Authors: Carolyn Davidson
“You have no idea who this person might have been?” Emily squinted behind her sunglasses as if to better discern whether the girl’s wide eyed bewilderment was genuine.
“I have no idea. I mean, I wondered who it could be. But our teachers were either ladies or really old, and I never saw Sarah talking to any other boys except Tommy. She wasn’t really a party girl. It was like I asked her to come sky diving if I suggested we meet up at the student pub. But that was just Sarah; like I said, she kept to herself.”
A stream of backpacked students began filing past them towards the nursing building’s doors, and Stephanie shifted the books in her arms restlessly. “Okay Stephanie.” Emily decided that Stephanie’s artlessness was just that. “Thank you for your time.”
Susan kept her finger on the fast forward button as the images of Donaldson’s crew setting up their camera equipment scuttled across the screen. Ginny’s camera began a slow, three hundred and sixty degree pan, and Susan returned the film to its normal speed.
The camerawoman captured the girl Susan had been interviewing leaving the station, and shortly after Susan’s own image appeared, running a hand through her errant hair before positioning herself at the microphone set up in front of the station’s entrance stairs. Ginny retraced the circle and Susan slowed the tape to study the faces of the crowd watching the interview. Sarah’s sister Elizabeth was there, as well as a number of Sarah’s school friends and their parents. Susan made note of the faces she recognized as well as those she would find names for, including a scruffy looking middle aged man and a teenage boy she wanted identified stat. Mr. Logan was in attendance, and the girl she had been interviewing prior to the interview, Trudy, had stayed to watch.
Susan paused the film as the call she had been waiting on hold for picked up. “David Ankor.” The voice clipped its consonants with the clear message that there was no time to be wasted on idle greetings.
“Inspector Susan Kovalsky,” Susan answered in suit. “I need to ask you some questions about a former colleague of yours, Terry Harmon.”
A pause was followed by an intake of breath between teeth.
“Okay, give me a minute.” There was a click while the phone was put back on hold, and Susan was left again in the silent no man’s land of an empty line. At least he’s spared me the requisite mind numbing easy listening music, Susan thought, drawing tight circles on the blank page in front of her.
The other end picked up and the Ankor’s voice returned, slightly less rushed in tone, just as guarded in meaning, Susan reflected, if she was any judge.
“I’m all yours,” David Ankor stated. “Ask away”.
“I’d like you to fill me in on what went on with Terry at the company. What led to his departure.”
“What went on,” David laughed without humour. “What went on is Terry swindled a bunch of clients out of their savings. Convinced them he had a one man lead on a high-return, low-risk investment strategy. Sent phony investment reports when they started to get antsy, the whole shebang. It was a mess.”
“I don’t work in white collar,” Susan frowned as she asked what seemed to be the obvious question. “But that all sounds pretty illegal. How is it Terry managed to run off to the countryside instead of winding up doing time in prison?”
“He was good at covering his tracks,” David responded. Susan could hear the patter of a keyboard in the background and figured her time allotment had been filled and Ankor was now multitasking. “Plus the clients he was dealing with were small potatoes. No documentation, just a few senior citizens crying, ‘he promised me this, he promised me that.’ It was easy enough to prove he was a bad broker, but no one actually nailed him as a criminal. We settled with a few, the others pretty much disappeared.”
Susan shook her head. “I’ll need you to supply me with a list of clients who lost money through Harmon. Terry claims to have left all records and client details at the office.”
“I’m sure he did,” Ankor snorted derisively. “There have been three different occupants in that office since Terry left; it’s a high turnover position. But our files are an open book, I’ll give you the number for internal audit and they can get you what you need.”
“Thanks,” Susan responded, ending the call. Lucky her; it looked like a visit to the city was in the cards. If someone had a vendetta against Terry Harmon it seemed more likely they would target him than his daughter, but it was a potential motive, and it bore looking into. She looked thoughtfully at the paper in front of her, imprinted with her scribbled circles within circles. It would be her first time back to the city in what must be three, probably closer to five years. No more than a few hours in decent traffic but it felt like a lifetime away.
Never in her wildest dreams growing up would she have imagined ending up in a blue uniform. She’d always had plans, alternate routes mapped out in her child’s, and then teenager’s mind, that would lead her to a streamlined suit in an air conditioned office, a crisp white lab coat with a stethoscope around her neck. Or, first choice for a long time, to a chair in a wide windowed air control office, overseeing plane routes, ensuring each aircraft followed its preordained path to a safe landing. As long as it was something foreign to the faded apartment couch her father spent the large portion of his days on, worlds away from the numbing background babble of other people’s lives on the television that was always on.
It was the policeman from Dawes Street, although she’d have to be pressed hard to admit it. His movements had been purposeful, while the group gathered around the boy prone on the sidewalk appeared stuck in time, a frozen image describing tragedy. Women’s faces stretched into masks of pantomime horror, and the two boys, almost men, turned feral and unrecognizable by the violence overtaking sense in their eyes.
Susan had been a part of the passing crowd, with little investment in the players she didn’t know. Shocked along with the rest of the crowd at the speed with which violence could erupt through the commonality of a weekday morning routine.
Of course she was concerned for the boy, whose face paled as his shirt stained a darker red with blood. And of course she felt horror that human nature could result in such violence on an ordinary blue skied day. But it was the policeman she had fixed on; he alone was doing something, making things happen to bring order to the chaos, to put things back to right.
So it was a blue police uniform and a badge, much to her teachers’ surprise, her father’s ridicule, and her friends’ consternation. Not that there were many friends; somehow an absent mother and a father attached to a bottle didn’t bode well for the light-hearted giggles of girlhood confidences.
It was a choice she had never regretted. It didn’t come without its own hurdles and barbs along the way. If she had a coin for every, ‘giving away a man’s job to keep the politicians happy’, ‘sleeping your way to the top’, flat out butch, bitch, lesbian labels she’d been given in the span of her career she’d have far more savings that an officer’s salary had afforded her.
But here she was. Twelve years on the city beat, a lucky transfer to the OPP north of the city, and then a luckier stint honing her skills with Andrews as her mentor. She’d made it to Inspector and she had no regrets. And would keep it that way as long as they nailed Sarah’s killer.
*
It wasn’t enough for her. It wasn’t enough that she had Tommy’s full attention. The way he hung off every word she breathed in her light as air voice. The way he put his arm around her at the hint of a chill in the air as though the slightest breeze might blow her away. It was enough to make you scream.
Funny how the people who have everything don’t appreciate what they have. She would have given Tommy all of herself. She would have looked into his sky blue eyes every time he spoke to her. She would have always been the first one to reach for his hand when he was walking beside her.
It was sad; he had no idea how he should be treated. He didn’t realize what a silly choice he’d made.
*
Emily squared her shoulders as she waited on the doorstep alongside her partner for the door to be answered. Or her partner for the time being, anyway. Lucky her, calling Constable Ronald Knapton as her number two. Driscoll had been pulled to do some digging into Mr. Logan’s past. It looked like he was the boss’s frontrunner for favourite these days.
That’s alright, it was friend’s of Sarah interview duty for her, likely chosen as she was amongst the youngest on the local force. Easier to relate to, the Inspector had advised her. Use that to get them to feel comfortable confiding, letting things slip when they don’t feel they’re being grilled.
Emily glanced at Ronald, busy sucking on his teeth. “Ran out of dental floss this morning,” he shrugged when he caught her staring at him. She was saved from responding when the door in front of them opened, and a man looking to be in his late teens or early twenties stood in front of them. White tee shirt worn thin to the point of near transparency, dark hairs on his chin and upper lip just shy of enough proliferation to be classified a goatee. Eyes bleared from lack of sleep or recent pot smoking, if the faint scent in the air was any indication.
“Jamie Neeman?” Emily took the lead before Knapton could recover from picking the food from his teeth.
“That’s me.” Their interviewee put on a Midwest American drawl. More like small town Northern Ontario born and bred, Emily thought.
“We need a few moments of your time,” she said, watching as their host studied them with squint-eyed consternation. “We’re speaking with people in the community who knew Sarah Harmon, looking for any information that will help with the investigation. You’re aware of what happened to Sarah?” she asked, when his guarded expression didn’t change.
“Yeah,” their host said, giving his head a shake. “Yeah, I heard.” He stepped back, holding his arms out theatrically. “Come on in. My casa and all that”.
Knapton entered first, smelling the air ostensibly, as though his trained nose would lead him directly to a clear baggie of weed stashed neatly out of sight. Jamie leaned forward slightly as Emily followed her partner into the house and she felt his chest in uncomfortable proximity to her own. She made a conscious effort to resist recoiling, instead brushing by him quickly.
“Alright, Jamie,” she said authoritatively, taking a seat on a leather chair in the living room, “we have a few questions for you.”
Emily saw a flicker of concern in the young man’s eyes as he glanced surreptitiously around the room. “What’s this really about?”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Emily assured him, intending to keep him as relaxed, and therefore as likely to volunteer information, as possible. “We’re doing the rounds interviewing people who knew Sarah, friends of hers and people who may have seen her recently, to get an idea of what was going on in her life. Your name came up as someone who was a part of Sarah and Tommy’s group in school.”
“I don’t know why my name would come up,” Jamie’s forehead creased in perplexity, and he was looking far from relaxed. “I used to be tight with Tommy in school, so I knew her, but it wasn’t like we had pajama parties. Besides, that’s way back, we’re talking high school.”
Emily let the inappropriate comment pass by uncommented upon, and pretended to do the mental math.
“So high school would be what, one year ago?” Emily asked. “Not so long ago. Can you remember when you last saw her?”
“No time recently,” Jamie rubbed his chin in exaggerated thoughtfulness. “She used to come around to the parties way back, sometimes with Tommy boy, sometimes without, but that was a while ago.” He smiled as he drifted into apparent recollection.
“And?” Knapton prompted.
“She used to be pretty wild, but I haven’t seen her around much these last couple years, she kinda dropped off the face of the earth I guess.” The boy’s face reddened as he processed the words he’d spoken, and Emily watched his face go through a transparent show of realization, embarrassment, and then defiance. “Well you know what I mean; she stopped coming around.”
Emily was careful to keep her expression impassive. “Sarah was wild?” she asked mildly. Nothing she had learned about Emily so far indicated a description anywhere near wild.
“I guess I heard some things, you know,” Jamie shrugged. “It’s a small town, things get around. She liked to drink, had some fun at the parties. Pretended to be Miss Innocent but I heard it was game on when Tommy wasn’t around.”
Emily forced herself to nod, as if in sympathetic understanding.
“Was there anyone in particular she dated aside from Tommy?” she asked.
“I didn’t say ‘dated’.” Jamie leaned back on the couch, one arm high on the headrest. “She liked to party, that’s all. I heard she had a few rolls in the hay, you know. I don’t want to say anything bad about someone that’s, you know, dead.” He finished awkwardly.
“Of course you don’t,” Emily said, nodding. “Is there anything else you can tell us about Sarah?”
“Nah,” Jamie shook his head. “I don’t really run into anyone from that crew any more. Tommy and I hung out a lot in high school, we played football and lacrosse together, but after graduation we kinda went our own ways. From what I heard he’s been busting his butt working for his Dad, and I’ve got my own things going on.”
He stared back at the officers blankly, drumming his hands on his knees.
“Alright Jamie,” Emily stood up, waiting for Knapton to follow her. “I think that’s all we need from you today. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”
The boy remained seated and the Constables let themselves out, Knapton giving the air one last sniff as they left.
*
It was busy as usual for the mid-week dinner hour at the Lion’s Head Tavern. The high-beamed room buzzed with conversations from tables surrounded by families and friends, and the smells of fresh cut fried potatoes and thick steaks searing on the grill wafted through the kitchen doors each time a waitress entered the room, arms piled high with dishes.
Alex leaned back to savour a mouthful of locally brewed amber lager. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander to sift through the babble of conversation surrounding him. Peppering the usual chatter about weather and fishing and family were threads of shock, fear, and as always the case with violent acts, the hushed edging of thrill. How could something so carnal happen among people we know?