Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

  They both just nod.

  It bugs me that Stammo is taking the lead. After some training to update me, I’m back in the Vancouver Police Department, thanks to the influence of the Mayor and the Deputy Chief, and I am on a kind of probation with Stammo supervising me. But we both know I am the better detective, which irks him. Pairing me with Stammo of all people was probably the result of someone’s resentment at my return, most likely Superintendent Cathcart, head of Investigations Division.

  Or maybe someone wants to punish Stammo.

  However, at least I am in the Homicide Unit. If I hadn’t solved Kevin Wallace’s murder last year, I’d probably be handing out parking tickets in Kerrisdale.

  So Stammo will ask the questions. On the drive over here, he said, “I don’t want you screwing up like you did earlier, Rogan. You take notes; make use of that Master’s degree in literature.” He never misses a chance to take a shot.

  “Can you tell us about when Terry went missing?” he asks.

  They look at each other and something passes between them. I can’t quite identify what it is but my gut says she is signaling that she wants to take the lead on answering the questions. She looks at Stammo and her husband looks down at his hands. I try to imagine what would happen between Sam and me if Ellie were murdered when she was with me. I can’t.

  “I came home from work at eight and he wasn’t here,” she hesitates, cutting a look at her husband. “I checked with the neighbors and called his friend Michael’s family. But no-one had seen him. Mark got on his bike and went round the local streets looking for him while I called 9-1-1 and reported him missing.”

  “Yesterday was a Sunday. You were at work?” Stammo asks.

  “Yes, I’m a nurse at VGH. I was pulling a twelve hour shift.”

  Before Stammo can ask his next question, Mark Wright groans, “It was my fault.” He leans forward and puts his head in his hands. “I should have been watching him better but I was working on the computer. I kinda lost track of time and he must have run off.”

  His wife cuts him a look.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” I ask, drawing a scowl from Stammo for interrupting his flow.

  “It was about five-thirty.” Tears are coursing down his cheeks. “We had just got back from a play date at his friend Michael’s house. I needed to do some stuff on my computer and so I sent him to his room to play. Next thing I know, it’s eight o’clock and he’s gone.”

  “So he disappeared sometime between five-thirty and eight,” says Stammo, re-establishing his position as lead interviewer with a redundant question.

  They both nod.

  Instead of asking one of the questions struggling to get themselves off my tongue, Stammo says, “OK, Mr. Wright tell us about Terry’s day yesterday. Starting from when your wife went to work.”

  “Sure. Elizabeth left at about six-thirty in the morning. Terry and I got up at about eight. I made his favorite breakfast, dollar pancakes with maple syrup. I let him play on his computer while I did the dishes and then I took him out. I practically had to drag him away from his game.”

  I’m watching him like a hawk for any tells that would indicate that he is lying. I can’t think why he would but it’s a habit.

  “We went to Best Buy,” he continues. “I needed to buy some stuff. Then we drove down to the airport. Terry loved to watch the planes land. We parked in that area right under the flight path.” He looks at his wife and again something passes between them. Something feels wrong here.

  “Did anything unusual happen at the store or at the airport? Did you see anyone you know or talk to anyone?” Stammo asks, sticking with the pedestrian questions.

  “Not really. Terry had a major meltdown in the store; he wanted to stay there and play with one of the Wii games. But apart from that, nothing out of the ordinary.” For the third time, the look at his wife.

  “So what did you do after the airport?”

  “We went over to his friend Michael’s house for lunch and a play date. Dave and Grace, Michael’s parents, are good friends of ours and we often visit each other. We stayed there for the afternoon and then got back here at about five-thirty, like I said.”

  “And nothing unusual happened at all?” Stammo is reaching the end of his limited repertoire.

  “No nothing.” Wright shakes his head.

  Stammo looks at me. At last, permission to speak. In the momentary silence, I notice that the clock I could hear this morning is no longer ticking.

  “Could you show me his room, please?” I ask.

  Elizabeth Wright rises to her feet. “Sure,” she says. I follow her back into the entranceway. Stammo does not bother to come.

  I look down the hallway which bisects the house. There are two closed doors on the right hand side of the corridor, an open door to a bathroom at the far end and a door on the left that I guess leads into the kitchen. She opens the second door on the right and ushers me into the tiny bedroom; there is barely enough room for us both. My first impression is that it is not a typical kid’s room. On the walls are large sheets of white paperboard covered in intricate, colorful designs. They are not the work of the average kid of that age.

  “How old was Terry?” I ask.

  “Ten, last month.”

  “My daughter, Ellie, was eight a couple of months ago,” I volunteer.

  Ellie loves to draw and is, I think, pretty good—she is going through what I call her Grandma Moses phase—but Terry’s pictures are quite different. Each one is made up of tiny geometrical shapes, of different colors, like microscopic tesserae. As I look at one, I let my eyes defocus and, with a shock, I see that I am looking at a huge, futuristic motorcycle made up of the tiny bright colors.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Yes, Terry’s a wonderful artist,” she says with pride which holds for a moment and then deflates. “Was,” she amends.

  As I study each picture, a different image springs to life from out of the chaos of the tiny shapes: a fire engine; a plane; what looks like a Mustang convertible. These are amazing. The kid was a bona fide genius with an unbelievable attention to detail.

  I drag my eyes away from the pictures and take in the rest of the room, not sure what I am looking for. There is something odd about it. There is a desktop computer with a clunky old monitor, an X-Box, a PlayStation, an electronic keyboard and hundreds of Lego cars, trucks, aircraft and spaceships, all on shelves, all meticulously aligned. There is an untidy array of clothes on the floor but the bed is made with military precision. It reminds me of my own room when I was a kid because it is so different.

  “Terry was very… organized,” I say.

  “Well yes…” she replies. For a moment I think she is going to say more but she doesn’t.

  I turn to leave but Elizabeth Wright does not move and I have to squeeze past her. Her eyes hold mine like magnets. I am very aware of her beauty and catch an alluring hint of perfume, Coco Chanel, the same as Sam wears. Although she is a mess right now, she seems to look into my soul and stirs in me an unexpected, almost animal attraction. I cannot stop the wildly inappropriate thoughts that tumble through my mind and affect my body; I want to slip my hands into my pockets for fear of what they might do. And throughout my struggle she just looks into my eyes, her thoughts unreadable.

  Breathing a little faster, I force myself to move. I think of Terry’s corpse in order to avoid any visible reaction to what just happened. Across the hall I find that the door on the other side of the hallway does indeed lead into the kitchen. It is small and the kitchen cabinets look like they were built in the sixties. This house dredges up uncomfortable memories: everything in it reminds me of several of the many run-down houses that I lived in as a child. I may have had a crappy childhood but unlike Terry, I survived it.

  The back door is locked but an old fashioned key is still in the keyhole. I turn it with difficulty. Years of Vancouver rain have warped the frame and rusted the hinges so I have to pull hard to open the door, whic
h protests with a loud creaking noise.

  The garden is somber under the heavy gray clouds. Everything looks run down and decayed. A rusty Schwinn bike sits in the middle of an neglected lawn.

  I close and lock the back door and take the door which leads into the living/dining room.

  Stammo is talking to Mark Wright, reviewing the details of his last day with Terry. While I was in the kitchen, Elizabeth has rejoined her husband on the couch.

  Stammo rises as if to leave.

  I flip open my note pad. “Mr. Wright,” I ask, “you said that you were on your computer when you got back from Michael’s house at five-thirty, until your wife arrived home at eight.”

  “Yes.”

  “That computer right there on the dining table?” For the first time I notice that on this visit the computer’s monitors are powered off.

  “Yes.”

  “So how could Michael have left without you knowing? The back door creaks when it’s opened and the front door is right there behind you.”

  Elizabeth answers for her husband. “Michael was always sneaking out through the window in his room. Ever since he was a child he was very active. He first climbed out of his bedroom window when he was seven.”

  The explanation doesn’t ring true to me. I look from her to him. There’s something they are not telling me. There was another question I wanted to ask. I open my notebook to see what it was.

  “Mr. Wright, you said that when you were in Best Buy, Terry had a meltdown. What exactly did you mean by that?”

  I hear Stammo sigh.

  “Well he became kinda angry when I told him—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake Mark,” Elizabeth interrupts him with a flare of anger. “You act like you are embarrassed by Terry’s condition.” She turns to me. “My son was autistic, detective.”

  Mark shakes his head and takes to looking at his hands again. But at least Stammo is not sighing anymore. I realize I don’t really know much about autism other than it’s some sort of mental disorder. Yet what I saw on the wall of Terry’s room was more the work of a genius than of someone who is mentally ill.

  “From childhood he was always physically active,” Elizabeth Wright is explaining. “He had to be moving all the time. He would climb and jump on furniture, even climb bookcases. Several times he climbed out his bedroom window. We thought about putting up bars but we just felt we couldn’t cage him in like that…” She starts to cry and the sound breaks my heart. I try to imagine what I would do if it had been Ellie lying dead in the woods and, for a second, I can feel a small fraction of what the Wright’s are suffering. It is a real physical pain. “But now… I wish that… we had.” She buries her head in her husband’s chest and I feel a strong desire to reach out and touch her, comfort her.

  “He’s… in the hands… of the Great… One,” she says between sobs.

  He puts both arms around her and holds her tight. He looks up at me; the hurt in his eyes is raw. I know the guilt he must be feeling. Terry disappeared on his watch. It is quite likely that his guilt, stirred with her blame, will be the recipe that kills their marriage. I was wrong about the looks passing between them; they were expressing her blame and his shame.

  “Autistic children can be very rigid in their behavior, they have difficulty regulating themselves.” he says quietly. “He was playing with a Wii game in Best Buy while I was doing my shopping. When I told him it was time to go, he refused and when I took the controller away from him, he started screaming and kicking at me. That’s what I mean by a meltdown. He didn’t stop until we got to the airport. It was why I took him there. He liked it. He would put in earplugs and watch the planes; it always calmed him.”

  I do not know what to say, a rare occurrence. I look over at Stammo and he shrugs.

  “I don’t think we need bother you anymore today, Mr. and Mrs. Wright. Just one last thing, can you give me the names and address of Terry’s friend Michael’s parents.”

  They know I need to contact them to verify Mark’s story but neither of them seems offended. I write down the information they give me.

  “Terry was very open and trusting,” Elizabeth says. “He couldn’t read facial expressions. He couldn’t tell if someone had bad intentions.”

  “There’s one other thing,” I add. “I would like to take Terry’s computer with me and have our forensic techs look at it. Check the email, internet browsing history and so on.”

  “We really tried hard to give Terry his privacy,” Wright says. “I’m not completely comfortable giving you his computer.”

  “Well, it could—”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake Mark.” Elizabeth Wright’s words cut me off. “If it will help find who did this to Terry… Of course, detective, take it.”

  Carrying the computer, we take our leave and trudge through the easing rain back to the car.

  I’m doing the driving as we head back to Gravely Street, the VPD’s nice new office building, built while I was away from the job. Stammo asks, “Did you ever work a child homicide before, Cal?”

  I am shocked. Not at the question but at the use of my first name. He always calls me by my last name, never Rocky, never Cal. I want to believe that it’s a breach in the wall that has always separated us but I don’t think it is. I think this case has made a big crack in that tough shell of his.

  “No, Nick. I haven’t.”

  “Me neither.” Silence. “Those poor people.” Longer silence. “And what that little kid had to go through. Jesus!”

  “We’ll nail the bastard who did this.” I make the promise to myself as much as to him. And, on another level, I realize I am making the promise to Ellie. It’s a promise to take one sick bastard off the streets and make the world a tiny bit safer for her.

  “You better believe it.”

  We lapse into silence.

  I think back over the interview. I cannot get out of my mind the physical reaction that I had to Elizabeth Wright as we were leaving Terry’s bedroom. It was a feeling of raw sexuality. I felt that if we had been alone in the house we would have been tearing off each others’ clothes, right there and then. I sensed that she felt the same way. I can feel my body reacting to the thought. It feels good but so, so wrong. I shake my head to clear out the thoughts.

  After I had been using heroin for three or four years, it blunted my libido; sex rarely entered my mind. Since I quit, the stirrings have returned but never so strongly. Not even for Sam… Oh, Sam… God, I want you back.

  I turn left on to Renfrew.

  “Earlier on, I had an image come into my head. You and me in an alley beating the crap out of whoever did this. When we catch him, the justice system is not going to give him what he deserves.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. I would feel good while you were doing it but you know what Rogan? You can’t become a vigilante. It leaves you feeling too dirty.”

  It sounds like the voice of bitter experience and I know he’s right. But I still want to do it. I cannot help savoring the thought.

  Stammo breaks into my reverie. “What do you think she meant when she said, ‘He’s in the hands of the Great One’?”

  “Well, I’m guessing she’s not talking about Wayne Gretsky. I expect she means in God’s hands.”

  “So why didn’t she say that then?” he asks. I shrug.

  We are silent again for several minutes. I cannot keep the thoughts of the child’s almost ritualistic murder out of my mind. Rather than fight it, I mentally reexamine the crime scene.

  “You know we could have a crazy here, maybe even a serial killer,” he says, just at the very moment I was thinking it. It’s not often Stammo and I are on the same page.

  4

  Cal

  Conflict. I cannot get the images out of my mind: the half-naked child’s body in the mud of the woods; the bloody wounds; the cross carved over his mouth; the stricken parents. I try focusing on one of the other cases that we are working but nothing can purge those images. They revolve in my
head without surcease. I see Ellie as the victim, I see the blame in Sam’s eyes. I don’t want this case. I know that it will haunt me until it’s solved and for long after. I fantasize about asking for a transfer. Maybe writing traffic tickets in Kerrisdale is a better option.

  But I know that’s BS. This case is has my name written all over it. The fate that I don’t believe in has placed it firmly in my hands. Outrageous as it may seem, being partnered with Stammo is somehow going to be the key to solving it… if I can just keep the images at bay.

  One of my rehab counselors used to say that the craving for heroin will always be less than half a step behind you. Right now it is standing in front of me, screaming in my face. The thought of the peace that a hit would provide is seductive; in fact, orders of magnitude more than merely seductive.

  I sweep up my car keys and head for the door. I am less that ten minutes drive from the downtown east side, the hub of Vancouver’s drug trade. To just wash away, just for half an hour, the images and thoughts of Terry Wright’s murder will indeed be bliss.

  I stop, grasping the front door handle. I am sweating. The Bard’s words fill my ears: A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that which would increase his evil.

  Not today. Not today. If I can just get through today…

  I takes all my will to let the keys fall from my hand onto the Travertine tile and force my feet to take me back to the living room.

  On my balcony, a sparrow is perched on the feeder, nibbling from the seed bell hanging there. He’s sheltered from the rain by the balcony above but he looks cold and wet. Cold and wet… a flashback to life on the streets. I think of Roy and wish he were here in my nice warm condo drinking a beer and chuckling at life’s ironies.

  I can’t get through this alone.

  Time to use one of my lifelines. I grab the phone and dial. I can feel my heart beat faster as my anticipation rises. One ring… two rings… thr—