The Arx (21 page)

Borrowing Rebecca’s computer, Frank tracked down the location of the incident. It was the middle of nowhere, many miles from the nearest town.

He studied the photograph in the article. Richard Carson was undistinguished: middle-aged and pudgy, with a graying crew-cut and glasses.

Frank imagined what it would take to stage a death like that, deep in the wilderness. Carson would have had to plant food, clothing, and survival gear ahead of time, and would have had to navigate through the bush alone for several days. Was the man in the picture, an intellectual, a city dweller with a desk job, capable of such a feat?

Maybe, if he was desperate enough.

He held up the article and looked at Rebecca. “Okay if I keep this?”

The Partnership Ends

After yet another session with Rebecca, Frank made his way from her building to the parkade where he’d left his car. He always came away from the sessions drained and confused, like he’d just wakened from a bad dream.

He hadn’t come to any conclusions about whether the sessions were actually doing any good. Many days had passed since he’d had a drink. He still had trouble sleeping, and still set the alarm as always, but several nights lately he’d woken up without the usual remnants of his recurring nightmare.

That had to be a good sign, but in the deepest part of his psyche he knew he was still damaged goods, still far from being the man he once was. There was always an obstacle in the sessions, an unassailable wall that thrust up out of the earth whenever he got too close to his demons.

He distracted himself by focusing on the case. Knowing what he’d learned so far about the conspiracy surrounding Olmerol, he was convinced that Richard Carson had faked his own death.

Why? Either Carson was part of whatever was going on and for some reason wanted out, or he somehow found out about it and was smart enough to kill himself off in the eyes of the world before the others did the job for real.

Whatever the reason, Frank’s gut told him that Richard Carson held the key to what he was looking for. It was possible that Carson could provide convincing evidence of what was happening and prove that Frank wasn’t crazy.

The problem was: how could he hope to find someone who had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to disappear? Frank shook his head as he walked. The answer was simple – he couldn’t. He couldn’t hope to find Carson, at least not without more information.

He was jolted awake as someone shoved him to one side. He looked up. A girl in jeans and a black leather jacket had pushed past him. As he watched she turned her head back and smiled. Frank shuddered, remembering the final entries in Retigo’s journal.

A few minutes later, as he reached for the door into the parkade, a hand appeared and opened it for him. Frank looked over. A middle-aged man in a business suit had appeared at his side. The man swept his hand forward motioning for Frank to go ahead, and smiled.

Frank watched the man head for a nearby car, then trudged up the narrow walk that ran beside the spiral driveway leading to the third level, where he’d parked. Lately he never took the elevator; he imagined the door sliding open and an assassin waiting with a shotgun in his hands.

He laughed at his own paranoia. Anyway, he thought, that’s not how these guys operated. They were a lot more subtle. They’d use a method that didn’t arouse any suspicion. Of course, they could make it look like a robbery…

As he turned a corner a sliver of shadow moved on the periphery of his vision. His muscles tensed. He listened closely and was sure he heard footsteps following him. He started to sweat. He walked faster, finally reaching the third level. The footsteps grew louder. He looked for any other customers in the dim light of the parkade. There was no one.

Finally he spotted his car and felt a wave of relief. He rushed toward it, glancing around him. He heard the footsteps again, closer now, still approaching, faster. He fumbled nervously with his key, slid it into the lock, and opened the door. His heart stopped when a man appeared from behind a concrete pillar beside him.

For a second their eyes met. Frank’s heart was pounding in his chest. He had no gun, no weapon of any kind. He was a sitting duck. The man smiled and continued walking, heading for a sports car on the other side of the level. The man clicked his key fob and the car beeped in response. He opened the door and stepped forward like he was going to get in, then turned, smiled again, and nodded at Frank.

A jolt arced down Frank’s spine.

The man got into his car and drove away.

I’m losing it,
Frank thought.

He flopped down in the driver’s seat, still shaking. On the way home, he told himself he was being irrational. He’d never actually seen anyone following him, and he was trained to notice these things.

Nothing had happened since he was attacked outside the Dogan mansion, and he was convinced that his attacker had acted alone and on the spur of the moment. No matter how many logical arguments he set down and confirmed, he could feel the paranoia welling up inside him.

His fear was illogical, animal, primordial. It threatened to cripple him. He thought about Rebecca’s comment that he wasn’t ready for this case, and considered that maybe she’d been right after all.

When he got to his house he examined it, inside and out, in neurotic detail. He found nothing. He checked the locks on all the doors and carefully drew the curtains to leave no gaps, recalling the bedsheets tacked up around the windows of Lawrence Retigo’s apartment. He stumbled upstairs, determined to get some rest, but instead lay staring at the ceiling.

He got up, parted the bedroom curtains, and peered down at the street. A sports car identical to the one from the parkade was driving by, slowly. He couldn’t see the driver’s face.

He watched for another hour, but saw nothing, and went back to bed. Finally, exhausted, he drifted off, tormented by a brand new set of nightmares.

He woke the next day after only a few hours’ sleep and reached out a shaking hand for his cigarettes. They weren’t there. He panicked, and remembered he’d left them downstairs. He spent the day scouring the block through the slit of a pulled-back curtain, chain-smoking, and trying to calm his shaking hands.

His thoughts kept drifting back to what had happened the night before. If they knew about him, how soon before they found out about Rebecca? By dusk he’d decided he needed to check on her.

The sky began to open just as he rushed out of his front door. He held his jacket collar together and sprinted to his car, scanning to the left and right. Again the image of Lawrence Retigo crowded into his mind. He was re-living Retigo’s nightmare.

Despite the earlier incident, he drove to a parkade downtown, circled to a level almost empty of cars, and parked in a darkened corner. He saw no-one as he locked the car and descended to the street.

By now it was early evening; most people were at home having dinner. The Granville Skytrain platform was almost empty. He stood as far away from the others as possible. When the train arrived he waited until the doors started to close before squeezing in, and was the only person who entered his car.

He rode the train for two stops to Waterfront station, checked that no one else was making a move, and stepped off just as it was about to leave. Only one or two others exited the other cars; he watched them carefully as he headed for the least crowded exit.

A woman who’d just gotten off stood texting on her phone. She looked up, and for a second made eye contact and looked back down. Frank’s hands started to shake. She didn’t follow as he climbed the stairs.

He stumbled around Gastown, glancing over his shoulder, peering into the eyes of everyone he passed, wondering if the guy in the jeans and checkered shirt, or the guy in the pin-striped suit, or even the overweight, middle-aged woman in the print dress, would be the one assigned to take him out.

He spotted a run-down hotel on the next block, slipped up a back alley and made his way to the hotel’s delivery entrance, watching for signs of a tail.

In a dark corner of the hotel’s lobby he found a pay phone. He didn’t want to go to Rebecca in person – they might be following. He didn’t want to use his cell phone; its signal could be intercepted. He stepped up to the booth with his back to the wall and a clear view of the lobby. Once in place, he called Rebecca. She was still at her office.

“You okay, Frank?” she asked. Her voice sounded dead, withdrawn. Something was wrong. “I thought you didn’t want us to contact each other by phone. You’re puffing like you’ve run a marathon.”

“I wanted to check that you were okay.”

“I hope you’re sitting down.” Her voice was trembling.

“What?”

“My friend from the coroner’s office called less than an hour ago. The DNA was a perfect match. The dead baby was Ralphie.”

“What!” he shouted into the mouthpiece. His knees almost buckled. His knuckles were white around the phone.

“There’s no doubt,” she said, in a voice that said the foundation of her world had been kicked out from under her.

He scanned the lobby. Nothing. He switched the phone to his left hand. “After all this it turns out Gloria killed her own child?” he said, lowering his voice. “I don’t believe it.”

“Oh God…” Her voice broke. She started to cry. He felt a sudden urge to go to her, to hold her in his arms, to comfort her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. For a few seconds he was at a loss for words, stunned by her revelation. Finally he said: “Look, it’s still possible that Gloria’s innocent. Maybe Ralphie was kidnapped by somebody else…” He spoke the words but he didn’t really believe them.

He heard Rebecca grab a tissue and blow her nose. She pulled herself together. “Stocker’s livid. He says the Coroner’s got no business overstepping his authority.”

“Big surprise,” Frank said. “But it doesn’t change anything. There’s still the conspiracy…”

“Come on, Frank. What conspiracy? Gloria was in over her head with Ralphie and had a breakdown.”

“You believe that?”

“DNA doesn’t lie. The whole conspiracy theory was based on the idea that the dead baby wasn’t Ralphie. The other cases could be made to fit, but they could also be coincidence.”

Her voice lowered, like she was talking to herself. “Why didn’t I see the signs?”

“It’s gotta be some kind of mistake,” Frank said. “What about the teeth?”

“I don’t know. My friend didn’t say anything about that. Maybe it was the gums swelling or something, like you said. Or maybe you were mistaken.”

“I wasn’t mistaken.”

“It’s my fault. I let myself get caught up in it. I knew what a fragile mental state you were in. I should never have gone along.”

He held the phone with his chin and hauled out his cigarettes and lighter.

“The DNA’s a match,” she said. “That’s all we need to know. It’s over.”

“I don’t care what the DNA says,” he said. “Something’s wrong here. Maybe they’ve got people in the Coroner’s office. Of course! Who actually did the DNA test? We’ll have to look into that.”

“Who’s they? Listen to yourself Frank. This has gone far enough. It’s horrible to have to accept what Gloria did to her child, but we have no choice. Facts are facts.”

“It’s not over.”

“How dare you!” she snapped. “You’d prolong this nightmare by hanging on after it’s clear to anybody in their right mind…”

“There’s more to it,” he said.

He felt like he’d been hit in the gut with a sledge-hammer. He needed Rebecca. She’d proved to be a first-rate researcher. He’d never have made it this far in the investigation without her help.

More than that, he needed her psychological support. Whether it was the little packets of therapy she’d been providing or the mere act of getting him out of the house, interacting with other human beings, and doing something approaching a job, Frank wasn’t sure, but there had been stretches lately where he’d actually felt something close to his old self again.

He’d tried to deny that the case was too much for him, but inside he knew he needed someone to lean on, to share the burden.

“Frank?” she said.

But there was another reason why he needed her. An idea was suddenly dredged up from his subconscious, an idea he hadn’t dared admit even to himself. He thought about her constantly, and when they were apart he couldn’t wait to see her again. He’d developed an almost physical need to be near her.

“Frank,” she said. “What do you mean?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘there’s more to it’?”

The previous day, just as a mental exercise, he’d tried to imagine his life without her and found, to his shock, that he couldn’t. Rebecca had become as essential to his world as the exhaling of his breath or the pumping of his heart.

“Forget it,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

Now, at this moment, as he stood with the cigarette pack in his shaking hand, for the first time since they’d met, he came to a stunning realization of how he felt about her.

He almost dropped the phone.

“Remember when we first started looking into this case?” she said. “The case that wasn’t a case – after I took you home from your little vacation at the police lockup?”