The K Handshape (7 page)

It would be up to Katherine to assign somebody and it would also depend on what work Ed Chaffey was willing to share with us.

“She has no criminal convictions that I know of but you will have to check on that. She may have failed to mention any to me.”

His voice was flat but I could sense the pain behind the words. He didn’t have to tell us how estranged he had been from his daughter; it wasn’t hard to see.

“Shall we do the usual credit check?” asked Jamie. He spoke hesitatingly and Leo flashed him a sharp glance.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t we?”

For a moment he was the old Leo, full of impatience at what he considered stupid questions.

Jamie flushed. I knew he had only been trying to be tactful. This was his colleague after all. I interceded.

“Leo, you told me Deidre was profoundly deaf and that she had become militant about Deaf Culture. I think that’s worth repeating.”

It was my turn to get the edge of his tongue.

“I was coming to that, Christine! It might be the most important fact about her.”

Now it was me reacting. He noticed and he winced.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take that tone … I, er…”

“That’s all right.”

There was another awkward silence. Jamie hid his discomfiture in his coffee cup. Leo continued working down his list.

“Map of travel prior to the offence. This is more your province, Ray. I received a call from Nora Cochrane at five-thirty this morning. They live on Mary Street. Deidre had left the house just after seven-thirty Tuesday evening, which apparently is her regular time. She has the routine of going to Casino Rama every Tuesday evening. She is usually home between eleven and eleven-thirty. On this occasion, Nora had fallen asleep and didn’t know Deidre hadn’t returned. When she realized what time it was, she telephoned me. It is utterly out of character for her to be out all night.”

David raised a tentative finger to indicate a question. “Had her bed been slept in?”

“Good question. I don’t know. We must ask Nora.”

I said, “I did have a brief look at Deidre’s room when I was there this morning. The bed was neatly made.”

Leo inhaled and went on. “That, of course, doesn’t prove anything really but it is worth knowing. So where was I? Right, I telephoned Christine…” he paused. “Frankly I needed some collegial support. She accompanied me to the casino, where we found Deidre’s car. It had a flat tire.”

Another finger raise from David. “I presume we will impound the car and see if the tire was intentionally damaged or not.”

“I’m sure Ed Chaffey has that under control,” said Katherine. “Go on, Leo.”

“We were able to locate her customary table. They all keep a receipt of bets with the time stamped when the bet was placed. Her last bet was at 10:33.”

“We’ll get a subpoena to watch the CCTV,” said Katherine.

“I have a key to her car.” He gave a wry grin. “Father’s privilege.” He reached into his briefcase. “We found this note on the front passenger seat. Unfortunately, I put it in my pocket and it did not survive the dunking in the lake. Christine no doubt explained what that was all about. I’ll give it to you, Ray. You are a miracle worker.”

He handed the piece of paper to Ray, who took it by the corner. “It was written in pencil and that has survived, but I don’t think I can pull up any prints from it.”

“Read it to us, will you Ray,” said Katherine.

“It’s in block letters.‘Okay. I’ll meet you at the monument at 11:00. Don’t be late, I won’t wait.’”

“That certainly puts her in the vicinity where you found her body. Assuming ‘11:00’ refers to last night. Did the roommate say if Deidre was out at any other time?” Katherine asked.

I spoke up. “Just the opposite. Apparently, her only night out was Tuesday and occasionally on Saturdays.”

“This could be a crucial piece of evidence so I suggest we come back to it.” said Katherine. “Are you doing all right, Leo? Do you need a break? Cup of coffee?”

He looked as if he was going to refuse, then he nodded. “That would be appreciated, thanks. There are just a few more points, and rather important ones, but the coffee sounds good, and one of those roast beef sandwiches. I haven’t had a chance to have breakfast.”

Suddenly he put his head in his hands. I could see he was trembling. I was next to him and I put my hand on his; it was cold. Over his head I caught Katherine’s eye.

“Why don’t we all take ten minutes?” she said. Jamie was closest to the coffee pot and he poured a mug. David rolled his little tube of homeopathic pellets down the table.

“These will do you more good than coffee. Just put three under your tongue and let them dissolve.”

Leo didn’t respond, but at a signal from Katherine, the others got up and made their way to the door. I sat where I was, trying to send some warmth into Leo’s icy fingers.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T actfully, the group took a long ten minutes, and by the time they shuffled back in, Leo’s colour had returned and his hands weren’t as cold. He had gulped down some food and was tackling the coffee and that helped. Once everybody was in place he took up his list.

“Deidre’s mother and I were divorced when she was four years old. Her name is Loretta Larsen. She is an environmental lawyer, which means she travels a lot, trying to raise awareness of the shitty job we’re doing everywhere on earth. Global warming, endangered this, endangered that.” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Loretta had measles when Deidre was in utero and the child was born profoundly deaf with no hope of cure. This was as you can imagine a dreadful shock to both of us. Loretta is what you would call a Type A personality. She blamed herself. She had continued to work until late in the pregnancy and who knows where she contracted the measles. She had only ever wanted one child. That child had to be perfect and it turned out Deidre wasn’t.”

By now he was back to his dispassionate, professional voice, but you didn’t have to be Dr. Phil to see behind the words. Giving birth to what was seen as a defective child had broken the marriage apart.

“I was very busy establishing myself as the pre-eminent forensic psychiatrist in the country and I will admit I was only too happy to escape into my work to avoid the increasing tensions at home. Deidre was a bright child but neither Loretta nor I knew what to do with her. I tried learning sign language but I didn’t get very far
and Loretta refused to do it at all, insisting that Deidre learn to read lips and to speak. Which she did and very well. Loretta wanted to send her away to a special school for the deaf, and after we had considered the options, I agreed it would be the best thing for her.”

We’d all been scribbling notes and he waited for us to catch up.

“Deidre has essentially been in residential schools most of her life. She went to Gallaudet University in the States and that’s where she became what I’d have to call militant. And I mean fiercely so. Deaf Culture is equal to and as good as the hearing culture is the mantra. She stopped reading lips and refused to use her voice other than to make noises. It’s all sign language for them.” He pinched his nose again. “You know the scene, I’m sure. Same scenario, different characters. ‘We the blankety, blank, totally reject the oppression foisted upon us for decades by the blankety blank, and we insist on our rights and privileges the same as everybody else.’ We can fill in the blanks, you can say black people, Native, labour, women. Personally I’m all for equality but I resent being held to ransom or threatened if I don’t comply. One of Deidre’s classmates heard she could have a cochlear implant that would restore her hearing loss almost completely and the girl was literally spat at in the cafeteria when she made the mistake of telling people what she was thinking. She was called a traitor, a defector to the hearing world.” He looked around the table. “I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Fanatics. Their teaching fell on fertile soil and when Deidre graduated she was into it. She wouldn’t communicate with me except by sign language, which I didn’t understand, so we didn’t communicate.” Another pause. He straightened his papers. “Then shortly after she graduated, she wrote to me and told me she was pregnant. She also said that the father was a deaf man and that she had deliberately worked the odds to have a deaf child. Which is what happened. Joy, her daughter, has the same affliction. I admit I was furious. It’s one thing to stomp around demanding your rights; it’s another to deliberately choose to inflict your handicap on your child. You’re shutting them out from one of the most sublime experiences we godforsaken humans can have.”

His voice was filled with both anger and anguish. Leo was notorious in the office for his dedication to operatic music. He
listened to it on his headphones in his office, but sometimes the sounds would leak out, and if you went in to talk to him, you’d find him, expression rapt, swaying and waving his hands like a conductor in time to the music. He let slip one day that he was part of a music group that put on opera excerpts once a year. I could understand how it would have been so hard for him to have a child who would never be able to share that passion with him and then to have her deliberately engineer a deaf grandchild.

He went on.

“This was a rare instance when Loretta and I were in agreement. She wanted Deidre to have an abortion but she flatly refused. She wouldn’t tell us the name of the father, who she actually referred to as the sperm donor, and as far as I know from Nora, there has been no man involved in Joy’s life at all. Now, here comes the crunch. About six months after Joy was born, totally deaf as planned, the story hit the newspapers and media. I don’t know how it got out but it caused quite a stir. Deidre received a lot of hate mail.”

He paused to have a drink of coffee.

“You said you haven’t seen her since Christmas?” asked Katherine.

“That’s right. I dropped in on Christmas Day with my gifts as I’ve done each year since Joy was born. It wasn’t a good meeting. We had a row, if you can call it that when one person is yelling words the other can’t understand and the other is waving her hands about and screaming incomprehensible noises. I’m not even sure what I communicated to get Deidre so angry with me except that I would like to have a relationship with my only grandchild.” He stopped again, lost momentarily in his painful memories. “Anyway that was that. She wouldn’t answer my messages or my emails. Since then, I have been cut off completely.”

“Where is Loretta now?” asked Jamie.

“In the Yukon. I have emailed her and I assume she will come back as soon as she can. Deidre, by the way, changed her name after she graduated. She took her mother’s name of Larsen. I don’t know if Dee was in touch with her mother or not. She and I do not communicate either.” He fidgeted with his papers. “I should add I have another son from my first marriage. He lives in Barrie. His name is Sigmund.” He grimaced. “He hasn’t forgiven me for that
one and calls himself Sig. To my knowledge his relationship with his half-sister is virtually non-existent.”

He looked over at Katherine, who nodded. “Thank you, Leo. Now let’s have a look at the letter again. Chris, would you say male or female?”

I had a brief study of the note. “It’s hard to tell with this short piece but the writing is quite bold and sprawling; more significantly, the tone is peremptory, no softening words. It doesn’t say, ‘Please, don’t be late,’ which a woman might do. I’d go for a male.”

“Anybody else?”

The others agreed with me, even David who often disagreed on principle.

“What else?”

“The writer is replying to a previous letter, presumably from Deidre. The ‘okay’ isn’t a question; it’s a statement. Otherwise it would follow after ‘monument.’ ‘I’ll meet you at the monument, okay?’ She must have said something like: ‘Can we meet on such and such a day?’ The answer is ‘Okay.’ He suggests the location, no asking. He’s calling the shots. ‘11:00’ supports my first statement. Deidre has already suggested a time so he doesn’t have to specify morning or evening or which day. He’s responding. He also doesn’t say which monument, which suggests they both know what he’s referring to, which in turn definitely points to a previous acquaintance. And then the scold, ‘Don’t be late, I won’t wait.’ Lots of irritation in those lines.”

“She was chronically late,” interjected Leo. “I’ve not known her to be on time once. It was infuriating.”

“That’s important to know,” I went on. “It reinforces the possibility that he knew her well enough to have experienced the problem.”

“You say you found the note in the car,” said Katherine.

Leo took up the story once more. “It was slightly crumpled up but quite dry. No envelope. It could have been sent through the mail, of course, and she didn’t have the envelope with her, but I have the feeling it was left on the car. Would you agree, Chris?”

“I would. It’s written in pencil and torn out of a pocket-sized notebook. That suggests to me a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“But if it was on her windshield, she’d hardly drive to the casino with it there, so it was placed on the car either before she left the
house or while it was parked at the casino,” said Ray. “Do you know where she usually parked her car?”

“She had street parking.”

“Don’t forget, Doctor Forgach said it was dry,” interjected David. “And it had been raining most of Tuesday evening if I remember properly. Anybody know when it started?”

I took that up. “I do. I walk dogs for the Humane Society and I’d just got them back when it began to pour down. I’d say that was just before six o’clock. The afternoon was overcast but no rain. So either she took the note to her car after receiving it in the mail — we can ask Nora about that — or it was left on her windshield before it started raining, meaning she got it before six.”

“Let’s go over this so far,” said Katherine. “Deidre has some sort of correspondence with a person she knows in which she proposes a meeting at 11:00 p.m. Given that we’ve been told Tuesday is her only night out, let’s assume she suggests Tuesday and that she was intending to meet this person after she had been at the casino. We don’t know if that communication happened by snail mail or email. Did she use text messaging, Leo?”