Grave Situation (45 page)

Obsessively, Herb wondered if the
cops were even close to him. He had no criminal record; if they
didn’t know that, Herb was sure they soon would. The only thing
that stood between him and arrest was the potential evidence Slick
had left behind.

He prayed his old friend had been
careful.

* * *

In the side mirror of the car,
David watched Herb close the front door of his farmhouse. As he and
Sam pulled onto the main road back to town, David plucked the mike
from the radio and called into dispatch.

“Copy, Andrew.”

“Go ahead, Chief.”

“Run a background on Herbert
Matteau of Acresville. M-a-t-t-e-a-u. I want to know everything I
can about him.”

46

Halifax, May 23

9:13 p.m.

Allan didn’t know what carnage lay
inside the apartment Stephen Eagles had rented, but the thought of
encountering a macabre collection of human parts rippled his skin
with a strange frisson.

At the rear of the van, Allan along
with Jim Lucas and Harvey Doucette, prepared for a potential
biological hazard. They put on Tyvek coveralls with attached hood
and booties over their street clothes and slipped their hands into
latex gloves. Jim handed out anti-putrefaction masks, but no one
put them on just yet.

The evening was cool and breezy;
under a crescent moon the sky glimmered with a light spattering of
stars.

Allan inhaled a deep breath as he
looked over the three-story brick building they were about to
enter. Most tenants, he saw, were still up. There were only a few
darkened windows.

“Since we don’t know what’s in
there,” he said, “we’ll treat this like any other crime scene. We
have only one chance to do it right.”

Jim checked his high-resolution
digital camera. “Understood, Lieutenant.”

Harvey gave a nod and picked up two
cases containing different field kits.

“Are we ready?” Allan
asked.

In unison, Jim and Harvey said,
“Yes.”

“Then let’s do it.”

The three ghost-like figures
crossed the parking lot toward the apartment building, their
coveralls rustling with each movement. Jim stopped briefly to
photograph the front entrance and then he followed Allan and Harvey
into a small foyer. Mailboxes covered the right wall; political
flyers littered the floor beneath them. Beyond a locked glass door,
one set of stairs went down, another went up.

The landlord who let them in was a
chubby man with a round face, close-set eyes and a smooth chin.
After a brief exchange of handshakes and introductions, the man led
them to the right apartment. Their footsteps echoed throughout the
stairwell as they climbed to the second floor.

Allan instructed the landlord to
stand off to the side, while Jim and Harvey took up positions on
either side of the door. He knocked, three hard raps that were loud
in the quiet corridor. By reflex he unzipped the front of his
coveralls and gripped his service pistol.

“Police,” he yelled. “Open
up.”

He waited. No response.

He knocked again and pressed his
ear to the door. He could hear no movement inside the
apartment.

“Okay, open it,” he told the
landlord.

The man produced a key and unlocked
the door.

“Thanks for your help,” Allan
said. “We’ll handle it from here.”

When the landlord left, the three
men put on their masks. Jim hit the light switch on the inside wall
and then he and Harvey entered first. Allan stayed in the doorway a
moment, looking around. The apartment was an epitome of bachelor
living—empty beer bottles and an open jar of peanut butter on the
kitchen table; dishes piled in the sink with food crusted on them;
clothes tossed over the backs of chairs.

The layout was simple—a kitchen
with a living room to one side, and next to that, a door that must
be the bedroom.

Jim began taking pictures to
document how everything appeared upon arrival. Allan stepped in and
closed the door behind him. He felt himself becoming warm, though
he didn’t know if it was the coveralls or the flare-up of
nerves.

He walked toward the refrigerator,
as it seemed the most promising place to start the search.
Anticipation quickened his pulse and his skin crawled at the
thought of what might lay inside. He reached for the handle with a
cautious hand and paused, lowering his head. A bead of sweat rolled
down his face. Grisly images burst in his mind—a set of hands, a
pair of eyes, a severed head.

Is that what I’ll find?

He braced himself and opened the
door.

There were bottles of pop and beer.
Chinese food boxes. An unwrapped plate of spaghetti. Packages of
deli meat and cheese.

Allan frowned.

Beside him, Jim snapped pictures of
the contents. Harvey removed a plastic trashcan from under the
sink. Piece by piece, he set a mixture of soda bottles, crumpled
paper towels, and the skeletal remains of a rotisserie chicken onto
a sheet of polythene he had lain out on the floor.

“Nothing here,” he observed,
poking through the items.

Allan moved to the stove. On a
burner sat a cast-iron frying pan with hardened bacon fat inside
it. When Allan pulled open the oven door, it grated in
protest.

Nothing.

Harvey carefully took out pots and
pans from beneath the counter, while Jim checked the cupboards.
Allan noted the cell phone charger on the counter by the toaster
and an empty phone jack in the wall by the table, but otherwise
couldn’t find anything else of importance.

The men moved the search to the
living room. There was a futon with socks lying on the floor in
front of it. A big screen TV that seemed too large for the room. A
multimedia cabinet filled with action movies and porn.

Allan picked up a Halifax phone
directory from the coffee table and thumbed through the pages,
looking for names or numbers that Eagles might have written in the
margins.

Again, nothing.

No phone either. Perhaps the
bedroom.

The men headed there
next.

Clothes were strewn on the floor,
sheets kicked off the bed. Jim hefted the mattress, checking
between it and the box spring. He then looked under the bed itself.
Harvey went into the adjacent bathroom.

Allan checked a black camera on top
of the dresser and found a half-used film in it. He had Jim
photograph it and then bag it for processing. From the top one
down, Allan began to look through the dresser drawers. When he
became satisfied that each one held no evidence, he’d pull it out
to check the underneath and the back.

As he reached the bottom drawer, he
found two pistols hidden under a pile of T-shirts. Jim shot
pictures of the guns in situ—a .45 Glock, the other a .40 Beretta.
When he finished, Allan brought them out and inspected the chambers
and magazines. Both guns were fully loaded.

After he rendered the pistols safe
for transport, Allan gave them to Jim who strapped each one into an
individual firearm evidence box. He packaged the bullets
separately.

Harvey came out of the
bathroom.

“It’s all clear in there,” he
said. “I found some pants and shirts in the hamper, but the pockets
were clean.”

Allan sighed. He felt uncomfortable
in the coveralls. His clothes under them were damp and stuck to his
skin. Breathing through the mask was becoming increasingly
difficult.

He made a final look around the
room. No phone in here either, he realized. No laptop or desktop
computer. How’d Eagles keep in touch with people?

One cell phone?

Allan stared at the closed bi-fold
door of the closet, the only place left to search. Moving toward
it, he hoped he’d find something of importance.

The closet was small in size.
Pants, shirts and jackets hung on hangers. Compact discs and a boom
box were stowed on an overhead shelf. Boots and shoes lined the
floor.

And in the corner a large
corrugated box.

He knelt down, shoving footwear out
of the way. He pulled the box out. Jim and Harvey gathered
around.

Allan opened the flaps and peered
inside the box. He shook his head and pulled off the mask in
frustration. That’s when the spicy aroma of one of the boxed
contents hit him.

He looked up at the two men behind
him.

“Not quite what we’re looking
for,” he said in a voice that sagged with disappointment. “Better
call in the drug unit.”

One by one, Allan began pulling out
the items from the box—a grinder, a scale, a block of hashish
wrapped in tin foil, numerous vials of hash oil and fifteen small
rocks of crack packaged in corner ties.

So what’d he do with the other body
parts?

Allan wondered if Eagles even had
them in the first place. Doubt, fatigue and frustration seeped
through him like poison. He pulled the hood back from his head and
ran a hand through his wet hair.

“I need to get out of these
coveralls,” he told Jim and Harvey. “Process everything we found.
Maybe dust some items in the sink and anywhere else you might think
of.”

“What are
you
going to do,
Lieutenant?” Jim asked.

Allan sighed. “I’m going to canvass
the building. See what I can come up with.”

He walked outside to the corridor
where he peeled off the gloves and coveralls. He piled them by the
doorway.

For the next hour, he went up and
down stairs, banging on doors, hoping for a little civil
cooperation. From those who answered, he learned that Eagles had
frequent visits by people of varying ages. Allan chalked it up to
the drugs. No one knew Eagles personally or the names of anyone who
had visited him.

Allan returned to the second floor
and gathered up the stuff he had left by the doorway. Jim and
Harvey were finishing up.

“I’m heading out,” Allan told
them. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He returned to his car. Behind the
wheel, he sank back in the seat and shut his eyes. He was tired, he
realized, his concentration wandering. He needed sleep, but the
thought of going back to his empty home only renewed his grief and
foreboding.

He glanced at his watch and saw it
was 11:23. He took out his cell and called David.

“How are you managing?” he
asked.

“We got a lot done.” David sounded
tired. “I just got home about half an hour ago. It’s been a long
day.”

For you and me
both
, Allan wanted to
say.

“What’d you find out about Stephen
Eagles?”

“He
was
the guy I
remembered,” David said. “Grew up here in Acresville. Moved away
when he was nineteen. His list of priors is quite extensive.” There
was the rustle of paper. “Goes back twenty-two years. Mostly drug
related in the last ten—trafficking, possession, laundering
proceeds. He was released from Springhill in August of last year.
Served half of a two-year sentence.”

“What for?”

“Possession.”

Allan sighed. “Old habits die hard.
We found drugs and drug paraphernalia at his residence.”

A note of surprise entered David’s
voice. “Shit. The man’s been on probation since he was let
out.”

“Unreal.” Allan felt a surge of
disgust. “Seems someone wasn’t doing their job.”

“Did you find anything else?”
David asked.

“Nothing related to our cases.”
Allan leaned his head back and thought a moment. “Were there any
violent acts associated with Eagles? Assaults or anything like
that?”

“No.”

Given the
picture forming in Allan’s mind, he wondered if
Eagles was even capable of murder.

David went on, “I
did find out that he had an account with
Sprint.
I’ll have the warrant for
the call records tomorrow, but it might take a couple of days for
those to get to me.”

Allan sat up. “That’s another thing
we didn’t find—his cell phone. You can always try calling his
number, see if someone answers.”

“Way ahead of you, son. Nobody
answered.”

“Triangulate it.”

“I’ll get on that in the
morning.”

“Did you track down his family
yet?”

“Yes,” David answered. “They live
here in Acresville. I dealt the notification and they took it
pretty hard.”

“Do they know
anything?”

“They never knew what their son
was involved in. Even after he got arrested at various times in his
life, it always came as a surprise to them.” David breathed in.
“They did give me the name of his best friend, Herb Matteau. His
only friend, according to the parents. He lives here in Acresville
too.”