Page 58 of Not a Word

“Yeah. At the time, he’d have been early forties.”

“I don’t think so. Name doesn’t ring any bells. Who is he?”

“He was a retired business consultant but back around the time Corby was murdered he also worked in pharmaceutical sales for Wiffel-Smith.”

Maitland’s eyes narrowed. “I’m pretty sure I never talked to him. Should I have?”

“I don’t know. But yesterday Chartwell shot a woman who was not his wife, a woman by the name of Leah Kennard, in his bed then turned the gun on himself. And here’s the kicker. The slugs from both of them matched the one taken from Evelyn Corby more than two decades ago.”

Maitland thought about that for a moment. Finally, he said, “I guess we should have talked to him.”

McCabe smiled. “No one’s second-guessing.”

“You’re lucky they were able to make the match. Late nineties was when all that evidence started being stored on the computer. I do recall talking to her employers. Went to the corporate office, in the northwest part of Toronto, near the airport. The Wiffel guy.” He nodded, remembering. “He was shook up, said she was one of his top salespeople.”

“Talk to any of her colleagues?”

“Just those who were at the HQ at the time, not anyone who might have been on the road. I suppose it’s possible I talked to this Chartwell guy and don’t remember.”

“This murder-suicide looked like something I thought I could put down in a hurry, but it opens the door to something in the past.”

“Too bad Chartwell shot himself. If he’s your guy, be nice to get a confession out of him. Might have wanted to get this off his chest after all this time.”

“There’s still his wife. She might know something. I’ll have another chat with her.”

Twenty-One

1999

Catherine was not a great shooter. But she wasn’t half bad either.

Dalton Crane belonged to a gun club that had its own indoor firing range where police officers trained, and once he had procured a firearm for Catherine, he took her there to teach her how to use it.

She enjoyed the instruction, in no small part because of the way Crane would wrap his hands around hers, teaching her the fine points of how to hold, point, and fire. In the early lessons, he used his own gun for the exercises.

“You don’t just pull the trigger like you’re flicking a wall switch.” She could barely hear him through the heavy-duty, soundproofing headphones. “You squeeze it, very deliberately. Slowly. Okay, you try it.”

At the end of the firing lane was a paper target hanging from a clip. Once she had fired off several rounds, the paper would be brought forward on a kind of mechanical clothesline and she could see how well she’d done. Her early attempts were as one might have expected.

“I fired six shots, didn’t I? But there are only two holes in the paper.”

“Yeah, well, those other four bullets went on vacation,” Crane said.

Their third lesson, he presented her with her own gun to practice with. She was delighted, but wary.

“There’s no record, is there? The police aren’t going to come to my door asking to see a license?”

“No.”

“Because if they do, Brent will know I have this.”

“The only way your husband will learn you have this is if you leave it someplace where he can find it.”

She snorted. “In that case, I’ll leave it in the washing machine.”

Jokes aside, Crane said she needed to keep it someplace where it was easy to get in a hurry. Burglars didn’t wait while homeowners went to fetch their firearm.

“What do you suggest?”