Cut to the Bone

by Joan Boswell

  “We have another one. It could relate to your case if your killer intended to murder the Aboriginal woman. Come into my office,” he said.

  Rhona’s breath caught in her throat. Not Ginny. They should have done more than warn her, should have put a guard on her apartment or sent her somewhere safe.

  “Ginny Wuttenee?” she said, hoping for a negative answer.

  “Who?” Frank stood in front of his window.

  “The woman we thought might have been the intended victim,” Ian said.

  “Could be. This woman — we haven’t found any ID — received multiple stab wounds. The perp threw her in the water at the far end of the dogs off-leash section of Cherry Beach. It rained last night, so we have tire track prints going through the park. A cement block tied around her waist should have taken her to the bottom, but the body was wedged under an old half-submerged picnic table. Although they say she’s tiny, it must have been a job to dump her into the water.”

  “Aboriginal woman?” Rhona asked.

  “Looks like it, although we won’t know for sure until we get an ID. The marine unit divers secured and removed the body and conveyed her to the marine station on Queen’s Quay. Go there first before you go to Cherry Beach, where I have officers conducting a ground search looking for evidence and taking casts of the tire treads. The coroner is on his way to Queen’s Quay.”

  No guarantee that it wasn’t Ginny. Rhona felt like crossing her fingers or touching wood, a very unprofessional way to think.

  “You take the case until I determine that it isn’t related to the apartment murder.” As he spoke, Frank performed an annoying exercise Rhona believed he was unaware of. First he balanced on one foot and then on the other. Rhona noted that he had more difficulty on his right than his left. He stopped alternating feet, rose on his toes, and rocked back on his heels.

  “Who found her?’ Ian asked.

  “A dog, which isn’t surprising in an off-leash dog park. I think it was a retriever. Of course they breed them to find things in the water. At any beach they race into the lake no matter how cold it is. It’s only May and Lake Ontario must be freezing, but that dog jumped in, and I know that mine would do the same thing.”

  Frank loved to talk about dogs. With no encouragement, he would launch into lengthy and excruciatingly boring stories about the brilliant or amusing antics of his dog. Rhona held her breath. At this early hour she didn’t want to hear a dog story, particularly as Frank forgot who he told his stories to and tended to repeat them.

  “I remember once …”

  Oh no, not again.

  He stopped and stared at Rhona. “After yesterday’s outburst I need to know you can deal with an Aboriginal woman’s murder.”

  “One reason I lost it yesterday was because I hate it when cops or anyone else speaks disparagingly about Aboriginals. I always feel that they are including me in their generalizations, which is stupid because most people in multicultural Toronto have no idea what ethnic mix I represent. To answer your question, I want to get the perp. I only hope the victim isn’t Ginny Wuttenee.”

  Frank nodded. “I thought you’d say that. You’re on both cases as long as we think there’s a connection.”

  Ian and Rhona collected what they needed. Rhona refilled her travel mug. The department’s weaker coffee didn’t recharge her like the high test she made at home, but she needed more java to keep her going.

  “Although the weatherman called for a nice day today, it’ll be cold down by the lake. I need a jacket from my locker,” she said.

  Ian also collected a jacket and they headed from College Street to University Avenue, where they drove south to Lake Ontario.

  A brisk wind blowing from the water chilled them as they moved from the parking lot to the station.

  Inside, the clerk at the desk directed them through the building to a room at the rear. They found the medical examiner suited up and ready to go. He blocked their view of the woman on the gurney. Rhona held her breath as he turned to speak to them and they saw the body.

  It wasn’t Ginny. Rhona breathed a silent thank-you.

  Ian stepped closer. Long, wet black hair spread around an unmarked face. Only multiple gashes in her acidic yellow shirt told the tale.

  Rhona joined Ian.

  “She look familiar to you?” Ian asked.

  They both stared down.

  “The security camera. The woman marched out of the building. The one who mouthed help,” Rhona said.

  “Was Frank prescient or what?”

  The medical examiner, studying the woman’s feet, looked up. “You can identify her?”

  “No, but we have a record of her whereabouts on Tuesday,” Rhona said. “Did the stab wounds kill her?” she asked, sure they had, but sometimes the coroner surprised them.

  “I’d say so but we won’t know for sure until we have her on the table.” He pointed at the slashes. “Any one of those could have hit her heart, aorta, lungs, or an artery.”

  “We’ll check back after we visit the crime scene,” Rhona said and put her hand on Ian’s arm. “Time to head over and see what the divers found in the water and the officers on land. With luck they may find her handbag.”

  Ian scrunched his face. “If I rerun the video in my mind, I see something glittery tucked under her arm. Let’s hope it turns up or someone hands it in. If they don’t and we have a clear image, we can appeal to the public to bring it in.”

  In the car they headed along the Lakeshore and turned south on Cherry Street.

  “Ever go in there?” Rhona said to Ian as they passed T&T Chinese supermarket.

  “Never,” Ian said without adding that he might find it interesting or hate it.

  “They sell the greatest Chinese prepared foods. On the weekends women heat and offer samples. I love it.”

  “Something to add to my list,” Ian said. His voice conveyed that if he did, it would take last place on a long list.

  They turned into the pot-holed lot crowded with police cars and emergency vehicles. A few early morning dog walkers clustered at the far end near the sandy beach. Officers must have told them to leash their animals, for no dogs roamed the area. A young officer, not recognizing the unmarked car, leaned in the window Ian opened.

  “Crime scene, sir, sorry, but you can’t park here.”

  “Homicide,” Ian said and the young man waved them in without requesting a badge.

  After the night’s rain, low spots remained muddy. Although Rhona had sprayed two cans of leather preservative on her red cowboy boots, she didn’t have total faith in the product. She hated getting the boots dirty, and picked her way around the puddles and the worst muddy patches. Ian, wearing heavy black brogues, clomped along seemingly unaware of his feet. Rhona knew plastic booties awaited them at the actual scene and regretted that when they left the car, she hadn’t slipped on the ones she carried with her.

  A bright day, but the wind blew steadily, carrying the chill of recently melted ice. The divers’ boat rocked, pitched, and rolled as the crew waited for the divers to return. Several officers in booties and coveralls, heads down and eyes fixed on the ground, scoured the shore as they searched for evidence.

  Rhona, after she donned protective footwear, gingerly picked her way down the bank, where huge slabs of concrete lay randomly deposited as if a giant had flung them from above. Rebar and lengths of rusted cable protruded from most of them. These leftover remnants indicated that at one time they had formed part of a substantial dock or building.

  “Have the divers found anything?” she asked the officer in charge.

  “Her handbag and a bunch of stuff from it. No wallet. No I.D. They retrieved a cell phone, not that it’ll be any good.”

  “Along the bank?”

  “We made casts of the treads and a couple of shoeprints that could be connected. The man who found the body told us he climbed down to see if she was alive. When he verified that she was dead he moved off. He showed us his footprints.”

&
nbsp; “Where is he?” Ian asked.

  The detective pointed up to the right, where a man was hunkered down on a bench watching the police and absentmindedly patting a dog.

  Rhona and Ian walked over. “We’d like to speak to you,” Rhona said.

  The man nodded and stood up.

  “Let’s get out of this wind.” Rhona led Ian and the man back to the parking lot, where they huddled in the lee of a beach building boarded up for the winter.

  “I’m sure the officers got your name and particulars,” Ian said. “But would you tell us?”

  “Certainly. Denton Dennison, and this,” he patted the dog’s head, “is Denby. I’ve always liked alliteration.”

  Ian bent and patted the dog, who swiped his hand with a slobber-laden tongue. Rhona decided to forego the pleasure.

  “Tell us what happened.”

  “Well, as soon as I let Denby off his leash, he headed for the beach.” Denton pointed to a broad swath of sand that ended in leafless bushes rimming a narrow stretch of shoreline that curved out to a point. “We walked.” He grinned. “I’ll amend that. I walked and Denby retrieved balls.” He flourished a long blue plastic stick with a ball holder at the end. “I carry this, a chuck-it, and use it not only to throw the ball a long way but also to keep from getting my hands covered in saliva. In May the water’s cold and your hands freeze quickly if you don’t use one. Anyway you don’t want to know about that. I walked and threw and he swam and retrieved.”

  He waved at the point. “We usually walk around there, come up on the gravel, and then continue to the back where that high fence topped with barbed wire separates us from an industrial site. I like going around there because Denby gets to do some serious swimming. On this side the water is too shallow for that.” He bent to pat the dog again. “Denby ran ahead of me. Not many people here at five thirty, it’s barely light. I heard Denby barking frantically and hurried to see what was wrong, and that’s when I saw her in the water.” He shook his head. “I briefly debated whether to go down the bank, but I worried that she might still be alive, so I did.” He smiled. “You can’t watch crime shows without realizing you shouldn’t muck up the scene, but I did show the officers where I stepped, and I got Denby out and leashed him as soon as I realized what he’d found.”

  “Did you recognize the woman?” Rhona asked.

  An expression of horror crossed the man’s face. “You don’t think that I knew her? Of course not. Never seen her before.”

  “Did you notice anyone leaving as you arrived?”

  Denton frowned and cocked his head to one side as if the action might jog a memory. “Let me see. There were two cars in the lot when I arrived.” He moved to one side and glanced behind them before he pointed. “That black Ford Explorer and the silver Toyota van. I didn’t see anyone when Denby and I walked along the shore. No. Nobody left as I came in.”

  “The officers took all your particulars?” Ian asked.

  “They did and I’ll do like they say on TV. I’ll call you if I think of anything else.”

  After Denton left, Rhona told the officer manning the parking lot to run the two vehicles’ plate numbers and interview the owners if they returned.

  “We could get lucky but probably these two vehicles have nothing to do with the crime. I suspect the killer dumped the woman in the middle of the night and took off. Whoever did it either didn’t see the table or figured that with the weight tied to her body she wouldn’t drift that way.”

  “Someone in that apartment building must know her identity. Get the techies to photograph her and doctor it up so she looks less dead and have an officer take it door to door in the building. You and I will talk to Hollis Grant. We’ll also post the photo in the mail room.” Rhona liked to have a plan. “Let’s go. Get an officer to deliver the photo to 68 Delisle when it’s done.”

  TWENTY

  Hollis, who seldom used an alarm clock, realized she should have set hers when she opened her eyes and saw the time. Coping with an excess of adrenalin released by Cartwright’s threatening visit along with the time spent deciphering the entries in Mary’s diary had kept her sleepless until the early hours. She rushed to get the girls up and fed, the dogs out, and the whole tribe off to school on time.

  Crystal smiled when she came into the kitchen, but not Jay, who stomped into the room, glared at Hollis, and clomped to the table.

  “Sorry to rush you but I slept in,” Hollis said as she provided cereal, milk, blueberries, and juice. That done, she foamed milk and poured herself a cup of coffee. Everything always looked brighter after that first rejuvenating cup.

  “You’ll both eat lunch at school today,” she said, whipping together tuna sandwiches and tucking them, along with an apple and a granola bar, into their backpacks. I’ll pick you up after school.”

  “You told us we’d come home for lunch until the police solved the murder,” Jay said in an accusing voice. “You never do what you say you’re going to do,” she added.

  “I did say that, but I have to go out this morning and I’m nervous that I won’t be back in time to collect you.” She wanted to defend herself against Jay’s accusation, but trying to change minds already made up was pointless. Putting herself in Jay’s place, she knew how disappointed she would have been about the cancellation of a visit with her father.

  With the dogs walked and the girls safely at school, Hollis went first to the office to deal with any issues that had arisen overnight. To her relief no one hovered at the entrance and no demanding messages waited on the machine. She swung away from the door and watched the screens from the security cameras as she punched in the number for Ms. Young, her contact at the CAS.

  Pleasantries dealt with, she said, “I’ve received information that Jay’s father’s background may make him and her and possibly me a target for violence. If this is true I should have been told.”

  “We didn’t believe it was true,” Ms. Young said.

  “Didn’t believe? You knew there was a possibility?” Hollis heard the outrage in her own voice.

  “A remote one, and had we learned that anything had changed we would have told you,” the woman said huffily. “We do not put our wards at risk, but we also don’t want their foster parents to worry unnecessarily or to refuse to take them because of perceived risks.”

  “What was it that Brownelly did or does that makes him a risk? Furthermore, why didn’t you tell me that you removed Jay from his home?”

  “I’m sorry, but that confidential information could endanger him if we told you and you happened to tell someone else. As for Jay’s removal, it was not his bad parenting but because we felt the circumstances were not conducive to bringing up a child in a healthy way.”

  Hollis clenched her teeth. Bureaucratic gobbledegook. How she hated a runaround. “Not good enough. I have to know what we need to fear, what I’m protecting Jay from, where the threat comes from. It appalls me that you would allow me to walk blindly into a situation endangering Jay and me.”

  A pause at the other end. “I’ll speak to my supervisor and get back to you.”

  Always the supervisor. Like buying a car and the salesperson’s charade that he could make no decisions about giving you a deal without consulting the manager. Not that they ever gave you one, but they liked to make you feel you might get one.

  “I guess that will have to do. I’ll be here.” Hollis slammed the phone down.

  “Problems?” Fatima said. Wearing black tights and a loose, patterned silk top with metallic dangling earrings, she balanced on high-heeled sandals in the doorway.

  Hollis wondered how much of the conversation she’d heard. “Fostering children is challenging. Always something to worry about,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “But lucky for them there are women who will care for them,” Fatima said. “Have the police finished with Ginny’s apartment?”

  Hollis shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Too bad about the other murdered woman,” Fat
ima said.

  A rush of adrenalin placed Hollis’s body on high alert. “What woman?”

  Fatima took a step back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to shock you. As a news junkie, I always think other people share my passion. I heard on 680 News radio that the police fished a woman’s body from the water at Cherry Beach and suspect foul play.” She pivoted into Cartwright, who’d come up behind her as she spoke.

  Hollis did not want to deal with him again this morning. “Fatima, come in and sit down, don’t rush away.”

  One of Fatima’s eyebrows rose quizzically and a small smile curved her lips. A quick study, she recognized a cry for help when she heard one. In one fluid motion she entered the office and perched on a chair. “Our talk is long overdue,” she said and turned to gaze meaningfully at Cartwright.

  His head swung from side to side as he looked from one woman to the other. His thick black eyebrows lowered and his eyes narrowed. “I came to talk to you,” he said to Hollis.

  “Come in this afternoon,” Hollis replied, hoping he’d choose the time she collected the girls. “I have several appointments between now and then.”

  “Goddamn it, why the fuck should I have to make an appointment to talk to the fucking building super,” he said.

  “Because other people also need to talk to me,” Hollis said, meeting his angry gaze.

  “Don’t screw around with me,” he threatened and lumbered out of sight. Hollis watched him reappear in the camera monitor focused on the elevator.

  “Mr. Charm,” Fatima muttered.

  “One of your clients?” Hollis asked.

  Fatima nodded. “Twice. Blacklisted now. A bad client, and we don’t do business with men we dislike,” she said.

  “Thanks for staying. He scares me.”

  “I’m here to tell you Ginny moves today.”

  What if Ginny had been the real target? Would the killer strike again?

  Hollis wished Ginny would postpone her move back into her own apartment until the police nabbed Sabrina’s murderer. However, she could do nothing to stop her, and it was none of her business. Indeed, as the saying went, she had other fish to fry. Time to text Norman and find Mary.