Dark Matter

by R. D. Cain

  Hopkins had slid her paperback aside and started cleaning up what was left of her takeout food. “Don’t worry, hon; I’ll hold the hordes at bay.”

  Carscadden had added a second desk for him a few months ago when he first dreamed up the idea of a detective agency. Nastos’ desk was off to the side, making an L shape with Carscadden’s. He watched the expanding mess as Carscadden flipped the file open and spread the papers out, pushing aluminum takeout bins of Indian food off to the side. Nastos fired up his computer and logged in to his email. “My old partner from Sexual Assault, Jacques Lapierre, emailed me everything he had on Lindsay from her previous runaways. Jesus, it looks like he included the investigation into her mom’s suicide.”

  Carscadden glanced over. “Did I ever meet Jacques?”

  “No. I’ll invite him by. I’ll tell you right now, he’s a Habs fan.”

  “That’s okay. As long as he hates Washington.”

  “Oh yeah, he hates Washington.”

  Carscadden pointed to the computer. “That should make for interesting reading.” He rolled his chair over to get a better look.

  Nastos thought he detected the odour of alcohol on Carscadden’s breath. He sniffed the air, but couldn’t be sure. “I’ll read through the police reports and pass over anything that seems interesting. The mom’s name was Tabitha Moreau.”

  “Stripper name,” Carscadden said to himself. “You enjoy the reports — I have to get through this Kalmakov deal, then make some time for your civil case against the police service. I meet with them this week for round one hundred.”

  On the surface, Kalmakov was nice enough. Nastos still felt the creeps, though. He might be a quasi-reformed Russian gangster, but Nastos wasn’t yet convinced he was reformed enough. And after the “waste disposal” help the old man had provided them with the dearly departed James North last year, he still seemed more than eager to relive some of his glory days. “You know, the problem with the Russian mob is that once you know too much, you can become a liability.”

  Carscadden grabbed the remote from the desk and turned on the TV, ignoring what Nastos had said. “I need some music; I’ll put on the satellite radio.” Carscadden found an ’80s rock channel and dialed down the volume.

  Nastos printed out all fifty pages of the reports, most of which were useless to him; he was able to narrow it down to a dozen pages of text. Few had anything nice to say about Lindsay’s clichéd upbringing. There was the abusive dad who disappeared, followed by the mom’s abusive boyfriends. Mom was of course a druggie. She eventually hanged herself — that wasn’t part of the cliché. Jacques was kind enough to include the SOCO’s — scene of the crime officer’s — pictures of the hanging, just in case Nastos had any doubts.

  Nastos read that the friend who fought for custody, Jessica Taylor, was as bad as the mom and eventually gave up on Lindsay shortly after the Bannermans were short-listed as prospective parents. Nastos could practically smell the payoff after that. He made note of the name Jessica Taylor. He had her date of birth and an old address from Flemingdon Park.

  Nastos turned back to the death photographs. Something about them was wrong. Whatever it was that caught his attention wasn’t readily apparent when he studied each picture one at a time. He must have made a noise because Carscadden rolled his chair over to look. “What have you got there?”

  “Lindsay’s birth mom hanged herself.”

  “Jesus, what a mess.”

  “Yeah. If people knew they crapped all down their legs after hanging, fewer might do it.”

  “So what’s the deal? Something catch your eye?”

  Nastos scrolled through the various pictures. They were in order and together they told a sad story. A picture of a run-down, practically derelict, apartment building. The next one was of the room number, 501. The following photo showed the door open and then came various shots of the apartment. The place was a mess. Overflowing ashtrays, takeout boxes, a sink full of dishes. There were ragged and dirty stuffed animals scattered around, some with amputated limbs as if chewed by small dogs — or rats, Nastos corrected himself. Rats would have done that.

  Then the camera showed the outside of a bedroom. The next picture peeked inside at the mess. Clothes, linen, shoes and empty liquor and beer bottles were everywhere. This shot was the first to show a glimpse of Lindsay’s mom: her arm, out of focus, at the edge of the picture’s frame. The next photo showed how it had happened. She had tied rope to the handle of the closet door and slung it over the top. She had tied the dangling end around her neck and sunk her body weight down, asphyxiating herself, her feet never leaving the ground. Naked, skinny, both knees bent, slumped to the right.

  There were tight pictures of the knot she used as well as of scrapes at her neck, signs of buyer’s remorse. She had two broken fake fingernails. The last shot showed the rope where it went over the door, her weight gouging into the cheap particle board.

  Carscadden stated the obvious. “All she had to do was stand.”

  Nastos countered, “Or let’s say she did stand. She still had to untie the rope. Maybe that’s when she clawed at her neck, but she passed out before she got it loose. Blood toxicology shows she was very drunk. How many auto-erotic asphyxiations go wrong? Those people do it this way and they don’t want to die — she apparently did.”

  Carscadden nodded. “Yeah, maybe she did try to stand. It wouldn’t take long before she dropped right back down again. And the drop of her body would only crank the knot tighter. So the theory was that she got the rope ready, got drunk, looped it around her neck and by the time she changed her mind she was too weak to do much about it.”

  Nastos handed the stack to Carscadden. “I’ve seen it before. Still though, something struck me as odd. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  Carscadden snatched at the mouse. “Here, let me take a look.” He began going through them. “She was pretty, just like her daughter. How sad.”

  Nastos asked, “Any idea what you’re looking for?”

  “Not really.”

  Nastos said, “I’ll start with the phone numbers.”

  Carscadden grunted acknowledgment, already immersed in the pictures of death. Nastos spread out the business cards that Bannerman had given them. “Rogers security, Bell security, Telus security — this guy knows everyone.” He flipped to the cell numbers on Lindsay’s phone bill. There were fourteen that repeated over the last two months. The first business card was Rod at Bell Canada.

  “Rod speaking.”

  “Hey Rod, this is Steve Nastos. Craig Bannerman said I should give you a call.”

  “Right, Lindsay — no sign of her yet?”

  “No,” Nastos said. “We just started on this thing.”

  “Well, give me the phone numbers; if they’re ours, I’ll get you the subscriber info.”

  Nastos went through the numbers one by one. Rod was able to help out with seven; thankfully, none were pay-as-you-go numbers.

  “Thanks, Rod.”

  “Call back anytime. And hey, if I’m not here, write down my personal cell. Call me twenty-four-seven. If you need anything to find Lindsay, call anytime, day or night.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “No one here’s going to be giving me crap for trying to help out Craig Bannerman.”

  Nastos called Jim at Rogers and found the same level of co-operation. With Rogers, Nastos now had the registered names and addresses of every phone number on Lindsay’s record. The two pay-as-you-go numbers Jim identified became the most promising because they could be registered anonymously by purchasing cards with cash at convenience stores instead of over the phone with credit cards.

  “Hey Jim, can you ping the pay-as-you-go numbers and see where they are?”

  “Actually, Steve, both of the phones have GPS. One sec.”

  Nastos waited a moment on the line. “Jim, don’t the
phone owners have to activate the GPS? Can’t they turn it off?”

  “Oh, hell yeah, they can turn it off. They don’t know I can turn it back on from here. It’s easier than triangulating towers and they’ll never know I did it.” Nastos heard fingers tapping on a keyboard.

  “I can get within ten metres with our system. One sec. Okay, one number’s at Windon Road, near Saint Dennis and Eglinton, that’s Courtney Love. Obviously a bullshit name. The other’s in Scugog Township — wherever the hell that is. Check out this name. Anita Bonghit.”

  “Can you repeat that?”

  Jim chuckled. “When you see it spelled out, it doesn’t seem like anything. When you say it, you realize it’s a pseudonym. I need a bong hit. Anita Bonghit.”

  “What a loser.” Nastos heard more typing.

  “Here, Steve. I’ll email you the billing address, since it matches the GPS hit. It’s a bullshit name but it seems like the real address for Anita.”

  “Great, thanks. Do you know where Scugog Township is?”

  “By GPS, it’s north of Oshawa.”

  “And Jim, what else do you have for Courtney Love?”

  “Her billing address? Let’s check here.” There was a pause before he came back. “That looks like the real address too. They were smart enough to use fake names but these geniuses both seem to use real addresses.”

  When Jim read out Love’s address, Nastos flipped to the front of the Bannerman file and saw a match. Courtney Love and Jessica Taylor were likely one and the same — or at least they lived at the same place.

  “Can you email me everything you have for both of them? Address, everything?”

  “It’s on the way. You probably already have it.”

  “Perfect. Thanks.”

  “Well, you have my number. If you need anything, call anytime. Day or night.”

  Nastos hung up. He had made rough notes on scrap paper while speaking on the phone and gave the information a once-over. Lindsay Bannerman had called Courtney Love, who was more than likely Jessica Taylor. It wasn’t a coincidence. Anita Bonghit was still an unknown, but at least he had an address.

  Nastos logged into Lindsay’s Facebook account. She had an open profile that listed five hundred and twelve of her closest friends. There were messages and messages from people asking her to come home. Of the names that the cell companies had provided, neither Anita Bonghit nor Courtney Love were listed, but Jessica Taylor was. Nastos looked over at Carscadden, who was still studying the suicide pictures. In his hands was the blown-up image of the rope over the top of the door.

  Carscadden shook his head. “Nothing so far. Good pictures, though.”

  Nastos nodded. “Yeah, the photographer did a good job. Great detail.”

  A close-up of the knot that had been tied. The woman’s weight had gouged the wood. If it had been a solid wooden door, Nastos might not have noticed anything, but it wasn’t solid. It was a cheap piece of garbage, built with strips of particle board around the perimeter of the door, with another strip across the middle, like the digital presentation of the number eight. The veneer was thin, revealing everything Nastos needed to see. “Stop there. Yeah, there it is.”

  Carscadden held the picture farther away. “And we’re looking for?”

  Nastos grabbed a pen from the desk and used it as a pointer. “She positioned herself in the closet and flipped the rope over the door. She had the length close enough, then went to the other side of the door and tied the rope on the door handle. Then she came back inside the closet, put the rope around her neck and dropped her weight.”

  “Yeah,” Carscadden agreed. “She lifted her feet to hang and choked herself out. After a while, she died.”

  Nastos pointed at the groove the rope had made over the door. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Carscadden squinted, seeing it. “The groove in the door goes the wrong way. The splintered wood goes backward, not forward.”

  Nastos summarized. “She didn’t sag down to choke herself, she was lifted off of the ground, then the rope was tied off from the other side of the door.”

  Carscadden studied the picture. “She was killed.” He scrolled through the others again. “Minimal claw marks at her neck from trying to get the weight off the rope, no bruises on her arms from banging on the walls. No kick into the drywall in front of her.”

  Nastos knew he didn’t have all of the answers. “Drugged, I don’t know. All she thought of was the rope around her neck. She was a user. I don’t see any pictures of the closet wall, maybe it was smashed in.”

  “Do you think it was the boyfriend? He killed her, then disappeared?”

  Nastos shook his head. “It’s always the boyfriend.”

  Carscadden stood and stretched. “Well, that sucks for her, eh? Listen, buddy, I’m beat. Hopkins and I are going to have an early night tonight, so let’s shut this down till tomorrow.”

  Nastos knew what that meant. “Oh, you two are going to have sex tonight. Good for you.”

  “What can I say? She gets me home and treats me like a beast of burden. What are you guys doing tonight?”

  Nastos was reluctant to say it was family counselling for Josie. It might ruin his mood. “Slow night, I hope. We’ll meet up with Jessica and Anita Bonghit tomorrow. I’ll just give Jacques a call and give him the good news about Lindsay’s mom.”

  He picked up the phone and dialed Jacques’ cell number.

  Jacques answered by saying, “Jesus, now what do you want?”

  “You just solved a cold case.”

  “Good for me. Which one?”

  “This girl we’re looking for, her mom — Tabitha Moreau? It wasn’t a suicide. My guess: it was the boyfriend at the time, who bolted. Darius Miner.” Nastos explained about the pictures while Jacques went through them on his end. “Tabitha Moreau didn’t commit suicide. She was murdered.”

  6

  Craig made sure Claire had extra wine at dinner, then told her that he’d follow her up to bed after the third period of the hockey game.

  As he sat in the basement office, he listened for the sound of water running in the bathroom. After it stopped, he peeked up the staircase every few minutes until he saw the bedroom light go off. He watched a bit of the game for another fifteen minutes, ensuring that she was sound asleep before he turned off the door chimes and went outside through the basement walk-out.

  The car was parked on the far side of the house beside the garage. He had left the handbrake up two notches when he arrived home, so when the car started the headlights would remain dark. Bannerman slid silently into the driver’s seat and engaged the ignition. The BMW’s three-month-old engine barely made a sound as he crept out of the driveway.

  He pressed the remote to open then close the gate, then turned to take Bayview Avenue south to downtown.

  It was ten-thirty and he was tired from the wine. He opened the glove box, grabbed a five-hour energy drink and guzzled it down fast, hoping to sober up quicker. He didn’t have to worry about work tomorrow, as he had taken the rest of the week off. In the morning he would put on a show of leaving for work, then get a hotel room to sleep away his exhaustion.

  The streetwalkers might not be out until midnight, and they moved around. They weren’t the same girls every time but most girls tried to make it out on Fridays and Saturdays, the big money nights. They were a different breed of gentleman’s company. They were the hardcore drug addicts, homeless or practically homeless, and less attractive discount fare. Bannerman knew he’d have to wait around somewhere for the time to pass. He considered going to the office, then changed his mind. The card swipe system would keep the record. He couldn’t even sober up in the underground parking lot, for the same reason. He found a quiet side street, a one-way with houses in darkness — except for the occasional blue blur from a TV screen.

  He rolled down his window, put the h
eat on low and let the car idle. His laptop was in the back seat. He slid it out of its case and powered it up. At least he could play solitaire to while away the time. When the wifi icon turned green, he smiled. An unsecure signal. Perfect. Bannerman forgot about solitaire and got to work.

  He started scrolling the escort sites again on RedLight. For the most part, the girls were self-organized by race. Bannerman focused on the Eastern Europeans on local pages. They were most likely to be white girls.

  Image after image, naked body after naked body. He began to notice that often the same girl would be in various ads — different poses and outfits, different rates. Just like supermarket chains, they marketed the same products at different price points.

  His cell phone had a memo feature and he had begun using it to keep track of the information because there was too much. Too many naked women for anyone to keep track of.

  He studied every picture from the escort site before going to the Toronto Today website. The only logical search parameter he could think of was geographic. The massage parlours and Asians were north of Sheppard Avenue. There were more places near the airport in Mississauga. He went highway exit by highway exit from Morningside to Highway 7, to the Gardiner. He then checked Hamilton, Brampton, the GTA.

  It was all just passing time, reading dirty ads by the women who promised to be dirty girls. Imperfect bodies were twisted, with arched backs, in awkwardly angled, self-snapped pictures. He scrolled the pages slowly. They were like a bouquet of wilted flowers rolling up the screen as he dug further down, the thoughts of their offers and promises at first began to arouse him. Almost instantly, he thought of Lindsay on the streets confused and desperate, and he felt physically ill. It was at that moment that he hated the sliver of darkness that he had felt welling up within himself. He felt ashamed and angry. An image of his wife first leading Lindsay into her new room all those years ago came to him. The wonder on her young face, the hope in her eyes. He was overcome with a desperate longing and reaffirmed his promise to find her at any cost.