The Ambitious City (24 page)

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?” he said, sounding uncertain that he’d gotten it right.

“Probably not, but I’ll take that as a yes. Bartender, another bourbon, please.”

“First, let’s settle up on what you’ve had.”

Penniman took out two twenties and put them on the bar. The bartender took one, turned to get the bourbon and poured another glass. He took the empty beer glass and filled it to the brim, put it in front of Penniman and walked back down the bar.

“I’ve been in friendlier bars,” Penniman said.

“Yeah, well, these guys got their reasons … So, you still in Iraq?”

“No, we moved on to Afghanistan, just about the time you came home, I guess.”

“No shit. Man, I lost touch with everybody so fast …”

“Pissed off?”

“Naw, naw, not that. Shit, I loved the army. No, I guess it felt … like being kicked off the baseball team and sent home. I got nothing, man. I got a small pension, a Purple Heart and this shithole.” He looked around the bar with blurry disdain.

“It’s not so bad. A lot of big bikes outside—one of them yours?”

“Naw, my money’s used up just makin’ it from week to week. Sometimes I ride with them, though.”

“More bikes than guys in here …”

“The rest are in the office at the back. The bikers actually own this place. Good guys, mostly.”

“Nice clubhouse.”

“Sure, yeah. Like, on weekends, man, there’s … I’ve counted forty bikes out there. Regulars too …”

“Forty. Now that’s an army in itself right there.”

“Seen their colours? OSMC. Two crossed swords under a skull. So cool, man—gold and black.”

“OSMC’s too close to USMC for me. You a member?”

“Naw, man—this here foot … It’s as tough to be a member here as staying in the army. But I’ve ridden with them.”

“You mean like down to the mall?”

“Yeah, right. These guys can fuck you up, man, and I ain’t talking teenyboppers down at no mall.”

“How’d you end up here? I mean, in Tonawanda and not in West Virginia.”

“Oh, I did go home. I was there after I got out of hospital. But after a while I heard that my sergeant had left the army and was here. Shit, man, I was on the next bus.”

“He’s a good guy?”

“The best. Bester. Bestest. I’da bin shot to pieces on that road, man. Like zippers tearing up the dirt—they had me. Sarge took out the two snipers on the roof and a guy in a doorway—it was like a fuckin’ movie. He drags me into a house, a guy runs at us out of nowhere, Sarge does this karate move—
boom
, down he goes—he was dead, man. Then it’s off with the boot, on with the field bandage. Next thing I know, I’m waking up and there’s a pretty woman feedin’ me Tropicana through a straw.”

“You were lucky.”

“Wasn’t luck—it was Sergeant Hughes, man.” Wenzel’s eyes were glassy. Penniman couldn’t tell whether it was from remembering or the bourbon—probably both.

“Still see him?”

Wenzel was about to answer, then glanced at the table by the
window and realized that all the men were staring at them. “Aw, man … sorry. I shouldn’t drink so much … I starts runnin’ my mouth and shit. Thanks for the drinks, though … And hey, man,” he said under his breath, “watch your back.” Wenzel stood up unsteadily and offered his hand.

Taking it, Penniman said, “You mean over there or here?”

The kid leaned closer. “Both.” Wenzel let go, straightened himself and called out to the bartender, “See ya, Wayners. You too, guys …” Then he limped towards the front door.

The bartender came over and retrieved the empty bourbon glass. “Get what you came for?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Sure, bud. You want another one?”

“No thanks. I’ll just finish this and be on my way. He seems like a good kid,” Penniman said, nodding towards the front door.

“Weasel? Why, what was he saying?”

“Nothing much. I asked him about the limp and he talked about how much he loved the army.”

“He gets the mouth shits when he drinks too much.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“In case I get someone in from Helmand province, what’s your name?”

“My name’s Bud. I thought you knew that.”

The bartender stared at him.

Penniman emptied the glass, retrieved the second twenty, pulled a ten from his pocket and slapped it on the counter. “Tip’s for you, and the vets.” He studied the men at the end of the bar and those at the table for a moment. Turning back to the bartender, he said, “Interesting place you got here. Might look you up when I get out. Not too many vet-friendly bars around anymore.”

The bartender put the ten in his pocket but didn’t answer.

T
HE LOBBY OF
Braithwaite Demography Incorporated was faux British all the way, with dark green panelled wainscoting topped by white and cream vertical-stripe wallpaper. There were hunting prints from the nineteenth century on every wall except the one behind the receptionist, where a large
BDI
hung in brass serifed letters.

As they sat in the deep leather chairs waiting for BDI’s president to appear, Aziz said, “I thought demographics was a new high-tech discipline run by math and computer geeks, but this looks like a men’s club in London. I feel naked without a cigar and a newspaper.”

“I’m not sure they’d let you into that kind of club,” MacNeice said, “naked or otherwise.”

“Yes, well, quite.”

MacNeice laughed.

A young woman pushed open the heavy oak door, nodded to the receptionist and said, “Dr. Braithwaite will see you now.
Please follow me.”

They followed her into another world, one of glass and steel. Offices around the perimeter defined an open inner space, roughly square; at its heart was a carousel of six flat-screen televisions hanging from the ceiling, tuned to various channels. Below them, at four narrow rows of white tables, people sat staring at desktop computers. Without exception, they were young. If they were curious as to who was being led through, they did a fine job of covering it. Most were wearing headphones and many were watching one of the overhead screens, which were also visible to the people in the glassed-in offices.

The assistant opened a door in the northeast corner; the glass of this office had been coated with a film that made it translucent. Presumably the boss needed privacy more than a view of the flat-screens. Not to worry—it turned out he had his own grid of four screens on the wall of his office.

A man of medium height and weight stood up from his desk and smiled as they approached. “I’m Roger Braithwaite, president and CEO of BDI.” He had pale skin and rosy cheeks, a close-cropped beard and short hair receding from his forehead.

MacNeice introduced himself and Aziz. They shook hands and Braithwaite gestured for them to sit, not in front of the desk, where there were chairs, but at a pine harvest table that was centred on the exterior windows. Outside was a screen of mature fir trees, beyond which MacNeice could see the Chevy in the parking lot. Braithwaite smiled, jostled a large stack of papers into shape and moved it off to the side before putting his hands together as if he were sitting in church.

Aziz put a large envelope on the table and pulled out several photos of the young man from the emergency ward, as well as his motorcycle.

“You know why we’ve come. And with this many televisions, you may already have seen these images,” MacNeice said.

Avoiding his eyes, Braithwaite picked up the photos.

“Mr. Braithwaite, I believe you know this man,” MacNeice said.

Braithwaite put down the photos, sat back in his chair and looked out to the trees and then back at the two detectives. “Yes, I do.”

“His name, please.”

“William Dance. He is—or rather, was—a demographer here. A quite brilliant young man.” He smiled.

“You saw the press conference where these images were first introduced?”

“Yes, I did, on one of the screens behind you.”

“Why didn’t you come forward?” Aziz asked.

“I’m sure you can appreciate why, Detective.”

“Actually, given what we suspect this man has been doing, I cannot appreciate why at all.”

“When did you leave the firm?” MacNeice asked.

“William graduated at the top of his undergrad class, did his MA and then came to work for me. He was with us for just over three years and left almost nine months ago.”

“What happened?”

“We’re not entirely sure. His parents had a cottage on one of the Muskoka Lakes, and both of them were killed in a traffic accident up there. Understandably, William appeared to be devastated. I told him to take all the time he needed, and he did—three months of it. Then he called and said he wasn’t coming back. No explanations.”

“Do you have his address?”

“His old one. He was living with his parents, but he’s moved out, which I found out only when I went by to see if I could persuade him to come back. I ended up talking to a neighbour who saw me standing by the gate, and the neighbour said that William was long gone, that he’d cut himself off, even from old family friends. Also that he’d likely come into a considerable amount
of money from his father’s estate. No one knows where he went.”

“And you’re certain these are photos of William Dance?”

“Oh, absolutely. And that’s his motorcycle—no question. It was the bane of our collective existence. He loved that thing, called it ‘The Avenger’ for some reason. So far as any of us knew, he didn’t know how to ride it without making a terrible noise.”

“So where is his parents’ place?”

“It’s 6 Spring Lane, a cul-de-sac out past the university, on the edge of the ravine.”

“Do you know if anyone on your staff has stayed in touch with Dance?”

“I doubt it. But several members of the executive team, my assistant and a few of the researchers in the pit—sorry, out there at the long desks—worked with him.”

“We’d like to talk with each of them as soon as possible. Detective Aziz, will you call Vertesi and Williams and get them over here?” Turning back to Braithwaite, MacNeice said, “We’ll need you to help organize this, as well as find us a private space to conduct the interviews.”

Braithwaite nodded. “That entire wall of offices is interview rooms—we do a lot of them for our research. You’re welcome to set up in any one of them.”

Braithwaite called in his assistant and asked her to organize the staff. When she left, Aziz went with her. MacNeice sat down again and took out his notebook.

Braithwaite stared at his hands on the table in front of him. “What’s happening is so grotesque … We’ll help in any way we can. I apologize for not coming forward. I should tell you that his neighbour on Spring Lane said William chased him away from the door when he went over to offer condolences. He actually screamed at this chap to go away and slammed the door. That was the night he disappeared.”

“So you had no clue he was unstable?”

“Well, I knew he was an odd duck.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

Braithwaite again put his hands together as he struggled for the right words. “He’s very … interior, if you know what I mean. In my experience, demographers, and mathematicians, tend to be somewhat odd that way. But with him there was something else—arrogance, perhaps? But William was always pleasant. We’re all in a state of shock to think that he might actually have anything to do with …” His voice trailed off, as if he was too decent to comment on young women being slashed to death.

Of Dance’s private life, Braithwaite said he knew nothing. “I mean, I met his parents occasionally at social functions when his father was CEO of Sterling Insurance. I knew he still lived at home—but so many young people do these days.” He gazed at his television screens, though they weren’t on—out of habit, or seeking inspiration?—before dropping his eyes to MacNeice. “He smiled a lot, you know, even when we were under intense pressure. William was so opaque … but there were many occasions when I thought how marvellous it would be to have several more people on staff just like him. You see, many are good at the math and some even shine in comparative analysis, but he had the ability to see it all as if it wasn’t just data but a narrative spread out before him.”

With all four of them involved, the interviews with BDI staff lasted just over two hours. When they were done, the four detectives sat in the interview room to review what they’d heard. While most of his co-workers thought Dance was a brilliant demographer and a benign presence, some said they found it—in the words of one young woman—“a bit unnerving” that he smiled so much. That young researcher went on to say that she assumed he was religious. When pressed to explain, she added, “Well, he had that fundamentalist
Christian thing, you know … like those women in Bountiful who are all married to the same guy and always smiling. It was creepy.”

According to another, Dance was a vegan and used that as an excuse not to go out with his co-workers, preferring instead to take his bagged lunch and tear off on his motorcycle—no one knew where. The only recreation he’d engaged in was video games on the office computers after work. “The ones I spoke to hated playing with him,” Williams said.

“Why?” Vertesi asked.

“Because he always won! Those games should be intense fun—lots of furrowed brows, yelling and laughing. But not for Dance. He was quiet, smiling the whole time. Once during a game, this one guy I interviewed said he asked Dance why he was always smiling, and his answer freaked him out. Dance said”—Williams looked down at his notes—“ ‘I wasn’t aware I was smiling. This is war. What’s there to smile about?’ The guy said Dance was dead serious, and smiling as he said it.”

“That boy should spend more time in front of a mirror,” Vertesi said. “Now that we have his name, we’ll get the motor vehicle registration for the Yamaha. With luck, they’ll have a current address.”

“Time to get out of here,” MacNeice said, looking at his watch—7:08 p.m.

“I’ll make some calls on that Muskoka traffic accident,” Williams added. “Shouldn’t take long, boss. We’ll join you at the house in max … three-quarters of an hour.”

Turning out of the parking lot, MacNeice and Aziz headed for 6 Spring Lane. Williams and Vertesi went back to Division to ensure that the face and name of a person of interest in the slasher killings—William Dance—was released to police forces and media across the province.