by Celeste
Hotaling-Lyons
I'm not a big fan of
the third season of Due South, and so have created my own alternate universe
season in which Ray Vecchio never left on any bizarre - dare I say *stupid* -
undercover missions. This "faux" third season represents my take on
how the season *should* have gone and include not only stories I've written,
but stories friends have written that fit the criteria for an episode of the show
(for instance: a crime committed, Fraser & Ray solving said crime, a plot,
a sub-plot, humour, emotional sub-text, etc.)
Comments? Please
e-mail me at vecchio at trickster.org
"The Third
Woman" is what would be considered a "February Sweeps"
two-parter - as the commercials would say, "Don't miss this Very Special
episode of Due South!" ;)
The Third Woman
Adapted to the DS universe from Graham Greene's "The Third Man"
by Celeste
Hotaling-Lyons
You never know when
life is gonna walk up to you and hit you one right in the chops.
I remember thinking
when I first heard the news over the police wire, 'Good! That's the end of her;
the end of this whole damn thing! Serves the bitch right!'; and about how bad
it could have been if she hadn't... if she had come back to him alive. But when
I saw Benny standing there at the funeral, the look on his face - well, for
that moment at least, the past didn't seem to matter. See, the thing about
Benny is this: whenever a woman walks past him, he looks at her like... like
she's just a person or something. Even when they push it, he usually acts like
he'd really rather not be bothered, or he's embarrassed. But this woman, she
was something else. And I've never been sure exactly what it was she was.
It was February, and
the grave diggers, union by the sound of them, were bitching about having to
use electric drills to break open the ground which was, this being your typical
nightmare of a
But I'm getting
ahead of myself. I want you to understand this story I'm telling you, and to do
that, I have to give you some background - about a love affair that stretched
out over some ten years, and how love and hate are the same thing for some
sick, twisted people; and about how sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind,
and being kind can be the ultimate cruelty. And about how sometimes letting go
is impossible, especially when there's no kind of real ending to a relationship,
just a reaching out to emptiness and a fading away. Say what you will about
Ange, about my marriage, but man, when she threw my suits out the window into
the street, screaming her lungs out at me - now that was a real, definitive
end. So now, we can see each other and just nod. Because it's over.
This is the
Jesus, life's a
bitch. This story is pretty ugly - though the thing with Benny and the lecture
was pretty funny. It's like life gives you just about as much as you can take,
and then it gives you a few minutes of comic relief, so you can go back and
take even more of the rough stuff it's going to hand out.
Benton Fraser got
himself in trouble in Canada when he went and arrested the bastard who had his
father killed; seems it's a Mountie thing that you don't turn in one of
"your own," even when one of your own killed someone else who was one
of your own. You get me? I mean, I would have thought the fact that the guy
Gerrard killed was Fraser's father would have been enough, but then there was
the fact that Bob Fraser was also a Mountie, and one of "your own,"
that should have taken the curse off of it. Then again, maybe all the weird
stuff Fraser must have pulled when on assignment up there in Canada was a
factor in his disfavor - and knowing him like I do, there was probably a whole
lot of weird stuff; I'd give anything to get just one peek at the file folder
marked 'Benton Fraser' in Meggy T's office file cabinet. So what I'm saying is,
maybe they didn't really hold Benny turning in Gerrard against him, they just
wanted him out of their hair. That makes sense to me. Sometimes I want him out
of my hair, what little there is left of it, and he's my best friend.
So. Here's this
Canadian citizen on the streets of Chicago, spreading his multi-colored cash
all over the place and making this town a decent, safe place to live in whether
it wants to be or not, not to mention occasionally driving me crazy, and he
goes and makes me shoot him in the back over this woman, this criminal, this
Victoria Metcalfe bitch-goddess from hell. Like she was worth all this trouble,
all the shit she put him through. I've said it before and I'll say it again -
God, I hate tourists.
But life goes on.
Benny pulls himself together, and I pull myself together, and we both somehow
pull ourselves together; and life goes on.
Anyway, something
weird happens at this diner that Fraser and I go to sometimes, where I bounce
stuff about my cases off of him. We're sitting there and he's ignoring the
waitresses who are trying to catch his eye, chowing down on a cheeseburger and
greasy fries like he hasn't had a bite to eat in three days - which, knowing
him, just might be the truth, he probably up and gave all of his food to some
homeless family - when this guy comes to the table who you could recognize from
a mile away as a reporter. I don't trust reporters any further than I can
comfortably spit out a rat, to coin a phrase.
"You Mr.
Fraser?" he asks.
"Um. Ah.
Yes," mumbles Fraser around a mouthful, that deer-in-the-headlights look
on his face.
"You look
younger than your photographs," this guy says. "Want to make a
statement? I'm from the Chicago Sun-Times, I work for the Out-And-About Town
section. We'd like to know what you think of
"Um. It's fine.
I like it fine... Ray?" he looks at me for help, chewing. I figure he just
doesn't like having to talk with his mouth full, he got pretty good at handling
reporters with that Randall Bolt incident of some eight months ago. I take pity
on him.
"What can I do
ya for?" I ask the reporter. The reporter surprises me.
He points at a
little guy in a corner booth with buck teeth, nibbling at a chunk of bread the
way a beaver, which he totally looks like, would nibble at a nice piece of
knotty pine. "Happen to know if that's McCabe?"
Fraser and I look at
each other. He swallows and answers for us both. "No, sir. Who is Mr.
McCabe?"
The reporter snorts.
"You real men! It's like you're from another planet - guess that would be
Mars, right? See ya at
"What the hell
was that all about?" I ask Fraser.
"I don't know,
Ray," he says, and tucks back into his hamburger. He's done in no time
flat, and his fries are gone, half of mine with them, and it's time for him to
go. He puts that stupid Mountie hat back on his head that doesn't even cover
his ears, and his coat on over the brown uniform he's wearing, to head back out
into the snow that's drifting down thin and soft and cold as it lays a fresh,
white canvas for the bus fumes to write on, on top of the dirty gray drifts
that have been part of the cityscape since mid-December.
When he arrived back
at the Canadian Consulate, there was a cryptic message on his desk for him from
someone he had never heard of called Wiener. 'We expected you tomorrow. Please
stay where you are. Hotel room booked.' But Fraser didn't want to stay where he
was, he had things to do before he could go home that night; and though he
didn't mention it, I have a feeling the hotel reference kinda threw him.
Cryptic messages about hotel rooms from God-knows-who had a way of devolving
into embarrassing incidents involving nubile young ladies, and with his
on-again-off-again sort-of romance developing with The Dragon Lady, he didn't
want any more incidents. Besides - incidents had a way of turning into sentry
duty in front of the Consulate, and it was too damned cold, even for Fraser, to
have to stand out there. Fraser probably even sternly lectured himself, 'I've
had about enough of these incidents. No more incidents.' And this just before
he found himself hip-deep in the most serious incident of an extremely
incident-prone life.
So Fraser honestly
wasn't curious about this 'Wiener' message; he'll never admit it, but I'm
pretty sure he assumed it was one of the many mash notes he was always finding
stuck in his mailbox or tucked under his plate in restaurants. I told you about
those waitresses before, didn't I? He balled the slip of paper up and tossed it
at the head of the wolf who was sleeping under his desk, who woke up.
"Come along, Diefenbaker," he said to the wolf. It's not like they
were gonna go off and do some big Mountie thing that needs a wolf to get it
done; no, Fraser was just off to do one of the thousand useless, demeaning
things The Dragon Lady likes to assign him to during those brief lulls between
saving babies from burning buildings and American cities from nuclear
holocaust, like picking up her dry cleaning. He wanted the wolf with him
because he's afraid Dief's getting soft, and some exposure to the
below-freezing
"It's
"Is she
back?" and the voice betrays a hope I really wished wasn't there to be
heard.
"Back and gone
again," I said. "She's dead, Benny. She's dead and I'm sorry."
And at that moment, I truly meant it.
Even Benny had to
sit down for that one. "Dead?" he muttered, disbelieving. That's
normal. Nobody ever believes it at first. "How?"
"Car
accident." He raised his head at that, but I beat him to it. "No, not
like last time - this time it's for real. No foul play. An accident, pure and
simple. Witnesses, unimpeachable ones; leading citizens of Chicago-type witnesses.
A body. A funeral, this afternoon."
"So fast, Ray?
Won't someone investigate...?"
"Yeah. But not
me. I'm too close to the case, after my little contretemps with Internal
Affairs over Ms. Metcalfe that first time. I got too much positive emotion
invested in her bein' dead." A muscle in his cheek did a brief shimmy, so
I know I got to him with that one. Okay, so I twisted the knife a little. Hey,
I love Benny like a brother, but you sometimes gotta hurt the ones you love,
just to teach 'em. I almost lost my house to the bail bondsman over that one,
you know. I'd do it again in a millisecond, but still.
He stood up, shaky
on his pins. "The funeral. Where--?"
I smiled and patted
my breast pocket. "I got the info right here. Should be interesting."
That got me a look, and I shut up for a while after that.
After a quick stop
at Fraser's place for the red jacket and ceremonial uniform belt he insisted he
had to have, I pointed the Riv straight out of town to the 'burbs where Central
City Cemetery is. It's one of those modern graveyards, with row after row of
identical white markers, each with identical white snowcaps, an endless chain
of puff-topped headstones reaching off miles on either side.
It was sheer luck,
Fraser-style luck, that we found the funeral in time; the only brown spot in
the place, the coffin about to be lowered into the hole. Surprise, surprise;
there were no mourners standing around but us two. The wind sliced through my
coat - a nice lookin' Armani, charcoal gray, the lining warm enough for maybe
walking through a parking garage to your car - but I stood by him until it was
over. And when it was over, he walked away from the grave, back to the Riv. He
didn't look back, and he didn't say a word until he was safe in his usual place
in the front passenger seat. "The office," he said. "I believe
it's up the road, that way...," and he nodded in the direction of a
building I could see that looked like it could be a fancy mausoleum. It had
marble walls and steps, and stone gargoyles dripping icicles from their fangs
off the roof, but you could see there were lights in the windows and a red car,
one of those mini-Japanese-types, parked in what looked like a small parking
lot right next to it.
I've got twenty-six
case files open and they're all sitting on my desk, waiting for me, so
naturally I drove up the road and parked the Riv next to the little red Honda.
The office was as
fancy as the outside looked, nice antique furniture and a working fireplace,
but all I cared about was it was warm. I stood by the fire, hands held out to
its life-giving crackling heat, while Fraser had a chat with the blonde sitting
reception. Typical Fraser, he quickly got all the info he wanted about who had
arranged Victoria Metcalfe's 'digs,' but missed the fact that the receptionist
was trying desperately to get him to call her. He does the old, respectful tip
of the Mountie hat to her, and excuses himself like a nicely-brought up kid in
grade school would bid adieu to his old maiden aunt, and the receptionist grips
her desk like she's stopping herself jumping over it after him as he leaves. It
totally makes me want to puke sometimes. I followed him back out into the
wind-chill-factor-from-hell; a gift, no doubt, from the whereabouts of Fraser's
home town and I hope freezing his butt off makes him feel 'to home.'
"Dr.
Kartnerstrasse," Fraser said to me when we were back in the Riv. "Her
office is on 20th and Kelsey." I immediately knew what part of town that
was - we're talking gentrification city, with a lot of old brownstones being
taken over by yuppies for homes and professional offices - so off we go, back
to the greatest city in the world.
There was a whole
lot of silence in that car until we crossed over the city line. Fraser cleared
his throat as we blew along the highway, past the 'Welcome to
I shrugged, I'd read
this on the info sheet I'd got off the wire about
He looked at me,
hurt, but I'm not sorry I said it. I could say stuff much worse.
"Well,
Ray," he said carefully, "Is it so far-fetched to think that perhaps
It wasn't funny, but
I laughed; but then it wasn't a funny laugh. I reached into my breast pocket
for the police report, which I handed over to him. He read it in the fading
light of the late-winter afternoon, but didn't get car-sick like any other
normal human being reading in a car would.
"Interesting,"
he said, folding the report in half. His hands came together like he was
praying, the report between them. "Carol Jones, a well-known
philanthropist, and Ms. Anna Sachet, an entrepreneur in the computer industry,
were witness to the incident. Both of these unimpeachable citizens identified
"Look, Benny,
if it's any consolation, it happened so quick, she never saw it comin'. At
least she wasn't in any pain."
"Yes, it does
say that much, doesn't it," he said. "And not much else."
It was true - three
pages long, and it didn't tell him any of the things he desperately wanted to
know. "Are you sure you really wanna stir up this mess, Benny?" I
asked, trying to warn him against, well, I didn't have the slightest idea what
I was trying to warn him against. I guess it was just one of my hunches, that
the info he'd be digging up was gonna screw with his mind.
"We'll ask Dr.
Kartnerstrasse about it," he said, full of determination. Great. Already I
could tell I was going to find myself in a shitload of trouble, poking my nose
into places where Internal Affairs would just love to chop it off....
I found a spot and
parked the Riv. Neither of us thought to point out to the other that the name
Victoria Metcalfe had been going by this time around was Victoria Fraser.
Lilly Kartnerstrasse
was at home, or at least in her office. Fraser told the receptionist that he
was a friend of
The waiting-room we
were shown to looked like some sort of museum - a religious museum. There were
more crucifixes than you'd find in my crazy Aunt Serose's bedroom, all kinds;
fancy scrolly metal ones, hand-carved ones, and simple
two-sticks-of-wood-and-some-twine ones. There were statues of martyrs with
their hands held out to either side, looking up beseechingly at the heavens -
'course if they were martyrs, nobody was listening to 'em, that's what makes
them martyrs. There were even old-fashioned frames with little bits of
God-knows-what in them, you could read the plaque on the frame and discover
that it was a piece of the body of a saint in there. Kind of creepy if you
think about it - some guy does what he feels he's got to do for himself and for
his Lord, and gets himself killed for it, and his patella gets worshipped by
some religious nut a thousand years later.
But there was one
thing that made the place even weirder than it already was - all that junk, all
those knick-knacks, and there wasn't a speck of dust in the place - even my Ma
doesn't keep her house that spotless, and she prides herself on her
housekeeping. I picked up an antique leather-bound Bible and was just about to
remark to Fraser how creepy-sanitary the joint was, when somebody sneezed.
Dr. Kartnerstrasse
was a wiry old broad, and one of the cleanest-looking people I ever laid eyes
on. She was very tiny and neat, in a black suit with a little white, stiff lace
collar; her black shoes were shiny patent leather jobs; her makeup perfectly
applied to her little monkey face. She sneezed again, like a cat, as if to shame
me for raising a cloud of non-existent dust into her air. She said, "Mr.
Fraser?"
All of a sudden, I
was overtaken with a disgraceful, irrational, but also irresistible desire to
do a number on the prim and proper Dr. Kartnerstrasse. Sometimes this happens
when I meet someone for the first time and I just can't help myself. Before
Benny could identify himself as Mr. Fraser, I said, "Dr.
Carter-street?"
"Kart-ner-strass-a."
She carefully enunciated the name like someone who was used to having to
correct dim lummoxes like me all the time.
"This is one
interesting collection ya got here." I could feel myself grinning at her
like an idiot.
"Yes."
"These saints'
bones...."
"The bones of
chickens and rabbits," she dismissed her impressive collection with a wave
of one tiny, wrinkled paw; then took a starched, linen hankie out of her sleeve
like a magician pulling a bouquet of flowers out of a magic wand and blew her
nose delicately, twice. I wondered if she'd throw out the hankie now that it
was dirty. "Would you mind, Mr. Fraser, telling me the purpose of your
visit? I have patients awaiting my attention."
"I am Benton
Fraser," Fraser jumped in before I could embarrass us both any further,
"and this is Detective Vecchio. Like you, we were both friends of Ms.
"Ah. I was her
medical adviser and business associate," Dr. Kartnerstrasse corrected him
and stood, stiffly, between her crucifixes.
"I didn't hear
of her death until earlier today, when Detective Vecchio got the information
off the police wire, so I was too late for the inquest. After the funeral,
Detective Vecchio and I enquired as to who had made the arrangements for
burial."
"Very
sad," Dr. Kartnerstrasse said. "She had a small insurance policy to
cover expenses and had made her own funerary arrangements. I merely set them in
motion after signing the death certificate. Her friend, Ms. Sachet, was
supposed to see to the arrangements, but that party was somewhat...
indisposed... after the accident. One steps in."
"Very
responsible of you, ma'am. Naturally, under the circumstances, I want to learn
all I can about the accident."
"If you have
read the police report, there is nothing I can tell you that you don't know. I
did not actually see the occurrence. I was told she saw a friend of hers across
the street and went to cross. She did not make it to the other side. She was
dead when I arrived."
"Would she have
been conscious at all?"
"I understand
she was for a short time, while they carried her into the house."
"In great
pain?"
"Not
necessarily."
"You are quite
certain that it was an accident?"
Dr. Kartnerstrasse
put out a hand and straightened a crucifix. "I was not there. My opinion
is limited to the cause of death. Have you any reason to be dissatisfied?"
Now, Fraser is
always professional about his job, but he can also be somewhat reckless. What
we're talking about here is a guy who'd jump off a 60-foot cliff just to make a
point. He said, "Some months ago, the police had implicated
"I do not feel
competent to pass an opinion on this subject," Dr. Kartnerstrasse said.
"Do you know a
Ms. Anna Sachet?"
"She was
witness to the incident. I recall her being at the scene."
"But you knew
her before...."
Dr. Kartnerstrasse
shrugged minutely. "There are a limited number of charitable functions in
this city, Mr. Fraser - that does not necessarily lead to an in-depth
acquaintance."
Dr. Kartnerstrasse
was not only the cleanest, but also the most cautious doctor I ever saw. Her
statements were so limited that you could not find the slightest amount of
wiggle room in them. If she had been called in to diagnose a case of chicken
pox, I get the feeling she would have stated that a rash was present, that the
kid's temperature was thus-and-so. She would never have allowed herself to be
in error at an inquest hearing.
"Had you been
"Ms. Fraser
first consulted with me last year. I suppose, considering the circumstances, it
does no harm to reveal it was a simple matter of a routine checkup. She was a
healthy young woman. It is a pity her life was ended in that violent
manner."
I thought it seemed
like a fitting end to
Fraser sighed. I
guess he didn't have else anything worth saying either, because he just said,
"Thank you kindly, ma'am, for taking the time to see us." The doctor
dipped her chin at us and I swear I heard a creak, which reminded me of an old
commercial for dish detergent from when I was a kid - 'so clean, it squeaks!'
was the line. "We mustn't keep you from your patients any longer,"
said Fraser, turning away. He was brought up short by yet another crucifix. It
was hanging just at eye level, the arms nailed above the head, the face carved
in a horrible wail of agony. "That's a... strange... crucifix," he said.
"Jansenist,"
Dr. Kartnerstrasse commented, then closed her carefully out-lined, lipsticked
mouth sharply as though she had somehow given too much away.
Fraser is always up
to collect fresh knowledge to fuel that little computer he has stashed between
his ears. "Jansenist?" he pronounced, interested. "Why are the
arms above the head?"
Dr. Kartnerstrasse
said disapprovingly, "Because wide-open arms would encompass all of
humanity, and He died, in their elitist view, only for the select few."
Well, that was
pretty much enough for me for one day, so I dropped Fraser off at the Canadian
Consulate and went back to my office. I didn't harbor the slightest hope that
he'd keep out of trouble, but I had to get back to the twenty-six case files on
my desk even if only to look like I was giving them some attention... besides,
I have a friend in the C.I.A. I thought I'd drop a line to, just for the heck
of it, and I didn't want Benny to know. At any rate, it didn't seem to me that
He went to his
office, shrugging off both his coat and the attentions of Turnbull, who had
only about half the facts and was actually pretty worried about Fraser; he did
what he could to sooth Turnbull's wrinkled brow and eventually managed to shoo
him away, then shut the door behind him. Fraser was exhausted, and dropped onto
the only comfortable chair in the room, stretching his legs out in front of
him. Within a minute, he had left
The voice of a woman
- with a bit of a Southern accent - said, "Is this Constable Benton
Fraser?"
"Yes."
"You don't know
me," the voice said unnecessarily, "but I was a friend of Victoria
Fraser's."
It felt good to hear
someone, anyone, say they were a friend of Victoria's, and Fraser warmed
towards the stranger immediately even in his half-dazed, newly-awakened state
of not-quite-all-there. He said, "Can I meet with you?"
"I'm just
around the corner from the Canadian Consulate, at a little restaurant called
'The Old Vienna'. You know... dear Vickie asked me to see that you were all
right, that night. I was with her when she passed off this mortal coil."
"Ah... then
this would be... Ms. Anna Sachet?"
The voice was, in
fact, a low and flirty one, and the laugh Fraser's question brought was pretty
damned sexy. "Oh, my; yes it is - but it's pronounced 'Sah-shay,' not
'Satch-ette,' sugar! You just must be some sort of lil,' ole Sherlock
Holmes," she said, the accent getting pretty thick all of a sudden.
"Not at all,
ma'am - aware as I am that Ms. Anna Sachet and Ms. Carol Jones were with
She laughed again.
Fraser was really wowing her, and she hadn't even seen him yet, so it wasn't
the uniform. "Well, it's about dinnertime, and a lady must eat. Why don't
you come on over and I'd be pleased to stand you a hot meal while we talk about
Vickie, Ben." This chick was a fast worker, she had him on a first-name
basis already.
"How will I
know you?"
"Well... I'm
wearing a fur coat, and I have long, red hair. Red hair's pretty unusual, don't
you think? 'Sides, I'll wave to you when I see you - how many Mounties are
going to walk into The Old Vienna tonight, right?" The voice had a load of
charm to it and sounded so damned reasonable, that Fraser couldn't help but
agree before hanging up. But after he'd hung up, he couldn't help wondering
about this Anna Sachet. The only colleagues of
Only one way to find
out - he threw on his coat, found the wolf, who he told to mind his manners and
he'd be back in an hour or so, then went back out into the cold of Chicago to
find a restaurant called The Old Vienna, and Ms. Anna 'Sah-shay.'
"What I am
afraid I disliked about her immediately," confessed Benny to me later on,
"was her hair. I do hate making these value judgments, but her hair was so
obviously a wig - bright red and heavily curled and lacquered. It struck me
that there must be something, I don't know... *insincere*... about a woman with
that much false hair on her head."
"Yeah, she
sounds like a real, live wicked city woman," I said to him,
straight-faced.
He shot me a look.
"Now, that's just silly, Ray. What I mean to say is that she looked as
though she was trying to appear as something other than what she was."
I'd seen Sachet by
then and had come to the conclusion that she was a pretty hot-looking chick,
with or without the wig, but I could see his point. All that phony Southern
belle, clinging-vine charm could get a pretty tired, pretty quick - and what
did all that charm cover up? "So you were tellin' me about Sachet."
He picked Anna
Sachet out of the crowd of diners easily. She was there making a big deal out
of searching the faces of every man who entered the restaurant, her lace-gloved
hands folded, lady-like, on the tabletop. She was wearing an amazingly
expensive-looking fur coat and had this attitude of dramatic soap-opera
expectancy, as if she were awaiting her long-lost love, or a brother she'd been
separated from since birth. As Fraser sat down, carefully placing his hat on
the table, she said, "Oh, I'm so pleased you decided to accept my
invitation!"
"Ms. Sachet,
you knew Victoria Fraser?" Benny cut to the chase.
"I'm probably
the one person who knew her best!" but Sachet added after a slight pause,
after she registered her error, "well, excepting of course for yourself,
my dear."
Fraser ducked his
head. "It is funny you should say that," he said. "Because I
have already come to the conclusion that I never knew her at all."
"Oh, now,
honey; you're just depressed. What you need is a hot toddy to take the chill
off. I ordered myself a 'Warm Daddy' - just what every little girl needs on a
cold night like this."
Fraser, as usual,
ignored any offer of a drink that contained alcohol. "Tell me how she
died."
"As I said on
the phone, I was with her. We came down the front stairs together, and Vickie
saw a friend she knew across the street - she said something like, 'oh, look,
that's Jonesy!' Well, of course I found out later that the woman's name was
Jones. So Vickie waved to her friend and started across the street to her -
when a taxi came tearing around the corner and just knocked that poor girl
right off her feet. I felt so badly for that poor cabdriver; it's true, he
shouldn't have been driving so fast what with the ice and all, but Vickie has
to share the blame...."
"I'd heard
somewhere that she'd died instantaneously."
"I do wish she
had, the poor little thing. She died before the ambulance showed up,
though."
"She could
speak, then?"
"Yes! Even
though she was in such awful agony, she worried about you."
"What did she
say?"
"My goodness, I
was so nervous and upset. I can't give you the exact words she spoke, Ben...
may I call you 'Ben'? Vickie always called you that when she spoke of you. I
feel I know you already. Well, let me see... she wanted me to tell you that she
loved you; always had and always would. She made me promise to tell you
that...."
"But then why
didn't she contact me? Before...?"
"She couldn't!
Not until she'd made it right, she said. I met her at a charitable function -
we were both involved in the Feed The World Project. She headed several
charitable organizations. She said she was trying to help mankind where she'd
only hurt it, used it, before. And when she'd redressed the balance of the
scales, and could live with herself again, only then could she show her face to
the world she'd so wronged - to the man she'd so wronged." Sachet sniffed
tearfully... and took a lady-like sip of her hot chocolate with peppermint
schnapps.
Now, me, I would
have wondered if this was Anna Sachet's line of bull, or if she was just
regurgitating the line of bull Vickie'd fed her; but Benny was reassured by
this little tale of redemption. It was exactly what he would have wanted for
Vickie - a change of heart. The only thing he would have changed in this
Perfect World scenario would be Vickie not coming to him for help right off the
bat - and of course, her not getting killed.
"You said you
knew her well." Fraser, for once in his straight-arrow life, was playing
it cagey.
"Yes. We got on
with each other right off, told each other all our little secrets; you know,
girl-talk. I felt as if I'd known her for years."
"Then you knew
about her... background?"
"If you mean
about the time she spent incarcerated... yes, I knew about that. But Vickie had
it in her to transcend all that - she was one of the finest people I ever
met."
"It is because
of that background that I'm suspicious of the circumstances of her death."
"Oh, now,
sweetie; don't you be getting yourself in a tizzy. It's all very simple;
accidents do happen!"
"I'm going to
get to the bottom of this. I'm going to investigate the particulars of her
death... and her life."
Sachet turned her
head sharply and the wig shifted very slightly, showing a bit more of her
forehead. There was a sheen of sweat there, but then she was wearing a heavy
wig and a sable coat in a warm room. She said, "Nothing can bring Victoria
back."
"I'm going to
start working backwards from her death. You were there, as well as Ms. Jones
and the cabdriver. You could give me their addresses."
"I don't know
the cabdriver's."
"I can get it
from my contact in the Chicago police."
"I'm quite a
rich woman," Sachet said. "I promised Vickie I'd look after
you...."
"You needn't
worry about money," Fraser said. "But I will make a bet with you -
Canadian dollars against American dollars - that there's more than mere
accident to Victoria Metcalfe's death."
That was a just shot
in the dark on Fraser's part, but he was having one of my hunches, and this
time it didn't feel so good. Sachet had her Warm Daddy half-way to her lips and
Fraser watched her. The shot apparently went wide; a steady hand held the cup
to the mouth and Sachet took a long, satisfied swallow. Then she put down the
cup and said, "How do you mean 'more than mere accident?'"
"A year and a
half ago, Victoria was involved with people who made a career out of being in
violation of the law - people who would have killed her without a thought. She
survived that experience handily. But now, even as she struggled to get her
life in order, to associate herself with respectable people, to perhaps pay her
debt to society; she dies in a street accident?" As he spoke, he thought
that maybe Sachet wasn't as unaffected by his wild statement as she looked. He
knew from experience that it's only in the movies that the bad guy drops a
glass, showing everybody how guilty he is. More likely a real 'bad guy' goes in
the other direction, acting too calm when confronted. Sachet had drunk her Warm
Daddy like she didn't have a care in the world, and, more importantly, hadn't
batted an eyelash when Benny had called Victoria by her real name, "Metcalfe,"
not Fraser.
"Well...,"
she took another sip, "...of course I wish you luck, though I don't for a
minute think there's anything to find. Accidents do happen. But just you ask me
if there's anything at all I can do for you, honey."
"I want Ms.
Jones' address."
"Surely. I'll
write that down for you. Here it is, her office address and number. Oh, and
sugar? I put my address and number just underneath. I'm serious about wanting
to help you; you just call me any lil' ole time it comes into your head now, y'hear?"
She smiled one of her Southern belle smiles, the charm carefully painted onto
her lips and cheeks and eyelids. "Now you be sure to keep in touch!"
As he reached for his hat, she leaned across the table and slid her lace-gloved
hand over his, looking deeply into his eyes. "I'm so very happy to have
met you; Victoria's secret love! Imagine!" and her other hand smoothed her
wig as she spoke. That smile followed him all the way out of the restaurant, he
could feel it burning into the exposed nape of his neck, just under his hat
brim.
Benny sat on a hard
chair at his desk in the dark. He had some time to think, he was calmer now
than before. When the light snapped on overhead, he didn't even turn to take a
look; he knew who was there by the scent of her perfume. No, that was wrong -
she didn't wear perfume, she didn't like perfume - and yet there was still that
signature scent immediately identifying who stood in the doorway, her hand
still on the light switch.
It was not until she
spoke, "Constable Fraser?" that he looked up at the face that watched
him from across the room.
It wasn't that she
was beautiful, he patiently explained to me, when I teased him about it. She
just had an honest face; dark hair and eyes which in that light looked brown; a
wide forehead, a small mouth that wasn't trying to charm him.
She said, "For
God's sake, Fraser, what are you doing, sitting alone in the dark? If your wolf
hadn't been in the hall, nose pressed up against your door, I'd never have
known you were here."
The wolf poked his
head around the door and whined a question at Fraser.
"Quisling,"
was his reply. The wolf withdrew.
There are some
people, he explained to me carefully, that you just automatically recognize as
a friend. You can be at ease with them because you know that with them, you
will never be in danger. "That was Margaret Thatcher," he said, and I
asked him if he was out of his mind. All the crap she'd heaped on him, firing
him, yelling at him, making him wear a dead animal-hat on his hea - but that was
just the job, Ray, he explained. That wasn't *her*. The real Margaret Thatcher
had been slowly revealed as time went on, just as he knew she would be.
She looked at him
sharply, searching his face, and stated, "I am going to make you a cup of
tea."
"I'd like a
cup," he said, but if there was one thing he didn't want at the moment, it
was tea. He followed her to the Canadian Consulate's employee lounge, empty at
that hour, and watched her while she made it. She made it, of course, all
wrong, like everybody does today: the water not quite boiling, styrofoam cups,
American tea bags that tasted like little bags of sawdust. He remember his
mother making tea, with real Indian tea leaves in a teapot, and real cream.
Thatcher said, "I've never quite understood the attraction of tea. I've
never really liked it - I suppose it gives your hands something warm to
hold."
He sucked down his
cupful like it was medicine and watched her carefully sip at hers. He said,
"I suppose you want to talk about Victoria."
It was one of those
awful moments; he could see her mouth stiffen to meet it.
"If you want
to."
"You've read
the report. The *reports*," he amended. That neatly covered the
"Death of a Canadian Citizen on Foreign Soil" paperwork Turnbull had
stuffed, in triplicate, in the Inspector's in-box earlier that day; plus the
flurry of Victoria-related reports she'd found waiting for her upon taking
command of the Consulate eighteen months ago.
"Yes."
"I met her some
ten years ago, saved her life, then destroyed it by arresting her."
"She had
committed the crime...."
"Yes. She had.
So justice prevailed. Then she came to Chicago after serving out her eight-year
sentence."
"Only to commit
another crime. Or a series of crimes, rather. Remember that, Ben; she didn't
have to do what she did."
"Didn't
she?"
"She was
intelligent and self-motivated - she had what it took to go straight. She chose
not to."
Now, Benny is the
kind of guy who can talk your ear off for hours about whether humanity has Free
Will or if Predestination is the ticket; but you know these philosophical
arguments always just boil down to opinion in the end. He smiled at her.
"She may have chosen to go straight this time, you know."
Thatcher shrugged.
"I read of her many charitable works in the report. Surprising. Amazing
how quickly she was able to set it all up."
"She tried to
use her talents for good, instead of evil," Benny said, like a character
from one of those old pulp novels where the Mountie always gets his man. I
sometimes wonder if he's spoofing himself, or if he really means the things he
says.
"If you can
think of her that way now, it's all to the good, don't you think? What's the
use of torturing yourself otherwise?"
"I loved
her."
Thatcher took that
like the little trooper she is, but there is a limit to what anyone can take.
"But she's gone now. There's nothing really for us to talk about, is
there?"
"Everything.
The police would have arrested Victoria if they'd known who she was, their feelings
about her charitable works notwithstanding."
Thatcher digested
that along with her tea. "Ten years ago, you arrested Ms. Metcalfe, your
feelings notwithstanding. Despite Mr. Vecchio's carefully worded police report
on the incident, I... I somehow got the feeling that... I suspected
that...."
"...that I
wasn't trying to arrest Victoria on the train station that day." With that
statement, Benny looked her straight in the eye, neither confirming or denying
her suspicions.
Thatcher stared
right back, as if daring him to try and finesse her. She finally said,
"That's over and done with, too. We'll put my 'methinks he doth protest
too much' misgivings down to Mr. Vecchio's obnoxious style of police-report
writing and let it go. But... but I can't help wondering, useless as it may be
to do so; I cannot help but wonder just what would have happened if history
repeated itself a third time. If she weren't dead, and you were given the
opportunity to arrest her again - what would you do?"
He had no answer for
her. He didn't know himself. So instead he said, "I'll walk you out."
The dark was
complete; the snow had started coming down again, in gentle drifts. Dief close
by his side, he watched her from a distance as her cab pulled away, her head
silhouetted in the back seat against the glow of the city lights shining
through the snowfall.
As I see it, at this
point Benny could have cut his losses and knocked off, secure in the knowledge
that he'd done his civic duty and confirmed that Victoria Fraser, ne Metcalfe,
had died an accidental death. He had shown an unhealthy curiosity, but you
couldn't say it had developed into terminal curiosity yet. The wall of lies
someone had taken the trouble to build was smooth as glass, and he hadn't been
able to get any kind of a grip on it yet, to pull himself over it. He could
have gone home with the wolf and slept the sleep of a man who'd laid his
worries to rest. Unfortunately for him - and there would always be times the
rest of his life when he would regret his decision - he chose to visit
Victoria's apartment building. He debated for a moment whether or not to first
visit Ms. Jones, but decided to visit the scene of the accident instead. The
police report had quoted one guy who'd claimed to be Victoria's upstairs neighbor,
who'd said he'd witnessed the accident - but who hadn't really said all that
much in the end, claiming he was late for a business appointment after making
his statement, refusing to elaborate on his answers to the cops' questions.
There had been other witnesses, more cooperative ones, so the uniforms had
pretty much cut this guy loose.
Victoria's nameplate
was still on her mailbox - seeing "V. Fraser" gave him quite a turn,
even though he knew she'd been using his name. "H. Koch" was the name
on the apartment above hers. Benny rang the buzzer.
Maybe the little guy
- his name was Howie - had had a good day at the office, or maybe it was just a
Mountie in full, red-suited, parade regalia, wolf by his side, struck him as
funny, but when Fraser rang his doorbell, he was friendly and ready to have a
chat, and invited them both right in. He had just had his dinner, there was a
dirty dish and a half-glass of orange juice on a table that also held a
partially-completed model of a ship. "Nice dog. So, your last name's
'Fraser,' too , huh? Ex-husband?" the guy said. "She musta still been
carryin' the torch. She had, like, an 8-by-10 of you in her apartment. No
offense, buddy - I mean, I never scored with her or nothing, but you can't
blame a guy for tryin'. I helped her bring her stuff up from the laundry room
once and got as far as the living-room. After I dropped her laundry, she didn't
exactly encourage me to hang around. She had a picture of you framed on her
desk, so I figured, hey, she's got a boyfriend, and he looks like he could take
me apart, so I didn't push it, you know?"
Now, Fraser didn't
know whether to be depressed or happy that Vickie had kept a photo of him in
her living-room, so he dismissed it from his mind and concentrated on asking
some pertinent questions. "You told the police that you were a witness to
the accident?"
Our boy Howie gave
that a thought and apparently decided it was safe to talk to this one.
"Well, yeah. You know, I may be the only one who wasn't directly involved
who actually saw it. Though, to be fair, I didn't really see it, I heard it.
See, I was gluing a hatch on the Potemkin here," and he gestured to the
model ship on the table, "and I had the window open. You open the window
or you get pretty high with this glue, see? So I heard the brakes put on and
the sound of the skid, and I got to the window in time to see them carry her
body to the building."
"But didn't you
give evidence to the police?"
"Hey, she was a
good-looking woman, but I hardly knew her. I didn't need to get my butt dragged
down to the station, it bein' an accident and all. Besides, I didn't really see
it, like I said."
"Was she in
great pain?"
"Buddy, she was
dead. I looked right down from that window there and saw her face. I know when
someone is dead or not. It's kinda my business. I work at Paederman and Son -
the biggest mortuary in Chicago. I'm in Sales."
"But the others
say that she didn't die at once."
"Maybe they
just don't know death like I do."
"She was dead,
of course, when the doctor arrived. The doctor herself told me that."
"I'm tellin'
ya, she was dead right off. You can take that to the bank, buddy."
"I really
think, Mr. Koch, that you should give the police this evidence."
"Oh, for cryin'
out - gimme a break! Why should I get involved? I wasn't the only one
there!"
"What do you
mean?"
"There were the
three women who helped carry her into the house. You know, you ain't supposed
to move someone who's been in an accident; but then she was dead already, so I
guess it didn't--"
"*Three* women?
I had assumed the driver was a man."
"Oh, the cabby
didn't move from behind the wheel! He was a nervous wreck; I saw him later,
shakin' like a leaf!"
"Three
women...." It was like suddenly, while fingering that glass wall, he had
found himself maybe not a crack, but a rough patch that hadn't been smoothed
over by the builders. "Could you describe the women?"
But good old Howie
wasn't trained to observe the living; only the one in the fur coat and the red
wig had attracted his attention - the other two were just women in bulky winter
coats with their heads down, bent over the body. He had seen them from the
second floor; they had not looked up, and he had quickly looked away and closed
the window, realizing it might not be such a bright idea to be witnessing this.
"So there
really was no evidence for me to give."
No evidence, Benny
thought, no evidence! He no longer doubted that Vickie's death had been a
murder. Why else had he been lied to about the moment of death? Had someone
wanted to shut him up with a tender story of Victoria's final words of love?
And the third woman? Who was she?
He said, "Did
you see Victoria go out?"
"No."
"Did you hear a
scream?"
"Only the
brakes screamed, buddy, only the brakes."
It occurred to
Fraser that there was nothing - except the word of Jones and Sachet and the
cabby - to prove that in fact Vickie had been killed at that precise moment.
There was the medical evidence, but that could not prove more than that she had
died, say, within a half-hour or so. "I think," said Fraser more to
himself than to Howie, "I think there is a very good chance that Victoria
was murdered."
"Murdered?"
Howie's buddy-buddy attitude disappeared real quick. He said, "Whaddaya
mean, murder? No, don't tell me, just get out. Both of you." He hustled
Benny and Dief out the door into the hall, and his last words before slamming
it shut behind him were, "It's none of my business, ya get me?" Poor
old Howie - sometimes you don't get to choose your own business, it chooses
you.
Still Fraser
couldn't let it go. He stopped by the building super's office and inquired
after the apartment that he'd heard had just opened up on the first floor. The
super, a tired-looking old guy in a droopy pair of coveralls with a cigarette
hanging off his lip, didn't question where Benny'd heard about the place; it's
an old trick in the apartment-hunting game to read the obituaries for tips on
openings. "We don't take pets," the super said, staring at
Diefenbaker.
"That's all
right, he's not interested in the rental," Fraser told him.
Apparently that made
it okay, because the super got the keys and led the way into the apartment that
had been Victoria's. Even through the cigarette smoke dribbling from the
super's lip, Benny caught a whiff of that scent he always associated with
Victoria - clean and cold and fresh. It seemed weird that a woman's scent could
cling in the folds of a curtain so long after the woman herself was dead,
decayed, gone.
The living-room was
bare - too bare, it seemed to Benny. A couch, a desk - the framed photo, gone.
There was no dust and no papers, either on the desk or in the wastepaper
basket. The parquet reflected the light like a mirror. The super opened the
door and showed him the bedroom; the bed neatly made with clean sheets. In the
bathroom, no shampoo bottles, no used soap; nothing to show that mere days
before, a living woman had occupied the premises. Only the cigarette smoke
hanging in the air gave a sense of occupation, and that was nothing to do with
Victoria at all.
"My wife did a
good job on the place," the super said, "it's ready to lease;
furnished or non-furnished, whatever you want."
The super's wife
certainly had done a good job. After a death, there should have been more
litter left than this. A person can't go suddenly and unexpectedly on her
longest journey without forgetting this or that, without leaving a bill unpaid,
an official form unanswered, a dog-eared magazine left by a chair. "I
understood the previous tenant fell victim to an unfortunate accident, sir.
Were there no papers left behind?"
"She was a good
tenant, very tidy. Her waste-paper basket was full, and her desk, but her
friend took all that away."
"Her friend?
Ah, the woman with the red hair?"
"Yeah, that
would be her - hey! You interested in the place or not?"
"Interested,
yes. But I don't wish to rent it, thank you." With that, Benny excused
himself. Later, when I was questioning him, I asked, "Did you see anyone
on the stairs, or in the street outside?"
"Nobody."
He is usually really good about stuff like that, so I believed him. He said,
"I noticed how quiet and dead the street looked. The snow had only just
stopped falling and the moon was out, shining on the snow-covered cars. It was
so very silent. I could hear my boots creaking as I walked."
"Of course,
there is the laundry room in the basement where anybody who followed you could
have hidden. The snow would have filled in their footprints."
"Yes."
"Jeez, Benny -
what would that famous Real Man, Benjamin Fraser, think, you not bein' able to
tell someone was trackin' ya?" Whenever I remind him about Mr. Wiener,
that poor, harassed rep from Boxbush Books, Ltd., Benny goes pink with
annoyance, embarrassment or shame; pick one.
True to form, Fraser
had been driving Wiener crazy, and he wasn't even trying. When he got to his
apartment that night, Mr. Mustafi gave him a desperate letter that had been
couriered over from the Consulate. The envelope said: To B. Fraser. URGENT!
"Dear Mr.
Fraser. I have been trying to get in touch with you all day," Wiener
wrote. "It is essential that we get together and work out a proper program
for you, working around your appearances at the convention center. This morning
by telephone, I arranged lectures for you in Oak Park and Wheaton, but I have
to have your consent on the subjects, so that I can get a program hand-out
printed up. I suggest two subjects: "The Real Man, Cast Adrift In The
Modern World" (you are very respected as the founder of the Real Man
movement in Canada, but please keep the misogenic comments down, as we've found
many women buy your books as gifts for the men in their lives) and
"Rediscovering the Roots of Our Manhood." The same lectures could be
given in New York and Boston a month from now. Apart from this, there are a
great many people who would like to meet you, and I want to arrange a
book-signing for next week." The letter ended on a hectoring note.
"You will be at the chat tomorrow afternoon, won't you? We all expect you
at 3:00 and, I don't have to say, look forward to your arrival with great
anticipation. I will send a car for you at 2:45 sharp."
Fraser read the
letter and, figuring he'd get this nonsense straightened out tomorrow, went to
bed.
Fraser spent the morning
in his office, going over the reports of the inquest I'd sent over to him,
which if Welsh finds out I did, I'm in deep trouble, even deeper than usual. It
was lunch time when he reached Carol Jones' office without calling first - once
again, declaring himself a friend of Victoria's got him into the place like he
had an 'E' ticket.
Carol Jones proved
to be a pleasant-looking older woman with straight, gray hair and a worried,
kindly face with wide, concerned eyes; the kind of humanitarian who turns up to
help out at a plague or a civil war or a refugee camp before anyone else even
knows the place exists in the first place. Her warm, firm handshake went far to
put Fraser at ease. He felt he might actually get trustworthy answers from her.
"Any friend of
Victoria's is a friend of mine," Jones said. "I've heard of you, of
course."
"From
Victoria?"
"Well, yes -
once I asked her why she did what she did, went to such great lengths for the
Feed The World Project, the Rumanian Orphan Fund, that chain of A.I.D.S.
hospices; my goodness, at least a half-dozen other causes she ran like a rat on
a treadmill to find funding for - and she said, simply, 'I'm doing it for Ben
Fraser.' Funny, I'd always assumed from the way she said it that Ben Fraser
had, well, passed on. Are you her brother? Husband?"
"I was a
friend. You were there, weren't you? If you could just tell me about Victoria's
death."
"It was
horrible," Jones said. "I was just crossing the street to go to
Victoria. She and Ms. Sachet were on the opposite sidewalk. Maybe if I hadn't
started across the street, she'd have stayed where she was. But she saw me and
stepped straight off to meet me, and this taxi - it was terrible, terrible. The
cab driver tried to brake, but with all that ice he didn't stand a chance. Will
you have a drink, Mr. Fraser? I think I will. I relive it every time I think
about it." She said as she splashed the soda into her Scotch,
"Despite the fact that I've been all over the world, in some awful places,
I've never seen someone killed violently right in front of my eyes
before."
"Was the other
woman in the taxi?"
Jones took a long
drink and then measured what was left in her glass with her tired, kindly eyes.
"What woman do you mean, Mr. Fraser?"
"I was told
there was another woman there."
"I don't know
how you got that idea. There were just the three of us - me and Ms. Sachet and
the driver. Oh, you must mean the doctor, Victoria's doctor was a woman. Is
that who you mean, Mr. Fraser?"
"No. I spoke to
a man who witnessed the accident, and he said he saw three women and the
driver. This was long before the doctor and the ambulance arrived."
"No one said
that at the inquest."
"He didn't want
to get involved."
"That's
terrible! It was his duty to speak up!" Jones brooded sadly over her
glass. "It's an odd thing, Mr. Fraser, with accidents. You'll never get
two reports that coincide. Why, even Ms. Sachet and I disagreed about the
details. The thing happens so suddenly, you don't notice things, until bang!
crash! Then you have to reconstruct, remember. I expect your witness got too
tangled up trying to sort out what happened before and after, to distinguish
the four of us."
"The
four?"
"I was counting
Victoria. What else did he see, Mr. Fraser?"
"Nothing of
interest - except he says Victoria was dead when she was carried into the
apartment building."
"Well, she was
dying - not much difference there. Won't you have a drink, Mr. Fraser?"
"No, I don't
think I will."
"Well, I think
I will have another. I was very fond of dear Victoria, Mr. Fraser, and I don't
like talking about this." The phone rang, and Jones drained her glass.
"Hello," she said. "Why, yes." Then she sat with the
receiver at her ear and an expression of sad patience, while some voice a long
way off droned on. "Yes," she said once. Her eyes were on Fraser's
face, but he got the feeling she was looking beyond him; flat and tired and
kindly, she might have been gazing out across an ocean. She said, "You did
quite right," in a tone of approval, and then, sharply, "Of course
they'll be delivered. I gave you my word. Good-bye."
She put the receiver
down and dragged her hand across her forehead like she had the weight of the
world on her shoulders. She seemed distracted, as if she were trying to
remember something she had to do. Fraser asked, "Is there anyone you can
think of who might wish to see some harm befall Victoria?"
"I'm sorry,
what?"
"Victoria. Can
you think of anyone who might profit from her untimely demise?"
"Oh, no!"
Jones said. "No. That's quite impossible. She was a well-respected person
in the community. She had a great sense of duty and a genuine love of the
down-trodden. Such a loss, a very great loss."
"Yes,
ma'am," Fraser said.
Fraser wandered,
distracted, back to the Canadian Consulate. The picture Carol Jones had painted
of Victoria was so far out-of-whack with the one Fraser had of her, that it was
bothering him something fierce. What was worse, he felt like he was betraying
Victoria by not believing a word of it. Aren't you supposed to believe the best
of the person you love, give them the benefit of the doubt no matter what? And
that was another thing - for ten years, he had thought of Victoria Metcalfe as
the love of his life, but now she was dead - did that mean he had to go on
loving her forever? Or would he prove to be as fickle as any other guy and go
find himself another love of his life?
He went up the
stairs thinking to hide out in his office, only to bump into Thatcher on her
way down. Him on the lower step and her two steps up put her at about eye-level
with him, and she stared into his face with some concern. "You look
terrible," Ms. Tact said, then, "Come along!" Never looking
back, never doubting he was following her for a minute, she went back to her
office. He stood at attention as he had so many times before when she'd chewed
him out, but this time she waved him into the chair in front of her desk as she
picked up her phone. "Ovitz! Cancel my luncheon appointment and hold all
calls."
Next thing you know,
he found himself telling her about all the people he'd seen since yesterday,
when he'd found out about Victoria's fatal accident. "I was not impressed
with Ms. Sachet, but Lilly Kartnerstrasse has an international reputation and
seems an unimpeachable witness," he told her, "and Ms. Jones, I
actually liked her upon meeting her - but the trouble is, if they are right,
then Mr. Koch is wrong, and that just doesn't make sense."
"I think I
missed something - who's this Koch when he's at home?"
Fraser explained how
he had gone to Victoria's apartment building and the scene of the accident and
described his interview with Koch and his story of the third woman.
"If it's
true," she said, "it's very important."
"But it proves
nothing. After all, Mr. Koch backed out of the inquest; so might this third
woman."
"That's
scarcely the point," she said. "Don't you get it? It means that they
lied; Sachet and Jones. It's one thing to soft-pedal, letting you think her
last words were about you; that could be construed as a kindness. But it's
another thing entirely to omit the presence of a witness of a possible
manslaughter in a deposition to the police."
"They might
have lied so as not to embarrass or inconvenience this third woman - if she was
a friend."
"Yes, but
where's this woman Jones' honesty then?"
"I confess, I
don't quite know what to do next. Mr. Koch was most uncooperative; he literally
threw me and Diefenbaker out of his apartment."
"Well, he won't
throw *me* out," she said, a fire in her eye. "I can be very
persuasive when I want to be."
"I don't doubt
that for a second," Fraser said. Sometimes you just gotta love The Dragon
Lady... when she's in your corner, that is.
They walked to the
apartment building together; the snow had been pushed to the sides of the
streets by the Chicago Snow Removal guys, making it easier to drive, but
creating mountains at every street corner for the pedestrians to scramble over.
You'd think pedestrians don't pay taxes, too. Panting with the exertion of yet
another mini-ascent, Thatcher gasped, "Is it far?"
"Not at all. Do
you see that crowd of people up ahead? It's somewhere near there." The
group milled about, spread out. When they got closer, Fraser said, "That's
the building. What do you suppose that is, a political demonstration?"
"Perhaps
someone's being evicted...." Thatcher stopped. She said thoughtfully,
"Who else did you tell about Mr. Koch."
"Only you, and
a somewhat more oblique reference to Ms. Jones. Why?"
She had her eyes
fixed on the crowd. "Oh, dear," she said, and took his arm. He felt
her small, gloved hand clutch at him, he felt her strength and her fear; he put
his hand over hers. They walked slowly towards the crowd, the snow sticking to
their boots. It wasn't a political demonstration, no one was carrying a sign
and no one was giving a speech. When they reached the fringes of the crowd, he
knew for certain that it was the right apartment building. Some guy looked at
him and said, "Are you another one of them?"
"What?"
"The
cops."
"No. What are
they doing?"
"They've been
in and out, in and out."
"What are you
waiting for?"
"They're gonna
bring him out."
"Who?"
"Someone said
the guy on the second floor." The vague horror that Benny'd been feeling
since he first sighted the crowd threatened to engulf him, and he found his
hand tightening over Thatcher's in return. He said, "What has he
done?"
"It ain't what
he did. It's that he's dead. It might be murder!"
"The man on the
second floor?"
"Yeah!"
A little kid, a
squirt with a runny nose in a stocking cap, came skipping up to Benny's new
buddy and pulled on his hand. "Daddy! Daddy! I seen them!"
"What'd ya see,
honey?"
"I saw blood on
the tiles! I heard them talking through the grate!"
"The kid's a
pistol, ain't he? What'd they say, honey?"
"The man who
runs the building said a big man came by yesterday, and the cops wanted to know
what he looked like!"
"Oh, so they do
think it's murder! I mean, why would a guy go down to the laundry room just to
cut his own throat, right?"
"Daddy?"
"Yes,
honey?"
The kid stared up at
Benny, little red nose running, and said, "This is a big man, too; isn't
he, Daddy?"
Benny's buddy gave a
big laugh that caused a dozen heads to turn. "Lissen to the kid,
willya?" he said. "He thinks you did it just because you're a big
guy. A basketball team comes through here, and the kid'll be hidin' under the
daybed for a week!"
"Daddy! Daddy!
They're comin' out!"
A crowd of uniforms
surrounded the covered stretcher which they cautiously guided down the stairs,
careful not to slide on the packed snow, and into the ambulance parked outside.
This block had seen more action in the past week than it'd seen the previous
fifty years. The building super came stumbling down the steps after them,
cigarette still attached to lip, and he looked around with a hopeless, tired
gaze at the crowd of strangers, looking from face to face. Thinking quick,
Thatcher tugged at Benny's arm, and when he glanced down at her, she hissed,
"Brush the show off my shoe!" Uncomprehending, he bent to the task -
and saw at his own eyes' level the evil, cold-blooded gnome-gaze of the
snot-nosed kid.
Thatcher tugged at
his arm again, this time to indicate her desire to leave. Walking back down the
street, he looked back one more time. The kid was pulling at his father's hand
and Benny could see the lips forming around those syllables like the chorus
from a grim old blues song, "Daddy! Daddy!"
Thatcher said to
him, "Your Mr. Koch has been murdered. Time for a chat with Detective
Vecchio, I think." Bless her. They walked away as quickly as the snow
would let them. His mind was going a mile a minute, so he paid no attention
when she said to him, "Koch was telling the truth. There was a third
woman," and was still working his way through the guilt a little later
when she said, "It must have been murder. You don't kill someone to hide
anything less."
He had snapped out
of it somewhat when they reached the Canadian Consulate - without thinking,
they had retraced their steps. Insisting that Thatcher had no part in this
'at-tall,' he shooed her into the Consulate, promising her that he would go
directly to the 27 District Building in Area 7, and my desk. Before she left
him, she said, "For heaven's sake, take a cab, have the Consulate
re-imburse you." No greater love hath a superior officer for her
subordinate than to offer to pay him back for traveling expenses to his own
lynching.
The poor, Canadian,
yutz-in-a-hat who was standing sentry outside the Consulate looked rigid with
cold, but he was human, he had a face, one of those honest, open Mountie faces.
The third woman had no face; only the top of a head seen from a second-story
window. Fraser turned just as what had to be an unmarked cop car pulled up to
the curb with a screech, and a big guy who had 'plain-clothes detective'
written all over him stepped out of the car, came forward, grabbed Fraser's
arm, and said, "Get in the car, sir." He threw open the door and
firmly guided Fraser into the back seat. Fraser surrendered without protest, he
knew the investigators would have to have their curiosity as to his part in
this satisfied eventually, might as well be now as later. He really would have
preferred to turn himself in, it would have looked better, but it was not to
be.
The driver drove too
fast for safety on the frozen street, and Fraser protested politely. All he got
was a sullen grunt and a muttered sentence containing the word 'orders.'
To Fraser's alarm,
the car pulled up to a building he did not recognize. The driver led the way up
a couple of flights of stairs; he rang the bell of a fancy-looking double-door,
and Fraser was aware of voices chattering away on the other side of it. He
turned to the driver and said, "Excuse me sir, but what...?" but the
driver was halfway down the stairs, and the double-doors were opening. His eyes
were dazzled from the darkness by the lights inside; he heard, but he could
hardly see, someone bearing down on him. "Oh, Mr. Fraser, we have been so
anxious, but better late than never. I'm Leonard Weiner," the figure said,
confident that Fraser knew who the heck Leonard Weiner was. "Let me
introduce you to Ms. Wilbraham, president of the Dearborn Street Book Club, and
Mr. Meyersdorf, our host." Fraser's eyes were getting used to the light,
so he could just make out that Weiner was a skinny little guy with a neatly
trimmed beard and a nervous twitch in one eye.
A buffet with coffee
cups and a steaming urn of coffee; a woman doling out paper plates of bundt
cake and plastic forks; some young guys smiling so much, they looked liked
sixth-graders who'd been sprung from school for a really fun outing; a woman in
black who stared at him with hostility; and, huddled in the background, a
hoary-looking gang of earnest, cheery book-reading types. Fraser looked around,
but the door had closed behind him. He was trapped.
He said desperately
to Mr. Wiener, "Excuse me? I'm sorry, but--"
"Don't think
any more about it," Mr. Wiener said. "One cup of coffee and then
let's go on to the discussion, shall we? We have a very good gathering this
afternoon, some new faces. They'll keep you on your toes, Mr. Fraser." One
of the young guys stuck a cup of coffee in his hand, the other poured the
half-and-half before he could say he wanted it black. The younger guy breathed
into his ear, "Afterwards, would you minding signing one of your books for
me, Mr. Fraser?" The woman in black came charging up and said, "I
don't care if Mr. Meyersdorf does hear me, Mr. Fraser, I want to make it
perfectly clear that I don't like your books, I don't approve of them. The idea
that man's status has descended in modern times as women's status has ascended
is positively Neanderthal!"
"Well, that's
the point, my dear," said a man who Fraser assumed was Meyersdorf.
"But this will keep 'til question time."
"I'm sure that
Mr. Fraser doesn't mind honest criticism, him being a Real Man and all."
"Drink up,
drink up," Wiener said and hustled him through into another room where a
bunch of college kids - fraternity geeks by the look of them - were already
sitting at the edges of their seats, in a semi-circle of chairs set up around a
raised dais.
Fraser couldn't tell
me much about the meeting of the Dearborn Street Book Club, his mind was still
in a daze with the death he suspected was his own fault; when he looked at the
crowd he half expected the drippy-nosed kid to pop up, yelling, "Daddy!
Daddy!", pointing the mittened finger of blame at him. He vaguely
remembered Wiener starting off the meeting by touching lightly on "the
technique of writing one's non-fiction experience of self-discovery, the use of
the first person as point of view, the passage of time as an 'encapsulation of
experience device'" - then he opened the meeting to questions from the
audience.
"It was very
odd, Ray," Fraser confessed to me, looking worried. "They all knew
me, calling me 'Mr. Fraser' and even 'Ben,' but I still had the distinct
impression it was a case of mistaken identity. Every time I was on the verge of
protesting that they'd somehow gotten hold of the wrong man, they'd ask me a
question about survival in the Canadian woods that I could answer, so I'd be
back to wondering if perhaps they did know who I was, I'd just missed a
communique along the line. They were so enthusiastic, it seemed a breach of
etiquette to quell their enthusiasm with the cold, hard fact that I didn't know
what they were on about."
Enthusiastic, yeah -
the frat boys greeted virtually every sentence Fraser uttered with a round of
Arsenio-Hall-style 'woof-woof-woof' yells, wind-milling their fists in the air
as they barked; that sure didn't do a lot for his nerves.
Naturally it wasn't
until after the fact that Fraser got the 411 on what was going on. Benjamin
Fraser, the founder of the Real Man movement in Canada and writer of a half-dozen
best-selling non-fiction books - well, best-selling in Canada, anyways - was
supposed to do a little book tour in the states to drum up his U.S. sales. He
had to opt out due to breaking both his legs during one of his communes with
Mom Nature. Seems upper management-types remove a thousand bucks from their
expensive leather wallets and give it to this other Fraser, whereupon he takes
them into the woods and they sit around getting primitive for the weekend;
beating on drums and chanting. Go figure. When the medics evacuated him to the
hospital on a helicopter, he was so pumped full of painkillers that he told
everybody he was a little teapot, short and stout; so you can't really blame
the guy for forgetting to tell them he couldn't make the book tour. Every time
the Consulate got a message for Mr. B. Fraser, Turnbull sent it on to Benny -
who had been too wrapped up in his investigation of Victoria's death to pay
attention.
He missed the first
question altogether, but luckily Wiener jumped in with the answer. Then a guy
wearing a Bulls jacket said, with the kind of passionate interest you'd think
he'd reserve for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, "Fraser! You
writing another book? Because I gotta tell you, your stuff really helps me put
the little woman in her place."
This caused a
general disturbance among the crowd, several of the woman actually booing, the
frat boys barking.
"Uh, no - no.
I'm not writing a book. In fact--"
Another question
from another questioner. "Mr. Fraser, could you tell us who has been the
chief influence in your life?"
"Ah. Well, my
father - although, actually, to be honest, it wasn't until he passed on and I
read his journals that--"
"Oh! So you
could say that your literary style as a diarist charting the day-to-day occurrences
in your life on the way to a deep philosophical awakening had its beginnings in
your own father's journals. Fascinating. That's fascinating." Some of the
student-types in the audience quickly wrote this down.
It went on like this
for some time. There was a general outburst when the woman in black who had
accosted Fraser earlier said something insulting about 'penis-bearers' under
her breath, and one of frat boys heard her and said something unprintable back.
Amid the twittering and barking, Benny sat gloomily back and thought about the
snow, the stretcher, the tired face of the building super. He thought, if I had
never asked questions, would Mr. Koch still be alive? How had he benefitted
Victoria by supplying another victim - a victim sacrificed to lessen the fear
of the killer; but who? Anna Sachet, Carol Jones, Dr. Lilly Kartnerstrasse?
None of them seemed up to the murder in the laundry room; he knew it's a lot
easier to pull a trigger and kill from a distance than to slit someone's throat
at close quarters. He could hear the kid with the drippy nose saying, "I
saw blood on the tiles!" and a figure turned towards him a blank face
without features, the third woman.
Fraser told me he
had no idea how he got through the rest of the meeting. The next thing he knew,
Wiener was making a little speech about what it honor it was to have such a
famous writer in their midst, let's all give him a hand. Then one of the young
guys led him to a table stacked with books and told him to sign them. "One
book per member."
"What? What do
you want me to do?"
"Just a
signature, 'Ben Fraser' or 'B. Fraser' will do, it's all they expect. This is
my copy of 'Real Manhood - What Our Forefathers Knew'. I would be so grateful
if you'd just write a little something personal...."
Seeing the light at
the end of the tunnel, Benny grabbed the book and wrote, "Best Wishes from
B. Fraser. May you live in interesting times."
"It was all I
could think of at the moment," he explained to me. "It's an old
Chinese curse, 'may you live in interesting times,' and all I could think was,
by that definition, I was experiencing one of the most interesting days of my
life."
As Benny sat down
and started signing Benjamin Fraser's title pages, he could see in a mirror the
young guy showing the personalized inscription to Wiener. Wiener smiled weakly
and stroked his chin, then turned to give the Mountie the old fish eye. 'B.
Fraser, B. Fraser, B. Fraser," Benny wrote rapidly - it wasn't, after all,
a lie. One by one, the books were collected by their owners and the pile got
smaller. He started to get irritated with this Benjamin Fraser as he signed the
twenty-seventh copy, and the owner of the book, the woman in black who had
seemed so pissed off at him earlier, leaned across the table and indicated that
there might be a suspension of hostilities if he'd join her for a drink after
the meeting; Fraser excused himself politely. Where was Benjamin Fraser in all
this? Why wasn't he enduring this torture? The members of the book club and the
Real Man retinue were beginning to go home with their spoils, the room was
emptying. Suddenly in the mirror, much to his eternal relief, Benny saw a
familiar face: Detective Jack Huey, come to take him away.
"Fraser! We
been lookin' for you."
"I lost my
way," Benny said.
"Yep. We
figured that was what happened."
Go to Part II