Crime Machine by Giles Blunt Read Free Book Online

protesters. We’re going to have to be a presence. I’ve already talked to Staff Sergeant Flower, and there’ll be uniforms, but the chief promised the Fur Harvesters we’d have people stopping by too.”
    “Harvesters,” McLeod said. “You gotta love it. What’s wrong with
trappers?”
    “Most of the furs come from farms these days. Listen, we’re talkingmillions of dollars in a tight economy, so let’s do some serving and protecting. Cardinal, where are we with Schumacher? Have we contacted any actual Schumachers yet? They’re not the victims, right?”
    “No, but they seem to be away—we stopped by their town residence last night. We don’t have an ID on the victims yet. At this point, we don’t even have a best guess. We’ve got stuff from the scene that has to be run down. Partial list: blood, fingerprints, footprints, tire prints, spent rounds, hairs and fibres.”
    The D.S. shifted in his seat and frowned. “Explain something to me.”
    Cardinal looked at him.
    “I thought we were going to have a holdback on this case. Why did I hear Detective Dunbar on CKAT this morning telling the world that the guy had a knife in his back?”
    Cardinal looked at Dunbar. “Why the hell would you tell them that? What were you doing talking to the media in the first place? When did this happen?”
    Dunbar winced. “I was coming back from canvassing the neighbours. He caught me off guard.”
    “That’s great. And now if another corpse turns up with a knife in its back and minus a head, we’re not going to know if we’ve got a serial killer or a copycat. To say nothing about ruling out false confessions.”
    “Like I say, he really caught me off guard.”
    “There’s going to be a lot of press, and I want to control what goes to them. Nobody else speaks to them.”
    “Cardinal’s right,” Chouinard said. “What else have we got?”
    “Ident,” Cardinal said. “Maybe Arsenault can tell us the plan there.”
    Arsenault took a sip from an enormous Tim Hortons mug. “We’re waiting in line for a pathologist. They’ve had three murders in Toronto since Friday and they’re short-staffed.”
    “Two beheadings,” Chouinard said, “and we’re waiting in line?”
    “Give ’em a call—they don’t care what I think. Preliminaries: female in mid-thirties, male in mid- to late sixties.”
    Chouinard shook his head. “Damn it. We should have a holdback. We’re already all over the radio, the
Lode
is going to have it on the front page this afternoon, and we’ve had calls from
The Globe and Mail
, the
Toronto Star
, the wire service. Do you have any idea how big this is? This’ll make papers in the States.”
    Dunbar winced again. “Sorry, D.S.”
    Arsenault flipped through his notebook. “Footprints. We have two size twelves and one size five, the woman.”
    “In what? Snow?”
    “Yeah. It was just a thin layer, but we managed to get great moulds. Same for the tire tracks. We’re putting all this stuff through the databases, but it’ll be a while.”
    “We’re looking for a third party, too,” Cardinal said. “Someone busted out a back window and left in a big hurry. Got cut pretty bad and then took off into the woods. So that’s going to be our new holdback.”
    “Not a word to anyone,” Chouinard said, “or heads will roll.” He paused a second. “I wish I hadn’t said that.”
    Arsenault picked the story up. “Tracks indicate a small person, maybe around five-four, five-five, and not too heavy—maybe 120 tops. Tracks head into the trees—running—followed by some size twelves. Much bigger, heavier person. We’ve got blood from the broken window, so if there’s DNA on file we’ll nail the runner.
    “Runner makes it to the road, where we found some nine-millimetre casings, so presumably size-twelve took a couple of shots at runner. Tracks pick up again at a utility road a hundred yards away. And lo and behold, another set of tire tracks. Can I go to bed now?”
    “No, you may