Bugler nodded vaguely, squeezed his shoulder.
McGrath stroked the keyboard, and Lenny’s ugly mug popped up on-screen, wispy whiskers framing a buck-toothed mouth. McGrath dragged the bar at the bottom, and Lenny went all fast and jerky. Then his jaundiced face suddenly turned mouse-white, his beady eyes registering panic. McGrath lifted his finger, returning the action to normal speed.
Lenny leaped out of his chair and skittered to the bedroom door. Someone was yelling at him from the hallway: “You put me away and I’m going to put you away, Rat!”
Lenny backed away, paws up and out in supplication, and a face briefly appeared in the shadowy doorway. McGrath froze the picture, cleared away some of the shadow, locked onto and enhanced the face: Bertrand Kolvin, delicate features twisted with rage, ponytail in a knot.
“Hmmm,” Pinero commented. “So Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny’s life. Who hasn’t? I heard the Doukhobors even put out a contract on the guy once.”
McGrath’s brown-toothed grin was a thing of triumph for everyone but the BC Dental Association. He restored the full picture, pointed to the timeline at the bottom of the screen. It read: 14 Nov 2005, 21:45:24. He said, “We know Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny Laymon on Sunday at 9:45 p.m. Now, let’s just see if he followed up on that threat. There’s nothing more of interest on the webcam, but remember that high-placed friend I was telling you about? Well, he CSIS’s all. Take a gander at this video, and note the time and date again.”
Pinero cracked his knuckles. Bugler sighed. McGrath clicked. The computer revealed a black world inhabited by white images, a timeline reading: 16 Nov 2005, 01:47:38 PTZ. The view was from on-high, way high, the white figure emerging out of a parked car a thermal image. The figure crossed a street with the jerky movement of time lapse photography, paused at the door of a house, and then went inside.
“Location?” Pinero asked.
“Two hundred block of Alexander Street,” McGrath crowed. “That bungalow,” he pointed, “is Lenny’s place-right around the time of his death.”
“Lenny coming home after a hard day’s night of working the back pockets of the bar crowd?” Pinero suggested.
McGrath shook his head, replayed the sequence. “See how the figure dips to the right when he walks? Do you know what that is?”
“A limp,” Bugler breathed.
McGrath beamed. “A limp is right. A noticeable limp. Lenny didn’t limp. But-”
“Bertrand Kolvin limps,” Pinero admitted.
The three police officers watched some more, watched a figure come skulking down the sidewalk, pick something up out of the gutter along the way, slip into Lenny’s house at 02:15:52 PTZ-Lenny returning home? Watched the limper exit Lenny’s house at 02:30:21 PTZ, get in a car and drive away.
“Like I said before, we should brace Bertrand Kolvin,” Pinero stated. Then added, “Too bad none of this is admissible in court, privacy laws and Charters of Rights and Freedoms being what they are.”
“It’s all strictly on the qt,” McGrath agreed. “I have to delete everything in an hour. But… the show’s not over yet.” He pointed and clicked and dragged some more, seemed to replay the scene of the limper exiting a car and entering Lenny’s house. Only now the timeline read: 17 Nov 2005, 02:02:13 PTZ. A full day later.
“What!? Why would Kolvin risk returning to the scene the next night?” Bugler asked.
“Good question,” McGrath replied, as they watched the limper leave Lenny’s death trap at 02:06:37 PTZ.
Bugler straightened up, her back cracking, head shaking. “But if Lenny was actually bumped off by Bertrand Kolvin early Tuesday morning, then how in heck did he participate in a jewelry store robbery Tuesday night?”
“Another good question,” McGrath responded, browning his nose still further. He looked at his partner. “Did anyone think to bring in Lenny’s jacket, by any chance?”
“Yeah,” Pinero replied, blowing a bubble. “I did – just now. It’s in the Lab, undergoing intense comparison with some surveillance video.”
McGrath nodded, grinned, tried to wash back the rising tide of his excitement with a shot of coffee. “My friends at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service also provided me with some useful information about making faces-false faces.”
Bugler glanced at Pinero as McGrath cackled, choked and coughed up some coffee. Pinero just shrugged.
Search warrants were issued, served, and executed on Bertrand Kolvin’s swank Port Coquitlam condominium, Matthew Kolvin’s downtown dump, that afternoon. McGrath and Pinero happily split up so they could cover both searches, and two hours and ten phone calls later, they felt they had enough evidence to bring the Kolvins in for questioning.
The twins were placed in Interrogation Room 104. It was the first time they’d met since they’d been busted five years earlier, and much like that time, it didn’t go well. They attacked one another on sight.
“Sit down and behave yourself!” Pinero commanded, shoving Matthew into a wooden chair, sending him and it skidding into the wall.
The brothers glared at each other, twin faces of hate.
Pinero kicked off the proceedings, talking about Lenny “The Rat” Laymon’s fateful tumble in the tub. “It looks like an accident, it smells like an accident – a guy taking a shower makes a wrong step and one-and-one-half-gainer later, he’s cold as a Coho. Happens all the time, right? No signs of forced entry, violence, lube on the porcelain, nothing incriminating like rat poison lying around.” He paused. “But does it sound like an accident? You didn’t know Lenny had a hearing aid installed two years ago, did you, Bertrand? Because you were doing five for a crime Lenny stooled you on.”
Bertrand folded thin arms across a bony chest, tilted his fine, blonde head up in a haughty manner that would’ve done the CEO of a Crown Corporation proud. “I didn’t know, and I don’t care. I’m glad the little rat’s dead, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“Then how come your face shows up on Lenny’s webcam-your voice threatening to do him bodily harm-only a couple of days before the guy’s soft head met hard surface in a love embrace?”
“What!? That’s preposterous!” Bertrand wailed.
“What!? That’s preposterous!” Matthew mimicked, an octave or two higher.
Bertrand lunged at him. Pinero, McGrath, and Bugler wrestled the two siblings apart, planted them firmly back in their chairs again.
McGrath struggled to catch his breath, mop up and strain into a cup his spilled coffee. Then he said, “We have surveillance pictures of a man entering Lenny’s house-easily picking his lock-Lenny coming home, the man exiting, right around the time of Lenny’s death. A man limping rather badly. That puck to the knee back in junior hockey put a permanent crimp in your stride, didn’t it, Bertrand?”
“Thanks to my brother, yes,” the man sniffed.
“I was aiming for his balls,” Matthew gritted. “But they were too small a target.”
Bertrand ignored him, said to McGrath, “I was home in bed when Lenny died, nowhere near his rat hole.”
“And what about the mystery of a man caught on a surveillance camera, entering a mall, eighteen hours after he’s supposed to be dead?” Pinero intoned. “How’s that possible?”
The Kolvins went stone-faced.
Pinero leaned into Matthew. “You emailed Lenny about a ‘job’ – Meatman. Was it the Zammy Jewelers job at the Centre Mall? A diamond ring was found at Lenny’s place – a down payment maybe, before the loot was fenced?”
Matthew snorted. “I told you dickheads already I had nuthin’ to do with that job.”
“Funny thing about that surveillance video, though,” McGrath interjected, tonguing the rim of his coffee cup. “Detective Pinero noticed something strange about the jacket ‘Lenny’ was wearing in the video. It’s got a Manitoba Moose logo on it – the new logo, that is: a stylized angry moose baring its teeth, set against a background of trees.”