chapter twenty

All thoughts of ears and bulls were driven from Chris's mind when his mobile reported the discovery of another body. Cursing, he put the cherry light on the dash and gunned the Durango. He would proceed directly to the crime scene without checking in with headquarters.

The Devonian Gardens! How in the hell had they missed that? It was a park, albeit an indoor one. Right in the centre of the downtown core, on the fourth floor of TD Square. Chris berated himself for not having placed it under surveillance, but he had just never thought of it as a park in the conventional sense. But as a public park it met all the criteria for the serial's signature. How had the killer managed to stash his victim there?

Three police cruisers, lights flashing, were parked outside TD Square when Chris arrived. Propping a police card up on the dash, he jumped out of the SUV, showed his badge to a uniform, and rushed inside.

A crowd had gathered around the elevator on the Plus-15 level by the time Chris arrived. The glass elevator that served the gardens had been sealed off and would be examined later for clues. Chris spoke briefly to the two uniforms behind the crime tape and, besieged on all sides by the outthrust microphones and cameras of the media, rode the escalators up to the fourth floor.

The loud splashing of fountains was the only sound as he walked into the conservatory, for that's what it was, with its glassed-in roof and lush tropical foliage. He could-n't really be blamed for not thinking of it as a park, he told himself, as he followed a constable along the brick pathways where couples and small groups of visitors whispered among themselves or stood frozen in awed silence.

"It's him all right." Gwen was waiting for him on a little footbridge spanning a pool where large, colourful carp swam.

"Left hand?"

She nodded and fell in beside him as they approached an archway painted white and decorated with plastic flowers, leading into an open space designed for wedding celebrations.

"One of the gardeners found her," Patterson, looking as clean-cut and preppie as ever, informed Chris. "He thought it was a bundle of rags, then he saw what was inside."

"We already have the gardener's fingerprints," Gwen assured Chris before he could say anything.

The slim, tanned body of a young woman with a shaved pubic area lay on a bed of rough dark brown cloth amid the flowers and shrubs at the foot of a grove of cedars. She had been mutilated and violated in the same manner as the others. Apart from the severed nipple, her firm breasts, which had no need of implants, were untouched. From the absence of blood it was clear that she also had been killed someplace else. Like TLC's other victims, the toxicology report would show no drugs in her system. Unlike some serials, he didn't keep his victims drugged and helpless for days to be tortured and raped at will. With TLC it was snatch, torture, and kill. Followed by the daring and dramatic display of the mutilated body. There were times when Chris wondered if the display wasn't the climax of the experience for TLC. If so, this one must have given him a real thrill.

"How in God's name did he get her up here?" As he spoke, Chris gazed around at the open expanse of the Devonian Gardens. "This place is busy all day and it's closed at night."

"We figure we have the answer to that," replied Patterson. "One of the security guards saw a couple get off the elevator not long before closing last night. Arabs. He had a beard and one of the headdresses they wear. She was in a wheelchair and covered head to toe in a ... what do they call it?"

"Burka."

"That's it. The guard is over there. You can talk to him when you're ready. He didn't see much more than that. He says those people don't like to be stared at. He remembers the man's beard was white."

"Anyone see them leave?"

"The same guard did. She was still in the wheelchair."

"Or something was. Easy enough to arrange. Prop up the burka somehow. A stick would do it." Chris fingered the cloth with his gloved hand. "This isn't a burka. It's just a blanket that's been used to cover her. I take it we don't know who she is yet?"

"Not yet."

"Let's start with the tanning salons."

"Your hunch about the tanning salons paid off." Gwen's smile was mischievous as she emphasized hunch.

Going along with her little game, Chris replied, "That was no hunch, but pure deductive reasoning. Who was she?"

"Marion Klasky. She was a regular at the Monterey Tanning Studio on Seventeenth Avenue. She was employed as a physiotherapist at the Talisman Centre for Wellness on MacLeod Trail. They're faxing us her file, but we already know she was twenty-eight years old, single, and lived in an apartment on Thirteenth Avenue and Seventh Street."

"The Beltline."

"Right. It's also not far from where she works. When she didn't show up this morning, they tried to reach her, but all they got was her answering machine."

"What time did she get off work yesterday?"

"Three o'clock. They open at six. A lot of their clientele are oil company executives and office workers who want to get an early start on their day."

"Like Ann Marin, the fitness instructor." Chris paused when his phone rang. He listened intently, then said, "We're on our way" and hung up.

"We have a hit on the wheelchair," he told Gwen. "Let's go."

Lightning flashed and thunder crashed as they exited the rear of the building and hurried over to where the police vehicles were parked. Gwen flinched and grabbed Chris's arm.

"You'd think I'd be used to that," she apologized. "But it gets me every time."

Raising his left arm to check his wristwatch, Chris chuckled. "Right on time. Five o'clock in the afternoon. In July. In Calgary. What do you expect?"

Forks of lightning lit up the sky and thunder rumbled and rolled as they joined the rush-hour traffic. "When you think about it," said Chris, easing the unmarked van to a stop as a traffic light turned yellow, "this case should provide us with some useful clues. Which is something we haven't had so far. This time our boy had to work out in the open. He had to risk discovery in order to pull off the Devonian caper."

"The Devonian caper. I like that," Gwen interjected. "It would make a great title for a book."

"I gues it would at that. Getting back to the subject at hand, the killer had to acquire a wheelchair, as well as a disguise. To do that, he would have to expose himself to other people. Not like the previous cases, where he could operate completely on his own."

The ease and speed with which the wheelchair had been tracked down seemed to bear out what Chris was saying. There were only a few retail outlets in the city that carried them, and it hadn't taken long to locate the likely source of the chair.

"Our killer must be well-heeled," Gwen remarked thoughtfully as they pulled into a parking spot in front of a small, independent drugstore in a nondescript strip mall. "Wheelchairs cost a bundle."

The unlit cherry light on the dash of an otherwise unmarked white Ford sedan showed that Homicide was on the scene. Ford seemed to be the police flavour of the year. Fleet discounts no doubt. Inside the store, Mason was questioning a balding, middle-aged man who seemed to be the proprietor.

"There's your answer." Chris nodded at two rows of wheelchairs lined up in a corner of the store under a sign reading "Pre-Owned Wheelchairs."

"A sense of humour, no less," he murmured in an aside to Gwen as they joined Mason and the owner by the cash register.

"They sold a chair to an Arab last week," Mason announced. "For $250."

"Sure beats the price of new one," the owner informed them complacently, sounding, thought Chris, just like a used-car salesman. His hopes that the man could provide them with a solid lead to the killer were soon dashed. The purchaser's face had been hidden behind a beard and sunglasses. "Yes, the beard was white." His head was covered with "one of them scarves," and he was wearing some kind of a cloak that reached down to his ankles. Fingerprints? He was wearing gloves. The proprietor figured that had something to do with his religion. Credit card receipt? He had paid cash.

There was no point in asking why the man's appearance hadn't aroused some curiosity. They were in an ethnic quadrant of the city.

"I think it's great you're doing this," said Gwen when the proprietor explained that he didn't make any profit on the used chairs and that he regarded it as an act of social responsibility on his part. "But doesn't Alberta Health Care cover the cost of wheelchairs for those who need them?"

"Yeah, but there's plenty what fall through the cracks. Immigrants, people who are in the country illegally, don't know about Health Care, don't trust the system. It's a different world up—" he stopped talking as a loud thunderclap rattled the windows and a drumfire of rain began to pelt down.

"I know. It's a good thing you're doing. And we appreciate your help," said Chris.

Heavy raindrops, almost hail, bounced off the pavement as he and Gwen dashed across the sidewalk to their van.

"We're getting close, Gwen," said Chris above the clack of the windshield wipers. "This is the first time anybody has actually seen the monster."

"But what did they see?"

That question kept recurring as Chris, after a solitary dinner in a nearby restaurant, sat in his study, mentally reviewing the file. True, the killer had exposed himself with the Devonian caper—a label that to Chris would always be inextricably attached to that file—but he had been damned clever about it. Still, he had left some potential leads. The beard was almost certainly false, although a canvass of the costume and novelty shops had so far drawn a blank. The brown cloth in which the victim's body had been wrapped was being examined by experts on a priority basis, but was unlikely to produce anything that could be linked to the killer.

Frustrated, his thoughts veered off to the cattle mutilations. Could there be a possible connection? Unlikely, although both displayed the same twisted cruelty. The psychopath who took human life so sadistically wouldn't be content with killing mere animals.

Why, Chris asked himself, had he gotten involved in the affair of the dead bulls? There was no doubt that the combined resources of the FCSU and Calgary Homicide greatly improved the chances of solving the vandalism spree, which had distressed some very fine people. And the Taylors, the latest victims, were good friends. Sarah. Was it because of her? Wanting to impress her? Whatever the reason, having involved himself in the case, he would damn well crack it.

Before he could begin to plan how to go about achieving this desirable outcome, he was startled by the sudden ringing of the phone on the end table next to his armchair. It caught Nevermore, half-asleep on his perch, unawares, and he failed to call out his usual greeting.

"No parrot this time?"

"He's asleep."

"You know who this is?"

"I do. What's up?"

"It's too nice a night to stay inside. You should go for a walk. I'll be at the corner of Thirteenth Ave. and Fourth. I'm driving a Pontiac Solstice."

Putting a drowsy and unprotesting Nevermore back in his cage, Chris took the elevator down to the ground floor, exchanged a word with the concierge, and let himself out into the night. Dummett was right, it was a gorgeous evening: the rain had stopped, and the air was invitingly cool and refreshing. A gibbous moon hung suspended in a starry sky over the downtown skyline.

Despite the warmth of the evening, the top was up on the sporty little two-seater. Dummett waited until Chris had buckled himself in before handing him a large brown envelope. "The letter's inside," he said as they drove west on 13th. "And I haven't touched it except with gloves."

"Good for you," smiled Chris, pulling on his own gloves. Dummett switched on the interior light.

The plain white envelope was postmarked Calgary, the same as the others. That didn't tell them anything they didn't already know, except it confirmed—if, Chris reminded himself, if it was genuine—that the serial was still operating within the city.

image

Everything was in lower case, with no punctuation.

"He knows what you look like."

"So it would seem. My byline is getting to be pretty well known. It wouldn't be hard to track me down."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"It goes with the territory. Besides"—Dummett gave Chris a sideways look as he switched off the light—"it'll be worth it when I'm there to see you do the takedown, and I get first crack at writing it up."

"That's assuming there will be a takedown and assuming that you've been of some material help to the investigation."

"I already have. Look, the guy calls me kid," Dummett expostulated. "I'll be thirty on my next birthday, for God's sake!"

"That could be helpful, I agree."

"And the way he dismisses that stuff I wrote about a deprived childhood and parental abuse."

"He would deny that anyway, even if it were true."

"Maybe. But there's the way he just dismisses it out of hand. Like it's not worth arguing about."

"Interesting. I'll keep this. Have some tests run. Not that I expect them to tell us anything."

"Sure. Keep it. I made a copy for myself."

"Where will I let you off?"

"Fourth and Elbow will be fine."