6
The Rocking Chair
Three hours later, Morgan and Elke Sturmberg were sitting in an interrogation room at Police Headquarters in Toronto. They looked like they had been soaked in a red-wine marinade.
“Miranda’s on her way,” said Spivak. “They’re just getting her bandaged up. She’s got a change of clothes in her locker. You want coffees, I’ll get you coffees.” He sidled out of the room, letting the door swing sharply closed behind him.
Morgan smiled across the table at the young blond.
“Don’t confess to crimes you’re not proud of,” he said. “We’re being observed. Of course, they know I know we’re being observed, so maybe they’re not bothering. Sometimes a room like this is just a good place to talk.”
“Do you ever torture people here?” she asked.
“For confessions? No, not often.”
“Good,” she said. After a moment, she declared, “I remember pretty well everything, but I don’t remember driving to Toronto. Why would I go to Miranda’s?”
“It’s a mystery,” said Morgan. Then looking up at the mirrored wall, he said, “Spivak, where’s the coffee?”
The door opened and Miranda hobbled in on her own. Then Eeyore Stritch came in, carrying three coffees precariously balanced, and set them on the table.
“I’m gonna live,” said Miranda as she sat down.
“Good,” said Morgan. “Saves me the trouble of finding a replacement.”
“Detective Quin,” said Eeyore Stritch in a funereal tone once they got settled. Miranda braced herself for whatever was coming. “The hand, the man in the vat, he wasn’t the one.”
“The one what?” she responded.
“The one who raped you.”
Miranda flinched. Nobody had used the word rape. Philip may have got her into bed under false pretenses, but that fell into the realm of seduction. As for the semen deposited by his killer, that had somehow seemed more an infusion, absolutely disgusting but not sexual assault. She was, as she told Morgan, fucked. Rape seemed something else, demanding at the very least the awareness of the victim.
“It wasn’t him?” She was baffled.
“We did a rush job on the DNA. It shows the man in the vat and the man who — did that to you — were different people.”
“Why did you assume they weren’t?” said Spivak, who had just come into he room. He knew by the ensuing silence he had asked a compromising question. “Explanation?” he demanded.
Miranda fished into her purse for the gold ring and dropped it with a resounding clang on the table.
“What’s this?” said Spivak.
“The waiter at the Imperial Room told me the man with Philip was wearing a gold ring, very ostentatious, an eye-popper.”
“So …?”
“Well, this ring,” said Morgan, cocking his head towards the ring on the table, “it might have been, how would you say this, on the hand that came in by itself.”
“My hand?” exclaimed Elke.
“Not yours exactly,” said Morgan. “The one in your Monica Lewinsky handbag.”
“It’s a knock-off.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Morgan? You saying this ring was on the dead guy’s finger?”
“On his severed hand, not the one still attached. The guy in the vat and the guy at the Royal York are one and the same. And the hand in the bag, it was obviously his.”
“For Christ’s sake, Morgan. You took a ring off a dead man’s hand, you gave it to your partner for a keepsake. What! What’s going on here? You’re both sick.”
“A severed hand. We didn’t know for sure he was dead,” said Morgan. “It was a connection. We thought sooner or later it might give us a lead. Apparently it’s not going to.”
“I thought we were in this together,” said Spivak.
“Yeah,” said Morgan. “Sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Jesus, Jesus, Morgan.”
“Expletive,” said Miranda to Morgan. “Not prayer.”
“What the hell am I going to do with you two! Lady,” he turned to Elke, “do you know who you are yet? That would be helpful.”
“I seem to have been abducted.”
“No shit,” he said. “Do you know who the hell you are? Where do you come from?”
“She does,” said Morgan. “But not how she got to Toronto.”
“Does anyone?” said Eeyore Stritch.
“What?” demanded Spivak, wheeling on him. “What?”
“Know how they end up in Toronto …” Whatever wit there might have been in his comment dissipated like unacknowledged flatulence. He chuckled to himself. Miranda liked him for that.
“Okay,” said Spivak. “Either we’re working together or we’re not working together.”
“We’re working together,” said Eeyore Stritch, who thought Spivak was addressing him.
“Yeah,” said Morgan. “Sorry, I thought — recovered memory syndrome. If she held onto it, maybe she’d remember things.”
“And I do,” said Miranda. They waited.
Miranda shut her eyes for an uncomfortably long period, then flashed them open. “His face, in the wine tank, that was the man with the ring. Philip met me in the lobby of the Royal York. He was there first, reading a paper. We didn’t have reservations. We never made reservations. We went in for dinner. Halfway through, the man, the other man, joined us. He didn’t eat. Philip ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon. The two men, they weren’t friends. They knew each other, and they were keyed up about something. Maybe they quarrelled.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Spivak, who seemed to have forgotten the purloined ring.
“Was there any evidence of her door being jimmied?” Morgan asked.
“Her apartment door? Miranda’s? No,” said Stritch. “But a pro wouldn’t leave any marks.”
“So here’s what happened,” said Morgan. “The ring-man doctors Miranda’s drink. Philip thinks it’s the Dom Pérignon, he walks her out of the dining room with as little fuss as possible. They get her to a car, a taxi. Have we checked taxis? Philip takes her home. The other man disappears.”
“How do you know?” said Miranda.
“The semen, it wasn’t his. Now let’s say Philip takes you home. You make love … correction, he has sex. Remember, he doesn’t know you’re drugged. He just thinks you’ve had too much champagne. You pass out … but, you know, maybe you’re already doing it by then —”
“Doing it!”
“Making love … pathetic, but not totally degenerate —”
“Says you,” said Miranda. “I think it’s despicable.”