Disposable Souls

by Phonse Jessome

  “What sweater, Louise?”

  “I put it under her head. I didn’t know what else to do.” Shit, she got too close. Thelma would play in her mind more than in ours. I was sure she’d alibi out, but we’d need to get some exclusionary DNA.

  “Did you move or touch anything else?” Her gaze moved back out over the water, but I knew it wasn’t what she was seeing.

  “No, nothing. I came over here and called 911 on my cell. I can’t…” More tears.

  “Look, Louise, I don’t think you should stay here. I’m going to send you home with an officer, and we’re going to come by and speak with you a little later. Okay? Before we do that, please think hard. Was there anyone, anything unusual when you arrived in the park this morning? Before you came out on the trail, maybe? Were there other cars in the lot?”

  “Well, there was that guy who feeds the cats. There’s three of them living over by the rocks. He’s very nice, he feeds them every day. I don’t know his name.” I jotted a note. If he was a park regular, we needed to find him.

  “No one else, then?”

  “Oh, a truck. There was a white truck. It left when I pulled in. I didn’t see who was in it though.”

  “What kind of truck? Do you remember?” Another loose end to tug.

  “White. I’m sorry, I don’t know much about cars.” She looked at me, now desperate to help.

  “Can you describe it at all?”

  “It wasn’t the kind of truck with an open back. It was like the ones you see in the commercials going through puddles and snow.”

  “An SUV?”

  “A what? I’m so sorry. I really want to help you, to help her.” She pointed back toward Thelma. “I just don’t know cars.” She looked back to the water, and I knew the tears were rolling again.

  “I’m sure the man who feeds the cats will know. You’ve been a great help, Louise. Don’t worry.” I walked over to the uniform and told him to take her home and keep her there. I planned to send a female detective to see her. Sometimes that mattered.

  Dr. Ian was through with the body when we returned. He’d need her on a table before working out the sequence of the wounds. Half a dozen officers remained at the scene, huddled in small groups, talking, taking notes, facing away from Thelma Waters. The ME was with Carla. He turned his bulk toward us as we approached.

  “Before you start, Detective Neville,” his hand was raised as he looked at us, “here is what I can say. Same rule applies today. Nothing in the field is as good as it will be when I get to autopsy. That said, I know you are impatient.” He glanced down at his notepad. Carla gave us a blank stare. She looked older, still beautiful but more worn. Dr. Ian resumed.

  “Likely cause of death is exsanguination due to a severed aorta. It appears to be completely severed, so it was quick.” News we all wanted.

  “The bad news for you: she was not killed here. Not enough blood.”

  Another crime scene to look for. I hadn’t even thought about that. I rubbed the back of my neck.

  “Let me ask you something else, doc.”

  He closed his notebook and shoved it into the side pocket of an expensive suit jacket. I realized he was not wearing coveralls today. This case changed everybody’s priorities.

  “Do you think this is the same killer?”

  He pulled his glasses off and began wiping them with his tie.

  “You know, of course, forensic medicine is my specialty. But, I confess I do dabble in forensic psychology. This is pure guesswork now, educated yes, but guesswork nonetheless. You’ll have to consult with the proper experts.” He looked. I nodded. He continued.

  “Okay, my guess is no. Not even close. Pastor Gardner’s wounds are minimal. The stab wound was post-mortem but could have been almost consecutive to the strangulation, so no overkill. No sign of post-mortem attacks beyond that, aside from what he sustained as the body was moved. No indicators of passion or hatred in that crime at all. Now here…” He gestured toward Thelma Waters. We didn’t look. “Here we are dealing with a crime motivated entirely by passion. This killer not only wanted to kill his victim, he wanted to punish her long after death. As though death itself was not punishment enough. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say a killer who has undergone a psychotic break.”

  “Psychotic break? We see that a lot in the street, doc, but it never looks like this,” Blair said, as he, too, gestured to a body no one looked at.

  “True. In most cases, the break leaves a person lost in a world of his own making. Harmless to others, but sometimes a danger to himself. Many of our homeless have suffered breaks.” He continued rubbing the glasses with his tie. “There is precedent in forensic psychology for something like this. Some psychotic breaks have led to the most extreme forms of violence. Especially if our killer entered this state with a pre-existing psychopathic personality disorder. I believe this killer has lost touch with himself, and with the world as we know it. He, or in fairness she”—he looked at Carla as though his suggestion that the killer could be female was somehow in deference to her—“we really don’t know, but I suspect it is a man based on the physical strength required to inflict some of those stab wounds. At any rate, our killer is now functioning outside of all norms. Sort of a mental virtual reality. Whatever his pathology, it is his entire reality now. It is likely that some form of physical or mental trauma caused the break. Again, this is simply educated guesswork.”

  “Thanks, doc. Would a victim of sexual abuse be prone to a psychotic break? Or a violent person trying to deny that side of his personality?” It was a long shot, but maybe he’d favour one of our suspects.

  He placed his glasses back on his face.

  “Either could. But now you are asking me to go beyond where I am comfortable offering an opinion. There are far too many variables. But let me tell you something else about this.” He gestured toward Thelma’s body. “Don’t hold me to this either, but I think maybe this killer has done it before. There is an old case I use when teaching at Dal. An unsolved one from almost twenty years ago. I will dig it out for you. The wound patterns around the throat and abdomen. They are strikingly similar. Not identical but close. The apparent attempt to stage the body in the image of the crucified Christ was not a part of that old case, so maybe it is just coincidence.”

  Perfect. A cold case to complicate things. Coincidence is an investigator’s greatest enemy. Can’t be ignored, but sometimes a coincidence is just that. We’d be burning up manpower with that old file.

  “How close, doc? And how many people have you shared details of that file with in a classroom?”

  “Excuse me.” A young uniform interrupted before he could answer. “Sergeant Cage, they need you over there,” she said, pointing to an opening in the treeline not far from where we were standing. “The dog found something. Lot of blood, looks like maybe she was killed in there.”

  That was the first good news of the day. We weren’t going to have to go hunting for another crime scene. Gotta take it where you can get it.

  I struggled with the idea of a cold case coincidence muddying up the investigation, as Blair nosed the car into a loading zone near the old library. I looked up at the street signs. Blowers and Grafton. I smiled. Pizza Corner. There was a time when I thought this place was the toughest strip of asphalt in the city. Every rookie thinks that at first. You do your time on the beat here, and you think you see it all. Pizza Corner sits at the outer edge of the downtown bar district. Halifax is a city with a serious drinking problem, unless you think binge drinking is okay. The city’s cluster of universities draws thousands of young people. They find themselves freed from the restrictions of home and set loose on bars competing for their attention with cheap drinks and loud music.

  It was two in the afternoon now, and the corner was quiet. In just over twelve hours it would be a steaming mess of drunken drama queens and staggering frat boys, looking fo
r one more chance to hook up. The pizza shops clustered around this intersection draw the drunks from last call. They stand three deep on the sidewalks and wait for the action. Raging hormones, cheap shooters, and college girls are all it takes to bring out the assholes with something to prove.

  Most of the fights are sloppy wrestling matches that end before they start. The real trouble comes when some moron gets it into his head to leap into action to rescue his buddy who is at the losing end of a fight. The brawls get out of hand fast. A few split skulls, a couple of dead frat boys, and a bad PR problem for the city convinced the chief to make Pizza Corner part of a permanent night foot patrol where rookies learn to deal with crowd control in a hurry.

  I looked down the street to the sandstone arch above the front door at the provincial courthouse. So much of what started in the bars and turned bad here ended up inside that building. My first shining moment on the force, and one of the best fights I ever had behind the badge, happened about half a block from the corner, close to the courthouse.

  Not long after I started walking the beat here, I noticed a different kind of victim. Maybe it takes a pro fighter to recognize talent, but I was seeing kids who had felt real pain—good hits delivered hard. Not the sloppy looping punches of drunks. It unravelled slowly because most of the victims were drunk and uncooperative. I put it together, though. Some hard-core street thugs from North Dartmouth were using the Pizza Corner crowd as a gang initiation, or just a kind of blood sport. They patrolled the streets in low-slung cars, hunting for rich white college boys, preferably drunk and alone. Whenever they spotted a guy staggering along on a sidewalk, they jumped from their cars and delivered fast vicious beatings before racing away.

  I got lucky and caught up to five of them while they were kicking some kid in the head. They were even more game to have a go at a lone white cop. They got a couple of early shots in, but, like I said, I used to fight pro. I could take a hit. The first kick I landed to the side of a head felt fantastic. I’ve been paid to do it in a ring, and I’ve done it on behalf of the club, but to place a solid police-issue boot into a bad guy’s skull on behalf of the city, well, that was sweet. I had three of them down and bleeding before I was blindsided from behind and went down myself. I figure three out of five meant I won the fight. The other two got away clean, but they left their buddies on the sidewalk bleeding next to me.

  The watch commander was waiting when the paramedics cleared me. He bought me a beer at the end of the shift. Thanked me for keeping calm and not bringing the gun into the fight. I didn’t tell him, but I hadn’t even thought of the gun or the steel baton on my belt. I just fought on instinct and never felt threatened. I was having fun.

  Two weeks later we got the intel from the guns-and-gangs unit. They confirmed what I suspected. It was an initiation. We started targeting gang members seen driving around the corner. They stopped. Sometimes you get lucky and win one. Today, I didn’t feel lucky.

  “You thinking about Thelma Waters?” Blair asked as he shut off the car,

  “Trying not to. Just remembering the good times on foot patrol here. Man, we thought we had it tough then. You Mounties missed out on it.”

  “Merger only goes so far. We ride horses. You HRP guys can walk the beat. I’m going to grab a donair. Want one?” He opened the door, and the hot humid air filled the car with the spicy smell of donair meat.

  “No way, man. You’re the only person I know who eats that shit sober. Grab me a veggie slice.”

  “Your loss,” he said as he headed into the nearest pizza shop.

  Donairs are made of over-spiced mystery meat the culinary purists at city hall named Halifax’s official food. Puzzling call in a capital supported by people who risk their lives on the waves. We send the best fresh seafood all over the world and celebrate meat that spins on a stick, sweating grease over grills, in almost every pizza shop in the city. The hunks of meat draw young drunks and flies; Blair could eat it for breakfast. But then he eats McLobster sandwiches, too, so what are you going to do? I’m not sure which is worse, because I’ve never been drunk or brave enough to taste what McDonald’s could do to lobster.

  The food break was a good idea. We needed to clear our heads before the next briefing. I watched a couple of tourists wander past and tried not to think of Point Pleasant Park while I chewed my slice.

  I poured a coffee and watched the darkness work its way across the room. Blair stood by the door, reading a newspaper and sweating donair spice. We were back in the office above the mall in Bedford for the late-afternoon briefing. The shock of the Waters scene was being replaced by anger. The entire team was feeling it. You could almost see it. It felt familiar, good. Like a pre-action brief back in Trashcanistan. Close to thirty cops jammed the office. We were lost in our own thoughts. Filling the inner tank with enough hate to pull the trigger if the time came.

  Carla’s crime-scene pictures helped. They covered a whiteboard at the front of the room. The Sandy Gardner scene filled an identical whiteboard beside it. No one looked at those pictures. Hard to stoke a red-hot hatred when the victim needed killing. Thelma Waters was another story. No one deserved that. We’d feed off her for the rest of this case. I hoped to hell the killer wouldn’t give us any more fuel.

  Carla joined me at the coffee urn. She wore a tight-fitting pair of black jeans and a matching black turtleneck that clung to every curve. She looked tired, but she looked good. A pleasant distraction. She nodded toward the back of the room.

  Inspector MacIntosh, head down, hands jammed in his pockets, paced like he was suffering a psychotic break of his own. You could feel the stress seep out of his uniform. The Mounties in the room kept a close eye on his movements. I figured his career would be made or broken in this room. Promotion or retirement, no other option. He wasn’t the type to go down alone. Made me happy I wasn’t a Mountie. I’d do everything in my power to solve the case, and that would probably get him his promotion. No good deed goes unpunished.

  At least his decision to move the team to Bedford looked good on him. I thought the move was about his inflated ego, but had to admit it made sense now. There was no way the major-crime office downtown would hold this crowd. Blair and I weren’t the only new bodies. The full-time major-crime detectives were outnumbered three to one by cops on loan from the other plainclothes units. There were even a couple of uniforms in the mix. Everyone with more than thirty seconds of investigative experience was in the room. Vice cops, the drug team, anti-gang guys, organized crime, and even the clowns from the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang squad. They avoided me. Whole lot of files were going to gather dust for a while. Some bad people were getting a pass. Fine by me. We needed all the help we could get.

  I walked toward the whiteboards. Carla stayed at the urn. She’d seen what there was to see. The board on the left was covered with shots of the Gardner scene. I started there. I wasn’t ready to face Thelma Waters again just yet.

  On the top row, Carla had placed a picture of Gardner in life. Beneath that, shots of his body at the dump. Tights of the bruising around his neck, wrists, and ankles. I found what I was looking for in the third row of pictures. It showed the office above the garage. I looked at the close-up of the drugs I’d seen in the small dish. Satan’s head branded the ecstasy pills. Little doubt where they came from. I felt as if everyone was looking at me. I was used to the feeling. Sometimes it was all in my mind.

  The board to the right was harder to look at. The shots from the Thelma Waters crime scene were carefully chosen. They were shocking enough to anger and motivate the new team members who hadn’t been in the park. I knew they could have been much worse. I looked at Carla and wondered again what promise she’d made to Thelma at the scene.

  A large corkboard on an aluminum frame stood beside the crime-scene boards. Pictures of Bobby Simms and Samuel Gardner, the two closest things we had to suspects, sat at the top. The rest of the board was empty. We had nothing to
tie either to the crimes yet. That meant Samuel was still off limits, but it was time to bring Bobby in for a serious chat. No way MacIntosh could stop that now.

  Blair and Carla came over. The three of us moved behind the whiteboards. Blair held his newspaper rolled tightly in one hand, a coffee in the other.

  “Going high-test, partner?” I nodded at the cup.

  “Might be a long night.” He sipped the coffee.

  “Sergeant.” I nodded to Carla.

  “Looks like you guys picked the wrong time to come out of retirement.” Her attempt at humour made me smile.

  “Couldn’t stay in the country club forever,” I said. “Be nice to go track terrorists again, though. At least until this is over. Careful what you wish for, right?”

  “If you wished for this, then yes.”

  “Not this exactly. Just off the task force and out of the port.”

  “Well, here you are.”

  “Yep.”

  Blair had his head back in the paper. I could see it was The Coast, a hip weekly that catered to the university students, artists, and the bohemian crowd that gave Halifax a little soul. The three of us sipped in silence and waited for the inspector to stop pacing and start briefing. I broke the silence.

  “Let me ask you something, Sergeant. These scenes. You feel anything even close to the same vibe? I mean, you think it could be the same guy?”

  She looked up at me over her coffee cup as she took another drink. Seemed to be working it through.

  “Why do you do that, Cam? Use my rank instead of my name?” she asked.

  “I, well. Because you earned it, I guess.”

  “Well then, Detective Constable Neville, I’ve earned the right to tell you not to. It just feels stupid in the middle of this,” she said. “This case isn’t about rank or the job. This is personal, you know. It’s us against something that scares the hell out of me.”