a high-wire act.
At lunchtime, she headed for the nearby Tim Hortons. The venerable doughnut chain, now American-owned, had a history of nearly half a century based on the joys of bubbling fat, popping franchises across the country on every strategic street corner, promising a sweet, warm antidote for the never-ending Canadian winter. Iced tea and cappuccino in the summer, but no latte . . . yet. Other chains folded tent, and lately Tim’s had aimed its sights at another border crosser, Krispy Kreme.
Collecting two Meal Deals, which included a sandwich, coffee and doughnut for mere pocket change, she saw Steve Davis coming through the door. As a detective, he wore a light-grey suit and carried a raincoat like any businessman. His six-six frame would look good in a burnoose, but she missed the handsome uniform from his younger days when he’d done off-duty security work for her Uncle Harold.
“I haven’t seen you for weeks,” she said, opening her coffee and pushing Miriam’s towards him as they found a booth. “With those terrible murders, you must be in triple overtime.”
He winced, sipping the brew. Ojibwa with a Scottish grandfather, Steve had been raised on a reserve in remote northwestern Ontario. His coal-black hair, thick and lustrous, shaded to silver at the temples. Her junior by a few years, he nevertheless felt a solemn obligation to play big brother, law vs. justice their favourite debate. “It’s a nightmare. I was called to the second homicide. The mayor’s courting a coronary. We’re not used to this. Mom-and-pop domestics or bar brawls head up the usual list.”
Belle leaned forward to hear his lowered voice. The police were not flavour of the month these days. Every pensioner in town punched in at coffee shops to heap abuse at the boys and girls in blue, usually in comparison with American television dramas where homicides were solved in an hour when dog DNA from a scrap of a cigarette filter of a suspect whose dachshund liked chewing paper turned up at the crime scene. “The methods seem similar, the victims, too. Are we talking serial killer?”
“Getting close.” He frowned, dark clouds gathering in his eyes, as serious as Belle was comedic. “The magic number is three for that definition. You know I can’t tell you much more than the papers. Strangling’s the hardest kind of murder to solve. No blood, no mess, no fuss. If you have the cold determination to kill another human being and the muscles to carry it out, you may beat the odds.”
“I see what you mean. Up close and personal.” Remembering arcane details from the Kathy Reichs novels she often read before bed, she added, “Hyoid fracture. Thyroid cartilage. Petach . . . petrach . . . Help me out here, expert.”
He rolled a tongue around his cheek in mockery. “A kindergartner knows the drill. Except that sometimes petechial hemorrhages appear for other reasons.”
“No prints, though. Right?”
“Fingerprints can show up on skin with hi-tech fuming devices, but you have to get them fast. With whisper-thin latex gloves, it can be marginally possible to retrieve prints, too.”
“Latex? Then rule out everyone with an allergy.”
“Very funny. You might get hired as our departmental joker.”
She was on a roll. “Trace evidence turned up by your forensics folk in white spacesuits? That theory that you take something and leave something—”
“Actually, the suits are black. You’re talking about Locard’s Principle of Exchange. If it were one hundred per cent true, few murders would go unsolved.”
“I haven’t heard anything about rape. Are you holding that back?”
“No more leaks.” He stroked his jaw, the noon shadow beginning to shade his bronze face. “I should get out of this sorry business, except that I don’t seem to have any other talents. The price of life’s so cheap. A few thousand in portable property.”
“You told me drugs were behind most crimes. Supporting a habit. Look how many times the Dairy Queen gets hit. What about the Hock Shop? Have you—”
They were interrupted by the loud guffaws and table slapping at the next booth, one coneheaded bald man with a pyramid of maple cream doughnuts, the other with a Godzilla hunk of coffee cake. Both wore hearing aids. “Friggin’ idjits. Whatta we pay them for, anyways? Couldn’t find their arsehole with their own thumb. There’s a squad car at every Tim’s.”
Steve winced. “Glad I walked. I’d better hustle back to the station. We have another task force meeting this afternoon. Some hot shot profiler flew up from the Big Smoke.”
“Let me guess the result. Male. Loner. Twenty to thirty-five. Hated Mommy Dearest. Works at a min-wage job.” She looked around at the staff, mostly earnest women, but what about the kitchen help? “Maybe twenty feet away operating a deep-fat fryer.”
“Not any more. The doughnuts come pre-cooked.” Finally he smiled, tapping her cheap watch, well-worn with a cracked crystal. “I’ll pass on your theory to the chief. But don’t buy a Rolex on the expectations.”
“One other thing. I had a nasty note from some Junior Crime Stopper. I suppose those in charge will give me some privacy baloney if I complain. Can you ask around and see if they have an overambitious kid on the roster in my area, maybe in Skead? A bike could do it in less than an hour.” She explained the wiper incident.
“Everything is routed through Toronto, but I know our liaison sergeant, Rick Cooper.” He pointed across the street to the Ukrainian Seniors’ Centre next to Ray Hnatyshyn Park. “Crime Stoppers could have used more eyes over there in June. Kids painted swastikas on the back wall near the garden. Makes me sick.”
“That’s low. I saw some graffiti on my way in, but it was rather artistic.”
“Graffiti’s no trivial issue.” He let out a slow breath in mute comment at her naïveté. “There was a dramatic increase over the summer. Over eleven thousand dollars in removal costs around the city. Besides that, it creates an environment that appears unsafe.”
“True enough. Reminds me of L.A. streets in that movie Colors. It’ll taper off soon. Spray paint doesn’t work at -30°C,” she said, coaxing a smile from his classic, chiselled lips.
As they parted company outside, she watched him stop momentarily to eyeball the stragglers in a crossover area between Tim’s and the LCBO. Booze it up and then sober up. This volatile combination with the nearby bus station attracted drifters. He fished in his pocket for loose change and passed it to a tall, thin man who gave a theatrical bow, sweeping his Peter Pan hat to the ground, a rare character in the staid mining town.
Later that afternoon, she pointed the van down Paris and turned left on John Street, high on a hill, overlooking the jewel of Lake Ramsey. On one side was the venerable St. Joseph Health Centre with its helipad, beyond that, the snowflake shapes of Science North, then Laurentian, the new megahospital with parking lots far enough from the entrance to weed out the more fragile heart patients. Then came Shield University with its gleaming towers, where the new medical college was breaking ground. At last the doctor-poor North could train its own.
She didn’t need to double-check the address. Parked in the circular, bricked drive was a brown, black and yellow Ford Focus, customized to resemble a bee. Its rear was striped, a sharpened, centralized exhaust pipe serving as stinger, with trompe l’oeil folded gossamer wings and black legs on the body, protruding from the hood a plastic proboscis and antennae. The bakery logo was stencilled on both doors. Great tax deduction.
Bea’s
