Dead Air

by David A. Poulsen

  “Actually, sarcasm aside, you’re not far off on that.”

  I looked back at where the body lay. I heard Yvette Landry say “We’re good here.” She was speaking to Lynn Cannizaro, who in turn signalled a couple of attendants, who moved into position to remove Hugg’s body, first to the body removal vehicle and then to the morgue.

  “Any idea when you’ll be scheduling the autopsy?” Landry asked.

  Cannizaro shook her head. “Obviously, this will be a priority. If we can, later today maybe. Call me this afternoon. By then I’ll have talked to Grey and should have an idea.”

  “Grey” was Grey Bruce, Calgary’s Chief Medical Examiner, at least five years past retirement age and possessing more energy than most of the staff who worked for him, most of whom were thirty or forty years his junior. For all his vitality, however, Bruce was more than a little erratic and extremely resistant to pressure from outside forces, including the police.

  Landry nodded and Andrew Chisholm added another notation to his little notebook. I turned back to Cobb.

  “Sorry, I know I sound like an ass. This …” I waved my arm to take in the crime scene, “this is way out of my league, Mike. I want you to know that.”

  “I get that, and I’m sorry I asked you to come here, but I’m going to need your help and —”

  “I need to get back to the hospital.” I started to leave, stopped and look back at Cobb. “Why? Why do you need my help? How does this change what I was already doing?”

  Mike took hold of my arm. His eyes narrowed.

  “He’s hired me.”

  “Hired you.”

  “Yeah. To prove his innocence … in the event he’s charged, and I think he will be. He’s got a lawyer, of course, but he wants me on the team.”

  The light finally went on. “And you brought me here because you want me on the team as well and figured I should be in on the ground floor.”

  Cobb nodded.

  I paused, thinking. “Do you have any idea how much of me wants to rejoice that Larmer could be sent away for thirty or forty years? There is nothing about the man that I don’t find repugnant. Even if he and I shared the same world view, which I thank God we do not, I couldn’t stand to be around the creep for longer than five minutes. This is the guy you want me to help get off.”

  “No, not help get him off,” Cobb said. “Help prove his innocence. That’s not the same thing.”

  There was a big part of me that wanted to tell Cobb to shove it.

  Instead I said. “I have to think about it. I’ll call you.”

  I cast one last look back at where Hugg was being lifted into the back of the body transport van. I didn’t look at Cobb as I started toward my car. “I’m going to have to think damn hard about this.”

  I didn’t know if he heard me.

  I called Jill.

  When she picked up, I said, “Hey, it’s me. I’m finished up here for the moment and headed your way. You need anything?”

  “Don’t need anything, but you might want to delay your arrival here. They gave Kyla something to help her sleep and she’s just dozed off. It might be two or three hours before she wakes up. I’m going to hang out for a while so I’m here when she wakes up but if you have stuff to do, maybe you should. How did it go?”

  “Bad enough that I don’t want to talk about it on the phone,” I replied. “I’ll tell you about it when I see you. And yeah, I could use a little time right now. I’ll come up to the hospital in a couple of hours.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little stressed. Murder isn’t nearly as much fun as it was when Columbo and Jessica Fletcher were on the job.”

  “I imagine not.”

  “We’ll talk when I see you.”

  We rang off and I started the Accord.

  Ever since I was old enough to go places by myself, my favourite place to go has been the public library. For me the library had always been more than a place to find books. Long before there was an internet it was the greatest information source out there. It was a place I could go to read the latest copy of Sports Illustrated, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (the publication that sparked my interest in journalism and, in particular, the crime beat), and The New Yorker.

  But more than merely the place I went to replenish my reading supply and learn about the Hindenburg disaster, the library was my refuge, the place I wanted to be when no other place would work — a place to think. I needed that place now and stopped at the Louise Riley Branch on the North Hill.

  I found a table and settled in with my notebook, a sharp pencil, and the calm that being there brought. I made notes on everything I knew about Buckley-Rand Larmer and Jasper Hugg. I started with my first meeting with Larmer when we were presenters at the university and continued right up to my conversation with Patsy Bannister and my own ill-fated meeting with Larmer. I wanted everything I knew about him, including my online research notes (I rewrote those as a review tactic) in that notebook. Then I duplicated the process with Jasper Hugg.

  I read and reread, cross-referenced, underlined, crossed out, and doodled in margins. And after almost three hours I was no closer to a decision on whether I would work with Cobb to prove Larmer innocent.

  I packed up my notes, exchanged smiles with a pleasant-looking librarian and stepped out into the beginnings of a lovely Calgary evening. I’d been longer than I intended, but on my way back to the hospital, I stopped at a florist and bought an arrangement after telling the woman this needed to be the cheeriest bouquet ever designed. When she’d finished I had to admit she’d created something amazing. Even after a day that had included seeing a dead body up close — a lot closer than I cared for — receiving an offer I wanted to refuse, and getting mediocre news or no news about Kyla’s condition, the flowers and the other elements in the arrangement were almost able to make me forget the past several hours.

  When I arrived at emergency, a nurse you’d like to have for your sister informed me that Kyla had been moved to a ward, gave me explicit directions for getting there, and complimented me on the floral arrangement.

  When I got to the room on the seventh floor, the door was pulled to and I tapped softly. Jill’s voice, sounding a lot better than it had earlier, invited me in. Kyla was sitting up, looking less pale but still a long way from chipper. She had an intravenous hooked onto her left arm and a glass of what looked like apple juice in her other hand. She managed a smile in my direction, and the smile got bigger when she saw the flowers.

  Jill rose, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “Adam, those are beautiful.” She made room on the wide windowsill for the vase and its contents.

  “Picked ’em myself,” I handed the arrangement to Jill and winked at Kyla. “Okay if I sit here?” I pointed to the edge of the bed.

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded seriously. “What I have isn’t supposed to be catching.”

  “Actually,” Jill added, sitting in a chair near the window, “we don’t know what she’s got, but they’re moving forward with finding out.”

  “Well, that’s good news.” I looked at Kyla. “Isn’t it?”

  “Not exactly,” she said with an unhappy shake of her head. “Tell him,” she instructed her mother.

  “Well, unfortunately” — I could tell that Jill was trying to make her voice sound cheerful — “the preparation for a colonoscopy requires that you completely clean out your system.”

  “Clean out as in …?”

  “Uh-huh. You have to drink stuff that will … well, clean out your system.”

  I felt bad for Kyla. Somebody who’d spent all that time in the bathroom for the last several days was now going to have to take stuff that would put her back in the bathroom. “The good news is,” Jill added, “she doesn’t have to go through that until tomorrow. First they want to get her built back up a little.”

 
“But I can’t eat anything.” Kyla frowned. “Except Jell-O, which I hate, juice, which is okay, and tea with no milk or sugar.”

  “And popsicles.” Jill smiled. “Don’t forget the popsicles.”

  “Which would be okay if they had more than one flavour — orange. How many orange popsicles can you eat?”

  “Yikes!” I said and turned to Jill. “Do they actually think she’s got anything left in her to clean out?”

  “Hah!” Kyla nodded violently. “That’s what I said.”

  “Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be how it works.” Jill reached over and patted her daughter’s leg in condolence. “The doctor says she can go home after she comes out of the anaesthetic for the colonoscopy and she’ll be able to eat pretty close to normally.”

  It seemed to me that Jill was working pretty hard at finding positives to focus on and that Kyla wasn’t totally buying it.

  I looked at her. “Think you could spare your mom for fifteen minutes or so?”

  “As long as you’re not taking her for a nice dinner.”

  I laughed. “Nothing but coffee and orange popsicles, I promise.”

  Kyla giggled, which I took as a good sign. Jill bent over the bed and kissed her. “We won’t be long.”

  As we got to the door, Kyla said, “Adam.”

  I turned back to her.

  “Thanks for the flowers. I totally love them.”

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart.”

  Jill didn’t say anything until we were in the elevator. “How did you know that the thing I wanted most in the world was a coffee?”

  “Hell, I wasn’t thinking of you. I wanted one for myself.”

  She punched my arm and managed a smile that created more lines around the eyes than usual. The past few days had taken a toll.

  The elevator door opened and we made our way to the cafeteria, which was populated by a few nurses, a couple of doctors, and a group of school kids a year or two older than Kyla who looked like they were about to perform for some of the patients, maybe a school choir. Or maybe they’d already performed and were grabbing snacks and drinks before leaving the hospital.

  I pointed to a table and Jill nodded and headed off in that direction while I got the coffees.

  I set one down in front of her, sat down, and took one of her hands in mine. “Okay, what are the doctors saying?”

  She shook her head. “They really aren’t sure. They’ll know more once they have the results of the colonoscopy.”

  “But what’s a colonoscopy for? What’s it supposed to find?”

  “A specialist stopped by for a few minutes and said they wanted to check for inflammatory bowel disease — colitis or Crohn’s disease. That’s a possibility, but we won’t know until after the test.”

  “And if it’s one of those?” I’d heard the terms before but knew almost nothing about either.

  “I’d already done some reading even before the specialist talked to us. Lots of times colitis or Crohn’s is worse in kids. But usually it can be controlled with diet and medication. Sometimes there are surgeries to remove the diseased part of the small bowel or colon. But they try to avoid that if they can.”

  Diet. Medication. Surgeries. Not happy words.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a process here. The colonoscopy is the first step. Once we know what’s causing her problem, then we can start figuring out how to deal with it.”

  I nodded and forced a smile. “Yeah … but damn.”

  “I know. Now why don’t you tell me what happened with Jasper Hugg.”

  I released her hand and took a long swallow of the coffee. It wasn’t bad.

  “Multiple stab wounds. Pretty awful.”

  Jill muttered something under her breath that could’ve been a curse. Aloud she said, “Do they have any idea who might have …”

  I nodded. “The police have someone in custody.”

  Maybe it was the look on my face or maybe it was her intuition, but she set her coffee cup down. “Larmer?”

  I nodded again.

  “But why? Why would he …?”

  “That’s where it gets tricky.”

  “Oh? Tricky how?”

  “The cops have arrested Larmer and are going to charge him with murder. Cobb says he’s innocent and wants us to prove it.”

  “That doesn’t sound easy. Why does Cobb think Larmer didn’t do it?”

  “Because … Larmer told him he didn’t do it.”

  We sat for a while, neither of us saying anything.

  Finally Jill spoke. “You said ‘us.’”

  “What?”

  “You said Mike wants us to prove it. Us as in him … and you.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

  “Which puts you smack in the middle of a murder investigation. Again.”

  “It would,” I said. “Except that I haven’t agreed yet.”

  “You haven’t?”

  I waited, wanting to find words that would adequately explain what I was feeling. I picked up my coffee, then set it down again. “Jill, I find Buckley-Rand Larmer one of the most appalling people I’ve ever come across. For me he has no redeeming qualities. He’s something that has come out from under a rock, and the best thing that can happen is for him to slither back under. Or be forced back there and kept there for a really long time, like, say, forever.”

  “So it’s safe to say you don’t like him, then.”

  I saw the crinkle at the corners of her mouth that was always a giveaway that she was teasing me.

  I realized I’d made much the same speech to Cobb and grinned. “Gee, I thought I’d done a pretty good job of disguising how I felt about the man.”

  She laughed. “You might need to work on that a little.”

  She looked at her watch and drank down the last of her coffee. “I should be getting back. But let me ask you something first. What if Mike is right and Larmer didn’t kill Jasper Hugg? And say, just for the sake of argument, that Larmer wasn’t a bottom feeder and you did like the guy, or didn’t really know him well enough to like or dislike him. Would that change how you’d react to Mike’s request for help?”

  “Jill, I’m not a cop and I’m not a private investigator. And I don’t want to be. What I saw today was beyond horrible. This isn’t my world and —”

  She held up a hand. “That isn’t what I asked you.”

  I shook my head. “If it was somebody else other than Larmer? I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. It is Larmer, and he is who he is, and who he is makes me sick.”

  “And what if he’s innocent?”

  “Are you telling me you want me to do this?” I stared at her, more than a little surprised by what I was hearing. “This is a murder investigation, Jill. That means if it isn’t Larmer, then the killer is out there somewhere and it’s just possible that he’s killed not one but at least two people, a Larmer-like lizard in Hamilton and now Jasper Hugg. I thought you and I were pretty much on the same page on the idea of keeping me out of murder investigations.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’ve never said that. I don’t want you in dangerous situations because I love you and I don’t want anything to happen to you. That’s not the same thing.”

  “But this could be dangerous.”

  That was lame and I knew it and Jill saw through it right away.

  “Adam Cullen, don’t put this on me. I’m just asking the question — would you be okay with it if Mike is right and Larmer’s innocent but is convicted, anyway. And you weren’t there to help because the guy’s a jerk. That’s all.”

  She stood up then and I drained the last of my coffee and stood up with her.

  “I have to get back to Kyla.” She reached out and touched my face.

  “I�
��ll come up and say goodbye.”

  Neither of us spoke as we rode up the elevator and strode down the hall to Kyla’s room. But when we stepped in, she was asleep. We stood and watched her sleep for a few minutes.

  I stepped to her bedside and gently patted her shoulder. Jill came up beside me and took my hand. “You know I’m on your side, right? And whatever you decide —”

  I put my fingers on her mouth and said, “Don’t say any more.”

  She looked up at me, her eyes searching my face.

  I said, “I just have some thinking I need to do.”

  She nodded and stepped around to the other side of Kyla’s bed to sit where she’d been before.

  “Promise me one thing.” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Promise me you’ll get some sleep.”

  “I promise.” She smiled.

  “Tonight,” I added.

  She smiled again, gave a tiny nod.

  “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  With that I headed out of the room, this time taking the stairs down to the main floor.

  I was still restless and a long way from sleepy, so I drove and walked the streets of downtown Calgary, then moved over to Kensington and walked some more. Interesting area, Kensington. It’s actually just a street. You could argue one of the coolest streets in the city, but it is one street in an area known as Hillhurst-Sunnyside. Good marketing or maybe good luck has led to the whole neighbourhood being called Kensington. I finally settled into a bar I liked a lot — Molly Malone’s Irish Pub — where I drank a Guinness and watched the last two innings of the Blue Jays game in Anaheim.

  When the game ended I sat for a while nursing the Guinness and liking the noise, the energy, the pub smells. I stayed maybe an hour. Back on the street I stopped on my way to the Accord and called Cobb’s cell, got his machine.

  “If you’ve got time in the morning we need to have breakfast — how about the Blue Star Diner, maybe ten. I’ll buy and put it on the expense account you’re going to get. And we can get started on proving Larmer’s innocence. Now there’s a goddamn phrase that doesn’t exactly roll off my tongue. Call me if that time doesn’t work for you; otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”