“Wait a minute! Are you telling me that Little Boy Blue was at that warehouse?”
“Dude, that’s what I’m saying.”
Dan thought back. Two days ago was when he had discovered Gaetan Bélanger at the abandoned retirement home. If Bélanger had wanted to find an alternate site to hide, he would have chosen his alter-ego to make an appearance. That way, if anyone saw him, it would be easy to back out with no one the wiser as to his true identity.
Germ showed Dan the tape. He watched as the boy in a cap and blazer approached with a knapsack on his back. It was Gaetan Bélanger. He was talking on a cellphone and looking over his shoulder. Then he simply turned the corner and went inside, disappearing from the screen.
“Do me a favour,” Dan told him. “I want you to check all your cameras in the vicinity and see if you can find him on the same site the day of the fire. Then I want you to look for a police officer or anyone who even looks like a cop checking out the warehouse any time before that.”
Germ gave him a look. “As long as you’re not in a rush. That could be hours of recordings.”
“Take your time. This needs to be done right.”
Dan was in his car, traffic whizzing by. He got on the phone to Ed Burch.
“Another late-night call,” Ed said. “Should I be worried?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I’ve been meaning to call you anyway.”
“I beat you to it. Not with the best news, I’m afraid.”
“Hit me.”
Dan drew a breath. “Do you know about the fire at the empty warehouse south of St. Clair?”
“Possible arson, yeah, I’ve been hearing about it. Someone died, I heard.”
“Yeah. Someone did.”
Dan let the pause sink in.
Ed caught his tone. “Do you think you know who it was?”
“Maybe,” Dan said. “I don’t think we’re going to like what we find out about the victim.”
Ed’s voice was cautious. “Are you thinking it might have something to do with Gaetan Bélanger?”
“It’s my guess it does.”
“Why?”
“Ask a leading question …”
He proceeded to tell Ed about his confrontation at the retirement home and the break-in at Germ’s studio.
Ed took a deep breath. “You should have told me sooner, Daniel.”
Dan heard the worry in his voice.
“Ed, it wasn’t my break-in to report.”
“I’m not talking about the break-in.” There was an edge to his voice. “I don’t like this. Argue what you will, this is a murder investigation. You had a duty to disclose what you know.”
“I still don’t know anything for sure.”
“I’ll let that go for now, but if you’re right then this is another murder. You’re getting in way too deep here. How can you even be sure that Pfeiffer was behind the break-in at your source’s studio?”
“Again, there’s no proof, Ed, but he was following me around and getting antsy about not having contact with my sources.”
“But that still doesn’t mean it was him.”
“Not in itself. But consider that what Pfeiffer wanted was access to tapes showing the possible hideout of Gaetan Bélanger. Then consider that he destroyed the tapes. Two days later, a fatal fire breaks out in one of the locations targeted by the cameras set up courtesy of my source. To my mind, there’s only one way that adds up. Pfeiffer has to be behind it.”
Ed was thinking this one over. “You’re right. There are too many coincidences there for me to swallow,” he said at last.
“That’s what I thought. Question is, what do we do about it now?”
Ed’s voice was gloomy. “I’ll have to call the chief about this. Sit tight. Chances are you’re going to receive a call in the next couple of hours, if I can wake anybody up. I’ll try to keep you out of this as much as I can, but I know they’re not going to like it.”
“Do what you can, Ed. I trust you.”
“I hope you don’t regret saying that, Danny.”
When Dan arrived home he reluctantly woke Trevor. His boyfriend sat up and blinked at the light, elf-like, a boy awakened on Christmas morning.
Trevor’s face fell as Dan explained what had been happening. “What can we expect?”
“At the very least I’m going to get a rap on the knuckles for withholding information.”
“And at worst?”
Dan sighed. “Things could get difficult.”
Trevor nodded. “Is this the point where you tell me to start worrying?”
“I doubt it will help,” Dan said. “But this is the point where I would normally decide to have a very strong drink.”
“I could probably use one, too. Do you think Ked would mind?”
“Not this time. Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen.”
Twenty-Six
Three Blind Mice
Dan’s phone rang a little past 4:00 a.m. It was Ed calling to tell him to be at police headquarters in an hour. When he finished the call, Dan saw Trevor watching him with worried eyes.
“Don’t worry. Everything’s all right.”
“Should I come with you?”
“No point. I could be there a long time and I doubt they’d allow you in with me.”
A thin drizzle began to pelt his car windows when he drove off. August’s heat had given way to September’s cool wet. This time, when he arrived Dan was ushered directly to the chief’s office. The room was stark, austere — red trim, plain cabinetry — unlike the cushy showroom of the previous month. Inside were the chief, Detective Danes, and Ed Burch. Constable Pfeiffer, Dan noted, was absent. That was good news then. He assumed they wanted to hear Dan’s accusations before confronting Pfeiffer.
A sober-looking chief of police glanced up mid-sentence. Danes indicated a seat for Dan on the far side of the table.
The chief turned to the recorder. “Please note that Mr. Daniel Sharp has joined us. The time is 5:21 a.m.”
Dan watched the chief sift listlessly through a couple of files on the table before continuing.
“The body is that of a Caucasian male. Probable age range from sixteen to twenty-four. That’s all we know for now, apart from certain physical evidence found at the scene indicating a possible identity …”
He paused and looked over at Detective Danes, a grim set to his face. “Anything?”
“We’re trying to track down the dental records.”
“Nothing on file with the Quebec police?” the chief asked. He wiped his eyes with his hand. He looked tired.
“No, sir. They wouldn’t have his dental records,” Danes offered reluctantly, as though unwilling to contradict his boss.
“Oh, of course. Excuse me, Karl. I’m not thinking straight.”
The chief continued to look through his report. Time ticked by. Dan glanced across the table at Ed, whose eyes shifted to Dan and then away. Something wasn’t adding up here. It took a lot for his ex-boss to be made uncomfortable by what went on around him.
The chief looked at Dan. His eyes took him in, assessed him quickly then retreated to his files. The Grim Reaper double-checking a certain date in his appointment book, rendered in a clear, hard script.
“Thank you for coming in, Dan. Ed called a few hours ago to update me on some of your activities in the past week. I understand you had some contact with the murder suspect Gaetan Bélanger.”
“I can’t say for sure that it was …”
The chief put up a hand and looked directly at him. “I want clear answers here. If you don’t cooperate, I’m ready to charge you with obstructing justice at the very least, and maybe with aiding and abetting a homicide.”
He paused to let this sink in.
Ed coughed. “Please just answer the chief’s questions, Daniel.”
Dan felt ambushed. Too late, he understood Ed’s discomfort. “I was in touch with someone I believe may have been Gaetan Bélanger.”
The chief lo
oked up wearily. “When?”
“Wednesday evening, between five and six.”
“From our point of view, it would have been helpful if you had come to us with this information earlier, but that isn’t important now. What I’d like to know is what you were doing there.”
“First off,” Dan said, “I want to make clear that I came across Gaetan — if it was Gaetan — by accident.”
The chief’s eyes narrowed.
“I was searching for someone else, but I won’t go into that now.”
He described his confrontation with the teenage killer.
“Was this at the site of last night’s fire?”
“No,” Dan said. He gave the address of the retirement home.
The chief made a note and gave an order to send men over to the site.
“Clearly, I spooked him,” Dan continued. “He’d be very unlikely to return there once his identity was blown.”
“You couldn’t know that for sure. You’re guessing …”
“It was a likely conclusion, but yes, I guessed.”
“And you think he ended up at” — the chief looked down to check his records — “at this other address, whatever it was.”
“Thirty-two Symes Road, sir,” Danes put in.
“Thirty-two Symes Road. Thank you, Karl.” He looked at Dan again. “How did you know to look for him at this location?”
Dan shook his head. “I didn’t know. As I said,
I was looking for someone else.”
“All right, all right.” The chief shook his head impatiently. The colour in his cheeks said he was about to blow a fuse. “Whoever it was you were looking for …”
“My source had a CCTV set up there.”
The chief’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead like caterpillars. Just then a knock came at the door. A junior officer entered and handed the chief another file.
He looked at it briefly and set it aside.
“Thank you, Constable.”
“Sir.”
The junior officer left.
Dan’s impatience was getting the better of him. “What have you learned about the fire? It was arson, wasn’t it?”
The chief shot an angry glance at him. “I realize we asked your assistance on this case, but I’m sure you understand there are things we can’t reveal to you. Certain people we have under investigation, for instance.”
“And others you’re protecting for their co-
operation.”
The chief’s face was a stone. Whatever target Dan’s comment may have hit, he was too practised to give anything away.
“That’s not at issue here.”
Dan returned his stare. “It might be. One of my sources had an unwelcome visitor the night before last. That visitor wore a mask. He forced my source to divulge information about his camera set-ups.”
A desk lamp reflected in the chief’s glasses. An acetylene glare. Blankness had taken over his features.
“An unidentifiable intruder made your source divulge information relating to the case? Is that what you’re saying? Information we asked for your assistance in obtaining, but which you refused to offer?”
Dan clenched his teeth. “He forced my source to show him footage of several derelict buildings, including the warehouse, in the days prior to the fire. My belief is that the intruder was a police officer. I think it was Pfeiffer. Whether or not he was acting under official orders during any of this is impossible to guess.”
Ed looked stricken. “Daniel, do you realize what you’re saying?”
“Of course I do, Ed. Someone got to my sources and now a fire kills a suspect in a murder investigation in a location pinpointed by my sources. But it’s not me who should be telling you this. Why don’t you ask Pfeiffer?”
The chief’s face fell. “First of all, there is nothing to indicate that any murder suspect died in that fire.” A dark hue glossed his features as he struggled to contain himself. “Second, you need to accept that I can tell you only so much. Suffice to say that finding a serial killer in the city has been my top priority. I invested my officers with the power to do whatever it took to capture Bélanger. I cannot and will not tell you exactly what that entailed, because it is none of your fucking business. In the meantime …”
“How else would someone have known where Bélanger was?” Dan interrupted.
A hand pounded the desktop. “Because we already had that address under investigation. Constable Pfeiffer informed me of his intentions to look into the matter personally.”
Dan took a breath. Pfeiffer had been ahead of him all along. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised.
“In the meantime,” the chief continued, “I will look into your ridiculous allegations.”
“I doubt you’ll find anything.” Dan glowered. The fact that Pfeiffer had already admitted to knowing Bélanger’s new location didn’t change the possibility that he’d set the fire. “Do you have any more questions for me? Or are you going to charge me with anything? Because if not, I have better things to do than listen to this whitewash.”
The chief sucked air between his teeth. His face turned bright red.
Dan looked him straight in the face. “Why don’t you get Pfeiffer in here? I’m sure he’ll have a lot to say about this matter.”
The chief swivelled his chair till he faced Dan. His eyes were the eyes of a sharpshooter. “Daniel, the reason Constable Pfeiffer isn’t here is because he perished in that fire.”
Dan felt the wind taken out of him.
The chief glared at him. He looked down at the file the junior officer had placed in front of him after Dan came in.
Dan stood. “I’m very sorry to hear that, but what was he doing there?”
The chief put a hand to his forehead. “I won’t discuss the reasons for that with you.”
Dan waited.
The chief nodded. “If you have anything else to add to this inquiry then you had better come out with it now. Otherwise, I am ordering you to stay as far away from this investigation as you can possibly get. Go to Cuba, if you need to. Go to the fucking moon. But if you meddle any further from this moment on, I will have you up on charges so fast it will make your head spin. On top of that, your sources will be subpoenaed and their files checked.”
Dan waited, a lump in his throat.
“Furthermore, as for primary sources of information protected by this or any other police or secret service, I would advise you to stay well away and stop prying. You have no idea how deep this is or what you’re trying to open up here.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” Dan blurted out. “That’s why I keep asking questions and keep feeling more and more frustrated with the answers I don’t get.”
The chief shook his head. “Get him out of here.”
He turned back to his files.
The console had been rebuilt, though it now held half as many screens as it had previously. All the cameras seemed to be operative.
“I need to cue this,” Germ was saying. “Help yourself to coffee.”
Dan walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup before coming back out to where Germ was working intensely.
“Here — this is what I wanted you to see,” Germ said.
Dan peered at the screen. He saw the outside of a building in the dead of night. Nothing moved. The views were as static as a camera pointed at outer space.
“I had to go through hours and hours of tape.” Germ looked meaningfully at Dan. “Even at fast forward — and it can’t be too fast or you might miss something — it still takes a hell of a long time to watch everything.”
“I appreciate it, Germ.”
Dan waited, wondering what he should be looking for. Then he saw it: a brief flash that lit up the top right-hand corner of the screen and died out again. After another minute, a glow took hold and grew steadily.
“That’s the first shot of the fire. Let’s go backwards from there.”
He tapped in a few commands. A new file began spoolin
g on the hard drive. After a few seconds, it began to play.
“Now watch this,” Germ told him. “This is about an hour before the fire began.”
Dan watched as a figure approached. He had on a blue blazer and cap. As he passed, he looked directly at the camera and flashed an indignant finger.
“He knew!” Dan said.
“The little fucker was on to us the whole time.”
The figure disappeared and was not seen again.
“Now, look who arrives just before the fire.”
A second figure approached the warehouse, a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead. From what Dan could make out, it was Constable Pfeiffer. He entered the building and did not return. They watched until they saw the spurt of flame that signalled the fire’s beginning.
“So it’s true. Pfeiffer was there. He must have been caught in the first explosion. But when did Bélanger leave?”
“It’s on another camera. I’ve got him leaving by the back door. Same get-up, blazer and everything.”
He sped the recording forward. A few minutes later, a group of kids stood and watched the flames without moving.
“I take it these were the kids who discovered the fire.”
“Probably,” Germ said.
Dan looked at the code on the bottom of the screen. “That works with the fire department report. The call was made a little past one o’clock. The time code places the start of the fire just before one. Do they go anywhere near the place?”
“Yeah, I wondered that too. But not that I can see.” Germ paused.
“What is it?” Dan asked.
“There’s something bothering me about this. Something that isn’t right.” He thought about it a moment then shook his head. “Maybe I just need to smoke a little more dope. It’ll come to me.”
“Okay, keep on it.”
Germ ended the playback. “That’s it for this tape. The camera was destroyed not long after.”
Dan stood. “Good work,” he said.
“Wait. There’s something else.” Germ pointed to another monitor.
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