by Tim McGregor
He looked at the broom like he’d never seen one before. He stood it in the corner and patted his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “Teach your pet to clean up after himself. I’m the injured party here.”
“You’re the intruder, Gantry.” Billie returned to the living room popping the tab on a tall can of lager. She flopped onto the couch, plonking her feet onto the coffee table. “What are you doing here?”
Gantry looked at the beer in her hand and then looked at the kitchen and back to her. “Nothing for the guests? That’s a poor hostess, you are.”
“Fuck off.”
That raised his eyebrows. “Bad day at the office?”
“No. Just a typical one round here.”
Disappearing into the kitchen, he returned with can and popped it open as he dropped into a chair. “Bad luck not to offer your guest a tipple, Billie. Didn’t anyone tell you that?”
“What do you want?”
Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a newspaper. “Your name’s in the news. Says you’re assisting the police.”
“Not anymore.”
“Publicity is the last thing you need, mate.”
She slugged at the can. “Who cares?”
“You should.” He hooked a smoke off his lip and lit up. “Makes you a target. You don’t want that.”
“I never wanted any of it, remember?”
“We’re not still carryin’ on about that, are we? You need to watch your back, now that your name is out there.”
Billie rolled her eyes and then patted the couch down for the TV remote.
“Don’t toss it off, Billie,” he warned. “There’s people out there who’ll be interested in you now. Not very nice people either.”
“Right,” she said. “This is more of that vague threat you keep going on about?”
“Possibly. Just watch your back, alright?”
The remote was nowhere to be found so she gave up hunting for it. She wondered if Half-Boy had destroyed it trying to kill Gantry.
Gantry tipped his ash in a take-out carton on the table. “Alright, out with it. What happened?”
“Nothing.”
A clink sounded from the kitchen. Gantry whirled around, expecting another missile but the apartment was still. When he looked back, he said, “Why don’t you send that little creep on his way?”
“He doesn’t listen to me,” she said. “Why would he?”
“There’s got to be a reason he’s hanging about.”
“Maybe he’s here to protect me.”
“Let’s hope so. Because you might need it.” Gantry got to his feet. Reaching behind her ear, he produced the lost remote. Like magic. “I’ll be out of town for a tic. Keep your eyes open for anything fishy, yeah?”
Unimpressed, she took the device and flicked on the TV. “Goodbye, Gantry.”
He hesitated for a moment before striding to the door. “Chin up, luv. Can’t be that bad, whatever it is.”
33
DETECTIVE MOCKLER CRINGED at seeing his own image on the television screen. He looked frumpy and haggard. He also looked guilty as hell, startled as he was after being ambushed by the reporter. The image froze as the recording was paused.
Mockler wondered, almost idly, if he was about to lose his job.
“So,” said Sergeant Gibson. “Do you want to tell us what this is all about?”
The Sergeant was seated across the table. On her right sat Superintendent Phil Morrisey. Neither of his superiors looked pleased to be here. The television monitor sat on a trolley at the end of the table, the remote resting in the Sergeant’s hand.
Mockler sat alone on the opposite side of the conference table like a penitent facing Judgement Day. He nodded at his own image frozen on the screen. “The camera really does add ten pounds, doesn’t it?”
“Careful detective,” said Sergeant Gibson. “You’re on the thin part of the blade here.”
Superintendent Morrisey had yet to speak a word other than a brief greeting. He looked impatient, glancing at the big clock on the wall.
“I got jumped by a pushy reporter with a lot of stupid questions. That’s all.”
“Is it true?” Gibson asked. “Have you enlisted the help of a psychic in your investigation? Without clearing it with anyone first?”
“Not officially. It was more of a favour.”
“A favour? On a high profile case like this?” Gibson nodded at the screen. “Do you have any idea how bad this looks?”
Mockler closed his mouth. There was no answer to that question without dig his grave any deeper.
Sergeant Gibson pointed the remote at the screen and ran the tape. The video switched to a shaky angle of a storefront where a young woman was being accosted by the camera in the same way he had been. Gibson paused the recording again. “Who is this woman?”
“She’s just a friend. Who did me a favour when I asked.”
“Her name, detective?”
“Billie Culpepper.”
“Billie?”
Mockler shifted in his seat. “Sybil. She goes by Billie.”
Gibson set the remote down and steepled her fingers together. “And what did you tell her about the investigation?”
“Not much,” he said, wondering how far to massage the truth to keep his neck out of the noose. “I had her walk through the scene cold. She told me what she saw.”
“I’m not interested in what psychics have to say about homicide investigations,” Gibson said bluntly.
The Superintendent cleared his throat and finally spoke up. “What did she say?”
Mockler gauged the superior’s expression but couldn’t read anything there. “She said the women had been murdered somewhere else and dumped at the scene. That they had all been at a women’s shelter four blocks from where their remains were found.”
“I see,” the Superintendent said. “Have you been able to corroborate any of that?”
“Not yet.”
“But you’re working on it?”
“I’m working on all of it.”
Sergeant Gibson spoke. “Do you have a suspect?”
“I do,” he replied. “But I don’t have anything real to connect to him.”
“Who?”
Mockler tugged at his collar. “Clarence Napier.”
Gibson furrowed her brow, trying to place the name but the Superintendent almost choked on his water.
“Clarence Napier,” the man said. “Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“Wait a minute,” Sergeant Gibson interrupted, plucking the name from her memory. “That Napier? He’s been dead for ten years.”
“Twenty.” Mockler sat up straight, going over the evidence in his head in order to make it sound legit to the two superiors across the table. “Napier founded the shelter—”
“Stop,” Morrisey said, waving his hand to cut him off. “I’ve heard enough.”
Mockler settled back, feeling the noose tighten again.
Gibson lowered her eyes to the table. Superintendent Morrisey adjusted his cuff and then squared the detective with a cold look. “This file is being moved. Detectives Latimer and Hoffmann will be taking over. You’ll transfer the book to them and assist Detective Odinbeck on his current case files.”
A burning sensation scalded against the back of Mockler’s throat. He cleared it, about to speak up when he noticed Sergeant Gibson glaring at him. Her head shook slightly from side to side, gently cautioning him to keep his trap shut.
“I expect the materials to be transferred to Latimer and Hoffmann before noon today.” The man stood up and pushed the chair back in. “Any questions?”
“Nope.”
The Superintendent left the room and the Sergeant stood and gathered her things. “I’m sorry, Mockler. It happens. Go kick something, then get back to it.” She left the room.
Detective Mockler didn’t move for a long time. Then he looked at the video monitor, the image of Billie Culpepper frozen on the screen. Taking up the remote, he hit the
play button.
The feed played out. Billie looked startled then confused at the barrage of questions and the intrusive microphone. Then a man burst out of the door behind her and pulled Billie away. The man hid his face behind his coat like something out of a cartoon as he put himself between the young woman and the camera. Then the coat dropped away and the face of John Gantry flared on the screen for a second before the two of them retreated back inside the building.
Mockler killed the recording and gently set the remote down. It took a concerted effort to stop himself from picking up the monitor and hurling it straight through the window.
~
The spirit board lay on the dining room table in Kaitlin’s condo, the broken planchette piece upside down, the snapped legs up in the air like some dead animal. Kaitlin stood frozen at the sink with her eyes locked on the parlour game.
It had moved all on its own.
She was in the kitchen re-heating leftovers when a high-pitched squeak sounded behind her. Awful in its tone, like nails across a chalkboard, sending a shudder down her spine. Turning about, she scanned the condominium she shared with Kyle for the source of the terrible sound. On the table lay the spirit board taken from the Paranormal Trackers, the broken planchette scraping across the board all on its own. It stopped the instant she turned her gaze on it.
Kaitlin felt her heart hammer and hammer but seconds passed and the piece lay still and moved no more. A trick of the light, she decided. Her nerves wrought after the weird incident in the garage with Justin and Owen, her imagination too eager to believe in a sign from the other side.
She approached the table, her eyes never straying from the gypsy board with its stylized letters and numbers. Why had she taken the damn thing in the first place? She didn’t know. An impulse she couldn’t deny in the moment that it occurred.
The heart-shaped planchette piece lay on its back like a dead turtle. Two of the three legs had snapped off leaving only a single spindle. The urge to touch the wooden heart was magnetic and she chewed her lip for a moment before reaching out and placing the fingers of both hands on it.
Was she unconsciously pushing the brittle pointer or was it actually moving on its own? The eternal question of every Ouija board session.
She whispered out a question. “Is someone there?”
The planchette scraped towards the northwest corner where a smiling sun beamed at her.
Kaitlin exhaled. “What do you want?”
The pointer scraped again, hovering over the ‘H’ and the ‘E’ before moving on.
h-e-l-p-m-e
This is crazy, Kaitlin told herself. It was just her own hand, moving the piece. Still, she asked a second question. “How do I help you?”
The piece moved, stopping over more letters.
c-o-m-e-b-ac-k
Kaitlin took a breath. “Where?” she asked but the piece remained still, as if it refused to answer that query. Maybe she already knew the answer. She tried again. “Come back. And do what?”
The scraping noise sounded again as the wooden heart touched more letters.
b-r-i-n-g-t-h-e-w-i-t-c-h
“What witch?” Kaitlin sputtered.
The racket at the front door killed everything. Kaitlin felt the electrical charge in the air vanish as Kyle came home, dropping his immense hockey bag at the door.
“Hey babe,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” She pushed the planchette away and went back to the kitchen.
“Have you seen the news?” Kyle leaped over the back of the couch, landing squarely on the cushion. He scrambled for the remote, pointing it at the immense screen.
“No. Why?”
“Your friend’s on the news,” he said. “Hey, toss me a cola, huh?”
“Friend?” She came out of the kitchen to see the screen. “What friend?”
“The weird one.” He flipped through the channels until he came to the local station.
They sat through a report on Russian forces in the Ukraine and another outbreak of Ebola. Then a local report updating the discovery of human remains inside an old warehouse. The headline at the bottom of the screen scrolled out, Police enlist psychic. Then Billie appeared in the shot, caught off-guard by the camera outside of the Doll House.
“Isn’t that Jen’s shop?” Kyle asked.
“Quiet.”
Kyle grumbled. “I always knew there was something weird about her.”
The scene shifted quickly to Billie’s detective friend, equally startled by the news crew. Ambushed as they were, they both looked as guilty as corrupt politicians dodging the press.
A greasy feeling roiled Kaitlin’s stomach. “Oh God,” she said. “Turn it off.”
34
TO HIS CREDIT, Odinbeck was gracious when Mockler reported to him. After the humiliation of handing the case file over to Hoffmann and Latimer, he had walked back through the cubicles with his head low. Odinbeck already knew the score and the only question he asked was if Mockler needed a little time. The dejected officer had shaken his head and said that he’d prefer to stay busy for the time being. If he had a quiet moment to let it sink in, he just might go completely ape-shit on someone.
The older detective grunted as he tilted up out of his chair and handed Mockler a list of names. “I got ten people to re-interview in the Garrison file this afternoon. I can already tell you that none of these people will have anything new to add but they gotta be done all the same. You ready to waste time while the guilty party runs free?”
Mockler was more than ready. As tedious as the interviews had been, the work kept his mind from dwelling on the shit-show he had endured this morning with the Superintendent. Odinbeck kept the mood light with his tired old jokes and the day progressed until the shift change. It was on the drive home that the quiet seeped in and the morning’s events got stuck in a repeating loop in his mind. He stopped at the liquor store on the way home, picked out something expensive with a fancy Gaelic name that he could not pronounce and steered the car back to Bristol Street.
The pity party was already in progress when he arrived home. Music wailed loud through the house, pouring out from the studio at the back. Mockler dropped the stuff on the counter, trying to place the tune filling the old house. As mournful and despondent as a funeral dirge, it did not bode well for his homecoming. He took a breath to brace himself before crossing to the studio to see what kind of state Christina was in.
The studio was vacant, the stereo blaring to an empty room. The smell of smoke hung in the air and Mockler panicked until he saw a blaze of flames out in the backyard. Banging out the backdoor, he found Christina stoking a small bonfire.
“What are you doing?”
“Waking up,” Christina said, without turning around.
The smoke boiling into the air was black and greasy and it stank. He came around her to see what she was burning. Her work. The pigments, both oil and acrylic, burned slowly with a noxious flame that smelled like poison.
He watched her pick up another painting, the canvass cut loose from the frame, and let it fall into the fire. He made no move to stop her.
“That isn’t the answer,” was all he said.
“It’s the only one that makes sense.” She still hadn’t looked at him.
“A bit dramatic, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is,” she agreed.
He watched her face. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying but they had gone blank now. Her pupils were constricted to pinpricks against the light of the rippling flames.
“Forget the opening. It was a fluke.”
“It was humiliating.” She snapped a length of wood framing and tossed it onto the fire. “But it opened my eyes finally.”
“It didn’t mean anything, Christina. Don’t read into it.”
“Not a single person? How much clearer could the answer be?”
The glazed-over look in her eyes scared him. An early warning sign of the depression Christina suffered from. The last bout of it h
ad been the worst yet and the last thing he wanted was to watch her slip down that rabbit hole again.
“It didn’t have anything to do with you,” he said. “It was my fault.”
“Please.” She finally looked up at him. “Don’t even try.”
Mockler took up one of the ratty lawn chairs leaning against the fence. Unfolding it, he sat down before the bonfire like they were camping. “I pissed off someone at work. Someone I’m investigating. He’s powerful and he has a very long reach. He orchestrated the no-show at your opening.”
“Am I supposed to believe that?”
“It’s true. It was a warning signal to get me to back off. But instead of targeting me directly, he punished you by sabotaging your show.”
A sneer formed on her lips. She wasn’t buying a word of it. “This guy is that powerful he could do that?”
“He funds Carlos’s gallery. He’d have access to the gallery’s mailing list, phone numbers, whatever.”
Christina grew quiet but her face darkened even as it lit up in the light of the fire. When she looked at him, something akin to hatred flashed hot and quick in her eyes. “Why do you do this to me?”
He poked a stick into the flames. “Chris, how was I supposed to know he’d pull that stunt?”
“But it’s always like this. It’s always something with you screwing things up. It’s like you go out of your way to hurt me. To crush the spirit out of me.”
“That isn’t true.”
“But it is.” She paced before the fire unsteadily, dangerously close to the glowing embers. “I finally see it now. You’ve always come first. In everything. Your work, your dreams, what you want. Your wishes. Is it any wonder I sink into depression sometimes.”
He didn’t know where this was coming from. He spotted her wine glass on the picnic table. He remembered the Xanax bottle on the kitchen counter where he left his bags. Or was that just too easy, dismissing this outburst on her tendency to over-medicate sometimes?
“It’s all about you,” she went on, the pacing becoming quicker. Urgent. “I can’t even breathe sometimes.”
“Slow down,” he said.
“I don’t even know who you are anymore.” Her voice diminished with each syllable, as if running out of steam. “We used to be happy. But you changed.”
