MURDEROUS MORNING: A heart-stopping crime novel with a stunning end.

by Bernadette Calonego

  Cliff, who was waiting a few meters away, holding the hunting rifle in both hands, shuddered. Tessa threw all caution to the wind. “Maybe he wouldn’t do anything for you, but for Cindy. I’ve heard that your father gave Cindy some money to keep the boutique afloat.”

  Lionel tightened his jaw so forcefully that he trembled. “Cindy said that the money came from her father. It’s probably not the case. I’m sure Dad seduced her with his money. He always gets what he wants.”

  Lionel is still trying to excuse Cindy’s actions, Tessa thought, despite everything that’s happened. “How did Hank find out about all this . . . . about Cindy and your dad?”

  “No idea. He didn’t tell me. Maybe from Mom. Cindy and I drove out to the farm on Tuesday. I went up to the house alone, and Cindy stayed in the pickup, waiting for me. I met Hank in the clearing with a hunting rifle. A grizzly had just been nearby. We started arguing right away. He didn’t want to share the outfitter’s license with me. He had other plans, he said. You have your own company, Lionel, he said, and I’m going to do something different. I knew exactly what he was planning. He wanted to sell the license to the goddamned Indians. I said that to Dad, but he didn’t want to hear anything about it. As usual he believed Hank.”

  Now he really started confessing. I don’t want to hear it, Tessa thought. I don’t want to hear it. How could I even stand it? How could I even live with it later?

  But Lionel couldn’t stop. “I told Hank: It’s better if you move away from here. You don’t have the slightest idea how Fran spends her time. When the ranger is up at your farm while you’re away. What’s she always doing in Whatou Lake? I asked him. Does she ever tell you anything? What’s she always doing at Rob Pleeke’s? Did she explain that to you?”

  Lionel began coughing because his voice had become so hoarse.

  Tessa didn’t say anything. Fran. Hank knew all that from Fran. She told him about Cindy and Harrison. She must have found something in the boutique lounge. Maybe she had watched them having sex. Just like Glenda.

  Suddenly they heard a helicopter.

  Lionel flinched. “Are they on their way to the farm?”

  “Maybe. You can probably see the smoke from far away. Your father’s going to have to explain things.”

  “Tessa. It was me. I killed Hank.”

  “For god’s sake, Lionel!” she blurted out.

  He looked at her with glassy eyes. “He was outside in the clearing with the hunting rifle. The dogs and the children were in the house. A bear had once again been in the chicken coop that morning. As I was telling Hank about Fran’s affairs, he lost it. He said to me . . . he said: You have no idea who’s really screwing around. Ask Cindy. She’s going at it with our dad. In the boutique and in the pickup and elsewhere. You have no idea, you idiot. You just close your eyes and pretend that nothing’s happening. Just like back then with the doping. Back then, did you really believe that you would have gotten away with it?” Lionel’s voice sounded just like Hank’s voice when he imitated his brother. “It would have shown up at the Olympics, you know. Then it would have been not only your name, Lionel, that would have been in deep shit, but the whole family’s. And all that money from Dad would have been thrown out the window. Simply because you, you idiot, didn’t want to see that doping is a dead end.”

  Lionel looked at her, his face distorted with anger, an anger that he was now reliving. “That’s what Hank said. I suddenly understood who had ratted on me back then. It was Hank! He had let the Olympic Committee know. He destroyed my future.” Lionel shook his head as if he still couldn’t comprehend what Hank had done many years earlier to his sports career. “Then we went at each other . . . and suddenly I had his rifle in my hand and there was a shot and . . . and . . . he was on the ground and not moving.”

  Tears fell down his face and his voice was like that of a distraught child. “I drop the rifle and run back to Cindy. She’s still sitting in the pickup and waiting for me. I say to her: I just shot my brother. I shot Hank dead. Cindy . . . she’s shocked. Did anybody see you? she asks. Where are the children? she asks. Where’s the gun? Your fingerprints are on it, she says. She jumps out of the pickup, runs up to the house. I wait for her. Then I hear shots. And the dogs barking. A lot more shots. So many shots. And then I know. She’s killing the children. I didn’t stop her.”

  Lionel was whimpering like someone being tortured. His whole body was shaking.

  Tessa sat silently there. Now that she knew the truth, the real, awful, unbearable truth, she couldn’t feel anything more. Her head, her body, her soul refused to digest the words. There was an impenetrable wall that protected her and kept her from breaking down.

  Cindy. No, that couldn’t be.

  Cindy would never kill children. There was nothing she wanted more than to have her own children. She couldn’t even kill a dog. She loved dogs.

  But then another picture of Cindy appeared in front of her eyes. Cindy with the pistol.

  Cindy has completely lost it. She would have made short shrift of you.

  Tessa screamed against his whimpering. “Did you tell her . . . Lionel, listen to me! Did you ever tell Cindy that you knew about her and your father?”

  “No,” he said, depleted. “No, I didn’t want to believe it. I thought that Hank just wanted to make a fool of me. Until Mom showed me the photos today. She . . .”

  Tessa couldn't understand the rest of what he said because she heard an ear-splitting noise. Shocked, Cliff was waving around his gun and yelling something to them. She tried to understand his gestures and sounds.

  It was too late.

  A truck loaded with logs appeared out of nowhere and ran into Cliff’s pickup, which had half blocked the road.

  Tessa fell into a dark well.

  44

  Later Tessa could remember two things clearly: Ron Halprin, whose hand she held onto as she lay on the stretcher and who had heard her repeatedly naming Lionel and Cindy. “I know,” he confirmed, as he pressed her hand gently. And she remembered the noise of the helicopter and how she recalled that only a short time before, Kratz Hilder had been transported by the same helicopter.

  She was X-rayed and checked over in the hospital at Whatou Lake. With the help of strong painkillers, she slept until the next morning. She woke up in a room with two beds, but she was the only patient. When she asked, the nurse on duty told her that Lionel and Cliff were in the hospital, too. Cliff because of a broken arm, Lionel had suffered serious, but not life-threatening, injuries. The logging truck driver had already been flown to Vancouver. The nurse didn’t have any further details about his condition.

  Dr. Rhonda Kellermann, the friendly head doctor, later came in and explained: “It looks as if you got away with bruising and abrasions and a concussion. Thankfully a helicopter was nearby.” She asked Tessa whether, after having a nice breakfast and a shower, she felt well enough to undergo questioning by the police.

  Tessa nodded, although she felt a little sick. She rubbed her eyes, which hurt because of the bright lights. “Did anybody tell my parents that I’m here?”

  “Yes, of course. We won’t keep you here for long; we’re waiting for the result of one more test. If it is good, we can let you go home. The concussion will cure itself. These days we don’t order strict bed rest any longer.” The doctor’s thoughtful gaze lingered on Tessa. “But you should take a rest whenever you can to help your brain recover.”

  The brain. Take a rest. Get better.

  Tessa didn’t have any illusions. The horror was not over by a long shot.

  “We also silenced your cell phone,” the doctor continued. “It caused too much of a disturbance. If you agree, I can give you a painkiller intravenously that will calm you down but won’t make your brain foggy.”

  Just after ten, Ron Halprin came by, accompanied by a constable. His face looked more determined, his eyes less tired; he seemed full of energy. Tessa understood: he had made a breakthrough in a very difficult case. Halprin pulled his c
hair up to her bed. She put her hand in his before he began to talk.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I don't know, I . . . it was a tremendous shock, and in some ways I still can’t believe it.” She looked out the window in order to remember better. “So it’s true that Lionel and Cindy . . .” She stopped; it sounded so unreal. And so terrible.

  “We have Lionel Miller’s confession. We had already secretly wiretapped his car. When he was telling you everything, we were also listening in. But we still have a lot of work to do.”

  “So he was under suspicion the entire time?”

  “Members of the family and close relatives are almost always under suspicion. We had checked out who could have a motive.” He took his notepad and pen out of his vest pocket and leaned forward. He must have worked all night; he was still wearing his shirt from the day before. “Explain to me again exactly what happened on the farm yesterday.”

  She told him everything in detail. She was surprised how calmly she could do that. As if she hadn’t been part of it at all. They must have given her a very strong sedative. “Where are Harrison and Cindy?” she asked at the end. “What happened to them?”

  “They are in custody. Our people were already in the area. We knew that both of them were on the way to the farm.”

  “Were they being shadowed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you also shadowing me?”

  “We had been informed that you and Kratz Hilder had flown to Beaver Lake. His wife told us you were going to the south side of the lake, which we found odd. We assumed that you wanted to get to the farm. The south side would have been a strange choice.”

  “He wanted to drop me off there and not pick me up again because he hates me.”

  “We’ll have to talk about that, but later. Where’s Fran’s camera now?”

  “In my backpack. Take a look in the closet and see if it’s there.” The other RCMP officer got up and pulled out her backpack. He turned on the camera and looked through the pictures with Halprin.

  The sergeant returned to his questioning. “What did you make of the pictures, Tessa?”

  “I think that Fran was in Cindy’s boutique and slept in the lounge that night. I think she did that several times. She didn’t want to sleep at Dana’s house or at my parents’ house, because . . . she was going through a deep personal crisis. It’s pretty easy to get into the boutique since Cindy leaves the key to the back door in the flowerpot. I saw her do that when I bought some blouses from her the day before yesterday. Fran must have also watched Cindy doing it. Or somebody told her about it.”

  Halprin looked at her, composed. She stared at the wall so that she didn’t get distracted. “Cindy denied that Fran had ever been in her boutique, but Fran had done some shopping there. Cat collars. She also had a free sample from Cindy, an essential oil. Or . . .” She stopped talking.

  Both policemen looked expectantly at her. “Or Fran stole those things when she was there during the night. That seems more likely to me.” She thought it over and then continued: “Fran must have seen or heard Cindy and Harrison in the boutique together. Maybe she hid herself somewhere, until the two of them . . . were done and had left. She had told Hank about it. Or Hank had heard it from his mother. That’s also possible. Hank told Lionel about it, since he felt provoked by his brother.”

  She looked at Halprin, and a new, horrible thought crossed her mind. “You’ve absolutely got to search through Cindy’s boutique, Ron!”

  “We already did that yesterday. And we searched Cindy’s car, too.” He tapped with his pen on his writing pad.

  Tessa hid her face in her hands. “Did they also kill Fran? Oh, my God!”

  Halprin’s voice came through to her as if from far away. “We’re still not sure. We still have to clear up a number of matters.”

  “But somebody dragged her to Bob Barker’s shed.”

  “We found traces in Cindy’s car.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “We’ll have to question Cindy about this to find out more. Please treat this information as confidential. We depend on your discretion.”

  Tessa nodded and looked at her arm, the bandages and the dressings. “Cindy is . . . I just can’t believe that . . . I didn’t particularly like her, but she . . . had a heart for children and animals. I know she looked after a kindergarten group at the United Church. And . . . she adopted a dog that somebody wanted to put to sleep. He suffers from diabetes and she has to give it an insulin shot every day. I’m also an animal lover, but I don’t know whether I would be willing to take up that responsibility. And the vet must cost a fortune.”

  Halprin interrupted. “She gives the dog insulin shots?”

  “Yes. Daily.”

  “Since when has she been doing that?”

  “It’s got to be at least three years. Fran showed her how you do it. Fran was almost a trained nurse.”

  The officers exchanged a meaningful look. Halprin’s colleague left the room while the sergeant took notes.

  Tessa was talking more to herself than to him: “Why can’t we protect children better? Why didn’t I notice what was going on here? What was going to happen?”

  Halprin crossed his arms. “I know what you mean, Tessa. I experience that in my profession over and over. We see the tragedies coming at us, but we can’t do anything to stop them. We can’t arrest somebody beforehand. Not as long as no crime has been committed. Sometimes it’s hard to swallow.” He glanced briefly at his notebook before he once again looked her in the eye.

  “We both have a difficult profession that drives us to the limits, because we see despicable and incomprehensible things. All we can do is to try our best every day and stop worse things from happening. I’m not going to give up—and I don’t think you are, either.”

  She felt that something undefined had just shifted inside her. “I just wonder . . . at what point is it all too much for me?”

  Lost in his thoughts, Halprin scribbled on his notepad. Then he looked up. “Sometimes you just have to go off fishing. Geographical distance. That does wonders for me. Go off anywhere, somewhere far away. And sometimes let the colleagues do the work. The key is a good team. Gather good people around you. In your personal life and at work. Give everyone enough room and time to do good.”

  For a couple of seconds, neither of them spoke.

  Tessa felt vulnerable. “Why? At least I want to know why they did it.”

  “Lionel Miller seems to be cooperating. Cindy and Harrison Miller have gotten lawyers. Both are in jail. Lionel is being treated here in the hospital. At the moment that’s all I can tell you.” He leaned back and stretched his legs. “The media know about the arrests. We can’t stop Harrison Miller from loudly declaring his innocence to the journalists and raging against the police.”

  “And what about Cliff Bight?”

  “Cliff talked to us.”

  “He gave Cindy and Lionel false alibis. They weren’t at the cabin that morning. He already had left the cabin around noon and was at the scrapyard at Whatou Lake just before three.”

  Halprin nodded. “He admitted that to us.”

  The constable came back into the room. “Excuse me, sergeant, they’re asking for you. We have to go back immediately.”

  Halpin got right up. “We’ll continue this conversation later, Tessa.” He nodded at her quickly and they both left.

  She was sitting there, alone again, a never-ending train of thoughts pulsing through her head, releasing painful and overwhelming emotions.

  In the end, she was simply exhausted.

  And then it occurred to her that she hadn’t asked Halprin what had happened to the grizzly. The grizzly that had saved her from Cindy’s pistol.

  45

  Tessa couldn’t deal with the events alone; she needed help. She needed a sharp analysis in order to get control of the emotional avalanche that was threatening to bury her. She needed Boyd Shenkar. She dragged herself over to the c
loset and took out her cell phone. A flood of missed calls and emails showed up when she turned it on, but she ignored them all and called Boyd’s number in Vancouver.

  “Finally. I’ve been trying to reach you the whole time,” her business partner said. His voice was like a life preserver.

  “The personnel in the hospital silenced my cell phone because it disturbed them,” she answered.

  “Where are you now?”

  “Still in the hospital in Whatou Lake.”

  “For god’s sake, Tessa, what’s going on? Should I come and see you?”

  “No, just stay in the office, no need for another person to be away. I have only a few scrapes and a concussion. They’re letting me out today.”

  “Can I do anything for you from here?”

  “Are you free for the next hour?”

  There was a short pause at the other end. “Good, I’ll tell them out front.” After a few seconds he was back. “Okay, what’s going on?”

  She let the words stream out, first haltingly, sometimes with tears, and then getting control again and looking for professional objectivity. Boyd listened to her patiently, concentrated on the flood of information. She could picture him sitting at his desk as he jotted down words on a writing pad, already analyzing them while writing. She had often done the same thing for him when he took on a case. She used to suggest a possible scenario of what might have happened in a particular crime, ponder motives and draw up a psychological profile of the suspect. They had always been a sounding board for each other, played the devil’s advocate for each other. She couldn’t have imagined a better business partner. Her monologue ended with the words “Now it’s your turn. What could have possibly driven Lionel and Cindy to commit such a . . . such an unimaginably awful crime?”