A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller)

by Van Rooy, Michael

  “Off-season?” I said it mildly.

  The old man shrugged. “Shooting. Not hunting. I kill for the pot. I feed the animals and the animals feed me.”

  “What about the game laws?”

  “All this land is mine for twenty kilometres every which way. I don’t normally let the game wardens onto it. What do you think of my habits?”

  “Not very fair.”

  The old man kept his eyes locked on mine. He was trying to tell me something very bluntly. “Not interested in being fair.”

  “Then you have a good system.”

  “Ya. Sit down.” He gestured to another chair made out of antler pulled up against the side of the house. I dragged it out and got uncomfortable in it while Mr. Reese leaned against the split log railing that ran around the porch.

  Mr. Reese started. “Mr. Haaviko would like the election expenses, his home operating expenses and $11,500 banked against the chance he loses. Call it roughly $40,000 total. He’s also been approached by Mr. Devanter to accept $20,000 to throw the election towards Rumer Illyanovitch.” He turned his head towards me. “Is that about right?”

  “Yes.”

  The old man kept his head poked forward and nodded. “You accepted the deal, Mr. Reese?”

  “I did, on your behalf.”

  “Then you are an idiot. I have no desire to pay for a campaign that will benefit that prick Cornelius.”

  I cut in, “My agreement with Devanter is for $20,000 to throw the election towards Rumer. Nothing else.”

  He scratched his head. “Those are the terms? To throw it towards Rumer? No guarantees? And he accepted?”

  “He did.”

  “You did not guarantee victory for his candidate?”

  “No.”

  “Or that you would lose?” His face was tilted to the side and he was thinking hard.

  “Exactly.”

  “Now why would the dumb prick accept that kind of deal? Wait a minute; are you smart enough to make it happen? Or are you jerking me around?”

  “Yes, I’m smart enough. I don’t like the idiot so I’m motivated.”

  The old man laughed until he choked and, when he recovered, said, “Good.” He thrust his hand towards me. “Good to work with you, Mr. Haaviko. With the help of Brenda and Dean we’ll beat Devanter’s bum boy like a drum.”

  We shook and I kept hold of the hand. “Two things. First, the money?”

  Goodson was amazed and astounded at my distrust. “The money? The money? Mr. Reese will provide that as needed, have no fear of that.”

  “It’s always easier to pay someone in promises. That’s like rule number 601 in life and it’s served me well, just like yours. The money up front, please.”

  “That’s insulting.”

  “They’re my rules.”

  He argued, wheedled, cajoled, bitched, whined and whimpered while Mr. Reese and I watched and I, at least, admired his technique and stamina. When he was done he got up and went into the house and I noted that he had a thick felt pad on the sharp, uncomfortable antlers that made up the seat of his chair.

  After about ten minutes he came back with a well-used manila envelope. Inside it was $40,000 in fifties and hundreds, all old bills, all used, none consecutive. Both men watched as I counted it out and then dealt it back out of sight.

  Then Mr. Reese spoke again. “You said you had two things, what is number two?”

  “Number two is a question. If you lie to me then I will keep the money and hand the election to Rumer or quit, whatever will cause you the most pain and suffering.”

  Both men looked amused and the old man said, “Ask.”

  “Why do you want to win the election? Why is it important to you?”

  Goodson looked uncomfortable and squirmed around for a few seconds. I felt sorry for his ass until I remembered the felt pad and then I didn’t feel so bad.

  “It’s,” he looked at his lawyer who shrugged almost imperceptibly,“… complicated.”

  “I’ve got time.” My ass was numb so of course I had time. If I tried to stand up I’d probably fall down.

  “All right then. I don’t want to win, I want Devanter to lose. There’s a difference. I knew Cornelius Devanter’s father back in the sixties when we were both wheeling and dealing all across the west. We fought for timber rights in provincial parks when all we had were a couple of pickup trucks and we fought over flight times and hangar space when we were bringing in supplies to mining camps. We fought over liquor licences for bars and distribution rights for outboard engines and we fought over women and staff and customers.”

  The old man picked up the drilling and broke it open to check that it was unloaded. He did everything slowly and, when he was done, he continued, “Basically we fought. Anyhow, the old bastard finally died in the early 1990’s, his heart blew out while he was trying to convince a client of mine to file a lawsuit over some transformers I was late delivering. But his son, Cornelius, now he’s something special. He just picked up the feud and kept going—but hard, you name it; class action suits, criminal complaints, civil judgements, patrimony suits, blackmail, low balling, industrial espionage, localized sabotage, injunctions and so on. He just goes like a fucking bunny.”

  The old man looked at me and there was a kind of twinkle in his eye, he was enjoying it. “Now he wants this asshole Rumer Illyanovitch as chief commissioner of police—no idea why. So I want someone else in place.”

  “You really don’t know why Cornelius is backing Rumer?”

  “Nope. No idea at all. The position can’t appoint anyone. It doesn’t control a bureaucracy. It doesn’t have a budget. The only thing it has any kind of influence over is the police force. And it doesn’t have much of that.”

  I stared at the old man and had to agree.

  “Anyhow, I figure the friend of my enemy is my enemy and that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so I picked you. I got Dean and Brenda to start looking for someone to counteract Rumer Illyanovitch, backed as he is by Cornelius’s money. Rumer’s got star power and influence and ability.”

  “And what do I have?”

  “The freak factor, the unknown, the x. You are a walking example of the biblical quotation ‘Set a thief to catch a thief.’ You will get everyone’s attention and that will sway a certain percentage of the vote. My weight and Brenda and Dean’s skill will help as well.”

  I stared at him and didn’t bother telling him that the thief quote wasn’t in the bible.

  “Now,” he said off-handedly, “you might want to find out what kind of plan Cornelius has for Illyanovitch.”

  He said it oh so casually but I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “Nope?” He was slightly pissed I’d say no to him.

  “Yep. Nope. If you want me to find out I’ll try but it’s a lot of extra work. It’ll cost you another $5,000.”

  He cursed and whined and bitched and again Mr. Reese and I watched him and finally he agreed. We talked over how to explain the money and the old man came up with the idea of claiming it was a wager between me and him over cards. I agreed and Mr. Reese noted that since it was a wager for pleasure, as opposed to professional reasons, it was untaxable.

  When we were done I got up to leave but I needed to know one more thing. “Quick question: do you put visitors in that abomination of a chair on purpose to make them uncomfortable and put them at a disadvantage in their dealings with you?”

  The old man nodded, “Yep.”

  “’Kay. Just checking.”

  We left. When I got back home it was past midnight and there was a written note from Elena that she had to see me the next day at 2:00 exactly (she had underlined it twice) at the Greek coffee house.

  #19

  The next day I got Claire to watch the kids. Then I went to the café where Elena was already sitting. I sat across the table from her and we ordered cheese Danishes and coffee and they came quickly.

  “You get your order a lot quicker than I ever do.”

  Elena lo
oked preoccupied and said, “Hmmm?”

  “It’s probably the gun.”

  “Probably.”

  She was in full cop regalia: uniform, body armour, radio, pistol, collapsible baton, Taser, spare ammunition, handcuffs and attitude. Every few minutes her radio growled and she’d hold up a finger and listen.

  Elena didn’t know where to begin so I started. “Look. You wanted to talk to me. Here I am. Like you asked.”

  Elena nodded and suddenly shook her head in exasperation. “Okay. I have a problem. I have a big problem. And it involves you and Claire.” She sounded very concerned.

  It took me aback. “Should I call a lawyer?”

  “No. Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  She examined her fingernails and I saw they were bitten down, something I’d never seen. Finally she took a deep breath. “Okay. Claire got a present in the mail, right? A bracelet?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you went to get it appraised and got arrested.”

  “Pretty much.”

  She ordered more coffee and leaned in. “Osserman lied to you.”

  “Cops? Lying to me? Never.”

  Elena wasn’t amused. “They told you that Paris was the first? That was true. But they didn’t tell you about the others.”

  My blood pressure surged and I felt a tight band around my forehead. “Others?”

  “Others. Since 1992 there have been seven women that we know of. Each received some of Paris’s jewellery as a gift. There has also been one husband and one son killed. The pattern is the same in each case; the women receive phone calls, flowers, letters, dinner invitations, etc. All from a secret admirer. The tone of the communications gets progressively more strident and finally the women vanish and are found later, tortured, raped, mutilated and murdered.”

  “Jesus.”

  Elena stared at her cup. “We missed any connections between the first woman and the second one and we couldn’t find any connections between the second and the third.”

  She took a bite of her Danish before grimacing. “The force was going through a rough time. A whole changeover of major crimes personnel, a new chief, dissent in the union, disagreements with the RCMP and so on. In 1996 someone found the connectors—the jewellery all the women had and complaints they had made to their neighbours about being stalked. Two had even called the cops and filed complaints against ‘Persons Unknown.’ Not that any of it helped them.”

  I reached out and grabbed Elena’s hand. “Is Claire in danger? Right now?”

  “No. She’s covered. We’ve got cops everywhere, watching and waiting. We’ve brought in RCMP plainclothes and, well, she’s covered.”

  I wondered about the other women and whether they’d been covered. I also wondered how rusty I was getting not to notice cops around my house.

  “Okay. Go on. So you guys found out you had a serial killer.”

  The term sounded ridiculous. It was something out of Hollywood, the boogeyman, the new monster of the time.

  “Yes. So we set up a system to flag any of the signs we were seeing—complaints, stalking accusations—but there were a lot of them, still are.”

  I nodded and she went on, “We also started to get the pawn shops and jewellery stores to watch for the stuff that Paris made. It was unique, after all. Finally, in 1998 we found a necklace being cleaned. By the time we got to the woman’s condo though, she was gone.”

  She stared into the distance.

  “Dogs found her remains on the banks of the Assiniboine. We told the public she had been run over by a boat. You

  see …”

  I realized she was pleading with me. Her mouth opened twice and then she said, “We didn’t want to panic anyone.”

  My mouth froze open and I just stared at Elena. When I could speak my voice was low and vicious, “Panic anyone? You didn’t want to panic anyone?”

  Elena touched my hand and I drew it back out of her reach. “Yes. When the Nightstalker was killing in California more than thirty people died as vigilantes and scared civilians panicked and opened fire, thinking the murderer was creeping up on them. Most of the people who died were innocent spouses and children. Lots of cops think some wives and husbands used the opportunity and the fear to get rid of unwanted spouses.”

  Somewhere I had heard that but the rage was still very strong inside me. “Panic. Okay. So you kept it quiet.”

  She nodded, “Yeah. We found more of the jewellery. Some turned up in estate sales. Other pieces we just ran across.”

  Elena looked off into the distance. “We call the killer the Shy Man. Sometimes he sends letters but they never get mean. Other times he sends a single piece of jewellery and that’s it. Other times the letters build to a crescendo and then stop and nothing happens for months, even years. Then the woman vanishes.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “How many more dead?”

  “Paris, we think, was the first one in 1992. Followed by a woman in 1995 who ran a flower shop in Saint James. We found her in an abandoned house, in the basement, pretty late and the coroner fucked up and claimed she had died of natural causes and that the damage had been caused by rats and insects. She was the one we didn’t catch until 1998 with better DNA testing. In 1997 there was a woman lawyer we found mutilated in her cabin in the Whiteshell. Her husband was beside her with a bullet hole in his brain and it looked like a murder/suicide. In 1998 there was a part-time model; she was the one we found in the Assiniboine. In 2001 there was a waitress we found in a minivan parked where kids neck sometimes near the zoo.”

  Elena shook her head. “In 2003 we caught on to a case before the murder happened. It was an accountant, a nice woman, dated a provincial sheriff. She went to a cop Christmas party with one of Paris’s brooches and a sergeant noticed it. We went to her directly and set her up as a decoy—full coverage, all the time. Nothing happened.”

  I was watching Elena. It looked like this was hurting her.

  “Then, in 2005, we caught another one in time. She was a bank teller and we pulled most of the coverage off the accountant to cover her. Which was a mistake, because in the summer of that year someone broke into the accountant’s house, shot her ten-year-old son to death and took her apart. In 2006 the bank teller went on vacation to Mazatlán. There she was kidnapped from the beach and murdered on a rented catamaran a mile off shore.”

  “Jesus.”

  Elena smiled. “You said that. So. We know the Shy Man sometimes kills and sometimes doesn’t. And we know he can ‘date’ his ladies for up to forty-one months, that’s the longest we know about. And we know he’s Caucasian, probably, and right handed, probably. And we have finger- and footprints and DNA samples and so on.”

  She smiled brightly. “Claire is probably safe.”

  “Sure.”

  “So don’t tell her.”

  “Of course not.” The lie rolled off my tongue easily.

  “I’ve got something for her though. Come with me.”

  There were tears in her eyes as she paid the tab and took me around to the back of the café where her police issue Crown Vic was parked. She walked around to the trunk and opened it. Inside were neatly racked tools, a shovel, a big first aid kit and a towel, neatly folded, from a Holiday Inn. Elena opened the towel and showed me what was inside.

  “They’re throwdowns.”

  I knew what that meant. The three pistols she had in the towel had had their registration filed and burned off. They were meant for cops to drop if they shot an unarmed person and didn’t want to go to jail or answer a lot of stupid questions.

  “Take ’em.”

  She was serious. I looked at her face and then back at the guns. Two semi-autos and a revolver. I leaned into the truck and picked them up one at a time and examined them. Finally I kept the Beretta Model 21 and the Taurus revolver in .32 long.

  “You can keep the Star. I’m not sure about the firing pin.”

  Elena nodded and closed the trunk as I put the guns away in my pockets, first making sure t
he safeties were on. They were loaded with eight .25 rounds and six .32 rounds respectively and just having them made me nervous. For an ex-con those two guns, illegal, unregistered, restricted weapons with no serial numbers, represented about six years of prison.

  I went home in the cop car to tell Claire my good news.

  #20

  Claire took it better than I expected.

  “Really? Me? Being stalked by a serial killer?”

  “Yes.”

  We were walking around the neighbourhood and pulling Fred in his red wagon. Claire stopped and turned her back to me to examine a cancer growing a boll on an oak tree. I respected her privacy and when she turned back I went on.

  “I wanted to tell you outside of the house. There’s a fair chance the cops have it bugged.”

  “Ah.”

  I couldn’t read her face. “Elena gave me two pistols for you. A .32 revolver which is fairly big and a .25 calibre Beretta you can carry on your person.”

  She ran her fingers across the bark of the tree. “In my purse.”

  “Never in your purse. I’ll rig something up for you. Frankly, the gun’s so damn small you can slip it into a pocket or into a wallet and no one will notice.”

  “Is there an ‘or’ here about this whole situation?”

  “Sure, there’s always an ‘or.’ In this case it’s ‘or we can run.’ The only problem is we’ll never be sure we’ve gotten away with it. He’s hunted the same woman for more than three years before. He might do it again.”

  “Ah.” Claire turned back to me and I saw something very angry in her eyes and I was glad that it wasn’t me who started it this time. “Any suggestions?”

  I thought about saying it diplomatically, then punted that idea and went for the truth. “We figure out how to antagonize him. How to make him react emotionally. We figure out what makes him tick and then we press those buttons hard. Then, when’s he’s really angry, we make him come out and play. Then I kill him.”