Although Chris knew that Telus wasn't the only company that operated pay phones in Calgary, he would start with them. Of course, it might not have been a pay phone that was used to call Dummett, but it was hard to imagine the killer would use a phone that could be traced to him. Pay phone or not, the fact that he had the calling number should expedite things. They would also need Dummett's phone number so they could trace the call. The call had come in on his regular phone, not his cell. Flipping the phone book open, Chris saw that Gwen was right about Phil being the only Dummett listed in the directory. As he copied down the number, Chris thought about the name. While never numerous, "Dummett" was reasonably well known back East, as Albertans persisted in calling everything east of the Manitoba border. But it was obviously thin on the ground out here in Calgary. But Dummett had a mother living here. She was a friend of Mrs. Underwood. Ethel, Mrs. Underwood had said her name was. Surely she would have a phone. Probably she had remarried and changed her surname.
To Chris's chagrin, and despite his best arguments, the Telus official took the position that he needed a warrant before they could provide the location of the pay phone. There was nothing for it but to send Gwen off to Provincial Court. Having done that, he had to sign off on a file where the suspect in a fatal domestic stabbing had been convicted of second-degree murder. How he would love to sign off on the TLC file with the arrest and conviction of the perp. Now he was using the diminutive. It was mid-afternoon before he thought again of Dummett's mother not being listed in the phone book. Dorothy Underwood would know.
"Oh, Chris, it's so good to hear from you! Dare I hope this means you're going to come by for a little visit?"
Chris hesitated, then, responding to the eagerness in her voice, replied, "There's nothing I would like better. Give me an hour."
With the same air of delighted surprise she always displayed, Dorothy took the bottle of Alvear's Amontillado from Chris and marched off to pour it into a crystal decanter, saying, "My Howard always insisted on decanting red wines before serving them."
There wouldn't be much decanting in the few minutes between his arrival and the first sip. No matter. Chris smiled appreciatively as she returned with a silver tray bearing the decanter and two crystal glasses.
Seating herself on an antique armchair, she smiled fondly as he went through the ritual of pouring the wine and handing her a glass. "That Phil is certainly making a name for himself, I must say. Have you seen him recently, Chris?"
"As recently as this morning. He came around to see me."
"He's so clever, that boy. And so good to his mother."
"That reminds me. Your friend doesn't seem to be listed in the telephone directory. Does she live with her son?"
"Mercy, no. She has a lovely home up in Varsity Acres. But she and Phil adore each other. She remarried after her first husband—Phil's father—died. Her married name is Lewis. She's in the book. Although she's no longer married."
"What happened? Divorce?"
"Not with Ethel. Not ever." Shaking her head, she refilled his glass. "He was killed in an accident. Like Phil's father."
"What happened to Phil's father? How was he killed?"
"He died in a house fire. Phil was only nine at the time. He was quite the hero. He managed to get his mother out, but he couldn't rescue his father. Who was dead drunk and must have weighed over two hundred pounds. Don't ask me what that is in kilograms!"
"What caused the fire? Did they ever find out?"
"They suspected arson. But they never did arrest anybody. Couldn't prove it one way or another, they said. Both of the parents were smokers."
"It sounds like your friend's husband—Phil's father—was also a drinker."
"A drinker and an abuser. He was a wife beater, and I'm sure he did terrible things to young Phil. Ethel never said anything. She wouldn't. But she would show up—when she absolutely couldn't avoid going somewhere—with black eyes and bruises that makeup couldn't hide. And she looked just sick whenever I saw the three of them together."
"It must have been a relief when her husband died."
"It was. It's a terrible thing to say, but it was. Ethel and Jim Lewis had a good life together. He had just retired and they were going to move to Vancouver Island when he had that accident."
"What sort of accident did he have?"
"He fell down the basement stairs. They were cement—concrete—so he didn't have a chance. Jim liked to drink a bit too, but he wasn't a mean drunk like Ethel's first husband. She still lives in that house, although I don't know how she does it. I certainly couldn't."
"Well." Chris carefully placed his glass back on the tray and stood up. "This has been most pleasant. I'm delighted things are working out so well for you. I must ask you not to mention our conversation to your friend Ethel. I wouldn't want Phil to know we had been talking about him."
"Not a word," she assured him with a conspiratorial smile.
Chris drove west for a few blocks, then parked on a side street. Raising the Crime Scenes sergeant on the mobile, he asked him to check the registry and see if an Ethel Lewis owned a Toyota. Minutes later, the sergeant informed him that Ethel Lewis owned a black 1999 Toyota Corolla. Chris copied down her address: ffl69 Viceroy Drive. "That's in Varsity Acres," the sergeant added helpfully. "North on Shaganappi Trail, past Market Mall, then turn right on Valiant Drive."
Varsity Acres was a mature, well-treed subdivision. Chris drove around until he found Viceroy Drive. ffl69 was the second house from the end, a small, one-storey stucco bungalow with a single-car attached garage. The garage extended to the edge of the narrow lot and its end wall was windowless. Not that he could go skulking around a citizen's property without a warrant in any case. Although if there had been a window ...
Tomorrow was Tuesday. The day Ethel Lewis drove her friend, Mrs. Underwood, to the Edgemont Club for an afternoon of bridge.
Gwen was waiting for him when he arrived back at the office. Telus had come up with the information as soon as they were served with the warrant. The pay phone was located in the lobby of the Bank of Montreal Building, and a call to Dummett's number had been made from it.
"Already done," she told him when he said they should have it dusted for fingerprints. "I'm waiting for the report."
"I'll wait with you."
They gazed at each other in silence after the report was telephoned in. The single, wall-mounted phone was clean. No fingerprints. According to the Crime Scenes detective it looked as if it had been recently wiped. He had gone on to say, "It's tucked away in a corner all by itself, so there's not much traffic. It could have been the janitorial staff."
"So I let it slip that we would dust the phone for prints and it turns up clean," Chris finally muttered.
"That slip, as you call it, could turn out to be useful. If Dummett was the one who wiped off the phone, and it almost certainly was done on purpose, it means he placed the call to himself."
"That's the way it looks. He was visibly taken aback when I mentioned dusting the phone for fingerprints."
"His making the call himself is also consistent with trying to win your confidence. Making it seem like he could contribute something. He wouldn't want you to know that, of course."
"That's one explanation, I agree. But we know there's also another one, don't we, Gwen? A much more sinister one."
At one o'clock the following afternoon Chris was parked on 19th Street at the corner of Memorial Drive. He was sitting in a vehicle borrowed from the Strike Force Unit, the squad that carried out undercover surveillance. The Chevy pickup, dark blue, encrusted with dried mud, and with a dented front fender, looked nothing like a police vehicle. Chris was dressed for the part: day-old stubble, jeans, and an open-necked shirt.
A half-hour later he snapped to attention as a black Toyota sedan drove past and pulled into a vacant space a few doors west of Dorothy Underwood's house. The red plastic cover of the right rear tail light was missing. Only an empty cavity where it should have been.
The truck's engine purred with a quiet power at odds with its decrepit appearance as Chris drove back to the Andrew Davison building where Gwen and Patterson were on standby.
"I was on a stakeout," Chris answered his companions' unspoken question.
"Well, you sure look the part. I'll give you that," said an amused Gwen. "How did it go?"
"Productive. Phillip Dummett's mother drives a Toyota with a broken tail light."
"Well, what do you know?" breathed Gwen.
"There's more. Dummett's drunken, abusive father died in a house fire when Dummett was nine. Arson was suspected, but no one was ever charged. And Phil's step-father was killed in a fall down the basement stairs. He had just retired, and he and Phil's mother were going to move out to Vancouver Island."
"So your journalist friend might have killed before?" mused Gwen.
"It's possible. I had the feeling Mrs. Underwood might have been trying to tell me something. But we can't know for sure."
"It fits!" Eyes alive with excitement, Patterson leaned across the table. "Here's a guy who has killed and gotten away with it. You said his father abused him."
"Mavis Ross would find that significant," Gwen interjected. "He's clever and talented. Isn't he, Chris?"
"Very," Chris replied tersely, curious to see where his colleagues would go with the new information.
"He knows he's bright. Much brighter than the other guys. But he's been treated like dirt. A piece of crap. He can never be free of what his father did to him. Something like that can do terrible things to a person." As Patterson said this, Gwen nodded thoughtful agreement.
"He could decide to revenge himself on the world," she said. "A world that he thinks despises him. As he despises himself."
"What about this?" Patterson's fingers drummed on the table. "He turns himself into a serial killer so he can become famous writing about it. That's already beginning to happen."
"And helps the police investigate his own crimes!" An equally excited Gwen chimed in. "Talk about a story!"
"Talk about chutzpah!" He looked at Chris. "Okay, you're the boss. What's our next step?"
"Chris will tell us it's all circumstantial," said Gwen with a knowing smile.
"That's what we have. Unfortunately. No hard evidence to connect our suspect to the crimes. We know his mother drives a Toyota with a missing tail light. We don't know how long it's been that way and whether our guy ever drove it. We suspect, but don't know, that he may have set the house fire that killed his father ... What is it, Gwen?"
"I was about to say that nine was awfully young to be committing arson, but on second thought, it really isn't."
"And there's his stepfather falling down the basement stairs just before he was going to move to Vancouver Island and take Dummett's mother with him. We think, but can't be sure, that he wiped the pay phone clean of fingerprints. All of which is enough to give us grounds for suspicion but not enough to justify an arrest."
"What about setting a trap for him? With a female undercover cop," suggested Patterson.
Chris shook his head. "Won't work. This guy hunts humans. No set pattern. They're victims of convenience. Except ..."
Gwen winced as she saw the pain flicker across Chris's face. He would always blame himself for that poor woman's death.
"This room will be our command post," Chris declared. "We'll run the operation from here. And the first thing we will do," he said, opening his laptop, "is to prepare a covert operations plan for 24/7 surveil-lance of Dummett."
"Twenty-four-hour surveillance?" Patterson looked skeptical. "SFU is stretched to the limit."
"They always are. But this trumps everything else." Chris began to tap the keys, rapidly sketching in the background.
"Are you going to ask for electronic surveillance?"
"I'll ask for it. But it's going to be difficult to implement without alerting our suspect. We're not going to serve any warrants on him or his mother. But I will ask for air support, if it becomes necessary.
"HAWC? Those helicopters attract a lot of attention."
"Too much, I agree, Ken. We'll use the airplanes if necessary."
The other two detectives exchanged glances. The fact that the police operated two light aircraft was a well-kept secret. They were much less likely to attract attention than a helicopter clattering overhead.
With Gwen and Patterson standing over his shoulders, offering suggestions from time to time, Chris finished typing the plan. "Now to take it up the chain of command. It won't take long."
He proved to be correct. In less than two hours the plan had been approved by the Homicide Staff Sergeant and the Major Crimes Inspector and been given final approval by the Target Selection Committee.