The Ambitious City (7 page)

M
AC
N
EICE PARKED THE
Chevy next to an old Land Rover, one of the ones built before the company decided to become groovy. On the hood the pale blue paint was worn down to the primer, and the interior was a mess. The back seat was littered with papers, a tennis racquet, a pair of white scuffed court shoes, a hand shovel, some whisks and brushes, several binders with the university logo on the cover, and on the floor, at least a dozen paper coffee cups. On the front passenger seat were six or seven CDs without covers; he couldn’t make out what they were. To finish it off, a jiggly plastic Hawaiian girl with a lei and a grass skirt was mounted on the dash under the rear-view mirror. MacNeice smiled.
No Good Housekeeping Seal for this puppy
, he thought. He put on his jacket and walked over to the tent. A new team of security guards was stationed outside, looking considerably keener than the last, which wasn’t saying much. MacNeice pulled out his badge and the guard on the door nodded and opened up for him, adding perfunctorily, “She’s expecting you.”

Once inside, he let his eyes adjust to the brightness. What was left of the two round columns had been taken away to the lab for examination; the bodies next to the Packard were gone, and there were obvious signs that August had opened the square columns. Next to the third rail cart, a woman in worn, baggy jeans and a T-shirt stood looking at him. She was slim, with a mop of grey-brown hair that looked as if she spent as much time at the hairdresser as she did at the car wash.

“Detective Superintendent MacNeice. This is your show, I understand.” She had dancing eyes, a smoker’s voice—low, gravelly and strong—and an unmistakable British accent.
What is it
, he thought,
with female Brits and dead bodies?

“What do you make of it so far?” she said, and then added, “Sheilagh Thomas, by the way. Pleased to meet you finally. Mary thinks you’re the brightest bulb on the homicide tree.”

MacNeice shrugged off the compliment. “I was going to ask you that very question, Doctor. What do you make of them?”

“P.F., they’ve been at the bottom roughly seventy to eighty years, died at the same time more or less, and what you see on the rail trolleys is only what came away from the concrete—”

“P.F.?”

“Oh, simply
post facto
—and I should also tell you I think their age at time of death was roughly twenty-eight for Harry here”—she patted a thigh bone—“and perhaps thirty-two for Arthur. Though once we get the matter cleaned off the concrete and we scope these bones, I’ll be more exact. If you can imagine taking off a leg cast and everything but the bones comes away with the plaster—well, that’s roughly what happened to these chaps.”

“Any indication of a prior wound or assault?”

“You mean other than Harry’s massively crushed skull and Arthur’s split head? No, but I should have thought that was sufficient to do the job in any case.”

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

“Well, for starters, what’s your objective here? The people who put these men in concrete are surely themselves long underground, or somewhere else in the bay. We may be able to discover something interesting that would help in an investigation, but investigate what, or whom?”

“I have the distinct impression you’re about to make a proposition, Sheilagh—mind if I call you Sheilagh?”

“You are a bright one. I usually insist on ‘gorgeous,’ but Sheilagh will do. A proposition—exactly so. The university would like to take ownership”—she waved a hand at the skeletal remains as if she were presenting a plate of smoked salmon—“to relieve you of Harry and Arthur for the study and enlightenment of the next generation—actually only the second generation—of medical anthropologists. Of course, you—and by ‘you’ I mean the police and City of Dundurn—will be the first to know what we find, and we will spare no effort in uncovering all that there is to, um, uncover.”

“I can’t speak for the City—”

“I beg to differ. I’ve already spoken to the mayor’s office, and the word is ‘Whatever MacNeice wants to do with them will be in the City’s interest.’ So you see, I’m here to ply you with reason, and later with wine, if necessary, to appeal to you to let me have them.”

“Well, then, on behalf of the good people of Dundurn, I bequeath Harry and Arthur to the university.”

“Splendid. I’ll toddle off to the Rover for the paperwork.” She bowed slightly, which seemed as odd as it was charming, and then walked cheerfully towards the entrance.

If Richardson’s humour was dry, Thomas’s was considerably wetter. She was wearing tan hiking boots scuffed and stained from years of digging holes and spilling God-knows-what on the leather. He wanted to believe it was from creating an English country garden in Dundurn, but he doubted it.

When she returned, she said, “It’s a bit of a tip inside; took me a while to find it.”

“I did notice a lot of coffee cups.”

“Ha! You imagine that I’m trucked up on caffeine, Detective. I drink only tea, water, wine and single-malt Irish whiskey. And I refuse, I stubbornly refuse, to drink tea from a paper cup.”

Seeing the confusion on his face, she explained. “The cups are for samples. Human samples.” She shoved Harry’s leg bones back from the edge of the cart, saying, “No, no, don’t get up,” and put down her binder. Flipping the pages, she came to a photocopied form with the university’s logo on top. She wrote the details of what she was taking ownership of on the appropriate lines and checked the caveats concerning distribution of any discoveries found during study. She signed the bottom above her name, which was printed on the form, and dated the signature before handing the pen to MacNeice.

“Do I need to read it?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No. Was this written by the university’s legal department?”

“By me.” She smiled.

He bent over, mindful of the leg bones just beyond the page, and signed.

She looked down at his signature. “Thank you, Iain.”

“Don’t call me Iain.”

“Right. Mac it is. I’ll be in touch once I have something on these two and the two from the trunk. We’ll do that work outside this contract, so they’re still the City’s property. But we’d be happy to discuss ownership of them as well.” She flipped the binder closed. “Until then,
bonne chance
and Godspeed.” She bowed again and then offered her hand. For such a strong, almost masculine woman, her hand was soft and her handshake worthy of royalty—gentle and firm, with a brief pause before a quick release.

“One last thing. Why did you call them Harry and Arthur?”

“It’s more human than ‘John Doe One’ and ‘John Doe Two,’ or any number. Being an optimist, I can imagine them as aliases that will eventually get put aside for their real names. Of course, if we can’t discover them, they’ll each have a number in perpetuity.”

“I see. Well, goodbye, Sheilagh.” As he was leaving, he glanced at the skulls of Harry and Arthur and noted, like most other skulls he’d seen, they appeared to be smiling.

R
ETURNING TO
D
IVISION
, MacNeice discovered the researcher, Ryan, lying on his back under a desk surrounded by boxes. Above him was the most bizarre array of computers that MacNeice had ever seen. Together they looked like castoffs from
Mad Max
—found objects cobbled together with wire, tape and hope—but then the electric-blue screens came to life above the keyboards and the joystick on its plastic camouflage control platform.

Williams was on the phone, pen in hand, and he looked up when MacNeice arrived. He nodded and slid his chair over far enough to kick Ryan’s foot.

The young man bolted upright, nearly slamming his head into the underside of the desk. “Sorry, sir. I was just connecting all the bits and hooking into the division’s server. I’ll have everything up and running in about five minutes.”

“Good to see you, Ryan. I understand you built this … what would you call it?”

“I did, from scratch, sir, with a lot of orphan parts people thought were broken but were just misunderstood. You could call it a homemade supercomputer. I call it the Millennium Falcon, because it’s not pretty but will hit warp speed in no time at all.”

“That seems like what we need. Is it legal?”

“Grey area, sir. But I promise you she’ll do the job for us. I’ve saved a whack of gear from going to some landfill in Southeast Asia.”

“Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

When Williams got off the phone, he explained that even though he’d made his calls as a homicide detective, he hadn’t been able to determine the origin of the serial number. Since prisons were controlled by the federal government, he’d had to call Ottawa. After following up on several referrals, he discovered that the person who had the authority to answer the question was away from her desk. Trying the back door and calling the prisons directly hadn’t worked, as there was no way of confirming over the telephone that Williams was who he said he was. Going through channels would take time, but it was—as he was told more than once—the proper way to make such a request.

When Williams had pointed out that all he wanted was confirmation of how many elements there were in a convict’s serial number and whether they were numeric, alphabetic or a combination of both, he was left with static on the line, so he finally hung up. “But I did look up someone I put in Kingston—seven digits, not eight—so No-Face wasn’t in our system. The Canadian military wasn’t any better: all requests have to flow through the Department of National Defence. So far, no one has returned my call.”

“I might be able to help,” Ryan said from under the desk.

“Do you know someone?” Williams asked.

“No, but I’m pretty good at finding things out.”

“You’re on,” Williams said, raising his eyebrows at MacNeice.

“Vertesi called after his meeting at Mancini. He’s going to drop in on ABC-Grimsby.”

MacNeice turned to the whiteboard. Williams had put up photos of No-Face and Bermuda Shorts, the couple from the Packard and even Archie the dummy. Photos for the two from the round columns would have to wait for Dr. Thomas, but MacNeice picked up the marker and added
Two male skeletons, estimated 70 years in the bay
.

“Okay, I’m ready to roll,” Ryan said, climbing out from under the desk and sitting down in front of the trio of screens, each of which appeared to be blinking or processing different information. MacNeice handed him a sticky note with the serial number on it and went back to his desk to call Richardson.

Behind him he could hear the young man’s fingers clicking rapidly on the keyboard. He listened, enjoying the rhythm of it, until Richardson came on the line. “Anything on Bermuda Shorts, Mary?”

“But for the hole in his head, no other markings, scars, tattoos or even birthmarks. However, what he had eaten is a visual and olfactory match to the other chap. I’m guessing bacon cheeseburger and beer.”

“Any indication whether he was tortured before he was killed?”

“Negative on Bermuda.”

“And the other one, can you determine the order in which he was mutilated?”

“Actually, yes. I’m almost certain his feet were removed first, followed by his hands, the flesh on the forearms and finally his face.”

“Christ almighty.”

“Yes. There’s every likelihood he was unconscious by that time, from shock and blood loss.”

“Every likelihood, but not a certainty …”

“No. He may have had an incredibly strong constitution, and there’s also the possibility that the butcher moved quickly to ensure he’d be conscious. Why do you ask?”

“I wanted to know if the mutilation was done after he was dead from the head wound, because that would suggest the rest was strictly a way to erase his identity.”

“And if it wasn’t?”

“Tells me that he’d done something or knew something that his killer believed warranted such butchery.”

When he got off the phone, Ryan’s key tapping seemed to be going faster.

“You should come and see this, boss,” Williams said, sitting to Ryan’s left.

The central screen appeared to be scrolling several columns of information on its own—very quickly. Lines of text and numerals filled the screen from top to bottom before blinking and beginning again.

“Here we are,” Ryan said.

“Where? Where are we?” Williams asked.

Ryan clicked the Return key. “Turns out it’s not Canadian—17712619 is a U.S. Army serial number.”

Williams snapped his head up to look at MacNeice, who turned to the photo of the faceless man on the whiteboard.

Ryan entered something else and again information started filling the screen. Less than ten seconds later he said, “The serial number belonged to Master Sergeant Gary Robert Hughes, a martial arts specialist of the Second Infantry Division’s Second Brigade combat team.”

“With long hair, in a concrete column in Dundurn Harbour?” Williams shook his head in disbelief.

“Keep going,” MacNeice said.

Ryan dug deeper into files that MacNeice felt certain weren’t
accessible to the public. The way the young man’s hands moved from the keyboard to the joystick reminded MacNeice of a musician working a Hammond B3 organ.

“Hughes received an honourable discharge in 2008 after serving fourteen years. He was thirty-four years old.” More clicking, and moments later: “Upon discharge, his residence was in Georgia, near the Fort Benning base. But he moved to upper New York State that December.”

“Is this legit?” Williams asked.

“The information? Oh yeah, it’s legit.” Ryan nodded several times but didn’t look away from the screen.

“Keep going,” MacNeice said.

Ryan moved the joystick and clicked the keys several times, and suddenly the second screen lit up. “Last known address for Sergeant Hughes is 3245 Trail Road, Tonawanda, New York.”
Click, click, click
. “There’s his phone number.”

“I’ll call from Swetsky’s office,” MacNeice said, wrote down the number and left the cubicle.

Williams got out of his chair and went to the whiteboard. “Great work, Ryan, though we probably shouldn’t know how you did it …”