by Tim McGregor
“Because he was considered a good man. We were nobodies. Why would anyone take our word over his?” The woman stopped, listening for anyone coming, as if afraid of being caught. “We came here because there was nowhere else to go. This was the last stop before ending up on the street.”
More questions bubbled under Billie’s tongue but she kept still, letting the woman talk.
The dead woman licked her lips. “The old man would stalk the bunks at night. All of us pretending to sleep and praying that it wasn’t our turn. One would be chosen and he would take them downstairs. They came back to their bed bruised and bloodied. Or they didn’t come back at all.”
She fell silent again, staring into the middle of the room. Billie spoke slowly. “What happened to you?”
“He would choke me while he did it,” she said. Horror rimmed her eyes as she recalled the memory. “He went too far one night. And I died. He took me to that awful place in the cellar. He dismantled the brick wall and put me in there with the others and bricked up the wall again. My belongings were taken from the room and destroyed. Everything I had. My identification was burned until there was no trace of me left.”
“Did everyone here at the shelter know?” Billie asked. “Were they in on it?”
“Only a few. Loyal to the old man. They helped him hide the awful things he did. The evidence of it.”
“Who are these people? Was Anna one of them?”
“No. This was before her time. There was Rodney, who worked in the kitchen and Mary, who ran the place. They’re both dead now.” Charlene licked her lips again. “There’s only the golden boy now.”
“Golden boy?”
“The son. He knew. He helped. And after the old man died, the golden boy hid his father’s crimes forever.”
Billie scrambled her memory for the name of the son. Mockler had told it to her. “Aaron Napier? He knew?”
“Shhh.” The woman put a finger to her cracked lips. “He’s here.”
A low hum of voices sounded from another room. Billie glanced at the door to see if anyone was coming but no one appeared. When she turned back, the dead woman was gone.
24
THE DEAD WOMEN stood in the hallway as Billie left the common room. Seven in all, a gauntlet of the dead, reaching for her as she rushed past. Some begged her to do something, others moaned for help. Billie pushed through, wanting out of this awful place and its crushing weight of misery. Coming into the main lobby, she stopped cold.
A man stood near the front desk, talking amiably to Anna. He was well dressed and deeply tanned and he smiled warmly to the woman at the desk, laughing over some small joke. The family resemblance was strong and, although she had never laid eyes on him before, Billie knew exactly who this man was.
Anna smiled up at Billie as she came into the lobby. “I’m sorry, Billie. I could caught up out here and almost forgot about you. Did you have a look around?”
Billie felt her mouth go dry, unable to take her eyes off the man in the expensive suit. “Yes.”
Anna nodded to the man next to her. “Billie, this is Aaron Napier. He’s the reason the Magdalene House carries on its good work.”
“Don’t pay any attention to that,” Aaron Napier said. “Anna is the unsung hero of this place. Nice to meet you, Billie.”
Napier smiled and stepped forward to shake hands. Billie froze, the thought of touching this man’s hand made her shudder with revulsion. He kept coming closer, his smile deepening and Billie curled her hand into a hard fist.
Before she realized what she was doing, her fist shot out hard. It collided with a crack against Aaron Napier’s nose.
“Oh my God!” Anna shrieked, too startled to believe what had just happened.
Napier staggered backward, holding his nose. “What the hell?”
“You son of a bitch.” Billie pressed in harder. She had never punched anyone in her life before but she wanted to do it again to this man. And again and again. “You knew! Your father killed those women and you covered it up!”
“Anna! Who is this?” Napier backed away. His eyes were watering and blood seeped through the hand covering his nose. “Call the police!”
Billie swung again. “Your fucking father abused the women who came here for help. And you covered his tracks!”
Napier ducked and dodged the blows. Anna ran for the phone and when her back was turned, the man struck back. He threw Billie to the floor and pinned her arms down.
Then he hissed at her. “You shut your fucking mouth, bitch.”
With his hands holding Billie down, blood ran freely from his nose and dribbled off his chin. Droplets of it splattered onto Billie’s face and she shrieked in agony as if it was acid burning her flesh.
~
Mockler sat alone at the long table in Task Room Three, reading through the final report from the pathologist for a second time. Nothing had been found on the bodies and cause of death was little more than a guess. One of the victims appeared to have her neck broken, but even that couldn’t be confirmed.
He pushed the document away, unable to focus his thoughts on the job before him. His thoughts kept drifting back to the conversation with Christina last night at the gallery. A slowly churning ball of unease kept rolling through his gut every time he recalled the words spoken.
Was she right? Had he changed that much? Things between them had brightened so much back in the summer when the depression had lifted. Coming back to her old self, his hopes had been dampened by the slight shift in their relationship. Everything seemed the same, just muted somehow, as if clouded through a faulty lens. He had assumed it was only his perception but after last night, Christina clearly felt it too.
Most troubling of all was the question she put to him. Was there someone else?
Fidelity had never been an issue between them. Even during the darkest moments it hadn’t raised its head and he had always taken that as a firm confirmation that the two of them were meant to be together. And yet Christina’s question continued to burn a hole in his gut. If he was honest with himself, it wasn’t her question so much as it was the answer rumbling around in him.
Maybe.
Someone else had been occupying his thoughts and his routine dismissal of those same thoughts were becoming less convincing. The woman in question was attractive but not what he thought of as his type. She was easy to talk to but the same could be said for a number of women he knew. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t know why Billie Culpepper kept drifting through his head or why it was increasingly harder to push those thoughts out. Or, for that matter, why their paths kept crossing since he had knocked her into Hamilton Harbour back in June. He barely knew the woman. He wasn’t even sure if he could say they were friends.
Still.
Is that what Christina had picked up on? Had she sensed it somehow? Or was something else going on that he was blind to?
Mockler shot out of his chair and stepped away rubbing his eyes. He couldn’t think about this right now. He had to concentrate on the job and find some tangible link between the dead women who had been thrown away like so much garbage and the man who ran the shelter where they had been taken from. He had nothing and continued to dig with nothing to show for his efforts.
“Hey chief.”
Mockler looked up to see a constable leaning into the doorway. “What’s up?”
“Brant’s got someone downstairs. Brought in for assault. She asked for you.”
Mockler blinked, trying to think of anyone he might know who was violent. A woman from a previous case? “Who is it?”
The detective’s jaw fell open when the constable replied. “Billie something.”
25
“WHAT THE HELL were you thinking?”
Billie leaned back against the hard plastic chair. The room she had been taken to was small, holding only a table and two chairs. The surface of the table was greasy with handprints from countless suspects so she avoided touching it. Her skin crawled and she wanted to
go home.
Detective Mockler, needless to say, was livid. He stood against the door.
“What were you even doing there in the first place?”
“I wanted to see it,” Billie said. “I thought I could learn something.”
“And you decided to just slug Aaron Napier on the way out? For what, shits and giggles?”
Billie folded her hands in her lap to avoid touching anything. “You were right about him. He knows everything. He covered it all up to protect his father’s reputation. That’s why I hit him.”
Mockler scratched the stubble on his chin. “I see. And how do you know that?”
“Because the woman his father murdered told me.”
The detective looked at the floor, like there was something interesting there to see. Billie waited for him to say something but he didn’t.
“How much trouble am I in?” she asked.
“Napier’s pressing charges.” Mockler pulled out the other chair and sat down. “But it’s a first offence. You’re gonna plead guilty and pay the fine and do whatever hours of community service the judge gives you.”
“What? Can’t I fight it?”
“You can but you’re not going to. It’ll just make the penalty worse.”
She folded her arms. “Thanks a lot.”
“Hey,” he barked. “You may have blown any chance I have of nailing that guy. If that asshole gets one whiff that I took a psychic down to the crime scene, I’m screwed and there’ll be no chance of nailing him to this.”
“There’s got to be something.”
“There isn’t. This Napier guy is smart and he has lots of money to bury this thing deep. That’s on top of a case that’s already twenty years cold.”
She lowered her head. “The woman told me how she had died. And then I walked out of the room and boom. There he was. I lost it.”
“I heard his nose was broken.”
“I just bloodied it.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve never punched anyone in my life.”
“You picked a hell of place to start.”
Neither came right out and laughed but the tiniest smirk passed between them. Brief but enough to lighten the air.
“Can I get out of here?”
He walked her out of the precinct and they stood looking out at the traffic on King William Street.
“Do you want a lift home?” he asked.
“No. I gotta go across town. I left my bike outside the shelter.”
“Nix that. You don’t want to go anywhere near that place now. Where exactly did you leave it?”
“Chained to a pole out front.”
“Give me the key to your bike lock,” he said. “I’ll get it for you later.”
Billie worked the small key off the ring and handed it to him. “Thanks.”
“All right. Get outta here and stay out of trouble.”
He stayed at the curb watching her until she rounded the corner and disappeared. He turned to go back inside when he heard his name called.
“Detective Mockler?”
What now? He spun about to see Aaron Napier standing next to a black Escalade parked at the curb. His poker face dropped into place, turning his features to stone. “Mister Napier.”
“So you two know each other, huh?” Napier wagged his chin in the direction Billie had left. “The crazy woman.”
The stone face slipped for a tiny moment. Mockler couldn’t tell if the man registered it or not. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Yes, there is.” Napier smiled at him. “If we can speak off the record, that is.”
“Sure.”
“I know that you were the one looking into my father’s affairs, trying to tie him to some heinous crime. I need you to stop and back away.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because,” Napier said, “life will become very uncomfortable if you don’t.”
“Really? Let me guess, a law suit from your suite of lawyers?”
“Without a doubt. But that’s just on the surface. And that will be the very least of your worries.”
“You’re threatening me?”
“I’m giving you a choice, detective.” Napier opened the back door of the Escalade. “Steer your investigation in some other direction and all will be fine.”
The man climbed into the vehicle and reached to close the door behind him. Mockler caught the door and blocked it open.
“Mister Napier? I know what your father did to those women. And I am going to nail him to his crimes. And everyone in this city is going to know about it. Then I’m coming for you. And I am going to fucking crucify you for this. Have a great day.”
He walked back to the precinct with a lot more empathy toward his friend for slugging the smug bastard in the face.
~
The sea air was cold and it ripped across the deck in a high wind like it was out for vengeance. John Gantry ducked low behind a stack but no matter where he hid, the wind found him out and he could not get the cigarette lit. The ship rolled leeways and he knocked into the bulkhead and a spray of seawater drenched the cigarette in his hand. He cursed the ship and he cursed the sea and he cursed the high scrutiny of airport security that forced him to travel like this.
The ship levelled out. He flung the wet cigarette away, dug out another and waited for a break in the bastard wind. The gust died momentarily and he lit the damn thing and leaned back with a deep sigh against the bulkhead. Gantry despised travelling by sea but air travel was out of the question. Customs and immigration were becoming harder to bamboozle too, to say nothing of an eight hour flight where he couldn’t smoke. Vessels were easier to manage, crews easier to bribe to take on a single passenger who would not be listed on the manifest.
A voice sounded above the ripping wind. “You ought to be below decks, Mister Gantry!”
Gantry turned to see a crewman banging down the stairs. “I needed some air. Stinks to high heaven down there.”
“It’s unsafe in this weather,” said the crewman. He was the ship’s third officer, the one Gantry had paid off for a discreet berth below decks. “A wrong step and you might just tumble off into the water. Or worse, the captain might spot you.”
Gantry craned his neck to gaze up at the wheelhouse. “Where is he?”
“Skyping with his granddaughter.”
The ship lurched again and Gantry gripped the rail for support. “How long now?”
“We’ll be coming into Halifax tomorrow afternoon. I’ll need you to stay below decks when we do. At least until nightfall.”
Gantry took a deep haul off the cigarette. “Let’s hope I survive that long. Have you seen Dmitri around?”
“This morning. He’s still fuming.”
Dmitri was a Russian crewman who liked to play cards but was something of a poor sport. When he lost a week’s wages to Gantry in a card game, the Russian accused the Englishman of cheating. He protested to his crew mates that Gantry had bewitched the cards and vowed to murder him and dump his rotten corpse into the sea. Gantry had scolded the man for being such a crybaby but that only seemed to anger the crewman more.
The third officer looked the Englishman over. In his thin coat and rumpled tie, he was clearly not crew and unprepared for a trans Atlantic crossing. “You eager to get to the mainland?”
“I’m eager to get off this bloody tub,” Gantry said.
“You have family in Canada? Friends?”
“Acquaintances more like.” Another spray of seawater doused the cigarette. Gantry flicked it overboard. “Enemies too.”
“You’re an odd one, Mr. Gantry. Stealing passage on a freighter like this one.” The mate laughed. “What is it your running from?”
Gantry shrugged. “What do you have?”
26
“LOOK AGAIN! There has to be something on this woman.”
Aaron Napier stood before the windows of his office, looking down at the lights of the ambitious city. His nose still hurt and he was annoyed with t
he woman sitting on the divan in the center of the room.
“There’s next to nothing here, Aaron.” Leah Khan tapped quickly at the keys of the laptop again, trying a different configuration of search terms. “There’s next to no presence. Which is unusual.”
“You’re telling me someone under thirty is not on some stupid social media whats-it? Please.”
Leah furrowed her brow and bent to the task at hand. The man’s outburst didn’t bother her anymore. She’d grown used to them after three years as his personal assistant. She popped up another window. The name Billie Culpepper appeared. “She has a Facebook page but it hasn’t been updated since the summer.”
“Then who the hell is this creepy girl?” Napier stepped around his massive desk and crossed to the sideboard where poured a drink from the crystal decanter. “And what does she have to do with that cop?”
Khan slipped the glasses from her nose. “It is strange. It’s possible she just doesn’t go online at all.”
He held the decanter up. “Do you want one?”
“No thanks.” The woman slid her glasses back on. “Here’s something.”
Napier leaned down to see the screen. “What is it?”
“It’s a fashion blog. Local. This post is about a store launch. The Doll House, up on James.” Khan pointed at the screen. “There’s a picture of Culpepper here. Third one from the left.”
Napier scowled. “That tells me nothing.”
“Don’t be so dismissive, Aaron. Take another look.” She pointed at the picture again. “The woman Culpepper is hugging is the shop owner. Jen Eckler. I think it’s safe to say the two are good friends. We could pay a visit to the shop, ask this Jen woman about Culpepper.”
“Do you know that shop?”
“I’ve passed by it but I’ve never gone in,” Leah said. “Not my thing.”
“Go there tomorrow. See what she knows.” Napier slugged back his drink and returned to the sideboard for another. “Buy yourself something while you’re there. My treat.”
“Hipster vintage isn’t really my thing.”
