Grave Situation (18 page)

You don’t care
about anyone,
she wanted to say.
A peddler of human misery.

Instead, she turned away and drew a
breath. She stared down at the bag of powder in her hand. Old
friend. Old enemy.

Pain crossed her face. With a
shudder she stuffed the bag into her pocket. The door closed behind
her. Then the outside light went dark.

As she walked back to the cab, the
drizzle became a shower.

“Take me home, please,” she told
the driver as she climbed into the back.

Slumping in the seat, she shut her
eyes. The crushing weight of what she had just done bore down on
her. She felt pathetic, a disgrace, sick at how she had betrayed
herself and others. The lost woman she had once been had returned
to claim her.

The cab jerked with sudden
acceleration. Gripping the armrest on the door, Cathy gritted her
teeth. There came a tightening in her chest, nausea in her
stomach.

After a few moments, she opened her
eyes. Beyond the rain-streaked window, she watched the flavor of
the neighborhood turn seedy, dilapidated, an eyesore on the city.
At the next corner, the cab stopped.

Over the hiss of windshield wipers
came the driver’s voice. “That’ll be fifteen, ma’am.”

Counting her money, she realized
she would have less than ten dollars left to her name after she
paid the fare. But for some reason, none of it mattered.

After receiving her change, she got
out of the cab. Hunched forward, hands trust into her pockets, she
walked slowly toward the front steps of her apartment building.
Climbing them, her legs felt shaky. Before she went inside, she
paused briefly on the stoop to look at her reflection in the door.
Maybe it was only an illusion, but through the small beads of
rainwater running down the glass, Cathy couldn’t see the tears
running down her own face.

23

Halifax, May 12

10:01 p.m.

The bleakest of nights.

Allan knew it was going to be a bad
one when he read the address on his pager. Returning here felt like
déjà vu, though the circumstances were different this time. Sitting
in his car, he didn’t want to go inside.

Around him, the night was deep and
still. Rain had fallen all day, ending only a short time ago, and
beneath the wash of streetlights everything had a glassy sheen.
There was a hiss of tires as a truck rolled by. In the rear-view
mirror, Allan watched the taillights recede into the urban maze. He
looked through the passenger’s side window at the apartment
building with foreboding, uncomfortable of what he might find
inside.

He sighed.

He left his car and crossed the
street, flashing his badge at two officers standing guard outside
the building.

Time.

Why was it important? He looked at
his wristwatch. 10:06 p.m. As he climbed the front steps of the
apartment building, he felt a coat pocket for the shape of his
spiral. He realized he hadn’t recorded his arrival. How could he
have forgotten?

The glass of the entrance door
caught his reflection in the red and blue strobe of nearby police
cars. It stopped him for a moment.

Funny, he thought, how tired he
looked. Nearly as exhausted as he felt.

Slowly, he gripped the metal
handle. Before going inside, he steeled himself.

He went up to the second floor and
maneuvered his way through a crowd of curious tenants. Many were in
nightclothes. Their eyes seemed transfixed on an open doorway down
the hall. Outside it, an officer was standing guard. He was young,
leanly muscled. His body was erect, his eyes keen. Beside him stood
another man, squat and pear-shaped. A fringe of gray hair circled
his bald crown.

Haltingly, Allan approached the two
men and took the officer out of the earshot of others.

“Give me the details,” he said
softly.

“The subject is a young woman,”
the officer said. “Early to mid-twenties. We haven’t established
identification yet. Looks like your classic overdose, Lieutenant.
There is drug paraphernalia on site.”

“Drugs?
” Allan reached for his
spiral and pen. “Who called it in?”

The officer gestured toward the
pear-shaped man. “Mister Carlson. The landlord. He got a call
earlier from the elderly neighbor across the hall. She became
worried about the tenant living here after she noticed the
apartment lights on for the past couple of nights. She came over
several times and knocked, but there was no answer.

“She called Mister Carlson and he
arrived at nine-twenty. And after receiving no answer, he let
himself in.

“The call came over my radio at
nine thirty-five. I arrived at nine-forty. EHS came on the scene
three minutes after me.”

“Who called EHS?”

“Mister Carlson.”

“Did you check for vitals before
their arrival?”

The officer gave a grim expression.
“I never touched the body. There was no need. It was obvious the
subject was deceased.”

For a moment, Allan hesitated. He
felt himself wishing the officer would stop talking.

I need to get away from all
this.

“Did the ambulance crew touch or
move the body?” he continued.

“No, sir. I told them they weren’t
needed, so they left.”

“Where’s the subject?”

“The first bedroom on the
left.”

“Has the medical examiner been
notified?”

“Yes. Should be en
route.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

After turning to a blank page in
his spiral, Allan walked over to the landlord and introduced
himself. The man accepted his extended hand with a lifeless
grip.

“Gerald Carlson,” he
replied.

“You found the
subject?”

“Yes.”

“Can you show me some
identification?”

The landlord gave a slight nod
toward the first officer. “I already went through this with
him.”

“Sorry, but now you need to go
through it again with me.”

A red flush appeared on Gerald’s
face. He reached into a back pocket and withdrew a leather wallet.
From that he produced his driver’s license and handed it to
Allan.

He wrote down the details in his
spiral.

“Tell me everything.”

Gerald cleared his throat. “Well,
earlier this evening, I got a call from Missus Layton from across
the hall…”

“What time did Missus Layton call
you?” Allan interjected.

“About ten to nine.”

“And what did she tell
you?”

Gerald folded his arms. “She told
me she became nervous after realizing the lights had been on for
the last two nights.”

“You have a key to the
premises?”

“Yes.”

“At what time did you arrive
here?”

“About nine-twenty.”

“Was the door chained when you
unlocked it?” he asked.

“Yes.” Gerald pointed to the
carpeted floor just inside the open doorway where pieces of a
broken chain and a splinter of wood laid. “I called in three times.
Waited probably a couple of minutes. Then I shouldered the door in.
It was obvious something was wrong.”

Allan’s gaze wandered into the
apartment. Down the hallway he saw Sergeant Malone standing in
front of an open doorway. From the room came flashes of a
photographer’s camera.

Allan swallowed and said, “You
should’ve called us first.”

Fleetingly, the man touched his
forehead. “I wasn’t thinking at the time.”

“You placed the call to
nine-one-one?”

“Yes.”

“Did you use the phone on the
premises to place that call?”

A brusque nod. “I did.”

Allan winced.

Great. More possible evidence
contamination.

“What time was this?” he
asked.

“Nine-thirty, nine
thirty-five.”

“What lights were on upon your
arrival?”

Gerald watched Allan’s pen moving
across the page. “The living room, the kitchen and the one
bedroom.”

“The bedroom where the subject was
located?”

“Yes.”

“Did you touch the
body?”

“I checked for a pulse. But she
was stone cold.”

Allan handed back the license.
“Okay, Mister Carlson. Thank you. That will be all for
now.”

“Do you want to talk to Missus
Layton?”

Briefly, Allan paused to take in
the elderly woman standing outside her open doorway across the
hallway. She was perhaps in her late sixties, he guessed, with a
nimbus of white hair and so thin that he found it painful to look
at her.

“No need,” he said, and walked
into the apartment.

With faltering steps, he approached
Malone, who passed him a clipboard. Allan timed into the
scene.

“After these past four days,”
Malone remarked, “I’m looking forward to the next four
off.”

“In need of a little R and R?”
Allan gave back the clipboard. “A few beers and barbeques on the
back deck will help.”

A faint smile started at the
corners of the sergeant’s mouth. “Damn straight.”

“So what do we have?”

“Straight-up suicide,
Lieutenant.”

The words, Allan found, jolted him.
Although it was something he had feared when the call had come
across his pager, it still took him by surprise.

In a tight voice, he asked, “How’d
we come to that conclusion so soon?”

Malone moved out of the doorway,
looking to his right. “She left a note.”

Allan followed the sergeant’s gaze.
There, on top of the dresser was a neatly folded sheaf of paper.
Jim Lucas stood near it, shooting photos. When he noticed Allan, he
lowered his camera and picked up an unsealed envelope beside the
note.

“This is addressed to you,
Lieutenant.” Jim held it up, pausing.

Before taking it, Allan checked his
pockets for latex gloves and realized he had forgotten them in the
trunk of his car.

Goddamnit
man
, he thought, wincing at his own
carelessness.

Jim got him a pair and Allan put
them on.

The face of the envelope had
Allan’s name scribbled across it. He stared at it,
swallowing.

Eyes narrow,
Malone asked. “You
knew
the subject?”

Allan didn’t look up.

“Only briefly,” he answered
quietly.

He turned up the flap on the
envelope and saw inside the note he had left Cathy Ambré only two
nights before. For a moment, he didn’t take it out. When at last he
did his fingers felt clumsy. Beneath his own words, the young woman
had written:

Thank you, Lieutenant Stanton. I
was surprised to find your note when I got home. We must’ve just
missed each other. Honestly, I thought about calling you. I really
did. But I’m afraid that I’m beyond anyone’s friendship or kind
words right now. I’ve tried to pick up the pieces of my life and
move on, but I’ve found it to be harder than I could have ever
imagined. I know that might be difficult for you to understand.
There are so many things about me that you just don’t know. You
were right when you said a doctor never treats his own illness. I
simply couldn’t treat mine either.

I wish you all the best. The world
needs more people like you.

God bless,

Cathy

P.S. Please find my
sister.

For a moment, Allan didn’t move.
Then he handed the note and envelope back to Jim for
processing.

“We found the bathtub full of
water,” Sergeant Malone was saying. “There is a razor blade on the
rim.”

Allan half listened. He began to
move toward the bedroom, numb.

“We can only surmise what her
intentions were,” Malone continued. “Had she decided to shoot up
before ending her life in the bathroom?”

Only when Allan stood in the open
doorway did he see Cathy Ambré. She lay supine atop the bed, arms
flung out across the sheets. Her face was turned to one side. Her
mouth was partly open. Her eyes were closed, as if asleep. Beside
her was a drug user’s paraphernalia—a short length of rope used as
a tourniquet, a box of alcohol swabs, cotton balls, a lighter, a
spoon with a tinged underside, a needle and syringe. On the floor
next to the bed lay a tiny clear bag, its inside marred with a
talcose residue.

“Are you receiving
treatment?”

“I went cold turkey…”

“It’s still hard to do without
professional help…”