Cornwall and Redfern Mysteries 2-Book Bundle (29 page)

“How about a kiss to seal the deal?”

I patted his good leg. “We'll talk about it tomorrow.”

To my beta readers: Kathy Alessio, Cheryl Bellefeuille, Marlene Donaldson, Alyssa Ferris, Donna Houghton, Lara Ferris Inneo, Barb Lowe, Marilyn Pharoah, and Desneiges Roy. Thank you for critiques, suggestions, and, most of all, your friendship.

To Donna Warner, my sister/editor, thank you for your unflagging support and the countless hours you spent helping me with
Corpse Flower
. It's been a long road, but we had a lot of fun along the way. Now, on to the next project!

To Allison Hirst, my fabulous editor at Dundurn, thank you for patiently and good-naturedly guiding the book to publication.

To the Crime Writers of Canada judges who picked
Corpse Flower
as the winner of the 2010 Unhanged Arthur contest. It was truly an honour to be chosen, and I thank you all.

Knees and elbows pumping
, the two men shot out of the building like a dragon's fiery breath was scorching their asses. As the shorter of the two reached for the door handle of a battered Ford pickup truck parked at the curb, his feet lost traction and he skidded into a snowbank. His companion leaned against the tailgate and pulled a phone from his pocket. When he saw the Cherokee bearing down on them, he ran toward it, waving his arms.

Neil Redfern slammed on the brakes and stopped his vehicle in the middle of the street. When he got out, his hand automatically went to his Glock. “What's the problem, sir?”

The man leaning on the Ford had a tall, lean build, and sported a black beard and moustache. Both men wore heavy plaid shirts with black toques pulled down low on their foreheads.

Seeing a uniformed cop, the bearded man slumped over, inhaling lungfuls of icy air. He motioned with a flashlight at the two-storey brick structure behind him. For now, he seemed incapable of speech. Neil looked at the other man, who was sitting on a mound of snow, rocking back and forth, hands shielding his eyes. He was mumbling non-stop, but Neil couldn't make out the words.

“I'm Police Chief Neil Redfern. Is someone in danger inside?”

The two men looked at each other, then shook their heads
.

“Am I in danger if I go in there?” He wasn't wearing a shoulder radio, or a vest, and didn't want to walk into a shitstorm without backup.

Vehement head shakes from both men, but Neil wasn't risking his life based on what they thought.

The lettering on the truck spelled out
davidson and cutler salvage
, and a heavy chain led from the bumper of the truck to the entrance of the building. The double entrance doors had been pulled away from the frame and lay on the ground. The words
Lockport H.S. 1961
were incised on a stone arch across the front of the building. The windows had been boarded up and fitted with iron bars.

The bearded man gestured to the old high school with one arm and poked himself in the chest with the other hand. “I'm … I'm Fang Davidson. That's my cousin, Larry Cutler.”

“Why are the doors on the ground?”

“We bought the salvage rights for the building. It's going to be demolished next week. We have to take what we can now. Nobody gave us keys, so we had to break the doors down.”

Cutler had regained coherency. “Tell him what we found, Fang.”

Fang clamped his lips shut again, looking as though he was going to pass out or puke.

“Take your time,” Neil told him. If one of them didn't spit it out fast, he was calling for backup. The day shift was already spread thin due to a flu bug and the Christmas parade about to start over on Main Street. He didn't have to strain his ears to hear the Salvation Army band trombones warming up with “Good King Wenceslaus.” The parade was the reason he had been using the back streets to get home from the station.

Neil turned toward the curb to try his luck with Cutler. Davidson clutched at his arm. “No, I … I have to show you.”

Neil shook Davidson off and focused on Cutler. But now the man refused to meet his eyes.

He called the station on his cell. “Lavinia, I'm about to enter the abandoned high school on the corner of Brant and Chippewa Streets. Two men, Larry Cutler and Fang Davidson, requested assistance. Yes, I said Fang. If I don't call back within ten minutes, send backup.”

“Okay, let's go.” He led the way inside, his Glock in one hand and Davidson's flashlight in the other. Davidson and Cutler followed close behind.

Cutler crowded against Neil. “Straight down the hall. At the end, hang a right. Second door on the right — the girls' locker room.”

“You won't need the gun,” Davidson contributed, his voice cracking.

“Stay back,” he ordered them.

A few metres inside and it was dark as a crypt. Staying close to the wall, they passed an opened door leading to the offices. Metal lockers lined both sides of the hallway. All were wide open and empty. He stepped cautiously over buckled flooring and fallen ceiling tiles. The hall ended in a T-intersection. Neil swept the weak beam of light to the left before turning the other way. About twenty metres in, he passed the closed door of the boys' locker room. Another ten metres and he faced a yawning blackness.

“In here?” Neil indicated the opening with the flashlight. The door had been propped back. Without stepping into the room, he couldn't see an identifying sign.

“Yeah,” Cutler confirmed, pushing up against Neil. “In a locker.”

Neil elbowed him back. “Stop breathing down my neck.”

He edged into the space, back against the wall. Only the sounds of the salvagers' breathing behind him broke the silence. On the left bank of lockers, the first half-dozen doors had been flung open, some hanging loose from one hinge.

Neil swept the light inside the opened lockers. They were empty except for a few items of stained fabric and some tattered textbooks. He sniffed: mould and stale air.

He indicated the first closed locker. “This one?”

“Yes.” It was Cutler's voice.

Davidson's respiration increased. Neil's skin tightened and he moved farther away from the men.

“Was it closed when you got here?” Neil positioned himself in front of the locker.

“Yes. They all were.”

“So you closed it again?”

“Guess so. Must have been reflex.”

Neil reached out with his left hand and grasped the handle. His right hand tightened its grip on the gun.

Davidson croaked, “It's … It's …”

Neil threw the door aside and jumped back.

He didn't expect the dry, brown heap of bones that lay on the bottom of the locker. The rib cage had settled gently onto the smaller bones and cradled the skull on top, like a pyramid-shaped Halloween decoration.

With a soft clacking sound, one long bone and a few smaller ones tumbled out onto the chipped tile floor. The rest of the skeleton shifted, releasing puffs of dust and fragments of cloth or paper. Leaning in, Neil observed a layer of dehydrated body fluids and decomposed flesh under the bone heap. Some of it had dripped out and dried in a half-metre-wide stain on the floor.

The skull tipped off the rib cage and dropped onto the edge of the metal locker, rocking twice before falling to the floor. It rolled across the tiles and stopped, the teeth resting against Neil's boot.

He flinched and backed up another step. The mandible broke away from the skull, as if the mouth had opened wide in soundless laughter.

Neil shook off his revulsion and noted the rows of flawlessly formed teeth. Then, his attention fastened on the left temple. The area near the orbital bone was a jagged black void. He reached for his phone.

The Scene of Crime team had set up lights powered by a small generator. Like an alien sun, the artificial daylight shone mercilessly on the floors and walls, reaching into every corner.

From the hallway, Neil leaned over the police tape and called to the coroner squatting in front of the locker. “Any thoughts yet, Ed?”

“Interesting,” the man replied. “This is the first time I've examined skeletal remains at a crime scene.”

“Same for me, Ed.”

Dr. Ed Reiner took a small flashlight out of his pocket and rammed his head and shoulders into the locker, avoiding the pieces of skull and other bones on the floor. He hummed and sniffed like a bumblebee with hay fever.

Neil shoved numb fingers into his pockets. He moved back a few feet to speak to the officer who had been first to respond to his radio call.

“What's the story on this place, Bernie?” His gaze swept the room with its rows of metal compartments and scarred wooden benches.

Bernie watched the coroner for a moment. “They built a new high school in the south end of town about fifteen years ago and boarded this one up after the last graduation party. The town council tried to sell the building, but no bites until recently, when it was bought by a developer who plans to put up a seniors' residence.”

Bernie Campbell was a twenty-year veteran of the Lockport Police Service. He was methodical, reliable, and marginally respectful. His ears were bright red from the cold as he watched the coroner.

When it was clear Bernie was done answering his question, Neil asked another. “What do you know about the two guys who discovered the remains?”

Bernie didn't consult his notebook. He pointed his chin at the two men standing in front of the boys' locker room. “Left to right, Larry Cutler and Fang Davidson. Cousins. They're from Dogtown. They bought the salvage rights and have a week to strip the place before the wreckers arrive. Construction for the new residence starts in the spring.”

The Davidson and Cutler names meant nothing to Neil, but he knew Dogtown was a collection of house trailers and outbuildings scattered over five or six acres of countryside west of the town limits. Its residents kept to themselves, married each other, if rumours were correct, and stayed out of trouble for the most part.

“Fang?” Who gives their kid a dog's name?

Bernie consulted his notebook for this one. “His real name is Rupert. I'd rather be called Fang, myself.”

Cutler and Davidson huddled together, the colours of their plaid shirts blending into a riot of conflicting patterns. Both men drew rapidly on cigarettes, expelling plumes of smoke into the frigid air of the corridor.

Under the harsh lights, Cutler seemed younger than Neil had thought, maybe late twenties, and Davidson a few years older, around Neil's own age. They didn't look much alike except for identical sets of white, even teeth.

The younger man rocked up and down on his heels, seemingly recovered from his fright and anxious to speak. In contrast, Davidson continued to stand motionless, his face drained of colour, his dark eyes red-rimmed. The cigarette shook in his fingers.

Neil asked Cutler to wait and motioned Bernie to stay with him. He drew Davidson back to stand in front of the police tape. “Please describe how you came to find the body, sir. From the beginning.”

Davidson took another drag on his cigarette. “We started in the offices and took out a few things. Trouble is, most of the wood stuff has rotted and anything metal is rusty. We'll be lucky to make our money back.”

During his account, Davidson's attention remained fixed on the floor of the room beyond. On the separated sections of skull. The coroner's body concealed the rest of the skeleton from view. Ed continued to hum contentedly, but he had stopped sniffing. Neil took Davidson's arm and pulled him away from the doorway.

“Go on.”

“We worked our way up the main hall from the office, checking the lockers for anything we can sell. When we reached the gym wing, we went into the girls' change room first …. Well, that's when we found it.” He dropped his cigarette butt and ground it into the floor.

Davidson hunched his shoulders and fingered his cigarette pack. Neil exchanged him for Cutler and heard the same story in different words. Knowing Bernie had contact information for both men, he dismissed them.

“Chief, do you need me for anything more?” Bernie kicked his toes against the wall to restore circulation.

“Yes. Stop at the station and write your report. I want to read it later this afternoon. Don't leave until I get there.” He ignored Bernie's exasperated expression and turned back to the locker room. Ed mumbled incoherently.

“What?”

“I'm stuck!” Ed's narrow shoulders hit the sides of the opening as he tried to pull his body free.

Constable Thea Vanderbloom appeared at Neil's side. At his instructions, she had photographed the rest of the school.

“You got photos of the locker and bones before Dr. Reiner arrived, didn't you?” he asked.

She nodded. “Do you want me to suit up again and take more shots inside the perimeter?”

“Yes. You can help Oliver with the evidence collection. But, here, give me the camera.”

Holding it by the strap, he called to Oliver Mendez, the SOCO working beside Ed. “Give this to Dr. Reiner. Ed? Can you take some close-ups of our vic's bones while you're in there, before they're disturbed any further? Change the setting …”

“I got it!” Half a dozen light explosions followed before the camera appeared over Ed's hooded head again
.

Oliver handed the camera back to Neil, then pulled on Ed's shoulders and twisted his head until the coroner popped free. A few more bones spilled onto the floor.

“Well, shit,” Ed said, “isn't this a party?” He pulled his mask down. His lips were blue from the cold, and he inspected a tear in his coveralls. “I hope my new down jacket isn't ripped, too.”

Neil leaned against the door frame. “Learn anything, Ed? What did you smell in there?”

“Nothing. No odour of decomposition. A few bits of tissue are still adhering to the bones but not much is holding them together. Poor little girl.”