“You should. It will help increase the levels in your blood. You’ll have more energy. How’s the pain?”
The rest of Thursday dissolves into the sameness of all those days that have come before. A dull routine of meds, another carer visiting to bathe her and to make lunch and set her up with a flask of afternoon tea. More meds. Yet another palliative nurse checks in. More medicine. Then a deep, dead-to-the-world, opioid-induced slumber, followed by a carer who preps her dinner. A heavier dose of meds for the night. But despite the meds, Beulah remains uncomfortable and propped up in her hospital bed so she can breathe.
At some point in the darkness, she fades into a groggy slumber. When Beulah wakes again, it’s with a sharp start. She’s drenched in sweat. Her room is dark. It’s raining outside. She lies there, listening to the rain and the oxygen compressor huffing and sighing as she tries to orient herself.
She heard a scream.
She’s sure she heard a terrible scream.
A woman’s scream. It’s what woke her. She’s certain of it. Beulah’s heart begins to beat very fast. The red glow on her clock radio reads 11:21 p.m. She listens for a while longer, wondering if she imagined the scream. Horton will say she did. A few moments later Beulah hears the bang of the wooden garden gate next door. Then a car door slams. She struggles to sit upright and tugs the cannula from her nose. Breathing heavily, groaning in pain, she gropes for her wheelchair and draws it closer to her hospital bed. She presses the bed’s buttons and manages to lower it. She transfers herself into the chair. Beulah is fueled with adrenaline, determined to get to the window, to see. Sweating, she rolls herself to the corner window. She peers down into the neighbors’ yard. The motion sensor light in the driveway has flared on. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, for Beulah’s brain to register.
What she sees is wrong. All of it. Very, very wrong. Something terrible is happening.
Beulah quickly rolls herself back to the bed. Dizzy now, she fumbles to find her mobile phone on the bedside table.
With shaking hands she dials 911.
MAL
November 1, 2019. Friday.
Detective Mallory Van Alst halts her unmarked vehicle at the road barrier. She powers down her window and shows her ID to the uniformed officer.
“Sergeant Van Alst, good morning,” the officer says as she writes Mal’s name on a clipboard. “Good luck in there—it’s a bloody one.” The officer moves the sawhorse barrier aside, and Mal drives into a lane of exclusive oceanfront mansions. West Vancouver PD cruisers with flashing bar lights are parked in front of a house constructed mostly of glass. Uniformed officers chat near the vehicles. At the end of the lane, onlookers gather, hair and coats ruffling in the cold breeze. Mal parks behind a forensic ident van. She kills her engine and studies the property.
It’s one of those ultramodern, “architecturally designed” affairs—all windows, some concrete and metal. It rises like an angular, shimmering phoenix from the ruins of what was probably once a characterful home—something unique but not quite old enough to claim protective heritage status. A bronze plaque on the driveway pillar says NORTHVIEW. The driveway is cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape that flutters in the wind. Crime scene techs in white boiler suits and booties traverse a delineated path between the ident van and the house. Behind the property the Burrard Inlet sparkles.
Benoit Salumu, Mal’s partner, is already waiting for her near the entrance. He stands stone still. Benoit has a way of doing that, being utterly motionless. At almost seven feet tall and carved as if from hard, black wood that has been burnished to a sheen, Benoit resembles a statue guarding the place. In fact the whole scene looks surreal. Especially against the backdrop of the rare and windy bluebird morning.
Mal quickly swallows the dregs of her coffee, unbuckles her seat belt, and reaches for her crossbody bag on the passenger seat. It contains spare gloves, booties, a digital camera, a small water bottle, and other backup basics she might need at a scene. She exits her vehicle and draws in a deep breath, focusing her mind. Compartmentalizing. Finding her zone. After thirty years on the beat, she finds it harder to center herself these days. A human can take only so much depravity and senseless loss of life.
“Morning,” she calls out as she approaches Benoit. “You beat me to it. The baby let you sleep last night, then?”
Benoit gives a half grin. “You’ll be the first to hear when that happens. Sadie did night duty, bless her heart. Can’t wait for some old-time peace.”
“Take it from an old pro, my friend,” Mal says as she slides booties over her shoes. “Your peace is over. They will become teenagers. Then adults. Brace yourself. What’ve we got here?”
“Signs of a violent struggle. Plenty of blood. No body.”
She crooks up a brow. “Photographers done their thing?”
“Yeah. Still some techs busy inside. I’ve got statements from the first responders. They’re on standby down the street if we need more.” His voice is deep, resonant, rhythmic. He speaks with an accent. French and Swahili are Benoit’s first languages. Congo French, not Canadian French. When Benoit speaks French, it’s the sound of the Belgian colony that once occupied his native Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Who made the 911 call?” Mal asks.
“Neighbor in that house.” Benoit points to a traditional structure next door with brick walls covered in ivy turning shades of red and orange. “Beulah Brown. Eighty-nine. She called it in shortly before midnight. She’s in palliative care. Occupies the top floor. Spends most of her days—and nights, it seems—watching the neighbors. She’s also made five 911 calls in the last six months, which turned out to be nothing.”
Mal frowns. “Unreliable witness?”
“Guess we’ll find out. Take a look at this.” Benoit points to the polished concrete floor in front of the door. A bouquet of wilting flowers—white orchids, lilies, chrysanthemums, baby’s breath—lies in a puddle of water on the concrete. Nestled between the blooms is a small white envelope. Beside the flowers is a crushed pie box with a clear window on the top. It contains a smashed berry pie. Dark-purple juice oozes from under the box. On the box is a logo in the shape of the mathematical sign of pi, and words beneath it say PI BISTRO.
“This was a red flag for the first responders,” Benoit says. “And the front door was ajar when they arrived. All the downstairs lights were on, and the glass sliding door at the rear of the house was wide open as well.”
Mal raises her gaze slowly and studies the wood-trimmed glass front door. “No obvious sign of forced entry. And no one was home?”
“Negative. Just signs of a struggle and the blood spatter.”
“Do we know who owns the place?”
He checks his notebook, flips a page. “Vanessa and Haruto North—guess that explains the name, Northview. There are two vehicles still parked in the garage. A red Lexus convertible and a silver Tesla Roadster. Both are registered to the Norths. The couple hasn’t been located. No response to the phone numbers on record, either.”
Mal crouches down and examines the wilting floral arrangement and smashed pie. She takes her own photos, then with a gloved hand she carefully removes the little wet envelope from beneath a white Japanese anemone and a sprig of baby’s breath. She opens the envelope and extracts a white card. A message handwritten in dark ink bleeds into the damp paper. It reads: