CHAPTER 33
Sometimes there was nothing like a good, old-fashioned keyboard. For entering or massaging data, it was still the best tool yet invented. Sandra Philo pulled out the keyboard drawer of her desk and began typing in all the proper nouns she’d turned up in relation to the Hans Larsen murder, including the street he lived on, the name of the company he worked for, where he’d taken his vacation last year, and the names of neighbors, family, friends, and coworkers. She also entered a variety of terms related to the mutilation Larsen had suffered.
By the time she was finished, she had a list of over two hundred words. She then asked the computer to search the records of all homicides in Greater Toronto Region for the last year to see if any of the same terms showed up in the reports filed for them. As it processed the search, the computer drew a little line of dots on the screen to show that it was working. It only took a few seconds to complete the search. Nothing significant.
Sandra nodded to herself; she figured she’d have remembered a similar MO. After all, it’s not every day a corpse is found with its penis lopped off. The computer presented her with suggestions for broader queries: all Ontario murders, all Canadian murders, all North American murders. It also suggested a series of time frames, from one month to ten years.
If she chose the broadest-based one, all North American killings for the last ten years, the search would take hours to run. She was about to select “all Ontario murders,” but at the last moment changed her mind and typed her own query in the dialog box: “all deaths GTR ›20110601,” meaning all deaths — not just murders — in the Greater Toronto Region after June of this year.
The little line of dots grew across the screen as the computer searched. After a few moments, the display cleared and this appeared:
Name: Larsen, Hans
Date of Death: 14 Nov 2011
Cause of Death: homicide
Search term correlated: Hobson, Catherine R. (coworker)
Name: Churchill, Roderick B.
Date of Death: 30 Nov 2011
Cause of Death: natural causes
Search term correlated: Hobson, Cathy (daughter)
Philo’s eyebrows went up. Catherine Hobson — that slim, intelligent brunette Toby Bailey had identified as having been involved with Hans Larsen. Her father had died just two days ago.
It probably didn’t mean a thing. Still … Sandra accessed the city registry. There was only one Catherine Hobson in GTR, and her record was indeed annotated “nee Churchill.” And — good God! She was listed as living with Peter G. Hobson, a biomedical engineer. The soulwave guy — Sandra had seen him on
Sandra switched back to the reports database and asked for full details on the Roderick Churchill death, Churchill, a high-school gym teacher, had died alone while eating dinner. Cause of death was recorded by medical examiner Warren Chen as “aneurysm(?).” That question mark was intriguing. Sandra turned on her videophone and dialed. “Hello, Warren,” she said, once Chen’s round, middle-aged face had appeared on the screen.
Chen smiled warmly. “Hello, Sandra. What can I do for you?”
“I’m calling about the death a couple of days ago of one Roderick Churchill.”
“The gym teacher who combed his hair over? Sure, what about him?”
“You recorded the cause of death as an aneurysm.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you put a question mark after it. Aneurysm, question mark.”
“Oh, yes.” Chen shrugged. “Well, you can never be completely sure. When God wants you, sometimes he just flicks the old switch in your head. Click! Aneurysm. You check out, just like that. That seemed to be what happened there. The guy was already on heart medication.”
“Was there anything unusual about the case?” Chen made the clucking sound that passed for his chuckle.
“I’m afraid not, Sandra. There’s nothing nefarious about a sixty-something-year-old man dropping dead — especially a gym teacher. They think they’re in good shape, but they spend most of their day just watching other people exercise. The guy had been scarfing fast food when he died.”
“Did you do an autopsy?”
The medical examiner clucked again; somebody had once suggested that Chen’s name was a contraction of
“It’s probably nothing,” said Sandra. “Just that the man who died, Rod Churchill, was the father of one of the coworkers in that castration case.”
“Oh, yes,” said Chen, his voice full of relish. “Now there’s an interesting one. Carracci was M.E. on that; she gets all the weird cases these days. But, Sandra, it seems a pretty tenuous connection, no? I mean it just sounds like this woman — what’s her name?”
“Cathy Hobson.”
“It just sounds like it’s not Cathy Hobson’s year, that’s all. Run of bad luck.”
Sandra nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. Still, do you mind if I come down and look at your notes?”
Chen clucked again. “Of course not, Sandra. It’s always a pleasure to see you.”
Peter hated funerals. Not because he disliked being around dead people; one couldn’t spend as much time in hospitals as he did without running into a few of those. No, it was the live ones he couldn’t stand.
First, there were the hypocrites: the ones who hadn’t seen the dear departed in years, but came out of the woodwork after it was too late to do the deceased any good.
Second, the wailers, the people who became so flamboyantly emotional that they, instead of the deceased, became the center of attention. Peter’s heart did go out to close relatives who were having trouble dealing with the loss of someone they truly loved, but he had no patience for the distant cousins or five-blocks-away neighbors who went to pieces at funerals, until they were surrounded by a crowd of people trying to comfort them, loving every minute.
For his own part, as in all things, Peter tried for a certain stoicism — the stiff upper lip of his British ancestors.
Rod Churchill, vain man that he had been, wanted an open casket. Peter disapproved of those. As a child of seven, he’d gone to the funeral of his mother’s father. Granddad had been known for his large nose. Peter remembered entering the chapel and seeing the coffin at the far end, the upper part open, the only thing visible from that angle being his grandfather’s nose sticking up above the line made by the side of the casket. To this day, whenever he thought of his grandfather, the picture that came to mind first was of the dead man’s proboscis, a lone peak rising into the air.
Peter looked around. The chapel he was in today was paneled in dark wood. The coffin looked expensive. Despite the request for donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario in lieu of flowers, there were many bouquets, and a large horseshoe-shaped affair sent by the teachers Rod had worked with. Must have been from the Phys. Ed. Department — only those guys could be daft enough not to know that horseshoe arrangements meant “good luck,” hardly the appropriate thing to send to a dead man.
Bunny was holding up bravely, and Cathy’s sister, Marissa, although crying intermittently, seemed to be doing okay, too. Peter didn’t know what to make of Cathy’s reaction, though. Her face was impassive as she greeted people coming to pay their respects. Cathy, who cried when she watched sad movies and who cried when she read sad books, seemed to have no tears at all for her dead father.
It wasn’t much to go on, thought Sandra Philo. Two deaths. One clearly a murder; the other of indeterminate cause.
But they both had Cathy Hobson in common.
