The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

Three Blind Rats by Laird Long

Laird Long (b. 1964) is a prolific Canadian writer whose stories have appeared in a wide range of print or on-line magazines, including Blue Murder, Handheldcrime, Futures Mysterious, Hardboiled, and Albedo One. His story “Sioux City Express” from Handheldcrime was included amongst the top 50 mystery stories of 2002 by Otto Penzler in the anthology The Best American Mystery Stories-2003. In this brand new story, he demonstrates how criminals can use the latest technology to commit the perfect crime – if only an impossible crime hadn’t got in the way!

Pinero said, “Marciano or Lewis – who’d you take in that one?” He lowered his Ring Magazine and looked at McGrath, watched the little man down his fourth cup of coffee of the morning, rub his grey face.

McGrath played around some more with his Blackberry, his right eyelid twitching as he stared at the glowing screen. “I told you, I don’t follow boxing. It’s too violent.” Thumbs flying like a twelve-year-old video-gamer chalking up kills on God of War, he added, “You should see all the great features on this thing.”

Pinero raised his magazine again, recrossed his feet on top of his desk. “You’re gonna get radiation poisoning from all those gadgets of yours,” he warned, taking some satisfaction in his partner’s stricken expression.

Pinero was young, liked to wear his clothes flashy, gel his jet-black hair into a subtle Mohawk. But despite all that, he considered himself old-school, less concerned with the geeky forensic fantasies of criminal investigation, than the pavement-pounding, door-dusting street solving of it. And he was good at it, like his father had taught him.

“Pretty soon we’ll be able to break cases without ever even leaving the office,” McGrath stated. “Like fighting a war by remote control.” He tilted his empty mug against his lips, almost choked on the plastic stir straw.

McGrath was well past the age when most cops were puttering around their Victoria condos, bald as a bagel and just as rubbery. But he’d carved out a niche for himself in the Department by becoming a tech-savvy guru, an indispensable computerized tool in the 21st-century assault on crime.

The men’s mutual loathing went back to the first day they’d been paired together in Homicide. Pinero despised McGrath’s foul coffee breath and chronic health whining, his holier-than-Intel attitude. While McGrath didn’t envy Pinero his smooth good looks and muscular physique; he detested him for them, in fact. And the young detective’s apparent indifference to all things chip-driven earned him a special place of contempt in McGrath’s ebook.

Pinero was two weeks away from transfer-bait for trolling John’s with the Vice Unit – and both men were counting the days, one on his Dukes of Hazzard wall calendar, the other on his Outlook software.

Sergeant Bugler walked into the Squad Room, barked, “McGrath, Pinero!” They looked up. “Got a job for you two.” They waited. “Lenny ‘The Rat’ Laymon’s been found dead.”

It was a skid row bungalow bordered by a boozecan on one side and a crack house on the other; smack-dab in the middle of the sour armpit of Vancouver – the downtown eastside. Inside: the nude body of Lenny Laymon, curled up in a fetal ball on the bottom of his bathtub, like a rat in its hole.

Pinero stared at the hunk of limburger on the toilet lid, gestured. “That a joke?”

McGrath slurped java out of a paper cup. “Air freshener, more likely.”

Constable Mullings laughed. “The Rat did like his cheese.”

The two detectives and the uniformed cop looked down at Lenny’s sunken body. The water had still been running from the showerhead when the girl had discovered him, both he and the water ice-cold by then. Even with the long soak, Lenny still looked dirty, the yellow skin on his hairless body going blue, backbone spined like a Stegosaurus. His eyes and mouth were wide-open, back of his blonde-fringed head a bloody mess.

“When’d the girl find him?” Pinero asked Mullings.

“’Bout an hour ago,” the Constable replied, wiping a big, red nose with a big, red hand. “She couldn’t reach him on the phone all of yesterday, so she decided to pay him a visit this morning.”

“How old is she, anyway?”

“Fourteen.”

“How’d she get in?”

“Had her own key.”

Pinero mauled a hunk of bubblegum. They could hear the girl, Kristal, crying away in the next room, lamenting a life gone down the drain: a con artist, fraud artist, sneak thief, pickpocket and stool pigeon.

“Look what I found when I made her empty her pockets,” Mullings added, pulling something out of his jacket. He held it up. It sparkled in the light of the bare bathroom bulb.

“A diamond ring,” McGrath said, taking it from the Constable and examining it.

“Rock’s gotta be at least one-carat,” Mullings guessed. “She claimed Lenny gave it to her – like anyone’d believe The Rat was gonna pop the question, eh – then finally admitted she’d found it on Lenny’s dresser and palmed it, after she found the guy soaking in the tub.”

“It’s got ZJ stamped on the inside of the band,” McGrath stated.

“Zammy Jewelers,” Pinero responded. “They’ve got a store in the Centre Mall-make their own rings. And right now I’m betting they’re at least one bauble short of a glitter palace.”

He pulled a couple of Kleenex’s, a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket. He set the Kleenex carefully down on the grimy tile floor and knelt beside the tub, dressed his hands in the throwaway gloves. He ran a finger along the bottom of the tub, up to and around Lenny’s body. He poked the corpse.

McGrath turned his head and spoke to the two guys from the Fire and Rescue Service who were lounging in the doorway, “Looks like an accident, huh?”

They nodded.

“If it was anyone but The Rat, we wouldn’t even be here,” he grumbled, fingering what he suspected was a cellphone tumor growing behind his right ear. “Hey, I heard you guys get Workers’ Comp now, if you develop lung cancer, or have a heart attack twenty-four hours after a fire. That right?”

The guy with the Stalinesque mustache nodded, smiled a self-satisfied smile. “You’re darn right it is. The Union got the legislation passed a couple of months ago, eh.”

“I just started smoking again myself,” the other firefighter joked.

“Cops should have something like that,” McGrath groused. “I’m sure I’m getting cancer from using my computer and cellphone all day, in the line of duty. My doctor even said-” He halted his grievance when he saw his partner tilt Lenny’s stiffened body face-up, so he could check out The Rat’s other profile.

Pinero dug around in Lenny’s right ear. “Gimme a pair of tweezers, someone.”

He was handed a pair, and everyone watched as he pulled something out of Lenny’s oversized ear. He held the small, brown object up for inspection. “How many guys take a shower with their hearing aid still in?” he asked.

McGrath was working his wireless keyboard like the Chicago Stadium organist when Pinero reemerged from Robbery. “There was a heist at the Zammy Jewelers store in the Centre Mall last night alright,” he informed his partner. “Estimated loss: four hundred grand.”

McGrath whistled. “Lenny pulled a couple of jewel snatches back in the day, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, with a little help from some friends-turned enemies.” Pinero glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. “The last one that we know of was the Big Rock Diamond Mountain store on Granville-five years ago. The Rat weaseled out of heavy jail time by squealing on all his partners, including the inside guy, the fence, a couple of US Customs slobs, and half the local Hell’s Angels starting line-up.”

The phone on Pinero’s desk rang. He scooped it up, growled, “Yeah?”

“Detective Pinero, Dr Rampersand, Coroners Office.”

“Yeah, Doc?”

“Yes, you wanted us to phone as soon as we had some preliminary results from our examination of Leonard Laymon.”

“The Rat. Yeah, go, Doc.” Pinero snagged a pad and pencil.

“Yes, well, cause of death appears to be a single blow to the back of the head-blunt force trauma-as you no doubt observed for yourself. Time of death was approximately two to four a.m., the morning of 16 November.”

Pinero glanced at his watch, the comely picture of Daisy Duke: 2:10 p.m., Wednesday the 17th. “What else?”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Well, not much, I’m afraid. There appear to be no other untoward signs of trauma on the body, other than the usual assortment of bruises, burns, cuts, scabs, pimples, and warts that come from a bad diet and a life lived close to the streets. We found soap scum, lime scale, and tile grains in the wound, consistent with someone knocking their head on the edge of a bathtub after losing their footing.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Pinero hung up, thought for a moment, then reconnected. “Hey, Doc, forgot to ask – what about the hearing aid?”

“It’s a completely-in-the-canal type of hearing aid, very small. It’s not waterproof, of course, but someone could well forget about it when taking a shower.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Maybe The Rat had actually gone out the same way he’d come in-accidentally, Pinero thought. He relayed the information to his partner.

McGrath’s cellphone chimed the alien greeting from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He plucked it off his belt. “Okay, we’ll be right down.” He stood up and reholstered his cell, swallowed dregs and said to Pinero, “The Lab’s got something for us to see.”

The two men trotted on down to the basement.

“The Zammy Jewelers’ cameras, all the mall cameras, went blank as a blacked-out Canucks game at midnight – for ten minutes,” Cordweider explained.

“Covered up?” Pinero asked the lab technician.

“Naw. Off-line,” Cordweider snorted, “along with the alarm system. Everything came back up like the new programming day at 12:10 a.m. But by the time the security company got there, the jewelry store was a whole lot less sparkly.”

“Did the cameras see anything interesting before they blinked off?” McGrath asked, fondling the bag under his left eye and staring at the bank of monitors.

“Indeed,” Cordweider teased. “We’ve been running the mug-shot file against the surveillance camera facial shots, looking for matches, and you wouldn’t believe who turned up.”

“Who?” Pinero gritted impatiently. He and Cordweider had gone a few rounds during a late-night stakeout once, when bad food and conversation had turned decidedly personal.

Cordweider grinned. “Take a look at this, hot-shot.” He pointed to a blank monitor, pressed a button. People started walking in and out of quadruple doors. “That’s the entrance to the mall on West Georgia. Note the date and time.”

Pinero and McGrath noted: 16 Nov 2005, 2103:44 and counting.

Cordweider pressed another button and the picture froze. A guy in a bulky jacket was coming through the door. Cordweider fingered a roller ball, locked on the guy’s face, clicked. The face jumped up and filled the screen, unmistakable.

“Lenny ‘The Rat’ Laymon,” McGrath exhaled.

Back in the Squad Room, the detectives went to work. What had been a simple slip-up in the tub-one more bad guy washed away – was now something strangely different. If the Coroner was right – and he had a lucrative book deal and speaking calendar to attest to his brilliance – then the unanswered question was: how could a Rat lying dead in a bathtub early Tuesday morning slink into a shopping mall late Tuesday night, with the intent, it seemed, of knocking over a jewelry store?

It didn’t make sense. And when something doesn’t make sense, you work some sense into it. Pinero hooked up with Forensics, while McGrath mined Lenny’s computer for pertinent information.

“Tolmeyer speaking?”

“Pinero. What’d the boys in Forensics get off the crime scene?”

Tolmeyer laughed. She had a soft spot for Pinero-right between the legs whenever he wanted it. “We ‘boys’ are still on scene. But so far, everything looks pretty clean – from a crime perspective, that is, not a housekeeping one. No signs of forced entry, lots of fingerprints-Lenny’s and the girl’s – nothing else unusual, so far.”

“No Athabaska Terrier hairs? Albino herb roots native only to Cape Breton Island? Poisoned tea bags? Furry creature suits with DNA-identifiable sweat?”

Tolmeyer laughed again. “You’ve been watching too many TV shows, Detective.”

“What about the tub? Any evidence someone dusted it with a Zamboni-made it extra slippery for the bathing beauty?”

“In my professional opinion, that bathtub hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed. And nobody greased the soles of Laymon’s feet, either, before you ask.”

Pinero grunted, shelved the phone as Tolmeyer was enquiring about his dinner plans for the evening.

He was chewing things and a wad of gum over when McGrath pointed at his computer screen. “Take a look at this,” he said.

Pinero strolled over, looked at the listing up on the LCD flat screen.

“This is Lenny’s email history,” McGrath explained, his hand stroking his optical mouse with caffeine jitters. He highlighted the first message listed after a backlog of porn and penis enlargement spam. It was dated Monday, 15 November, from meatman@yahoo.com, subject: “Ready to go to work?”

McGrath looked at Pinero. Pinero looked back. They both knew The Rat didn’t work-honestly, anyway. McGrath clicked on the message. It read: “Job’s a go. Come prepared.”

“Did The Rat respond?” Pinero asked.

“Not by email, no.”

“Who’s Meatman? J.M. Schneider?”

“Don’t know.” McGrath admitted. “The account information’s as phony as a three-dollar coin. But I ran a trace on all Internet activity associated with the account, and found something fairly interesting.”

“Give.”

“Meatman is a ‘member’ of an adult dating site-kinkyluvers.com. The profile is of a thirtysomething guy with a peccadillo for morning toe jam, I kid you not. No picture, though. And the membership contact info is limited to the email address.”

“Don’t you need a credit card or something to sign up to those sites?”

“Not this one. It’s run free of charge by The Friends of Fetish – a government-subsidized think-tank operating right here in the downtown. Anyway, I already sent Meatman a message-with an attachment.” McGrath clicked, and Pinero ogled a busty brunette with black-stockinged, red-ribboned legs long enough to span Burrard Inlet, her silky feet close-up displayed in open-toed, patent-leather red pumps. Her hair covered up her face, if she had one.

“Just call me Clarissa,” McGrath chuckled, coughed. He took his hand off the mouse long enough to pour himself a mouthful of mocha.

The two detectives kept at it, logging frustration and overtime at time-and-a-half. Pinero ran a check on Lenny’s known associates; McGrath and the lab techs continued to pour over Lenny’s hard-drive and the mall surveillance video.

Lenny’s “associates” were the scum de la scum of the Vancouver crime scene. “Rainy Day” Izzo: part-time drug dealer, full-time drug user; ratted out by Lenny on a heroin deal that went bust; parole records stated that he was currently weaving hemp into saleable product in Nelson, four hundred miles due east. Sylvia Wojawoski, aka “Skye Flowers”, so named because she was always on her back, looking up at the sky: Stanley Park prostitute and bit – player MILF in locally-lensed porn; cohabitated with Lenny for five years; currently suing the deceased rodent for child support-three kids that he denied were his despite their enormous overbites; busted on a low-track sweep Sunday night, now cooling her high heels in lock-up. John Jorossismo, aka “Jarhead”, aka “Jason” (of Friday the 13th movie fame): US Marines deserter and Hell’s Angels patch prospect, weapons smuggler, loansharker, goalie in an industrial beer league, and recent Vancouver Port Authority employee of the month; stiffed out of a grand and stooled on by Lenny – the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job; current whereabouts a gated subdivision in White Rock. And…

“Matthew Kolvin,” Pinero and McGrath spoke as one.

They looked at each other. “Why’d you say-” they both said.

McGrath pointed a shaky digit at his computer screen. Pinero trucked on over, stared at a picture of a bare-chested Matthew Kolvin, shaved head gleaming, blue eyes glinting hard as diamonds, thick lips curled into a smirk, torso tanned and rugged as Desert Storm khaki.

“Clarissa received a response to her email,” McGrath said, grinning triumphantly.

Pinero recited the file he’d just been looking at: “Matthew Kolvin: strong-arm specialist, extortionist, cigarette, alcohol, and Lotto ticket smuggler – and sometime jewel thief; handed a ten-year sentence for his role in the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job; served half, release date: 10 November-one week ago today.”

“Maybe you, me, and Clarissa should pay Matthew Kolvin a visit,” McGrath added unnecessarily.

The detectives rousted Kolvin and an underage hooker out of bed at the fleabag rooming house address he’d given his parole officer. He was spitting mad. Pinero calmed him down only slightly with a shot to the groin.

“I never robbed no goddamn jewelry store!” he gasped. “Don’t know nuthin’ about any dead Rat, neither!”

“Listen, Meatman,” McGrath countered, knocking back a caffe latte and eyeballing a laptop, scanner, camcorder, and printer huddled together on a ratty couch, along with the hooker. “We’ve got an email that you sent Lenny talking about a ‘job’ – a day before Lenny did a back flip in his bathtub and a day-and-a-half before the Zammy Jewelers store was hit.”

Kolvin glared at the men.

“You hated Lenny’s guts, didn’t you – for ratting you out on the Big Rock Diamond Mountain job?” Pinero stated. “But not bad enough to turn your nose up at another good heist, team up with the guy again?”

Kolvin’s incisors glinted silver. “I ain’t talked to that bum in five long years.”

“How do you explain the email then?” McGrath asked.

“I don’t,” Kolvin growled.

Silence.

“What’s your brother up to these days-Bertrand?” Pinero asked, changing tactics. “You talk to him since his release?”

“I talk to that bum like I talk to Lenny and you bums!”

The detectives exited the flophouse with the exact same thing they’d entered it with-one flimsy cyber link between Lenny Laymon and Matthew Kolvin that would vaporize in the ether of a court of law, without plenty more supporting evidence.

“Maybe we should brace Bertrand?” Pinero suggested, as the two men sat in their unmarked and stared at the constant drizzle. “He knew and hated Lenny, was in on the BRDM job, too.”

“Maybe…” McGrath mused.

Matthew and Bertrand Kolvin were, in fact, identical twins, but that’s where the similarities ended. Matthew was a muscle boy, Bertrand a finesse man – an accountant gone bad, writing a ticket to the easy life through cheque kiting, money order doctoring, credit card fraud, and embezzlement. He wore his blond hair long, usually in a ponytail, build: slender.

The two brothers hated each other with a passion reserved for only the overly intimate, since their teen years. They’d nonetheless worked together on a number of jobs since graduating from young offenders status, business being business – the last one the BRDM job. They’d demanded separate trials, then jails, and been granted both by the accommodating Canadian judicial system.

“But how do we explain Lenny walking into a mall – presumably robbing a jewelry store, presumably with Matthew Kolvin’s help-eighteen hours after he’s supposed to be dead?” McGrath continued.

“Reincarnation?” Pinero suggested. “He picked right up in the new life where he’d left off in the old? Or maybe it was a guy in a Lenny Halloween mask, like bank robbers wear Nixon masks and cheating husbands wear Clinton’s?” Pinero laughed.

McGrath didn’t. “A mask…” he pondered, sucking the last drops of life out of his latte. “Did you happen to notice all that computer equipment in Kolvin’s apartment?”

“I noticed. What about it?”

“The mall surveillance system is digital-computer-controlled. I wonder…”

“Wish upon a star while you’re at it,” Pinero growled. “I’m gonna grab me some gym time then sack out.”

“Good idea,” McGrath said, eyeing a street-corner Sally Ann that served all-night joe. “I think I’ll log some sleep myself. Then first thing tomorrow morning, I think I’ll consult with a high-placed friend of mine. A friend who sees all, knows a thing or two about subterfuge.” He winked a pouchy eye at his partner.

Pinero snorted.

Early next morning, Pinero dropped McGrath off at the Defence Department Building downtown, then proceeded to Lenny’s bungalow for another look-see. He lifted the yellow tape, ducked inside the squalid digs.

Everything was just as crummy as before, the dust settled back to where it had lain for the fifty years before Forensics had disturbed things. Pinero went into the bedroom, looked at the dirty clothes strewn on the floor, the unmade, sheet-soiled bed, the battered nightstand with the “barely legal” skin mags on top, the splintered garage sale card table where Lenny’s powerful stolen computer had sat.

He walked over to the doorless closet, fingered through the tie-dyed and BC Bud T-shirts, the Manitoba Moose jerseys, getting nothing more out of it than a probable skin rash. Kristal had told the detectives that lover-boy Lenny was nutso over the Moose, a minor league hockey team playing in the frozen tundra of Winnipeg, Manitoba-Lenny’s birthplace.

And as Pinero stared at the jerseys, something suddenly tumbled inside his skull. He retraced his steps, to the front door of the rathole, where a Manitoba Moose jacket hung on a hook. He examined the bulky jacket, fingered the sewn – on crest – a smug-looking cartoon moose holding a hockey stick, a frozen pond in the background. He plucked the jacket off the hook and took it with him.

When Pinero entered the Squad Room he found Sergeant Bugler hanging over one of McGrath’s bony shoulders, their eyes glued to something on the computer screen. Pinero admired Bugler’s tight, round bottom for a moment, then said, “Found another good Jimmy Neutron site?” He flung his leather jacket over the back of his chair.

Bugler glanced up, annoyed. McGrath’s pavement-hued face tinged slightly red.

Pinero took up position behind an unoccupied shoulder.

“The lab technicians have finished stripping Lenny’s computer equipment,” McGrath told his partner. “They found enough child porn to put the Thailand Bureau of Tourism out of business, but look what they found in his webcam history.” The detective took a long, suspenseful slurp of fresh-brewed coffee.

“Why would a rat like Lenny even have a webcam?” Pinero asked no one in particular. “To see him is to hate him.”

McGrath finally swallowed. “Lenny was technologically armed, like all professional criminals are getting these days.” He looked up at Sergeant Bugler meaningfully. “Like all law enforcement officials need to be to keep up with them.”

Bugler nodded vaguely, squeezed his shoulder.

McGrath stroked the keyboard, and Lenny’s ugly mug popped up on-screen, wispy whiskers framing a buck-toothed mouth. McGrath dragged the bar at the bottom, and Lenny went all fast and jerky. Then his jaundiced face suddenly turned mouse-white, his beady eyes registering panic. McGrath lifted his finger, returning the action to normal speed.

Lenny leaped out of his chair and skittered to the bedroom door. Someone was yelling at him from the hallway: “You put me away and I’m going to put you away, Rat!”

Lenny backed away, paws up and out in supplication, and a face briefly appeared in the shadowy doorway. McGrath froze the picture, cleared away some of the shadow, locked onto and enhanced the face: Bertrand Kolvin, delicate features twisted with rage, ponytail in a knot.

“Hmmm,” Pinero commented. “So Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny’s life. Who hasn’t? I heard the Doukhobors even put out a contract on the guy once.”

McGrath’s brown-toothed grin was a thing of triumph for everyone but the BC Dental Association. He restored the full picture, pointed to the timeline at the bottom of the screen. It read: 14 Nov 2005, 21:45:24. He said, “We know Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny Laymon on Sunday at 9:45 p.m. Now, let’s just see if he followed up on that threat. There’s nothing more of interest on the webcam, but remember that high-placed friend I was telling you about? Well, he CSIS’s all. Take a gander at this video, and note the time and date again.”

Pinero cracked his knuckles. Bugler sighed. McGrath clicked. The computer revealed a black world inhabited by white images, a timeline reading: 16 Nov 2005, 01:47:38 PTZ. The view was from on-high, way high, the white figure emerging out of a parked car a thermal image. The figure crossed a street with the jerky movement of time lapse photography, paused at the door of a house, and then went inside.

“Location?” Pinero asked.

“Two hundred block of Alexander Street,” McGrath crowed. “That bungalow,” he pointed, “is Lenny’s place-right around the time of his death.”

“Lenny coming home after a hard day’s night of working the back pockets of the bar crowd?” Pinero suggested.

McGrath shook his head, replayed the sequence. “See how the figure dips to the right when he walks? Do you know what that is?”

“A limp,” Bugler breathed.

McGrath beamed. “A limp is right. A noticeable limp. Lenny didn’t limp. But-”

“Bertrand Kolvin limps,” Pinero admitted.

The three police officers watched some more, watched a figure come skulking down the sidewalk, pick something up out of the gutter along the way, slip into Lenny’s house at 02:15:52 PTZ-Lenny returning home? Watched the limper exit Lenny’s house at 02:30:21 PTZ, get in a car and drive away.

“Like I said before, we should brace Bertrand Kolvin,” Pinero stated. Then added, “Too bad none of this is admissible in court, privacy laws and Charters of Rights and Freedoms being what they are.”

“It’s all strictly on the qt,” McGrath agreed. “I have to delete everything in an hour. But… the show’s not over yet.” He pointed and clicked and dragged some more, seemed to replay the scene of the limper exiting a car and entering Lenny’s house. Only now the timeline read: 17 Nov 2005, 02:02:13 PTZ. A full day later.

“What!? Why would Kolvin risk returning to the scene the next night?” Bugler asked.

“Good question,” McGrath replied, as they watched the limper leave Lenny’s death trap at 02:06:37 PTZ.

Bugler straightened up, her back cracking, head shaking. “But if Lenny was actually bumped off by Bertrand Kolvin early Tuesday morning, then how in heck did he participate in a jewelry store robbery Tuesday night?”

“Another good question,” McGrath responded, browning his nose still further. He looked at his partner. “Did anyone think to bring in Lenny’s jacket, by any chance?”

“Yeah,” Pinero replied, blowing a bubble. “I did – just now. It’s in the Lab, undergoing intense comparison with some surveillance video.”

McGrath nodded, grinned, tried to wash back the rising tide of his excitement with a shot of coffee. “My friends at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service also provided me with some useful information about making faces-false faces.”

Bugler glanced at Pinero as McGrath cackled, choked and coughed up some coffee. Pinero just shrugged.

Search warrants were issued, served, and executed on Bertrand Kolvin’s swank Port Coquitlam condominium, Matthew Kolvin’s downtown dump, that afternoon. McGrath and Pinero happily split up so they could cover both searches, and two hours and ten phone calls later, they felt they had enough evidence to bring the Kolvins in for questioning.

The twins were placed in Interrogation Room 104. It was the first time they’d met since they’d been busted five years earlier, and much like that time, it didn’t go well. They attacked one another on sight.

“Sit down and behave yourself!” Pinero commanded, shoving Matthew into a wooden chair, sending him and it skidding into the wall.

The brothers glared at each other, twin faces of hate.

Pinero kicked off the proceedings, talking about Lenny “The Rat” Laymon’s fateful tumble in the tub. “It looks like an accident, it smells like an accident – a guy taking a shower makes a wrong step and one-and-one-half-gainer later, he’s cold as a Coho. Happens all the time, right? No signs of forced entry, violence, lube on the porcelain, nothing incriminating like rat poison lying around.” He paused. “But does it sound like an accident? You didn’t know Lenny had a hearing aid installed two years ago, did you, Bertrand? Because you were doing five for a crime Lenny stooled you on.”

Bertrand folded thin arms across a bony chest, tilted his fine, blonde head up in a haughty manner that would’ve done the CEO of a Crown Corporation proud. “I didn’t know, and I don’t care. I’m glad the little rat’s dead, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“Then how come your face shows up on Lenny’s webcam-your voice threatening to do him bodily harm-only a couple of days before the guy’s soft head met hard surface in a love embrace?”

“What!? That’s preposterous!” Bertrand wailed.

“What!? That’s preposterous!” Matthew mimicked, an octave or two higher.

Bertrand lunged at him. Pinero, McGrath, and Bugler wrestled the two siblings apart, planted them firmly back in their chairs again.

McGrath struggled to catch his breath, mop up and strain into a cup his spilled coffee. Then he said, “We have surveillance pictures of a man entering Lenny’s house-easily picking his lock-Lenny coming home, the man exiting, right around the time of Lenny’s death. A man limping rather badly. That puck to the knee back in junior hockey put a permanent crimp in your stride, didn’t it, Bertrand?”

“Thanks to my brother, yes,” the man sniffed.

“I was aiming for his balls,” Matthew gritted. “But they were too small a target.”

Bertrand ignored him, said to McGrath, “I was home in bed when Lenny died, nowhere near his rat hole.”

“And what about the mystery of a man caught on a surveillance camera, entering a mall, eighteen hours after he’s supposed to be dead?” Pinero intoned. “How’s that possible?”

The Kolvins went stone-faced.

Pinero leaned into Matthew. “You emailed Lenny about a ‘job’ – Meatman. Was it the Zammy Jewelers job at the Centre Mall? A diamond ring was found at Lenny’s place – a down payment maybe, before the loot was fenced?”

Matthew snorted. “I told you dickheads already I had nuthin’ to do with that job.”

“Funny thing about that surveillance video, though,” McGrath interjected, tonguing the rim of his coffee cup. “Detective Pinero noticed something strange about the jacket ‘Lenny’ was wearing in the video. It’s got a Manitoba Moose logo on it – the new logo, that is: a stylized angry moose baring its teeth, set against a background of trees.”

Pinero held up Lenny’s jacket, fingers covering the logo.

“But Lenny hadn’t bought the new one yet,” McGrath went on. “It only came out in September, just before the start of the season. The jacket we found at his house still has the old logo on it…”

Pinero moved his fingers aside.

“… a smug-looking cartoon moose holding a hockey stick, a frozen pond in the background.”

Matthew glanced at Bertrand; Bertrand glanced at Matthew.

“It’s like the man in the video knew Lenny wore a Moose jacket, but when he recently purchased one, he unknowingly got a slightly different moose than the one Lenny sported,” McGrath said. “It’s tough to keep track of all these marketing gimmicks, isn’t it?”

“And while I was taking note of Mick E. Moose’s facial expression,” Pinero clocked in, “Detective McGrath was taking note of the zipper on the jacket – the zipper tongue, specifically. It looked wider, shinier than the narrow black one on Lenny’s jacket. Reason?” He plucked it out of McGrath’s shirt pocket, held it up.

Everyone looked at the glinting tongue, waiting for it to speak.

McGrath interpreted. “We ran it through the Lab. It can be used to mesh metal teeth together alright, but it’s also a device used for what’s called ‘facial provocation’. A device developed by a certain spy agency which shall remain nameless, that can be purchased on the black market or rigged up at home by a real tech expert. A device that when triggered throws up a preprogrammed, made-to-specs image-almost like a hologram, except more realistic. In this case, a preprogrammed image of Lenny Laymon’s face, masking the face of the real man who entered that mall and hid in it until after closing, then shut down the Zammy Jewelers security system and the mall security cameras just long enough to rob the store and make his escape.”

Gum chewing. Foul, ragged breathing. Twin sets of teeth grinding.

“Someone wanted to pin the robbery on Lenny; someone with technological expertise. Someone who didn’t know The Rat was already dead when he was supposedly knocking over a jewelry store.”

Pinero said, “I talked to the warden at Stony Mountain, Matthew, asked how you spent your five years. He said you were a royal pain in the ass the first three, until you discovered the computer lab your last two. They had to almost drag you out of there when your sentence was up. Boning up for crime in the new millennium, eh, Matthew?”

A single finger – the middle one – in the upright and locked position, was the Kolvin response.

Pinero slapped it aside. “And guess who was doing exactly the same thing fourteen hundred miles away in the William Head pen? Your twin brother Bertrand. You guys might hate each other, but you still think alike, like identical twins will.”

“You’re the one tried to frame me and Lenny for the jewel heist,” Matthew snarled at Bertrand, “hacking into his computer and planting that phony email, his ugly mug on your stinking face, that ring at his place!”

“You’re the one tried to pin a murder rap on me,” Bertrand snarled back, “hacking into Lenny’s computer and planting my face in his webcam, your voice-our voice-threatening him, limping around like you were me!”

They launched themselves at one another. Mutually assured destruction.

Sergeant Bugler walked into the Squad Room. Detectives McGrath and Pinero were at their desks eating, yammering, the crumbs and insults flying. “Well, Bertrand Kolvin just signed his confession to the jewelry robbery,” she informed the pair, “admitting to trying to frame his brother and Lenny Laymon for the job. Apparently, he doesn’t want to face a possible murder charge.”

Pinero stuck a pencil behind his ear, chewed corned beef and said, “Lucky we found that zipper tongue in his condo, along with enough computer equipment to stock a Radio Shack. He tossed the Moose jacket, but I guess the tongue was just too valuable – for other jobs and other frames.”

“You think Matthew will confess to murdering Lenny?” Bugler asked, hands on her hips.

“Maybe, once we break his alibi. We know where he was the morning Lenny was killed-faking a limp in front of Lenny’s house to implicate his brother, just to be on the safe side in case there were any witnesses around. Like ones in the sky that he may or may not know about.”

“How do you think he killed Lenny?”

McGrath fielded that one in a spray of coffee cake. “We’re guessing he just caught Lenny in the bathroom and overpowered him, slammed his head against the tub, killing him instantly. He worked it out to look like an accident, but he set his brother up to be the fall guy just in case it was ruled foul play. There’s no such thing as a perfect crime, after all, Sergeant.”

Bugler nodded. “But it was actually Bertrand going into Lenny’s house the night after the murder, right? He says so, anyway.”

“Right,” McGrath confirmed, picking his teeth. “He was planting that diamond ring to really tie Lenny into the jewelry heist. He never even saw the body – just heard the water running and assumed Lenny was taking a shower. That two man limping oddity, along with the ‘dead’ Lenny going shopping mystery, of course, is what made us realize there was a frame going on-in this case, a double frame.”

Bugler gave her head a shake. “Instead of working together, like good twins should, they were working at cross-purposes – and didn’t even know it.”

Pinero nodded, belched. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and propped his feet up on his desk, almost toppled over backwards. “Yup. They were going to fix The Rat for what he did to them-each in their own way – so why not kill two jailbirds with one stone by framing each other for their crimes at the same time?”

Bugler let out a sigh. “Well, thank goodness that unlike the Kolvins, you two work so well together.”

McGrath spluttered Java. Pinero untangled hands and feet and shot upright. “Huh!?” they gaped.

“So well, in fact,” Bugler continued, smiling, “that I’ve canceled your transfer out of Homicide, Detective Pinero. This is one pairing that’s just too valuable to split up.”