Canadian Crime Fiction Series With A Psychological Twist
Annie Hansen Mysteries by Kenna McKinnon
Series Excerpt
“I think we should visit the scene of the crime,” Lorne grunted. “Would give you an idea of what we’re up against.”
We went in his van, stashed my Vespa in the back. Didn’t take long to get to Doc Hubert’s building. Anything was only ten minutes away in this town.
We took an elevator to the second floor. Lorne had a key to the door. He pushed it open. The cops had left fluorescent tape to mark off the murder scene and chalk marks on the floor. Somebody had tried to clean up the blood. There were stains on the floor, though, and across the top and sides of the counter where the drill still gleamed and dripped.
“Cops will be back later,” Lorne said. “I’ve got clearance. You’re okay,
Annie, you’re with me.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, thinking hard and counting beneath my breath. Fortunately, the body had been taken away, leaving a bodysized stain on the carpet. A few feet away there was a wet mark with a few red noodles curling about like somebody’s leftover dinner.
“Brains?” I said. I was curious. I had never seen brains. “Why’d they leave the murder weapon here?”
“They’re waiting for the RCMP to come and take over.” Royal Canadian Mounted Police, that meant we were in the big time, out of Constable Tom and the Sergeant’s league.
I looked around the room. “What time does the nurse usually get to work?”
“You ever see his nurse? Small like a wren. She wouldn’t have had the strength to clobber ol’ Doc, even if he wasn’t expecting it. She’d have the knowledge to drain his brain, though, you’re right about that.”
“He was a big man,” I agreed. “Would have to be knocked out first. Somebody must have been pretty darn angry or crazy, though, to do what they did.”
“Clue number one,” I said, counting under my breath. “Someone gets in through a locked door and the keys are missing.”
“It was Doc’s custom to lock the doors before he left and tidy up, lock the methadone away, pull the drapes, check all the doors and set the alarm, then go home. Anyone could nail the time Doc left every night, regular like clockwork,” Lorne said.
With one hand, I counted on my fingers, under the table where he couldn’t see. “Crikey. I never thought about the alarm. Why didn’t it go off?”
“Because he was there when the boogeyman came in. His habit was not to set the alarm until he left the building empty,” he said. “There were no signs of a forced entry. We know he always kept the keys in his desk drawer.”
“Unfortunately, everyone knew that,” I said. “Doc’s been a fixture in this town for a hundred years. His habits were common knowledge.
Too bad for him, as it turned out. Pore guy.”
“I think we’ve established that he knew the intruder,” Lorne said. He frowned at my chewed fingernails, or I thought he did.
“No accounting for taste. It does look as though he was waiting for someone.”
The coffee pot in the corner was full and still on. I walked over and switched it off, passing the drill as I did. I shuddered.
The private eye snorted. “We have to do better than this, Annie.
The Justice Department is after my hide.”
“Only because you’re running for mayor this election.”
“I have a damn good chance of getting the position, too. Those guys are jealous. I have a good rep with the medical staff and clinics here, am well known in the community.”
I’d heard this before. It was best to suck up to my boss. “I could be talking to the next mayor, Lorne.”
The corners of his mouth turned up. “If we solve this case for the Department, I’m sure the city will be very grateful. The Doc was a fixture here for over twenty years. He gave generously to every campaign and he was well known. He’ll be missed. I could be a natural, riding on the heels of a successful arrest and conviction.”
Correction. If I solved this case. “Him or her. Ka-bam. Somebody pole-axed him then gimleted his skull.”
“Had to be somebody strong,” Lorne agreed.
“Ol’ Doc wasn’t a featherweight.”
“Yeah. A friend? Or a drug addict he was trying to help?” Lorne’s nicotine stained fingers riffled through the Rolodex at the side of the mail cubbyholes.
I looked through the cupboards. There had to be an appointment book.
My voices howled. Who keeps a paper track anymore, Annie Tin Pan
Alley? Look harder. You don’t try hard enough. This is the twenty-first century.
“He kept his clients private. Your job’s to go out on the street and scoop up the perpetrator,” Lorne said. He waddled to the other end of the room and helped himself to some tepid coffee from a stained mug.
“Me? I risk my life for some high-end drug pusher?”
Lorne slammed his coffee mug on the desk. “You get paid to follow orders. And you get paid to go out on the street.”
“Yes, boss.” I looked around. A pink rhino floated in a corner behind the filing cabinet. I blinked my eyes and the rhino disappeared. A pile of papers morphed into a snake, making me smile.
“You schizoid gumshoe, get outa here.” Lorne raised his voice. He sounded like the voice I called The Screamer.
No need to call us names, my voices whispered. You know it’s true.
“I know it’s true,” I said out loud.
“You’re lucky to have a job.” Lorne unwrapped a Cuban cigar and bit off the end. “You hear voices,” he said. “You friggin’ nut case.”
“Yeah,” I said. He was right. I was a schizophrenic gumshoe. My voices were quiet again. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t.
“You’re a good worker.” Lorne’s voice was softer. “Now get to it,
Annie. I’m sorry.”
“Time to get to work,” I agreed with Lorne, and took the stairs two at a time, going down. He would take the elevator. Sure, he was sorry he’d ragged me about my voices. I knew he needed me in his downat-the-heels but respected Private Investigator business. My boss was real good at using people, hadn’t read a legal paper or indictment by himself for fourteen months, far as I knew, just had me type it up and read it to him, then he signed his name.
It seemed to me I was missing something, but it couldn’t be important. I shook my head to clear the spiders out of my brain, and stepped into beams of yellow dancing dust motes in the lobby downstairs from Doc’s office. It was real pretty. I stood still a time to admire the glory of the dawn streaming through the dirty window panes after last night’s rain, then nudged open the door and stepped outside.
It was eight o’clock in the morning. The hotel opened at seven. Samir and his cousin Pepsi would have had their first few games of Chinese checkers together and be well into their second argument by now.
I pulled up beside Pepsi’s old blue Mercury and parked the Vespa. I had my suspects in sight already. It was time for a convo with tall, thin, and talkative Pepsi, my main man’s cousin and best friend. Pepsi was the substitute caretaker at Doc’s clinic and knew Firewall Eddie real well. It meant keys, it meant another suspect. Another friend who could be loony tunes when Doc had pulled the plug on the free methadone. But they backed each other up. That was a relief, in a way, but could I trust either of them? Time would tell the story, I had things to do, and a lot of pressure on me to do them.
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