The Suspect

by L. R. Wright

  But he couldn’t do it during the day, and he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to do it that night, and the next night was Sunday, which although he was not religious was still not appropriate. He would do it on Monday.

  Yet he couldn’t stand the thought of those shell casings sitting in his house one more second. He might be unrepentant about his act, but he wasn’t proud of it, and he didn’t want to be reminded of it every time he went through his own living room.

  He went inside to fetch them. He would bury them in his garden until Monday night. It wouldn’t hurt the zucchini to be uprooted for a while. Not if he made sure to water it as soon as he planted it again.

  But when he got into his kitchen, his life in its entirety was waiting for him, and it toppled upon him—he put up his hands to ward it off, and stumbled to his leather chair to hide and huddle there, but it swept implacably upon him, his entire life. It was a lie, of course, that Carlyle was the only blight upon it; a lie that Carlyle was his only guilt. With his face in his hands he sat, rocking himself back and forth under the pain that stretched back over so many years. All his attempts to make things right had failed; worse, they had brought death, and more death, and finally, this death, Carlyle’s, and all that was left for him now was his own.

  George sat for a long time. When he finally lifted his head, his face was dry again. Had he misjudged his duty, throughout his life? Or had he simply been unequal to it?

  It was midafternoon when he finally dragged himself from his chair and went to get the shell casings.

  13

  “WE SHOULD QUESTION the bird,” said Freddie Gainer that same morning as he peered into the cage. “Parrots talk. Could be he saw something.”

  “Good idea,” said Sokolowski. “Go ahead, Freddie. You want to take him into an interview room, or what?”

  “He didn’t see anything,” said Isabella, over the clackety-clack of her typewriter. She worked Saturday mornings and took Wednesday afternoons off. She said it suited her. She took karate lessons in Gibsons on Wednesday afternoons.

  “How do you know?” said Freddie.

  “He’d be upset. Disturbed. Something. He’s a feeling creature.”

  The parrot sat silently on his perch. Alberg was over at the duty corporal’s counter, getting the name and address of the man who’d said he’d seen George Wilcox enter Burke’s front yard at twelve thirty. He glanced at the bird uneasily. He didn’t like the way it cocked its head at him, staring at him through eyes like tiny black marbles.

  “Does it ever say anything interesting?” said Gainer.

  “I think it’s very interesting that he says anything at all,” said Isabella. She whipped a sheet of paper from her machine and inserted a clean one. “But I admit, his vocabulary is limited.”

  The parrot gave a sudden squawk. It was a loud, shrill sound.

  “There,” said Isabella proudly.

  “There what?” said Sokolowski. “What did it say?”

  “He said ‘Tom.’ I think that must be his name.”

  “Sid,” said Alberg. “If you can drag yourself away from that damn bird for a minute…” He went down the hall to his office.

  The parrot was Isabella’s latest self-assumed responsibility. When Gainer had delivered it to the detachment office Tuesday afternoon, Isabella had snatched the cage from his hand and plunked it on her desk. She then picked up her purse and hurried off to the pet supply store, where she had a conference with the owner and purchased from him sufficient quantities of food and vitamin supplements to last several weeks.

  Next, in Alberg’s absence, she whisked away his coffee table and spread upon it a white cloth she had picked up from her house. She put the table next to her desk, and the cage on the white cloth.

  Alberg retrieved his coffee table that evening, leaving the cage on the floor. The parrot shrieked when he did this even though the cage was covered.

  Sometime Wednesday morning he ventured out into Isabella’s domain and saw that the cage was now sitting upon Sokolowki’s table. The sergeant kept his table against the wall next to his desk in the main office, behind the counter, and used it as a place to drop things he’d finished with but didn’t want to put away yet. It took him several hours to realize that the table was missing, and he was piling things up on the floor.

  “Shit!” Alberg heard him cry. “Where’s my table?”

  On Thursday he and Alberg found themselves going shopping for a card table for the parrot. “Why the hell are we doing this, Karl?” Sokolowski complained as they drove. “What’s that parrot doing here anyway? Why don’t we just turn it over to the S.PC.A.?”

  But they couldn’t do that. The parrot was part of Carlyle Burke’s legacy to George Wilcox, and Wilcox refused to decide what he wanted done with it, except that he didn’t want it in his house and he didn’t want it given to the S.P.C.A., in case they took it into their heads after a while to have it put away.

  Now Sokolowski followed Alberg into his office, which seemed to shrink as he came in, and sat down in the black chair. It was getting hot in there, too. The sun shone in through the window from late morning until midafternoon, which was nice most of the time but not in the heat of summer, and the heat of summer had begun early this year. Alberg’s shirt was sticking to his back, and the waistline of his pants dug into him uncomfortably. He thought with dismay that he must have put on yet more weight.

  He peered out through the slats of the venetian blind. A couple of squad cars sat in the parking lot, glinting in the sun. Alberg’s Oldsmobile was out there, too, along with Isabella’s well-used Mercury—doesn’t she ever wash that damn thing? he thought irritably. The road led off through scattered groups of houses and stands of fir and fields cleared for strawberries or orchards or kitchen gardens, then down the hill into the village and straight to the sea.

  “No word yet on the fishmonger, I suppose,” said Alberg moodily, trying to spot the roof of the library.

  “You’ll be the first to hear, Staff,” said the sergeant.

  Alberg fiddled with the cord on the blind, lessening the glare. Then he turned from the window. “I’ve got another thing or two I want you to look after.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “First, check old Carlyle out on the computer.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m just curious, that’s all,” said Alberg. “Why doesn’t anybody seem to have liked him much, why didn’t he get married until he was fifty-five, why did he never get married again—that sort of thing. You probably won’t find anything. But have a look, would you?”

  “What, you think he was a fag?” said Sokolowski, showing more interest.

  “I don’t know. I’m looking for anything, anything at all.”

  “Those fags carry grudges, all right. Like I told you, I worked in Vancouver for a while, before I joined the force. In the West End”—he shuddered, fastidiously—“they’re worse than married people, those fags. The way they bash each other around, cut each other up.” He sounded massively disapproving.

  “His wife’s name was Audrey,” said Alberg. “Burke, née, of course, Wilcox. She died in a vehicle accident, this was about twenty-five years ago. See if you can find out what the circumstances were.”

  “Twenty-five years ago? Come on, Staff.”

  “Give it a try, Sid, okay? It happened in or around Vancouver. The records will be around somewhere.”

  Sokolowski was nodding thoughtfully. “I like the fag angle.” He stood up to leave. “Tell you one thing. If it wasn’t a fag thing, and it wasn’t the fish seller, it must have been a crazy or a shitrat or two.”

  “It wasn’t messy enough for crazies or shitrats, Sid.”

  “There wasn’t any profit in it—except for Wilcox and the will, and you said that surprised the hell out of him—so it wasn’t a criminal, either.”

  “Let’s find the fish man,” said Alberg, “and go from there.” He got up, straightened his tie, and put on a light jacket. “Meanwhile, I’m
off to talk to—” He consulted a small notebook. “To Mr. Frank Erlandson. Gotta tie up all the loose ends, Sid. I’d sure hate to trip on a loose end.”

  Frank Erlandson sat on his porch on a cushioned wicker chair. He was a tall man with long limbs, a slight potbelly, and an open, freckled face. When he occasionally uncrossed his legs and recrossed them, or lifted a hand to stroke his nonexistent hair, he moved slowly and cautiously; Alberg thought he might be anticipating pain. He looked older than George Wilcox and was certainly not as strong.

  His widowed sister, Molly Newell, lived with him in a house across the street and two doors up from Carlyle Burke’s. She was knitting as they talked, her hands moving the needles slowly and awkwardly; the knuckles of her fingers were swollen. But she was younger and more robust than her brother.

  She had served them iced tea and brought one of the dining room chairs onto the porch for Alberg before settling into a wicker chair of her own. They had discussed the weather, and Alberg had inquired politely about the state of Mr. Erlandson’s health, which was apparently not good.

  “If you could just go through it for me once more, Mr. Erlandson,” Alberg said now, taking his notebook from his jacket pocket.

  “As I told one of your men on Wednesday morning,” said Erlandson, “I’d hardly be likely to mistake either the date or the time, given the circumstances.” He pointed to the laurel hedge across the road. “I saw George come walking along there, from the direction of his own place, and I saw him go through the gate into Carlyle’s front yard, and it was just a few minutes after twelve thirty P.M.”

  “I’m going to be patient, here, Frank,” said Molly Newell to her brother, “but I’m bound to tell you, Sergeant, that we disagree on this matter, Frank and I.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” said Alberg. “I wonder, though, if I could hear Mr. Erlandson’s account first, and then yours. People often see the same things and yet make different observations. It’s very common,” he told her reassuringly.

  She looked at him for a moment through gold-rimmed bifocals. Her long gray hair was done up in a neat bun at the back of her head. Her blue eyes were brilliant against her tan; she was not smiling, and he could see delicate white lines in the wrinkles around her eyes.

  “I’m perfectly aware of that, Sergeant,” she said. “However, that’s not the kind of thing I have in mind. Not at all.” She lifted a hand from her knitting—Alberg thought it was a square meant for an afghan—and waved it at her brother. “Go on, Frank.”

  Erlandson reached for a glass of iced tea sitting on a wicker table, took a slow sip, and carefully replaced the glass. “As you suggested, Mr. Alberg, I’m going to retrace my day for you; last Tuesday, that is, the fifth day of June.” He dabbed at his lips with a tissue from the pocket of a light sweater he wore over a white shirt.

  “It’s my usual habit to have lunch with Molly, here, at noon precisely. We have lunch at the kitchen table and we listen to the twelve o’clock news. This has become routine. Immediately after lunch, which lasts about half an hour, it is my custom to go out into the back garden while Molly does up the dishes. I walk around making mental notes of the things that need to be done out there; this usually takes me about twenty minutes, or perhaps half an hour, if I should happen to sit down in one of the patio chairs for a few minutes.”

  Alberg nodded soberly. He was fervently grateful for the large cedar tree that stood in Erlandson’s front yard, spreading shade over the end of the porch where the three of them sat. Mrs. Newell dropped the completed square into a basket at her feet which contained several similar squares, some brown and some rust-colored, and began casting on stitches for another one. Alberg thought of his grandfather, who had provided his entire family with afghans, over the years.

  “Now on this particular day,” said Erlandson, “my normal routine was shot to ribbons.” He spread his hands on the broad arms of the chair and recrossed his legs, slowly. “Usually, after my walk around the garden, I go indoors and rest for an hour or so, and when the hottest part of the afternoon has passed I go back outside to do some chores. But on this particular day—” He looked coolly at his sister. “And I remember it quite, quite well,” he said. She ignored him, bent over her knitting. “On Tuesday I had my usual one fifteen P.M. doctor’s appointment, and”—he looked unhappily at Alberg—“I knew what he was going to say. He was going to tell me I had to go into the hospital for tests. So I found it quite impossible to follow my regular routine. Right after lunch I came out onto the porch and sat here, just thinking. A few minutes—no more—after I sat down, I saw George coming up the road, heading in my direction.” He nodded to himself. “I like George. He’s a bit gruff, but I like him. I know he goes to the hospital regularly, once a week, to read to some of the patients, visit them, that sort of thing.”

  Molly Newell interrupted to agree with him. “He’s a good man, George. Ever since his Myra died—no, before that,” she said to Alberg. “Ever since she got sick in the first place, he’s been spending time at the hospital. Go on, Frank. Get on with it.”

  “As I said, I saw George coming up the road. I assumed he was walking into the village, and I decided to hail him as he passed me.” He rested his head against the wide, curving back of his chair. “I think I wanted some reassurance. I think I wanted him to tell me the hospital wouldn’t be so bad after all.” He lifted his head and focused again on Alberg. “But I didn’t get a chance to call out to him. He went through the gate in Carlyle’s hedge.”

  “How long did you sit out here, Mr. Erlandson?”

  “Not long. Maybe fifteen minutes or so. Then Molly came out and told me I’d better get ready for my doctor’s appointment.”

  “So you didn’t see George come back out through the gate?”

  “No.”

  “Did he often visit Mr. Burke, do you know?”

  “He and Myra used to drop by sometimes, I think, before she took ill. But I haven’t noticed him going there since. He comes here, to us, every now and then.”

  “Not often, though,” said Mrs. Newell, her hands motionless in her lap. “He keeps to himself, now that Myra’s gone. Except for visiting the hospital, once a week like clockwork, I’m told.” She shook her head and resumed her knitting. “It’s a sad thing. All he lives for now is his garden, it seems to me.”

  “True,” said Erlandson sorrowfully.

  The ice in his tea had melted, but Alberg drank it anyway. “Now, Mrs. Newell,” he said, “in what way does your memory of that day differ from your brother’s?”

  “He’s got the time wrong,” she said immediately. She dropped her knitting into the basket and pushed her glasses farther up on her nose. “His doctor’s appointment on Tuesday was at three thirty, not one fifteen. He’s been going every week, recently, and usually it’s at one fifteen, but this week it was three thirty.” She turned to her brother and spoke gently. “That’s what’s gotten you confused, Frank, as I keep telling you. They changed your time this week, that’s all.”

  “So, you mean…” said Alberg.

  “I mean that, yes, he was sitting out on the porch on Tuesday, and, yes, he probably saw George go through the hedge, but he’s got his times mixed up. After lunch on Tuesday he went out into the back garden as usual, and then he lay down for a while as usual, and then he got up, at about two fifteen, and I reminded him about the doctor’s appointment at three thirty, and then he came out here onto the porch.” She reached over to pat Erlandson’s hand. “It was the next day, Frank, Wednesday, that you were sitting out here early, right after lunch, thinking about your tests. The day the policeman came to talk to us in the morning. And then at four o’clock I drove you to the hospital. Don’t you remember?”

  Alberg noticed that his heart hadn’t sunk. Did that mean he’d stopped thinking seriously of George Wilcox as a suspect? Or maybe he didn’t want the old man to have done it…

  Erlandson wore an expression of great stubbornness. “Then I must have come out here twice on Tue
sday,” he said crossly. “It was right after lunch when I saw him. How would you know, anyway? You have a rest after lunch too, same as I do.”

  Mrs. Newell sighed and glanced apologetically at Alberg.

  “What does George say about all this?” said Erlandson, irritably. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that, if accepted as truth, his account of things might get his friend in trouble.

  “Mr. Wilcox says he found the body,” said Molly Newell quietly. “At about two thirty.” She turned to Alberg. “Isn’t that right, Sergeant?”

  Alberg agreed.

  For the first time, Erlandson seemed bewildered.

  “What was he wearing when you saw him, Mr. Erlandson?”

  He concentrated. “Gray pants and a sweater. Dark. I don’t remember exactly what color, but dark.”

  “What kind of dark?” said Alberg. “Dark red? Dark green? Dark brown?”

  Erlandson was shaking his head. “No, no, no. Dark blue, I think. I’m not sure.”

  “Could it have been gray?”

  He thought about it. “Maybe. If it was a very dark gray. But I think more likely blue.”

  Alberg put away his notebook and stood up. “Thank you both very much indeed,” he said.

  “What do you think of cremation?” said Erlandson suddenly, looking up at him.

  “Frank, really, for goodness’ sake,” said Molly Newell in horror.

  Alberg stuck his hands in his pockets and watched a loudmouthed bluejay chase a sparrow away from a birdfeeder that hung from the corner of the porch roof. “I think it’s fine,” he said, “for dead people.”

  Their laughter followed him to his car.

  He found Cassandra next to one of the potted plants. Her nose and forehead glistened, and the hair around her face was damp and more curly than usual.