by L E Fraser
“Was that blood?” He turned to look over his shoulder.
“Yeah. From a dead cat.” Sam led him behind the tree to the animal’s corpse. “She was holding it.”
“Jesus. Is she okay?”
Sam shook her head. “No. Can you imagine how awful it would be to find your pet mutilated?”
He glanced over his shoulder again with a troubled expression. “Should we go after her and tell Brenda?” His eyes shifted back to hers. “Maybe you should try to talk to Jennifer.”
Sam thought about the look on the girl’s face when she’d tried to touch her and shook her head. “No. Anything I do right now would be intrusive. Her father just died, and it’s understandable that she thinks someone hurt her cat.” She looked around. “But this is the country. A wild animal could have done it.”
Reece knelt and picked up a twig. He used the tip of the stick to pull up a section of flesh. “No,” he said slowly. “This looks sliced, not torn.”
A blood-covered maggot wiggled out of the guts. Saliva filled Sam’s mouth and she gagged.
Reece stood. “Take a few deep breaths,” he said and rubbed her back
“Maybe they’re claw marks?” she suggested, swallowing hard and breathing through her mouth.
I wish my brother would die, Jennifer had said.
“Animals kill because they’re threatened or hungry.” He waved the stick behind him before dropping it and wiping his hands on his jeans. “Anything that could do that to a cat wouldn’t be threatened. A coyote would have consumed it. If an owl had tried to grab it and dropped it, the talons would have left distinctive wounds, same with a raccoon’s claws.”
“You’re saying the predator was human.”
Reece shrugged. “An animal can’t pluck an eyeball without wounding the face. Have you got a garbage bag in the car?”
She nodded.
“Let’s take the body. I’ll call Brandy’s vet and have him take a look before we reach a conclusion.”
Reece walked toward the car and Sam was struck with the unshakable feeling of someone’s eyes on her. She turned in a circle. The fields were empty. Reece had his back to her, talking on this cell. She stared at the house. The sun’s glare reflected off the windows and she couldn’t see inside. But she detected a wink of bright light. Binoculars.
Someone was watching.
Chapter Nineteen
Reece
WHEN REECE FIRST joined Sam’s investigation firm, he filed articles of incorporation for Lanteka Consulting Inc., a dummy corporation. Toronto Chamber of Commerce listed it, Lanteka had an excellent rating with the Better Business Bureau, and an in-bound call centre live-answered the business number. A lovely website boasted an array of marketing services with glowing testimonials.
The marketing consulting company would pass base-level background and credit checks. Reece and Sam paid a hacker a hundred dollars a week to maintain the illusion of legitimacy and to push the social media side. Easy money, once everything was in place, but they frequently hired Behoo to dig around online to obtain intel on cases.
Behoo’s activities on the deep web most certainly breached Canadian privacy and cyber laws. Sam didn’t care, but Reece hoped they were never in a position where they had to speak to authorities over how they’d obtained information. He also worried that Behoo’s activities would eventually be of interest to the police. All Reece could do to try to hide their association with the hacker was to pay him in bitcoin to add a layer of cryptocurrency protection.
Neither Reece nor Sam had ever met the man and didn’t know his real name, but the hacker had never given Reece any reason to mistrust him. In fact, last year, when he’d forgotten his credit card at a restaurant, Behoo had called within the hour to ask if he’d had a sudden urge to spend thousands of dollars at Chanel Boutique in Yorkville. Reece trusted the hacker and did his best to respect the man’s obsessive need for anonymity.
Behoo and Lanteka had come in handy on more than one occasion. Today was one of those days.
A quick comparison of last year’s King City yearbook against the current staff list confirmed that Sally Alistair had taught grade eleven math the year before. The Board of Education no longer employed her and she’d left mid-semester.
Using Lanteka’s telephone number and contact details, he’d called the high school for a business reference, stating that Ms. Alistair had applied for a position with their market research division. The principal confirmed the dates of employment and the subjects she’d taught but declined to answer subjective questions or to comment on the teacher’s abrupt departure.
However, the man was curious about Lanteka’s hiring process. His daughter had graduated from a marketing program at Humber College. Reece directed him to the website and they had a lovely conversation about intern opportunities. Appetite whetted, the principal opened up to Reece by confidentially sharing that Ms. Alistair had had an unfortunate incident with a student. Her moral fibre was questionable, and he couldn’t recommend her to such an innovative organization as Lanteka. He did hope Reece would repay the professional favour and put in a good word for his daughter. After a bit of coaxing and some empty promises, the principal gave Reece Sally Alistair’s address.
Toys littered the front yard of the two-storey brick house, and a swing hung from the low branch of an apple tree laden with late spring blossoms. Beneath the tree was a group of trilliums, the provincial flower of Ontario that signified peace and hope. Digging them up from indigenous woodland areas not protected by the Ontario Trillium Protection Act wasn’t illegal, but people frowned on transplanting the wild flowers. It was a rebellious choice to display in a front garden.
Reece was lifting his hand to knock on the screen door when a man ambled by from inside the house, glanced over, and jumped.
“You startled me,” he exclaimed as he opened the door. “Can I help you?” Brown hair flopped into his eye, and he shoved it aside.
“Eric Alistair? Reece Hash.” He dug out his wallet and opened it to his investigator licence. “I’d like to ask you and your wife, Sally, a couple of questions.”
Eric opened the door and stepped out to the porch. He was a couple of inches taller than Reece, close to six-foot-five. His build was wiry and thin with slouched shoulders, as though he’d gotten so used to bending over, he didn’t bother to straighten up any longer.
His expression was neither friendly nor hostile when he asked, “What about?”
“A student she taught.”
Eric’s eyes narrowed. “What student?”
There wasn’t any reason to be cryptic, and Reece answered honestly. “Jordan Harris.”
Eric’s nose scrunched with distaste, and he folded his arms across his chest, taking a step back to block the door. “What about him?”
“His father—”
“Was murdered. I know. I read the papers. What’s that got to do with my wife?”
“We’re trying to get some background on the family,” Reece explained, curious about Eric’s sudden antagonism.
“Are you working with the cops?”
Reece settled on a small white lie he felt would put Eric at ease. “I’m collaborating with Detective Alston at York Regional Police,” he said.
That was not exactly true, as Alston had in fact been openly hostile when Reece had called to inform him that they’d taken the case. Reece wasn’t going to fret over semantics though.
Instead of soothing Eric, Reece’s comment aggravated him. “We’ve nothing to say to the police,” he stated briskly and turned toward the door.
Reece hurried to say, “Yes, but I’m not with the police. A man by the name of Dr. Roger Peterson hired my firm.”
Eric turned back and faced Reece, looking baffled. “The guy who wrote those books on recovery and living life on your own terms?”
“That’s right.”
“My wife read them. She’s into self-help stuff. Peterson’s a shrink, right? Did they get the monster into therapy?”
Eric ran his tongue across his bottom lip, thinking. After a minute, he entered the house and held the door for Reece. “My wife is in the living room.”
A tall, thin woman with short brown hair and large brown eyes was standing beside a fireplace, holding a child in her arms. The baby was sucking her thumb against her mother’s shoulder. Eric spoke to his wife, but Reece couldn’t hear the exchange. She glanced at Reece, whispered something to her husband, and nodded at his response.
“Tommy needs to go down for his nap,” she said to Reece on her way by.
Oops. Boy baby, not girl baby.
Sitting on a canvas-covered sofa to await Sally’s return, Reece gazed around the living room. He liked the bright colours and homespun country finishes better than the stark lines and grey, black, and white decor of the modern loft he shared with Sam.
The walls were painted blue, the shade of a shallow lake on a warm day. The trim was pale yellow. Handmade shelves, crafted from cut terracotta tiles that supported sheets of plywood, covered the walls on either side of the brick fireplace. The coffee table was a rectangular piece of glass perched on two pottery urns decorated with a swirling, abstract pattern. A sunflower rug covered the scratched wood floor, and a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers hung above the fireplace. Handcrafted picture frames, decorated with shells and dried flowers, held photos of Tommy in various stages of development. He looked like a girl in every snapshot.
A Steinway grand piano took up the entire dining room. On top of the closed lid, above the keys, were sheets of paper and four mechanical pencils. A good starting point to establish some rapport.
“Are you a musician?” Reece asked Eric, who had taken a seat in one of two stout chairs covered in aqua-striped fabric.
Eric nodded. “I compose for a theatre troupe downtown, and a production company commissioned me to do the score for an upcoming movie.”
“That must be interesting. What’s the movie?”
“Oh, just a sci-fi. No big deal.” Eric looked toward the stairs.
Having not receiving an enthusiastic response from Eric regarding his work, Reece decided on another approach. “Nice house. Did you paint the coffee table urns yourself?”
That evoked a bright smile. “No, Sally gets the credit.” Eric pointed at the Van Gogh copy above the fireplace. “That’s her work, but she’s a talented artist in her own right.” His voice rang with pride.
Eric glanced to his right and stood as his wife entered the room. “Sally, this is Reece Hash. Reece, my wife.”
Reece expected Sally to be shy and reserved. No reason for his assumption other than the demure way she’d interacted with her husband earlier.
She surprised him when she announced in a confident voice, “The Board of Education suspended me without pay for hitting Jordan Harris. Later, they asked for my resignation under the threat of termination. I have no regret or remorse over striking him. I wish I’d knocked his teeth out.” Her voice was a beautiful mezzo-soprano. It was at odds with the ugly, aggressive expression on her face.
Reece waited for her to explain what Jordan had done. She didn’t elaborate and sat beside her husband on the matching chair across from Reece.
“Last fall, I went to a convenience store,” Eric said. “Tommy was asleep in his car seat, so I didn’t wake him. I could see the car at all times. A cop pulled up, woke Tommy, and scared the shit out of him. When I ran out, he charged me with reckless endangerment of a minor because I’d left a crying baby in the car.”
Reece had no idea what that had to do with anything. He remained silent.
“Police dropped the charges,” Sally added.
Reece didn’t care. He did care why she hit Jordan Harris. “What happened with Jordan that made you so angry?”
“Sally tried to do the right thing,” Eric said. “When the school turned against her, she tried to speak with Brenda and Graham.”
“We also asked for help from the cops,” Sally added quickly. “Because of what happened with Eric and the baby and the horrible things the school said about me, the police disregarded our concerns.”
“Jordan did something that required the police?” Reece asked, trying to coax them back to the subject that interested him.
The couple exchanged a guarded look.
“It would help me to understand, if you could say what happened between you and Jordan,” Reece said patiently.
“Tell him,” Eric said.
Sally held his eyes and then turned to address Reece. “He hurt younger kids. Only around me. Never in front of any other teacher. I’d escort Jordan to the office where he’d deny everything,” Sally said. “When forced to confront him, his victims balked and wouldn’t corroborate my claim. Eventually, the principal accused me of taking an unprofessional dislike to the school’s star quarterback and fabricating allegations.” Her lips were a tight slash across her face, and she was clenching her hands into fists.
“What exactly did he do?” Reece asked.
“At first, it was intimidation,” Sally said as she unclenched her hands. “Mean stuff like crowding grade nine boys against a locker or throwing their books on the ground. He’d make fun of their size and embarrass them in front of bigger kids.” She stopped and her lips pressed together again.
“So Jordan’s a bully,” Reece stated, growing impatient.
Popular kids were often the “mean” kids in a school hierarchy. But answering violence with violence wasn’t a disciplinary strategy he endorsed, and he supported the school’s decision to dismiss her for striking a student. This was a waste of time.
“But then it shifted to girls,” Sally said. “Last year, I was at the school late. Jordan was in the hallway. He was sweet as pie, asking if I wanted him to escort me to my car. I declined and he left. When I finished what I was doing in the classroom, I went outside and found Jordan with a grade nine girl, away from the cameras. One hand was over her mouth, the other held her throat to keep her body pressed against the wall.” She choked up and had to stop, putting her hands over her face.
When she lowered her hands, tears were filling her eyes. “She was gasping for air, clawing at the hand around her throat. He’d torn off her hijab, ripped her leggings, and her skirt was up. He was… Jordan was raping her.”
“You caught Jordan raping a fourteen-year-old girl?” Reece asked in stunned disbelief.
She nodded and wiped the tears off her cheeks with the knuckle of her index finger. “I pulled him off her. He… he grabbed himself and asked if I wanted some. He… ejaculated on my leg. I hit him, locked the girl in my car, and called 911.”
“Jesus,” Reece muttered.
“The girl called her mother and sister who arrived before the cops. By then, Jordan was gone.”
“Did the girl confirm he’d raped her?”
Sally shook her head. “No. She’s Muslim and terrified of her father and brother. Her mother took her home before the police could question her. When they went to the house to interview her, she denied it happened. Her mother claimed she’d come straight home from school. There wasn’t any evidence to support my testimony.”
“What about your clothes? Any semen on your skirt?” Reece asked.
She dug in her pocket and took out a tattered tissue. After she’d wiped her nose, she said, “No and I scrubbed my leg with antibacterial wipes I had in the car. It never occurred to me it was evidence. I threw them out.”
Eric cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. “Then we started to have issues. The football coach harassed Sally at work, accusing her of all sorts of shit, and the principal took his side.” He sneered. “Old boys club alive and well, goddamn it.”
“One night, the garage caught fire,” Sally said. “The fire department told us if we hadn’t had the home security system, the smoke and fumes could have killed us. Our master bedroom and the nurser
y are above the garage.”
“Did they figure out the cause of the fire?” Reece asked.
“Solvents had spilled and combusted. But we didn’t keep solvents in the garage,” Sally said. “And the telephone calls came night after night. A freakish robotic voice, singing a depraved version of Up in the Cradle. The caller would shriek, ‘and down will come baby, covered in blood.’ Then there’d be this macabre hoot of laughter.” She reached out and grasped her husband’s hand.
“There were childish pranks, too,” Eric said. “Car tires slashed, windshields smashed, a rock through our front window. Jordan complained to the football coach that I threatened him. The cops treated me like the criminal.”
“Did you tape the calls?” Reece asked.
Sally shook her head. “It was random and late, like two or three in the morning. We’d prepare, but the calls wouldn’t come. We’d relax and it would start again. Sometimes on our landline, sometimes on one of our cells. We changed our numbers and unlisted the home phone. A week later, we received a call. On the home phone. Whoever it was had the unlisted number.”
“They got into our computer,” Eric said. “Uploaded malware and wiped out our hard drive. A remote access tool, the cops said, and they didn’t consider it a big deal. They said it happens all the time.” Eric’s cheeks flushed with anger. “I lost all my compositions.”
It surprised Reece he hadn’t backed up his files. Then again, it might not have mattered. Hackers could install a remote access tool—a RAT—via a USB stick the hapless user inserted into their computer, or from a link attached to an email using a recognizable address that overrode spam detectors. The hackers could access whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. They could download malware that would affect anything connected to the computer, such as a remote hard drive or USB stick that backed up files. One of many reasons experts recommended not leaving backup devices connected to a computer.
“They sent pornographic emails to everyone in our contacts,” Sally was saying. “They accessed our bank accounts. Before we realized what was happening and cancelled our credit cards, they’d maxed out everything, including a fifty-thousand-dollar line of credit.” Tears welled up again in her eyes. “We’ll never get out of debt. If the house wasn’t in my parents’ name, we’d have lost it.”
