Accidental Deaths (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Laurence Gough

  “Gimme another five minutes. Maybe ten. Now that the sun’s moved around, I can get some better shots of the splash pattern on the wall. Hot stuff, Jack. Lemme tell you, the tabloids’d pay a month’s wages for this. Not that I’d consider moonlighting. It’s just I’ve been looking down the road lately — to the retirement years.”

  “Mel … ”

  “What I’m gonna do is publish a book. Coffee-table thing, twice the size of an encyclopedia. Crime scene pictures. I was thinking of calling it Dead Bodies or maybe Scene of Crime.”

  “Sounds terrific,” said Willows without a trace of enthusiasm.

  Dutton folded the two wooden rulers, stuffed them in his shirt pocket and turned his attention to the blood-spattered wall. Cherry Ngo was about five-eight. The angle of impact indicated that whoever’d shot him was at least a few inches shorter. The narrow end of teardrop-shaped blood stains always pointed in the direction of travel. Well, from what he knew about Cherry, the kid’s direction of travel was basically a straight line to hell. The weapon used was a .45-calibre semi-auto. Two rounds had been fired and both spent casings had been recovered, as well as a single unfired cartridge. Only one bullet had struck Cherry. It had passed through his hand, the sweet potato, his skull and three-quarters of an inch of sturdy lathe-and-plaster wall. Now it was in an evidence bag in Willows’ pocket.

  Dutton moved along the wall, shooting a series of overlapping photographs of the blood and bone-chips and chunks of brain and gore and sweet potato that stippled the smooth white paint. He wondered if there’d ever been an artist who created his work by lining up cans of paint in front of his canvas and then blasting the cans full of bullet holes. Might be worth looking into. Be a real unique effect. He finished the role of film and clipped the lens cap back on his Pentax.

  “Anything else, Jack?”

  “That’ll do it, Mel.”

  Dutton avoided eye contact as he slipped past Parker and out the door.

  Willows knelt beside the body. Ngo’s wide-open eyes stared right through him.

  Parker said, “Somebody found out he was down at 312 Main, that we questioned him. He was killed because of something he told us, or something he might've told us, but didn’t.”

  Willows shook his head, no. “Whoever shot Cherry tried to gun him down before he talked to us. Emily was a mistake.”

  Cherry Ngo was wearing a plain white shirt, charcoal pants held up with a thin red belt and scuffed white leather basketweave shoes. He wasn’t wearing socks. The shoes were laceless.

  The Body Removal Services employee loitering in the doorway said, “You gonna be much longer?”

  Willows ignored him.

  The guy said, “Mind if I smoke?”

  Parker said, “Out in the alley.”

  A crime scene technician named Willy Talbot stepped into the room. Talbot was tall, thin enough to qualify as anorexic. He had a terrible complexion, his dark, oily skin pitted and cratered by childhood acne. There was a story Willows had heard about Talbot — that he’d been down in the basement of 312 Main, getting into his uniform, when a wise-ass vice cop named Lewis Brandon told him he looked as if he shaved with a cheese grater. Talbot had knocked Brandon cold with a single punch and handcuffed him to a locker door, pulled down his pants and kicked him in the ass so hard they heard it upstairs and thought there’d been a traffic accident out on Main Street.

  When Brandon regained consciousness, there was a huge purple bruise on his ass and a note taped to his locker door advising him that if he wanted the key to his cuffs, he’d need a mirror and a pair of rubber gloves.

  Talbot nodded to Parker, crooked a finger at Willows and said, “C’mere and take a look at this.”

  Willows and Parker followed Talbot into the staff washroom at the back of the building. Despite health laws to the contrary, the bathroom was located directly off the kitchen.

  The two detectives and Talbot squeezed into the tiny bathroom. There was a toilet against the far wall, and next to it a sink with a mirror above it. An unpainted plywood shelf held a stack of paper towels and a water glass containing a toothbrush and wrinkled tube of Crest toothpaste. Several crumpled paper towels lay like dead flowers in a rusty metal wastebasket beneath the sink. The wall in the area of the sink and within arm’s reach of the toilet was covered with crudely drawn artwork, but the scrawled captions were incomprehensible because they were in Vietnamese.

  Talbot shut the door and said, “Get the light, will you?” The bathroom had already been dusted. Parker hit the switch. Talbot had a flashlight. He aimed the narrow beam at the sink. Willows and Parker moved closer. He switched off the flash. In the darkness, the sink glowed with a faint, pale green luminescence. Talbot turned the flashlight back on, produced an aerosol can and sprayed the wastebasket and paper towels. He switched off the flashlight. The paper towels glowed pale green.

  “Weird, huh?” Talbot turned the bathroom light back on. He shook the can. “Luminol.”

  Parker said, “I’ve seen it before.”

  “It’s a reagent. Blood reacts to it by luminescing.”

  Parker glanced at Willows. Talbot was one of those guys — a born lecturer.

  Talbot said, “Don’t ask me how it works, because I got no idea. Normally, in a situation like this, I’d use the laser. But somebody dropped it out a window last week and smashed it all to hell.” He waved the aerosol can at the sink. “Pretty obvious your perp washed up in here after he did the job. The quantity of blood in there is very small, minute. Best bet’s the wastebasket. The question is, whose blood was the perp getting rid of, the victim’s or his own?”

  Willows said, “How long’s it going to take?”

  “I dunno, Jack. We’re snowed, as usual. This time tomorrow, maybe.”

  “Push it. You need some weight, give me a call and I’ll see what I can do.”

  The Body Removal Services employee — what some of the cops called the ghoul patrol — was asleep in his vehicle. The guy’s name was Harvey McArdle. Parker knew him from other cases. He was okay. Quiet. Not like some of them, always cracking jokes. Parker made a fist and rapped on the windshield. McArdle came awake instantly, got out of the car and pushed his gurney through the back door of the restaurant. He unrolled a rubberized bodybag on the floor next to Ngo’s body. Willows helped lift the corpse into the bag. Ngo didn’t weigh much. Willows held his head steady while McArdle worked the zipper. Together, they lifted Ngo onto the gurney.

  The gurney’s rubber wheels rolled across the chalked outline of the corpse, smudging the lines.

  Willows looked away. The smudged chalk irritated him. It was a minor form of degradation, in a way — like turning over a gravestone.

  Parker said, “There’s no family except for Joey — the parents are both dead. We better talk to Joey, and do it fast. There’s a mobile unit from Channel Eleven down at the end of the alley.”

  Willows zipped up his leather jacket. He stepped carefully over the chalked lines. “Okay, let’s get it over with. He’s got a job, hasn’t he?”

  Parker nodded. “At a wholesale auto parts supplier over on East Eighth.”

  Willows said, “My car could use a new set of wipers. Maybe I can get a discount.”

  In the car, crawling down Broadway through the snarl of mid-morning traffic, Parker said, “Four years now, since I was rotated to homicide. You ever get tired of it, Jack? Feel worn out and used up?”

  Willows shrugged. A delivery van cut in front of the unmarked Ford, forcing him to stab at the brakes. He grinned at Parker and said, “Cynical, too, and world-weary.”

  They weren’t going to make the light; it was going to be close but they weren’t going to make it … The light went from green to amber. Willows braked. There was a shriek of tortured rubber behind him. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. A red Miata convertible. The driver waved his fist in the air, gave Willows the finger and leaned on the horn.

  Parker glanced behind her. “What’s his problem?”

&nbs
p; “Me. I’ve just been tried and convicted of driving with due care and attention.”

  “Sentenced to deafness.”

  “What was the address on Eighth?”

  “Five twenty-seven.”

  The instant the light turned green, the Miata’s horn started up again.

  Willows said, “Okay, that does it.” He put the Ford in gear and yanked open the door.

  “Don’t do anything crazy, Jack.”

  “Why not?” Willows got out of the car. He walked slowly back to the Miata. The driver was in his fifties, wearing a suit and tie. Willows took out his wallet and flipped it open. The driver stared straight ahead, as if hypnotized. He had both hands on the wheel and his knuckles were white, the blood squeezed out of them by the pressure of his grip. Willows slapped his badge against the windshield. Metal on glass. The man glared at him and then registered the badge.

  It was a pleasure, watching the colour drain out of his face.

  Willows said, “Follow me, please.” He walked back to the Ford, climbed in, put the car in gear and pulled away.

  “What’d you say to him?”

  Willows reached up, made an unnecessary adjustment to the rear-view mirror. The Miata was in a holding pattern, keeping a respectful distance.

  “I asked him if he wanted to play a little game of follow the leader.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Five twenty-seven East Eighth, to talk to Joey Ngo. It’s about what, a fifteen-minute trip?”

  “Somewhere in there,” said Parker, smiling.

  Speedy Auto Parts was housed in a crumbling stucco building squeezed in between a tiny lunch-hour cafe and a print shop.

  Willows parked in a towaway zone in front of the building. The Miata pulled up behind him. Willows flipped down the Fords sun visor so the “Police Vehicle” card was visible. He and Parker got out of the car. Parker waited at the curb as Willows went around to the Miata.

  Willows held out his hand. “May I see your licence and vehicle registration, please.”

  The driver, Peter Reikerman, was the registered owner of the Miata.

  Willows waved the licence in his face. “This your current address?”

  Reikerman nodded. “Yes, Officer.”

  “Detective.”

  Willows walked slowly around to the rear of the car. The licence plate decal was valid. He told Reikerman to turn on his lights, signal a left- and then a right-hand turn, hit the brakes and put the transmission in reverse.

  Willows walked slowly back to Reikerman. He still had Reikerman’s licence in his hand. He said, “Everything works — not just the horn. Lucky you. Your driving improved considerably on the way over here. Think you can maintain that standard?”

  “Yes, sir.” According to the licence, Reikerman was fifty-two years old. Half a dozen cassette tapes lay on the passenger seat. The Band, Lovin’ Spoonful, Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan …

  The guy was half a century old, drove a sports car that had been marketed for his children, liked music from the sixties. Willows smiled. He could bust Reikerman, but what was the point — his development had already been arrested. But at the same time, the guy pissed him off. An adult, acting like a kid.

  “Wait here, Peter.”

  The first thing Willows saw as he walked into Speedy Auto Parts was the Corvette coming right at him, bursting through the cinderblock wall with headlights blazing, the driver and the girl in his lap looking startled but not dismayed.

  The man lounging behind the counter was short but not fat. He was about as bald as he was ever going to get, but to compensate wore his blue overalls unbuttoned halfway down his hairy chest. He scratched himself, gave Parker an appreciative look and fashioned a carnivorous grin around the stub of his cheap cigar. “First time, am I right?”

  Parker nodded.

  The man winked at Willows. “The first time a person walks through that door, don’t matter how much of a hurry he thought he was in, he’s gotta stop and take a look at the wall. And the look on the guy’s face — it took me a while to figure out what he’s thinking. Why can’t I hear anything?”

  “Bob” was stitched in red thread on the blue overalls. “And maybe they was gonna ask something like do I got a rear fender for a fifty-six Chev. But the first question’s always … ” Bob aimed the juicy stub of his cigar at Parker. “Go on, take a guess.”

  “They want to know what happened to the Corvette’s rear end.”

  “And you know what I always tell them?”

  Willows said, “That you’re sitting on it.”

  Bob leaned his belly against the counter. “What are you guys, psychic?”

  Willows showed him his badge.

  “Cops. I mighta guessed. It’s about the eighty-two Caddy I bought last week, right? Kid told me it was an estate vehicle, his grampa died and … I knew goddamn well I shoulda checked the paper on that baby. Look, if there’s anything … ”

  Willows said, “Don’t say it.”

  Bob lifted both hands, palms out. “Never crossed my mind, believe me.”

  “We’re from Homicide, not Auto. We want to talk to Joey Ngo.”

  “What about?”

  “That’s between him and us.”

  “Yeah, sure. But you wanna talk to him on my time, right? I mean, who’s paying the shot here, if it isn’t me?”

  Parker said, “Maybe you better show us the Caddy after all.”

  Bob sucked on his cigar and pondered his limited options. The cigar was dead. And, judging from the look on the cop’s face, he was too, unless he cooperated.

  There was a swing gate at the far end of the counter. Bob pointed at it. “Joey’s out back. Whatever time you spend with him, he’s gotta take off his lunch.”

  They found Joey Ngo sitting in front of a computer terminal, punching at the keyboard with two stiff fingers while he talked into a telephone wedged between his cheek and shoulder. He glanced at Willows, nodded, and went back to work. “No, we’re out of stock.” Pause. “Three working days, if I fax the order to Toronto and you don’t mind paying air freight.” Another pause. “Well, that’s the best I can do. Otherwise, all you can do is phone around, try the wreckers for a used one.” Pause. “Yeah, sure.” Pause. “Five, but Toronto won’t start to process your order until tomorrow morning unless we fax them by two o’clock.” Another pause. “Right, because of the time difference.”

  Joey Ngo rolled his eyes, sighed, and hung up. He looked Willows straight in the eye and said, “Like I told you, I didn’t see anything. All I heard was the shots. No voices. The car was long gone by the time I made it to the door. And my brother’s friends are no friends of mine.”

  Willows said, “The reason we’re here is somebody took another shot at Cherry.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “From a lot closer range this time.”

  Joey Ngo became very still. His eyes seemed to go out of focus. He fished a pack of Export cigarettes from the back pocket of his jeans, lit up with a disposable lighter.

  “He hurt bad?”

  Willows said, “It couldn’t be much worse.”

  Joey Ngo sucked deeply on his cigarette, pulled the smoke down to the very bottom of his lungs. He held his breath a long time, and then shrugged and said, “The way he played, I guess he got what he wanted.”

  Parker said, “You don’t really believe that.”

  “I knew he was in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble — gangs?”

  Joey said, “Hey, look at me. I got a job. I pay my bills, keep my nose clean. Don’t mess around with drugs. Cherry was my brother, but that's it. We didn’t hang out with the same crowd.”

  “You lived in the same house.”

  “It was a temporary arrangement. He was staying with me ’cause he had no place else to go.”

  “He never talked about his friends?”

  “I didn’t want to hear it. He'd start to tell me what a tough dude he was, I’d shut him right down. I’m telling you
right now what I said to him lots of times — I ain’t interested. I don't want to get involved. But he didn’t run with a gang, I know that much. He was too smart, too independent.”

  Parker said, “Joey, the impression you’re giving me is that you aren’t too concerned about finding out who shot your brother.”

  “The way he was headed, somebody was gonna do it sooner or later. What difference does it make who pulled the trigger?”

  Willows said, “I heard Cherry was dealing.”

  “Yeah? Who told you that?”

  “A friend of mine in narcotics.”

  Joey shrugged. “Yeah, he sold a little dope, now and then. It wasn’t his main thing; just a way of picking up a few extra bucks.”

  “So how did he make a living?”

  “Stealing cars. There’s a chop shop out in Delta he worked for. But I think he quit; almost got busted once and decided there had to be easier ways of getting rich.”

  “What else was he into?”

  “That’s it, far as I know.”

  “There must’ve been something else. If he quit boosting cars … ”

  “Look, I got to get back to work. Bob’s gonna fry my ass, I spend too much time talking to you.”

  “Still at the same address, Joey?”

  “Fuckin’ landlord’s trying to get me evicted, but the rent’s paid till the end of the month, so I guess I’m good until then, at least.”

  Parker said, “Did Emily have any friends who might have wanted Cherry dead, because of what happened to her?”

  “I didn’t know her that well.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Joey Ngo’s face darkened. The kid was five-six tops and might weigh a hundred and thirty pounds after a full meal, but for a moment there, Parker thought Joey was going to take a run at her.

  Then the phone rang, and Joey snatched at it, and the moment had passed.

  Outside, Willows returned Reikerman’s licence. “I decided I’m going to give you a break. Beat it.”

  “Hold it just a minute, now. You made me wait all this time and you’re not gonna even give me a ticket?”

  “I’m going to give you some free advice instead. Drive less aggressively, Peter. Otherwise, despite your impeccable taste in music and dinky cars, people are going to think you’re immature.”