18
Cardinal waited for Delorme at the end of the alley where it opened onto College Street. She arrived in a cab, which was itself unusual, and there was something else about her that seemed a little… off. He could not have said exactly what it was.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you’ve been calling in sick and-”
“Who called this in?” Delorme headed down the alley toward the lights.
“A teaching assistant who came by to pick up some term papers. Hayley knew she was coming. When she got here, she found Hayley’s bike lying in the alley and no sign of her.”
“How’d they know to call you?”
“I used to work with Art Drexler, the lead guy at 52 Division, a century ago.”
They were waved past the crime scene tape and Cardinal introduced Delorme to Drexler. He didn’t waste any time on preliminaries.
“Don’t bother with the bunny suits, we’re just about done here.”
Two cops were loading a woman’s bike into the back of a van.
“That’s hers,” Cardinal said. “It looks like she never made it into her apartment.”
“ She didn’t,” Drexler said. “But he did.”
He led them up the fire escape to a door on the second floor. Inside, the scene people were collecting their markers, putting camera gear away, snapping cases closed.
“I asked the wizards to leave some stuff out for you to see. First of all, check out her land line.” He picked up the handset, which was wrapped in clear plastic and dotted with print powder, and pressed a couple of buttons. “It’s got an automatic message retrieve function. I’m putting it on speaker.” The phone beeped a couple of times and a synthetic voice said there were five old messages. Drexler skipped four of them. “Students and TAs. But get this.”
Hi, sweetheart, it’s me again. Why can’t I get you on your cell? I suppose you were in class. Listen, I know you said you don’t want anything to do with a bodyguard, but I’ve gone ahead and contacted a company anyway. Their top guy will come around in person tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.
“That’s Ronnie Babstock,” Cardinal said to Drexler. “I know him.”
“He saw this coming?” Delorme said. “Why didn’t he call us?”
It’s crucial that you listen to him, the message went on. These people know what they’re doing and he won’t waste your time. If you have any reason to fear for your safety-anything untoward-call the police. And tell them to call Detective John Cardinal at the Algonquin Bay police. Hayley, please, please, be careful.
“Looks like someone else picked up that message,” Drexler said. “Also, take a look at this.”
Someone had scrawled a number on a small notepad next to the phone.
“79,” Delorme said. “Could be anything. Is it her writing?”
“Not enough there to be definitive,” Drexler said, “but the sevens and nines in her chequebook are quite different.”
“We had numbers at two other scenes,” Cardinal said. “25 at one and 45 at the other. We’re not a hundred percent sure about those either.”
“Well, I think we can be reasonably sure it’s not an address where we can find him,” Drexler said.
“No, but it might contain some other information.”
“You’re with 52 Division?” Delorme said. “I don’t suppose you ever happened to work with a guy named Loach? He’s with us now.”
“Ugh. You can keep that prick.”
“We might have got here sooner,” Cardinal said, “but Loach has got everyone running in circles.”
“Chasing this,” Delorme said. She pressed the Play button on her phone and the mysterious caller told them in thick French-Canadian tones that he would soon strike again.
Drexler’s face changed. “That’s your suspect?”
“It’s Loach’s suspect.”
“Caller have anything not general knowledge? He mention any of your holdbacks?”
“Yeah, he did,” Cardinal said. “He mentioned those two numbers, 25 and 45, in an oblique sort of way. We don’t know how he got them-obviously a leak somewhere. It’s not that chasing down the voice is insane, it’s just-”
“It’s just not good prioritizing. That’s Loach. Also, you’ve got a leak. And Loach, you may have noticed, is a real motormouth. Has a habit of yakking to people off the rez.” He turned to the last remaining member of the scene squad, who was waiting by the door with hands folded and head bowed. “Jackson! Sorry! You guys can go. We’ll be along in a minute.”
When the scene man was gone, Drexler said, “I don’t normally bad-mouth a former colleague, but in Loach’s case I’m making an exception. The thing about Loach-well, there’s a lot of things-but thing number one is, he gets something in his head, it don’t leave.”
“We noticed.”
“Thing number two, Vernon Loach is not a team player. You have a big success, Loach is its daddy. No one else had anything to do with it. Thing goes sour, Loach had nothing to do with it.”
“Our D.S. is pretty dazzled by the Montrose case,” Cardinal said.
“I can’t blame him, way it played in the media. But Montrose got cleared because two dozen detectives worked nights and weekends to follow all the boring little details that make a good case. Plus we got lucky-Mr. Montrose having used a firearm that matched a case from eight years ago.”
“Was it Loach followed that up?” Delorme said.
“It was me. But it coulda been any one of us. I can’t tell you the number of court cases went belly up with Loach. Chain-of-evidence crap. Witnesses who didn’t pan out. My blood pressure’s going up just remembering.” Drexler laughed. “And the whole time he’s yapping about how his ship’s about to come in.”
“At the moment,” Delorme said, “he seems to be expecting a CBC biography or something.”
Drexler shook his head. “It makes you want to roll on the floor laughing. Except it also makes me want to cry. I can’t say I ever hated Loach. I try not to hate anybody. But a lot of people did. In particular, a sergeant named Chuck Rakov. Rakov used to make fun of him all the time. To his face. Refused to take him seriously. Eventually, Loach got him fired on some trumped-up thing-actually got the guy fired — which as you know is pretty near impossible to do. Listen, come on down to the div with me. The others should be wandering back with their reports, and you may as well get the stuff first-hand.”
Drexler was everything Loach was not. He brought everyone to order quickly. He had Cardinal and Delorme stand up when he introduced them.
“Hayley Babstock was abducted in our town and this is absolutely our case,” he told them, “but these two detectives are our total allies. They know way more than we do at this point, and I’ll have them run through it for you once we get everyone debriefed.
“Now, there was a number written at the scene that may or may not be in this maniac’s handwriting. That number is 79. Cardinal and Delorme are telling us there were numbers found at two previous scenes. Those numbers are 25 and 45.”
“Could be a combination,” someone said. “To a lock of some kind.”
Someone else suggested a computer key or maybe a password.
“It could be a lot of things,” Drexler said. “We’re going to have to brainstorm it.”
Detectives got up one after another and gave a summary of what they’d found. A security camera across College Street had picked up a white van leaving the alley. They had a techie trying to enhance the image so they could pull up a licence plate. But the alley had two other exits that were not covered by any kind of surveillance.
Cardinal got up and told them what he knew so far. When he was done, someone asked where he thought the perpetrator might be headed.
“Possibly Algonquin Bay-he’s killed two people there so far, including one he abducted from Ottawa. But his first victim was in Parry Sound. So, other than that… somewhere cold. Right now I’m working on the theory that this
