by Warren Court
Armour sifted through papers. He got the impression that this was the complete case file for the Truscott murder. It looked original, not photocopies or photostats. Armour thought it was highly unusual that a detective, even a seasoned and honoured one like Burke, could take something like this home. On almost every page was a stamp, Property of OPP Norfolk County; Port Dover Detachment. Not to be removed. Yet here it was – removed. Removed and hidden away in a crawl space.
Armour had read his share of detective mysteries, police procedurals Melanie called them. He was reading one now that Melanie had bought him a while back. It was a classic noir thriller set in Cuba in the 1940s. Armour thought that Melanie must have seen the vintage pair of wingtip shoes on the cover and thought it was set in Armour’s preferred period; the roaring twenties. He didn’t begrudge her the small mistake and was actually getting into the story. He had the book out in the car in case he had to wait for a while and wanted something to read. And he did like the picture of the shoes.
From reading detective fiction Armour knew that at least in the fiction world, cops who worked murder cases always had that one case they couldn’t shake, the one that got away. The one that haunted them into retirement. Apparently, art imitated real life. But Detective Burke had solved this one, he had got his man – boy at the time. Why take the case files home?
Then Armour remembered the scathing words of Dale Macintyre. How the detective had come out of the interrogation back rooms pleased as punch, piece of paper in his hand. How he had beaten the young Macintyre boy down and forced him to confess. All hearsay of course, as even Dale Macintyre had said he had not been allowed to see the boy. Maybe Burke harboured some guilt about this case, how he had treated the boy. Then why go on television after Macintyre was released and still stick to his guns and say that Kevin Macintyre was the killer?
Armour looked at dates on some of the documents which were all dated around the time of death of the Truscott girl. There were witness reports that seemed vague, a bus driver had seen the girl alone on the road two hours before the supposed time of the murder. No mention of Kevin Macintyre or anyone else being around her. There were character reports from Macintyre’s boyhood friends and teachers.
And then he found it; a witness report. The witness report. A twelve-year-old boy had seen a car on the Scotch Line road about half an hour before the police say the Macintyre boy pounced on poor little Sheila Truscott. There was more, the car had come so close to the boy, who was fishing down in a ditch, that he saw a yellow and black sticker on the window, triangle shape with a man on it.
The car was brown in colour, small, two doors, Burke had written. Armour assumed it was the man’s writing, on that report. Checked EFS, driver of brown Toyota located. Has solid alibi.
What was EFS? Armour wondered. Driver has solid alibi must mean that whatever or wherever this EFS is that Burke went there, found a car that matched that description the witness had given and cleared the driver. So much for the new lead.
He skimmed through the rest of the documents finding little of interest. He finally opened a file folder that had black and white photos, all angles of the Scotch Line road. One showed Cathy’s farm house in the distance. Strange there was no report of a witness statement from anyone in that house. Maybe it had been vacant at the time. Cathy hadn’t known anything about the murder so must have moved in afterwards.
Armour continued to flip through the photos and then almost lost control of the file folder when he got to a close up black and white photo of the young girl, her face stricken in terror. Her blouse tied tight around her neck, her small breasts exposed, bruising clearly visible, her skirt hiked up. Armour flipped the folder closed fast just as widow Burke came in.
“Find what you were looking for?”
“Uh yes I did,” Armour said.
He took his notebook out and wrote a couple of lines about that one witness report, the brown car, yellow and black sticker on the window. Even though the lead had apparently turned up nothing, he wanted to come away from looking at the files with something to show for his effort. He didn’t remember the boy’s name, the one fishing in the ditch but the widow Burke was hovering over him and that photo of the dead girl was on top of the file. He didn’t want to shock her.
“Can I ask you why your husband brought this file home?” Armour said.
“Oh, I don’t know. I do know that he said it wasn’t for me to look at, I wouldn’t like it. But now he’s gone. I would never get in that old crawl space at my age. Anything interesting in there?”
“No just a lot of police reports. You know how much paperwork they have to do. Especially a case like this.”
“Well if you don’t mind putting it back, I would appreciate it.”
“Certainly.”
11
Armour had let the day get away from him and it was pitch black now, a dark night, no moon. Not the best conditions to drive an almost hundred-year-old car on a road with an 80-kilometre speed limit. The lights on the Model T, though legal, were weak at night. He was just asking for trouble. Armour pulled the cash out of his pocket to find it was insufficient for another motel room.
He drove around Port Dover for an hour looking for a place to bunk out when he came upon a high school.
It was lit up in the front with several spotlights, probably to deter vandals. He drove into the parking lot and around to the back of the school lit by a single light above a rear door. There was a fenced in area with cars both inside and outside of it. Armour could tell they were wrecks, probably just rollers for the auto shop. He drove over and put his car in between two old junkers; one a late eighties Ford 5.0 Mustang, its paintwork peeled off and primed over in greys and black. The other one was a black pickup truck that shielded Armour’s car nicely from prying eyes driving by. He did not want to get arrested for vagrancy or trespassing. Phoning Melanie to come bail him out of jail was not a call he wanted to make, not for something as silly as trespassing.
There was just enough light from over the door for Armour to review his notes. He was still puzzled about those files being in the dead detective’s home. Why do that? Did he believe there was another suspect? Armour doubted that, remembering what Dale Macintyre said and what the widow Burke confirmed, that the late detective was convinced he had gotten his man at the time. He was defending his actions back then. Then why take the notes? Maybe what the Macintyres said was correct – he had coerced, maybe even beaten a confession out of the boy. Maybe by taking the files he was hiding his tracks.
Armour knew that going back to the OPP detachment and requesting to see the files, maybe there were more, was a dead end. They wouldn’t show them to him anyway. And if he told them about Burke having the files at his home, they’d go and take them back. Then he wouldn’t have access to them. Right or wrong, having those files in an accessible place was going to come in handy, he just knew it. But the widow was selling her house. Those files might be tossed out or he might lose track of her.
Armour closed his notebook. There wasn’t really a lot there to review. More unanswered questions than answered ones. He pulled the detective novel out of the glove box and for half an hour was sucked into a world of Cuba at war.
Armour woke up with a start and clutched his chest. No, it wasn’t a panic attack. He didn’t have his pills with him anyway. If he had an attack he’d just have to ride it out. He heard it again, a bang, that sounded like a shot but it was metal on metal. Another one, then a laugh and someone hissing to be quiet.
Armour sat up in his car and over the hood of the pickup truck that shielded his car from view he saw a group of people huddled around the rear door of the school. They looked like teenagers. They were wearing double denim, jeans and jean jackets and two of them had hair down past their shoulders, though their squared-up bodies told him they were male.
There was a crack and the door was opened and in they went. Armour roused himself and got out of his car, approaching the door slowly. Then he heard la
ughter coming from inside the school and the sound of breaking glass. He poked his head around the door to see the group of three teenagers disappear around a corner. A sprinkling of glass could be see littering the floor, glittering in the moonlight coming in through the open door. Armour entered the school.
He heard more laughter and a door close. Armour stopped when his feet reached the broken glass. He should go on, get those miscreants out of here before they cause more damage. On the wall was a long glass case and he could see the jagged edges where the boys had broken it.
The case stretched along the wall for twenty feet. He saw photos, some of girls and boys others of faculty, team photos. Some new, Melanie’s modern age, others much older. He could tell by the short cut satin red shorts and the fade on the photos, they had been taken with real cameras, filmed developed at labs, not those fancy new electronic devices Melanie and his friend Gim used. They were always showing him tiny photos on tiny devices. He always had to squint at them to see. They were never printed off, never to be seen again. Armour had asked what Melanie did with them.
“Post them,” she replied.
“Who to?” Armour asked.
“Not post as in mail, I put them up on Facebook. Instagram. So my friends can see.” She’d shown Armour her Facebook page where he saw photos of himself standing by his Model T. Armour remember feeling excited at seeing himself and then another sensation he couldn’t understand. One of violation. He felt that Melanie had violated him in some way posting these pics to the entire world without his approval.
“Not the world.” Melanie had said. “Just my friends.” She showed him a list of them – there were hundreds. “If you ever got on this thing I’d add you.”
Armour had thought about it but it would mean abandoning everything he had established. It was abhorrent to him. He swallowed his pride and decided to let Melanie post anything on him she wanted. She had a good head on her shoulders, she wouldn’t do anything untoward.
Armour peered at the photos in the case and saw a girl in a soccer team pose, second row. Pretty, curly hair and more than a healthy bosom. Her smile and eyes reached out to him, made a connection. He felt dizzy. Christ no, not here.
He staggered back against the wall, feeling the spell coming on. “No,” he shouted. There was a door slammed somewhere else in the school. “No!” He shook his head and leaned against the wall for support, his arms outstretched against it.
“No!” he shouted again. Last thing he wanted was to pass out here, let those boys see him. He heard running footsteps and saw them turn the corner and see him. They skidded to a stop.
“Mister, you okay?” one of them asked.
“Get out of here. Get out now.” The boys turned and crashed out an emergency exit and were gone. Armour let the spell take him and slid to the floor on top of the broken glass.
12
He woke with sharp needles piercing his cheeks. It was the glass. He heard sounds coming from the corridor. The sun had come up. He had been out for hours. He rolled up off the glass and swiped it off his face. There was no blood but his cheek was tender. He heard whistling coming from down the corridor – the janitor, no doubt. Armour took one look at the photo on the cork board, reached in through the broken glass and removed it. Then he ran out the door, his shoes making a clopping sound. He made it to his car and ducked down behind the pickup truck and peered over the roof to see the janitor, a skinny man in his fifties in jeans a grey, long sleeve shirt.
“Goddamn kids, sons of bitches. I hope you rot in hell,” he shouted. His voice echoed out over the football field behind the school. The man went back inside slamming the doors closed. Armour waited another five minutes before getting in his car and closing the door gently. Normally he would start his car with the hand crank at the front but this model had an electric starter installed and now he was grateful for it. The car turned over and he slowly backed out and then raced around the front of the school and out into the street. The photo of the soccer team girls on the bench seat was laid out beside him.
Armour parked on main street and took the photo of the soccer team with him into a diner. His finances may not stretch to a hotel room but he could splurge on the famous bacon and eggs this place reported to have. He slid into a booth at the far end of the diner and gave his order to the waitress when she came over.
After he had eaten he pulled out the photo and studied it, looking at each of the girls. Other than the dozen teenage girls there was a woman, an adult, with blonde hair and tanned skin standing at the opposite end from the engaging brunette. The coach. Armour turned the photo over to find nothing written on it. There was a plaque in the photo in front of the bottom row of girls who were sitting cross legged. It said Girls Senior Soccer 1989.
The Truscott girl was fifteen when she was abducted, grade eleven. That was in ‘91. The girl that had caught his attention couldn’t be her. He remembered the look on the Truscott girl’s face, the look of horror and death. She wasn’t here in this picture, she had been in grade nine when this picture was taken. So what had caught his eye? Why did he take it? The waitress came over and filled his coffee cup.
“Where’d you get that?” the woman asked.
“Excuse me?”
“That photo. Where’d you get that? Haven’t seen that in years.”
“Oh, I um…”
“That’s me,” she said, not interested in his answer, thankfully. What was he going to say, I stole it? She pointed at a girl with blonde hair and a mouth full of braces standing next to the coach.
“Really?” Armour said. He looked up at the waitress and then back down at the photo. He could see a slight resemblance. “I’m trying to find this girl.” He pointed at the one on the far end.
“Oh her.”
“Ruth, come on I need a refill.” one of the patrons up at the counter said.
“Calm yourself, Hank. I’ll be there in a second. Like you need one more cup of coffee.” There was laughter from the group of men Hank was sitting with.
“Those guys are in here every day, can’t get enough coffee. What a life. Or maybe they can’t get enough of me.” She laughed and Armour joined in just to keep the good spirits going. Come on answer the question he said to himself.
“Do you remember her?” Armour said.
“Yeah can’t remember her name for the life of me. Nice girl, kept to herself. Dutch name. Wait a minute.” The woman snapped her fingers. “Housen. Barbara Housen. Wow, I haven’t thought of that name in twenty years.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Something happened to her, car accident or something like that. She ran out of a car and got hit by another one coming the other way. I think she was raped, or was about to get raped. It went all through the school. The principal, I remember he talked to us in the auditorium. Told us about the dangers of getting in a stranger’s car. My friend Lucy and I used to hitch hike into town on the weekends. We’d stand on either side of highway six and whoever got a car to stop first, that’s the direction we went in. We stopped all that after Barbara was hurt.”
“What happened to her?”
“I think she wound up in a wheelchair and went away to a private school. Never saw her again.”
“Do you know this woman?” Armour pointed at the coach.
“Squires. Yeah that was her name. Miss Squires. She was great.”
“Ruth!” Hank yelled.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You should go see him,” Armour said. “Thanks for your time.”
Armour left a generous tip, more than he should considering his finances. He just wanted to get out of there before she enquired further into why he had a photo of her.
Armour came out of the diner to see a cop writing a ticket for his car. The cop looked up and Armour recognized him. It was the junior constable he had seen at the desk the other day. What did that sergeant call him? Luke?
“This your car, sir?”
“Yes, Luke, it is.” The con
stable gave Armour a funny look but didn’t recognize him.
“Sir, it’s one-hour parking only.” He tore the ticket off and handed it to Armour. “Next time use the parking lot around the corner there.”
There was a cruiser parked behind Armour’s ford and Sergeant Kenny got out of it.
“Hello again,” Armour said.
“Didn’t know this was your car.” Sergeant Kenny said and nodded at Armour’s Model T. “Makes sense though, you dressed the way you are.” I think we got off on the wrong foot.” He took the ticket out of Armour’s hand and put it in his pocket. “It’s okay, Luke, why don’t you go do a radio check.”
Luke rolled his eyes slightly at being dismissed by his sergeant again.
“He’s a good kid. New on the job, fresh out of the academy. I’m his coach officer.”
“How long does that last for?”
“Couple of weeks. He keeps looking for bank robbers every time we drive down main street.” Armour and the cop chuckled.
“What brings you out here again? We ran your plate. You live in Hamilton.” Is he testing me, Armour thought. Does he know I slept out back of the school and technically at least did the entering part of a break and entering? You’re paranoid, Armour.
“Just poking around. Trying to find out more about the Truscott case.”
Kenny nodded.
“Did you go to school here, Sergeant?”
“Yes, I did. I was lucky, getting posted to my home town. Not every copper in the OPP gets that but they were short staffed at the time and I had some pull with command. My father was on the job, twenty-five years. Worked out of headquarters in Orillia.”
“Do you remember a Barbara…” Armour pulled his notebook out, “…Barbara Housen?”
Kenny had been looking down the street at a car that had just squealed its tires. His head snapped back quickly at the name Housen.
“What do you want with her?”
“I think she’s connected to this whole Truscott murder thing. She might be a witness.” Armour had tried as hard as he could to place Barbara in that vision he was having. Was it her leg and arm he was seeing? Was he seeing it through her eyes? For some reason that didn’t seem right.
