If Turnbull ever
shows up dead in some kind of a locked room murder mystery, the first person
Homicide should question is me. I take that back - the list of people who want
to kill Turnbull is a long one, and growing every day.
Elaine stopped by my
desk to tell me about the murder at the Vickie's apartment building; that, plus
the info faxed to me from my friend in the C.I.A., told me it was time to reel
Fraser in - see, I'd had a hunch about Vickie and her charity work and I'm almost
sorry to say it panned out. At any rate, I figured if I stayed at the district,
it would only make it easier for Internal Affairs to find me, so I went over to
the Canadian Consulate. Turnbull told me Fraser wasn't there, the Dragon Lady
popped her head out of her office and demanded to know where Fraser was, and
the next thing I knew, the two of us were doing this back-and-forth, Abbot and
Costello routine.
"Where's
Constable Fraser?"
"I was just
lookin' for him myself."
"I thought he
was with you."
"Whaddaya mean,
with me? I thought he was here."
"I sent him to
you over an hour ago."
"I appreciate
the thought, but the package didn't get delivered."
"I told him to
take a cab."
"I don't care
if you told him to take a dog sled, he never got there!"
"Well then,
Detective Vecchio, WHERE IS HE?!"
"Constable
Fraser is at the Dearborn Street Book Club," Turnbull said.
Me and Thatcher
looked at Turnbull like he just sprouted another head.
"What the
hell," I said, "is Fraser doin' at the Dearborn Street Book
Club?"
"I don't
know," Turnbull said. He leaned towards me and the Dragon Lady and tapped
the side of his nose, a gesture I figure he picked up watching some spy movie.
"I assumed that information was on a need-to-know basis," he said.
I was gonna go get
Fraser, but instead I called up Duck Man and sent him over to rescue the
Mountie because I wanted to talk to Thatcher.
She brought me up to
date on Fraser's last twenty-four hours; he had been getting around quite a
bit. Then she told me about their aborted mission to tackle the upstairs
neighbor, and I laughed.
"What's so
funny?"
"Nothin'. I
just got this image of you two playing Good Cop, Bad Cop with Koch. I wish
you'd gotten the chance."
"Believe me, so
do I! Constable Fraser thinks his having mentioned a witness to the accident to
Ms. Jones might have been the cause of his murder."
"Nah, Koch was
dead more than twelve hours by then. That don't let Fraser totally off the
hook, though - I think Koch was killed shortly after Fraser left the apartment
building. I think someone was tailing him and stayed behind to clean up
house."
"The third
woman!"
"Maybe." I
checked out The Dragon Lady; the excitement of the chase had put some color in
her cheeks and sparkle in her eyes. I've seen this before, all cops get juiced
up like that when they've got ahold of a case that's on the verge of breaking
open, but on Thatcher it looked particularly good. I was going to give her the
info I had gotten from my friend in the C.I.A.; I would have liked to have
commiserated with her on it - it stands to reason, the one thing I share with
Thatcher is a deep dislike of
Thatcher made like
she wanted to talk to him, but I just shook my head a little and she sat back
in her chair, a worried look on her face. I grabbed his arm and hustled him
into his office; what I had to tell him needed privacy. He was graciously
bidding Detective Huey a pleasant afternoon, thanking him for the ride even as
I shut the door in Jack's face. I pushed him into his chair and put the desk
between us. He seemed a little put out by my rough handling, but sat there,
looking game and probably wondering what I had up my sleeve. "You been
getting around quite a bit," I said, "Thatcher brought me up to speed
about your last twenty-four hours."
"Yes," he
said. "It was under my nose, but I didn't want to believe it."
"What?"
"That she was
murdered." That took me by surprise: not that she'd been murdered, but
that Fraser accepted it so calmly.
"Go on," I
said. I wanted to hear it first-hand from him, now that I'd heard it mostly
second-hand from Thatcher. He told the story pretty much as she had, talking
about a witness who had seen the accident and the third woman. He obviously
placed a lot of importance on this third woman - it was really bothering him,
this loose end - that, and Koch's murder.
"She did not
turn up at the inquest, and the others lied to keep her existence a secret.
Koch was safe until he told me about her - then they murdered him."
"As far as we
know, you were the last person to see him alive." Like I said before, I
asked him if he'd seen anyone on the stairs, or in the street; he hadn't.
"Homicide is gonna stick this one on you, we don't figure this out. The
super told them he saw you there last night - a Mountie accompanied by his
wolf, not like there's a question about who that is. Who else knew about
Koch?"
"I told Carol
Jones." His eyes narrowed, and for a moment I thought he was wincing.
"Is it possible immediately I left her office, she telephoned someone -
perhaps the third woman? They had to silence Koch."
"When you told
Jones about Koch, he was dead already. That night, he went down to the laundry
room to run his skivvies through the gentle cycle, and--" I made a gesture
with my thumb cutting across my throat.
"Ah. I was gone
by then."
"Did you go
straight home after you saw
He shook his head.
"No. Diefenbaker and I got home at about nine-thirty."
"Where were you
before that?"
He said gloomily,
"Wandering around the city, trying to sort things out. It was so beautiful
and quiet."
"Any evidence
of your movements?"
"No."
"One way or
another, you are in big trouble, Benny. Although what they're gonna come up
with for motive, I don't know." It was time for me to tell him, and I
didn't want to. As depressed as he was now, in a few minutes, he was going to
be more depressed. "Benny? I called a friend of mine in the C.I.A. and got
some info on
"She was
involved some sort of illegal activity, wasn't she, Ray."
"Yeah,
Benny."
"Let me guess.
Money-laundering?"
"No. Nothin' so
harmless."
That made him sit
up. "Perhaps - perhaps
"Or
maybe," I said, "somebody wanted a bigger cut of the loot. Thieves
fall out."
To my surprise, he
took that without any anger at all. He said, "We'll never agree about her
motives, Ray."
I could have let it
lay... but I couldn't. He had to know. I said, "I'll give you the facts in
It could not help
but hurt. This kind of racket was a new one on me, never having been outside of
the US of A, where if you get sick, your doctor writes you a prescription and
you get it filled at the corner drugstore, no problem. There are few things in
the world more vile, more disgusting, than the black-market drug dealers who
work places like
Because we're not
talking narcotics here; we're talking, for instance, penicillin. Say it's in
short supply in one of these countries, air-lifted into the country every so
often by a charity or something, so it brings a good price on the street. It
starts off with an orderly maybe stealing some from the hospital he works at to
sell it for the pocket-change it'll bring him. Then it starts getting organized
- the big boys see big money in it, and they start running the racket like a
business. Next step, the big boys begin to think they're maybe not making
enough money, they want the profits bigger, and to get it quicker while the
getting is good. So they start diluting the product. Sometimes, if the patients
are lucky, they're injected with a weak dose of penicillin - if they're lucky,
they only develop an immunity to the drug, or lose a foot or a leg to an infection
that doesn't get cured. Because sometimes the stuff it's cut with is a little
more dangerous than tap water.
That was
"Anna
Sachet!" Fraser looked confused. "But why haven't arrested her
yet?"
"Soon, Benny -
according to my friend, zero hour is almost here."
Sachet had been a
big step for the Feds, because she was in direct communications with
"It's... it's
in
"She was the
boss, Benny; the brains, the big cheese.
He sat there,
looking at his hands. I wished he was a drinking man, I wanted to push a whisky
at him or something; heck, I could have used one myself.
He said slowly,
"They are certain she was the real organizer?"
"They were
pretty thorough, Benny."
"I
suppose," he said, "I suppose she could have been black-mailed into
it, if someone knew who she was and that the police were looking for her."
"It's
possible." I didn't contradict him, I knew he would get around to the
truth eventually, when it didn't hurt so much.
"And they
murdered her to stop her from talking when she was arrested."
"Not
impossible."
"I wouldn't
have liked to have seen her arrested. I don't think she would have been able to
stand being incarcerated again. It would have destroyed her." He folded
the copy of the note and placed it carefully on his desk in a strange little
movement, very precise, as if to say, 'well, that's that.'
"When we find
the third woman...," I said.
"I'd like to
see her arrested," he said. "That bitch."
After he left me,
Fraser went straight out of the Consulate, for one of his walks through the
city; thinking, fitting the pieces together, working out his next move. He
walked through
It must have been
almost
He said, "I've
found out everything."
"Get in
here!" she snapped, "What's wrong with you, Fraser? Don't you know
enough to come in out of this weather?" She was wrapped up in a pink
chenille robe, legs in striped flannel pajama bottoms, her feet bare. Her place
was as tidy as you'd expect the Dragon Lady to keep her lair, except for some
files spread across the coffee table in the living room she ushered him into.
"Now," she
said, while he stood there, fumbling for words, "what is it? Are the
Chicago police after you?"
"No. Well,
possibly. Perhaps. No."
She looked at him
dubiously. "Are you drunk, Constable?"
He was shocked.
"Certainly not!" the meeting seemed to him to have derailed somewhere
along the way. He said, "I'm sorry."
"Why? What did
Detective Vecchio say to you to get you in this state. I thought you'd stop by
my office before you left, imagine my surprise when I found you'd bolted.
Vecchio wouldn't tell me anything - bizarrely, he tapped his nose and told me
the information was on a 'need-to-know' basis. I wonder about that man
sometimes."
Fraser said,
"Detective Vecchio... Ray has been in contact with a friend of his in the
C.I.A. He passed information from them on to me, about Victoria. I've learned
everything. Victoria was involved in corruption on a grand scale."
"You'd better
tell me," Thatcher said. She sat down on the couch and waved him to sit,
too, but he wouldn't, and stood there, swaying slightly beside the coffee table
where her files about the work-a-day, common, everyday occurrences at the
Consulate still lay open. He probably told it to her pretty confusedly,
dwelling chiefly on what had stuck most in his mind - the Rumanian children's ward,
silent, the children dead of pneumonia and poison. He stopped and there was a
moment of silence. Then she said, "Is that it?"
"Yes."
"They proved it
to you beyond a shadow of a doubt?"
"Yes." He
added wearily, "So there you have it, that was Victoria."
"I don't know
why you're so surprised. Anyone who would shoot an animal at point-blank range
for no reason other than to hurt its owner would certainly be capable of that
sort of behavior."
He finally sank into
her couch, bone-tired. He said hopelessly, "I'd always assumed her
accomplice, Jolly, broke into the apartment and shot Diefenbaker."
She gave him a look
of disbelief.
He shrugged. "I
feel as though she never really existed, that I had somehow dreamed her up. Was
she laughing at fools like me all the time?"
"Very probably.
What does it matter now?" she said. "Relax. Take off your coat, for
heaven's sake." Fraser didn't take off his coat, nor did he relax, but he
watched her, listening. She went on, "If Victoria was alive now, she might
be able to explain her actions to you, but she's not, so she can't. You thought
you knew her, but there's always so many things that one doesn't know about a
person, even a person one loves - good things, bad things. There's room enough
in any personality for both. Even in Victoria Metcalfe's."
"Those
children--"
She said angrily,
"For God's sake, stop acting as though you're responsible for the things
she did. She was involved in a drug-selling conspiracy. She did bad things.
What can you do about it now? She's gone, and what you felt for her was outside
of what she did. That was part of you, what you did and felt, Fraser, not her.
It wasn't evil or dirty or even stupid."
He shook his head
and said, "Words of wisdom... but it's only talk, it's not real. I can't
just turn off how I feel. And when I mourn for her, I almost feel...
ashamed." For that moment, exhausted, he actually relaxed into the couch,
his head tilted back against the headrest. "Did you know," he spoke
to the ceiling, not meeting her eyes, "that I actually thought there could
never be another after her? That what we had was meant to last forever? But it
didn't. Because it's you I love now."
She looked at him,
apparently astonished at the turn the conversation had just taken.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. You
don't kill people with fake drugs. You don't lie or cheat or steal. You don't
smuggle diamonds, burn down cabins, or shoot other people's wolves. The most
mean-spirited thing I've ever seen you do is make people stand outside the
Consulate in all kinds of weather. It pales, comparatively."
"But I'm your
commanding officer. It's against the rules...."
"As opposed to
what? Becoming enamored of a murderous criminal who frames your best friend for
her crimes, then allowing her to escape arrest? I repeat, as a breach of the
rules, it pales, comparatively." He tilted his head just enough to look
her in the eye. "I don't think love is meant to necessarily conform to any
rules," he explained carefully to her.
"Oh." That
was all she could come up with. It was late, she'd had a rough day.
Suddenly restless,
he stood and went to the window, pulling aside the curtain to watch the light
snow filter down to the street below. Something odd caught his eye in that
moment - a long shadow that had moved, or maybe it was just a cloud passing in
front of the moon, but whatever it was, it was motionless again.
She said, "You
still love Victoria, don't you?"
"Yes. I suppose
I do in a way. I don't know." He dropped the curtain and said, "I
think I'd better leave now."
He walked rapidly
away from the townhouse, not looking behind him. He knew, he just knew, he was
being followed, and it somehow seemed important to him at the time to get
whoever it was as far from Thatcher as possible. You know, the usual misplaced
Mountie chivalry. At the end of a street, he turned, and there, just around the
corner, was a figure in a bulky coat, pressed against a wall to escape his
notice. Fraser stopped and stared. There was something familiar about the
figure. Perhaps, he thought, it's one of the Chicago P.D.'s detectives of
homicide, shadowing me for my involvement with Mr. Koch's death. Fraser just
stood there, twenty yards away, staring at the silent motionless figure in the
dark side street, who stared right back. A cop? Or maybe not, maybe it was one
of the people who had corrupted Victoria first and then killed her - or maybe
it was even the third woman?
The face was not
familiar to Fraser - he couldn't make out even the merest hint of a feature in
the dark, the snow still coming down in fits and starts; it wasn't the movement
either, because whoever it was stood so still that Fraser began to think the
whole thing was an illusion. You know, like when you're a kid and it's dark in
your room, and your coat hanging on a closet door becomes an ax-murderer who's
going to kill you first, then take care of the rest of your family. He couldn't
bring himself to walk towards the figure, but he couldn't just walk away - so
he called out, "Can I help you?" The figure didn't reply. "Answer,
can't you?" and an answer came, because a window curtain was pulled back
by somebody checking out what idiot was yelling in the street in the middle of
the night, and the light fell straight across the way and lit up the features
of Victoria Metcalfe.
"Do you believe
in ghosts?" Fraser asked me.
"Do you?"
"Yes. Oh,
yes."
"Yeah, well; I
also believe that if a man really wants to see someone again, he might see her
even though she isn't really there."
It was two in the
morning, and Fraser had come straight to me with his story. I only cussed him
out for five minutes for waking me up before I sat down to listen to him. He
looked terrible - the worst I'd ever seen the usually band-box perfect Mountie
look; he needed a shave and had a haunted look in his eyes. I decided to add
yet more joy to his life. "You're gonna love this one, Fraser - once the
facts about Koch's death hit the news, your friend Ms. Jones called up Homicide
and reported to them that you'd been there to see her and told her you'd seen
Koch - she said it was her 'civic duty as a citizen' to report the matter. They
thanked her kindly and told her they'd see to it - no warrants for your arrest
from them yet, I think she weirded them out. Like you're weirding me out right
now."
"I'm sorry, Ray.
If it had been just the face, I wouldn't have worried. I had been thinking
about Victoria, so why wouldn't I see her in a stranger's face? Some woman
walking along a dark street late at night, frightened by a man she thinks might
be following her, pressing herself against a wall, hoping he'll miss her. The
light was turned off again immediately, you see; I only got the one glimpse.
Then whoever it was took off down the street. There was no cross-street for
quite a ways, but I was so shocked, I just stood there, giving whoever it was a
good thirty yards' start. There was a truck parked there, and the figure went
out of sight for a moment. I ran after her. It only took me ten seconds to
reach the truck, but the odd thing was that she never appeared again. There
wasn't anyone there. The street was very dark, but it was empty - the
footprints just... stopped. She couldn't have reached a doorway, I would have
seen it, heard the door creak on its hinges in the cold. What I could see of
the truck, it was covered with snow and untouched. The woman, whoever it was,
had simply vanished."
"Maybe it was a
ghost, Fraze."
"No."
"How can you be
so sure?"
"Because
Victoria was a blonde."
"What?!"
"She was
wearing a thick, bulky down coat, the hood pulled as far over her face as she
could get it. But a wisp of straight, ash blonde hair managed to escape the
confines of the hood. Now, if she were a ghost, why would the ghost have been a
blonde?"
"Nicely
logicked, Sherlock. It cannot have been a ghost because a ghost would not have
dyed its hair. But a felon on the lam... now that's another story." I
wasn't totally convinced, but I was getting there. It wasn't until the attempt
on Margaret Thatcher's life that I was certain.
"Yes, Ray.
Thank you, Ray."
I put on some running
pants over my pajamas, and an old P.A.L. sweatshirt, and snowboots, and threw
on my heaviest winter coat. It wasn't Armani, but then it was almost two-thirty
in the morning, a horrific hour for anyone who isn't a vampire, and I had a
hunch where Victoria had gone. I took the heavy-duty flashlight from under the
sink where Ma keeps it, and traded looks with Diefenbaker, who was curled up in
a box by the kitchen radiator. "You comin'?" His tail thumped a few
times against the side of the box, but then he tucked his head back under the
plaid blanket my sister Frannie had draped over him. I suddenly realized it was
my blanket she'd given him. So that's where it had gotten to.
Thank God it had
stopped snowing. Fraser and I piled into the Riv and took off for the place
where Victoria had vanished. "Over there, Ray," Fraser said and I
pulled up and double-parked. With all the snow heaped up against the curbs,
finding a space would be impossible. He led me to the truck - a big, orange
U-Haul - and I could see that no one had hidden in it, even in the dim light of
a street lamp about six yards away. The snow sticking to the doors of the cab
and on the top of the lock on the back door was smooth and undisturbed. We
walked around to the other side of the truck. The street lamp had been broken,
and it was pitch dark on that side, as well as under the truck. Ma's flashlight
came to the rescue, and I shone it around the tires, then lay down on the icy,
snow-packed ground and threw the beam of light under it. The beam revealed a
round pool of inky darkness under the truck - a manhole, without its cover.
"There ya go!"
Fraser joined me in
the gutter to see. "Good God, I didn't imagine her!"
"I figured it'd
be something weird like this. Does this chick love to mess with your mind, or
what? She ran like hell, then threw herself down and rolled under the truck,
and slid down the open hole. She probably even broke that street light. She
must have known you'd be showing up at Thatcher's eventually and made
arrangements beforehand. "
"But I didn't
know I'd be visiting the Inspector!"
"Yeah? Well,
maybe Victoria knows you better than you know yourself. I hope the sewer rats
get her."
"So, you really
believe it was Victoria?"
"Who else would
pull this kinda shit on you?"
"Then who did
they bury?"
"I don't know.
But we soon will, because we are gonna dig her up again. No, not you and me
with a shovel, Benny. I will get a court order." He looked relieved.
"I bet you Koch wasn't the only inconvenience they got rid of."
"It's a bit of
a shock, Ray."
"You could say
that, Benny." I noticed his face had suddenly gone all wary.
"What?"
"Victoria. As
you said, Ray. She knows about... saw me at Margaret's... at the Inspector's
apartment."
"So if
Victoria's running true to form...."
"...Margaret is
in extreme danger."
The Dragon Lady's
townhouse wasn't very far. There was another car pulling out, so I actually got
a parking spot directly in front. No one answered when we hammered on
Thatcher's door, so we broke it down. Fraser hit it so hard, it splintered
right off the hinges. Except for the broken door, the place looked untouched -
but there was no Thatcher in evidence.
I remembered then
how easy it was to get a space in front of the townhouse and the hair went up
on the back of my neck. "Fraser! That car! The blue Chevy with the
smoked-glass windows!" He raced out of the building, me a half-a-step
behind all the way, and we jumped into the Riv. Fraser slapped the light onto
her roof and we went screaming down the street after them, the siren winning us
no friends in the neighborhood. Driving on hard-packed snow and black ice is no
joy ride at the best of times, but the Riv's new snow tires took the speed like
a champ. The Chevy didn't have much of a head start on us, and we pulled up
close behind them, but how in the hell were we going to force them to pull
over? A high-speed chase under those conditions was insane, but there we were,
doing ninety the wrong way down a one-way street in one of Chicago's prime
residential neighborhoods in the middle of the night. The Chevy took the corner
hard at Batchelder Street, shaving the paint off of a parked Saab, then went
down High towards the water. The windows were too dark to see what was going on
inside, so you can imagine my surprise when the Chevy suddenly pulled over to
the side of the road, smooth as you please. I pulled the Riv over and threw
open the door, then crouched behind it, gun drawn.
"Right! Outa
the car nice 'n easy, you wanna live to see tomorrow!" I bellowed, and the
two doors on the driver's side cracked open in unison. I was doubly surprised
to see a thug carefully decanting himself from behind the wheel, and a
livid-looking Margaret Thatcher, gun pointed in the general direction of the
scumbag's head, sliding out from the back seat. The thug assumed the position
like he was born to it, without being told. "Guess you probably done this
before; huh, buddy?" I patted him down and put the cuffs on him after
relieving him of some hardware.
Fraser was checking
on the goon in the front passenger seat. "He's out cold, Ray. At a guess,
I'd say he was somewhat... concussed."
"There's no
mistaking that noxious car you drive, Detective," Thatcher said.
"When I saw it was you following us, I demanded the driver pull over. When
he ignored me, I insisted. That's when he," and she tilted her chin in the
direction of the car's napping passenger, "pulled a gun on me. I relieved
him of it, and repeated my request that the driver pull over, this time with
the threat of reprisal if he didn't comply."
"So you just
pulled over, huh?" I asked the cuffed thug. "What did you think she
was gonna do, put a bullet in your head when the car's goin' ninety miles an
hour?"
The thug was white
as a sheet. "It wasn't my head she was pointin' the gun at, at the
time," he said. Ah, yes. I guess there are some things a man just doesn't
want to take chances with.
"Resourceful,"
Fraser said. He held up a perfect counterfeit of a cop I.D. that he'd found in
the breast pocket of the sleeping thug. "I assume they mis-represented
themselves to gain your initial compliance?"
"They said they
were with the Chicago police department, and that they'd come to get me
because... because you'd...," to my surprise, as God is my witness,
Thatcher, Dragon Lady Supreme, actually choked on her words here, "...and
I remembered the odd way you acted when you left my apartment, how distraught
you were. They said you'd taken Detective Vecchio's gun and... and.... They were
taking me to the morgue to identify your body."
Victoria's main
talent, I think, is the art of knowing exactly how to push someone's buttons.
Without a word,
Fraser came around the car and very gently took her into his arms. She didn't
cry, just stood there, face pressed against his chest, left arm looped around
his back, right arm pointed at the ground, the gun she took off of Vickie's
goon still held loosely in her grip.
"Hey,
Benny," I said, "is now a good time to tell her we trashed her front
door?"
I was at my desk,
finishing up the report on the attempted kidnapping, and misspelling every
other word due to getting about three hours sleep last night. Fraser had
somehow found a moment to shave in the changing room, and had taken Thatcher to
breakfast and then home after she'd filed charges. I would not have forgiven
him that breakfast if he hadn't shown up with a hot meatball sandwich and a
large coffee for me - the breakfast of the gods. He looked a world better than
he had when he'd knocked at my door in the middle of the night with his ghost
story. I rubbed some grit out of my eyes. "You know, Victoria is a cop's
nightmare - a crook who's aces at planning things in advance, with clever back
up contingency plans; plus she knows how to take advantage of last-minute
opportunities and think fast on her feet when things go wrong. She's Moriarity
in a dress, except - she screws up over you, every time. With you out of the
picture, Benny, this chick could take over the world. Did you ever think of
that?"
"No, Ray, I
hadn't. I wish I could speak to her."
"I have a
feeling Victoria won't be able to resist giving you the chance now," I
said.
"I still find
it hard to believe. I only saw her face for the barest moment. I thought my
heart would stop in my chest."
"She's got to
know the Feds are closing in. Why else the phony funeral? Now that she's been
found out, I can't believe she'll tap-dance her way out of this one. She might
think she can, though. That'll get her killed."
"The only
person who has the remotest chance of getting her to give herself up is me,
Ray."
"Remote is
right. You know too much, she'll kill you."
"No, she won't.
And I don't want to play decoy, Ray. I just want to speak to her. I'll arrange
it with Ms. Sachet. She gave me her address."
"You're an
idiot! Without backup, there's no way to protect you."
"I want to
clear this whole thing up," Fraser said, "but no wires, no
undercover. I'll talk to her. That's all."
It had dawned a
cold, clear day, not a cloud in the sky, and a sharp breeze made his eyes water
a bit as he approached the street of turn-of-the-century mansions Sachet lived
on. He didn't call her, gave her no warning of his visit. There was nothing to
fear, but all the same, in this huge, empty street, where all you could hear
was the wind whistling in your ears and your own official Mountie boots
creaking with cold, it was hard for him not to get paranoid and start looking
around for a sniper.
He had no trouble
finding Sachet's house, and when he rang the bell the door was opened quickly,
as though Sachet was expecting a visitor, by Sachet herself.
"Oh!"
Sachet said, "Heavens! It's you, Ben," and she made a move with her
hand to her head that stopped before it got there. Fraser had been wondering
what it was that was different about her, and now he knew. She wasn't wearing
her wig. Her dark brown hair was rather short, cut close to her head - a
perfectly nice head of hair, and he wondered why she bothered with the wig at
all. She said, "It would have been better had you telephoned you were
coming over, Ben. You almost missed me; I have to go out now."
"May I come in
for a moment?"
"Sure, sugar.
C'mon in."
In the hall on a
table was what looked like a large, round hat box with the words "Suisse
Natural Hair Replacements - weaving, repair, cleaning" printed on it, and
a pink receipt stuck to it. His sharp eyes caught that the box contained one
curly brunette wig that had been cleaned and returned with some slight but necessary
re-weaving done to it, according to the receipt. It suddenly occurred to Fraser
how useful a curly brunette wig might have been on the day of the accident. He
looked up and saw in the hall mirror a look of hatred and fear on the face of
Sachet as she caught him noticing the box, but when he turned, it had been
replaced by a flirtatious smile. "A girl has her beauty secrets," she
said.
"Never
mind," he said, all business. "I am here to see Victoria."
"Victoria?"
"I need to
speak with her."
"Darlin', have
you gone mad?"
"I am in a
hurry, ma'am, so let us assume that I have. If you should see Victoria - or her
ghost - please let her know that I want to talk to her. A ghost shouldn't be
afraid of a man - surely it's the other way around? I will be waiting on top of
the Sears tower for the next three hours - if you can get in touch with the
dead. I will be alone. I would appreciate it if she would extend to me that
same kindness?" He added, "Remember, I was Victoria's secret
love."
Sachet said nothing,
but somewhere, in a room off the hall, someone cleared her throat. Fraser threw
open a door; he half expected to see the dead rise yet again, but it was only
little Dr. Kartnerstrasse who rose from a kitchen chair.
"Dr.
Kartnerstrasse," Fraser said. Dr. Kartnerstrasse in her tidy gray business
suit looked oddly out of place in the feminine-looking kitchen, with its frilly
yellow curtains and matching table-cloth, and pink striped wallpaper. The
remains of lunch littered the kitchen table.
Fraser said to
Sachet, "Please tell the doctor about my madness. She might be able to
make a diagnosis. And remember the place - the top of the Sears tower. Or do
ghosts only rise at night?" He left the house.
For hours he waited,
walking up and down to keep warm, on the observation deck of the World's
Tallest Building. Despite the cold, there were people, sightseers and tourists,
who milled around, getting an eyeful of the best city on the face of the
planet, until they were driven back inside to the warmth of the souvenir counter
and the bank of elevators. Fraser wondered who would come for him. Was there
enough love left in Victoria for her to come alone, or would she send more of
her hired goons? It was obvious from the attempted kidnapping of Margaret
Thatcher that he still had a certain pull on Victoria. As the hours passed, he
began to wonder, "Am I really mad? Is this whole thing an invention of my
mind? Are they digging up Victoria's body now in Central City Cemetery?"
Suddenly, oddly, as
it sometimes does at the tops of the world's tallest skyscrapers, it began to
snow... upwards. It was a freak weather condition - it wasn't snowing at all
over the rest of Chicago - just at the top of the tower. The tourists oohed and
aahed their delight. Fraser shivered and waited. Was it fear or excitement that
made his heart beat faster - or just memory, because life had always somehow
gotten realer, more vivid, when Victoria showed up, just as she showed up now.
"Ben."
"Hello,
Victoria."
Don't picture
Victoria as some sort of sexy-looking criminal bimbo. Don't think of her as a
beauty queen, or a delicate flower, or made up like a femme fatale to twist
men's minds and make them do her bidding. Fraser has a picture of Victoria that
he doesn't know I know he has. It's not a bad shot of her; a candid shot
someone, I don't know who, took of her when she wasn't looking. She's actually
a nice-looking woman; lots of long, curly brown hair floating around her head,
pale skin, kind of tall and bony for my taste; but still, an attractive woman, with
cheekbones and dark eyes. She's standing outside in front of a brick wall,
looking off to the side with a smile on her face, a real smile, you can see it
in her eyes - maybe she's looking at Benny; like I said, I don't know when the
picture was taken. An attractive, but still somehow ordinary-looking woman.
She didn't make the
mistake of trying to kiss him, probably didn't want to chance he might pull
away, but she put a hand on his arm and said, "How are things?"
"We have to
talk, Victoria."
"You didn't say
how you like my new look, Ben." She reached up and smoothed a blonde curl
over her ear, and the snow swirled around her head. As Fraser had noted the
night before, her mass of brown hair had been cut off, and what was left had
been bleached an ash-blonde color. "I tried straightening it, but it just
keeps curling up again."
"You still look
like Victoria to me."
"I'm not sure
how to take that," she laughed.
Fraser looked away
from her, scanning the Chicago skyline that stood out clear in the cold winter
sunshine. "I was at your burial."
"That was
pretty clever of me, don't you think?"
"Not so clever
of you to stage it in Chicago - anywhere else, and I'd never have found out
about it until it was too late to do any investigating."
"I suppose part
of me wanted you to know. I wanted my death to hurt you. I wanted to see how
much you still loved me."
"Were you going
to cut me in on the spoils of your business ventures?"
"My offer is
still open, if that's what you mean." She smiled at Fraser, who could
remember her smiling just that way the time she'd sent him off to deal with
diamond thieves who then tried to kill him; sure of herself, sure of what he'd
do for her.
Fraser said,
"Have you ever visited the children's hospital? Have you seen any of your
victims?"
"My
victims? Don't be so melodramatic - you're as bad as Lilly. It's not like Anna
and I sat there and measured out the drugs into the vials ourselves. We hired a
local crew in Rumania to handle the hands-on part of the business - you know the
expression, 'it's so hard to find good help nowadays'? Those idiots. If it
weren't for their greediness, the authorities would never have decided to make
an example of us. Oh, now - don't look at me that way! Of course, it's terrible
what happened to those poor children. But it really wasn't my fault."
Victoria fished around in her pocket for a quarter, found one, dropped it into
one of those pay-view binoculars they have on the observation deck, and took a
look at the toy landscape below. "Oh look, Ben! The people look just like
ants down there! Ben, if I were to give you a box with a button on the top, and
tell you that every time you pressed that button, an ant would stop moving, but
you'd get a million dollars, how many times would you press it? Would you
really tell me to keep my money? Without hesitation? Or would you calculate
just how many ants the world could afford to spare?" She turned from the
eye-piece and smiled conspiratorially at him. "Tax-free, Ben."
"You're
finished now. The authorities know about you."
"They won't
catch me, Ben. You'll see."
"They're
exhuming your grave even as we speak. Who will they find?"
"Nadia
Dumansky," Victoria replied simply. She put her hand up as if to catch the
snow, saying, "Look at the sky!"
"Why did you
try to kidnap Inspector Thatcher?"
That brought a
frown. "I suppose I could say it was just for old time's sake, but I must
be honest, Ben. I resent even the suggestion that I'm so easy to replace in
your affections."
"What would you
have done to her?"
The smile was back,
almost flirting. "Well, we'll never know for sure now, will we? Until the
next time, of course."
Like I said,
Victoria is good at pushing buttons. Fraser was suddenly as angry as he'd ever
been in his life, as angry as the time Gerrard handed him a bankbook and told
him his father was dirty. "I'd like to pick you up and throw you off this
building," he said.
"But you won't,
darling. I trust you, Ben. Anna tried to persuade me not to come, but I know
you. Then she tried to persuade me to, well, arrange a little accident for you.
She told me it would be easy in a crowd like this, just take a second, and her
man would be back on the elevator before anyone even realized you were
dead."
"I could take
you in right now."
"If you touch
me, I'll scream. They'd grab you, not the frightened woman you attacked. And
I'm gone in the confusion." Fraser didn't answer this, but he didn't move,
either. The crowd shuffled around them, oblivious, enjoying the snow flurry. He
knew that if Victoria screamed, they would come to her aid. They didn't know
they were doomed to be victims, if not Victoria's, then someone else's. She
sighed and put her hand on his arm. "Darling. What fools we are, talking
this way. I'm leaving Chicago. Come with me. We would be so good together. You
know we would."
"What about Ms.
Sachet and Dr. Kartnerstrasse."
"Don't worry
about them. They're nothing." She had a thought. "How's Ray doing?
And his family? I never thanked them for putting me up in their home."
"Keep away from
them, Victoria."
"Give Ray my
regards, Ben. If you change your mind, you can reach me through Anna, but don't
leave it too long." She moved away from him towards the elevators, waving
gaily until she disappeared into the crowd. Fraser suddenly called after her,
"Don't trust me, Victoria," but it was too late, she was gone.
I met Fraser in the
Riv a few blocks from the Sears tower. He gave me the scoop on what had just
happened. "If we're gonna pick up Victoria, we have to act fast," I
said to him. "The C.I.A. is hot to put the moves on Sachet and
Kartnerstrasse, and if they pick them up, we've lost our link to
Victoria." Fraser looked like he was on another planet, so I poked him in
the arm. "Earth to Mountie; come in, Mountie. What's with you, Benny?"
Like I didn't know.
"What? What do
you want me to do?"
This was not good. I
knew I had to get him in the program, but set it up so a last-minute hesitation
on his part wouldn't sink us. See, I trust Fraser totally on everything -
except for Victoria. I didn't want to put him and us in a position where a
decision on his part would be the difference between success or failure - or
get someone killed. "The body in the coffin isn't Victoria's - we'll put
in a formal request to the C.I.A. to arrest her, that'll keep the paperwork
straight. But there isn't a hope in hell they can track her down - only you can
bring her out into the open, Benny. Think you can do it?"
"Be your decoy?
I think I can handle that."
"What do you
mean 'your decoy'? - Benny, you have to be a part of this, not just used by us;
you have to take some ownership for this one. It can't be just me."
He nodded tiredly.
"Ray, you've forgotten Carol Jones - we can't prove she's a part of the
drug racket, but she did give false testimony about Victoria's death. She might
even be liable as an accessory after the fact in Nadia Dumansky's murder."
"Oh, she's in
this up to her sanctimonious eyeballs; you bet."
"I have an idea
as to how to do this in such a way that it seems real enough to draw Victoria
out, as well as put her off her guard."
"I'm all
ears."
"I cannot go to
Ms. Sachet - I suspect that any message I might give her would not be relayed
to Victoria, but might result in my own death at the hands of her operatives
instead. But Ms. Jones - I can go to her with a story that I must get in touch
with Victoria, warn her that the C.I.A. is closing in on both her and her
cohorts. I will tell her that I can't go to Anna Sachet or Dr. Kartnerstrasse,
they're under C.I.A. surveillance and I'm wanted by the police for conspiracy
to commit first-degree murder, with regards to Mr. Koch. This necessitates my
leaving the city with Victoria. Does that sound authentic to you?"
"It has that
ring of truth. I've actually had my eye out for a warrant for your arrest since
yesterday; knock on wood nobody in Homicide gets cute on us."
"I can arrange
to meet Victoria at some place...," he seemed at a loss for words here, as
if his plan had brought him along this far, and no further.
"We'll find a
place. We'll get our people in there long before she gets there; it'll work
Benny. We'll pick her up, and nobody gets hurt. You don't have to be there,
Benny; we can pick her up without you being there."
He shook his head.
"That won't work and you know it, Ray. It's just that - I told Victoria
not to trust me, but she didn't hear me. I wish she'd heard me. This wouldn't
be quite the betrayal it is if she had."
"Can you do
this, Benny? Are you sure?"
I had tossed the
report from my friend in the C.I.A. onto the front seat and forgotten about it
- I didn't mean to leave it there for Fraser to find, but as Freudian slips go,
it wasn't a bad idea to bring home the facts to him one last time. He picked up
the folder and weighed it in his hand.
"Yes," he
said. "I'm sure."
The arrangements
went like clock-work. The Feds jumped at a chance to get at Victoria, and
agreed to hold off hauling in Kartnerstrasse and Sachet until Fraser had a
chance to talk to Jones. I think Jones shocked Fraser. She greeted him without
embarrassment - she was practically condescending. "How nice to see you,
Constable Fraser. I'm pleased you were able to work out your little problem
with Chicago Homicide."
"I
wasn't," Fraser said.
"I hope you
don't bear me any ill-will, about my letting them know you'd been to see that
poor Mr. Koch. I figured that if you were innocent, you'd clear yourself right
away, and if you were guilty, well, the fact that I liked you shouldn't stand
in the way of justice. A citizen has her duty."
"Like giving
false evidence at an inquest?"
Jones said,
"Oh, dear, I'm afraid you are mad at me, aren't you. Look at it this way,
young man, any citizen of a country, owing allegiance to - "
"The police dug
up the body. They'll be after Dr. Kartnerstrasse and Ms. Sachet and possibly
after you as well. I want you to warn Victoria."
"I don't
understand...."
"Yes, you
do." Fraser laid his trap and got out of there quick. He couldn't stand
looking at that phony humanitarian face any longer than he had to.
And now all we had
to do was bait the trap and haul in our prey. We had gone over maps of the
Chicago sewer system and had to put the kibosh on several likely meeting spots
for one reason or another, when Fraser had a brainstorm. The restaurant he'd
met Anna Sachet at a day ago - The Old Vienna. Victoria had to know about that
meeting, so if Fraser suggested she meet him there, it would sound more like it
was his last-minute inspiration instead of some kind of set-up. There was a
manhole that linked to the main line literally around the corner of the place,
so she'd think she could get in and out right under our noses even if he was
being tailed. She'd take the chance, I knew she would. All she had to do was
come up through the ground, walk twenty yards to the restaurant, grab Fraser,
and sink back into the sewer like the rat that she was. We'd get her before she
went underground again, that would be the easiest. Also less dangerous to
Fraser.
So Fraser sat in the
big bay window of The Old Vienna, drinking cup after cup of coffee for hours.
We had operatives as customers, as waiters, the girl who sat people at their
tables was ours. They were the lucky ones - those of us who were known by
Victoria were stuck outside, and it was cold as a bitch out there. Me and Jack
Huey were well out of the way around the block, holed up in the Riv; Welsh was
in the C.I.A.'s communications vehicle - a big moving van full of more computer
hardware than Bill Gates' playroom. We couldn't see what was going on, but we
had a wire on Fraser and could talk to him, keep his spirits up. He wasn't
talking back, if she saw him talking to his lapel, she'd know something fishy
was going down. Which is why I nearly passed out when I heard:
"Excuse me,
sir? Which way is it to the men's room?"
"Fraser!!! What
are you doin'?"
I knew he'd walked
away from the bay window by then, because he took the chance to say, "I
don't wish to be indelicate, Ray, but I have had six cups of coffee over the
course of two and one-half hours. What do you think I am doing?"
Well, I couldn't
argue with him there. "Just get back to your seat as quick as you
can!"
Fraser's voice said
suddenly, "My God, Ray! She's here!" and then the wire went crazy;
snap, crackle, pop. I yelled to Welsh over the radio, "Give the signal to
guard all the manholes!" and I heard him telling the troops, "We're
going down." We jumped out of the Riv and took off for the restaurant,
Jack going one way, me the other.
This is what
happened: Fraser went down the stairs to find the restroom; there's a hallway
down there with the men's room on one side and the ladies on the other. At the
end of the hall is the building's furnace room, the door with an
"Employees Only" sign on it over one of those little glass windows
with chicken-wire running through it. Slick Vickie'd slipped through the
delivery bay in back and come through the furnace room, and had got there just
in time to look through the little window to see Fraser telling me off. Talk
about your lousy timing. When he caught sight of her turning away from the
window, he yelled she was there and took off after her. All of the pipes in the
furnace room was why the wire went nuts - the metal interfered with sound
transmission.
Fraser jumped down
from the building's loading dock and met Jack Huey. If he'd pointed her out
then it would have been an easy shot, but to Fraser it wasn't Metcalfe,
international drug runner, escaping down the street, it was Victoria. He
hesitated just long enough for Vickie to turn the corner; then he yelled out,
"There she goes," but Vickie had already shot our guy by the manhole
and escaped down it. After making sure the agent wasn't hurt too badly - he had
a bullet-proof vest on, thank God - Jack and Fraser followed her down the hole,
like Alice after the White Rabbit.
Since I met Fraser
almost two years ago, he's dragged me down below the streets of this city more
times than I would care to mention - it's a strange world down there. You don't
realize it, but we live over a dark domain of rushing rivers and empty, echoing
concrete-and-brick caverns; it's like a science fiction movie or something, but
with a bad smell. I was with Welsh over in the main sewer - it's enormous, with
waterfalls crashing so loud, you can't hear yourself think. Fraser and Jack
went down the metal ladder to find themselves in a little side-canal, it was
quiet and the water was shallow, with all kinds of disgusting scum floating
gently on the surface - though they could hear the rushing waters of the main
channel in the distance. Jack shone his flashlight along the edge of the water
and Fraser saw which way Vickie had gone; she'd left a clear trail through the
surface scum of old orange peels, cigarette stubs, used condoms, and God knows
what else; it was as unmistakable as if she'd left footprints in the mud. Jack
pulled his gun at this point, he had the flashlight in one hand and the gun in
the other. "Get behind me, man," he said to Fraser.
"Why?"
At that instant,
Jack must have experienced one of those dealing-with-Fraser moments that make
me so grouchy. "Because you don't have a gun, man!" he said, sounding
exasperated. He kept the light on the scum-trail, and they inched along,
keeping to the shallow edge, up to their knees in filthy, cold water. He went
on, "What is it with this bitch? She hasn't got a chance in hell. The
manholes are all guarded and the streets are cordoned off. All we have to do is
make a sweep through the side-passages from the manholes." He handed off
the flashlight to Fraser for a second and took his walkie-talkie from his
breast pocket, listening in at a pre-arranged frequency to the search party for
a moment, then stuck it back in his pocket. Taking his flashlight from Fraser,
Jack said, "Man, oh, man - it's like an army is down here now. The cops,
the Feds - " At that moment, the shot came. The flashlight flew out of
Jack's hand and fell into the water. "Son of a goddamn bitch!" he
yelped.
"My God, are
you hurt?"
"Nah, she must
have shot at the light, the bullet just nicked my hand. Here, Fraser - take
this other flashlight, I'm gonna wrap up my hand. No, don't shine it. She's
right up ahead of us." Fraser took the light and Jack used his
walkie-talkie to let everyone know where Victoria was. The noise of the shot
still reverberated throughout the entire sewer system, so I think everyone
already had an idea that something had happened.
"I'm going up
there to talk to her," Fraser said.
"You crazy,
man? Vecchio will kill me you get blown away! Fraser, get back here,
dammit!"
Fraser didn't
listen. He waded along towards where Victoria was hidden, towards the rushing
waters of the main channel, Jack cursing softly close behind him. Fraser called
out, "Victoria!" and the name echoed down the tunnel, "Victoria,
Victoria, Victoria!" Nothing. He called again, "Victoria! Come on
out! It's no use!"
A voice alarmingly
close made them hug the wall. "Is that you, Ben?" it called.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Come on out
with your hands up!"
"I don't have a
flashlight, Ben. I can't see a thing."
"Don't trust
her, Fraser," Jack said.
"Go back,
Detective Huey. She won't shoot at me," Fraser said. "Victoria, I'm
going to shine the light. Give yourself up, it's the only way." He turned
the light on, and twenty feet away, at the edge of the light and the water,
Victoria stepped into view. "Put your hands up, Victoria." Victoria
raised her hand and fired. The shot ricocheted against the wall a foot from
Fraser's head, and he heard Jack cry out. At that same moment, a huge searchlight
was turned on, illuminating the whole cavern, catching Victoria in its beam,
bright enough for Fraser to see the staring eyes of Jack Huey slumped at the
water's edge. Our little army had arrived on the scene, finally.
Fraser dropped to
his side, but it was no use, Jack was dead. "Don't shoot!" I yelled
to the Feds around me over the noise of the water, "you'll hit
Fraser!" Victoria was blinded by the light; she pressed herself up against
the wall, her hand in front of her eyes, trying to suss out what to do next.
Her only choices were to go towards us, or back through Fraser's tunnel. So
naturally, she found herself a third choice - she took a flying leap into the
deep central rushing stream. When the Feds turned their lights on her, she was
submerged, and the current of the sewer carried her rapidly on, past Jack's
body, out of the searchlight into the dark. What makes someone, without hope,
do anything she can to cling for just a few more seconds to freedom?
Fraser stood at the
edge of the searchlight beam, staring downstream. He had Jack's gun in his hand
now, and he was the only one who could fire with safety. I thought I saw a
movement and called out to him, "There! Shoot! Shoot, dammit!" He
lifted Jack's gun and fired. A cry of pain came back up the tunnel; a cry of
blame, a call for help. "You got her!" I yelled out, wading up to
where Fraser stood over Jack's body. "We got her, Huey," I whispered
to Jack, closing his staring eyes.
When I looked up,
Fraser was out of sight in the darkness. I screamed his name and got nothing
but my own voice back at me, echoing over and over, until his name was lost in
the rush and roar of the underground river. That's when I heard a third shot.
Fraser told me
later, "I walked downstream to find her. I didn't use the light, I was
afraid she's shoot at the beam. She must have been struck by my bullet just at
the entrance of a side passage - she had crawled up the passage to the foot of
an iron ladder. Only a few yards above her head was an open manhole, and
freedom, but she hadn't the strength to make the climb, and even if she had,
there were Federal agents waiting for her above. She must have known that, but
something in her made her try, doomed to failure though she was. She was just
making the attempt, crawling up out of the dark towards the light, when I came
into view down the tunnel. She lifted her gun at me and smiled - Ray! she
smiled! - and I shot her dead with Detective Huey's gun. And now I'm left
wondering if she would have killed me, or if it was her way of getting me to
kill her."
"Forget about
it, Benny," I said.
Benny said, "I
never shall."
A thaw came to
After the coffin had
been lowered, Thatcher wandered away from the grave site for a moment, making
like she was interested in reading epitaphs, but really giving me and Benny a
second alone. He reached down and picked up a handful of dirt, and dropped it
on the coffin. Then he stood there, gazing down into the grave, that stupid
little muscle in his cheek twitching.
"Benny, for
Christ's sake, snap out of it! You survived; you're alive, your Mountie honor
intact! It was her sick game, but you won it!"
"I haven't
won," he said. "I've lost."
There was no arguing
with him, so I just shrugged. "The Riv's parked up the road. Want a
lift?"
"No," he
said, "I'll take Margaret's car back." I watched him striding off
after Thatcher. He caught up to her and they walked side by side. I don't think
he said a word to her; but before they turned up the road out of my sight, her
hand was through his arm. Jeez, I wonder where that's going, and do I really
want to hear about it. He's a moron, a Pollyanna who insists on thinking the
best of people, that anyone can be redeemed - okay, so ninety-nine percent of the
time he's right, but look out for that one-percent when he's not.
Oh, and Wiener?
Wiener is still arguing with Boxbush Books about Fraser's expenses. They say
they won't pay up for his book tour since they figure they're already paying
his hospital expenses in
Fin.