“I’ll be fine, Kara. The bleeding’s almost gone. I don’t think he hit anything internal. We need to get you checked out.” A person who survives being choked or strangled can seem fine at first only to develop sometimes fatal complications much later. A trip to the hospital might be required, and I would be right beside her, riding in the ambulance awaiting a number of stitches.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Link?”
There it was again, the short form of my name. We had shared something special, not the kiss but the near death experience. It was a bond that would never be broken.
“Trust me, I’m fine. Look at me. I just chased that asshole down the street then sprinted back here. If it were serious I’d be white as a sheet right now. Stop worrying about me.”
I helped Kara down the stairs and found the paramedics coming in through the front door. Red had taken down their names and stalled them for a moment in case Kara and I had renewed our… inappropriate actions. The medics saw my bloodstained shirt and were on me in an instant. “Give me some gauze and tend to her,” was all I had to say.
I put pressure on my wound and watched as they checked Kara over. She was an attractive woman, something that was not news to me, but my attraction to her had always been on a level of admiration and respect for her abilities and drive. As my eyes fixed upon her, sitting on her couch calmly in the midst of chaos, I saw another side of her, one I had ignored. I saw her as a woman in the simplest sense. I have never believed in love at first sight. Lust, yes, but you can’t love a person based on their appearance alone. It’s getting to know someone, learning about them, their character, their dreams, and their lives that makes us fall in love with them. Looks can start the chemicals but chemistry doesn’t last for long.
But I knew Kara. So to suddenly see her, not as a partner, not as a friend, but as the beautiful young woman that she was, stirred more than chemistry.
I gazed at her face, her features holding me in place. Brown hair streaked with natural highlights of auburn, a high forehead marked by eyebrows that angled down in the middle, drawing attention to her small nose and large round green eyes. Her lips were full and her mouth wide, widening even more as she smiled. A smattering of freckles dotted her nose and cheeks and all this sat atop a petite and delicate frame. She wasn’t a supermodel, but she had a unique and unconventional beauty.
Kara turned and looked at me, catching me staring at her, watching her. She smiled wide; it was a pure and genuine smile that always warmed my heart.
I heard Red’s voice again, saying that people do crazy things in crazy situations. Maybe he was right—maybe this was just the adrenaline, the fear, the pain and the thought of losing someone important.
Kat entered my mind and guilt flowed in. I loved her, I always would love her and nothing would change that. I could never tell her what had happened. Even given the circumstances, it would break her heart and Kara and I, nothing could ever happen again. I respected Kat too much for that. This was an accident, it had to be.
The paramedics decided that they would take Kara to the hospital, and I, of course had no choice in the matter. I liaised with Red, asked him to hold the scene and get other detectives out along with the forensics team. The blood on the wall and the rope would need to be tested.
“Understood. I’ll call you if we find anything. And Lincoln?”
“Yes?”
“I hate to say it… but he got away for now.”
I clenched my teeth. My reply was not to Red. “We’ll get him Kara, I promise.”
The ride to the hospital seemed shorter than it was. Kara and I were both stable, the paramedics had taped some gauze over my wound, and we sat in the back together under the not so watchful eye of one paramedic. He seemed to think Kara and I were a couple and allowed us some privacy. We didn’t speak the entire ride—I took her hand in mine and gently rubbed its back with my thumb. I found it hard to look at her now, what had happened and the consequences were becoming real to me.
The ambulance pulled down the ramp to the emergency room entrance and Kara and I exited out the back, her hand still in mine. I began walking toward the door and tried to let go of her hand, but she pulled me back. Her eyes met mine again.
“How did you know?”
“I’m not sure. I had a dream, and in it someone told me I was too late, ‘she was already dead’. I woke up and thought about how you were home alone, living out of town, and that Grant was on night shift. I figured my dream was talking about you.”
“Do you always believe your dreams are telling you the truth?”
“Only lately, but that’s a story for another day.”
She hated the cryptic answer, I could see it in her eyes but she didn’t push it.
“My cellphone died and I forgot to plug it in,” she said. “You must have called the house, the phone rang beside my bed and woke me up. He was standing over me. If you hadn’t called, I never would have got my hands under the rope.”
I didn’t speak, just gripped her hand tighter then let go. We entered the hospital, and between my stab wound and being recognized as police we were tended to in short order. The police work very closely with hospital staff, often spending entire shifts in the hospital guarding patients or bringing people in for mental health evaluations. Our treatment would never jeopardize anyone else, but we can jump the queue in non-emergencies. Besides, in this case, we had a killer to catch. The longer we stayed in the hospital the further he got away.
Kara was examined to ensure that there was no major damage to her throat or esophagus. She received a clean bill of health. I on the other hand was not so lucky. The trauma doctor wanted to run a number of tests to ensure that I had not suffered any internal injuries. It was David vs. Goliath in terms of medical knowledge, but I had stubborn on my side.
“I’m not staying for any tests. It’s been over an hour now, the bleeding is minimal, just stitch me up and let me get on my way.”
“I can’t do that, Detective. If an organ even got nicked it could cause serious problems.”
“With all due respect, Doctor, I don’t give a shit. Either stitch me up or I’ll go down the street to the drugstore, buy a needle and thread and do it myself. You can’t keep me here.” I was livid now, every moment counted, including these, which were running down the drain.
“Actually, I can, if I think you’re a danger to yourself, which you are right now.”
He was right, I’d forgotten the mandatory psych eval rule. Time for a different approach. “Nice wedding band, Doctor. Platinum?”
“Yes.” Confusion.
“Do you have kids?” I assumed not, the ring had barely begun to dull.
“Not yet.”
“So right now your wife is home alone?”
More confusion. “Yes. Why?”
“Because the killer we’re trying to catch, you may have heard of him, the papers are calling him The Strangler—very original—preys on women who are home alone while their husbands or boyfriends are working nights.” A nervous look. “He escaped from us after failing to kill my partner and I. Last time he made a mistake he killed again almost the next day. How many more shifts are you on for?”
“I see your point, Detective. But if you bleed out internally, how do you expect to catch him?”
“Touché. My wife is home alone now as well, and I can’t do my job from in here. Stitch me up and if I get worse I know who to call to get back here. Please.”
He nodded then walked away and returned with a suture kit. Twelve stitches later and with orders not to move around too much, I was on my way out the door with Kara by my side. A cruiser was waiting to take us back to the place where we had both almost met our end.
—18—
We spent the rest of that day trying to disassociate from reality. Kara was searching her own house, ducking under crime scene tape and showing her badge to the officer guarding the front door just to get in. It could not have been easy for her, her quiet existence thrown int
o chaos. She had called Grant, the boyfriend I had instantly become jealous of, to tell him what had happened and to let him know that he’d have to find another place to stay during the day before heading back into work that night.
Grant had not taken the news of Kara’s near death well. He had not turned into the white knight riding to her rescue, and offered little in the way of compassion or sympathy.
I recognized the symptoms. He had shut down. The fight or flight response is one of the most basic systems wired into us, no amount of civilization can erase millions of years of instinct. Grant had chosen to flee. Kara took it well, even seemed relieved that she would be alone and wouldn’t have to describe her ordeal or keep saying that she was fine.
My call to Kat was short and sweet. I apologized for running out in the night and not having called her but that I somehow knew Kara was in trouble. I told her about the killer, about how he’d tried to kill Kara but had gotten away. I left out the part about me being stabbed—no need to worry her.
We searched Kara’s house, seized the rope and took a blood sample from the wall, then raced down the 401 to Toronto. We arrived at the Centre for Forensics Science in the heart of the city and moved through with purpose, delivering the evidence and seeking DNA results as fast as possible.
The possibility that our suspect had no criminal record scared me. If his DNA was not already on file we would still have little to go on. I was not a pleasant person by this time, demanding that the blood be tested against all known offenders and if no result was found it was to be tested against offenders with eleven of thirteen matching alleles—a familial search. That could be enough to link the killer by direct lineage to another offender, a son or daughter if he had one. The rope was to be swabbed and tested for DNA as well then compared to samples obtained from the victims.
These were all complex, involved processes and, unlike on television, could not be done within minutes. I would have the results by tomorrow they told me—twenty-four hours was the fastest turnaround time regardless of my telling the scientists to take over the DNA lab and forgo all other cases.
A bruise was forming on Kara’s neck, and the rope in a plastic evidence bag was a perfect match and a constant reminder. She had been happy to get it out of the car and out of her mind.
Technically, I had driven to Toronto against doctor’s orders, but I wasn’t sure if Kara’s level of concentration was suitable for highway driving. She remembered as we passed through Mississauga that I wasn’t supposed to be driving, that I wasn’t supposed to be doing anything at all if I wanted to keep my stitches in, and she made me promise to let her drive on the way home. I had little choice—Kara had stubborn working for her, too.
We stopped in Kitchener on the way home, getting dinner at a Viet-Thai restaurant with unbeatable pad thai and tom yum soup. Kara and I both had the pad thai, I added a soup and we split an order of deep fried spring rolls and BBQ pork fresh rolls. To drink, given that we were working and unable to enjoy any adult beverages, we each had a bubble tea—a mix of fruit and tea with tapioca beads at the bottom. It was a more expensive meal than we usually allowed ourselves on the OPP’s dime, but given what we’d endured, the province could foot the bill.
We left the restaurant after ten. Red lights streamed ahead of us, white toward us as we drove down the highway. We had been driving for only a few minutes when my phone rang, something it had been doing all day. It was Kat calling. I had ignored her calls many times today, not wanting to explain everything to her again, not wanting to hear the worry in her voice.
Not wanting to face my guilt.
I pressed ‘ignore’ and put the phone away. Within seconds it rang again. I almost didn’t even look at it, but the call display showed a different name: Chen-Chen.
I answered the call as fast as I could. “Chen? What have you got?”
“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”
“After the day I’ve had Chen, I don’t have small talk in me.”
Chen knew what that was like. The job wore on a person and some days were too much to handle. Granted Chen had never had a day like mine.
“Okay. That park ranger, he was right about our guy. William Jeffries; born April sixteen, nineteen-forty-six. Reported missing July twenty-fifth, nineteen-eighty-four. Coroner determined cause of death to be a stab wound through the back, severed the two ribs and tore through the heart. Would have been a long blade and wide too, like a hunting knife.”
I already knew that. “What else?”
“Here’s the kicker. His date of birth had been entered wrong on the missing persons file. We got medical records that matched the old injuries, checked the right date of birth and found a bit more.”
“You going to share?”
“You know me, I like suspense. He had two convictions from the early seventies for masturbating in public and in seventy-seven he was arrested and questioned in an attempted abduction of a seven-year-old boy. Cops liked him for it but they didn’t have enough evidence, had to cut him loose.”
Makes sense. If I was his last intended victim and my father interrupted him… I’m surprised there was anything left of the body.
“Interesting. Not many people would have missed this guy then?”
“Just his family. They said he was a perfect angel.”
“Of course they did. Would you tell your parents if you got arrested for milking it in public?”
Kara looked over at me and tried not to laugh. I looked back at her and mouthed the words, “I’ll explain.”
“My dad would have lopped it off if I did that,” Chen said. “Anyway, that’s all we’ve got so far. Still looking into who might have killed him. I hope he’s still alive so I can shake his hand.”
Lincoln Charles Munroe the Third. “I’m sure you’ll find the guy, definitely did some kids a favour.”
“Yeah, I’ll let you know what else we find.”
“Thanks, Chen.”
I hung up the phone and put it back in its place on my belt. “That murder in Algonquin,” I said to Kara, “the guy was a public masturbator and may have been into kids as well.”
“Ahhh. Parents thought he was a stand-up guy?”
“Don’t they always?”
We shared a laugh, the first one today and for a moment everything seemed right with the world.
An hour later we were parked outside of Kara’s house. She was keeping the unmarked car overnight on account of hers being in a sealed garage.
“Where are you staying?”
“They’re putting me up in a hotel for the night. The Ramada by the 401.” I must have looked concerned. “Don’t worry, I’ll be armed and there will be a cruiser at each end of the hotel. I’ll have a radio on me as well.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, “I’ll be safe.”
I put my hand on her thigh but couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to acknowledge my fears, it was easier to get out of the car. “I’ll see you in the morning then, shoot anything that moves.”
“I will.”
I shut the door behind me. My own car was still in the driveway. I wanted to just sit behind the wheel for a few minutes, to try to compose myself before returning home, but I knew Kara would wait for me to get on my way before she left. I wondered who was protecting whom at this point. I backed out of the driveway and started down the street, Kara was right behind me. We stayed like that, a convoy of two, until we reached Wonderland Road.
She went south and I turned north then drove until she was out of view and pulled into the nearest parking lot. I turned off the car, shut down every light and turned off the radio. I sat in silence, but my mind was anything but. Thoughts raged about in my head and forced me to turn the car back on, turn up the radio and keep driving.
No matter how fast I drove I would never escape what I was really afraid of.
—19—
As late as I returned home that night, Kat was still awake.
My intentions had been to update her frequently during th
e day—she was the worrying type—but I had either forgotten or not wanted to. My day and the night before had been too busy, too intense, for me to remember to do anything. Kara and I had developed tunnel vision, our eyes and minds focused on one thing and one thing only: catching the killer. There was another focus in there, one we tried to push away. Everything else was secondary, even my family. It pained me as I walked in the door, like walking into an alternate reality I had forgotten existed.
So much had changed in these past few weeks. Once the perfect family man, I was losing myself to this case, to my work, to my past, and now to my partner. My family had become an afterthought, if I even thought of them at all. I had been away from home before on courses and cases, and I had always debated if there was another way to fulfill my duties at work. If there was a way to stay home—to work only the hours I needed to work—I found it. My family had been everything to me, and even leaving for two or three days made me feel like I had abandoned them. Yet when Chen called, I only phoned in a quick goodbye before I was on the plane and gone.
That wasn’t all. I had broken my vows to my wife and put our entire existence in danger. Kat and the kids deserved so much more, I just couldn’t find it in me to give it to them. So much had been lost in the past few weeks, so much of myself, that I no longer knew the man I saw when I looked in the mirror—when I was even capable of doing so. My eyes were so full of sadness, fear, doubt and confusion that I couldn’t bear to look into them.
I was surprised anyone else was able to. Especially Kara. She saw through this new me, this abomination. If only Kat could have done the same.
“I’ve been calling you all day,” she started as I walked in the door just past midnight. “You could’ve at least picked up, told me you were still alive.”
“I’m sorry. I got lost in the case, there’s been so much to take in, so much to do.”
“I don’t care, Lincoln. Your family always came first. Do you even remember us anymore?”
If one knife wound wasn’t enough, now she was plunging the dagger of guilt into me. I wanted to cry, I should have cried. A month before I would have, but now there was nothing left.