Giles Blunt: Crime Machine

“Might have a survivor.”

Thenext day was Saturday, but Detective Sergeant Chouinard had cancelled everybody’s weekend and they had a morning meeting just like any other day. They began with a quick rundown of smaller cases. Szelagy was working with the fire marshal on a suspicious blaze in an old warehouse. McLeod was working on a fraud artist. Delorme had a couple of ATM robberies.

Chouinard sat at the head of the table, making the odd note and looking unhappy. “We have the fur auction in town, people, and after that the winter carnival. We need to be quick on this one, and we need to be good. Cardinal is lead investigator.”

“Cardinal’s not available,” McLeod said. “He’s too busy with Scriver.”

“Very funny. Listen, it’s not the carnival I’m worried about so much as the fur auction. It’s still a big deal in this town, and they’re expecting protesters. We’re going to have to be a presence. I’ve already talked to Staff Sergeant Flower, and there’ll be uniforms, but the chief promised the Fur Harvesters we’d have people stopping by too.”

“Harvesters,” McLeod said. “You gotta love it. What’s wrong with trappers?”

“Most of the furs come from farms these days. Listen, we’re talking millions of dollars in a tight economy, so let’s do some serving and protecting. Cardinal, where are we with Schumacher? Have we contacted any actual Schumachers yet? They’re not the victims, right?”

“No, but they seem to be away-we stopped by their town residence last night. We don’t have an ID on the victims yet. At this point, we don’t even have a best guess. We’ve got stuff from the scene that has to be run down. Partial list: blood, fingerprints, footprints, tire prints, spent rounds, hairs and fibres.”

The D.S. shifted in his seat and frowned. “Explain something to me.”

Cardinal looked at him.

“I thought we were going to have a holdback on this case. Why did I hear Detective Dunbar on CKAT this morning telling the world that the guy had a knife in his back?”

Cardinal looked at Dunbar. “Why the hell would you tell them that? What were you doing talking to the media in the first place? When did this happen?”

Dunbar winced. “I was coming back from canvassing the neighbours. He caught me off guard.”

“That’s great. And now if another corpse turns up with a knife in its back and minus a head, we’re not going to know if we’ve got a serial killer or a copycat. To say nothing about ruling out false confessions.”

“Like I say, he really caught me off guard.”

“There’s going to be a lot of press, and I want to control what goes to them. Nobody else speaks to them.”

“Cardinal’s right,” Chouinard said. “What else have we got?”

“Ident,” Cardinal said. “Maybe Arsenault can tell us the plan there.”

Arsenault took a sip from an enormous Tim Hortons mug. “We’re waiting in line for a pathologist. They’ve had three murders in Toronto since Friday and they’re short-staffed.”

“Two beheadings,” Chouinard said, “and we’re waiting in line?”

“Give ’em a call-they don’t care what I think. Preliminaries: female in mid-thirties, male in mid- to late sixties.”

Chouinard shook his head. “Damn it. We should have a holdback. We’re already all over the radio, the Lode is going to have it on the front page this afternoon, and we’ve had calls from The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the wire service. Do you have any idea how big this is? This’ll make papers in the States.”

Dunbar winced again. “Sorry, D.S.”

Arsenault flipped through his notebook. “Footprints. We have two size twelves and one size five, the woman.”

“In what? Snow?”

“Yeah. It was just a thin layer, but we managed to get great moulds. Same for the tire tracks. We’re putting all this stuff through the databases, but it’ll be a while.”

“We’re looking for a third party, too,” Cardinal said. “Someone busted out a back window and left in a big hurry. Got cut pretty bad and then took off into the woods. So that’s going to be our new holdback.”

“Not a word to anyone,” Chouinard said, “or heads will roll.” He paused a second. “I wish I hadn’t said that.”

Arsenault picked the story up. “Tracks indicate a small person, maybe around five-four, five-five, and not too heavy-maybe 120 tops. Tracks head into the trees-running-followed by some size twelves. Much bigger, heavier person. We’ve got blood from the broken window, so if there’s DNA on file we’ll nail the runner.

“Runner makes it to the road, where we found some nine-millimetre casings, so presumably size-twelve took a couple of shots at runner. Tracks pick up again at a utility road a hundred yards away. And lo and behold, another set of tire tracks. Can I go to bed now?”

“No, you may not,” Chouinard said. “But that’s damn fine scene work.”

“Of course, we don’t know for sure what relationship the runner has to the others,” Cardinal said. “Intended victim? Fellow perp in a scenario that went bad? We’re still trying to piece together what happened inside the house. Today’s agenda is almost totally Ident: they prepare fibres, blood and hairs, and I’ll take them down to T.O. later in the day. Delorme, you can come with me. In the meantime, you can track down the Schumachers, and I’ll get to work on ViCLAS.”

–

Delorme drove over to the Schumachers’ town residence on McGibbon Street. This was a good neighbourhood of old houses and neat lawns. Delorme had been through it a lot recently, because one of her ATM robberies had taken place just around the corner. And late last night she had shoved her card through the Schumachers’ mail slot, noting that there were no footprints around their house and no car in the drive. The house was a large red-brick Edwardian, nicely restored and maintained. Now there was a late-model Lexus in the driveway.

She knocked on the front door. It took a while, but a man eventually opened it. He looked about seventy-five, with a badly sunburned face. “Yes? Can I help you?”

Delorme identified herself and asked if he was Joseph Schumacher and if he owned the house at the end of Island Road.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s me.”

“Were you away yesterday, sir?”

“Yes, we were on a cruise round the Mediterranean. Just got back to Toronto last night. Flew back from there and just got in”-he looked at his watch, then back to Delorme-“half an hour ago.”

“Did you find the card we put through your mail slot?”

“Haven’t had a chance to look. I just tossed all the mail on the kitchen counter.”

A woman appeared on the staircase behind him. “What’s going on, Joseph? Why are you standing there with the door open?”

“This young lady’s from the police. Wants to ask us some questions. See, I told you we should never have joined the Hells Angels, but no, you had your own ideas.”

“Mr. Schumacher, maybe we could sit down for a couple of minutes. It seems you haven’t heard the news, and I’m afraid I have something bad to tell you.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Schumacher said. “Has there been an accident? This isn’t about our son, is it? His family? No, surely we’d get a phone call-”

“I don’t think it concerns your son,” Delorme said.

“Well, you’d better come into the kitchen.”

They went in and pulled out chairs from the Formica table and all three of them sat down.

“Who has keys to your house on the lake?” Delorme asked.

“Just us,” Mr. Schumacher said. “We each have a key. Far as I know, we’re the only…”

“The only ones,” his wife said. “We’re the only ones with keys.”