Chapter 23 Kobe
Kobe
The days leading up to Christmas dragged.
In lieu of interviews—setting them up had proved impossible—Rue delegated me to reviewing street cams and all the video footage we’d managed to get our hands on to see if I could spot our killer.
It was menial labor usually delegated to a lowly constable on desk duty, but since so many officers had taken time off, there was nobody else.
I suspected it was punishment for my behavior, but I sucked it up and did as I was told.
Rue, on the other hand, attended Navid Kordestani’s funeral since his body had been released and his distant family had arranged a small service. She wanted to observe who was in attendance, convinced our killer might make an appearance.
Navid’s murder was the only one that didn’t stand a chance of having been caught on video. The trails where he ran were far out of the range of street cams and accessible by so many entry points, we wouldn’t have known where to look if we wanted to.
Jesse’s murder by the outdoor rink was sketchy.
The community center in the area had outdoor cameras, but they didn’t cover where the body was located.
The rink itself was unmonitored by technology.
We had procured street cams from the surrounding neighborhood access points, but they weren’t likely to be much use.
We put all our hope on Ford Carrigan’s murder and the university cameras that covered some of the quad.
Some being the operative word. Their positions over doorways gave us no more than an arc of twenty or so feet, leaving much of the area out of camera range.
Not only were the angles bad, but the resolution was worse.
Still, like a good little detective trying to win points with his superior, I spent two days combing every inch of footage, trying in vain to catch our perp in action.
I found nothing.
On Wednesday, December twenty-third, two days before Christmas, Rue and I hijacked a conference room, chart paper, and the only working black marker in the entire department to go over the evidence we had collected.
Again.
We started by summarizing everything we knew and making comprehensive profiles of our victims. Not for the first time, I pointed out Jesse and Navid’s poor reputations.
Ford, so far as we could tell, had no reputation to speak of.
Especially since he had spent the past couple of years in a pit of depression, barely leaving his house and not socializing with anyone.
“Suspects. I don’t care how loosely they fit or how impossible they seem. List them.” Rue poised the marker over a clean sheet of poster paper that hung beside the others she had tacked to the wall.
I skimmed the table full of papers and notes we had studied meticulously over the past hour. Endless charts and interview transcripts from the people we had talked to at the hospital and on campus. Autopsy reports. Lists of names we had yet to connect with.
“Fatemeh.”
Rue clutched her chest with feigned astonishment, gasping dramatically. “A woman? Are you sure?”
I scratched my nose with my middle finger extended.
My partner, far too smug for my liking, wrote Fatemeh’s name on the chart paper, underlining it twice. “Okay. Why?”
“For her ex-husband’s insurance money. Because she seemed outraged when I mentioned Jesse and his sexual exploits on campus. Because she publicly tore Navid a new one when she learned her husband voted to keep Jesse in school. Because she hates men. Full stop.”
I displayed my palms and continued. “Abrasions on her hands, which she claimed were from picking at her gym calluses, but they could have been caused from strangling three people. And, I begrudgingly admit that she has the physique of someone who could subdue a man twice her size.”
Rue scribbled everything down and added a note of her own. Medical knowledge.
“Shit. I forgot about that. Good point.”
“Next?”
I ran a finger over a page that listed the dozens of people we’d chatted with, stopping when I arrived at a name I hadn’t considered in a while.
“How about Neo Freely, Blaze’s brother? He didn’t like that his sister dropped the charges against Jesse.
He showed clear hostility surrounding the assault.
He’s a medical student, and for whatever reason, he didn’t seem to like Dr. Kordestani.
He and his sister claimed they couldn’t see a connection between Kordestani and the other two, but if we consider that Jesse was peddling drugs or used date rape drugs at parties and Neo or Blaze knew this, it could have fueled his rage. ”
Rue tipped her head side to side, conveying uncertainty over my choice of suspect, but in the end, she added Neo to the list.
“Keep going,” she said.
I huffed, skimming our notes. “How about every female student on campus who ever partied with Jesse Vargas? My god, Rue, I can’t narrow it down.
We’ve interviewed over a dozen women who all had problems with Jesse and his gang.
They had a petition at one time to get rid of him, which the school dismissed.
If he crossed lines, any one of them could have done this.
Or a group of them. We still don’t know that Navid wasn’t party to Jesse’s attacks on these women. Hell, maybe he helped cover for him.”
Rue simply wrote female student and added a plus symbol to indicate we could be looking at more than one.
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I could make a case for Laurent St. Pierre, the administrator we talked to, or Buckley Calloway, Kordestani’s TA.”
“Buckley thought the sun shone out of the doctor’s ass. You really think he would kill him?”
“Why not? That’s suspicious as fuck, don’t you think? Not one person has spoken nicely about Navid, except the TA. He was also very good at redirecting my attention to Fatemeh, and he had a negative opinion about Jesse and his gang.”
“And St. Pierre?”
I shrugged. “Call it a hunch. He didn’t want Jesse at the school.
He was forced to follow protocol. He has two daughters who were at the university when Jesse was in attendance.
One of them split the second her older sister graduated.
Why? He wasn’t telling us something. I can see an irate father going ballistic if his daughter was assaulted or threatened by a gang like Jesse’s.
Navid, fighting to keep Jesse around… I don’t know. Think about it.”
“Jesse’s expulsion was last year.”
“And according to the female population, up until his murder, Jesse was still at it. He was still sneaking into parties and playing his old games. The threat was real. Maybe St. Pierre had enough and wanted to stop him before he did real damage.”
“Okay.” Rue added Buckley Calloway and Laurent St. Pierre to the list before chucking the marker on the table. “This is ridiculous. Fatemeh might be our strongest suspect, but she has a solid alibi for Ford’s murder, so technically, that should eliminate her.”
“It’s not that solid.”
“It’s pretty damn good. Where’s St. Pierre now? I want to ask about his alibis. You make a good case.”
I sat taller, stunned at the compliment. “Really? I’m not sure where he is.” I shuffled through papers until I found his personal information. “He lives in the city.”
“Good. I’ll call him.”
Rue made a phone call while I stared at the chart papers pinned to the wall.
It had been five days since Ford’s death.
Nine since Jesse’s. Sixteen since Navid’s.
Were we waiting for another body to drop, or was our unsub’s quest for revenge complete?
I feared we would never catch the perp at this rate unless they struck again and gave us something solid to work with.
Rue chatted to Laurent St. Pierre for over ten minutes.
When she got off the phone, she collapsed in a chair across from me with a tired sigh.
“He has an alibi for Ford’s murder. He was out drinking with a colleague to cap off the upcoming school break.
Navid and Jesse are a no. His wife works shift work and wasn’t home until after seven both mornings.
He claims he was asleep but can’t prove it. His daughters don’t live at home.”
“Do you have the name of the colleague?”
“Yeah. I’ll call and confirm.” But Rue didn’t reach for her phone.
We stared at the spread of papers on the table, neither of us speaking.
I wanted to mention Yates and the rape he’d failed to report three years ago, but Rue had harped at me enough about focusing on current events, so I kept my mouth shut.
The door to the conference room opened abruptly, and Staff Sergeant Golding poked her head in. My spine stiffened. Rue had been the one keeping her up to date on the case, while I’d worked at keeping my i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
I had no idea if Rue had spoken to her about my unfiltered comments as of late, but if so, she showed no immediate signs of ire.
Golding glanced between us before snapping, “Get out of here. Unless another body drops, I don’t want to see either of you until the twenty-seventh.”
Shocked, I looked at Rue. Golding had been pushing us to solve this case since Ford’s body had shown up the other day. What about the ceaseless media? The fear of a serial killer in the city?
As though reading my thoughts, Golding added, “You know as well as I do that if a homicide isn’t self-solving in the first five minutes, you could be at it for years.
You’ve made no arrests, and Hayashi has informed me that your evidence is thin and the suspect list thinner.
The university is locking its doors until the twenty-seventh.
I got a call an hour ago. Your killer seems focused on students and faculty, so at this rate, you’re not going to get anywhere anyhow. ”
It was true that all the interviews we needed to conduct were with people who had gone home for the holiday and weren’t available.
I stayed silent and let Rue acknowledge the gift we’d been given.
“Thank you, ma’am.” The sergeant gave a brusque nod and closed the door. Rue offered me a rare smile. “Merry Christmas to us.”
I was out of the office and in my car, driving home in under twenty minutes. I hadn’t seen Dominique since crawling from his bed Sunday morning and dragging myself to work. It had been a lonely three days, and had it not been the middle of a workday, I would have driven straight to his house.
We talked daily, but our jobs kept us busy. As I drove, I connected a call to his number, figuring I’d get his voicemail. Surprisingly, he answered on the second ring with a, “For the last time, Detective, toxicology reports take weeks, sometimes months.”
“So you’re saying sucking your cock got me nowhere? Dammit.”
Dominique chuckled, and it was music to my ears. Not only did he laugh on occasion, but his smiles came with greater ease. I liked to think it was all my doing.
“Hello, Kobe.”
“Hello, handsome. How’s your day?”
“Well, I’ve got a stiffy on my hands and no blow job in the world will help this time.”
I groaned. “Oh god. Your sense of humor should be illegal.”
“Will you arrest me?”
“Keep it up, mister, and I might.”
“Shouldn’t you be solving a case?”
“Fuck that case. It’s giving me a headache. I got sent home, and for once, it wasn’t because I did something wrong. The boss shooed us out the door and told us not to come back until after the holiday. It’s barely two in the afternoon, so I thought I’d see if émeric wanted to hit the arcade.”
“Ottawa has an arcade?”
“Damn straight. House of Targ. It’s amazing fun. émeric loves it there, even when I kick his ass at Guitar Hero. They serve the best pierogies, too, and that kid doesn’t eat enough, so I like to load him up before I bring him home.”
“Sounds like a good afternoon.”
“When Cosette is older, I’ll introduce her to the art of classic video games and greasy food. Ms. Pacman still sports her pink bow.”
“I’m sure she’d like that.”
“What are you doing later?” I asked, turning onto my street. “Up for some company?”
Dominique paused, and my heart sank, disappointment setting in.
“Let’s make a deal,” he said. “How about I work late tonight. That way, I can take the next two days off. You were already spending Christmas with me, but why not start sooner? Come for breakfast?”
“Listen, Doc. You’re cute and all, and I admit, you turn me on, but I’m not planning to get up before noon tomorrow, not even for princess pancakes, whatever they are. Do you know when I last slept in?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “1998.”
“Were you alive in 1998?”
“Yes, I was, smart-ass. I was born in ninety-three.”
“Such a baby. Lunch then?”
“It’s a date. Can I bring anything?”
“Just your appetite… and a fully stocked overnight bag?”
I grinned, remembering the exchanged blow jobs and desperate desire to explore more. “I can do that.”
“Excellent. I should go. I have students waiting, and if I want to take a couple of days off, I have a lot of work to do.”
“Go play with your stiffy. Have fun.”
Another chuckle. “I’ll text you when I get home. Maybe we can chat.”
“I’d like that.”
Dominique disconnected, and I instantly missed him.
In a few short weeks, he had burrowed into my heart.
I impulsively wanted to cling and spend every spare second in his presence, but that was one of my greatest flaws, and I’d been trying hard not to come across as needy or overbearing.
It had cost me boyfriends in the past, and I wasn’t ready to give up the handsome pathologist.
Every day, I learned more about Dominique.
He opened up, shared about himself, smiled more easily, and laughed freely.
Our nightly phone calls had gotten deeper.
I shared about living with a narcissistic mother I couldn’t please, a stepfather who loathed my mere existence, and a half sister who could do no wrong.
Confessing to years of attention-seeking behavior didn’t paint me in a positive light, but I told him anyhow.
Unveiling my troubled youth and rebellious teenage years wasn’t easy, but I wanted Dominique to know the real me. I wanted his trust.
In turn, Dominique spoke tentatively about Angelique, recounting stories of her disastrous attempts at cooking simple meals like scrambled eggs, how she taught herself to play the piano after finding an upright grand for twenty bucks at a yard sale, and about the times she cheered him on when he competed in bike races across Quebec.
She loved art and music and black-and-white movies.
She picked flowers in the summer and loved to stargaze on crisp winter nights.
He spoke of Cosette often, and his love for her shone.
Raw emotion tainted his voice on occasion when a particular memory surfaced, but overall, his reservations lessened. I still had a world to uncover, but it was a start.
The more I learned about Dominique, the harder I fell.