Tin Men

by Mike Knowles

  “You got it all figured out, eh? Super smart homicide dick. But tell me this,” the bearded cop said. “Why?”

  Woody looked back in the bedroom at Marie Green bending over the corpse. “It looks like someone else thought Tony killed Julie Owen, and they weren’t too happy about it.”

  “I thought you said he didn’t do it,” Ramirez said.

  “He didn’t, but that doesn’t mean someone doesn’t think he did.”

  “What?” the bearded cop said. “You think it was one of us?”

  “Makes sense,” Woody said.

  “I wish I had done it,” the bearded cop said. “What do you think about that?”

  Woody turned his back on the man. He didn’t want to get into it any deeper in front of the GANG squad cops. Process of elimination would make a suspect pool pretty shallow. Cross referencing the number of people who knew about Julie’s death with the number of people who knew about Tony’s connection to her left him with a group of suspects all carrying badges. The cops in the loft all thought Tony did Julie, and they would be at the top of the list—they had a hell of a motive, but Woody didn’t think they did it. Too much finesse and skill was involved. The bearded cop couldn’t keep his shoes tied. How could he pull something like this off? The other two couldn’t even come up with something to say. Murder seemed like far too big a step for them. The necessary skill set narrowed the list even more. Woody wanted out of the loft. He needed to think. His phone chirping from his pocket couldn’t have come at a better time.

  Woody opened the phone. Ignoring the angry looks from the cops in the kitchen.

  “Yeah?”

  “Woody,” Dennis said. “Os is the father.”

  25

  Dennis had woken up with a smile on his face. The night before had been good—it had taken his mind off the job for a while. He rolled out of bed at six and padded into the bathroom for a shower. When he was getting dressed, he reached for his watch and realized it was gone. He had left Jennifer in the bedroom and the fucking bitch had stolen his watch. Dennis spent the next ten minutes looking for anything else that might be missing, but everything seemed to be there.

  He stomped out of the bedroom on his way to the kitchen and caught his pinky toe on the side of the door frame. There was a loud crack and then enough swearing to get the neighbours to pound on the wall. Dennis limped the rest of the way to the fridge and got out the milk. There wasn’t enough left for a bowl of cereal. Dennis put it back and dug around the cupboard for microwavable oatmeal packets. He found three maple-and-brown-sugar flavoured pouches and poured them all into the same bowl. He eyeballed the water using the faucet instead of the measuring cup and threw the bowl into the microwave for a few minutes.

  While breakfast cooked, Dennis turned on the television, just in time for the six-thirty repeat of the top stories. Julie’s murder was the first story. There was a reporter on scene, alone in the street in front of Julie’s apartment building, talking about what had happened. The reporter didn’t know much; all she could confirm was that a murder took place in the building and that the victim was a police officer. The reporter said the police were not releasing any other details at this time. Dennis heard the microwave beep just as the news replayed yesterday’s interviews with people who lived in the building. Dennis remembered two of the three names from the interview notes he went through back at Central. The third name belonged to an older man, maybe sixty-five, who gave only vague details. Dennis smelled bullshit. The guy probably just wanted a little airtime so his friends and family could see him on TV. Dennis wrote down the name anyway. The guy might have been missed by the uniforms, and a break could come from anywhere.

  The oatmeal resembled a steaming bowl of soup, so Dennis let it cool under some extra brown sugar before he tilted the bowl and slurped it all down. The news had nothing—translation: the police had nothing. Dennis figured they had about one more day before reporters began asking questions about the ability of the police to solve the crime.

  He put on yesterday’s suit and slid his pistol into the holster. He walked out the door and tried to check his watch to see if there was time to stop for coffee. He swore when he saw his naked wrist and decided to stop anyway.

  Dennis was at his desk, looking at the coroner’s report and some crime scene pictures, by seven thirty. The coroner had nothing new to say. The murder was brutal and done with a single-edged blade. No drugs in Julie’s system, no alcohol—nothing. Her house was clean. The only exception was that junk drawer in the kitchen and her bedroom closet. The picture showed boxes for a crib, a Diaper Genie, and a playpen crammed inside the small space.

  Dennis checked the photos over and over again. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The thought went away when Dennis noticed a heavy smell around his desk, settling in like a fog. He sniffed twice and then looked around. Jerry was resting his two fat forearms on top of the cubicle partition.

  “Christ, Jerry, how much cologne are you wearing?”

  “A couple of sprays. Why? Too much?”

  “I’m bringing you to the next scene I have to work. I’ll never smell the body.”

  “Funny guy. I feel so bad telling you the meeting is pushed back. I won’t be able to hear all of your oh-so-witty observations.”

  “Why is it pushed back?”

  “Woody is chasing a lead. Grapevine is telling me that last night something went down with the guy Julie was investigating. Woody’s at the scene now. We’ll meet up in a few hours.”

  “What about Os?”

  “He’s off the case.”

  “Why?”

  “Not important, Dennis.”

  Dennis got loud. “The fuck it’s not, Jerry. If that big psycho did something that’s going to screw up our investigation, it is goddamn important.”

  Jerry sighed and leaned in closer. His cologne became almost suffocating.

  “Four kids came in with a big-time Toronto lawyer. One of the kids is a trust-fund brat, and his father owns the firm. The kids claim that Os put them in the hospital. Lawyer says a pedestrian got some of it on their iPhone. Os is double fucked and it has nothing to do with this case. So keep your voice down and your mouth shut. I’m working on getting another guy on the case to pick up the slack.”

  Dennis nodded and resisted the urge to smile until Jerry left. Jerry’s stench was the only witness to Dennis’s enjoyment of Os’s trouble. It was times like these that karma seemed like it was really out there. Dennis closed the file on his desk and used it to fan the air out of his cubicle. It didn’t work—Jerry’s cologne was somehow impervious to wind. Dennis gave up and decided to get another cup of coffee while the air around his desk diffused what was left of eau de Jerry. He filled a Styrofoam cup with the last of a pot of burned coffee and killed time stirring in lukewarm cream.

  Dennis tried a sip and felt grateful the coffee had been too hot to gulp. He put the cup down and started to open the coffee machine when his phone rang.

  “Detective Hamlet.”

  “Detective, this is Lucy Hayes. We met the other day at St. Joan’s.”

  “Sure.”

  “Yes, well, I was calling to tell you that Miranda is quite clear today.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Dennis said.

  “I don’t know how I feel about this. You’re going to upset her.”

  “Her daughter is dead. She has a right to know.”

  “I know, I know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “It’s my experience that waiting for things to feel right never works out.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He hung up the phone, turned to go back for his coat, and ran straight into Jerry. The detective sergeant was holding an empty mug.

  “Oh, no, detective. Coffee is the life blood of a police force. I cannot allow you to walk out of h
ere, leaving the machine like that.”

  Dennis looked back at the coffee maker. The lid was still up and the carafe was empty. “Jerry, Julie’s mother is thinking clear. She doesn’t think it’s eighty-five anymore. I have to get down there while she still thinks it’s today.”

  “I don’t know what you just said. I just see no coffee.”

  Dennis swore and turned around. He found the cup he had poured still stagnating and picked it up. He poured the coffee into Jerry’s mug and said, “Call it a transfusion.”

  Jerry took a sip and gave the mug a hard look. The look didn’t stop him from taking another sip. “Not hot enough,” he said.

  “Microwave it, Jerry,” Dennis said as he squeezed past.

  It took just over thirty minutes to get to St. Joan’s. The whole way there, Dennis watched the clock. How many minutes would Miranda spend in 2017? What if she went back a year as each minute passed and she was back in the eighties when he got there?

  He parked in a handicap spot and walked straight past the front desk to the elevator. The nurse at reception didn’t say a word. Dennis didn’t give her a chance; he badged her as he passed, and he knew she could tell that he meant business. No one would think he was there to visit his mother. Everyone knew a badass on a mission when they saw one.

  Dennis took the elevator up and walked straight to the door he had entered the last time he was there. He knocked twice and said a little prayer that Miranda Owen was still in 2017. He didn’t want her opening the door in lingerie. Lucy, the nurse who had called him, opened the door. She looked tired. Her eyes were half lidded and she was sucking on part of her lower lip.

  “Does she still think it’s today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God,” Dennis said stepping inside.

  “Do you have to tell her now? She’s in such a good mood. A shock could really hurt her.”

  “Will the news send her back?”

  Lucy turned and looked down the hall. “I don’t know what hearing something like that would do to a person.”

  “Listen, I’ll keep it light until I have a sense of what she can handle. If I see it won’t help, I won’t tell her. We can have a psychiatrist come and do it or something. I think I can find out what I need to know without telling her everything. I can be very subtle.” Dennis was thinking about how smooth he was the last time he met Miranda. He was a natural undercover cop, and he was in no way trying to delegate the job of telling the old woman about Julie because he was scared.

  “Okay, I guess that’s all I can ask.”

  Dennis twisted his body and slid past the woman. The room exactly the same as before—Miranda, on the other hand, was different. Instead of the racy outfit she had shocked him with the day before, she was wearing a long flower print dress under a pink cardigan. There was very little skin showing between the hem of her dress and the tops of her flats. Dennis sat down in the same chair he was in the other day and said, “Good morning. I’m Detective Hamlet. I work with your daughter, Julie.”

  “You know my Julie?” Her smile was wide and friendly; nothing like the sexually charged leers she had given him yesterday. “Well, that is just wonderful. What brings you here, Detective?”

  “Just visiting a friend. I was about to leave when I remembered Julie once told me you lived here. It just wouldn’t have been right not to say hello to a friend’s mother.”

  “Well, isn’t that sweet. Most people have trouble getting their own relatives to visit and you’re looking in on strangers.” Miranda reached over and patted Dennis on the hand. He cringed, thinking she was still horny, but she took her hand away and put it back in her lap. “So, you and Julie are friends?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Does Julie visit often?”

  “As often as she can. I know when she’s been here because she always brings me tulips. They’re my favourite. My mind isn’t what it used to be—I’m forgetful—but when I see those tulips, I know my Julie’s been by.”

  Dennis looked at a vase of tulips on the coffee table. The yellow flowers had opened up and were starting to shed their petals. Dennis didn’t know much about flowers, but he knew enough to understand that Julie had been by recently. She had probably come the day before she died.

  “Are you excited to be a grandmother?”

  “Oh my, yes. I have picture frames ready for all the photographs I’m going to have of the new baby.”

  A queasy feeling in the pit of Dennis’s stomach appeared. It wasn’t guilt or remorse for asking about a grandchild that would never be—it had to have been the oatmeal. It probably just wasn’t sitting right. He was a cop, and he didn’t let anything get in the way. You start worrying about your feelings, you have no business carrying a badge and a gun. Dennis knew that the baby had to be dead. There was no kidnapping, just some sick fuck committing the worst kind of murder. Dennis was sure some nut, off his meds, would turn up carrying the dead baby around in a stroller. There would be a trial and a shrink explaining that the guy didn’t know what he was doing. There would be a bullshit, lenient sentence and the whole world would move on.

  “You know, I haven’t had a chance to ask if Julie ever decided on a name.”

  Dennis heard Lucy gasp and he turned his head just in time to see her look away. He looked back to see if Miranda noticed, but the old woman was too focused on her soon-to-be grandchild to be distracted.

  “She has names narrowed down for both a boy and a girl.”

  “Yes, I know she wants to be surprised on the big day.” Dennis winked at the old woman and smiled.

  “The only thing she was ever sure of is that she is not naming the baby after the father. It is a terrible name, but I don’t know if naming the baby after him would be such a bad thing. In my day, family values were important. I loved my husband dearly, and I would have been proud to name a son after him. But Julie is a different girl with much different values.”

  Dennis kept his mouth shut. Miranda had no idea that he had met her forty years ago yesterday. She had values that would still be considered racy today.

  “She didn’t like the name? I thought it was kind of cute for a baby.”

  Miranda raised an eyebrow. “Cute? Whoever heard of a baby named Oswald?”

  26

  Dennis met Woody in a parking lot of an ice hockey arena. It was still early, eleven o’clock, and the hour combined with the fact that it was a weekday meant there was no one else using it. Dennis’s nephew played a game here one time. He came out and drank shitty arena coffee and ate a crappy burger while his youngest relative cleaned the ice with his ass. He couldn’t remember who won the game, but he sure as hell remembered the heartburn. The thought of it put him off burgers for months, which, in hind sight, was great for his waist. Dennis always worried he was too fat. No good cop was fat. The assholes his father talked about always were. All the brass that kept him down and the guys on the take were, all of them, fat fucks, fat bastards, and dumpy motherfuckers. Hell, Jerry was a fat guy and he was shit police. Dennis lay awake nights worrying about getting heavy. The fear didn’t make him exercise—it actually got him eating more. Dennis always had been what they call an emotional eater. Oprah was the same way; she was big, but no one cared because she was powerful. Like him.

  Pulled window to window with Woody, Dennis marvelled, not for the first time, at how skinny Woody was. Dennis saw the constant mess of take-out bags around Woody’s desk. Both he and the other man had the same diet, but, somehow, Woody stayed thin. Dennis meant to ask Woody about it one day.

  “How do you know Os is the father?” Woody asked the second the window was lower than his mouth.

  “Well, good morning to you too, Woody. I crack the whole case and you can’t even be polite?”

  “Cracked the case?”

  “Os did Julie. He did her, and then he did her.” He held up his thumb and index finger and fired off an imaginar
y bullet so the message was clear. “Or should I say . . .” Dennis changed the gun to a knife and began plunging his hand up and down in tune to the sound effects from Psycho.

  “Being the father doesn’t make him the killer.”

  “No? Then why didn’t he say anything? We’re busting our asses trying to piece together her life, and he’s sitting on something as important as the fact that he’s the father. How much time was he going to let us waste wondering about it until he decided to speak up?”

  “What would you have done different?”

  Woody didn’t wait for an answer, proving that the dickhead was just too childish to admit he had been beat. If Woody knew what was good for him, he’d get himself in check and work his way into Dennis’s good graces, so he could get a bit of the credit too. “How do you know Os was the father?”

  “Julie’s mother said Julie refused to name the baby Oswald.”

  Dennis was ready to defend himself against Woody’s comment that anybody could be named Oswald, but it never came. Instead, he said, “You ever think he said nothing so that we wouldn’t waste time on him instead of on whoever really did this?”

  Dennis made a face like he had just tasted something gross. “Pretty thin, Woody. He knows telling us would help more than it would have hurt. Right now, we know shit about her personal life, and it’s hurting us. How many things could he have told us that we don’t know right now? Did her partner know anything about her life outside the job?”

  Woody shook his head.

  “See? How does clamming up help? He had to know it would come out eventually. It’s probably why he took the baby. The baby was the only thing that proved they had been together. He had to get rid of it. The missing baby was the key all along.”