A VICTIM OF CONVENIENCE
Also by John Ballem
Novels
The Devil's Lighter
The Dirty Scenario
The Judas Conspiracy*
* Reissued as Alberta Alone
The Moon Pool
Sacrifice Play
The Marigot Run
Oilpatch Empire
Death Spiral
The Barons
Manchineel
Murder as a Fine Art
The Oil Patch Quartet
Poetry
Lovers & Friends
Non-Fiction
The Oil and Gas Lease in Canada
A Victim of
Convenience
John Ballem
A Castle Street Mystety
Copyright © John Ballem, 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for
purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission
to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Barry Jowett
Copy-editor: Andrea Waters
Design: Alison Carr
Printer: Transcontinental
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ballem, John, date
A victim of convenience / John Ballem.
ISBN-10: 1-55002-617-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-55002-617-7
I. Title.
PS8553.A45V52 2006C813'.54C2006-901334-9
123451009080706
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book.
The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify
any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada
Printed on recycled paper
For Grace,
who shares my affection for this toddling town.
chapter one
"Another one!" The rookie cop who had been on patrol in the southwest sector gave up the struggle to sound professional and, hand clapped to mouth, bolted away to retch helplessly into the shrubbery.
Chris Crane, the primary in the serial killer case, tactfully looked away. As required by protocol, both he and the young officer remained behind the yellow tape while the forensic unit checked out the scene. In the course of his career, most recently five years as a sergeant in charge of the Forensic Crime Scenes Unit, then as a lead detective in Homicide, he had been at the scene of many murders. Still, he had to swallow hard against the gorge rising in his own throat as he looked at the victim's naked, mutilated body. In life, she must have been beautiful—a knockout. Except for the half-shut eyes, glassy and suffused with blood, her face was unmarked, the same as in the other three killings.
The victim was tanned and fit; Chris visualized those long, lovely legs bounding lithely over a tennis court. She would have been somewhere in her mid-thirties. The deep stab wounds low in her chest were the ones that had killed her, but the killer hadn't been satisfied with that. The nipple had been sliced off her right breast; the blood, now dry, had trickled down first to fill, then overflow, her navel. Worse, far worse, was the dark red blood matting the light brown pubic hair and spreading obscenely across her inner thighs. In a mocking gesture, the killer had clasped her hands together as if in prayer and placed them at rest on her blood-streaked abdomen.
Turning away from the corpse, Chris saw Brenda, looking chagrined, coming back to join him. He motioned her to follow him as he went over to question the witness who had found the body and called 911 on his cell.
The witness, a stockbroker, had been walking his dog in this remote part of the park, as he always did first thing in the morning. His name was James Stanley. Separated from his wife, he lived by himself in a condo on the Old Banff Coach Road and worked at Loyalty Capital, a well-known downtown brokerage firm.
Stanley explained that walking the dog in the park was the last thing he did before leaving for the office. That would account for the shirt and the tie he had loosened for comfort. It was early because he had to be at his desk when the markets opened in Toronto at seven-thirty Calgary time.
"It was Duke." At the mention of his name, the Lab sitting obediently at his master's side wagged his tail, making a swishing noise in the scrub grass. Stanley patted the broad head and continued. "He was off leash, which he's not supposed to be ..." As he said this, the broker paused to look somewhat askance at the detective. Chris gave him an understanding smile and motioned for him to continue.
"That's why we were up here, where almost nobody ever comes. Then Duke started to bark. He doesn't bark all that much. Labs usually don't as a rule. And there was something about the way he was barking. Deep, way down in his throat. More like a growl. I could tell he had found something."
Nodding his thanks, Chris closed his notebook and looked across at the Crime Scenes team. He had worked with both members. In fact, Gwen Staroski had been his protegé. She was intelligent, sure, but it was her powers of observation and her perceptiveness that made her so valuable. Chris smiled to himself as he recalled the Murray murder: Gwen had been the one to recognize the possibility that the blue paper clip, which had seemed so promising a clue, might have been deliberately planted by the suspect. Short, with a broad, plain-featured face and stocky body, she was no looker, but she had this great intuitive sense about people, which Chris had come to rely on. Despite the fact that they were now in different units, he had been able to second her because of the urgent need to solve the case that was holding the city in the grip of terror. Now it seemed she was going to return the favour.
Holding a plastic bag containing white coveralls, latex gloves,