The Ophelia Trap

By Kate Cassidy

When a former neighbour plunges eight stories to her death in the snow, Julia Henry is convinced her previous landlords harassed the woman to suicide. But as she investigates, another dead girl turns up – with a connection to a series of rapes.

Julia and her husband put as much distance as they could afford between them and the landlords who put them through hell, and stories from humiliated tenants match Julia's own. She's determined to prove their tactics resulted in tragedy.

But the half-empty building is hemorrhaging tenants, the girl's boyfriend comes complete with a wife and daughter, and the best friend overdosed days after giving police their only description of a serial predator.

Now it seems someone wants Julia buried under the heaviest blizzard in thirty years, and one of her daughters is targeted for a brutal attack steps from home. The only way she can protect her girls and still live to see the snow melt is to expose the wrenching truth behind the rapes, the deaths, and the strangest absentee landlord ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kate Cassidy
• Release date: Jan 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9780986845505

Kate Cassidy

Kate Burns is a designer and writer living and working in the Ottawa-Gatineau area. She gardens, knits, enjoys nature in all its beauty and expresses herself through writing and acting. The Ophelia Trap is her first novel. She is currently working on her second mystery, as yet untitled, set in Ottawa’s intriguing and diverse Byward Market.

Book preview

Chapter One

JANUARY 6

Julia Henry had no explanation for why she stayed at the telescope so long when all she’d expected to see falling was the snow. She was too far away to stop the girl who burst through the eighth floor window and fell to the cold ground below. Yet too close to miss the awful sight.

With quivering hands, Julia regained control of the telescope’s viewfinder, forced herself to count the balconies and found eight-oh-seven again.

Its window was open wide, curtains flapping out into the blue predawn. A screen panel swung drunkenly over the sill, held by remnants of a bent aluminum frame. Then the wind took it, the frame let go, the panel whirled away.

The girl was gone. Only the little black and white cat sat on the open ledge of the burst-out window. Julia stared as the cat turned and delicately jumped back into the bedroom.

There should have been a scream. There was nothing. An explosion on TV with the sound turned off. Julia sucked in her breath, breaking the silence.

Oh, God. Mandi.

The girl’s name slammed into Julia’s memory. Dizziness swam over her. 911. She needed to call 911. Where the hell was the phone? Julia straightened up, whirled around to look for Matt’s cell. She had to get over there.

The girl had fallen almost eighty feet.

Julia’s stomach clenched. She doubled over and threw up on the floor.

Madame, stay on the line. The accented voice in Julia’s ear was calm and authoritative. Julia’s heart threatened to break out the front of her t-shirt.

Boots on but undone, she frantically dug through her right coat pocket for keys. She stumbled out to the van. She turned the key, and despite the cold, the engine roared to life. Thank you, Matt.

Matt. She bit her lower lip, hard. There was no time to wake him, she had to go. She would get there before the ambulance. She tasted blood and bile over her chattering teeth, and shook uncontrollably from cold or shock or both.

Hold on, I’m going over. She dropped the cell phone on the passenger seat.

The wheels skidded over the packed snow on the sidewalk. Thank God it hadn’t snowed much overnight. She sped down the street, right, around the bend, left, and there it was.

Julia braked with a jolt and stumbled out. The dispatcher’s thin voice called her, and she reached back into the van to grab the phone. She left the keys dangling from the ignition, the driver’s door wide open, and ran toward the front of 70 Papineau.

At the edge of the deep snow, she halted, panting. The gray blue sky and yellow-tinted parking lot lights illuminated the entire front facade of the main Place Papineau building, a line of scrawny trees and the cars in the parking area. Her breath fogged the air before her face and rendered the scene a blurred pastel. She could stop here; go home; be safe in bed and she might not even hear the sirens. No one would lay crushed at the foot of the building. Julia closed her eyes. Not real, please, not real. But the dark form of the girl was there.

Maybe the snow was deep enough... Julia drew strength from a ragged breath and pushed through the drifts to approach the prone form.

Mandi lay face up in the undisturbed snow around her. As though she’d seen the softness of it, and stopped to rest. She had achieved the impossible: a snow angel with no footprints around her.

But under the dark blood that stained her bright blue t-shirt, a collarbone jutted out, and Mandi’s left leg was twisted backward, her foot pointed the wrong way. Broken.

Julia stood over her in disbelief. Mandi’s freckled face was pale and still. A line of blood trailed from her nose. More glistened through her hair. Her blue eyes were open. Dead.

Mandi. Oh, kid.

The girl blinked. Unnh…

Oh my God.

Julia scrambled out of her orange coat and fell to her knees in the snow. As gently as she could, she laid the coat across Mandi. It covered everything from the girl’s neck down to her bare feet. Bare feet. Julia choked.

Mandi? Mandi. It’s ok. You’ll be ok.

Julia turned her head so the girl wouldn’t hear and hissed into the cell phone, I’m with her. She’s alive. But she’s hurt badly. Please hurry!

Avoiding the blood, Julia tried to stroke the girl’s hair. Mandi licked her now-white lips and spoke.

Mmuh... phone… police. It was little more than a murmur.

They’re coming, honey. Help is — Julia stopped. Help had to be coming.

Mandi’s lips moved a little, but no more sound came out.

Oh, sweetie, why? Why would you do this? Honey. Stay with me. Oh, God.

Mandi regarded Julia calmly, and then smiled a little. She put her hand on Julia’s where it rested on the dark hair. Mandi’s hand was cold. As the two women gazed at each other, the morning became still. Even the falling snow paused.

Then, though Mandi’s eyes remained fixed on Julia, her hand slipped off of Julia’s fingers.

Julia grabbed the cell phone she’d dropped in the snow and screamed into it.

Where are you people? She was deaf to the answer. Life had left, and had taken with it all sensation.

She didn’t know how long she remained frozen on her knees. She couldn’t move, not even to shake. The sirens and shouts sounded as if they were coming from the river’s opposite shore, even when the paramedics were almost on top of her. She barely felt it when they lifted her away from her former neighbour’s cold body.

And Mandi lay dead in the snow, under Julia’s useless orange coat, on a silent Sunday morning in front of a goddamned parking lot.

Chapter Two

Julia stood cold and numb, someone’s pink comforter around her shoulders. The ambulance took Mandi’s body away, flashing lights, but no siren. It took Julia a moment to realize why. No rush.

She waited for a senior officer to arrive. The baby-faced cop who ushered her into the warm back seat of a cruiser looked like he hadn’t seen thirty yet. She got out again after a minute. The super-chilled dawn air was the only thing keeping her from throwing up.

Though it felt as if an entire day had passed, the streets to the north and west of Place Papineau remained deserted, except for the emergency response team. Julia watched the crowd of tenants in the lobby as their number grew. People stood in groups, arms folded or hands over mouths. A few approached the lobby window to peer up, pointing and shaking their heads. One set of headlights turned into the complex parking lot, then abruptly out again. An allergic reaction to police.

From where she stood, the two buildings blocked the sole feature Julia missed about apartment living: the view. The Ottawa River stretched from horizon to horizon, frozen to the middle and dotted with ice fishing huts. Around the bend to the east, Ottawa’s gothic Parliament Buildings sat on the opposite shore, and to the west the wide river curved north twelve degrees and divided Québec from Ontario for another thousand kilometres.

Next to one of the officers was Mandi’s father. With a gray face that matched his overcoat and winter fedora, and both hands lost in his pockets, he stood unmoving, a concrete wall.

The senior officer arrived to take her statement. Julia read the card he presented. Marc Bergeron, Gatineau Police. Sergeant d’enqueteur. He was older than the first officer, fifty, at least. And he looked confused.

I’m so sorry, Madame, but where did you say you were?

Sergeant Bergeron looked from Julia to the eighth floor of the building, where one uniformed officer looked back and forth out the open window while another stood on the balcony. From their gestures, she could see they were trying to re-enact the event. Julia closed her eyes a second to let another wave of nausea pass.

Sergeant Bergeron shook his head.

"Who knows eh? Sometimes these young people have problems they can’t ’andle. How well did you know the victim? Amanda Reilly was your neighbour, oui? Did you know her habits, drugs, that kind of thing?" He glanced at his notes, then back at Julia.

I-I don’t know. About drugs or anything. I only talked to her once. Before. Before... Before she lay dying at my feet.

They must have found evidence already. Or they knew the girl. It was common in this area. Known to police.

Bergeron pressed on.

"Which one again is your appartement?" He used the French word.

Julia sighed and rubbed her eyes. She’d tried to explain to the other officer, but she would have to do it again. This was getting lost in translation.

She repeated everything. How she’d been a neighbour until they’d moved. Her new home two streets behind her. The telescope. The 911 call. Mandi’s final words.

Where is your house?

She pointed again behind her.

Two streets up the hill, their little house was a world away. No missing fire extinguisher, no graffiti on slamming metal doors, no spider of fractured glass in the stairwell door, no sticky floors, no missing hallway light bulbs. No noise from other apartments. No other apartments. Julia could be there right now. How was she going to explain what she was doing here to this man? To herself? To Matt?

I was up early, we had an apartment next to hers, there’s this stupid back rent thing I’m dealing with... Her voice trailed off. Why did she say that? Now she looked like a deadbeat ex-tenant. Julia looked into the Sergeant’s kind and puzzled eyes.

Look, are you sure there was no one else up there? she asked.

He shook his head. The door was locked, and chained. She was alone. Why?

Julia could feel tears starting. That poor kid. Why?

I don’t know. I thought maybe.... alone. That’s so shitty.

The Sergeant put a hand on her shoulder.

Would you like a coffee, Madame? Bergeron’s brown eyes and wrinkles gave him a warm face. Waving over Officer Babyface, he pulled a five out of his pocket and told the man to go to Tim’s, vite. Quickly.

"We’ll get you un café, oui, yes, and then I want to see your house, ok? I need to see what you saw."

Sergeant Bergeron excused himself and walked to where a man in a tan parka was taking photos of the snow eight stories below Mandi’s window. She stood alone and watched them.

She had to call Matt. Poor Matt, almost certainly still asleep, blissfully unaware that normal had just left town. What a wake-up, his wife at the door with the police. She reached into her pocket. The cell phone wasn’t there.

The young officer returned within minutes carrying a Tim’s double-double. He’d probably run the sirens to fetch it. She sipped the hot sweet coffee, and walked over to Bergeron. She must have dropped the phone in the snow by the body. The body. Already Mandi was a thing. Not a who anymore. A what. The thought hit Julia’s stomach before the coffee did.

As she approached Bergeron and the police photographer, a thin middle-aged man rushed up to the Sergeant. He wore dress pants and a white shirt, but no jacket.

"Je m’excuse," he said to Julia. The man handed a sheet of paper to the Sergeant and they spoke in French, ignoring Julia. She wasn’t surprised. Julia was Anglo. She must have it stamped on her head. She was passably bilingual, could even be fluent with a little effort. Now, though, her dumb-English look was an advantage, and she used it to eavesdrop. This was the building’s new manager, the busy one with whom she couldn’t get an appointment. The sheet of paper in the Sergeant’s hand was a printout of all the tenants currently listed as renting in the building. Sergeant Bergeron thanked the manager and asked him, again in French, if he knew anything about the girl in eight-oh-seven.

"Non, non, pas du tout. The manager paused. Then he cleared his throat. Well, she was late by two months with her rent. C’est dans son dossier."

May I have that file as well, please?

The manager nodded. I’ve checked her keys. There was only one set issued.

That was interesting. Julia looked more closely at the guy. As if he caught her staring, he glanced her way, and then his gaze slid away. Was it her imagination, or did he look nervous? The shit.

Julia spoke before she could lose the nerve, as the French would say.

"How is it she was two months unpaid, Monsieur? She spoke in English, adding the French address. Mandi paid cash. No receipt, right? Easy money." Julia couldn’t stop herself. It was the verbal equivalent of chattering teeth, and more satisfying than trying not to puke in the snow. She couldn’t stop.

You people are unbelievable. Did she get her eviction notice already? I guess she evicted. Julia spat the last word.

She turned to Sergeant Bergeron. Sergeant, you ask him. This company likes to make people pay their rent twice. You don’t even have to live in the building. She jabbed her index finger at the manager. Maybe your thug bosses in Montréal can raise the rent on another fresh empty apartment. I’m sure they’ll be happy about that.

The manager’s tired eyes met hers for a second before he bowed his head slightly, red showing through his thin black hair. Julia’s outburst had drawn a circle of uniformed officers, and the Sergeant’s eyebrows were raised. The only sound was the wind off the river.

Julia blinked and stammered.

I’m sorry. I’ve never seen anyone die before. I know you’re new. It’s not your fault, you’re just following orders. But how you can stay working for them? Something’s off about the whole company. If I were you, Monsieur, I would be circling want ads by now. These tenants are people. Some of them are too close to the edge to be pushed around this way. Don’t you see that? She searched the manager’s dark eyes. He looked down again.

No one said a word. Julia took a shaking breath. Suddenly she felt too drained to care.

A hand came around her shoulder from behind, and she caught the faintest scent of pot. Cynthia. Julia turned to look into her friend’s worried brown eyes.

Come here. Come here, Julia. Cynthia stroked Julia’s hair while walking her away. As she turned, Julia saw the manager turn to face Sergeant Bergeron. She could imagine a more pointed line of questioning now.

What are you doing here? Cyn asked. Julia almost laughed. Good question.

She would have to tell the awful story all over again. But maybe only once more, to her friend and to her husband.

Cyn, can you drive me home? I know it’s only two blocks, but —

Of course.

Ten minutes later, a police cruiser followed Julia’s van around the corner. In front of the house, she got out of the passenger side wearily and climbed the steps to her new front door, trailed by Cynthia, Sergeant Bergeron, and another uniformed officer. The door opened. Matt, in his bathrobe, stared at the incomprehensible scene on his front step: his wife, who should have been in bed, accompanied by the police, who shouldn’t have been there at all.

My God. Julia? What’s happened? Grace woke me, we couldn’t find you anywhere.

Matt stepped onto the porch in his slippers. He looked from her to the police cruisers. Julia had been sure she was too wrung out to cry any more, until she saw the alarm in Matt’s eyes and the new pallor on his unshaven face. Behind that was another expression. A hint of what she would see when they were alone and she would stumble over her tongue trying to explain the impossible. Now, though, Julia sobbed and buried her face in her husband’s terry cloth robe, snow white, but so much warmer, and smelling of home.

Chapter Three

Matt saw the police out. Sergeant Bergeron had looked through the telescope in Ben’s room, along with the other officers, everyone very impressed with the quality of the view.

Cynthia was in the living room with Grace. In the kitchen, Julia cupped her shaking hands around another hot mug. It was her fifth, not counting the Tim Horton’s from the young cop. She still couldn’t get warm, despite the Christmas brandy that Matt had slipped into it.

Matt rubbed his neck and stared at the table. His hands traced the wood grain. Here it comes.

Ok, so you were at Ben’s telescope —

Matt, it could have happened to anyone.

Sure. Anyone who was up at four o’clock in the morning staring at the one window that a girl jumped out of.

Julia rubbed her eyes. Did they have do this? Now?

I wasn’t supposed to be looking there. I was trying to find our balcony. It was a simple mistake. Coincidence.

I’m just saying. It’s another — Matt broke off as Cynthia entered the kitchen and took her seat at the table again. No one made a move towards the living room with its soothing fireplace and distracting TV.

Grace is eating her toast. You should eat yours. Cynthia pushed the plate of toast closer to Julia. Amisha, Julia’s old Siamese, brushed against her leg. Absently she picked him up and stroked him in her lap. Purring, he buried his head under the crook of her arm. Julia curled around him for warmth. Something slid around in the back of her mind, but refused to be caught.

She looked up at her husband. He smiled. Truce? She smiled back. Truce.

Matt said, You said she was next door, but I can’t even picture the girl.

We never really met her. Julia turned to Matt. I saw her a couple of times. She used to let herself into her apartment at five o’clock in the morning. I’d be up early, she was up late. Different hours, if you know what I mean.

Cynthia and Matt both nodded. They knew.

You didn’t meet her, Matt. And I almost didn’t.

Until the very day they’d moved out. Last September. Julia had shared an elevator with Mandi. It was the only time she’d seen the girl up close, or even in the daytime.

The skinny Mandi had seemed barely there. Twenty? If that. Julia had at least eighteen years on her. A used-up look of dyed reddish brown hair, dark eye shadow and too-low jeans was enhanced by the faint odor of stale cigarette smoke. Julia had seen kids just like Mandi, looking lost in the building’s laundry room, trying to figure out how to clean their clothes without laundry soap. After the partying, they could barely feed themselves, let alone pay rent. She hadn’t even reached thirty, but her best days were already gone. Under all that makeup, though, Mandi was pretty. Freckles and big eyes, blue as Gracie’s.

Taken by a sharp surge of maternal concern, Julia had collected a box of kitchen supplies for the girl. It was no good to anyone now.

All of Mandi’s days were gone.

Chapter Four

JANUARY 23

Yes, the Régie. Good luck. Goodbye. Julia hung up the cordless.

Who are you talking to, Mommy? Grace swung her legs from the kitchen chair as she sipped a drinking box. Outside the kitchen window, snow fell in the darkness of the late afternoon.

Just a lady from our old building, sweetie. She made another note on the pad by the phone, and then checked off another name. That made twelve, added to Cynthia’s fourteen.

Oh. Is she coming over? Gracie loved visitors.

No, baby. Julia looked over her notes.

There was definitely a pattern. Half of the people she had spoken to already had some kind of problem with the owners. Conversation after conversation, she ran into the same caustic mix of bravado and naiveté over baby screams in the background.

The tenants that paid cash had kept the worst records. It was strange. Men and women living closer to the edge of homelessness than she or Matt had ever dreamed had nonetheless failed utterly to guard what little they possessed. Caught off guard by legalese and threats of eviction, most had simply paid a second time.

The demand for October and November’s rent had arrived right before Christmas from the new owners. Matt and Julia’s early lease termination agreement, sealed with trust and a handshake, conveniently forgotten. Now every time Julia phoned about an appointment with the new manager, she was told he was swamped. Not that she was eager to see him, necessarily. And maybe he was ducking her calls more because of her outburst. According to the secretary, though, Place Papineau’s office lay buried under an avalanche of paperwork generated from the recent rash of late and unpaid rents. Tenants and former tenants alike stormed in daily, demanding the same thing that Julia needed: a rational explanation.

But Julia remembered only too well every indignity that she and Matt had put up with in that apartment. Tears of rage spilled as she shushed and rocked baby Grace on Place Papineau’s front lawn at four in the morning, fire trucks lining the street and another weeknight’s sleep shot to hell. She’d made her promise to her daughter out there the fourth time the alarm had been pulled. With Matt’s arm on her shoulders, Julia had sworn to get them out of that hellhole and into a house.

And it took every penny, but they’d got out. Barely.

Now she was damned if she would let Place Papineau reach across the yards to poison their fresh start. Every phone call angered her more. Maybe they should just pay the disputed bill and get on with it. But there was no room for that. The mortgage was too important.

The truth was, Julia had been less than careful, too. She had faxed in a letter to Len in June that confirmed their conversation. His offer to assign a lease to someone on the waiting list for the sought-after three bedroom apartment had ultimately proved worthless. Under new management, the office suddenly couldn’t find the letter. Of course, by then Len was long gone, and Julia felt like a fish on a hook. Somewhere in Montréal, a Dergan Vielde flunky was probably roaring about what idiot tenants they’d inherited. A thought that made Julia’s teeth grind.

The front door blew open, and Matt walked in from the cold, stomping snow off of his work boots.

Daaaadddy! Gracie tumbled out of her chair and wrapped herself around Matt’s legs. He laughed and kissed his daughter’s head. Julia put the pad and pen down and kissed Matt’s cold lips under the wet winter beard. Hey, baby.

Matt dumped a copy of the Ottawa Sun on the kitchen table and picked up the mail, then picked up Julia’s notes around to read them.

Hm. More rent stuff? Anything new?

She filled him in.

What I want to know is this. Why is the company collecting from tenants who already paid? What do they call that? Double-dipping. That’s fraud. I’m staggered that this company is getting away with it. All I can do is to tell people to complain directly to the Régie, because they only want to hear case by case.

The Régie du logement was the Province of Québec’s rental authority.

She went on. But I’ve gotten through to quite a few tenants. In both buildings.

Julia took the note.

You know, she said, If Mandi was caught up in this rent thing, Carole would know. I’ll call her in the morning.

Julia sat down at the kitchen table and turned the newspaper around.

Matt got a beer from the fridge and joined her. He unclipped one side of his painter’s overalls and raked a latex-white hand through his dusty hair. Grace grabbed her juice and scooted off into the living room to catch some kid TV before someone could change the channel.

What’s for dinner? Jules?

Julia didn’t answer. She was busy staring at the headline and the picture on the front page.

Wanted for Sexual Assault, it read. Below that, smaller:

Gatineau Police Release Sketch of Suspect Wanted in Aylmer Sexual Assaults.