“Why hello tall, dark and handsome.”
The playful tone of Em’s Southern lilt pulls me out of the darkness. I slide off the bar stool and she kisses me on the cheek. “This place is beautiful, I’ve never been here before.”
The manager leads us to our table right by the window with a view across the sunny expanse of Coal Harbour and the Burrard Inlet. Vancouver at it’s springtime best. The mood of mere seconds ago dissipates and I’m ready to enjoy our dinner at the Lift.
“How was your day?” I ask, unconcerned about the sheer banality of the question.
“It was fine. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Then I took my boss to the airport. Altogether a good day.”
“When will the new store open?”
“It’s scheduled for six months from now.”
“Well that’s good. I can look forwards to six months of your company,” I raise my glass to her.
Before she can respond the server appears at our table, takes Em’s order for a glass of Chardonnay and recites the specials of the day.
“I look forward to every minute of our time together,” Em says. We hold each other’s eyes for a moment. “Let’s get business out of the way first. How’s your investigation into Dale’s murder going?”
“Not great. There’s been another murder, another gay man. Like Dale’s, the pictures have been posted to that twenty-thirteen.com website I told you about. By the way, don’t go to the site. It’s horrific. The second murder was even more gruesome than Dale’s. He’s clearly escalating. We had an idea that maybe the pastor of Dale’s brother’s church was the murderer, he’s a rabid anti-gay—or at least he used to be—but he really didn’t work out.”
“Was the new victim connected to Dale in any way?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact he was. They were both members of a self help group for married gay men.”
“So who are your suspects?”
“We’re back to square one. Dale’s wife, her lawyer, Dale’s brother,” I don’t mention Sean O’Day because I promised to keep his orientation from his boss however, he’s a possible I suppose.
“Good. Business over.”
Feeling a sliver of guilt about withholding Sean’s name, makes me want to give her some more details. “With two similar murders the Police will put an IHIT team together and my partner indicated they might want us to help them, though I don’t know in what capacity. I’ve got to admit, I’m at a bit of a loss.”
“What’s an IHIT team?”
“Integrated Homicide Investigation Team. As the second murder was in Burnaby there will be VPD and RCMP members in the team.”
Our server brings Em’s wine and learns we haven’t even looked at the menus yet.
Em raises her glass. “I have faith in you, Cal. I’m betting you find the person doing these horrible things before the IHIT people have even scratched the surface.”
We chink glasses and she smiles deep into my eyes. I return her smile. It’s nice to have someone have faith in me. Maybe I can find a new line of inquiry. Maybe there’s some connection I’m missing.
53
Max
It’s all out of control this time. Not like before. It’s all because of number one. The previous number ones were all anonymous. Why didn’t I stick to the plan? If I’d have stuck to the plan… but I couldn’t. It’s all because of number one. Damn him! But knowing him did add that little bit of extra pleasure didn’t it? Yes, number one was wonderful. In a way I’m glad it was him even if it did throw everything off.
And number two, oh number two was sublime. When I amputated his prick, I’ve never felt such pleasure. In the warm and the dark, I reach down and relive that moment. Within seconds the pleasure’s building… building… and… Ooooooh. Ooooooooooh.
Frustratingly, it’s not the same. Not like the real thing. I need the real thing. I need it soon. For the next one, I want to add some nice little touch, I don’t know what it is yet but I’ll think of it. I really do need the next one soon. Number three is always the best. My usual method’s blown; I can’t go there again. That damn guy in the wheelchair, Nick Stammo. He was what Paul was mumbling about. But there’s a golden lining, I can chose someone I know as my number three. And I know just who he’ll be.
But this time I will have to leave everything behind. Everything. But it’s worth it.
You will be avenged my love.
54
Cal
Friday
I feel equal parts of glow and guilt. I’m basking in the glow of another wonderful night with Em and I’m feeling guilty because of my feeling I’m betraying Sam. It’s not even three weeks since Matt’s funeral and already I’m in another woman’s arms. But what a wonderful woman. We are so good together and not just in bed. We talked for hours last night and we talked about so much. I can’t help the feeling this could be huge.
As I go to insert my key, I see the office door’s unlocked. Why the hell’s it unlocked so early in the morning? Adry’s really conscientious about locking up and Stammo would never leave without locking up and setting the alarm. I push the door open. The alarm gives its triple beep; it wasn’t set last night.
I close and lock the door. If anyone’s in here I don’t want them to escape.
Silence.
I wait.
Nothing.
Quietly I step around the partition wall separating the reception area from the office. I don’t spot anything. Then I see him, slumped over his desk. Oh God.
“Nick,” I rush to his side. “Nick are you alright?”
I reach down to feel for breath.
I cannot lose this man.
“Nick!”
I shake him feverishly.
“NICK!”
“Wha…? Who…? Ooh. Jeez, Rogan… You scared the crap out of me.”
I let out a long groan of relief. “You scared the crap out of me. I thought something had happened to you.”
He straightens up with a sigh and stretches. “I was just taking a nap.”
His hair looks like a spiky halo.
“Hell Nick, you look like something to hang on the front door at Halloween to scare the kids away. Were you here all night?”
He thinks about it and then something dawns on his face. “Rogan, you’ve gotta see this.”
He shakes his mouse and logs into his computer.
“Yesterday afternoon, I got to thinking. Our killer’s escalating right?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. So I started to think, what if Dale wasn’t his first. What if this guy’s a serial killer. And what if Dale was also an escalation.”
“Makes sense.”
“Does it ever. The day after you found Dale’s body, I did a bunch of searches for similar killings where the victim had been branded with twenty-thirteen. But I didn’t find anything. But this time I thought, what if the branding was an escalation? So I spent a few hours trying to find murders where twenty-thirteen was written on the bodies rather than branded. I tried a whole bunch of different searches and then I found it by accident. I was getting a bit tired and I mistyped twenty-thirteen as twenty-nine-thirteen. As I went through the search results I saw a reference to the Quran. So I thought about it. The Bible doesn’t have a monopoly on being anti-gay and I did a search of the Quran and found the main verse that condemns homosexuality. It was verse twenty-nine in book twenty-nine.”
He grabs a stale glass of water from his desk and drinks it down before continuing. “So I redid all my searches and found this.” He clicks on his browser and there’s a website that looks very much like twenty-thirteen.com except that it’s twenty-nine-twenty-nine.com. As Stammo scrolls down the page there are photos of the bodies of dead men in various stages of torture. Two of them have 29:29 written on them in what looks like marker pen and the third has the letters carved with a knife. All have identical daggers sticking up from their chests with a quarter moon on the handles, a symbol of Islam.
“Holy crap. When were these murders
? I don’t remember anything about them.”
Stammo has a big smile on his face. “Seven months ago and you wouldn’t remember them because they happened in Minneapolis. I checked the newspapers at the time and the murders were a big deal down there. Caused all sorts of crazies to come out of the closet. There were even anti-Muslim demonstrations by the local skinheads. There were only three murders, each one a bit worse than the previous.” He finishes with an even broader smile.
“So the Christian thing is all a red herring. It’s someone who hates gays and wants to blame it on religion. Who would be anti-religion and hating gays?”
“There isn’t a religious angle,” he has a smug look on his face now.
“But both the site are supposed—”
“Listen and learn,” he grins. “It was about three in the morning when I found the Minneapolis murders. I knew if I went home I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I carried on trying to find other murders inspired by religion. I tried everything I could think of but I was out of luck. Then I remembered the skinhead riots and I added skinhead into the searches I’d been doing and look what I got.”
Another click of the mouse and yet another familiar-looking website appears. Three bodies, all tortured, all with §175 written on them. “It stands for Paragraph 175 which was a section in the German criminal code from 1871 banning homosexual acts. It was used by the Nazis to justify sending gays to the death camps. This website was supposedly set up by a skinhead group with the dumb-assed name of death4gays.com.”
“When and where?” I ask.
“Just over a year ago in Tallahassee, Florida. After this one I must’a fallen asleep.”
“Do you think there might be others?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. But three’s enough to see the pattern, right? When I tell Steve, he can get his techies to see what they can find out about ’em or maybe find more. Let them work all night, eh.”
“Nick, you are brilliant.”
“Thanks, Rogan. Yes, I am.”
A thought hits me. “Are there GAMMA chapters in Minneapolis and Tallahassee? Maybe that’s how he finds his victims.” Twenty seconds of keyboarding later I get an affirmative from Nick. “Was there a mention of GAMMA in any of the press coverage?”
“No.” He thinks for a second. “Maybe the police never released that information to the press. I’ll tell Steve and he can get his guys to find out.” He picks up the phone and starts dialing.
As he starts talking to our former colleague, I suddenly deflate. Our job’s over. The killer’s some random guy who goes from town to town killing gays. Three in every town. I wonder why three. Maybe he’s smart; knows that the more he does, the greater the chances of being caught. Three’s the magic number. But he’s only done two in Vancouver. Two down, one to go. Steve’s going to have his job cut out for him if he’s going to find an out-of-town serial killer before he kills again.
I’ve spent the last ten days or so on this one case. Although Adry and Stammo have been working on the rest of our caseload, I’d better get dug in and pull my weight.
I open the spreadsheet which we use to track our cases, an innovation made by Stammo when we first started the business. We’ve got a lot on board at the moment. I update myself on each case until I come to one I was involved in before the kidnapping of Ariel Bradbury and it was—
“Absolutely Steve, no problem.” The excitement in Stammo’s voice breaks my concentration. I look up and he gives me the thumbs-up. He listens with a big grin on his face interjecting the occasional “Sure,” and “Right” and “Got it” into the conversation.
He puts down the phone.
“You’ll never guess what,” he says.
“What?”
“The VPD have asked us to help ’em. Seems like they can’t get along without us.”
I chuckle at his enthusiasm. “What do they want us to do?”
“They want me to go undercover into the GAMMA meeting and see if I can sniff out any suspicious activity. They figure the people at the meeting have already met me, so they might open up about who Dale and Paul hung out with.”
“Why don’t they send one of their own people?”
“Steve said something about sensitivity to the gay community. Said it was the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall, whatever that is.”
“Do you want me to come with you? As backup? I mean it could be dangerous if there’s a killer in the group.”
“Good point but no. I’ll be OK. Maybe I’ll go home first and get my Glock. Put a blanket over my legs and hide it underneath. Just in case.”
“Make sure the safety’s on.”
“Right,” he chuckles.
A former thought runs through my mind. “When you’re there Nick, ask if Sean O’Day was ever there?”
“I thought we’d ruled him out as a suspect.”
“Yeah I guess so, but not as a possible victim.”
“OK. Good point.”
Now’s the time.
I’ve avoided it for too long.
“Nick we need to talk.”
“What about?”
“What happened on the island.” Muscles in his jaws tighten as he clenches his teeth. “Jim Garry says they’ve got a court date for the trial. It’s in six weeks.”
“Uh-huh,” he grunts.
“It’s just that I need to know what you are going to say. Are you going to back me up? Tell them the sequence of events that show it was self-defence?”
He doesn’t speak, biting his lip. He won’t make eye contact.
I resist the temptation to ask again, to basically plead.
Finally. “They searched my apartment.”
“Yes, sure. They searched mine too. They didn’t find anything did they?”
“That’s it. I don’t know for sure. They took a lot of stuff. There could be something that ties us to the murders of Santiago and Perot.”
“If there was, they’d have filed charges by now, surely.”
He shrugs and goes silent for a bit. Then his voice is little more than a whisper. “They offered me immunity.”
A cold hand grips my gut. “In return for what?”
There’s embarrassment all over his face. “Steve said they might have found evidence that you were the shooter.”
“So you’re going to turn Queen’s evidence on me?”
An even longer silence. Then, “I can’t go to jail like this.” He thumps the arms of his wheelchair, the wheelchair he’s in because of my negligence two years ago.
Before I can respond, Adry unlocks the office door and walks in with donuts. It may be a cliché that cops love donuts but it’s definitely true in this office.
But Adry mustn’t hear any of this. Stammo shrugs and mouthes the words, “I’m sorry,” before wheeling past Adry and out the door.
Despite my conversation with Stammo weighing on my mind, it’s been a productive day. I’ve discovered the identity of a cheating husband’s girlfriend; between us, Adry and I have tracked down six former employees of a now bankrupt airline; and Workers’ Comp has given us a list of people to check out for possibly faking or exaggerating their injuries. All pretty boring stuff but boring can be good. It’s certainly better than the drama of the last few weeks.
Nick came back for a while but has now gone home to pick up his gun and go to the GAMMA meeting and Adry left an hour ago.
I stand up and stretch. Holy mackerel, it’s eight-fifteen; I’ve been in the office for over thirteen hours. A new indoor record. Shame Em has meetings again tonight, I really would like to get together with her. I wonder if I dare tell her about Samuel Island. I need to tell someone and I can’t think of anyone else I could talk to. My feelings for her are… well… amazing. Probably a bit too soon for the ‘L’ word but it’s not off the table.
OK. Stop acting like a love-sick teenager Cal Rogan. I’m going to head over to Stormcrow and eat a plate or two of wings and sample their fine choice of ales.
As I head for the door, my e
ye’s diverted to the Vancouver Sun lying on the coffee table in reception. Right there at the bottom right hand corner is a picture of Em. The headline reads Southbrook VP High on Vancouver. Em never mentioned she was going to be in the newspaper. It’s probably no big deal for her. She’s a Vice-President of a major corporation and probably appears in the press and on TV all the time. It makes me wonder if maybe she’s a bit out of my league. I’d never really thought about that. It gives me an uncomfortable feeling. I pick up the paper and start reading.
Southbrook, the high-end US department store is opening its first location in Canada. Located in downtown Vancouver on the site of the now defunct Harrows store, Southbrook hope to capitalize on the growing number of successful residents our City boasts. Maxine Audley, Southbrook’s VP of—
Maxine? Her name’s Emily. At least I thought it was. Then I remember her saying ‘Call me Em.’ I just assumed it was short for Emily, not the letter em. I grin. I’m starting to fall for a woman and I don’t even know her name.
As I read on, enjoying the warm glow that reading about her produces in me, I get to find out all sorts of interesting new stuff about Em the businesswoman and her history with the firm.
Suddenly two names jump off the page and smack me in the face. My mind races over the options and suddenly all the wheels click into place. Why didn’t I spot it before? I know who the killer is.
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 4, 5 & 6 (Box Set) Page 22
