We didn’t have much in common, apart from our love of stories, and our proximity to death. Despite that we became friends, and often met at “The Rose and Crown” to have a drink after work, and regale one another with largely exaggerated stories.
Dupont had grown up fairly well off. You could tell by the way he carried himself. He was stylish, always opting to dress up for the occasion rather than to dress down, and no matter how straight and rigid his posture was– Jerry always managed to look more at ease in a suit jacket and tie than I ever did in a t-shirt and jeans.
One of the first stories Jerry Dupont ever told me at “The Rose and Crown” was the story of his life, and I was deeply interested in the family history he told me. His parent’s had died early, and all that was left was his trust fund, and a gold ring with an black onyx face that he wore on his left hand pinky. It was the perfect detail to punctuate the tragedy of his youth.
It wasn’t until his teenage years when the narrative lines he’d laid before me began to cross over one another and I saw the nature of the game, and the rules he’d set between us. I was suddenly less than certain of the accuracy surrounding the death of his parents and the origin of the ring.
But, the light deceit wasn’t off putting, instead I found it freeing. Jerry and I were able to express ourselves to one another with far more candor, when the truth was tied in and around hyperbole.
His willingness to sit, and share his mind with me was a balm to the machismo of my day job, and I felt like sparking a friendship with him would be worth more to me than the overtime I was sacrificing by meeting him semi-frequently at “The Rose and Crown”, and so we began to meet more regularly.
We spent those evenings talking, laughing, and drinking well past my bedtime.
Unlike me, Jerry was naturally inclined to love the night, and would often invite the chance to extend our time together well past the closing of the pub. Sometimes we’d continue our discussion, or the continuation of a tall tale, but often we’d just revel in the company of one another.
I soon began to notice that Jerry had an analytical, almost cold, and calculated mind. Sometimes, I would describe to him a case I had heard about or was working on, and presented it to him as if he were the detective-to-be, and not myself.
Exercising that part of his brain thrilled him, you could see the pleasure it gave him plaster on his face.
More often than not, he was able to spin the puzzle in such a way as to find the solution with an ease that was almost elegant in its nonchalance.
When I asked him on one of our late night walks after the pub had closed, how he managed to deduce the solution with such eerie accuracy, he stated plainly;
“You look for the why above all. You always have. How could you not? You arrive at the scene of the crime, and are confronted with all angles and aspects of the case. You see the corpse as a human, someone who lived in the home they were killed in, comfortably and only hours before.”
I only listened then, and didn’t speak a word.
We continued to walk as Dupont left me without resolution to my question. He let me ponder his criticism quietly, before stopping suddenly beside a large maple tree, with our feet buried beneath the fallen leaves, and continuing;
“I arrive at work, and put my vulcanized rubber apron on. I put my gloves on. I arrange my tools; my saws, and scalpels. I turn on my tape recorder, and begin to dissect. I see the plain truth of a person laid out before. I open the window of their soul with a sternal saw, and I peer inside. I can see all there is to someone, from above them. They can’t lie to me, just like they can’t lie to god.”
I was left wordless, as he seemed to ponder the truth of his own words, as if he had never asked the question of himself that I had.
Dupont shrugged, and sighed before quietly stating;
“The corpses sing to me.”
The words would have been poetic, had they not chilled me to the bone.
He looked away from me staring down the barely lit street, peering into the darkness. His eyes looked empty, and lost in some near forgotten memory.
I saw him for the first time, the duality of Dupont. A person who could coldly put things together, and another who just as coldly took them apart.
I grabbed him by the shoulder to shake him from wherever he’d drifted off to, and continued walking. It took a moment for him to follow, and the rest of the night drifted from one topic to another
Astronomy gave way to galaxies, gave way to the texture of the universe, and in there we found morality defined by evolving philosophy until weariness claimed my and I said my goodnight to Dupont and caught a taxi home.
By 1991, I had become a detective, with no help from Dupont I might add– as I surely could have done so sooner had I relied on him more, but I wanted to achieve the rank on my own merits.
Dupont had taught me much about the impartiality of deduction, and I was grateful for it, although sometimes I found myself envious of the inhuman ease his mind moved around murder. I only wonder now, if it was because of Jerry Dupont or in spite of him that I became a detective.
One morning in the early morning dews of October, Dupont came to me with a newspaper rolled tightly and tucked under his arm. He had a skip to his step as he met me uncharacteristically for coffee.
As he sat, with no foreword he pulled the newspaper between us and pointed his fingers to the headline.
It read;
Vancouver, British Columbia - October 8th, 1992
A cloud of fear and uncertainty has descended upon the residents of a run-down social housing apartment building called “Rue Du Chagrin” in Vancouver, as a shocking and unsolved murder case continues to baffle both residents, as well as local law enforcement.
The incident, which occurred last week, has left investigators grasping for clues in the aftermath of a brutal and possibly premeditated crime.
The victim, a 53-year-old divorcee named Anna Stillwater, was discovered in her unit on the 13th floor by a concerned neighbor who had not seen her for several days, and noticed a foul odor emanating from the apartment.
The gruesome scene that awaited the neighbor was one of chaos, with the apartment tossed about, broken glass littering the floor, and chairs overturned. Ms. Stillwater lay on the floor in a pool of her own blood, with her throat slashed.
More alarmingly, the assailant had made off with valuable jewelry, suggesting a possible motive of robbery turned deadly.
What makes this case even more confusing for police, has been the lack of any discernible entry point for the assailant, as stated anonymously by someone close to the case.
The apartment’s door was found locked from the inside, and investigators have yet to identify any signs of forced entry, leaving the possibility that the attacker was already inside when Anna Stillwater arrived home before the crime was committed.
Despite the apparent lack of forensic evidence pointing to an intruder, the local police force remains resolute in their pursuit of the truth.
Detective Sarah Reynolds, who is heading the investigation, stated, “we are exploring every avenue of investigation, and are committed to bringing the perpetrator to justice. This case presents unique challenges but we will leave no stone unturned.”
Intriguingly, the victim’s landlord, John Miller, when asked to comment on the situation by local reporters expressed his sympathy for the victim, and their family, but also hinted at a possible motive.
Miller stated that Ms. Stillwater had been consistently late with her rent payments, and often had to seek loans, leading to some speculation that financial troubles may have played a role in the tragic events.
Authorities are taking Miller’s statement seriously, and it is now an integral part of the ongoing investigation.
Detectives are delving into Ms. Stillwater’s financial history, and potential connections to determine if any debts or conflicts may have contributed to her untimely demise.
As the investigation continues, the community remains on edge, struggling to comprehend the violent incident that occurred within the confines of their modest, and tight-knit apartment building.
Local residents have expressed shock and concern for their own safety, with many calling for increased security measures in the building.
For now, the shadow of this unsolved murder hangs over the neighborhood, and the search for answers is ongoing.
When I finished reading the newspaper’s account of the event I already knew too well, Dupont said nothing.
There was a tension between us, that was new to me, and as I looked at him, he stared back at me with that faraway, calculating inhuman look– his mind working busily in front of me, while his gaze peered through me to someplace far away.
Finally he asked me what I thought knowing, somehow, that I was assigned to the case.
I told him I agreed with my superior Detective Reynolds that it was a complicated, and unique case, unable to say much else.
“You’re wrong,” he said flatly, his eyes snapping into focus.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little insulted by the tactless assertion he’d made plainly to my face.
I rested back into my chair, my coffee sending swirls of steam between us, as I crossed my arms, trying as best I could to not get defensive as my ego withered inside me.
All credit due to Dupont, he let me stew, and gave me ample opportunity to assert myself, but I didn’t.
As much pride as I took in my job as a detective, I knew that he had uncanny abilities that I simply wasn’t born with.
I gave him a terse nod, and he spoke,
“Ms. Stillwater slashed her own throat,” he said, and no more.
I was as perplexed, as I was disappointed. I had come to know Dupont as a person with a mind as sharp as a razor, and yet there we were, sitting before me dashing all illusions I’d had of him until that moment.
“No,” I said, “the jewelry was missing and the apartment was ransacked.”
Not to mention the difficulty she would have had, sawing through her own throat with a serrated steak knife, I thought to myself.
Like a little boy his eyes lit up, and I realized now I’d taken the bait. Already on edge, I didn’t appreciate the frivolity and joy Dupont took in that moment, and felt the hair on my neck raise as I smelt the same psychosis in him that I saw in the many murders I’d investigated at that point in my career.
Resting his elbows on the table, and crossing his fingers he began once more to outlay his theory in more detail.
“Ms. Stillwater frequently missed rent payments. This must have been frustrating for the landlord, Mr. Miller.
So he gives her a final ultimatum– pay your rent or get out.
She has few belongings, save for the jewelry she received as gifts from her husband before they separated.
It’s her safety net.
In fear she’s going to lose her place, she pawns them off to make rent, and pays Mr. Miller, but is just short of the total amount owing.
So the landlord changes the locks without her knowing but she returns home early and finds Mr. Miller outside her apartment. She’s unaware he’s just changed the locks. She only sees her apartment door open, and Mr. Miller leaving her unit.
Assuming he’s come to serve her with an eviction notice, she rushes into her apartment and closes the door behind her, only noticing once she’s on the inside and hears the lock click from the otherside, that the second lock beneath the deadbolt has been changed.
Mr. Miller, knowing she has adult children, tells her to call one of them to come and pay the remaining rent owed, and leaves her locked in her apartment.”
It was only then that Dupont paused for the first time, to catch his breath.
“Why didn’t she just call the police?” I asked, “That’s unlawful imprisonment.”
Dupont smiled at me, and I only resented him more in that moment, despite our friendship. It felt as though he was gloating now as he continued to make his wild assertions.
“Ms. Stillwater refrained from calling the police because she was afraid that they would have her removed from the apartment. It isn’t rational to think that would be the case in her circumstance, but also she feared she’d be homeless.
Ms. Stillwater also refused to call her children because of pride. She’s their mother and would never want them to take care of her. That’s her job– to take care of them.
No, instead she stays in the apartment and wages a silent wage of attrition, knowing she has enough food to outlast the cruelty of Mr. Miller.
The only problem is the building itself.
It’s derelict, the owners are slumlords. There’s a CO2 leak in the apartment, and Ms. Stillwater begins to find herself short of breath.
She’s breathing but the feeling of drowsiness overcomes her, and her heart rate increases. No matter how hard she tries to breathe in deeply, she feels as though she’s suffocating.
Ms. Stillwater rushes to the door, but it’s locked.
She’s getting dizzy and crashes about her apartment, as she falls back on her instincts to survive, she thrashes about the apartment, tossing chairs, and smashing the pictures on the walls.
Finally when she exhausted all options, she grabs a steak knife and begins trying to give herself a tracheotomy. It’s the only thing she can think of, but she digs too deep and she loses balance as the apartment swims around her and her vision starts to go. She falls and her elbow crashes into the ground with the knife tip underneath her skin.
The force drives the serrated knife through ligaments and tendons and is sent skittering across the floor away from where she lies bleeding out on the floor.”
It would have been impossible for him to know any of what he claimed to be certain. There were simply too many assertions being made.
But at the same time I was unsettled to know that somehow, my friend had been aware of case details we had kept under tight wraps and away from the press, such as the fact that a serrated knife had been used.
Could my friend, Jerry Dupont, the sharpest mind I’d ever met, be the killer? I’d known him so long, and yet there was always the underlying lack of humanity. Could he be toying with me, I thought to myself at that moment, using our standing rapport to set our sights away from himself, and make her a victim of circumstance, and cruelty?
I countered then, trying to shake my mind free of the suspicion.
“Her fingerprints weren’t on the knife,” I said, feeling the tension loosen from my shoulders as his version of events crumbled before me.
Then without a pause, he said,
“The cat licked it clean.”
But there was no cat, the building was pet free, and I felt a burst of laughter ripple through my chest at the absurdity of the claim.
Dupont looked at me, I could tell he didn’t take kindly to my reaction, and wasn’t used to my dismissal. I’d never once in all our years questioned his deductive mind.
He slammed his hands on the table, startling me as I fell quiet, before quickly placing them in his lap, ashamed at his own out of character burst of emotion.
“Mr. Miller came to check on Ms. Stillwater, unlocking the door and letting the scent of her bloated body out into the hallway alerting her neighbors, and in the process let her cat, which she was not allowed to have, out of the apartment.”
I simply shook my head. It was too ridiculous. I offered my friend an olive branch suggesting he needed more sleep, or that he was perhaps bored with his own work and had begun daydreamin, and that he should pick up a hobby not centered around death I suggested, once again in a dismissive tone I look back on with shame.
“Check the pawnshops in the area, ask the neighbor, check the keys in evidence–they won’t match the door. Talk to her friends and see for yourself that she had a cat,” he said in a huff as he stood up pushing his chair over in humiliation due to how I was treating him.
I was stubborn in that moment, refusing to assuage his hurt feelings, remembering the tall tales we used to tell one another at “The Rose and Crown”, but as he walked away I couldn’t help myself, and asked him how he could be so certain such a ridiculous story could be true.
He turned, his face red, and said,
“Her corpse sang for me.”
We didn’t speak after that. I visited his work a time or two thinking it best to smooth things over and apologize but he refused to see me having ordered his secretary to turn me away on sight regardless of the matter.
And It wasn’t until a year later, with little movement in the case, that I thought to bring Dupont’s versions of events to Detective Reynolds.
We were at our wits end. The case was largely forgotten by the media, but we still worked diligently on it in our spare time. Until one morning, in a meeting I offhandedly mentioned the conversation I’d had with Dupont as I was deep in the throes of nostalgia thinking of my old friend as I often did when the Stillwater case came up.
And while the version of events might have seemed too farfetched to me when Dupont had laid it out before me, as I worked on the case up close, with the distance of time no theory became too outlandish.
Detective Reynolds was furious I’d not brought this detail to her sooner, but I explained just how insane it had seemed.
Quickly, as if every minute counted, as if the gruesome scene were still fresh, and any minute wasted was an opportunity we might lose forever, ordered an exhumation to have another autopsy performed.
She called in a pair of beat cops and instructed them to canvas the apartment complex to determine if she had a cat, and took off towards the evidence room to determine if the keys we took into evidence from within the apartment matched the second deadbolt on the outside of the door.
And as she walked away, Detective Reynolds called back to me and ordered me to bring Jerry Dupont in for questioning.
I felt cold sweat seep from my skin, as I realized what I had done. I could see it in the change of her demeanor.
Detective Reynolds could see the headlines already; “Star Detective Solved Death of Stillwater.”
But the headline, “Star Detective Catches Mastermind Murderer”, was far more attractive in the eyes of the ambitious lead detective, and I knew that she meant to try and try it all together in some elaborate way as to benefit in a more grand newsworthy fashion.
But what could I do? She was my superior and ordered me to bring in Jerry Dupont.
It was early evening, and I parked outside the back of the funeral home where the adjoined morgue was attached by a covered outdoor walkway, and saw Jerry Dupont buttoned up in a dress shirt and tie, beneath his rubber apron on the way back from the morgue.
Dupont squinted in the light and was less than pleased to see me exit the vehicle.
As he started walking briskly away, I called after him, ordering him to stop or I would charge him with impeding an investigation. That hurt him as much as it hurt me.
I’m sick with myself thinking back on this moment.
It was a bluff, but all men fear authority in one way or another and despite his deductive intellect, he was too shocked to see through my deceit.
The drive back to the station was quiet and uncomfortable. I tried to explain as best I could what it was that I had done, that time had shown me that his claim wasn’t so preposterous and that I was sorry, but he simply turned his head away, and I was unsure if he heard me.
Detective Reynolds conducted the interrogation, and I wondered at my desk how she would react to Dupont if he claimed the corpses sang to him in front of her.
I didn’t see him leave, but Detective Reynolds walked past my desk, rapping her knuckles on the surface and told me I’d done a good job today.
For a moment I felt pleased with myself, until I concluded that the context of her compliment was that Dupont might have said something to implicate himself on record without requesting his lawyer be present.
The next day, I went to see Dupont, hoping to sit and talk with him– I wanted to apologize and help set things right, but once again I was turned away by the receptionist claiming he’d called into work sick.
This did little to ease my mind.
By that point Detective Reynolds was most likely already speaking with a judge to get an arrest warrant, or at least that was my fear.
Regardless of Dupont’s wish, that I not see or speak with him, I knew I needed to help my friend, and make right the wrongs I’d unintentionally done.
As I left the receptionist at the desk, and got back into my car I knew there wasn’t a moment to waste. I drove round back, parking my vehicle out of sight of the front foyer of the funeral home, and got out.
I pulled a set of lockpicking tools from my glove box, and quietly ran to the morgue where I knew he’d be toiling away, and prepared myself for the stench of death and preservation chemicals that would bombard me the moment the door swung open.
I looked about realizing that was the first time I felt the anxiety of crime in my life. I felt the tools catch in the lock and make their way deeper one small tooth at a time until the lock clicked and opened.
The room was dark save for a single light that hung over a stainless steel table in the middle of the room. Dupont wasn’t there, but it was also the first time I’d ever stepped inside of the morgue.
It felt odd to me, that although Dupont had taught me so much about myself, I knew little save for that brief family history he’d once told me.
I walked around and examined the blood and bile encrusted drain at the foot of the steel table. The curiosity was simply too much, and although I knew this was an invasion of his privacy I was not there as part of the police but as a friend and so I excused myself.
His tools, the saws, and pipes, and scalpels all sat on a table pushed against a wall. They were meticulously ordered, and cleaned, gleaming under the harsh overhead light. I could feel the cold of the polished tile floor seep up through the bottom of my boots, and my breath hung in the refrigerated air.
And that’s when I heard a whisper.
Small and faint, hardly louder than the hum of the fluorescent light.
It sounded like a human voice spoken through the end of a balloon.
Whiny and drawn out, escaping air instead of spoken words.
I felt crawling terror wriggle its way up my spine. I could see I was alone but where had the noise originated?
Then again, the smallest whine, like a human voice, spoken through the end of a balloon, as if it was escaping a vacuum, the words were indiscernible.
I looked low under tables, and in the trash – I felt silly as though I was playing a morbid game of hide and seek, but still I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from.
Finally I came to the wall where the tiny square refrigerators doors stood closed in 2 neat rows of 8.
I placed my ear to each one by one, praying that I heard nothing.
And one by one, I came away having heard nothing but too afraid to open them until I came to the final refrigerator door in the bottom right of the wall.
I felt bile burn the back of my tongue and the insides of my teeth leaving them raw and gritty as I heard the whine from inside, and a little squeal of fear escaped from my throat.
I knew I needed to open the door, and see what was inside, but fear kept me from doing just that. I’ll admit I’m a coward, because in that moment I found I didn’t naturally have the courage to face my fear.
Even worse my mind would not make heads or tails of what it was exactly that I was afraid to confront.
I was shaking by then, and I’d love to say it was from the cold of the refrigerator room, but it was not.
It was only with the brief invasive thought that Dupont might be trapped inside, that I found it within myself to grip the handle tight and yank it open.
It opened soundlessly, and a gush of flesh infused air gushed out at me. I could taste the body rotting slowly within, and had to stop myself from gagging.
I could see bare feet facing me, and wanted to turn tail and run, but it was then I heard the whine again, the sound of escaping air, and without thinking too hard about what I was about to do, I grabbed hold of the end of the tray and yanked.
The body came into the light and I gasped.
It was Jerry Dupont.
My friend.
Stark naked, and dead.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
My friend, who I’d spent many nights with talking and laughing, there in the corpse refrigerator, with both his pale rigored hands wrapped around a knife plunged into his heart, expertly slipped sideways between the ribs to the left of his sternum.
I fell to my knees dumbfounded, and tears welled in my eyes. I felt the hot regret of our last two encounters, and wanted to bash myself in the face with my own curled fists until I was senseless.
I hung my head low, and cried. I couldn’t hold back my emotions no matter how hard I tried. I felt responsible for his death, not truly understanding what I was doing when I put forth the theory he’d told me a year previous.
Why had I not claimed it was my own absurd concoction?
And then I heard it again, that small whine, long and drawn out.
It was coming from Dupont’s dead body.
It was the gas bloating his belly, escaping from his lips.
Is this what he’d meant, when he said the corpses sing for him?
Inconsolable in my grief, and out of my mind with guilt I bent down, hoping to hear the soft words of my friend’s voice one more time.
I stayed like that frozen in place for an indeterminate length of time.
Until the gas from his body broke free once more escaping through his throat and passed his lips.
rrrrreeeeeeeeyyyynollllldssssss.
I fell back, shocked and breathless - I knew I must be past my wits in shock, but I could have sworn I heard him speak a name.
I know it seems odd, and macabre, but I sat there a little while longer hoping to hear the gas whine and run past his lips once more, resolved that what I heard was merely a trick of the mind, but his body now lay quiet and deflated.
Dupont was simply dead.
I walked slowly to my car and radioed the station, alerting them of Dupont’s death. I chose not to wait for them to arrive and instead returned home in a daze.
I called in sick to work the next day, unable to face the reality of the situation. I was grief stricken unlike anything I’d ever felt before, but I did turn on the TV to see Reynolds giving a press conference in regards to the Stillwater case.
It played out much like I had suspected, but only Detective Reynolds held back no punches. With Dupont dead she was free to make whatever claims fit the narrative, as he was no longer alive to refute them.
He was the murderer, and he’d confessed to a friend on the force a year earlier according to Reynolds. As she put it, the absurdity of the case made it impossible to solve with rational minds, and the culprit Jerry Dupont was as insane, sick and twisted as he was brilliant.
At least he got that.
Knowing the cops were closing in, he opted to take his own life in as dramatic a fashion as his elaborate murder of Ms. Stillwater had been, in order to escape justice and the consequences of his actions.
I was disgusted listening to her on the television, and was glad for the two weeks paid vacation I received for my trauma.
I don’t think I could have stomached the lies when they were fresh, and I’m ashamed I tolerated them at all. I’m a coward. I feared losing my job, a job I’d worked hard for, and was proud of, but I let my friend’s good name be tarnished.
Upon returning to work though, Reynolds called me into her office one last time, before she was promoted and transferred to a national position for the RCMP.
I think she was congratulating me, or telling me to keep my mouth shut. I couldn’t tell.
My eyes were transfixed on a small gold ring with a black onyx face sitting innocently among the stacks of papers on her desk.
Detective Reynolds was as capable as she was ambitious, and I needed no convincing to know what she had done.