Old Scores

by Scott Mackay

  The doctor turned to Nina. “And when do you think you were exposed, Nina?” he asked.

  The color rose to Nina’s face, and she looked so scared Gilbert thought she was going to faint. “February,” she said.

  “And how were you exposed?”

  At first she didn’t seem to understand, but then she got it.

  “Unprotected sex,” she said.

  “Do you want your father to be here for this?” asked the doctor. “In these cases, I’m legally obliged to give you the option of privacy.”

  She nodded. “I want him to be here,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. “So you had unprotected sex in February. Do you remember roughly the date?”

  “The twenty-fifth.”

  “Exactly the twenty-fifth?”

  “There was a party,” she said. “I remember the date.”

  “So essentially three months ago.”

  In a small fragile voice, she said, “Yes.”

  “And your partner—I’m assuming he knows he’s HIV-positive, and that’s how you found out?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is he your only partner?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when did he find out he was HIV-positive?” asked Dr. MacPherson.

  “Yesterday.”

  “And how many tests has he had?” he asked. “Do you know?”

  She raised her eyebrows, as if she wondered how this could possibly matter. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess only one.”

  “And he showed up positive the first time?”

  “I think so.”

  Dr. MacPherson flipped through some notes in Nina’s chart, but Gilbert could tell he wasn’t reading them. He was thinking. Going over the timing maybe?

  “Well…I guess we should get you tested, then,” he said, as if it were no big deal. “But it’s unlikely we’ll get a useful result three months after exposure.”

  Gilbert cocked his brow. “What do you mean?”

  The doctor leaned back in his chair.

  “Well…the tests we do for HIV are sensitive to a specific HIV antibody,” he explained. “Your immune system starts to make these antibodies three months, give or take, after you’ve been exposed. If you test too soon you’ll come back negative, and we’ll have to test again.” He turned to Nina. “Health Canada recommends waiting three to six months after initial exposure as a way to keep things cost effective. And you’ve barely broken the three-month mark.”

  Gilbert frowned. “I don’t care about cost effective,” he said. “This is my daughter.”

  Dr. MacPherson raised his hands. “I know…I know…and we’ll get her tested. Cost effective and peace of mind don’t seem to have any real-value connection as far as Health Canada is concerned. By all means, we’ll get her tested.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a test requisition form. “But she may have to be tested again at the four-month mark, and again at the five-month mark…and maybe even again at the six-month mark if the early tests come back negative.”

  Gilbert felt his shoulders sinking. This was going to turn into a bigger waiting game than he thought.

  “Can’t we do home tests?” asked Nina, now squirming a bit. “I hear they have home testing kits. If I’m going to have to do three or four…I find this all so…embarrassing.”

  “I wouldn’t go with the home kits, Nina,” said Dr. MacPherson. “They’re only ninety percent accurate. And they’re prone to false positives.”

  “I just thought of something,” said Gilbert, his pulse quickening with dread. “If it takes at least three months for the test to detect the antibodies, and Nina’s partner found out he was HIV-positive only yesterday, then that means he was probably infected longer than three months ago, before he and Nina had intercourse.”

  “That’s probably a safe assumption,” said the doctor.

  “Then that means she’s probably infected,” said Gilbert.

  Dr. MacPherson’s face settled. “Unfortunately, that’s true.”

  “Then what chance does she have?” asked Gilbert, his face growing flushed.

  “Not a good one, I’m afraid,” said Dr. MacPherson. “If her partner came back positive on his first test, and it’s a true positive, it’s likely he’s been infected for a good long while. The antibodies have had a chance to build, and that takes time. Over three months, on average. So you’re right, there’s a strong possibility Nina is indeed infected.”

  To hear the doctor say it was nearly more than Gilbert could bear.

  “So she has no chance, then?” he said, his dread turning into a mounting wave of panic.

  He glanced at Nina. Tears came to her eyes. She, too, had been shocked by the doctor’s words.

  “I wouldn’t say she has no chance,” said Dr. MacPherson. He lifted the Kleenex box and handed it to Nina. “People produce antibodies at different rates. Average trigger levels for HIV are three to six months. Some people produce trigger levels after only three weeks. Nina’s partner might have been exposed after February. It wouldn’t be entirely beyond the realm of possibility for him to produce antibodies more quickly than other people. So let’s not give up all hope just yet. Let’s get her tested. Take this requisition down to the lab this morning. They’re open till noon.” He turned to Nina. “If it comes back negative—and by the way, it takes six or seven days to get the results back—we’ll have you tested again the first week of July.”

  “We’ll be at the cottage the first week of July,” said Gilbert.

  “Then the second week of July,” said the doctor. “If it comes back negative again, we’ll test her the first week of August. As far as negatives are concerned, test reliability increases with time. If the test comes back negative six months from the time of suspected exposure, there’s nearly a hundred percent chance you’re virus-free. At that point I usually say there’s no need for further testing. But if you’re still concerned, we can retest at nine months. And to hell with cost effectiveness.”

  Three

  In the Homicide office on Monday morning, Lombardo had the results of the Boyd autopsy.

  “A few surprises,” he said. “His arm was broken.”

  “It was?” said Gilbert. His mind was still half on Nina.

  “A fracture in his ulna up near the elbow of his left arm.”

  “I didn’t see any swelling or bruising,” said Gilbert, forcing himself to get back on track.

  “Dr. Blackstein said it was apparent only on X-ray.”

  “And the fracture was fresh?” asked Gilbert.

  “No more than twenty-four hours old.”

  Gilbert shook his head. “If his arm was broken, why didn’t he go to the hospital?”

  Lombardo raised his eyebrows. “Remember all those painkillers we found?” he said. “Up on the windowsill and in the medicine cabinet? Maybe he thought it was just a sprain. If he took enough painkillers, he wouldn’t feel much pain. Which brings us to the next surprise.” Up at the front, Carol Reid, the squad secretary, came in with a flowerpot full of red begonias. “Dr. Blackstein’s not prepared to rule manner of death was definitely strangulation.”

  Gilbert was indeed surprised by this. “Why not?”

  “Because the trauma to Boyd’s hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage wasn’t significant enough to fit the usual pattern of strangulation,” said Lombardo. “Nor were the ligature markings on Boyd’s throat deep enough.”

  “Yes, but he was blue,” said Gilbert. “He was cyanosed.”

  “I know,” said Lombardo. “And Dr. Blackstein is definitely willing to rule cause of death as respiratory insufficiency. But as for the manner of death…in this particular case, because of all the drugs we found, and because Dr. Blackstein suspects Boyd took a good deal of those drugs for his broken arm…well…he says the manner of death could be either strangulation or a drug overdose. A drug overdose often causes respiratory arrest. Dr. Blackstein wants a toxicologist to look at the case before he rubber-stamps the manner of death.”

>   “That’s going to take a while,” said Gilbert.

  “Dr. Blackstein thinks we might push it faster if we ask Toxicology to test for only the drugs we found in Boyd’s apartment.”

  Gilbert thought about it. “Even with streamlined testing, it’s going to take at least eight weeks.”

  “That’s what we’ve got to work with,” said Lombardo. “He says we should still go ahead and investigate the case as if it were a homicide. He says strangulation is by far the likelier scenario.”

  Gilbert tapped his paperweight made of bullets. Forgetting Blackstein’s preliminary conclusions, he now considered the. specific findings of the autopsy report itself. Trauma was slight. That could say something about the strength or size of the killer. He raised the point with Lombardo.

  “It seems to me that in the absence of the usual pronounced trauma, we can guess the murderer wasn’t particularly strong, and that he was small in stature. We might be looking at an older individual.”

  Lombardo thought about it. “Or a woman,” he suggested.

  This stopped Gilbert. He hadn’t considered this possibility. He swallowed. He had a sudden thought. A ridiculous, bizarre thought, a thought he shouldn’t be thinking at all: Regina. A crazy thought. How was he going to keep objective on this case? He forced himself back on track a second time.

  “Did Blackstein find any useable DNA evidence anywhere on the corpse?” he asked.

  “Some skin flakes underneath the fingernails of each hand,” said Lombardo. “It looks like there was a struggle after all. Boyd grabbed whoever was attacking him and he got trace amounts of their skin lodged under his fingernails. Were you able to reach Boyd’s secretary at all?”

  “Actually, she phoned me,” said Gilbert. “Stacy Todd’s her name. She’s asking me whether she can get into the office today. She says there’ll be a ton of e-mail and voice mail inquiries because of all this. I’ve made an appointment to see her at noon today. I’m going to pick her up at her apartment, then we’ll drive over. I’ll find out what she knows.”

  “Okay,” said Joe. “I’m going to Computer Support to see how they’re doing with Boyd’s PC. I’ve twisted some arms. They say they’re at least going to start on it.” Lombardo glanced at his watch, a sporty little number with Roman numerals. “We’ll hook up sometime this afternoon then?”

  “Sure,” said Gilbert. “I’ll bring back coffee.”

  Gilbert killed time until his Stacy Todd appointment by doing some deskwork on the Glen Boyd case.

  He checked for outstanding warrants, prior arrests, and previous convictions on the man, and found three marijuana possession charges, all dating from before 1985. Fraud had a bad-check case on him from 1997. Patrol arrested him for public drunkenness in 1999. More interestingly—and of possible value to his case—Glen Boyd had filed a harassment complaint against former Mother Courage guitarist Phil Thompson just this year. Accompanying the complaint was a restraining order: Phil Thompson wasn’t allowed anywhere near Glen Boyd.

  So. Friction between Glen Boyd and Phil Thompson. Definitely something worth looking into.

  He ran a search for priors on Phil Thompson and found nothing but a current driver’s license suspension for driving under the influence. As Gilbert had once been a Mother Courage fan, he now recalled how Thompson had been arrested a couple of times in the United States, once in Denver for lighting his guitar on fire and throwing it into the audience, and once in Houston for stripping naked at one of his concerts. But these ancient antics didn’t concern Gilbert. Not the way this restraining order did. Gilbert tapped his fingers a few times against his mouse pad, then scrolled down. Here was an actual online copy of the restraining order. He cut and pasted it into the Boyd case file for future reference. There were no useful details in the order, nothing indicating the reasons for it, but that particular information gap might easily be filled by talking to Phil Thompson personally.

  First he had to worry about Stacy Todd.

  Gilbert went to the car pool, signed out an unmarked Lumina, and drove to Stacy Todd’s apartment on Queen Street West—not the trendy part of Queen Street, but the part out near Lansdowne, a stone’s-throw away from the sprawling skid row of Parkdale. She lived in a pluralistic little community of musicians, artists, and prostitutes.

  Stacy’s apartment occupied the third floor of a shopfront building. Looking up, Gilbert saw a dozen pigeons sitting on her window ledge. A streetcar rumbled westbound. He crossed the tracks to the sidewalk and rang Stacy’s buzzer. A moment later, Stacy came downstairs—quickly, loudly, an avalanche of legs and feet.

  She opened the door. She was a tall, thin, tired-looking woman in her mid-fifties. She wore black stretchy pants tight to her legs, a black sweatshirt, and red running shoes. She wore glasses with oversized lenses and dipping arms, the frames transparent pink. She had blue eyes and blond hair. She gave him a shy but pained grin.

  “Hi,” she said. “Detective Gilbert?”

  He pulled out his badge and identification and showed them to her.

  “I’m glad you could take the time to see me,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m glad you’re giving me the chance to get into the office.” She made way, swept her palm toward the stairs. “Let’s go up,” she said. “I’ll put the kettle on. I’ve got some seed cakes.”

  He followed her up the stairs. Seed cakes? What the heck were seed cakes?

  The first thing that struck him about Stacy’s apartment were all the gift baskets sitting on a long worktable against the wall. She had them filled with designer soaps, bath beads, small cans of expensive salmon, little packages of rye squares, various wines, and boxes of gourmet crackers. She had them decorated with blue, yellow, and pink cellophane. She caught him looking.

  “I do gift baskets,” she said. “These small ones are eighteen dollars. These ones here are twenty-seven. And the large ones back there are forty-nine. If you’re ever stuck for a gift idea, call me. I’ll give you my card before you go. I also do catering.”

  He gazed at the baskets some more. “Boyd doesn’t pay you enough?” he asked.

  “This is a hobby,” she said. “I do it for fun. If I make some money at it, so much the better.”

  He followed her into the kitchen. He sat down and watched her fix tea. She looked unwell. She looked as if she’d been up all night. Her face was pale, and the rims of her eyes were red. She spooned a green leafy substance into a stainless steel tea ball.

  “What’s that?” he asked, knowing Boyd had always been a big pot smoker.

  “It’s mint,” she said. “Is that all right?”

  Mint tea. And seed cakes. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? But do you mind if I use your washroom first? It’s hot out. I want to splash my face.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Just down the hall.”

  He went to the washroom. He wanted a chance to look around. A plain-view search. You never knew what you were going to find. The washroom was spotless. The wastepaper basket was empty except for one small item of interest, a hospital identification bracelet from Mount Joseph Hospital. He splashed his face and returned to the kitchen.

  “You were in the hospital recently?” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I saw the hospital identification band in the wastepaper basket.”

  She nodded. He again noted how unwell she looked. “I’m a diabetic,” she said. “I had a bit of an episode on Friday so I thought I’d better have it checked out.”

  “My brother’s a diabetic, too,” he said. “Insulin dependent. He has to go in every three months.”

  “It’s not nice,” she said. “The doctor was going to keep me in. But then I learned about Glen, and I knew there would be a ton of calls.”

  “You don’t look too hot,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  Once she’d served tea, he began with his questions.

  “So when was the last time you saw Boyd?” he asked.

  “Friday a
fternoon,” she said.

  “In the office?”

  “In the office,” she said.

  “And how was he?”

  “He was…preoccupied,” said Stacy. “That’s nothing unusual. He’s always preoccupied.”

  “So you went home at the usual time on Friday?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And then you had your episode here in the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure you’re up to driving to the office?”

  “I’ve got to,” she said.

  “Okay.” He glanced cautiously at his seed cake, wondering if he should eat it. “So on Friday, when you were at work, did Glen mention anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Only that he was having dinner with Judy Pelaez that night,” said Stacy.

  “The Judy Pelaez?” asked Gilbert.

  Stacy nodded. “She flew up from San Francisco to see Glen.”

  Gilbert thought of Judy Pelaez, the petite, pretty folksinger who sang such achingly sad love ballads as “River of Tears,” “The Bluest Bird in the World,” and “So Cool You’re Cold,” recalled the versatile quality of her voice, one moment husky and low, the next moment sweet and high.

  “So in other words, there’s a good possibility Judy Pelaez was the last one to see Boyd alive.”

  “I can’t say,” she answered. “He was booked to have dinner with her. Whether he showed up is anybody’s guess. Glen’s notorious for not showing up these days.”

  Gilbert thought about it. It certainly warranted further inquiry.

  “Weren’t Boyd and Judy married for a while?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Stacy gave him a questioning look. “You knew they had kids together, didn’t you?” she said.

  “I might have read it somewhere,” he said.

  “A daughter, Morningstar. She’s sixteen. And Delta, their son. He’s eighteen.”

  Morningstar and Delta. Mint tea and seed cakes. God. “So she came up to see him?” he said.

  “Yes.”