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

by Robert P. French

  9

  Cal

  As angry as I am at Stammo for screwing up the start of the interview with Varga, I have to hold it all in. If I blow my top about his interference while I am on probation in the department, it will be reported upwards as ‘unstable behavior.’ One slip up and I could lose the job I live for. For the second time. There would be no going back. A worm of fear crawls through my gut.

  This time I’m driving the black unmarked Crown Victoria—a vehicle that a blind man would recognize as a cop car—and he is looking out the window at the North Shore Mountains. My knuckles are white as I grip the wheel, suppressing my anger at him.

  “Didn’t you think is was funny,” he asks, “that he was at work today, the day after his wife’s death.”

  “Yeah, I did,” I reply. “I wanted to ask him why at the end of the interview but I didn’t want to antagonize him.”

  “Me too… Sorry about jumping in at the beginning there, by the way. I just wanted to spring the idea of murder on him and see how he reacted.”

  I am stunned. Stammo is not one to apologize to people, especially to me. Suddenly all my anger seems petty and it drains away fast.

  “S’OK,” I say. “Did you see that flicker in his eye?”

  “Yeah. Difficult to read but I think he knows something. More than he’s telling us anyway. What d’you think?”

  Stammo is full of surprises today. We are right on the same page. Maybe his instinct to jump in was the right one.

  “You were married, right Nick?”

  He grunts.

  “If your wife went to a church meeting every Monday, don’t you think you’d know the name of the church?”

  He snorts. “The only reason my ex would go to a church is if they gave away free booze. But I know what you mean. There’s a lot of weirdo churches on Oak; we should get a patrol car to go visit them all with that photo and see if anyone recognizes her.”

  He is staring out the window again, deep in his own thoughts.

  As we pull up in front of the Wright’s house, he looks at his watch. “Do you really want to do it?” he asks.

  “What, question them about the wife’s religion?”

  “No, not that. I’m asking do you really want to be back in the VPD?”

  The question is out of left field and floors me. What is he getting at?

  “I gotta tell you Rogan, there’s a whole lot of people resent the fact that you got parachuted back in by the Mayor and the Deputy Chief. Especially the young guys coming up. Why risk having a junkie back in the department is what they’re saying. People feel they can’t trust you; what happens if you start using again? You could put a lot of people at risk.”

  He can see the flush that has risen to my face in counterpoint to the white knuckles which are again clamped on the steering wheel, for fear of what they might do. I try to calm myself by focusing on my hands but become aware that I no longer have a wedding ring; it was sold long ago to buy drugs.

  Although my former partner Steve and his boss Inspector Vance—a popular, street-smart cop and shrewd politician who heads up the Major Crime Squad—genuinely welcomed me back, I have sometimes felt that some others were wary around me. But nobody has spoken up like this before. I don’t know which is greater, my anger or my humiliation.

  “What do you think, Nick?” I ask.

  “Truth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All I’m saying is that I’m not a hundred percent comfortable knowing that right this very minute you’re the one who’s got my back.”

  He gets out the car, leaving me awash in shame.

  Somehow I have to put this behind me for now, so I get out and follow him up to the front door.

  The door opens before Stammo reaches the top step. Elizabeth Wright looks like she has not slept in days; she is wearing the same clothes that she wore yesterday. Her curly blonde hair is no longer tied back; it gives her a wanton look. Her puffy eyes are ignoring Stammo and are riveted on me. Again I feel the overt sexuality in that gaze.

  Stammo looks at me and then turns back to her. He can see it too.

  “Can we have a word with you and your husband, Mrs. Wright?” he asks in a tone that makes the question a demand.

  She turns and leads us into the same room as before. Mark Wright is sitting at the computer on the dining table, absorbed in the figures on his screens.

  “They’re here again,” his wife announces and with a mouse click, the windows vanish from all three monitors leaving a plain blue desktop devoid of icons. Is he hiding something from prying eyes?

  Wright gets up from his computer and sits on a chair signaling us to sit on the sofa. I comply and sit at the end farthest from him but Stammo elects to stay standing. Elizabeth Wright stands staring out the front window.

  “Mrs. Wright,” Stammo says, “we have some things that we would like to discuss with you and your husband. Would you come and sit down, please.”

  She turns, recognizing his presence for the first time, and I am sure that she is going to refuse. She holds his gaze for a long moment then sweeps around her husband’s chair and sits at the other end of the sofa from me.

  Stammo stands waiting, until he has got their full attention. “I’m sorry to have to discuss these details with you,” he says with minimal sincerity, “but your son’s body was mutilated after his death. Carved on his chest was a five pointed star…”

  There is a sharp indrawn breath from Elizabeth. Her husband’s eyes widen as he looks at her.

  “It looks like a pentacle,” I add. She looks at me and shakes her head hard. Three times.

  Stammo and I exchange a glance and remain silent. Although the room is buzzing with tension, neither of the Wrights speak.

  “There was a cross, like an X carved over his mouth and his eyes had been damaged,” he tells them.

  “It seemed symbolic of wishing to silence him for something he had seen or heard,” I add, earning a glare from Stammo for putting in my ten cent’s worth.

  Elizabeth Wright makes a choking sound and rushes from the room. A door slams and we can hear her muted sobs. I cannot suppress the uncharitable question that springs into my mind. Is it the natural anguish of a mother at hearing the details of her only child’s death or is it something else?

  Wright doesn’t follow her but leans forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees; he massages his temples with his fingertips.

  “Mr. Wright,” Stammo says, “given that these marks on your son’s body look like they might be, uh, religious in nature, I have to ask you about you and your wife’s religious affiliations.”

  There is no movement from the chair other than from his fingertips. He is not wearing a wedding ring either.

  “Mr. Wright?”

  “Uh?” Mark Wright looks up at Stammo as if seeing him for the first time. “Sorry officer, what was that?”

  Stammo cuts me a quick glance and repeats his question. It takes Wright a moment to absorb what he has been asked. “Well, I don’t—”

  “Mark!” Elizabeth Wright’s voice is strident. She is standing in the doorway from the hall and her hair is in greater disarray than when she opened the front door. She turns to me and the look in her tear-reddened eyes is wilder than her hair. “Shouldn’t you be out looking for my Terry’s murderer rather than infringing our rights by asking about our religion?”

  Stammo says “We have—”

  “I was asking him!” she says, pointing at me. Her voice has risen a half octave and several decibels.

  Stammo nods at me. Permission to speak.

  “We have several detectives and forensic technicians on the case, Mrs. Wright,” I tell her. “I can assure you that we are doing everything possible. It’s just that given the nature of your son’s injuries we need to investigate any religious or mystical angle. Perhaps there’s someone at your church who wants to harm you or your husband by killing your son.”

  “That’s ridiculous and I refuse to answer your questions
.” She turns back to the bedroom door but does not move toward it. She stands stock still for a moment and then turns slowly back. The quaver in her voice makes her sound like she is on the very edge of descent into madness. “If you are suggesting that Terry was killed by someone in order to hurt us, ask my husband about that.”

  She stalks off, banging the bedroom door behind her.

  Mark Wright sits staring at the space where she was standing, shaking his head.

  “What did your wife mean by that Mr. Wright?” asks Stammo.

  Wright looks up at him and takes a deep breath which comes out as a sigh. “I don’t have any idea detective. She’s obviously very distraught.” He stands up. “I must go and comfort her.”

  But Stammo is not going to give up that easily. “Just one thing before we go, sir. You didn’t answer my question about you and your wife’s religious affiliations.”

  With what looks like a great sadness in his face, Wright turns to him. “Go away detective and please call before you come back again.” He walks into the hallway and opens the front door.

  Stammo shrugs and leads the way out the door. I follow him and, as I pass in front of Wright, I stop and ask on impulse, “Can you tell me, what does ‘O – B – O – E’ mean?”

  He looks at me. No expression. His eyes are voids. Nothing. After a moment, “Oboe. It’s a musical instrument, like a clarinet,” he says.

  Stammo has turned back. He gives an angry signal for me to follow him.

  But I don’t.

  I look back into the house, into the living/dining room. I see the shabby furniture, bland modern art prints on the walls, the dining table and the hatch through to the kitchen which looks particularly messy now. Messy, just like this case is about to become.

  I snap back my head and look into Mark Wrights eyes. And behind the cold blank stare held carefully in place, I can sense a primal fear.

  10

  Cal

  The building looks creepy. It is hemmed in by trees which give it a dark aspect and it is more like a house than a church; a house from the nineteen-fifties that would fit well in a Hitchcock movie. Despite the Wright’s unwillingness to reveal the name of Elizabeth’s church, one call to Michael Chan’s mother revealed the name; Elizabeth Wright had at one time persuaded Grace Chan to attend an introductory service here.

  This is our last call of the day. Stammo didn’t want to drive back to Gravely Street after this interview so we checked in the Crown Vic and I am parked outside in my own car, getting impatient while waiting for my minder. Stammo gave me strict orders to wait for him and I suspect that he is taking his time just to annoy me. I am itching to go ahead and interview the Reverend Morgan Harris by myself but I have to learn to obey orders—never my long suit. I am to wait, though waiting so be hell as the Bard said.

  However, waiting for Stammo gives me time to make a quick but important call to Sam and then to examine the place. The sign on the lawn, carved into a rustic-looking piece of wood and painted a muddy brown, reads The Church of the Transcended Masters. Oak Street is the home of a lot of alternate churches. The house itself is stucco, painted the same color as the sign, and has dark green, peeling, wooden window frames. Dismal is the word. Attached to each side of the house are the ends of a seven feet high, industrial-grade, chain-link fence topped with a single coil of razor wire. There are no gates in the front wall of the fence, the only ingress is through the house itself. Forbidding. There is nothing welcoming about this church.

  It is too dark to see what is in the area behind the fence but I think I see what looks like playground equipment. Nothing on earth would persuade me to let Ellie play in there.

  I am blinded by the lights of an SUV pulling up behind me as they reflect off my mirror. It is Stammo in his beloved Buick Enclave; heaven only knows how he affords it on a cop’s salary.

  I get out of my fifty year-old Austin Healey 3000: my one extravagance. Stammo comes and stands beside me while he finishes his cigarette. “I had one of the new guys do some research on her ‘Great One’ remark. Once he’d excluded all the references to Gretzky, he discovered that the ‘Great One’ is a way of referring to Satan.”

  Stammo is really keen on this religious angle and I have to admit that a lot of things point in that direction.

  “Have you had anyone looking into similar murders?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I talked to Steve and he’s having someone check all of Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the US too.”

  “How do you want to handle the interview?” I ask.

  “Watch and learn.”

  Smug bastard.

  He drops his cigarette and grinds it out on the sidewalk. “Come on, Rogan. Let’s do it,” he says. We head for the front door. “I don’t want to spend too much time here on our first visit; I got stuff to do this eve—”

  We are halted in our tracks by the deep rumble of growling, coming from behind the fence. If it’s a dog, it is a giant of a dog. Stammo looks at me uneasily and I am reminded of his comments about not being happy that it is me who has got his back. But now my emotion is anger rather than shame. I step forward and hear him follow me.

  A sign on the front porch informs us that there is a service at six tonight, less than an hour away. The double doors look new, out of step with the rest of the house. Stammo grabs the lion’s-head knocker on the right-hand one and raps it twice. For no reason, I look up and see, two feet above the doors, a diagram painted in red on a white disk. It features five-pointed stars and crescent moons of difference sizes. I nudge Stammo and indicate with my eyes. He takes it in and gives me a smile that borders on the feral.

  The city property records indicate that the house is owned by the Church of the Transcended Masters, the Chief Executive of which is the Reverend Morgan Harris. I am dying to know if the mental image that I have of the Reverend Harris—crafted in my mind on the way over here—tall, dark and saturnine, will resemble the man in the flesh.

  As Stammo reaches up to knock a second time, the left-hand door opens part way revealing a figure in a hooded, white surplice. Five feet three inches maximum and of slight build with long blonde hair, she has a timeless beauty and looks to be in her mid-teens. The Reverend Harris has a taste for beautiful, possibly underage, acolytes.

  Stammo badges her. “I’m Detective Stammo and this is Detective Rogan. We are here to see the Reverend Morgan Harris.”

  A slim and elegant hand reaches out and takes Stammo’s ID wallet. She scrutinizes the photograph with infinite care and compares it to his face before handing it back; it is something I have never seen anyone do before. She turns her attention to me and I feel sure that she is also going to ask to see my ID too but, after a long moment’s hesitation, she gives a secret smile and opens the door wide enough for us to enter. Why do I get the walk to first base?

  The interior is larger than I imagined. The ground floor is one open area except for a small room off to the right which looks like a kitchen. On the far right-hand wall, stairs lead up to the next floor. There are curved rows of folding chairs facing the back wall, in the middle of which is an altar covered in white cloth and bearing hundreds of white candles of varying sizes, all of them lit in readiness for the upcoming service, I presume. Immediately behind the altar are black drapes; so close to the candles, I cannot help but think about the fire hazard they pose.

  The other walls are all draped in pairs of curtains, alternating black pair with white. Each pair of curtains is held back with heavy, braided, golden ties and between each pair is a picture. The pictures framed by the white curtains are of beatific-looking men and women, some surrounded by halos of white light, whereas the pictures framed by the black curtains look like they were painted by Hieronymus Bosch on a bad day… a very bad day. They feature strange birds, ravening dogs and tortured men and women. The net effect makes me uneasy.

  Before I can examine them in more detail, the child-woman who opened the door glides down the center aisle between the chairs and stands
facing us with her back to the altar. “Please detectives, come and be seated,” she says. Her voice is deep and sensuous and sends a small but pleasant shiver down my spine.

  Stammo and I exchange glances, make our way forward and sit in the front row on opposite sides of the aisle. Immediately I sit down, I realize, with some discomfort, that we have both obeyed her without question and thus put ourselves in a disadvantaged position to conduct our interview. When Reverend Harris shows up, I will make a point of standing to shake his hand and will not sit down after.

  “How may I help you, detectives?” she says. The mellow tones of her voice makes me revise her age upward; no teenager could sound like this.

  “As I said, miss,” Stammo replies, “we would like to speak with the Reverend Harris.”

  Her laugh is a kid’s laugh and I can see that it pushes all kinds of buttons for Stammo but before he can react, she says, “I am Morgan Harris, Detective Stammo,” which leaves us both speechless.

  “I was elevated to the ministry on the death of my father, so I repeat, how may I help you?”

  I recover more quickly than Stammo and, forgetting his stricture against my leading the questioning, I say, “We are here investigating the murder of Terry Wright. I believe his parents are your parishioners.”

  “Elizabeth is. I am afraid that Mark no longer attends. I hope that he will return; he may find some comfort after the loss of Terry.”

  “Does she come here regularly?” Stammo asks, glaring at me.

  “Several times a week. Sometimes she would bring Terry. Her beliefs are very strong.” Her responses are even and measured. For someone who appears so young she exhibits a great deal of self-assurance.

  “And what exactly are those beliefs, Miss Harris?” Stammo asks.

  “That’s Reverend Harris, detective,” she chides him gently then she laughs again; her humor seems genuine. “And that very short question will require a very long answer I’m afraid. We hardly have time before the service at six o’clock.”