Ogrodnik Interior 2.0c (2 page)

The detective paused for a moment, and Elliot imagined him looking toward the ceiling and squinting to squeeze out an accurate recollection. “No. No, we found them in his shirt pocket zipped inside his jacket.”

“I see. That explains why they weren’t broken. Sorry to bother you at home, Yves. I was just curious,” Elliot replied wanting to finish the conversation quickly.

Before he could hang up, Yves interjected, “It sounds as though you’re going to investigate the murder on your own. This isn’t one of your schoolbook scenarios. This could take you down a dangerous path, so I caution you to be careful.”

“Good night, Yves.”

“If you think I can help, call me.”

“Good night again, Yves.”

 
Elliot sat back in his chair and processed what he just learned from the detective.
Dad was almost blind and could not function without his glasses. The killer would not have taken the time to put them in Dad’s top pocket and then zip up his jacket so that means Dad must have done it shortly before the murder. Why would he do that?

Elliot was starting to form a mental image of what may have transpired on the mountain that day and had no doubt that the police investigation had come up with the wrong theory. Now that the seeds of doubt had been sown, it was time for him to shed his professor’s cap and do the job that he’d been preparing to do for most of his life.

He needed to know what his father had been involved with in the days and weeks prior to his death. His father’s house was a good place to start looking, but he decided it was too late to head over that night. There were a few things he wanted to do before going to the house, so he planned an early morning start, went to bed and thought about tomorrow’s plan.

I grabbed the back stay line to steady myself against the wind and shielded my eyes from the salty sting of the ocean spray. The cold wind whipped across the water and tore at my clothes in desperate snatches.

A faint protest of birds in distress hung on the wind and, although they were distant, I knew their calls were meant for me. The pallid sky yielded no clues as to their source, so I abandoned my skyward search and turned my gaze downward to the sea. My small boat plunged into a trough, nearly sending me overboard and, as I regained my balance, I found the source of the cries. It was not birds after all but the soulful cries of a female body floating before me, begging to be saved. I lost sight of her when she dipped into another trough, and when she crested on the next wave, I saw it was my wife, Sarah. The absurdity of the situation struck me. Sarah was dead, but I put that thought aside without further analysis in order to fulfill my duty. Our eyes locked as I yelled her name and, with hand extended, she bobbed within reach. Our fingers were only inches apart, but despite my best efforts to close the gap, we came no closer. I watched in horror as she slid by me on the next wave and then slipped below the surface, only her outstretched hand now visible. I tried in vain to jump in, to swim after her and drag her back to safety, but my legs would not obey; I was rooted to the boat, unable to move. When the hand disappeared behind the next swell, I let out a tormented cry.

Elliot bolted upright in bed filling his lungs in frantic intakes and waited for the palpitations to ebb. The face of the clock stared out from the night table blinking 6:20 a.m.
Not bad
, he thought. He often awoke from his nightmares in the middle of the night. At least today, he wouldn’t have to pretend to go back to sleep; it was already time to get up. There was a time not so many years ago when his nightmares were the exception. They gradually became more frequent and now, especially since the death of wife three years ago, they were the rule. The visions that haunted his dreams involved different people and places, but they all shared a common theme. He understood what they meant and why they came to him. He just didn’t know how to stop them.

He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and looked in the mirror. He had to duck down to see his entire head. He was tall but not unusually so. The mirror placement had been a compromise between his six foot three body and Sarah’s five foot two. He wondered why he hadn’t yet re-adjusted the mirror.

His boyish good looks still existed if one looked past the weathered mask that life had started to cover his face with. The dark brown hair that once matched the color of his eyes had softened over the years to a shade that was more like that of a tarnished penny. A few years ago, his hairline had started its slow and relentless march away from his face, and it seemed to him to be gathering momentum. The defiant hairs around the temple that refused to retreat were turning grey as if his body were telling them
fallback or die
.

Despite feeling good this morning, he looked tired and overdrawn. The man staring back at him in the mirror had carried too much baggage for too long, but he also saw a
spark that wasn’t there a few days ago. The idea of leaving school and investigating his father’s murder had ignited a fire somewhere deep within.

A shower seemed like a waste of time, so he brushed his teeth, wet his hair, dressed and stopped for a McCoffee on the drive over to the base of Mount Royal. Elliot found a parking spot close to the starting point of the trail that his father had walked up on the last morning of his life and started to climb.

He felt the strength in his glutes as he powered up the steep stairs and refused to slow down until he fell into a regular cardio rhythm. By the time he reached the top of the trail, he was breathing heavily and wished there were more stairs to scale. The three times a week he went to the Karate dojo kept him flexible and in reasonable shape, but he needed more to really push himself. For years he had been an avid hiker. He, Sarah, and Jake would often travel to destinations that offered demanding hiking trails. Some trips were as near as the Laurentian mountains directly to the north of Montreal and some as far away as Europe or South America. He’d forgotten how much he relished those hiking trips and thought about how much his life had changed over the past few years. He also came to the realization that just because some things he used to cherish were no longer in his life, it didn’t mean that he shouldn’t pursue his own desires.

Elliot turned to take in the view, just as he knew his father would have done, and waited for his heart rate to slow down before moving on. This was the first time he had come up to look at the scene of the crime and, although he didn’t know exactly where the murder had occurred, he’d been on this trail a number of times and, based on the police report, he had a good idea of where it had happened. He came over the last of the pitches and then slowed down to scrutinize the trail for signs of the crime. When he turned the next corner, he saw the remnants of yellow crime scene tape fluttering from a tree limb like a beacon from the dead. There was no chalk line on the path as you might see on a city sidewalk, just a discoloration in the general shape of Australia that he thought might be a blood stain but was probably just a dark patch of earth.

He soaked in the scene for a few moments as he stood by the trail and allowed his thoughts to stray as he recalled some memories of his father. Remembering the good times only strengthened his resolve. Justice would be served.

The walk up the trail and the visit to the murder site was something Elliot wanted, and needed, to do. He considered it the final stage of grieving and knew it would put closure on the death of his father and allow him to move on personally. This was also the place where his investigation would begin.

The primary goal of the walk up the trail was not to visit the murder scene and hunt for clues. The investigators would have done a complete examination of the surrounding area and, even if they missed something, a month of rain, people, and small animals would render any trace evidence left behind unusable. His primary goal was to look at the lay of the land and determine the logistics of how the killer had accomplished his task. The police did not view the case as a planned murder and therefore would not have investigated with the same rigor or methodology that he would be using.

After climbing the trail and taking note of the sightlines, Elliot discounted the possibility that the killer had followed his father. It wasn’t plausible that the killer would follow him all the way up the mountain only to kill him at the top. There were plenty of opportunities to do the deed along the way up, so why complete the strenuous climb? It was far more likely that the killer knew his father’s routine and was waiting for him at the top. He continued along the trail in search of the parking area at the top of the mountain. He knew of a public parking spot at the place called the Lookout, or as it is known in Montreal, the Belvedere, and made his way over to it. The Lookout was on the main road that traversed the mountain and was formed by a pull out where the road widened to accommodate about twenty parking spots. At the front of the parking spots was a sidewalk area bounded by a sturdy guardrail on the down slope side. It was a popular area for tourists and sightseers and offered a spectacular view of downtown Montreal and the St Lawrence River valley beyond.

There was no charge to park there, thus no parking meters were needed. A quick scan of the surrounding parking area also showed Elliot that no security cameras were mounted on the light standards, so if the killer did park there, there would be no electronic record of it. He sat on the guardrail for ten minutes and silently counted the joggers, walkers, and cyclists as they passed. He was already familiar with the roads that crossed the mountain and knew that the Lookout parking lot was the only parking area on the east side of the mountain. Parking on the road would be unlikely as it would surely attract the attention of the parking police, so unless the killer was dropped off and picked up, he would have parked here. Satisfied that he had a good feel for the foot traffic going past, Elliot started the walk back down the trail to his car and called his partner, Rivka Goldstein.

“Morning, Riv, did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Mornin. No, not a bad time. Just watching the hair on my legs grow.”

“I thought you Ironman types didn’t grow hair on your muscly parts?”

“That’s true. Hair doesn’t grow on steel. No wonder this is so boring.”

“I know we have a few pokers in the fire, but I have something important that will require our undivided attention.”

“What, did we get a job to find a chaste priest or something?”

“No, and you won’t be peaking in bedroom windows on this one either. We’re going after my father’s killer,” he said with more zeal in his voice than intended.

“Fey! The prodigal son wakes up. I’ve been waiting for you to get your brain back in gear and start looking into this one. The old man deserves better than that sideshow the police called an investigation. I’m almost ashamed to admit I was once one of them. When do we start?”

“I’m on my way to the university now but will be back at the office later. Let’s meet around noon. I’ll pick up lunch on the way and get you up to speed.”

“See you there, Chief.”

Elliot parked in his assigned spot at the university and checked to see if Randy Mesman’s car was also there; it was. Randy was the Dean of Social Sciences, Elliot’s boss at the university and his best friend. He knocked on the door once and entered without waiting for a response “Morning, Randolph.”

“Hey, Stretch, what are you doing here? I haven’t seen your sorry ass in this early since Christ was a cowboy,” said Randy as he looked up.

“Christ was a cowboy? I must have missed that Testament.“

“New Testament, in the Book of James, Jesse James.”

“Ha-ha. And I can say the same for you. 8:30 and you’re already buried in paper,” said Elliot as he folded his lanky frame into the chair.

Randy pushed himself back from his desk and looked over at his friend. “So… We haven’t talked in a while. How have you been coping since the funeral?”

“I’m doing okay. I decided I’d let the investigation run its course. It’s now complete, and I don’t care for their findings, so I’m going to investigate it myself, which is the reason I’m here.”

“What did they come up with?”

“After three weeks of half-assed research, they’ve come up with the theory that it was a robbery gone bad. I don’t buy it though. “

“Oh?” replied Randy.

“The robber didn’t take Dad’s credit cards nor did he take his Rolex.
Their theory was that during the course of the mugging, the thief killed my father by a blow to the head. Maybe he didn’t mean to kill him; maybe he just wanted to knock him unconscious. We’ll never know. He then took Dad’s wallet, stole the cash and tossed the wallet in the bushes. What they couldn’t explain
was the broken jaw he suffered during the robbery or the complete absence of foreign fingerprints on the wallet. The coroner confirmed that the killing blow came from a big rock to the side of the head, and we know the rock was not used to break the jaw. Did the robber punch Dad and then hit him with the rock? Seems like overkill if all he wanted was the cash. And then there are the fingerprints on the wallet. They said that the only fingerprints on the wallet were Dad’s. That means the robber didn’t wipe it down, so was he wearing gloves? That indicates pre-meditation. In any event, the police theory doesn’t add up for me, so I’ll investigate on my own to see what I can come up with.”

“You’re right. It sounds fishy,” Randy replied and then let the silence hang for a moment.

“What else is going on in your life?”

“Not much really. I’ve been clearing up my dad's affairs and waiting for the investigation to finish. I know I’ll have to sell his house and most everything in it, but right now, those aren’t a priority for me.”

Randy hesitated for a moment before venturing into an area he knew would be sensitive. “Are you seeing anyone?”