Splicer (15 page)

Rusty held up his hands. "Sorry. I was hoping that you were wrong. That this was all just your imagination. I got caught up in it.”

Jayne turned and paced back a few steps. When she turned back, her expression hadn't softened. "Let's get something straight. I don't
have
an imagination. I'm a goddamn lawyer. I deal in the facts. "

"Fine."

"There
was
somebody tailing us. And they weren't delivering Chicken Gai Kew."

"O.K."

"And who asked you to lead the charge of the light brigade anyway?"

"Ouch," he said, genuinely stung.

"Great. I've got mercenaries watching my every move and a trigger-happy client who's reliving his teenage years as a comic book super hero."

"And now you know my secret identity," he added, shrugging. She didn’t smile. He kicked a flattened pop can with the toe of his shoe. "Maybe we both over-reacted," he offered. Jayne continued to stew. Then her phone rang. She answered and listened for a moment, her face even more serious than before. When she was finished she turned to him.

“Bad news?” guessed Rusty.

“The judge I just referred to? The one who had warned me? His name is Zukerman. He was found murdered last night,” she said.

Rusty cocked his head. He was alarmed by the odd blend of emotions he could see in his attorney’s expression. 

“And not only was he murdered,” she said, her voice catching. “He was tortured. Like Shay.  Some kind of sexual mutilation. Someone is leaving a message.”

“For who?” asked Rusty.

“For all of us,” answered Jayne.

Rusty accepted the simple truth - he was an abysmal judge of character. This weakness in understanding another person’s motivations was a dangerous form of color blindness, a handicap that often put him at a disadvantage.

Shay used to refer to him as her
rabbit
. She had a black and white perception of reality - there were rabbits and there were wolves.
You're either eating or eaten.
Rusty wanted to be neither. He saw himself as apart from these two inevitable groups; but then didn't everyone. He felt uncomfortable in the mindless role of the hunter but agreed that it probably wasn't sane for rabbits to spend a lot of time thinking about their fate either. Isn't that what they invented beer for?

He had to accept the fact that someone hated him enough to frame him for Ludd's murder, someone smart enough to lure Ludd to a parking lot at night, plant his business card and to do it when Rusty was without an alibi.

Rusty could only think of one person – Malcolm Grieves.

He also knew with absolute certainty that he had never given Grieves one of his Great Barrier business cards. In fact, Malcolm was still in jail when the cards arrived from the printer. But Jayne felt certain that the card led to the killer. They would have to track it down. Rusty, by virtue of his decimated bank account, had to play detective himself. The police seemed to have given up the chase. And why not? They thought they had the number one suspect.

The speaker box chirped twice. Debbie Grieves lived in a modest apartment block in the suburbs and the first thing that Rusty noticed when he arrived there was that she had reverted to her maiden name -
Abbot
. She lived in the same apartment she had shared with Malcolm for almost 5 years. Her distant voice echoed off the cinder block walls of the foyer.

"Yes?" She sounded afraid. Maybe Malcolm had come to her in just this way - then made threats, maybe acted crazy.

"Debbie? It's Rusty. Can we talk for a minute?"

There was no answer, only several seconds of hesitancy and the sad sound of white noise over the cheap speaker. Then the buzzer that released the door latch sounded. Rusty grabbed for the door and pulled it open, expecting the sound of the security latch to go silent momentarily. But as he moved through the hallway, the grating noise echoed behind him for almost a full minute. He climbed one set of concrete stairs. She opened the door for him before he had a chance to knock and smiled timidly.

"I suppose I shouldn't be letting a murderer into my apartment."

"If you believed that, then why did you open the door?" he asked as gently as he could.

She shrugged. "The police were here a week ago." She was short and small-boned, like a child, with the face and demeanor of an adult. Her voice was high and fragile. "They weren't saying much but I know they're looking for Malcolm."

"What do they want him for?"

She coughed lightly into her hand and took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose. "Improving their odds?" She closed the door behind him. He stepped into the dimness of the apartment lit only by the light from a trio of 60-watt bulbs hanging in the kitchen. The drapes were pulled tight across the windows in the small living room.

"Debbie, I need your help to find Malcolm."

"Nobody knows where he is," she answered matter-of-factly.

"Nobody?"

"I mean his family. His brother phoned me. His father. They're all looking for him. He's been gone for weeks. Do you want a beer?"

"Thanks. Do you think he's still on the coast?”

She shook her head again, a vacant smile on her lips. She invited him into the kitchen where she dug two cans of Ice beer out of the fridge while he sat at a tired brown Formica table. "How about friends? Maybe someone he knew before he was married?"

She closed her eyes and touched her forehead. "He's here," she said quietly and sat down. Rusty gave her time to complete her answer. "Every few days the answering machine comes on, someone listens to the message, waits a bit, then hangs up. He's building up his courage."
For what
? Rusty thought.

"Did you tell the police that?"

"I'm not afraid of Malcolm, Rusty. He never raised a hand to me. His real problem is that he keeps everything bottled up. When they took him to prison, something happened. You could hear the snap. I don't think he's really, well, I hate saying this but,
sane
. That doesn't mean he's an axe murderer.  But he's not the same person you knew."

"I'm beginning to think I didn't know him very well at all."

"You did as much as anyone." She looked across the table at him, her small eyes unblinking. "He looked up to you. He wanted to be like you. Tall, able to talk to anyone, able to charm people...”

Rusty felt embarrassed. He downed half the beer.

"Then you let him down ... and that all sort of crashed around him."

"Debbie, I ... "

"I know what you're going to say. It wasn't you. But it wasn't Malcolm either. In a way he outsmarted himself again. He thought he could dance around all these people, play with their heads without getting hurt."

Rusty leaned forward. "How are you doing?"

"I'm doing
without
," she laughed harshly. She emptied her beer, pushed it aside then hugged her arms to her sides and shivered. "I've still got a job, I should be grateful for that. Just wish the real estate market was a little stronger. Want to buy a house?" Rusty huffed then looked around the room once, noticing the absence of furniture, the emptiness of the place.

"I know what it looks like. Malcolm sold most of his belongings. The rest went to pay the lawyers - vultures everyone. I have no idea where his stuff ended up. He has no family here."

"I thought his father lived here."

"Hah. His
father
, who I've only met once for three minutes at an airport while he was transferring flights - Mr.
Jet Setter
- owns some land north of here but that's the closest he's ever gotten to Malcolm. He's an American citizen, some kind of real estate developer."

"I remember. You used to own a cottage. Up north."

"It's more like a bunker. A mossy pile of sticks on the side of a cliff. Malcolm’s family called it
Ragnarock
- with a ‘c’. Get it? What the Vikings called the end of the world. Want another beer?"

Rusty shook his head. "Could Malcolm be there? At this Ragnarock?”

"Up at Red Lake? God! He hated that place. No TV. No plumbing. No video games.  Spooky as hell, too. And Malcolm wasn't the most courageous man I ever met. Anyway, how would he get there? He doesn't have a car or a driver’s license.” She started into her second beer with determination. "Know what Malcolm and his father used to call it? That cottage?
The Hard Place
."

"Doesn't sound very appetizing."

"D'ya know what
hardened
means? As in the military?" she asked.

"As in a bunker? Protected against bomb attack?"
Where was this leading?

"Malcolm's old man had a thing about war, bombs, bunkers. He was into Armageddon."

"The end of the world was his hobby?"

"It's at the end of the world, all right. If you saw it, you'd know where the name came from. Speaking of the end of the world, I hear you're single now too."

Rusty laughed once, but it was more like a cough or a clearing of the throat. "No wife. No job. And I'm spending too much time around criminal lawyers."

"Are you seeing anyone?" she asked, her shyness gone.

Rusty looked at her eyes. Had she been crying? He couldn't tell. What kind of woman lives with someone like Malcolm and doesn't know that one day he'll just crack under the pressure and end up in a bell-tower somewhere in a clown suit with a high-powered rifle. She was either blind or liked the danger. He could see in her bored expression a hint of that. She looked frail but he knew she had the strength that comes from not being afraid of what waits around the next dark corner.

"I'm still in love with Shay. She left me, remember?"

"I knew that," she said this softly and laid her hand on his. "You've looked wounded ever since. You deserve some ... better luck."

"What, me? The mad killer?"

"These hands - do they look like the hands of a killer?" She lifted them in hers and started to pull them towards her. For just a second Rusty believed she was moving them towards her tiny breasts. He watched, fascinated and nervous at the same time. Her eyes were closed now, her lips parted.

He had dreamt once of Debbie. She sat in a white diaphanous dress, the wind moving it about her in slow lazy loops. They were in a boat together, rushing towards a waterfall. She was frightened. He held her and kissed her to calm her and she melted away. He was left with hands full of satin. It was an empty soulless guilt that had invaded his dreams and he realized the expression she wore now was the same. But he couldn't save her, couldn't make her feel whole and loved and happy again. The dream had told him that.
Save yourself. Save yourself
he had heard her yelling into the wind.

Rusty stood awkwardly, throwing Debbie off balance. She opened her eyes in surprise. He pulled her to him reluctantly and hugged her lightly, feeling some obligation to console her but wanting it to feel like a
brotherly act
as opposed to something she might misinterpret. Just as she began to relax into his arms, he let her go. She looked dazed, slightly stupid.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've got to go."

"If you need me, Rusty, I'm here," she said almost in a whisper. And then, as he retreated down the hall, she said it again only louder. He didn't look back.

The phone company was able to supply an address to Jayne for the number that Malcolm had listed under DANTE and was using for his computer communications.

"There it is," shouted Rusty.

It was an eight story brick warehouse built just after the turn of the century. Many of the windows were cracked, missing or boarded over. Jayne pulled into a side lane; a gravel loading area south of the tracks that crossed the back of the building’s dilapidated loading dock. Forming a border between the lot and the building was a row of scarred oak trees, their branches shaking in the heavy breeze that roared down from the lake. They watched for signs of life.

Jayne leaned over and studied the building through the passenger window. "This is home sweet home for Grieves? How do you get a phone installed in a building ...?"

Rusty answered before she could finish. "That line has been active for ten years. At one time they probably used this place for something. But now? You've got me."

"Someone has been paying monthly phone bills for a decade on an empty building?"

"Sounds like someone with a plan."

For a moment Jayne believed she saw movement behind one of the windows on the main floor. "Who is it registered under?" she asked. Rusty sorted through a file of notes and photocopies on his lap. "A company called Midwestern Holdings. Signing authority, Michael Grieves."

"Father?" Jayne asked.

"Or uncle. Brother. Grandfather. Shit, I don't know, Jayne. I'm just looking for the little snot who lives here."

"Well, you've found him. There he is."

A man was trudging along the rail bed with his head down and his arms pushed down deep into the pockets of an oversized overcoat. He was headed towards the downtown. His hair was long and uncombed and a full beard hid his face - but it was unmistakably Grieves.

Jayne sighed. "Your wife was right. He's a mess."

"My ex-wife," corrected Rusty.

"She didn't think he had a flair for fashion?"

Rusty looked from the receding figure on the tracks to Jayne's darkening expression. He swallowed, preparing himself for what was ahead of him. "She said he was a phony. As if everyone isn't." Jayne's eyes widened. "Present company excepted," Rusty said.

Jayne turned towards him again. "He's definitely in hiding. Trouble is, anyone who knows him can see through that beard and the Salvation Army wardrobe in a second. I'd like to know who he's hiding from?"

"Don't you see?" asked Rusty. "From me. From the police. From his wife ... "

"He did that by going to Vancouver. But he's in Toronto now, playing vagrant. He's hiding from someone else. If we knew who it was, we might solve this mess."

Rusty had the door partially opened, the wind whipping his red hair across his eyes like a warning flag. "Well, let's go ask him."

"Hold on," said Jayne, raising her voice above the noise of the air whipping the leaves of the trees above her. It sounded like a thousand blackjack dealers cutting cards.  "You're on your own with Grieves. I'm not comfortable playing detective." Rusty stared at her.

"You think he's dangerous?" he said.

"It's not that. I just think it's better that I stay out of this for now."

"Suit yourself," he said, slamming the door of her car. Without looking back, he ran across the gravel lot, up a rise to the track bed and disappeared over the other side.