It was Marty, keeping tabs. Jake had miraculously turned the corner. Unless he suffered a relapse, he was going home in the next day or two. Marty said Jake intended to take the reins the minute they lowered him into his beloved wheelchair.

  Carlos said, “That’s good news!”

  Marty told him to sit on the money, but be ready to move at a moment’s notice. He mentioned in an overly casual sort of way that he could expect a fat bonus.

  “Terrific,” said Carlos.

  Marty warned Carlos that Jake expected him to count the money when they handed it over.

  “Count it?” said Carlos, aghast. He compounded his error by adding, “All of it?”

  Marty said, “Let’s hope so.”

  Chapter 42

  There were lots of witnesses. Typically, no two of them agreed about what they’d seen. Sorting through the conflicting statements was a time-consuming chore, and neither Willows nor Parker wanted any part of it. Despite this, a pushy rookie cop named Herb Montague insisted on introducing them to the Safeway employee who’d bagged Chantal’s groceries.

  Cheryl Hogg was in her early twenties, confident and smart. She was an ideal witness: observant, thoughtful in her responses, and unflappable in the face of rigorous cross-examination.

  Parker said, “Okay, I appreciate that you’ve already gone through all this with Constable Montague, but let’s just make sure we got it right the first time.”

  Cheryl nodded agreeably.

  “Can you describe the woman who hit Kurt?”

  “She was seventeen or eighteen, about five-four, on the thin side. Not emaciated, but definitely thin. Small-boned. Blond hair, cut short. Dyed, because her roots were showing. She looked just like the picture in the paper, except really tired.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Uh, black boots, jeans, and a man’s jacket.”

  “How do you know it was a man’s jacket?”

  “It was way too big for her, and the buttons were on the wrong side.”

  “Okay, good. Was she alone?”

  “I think so. She behaved like she was alone. I didn’t see anybody with her.”

  Parker scribbled it all down in her notebook. “What else can you tell us?”

  “Well, I noticed she didn’t have an umbrella, and her hair and jacket were damp, but not wet. I offered to double-bag the groceries, because she was on foot, but she said it was okay, she only had to go a couple of blocks.”

  “Did you follow Kurt when he went after her?”

  “No, I was bagging for two checkouts. We were fairly busy, so I had to stay where I was, keep working. I’d seen her pay for her groceries, so I knew she wasn’t a thief. Kurt didn’t seem angry. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what he was so excited about. He certainly didn’t act like somebody in hot pursuit of a murder suspect.”

  “What was his attitude?”

  “I’m not sure … he seemed to be enjoying himself, having a little fun.” She thought about it for a moment and then added, “I’ve got a cat, and the people next door own one of those fuzzy little yappy dogs, a cockapoo. Sometimes their dog chases my cat. He never catches her. I doubt if he really wants to. But he sure gets a kick out of the chase. That’s what Kurt looked like, as if he was enjoying the chase.”

  “Anything else you can think of, Cheryl?”

  “Not really. Well, I guess I should mention that … what’s the girl’s name?”

  “Chantal.”

  “Some guy in the lineup was hitting on her. An old guy. I mean, old enough to be her father. She got rid of him without any problem, but I could see that she was really angry. Then her face changed, and she looked sad. Really sad.” Cheryl looked directly at Parker. “Sometimes you’re so unhappy in your own life that you wish you were somebody else?”

  Parker nodded.

  “That’s what Chantal looked like, the saddest person in the world.”

  Parker thanked Cheryl for her help. She gave her a card and Cheryl promised to call if she thought of anything else, anything at all.

  Twenty-odd witnesses had seen Chantal run diagonally across the parking lot, and down the street. It would be hours before they determined ownership of the dozens of cars in the lot, but at this point it seemed likely that Chantal had been telling the truth when she’d said she was on foot.

  Had she really gone to ground within a few square blocks of the mall? Parker hoped so. Maybe she’d grown up in the area, or had friends or relatives who lived nearby.

  Parker said, “Jack …”

  Willows glanced up as Homer Bradley stepped from his dark-blue Lincoln Town Car. Bradley waved him over. The inspector wore a black fedora and long black raincoat. He carried a tightly furled black umbrella with a gleaming silver tip. Rain speckled his shiny black shoes. He stood perfectly still, with his black-gloved hands at his sides. Parker thought he looked like a character from a thirties-era film, somebody Ted Turner would love to colourize.

  Willows brought Bradley up to speed. He wanted to canvass the homes and apartments within an expanding radius, as many as twelve to sixteen blocks in total. Bradley pointed out that canvassing such a wide area would require more manpower than was readily available. Willows said he didn’t see any other way to handle the situation. Bradley appeared not to have heard him. He worked his fingers more deeply into his black gloves, touched the handle of his umbrella to the brim of his fedora, turned his back on Willows and Parker and walked slowly back through the rain to his idling car.

  Half an hour later, cops started pounding on doors.

  Chapter 43

  Bobby Dundas waited until Dutton had stopped taking pictures, then crouched down beside Pinky Koblansky. He was careful not to get any blood on his clothes as he reached out and took Pinky’s limp hand.

  “Pinky, you okay?” He made a show of taking Pinky’s pulse, and then looked up at Eddy Orwell. “Eddy, I got some bad …” His voice broke. “I got some real bad news, Eddy …”

  Orwell rolled his eyes.

  Bobby tried to roll Pinky over on his stomach. Pinky was even heavier than he looked. Bobby motioned to Orwell. “Gimme a hand.”

  “Forget that. No way we should move him.”

  Bobby sneered up at his partner. “What’re you afraid of, a hernia? I bet the heaviest thing you’ve lifted in the past six months is a six-pack.”

  Not quite true. Judith’s sudden departure had depressed Orwell something awful. The heaviest thing he’d lifted wasn’t a case of beer, it was his heart.

  Bobby snapped his fingers. “Gimme a hand, you wimp!”

  Orwell knelt down beside Bobby.

  “All set? On the count of three …”

  But when they tried to roll Pinky Koblansky over, he wouldn’t move an inch.

  Bobby said, “What the hell! Jeez, we’re gonna need a fucking forklift.”

  Orwell stared at the bloody, overlapping bootprints on Pinky’s chest. He said, “The way I see it, the killer must’ve shot him, then cut a hole in the mesh …

  “Chicken wire.”

  “… and crawled in here after him. Pinky’s lying on the floor. Mortally wounded, too weak to move …”

  Bobby got a two-handed grip on Pinky’s belt, and yanked hard. Pinky flipped over, quick as a pancake. Bobby lost his balance and sat down hard on the bloody floor. Cursing, he scrambled to his feet.

  “Look at my goddam coat!”

  “Ruined,” said Orwell cheerfully. “Blood’s a bitch. Those damn spots will never come out. The harder you scrub them, the bigger they’ll get.”

  Bobby eyed him suspiciously.

  Orwell delicately patted Pinky’s butt. Pinky was not packing a wallet. Where was it? Orwell assumed the killer had stolen it. Money was always a popular motive, because murderers were just like everybody else, obsessed with getting and spending. Orwell patted Pinky down again.

  Bobby said, “Watch it, Eddy. Once is business, but twice is asking for a bum rep.”

  “Very funny.” Orwell pawed through a stack of sex magazines that had spilled across the floor. It seemed that Pinky was fond of close-ups. Why leave anything to the imagination when your readers probably didn’t have an imagination? But could this be love? Bobby reached past him and snatched up a magazine. He tried to flip through the pages, but many of them were stuck together.

  Pinky’s wallet lay under a particularly revolting magazine. He had no credit or ATM cards, or plastic of any kind. No pictures of loved ones, or relatives, or even people he didn’t like. His driver’s licence had expired prior to the rollover of the millennium. A coin pouch contained a dime-sized medallion of St. Christopher, the patron saint of Catholic travellers. Eddy slipped the medallion back into the pouch. Pinky was a traveller, all right. Flush, too. Orwell’s thumb catalogued a fat wad of crisp new American twenties. Five, six hundred bucks. Had unadorned robbery been the motive? It seemed likely.

  Orwell fanned the bills out on the desk. “Bobby?”

  “Yeah, what?” Bobby stared blankly at the money.

  Finally, Orwell pointed out that all the serial numbers were identical. The bills were counterfeit. He turned on the gooseneck desk lamp and held a bill to the glare. “This is nice work.”

  Bobby shrugged, unimpressed.

  Orwell glanced down at Pinky. If the deceased night clerk had been involved in the highly lucrative bogus-currency racket, maybe he wasn’t such a total loser after all.

  Orwell said, “We better call Jack.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if Chantal killed her boyfriend, that Partridge kid, she probably bumped Pinky, too.” Orwell triumphantly snapped his latex gloves. For the first time since Judith had bugged out on him, he felt like a genuine, fully-functioning detective.

  Chapter 44

  You couldn’t assault a person, knock them cold or maybe even kill them, and expect to stroll off whistling your favourite tune and not be noticed.

  Chantal was already on the run, described by the VPD as a “person of interest,” a twitchy phrase she and everybody else in the world translated to “murder suspect.” She waited until the mall parking lot was out of sight, then ducked into an alley and ran like hell.

  The people who lived in this modest working-class area had apparently developed such a strong emotional attachment to their cars and major appliances that they couldn’t bring themselves to get rid of them after they’d died. Most of the backyards served as ersatz graveyards. Many of the crumbling, swayback garages had been converted into automotive crypts.

  She’d made it about halfway to Tim Shepherd’s apartment when she heard the first police siren. A shot of adrenalin fuelled a short burst of speed, but she was soon winded. Doubled over and gasping for breath, she stumbled into an open garage and dropped to her knees. She soon recovered her breath, but the pain in her side wouldn’t go away. She was about to leave the protection of the garage when she heard a splash that her brain automatically registered as a car tire hitting a puddle. She retreated into the shadows as a patrol car cruised slowly past, the driver and the cop in the shotgun seat swivelling their heads from side to side in asymmetrical rhythm.

  Chantal’s heart rose up into her throat. How could they have missed seeing her? She made herself count to ten, very slowly, and then risked a quick peek outside. The patrol car had vanished.

  The circuitous route she took back to Tim’s apartment was designed to minimize her exposure to the long view. It took her almost half an hour of bobbing and weaving to gain a single block.

  Once — and one time only — she made the neophyte escapee’s error of cutting through a yard surrounded by a high wooden fence.

  The enormous mixed-breed dog idly snoozing on his owner’s back porch was not amused to see her. The animal lifted a head the size and weight and approximate density of an anvil. He tested the breeze, stared myopically down at her with eyes black as the wrought-iron gates of hell.

  Chantal tried to make herself just as small as small could be. The dog laboriously stood up. His threatening growl was a near-subsonic rumble that came from somewhere deep inside his carnivorous bowels. Chantal was so terrified that it felt as if her soul had been pinched out like a match. She broke eye contact, and backed slowly away from the dog, angling across tall weeds and clumps of clinging wet grass that had long since gone to seed.

  The animal tracked her, growling and snarling. It drew back its heavy flews, baring two large horseshoes of sharp white teeth. A stringy rope of drool lowered itself from its jaws.

  Chantal said, “Good dog!”

  Both of them knew it was a lie.

  The huge creature was like a train. It’s enormous mass didn’t encourage a quick start, but once it got under way the die was cast. It’s chunky hind end waggled comically as it hustled down the porch steps, but nobody was laughing.

  Chantal hurled a loaf of white sliced. The dog kept coming, slowly but surely picking up speed. She threw a can of soup at it, missed by a mile, and turned and ran.

  The beast lunged after her, huffing and puffing, one hundred and thirty pounds of meat and bone and pure bad attitude. The gate was about twenty feet away. She lost her footing and fell heavily and face down into the grass. She struggled to her knees. She’d tripped over a child’s tricycle. The bike was red, with white fenders, and was spotted everywhere with rust. Red-painted wooden blocks had been bolted to the pedals. She grabbed the handlebars and pulled hard. The spoked wheels were entangled in grass and weeds. She pulled with all her strength, and the bike suddenly broke free. She lifted it high above her head. Christ, it weighed about fifty pounds!

  The dog was not fast but he had oodles of torque. His claws tossed up a roostertail of grass and dirt and weeds. As the space between them slowly shrank to nothing, Chantal tried to keep in mind the vital fact that timing was everything.

  In the sport and pastime of baseball, the elite hitters have the vision of a peregrine falcon, the timing of a Rolex, the discipline of a Gandhi. Of the three vital elements, discipline, or control of self was the most difficult skill to attain.

  Chantal struggled not to swing too soon. But the charging dog was all jaws and teeth and he was so close, and gaining speed …

  Wait.

  Wait.

  Wait.

  Now!

  Chapter 45

  The world was your oyster if you owned one of those little blue-and-white handicapped parking tags. Carlos’ had cost him thirty-five bucks, but it was worth every penny, because it had saved him a fortune in shoe leather and Band-Aids. The same feisty pensioners who’d been so eager to punch his lights out now gravely offered to help carry his groceries.

  He parked the van and killed the engine. He and Hector got out and hurried across the sidewalk and into the hospital.

  Hector slowed his pace to a crawl. He glanced around with an awestruck look on his face, enchanted as a serial killer enjoying a guided tour of Hitlers bunker. “So this is where it all comes together.”

  “If you’re lucky. But first, they gotta take you apart.”

  Hector’s hairline dipped into his eyebrows. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Surgery.” Carlos gave him a quizzical look. “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “The TV series.”

  Hector’s boots echoed on the tile floor of the hospital’s cavernous foyer. He turned left, following a large green arrow directing them to “Information,” which they badly needed.

  He added, “It’s on in the middle of the afternoon, five days a week. ‘General Hospital.’ It’s a soap. A quality soap. The best. I can’t believe you never heard of it.”

  Carlos’ low chuckle contained zero mirth quotient. He said, “This ain’t the hospital where they film the TV series, you dope.” He adopted a gratingly patronizing tone. “See, there’s general hospitals all over the world. It’s a popular name, like Tyler for little boys.”

  “No kidding,” said Hector sarcastically.

  Carlos glared at him. Nobody liked being made fun of. Especially him. He silently drove another nail in Hector’s coffin.

  They continued to plod down the wide, overly bright hallway. Carlos was in a hurry, but he was no athlete. The criminal lifestyle encouraged a high cholesterol level, and a lazy heart. Maybe he should think about joining a club …

  They passed dozens of doors, all of them shut. Drugs in there, probably. Hector hadn’t seen any security guards, but he knew they were out there, on the bloodthirsty hunt for desperate junkies hoping to make a quick score.

  A passing nurse eyed them warily. Hector returned the favour, in spades, glaring at her with such unrestrained hostility that she ducked her head and looked away. His mother had drummed into him the necessity to be courteous to the weaker sex. It was a rule he had memorized but broke constantly. The information kiosk was just ahead. Carlos surprised Hector by suggesting it might be better if he approached the booth alone.

  “Me?” Hector was instantly suspicious.

  “Look at me.” Carlos was dressed in his two-piece mottled grey-and-brown Desert Storm suit, and sturdy paratrooper boots fit for stomping a grizzly. “I walk up to her, she’s gonna think she’s being invaded.”

  The woman in the kiosk was on the phone, smiling and giggling. She swung one of her long, crossed legs in a steadily accelerating rhythm. Hector was no more perceptive than a mirror, but couldn’t help wondering about the topic under discussion. He pressed his mouth against the circular hole in the thick sheet of polycarbonate intended to protect her from dudes one quarter as bad as him.

  “Excuse me? Ma’am? Miss? Excuse me, could I ask you a question?”

  She glanced up, gave him an irritated look.

  Hector smiled. “Sorry to interrupt. Kurt Butlers room, please.”

 

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