AN: When I started writing this chapter I was actually IN Toronto pre-pandemic. (Summer of 2019! My first EVER trip to Canada took place more than 10 years after I started writing!).
Part Two
Chapter Twenty – Photographs Again
"Sister Casey! Sister Casey! Will you tie my shoelace?"
Casey lifted her head from the pile of papers in front of her and regarded the small boy in front of her with a mock stern expression.
"William," She chided in her gentlest tone. "If I do that, you'll run to Sister Agnes and tell her that you tied it yourself, and the new shiny sticker on your reward chart will belong to me and not you!'
William pulled a face. "I promise I won't." He sounded less than certain, and Casey chuckled to herself and swung her legs out from under her desk. She tapped her knees with her hands.
"Come here." She suggested and was rewarded with a big grin and a rush of air as the little boy charged at her. Casey swung his light figure onto her lap and gently squeezed him in a hug. "Now, I won't think it's cheating if we tie your laces together. Ready?"
Moments later, task achieved, the little boy pressed a sticky kiss to Casey's cheek and scrambled down. She watched him go with a wistful look and touched the sticky patch of skin he'd left behind.
"Well done for not giving in." A voice called from behind her. Casey turned and smiled at the newcomer. "I've always said you're a natural."
Casey shrugged. "I have a lot of younger siblings." She chuckled. "Manipulative younger siblings." She corrected and her companion moved further into the room. Sister Agnes was short and had small features, but she knew how to rearrange them into carefully crafted expressions that controlled her young charges without the need for a sharp word. She had rules and expected the children to obey them, but her eyes flashed with amusement and she dispensed as much fun as she did discipline. Despite the fact there was more than thirty years difference in age between them, Casey and Sister Agnes had grown fond of each other over the past two months.
"How goes the case?" Agnes pulled up a nearby chair and sat down. Casey ran her fingers through her hair. One of the fingers flashed in the light of the desk lamp.
"Which one?" She blew out a breath. "I have twenty I'm working on right now. Mostly tenancy conflicts, income support, or alimony and child support."
Agnes shook her head. "It's a cruel world, but at least we have you to help."
It was Casey's turn to shake her head. "I'm doing so little." She protested, but her friend disagreed.
"You are giving them free legal advice, Casey. Good quality advice that would be beyond their means without you. You write the letters and make the phone calls they can't, and when it's needed you even stand up in court. We all give thanks to God for sending you to us and for the work you do."
Casey sighed. "Believe me, I get far more out of this than I put in." She pushed the papers away from her slightly and gave a weak smile. "What can I do for you?" She asked. "Do you have another case for me?"
Agnes shrugged her shoulders. "Always, but it can wait until tomorrow. I came to remind you that it is gone six and it's time you were making your way home. Unless you love this so much you've decided to become a member of this community full time?" She teased. Casey rolled her eyes.
"I fear I lack the humility, Sister." She said in a pompous tone. They both giggled.
"Humility, be damned!" Agnes chuckled. "It's that heavenly young man of yours! I may be on the wrong side of sixty and wedded to Christ, but even I can see that the sparkle in your eyes when you talk about him. The sparkle in your eyes and the sparkle on your finger."
Casey grinned broadly. "He's more of a devil than an angel, but yes, I agree, I am not cut out for a life of celibacy."
"You are born to be a mother, Casey. In time."
Casey shook her head sadly. "You know that isn't possible." She sighed. "One day, I fear that will be what draws him away."
Agnes stood up and walked to Casey's side. She put a comforting hand on Casey's shoulder and squeezed it gently.
"I try to never second guess the Lord. But I have seen more than one miracle, child. And I doubt very much that Derek is going anywhere."
If Derek was planning to cut and run, tonight was clearly not going to be the night. As Casey pulled her car into her assigned space at the bottom of her apartment block, she noted that Derek's own vehicle was already settled in its own place. She smiled to herself, pleased that he had kept his promise and finished work early for once. Of course, she was also very much aware of the hockey game scheduled on TV tonight, but she knew that their commitment ran both ways. The past weeks had refreshed her broken memory and reminded her just how intertwined Casey's life was with Derek, conscious and unconscious. Despite the wilderness years when they were so near and yet so far apart. She had meant it when she told Sister Agnes she felt her inability to have children would be the thing which drew Derek away, but even Casey recognised it would probably be the only thing.
"Something smells good!" She called, on entering the apartment and being greeted with the smell of Derek's trademark cannelloni and garlic bread.
"Good timing!" he called from the corner sofa, glancing away from the screen briefly. "The nuns released you from their lair then?"
Casey rolled her eyes at his quip. "Be respectful, Derek. Their seclusion serves a purpose. They are a safe haven for many." Her partner stood up and crossed the floor towards her, grabbing a piece of freshly cooked garlic bread on the way. He chuckled.
"Even the Bish thinks they take it to extremes, Case. You know that." He bit into the greasy bread and leaned towards her for a kiss. Casey pulled a face.
"You do that deliberately, don't you? Eat garlic, kiss fiancée." She pointed out. He shrugged.
"We're both going to eat the stuff, what does it matter if I kiss you with garlic breath?" Casey shuffled out of his arms and walked to the kitchen counter to grab her own piece of bread.
"But I haven't eaten any yet." She illustrated the point by holding up the warm offering between her thumb and middle finger.
"Well, I'm not stopping you." Derek then watched as Casey ate the bread and licked her fingers. She did it in a deliberate way, slowly and in a manner that showed a lot of tongue. Derek made a snorting noise.
"Casey, stop teasing. You and I both know there's food ready for the table and a game on TV. You could take every inch of your clothing off and perform that pole-dancing routine of yours, tonight I'm not interested." She reached for the top button of her shirt and Derek swallowed hard. "much…"
Casey laughed loudly and did her button up again. "Don't worry." She reassured him. "I'll keep." Derek moved to finish dishing up the dinner, but he kissed her briefly on the way.
"Good. I'm counting on it."
Later, during a pause in the game, there was time for a little more conversation at least.
"How's it going at the convent anyway?"
Casey sighed. "It's never-ending. The cases I'm seeing, the lives these people have…it's heart-rending."
"You're making a difference." Derek reassured her. "You're giving them hope."
Casey put down her fork and sat back. "That's part of the problem. I feel like a fraud. I know they need my advice, and I am helping, but I'm not convinced that the end justifies the means. I mean, if the sisters knew why I am really there."
"…You aren't disrupting their community. You're giving something important to them."
"But I'm there under false pretences. I feel nosey. Like a sneak."
Derek snorted. "You've always been nosey. You're just being true to yourself. Don't forget, I was there during the teenaged years."
Casey's eyes widened. "Gee…thanks! I thought we'd got past the whole 'when you were 15 you did that embarrassing thing'."
"Hey, I never even mentioned staircases, cheerleading…Truman." He teased her with a gentle nudge.
She raised an eyebrow. "Good, because then I would have to mention all your embarrassing mistakes. And don't worry, my memory may very well be shot to pieces, but somewhere I still have your little black book with all their names…"
They grinned at each other and Derek placed a kiss on her lips, both of them just grateful that they were still in each other's lives, and very much aware that the least of the heartache in their relationship was the way they had behaved towards each other during their high school years.
Casey shuffled further into his arms.
"Anyway, the nuns know who you are, because it was you and His Grace, the Bishop who introduced me to them. I'm sure they must be wary of sharing information with me." She pointed out.
Derek tightened his arms around her, though his eyes were back on the screen.
"That's actually the point. I don't want to hide from them that we need information. I want them to know that they can trust you, and me by extension. They need to know that I can help them."
Casey sighed. "Yes, but help them with what? It's still only a theory that Sophie left her child at the convent. A strong theory admittedly, but we haven't even confirmed that."
At that they both pulled a face, knowing the truth of Casey's words.
It had been two months since the miserable, wet night when Derek had been called to a small alley to see the body of a young woman, subsequently identified as Casey's friend, Sophie. A friend who was already thought deceased as a result of the horrific car accident nearly six years ago which also took the life of Jessie, Casey's ex-boyfriend and dance partner, and that had come so close to claiming Casey's own life. Two months, since Casey had been dragged into the investigation of both the murder and her own car crash, forcing her to confront her mental hurdles as well as her physical hurdles, because it was only a few weeks since Casey and Derek had finally told their friends and family about their relationship, and the loss of their child.
When Casey paused to acknowledge this time frame, she was always astounded that she was still breathing, still standing and, thanks to a lot of counselling and support from those around her, moving on with her life. Her relationship with Derek had evolved. They would never be the same couple they were before the crash, but all secrets were revealed, and their grief had brought them together rather than forced them apart. The sparkle on Casey's left ring finger was a recent affirmation of all the progress they had made in rebuilding their relationship. Despite everything, they were very happy.
Sophie's case was still very much open. Derek and Jazz had worked on little else since that first soggy evening. But it was slow-going, even more so than usual. Derek was used to the ups and downs of a murder investigation, the peaks and troughs, the days that raced by; the weeks that dragged. Unlike the movies, criminal investigations aren't all solved by teatime and many theories are broached, investigated and discarded, before the culprit is found. This case seemed worse than most. Even Jazz joked, with his usual lack of taste, that it had more dead ends than a crematorium.
The procedural forensics had been carried out, taking the more realistic timeframes of weeks, rather than Hollywood hours. The fingertip searches had finished, the crime scenes long since returned to normal. Large boxes of detritus optimistically labelled as "evidence" were signed into storage, and archived information from Casey's car crash had been signed out, trawled through and re-consigned to the vaults.
Progress had been made. Five years is a long time in science, and forensic procedures which had been in their infancy at the time of Casey's crash were now firmly established in legal statutes. DNA testing methods which had not been trialled in court five years ago, were now deemed reliable enough to prove identity in both criminal and civic courts. As a result, they had identified the second body in the car.
This was important to Casey, who, now knowing that Sophie had not perished in the resulting inferno, had been left to fret over who the other body might be. Guilt that she may have forgotten and lost another friend plagued her until she re-gained the memory of meeting the hitchhiker at the coffee shop. Following that, all she wanted was for the girl's family to have peace.
It was important too for Derek, because he wanted closure for Casey, but the DNA results did not help their case. The young woman who had died alongside Jessie, turned out to be a girl whose family had reported her missing seven years previously, and who had a history of hitchhiking her way home when money ran out.
Currently, the evidence such as it was, pointed in many directions leaving more questions than answers. Why had Sophie taken pains to conceal her true identity? What had happened to the baby Casey knew her friend was carrying? Where had she had her caesarean? Where had Sophie been for the past five years? If she knew Casey was alive, why had she not contacted her? Was the convent Sophie's place of refuge? The case file was full of open-ended lines of enquiry. Some of them spawned directly from evidence. Some on the fringes, more as a result of Derek and Jazz's gut instincts.
Not all of the uncertainties involved Sophie directly. There were questions such as, what caused Casey's car accident in the first place and what were the strange sequences of numbers Derek had found in Casey's hands at the crash scene?
In the meantime, other more incidental changes had occurred. The people directly involved in the case had formed a sort of contact group. Stuart and Mark now regularly socialised with Derek, Casey, Jazz and Bea. Though the latter pair were anything but established as a couple, Derek and Casey had hopes for their friends. The arguments between the alphas had softened and become more like banter. They would not call themselves friends, but neither were they likely to commit murder on Open Mic night. (Which sounded a little too much like a cheap novella for Casey's taste.)
Another incidental was that Derek found himself sharing a beer with Bishop Matthew about a month after their first reunion.
Derek opened the door to the bar slightly sceptical as to what he might find. When His Grace had called earlier in the day, he had mentioned that this place was as close to a "local" as a Catholic bishop could get. To Derek's relief, the watering hole was pretty normal for an Irish bar. A little quieter than normal, and the clientele a little older than Derek was used to, but not some culture shock which made him look at his friend in a different light. Bishop Matthews was seated in a corner, his usual clothing discarded for a dark pair of trousers, a roll neck sweater and his faith merely marked with a cross pin on his lapel.
"Incognito, your Grace?" Derek smiled as he took his seat.
Bishop Matthew shrugged. "Tending to a different flock who would prefer it if I didn't broadcast my religious affiliations too loudly." He acknowledged.
"Get many confessions among these sinners?" Derek asked when the wait staff had gone to process their order.
"You'd be surprised." Derek's friend noted. "Or, given your profession, maybe you wouldn't be. I hear congratulations are in order." When his companion looked confused he went on. "Your engagement."
Derek was taken aback. "The all seeing-eye? How did you hear?"
The Bishop smiled. "Casey answered the phone when I rang to arrange this meeting, remember? She introduced herself. How long have you been together?"
The waiter returned with their drinks, giving Derek time to think about his answer. Somehow he knew there was no point in withholding the truth – much of it at least.
"Engaged? About three weeks. But I'm sure your own investigative skills have told you that's only half the story."
Matthews conceded the point. "I may or may not have deduced that Casey was the step-sister with Catholic school previous." He quipped. Derek grinned.
"Ah! You took her on the ol' Catholic Guilt trip!" he returned the joke. Matthews shrugged.
"I can't help it." He protested. "It's something about my voice. I speak and sins reveal themselves." He sipped his drink. "Don't worry, Casey let it slip that you were her step-brother, but I'm not even sure she noticed she'd said it. Merely, 'I'm sorry Your Grace, Derek is taking our brother to the movies tonight. I'm Casey, his fiancée." He pulled a face. "It took me a moment to click that we weren't talking cardinal sin, of course."
Derek coughed. "I thought the Catholic Church frowned on co-habitation? Doesn't that come under Lust?"
The Bishop looked up hopefully. "You're right! That'll be Eight Hail Marys and a donation to the organ fund!"
They both chuckled. There was a pause and the Bishop looked expectingly at Derek who sighed.
"I met Casey when her mom married my dad when we were 15. It was hate at first sight…until it wasn't – aged 22 – and it's been a rollercoaster ever since." He swallowed a mouthful of beer. "Casey was the other girl in the car that I mentioned to Mother Superior."
Bishop Matthews closed his eyes briefly. "But she survived?" He prompted eagerly.
"Just. The accident cost us years of our life and so much more. But I have to be thankful. She's here, well and still wants me in her life." Derek glanced around the room. They were hidden from view and the bar was barely half empty. "You can understand why I'm keen to solve this case."
His companion sat forward with a renewed vigour.
"That's why I am here." His Grace offered. "I think we can help each other."
Derek raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."
"I can't interfere with the convent, you know that. We are two parts of the diocese and though they come under my protection, their guidance comes from God like mine. It's just not feasible for me to weigh in heavy-handedly. The convent is a place of sanctuary and I would be betraying those who seek our help if I did. The information you seek is probably only accessible if you win their trust: Possibly that of the Mother Superior – although I doubt you would get much information out of her. More likely, you will need to win the trust of the person who has the information directly."
"That's not easy when it's a convent. They are a fairly closed order and I'm a male policeman."
The bishop nodded. "True. But this is where I can help you…and you can help me. You…or rather, Casey." He grinned at the look on Derek's face.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but Casey is a lawyer?"
Derek nodded. "How did you find that out?"
The clergyman shrugged. "I have my sources…Does it matter? Anyway, one of the hardest aspects of the work the convent does is to help those who run up against the system. People who have been hard done by in some way, but who lack the knowledge, confidence and resources to fight their own battles. I'm talking women who've been abused by their partners, tenants who've been made homeless by unscrupulous landlords, the young people who have been profiled by society and are not given the opportunity to defend themselves properly in a court of law. Of course, there are some companies who do pro bono work, but I've found they always have a hidden agenda. I think Casey's hidden agenda and our need could be mutually beneficial."
"Casey volunteers in your convent to win over the trust of the nuns?" Derek asked.
"Perhaps…" The Bishop hedged. "All I'm saying is that I've found a way for you to get someone into the convent which I am comfortable with. Casey helps us with some of our problems for a while, and in return, she gets access to the people who may have the information you need."
Derek sat back. "It might just work."
The bishop jerked his head in a nod and also sat back. "Mind you," he clarified. "I'm not sanctioning whole scale rummaging through our filing cabinets and downloading our data onto memory sticks…"
"Perish the thought!" Derek grinned. "But you are right. You get Casey into the convent, working with the community, and maybe something will come up. Casey is nosey as hell. When we were teenagers, it was like living with a ferret in the next room."
This amused the bishop who chuckled. "And you're marrying her?"
Derek shrugged. "I learned to stay on her side. Then the ferreting becomes useful. Of course, there are other compensations – which, as a man of the cloth, you will prefer I perhaps DON'T share with you."
Bishop Matthew acknowledged the point with a wince and changed the subject.
It had been settled. Casey leaped at the chance to start a new project and whilst she didn't really feel comfortable with Jazz's description of her as "Our man inside", she accepted the opportunities the position gave her enough that any guilt associated with it were pretty easily pushed away.
Initially, the convent inhabitants were reticent, and Casey fretted that it was a pointless exercise. Derek, however, remembered Casey the teenager, who put her heart and soul into every project and piece of schoolwork she was handed. Her tendency towards over-thinking had been pared down by loss and the passage of time, and the derision of their fellow students replaced by respect from the wider community as she took on the cases brushed under the carpet by her fiscally minded colleagues.
It wasn't only the bishop and Casey's colleagues at the convent who had noticed how content the couple was. Jazz, too, had noticed a softening in both Casey and his partner. A good friend for many years who had been around for the wilderness years, it had been a relief when, to use his vernacular, Derek and Casey had finally "got their shit together". His comments on the subject got tedious after a while (five minutes), though Derek suspected Jazz was deliberately being obnoxious to bury the tragedy of the whole mess, and he appreciated his friend's sentiment. He did, however, watch with amusement as Jazz and Bea danced around each other, storing up some witticisms ready for the moment when the second couple got their own "shit together".
The MacDonald-Venturis were also supportive, and the recent announcement of their engagement had the female portion of the family in hyper-planning mode for some form of nuptials at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Edwin had contributed to the case in a not insignificant way, a day or so previously. Having helped Casey to access her old icloud account a few weeks ago, and been showered with praise for his efforts, he was keen to help even more. More in hope than expectation, finally Derek had handed him the piece of paper with the alphanumeric codes which had been plaguing him since Casey's "accident". Despite Derek's concentrated focus over the intervening years and vague suggestion that they might be photographs, it had indeed taken a fresh set of eyes to get to the bottom of the puzzle. Edwin had quickly confirmed that the "codes" were actually filenames, auto-generated by some sort of smart device or camera. Edwin guessed at a phone camera, but the search had ground to a halt again, when a parsing of Casey's old icloud had failed to find any trace of the files. Currently, they were trying to discover if Sophie had had a laptop or icloud account, but the mobile phone networks and Apple were proving unhelpful. Derek had had to resort to a warrant.
The morning after the Cannelloni meal, Derek arrived in the office to find that Sophie's icloud account had been unlocked, and Jazz had brought Edwin in to take a look. Derek chuckled ruefully to himself as he reflected that before long, the entire MacDonald-Venturi family would probably be deputised for this case. Casey, however, was back in the convent, working on her twenty outstanding cases, so this morning, it was just the Venturis.
"What have we got?" Derek asked his younger brother who was sitting hunched over a Macbook on Derek's desk. Edwin frowned but didn't look up.
"Well, she wasn't as organised as Casey, that's for sure." He stated, finally glancing up as Jazz handed him a coffee mug. "Thanks, Jazz."
"Lots of youtube links to dancing videos, a few baby blogs. Much of it is almost inaccessible as the software is so out of date. Looking at the versions, I'd say her laptop was ancient even back then."
Derek threw Jazz a look. "What DO we know about her laptop?" he asked his partner. Jazz shook his head. "Another casualty of the crash. Hard drive fried along with everything else. But Edwin was right. The techs at the time deemed it very dated."
"She wasn't particularly tech savvy." Edwin continued. "A few word documents but no excel or powerpoint. Just videos and pictures. I'm surprised she had an iCloud account."
"And the alphanumeric codes?" Derek asked hopefully.
Edwin pulled the piece of paper from a file on the desk and opened Finder on the macbook. A few seconds later, he exclaimed and raised his face with a grin. "Bingo!" He shouted. Jazz and Derek stepped around behind the back of Edwin's chair. The three men leaned forward to see what the files contained.
"They are indeed Jpegs." Edwin announced. "And they are all there." He frowned again. "What I never understand is why people don't give files meaningful names." He complained. "How are you supposed to be able to find the file you want when the name of the file is _ZA1278961RG ?"
Derek nudged Edwin in the shoulder. "I don't know, maybe, OPEN THEM!" He pushed. Edwin pulled a face at Jazz.
"Seriously, how do you put up with him?" He asked Derek's friend. Jazz grinned.
"He hasn't had his three cups of coffee. His humour improves as the day goes on. Although, of course, it does depend on whether he got any last night." Jazz explained. Edwin pulled a face at the reference to his brother and step-sister's physical relationship.
Derek ignored them, and after a second, Edwin's focus returned to the task at hand. Jazz didn't mind, because he too was leaning forward to look at the images on the screen.
The first image was the same as the picture they had found on Sophie's body. Clearer, because it hadn't sat in a wallet for several years, nor rested in the cleavage of a corpse.
"The resolution could be better. Whichever camera took these was better tech than her laptop, but not by much. I'd say an early digital DSLR camera rather than a cell phone." Edwin commented. Derek nodded. "Too blurry, I think." He agreed. "When we've looked at these, we should send the files to Image Forensics. They may be able to get more from the digital copy than they did from the print version. There may be a watermark and if it's a professional grade camera we may be able to track down the photographer, although I doubt it. What about the other images?"
His brother highlighted the browser bar. "The photos are located in a particular folder." He announced. "You've given me a handful of filenames, but the contents of the folder are more comprehensive. There are probably another fifty images here." His fingers flew over the trackpad of his laptop and began to open up the individual files.
The vast majority of the files were along similar lines to the first shot of the party. They were the same quality shots of the same set of people, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in larger sets. When Derek had first found the alphanumeric codes years ago, he had noticed two different formats to them. The reason for this became obvious when Edwin opened the files up. As well as the blurred images, there were other images, obviously taken using a more recent phone camera.
"That looks more like a cell phone camera to me." Edwin commented. The others concurred. "Different scenery and people…oh!"
Edwin's exclamation came as he opened one particular file, and Derek found himself reaching for a chair as his legs wobbled beneath him. The picture was of Casey.
Jazz smiled softly. "She hasn't changed a bit." He murmured. "Not in essence. Still as beautiful as ever." Derek wanted to agree, but he couldn't help noticing the carefree eyes of his fiancée way back then, before her world had been turned upside down. Casey was still beautiful, of course, but there was a maturity in her eyes these days. It spoke of a hard road travelled, that didn't show in wrinkles or darkened areas under her eyes. It was like a shadow in the eyes themselves.
As Edwin flicked through the files, more images of Casey, Jessie and the rest of the dance company appeared. There were scores of pictures, and Derek grew slightly impatient.
"We can go through these in detail later. What about the ones on my list?" He asked.
Edwin nodded and began to pull up the ten files from Derek's list.
It came as no surprise to see that the ten pictures were of the party and even less that Trent Sutton figured in at least four. Most were in the older format, but some were the newer format. When they had clicked through the ten files, Derek groaned in frustration and Edwin began to click on the remaining photos, loading a couple of shots of seemingly random scenes. A view of a parking lot, a rural road, a country house surrounded by trees. It left them confused.
"When were those taken?" Jazz asked Edwin. The latter switched back to Finder and amended the view to include the Created On date.
There was silence between the three men.
Mindful of the quiet, Edwin opened the file information and pointed the relevant information out. The photos of Trent were contemporary with the original photo and so they had expected the other photos to have similar dates.
To their surprise, the random scenes were all dated after the car crash, many from the weeks immediately following Sophie's escape. But, even more shockingly, the folder also contained photos from just a year ago, and some pictures were only nine months old. Jazz whistled. "She's been saving photos to her iCloud in the past year." He stated. "That's unexpected."
Derek pulled a face. "Why?" He asked. "Why is she saving these photos now? It's all pre-crash stuff apart from these. And there is nothing else. No Word documents, etc." They pondered this for a moment.
These latter pictures included close up views of stained glass in a setting which might be part of a church window, and another picture showed part of a vivid blue painted latticed ceiling. The most interesting photo, however, was of a young child and a young woman. Edwin filled the screen with the shot and turned to Derek with a quizzical look.
"That's not Sophie." Edwin announced, somewhat unnecessarily. "It's almost as though she's trying to tell us something." He commented. "If this was about her moving on with her life you would expect there to be lots of pictures in a continuous timeframe. Instead, there's three distinct phases. Pre-Crash, immediate aftermath and then within the past twelve months."
"She abandoned her iCloud all those years ago." Jazz asked thoughtfully. "But something happened a year ago which caused her to start uploading pictures to it again. The question is…What?"