The Arx (5 page)

“Speaking of Ralphie,” Frank said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but… did you find anything strange about him?”

She shrugged. “Not really. He had an unusual way of staring at you.”

“Like an animal.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Something’s missing,” Frank said. “Too bad we can’t get a copy of the Coroner’s report.”

“My ex-roommate from university is pretty high up in the Coroner’s office. I might be able to convince her to give me a copy.”

He leaned forward. “Could you do that? We don’t have much to go on, but it’s a start.”

He grabbed a sugar packet out of a bowl on the table, shook it a few times, and put it back.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

He took a large swig of his coffee. He needed a smoke. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, getting up from his chair. “I’ll be in touch. Let me know if you hear anything.”

A few days later, Frank was wakened by a loud noise. He found himself lying cross-ways on his bed, still in his clothes. At first he was confused and rolled over to swat his alarm. Then he realized it was something else: his phone was ringing. He staggered to his feet and reached for it.

It was Rebecca.

“My friend came through,” she said. “I’ve got a copy of the Coroner’s report, if you want to have a look.”

They agreed to meet back at her office. Frank formally met Judy, Rebecca’s receptionist.

“Wow, a real live detective.” She smiled, as Frank shook her hand and introduced himself.

“Ex-detective,” he corrected her, smiling.

Rebecca led Frank to her office and Judy brought them both coffee. When she was gone Rebecca closed the door and took a seat behind her desk. Frank sat facing her. She unlocked a drawer, pulled out a white plastic flash drive, and plugged the device into her computer. She swiveled the screen around for Frank to view.

“I’ve read it already,” she said. “The cause of death is asphyxiation, either accidentally or on purpose. The burning of the body occurred after death.”

Her face was drawn, like she was fighting to hold it together.

“The report’s not due to be officially released for a few days,” she continued. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast that you’d seen it.”

“My lips are sealed,” Frank said. “Can I borrow your mouse?”

Rebecca passed him the mouse. He flipped through the written records, scanning the comments and conclusions. He stopped at a page with photographs of the dead child. His stomach turned as he viewed the charred corpse. Even with his years of experience with death and mutilation he found the images shocking. He switched on his cop’s detachment and forced himself to look.

“Huh?” he suddenly said, zooming in on a photograph. “I’ll be damned…”

“What?”

“They’re gone.”

“What? What are gone?”

“The teeth.”

“Teeth?”

“There’s a clear shot here of the mouth and gums. There’s no sign of any teeth.”

“Well, of course…is that so surprising?"

"When I first met Gloria at Janet's place she had Ralphie with her, and we all went to look at him. She specifically pointed out that he already had two top incisors coming in. I saw them myself. She said they'd just come in within the past couple of days. She was kind of proud of it, like it made him special somehow."

"But the photographs show something different."

Frank nodded.

"Are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be without being officially involved and having more access to the records. I saw the teeth myself. We’ve got the report right in front of us. Teeth are actually pretty unusual for a kid that age.”

“So…what are you saying?”

He looked over at her. “There’s only one explanation – this isn’t Gloria’s baby.”

“What!” Rebecca gasped. “You mean to say that someone killed another baby and exchanged it for Ralphie? Why would anybody want to do that?”

Frank shrugged. “Somebody who lost their own baby, some childless couple with access to babies who died… It would explain why the corpse was burned. That could have been deliberate – to cover up the exchange.”

Rebecca reached out to swivel the monitor back.

Frank caught her arm. “Wait. I don’t know if you had a good look at these pictures before. They’re pretty graphic.”

She closed her eyes for a second and swallowed. “I saw them.”

She swiveled the monitor and cringed as she studied the photograph.

She shook her head slowly. “Is it possible that somehow the fire destroyed the teeth – or swelled the gums and made them invisible, or something?”

Frank absently picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser on the desktop. “I don’t think the fire would have destroyed them. Anyway that’s a pretty clear picture of the inside of the mouth. It doesn’t look like it suffered much damage at all. The gum thing – we’d have to talk to an expert to know for sure. It’s easy enough to confirm whether or not the baby was Gloria’s. Just compare the DNA.”

"God, this is terrible," Rebecca said. "So my poor sister killed herself thinking her baby was dead… There’s got to be some other explanation. I’ll talk to my friend in the Coroner’s office. Maybe she can give an opinion about whether there ever were any teeth, and she might be able to convince the Coroner to order a DNA test.”

The tapping of Frank’s pencil became insistent. “I know the guy in charge of the case. He’s going to fight like hell to get it closed and off the radar before he can screw it up any more than he has already. He’ll be in the shit as it is with Gloria’s suicide. He won’t want to do anything to prolong it.”

Frank’s tapping grew louder and more intense. He looked up. Rebecca was staring at him.

“What?” he said. Her eyes moved to the pencil. “Oh.” He replaced it in a cup on the desk and interlaced his fingers in front of him. “Sorry.”

“Frank,” she said. “I appreciate you trying to help, but maybe you’re not ready for the stress involved in an investigation.”

“What, because I tapped a pencil on the desk?”

“Of course not. But that’s an indicator of your stress level and your underlying psychological condition.”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about that. I’m here about the case – that’s all.”

“There
is
no case, Frank. You’re not on the force anymore, remember? This is just an attempt to assuage your guilt over what happened to Gloria.”

Frank’s hands separated and bunched into fists. “I know it’s not an official case,” he said, his voice rising. “Why do you people always have to read all this mumbo-jumbo into everything a person says? It’s just a manner of speaking. Sometimes words are just words, like ‘assuage’. Sometimes they don’t have any mysterious double meaning.”

Rebecca was still staring at him.

“And don’t give me this analytical crap about my underlying psychological condition,” he continued. “I’m fine. Let me get on with my work and maybe we can solve this thing.”

“You have no work, Frank,” Rebecca said, raising her own voice. “You’re out on stress leave. Your priority should be getting your own life back on track – dealing with what happened and putting it behind you. I want to find the person responsible as much as you do, but I’m more concerned about you. You’ll make things worse if you keep pushing. I should never have shown you the report.”

Frank’s lips tightened and he scowled as he pushed back his chair in a replay of his first visit. “This is a waste of time,” he said. “You’re more interested in busting my balls than finding some answers.”

“God, you’re pig-headed!” Rebecca said, her face turning red. “I’m just trying to help you. I’ve lost my sister and probably my nephew – I don’t need another tragedy on my conscience. Your behaviour makes it clear that you’re not ready, Frank. Continue on this path and you’ll be cruising for another breakdown.”

Frank rose from his chair with a sense of déjà-vu. “Thanks for the information. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

“Frank,” Rebecca said in exasperation. “Come on, be reasonable. Settle down, take a few deep breaths. Maybe look into the case in your spare time. Gloria and Ralphie aren’t going to be any worse off if you take it slow.”

“And what if Ralphie’s still alive?”

She looked at the floor.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he said, heading for the door. He strode out of the office, past a bewildered Judy, down the hallway, and into the glaring light of day.

“Never again,” he said as he stomped down the stone steps and into the cobblestone alley. “Never again.”

Frank Goes it Alone

After his blowout with Rebecca, Frank stepped through his front door and slammed it behind him, and vowed to continue his investigation alone. That night an unfamiliar dream jammed its way into his tortured sleep. A mother, on a picnic with her three children near a river, turned away for a few seconds to settle a quarrel between the two eldest. When she turned back, her youngest, a baby about nine months old, had disappeared without a trace.

When the hammering bell of the alarm clock shocked him awake he sat up in bed, scratching his head. A nagging familiarity in the dream floated around his psyche for a couple of hours, stubbornly refusing to surface.

Finally he remembered – it had really happened. It was a case he’d been involved in when he first became a detective. In the beginning they’d accused the mother, like Stocker had Gloria. They had no evidence, and no motive, so in the end they cleared her and assumed the kid had crawled into the river and drowned; his body was never found.

For the first time in almost a year, Frank waded into his debris-strewn home office, clearing a path to his desk. He swept the pile of newspapers and dirty laundry from the computer, and cleared a spot beside it.

On a whim, he sifted through old news stories online about kidnapped children. He found the one he’d dreamed about and confirmed the details. As he continued to dig, he discovered several incidents in the following years that were eerily similar to Gloria’s.

He put together a list of the cases with the greatest similarities and contacted a couple of colleagues at the squad who still respected him enough to stick their necks out and use police resources to gather more detailed information.

When he got the printed results a few days later, they made his hair stand on end. Since the case he’d dreamed about, at least five babies, ranging from three months to two years old, had gone missing in a manner similar to that of Ralphie.

In every case, either the body was never found or was mutilated to such an extent that it couldn’t be positively identified. In every case, the mother was implicated or made to believe some plausible accident had taken her child.

None of the investigators had considered that the cases might be linked.

The first panic attack struck when Frank was still blocks away from the Vancouver Homicide Squad – the place where he worked for fifteen years and had once felt more comfortable than in his own home. He’d parked a few blocks away so he could approach at his own pace. As he walked he fought for control, and won at least a temporary victory.

On the final block he willed himself across the street to the sidewalk in front of the squad building. Already he was trembling and his palms were slippery with sweat.

A half-block away he paused to confirm that none of his former colleagues were in sight. As long as he didn’t run into anyone he knew, he still had the option of aborting the operation and walking away. Contact with someone from his past life would drive him across a threshold; he’d be forced to push on and enter the squad room. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

He reached the stone steps leading up to the door, and paused one last time. Soon there would be no turning back. His muscles tightened and his throat went dry. With each step the pressure mounted, like he was descending underwater.

Just as his foot touched the top step the door swung open. He panicked, certain he’d see a familiar face. A middle-aged woman emerged – someone he’d never seen before. She stared at him, and he realized he was bathed in sweat and visibly shaking. He hurried back down to the street and into a nearby alley.

He fought the urge to run to the nearest bar. Instead, he walked a few blocks to minimize the chance of seeing anyone he knew, and slid into a booth at the back of a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. After three cups and several aborted attempts, he stood once again outside the imposing glass doors of his old workplace.

The squad room flickered like a heat-stroke hallucination as he pushed open the doors and stepped inside for the first time in more than a year. He drove himself forward. His mind was numb but his body reacted, muscles pulling against one another as if they were fighting to escape from an invisible straitjacket.

The movement around him slowed and shapes blinked, strobe-like, in and out of existence. Colours were amplified and the range of hues collapsed until the squad room looked like a panel out of a comic book. The surrounding clatter reverberated inside his skull. The smell of paper dust and body odour made him nauseous. He glanced at the path to his old office and shuddered as memories of that night pushed up inside him like the bubbling magma inside a volcano. By sheer strength of will he calmed his trembling hands.