Deadly Season Read online

  “He said all that after surgery?”

  I smiled.

  “I didn’t say how long after surgery.”

  Carmedy smiled back. I wondered if I could get the florist to source me fresh mistletoe year round.

  “What theory did you put together?”

  I sat up a little straighter.

  “I’m not sure if I remember my rationale, but I deduced that the news reports were all partly correct and fundamentally wrong. One report had the shot being aimed at my father, and he dodged getting killed. Two other reports insisted that my father threw himself in front of the shooter to protect either the abused wife or the other detective on the scene. All agreed that my father got off three shots and that at least one hit the husband. Since they all agreed, I took that to be a potentially fact-based statement, not just hearsay.”

  “What did the other witnesses say?”

  “Nothing.”

  Carmedy leaned in.

  “Nothing?”

  I nodded.

  “The only witnesses to the shooting were Mr. and Mrs. Collins and my father’s partner, a rookie who resigned after the incident. Mrs. Collins was unresponsive. Or as one reporter put it,” I made air quotes with the hand that wasn’t holding my coffee, “a victim of abuse for years, the poor woman was unable to respond to any of the questions put forth by this reporter.”

  “You memorized the line?”

  I shrugged.

  “It wasn’t hard. It was quoted over and over in other articles. She never made a statement to the police either. She checked herself into the Mental Health Centre. But I found that out later. At the time, the big news was that, in the ensuing confusion, the husband got away. A blood trail indicated he was wounded. Police were in hot pursuit. That’s the last I ever heard.”

  “At the time,” said Carmedy.

  “At the time.”

  I hugged my coffee cup for warmth. It was empty but still warm and I was feeling chilled, a sure sign I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Maybe I should let Carmedy order me up to bed after all. Maybe I’d let him tuck me in…

  Back up, Garrett. He’s off limits. I continued my debriefing.

  “I couldn’t quite face listening to my father’s recorded notes, but he saved articles and news bytes from the aftermath. I ran a search through public and police data bases for more information. Blake Collins, the man who shot my father, was never found. He dropped off the grid and has managed to stay off it ever since.”

  “That’s highly suspect. What does it have to do with our case?”

  I tilted my head to one side.

  “Our case, Kemosabe?”

  His face scrunched up like he’d just sucked a lemon. I let him off the hook and continued.

  “There are two intersection points. One, it happened in East Hills. Two, a neighbour reported that Collins had been back to the house. He took a couple of suitcases, the car and his wife’s cat, which he apparently hated and threatened to strangle.”

  “So, after all this time, you think he’s returned to threaten other cats?”

  When he said it like that, it did seem a bit unlikely.

  “I know it’s a bit tenuous. I looked for more information in police records. Mrs. Collins moved and seems to have changed her name. Even so, East Hills is the logical place for Collins to return. If he returned.”

  Now my argument seemed weak to my ears.

  “Never mind,” I said, putting down my cup. “It’s just a weird coincidence.”

  “Probably it’s a coincidence” said Carmedy. “Maybe it’s not. We'll keep it in mind.”

  I grimaced.

  “No, I’m not trying to humour you,” he said, getting up and pulling my legs into the space he had been sitting.

  I took the hint and lay down. In what seemed to me like a blink of an eye, he was putting a blanket over me. I was going to get tucked in after all. Too bad I was too sleepy to appreciate it.

  “Sleep on it.”

  He tucked the blanket under my feet.

  “Weird shit happens all the time and this case has been weird from the get-go.”

  8

  I woke up alone.

  Carmedy left a message saying that he was meeting with Valerio. I was betting it would include lunch and felt a bit envious. They were probably eating a gourmet, locally sourced lunch while I was going to have bagels, cream cheese and peach jam.

  Okay, maybe I wasn’t that envious.

  I finished processing the report and started proofreading. Honestly, I doubted anyone had time to read this stuff. But if they did, they’d find everything properly referenced and interlinked to corresponding digital documents. No auditor would complain my i’s and t’s weren’t dotted and crossed.

  Still, a girl could only take so much admin crap before having a meltdown. So, I logged out and left the office before Carmedy came back to ask if I was done yet. Since I had laundry to do, I went home.

  I didn’t keep track of Magnus’s shifts, so I had no business being disappointed he wasn’t home. It’s not like I’d been around much either. Still, I was disappointed. Magnus and I were much better friends now that we weren’t together as a couple. We had practice living together from when we were both students and we had a history. I didn’t have to explain how shitty my job could be. He didn’t need to explain how sad his could be working as a pediatric nurse. At the same time, we appreciated the humour that came our way too and shared it without fear of being labelled crude, crass or ghoulish.

  When I started thinking that way, moving into my dad’s place seemed wrong. Then he’d bring a party home and having my own space seemed like a great idea. Until I had to do laundry.

  Screw it! I didn’t have to make a decision yet. That settled…or not settled for now, I was able to attack a few chores like taking out the recycling, watering my poor forsaken plants and cleaning out my closet. All mostly mindless tasks that helped me think. Give me enough closets and I could solve the problems of the world.

  Cats.

  When I took the case, I concentrated on the pet owners. Leaving a dead animal on a doorstep is a pretty personal message. Thinking that the cat-killer had an issue with the families seemed reasonable. That didn’t make it correct, especially since I couldn’t find a common denominator between the families other than cat ownership.

  If Paulo Crabbe was the killer, it might be his way of getting attention, or a step toward killing the women he watched. It wouldn’t be personal so much as staged for effect.

  If Blake Collins was the cat-killer, it might be personal, but directed against his wife. If that was the case, maybe she had returned to the neighbourhood too. Or it might be directed against the neighbours who called the police. I should get the details and follow that up.

  If it was someone else… Nah. There was no point going there until I’d eliminated the suspects I had.

  All my clothes were out of the closet and arranged in piles on my bed. I could bag up the stuff I was getting rid of and organize the rest. Or I could hang up the stuff that needed hanging and the use rest of my time, and my police login, to get the names of the Collins’s neighbours. I opted for the latter.

  At five, Carmedy called.

  “Are you coming back tonight?”

  I looked at my bed and nodded. “I’ll be back after I’m finished in East Hills.”

  “Are you still tired? I could go if you want.”

  “I’m good.”

  Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. I’d just found out that Mrs. Parnell used to live beside Mr. and Mrs. Collins.

  9

  Mrs. Parnell begged off, claiming her back was acting up.

  “She’s in the middle of watching a documentary series on reality shows,” her husband explained. “She’s convinced the channel is going to succumb to pressure from its sponsors and pull it from the Net.”

  “Is that likely?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? I’m happy to get out of the house.”

  “A
nd I’m happy to have your company,” I said, though I was also disappointed about missing a chance to pick Mrs. Parnell’s memory. She was Miss Morrow when she lived in the apartment next to the Collins. They weren’t as old a married couple as they seemed. Or were they?

  “How long have you and your wife been together?”

  “We’ve been married seven years.”

  He gave a little cough.

  “But we’ve been together for more than ten.”

  Only years of training kept me from showing how happy I was.

  “Then you were together when she lived in the geared-to-income townhouses.”

  We weren’t walking very swiftly to start with. Now he slowed to a snail’s pace.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I’ve been working my way back, looking at criminal activity in the neighbourhood.”

  He nodded and picked up the pace.

  “You mean what happened to poor Irene.”

  “Irene Collins, yes! I was hoping your wife might be able to fill in some gaps. Maybe you can instead.”

  Another hesitation.

  “I didn’t live with her back then. I just stayed over a couple of nights a week when my wife was away.”

  “Oh. I didn’t mean to pry…”

  Of course I did. That’s was my job. However, there are subtler ways of prying. One of them is to shut up and let the other person fill the awkward silence.

  It didn’t take long.

  “It’s no biggy.” He flexed his shoulders as if shrugging off something unpleasant. “My ex-wife and I had an open marriage. I just realized too late that I was made to be monogamous. I might complain about her, but Stella is the love of my life.”

  He cleared his throat noisily.

  “You won’t tell her I said that, will you?”

  “I won’t say a word if you tell me what you know about the Collins family.”

  He didn’t know much. I shared my carafe of coffee with him and even a couple of Magnus’s homemade cookies, only to find out that most of what he knew was hearsay. Stella said Collins yelled at his wife all the time. There had been noise complaints. Then there was the shooting. He had disappeared before he could be arrested. All things I knew.

  “I only talked to Irene a couple of times…about the weather or the latest municipal cutback. Time-of-day stuff. Even so, she struck me as a pleasant and intelligent young woman. Smarter than her husband, who talked more and said less. It was a real shame what happened to her…”

  Finally. Something useful.

  “What happened to her?” I did my best not to sound too excited.

  “Well, she closed down completely, didn’t she?” Gray shook his head. “We thought that she might be able to make a fresh start, especially after her father helped her buy the house. We even tried to befriend her after we bought a house and got married. After all, we’re still neighbours.”

  “You are?”

  “Didn’t Stella mention her?” He scratched his head. “Didn’t I? Anyway, she goes by Irene Cole now. She lives on the other side of Crabbe. Fortunately for her, there’s the access lane to the park between them. He can’t spy on her the way he does on my wife.”

  He grunted.

  “Creep.”

  10

  December 20

  The phone woke me up at eight. It was Magnus. At least, he said he was Magnus. He sounded so gruff, it could have been his twin brother and fellow cop, Xavier.

  “Is there something you were meaning to tell me?”

  “Huh?”

  “If you’re going to pull a midnight run, you need to finish packing before I get home from work.”

  “Huh?”

  I needed coffee, or better still, more sleep.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Magnus?”

  “Your suitcase is gone. Most of your clothes are in bags or piles ready to bag or box.”

  Now that I was seeing the light, I decided that coffee was the way to go. I put on a hands-free and headed for the kitchen.

  “I was cleaning out, not clearing out. The bag, singular, is stuff I’m getting rid of, and you still have my suitcase since you borrowed it for that cruise last spring. As for the rest, I ran out of time and didn’t get a chance to put stuff back.”

  “You got distracted.”

  Some days that man knew me too well. Since I didn’t feel the need to tell him he was right, silence hung between us until Magnus broke it. When he did, he sounded like the gentler twin I knew and loved.

  “You haven’t made a decision yet, have you?”

  “No. Do you want me to go?”

  His sudden snort of laughter made me lose track of my coffee scoop count.

  “No way! This decision is yours to make not mine.”

  “But it’s your apartment,” I whined.

  Again there was silence, then a sigh I could almost feel.

  “I just got in and I need a shower and my tea. I told you when you moved in you could stay as long as you needed. It’s up to you to figure out what you need now.”

  He disconnected, and I cursed him for being so reasonable.

  Dumping the beans back into the canister, I started over. The familiar ritual of making coffee, showering and putting together leftovers to have for breakfast gave me time to think. Since I wasn’t ready to think about where I was going to live, I thought about Irene Collins/Cole.

  I needed to talk to her, but that wasn’t going to be easy if she was as reclusive as I’d been told. It would be better to arm myself with more information. Right now I didn’t have enough reason to invade her space. It was a longshot that her husband was involved in the cat killings, and I couldn’t very well tell her I wanted to know what happened because of my father.

  Or could I?

  The answer to that question might be in my father’s personal logs. I wasn’t sure I was ready to listen to them.

  I pulled out the memory card and refilled my coffee cup. I took a sip of black courage and plugged the card into an adaptor for my eCom.

  “Damn! Is this thing working finally?”

  Dad sounded tired and irritated. Those were the days when he used to come to me for tech support. He complained that electronics were getting to be like child-proof medicine bottles. Only the kids could work them.

  “To briefly recap the notes I lost when this damn device ate them, I have a problem with my new detective. She’s intelligent and compassionate and going to get herself into trouble if she doesn’t learn to step back. Taking a case too personally doesn’t help anyone and can put people in danger. I almost hit her today, for example.”

  There was a rumbling chuckle that I remembered well. Dad was laughing off his bad mood. It was a trick he taught me. Laughter can trick your body into thinking you don’t really want to cry, kill someone or just give up. It cleared the mind.

  There was a rustle of paper. He was consulting his case notes.

  “Okay. There were three callouts to the Collins home before the case was sent to the bullpen. None of them screamed spousal abuse, but Mohr had a feeling and went to the chief with it. Mohr would make a decent detective if you could pry him out of community policing.

  “During our initial interviews, it seemed to me that Collins was verbally abusing his wife. At the very least, he showed no respect for her. Marten says that Mrs. Collins showed her bruises on her upper arms. She thinks there’s more, but Mrs. Collins refuses to be examined. Marten has a certain prejudice in this area, but her interview seems…”

  There was a thump, accompanied by a faint cry.

  “Damn!”

  There were sounds of movement, then nothing. The recorder had been turned off.

  Then there was faint music in the background. Beethoven’s Pastoral. Or, as I always thought of it, thanks to Disney’s Fantasia, the centaur music. That probably meant that I had woken up from a bad dream. Mum must have been at her night class, because it was only when she was out that I could get away with tucking up on t
he couch in front of the plasma screen. Otherwise, I had to be satisfied with my tablet in bed.

  “Forget the details.”

  My father’s voice was pitched lower than before.

  “Let’s get to the stuff I couldn’t write up in the report. In absence of a psychiatric evaluation, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Collins is a high functioning sociopath. Since he’s also handsome and capable of being charming, he can fool most of the people most of the time…until he wants something, that is. Then he becomes manipulative and abusive. I saw it when it was clear Marten and I weren’t going away until we had completed our interviews. He tried to cajole, then coerce me into letting him join his wife.

  “He argued that his wife was phobic. When I asked what she was afraid of, he laughed and said ‘Everything.’ When I asked if she had sought professional help, he said ‘No way! I don’t trust those mind-fuckers.’”

  There was a pause. In the background I could hear the thunder that accompanied the music when the centaurs were finding shelter from the storm.

  “I can’t say I entirely trust psychologists either. Or maybe I just don’t trust the one my wife keeps staying out with after class.”

  He was talking about David. I knew that my mother was seeing him back then, which is one of the reasons I kept having nightmares. She said it was just coffee and intelligent conversation, but I was too much my father’s daughter not to see the signs.

  I didn’t know my father knew. I guess I just hoped he didn’t.

  I turned off the recorder. I was going to get bogged down in my own bad memories if I continued this way. Instead, I ran the file through my voice to speech transcriber. While it processed, I took my coffee to the bathroom so I could shower and get ready for the day.

  The morning went smoothly. Koehne avoided me in the lobby. Carmedy didn’t say anything about me leaving early, and he let me make the coffee. This partnership might work after all.

  I wrote up my case notes in hope that something about the cat-killer would pounce out at me. The trouble was, all the activity at night was keeping the cats safe, but all the killer had to do was lay low until we went away. Even the most enthusiastic member of the East Hills group couldn’t keep up this level of watchfulness forever.