Giles Blunt: Crime Machine

“That’s right.”

“My God,” he said again. “But-so, are you looking for some insane individual, like a psycho of some sort?”

“Of some sort.”

“My God.”

“Just for the record, Mr. Wishart, can you tell me where you were Thursday night?”

“Thursday night? That’s easy. I was watching the game at a friend’s place. Leafs lost, of course. Troy was destroyed. He’s a serious Leafs fan. I mean serious. God, I can’t get over this.”

“Troy?”

“Troy Campbell. We went to high school together.”

“I’ll need his address. Home and work.”

“What? Oh, of course.”

Wishart gave him the addresses and Cardinal wrote them down. Then Wishart went with him to the front door, still a little stunned.

Cardinal asked him about the Acura parked outside.

“Pardon me?”

“The black Acura. It’s yours?”

“Oh. Yes. Speaking of things we can’t afford. God, I can’t get over this. It’s horrifying. Let me know if I can do anything to help.”

“You can. We need you to come down to the station to be fingerprinted.”

“Sure. Absolutely. I’ll try to get down later in the week.”

“Today, Mr. Wishart.”

–

On his way back to the office, Cardinal stopped off at the local hockey arena, which was called Memorial Gardens, although no one knew in memory of what. It was only a couple of blocks from work. Cardinal couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a game, but even though the concession stands were not open at this hour, the smells of popcorn and caramel hadn’t changed. A janitor mopping the front lobby directed him to the security office.

A lot of security people are former police officers, or people who want to be police officers. Troy Campbell was neither. A tall man with shoulders that looked like they could support a small cathedral, Campbell was a former captain of the Algonquin Bay Trappers, the local Junior A hockey team. A photograph on the cinder-block wall showed him swooping away from a goal, stick high in the air. He still had the blond hair of the photograph, but it was thinner now, unlike the rest of him.

“What can I do for you, Detective? The only time I see police is when we have to charge some drunk for throwing bottles on the ice.” Campbell had the easy confidence of a man who is used to being the biggest in the room.

“I’m investigating a major crime, and right now I’m just nailing down a few corroborating details.”

“Nothing at the Gardens, I hope.”

“No. But I need to know where you were Thursday night.”

“Where I was.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I don’t understand. Why do I have to tell you where I was?”

“You don’t have to. But it’s pertinent to our investigation, so it depends how helpful you want to be. Or not.”

Campbell laughed. “Sorry. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just mystified. I’m glad to help. Thursday night I was here. Intramural game.”

“You were here.”

“Yeah. No, wait. Thursday? Thursday I was home. Watching the Leafs on TSN. Total, blatant robbery. You see it?”

“Leafs lost, I take it.”

“It was obscene, no other word for it. There was no way Komisarek threw the first punch. Five minutes for fighting and they go from one-nothing to a three-one loss. Ref that called it was Desrosiers. Biased much? Anybody but a French Canadian could see that fight was started by Laraque. I mean, look at the tape, for God’s sake. I’m telling you, some people think refs don’t know what they’re doing, but refs know exactly what they’re doing. They know exactly.”

“Anybody watch it with you?”

“Yeah, Randy Wishart. Buddy of mine. Ask him. I nearly threw my beer at the TV screen, and I’m not gonna tell you what I paid for that sucker.”

Cardinal got a few more details, and then thanked him for his help.

“Hey, any time. Let me give you some free tickets to the Trappers.”

“Thanks, but I really can’t. It makes me too crazy.”

“Crazy?” Campbell’s wide brow furrowed, and he rubbed a hand through his thinning blondness. “You mean cuz of all the fights?”

“The refs. It’s just too painful.”

“Well, yeah, but up here when they make a mistake, it’s cuz they’re old or blind. Montreal, it’s an outright conspiracy.”

When cardinal got back to the station, Ident’s walls were covered with photographs. Images were tacked to the bulletin board, to the shelves, and taped to the windows, making their cramped quarters even more claustrophobic than usual. The pictures showed every conceivable angle on footprints and tire prints. And the arrangement didn’t make much sense to Cardinal until Paul Arsenault started explaining.

“The fresh snow gives us a pretty clear picture of who’s who,” he said. “We’ve got tire tracks from two vehicles.” He pointed to a photograph. “These were there first. We’re checking the databases, but for now we know that it’s a mid-size car, not too heavy. The second vehicle is smaller and lighter, pretty new treads. Its tracks are on top of the other car’s, but we can’t say anything more than that in terms of timing.

“Now, shoe prints. Again, the initial sorting is easy because we were able to take moulds from the shoes of the two victims. The woman’s boots-tiny triangular front, small square for the heel, size fives. The man’s are size twelve galoshes-note the shallow tread. Hers are Manolo Blahniks, his are Cole Haan-didn’t have to look those up, obviously, since they were still at the scene. Took some fibres off the tread of the man’s galoshes, but fibres, you know-that’s out of our league.

“Which leaves our headhunter. Same size, but a totally different kind of boot. Look at that: deep tread on heel and toe. We’re talking serious outdoor footwear here, and I’d say they’re pretty new. We should be able to get a make on those pretty quick.”

“Tell him about the master bedroom.” Collingwood spoke from his desk without looking at them.

“Well, we’ve got the broken window and the blood. And we’ve got clear prints from the sill and the chair. Blood type is different from the other room.

“Under the bed, even more interesting. Good layer of dust under there, and look at this. We lifted the bed out of the way to shoot these. You can see where someone’s hands were-not the kind of prints you might make pulling something out from under the bed.”

“No, looks more like someone slid under there to hide.”

“Handprints this end, facing out. And this way you’ve got leg and toe. Yeah, we think someone was hiding. Picked up some hairs from the top of the bed. A couple of them short, brown. Another one long, black. Now, I’ve met the Schumachers-they came in right away to give prints-so I know these hairs have nothing to do with them. We also know that some of the prints on the bedside tables are theirs and some of them are not. One set matches whoever broke out the window, the other set matches some we found on the front door but nowhere else-not on the table or the glasses.”

“Let me get this straight,” Cardinal said. “You’re saying we’re looking at five different people now, not just four?”

“Looks that way.”

“We’ve got all these prints but nothing that matches any criminal record?”

“Not yet. Could still happen, though. Problem for me and Bob is too much evidence, not too little. For example, we pulled a whole bunch of blue fibres off the top of the bed. No big deal, except we didn’t find any blue blankets-we photographed the linen closets and the other beds, you can see for yourself. Plus, I asked the Schumachers and they say they don’t own any blue blankets.”

“I’m still trying to get my head around five people,” Cardinal said. “One of them hiding under the bed.”