by Dale Mayer
Kate thought it was an apology, but she wasn’t too sure. She listened as Lilliana explained a little more.
“It’s not that you personally weren’t wanted,” Lilliana said gently. “Nobody was wanted. We even went to the department head and asked if we could operate as is, save the budget, you know, not hiring someone else,” she said, “but they wouldn’t allow us to do that.”
“Ah,” Kate said. “Knowing you’d all rather have no one than me doesn’t help.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Whatever,” Kate said. “You wanted a four-man team. Duly noted.” Inside though, it was nice to get a little bit of give in the relationship between the two of them. She sipped her coffee, and Lilliana continued.
“Technically,” Lilliana added, “we were a seven-man team.”
Kate snorted. “Where have you been hiding the other two? We could use the help.”
Lilliana nodded. “I guess we’re really at six. The five of us and Colby makes six. I can’t count Nix. He’s switched to Darren’s team. Trudy replaced him, who almost instantly got pregnant and keeps extending her maternity leave. We may never see her again either. Von replaced her and got injured on the job. With each surgery, he’s got two months to recover. Once back, he’ll be on desk duty for a while.” She sighed loudly. “So maybe you ought to cut Andy some slack.”
“Why is that?” Kate asked.
“We need him, and he’s still in the hump-and-dump-them stage.”
She stared at her in surprise. “I’m sorry?”
Lilliana shrugged impatiently. “You must have heard about it. You know? After you have a breakup, you have a lot of affairs, just so you feel like you still have it.”
“Glad I missed that stage,” she said in a neutral tone.
“Well, I didn’t,” she said, “and Andy is in it.”
“Okay,” Kate said. “So what then? When he makes digs at me, I’m not allowed to bite back?”
“Actually it’s a good thing you do,” Lilliana said. “We’ll respect you a little more.”
At that, Kate stared at her. “If you say so.” She shrugged and turned to walk away.
“And you’re right about Andy.”
Kate halted, then turned to look back at Lilliana. “What part?”
“He is running away,” she said. “His wife of twelve years left the marriage with his best man from their wedding. Andy is hurting, and he is running. But it’s his way of handling it, so maybe lay off a bit.”
*
“It was broken already.” He stared down at the phone in his hand. “Honest,” he said. “I don’t know how the hell it happened, but it’s broken already.”
“Already?” his sister cried out in alarm, her thin high-pitched voice rose as it came through the phone.
“I think something was wrong with this one,” he said hurriedly.
“No, no, no,” she said, “you can’t take the sick ones.”
“I didn’t think it was,” he said, bewildered. “It’s broken.”
“How broken?”
Silence.
“Oh, God, did you kill him?”
“Her,” he said absentmindedly. “Her.”
“Jesus Christ,” his sister said. “Bro, we’ve talked about this. You need to let up. Before you get caught.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I was lonely.” His voice cracked, as he stared out the window. “There’s what? Two-and-a-half-million people in and around this city?” he asked. “And nobody even knows I’m alive.”
“A lot of people know you’re alive,” she said earnestly. Then she added, “And, if you don’t watch it, a lot more people will know, and that’s not what you want.”
“Why not?” he asked. “I mean, lonely or notorious. Is there a difference?”
“Well, they are two sides of the same coin maybe,” she said, puzzled. “But the more people know about you,” she said, “the more people will know what you’re doing, and you could wind up in jail again.”
“Well, I’m not spending the rest of my life in prison,” he said in that matter-of-fact tone of voice he used all the time. “You know that.”
“And I don’t want to lose my brother,” she said. “So please be careful.”
“I was so careful,” he said, hating that he’d changed to that childish singsong voice again, as he stared down at the little girl on the couch. He’d only had her a few hours. But she was dead, … broken. “But it’s broken.”
“Damn,” she said. “Can you just wait a bit before you dispose of her?”
“Well, I can’t dispose of her the same way as the others anyway,” he said. “You know that.”
He could almost hear his sister swearing in the background. She didn’t really understand what he was doing and why he was doing it, but she was always here to help him deal with it.
“Look,” she said. “It’s too many, too fast.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it to be,” he said, “but it’s broken.”
“What are you doing about it?” she said after a moment. Her tone was calm, and she was trying to be reasonable.
He didn’t like the reasonableness either. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but it’s broken. What do you do with things that are broken?”
“Don’t throw it in the trash,” she warned.
“Of course not,” he said. “What do you think I am?”
“You’re my brother, and I love you,” she said softly. “But you’ve got to stop doing this. You’ve been caught once. You can’t a second time. It’s different now.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me. You’ve always partaken, like a voyeur,” he said. “I’d give you all the details, and you’d always be right there with me. Why are you separating from me now?” He hated that. It made his world feel even smaller.
“I’m not,” she rushed to say, but he’d already heard that soothing tone in her voice. Her attempt to handle him.
“Yes,” he said, “you are. You’re unhappy with me, and I don’t like it.”
“I’m not happy that she’s dead,” his sister snapped. “You only moved Jason’s body out what, ten, eleven, twelve days ago?”
“I was lonely.”
“Take up dancing lessons then,” she cried out. “Go to a pub, get laid, do something to meet people.”
He snorted at that. “Well, as you know, I can’t dance,” he said, “because I’ve got two left feet, and I’m completely tone-deaf,” he said. “Besides, it was a while back but I was at the park, sitting and talking to all these nice people,” he said, “and that’s when I saw her.”
“The child?”
“Yes,” he said in a dreamy voice. “She was running across the park with a balloon. She was so happy, so innocent. I just really wanted to touch that. She was so full of love and laughter, and her mother obviously cared. I mean, they were hugging each other all the time. I mentioned her to one of my cronies. He grabbed her. I was pissed initially, but then I realized he’d done me a solid, as I managed to buy her off him. It took a bit, but eventually I got her for myself.”
“So why did you break that?” his sister asked curiously.
Just hearing that note in her voice again made him feel better. She was always trying to figure him out. Always trying to make some sense of it. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I wanted to be a part of it somehow. I wanted to see, if she was with me long enough, if she would treat me like she treated her mother. If she would look at me like she looked at her mother.”
“But you never could be her mother.”
“I know that,” he said, “but it doesn’t change anything, not really. I still needed to try.”
“And how did she react when you took her away?”
“She was screaming,” he said sadly. “She kept crying for her mother, and, when I told her that I could be her mother, she told me to go away. She said that I was a mean old man. Just like the other one.”
“Ouch,” his sister said. “And I suppose that made you ang
ry?”
“Well, I didn’t think so,” he said. “I mean, these little kids, they don’t know what they’re saying. She’d just never been in an experience like this before, so I couldn’t really listen to the words she was saying.”
“No, of course not.” But his sister spoke with a heavy tone.
“It really was fast,” he said. “I didn’t have any fun at all. I just wanted to be a part of what they had.”
“I’m not sure,” she said, “that you are completely there.”
“Of course I’m completely here,” he said, adding a note of warning. “Just the two of us are involved in this. You’re the only one who knows, and we’ll keep it that way.”
“I’d never tell,” she said, the weariness in her voice making him worried. “But sometimes I wonder if it’s too much for me to hear.”
“You love the details,” he cried out. “That’s how we bonded way back when. It’s never changed.”
“Maybe I’m just getting old,” she snapped.
“We’re both getting old then,” he said. “We’re twins.”
“Duh,” she said. “But sometimes I hear these details, and they’re not fun for me.”
“That’s because you’re not with me,” he said. “I’ve told you that we can get two. I mean, lots of children are out there. It might take a little more planning, but we could get one each. I’ve never gotten the ones I really wanted.”
“Is that true?” she asked again, that curiosity back in her voice.
He smiled, pleased with the angle he had picked up. She always had questions, and, when she had questions, she was engaged. When she was engaged, he knew she was his. “There might have been a couple I wanted, but then I decided that they weren’t a good bet,” he tried to explain. “You know? Some kids are watched better than other kids. Or sometimes you see them walking, and you realize that something’s wrong with their leg, or the mother comes over with medication, so you know they’re sick or things like that,” he said. “Obviously I want as healthy as I can get.”
“And yet you took Jason.”
“I know,” he said. “He had that ethereal look to him, as if he already had one foot in the grave, one foot in the angel’s realm. Seriously something was so angelic about him.”
“And he lived for quite a while,” she said, marveling.
“Well, I treated him really well,” he said. “I had to, you know? Because I really, really loved him.”
“I know you did,” she said, her voice softening. “He was special for you.”
“He was.” And the tears choked his throat again. “And I thought maybe she’d be special too. But it’s broken.”
“Why do you keep saying it?” she asked.
“Because it is an it,” he said. “Not a she anymore. Not a he anymore. It’s dead. It’s just an it. It’s now a piece of garbage that I have to get rid of. A broken toy,” he said sadly. “And what do I do with broken toys?”
“You have to get rid of them,” she said, with that old weariness in her voice again. “And then you replace it.”
“Exactly,” he cried out. “See? You’re the only one who understands me.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I understand anything,” she said sadly.
“You do,” he assured her. “You know you can ask me anything. I’m happy to tell you.”
“I know,” she said, “except for that one question I keep asking that you refuse to answer.”
“Well, stop asking that one then,” he said crossly.
“No, you said you’d tell me anything. So, tell me why you’re doing this.”
“And I keep telling you,” he said, “it’s because I’m lonely.”
“That’s a reason. It’s not a motive,” she said.
He frowned. “They are the same thing,” he said, getting angry at her for splitting hairs over a simple word.
“No, that is a reason that you give to others, but it’s not the motivation inside you that’s telling you to do this,” she said, her voice getting hard and angry too.
Every time they talked about it, they ended up back at the same point.
“You can listen to what you want to listen to,” he said, “and I’ll listen to what I want to listen to. The bottom line is that this is the way it is. I’m not changing.”
“Yes,” she said, “that we can agree on.”
And, with that, she hung up.
Chapter 6
Tuesday Morning
The next morning Kate was sipping her coffee and running through the files. It was 10:15 a.m. already. She set the computers for multiple searches, and then she went case by case by case, looking for any elements that linked to the theory she was working on. On one of the images, she caught an ever-so-tiny nick on the inside of the left wrist. She stared at it, magnifying it many times over. She went back to her other seven cases, all eight similar to Jason’s, and found something at the same place but too grainy to clearly see it.
Was it possible? Excitement gripped her. She flicked through Jason’s digital folder but didn’t have a good picture of Jason’s left wrist. She picked up the phone and called the coroner’s office.
“Jason’s wrist,” she said, “left hand, above the wrist bone,” she said. “Is a tiny mark there?”
“I can check,” Dr. Smidge said. “The photos are in the file. Can’t you see the mark on the images?”
“Something’s there, more of a shadow on the photo,” she said.
“You seem to be pretty excited about it,” he said in a dry tone.
“Anything that we can find is a help,” she said. “No, I don’t know in what way, but, if a mark is there, this might connect a bunch of other cases.”
“Then I don’t want a mark to be there,” he said forcefully. “The last thing we need is a child serial killer.”
“You mean, another one?”
“I know,” he said. “Already too many in this world. But we don’t need one here in Vancouver.”
She heard the morgue drawer being opened and a tray being pulled out.
“Left wrist?” the coroner asked.
“Left wrist, above the bone,” she said. “On the inside corner.”
He looked at it. “Hmm.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, something’s there,” he said, “but it’s pretty indistinct.”
“Can you take a couple good photographs of it?”
“Or you can come down here and take a look at it yourself,” he said. “I’ll take a couple photos too.”
“Done,” she said. “I’ll be there in thirty.” She hopped to her feet, grabbed her jacket, stuffed her phone into her pocket, and bolted out the door. As she got to the elevator, she heard Lilliana call out.
“What did you find?”
“Maybe nothing,” she said. “I’ll let you know if I can confirm it.” She would have taken the stairs, but the elevator was right here and empty. She dropped to the ground floor, then raced to the coroner’s office in the hospital, what was usually a twenty-minute drive away.
He looked up with a nod and said, “That was fast.”
“It’s important,” she said quietly.
He studied her face for a moment. “Well, you seem to be excited about it, but I sure as hell hope you’re wrong.”
“I do too,” she said. She followed him to the back room, thinking about all this short, rotund man with the wispy white hair had seen in his career thus far. Dr. Kerry Smidge had a little more than ten years to go in this industry before he retired, but he’d already seen it all. He had the demeanor of a leprechaun but the attitude of a junkyard dog, and somehow she appreciated both. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
He walked over to the wall of drawers. He pulled out the one with Jason’s body on it. Already autopsied. He pulled the sheet back to show her the left wrist. Bringing out a camera, he took several more photographs.
She pulled a magnifying glass from her pocket and took a look. And whistled. “Godd
ammit,” she said, “it’s the same.”
“What are you thinking it is?”
“Originally I wondered if it was a wave pattern,” she said, “but do you see that little bit underneath, that half circle?”
“Yeah, what about it?” he asked. “And honestly it’s so faint here, I can’t imagine that it was done recently.”
“No, I suspect it wasn’t recent at all,” she said. “I think it’s supposed to resemble a set of lips. Like a kiss.”
*
Wednesday Morning
Simon woke up to the bright Wednesday morning, out of sorts and hemmed in. Craving fresh air, he dressed, grabbed his lightweight raincoat, and walked out. He waved at the doorman and headed down the front steps at a brisk pace. He took several deep breaths of the moist refreshing air. Applauding his decision, he picked up a coffee and took the next right. The constant misty atmosphere continued, but dark clouds threatened more. First stop was the nearest building he was rehabbing.
He strolled up to the front, stopped, and stared.
“Doesn’t look much better, does it?” said the general contractor, when he saw Simon.
“Didn’t really expect it to, did you? It’s one hundred years old and needs the work.”
“Other buildings would take less money,” he said.
“Other buildings don’t interest me,” he said. He hadn’t explained why he’d chosen this building, and he wouldn’t. Not now. Plus Gary hadn’t worked for him for long. It was nobody else’s damned business but Simon’s. That’s the way he liked to keep it. He looked at the work in progress, nodded, and said, “Keep going.”
He strolled away. He knew that his contractor was watching him as he left, but he didn’t give a damn. Simon was long used to people wondering who he was and where he and his money came from. As long as they questioned in their own minds and not out loud to him, he didn’t give a shit.
He’d built his life to what it was today. He avoided close relationships, which really made him question that major detour he took with Caitlin. It was easier to not deal with people, since he didn’t generally like them. He had four other buildings projects that he was working currently. It would be a long afternoon.
He kept looking up at the sky, wondering if he would be lucky enough to miss the deluge. As it was, he was inside one of his other buildings, when it started to pour. He delayed his exit until the rain eased, and then he made a quick run to the next building. He could have taken a cab or even driven, but neither appealed to him today. Fresh air, even if it was damp and spongy, was still better than vehicle exhaust and the pain of parking.
