by Mike Knowles
Tony, now fully awake, began to panic and struggle against his bonds while the song on the stereo slowed down. In the moment of quiet between tracks, Os spoke just loud enough for Tony to hear. “No lawyer to bail you out this time.”
Tony struggled at the sound of the words and attempted to say something through the silver mask over his mouth. It was pointless; there were too many layers of tape and the new song had already begun forcing a heavy baseline through the speakers. Os put the pen in his mouth and then picked up the knife off the dresser. Maybe it was better that he wasn’t a cop anymore. He wasn’t like Woody; his partner had a light touch. Woody could probe a suspect for weaknesses and exploit them without crossing a single line. Os was the heavy; a blunt tool that could only follow a line if it was on the way to someone’s jaw. Now that lawyers were weapons, there was no place for the heavy on the job anymore, but Os wasn’t on the job anymore. He was alone with Tony, without a line in sight. He inverted the blade and raised it high. Os watched Tony’s shallow breaths. When the flabby stomach reached its peak, Os put his left hand on Tony’s hip, to brace himself, and brought the knife down. He pulled the blade back hard and fast like he was starting a lawn mower, and flesh parted.
Tony’s head strained up as high as his trapped arms and legs would allow. The shallow breathing was done. Tony pulled air hard into his nostrils and screamed under the tape. Os wasn’t worried about the sound, the stereo made the noise hard to hear in the room. He put the tea towel around the knife and put it in the freezer bag. He put the bag on the floor, before the blood got a chance to touch it, and then punched the twisting head as hard as he could. Tony’s head bounced off the mattress and came up slowly. He wasn’t out, the adrenaline had kicked in and toughened him up, but he was quiet. Os checked the gloves for blood and saw none. He took off his coat and hung it on the doorknob. Os then put both of his hands into the footlong, leaking incision and pulled out a nest of pink, bloody snakes. Tony’s intestines came out like Os was doing a disgusting magic trick that substituted handkerchiefs with guts. When the pile was the size of a watermelon, Os carefully took the pen from his mouth and used the capped tip to push the glove off his left hand. He used his clean hand to turn the other glove inside out, and then both went into the freezer bag on the floor.
“Lawyers get you out, Tony, but they don’t get you away,” Os said. He doubted that Tony had heard him. Os watched Tony die and then put his coat back on, picked up the sealed freezer bag, and walked to the door. Os opened the front door with the ski mask over his hand and stepped out in the quiet hallway. He looked around the hall, saw that it was still empty, and put the freezer bag down. Os used the lock picks to lock Tony’s door again and then picked up the bag and walked out of the building.
It took five minutes to get to the waterfront. Os pulled into a parking lot that shouldered the lake and got out of the car. He opened the bag and dropped everything over the railing into the water. Twenty minutes later, he was home.
24
Woody was somewhere near his twenty-seventh consecutive hour of being awake when his phone rang. Whatever Joanne had given him had kept him alert through the entire night. The two little blue pills were amazing; he didn’t feel anxious, his heart wasn’t pounding—he just felt the most clear and alert he had ever been. But the magic was starting to wear off, and Woody needed caffeine if he was going to keep the spell going. He was in a Tim Hortons drive-thru, waiting for his order, when his phone began to ring.
“Woodward.”
“Hey, Woody, it’s Ramirez.”
“Another early bird.”
“Don’t count as early if you haven’t been to bed,” Ramirez said.
“What’s up?” Woody had a feeling Ramirez’s all-nighter had something to do with him.
“You got anything on your plate you need to take care of right this second?”
“I got an eight o’clock meeting to go over the case.”
“Who’s the DS?”
“Jerry Wellwood?”
“Oh.”
Woody loved cops. They had somehow managed to develop their own language that was made out of reappropriated English words. Ramirez’s “Oh” was a whole paragraph on his feelings for Jerry. Ramirez’s word communicated that he knew what kind of kiss-ass ladder-climber Jerry was and how he, a real cop, felt about him.
“Won’t take more than an hour. I can meet up with you after that.”
The line was quiet for a second, and Woody thought he might have lost reception. Then Ramirez was back. “I think you should get down here now. Odds are if you come here second, you’ll just be going back to Jerry for a whole new meeting.”
“Hold on.” Woody pulled up to the window and traded exact change for a coffee and two muffins. He pulled into a parking space and said, “What’s going on?”
“Just get down to sixty Murray West, and hold off on eating any breakfast.”
Woody pulled out of the parking lot and dialled Jerry while he weaved in and out of traffic. Jerry didn’t take postponing the meeting well, but Woody got him to come around. He explained how bad Jerry would look walking upstairs with what little they had. It didn’t take much to make Jerry agree.
“You think Ramirez is sitting on something good?” Jerry asked.
Woody could practically hear the fat cop salivating on the other end of the phone line. Good news for the brass was a better treat than chocolate cake. “Whatever he tells us has to be better than what we got now. The gang angle looks like a dead end, but maybe Ramirez found something else that links the Yellow Circle Gang to Julie.”
“Fine, fine, but you gotta come back with something. We go much longer without a lead and heads will roll.”
Woody understood what Jerry was saying—he was as fluent in cop as Ramirez. Jerry was worried about being named as the guy who let the murder of an off-duty cop go unsolved. His we meant I, and all of his claims about the chief’s demands were really his own.
Woody said, “I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” and hung up the phone. He didn’t listen to Ramirez; he ate both banana nut muffins while he drove to 60 Murray West.
There was no need to worry about finding numbers on the side of buildings, 60 Murray had three squad cars parked out front. Two more cars were parked on a side street and the coroner’s van was behind them. Woody pulled up behind the van and got out. The building was a new addition to the neighbourhood. An earlier version offering high-end condos had done so well that they built another right beside it. He walked towards the newer building and saw a uniformed officer standing in front of the entrance. Woody flashed his badge and the constable pulled open the door, which was partially propped open by a chunk of concrete. The uni said, “Third floor,” and Woody nodded.
Woody’s steps reverberated through the aerated metal underneath his feet. The empty stairwell acoustics warped the sounds and produced an unpleasing soundtrack to accompany his march to the third floor. Woody was greeted by another uniformed officer at the door of apartment 304. Another badge flash got him past the constable and into the loft.
Four plainclothes cops, numerous scene-of-crime officers, and three uniformed constables were scattered around the large open-concept space. Everyone was doing their best to pretend they weren’t listening to Ramirez.
“It wasn’t my fucking call. I told you that Raines told me to talk to the guy because he was investigating Julie’s murder. I talked to him and he moved on Tony on his own. I told him to stay out of it, but he didn’t listen.”
Woody crossed the room and got hit with four hard stares.
“This the guy?” a bearded cop in a warm-up suit and Air Jordans asked.
Ramirez nodded, and the bearded cop said, “Good fuck-up, asshole. You blew our case and Julie’s in one afternoon. Real fucking professional.” If Woody was supposed to feel some kind of reaction to the words, he didn’t. The cop with the beard walked away f
rom the group and shouldered Woody hard as he passed by. It was times like these that Os came in handy; his presence had a way of deflating displays of macho bullshit because no one wanted to run the risk of having to back up what they said to him.
The other two cops gave Woody a few more seconds of death stares and then followed their asshole leader into the kitchen. Ramirez was the only one left.
“He’s not wrong,” Ramirez said.
Woody ran a hand over his head. His hair felt greasy. “He was. I told you, Tony’s not my guy.”
“Well, he was ours.”
“So this is his place we’re in?”
Ramirez nodded.
“I’m in the wrong job if a dirtbag like Tony is living so well.”
“Not anymore.”
“Living well, or living?”
Ramirez walked towards two rooms on the other side of the living space. Looking at the pipes coming down from the high ceiling, Woody judged the room on the right to be the bathroom. Blood on the floor was marked with a little evidence stand. The stain blossomed out on the floor as it got closer to the bathroom, changing from small flecks to larger splatters. The impact had come left to right. Woody turned his head to the left and his eyes found the bed.
At first, Woody had a ridiculous thought: Tony must have been an amateur butcher. Why else would he be covered in sausages? The thought passed in a second—disregarded as fast as it had appeared. Woody felt ashamed of the stupid thought. He was surprised at himself—thinking like that meant he was off his game. He didn’t dwell on the feeling. He looked at the body and remembered what Ramirez had said about not eating breakfast.
Woody walked into the bedroom, staring at the mess on the bed. He noticed Marie Green in his peripheral vision, but he ignored her and focused instead on the body. It wasn’t like seeing Julie—this body was nothing like the nightmare memories he had been carrying around since he saw her. Woody almost smiled at the sight of something else to think about, but he knew enough to hold the smile down.
The body might have belonged to Tony; it was hard to tell with the entire head covered in tape.
“This is why I like you, Woody. You get me invited to the most interesting places.”
“Hey, Marie.”
Ramirez made a sound, and Woody turned his head enough to give him a glance. “You sure it’s him under there?”
“His place. His bed. Body is the right size. I’m sure enough the prints will confirm it.”
Woody nodded. It was a safe bet. “Any ideas?”
“You tell me,” Ramirez said. “You talked to him last.”
“Nah, the killer did. We just met for lunch.”
“Funny, asshole.”
“Body does look like a message,” Woody said.
“No paper handy, I guess.”
“Now who’s making jokes? Body taped to the bed. Insides on the outside. Almost déjà vu.”
“Wound was done with a sharp single-edged blade. Wound’s about six inches deep. I’d bet that was the length of the blade,” Marie said.
“Why?” Ramirez asked.
“Most people stab until the blade doesn’t go in any further. Usually, the blade stops for one of two reasons: the metal hits bone or the weapon goes in to the hilt.”
“Looks like one cut,” Woody said staring at the far end of the incision.
“My guess, it was. Your vic bled out. Probably took a few minutes. Each breath would move more and more blood out until he was dead. Being held down like he was probably prolonged death. The intestines on top of the wound stopped all of the blood from coming out at once.”
“Nasty way to go,” Ramirez said.
“What do you know?”
“Not much. We saw Tony leave with his lawyer last night at nine. We checked and the lawyer said he dropped Tony off at the curb and saw him go inside on his own.”
“Any reason to think the lawyer is lying?”
Ramirez shook his head. “The timing checks out. The neighbours heard music from the apartment around the time the lawyer said he dropped Tony off.”
“So how’d our guy get in?” Woody asked, still looking at the body.
Ramirez let out a long breath. “Can’t tell. Door was locked when the uniforms got here. They were responding to a noise complaint, and there was no answer at the door. They got the super to let them in, found the body, and called it in.”
“What time was that?”
“Two a.m. Homicide was around for a while. They split for breakfast when we showed up.”
“Who was it?”
“Wittman and Price.”
“Good cops,” Woody lied.
“Oh, the breakfast break already confirmed that. I’m expecting them to clear the case in the very near future.”
“Windows open?”
“Locked,” Ramirez said. “Wouldn’t matter anyway—there’s nothing outside to climb. Spider-Man would be the only guy who could have made it.”
“Sounds like we have our first lead. You’re wasting your time in gangs.”
“No shit. Thanks to you, a year of work just got flushed.”
“You know that’s crap. Tony here knew nothing about what I really wanted. He spent a few hours in a cell before his lawyer boosted him. No one would have done this to him over that.”
“What if they thought he ratted them out for a walk?”
“It takes longer than a few hours for a deal like that.”
“Maybe our guy ain’t that smart.”
“But he was smart enough to kill Tony without leaving any obvious signs of entry.”
“Tony could have let him in,” Ramirez said.
“Maybe, but why lock the door when you leave? If Tony is a message why not leave the door open? Locking it means you want the body to be harder to find.”
Ramirez had no answer.
“The neighbours see or hear anything?”
“Just the music. Started around ten p.m. and kept going. Apparently, the music was a real thing between Tony and the neighbours. They’ve been fighting about the noise for a while. Usually it only goes till midnight.”
“But last night it didn’t stop,” Woody said.
“Nope.”
“So it happened between ten and midnight.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Ramirez said.
Woody put on a pair of latex gloves and picked up the cell phone on the nightstand. Seeing that the phone was still on, Woody tilted the phone and judged the circular smudges on the screen against the light. He played with the password while he spoke. “How did he get into the building?”
“Either through the front door you came in, or a back door leading down to the street.”
Woody tried another combination. “I saw a buzzer in the lobby. Is there one on the other door?”
Ramirez shook his head. “Need a key for that door. No other way up.”
Woody’s cheek twitched a small smile when the phone screen changed on the seventh attempt. “Where are Tony’s keys?”
“Found them in a dish in the kitchen. The keys to the building and the front door are still there. We checked.”
Woody spent a few seconds with the unlocked phone and then put it down. It wasn’t his case, and he knew better than to start sticking his nose into it. “So the going theory is if someone got in, Tony must have buzzed them up.”
“Yeah.”
Woody walked out of the bedroom and stepped over the marked-off blood on the floor.
“Where are you going?”
Woody looked around the bathroom; he used an elbow to move the door so he could look behind it. He walked back into the bedroom again, careful of the evidence between rooms. “Got a t-shirt hanging on the corner of the door and a towel next to the sink.”
“So?”
“Got a tople
ss guy on the bed.”
“So?”
“So he was washing his face.”
Both Ramirez and Marie looked at Woody. It was Marie’s turn to say, “So?”
“You got a guy in the lobby?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell him to buzz the apartment.”
Ramirez sighed, walked to the door, and spoke with a uniform in the hall. A second later, the buzzer sounded. Woody heard it fine from where he was standing. It was a classic buzzer sound—the kind that sounded like it indicated a wrong answer on a game show.
“Buzzer sounds and he answers the door,” Ramirez said.
“One more time.”
“What the fuck, Woody?”
“Once more.”
Ramirez spoke to the cop in the hall, and Woody pushed the power button on the stereo. Sound started to pump out of the speakers loud enough to make Marie cover her ears. She was wearing gloves, so she had to settle for using her forearms.
Woody gave the stereo about thirty seconds before hitting the power button again. Then, he walked out to the hall.
“It ring again?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t think he buzzed anyone up,” Woody said. “There’s no way he could have heard the buzzer with the stereo on. And, he was washing his face. Who buzzes someone up and then starts washing their face? No one called him either. He called a few people just after nine, but there were no incoming calls, or texts, at ten to let him know someone wants to be buzzed up.”
“So what did happen?” the bearded cop yelled from the kitchen. He and the other two plainclothes guys had been listening to the whole conversation. “Tell us.”
Woody looked at the floor beside him. “Someone caught him coming out of the bathroom. Our guy broke in. He didn’t have a key. You guys have been watching Tony hard, so if someone else had a key to his place you would have mentioned them already. Tony was knocked out here, dragged to the bed, taped, and then gutted.”
