Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (67 page)

“Yeah, yeah. I hear you. Don’t start feeding me my own lingo.”

His eyes flashed around the room. They stopped at the console.

“Okay, so what I gotta do is get a few cameras set up in the likeliest places.” His mind was kicking into gear. “Velvet Blue will help. We’ve already had a few sightings of a possible match for the kid I saw at the slaughterhouse. Can’t say for sure it’s Bélanger yet, but if it is then that newspaper article is going to drive him further underground. If I were him, I’d stay so far underground even the rats couldn’t find me.”

“He still has to come out to eat now and then,” Dan ventured.

Germ shook his head. “Not necessarily. Maybe he’s got a friend bringing him food.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah, there’s that, but let’s not get lost in maybes. We need to concentrate on the best possible scenario, deal?”

“I’m cool with that.”

Germ looked down at the photo again, an expression of disgust on his face. “But if some fucker is capable of doing shit like this then our involvement’s got to be at a distance. I can’t have him finding me and Velvet Blue. He’d be worse than the cops for retribution.” He grinned. “Besides, she might kill him if he tries anything.”

He took Dan over to the console and pointed to a screen in the lower right-hand corner. Dan saw a perimeter fence with a gravel road leading off to the right.

“This is the old dairy in the west end, just off Dundas West. You know it?”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s not far from the slaughterhouse where your last guy was done.” Germ tapped the screen. “I’ve got a couple kids there who said they might have seen your guy. Emphasis on
might
.”

“What were they doing there?”

Germ looked up. “They live there. Same as you live at your address.”

“And that’s where they saw him?”

“No. They saw him at an abandoned storage site not far from there. They could tell he was a newbie. Everyone living underground knows when someone else comes on the scene. The network is small and tight. Even if you avoid the others, someone’s bound to notice you before too long.”

Dan thought a moment. “Okay, so what do we do? I don’t want anyone getting too close to him in case he tries anything.”

“Velvet Blue and I can take care of ourselves. I think Mohawk’s got a black belt.”

“Mohawk?”

“First Nations. Real good guy. One of the kids who lives at the dairy. He can take a look around — from a distance, of course. Is there a reward on the guy’s head?”

“Besides what I pay? So far just the usual Crime Busters fee.”

“Oh, yeah. That snitch line thing. Well, better than nothing, I suppose.”

Dan took stock of this. “I thought you said your guys wouldn’t touch money from the System.”

“Well, sometimes you gotta take what’s out there. Me, I’m a bit choosier. In this case, I feel I’m helping Mr. Jags Rohmer. It’s not about the money; it’s about love.”

“He’s that important to you?”

“Yeah, in a way. Guy turned my life around when I was a fucked-up, suicidal teenager. His music, man? It’s got more soul and more meaning than all the crap out there today. Fucking JT and Beyoncé, man. Useless little prats. What do they know?”

Dan smiled. “I hear you.”

“So, I’m doing it for him.”

“Well, I’m sure he thanks you.”

“But I still want that autograph.”

Germ assured him the cameras would be up and operational within two days. Dan left him to his work. Pulling the elevator doors open on the ground floor, he looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Outside the warehouse, the street was empty.

Seventeen

When Children Kill

The house looked deserted when Dan arrived. The lights were off. No Trevor. No Ked. And strangest of all, no Ralph. In the kitchen he found the remnants of a meal in the sink. At least they’d been there. Then he heard the scream from the basement.

A woman’s scream. The paint-peeling, blood curdling type.

It wasn’t just supper he’d missed. He’d forgotten their Fright Night movie date. Forgot even what day it was. He trouped downstairs to find Trevor and Ked glued to the TV. Ralph’s tail wagged at his arrival, but he stayed put, unwilling to abandon his seat to greet the latecomer. Or else he found the movie that absorbing.

Ked pressed pause on the remote. Onscreen, a boat careened over a waterfall, stopped and held.

Trevor and Ked turned and stared at him.

“What?” Dan asked.

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Trevor said.

“You forgot our movie,” Ked said.

“Sorry.”

“And supper,” Trevor added, “but we’ll forgive you for that.”

“You’ve been acting awfully strange, Dad,” Ked added.

“More than normal, you mean?”

Ked nodded. “Oh, yeah. Way more.”

Dan sat on the couch and looked at the TV. “Okay. I’ll try to act normal. If I can remember what that is.”

Ked pressed the play button and sent the boat into freefall. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.

“Dad, you’re missing a great movie. It’s awesome! This giant anaconda takes over the Amazon and attacks a boat full of filmmakers.”

“So far,” Trevor said, “they’ve broken just about every rule for surviving in a horror film we could think of and then some. But the monkey’s cute as hell.”

Dan settled in for the adventure. When the movie finally ended, they waited while the credits flickered and died. Ked said goodnight and went up to bed with Ralph trailing behind.

Dan turned to Trevor. “Sorry for missing supper.”

“You’ve got a lot going on.”

Dan nodded. The week had passed in a blur.

“Donny called earlier.…”

Dan clapped his forehead with his palm. “Shit!
I forgot I was supposed to meet him this afternoon.”

“He’ll forgive you.”

Dan reached for his cell phone.

“Don’t bother. I told him you were pressed for time and just forgot. He said he’d talk to you tomorrow.”

Dan looked over. “Is it about Lester?”

Trevor nodded. “Yes. He called again.”

“How is he?”

“Physically okay, I guess. But all is not well.”

“The parents are still at it?”

“More than ever. Donny’s afraid he’s going to do something rash. Worse, I’m afraid Donny is going to do something rash. Lester gave him the family address in Oshawa.”

“Oh, no.”

Trevor eyed him. “Oh, yes. Don’t be surprised to hear he has some cockamamie scheme to get the kid back to Toronto.”

“I don’t like it,” Dan said.

“Nor I. I told him to talk to you before he does anything.”

“Thanks.”

Dan leaned in and they kissed tentatively. Not having Trevor near these past few days, he’d felt as though he were missing a part of himself.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Dan said, reaching for Trevor’s hand.

Dan undressed and lay watching Trevor. He loved the lean silkiness of him, as though he were both boy and man. His face was one Michelangelo might have sculpted, like a model whose beauty would be celebrated for centuries. But he was not only beautiful. He was also kind, Dan knew. It didn’t matter if they’d known one another less than a year. You couldn’t fake goodness or decency.

Trevor came to him and made love dutifully, but Dan sensed his distraction.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“I know this is still supposed to be our honeymoon period. Sorry.”

“No apologies necessary,” Dan said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

There was a long silence.

“It was difficult coming back here,” Trevor said. “I had a panic attack putting the house up for sale. Then I had another one getting on the plane. The only thing that made me do it was the thought of losing you if I didn’t.”

Dan looked chagrined. “I’m sorry … I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Trevor said. “I just want you to know what’s going on with me.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, not yet. Just hold me, please.”

They clung to one another in silence until Dan felt Trevor’s body relax. He tried to twin their breathing and found he could do it for a while, but somehow Trevor’s always galloped ahead, as though even in sleep he was anxious to get away. As if under the skin lay something that could not be smoothed away with a kiss or a caress.

Dan got up and went down the hall to his office. The desk lamp focused a bright beam within a narrow radius, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Peace and calm reigned here. It was his sanctuary.

Jags’ world had taken over his own lately. Shamefully, he’d neglected both Trevor and Ked. He’d also neglected his cases of deadbeat dads skipping out on childcare payments. A little overtime was required so he could spend more family time over the weekend.

He turned on his laptop and pulled the keyboard close. How anyone could not care enough about their child’s welfare to do whatever it took to support them was beyond his understanding. He’d taken full responsibility for Ked when Kendra told him she was pregnant. Her family would have disowned her — or worse — had she revealed her pregnancy. An extended stay in California during the final months resolved that problem. The rest was up to Dan on Kendra’s return with their newborn son. He hadn’t regretted it once in all the years since. In fact, raising Ked had given him purpose and helped ease some of the burdens of his own childhood. In many ways, Ked had been his redemption.

He logged on to a website for non-payment of child support and felt ironically gratified to see a few women cropping up among the deadbeat dads. Nice to know it wasn’t endemic to the male of the species. Most of the absconders were ordinary looking. It wasn’t as if you expected a leer on the deadbeat’s face and a left arm that ended in a hook, but the assumption was that a certain mentality must be betrayed by its features. Not so. They also had a vast array of trades at their disposal: waiters and carpenters, accountants and IT workers. No stock brokers, Dan noted. Presumably, if you had money and didn’t care about your kid, you just paid off your spouse and were shot of it. Others seemed comically geared to get a laugh when you read the sections on
LAST KNOWN EMPLOYER
: Chicken-on-the-Run, Getaway Travel, East-West Carnivals Ltd.
I’m outta here and good luck finding me, Mary Jo!
As for aliases, the deadbeat moms had the drop on the deadbeat dads by a long shot. One woman was known by thirteen individual names, not counting her real one. Under
OTHER TRAITS
were listed a bird tattoo (“species unknown”) on her left breast and a sword and shield over her belly button. No doubt the latter would be viewed as an enticement in some circles, Dan mused. Or maybe the sword and shield were to deter any further children from springing from her womb, while the bird could be read as an ironic comment on her flighty tendencies.

Dan found nothing helpful to his current cases on any of the sites. He’d combed through them many times. Boredom crept in. Without thinking, he found himself typing in the words:
whenchildrenkill.com
. The photos and stories were both fascinating and utterly grotesque. Children who killed other children, children who killed adults and strangers, children who killed their own parents.

His eye ran down the page. The site was a repository for some of the most gruesome murders he’d ever come across. Of course, he wasn’t surprised that children might have murderous intentions — youthful emotion tended to the extreme. What surprised him was the ferocity with which some of the murders had been carried out. Here were children who killed siblings out of jealousy or murdered their parents for seemingly innocuous reasons: friendships disapproved of, dates not allowed, scoldings over sloppy schoolwork. He thought of his own father and how much he’d hated the man’s drunken brutality. But in all the years his father had abused him, Dan never once thought of doing away with him. It was the nature of the beast, he knew. He’d eventually found the courage to leave the situation behind, but not before his father had inflicted a permanent reminder of where he came from in the red line that ran down the side of his face.

After an hour on the site, his eyes began to give out. He crept down to the kitchen to share a late-night snack with Ralph, who seemed happy for the company and sloppy leftovers. Finally, when there was nothing else to kill time with, Dan went back up to bed and snuggled in beside Trevor without waking him.

The store on Queen Street West was ablaze with lights and chock-a-block with customers. It looked like a Boxing Day sale. A guaranteed sell-out. Dan found himself perusing a shelf of children’s books. He was surprised how many of the titles boasted some form of violent interaction between children and their antagonists. The latest Harry Potter was prominent, of course. The series famously portrayed adolescents who battled dark forces in a universe where good and evil clashed in ways far more ingeniously than in the real one. There was also a selection of classics describing dark happenings to even younger children. A chicly coutured Little Red Riding Hood faced her nemesis, the Big Bad Wolf, alongside a volume entitled
Bearskinner
by the Brothers Grimm. (
How aptly named they were
, Dan told himself). The list of atrocities mounted. Was it any wonder kids grew up violent or fearful or sometimes both? Dan had never exposed Ked to anything of that nature, but neither had his son been drawn to violence on television. Then again, Ked was different from most kids. Or so Dan prided himself.

He turned his attention to the gathering. He was supposed to be watching out for his boss, not fantasizing about children’s literature. He put aside a copy of Jags’ book for Germ. He’d have to remember to get him to sign it.

Dan stood on the sidelines watching the hopeful fans approach their idol, hands holding out copies of the book. Jags had dressed impeccably. Dan couldn’t help noticing he’d worn his Farley Chatto jacket, with flannel trousers and a linen shirt open at the neck.

When he smiled, there was something almost feminine in his face. Androgynous, amorphous. He would exchange a few words with a fan, look down and turn the pages before signing his name. Broad hands smoothed his inky hair into place behind his ears. The man was nearing sixty, but his sex appeal was undeniable. He could easily have passed for forty.