Woman Chased by Crows (52 page)

“I think you should get somebody over to that pawnshop. He may have gone after Louie's kid.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right, I'll cover that. You stay the hell away from it. Got me?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Do your goddamn paperwork and have it on my desk in the morning.”

“Yessir. What about the dancer?”

“What about her?”

“Should I bring her in?”

“What for? She do something?”

“No, but . . .”

“We've got enough problems without nursemaiding that crazy woman. Tell her to get her ass back up to Dockerville. If we need her, let your pal Crean round her up.”

“Yessir. What about the other one, Sergei?”

“Jeezuss! It's never going to end with these frickin' Russkies, is it? Tell him to keep himself available. Tell them all to keep themselves available.”

“And Dilly's wife? His assistants?”

“Stay the hell away from
everybody
. We'll handle it from here. You've caused enough goddamn wreckage for one night.”

“She's still got the ring. And the assistant was holding some package for O'Grady. Might have been a gun.”

“Christ! We're
on
it. Hear me?
We're
on it. Not you. You do some paperwork and stay the hell out of my hair for a while! Full report. On my desk. 09:00. Got it?”

“Yes, Captain.”

After that it was a long night.

A very long night.

First on the scene were two uniformed cops Adele didn't know well and didn't like much, who didn't know what the hell they were doing there anyway. Dylan O'Grady wasn't a fugitive, wasn't charged with anything and the only element worthy of police attention was an unsubstantiated claim by one of his assistants that he “maybe” had a handgun in his possession, although Cam Gidrick hadn't actually seen the weapon, only inferred it from the weight and shape of the “package” he'd been asked to keep in the campaign car. Said car was “possibly” being driven by the missing candidate, although no one had actually seen him drive away in it.

More troubling to the campaign was the sudden swarm of reporters who smelled blood in the water and were hungry for information. Neither Adele nor Stacy had any intention of helping them out. The campaign organizers and aides weren't any more forthcoming and Cam Gidrick had been admonished by Stacy early in the proceedings to keep his mouth shut.

The cobbled together semi-official statement issued by the campaign manager was a cryptically worded paragraph suggesting that the candidate had suffered a “sudden attack of indigestion.” This prompted many in the gathering to experience sympathetic stomach cramps. Most blamed them on the shrimp platter.

Sergei Siziva immediately demanded around-the-clock police protection. Adele told him to move to a hotel, and no, she wasn't going to pay for it. Anya told them she'd be catching the morning train back to Dockerty and would spend the night in her hotel room, and no, Sergei wasn't invited to share it, although she offered to lend him money to get a room of his own.

And after an hour of what seemed an interminable inconclusive explanation, Stacy and Adele were allowed to depart the room, leaving behind a crowd abuzz with conflicting opinions of what exactly had transpired. The only consensus seemed to be that a formerly secure federal seat was now very much in play.

Stacy decided to spend another night on Adele's couch. She not only wanted to help her friend craft the necessary report for the morning, she also had a few ideas she wanted to talk out.

“Okay, I'm just spitballing here.”

“Spit away, partner.” Adele was pulling the cork on a bottle of her favourite Spanish wine.

“Paul was a pretty good cop, right? I mean he bent the rules, but he didn't mess around.”

“Okay, that's how I'd like to remember it.”

“So what happens if a cop loses his weapon? What does he do? He reports it, right?”

Adele stopped with the cork half out. “Oh yeah. Immediately.”

“From the start we've been stuck on the idea that Paul's gun was used to shoot Nimchuk. Then we sort of proved, at least to our satisfaction, that it wasn't the gun, that it just as easily could have been Dylan's gun.”

Adele finally got the cork out but didn't pour herself a drink. She was still mulling the implications. “Keep going.”

“So if it wasn't his gun, what reason could he have for not reporting it missing?”

Adele finally poured her flowered water glass half full of Spanish wine and had a long drink. She lowered the glass. “No reason I can think of.”

“The first time we hear that his weapon's gone is up in Dockerty. And the only person's word we have is the woman he was having his little fling with. She claims she never saw it.”

“So?”

“So who could have got their hands on it? The waitress he boinked after lunch? Edwin Kewell who shot him through the window?”

“Or the shrink.”

“So what would she want with a gun? She planning on offing her hubby?”

“Hold that thought.” The phone was ringing. Adele had another gulp of wine before she picked up. “Moen,” she burped. “Wha? When? Where? Oh shit. Yessir. Yessir. In the morning.” She hung up and looked at Stacy. “They found him,” she said.

“He in custody?”

“Nope. He's in the morgue. Spotted his car out at the Leslie Street Spit, parked on the grass. Looks like he blew his brains out.”

“Oh cripes.”

Friday, March 25

It was a fine and fresh Friday morning. Almost April. Less than a week until opening day of the baseball season. That was something good.

Far less good was the news of Dylan O'Grady's suicide the previous night. It had yet to hit the newspapers, but the early television broadcasts had been filled with speculation as to why the man had done such a thing.

Orwell needed a walk, a good brisk walk across the fields to clear his mind. The dogs
always
needed a walk; across the fields, through the woods, over the footbridge across the stream, back along the side road, down the gully, up the other side, as much as they could get, and certainly more of a walk than Orwell was prepared to lavish upon them, that was certain. But they would happily walk to the ends of the earth if he had a mind to hike that far, and this morning Orwell was prepared to walk at least as far as the footbridge. It would do him good he was certain. He was getting fat. Well, not exactly
fat
, not
obese
, definitely
not
obese, but, face it, he hadn't lost any of his “winter weight,” that's what he was calling it,
winter
weight, as opposed to
summer
weight, which, for the past few years had been roughly the same as what he carried during the cold months.

Yes, it was a nice morning and he was out of the house and moving in plenty of time to see the sun come up from the top of the second rise. A bright clear morning: birds, breeze, the air rich with the smells of things starting to grow, things beginning to come back from the cold and dark. And to kill yourself on such a morning. To miss even one more sunrise. Orwell couldn't begin to grasp such a thing. He knew, even without referring to the crumpled faith of his childhood, that such a thing was a terrible sin. Despair. One of the great sins, albeit not listed among the Seven Deadlies, but perhaps the
worst
sin, giving up entirely, ceasing to believe in even the possibility of salvation. Or if not salvation of the soul, at least in the value of life, the worth of one more breath, one more sunrise, one more walk with the dogs, one more conversation, meal, idea.

And dammitall, he wasn't about to waste a fine morning such as this one letting it drag his spirits down. The dogs were enjoying it; even Borgia had been inspired to break into a trot from time to time, and Duff had battered himself ragged charging through brambles and hedgerows, splashing across the stream, digging furious holes in the muddy earth. His paws would definitely need sluicing when they got back.

Something else was nibbling at the back of Orwell's mind, something vague and unresolved. Tomashevsky, that was it, Tomashevsky and the missing investigator on his list. Her name, according to Tomashevsky, was Lorena Wisneski.
Doctor
Lorena Wisneski, an art historian and retrievals expert. He wished Stacy was back. Like to set her loose on that one. He wished he'd had the presence of mind to mention it to her during last night's phone report. That would have prompted her return forthwith he was certain. Forthwith, indeed. Just the sort of thing she could sink her teeth into. He supposed he could give it to Emmett Paynter, let him pass it on to one of the other investigators, but Orwell didn't like that idea. This was Stacy's case. And his. Lengthy explanations wouldn't be required. Hell's bells, she had a cellphone, she wasn't
that
far away.

“Come on beasties! Let's ramble. Breakfast is waiting. At least I have high hopes it's waiting. God knows I've worked up a hell of an appetite.”

“Front-Runner Bolts Fundraiser.”

The early television news programs were already full of conjecture as to why Dylan O'Grady had shot himself, but that news had come too late for the morning papers and they only had the first part of the story. Still, Anya read them all on the trip home by train and bus, read them dutifully, as if paying a debt. Ludi's killer was dead. It was necessary that she pay close attention to the details.

But there weren't many details. The
Globe
made reference to a police presence at the fundraiser, but did not venture an opinion as to what the cops were doing there. The
Star
concentrated on the scrambling campaign and the implications for the imminent election. Both the
Sun
and
National Post
hinted at conspiracies and smear tactics, but ultimately failed to connect any dots. Tomorrow's editions would be much juicier, albeit a full news cycle behind events. Anya entertained a fleeting thought that she should save the items in some kind of scrapbook, some sort of testament to justice, but in the end she decided that was pointless and recycled the papers in the appropriate bin.

As she headed north on the final leg of the trip, watching the farms and fields roll by, she found herself gnawing on her knuckles, generating a familiar pain, something she hadn't done in a while. Long ago it was her way of holding herself together offstage while awaiting her cue, or in rehearsal, enduring a harsh critique, and sometimes simply to confuse her mind into forgetting other more serious agonies in legs and knees and feet. This morning it seemed that she had other pains to forget, deep-seated aches of heart and mind.

Some would say Dylan had taken the coward's way out, some might say he had done the honourable thing, but to Anya it seemed only logical for him to skip out that way. What did he have to live for? His career was destroyed, his future was bleak, all his debts had come due, it was over for him. And she was the one who had pushed him into the corner, cut off his escapes, exposed him for all to see. It was what she wanted, wasn't it? Now she could live some kind of life, get some rest and perhaps, in time, sleep without dreams full of shadows. So why was there no sense of relief? Why was she still unfulfilled? Why was she biting her thumb hard enough to draw blood? Did she want to kick his dead body? Would that be enough? No. Not enough. Never enough. Was it because he escaped exposure, would never be forced to admit that he murdered Ludi? Perhaps. That was part of it, surely. To convict him of Ludi's death would have brought satisfaction, but she knew it would have been unlikely. More conceivable that Viktor's murder was the one they could prove. Or Louie's. Or could they have proven any of them? With a good lawyer playing up the murky string of events and the dubious backgrounds of the victims, he might have walked out of a courtroom free as a bird. A ruined career to be sure, but no guarantee of a life behind bars. He could have escaped. But his pride could not handle it. In the end it was probably vanity that killed him. How sad that was.

And unsatisfying.

As it turned out, and notwithstanding his energetic romp across the fields, Orwell's breakfast had been something of a disappointment. It was becoming obvious that his wife was cutting back on certain of the morning staples he considered mandatory: bacon, sausages, waffles, unlimited toast and jam, fried eggs basted in butter, the
basics
. Instead, for the past few days he'd been confronted by such items as fruit cups, oatmeal (with 2% milk for Pete's sake), grapefruit juice, a single scrambled egg — it was punitive, no other word for it. Worse, she had begun saddling him with a brown bag for his lunch, a bag containing
raw
vegetables! And a hard-boiled egg! And an apple. He had nothing against apples, they were nature's vitamin pills, but they were far tastier surrounded by pastry and scented with cinnamon or allspice. This of course wasn't the first time Erika had kept such a close watch on her husband's caloric intake, but in the past she had eased up after a while, or relented entirely during traditionally tasty cycles such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter. Well, at least Easter was on the horizon, and there had better be some decent grub
that
weekend or people would hear about it.

He was in a mood, no doubt about it, Dorrie could tell by the way he was clumping up the stairs — it was a dead giveaway to her boss's morning disposition. On good days he charged up filled with energy and bonhomie, on preoccupied days he climbed slowly with pauses for thought and on days when he was in a black mood he clumped. Today he was clumping.

“Morning, Chief.”

“Dr. Lorna Ruth,” he barked, without greeting. “See if you can get her on the phone.” He stomped into his office and reappeared almost immediately, aware that he'd been brusque. “Would you, Dorrie? Please?”

“Of course.”

“And good morning,” he added.

As she handled the phone calls she could hear him banging around inside his office. “Dang it all!” She heard the distinct sound of a filing cabinet drawer being slammed. “It's a bloody conspiracy!” He was hungry. That's all it was. “Dr. Ruth isn't answering, at her house or office,” she said.

“Where the heck is everyone? This is a workday, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir. It's Friday.”

“I
know
what day it is. The question was rhetorical. Why aren't people where they're supposed to be on a Friday was the gist of it. Try the Zubrovskaya woman.”

“No luck with Ms. Zubrovskaya either.”

“Keep trying.
Please
.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What's going on?” Stacy whispered.

Dorrie looked up at the new arrival. “The Chief's wife has him on a diet again.”

“What's going on out there? I hear whispering.”

“Stacy's back, Chief.”

“Well, get her in here. I'll have no conspiracies.”

Dorrie put a finger to her lips.

Stacy found her boss standing by the window, staring out at the street.

“I'll have my report ready for you in ten minutes, Chief. Just have to print it up.”

“Fine, fine, no rush. Sit down.”

“Yes, sir. Something come up?”

“There's a man in town, from the Russian Ministry of Culture wants to talk to you. And to Ms. Zubrovskaya of course. She on her way back?”

“I think she took an early train. I can pick her up.”

“If she's around I want to talk to her. And Dr. Ruth, too. I want both of them, separately or side by each, I don't care, see what you can do, will you?”

“Right away.”

“Good.” He turned his head. Dorrie had the Chief's coffee and newspaper and a jelly donut on a paper napkin. “What's this?” he asked suspiciously.

“We took up a collection,” she said with a straight face.

He pointed at Stacy. “Both of them. As soon as.”

“On it,” she said. As she left she caught a glimpse of him wiping a drop of raspberry jelly off his bottom lip.

Adele had no such constraints on what she was allowed to eat for breakfast, or lunch, but she had no appetite this morning. Her last substantial intake had been a handful of macaroons followed by most of a bottle of Spanish red and she was experiencing a certain level of internal discomfort. She might also be carrying the plague judging by the wide berth her colleagues were giving her this morning. Or maybe she needed to change her deodorant. Or it could have something to do with the black cloud hanging over her head. She could feel it pressing down, almost see its dark shadow as she walked. Her mother would have said the Angel of Death was hovering near. That was how she talked: angels of death, ends of days, wages of sin, she loved saying the words, her mouth would curl into a mean smile as she pronounced upon Adele's head the swift and sure retribution of a vengeful . . . fuck, long after the hag was dead and buried and her preaching silenced, those images continued to plague her. Out of my head, you old witch. I'm doing my job.