Stone Cold

Like all old cold cases, it had been passed from one detective to another, with folder piled on folder as each new guy took a turn trying to crack the uncrackable.  There were older unsolved cases; but none that meant more.  Detective Schanke picked through the bundle.  It dated back to 1996, which was practically the Middle Ages as far as she was concerned.  The bottom of the stack held the earliest files:  the daily reports from those who’d worked the case back when it was hot, fresh headline news.

Strictly speaking, it really came under Missing Persons’ aegis.  There was only circumstantial evidence that it might have been a murder—or, rather, two murders—since the bodies were missing, and so might not be bodies at all but have simply walked off alive and disappeared into pseudonymity.  Usually, such situations merited only a cursory check:  consenting adults, after all, had the right to leave town if they wanted, with or without formal notification to family and friends.  True, since the Bruce McArthur debacle, the Force was supposed to be checking more carefully; but that was now, and this case was then.  Nevertheless, it seemed always to have belonged to Homicide.

Flicking through the reports, she had no doubt why.  One of the names rang a bell.  Admittedly, it was a very faint bell.

“Do you remember any of Dad’s partners?” she asked her mother over the phone that evening.  It was the usual daily check, with the usual search for something to say in plausible justification for ringing.  Of course, Mom saw through the subterfuge (and Jenny knew Myra found the monitoring an unnecessary irritation); but, after all, there had been that scare last year.

“Of course,” came the reply.  “Some I knew better than others, of course.  Patrick Delehanty, in particular.  He was over here all the time.  He and your father went way, way back.  Donnie felt so betrayed when he found—” Myra broke off.  “Well, that’s water long since under the bridge.”

Jenny remembered Uncle Patrick.  After his move to the States, he’d phoned now and then; and he’d come over to the house that last time he’d been in Toronto.  He and Dad had been bros, so to speak; but, from the occasional mention down the years, she’d got the impression that Mom had never much cared for the guy.  “No, not him,” she said quickly.

On the whole, she thought it best to change the subject.

That weekend, they picked up Myra for a picnic in High Park.  It was a lovely sunny day.  A bit hot, but it was cooler down on the grass, though the breeze that fluttered round their faces also tugged at the serviettes.  They weighed them down with paper plates of food, and brushed off the odd wandering ant.  Afterwards, when the debris had been dumped in the bins, Steve tossed a Frisbee with the kids.  As the two women packed the Tupperware back in the picnic basket, Jenny said, “I went through the files on Detective Knight earlier this week.”

Her mother paused in shaking out the red-checked picnic tablecloth.  “He was your father’s last partner.”  She lifted the cloth and pinched it corner to corner to get the first fold straight.

“I honestly don’t remember him.”

“He was quite a good-looking man,” said Myra dispassionately.  “Fair-haired and blue-eyed.  Taller than your father.  I don’t think I have a photo.”

“There’s one in the file.  The one from his police ID, I suppose.”  Jenny had looked at it for a while, trying to recall the face.

“He didn’t come round much.  And mostly, if he did, you’d have been in bed.”  Myra finished folding the tablecloth.  “I don’t recall him ever doing anything with your Dad, like the bowling league or taking in a game together.  Not even a beer after work!”  She shook her head.  “Kind of a loner, I think.  I know Donnie wasn’t keen at first on being partnered with him.  I will say, though, that Nick did come round after—”  She broke off and stooped to pack the cloth into the basket on top of the dirty containers.  “Captain Reese had been over with the chaplain,” she said, her face turned away, “so I knew already.  Still, Nick did at least have the courtesy to drive to the house to say a few words … though he wouldn’t come in.  He didn’t come to the service, either.  Captain Reese did.  So did Joe.  So did a bunch of the guys from the bowling league.  But not his own partner.”

Clearly it still rankled, even now.  “Well, maybe he had to work,” said Jenny awkwardly.  But, as a cop, she knew perfectly well that Knight would have got time off for his own partner’s funeral.  And, as a cop’s widow, Mom knew that equally well.  She shot Jenny a look of pure exasperation:  as excuses go, it was a lousy one; and transparently so.  Jenny flushed slightly.

Myra flipped the lid of the basket shut, and straightened.  “Is the case being reopened?  Is that it?  You said you had the file out.”

“No,” Jenny said.  “Just routine.  Transcribing old cases into the new system, that’s all.”  The Frisbee came flying towards them; and instinctively she caught and threw it back.  A cop’s reflexes.  They hadn’t saved her dad.  Not much you can do about a plane crash.

Two days later, she got a call in the middle of the day from Myra suggesting she come over for afternoon coffee.  Only when they hung up did it dawn on Jenny that her mother must have known it was her day off.  She drove over expecting a girls’ tête-à-tête, and maybe questions about Labour Day:  the cottage, the Ex, or a family barbecue.  When she got there, though, she saw Uncle Joe’s car out front.  The thought of seeing him again brought a smile to her face.  He didn’t drive into Toronto all that often.  Nowadays it was Steve who put up Mom’s double glazing and cleaned the eavestroughs.

“So Myra says you were asking after Nick Knight,” said Uncle Joe after they’d caught up, eaten a plate of little sandwiches, and sat back nursing refills of coffee.  Myra had just gone out to the kitchen to fetch dessert.

Jenny looked at him with surprise.  “Mom didn’t ask you to drive all this way just for that?” she exclaimed.  “What I told her was true:  I just turned up the case while transferring old files from hard copy.  It’s easier to cross-check when the data’s on computer.”  She laughed.  “I swear, we’ve got boxes of forms filled out by hand even, with some of the oldest cases.”

“We did have computers in the nineties,” pointed out Uncle Joe.  “I remember Knight.  I remember Lambert.  Doesn’t feel that long ago to me.  And I only retired a few years ago.”

Before Jenny could answer, Myra came back with a plate of home-made chocolate fudge cake.  She placed it invitingly on the coffee table, handed round plates, and hovered a knife.  “Who’ll have how much?” she asked.

“Just a small slice,” Joe said quickly.  “It looks delicious,” he added, “but….”  He patted his waistline.  As Myra wielded the knife, he said thoughtfully, “You know, that cake is something Nick would have turned down even one piece of.  I don’t think I ever saw him have so much as a coffee break—”  He raised his mug.  “—let alone a bag lunch at his desk or something sent in from a burger joint.”  He took a sip of coffee, put down the mug, and shook his head.

“Donnie said that too,” Myra confirmed.

“Yeah, there were comments like that in some of the witness statements.”  Jenny hesitated.  In some ways, it might be best to let the subject lapse; but … she wasn’t the one who’d brought it up in the first place, after all.  It was Mom who’d mentioned it to Uncle Joe.  Also she was curious.  “What was he like, Detective Knight?  Aside from the food thing.”

“A damned good cop,” said Joe staunchly.  “A fine arrest record.”  Then, with a wry twist, he admitted, “Well, speaking as a police captain (retired), I got to say Knight could be flat out impossible at times.  He was one of those guys who run on instinct, you might say.  Goes by his gut?  Flair, maybe.  Anyway, he was always sure of himself, even when he jumped to wrong conclusions; but he was right more often than not—and could get right up the nose of cops who were more the by-the-book type.  Still, he got results.”  Turning quickly to Myra, he said, “They got results, I should say.  Don was a solid detective, good at following the evidence.  They worked well together.”

“It was a long time ago,” was all Myra said.

Jenny gave her a quick glance, and thought better of continuing the conversation.  It was not, therefore, until they’d finished eating, she’d helped clear things to the kitchen, and Myra had refused her help with the dishes that she took Uncle Joe out to the back garden, ostensibly to show him the flowers.  They walked slowly down along the beds and finally stopped, well out of earshot of the house.  “I don’t know how much you were involved at the time,” Jenny said quietly.  “I don’t want to just repeat stuff you know already.”

“I kept an eye on the investigation,” Joe said.  “I was interested.  I mean, we all were; but also I’d had Knight under my command just a couple of years earlier.  Joe Reese was the guy in charge, though; and I didn’t know him all that well.  I’d say, if you’re looking for details, you should ask him; but he retired a while back, and I’ve no idea where he is now.  Of course, if you really need to find him, his pension will go to some place somewhere, assuming he’s alive.  And he’s only round about my own age, after all; so he probably is.”

Jenny shook her head doubtfully.  “I’ve seen his statement.  If he ever thought of something more, he’d have said it years ago.  Of course, now I’m working through the files, the boss may want me to dig deeper.”

“Murder cases are never closed.”

Jenny was silent.  They both knew that this was true in theory; but some cases were cold as the Arctic.  “Was it murder?” she asked finally.  “I mean, yes, there was the blood; but, from the evidence I read about the final days before it happened … before whatever ‘it’ was that happened … Dr. Lambert had a close friend commit suicide and Knight lost his new partner.  Not Dad.  It was—”

“Vetter.”

“That was the name, yes.”

“She was the daughter of one of the cops on the Police Commission.  You know how that works:  an unholy mix of police, civilians, and politicians.”

“High profile.”

“Oh, it made it all into a real stinker of a case.”  Uncle Joe sighed.  “And no closure.  No solution:  no arrest:  no trial.  He was right royally pissed.”

“Well, the two of them—Lambert and Knight, that is—could have had a good reason to just disappear; that’s what I’m saying.  Did you know … there was a report done ten years ago by Forensic Accounting … Knight had over three million dollars.”

Joe raised a very mild eyebrow.  “I knew he had a nice place, and ran a car that was practically a collector’s piece.”  He shrugged.  “Yeah, I’m not surprised:  I figured he came from money in his family background.”

“Not that they could find out,” said Jenny, with a shake of her head.  “He doesn’t seem to have even had any family.  Well,” she backtracked hastily, “literally he must have:  he was born, after all.  But you know what I’m saying.  They did uncover some connection with the De Brabant Foundation; but the money didn’t come from there, either, far as they could trace, which basically they couldn’t.”

Joe frowned.  “I’d sure as hell swear he was straight as a die.  Eccentric, sure.  But honest.”  He looked worried. “Seriously, Jenny … this is news to me.  What else you got?”

“There are the old evidence boxes, of course.  They’re all still in storage.  Three years ago Ident ran everything again—you know how fast the science changes.  Their report says they confirmed the blood.  Type B positive, same as his.  And they confirmed the evidence that Dr. Lambert had been there.  But also,” and she paused meaningfully, “they found traces of a third person.”

“A third?!”

“On the murder weapon.  It had been wiped; but nowadays they can analyse the tiniest amount.  They couldn’t tell much, though.  Just that it had to be a different person.  They couldn’t get the blood type; but it was a different DNA, with some anomaly they couldn’t figure out.  The sample had degraded or something.”

At which point Myra came out to join them, waving from the back door to catch their eye; and the conversation had to stop.  An hour or so later, Jenny said her goodbyes and left.  So did Joe; but, in the circumstances, she was not desperately surprised to find his car following hers across town instead of heading for the highway.  When she pulled into the garage, she got out and waited for him to draw up.  They went in through the kitchen, and she offered coffee.  He shook his head, and sat down at the table.

“Without looking at it all in detail (and there’s plenty in that box of files), there really isn’t a lot more I can tell you,” Jenny said.  But she sat down, too.

“Look,” Joe said heavily.  “I know sometime, someone will work the case again.  They’ll find and re-interview as many witnesses as they can locate; and they’ll get the most up-to-date forensics analysts to look at every sample and print that got collected back then.  And maybe they’ll find something and maybe they won’t.  But I don’t think Knight and Lambert are alive.  If they are, they’ve managed to hide for years in the face of what, at the time, was a hell of a manhunt.  We didn’t want to think them dead, you know.  They were two of our own.  But … ‘high profile’ did you say?  Their faces were plastered over every newspaper and television in the country.  Hell, the continent:  it was just the sort of case to grab the headlines.  Real yellow-journalism tabloid stuff.  Blood and sex and mystery.”  He stopped for a moment, shook his head at the look on her face, and said, “Yeah, I know.  You don’t remember.  But Nick Knight’s ex-partner might even have been turned into news fodder himself if your Dad hadn’t been dead by then and safe from it all.  Your Mom….”  He hesitated.  “You were just a kid.  I bet you never read a paper or watched the six o’clock news.  Not at that age.  She’d’ve told you as little as she could.”

Wryly, she had to nod.

“Well, maybe someday some journalist writing a feature on unsolved crimes in Toronto may run through a few column inches telling the tale; but who reads the paper today?  Even if they make a TV movie, which I doubt, they’d change half the details.  Back then, though?”  He sighed, with a slight shake of his head.  “Someone would have spotted them, Jenny.  Sooner or later—more likely sooner than later—someone would have spotted them.  I reckon they’re both dead.  Who did it?  Probably that mysterious third person, if there really was someone else there.”

“It’s likely,” she admitted.  “But there still are a lot of questions.”

“Aren’t there always?  If there weren’t questions, there’d be no cold case.  If there’d been answers, it’d be solved.”

“So what do you think happened?”

He was silent.  After a bit, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully; but he didn’t answer.

“Seriously, Uncle Joe.  I don’t mean, ‘Who do you think did it?’  If you had an answer to that, you’d have a lead; and I figure a lead like that would be in the file even if it never panned out.  But, leaving out the question of who—what do you think happened?  And maybe why?”

“To be honest?” he said, and sighed deeply.  “I think Nicholas Knight was the mystery.  Not who killed him.  Not how, not why.  Not his death.  I think Nick himself was the real mystery.  And everything that happened came from that.”

She frowned slightly, tilting her head in query.

“Look,” he said, and tapped the table emphatically.  “A moment of truth here.  Homicide detectives … we come in at the end of the story.  We come in at the end; and we try to piece together the beginning.  The puzzle of how it all got from there to here:  that’s what tells us the how and the why and the who.  Now, we know the answer to Dr. Lambert.  We know who she is, where she came from, who her family was, who she knew, what she did, where she went—and frankly, those of us who worked with them have a pretty good idea who she loved.  So that day, she went over to Nick’s place.  And she walked in on something.  I don’t know what.  I don’t know any of the details of what went down.  But I’d say, with a fair certainty, that—whatever it was—she walked in on it; and that’s why she was killed.”

“A witness.  Okay, I get that.”

“With Nick, though, we know nothing.  His past?  What do we know of his past?  What did you get from the file?”

“He’s supposed to have transferred here from Chicago P.D.”

He nodded.

“No corroboration, though.  They either lost his files in some computer glitch or they’re buried in the basement and no one can be bothered to go look them out for us.”

“Uncorroborated past,” he nodded, with another tap on the table.  “Mysterious money.”  Tap again.  “No friends, no associates, no family.”  He lifted his finger to point emphatically.  “You see?  The mystery is Knight.  It always has been; and it always will be.  Unless someone solves that, they’ll never solve the murders; and no one’s ever succeeded, not so far.  And it’s been years.”

Slowly, she nodded.  It made sense.

“It’s a stone cold case, Jenny.  Gravestone cold.  We’ll go to our graves, and we’ll never know.”

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