Last Call (7 page)

Boland nodded, saying, “Still, it’s worth a follow up. The girl’s family should be able to put us in touch with the ex.” He was watching Forensics bag the vic’s remains. “You get a look at that head?”

“Sick puke yanked all her teeth.”

“Doesn’t make any sense.”

* * *

At 3:46 that afternoon, Trish tore out of the house still buttoning the blouse on her hotel staff uniform. Her hair was a mess, she couldn’t find her obligatory name tag, she was supposed to punch in at 4:00 o’clock sharp and the hotel was a sixteen minute drive from her front door,
if
she made all the traffic lights.

She caught her toe running across the lawn, cursed and almost fell. A kid on a trike across the street stopped picking his nose to stare at her. It started to rain. She piled into the Jetta and turned the key—

WHIZ!

“Shit!”

It was all she could do not to scream. Not only had the excitement of owning her first car already worn off, in this moment—with the clock ticking and sweat running in rivulets between her boobs in this hideous, baby shit-colored blouse—what she really wanted was to take this clunky piece of crap back to its previous owner and torch it on his scabby front lawn.

Her mother had been right.

She checked her watch. Another minute gone. She thought of calling her mom to say she’d be late, but that would be like asking for the death penalty. If she kept her trap shut, she might still be able to sneak into the hotel undetected.

Her fingers itched to turn the key, but she knew from bitter experience that it was best to give it a few minutes.

She sat there watching rain drops spatter the dusty windshield, reflecting on her insane trip home, a four-hour drive costing her six-and-a-half. She closed her eyes and saw Dean leaning on the sill, asking if she really had to leave so early.

The trip had started out fine, her 9:00 A.M. departure sparing her the worst of morning traffic. She made the 400 in record time, and had enough gas left over to carry her all the way up to Highway 69. Whatever else her ‘new’ car might be, it really was excellent on gas. She stopped north of Barrie to top up the tank—and after she paid the attendant, the damned thing wouldn’t start. A guy at the next pump said, “Sounds like your starter’s going,” And Trish thought,
You think
? She was no mechanic, but the diagnosis seemed fairly self-evident—and it didn’t help. She tried cranking it again right away, but the
whiz
turned into something much worse, a kind of breathless death rattle that made her cringe. So she got out in the muggy heat, grabbed a Coke out of the pop machine and paused to take a long swig and stare bullets at the Jetta. And when she got back in the car a few minutes later, it started on the first try.

That had been bad enough, but the real time waster came at the construction site that had held her up the day before. She’d forgotten about it, and when she got jammed in it again she cursed herself for not keeping it in mind and planning an alternate route. As before, the merge to a single lane took forever, and the truly annoying part was that from a distance it didn’t appear as if anyone was actually working over there, the machines all standing idle.

But then she saw the police cruisers and the crime scene tape, and there was a cop standing next to the flag girl at the choke point now, the officer leaning in to speak to each of the drivers in turn, slowing things down even more. When Trish got four car-lengths away the Jetta stalled, and in her fear of holding things up she tried to start it right away—and this time that wretched death rattle was punctuated by a crisp backfire, the report so loud the cop actually reached for his sidearm.

In a dreadful kind of déjà vu, the vehicles in front of her cleared the check point one by one and now the cop was waving her ahead, impatient in the sweltering heat.

Trish turned the key and the Jetta shrieked. She shrugged at the cop and tried on a smile that didn’t fit. The flag girl came to the window and said, “You’d better get it moving, Miss. Fuses are pretty short around here already.”

“You want to give it a try?” Trish said and the girl unclipped her walkie and turned away. She said something Trish couldn’t hear, and a few moments later three grim-looking crewmen appeared. The flag girl told her to put it neutral, and the men pushed the Jetta up to the cop like it was a kid’s toy. The cop showed her a picture saying, “Do you recognize this girl?” and Trish did, right away. She said, “Yes, I saw her here yesterday,” and pointed to the shoulder of the equally backed-up southbound lanes. “Right over there. She was working, holding a sign.”

The cop thanked her and said she could go, and Trish was left to wonder what had happened here. The crew guys pushed her out of the way and she spent the next forty minutes waiting for a gracious on-site mechanic to come have a look under the hood. Thirty minutes after that they got the car started and the mechanic told her it was probably her starter.

Starving by this point, she broke for lunch at a truck stop restaurant and got underway again as quickly as she could. North of Pointe au Baril there was a car accident that cost her an hour, then she got caught in a cloudburst so intense she had to slow to a crawl for the next fifty kilometers.

And now she was late.

She turned the key and the Jetta started.

* * *

When Detective Boland entered the police mortuary in Barrie that afternoon he found the pathologist, Dr. Franklin Todd, hunched over a high-powered microscope, numerous glass slides littering the table in front of him. Mozart played softly in the background, Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, one of Dan’s favorites. The music soothed him.

Without looking up, the pathologist said, “Afternoon, Dan. Just finishing up the microscopic.”

Smiling, Dan said, “How’d you know it was me?”

“Those infernal cigars. You reek.” He raised his eyes now, flicking the bifocals off his forehead to land smoothly on his nose. ”I’ve got some lung cancer slides that might smarten you up. I have my teaching stuff around her somewhere...”

“Never mind,” Dan said. “If Connie can’t make me quit, what chance do you think you have?”

“Stubborn bastard.”

The pleasantries dispensed, Dan said, “So what can you tell me, Frank?”

“For starters, you’re dealing with an exceedingly bent piece of work here. This is one sick puppy.”

You’re supposed to tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Your perp did the dental work while the lady was still alive. Chainsawed her alive, too.” He indicated the slide on the scope. “I found microemboli in the lungs. Traces of machine oil and bits of sawdust. This can only happen if the heart is still beating.”

The doctor swiveled a computer monitor around to face the detective, then clicked on a tiny photograph, the shot enlarging now to fill the screen.

“And here. A one-and-a-half inch incision in the abdominal wall, also inflicted antemortem. Neatly done. Almost surgically precise.”

“Any signs of rape?”

“I suppose you could call it that,” the pathologist said. He tapped the screen with the tip of his pen, indicating the small incision. “Stated bluntly, Dan, the guy made a hole in her belly and fucked her in the guts.”

Dan Boland rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. In his nearly twenty years in Major Crimes, he’d witnessed more than his share of the twisted shit people dreamed up to do to each other, but this one ranked in the top five.

“Jesus,” he said.

* * *

At 4:00 P.M. on the button, Trish slipped in through the kitchen doors at the Radisson Hotel and fell in next to Stacey, the girl already busy wrapping utensils in burgundy napkins. She saw her mother on the phone in her glass-walled office, staring daggers at her now, and said, “Uh-oh.”

Stacey said, “Wouldn’t wanna be ya,” and Trish elbowed her in the ribs. She cut her eyes away from her mother’s death stare, picked up some utensils and got busy.

Sally strolled over a minute later and Trish thought how sharp she looked in her business-woman’s suit, the word SUPERVISOR embroidered in gold on the breast pocket. She said, “Hi, Mom,” but her mother kept walking, moving behind her now, leaning over to say in her ear, “That was close, little sister. Very close.”

Out of the corner of her eye Trish saw Stacey smirking and had to bite her tongue to stifle a giggle. Her mother slapped her on the fanny and Trish let out a squeal.

Strutting away, her mom said, “Next time wear your name tag,” and the girls lost it, their laughter peeling through the stainless steel kitchen.

* * *

An hour after her shift ended, Trish crawled into bed and leaned against the headboard, as exhausted as she’d ever been. Dean had called while she was still at work to tell her nothing had changed. At least her dad was still alive.

She took the band photo off the bedside table and viewed it in the lamplight, thinking,
I finally found you
. She prayed he’d make it through.

She tucked the photo in the night table drawer and switched off the lamp. “Nite, Dad,” she said in the dark of her room. “Sweet dreams.”

* * *

In his ICU bed at TGH Jim Gamble lay stock still in the dim light, the only sound the steady hiss and chuff of the ventilator that kept him alive.

––––––––

Monday, June 29

JIM GAMBLE OPENED his eyes.

His first perception was pain, his old companion, but on a scale beyond any he’d previously experienced; it was prodigious, apocalyptic, and his body braced against the enormity of it. This intense sensation did not reach his higher centers, however, for these were still beyond function; but on a primitive level, where the animal lived, billions of neurons discharged in tandem in a pyroclastic eruption of agony. It was centered in his belly, where the hunger waited, and the muscles of his core drew him into a bow, causing the jagged suture line to let go.

His gaze settled on the ceiling now, his eyes bulging in horror. The tiles up there were swarming with spiders, goliath black tarantulas, and they were losing their footing and falling, dozens of them landing on his face and chest and legs, skittering hordes of them covering the bed.

He opened his mouth to scream, but the breathing tube rendered him mute. He cranked and twisted his arms until his wrists popped free of their padded restraints, and now his hands came up and yanked the tube from his throat, giving voice to his horror. Screaming, he sat bolt upright in bed, sending a pole laden with med pumps crashing to the floor.

The staff that rushed in to restrain him had egg-plant heads and smoldering red eyes and Jim fought them with everything he had, opening his suture line even more.

He howled like a lunatic. “Get them
off
me!
Get them off!
”

Then something warm crept up his arm like gentle surf, finding his brain, and Jim Gamble drifted away on it, to a place where nothing mattered.

* * *

Trish was pulling on her uniform when her cell phone rang. It was Dean.

“Hey, Trish.”

“Hey, Dean, how—oh, my God, was that a scream?” It had sounded like someone being burned alive.

Dean snickered. “Yeah, I’m in the delivery room. I just brought a teenage girl up here from the ER. Poor thing had no idea she was even pregnant. Her grandmother brought her in—these two, they look like something out of
Deliverance
, six teeth between them and no shoes, three hundred pounds each and neither of them over four feet. Granny brought her in with abdominal pain, thinking it was something she ‘et’. Turns out she’s fully dilated. On the elevator she asked me when the belly button opens up so the baby can come out.”

“Oh, my
God
.”

“Yeah, never a dull moment. Speaking of which—and I don’t want you getting too excited; things are still pretty grim—but your dad’s awake.”

Trish smiled. Awake was better than comatose. She said, “That’s fantastic.” And then, “What do you mean ‘grim’?”

“He’s in the DTs—delirium tremens, acute alcohol withdrawal—and it’s not very pretty. Hallucinations, convulsions, irritability. He could still even die.”

“That means he’s going to need me.”

“They had to sedate him pretty heavily, Trish. Maybe you should put off coming down for a while. He doesn’t even know where he is yet.”

“I’m coming tomorrow after work. It’s all arranged. I’ll be staying with my aunt in Mississauga.”

“I just figured you might not want to see him like this.”

“I can handle it, Dean. I’m a lot tougher than you think. I want to be with him when he wakes up again.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll see you?”

“Sure. Maybe. Thanks for keeping me posted.”

Trish signed off and finished getting dressed, then Googled delirium tremens on her phone. It was just like Dean had said. The next several days would be dicey in the extreme, and in a case like her dad’s, where chances were good he’d been ingesting substances much more toxic than booze, death was a real possibility.

She wished she could take off right now, but she had a double shift at the hotel and her mother was right, she needed the money.

She grabbed her knapsack and headed for the car.

* * *

Bobcat parked the camper in front of the Cold River Trading Post and pocketed the keys. The parking lot was packed today, but that was how he liked it. The bigger the crowd, the harder he was to see.

With a glance in the rearview, he snugged the ballcap over his eyes and combed his fingers through his tangled beard. Sammy, his Jack Russell terrier, eyed him expectantly from the carrier in the passenger footwell, but Bobcat said, “Not this time, Sambo. You go on back to sleep now, boy. Bobby’ll be right back.” He retrieved a small rectangular item wrapped in cloth from the seat beside him and exited the vehicle.

The bell above the shop door startled him, and not for the first time Bobcat wanted to rip the damned thing off its mount and ram it down the throat of the fat fuck proprietor—Hank—the man eyeballing him now from his throne in front of the register. Patrons were scattered all through the sprawling shop, but at the moment Hank was alone at the register.