Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

“No Athabaska Terrier hairs? Albino herb roots native only to Cape Breton Island? Poisoned tea bags? Furry creature suits with DNA-identifiable sweat?”

Tolmeyer laughed again. “You’ve been watching too many TV shows, Detective.”

“What about the tub? Any evidence someone dusted it with a Zamboni-made it extra slippery for the bathing beauty?”

“In my professional opinion, that bathtub hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed. And nobody greased the soles of Laymon’s feet, either, before you ask.”

Pinero grunted, shelved the phone as Tolmeyer was enquiring about his dinner plans for the evening.

He was chewing things and a wad of gum over when McGrath pointed at his computer screen. “Take a look at this,” he said.

Pinero strolled over, looked at the listing up on the LCD flat screen.

“This is Lenny’s email history,” McGrath explained, his hand stroking his optical mouse with caffeine jitters. He highlighted the first message listed after a backlog of porn and penis enlargement spam. It was dated Monday, 15 November, from meatman@yahoo.com, subject: “Ready to go to work?”

McGrath looked at Pinero. Pinero looked back. They both knew The Rat didn’t work-honestly, anyway. McGrath clicked on the message. It read: “Job’s a go. Come prepared.”

“Did The Rat respond?” Pinero asked.

“Not by email, no.”

“Who’s Meatman? J.M. Schneider?”

“Don’t know.” McGrath admitted. “The account information’s as phony as a three-dollar coin. But I ran a trace on all Internet activity associated with the account, and found something fairly interesting.”

“Give.”

“Meatman is a ‘member’ of an adult dating site-kinkyluvers.com. The profile is of a thirtysomething guy with a peccadillo for morning toe jam, I kid you not. No picture, though. And the membership contact info is limited to the email address.”

“Don’t you need a credit card or something to sign up to those sites?”

“Not this one. It’s run free of charge by The Friends of Fetish – a government-subsidized think-tank operating right here in the downtown. Anyway, I already sent Meatman a message-with an attachment.” McGrath clicked, and Pinero ogled a busty brunette with black-stockinged, red-ribboned legs long enough to span Burrard Inlet, her silky feet close-up displayed in open-toed, patent-leather red pumps. Her hair covered up her face, if she had one.

“Just call me Clarissa,” McGrath chuckled, coughed. He took his hand off the mouse long enough to pour himself a mouthful of mocha.

The two detectives kept at it, logging frustration and overtime at time-and-a-half. Pinero ran a check on Lenny’s known associates; McGrath and the lab techs continued to pour over Lenny’s hard-drive and the mall surveillance video.

Lenny’s “associates” were the scum de la scum of the Vancouver crime scene. “Rainy Day” Izzo: part-time drug dealer, full-time drug user; ratted out by Lenny on a heroin deal that went bust; parole records stated that he was currently weaving hemp into saleable product in Nelson, four hundred miles due east. Sylvia Wojawoski, aka “Skye Flowers”, so named because she was always on her back, looking up at the sky: Stanley Park prostitute and bit – player MILF in locally-lensed porn; cohabitated with Lenny for five years; currently suing the deceased rodent for child support-three kids that he denied were his despite their enormous overbites; busted on a low-track sweep Sunday night, now cooling her high heels in lock-up. John Jorossismo, aka “Jarhead”, aka “Jason” (of Friday the 13th movie fame): US Marines deserter and Hell’s Angels patch prospect, weapons smuggler, loansharker, goalie in an industrial beer league, and recent Vancouver Port Authority employee of the month; stiffed out of a grand and stooled on by Lenny – the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job; current whereabouts a gated subdivision in White Rock. And…

“Matthew Kolvin,” Pinero and McGrath spoke as one.

They looked at each other. “Why’d you say-” they both said.

McGrath pointed a shaky digit at his computer screen. Pinero trucked on over, stared at a picture of a bare-chested Matthew Kolvin, shaved head gleaming, blue eyes glinting hard as diamonds, thick lips curled into a smirk, torso tanned and rugged as Desert Storm khaki.

“Clarissa received a response to her email,” McGrath said, grinning triumphantly.

Pinero recited the file he’d just been looking at: “Matthew Kolvin: strong-arm specialist, extortionist, cigarette, alcohol, and Lotto ticket smuggler – and sometime jewel thief; handed a ten-year sentence for his role in the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job; served half, release date: 10 November-one week ago today.”

“Maybe you, me, and Clarissa should pay Matthew Kolvin a visit,” McGrath added unnecessarily.

The detectives rousted Kolvin and an underage hooker out of bed at the fleabag rooming house address he’d given his parole officer. He was spitting mad. Pinero calmed him down only slightly with a shot to the groin.

“I never robbed no goddamn jewelry store!” he gasped. “Don’t know nuthin’ about any dead Rat, neither!”

“Listen, Meatman,” McGrath countered, knocking back a caffe latte and eyeballing a laptop, scanner, camcorder, and printer huddled together on a ratty couch, along with the hooker. “We’ve got an email that you sent Lenny talking about a ‘job’ – a day before Lenny did a back flip in his bathtub and a day-and-a-half before the Zammy Jewelers store was hit.”

Kolvin glared at the men.

“You hated Lenny’s guts, didn’t you – for ratting you out on the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job?” Pinero stated. “But not bad enough to turn your nose up at another good heist, team up with the guy again?”

Kolvin’s incisors glinted silver. “I ain’t talked to that bum in five long years.”

“How do you explain the email then?” McGrath asked.

“I don’t,” Kolvin growled.

Silence.

“What’s your brother up to these days-Bertrand?” Pinero asked, changing tactics. “You talk to him since his release?”

“I talk to that bum like I talk to Lenny and you bums!”

The detectives exited the flophouse with the exact same thing they’d entered it with-one flimsy cyber link between Lenny Laymon and Matthew Kolvin that would vaporize in the ether of a court of law, without plenty more supporting evidence.

“Maybe we should brace Bertrand?” Pinero suggested, as the two men sat in their unmarked and stared at the constant drizzle. “He knew and hated Lenny, was in on the BRDM job, too.”

“Maybe…” McGrath mused.

Matthew and Bertrand Kolvin were, in fact, identical twins, but that’s where the similarities ended. Matthew was a muscle boy, Bertrand a finesse man – an accountant gone bad, writing a ticket to the easy life through cheque kiting, money order doctoring, credit card fraud, and embezzlement. He wore his blond hair long, usually in a ponytail, build: slender.

The two brothers hated each other with a passion reserved for only the overly intimate, since their teen years. They’d nonetheless worked together on a number of jobs since graduating from young offenders status, business being business – the last one the BRDM job. They’d demanded separate trials, then jails, and been granted both by the accommodating Canadian judicial system.

“But how do we explain Lenny walking into a mall – presumably robbing a jewelry store, presumably with Matthew Kolvin’s help-eighteen hours after he’s supposed to be dead?” McGrath continued.

“Reincarnation?” Pinero suggested. “He picked right up in the new life where he’d left off in the old? Or maybe it was a guy in a Lenny Halloween mask, like bank robbers wear Nixon masks and cheating husbands wear Clinton’s?” Pinero laughed.