Do or Die (29 page)

Green shuddered at the thought. This killer was far too clever and cold-blooded to fall for that, and in the ensuing battle of cunning, Green had no doubt what the outcome would be. But could he stop it? Yanking open his car door, he seized his police radio. He reached a weary Brian Sullivan just locking up his house for the night and ordered him to put out an APB on Dave Miller. Not to pick him up but to find him and keep him under surveillance.

Sullivan's weary voice suffused with energy. “Hey! Have we finally nailed him?”

“No. I'm scared to death someone else will.”

Afterwards he sat in the driver's seat in the RCMP parking lot, his mind racing over possibilities, terrified that he was already too late. He was so lost in worry that he did not hear the shouts until the running figure was almost upon him. Startled, he peered through the shadows at the man scurrying towards him, glasses glinting in the lamplight.

“Jim Winkler, Hair and Fibre.” The man stopped, breathless. “I was working late preparing a report for court, and I heard you were in the building. This afternoon I got to wondering about that hair we found on the shirt. You know—the one we couldn't match to anything? Well, just on a hunch I ran a new match, and you'll never believe this. Guess whose it turned out to be?”

Green was beyond riddles. “Who!”

“Jonathan Blair's.”

*    *    *

It makes no sense, no goddamn sense! Green ranted to himself as he drove his car aimlessly through the deadened streets. The hair was on the inside of the shirt at the back of the neck. Exactly where it would be if the shirt had been worn and hair from the nape of the neck had got caught inside. How the hell would hair from the victim, who was in front of the killer and at least a foot away, have ended up there? Only if Blair had worn it, and that made no sense at all.

Unless…!

The thought so surprised him that he drove through a red light. Slamming on the brakes, he spun the car around and headed back towards the RCMP lab. It was a crazy, nonsensical idea, but the only one that fit the facts. There was one person who could perhaps tell him just how crazy it really was.

Twenty minutes later, shirt in hand, he was ringing the bell outside Marianne Blair's mansion, expecting to face the pinched sneer of her executive assistant. It was the only pleasure he took in rousing the household at this hour. But instead after a long wait, the door cracked open to reveal the cautious stare of Henry Blair. Blair swung the door wide at the sight of him. He was wearing the same mismatched clothes as earlier, but they were in rumpled disarray.

Green recovered his voice first. “I'm sorry to disturb you so late.”

“No, no! It's quite all right, we were just ah…talking.”

Marianne Blair appeared in the hallway behind him, her knobby hands clutching her blouse to her throat. She gripped her ex-husband's arm and stared at Green through questioning eyes.

“Is there news?”

He dodged artfully. “I'm getting close. I have one quick question for both of you.”

“Of course, please come in. Henry was just…we were talking about Jon. Come, there's tea in the kitchen.” Mrs. Blair drew Henry back to allow Green entrance and only then, in the brighter light of the hall chandelier, did he see the swollen redness of their eyes.

“Thank you, but I don't want to intrude,” he mumbled. “I just wanted to show you this.” He held out the evidence bag containing the black shirt. “Do either of you recognize this shirt?”

Marianne sucked in her breath with a sharp gasp. She took the bag from him almost reluctantly and stepped over to hold it under the stronger light of the hall chandelier. In the stillness, he could feel his own heartbeat as he waited. When she finally turned to him, her face was pale and her voice hoarse.

“This is Jonathan's. I bought it for him myself last year, to sort of liven up his wardrobe. Jonathan usually goes in for beiges and blues. But I haven't see it…oh, for at least two months.”

It took him five minutes to extricate himself from their questions and to get back out to his car. A brief phone call to Sullivan turned up no trace of Miller. Sullivan sounded groggy and discouraged, but promised to continue the search and the stake-out of Miller's apartment. In the distance, the bells of the Peace Tower tolled midnight, each lugubrious chime like a further nail in his coffin. Green's sense of dread grew. Where could Miller be at this hour! Whom had he gone to see? Who could have held the final key to the mystery for him?

He sat in the dark, staring through the car windshield at the deserted Rockcliffe street, pondering all the pieces of the puzzle that fit nowhere. Why did the killer wear Jonathan Blair's shirt? Where did he get it? The image of Sharon and the
photo suddenly flashed through his mind, and he held his breath as an answer slowly came into focus. Not Miller, not Halton, not even Difalco, but someone he should have seen right from the beginning, and for reasons as old as the hills. Considered in this new light, a number of niggling little problems suddenly made sense—why Jonathan Blair's sketch had been taken from Carrie's apartment, why his wallet had never been found, why his office and computer had been so easily accessed. Why the frame of Eddie Haddad had begun even before Jonathan's results were complete. Everything fit!

Shoving his car into gear, he tore out of Marianne Blair's driveway and down the hushed, mansion-lined street, barely missing an elderly gentleman out walking his Pekinese. He remembered that the apartment was a short hop across the Rideau River and up King Edward Street into the seedier student area of Sandy Hill. The little car squealed as he spun around corners and raced up deserted streets. Drawing up outside the apartment, he paused. He needed back-up, a search warrant, and an arrest warrant. But a life was in jeopardy and it might already be too late. In a life-and-death crisis, the department and the courts could be very forgiving.

There was no response to his knock and listening at the door, he could hear no sounds from within. Throwing procedure to the winds, he roused the building superintendent to open the door. The apartment was in darkness and a quick check of the rooms revealed it was empty. On the kitchen table lay a pharmacy bag, with a prescription receipt for Elavil stapled to the front. But the bag was empty.

Fuck!

Elavil was an anti-depressant which could induce a fatal coma with relatively few pills. Time was the enemy. David
Miller's home was just across the Queensway in one of the Lees Avenue apartment buildings, and Green decided it was faster to drive there than to call the surveillance team and explain. Careening into the apartment driveway, he spotted Brian Sullivan's old Chevrolet itself sitting near the front door. Beyond the car, just exiting through a side door and slipping around the corner of the building was a dark-haired man with a mustache. Leaping out of his car, Green raced to Sullivan's window and found him fast asleep at the wheel. Raging, he shook him awake.

“Grab that man with the mustache and call for back-up! No time to explain. I'm going up to Miller's.”

The building was part of a massive, low-rent complex that had fallen into decay and squalor. Even at midnight the tenants hung over the balcony rails in the summer heat, shouting obscenities at one another. Beer bottles littered the lobby, and the stench of urine choked the airless halls. Through the flimsy walls, babies wailed and heavy metal rock music boomed. Green jumped over a drunk sprawled in the hallway and dashed for the elevator. How much time had the killer had? Goddamn it, if they'd been able to identify the fingerprint earlier, none of this would have happened! If only he hadn't felt sorry for Paquette that night and compromised his thoroughness. If only everyone on this case was not stretched beyond endurance. How long had Sullivan been asleep? Had the killer waited to be sure Miller was dead? Any delay increased the risk of capture, but leaving too early increased the chance that Miller would rouse enough to call for help. Green could only pray for a miracle as the cranky elevator jerked its way to the top floor.

He dashed down the dimly lit hall and pounded on Miller's door. No answer. Grabbing the handle, he thrust. The door
gave and spilled him inside. A computer screen on the right wall washed the small room in a bluish glow which glanced off the fridge and stove in the opposite corner, but left the rest of the room in shadow. Green could just make out the dim shape of a bed against the far wall before he found the light switch. Murky yellow light filled the room, revealing a huddled form under the bedcovers.

Covering the distance in two leaps, Green groped for a pulse. Thin, but there. Thank God! He radioed 911, then returned to Miller. The man was unconscious and felt clammy to the touch. Green rolled him onto his back, loosened his clothing and checked his airways. As he searched his memory frantically for further first-aid techniques, his eye fell on the pill bottle on the bedside table. Beside the bottle sat an empty water glass. Green knew Miller's prints would be on it and no one else's. All other traces of the crime—the coffee cups, the drugged cake, whatever the killer had used to feed Miller the pills—would have been washed away. A suicide note, artfully dropped from the dying fingers, would be the perfect finishing touch. This killer, smart and thorough, would have added that.

Green scanned the floor, bedcovers and tabletops for a note without success. Then he settled on the computer. Of course! The computer was this killer's special trademark! Rising, he walked over to the screen, which had a display of multi-coloured brain cells. Tapping the space bar returned him to the file in use.

Dear Rosalind,

You are the only person I want to send a message to before I die. Now that I've lost my life's work, Professor Halton's respect, and my hopes for the future, I have nothing left to live for. My work was right and somehow Defalco tricked us all, but I have
no hope of proving it, so what's the point? Maybe someday people will learn the truth. Thank you for your faith in me.

Your friend, Dave

Suddenly, Green heard a door slam and he glanced out the window. The roof of the twin tower opposite was directly in his line of vision and lit by a single searchlight above the rooftop door. Green saw a long shadow play across the roof, then as his eyes adjusted, he made out a small figure running towards the edge. The man's dark hair was on end, and in the floodlight his mustache was a jagged slash against his whitened face. Down below, three patrol cars converged on the building and screeched to a stop, sirens flashing. Green saw Sullivan talking to them and gesticulating to the high-rise.

The suspect was racing back and forth across the roof, peering over the edge as if searching for an escape route. The only exit was the rooftop door through which he had obviously come. Below, the police officers had sealed off the street exits and now stood gazing up at the building façade uncertainly.

Green grabbed his radio and called Sullivan. “Brian, he's on the roof.”

“I've got a call in to the tactical unit.”

The suspect had abandoned his aimless running and was turning back towards the rooftop door.

“No time,” Green said. “He's going back into the building, and that means potential hostages and a half-dozen exits you might not know about. You've got to get up there right away.”

Green saw Sullivan beckon to three officers and head into the building. “I'm on my way up,” Sullivan said breathlessly. “What's his position?”

“He's still there, but he's thinking about the door. Quick!” Down below, the ambulance and more squad cars
converged on Miller's apartment. The response to my 911 call, Green thought. He took one last quick glance at Miller and saw with relief that his breathing had not changed. Across the way, the suspect was reaching his hand towards the door. Time had run out.

Green crashed a chair through the window and pulled out his gun. “Police, freeze!”

The man jerked back and spun around, his hand shielding his eyes from the floodlight as he searched the darkness. Green kept his gun trained on him. “Put your hands on your head and back away from the door.”

The man hesitated. Green gauged the distance from his window to the rooftop across the way. At least seventy-five feet. To his surprise, the gun was remarkably steady in his hand, but there was no way he was going to hit the man if he fired. If he could even bring himself to fire. He couldn't believe he was doing this. He'd never fired at a live target, and never hit anything at seventy-five feet.

But the suspect didn't know that.

“Back away. Right now!” Green bellowed, and to his great relief the suspect slowly turned away. Green had just begun to breathe again when abruptly the man launched himself toward the edge of the roof. Shit! In that instant Sullivan burst through the rooftop door, took a running leap in pursuit, and brought them both crashing to the ground.

Behind him, Green heard a commotion as the paramedics rushed into Miller's room. After briefing them on the Elavil, he turned back to the window. Sullivan was just hauling the suspect to his feet and hustling him toward the door. Handcuffed and dwarfed by Sullivan, the suspect looked fragile and harmless. Not like a deadly killer at all.

“Brian!” Green called. “Take the wig off.”

Sullivan glanced over at him questioningly, then reached down to snatch the black wig from the man's head. A mass of pale blond locks slowly tumbled over the suspect's face.

“Gotcha, Miss Weeks,” Green said to himself with a smile of satisfaction.

“My father's on
his way up here, you know. You don't know trouble till you've met Dr. Lorrimer Weeks.”

Vanessa Weeks sat in the interrogation room, her arms crossed over her chest and her chin thrust out. Gone was all trace of the panic that had driven her to contemplate suicide. Her eyes were steady and her tone sure. A damn good actress, Green thought, remembering her convincing portrayal of grief when he'd first met her. Only her pallor betrayed her fear. She had been booked and had spent the rest of the night in a tiny metal cell, but that seemed only to strengthen her resolve.