Woman Chased by Crows Read Online Free Page B

Afro-Irish. Big guy, your size, used to play tackle for the Argos. Dylan O’Grady. Know him?”
    â€œVaguely. Don’t think he played very long.”
    â€œBroken toe did him in. Believe that? Worked out in the end. Did his twenty as a cop, went into politics. He’s a city councillor now, but I hear he’s running for a vacant seat in Ottawa.”
    â€œThe big time.”
    â€œYeah, he’s a go-getter.” Delisle sounded dubious.
    The coffees arrived as well as two bite-size portions of Dutch apple pie on saucers. “Just so’s you two know what you’re missing.” Doreen walked away, fluffing her hair again. Orwell savoured the single bite. “The guy in the park,” Orwell said, licking the corner of his mouth. “You ever find the real killer?”
    â€œOh sure we did, not for that one, but we found a strangler, a big gay dude, eight months later for another one, and for one more that the guy didn’t finish off and the victim lived to testify. Messed up his life, but he stood up, testified, give him that.”
    â€œYou should try the pie,” Orwell said. Delisle shook his head. Not interested. Orwell popped Delisle’s sample into his mouth. Be a shame to let it go to waste. “So you closed the first case, too,” he said, wiping his lips.
    â€œNot officially, he wouldn’t cop to the guy in the park but we’re pretty sure it was him.”
    â€œSo if she didn’t do it, what’s the interest?”
    â€œWell, we’ve got this other case, still open, two years previous, guy got himself shot, out in the Beaches. I was checking her out and her name pops up in this other file. She confessed to that one, too. Said she strangled him.”
    Orwell shook his head and stifled a laugh. “So she’s on record of having confessed to two different murders, only she got the methods wrong?”
    â€œOr backwards.”
    â€œGot anything else?”
    â€œOh yeah. Turns out we’ve got a file on this woman four inches thick. From September 13, 1987, to October 27, 1995, she called 9-1-1 fifty-four times. Prowlers, assaults, stalkers, rapists following her, assassination attempts. Fifty-four.”
    â€œHow many responses?”
    â€œActual investigations? Maybe seven. Patrol logs, maybe another fifteen. She wasn’t ignored, at least not at first, but after a couple of years she was kind of established, a crank, not to be taken too seriously, paranoid delusion, persecution complex, chronic confessor, that kind of evaluation.”
    â€œSounds like she was going through a bad patch,” said Orwell. “She seems to be functioning all right in Dockerty. Opened a dance school, teaches ballet to the kids, ballroom dancing for the grownups. Never any trouble as far as I know.”
    Delisle looked away from the river and the bridge and wherever his mind had travelled. “She says she did something in her homeland that will never be forgiven, they’re going to send assassins after her to make her pay.”
    â€œThe body in the park, guy was an assassin?”
    â€œNot hardly. Stockbroker. Riverdale. Wife and kid. He had coke in his system. Some white collar putz taking a walk on the wild side, got himself into a dangerous situation.”
    â€œSo what are you up here for?”
    â€œWell, another guy turned up dead. Last week. On the Queensway. In a motel room.”
    â€œShe didn’t confess to that one, did she?”
    â€œFar as I know, she was up here. But here’s the thing, this guy was Russian, he was a defector, he was a scenic designer for a ballet company and he was carrying her picture in his wallet.”

    She had recognized him immediately as he drove by — not the sort of man you forget, so tall, that preposterous red hair, and there he was again, on the sidewalk across the street. He was even walking in rhythm with the music, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Schéhérazade.
The