Primary Obsessions, page 17
“You think she killed Jason?”
“Nope. I know who killed Jason.”
Mike glowered skeptically, and a fire engine’s siren wailed farther up Nanaimo Street.
“Follow me,” he said.
24
As they passed the hulking darkness of the horse racing track, Mike signalled onto the last turnoff before the highway, down onto the curlicue overpass that led to the New Brighton Pool, a summer oasis of public recreation with a stunning alpine vista, encircled by the rusty clang of port-authorized transportation trucks and the railways that had been the whole reason for the city in the first place. There was no speed to the chase anymore, and now the two cars were a convoy, driving like a group of friends too big for just one vehicle.
Mike pulled the Audi into the dusty overflow parking lot, which sat empty and dark except for the summer moon and the cast-off glow of the tall halogens lighting the train tracks. Annick pulled the car share in just a few feet behind the Audi.
Philip took his seat belt off, moved to the front of his seat. Without taking his eyes off of Mike’s truck, he spoke with dead calm to Annick.
“Can you make this work?”
“I have no idea.”
“What does he want?”
“Don’t know.”
“But like, I mean—is she going to be willing to say anything right now?”
“I don’t see how we can leave her like this,” Annick said. “And I’m not sure we have much choice.”
Mike’s door opened more slowly this time, his steps down from the driver’s seat more deliberate. He swivelled to face them, smiling, raising his hands above his head as though he were headed into a wrestling ring.
“Let’s fucking do this, for real. Come on, bitch. Let’s finish this.”
“You get out of this car again and you are officially single, lady.”
Mike slapped the front of the car in a violent burlesque of playful. “Huh? What do you say? Step out and end it?”
“Single’s if I’m lucky. What I’m really worried about is you being a widower.”
“Maybe we’ll just go to heaven together.”
“Some science reporter you turned out to be.”
“Yeah that’s what I thought, you fucking bitch,” Mike said outside, seeing that they weren’t moving and waving them off with disgust, then turning back towards the SUV.
“What’s this?” Philip asked.
“It’s not real,” said Annick, and as she did, Mike turned on his heels, lurched to the side of the car in three or four lunging steps, and punched the window next to Annick’s head.
“Jesus!” she screamed, and Mike’s fist rocked the tempered glass again, first leaving nothing, then a fracture like breaking ice in a cartoon, then his fist again, bloody this time, leaving the window a soft spiderweb.
“I’m going,” said Philip, to himself and to Annick, and as he turned to get out of the car, Mike stopped punching, reached into the waistband of his pants, and pulled out something dull and black.
Annick opened her door and slammed it into his arm, but Mike held onto the gun, and squeezed a loud round off into the air. Annick jaw’s locked shut as she pulled the handle back and pushed it out again sharply, quickly, hitting the heel of Mike’s hand with the corner of the door and finally loosening his grip. As Mike turned with his bleeding hand to pick up the gun, Philip was on him, knees between his shoulders, punching the back of his neck.
“What are you doing?” someone screamed, and Annick stood to see Lina, still wearing what looked like the shorts she must wear at work, but with a large grey cotton hoodie overtop. “Why don’t you leave me alone? Just leave me the fuck alone!”
“Lina, I spend almost all day, almost every day, talking to people who can barely breathe, they feel so guilty. Even though they haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Just go away, okay? Just go away!”
“You don’t need to be afraid to talk to me, Lina. You haven’t done anything wrong. But you also know Sanjay Desai didn’t kill your boyfriend,” Annick said, trying hard to stay calm. Seeing that Philip had neutralized Mike, she stepped out around their bodies and towards Lina, who began shaking her head incoherently.
“I don’t. I don’t know anything.”
“Lina, I want you to relax,” Annick said in the same voice she’d used a thousand times in her office, a voice that established authority, safety, calm. “I know you didn’t kill Jason. But you can’t let someone you know also didn’t do it go to prison. Because that’s another life. And if you let that happen, then Lina? You will have something to feel guilty about. You will have taken a life. And for a normal person—a good person, Lina, like you? That kind of guilt will never go away.”
Lina began to cry, wet glitter running down both sides of her face.
“They’ve got—they’re very scary people,” she said. “And Lewis takes care of his family. I’ve seen it.”
“Lina, I will do everything that I can to help you get out from under that fucking scumbag. Nothing would make me happier.”
Lina laughed through the sob. “You can’t.”
“But there are other people who are going to be hurt from this. There’s an innocent young man in jail.” Lina wiped her hand roughly across her cheek, the motion saving her from conceding a nod. Annick pushed: “You didn’t kill Jason, but I also know that you know who did. You were there when it happened, weren’t you?”
“Don’t you get it? If I say anything—”
Philip stood with his foot in the middle of Mike’s back, pulling a cellphone out of his pocket and beginning to dial.
“Who’s he calling?” asked Lina, in a panic.
“He’s calling the police.”
“No!”
“Lina, I need you to relax.”
“Don’t call the cops, please.”
“The police are going to come and arrest Mike for assault, probably a gun charge. You haven’t done anything. They aren’t coming for you.”
“But Lewis…”
“Listen, I—I think we can do this in a way so that it doesn’t come back on you, okay Lina? As far as the cops are concerned, as far as Lewis Blair is concerned. It’ll be on me, and I can take care of myself. But before the police get here, I need you to confirm a few things for me. I need to know that I’m right about what happened, so that I can point them in the right direction.”
Lina stared at her, stared at Mike.
“Mike is sleeping right now, Lina,” Annick explained, and she could hear Philip explaining their location to the emergency dispatcher. “This is just between you and me. I take confidentiality very seriously, Lina. But we don’t have a lot of time. So I’m going to ask you to confirm some things I think I already know, okay? Can you do that for me? Can you do that for Jason?”
Lina stared at Annick, and seemed suddenly like a child who had gotten into her mother’s makeup. What could she be, twenty-one? Twenty-two? She would have been too young for all of this at any age.
“Okay,” she said, shakily.
“Okay. Now, I’m guessing, Lina, that if the police take that blood on my window there, from where Mike punched it, I’m guessing that if they take a look at that blood, it’s going to match the blood they found in Jason’s room. Am I right to think that?”
Lina nodded.
25
Terry Chu drank black espresso and, at the very least, Annick could respect him for that. She watched him leaving Caffé Puglia holding a tiny paper shot, gripping a wax-paper bag as he walked towards where she was sitting in the sun. Annick had found a bench next to a soaring glass wall, slanted at a severe and inorganic angle appropriate to the sober and austere spirit of the law. After nodding a hello, Terry sat and began picking the berries out of his scone, and Annick took a moment to remind herself that mental wellness was a broad spectrum.
“Thank you for meeting me,” she began. “Especially on a court day.”
“Listen, before you say anything, I’d like to apologize again. The way I spoke to you the other day, that wasn’t fair. This has been a frustrating case, and until very recently it didn’t feel like my client was levelling with me. Now I know he wasn’t—and I guess, at this point, I understand why. You helped a lot by reaching out to him.”
“Thanks.”
“So—are we cool?”
“On the condition that you explain this berry thing.”
“What, this? I like the flavour that berries give a scone, but I can’t stand the texture of any fruit that has been heated.”
“I respect a man who knows what he wants in a baked good.”
“Life’s too short, you know? So tell me about this good news. I could use it.”
“Are you with Sanjay today?”
“Later. This is something else, a burglary charge.” Terry grimaced a lost-cause smile. “They found my guy with his dead father’s whole collection of sculptures and paintings, all crammed into his condo storage locker, before the executor had even had a chance to read the will. So fucked up. He’s got all these brothers and sisters, they sit in the courtroom, they’re practically hissing at him.”
“You like an underdog, huh?”
“Karmically, I figure I’m building up one hell of an IOU from the universe. Which your text last night kind of made it sound like you might be delivering?”
Annick smiled. “The girl, the dancer?”
A look of excitement passed across Terry’s face, lifting him up from his work with the berries. “Yeah?”
“She didn’t do it.”
“I thought you said this was good news?”
“She knows who did it, though.”
“Can she prove it?”
“You don’t want to know who?”
“Doesn’t matter who if she can’t prove it.”
“Man, you really are a lawyer.”
“What can I say? I imagine you’re the same way about psychology.”
“Good guess. But she doesn’t have to prove anything.”
“Okay?”
Two lawyers in full colonial costume passed by, smiling to each other conspiratorially as one quietly explained something infinitely exciting to the other, and Terry’s eyes raised to follow them just for a moment before returning to Annick.
“Mike Collis.”
“The guy’s best friend? The thickneck that wrote the Facebook post?”
“The very same.”
“No!” Terry said, staring into the middle distance. “The balls on that guy.” Then, after another pause: “What a fucking asshole!”
“Hiding in plain sight.”
“So first tell me what happened, then how we can prove it.”
“Jason and Lina were apparently always fighting—even I knew that, before this whole thing exploded. To hear her tell it, they were head over heels in love, but it’s a difficult piece of psychology to manage, working security at the same club where drunk dipshits ogle your girlfriend on stage, and big-time players in the VIP lounge, guys you could never stand up to or they’d put you in the ground, take even greater liberties.”
“Woah,” said Terrence, pie-eyed, and Annick could sense that not all of his interest in the story was strictly down to legal strategy.
“Jason was a jealous type, and from what I’m told, they would go back and forth about her work, arguing about it, then reconciling with just as much heat.”
Staring at Annick, Terry absent-mindedly fed one of the baked berries off of his scone into his mouth, curling his face up in disgust and spitting it onto the ground.
“So, what? There’s a confrontation at the house? Jason, operating as a standard-issue dirtbag jealous boyfriend, tried to kill Mike—that gives us the extra blood—and then Mike gets him back in self-defence?”
“Not exactly. Apparently, Mike, who has delusions of climbing the ladder in his uncle’s organization—”
“Who’s his uncle?”
“Lewis Blair.”
“Jesus Christ!” Terry shouted, expanding himself, hands spreading wide, knees flying open, knocking his briefcase over and upsetting its contents. A few yards away, a swarm of television journalists was closing in on an attorney and her high-profile client, and an eruption of laughter met a line delivered by one or the other of them just as the scrum began; across from them, a group in late adolescence was trying to climb the concrete benches with their skateboards. But the more that seemed to be going on outside of the courthouses, the tighter the focus of Terry Chu’s concentration. When she saw that he wasn’t moving to refill his open briefcase, Annick pressed on.
“Apparently Mike had been throwing his weight around in the VIP room, trying to show off for some of the high rollers. Then, asserting whatever the strip club slash brothel version of droit de seigneur is, he manhandled Lina in front of them. Jason pulled him off her, in front of everybody, shoved him over a side table covered in drinks. Apparently Mike looked like one of the Stooges, completely humiliated.”
“Emasculated.”
“Sure, if that helps.”
“So he killed him.”
Annick nodded. “She was there, but I promised her that in our version, she wouldn’t be.”
“But I’ll need her.”
Annick shook her head. “No, you won’t. The blood, the extra blood? It’s his. Mike burst in on the two of them—”
“Remind me to get the brand name of Sanjay’s headphones.”
“No shit, right? It didn’t help that he likes his music loud.”
“Kids think they’re invincible. That they’ll never go deaf.”
“So while Sanjay’s off in sensory-deprivation land, Mike comes over to the house, he’s upset, he wants to talk to Jason and Lina. Jason sends Lina to the bedroom, so the boys can lock antlers in the living room or the kitchen, and after a few minutes, Mike storms out, and Jason goes back to the room with Lina. But almost as quickly as he leaves, Mike’s back, into the bedroom now by way of the kitchen, lunging at Jason with the knife, screaming about how he made a fool of him in front of these big guys. But Mike can’t fight for shit—I can attest to that myself, I’ve seen it twice now. So even though he makes a big show, Jason gets the knife off of him, slashes his arm. Now, Lina says, Mike starts whimpering, and Jason throws the knife on the floor because he thinks it’s over, his friend is calming down. But he isn’t—instead, Mike grabs Lina’s shoulders, flings her to the ground. She falls onto her back, and when Jason bolts over to check on her, that’s when Mike picks the knife back up, opens Jason’s throat from behind.”
“Holy shit.”
“He grabs the knife—”
“Hence no murder weapon…”
“—and he grabs Lina hard by the wrist, covers her mouth because she’s losing it. He hears Sanjay go into the bathroom, hears the water start running, and she says Mike whispered that he had to kill Sanjay, too, but she bit the inside of his hand and he barrelled them outside and into his car. She says later, Mike’s going out of his mind, swinging between screaming rage and just bawling like a baby. A few hours later, when they see the first story online that the cops have arrested Sanjay, Mike says how Jason told him about Sanjay’s OCD before, his complaints to the landlords. Even a mug as dumb as Mike could see that he had a scapegoat.”
“And she doesn’t say anything until now, because?”
“Fuck-up that he is, Mike’s still Lewis Blair’s nephew. She’s still terrified. That’s why we can’t have her there, on the scene.”
Terry shook his head. “Nope. I’m sorry, I do—I need a reason to take his blood.”
Annick smiled. “No, you don’t. Because right before Mike Collis was arrested last night for assault and possession of an illegal firearm—”
“Wait, what? How do you know this?”
“—he punched a blood sample right into the window of the car I was driving.”
Terry Chu sat in dumbfounded silence for a few seconds, then spread his moustache over a wide, full-face smile. “Hells yes. Holy shit. Dr. Boudreau, I misjudged you.”
“Could’ve happened to anyone.”
“The balls, I still can’t believe it. That Facebook post.”
“The guy’s an asshole. But he didn’t do it alone—he has every dumbshit on the internet to thank. So, here’s what I need you to do, while they still have him in custody.”
“Shoot.”
“You tell the swaggering VPD sergeant, what’s his name?”
“Bremner.”
“You tell Sergeant Bremner the version of the story where Lina’s on the other side of town. If he has any problem with her absence, shift the conversation to the fact that you’re helping me prepare a formal complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal that the police department acted in a way that was prejudicial to my patient on the basis of his mental health.”
Terry laughed. “He’ll flip out. They just settled with the family of that guy, the schizophrenic they tasered into a coma on Robson Street.”
“Throw in Supriya’s poetry, the anti-brutality stuff.”
“That’s considerate of you.”
“I’m feeling magnanimous. We good?”
“Yes, Dr. Boudreau. We’re very good.”
Annick stood and extended a hand, but Terry leaned in to a deeply genuine hug, and she was happy to reciprocate.
“Can I ask one thing?” he said.
“Sure.”
“How come you’re not afraid of Lewis Blair?”
Annick raised her palms slightly. “Who said I’m not afraid of Lewis Blair?”
“I see,” said Terry.
“But it’s like I always tell my patients,” Annick said, already moving. “You can’t control every variable, every possible bad outcome. You could die crossing the street, but that doesn’t mean you stop doing it. Lewis Blair shows up, I don’t know. I can take care of myself, I guess.”
