Dark Matter

by R. D. Cain

  Dammit, Chavez, this is going to change a few things. Anthony quickly pondered the situation. Chavez had raped and potentially left DNA on one of the victims, or more. Should we change the order in which we dump the girls? No. We have to maintain the timeline to make it appear that a methodical killer is doing this. We might need to change the way the body is dumped to help with DNA. Again, no. It all has to be the same. How long does it take DNA to decompose in a living body? How long in a dead one? Chavez and his insatiable sexual urges had screwed the whole thing up. The only way to save the plan was to get answers from Chavez. And right now, Chavez wasn’t talking.

  Anthony opened the shower door a crack and spoke through it. “I don’t care if one of those girls seduced you; I don’t blame them for trying. But, Chavez, we have to be careful of the DNA.”

  Chavez paused for a moment and shrugged. Then he leaned back into the water and rinsed the soap from his body. “It’s not going to be a problem.” Chavez turned off the water and pointed at the towel rack.

  Anthony grabbed a white towel and passed it in for him. As easily as Chavez wrapped the towel around his waist, Anthony decided that Chavez was painting himself into a corner. Only he didn’t know it yet.

  There was radiator fluid in the garage. He had decided from the beginning that if Chavez went out of control and threatened Anthony’s calling, then he would poison him at the shack and try to make it look like an accidental overdose. He’d made up a CD of depressing songs and dug out some old pictures of Chavez dressed in drag, mugging for the camera at the Pride Parade, from years ago. That should be enough for the average heterosexual cop to think he was some fucked-up individual who wanted to die.

  Chavez interrupted his train of thought. “You said we were stopping at two. So there’s nothing to worry about.” When Chavez saw that Anthony was trying to understand what he said, he began to recite the rhyme. “One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a —”

  “A boy,” Anthony finished.

  Anthony retreated to allow Chavez out of the shower, then followed him into the bedroom.

  “We only needed three. Why did you take a boy?”

  Chavez smiled. “Just a toy to pass the time. You should see him, innocent-looking. It was his first time with a man.”

  Anthony felt his heart beat more forcefully. He was both scared and intrigued. Capturing a boy was dangerous. He wasn’t needed, wasn’t part of the plan. Chavez was going to have to dump one extra body, one that they could not allow to be found and linked to the others. So that’s what he was doing — a little toy to pass the time. Pangs of jealousy made Anthony’s face flush red and his stomach drop.

  “How old is he?”

  Chavez smiled. “Eighteen. He looks it. The prime of life.” Chavez dropped the towel to the floor and pointed to the bed. “Sit down there. I’ll show you what I did to him. We can re-enact it.”

  “No, thanks, I have to get ready for a radio interview later today.”

  Chavez grabbed Anthony by the arms and forced him onto the bed, on his back. He grabbed a pillow and began to smother Anthony’s face with it. When Anthony blindly reached up to grab Chavez’s wrists, Chavez countered with a wrist lock and rolled him face down.

  “This is almost exactly how it went, Anthony.” Chavez wrenched Anthony’s arms, then began to punch him in the ribs. Each hollow thud was followed by a muffled grunt from Anthony. Chavez punched harder and harder. Anthony refused to give up the safe-word that would tell Chavez when it was too much. If Chavez wanted to hear it, he was going to have to earn it.

  Anthony felt a hand slide under his armpit, past his shoulder and up to his neck. He felt Chavez’s naked body drop down on top of him and the hand at his throat tighten. Chavez hissed in his ear, “This is what happened to the boy.”

  Anthony struggled to breathe. A glob of saliva became stuck in his esophagus. It burned like acid as he tried to cough it clear, but the hand crushing his throat stifled his attempts.

  Chavez punched him in the back a few times, then moved to a position to where he was squatting on Anthony’s shoulders. Anthony bucked, trying to breathe. He was terrified; it wouldn’t be the first time Chavez choked him to unconsciousness. He’d woken up before to find Chavez finishing with him. Surprisingly, though, Chavez let go of Anthony’s throat with both hands and began sliding his pants down.

  Yes, Anthony decided. I wonder what the cards would have to say about Chavez.

  Anthony sat on a stool in the booth at the NewsTalk 1010 radio station. The immature bruises on his back and ribs ached, but they wouldn’t echo the splendour of the fall leaves for a few days yet. He body was riddled with injuries, old and new. Unlike Anthony, Chavez knew how to do the damage without the showmanship.

  There was a bright green button on in front of the host, Casey Barnes. A woman was reading the traffic report in a side booth. While Barnes was in conversation with a producer, Anthony found himself fiddling with the wire from his headphones. He could feel that his face was blanched. The self-marketing industry was best suited for the narcissists of the world; he dreaded it. If only the people of the world would search for the truth, or even just recognize it when it came to them. He fiddled more. And Chavez. That man has to take over everything. Such a consumer. He’s like a pet vortex, a black hole that sucks up everything he’s near. It’s my solemn duty to bring a message to the world, and he turns it into a hedonism retreat. Anthony tried to clear his mind. Take a breath, Anthony. Now lure them in to the show that will change their lives. It’s for their own good.

  The light in front of Barnes turned red and he began to speak. “Welcome back from the break. We’re sitting here with world-famous psychic Anthony Raines. He first came on the scene in the ’80s when he helped the police locate a young man who had been murdered. Shortly afterwards, Anthony found himself busy with radio and television appearances and granting readings to everyone from celebrities to the common folk. Then he stepped away from his well-known public persona and decided to practice on a much more private scale. Anthony, what made you make that sort of transition?”

  Anthony adjusted his headphones. They were heavy and snug, giving his ears the feeling of being gobbled up by warm leather. Anthony made a conscious effort to smile at Barnes. Casey was famous for his stint on television, hosting a show called Mysteries Explained. The whole show revolved around Casey debunking so-called psychics. Anyone who watched could see that Casey acquired great personal satisfaction from exposing con artists. Anthony had come prepared. Not your basic homework here — no, Anthony was thorough.

  Anthony leaned into the microphone in front of him. “I semi-retired in an effort to simplify my life, to get back to the real reason why I started in the first place. I have an ability to connect with beings that have gone beyond our earthly experience. I have learned that this ability can help people here, in the living realm. When the fame came, everything began to spiral out of control. On the one hand, my notoriety allowed me to help more people. On the other hand, though, some people were scared to come see me because they did not want their suffering to become public fodder. Returning to a more discreet practice was the right thing to do.”

  Barnes swivelled in his chair and leaned forward with a devilish grin. “And now you are back in the public eye. Was the discreet practitioner running out of money?”

  Anthony smiled. He’d seen that one coming a mile away. “No. In fact I’d be happy to retire completely. What happened was that I received a lot of requests from friends and fans alike. So I’ve decided to do a big show, a one-off if you will, at Casa Loma. It’ll be a night filled with rapid-fire readings, open discussions and a few predictions that I feel an urgency to share with the audience.”

  Barnes smiled smugly as if to say that while he didn’t believe a single word, he thought it made for great radio. “Anthony, I know you get asked all of the same questions time and time again. We here
at NewsTalk 1010 have informed, intelligent listeners and if I may, I’d like to take the interview up a notch and ask some really different questions.”

  Anthony had agreed in the pre-interview prep that he would answer callers’ questions and that anything was fair game. It was his moment to step back on stage, toss in some dazzle, and knock people off their feet. “Any time you’re ready, Casey.”

  “So you speak to the spirits of people after they have died. How do they describe the afterlife?”

  “Like where they are?”

  “Yes, Anthony — what does the world look like to a ghost?”

  Anthony checked the time on the clock. He had ten minutes before a traffic break. “Well, let’s start at the beginning. I’d like the listeners who aren’t driving or looking after kids — you know, the slackers at work or people here in the station — to play along. Turn up the radio and close your eyes. You’re on a planet like earth, but it seems smaller. The sun is in the sky, but it’s a dark purple colour. You can see the sun spots, you can see the solar wind radiating away from the sun. You can watch it pass the earth and the moon. Some stars are there, but not as many as we see here, so the constellations appear different at night. There are animals that resemble dogs, though they look wilder. People live in things like lean-tos; there is no advanced technology. Beautiful fruit trees, lush gardens and grasses, all with darker, blander colours. It’s like walking through the most beautiful parts of earth with welder’s glasses on.”

  “Have you ever spoken to any physicists who have passed over? What do they say? How do they explain where they are?”

  “In fact, I have spoken to dead physicists.”

  Anthony checked the production booth. There were three young people in there, two men and a woman. They seemed riveted by his answers.

  “Feel like sharing?”

  Anthony smiled. This debunker was at least charming. “Sure. He speculates that he is in another dimension. Gravity is weaker. The light spectrum, as I described, is very different. He feels that it is a different dimension, one that we would describe here as dark matter. Dark matter is everywhere, all around us.”

  “Have you spoken to any dead psychics?” Barnes chuckled.

  Anthony clenched his eyes shut, as if he was in pain. It wasn’t hard to fake after the beating that Chavez had given him. He pinched the top of his nose and shook his head. He’d played with the pledge of magic long enough. It was time for the turn and the prestige.

  Casey asked, “Are you feeling okay, Anthony?”

  Anthony rubbed his face and eyes. “Sorry. Sorry. I opened up here. I have a visitor.” He looked around the room. “Who’s George Sherman?”

  Barnes shook his head. “No idea, I —” He stopped suddenly and cupped a hand to his earphone. “My producer, Andy there in the booth, says that George Sherman was his grandfather.”

  Anthony looked at the booth and saw that one of the men had an expression of surprise on his face. “Well, Andy, your granddad sends his regards. He says they don’t have soccer balls where he is, but they have sticks and pebbles. He and a bunch of veterans have taken up golf. He says he loves you and that Martha has nothing to worry about — they’ll be together when she’s ready, no rush. If you ask me, Andy, I think he’s enjoying his time with the boys.”

  Barnes flipped a switch on his control panel. “You’re on the air, Andy — what do you have to say to Anthony?”

  Andy spoke into his mic. “My granddad died two years ago. He was a big soccer fan. That was his big saying, send my regards.”

  Anthony had the show-stopper memorized. “Yes, Andy. He told me about how you and he planned to watch the World Cup in 2010; it’s too bad the heart attack took him first.”

  Andy’s eyes were as big as dinner plates. He was speechless.

  Casey asked, “Is that true, Andy?”

  “Yeah.” He turned to Anthony. “How did you know that?”

  “Come to the show on October twenty-sixth at Casa Loma, and I’ll tell you, and everyone else, everything.”

  Casey was watching Anthony. “So what is so important about your Casa Loma appearance?”

  Anthony smiled. Time to sell. “Well, it’s an interesting story. A while ago, I purchased a new set of tarot cards called Oracles. These are special cards; they are very old, hundreds of years old. Not long after the dream came to me. I awoke on the other side. I was walking backward through a warm, shallow river. There was a bright sun, the darkly tinted colours. I could look back downstream and see the eddies that I had caused in the water churning around my legs, the splashes from my steps as I steadied myself on the smooth rocks.

  “I tried to turn my head to look upstream, but I couldn’t. That’s part of the experience there, and I understood it for what it was: a metaphor for life here. The way we walk backward into our future; we can look forever backward to our past. We can only understand our history, never our future. And the further back we look, the better we understand with objectivity.”

  Casey said nothing. He was trying to doubt Anthony, to remain objective. Anthony continued. “And I don’t think it’s any great concept I came up with; I was just given this gift of understanding, and I need to share it with others.”

  “So how does this help us?”

  Anthony cleared his throat. “Eventually, I was able to turn around. I saw everything that was coming at us down the river. I think it’s time we all deal with the truth.”

  Casey smiled. “Let me guess, you’ll tell us all about it at the Casa Loma show?”

  “That’s right. I’ll reveal what we have to do to avoid what’s coming.”

  15

  Nastos sat in Carscadden’s office, flipping through the pages of the Bannerman file, hoping to see something that he might have missed before. Being alone wasn’t helping. Working alone had been the annoying part of the insurance gig — no one to bounce ideas around with. Carscadden was out fighting with the Police Services Board about his lawsuit against them, and Hopkins had left to grab something to read from the used book store a few doors down and was taking her sweet time. Nastos drummed his fingers on the desk while staring at the picture of Lindsay, trying to put himself in her place.

  He asked her, “So, where were you taken from? Did you see anything that can help us find you?”

  Nastos anticipated dozens of missing persons reports coming from Records. Now it occurred to him that if she had been taken, then there might be a few suspicious vehicle calls or suspicious people called in to the police from botched abductions. Whoever abducted her must have made mistakes previously, either in Toronto or someplace else. He had to hope that if mistakes were made, it had been in Toronto, or he would never find her in the time remaining before she’d been gone for thirty days like that poor girl with Sorrow carved on her chest and 30 on her wrist.

  Nastos considered the number 30. He found the newspaper article about Anthony and scanned down the page. The dead girl, Rebecca Morris, had been missing exactly thirty days, if the article was correct. I wonder if that’s what the 30 means?

  Calling Sharon McLean back to request the suspicious persons and vehicles reports wasn’t an option. He’d have to wait a long time before he could bluff her again. Further impersonating Koche might prompt her to file a complaint, and she might figure out that the real Koche had made no such inquiries.

  Realizing that he needed someone else to instigate the search, he retrieved the name Jacques from his BlackBerry address book and dialed his ex-partner’s number.

  Jacques answered on the second ring. “Let me guess, you need something.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice. I call to congratulate you on the Habs’ embarrassing loss against Washington last night and this is how you treat me.”

  He heard Jacques chuckle a little. Knowing he was in good spirits was a relief; he’d probably help. “This coming from the Leafs fan. Guess you
don’t like someone muscling their way into your position at the bottom of the crap pile.”

  Nastos asked, “You near a terminal?”

  “Here it comes.”

  He flipped the newspaper around to look at the picture of Anthony. “Anyone around?”

  “This is going to be a bad one. No, go ahead.”

  “Listen, Jacques, did you hear about the body recovered at Morningside? Sorrow?”

  “Yeah, Sorrow. The whole department knows about it. I knew it would be just a matter of time before someone blabbed to the media.” Jacques must have thought Nastos had heard about it on the radio. The reporters at crime scenes always coerced someone to talk. Soon enough it would hit the internet. Then reporters would ask more and more probing questions until the implications and non-denials couldn’t last. The police wouldn’t have much time.

  “Jacques, I only knew about it because I was there. I’m wondering if some of the missing girls out there in the city have been abducted by the same guy. There could be more.”

  “If you were there, did you suggest that to Dennehy?”

  “He wasn’t in a receptive mood. I think he only likes his own ideas.”

  “Not a big deal. If he liked it, tomorrow it will be his idea.”

  “Yeah, well, the reason I called is I’d like you to run every attempted abduction for complainants that are approximately her age and physical appearance. I’d like to read through the reports.”

  “How far back?”

  Nastos glanced back at Anthony’s picture. “The last sixty days.”

  Jacques’ phone made static noises, like Jacques had moved to another room. “Oh, that’s all.”

  “No. I also want the suspicious persons or suspicious vehicles too.”

  “Also for the last sixty days?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, Nastos, it’s not like I’ve gotten any better with computers since you left. This new system is a mess. What age range are we talking here? I’ll do what I can and get back to you.”