Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (54 page)

When Children Kill

The house looked deserted when Dan arrived. The lights were off. No Trevor. No Ked. And strangest of all, no Ralph. In the kitchen he found the remnants of a meal in the sink. At least they'd been there. Then he heard the scream from the basement.

A woman's scream. The paint-peeling, blood curdling type.

It wasn't just supper he'd missed. He'd forgotten their Fright Night movie date. Forgot even what day it was. He trouped downstairs to find Trevor and Ked glued to the TV. Ralph's tail wagged at his arrival, but he stayed put, unwilling to abandon his seat to greet the latecomer. Or else he found the movie that absorbing.

Ked pressed pause on the remote. Onscreen, a boat careened over a waterfall, stopped and held.

Trevor and Ked turned and stared at him.

“What?” Dan asked.

“That's what we'd like to know,” Trevor said.

“You forgot our movie,” Ked said.

“Sorry.”

“And supper,” Trevor added, “but we'll forgive you for that.”

“You've been acting awfully strange, Dad,” Ked added.

“More than normal, you mean?”

Ked nodded. “Oh, yeah. Way more.”

Dan sat on the couch and looked at the TV. “Okay. I'll try to act normal. If I can remember what that is.”

Ked pressed the play button and sent the boat into freefall. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.

“Dad, you're missing a great movie. It's awesome! This giant anaconda takes over the Amazon and attacks a boat full of filmmakers.”

“So far,” Trevor said, “they've broken just about every rule for surviving in a horror film we could think of and then some. But the monkey's cute as hell.”

Dan settled in for the adventure. When the movie finally ended, they waited while the credits flickered and died. Ked said goodnight and went up to bed with Ralph trailing behind.

Dan turned to Trevor. “Sorry for missing supper.”

“You've got a lot going on.”

Dan nodded. The week had passed in a blur.

“Donny called earlier.…”

Dan clapped his forehead with his palm. “Shit!
I forgot I was supposed to meet him this afternoon.”

“He'll forgive you.”

Dan reached for his cell phone.

“Don't bother. I told him you were pressed for time and just forgot. He said he'd talk to you tomorrow.”

Dan looked over. “Is it about Lester?”

Trevor nodded. “Yes. He called again.”

“How is he?”

“Physically okay, I guess. But all is not well.”

“The parents are still at it?”

“More than ever. Donny's afraid he's going to do something rash. Worse, I'm afraid Donny is going to do something rash. Lester gave him the family address in Oshawa.”

“Oh, no.”

Trevor eyed him. “Oh, yes. Don't be surprised to hear he has some cockamamie scheme to get the kid back to Toronto.”

“I don't like it,” Dan said.

“Nor I. I told him to talk to you before he does anything.”

“Thanks.”

Dan leaned in and they kissed tentatively. Not having Trevor near these past few days, he'd felt as though he were missing a part of himself.

“Let's go upstairs,” Dan said, reaching for Trevor's hand.

Dan undressed and lay watching Trevor. He loved the lean silkiness of him, as though he were both boy and man. His face was one Michelangelo might have sculpted, like a model whose beauty would be celebrated for centuries. But he was not only beautiful. He was also kind, Dan knew. It didn't matter if they'd known one another less than a year. You couldn't fake goodness or decency.

Trevor came to him and made love dutifully, but Dan sensed his distraction.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“I know this is still supposed to be our honeymoon period. Sorry.”

“No apologies necessary,” Dan said. “Tell me what's going on.”

There was a long silence.

“It was difficult coming back here,” Trevor said. “I had a panic attack putting the house up for sale. Then I had another one getting on the plane. The only thing that made me do it was the thought of losing you if I didn't.”

Dan looked chagrined. “I'm sorry … I don't know what to say.”

“You don't have to say anything,” Trevor said. “I just want you to know what's going on with me.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, not yet. Just hold me, please.”

They clung to one another in silence until Dan felt Trevor's body relax. He tried to twin their breathing and found he could do it for a while, but somehow Trevor's always galloped ahead, as though even in sleep he was anxious to get away. As if under the skin lay something that could not be smoothed away with a kiss or a caress.

Dan got up and went down the hall to his office. The desk lamp focused a bright beam within a narrow radius, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Peace and calm reigned here. It was his sanctuary.

Jags' world had taken over his own lately. Shamefully, he'd neglected both Trevor and Ked. He'd also neglected his cases of deadbeat dads skipping out on childcare payments. A little overtime was required so he could spend more family time over the weekend.

He turned on his laptop and pulled the keyboard close. How anyone could not care enough about their child's welfare to do whatever it took to support them was beyond his understanding. He'd taken full responsibility for Ked when Kendra told him she was pregnant. Her family would have disowned her — or worse — had she revealed her pregnancy. An extended stay in California during the final months resolved that problem. The rest was up to Dan on Kendra's return with their newborn son. He hadn't regretted it once in all the years since. In fact, raising Ked had given him purpose and helped ease some of the burdens of his own childhood. In many ways, Ked had been his redemption.

He logged on to a website for non-payment of child support and felt ironically gratified to see a few women cropping up among the deadbeat dads. Nice to know it wasn't endemic to the male of the species. Most of the absconders were ordinary looking. It wasn't as if you expected a leer on the deadbeat's face and a left arm that ended in a hook, but the assumption was that a certain mentality must be betrayed by its features. Not so. They also had a vast array of trades at their disposal: waiters and carpenters, accountants and IT workers. No stock brokers, Dan noted. Presumably, if you had money and didn't care about your kid, you just paid off your spouse and were shot of it. Others seemed comically geared to get a laugh when you read the sections on
LAST KNOWN EMPLOYER
: Chicken-on-the-Run, Getaway Travel, East-West Carnivals Ltd.
I'm outta here and good luck finding me, Mary Jo!
As for aliases, the deadbeat moms had the drop on the deadbeat dads by a long shot. One woman was known by thirteen individual names, not counting her real one. Under
OTHER TRAITS
were listed a bird tattoo (“species unknown”) on her left breast and a sword and shield over her belly button. No doubt the latter would be viewed as an enticement in some circles, Dan mused. Or maybe the sword and shield were to deter any further children from springing from her womb, while the bird could be read as an ironic comment on her flighty tendencies.

Dan found nothing helpful to his current cases on any of the sites. He'd combed through them many times. Boredom crept in. Without thinking, he found himself typing in the words:
whenchildrenkill.com
. The photos and stories were both fascinating and utterly grotesque. Children who killed other children, children who killed adults and strangers, children who killed their own parents.

His eye ran down the page. The site was a repository for some of the most gruesome murders he'd ever come across. Of course, he wasn't surprised that children might have murderous intentions — youthful emotion tended to the extreme. What surprised him was the ferocity with which some of the murders had been carried out. Here were children who killed siblings out of jealousy or murdered their parents for seemingly innocuous reasons: friendships disapproved of, dates not allowed, scoldings over sloppy schoolwork. He thought of his own father and how much he'd hated the man's drunken brutality. But in all the years his father had abused him, Dan never once thought of doing away with him. It was the nature of the beast, he knew. He'd eventually found the courage to leave the situation behind, but not before his father had inflicted a permanent reminder of where he came from in the red line that ran down the side of his face.

After an hour on the site, his eyes began to give out. He crept down to the kitchen to share a late-night snack with Ralph, who seemed happy for the company and sloppy leftovers. Finally, when there was nothing else to kill time with, Dan went back up to bed and snuggled in beside Trevor without waking him.

The store on Queen Street West was ablaze with lights and chock-a-block with customers. It looked like a Boxing Day sale. A guaranteed sell-out. Dan found himself perusing a shelf of children's books. He was surprised how many of the titles boasted some form of violent interaction between children and their antagonists. The latest Harry Potter was prominent, of course. The series famously portrayed adolescents who battled dark forces in a universe where good and evil clashed in ways far more ingeniously than in the real one. There was also a selection of classics describing dark happenings to even younger children. A chicly coutured Little Red Riding Hood faced her nemesis, the Big Bad Wolf, alongside a volume entitled
Bearskinner
by the Brothers Grimm. (
How aptly named they were
, Dan told himself). The list of atrocities mounted. Was it any wonder kids grew up violent or fearful or sometimes both? Dan had never exposed Ked to anything of that nature, but neither had his son been drawn to violence on television. Then again, Ked was different from most kids. Or so Dan prided himself.

He turned his attention to the gathering. He was supposed to be watching out for his boss, not fantasizing about children's literature. He put aside a copy of Jags' book for Germ. He'd have to remember to get him to sign it.

Dan stood on the sidelines watching the hopeful fans approach their idol, hands holding out copies of the book. Jags had dressed impeccably. Dan couldn't help noticing he'd worn his Farley Chatto jacket, with flannel trousers and a linen shirt open at the neck.

When he smiled, there was something almost feminine in his face. Androgynous, amorphous. He would exchange a few words with a fan, look down and turn the pages before signing his name. Broad hands smoothed his inky hair into place behind his ears. The man was nearing sixty, but his sex appeal was undeniable. He could easily have passed for forty.

Dan noticed a stir over by the door as a woman entered to join the gathering. It was Joni Mitchell, dropping in to visit a ghost of her past. She was the only visitor Jags stood to greet during the course of the evening. Dan recognized a few other faces from somewhere, though if pressed he couldn't have said exactly where. An alternate universe where famous people lived their curious lives and cavorted with one another.

Jags signed for nearly two hours. He looked happy. He was back in his element. As much as he claimed to disdain celebrityhood, it suited him. He wouldn't know what to do if he moved to his Collingwood cabin in the woods with little or no human interaction.
Once a star, always a star
, Dan thought. And Jags Rohmer would always be that.

Joni Mitchell left after a brief chat with some of the other famous faces. By nine o'clock, almost everyone had gone. Dan was glad when the storeowner flipped the
Closed
sign on his door and turned the lock. Day was done.

They were just about to leave when Dan remembered the copy he'd picked up for Germ. Jags flipped open the cover, scratched out his printed name with two bold strokes, and signed with a flamboyance stretching across the page.

As he waited, Dan looked down at a pile of books on a sale table. There, on one side, was a book with a curious title. He picked it up:
An Incredibly Ordinary Life
by Anonymous. Perhaps it was what Jags might aspire to write next.

Word on the Street

Jags dropped him off in his Porsche. Dan emerged with the signed book under his arm. In the kitchen, a note said Trevor and Ked had gone to the Ex. At least they had each other for company while he was busy, Dan thought. He tossed his coat over the banister railing and poured himself a beer. The hallway answering machine yielded a single message.

“Hey there, mister man.” It was Germ. “Drop by when you get a mo. I got some of that nice black tea you like.” Followed by a cackle.

The man really was cracked, Dan mused. At least he'd be pleased with the book.

Dan called back immediately. They had just got through their opening preamble when Germ went silent. Dan waited.

“Uh-oh, we got some static on the line.”

Dan paused and listened for it. “I don't hear it.”

“Trust me, dude. Call me back from another line.”

“What?”

“Just do it. Find another phone and call me.”

Five minutes later, he had Ked's cell phone. The voice that answered sounded suspicious.

“It's Dan.”

“One minute.”

He heard a hum as the line went quiet. Eventually, Germ came back on.

“Okay, this line's all right for now. Where are you?”

“At home. I borrowed my son's cell.”

Germ laughed. “Well, I'm sure your son's a good kid, but don't let them start tapping his line too. Kids have got all kinds of secrets.”

“Tapping?”

“Dude, I'm telling you. That other line was being listened in on. I was monitoring the interference. I can't tell you who was on the other end, but it was there.”

“Fuck!”

Dan looked out the window toward the street, as though whoever was spying on him might be skulking under bushes and hiding behind parked cars. As if.

“From now on, use a payphone when you call, but even payphones are liable to be tapped, depending on your 'hood, right? I mean, a lot of guys selling dope use public phones thinking they're safe. Wrong 'hood, wrong phone, and you got a tap. Next thing you know, you're busted. So how are things?”

“Things were fine till just this last thirty seconds.”

“Don't sweat it, dude. You could always get a new cell phone with a calling card from a corner store. Much harder for them to trace.”

“All right.”

“Like you to meet me.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Okay. Where?”

“Don't come to the usual place. Remember that place where I shot the video for you last year?”

Dan recalled an earlier instance when Germ's capabilities came in handy.

“Yeah.”

“Go there. Bring your kid's phone with you. Here's what we're gonna do …”

Half an hour later Dan arrived at a deserted warehouse in the city's west end. He parked on the street and sat waiting. There were no other vehicles in sight. Outside, the sky was glowering. Ten minutes went by. A car passed, slowed, then moved on.

Ked's phone rang.

“Sharp.”

“I'm here. Come in, man.”

He walked up to the building and saw the camera pointing at him like an accusing finger. A door clicked open. Dan entered and felt his way carefully down a darkened staircase. At the far end of the corridor he saw a tiny red light. It blinked and he walked toward it. He smelled dope.

Follow the trail
, he thought.

A shadow moved and Germ greeted him.

“This is
so-o-o
not my usual place,” he said. “Nowhere to sit, and I can't even offer you tea. Toke?”

He held out the glowing wand.

“No, thanks.”

“One of these days then.”

“We'll see.”

“I won't lecture you, but you need to relax a little. Believe me, you'll live longer.”

“Great, but for what it's worth I wasn't planning a long stay on the planet this time around.”

“Cool. I hear you.” Germ took a gargantuan toke and dropped the roach, grinding it into red splinters underfoot till it stopped smoking. “So, what I wanted to tell you is this. Your guy? This Gaetan kid? He's in town. He's been spotted, but since the
Star
exposé he's hiding extra low. If he was invisible before, he's super-invisible now. Like, nonexistent.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Sorta.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, where does the wind blow? I know the general area, sure. Whether or not I can pinpoint it to one particular building, I can't say yet. Kid's been moving around a lot. But dude.”

He stopped. Dan waited.

“Are you sure he's the one?”

“I'm not at all sure,” Dan said. “I've never seen him. All I know is he blogged a death threat against an ex-priest who ended up murdered. He may also have dumped a file of names from the Sex Offenders Registry on-line. At least three people on that list are now dead.”

“Okay, but everything I hear about him says he's all talk, no walk. Big pussycat type.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I'm reluctant to expose him. Meaning if I turn him over to you and the cops get hold of him, I think I'm gonna feel bad before too long. Et cetera. Don't think he's your guy, is all I'm saying.”

“Okay,” Dan said. “So what then?”

“Let me see if I can track him down. Then we'll talk. Give me a few more days.”

Germ's voice lowered. The conversation continued
sotto voce
for a while then concluded quickly.

“By the way,” Dan said, “I've got something for you from Mr. Jags Rohmer himself.”

He held out the book. Germ all but snatched it from his hands.

“No way!”

“Way.”

“Cool! Thanks, man.”

Germ slipped away to the far end of the building, disappearing into blackness. He really was a mole, Dan thought in amazement.

When he emerged, sheets of rain were falling. They'd been so far underground he hadn't heard it begin. He turned the corner in time to see a tow-truck driving away with his car. He yelled and waved his hands, but the truck continued on heedlessly. Cursing, he turned up his collar and started to walk.

He made it half a block before he heard the siren. Blue and red lights flashed over his shoulder, phantom hands grabbing him from behind. His gut clenched like a kid caught stealing from a corner store. Germ's nonsense about phone taps had hard-wired him into paranoia. He stepped over to the side of the road to let the car pass. Instead, it swooped up beside him. The vehicle was unmarked.

The light went off. Dan waited as the window lowered. Constable Pfeiffer leered up at him.

“Evening, Dan.” He nodded to the inside of the car. “It's a bit wet out. Care to join me?”

“Is this an official invitation?”

“Absolutely not. I just don't like to leave a guy standing out in the rain. Especially after his car's been towed.” He grinned.

“Actually, there were no parking restrictions in that lane. I'm inclined to think it was stolen.”

“Always a possibility. I could look into that for you.”

Pfeiffer was chewing his trademark gum. He waited as the rain dripped down Dan's cheeks.

“You're getting wet.”

The automatic locks clicked open. Dan shrugged and went around the front of the car. He slid into the passenger seat and looked over at Pfeiffer. It was the first time they'd been face to face since the meeting at headquarters, and the first they'd spoken since Pfeiffer had told him Jags was mixed up in the case.

He'd shaved his moustache, Dan noted. Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, he really did look like a street punk. Dan thought of the pissing contest they'd had in the bathroom of the police station. A literal pissing contest, with Pfeiffer trying to impress him. Dan wanted to laugh. He was an overgrown boy playing at being a man.

A rap tune beat insistently in the background, too low to make out the words. The music was punctuated every few bars by what sounded like gunshots.
Very ghetto
, Dan thought.

“I thought you'd prefer this to standing in the rain,” Pfeiffer said.

Dan didn't say anything.

“How are things going with your new client?” Pfeiffer asked in a jovial tone.

“I'm not at leisure to talk about my clients.”

“No problem,” Pfeiffer told him. “I wouldn't want you to break client confidentiality.”

Dan waited. He had no idea what game they were playing, so he hadn't a clue how to proceed. If this were a sexual pick-up, he'd have a better sense of the banter expected of him, but he doubted this macho little prig would ever admit to being gay or even bisexual.

Pfeiffer put the car in gear and drove. “Where to?” he asked.

“It's your move,” Dan said.

Pfeiffer looked out the window at the warehouse. “Quite an interesting neighbourhood. What brings you out to the middle of nowhere at this time of night?”

“Heard there was a good smoke-damage sale.”

“Smoke damage. That's good.”

Pfeiffer laughed a high, clear laugh.
Doesn't get out enough
, Dan concluded.

“You're funny.”

“I'm a lot of things,” Dan said.

“So is this where your friends live?”

“What friends?”

Dan had no doubt Pfeiffer knew why he was here. He wondered if somehow Ked's cellphone had been monitored too. If so, how much did Pfeiffer already know about Germ and Velvet Blue?

“Security cameras?” Pfeiffer asked, looking over at the building.

“Is that a question?” Dan said, thinking of the rows of monitors in Germ's underground sanctuary. “Because I couldn't tell you.”

Pfeiffer shrugged. “I could always tell your friends that you brought me here and showed me their set-up.”

They still wouldn't help you
, Dan thought.

Pfeiffer shrugged off his silence. “No matter. I can see a few good places where I'd hide them if it were my place. 'Course, my place is smaller, so they're harder to conceal. I've got nearly a dozen inside and out.”

He waited a beat for Dan to pick up on this.

“Your place has a dozen security cameras?” Dan asked. “Why?”

“For security,” Pfeiffer said, laughing at his own joke. He shrugged. “You never know.”

“Wouldn't one at the front and another in the back be sufficient?”

“Yeah, but this way I have a better chance of catching a facial if anyone tries anything. I've got some high up, some low, some head on. I learned it from a couple of guys who specialize in this sort of thing. They did that house on Carlton for Zundel after the pipe bomb blew a hole through his garage door.”

“Ernst Zundel?” Dan asked. “The Holocaust denier who claims that Nazis are behind UFOs?” He shook his head. “You're kidding, right?”

Pfeiffer's expression turned serious. “He's a very bright guy. People don't give him enough credit.”

“Yeah, well, I can't say I blame them. He says some pretty crazy things.”

Pfeiffer put the car in gear and drove for a while.

“You should know about security. It's important. You've got a family to protect, right? Couple of kids?”

Dan felt the fear creep into his gut. Was this a threat? The guy was a maniac.

“Actually, just one. But you're right, I do my best to protect him. Whatever it takes.”

“Yeah, sure. Doesn't matter if you're gay or not. You people have kids these days. You can get married even. The whole nine yards.”

Dan waited, reluctant to antagonize him but knowing that was how threats worked. A word was spoken, a name mentioned, then the victim did the rest out of fear. It didn't matter whether the threat was real, the effect was the same. Protection money didn't protect you from anything, it simply guaranteed you didn't need to be protected.

“Whether or not you help me, I will get this Bélanger kid.” Pfeiffer looked over at him meaningfully. “But I will remember afterward whether you helped me or not.”

“And here I was starting to think maybe you liked me, just showing up out of the blue and all.”

“Hey, you never know,” Pfeiffer said.

They were stopped on a red. The light went green and the car jolted forward.

“What's Jags Rohmer got to do with any of this?” Dan asked to change the subject.

Pfeiffer looked him over. “Did you ask him?”

“Yes, and he denied having his name on the Sex Offenders Registry. Do you know something I don't?”

Pfeiffer shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he doesn't have anything to do with it.”

“You know what I mean,” Dan said, bristling. “Why did he receive a photograph with a severed ear? He said he showed it to you. That's Bélanger's signature. So why is he targeting Rohmer?”

Pfeiffer concentrated on driving. They were getting into traffic now, the streets less deserted. He pursed his lips at the question. Either he knew something and didn't want to say what, or else he knew nothing and wanted Dan to think he did.

“I guess that's something you'll have to find out for yourself.”

“Rohmer swears he's not into kids,” Dan said. “I believe him.”

“Well, there you are,” Pfeiffer said.

They were on Bloor Street near Clinton. The rain was still coming down, leaving shivery little trails of light on the pavement.

“Isn't this city amazing?” Pfeiffer asked. “Here we are in the centre of Toronto and you look out the window and what do you see? Korean writing! We're in Little Korea. A bit south of here we'd be in Little Italy.”

The wipers beat a tattoo rhythm in time with the music. The effect was hypnotic.

“What's your background?” Pfeiffer asked.

“White trash,” Dan said. “Or is that politically incorrect?”

Pfeiffer laughed. “Yeah. I guess it is. Me, too.”

Amazing
, Dan thought.
I get picked up for a lesson in ethnicity
.