Last of the Independents (19 page)

Weeks later the woman's older sister requested my grandfather visit her in the palliative care unit of Peace Arch Hospital. I drove with my grandfather, we were going fishing after. The bed-bound woman demanded to know the particulars of her sister's murder. My grandfather obliged her.

He told it honest, from the defensive wounds on her hands to the damage to her face and eyes. The woman took it all in, nodding but otherwise blank, letting this information pour into her.

When he was finished, she thanked him for his candor. We made to leave. She called him back: “Constable.” We paused and turned back to her but she said nothing. She had blue eyes and the pupils flitted from my grandfather's face to mine. Finally she said, “I'd like to think my sister wasn't in any pain when she passed.”

What're you, an idiot?
I remember thinking. I looked to my grandfather to see how he'd answer. Actually, ma'am, your sister was in a hell of a lot of pain and it lasted a hell of a long time.

But he said, “That's right. The coroner told me she didn't feel none of it.”

I wondered whether it was strength or weakness that made him say it. Thinking back on the way she phrased that question, I'm sure she knew the truth. I think what she wanted was to be able to tell other people, “The police said she wasn't in pain.” Maybe by repeating that, she could program herself to believe it was true, and in so doing, give herself and her sister some measure of peace.

Headlights in the rearview mirror. The same sedan coming back. It pulled into the mortuary loading area, a nondescript Cadillac, black in the lamplight. A company car.

The dashboard clock read 9:40 p.m. “We'll wait a few minutes,” I said.

“He could do his business in that time.”

“It'll take a couple minutes for him to wheel them out of the fridge,” I said.

We waited in silence, which I was grateful for. At ten to ten the lights went on in the offices, then clicked off a minute later.

“Now,” I said.

We walked up the path the car had taken, into the lot and around the side. I took out the key ring I hadn't returned and silently opened the doorlock.

I said, “Follow me. Hang back a bit. Don't say anything.” I didn't look back to see if Ben had understood.

Single file we crept down the hall. I put my hand on the door to the embalmer's room, nodded one, two, three, and moved inside.

In the darkness I collided with someone. A slight figure, surprisingly strong. Off-balance, I struggled to keep a grip. The figure pivoted and my forearm shattered on the concrete wall. The burst of pain was accompanied by a numbness that meant something was broken. With my good hand I seized the figure and slammed it to the wall, feeling the body go limp as I repeated the gesture.

Ben hit the lights. I watched the older Thomas Kroon slide to a sitting position by my legs. I could see tears on the cheeks of the old man, his face contorted with humiliation and sorrow.

In the centre of the room a cadaver in a hospital gown had been laid out on a gurney. The dead old woman's eyes were closed, her posture supine, her expression — how do you judge the expression of a corpse? The muscles in her face were slack, which leant her a kind of peace. Her bloodless mouth had been pried open. She looked as if waiting to be kissed.

“How's your arm?” Ben asked.

“Hurts.” I set it on top of the nearest supply cabinet and looked over at Kroon. “The hell did you do that for?”

“I am so sorry,” he said. “I am so ashamed.”

With my right hand I worked my cell out of my left pocket, tossed it to Ben. “His son's number's in the contacts.”

“I don't want to live,” Kroon the Elder said.

“Shut up. Sit there.” To Ben: “Pair of cuffs in the trunk of the car. Grab them, will you?”

“Shouldn't we take you to a hospital?”

Through my teeth I said, “Faster you get the cuffs, faster we can go.”

“All right.” Ben ducked out.

I leaned back against the wall a few feet from where Kroon sat. The endorphins were slowly kicking in and the pain was almost tenable. Almost.

“I'm so ashamed,” Kroon repeated. He blew snot on the front of his shirt. “In that cupboard there's a bottle of chloroform. Half a cup is fatal. I can't bear to see my son.”

“Don't think about it.”

“My whole life has been a waste,” he said. “When I saw Ethel laid out there, I remembered seeing her in Church years ago. Tried to summon the courage to ask her out, but she was a year ahead of me, and always with older boys, and so very beautiful. After how many bodies over how many years, I saw her laid out and I thought, what a waste. I never had the courage, and I knew her husband hadn't made her happy.” He wiped his nose. “And the others, all beautiful, all gone.” He looked over at me. “I'm sorry about your arm. I am so ashamed. Please let me get to my cabinet.”

Drops of sweat hit the floor. “Unless you named me in your will, you sit your ass down.”

“What's going to happen?”

“I don't know yet.”

Ben came back and tossed me the cuffs, which bounced off my good shoulder and hit the floor. I stared at him. He walked over, picked them up and clasped them around Mr. Kroon's wrists.

“Why?” Ben asked him, looking from the cadaver to the sobbing man on the ground.

“Missed his chance with the original victim,” I said. “She could've been his first girlfriend.”

Ben leaned towards me and said sotto voce, “Guess he made sure he was her last.”

The Ethics of Extortion

A
tired-looking doctor glanced at the X-rays and called it a hairline fracture of the ulna. A typical sports injury, she assured me, as common as a cold. My arm was cast by a nurse named Sunny who told me she'd personally set three other broken arms this week. I asked her in a city the size of Vancouver was that a lot or a little. She said she didn't know.

Ben drove me home and called a cab for himself. I made it downstairs, still reeling from the anesthetic, and found my bed in the dark. The dog inspected the cast. I pushed her snout away from the plaster. I lay sweating on top of the covers until sleep came. When I woke up in the late morning I found myself fully-dressed and still wearing shoes.

Upstairs I answered my grandmother's questions and drank orange juice. Once she was satisfied the person who broke the arm wasn't in league with the firecracker-throwers, she asked me if I'd be home tonight. I told her not to plan on it.

“You will pick up the candy, though? And the pumpkin?”

“I'll take care of it.” I rinsed out my glass. “Should I get someone to stay with you?”

“Not necessary.”

“You have my cell.”

“Don't forget the candy.”

D
riving with one arm took getting used to. For the end of October the weather was balmy. A pleasant breeze stirred the laurel bushes. The sun shined through cloud cover. It would be a busy Hallowe'en for the trick-or-treat crowd. Doubtless someone would go missing. A kid in a dark costume, garbage bag swinging against her legs as she strays away from the cluster of kids, eager to hit the next house and the next. The parents hanging back to gab with other parents or exchange sheepish smiles with the home owners as the kids trample through the garden to the house next door. Or maybe everything would work out for everybody. The dangers of Hallowe'en are always over-stressed. Maybe what makes it an appealing holiday is just those dangers, that mockery of death and tempting of one's fate. Those were feelings that don't get expressed in the December holidays.

I ran the errands first, picking up a box of Cadbury's assorted miniatures and a pumpkin the size of a severed head. Ichabod Crane, Bing Crosby, and the Disney cartoon. I wondered if there were still assholes out there who handed out raisins and toothbrushes. Probably more than before. That was how the world was heading. Safe and joyless. Anyone who doubted that had only to turn on the radio. Sometimes it didn't seem so bad to go missing.

I parked in front of the funeral home, surprised to see that it was open and the weekend staff were going about their business. The younger Thomas Kroon noted my cast, smiled apologetically and led me to his office. He unlocked it, led me in, locked it behind us.

His father sat in a client's chair to the left of the desk, a nylon hockey jersey spread over his lap to cover the cuffs. I unhooked him and settled into the other chair. He massaged his wrists, left to take a leak, returned with a mug of coffee.

“You did all of them?” I asked him. He nodded. I turned to his son. “And you had zero idea it was him?”

“Would I have hired you if I knew?”

“Why did you hire me?” I asked the old man. “Didn't you think I'd find out?”

“I'm so ashamed,” the older Thomas Kroon said.

“Don't start,” I said. “The question is, what happens now?”

“What's your suggestion?” Younger asked me.

“First off and non-negotiable, this can't continue.”

Both Kroons agreed it couldn't.

“He —” I pointed at Elder “— can't work here. He needs counseling and supervision.”

“My therapist recommended someone,” Younger said. “Funny. My father always said those people were full of shit.”

Elder flinched when his son referred to him as if he wasn't there. It was curious to watch the two of them redraw the lines of power. A month earlier when they'd come to my office they'd resembled walking advertisements for old and new school: Elder patient, mannered, calm and commanding respect, Younger brash and smarmy, bridling at any insinuation he wasn't ready to take the reins. Now Younger looked burdened. He cast his eyes about the room as if looking for something to anchor him. He looked everywhere but avoided his father, whose eyes rarely left his, as if pleading to his son for reassurance, and the son unwilling or unable to give it. Discovering the identity of the Corpse Fucker had not only destroyed Thomas Kroon the Younger's image of his father, but that of himself as well. I wondered if having the same name added to the burden.

“I'll get him the help he needs,” Younger said to me. “Now what about the police — should we involve them?” His voice free of indications of his own preference.

“When we started you told me you didn't want the publicity that law enforcement would bring. Is that still true?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

“Then I need some things from you.” To Elder I said, “First off, no more talk of suicide or how ashamed you are. You accept what you did and accept help. Any more suicide nonsense, word or deed, and it ends up page one of the
Sun
, with a letter going out to each of the victims' families.”

“All right,” Elder said. He looked hopefully to his son, who busied himself writing something on a sticky note.

“If the incidents are over and I don't have to worry about you offing yourself, then I can live with not involving the police. The only other matter is the sum of ten thousand dollars, which I'd like paid out over the next four months.”

“You're shaking us down?” Younger said, perplexed.

“Call it atonement,” I said. “I'm working a missing child case where there's a chance of finding the kid if we act now. The father can't afford to pay and I can't afford to work for free, and to be honest, you can't afford not to pay, so it works out for everyone, you subsidizing the search. If it wraps up in the first two months, I won't ask you for the other five grand. The only way I come out of this with a somewhat clean conscience is if I know Szabo gets the help he needs.”

“Szabo? That was in the paper the other day,” Younger said.

“I remember,” Elder said, looking to the son who wouldn't look at him.

The son said, “We'll pay.”

I shook their hands in turn. “Can you see me out?” I asked Younger.

On the walkway he lit a cigarette, offered me the pack. “Tempting but no,” I said. He lit up and exhaled something more than smoke. “You're in your mid-forties?” I asked him.

“Forty-two this April. What're you, early thirties?”

“Twenty-nine,” I said. “I have no place giving you advice, but that's not going to stop me. You'll be mad at him a long time, and he deserves that. But don't drag it out. Don't hate him.”

“I can't hate someone I don't fucking know,” he said. He coughed hard enough to extinguish the cigarette. He relit it. “My dad taught me the business. It's all I know. Now I find out at the centre of this is — ” He spread his hands, to say, well, what exactly
is
this?

“Your attitude to him the next few months will affect his lifespan,” I said. “You don't want him to kick off with some reckoning still owed between you.” Kroon looked at me as if to say, “Is the lecture over now?” I added, hesitantly, “Fucked-up parents are better than none at all.”

He finished his smoke, stubbed it out, and contemplated the butt as he worked it into the concrete with the toe of his loafer. My part in their family drama was over. I wondered if either of them would forgive the elder Thomas Kroon. I wondered if I'd ever know.

K
atherine was at the office sending off the last batch of files to the lawyer. From the looks of things the lawsuit would proceed against the school. I'd thought of it as a scare tactic, but it looked as if the school would rather take the whole sordid matter to court than simply pay my fee. This presented me with the day's second great ethical dilemma. A lawsuit had the potential to ruin the reputation of a teacher who, to my knowledge, had never glanced sideways at a child. I had Katherine indicate that if it came down to such a scenario, we would drop the lawsuit before dragging the man's name through the mud. Hopefully the school trustees would pull their heads out of their asses and pay up before it came to that. I wasn't optimistic.

I put a call in to Gavin Fisk and tapped my pencil while I waited.

“Are you meeting Ben and I for a drink tonight?” I asked Katherine.

“Maybe,” she said. “Who else'll be there?”

“Probably just us, Yeats if she wants to come.”

“I can't make it, I just remembered.”

“What do you have against her?”

“It's no use talking to you,” Katherine said.

“Why's that?”

“Because. Anything I say will just make you defend her more fiercely, which means we're going to fight, and I don't want that.”

Irrefutable logic if you took the first idea as truth. Amelia Yeats was beautiful, brilliant, talented, funny. What wasn't there to love? Drugs for starters. I hated to think of myself as a prude, but I'd seen too many ashen-faced zombies with no teeth and gouges out of their arms to be comfortable with dating someone into that. Yeats was also inexplicably rude to Katherine — maybe she could sense her disapproval. It was hard to imagine someone as self-reliant as Amelia Yeats falling into either of those traps.

I worried it over until Fisk returned my call. “Mister Holmes,” he said. “I did promise to keep you informed. April 7th, Barbara Della Costa tried to use a credit card at a Shell station on Vancouver Island, a small town north of Nanaimo called Prosper's Point. Am-Ex hadn't received a payment from her in five months. Week later the card was used at a rod-and-gun store. Same town. Owners had the old manual imprint system, frequent problems with service out in the boonies.”

“She bought a gun?”

“Six top-of-the-line fishing rods,” Fisk said. “A pawn shop nearby confirms that a woman hocked two of them the same day. Brought the others back the next week but the shop owner said nothing doing. She gave him a fake address, naturally. I'm heading over Monday.”

“No word on the other two girls?”

“None, but we have a name for one of them. Dawn Meeker. Co-signed a lease on an apartment with Barbara before they moved into the house on Fraser.”

“Dawn Meeker. Dominique.”

“Never would've thought of that, Sherlock. Glad there are PIs around to keep bumbling cops like me from missing the obvious.”

“Can I tell Szabo?”

“I'd prefer to be there for that conversation,” Fisk said.

“We're meeting Sunday morning.”

“That's my day off,” Fisk said. I said nothing. “Fine,” he said. “Didn't want to sleep in anyway.”

“Eleven in front of the police station.”

“Try and get him to open up a bit to me,” Fisk said. “Being forthcoming is in his interest more'n mine. Grouchy old bastard. How you got him to trust you is beyond me.”

“My countenance enforces homage,” I said.

“What?”

“Shakespeare. You wouldn't understand. See you tomorrow.”

A
s we closed up shop, I said to Katherine, “If I promise not to argue with you, will you tell me what you have against Amelia Yeats?”

“We're back to that?”

“I guess I never left it,” I said. “Are you worried she'll have me running the office off of star alignments and tarot cards?”

Katherine shook her head. “You're way too domineering for that.”

“So it's just the name-calling?”

“No,” Katherine said. “I didn't want to bring it up, but don't you think she's a little close to this investigation? One of the last people to see Django. Frequently did business with Cliff, and we know how reputable the people he deals with are. Contact with lots of lowlifes, like those punks that were in the stairwell. Plus you told me her father's insane.”

“I'm trying to imagine the scenario you've come up with,” I said. “She decides out of the blue she wants this kid so she hires Zak Atero to boost the car, hires the hookers to take Django and make it look like they left town with him, and all so that she can — what? Give him to her father? Grind his bones to make her bread? No,” I said, locking the door behind us, “Yeats has her problems but she's not involved.”

“Does she use drugs?” Katherine asked.

“What does that matter?”

“That's a yes,” she said. “What's the connection between Zak Atero and Dominique?”

“You have a point,” I said. “I'll ask if she knows them. But she won't.”

“She only knows the good drug users?” I started to respond and she said, “Just look at her like you would anyone else, Mike.”

I wondered if that were possible.