I take several deep breaths to calm me.
The alarm’s beeping speeds up.
I look closely at the body. He’s naked. The ornately carved, bejewelled handle of a knife is jutting up out of his chest. His stomach is a mess. It looks like it’s been branded and as I move closer I can see it has indeed. The numbers two, zero, one, three, written in a square pattern, in digits four inches tall have been scorched onto his flesh. I’m betting they were burned there before the coup de grâce. While he was still alive. I shudder at the thought. I’ve been to a bunch of crime scenes before, even a dead child, and I’ve never thrown up. My roiling stomach tells me this may be a first.
The sound of the flies is drowned by the ear-shattering peel as the security alarm blasts into life.
I figure I’ve got five minutes to check the crime scene.
First the body. The knife has been placed precisely over the heart entering the ribcage between the third and fourth ribs. There’s a lot of blood but the stomach has been wiped clean, presumably to show off the killer’s handiwork. The killer’s obviously a sadist. The numbers look like they have been carefully and probably slowly branded with some red-hot blunt instrument. The pain must have been excruciating. The queasiness ramps up a notch. As an added insult, the digits are surrounded by a square also branded on his flesh. The hands and feet are tied to the four bedposts with ropes. The ropes are further secured to the body with lots of duct tape. They are tight, forcing the arms and legs far apart. The genitals are shrivelled, almost certainly as a result of the victim’s fear and pain. His mouth is secured with more duct tape which is wrapped across the mouth and around the back of the neck several times. It’s a very thorough job.
The murder weapon’s ornate; it looks medieval. The blade seems to be ten or twelve inches long because there’s a good six inches of blade between where it enters the chest and the hilt.
Everything else in the room looks incongruously normal. The killer must have tidied up before he left. There’s nothing on the floor and the only thing under the bed is a pair of red leather slippers. There’s nothing else here which catches my attention.
With a selfish little twinge, I realize this has ruined my afternoon. I was planning to spend the time trying to track down Sam and Ellie. I have a couple of ideas on how to do it. But as much as I want to, there’s no way I can do it now.
I guess I’ll go downstairs and open the front door for the cops. Hopefully I won’t get arrested for murder again. However the shakes that have started in my body are not at the thought of arrest; it’s the full horror of what I experienced upstairs. I think I’m going to need to throw up. It’s seeping into my bones and the old feeling’s on the rise: I am going to get whoever did this.
After eight hours with the VPD’s Major Crime Section, during which time I was debriefed endlessly about my investigation into Dale Summers’ disappearance, all I really want to do is go home and sleep. Except I just need to scratch a mental itch which is irritating me.
Marly Summers looks wrecked, I’m surprised she agreed to see me at this late hour at her home.
“Thank you so much for seeing me. I won’t take up too much of your time.”
“No problem Mr. Rogan. I don’t think I’ll sleep much tonight.”
“Yes, I understand. I’m so very sorry about your husband.”
She doesn’t respond but walks me into a large living room overlooking English Bay with the lights of the Westside reflecting in the water. She sits on a long sofa facing the view and indicates for me to sit at the other end. But I don’t and I’m not sure why.
“The police told me it was you who found him.” It’s said in an almost matter-of-fact manner. Her emotions don’t seem to match her appearance.
I won’t go straight to the mental itch and besides there are some other things I want to know. “Dale owned the townhouse where I found him.” Her eyes flutter. Maybe tiredness, maybe something else. “Did you know about it?”
“No.” She says it quickly, like she was expecting the question.
“Your husband never mentioned it?”
This time she doesn’t answer immediately. She’s trying to see where I’m going with this. “No,” she says, more emphatically. With an elegant movement, she puts her feet up on the coffee table between us.
“Did he keep his financial affairs secret from you?”
“I didn’t think so but now I’m beginning to question that.” Honest sounding answer.
“Did he have any enemies?”
She pauses before answering. “Yesterday, I would have said no, but I’m starting to realize I know even less about him than I thought. It seems he had many secrets.”
“Did you have any secrets from him?”
She reacts to the question. “What exactly do you mean, Mr. Rogan?” There’s an odd tone in her voice.
“You told my partner you and your husband hadn’t been intimate for a year or more. Is there anybody else in your life?”
“No. Nobody. I’ll admit I thought about it once or twice, but no, I could never do that to Dale.” Either she’s sincere or she’s thought this through in advance.
Time to scratch the itch but first, “Well thank you again for meeting with me so late, I really do appreciate it.” She takes a deep breath and relaxes; she looks glad the questioning’s over. Now to slip in that last question.
“Would you like a drink before you go?” Her question throws me. She sees the surprise in my face. “It’s been a long day for you too. What would you like?”
This might work better. “Do you have a local beer?”
“No, Dale hated beer. How about a Scotch?”
“Sure, thanks.”
She walks over to a cabinet and opens a door to reveal an array of expensive spirits. She grabs a bottle of eighteen year-old Johnny Walker and two glasses. “Please, sit.” This time I comply and she sits down too, but not at the other end of the couch. Her knee’s inches from mine.
She puts the glasses on the coffee table in front of us. The bottle has never been opened until now. She cracks it open and pours two very big drinks. “My husband hated blended Scotches too.” Said defiantly. She hands me one and clinks hers against it. “Cheers.”
I respond and take a sip; like her late husband I usually prefer single malts but this is wonderful. She takes a gulp and then another. I’m confused. Where’s she going with this?
She rotates toward me and brings her knees up onto the sofa and as they brush against the outside of my thigh, she gives me that wonderful smile I first saw in our office on Monday afternoon. Despite not wanting to, I feel my body reacting. She takes another drink of her Scotch and, unnecessarily, the tip of her tongue slowly licks the right side of her upper lip and traverses to the left.
I get the feeling I’m being manipulated but I have no idea why.
“You know it’s been a long time for me,” she says and puts her hand on my knee.
My common sense tells me that what I’m thinking is insane. She runs her nails up the inside of my thigh; now my body’s really reacting. I’m lost… until King Lear comes to my aid: O, that way madness lies; let me shun that!
“I’m sorry,” I mumble as I struggle to my feet. “I have to go.”
I walk awkwardly out of the living room and without looking back, head for the front door.
Then I realize with annoyance, I never got to scratch the itch which brought me here in the first place. Maybe that was the manipulation.
13
Cal
Thursday
I haven’t been on this doorstep in over a year and the welcome is even more frosty than the last time I was here. “What do you want Cal?” Sam’s mother has always disliked me, which I can’t actually blame her for; I did after all ruin my marriage to her daughter by shooting enough heroin to numb my brain for over five years.
“Hello Miriam. I’d like to speak to Sam please.” I try to sound as friendly as I can.
“I thought when you ca
lled the other day my husband told you she wasn’t here.”
“He did but I kind of hoped…”
“Hoped he was lying? I thought that was in your character, not his.”
“Please Miriam, I’m worried sick about her and Ellie.”
“Well you should have thought of that before you went and killed a drug dealer.”
“Those charges have been dropped,” I tell her just a bit too quickly.
“Oh well that’s OK.” The sarcasm drips from her tongue. “The gang will know you’re not the one who killed their leader if the charges have been dropped. Samantha’s petrified they’ll try and extract vengeance on you and maybe on her and Ellie too, so she’s gone into hiding and I’m the last one who’s going to say where she went.”
It hits me like a truck. Why did it never occur to me? Just because Santiago’s dead doesn’t mean the gang’s wound up. They arrested several of them when they raided his place on Samuel Island but they couldn’t have got all of them. Those who are left won’t want his death to go unavenged.
“You didn’t think of that did you?” It’s her parting shot as she slams the door in my face.
But she’s right.
I stand on the doorstep. Sam’s right. Of course they’re going to come after me and maybe her too and even Ellie. My God, what have I done?
In a daze, I turn and walk down the path to the front gate.
I get into the Healey and fire up the engine. As I pull away from the curb, I hear the squeal of brakes. In my altered state, I pulled out in front of a black Escalade without looking. I wave my apologies to the driver and take off down the road. I know what I have to do now.
I have to let them go.
“I got some good news for you Rogan.” Stammo has a big grin on his face. “I might know where Ellie and Sam are.” Then he sees the look on my face. “What?” I tell him about my meeting with Sam’s mother.
He looks at me and his face drops. “Why didn’t we realize? Sam’s smarter than the two of us put together. We’ve been so worried about the VPD finding out, we never thought that once you got arrested the news might get back to the remnants of his gang. It’s just possible they could get it into their minds to come after you, me, Ellie and Sam.” He thinks for a while. “Once you left your DNA on the island, we were screwed.”
I don’t know what to say to him. My DNA was there because… But there’s no point in rehashing all that. There’s a far more pressing problem.
“You said you may have tracked down Ellie. Where is she?”
“When you found out last month she was on Instagram I started following her. I just checked and she has been posting some selfies. I recognized one of them. Here, take a look.”
He swivels his screen toward me and clicks a tab in Chrome. Ellie’s smiling out at me from the deck of a boat. It’s the car deck of a ferry and behind her I can see Sam’s car. The ferry’s approaching a dock. “You know where this is?” I ask him.
“I’m pretty sure it’s on the ferry over to Gibsons.”
He’s right. The Horseshoe Bay to Langdale ferry takes people over to the aptly named Sunshine Coast. Of course! Sam’s parents have a summer cottage on Hardy Island. That’s where they’re headed. A wave of relief washes over me. I know where they are. They’re safe on a remote island a hundred kilometres from Vancouver. I tell Stammo but he doesn’t look so happy.
“They could still come after you and me. From now on I’m gonna be carrying my Glock wherever I go. The law be damned. You ought to get yourself one too.”
His words take the edge off my relief. I grab my phone and text Sam. Tell Ellie to stop posting pictures. They might be able to find your location. PS I love you both. It wooshes and the ‘Delivered’ message comes up. She hasn’t replied to any of my other texts or emails so I don’t expect her to reply to this one. I’m not too worried about the gang tracking them. Even if they find Ellie’s Instagram and recognize the Langdale dock, there’s no way they could make the connection to Hardy Island. It’s me they’ll want to catch. Maybe I should follow Stammo’s advice and get myself a gun. It just seems so, I dunno, so un-Canadian.
He breaks into my train of thought. “So, you closed the Dale Summers case. Not the ending Marly Summers was hoping for.”
“No, but you know what, something’s been bothering me. The killer branded him with the numbers two, zero, one, three. Didn’t you say they’d been married for six years?”
“Yeah.” He looks at me then it dawns. “Twenty-thirteen, the year they were married.” A shocked look slides onto his face. “You don’t think she killed him?”
“No. But I’ve got to believe there’s a connection.”
“I wonder if she has a lover?”
“I asked her that and she said not. I think she was telling the truth.”
“When did you ask her?” he asks. There is a tone in his voice.
“Last night. I went over to her house after I’d finished at Major Crimes Section. It was one of the things I asked her.”
“Oh.” I can tell he’s not happy that I went to see her. “So what did she say about the twenty-thirteen thing?”
“I never got to ask her.” I can hear the hint of embarrassment in my own voice.
So can he. “Why the hell not?”
And the truth will set you free. Not Shakespeare, but from the other oft-quoted verses. We’ll see if it does. “If you really want to know, before I could ask her she came on to me.”
“You are joking!” He laughs. It’s not a nice laugh.
“No.”
“Why would she do that?”
I decide not to take that too personally. “I dunno. Maybe in a weird way it was to get back at her husband. Or maybe it’s the thing that happens when we’re exposed to death: the deep evolutionary need to procreate, to create a life that replaces the lost one.”
He looks at me with his interrogator’s look. “And did you?” he asks slowly.
“No.”
“Huh.” He seems placated. “Then you’re a stronger man than most.” After a pause he adds, “Anyway the case is closed. She called this morning and asked if there was any final billing. I told her no, the retainer covered everything. It was a big fee for only two days work. I’m happy.”
I should be too. But I’m not. The cop in me wants to continue the investigation, question her about the twenty-thirteen branding, dig into her life, find out if she’s got a lover, find out how much she inherits from her husband. For the hundredth time I question my decision to leave the VPD.
“You’ve got that look again.”
“What look?”
“Like a dog that won’t let go of a bone. Let it go Rogan. Call Major Crimes and tell ’em about the twenty-thirteen connection and let them do their thing. Do it now.”
He’s right. As much as I may want to investigate the murder of Dale Summers, it’s a job for the VPD now. I need to just tell them what I know and get on to other things. Anyway, my next move would have been to get Stammo to do some research for me and there’s no way he’s going to do that if it’s not billable. Reluctantly—and it’s more like a gut-wrench than mere reluctance—I pull out my phone to dial the familiar number but before I can, it rings.
“Cal Rogan.”
A newly familiar voice says, “Mr. Rogan, I need your help with something.”
14
Tomás
He looks pleased. “Our men have some news Patrón.” I nod for him to continue. “We found Rogan. We Googled him and found his company. He’s a private investigator now. The photos of him and his partner were on the website and so was the address of their office. We followed them and we know where they both live. Now here’s the odd thing. His partner’s name is Nick Stammo.”
“Stammo? That was the Bookman’s last name wasn’t it?”
“Yes Patron. He’s the Bookman’s father.”
“Very interesting. He and Rogan are responsible for his own son’s death. Go on Javier.”
“W
e also discovered he has a wife and daughter though they don’t live with him. We have a man staking out their address but they have not been there. And the daughter is not at her school.”
“A wife and daughter? Good work Javier. I knew I could rely on you.” A little praise is good, something my father often omitted.
“Thank you Patrón,” he smiles and there is pride in his voice. “There is more. This morning, just an hour ago, Rogan went to a house in Burnaby. I saw him there myself. We checked the property records; it belongs to a woman who has the same last name as Rogan’s wife. It could be her mother. If the wife and child don’t show up soon, maybe the parents will know where they have gone.”
“Excellent. When it comes time to kill them, you can have the wife as a little bonus. It will increase the level of Rogan’s pain.”
“Thank you Patrón. I have seen a picture of her. It is a bonus I will enjoy.”
Knowing Javier’s proclivities, I’m sure he will and am equally certain she most definitely won’t.
15
Cal
The coffee shop is opposite the site where they’re renovating the building which will become the new Southbrook store. While I wait, I look through the rain across Granville Street at a small group of people with placards objecting to the fact that another iconic Canadian department store is being replaced by an American behemoth. As much as we really do love our neighbours to the south, there is a small group of Canadians who like to object to every encroachment of US business into Canada. I personally don’t really care about the lost department store; I do most of my shopping online these days. Somehow being online anonymizes the nationality of the stores. As I think about it, I have no idea where some of the sites I use are located and who might own them.
My train of thought is derailed by the voice I heard on the phone. The sweet, southern sound says, “Thank you so much for seeing me at such short notice, Mr. Rogan.”
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 4, 5 & 6 (Box Set) Page 5
