The Terminal Experiment

CHAPTER 33

Sometimes there was nothing like a good, old-fashioned keyboard. For entering or massaging data, it was still the best tool yet invented. Sandra Philo pulled out the keyboard drawer of her desk and began typing in all the proper nouns she’d turned up in relation to the Hans Larsen murder, including the street he lived on, the name of the company he worked for, where he’d taken his vacation last year, and the names of neighbors, family, friends, and coworkers. She also entered a variety of terms related to the mutilation Larsen had suffered.

By the time she was finished, she had a list of over two hundred words. She then asked the computer to search the records of all homicides in Greater Toronto Region for the last year to see if any of the same terms showed up in the reports filed for them. As it processed the search, the computer drew a little line of dots on the screen to show that it was working. It only took a few seconds to complete the search. Nothing significant.

Sandra nodded to herself; she figured she’d have remembered a similar MO. After all, it’s not every day a corpse is found with its penis lopped off. The computer presented her with suggestions for broader queries: all Ontario murders, all Canadian murders, all North American murders. It also suggested a series of time frames, from one month to ten years.

If she chose the broadest-based one, all North American killings for the last ten years, the search would take hours to run. She was about to select “all Ontario murders,” but at the last moment changed her mind and typed her own query in the dialog box: “all deaths GTR ›20110601,” meaning all deaths — not just murders — in the Greater Toronto Region after June of this year.

The little line of dots grew across the screen as the computer searched. After a few moments, the display cleared and this appeared:

Name: Larsen, Hans

Date of Death: 14 Nov 2011

Cause of Death: homicide

Search term correlated: Hobson, Catherine R. (coworker)

Name: Churchill, Roderick B.

Date of Death: 30 Nov 2011

Cause of Death: natural causes

Search term correlated: Hobson, Cathy (daughter)

Philo’s eyebrows went up. Catherine Hobson — that slim, intelligent brunette Toby Bailey had identified as having been involved with Hans Larsen. Her father had died just two days ago.

It probably didn’t mean a thing. Still … Sandra accessed the city registry. There was only one Catherine Hobson in GTR, and her record was indeed annotated “nee Churchill.” And — good God! She was listed as living with Peter G. Hobson, a biomedical engineer. The soulwave guy — Sandra had seen him on Donahue and read about him in Maclean’s. They must be rolling in money … enough for either of them to hire a hit man.

Sandra switched back to the reports database and asked for full details on the Roderick Churchill death, Churchill, a high-school gym teacher, had died alone while eating dinner. Cause of death was recorded by medical examiner Warren Chen as “aneurysm(?).” That question mark was intriguing. Sandra turned on her videophone and dialed. “Hello, Warren,” she said, once Chen’s round, middle-aged face had appeared on the screen.

Chen smiled warmly. “Hello, Sandra. What can I do for you?”

“I’m calling about the death a couple of days ago of one Roderick Churchill.”

“The gym teacher who combed his hair over? Sure, what about him?”

“You recorded the cause of death as an aneurysm.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But you put a question mark after it. Aneurysm, question mark.”

“Oh, yes.” Chen shrugged. “Well, you can never be completely sure. When God wants you, sometimes he just flicks the old switch in your head. Click! Aneurysm. You check out, just like that. That seemed to be what happened there. The guy was already on heart medication.”

“Was there anything unusual about the case?” Chen made the clucking sound that passed for his chuckle.

“I’m afraid not, Sandra. There’s nothing nefarious about a sixty-something-year-old man dropping dead — especially a gym teacher. They think they’re in good shape, but they spend most of their day just watching other people exercise. The guy had been scarfing fast food when he died.”

“Did you do an autopsy?”

The medical examiner clucked again; somebody had once suggested that Chen’s name was a contraction of chicken hen. “Autopsies are expensive, Sandra. You know that. No, I did a couple of quick tests at the scene, then signed the certificate. The widow — it’s coming back to me now, her name was Bunny; can you believe that? Anyway, she’d found the body. Her daughter and son-in-law were with her when I got there around, oh, one-thirty, quarter to two, in the morning.” He paused. “Why the interest?”

“It’s probably nothing,” said Sandra. “Just that the man who died, Rod Churchill, was the father of one of the coworkers in that castration case.”

“Oh, yes,” said Chen, his voice full of relish. “Now there’s an interesting one. Carracci was M.E. on that; she gets all the weird cases these days. But, Sandra, it seems a pretty tenuous connection, no? I mean it just sounds like this woman — what’s her name?”

“Cathy Hobson.”

“It just sounds like it’s not Cathy Hobson’s year, that’s all. Run of bad luck.”

Sandra nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. Still, do you mind if I come down and look at your notes?”

Chen clucked again. “Of course not, Sandra. It’s always a pleasure to see you.”

Peter hated funerals. Not because he disliked being around dead people; one couldn’t spend as much time in hospitals as he did without running into a few of those. No, it was the live ones he couldn’t stand.

First, there were the hypocrites: the ones who hadn’t seen the dear departed in years, but came out of the woodwork after it was too late to do the deceased any good.

Second, the wailers, the people who became so flamboyantly emotional that they, instead of the deceased, became the center of attention. Peter’s heart did go out to close relatives who were having trouble dealing with the loss of someone they truly loved, but he had no patience for the distant cousins or five-blocks-away neighbors who went to pieces at funerals, until they were surrounded by a crowd of people trying to comfort them, loving every minute.

For his own part, as in all things, Peter tried for a certain stoicism — the stiff upper lip of his British ancestors.

Rod Churchill, vain man that he had been, wanted an open casket. Peter disapproved of those. As a child of seven, he’d gone to the funeral of his mother’s father. Granddad had been known for his large nose. Peter remembered entering the chapel and seeing the coffin at the far end, the upper part open, the only thing visible from that angle being his grandfather’s nose sticking up above the line made by the side of the casket. To this day, whenever he thought of his grandfather, the picture that came to mind first was of the dead man’s proboscis, a lone peak rising into the air.

Peter looked around. The chapel he was in today was paneled in dark wood. The coffin looked expensive. Despite the request for donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario in lieu of flowers, there were many bouquets, and a large horseshoe-shaped affair sent by the teachers Rod had worked with. Must have been from the Phys. Ed. Department — only those guys could be daft enough not to know that horseshoe arrangements meant “good luck,” hardly the appropriate thing to send to a dead man.

Bunny was holding up bravely, and Cathy’s sister, Marissa, although crying intermittently, seemed to be doing okay, too. Peter didn’t know what to make of Cathy’s reaction, though. Her face was impassive as she greeted people coming to pay their respects. Cathy, who cried when she watched sad movies and who cried when she read sad books, seemed to have no tears at all for her dead father.

It wasn’t much to go on, thought Sandra Philo. Two deaths. One clearly a murder; the other of indeterminate cause.

But they both had Cathy Hobson in common.

Cathy Hobson, who had slept with the murdered man, Hans Larsen.

Cathy Hobson, daughter of Rod Churchill.

True, Larsen had been involved with many women. True, Churchill had been in his sixties.

Still…

After Sandra had finished her work for the day, she drove to the Churchill house, at Bayview just south of Steeles. It was only five kilometers from 32 Division headquarters — not much of a waste if this turned out to be a wild-goose chase. She parked and went up to the front door. The Churchill family had a FILE scanner — Fingerprint Index Lock Electronics. Common these days. Above the scanning plate was a doorbell button. Sandra pushed it. A minute later, a woman with gray hair appeared at the door. “Yes?”

“Hello,” said Sandra. “Are you Bunny Churchill?”

“Yes.”

Sandra held up her ID. “I’m Alexandria Philo, Metro Police. Can I ask you a few questions.”

“What about?”

“The, ah, death of your husband.”

“Goodness,” said Bunny. Then: “Yes, of course. Come in.”

“Thank you — but, before I forget, can I ask whose fingerprints the FILE scanner accepts?” Sandra pointed at the blue glass plate.

“Mine and my husband’s,” said Bunny.

“Anybody else?”

“My daughters. My son-in-law.”

“Cathy Hobson, and — ” Sandra had to think for a moment — “Peter Hobson, is that right?”

“Yes, and my other daughter, Marissa.”

They went inside.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Sandra, smiling sympathetically. “I know this must be a very difficult time for you. But there are a few little questions I’d like to clear up, so we can close the file on your husband.”

“I thought the file was closed,” said Bunny.

“Almost,” said Sandra. “The medical examiner wasn’t a hundred-percent sure of the cause of death, I’m afraid. He’d marked it down as probably an aneurysm.”

“So I’d been told.” Bunny shook her head. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Can you tell me if he had any health problems?”

“Rod? Oh, nothing serious. A little arthritis in one hand. Sometimes a little pain in his left leg. Oh, and he’d had a small heart attack three years ago — he took medication for that.”

Probably insignificant. And yet … “Do you still have his heart pills?”

“I suppose they’d still be in the medicine cabinet upstairs.”

“Would you mind showing them to me?” asked Sandra.

Bunny nodded. They went up to the bathroom together and Bunny opened the medicine cabinet. Inside, there was Tylenol, a container of dental floss, Listerine, some of those little shampoos they have at hotels, and two prescription bottles from Shoppers Drug Mart.

“Which one is his heart pills?” asked Sandra, pointing.

“Both,” Bunny said. “He’d been on one kind since his heart attack, and had been taking the other kind for several weeks now.”

Sandra picked up the bottles. Both had small computer-printed labels stuck to them. One said it contained Cardizone-D, which certainly sounded like a heart drug. The other was labeled Nardil. Both had been prescribed by a Dr. H. Miller. The Nardil bottle had a fluorescent orange label on it: “Warning — severe dietary restrictions.”

“What’s this about dietary restrictions?” asked Sandra.

“Oh, there was a long list of things he wasn’t supposed to eat. We were always very careful about that.”

“But he’d been eating take-out food the night he died, according to the medical examiner.”

“That’s right,” said Bunny. “He did that every Wednesday while I was out at a course. But he always had the same thing, and it had never given him trouble before.”

“Do you have any idea what he’d ordered?”

“Roast beef, I think.”

“Do you still have the packaging?”

“I threw it out,” said Bunny. “It’s probably still in our Blue Box. We haven’t had our trash pickup yet.”

“Do you mind if I have a look — and can I keep these pill bottles, please?”

“Uh, yes. Of course.”

Sandra slipped the pill bottles into her jacket pocket, then followed her down. The recycling hopper was inside a wicker hamper. Sandra rummaged through it. She soon turned up a small slip of newsprint with Rod’s order from Food Food printed on it.

“May I keep this, as well?” said Sandra.

Bunny Churchill nodded.

Sandra straightened up and put the slip of paper in her pocket. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” she said.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s going through your mind, Detective,” said Bunny.

“Nothing at all, Mrs. Churchill. Like I said, just loose ends.”