Kill Her Twice

by G A Pickstock

  Dan shook his head. “I knew something didn’t add up. Just so you know, she tells a different tale. Don’t go home. You can crash at my place, or better yet, go to your mum and dad’s for the night. I’ll try to get her to drop it. Just be available if I have to find you tomorrow. Now drink up and get out of here. Oh, and by the way, we haven’t seen each other tonight. Got it?”

  “Yeah! Got it. I’ll stay at mum and dad’s tonight.”

  * * *

  Located on the south side of the Clarksville River, only a quarter-mile from the town limits, the driveway leading to Dan’s uncle’s hobby farm was almost as long. As he pulled up to the chalet-styled house, he looked in vain for Mark’s car. “Shit! Tell me he didn’t come home last night.” He put the cruiser in park and walked to the front door. Mark’s mom opened it before he could knock.

  “Danny, it’s good to see you, how long has it been? My goodness, it’s been ages, come inside. Uncle Herb is in the family room, I’ll make some coffee.” She ushered him through the house to the back.

  “Thanks, Aunt Penny, but I’m looking for Mark. He told me he was going to crash here last night. His car’s not here, though. I really need to see him.”

  “He’s here Danny, in the back with Herb. I guess there was a bit of trouble with Kallita last night.”

  “You might say that.” Relieved, Dan followed his aunt into the family room.

  Huge A-frame windows filled the wall of the family room. Towering over a massive deck, the two-storey high windows offered a vista of the Clarksville River that stretched for over a mile to the west. Herb and Mark were outside on the deck, talking. The two men turned as he stepped through the patio doors, interrupting their conversation.

  “Hey Dan, I figured you’d show up today.” Mark put his coffee cup down on the top rail of the deck. “I guess you couldn’t talk her out of it. Huh?”

  Dan shook his head. “Sorry, no, she’s a piece of work. I told her to meet me at two o’clock. She was there at eight this morning. She never gave me a chance. I hate to do this, but I’ve got no choice. Mark, I gotta take you in. She swore out a complaint, and there’s a warrant out on you.”

  “You’re arresting him?” Herb was incredulous. Turning to his son he said, “I told you not to marry her.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I knew this would end badly.”

  Dan took Mark by the arm. “Listen, don’t worry, Uncle Herb. He’ll be alright. He’ll see the judge by five, and he’ll probably be O R’d.”

  Herb looked bewildered. “O R’d, what’s that?”

  “Released on his own recognizance.” Dan tried to reassure his uncle. “Unless she drops the complaint, Mark will have to answer the charges in court, but that’ll be months from now, maybe even a year or more. A lot can happen in that time. I don’t see it getting that far, really.”

  “Oh?” Mark piped up. “What makes you say that?”

  “I’m no lawyer, but I’ve been through this before. Unless Kallita can absolutely prove abuse or make the judge believe you are a threat, then the judge will probably issue a peace bond to both of you. Before you ask, a peace bond means that neither of you can come with a certain distance of each other. Oh, and one more thing. You’ll have to give up your guns.”

  “My guns! Hell no! They’re about the only things I have that she doesn’t have her name on. Everything else is in her name. The apartment, the cars—Christ, everything.”

  “We can cross that bridge when we get to it. My guess is, you’ll be ordered to surrender them. Do you need to get anything from inside?”

  “No, let’s just get this over with. Damn, I hate that bitch.”

  Dan walked Mark around the house to the waiting cruiser. His partner stood beside the vehicle with the rear door open. As they approached, she withdrew a set of handcuffs. Mark arched his eyebrows and shot a look at his cousin; he didn’t want his mom to see him placed in cuffs. Sensing Mark’s concern, Dan shook his head at his partner.

  “You can put them away, we won’t need them.”

  * * *

  He couldn’t afford to have this dragged up again. He tossed the purse into the wastebasket, walked it out to the dumpster in the parking lot and emptied the trash can. “You’ve been gone over twenty-five years, and if I have anything to say about it, you’re going to stay gone.”

  Chapter 8

  More than a little miffed at the abject dismissal by Staff Sergeant Clifford, Emily fumed all the way home. Maybe he didn’t care about that purse, but she did. She would figure a way to find Kallita and at least tell her where it was. Colm wanted to help her. She could see that. She also sensed that his interest might not be purely professional. Smiling at the thought as she pulled into her parking space, she considered calling him at the detachment. After all, he said he would keep in touch. She pulled her phone from her purse and dialled the detachment number.

  * * *

  Colm couldn’t understand Clifford’s over-the-top reaction to a lost purse. A reprimand was not in order. A lost purse was insignificant, and Colm would have made it go away. He was more interested in Emily, and if helping her helped him get to know her, then all the better. Now, the detective in him screamed at him to dig into this further. There had to be more to this. Who was Kallita Robbins-Prewitt? What happened to her, and why was her purse found after all these years? More importantly, what was it about all this that had put Sgt. Dan Clifford in a snit?

  He had to find out. He entered his password into the Canadian Police Information Centre - CPIC - and searched for Kallita Prewitt. An hour later, all he had was profound sense that there was a lot more to this purse than people wanted to admit. His most nagging question was, why would Dan be so adamant about dropping the subject? His name was all over the information he had found. He certainly knew more than he was letting on. He hit print, and the behemoth in the corner cranked to life, spitting out page after page. He had the next few days off. What he did on his own time was his business. Retrieving the documents, he grabbed his jacket and slipped out the back door, armed with his reason to see Emily again.

  Colm opened the driver’s door and placed his paperwork on the passenger seat. An empty MacDonald’s bag sat on the floor. He chastised himself as he gathered the trashy containers and carried them to the trash bin. His breath quickened as he spied a piece of black leather buried under a stack of papers. He moved the paper, revealing Kallita’s purse. A knot formed in his stomach as he realized that Clifford might have more than a managerial interest in this purse. For some reason, he wanted this purse to go away. “What in God’s name is this doing here?”

  “What’s what doing where?” Colm hadn’t seen Jen approach him. He dropped the purse back inside the bin as he turned to see Jen standing behind him.

  “Jaysus, girl! Don’t be sneaking up on a man like that. You like to give me a fright.”

  “You’ve got a phone call on line three; I think it’s that girl that was in earlier.” Jen tried to see in the bin behind him. “What’s so interesting in there?”

  “Oh, nothin’, I was just tossing some rubbish from my car. The girl from earlier, eh? What does she want now?”

  “I don’t know, maybe you should talk to her.”

  Colm dropped the lid to the bin and ushered Jen back toward the building. He walked into his office, picked up the phone and pushed the button next to the flashing red light. Jen lingered at his door.

  “D.S. O’Byrne speaking. Yes—I remember—I see—Well, I may be able to stop by in an hour or so, would that work for you?” He waved at Jen to leave him alone. She flashed him a knowing smile and turned away. “Yes, I’ll see you shortly.” He hung up the phone and headed out to the parking lot. He snatched the purse out of the bin and stowed it away in his car. The last thing he needed was Clifford finding out that he had retrieved it.

  * * *

  “Jen, what are you looking at?”

  Jen turned to see Sergeant Clifford standing behind her.

  “Just watching Colm lea
ve. He’s off for the next three days, but I think he took some work home with him. He just had a call from that girl that he saw earlier. Funny, though, he grabbed something out of the dumpster and took it with him. What would he want out of the garbage, Sarge?” She gave him an inquisitive look and walked back to her desk.

  Clifford waited for her to get out of sight, then made for the dumpster. His chest tightened as he lifted the lid. A piercing chill attacked the base of his neck. Everything in his stomach seemed to move into his bowels, churning for release.

  “Fuck! It’s gone! That sonofabitch isn’t going to let this drop.” He slammed the lid shut. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

  Chapter 9

  Even the compact Mustang dwarfed the Mini Cooper. It seemed huge compared to the spirited British motor. Emily chuckled to see Colm’s imposing frame emerge from the driver’s seat. It looked like he had climbed out of a go-cart. He grinned back at her as he walked up the pathway to her front step.

  “Don’t laugh, it’s fast and fun to drive, and I can run it for a month on one tank of petrol.” His face beamed with delight at seeing her again. She was still wearing the navy blue outfit from earlier in the day. “I’ve some information here. If you don’t mind, I think we should talk inside.”

  The townhouse-style condos were all attached, and some shared the same set of front steps. Some of Emily’s neighbours were outside, and his arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  Emily gave a glance up and down the row of condos and nodded her agreement. Holding the door for him, she ushered Colm into her living room. A heavy oak coffee table sat surrounded by a large crimson sofa and matching love-seat. A matching reclining armchair completed the furniture suite. She had a large screen TV mounted on the wall across from the recliner. Emily offered him a seat on the large sofa.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Detective?”

  “No, no thanks, and please, call me Colm. Detective sounds so official, and I’m not officially here.”

  “I don’t understand.” Emily gave him a puzzled look as she sat in the recliner.

  “I have three days off. So, in fact, you could say I’m looking into this on my own time. There’s nothing official about any of this.”

  “I see, but where does that leave us, and why did you bring the purse with you? Shouldn’t that be in the lost and found or something?”

  He thought better of telling her where he found the purse. “Ahh! Aye, you’re right, lass, but there you go, you see, there’s a bigger mystery here, and I’m betting that if we dig at it, we might find out what it is. I shouldn’t do this, but from what you told me about this Kallita woman, nobody liked her. From the looks of these papers, there’s a large file on her. I printed what I could, and if we go through them, maybe we can come up with some theories.” Colm pulled out a ream paper from a file folder and spread them on the coffee table.

  “Is it OK for me to look at these?” Emily sifted through the stack of papers. “Aren’t these confidential?”

  “Technically, I suppose they are, but this case is so old that I doubt if anyone will really care. Sergeant Clifford doesn’t think it merits any time spent on it at all. I’m under orders to leave it be. That’s why I’m doing this on my own time. I think there might be something in here that will help us find out what happened to this woman.”

  Colm picked up a stack of paper and handed it to Emily. “Look through these and see if you can find anything that stands out. I’ll go through the interviews.”

  Emily thumbed through the paperwork, quickly scanning each document. Most of them were simple reports accounting for the time spent by constables searching for Kallita. The initial report came from Roy Prewitt when he reported his wife as missing. She hadn’t returned home, and he was concerned that he hadn’t heard from her. He’d enquired as to whether there had been any accidents reported that evening. It wasn’t until the next day that he officially declared her as missing. Constable Dan Clifford’s name kept popping up in many of the reports, however, and Emily began to wonder why he had taken such a negative stand upon learning of the existence of the forlorn handbag.

  “This is interesting.” She looked up from the paper she was holding. “Constable—er that is—Sergeant Clifford actually found her car a couple of days after she disappeared. It says here that a 1989 Buick LeSabre registered to Kallita Robbins-Prewitt was discovered buried in snow, in a ditch about ten kilometres south of here. They found it among some trees, not easily seen from the road. The airbag had deployed, and there was blood all over the interior. The car was towed to the impound, and a forensic team was called in from Toronto. I don’t see their report here. Do you have it?”

  Colm flipped through his papers. “Aye, here it is.” Scanning the document, his eyes widened as he read. “This is interesting. DNA tests were inconclusive. Judging by the location and the amount, the forensic team surmised that the victim suffered a head injury of some kind and that by the condition of the car, they conclude it was most likely a result of the car crashing into the trees. Oh! This is strange. The seat cushions were wet. They initially thought it was from snow melting on the seats, but analysis showed traces of mercury and fecal matter. They concluded that the water must have come from a creek or possibly a river.” Colm rubbed his left temple to alleviate an itch. “It says here that the police carried out an extensive search of the area where the car was found. They had over fifty volunteers scouring the fields and woods around the crash site. They called it off after three days because of bad weather.”

  “Wait a sec. I think I saw something.” Emily shuffled through the papers in her lap. “Yes, here, it says that Clifford searched all the hospitals in the area for a woman fitting Kallita’s description. He came up empty. No one matching her description had been admitted or treated for the type of injuries that she might have sustained. He visited every hospital in a hundred-kilometre radius of Clarksville. No sign of her. Where the hell did she get to?” Emily rubbed her eyes. “God! How long have we been at this?” She stretched her arms in front, arching her back and twisting her neck to remove the kinks.

  Colm couldn’t avert his gaze. Her breasts strained at her blouse, almost popping the buttons open as she arched backward. He couldn’t remember a time when a woman had had such a strong effect on him. She moved to sit beside him as they studied the paperwork in more detail. He felt the warmth of her nearness, and her scent intoxicated his senses, distracting his attention. He needed to be careful here; after all, it was early days, and as much as he wanted to get to know Emily, he also knew he had to be professional even though he was on his own time. He needed to get his mind back on the business at hand.

  “Here look at this,” Emily picked up an incident report with Kallita’s name on it. “The name on this report is Kallita Taylor. What the—oh, I think I see. She was married before. Roy must be her second husband. Look who the constable was on this one.”

  Colm leaned in to see the report. “Jaysus! Dan Clifford. Mother Mary, he’s all over this Kallita woman. What’s the date on that report?”

  “April 3rd, 1983.” Emily kept reading. “Clifford responded to a 911 call, and according to this, he wound up arresting Mark Taylor the next day. Oh, and look! Dan Clifford is listed as Mark’s cousin. Is that kosher? Wouldn’t it be a conflict of sorts?

  “Well now, it could be, but a policeman on duty doesn’t get to pick and choose his assignments. Police go where they’re told when they’re told. He likely had no choice in the matter. Nevertheless, Dan Clifford knew her for a long time, it seems. What happened after the arrest?”

  “It doesn’t say. Mark was released on a promise to appear in court, and the report ends there. It doesn’t say what happened.”

  “Well, now, I can find out from the court records not that I think it matters because it happened years before Kallita went missing. What we should do is look this Mark Taylor up and have a chat. I’ll have to go back into the detachment to use the computer.” Colm stood to stretc
h his legs, he could only sit for so long, and he was beginning to stiffen up.

  “You know I could murder a pint—erm a beer—that is if you have one?”

  “Sure!” Emily stood to get them a drink. “Would you like something to eat? It’s getting late, and I’m starving.”

  Colm checked his watch, “Jaysus! Have we been at it this long? It’s well past nine, maybe I should go?”

  “No way! We have work to do yet.” She didn’t want him to leave yet. There was something about this man that made her feel safe. She trusted him, and he smelt so good. Not fruity, like some men she’d met, and not musky either. She really liked the heat he gave off when they were close. More than once, she caught herself staring at him while he searched through the documents. He had strong hands, but ever so gentle on the odd occasion when their hands touched. She also liked that he didn’t talk down to her. If anything, he deferred to her when they discussed the various finds within the documents. He valued her opinion, and that made her feel good.

  “Bottle or glass?” Emily waved a beer mug at him.

  “Oh, bottle for me, no need to make dishes.”

  “Me too! My dad always uses a glass, but I think it makes the beer go flat faster. Do you like pizza or chicken?”

  “Fish ’n Chips actually, but I haven’t had a decent meal of fish ‘n chips since I left Ireland.”

  “Ah, you haven’t tried Mr. Chips. Do you like halibut? It’s the best. I’ll order some and then maybe we can get back to work.” Emily picked up the phone and ordered the food.

  They devoured their dinner with gusto and Emily smiled as Colm wiped his mouth with his napkin. She didn’t have to ask, she could see from the way he attacked his meal that he loved it.