Woman Chased by Crows (3 page)

“Chief?” Dorrie again. “There's a Detective Delisle from Metro Homicide in town. He said he was checking in.”

“Well now, that might distract me for a moment from the usual travail.” He opened his door and checked the big room. “He here?”

“Just missed him, Chief,” Dorrie said. She was wearing a powder blue sweater set. “I didn't want to interrupt your chat with the Mayor.”

“Most considerate.” Orwell noted, as he often did, how very tidy his secretary looked, not a hair out of place. “Have I seen that sweater before?” he asked.

“Probably. You gave it to me for Christmas.”

“Ah,” he said.

“Your wife may have helped you pick it out,” Dorrie said.

“Yes, as I recall I was going to get you a karaoke machine.” Dorrie didn't laugh. It was one of Orwell's missions in life to make her smile. She rarely did. “This detective . . .”

“Delisle,” she said. “Paul Delisle, Metro Homicide.” She articulated clearly. “Said he was hungry, be back after he had some lunch.”

Orwell checked his watch. “Hmm. I'm a mite hungry, too,” he said. “Know where he was planning to eat?”

“I told him to try the Hillside.”

“What's he look like?”

“Can't miss him, Chief: redhead, taller than you even, looks like a basketball player.”

“That colour suits you,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. “And may I say that green tie suits you.”

Orwell thought he detected the briefest flicker of a smile on his secretary's face, but he could have been mistaken.

Paul Delisle
had
been a helluva basketball player. Good ball-handler for all his size, decent outside shot, not afraid to stick his face in there. Went all the way through college on his rebounding and his outlet pass. He still had a floating grace in the way he moved, his head was always up, expressive wrists, wide square shoulders. He was sitting by the corner window with an angle on the bridge to his right and a long view of Vankleek for three blocks west.

“Detective? I'm Orwell Brennan, understand you were looking for me. Don't get up.”

“Chief. Pleasure. Paul Delisle.”

Delisle put down his hamburger, wiped his hand and extended it across the table. The two hands together were the size of a picnic ham.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Oh yeah, please. You don't mind me eating?”

“Hell, I'm here to eat, too,” Orwell said. “Doreen, sweetie, give me a small steak, tell Leo it's for me — he knows how I like it.”

“Anything to drink, Chief?”

“Canada Dry, lots of ice. Thanks. Cut your hair. Looks nice.”

“Thanks,” Doreen said. She fluffed her new look as she headed for the kitchen.

“You know everybody in town, don't you? I watched you walking this way.”

“Small town. I'm easy to spot.”

“Me too,” Delisle said, “but I'm more anonymous.”

“That's the big city for you. So. How can I help you? You looking for somebody?”

“It's sort of complicated.” He looked out the window at the Little Snipe flowing past. “There's a ballet teacher in town. Calls herself Anna Daniel these days.”

“She a witness? Suspect?”

“Tell you the truth, I don't know what the hell she is.” Delisle stared out at the river. “It's probably a waste of time.”

“Something personal with you?” Orwell asked.

“Anna Daniel used to be with the Kirov or the Bolshoi or one of those, twenty-five, maybe thirty years ago,” Delisle began.

“Anya.”

“Say again?”

“Her name. Not Anna, An-ya. I've met her,” Orwell said. “My youngest daughter, Leda, took some classes before deciding she'd rather save the world than do pliés.” Orwell's steak arrived, charred on the outside, red in the middle, salad on the side. He had foregone the excellent baked potato and sour cream he would have liked. He was trying to lose a few kilos. Again. “Where's your partner?”

“I had some vacation time coming.”

“So this is personal.”

“What'd you think of
Anya
?”

“Can't say we talked much. She was forthright. Said Leda was too tall, uncoordinated and had an attitude.”

“Does she?”

“My daughter? Definitely. The teacher, too. I like people with attitude. She defected, right?”

“1981, did a Baryshnikov in Toronto, asked for asylum.”

“She a citizen now?”

“Oh yeah, that's all square. The Russians didn't make much of a fuss. Not a
big
star.”

Orwell attacked his six ounces of rare beef and, for appearance's sake, a few bites of salad. “What's the interest?”

“She confessed to a homicide.”

Orwell blinked. “She did? When was this?”

“Six years ago. In the city. Before she moved up here. Somebody dead in High Park. She was questioned.”

“Why?”

“Routine. She lived close to where it happened. She was seen in the park, walking in the park, no big deal, she wasn't a suspect, we were questioning people in the neighbourhood, just routine, and out of the blue she confesses.”

“To you?”

“It was a follow-up interview after the uniform cops had canvassed the neighbourhood. Uniform made a note that she'd acted a bit weird and might be worth a second visit. My partner and I knocked on her door, she comes to the door with a drink in her hand, sees the badges and says, ‘Ah, there you are at last.' We give her the just routine ma'am, follow up visit, in case you may have remembered something, and out of the blue she says, ‘I know what you are talking about. I know the man you are talking about. I killed him.'”

“Holy cow.”

“Well, ah yeah, but it didn't check out. Everything was wrong with her story. She said she shot him, the guy was strangled, big guy, strangled, she's a small woman, no way she strangles somebody that size. The body had been moved, no way she
moves
a guy that size. She took a polygraph, she lies about everything. Nothing checks out. She didn't have a gun. She had an alibi but she didn't use it, the super in her building says she was moving furniture, tying up the service elevator, he saw her five, ten times that day. She's a loon.”

“I know she's seeing a psychiatrist,” Orwell said. “Dr. Ruth.” Delisle raised his eyebrows. “That's her
last
name. Lorna Ruth. Anyway, Lorna's in the medical building near the campus. Evangeline Street.”

“She won't tell me anything, probably.”

“No, she won't. I just mention it. You saying she was a loon. You want coffee?” Delisle nodded, distracted. “Doreen, couple of coffees?”

“Got Dutch apple pie, Chief.”

“Temptress. But I am strong. Maybe next week. You want dessert?” Delisle shook his head, his thoughts still elsewhere. “Where's your partner in all this?”

“What? Oh, Dylan? He's retired. Six years ago. O'Grady. Black Irishman. Literally. Afro-Irish. Big guy, your size, used to play tackle for the Argos. Dylan O'Grady. Know him?”

“Vaguely. Don't think he played very long.”

“Broken toe did him in. Believe that? Worked out in the end. Did his twenty as a cop, went into politics. He's a city councillor now, but I hear he's running for a vacant seat in Ottawa.”

“The big time.”

“Yeah, he's a go-getter.” Delisle sounded dubious.

The coffees arrived as well as two bite-size portions of Dutch apple pie on saucers. “Just so's you two know what you're missing.” Doreen walked away, fluffing her hair again. Orwell savoured the single bite. “The guy in the park,” Orwell said, licking the corner of his mouth. “You ever find the real killer?”

“Oh sure we did, not for that one, but we found a strangler, a big gay dude, eight months later for another one, and for one more that the guy didn't finish off and the victim lived to testify. Messed up his life, but he stood up, testified, give him that.”

“You should try the pie,” Orwell said. Delisle shook his head. Not interested. Orwell popped Delisle's sample into his mouth. Be a shame to let it go to waste. “So you closed the first case, too,” he said, wiping his lips.

“Not officially, he wouldn't cop to the guy in the park but we're pretty sure it was him.”

“So if she didn't do it, what's the interest?”

“Well, we've got this other case, still open, two years previous, guy got himself shot, out in the Beaches. I was checking her out and her name pops up in this other file. She confessed to that one, too. Said she strangled him.”

Orwell shook his head and stifled a laugh. “So she's on record of having confessed to two different murders, only she got the methods wrong?”

“Or backwards.”

“Got anything else?”

“Oh yeah. Turns out we've got a file on this woman four inches thick. From September 13, 1987, to October 27, 1995, she called 9-1-1 fifty-four times. Prowlers, assaults, stalkers, rapists following her, assassination attempts. Fifty-four.”

“How many responses?”

“Actual investigations? Maybe seven. Patrol logs, maybe another fifteen. She wasn't ignored, at least not at first, but after a couple of years she was kind of established, a crank, not to be taken too seriously, paranoid delusion, persecution complex, chronic confessor, that kind of evaluation.”

“Sounds like she was going through a bad patch,” said Orwell. “She seems to be functioning all right in Dockerty. Opened a dance school, teaches ballet to the kids, ballroom dancing for the grownups. Never any trouble as far as I know.”

Delisle looked away from the river and the bridge and wherever his mind had travelled. “She says she did something in her homeland that will never be forgiven, they're going to send assassins after her to make her pay.”

“The body in the park, guy was an assassin?”

“Not hardly. Stockbroker. Riverdale. Wife and kid. He had coke in his system. Some white collar putz taking a walk on the wild side, got himself into a dangerous situation.”

“So what are you up here for?”

“Well, another guy turned up dead. Last week. On the Queensway. In a motel room.”

“She didn't confess to that one, did she?”

“Far as I know, she was up here. But here's the thing, this guy was Russian, he was a defector, he was a scenic designer for a ballet company and he was carrying her picture in his wallet.”

She had recognized him immediately as he drove by — not the sort of man you forget, so tall, that preposterous red hair, and there he was again, on the sidewalk across the street. He was even walking in rhythm with the music, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Schéhérazade.
The children in the room behind her were fighting the tempo, but the tall man below was floating along in perfect time. She wondered if he could hear it. The windows were closed, no traffic noise. Maybe it was a sign. A good sign. A sign that would cancel out a dead crow. It was possible, was it not? Of all the people looking for her, he was the one she always hoped would find her again. From that first time, when he came to the apartment on Quebec Avenue with that huge black man, that first look, standing in the hall, offering his badge toward her like a sandwich. Viktor had been there, getting drunk on her vodka, smoking her cigarettes, badgering her, hiding in the corner. Unlike Viktor, she had been happy to see the policemen, welcomed them into the apartment, offered them drinks. She didn't like the big black man. He was too friendly, and he crowded her with his big smile and sexy voice, acting like her uncle, the one who always stood too close. But the red-haired man, she liked him, standing by the door, not leaning, but giving the impression that he was lounging, so relaxed. He had an easy smile. He had a nice voice. She wanted to get his attention.

“Yes, the man in the park. I know who you mean,” she said. “I killed him.”

They hadn't believed her, they took her to the police station for questioning and that was all she really wanted, to get away from Viktor who was drunk and getting crazier every day, to ride in a car with the red-haired man, to have him pay attention to her for a while. And he drove her home as well, insisted even. She turned down a ride with the big black man, but she went home with the red-haired one. When she invited him inside, he demurred, but so charmingly, with a smile almost rueful, a smile that suggested
another time, another place, ships that pass in the night, if only we'd met last week
, and never that she was too old for him. He was a charmer. And courtly. A private part of her, the tiny part that wished for things, had prayed he would return some day.