The Corpse with the Ruby Lips

by Cathy Ace

  Word Is Passed Down

  I’D WARNED BUD I’D BE late getting home that night, and, by the time I got back to the apartment, I was pretty tired. It had been a long day, and the rich food wasn’t helping me remain alert. Even so, I brightened considerably when I saw my husband’s face, until I realized something was wrong—other than him still having a nasty cold, that is. He was raking his hands through his hair and I felt my full tummy tighten.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t get upset.” I hate it when he uses his “calming” voice.

  “Something’s up.”

  “It’s this case. The Ilona Seszták killing. Seems you’ve caused me to stir up something of a hornet’s nest at this end. Go figure—you, doing that, eh?” Bud rolled his rheumy eyes. “You’re thousands of miles away, and you’ve still managed it.”

  I pulled a face designed to make my husband laugh, but it didn’t work. “What have I done now? Just tell me all in one go.”

  Bud smiled wearily. “Okay, I admit it, it’s not you, it’s me—and Jack and his old pal. I know that. But this case? It just got a lot more complicated, and politically sensitive too. You’ll need some background, because you didn’t get to Canada until long after all this happened. I’ll give you the highlights, but I can’t send you any paperwork on it. This really is all hush-hush, so I’m working from notes and you’ll just have to take me and my source at our word.”

  “Of course I’ll take you at your word. Do you trust your source?”

  “Absolutely. I have no choice but to trust this person. So should you.”

  “Good enough for me. Tell me what you can. I’ll make up the rest. Go ahead.”

  “Don’t go making up anything. Or telling anyone this. Got it?”

  I smiled sweetly.

  Bud settled himself. “Today’s a holiday across Canada, so I was surprised to get a visit here in my parents’ home this morning from someone whose name you don’t need to know. It seems the informal inquiries Jack and I have been making have come to the attention of some folks with a lot of fruit salad on their chests, and a few whose stock in trade is to say they ‘work for the government.’ I’m pretty sure I haven’t been given all the facts, but I’ve been given enough information to help me understand why I should back off.”

  “What do you mean, back off?”

  “Don’t get on your high horse yet. Hear me out.”

  “Okay.”

  “The first nugget of information is that Kristóf and Ilona Seszták’s son Valentin isn’t who you think he is.”

  I couldn’t help but interrupt. “I know. I told you, he’s VS Örsi, the author.”

  “Cait,” Bud was using his professional voice, “if you keep butting in we’ll never get through this.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I know about that. What I mean is he isn’t Kristóf and Ilona’s son at all. He was adopted.”

  “That’s news.” I sounded as surprised as I was. “No one’s mentioned that.”

  “Nor would they. Apparently, the Sesztáks never planned on telling him. He was adopted when he was just two years old, and they wanted him to have a completely fresh start.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “You’re right, it’s not. Valentin Seszták’s real name is Colin Cook. He was the younger son of . . .”

  “You mean Freya and Elmer Cook were his parents?”

  Bud nodded.

  “Oh my goodness me.” I had heard about the case. “He was the toddler who survived the massacre of his entire Vancouver family in 1959. It was committed by his sixteen-year-old brother. That’s so sad.”

  “Well, it is, and it isn’t. At least he lived and had a good chance at a normal upbringing, and—given what you’ve told me about his recent life—it seems he’s managed to find a creative spark he’s shared with the world,” said Bud reasonably.

  “I can understand why they didn’t want him to know who he really was. Maybe living with a psychologist was an advantage—Seszták could have watched for any psychological trauma resulting from early memories. But you know, there’s been some recent research . . .”

  Bud held up his hand. “Don’t go off on a tangent, I haven’t finished yet,” he said firmly. I motioned locking my lips, and threw the invisible key over my shoulder. Bud continued, “As I’m sure you know, it’s one of the grisliest cases in Vancouver’s criminal history. The real problem for us is the older brother, the one who did it. The night of the murders the police found him a few blocks from the family home, drinking a soda. He never denied killing both his parents and his two sisters, though he was never found guilty of murder. He was sent to the Valleyview Institution for the Insane in Coquitlam at the age of seventeen, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. They released him when he was thirty-four, following ‘successful medication.’ He was never seen again. It was 1976.”

  I sat quietly for a moment. I wanted to say so much, but didn’t know where to start.

  “Before you say anything, Cait, I’ve been told there was a terrible political hoo-ha when it emerged he’d been let out. They managed to keep it from the press, because they didn’t want the population to panic, but I gather several key people were dismissed. Three years later, in 1979, a report came out criticizing the gradual shift from qualified clinicians running the place, to administrators taking over the decision-making. Hence the political sensitivity. The multiple-murderer, Edward Cook, Valentin Seszták’s biological brother, was supposed to report to one of the then-new outpatient facilities for those leaving the residential care of the hospital. He never showed up. Ever. Never got a script for his meds, or showed up at a clinic or a doctor’s surgery. I guess the one good thing I can report is that he also never showed up on a police charge sheet. Not anywhere in Canada, in any case. There was a room organized for him at what they referred to in those days as ‘an appropriate place,’ in other words some sort of boarding house where people being turfed out of institutions were supposedly kept an eye on, but he never showed up there either. Once the cops knew he had dropped out of sight they put all the usual alerts, for the time, in place. He was never spotted—he essentially disappeared the moment he left the grounds of the hospital.”

  “When exactly in 1976 was that?”

  Bud paused, and I could tell he was weighing his words. “Cait, it might mean nothing. He was released early in August.”

  “And the adoptive mother of his young brother Colin, Ilona Seszták, was found murdered just a couple of months after his release?” I couldn’t help myself.

  Bud held up his hand, trying to calm me. “Whoa there, missy,” he said almost jovially. “I know where you’re going with this information, so let me rein you in for a moment or two. There’s more.”

  “Don’t tell me the cops knew it was Edward Cook who killed Ilona all along and didn’t tell the family to avoid a scandal? A lawsuit?”

  “I knew that’s where you’d go with it. Just let me pass on what I have been told.”

  “Now I get it. They’ve fed you some flimflam, and we’re supposed to buy into the cover-up, right?”

  “Cait, stop it.” Bud sounded genuinely cross with me, so I did as he asked. “As you can imagine, when the news of Ilona’s death came out panic among the higher-ups was rife. The decision was made to not pass the information about the relationship between the freed killer and the dead woman’s adopted son on to the RCMP because the people who mattered felt the information was irrelevant to the case, and might have diverted the efforts of the officers involved.”

  “Good grief, Bud, who on earth are these people that they can make decisions about keeping information from the RCMP when they’re investigating a murder? Did anyone tell Kristóf that Edward Cook had been released?”

  “Cait, like I said, we’ve rattled some golden cages by looking into this case. I asked exactly what you’ve just asked me, but got no answer. And it was made clear that I’m not going to. I guess we can both understand why
my digging about in such muddied waters has drawn down the wrath of some pretty important people. They’ve panicked, Cait. I’d like to think my reputation has something to do with the fact they’ve come to me with this information. But it’s not information we can use. They’ve given me facts to persuade me to stop digging. They thought it had all gone away.”

  I gave the whole matter some thought. Questions swirled in my head. “Who knew about the adoption of the boy?”

  “That question they did answer. My source says almost no one. The young child, Colin, was taken to the local police station the night of the murders; he stayed with a female police officer for a few days. It all gets a bit vague then—purposely, I suspect—because it turns out Professor Seszták was big buddies with someone high up in the child services department of the day, and I suspect the adoption was less formal than it should have been. This is me reading between the lines here; Seszták and his wife were quite the stars when they arrived at UVan, it seems, so their stock would have been pretty high in 1959. I understand they named the toddler Valentin because they adopted him around St. Valentine’s Day in 1960.”

  I supported my chin as I spoke. “I can’t help but think of the graphic descriptions of bloodshed in Valentin’s books. I wonder if the horror he witnessed as a toddler is the genesis for all that.”

  “I thought you would. You mentioned the rivers of blood often enough when you were telling me what the books were about.”

  “Yes. I thought he might have been referencing Magyar and Transylvanian myth and lore in those passages, but now? I recall from reading about the Cook killings that they found the young boy hiding under a bed, covered in blood. Maybe Colin/Valentin/VS’s obsession with gore comes from a deeply personal place.” I paused, thinking along Colin’s timeline until he’d been Valentin for seventeen years. “Do you think it’s possible the older brother, Edward, could have somehow tracked down his sibling when they let him out? Somehow worked out Valentin was Colin? Might he have somehow found out about his brother’s new family while he was in hospital? Did the authorities think so at the time? Any evidence he did?”

  Bud furrowed his brow. “All questions I asked. None of them were answered. We both know more or less anything is possible. But probable? Even if Edward Cook did somehow find out about his kid brother, which I have to be honest with you, Cait, I think is unlikely, why on earth would he want to kill Ilona Seszták? All she did was adopt the little guy and give him a home, and a life. Okay, I get it that Edward, the killer, was nuts but—”

  “Not nuts, Bud. Don’t say he was nuts. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic; I recall that from the coverage I read about the case. He was sick. Of course, the basis for the diagnosis has shifted somewhat since the 1960s, and there might have been other aspects to his condition, but we’ll never know that. It doesn’t sound to me as though anyone’s going to let you, or me, read the guy’s case notes any time soon. But I’m still confused—and annoyed, Bud. What you’re telling me is someone over there doesn’t want us nosing about in the Ilona Seszták case to such an extent that they’ve come to you with information you might never have otherwise uncovered to stop you going any further?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “So they’re sufficiently concerned you might inadvertently discover something about the poor management of the release of the murderer Edward Cook into the community because they know how brilliant and dogged you are?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Hasn’t this all been dealt with, in political terms, and in management terms too? Would the general population today be frightened of a man who’s been, possibly, in their midst for the better part of forty years without coming to the attention of the police? He’d be seventy-one by now, if he’s still alive. He might have tried self-medicating with any number of legal or illegal substances, might have lived on the streets, and used an alias. He could have survived like that for a long time. It’s also sad, but true, that some people die and their remains are never found, or they aren’t discovered until fingerprints have disappeared. He could have ended up as an unidentified cadaver on the coroner’s table. Did you ask if they had anything on file from the hospital, or in their own records, that could have allowed for a DNA match with any bodies found?”

  Bud puffed out his chest. “I asked those same questions and was told there wasn’t any. So, you’re right, he could be dead and simply recorded as an unidentified decedent in Canada.”

  “They’d have had his dental records though, surely.”

  “They would have. He was in the system, so they’d have been easy to find and match—so long as they hadn’t been misplaced or lost.”

  “You’re not going to tell me that happens all the time, are you?”

  Bud shrugged. “It’s not unheard of. Cops are only human, as are the civilians who work in some filing roles too. Mistakes can be made.”

  “You’re covering for your source now, I can tell. They’re telling us it’s a closed avenue of investigation. I get it. Still, that’s a lot of food for thought. Thanks. I’ll bear it all in mind at this end.”

  “No, Cait, not ‘thanks and I’ll bear it in mind’—I told you, we’ve been warned off. Shut down. In no uncertain terms. The only reason this . . . person . . . came to my parents’ home and told me what they did was out of respect for my record, and with a clear understanding of my security clearances. Cait—I’ve signed several sets of papers during my life that prohibit me from talking about this case now that I have been officially warned off it. My source understood I would have to divulge certain facts to you so you, too, would understand the situation we’re in. We are not to inquire, pry, prod, or poke. I am not to have so much as an informal chat with an old colleague about this after this discussion. Nor are you. Got it?”

  “Hmmm.” My mind was racing.

  “Cait?”

  I smiled. “Of course, I get it. Don’t do anything more. You’re right, you shouldn’t. Thanks for all you have done. I know they’ll be grateful over here.”

  Bud stood up in his parent’s kitchen and paced about, disappearing from the camera’s range, then re-entering the frame. “You’re not hearing me, Cait. It’s not just me who has to stop, it’s you too. I’m not happy about it, but come on—what did this girl think? That after thirty-seven years we’d be able to track down some guy walking a bike path at night, in a rainstorm, who got it into his head to smash her grandmother on the side of her head with a giant rock for no good reason? Because, given what I’ve been able to find out from the police records, that’s about the size of it. The RCMP couldn’t find one credible suspect in the woman’s immediate circles, on the campus, in the general area, or even in the entire province. Short of writing ‘A passing tramp must have done it’ on the file, they couldn’t have made it clearer. They were completely stumped. We all know someone must have done it, but there are, quite literally, no clues about who that might have been. Even with this new information, I don’t see where it leads. We know little more that’s of any help to us.”

  “It might mean they know who did it—Edward Cook—or maybe it’s nothing to do with him. I don’t know about that. I’ll have to think it through. However, I do have some more insights of my own. I just had dinner with a man who told me he ran a mile because Ilona was all over him like a rash.”

  “What?” Bud looked aghast and sat down in front of his computer screen with a thump I could hear half a world away. “Tell me.”

  “Patrik Matyas, my overly jovial colleague and sometime shadow, told me Ilona Seszták made unwanted advances toward him.”

  “Was he telling the truth?”

  I grinned. “See? You want to know, don’t you? You cannot help but want to know what happened.”

  “It’s not so much that as the feeling of injustice for the poor woman who was killed. She deserves better.” Bud’s expression became grim. “I felt like I was being railroaded today, all that political nonsense being spouted when there’s a family
living without answers. It makes me angry. But I have to comply, Cait. I have my suspicions that maybe some pressure was brought to bear to keep the case dormant over the years. It can’t be closed, but there are ways and means of making sure a file doesn’t make it to the top of the pile for a very long time. Yes, Zsófia Takács’s family deserves to know what happened, but I’m not interested in what you’ve discovered just so I can solve some sort of abstract puzzle, Cait. That isn’t what it’s about—we’re merely the means to an end. The end being justice.”

  “I know. And you’re right. We’re stuck in a difficult situation. We want to help, and believe we could, but the powers that be are shutting us down. We have to decide what matters more to us—morals and ethics, or abiding by rules being imposed upon us.”

  Bud sighed with resignation, his shoulders drooping. “What did the guy say, exactly?”

  I replayed my conversation with Patrik for Bud, and he whistled his amazement at the end. “Not quite the bombshell I dropped, but pretty good. There’s nothing I can do here, now, to try to find out if Ilona Seszták was the man-eater Matyas suggests she was, and all you have is his word, and what you’ve told me about him doesn’t suggest you have a high opinion of him.”

  “You’re right. He’s a slippery one. But you know I’m pretty good at reading people, Bud, even when I’m far, far away from you and all on my own in the big, wide world. So, no, I’m not just taking his word for it, even though I believe he was telling the truth. What he said, when taken with the comments Valentin made about his mother, suggests she might have been the type to find dalliances with young men to be at least fun, if not deeply satisfying. Now you’ve told me Valentin was adopted I can consider the internal family dynamics in a different light. Ilona knew Valentin wasn’t her son, even if he didn’t know she wasn’t his mother. If she was as drawn to young men as has been suggested, maybe there was some sort of Oedipal thing going on there.”