Hot Shots (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Laurence Gough

  There was traffic from two radios; a ship-to-shore unit and a Motorola that broadcast the regular police band. Willows noticed that the boat was also equipped with an MRDS, or Mobile Radio Dispatch System. The value of the unit was that it transmitted data on a miniature TV screen, effectively preventing the interception of information by radio and television reporters. Willows knew there would already be camera crews on the scene. If there had been foul play, there’d be footage of the body’s recovery on the six o’clock news. If it was a suicide, the public would never find out about it.

  The water off Spanish Banks was crowded with sails. The sergeant brought up his binoculars. “Lasers,” he said. “The different clubs at Jericho get together, set up a figure-eight course.”

  Parker thought about the slim, graceful hulls cutting across the surface of the water. She thought about the body caught below. And found herself wondering, how many corpses, in all the seven seas? It didn’t pay to think about it. A flock of crows swirled like dead leaves high above a copse of maple trees in Vanier Park. The bow of VPD 98 dropped as the revs were cut back. Curtis removed his earplugs. They cruised slowly past the Civic Marina and Coast Guard wharf, beneath the Burrard Street Bridge, dull thunder of traffic. Parker went out on deck.

  A deep-sea tug slipped past. For a moment the two boats were very close. A seaman waved at them, but no one waved back. The wake of the tug made the Uniflite sway vigorously. Willows gripped the back of Curtis’ chair.

  Hollis turned the boat towards the small dock at Granville Island. The dock was used primarily by a fleet of small, electrically powered ferries that catered to people out for a short pleasure ride, or who wanted, for one reason or another, to approach the Island by water.

  Constable Leyton went out on deck to attend to the mooring.

  “Can you give me a hand with the stretcher?” Curtis asked.

  Willows followed him to the bow of the boat. The stretcher was about six feet long and perhaps twenty inches wide, galvanized wire on a frame of half-inch metal tubing. There was a varnished slab of plywood for the body to lie on, a sort of rudder made of wood to keep the corpse’s legs apart. The stretcher was held in place against the hull by two short lengths of nylon rope and two bands of thick black rubber. The sergeant worked on one end, Willows on the other.

  “Smell anything?”

  Willows sniffed the air, shook his head.

  “It’s been a couple of months since the last one, so I guess it’s faded. But it’s the worst stench on earth, believe me. Gets into your hair, your clothes. It’s a nice tour, the Marine Squad. Until we have to pull one out of the water.”

  They lifted the stretcher off its brackets. Curtis flipped open the lid of a white-painted box. He removed a pair of surgeon’s masks. “Think you can handle the stretcher, Jack?”

  “Sure.” Willows braced himself against the thin fiberglass hull. He could feel the gentle motion of the boat, the coolness of the water against the palm of his hand.

  The sergeant removed a pair of disposable surgeon’s gloves from a cardboard box fastened to the bulkhead. He pulled on the fragile gloves and then put on another pair of gloves, made of thick black rubber. The gloves and surgeon’s mask were considered a necessary precaution. No one jumped off a bridge unless he had a reason. The threat of AIDS was always present.

  They tied the stern of VPD 98 to the western end of the wharf, the bow to one of the pilings. Up on the dock, there was an unmarked Body Removal station wagon, a squad car and two uniformed policemen to keep the crowds away. The fisherman was waiting for them. He pointed out the location of the body, caught beneath about five feet of water.

  Curtis took the man’s name and address and telephone number, gave him one of his cards and sent him on his way. Let a civilian get a peek at what they were about to pull out of the water, next thing you knew you had a lawsuit on your hands.

  Willows peered into the depths. He became aware of Parker standing beside him, leaning over the rail.

  “What’s he caught up on?” Curtis said to Leyton.

  “Beats me, sergeant. Want me to fish him out?”

  “In one piece,” said Curtis.

  Leyton slid an aluminum pike pole into the water. He used the piling for leverage. The body drifted away from the piling and then back again. All Willows could see was a vague, pale shape. The light was uncertain, like dusk on a dull and cloudy day. Leyton got a fresh grip on the pike pole. The aluminum bent in a graceful arc as he put his back into it. The body slipped away from the piling and then returned to embrace it once again.

  “Jacket’s caught on something.” Leyton used the pike to stab at the water.

  Parker heard the snap of rubber. Hollis was busy with the surgeon’s gloves.

  “Got him.” There was a note of triumph in Leyton’s voice, as if he’d hooked a particularly large fish.

  The body rose swiftly towards the surface. Willows held the stretcher.

  “Roll him over.”

  The man was wearing jeans and a bright yellow rain slicker. Leyton and Hollis slid the body on to the swim grid. The throat looked as if it had been slashed, but Willows knew it was the soft tissue that went first, so you couldn’t be sure. Behind him, the door to the Uniflite’s head slammed shut. He looked for Parker but couldn’t find her.

  Curtis started taking pictures. He’d been right about the body; it smelled like nothing else on earth.

  It wasn’t until they’d eased the corpse into the stretcher that Willows saw the wide overlapping bands of clear plastic tape over the mouth. The tape had lost much of its viscosity, was unravelling. He stared across the water. It was on the far side of the bridge, less than a quarter of a mile away, that they’d found the bloody shot-up Pontiac and the heel marks in the gravel leading down to the water.

  He wondered how quickly he could get the coroner’s office to do the autopsy, file the report. Goldstein had hair, he had blood. There was a chance the .25 calibre bullet was in there somewhere. If they could match it to the spent casing ...

  Parker came back on deck. She stared at the body, glanced across the water towards the bridge. “Think there might be a connection?”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” said Willows.

  Curtis and Leyton got down on the swim grid, unrolled a yellow bodybag of rubberized canvas. They were both wearing gloves and masks. The body shifted fitfully in the chop. Curtis held his breath, got a grip beneath the armpits.

  Something was bothering Parker but she couldn’t think what it was. She glanced up, towards the endless stream of traffic that hummed a dirge on the bridge.

  “You okay?” said Curtis.

  Parker nodded, but she wasn’t so sure.

  The air smelled clean and pure and the sky all above her was a rich, flawless blue. And that was it — what was on her mind. The weather was all wrong.

  A day like this, it should have been raining.

  18

  The city morgue is on Cordova Street, conveniently located just around the corner from 312 Main. With its arched doorway and facade of orange brick highlighted by orderly rows of white-painted mullioned windows, the morgue remains an attractive building despite its grim function and the years of accumulated dust that lay upon it like a shroud.

  The morgue’s front entrance — the door used by the living — is painted bright red. Parker pushed the door open and stepped aside.

  “Thank you,” said Willows.

  “My pleasure.”

  Parker pressed the elevator button, but Willows had already started up the stairs.

  They reached the third floor and walked down a long, wide, brightly-lit corridor. This time Willows got the door. They entered the operating theatre, a large, square room with a floor of glossy blue tiles, walls that were lined from floor to ceiling with the refrigerated stainless steel drawers that serve as temporary coffins for the permanently down and out.

  In the center of the room, a pair of zinc tables stood directly beneath a huge industrial skyligh
t made of cast-iron and frosted glass. The tables were exactly thirty-six inches wide and seven feet long.

  A corpse lay on the nearest of the tables; Willows went over and flipped back the sheet. A girl with bright blue eyes and color-coordinated hair shaved within an inch of her skull stared up at him.

  The pathologist, a short, dark man named Brahms, turned away from the sink. “You wouldn’t believe what happened to her,” he said to Parker.

  “Then there isn’t much point in telling me about it,” Parker replied.

  Willows flipped the nylon sheet back over the corpse. He eyed the rows of stainless steel drawers. “Where’s my floater?”

  Brahms turned back to the sink, yanked a handful of paper towels from the dispenser. “We did the preliminary this morning. Finished a couple of hours ago.” He dried his hands, tossed the used towels overhand into a metal wastebasket beneath the sink. “The report’ll be on your desk by tomorrow morning. Want the highlights?”

  “Please.” Willows took out his notebook, flipped it open to a fresh page, tried to write down the date and discovered that his pen was out of ink.

  Parker fished through her purse, found a Bic.

  Brahms cleared his throat. “Your victim was shot at least four times, minimum of two weapons. He was hit once in the thigh, once in the gluteus maximus, a.k.a. ass, and twice in the head. Both head shots struck him in the left temple and exited above the right ear. The one he caught in the ass hit the femur at a sharp angle and lodged in the knee joint. That bullet and the one that got him in the leg were recovered and have been sent to the lab. At least two weapons were used. The one from the thigh was small-calibre. The round I dug out of his knee is probably from a three fifty-seven Magnum or a forty-five. Big, a cannon.”

  “He was dead when he went into the water?”

  “You betcha. Either head shot would’ve killed him instantly.”

  “What condition were the bullets in?”

  “The one that hit him in the thigh was in excellent shape. The second bullet was pretty banged up, but I’d say you should be able to make a comparison. Why, you got a gun?”

  “Not yet,” said Willows.

  “This was the shooting that took place down by the Granville Street Bridge last weekend?”

  Willows nodded.

  “You didn’t find anything in the car?”

  “A hole in the roof.”

  “The hair was badly burned. A searing effect was noted. We found evidence of stippling.” Brahms glanced at Parker, as if unsure that she knew what he was talking about.

  Stippling was an effect of shooting at point-blank range; pinpoint hemorrhaging due to unburned powder and metal shavings being driven into the victim’s flesh.

  Parker was watching Willows take notes, the knuckles of his right hand white with pressure as he wielded her Bic pen. Willows stopped writing. He looked up. “What else?”

  “The body was in pretty good shape, considering. At a depth of five or six feet the temperature of the water around here doesn’t change much, it’s fairly cold all year round.”

  “Alcohol?”

  “His blood level was point five. He’d had a few, but he was sober.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  Brahms shrugged. “The left hand was pretty bad, some kind of marine life had made a meal of it. The right hand was better, most of the skin was intact even though there was a lot of wrinkling.” He grinned. “You ever spend a couple of days soaking in the tub, you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

  “My line of work, I’ve never felt that dirty.”

  Brahms frowned. “To get a decent print, what we had to do was tie a string around the end of the thumb and fingers close to the knuckle joint, then use a hypo to inject water under the skin, fill out the finger. Ever seen it done?”

  Willows shook his head.

  “Tricky,” said Brahms. “One of your techs rolled the prints. Guy named Saunders. Mel Dutton was with him. Set up some lights and snapped a couple rolls.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Maybe an hour ago, little less. He’s putting on weight, Dutton. Looks a little older every time I see him.”

  Willows handed the Bic back to Claire Parker.

  “One more thing,” said Brahms. “The victim’s palate and tongue were badly lacerated, as if he’d had a sharp chunk of metal in his mouth, or maybe been punched.”

  “Find anything?”

  Brahms shook his head. “The mouth had been taped shut, but the tape came loose in the water.”

  Out on the street, as they walked back to 312 Main, Parker took a deep breath, filled her lungs with air. The mix of exhaust fumes and windblown grit seemed comparatively refreshing, after the cold and clammy atmosphere of the morgue.

  Dutton had left a memo taped to Willows’ telephone. He’d had a problem with the prints and he and Saunders had taken them to the more sophisticated facilities at the Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit on West Seventh.

  Willows phoned CLEU. Saunders had come and gone. He tried Mel Dutton’s number. No answer. Eddy Orwell and Farley Spears wandered into the squadroom. Spears held a handkerchief to his nose. Orwell was drinking a diet Pepsi. Spears sneezed, loudly blew his nose. Orwell saw Parker and ambled over to her desk.

  “Hear you finally got a victim, that shooting down by the bridge.”

  Parker picked up her phone, started dialling.

  Farley Spears sneezed again.

  Orwell drank some Pepsi, jerked a thumb at Spears. “Guy waits until he’s infectious, then he comes back to work.”

  Parker gave Orwell a look, as if he was something she’d found swimming around in her drink. He gave the Pepsi can a squeeze and wandered down to his desk at the far end of the squadroom. Spears said something to him. He glanced over his shoulder at Willows, as if worried about being overheard.

  After a few minutes, Orwell and Spears approached Parker.

  “What is it, Eddy?”

  “Mel told us a couple slugs were recovered from the body, and one of them was from a forty-five.”

  “So?”

  “There’s a guy in the interrogation room, a chartered accountant. Picked him up about twenty minutes ago. Got a call from the White Spot on Georgia. Guy opened his briefcase to get his newspaper, waitress noticed he had a gun.”

  “Jack,” said Parker.

  Willows looked up from his desk. Parker motioned him over.

  “Picked up a chartered accountant with a forty-five calibre Colt stainless,” said Orwell. “Thing is, the guy claims he found the gun in the can at a nightclub over on Richards.”

  “When?” said Willows.

  “Last Saturday night,” said Orwell. “Think there might be a connection? Wanna talk to him?”

  “Where’s the Colt?”

  “Lab’s got it.”

  “Good work, Eddy.”

  The phone on Willows’ desk started ringing. It was Mel Dutton. He told Willows that the floater had been identified; his name was Oscar Peel. Dutton had Peel’s address, if Willows was interested.

  “Bless you,” Willows said.

  Spears hadn’t even been thinking about sneezing. He gave Willows a bewildered look.

  “Let’s go,” Willows said to Parker.

  “What about the accountant?” said Orwell.

  “Don’t count him out, Eddy.”

  Orwell waited until Willows and Parker had left the squad-room, and then turned to Spears and said, “Are we supposed to hold the guy, or what?”

  “Maybe we should tell him his number’s up,” said Spears, and sneezed several times in quick succession.

  Or was he laughing?

  “What’s so funny?” said Orwell, his face bunched up like a fist.

  “Everything,” said Spears, and wondered if he was going into remission.

  19

  The main branch of the city’s public library is on the corner of Robson and Burrard, right downtown. The building is five storeys high — pre-formed concrete and
big sheets of green-tinted glass.

  Paterson knew what he wanted, but had no idea how to get it. He strolled by an unarmed guard in a natty gray uniform, made it past the library’s swing-gate security system and walked up to a counter that had a sign hanging above it that said INFORMATION.

  A plump woman with frizzy blonde hair listened carefully as he explained what he wanted, then directed him to the Sociology department. The librarian at Sociology was tall and thin, in his mid-thirties. He was wearing glasses with gold wire frames, a lemon-yellow shirt, neatly pressed brown pants, a brown tie decorated with gold horses.

  “Excuse me,” said Paterson. “Do you keep a clipping file on narcotics?”

  The librarian nodded. A strand of mouse-brown hair fell across his forehead. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Do you have anything on heroin?”

  “Yes, we do. I’ll need your library card, or two pieces of identification.”

  Paterson didn’t own a library card, but he had a driver’s licence, Visa.

  The man disappeared behind a row of gray metal filing cabinets. A few moments later he reappeared carrying a buff-colored nine by twelve folder. He accepted Paterson’s licence but ignored the credit card. The file was marked in bold typeface:

  FOR REFERENCE SOCIOLOGY DIVISION VPL

  NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THIS ROOM

  “Do you have any related files?”

  The librarian nodded. “We have clippings on Crime, Narcotics, Youth and Drugs ...”He adjusted the knot of his tie. The gold horses winced. “Would you like to see the file containing the subject headings?”

  “Maybe later. Thanks for your help.”

  He took the folder over to a nearby table and sat down. The flap of the folder had been glued shut and then the folder had been sliced open along its length. He opened it and shook out a double handful of clippings.

  The clippings varied in size from half a page or more to less than a hundred words. The smallest of them were glued to quarter-sheets of used computer paper. Each article was stamped in red ink with the name of the source newspaper and publication date. He noticed that they were all current. Presumably another file was kept for backdated clippings. If he needed to, he’d ask the librarian, see if he could squeeze a few more words out of him.