Mind Games (22 page)

“Who loves me?” I cried.

I raced after him, finally coming upon a tent beside a lake upon which the moon glistened. On approaching closer, I heard the rustling and groans of intercourse. Then came a howl of male release as I was conceived.

He loves me. My father loves me.

When I woke I groggily assumed the dream was revelatory, a grant of insight. But as my mind cleared, I realized I had been played the fool. The dream represented only the longing, the fatherless longing.

I was more a mess leaving your office than coming in. Walking off without my shoes … Was it the wounding insight? The Xanax? Had my struggle to maintain sanity taken too great a toll?

Murder, betrayal, a crippling truth revealed: the past seven days were designed by the devil in hell himself …

Yet it all began so innocently: Sunday, my backup dinner date with Sally. She’d picked me up, was subdued during the ride. Though bothered by
l’affair Celestine
, the incident in the VW van, she preferred not to talk about it. “I don’t want it to dominate the evening. I intend to have some words with her.”

What she wanted to talk about was you. I took some small pleasure in confessing – in the broadest outline – to our cookout at the
Ego
. I found it odd that her initial reaction was pique, but presumed she was castigating herself for her haste in dumping a master chef.

She wanted to know what level of intimacy had been reached that night. (“Did she stay over?” “Please, darling, Allis
is my therapist.” “What kind of therapy was she offering?”) I remained vague, didn’t even mention you’ve sent Richard packing – though others seem to know. Evelyn Mendel phoned me. I gather she’s being a pillar of support.

Left to her speculations, Sally treated me with silence for most of our date – this was upon a moonlit setting by the Fraser River: the Floating Lotus (my choice, okay, but only after she suggested Chinese). We sat by candlelight, studied menus, drank wine, listened to the river. I’d vowed to stop probing, to let her fill conversational gaps with her own words. I sensed she was rehearsing them: her lips were softly working, and there was that telltale tilt of her head.

The silence was so tense that I jumped when my cellphone rang. Once again, it was Jack Churko. Once again, he had ugly news: another body had been discovered, mouldering in an East End basement suite, multiple stab wounds with a pair of scissors.

I pleaded for an hour’s grace. Churko reminded me I’d been placed on a retainer. He needed me at the scene of the crime. I might be able to help connect this with the other attacks, he didn’t know yet if this victim, too, was gay. “And this time we’re talking killers, plural, at least two.” I put him on hold and turned to Sally, who sighed and offered to drive me.

Our wonton soup, crab-in-the-shell, and shrimp with baby asparagus were already coming from the kitchen, so management provided takeout boxes. We ate as we drove, a slapdash, shirt-soiling ride. Soon we saw flashing lights ahead and stopped by the crime-scene tape. I told her I’d call her later.

“It’s all right. We’ll talk tomorrow when you’re fresh.”

We kissed, tenderly enough, but in no lingering fashion. “I love you,” I said.

“We’ll talk tomorrow.”

I nodded. She looked away, and as I stepped from the Saab onto a dreary street of wood-framed one-storeys I felt a hint of nausea (we’ll talk about what, tomorrow?). After watching the
tail lights disappear, I turned wearily toward a shabby cottage, the scene of the crime, and I put my worries aside, grasped at the lifeline of cold reality. A savage murder had been committed here.

I identified myself to a uniformed woman, and as I ducked under the yellow tape I felt as if I were passing between zones of the psyche – it was as if the tape marked the boundary of two personalities, the neurotic nerd and the forensic investigator, the two faces of Tim Dare. I’ve told you, Allis, how I’m morbidly allured by the murderous mind – and I think this helped me concentrate that Sunday night.

The roof of the cottage was sagging, patched with tar shingles, and the yard was overgrown with weeds. Churko was near a side door leading to a half-basement, and he motioned me over to meet the homeowner, Mr. McLaird, in his eighties, a squint-eyed fellow with unwashed ears.

“This is Dr. Dare,” Churko said. “He’s going to want to talk to you.”

He excused McLaird for the moment to put me in the picture: the late tenant of the downstairs suite, José Pierrera, was an immigrant from Portugal, a laid-off bricklayer subsisting on employment benefits. A loner, according to McLaird, with no close friends. His only occasional visitor was a married older sister, but on Wednesday evening last he’d entertained two or three men, presumably the assailants.

McLaird hadn’t seen him for several days, and tonight, noticing a gamy aroma, entered the suite to check. He found Pierrera’s naked body lying in the kitchenette, the blood that had poured from multiple wounds pooled around it. He had died several days ago – the pathologist would give a more exact estimation later.

Churko suggested I might apply my forensic expertise to the motive behind a macabre joke; a pair of bloody shears had been in the corpse’s stiffened right hand – as if, impossibly, the
victim had stabbed himself. I told Churko it seemed a very Grundyesque gesture. He snorted and lit a cigarette.

Inside I could see a worn couch, a table and chair, a bed behind a partition, its sheets rumpled, clothing strewn over it. The ID team was still probing into crannies, bagging hairs, food crumbs, beer-bottle caps. Fingerprint dust mottled the many beer empties strewn about.

I stood aside as the morgue crew removed the sheeted body: a short man, a pot belly. I looked into the tiny kitchenette at its stained wallboard, loose ceiling tiles, and worn linoleum. The silhouette of the former José Pierrera showed on the floor in a wash of red. I felt sickened, struggled with an urge to vomit.

When I returned outside, Churko drew me into a huddle with the landlord. “I want you to tell Dr. Dare what woke you up Wednesday night.”

“Like I said about José, I never known him to have friends, but he was having a party, and that’s what waked me up – they was laughing, making a racket. Couldn’t tell how many. Two, three fellers. No girls. They didn’t have girls. I wouldn’t of allowed it.”

“Could you make out their words?” Churko asked.

“Can’t say I did.”

“Even when you put your ear to the floor?” I asked.

McLaird looked uncomfortable, as if exposed as one who performs unseemly acts.

“To be honest, I didn’t hear nothing. No screams, nothing.”

“You might have felt something,” I said. He looked blank. “Vibrations. Thumps.”

“Well, now, the fridge makes that kind of noise, so I wouldn’t of noticed.”

He hadn’t been able to identify Pierrera’s voice. “Never spoke much, anyway, and you couldn’t understand him for his accent.” He had no idea whether his visitors came by foot, taxi, or private car. He was asleep before they left.

“Any reason to think he was homosexual?” Churko asked.

McLaird couldn’t say, but hadn’t considered him “of that fashion.”

Churko led me back inside, where we looked through a box of personal papers. Correspondence, letters from Portugal, bills, a passport. Nothing to hint he was gay.

The only reading material – it was folded under the phone – was a page of classifieds from the
Georgia Straight
, the giveaway weekly. Not employment listings but personals, pleas from the lonely for companionship. On a margin, someone, presumably Pierrera, had inscribed in pencil, in laborious, crude letters, the name
Jimmy
.

The phone had a redial function. Churko isn’t dull, and after he checked with identification to make sure they were finished with it, he put it on speaker and pressed the redial button. An unctuous voice answered. “You have reached the Adonis Hot Line. Do you want to speak with Philip or Conrad or Jimmy?”

Churko hung up, preferring not to give notice that he’d be dropping by to talk to Jimmy and seize any records or tapes. “Guess we’re going to have to put some effort into this one.”

This murder happened Wednesday, September 17, the same night the homeless man was killed in Brighton Park, and I asked Churko if he’d learned the whereabouts of Grundy and Lyall that night.

“Relax about it, Doc. To make you happy, we checked. They were home. We got two employees confirm that.”

A night watchman and a live-in maid at The Tides insisted Grundy and Lyall had been there all evening. They had been interviewed at a “neutral” location.

“We had to tell them to keep their mouths shut about this. We don’t want to get in a hassle with prominents. I’m a year shy of retirement with full pension.”

What about August 22, the night of Chauncey Wilmott’s death – had he asked about when Grundy and Lyall actually showed up for their rafting trip?

“For Christ’s sake, Doc, why are you beating this dead horse? They were up there, it was in all the newspapers, Grundy saved some girl’s life. Okay, he has a bad report card from the past, and I know you got a hard-on for him, but cut him some slack, he’s a hero. We can’t allocate all our resources to one wild theory.”