“I’m not going to argue with you, either,” she informed him sharply. “Playing detective, as you call it, happens to go with my job description, Sergeant. I am an investigative reporter.”
“So was Bert Waldron.”
The room was deathly still. As their eyes locked, Sandy felt a chill ripple down her spine and knew she hadn’t imagined the threatening undertone in Ted Gaine’s quiet statement. This interview was definitely over. Fighting to keep her hands from shaking, Sandy pivoted away.
“You’ll be hearing from me again, Ms. DiGianni,” came the soft voice over her shoulder.
Fervently hoping he was wrong, she quickened her stride toward the street.
For research and reconnoitering, he preferred a partial disguise—a mustache, tinted contact lenses, some powder in his hair and eyebrows, and a couple of props that would make a strong, and misleading, general impression. Over the years, he’d come to depend especially on them. People were so accustomed to swallowing stereotypes whole these days.
Several times he’d even considered making his kill in a crowded place, with only the props to disguise him. Perhaps he would eliminate this Alessandra DiGianni that way. A well-timed push off the subway platform, maybe, in front of hundreds of horrified witnesses. He understood she used the public transit system every day, and rush-hour crowds in a city the size of Toronto could be so unruly…
As he approached the busy intersection, his keen eyes took in the size of the aging brick building just north of Gerrard Street, the location of its front entrance, the distance between the row of windows stenciled with Police Digest and the roof, two stories above. There were plenty of brick edges exposed; climbing would be a simple matter, if it came to that. Perhaps he would come on her in the editorial office a half hour before deadline, with a small-caliber pistol in his hand. Everyone and no one would see him fire.
Pausing at the newsstand on the corner, he thoughtfully stroked his graying mustache while pretending to survey the selection of magazines for sale.
There was a disturbing trend beginning here, he reflected—two reporters in less than a year, and both of them working for the same publication. Obviously he’d failed to completely eradicate the first investigation. He would have to be much more thorough the second time.
Suddenly his eyes were drawn to the purposeful gait of the dark-haired, grim-faced young woman who had just crossed Yonge Street and was now striding firmly in the direction of the magazine offices. Alessandra DiGianni, in the rather attractive flesh. With a faint smile, Mr. Vanish shook his head apologetically at the magazine vendor and strolled away.
Her foot was well and truly in it now, mused Sandy as she stared bleakly at the text on the screen of her computer:
Between them, Eliza Marchand and Florion, her lover, had concealed the murdered bodies of eleven trappers in the isolated bush north of Nepean. There were no witnesses, to the killings or the burials. In fact, not until an intuitive Hudson’s Bay Company clerk made a connection between Florion’s suddenly teeming trap lines and the mysterious disappearance of eleven men were the authorities called in.
Retracing the paths the trappers must have taken to the trading post, the provincial detectives eventually located several of the bodies. But by then the remains were skeletal, yielding little in the way of forensic information to the relatively unprepared local surgeon. The Crown never did manage to make a case against Marchand and Florion. If Eliza hadn’t left a confession in her will, the full truth about these murders might never have come to light.
If forensic science had not been in its early stages of development, if there had been more reliable lines of communication, if Ontario had not been such a wilderness—in short, if these crimes had occurred in more modern times—they would surely have been solved quickly. Or would they?
Consider a more recent example, the murder of
The murder of whom? All the recent murders in her research files were out of bounds. She would have to restructure the article, transporting modern detectives and forensic specialists into the past and putting them to work on those much older cases. But, Dio, not today. After her interview with Ted Gaine, Sandy was scarcely able to frame a coherent sentence, let alone revise an entire article.
She was even having difficulty typing. Every time Gaine’s honey-smooth voice intruded on her thoughts, her hands clenched into fists. There was no way to shut out those remembered fragments of conversation, or the residual feelings of frustration that accompanied them. Ted Gaine had had an effect on her, all right, along with her poorly digested lunch. Her mind and stomach were both churning angrily.
He’s a friend of yours… Or maybe that he admired your legs…? Suddenly Sandy’s teeth were grating together. How dare he insinuate such a relationship between her and Charlie? Just because Gaine was a police detective and her professional ethics demanded that she protect a thief!
For Sandy was certain now that Charlie had stolen at least some of his information. “Some of this stuff isn’t even in police files,” he’d told her. How could Charlie have known what was and what wasn’t in police files unless he’d seen them? He wasn’t a cop; of that Sandy was certain. So he had to be a thief. A very helpful thief, she reminded herself. Bert Waldron had even kept him on a monthly retainer.
And Bert Waldron was dead. Lately it seemed as though every time Sandy tried to follow a train of thought, it always ended up on that same ominous note. Bert was dead and nobody had told her, and now it was blindingly obvious, from her contacts with Charlie and Sergeant Gaine, and from Paul’s reaction to her second article, that she was following in the footsteps of her predecessor, whose boating accident Ted Gaine, at least, seemed to consider suspicious. And maybe Paul did, as well. Why hadn’t he told her? Had he assumed she already knew? And what exactly had he seen in her article that morning?
Questions circled maddeningly inside her head, growing as they fed on one another, until there was scarcely room in her mind for another thought. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. Punching the keys decisively, she logged off the computer and strode to Paul Rudd’s office.
At the sound of his door opening and closing, Paul glanced up from his computer screen. “So how did it go?” he demanded gruffly.
Sandy sat down on the extra chair and deliberately folded her arms over her chest. “I asked you a question this morning and you ducked it,” she said. “What was that about Bert?”
With a heavy sigh, Paul swiveled away from the computer. “I was hoping you’d missed that. It was just a reference in your article to something Bert had been working on. It…never panned out. That’s all.”
There was more to it than that, thought Sandy with a surge of curiosity. A dead lead shouldn’t have elicited from an editor the reaction she’d witnessed that morning.
“Why didn’t it pan out?” she persisted, sliding forward on her chair as Paul leaned back in his, polishing his bald spot with one hand. “Come on, Paul, I want to know. From what I hear, Bert was the best in the business. So why didn’t this story work out for him?”
“All right,” he said at last. “If I don’t tell you, you’ll probably try to dig it up on your own and get into all kinds of trouble. It’s this Mr. Vanish thing.” Paul sighed again, obviously losing a debate with himself over whether to say more. “Bert latched on to it years ago. He was sure he could prove Mr. Vanish existed. So he began gathering information—”
“Playing detective,” Sandy murmured, recalling her parting exchange with Sergeant Gaine.
“It became a part-time obsession with him. He put together a huge file of stuff—names, dates, places—kept swearing he was that close to solving the riddle of Mr. Vanish, but he never did. The file just kept getting fatter and fatter.”
“And where is it now?” she asked, trying to sound only casually interested and failing utterly.
“Gone,” Paul replied darkly. “The Mr.
Vanish file disappeared from our computer the same day Bert died.”
“How? Did anyone else know about it?”
Paul shook his head. “Only Bert and me. Because of the possible danger involved—and to protect the scoop for the magazine—we decided to keep it a secret.”
“Danger?” Sandy leaned forward tensely as an idea slipped through her mind, leaving a mixture of dread and anticipation in its wake. “You mean from Mr. Vanish?”
“Maybe,” Paul conceded. “In our business it’s best to play it safe, even when you think you already are. Bert was a pro, and look at what happened to him.”
“So you’re suggesting there might have been a connection—?”
“I’m not suggesting a damned thing, DiGianni,” he growled, parting the air between them with his cigar. “And you can just get that gleam out of your eye. If there was a connection between that file and Bert’s accident, that’s all the more reason for you to keep your pert little nose out of it.”
Sandy straightened in her chair, momentarily speechless with indignation. She’d always suspected Paul Rudd was a male chauvinist, but…pert little nose?
“Too dangerous for a poor, frail woman, is it, Paul?” she sniped.
All at once he was standing over her, speaking in a quiet voice that conveyed a deeper, colder anger than any bellow could have done. “Listen here, Miz DiGianni. When Bert was killed, I decided to let his investigation drop. It’s going to stay dropped. That’s an order from your managing editor. If you’re not prepared to abide by it, you can go clear out your desk right now.”
His very adamance made Sandy feel suddenly fragile. There was no way she could win a confrontation on this issue, she realized. Paul was obviously refusing to assign her Bert’s unfinished business because he didn’t think she could handle it. In order to satisfy her now burgeoning curiosity, she would just have to show him he was wrong.
Chapter Two
Friday, June 8
At 2:15 the following afternoon, with very little progress made on her second article, Sandy was finding out why the small flashing block on her computer screen was called the cursor. Muttering a few unladylike epithets, she pressed the keys again, one at a time. Each time she tried to send the little block to the right, it went left. Or up two lines. Or down three. Finally it landed at the bottom of the screen and spewed out a line of symbols that bore no resemblance at all to the Roman alphabet.
“Your resume said you could type,” Paul remarked dryly over her shoulder.
“It’s not me,” she shot back. “There’s something wrong with this machine.”
“Maybe it doesn’t like being pounded on.”
“I’m a touch typist, Paul. I don’t pound the keys.”
Suddenly the telephone in Paul’s office shrilled. He turned with a scowl to go answer it, leaving Sandy locked in grim and solitary battle with her keyboard.
“DiGianni!” he bawled a moment later from the door of his office. “A word with you, please?”
Sandy shut down her terminal and strode rapidly across the room to join him.
Paul was leaning back in his swivel chair, absently fingering the stub of his cigar as she stepped through the door. “Close it, would you?” he murmured.
He waited to speak until she had shut the door and was sitting comfortably in the extra chair beside his desk. “That phone call was from Sergeant Gaine. He wants another meeting with you, at three this afternoon, at Investigative Services. I told him you would be there.”
Instantly, a flock of butterflies broke loose in Sandy’s stomach. Another go-round with tough, smart Sergeant Gaine? There would be no pleasantries wasted on her this time, she was sure.
“I’m not going, Paul,” she said tightly. “He’s already asked me to name my source and I refused. There is nothing more to discuss.”
Paul puffed on his cigar, eyeing her with disapproval. “Obviously he disagrees. And before you go flying off the handle, let me point out that you work for this magazine, which depends heavily on the goodwill and cooperation of the police department. Whatever respectability we have in the news community is the result of those official connections. So when a police officer requests an interview with a member of my staff, DiGianni, that writer cooperates.”
His logic was undeniable, but the butterflies refused to settle down. Stubbornly, Sandy shook her head. “I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t,” he corrected her, his hand holding the cigar mooring him to the desktop as he swiveled back thoughtfully in his chair. “Why do I get the impression that something else happened between you and Gaine yesterday and you just don’t want to talk about it?”
“Nothing happened, Paul. I did not reveal the name of my source,” she told him, her voice rising defensively, “and I don’t think I gave Sergeant Gaine any useful information.”
Her editor glanced up sharply. “But you did tell him something?”
“Nothing specific—just that I knew my source hadn’t witnessed either of the murders in my article. He got me angry, and it just kind of popped out,” she apologized.
“Well, you’d better brace yourself for more of the same,” said Paul grimly, perching his cigar on the rim of the cheap foil ashtray on his desk, “because that’s probably why he wants to talk to you again—to see what other interesting tidbits he can get you mad enough to throw at him.”
She shook her head again, even more vigorously than before. “I’m not going, Paul. Forget it.”
“I’d love to, kid, except that Ted Gaine happens to be one of the most tenacious investigators in the department and he’s on your case. If you don’t go to him, he’ll come looking for you, guaranteed.” Paul paused to inspect the end of his cigar. “He’s like a bloodhound. As long as you have information he wants, he’ll track you down, wherever you are. Just how far do you feel like running to postpone this interview, DiGianni?”
Sandy breathed a bitter sigh. If Paul was right and her only choice was between sooner and later, it made more sense to get this ordeal over with now. “Okay, Paul, you win,” she said, frustration and resignation warring within her as she stalked out of his office.
Frank Leslie, one of the senior staff writers, looked up curiously from his terminal as Sandy slammed open and then slammed shut the drawer containing her handbag.
“The old rhino hasn’t fired you, has he?”
“Not yet,” she muttered darkly, rifling through her purse for the little wallet containing her subway pass. “I’ve been summoned to another meeting with Sergeant Gaine.”
“You lucky soul,” Frank chuckled. He ran both hands through his shock of salt-and-pepper hair on his way to a lazy, back-arching stretch. “By the way, did I also overhear you losing an argument with your terminal?”
“I’m afraid so,” she sighed, finding the subway pass at last. “It’s probably scrambled my file.”
“Well, I’ll be leaving a little early today, so if you return here this afternoon, feel free to use my terminal to access your backup file.”
Backup file. Suddenly the thought was just there, begging to be tested. Was it possible? Paul said he and Bert had been extremely cautious about that particular investigation; what if Bert had taken an additional precaution and hidden an extra copy of the Mr. Vanish file somewhere?
And what if Sandy could find that file, and maybe even prove that Mr. Vanish really existed—Dio, what a coup that would be, for her as well as the magazine! Paul couldn’t refuse to give her challenging assignments after that.
Of course, she would have to be twice as secretive as Bert, and present it to Paul as a fait accompli… No, wait, she was getting ahead of herself again, Sandy thought with a shake of her head. First she had to find the file.
No, she amended bleakly, remembering the subway pass clutched in her hand, first she had to go see the tenacious Ted Gaine.
Seen from t
he subway entrance, the tall brick structure on Yonge Street that housed the Investigative Services branch of the Toronto Police Department was only a building, like half a dozen other high rises on this block and the next. Still, as soon as she’d identified it, that building became different; and as she approached it, Sandy felt uncomfortably like a fox paying a visit to the hounds.
She wished she’d had time to go home and change her clothes. In her bleached denim skirt and checkered blouse she looked like a high-school student on a day off between final exams. Before yesterday she might have considered using her youthful appearance to try to stir Sergeant Gaine’s sympathies. Today Sandy knew better.
Her footsteps echoed ominously across the terrazzoed foyer. Reluctantly she stepped into the elevator, feeling the familiar flutter at the back of her throat as the doors sighed shut, and a responding flutter from the pit of her stomach as she felt herself lifted, ready or not, to the eighth floor.
The elevator doors opened again on a featureless beige hallway. But off to her right was a small reception area tucked discreetly into an alcove.
The receptionist was a blonde, about Sandy’s age, wearing a cream-and-peach outfit and a carefully casual short hairstyle. Mounted on the wall over her head was the crest of the police department, with the words Investigative Services in raised gold letters on the bottom half of the plaque.
As Sandy approached, she saw that the reception desk shared the alcove with a compact three-seat sofa; and sitting at the far end of the sofa was a tidy, rather compact man wearing a tweedy brown sports jacket.
He watched her keenly with pale blue eyes as she identified herself and signed the receptionist’s logbook. Then he got to his feet, smoothing back a rebellious lock of straight blond hair.
“Ms. DiGianni? I’m Sergeant Wegner, Sergeant Gaine’s partner. Would you come this way, please?”
No Pain, No Gaine Page 3
