The blue pages of the telephone directory listed a number for Missing Persons Coordinator under Calgary Police Services. That was the place to start, but as soon as he began to describe Adrienne, he was told to hang on while his call was transferred.
"Homicide." The voice was brisk and business-like.
"I want to report a person who seems to have gone missing."
"Describe the person. But first could I have your name and address, sir."
There was a moment's silence when Ingram finished describing Adrienne in words that he realized could have come from a besotted lover. Then, in a voice softened with professional sympathy, his listener said, "It's possible we might have some information for you, sir. I'm afraid I must ask you to visit the medical examiner's office and view a body. You may be able to identify it."
Ingram only half listened as he wrote down the street address. Adrienne was dead. That, and only that, would explain her failure to show up for the meeting. The detective offered to send a car and driver for him. "That won't be necessary. I can make my own way there. But I have to talk to some people first."
chapter two
So the victim was a lawyer. A partner in the largest law firm in the city. Chris Crane sighed and put the two-page report down on his grey metal desk. That was the sum of everything useful they had learned in the twenty-four hours following the discovery of the body. Homicide, along with the other sections of Major Crimes—Robbery, Sex Crimes, and Child Abuse—was housed on the tenth floor of the police headquarters at 133 6th Avenue SE. Originally the building had been the head office of Dome Petroleum. Subsequently it had been acquired by the city and renamed Andrew Davison in honour of the man who had been a long-serving mayor back in the 1930s and ‘40s. A bronze plaque commemorated his career in civic politics. It was common for police officers to say they were "heading to Andrew Davison" when they were on their way to headquarters.
Homicide's complement of eight detectives sat at small desks, each partially separated from the others by forty-five-centimetre-high partitions. Three rows of unoccupied desks at the back were reserved for occasions when it was necessary to bring in temporary reinforcements. The only office cubicle belonged to the staff sergeant, whose work was purely administrative. The plan was to promote the interchange of ideas between the detectives. It worked for the most part, but there were times when Chris found himself longing for the small office that had been his when he was the sergeant in charge of the Forensic Crime Scenes Unit. Never more so than when the raucous voice of Steve Mason boomed out from his desk, two over from and one behind Chris's. As it was doing now, dressing down a snitch for not coming up with the name of a dead prostitute.
Mason resented Chris and made no secret of it. He was openly contemptuous of the fact that Chris was a lawyer—"a member of the bar, for Christ's sake!"—who didn't practise law and had no damn business being a policeman. It didn't help that Chris was known to have private means and to enjoy an upscale lifestyle. Gwen had once tried to explain to Mason that Chris loved working with and solving puzzles and mysteries. And what better way to do that than as a detective? The thrill of the chase and the attendant risks and human consequences would make it even more irresistible for someone like Chris Crane.
"That's what made him so brilliant at decoding a crime scene, and why he'll be so good at this," she had told the skeptical Mason shortly after Chris's transfer to Homicide had been announced.
"Aw, don't give me that bullshit! You've got the hots for the guy. That's your problem, Staroski," Mason had replied.
Deep in thought, Chris heard, rather than saw, Gwen opening the bulletproof door of the Homicide section. Over Mason's protests that it was a breach of security, he had arranged for her to have a temporary pass. Smiling, he logged off the Net and a colour photo of his parrot, Nevermore, appeared on the screen saver.
Returning his smile, Gwen could see how Mason could have thought she had the hots for Chris. He was devastatingly attractive in a dark, intense sort of way, lean, blue-jowled despite scrupulously shaving every morning. His eyes, grey and piercing under well-marked eyebrows, were his best feature. Robyn, his ex-wife, frustrated by his single-minded dedication to solving crimes, had given up on him a year ago. That's when he had acquired the parrot. Blanche wouldn't like her thinking like this. But Gwen wouldn't give up what she and Blanche shared for anything. Certainly not for a man, however attractive. She and Blanche were so lucky to have found each other. She felt a momentary inner glow at the thought of the cozy apartment they shared.
These thoughts running through one part of her mind didn't distract Gwen from the business at hand. "Do you think Vinney might have been killed because of something connected with her work?" she asked Chris.
"It's possible," he answered slowly. "I guess anything is possible at this stage. We don't know anything about her personal life, apart from the fact that she was a highly successful lawyer. She was single and lived alone. But we don't know yet whether she had a boyfriend, or boyfriends. I've been sitting here thinking about that cross."
"Wondering about it being on the right hand, and if that means anything?"
Chris's nod turned into a grimace as they heard Mason heave himself to his feet and come over to join them. Another disadvantage to the open seating concept was that it allowed everyone to know what was going on in every file. The serial killer case had by far the highest profile, and Mason couldn't stay out of it. Indeed, he thought that he, not Chris, should have been in charge of the investigation.
There was nothing to be done about Mason, not at the moment anyway, so Chris answered Gwen's question. "It's got to mean something. In some cultures, Arabian mostly, the left hand is considered unclean."
"That's what they wipe their asses with," Mason surprised them by saying.
"Right. The cross being on the left hand in the previous cases could have been an act of exorcism on the part of the killer."
Hitching his belly to hang more comfortably over his belt, Mason said, "Or it could be just the guy getting his rocks off. You ask me, which you don't, this is a pure sex crime. The guy can't get it up, so he takes it out on women. That's how he gets his jollies. The cross is part of that mumbo-jumbo. Fantasy, like Mavis says. For once that profiler bullshit of hers makes some sense. It don't matter where the cross is. All the killer cares about is that it's there."
"You have a point," conceded Chris, pleased that for once he could agree with the burly detective. There wasn't room on his desk to spread the photos out, so he held them in his hand. Flipping through them, he asked Gwen, "Your search of her condo didn't turn up anything untoward?"
"Untoward." Where did the son of a bitch get off using words like that? Mason thought, giving his sagging pants another hitch.
"Except that it's to die for," Gwen sighed. "It's in Eau Claire. It's not a penthouse but the next thing to it. It's so cool. Everything in shades of grey and silver, low coffee tables of polished stainless steel, Minimalist paintings. Cushions scattered here and there. Floor-to-ceiling windows with a great view of the Bow River. You would love it, Chris."
"You sound like the Home Page in the Herald, for Christ's sake!" Mason snorted.
Chris smiled and asked, "No fingerprints, no blood? Nothing useful like that?"
"No blood. Fingerprints, yes. Mostly hers. A few others that we're trying to match. One is bound to be her cleaning woman, who comes in twice a week. The place is immaculate."
"So she wasn't killed there?"
"Couldn't have been. Not with those wounds. The place would have been awash in blood."
"Your report states that she could have been rendered unconscious by a blow to the back of her head. That could have happened in her condo, and she could have been taken somewhere else to be assaulted and killed."
"That could have been the way it went down," Gwen agreed. "But there's nothing to tell us one