The Dichotomy
The telephone rang in the CIB office and Kato picked up the call. He maintained that he always picked up the calls and Ryan always yelled back that he was the Kato - that was one of his jobs.
After a short set-to with his antithesis, Ryan took the call from the uniforms in the Northern part of the division. Rosedale was never a police concern; the entire area was filled with Par 6 homes as Ryan called them. They were so large you had to use your driver across the hallway and then hit a 3 wood into the living room leaving you a short wedge into the kitchen. They had gardeners and nannies and financial planners, they hardly ever needed the police especially for this type of call - A Homicide.
The first information was pretty vivid. The uniforms got a call from a cleaning lady that her elderly client was dead and that blood was everywhere.
The first officers backed out of the scene not touching anything when they saw the situation. They had been taught by the detectives to back out when the man was dead, so they would not tramp on any evidence left at the scene. First information was that the deceased had multiple stab wounds to the head and chest and there was blood everywhere. The scene had been searched, no suspect had been located.
Ryan and Kato attended the scene. Ryan had to calm the youngster down as this was his first Homicide and he was nervous, a little nauseous, yet excited.
The scene was turned over to Ryan who barked the orders to the uniform Sergeant and he complied. Most people do not understand that Detectives and Sergeants are the same rank within the police framework but in serious matters such as this one - the Detective has the scene.
Ryan knew that he would lose the scene when the Homicide Squad arrived. The persons from the House of Mirrors as he called them. Ryan was just a little jealous deep down because these Detectives had all the time in the world and no caseload. But they also had everybody and their brother watching over them. Politics and Ryan didn't mix. Ryan had been there for a short stint but didn't have the patience or the clothes to work there permanent.
The deceased had lived there for over fifty years. The building was an original Rosedale apartment. It overlooked the ravine and was built of brick and stone. The windows of the ground floor apartment were made of stained glass. There were no sliding doors in those times when the building was built and no balcony. The apartment was a Spartan one bedroom with the standard kitchen to right and the hallway to the bedroom on the left. Half way down the hallway was the tiled bathroom. It had been recently upgraded and retiled. It gleamed white Italian Tile except for the blood.
The bedroom was straight ahead. In the living room was the most bizarre thing, almost a warren of walkways into the corner of the room. The walkways were actually bookshelves with thousands, no tens of thousands of books. Some libraries had fewer books than did this man who was on the bathroom floor covered in blood.
In the corner of the room was an alcove where the largest window of the apartment let in sunlight from the southern exposure. It was here that he must have spent most of his time. He had no television and none was taken from the scene. He had no radio and none was taken.
On the table was a book opened to a glossy photo and on the page to the right was one drop of blood. The blood drop was dropped straight down no stippling; this droplet came from a stationary person hovering over the book. On the other page was what appeared to be a water droplet. Again, one drop straight down.
Making their way through the warren of books, Kato and Ryan determined by the shoes and clothing that he lived alone. You can always be sure if a female lives in a place by the number of shoes.
Outside the apartment Ryan talked to the Maid and she stated that he had lived there for over fifty years and was a retired schoolteacher. He just read books. He had no enemies and why would anyone kill him.
Ryan had called the Ident Team and they were starting to arrive. He was also awaiting the coroner to move the body. It was always embarrassing to make a call on these things and then roll the body and find an axe stuck in his chest.
Ryan and Kato carefully went back into the apartment trying not to dislodge anything. The front room was checked and three more droplets of blood were located in the livingroom and one in the hall leading to the bathroom. Each droplet had indications of travel from the corner nook to the bathroom, but in a slow pace, a walking kind of gait.
Into the bedroom and on the dresser was a cornucopia of pills and medications. Each had been lined up as to expiration date and type of drug. The man had every painkiller known to mankind. Street drugs worth a small fortune. All from different Doctors, but all from the same office complex. He was seeing four different Doctors and a pain specialist.
The man had all the pills lined up in size, category and expiration date. He had the pain pills all in order of strength and expiration. This man was more organized than most.
On the bed was the man’s wallet and inside the wallet was over $450 and his one credit card. All his identification matched as the owner/tenant and he was dead in the next room with, as Ryan counted over twelve knife wounds to his body.
The bathroom scene was blood all over and Kato could not figure out why someone would stab anybody that many times. Ryan surveyed the room and noticed that the murder weapon was all but hidden under the body.
With this new information he told Kato to carefully go to the kitchen and check the knife block to see if one was missing. Kato returned and stated that a standard Heinckel block was there and one of the big knives was missing.
As Ryan pondered the scene he told Kato to double-check the windows and door for forced entry.
At the moment, Ryan had a murder with no motive and no suspects.
Ryan awaited Kato’s return; he re-affirmed Ryan’s recollections. No forced entry - no theft of drugs - no robbery.
To complicate things the building Superintendent arrived and stated that he had been there thirty years and the Old Man had no visitors or family that he was aware of.
Well secret passages were hopefully out of question and even if they had one, they still had no motive. When there seems to be no motive it is always someone from the nuclear family. This man had no family.
The answer lay in the clues left around the household and Ryan started figuring out a theory as to the murder of the Old Man.
As he plotted out his bizarre theory, a new arrival happened upon the scene. The coroner - the Medical Examiner - this man was required in all deaths and was one of the Checks and Balances within the justice system. He would pronounce death because police officers can only assume death in three cases.
This was not dismemberment, or a decapitation, and he was not decomposing. The coroner was a little gnome of a man. He was generally misunderstood by most Detectives as a prying, wannabe detective, who kept messing with their cases. Ryan’s' take was that he was fun, entertaining, and sharp as a tack.
He apparently lived alone with his elderly mother in an Old Swansea mansion on the Credit River. The family was old money and this coroner had no driver’s licence. He either took the car and driver, an Old Bentley, kind of a driving Miss Daisy thing or took the streetcar to the scene.
He had the mansion filled with jars of stuff from cases he had done and every time Ryan saw him he figured that he was about to relive that scene from Psycho where the guy becomes his Old Mother. It was said they never saw his mother and him in the same place at the same time.
He always had enthusiasm, and each new death was a puzzle to solve, one way or another. He was a smallish, quickly moving man with an air about him - Kind of a local version of Quincy.
He came in and saw Ryan. They had chemistry and always had the most bizarre matters together. He pulled out his little Kodak pocket camera circa 1962 and started taking pictures. Ryan had told him this was a bad idea and that his guys and the Homicide Guys would take care of it but he wanted his own.
Ryan would prove correct in his warning as the Coroner was cross-examined about his pictures soon there after and ceased the practice.
They squatted and the doctor pronounced death. They managed to lift the Body and determine that he had three knife wounds in the chest. He also had 11 or twelve in his temple, the doctor looked at the Detective and asked if there were any suspects.
Ryan stated just one, the man himself.
The doctor looked at his Old friend in quizzical way and Ryan started outlining his theory of the man’s death.
He first took the doctor around the apartment so he would understand all that he mentioned in this theory. The doctor checked the windows and doors but was not an expert in these areas .He looked at the blood splatters and the open book located in the sunny nook.
The doctor looked in the bedroom and saw all the medication and he knew the pain doctor. He saw the position of the body and he told Ryan that his man was in the last stages of some type of cancer, probably a brain tumour.
He had figured this out using his knowledge of the medication but was just chomping at the bit to hear Ryan's explanation of the facts.
Ryan first squatted over the body in the bathroom and told the doctor that he had been cut while sitting on the toilet. All the blood was consistent with a man on the floor reaching up the walls in final throes of life, bleeding to death.
There was no blood on the ceiling and none in the hallway save those few spots, which Ryan would explain later.
Ryan explained to the doctor the lack of motive and the drugs still being in the apartment. There was no point of entry and no forced doorway. The house was clean except for the bathroom where he died and the spots of blood and one spot of water.
The doctor looked into the bathroom sink and found more little droplets of blood. These could also be explained Ryan stated.
The doctor with great intensity walked to the sunny nook and looked carefully at the open text. He smiled at his friend and they sat as he listened to Ryan's theory.
Ryan figured that the Old man knew it was cleaning day .He knew the maid would open the Old Oaken door and would find him. Earlier in the day he had a severe pain attack from what turned out to be his Terminal Brain Cancer. He had been given painkillers for the discomfort but they were not working.
The main pain was over his right eye. In a delusional moment the man went to the kitchen got a large butcher knife from the wood block and returned to the bathroom. Looking at himself in the mirror he placed the large knife over his temple and stuck the knife into his own skull.
This gave him some relief and he continued doing this numerous times. This caused the newly found droplets within the sink as the blood slowly fell from his temple.
After the shock wore off from this ordeal the pain from the tumour took over once again and the man decided to end his life.
Being a thorough, well-educated man he went to his medical dictionary and brought the book from the shelf. He opened the book to the Circulatory system and looked down plotting his next move.
While he looked down figuring where everything was located, he shed one drop of blood straight down and one tear as Ryan figured from the left eye.
He slowly walked back to the bathroom where he continued his plan. On the way to the bathroom the temple gave three more spots of blood.
In the bathroom, the plan escalated into him driving the knife into his chest. While sitting on the toilet the blood poured out of the chest and he must have looked down to wonder what happened to the plan .The second stab was right handed again and was also shallow and blocked. Now he was cut in two places but still very alive.
Finally in his pain and disillusionment he figured out that his ribs were stopping the blade and turned the knife sideways. The knife he had chosen was too wide a blade to get through the ribs.
Sideways and very successfully the knife plunged into his heart, he pulled the knife out and fell forward onto the tile floor in a pool of his own blood. In the moments leading to the end he reached up with bloodied hands and fingers and tried to get up but died on the bathroom floor- alone.
The coroner could not argue any of the points but it so bizarre - but possible.
Just then a touch of reality came calling. The Homicide Squad came to the scene. They were two of the newer almost regular guys and they took over the scene.
Ryan and the coroner told them to put their investigation on hold till after the autopsy and the printing of the knife but no such luck.
Ryan told them it was a suicide and they laughed. The Homicide Squad called two days later after many hours of overtime and with a subdued and almost apologetic tone turned the case back over to Ryan, because they don't handle simple suicides.
Ryan smiled and looked at Kato stating, " That was the worst case of suicide I ever saw ".
