Dark Matter

by R. D. Cain

“Does she have access to money?”

  “She has a bank card; it hasn’t been used since she disappeared.”

  Nastos rested the file on his lap while Craig continued. “The police did the report over the phone; no one came here. They told me to bring in the phone records and they’d have a look at them when they got a chance. They’re not returning calls.”

  Claire Bannerman spoke up. “I can’t believe that a child can go missing and the police don’t do anything about it.”

  Out of habit, Nastos found himself trying to defend his former colleagues. “The city is full of kids — most are just out having fun. Cops are overworked and just assume that she’ll cross their paths if, like I said, she’s doing anything stupid. She’s on the system. That means she hasn’t gone to a hospital or been arrested.”

  Claire was lost between angry and sad. “You think she joined the army, Mr. Nastos? Is she competing in a top model search and too busy to call? She’s not a nobody. There are people who love her.”

  He didn’t want to say what he thought she was doing besides drugs. After she couldn’t sell stolen merchandise from her house, she’d have to find something else to sell. He remembered her face from one of the pictures, the blue eyes and innocent smile. “I think she’s shacked up with people she shouldn’t be with, Mrs. Bannerman. Friends probably think they’re doing her a favour.”

  Claire replied by folding her hands in an unconscious gesture of prayer and looking thoughtfully at nothing.

  Praying wasn’t going to be the answer for Lindsay. Nastos continued. “We’re going to have to track down some of the cell numbers in the records.”

  Craig handed several business cards to Nastos. “I know a few of the executives at Rogers and Bell Canada. They know what’s going on and are expecting your call. They’re anxious to help, so don’t hesitate.” Nastos read the cards. Two vice-presidents and a president. Bannerman kept good company.

  After some more questions, Craig handed over a twenty-thousand-dollar deposit cheque to Carscadden. They shook hands with him and Claire, then left for the car.

  Carscadden pulled out of the driveway and waited a few minutes before asking, “What bothers you most about this?”

  Nastos still had the file in his hands. He spun around and put it down on the back seat. “I don’t think they were completely honest. I bet she’s been a nightmare for them for a long time. Hell, the adoption was likely a mess from the beginning. And three weeks missing, that doesn’t sound so good.”

  Carscadden stopped at the intersection of Lawrence and High Point. “This pays a lot more money than the insurance business.”

  Nastos pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. “Taking their money makes me feel kind of dirty. Twenty grand is a lot of money for this.”

  “They want her back. If we can do it fast, I’m okay with returning some of their deposit.”

  Carscadden had his issues; however, the accumulation of wealth didn’t seem to be a burning desire after all. Nastos said, “I’m calling a buddy still on the force. I want to see what kind of story they have on Lindsay. Maybe she has a longer history with the police than they felt like revealing. If she’s been picked up before, we can get an idea of where she hangs out.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Twenty grand; may as well try to deserve it. Drop me at home, then I’ll meet you at the office.”

  Carscadden turned left toward Bayview. “Want to go to Frankie’s for lunch?”

  “Kalmakov’s bad news — I’d rather stay clear of the guy.”

  “After everything he’s done for us?”

  “I appreciate that you successfully defended him from a triple-murder conviction, so he holds a certain place for you in his heart. You just need to remember that he’s a Russian mobster, not the kind of guy we want to owe anything to. Besides, I have to consult with Madeleine about all this. I might be a while.”

  3

  Madeleine Nastos was a born interrogator. She asked the kind of questions that had only incriminating answers. And in the amount of time Nastos required to consider options and mull over an escape route, she would read the pensive, maybe even lost, expression on his face as weakness and hit him with more questions.

  “You know what my uncle went through to get you that job?”

  They were at the kitchen table, where she was drinking herbal tea. She stirred the spoon one way, and just when things started going smoothly, she’d abruptly stop and stir the other way.

  “Maddy, sitting at a desk all day isn’t for me. I gave it a solid six months — most retired guys only last two years anyways. We’ll be okay for money.”

  Her disappointment masked the real issue: money. The wrongful arrest lawsuit against the police service was still pending and cash was tight. Nastos wasn’t old enough to collect the police pension and he couldn’t be hired back because he’d served time in jail briefly for breaching his release stipulations while he was on trial for the events at Cherry Beach.

  “So what are you planning to do now? The trial really hurt us.”

  This was going to be the fun part. He sat next to her and put his hand out. She accepted reluctantly, her fingers interlacing with his. Start with the good news.

  “Today Carscadden and I picked up a cheque for twenty thousand dollars; we split it fifty-fifty.”

  She liked the sound of twenty thousand dollars. “What did you have to do for it?”

  Here we go. “There’s a banker — he lives in the Bridle Path, in a mansion.”

  She perked up; this was sounding promising.

  “He and his wife couldn’t have children, so they adopted. I don’t think it was an easy integration, and the girl has taken off from home a few times. Now she’s gone again. Here, look.” From his pocket, Nastos produced the picture of Lindsay with her mom in the kitchen for Madeleine to see. Lindsay looked more like Madeleine than either of the Bannermans.

  “How long has she been gone? She’s a skinny little thing.”

  “Three weeks. He’s asked us to find her and get her home.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Bridle Path — you’d have a stroke if you saw the place. It’s worth twenty million, easy.”

  She did the math. “That’s one hundred thousand in commission.”

  “Twenty for us to find her, another fifty to get her into a treatment centre; it isn’t much for them. What would you pay to get Josie back?”

  “It depends on the day.” Madeleine started to smile, then her gaze turned to the patio doors and the sky outside. She began spinning the spoon back the other way. “You just can’t give it up, can you? Saving all the little girls of the world. You have a hero complex.”

  “The only thing I’m qualified to do is be a cop. There aren’t a lot of transferable skills; one of them is finding people.”

  “I thought you were ready to finally leave it all behind you. You’re not getting any younger. You’re planning on chasing teenagers around Toronto for the next five years till your pension comes in? Josie’s growing up so fast. This time off could all be worth it if after the settlement you were spending more time with her, while you still have it to spend.”

  “This money will get us closer to the settlement from the lawsuit; one step at a time. Looks like I’m now in the world of sales and promotion, like you.”

  She wasn’t buying it and kept staring out the window, lost. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing her long neck and tense shoulders. The reflection in the glass was like she was half-gone to another world where he couldn’t touch her without his arms going right through. It had started with her staying on the couch downstairs to read; then came the end of flirting, the end of intimacy. The more they worked to get Josie past what happened, the more Madeleine seemed to be turned off sex completely.

  Nastos persisted. “I’ll have less co
mpetition than you, though. You don’t see private investigator signs up everywhere like there are for real estate agents.”

  She looked at him, having heard not a word of what he had said. “Quitting was a bad idea, Steve. Josie needs stability. Here you go again; you’ll be gone all hours of the night, sleeping half the day —”

  “It’s too late now.”

  She began drumming her fingers. “Just pick up the phone and get your job back. We can’t afford this. We can’t afford to have you out there feeling emotionally fulfilled when we have a mortgage to pay.” It was the kind of anger that she sometimes reached, where she didn’t have to shout. She had detached herself from him, like she was giving advice to a stranger.

  “No, I’m not going back to insurance. I don’t think they’d take me anyways.”

  “Huge mistake. Huge.”

  She looked into the living room, then to the front foyer as if she was looking for something urgent that needed her attention. She was looking for a reason to get away from him. What she wasn’t saying was that she had known all along that it was just a matter of time before he pissed somebody off or did something stupid. He had to admit that he’d done both.

  “Sorry about your uncle.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  Nastos stood up and stretched. “How long before Josie comes back from her friend’s house?”

  “She’s staying for dinner. They’ll call when she’s ready.”

  He took a chance. He grabbed her hand and led her around the corner to the living room couch. He lay down and pulled her on top of him; she resisted only reluctantly. He ran his hands through her hair.

  She said, “Steve, not now.”

  “Yeah, sure. Maybe some other time.”

  Not long after Carscadden and Nastos left his house, Craig was able to get time away from his wife. It was easy to explain; he had taken the afternoon off work to meet with them and now he needed to head to the basement office. It was cool and quiet there.

  For a house this size, it was a small room, barely twelve by twelve, lined with bookshelves and warmed by a gas fireplace. There was a network plug-in for his laptop. His wife wouldn’t bother him down here and she rarely used his laptop; nonetheless, he employed the usual security precautions.

  He used Firefox in private browsing mode, and when he wanted to look up something especially secure — the kind of thing that he absolutely never wanted the IT guys at work to see — he used Google Chrome and kept the browser hidden in an innocuously named file. He deleted the browsing history after each session. He didn’t care so much about himself, but Claire didn’t need to know about anything that would make her upset.

  He never bookmarked a single site, relying instead on his memory. He brought up the Toronto escort directory on one tab; then in another he opened the RedLightEscorts Erotic Services page. He spent at least an hour a day scanning the images of the girls, the young blonds. Some obscured their faces with Photoshopped blurs, forcing him to study their bodies instead.

  He reached for his cell phone and dialed a number. She answered, but the voice was wrong. He hung up. He scrolled all of the pictures that were new since yesterday — nothing. Nothing so far he’d have to keep searching.

  He closed the screen and checked his email. Both of his connections at the cell carriers were helping. They had set up electronic surveillance on Nastos’ and Carscadden’s cells as well as Carscadden’s business number. All phone calls would be recorded as MP3 files and emailed to him with a one-hour lag time. There were no messages yet. He planned on paying close attention to the progress of their investigation. If they were getting close to anything, he needed to know.

  Carscadden strode into his office, finding Hopkins at her desk, a phone jammed up to her ear. She smiled upon seeing him. She was older than him by seven years, but didn’t show it. Her dark hair was trimmed to her chin to accent her heart-shaped face. He placed some Indian takeout on the counter in front of her. She stood, smoothing out her skirt, then raised her hand to stop him in his tracks. “I have to let you go, Mom, Kevin’s back and we have to go over something. Okay, bye, Mom.”

  She eyed the food. “I’m starving. Here, trade ya.” She slid a file over the counter and spun it so he could read the name Viktor Kalmakov at the top, then began ripping into the stapled brown paper bag from Raja’s Indian Food. “Ummm, good choice.”

  Carscadden picked up the file. “How many did he kill this time?”

  “He wants a limited partnership set up.”

  He sighed. “Taxes, corporate law — how exciting.”

  Hopkins came around the counter and peeled the file from the counter. “Let’s go through it. You’re going to like the numbers, if you can handle it.”

  “I can do it with my eyes shut. Please, eat, you practically deserve food anyways.”

  She ignored most of what he had said. “Are taxes the only thing you can do with your eyes shut?” She puckered her lips, leaving him no choice but to kiss her.

  “No, it’s not.” He opened the door to the office that he now shared with Nastos. Hopkins followed him in, closing the door behind her. She sat at Nastos’ desk, opened the file and handed Carscadden the first page. He read it.

  “Twelve million dollars equity. Nice. I could use some partners like that.”

  Hopkins rolled her chair over next to his. She pointed. “That’s our cut there. Cash that check and I’ll be shopping by this afternoon.”

  Carscadden read the payout. “That’s more like it.” He flipped to the second page in the Kalmakov file. “That’s too much money; what’s the catch?”

  Hopkins pulled over the rest of the file. “He came here personally to drop this off. Look at the names of the partners. They’re all trouble.”

  Carscadden only recognized one name out of the six listed: Liuzzo, a knee breaker.

  “Viktor must have said half a dozen times that it involves some close friends and it’s a sensitive matter. He’s getting into the shipping business, barges.”

  “Expanding the garbage business, probably. If it’s for waste removal, it might include hazardous waste, international shipping — it could get complicated with insurance and permits.”

  Hopkins asked, “Do dead bodies count as hazardous waste these days?”

  Carscadden mulled it over. “Only if they are politicians.” He closed the file and set it on his filing cabinet. “Well, that’ll be a nice paycheque.”

  The front doorbell chimed. Hopkins stood to answer it, but Carscadden stopped her. “Hey, one sec.” She turned to him as he approached her. He grabbed her ass with one hand and kissed her hard on the lips. He cupped his other hand at the nape of her neck and released her when she started kissing back. “Hey, hey, what kind of place do you think this is?”

  Her face scrunched up. “You started it.”

  “See that? That backtalk? That’s what I’m talking about. Tonight I’m taking you home and teaching you a lesson, young lady.”

  “Oh, really? Well, I might just teach you a lesson of my own. And I might not wait until we get home.” She left the office, pulling the door closed.

  Carscadden opened the top drawer of his desk and sucked back a long pull from his vodka bottle. He was living the clichéd detective life and loving it. He had the hot secretary he’d been dating a few months now, the bottle of booze in the top drawer and until recently he had been flat broke. Being his own boss, free of his former corporate shackles, was a freedom he had never experienced before in his adult life.

  It was Polish vodka. The label was a black with the white outline of an ox pulling a plow under the guidance of a farmer walking behind with a whip. Carscadden decided he would be the farmer. With hard work, he would pull the treasure from the earth by working hard and being his own man. All he needed to do was give Nastos, the big dumb ox, the odd whip in the ass to get moving. He smiled. Na
stos was turning into the best friend he’d ever had.

  When Carscadden heard Hopkins talking to Nastos in the front room, he put the bottle away and went to the washroom to swish with mouthwash. The Indian food would take care of the rest of the alcohol breath.

  4

  Anthony Raines sat in the brown leather armchair nearest the fireplace in his office. He gave a thumbs-up to the muscular man who, upon receiving the signal, pressed a button on the timer and slipped out of the room, leaving Anthony alone with his client. She was leaned back in the crook of the couch, her eyes closing, the book and its blank pages drooping away from her.

  “I want you to relax while we go through this next part. Lean back on the couch and just let your muscles relax. You’re going to hear my words as I speak to you directly. And you’ll recognize the voice you hear as the voice of your internal monologue — that instinctive voice you’ve listened to your entire life. And that’s fine, because in a sense it’s really going to be you talking to yourself.”

  “I’ve gone over your chart and your signs and spent a good amount of time studying up on you. So let your hands hold the stiff spine of the book in place, and let’s get started. I know you’ve worked hard for your career. I see a solid worker who is appreciated by the smarter co-workers, but undervalued by some minor petty person you have to deal with. Too busy to hold grudges — that’s not your style; you believe destructive people get theirs in the end anyways, sooner or later, usually later. You’re independent but strike a balance when others want your company.

  “You’re a protector, a person who cares, a defender of weaker people. With your sign you prove to be a difficult adversary after the first confrontation, and I see here you’re balanced and only go for the throat when it’s justified. Your sign can be highly skilled in many different fields, cooking, reading people’s body language; I see a strong intuitive ability, on the verge of psychic at times.

  “You’ve settled into a pattern of life that, if you think about it, has so many more pluses than minuses. I do, however, feel an interest in changing things up a little. There is a part of you that is like a lone wolf. You are on this journey where you are ultimately alone, soldiering forward to great unknowns. I can tell you that everything is going to work out fine if you just keep moving forward.