John felt like he was trapped in a nightmare, scratching and crawling and dragging himself in directions he felt would take him away from involvement only to find that people seemed to be looking to him specifically.
What do you think?
Have you ever seen anything like that before?
Have any idea of what kind of person we should be looking for?
John didn’t have answers to any of those questions.
As much as he didn’t want to know or see any more than he already had, once he and Doug had knocked on their share of doors, he couldn’t help but wander over to the crime scene and see what the OPP homicide team was up to. From what he could tell, they spent most of their day in the woods with the body, meticulously collecting evidence and shooting video of the scene. He arrived just in time to see them cutting the wires binding the victim before they peeled the broken, skinny, burned little body onto a stretcher and covered it with a blanket.
The forensics team took over at that point and the plain-clothed cops left the reservoir to check out Dushku’s car.
John knew precisely what lay ahead for them and wouldn’t have traded places with them for all the tea in China. Having been in their shoes a couple hundred times before, experience told him that their odds of solving this case within the next twenty-fours hours were slim to none. All they had to work with was a car broken down on the side of the road and a severely burned corpse to work with. The type of acid used might yield some information, as might the wire used to restrain the victim, but not likely.
To make matters worse, McLeary had informed him that they were planning a press conference. A tip line was being set up and any useful information that lead to the capture and conviction of Paul Dushku’s murderer (or murderers) would be rewarded to the tune of five-thousand dollars, courtesy of Foster Harrington.
It was a dumb move.
John had seen it done before in the past and it rarely produced any useful leads. More often than not, the hot line would only lend a venue to crackpots and bitter ex-lovers to voice unfounded accusations. With less than twenty full-time officers working at their division, he anticipated that he’d be spending his shifts sitting at the telephone for the next several weeks, instead of patrolling their town and doing the job that they were paying him for. McLeary said he’d enlist as many of the part-timers and auxiliary police as he could to man the phones, but John could tell by his expression that even he didn’t believe that.
It was just after ten o’clock when John and Doug arrived at the town hall, more than six hours after the official end of their shift. Both men had gone to their respective homes to shower and change into a fresh uniform and John had found Mark sitting in front of the television, watching the coverage on CNN no less. John did his best to keep the details to himself, but many of the gory particulars of what they’d found in the woods that morning were already being broadcast on a grand scale. Someone who had seen the body was blabbing, and John had a pretty good idea of which person that was.
He assured Mark that there was nothing for him to worry about and that he was safe, but he wasn’t sure that was the case. He couldn’t help but think to himself that less than twenty-four hours before Mark had been lost in the woods, probably not far from where Paul Dushku was being tortured to death. The possibility that Mark could have stumbled onto the scene, perhaps become a victim himself, filled John’s heart with dread.
He discovered that Mark had hauled most of his belongings up to an attic he didn’t even know existed. It was cold and dusty, practically uninhabitable, but John was too tired to argue. He set the oven timer on a frozen lasagna and told Mark that he would be right home after the emergency meeting and press conference being held at town hall. As he headed out the door, he heard his son say ‘Nice town you moved us to’.
John met Doug back at the station an hour later and they rode to the town hall together in the Jeep. Half a dozen news vans were parked at varying angles around the parking lot where talking heads were regurgitating the story with the building in the background from where the mayor was about to give a live broadcast. Unfortunately, John’s career had brought him into the spotlight enough times that several of the field reporters recognized him and they practically mobbed him on the way through the entrance doors. He ignored their questions and used his partner as a shield, deflecting the reporters out of the way until they made it safely inside. The questions they were firing off were disturbing to him.
Detective Stevens, how do you comment on the rumors that you’ve had a ritual typed-murder here in Ratcliff?
“No Comment.”
Detective Stevens, is it true that the victim was a transvestite, and if so, how will that effect your handling of this case?
“No Comment.”
Detective Stevens, is it true that you’ve found evidence to suggest that this was some sort of religious sacrifice and that the body was partially eaten?
“No comment.” (you moron).
Once inside, John followed Green upstairs where he was surprised to see McLeary and Foster Harrington having a heated debate inside the Mayor’s oak paneled office. The secretary outside waved them by and John tapped on the door before entering. McLeary and Harrington acknowledged their arrival but the Mayor was running and full steam and barely glanced in their direction.
“I don’t give a shit!” he snapped, apparently upset by something McLeary had said, “The people of this town have the right to know that this thing has been taken out of our hands by the attorney general.”
“Larry,” McLeary said patiently, “this kind of thing has to be done a certain way, the right way.”
“This is bullshit,” he snapped. “If they get the guy, you think they’re going to give you or your cops any of the credit? You fucking know they won’t. Alright? So fine, they want the credit, it goes the other way too.”
“Of course it does,” McLeary interjected.
But Tate was having none of it, he continued on his rant, slamming his desk drawers before moving to the filing cabinet and producing a half-empty bottle of scotch and pouring a healthy blast. “Bullshit.” He said, tossing the drink down his throat before pouring another. “I’m up for re-election this year, so are you. If the OPP screws up this investigation, we’re both out of a job!”
Harrington sat quietly, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. Several times he looked over at John, a small smile peeking out from the sides of the stogy, watching in mild amusement as the mayor ranted like a spoiled child. He waited for him to take a third shot before he spoke.
“I think were getting a little ahead of ourselves gentlemen. The issue here isn’t the election, it’s tonight’s press conference. We’re going to have a lot of eyes on us and the people of this town are going to want answers. We have to stay focused. What’s most important, Larry, is that you reassure the public that A; this town is still safe and B, that you have the fullest confidence in the OPP to do their part in bringing the guilty parties to justice. We’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow, and November in November. In the meantime, you don’t want to appear weak. It’s important that we appear as a unified front in the press. Ratcliff PD, and the OPP, working hand in hand to bring this person to justice.”
John couldn’t help but notice how many WE’s he’d just heard from Harrington and that neither the Mayor or McLeary disagreed with him.
“Worry about November in November? Easy for you to say,” Tate said, leaning back in his chair slightly as the first shot of scotch began to work on him. “You think I don’t see what’s going on here? You’d love to be sitting in this chair in November so don’t piss down my back and call it rain.”
“You know perfectly well how much of a stake I have in this town. Anything that hurts this town hurts me too.”
McLeary turned towards John and his partner and motioned for them to come closer now that the mayor was safely sedated. “How’s it look outside?”
“Like the circus has come to town,” John said
quietly. “I’m already hearing some disturbing stuff being tossed around in the press.”
“Such as?” Harrington inquired politely from behind his cigar.
“Oh you know, serial killer, satanic cult, hate crime . . . all the good stuff.”
The Mayor let out a long sigh, ending the breath with; “Shit.”
Harrington rose from the chair and approached them, pulling McLeary with him into a conversation without the mayor despite the fact he was sitting ten feet away.
“Listen, Captain, we’ve got to squash these rumors. I don’t need to tell you how much a scandal like this can cost us. I’ve got investors from all over the province champing at the bit to get a piece of my new development out on the forty. They’ll run like hell if we don’t get a hold of this thing, and fast.”
“What do you suggest?” McLeary asked.
John found it completely bizarre, to say the least. Harrington seemed to be more in control of the situation than McLeary or even the mayor himself. He glanced over at his partner, wondering if this behavior was normal and Green quickly shook his head slightly and mouthed the word; ‘Later’. What ever was going on, John had a feeling that if not for the death of Paul Dushku, he would not have been allowed to witness it.
When people said that Foster Harrington ran this town, they weren’t kidding.
Fourteen
Sarah awoke on the couch of her motel room to a mass of papers and photographs spread on the coffee table in front of her. She’d fallen asleep with images of a poor dead boy fresh in her psyche and awoken to those same images. She hadn’t meant to sleep but exhaustion must have won her body over after a trying day. She’d spent at least twelve hours combing over the crime scenes, first the reservoir and then the victim’s Honda, after which she was obliged to make an appearance for the television cameras outside the city hall. She didn’t check into the town’s only motel and sit down for the first time until after midnight, and she was still awake at 4 am going over the photographs and pestering the coroner for the official cause of death.
As of her seventh call to the coroner’s office there was still no new information. What was left of Paul Dushku was still lying on a gurney in the cooler and they had nothing more for her. Part of her thought that she was getting the run around while the other part of her, the logical one, told her that it was just too soon. No matter how fast she wanted things to progress, they were going to move at their own speed. Nothing she could say or do would change that.
Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with one hand, she snatched her phone off the table in the small dinette and checked her messages. The only thing she’d received since their arrival at the motel was a text from Darcy Drake, currently housed in a room of her own less than fifty feet away. It read; ‘This place blows, and not in a good way.’
That made her smile. Some days, working with her was the only thing that made the job bearable. The only problem was that Sarah suspected that Darcy had a thing for her. She wasn’t at all bothered by it, truthfully she was secretly flattered, but nothing was ever going to happen. They were cops. If anything went down between them, every one they worked with would pick up on it in a New York minute. She had never really thought that way about another woman in the first place, but just the same, if Sarah had been born gay she could do a lot worse than Darcy.
Sarah prepared the coffee maker and turned on the shower before calling Lewinski. He was the last person she wanted to talk to that morning, but the one member of the team even more likely to have any information than she was. The phone rang three times before he finally answered. She ignored his complaints of tiredness and got to the point. “What’s happening?”
“I talked to Scott over at the coroner’s office, he said you should stop calling him.”
Sarah resisted the urge to blast him over the phone, it was early in the day and they had a lot of ground to cover, no sense in creating conflict before they’d even gotten started. “Screw him. What else does he say?”
She heard Lewinski yawn over the receiver followed by the sound of a disposable lighter being clicked a few times before it was set down on an identical coffee table as the one she was sitting in front of. “He’s just getting started on the autopsy. But he says there’s a chance the kid was raped.”
“That’s interesting,” Sarah said to herself.
“You ask me, the little fruit was probably on a date with one of his butt-buddies and things got out of hand.”
“I didn’t ask,” she pointed out. “Anything else?”
“Nah,” Lewinski grumbled back. “He’s only been at it for like half an hour. Give me another couple hours to sleep and I’ll try him again.”
“No,” Sarah said, desperately trying not to explode, “get everyone up and over to my room in fifteen minutes, we’ve got a lot of work to do and you can call your buddy at the CO when you get back here. I want minute to minute updates, I don’t care if he has to put me on the goddamned speakerphone while he does the cutting.”
Sarah hung up the phone before Lewinski could argue or even respond. She could already feel the strings being pulled by the brass in Orillia, the coroner’s office, and a certain member of her own team. She was being set up. First they’d say she wasn’t being thorough, moving too slowly or simply lousing things up.
Lack of leadership and effectiveness.
Failure to see this case through to the end regardless of the outcome would be a permanent mark on her file, one that would prevent her from ever leading a team like this again. She had no intentions of letting that happen.
Sarah had a shower and quickly dressed. Information was finally trickling in via her smart phone and through the weakest Internet connection she’d ever encountered through her laptop. Her mind was busily delegating duties to her team before most of them even arrived. Her task was made all the more difficult not by the four members of her team but the twenty other detectives working the case from Orillia who were pouring over every line of text and examining every photograph hoping desperately to find something, fast. It was Sarah’s responsibility to make sure they all had something to do, at all times.
Darcy was the first to arrive, walking though the motel room door mere minutes after instructing Lewinski to make the calls to the team. To Sarah’s delight, she’d already been awake and even had the foresight to take their SUV to the closest Tim Horton’s, bringing back enough coffee and sugar coated holes to keep them all conscious for at least a few hours. The senior member of the team shuffled in, his fedora just barely hanging on his head and mumbling something about the mattress he’d slept on. Sarah was only half listening but she caught a few words that implied that the motel would do well to consider a future as a terrorist detention camp.
Ten minutes later, three members of her team were seated before her, up to date and ready to work. Lewinski shuffled in twenty minutes later as if he hadn’t a care in the world. It came as no surprise to Sarah. If the man had actually taken some kind of initiative, she would be almost certain that he was only doing so out of some sort of vested interest of his own. Sarah gave them all a few more minutes for the caffeine and sugar to take effect before she began. She made no apologies for the fact that most of them couldn’t have slept longer than a couple hours, if at all. She’d buy them all a round at the bar when it was all over but in the meantime they had work to do.
“So far, the best estimate we have for the time of death is between two and six. Our official cause is still a little hazy,” she informed them. “But for our purposes it’ll do to say he died of extreme shock and exposure. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of physical evidence. The techs found a circular depression in the leaves beside the body and they think that it was caused by a plastic pail or possibly a small metal drum. Whatever it was it was, it was fairly heavy and was probably made by whatever our guy carried the acid in. We’re still waiting on the exact type of acid but in a town this small, something this strong might be rare and we should be able t
o narrow down a list of people who had access to it. Aside from that, we’ve got a ton of footprints. There’s so many of them crossing over one another that none of them will be of any use to us. The only thing they did find was a pair of eyeglasses. According to Dushku’s driver’s license, he didn’t wear glasses so there’s a chance that our suspect dropped them while he was carrying him out there. We’ve got forensics and profilers working the evidence from headquarters and they’ll eat anything we feed them so I think we’re pretty well covered on that end.”
“So,” Wright said, rubbing his eyes thoughtfully. “You’re telling me that someone rigged the wheel on this kid’s car to come off, grabs him off the side of the road, drives him out to the reservoir and kills him. But he’s dumb enough to drop his glasses out there and leave them there? That doesn’t play out, not in my mind.”
“I know it’s thin but for the time being, it’s all we’ve got to go on. The glasses were found just off the pathway, about a hundred yards from the crime scene so it’s possible that it’s totally unrelated but until we know for sure, we’re going to treat them as if they belonged to our perp. Now for the bad news, McLeary is going to assign each of us a couple of UNI’s to come along on every interview to make the introductions.”
A common sigh passed around the room. None of them seemed to relish the idea of babysitting a bunch of yokels while they worked, but every one of them knew it was more than that. Every bit of information that they managed to obtain would likely be public knowledge in less time than it took Lewinski to inhale the last donut. And if information that they needed to hold back got out before they wanted it to, it might get back to the person or people they were looking for.
“Feed them shit and keep them in the dark,” Sarah said decisively. “Co-operate but don’t let them see the play-book.”
Confident she had made her position clear, Sarah allowed herself a mouthful of coffee before she went on. “I’ve got interview assignments for each of you, and you’ll be expected to cross off each and every one of them. I don’t care if they’re on the john, screwing their neighbors or taking the kids to ballet practice. You can cross this whole town in ten minutes so there’s no such thing as ‘subject not available’. Headquarters is running the methodology through ViClas and they’ve got a team of monkeys running everybody who ever spent a night in this town for a criminal record. So far, they got a few.” Sarah snatched a manila folder off the coffee table and handed it to Darcy to glimpse over before passing it along to the others.
Rage: The Reckoning Page 13
