Cut to the Chase (22 page)

Hollis, who'd opened the door, said, “Hang in there, kid. We don't know anything for sure, and as long as that's true you have to believe he's alive and innocent. Maybe the best case scenario is that he's hiding out because he's afraid he's opened a can of worms and doesn't want to drag his family into the mess.”

“Speaking of cans—I forgot to feed the cats.”

“Cats are independent. Can't they wait until tomorrow?”

“No. Poppy gives them fresh canned food every day. I'll go and do it. Poor things, they'll be hungry.”

“Want me to come down with you?” Hollis offered.

“You're thinking someone might be there, aren't you?” Candace said.

Hollis shrugged.

“What about Elizabeth?”

“If you're worried, I'll stay here. I'd offer to go, but you may be able to tell if anyone else has been there.”

“Stay here in the doorway. That way you'll hear either one of us.”

At that moment, the phone rang.

I
an,
who was driving, half-turned to Rhona. “So what do you make of her key explanation?”

“She may be grasping for anything to help her believe her brother is okay, but her story rang true.”

“If it is, what does it mean?”

“Someone wants us to think Danson jumped in the falls or ran away. If that person murdered Danson, his body could be anywhere. If this is what happened, the killer drove Danson's car to Niagara Falls and left Danson's wallet and keys.”

“Why make new keys?”

“To have continuing access to Danson's and his mother's apartments. Danson was last heard from two weeks ago. The killer had time for a leisurely search. I assume whoever made the duplicates didn't know how close Danson and his sister are. He wouldn't know that Candace would know so much about Danson's keys. From that we can figure that whoever this person is, he wasn't intimate with either of them. Since the missing key is for the mother's apartment, we'd better talk to her.”

“Didn't Candace say she was away?”

“Right, we'll do that as soon as she's back.”

“It's about time the techies opened Gregory's or Danson's computers,” Ian said.

“It had better be done by now, or I'll raise blue bloody murder,” Rhona threatened.

At the station, the computer expert had left. The computer's mysteries remained unsolved. Rhona filed a complaint with her superior. She hated to do it, but the job came first, and knowing what was in the computers was vital to the case. Once she'd done that, her head lifted. “Ian, did we ask Candace if she knew her brother's password?”

“No. Don't tell me we've done it again?” Ian said. “We assumed she wouldn't know it and passed both computers to the techies. Now that we're aware of how close she and her brother are, it figures she may have the information. I'll call her,” he said.

A moment later, he replaced the phone's receiver. “Angie—that's the password,” he said.

“Time for a quick scan. I'll collect the computer,” Rhona said.

With Danson's laptop planted on her desk, she glanced at Ian, “You or me?”

“Go ahead. There'll be enough information for both of us to analyze. Forward any relevant files,” Ian said. He pulled paper from his in-basket. “I have work to do.”

Rhona centred the computer on her desk, tapped in “Angie” and clicked on Danson's e-mail. She downloaded the new messages—more than a hundred—and slogged backwards from the newest to the oldest. When she lighted on one she thought might relate to Danson's disappearance or to Gregory, she forwarded it to Ian.

Then she focussed on his files. “I'm outraged,” she roared.

Ian's head jerked up as did every other officer's. “What. What is it?” he said.

“For three years Danson has tracked criminals returning illegally to Canada. Neither his sister nor Hollis thought to mention this to us.” She banged her fist on the desk. “Can we charge them with obstructing justice? That's the question. I'd like to. Imagine how helpful that information would have been.”

“You think they knew?” Ian said.

“Knew. It explains why his sister has been panicking, doesn't it? She must have been well aware that he operated in dangerous territory. Returning perps don't like being fingered and turfed out. I imagine if we'd talked to the guns and gangs bunch, they'd have known about Danson. Just wait until I see those two women. What else have they hidden or not told us?”

“Candace didn't volunteer any information, did she? We'll go after them again. What's in the tracking files? Ian said.

“I'll send everything along. Take a break and read it.”

Ian affixed a yellow sticky note to indicate where he'd stopped in the report he was working on and laid it to one side. He opened his computer. “What are you reading?” he asked before he read the information she'd sent.

“I'm inspecting the mail folders, mainly because I sometimes inadvertently file stuff in the wrong folders. I've already found three or four. Hard to say if he did it on purpose or was just careless.”

“I see that in his most recent file he refers to tracking a Russian involved in industrial espionage,” Ian said. “Possibly whoever was running the espionage agent clued in to Danson's activities and arranged for Gregory to live with him and keep an eye on what he was doing.”

“That would explain things, wouldn't it? I'll print the relevant info and take it to the specialists—the team that deals with Eastern European criminals.”

* * *

Candace moved to answer the phone, but Hollis waved her back. “Let me. If it's the prankster, I'd like to hear his voice.”

“Where's Danson? Wouldn't you like to know,” the caller whispered and hung up before Hollis could respond.

“It was him, wasn't it?” Candace said.

“It was. I don't know whether to take the call seriously or not. I still think you should tell the police.”

“I will if we haven't found Danson by the end of the week,” Candace said.

Hollis regretted again that she'd agreed to keep everything secret for that long, but a promise was a promise.

“Feed the cats,” she said and leaned against the door frame.

When Candace returned, “Someone has been up there. I know they have.”

“How do you know?”

“It feels different.”

“Come on. No one could get in. You're imagining things.”

“You're not very sympathetic,” Candace said.

“No. I'm not. I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.” Hollis stomped upstairs, wishing she'd never got herself involved in the search for Danson Lafleur.

Next morning she woke long before the sun rose. She lay in bed mentally sorting puzzle pieces. Why had Danson's car and effects showed up in Niagara Falls? Why had someone tampered with the key ring? Who was making the phone calls, and might the person know where Danson was or what had happened to him? She couldn't come up with any satisfactory answers. Perhaps the police, now that they had the password for Danson's computer, would find something significant that she'd missed.

She rose and readied herself for the day. She leashed MacTee and decided they both needed a long run. The repetitive, rhythmic activity cleared her mind, soothed her spirit and sometimes relieved her depression. November's short days and frequent cloudy grey skies and the depression she often suffered made her wonder if she had Seasonal Affective Disorder.

They began in the crisp, lavender-tinted predawn. Gradually, as the sky lightened, trees shaded from black to grey to vibrant autumn shades. The thin November sunshine failed to warm but did cheer as they tracked over a carpet of crisp leaves and headed north and east toward Sherwood Park.

Inside the park that curved and flowed for miles along one of Toronto's many ravines, she unleashed MacTee and maintained a steady pace along the trail through half-bare trees and over a sometimes slippery, leaf-covered path. Her spirits lifted as the kilometres flew by. When she reached the point where she usually stopped and drank from her water bottle, she checked her watch and reluctantly turned back, realizing she'd need to shower before her lunch with Willem.

Back on Belsize Drive, she slowed to a walk as she cooled down. Near the house she recognized the figure approaching. It was Jack, the lacrosse player. He'd unlocked and climbed into a dark blue Ford van which pulled away from the curb ahead of her before she could say hello. Probably on his way to practice, she thought.

While she luxuriated in the warm water coursing over her body, a question occurred to her—why did Jack's van have Ontario plates if he'd been living in Quebec and driven from Montreal?

* * *

Rhona hurried to her desk at eight fifteen on Thursday morning. Having slept through the alarm, she'd fed Opie, grabbed clothes, thrown them on and rushed to her car without breakfast. In the parking garage under police headquarters, she tidied herself up and saw that the pants she'd thought were black were actually navy. They did not go well with the black-striped blouse which had a stain on the front. Dishevelled, disorganized and at least three-quarters of an hour late, she'd hoped to make an inconspicuous arrival. No such luck. She shared the elevator from the parking garage with her boss, who peppered her with questions—most of which she failed to answer to his satisfaction. The elevator mirror reflected a face needing makeup and hair looking as if she'd been standing in a force nine gale. Once in the office, she fished through her in-basket.

“Your memo to the chief must have done the trick. The techies have Gregory's computer open,” Ian said, breezing past her.

“Do we know who Gregory was?”

“Not his name. Everything is in Russian. They've sent the machine's hard drive for translation. We'll know more later.”

“Russian. Danson was tracking a Russian criminal. If we'd given the dentist a chance, he could have told us that. At least he would have known the dental work was done by an Eastern European. Ever wonder how they know?”

“I went to a forensic dentistry seminar once. You'd be amazed at what teeth tell about a body,” Ian said.

“I know about age, sex, etc, etc, but I'd like to know how different nationalities do dental work,” Rhona said. She touched the pile of work in front of her. “That's not our issue. Did Danson know Gregory's real identify? That's the next question.”

“And one we won't be able to answer until we get the translations. It's back to Preacher Peter and the addict murders for us, isn't it?”

“I had a thought about that,” Rhona said as she slapped a form in her printer and pressed copy.

“Which was?”

“We may have been on the right track when we interviewed the people in the park. The fact that not one of murdered men fought back has to be as important as the fact that they were addicts. Those men knew the killer.”

“What kind of person would that be?” Ian said.

“A nurse, doctor, social worker, a neighbourhood friend.”

“What are we waiting for? Paperwork can wait. Let's track down a living, breathing person and ask the right questions.”

From his emphasis on right, Rhona realized that Ian still smarted from their failure to ask Candace if Danson lived alone.

They grabbed their coats.

Ian offered to drive, and Rhona, whose hip continued to pain her, accepted. As they travelled the short distance across College and Carlton streets, he spoke. “Any particular way to identify a likely druggie other than making him roll up his sleeves or take a urine test?”

“No easy way. Since it's early in the day, the girls on the stroll will be eating. I could do with a coffee. They'll pass on some names if we assure them we have no interest in the men except as information sources. I'm sure they're as eager to root out the killer as we are. And cooperation may pay off if the next serial killer targets prostitutes like Pickton did in Vancouver. How many women died before they finally arrested him? The police weren't too swift there. In Edmonton a killer has been murdering prostitutes, and no one has been arrested. Dealing with nut cases is a prostitute's nightmare.”

Inside the coffee shop they surveyed the room before Rhona led them to a booth occupied by two young women.

“You're cops,” said one, who had café latte skin and tightly braided corn rows.

The metallic bracelets on her arms jangled as she raised a hand and gestured dismissively before reaching down to adjust her tiny white leather skirt and low-cut black top.

Her companion, a thin girl who looked no more than fourteen, radiated alarm. Her legs were bare, and she wore what could have been a private school kilt. No makeup, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Dressed to attract the guys who were pedophiles at heart, who liked the girls as young as they could procure them. The younger girl pulled her grey hoodie tight to her body.

“We are. I'm Rhona, and this is Ian. We aren't here to trap you, or to bring you in for any reason.” Not quite true. She'd like to see the young one's ID, but this wasn't the time. “We want to talk about the murders.”

“Don't know nothing,” the black woman said, gathering up a black leather bag studded with faux stones.

“Your name is?” Ian said.

“Alicia,” she mumbled.

“And your name?” Ian said to the younger girl.

“What difference does it make what my name is?” she squeaked.

“If we're having a conversation, it goes better with names.”

“I don't want to tell you.”

Rhona and Ian waited.

“Call me Tiny.”

“Okay, Tiny, order something to eat, then we'll ask you a couple of questions,” Rhona said. She and Ian squeezed in on opposite sides of the cigarette-scarred red arborite table and effectively blocked the escape route.