Cut to the Chase. Joan Boswell

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      Copy, copy, copy—it took forever; almost all her paper, and the printer alerted her that the ink cartridge must be replaced. Once done she carefully replaced the files and opened the laptop. If she needed a password, she would be out of luck. No one in her circle of friends used passwords for their personal computers, but given his campaign to round up criminals, Danson might. She flicked it on.

      The intercom sounded. Candace and Elizabeth had arrived.

      Hollis buzzed them through the downstairs door and stepped out in the hall to wait for them to climb the stairs.

      “Touchdown. Mission accomplished. We have shoes,” Candace called.

      “Hi, Howis,” Elizabeth said.

      Inside the apartment’s living room, Candace donned the gloves Hollis offered. Elizabeth watched and held up her hands.

      “No gloves for you. They’re too big. They’re for Hollis and me,” Candace said.

      Elizabeth’s lower lip quivered.

      “You can watch TV,” Candace said to the little girl, who immediately plunked herself down in front of the television.

      Elizabeth held up her foot for Hollis’s inspection. “See,” she said displaying a pink running shoe with Velcro fasteners. “New.”

      “They’re gorgeous. What a lucky girl you are,” Hollis said.

      Elizabeth ripped the Velcro tab to undo the shoe. She gripped the heel, yanked the shoe off and held it up to Hollis, who accepted the gift, admired it, and handed it back.

      Elizabeth struggled to push it on, so Hollis bent down to help her. “Was it hard to track them down?” she said to Candace peering over the little girl’s shoulder.

      Candace smiled ruefully and ran both her hands through her neat bob. Hollis admired the way the hair dropped into place, the mark of great hair and a terrific cut.

      “Hard enough. Three stores, two temper tantrums—then success. Coping with toddlers is not for the faint-hearted.” She picked up the remote and flicked on the TV.

      Elizabeth ignored it. Instead she peered up at Candace. “Danson?” she said. Her nose wrinkled, and her tiny, almost invisible eyebrows drew together in a frown.

      “Not here, sweetie,” Candace said.

      Elizabeth glowered. “Lizabet want Danson,” she said.

      “I know you do. But not now. Elizabeth, this is one of your favourite shows—it’s Curious George.”

      Diverted, the little girl settled to watch the monkey’s cartoon antics.

      Candace moved closer to Hollis. “Well, what did you find?”

      “Danson’s car, wallet and keys are gone, but he left his cell phone, toothbrush, and shaving stuff. He must have expected to return quickly from wherever he went.” Hollis didn’t want to look at Candace, to witness the devastation as the ramifications of this information hit home.

      “He doesn’t go anywhere without his cell.” A long silence grew heavier by the minute. “This is bad news, isn’t it?” Candace said.

      No use denying it. “I think you should contact Missing Persons,” Hollis said gently. “If you like, I can phone Rhona Simpson, a homicide detective I know, and ask her advice.”

      Candace shuddered. “Please. Do it immediately. I have to know that Danson isn’t the unidentified man in the morgue.”

      Five

      Late that October Saturday afternoon, Rhona Simpson hunkered down at her desk. She, along with an ever-growing pool of detectives, had been assigned to unearth the killer or killers preying on men in the downtown area. The killings had begun six weeks earlier. The police weren’t any closer to solving the crimes than they had been on day one.

      Six murdered men, five identified thus far, all stabbed with a long, thin blade. One unidentified—his face pulverized and his fingertips chopped off. No one had reporting a missing loved one, at least not a man with physical characteristics that corresponded to the mystery man’s. A gangland execution—but which gang and why?

      Rhona repositioned the elastic scrunchy anchoring her dark hair away from her face and covertly studied the partner assigned to her.

      Ian Galbraith, the newest detective in homicide, zealously applied a yellow highlighter to the document in front of him. There wouldn’t be much unmarked when he finished. Single-mindedness characterized his attitude. Like most new boys, he was determined to prove himself.

      Physically, blazingly blue eyes, fair skin and black hair falling in his eyes marked him as a man with a Gaelic heritage matching his name. Tall, thin and intense, he’d launched himself into the investigation as if his position depended on it, and maybe it did.

      “What are you staring at?” Ian said.

      “Sorry, I do that when I’m thinking,” Rhona said.

      “I’m relieved. I thought I must have left half my lunch on my face,” Ian said with a small smile that revealed perfect teeth and a dimple. He returned to scrutinizing the document.

      They’d spent the morning on the street, interviewing women and men on the stroll and searching for fresh clues to identify the killer. Hours later, they were cross-indexing information from the murdered men’s files, seeking a revealing, overlooked detail. For the last few minutes, they’d been reviewing information, searching for similarities in lifestyle, hangouts, diet, habits, medical conditions—factoids that linked the victims to each other and to their killer or killers.

      Rhona leaned back in her swivel chair and shifted her weight to keep from resting on her left hip. She’d enrolled in a Pilates class several weeks before, and the previous day her ego had prompted her to do a leg-lifting exercise that the instructor had cautioned was for the “more advanced” in the group. Rhona had figured that as she was only in her late thirties, she was as fit as anyone, but watching the lithe twenty-year-olds, she should have known better.

      She stretched her legs and contemplated the black tooled-leather cowboy boots chosen to coordinate with her washable black pantsuit. Aware of her foibles, she knew she wore boots almost daily not only because they were comfortable but because they gave her the added inches she craved. In the man’s world of policing, being a short First Nation woman left her triply disadvantaged, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it except wear higher heels. Enough self-examination. They had work to do.

      “Six weeks since the first murder—it’s too long,” Rhona said.

      “It is.” Ian evened the edges of the paper piled on his desk and frowned. “Do you get a sense the killer doesn’t care about his victims?”

      Rhona felt her eyebrows rise.

      “No, that didn’t come out right. What if the killer hates what his victims do but isn’t attacking them as individuals. That’s what I mean?”

      “Like the anti-abortionists who have nothing against particular doctors but kill them because СКАЧАТЬ