by Mike Cranny
“You want this, Arch,” he said. “Or should I call Rochville?”
“So long as you’re not going to be breathing over my shoulder every five minutes, I’m good with it.”
“Within reason, you can handle it how you want. I need results pretty damn quickly. I’ll decide who helps you on this and let you know. I contacted Rochville about getting their forensic team; apparently they’ll arrive pretty quickly. Coroner won’t make it until eight or nine in the morning maybe. Beyond that it’s all yours, the warrants, interviews, expense forms, the whole deal. It’s a big job for a greenhorn.”
“I don’t want Reddin.”
“You won’t get Reddin. He doesn’t want to work with you anyway, which should be obvious. Lee is a possibility to assist, but I’ll let you know. What I want you to do is go home. Get a couple of hours sleep and be at the murder scene first thing in the morning. Plan things out and get back to me.”
“I’m going to Donaldson’s now.”
“No you fucking won’t. I want you there with a clear head. There’s a lot to do.”
“If I’m in charge, I’m going back now. If not, screw it.”
Fricke shook his head but it wasn’t his way to load up an assignment with conditions. He looked hard at Archie and shook his boulder-sized head.
“Get your ass out there then. I’m going home and I don’t want to hear nothing about nobody screwing up no assignment — pisses me off. ”
And then the meeting was over. Archie left the room. He had things he figured he’d need from his office and headed in that direction. A few cops from the night shift were at their desks. Most were preoccupied with what was happening on their computer screens. One or two were chatting, drinking coffee. None of them acknowledged him as he passed.
He stopped at his desk and looked at the area around it. The small space seemed inadequate now. He would have a team working with him. He’d need to hold meetings, put up white boards; he’d need more room. He remembered that there was an empty office nearby. He grabbed stuff off his desk and went down the hall to claim it. When he had finished establishing a presence, he headed for the door, stopping at Delia John’s desk to leave a note asking her to have his phone number moved in the morning.
Outside, the night was clear, but clouds threatened to obliterate the gibbous moon. The 4Runner was covered in dew, even though it had only been sitting there for an hour. As he got into his car he saw a note under his wiper. He pulled it out and looked at it. Somebody had drawn a picture of an Indian with a feather headdress and a tomahawk, with the words “Watch your scalp, Stevens — Ha-Ha!” printed in crude, oversized letters.
He looked around to see if anyone was lurking, watching for his reaction. He regretted doing so. But he neither saw nor heard anyone. He wanted to get mad, but instead he shook his head, balled up the note, and tossed it.
CHAPTER 3
Bright emergency lights lit the scene. Archie watched as a sky-blue BMW manoeuvred past the wall of boats, the driver carefully avoiding the road’s many potholes. The car stopped next to the far end of the caution tape where the parking lot was smoother and looked somewhat more graded. For more than a minute, the car sat idling, the wipers slapping drizzle off the windshield at long intervals. Then the engine was shut off, the door opened and Thomas Lee stepped out onto the gravel. He rearranged a very fine overcoat and a mauve scarf, stood and peered out at the sea a hundred yards away before he looked for Archie. The case could easily have gone to Lee; Archie wondered what the man would think about having to take orders from someone less experienced.
He liked Lee. Lee had been on the force for years and was one of the few officers that Archie hadn’t tried to make look foolish, back when Archie was raising hell and testing the Harsley police department every way he could think of. No wonder some of the cops couldn’t see him for what he was now. Strange the way life turned out. But Lee was okay, no problem then and, hopefully, no problem now.
Lee navigated the puddle-strewn parking lot and crossed to the berm where Archie was standing.
“They’ve got tape running all over the place,” Lee said. “There’s a big gap at the west end. It’s untidy.”
He pointed to the string of caution tape that ended in the middle of nowhere. Archie stiffened, called to an older, uniformed cop named Jim Stone who was walking back to one of the vans.
“Stoney?”
“Uh-huh?”
“The tape’s stopped over there. Get another roll and make sure the whole crime scene is enclosed.”
Stoney hesitated, then shrugged and lumbered away to rearrange the tape. Archie realized he’d given his first real order and noted that Stone, maybe the oldest officer on the force, seemed to accept his authority — more or less. It was a start.
Lee looked towards the low building housing the dive shop.
“The body inside?” he asked. He stayed on the gravel below where Archie was standing so that Archie had to look down at him. Lee obviously didn’t want to risk his loafers and immaculate trousers on the muddy side of the berm, which was still wet and slippery from the previous night’s rain.
Archie started to walk the berm towards the path to the shop. Lee paralleled him, trying the impossible, which was to preserve the shine on his shoes.
“He’s still lying in the back part of his shop,” Archie said. “You and I are going to be working on this case together at least for the next two weeks.”
Lee’s face remained expressionless; it was hard to figure out if he was happy with the situation or not.
He was quite a bit shorter than Archie and had to walk faster in order to keep up. Archie realized he’d been striding and slowed down. The berm eased away and soon they were walking side by side towards the broad steps leading up to the porch, although Archie still stood a head taller.
“Did Fricke brief you this morning?” Archie asked.
“He said you’d fill me in with all the details.” Lee took off his gloves, layered them one on the other, folded them, slid them into the pocket on his Burberry Mac and waited for Archie to continue.
“Beyond the fact that you found Nick Donaldson with his throat cut and that there was a break-in, I don’t know a thing.”
“The first part is right anyway.”
“So you haven’t got everything figured out?”
The words were peevish but the tone was... Lee changed the subject before Archie could think too much about it.
“Heard they did a number on him.”
“Surprised the hell out of me, for sure. I came out to ask him about abalone poaching and found him in the back. Not pretty.”
“This is your first murder, right?”
Archie didn’t confirm or deny it.
“Why don’t you just follow me and see for yourself.”
Lee followed Archie up the steps. There was an open box of booties near the door and they both paused and slid some on over their shoes. Lee looked at the broken glass and seemed interested in how it was scattered around. Then he squatted and looked through the lower part of the door into the shop after which he stood up and straightened his trouser knees.
“Strange,” he said.
“That’s what I thought.”
They were both looking at the pattern of the broken glass, how it lay. They followed a marked path into the shop. The forensics team had only just arrived and hadn’t left much evidence of their presence beyond some yellow location markers within. That helped. As much as possible, Archie didn’t want to see the scene as others saw it, to be prejudiced by too many markers and labels.
Archie led the way further inside, through the shop and down the row of lockers where people stored their clothes while diving, to the back where Nick’s body lay and stopped. Lee whistled through his teeth and moved around to get a better look. Archie hadn’t looked at the corpse for a few hours. Now, it almost demanded attention. Nick’s skin was stark white, the face strangely serene. The position of the body seemed even stranger to Archie t
han it had when he had first seen it. On the other hand, his state of mind had shifted. He was now more clinical, more detached.
Lee walked around to the other side, being careful not to step in the blood. He shook his head.
“Phew! What do you think?”
“That they rolled him over after they cut his throat and searched him,” Archie said. “The left arm got pulled out of its socket; they must’ve really wanted something.”
Lee took some shots with his phone camera of the area.
A .32 Smith and Wesson lay near the splayed right leg. The hammer was still cocked. It was an old pistol, the bluing gone in places so that the bare metal showed through.
“I’m guessing the pistol belonged to Donaldson,” Archie said. “He must’ve shot somebody with it.”
He indicated the pattern of blood spatters high on the wall.
“Blood everywhere. Are these pistols single or double action?“ Lee asked.
“So far as I know, they’re single action, which might mean that he was just about to shoot again.
“There are two empty cartridge cases over there. I don’t think that’s Nick’s blood on the wall either but we’ll know after it’s tested. I’d guess the wound it came from wouldn’t be too serious, just hurt a lot. To me, it isn’t lung blood or gut blood. Appreciate it if you’d look into that. Check the hospital, every clinic too,” he continued.
“Spatter analysis will help here. I can do that,” Lee said.
Archie watched as Lee took an electronic tablet out of his jacket pocket. He turned it on and then entered something using the touch screen.
“Did you find any footprints?” Lee asked.
Archie shook his head. There was a wide swirl of streaked, smeared blood now dry on the floor and he pointed it out to Lee.
“They used a mop in here.”
“Outside? It’s pretty muddy.”
“No tracks in the mud. There weren’t any prints anywhere, not that anyone has found yet anyway.”
“What do you make of that?”
“My guess is that they took off their boots and walked away in their sock feet — maybe. There’s a lot of gravel back there that wouldn’t show tracks. Forensics will be going through the living quarters and out buildings but it looks like everything happened here. Check with them later.”
“Donaldson usually worked with John Robbie,” Lee said. “We have a file on Robbie. I guess you’ve thought of pulling him in for questioning?”
Archie looked past him towards the front room and its repair bay.
Lee repeated his question. Archie re-focussed.
“There’s no indication that Robbie had anything to do with this,” Archie said. “But yes, I want him questioned. If nothing else, he may be able to give us some ideas about Nick’s recent activities. I’d like you to talk to him as soon as you can.”
“I’ve already got him on my list. I know Robbie and Nick worked some stuff together and they both drank at Moffat’s quite a bit.”
“I can’t really figure the motive for this. Not with Robbie anyway. He was Nick’s buddy.”
“I saw them together two days ago,” Lee said. “They were downtown and they both looked drunk. Maybe they got into a fight here and it got nasty.”
Archie shook his head.
“With the level of violence and destruction here, I don’t see a scrap being at the bottom of it.”
Archie crouched down and examined the body again. Two forensics people were bustling about in the next room, working their way towards them. They had already examined the body in situ. The awkward way Nick lay bothered him. He couldn’t quite figure out why at first but then it became obvious.
“You think you’re missing something?” Lee asked.
“I’ve got a hunch.”
He tugged the shoulder back and looked at the dislocated arm, saw the bruises on it, missed because of the body’s position. Then he stood up, cocked his head and peered down the hallway in the direction of the door. He looked up at the blood smear and then again towards the smashed front door pane. He walked to a pony wall and examined it intently.
A local Harsley tech came in carrying a fingerprint kit. Lee, watching, reached into his top pocket, pulled out a package of gum, popped a piece out through the foil; put the packet back into the pocket of his Mac.
“You got it all figured out now?” Lee said. “The whole thing from A to Z? Seriously, what do you think?”
“I’m going under the assumption that it was probably still light out when Nick died, which would make it no later than five like I said in the briefing notes. I haven’t changed my mind about that. I think he had just come back from a dive and somebody was waiting for him when he got home. To me that means that he knew whoever it was who killed him and he probably even let them in. After that it got nasty. His arm was dislocated because somebody pulled something off him, likely a wetsuit. What I can’t figure out is why. Plus where is the suit?”
Lee nodded. He scratched his chin with well-manicured nails.
“They got him out front but how’d they take him? He would presumably be in control of the situation if he knew the killers. He was a big guy so he wouldn’t be easy to beat. Did somebody he knew pull a gun on him? Or get round behind him and knock him down maybe?” he said.
Archie pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to shake an incipient headache that was certainly the result of sleep deprivation
“I’ve asked myself the same questions. It’s not completely clear to me yet.”
“He must have dragged himself back here before they finished him.”
“You’re sure it’s more than one?”
“Look at him. He’s a big guy. It would take more than one and likely as many as three. I think that one of them was a big guy as well, maybe even bigger than Nick.”
Lee looked puzzled. Archie wondered why people found it so hard to see what was obvious.
“Look,” he said. “Nick weighed, what, maybe two-fifty and he was taller than me, standing six two or so. One attacker doesn’t seem likely. Plus somebody strong enough was able to pull his arm out its socket.
“You’re right. That’d take a lot of strength.”
“I think three men, maybe four. But not together. One man came first. Then the others came and finished him off.”
“What do you base this theory on?”
“Common sense and a hunch.”
“Great.”
Archie was reluctant to put out a theory until he had more to support it. He had hunches but nothing more. He was too new to this to lay them out. Plus the last thing he wanted was to be contradicted, or shown to be an idiot because he had overlooked something. Besides, he wasn’t sure about Lee yet and he knew Lee wasn’t sure about him. Anyway, the scenario he pictured had two men doing the killing and a third watching, standing at the pony wall.
“I want to get your thoughts on something else,” Archie said.
They left the body and went back into the shop. Archie pointed to the little alcove hung with regulators. There was a messy workbench there, strewn with tools, O-rings, regulator parts. Looking past the mess they could see the signs of a scuffle, containers knocked over and a coffee cup lying on the floor beside its spilled contents.
“That’s Nick’s, I guess,” Lee said. He was looking at a bloody handprint on the wall close to the alcove.
“I think so. Stoney found an abalone iron with blood on it out back. That’s probably the weapon that knocked him down. Forensics will probably have it bagged up now but you’d better take a look at it.”
Lee nodded. Archie waited while Lee entered something else on his tablet and then aimed it at the workbench and took some shots with its camera. When he finished, they followed the blood trail back to the body, trying not to get in the way of the forensics techs who now seemed to be everywhere. Donaldson’s Dive Adventures was getting crowded.
“You figure that maybe he got something out of his safe, he went over to his workbench, he go
t hit, came to, he shot somebody, somebody twisted his arm out of its socket and then cut his throat to finish him?” Lee said.
“Something like that.”
“Why didn’t they stop him from going into the back?”
“That’s a good question.”
Lee hiked up his pants and squatted down to look at the gaping wound under Nick’s chin.
“Almost took his head off. Pretty dramatic.”
Archie had to look away. He glanced at the ceiling, his clinical distance suddenly gone. He knew Lee had figured it out — that he, Archie, was squeamish, something he didn’t want spread around.
“What about an ordinary break-in and robbery gone bad?” Lee asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “It was made to look like it, but the dive computers are still here, other valuable stuff too. Not much missing that I can see. And you saw what I saw at the door.”
“That the glass was smashed out not in.”
“Exactly.”
“So, what do you want me to do, Archie?”
“What do you mean?”
“I appreciate the grand tour but I’m not sure how I fit in here.”
Archie raised his chin in the direction of the corpse.
“There’s a lot to do. You got experience in murder cases. By rights I should be working for you, but that’s not the way it is. All I can say is that you drew the assignment and I’m glad you’re here.”
“You know why Fricke won’t give me the responsibility, I guess.”
“I think so. It isn’t right.”
“It has to do with the death of Bob Wilkins.”
“All I heard was that he drove off the road.”
“And how I pulled my weapon and said something to Jameson?”
Archie didn’t want to get side-tracked.
“I guess. What about Wilkins’s death? What bothered you?”
“That didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t now. Bob was too careful and too competent.”
“Car accident could happen to anyone.”
“Bob and I were close.”
Archie wondered what he should say to that.
“Did you know about Wilkins investigating abalone poaching?”
