A Striking Death Read online

  Drumm stood up. “One last thing. Do you know why he transferred to Addison Road?”

  Donnelly thought for a few moments. “No. If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten.”

  “So you couldn’t say whether he transferred in voluntarily or whether the School District did an administrative transfer?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  Drumm thanked Donnelly for his time and walked slowly out to his car. That was a waste of time, he thought.

  forty-three

  Detective Richard McDonald was relaxing at Celeste Chappell’s home. He was sitting on her couch with his feet up, allowing her to spoil him. He had a bottle of beer on the table beside him and he was watching wrestling on her large television. Celeste was in the kitchen; he could hear her bustling around, presumably laying the table in preparation for the Chinese food she had ordered.

  Strictly speaking he shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, but it had been a long, boring day and he had allowed Celeste to persuade him. He deserved it.

  Dutifully following Celeste around all afternoon, he had seen exactly nothing. There had been no white van anywhere near her. Lunch at Raymond’s had been tasty but dull, as he waited for Celeste. He hoped he never had an assignment again where he watched two women talk non-stop for an hour and a half. Nobody in a blue hoodie had shown up, no one suspicious at all. There hadn’t been any young men of any description paying attention to her at the restaurant. Just him, and he had quickly tired of watching her.

  It was the same at the food bank. Parked outside the building, he had kept the entrance under observation. Celeste was working in the back, he could see her through the window, which meant that anyone else could too, but nobody had paid any attention to her at all. She’d done her two hour shift while he grew bunions outside watching and waiting.

  And then they’d come home. Soon it would be dark outside and he would have to change locations. The doorbell rang. First, Chinese food.

  forty-four

  Lori was at her desk in the station. She was actually using two desks, McDonald’s as well as hers, because she had so much spread out that she needed the room. She had the crime scene photos from Billinger’s and Levine’s murders arranged, financial and telephone records, witness statements, her own notes, the lab and autopsy reports and a long list of names and phone numbers that they should contact. These were the people who had called in “tips”. Tips almost always turned out to be completely useless but they all had to be followed up. And without McDonald around, getting through the list would be a challenge.

  The truth was they needed more help. But instead of assigning extra officers to the two murders, Staff Inspector Chappell had temporarily reassigned Detective Dick. Lori shook her head. It was crazy, that’s what it was, but Drumm just accepted it. She supposed a large part of the reason was office politics and that was not something she wanted to get involved in. She turned her attention back to the accumulation of information in front of her. Arrange it as she would, the mass of papers and photos wasn’t telling her anything.

  She sighed and picked up the phone. Might as well call a couple of the tipsters. Some noise behind her distracted her and she twisted in her chair to see a couple of uniformed officers, each pushing a whiteboard into the Violent Crimes Unit.

  “Hallelujah!” she said. “Just leave them right there.” She had been after Drumm for months to get whiteboards for the unit. She thought it was ridiculous that they had to make do without, shuffling paper around constantly and pinning things up on bulletin boards. The Violent Crimes Unit was getting busier all the time as the more serious problems afflicting Toronto migrated north. Robberies, drive-by shootings, rapes and other assaults were becoming more and more common. It appeared that Drumm had finally got the necessary approval.

  The whiteboards were reversible, as well as being wheeled, making them doubly useful. One of the uniforms returned and threw her a small package.

  “Almost forgot these,” he said. The package turned out to be markers, magnets and erasers.

  Lori had learned a long time ago that it was easier to get forgiveness than receive permission, so she set to work immediately. One side of each whiteboard was devoted to Arthur Billinger and Daniel Levine. She was beginning work on setting up a third side as an overall summary of all the violent crimes currently under investigation when her cellphone rang.

  “Detective Singh, this is Dean. Dean Barber.”

  It took her a few seconds to remember who Dean Barber was. “Oh, yes. The bartender.”

  “You asked me to call Craig and get back to you. Turns out Craig popped in tonight to talk to Guido. Um, Guido’s the manager.”

  “I know who Guido is. What have you got to tell me?”

  “I showed Craig the two photographs, you know, of the two men who were murdered. He recognized them. And then I asked him if he’d ever seen anyone watching them, like you asked me. And he said he had.” Dean sounded pleased with himself.

  Lori was suddenly alert. “What! Is he still there?”

  “No, he’s gone already. I couldn’t stop him. It’s Friday night, he always goes out drinking Fridays. He just stopped in because Guido owed him some wages.”

  That was disappointing, but Lori was still excited. “You did well, Dean, thank you so much. Give me Craig’s full name, please, and his address and cell number.”

  The bartender said, “He has no cellphone. Can’t afford one, he says. But he can drink every weekend. Go figure. Anyway, his name is Craig Buleman and he lives on Caswell Street. I don’t know the exact address, sorry, and I have to get back to work. Break’s over.”

  Lori thanked him and then asked, “Do you know where he’s drinking tonight? And with whom?”

  “He’s usually by himself. And it could be any of a hundred bars. He moves around a lot, tries his luck.” She could almost hear him grinning. “He strikes out a lot, too. Gotta go!”

  Lori put her phone down on her desk. A lead, finally, and they couldn’t follow up on it until tomorrow. It was frustrating. She pondered whether to try getting a description of Craig Buleman and looking for him at all of York’s bars and nightclubs, and then she realized it was a ridiculous idea.

  Lori was able to discover that Craig Buleman lived at 88 Caswell Street, Apt. 1203. The phone at that address rang and rang; he didn’t even have an answering machine.

  Her cellphone buzzed again. It was Drumm.

  “Lori. Where are you?”

  “I’m at my desk, admiring our two new whiteboards. Good on you for getting those for us.”

  “It was Chappell’s doing, not mine. How did you get on with Garmand?”

  Lori said, “In a minute. Nick, we might have a breakthrough.” She told him about her conversation with Dean Barber, and her inability to reach Craig Buleman.

  She could hear Drumm exhale explosively. “Damn! Every young person in York has a cellphone except the one we want to talk to.” He paused. “Can’t be helped, can it? We’ll put a uniform on his apartment building. He’ll need a photo of this guy. What’s his name again? Buleman? When he comes back from his night on the town, we’ll bring him in to get his story and a sketch done.”

  Lori told him about her conversation with Garmand. Drumm wasn’t surprised at the lack of anything concrete.

  “It was the same with Billinger’s last principal - Donnelly’s the name. I got nowhere with him. I mean, he was cooperative, it’s just he didn’t know anything. Arthur Billinger was a wonderful guy, everyone liked him, he was a great teacher, blah, blah, blah. It’s too good to be true. There had to be something about him! Or why was his head smashed in like that?”

  Lori’s stomach was rumbling. “Nick, where are you?”

  “On my driveway. I just got home. I was going to eat some dinner and relax for a few hours.”

  He sounded a little strange. And she was disappointed. She had been hoping they might eat together. Carefully, she said, “Is everything okay? You sound a little off.”

  “N
o, I’m good. 5.5 was my latest reading.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. She wondered what he might be thinking, sitting in his car in the dark. “Emily’s here, that’s all.”

  Now she was sorry she had asked. There was another awkward silence. “I should go. I want to pop down to Larry’s and pick up some dinner and then follow up on some of these tips.”

  “Lori, just leave all that stuff for tonight. Go home and have some proper food. Nothing there is urgent. You know that.”

  She did know that but she sensed that being busy would be better for her just now. “We’ll see.”

  “Let me know if anything comes up.” And he hung up.

  Lori sighed heavily and went to satisfy her hunger.

  forty-five

  Detective Richard McDonald was comfortably ensconced in Celeste Chappell’s garden shed. He had rearranged tools and bags and made himself space for an observation post. He was sitting on a kitchen chair which was positioned on a piece of carpet to avoid making any noise. On a little table beside him was a bottle of Guinness. The doors to the shed were closed but ajar and there was sufficient distance between them to afford him a decent view of her backyard. It was cold in the shed and the smell of gasoline and rotting vegetation wasn’t entirely pleasant, but he’d put up with much worse in his career.

  He had his gun, handcuffs and phone. The phone’s sound was turned off and he had a little flashlight in case of need. He had decided not to use the light and his eyes had adjusted very well to the darkness. With the chair turned around backwards and his eye up to the doors, he could see clearly. There were no lights on at the moment in any of the rooms that he could see; the back of the house was in darkness.

  The plan was to make things as easy as possible for a stalker or peeper or whatever he was, so the outside lights were off. If a light were turned on in any of the back rooms, it would be immediately obvious. The kitchen, Celeste’s bedroom, a second bedroom and the main bathroom all were at the back of the house. Anyone watching would see the light come on and presumably move closer in order to get a better view.

  Dick had scouted around before and discovered that it would be easy for an intruder to get into Celeste’s backyard unobserved. There was a walkway along one side of her house, blocked only by an unlocked gate, which led directly to the back. The gate opened noiselessly, he had found, so it would be a simple matter for someone to get in unnoticed. As he presumably already had at least once before.

  He took a sip of his beer. It had been Celeste’s idea; a hot toddy might have worked better.

  “It’ll be cold out there, and you’ll be bored. You need something.”

  So he had taken a beer after having three earlier and just now he was glad he had. It gave him something to do and he was trying to make it last. He couldn’t smoke for fear the smell would give him away. He would really like one, too; Celeste wouldn’t let him smoke in her house and it had been a while since his last cigarette. He had on a thick leather jacket so the cold wasn’t an issue. The biggest problem was his feet getting chilly. He blew out noiselessly; yes, he could see his breath. Good thing he had gloves on.

  It had been decided that Celeste would come into one of the back rooms every fifteen minutes or so, and turn on a light. The blinds were open partway in the kitchen, so she would be clearly visible in that room. The bathroom window had frosted glass, of course, but the curtains in the two bedrooms were left open a crack, as if by accident. If, by ten o’clock, no one had shown up, Celeste was to come into her bedroom and stay there, reading in bed, with the light on. The matter of what she was to wear had been discussed. It had been decided that nothing revealing was needed, that the fact she was there alone was bait enough.

  Just then the light in the kitchen came on and Celeste was visible getting something out of the fridge. McDonald craned his neck in order to extend his view of the yard. There was nobody there. After a couple of minutes, the light went out. He settled back to wait some more.

  Time passed slowly. The level in the beer bottle dropped, he got more and more bored and his feet were turning into blocks of ice. He had seriously underestimated how cold it would get. Late October was no time to be sitting outside in a garden shed, even if it was out of the wind. Celeste did her part three times more, but there was no activity in her backyard at all.

  He drained the beer and looked at it ruefully. Another would be good. But what he badly wanted was to get up and stomp his feet to try to warm them up. He couldn’t risk the noise, though, even with a brisk wind rattling the trees around outside.

  Celeste’s bedroom light came on. He leaned forward to scan the yard. And there he was: a dark figure with his back to him, a few feet from Celeste’s bedroom.

  The man was dressed all in dark clothes; it looked like black sweatpants and a blue or black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. From his angle in the shed, Dick could not see his face at all. McDonald took off his gloves, eased one of the shed doors open and stepped out onto the grass. The wind covered any slight noises he might be making. He drew his gun and advanced until he was right behind the man.

  The prowler’s head swivelled from side to side as if making sure he was unobserved. Suddenly the man turned around completely, losing his balance in the process and stumbling towards him. McDonald had time to see a blur of white under the hood, a flash of something shiny in a glove, and then the man’s hand snaked out towards him. He had no time to react at all, it happened so fast, and he felt rather than saw the knife as it ripped into his left leg. He grunted with the pain of it and sank to his knees. The man had already turned and was running towards the side of the house.

  McDonald pointed his gun and got off one shot. He thought he saw the running figure stagger, but the man continued on his way and disappeared through the opened gate. McDonald had time to see Celeste’s face appear at her window but his vision was blurring and he was feeling incredibly weak. He could barely hold his weapon. He let it drop and struggled to explore his leg with both hands. Christ, the blood! It was pumping out of him! A tourniquet, that’s what he needed. What could he use? It was difficult to think straight. The shed – there was an electrical cord in the shed. Could he make it?

  McDonald tried to get to his feet, realized he would have to crawl. But his strength was going. The world turned black and he pitched forward onto his face. Underneath him a pool of blood spread in the darkness.

  forty-six

  Drumm was sitting in his favourite chair, food in his stomach, Will at his feet, beer by his side. Emily was in the kitchen, tidying up. What more could a man ask for? He and Emily had enjoyed a quiet meal together, a simple pasta dish that she had prepared. She hadn’t seemed fazed by his sudden appearance for dinner; she chatted away companionably about the real estate market and a couple of new listings she’d obtained.

  Drumm hardly listened, focused as he was on the two unsolved murders. He’d excused himself quickly after the meal, using Will as the reason to get out for a little time alone. Will loved the cool fall air and he had been a happy Sheltie trotting around the block in the dark.

  Now Drumm was waiting for Emily to join him and dreading the conversation that he knew he must have. She finished in the kitchen and sat down on the couch.

  “What’s on, Nicky?”

  The television was on but he wasn’t paying attention to it. “It’s all yours, Emily. I have to go back to the station.”

  Emily turned to him, a look of disbelief on her face. “What? You just got here, and you already put in a full day!”

  “I have two unsolved homicides, Emily. And a whole lot of leads to pursue. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.” He was watching her carefully to see her reaction.

  Predictably, she was annoyed; he could tell by the set of her mouth. This, he knew, would lead to the chilly Emily, with cutting comments and sarcasm. She didn’t get violently angry or throw things but she made it uncomfortable for him all the same. Before s
he could say anything, he said, “This isn’t working, Emily.”

  “What isn’t working?”

  “Us. It’s not working. For me, at least.”

  Emily was staring at him. She seemed to be waiting for him to continue. He forged ahead.

  “It’s the same thing as last time, the same arguments. I just don’t want it any more, any of it. Arguing about the same stuff, over and over. It’s too hard on me.” He paused, waiting for her to speak, but she just kept looking at him. “Say something, Em.”

  “Why? You’re doing fine, saying enough for both of us.”

  “Em—”

  “I don’t think it matters what I think, anyway, does it? Your mind’s made up. Isn’t it?”

  This was it, he realized, a turning point in his life. He could hedge, and probably patch things up again. Until the next time. Or he could move on. He hesitated.

  “I’m not sure, Emily. As much as I love you, I don’t think we’re right for each other.”

  She was sobbing now and he wanted to move over beside her and put his arm around her, like he had done so many times before. He was tempted. But he knew that wouldn’t solve anything.

  “I’m sorry, Emily. But don’t you think this would be best?”

  “Best for you, you mean. But what about me?” She got up and went out to the kitchen. She returned, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “Don’t I have a say in it?”

  “Emily, you can’t tell me you’re happy when we argue.”

  “Don’t tell me what I think! I know how I feel!” She was standing in the kitchen doorway, holding the Kleenex up to her mouth. Her eyes were red and her shoulders were slumped. Drumm felt dreadful.

  “Emily—.” His cellphone rang. He could see it was Mark Chappell. “I have to take this, Emily.” He looked up at her as he said, “Drumm.”