Blue Rubicon (3 page)

THE DAY WAS LONG AND arduous for all of us, but Laura Carter
had it the worst. We were able to go home at the end of the day. We could have
a drink or watch TV and hopefully forget about what had happened. She didn’t
have that luxury.

And apparently neither did I. Great, another case that would
haunt me.

I’d barely walked in the door when Kat was on me.

“What’s wrong?”

“Tough day,” I said.

“You want to talk about it?”

Yes. A million times yes. But I couldn’t. I trusted her, but
I couldn’t put her at risk. One person was already dead because of whatever was
on the thumb drive burning a hole in my pocket. I hated lying to her, I thought
I was done with that.

“One of our young constables killed himself today.”

“Oh.” A long pause. “Did you know him?”

“Only by name and reputation. A good cop.”

“What did…”

She wanted to ask how he killed himself, but for Kat, the
topic was taboo.

“He shot himself in his cruiser near the end of his
nightshift.”

Kat just shook her head.

“Did you see him?”

“I was the first one there, he hadn’t checked in at the end
of his shift. I figured he’d fallen asleep.”

“I’m sorry, Lincoln. What can I do?”

“I think I just need a little time to myself. It’s been a
lot to take in.”

“Okay, but say hi to the kids. They’ve been waiting for
you.”

“Downstairs?”

Kat nodded.

I hugged Kat and was surprised by how tightly she held me.
Once she let go I made my way into the finished basement to find Link and Kasia
on opposite sides of the room, Kasia playing with her Barbies and Link on the
XBOX.

“Daddy!” A scream in stereo.

“Hey guys, how was your day?”

“Awesome,” said Kasia. “Mommy took us to the library and
then we got Wendy’s for lunch then we came home and played outside on the
swings and then we watched a movie and then we had dinner.”

Link nodded along, waiting for Kasia’s run-on sentence to
end—waiting for his turn to speak.

“I beat
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
,” he said
at last. “Only three achievements left to get.”

I’d taught him well. Achievement hunting on games was a
pastime of mine as well, fulfilling whatever obligations the developers decided
would earn you points for your overall Gamerscore. The geek equivalent of
street cred. And I had droves of it.

“Do you want to play?”

“Sorry, bud. Daddy had a really rough day at work so I’m
just going to go up and use my computer for a bit. I’ll be there to tuck you
guys in though. New book tonight, right?”

“Yep,” Kasia said.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
was done. I wondered what would be next.

I left the kids to their fun and went upstairs to the small
office where I kept my computer. I took the Ziploc bag out of my pocket and
looked at the silver thumb drive inside. Sixteen gigabytes. Was it full? How
much information did Carter have? Of course you couldn’t buy them too much
smaller anymore—there might have only been one file on it.

I left it in the bag and held it through the plastic, taking
the cap off carefully and plugging it into the side of my computer. If it was
his, there would be no important evidence on the outside of it. If it wasn’t,
there could be prints or even trace DNA to protect.

A window popped up on my screen. Password required. I looked
at the piece of paper in the bag and typed in the handwritten sequence.

6hILbbOEZ.

Nothing.

I tried changing the ‘I’ to a ‘1’ in case I was reading
Carter’s handwriting wrong. ‘O’ to ‘0’ didn’t help either.

Still nothing.

What had Laura said? Something about stars.

I tried the sequence with asterisks at the front, back,
front and back, middle, everywhere imaginable.

Again nothing.

Great. This was something I wouldn’t be solving tonight. I
took the drive out of the computer, capped it again and sealed the bag once
more. The floor vent was the first thing to catch my eye. I pulled it out and
slid the bag down into the ductwork, out of view, then put the vent back in
place.

I sat back down in my chair and took Carter’s phone out. The
battery light was flashing. My iPod sat across the desk and gave up its power
cord. The lock screen popped up as soon as I plugged the phone in. I tried to
think, figure out something that would work. Maybe Laura would know.

I picked up the cordless phone on my desk and started to
dial the number I’d already memorized. I stopped before I reached the final
digit. If Carter was right, the phones were probably bugged too.

Yet another dead end. The phone beeped as I pressed the
‘End’ button.

Mental inventory time—what did I know?

The gun had been fired in such a way that the slide couldn’t
rack back. The casing hadn’t been ejected and a live round hadn’t chambered.
The killer either wasn’t familiar with a gun, not likely if he was a cop, or
had to hold it in an awkward manner. It didn’t take much to stop the slide from
going back, even light pressure from a thumb sticking up could stop it.

The killer knew the victim. The ‘paranoid’ victim trusted
his killer enough to let them sit in the front seat with him. There were no
signs of a struggle in the car. But how could the killer have gotten Carter’s
gun out of the holster and shot him without Carter noticing? Was he drugged?

The duty bag was put back in haste, the killer had tried to
clean up the scene and get away. It was backwards, not the way Carter would’ve
had it. The opening should’ve been facing the driver’s seat so Carter could get
into the bag easily. Officers kept a host of things in their duty bags—tickets,
summonses, impound forms, property forms, gloves, hats, portable radios,
handheld video game systems, and for me, Tums. The duty bag was our office.

The smell of gunpowder wasn’t there. Had the doors been
locked and the windows up from when Carter supposedly shot himself until I
opened the door I would’ve been able to smell it. Someone had obviously opened
the door after the shot was fired, long enough for the smell to air out
considerably.

It was obviously murder, but the who, why and how still
escaped me.

* * *

Three hours later the kids were in bed and sound asleep, and
I, I was sitting on the couch, Kat’s head resting in my lap while the TV played
in the background. Three chapters of another Roald Dahl classic,
Danny, The
Champion of the World
, had tapped me out and now, I didn’t even know what
we were watching.

And it had been an hour.

I couldn’t stop my mind as it raced downhill, brake lines
cut, around hairpin curves with steep cliffs on either side. Part of me wanted
to steer off, to give in.

“Lincoln?”

The question came in the midst of a barrage of gunfire on
screen. I looked down and saw Kat staring up at me, her beautiful blue eyes
marred by pain.

“You can talk to me, Lincoln.” She paused and I knew what
was coming. “You used to talk to me.”

“That hasn’t changed, Kat. It’s not that I don’t want to
talk about it… I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

Kat knew of the sworn aspect of my job. Commandment the
Eleventh:
Thou shalt not talk about your job
. The rule was there for a
reason, but it was a stringent and stupid rule in my opinion. Most of the
officers I’d seen burn out were the ones who took the oath to heart, who never
spoke of what they’d seen or done.

The way I looked at it, when I was sworn in so was Kat—I
just left people’s names and other identifiers out of it. She was my barometer,
the one I looked to for advice, for guidance, for a shoulder to lean on. That
had changed when I killed Saunders and when she found out I had killed Jeffries
when I was a child. A dead serial killer and a dead abductor, pedophile and
murderer still wasn’t enough to bypass her beliefs.

But this was different. I knew she’d agree with everything
I’d done. I just didn’t want her getting involved.

“Lincoln, why can’t you talk about it?”

“It’s too dangerous,” I said. I turned my eyes away from
hers.

“What do you mean? An officer killed himself and…”

Her mind was already there. She knew what the issue was.

“Unless,” she said.

“Don’t. Damn you and your intuition.” I lowered my voice to
a whisper. “I think he was on to something, something big. Something someone
felt it was worth killing for.”

Great. Now I was the paranoid one, whispering in my own
home.

“I don’t want to put you and the kids in danger.”

Kat nodded. “Does anyone else know?”

I shook my head.

“You and your burdens,” she said. The faint smile was fake,
but the look of sadness in her eyes was real.

We laid there until the movie ended and I still had no idea
who was in it or what it was about. I couldn’t focus on anything but the case.
There was the need to get to the bottom of it, to solve the murder and figure
out what Carter was on to, but there was also a major worry. If I was wrong, or
even if I was right, I had covered up a possible crime. That was enough for a
host of charges under the Police Services Act and, likely, termination.

I couldn’t believe the things I would do to find the truth.

* * *

Kat and I were in bed less than an hour later. The top of
the news had covered the case. Suicides usually stayed out of the press, out of
the respect of the deceased and their families, but this was an exceptional
circumstance. The story was simple, to the point and respectful. An officer,
found dead in their (they didn’t even identify gender) cruiser of an apparent
self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Thirty years of life and six years as a police officer, all
reduced to a twenty-five second send off.

It took me hours to get to sleep, red numbers slowly ticking
by. Kat was asleep almost before the brief news story had ended. I found myself
staring at her, watching her as she slept. She was everything to me and I knew
now that my indiscretions had been simply chemical—adrenaline and fear had
pushed Kara and I beyond impassable boundaries.

I dreamed little that night, something that surprised me
given my previous dreamworld forays. All I remembered was lying under the stars
when a gunshot sounded in the distance.

I WOKE EARLY THE NEXT morning and rubbed my bloodshot eyes.
Three hours of sleep was far from enough. It would be a caffeine and sugar
lunch today—chocolate and Coke. Showered, shaved and on the road I made it into
the station by twenty to six.

I put on my Hallowe’en costume and walked into the parade
room. The air grew cold as I stepped in and I felt my emotions fall even
further. It was like Carter’s ghost stood in the middle of the room, his
disappointment becoming ours.

Suicide.

If there was an afterlife I’m sure he was looking down and
pissed off.

Maybe he knew I was on his side.

“It’s a sad day for us all,” I said. “And I know that none
of us want to be here today. I didn’t know him well, barely ever spoke to him,
but there is no doubt in my mind that Jakob Carter was a good man. His
reputation preceded him.”

I saw an officer at the back break his eye contact with me,
and I thought I saw a snicker. Rob Stanton.

“A trust fund is being set up for his son, Noah. Donations
can be made through the Association and Vern has been kind enough to collect
for our unit.”

I cast a look of respect and thanks in Vern’s direction. She
tried to hide her face. She was one of the quiet ones, the unsung heroes.

And then came the part I hated, perpetuating a horrible lie.
“We’ll all have our own thoughts, our own opinions. I know some people will say
Carter was weak, to me, that’s bullshit. Not a single one of us can know what
Carter was dealing with, what led him to take his own life.”

I saw heads nodding, all except for one.

“We need to get out there and do our jobs, do it to honour
Carter who always did his. And be prepared for questions and condolences from
the public. They’ll stop you in the streets, they’ll approach your cruiser. Be
civil, be courteous. The good ones, they take the loss of an officer seriously,
almost personally.”

I stood up and the rest of the room did the same.

“And also, the bad ones, the ones who think the only good
cop is a dead cop, don’t hit them, pepper spray them, taser them or shoot them
for their fucking ignorant comments. I don’t want to have to go through the use
of force reports.”

The somberness disappeared for a moment while a few faint
laughs spread through the room. It was only a brief reprieve, but it let the
light back in.

Everyone filed out to start their days. I motioned for
Stanton to have a seat. Once the room was clear I shut the door.

“Did you have an issue with Carter?”

He looked surprised. I couldn’t tell if it was feigned or
real. “No, why?”

“You weren’t too respectful during my debrief.”

“Just didn’t see eye to eye, that’s all.”

I looked at him—stern, solid eye contact. It was a simple
trick. Unyielding eye contact can be uncomfortable, add in silence and it’ll
make almost anyone talk.

“He ratted me out two years ago. You didn’t hear about it?
Or are you just playing me?”

Arrogance. He was shielding himself.

“I’ve been on the other side for years, a lot of the
uniformed gossip doesn’t cross the border. Plus I don’t listen to half the
rumours that go around here.”

“I got a little carried away on an arrest. Carter and I were
grabbing a guy for a domestic, a real vicious one, put his lady in hospital
with a ruptured spleen, broken ribs, broken jaw, you name it. When we got the
guy he started fighting back. Carter and I got him to the ground and while
Carter was holding him, trying to cuff him, I laid the boots to him. Fucked him
up good. Carter was pissed, had to pull me off.”

“I can’t say he probably didn’t deserve it, but-”

“Yeah, I know. I fucked up. The guy complained and I don’t
think Carter even batted an eye before he told PSB everything.”

PSB. IAB. Professional Standards Branch. Internal Affairs
Bureau. Whatever you wanted to call it, no one wanted to have to see them.

“He was doing his job, Stanton. You weren’t. And you blame
him for it?”

“He could have at least tried to protect me. We’re all in
this together, right?”

Not always.

“What happened after?”

“People called him a ‘rat’ for a while, glares behind his
back, that sort of thing. I got lucky and didn’t get a criminal charge out of it.
Shitrat didn’t want charges, he just wanted money.”

“That’s enough. That ‘shitrat’ saved your career by not
laying a charge. Head out to the street, now.”

Stanton nodded and walked out the door, closing it hard
behind him.

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard a story like his and I
knew full well it wouldn’t be the last. ‘Above the Law’ seemed to be the motto
for some, not all luckily, but as they say, one bad apple spoils the bunch.

And when there are more than one…

* * *

My first stop for the day had been planned out since last
night. I was going back to Carter’s house, to speak to his grieving widow and
learn whatever I could. The car may as well have been on auto-pilot for how
much attention I paid. At least it made the drive seem shorter.

The brown brick house stood in contrast to a street of reds
and yellows, a contrast further marked by the garage door and front door, both
painted black with chrome fittings. The yard was well landscaped, the grass
slowing its growth as the winter approached. It was a newer area and as such,
nearly devoid of trees with the exception of a few emerald cedars and a
Japanese maple in the front garden. At least raking would have been easy.

An almost new van sat in the driveway beside the only
slightly older Mustang. Who’d been the one to sell their car and get the
minivan?

It was amazing the things I didn’t notice when I first came
to the house. The detective in me had stepped out for a coffee break and left
just the human behind—the emotional, vulnerable human. The detective was back
now, but he wasn’t alone. I had to fight back a tear as I thought about talking
to Laura, seeing her with her son.

The door opened as I stood on the driveway, thinking of what
to say.

“Sergeant Munroe, please come in.”

I nodded and walked toward the door. She was holding her son
in her arms. If it had been me that had lost my spouse, I wouldn’t have let go
of my kids for weeks. I felt that it was the same for Laura—it was as if Noah
grounded her, and holding onto him was the only think that kept her from
blowing away.

“Thank you, Mrs. Carter.”

I walked into the house and noticed that in one day it had
gone from clean to a mess. Books were all over the floor, clothing sat in piles
on the stairs ready to cascade down at any moment. She had been searching for
answers, and I wasn’t sure she’d found anything.

“Can I get you a drink? Water, tea?” She was keeping with
formalities, acting the part.

“No, thank you. I just needed to talk to you a little more
about Jakob.”

She paused, took a deep and audible breath then sat down on
the couch so hard the neighbours could have heard it.

“Alright,” she said. “Just give me a second.”

I nodded. “Take your time, ma’am. Do you mind if I take a
look around?”

“Not at all, Sergeant.”

I began my own search of the residence now, stepping over
the carnage of hers. If Carter had wanted to hide something, it could be
anywhere in the house. The thumbdrive I had and the cryptic note may have been
everything there was, but I was still hoping for something more.

The living room where I stood was as to be expected—gently
used leather furniture, wooden coffee and end tables, a flatscreen TV mounted
above the gas fireplace, art on one wall, and family photos on the other.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I noted a tower rack full of DVDs but
decided against going through them one by one.

I had to work under the premise that the house was bugged.
And if it was, was it just audio or were there video cameras as well?

If he’d backed up the thumbdrive or had more documents,
hiding a disc inside a DVD case would have been a decent idea.

The next step was the kitchen, my pet investigative tool. I
found it amazing the things one could learn about people just by their kitchen,
especially the contents of their fridge.

The kitchen was quite neat compared to the rest of the
house. Either Laura didn’t believe Carter would have hidden anything in the
kitchen, or she just hadn’t gotten there yet. I, of course, went straight for
the fridge.

I counted over a dozen cans of energy drinks and not a drop
of alcohol. The food in the fridge was toward the higher end, bought at
specialty food stores. Fancy homemade jams and spreads from a place in town,
yogurts with omegas, probiotics and everything else that could be jammed in,
organic milk, organic fruit and vegetables, free range eggs, meat from a local
farm. With the exception of the energy drinks, their fridge made mine look like
it was full of fast food.

“Are you both locavores?” I had to say it loudly as my head
was still buried in the fridge.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m vegetarian, but Jakob wasn’t. But he
was the one who always wanted to eat locally. He’d only buy free range eggs and
meat from trusted, local farmers, and always organic milk. We try to buy
locally as much as we can… could… but sometimes it’s hard.”

“I can believe it.”

“He got more into it when I got pregnant. Eating better,
buying locally, trying to reduce his carbon footprint, trying and trying to
quit smoking. He sold his truck and bought the minivan, tried to get me to
trade in the Mustang.”

A man who cared about his health, about other species, and
about the planet. A man who turned to energy drinks instead of alcohol. Nothing
was shouting depressed or suicidal. Of course, I was only confirming what I
already knew.

“Jakob didn’t sleep much, did he?”

“No, he was usually up late reading books or watching TV.
Said he only needed about four hours a night.”

Reading books and watching TV. I had a feeling he was
fueling his body with taurine and caffeine for other pursuits.

I closed the fridge door and turned around to see Laura
standing behind me.

“Noah’s in his playpen. I can see him through the window. I
need a cigarette.”

I nodded at the cue and we made our way outside onto the
deck once more.

“I’ve been searching for something, anything to help explain
this,” she said, once we were a distance from the house.

“You need to be careful, Laura. If Jakob was right and the
house was bugged, there may be cameras too. You don’t want anyone seeing you
tearing the place apart. If they think you know…”

“I know. I just… I need answers.”

“We all do, Laura. But I don’t want you putting yourself and
your son on the line for it.”

“And what if I don’t want you putting your life on the line
for it? If whoever killed Jakob finds out you’re investigating this you could
be next.”

I knew it, and it hit deep inside. I was risking my life for
the legacy of a man I barely knew. But it was more than that. The more time
went by the less people of true integrity I saw in the world. That ideal was
what I was protecting.

“I couldn’t crack the password,” I said. “On the thumbdrive.
The note that was with it didn’t work and doesn’t make any sense. What was it
about the stars?”“Something about how they’ll never steer you wrong.” She shook
her head. “I’ll love him to the day I day but he was a strange one. Always off
in his own world. He was a self-professed geek, reading and watching every bit
of sci-fi he could get his hands on. He loved to look at the stars.”

“I can relate, just maybe not as much.”

She smiled weakly, but it was real.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. She was crying now, the
tears flowing down her face. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up. It
almost killed his mother when I told her that her son had killed himself. She
thinks he’s in Hell now, burning for eternity. His brother looked like he’d
lost all hope, and Noah…”

I could barely understand her now. I put my hand on her
shoulder and gripped gently as she wept. When the tears stopped she put her
hand on mine and squeezed, then mouthed the words ‘thank you’.

“Noah knows something’s wrong. He’s not even a year old yet
but he knows. I think he misses Jakob. God, he won’t even remember his father.”

This was hitting to close to home, fears I’d had ever since
I’d had kids. It wasn’t death I was afraid of, it was leaving them behind with
so many questions and so few answers.

“You’ll just have to stay strong. I’ll find who did this and
I’ll do it fast as possible, I promise. Once I’ve got someone in cuffs everyone
will know the truth.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I have Jakob’s cellphone. It was ringing when I got to him,
and when I looked at it the voice recorder app was open. I listened to some of
it, heard two voices. Now the phone is locked and I can’t get into it.”

“Zero-one-fifteen-eleven. Noah’s birthday.”

I should have figured it would be something like that.

Mine was.

“Thanks. Get a new cellphone and a new number,” I said. “If
anyone asks, you lost your phone.” I wrote my cell phone number down on the
back of one of my business cards and handed it to her. “Call me with the new
number. I’ll stay in touch.”

I stood up and walked alongside the house, out the side
gate. The moment I was in my cruiser the engine was turning over and I was
putting the car in drive. I was losing composure.

It would be hard to be impartial on this investigation.

* * *

I didn’t have long to think about it, to dwell on everything
else going on. A call came in, Code One, lights and sirens, within twenty
minutes of my leaving Carter’s house—suicidal male preparing to jump from an
overpass. We were sent to Elgin Road, Highway 73, where it passes over the 401—the
busiest highway in Canada.