Erasing Memory (11 page)

“My son? No, that won’t be possible. He’s a colonel in the Romanian army, stationed in Bucharest.” He looked up at the woman beside him. “Perhaps, Madeleine, you would accompany me?”

“Of course, Monsieur Petrescu.”

“You will no doubt have many more questions, sir, as we will,” MacNeice said. “We’ll do our best to answer, but this investigation is unfolding as we speak—”

“How did she die?” Petrescu’s hands were now in his lap, slowly twisting the tissue.

“She was drugged and unconscious when she was injected with a lethal substance.”

Petrescu groaned deeply and dropped his head to his chest, once more covering his face with his hands. Madeleine inhaled sharply and looked as if she’d gone weak at the knees; the fingers of her right hand dug into the man’s shoulder.

“Here is my card, Mr. Petrescu. I will be available to you at any time and I can be here within fifteen minutes of your call.” Aziz handed him her card. Then she bowed slightly and said, “I am very sorry for your loss, Mr. Petrescu.”

The older man nodded. “I will call you. Madeleine, please show the detectives out.” He turned to face the garden as MacNeice and Aziz were led to the door.

They walked silently to the car and MacNeice pulled away slowly. After several silent blocks he pushed the button on the car stereo. Miles took over.

W
HEN HE PULLED UP
in front of Aziz’s apartment building, MacNeice turned off the ignition and handed her the keys.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t bother going downtown to get a car. Take mine.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I need some air. I’ll walk, and think. You can keep the car for Petrescu. I’ll have my cell if you need me.”

“Why did you set me up to take him for the viewing?”

“Because I think you’re the right one to do this. He needs an open spirit, not necessarily to speak to, but to be with … and I’m just not. Let him know we’ll both be back at his house this evening, say eight p.m., to learn more about Lydia’s life. I’ll take a cab if necessary.” MacNeice nodded to her and got out of the car.

He was across the street, headed towards the highway and home, before Aziz got out of the car. Calling over the roof to him, she asked, “What if he wants to know about the case, our progress?”

“You tell him that we will find the person or persons who did this, so help us God.” And with that MacNeice rounded the corner and was gone from view.

Whose god would that be?
Aziz asked herself as she shut the door, pushed the button on the key fob and turned towards her building. The car answered with a cheery
tweet, tweet
.

H
E WALKED TO END OF
the next street, which sloped down to the Royal Reserve, a 2,700-acre wildlife sanctuary of rolling
hills on either side of a wide marsh, which doubled, when necessary, as a storm-runoff reservoir for Aziz’s residential community and the university. The area was crisscrossed with bike and walking paths and dotted with picnic tables. MacNeice knew the Royal well because it was the best place in the city to cycle and think; it had been years since he’d walked it.

For a Saturday in June, there was surprisingly little activity. He passed by a large family gathered on blankets on the grass near the lilac; people of all ages were sitting, standing, talking, laughing as kids played badminton with imaginary nets while others picked through the assortment of food and juices that covered the picnic table.

As the sounds of King Street and the happy family faded, MacNeice listened for birdsong and the metallic whirring of bikes coming up behind him. Feeling the heat of the day, he took off his jacket, put his cellphone in his pants pocket, rolled up both shirtsleeves and settled into a loping stride, one that would raise his heart rate but hopefully not sweat up his shirt.

MacNeice wondered how many steps it would take to cover the mile or so that he would walk before cutting across to the far side of the reserve; he gave up counting when his mind wandered. Focusing on a young couple sitting by themselves at a picnic table well off the path, he noticed the wary look they gave him as he passed. It suggested that one of them or both were cheating, and that this semi-public rendezvous was their one opportunity for intimacy. A flash of orange and black flew by just above his head—a Baltimore oriole settled on the branch of a maple and hopped about to watch him.

Crossing the bridge over the stream, he sat down on the bench that ran its length. A few hundred feet upstream and
high above where he was sitting, a train trestle, built in the 1930s, stood grey and stern against the blue sky, a circling crow the only movement. This was Kate’s favourite place in the reserve, and it was where they had come to sit and talk after the doctor’s appointment that changed everything.

MacNeice closed his eyes. He could hear the water falling lazily over rocks that had been there since the ice age; he could hear the call and response of chickadees and cruising crows, and a songbird he didn’t recognize. They sang out along the creek bed and in the birch, maple and oak woods of the hills on either side. He opened his eyes only when he heard the rhythmic thumping of a cyclist riding across the wooden boards at the far end of the bridge.

A young woman, helmeted and wearing reflective orange sunglasses, beaming from exertion, approached on a sleek red road bike. He pulled in his feet to let her pass and she smiled, nodded and said a breathless “Thanks.” He inhaled deeply as she passed, hoping to catch a sense of her. He knew nothing about perfume but enjoyed breathing in the subtle scent that followed a beautiful woman. There was a faint, almost citrus current in the air; had he been exhaling at that moment, he’d have missed it.

He looked down at the stream and let his thoughts drift back to Lydia Petrescu. Her death was a crime so lacking in passion that he had already ruled out former lovers and jealous rivals. He supposed her death could be a message to a lover they didn’t yet know about, but if her killing was meant for her father, who would hate that gracious man enough to destroy her?

His cellphone rang. “Hi, boss. Mr. Petrescu wants to go over for the viewing now. I hear birdsong—where are you?”

“I’m sitting on a bridge overlooking a creek in the Royal, just south of the train trestle. Do you need me to come with you?”

“No, sir. I called Mary Richardson, and she’ll be there herself, not that creepy dweeb. She’ll answer his questions and I know she’ll be considerate. He’s also agreed to meet with us again tonight. Said he tried to reach his son but there was no answer.”

“Okay, then. I’ll leave my cell on.”

“What you saw at the morgue—do you think he’ll be able to handle it?”

“No. Well … actually, I never looked at her.”

“Shall I pick you up at home tonight?”

“That would be great. Do you know how to get to me?”

“I’ll find you. And by the way, I love that bridge; it’s my favourite spot in the reserve.”

“Good luck, Aziz.” He put the cellphone back in his pocket.

His thoughts took him back to the cottage on the lake, to the beautiful girl and the music, and he found himself humming the opening bars of the Schubert. Why had the killer—it had to be the killer—thrown the record jacket onto the beach?

He got up and began walking again. As he stepped off the bridge, turning up the gravel trail towards the roadway, he recalled a time, many years before, when he had seen an LP cover slicing through the air, and the ultimate thrill of throwing the vinyl itself.

The record, Johnny Mathis’s
Johnny’s Greatest Hits
, had come from David White’s house. Davey hated his mother, so far as anyone could tell, and he particularly hated the music his mother loved. Abducting her Mathis record was in his mind some sort of sweet revenge. On the deserted school
grounds he took the cover with the impossibly happy Mathis face, handed MacNeice the LP to hold, and wound himself up like a cartoon pitcher. With a violent whirl he unwound, sending the jacket on a line drive towards the gym exit doors. It flew beautifully for the first twenty yards, but then the drag of the open pocket came into play, and it descended, skipped and skidded harmlessly before coming to a stop just shy of the building.

In the dim light of that dreary grey place—dreary grey even in the daytime—they could see Johnny smiling up at the night sky, happy as a clam to lie there on the cold concrete of Stinton High. “Okay, Mac, let ’er rip.” Lacking all that built-up hatred, MacNeice nonetheless did his best—and learned something about aerodynamics.

Caught in the prison-yard lighting of the perimeter poles that washed the fenced-in yard to discourage the kind of hanky-panky they were up to, the shiny black disc climbed swiftly in a sinister arc before banking menacingly towards the school. It shattered against the second-floor brick wall, inches from the window of Room 10A, his and David’s homeroom.
“Ho-ly shit
, that was great!”

They took off running, Davey laughing himself silly and threatening to bring his mother’s whole collection out there and let them fly. MacNeice felt nothing but lucky, though seeing the LP exploding like dried tar hit with a hammer—well, that was pretty cool. He’d done stupid things before and he would again—mostly getting caught for them—but he decided he’d forgo any more flying vinyl with Davey.

Davey had ended up forgoing it too. At the Stone Road slate quarry a week later, on a dare, he took a short run and went head first into the
UNSAFE
end of the
NO TRESPASSING
local swimming hole, right where, local lore had it, a tractor lay submerged some ten feet under the slate black water. Davey found the tractor. His head split like a cantaloupe fallen off a truck, and he floated up, all done for this trip.

R
ICHARDSON WAS WAITING FOR THEM
in the upper lobby, wearing a grey suit and without her usual white lab coat. The drive to the morgue had been tense, and Aziz could feel the fear mounting inside her as she introduced Petrescu and Madeleine to the pathologist. Petrescu’s face was frozen. He said nothing but accepted Richardson’s hand with a nod.

“Before we go on, may I speak to you a moment, Detective Aziz?” Richardson didn’t wait for an answer but walked several feet away.

“What is it, Doctor?” Aziz said, following her. Petrescu’s back was towards them, but she noticed that Madeleine was watching them closely.

“As you can imagine, the acid caused considerable damage. We’ve covered her skull, and I don’t recommend he look at it, but to make the identification he’ll need to see her face—which
has turned black. We flushed out the brain pan so it won’t erode further, but there was nothing else we could do.”

“My God.”

“Yes, though that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you. After we finished the autopsy I did a further check of her abdomen. Her blood and many of her organs had been so compromised that the usual tests we run would not have worked. However, her womb remained intact, and when I dissected it I discovered that this young woman was three to three and a half months pregnant.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’ll let that pass, Detective. And I’ll leave it to you to tell her father.”

“Would she have known?”

“Most certainly. Let’s not keep them waiting any longer.”

As the pathologist led the way, Aziz had to wonder whether she was up to the task after all. She took a slow, deep breath and caught up as they entered the hallway to the morgue.

Outside the swinging metal doors, Richardson turned to Petrescu and said, “Sir, this will be difficult for you, beyond anything you can imagine. Do you have any questions before we go in?”

“I want only to see my daughter.” He stared at the metal doors in front of him.

“As you wish.” Richardson reached out and pushed open the door to the viewing room.

The first thing Aziz noticed was how cold it was inside, a frigid, sterile space with a stainless steel wall of drawers and white ceramic tiles under fluorescent lights.

Petrescu stood next to the covered gurney with Madeleine, grim and pale, to his left and Aziz to his right. His daughter’s body lay waiting under the crisp white sheet.

Richardson asked, “Are you ready, sir?”

“Yes,” he said, a slight shiver in his voice.

The pathologist pulled the sheet back to reveal Lydia’s face. Petrescu screamed and fell sideways into Aziz, who struggled to support him. The full horror of the girl’s face had taken her breath away, but she concentrated on keeping the man from falling. Madeleine had turned sharply away and stood there with her head in her hands. Petrescu wailed again, the sound echoing off the hard surfaces of the room.

“Shall we leave, sir?” Aziz said with difficulty.

Several seconds passed before he was able to answer. “Leave me alone with her, please.” He pulled away from Aziz, repeating his request. “I want to be alone with Lydia.”

Madeleine averted her eyes from the gurney but put her arms around him. “Monsieur Petrescu, I don’t—”

“Leave me.” He shook himself free of her too.

Aziz looked over at Richardson, who nodded. The pathologist folded the sheet just below Lydia’s neck and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Petrescu. Though we can step aside, we cannot leave the room.”

He ignored her, reaching out tentatively towards his daughter’s shoulder.

Aziz and Madeleine went to stand near the door and Richardson joined them. Madeleine took out several tissues and wiped the tears from her face. Aziz looked again at Lydia. Her face was almost blue-black. She could make out, even from ten feet away, the veins that traced her cheeks and forehead; as dark as her face was, they were darker still, a network of black lines.

Petrescu supported himself with one hand on the edge of the gurney and rested the other for a moment on his daughter’s
shoulder. When he reached for the cloth that covered her skull, Madeleine drew a sharp breath.

Richardson said, “Do not touch that, sir. I’m sorry, but I cannot let you remove it.”

He took his hand away quickly and rested it again on her shoulder, patting it gently several times.