The Arx Read online

  “I’ve read it already,” she said. “The cause of death is asphyxiation, either accidentally or on purpose. The burning of the body occurred after death.”

  Her face was drawn, like she was fighting to hold it together.

  “The report’s not due to be officially released for a few days,” she continued. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast that you’d seen it.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Frank said. “Can I borrow your mouse?”

  Rebecca passed him the mouse. He flipped through the written records, scanning the comments and conclusions. He stopped at a page with photographs of the dead child. His stomach turned as he viewed the charred corpse. Even with his years of experience with death and mutilation he found the images shocking. He switched on his cop’s detachment and forced himself to look.

  “Huh?” he suddenly said, zooming in on a photograph. “I’ll be damned…”

  “What?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “What? What are gone?”

  “The teeth.”

  “Teeth?”

  “There’s a clear shot here of the mouth and gums. There’s no sign of any teeth.”

  “Well, of course…is that so surprising?"

  "When I first met Gloria at Janet's place she had Ralphie with her, and we all went to look at him. She specifically pointed out that he already had two top incisors coming in. I saw them myself. She said they'd just come in within the past couple of days. She was kind of proud of it, like it made him special somehow."

  "But the photographs show something different."

  Frank nodded.

  "Are you sure about this?”

  “As sure as I can be without being officially involved and having more access to the records. I saw the teeth myself. We’ve got the report right in front of us. Teeth are actually pretty unusual for a kid that age.”

  “So…what are you saying?”

  He looked over at her. “There’s only one explanation – this isn’t Gloria’s baby.”

  “What!” Rebecca gasped. “You mean to say that someone killed another baby and exchanged it for Ralphie? Why would anybody want to do that?”

  Frank shrugged. “Somebody who lost their own baby, some childless couple with access to babies who died… It would explain why the corpse was burned. That could have been deliberate – to cover up the exchange.”

  Rebecca reached out to swivel the monitor back.

  Frank caught her arm. “Wait. I don’t know if you had a good look at these pictures before. They’re pretty graphic.”

  She closed her eyes for a second and swallowed. “I saw them.”

  She swiveled the monitor and cringed as she studied the photograph.

  She shook her head slowly. “Is it possible that somehow the fire destroyed the teeth – or swelled the gums and made them invisible, or something?”

  Frank absently picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser on the desktop. “I don’t think the fire would have destroyed them. Anyway that’s a pretty clear picture of the inside of the mouth. It doesn’t look like it suffered much damage at all. The gum thing – we’d have to talk to an expert to know for sure. It’s easy enough to confirm whether or not the baby was Gloria’s. Just compare the DNA.”

  "God, this is terrible," Rebecca said. "So my poor sister killed herself thinking her baby was dead… There’s got to be some other explanation. I’ll talk to my friend in the Coroner’s office. Maybe she can give an opinion about whether there ever were any teeth, and she might be able to convince the Coroner to order a DNA test.”

  The tapping of Frank’s pencil became insistent. “I know the guy in charge of the case. He’s going to fight like hell to get it closed and off the radar before he can screw it up any more than he has already. He’ll be in the shit as it is with Gloria’s suicide. He won’t want to do anything to prolong it.”

  Frank’s tapping grew louder and more intense. He looked up. Rebecca was staring at him.

  “What?” he said. Her eyes moved to the pencil. “Oh.” He replaced it in a cup on the desk and interlaced his fingers in front of him. “Sorry.”

  “Frank,” she said. “I appreciate you trying to help, but maybe you’re not ready for the stress involved in an investigation.”

  “What, because I tapped a pencil on the desk?”

  “Of course not. But that’s an indicator of your stress level and your underlying psychological condition.”

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about that. I’m here about the case – that’s all.”

  “There is no case, Frank. You’re not on the force anymore, remember? This is just an attempt to assuage your guilt over what happened to Gloria.”

  Frank’s hands separated and bunched into fists. “I know it’s not an official case,” he said, his voice rising. “Why do you people always have to read all this mumbo-jumbo into everything a person says? It’s just a manner of speaking. Sometimes words are just words, like ‘assuage’. Sometimes they don’t have any mysterious double meaning.”

  Rebecca was still staring at him.

  “And don’t give me this analytical crap about my underlying psychological condition,” he continued. “I’m fine. Let me get on with my work and maybe we can solve this thing.”

  “You have no work, Frank,” Rebecca said, raising her own voice. “You’re out on stress leave. Your priority should be getting your own life back on track – dealing with what happened and putting it behind you. I want to find the person responsible as much as you do, but I’m more concerned about you. You’ll make things worse if you keep pushing. I should never have shown you the report.”

  Frank’s lips tightened and he scowled as he pushed back his chair in a replay of his first visit. “This is a waste of time,” he said. “You’re more interested in busting my balls than finding some answers.”

  “God, you’re pig-headed!” Rebecca said, her face turning red. “I’m just trying to help you. I’ve lost my sister and probably my nephew – I don’t need another tragedy on my conscience. Your behaviour makes it clear that you’re not ready, Frank. Continue on this path and you’ll be cruising for another breakdown.”

  Frank rose from his chair with a sense of déjà-vu. “Thanks for the information. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

  “Frank,” Rebecca said in exasperation. “Come on, be reasonable. Settle down, take a few deep breaths. Maybe look into the case in your spare time. Gloria and Ralphie aren’t going to be any worse off if you take it slow.”

  “And what if Ralphie’s still alive?”

  She looked at the floor.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he said, heading for the door. He strode out of the office, past a bewildered Judy, down the hallway, and into the glaring light of day.

  “Never again,” he said as he stomped down the stone steps and into the cobblestone alley. “Never again.”

  Frank Goes it Alone

  After his blowout with Rebecca, Frank stepped through his front door and slammed it behind him, and vowed to continue his investigation alone. That night an unfamiliar dream jammed its way into his tortured sleep. A mother, on a picnic with her three children near a river, turned away for a few seconds to settle a quarrel between the two eldest. When she turned back, her youngest, a baby about nine months old, had disappeared without a trace.

  When the hammering bell of the alarm clock shocked him awake he sat up in bed, scratching his head. A nagging familiarity in the dream floated around his psyche for a couple of hours, stubbornly refusing to surface.

  Finally he remembered – it had really happened. It was a case he’d been involved in when he first became a detective. In the beginning they’d accused the mother, like Stocker had Gloria. They had no evidence, and no motive, so in the end they cleared her and assumed the kid had crawled into the river and drowned; his body was never found.

  For the first time in almost a year, Frank waded into his debris-strewn home office, clearing a path t
o his desk. He swept the pile of newspapers and dirty laundry from the computer, and cleared a spot beside it.

  On a whim, he sifted through old news stories online about kidnapped children. He found the one he’d dreamed about and confirmed the details. As he continued to dig, he discovered several incidents in the following years that were eerily similar to Gloria’s.

  He put together a list of the cases with the greatest similarities and contacted a couple of colleagues at the squad who still respected him enough to stick their necks out and use police resources to gather more detailed information.

  When he got the printed results a few days later, they made his hair stand on end. Since the case he’d dreamed about, at least five babies, ranging from three months to two years old, had gone missing in a manner similar to that of Ralphie.

  In every case, either the body was never found or was mutilated to such an extent that it couldn’t be positively identified. In every case, the mother was implicated or made to believe some plausible accident had taken her child.

  None of the investigators had considered that the cases might be linked.

  The first panic attack struck when Frank was still blocks away from the Vancouver Homicide Squad – the place where he worked for fifteen years and had once felt more comfortable than in his own home. He’d parked a few blocks away so he could approach at his own pace. As he walked he fought for control, and won at least a temporary victory.

  On the final block he willed himself across the street to the sidewalk in front of the squad building. Already he was trembling and his palms were slippery with sweat.

  A half-block away he paused to confirm that none of his former colleagues were in sight. As long as he didn’t run into anyone he knew, he still had the option of aborting the operation and walking away. Contact with someone from his past life would drive him across a threshold; he’d be forced to push on and enter the squad room. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

  He reached the stone steps leading up to the door, and paused one last time. Soon there would be no turning back. His muscles tightened and his throat went dry. With each step the pressure mounted, like he was descending underwater.

  Just as his foot touched the top step the door swung open. He panicked, certain he’d see a familiar face. A middle-aged woman emerged – someone he’d never seen before. She stared at him, and he realized he was bathed in sweat and visibly shaking. He hurried back down to the street and into a nearby alley.

  He fought the urge to run to the nearest bar. Instead, he walked a few blocks to minimize the chance of seeing anyone he knew, and slid into a booth at the back of a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. After three cups and several aborted attempts, he stood once again outside the imposing glass doors of his old workplace.

  The squad room flickered like a heat-stroke hallucination as he pushed open the doors and stepped inside for the first time in more than a year. He drove himself forward. His mind was numb but his body reacted, muscles pulling against one another as if they were fighting to escape from an invisible straitjacket.

  The movement around him slowed and shapes blinked, strobe-like, in and out of existence. Colours were amplified and the range of hues collapsed until the squad room looked like a panel out of a comic book. The surrounding clatter reverberated inside his skull. The smell of paper dust and body odour made him nauseous. He glanced at the path to his old office and shuddered as memories of that night pushed up inside him like the bubbling magma inside a volcano. By sheer strength of will he calmed his trembling hands.

  The activity in the room gradually ceased as, one by one, his former colleagues became aware of his presence, and the bustle faded to an uncomfortable silence.

  Finally Art Crawford, a solid detective and one of Frank’s ex-poker buddies, strode over and shook his hand.

  “Frank – good to see you! How’s it going? We’ve missed you.”

  “Hi Art,” Frank said.

  Jill Stamford, one of the new recruits for whom Frank had been a mentor, also shook his hand, though, Frank thought, tentatively.

  “Great to see you, Frank,” she said. “It’s been too long. Hey, you know I made detective!”

  “Congratulations,” Frank said.

  He studied the other faces in the room. They were a confused blend of pity, condescension, and genuine friendship. The tension expanded through his body: blood pumping harder, breath accelerating. A vein at his right temple twitched annoyingly. He wondered if coming here had been a mistake.

  Near the back of the room, standing at the center of a knot of activity, stood Grant Stocker, Lead Detective – the job that should have been Frank’s. Frank pushed past his former colleagues, shaking the occasional hand and nodding this way and that, until he was face to face with Stocker.

  Grant Stocker was a big man with a profile like a side of beef, who seemed perpetually in danger of popping the buttons on his suit. His nose was large, red, and laced with spider veins. His fine brown hair had disappeared on top, a condition he tried to conceal by combing several long wispy strands over his baldness.

  When he was presented with a difficult problem, Stocker’s face would contort into a pinched bundle of wrinkled seriousness, a façade behind which, Frank was convinced, nothing was actually happening. Stocker had been a pain in Frank’s ass ever since the day they both entered the Police Academy. He was ignorant, arrogant, and not very bright, but that never seemed to stand in the way of regular rewards and promotions. Something always seemed to prevent Stocker’s many blunders from sticking to him, and he’d been propelled to ever higher levels of responsibility.

  When Jack Sanders, the Lead Detective, chose to retire, Stocker had been Frank’s only rival for the vacated post. The overwhelming sentiment in the squad was for Frank to get the job. Frank was intelligent, resourceful, able to think on his feet, and potentially a great leader. His breakdown had changed all that, and with Frank out of the picture, the administration had promoted Stocker to the position.

  Beside Stocker stood a younger man Frank didn’t recognize. He was shorter than Stocker – in fact dwarfed by Stocker’s bulk. The man bore a disturbing resemblance to Frank himself – thin, with a dark complexion and straight jet black hair. The collar of his dress shirt was too tight; it made the skin bulge out around his neck. He was glued to Stocker’s side like a pet dog waiting for a command.

  Stocker made an unsuccessful attempt to project compassion on seeing Frank back in the squad room.

  “Hi Frank,” he said, pumping Frank’s hand in a painful grip. “It’s been too long. How’re you doing?”

  He tilted his head at Frank’s double. “This is Terry Hastings, my new assistant.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Frank said, nodding and shaking the assistant’s hand.

  Frank turned back to Stocker. “I need to talk to you in your office.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” Stocker said, a smile on his jowly face. “Can’t spare the time – got some major investigations on the burner. I can spare a minute right here and now if you want.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “It’s about this baby kidnapping case – the Hanon woman.”

  Stocker peered down at him like he was a child asking for his first sip of beer.

  “Frank,” he said. “You of all people should know that I can’t discuss an active case with a civilian. You got information that bears on that investigation, make an appointment to talk to a detective.”

  “Cut the crap,” Frank said, taking a step toward him.

  Stocker stepped back like he’d been slapped. The conversations around them halted.

  “You’ve been running with the idea that Gloria Hanon murdered her own child,” Frank said. “You’ve got it wrong.”

  “And you base that belief on what?” Stocker said.

  “I knew her. That baby was her life – there’s no way she would ever have harmed him.”

  “Well, that’s a pretty compelling argument, Frank,” Stocker said, smiling and rocking back
on his heels. “But here at the squad we put together cases based on hard evidence. I’m glad you hit it off with your little friend, but according to the evidence the investigation’s a done deal.”

  Frank clenched his fists and fought for control.

  “Gloria Hanon couldn’t handle the stress,” Stocker continued. He stared at Frank as if to say: You should know something about that. “She was on the edge already. She snapped and did away with the kid, then came on with the grief-stricken mother routine. If you’re aware of any facts that would indicate otherwise, I’d love to hear them.”

  Frank hesitated, knowing how what he was about to say would sound. “I don’t think the baby they found in the car was the Hanon baby,” he finally said.

  “What!” Stocker said, incredulous.

  Frank pushed on. “I think you should conduct DNA tests on Gloria Hanon and the baby from the car.”

  “Hoooold on,” Stocker stifled a laugh. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that someone snuck up fifteen floors to Gloria Hanon’s apartment, broke in, kidnapped her baby in the ten minutes that she was having a shower, stole her car, replaced her baby with another baby, torched the car, and – then what – kept the Hanon baby?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Stocker laughed. “Wow – that’s one twisted perp you’ve got there Frank.”

  “Do the test. It’s not hard. Prove me wrong.”

  Stocker’s smile disappeared. “We found the Hanon woman’s car. We found the baby inside it. I’m not going to waste the taxpayers’ money on a pointless test just to please you.”

  “I’ve looked into some other cases,” Frank said. “I’ve found several that strongly resemble the Hanon case.”

  “Cases from where?” Stocker glared down at him. “Who’s leaking case documents to you?”

  Shit! Frank thought. I’ve got to watch myself. I’m not thinking straight. “I dug up news stories on the web,” he said.

  “So what are you saying?” Stocker said, buying Frank’s explanation. “You think this is some kind of baby-napping conspiracy?”