Chapter Thirty-Four
The sound of the siren was distant, but getting closer. Dame sat on the floor of her front hall and hugged her knees to her chest. She hadn’t bothered to close the door, and the cold was creeping in like a stray nosing for food.
Beside her, Lewis was still unconscious. He was breathing, but his left eye was swollen shut and his face was ugly with colour. The 911 dispatcher had told her to stay on the line, but all she wanted to do was hang up and call Meera.
Around her was the evidence of frenzy. Furniture overturned. Couch cushions gutted. Picture frames splintered and jewelled with broken glass. Her laptop had been pried open and smashed. Its keys littered the floor in a deranged alphabet.
At first glance, it looked like nothing had been taken. The 42-inch Sony flat screen was still on the wall. Even Dodge’s Pentax — still worth a few bucks — sat untouched on the kitchen table. In fact, as far as Dame could tell, there was only one thing she couldn’t account for: the pictures of Aki and Howlett.
She turned and looked at Lewis. His mouth hung open, and a low groan crawled out of it. She ran her fingers into his pockets. Keys. Wallet. Phone. Dirty tissues. She unzipped his coat and searched around inside. Nothing. She pulled the zipper back up and gingerly brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. Dame got to her feet and adjusted her glasses. She walked out onto the front step and tried her mailbox. The photos weren’t in there, either.
She tried to rewind the scene in her head. Lewis didn’t have a key to her place, which meant the door had to be open when he came by. He must’ve surprised whoever was inside and gotten himself clobbered in the process. But why would someone take the photos and nothing else?
Dame walked back inside and sat beside her friend. She watched the rise and fall of his breathing. Put a hand on his arm.
Why had someone done this to him? What wasn’t she seeing?
Slowly, she stood up again. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Outside, the sirens were still getting louder. Tires hissed over the rain-slick asphalt. Sunday night voices floated on the air. She took a step forward. Broken glass and Cheerios crunched under her boot. The hardwood creaked.
Dame stopped.
She opened her eyes and crouched down. With the tips of her fingers, she pried up the loose floorboard Ray never got around to fixing. Underneath, right where she’d left it, was Sharon Fischer’s flash drive.
The paramedics burst in wearing fluorescent jackets and snapping plastic gloves up their wrists. They swarmed Lewis, stabilized his neck and head. When did you find him? Does he have any medical conditions? Has he taken any medication today? On the wall, the red and white light of the ambulance shimmered like stained glass. Dame paced as the paramedics worked. Every minute seemed unending.
Airway is patent. Putting the C-collar in place.
A decade passed.
Breathing’s at twenty. Blood pressure’s one-thirty-four over eighty-six.
A century.
Sats are ninety-eight. Pulse is one hundred and five.
A Bronze Age.
Orbital bone looks fractured. Okay, let’s lift him up. On three …
Now that she could, Dame picked up her phone and ended the 911 call. Immediately, she made another.
“Meera?” she said. “Something’s happened. Lewis is hurt. I had to call an ambulance.”
Dame expected another barrage of questions, but Meera only had one. “Where are they taking him?”
She told her and Meera hung up.
The police arrived just as they were packing Lewis into the back of the ambulance. She had wanted to go inside and grab her bottle of mezcal, but they wouldn’t let her. Instead, she waited in the front yard, leaning empty-handed against its one tree. Her front window bled light into the darkness of the yard and framed the uniformed figures who searched her apartment. Dame had the strange feeling she was watching some kind of stage production set in her own house.
Eventually, an officer approached her, notebook in hand. He was about her age and had a kind face, or at the very least, a face that was trained to be kind in these situations.
“Scary stuff, isn’t it?” he said to her.
Dame nodded.
“Is this your apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“And the injured party was … your husband?”
Dame shook her head. “My friend’s husband.”
He looked at her and then wrote something down in his notebook. “Does your friend know her husband was visiting you?”
She swallowed a little laugh. “Yeah.”
“What was he doing here?”
“Just stopping by.”
He looked at her again, and Dame could see him putting the narrative together in his head. Testing her story for holes. As he kept on with his questions, Dame marvelled at the many-headed police machine. There was the cop interviewing her, the cop taking pictures of her front door, the cop interviewing her neighbour. So many cops. What good was a private investigator next to this shining hydra?
“Any chance you saw who did this?”
“They were already gone.”
“Any security features we should know about? Alarm systems? Cameras?”
She shook her head.
“Do you know if they took anything?”
Dame put her hands in her pocket. “Not that I could tell.”
“Can you think of any reason why someone would want to break into your apartment?”
Her fingers found the flash drive in her pocket and closed around it. “No.”
The cop looked back at the house. “Well, it’s possible that this was an attempted robbery, and your friend just showed up at the wrong time. Hopefully, he’s okay. And hopefully, your insurance will cover the damage.”
“Hopefully.”
“Weird though” — the cop tapped the notebook with his pen — “they had time to trash the place, and do a number on your friend, but they didn’t take anything.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That is weird.”
Half an hour later, Dame found Meera sitting in the ER waiting room. She was holding an empty coffee cup in her hands and her hair was up in a bun. A few seats down, a grey-haired man sat with his leg straight out in front of him. He gripped the sides of his chair and sweat beaded on his face.
Meera smiled a little when she saw Dame. She looked down at the coffee cup in her hands as if she just noticed it was there, then put it down by her feet. Dame sat in the chair beside her and held her hand.
“They’re doing a CT scan,” Meera said. “To see if there’s —”
She didn’t finish her sentence.
“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Dame said.
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
“He used to drive me home,” she said, staring out at the bank of chairs across from them. “Did I ever tell you that? When I first started working at City Hall. I didn’t have a car back then, and he offered to drive me. I was living with my parents in Etobicoke, and he said it was on his way. I didn’t find out for months that he lived in Little Italy. He must’ve driven an extra hour, every single day.” She sighed. “He always did have a lousy sense of direction.”
“I think he knew what he was doing.”
“That first time I brought him home, my dad didn’t crack a smile once. My mom and I made this really good chicken karahi, but my dad wouldn’t touch it. Just asked Lewis all these questions: Where did he grow up? What did his parents do? What school did he go to?” Meera sniffed a little and sat up straighter. “And Lewis, he just took it like a champ. Answered all his questions. Plus, he ate two helpings of chicken.”
She put her face in her hands. Dame rubbed her back. A woman in blue scrubs hurried past them carrying a clipboard. After a little while, Meera dug a Kleenex out of her pocket and blew her nose. “This is all my fault.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was supposed to be me, but I sent him instead.”
“Meera” — Dame levelled a look at her — “Lewis caught some asshole breaking into my apartment. Don’t blame yourself.”
Meera took a deep, shuddering breath. “Did they take anything?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean?”
Dame looked down at the floor. “Do you know if Lewis picked up the photos from Cosmo’s?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He texted me right after he got them. Why?”
“They weren’t there when I — you know — found him.”
The old man with the wonky leg cleared his throat.
“Who would want those pictures?” Meera asked. “I mean, you don’t think Hugo Howlett did this to Lewis, do you?”
“No,” Dame said. “I don’t. But whoever did it tore my apartment to shreds. I think they were looking for something.”
“What?”
Dame reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the lipstick flash drive. “Something they didn’t find.”
Recognition dawned on Meera’s face. “But how —?”
“Maybe someone saw us sneaking around the office that night and told Fischer. Maybe she put two and two together. I don’t know. But it’s the only thing that makes any sense to me.”
“So” — Meera’s eyes stayed locked on the flash drive — “what did you tell the police?”
“About what?”
“About that.” She pointed at the little device in Dame’s hand. “About Sharon Fischer and strange white cars and whatever else.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“What am I supposed to say? That we broke into our colleague’s office and stole a secret flash drive? That maybe she hired someone to steal it back?” Dame scrutinized the device between her forefinger and thumb. “I just wish we could see what’s on that video file. Maybe if I could get into Fischer’s office, again. Look around a little more …”
“Do you even hear yourself?”
Meera was staring at her in disbelief. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles.
“We’re in a hospital. Lewis might have brain damage, and you” — she squinted at Dame — “you still want to play detective?”
“Meera, you were the one who said I should do this.”
“I know. And you did it. It’s done. But all this —?” She looked around the waiting room. “This isn’t your job, Dame. This is way out of your league. Whoever did this to Lewis is still out there. You have to talk to the police.”
Dame didn’t say anything.
“What if they come after me next time?” Meera asked. “Or you? Who’s going to look after Dodge if you get hurt?”
Dame looked at the flash drive. “Maybe Dodge knows someone who’s good with computers. Maybe I could —”
“Dodge is almost seventy!”
The man beside them adjusted his leg and grunted quietly.
“The guy can barely work his flip phone. Jesus, Dame, he doesn’t know anything about computers.” She sighed. “This world you think you’re living in — all this Humphrey Bogart cloak and dagger bullshit — it doesn’t exist, okay?”
Dame was quiet for a few moments. She sat hunched in her chair, rubbing the back of her neck with her hand. “I know Fischer’s hiding something. If I could just —”
“Okay. No.” Meera held up one hand. A barrier between them. “I can’t do this right now. I think maybe you should go.”
“Meera, I’m just —”
“Please, Dame.” She stared at the floor. “Just go. I don’t want you here.”
“I’m not going to leave you here alone.”
“I’m not alone,” Meera said. “I have Lewis.”