“You have been more busy than I thought. And you have done well. Exceeded all expectations in fact. I will make sure that it is rewarded.”
My heart skips a beat. Does this mean that he will use his relationship with the mayor to get me back into the department? Before I can decide whether or not to ask him, he removes his hand from mine and squeezes my wrist. “Go now, Cal. I need to think about everything that you have told me. Make sure that you call Arnold tomorrow. I do not expect to see you again on this side of the Styx but perhaps we shall meet sometime in the undiscovered country. You were like a son to me and, although I have never said it before and perhaps I should have, I love you like one.”
My tears fall upon his silver hair as I lean forward and kiss his forehead.
62
Cal
The scene is washed by a late November drizzle. The stand of trees looks stark black against the grey landscape. Even the colour of the grass seems muted by the standing lines of gravestones.
Roy’s grave is close to Kevin’s, his eternal bed a gift arranged by Arnold on behalf of the Wallace family.
It is the first funeral Ellie has ever attended. We stand alone beside the grave, her hand gripped tightly in mine. Water is dipping from her rain hood and my hair. In contrast to Kevin’s funeral, we are two lone mourners. The rent-a-minister is gone. The doleful service is over. When beggars die, there are no comets seen.
I wonder how long it will be before I am back here to say a final goodbye to another father.
Ellie tugs on my hand. I look down. “Now, Daddy?” she asks.
“Yes,” I smile at her.
She steps forward, dragging me with her, and throws the rose into the maw of the grave. It lands on the coffin and in my mind I see Roy’s body, dressed in the maroon velvet shroud supplied by the undertaker, his old leather hat at his feet, his beloved knife open and clasped in a gnarled old hand, ready to ward off foes in the undiscovered country.
I look at the gravestone.
Roy
– 2016
He lived life on his terms.
So much never to be known.
So much we could have done together for years to come.
I look over at Kevin’s grave. Kev, I am so, so sorry. If I had just taken one minute to listen to what you had to say on that Saturday morning, you would still be alive, your career in ruins for sure, facing jail time perhaps, but still alive damn it.
And Roy. I put you in harm’s way and the fact that we avenged your death provides no solace, quite the opposite in fact.
I feel like the murderer that Stammo wanted to prove me to be.
Of all the things I want to say, I just stick with, “Goodbye Roy… Dad.”
We turn away and walk through the sodden grass to the path where Sam waits in her SUV. Sam: yet another victim of the fallout from Kevin’s murder. Her reactions to me have been guarded. At some level she blames me for ruining her life by bringing George to justice; another layer of guilt for me to consider. She is still living in his house but knows it cannot last. The government may well seize all of George’s assets. This may leave her and Ellie homeless and with MS she will be limited in her ability to work.
Ellie and I bundle into the back seat. The car is warm and so we struggle out of our coats before we buckle up. I wince as the seat belt scrapes against the infection that has been growing in the crook of my arm and I worry for the hundredth time about what I may have picked up from the needle I dropped on the floor of the Lion hotel.
“Are you OK, Cal?” Sam asks, looking at me in the rear view mirror.
I’m not but I nod.
I smile down at my lovely daughter and think about my last moments with my father.
“Sam,” I say, “will you do me a flavor?”
“If I can,” she says guardedly.
“I’d like it if from now on you called me Rocky. It was the name that Roy always called me.”
“Sure… Rocky.” She tries it out.
“Should I call you Rocky too, Daddy?” Ellie asks.
“No, sweetie. You can still call me Daddy. OK?” Her little hand squeezes mine and she giggles.
“Uh, Rocky,” Sam is struggling with what she wants to say. “I want you to know I don’t blame you for what happened with George. I made a terrible mistake which I’m going to pay for dearly, so will Ellie; but I wanted you to know that you did the right thing. We’re going to move out of the house on the weekend, I need to get our stuff out before the government decide what they want to do about George’s assets. We’re going to move in with my parents until we get ourselves sorted out.” I hear the catch in her voice and so does Ellie. She looks at me with puzzlement on her little face.
“Sam, I’ll do anything I can to help.” I feel the emptiness of my words. There’s nothing I can do until I get clean. It spurs my resolve.
Sam heads the car towards the downtown east side and the detox facility on East Second.
“This time it’s for sure, Ca— Rocky?” Sam asks.
“Yes. For sure.” And I pray that it is.
It has to be.
This time it’s not for the chance of returning to the VPD, it’s not for Sam or even for my darling Ellie.
It has to be for me.
I squeeze Ellie’s hand. She smiles up at me and helps soothe my worry for her and for Sam. But she can do nothing to ease my rising dread of what I will have to endure over the next little while.
She is thoughtful for a moment and then asks, “When he came to our house he was nice, he made me laugh. I asked him to take me to your house.”
“I wish so much that I had brought him to see you. We could have all gone out together. You and he would have had so much fun. He had all sorts of stories and jokes.”
“Tell me some of them Daddy.”
Tears are welling in my eyes. I no longer know whether they are for Roy or for Kevin or for Brad.
Or for me.
I smile down at Ellie. “Let me tell you about your grandpa…”
Cal
Monday
The thought of crossing this line fills me with dread. I feel rooted to the ground; I know that once I move, I will be changed forever and not for the better.
Steeling myself—or am I just delaying the inevitable?—I look up at the trees. They are old growth, moss covered monsters that have stood here for centuries. The enmity with which they glare down at me, through the forbidding early light, seeks to warn me off; they know I am a member of the species that has just profaned their woods. Although the thought skips through my mind, I know I cannot turn back.
I lift the yellow tape and stoop under.
At twenty paces, facing away and clad, like me, in crime-scene clothing, heads tilted forward, they look like alien prisoners about to be executed by a bullet in the back. Five of them are standing in a semicircle looking down at the sixth, a man, crouching over something on the ground. Cops at a murder scene often indulge in gallows humor, a futile mechanism to try and erase the horror of the brutal theft of a human life, but as I approach, I note they are silent.
I take my place beside my minder, at the left-hand end of the group; the outsider. He doesn’t bother to acknowledge my presence but a distant peal of thunder announces my arrival. Or is it a warning of what this case might do to me? Nothing has prepared me for this, the crime scene every cop dreads, especially a cop with a child he once failed to protect. But it is also the crime every cop wants to solve, especially the outsider who wants back in.
In an effort to delay the inevitable, I exchange looks and nods with the others present. There are no smiles today. Glad of the excuse, they fix their eyes on me. Waiting for the reaction, I suppose.
With no other option, I force myself to look down.
The gray light filtering through the forest canopy is just enough to illuminate the body in the mud. He is wearing funky yellow and green sneakers and gray sweat pants bearing the red Nike swoosh. They are muddied and ripped. He is naked above
the waist and is drenched in blood. He looks to be about nine or ten years old, forcing other unwanted images into my mind. I struggle to banish them… and only partly succeed.
There seem to be five wounds in an approximate circle with his belly button at its center. As if this were not enough, on his face there are two knife slashes forming an X. Each slash starts on one cheek and finishes on the opposite jaw line, with the center of the X over his mouth.
The eyes are bloody, damaged in some way. There is not a lot of blood on his face and I am praying that the facial wounds were inflicted after he was dead.
I look up. I survived but I was right. I know exactly how this crime has already changed me and, God help me, I embrace the change. The shiver that runs through me has nothing to do with the cold February morning and I can feel burning rage building inside. A good rage. A rage to consume me until I find the monster who did this.
“We’ll know more later but I estimate time of death at about eight or nine PM yesterday,” says a voice in a Québécois accent. I turn back and see that the coroner is on his feet and I am grateful that I do not have to look down again. “Cause is almost certainly the wound to ’is solar plexus. The facial wounds were post mortem and there is no obvious sign of sexual assault.” At this last, there is a sigh of relief from everyone but me. Not even that abomination could make me more determined to find this child’s killer. He nods toward Steve, my boss, “We should ’ave more for you later.”
I force my jaw to relax. “Was there any ID on the body?” I ask. He shakes his head.
It is time for the removal of the body and then the Forensic Services techs can take over. Before I clear the scene, I make myself take a good look around the area. About five feet from the body is what I guess to be the remains of a green t-shirt and a yellow winter jacket—it’s the exact shade of yellow that is my daughter Ellie’s favorite color. A part of me screams to call Ellie, just to hear her voice and know she’s OK, but right now I need to move heaven and earth to get my hands on the monster who did this.
Nothing else on the forest floor seems to be out of place but, if anything is, Forensics will find it; unless the firemen, typically first at the scene, have trampled it out of existence.
I somehow bring myself to take a final look at the body. Three lone rain drops fall from the leaves above and I watch them spatter on the child’s bloody torso. Claudius’ words spring into my mind, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow?
No, Claudius. There isn’t.
I head down the trail, back to where the cars are parked, and the not-so-sweet heavens open, baptizing us all into the select cult of those who have looked upon the body of a murdered child.
As badly as this day has started, I know it is going to get worse. By the time it draws to its close, I pray the images of this particular morning will keep my rage alive and keep at bay the longing for the sweet release only heroin can bring.
2
Cal
And now another line to cross. One I have crossed before. But this time will be a thousand times worse. I am angry at my minder’s curt “you handle this, Rogan,” but am glad too, because I will do this so much better than he ever could.
The door is snatched open.
She sees us and casts a desperate look around and behind us. I know what, or rather whom she is looking for. I hold up my badge, “Mrs. Wright? I’m Detective Rogan and this is Detective Stammo. May we come in, please?”
Her eyes settle on mine, switch to Stammo and then back to me. She knows to a certainty why we are here.
“Nooooooooo!” she collapses against the door post.
Stammo springs forward to stop her from falling but a man appears and puts both arms around her. He looks at Stammo. “Is it… Terry?” he asks.
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid so.” There is a catch in Stammo’s voice. My minder is human after all.
“Oh God, no.” He half carries his wife into the house. “Come in,” he throws back over his shoulder.
We follow him through the tiny entranceway and into the tiny living room. It feels familiar but not in a good way. I was brought up in houses like this.
He helps her onto the couch and sits beside her with his arm around her shoulders, steadying her. I try to imagine the pain that is coursing through them. If it were me being told by two strangers that Ellie… I need to stop myself going there. Too much empathy is a dangerous thing in a murder investigation.
I sit in the worn chair opposite them and they turn their faces toward me. Stricken: his, wide-eyed and haunted; hers, awash in tears, no hope in them, not wanting to hear what I have to tell them… but needing to.
The ticking of a clock somewhere in the room seems loud.
I dry swallow. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you but we’ve found the body of a child. We believe it could be your missing son, Terry.”
“You’re not sure?” Elizabeth Wright clutches at a desperate straw.
“I’m afraid we will need you to come and identify the body to be certain.” I tell them. “But he was dressed as you described in the missing person report and the photo matches. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
As his wife sobs in his arms, Wright asks the question, the answer to which will haunt them forever. “How did he…?”
There is no way I can sugar-coat the answer with the empty phrases I’m afraid that or I’m sorry to have to tell you, so I just and say, “His body was found in the UBC Endowment Lands. He was murdered.”
Elizabeth Wright’s sobbing has become a wail and her husband buries his shocked face in her hair.
I look up at Stammo and even he is blinking his eyes and looking at the ceiling. I see a real pain inside him. The shock makes me forget my anger at the cruel departmental joke that, given our history, made him of all people my minder, the supervisor of my probationary period.
The clock ticks in rhythm to Elizabeth Wright’s sobs.
To distract myself I look around the room. It is a small living/dining room and, through a hatch in the wall at the back of the dining area, I can see a kitchen. On the far end of the formica dining-room table there are the remains of an abandoned breakfast. Sharing the table are three very large computer monitors each displaying a writhing screen-saver. The monitors are connected to two tower PCs located under the table. It looks like a very expensive setup to my untrained eye and is at odds with the low-cost, rather shabby look of the rest of the house. The computer makes a pinging noise and the screen savers vanish. The screens fill with what looks like gobbledygook to me.
“Why would someone murder my son?” Mark Wright asks suddenly, drawing my attention away from the screens. “He was just a kid. Everybody loved Terry. It doesn’t make any sense.”
I turn to him. His eyes flick toward the computer screens. Why? His eyes pan back to mine and I try to read what’s in them. Is he trying to hide something? Guilt?
I turn back to the monitors and try to make sense of what I see. I can feel the awkward silence behind me. On the middle one there are words, numbers and symbols… lots of parentheses, but on the right hand one, just long lines of letters and numbers without spaces.
“Do you know why Terry went missing?” I ask.
“Rogan!” As I turn, Stammo’s eyes drill into mine for a moment. Then they soften. “We don’t know why someone would murder your son, sir,” Stammo says, his voice more gentle than it has ever been with me, or with anyone else for that matter, “but believe me, I promise you we will do everything in our power to find out who killed him and bring that person to justice.”
An image springs into my mind: Stammo and I in an alley, armed with baseball bats, administering justice to this particular killer. The thought feels better than it should.
Elizabeth Wright ignores him but looks at me and brushes away the tears with her fingertips. “Was he… you know…”
She cannot say it. Before I can speak, Stammo supplies the word. “Molested?” She shudders. “At this p
oint we don’t think so but we won’t be sure until after the autopsy.”
She nods her head and buries her face in her husband’s shoulder.
Stammo gives me a half nod. I stand up. “We have to ask you to come downtown to identify the body.” I tell them. “I am going to send in two uniformed officers; they’ll drive you there and bring you back home afterward.”
They both look up and nod vaguely in my direction.
Stammo and I make our own way out and signal the patrols to go in.
“Very sensitive, Rogan.” The old Stammo has returned. “Your job was to help them through this, not stick your nose into the man’s computer programs and definitely not to start questioning him. What the hell were you thinking?”
I don’t know which surprises me more: the fact that he knew the stuff on the monitors was a computer program or that he did a better job in there than I did.
As we walk to the car, the rain redoubles its efforts but does nothing to wash away my feeling of isolation.
3
Cal
Alack! My child is dead; And with my child my joys are buried.
The Wrights embody the Bard’s word. From the moment they identified the mutilated face, they have become like zombies. The loss of their son Terry has sucked their life force and left them husks, sitting together on the elderly couch, holding hands, forlorn. Elizabeth Wright is a striking woman with thick, curly, straw-colored hair tied behind her head in a scrunchie. She looks like she has cried all the moisture out of her system. Her husband Mark looks disheveled, curly hair awry, two days growth of black stubble, his eyes focused on some distant point.
“We’re sorry to have to ask you all these questions so soon after the loss of your son,” Stammo is saying, “but the faster we pursue the investigation, the more likely we are to get an outcome. And we will do everything we can to find who did this to your boy.”
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set) Page 35
