The Evil That Men Do

by Michael Blair

  Gil paled.

  “His last words were about you,” I said, lying through my teeth, but better at it than Gil. “Do you want to know what they were?”

  “No,” he said. “Goodbye, Riley.”

  He tried to shut the door. I kicked it open. He staggered back into the front hall, almost falling. I followed, slamming the door shut behind me.

  “Goddamnit, Riley!”

  “Listen to me, Gil. Thomason arrived at the boat Chaz Brandt was hiding out on in a little rubber dinghy he’d swiped somewhere nearby. He couldn’t have paddled far. The police will find his rental car, and when they do, they’ll find his phone, if he didn’t have it on him when he died. What do you think they’ll find when they look at his call history?”

  “I dunno. You tell me.”

  “You’re really starting to piss me off, Gil,” I said. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn about you. Or the money, for that matter. All I want is Terry and Rebecca back. And if I have to beat the crap out of you to get you to stop lying to me, well, so be it.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, keeping up a brave front as he backpedalled into his living room. “If that’s what it’ll take to convince you I’m not lying.”

  “You don’t believe I’d do it, do you?” I said, advancing on him as he continued to back away. “You don’t think I’m cold-blooded enough.” I wasn’t sure I was, either. “I don’t want to hurt you, Gil, but trust me, I will, if you don’t tell me the truth.”

  His big flatscreen TV stood on the low bench in front of the fireplace. Gil reached behind the TV and took a heavy wrought-iron fireplace poker from the tool rack. Three feet long, it had a barbed end, similar to a log-rolling pike. I backed off as he waved the thing at me. I looked around for something with which to defend myself, picked up a fat leather seat cushion from the sofa.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he said, smirking, coming at me with the poker.

  “This,” I said, and charged at him, holding the seat cushion in front of me.

  Gil flailed at me with the poker. Using the cushion as a shield, I drove him backwards. The poker pierced the leather of the cushion cover, the barb preventing him from pulling it out. He backed into the big TV. It tipped off the bench against the brick front of the fireplace. The screen shattered as Gil fell over the bench and landed on the TV. Yanking the fireplace poker out of his hands, I threw it and the cushion across the room.

  “Never bring a fireplace poker to a pillow fight,” I said, hoisting him out of the mess of the smashed

  television.

  “Very funny,” he said. “Christ, that was a three-thousand-dollar TV.” He twisted his neck as he tried to look over his own shoulder. “Shit, am I bleeding?”

  I half turned him and looked at his back. “No, you’re not bleeding.” I shoved him into his recliner and stood over him. “No more bullshit, Gil. Where are Terry and Rebecca? I swear, if you keep lying to me I’m going to break your fingers off and feed them to you.”

  “What makes you so fucking sure I’m lying?”

  “Goddamnit, Gil, the only way Thomason could have gotten to Mace McKenny and Marie-Claire Cloutier ahead of me, or found the boat Chaz Brandt was hiding out on, was if he—or someone—was listening in on my phone calls.” The zipper bag containing the smashed iPhone was on the floor. I picked it up. “I regret smashing the phone, Gil, but I’ll bet the main memory chip is still okay. I don’t have to tell you how small they are. You’d probably have to run the phone through a food processor or zap it in a microwave oven to destroy the chip. I don’t imagine a technical forensics expert would have much trouble recovering the information on the memory chip, which will reveal the eavesdropping software you installed on the phone.”

  He shook his head, as if that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. Perhaps it was. “You’ve got nothing, Riley. Less than nothing. Just go away and I’ll forget that you assaulted me in my own home.”

  “Sorry, Gil,” I said. “I can’t do that. Okay, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you are telling the truth. The thing is, I need to be sure. If you’re still denying you had anything to do with Terry and her daughter’s abduction after I’ve broken two or three of your fingers, I guess I’ll have to believe you.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, sitting on his hands, just in case. “Who do you think you are? James Bond, for Chrissake? You don’t have the balls to torture anyone.”

  “Let’s see,” I said, and with a short, sharp right jab, I broke his nose.

  He yelped at the sudden pain and clapped his hand to his face, blood dripping, tears leaking from his eyes. I felt soiled, ashamed of myself for hurting him, but I’d get over it.

  “Goddamnit,” Gil said, snuffling and snorting blood. “Fuck.”

  “Sorry, Gil. I didn’t want to hurt you. Once upon a time you were my friend. But you haven’t given me a whole lot of choice. I’ll hurt you some more, too, if I have to. Tell me where they are.”

  “Shit,” Gil said, seeming to deflate.

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said. “Where are they?”

  He told me.

  “We’ll take your car,” I said, hauling him to his feet.

  Chapter 32

  As Gil drove north toward the Trans-Canada, I tried Nina again, and again got her voicemail. I called Louise Desjardins and asked her if Nina had come back to the office or called in. She hadn’t done either. I tried her home phone and got voicemail again. I was starting to get a very bad feeling.

  On the Trans-Canada, heading west, I asked Gil how he and Thomason had met.

  “Fred Strom brought him to a strategy meeting of Brandt’s victims,” he said, voice thick and nasal. His nose was red and swollen, wads of blood-stained tissue protruding from his nostrils. I’d reset his nose and applied a strip of adhesive tape across the bridge, which I knew from experience was about all you can do for a broken nose, besides applying an ice pack. He was going to have a couple of nice shiners, too. “I knew he was a fuck-up right from the start.”

  “How did Strom and Thomason know each other?”

  “They worked together at some furniture manufacturing company.” Snuffling, he removed the wads of bloody tissue from his nose, lowered the side window and tossed them out.

  “Did Thomason set up Strom’s assault on Terry after Nina’s album launch?”

  He prodded his nose. “Yeah. Stupid bastard. He thought things were moving too slowly with Terry, so he thought he’d play the hero, I guess. You really screwed that up for him, though. He was not happy about it.”

  “Tough,” I said, and felt a stab of guilt. Thomason may have been a sociopathic dimwit, but he was dead, after all, and death is the great equalizer.

  “None of this was my fault, you know,” Gil said. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt. I just wanted to get some of Dad’s money back, to help save my business.” He glanced at me across the car. “And protect your investment.”

  “Don’t try to play me, Gil,” I said. “You’re not very good at it. Right now, the last thing I’m worried about is your company or my investment.”

  “Easy for you to say. You don’t have your whole life riding on it. Okay, fine, I admit I set Thomason up with a couple of books written by some wannabe writer friends of mine so he could get close to Terry. But all he was supposed to do was keep tabs on her in case she and Brandt were still in touch, or get her to trust him enough to tell him where Brandt was. Is it my fault he didn’t stick to the script? How was I to know he’d go after Brandt and the money himself?”

  “You’re telling me it was his idea to abduct Terry and Rebecca?”

  “Of course it was. He was worried that if Marie-Claire Cloutier turned Brandt in, he’d lose any chance to get his hands on the money.”

  “How did he manage it?” I asked.

  “He convinced Terry that she and her daughter were in danger and hustled th
em out of the house before they even had time to pack. He had the perfect place for them to hide out, he told them. By the time they realized where he was taking them, it was too late.”

  “In danger from whom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Me, I guessed. “And you went along with this?” I said.

  “Christ, no. Jesus, Riley, do you really think I’d agree to something like that? I didn’t know anything about it till it was done.”

  “Do I need to start breaking your fingers?” I said. “Thomason wasn’t smart enough, and probably incapable of thinking that far ahead. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? He isn’t around to take the heat. Trust me when I tell you that if any harm has come to either Terry or her daughter, I’m going to make it my life’s work to see that you pay the price, no matter what it takes.”

  We crossed the Île-aux-Tourtes Bridge and continued west toward the Ontario border. A few kilometres past the Hudson turnoff, Gil took an exit south toward Saint-Lazare. After a few more turns we came to a gravelled drive that ran straight to a picturesque farmhouse fifty metres or so back from the road. Tall poplars stood along both sides of the drive, and the property was surrounded by neat red-stained plank fences. The lawns and paddocks needed mowing. There was a small barn and stable at the rear of the property, but no horses that I could see. A For Sale by Owner sign was nailed to a tree by the road.

  “Nice,” I said. “I don’t blame Strom for trying to save it. Have you been here before?”

  “Once,” Gil said.

  “Does anyone else live here besides Strom and his mother?”

  “No. Thomason was crashing here for a while, but …”

  He shrugged.

  “Do you know if he keeps guns in the house?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think he does.”

  I took his answer with a certain degree of skepticism. I wasn’t very concerned that Strom might have a handgun. Few Canadians keep handguns. But what self-respecting farmer, even horse farmer, didn’t keep a small-bore shotgun or a .22 rifle for plinking rats?

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go. Slowly. Let’s not spook anyone.”

  Gil turned into the driveway and drove between the rows of poplars. We were almost at the house when I saw a small red car parked behind a stand of cedars, next to Strom’s pickup. It had a Union Jack flag painted on the roof. It was Nina’s Mini Cooper.

  “Stop the bloody car!” I roared.

  Gil stamped on the brake, jerking the car to a halt. “What’s wrong?”

  “Did you know she was here?”

  “Who?”

  “Nina,” I sad. “That’s her car.”

  “Is it?”

  I fought down an almost overwhelming urge to smash his face in. “You know damn well it is. You bastard. Did you know she was here?”

  “No, of course not,” he said.

  “You’re lying again, Gil. When I got to your place, you told me you were on your way out. Strom called you, didn’t he? He panicked when Nina showed up, so he called you. Goddamnit, Gil.”

  “I swear to God, Riley, I didn’t know she was here. I was going to the office to—”

  “Stop. No more lies. You can swear to whatever god you believe in, Gil, but if anything’s happened to Nina, I’ll rip your fucking heart out. Let’s go.”

  Maxwell lifted his foot off the brake and eased the car into motion. The driveway looped around in front of the house. He stopped by the front steps, switched the engine off and turned to me.

  “Look,” he said. “I know you don’t believe Terry had anything to do with her husband’s scam, but you don’t really know her, do you? You hadn’t seen her in twenty years. But even when you were living together, you never really knew her.”

  “Shut up, Gil,” I said. “I’m tired of your bullshit. I don’t give a shit if you think Terry was involved or not. In fact, I don’t care if she was involved. If she was, it will all come out when Brandt goes to trial for killing

  Thomason. He’s just the kind of sorry son of a bitch who would use whatever leverage he can. But when we spoke to Marie-Claire Cloutier in Vancouver, she told me Terry knew nothing about Brandt’s scheme. So just save your breath.”

  I opened the door of the car and got out, never taking my eye off Gil as he got out the driver’s side. Shutting the car door, I gestured toward the steps to the wide, covered veranda.

  “After you,” I said.

  Gil climbed the steps to the veranda and reached for the doorbell, but the door opened before he could ring it. Although it was not quite 8:30 p.m. Fredrick Strom looked as though he had just awakened from a long sleep in a cave. He was unshaven, his hair stood out from one side of his head, and his eyes were red-rimmed and bleary. His plaid work shirt, worn over a grimy white T-shirt, was untucked and unbuttoned. A sour odour emanated from his body, not quite masking the musky smell of horses, the odour I hadn’t recognized on our first encounter outside the hotel in Hudson. He stared past Gil at me. His eyes wavered, then swivelled back to Gil.

  “What happened to you? What’s he doing here?”

  “I’ve come to take Ms. Jardine, her daughter, and Nina Sparrow home,” I said. “Can we come in?”

  Strom goggled at me. “What?” He looked at Gil. “Where’s Lawrence?”

  “He’s dead,” Gil said.

  Strom stared at him, eyes devoid of comprehension. “What do you mean, dead?”

  “Let’s go inside,” Gil said. He took Strom by the arm and steered him into the house.

  I followed them inside. The house seemed smaller on the inside than it appeared from the outside, probably due to the wide veranda and deep eaves. I looked for signs of Nina, Terry and Rebecca, saw none. Straight ahead was a staircase to the second floor. To the right of the stairs, a hall led to the kitchen at the rear of the house. To the left of the stairs was a dining room filled with heavy Victorian or Edwardian furniture, finish dulled by a patina of dust or age. To the right was the living room, furnished with a mishmash of styles, none of which looked more recent than the nineteen fifties.

  “Where are they?” I said to Strom.

  “Where’s who?” Strom said. He blinked, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then added, “There’s no one here ’cept me and Mother.”

  I took a breath to calm myself. “Mr. Strom. Whatever this idiot and Lawrence Thomason have gotten you into, it’s way over your head. In more ways than one, I think. Just tell me where Ms. Jardine and her daughter are. And Nina Sparrow. Don’t make things any worse for yourself than they already are.”

  “I told you, there isn’t no one here but me and Mother.”

  “Mr. Strom. Fred. Nina Sparrow’s car is parked in your yard.”

  Strom’s eyes bulged with panic and he shook his head vigorously, as if trying to shake gnats out of his hair.

  “Talk to him, Gil,” I said, fighting down the fear that I was too late, that Terry, Rebecca and Nina were already dead and buried under the floor of Strom’s horse barn. “You got them into this, maybe you can get them out.”

  Strom spun and bolted down the hall toward the kitchen. I went after him, reached for him, got hold of his shirt sleeve, but the fabric tore. He slipped away and slammed out the back door.

  “Tabernac!” someone swore. Marc Lefebvre stepped through the door into the kitchen. “Oh, merde,” he said, when he saw me. He snatched an automatic pistol from under his sport coat.

  I threw myself to the side. A stab of pain lanced through my knee and I staggered against a kitchen counter.

  “Relax, chum,” Lefebvre said, with a bark of laughter. “I’m not gonna shoot you. At least, not yet.”

  I straightened, backing away from him, wary, watching for an opening.

  “And don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “You, either.” He pointed the pistol at Gil.

&n
bsp; “Who the hell are you?” Gil said.

  “It doesn’t matter who I am,” Lefebvre said.

  “Marc Lefebvre, former police fraud squad detective,” I said, “meet Gil Maxwell, soon to be former mobile app developer.”

  “Right,” Lefebvre said. “You’re one o’ the guys been jerking poor ol’ Freddy’s strings. Where’s the other one? Thomason.”

  “In the West Vancouver morgue,” I said.

  “Ah,” Lefebvre said. “Who put him there? Not you.”

  “No. Chaz Brandt killed him.”

  “And where’s he?”

  “In police custody.”

  “Well then, there’s no time to waste, is there?”

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Lefebvre?” I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be polite.

  “You’re a smart guy,” Lefebvre said, revealing his bad teeth in a feral smile. His eyes were bloodshot, and the smell of alcohol on his breath was strong, almost overwhelming his halitosis. “What do you think? I’m after the same thing this idiot and his pals are after. The money Brandt stole.”

  “And, like them, you think Terry knows where it is, right?”

  “Yeah, I do. Some of it, anyway.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Ms. Jardine? She and her kid and the little tattooed freak are locked up in Fred’s mom’s horse barn.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “For now.”

  Lefebvre reached into the left side pocket of his sport coat and tried to take out a pair of self-locking white-plastic handcuffs. The cuffs caught on the lining of the pocket. The muzzle of the pistol drifted as Lefebvre looked down to disentangle them. “Merde,” he swore, as the lining of the pocket tore. He was, I realized, more than a little drunk. Freeing the cuffs, he tossed them to the floor at my feet.

  “Cuff yourselves together and I’ll take you to them,” he said. “Maybe you can convince Mrs. Jardine to tell me what I need to know. I don’t want to hurt the kid, but I will if I have to.”

  I picked up the handcuffs.