The shrill sound of her phone woke Penner from a deep sleep. As she rolled over to answer it, she looked at the clock. 1:30 a.m. ‘Well, at least I got a bit of sleep,’ she thought. She fumbled around on the night stand for her phone without opening her eyes, finally finding it.
‘Penner,’ she groggily said, eyes still closed.
‘Evening, Detective Penner.’ Dispatch was on the line. Penner opened her eyes. ‘We have a call for you, 72 Queen Street.’
Penner sat up, flicked on the light and swung her legs out of bed, trying to will her body to wake up. ‘What’s the call?’ she asked, already knowing the answer. If it was just another jewellery heist, she wouldn’t be the one getting the call.
‘Someone reported a body. EMTs are en route and responding officers are already on scene.’
‘Another one! What’s going on this week?’ Penner said, standing up and walking towards her closet. ‘Can you get in touch with Detective Millar?’
‘Already did, ma-am.’
‘Thanks. You can mark me as en route in about ten minutes. Oh, can you call Constable Grant, too? He’s working with me for now.’
‘Will do, ma-am.’ The dispatcher hung up.
‘A third murder? In one week? This is really not good,’ Penner thought, buttoning her blouse and shrugging on her suit jacket. She walked into her kitchen and opened the pantry door, looking for a granola bar or something else to eat quickly before heading out. Her phone rang again. ‘Penner.’
‘Sorry, ma-am, dispatch again. I tried Constable Grant’s home number, but there was no answer. And his cell went right to voicemail. I left a message on both with the location of the scene and your instructions to meet there.’
‘Okay, thanks. Try him again in ten minutes, and keep trying until you get him.’ She hung up.
Thankfully, as Penner turned onto Queen Street, she could see that there wasn’t much of a crowd at the scene. Under the beam of a streetlight, it looked like only a couple of people standing behind the yellow police tape. ‘Maybe we can keep a lid on this one,’ she thought. She had just stepped out of her car when she heard a familiar voice.
‘Detective! Is this murder related to the other two? Is this the work of the same serial killer?’ Arden Wall asked.
Penner could feel the heat in her face as she turned towards Arden in anger. ‘How dare you report that we had a serial killer in town! Do you realize that could have jeopardized our entire case!’ she yelled, storming over to Arden.
‘I was just reporting what I heard you say, Detective,’ Arden said as the camera kept rolling beside him.
‘I never said there was a serial killer. I never said the two cases were related at all!’ Penner said, furious. ‘You turned my words around so you could have a big scoop. Well guess what, bub. I’m done giving you any more information. I’ll gladly go to your competitors just to make sure they break the story before you do. Oh, and again, you’re here before any of the detectives. I should pin this on you and get you off the streets for a long time. I suggest you get out of here before I bring you in for questioning.’ She turned her back and started to walk off. She knew she shouldn’t have threatened him, but it definitely felt good.
Penner nodded to the uniform officers at the scene, and ducked under the police tape. About ten feet beyond the tape, she saw what looked like a body sitting upright under a blanket and leaning against a bronze statue of a Native American hunter. Penner had admired this sculpture many times over the years—it was one of her favourite in the city. Her eyes followed the gaze of the hunter, who was aiming his bow and arrow at a bronze buck, about fifteen feet away. ‘What else did you see tonight?’ Penner wondered.
She reached down and carefully lifted the blanket from the body. A petite woman sat beneath, wearing a summer dress and sneakers. Her purse lay beside her, undisturbed. Her head had fallen forward, hair hanging down in front of her face. Penner could see that she had an all-too-familiar-looking gash on the back of her head. Without touching anything else, she tried to see if there were any other obvious marks on her body, but she couldn’t tell. She would have to wait until Faye had her in the autopsy room. Penner covered the victim back up with the blanket and used her flashlight to look carefully around the body, searching for anything out of the ordinary. On the base of the statue she noticed a faint, dusty shoe print. If she hadn’t had the flashlight on just the right angle, she would have missed it. It might not be anything—after all, this was a high-traffic area during the day. The Parliament buildings were only a few blocks away, so there were always a lot of tourists walking around and posing for pictures. And it would make sense that someone would stand right there to get a good picture with the statue, but still, she wondered. Looking around, she saw an FIS officer talking with the uniformed officers. ‘Excuse me?’ Penner called out. ‘Can you come take a picture of this, please?’ The young female officer came over with her camera.
‘Evening, Detective. I’ve already photographed the body.’
‘Great, but I want you to try and get a good picture of this,’ Penner said, pointing to the shoe print.
‘Ma-am?’ At first, the officer couldn’t see anything. She tried standing where Penner had been standing, while the detective shone her flashlight on the print. ‘Ah, I see it now. I’ll try,’ she said. ‘But it may be tough. It’s pretty faint.’ Leaning right down, she angled the lens so she could see the print in the view finder and took a photo. She checked the camera display to see if the shoe print was visible. Unhappy with the result, she tried a few more shots, moving around the print each time and adjusting the lighting settings on her camera. Finally, she seemed happy. ‘I think this should work,’ she said, showing Penner the picture.
‘Are you going to be able to figure out what type of shoe that came from?’ Penner asked.
‘Should be able to. We have a database we can upload it to for comparison. It’s a pretty heavy tread, probably a boot or hiking shoe. I’ll take a couple of measurements too, that way we’ll know what size shoe it is.’ She put down her camera and took a measuring tape out of her pocket. ‘Bit of a long shot that it belongs to our perp, isn’t it?’
‘True. But right now it’s about all we have to go on,’ Penner said, watching the forensics officer take notes. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up to see Millar approaching. ‘Hey, good to see ya. How was the trip?’
‘Hey, Penner. The trip was actually a bust. Not sure what happened, but I got there and found out the conference was cancelled. Figured I was already there, so I might as well enjoy the time off and be a tourist for a day,’ Millar said. ‘Kind of nice having time to myself for a change.’
‘Sounds ideal,’ said Penner. ‘So, Tina wasn’t too interested in father-daughter time?’
‘Maybe she would be if she had a different father,’ Millar said, and then changed the subject abruptly. ‘So, seems like you’ve been busy. Anything I should know?’ Millar watched the officer taking measurements, but couldn’t make out of what. ‘What am I missing?’
‘Shoe print,’ Penner said, shining her light just right. The print appeared like magic.
‘Wow, good eye. Not sure I would have caught that,’ Millar said.
‘Well, my eyes are still a bit younger than yours,’ Penner said with a smirk. ‘So, to bring you up to speed, our second vic from the other night, Mrs. Elaine Jackson, was found over on King Edward, also beside a statue. Such a strange M.O. Bash someone over the head and leave their body sitting beside a statue.’
‘That is really strange,’ Millar said. He sounded distracted.
‘Hey, speaking of statues, are you still doing the stone carving? You took a couple of classes, didn’t you?’ Penner asked.
‘What? Oh, yeah. Three series of classes. Hard to find the time to do any at home, though. Messy, too,’ Millar said. ‘Did you say the second victim was Elaine Jackson?’
‘Yeah. Why, do you know her?’ Penner asked.
‘I think I met her a couple of weeks ago, at one of Tina’s wrestling matches. I think T beat her daughter in one of the final heats,’ Millar said. ‘Pretty sure her name was Elaine.’
Penner reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a creased copy of the article Grant had printed. Lucky thing she always wore the same blazer. ‘Here’s a picture of her,’ she said, flattening the paper and handing it to Millar.
‘That’s her,’ Millar said, looking at the picture. He held it a bit closer. ‘Is that…?’
‘Karen Wong. Our first victim,’ said Penner. ‘Be interesting to see if there’s a connection with this victim, too. During Mrs. Jackson’s autopsy, it looked like the same type of weapon was used. Same type of gash on the head. But this time, it seems like she was incapacitated first with a Taser.’
‘Really? Not a lot of those on the streets. Well, there shouldn’t be, anyway. They’ve been illegal for years now,’ Millar said.
‘So have hand guns, but it hasn’t stopped people getting their hands on those,’ said Penner.
‘True. Have you identified any suspects, yet?’ Millar asked, looking around the scene.
‘Not really. Mrs. Jackson’s husband is a security guard and he carries a baton and Taser, but that’s about all we’ve got on him. And there are plenty of security guards in the city that carry the same, so…nothing really. One of Mrs. Wong’s co-workers was having an affair, and it wasn’t his first. He’s got a history of domestic violence, so there may be something there, but we haven’t found a connection between him and Mrs. Jackson, so…I don’t know. I think it has to be the same killer in all these cases. They’re too similar to be a coincidence.’
A voice spoke out of the darkness behind them. ‘I tend to agree.’ It was Faye. ‘Detectives. Seriously, I am going to need a good night’s sleep one night this week. So, another body?’ Faye put on her gloves and leaned down to get a better look. Her assistant handed Penner a coffee.
‘You know the way to a girl’s heart,’ Penner said, gladly taking the cup. ‘We haven’t gone through her purse yet, so we don’t have a name,’ she said, turning back to Faye.
‘What, no coffee for me?’ Millar said with disappointment.
‘Sorry, Detective, I thought you were out of town.’
Faye grabbed the purse and handed it to Penner. ‘Feel free to have a look.’
Penner opened up the purse and started inventorying the contents. There were the usual items: lipstick, mascara, lip balm. ‘Huh,’ she said, pulling out another container. ‘Pepper spray.’
Millar and Faye both looked at Penner with interest. ‘Wonder if she used it on the perp before she got hit?’ Millar said.
‘Cap’s still on, so unless the perp put it back, I have my doubts,’ said Penner. ‘Also got some gum, a pen and her wallet.’ She opened the wallet. ‘Wow, a lot of cash. Couple of hundred. I guess robbery wasn’t the motive. Let’s see who you are.’ She pulled out a driver’s license. ‘Yvonne Brenner.’
Millar looked shocked. ‘What did you say?’
‘Yvonne Brenner. You okay?’ Penner looked at Millar with concern.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Millar said. ‘Faye, can I see her face?’
Faye pulled the hair back out of Mrs. Brenner’s face and Penner shone her light on it. The lifeless eyes seemed to look straight ahead with a steely stare.
Millar moved in for a better look. ‘I’m pretty sure her daughter is a wrestler, too.’