“It looks perfect to me.”
“Keep watching.” With his next step, the cone rolled and distorted slightly. “Did you see it?”
“I think the shape changed as you rolled it.”
He left the flashlight in position, knelt down and ran his hand over the stress crack and into the cone. “Beyond the crack, there’s a slight rise.” He stood up and rolled the light toward the front of the house. For seven or eight feet, the shape of the cone didn’t change, but then it did.
“What does it mean?”
“This floor’s been re-poured or repaired, then refinished and repainted. See, there’s another crack here.” He picked up the flashlight and ran the beam the length of the crack to the outside wall. He looked back at Aziz. “Something’s under here,” he said.
“It could have been a plumbing issue … or bad workmanship.”
“I don’t think so.” MacNeice squatted down beside the glass with the amber residue and passed his light over its surface. “There are prints on the glass. We’ll check those against Tisdale and Nicholson’s car. For now, let’s get out of here.”
Aziz was up the stairs and outside before he’d made it to the first floor. He found her waiting in the Chevy. MacNeice climbed into the car and called Division to request a full forensics team with a jackhammer and shovels. Ending the call, he started the engine and turned on the heater and defroster.
They sat in silence looking at the sad little house. To everyone passing by on the lonely road, it would appear to have been abandoned or boarded up for demolition to make way for something grander. But it was the secret retreat of David Nicholson, a place where he would read and drink in the middle of an empty basement in a house in the middle of nowhere.
Aziz shook her head. “Nothing good or kind or loving ever happened in there.” She took off the latex gloves, shoved them into her pocket and unbuttoned her coat.
MacNeice wiped away the last of the windshield fog in front of him but said nothing.
“I know you’ve got a theory,” she said. “So what is it?”
“Jennifer Grant came home. She promised she would and she did, for Dylan’s sake. There was no record of her returning by air, so Nicholson met her at the train or bus station and brought her here. This was solitary confinement—her crime was running away.”
Aziz wrapped her arms about herself and looked away toward the escarpment. When they finally spoke again, it was about the weather and how oppressive the rain was and how it seemed like London in a very bad year.
After a half-hour had passed, the radio phone burped to life. The forensics team had overshot the road and were making their way back; the jackhammer was coming separately and would arrive in ten minutes.
While they waited, Vertesi and Williams called in to report on their interview with Jennifer Grant’s brother. MacNeice put his cell on speaker mode.
“Boss, he seems like a loving brother. The only flag is that when he was eighteen, over twenty years ago, he joined the Royal Dundurn Light Infantry. He was in the militia for three years,” Vertesi said.
“It’s not like he stuffed a grenade down his shorts to sneak it home back then,” Williams chimed in. “And anyway, they would have been using the pineapple ones—the kind some hero’s always falling on in the war movies.”
Vertesi picked it up. “He said he has no ill feelings toward David Nicholson, and I believed him. His explanation as to why Nicholson didn’t pitch in with the search in California was that he was focused on caring for Dylan and making a living to support him. As far as he was concerned, Nicholson was a great father. And he thinks that his sister simply ran off to live in California, that she wasn’t really concerned about her son or her own family. Basically he thinks his sister was a free spirit and hasn’t been found because she doesn’t want to be found.”
Aziz glanced at MacNeice, who was staring through the rain at the house. “I have another theory,” MacNeice said. “I want you both here at 1012 Ryder Road.”
Within minutes, the first of the black Suburbans came tearing down the road and pulled onto the grass beside the Chevy. Five people climbed out. The driver came over as the others were donning their haz-mat suits and pulling equipment out of the trunk. He leaned down to MacNeice’s window while stepping into his yellow Tyvek. “What have we got here, sir?”
“The house belongs to the bombing victim, David Nicholson, but he didn’t appear to want anyone to know about it. I think we need to excavate the basement.” MacNeice got out of the car and handed the front door key over. “Until your jackhammer gets here, do a thorough search for prints on the first floor and basement.”
Vertesi and Williams showed up with lunch: burgers and milkshakes from the Secord Dairy. When the jackhammering finally stopped, they waited until the steel front door opened and the team leader appeared, pulling off his yellow hoodie and sliding down his face mask. He stood on the front step and stared at them but made no indication of what they should do.
“That doesn’t look good,” Aziz said.
“Let’s go.” MacNeice opened the car door.
When they were lined up in front of him, the team leader shook his head. “I need to give each of you a mask, not because it’s rank in there, but just in case. This is a no-shit spooky one.” He walked over to the Suburban, popped the trunk and came back with four masks and goggles.
“Seriously? Goggles?” Williams screwed his face up. “I look like a dweeb in goggles.”
“No goggles, no look-see, detective. Trust me, you’ll thank me for them. We don’t know what’s in the dust down there.”
After Williams put the goggles and mask on, the forensics leader pulled the hoodie over his head again and adjusted his mask, then turned back to them. “Ready?”
They all nodded and followed him to the basement, past a couple members of the team who were scanning the bedroom. The jackhammer operator was dismantling his rig. Standing beside a pit roughly ten feet square were two members of the forensics unit, both female. Large and small chunks of concrete were piled neatly against the outside wall, along with a door that might be the one missing from the bedroom. The women moved back a few paces to provide them full access to the pit.
MacNeice stepped toward the edge and looked down. He inhaled sharply. When Aziz came to stand beside him, she took one look and buckled. Williams caught her before she hit the floor. They all stared at what the digging had revealed: a mummified female body in a soiled wedding dress complete with its train and veil. The nose and cheekbones were flattened. MacNeice glanced toward the door. The forensics leader noticed and said, “Yeah, it was on top of her, and on top of that was the gravel and concrete.” The dead woman’s hands were folded across her stomach, pressed deep into the folds of the dress, which MacNeice recognized from the wedding photo Dylan had loaned him. On the left hand was a wedding ring. Her flesh was dried and leathery over the bones, covered with concrete or gravel dust. The lips were pulled back as sharply as an incision, exposing grey teeth.
Neatly stacked beside her was dirty clothing. “Soiled—feces and urine, some blood,” one of the women on the forensics team offered. Folded the way it would be if someone were packing for a long trip—underwear, socks, T-shirts, jeans, a cotton dress, a light sweater. Beyond the clothes was a small carry-on bag and a suitcase. Next to the head was a coil of rope with something stuffed in the middle.
“That’s a gag. There’s blood on it with an incisor stuck to it. Looks like it wasn’t knocked out—just rotted out while the gag was on.” The team leader’s voice was flat.
Aziz adjusted her mask and goggles. “She must have been kept in this house for a while.”
The jackhammer operator was perched on his generator. “Oh yeah,” he said, “she was here for a while.” He went over to the door and lifted it, pivoting it so they could see the other side. The days and weeks were scratched into the wood, the seventh day crossing over the previous six. “She made it to 101. If she started keeping score on a Mon
day, her last day was Thursday.” MacNeice looked down to the right of her hip, where a green garbage bag was stuffed between her and the wall of the pit.
“That’s garbage, sir. Appears to be biscuit wrappers and empty cereal boxes.”
“He wanted her alive but not very,” Williams said wryly.
“She was being punished,” MacNeice said. “What’s that under her head?”
“Looks like a book in bubble wrap, sir,” one of the women said.
“After we lifted off the door, we wanted you to see it before we disturbed anything further,” the team leader said.
MacNeice nodded and put on his latex gloves. “Lift the book out for me.”
The woman stepped carefully into the pit and gently raised the skull, trying not to disturb the matted hair or stained veil. She retrieved the book, and as she let the head down, they heard the sound of something clicking or snapping. In the quiet of the basement, the noise was sickeningly loud. Aziz wasn’t the only one who winced.
MacNeice took the package from her. Removing the bubble wrap, he studied the cover. “It’s a diary.” MacNeice opened the book and read aloud: “This will be my wife’s last will and testimony.” It was dated 07 08 01 and signed by David Nicholson. Below, in a jagged scrawl was another signature: “Jennifer Nicholson.”
The book sat in an evidence bag on the floor between Aziz’s feet as they drove back to Division. He noticed her glancing down at it from time to time, though she said nothing. When he was parking, she spoke for the first time. “He deserved to die.” She opened the door and got out. MacNeice leaned over and picked up the book.
As he climbed the stairs behind her, he said, “What amazes me is that someone so brutal could also be a great father.”
“But, it happened … it happens,” Aziz said. “Or at least that was the image he fought to preserve.”
MacNeice had a thought that made his skin crawl. “Dylan was also his prisoner—he just never knew it.”
“How so?” She was taking off her coat, draping it over the cubicle wall.
“Dylan and his mother both did whatever David Nicholson wanted them to do. She was forced to obey. Dylan complied out of love and affection. Doesn’t it seem strange now to think how many people said that Nicholson was Dylan’s best friend, that they were inseparable, and that a father who didn’t care about sport suddenly became an assistant coach on the basketball team so he could support and encourage his son? Now I have to think it was all about control.” He put his coat beside hers. “Double espresso?”
She nodded, smiling at him for the first time since the basement.
When he returned with the coffee, Aziz said, “Ryan has some news—it’s not good.”
Ryan was sitting at his computer station, his feet up on the casters of his task chair, his hands on its leather arms. “Sir, Constable Szabo died this afternoon. The head injury triggered a cerebral hemorrhage late last night.”
Aziz held the cup to her lips with both hands as her eyes welled up. “That young man did not deserve to die.”
MacNeice put his latex gloves on, removed the diary from the evidence bag and bubble wrap, and sat down to examine it.
The handwriting was precise—consistently within the lines—and smaller than he expected from the tall man he’d seen in the barbecue photograph. The neat entries were dated to the minute, leaving MacNeice with the impression that Nicholson knew it would be discovered eventually and that he wanted people to be impressed that it was neat—that he was neat.
MacNeice began at the beginning:
August 6, 2001. 4:37 p.m. J wants to know why we’re here. It’s disingenuous of course—she knows exactly why, so I ignore the question. Have managed to establish 7:00 p.m. as my pick-up time for Dylan at Daycare—splendid! This means I can continue to arrive here between 4:30 and 4:40 every day. I neither need nor want more.
4:48 p.m. She wants to go home. Promises she’ll behave. I tell her this IS her home, and that I will come once a day. She will remain tied to the bed until I arrive, and while I’m here, she will be allowed to move around the house until her lessons begin. “F*** you!” she says. I tell J that every time she swears—a nasty habit that I’m determined will not infect my son—she will lose food privileges for the day. J screams, “F*** you!” I introduce her to a dirty dishcloth that was here when I took possession of the house. Rolled up, it makes the perfect gag. Today’s lesson was postponed due to bad behaviour.
August 7, 2001. 9:40 p.m. Daycare closed early for cleanup, so I had to miss today. Dundurn Missing Persons called me and her parents to say there was no record of Jennifer Grant returning by air, rail or bus. Of course they don’t know she came back by car. That part was so easy. J wants to begin teaching next month—what a laugh! J wants to be with her son, begs to be with Dylan. Why? “I love my son, I’ll do anything you say; just let me be with him.” I tell her D is not her son anymore and he will grow up knowing his mother deserted him. Tears now … oh my, such tears. “When a woman weeps, she is setting traps with her tears.” Dionysius Cato.
August 8, 2001, 4:15 p.m. On the bright side, J understands now that I’m serious. I have removed the gag for the visit. J eats Cheerios from the box. She smells like excrement—for good reason. She has defecated in bed, soiling everything, and has to be punished. We move downstairs for the lessons—permanently, I think, as the stench above is too much for me. She’ll sleep and spend her day in the bed until I come—but I will limit her liquid intake to eight ounces of water a day. Dry food means, hopefully, a dry bed. What a pig she is. How did we ever, ever, ever, find ourselves together?
4:42 p.m. J fondles her breasts, groans, a come-on from a bad actor. I laugh. J cries. AGAIN! I tell her she’s pathetic and I mean it. Who would want this woman if they could see her now? Begging, pleading … If I were in her shoes, I’d like to think I’d be stoic and resigned to my fate. Not her. She’s still squirming, conniving, looking for a way out. Right now, she thinks I don’t notice, but she’s studying the basement windows to see if I’ve forgotten something. I haven’t.
5:00 p.m. Our lesson is a success I think. Yes, she continues to beg me to let her go, but as soon as I reach for the dirty dishcloth, she sits silently, whimpering in a sweet but pathetic way. I read Auden and James. She listens—and I hope learns—from the beauty of the language.
5:45 p.m. Before I leave, J cleans up—well, she scrapes the bed with a spatula and puts the filth in a garbage bag. She’s quite domesticated now, and only two days have passed. J has so much more to learn—I’m quite excited about this. I tell her so, and say that I’ve decided to call this the Great Reform Program. J sees neither the humour nor the gravity in that statement. But she will.
5:58 p.m. Have determined to hose J down every Friday—must do for my own sake. Pity, there’s no hot water. Will make do. Have taken to wearing rubber gloves.
MacNeice stopped reading, put the book down and slowly peeled off the gloves. His breathing was shallow and his heart was racing. He couldn’t go on—at least not right away—and he wouldn’t except for the chance the diary would provide clues about the person who wrapped Nicholson up in duct tape with a grenade under his chin.
Catching the look of despair on his face, Aziz said, “It’s that bad?”
“Worse.” He rubbed his face and eyes hard.
“Well, I’ve got something of interest in that respect: an email from a Constable Jeremy Hopewell, concerning interviews he’s doing on Tisdale. Something was troubling him and, after he got home from his shift, he reread his notes of an interview he did with a woman across the street from the Nicholsons.
“Her name is Grace Smylski, and it turns out that her son, Tom, is the same age as Dylan. They’ve been friends since grade one and Tom’s also on the Mercy basketball team. About a month or so after Dylan’s mother disappeared, a man showed up at the Nicholsons’. There was a loud confrontation on the front porch, and the stranger shoved Dylan’s father against the wall.
�
�Grace told the constable that she couldn’t see what happened next, because of the tree in front, but when she ran across the street, David Nicholson was lying on the porch with a bloody nose and the man was driving away.”
“Ask Hopewell to confirm that she’s at home and get him to meet you there in a half-hour,” MacNeice said. “Let’s see if she can describe the man or recall the kind of vehicle he was driving.” He took a sheet from his pad and wrote, “Jennifer Grant’s body found, basement of Ryder Road.” He taped it next to Nicholson’s photo, then, feeling sickened by the proximity, he moved the note two inches to the right.
Williams and Vertesi got back as Aziz was heading out.
“Get this,” Williams said. “Inside the suitcase there was a Star Wars Jedi Knight toy still in the box. Guess Dave didn’t think Dylan would appreciate having it.”
“Which one of you has the skin to read something grim?” MacNeice pointed to the diary.
Vertesi shrugged, and Williams looked over at the whiteboard.
“I won’t lie about how sick it is,” MacNeice said. “I want it skimmed—don’t get hooked. Remember the man who wrote this is still being picked up by crows, seagulls and pigeons.”
“I’ll do it,” Williams said.
Vertesi said, “I’m in too. If you need a breather, I mean.”
“I’m not looking for the details of what was done to Jennifer Grant—that much we’ve already discovered,” MacNeice said. “I want anything that would point us toward Nicholson’s killer—and Szabo’s. Again, the man was a monster—don’t let him in your head. Understood?”
“Yeah, I’m cool.”
“Sure, me too … I guess.”
Chapter 19
Byrne’s boat was getting the star treatment at Mount Hope. Surrounded by computers on folding tables and microscopes on rolling cabinets, the runabout was suspended by chains a few feet off the ground. There were four researchers on site and Nathan Ho said two more were down at the Barton Street facility doing DNA. “Basically, gene matching.”
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