Middlemen, page 29
Seconds passed; the puddle of blood at Daintry’s feet grew larger. Shaking from fatigue, he twirled the pistols and slid them cross-armed back into their holsters.
Wright draped the jacket over Daintry’s shoulders. Taking hold of the wounded man’s waist, he turned to leave. As a warning, he pointed his weapon at each of them before disappearing behind the crematorium.
Williams and Bichet looked at each other. She was bleeding onto the seat, blood smeared across her face and neck. Williams cradled his arm against the steering wheel and whispered, “What the fuck was that?”
Suddenly a white Escalade appeared before them and tore across the lot, then ploughed along a narrow footpath, whipping pines and snapping branches until it reached the other side and swung left, kicking up dust and disappearing from sight.
“Call it in, Lise . . .” Williams climbed out, showering the ground with small glass cubes.
“Officers down, officers down. Perps took off in white Escalade.” She gave the plate number and their location, then dropped the handset.
Williams removed his belt and wrapped it tightly around his forearm before staggering to the trunk for the vehicle’s standard-issue first-aid kit.
Making his way to the passenger door, he noticed a piece of folded white paper where Wright had been standing. He opened the kit. Inside were Band-Aids, a disinfectant cream, Q-Tips, a packet of aspirins, four tongue depressors, and two large gauze pads. “Pathetic.”
Bichet got out of the car, removed her jacket and shirt, and leaned over the hood.
“Trapezius is torn, Lise. Blood’s flowing freely from there and your upper back.”
“Muscles severed?” she asked.
Williams used her shirt to clear the blood. “Neck — no. Back, I can’t tell.” He put a gauze pad on the wound, but it quickly soaked through, so he laid the remaining one on top. “I don’t know what the muscles are above your bra. The ones running vertically next to your spine look like they’ve been slashed by a sword.”
“Lattissimus dorsi . . .” she moaned. “Ribs and spine okay?”
The gauze pads were too bloodied to tell, so he rubbed her shirt over the gash.
“Fucking hell, sir.”
“Sorry . . . Probably missed your spine, but not the ribs.”
“Okay. You done back there, Monty?”
Funny, he hadn’t heard that nickname since his grandfather died. “I’m done.” He packed the soggy gauze into the wound and covered it with her shirt before pressing the shirtsleeve to her neck.
Seconds later, he was shivering and faint. He leaned against the car, pulled his own shirt free, and wrapped it around his wounded wrist. It was hot outside, but he was freezing. “Lise . . . you cold?”
“Shock, sir . . . Yeah, I’m cold — but the hood’s warm. Keep that hand up high . . . They’ll be here soon.”
“Yeah, thanks, Sergeant . . . Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I don’t mind saying I was shit-scared.”
“Me too. So weird they didn’t finish it . . . especially with Daintry and that Fistful of Dollars routine.”
“Lise . . . didya know I was a stand-up comedian?”
“No way. Go on, say something funny.”
“I was a stand-up comedian.”
Bichet erupted in a locker-room roar that was shortly overtaken by swearing.
Williams thought about screaming, but if anything, he was afraid he’d cry. He spotted a trio of small, fluffy clouds — it might have been their whiteness that made him recall the piece of paper. “Lise, look where Wright was standing. Do you see a folded piece of paper?”
Seconds passed. “No, sir . . . nothing.”
Still shivering, Williams pushed himself off the car, and was hit by a wave of pain that made him nauseous. He almost swooned and took several deep breaths — then, like a Saturday-night drunk, he staggered forward.
“Monty . . . where you headed?”
“White piece of paper . . . It wasn’t there . . . then it was . . . then it wasn’t. I gotta find it.”
Rounding the corner, he noted a silver Toyota parked on the far side of a ramp. As he drew closer, he spotted the paper three feet down the ramp, flapping lazily against the retaining wall. He watched as it skidded down another foot. It would only take a few steps to reach it, but the angle was steep, and he couldn’t use his shot-up arm to support himself on the wall. So he did the only thing that came to mind — he turned around to use his left hand.
But now the down ramp was directly behind him. If there’d ever been a successful relationship between prudence and pain, it wasn’t now. But it was only three or four feet, and if Williams waited, he knew there was a chance the paper would blow even farther away.
That first step was a shock. It felt like his heel would never touch concrete, and when it did, he took a moment to adjust to leaning forward to go backwards down the slope. When he’d taken two more steps, he paused; his wrist was throbbing with pain and still bleeding badly. His breathing was so forced that he thought he’d pass out, so to calm himself, he studied the trees in the distance — but the swaying of their branches only made him more nauseous.
He turned his head to see how close the paper was — which was an unrecoverable mistake. Disoriented, he grabbed frantically at the retaining wall. Free-falling backwards, it was futile to claw at a smooth surface. Before his head hit concrete, Williams saw his bloodied hand fly wildly above him like the broken wing of a great wounded bird.
[80]
MacNeice’s goal with Garrick came into focus before he’d reached his car. There was only one question to ask — and it wouldn’t take ten minutes. It was the same question he’d have asked Rodney Conroy.
As he turned on to Main, a call came over the radio: “Officers down; officers down . . .” Though her voice was laboured, he recognized Bichet. The hair on his neck stood up; he hit the grille and tail emergency lights and called the dispatcher on the radiophone. “Get me DI Aziz; she’s on her cell.”
“Wilco; over.”
Slalom racing through the traffic, MacNeice’s thoughts returned to Bichet’s voice. It had been strong — even pugnacious — but severely stressed.
The radiophone came to life; it was Aziz. “You’re off to interview Garrick?”
“Williams and Bichet are wounded out at the crematorium — the call just came in — I’m on my way there now.”
“Oh god . . . Mac, we’re about to turn this scene over to Forensics. Dr. Richardson left a while ago. Where do you want me?”
“Garrick wants to talk; you should interview him. His wife is there. You won’t have much time — but you don’t need much.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only one question to ask him — he didn’t see his abductors, but we know who they are. Garrick must know why he was abducted, so the question is — who is he indebted to?”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Montile and Lise will probably go to Dundurn General. John and Charlie should meet them there.”
“One last thing — I’ll be brief,” Aziz said.
MacNeice swung onto the ramp to the 403 and accelerated. “What is it?”
“We had a breakthrough. John thought to wonder where Jeremy Slater’s office toilet was. He found it — and a separate room behind a panel, triggered by a button under his desk. Inside was a wall of locked cabinets and a formidable-looking safe. Forensics will drill through the cabinet locks and think they can open the safe. If not, they’ll blow it.” She ended the call.
“We’re in the octopus’s garden . . .” MacNeice said softly.
“When something happens, something you didn’t cause — but could have stopped —”
Are you responsible?
“Without doubt — I am.”
Are you expecting me to disagree?
“I had a twinge, Kate — just for a moment. I should have acted on it but didn’t.”
That they shouldn’t have gone out alone, even though Montile’s not the cavalier sort . . .
“I miss you, Kate, more than words —”
You miss the idea of me, the touch and feel . . . my love. The last is ours eternal. As for the rest, you have that in front of you . . .
His cellphone rang. “Vertesi?”
“Slater had nothing to say. His lawyer’s pissed off — I’m pretty sure they didn’t spend their five minutes grieving. I handed them our division cards and told Moose to put Ronnie in the drunk tank with a bottle of water and a stale salmon sandwich.”
“You think he’ll come around to escape the cuisine?”
“Yeah, well, I would. Talking’s his only choice . . .”
[81]
MacNeice eased the car into the crematorium’s laneway and hit the brakes. Ahead, with its front doors and trunk open, Williams’s Chevy provided visceral testimony against a backdrop of emergency response vehicles.
He went to survey the scene. Blood was smeared on — and in — the trunk; it streaked the passenger window and door, and much more was splashed on the dash, console, and driver and passenger’s seats. It was painted along the Chevy’s sides, and on the hood, a bloodied med kit and gauze pads lay next to Bichet’s jacket. Her shirt was rolled up nearby, like a red-and-white tie-dye or a discarded mop.
Free of blood were the two half-inch holes in the windshield. Ahead of the Chevy he could see dark rust-red shoeprints that had been tracked in and out of a pool of blood.
Further into the parking lot, a firefighter was packing gear into the truck, and to his left an ambulance sat idling, its back doors open, no paramedics in sight.
MacNeice walked behind the building. A couple of cops immediately turned his way, and an opp officer approached with his head down.
“DS MacNeice, Staff Sergeant Turek.” He could see the concern on MacNeice’s face. “DI Williams took a shot to the wrist — it’s bad. He also toppled backward down this ramp. Paramedics suspect he’s got a serious concussion, or possibly brain damage from internal bleeding. He was unconscious when we arrived and still out when he left — a medevac chopper took him to the brain centre in Toronto.”
“And Sergeant Bichet?”
“Shot up a bit more — but she’s lucky. First round tore across her back and hit some ribs. Paras think her spine and organs are clear. The second one hit her trapezius near the neck and went clean through.” Turek pinched his left trapezius muscle. “She confirmed it was Daintry and Wright, and that Wright did the shooting. Daintry’s wounded; there’s a spent casing from a small-calibre pistol in the crematorium. Before Bichet left for Dundurn General, she kept asking why the pair hadn’t finished them off.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. Bichet said Williams went looking for a piece of white paper; she thought he was delirious. But when the first responders got down that ramp, they found it pinned under his shoulder.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Sergeant.”
He handed MacNeice an evidence bag; the note inside was open: Blow’s in the cremator.
“Where’s Blow now?”
“Still down there. Paras are in communication with dgh’s burn unit. Thomas Cameron, the owner, is down there too. He was brought in by the uniform sent to watch his house. Cameron said the computer was set for a test, not a full burn — has no clue whether that was intentional. We’re just about to arrest him.’”
“Hold off on that . . . Any leads on the Escalade?”
Turek pointed diagonally across the lot. “Abandoned outside an empty building. From the state of the passenger’s seat, it looks like Daintry was bleeding out . . . Shall I take you below, sir?”
“Not necessary. I’ve been here before.” MacNeice stepped onto the ramp and felt sickened to see that Williams’s blood had streamed its way down to the drain grate, and that several of his rusty-red handprints could be seen on the retaining wall — like those found in prehistoric caves.
MacNeice passed carefully through the steel door — can-opened by a chainsaw — and followed the sound of voices until he was in the room. Confronted by the smell of burnt flesh, he instinctively shortened his breath. Blood pooled around the cremator — its sleek door axed and lying on the floor.
He couldn’t see the stretcher for those standing in front of it, but he recognized Thomas Cameron as one of the onlookers. His arms were wrapped tightly across his chest and he was weeping. MacNeice wondered why he wasn’t cuffed until he noticed the thick-necked cop standing behind him.
Someone must have noticed MacNeice enter, because the attending cops and firefighters slowly parted, exposing something awful on the gurney. The words that came to his mind were roast pig. MacNeice gulped, risked a deeper breath, and moved closer. One of the two paramedics was on his cell, speaking in a monotone: “Understood. Right now. No intubation? Got it. Affirmative — morphine and oxygen.” Ending the call, he tucked his phone into a thigh pocket.
MacNeice couldn’t look away; it was like viewing an exotic creature before it disappeared forever. “He’s not dead?” he asked, incredulous.
The older of the two paras answered. “Not quite. Ninety percent second-degree burns and the skin’s sloughing off his back — we’re leaving now.”
As they rolled by, MacNeice held his breath and glanced down. Blow was naked but for a few blackened patches of clothing, the remains of a leather belt, and a holster. What was left of his shoes clung haphazardly to his scorched feet. Across his chest and stomach, hot pink lava-like rivulets had broken through the scorched flesh. Oxygen tubes perched in his nostrils. His forearms were frozen and folded in a defensive position above his body, fists clenched. And yet, Blow’s face appeared, by contrast, untouched, merely flushed from embarrassment or a bad sunburn.
The paramedic explained, “When that oven lit up, buddy’s instinct was to use his forearms to cover his face . . . that’s the other ten percent.”
They finished covering him with a silver foil blanket and hurried the gurney through the door; firefighters helped them minimize the body’s movement on the ramp. The thick-necked cop took Cameron by the arm.
MacNeice stepped in. “I’ll bring him up, officer; we won’t be long.”
The officer nodded toward the ramp. “I’ll be right outside.”
The room felt worse than empty. Just as you can’t unsee something horrific, you also can’t unsmell it. MacNeice took a deep breath and regretted it — the stench of burnt flesh filled his nostrils.
Cameron was staring at his shattered Scandinavian oven, his cheeks still wet with tears. MacNeice handed him a tissue from a packet, and for a moment Tom looked surprised to find it in his hand.
“Thomas, you’re being taken into custody. You’ll be charged — though the scope of the charges will take us some time to determine. But before the justice system kicks in, we should talk.”
[82]
The room’s lighting was so low that the monitors for Garrick’s vitals offered most of the illumination. Once her eyes had adjusted, Aziz saw Elaine Garrick slumped in a chair, legs tucked up — asleep.
Arnie Garrick had three drips going, and an oxygen mask covered his face. Out of sight, the compressor’s breathing intersected dreamily with the monitor’s constant do-re-mi beeps. The blue bedding was neat but gave no hint that the person it covered was alive.
Aziz sneezed just as the door behind her swung open. “Bless you, dear,” the nurse said.
“Sorry. I’m Detective Aziz,” Aziz said. She read the nurse’s nametag — Dora Aploon, RN.
“No worries, miss, I knew you were here.” Tray in hand, she proceeded to the bed. “Professor Garrick, wake up — you have a visitor.” Her voice, a fill-a-hall contralto with a Cape Town lilt, sounded calm and motherly. “Professor, I’m here for some blood . . .” She switched on the bed’s overhead lamp, mercifully directing its light up to the ceiling.
Elaine opened her eyes. Her face was expressionless, as if seeing Aziz from the safety of a dream.
“I’m glad you’re here, Elaine . . .”
“Where else would I be?” She let her legs fall to the floor and slipped on her shoes. “I’m sorry, that was curt.”
“You’ve every right —”
“No . . . I don’t. I’m grateful to you and your colleagues — you didn’t give up on Arnie.”
“You must be exhausted, and I can’t imagine how your husband’s feeling, so I’ll be as brief as possible.”
“To be clear — this is Arnie’s idea.”
Nurse Aploon nodded. “I’ll be back shortly . . . Mind now, you have ten minutes.” She smiled as she exited the room.
Aziz turned to Arnie Garrick and was met with a blank stare, though his eyes sharpened as she introduced herself. “I’m here to take your statement, Professor. I’ve been told I have ten minutes, so, if you’re ready . . .”
Garrick turned to his wife. She pulled a chair over to the bedside. “He knows about you and MacNeice. His voice is just a whisper, so you’ll have to be close.” Elaine leaned over and removed his oxygen mask.
Aziz sat down. Seeing Garrick up close was shocking. He was more grey than pink; his cheeks were hollow. His right eye was bloodshot. The orbital bones of both eyes were dark and theatrically defined. The rat bites on his neck had been stitched and covered with an antiseptic stain. His lips were so badly chapped it looked like he’d been lost in the Sahara.
Aziz opened her notebook. “Whenever you’re ready, Professor.”
He looked past Aziz to his wife. “Sorry, he needs water . . .” They juggled positions and Elaine put a straw in his mouth. Aziz noticed how focused Arnie was on Elaine, watching her as if she might evaporate any second. When he nodded, she removed the straw and stepped back.
“I’m a gambling addict . . .” In spite of the water, his voice was little more than a dry hiss. “Since university . . . I’ve never told anyone.” A couple of tears leaked from his eyes. “Not even Elaine . . . I was too ashamed.”
Wright draped the jacket over Daintry’s shoulders. Taking hold of the wounded man’s waist, he turned to leave. As a warning, he pointed his weapon at each of them before disappearing behind the crematorium.
Williams and Bichet looked at each other. She was bleeding onto the seat, blood smeared across her face and neck. Williams cradled his arm against the steering wheel and whispered, “What the fuck was that?”
Suddenly a white Escalade appeared before them and tore across the lot, then ploughed along a narrow footpath, whipping pines and snapping branches until it reached the other side and swung left, kicking up dust and disappearing from sight.
“Call it in, Lise . . .” Williams climbed out, showering the ground with small glass cubes.
“Officers down, officers down. Perps took off in white Escalade.” She gave the plate number and their location, then dropped the handset.
Williams removed his belt and wrapped it tightly around his forearm before staggering to the trunk for the vehicle’s standard-issue first-aid kit.
Making his way to the passenger door, he noticed a piece of folded white paper where Wright had been standing. He opened the kit. Inside were Band-Aids, a disinfectant cream, Q-Tips, a packet of aspirins, four tongue depressors, and two large gauze pads. “Pathetic.”
Bichet got out of the car, removed her jacket and shirt, and leaned over the hood.
“Trapezius is torn, Lise. Blood’s flowing freely from there and your upper back.”
“Muscles severed?” she asked.
Williams used her shirt to clear the blood. “Neck — no. Back, I can’t tell.” He put a gauze pad on the wound, but it quickly soaked through, so he laid the remaining one on top. “I don’t know what the muscles are above your bra. The ones running vertically next to your spine look like they’ve been slashed by a sword.”
“Lattissimus dorsi . . .” she moaned. “Ribs and spine okay?”
The gauze pads were too bloodied to tell, so he rubbed her shirt over the gash.
“Fucking hell, sir.”
“Sorry . . . Probably missed your spine, but not the ribs.”
“Okay. You done back there, Monty?”
Funny, he hadn’t heard that nickname since his grandfather died. “I’m done.” He packed the soggy gauze into the wound and covered it with her shirt before pressing the shirtsleeve to her neck.
Seconds later, he was shivering and faint. He leaned against the car, pulled his own shirt free, and wrapped it around his wounded wrist. It was hot outside, but he was freezing. “Lise . . . you cold?”
“Shock, sir . . . Yeah, I’m cold — but the hood’s warm. Keep that hand up high . . . They’ll be here soon.”
“Yeah, thanks, Sergeant . . . Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I don’t mind saying I was shit-scared.”
“Me too. So weird they didn’t finish it . . . especially with Daintry and that Fistful of Dollars routine.”
“Lise . . . didya know I was a stand-up comedian?”
“No way. Go on, say something funny.”
“I was a stand-up comedian.”
Bichet erupted in a locker-room roar that was shortly overtaken by swearing.
Williams thought about screaming, but if anything, he was afraid he’d cry. He spotted a trio of small, fluffy clouds — it might have been their whiteness that made him recall the piece of paper. “Lise, look where Wright was standing. Do you see a folded piece of paper?”
Seconds passed. “No, sir . . . nothing.”
Still shivering, Williams pushed himself off the car, and was hit by a wave of pain that made him nauseous. He almost swooned and took several deep breaths — then, like a Saturday-night drunk, he staggered forward.
“Monty . . . where you headed?”
“White piece of paper . . . It wasn’t there . . . then it was . . . then it wasn’t. I gotta find it.”
Rounding the corner, he noted a silver Toyota parked on the far side of a ramp. As he drew closer, he spotted the paper three feet down the ramp, flapping lazily against the retaining wall. He watched as it skidded down another foot. It would only take a few steps to reach it, but the angle was steep, and he couldn’t use his shot-up arm to support himself on the wall. So he did the only thing that came to mind — he turned around to use his left hand.
But now the down ramp was directly behind him. If there’d ever been a successful relationship between prudence and pain, it wasn’t now. But it was only three or four feet, and if Williams waited, he knew there was a chance the paper would blow even farther away.
That first step was a shock. It felt like his heel would never touch concrete, and when it did, he took a moment to adjust to leaning forward to go backwards down the slope. When he’d taken two more steps, he paused; his wrist was throbbing with pain and still bleeding badly. His breathing was so forced that he thought he’d pass out, so to calm himself, he studied the trees in the distance — but the swaying of their branches only made him more nauseous.
He turned his head to see how close the paper was — which was an unrecoverable mistake. Disoriented, he grabbed frantically at the retaining wall. Free-falling backwards, it was futile to claw at a smooth surface. Before his head hit concrete, Williams saw his bloodied hand fly wildly above him like the broken wing of a great wounded bird.
[80]
MacNeice’s goal with Garrick came into focus before he’d reached his car. There was only one question to ask — and it wouldn’t take ten minutes. It was the same question he’d have asked Rodney Conroy.
As he turned on to Main, a call came over the radio: “Officers down; officers down . . .” Though her voice was laboured, he recognized Bichet. The hair on his neck stood up; he hit the grille and tail emergency lights and called the dispatcher on the radiophone. “Get me DI Aziz; she’s on her cell.”
“Wilco; over.”
Slalom racing through the traffic, MacNeice’s thoughts returned to Bichet’s voice. It had been strong — even pugnacious — but severely stressed.
The radiophone came to life; it was Aziz. “You’re off to interview Garrick?”
“Williams and Bichet are wounded out at the crematorium — the call just came in — I’m on my way there now.”
“Oh god . . . Mac, we’re about to turn this scene over to Forensics. Dr. Richardson left a while ago. Where do you want me?”
“Garrick wants to talk; you should interview him. His wife is there. You won’t have much time — but you don’t need much.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only one question to ask him — he didn’t see his abductors, but we know who they are. Garrick must know why he was abducted, so the question is — who is he indebted to?”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Montile and Lise will probably go to Dundurn General. John and Charlie should meet them there.”
“One last thing — I’ll be brief,” Aziz said.
MacNeice swung onto the ramp to the 403 and accelerated. “What is it?”
“We had a breakthrough. John thought to wonder where Jeremy Slater’s office toilet was. He found it — and a separate room behind a panel, triggered by a button under his desk. Inside was a wall of locked cabinets and a formidable-looking safe. Forensics will drill through the cabinet locks and think they can open the safe. If not, they’ll blow it.” She ended the call.
“We’re in the octopus’s garden . . .” MacNeice said softly.
“When something happens, something you didn’t cause — but could have stopped —”
Are you responsible?
“Without doubt — I am.”
Are you expecting me to disagree?
“I had a twinge, Kate — just for a moment. I should have acted on it but didn’t.”
That they shouldn’t have gone out alone, even though Montile’s not the cavalier sort . . .
“I miss you, Kate, more than words —”
You miss the idea of me, the touch and feel . . . my love. The last is ours eternal. As for the rest, you have that in front of you . . .
His cellphone rang. “Vertesi?”
“Slater had nothing to say. His lawyer’s pissed off — I’m pretty sure they didn’t spend their five minutes grieving. I handed them our division cards and told Moose to put Ronnie in the drunk tank with a bottle of water and a stale salmon sandwich.”
“You think he’ll come around to escape the cuisine?”
“Yeah, well, I would. Talking’s his only choice . . .”
[81]
MacNeice eased the car into the crematorium’s laneway and hit the brakes. Ahead, with its front doors and trunk open, Williams’s Chevy provided visceral testimony against a backdrop of emergency response vehicles.
He went to survey the scene. Blood was smeared on — and in — the trunk; it streaked the passenger window and door, and much more was splashed on the dash, console, and driver and passenger’s seats. It was painted along the Chevy’s sides, and on the hood, a bloodied med kit and gauze pads lay next to Bichet’s jacket. Her shirt was rolled up nearby, like a red-and-white tie-dye or a discarded mop.
Free of blood were the two half-inch holes in the windshield. Ahead of the Chevy he could see dark rust-red shoeprints that had been tracked in and out of a pool of blood.
Further into the parking lot, a firefighter was packing gear into the truck, and to his left an ambulance sat idling, its back doors open, no paramedics in sight.
MacNeice walked behind the building. A couple of cops immediately turned his way, and an opp officer approached with his head down.
“DS MacNeice, Staff Sergeant Turek.” He could see the concern on MacNeice’s face. “DI Williams took a shot to the wrist — it’s bad. He also toppled backward down this ramp. Paramedics suspect he’s got a serious concussion, or possibly brain damage from internal bleeding. He was unconscious when we arrived and still out when he left — a medevac chopper took him to the brain centre in Toronto.”
“And Sergeant Bichet?”
“Shot up a bit more — but she’s lucky. First round tore across her back and hit some ribs. Paras think her spine and organs are clear. The second one hit her trapezius near the neck and went clean through.” Turek pinched his left trapezius muscle. “She confirmed it was Daintry and Wright, and that Wright did the shooting. Daintry’s wounded; there’s a spent casing from a small-calibre pistol in the crematorium. Before Bichet left for Dundurn General, she kept asking why the pair hadn’t finished them off.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. Bichet said Williams went looking for a piece of white paper; she thought he was delirious. But when the first responders got down that ramp, they found it pinned under his shoulder.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Sergeant.”
He handed MacNeice an evidence bag; the note inside was open: Blow’s in the cremator.
“Where’s Blow now?”
“Still down there. Paras are in communication with dgh’s burn unit. Thomas Cameron, the owner, is down there too. He was brought in by the uniform sent to watch his house. Cameron said the computer was set for a test, not a full burn — has no clue whether that was intentional. We’re just about to arrest him.’”
“Hold off on that . . . Any leads on the Escalade?”
Turek pointed diagonally across the lot. “Abandoned outside an empty building. From the state of the passenger’s seat, it looks like Daintry was bleeding out . . . Shall I take you below, sir?”
“Not necessary. I’ve been here before.” MacNeice stepped onto the ramp and felt sickened to see that Williams’s blood had streamed its way down to the drain grate, and that several of his rusty-red handprints could be seen on the retaining wall — like those found in prehistoric caves.
MacNeice passed carefully through the steel door — can-opened by a chainsaw — and followed the sound of voices until he was in the room. Confronted by the smell of burnt flesh, he instinctively shortened his breath. Blood pooled around the cremator — its sleek door axed and lying on the floor.
He couldn’t see the stretcher for those standing in front of it, but he recognized Thomas Cameron as one of the onlookers. His arms were wrapped tightly across his chest and he was weeping. MacNeice wondered why he wasn’t cuffed until he noticed the thick-necked cop standing behind him.
Someone must have noticed MacNeice enter, because the attending cops and firefighters slowly parted, exposing something awful on the gurney. The words that came to his mind were roast pig. MacNeice gulped, risked a deeper breath, and moved closer. One of the two paramedics was on his cell, speaking in a monotone: “Understood. Right now. No intubation? Got it. Affirmative — morphine and oxygen.” Ending the call, he tucked his phone into a thigh pocket.
MacNeice couldn’t look away; it was like viewing an exotic creature before it disappeared forever. “He’s not dead?” he asked, incredulous.
The older of the two paras answered. “Not quite. Ninety percent second-degree burns and the skin’s sloughing off his back — we’re leaving now.”
As they rolled by, MacNeice held his breath and glanced down. Blow was naked but for a few blackened patches of clothing, the remains of a leather belt, and a holster. What was left of his shoes clung haphazardly to his scorched feet. Across his chest and stomach, hot pink lava-like rivulets had broken through the scorched flesh. Oxygen tubes perched in his nostrils. His forearms were frozen and folded in a defensive position above his body, fists clenched. And yet, Blow’s face appeared, by contrast, untouched, merely flushed from embarrassment or a bad sunburn.
The paramedic explained, “When that oven lit up, buddy’s instinct was to use his forearms to cover his face . . . that’s the other ten percent.”
They finished covering him with a silver foil blanket and hurried the gurney through the door; firefighters helped them minimize the body’s movement on the ramp. The thick-necked cop took Cameron by the arm.
MacNeice stepped in. “I’ll bring him up, officer; we won’t be long.”
The officer nodded toward the ramp. “I’ll be right outside.”
The room felt worse than empty. Just as you can’t unsee something horrific, you also can’t unsmell it. MacNeice took a deep breath and regretted it — the stench of burnt flesh filled his nostrils.
Cameron was staring at his shattered Scandinavian oven, his cheeks still wet with tears. MacNeice handed him a tissue from a packet, and for a moment Tom looked surprised to find it in his hand.
“Thomas, you’re being taken into custody. You’ll be charged — though the scope of the charges will take us some time to determine. But before the justice system kicks in, we should talk.”
[82]
The room’s lighting was so low that the monitors for Garrick’s vitals offered most of the illumination. Once her eyes had adjusted, Aziz saw Elaine Garrick slumped in a chair, legs tucked up — asleep.
Arnie Garrick had three drips going, and an oxygen mask covered his face. Out of sight, the compressor’s breathing intersected dreamily with the monitor’s constant do-re-mi beeps. The blue bedding was neat but gave no hint that the person it covered was alive.
Aziz sneezed just as the door behind her swung open. “Bless you, dear,” the nurse said.
“Sorry. I’m Detective Aziz,” Aziz said. She read the nurse’s nametag — Dora Aploon, RN.
“No worries, miss, I knew you were here.” Tray in hand, she proceeded to the bed. “Professor Garrick, wake up — you have a visitor.” Her voice, a fill-a-hall contralto with a Cape Town lilt, sounded calm and motherly. “Professor, I’m here for some blood . . .” She switched on the bed’s overhead lamp, mercifully directing its light up to the ceiling.
Elaine opened her eyes. Her face was expressionless, as if seeing Aziz from the safety of a dream.
“I’m glad you’re here, Elaine . . .”
“Where else would I be?” She let her legs fall to the floor and slipped on her shoes. “I’m sorry, that was curt.”
“You’ve every right —”
“No . . . I don’t. I’m grateful to you and your colleagues — you didn’t give up on Arnie.”
“You must be exhausted, and I can’t imagine how your husband’s feeling, so I’ll be as brief as possible.”
“To be clear — this is Arnie’s idea.”
Nurse Aploon nodded. “I’ll be back shortly . . . Mind now, you have ten minutes.” She smiled as she exited the room.
Aziz turned to Arnie Garrick and was met with a blank stare, though his eyes sharpened as she introduced herself. “I’m here to take your statement, Professor. I’ve been told I have ten minutes, so, if you’re ready . . .”
Garrick turned to his wife. She pulled a chair over to the bedside. “He knows about you and MacNeice. His voice is just a whisper, so you’ll have to be close.” Elaine leaned over and removed his oxygen mask.
Aziz sat down. Seeing Garrick up close was shocking. He was more grey than pink; his cheeks were hollow. His right eye was bloodshot. The orbital bones of both eyes were dark and theatrically defined. The rat bites on his neck had been stitched and covered with an antiseptic stain. His lips were so badly chapped it looked like he’d been lost in the Sahara.
Aziz opened her notebook. “Whenever you’re ready, Professor.”
He looked past Aziz to his wife. “Sorry, he needs water . . .” They juggled positions and Elaine put a straw in his mouth. Aziz noticed how focused Arnie was on Elaine, watching her as if she might evaporate any second. When he nodded, she removed the straw and stepped back.
“I’m a gambling addict . . .” In spite of the water, his voice was little more than a dry hiss. “Since university . . . I’ve never told anyone.” A couple of tears leaked from his eyes. “Not even Elaine . . . I was too ashamed.”
