Читать книгу Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - Sylvia Maultash Warsh - Страница 32

Rebecca jammed her foot on the gas and watched the asphalt speed up beneath her as she raced up Spadina. The street was empty but she couldn’t take her eyes off the rear-view mirror. Where was he? Had she really lost him? Her eyes were engaged in the mirror when she felt the thud of her tires against the curb. She swung the wheel wide and veered into the oncoming lane. Take it easy. You don’t want to wrap yourself around a pole and do his job for him.

She was fast approaching Eglinton Avenue. Up ahead, the traffic light was red. There was no one behind her that she could see, but she wasn’t about to stop. Maybe he’d taken a different way. Maybe he’d camouflaged his van somehow; maybe he was a magician. Slowing down, she checked both sides of Eglinton for cars. There was one coming toward her in the distance but she could make it. She floored it and shrieked into a left turn, heading west.

The light at Bathurst was unavoidable. There was always traffic at that intersection. While sitting impatiently at the red, she kept her eyes on the rearview mirror. No high beams. No vans. He’d given up. For now.

She pulled her car into the nearly empty parking lot of Thirteen Division for the second time in two days. Looking frantically over each shoulder, she hurried into the building.

At the front counter, the same desk sergeant greeted her. “May I help you?”

“Someone just tried to kill me!” she said, trying to control her voice. She was out of breath as if she’d run all the way.

“Calm down, ma’am,” said the sergeant, coming out from behind. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m not injured,” she said, realizing she had been lucky.

“Have a seat, ma’am, and I’ll get a constable.”

“I’ve got to see Detective Wanless. Is he still here?”

The man craned his neck behind him. “He’s working late on a case, but I’ll get one of the other men.”

“This is about the case he’s working on.” She hadn’t sat down and she wasn’t going to.

“The Morelli murder?” he asked.

So Wanless had other fish to fry. She had a sinking feeling about Goldie’s case but kept her face determined. The sergeant hesitated, then made for the back corner of the station.

In the distance she could see Detective Wanless pulling on his sports jacket while he strolled toward her.

“What can I do for you, Doctor?” he said, his bullet head tilted and waiting.

“He tried it again, he tried to kill me,” she said. “I just barely got away.”

“Take it easy,” he said. “You’re all right now.”

Rebecca was taken aback at the soothing tone of his words, words she had murmured herself often enough to patients. It felt odd being on the receiving end but she was surprisingly grateful for his sympathy and followed him back to his office in the corner.

His desk was awash in clutter, paper piled in organized clumps. Wanted posters decorated his walls. It wasn’t until she sat down that she realized her knees were shaking.

“Who tried to kill you?” he asked.

“It was Goldie’s killer. He must’ve followed me all the way from the club. It was a van. Dark blue, I think. It was hard to see because of the headlights. He was very clever, hanging back at first. Then when I turned down a side road and he followed, I knew. He pulled in front of me. I heard his door open. He was going to drag me out of my car....” She took a breath to calm herself, knowing she hadn’t explained it well.

Wanless was taking notes behind his desk. “So how did you get away?” His voice was too even.

“I backed up as fast as the car would go. Then I turned and gunned it out of there.”

“What did he look like?”

Was Wanless trying to be obtuse? “I couldn’t see him,” she said. “He was driving behind me with his headlights shining in my eyes.”

“What about when he stopped?”

“I wasn’t going to hang around to see who it was! I just got out of there fast.” She paused, uncertain. “There’s a man I’ve seen a few times. He watches me from a distance. Strange-looking man in a sweatsuit and baseball cap. Couldn’t see his face, but it could’ve been him in the van.”

“Height?” Wanless asked. “Weight? Hair colour?”

“I don’t know. Slim, I’d say. Average height. I couldn’t see his hair.”

“What about the car? Did he hit your car at all?”

She thought a moment. “He swung over at me, but I pulled onto the sidewalk.”

One of his eyebrows went up but he kept writing in the notebook, his skepticism an aura around his face.

“You say you were at a club.” He glanced up from the desk and perused her skirt and modest heels. “Which club?”

“El Dorado,” she muttered, suddenly embarrassed.

His face clouded over. “The one on College Street?” She nodded, but said nothing. “Doesn’t seem to be your style, Doctor. I would’ve thought something more upscale, maybe one of the ones near Eglinton and Yonge.”

He would get it out of her sooner or later. “I went there to speak to someone who knew Goldie Kochinsky.”

“And you did that because...?”

“I wanted to clear something up.” She ignored the blank stare that said, “I’m too busy for this crap,” and went on.

“The man who runs the club — Capitán Diaz — is from Argentina. What if he had something to do with her torture there? What if he had orders to finish the job here?”

“Do you have any evidence?”

She blinked and turned away.

“If I followed every ‘what if in a case, Doctor, I’d need to bring my sleeping bag to the office and my wife would divorce me. Look, we’re professionals. Let us do our job.”

“Why don’t you admit it, Detective. You’re already working on a different case. This is obviously more important to me than it is to you.”

He sat back in his chair and absently brushed his palm against the side of his head. “All murder cases are important. Some are just more straightforward than others. I went over Mrs. Kochinsky’s file today. I go with your first diagnosis, Doctor. Sure looks like the woman was paranoid as hell. Nothing to reproach yourself for there. I’m glad you gave it to me though; helped clear up any doubt I had. See, we couldn’t find any evidence of premeditated murder. Everyone who knew her is accounted for. And we have no motive besides the obvious. It isn’t final yet, but I’m going to mark it down as a robbery gone bad.”

Rebecca opened her mouth to speak but he lifted his hand for her to wait. “Someone, some punk, maybe a few punks, broke in planning to rob the place, probably thought it was empty. Mrs. Kochinsky confronts the guy or guys, they panic. She was an excitable woman, maybe she starts to yell. One of them loses it, knows he has to shut her up, and pulls something around her neck. Maybe some rope he brought with him. I’m sorry, Doctor, but doesn’t that make sense to you?”

Her heart plummeted; he was giving up. “It makes perfect sense. Except that someone’s trying to kill me.”

Wanless observed her more carefully, searching her face with opaque blue eyes as if he would find some clue on the surface of her skin, some hidden message her mouth had not revealed.

“Did you meet anyone at this club? Maybe you had a few drinks?”

At first she was angry at the implication. Then she thought of the wine, the two glasses sipped during her conversation with the Capitán. “ I met who I intended to meet. And I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

Wanless sat back in his chair, the tips of his fingers arched together in a steeple. His voice was softer. “I’m not insinuating anything. You’re upset, as you have every right to be. People interpret things differently when they’re upset. I don’t have to tell you, Doctor. And I’m not saying you weren’t followed. But maybe the guy was after something else. Do you have an old boyfriend who might be trying to scare you? A disgruntled patient? You see, there are other possibilities.”

“I know it was Goldie’s killer after me. I lead a very quiet life and believe it or not, I have no old boyfriends and no patients angry enough to run me off the road.” She felt her blood heating up and could barely contain her anger. “I can’t believe you’re finished with this case. You barely started. Is it because the victim was just an old woman?”

“Now you know that’s not fair,” he said, sitting forward. “If anything, her being a senior citizen makes the crime more despicable. But I’ve got to be realistic. Look at my desk. I forget what colour it is. These files just keep piling up. How many homicide detectives do you think there are? It’s the same old story: overworked and understaffed.”

“So Goldie’s killer is going to get away because you don’t have the time?”

“Look, Doctor, I know how frustrated you are. If I thought it would do any good, if I had a shred of evidence that it was premeditated or someone she knew did it, I’d keep going. But there’s nothing.” He lifted a large envelope from under the morass of papers. “You’d better take Mrs. Kochinsky’s file back. I’m done with it.”

She rose to her feet, her face burning. “You want evidence? You’ll have evidence soon enough.” Her heels clicked against the floor as she headed to the door. “It’ll be my body at the morgue.”