Her husband, a murderer. A monster. How is Grace to come to terms with that? We sit there for several minutes, I, the cop; she, my most valuable witness. Then I dare to ask one last question: “Why do you think your husband put the crate with Lorna on the beach so that someone could find it?”
She stares blankly for a while before answering. “I’ve asked myself that, too. Ernie . . . he was dissatisfied. I remember. He’d hoped for a promotion in the fall, but they passed him over, saying they’d put it off until later. That frustrated him a lot. He ranted like never before.”
So, impatience, bitterness. The shame of rejection. Aggrieved self-esteem. I’ll show you guys, Ernie must have thought. I’m no loser, you’re the losers. You have no idea how smart I am. And you’ll never know.
Grace stands up swiftly, a wild expression on her messy face.
“He shoved her into a crate, but he can’t do that to me. I will live Lorna’s life while he’s rotting in prison.”
54
Ernie Butt’s lawyer is not a happy camper. Fred can smell it a hundred miles away in a wind. The judge denied Ernie bail. Which delights Fred. The tables have turned. Unlike a few days ago, the investigators sitting opposite the lawyer now find themselves in a much stronger position. Fred is almost euphoric over the fact that they’ve solved a case in the meantime and have the murderer’s confession. And that convinces him all the more of his team’s strength. Not least because they also found the pistol Rick used to kill Perrell on the tundra, not far from the flashlight.
In contrast to Rick Stout, Ernie won’t come clean. He sits with his lawyer across from Fred and Delgado and digs in his heels.
Fred tries confrontation. “Come on, Mr. Butt, the jig’s up. The evidence against you is damning. You’re only making it worse for yourself if you say nothing.”
The lawyer protests: “Mr. Butt has the right to remain silent; you know that better than anyone else. He is innocent, and we will argue that convincingly in court.”
Delgado laughs contemptuously. “Lorna’s ring in the desk drawer? The necklace in the glove compartment? The material used to make the crate for Lorna Taylor’s body? How do you intend to explain all that away? You’d have to be a magician.”
“The objects could have been planted there by someone else. My client is the victim of a conspiracy.”
Fred ignores the lawyer and focuses on Ernie Butt.
“Now’s your last chance, Mr. Butt, to get off with a lighter sentence. Your last chance because . . .”
“Stop harassing my client, Constable. We will come out of this trial the winners. My client is innocent.”
Fred almost feels sorry for Ernie. Not only does the evidence look bad for him, but his lawyer is also bad. He leans forward. Time for the explosion.
“If you want a trial at all costs, then be warned: we have an outstanding witness.”
He lets the words hang in the air like a guillotine that can drop at any moment.
The lawyer tries to put on a brave face, but his facial muscles go tense.
“Who is the witness you’re speaking of, Constable?”
Fred takes his time before speaking. “Mrs. Grace Butt.”
“Grace?” Ernie jumps up. “Grace would never testify against me!”
Delgado waves around a stack of papers. “What you see here, Mr. Butt, is the written statement, signed by your wife.”
“That’s—”
“Do not say a thing, Mr. Butt. It may be a bluff. I shall look into it.”
Fred leans back without taking his eyes off Ernie.
“We’ve got a pretty good idea of the course of events. We know that you intercepted Lorna when driving Grace’s car on the day in question; that you offered to take her to the restaurant where she’d arranged to meet her boyfriend. When she got in, you anesthetized her with the ether you’d bought two weeks earlier at the pharmacy. You took Lorna to your cabin in the woods, where you held her captive for several days and checked up on her repeatedly. Witnesses saw the silver Hyundai in the vicinity. You probably cut off her left little finger on the very first day, as punishment. We’ve seized a knife in your cabin; the medical examiner confirmed Lorna’s DNA is on it. You saved the ring as a trophy. After several days you strangled Lorna Taylor with a nylon rope that we also seized in the cabin. You took her body to Port Brendan later, in a crate you built out of boards in the cabin. You unfortunately didn’t see the Viking symbol on one of them. You sank the crate on a rope in the water. And you sometimes went back to the spot to enjoy the fact that Lorna was safely inside the crate and could never persuade your wife to leave you.”
“Is that all you have, Constable? It is preposterous. Come, Mr. Butt, we have little to fear from these gentlemen.”
A really bad lawyer, Fred thinks. And Rick Stout is smarter than Ernie Butt, who now has to go through a trial he’ll certainly lose. Rick wanted to spare his wife, Meeka, a trial. Ernie Butt doesn’t give a damn about Grace. He’ll be staying in pretrial detention. Maybe he’ll feel safer there. Lorna Taylor’s brothers would probably lynch him if he were running around town.
The lawyer packs his papers into his briefcase. Delgado puts handcuffs on his client and shows the two of them out. Ernie will be transferred to Happy Valley-Goose Bay that afternoon.
Fred remains sitting at the table for several minutes more. He must ask Rick Stout why he committed his deeds when he did, right after Lorna’s body was found. Was the trigger anger over Meeka’s operation? Did he think the police would connect the murders to Lorna? Did he hope the two murders would put the police on the wrong track? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Rick’s hate for Dr. Perrell reached a boiling point, and he had to act to relieve himself of the pressure inside him. Coincidences exist. The pure chance, for example, that Calista Gates came to Port Brendan of all places, and that Closs will give up his position. The sarge has already shared the news with him.
“The post is yours,” he informed him.
Fred stands up and leaves the room.
Wendy calls to him from reception: “There are fresh scones!”
He declines. “Thanks, I’ve got to go out again.”
He wants to pay a visit to Scott Dyson, to work on him before Butt’s family persuades him not to testify against Ernie. He knows what he can offer Scott in return: to occasionally turn a blind eye here and there.
But before that, he has to go to another house.
He’s thinking about Calista Gates while driving through Port Brendan when he suddenly sees her at the gas station. She’s talking to a man, Gerald Hynes. The Great Savior. Fred’s annoyed that it wasn’t him who pulled Calista out of the creek. Now she’ll be forever grateful to Hynes for saving her life. A strong bond. Shit.
Should he stop?
He doesn’t. After all, he’s in possession of information he must keep from Gates until she gets it from somewhere else. Closs sat down with him and clued him in.
RCMP headquarters is going to transfer her to St. Anthony in Newfoundland. A larger town than Port Brendan, with a nearby airport. Gates is to run the post as detective sergeant. And that’s not all: there’s an internal investigation of Calista’s ex-husband going on in Vancouver.
“It’s said to be a serious business,” Closs told him.
“The guy surely doesn’t have anything to do with the assault on Gates?” Fred couldn’t resist asking the question.
“You read my thoughts,” the sergeant answered. “But I don’t know.”
If the ex-husband was involved somehow, it would shake the RCMP in Vancouver like an earthquake. And it would be better if Calista were far away from the action.
Fred will feel reluctant to see her move to St. Anthony, but he’s also glad. He’s been preoccupied with her. That makes him nervous. Having some distance from Calista will do him good. There’ll also be distance between Calista and Gerald Hynes. Fine by him, too. But that, however, is something he won’t openly admit to himself.
In the rearview mirror
, he can see how serious their conversation is. He averts his eyes and goes down a side street to a house with a red door.
Melissa Richards is startled when she opens the door. “You don’t have more bad news for me, do you?”
“It depends,” he replies.
He’s about to take off his boots, but she says: “You can tell me right here, Constable. Let’s get it over with.”
Her face is haggard, without any makeup. It could be depression; that often happens after the loss of a loved one. How would she have taken Bakie’s Las Vegas escape plan? He finds it almost cynical that she was only spared this humiliation because Bakie was murdered before he could flee.
Fred reaches into his pocket and holds out the plastic bags with the scalpel and the anonymous note. The letters from glossy magazines.
“We found your fingerprints on this.”
He’s bluffing. Melissa’s fingerprints wouldn’t be in the RCMP data bank. But the surveillance camera in front of the station recorded Melissa at the mailbox. He doesn’t want to let her in on it. The fewer people who know about the camera, the better. Or else the day will come when a trigger-happy drunk gets the idea to target it.
Melissa sinks onto the steps leading to the living room. She looks at the floor and says nothing.
He resists the temptation to squat beside her.
“What were you intending to do with this?”
Still nothing.
“We don’t have to make a big deal of this. We’ve got other things to worry about. Just tell me why you did it. Revenge on whom?”
“Revenge on whoever cut the dog’s head off,” she mutters.
He’s startled.
“But you don’t even know that the person used a scalpel.”
No answer.
“Where did you get it?”
Then it hits him. Melissa’s mother works in the hospital. As a cleaning woman.
“It was your mother’s idea, right? She thought it up. Because she was furious that we’d put Dennis in a cell. She wanted to mislead us—intending it as revenge on the police. And you carried it out.”
She doesn’t contradict him. Keeps her head lowered.
“Didn’t you give a damn that you might have steered suspicion to an innocent person with this scalpel?”
Fred puts the evidence bags away. First a mother gives her son a false alibi. Then she concocts an anonymous threat. No wonder Kris Bakie wanted to live very, very far away from the Richardses. He almost made it.
Fred looks down at the hunched figure.
“We’ll let it rest,” he says, turning toward the door. “So long as there’s no more trouble from your family.”
Outside, he breathes in the cold air to get rid of the disgust he feels in his mouth.
55
“Are you sure the police haven’t made a mistake?” asks the elderly cashier behind the counter at the gas station. “Rick and Ernie, they’re no murderers.”
My team gets asked the same kind of question; still, it bugs me. The woman doesn’t annoy me, but the fact that I can’t really defend my job. The two investigations aren’t officially closed. We’re still checking on details in Rick Stout’s confession and gathering further evidence for Ernie Butt’s trial.
“We’re really working hard,” I reply. “Our primary concern is to protect the population.”
The woman looks at me as if I’ve taken her for a fool.
“I’ve known Rick since he was little; he’d never hurt anybody.”
“Apart from the fact that he let Constable Gates almost kick the bucket in the creek,” says a voice behind me. I turn around. Gerald Hynes has appeared from nowhere.
“I’ve heard that story,” the gas station owner says. “You should never go on a Ski-Doo all by yourself.”
“She wasn’t alone. Rick was with her and drove her through the ice. Then he took off and left her lying there, the rat.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Just drop it,” I say.
It’s no use trying to convince people who’d rather cling to their illusions. It would destroy their view of the world, and that’s hard to take. I think most people in Port Brendan are in shock. They act as if it’s any other day; they go ice fishing, play bingo, go to church—but life is nevertheless not the way it was before.
Gerald goes to the door.
“I’ll wait for you outside.”
“He’s a good man,” the woman says. “Melissa Richards jilted him, God knows why. That guy Bakie brought her bad luck. Now she’s all alone and has no money. She’d have done better with Gerald. Maybe he’s something for you.”
I pay for the gas. It doesn’t matter one bit what she says. What’s important is that there will be justice for the awful crimes against Lorna Taylor, Kris Bakie, and Carl Perrell.
I hurry out of the store. Gerald is waiting beside my pickup, without a hat on despite the cold.
“You’ll freeze your ears off,” I tease him.
He grins.
“You’re the expert in freezing to death.”
“I must disappoint you; I’ve never frozen anything; you saved me just in time.”
“Still a ton left to do?”
“It’s crazy. Three murders. That’s fifty kilograms of files. Heavier than all your tools put together.”
“I’d like to take you to Forteau sometime. There’s a really good restaurant in the Florian hotel.”
“Restaurant owners live dangerously.”
I’ve scarcely gotten the words out when I decide I’d like to take them back. That’s how cops speak among themselves, to relieve the pressure, but not in front of outsiders.
Gerald just nods.
“The customers live dangerously, too,” he jokes. “You never know what’s going to be put in front of you.” He looks at me. “Maybe a drink or two in the Golden Anchor would do you good. As relaxation.”
I don’t let him know that I’m not supposed to have any alcohol with my medications.
“And you. How’s work going? Got any new projects?”
“Now’s the time I normally fly off on vacation. Somewhere in the sun. Dominican Republic, Mexico, Costa Rica.”
“Or Greece.”
“Why do you say Greece?”
“The cigarettes.”
He looks at me, confused.
“The pack of Karelias in Shannon Wilkey’s bathroom. Remember?”
He laughs and exhales white clouds of breath.
“You’re a sly one, Calista, but you’re not always right. Those cigarettes were Shannon’s.”
Now I’m the one who’s confused.
“I’ve never seen her smoke . . . and never smelled cigarettes on her.”
“She sneaks them.”
Gerald puts his hands in his pockets. His throat is unprotected despite the cold.
“I think she does a lot of things in secret.”
“Is that so?”
I don’t want to comment on that. Maybe she had a cigarette after a secret rendezvous.
He smiles. “Greece. Why not? It’s said to be very beautiful. But I don’t want to go there alone.”
I can’t picture this guy on a beach, lying in the sun, without his heavy winter clothing. Though it would make an attractive image. I’d like to fly away, too. I get wistful.
“I’d like to go back to Vancouver as soon as possible, to see my family, my nieces and nephews.” It gushes out of me before I can even give it a thought.
Gerald Hynes gets the message. Calista Gates doesn’t want to settle down in Port Brendan. Not in the vicinity. Not in Labrador. Not in eastern Canada.
“You can hardly wait to get away from here,” he says. “My tough luck.”
His openness is touching. So I open up as well.
“I don’t want to leave here with a broken heart, Gerald. My heart hasn’t healed completely from the last time.”
I don’t tell him that I hope to be able to return to Vancouver very soon. Even before the three years are up. Now that I�
�ve proved that I’m fully ready for duty again. Three murders solved in two weeks, one of them three years old. Good heavens! What more do they want?
“Do you know what: we can simply practice a little, take it easy; it doesn’t have to be so bloody serious.” He grins mischievously.
Sure, why not?
“I could call it rehab.” Those words slip out, aloud.
We both grin.
“Tomorrow, happy hour in the Golden Anchor?”
“Closer to seven,” I answer, climbing inside the car, freezing. It’s not much warmer there. With numb fingers, I enter Fred’s number on my phone. He answers immediately.
“Where are you?”
“At the gas station. And you?”
“In front of Melissa Richards’s place.”
I have a present for him. Something to thank him with. He’s my bright spot in Labrador. A reliable teammate. Someone who thinks like me. We’re a good team. I couldn’t have had it any better under the circumstances.
When I handed him the SureFire Lawman recently, he said: “I could use one of these, too.”
I tracked down a great flashlight in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, and it came here by truck. It is not a SureFire Lawman: this one is supposed to be even better. I’d like to see his face when he unwraps it.
“Wait for me there, Fred. I’ll be with you in five minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
He promises her.
He waits for her. Of course he waits for her.
It’s a pleasure and scary at the same time.
Epilogue
Scott Dyson dips his favorite biscuit in his tea. The small pleasures of the day. He hums an old sea chanty as he chews it. His mother’s making a soup of turkey necks. She’s cutting up onions, carrots, turnips.
She’s just as satisfied with the way events have turned out as he is.
“I told that RCMP lady that Ernie’s mother took off. That she simply abandoned Ernie. That he was adopted. He always thought he did better than everybody else. And here he is, a murderer! Not surprised. He thinks he can have any woman he wants, and if one of them says no, he kills her.”
CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller. (Detective Calista Gates 1) Page 37
