by Gail Bowen
Other Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries
by Gail Bowen
The Gifted
Kaleidoscope
The Nesting Dolls
The Brutal Heart
The Endless Knot
The Last Good Day
The Glass Coffin
Burying Ariel
Verdict in Blood
A Killing Spring
A Colder Kind of Death
The Wandering Soul Murders
Murder at the Mendel
Deadly Appearances
Copyright © 2015 by Gail Bowen
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information available upon request
ISBN 978-0-7710-2400-9
eBook ISBN 978-0-7710-2402-3
Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited.
Library of Congress Control Number available upon request
This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions, and organizations in this novel either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct.
Lyrics on this page from “I’m a Pirate,” by Mark Summers. The song is published online at www.talklikeapirate.com/juniorpirates.html.
Cover design: Leah Springate
Cover image: © Peeter Viisimaa/Vetta/Getty Images
McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited,
a Penguin Random House Company
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
v3.1
For my husband, Ted,
with thanks for helping me pass Old English forty-six summers ago
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER
1
When Brock Poitras moved into our building, my husband, Zack, our soon to be sixteen-year-old daughter, Taylor, and I had been living in Regina’s Warehouse District for a little over a year. I took my early morning run with our dogs, but our area can be dodgy and Zack was relieved when Brock, who had been a wide receiver for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, began joining me. Brock and I never talked much when we ran, and Labour Day morning was no exception. After we exchanged greetings, Brock took our mastiff Pantera’s leash, I tightened my hold on our bouvier Willie’s, and we set off.
Rose Street was about halfway along our usual route, and whenever we turned onto it I felt as though we entered another world. Demolition had cleared the way for progress in our part of the neighbourhood, but Rose Street remained a grim Dickensian landscape of condemned warehouses, abandoned shops, and once-tidy pre-war bungalows that had crumbled into slum dwellings. Brock had grown up on Rose Street. As much as anyone could be, he was inured to the ugly realities of life in the heart of North Central. I was not, and whenever we ran there my nerves were tight.
That morning trouble was not long in coming. When we were midway down the block, the front door of the storey-and-a-half on our left burst open. A woman and a man were screaming curses at each other. Within seconds, the man picked the woman up, slammed her body from the porch onto the concrete front walk, and ran back inside. Brock and I halted in our tracks. Startled at the break in routine, the dogs tensed and turned to us for direction.
The porch was at least two metres above the walk, and I was certain the impact must have broken the woman’s bones, but, still cursing, she scrambled back onto her feet. Brock took Willie’s leash and fished in his pocket with his free hand for his phone. “I’ll call 911,” he said. I moved towards the woman.
She was really just a girl – late teens, Aboriginal, and high on something that was making her manic. She was flailing her arms, and she couldn’t stop talking. “I’m sixteen weeks’ pregnant,” she said, whirling to face me. “Sixteen fucking weeks. I’ve got three kids, and that asshole boyfriend of mine is still making me work the street. I told him he should fucking get a job. I’m sixteen weeks’ pregnant. I don’t want strangers jamming their cocks in there. It’s not good for the baby. Sixteen weeks.” She held out her hands imploringly, then her eyes opened wide and she bent double and clutched her abdomen. “What the fuck?” she said.
“Hang on,” I said. “There’s an ambulance on its way.”
She had beautiful, long-fingered hands. She reached towards the crotch of her jeans and when her fingers came back bloody, she began to keen. “Sixteen weeks,” she moaned. “Sixteen fucking weeks.” Her eyes met mine. “Do you think I lost the kid?”
“I don’t know. The EMT workers will take you to the hospital,” I said. “There’ll be people there to care for you. My name is Joanne.”
“I’m Angela,” she said, and her voice was dead.
“Angela, is there someone to take care of your children?”
“Just Eddie,” she said. She grimaced with pain. “Everybody told me he was a son-of-a-bitch bastard. I shoulda listened.”
The ambulance arrived, and the police were right behind it. Brock and I gave our statements and told the police that, as far as we knew, Angela’s boyfriend was still inside and three children were with him. The police took our contact information and strode towards the house.
The EMT workers were loading Angela into the ambulance. I couldn’t leave without checking on her. The manic phase had passed. She was drained. Her skin had a yellowish tinge and her lips were bloodless. When she spotted me, she raised her hand in a kind of salutation. “See you around, Joanne,” she said.
“Angela, I’m so sorry.”
Something in my words ignited her. Angela’s tone was scathing. “So you’re sorry, and everything’s all right again,” she said. “Everything’s fixed. Joanne, you seem like a nice lady, but you’re fucking clueless. Nothing’s ever fixed for people like me.”
The EMT workers closed the doors and I turned to see an old Aboriginal woman wearing trousers, a hunting jacket, and men’s bedroom slippers come out of the house across the street from Angela’s. The stuccoed two-storey at 12 Rose Street had caught my eye on earlier runs – first because it was seemingly in good repair and second because it was painted an eye-scorching shade of mustard yellow. The old woman found a place on the sidewalk beside Brock. As the ambulance disappeared around the corner, she clicked her teeth. “But as for the murders and the sexually immoral, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur … Revelation 21:8.” Her eyes, black as pitch, fixed themselves on me. “The Bible isn’t talking about that girl. She’s blameless – so are the other ones who are forced to commit indecent acts. The lake of fire and sulphur burns for the evil ones, the ones who break innocent bodies and steal souls.” Her words still hanging i
n the air, the woman turned and went back inside.
Brock and I waited until Angela’s children had been led out of the house at Number 15. They were very young, and when a female officer approached them, they went with her willingly. Clearly they knew the drill. After the children were safely inside an unmarked car, two officers brought out Angela’s boyfriend, Eddie. He was shirtless – a thin, pale, heavily tattooed young man sporting low-slung jeans, a blond ponytail, and an expression of abject remorse. As the officers shepherded him into the back seat of the squad car, Eddie was co-operative. He, too, knew the drill. Acquiescence and a show of penitence now would hold him in good stead when he appeared in court.
We finished our run in silence. The brutality we had witnessed had shaken us both. Before Brock got off the elevator in our building, he handed Pantera’s leash to me. “I wasn’t close enough to hear exactly what went on,” he said.
“Her name is Angela. She was pregnant,” I said. “And I’m pretty certain she lost her baby.”
His face was stony. “That may not have been the worst outcome,” he said.
Zack was at the breakfast table with the morning paper when the dogs and I came in. “How was your run?”
“Fine,” I said. I swallowed my urge to tell Zack about Angela. “The weather should be great for the opening.”
“Speaking of …” he said, holding out the morning paper. “Check this out.”
A photo of Zack and Brock was on the front page. “Nice-looking dudes,” I said. “What did they do?”
“Read the story,” he said. “It’s a very favourable account of what the Racette-Hunter Training and Recreation Community Centre will mean for this city.”
I skimmed the article. “Absolutely glowing,” I said. “As are you. And you deserve to glow.”
For over a year, Zack and Brock had been putting in punishing hours to make the Racette-Hunter Centre a reality, and today was its official opening. The centre had begun as the dream of Zack’s friend, the late Leland Hunter, a developer who believed that through mentoring and on-the-job training the people of the deeply troubled community of North Central Regina could salvage their lives and change our city. After Leland’s death, his widow, Margot Hunter, asked Zack to take over the Racette-Hunter project. She hadn’t had to ask twice.
A year of swimming in the murky waters of civic politics and dealing with obstructionists on city council had politicized my husband. Now he was running for mayor and Brock Poitras was running for council from Ward 6, our ward in North Central.
I was managing both Zack’s campaign and Brock’s, and we were counting on the opening of Racette-Hunter to give them a much-needed boost. Civic elections don’t engender much interest. Our opponents were a mayor running for his fourth term and an equally entrenched city council – all of whom had seemingly bottomless war chests.
Zack and Brock both had impressive resumés, but both were dragging some heavy baggage. As a trial lawyer, Zack had been ruthless and single-minded. When it was necessary, he got blood on his hands, and the colleagues he eviscerated in court had long memories. Zack had been a paraplegic since he was run over by a drunk driver at the age of seven. He was forty-nine when he and I married. Until then, believing that his chances of making it to a ripe old age were minimal, Zack had lived like an eighteen-year-old with a death wish: hard drinking, gambling, fast cars, and many, many affairs, not all of which ended amicably.
As a husband, lover, friend, stepfather, and grandfather, Zack was everything I could wish for. As a candidate for public office, he was a challenge. The number of skeletons in his closet was daunting, and every day I awoke waiting for another one to topple out.
By any criteria, Brock Poitras was an extraordinary man. He’d grown up in North Central. He came from a single-parent home, he was Aboriginal, and he was gay.
Brock’s brains and his talent as an athlete protected him against the hopelessness that makes so many inner-city kids vulnerable to gang membership, drugs, alcohol, and crime. When a torn meniscus ended his football career, Brock earned an MBA.
From the day Zack recruited Brock to be second-in-command of the Racette-Hunter working team, Brock was Zack’s go-to guy. Zack likened their relationship to the trust that exists between a quarterback and his best wide receiver. Brock was a natural for the permanent position of executive director of Racette-Hunter, and when Zack and Margot offered him the job, Brock didn’t hesitate.
I poured myself a large mug of coffee – it was going to be a big day for us all. I hadn’t planned to tell Zack about the incident on Rose Street until later, but he knew me too well. He wheeled his chair close and took my hand. “What’s wrong?” he said. Zack listened intently until I was through, then he held out his arms and I folded into them. When, finally, we broke apart, I was almost ready to face the day.
Zack, Taylor, and I arrived at the Racette-Hunter parking lot at the same time as Margot, her eighteen-year-old stepson, Declan, and Margot and Leland’s nine-month-old daughter, Lexi. We were all wearing the forest-green sweatshirts with the Racette-Hunter logo that identified volunteers. Declan gave us the once-over. “We look like the world’s lamest softball team,” he said. We all laughed, but the truth was we did feel like a team. In fact, we felt like a family. There were only two condos on the top floor of our building on Halifax Street: the Hunters lived in one, and our family lived in the other. But our connection went far beyond physical proximity.
Margot and Zack had been law partners, and sometime sparring partners, for two decades, and after a lengthy period of friendship, Taylor and Declan were on the cusp of romance. After Leland’s death, Margot and I grew close. I had been her labour coach, and Zack and I had both been with her when Lexi was born. Not long after Lexi was safely launched into the world, Margot, who was from a big close family, began considering having a second child. I was her sounding board as, lawyer-like, she marshalled the arguments for and against enlarging her family as a forty-four-year-old single mother. From the outset it was clear that Margot wanted another child, and I was pleased but not surprised when she announced that she’d decided to have another baby right away.
Margot and Leland had been truly in love, and Margot found it difficult to think about sex with a casual partner. After deliberation she decided on donor insemination and she was now happily pregnant. Her baby boy was due on Valentine’s Day. In a week Declan was starting his first year at the University of Toronto. We were all moving along, and on that bright morning it felt right that our two families were together to celebrate a project that mattered so much to us all.
Brock and Margot had decided to keep the formalities of the opening to a minimum. The noon ribbon-cutting was a photo op only. The speeches would come at suppertime, and they would be brief. The focus of the day was exploration and fun. Tour guides recruited from North Central would show off the buildings and talk about the programs. The swimming pool and the basketball courts would get a workout, and there would be plenty of old-fashioned outdoor games for the kids.
The centre was comprised of eight two-storey buildings linked to form an octagon. The space enclosed by the octagon was known as “the green,” and by eleven o’clock Brock, Zack, and I were on it watching Zack’s and my granddaughters, Madeleine and Lena, run together in a three-legged race. They were halfway across the green when someone in the crowd to my left caught Zack’s eyes. “You won’t believe who’s coming our way,” he said.
Brock and I turned to follow his gaze. “Cronus,” I said. “Wow. What’s he doing here?”
Zack shrugged. “Nobody has a bigger investment in North Central than Cronus.”
I gave Zack a sidelong glance. “He does pretty much own it, doesn’t he?”
Cronus was a slumlord. He held the deeds for dozens of the neighbourhood’s overcrowded, rat-infested houses, and his motto as a landlord was “maximum income, minimum maintenance.” Cronus was also known to be into rough sex – always consensual, he was quick to point out. When a girlfriend who
shared Cronus’s pleasure in spanking, hair-pulling, and limb-twisting ended up dead, Cronus landed in the prisoner’s box. Zack had successfully defended him, and Cronus continued to be grateful. In addition to paying Zack a hefty fee, Cronus had offered him his top revenue-earning property. Zack demurred, but Cronus promised Zack that someday he would reward him. It was an assurance that unnerved me.
That sunny morning, Cronus approached with his hand extended. He offered it to me first. I took it but only after steeling myself. Cronus gave me the creeps. It wasn’t just his occupation or his enthusiasm for rock-’em sock-’em sex. It was the man himself. He was always immaculately dressed. That day he was wearing a custom-tailored white summer suit that would have done Gatsby or Mick Jagger proud. The workmanship was artful, but all the tailors in Hong Kong couldn’t disguise the fact that Cronus was a snake. His shaved head was bullety; his eyes were hooded. He had a habit of flicking his tongue before he spoke. His hand was unnervingly cold and smooth, and I was relieved when he released mine.
The three-legged race was over. Madeleine and Lena had come in fourth and were standing in line to receive their ribbons. Zack pointed out the girls to Cronus. “Those brilliant athletes are our granddaughters,” he said.
Cronus’s gaze was cool and assessing. “How old are they?”
Zack’s smile faded. “Madeleine is eight and Lena is seven.” He moved his chair closer to Cronus. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Watching children at play isn’t exactly your scene.”
Cronus nodded his bullety head. “True,” he said. His eyes travelled over the green. “When I was a kid, our neighbour took me to her church’s Sunday school picnic. All I remember is lining up and waiting while some lady with a great rack and a face like a bloodhound gave each of us an egg on a spoon. When we all had our eggs and spoons, she counted to three. Then she yelled, ‘Run for Jesus.’ ”
Cronus seemed lost in nostalgia; Brock nudged him towards the present. “Did you win?”
Cronus nodded. “My prize was a plastic bookmark with a mustard seed stuck on it. A piece of shit. I gave it to the girl I accidentally tripped at the finish line.”
