Several seconds passed, then one small, almost invisible nod.
“One last thing,” I said. “There were four girls at Northern Horizon and there were two at other schools. Was that all of them?”
The rain fell harder and for several seconds our eyes were locked onto each other, neither of us saying anything. Then as his lips barely moved, words came — barely formed, hard to hear, hard to understand.
But I did hear. I did understand.
“There was one more. She was my stepdaughter — Kathleen’s daughter.”
I had no words to respond with. I walked past Appleton, out of the park and toward the Impala.
Sixteen
I’d been home for almost three hours. I’d finished two rye and Cokes to go with the two I had on the plane. I’d started on a third but it had been sitting on the table in front of me since I’d poured it a half hour or so before. The ice had melted and the Coke had lost its colour and its allure. Great Big Sea had given way to the Downchild Blues Band on the stereo.
My cell phone had rung six or eight times since I’d walked into the apartment and I had yet to answer it. I wasn’t sure there was anything anybody had to say that I needed to hear right then.
I now knew what had happened to Donna in her grade eleven year. But I wasn’t any closer to knowing who had killed her or why. Maybe the fire had nothing to do with Appleton and his sexual predation on seven young girls. Or maybe it did.
Was it a stretch to think that a man who could do what he’d done to those girls was capable of worse? Likely not. I’d known of cases where convicted criminals threatened revenge on judges, lawyers, witnesses — everyone involved in the case against them. And I had known of a few who tried to carry out those threats with varying degrees of success.
So it was possible that Appleton had killed Donna out of a desire for revenge. And I supposed the same logic could apply to Kathleen Appleton. Despite her husband’s protestations, what I had seen in that house was a woman who was dangerous.
And arson wasn’t like looking into someone’s eyes and shooting or stabbing or bludgeoning and watching them die. You could start a fire and be far away from the scene when your victim’s life ended. The kind of murder that might be favoured by a woman?
And how did the fact that one of her husband’s victims was her own daughter impact the thing? Wouldn’t that have focused any need for revenge on him? Or had Appleton’s silver tongue somehow managed to paint himself as the victim even as he seduced his step-daughter?
Was Kathleen Appleton’s faith in her husband so great that she could choose him over her daughter? That kind of misguided fanaticism had existed throughout history so it was certainly possible.
And there was the note. The kind of vicious cruelty and hate that would enable someone to send a note like the one I had received one year after Donna’s death was evident in the face, the voice, and the actions of Kathleen Appleton when I accused her husband of starting the fire.
Yet, for all of my cop show dialogue — means, motive, opportunity — it somehow didn’t feel right. I wasn’t sure. I wanted to be sure and I wasn’t. Richard Appleton was a predator. His wife was a whack job. Hard to argue either point. But coldhearted, coldblooded killers?
I just didn’t know.
I picked up the untouched third rye and Coke just as Donnie Walsh and the rest of Downchild were wrapping up “Cruisin’.”
I stood at the window and watched the street lights coming on throughout the streets of Bridgeland.
I set the drink glass back down — still untouched. I didn’t feel up to a run but I needed to get outside — walk for a while. Think. I pulled on a down-filled jacket, toque, and mitts, expecting the worst, and took the stairs down to the main floor, stepping out into the dry cold the Canadian prairies are noted for. I shoved my hands into the jacket pockets, turned right when I reached the sidewalk, then left at the bottom of the little hill that led up to my apartment, walking aimlessly and without purpose. I turned again and was opposite the park at 9a Street. There were no kids in the playground there and no one else walking. Too late. Too dark. And too damn cold.
I stepped off the curb and started across the street toward the park.
I heard the car before I saw it, looked up at the roar of an engine that was loud and close…. too close.
The car roared by and I instinctively jumped back, lost my footing, and almost went down. When I’d recovered I turned to … what … yell? Extend a middle finger? Get a licence number to report an idiot driver? I didn’t do any of those things. Instead I stared after the car, watching it disappear, tail lights racing into the night.
Dark, maybe blue, hard to say, not a recent model. Big car. Car, not the SUV that was the vehicle of choice in this neighbourhood. I saw the back of a head, only one. The car and its lone occupant disappeared around the corner.
A warning? About what? The MFs didn’t likely see a need to send a message since I hadn’t been a part of the Blevins thing for a while, and wasn’t all that critical to the investigation anyway. Using me to warn Cobb to back off?
Or was it one of the Appletons having beaten me back to Calgary, wanting to scare the crap out of me?
The real answer, of course, was that a bad driver, likely fuelled by a liquid stimulant of some kind, had buzzed me, carelessly but probably unintentionally. Might not have even seen me, noticed me at the last second, was as scared as I was.
The night was even colder than I’d thought. I decided to cut short my walk, stopped in at a Lebanese takeout, bought a takeout sandwich and salad, headed back in the direction of Drury Avenue and my apartment, checking the street periodically for wayward vehicles coming in my direction.
Back in the apartment, I transferred the sandwich and salad to a plate and set it on the counter. I poured myself an orange juice and was pulling Broken Social Scene out of its case when the cell phone rang again. I glared at it, willing it to explode. When it didn’t, I picked it up, noting that I had seven messages.
“Hello.” I hoped my tone of voice would let the caller know that I preferred shawarma to anything he or she had to tell me.
“It’s Cobb. Just checking to see how you’re doing.”
“I’ve made a pretty good start on getting drunk but I seem to be losing steam.”
“You sound like someone who’s losing steam. You okay?”
“Not so much.”
“I take it you found the teacher.”
“Yeah, I found him. And his wife. Charming couple.”
“I’d like to hear about it. Plus I’m hungry. How about I come by in twenty minutes?”
“I’m not in the mood for company.”
“Well, get in the mood. I’m on my way.”
He hung up. I looked at the phone. “You know, Cobb, you’re really starting to piss me off.”
I surveyed the room. It wasn’t that bad, nothing that twenty minutes of tidying couldn’t adequately deal with. I started with wrapping the sandwich and salad in separate cellophane packages and setting both in the refrigerator. I changed my mind on the music and Stan Rogers provided the accompaniment for my cleanup.
The knock on the door came after seventeen minutes and halfway through “Northwest Passage.” I hadn’t finished the tidying but it wasn’t bad — good enough for Cobb on short notice.
I went to the door, pulled it open. Cobb stood, legs apart, grin on his face, like John Wayne arriving in Nome, Alaska, with a prostitute in tow. Except there was no one, prostitute or otherwise, standing next to him.
“Get your coat. I left the car running and we’re going for something to eat.”
I looked at him for several seconds, decided against arguing. Two minutes later we were heading down the front steps of the apartment.
He hadn’t been kidding. The Jeep was running and it was warm inside, a good thing on a night when the thermometer seemed intent on exploring new depths.
“Feel like Chinese?”
“Yeah, sure. Anything.�
�
We’d gone only a few blocks when Cobb’s cell phone played the first few bars of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Different ring tone from what I remembered. I hadn’t taken Cobb for a classical guy.
“Cobb,” he said. And nothing else. He listened for thirty, maybe forty seconds, ended the call, reached again for the gearshift.
“Change of plans. We’re still going to eat but Chinese is off the table.”
“Jay Blevins?”
“I’ll bring you up to speed on that over dinner. This is related … somewhat.”
He didn’t say anything more, at least not to me. He pulled over to the curb, tapped away on his cell phone for a minute or so. Texting. I resisted the urge to glance over, see if I could spot anything on the screen. Instead I looked out at Lukes Drug Mart, a Bridgeland landmark since sometime in the fifties.
A pause, silence, then more tapping. Cobb set the phone on the dash, put the Jeep in gear, and we were back in motion.
I sat back, let the heat fold itself around me, and continued to look out the side window. There was more snow than when I’d left and the people on the streets looked like figures from a Christmas card. Lots of scarves, bulky coats, and quilted ski jackets, gloves, some mitts. I realized I’d forgotten my own gloves.
Neither Cobb nor I spoke much and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to our route until we pulled up in front of Kane’s Harley Diner. I could see into the restaurant. Quiet night. People tend to stay at home when it’s minus twenty with a wind chill ten degrees south of that.
“Home sweet home,” I said.
Cobb said, “Yeah,” shut the car off, and got out. I stepped out onto the curb.
Obviously the phone call and the texting had something to do with our being here. I figured he’d tell me when he was ready. We hurried into the diner, Cobb as eager as I was to get out of the cold. Or maybe he had another reason for wanting to get inside in a hurry.
There was one middle-aged couple in a booth I hadn’t been able to see from the street and a guy at the counter reading the paper and drinking coffee. Empty plate on the counter in front of him. Pie maybe.
I looked at Cobb and he pointed to a circular centre table with four chairs that seemed to be the focal point of the restaurant. I followed him to the table. Since the place wasn’t busy I figured no one would object to our taking it. Not that Cobb would have altered his plans even if there had been an objection. He wasn’t wired that way.
We sat down, waited. Davy came out from the back, spotted us, and came slowly toward us, his body language screaming his lack of enthusiasm. Olympians can run 800 meters in less time than it took for Davy to cover the dozen or so steps that separated us. He arrived at our table and looked at us like he’d never seen either of us before.
“Evening, Davy,” I said.
A barely discernible nod as he handed us two menus, then turned to leave.
“You have a special tonight?” Cobb said.
Davy stopped but didn’t turn around. “Chili.”
Cobb said, “Bring us two specials. And two beers. We won’t need glasses.”
Davy made the trip back to the kitchen with what could be termed lightning speed — at least in comparison to what I’d seen as he came toward us.
I said, “Davy doesn’t seem happy.”
Cobb nodded. “Holiday season blahs.”
“Must be it.”
“I hope you’re okay with chili. I seem to remember you telling me once you like it. I didn’t want him hanging around our table.”
“Chili’s fine.”
“So tell me about your trip to sun country.”
I told him about my meeting with Kelly, the revelation about the abuse, and finally my encounter with the Appletons. I rolled it all out at once, paused only when Davy brought our food and two cans of Coors Light. Cobb watched me, seemed almost to be studying me as I talked, but didn’t interrupt or ask me anything until I finished.
And not even then, at least not right away. We ate chili for a while. I piled mine on the toast Davy had brought with the chili; Cobb kept the chili and the toast apart from one another. To each his own.
Halfway through the chili, Cobb stopped eating, wiped his mouth with a serviette, and looked up at me.
“I’m sorry Adam, I really am. All this has to be tough for you.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“You think Appleton is capable of setting the fire?”
I paused before answering. “I’ve thought about nothing else since that afternoon. And the truth is I don’t know. If he was capable of doing what he did to those girls I’d say he was capable of setting the fire. But being capable of doing it doesn’t mean he did it. I just don’t know.”
“How about the pitbull wife?”
“Same answer. Maybe even more capable if she thought her husband was under threat. She might do anything if she freaked out like she did with me. Thing is he wasn’t under threat. This was after the fact. He’d done his time. For all intents and purposes the whole thing was over.”
“Except for revenge.”
I nodded. “Except for that. And I don’t know if either of them could kill with revenge as their motive.”
“Either or both.”
“What?”
“Just thinking out loud. It’s possible that they were acting together on this thing.”
I thought about that over a mouthful of chili and toast. “Maybe, maybe not. She didn’t strike me as Lady Macbeth. And there’s the X factor in all this — he molested her daughter. I haven’t got that figured out at all.”
“You mean why she’s side by side with the son of a bitch when she should be trying to poison his birthday cake.”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head, which I took to mean it made as much sense to him as it did to me.
We sipped our beer and I told him about the narrow miss with the car.
“You get a look at it?”
“It was dark so it was tough to get a good look. It was a big car, dark colour.”
“What do you mean, big car?”
“Like those boats people use to drive before we knew about climate change.”
“So an older big car.”
“I’d say so, yeah.”
“You saw the Audi at the warehouse. Any chance…?”
I shook my head. “Notta. Not in the same league. I don’t know what this car was but it wasn’t the Audi.”
“And you didn’t see the driver?”
“Uh-uh. Back of a head, that’s all. I wish I could tell you for sure it was the MFs or that it wasn’t, but I can’t.”
“Maybe we’ll just ask them when they get here.”
“What?”
“They should be here any time now.”
“And you know that because…?”
“I happened to learn that they often come in here on Sunday nights. Not every Sunday, but most of them.”
“Just happened to learn,” I repeated.
“My man Davy. Picked himself up a two hundred dollar bonus for making a phone call.”
“To you.”
“To me.”
“The phone call you got while we were driving? The texting?”
“The texting was something else. But the phone call, yeah, that was our boy.”
“That explains the less than enthusiastic reception we received. He’s scared they’ll find out and rearrange his body parts.”
Cobb nodded.
We ate for a minute. I looked over at him. “I think I liked it better when you were wanting to keep me out of the line of fire.”
“Came up a little sudden. I didn’t think you’d want me to drop you on a street corner on a frostbite night.”
“Good call.”
“Besides, there shouldn’t be a line of fire. Just a little chat.”
“Rock Scubberd going to be one of the diners?”
“That’s what Davy tells me. He let it slip during one of my stops here that the MFs phone ahead when they’re
planning a visit. They like to make sure they’re dining alone. I mentioned to Davy that I was aware of a couple of outstanding legal issues he had and that I’d be less inclined to pass that information along to former colleagues, and I’d add a two hundred dollar tip to my next bill if he let me know the next time Scubberd and his group were planning to stop in.”
I set my fork down. I’d lost interest in the chili.
“And how will Scubberd take it when he and the MFs aren’t the only diners tonight?”
“I told Davy to tell them I got pushy, wouldn’t take ‘we’re closed’ for an answer. Basically put it on me.”
I glanced around the restaurant, noted that we were the only ones still in the place. “So if Rock and company decide to vent their displeasure, it will be in our direction, not Davy’s.”
“It was the least I could do for the young man.”
“Thoughtful. And why exactly would we want to spend time bonding with the likes of Rock Scubberd?”
“I received another phone call a couple of days ago. From my man Grover.”
“Ike Groves.”
“The same.”
“Informants are a cop’s best friend. Or an ex-cop.”
Cobb smiled. “Roger that. Apparently my chats have borne fruit. Suddenly Grover can’t wait to tell me things. Shared with me that there’s a rumour on the street about a drug shipment — big time deal supposed to arrive sometime in the next couple of weeks. Which dovetails nicely with the information I received as to why Scubberd was spending time in Vancouver. Setting up a network for a continuous supply.”
“And I’m guessing the shipment is bound for a location owned and operated by the MFs.”
“That’s the scuttlebutt. Then it gets turned around and is off to Fort McMurray. Popular destination for MF imports. If there’s any truth to the rumour, Mr. Scubberd may see the wisdom of chatting with us further.”
“And this is the first shipment via the new network?”
Cobb shrugged. “Don’t know. Obviously they’ve been getting stuff from somewhere prior to this. But the Grover tells me this is big.”
“And if the Grover’s tip is some crack induced hallucination with no connection whatsoever to the reality …”
Serpents Rising Page 21
