Slow Recoil (17 page)

He stepped back out of the room and stood there for a long minute. Fielding was gone—either of his own volition or against his will. So then, think. Play it through. Okay, Fielding finally makes contact with Donia Kruzik. Maybe she comes by and they get into a heated argument. She admits she has a husband or a boyfriend or turns tricks every third Wednesday, and Fielding loses it, strangles her, and he bolts.

No. Jesus.

Not Tim Fielding.

McKelvey understood it was a cardinal sin of police work to discount from the get-go, to let personal feelings or judgments blind you to the cold, hard facts, but he knew the man. His nature, the stuff that he was made of. Just not possible. No, there was something at play here, and Fielding had found himself at its rotten centre. What had Tim found out about this woman, who she knew, where she was from? Was his body somewhere as well, or had he been taken, set up as the fall guy for the murder? Christ, was the dead woman even Donia Kruzik? Who
was
Donia Kruzik, for that matter?

It didn't look good, not for McKelvey, definitely not for Fielding. All the connections, the dotted lines that could be drawn. He had called the apartment twice before coming over. From a payphone, but still, they could and would make that connection. Hassan was waiting downstairs, had driven him straight over after he had made the calls. The superintendent at Donia's building could confirm that yes, this ex-cop had showed up looking for her. Passed himself off as a cop on active duty. Jesus. He felt dizzy for a minute, his chest tight. What sort of half-assed, half-rate hack would bumble through something like this? What a fucking fiasco…

He found the cordless on the coffee table and dialed Hattie's cell phone.

“Detective Hattie,” she said.

“It's me,” he said. “Where are you?”

“With Anderson. On our way to an address in Scarborough to get a few hammerheads out of bed, see if their mommas can vouch for their whereabouts last night. This after-hours bar got turned over for the cover charge take.”

“There's a situation,” he said. “At Fielding's apartment.”

“A situation,” she repeated. And she waited.

He drew a long breath and exhaled slowly. He closed his eyes and shook his head at nobody in particular. “A body,” he said. “I think there's a pretty good chance it's Donia Kruzik.”

“Jesus and Mary.”

McKelvey said, “And Fielding's missing.”

“Sit down and don't even think of moving,” she said. “I'll make the call, Charlie. You're in enough shit.” He heard her turn to Anderson and say something, then she came back on the line. “My very understanding partner here has offered to bring me around once we finish up our stop. Shouldn't be too long. They'll be all over you by then, but I'll try to be quick.”

“Thanks,” he said.

She didn't answer, she was simply gone. The dial tone. About what he deserved. He walked over to the kitchen bar and sat on a stool, trying to focus his thoughts on the facts, the details of the last few days. Hattie called it in from the road—a 10-45, dead body—and patrol cars arrived on the scene within six minutes. Two patrol officers entered the apartment with their sidearms unstrapped, hands at the ready—modern-day gunslingers. McKelvey could tell right away they were young on the job, at least the first one in the door who caught sight of McKelvey at the kitchen bar. This kid held a hand out in caution, the other hand hovering at his holster.

“Don't move,” the cop ordered. “Hands up where I can see them.”

The rookie's oxymoron—don't move, but put your hands up. McKelvey slowly raised his hands to shoulder height and said, “Vic's in the master bedroom face-down on the floor. Female Caucasian, mid-thirties. Signs of trauma to the neck. Secure the scene and don't touch anything.”

“He's the cop they said was here,” the second officer said to the first.

“Ex Hold-Up Squad,” McKelvey said and slowly lowered his hands.

The first patrol officer nodded and stood in the centre of the room to secure the scene while the second officer ducked into the bedroom to clear the rooms and then check for a pulse. McKelvey heard the officer making a call on his radio. He sat there with his hands on his lap, lightheaded and in serious need of a pain tablet. Christ, even a half tab. Why had he flushed them in a moment of guilt? He wasn't an addict; he was simply looking for a window to let in a little light.

THIRTEEN

H
attie hung up and tossed the phone on the seat between her and Anderson. They were headed east on the 401, the King's Highway that cut across the very heart of Ontario. It was a line of two, four and six-lane asphalt spanning 820 kilometres from Windsor in the southwest corner, to the far eastern border with Quebec. One section of the freeway in Toronto alone carried more than 400,000 vehicles on an average day, giving it the distinction of being North America's single busiest stretch of highway. For three hours each morning, and for three hours each afternoon, it turned into the country's biggest parking lot. Today, a Sunday, traffic was light and moving well.

“Anything you want to share?” Anderson said.

“Goddamned McKelvey,” she said then unleashed a string of Maritime expletives, which included multiple references to saints and fishermen, many H's and Mary's.

Anderson whistled, and said, “Trouble in paradise.” He ran fingers over the short stubble on his chin. “He's too old for you anyway, you know. You've got what, like a fifteen-year age difference?”

“Shut up,” she said.

“All I'm saying is he's old school,” Anderson said.

“What the fuck do you know about old school?” she said, turning to look at him, his young face without even a hint of experience beyond the late nights he kept. He owned the tight and showy physique bought in a fancy gym where they handed you a clean towel on your way in, but she still figured she could take him down with a good solid shot to his pretty little nose. Her brothers had taught her how to fight the same way they had taught her how to tie a dozen different seaman's knots.

Anderson shrugged and said, “Don't take it the wrong way. I think McKelvey's cool as shit, I mean, Jesus. He shot that biker, he fucking took care of business, you know what I mean? The guy has balls the size of pumpkins. I'm just saying, if you're looking for, you know…someone who's going to listen and understand, then…”

“Then maybe I should turn to someone like you, someone who really understands the complex inner workings of a woman,” she said, smiling now. “Well, whatever his faults, I can tell you, McKelvey never once even contemplated frosting his fucking hair.”

Anderson went to say something but turned to the window instead, and Hattie gunned them towards their destination, her mind stuck on Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. She knew she had a decision to make. They both knew it had been coming for some time. She was up for a promotion to the Homicide Squad. It was a very real possibility. Homicide in the biggest city in the country. She needed to keep her nose clean. The closer she was affiliated with McKelvey, the less her chances were of making the grade—it was that simple, the politics of his exit from the force, the cloud surrounding his dogged pursuit of Duguay. It made her sick to her stomach to think this way, some sort of careerist, but goddamnit, she was forty-two years old. She had herself to think of for once in her life. Well, maybe twice. Leaving Halifax, and her ex-husband, and two hundred years of ancestral roots, had been the first time she'd really thought of her own desires and aspirations over all else. The decision to leave a lifetime of fishing and fiddles, kitchen parties and long winters of her husband sitting at home drinking and waiting and watching
The Price is Right.
It was strange, because she had loved her ex in much the same way that she loved Charlie, meaning she had stuck around too long waiting for the results to change simply because her heart won out, because she was in deep. She loved Charlie, but it was getting to the point where a shared future seemed like the dream of a naïve girl. Just when she seemed to catch the glimpse of a beacon of hope on the horizon, some notion that he might take up golf or surprise her with a sudden trip to Antigua—anything that signalled an investment in himself or their shared future—McKelvey retreated to his view of the world as this failed experiment that was long overdue for a cancellation of its funding.

“You're not going to tell McKelvey what I said,” Anderson said. He sounded like a young boy now. He turned and looked at her, waiting for a response. “I didn't mean anything by it. You know me, I take every opportunity I can get. I'm sick that way. It's a disability, probably even chronic.”

Hattie laughed and shook her head.

Detective Mary-Ann Hattie arrived just as the crews from Homicide and Forensics were pulling into the parking lot of Fielding's building. McKelvey knew that in an hour the place would be stuffed with evidence experts dressed in their white space suits, scanning the place with their blue lights, photographers taking still shots and 360-video of the scene, recording and measuring everything. Even the Homicide dicks had to wait for the evidence geeks to get in and do their job, crime scene preservation trumping all else. The nerds could take as long as they damned well pleased. They had all been patrol officers at one point, which was their saving grace. There was a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities.

“Detective Leyden has agreed to take you to headquarters,” Hattie said. “No cuffs, no fuss. And listen, Charlie, they're going to ask you a lot of questions. You know how it works. Be patient, for god's sake, and let them do their job. I told Leyden I can corroborate the events leading up to you being in Fielding's place to check in on him.”

“Sounds like you don't have much faith in me,” he said.

“I have an unmovable faith in the fact that you don't change,” she said. “Cooperate. You know the process at play here. You're working within the parameters of the system, whether you like it or not. You're a
civilian,
Charlie… ”

Leyden drove him to the police headquarters on College Street. McKelvey rode in the front seat like a partner riding shotgun, and it brought him back to those better days, those long ago days of youth and midnight shifts and locker rooms boiling over with bravado and bullshit. Back then, back when life seemed either black or white, everything was boiled down to its purest essence: a code in the police book, a 216 or a 61, and you could drink half the night and swagger at the bar after pulling a twelve-hour shift. The police work back then had perhaps been rudimentary when compared with today's science and digital voodoo—and a lot of the officers had been rough around the edges, to be sure—but they had worked cases based on their heads and their guts and a thousand hours of experience working in the blood and the filth of the streets.

Leyden was perhaps forty-five, a lanky man with a build that made McKelvey think of a ball player, long limbs and lean musculature, broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He had a Marine-style crew cut buzzed to the bone on the sides so that you could make out every small nick or cut the man's scalp had earned in a lifetime. Very little personality, McKelvey thought, and something about the man made him think of Clint Eastwood, all squints and grunts. He looked like a cop, if one could look like their occupation. As though as a kid Leyden had practiced in front of a mirror. McKelvey gave him a sideways glance and wondered if he himself had that same look. Perps and rounders recognized a guy like Leyden a mile away. The sport coat and the too-short tie, the never-smile, that look on his face that declared: Police, Police, Police.

“Anybody call Aoki on this?” McKelvey said. He wasn't nervous, not yet, but a little help from his old boss on the Holdup Squad couldn't hurt. Last he'd heard, Aoki was in line for a jump to Homicide, the Holy Grail in copland. He understood she had finished her Master's degree in criminology through night school.

“Don't know,” Leyden said.

“Was your father a duty sergeant over at 51 back in the day?” McKelvey said, trying to make conversation.

“Fifty-one, that was my uncle,” Leyden said. “My dad was on patrol for twelve years, hurt his back wrestling a guy he was taking in to the Don Jail. Got put on permanent disability.”

A police family. The best and worst kind, McKelvey thought. How each generation came at the job a little harder, something to prove. He saw Leyden as a ten- or eleven-year-old boy, his old man at home on disability. His father must have been bitter at the world, reliving the old days, the lost potential. It would have been hard on a kid, then as he grew older, there'd be little choice between college or the cops.

“Tough on the family,” McKelvey said. “The association look after you guys?”

Leyden nodded and drove on in silence. McKelvey could respect a man of few words, yet at the same time he understood why perps were always yammering away out of nervousness, looking to fill the space, and it was only the most controlled and measured con who knew enough to keep his mouth shut. Everything you said in the presence of a cop was fair game for the record. Sometimes the adrenalin ran, and you just couldn't stop it.