Читать книгу Undertow - R.M. Greenaway - Страница 6

Crime Currents

Each new day, Dave Leith had to look harder for that silver lining. For over a month now he had been living in a strange city, confined to a crappy little apartment that was costing him twelve hundred a month, plus utilities, and driving a rental car to an office full of strangers, none of whom he had managed to befriend. He asked himself now: when exactly in the recent past had this move to the metropolis struck him as a “great idea”?

Last night from Prince Rupert, his wife Alison had given yet another long-distance reassurance: “You just need time to adjust.”

“It’s not exactly what I thought it would be,” he had told her.

“What ever is?” she asked.

Sure, he would adjust — what choice did he have? But Alison didn’t get it, that adjustment for him was step two in a two-step process. First he had to get over the disappointment, and he had to do that in his own particular style, griping all the way.

At least the daily commute from his apartment to the North Van detachment had become routine by now; he no longer tilted an ear to the GPS delivering her robotic instructions. He merged onto Highway 1 and joined another vehicular lineup. North Vancouver hadn’t failed in its promises in any big way; the bright lights were maybe not as bright as he’d imagined, but he had grown up in a small Saskatchewan city, and his thrill-meter was set fairly low. Really he was only disappointed in himself. Where was the handsomer, smarter, wittier Dave Leith that this move was supposed to have made him? A juvenile fantasy, of course, but still he would check the mirror as he shaved each morning and be chagrined to see no progress. He remained a tall, thickening, doubtful-looking forty-four-year-old with lumpy, blond hair beginning to recede, blue eyes too close set, nose and chin too big, mouth too thin and always clamped into a self-conscious smile.

There was no wild nightlife here, either, at least not for him. He had made the effort and gone out drinking twice with the rowdier set of his new workmates, but the situation — it was mostly the noisy atmosphere that got him down — only made him antsy. Not that he would quit trying.

He seemed to spend all his time commuting, burning frozen dinners in the apartment’s quirky oven, and studying up on the procedures and protocols of his new office. In an effort to impress his new superior, Sergeant Mike Bosko — the man he’d met on a northern assignment and who had made this transfer happen — he also brought his caseload home with him to mull over as he ate his burned dinners.

He missed Prince Rupert. Missed his buddies and comfortable bungalow on its good-sized lot, which now had a big for-sale sign on the front lawn. He missed the morning fogs and the busy harbour, the locals and summer tourists. Alison was still up there, with the furniture and their two-year-old, Isabelle, waiting for Leith to get settled before coming to join him.

Their foolish expectation had been that he would find a great little house, put an offer on it — stretching the budget just a bit — and they would transition smoothly from one residence to another.

The expectation had hit a brick wall called the ridiculous price of real estate in North Vancouver. He was still reverberating from the shock. Some local staff were buying properties as far afield as Abbotsford, he heard. Which meant they spent half their lives commuting.

He was off Highway 1 and driving down the spine of North Vancouver, Lonsdale Avenue, a gauntlet of traffic lights that each turned sadistic yellow as he approached. He had learned that pulling faces and swearing at traffic lights didn’t help. Didn’t help at all.

Making it through the last light, he turned his car up 15th and down St. Georges and entered the underground parkade of his new detachment.

The North Vancouver RCMP HQ was a modern terraced monolith, three above-ground levels of concrete and glass that looked more like a beached ocean liner than a building. He left his car and rode the elevator up to Level 2, walked down the corridor, and swung into the briefing hall where “A” watch gathered to learn of the day’s challenges.

North Van was a mill of hot files, unlike laid-back Rupert, City of Rainbows, up there on its rocky shore. Some crimes were bad, others worse. Today’s was off the scale, horrific, and the point-form description, even without the graphic details, rattled Leith as Watch Commander Doug Paley laid it out. A mother and daughter found dead in their home, Paley was saying. Found by a concerned neighbour. Neighbour had seen lights on all night, heard music going, too, and no sign of the residents. She didn’t know them personally, not even their names. But the lights and music had struck her as odd enough that she had gone up the back stairs this morning and peeked inside.

First-on-scene gave some details, describing the scene, the victims.

One of the dead was just a toddler. Like Leith’s own little Izzy.

* * *

Leith rode in the passenger seat with Doug Paley. Paley was late-middle-aged, heavy set, and cynical. He didn’t speak throughout the drive, and only as he pulled in to the curb and yanked on the handbrake did he tell Leith what was what. He would talk to the first responders outside, then join Leith inside the house.

The house was a modest one-storey with finished basement on the corner of 23rd and Mahon. Several squad cars and the crime-scene vans were ranged along the avenue. A crowd of the curious was gathering: neighbours and passersby. Constables kept traffic moving. At the back of a van, Leith zipped into anti-contamination coveralls. The home’s front gate was propped open, the egress path marked with crime-scene tape. He climbed cement steps to the door, identified himself to the constable at the door, was given general directions, and entered the house.

Music played, soft rock. There was an unpleasant smell, but it wasn’t the worst he had ever worked at not inhaling. Inside the front door a flight of stairs led down, and another led up. He took the flight up, and the music got louder and the smell got ranker. From the top of the stairs radiated a hallway to what might be bedrooms and a bathroom. The place looked neat and clean. Kitchen straight ahead and a combo living room/dining room to his left. The bodies were in the living room, along with the first signs of chaos: a lamp knocked over, dry flowers strewn willy-nilly, a toppled high chair.

Leith stood at the threshold and looked down on the strange tableau. The bodies. They were Asian, the child so like his own, but with downy black hair and ivory skin. She was on her stomach to Leith’s left, next to the leg of a wood-and-glass coffee table. A young woman lay ten feet away, face up, before the fireplace. She was slim, wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved sweater, bare feet. Her long, glossy black hair criss-crossed in swaths over her face, as though draped to hide her features.

The coroner moved in with his kit and an assistant, obscuring the view.

The clothing of both victims seemed intact on first sight. No visible trauma, and aside from the upset furniture, no signs of violence, even. But all it took was a little imagination to hear the screams, to see the struggle, to feel the fear. Violence had swept through this house and left no sound but the music playing, an absurdly hopped-up pop song Leith had heard before somewhere, sometime.

Mother and child had already been pronounced dead. They remained only to be studied, charted, photographed, and stared at by people like Leith, who should be doing his job and analyzing. But he wasn’t there yet. He was thinking again of the gross error he had made in transferring his family to this city. His big responsibility in life was to keep them out of harm’s way, and instead he was bringing them right into its embrace. The north wasn’t crime-free, by any means, but the victimology was more predictable. Down here, high density brought out the weirdos and the guns, no doubt about it, which meant anybody could be mowed down, at any time.

This poor little thing was at the very same tottering age as Izzy, when the tiny legs were losing their baby fat and gaining muscle tone. She should have been learning to talk, too, stomping about with her eyes open to the wonders of the world. Leith looked sideways at Paley, who was done speaking with the coroner and now stood beside him, relaying the findings.

“Strangled, he’s thinking.” Paley was staring down at the adult victim. “Looks like bruising around the throat. There’s that tea towel. Does that look like it’s been twined into a rope, to you? That might have done it.”

“The hair over her face …” Leith said.

“Yeah, yeah. The hair placement — that’s remorse, right? Or apology, or something like that.”

“Looks more like insult to me.”

The coroner stood and moved away, leaving the assistant making notes.

“Or that,” Paley agreed. “As for the baby, she might have fallen and hit her head on that coffee table, we’re thinking.”

“Do we have names yet?”

Paley didn’t answer, too busy staring over Leith’s shoulder. Leith turned to see why and watched a young man approach from the hallway, also in white coveralls, shirt collar and tie showing under the unzipped throat of his Tyvek. He looked familiar to Leith, and not in a happy, well-met kind of way.

This was someone he had worked with in the not-so-distant past, up north in the Hazeltons, for a few long weeks through the bitterness of February. So Dion had somehow made it back to North Van, just as he had promised, and instead of being demoted to janitor, as Leith had thought most likely, he had advanced from uniform to the suit-and-tie brigade. Which meant they would be working together again. Hoo-ray.

“Well, there you are,” Paley exclaimed as Dion came to stand with them. “Heard you were back, you sneaky son-of-a-bitch, but wasn’t expecting you today.”

“All hands on deck on this one,” Dion answered cheerfully. “So to hell with orientation, they just pushed me out the door.” He glanced at the bodies, then glanced at Leith, and looked at Leith again, with surprise. Then a shockingly huge smile, as if this meeting really made his day. “I was wondering when I’d run into you! How are you doing? Got set up okay?”

As Leith recalled, their northern parting of ways had been unpleasant. But maybe it was all water under the bridge. He smiled, too, and shook Dion’s extended hand, their first physical contact, barring one brief skirmish at the Hazelton detachment. “Getting by,” he said. “How are you?”

“Great, great.”

The reunion formalities over, Dion became businesslike. He gestured at the two bodies and said to Paley, “Just talked to Dadd and got suspected cause of death and his timing estimate —”

The name Dadd — Jack Dadd, the coroner — threw Leith each time.

“— adult female died about twelve hours ago, so it happened last evening. But I guess you have the basics on this one, Doug?”

“The basics,” Paley echoed flatly.

“Strangled,” Dion said. “Petechiae and some edema visible. Damage to her tongue — she probably bit it — and narrow bruises on the neck, but no cutting. The child, at a guess, likely died of head trauma. TOD about six hours ago, he says — that’s quite a bit later than the adult, so it was probably secondary TBI.”

TOD, TBI. Time of death was common enough, but TBI made Leith think a moment. Traumatic brain injury. The new, improved Dion opened his notebook, found a page, and studied it. “The homeowner’s name is King, and he’s got it rented to Lance and Cheryl Liu,” he told Paley, with glances at Leith to include him. “The Lius are new in town, out from Alberta. They took the place on March 1st. Lance Liu has just incorporated a company called L&S Electric. He’s not been reached yet. I called the L&S number and got voice mail, so I’ll follow up. The name L&S suggests there’s a partner, so —”

“Hey,” Paley cut in. “That’s all very fuckin’ fantastic, but did I ask for a report? Did I?”

“No,” Dion said. “You want a report?”

“Too late, I already got it, didn’t I?”

Leith suspected this was more a skit than a real conversation. In spite of the age gap, these two were friends from way back.

“Sorry, Doug,” Dion said, not sounding sorry at all. “It was hairy at the office. Jim was buried, so I task-shared. You want me to follow up on this L&S thing?”

Paley rolled his eyes. Leith was glad that Dion was apparently okay now. The northern Dion he knew had been remote, unlikeable, and … well, unsmart. The new Dion was now outlining to Paley the task he had butted his way into. Probably the most important task on the board at the moment, hunting down their best and only suspect — the missing husband, Lance Liu.

The conversation between the two seemed snappy and efficient, and ended on a positive note. Paley moved off to supervise the removal of the bodies, and Dion remained by Leith’s side, pointing down at something. Leith followed the line of his finger to the child’s feet.

“One shoe on, one off,” Dion said. “Where’s the other shoe?”

Booties, not shoes, thought Leith, a bit of an expert. “I saw that,” he lied.

“Probably under her body,” Dion told him. “Keep an eye out. Also, I don’t see a vase.”

He turned and headed away, unzipping the bunny suit.

Leith watched him go, then looked at the child’s feet, at the pink velvet bootie on one, a tiny striped sock on the other, green and yellow. Vase, he thought. What?

* * *

The Level 3 office had once been occupied by Staff Sergeant Tony Cleveland, now retired. Cleveland had kept the door shut and the screens closed. He hadn’t liked drop-ins, so nobody had dropped in. Now the slats were open, and so was the door. Dion poked his head in and took in the view. He saw that Cleveland’s classic etchings of famous bridges were gone, and modern posters were up instead, large photographs of this or that, mounted behind glass with minimalist steel frames. The new occupant, Sergeant Michael Bosko, sat at the desk, working at his computer and talking to himself. Or so it seemed.

With a nod toward the visitor’s chair, Bosko acknowledged Dion, then carried on bashing his fingertips on a heavy-duty laptop and chatting via Bluetooth.

“Yes, of course,” Bosko said, smiling. “They call it the acid test.” He quit typing and peered at the laptop screen. “Just dropped a point. No, I am not kidding you. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.”

Without a sign-off, he tapped something near his ear and looked across at Dion. There was no recognition in his stare. Strange, since he knew Dion, at least remotely. They had met in the Hazeltons, working on the same case, though nowhere near in the same league. Had not exchanged a word, or even eye contact, much, which might explain the lack of aha. Still, it was Bosko who had gotten Dion back here, so …

“Calvin Dion, hello.” Recognition must have kicked in, for now Bosko was on his feet, smiling. “Or is it Cal?”

“Cal’s good.” Dion had risen too, reaching across the desk. This was another of the day’s big challenges: the all-important first impression, the firm handshake, the confident smile. The smile had to reach the eyes, or it was worse than no smile at all. The reach and grip had to be solid, fluid, and of just the right duration — not so brief as to seem skittish, but releasing before being released, to show initiative. “Morning, sir.”

They both resumed their seats. Reborn from the haircut to the silk-blend socks, Dion had been careful not to show up on Day One looking like a menswear mannequin. That would make him look insecure. He had knotted the tie properly but hadn’t snugged it too tight, tucked the shirttails in, then did a few overhead stretches to slack off the tension. He was showered and shaved, but had skipped the cologne, and his short black hair was a tad mussed. According to the mirror, he was perfectly imperfect.

“So you didn’t have time to set up your pencil jar before they sent you off to the field, I hear,” Bosko said. He had a deep, easy voice, almost lazy. And controlled, as though nothing could fluster him. “I also understand you’re already in the thick of it, so I won’t keep you. I called you in just to welcome you back and have a one-minute face-to-face, since I don’t believe we ever actually spoke, did we? How are you doing so far?”

“Great,” Dion said. Seated straight, but not too straight, his expression enthused but not maniacal. “I’m stoked to be home. I wanted to thank you. For putting your trust in me, sir. You won’t be disappointed.”

“I don’t expect I will be. Now, you’ve been away for a while, and things have been shuffled around a bit, so if you need any help with our setup here, procedure, fitting back in, or just need to talk something through, come on over and let me know. The door’s open.”

Dion nodded. “There is one thing. I was working on a file when the crash happened. It’s still unsolved. Would I be able to get back on it?”

Bosko asked for the particulars, and Dion gave him the file name — written down and memorized before this meeting — and the basics. Last summer a young woman’s body had been found washed ashore. Snagged in the boulders that formed a rampart down by the Neptune Terminals. He didn’t give Bosko the fine details, how Jane Doe’s face had been eroded by gasses, brine, and parasites, so a police artist had reconstructed her, as best she could, in pencil, to be followed up by a 3D model. Early twenties, short hair that was natural brown but dyed white-blond, wide-spaced eyes, rosebud mouth. Ancestry undetermined, but possibly Eurasian. Pink spandex bathing suit — a pricey brand — embedded in flesh, grotesque and slimy. And one earring, the other apparently lost. He had been trying before his departure to track down the jeweller who made the earring. It was of characteristic design, a round, enamelled button, a yellow shape against a red background. The shape might have been a star, except it was cut off. Around the edges ran little beads of gold, fourteen-carat.

The bathing suit and the season — summertime — suggested she had come off a boat. The pathologist determined she had been strangled by a fine, hard ligature. Alternatively, it might have been a necklace that had cut into her bloating flesh before snapping and sinking to the ocean floor.

She would have been beautiful, once.

Nobody had come to claim her, and she had never been given a name, and like any unfinished job, she continued to haunt Dion.

“I’ll tell you what,” Bosko said, after calling the case up on the intranet. “You’re free to look it over, but I’d like you on this Mahon case, hundred percent.”

Mahon Avenue, murdered mother and child, missing husband. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

And just like that, they were done. Dion stood and smiled again. As he left the room and strode down the hall, he counted again the four possibilities of why he was back in North Vancouver. Possibility one was just what he’d been told, that Bosko was impressed with him for some reason — his excellent past record, say — and for that reason alone, he’d had him summoned. Possibility two: sheer error. Bosko was a busy man with lots on his mind, and maybe a wire had crossed, a typo or false memory, and he simply had someone else in mind. Three, Bosko was a manipulator. He considered Dion a liability and wanted him gone, but needed a good excuse, so he’d decided to place him in a stressful situation — the big-city crime scene — to watch him come apart.

The fourth possibility kept Dion awake nights: he was being investigated. Bosko was working a crime, had a theory, was putting his suspicion to the test, and to test it properly he needed his suspect close at hand.

Down on Level 2, at the desk he’d been given, Dion set aside his doubts and focussed on the Lius. He listed his thoughts on paper. First on the list, he made a call to the Justice Department for a telephone warrant, doing Jimmy Torr’s job for him, then to the Corporate Registry of Companies, and fairly soon had the information he was looking for: the names of all partners in the company, which totalled two, each owning fifty percent of L&S Electric.

He guessed the “L” was Lance Liu. The “S,” he knew now, would be a Sigmund Blatt. The company had been incorporated only three months ago. Its address was a PO box, and its phone number was the one he had tried earlier without luck. Now he made more calls, tracking down the unlisted contact information for the surviving partner.

Within the hour he took the information a few desks down to Jimmy Torr. He sat and waited for Torr to finish a call, then told him, “I’ve got a line on Sigmund Blatt, the missing man’s partner. You want me to follow up?”

He had known Torr for years. Torr was in his middle thirties, built, irritable, and insecure. He had never liked Dion, and vice versa. But animosity felt good to Dion. It meant for a while he could drop the cheek-numbing smile.

“I’ll take care of it,” Torr said coldly, reaching for the note. “Thanks.”

“It’s priority. Lance Liu’s our best bet right now, and he’s missing. If you’re not going to deal with it straight away, I will. Paley’s given me the go-ahead.”

Torr looked at the paper. He said, “Call him up, tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I tried. Got an answering machine.”

“Did you leave a message? Tell him to get back to you A-SAP?”

“No. Better to cold-call him anyway,” Dion said. “I could head over there now.”

Torr said sourly, “What meds they got you on?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but stood and grabbed his suit jacket, making a statement with the set of his shoulders that he was going alone. Dion followed.