by Warren Court
HOG TOWN
A John Temple Mystery
Hog Town
(Second Edition)
Copyright © 2017 Warren Court
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form (except for brief passages for the purposes of review) without the express written consent of the author
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons,
living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
To contact the author send email to [email protected]
For Tina and Katherine
And for my friend Matt and my brother Colin, both on the job.
Thanks for the help
1
The woman turned and her robe opened slightly and Temple caught sight of a ruby-coloured nipple. He was on her back porch watching her through the kitchen window. When she went into the living room he tried the back door and slipped inside. He stood next to the kitchen entranceway, twiddling himself. There was a pot boiling on the stove. On the counter was a wooden block of Ginsu knives and a cutting board with chopped onion on it. He turned the hot plate down.
He heard her say “Shit,” as she came back into the kitchen studying a fingernail. He put his arm around her fast, clamping his hand over her mouth. She fought. With his other arm he grabbed her around her waist and lifted her, rammed her into the kitchen cabinets. The lid flew off the pot and broth sloshed out, hissing as it hit the plate. She pushed back. No shouts, just grunting and the clanking of dishes and glassware in the cabinets. Her hands ran over the block of knives in desperation, tipping it over, the handles pointing away from her.
He dragged her out to the living room and kicked the coffee table out of the way. She bit down hard on his hand. “Bitch!” He kicked out her legs with the sole of his foot and she went down. He fell on top of her, driving the wind out of her. Good. He got his hands around her throat and squeezed, then switched to a one-handed grip. She clawed at him. He lay on her with all his weight. Her robe was open and he could feel her warmth, could smell the Pantene and the Ivory soap. He freed his belt and himself and plunged into her. His free hand went back to her throat.
They went upstairs to the master bedroom for the second time, which was slower and gentler. Afterwards he lay with his arms folded behind his head, her head on his stomach, her long hair splayed out across his chest. She tickled the hairs of his belly with her nails, used the back of her hand to try and stir him for a third go-around. She raised her head and looked at him.
“We should go away together,” she said. He caught a whiff of himself on her breath.
“Impossible,” John Temple said.
“Just a thought.”
Temple looked at the silver-framed photograph on the dresser. Sylvia in a white summer dress standing next to her husband Tim in his uniform holding a plaque. Both of them squinting in the sun. Temple remembered ripping that dress off her last September. It got put out in the garbage when her husband was out of town.
“We have to stop this,” she said.
“Just say the word.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
He smiled. “Everything is okay. We just can’t go away together.”
“I should leave him.”
“For me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“But…”
“It would be a disaster,” Temple said.
She sat up and pulled the soiled sheet around her and turned on the TV. A loud commercial about processed pork products came on. A fat, obnoxious fool was yelling “That’s good eatin’!” She clicked it off.
“What an asshole,” she said. Temple scratched her back.
“Would he kill us?” Sylvia said.
“Your husband? Probably just you. He likes me.”
She laughed. “My shrink says I have a self-destructive personality.”
“You should join the force. You’d fit right in,” he said. “Why are you seeing a shrink?”
“Because, John.” She waved her hand around the room. “You know… This whole thing.”
They were quiet for a while. “I’m going to go on a trip. By myself. Spain. Portugal,” she said.
“Dangerous over there. Woman on her own,” Temple said.
Another laugh. “Is it? I asked Tim if he wanted to go. He said ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He hates Europe. Hates flying. The food.”
John Temple could hear his phone buzzing from the floor. He had to respond. He rolled out of her bed and grabbed his clothes.
“Want a bowl of soup?” she said.
“Don’t leave the door unlocked. Too easy.”
She threw a pillow at him. “You won’t get in.”
“Where there’s a will…” he said.
2
Detective John Temple ducked under the police tape and danced gingerly across a delta of March runoff in the middle of the Sobeys parking lot. Large squares of snow were sliding down the side of the silver Lincoln Town Car tucked into the corner of the grocery store’s lot, leaving it wet and clean. Temple came up to the car and stood next to Tim Wozniak, the lead detective on his team.
“John,” Wozniak said.
“You take a look?”
“No. Where were you?”
“Twenty-Three Division. That shooting from last week,” Temple said. He could still smell Tim’s wife on him.
“This is your catch and you’re the last one here?”
“Couldn’t be helped.”
Normally a Toronto Police Service’s homicide team had three senior detectives, with the responsibility for handling each case rotating among them. Wozniak’s team was down one man. The workload was beginning to become unmanageable. Temple’s BlackBerry buzzed. The text said Tomorrow? He texted back I’m with Tim. He put his phone away and noticed the pizza-sized splatter of pink and orange vomit on the ground near the trunk of the car.
Wozniak said, “First uniform onsite confirms it’s the missing car. It’s open, so he pops the trunk. Out pops his lunch. He closes the trunk. At least he gloved up first.”
“Nice.” Temple chalked up Wozniak’s annoyance with him as the residual effect of finding out the scene had potentially been contaminated.
“Come on. Let’s go. They’re not going to get any more dead,” Wozniak said.
“Not so sure,” Temple said, and wrinkled his nose.
He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and put them on and peered into the car. There was a black leather duffel bag on the floor of the rear seats. He used the tips of his fingers to open the driver’s side door. The interior was a fetor of rotting flesh and leather, but that was just for starters. The real action was in the trunk. Temple reached under the dash and re-popped the trunk and then backed out, leaving the door open. There was that queasiness he felt every time he was about to see someone. Would it be her? He knew it couldn’t be his sister in there, not this car. But that feeling was still there.
He opened the trunk. The sight of the two destroyed and ruptured corpses was shocking even to the seasoned Toronto detectives. Temple fought hard to keep from adding his own vomit to that of the rookie police constable’s. He looked around. There were a half dozen marked police cars on the Danforth now. A couple of them still had their roofs lit up, the blue and red strobes playing off the shop windows across the street. The entrance to the parking lot was sealed with yellow tape and the grocery store was closed down. There were customers’ cars in the lot. They would stay put until the bodies and the Town Car were removed and the general area scoured. That wouldn’t be until the early hours of the morning. Maybe longer than that.
“Forensics?” Temple said
.
“Ten minutes away,” Wozniak said.
It was rush hour, and the Danforth, a major artery for commuters in and out of Toronto, was choked down. A cacophony of car horns started up as people trying to get home at the end of the day slowed down even further to see what was going on at the Sobeys. The noise made it difficult for the two detectives to have a conversation without shouting.
“Like to shove their heads in this trunk,” Temple said, nodding at the rubberneckers.
“What do we have, Detective?” Wonziak said.
Temple looked in at the bodies again. “Two bodies. One definitely male, one probable female.” The thinner and smaller one had long dark hair, but the face was bloated and broken, and unrecognizable as a person. The bodies were spooning and lying in an inch of brown slop. Their clothes were falling in on them as their innards had started to liquefy. Temple took a notepad from his coat pocket and started writing.
“Hands not bound,” he said, almost to himself. “Clothing consistent with our missing persons last seen wearing. Probable gunshot wound to the side of the head for the male, looks like a contact wound. State of decomp tells me they’ve been here a long…” Temple took a step back and put the back of his hand to his mouth and nose. Wozniak said nothing.
“ …been here a long time. Probably before winter,” Temple said.
“That checks out,” Wozniak said. Security guard says the car got piled up with snow by the guy who plows the lot. These two went missing just before the first snowfall.”
It had been a particularly bad winter for Toronto. The snow had come early and had stayed for the duration. The past couple of weeks, however, had seen consistent daytime temperatures above freezing. Wozniak was making the leap that the two bodies in the trunk of the Town Car were that of Prajoth Nair, a 44-year-old father of two and owner of the South Asian Delites restaurant, and his 13-year-old daughter Aruna. They had last been seen leaving their family home in the east Toronto suburb of Scarborough on November twenty-seventh. It was now March fifteenth. When they had first disappeared, the police had put out a “be on the lookout” for the Town Car and, with the help of the media, spread the word. Airport parking lots were searched, in case the father had taken the child back to India. An Amber Alert was put out for the girl but the search had turned up nothing.
“Why didn’t security have it towed before it got covered in snow?” Temple said.
“Don’t know. When the snow melted, our guy said he remembered the alert about a missing Town Car. Checked the plate on the Toronto Police Service website and called us,” Wozniak said.
“He just happened to remember a BOLO from four months ago?” Temple said.
“This guy was TPS auxiliary for a while. A cop wannabe like you,” Wozniak said.
“Great,” Temple said. Like most members of the Toronto police force, Temple felt disdain for the volunteer members of the auxiliary contingent who saw it as a make-believe world where they could play at being cops even though they only carried batons, were undertrained, and had no more arrest powers than a civilian. He knew there were some dedicated volunteers on the auxiliary, but most of its ranks saw it as a stepping stone to getting a real badge and a gun. Most of them never made it.
“What else you see?” Wozniak said.
“Blood movement on the floor of the trunk. No splatter anywhere else that I can see. No shell casings visible. Probably killed somewhere else. Put in here while still fresh, and the car is dumped. Gets covered over with snow.
“Inside the car—you spot it?”
“Black duffel. That was dumb leaving that behind,” Temple said.
“Looks like a professional job, but might not be, huh?” Wozniak said.
“We all make mistakes. Where’s Dalupan?”
“He and Mendoza are in the store checking out the video system, talking to the store manager. I asked him to stick around.”
“We got cameras?”
“Yes, Detective.” Wozniak sighed and pointed at one camera jutting out from the front of the store. Temple grinned. The camera was fixed and covered most of the lot, but likely not where the Town Car was parked. It was another sign that this might not be as professional a job as he’d first thought. If it were the work of professionals, the car would have been dumped out in the country or the bodies would have been put through a meat grinder.
“I’ll bet the driver shows up nice on the tapes,” Temple said.
“For sure,” Wozniak said. They exchanged a look both cops knowing it would be almost impossible to locate the driver on the tapes unless they saw him getting out of the car.
“Car gets dumped here. Why?” Wozniak said.
“So the driver can take the subway home,” Temple said, and shrugged. The store was midway between the Coxwell and Victoria Park subway stations on the Bloor line of the city’s subway system. The parking lot was on the east side of the grocery store, and part of it wrapped around the back to two loading bays. Adjacent to the parking lot was an automobile wrecker with dozens of discarded vehicles stacked three and four high. The fence that ran around the Sobeys was six feet high, topped with rusted swirls of barbed wire. At the back of the lot, there was a steep bank down to a twin set of railroad tracks. Beyond that, the bank rose up again and there were several three-story apartment blocks backing onto the tracks. Temple could see people looking out of the windows of those apartments to the commotion in the parking lot. Some were holding up cell phones to take pictures and videos of the police activity. One in particular caught his eye. She was tall and wearing a bathrobe, and was drinking from a water bottle. Temple and the woman locked eyes until she looked down at a mobile device.
“What about the PC with the empty stomach? Where’s he?” Temple asked.
“He was pretty shook up. I cut him loose. Told him to go back to his division and write down everything he did. Divisional D. hears about it she’s going to shit a brick.”
“Who’s the Divisional Detective for 55?
“Karen Kindness,” Wozniak said, and Temple let out a rush of air.
“Care and Kindness—fuck me,” Temple groaned.
“What was that, Detective Temple?” It was a woman’s voice, full of the authority of a divisional detective. Karen Kindness was approaching the Town Car with quick steps, splashing through the water Temple had tried to avoid. She threw her shoulder-length blonde hair back twice before she reached them.
“What’s the PC’s name?” she said. “The one that opened this trunk?”
Temple was amazed she had heard their conversation from that far away.
“I don’t know, Karen. Your guys at the tape will know,” Wozniak said.
“You spoke to one of my men and you don’t know his name or number?”
“Take it easy, Karen. I don’t think he did shit to the scene,” Wozniak said.
Karen huffed. She looked at Temple. “This your case?”
“Yes, your Majesty,” Temple said.
“That supposed to be funny?” she said, and she closed the distance to him. Temple could smell her Chanel Number 5. He could see the streaks of makeup ladled onto her weathered face. She was what he called a twenty-footer: nice to look at far away; damaged goods up close. Her two-piece business suit was well cut, though; it showed off her tight, toned body but kept her Glock hidden from view.
He looked up at the sound of a helicopter approaching. “Here comes the limelight, Karen. Better hurry—I’m going to close this up before someone snaps a pic,” he said.
Karen pushed between the two detectives and looked into the trunk of the Town Car. She gasped. “My god,” she said. “Is it them?”
“Can’t really tell, can we?” Temple said, and Karen shot him a vicious look.
“Yes, Karen, we’re pretty sure it’s them,” Wozniak said. “It’s their car.” He put his gloved hand on the trunk and lowered it without engaging the lock, just as a helicopter from CP24 News appeared overhead.
“I heard you were downtown on a mov
ie set. Technical advisor or some kind of bullshit like that?” Temple said.
“Like you wouldn’t jump at the chance,” Kindness said.
Temple smirked. “We got people at the Nair home?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Of course. They were dispatched as soon as the call came in about the car,” Kindness said.
There was the groan of a large vehicle and the three detectives turned to see the TPS forensics van pull into the parking lot. Two uniforms put the yellow tape back after it went through. Two men and a woman exited the truck. The woman was Asian, around mid-thirties. Cute, hair in a ponytail. Temple didn’t know the two men. They started donning thin white suits and hung respirators around their necks. When the woman was done, she approached the detectives.
“Hey, Tim, what do we have?”
“Sara,” Wozniak said. “Two in the trunk. Been there a while. And John is lead on this one.”
Sara Chang looked at Temple and the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile, and then it was gone. Temple nodded at her.
“We have to get a tent up,” Chang said, looking around at the scene.
“You bet we do,” Wozniak said.
“It’s a nice one?” she asked.
“Yup.”
“Detective Kindness, can we get some of your guys to help with the tent?” Chang said.
“Sure. Tell them I said it was okay.” Chang went over to a group of PCs who were standing around, talking. Detective Kindness looked at Temple.
“Does every woman in the TPS hate your effin’ guts?”
“Try the whole city,” he said. She laughed and walked back to her car, flicking her hair as she went.
“She’s got a great ass,” Temple said.
“It’s a bear trap,” Wozniak said, and stepped away to answer a phone call.
Temple went around to the passenger side to work the car, studying the ground the whole way, looking for anything the melting snow might reveal. He opened the rear door, took out the leather bag, set it on the hood of the car, and unzipped it. It was full of women’s clothes. A silk scarf. Bra. Pair of panties and some dark jeans. A blouse. A short jean jacket with metal studs covering the shoulders. Temple used a pen to help sift through the items without removing them. They were clothes for a teenager, maybe someone in their twenties. Probably the Nair girl. One of the white-suited forensics flunkies came over and Temple handed the bag to him. Everything was going to go back to the forensics lab on the west side of town, including the car. The bodies, when they were eventually removed, would be taken to the coroner’s downtown.