Authors: Martin Crosbie
“Was it botulinum? Did you give her the same stuff you gave the others?” He grabbed one of the brownies, smelling it. “It’s in here, isn’t it?”
Sirens in the distance. Monica was dozing off again. The stiffness was beginning to set in. Her arms hung beside her, becoming rigid. She came to life for a moment and smiled, wriggling her fingers.
Drake rubbed hard up and down her arms. “Do not die. You will not die.”
A smile from Mrs. Parker. He saw it from the corner of his eye.
“Why did you do this?” He turned to her, screaming. “Why?”
She was gleeful – absolutely gleeful. She couldn’t wait to tell him. “He thought he could exclude me. That was not going to happen. I knew they were up to something. All of their secrets.” She let out a sigh – a huff. “I knew Mike would talk though.”
Drake held Monica’s face in his hands, blowing his breath on her. “You killed him. You killed him so the two of you would be the last ones. And then you killed Rochfort too.”
Mrs. Parker raised her voice. “They wanted to play a game; well they didn’t know who they were playing against. I would not allow them to win. Two drinks and a flash of cleavage, and Mike Robinson told me the whole story. All of it.”
“You poisoned him, and then pushed him out onto the street to die.” A thought hit him. He turned away from Monica for a moment. “Where’s Tony Hempsill? What have you done to him?”
“Tony’s fine. He does as he’s told.”
The little boy in the other room. He stood over Jennifer Parker, yelling again. “And the child, did you poison Monica’s child?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t harm a child, or an old man. This is business. They wanted to play, so I played with them.”
Pringle at the door, running in.
“You killed him? You killed Robinson and Rochfort.”
Pringle standing, listening.
Mrs. Parker sat back down on the seat by the kitchen table. She swept her hand across her forehead, swatting away an imaginary strand of hair. “Officer Drake, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You really do have a vivid imagination.”
More sirens followed. Drake let go of Monica as Rose and Rempel came into the kitchen. “Botulinum, I think. She took it recently. I think it was in one of these.”
The two paramedics laid Monica on a stretcher and began to hook her up to a small machine. Mrs. Parker was smiling when he turned to her.
“Jennifer Parker, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Michael Robinson and Derek Rochfort and the attempted murder…”
She shook her head. “You’re crazy. I didn’t murder anybody.”
“The attempted murder of Monica Brown.”
Pringle lifted the woman up by her shoulders. Submissively she put her wrists together in front of her and held them out toward Drake. He pulled the cuffs from his police duty belt, and placed them around her wrists. The machine hooked up to Monica gurgled behind them. Rempel swore as he twisted a dial.
Drake began to speak but Rose interrupted him. “It’s better if you go. Give us some room.”
Two other ambulance attendants pushed into the kitchen as Pringle and Drake escorted Mrs. Parker to the patrol car that Myron and Pringle had driven up in. Her head was high, regal. She crouched down low enough so her perfectly styled hair did not hit the opening of the rear door when Drake pushed her into the car.
Pringle looked Drake in the eye. “I can take her in if you like. You can stay with the girl.”
He stared back at the house. Myron was passing the little boy over to an ambulance attendant. The boy watched the two of them, the same way he’d been watching the television. “No. She confessed to me. I’ll do this.”
They sat in the patrol car. He felt like her chauffeur as Mrs. Parker sat in the back. With her perfect poise she stared back at him in the rearview mirror. “I told you, Officer Drake. My husband and I don’t keep secrets from each other. When I found out his secret – his big secret – I had to take action. I mean, wouldn’t you have done something?”
“I wouldn’t have killed anyone, Mrs. Parker.”
“Mikey? He was collateral damage. I had to start the money flowing somehow. And I needed to send a message to the rest of those clowns. Do you realize how much work I’ve put into getting Menno’s Ford on the map? Do you know how many nights I’ve sat listening to representatives from the manufacturer drone on about inventory levels and return on investment? Do you know how many times I’ve had my ass squeezed and had to look up at a leering old fool, and just smile back?”
“So you killed Mike Robinson?”
“No, I had him over for dinner and he ate something that didn’t agree with him.” She smiled and held her stare on Drake in the mirror. “He had a crush on me. It was easy to entice him over while Dave was out with his substitute woman. I cooked him his favorite greasy meal.”
“And you killed Derek Rochfort too?”
“I didn’t know who should be next. I wanted it to be Wilson but I couldn’t decide.” She was giddy, excited, as she explained. “I wanted to see Frank panic. I wanted to see the fear in his eyes when he knew that it was only a matter of time. Killing Derek was a diversion really. It was so that Frank Wilson would spend the rest of his life – whatever time I chose to give him – in fear, waiting.”
Myron was out front, writing in his notebook, and Pringle was on his phone – the same positions they’d been in the night he first met them. Rempel and another attendant placed Monica in the ambulance. The vehicle pulled away with the sirens on full and lights flashing. This was a good thing. She was still alive.
“For the money – you did it for the money.”
She bolted upright in the seat. “Never. The money was a bonus. I did it to show them. You can’t keep secrets from me. I know everything.”
“Even about your husband and Elizabeth, the receptionist?”
She waved him away dismissively. “Of course, that was inconsequential. Sex, it meant nothing.”
“And Monica was next. You decided to kill her next.”
“Wilson had to sweat for a while longer, and Trevor had a target on his back. Trevor deserved it. He isn’t any better than the rest of us. His family lived on handouts their whole life, and now that he has his silly little business he thinks he’s better than us. His time was coming, but I picked the barmaid first. They all have to pay.”
Drake shook his head. “They won’t pay though. You’re going to jail, Mrs. Parker.”
Her head cocked back and her laughter cackled the same way it had when they spoke in the showroom. “Listen to me, Officer Drake, and try to keep your eyes focused on my face this time.” She winked at his reflection in the mirror. “I will not go to jail. You have nothing. Nothing will stick. I guarantee it.”
It was all about the bodies, and it always had been. Somewhere between standing over Michael Robinson and picking up the killer – Jennifer Parker – it had become personal. Just like the young girl in Ireland, Robinson’s death had become his responsibility. Was it because he’d been the first officer on scene, or was it because of the arrows? He stood in front of the half-erased whiteboard. The arrows went to the names of the man’s friends, but not to the killer. And there were still arrows pointing nowhere. Those arrows would never have a connection. The man had lost his opportunity to live and interact and be alive. Was that why he felt responsible for him? Was he identifying with the life that Robinson had led because he also had to live on the outside?
He was in a precarious position. It was only a matter of time before the threats from the postcards come true. Who would miss him then – Tracy, the woman from the restaurant? She would find out, and for a short while she might miss his company or wonder what might have happened between them. His life had barely made a ripple. If he were to vanish or be killed the world would hardly notice.
Ryberg was carrying a briefcase and smiling when he closed the door of Sergeant Thiessen’s office. Surprisingly, Thiessen was smiling too. Ryberg laid his briefcase on the long table and motioned for Drake to come closer. “John, I’m glad you’re here. Join me as I pack up my meager belongings.” When Drake was across the table from him, the older man whispered, “I think your sergeant believes I’m going to steal the stapler. He seems to be watching me.”
Drake didn’t look around. He smiled at the man. He was going to miss him. He’d taught him so much over the course of a few days.
Ryberg pushed some papers into his bag and continued speaking. “So we have nothing with which to charge the men on the list, including Trevor Middleton. We could charge them with petty mischief, but any judge worth his salt would call it exactly that – mischief. It’s disappointing, but I do not believe they’ll give you any further trouble.”
J.J. had been right – there was a red car that night. And the driver pushed a body out of the passenger side. But the car did not belong to Brian Stam; it was the personal car belonging to one of the owners – Jennifer Parker. When Sophie Peterson had called the dealership, the call was not handed over to the owner of the car but to a salesperson. And he pretended the demo car was his, in the hopes of earning Sophie’s business. Little did he know it would cost him a few hours of his life in a jail cell.
“And Mrs. Parker, what do you think will happen to her?”
The investigator’s accent grew stronger. “We’ve done all we can. We have provided the crown prosecutor with the facts – the evidence. It’s now up to the lawyers to make her pay. She killed two men. Two men are dead because of her.”
“She seems convinced that she’ll get off.”
“That is always a possibility. It’s out of our hands.”
He was right. Her husband had joined the dots, and figured out his wife was the killer. He had been willing to pay the consequences to save her. And when it went to trial he’d probably still end up providing her with an alibi. There was a possibility that she might not pay for killing two men.
Drake shook his head. “If she does get off, I wonder where she’ll go.”
Ryberg laughed. “She’ll stay here. Why would she go anywhere else? She’ll be known as the woman who killed two men and got away with it. She’ll write a book and live very comfortably. She’s not the kind of woman who will hide. She will flaunt her guilt as an accomplishment. Why not hide in Hope? It’s as good a place as any.”
He was right; he was absolutely right.
Drake shook the man’s hand, and Ryberg passed him a worn piece of paper.
“The list – you may as well have it. We know who they are now and what they did.”
Six names and two of them dead.
“I feel like I was running in every direction at once – chasing down these men and the other man too. They were all innocent.”
Ryberg stopped and looked straight at Drake. “You were; we all were. Sometimes that’s what it takes.” He let out a little laugh before going back to putting items into his briefcase. “This isn’t science; there is no easy road to the answer.”
“I’m going to visit Tony Hempsill and apologize. I hope he’ll testify against her. She had him manipulated – encouraging him to lie for her and make up a story about a truck.”
Ryberg stopped what he was doing and stared at him. “You did a good job, and you saved Monica. If you hadn’t got there when you did, the woman would have killed her, and possibly her child too. There could have been more names eliminated from that list.” He pushed the latch on his briefcase. “Pringle tells me he’s encouraging you to take your career to the next level. I hope you do that. I’d be happy to recommend or help in any way I can. Old dogs like me have to move on sometime. We need fresh, young talent to replace us.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket just in time to catch a cough. The hacking lasted for several seconds as Drake watched with concern.
“Look after yourself, sir. I hope you get through your challenges.”
He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to know about the man’s health problems or not. Ryberg did not react.
As Drake walked away he turned and asked one last question of the man who had somehow, in a very short period of time, become his mentor. “Your accent – where are you from?”
Unlike Drake, the old investigator had no secrets. He answered immediately. “Sweden. Born in Canada, but my parents spoke Swedish all through my childhood. The accent stuck.” He made his words even more pronounced. “It doesn’t go away.”
He didn’t expect the question to come back to him. “And your accent, John, where are you from?”
He stood at the door and tensed his shoulders as though he was ready for patrol. He thought of the old days – the men who had fallen, and the men he’d served beside. And then he said it. He finally told the truth – doing nothing to disguise his accent. “I’m from Scotland – born and bred.”
Ryberg nodded, accepting. Maybe he knew; maybe he didn’t. “Good luck to you, John Drake. Keep in touch.”
“I will, sir. Thank you for your help.”
Drake stood off to the side of his apartment window for ten minutes before he was satisfied that there was no movement from the street below. He moved to the other end of the living room and removed two screws and pulled the ventilation grate on the wall. Reaching down inside the opening, he used the screwdriver to pull up a loose strip of wood from the floor. He fished into the hole with his fingers and pulled out a small package. Peeling away the batten of fiberglass insulation, he removed a cellular phone and battery from the sealed plastic bag. He placed the battery in the phone and watched the small device light up. His fingers automatically pushed on the numbers that he’d memorized twelve months earlier.
Three rings, and then the familiar voice. “Speak.”
“I’ve been receiving postcards. They’re addressed to me – the old me. Somebody knows I’m here.”
“Wait. I’ll call you back.”
It took exactly ninety seconds before the phone rang again, and he heard the woman’s voice – terse, officious, just like always. “Postcards? Plural? As in more than one?”
“Two, over the past month. The address is to John Drake, but my real name is on the card. Postmark is Canadian – general delivery.”
A slight pause. “We’re pulling you out.”