Cut to the Chase (5 page)

Would learning that Danson didn't have his cell phone make Candace feel better, even explain why he hadn't phoned? No way. It would give her even more reason to worry—few young men travelled far without a cell phone.

She plucked her notebook from her shoulder bag, copied his cell phone address book and wrote down the names of those whom he'd contacted and those who had called him. Unfortunately, it wasn't a photo phone. She knew how useful they could be. Recently she'd read that many companies had outlawed cell phones, since they provided such an easy way for staff or visitors to steal confidential information.

The second bedroom, impersonal as a motel room, epitomized austerity. If Gregory intended to establish a homey base in Toronto, he hadn't accomplished his goal.

She'd deal with establishing Gregory's identity later. Danson was her priority.

Back to the combination living room/dining room. A wall of Venetian blinds, no curtains, off-white walls. A collection of tall, healthy palms and ficus in large black self-watering pots clustered near the windows. The pristine leather furniture grouped around a small TV set on a worn chest of drawers flanked by three bookcases.

Books revealed facets of a reader's character. Danson had kept his college texts, along with books on kinesiology, brain patterning, psychological treatises on abnormal behaviour, books on treason, on the organization of the courts, on criminal law and more prosaic volumes on lacrosse. An interesting collection.

A sound system, CDs, jazz and more jazz, along with black cardboard file boxes, and large photo albums filled the remaining shelves. A peek inside the boxes confirmed that Danson seldom threw anything away, as he'd saved memorabilia from his life along with outdated files and receipts. The photo albums, arranged chronologically, revealed his devotion to his family and to Angie, his murdered fiancée.

Opposite the recreational side of the room, yet another lacrosse poster presided over the mechanics of twenty-first century living. An unpainted door resting on two beige metal file cabinets served as a desk. A laptop, printer, phone and answering machine lined up like soldiers awaiting their marching orders. The answering machine's message light flashed.

Hollis pressed play.

“Your mortgage has been approved blah blah blah...” Pointless to save, but to erase would be tampering with evidence in the event there had been a crime. She pressed save and moved to the second one. “This is Boris,” a heavy Eastern European accent, one she thought that she recognized. Boris must have done a blitz on every phone number in the book. “Do not move unless you talk to Boris...”

She stopped listening. Boris might vary his spiel, but many times before she'd received his annoying calls selling his moving company's services.

Number three. “It's Monday. Where the hell are you? You've got a job, in case you've forgotten. Actually, you fucking well haven't—you're fired.”

Not good news. If he'd intended to be away for an extended period, Danson would have talked to his boss.

She moved on to the next message. “It's Cally. Let me know if your gorgeous mother still sews her wonderful costumes. I'd like her to design one for me with no other like it in the whole wide world. Oh, and tell her we're not in the same competitions. Call me.” Cally sounded like she drew hearts as punctuation in anything she wrote and cultivated wide-eyed innocence. Probably her stock in trade in the competitive dance world.

Next call was a hang-up.

Several long messages related to lacrosse and recruiting for the team. The callers, and there were three different voices, became increasingly irate when they repeated their messages and demanded that Danson return their calls. Whoever they were, they'd phoned before Candace talked to them, or they'd be aware of Danson's absence.

And then it was Boris again.

No messages offered any immediately recognizable clues as to Danson's whereabouts.

The filing cabinet came next. The top drawer confirmed her impression that Danson was a tidy man. Financial records—paid bills, taxes, insurance, Visa and bank statements—filled the first drawer. Lacrosse schedules, contacts, equipment etc, memberships in lacrosse and alumni associations, newspaper clippings relating to lacrosse, to criminals, to the justice system, to trials—these files crowded the second drawer. Danson seemed to have recorded and saved every detail of his life.

If a crime had been committed, the apartment would be sealed, and she wouldn't get a second chance to burrow through his records. Hollis hoped she wouldn't need any of this information but pulled the paper from her bag and used Danson's printer to copy every potentially helpful file, including a chart detailing the organization of Toronto's Russian Mafia.

The Toronto police would do a thorough job. She'd had firsthand experience and knew how effective they were. Sometimes an unprofessional mind thought differently, approached problems in a different way. That would be her role.

Copy, copy, copy—it took forever; almost all her paper, and the printer alerted her that the ink cartridge must be replaced. Once done she carefully replaced the files and opened the laptop. If she needed a password, she would be out of luck. No one in her circle of friends used passwords for their personal computers, but given his campaign to round up criminals, Danson might. She flicked it on.

The intercom sounded. Candace and Elizabeth had arrived.

Hollis buzzed them through the downstairs door and stepped out in the hall to wait for them to climb the stairs.

“Touchdown. Mission accomplished. We have shoes,” Candace called.

“Hi, Howis,” Elizabeth said.

Inside the apartment's living room, Candace donned the gloves Hollis offered. Elizabeth watched and held up her hands.

“No gloves for you. They're too big. They're for Hollis and me,” Candace said.

Elizabeth's lower lip quivered.

“You can watch TV,” Candace said to the little girl, who immediately plunked herself down in front of the television.

Elizabeth held up her foot for Hollis's inspection. “See,” she said displaying a pink running shoe with Velcro fasteners. “New.”

“They're gorgeous. What a lucky girl you are,” Hollis said.

Elizabeth ripped the Velcro tab to undo the shoe. She gripped the heel, yanked the shoe off and held it up to Hollis, who accepted the gift, admired it, and handed it back.

Elizabeth struggled to push it on, so Hollis bent down to help her. “Was it hard to track them down?” she said to Candace peering over the little girl's shoulder.

Candace smiled ruefully and ran both her hands through her neat bob. Hollis admired the way the hair dropped into place, the mark of great hair and a terrific cut.

“Hard enough. Three stores, two temper tantrums—then success. Coping with toddlers is not for the faint-hearted.” She picked up the remote and flicked on the TV.

Elizabeth ignored it. Instead she peered up at Candace. “Danson?” she said. Her nose wrinkled, and her tiny, almost invisible eyebrows drew together in a frown.

“Not here, sweetie,” Candace said.

Elizabeth glowered. “Lizabet want Danson,” she said.

“I know you do. But not now. Elizabeth, this is one of your favourite shows—it's Curious George.”

Diverted, the little girl settled to watch the monkey's cartoon antics.

Candace moved closer to Hollis. “Well, what did you find?”

“Danson's car, wallet and keys are gone, but he left his cell phone, toothbrush, and shaving stuff. He must have expected to return quickly from wherever he went.” Hollis didn't want to look at Candace, to witness the devastation as the ramifications of this information hit home.

“He doesn't go anywhere without his cell.” A long silence grew heavier by the minute. “This is bad news, isn't it?” Candace said.

No use denying it. “I think you should contact Missing Persons,” Hollis said gently. “If you like, I can phone Rhona Simpson, a homicide detective I know, and ask her advice.”

Candace shuddered. “Please. Do it immediately. I have to know that Danson isn't the unidentified man in the morgue.”

L
ate
that October Saturday afternoon, Rhona Simpson hunkered down at her desk. She, along with an ever-growing pool of detectives, had been assigned to unearth the killer or killers preying on men in the downtown area. The killings had begun six weeks earlier. The police weren't any closer to solving the crimes than they had been on day one.

Six murdered men, five identified thus far, all stabbed with a long, thin blade. One unidentified—his face pulverized and his fingertips chopped off. No one had reporting a missing loved one, at least not a man with physical characteristics that corresponded to the mystery man's. A gangland execution—but which gang and why?

Rhona repositioned the elastic scrunchy anchoring her dark hair away from her face and covertly studied the partner assigned to her.

Ian Galbraith, the newest detective in homicide, zealously applied a yellow highlighter to the document in front of him. There wouldn't be much unmarked when he finished. Single-mindedness characterized his attitude. Like most new boys, he was determined to prove himself.

Physically, blazingly blue eyes, fair skin and black hair falling in his eyes marked him as a man with a Gaelic heritage matching his name. Tall, thin and intense, he'd launched himself into the investigation as if his position depended on it, and maybe it did.

“What are you staring at?” Ian said.

“Sorry, I do that when I'm thinking,” Rhona said.

“I'm relieved. I thought I must have left half my lunch on my face,” Ian said with a small smile that revealed perfect teeth and a dimple. He returned to scrutinizing the document.

They'd spent the morning on the street, interviewing women and men on the stroll and searching for fresh clues to identify the killer. Hours later, they were cross-indexing information from the murdered men's files, seeking a revealing, overlooked detail. For the last few minutes, they'd been reviewing information, searching for similarities in lifestyle, hangouts, diet, habits, medical conditions—factoids that linked the victims to each other and to their killer or killers.

Rhona leaned back in her swivel chair and shifted her weight to keep from resting on her left hip. She'd enrolled in a Pilates class several weeks before, and the previous day her ego had prompted her to do a leg-lifting exercise that the instructor had cautioned was for the “more advanced” in the group. Rhona had figured that as she was only in her late thirties, she was as fit as anyone, but watching the lithe twenty-year-olds, she should have known better.

She stretched her legs and contemplated the black tooled-leather cowboy boots chosen to coordinate with her washable black pantsuit. Aware of her foibles, she knew she wore boots almost daily not only because they were comfortable but because they gave her the added inches she craved. In the man's world of policing, being a short First Nation woman left her triply disadvantaged, and there wasn't anything she could do about it except wear higher heels. Enough self-examination. They had work to do.

“Six weeks since the first murder—it's too long,” Rhona said.

“It is.” Ian evened the edges of the paper piled on his desk and frowned. “Do you get a sense the killer doesn't care about his victims?”

Rhona felt her eyebrows rise.

“No, that didn't come out right. What if the killer hates what his victims do but isn't attacking them as individuals. That's what I mean?”

“Like the anti-abortionists who have nothing against particular doctors but kill them because of what they do?”

“An analogous comparison. A fervent crusader maybe?”

Analogous? Fervent? Not words commonly heard from her fellow detectives. She'd have to learn more about this new guy. “Maybe. They were all addicts.” Rhona riffled through her papers. “No victim was sexually assaulted or fought back. No skin under fingernails, no semen, nobody who's come forward to say he saw anything—we'll have to catch the perp in the act.” She rocked forward on her chair and winced.

“What's wrong?” Ian asked.

“Pulled a muscle doing Pilates,” Rhona said. She cautiously leaned her body forward again. “These men were expendable. That doesn't explain why they were killed.”

“It's the general opinion that they were involved in the drug trade?”

Rhona shook her head. “Too obvious. These guys were peripheral—small fry.” She moved herself a fraction of an inch to the right. “They weren't operators—maybe mules, but I doubt it. I think the killer hates drugs and those who use them. Finding the person who hates drugs enough to kill men because they were addicted—that's who we're searching for. Whoever that someone is, he doesn't frighten those he kills. That's our perp.”

“That might explain those crimes, but I don't see how it ties into the killing of the other man.” Ian steepled his fingers, tilted his head to one side and waited for her response.

“In my opinion it doesn't. The perp beat the shit out of this guy before he died. His face smashed with something heavy—a crowbar, baseball bat—who knows. His fingers chopped off. No fingerprints. Whoever killed him didn't want him identified. We have to wonder why.”

“No blood in the dumpster where we found him. Moved from somewhere—who knows—it's a big city,” Ian said.

“The killer made sure the victim would be hard, if not impossible to identify. Why hasn't someone missed him?”

“Obvious answers. Either he isn't from Toronto, or those close to him don't dare call us.” Ian swept up the pile of paper, held it aloft and shook it. “The answer is here. It would be good for our careers if we could identify the missing link.”

Rhona's phone rang. She listened for a moment, pushed the button to activate the speaker phone and motioned for Ian to listen. “Repeat that, please,” she said.