His Hand In the Storm: Gray James Detective Murder Mystery and Suspense (Chief Inspector Gray James Detective Murder Mystery Series Book 1)

by Ritu Sethi

  “Did your husband take his medication yesterday?”

  “I don’t know.” She got up and brought over a bottle from the kitchen. Pradaxa. He asked if he could keep it. He requested a picture of her husband, and she went up to retrieve one.

  While she was away, Gray took the opportunity to study the room. A family photo sitting on the grand piano spoke volumes – a contrived pose in a photographer’s studio of mother, step-father, and son.

  Everett stood behind the other two, his face stretched out in a forced smile revealing a small gap between the two front teeth. Gray’s heart slammed inside his chest; he smelled blood. The acid-torn face loomed in his memory with its widely spaced front incisors. He examined the rest of the photo. Mother and son looked more comfortable, sitting on a settee holding hands. It was a sad picture in many ways – at least for the balding man standing stiffly in the back, and Gray felt sorry for Norman Everett, just as he had felt sorry for the corpse hanging from the tree.

  Gabi came downstairs and handed him the snapshot.

  He stood and placed it in his inside jacket pocket. “We’ve found a body. A victim of a violent crime. We need an identification.”

  Her hands flew to her face, a little too quickly. “You think it might be Norman?”

  “Possibly. I’ll have Detective Vivienne Caron drive you to the lab to make an identification. She can bring you back here afterward.”

  He waited for her to ask him about the dead man, but she didn’t. She stood before him, open-mouthed, eyes lowered. No questions about where the body was found or by whom. No curiosity regarding how the victim had died.

  “Where were you last night, for the record?”

  “Here. I got home at six and stayed in all night. Norman often works late, and my son Simon has his own place. Simon has a healthcare technology company, and Norman is a major investor and medical adviser.”

  A health tech startup. Another possible link to the hospital near where the corpse was found, near where the presumed victim, Norman, worked.

  “I thought you said Dr. Everett didn’t have much money of his own. How could he afford to invest in a trendy tech startup? Or was he a front-man for a silent investor?”

  Gabi’s face puckered up. She seemed to physically recede into her chair.

  “There’s also the matter of dental records. We can check your husband’s against the body we found.”

  “He never went to the dentist. He was terrified of them.”

  Gray could tell when a suspect was holding back, and she was a suspect. She was also unknowingly serving her son up as one. He liked Gabi Everett, but if she’d killed her husband, she would come to regret her confidences. He now had a faceless corpse and a missing man with a heart problem. If Gabi positively identified the body, all that remained was Seymour checking the corpse for traces of the heart medication. And finding out about a possible silent investor.

  When it was clear that she wouldn’t elaborate, Gray got up to leave. At the door, he turned around and asked:

  “What’s the name of your son’s company, Gabi?”

  ***

  Gray could just make out the yellow tape cordoning off the crime scene in the distance. Adjacent to the snow-capped trees, the St. Lawrence flew eastward, white tips rising and falling on it’s surface like countless anonymous faces submerging into the blue-gray depths while howling out into the wind.

  Across the road, Westborough Hospital glittered shiny and new. But where Gray now stood, a hundred meters down the road, the architecture was a little older and more crumbly.

  Gray clutched the ID found earlier in the beach park. The young face of a boy, no more than twelve, stared back and him, and the name of the institution had brought him here: to Westborough Psychiatric Institute, adjacent to the main hospital and crime scene. With a little luck, the young witness had returned to his cage during the night. Or else, Gray might never find him.

  The large Queen Anne two-story dated back to 1902. The towers, turrets, and rounded porches exuded a regal air, but they desperately needed repairs. Peeling paint, stained bricks, and graffiti all vied for attention. A nineteen-seventies five-story addition loomed directly behind, like a warty growth, its Brutalist-inspired cement walls littered with graffiti.

  Inside, a security guard escorted Gray around the corner to Director LeBlanc's ground-floor office. The slightly balding and pear-shaped LeBlanc was pacing back and forth in his office and yelling into the phone. Great. So, it would be like that. Seeing Gray at the door, the Director ended the call and held out a red, eczematous hand with an alarming sheen. Gray didn’t want to take it, but he did, and the clammy, calloused palm grazed against his. He needed another coffee.

  “We detain many murderers,” LeBlanc said, leading the way to Étienne Cloutier’s room in a stiff, slow stride that made you want to push him from behind. Here was a man who would get in the way.

  “And the boy you are visiting is one of them,” the director said. “He’s sometimes violent and delusional.”

  Inside his room, Étienne stood looking out the window at the river. A branch grazed the old paned glass, scratching with each gust of wind. The boy moved to a single bed which stood beside a dresser, a guitar, and a stack of comic books in one corner. Otherwise, the room was depressingly bare. He turned two wet puppy-dog eyes in their direction.

  Straddling a chair, Gray sat beside him. “We found your ID in the beach park. What time did you leave the Institute last night?”

  His hair smelled of sour sweat. He merely shrugged.

  “Did you see anyone or anything on the beach?”

  Another shrug.

  Gray leaned forward. He measured his next words, knowing the risk, wishing he could leave things alone. All the while acknowledging that murder contaminated everyone it touched. No one escaped, especially not the innocent.

  “Someone died last night. I can’t tell if you’re safe from the killer unless you talk to me.”

  The small mouth fell open revealing crooked, yellow teeth. The pre-pubescent voice was heavily accented with a working-class Quebecois accent. “They make me take pills. I dunno if man is real.”

  LeBlanc lurched forward. “There was no man. Only a hallucination.”

  Étienne stuttered. “He have no face. Like the moon.”

  “Who did this? What did they look like?”

  “He rise in the air, like magic. The bad man hang him from a tree, I scream, and then he chase me.”

  Gray swung his chair around. “You ran back here?”

  “Fast. I close the gate, and he try and grab me with gray claws. But he can’t.”

  The boy’s hands shook; his lips trembled, reminiscent of other small lips that had once trembled. Gray felt a kick in his gut, but Etienne looked nothing like his son, Craig, except for those fluttering lips.

  The boy curled into a ball on the bed and rocked back and forth. LeBlanc flew to their side, and soon the interview would soon be over, the doors of bureaucracy would slam shut.

  “What did this person look like?” Gray said. “Man? Woman?”

  Étienne shook his head, gasping and gurgling. “Cloth sack over face. Black robe.”

  “Tall? Short? Did this person speak to you?”

  “The eyes. Oh God, the eyes–”

  “This questioning is over, Chief Inspector. It’s time for you to leave.” LeBlanc called out for a nurse.

  A stern and starched-looking woman entered, reached the bedside, and efficiently loaded a syringe. No consolation, no reassurance. Just an aggressive stab of the hypodermic followed by Étienne’s pig-like squeal.

  A muscle jerked in Gray’s jaw. His questions had brought this on. He’d done this to the child.

  “He obviously made it up,” LeBlanc said. “To avoid solitary confinement.”

  “We found the body this morning. He made nothing up. If you punish him, I’ll hear about it.”

  “Are you threatening me, Chief Inspector?”

  “Call it what
you like. You’re not set up to protect witnesses. I’ll assign additional protection.”

  “No. The boy’s under my jurisdiction.”

  Control threatened to slip through Gray’s fingers. Powerlessness, felt once before, would never again take a child’s life. Not on his watch.

  “He’s a murderer.” LeBlanc said. “A little younger than most, but we’re not funded to be a daycare. He killed another boy. Beat him to death with a rock.”

  So much for patient privacy.

  A commotion in the hall sent LeBlanc flying out of the room.

  “Security here no good,’ Etienne said, his voice groggy. “Doctor who take care of me last year say they get me out of here, but I no hear back. Doctor gone, and I want to get out. Please help me find. At night, the boys come to get me, and I hide in cupboard, over there.” He pointed to a small alcove in the corner of the room.

  A three-foot door led to a storage nook that must have been sealed when the house turned into a psychiatric facility. The edges pulled out effortlessly, and the door opened to reveal Étienne’s sanctuary: a musty and damp alcove with a low, cracked ceiling angled to one side, making it impossible to stand inside. An old blanket lay on the pine floor with a pillow on top, the case yellowing and stained and hosting several carpenter ants.

  Gray ran a hand through his hair and moved to the only window in the room, overlooking the choppy river and snow-covered beach park. A view of sky, water, and openness, where the boy could see others living freedom while he was trapped in these unfair walls. Parts of the slush appeared moth eaten and the struggling winter grass peeped out in yellows and green from below.

  It was time to go. He said goodbye, promising to check-in soon.

  Taking one last look, he wondered what the years ahead held in store for his young witness. Étienne looked back, his wet, drugged eyes asking, searching – for something Gray was powerless to give.

  Especially with LeBlanc’s promised interference. And Gray could feel professional detachment slipping away, if indeed he had any to begin with, leaving in its place that personal raw core which erupted at the thought of failure and brought forth that caustic whisper: what if you fail this child, too? How will you go on?

  CHAPTER 3

  April 1, 10:30 am

  GRAY PULLED THE car up at Westborough Hospital – where Gabi’s husband, Dr. Norman Everett, worked – towards the newly-constructed colorful blocks of over two million square feet of eclectic glass and metal strung together by impressive skyway.

  After examining Norman’s office, Gray planned to visit the health-tech startup Gabi’s son, Simon, owned.

  He drove through the lot, appreciating the hospital’s attempt to make medicine less clinical: next to the pediatric complex stood a thirty-foot metal teddy bear. An even taller stethoscope sat at the center of the geriatric ward. And in the front, before the parking lot was a gigantic abstract sculpture resembling an apple.

  The temperature had warmed a couple of degrees, but the sky remained ashen, pitting out the freezing rain incessantly slamming the windshield. Switched off, the engine choking to a halt. He pulled his coat more closely around him and stepped out of the car. Immediately, icy shards assailed his eyelids.

  A woman in a bright red coat miraculously maneuvered the lot on stiletto boots, the clicking echoing behind her; two men walked purposefully, chatting in French with their hands in their jeans pockets; cars skirted past on snow tires crunching over ice.

  Sighing, Gray let his shoulders fall. Séverin was getting to him, making him paranoid of everything around – and Gray had never, would never live in fear.

  The automatic revolving doors stood ten feet away past the slushy circular drive. To the right, the river gleamed a molten silver next to oaks with swaying arms, lawns honeycombed with snow, and the snaking icy boardwalk. Here, the river’s cleansing scent lay trampled by the incumbent smells of the city and exhaust fumes from passing cars.

  He wished he could lay his weary head down on a soft pillow or put his feet up at home nursing a tumbler of scotch – with Handel or Couperin playing in the background.

  An object ricocheted past him, making the popping sound of a child’s toy followed by the sudden shatter of glass.

  Sharpness stung his ear, and wetness slid down his neck and under the collar of his shirt. The world shifted while people and places tipped sideways and then back, blurring and unblurring.

  Gray pushed through the revolving doors and ducked. His heart drummed in his chest, and voices crackled around him, some shrieking, some yelling and pointing at the shattered front panel of the hospital entrance. Cold wind ripped through the hole into the hospital lobby while the square-tiled floor seesawed back and forth under his feet. Gray ran behind the black leather sofa and yelled:

  “Police! Everyone down!” He dialed 911 and shot out instructions to the dispatcher. Faces lurched at him, then away, eyes wide, mouths gaping open. But now, he was the lone figure in a vast expanse of open space – vulnerable and exposed, near agoraphobic, making him long for a small enclosed area he could control instead of this vast and futuristic lobby. A gun might be aiming at his head this very second.

  Gray herded everyone to the back of the floor towards the double glass elevators. A security guard ran over, and Gray took him by the arm and shot off instructions: to keep everyone together and call for backup, to check the bystanders for a weapon, to let no one leave under any circumstances.

  Wetness crept underneath his coat and soaked the side of his shirt. Blood dripped from his ear onto his wrist, the redness bringing back another time when blood sprouted out of his wrist like through an open mouth, when the tendons had ripped, and the worst thing imaginable had happened.

  But this situation was different. Gray reined in his imagination and practiced the Box Breathing used by the military and police professionals in times of crisis. He turned his attention towards the dozen or so people by the elevators while breathing in for the count of four, holding his breath for the same count, and blowing out to the count of four. Calmness descended. No one appeared suspicious or familiar. The assailant was nowhere in sight.

  Sirens sounded from a distance and grew louder. Gray moved towards the front entrance, jumping over the shattered glass and small trail of blood dotting the tile and outside slush.

  Two marked cars with flashing lights screeched to a halt before the doors, spraying snow from their tires. Gray ran outside to meet them; the wind stung his wounded ear and ice slammed his lids. Four officers came towards him. He shouted for two to scour the lot and grounds and sent the other two to secure the lobby – all on autopilot, despite the world blurring and the slush and salt-ridden ground threatening to jerk up to meet his face. And now, he did what he had to do. Gray punched in the number using sharp, hostile stabs.

  The phone connected in two rings. His boss, Deputy Director Séverin answered.

  “What the hell?” Gray said. “At a hospital, with all these people around? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Calm yourself, Chief Inspector.”

  “Like hell, I will.”

  The rough Quebecois voice crackled over the cell. “What is the problem?”

  “You just tried to kill me, again, that’s the bloody problem.”

  “What? You are mistaken, or delusional. Why would I try and kill you?”

  “You’re obsessed with Céline. And you know we spent the night together. Maybe, there’s another reason I haven’t uncovered yet. Trust me; I will.”

  Cold steel twisted in Gray’s gut. He stammered back into the lobby and ground out the words. “I’m bringing up charges of attempted murder.”

  Séverin laughed on the other end. “If someone tries to kill you, that’s not my problem. They might be doing me a favor. Any sane man would have left the force by now. But you aren’t sane, are you? You live in calm desperation, need a case to keep you occupied, non?” Séverin’s voice rose. “Go after me, and I’ll have you suspended for the remainder of this inv
estigation. I’ll drum something up to tell the Cousineau. He’ll have no choice but to put you on leave until you can clear yourself of whatever I dream up. Clear?”

  “Crystal. You’re not what I’d call a subtle man.” The lobby’s leather sofa looked a long way away, but Gray made his way over and plopped himself down. His aching head fell into his hands.

  “I never assigned this case to you,” Séverin said. “You were next on the roster and assigned automatically.”

  “Why don’t you want me on this case?”

  “This is a game of chess, my friend. And I will win. I am holding back, asking you to be reasonable. We don’t turn against our own kind.”

  “Only bomb and maim them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You must learn to get along, Chief Inspector.”

  The line went dead.

  Gray lifted his head from between his legs, embarrassed at his disorientation from a simple bullet wound to the ear. His arms floated before him, pale and dismembered. Concussion? It was possible given the force of this morning’s explosion. Knowing it didn’t help the pain in his head.

  He scanned the lobby. No one watched, but outlines and curves of familiar objects swiveled and zigzagged. He drummed down the impatience to go to Séverin’s office now – to kick down the door, grab his boss by the throat, and shove him against the wall. Gray took a few deep breaths. He had to play this game smart, or he’d end up as roadkill. He had a plan regarding Séverin, and he wouldn’t diverge from it, despite today’s shooting.

  A shape came forward and cast a shadow, and a halo of light surrounded the blonde head and gentle eyes, a small nose, and a thin mouth. She leaned in close, her breath smelling of cinnamon. The lady from the lobby café. She held out an open bottle of orange juice. “This will help.”

  Gray gulped it down fast, and the sweet, tart liquid soothed his parched mouth and slid down his throat.

  “Are you my Guardian Angel?”

  “I’m a barista at the hospital coffee shop.”