Do or Die

by Barbara Fradkin

  She was shaking her head fiercely. “Dave would never do anything! He’s been set up!”

  “But he was there.”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth!”

  “Miss Simmons, I understand your loyalty to Dave—”

  “He’s a gentle, honest man.”

  “So was Jonathan Blair!” Green retorted. “He didn’t deserve to be murdered. If Dave Miller didn’t kill him, trust me to uncover that. But if he did kill him, who deserves your loyalty more?”

  She roamed around her barren room, straightening covers and wiping up imaginary dust. Finally, she began to speak. “Dave told me he was going to the library to meet Jonathan.”

  “When did he tell you this?”

  “About nine o’clock that evening. I was just leaving, and I dropped into his office to ask if he wanted a bite. He said no, because Jonathan had asked him to meet him at the library later.”

  Green frowned. “You’re sure he said Jonathan asked him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where in the library?”

  “Just…” she shrugged, “just in the library, I think.”

  “So Jonathan was in his office that evening?”

  She shook her head. “He’d been around earlier. He sent Dave an e-mail.”

  The e-mail trick again! “You mean from his computer to Dave’s?”

  “Yes. We did that to each other all the time. Silly little things half the time. Like ‘Hi, you lonely in there?’”

  “Did Miller ever verify the message really came from Jonathan?”

  “I have no idea.” Comprehension widened her eyes. “You think someone else sent him that message!” she gasped. “To get him over there, so he’d get blamed?”

  Green’s mind was racing. Pieces were falling into place, but the picture didn’t make any sense! Groping for logic, he asked her to continue her account of the evening. Now that she knew he was considering Miller’s side, she softened and came to sit by his side.

  “I did go over to the library and hang around, but I didn’t see anything. I was hoping…” She flushed, awkward with feminine wiles. “I was hoping to catch Dave when the library closed, maybe get him to go out for a beer afterwards. I saw him studying on the fourth floor.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About ten-thirty. I saw Jonathan too, his nose buried in a book, scribbling furiously.”

  “When and where?”

  She flinched at his sharp tone and twisted her hands in her lap. “Uh—after that. Maybe twenty to eleven? He was in a corner of the library, a place we’d never normally go.”

  “The Medieval Literature section?”

  Surprised, she nodded. “He was so intent that he didn’t see me.”

  The insight came to Green in a flash. Blair was hiding! Trying to avoid all the colleagues who had suddenly turned up at the library. The question was—who else besides Dave Miller and Rosalind had he seen? “Did you see anybody else from your group?”

  “Well, I didn’t stay around. Soon the intercom announced ten minutes to closing, and I started trying to find Dave, but he wasn’t in his carrel anymore. I realized I must have missed him, so I hurried to try to catch him downstairs.” She flushed again, knotting her fingers. “I…I feel sorry for the guy.”

  Green had no time for sentiment. “And did you find him downstairs?”

  “Well, there was a lot of confusion. The fire alarm went off and—”

  “Did you find him?”

  Reluctantly she shook her head. “But he said he left when the fire alarm rang. And I believe him. Dave is not like other men, Inspector. He’s not capable of deceit. He’s been trying to figure out himself how he was set up, and he says he’s very close. He found a book in the library yesterday describing some recent research in Denmark on localizing functions in the brain.”

  Some vague memories stirred. Something Stan Baker had said in his wild speculations about Miller. And something Carrie MacDonald had mentioned when she first described her discovery of the body. Both had talked about a book. “Where is this book?”

  She hesitated, avoiding his sharp gaze. “Miss Simmons!”

  Without a word she rose and went to her bookshelf, where she pulled out a thick, shiny volume. “Dave told me to hold it for him and not to let it out of my sight for anyone.”

  Green flipped through it, recognizing words like perception, sensory input and cerebral cortex, but little else. He was going to need Dr. Baker’s services again in a hurry.

  “He said it was that important?”

  She nodded. “He certainly got very excited. He was looking at the section on auditory processing, and he said he found exactly what the culprit did to the numbers. He said he just had one more person to talk to and I should keep the book just in case.”

  Green felt a chill. Had Miller known he was heading off to meet a killer? “In case what?”

  She obviously had not sensed the same threat, for she shrugged with disinterest. “In case he got arrested, I assumed.”

  Green was just about to close the book and call Baker when a smudge of dirt caught his eye. Flipping on a stronger light, he took out his magnifying glass. On closer scrutiny it was far more than a smudge of dirt. Near the edge of the page, barely visible to the naked eye, were the clear lines of a fingerprint etched in blood.

  * * *

  Green paced the little fingerprint lab, tripping over Lou Paquette at every turn. Paquette sat at his microscope surrounded by fingerprint sheets and, in his utter concentration, not a sound could be heard beyond the faint wheeze of his breath. His hair was rumpled, and there was a smell of stale whisky about him, but he had dragged himself out of bed without complaint when Green had called.

  “It’s still going to be hard to connect the print to the scene,” Sullivan pointed out on one of Green’s passes. “The defence will claim that hundreds of students with hangnails could have touched that book.”

  “Not if the blood is Jonathan Blair’s and the print is our killer’s.” Green threw his hands up. “Lou, what the hell’s taking so long! I thought you said it was a good print.”

  Paquette raised his head from the lens, his face ruddy from concentration. “It is. It’s beautiful. I just can’t match it to anyone. Not Miller, not Difalco, not the Haddads or Halton. It’s not even Jonathan Blair’s.”

  “Maybe it is just some student with a hangnail,” Sullivan replied, rubbing his eyes wearily.

  “Not that kind of coincidence.” Green snatched the book off the table. “Not on the book both Jonathan Blair and David Miller found crucial to the research fraud. You two guys can go home, but I’m taking it over to the RCMP lab to see if Serology can tie the blood to Blair.”

  Green had to rant a little and threaten the wrath of the Police Chief, but he was finally able to cajole one junior serologist back into his lab to look at the bloodstained print. He gritted his teeth as the young man fiddled and measured and peered through his microscope before finally coming up with his verdict. Type A—Jonathan Blair’s blood type.

  “I could go further,” the technician added nervously. “I mean, if you want. It’s a pretty small amount, but I can get you some other factors. If you want.”

  “If I want?” Green shook his head in exasperation. “Of course I want. And I want DNA too. The killer’s ID, and our whole case, hinges on this print. I need every piece of physical ammunition I can get.”

  Green glanced at his watch as he headed back out to the parking lot. Eleven-thirty. Half an hour to judgment day, and he was at a loss. Whose bloody thumb print had been on the book? Who had picked up the book as it fell from Jonathan’s hand, and who had shoved it hastily onto a bookshelf on his escape route? And where was Dave Miller? Sullivan had checked out his apartment and had come up empty. Who was the one final person he said he had to talk to? And why? Was he just asking naïvely around trying to figure out the mystery of the vanished data, or had he seen the thumb print and put the pieces together? Had he gone off k
nowingly to a rendezvous with a killer, hoping to flush him out and so clear his name?

  Green shuddered at the thought. This killer was far too clever and cold-blooded to fall for that, and in the ensuing battle of cunning, Green had no doubt what the outcome would be. But could he stop it? Yanking open his car door, he seized his police radio. He reached a weary Brian Sullivan just locking up his house for the night and ordered him to put out an APB on Dave Miller. Not to pick him up but to find him and keep him under surveillance.

  Sullivan’s weary voice suffused with energy. “Hey! Have we finally nailed him?”

  “No. I’m scared to death someone else will.”

  Afterwards he sat in the driver’s seat in the RCMP parking lot, his mind racing over possibilities, terrified that he was already too late. He was so lost in worry that he did not hear the shouts until the running figure was almost upon him. Startled, he peered through the shadows at the man scurrying towards him, glasses glinting in the lamplight.

  “Jim Winkler, Hair and Fibre.” The man stopped, breathless. “I was working late preparing a report for court, and I heard you were in the building. This afternoon I got to wondering about that hair we found on the shirt. You know—the one we couldn’t match to anything? Well, just on a hunch I ran a new match, and you’ll never believe this. Guess whose it turned out to be?”

  Green was beyond riddles. “Who!”

  “Jonathan Blair’s.”

  * * *

  It makes no sense, no goddamn sense! Green ranted to himself as he drove his car aimlessly through the deadened streets. The hair was on the inside of the shirt at the back of the neck. Exactly where it would be if the shirt had been worn and hair from the nape of the neck had got caught inside. How the hell would hair from the victim, who was in front of the killer and at least a foot away, have ended up there? Only if Blair had worn it, and that made no sense at all.

  Unless…!

  The thought so surprised him that he drove through a red light. Slamming on the brakes, he spun the car around and headed back towards the RCMP lab. It was a crazy, nonsensical idea, but the only one that fit the facts. There was one person who could perhaps tell him just how crazy it really was.

  Twenty minutes later, shirt in hand, he was ringing the bell outside Marianne Blair’s mansion, expecting to face the pinched sneer of her executive assistant. It was the only pleasure he took in rousing the household at this hour. But instead after a long wait, the door cracked open to reveal the cautious stare of Henry Blair. Blair swung the door wide at the sight of him. He was wearing the same mismatched clothes as earlier, but they were in rumpled disarray.

  Green recovered his voice first. “I’m sorry to disturb you so late.”

  “No, no! It’s quite all right, we were just ah…talking.”

  Marianne Blair appeared in the hallway behind him, her knobby hands clutching her blouse to her throat. She gripped her ex-husband’s arm and stared at Green through questioning eyes.

  “Is there news?”

  He dodged artfully. “I’m getting close. I have one quick question for both of you.”

  “Of course, please come in. Henry was just…we were talking about Jon. Come, there’s tea in the kitchen.” Mrs. Blair drew Henry back to allow Green entrance and only then, in the brighter light of the hall chandelier, did he see the swollen redness of their eyes.

  “Thank you, but I don’t want to intrude,” he mumbled. “I just wanted to show you this.” He held out the evidence bag containing the black shirt. “Do either of you recognize this shirt?”

  Marianne sucked in her breath with a sharp gasp. She took the bag from him almost reluctantly and stepped over to hold it under the stronger light of the hall chandelier. In the stillness, he could feel his own heartbeat as he waited. When she finally turned to him, her face was pale and her voice hoarse.

  “This is Jonathan’s. I bought it for him myself last year, to sort of liven up his wardrobe. Jonathan usually goes in for beiges and blues. But I haven’t see it…oh, for at least two months.”

  It took him five minutes to extricate himself from their questions and to get back out to his car. A brief phone call to Sullivan turned up no trace of Miller. Sullivan sounded groggy and discouraged, but promised to continue the search and the stake-out of Miller’s apartment. In the distance, the bells of the Peace Tower tolled midnight, each lugubrious chime like a further nail in his coffin. Green’s sense of dread grew. Where could Miller be at this hour! Whom had he gone to see? Who could have held the final key to the mystery for him?

  He sat in the dark, staring through the car windshield at the deserted Rockcliffe street, pondering all the pieces of the puzzle that fit nowhere. Why did the killer wear Jonathan Blair’s shirt? Where did he get it? The image of Sharon and the photo suddenly flashed through his mind, and he held his breath as an answer slowly came into focus. Not Miller, not Halton, not even Difalco, but someone he should have seen right from the beginning, and for reasons as old as the hills. Considered in this new light, a number of niggling little problems suddenly made sense—why Jonathan Blair’s sketch had been taken from Carrie’s apartment, why his wallet had never been found, why his office and computer had been so easily accessed. Why the frame of Eddie Haddad had begun even before Jonathan’s results were complete. Everything fit!

  Shoving his car into gear, he tore out of Marianne Blair’s driveway and down the hushed, mansion-lined street, barely missing an elderly gentleman out walking his Pekinese. He remembered that the apartment was a short hop across the Rideau River and up King Edward Street into the seedier student area of Sandy Hill. The little car squealed as he spun around corners and raced up deserted streets. Drawing up outside the apartment, he paused. He needed back-up, a search warrant, and an arrest warrant. But a life was in jeopardy and it might already be too late. In a life-and-death crisis, the department and the courts could be very forgiving.

  There was no response to his knock and listening at the door, he could hear no sounds from within. Throwing procedure to the winds, he roused the building superintendent to open the door. The apartment was in darkness and a quick check of the rooms revealed it was empty. On the kitchen table lay a pharmacy bag, with a prescription receipt for Elavil stapled to the front. But the bag was empty.

  Fuck!

  Elavil was an anti-depressant which could induce a fatal coma with relatively few pills. Time was the enemy. David Miller’s home was just across the Queensway in one of the Lees Avenue apartment buildings, and Green decided it was faster to drive there than to call the surveillance team and explain. Careening into the apartment driveway, he spotted Brian Sullivan’s old Chevrolet itself sitting near the front door. Beyond the car, just exiting through a side door and slipping around the corner of the building was a dark-haired man with a mustache. Leaping out of his car, Green raced to Sullivan’s window and found him fast asleep at the wheel. Raging, he shook him awake.

  “Grab that man with the mustache and call for back-up! No time to explain. I’m going up to Miller’s.”

  The building was part of a massive, low-rent complex that had fallen into decay and squalor. Even at midnight the tenants hung over the balcony rails in the summer heat, shouting obscenities at one another. Beer bottles littered the lobby, and the stench of urine choked the airless halls. Through the flimsy walls, babies wailed and heavy metal rock music boomed. Green jumped over a drunk sprawled in the hallway and dashed for the elevator. How much time had the killer had? Goddamn it, if they’d been able to identify the fingerprint earlier, none of this would have happened! If only he hadn’t felt sorry for Paquette that night and compromised his thoroughness. If only everyone on this case was not stretched beyond endurance. How long had Sullivan been asleep? Had the killer waited to be sure Miller was dead? Any delay increased the risk of capture, but leaving too early increased the chance that Miller would rouse enough to call for help. Green could only pray for a miracle as the cranky elevator jerked its way to the top floor.

>   He dashed down the dimly lit hall and pounded on Miller’s door. No answer. Grabbing the handle, he thrust. The door gave and spilled him inside. A computer screen on the right wall washed the small room in a bluish glow which glanced off the fridge and stove in the opposite corner, but left the rest of the room in shadow. Green could just make out the dim shape of a bed against the far wall before he found the light switch. Murky yellow light filled the room, revealing a huddled form under the bedcovers.

  Covering the distance in two leaps, Green groped for a pulse. Thin, but there. Thank God! He radioed 911, then returned to Miller. The man was unconscious and felt clammy to the touch. Green rolled him onto his back, loosened his clothing and checked his airways. As he searched his memory frantically for further first-aid techniques, his eye fell on the pill bottle on the bedside table. Beside the bottle sat an empty water glass. Green knew Miller’s prints would be on it and no one else’s. All other traces of the crime—the coffee cups, the drugged cake, whatever the killer had used to feed Miller the pills—would have been washed away. A suicide note, artfully dropped from the dying fingers, would be the perfect finishing touch. This killer, smart and thorough, would have added that.

  Green scanned the floor, bedcovers and tabletops for a note without success. Then he settled on the computer. Of course! The computer was this killer’s special trademark! Rising, he walked over to the screen, which had a display of multi-coloured brain cells. Tapping the space bar returned him to the file in use.

  Dear Rosalind,

  You are the only person I want to send a message to before I die. Now that I’ve lost my life’s work, Professor Halton’s respect, and my hopes for the future, I have nothing left to live for. My work was right and somehow Defalco tricked us all, but I have no hope of proving it, so what’s the point? Maybe someday people will learn the truth. Thank you for your faith in me.

  Your friend, Dave

  Suddenly, Green heard a door slam and he glanced out the window. The roof of the twin tower opposite was directly in his line of vision and lit by a single searchlight above the rooftop door. Green saw a long shadow play across the roof, then as his eyes adjusted, he made out a small figure running towards the edge. The man’s dark hair was on end, and in the floodlight his mustache was a jagged slash against his whitened face. Down below, three patrol cars converged on the building and screeched to a stop, sirens flashing. Green saw Sullivan talking to them and gesticulating to the high-rise.