Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (65 page)

Dan imagined his blood as the darkest thing in the shadows, his life essence glowing and luminous and black all at once. Something so macabre and strange it would be shown like a science exhibition, some phosphorous essence, impossible and wondrous, put on display for centuries. Had he been expiating the sins of love for human kind? He’d dared to love what was forbidden. In his mind, Dan watched as Darryl knelt before his killer, like a martyr arriving at Golgotha. Was Death something horrible in that moment or was it a thing to be embraced? Did he cling, in the last few seconds, to his dreams of what could have been or willingly place himself in Death’s hands, like a baby waiting to be taken up in arms stronger than his? How did you give it all up? How did you age into that state of mind? Was there gratitude that he’d fulfilled his earthly obligations or was it doom and terror right to the final moment of consciousness, the last fleeting images dying on the retinas, haunted and tormented, before they closed forever?

An hour later, coffee in hand, Dan was parked across from the slaughterhouse. The remnants of yellow police tape flapped around the yard like a warning. The place was deserted.

He let Ralph out of the car first. If anyone confronted him, he’d simply say he was walking his dog. No matter that he’d driven half an hour across town in the middle of the night to do so.

As if by instinct, Ralph headed for the door where Dan had entered the nightmare realms of Darryl Hillary’s tomb two weeks earlier.

“Good boy!” he called softly.

Dan followed silently, shaking his head like a reluctant dog owner chasing his disobedient dog, all the while knowing the dog was taking him where he wanted to go.

The silence hit him as he stepped over the threshold, a hush as smooth as velvet. No horror theme played in his head tonight. After a few moments, his eyes adjusted. It was just light enough to make out the debris and retrace his route.

He followed Ralph to the centre of the space, saw the hooks grappling with the open air. The one Darryl had been hanging from was gone. A gap-tooth space took up its place in line.

Ralph sniffed the ground beneath the missing hook and looked anxiously back at Dan.

“Good boy, Ralph.”

Ralph moved on, squeezing through into another passageway Dan hadn’t noticed on that other night. He followed cautiously. It took him to a small cubby space with a hole in the roof directly overhead. It was brighter here. He flicked on his Maglight. The floor held the remnants of a fire, its ashes piled in a heap, empty food tins dropped onto the fire pit.

Dan squatted and stared into the ash, glimpsing a teenaged boy huddled over an open flame trying to make sense of his existence. An existence that no longer mattered in the everyday world.

Gaetan Bélanger ate a meal here,
he thought.
Maybe he slept here, possibly more than once
.

Bélanger was an orphan who had legally become his own person on his sixteenth birthday. Dan had left home at seventeen, though he’d felt orphaned long before. Six years later, he had his own son.
Our kids make us vulnerable
, Domingo had said.

Dan lay on the floor and hugged Ralph when the dog came over to him. He felt vulnerable all over again.

He thought of Ked. His son was tall and broad-
shouldered for a fourteen-year-old. Did grown men and
women find him sexually appealing? Maybe mistake him for an adult? Some must, he knew. Ked was good-looking, his features sharper and more refined than Dan’s. Thanks to Kendra. Her genes had mellowed Dan’s harsher aspects. Ked might even grow to be bigger than Dan one day, though he’d be softer, less muscular unless he trained for long hours in a gym.

Would someone try to steal the last of his childhood from him before his time? Child abuse. It was the most heinous of sexual crimes, the compulsion to tangle the hidden mysteries of innocence and desire. To take from a child what it didn’t even know it had. Because you can never know you are innocent. You only realize it once you’ve lost it. And once lost, you can never get it back.

Fifteen

Gasper

The plane was late. Dan fidgeted. Read the newspaper. Fidgeted some more. Hung out at Starbucks till he couldn’t force himself to ingest any more caffeine. Every few minutes, he glanced at the arrivals board.
DELAYED
. No change.
DELAYED
. No change.
DELAYED
. No change. He felt his anxiety growing. Plane crashes happened all the time.

He checked his messages. Three calls registered Jags’ cell number. The first was a hang-up. The second was a drunken Jags trying to sound coherent. He made what barely passed for an apology, as far as Dan was concerned, and pleaded with Dan to call him. There was a long pause then Jags said he’d been getting weird hang-up calls again.
No one has this number, so how the fuck could...?
The call ended mid-sentence.

The final call came an hour later. Jags sounded agitated and even less coherent. He mumbled something about feeling claustrophobic in the condo, declared he was going out to the island. His words trailed off.
I don’t even have a fucking friend to talk to
.

Pay somebody
, Dan thought.

Last on the caller’s list was Donny. He said he had something important to discuss and suggested a get-together later in the day. Dan left a message agreeing to meet him at the suggested time and place.

Finally, the flight board registered the arrival of Trevor’s plane, the status giving way from
DELAYED
to
ARRIVED
. He was on the ground. Safe.

Dan’s anxiety turned to relief. He knew the fear he endured when someone he loved went away was nothing rational. It was a holdover dating back to his mother’s early death from pneumonia one Christmas after being locked out in the snow by his father. The experience had scarred him. Rationality didn’t enter the picture. Fear was primal and irrational, but you couldn’t stop living because you were afraid. Bad things happened to people all the time.

Dan’s heart swelled as he caught sight of Trevor emerging from the crowd.
You are beautiful
, Dan thought.
So heart-achingly beautiful
. The feelings came at him in a rush and nearly knocked him off his feet.
It was the sort of impossible beauty you glimpsed passing a store window, like catching sight of a stranger in a line-up, before vanishing again. Only with Trevor it didn’t vanish. It stayed and stayed, replenishing every time Dan looked at him. Impossible to touch or hold, but knowing it was there and that it was his to bask in. Being loved by someone beautiful had to be better than being beautiful yourself.

To find the mortal world enough
, Dan thought.
Please let me
.

Then Trevor was beside him, reaching out to him. “How’s it going? Enjoying the bodyguard work?”

Eyes flickered over the two men hugging and kissing. But this was Toronto in the twenty-first century. Despite what anybody might think, nobody dared speak a word against them.

“I quit,” Dan said, when Trevor released his grip on Dan’s shoulder.

“What? Already?” Trevor laughed. “Jags too much for you?”

Dan grabbed Trevor’s bag and they headed for the parking lot.

Dan told him about the photograph of the severed ear and how Pfeiffer had advised Jags not to tell Dan about it.

They were in the car, driving down the ramp inside the parking garage. Dan put a credit card in the machine and waited as the arm rose like a starting gate at a horse race. The car shot ahead. Dan’s anger had passed since his confrontation with Jags. If Jags was telling the truth, he hadn’t known the full implications of his decision to conceal the truth. On the other hand, the police had been correct in assuming Dan wouldn’t have taken on the job if he’d known the facts. Dan was beginning to think Danes and Pfeiffer were really to blame.
Jags wasn’t such a bad guy
, Dan thought. His pathetic admission that he had no one to talk to was getting to him.

He was still grim by the time they returned home. He’d hoped Trevor would have greeted him on his return with an exultant declaration that he was there to stay, but so far he’d said nothing about his decision. He pulled Trevor’s bag from the trunk.

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself about this,” Trevor told him.

Dan turned to him. “Three men have already been killed. It won’t help if someone else dies.”

“Do you honestly think someone is going to kill Jags Rohmer?”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible. He practically begged me not to leave him.”

Trevor shook his head. “You don’t owe him anything.”

“I realize that, but I can’t help feeling I’ve abandoned him.”

“Dan, everyone has problems. You can’t rescue everybody.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing with you?”

The words were out before he could think what he was saying or try to stop himself. All the pleasure and anticipation of Trevor’s return were suddenly stripped away.

“I’m sorry,” Dan said quietly. “I didn’t mean that.”

They were standing on the front step. Dan reached for Trevor’s hand and was glad he felt no resistance when he took it.

“I’m really sorry.”

“I understand your frustration. I wasn’t suggesting you should leave him hanging, but there are limits to what you can do.”

“I don’t abandon people, Trevor. I don’t drop cases because they’re difficult. And I always finish what I start.” He shrugged. “There’s an old Jewish saying: ‘In a place where there are no good men, be a good man.’”

Trevor said, “You are a good man. You don’t have to prove it. But you do have to live with your conscience, so you need to do what you think is right.”

The front door swung open. Dan placed Trevor’s bag on the inside step.

“My conscience is not always the easiest thing to live with.”

Trevor laughed. “Don’t I know it!”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Why not swing around and talk to him? See how you feel then. Maybe you’re right — maybe he needs you. On the other hand, he may have found someone else to hold his hand already.”

Dan phoned Jags’ cell. There was no answer. Jags had said he was going to his island hideaway. Dan waited till Trevor was settled then headed for the waterfront, trying Jags’ number every ten minutes. His anxiety began to mount, though he reminded himself there was nothing ominous in not getting an answer.

The terminal was crowded. He eyed the Centre Island ferry as it filled with families and screaming kids. The hot weather always brought them out. He gave it a pass. Though it was smaller and slower, Dan waited for the Ward’s Island ferry. He’d have an easier trip and it would get him to Jags’ house almost as fast. He could see it heading in now, a tortoise crawling across desert sands, avoiding the fleet, impatient sailboats that zigzagged around it. Once the boat docked, Dan waited impatiently for it to unload. Finally, the operator swung the gate open to the waiting crowd. The ride over seemed interminable.

Algonquin is one of several small islands that comprises North America’s largest car-free urban centre. The five-hundred-and-seventy acre alluvial deposit had slowly formed from eroding sand bluffs farther to the east. The isolation was nearly complete. To be in the city, yet cut off from it at the same time was an almost magical illusion. Yet it wasn’t an illusion. All in all, this was as remote as Toronto could get.

Dan disembarked and followed the trail to Algonquin. A wide wooden bridge spanned the estuary dividing the islands. Dan crossed over and vanished beneath an overhang of trees. Little more than an overgrown footpath, Dacotah Avenue cut the island in half. Dan’s unease grew as he counted down the numbers, the feeling of remoteness increasing the farther he went. The island had always seemed a haven,
made idyllic by soft evergreens and marshland backing onto the canals lined with boats. Now it felt ominous and threatening.

The houses were separated from one another by forest. Jags’ was near the middle, a deep blue chalet engulfed in lush garden beds. Dreamy and distant, it was another world entirely.

Wind blew through the branches high overhead. All was silent, not a soul in sight. Dan recalled the second rule of horror film survival:
When you arrive at a deserted town, don’t stick around to find out why it’s empty
.

The upstairs curtains were drawn. At the far end of the path, under an overhang of trees, a sailboat scudded by, sudden and unexpected, like a deer leaping across a road.

Dan knocked; there was no answer. Maybe Jags was passed out in an alcoholic stupor. If he’d even made it over here. Dan took out the key ring — there was no sense turning back now. He let himself in, looking warily around. Music was playing softly, nothing he recognized, certainly nothing of Jags’. He heard a
clunk
. Someone was in the house.

“Jags? It’s Dan. Are you here?”

No answer. He walked cautiously around the main floor. Empty. Island homes had no basements, being barely above sea level. He headed upstairs, looking first into one room then another. Two doors stood open; the last was closed. He was aware of his heart’s erratic rhythm as he approached and pushed open the final door.

The room was dim, the blinds turned down. Dan’s eyes took a second to adjust. When they did, he felt the bone-white shock of fear, the mind’s artful reluctance as it tried to sidestep what it was seeing. A shadowy figure lay prone on the carpet, a coil of rope twined around the neck like an oversized necklace.

Before Dan could react, Jags stirred. His eyes opened. He sat up and looked around groggily.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked hoarsely.

He loosened the rope, pulling the ligature over his head, and took a few deep breaths.

“Satisfied?” Jags asked, rubbing his throat.

Dan knelt and yanked the rope from his hands. “What is this?” he demanded.

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like some kind of pathetic suicide attempt. Are you that desperate for publicity? You want me to tell everyone I saved your life so your book will sell even more copies?”