HARRY WATSON -- Chapter Six
There’s no such thing as sleep. Harry knows this as she presses her hands against the shadow images of The Sandman’s victims, their blood seeping across her knuckles as her fingers cuts their bodies in two. The wall is a reflection of his evil, his message still unclear to her. The flesh is his essay, one full of run on sentences that left his victims gasping for air, the circular bruises of his grip around their throats the punctuation. She glances out the small window he had used to make his escape and the sill is dripping blood, a black pool collected on the floor beneath it. The wind howls through it, and Harry stares out through its open maw and sees the rolling black and white tipped waves framed within it, where bones are collected, skulls and ribs rolling bleached white within the black water, pulverized into coral powder against the unforgiving rocks. She can hear a baby crying, and she leans out of the window, her hands sticky with blood as she grips the windowsill. The careening pitch of the infant’s woe seeps into her marrow, as does the grinding cold that whips into the open window, freezing the blood beneath her feet. She wants to run along the shore, her heels cracked and frozen, her steps leaving a trail of her own blood behind. She wants to run until she finds that weeping baby, its cries carried across the wind and black waves, longing for its mother’s comfort. The loneliness assaults her. It freezes her in place and makes her heart crumble in frosted shards within her heaving chest, her lungs unable to catch her breath.
She awoke with a start, a curse on her lips as she instantly sat up. Her heart hammered hard in her chest and it took a good few minutes to realize she was on the couch in Maurice Harding’s living room, the fire long dead before her. She could hear someone puttering in the kitchen to the right of the living room, and gentle words said to a babbling infant who was lulled into an equal quiet. Maurice was awake, as was Joy. Harry squinted into the darkness of that section of the house, shade placed onto it from the soft light in the kitchen. It was still dark outside.
She rubbed wakefulness into her face with her rough hands and was surprised to find a warm, fur lined blanket had been placed over her, along with an especially soft, goose down pillow placed beneath her head. She peered into the shadows still moving about in the kitchen. “What time is it?”
“There’s no need for you to get up,” Maurice gently said. “I know you were working well into the early hours, I saw the light in the spare room when I got up to check on Joy who needed changing. I resettled her and you were still in there around four o’clock this morning, pacing back and forth.”
Harry still felt disoriented. “How did I end up down here?”
Maurice pointed to an empty glass tumbler on the coffee table in front of her. “You needed a glass of water.”
She didn’t remember leaving the room. Groaning, Harry sat up and wrapped the fur lined blanket around her in a tight cocoon, sleep still trying to claim her. Maurice hadn’t given her the whole story, for he had been kind enough to tuck her in when he found her passed out on the sofa in his living room, an act of caring she wasn’t at all sure how to react to. “I don’t remember coming down here,” she said. She sighed and rubbed a kink out of her neck. “You couldn’t sleep either, I guess, if you came down here and found me.”
“I heard someone downstairs and it spooked me,” he admitted. Joy let out a happy gurgle as he gave her a piece of toast to munch on while he balanced her on his hip. “I had a fire poker in my hand, you were quite lucky I found you down here passed out on my sofa instead of lurking around in the dark. I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it.”
Harry felt sheepish. “Sorry about that.”
“You are human, you still need sleep like the rest of us. I’d rather you obtained proper rest than try and fight the natural needs of your body. Joy and I need you alert and ready, not pushed to your limits and barely functioning.” If there was a judgment in there as to her methods, Harry wasn’t going to fault it. It was good advice and one she had trouble taking.
He turned on a few lights, bathing the living room in a warm golden glow. Joy was still clutching her piece of toast as she was placed in the nearby playpen, her morning habit. She danced with floppy purpose around its edge, staring at Harry between soggy gnaws of toast and giving her drooling giggles. A mug of coffee was placed in Harry’s hands without her asking and she thanked Maurice for his further kindness.
“Still don’t get why you’re single,” Harry muttered as she took a sip. Perfect. As usual.
“There’s a spare bed in my attic studio. Feel free to use it, there’s no reason for you to earn a bad back on this old couch. Ann-Marie will be here at seven to take care of Joy, and if you need more rest it’s an excellent spot to steal it.” He stood in front of her, his own cup of coffee held aloft, his attitude one of concern mixed with annoyed pique. “I heard you pacing all over the house early this morning. Is there anything I need to know?”
Harry bit her bottom lip, grateful that she hadn’t wandered out the front door and into the drifts of snow in bared feet, her somnambulist’s march taking her into the centre of Trinity. It was a problem she’d encountered more than once in Washington, where she’d awake in the centre of the street blocks away from her crappy apartment wearing a pair of faded grey pyjama bottoms and a black tank top and nothing else. Superficial cuts lined her heels. After Florida it got so bad she got in the habit of wearing rubber soled slippers to bed. Charmaine was long gone by then, of course. Nothing but Harry’s dark thoughts and her midnight marching was left to keep her many demons company.
“I’ll take you up on that attic bed,” Harry said. Then, frowning, “Your studio? So that’s where all your own work is hidden away, I figured you couldn’t deal with artists without being a bit of one yourself.” She gave him an uncertain smile. “You aren’t shy about me invading your privacy?”
“There’s nothing to invade. My work is private but I’m also it’s most severe critic. Your judgment could never be as stinging as my own.”
“I wouldn’t dare give an opinion.”
“Art is meant for the viewer’s discernment.”
Harry snorted over her coffee, a wry grin meeting Maurice’s serious look. “While that’s probably true, I’m not going to be one to shoot my mouth off and spew shit I know nothing about. I’ll leave the academics and formal appreciation of art to an expert, and that’s you. Me, I just need a place to crash for an hour or two here and there. This couch wasn’t so bad, but a bed? You really do know how to spoil an unexpected guest.” She sipped at her coffee, contemplating Maurice’s silence. “Are you visiting your brother today?”
“I’m considering it,” Maurice said. He joined her on the couch, cradling his own mug of coffee. He stared into the pale brown swirl for a long moment before taking his own tentative sip. “You have to understand, I have no illusions about Sebastian’s prognosis. I’ve been ready for this inevitability for quite some time. What is unexpected is the method that has placed him there, and while I know the outcome would have been the same, it hurts more, somehow. I go into that room and I feel responsible. I should have been more vigilant over who he was associating with. I should have had better locks on my doors and windows.”
“You had no idea he’d possibly befriended a serial killer. I’m stressing that we don’t know he did that for sure, not yet. Besides, Sebastian was a grown man, he has responsibilities towards his own conduct, too. Much as you believe you are his keeper, you stopped being that the minute he decided that heroin was more important. You took him in when he was hungry, you fought to get him help even though he didn’t want it, you’re raising his kid. You’ve done way more than most and if I have to keep saying it like a damned mantra, I will: There’s no room for blame on you.”
Though he was putting on a good front of genteel bravado, Maurice was a morning mess, a note of fragility peeking out from beneath his red brocade bathrobe and striped flannel pyjamas. A dusting of dark stubble lined his cheeks and jaw and along the length of his neck. He was handsome but not in the Hollywood definition of the word, more fine boned and wired tight, like a bird of prey always ready to spring. Ice blue eyes met Harry’s with fleeting study and he broke the gaze immediately, shyness winning out over masculine bravado.
His cell phone rang and he cursed as he dug it out of his bathrobe’s pocket, the green light on the screen indicating yet another text from his stalking artist. He closed it off with a huff. “This man is going to be the death of me. I have so much work to do at the gallery, and we have our bimonthly agenda and budget report meeting, one I simply cannot miss. The Descartes we are receiving on loan is set to arrive next week, and it was a costly promotional venture. Our marketing team has been remiss in advertising its arrival, and we haven’t even discussed security for it yet. Not that I think anyone would believe stealing some scribbles by a philosopher of art and the human condition would be a wise venture, they’d hardly find a market here. Our group admission sales are abysmal. All this and dealing with Gravestone is wearing me thin. Agnes is finally ready to strangle him, and believe me, she has more patience than sense.”
The guy was a tad overeager, Harry had to admit, and she wondered if it would be a good idea for Janine to swing by the gallery while this stalking, starving artist was there, if only to gauge a temperature on just how volatile the needy bastard was. The disturbing image of the flower painting he’d given as an auctioned off work for the hospital still sat ill with her, the clawing petals too reminiscent of the twisted grip of a corpse for her liking. The fact Maurice had purchased it said more about his lack of understanding of such facts than his artistic sensibilities. It was a provoking piece, sure, but there was some macabre experience behind it that Maurice wasn’t aware of. She wondered what the trilogy depicted, and if it held the same creepy allure.
ANN-MARIE WAS A WELCOME, cheerful addition to the otherwise overpowering aspects of the large house, her rotund form rolling through each room with Joy in her arms like a well travelled matriarch. She had a surprising amount of energy for a woman of her size and age, and her sweet smile disarmed Harry, bringing her into her eager warmth. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to stay here, I was going to offer myself, but I know Maurice wouldn’t hear of it. He hates asking for help, you do kind of have to just show up and do it so he can’t refuse.”
They were in the living room which now had a roaring fire in its hearth, the snow still falling outside past the windows on the ground floor, thick flakes that sat in fluffy clumps on top of the large drifts. They were being buried alive and it was all so cozy and pleasant, liking bathing in a warm cup of tea. Ann-Marie slathered butter on a homemade scone she’d made on the stove top and handed it to Harry, using a paper towel as a plate. “I’ve known Maurice since he bought this money pit. He was so young, then, and I had just retired from teaching. I had the travel bug at that time, of course, and spent a lot of time in Asia and backpacking through Nepal. It was the kind of thing to do at the time, though I never did get the whole zen religiosity of it. The monks were okay. They were used to religious tourists by then, and they had a whole script they used for people like us. It’s like anything, you give it too much importance and then you wreck it. Their meditative philosophy is not my style at all. Too much sitting around for my liking, I like to be on the move.”
Harry tried to envision the busy marble of a woman on a Tibetan hilltop and wondered if the quiet monks grew irritated with the way she needed to roll around its precipice. Ann-Marie didn’t need to sit still, her restlessness was a type of meditation in itself. “So you were here when Sebastian came to live with Maurice?”
“Fifteen years old and a miserable, snotty little brat, I had lots of experience with his type. Spoiled, allowed to do whatever he wanted, no boundaries placed on him at all, poor Maurice had a hell of a lot of work cut out for him. And he was so young himself, only twenty-seven when Sebastian arrived and barely able to make his life a go of it. Sebastian was a horror, make no mistake. I remember Maurice studying hard in school before that brother of his got here, he’d bought the house when it was a shell of what it is now. I knew he wasn’t eating properly, oh he was so thin! I got in the habit of bringing over dinner every night, just to fatten him up a little. The place had no heat, the taps barely worked. Anyone else would have abandoned the whole thing. But he’s stubborn and he finishes what he starts. Maurice has been my neighbour for going on seventeen years, and I can’t say he has been anything but lovely. His brother, that one I can do without, and we were all waiting for something like this to happen. He was often cruel to Maurice, and when this little piece of Heaven showed up...” Ann-Marie tickled under Joy’s chin, sending her into sweet giggles. “Sebastian acted like she didn’t exist. It was heartbreaking. Poor Maurice, after being so sick and then given this extra responsibility while he was recovering...It was like Sebastian was doing all he could to take his brother into the pit with him. But Maurice has never followed him. He’s made of steel, that one. He don’t break, not ever.”
Harry wasn’t so sure of that, she had experience with that kind of compartmentalization herself and it hadn’t helped her at all after Florida. The nightmares were still there, and her feet were still itching to hit pavement. She finished her coffee and bid Ann-Marie a good day, giving Joy a little smile that was eagerly returned, as was an unexpected outstretch of tiny arms begging her to pick her up and hold her. Surprised at this, Harry did, her small weight pleasant and cuddly as Joy nuzzled against her shoulder.
“She’s used to you already,” Ann-Marie said. She polished her glasses on the hem of her over sized knit sweater. “She doesn’t usually warm up to people that easy.”
“I was getting her stink eye yesterday.”
“She was just summing you up. Sharp little thing, isn’t she?”
She certainly was, Harry conceded, and she gave Joy a little kiss on her rounded cheek before handing her back to Ann-Marie. She’d never thought of having kids before, the very idea had always been an abstract notion, one that certainly didn’t involve pregnancy or a suitable partner, neither of which she necessarily wanted to experience. It was such a strange thing, feeling warmed by the fact this tiny baby had enough power to make her happy that she was accepted by her. Joy was willing to place Harry in her very teeny tiny circle of trust.
She wouldn’t dare disappoint her.
Harry went up the stairs to the second floor, checking out the cold room and turning on her netbook. The grid of murder was instantly displayed on the wall in front of her, grey faces of death staring back. She rubbed her hand along the back of her neck, still working out the kinks from the couch that morning. It was the cold that had done her in, not the angle of how she’d slept, the chill seeping into her muscles and bones. Maurice had kept his fire burning in the small hearth in his bedroom overnight, which made the second floor pleasantly toasty long after the fire had died down to ash. Curious, she stepped into his bedroom, a place of brilliant white walls and rich, spotless moldings and an equal collection of white bedding, all of it giving one the impression they were stepping into the bedroom of a wedding cake. The Victorians certainly loved their scroll work, and there was plenty of it in evidence on the walls, plaster white flowers embedded in garland patterns above the wainscoting. Maurice was a tidy person, his bed expertly made though there was a silk blue cushion out of place which Harry picked up and tossed to rest between the thick pillows that guarded the head of the bed. It was a four poster affair of dark cherry wood, the ornate scrolling not antique so much as a replication of one. She’d seen this exact model during an outing with her sister Brenda to Pottery Barn, the queen sized bed too large and overbearing for any room Harry would have found herself in. Maurice’s fussy pomp had followed him here, in his quiet sanctuary, where even his bedding held a sampling of his inner English snobbery.
He’d mentioned there was a place of rest for her in his study and further curiosity had her leaving the bedroom o approach the small, narrow door in the centre of the upper landing. She opened it to reveal a very humble set of stairs that led up to the attic room, their bare, worn appearance beckoning her upwards. It was not an inviting climb, and she felt claustrophobic as she slid up the steps, wondering how it was a nanny with all her thick skirts had managed to bundle her way up here every night. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, Harry was eager to clamor into the wide open space they suddenly opened up into. The ceilings were surprisingly high, and she easily stood to her full height as she surveyed the studio, two large windows facing the back of the house that went from floor to ceiling bathed the workshop in light. Canvas paintings of various sizes lined the far wall, and the bare wooden floorboards were a mess of paints, mostly oil based and smeared in a thick collage of footprints. As promised, there was a daybed in the corner, though it was obvious that it was rarely, if ever, used, a pile of blank canvases strewn over top of the dusty bed covers.
More fascinating to Harry was this glimpse she earned into Maurice’s mind, for regardless of skill in interpretation when it came to intent in art, Harry has a keen understanding of human misery. This was where Maurice placed all of his considerable angst, she realized, in tortured strokes of dark, death mask colours that rendered the simplicity of its subject into decay.
Flowers. Canvas after canvas of startling still life that looked real enough to pluck petals from, and yet, there was an overall theme of rot, the flowers wilting, their masculine colours drenched in dark hues on black backgrounds. Skulls and bones were hidden among the green leaves, pockmarked with brown and black fungus, a funereal study in despairing hopelessness. There was nothing feminine lurking in these images, the human element reduced to its discomfort with how all must come to an unpleasant end, even the richest of nature’s most beautiful samples.
Looking at painting after painting of these wilted, spent visions left Harry feeling as though she was looking on a collection of corpses.
One thing was for sure, she sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep up here.
SHOWERED AND IN FRESH, unseasonable clothing (she really did need to find a sweater, somewhere), Harry was back in the cold spare room staring at more predictable corpses than the ones she’d found in the attic workroom. She plucked her cell phone out of her pocket and dialled Janine.
“I need you go to the Halifax Gallery Group and check out an artist, last name Gravestone. He might even be there right now, he’s been harassing Maurice non-stop since I arrived and I have to wonder about this guy. We know the person who attacked Sebastian is from Trinity, and it’s very likely he’s been working for some time in the close network around Sebastian and Maurice both. This artist might know something. Doesn’t matter if he’s nuts, people forget the crazy have ears, too.”
Janine cleared her throat. She’d been eating something, and Harry guessed it was a sandwich. Janine swallowed with exaggerated effort before speaking. “Yeah, good morning to you, too.”
Harry frowned, she could hear the intonations of Maurice’s voice in the far background. “Where are you?”
“Apparently ahead of you. I’m at the gallery, Maurice called me when that Gravestone guy started getting all heated up. I’m off to have a coffee with the guy to calm him down and if you want me to chat away with him, that’s fine with me, too. He’s a tiny little thing, looks like he hasn’t had a proper meal in a decade or more. Lives off of alcohol and paint fumes by the look and stink of him.” She sighed and Harry thought about apologizing for being too brash, but it was Janine who was the queen of that. “Dan can’t find your guy, the one who was squatting in Maurice’s house before he bought it. There’s plenty of evidence that someone was living in that house due to the damage found, but what tends to happen around here is we don’t bother charging vagrants. I mean, the house was empty on that street for twelve years before Maurice showed up and it’s not the like the elderly owner who lived in it kept it up before that, we all figured it would just fall down one day. If someone was squatting in it, we’d just chase them out and force them to move on. We were more worried about arsonists back then than homeless people using it as a stop along the way.”
“Arsonists?” This peaked Harry’s interest. She glanced through her various files and notes on The Sandman, seeking any kind of connection. “Someone was lighting fires in Trinity?”
“Back in ‘92,” Janine said. “Set a couple of sheds and a rack of lobster traps ablaze in June of that year. Only happened those three times and we never caught who did it. Had everyone on edge, the places around here are all wood and they go up like matches when they’re lit. Maurice’s fireplaces make me real nervous, not gonna lie. I was so relieved when he boarded most of them up.” There was a pause on the other end of the line that put Harry on instant alert. “Debs wants you to call her.”
“Tell her I’m busy,” Harry said.
“She said it’s not optional. You need to check in.”
Harry inwardly cursed. “Just make sure you really grill that artist, he’s been bugging the hell out of Maurice.”
She hung up and stared at the cell phone, knowing the call she was going to have to give Debs was a difficult one. Her official capacity here hinged on Deb’s opinion on whether or not Harry was able to handle the investigation and while she considered her a close ally, she knew Debs could be overcautious. Harry made her way down the narrow steps and out of the disturbing realm of rotted flowers and bones and back down to the second floor. She descended further, the roar of the living room fire attracting her and giving her a sense of soulful calm. Joy was quietly playing on a comforter spread out beneath her, a collection of toys fanned out beside her. Ann-Marie was sitting close beside her, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, absorbed in the pages of a thick book.
Harry texted Debs rather than speak to her. It was easier that way.
HairyB—*Janine said to get a hold of you. We’re still working on some leads. Not much yet. Determined The Sandman is possibly from the Trinity area. Trying to narrow down his past actions, checking police records, etc. Should have something solid for you v soon.*
Debster—*You doing ok Harry?*
HairyB—*The investigation is progressing.*
Debster—*Not what I asked. I need to know if you’re sleeping, if you’re having any of your episodes, you know the ones I mean.*
HairyB—*Not a one.*
Debster—*I know you’re lying. You can’t just turn off trauma, you learned that the hard way. Get proper sleep, and if you get the itch to start marching off into the ocean in bare feet and your undies, get to a damned hospital first.*
Harry paused before answering her, her heart hammering deep in her chest, the itch at the bottom of her feet always there but easier to keep still.
HairyB—*I’m not going to march into the fucking ocean. Things are great here. I like it a lot, it’s so quiet. Beats all the shit of Washington and Jersey any day.*
There was a long pause after this message was sent, enough to make Harry wonder if Debs had run off.
The surface of her cell phone lit up.
Debster—*How’s your mom?*
She closed off that final message. Instantly, the calm of the house was interrupted by a furious banging on the front door, a heavy, gruff voice demanding it be opened.
“I know you’re fucking in there! Open this fucking door! I have a right to see my fucking kid!”
Harry cast a shocked glance at Ann-Marie, who was staring at the front door in equal alarm. She shook her head, telling Harry she didn’t have a clue who this was. Harry nodded at her to take Joy and hurry upstairs, a silent plea that didn’t have to be suggested to the elderly woman twice. She gathered Joy up into her arms and near broke into a rolling run as she bounded up the stairs, Joy fussing over the fear in Ann-Marie’s grip.
The harsh pounding at the door shook the wood on its hinges and instinctively Harry reached behind her, where her gun was neatly tucked into the back belt of her trousers, her fingers dancing along its smooth, metal shape. She stood on the other side of the door, listening to the pounding threats and furious anger that continued to hammer against it.
“You fucker! Fucking open this fucking door!”
“Who are you?” Harry demanded.
The pounding paused, and Harry made the quick deduction this bastard didn’t have a clue why an unknown woman was in Maurice Harding’s house. She slid alongside the edge of the couch, getting a good look out the window at an uncomfortable, but safe, angle. The son of a bitch on the front porch was a Goliath of a man, dressed in an over sized black suit. His car and driver were waiting for him at the pavement. A meaty hand met the door as he began pounding again, and this time Harry didn’t hesitate, she took her gun out and in one fluid motion opened the door.
With the barrel of the gun pointed at the centre of his forehead, he shut his big mouth up real quick. Not procedure, she could get into a hell of a lot of trouble for this, especially around here, but there were times when only the threat of copper tipped steel could make an idiot calm down enough to talk and this was definitely one of them. He open and closed his mouth like a gaping fish, his face beet red and round, beads of sweat dripping down the backside of his cheeks. He had thick lips and a wide, fleshy brow that overhung over his eyes, like some latent caveman who had been stuffed into a generous suit.
“Where’s Maurice?” he said, voice significantly quieter than before. He licked his lips and chose his words carefully, watching every finite move of the gun that was trained on him.
“What’s your name?” Harry demanded.
“Look, I just want to talk to him, that’s all...”
“Didn’t look like that to me, looks like you wanted to beat his door down and do some serious fucking harm, that’s what it looks like from here. Don’t even think about stepping any closer.” Harry pulled out her cell with her free hand, and threatened to dial. “One more step and I call a car to come over here and have you arrested, do you understand me?”
“You’ve pulled a gun on me, you’re not going to call the cops!”
“I was protecting the home of Maurice Harding, and you were threatening its occupants. I am a Federal Agent currently acting in conjunction with the RCMP and I deemed the situation volatile. I’m going to ask you again, who are you?”
The sweaty monolith cursed and tried to peer past her shoulder. “I just want to see my damned kid! Where the hell is Maurice?”
“If he wanted you to know he would have told you.”
“That fucking bitch!”
The burly man stormed away from the porch, heedless of the gun now trained on his back as he headed for the waiting car. Harry quickly noted the license plate and didn’t pack her gun away until the car and its vile occupant, stuffed into the back seat, drove down and away from the street. The entire neighbourhood was stunned into silence, though Harry witnessed one or two curious onlookers peeking through curtains at upstairs windows. Only Old Jessop stood proud and stern in the main living room window, boldly staring at the house. He caught Harry’s eye and gave the gun in her hand a glance before giving her a solemn nod in understanding. Harry stepped back into the house and bolted the door shut, adrenaline riding high within her. Her knees were shaking. The last time she had to pull a gun on someone it had ended with his brains splattered against the edge of a well filled with the bodies of his victims. That was the tattoo of a leaky bucket just under her left breast. Her seventh case solved.
Her hands shaking, she tucked her gun back and then snatched up her cell phone, dialling Dan, but not before making sure the deadbolt on the front door was secured tight.
“Hey, I need a check done on a license plate, it’s urgent.”
“I was just going out for lunch...” Dan whined.
“No, Danny Boy, you’re going to act like an actual officer of the fucking law and you’re going to check this plate and give me a name.”
She read the letters and numbers out to him and a chastised Dan punched them into his computer, letting a small huff of surprise at the name that came up. “Hunh, how about that? The car belongs to Richard Alansi, he’s a businessman based out of Vancouver. Horta Enterprises, they specialize in pesticides and insect GMO.”
“Since when did you become a columnist for Business Insider?”
“You don’t need to snark at me,” Dan snapped. “I’m just giving you information.”
Harry stared at her cell phone like it was an alien’s middle finger. “What are you talking about?”
“You being real nasty to me. I don’t like it.”
“For fuck’s sake...” Harry let out a low whistle, her adrenaline still riding high. “Look, I just had to chase that asshole off of Maurice Harding’s property with a barely legal Magnum .45. Any word on what his beef with Maurice might be?”
“You pulled a gun on him? Jesus Christ, you can’t do that! Why the hell did you do that!”
Dan really was dim. “Because he’s the size of the fucking house, is why, and he was beating down the damned door and there was no way that son of a bitch wasn’t going to erupt in violence otherwise. What’s his connection to Maurice?”
Dan’s voice was static, interference from the soft fluff still falling out of the sky and onto the ground below making the connection difficult to hear. He kept shorting out. “He’s....Gallery...Richest man in...Contributions...Gallery gets donations, he gets...”
“I didn’t catch that last bit. Dan! Repeat yourself!”
“You can’t just...gun...There’s....Laws...”
For fuck’s sake, Dan. Harry forced patience into her being, but it was hard going. “What’s this about donations to the Gallery? What’s he doing here?”
“Maurice is...Descartes...You can’t...firearm...illegal...he’ll file a complaint...”
It was impossible to hear more, Dan descended into a thick crush of static and Harry turned off her cell phone with a loud curse. A heavy creak behind her made her whip her head around only to find a startled Ann-Marie halfway down the stairs. Harry breathed a sigh of relief, but her heart was still pumping hard.
Ann-Marie held an iron poker in her hand. The same one Maurice had used when he’d heard Harry pacing about the house at an ungodly hour of the morning.
“That’s the weapon of choice around here,” Harry said, pointing to it. She nodded at the front door. “He’s gone. I was just talking to Dan, he said that was Richard Alansi, does that name mean anything to you?”
Ann-Marie continued her careful climb down the stairs, still holding the fireplace poker in her grip. Harry had to give the old girl credit, she wasn’t about to let anyone get into this house without a good fight. There was a certain fire about the elderly woman that suggested if Richard Alansi had made his way into the house it wouldn’t have been bullets that took him down, but the sharp end of a poker in just the right spot at the base of the brain. Ann-Marie was a woman full of strange knowledge.
“I wouldn’t have let him live,” she said, as though reading Harry’s thoughts and confirming them. Ann-Marie had quite the anarchist streak and Harry found she was really liking the tough old matron. “A warning shot would distract him, and then I would have given him a few good whacks to take him out. You get the cross section of the poker to do the job, the flat end. Hit the skull just right and it’ll crack open like a watermelon.”
Harry raised a brow, the question of how Ann-Marie knew this to be true not asked. “Good to know.”
Ann-Marie waddled past her and headed for the kitchen, making a beeline for the small jar that held tea. She put water on to boil and gathered up a couple of Earl Greys and two mugs. “Joy’s upstairs having an early nap. Richard Alansi is a very rich man who thinks he owns everything he touches. He’s some big mucky muck billionaire type out of Vancouver, and he’s got some investments in Halifax, mostly to do with the oil they found off the coast of Newfoundland a while back. His company mainly deals in pesticides, but Horta Enterprises is just a blanket term for a wide number of companies he owns shares and interests in.” Ann-Marie sighed sadly as the water boiled and she placed the tea bags in the waiting mugs. “He’s a real asshole. There’s no nice way to put it. He’s set himself up to be this big, powerful businessman, but really he’s no better than a playground bully. That pesticide company he owns still uses chemicals similar to DDT in its formula, and it’s been known to cause deformities in bee populations where it’s used. The bees die out and pollination doesn’t occur. Entire crops lay barren. Whole farming communities have collapsed in India as a result. Farmers are committing suicide over the loss of their crops and people in those regions are starving. Of course, Horta Enterprises absolves itself of blame, all while it reaps the record profits of farms from larger, corporate companies. It’s a form of sanctioned chemical warfare against the independent farmers eking out a living. Horta Enterprises is seeking to make monopolies, not partnerships.”
Harry looked over her shoulder at the door, and wondered if the hinges had sustained any damage. She could see cracks along the dark wood spidering out near the handle. This wasn’t about business, this was intensely personal and thus all the more dangerous. “He’s a real prince.”
“Yeah, but he thinks he’s a goddamned king.”
Harry accepted the cup of tea, but its heat gave her no comfort and her feet were itching and restless. She danced them beneath the chair she was seated in, the large oak table dwarfing them both as they tried to regain their bearings. Harry closed her eyes, trying not to think of what would have happened if she’d been forced to pull the trigger. Ann-Marie had faith in a warning shot, but Harry wasn’t one to be a fool when faced with a raging, rabid bull.
“What’s this creep’s connection to the Gallery?”
“He likes to think of himself as a patron of the arts,” Ann-Marie said. She blew on her hot tea, cooling it before taking a patient sip. She held the mug close to her heart. “I never thought it was a good idea for him to arrange getting that Descartes here on loan. He thinks the Gallery owes him now, and he likes throwing his weight all over the place. I know Maurice and him had words a while back, a bit earlier than this time last year, it was just a few months before Maurice got so sick and had to go to Montreal for treatments. Got in a real rage during a black tie affair at the Lord Nelson, embarrassing, really. Was babbling on about how Maurice was nothing but a liar, called him nasty names, I won’t repeat them. This is all what Agnes told me, of course, I wasn’t there, but Alansi was nearly banned from all Gallery interaction then and there. Maurice didn’t stay long at the black tie gala like he was supposed to, a real shame to be honest because he was showcasing some of the new artists in the region. Alansi’s tantrum ruined all of that. Maurice left while Alansi was shooting his mouth off about the Gallery, and about him, so just as well, really.”
Harry wasn’t exactly pleased with this information. Maurice clearly had an enemy and he hadn’t disclosed him, a serious omission that felt like a personal slight. During their conversation about Joy he had never let out a hint that her paternity was in question and Richard Alansi was not the kind of jackass you wanted coming after you. He had deep pockets and was used to throwing his heavy weight around. Maurice needed a lawyer more than ever.
She left Ann-Marie in the kitchen, telling her to let her know if he came back. She considered getting Dan to park in front of the house but she didn’t feel like getting the lecture that she couldn’t go swinging her firearm around, that this wasn’t the wild west, this wasn’t some Texas parking lot where she could carry her loaded gun in her purse. There would be consequences. Right now it was a matter of who saw what and it was all hearsay.
Luckily, she hadn’t needed to fire it.
For now, anyway
JANINE STOOD IN FRONT of a large painting of a female vulva. At least, that’s what it looked like to her, smeared reds and pinks in long lines that gave one the impression of ragged flesh. She made a face, unimpressed with the gory representation, and wondered who the hell would put something like that on their living room wall. A gynecologist, maybe? Even then, this was hardly a healthy sample.
Andy Gravestone was a shy, wiry little man with a scruffy beard and lots of nervous energy. He paced in front of several paintings, barely looking at them, his eyes darting to the side at Maurice and Agnes who were in a deep discussion in the Gallery’s main office. Janine’s imposing figure made him even more nervous and she smiled as send a nod his way, the action making the small man near jump out of his skin in terrified shock.
Harmless, that was her first impression, and she was very rarely wrong.
The Gallery was mostly empty, a leftover affect of the storm which turned many a Halifax resident into a snowed in shut-in. The wide, open space invited calm and Janine liked the way the rubber soles of her heavy boots snuck through the place, not disturbing the contemplative quiet. She snuck up behind Gravestone and, amused by how he twitched at her close proximity, sent him into a little gulp of panic when she spoke.
“So you’re the guy with the three paintings.” She gave his shocked expression a wide smile. “The librarian in Trinity told me all about you.”
“They need to be together...” he began and Janine held up her hand, stopping him.
“I’m sure they do. But I ain’t no art critic, I got no damn way of knowing what’s supposed to happen and what isn’t. Like this thing. Looks like someone’s nasty period. Puts me right off my lunch.”
He nodded in that twitchy way of his, dirty fingernails scrabbling through the underside of his wiry beard. He was dressed in a worn, plaid flannel shirt and a pair of equally worn jeans with paint stains all over the thighs. He looked hungry and sick. Janine narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, and wondered, on a hunch, if his social circles included addicts.
“You’re a friend of Sebastian Harding,” she said, and he really jumped then, his small eyes darting towards her like little needles. He actually took a step back when she tried to close the distance between them. “I guess you got an idea of what’s happened to him, then.”
“He’s in hospital,” Andy Gravestone said. His shoulders shook as he shrugged. “Overdose.”
“Not really,” Janine said, watching him carefully. “But you know all about how much he’s been using. How long have you been on heroin?”
Gravestone closed his eyes, sighing. “Too long. I have to go to the clinic later, I...They can’t break them up...”
She felt a pang of empathy for him, knowing he wasn’t the kind of addict who wanted it to take over his life like Sebastian had. She wondered how close they were. “Were the two of you good friends?”
He shrugged again. “We knew each other. Bought from the same guy. It’s like that. We slept under the same bridges, he’s always around, always has a lot to say. Sebastian is always there.”
“Sounds like you two were besties.”
His head shook as he gave Maurice and Agnes in the Gallery office a hooded study. “Sebastian is cruel. He says too much. He’s a thief and he shouldn’t have said what he said. Those two, over there, they want to separate my vision. They want to divide it and they can’t...”
“What do you know about the dealer Sebastian dealt with?” Janine asked, pulling the small man back into her reality. Addiction was just a symptom, she realized, this man wasn’t entirely all there, his eyes flicking towards things only he could see, muttering under his breath as her presence made him more agitated.
“He was a dealer, they’re all the same. They’re all the same. One, two, three. They need to be together, people won’t know if they don’t see them together, and they have to know, it’s getting too much...”
Janine sighed, wondering how she was going to bring this loony tune onto the right track. Acquaintances, fellow users, they tumbled through this guy and Sebastian’s life, little pieces of crazy that drifted like flotsam through their friendships. “What do you know about Sebastian?” she asked, and the artist’s head shook, his muttering increasing. She bit her bottom lip, going for any straw she could find. “What about that girlfriend who took off, the one who had Joy?”
“Bitch..Bitch...Bitch...” He glanced up at Janine and then let his gaze fall away. “She’s a dancer in Vancouver, and she peels off her skin for anyone who pays for it. She needs more sleep. I wanted to go to Toronto, but there was no way she could make it there. She comes to Halifax and peels her skin here, she dances and she thinks they believe she’s beautiful, but she’s tired, she’s so tired...The baby had to be left behind. She wasn’t any good, always keeping it awake. Sebastian has a baby now. Sebastian is so tired...”
“Mr. Gravestone!”
The artist’s eyes went wide as Maurice approached him, Agnes in tow. Maurice’s lips were tight as held in his frustration with the confused artist, whatever grip his mental state had on him squeezing him until his coherence wavered. Maurice seemed to have experience dealing with these episodes and he motioned to Agnes behind him. “I think you could use a nice hot cup of coffee, yes? I can see you aren’t well, Mr. Gravestone. Please, come into the office and have a seat, we can discuss the sale of your work in private...”
“They need to be together!” Gravestone exclaimed.
He began shouting gibberish then, clutching at his head and his hair, his mouth twisted into a tortured grimace. Maurice watched the spectacle with a mixture of exhaustion and pity. “Mr. Gravestone,” he said, his voice calm and soothing in the wide, echoing space. “You know I trust your work implicitly, I would not be fighting for it so much if I didn’t. You need to trust me, too. I know you need your work to be seen, I’m going to make that happen. Please, Mr. Gravestone, will you let me do that?” Maurice gave him an imploring look that silenced any further mad babble. “I purchased the work you had presented for auction at the hospital. There is no question I appreciate your vision.”
Gravestone swallowed, the bump of his Adam’s apple pronounced and quivering as it bounced up and down. His agitation was still there, but it wasn’t as frantic as before. He shook his head and broke what fleeting eye contact he had with Maurice and kept his gaze rooted to the floor at his feet.
“I have to go to a budget meeting within the hour, but I will talk to you if you need to, Mr. Gravestone. Agnes will get you some coffee and a sandwich from the cafeteria downstairs. Please, help yourself to whatever you like. Have you had breakfast? I don’t think you have. Take a few things to go, too.” It was a kind gesture offered to a very desperate, mentally ill man and Janine had a new respect for Maurice. She wondered how often he had to play social worker to the various artists who contributed to the gallery and figured it was a role he had to implement often. She watched with a sense of deep pity as Agnes took the small man under her wing and guided him towards the elevator leading to the downstairs cafeteria.
“He is talented,” Maurice said to Janine, sighing. “Unfortunately, that has come at a price.”
Janine took in Maurice’s neat appearance, his stoic stance as he stood in front of the ghastly vaginal painting that still made her skin crawl. “He’s an addict. Heroin, specifically. He knows Sebastian pretty well.”
Maurice raised a brow at this. “Does he?”
“Sebastian never mentioned him?”
“That’s not surprising, he rarely confided in me about his friends. How well were they acquainted?”
“Pretty close, I’d say,” Janine said. “He knew all about Sebastian’s girlfriend. Said she was an exotic dancer in Vancouver and made her way across the country before ending up here. He doesn’t have a very high opinion of her.”
Maurice frowned at this, and Janine swore it was a look of abject confusion. He glanced towards the elevators where Agnes and Andy Gravestone had made their leave. “How strange,” he said, mostly to himself.
“What do you know about him?”
Maurice was still frowning. “I’m not sure, to be honest. I know he’s struggling, has been for years. He has a place to live now, but it’s unlikely he’ll have it for long, it’s why I’m fighting so hard for him to see his work needs to be marketable. Getting a sale for him ensures he has a roof over his head. He’s very ill, Agnes told me he has hepatitis, has been infected for over a decade. He can’t survive on anything other than his art. He spent many years homeless, and he squatted in various places in Halifax and the surrounding area, it’s a miracle he didn’t die then.”
“Trinity, too?” Janine asked.
“Maybe. I really don’t know. He can, however, tell you where every abandoned building and hollow corner of space is in Halifax. He’s quite an asset to the homeless youth around here as a result.”
Janine would have thought on it more and asked more questions, but the day was set to be filled with every increasing levels of conflict. She watched as a burly, furious large man in an equally large suit barrelled his way through the Gallery doors. Maurice’s sudden pallor at seeing this man heading towards him put her on high alert, and it didn’t take more than five seconds to realize this was the right response.
“You fucking piece of shit!” The giant’s steps echoed loud and rude through the Gallery’s open space. “You fucking cunt!”
And then, out of the blue, and before Janine could react, the brute hauled out and punched Maurice brutally across the face, dropping him to the floor. Blood poured from Maurice’s mouth and nose. It took a few seconds for Janine to realize the cursing brute drove a nasty kick into Maurice’s stomach while he was down.
Fuck this!
She got out her tazer. Janine acted fast, not waiting to talk a thing out, this bastard had murder on his mind. He was gearing up to lay another beating on the man already on the floor and who was only a third of this prick’s size.
The electrodes hit him and he cursed as he went down in a violent spasm, the voltage driven in twice to make sure his bulk wasn’t getting back up. It was liking taking out a moose. Janine sat on his back and cuffed him, all the while calling for back-up. Maurice was sitting up now, bleeding profusely all over his suit and onto the floor, clots hemorrhaging from his nose. He smeared blood across his face as he tried to stem the flow with his fingers.
“That’s my kid, you fucking piece of shit! You cunt!”
She was going to get written up for it. Hell, maybe even disciplined. But in that moment Janine didn’t give a shit what the cause of this brutality was, only that the instigator was still trying to attack someone she both respected and considered a good friend.
She kicked the side of the massive man’s head, her heel meeting bone echoing through the Gallery at the force of the impact. He was stunned, but not rendered unconscious. He kept his big, ugly mouth shut.