by L E Fraser
“A ruse,” Lisa repeated with disbelief. “Explain.”
“Incubus claims he can offer insight into the Frozen Statue Killer.” Sam poured wine into their empty glasses. “Offering Jim’s services was a bribe. It was a stupid idea.”
“Reece says you’re talking to the psychopath and that you believe these new murders are a copycat.” Lisa’s brown eyes filled with tears. “I can’t bear for you to break again. Please stay away from that monster.”
Sam was silent for a moment. So Reece had gone behind her back and gossiped with their friends. “I’m not the same woman Incubus broke.”
Lisa stood and wiped her sleeve across her eyes. The gesture incited a wave of guilt in Sam. “What happened after Joyce’s murder will never happen again,” she vowed.
“Why invite trouble? Stay away from him,” Lisa said again. “He’s cunning and dangerous. Promise me that you’ll stop talking to him.”
Reading his letters and planning a visit wasn’t talking to him. Not yet, anyway.
“I’m not. I meant to ask, where do you park at the Ontario School of Art and Design?” She kept her tone light and curious.
The change of topic would irritate Lisa but Sam expected her to take it in stride. After years of friendship, Lisa knew that pushing an issue was pointless. Sam’s stubbornness was legendary.
Lisa turned her back and opened one of the refrigerator doors. “I take the subway. Why?” She nudged the door closed with her shoulder. In her arms was a tray of antipasti.
Sam took the tray and set it on the table. “Do you have many late classes?”
You would sacrifice your life to protect your friend.
Lisa passed her a plate. “One or two. Jim’s mom cured the salami. Try it.”
Sam loaded her plate with roasted red peppers, bocconcini, artichoke hearts, and thinly sliced salami. Lisa handed her a bowl with homemade bread sticks.
“I want you to start taking a cab instead of public transportation,” Sam stated.
“Excuse me?”
I receive positive attention from fans outside the prison.
Someone had anonymously sent Lisa a bouquet of white lilies. During his trial, Incubus had arranged for a florist to send Sam lilies every week. Was that a coincidence? A lump of congealed bread stuck in her throat. “There are lots of weirdos out there.”
Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a serial killer in Toronto.” She pointed to the television where the news was reporting Micha Washington’s murder. “Stupidity can be avoided.”
Lisa bristled and dropped her napkin onto the table. “Those young men did nothing stupid and they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
“I didn’t mean that. I know you don’t fit the victim profile.” Sam refrained from adding, of this serial killer. “But it wouldn’t hurt to be careful.”
Before Lisa could reply, the image on the fridge display changed to Bryce Mansfield addressing a group of reporters.
Sam got up and went over to the fridge. “How do you turn this up?”
Lisa joined her and tapped on the display.
The broadcaster wasn’t recapping Micha’s murder. Police had found a third frozen victim, an eighteen-year-old first-year business student from Calgary. They’d found his body at Étienne Brûlé Park.
The exact location where Incubus had discarded Joyce’s body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Three Years Earlier
Sam
MY CLIENT LIVES in Yorkville, an affluent neighbourhood in downtown Toronto and the mecca of high fashion in the city. A professor who is away on sabbatical owns the right half of her Victorian semi. The house to the left is empty and for sale. Without the interference of vigilant neighbours, life is easy for Lorna’s stalker.
An ornate cast iron fence circles the front garden of her home and there is a detached garage at the back. Access to her design studio, parking pad, and miniature garden is via a private lane behind the row of houses. A second alley runs between her property and the vacant house next door. It’s just wide enough for foot traffic. There were plenty of spots for my team to install discreet surveillance cameras last week.
The hidey-holes around her home are a voyeur’s dream. Her stalker wears dark clothing and the requisite hoodie that peeping Toms favour, but he doesn’t bother to skulk. He roamed the property boldly for three nights in a row last week. Footage depicted him sauntering at a casual pace through the dark alley to Lorna’s workshop. The camera recorded him crouched under the window peering in for over an hour. When she turned out the studio lights, he jogged into the alley and lingered to watch her enter the house. After a few minutes, he strolled away.
He’s left a few treats, including an oil reproduction of John William Waterhouse’s Pre-Raphaelite painting “Pandora.” That gift set him back a hefty amount so he has a decent paying job, which didn’t escape my client’s notice. An accompanying letter extolled Lorna’s beauty, comparing her to the first human woman created by the Greek gods. The image of Pandora unleashing the evils of humanity doesn’t bother her. Lorna hung the painting in her studio. A few days later, her stalker left an arrangement of white hydrangeas, double-flowered lilies, and red roses. My client thought they were lovely.
She couldn’t identify the man on the recording but cooed over how attractive he is. Violent offenders don’t sport horns and forked tails. Almost seventy percent of Canadian women experience physical or sexual violence from men they didn’t recognize as monsters. Lorna’s positive reaction to the attention irritates me. Lurking and spying are not romantic. Obsession can turn ugly fast.
I haven’t told my client about my sister’s abduction. It’s a throwback from being a cop, when my life depended on focusing on the job and leaving personal issues at home. Since Joyce’s last name differs from mine, Lorna hasn’t connected the newspaper reports to me.
It has been two weeks since my sister vanished, and the teenager in the grocery store hasn’t stepped forward. The media plea for information went national—along with the grainy image of the young woman chatting with Joyce. Friends and family have inundated social media with requests for information about the girl’s whereabouts. It trended for over a week with no results.
This case with Lorna is my excuse not to spend long periods with Leo and my mother. Their grief is a pulsing entity, and I can’t bear the misery in their eyes. Analytically, I know avoidance is a behavioural response to guilt. If I had answered my sister’s call that night, Joyce would have been with me and not at the grocery store. Sometimes I worry that all the demons I compartmentalize into sealed boxes will someday breach the walls and be the demise of my sanity. Focusing on work prevents me from poking at the tenuous seals around those boxes.
I park across from Lorna’s house to wait for her stalker to materialize, and hope that she follows my directive and doesn’t come outside and interact with the sneaky creep. I think I’ve put the fear of God into her and she is beginning to understand that this situation could be dangerous.
It snowed last night and the temperature plunged to Siberian conditions. Some tree-hugger rapped on my car window to pontificate about engine emissions so I have no heat tonight. Spending another night freezing on a stakeout isn’t my idea of fun.
At a little after ten, a tall figure in jeans and a black jacket strolls up Lorna’s street. He doesn’t even pause to check his surroundings before darting into the alley. What an idiot. I get out of my car and tread lightly behind him. He walks with purpose to the garage studio and positions himself beneath the large window. When I’m about two metres away, he turns and has the audacity to smile.
“Hi there,” I say. “Out for a midnight stroll?”
“Do you live here?” he asks.
I laugh. “You know I don’t. Let’s talk.”
“Sure, come on over.”
His self-assurance is unnerving. Maybe I underestimated the loser and he’s carrying a concealed weapon.
“You’re trespassing on private property and spying on the occupant,” I say. “That’ll catch you a criminal harassment charge.”
He shrugs with a chagrined expression that’s so contrived it’s comical. “And if it’s you I was hoping to meet?”
“It’s your lucky night.”
He removes his hands from his pockets and holds them out with the palms facing me. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“You’re a voyeur.”
He chuckles. “That requires achieving sexual gratification from observing Ms. Maracle disrobing. All I’m doing is bestowing gifts upon a woman worthy of my affection.”
I’m not debating the difference between obsession and affection. “Tell it to the cops.” I press 911, give the dispatcher the address and my name, and tell her that I’m a PI detaining a peeping Tom.
The man lunges. He’s going to make a break for it. Before I can grab him, he flops onto a patio chair under the backdoor light. With a sly smile, he lowers his jacket hood and cocks his head to the side.
He’s Caucasian, six-feet, one-eighty, with blue eyes and blond hair that’s too long for his age, which I guess to be late forties. There’s something familiar about him. He resembles an aged version of Kurt Cobain and has the same facial scruff around his mouth. But his appearance isn’t triggering my memory reflex. It was his swift movement to the door. The way he’s sitting stirs a sense of recognition deep in my memory.
“Ah, now I recognize you!” He claps his hands. “Samantha McNamara, the ex-cop who murdered the fifteen-year-old boy.” He points in my direction and chuckles. “The pictures in the paper didn’t do you justice. What a shame that the impunity enjoyed by most police officers excluded you. Rather inequitable, I thought.”
I’m certain that I know him from somewhere. Maybe I arrested him when I was on the job. “What’s your name?”
“Jerry Lutz.”
It doesn’t ring a bell. Once the uniforms arrive, they can run him for priors. If I picked him up in the past, I’ll know soon enough.
“How about you shut up while we wait for the police.” Response time for this neighbourhood is good, but it depends on how many free units are in the vicinity.
“Can’t I satiate your curiosity and enlighten you on the qualities that drew me to Ms. Maracle?” he asks.
“I don’t care.”
With a flair for theatrics he quotes, “Bid me with your joy rejoice till riotous longing rest in me!”
It’s getting colder and I want to go home, cuddle Brandy, and try to forget about the scumbags who wander the city streets.
“Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I’m a fan of the romantic period.” He sighs. “Alas, I was born ahead of my time. Romance is a dying art. Women have no morals—whores, all of them, contemptible creatures unfit to procreate from wombs that stink from the rot of their sins.”
His eyes darken and his dead expression troubles me. I elevate him from a nuisance to an outright nutcase.
“Ms. Maracle is a rarity,” he continues. “Ebony tresses shine poignant in iridescent moonlight as my goddess toils with innocence and purity against the wickedness of the unclean.”
A car door closes and distorted radio mumbles float on the wind. I turn to the mouth of the alley and holler at the officers.
Weirdo stands to greet them, holding out his arms in anticipation of handcuffs. “It seems, dear officers, that my attentions are undesired by the fair maiden. I stand before you repentant and accept my punishment with grace.”
Ignoring him, I brief the two constables on Lorna’s situation and conclude by saying, “The fair maiden in question is inside.”
The male cop handcuffs Jerry and marches him down the alley to the cruiser.
“Enjoy the rest of your night, Samantha,” Jerry calls over his shoulder. He laughs.
The female officer and I go into Lorna’s house. Since Jerry was happy to confess, the interview doesn’t take long and I’m in my car within an hour. Before I turn off Hazelton Avenue, my cell rings.
“Sam, Craig Branson. An informant just gave me a tip.”
My heart drops to the pit of my stomach. Craig is an investigative reporter for The Globe and Mail. He followed my case after the shooting and was the first reporter to disclose the victim’s multitude of crimes and recidivist behaviour. Branson is the lead journalist on the story of my sister’s abduction. There is only one reason he’d call me about a confidential informant’s tip.
Maybe the merciless deity that controls mortal puppets saved my sister. But I don’t believe that. The news is bad. A CI wouldn’t call a crime reporter with a human-interest story.
Craig confirms my worst fears by saying, “Police recovered a woman’s body tonight.”
A cavernous hole swallows the fragile spark of hope I’ve clung to for two weeks.
“Where?”
“On the Humber River Trail,” he says.
The trail is over thirty-two-kilometres and winds along the river from the Queensway in the south to Summerlea Park in the north.
“Can you be more specific?”
“North of Étienne Brûlé Park, somewhere near the railway tracks in Lambton Woods. I’m driving there now.”
I used to jog in that park. A pedestrian path crosses the trail to the west side of the river just before the railway tracks but there are dense forests on both sides. Hikers, joggers, and bikers don’t congest that section of the trail, especially in winter. It’s possible the corpse has lain undetected for weeks. Maybe it isn’t Joyce.
“East or west side of the river?” I ask.
“East. I texted you directions. Man, I’m praying it isn’t Joyce.”
“You and me both.”
I hang up, open his text, and head northwest. It’s after midnight and the roads are quiet, so I drive faster than I should. My tires keep spinning on a slippery blanket of wet flakes that coats the asphalt.
When I reach the point where Craig suggested leaving the car, I see his SUV. There aren’t any official vehicles so the police have found a different access route. A chopper circles above me, the beating rhythm of the blades intrusive in the tranquility of the night.
I run into the woods, stumbling over tree roots buried by snow. I trip, plunge onto the snow-covered path, and smash my knee against a rock. Searing pain engulfs my kneecap. An owl hoots and branches break as its prey scurries along the forest floor in a desperate attempt to evade death. Adrenalin courses through my veins and I struggle to my feet. Finally, I break clear of the trees and run toward the cluster of people around the river.
Craig steps in front of me and grabs my shoulders. “Sam, stay here.”
“Get off me.” I shove him and wobble to the river.
Detective Mansfield yells. The roaring in my ears mutates his words to gibberish. A uniformed officer rushes to my side. I beat him away and charge toward a woman lying by the edge of the murky river. A cop grabs me from behind, crosses my arms against my chest, and restrains me tight against his braced body.
Animalistic wails ricochet through the woods. The anguished cries are coming from me, but my mind has separated from my physical form. There is an eerie sense of detachment. From above the scene, I gaze at a spectral duplicate of myself flailing against the steely grip of the cop.
She’s lying by the water. The contrast between her raven hair and blue-tinged skin is gruesome. Harsh light shines on the crown of her head and the middle part is an obscene ribbon of white between coiffured waves that frame her oval face. Her makeup is flawless and my sister appears peaceful in slumber. Incubus has staged her with her hands clasped across her abdomen, covering the mound of her pelvic bone and modestly hiding her sex. The scarlet varnish on her nails is garish against the paleness of her naked skin. Joyce thought red nail polish vulgar and the sight of those manicured crimson nails wounds me to the core of my essence. Within the fold of her hands is the long stem of a white lily with a pale green centre. The blossom rests in the cleavage of her perfect breasts. Tattooed on
her right ankle is an artful replica of the flower she holds.
“I would trade my life for yours,” I say through my tears. “You are so much more than I will ever be.”
Memories flash across my mind. Joyce at sixteen, cradling a bouquet of red roses and wearing the Miss Teenage Canada crown and sash. From the front row of the audience, I had clapped until my hands stung. I see Joyce on her wedding day, breathtaking in a backless Chantilly lace gown. She had hugged me close and begged me to make Mother change the hideous colour of lipstick she wore.
Joyce is the architect of our family drama but she is loyal and loving. When I was eight, a boy at school stole my lunch money and made me cry. My fifteen-year-old sister confronted him in the playground and slapped him hard. After her grade twelve prom, we snuggled together on her double bed and she described every detail of her fairytale night.
My sister can’t be dead. The woman who sleeps for eternity amid the filth of the riverbank cannot be my sister.
A crisp scent of pine fills my nose. It will be Christmas in three weeks. Leo bought Joyce a dinner ring encrusted with chocolate-coloured diamonds. Leo’s beautiful girl cannot be dead.
Bryce Mansfield blocks my sightline to the scene beside the river. The cop holding me lets go. Again, I dash toward the sleeping beauty. My feet tangle and I fall. Howling, I crawl on my hands and knees and almost reach the cold dead flesh of an outstretched foot before Bryce wrestles me flat against the wet ground. Decaying leaves stick to my cheek as I buck and squirm beneath his solid body.
“Stand down, McNamara,” Bryce yells in my ear. “That’s an order, Officer.”
The title snaps me from the incoherent grief. Rational thought dribbles through the chaos in my mind. This is a crime scene. I cannot contaminate the chain of evidence. My body falls limp and rotting foliage muffles my wails of sorrow.
“Get up,” he orders and tugs me.
