Annie Hansen Mysteries

Chapter 10

My cell phone glowed blue and reflected my horrified face when I got the next call from Lorne. He said the mayor was gone, semen blown clear through his balls and spattered on the wall behind, in his fancy office in City Hall, left alone to bleed to death in agony.

“Thanks, Lorne,” I said and mentally put him on my suspect list for Murder Number Two.

Nothing like this ever happened in Serendipity, our little island town just off Vancouver Island and five hours from Vancouver. Serendipity Island had been my refuge all these years from the big cities that had been so cruel to me growing up. The moon soared over our small City Hall, its mediocre arches and pillars shadowed and silver like I thought the Parthenon might be by moonlight. Beautiful, I thought, and the stars, like, punctured the sky and showed through a black and silver curtain. I was glad I worked and lived on our Island, connected to the mainland only by ferry and the Georgia Straits.

The mayor"s death left me with maybe two suspects instead of one (that one being Samir). Who"d benefit from the mayor gone? Maybe somebody who was planning on running against him in the next election, and would probably lose. The mayor got a pile more money and prestige than a gumshoe detective, aka private eye, a gumshoe detective with a SIG Pro semi-automatic pistol and a twisted motive, who maybe knew enough to get away with it.

What"s the connection to Doc? I asked myself, and my brain came up empty as usual. No similarities in modus operandi except, of course, for the horrible methods of execution in both cases.

modus operandi“Whatcha doing downtown this time of night, Annie?” Pepsi, the tall Sudanese man walking home, interrupted my thoughts. Pepsi didn"t go to work until six p.m. and quit ten hours later, in the wee hours of the morning. It was about that time now, quitting time.

“Got a question for you, Pepsi,” I said. “Do you know what happened here yesterday evening?”

“Yeah,” he said and smacked his head. “I know—I work at City Hall, too, as well as Doc"s building, but I didn"t see or hear nothin" about the mayor before he got his balls blowed off.”

“What I"m wondering is the motive for killing Doc seems straightforward. Money and drugs. But what"s the connection to Mayor Spacey?”

“Only the bad guys get handguns in Canada. Or maybe a law enforcement officer. What was it blew him away?”

I eyed the lanky Sudanese with more respect. “Maybe you could tell me, Pepsi.”

“Yeah? Maybe not. You"re barking up the wrong maple tree if you think it was me, Annie.”

“You still clean, Pepsi?”

“Yeah. I haven"t used dope for more than a year. Ask the boys at NA.”

“Narcotics Anonymous, that"s brilliant. Think I"ll pay them a visit next open meeting they have. I might be able to get a lead there.

Thanks.”

Why hadn"t I thought of that? That"s what they paid me for. As for Lorne O"Halloran, my erstwhile boss? Lazy bar of soap hadn"t solved a case in fourteen months without me, and needed either a safety net or a better job to pay his gambling bills. If he could pin Doc"s murder on Pepsi or Samir and step into the mayor"s chair, he"d be sitting like a pretty fat Republican president in a Republican Senate.

The bullet that blew away Spacey"s balls? RCMP Ballistics wasn"t that clever when the bullet went clear through the wall and they didn"t find it.

Something niggled in the back of my mind. They"re not telling you the truth, my voices squealed. Listen to us. We"re your friends. “Shut up,” I said to the voices. “Let me think.” What if the killer wants you to think they"re psycho? Just like you.

They"re not telling you the truth,Listen to us. We"re your friends.What if the killer wants you to think they"re psycho? Just like you.Tomorrow I"d go downtown to my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Everyone on the street knew they met in the back of the bookstore every Monday morning. Maybe I"d get some answers there.

You"ll never solve this case. Do you want to see what"s at the bottom of this filth? Do you really want to know?

You"ll never solve this case. Do you want to see what"s at the bottom of this filth? Do you really want to know?Maybe they were right, and maybe I didn"t want to know. I needed a job and the longer it took me to solve the case, the longer I"d be working on it, right?

Oh, you"re a clever one, you are. Clever like Jack the Ripper but you"ll get caught.

Oh, you"re a clever one, you are. Clever like Jack the Ripper but you"ll get caught.What did they mean by that?

Sometimes the sun rose in the west not the east, and sometimes it didn"t rise at all and it was night for twenty-four hours as I slept. Sometimes I was stupid and sometimes I wasn"t.

I wasn"t sure I wanted to meet the killer. Who would remove the brains of an old, overweight pill pusher, and who would be trusted enough by Security to sneak up in City Hall and blow off the balls of a crazy mayor, and leave him to bleed to death? Who would know enough to do that? Who would want to?

I made sure I took my pills the next morning, letting the antipsychotic wafer dissolve under my tongue. The voices whispered and mocked me but it kept them at bay for a couple of hours. I counted my fingers up to thirty under the breakfast table. Counting my fingers calmed me. Oh, you"re so friggin" serene, Annie.

Oh, you"re so friggin" serene, Annie.The Vespa bucked as it squealed down the street from my group home at the Powolskis. Everyone on the Island knew I drove a scooter.

It was one of the hallmarks of Annie Hansen.

They didn"t know much else about me. I liked it that way.