commotion. Vivienne reached their side, but Gray indicated she should step back.
“Come with me,” he said to Jimmy. “We need to speak further. After that, you’re free to leave, I promise.” This was his last chance; he had to make the boy understand.
Jimmy yelled, “I’m not saying anything,” and ran out of the office before jumping into a waiting elevator.
What made him change his mind about speaking to Gray? What had happened in those last few minutes? Gray pursued him, but the doors shut in his face.
But by the time he’d reached the ground floor, the engineer was gone. And so were any forthcoming answers and hopes.
Gray stood on rue William for a solid minute, slowing his breath and racing heart and pushing down the instinctive knowledge that they hadn’t yet seen the last death at the fashionable startup.
***
Ahead, the sun peeked up over the city’s central mountain, and shot out red and orange rays, lighting the treetops of Mt. Royal on fire.
Gray couldn’t yet speak to Holly, and he needed to interview Jimmy’s girlfriend – but not yet, not until he’d cooled down, or else that interview might go as badly as the one he’d just messed up.
Picking up his pace, he headed towards the canal, initially dug to make this part of the St. Lawrence more accessible to trade. The canal merged into the river eastward, and the cobalt water glittered in the distance under a burgeoning blue and purple sky.
The planked boardwalk under his feet jostled slightly with each step; bikers passed him, fit and seemingly warm in their thin tight jackets; an occasional jogger bolted by, headphones on and panting out their misty breath.
To his left, condos sprouted out like mushrooms, and soon, he found himself in historic Old Montréal contained the old port on the St. Lawrence River, now home to boutique hotels, tourist restaurants, and quaint cobblestone streets looking as they were a movie set in the early dawn light.
His heart drummed, and he looked up and down the cobblestone street. Most of the tourist shops hadn’t yet opened. A horse-drawn carriage trotted by; the animal’s unbrushed mane and tired face gave him pause.
The soulful brown eyes connected with his, sad, resigned, hitting Gray in the gut before the caleche driver looked his way expectantly, hoping to snare his first customer of the day. How could a man make his income by hurting another creature all day long? How could tourists finance him to do it?
Gray waved him away and wished the city hadn’t retracted its ban on the tourist-driven attraction. The horse trotted past with a melancholy click.
He watched the animal move further and further away.
And what he feared, what came upon him suddenly during his unguarded moments, morphed his lens of the world. The dark shroud, imagined but also real, shaded the river, the city, the sky before him in a blur of gray thick as soup, and his head felt burning hot.
Dissociation grabbed him, morphing the surroundings into a foreign land in which he couldn’t live without pain, agony, and each passing second punctuated that agony while his heart drilled a hole into his chest.
How could he go on with the case? So much remained to be done; so many people relied on him.
Without thinking, he grabbed the only remedy he knew and sprinted back towards the startup – towards the cafe, his suspects, Kate...away from what churned inside him.
Every action, every choice remained his to make. No harness encircled his neck; no one would rein him in, not Séverin, not anyone.
Sweat soaked his back despite the frigid cold as he flew past the old Five Roses flour company sign across the canal, up and across rue de l’Inspecteur, again to rue William – back to where he’d begun his early morning walk. Back to work –
Where the chokehold loosened its grip; where his
breath began to even, and the breeze finally cooled his cheeks.
Café Doigt stood directly across from the startup, on the ground floor of a restored nineteenth-century brick factory. The street still carried the faint scent left behind from a long-gone candy factory, yet what Gray needed most right now lay within the cafe itself. A dark, strong espresso to help him refocus.
He lifted his collar against the early morning chill. Yesterday’s freezing rain had left a treacherous sheet of ice under soft snow on the pavement. The street looked deserted and bathed in the last vestiges of the early morning blue light.
Inside, the aromas of soup, baked goods, and bodies clamoring to get their morning coffee filled the air. The sudden warmth burned his frozen face, and the bright crystal and gold chandelier hanging from the textured aluminum ceiling made him squint.
“Oui, Monsieur?”
Gray focused on the twenty-year-old man with quarter-inch long hair and a tattoo of a scorpion on his left cheek. “A double espresso and pain au chocolat, s’il vous plaît.”
He scanned the food under display: Peruvian beef with ahi and coriander, salmon tartare and oyster sandwiches; two dozen flavors of coffee beans – almond, butterscotch, chocolate-cherry, coconut butter, Mexican liqueur, to name a few.
The swinging door leading to the back kitchen lay wedged open with a knee-high metal trolley. Beyond, he could see the glittering surface of large counter space, a gas stovetop and oven, and a door to an industrial-sized fridge.
The server nodded silently and indicated Gray should sit. He chose a place by the window.
Old sheet metal secured by rivets decorated the sides of the long counter. Original paintings lined the walls. One acrylic caught his eye.
An African woman stood barefoot on a dirt road wearing rags and a patterned turban-like scarf wrapped around her head. The sunlight couldn’t outshine her eyes or her smile. This woman clearly had nothing, and she was still exuberant, triumphant. A feminine voice whispered from behind.
“Why should she be so happy with so little?”
The slim wrist weighed down by rings, and heavy bracelets placed his espresso and pastry on the table. His eyes traveled up her bare outstretched arm, trim and muscular, to that bejeweled and bare midriff that impelled the eyes downward. Apparently, he felt better.
“A simpler life?” he suggested.
“What’s the struggle for, if not to win the fight for happiness?” Kate straddled a chair opposite. “What’s with your ear?”
“I cut myself shaving.” He took a bit of the pastry. The tastes of nuts, butter, and flour swirled in his mouth, washed down with the beautifully sharp espresso.
Caffeine coursed through his system; he breathed in and out, feeling more like his usual self again.
A long swath of red hair curtained her right cheek; the rest was cropped short. Something churned behind those brown eyes, something he couldn’t quite grasp. Guilt? Suspicion? Or cloistered knowledge of the crime? He hoped Kate Grant wasn’t destined to be the killer’s next victim.
“Where were you last night after ten pm?” Gray asked.
Her head whipped back. The long strand moved and exposed her cheek, and she pushed it back down, but not before Gray noticed a scar – a two-inch diagonal slash of puckered flesh, as red as the ruby on her nose.
Welcome to the club, he thought. He knew they had something in common. Something beyond the bejeweled belly button which twinkled in what seemed like Morse Code – sending him a message he had no business receiving.
“I have something vital to tell you,” she said. “Don’t know if I should say.”
“I’m listening.”
But she merely stared: stunning sapphire irises framed by almond-shaped eyes.
He blinked first and looked from the eyes to her hair. Black roots. She had mixed heritage which wasn’t evident at first glance. A blend of Caucasian and South Asian?
Kate was sidestepping his request for an alibi. If she thought she could distract him, she was in for a surprise.
He tilted his head to one side and waited.
“It’s about last night,” she said. A momentary hesitation. She bit the side of her lower lip.
The internal fight played in her eyes, and then she finally said, “Jimmy came to my apartment.”
“After he found Holly? What did he say?”
“He came to see me all crazy and confused. It took forever to calm him down and first, I figured he was just making it up. You know? Then, when I’d given him some brandy, and he’d choked it down, he explained.”
Was she presenting Jimmy on a platter as a suspect? Kate gripped the back of the chair tighter, causing two chunky rings to clink against the metal. Reggae played loudly overhead, the primal beat drumming through his insides, punctuating his impatience.
“Take your time,” he said.
“Jimmy told me you’re investigating a murder and that one of the executives at the startup is missing. Then, he kept going on and on about Holly and some blood they found together at the startup. He thought she’d hurt him if he told anyone. He also figured she planned to clean it up – to cover up whatever happened at HealSo.”
“Holly Bradley was attacked last night.”
“Yeah, he said as much. He found her lying in her own blood, but what I want to know is: if she’s so innocent, why threaten Jimmy? Why cover up evidence?”
“Had he contacted you this morning?”
“Course not. But I’m still askin’ myself: why she wanted to wash away the evidence.”
Kate leaned back, arching out her chest. Despite himself, he looked down before meeting her half smile. “Unless she had an accomplice to the first murder,” Kate added, “and that accomplice got ‘er in the end.”
“Who might that be?”
“No idea, man. Your job, not mine.”
“How do you know Jimmy didn’t attack Holly?”
She chuckled. “No chance. I know the boy intimately, remember? Besides, ask yourself this: why did Holly survive when the first victim didn’t?”
“Your boyfriend chased the attacker away?”
“He ain’t scaring nobody.”
Gray took a moment to churn her words in his sleep-deprived mind. The muscles in his back ached for a heating pad or a massage – but no such reprieve lay in his foreseeable future. Outside, the keen wind buffeted pedestrians trying desperately not to slip on the wintery sheet beneath their feet.
“Were you alone at home last night?” he asked.
“Yeah. All night until Jimmy showed up.” She clicked her tongue. “I don’t have a ready alibi for you, and Jimmy ran off before I woke.”
Gray left feeling a foreboding of danger, but was it for himself of the woman in the café? She knew something more, he was sure of it; perhaps, something else the Engineer had told her.
This theory – of Holly having an accomplice – might not have come out of Kate’s imagination. In which case, she was in danger.
Now, more than ever, he had to find Jimmy Cane.
CHAPTER 10
April 2, 1 pm
THE SMELL OF ANTISEPTIC assailed his nose. This floor of the hospital smelled worse, way worse than the lobby or the elevators on his way up.
Gray stopped short of entering Holly’s room when he detected Simon’s voice booming from inside. “You can’t speak to me that way. I’m the Founder of this company.”
“Listen to me.” Holly sounded hoarse. She lay in bed, eyes swollen, forehead bruised. “Forget about Guilter’s offer. Juva Pharma jumped into the game last night. They want to talk about buying us. And not for a mere forty million either – we’ll receive the full two hundred.”
“What–”
“I’m continuing as CEO, even in hospital. These negotiations will go on through me, and me alone. Nothing can be allowed to mess them up.”
“You’re going to work after that blow on the head?” Simon said. “What are you, a woman or a machine?”
Holly’s breath ca
me heavy and ragged, and she was turning alarmingly greener by the second. Yet her voice remained strong.
“If I find out you had anything to do with my attack–”
“Don’t threaten me,” Simon said. “Have you forgotten how you got to be CEO in the first place? Should I call your loving partner and tell her about our affair? Melanie adopted the baby, right? Not you. You think she’d leave in a huff and puff and take the brat with her if she knew?”
Holly’s jaw clenched, and her lids lowered. “That secret had better stay in your pants, or else –”
Suddenly noticing Gray by the door, she stopped. Her eyes flashed before fixating on a person behind him.
A familiar-looking doctor came into the room, said a few predictable niceties, and began shining a penlight into her patient’s eyes.
Simon merely stood and watched, seething. Finally, he stormed out of the room, and his departing footsteps echoed down the hall while Holly, now looking even more unwell, began to retch into a stainless steel basin.
Any other smell, Gray could endure, but vomit made him literally sick. The doctor completed the exam with Gray waiting outside. When she came out to join him, and he presented his ID, she shook her head.
“Dr. Jenna Peters,” she said, holding out her hand. Her wild ringlets framed an angular face. He guessed from her crumpled greens and the glasses perched over her unadorned face that she’d been on call the previous night.
“How is Ms. Bradley?”
“Not up to an interrogation. You don’t recognize me, do you? I’ve seen you around the neighborhood. You’re on Leeson, right?”
Of course. Dr. Peters lived in that large corner Victorian one street over from his.
“Yes, nice to see you again, Doctor.”
Her long lashes nearly brushed the insides of the purple, square-rimmed spectacles. She had a lazy way of talking. “Now, Chief Inspector. You know I can't discuss the patient's condition without her consent.”
“This wasn’t a random attack. We’re investigating a brutal murder, and the two crimes are related. I don’t have confirmation, but the first victim may have been Dr. Norman Everett. He’s missing.”