Finally, I decided, So what. Sins are interesting. I made my peace with it. But sometimes I wondered, especially when I ended up confronting this level of insanity, if I had made the wrong choice. Not only was I absorbing the sins of the sick, but I was actively seeking out deranged murderers.
I took a deep breath. My phone buzzed again. This time it was Dr. John Tucker: Yo yo yo, he wrote.
Hi, I wrote back. If I ever needed Tucker’s silliness, it was now. Even though talking to him on this phone vaguely seemed like cheating. Again, maybe that was Ryan’s point, since there was little love lost between him and Tucker.
What’s wrong?
Again, Tucker seemed to know me too well. How could he tell, through a text? I’m looking at something disturbing.
Ryan? JK.
I rolled my eyes, as if he could see me in my white-walled apartment.
Are you on another case?
Slowly, I tapped out my response: Maybe.
I’m coming over.
You are not. I need to think. Bye
I turned my phone to airplane mode, so that neither of my guys could distract me. I started googling animal cruelty in Montreal. Then I called the local Humane Society. They took my name and number, but when I said I was calling about photos online, I could feel the guy’s interest dimming. “Hamsters? In a picture? Okay.”
“I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I really think we should look into this.”
He sighed. “I would love to look into everything, Ms. Sze.” He pronounced it See, which was close enough. “But we just got a report of a guy beating his dog to death. We have to close down a puppy mill in another part of the city. And did you hear about le Berger de l’Étoile?”
I hadn’t.
He sighed again. He sounded pretty wrecked, so I just thanked him and hung up. Poor guy. It seemed like the animal welfare system was as underfunded as the Montreal medical system. Or worse.
I looked up le Berger de l’Étoile, which turned out to be a for-profit shelter that killed eighty to two hundred animals a day. Instead of hiring a veterinarian or an animal health care technician, a maintenance worker used the outmoded technique of intracardiac injections, ineptly. So the worker would have to inject up to twelve times, and even then, they’d basically throw the animals in the garbage, still alive.
I covered my eyes. I was heading down a rabbit hole here. I had to concentrate on Raymond Pascal Gusarov.
I Skyped Ryan, who picked up right away. I smiled at his blurry, pixelated webcam photo before I got down to business.
“Ry, I’ve got pictures, and I’m sending you the link. I need you to help me figure out if the pictures are real, who did them, and if we can sic the SPCA on him.” I figured I could bring Ryan into my private investigation because the pictures were public, and I didn’t know how to prove that they were from Raymond Pascal Gusarov.
“On it... Ugh,” he said, clicking away, and then choked on his coffee.
“Sorry, babe.” I hated to rope him into this too, making him into a sin eater when he could just work with nice, neat computers all day.
He waved my words away. “Let me see. Okay. I need an IP address... Okay, that’s interesting.”
“What?”
“His IP is 1.2.3.4. Obviously a fake. There’s nothing there.”
“He covered up his IP address?”
“Pretty much. Let me see what I can do.”
While he worked his techno-magic, I busied myself combing through what I assumed was Gusarov’s other alias, Heart’s Blood, where he wrote stories about screwing other guys, slitting their throats, and eating their hearts. Dear Lord. I rubbed my eyes.
Ryan said, “Holy crap. He’s using proxies here, bouncing from China to Sweden. Do you have a video?”
My heart was still pounding from Heart’s Blood. “Um, I’ll see if I can find one.”
“Never mind, I’m on it. Videos are nice because they take up more bandwidth. YouTube won’t give out an IP without a police warrant.”
I wondered how he knew that.
“I pinged some of my friends. One of them commented on the background for the flying hamster. See how there’s a streetlamp outside? It’s got an unusual shape.”
I squinted. It was especially blurry through Skype, but yes, one shot was of a hamster in a cape, in front of a window, with toothpicks through the eyes. I needed a drink of water. “How long’s it going to take you to find out more about this creep?”
“It takes as long as it takes, Hope. It’s not like TV.”
“Too bad,” I muttered.
Ryan’s face stilled. “He’s in Montreal. My friend found a match on Mapzest.”
“I know.”
“Is it that patient you were talking about?”
I didn’t answer, which was probably enough of an answer.
“Be careful, Hope.”
I heard a knock at my apartment door, and jumped. No one should be able to knock on my door since I moved into an apartment with a security guard.
I stifled a scream.
“Don’t answer it,” Ryan said.
“I won’t.” I was truly freaked out. Was it possible that while we searched for Raymond Pascal Gusarov, he was tracking us? Was that how he got money for plastic surgery, at the age of twenty-two? Was he some sort of hamster-killing, heart-eating computer genius?
His before and after pictures weren’t too impressive, but what if he’d started out as someone who looked very different?
“I’m going to stay on,” said Ryan. “If anyone breaks in, I’ll call the Montreal police.”
Virtual backup. Good. Better than no backup.
I’d put the chain on my door, but I called down to the security desk first. “Hi, this is Hope Sze, apartment 8828. Did you let someone in the building who came up to the eighth floor? I didn’t buzz anyone in.”
“A man got buzzed into the twenty-third floor.”
Shit. Of course, there was no stopping him from making his way to my apartment from another floor. Some idiot could have buzzed him in, and then Raymond Pascal Gusarov could decide, Nope, I’m heading over to kill the detective doctor instead. I’d gotten complacent, living in a prettier place. A killer is a killer is a killer.
“What did the man look like?”
“Caucasian, about five-nine, blond hair, slim build, jeans, navy jacket. Is there a problem? Do you need me to come upstairs?”
Someone knocked on the door again, harder this time. I squeaked.
The guard said, “I’ll need someone to man the front door. Let me call someone.”
While he did that, Raymond Pascal Gusarov could smash his way in.
“You want me to call the cops?” said Ryan.
A man spoke through the door: “Hope, I know you’re in there. Let me in.”
My heart seemed to pause for a moment. I recognized this voice, deep in my marrow. I unlocked my lips. “Tucker?”
“Are you okay? You weren’t answering your phone, so I got Mireille to let me in. What’s going on?”
I let my breath out slowly. He was talking loudly enough so that Ryan heard. “Is that Tucker?”
I nodded. “You don’t need to call the police. But you may need to beat some manners into him.”