Blue Rubicon (2 page)

First was the gun. I had to make it safe. I took it from
Carter’s lifeless hand. The fingers gave only slight resistance—rigor hadn’t
set in. Less than three hours dead. I dropped the magazine out of the pistol
and racked the slide back several times to make sure there were no rounds left
in the gun.

A casing.

All that came out when I racked the slide was a spent shell
casing, not the live round I was expecting.

My mind was spinning. When a bullet is fired from a
semi-automatic pistol the slide comes back ejecting the spent casing, then
snaps forward bringing a live round into the chamber. No live round meant
something had stopped the gun from doing its full job. Held properly, the gun
would have worked.

No live round and only the faintest smell of gunpowder. The
windows were all up and the doors locked. I looked around for a suicide note
and saw nothing. I slid my finger across the touchpad on the in-car computer
and the screen came to life: “I’m sorry” was typed on the screen.

A brief, typed message.

Everything was adding up. Unfortunately, it was adding up to
murder.

I stepped back, took my body out of Carter’s cruiser for the
first time since I’d opened the door. Sirens broke the crisp morning air and I
knew I had very little time. I looked in the car again, at the youthful face,
at the gold wedding band, and I couldn’t decide whether to scream or cry.

A murdered cop.

It had to have been someone known to him. We were notorious
for keeping our car doors locked and to let someone in the car, Carter must
have trusted them. His duty bag caught my eye, a large black canvas bag with J.
CARTER #4532 and an OPP emblem embroidered on the top.

Facing the wrong way.

The zippered opening was away from Carter, facing toward the
passenger side door. It had been moved and put back wrong. Whoever killed
Carter had been sitting in the car with him.

A cell phone rang from somewhere in the car. I couldn’t let
it distract me.

The casing had been ejected from the gun when I racked the
slide. It would’ve been ejected on its own had the gun fired normally, but now
it was on the floor of the car, consistent with a suicide. But there should
have been a live round expelled when I racked the slide. I picked up the
magazine and pushed the top round out into the palm of my gloved hand then
threw it under the car.

I went around to the passenger side and opened the door then
turned the duty bag around, the opening facing Carter as it would have been
when he was working. The sirens were getting closer, I had to work faster.

The phone rang again.

I leaned in across the duty bag and patted the pockets on
Carter’s shirt. When I touched his right pocket the phone rang again and
vibrated against my hand. The tearing of Velcro filled the car as I lifted the
flap on the top of the pocket then reached in, my gloved hand taking out the
phone.

Home.

He was overdue and someone was worried about him. I’d been
on the receiving end of those calls a few times. Stuck on overtime and too busy
to remember to call home.

The phone rang twice more before the call display
disappeared and the voice recorder app took its place. I scrolled to a point
near the beginning and listened.

“—figure it all out?”

“I’ve got a lot of information, a lot of names. I just can’t
put it all together.”

I didn’t recognize either voice. And I didn’t have time to
think about it—the sirens were closing in, I looked out toward the main road
and could see the lights flashing. I was almost out of time.

I scrolled forward, hoping for something.

“—he’s in on it, I know that much.”

“You have no idea how high it goes.”

My hands were soaked with sweat, puddles forming inside the
latex gloves.

I stopped the playback and put the phone in my pocket, then
backed out of the car. It had been dry the last few days and whoever had been
here left no evidence. No mud meant no tire tracks or foot prints.

There were two cigarette butts on the paved road beneath
Carter’s window. Back to the passenger side. None. But there was a slight burn
mark, and some ash on the ground. I knelt down and blew the ash away then
scraped at the burn mark with my foot.

Two cruisers rounded the corner onto Shain Road and began
speeding toward me. And here I was, destroying evidence and covering up a
murder. Not bad for only my second week back.

But I didn’t know who I could trust.

I WAS DONE.

ANY EVIDENCE of murder was gone and all that remained was
the suicide of a police officer. Sad, but not unheard of. It’s a stressful job
and one that not everyone can handle. In less than a week the case would be
closed and people’s wounds could begin to heal.

But not mine.

I knew only two people I could trust with my life—Kara and
George. Despite the best efforts of the Brass, Kara and I would be working
together again. But this time, no one could know.

The cruisers pulled up and George was first out, Vern just
seconds behind. An ambulance made its way onto the street—unnecessary, but with
an officer involved, no one was willing to take a risk. I’d told radio Carter
was dead, radio code 10-45, but they sent an ambulance anyway.

“Fuck, Munroe,” George said. His hands were trembling and
his breathing was faster than normal.

“It’s real, George. Carter killed himself.”

George hung his head and shook it side to side. I’d never
seen him look so shaken, so pale.

“Kara’s on her way. She’ll be lead on this.”

He walked over to the car and looked in—maybe it was too
much for him, too hard to believe it could be true. Vern stayed by her car,
facing out to the road, but I could still see she was crying.

Carter’s cell phone started ringing again. In my pocket.

“Just the wife,” I said. I pressed my hand against the
outside of my pocket trying to find a way to silence the phone. It rang twice
more then stopped.

I felt horrible for lying, for blaming the death of this
young man on his own demons—demons which didn’t exist. It would be temporary, I
hoped. I knew I’d catch the killer, but I’d have to cross the Rubicon to do it.

There was one steadfast rule in the police culture whether
you agreed with it or not—the brotherhood: we protect our own—no matter what
they’ve done.

It was a rule I was preparing to keep and break at the same
time.

George and I didn’t speak for a few minutes. The paramedics
came on scene and were gone almost immediately. They knew there was nothing
they could do but they had to check, if only for their own sake.

Vern stayed by her cruiser the entire time, occasionally
wiping a tear from her eye. I didn’t know if she’d known Carter, or if the mere
idea was too painful for her. The next cruiser parked at the main road to block
traffic from coming down the street, not that there would be much traffic to
worry about. I watched from a distance as the officer pulled a pile of orange
traffic cones from the trunk and spread them out on either side of the cruiser.

When a black Mercury Grand Marquis turned onto the road a
few minutes later the officer was back out of the car, moving the traffic cones
to allow the car in. Kara was here, likely with her new partner.

I waited for her to pull up to the scene, shifting my weight
from foot to foot. There was a flitter of anticipation I hadn’t expected to
feel—I couldn’t deny that I was happy to see her again. Things had ended but
feelings still lingered, and with what was going on, I needed someone I could
count on.

Kara stepped out of the driver’s seat and her partner, a man
I didn’t recognize, climbed out of the other side. He was older—at least fifty—and
short, not much taller than Kara. His dated suit and the paunch around his
waist made him look like an old time detective—a cigar and a fedora were all he
was missing.

“Link,” Kara said once she’d approached. “This is Detective
Daniel Howlett.”

“Lincoln Munroe,” I said, my hand outstretched. He took it,
a loose grip and flaccid shake.

“Dan,” he said. “Link or Lincoln?”

“Lincoln. Link’s my son’s name.”

I caught Kara blushing. It was something she’d have to
correct or the rumours about us would never stop.

“Got it.”

He stepped back and the breeze caught his suit jacket,
opening it and revealing his gun, the untucked flap of his shirt and a coffee
stain on the bottom of his cornflower blue tie.

“Dan just transferred here from Niagara, couple of months
ago now.”

“Welcome,” I said. ‘Button your damned jacket’ was what I
should’ve said.

The small talk was just a way of delaying the inevitable. I
turned and walked toward Carter’s cruiser. It would have to be done. I steadied
myself, focused on my breathing, my voice, my gestures and my eyes—if I was
going to have to lie in front of human lie detectors I’d have to do it right. I
couldn’t risk telling Kara and George the truth now.

My report would be an act of deceit. I wouldn’t make them do
the same. For now, they had to be ignorant to the truth.

“Single gunshot wound to the head, appears self-inflicted,”
I said, my voice level. A raise in inflection indicated a lie. “No exit wound,
consistent with a police sidearm and hollow-point rounds. Doors were locked
when I arrived, windows up as well.”

Carter’s body still sat as it had when I arrived, but the
gun was out of the car. It had been loaded with hollow-points, bullets designed
to mushroom on impact slowing the round down significantly and, with a little
luck, keeping it within the body. No one wanted to shoot the bad guy and have
the bullet pass through and hit some innocent standing in the wrong place at
the wrong time.

Kara leaned in and inspected the wound, saw what I had seen—single
point of entry, gunpowder burned into the flesh and hair around the bullet
hole. Just as one would expect for a suicide—the muzzle had either been against
Carter’s head or almost touching.

Kara’s eyes scanned the area. “No one would’ve even heard
the shot,” she said. “Even if they did, out here no one would’ve thought a
thing about it.”

“Just another farmer shooting a gopher,” I said.

The phone rang again. I wished I’d turned it off.

“The gun?”

“On the trunk,” I said to her. “I opened the door, checked
for a pulse then seized the gun. I proved it safe and put the pieces on the
trunk. I haven’t had a chance to bag it yet.”

“Are the other rounds accounted for?”

“I haven’t checked. One ejected when I proved the gun safe.
It bounced underneath the cruiser. I haven’t tried to get it yet.” I kept eye
contact, not wanting to give myself away this early. Liars have a hard time
looking people in the eye.

I walked to the trunk and picked up the magazine, then
checked the back. Every other round was there, numbered holes showing how many
bullets were loaded. A count would still have to be done, just to be certain.

“Looks like they’re all in here.”

Kara brought an evidence bag over and put the pistol and
magazine in then sealed it, writing the date and time on the front.

I didn’t want to be here if Kara and Dan found something not
right with the scene. I needed to get away and I needed to get to work on the
investigation.

“If you guys have it all under control here, I need to go
and tell Carter’s wife.”

Kara nodded. “I met her once, two years ago. She probably
barely remembers me.” Her eyes started to well up before she steeled herself.
“I’ll give you a call later, we can meet back at the station.”

I walked back to my cruiser and noticed damage on the edge
of the driver’s door.

“Hey, Kara. I forgot to mention. I thought maybe he was
sleeping at first when I pulled up. I was right beside his cruiser. I reached
out and knocked on his window and he didn’t respond. Then I saw the gun. I
panicked and opened my door right into his.”

Kara looked over at the dent and paint damage on Carter’s
cruiser. “Thanks, that’s one question explained.”

I started the car and backed up, then turned around and left
the area. Once I was far enough away, I pulled into a parking lot, found an
empty spot at the back and parked the car.

I couldn’t believe it. Just when I’d started getting my life
back on track, something else came along to derail it. This case was going to
make me a double agent, working both sides of the force as I tried to find the
killer. And when I did, I had no idea how it would be received. I wouldn’t be
the first to cross the thin blue line, others had before and been branded
‘rats’ for their integrity. Murder was different though. There would, I hoped,
be few who would consider me a rat for this one, but a wrongful accusation
would be destructive—for my career as well.

I called dispatch and was given Carter’s home address. It
wasn’t far from where I sat, just a short drive into the south end of St.
Thomas. Saturday morning, she’d probably be home.

The house was modest, a normal size for a young couple, with
a two-car garage and a neatly landscaped yard and garden. A white Mustang
convertible sat in the driveway. She was home, and this was the last thing she
was expecting.

I put on my hat—formality was important at times like these—and
walked up to the door. The door swung open before my knuckles hit for the
second time. There she stood, sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, tears streaming
from her face.

SHE DROPPED TO HER KNEES and buried her head in her hands. I
put my hand on her shoulder and tried to comfort her as best I could. It was
what the family of any cop feared—the visit from a Sergeant.

“He wasn’t here when I got up,” she said between sobs. “I
thought he was on overtime but he wasn’t answering his phone. I was getting
worried, then…”

Then I pulled up.

“I need to talk to you, Mrs. Carter. Can we go inside?”

She nodded and stood up. I could only imagine the strength
she had to muster to bring herself back to her feet. We stepped inside and she
ushered me into the family room then took a seat on the sofa. I sat down on the
chair across from her.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Her tone of voice was flat, even. Her face was buried in her
hands, I couldn’t see the pain that this was causing her.

“Yes, he is. I’m sorry, Mrs. Carter.”

Her emotions didn’t change, she was already as low as she
could be. She’d prepared herself for this moment. Every day he didn’t come home
on time, every time he didn’t answer her phone when she called, every time she
heard sirens when he was working, she’d assumed the worst.

“What happened?”

It was so hard to say. She was expecting a hero’s death—shot
while saving someone’s life or stopping an armed robbery—anything other than a
suicide.

“It appears… that he took his own life.”

“What?” She jumped to her feet. This was something she
hadn’t prepared herself for. “There’s no way. He’s happy… we’re happy. We have
a son, he’s not even a year old.”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks and her voice was
anything but even.

“How the fuck could he do this to us? How could he leave us
like that?” Sorrow and denial had given way to anger already. “Did he leave a
note?”

“All we’ve found was ‘I’m sorry’ typed on his in-car
computer.”

She shook her head. “That’s it? That’s all he bothered to
say?”

That’s all his killer bothered to say.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carter. I never had the chance to know your
husband, but I’ve heard great things about him.”

“Laura, please. He’s… he was… a good man. And a good cop.”

I nodded.

“I… I didn’t get your name.” She looked at my tag. “Munroe?”

“Lincoln.”

“Jakob talked about you…”

I didn’t know what to say, just nodded for her to go on.

“He respected you a lot, said that you were a hell of a cop
and one of the honest ones. He always wanted to go to homicide—just hoped you’d
still be there when he made it. Then when you got that serial killer, he
idolized you.”

I blushed. I barely even knew his name.

“He said you could be trusted, you were a man of integrity…”

She paused and looked me deep in the eyes. It was as if she
was staring into me, searching my mind to see if her husband was right.

“I need a smoke,” she said, finally. “Come out back.”

She walked toward the back door and I followed her. I
watched her open a drawer in the kitchen close to the patio doors and remove a
pack of cigarettes. Then she slid the door across and walked out onto the deck.

I followed and shut the door behind me. She had a child in
there, the last thing I wanted was for smoke to get in the house. She walked to
the far end of the deck and sat on the stairs.

“Is your son…”

“Sleeping. He sleeps late.”

I nodded then sat down beside her. She took a cigarette out
of the pack and put it between her lips then brought the lighter up. She
flicked her thumb and the flame burst upward but she never lit the cigarette.

“Do you want it?”

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

“Neither do I. Never have. Jakob was trying to quit, his
fifth or sixth time now.”

I was confused and must have looked it.

“I’m glad it was you that came,” she said.

She was almost whispering. Her face was stoic, she’d found
something else to focus on.

“Jakob started getting worried a couple of weeks ago,
paranoid actually. He thought the house was bugged. He told me he was onto
something, something big. It had to do with some cops, dirty ones. He said…”

She looked at me again.

“You can trust me, Laura. I promise.”

“He said he thought he was in danger. I told him to go to
his boss but he said he couldn’t, said he didn’t know how far it went. I wasn’t
sure what he meant.”

I took a deep breath. My eyes returned her earlier gesture,
boring into hers to search for the truth and determine if I could trust her. I
knew I could, I just had to make sure.

“Laura, nobody else knows this yet, but I think Jakob was
murdered. I was the first one there and things didn’t add up, it was too
suspicious. If someone killed him, they would’ve been in the car with him, so
he must have known them or thought he could trust them.”

She was following me. It seemed like she knew what I was
going to say.

“Like Jakob, I don’t know who I can trust. I covered it up,
hid the facts that made it look like murder. It’s an investigation I have to do
on my own, off the record.”

“I don’t want people thinking he killed himself if he
didn’t. He was stronger than that.”

“Right now, we need people to think that. It’s the only way
I can find out who killed him. And once I do, everyone will know the truth.”

She nodded, a faint smile on her face. Her faith in her
husband had been restored—if he’d killed himself, would it have meant she
failed him? Would it have meant he didn’t love her or their son? These were
questions she could forget now.

She stood up and walked over to a large rock in the garden
then knelt down beside it. She lifted the rock and dug her hand into the soft
dirt beneath it. When her hand came up she was holding a Tupperware container.

“He gave me this, two weeks ago. Told me to hide it
somewhere no one would find it, somewhere even he wouldn’t know about. He told
me if anything happened to him to give it to the police, but only to someone I
could trust.”

She handed me the container. Through the thin layer of dirt
I could see a Ziploc bag inside with a small USB thumb drive and a Post-It note
with numbers and letters written on it.

“I thought he was just being paranoid, overreacting. I wish
I’d listened more, maybe I should have told someone.”

She was crying again.

“There was nothing you could’ve done.”

“I hope you’re right. I didn’t know what he meant, but when
he gave me that he told me ‘remember that the stars never steer us wrong’.
Everything was so cryptic, it was hard to take him seriously. He barely said a
word to me in the house the last two weeks. He just… seemed paranoid.”

It’s not paranoia if someone’s really after you.

“I’ll get whoever did this,” I said. “I give you my word.
But I need yours that you won’t say anything to anyone.”

“I promise,” she said. “Not a soul.”

She reached out, hugged me and I squeezed back as her
emotions returned and my shoulder absorbed her tears.

* * *

I took my time driving back to the detachment. A green tea
to calm my nerves, some Damien Rice playing through my phone and a quiet spot
in another empty parking lot were what I needed. I closed my eyes and tried to
think. I couldn’t focus, all I could see was the bullet hole in Carter’s head
and the pain in his widow’s face.

I took out Carter’s phone and pressed the power button. A
password was required. The phone had been idle too long. The longest I could
set my phone before a password was required was thirty minutes. Hopefully my
Android phone wasn’t much different than his iPhone.

A timeline.

My voice recorder would last for an hour. I only listened to
bits of the first few minutes. If he’d been killed early in the recording I had
to get there within about an hour and fifteen minutes after he’d been killed.

His hand had barely given any resistance when I took the gun
away. Rigor mortis hadn’t started to set in, it had been less than three hours.
I opened my duty book and looked at the times I’d recorded—on scene at 0650hrs,
radioed it in at 0651hrs.

My fingers moved in a flurry on the keyboard, pulling up the
call logs from the previous shift. Carter had cleared his last call at 5:07a.m.
Time of death was probably somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30a.m.

An hour. A decent window, narrow enough. I needed to unlock
the phone, listen to the recording. Maybe I could pinpoint it exactly. I took
the Ziploc bag out of my pocket and looked at the sequence written on the
Post-It note.

6h1Lbb0EZ.

Definitely not going to work. Hard to do letters with only a
slider and some numbers. I was out of luck for now, and Kara would be expecting
me.

* * *

Twenty minutes later I walked into my old office to see Kara
sitting at her desk. It felt like the old days, like I’d only been gone a few
minutes.

Except my desk was no longer my desk. I could actually see
the surface. Everything was neat and ordered, perfectly in place—almost a
mirror image of Kara’s desk. I got the feeling his desk stayed clean due to a
lack of work being done on it. Dan was out of the office. Fate was finally
giving me a hand. Kara looked up at me standing there, staring at what used to
be.

“I was just about to call you,” she said. “How did it go
with Carter’s wife.”

“As expected,” I said. “She has a lot of questions.”

“So do I.”

Breathe. There’s no way she’s figured it out already.

“Like what?”

“It just doesn’t make sense. He was a rising star in the
service, had a new baby at home. Everything seemed to be going right for him.”
She paused for a moment. “I worked with him on the street for a few months
before going to sex assault. He was the nicest person—genuinely nice, not fake
nice.”

There was a lot of fake nice around here.

“I never had the chance to get to know him, barely ever spoke
to him,” I said.

“And to only leave ‘I’m sorry’? Shit. I don’t know how a cop
could do that to his family.”

“I know. We’ve seen too many suicides without notes, too
many broken families trying to figure out what the hell went wrong. I couldn’t
do that to Kat and the kids.”

“If I was ever going to do it, I’d leave a novel. Just so
everyone knew it wasn’t their fault. I bet Laura’s blaming herself. I just
can’t believe it.”

I nodded. It was hard to be caught lying if you didn’t
outright do it. “She doesn’t know what to think. She knew right away why I was
there, every police spouse worries about it. Probably wanted to hear he died a
hero’s death. At least there would’ve been some meaning to it all.”

A tear was forming in Kara’s right eye. She turned her face
away from me and wiped it away.

“It’s pretty cut and dry, unfortunately. It was his gun,
serial number checks out. We’ll do a tox screen, see if he was on anything that
might explain it. Did Laura say if he was on any medications?”

I’d forgotten to ask. I’d forgotten to get a lot of the
details I normally would have.

“I… I didn’t ask.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have to get a statement from her
anyway, try to answer at least some of the questions.”

I hoped Laura was as good a liar as I was turning out to be.
If she wasn’t, Kara would pick up on it instantly.

“Why don’t you let Dan do it? I know you only met her once,
but maybe it would be easier… for her. You know, if she didn’t know the person
interviewing her.”

“Yeah,” Kara said. “You’re probably right.”

Now I just had to hope Dan was as sloppy about his work as
he was his attire.

“Anything else for me to do?”

Kara looked around at her empty desk, as if searching for
something. “No, I think I’ve got it. Just bring me a copy of your notes when
they’re done, okay?”

“Sure.”

Her desk wasn’t just hers anymore. There was a piece of me
left on it, my Page-A-Day word calendar.

“What’s the word of the day?”

Kara looked up at me, confused. “Oh, right. I haven’t
changed it in a few days.” She flipped through the top pages. “October 10th,
‘veracity’: devotion to the truth, something true, conforming with truth or
fact.”

Fitting.

I turned and walked out of the office before the sweat began
to bead on my forehead.

My notes.

Notes were the true mark of any officer. They had to be
meticulous, they had to be detailed, and they had to be true. I thought about
what to do. Lie in my notebook? Lie in this one and keep a second one? I
remembered police college, twelve years earlier, being told that keeping two
notebooks was a sure fire way to get a new one torn on the stand.

I was walking on an ethical tightrope. Lying was
unacceptable, but I was doing it to protect the investigation. As long as the
truth was all revealed, I hoped it would work out in the end.

It would be a hell of a trial, there was no doubt about
that.