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

by Robert P. French

  The effort intensifies the throbbing in my head.

  There is nothing in the room. No bed, no sack, no drug paraphernalia. Nothing.

  I pull myself to my feet, fighting a wave of nausea.

  The room is old, it smells of mildew and I can hear dripping; the sound tells me how thirsty I am.

  The dark green paint of the door is flaking. The brass handle feels slimy and I have to grip hard to turn it. The door won’t open. I’m locked in. I have to work hard to suppress the desire to scream for help. Why did they put me through the ordeal with the heroin in order to let me die of thirst in a locked room? I must think.

  Unbidden, Iago’s words rescue me from my rising panic: but we have reason to cool our raging motions. Reason. I must apply reason. No-one would go to the trouble of shooting me full of heroin to leave me here to die. Either someone is going to come and unlock the door or…

  I turn the handle and pull harder. With great complaint, the warps in the door surrender and it opens. This is not the room I was held in. People came and went in that room without noise.

  It is dim in the hallway. I hear movement and strain to see where it comes from. Are my captors still here, watching… waiting. Before me are vertical bars. Cells. Inside the cell in front of me is a hospital style bed with restraints. I’m on Shutter Island. The laugh that escapes at the thought sounds maniacal. Breathe deeply, Rocky.

  There is a scuffing sound behind me. Electricity charges up my spine and I spin, raising my hands to ward off the inevitable blow. There is a blur below me and I shudder as the rat runs past my foot.

  I do more deep breathing.

  At the end of the hall is another green door, a painted exit sign above it. I walk quickly toward it, keen to get off this floor but trepidatious of what may be on other floors. The door opens easily and reveals stairs going down. Wherever I am, I’m on the top floor. I try the doors to each floor on the way down. Every floor is deserted, abandoned and as dank as the one above. At the top of the last flight of stairs, which I surmise leads to a basement, I go to the door and walk through. This floor is brighter and seems dryer and less forbidding. There are no cells and the windows are of normal height. Through the windows I can see some skeletal trees and a wall of dark red brick that runs perpendicular to the windows. To my left is a large black door which I open.

  Complete disconnect!

  In front of me is tarmacked pavement. Sitting in the middle is my car, the winter sun glinting off the British racing-green paint and the chrome-spoked wheels. Behind it is an expanse of green, rising to a crest topped with dark evergreen bushes. Beyond the bushes are brick buildings that look like they belong to an ivy league college and in a flash, I know where I am.

  Riverview Mental Hospital.

  The building where I was held is the notorious cell block for the criminally insane, long abandoned and now used only as a movie set for made-in-Vancouver films.

  The surrealism of the last few days dissipates and I feel a wave of determination to discover who did this to me and why.

  27

  Cal

  I must walk alone, like one that has the pestilence. I desperately want to talk to someone about what has just happened to me but there is no-one I can turn to.

  My first thought is to call my boss and former partner, Steve, and tell him; but what if he thinks I am inventing the whole thing to cover up the fact that I have heroin in my blood stream? He administers the random urine test on me once a week. The presence of morphine in the urine can be detected up to forty-eight hours after using heroin, so if I am not tested before midday on Tuesday, I should be OK. Should be. It depends on how much heroin they gave me.

  I toy with the idea that I tell him about the kidnapping but leave out any reference to being shot full of drugs. But what do I say happened? I was locked up, blindfolded, tied up for the weekend? Why would anyone do that?

  Arnold? He is a man of many resources who manages the trust fund I have from Mr. Wallace but I can’t confide in him because a condition of the trust fund, is that I stay clean.

  In the old days, I could have talked to Roy; I could tell him just about anything. The thought brings a wave of sorrow.

  Whoever kidnapped me was considerate enough to leave my cellphone in my car. Sam was the first person I called. I couldn’t tell Sam the truth. There was no telling what her reaction might be. If she knew I had used, she would probably cut me off from Ellie, regardless of the reason. I lied to her. I told her that I had had to go undercover on a case over the weekend but somehow she knew it was a lie. She didn’t confront me with it, she just said, “Sure, Cal. No problem.” The tone of her voice said it all. She hung up and did not answer when I called her back.

  I must resign myself to the fact that I cannot tell anyone. As Hamlet said, The players can not keep counsel; they’ll tell all.

  And so here I am in my car, parked outside the Met pub, just three blocks from the Main Street police station feeling sorry for myself and trying to decide. Within a couple of hours, I am going to go into the physical agony of withdrawal that only heroin can assuage. Can I face going cold turkey? If I do, how bad will it be? The week I spent in detox fifteen months ago was unbearable but was that because I was recovering from years of using? Will it be easier this time? If it’s bad, how will I cover up at work tomorrow?

  Then I see him. The steer. He’s scouring the streets for customers. If I just make one buy, I can stave off the worst of the withdrawal with small hits, just enough to take the edge off. In a few days I can wean myself off. So long as Steve doesn’t test me for a few days… But I know it is the Beast talking. The Beast: that part of me that craves the high, craves the impossible dream of recapturing the bliss of my first hit.

  The steer is two cars away from me. My hand, unbidden, goes to the door handle but does not open it… yet.

  I am on the razor’s edge.

  28

  Cal

  Monday

  “So where the fuck were you on Friday?” Stammo asks.

  I repeat the lie I told to Steve, “I had the flu that’s been going around. I would have called in but my battery was dead and I don’t have a land line at home. I still feel like crap.” The last sentence is true anyway. The flu story covers the fact that I am sniffing and moving slowly because of my aching joints. I had to use one flap of heroin last night just so that I could sleep but I am cold turkey today. I feel terrified that my absence will cause Steve to think the worst and test me immediately. I just hope he holds off until Wednesday, by which time my urine should be clean. That’s assuming that I don’t need to use again, just to keep the pains at bay.

  Stammo can be sympathetic at times, “Thanks so much for coming in and sharing your flu germs,” he grunts. This is obviously not one of those times.

  The keen, young Eric Street joins us in the room. “Hi guys,” he grins.

  Stammo grunts from habit; I grunt from pain.

  I hope no-one notices as I pull down on my sleeves. I don’t want anyone to see the cuts on my wrists from the wire restraints.

  “I widened the search for murders similar to Terry Wright’s but couldn’t find anything. Also, there are no other churches by the name of ‘Church of the Transcended Masters’ and there is nothing in criminal records, either here or in the US, on Morgan or Seth Harris; I googled them too but didn’t get anything.”

  “Thanks a bunch.” Stammo is not a happy camper. His usual odor of cigarette is overlaid with another familiar smell. I suspect that he is also suffering from the flu but in his case, it’s the 26-ounce flu, as Roy used to call it. The legal type of phony flu.

  But Eric is not phased by Stammo. “I do have something on your other case: info on Varga’s gambling. I’ve got a good buddy who works at the River Rock. I sent him Varga’s photo. He’s a regular there. He drops about five grand a month at the blackjack tables. He’s not a great player so he rarely wins.”

  “That’s sixty grand a year.” Stammo’s math skills an
d interest are both aroused.

  “Yeah and that’s not all. My buddy texted Varga’s pic to a buddy of his at the Edgewater. Varga drops a similar amount there too. Also, some of the other punters he hangs with at the Edgewater are a bit suspect.”

  “Do you have any names?” I ask.

  “No, but the casinos like to be seen to be cooperating with the police, so he is going to get me copies of their surveillance videos the next time Varga is in there, which will likely be tomorrow.”

  “Good work, Eric.”

  “Yeah,” Stammo grunts.

  My almost four year hiatus from the department has left me a bit behind in the information technology area so I ask Eric, “If Varga is losing over a hundred grand a year at the tables it’s not such a big deal if he’s earning a ton of money from the bank. Any chance that you could find out what he earns?”

  Eric smiles a secret smile. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says with a Marxist flick of his eyebrows. He starts tapping at his laptop’s keyboard as my phone starts to ring.

  “Detective Rogan.”

  “Hello, Detective. This is Grace Chan, Michael’s mother.”

  “Oh, hi.” This is unexpected.

  “You know that thing that Michael kept repeating, ‘oboe is blood’? Well he is now repeating a whole lot of other stuff that I can’t make sense of, but I thought I should tell you.”

  “Do you think we could come over and talk to him?” I ask.

  “Yes… OK… but could I ask you to back off quickly if he gets upset?”

  “Absolutely. Could we come over today?”

  “He’ll be home from school at three-thirty. You could come then.”

  “Thanks, we’ll see you then.”

  I fill Stammo in on the phone call, hoping that he will say I can visit the Chan’s by myself.

  “OK,” he says, “let’s go over there this afternoon then.” He’s back in supervisory mode.

  As we head out, I say “See you Eric,” and almost run into Steve.

  My face drops and I feel my blood run cold… not at the near collision but at Steve or, more precisely, at what I see in Steve’s hand. A small brown evidence bag that I know contains a plastic bottle with an orange lid. Why today? Last week he tested me on Wednesday. For an instant I think that he knows about what happened to me in Riverview but that’s crazy, the truth is he just didn’t buy my story about the flu. He thinks that I was out getting high.

  “It’s that time, Rocky,” he says.

  “I’ve been taking medication for the flu, Steve, it might screw up the results.” It’s all I can think to say in order to try and delay the inevitable.

  “Write down the drugs you’ve been taking and I’ll submit them with the sample and let the lab decide.”

  My mind races to find another excuse, any excuse that will delay the test. I look at Steve and then at Stammo. Both have grim looks on their faces.

  Stammo steps forward and takes the bag from Steve. He gives his feral smile. “I gotta take a piss and I need to talk to Rogan about an interview we’re doing today.” He strides down the hallway toward the can. “I’ll make sure he fills the bottle. I’ll bring it to you right after, OK?”

  Steve shrugs and I follow Stammo.

  I might, just might, have been able to find a way to get Steve to delay the urine test. He and I go back a long way and we were good friends before my spiral into addiction. Stammo, however, has never liked me and I’ve spent a lot of time taking the piss out of him to his face. Now he’s going to take the piss out of me… literally.

  There’s got to be a way out of this.

  We are steps from the washroom door.

  It opens and Superintendent Cathcart exits and steps aside to let us pass.

  “How are things going on the investigation into Marguerite Varga’s murder?” he asks.

  Maybe I can find a way of getting out of this drug test.

  I don’t want to tell him that we have very little, that we have been focusing on our other case. “There may be a connection with the murder of the boy, Terry Wright, sir,” I say.

  “Yes that’s a bad one… ritualistic,” he says. I cannot read what he is feeling about Terry’s murder but it is certainly not the outrage that Nick and I have been experiencing. “What sort of connection?” he asks.

  “Both the boy’s mother and Mrs. Varga attended the same church. Also it seems that Varga was a big gambler.” Suddenly, I see an opening. “You know Varga, sir. Could you spare us some time to answer a few questions about him?”

  His eyes drill into me. Please say yes. Invite us up to your office right now. Anything to get me out of this test.

  “No point. I hardly know the man. I met him at a charity function,” he says. “Anyway I have a meeting to go to right now. If I think of anything about Varga that might be of interest, I’ll let you know.” He turns and walks off.

  “Came off as a bit of a brown-nose there Rogan,” says Stammo.

  He walks into the washroom and, after a fleeting thought of fleeing, I follow. One of the uniformed old timers, Sarge, is drying his hands.

  Instead of handing me the bottle, Stammo taps the evidence bag against his leg and asks, “So you think this ‘oboe is blood’ thing is important? What did you call it, a hex?” There is a slight smile on his face. It is like he is taunting me, knowing that I am worried about this test.

  “Yes, I do.” My mind is racing. Should I tell Stammo what happened to me? Maybe he would give me a break here.

  But that wouldn’t work, Steve would just make me take it again and maybe a blood test too. Oboe is blood.

  Sarge throws the paper towel in the bin, nods at us and leaves.

  Stammo takes the plastic bottle out of the bag and unscrews the top.

  He nods at a urinal. “Take a piss, Rogan.”

  There’s no way out now. In twenty four hours I’ll be on suspension at best, summarily dismissed at worst.

  Bowing to the inevitable, I walk to the porcelain, unzip and put my hand out for the bottle… but he doesn’t hand it to me.

  He steps up to the urinal at the far end and looks down. “I told you to take a piss,” he says.

  What is happening here? In my confusion, I can’t go.

  After about a minute, he steps back. In his hand is the specimen bottle, three quarters full of dark yellow. He screws on the orange cap, drops it in the evidence bag and directs a stare at me.

  “Just this once,” he says. “And we never talk about this. It never happened, OK? Never.”

  I nod blankly as he walks out.

  29

  Biker

  I fuckin’ hate doing this job. Havin’ to dress up like some geek and stand in line for half an hour with a bunch of old farts who want to talk to a teller ’cause they don’t know how to use the fuckin’ bank machines. This is only the second drop of the day. Eight more to go. It’s a few hours before I’ll be dressed in my colors and downing a few beers.

  I gotta remember the positions of all the cameras. Keep my head down and hope the Canuck’s cap covers my face. Not that it really matters but it don’t hurt to be careful, eh?

  “Can I help the next person in line?” Well, at least I got the cute little blonde. She’s wearing a white shirt, open just enough to get a peek at what’s inside. Makes me want to lean over the counter and grab hold of them luscious—

  “How can I help you, sir?” Cold as ice. It’s like the snotty little bitch read my mind. Man, I’d like to catch her alone one night. I’d show her some things she’s never seen before. I feel the old stirring. I could wait around near the bank at closing time, follow her home… I lick my lips. Nah. No chance of that; gotta stay with the plan; too much at stake.

  “I’d like to deposit this into my aunt’s account please.” I get that moment of panic I always get when I say them words, or something like ’em. What if she knows the old biddy. It’s not very likely, she lives on the other side of town fer Chrissake. But I always worry about it when I pus
h the piece of paper across the counter. She looks at the paper and taps at her keyboard for what seems like a long time. What if something’s wrong? Maybe the old bitch has popped off and they’re gonna wonder why her nephew don’t know about it.

  Finally, she turns back to me. “How much would you like to deposit, sir?” She says the last word with a sneer in her voice.

  “Nine thousand, seven hundred and thirty dollars.” I push the envelope to her. It’s always less than ten grand but more than nine. Never the exact same amount.

  While she’s counting it, I think of the things I could do for her. I can just picture her naked right now. Man, I’d like to do her but it’s out of the question. I gotta start thinking about something else before what I am thinking starts to show. It’d give the old biddies in the line up a bit of a thrill though.

  The little cutie puts a slip of paper and the money in a plastic baggie with a ziplock. I wonder if the guy who invented those knew how much they would be used in the drug trade? She hands me another slip of paper. I give her a big smile and she knows what I’m thinking. I turn to go and then remember.

  “Can I have the envelope please, Miss?”

  I almost forgot about it, thinking about doin’ her.

  Can’t forget the details.

  If something happened, my fingerprints are on that envelope.