The Ambitious City (16 page)

Lying in bed, he realized that his T-shirt was soaking wet with sweat. He slipped it off and dropped it onto the floor. And then it came to him—
They’re black coveralls, something he could easily slip on or off in a moment and appear to be someone else, just another guy on a motorcycle …

MacNeice sat up, squinting at the clock radio—5:12 a.m. He considered trying to fall asleep again and decided he’d had enough of sleep, and dreams. He got out of bed, splashed his face in the sink and then climbed on his stationary bike. By 7:40 he was driving up King Street on his way to Dundurn General to speak to Lea Nam. At 8:06 he was making his way through wards where breakfast was
being served, nurses were distributing painkillers and doctors were doing rounds; it was the best time to see the business side of the get-well factory.

The drapes were drawn in the room and only the upper wall light was on. Lea was sitting up, supported by the bed and several pillows. Her right eye was dark purple and swollen. The bandage from the previous day was gone, replaced by transparent adhesive closures running up at an angle away from her eyebrow. Her neck was still heavily bandaged. Her hair, blue-black and shiny, had been smoothed away from her forehead, likely by her mother, who was sitting in a chair at the far side of the bed. Seeing MacNeice, she stood up.

He offered his hand. “I’m Detective Superintendent MacNeice.”

“Ruby Nam.” She took his hand briefly and looked down at her daughter. “Can you tell me who did this?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, not yet.” Turning to the young woman, he said, “Lea, we met yesterday.”

She smiled. In spite of the bruises, MacNeice was struck by how beautiful she was. “I remember. I told you about the black bubble.”

“Yes. It was likely a motorcycle helmet.”

“Yeah, I was out of it yesterday. But I had seen someone near the athletic centre with a black bubble helmet and a motorcycle.”

MacNeice took out his notebook and pen. “Where exactly did you see him and how long ago?”

“I’ve been training for two big meets, so I’ve been on that trail every other day for the past three weeks. I can’t remember which days, but I saw an orange motorcycle parked on the grass by the ravine on at least three different days. There’s a parking lot at the end of the practice field—do you know it?”

“I do.”

“That’s where I saw him. He watched me run across the field to pick up the trail on the other side. I thought it was strange that
someone was there, and every time, he was standing near his bike looking over at me.”

“Tell me more about the motorcycle. Was it a scooter or a larger bike, like a Harley-Davidson?”

“Not a Harley—I’m familiar with those because there’s a guy on the team who has one. No, this was smaller. Not like a scooter, though. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do. Did it have fenders?”

“I can’t remember. The last time I saw him, I was on the road down to Princess Point, and it occurred to me how strange it was to keep seeing him there.”

“We’ll assemble a photo collection of motorcycles for you to review. Is there anything else, Lea?”

“How soon do you think—I mean, when do you think you can catch him?”

“We’re committed to finding him very soon, and you’ve been very helpful.”

Ruby Nam asked the critical question. “Do you think he’ll come after my daughter again?”

“I don’t think so. There are too many risks involved in making another attempt on your daughter. While she’s in hospital, and even when she returns to the university, city and campus police will have her under surveillance. I’ll have someone come by with the photos of motorcycles.” MacNeice again offered Ruby Nam his hand, which she took, he thought, reluctantly. He smiled at Lea, turned and left the room. The cop at the door stood up as MacNeice emerged; after he’d disappeared at the end of the corridor, he sat down again.

Within two hours the cop was on his feet again, as Vertesi approached with a large manila folder. He knocked before entering the room, and seeing how dark it was, asked the woman in bed if he could turn on the overhead lights. She said, “Okay.”

Vertesi introduced himself to Lea and her mother and reminded them of the reason for his visit. Using the rolling tray, he went through a series of flashcards of motorcycles, from dirt bikes to road hogs, from scooters to Japanese crotch-rockets.

She said, “Maybe,” several times, but at least it was always to a similar profile: two-stroke dirt bikes and road bikes. “I’m pretty sure it was orange … But then, it was always sunny, so it might have been red … I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be—you’re doing great. It’s easy to mix them up.” With each “maybe” Vertesi added to a separate pile of cards. When he’d eliminated all the “no” cards, he started going through the maybes again.

Twenty minutes later he was leaving the hospital with four bikes that qualified as maybes. One was actually blue and white, but Lea thought its profile made it a maybe. She had asked, “What kind of bikes are they?”

“All four are Japanese, but honestly, Lea, I don’t know much about them. Forensics will. You’ve been very helpful. Tell me, did you ever hear it idling or driving away?”

“No, sorry. I remember actually thinking, the first time, maybe it had broken down.”

When he returned to Division, Vertesi dropped the images off with Forensics before heading upstairs. When he reached the cubicle, Williams was leaning over Ryan’s computer. Deputy Chief Wallace was in the middle of a press conference about Lea Nam, much larger than the one he’d held for Ghosh. “They’re asking if there’s any connection between the two attacks,” Williams said.

Wallace didn’t hesitate. “That hasn’t been confirmed. The investigation is still in the early stages. However, nothing has been ruled out.” The cluster of microphones in front of him included two sports networks among the mainstream radio stations and
television channels—an acknowledgement of Nam’s celebrity as an athlete. Over his shoulder to the right was MacNeice, who had made the initial announcement before turning over the microphone to the Deputy Chief.

When MacNeice returned to the cubicle, Williams didn’t ask about the press conference but whether his boss had spoken to Wallace about additional help.

“Yes. He said, ‘Speak to your genie, then tell me who you want.’ ”

“Damn—I thought he was the genie,” Williams said.

“So I spoke to the genie.”

“And?” Vertesi asked.

“He said, ‘Tell your boss who you want, but remember the wage freeze.’ ”

“Have you got someone in mind? I mean, Swetsky’s gonna be hunting for the boys who killed the bikers we found above ground, so his team’s going to get bigger, not smaller. And that’s before he gets to the ones wrapped in plastic.”

“I do, but it’s a long shot,” MacNeice said.

“Fiza Aziz!” Vertesi blurted.

“Exactly.”

“No way. D’ya think she’d just up and leave the university?” Williams asked. But he had to concede that, given the circumstances, Fiza Aziz was not only the perfect candidate, she was the only candidate.

“I don’t know.”

“She’s not happy in Ottawa, boss,” Vertesi said. “We’ve been emailing back and forth for the past six months. Aziz was burnt out by our last case together. When the offer to teach criminology came, it just seemed like the right thing to do. But that was then …”

“What about the hiring freeze?” Williams asked.

“I might be able to swing calling her departure a sabbatical, a
leave of absence, or possibly even professional development—retroactively.”

“You haven’t called her yet?” Vertesi asked.

“No.”

Williams moved abruptly to his computer and opened the search engine. Vertesi asked, “What’s up?”

“An idea—maybe nothing. I just thought Aziz—a PhD, a detective, a member of a visible minority, a Muslim—remember the article the
Standard
did when she was promoted to DI? It’s a long shot, but Ghosh and Nam are both overachievers.” He tapped in
Taaraa Ghosh
. The first page to appear was filled with news reports of her murder, but halfway down the second page was an article published three months earlier: “New Canadian Places First among Nursing Students.” It included a photograph of her smiling as she checked the blood pressure of an elderly patient, who was also smiling. The article mentioned, among other things, the death of Taaraa’s father and brother in a terrorist bombing in Bangladesh.

Williams then entered Lea Nam’s name and hit the Return button. Again after the coverage of the recent attack came older articles, some of them from national sources, about her triumphs—or predicted triumphs—in cross-country.

MacNeice sat down at his desk, staring over at Williams’s screen.

“So you figure our perp is reading the papers to identify his targets?” Vertesi said.

“Why not? Narrows the field. They’re in the news because they’re great at something, and he’s got pictures for reference. So far he’s hit two of them …”

“It’s also something you could reverse-engineer,” MacNeice said.

“How so?” Vertesi asked.

“You enter ‘outstanding young immigrant women’ plus ‘Dundurn.’ Find the articles and you find the potential targets,” Williams answered. “Based on the first two, he’s not going to take
out an immigrant mom who’s in the news because her welfare cheque didn’t arrive and her kid has leukemia.” He looked over at Ryan. “Does that make sense?”

“The question needs refining,” Ryan said.

“You know how to do it, though?”

“Yessir. Soon as I’m done with the hospital, if that’s okay.”

“Keep going on the hospital footage,” MacNeice said.

He got up and went to Swetsky’s office, where he wouldn’t be disturbed. He wasn’t sure Aziz would say yes to his offer. He was pretty sure she had burned out not because of their last case but because of their mutual attraction—or distraction. That distraction had led to the death of a young man, a witness to a murder whom the perpetrators wanted to silence. They’d thrown him over the railing of a hotel atrium, twenty-one storeys above the lobby; he’d smashed through a glass ceiling and blown apart at her feet. Her belief in MacNeice had been extinguished at the same time, he feared.

He laid his hand on the desk phone, working up his nerve, then picked up the receiver and dialled. The telephone rang several times before she answered. MacNeice felt a rush hearing her voice again—so steady and assured. He said hello and, after an awkward silence, asked, “Is teaching all you hoped it would be, Fiza?”

There was a long pause, during which he heard her sigh, then, at last, chuckle. “No. No, it isn’t, Mac. I don’t know—teaching isn’t living, it’s like constantly preparing for life.”

“I’m not sure I understand …”

“I’m not sure I do either. The faculty are all criminologists, no doubt about that, and in the main they’re fine people, even dedicated people, but none of them has ever smelled fear or death or experienced the brutal mayhem that we—They’re concerned about tenure, Mac, and putting decks on their cottages in the Gatineaus.”

“But I would have thought that brutal mayhem was exactly what you didn’t want after our last outing.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

The phone line went quiet again, and MacNeice simply waited for her to continue. He studied a snapshot tacked on the wall above the phone: a smiling Swetsky on a dock somewhere triumphantly lifting a large muskellunge for the camera. On the border he had written:
The one that didn’t get away
. Was it a talisman that helped Swetsky deal with the grim realities of homicide? MacNeice realized he’d never seen the big man smile like that.

“Mac …”

“Yes?”

“Why are you calling?”

“To ask you to come back. Your job is open if you’re interested—and we really need you here.”

Aziz inhaled sharply; he could hear her chair creak as she changed positions. “You’re serious?” Then she said, “Of course, you’re serious.”

“You must have heard about the biker killings, which have already stretched our resources to the maximum. Someone is also slashing and killing young women here, Fiza. I’m very serious.”

“How much time do I have to think it over?”

“Fiza, we don’t have time.”

“But really, how soon would I have to get back to you? I don’t want to leave them in the lurch here, no matter how much I don’t think I’m suited to teaching.”

“By now I mean today.
Now
.”

“Okay—tonight.”

T
HEY WERE ALL
staring at him as he returned to the cubicle. He shrugged, then said, “We’ll hear by tonight if she’s coming back.” All of them knew better than to push him for more detail, though Vertesi said, “Maybe we should book her a hotel until she can get her stuff moved back.” MacNeice had to laugh, and they all joined in. Clearly they missed her almost as much as he did. “Let’s just hold off on that,” he said. “I don’t want to jinx it.”

Williams said, “Ryan’s ready to roll four weeks of Ghosh Emerg footage.”

They had set up a ringside seat for MacNeice right in front of Ryan’s central monitor. Ryan was off to the side of the desk, his keyboard and joystick in front of him.

Reviewing the footage was disorienting, like watching the grooves on a baggage carousel pass by after a long flight. The scenes began at normal speed, then Ryan would move the stick forward and they’d speed up, or he’d move it back and Taaraa would walk
by in slow motion. The detectives focused on the images as Ryan manipulated the joystick. They watched the changing cast of characters pass—fast, slow, normal—and after a while they sank into the rythmn of it so much that normal speed resembled crawling.

Every one of Ghosh’s interactions appeared to be pleasant, professional and compassionate, whether she had her arm around an old man with a walker or was easing an extremely pregnant woman into a wheelchair or was kneeling in front of a boy with a gash on his knee.

On the third pass MacNeice said, “Wait. Rewind it. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

Ryan, who’d been slouching, sat up in anticipation and shoved the stick down, the images blurring by.

“Stop.” MacNeice moved closer to the screen. Williams looked at Vertesi, who raised his eyebrows.