by Mike Cranny
Bulkwetter raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“I’m not going to talk about police business, Arn, so forget it.”
Bulkwetter shrugged. He shifted the conversation to nothing in particular, talked about how he’d seen Archie drive in from his office window, about how he didn’t like to stay cooped up in his office.
The Lindeman girl came back and Archie asked for his cheque. Bulkwetter didn’t seem to want to leave, but he wasn’t forthcoming either. He rambled on some more about the weather, boats, the town, and then shifted to questions about the Wainright sisters, Streya in particular. Archie said nothing on the subject. He was tired of listening and getting nothing. When the bill came, he got out his wallet, peeled out a ten and a five and stuck them under the sugar container.
“I got to go Arnie.”
He stood up. Bulkwetter extricated himself from his chair as if to follow. He grinned at Archie.
“You get Robbie and you’ve got this thing solved,” he said. “I’ll bet you money on that.”
“If you say so, Arnie.”
Bulkwetter laughed and turned for the stairs. Then he ambled off in the direction of the Marina. Archie watched him until he saw the man go through the back door of the two story marina office. A department ghost car pulled up and Chad Reddin got out. He tossed his still-smoking cigarette into the gravel and climbed the steps and walked towards where Archie was sitting. He nodded a greeting.
“You staying, Stevens?”
“No, I’m on my way.”
“I’ll take your table then.”
“You’re welcome to it.”
Archie gathered his stuff. Reddin eased into a chair, unbuttoned his jacket, revealing the black-handled butt of the nickel-plated .45 automatic he always carried, nestled in its under-arm holster. He took out a pack of cigarettes and placed them on the table. The pistol and holster seemed like a clumsy rig to Archie — showy too. Reddin slapped his lighter on the table’s glass-top.
“You making any progress on your little case there?”
“We’re going to trial on Monday.”
“Ha. Ha. I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Asshole.”
“Like you say, Reddin.”
“You know what you can do, Stevens.”
Archie laughed, turned and walked down the steps to his car. He had nothing personal against Reddin who seemed to be good enough at his job. Maybe it was the association with Jameson. And the show-off pistol and other stuff too. He looked up over the dash, saw Reddin was now standing, talking on his cellphone, animated in conversation. Archie watched a moment. Reddin looked angry, walked out of sight towards the far end of the deck. Archie turned the key, started the 4Runner and drove away.
CHAPTER 5
John Robbie parked out of sight of the highway. He never came near when anybody else was around, which was better for her anyway, him glaring at any guy that spoke nice to her — which still happened. Bonnie Tran saw him when he needed a meal, or when he was lonely. He was edgy and unpredictable, and she liked that in a man or needed it. She contemplated refreshing her lipstick, thought better of it, got rid of her apron and straightened her hair. Time had sifted out her life and left her with John Robbie — suffit!
He came in all at once, wet and dishevelled and shut the door quickly behind him. He’d brought a packsack with him that he kept close. She watched him look out the windows as if he was afraid he’d been followed. She leaned back against the counter, lit a cigarette and waited for him to settle.
“Nobody else around?”
“Who were you expecting, John?”
“Don’t get smart.”
There was suspicion in his voice, more than usual.
“You’re wet.”
“I showered — for you.”
She laughed.
“That’d be a first.”
He glanced at her, an odd look she couldn’t read, and then looked out the window into the parking lot again. When he turned back he seemed to be different — easier, as if he had put on a mask.
“If you’re looking for a meal, you’re out of luck. Day’s over and I’m not firing up the burners just because you showed up.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“So — are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
He unzipped his jacket and tossed it on the back of a chair. The leather smelled damp.
“Be nice if you’d call once in a while.”
“Been busy. Meant to.”
He shot her a sideways glance, a look too broad to misinterpret. She gave his ass a tentative slap as he bent down to retie a boot lace, saw the old burn scars on his neck and shoulders. Something from his time in prison, she knew. He stood up, unexpectedly grabbed her around the waist and squeezed her into him. She didn’t pretend to squirm away this time. If she did that, he’d hold her too hard and she wasn’t sure she was in the mood. She leaned against him, and he growled into the nape of her neck.
“I’m hungry.”
“Later.”
“Make something.”
He loosened his hold on her. She lingered; he pushed her towards the kitchen. She laughed, told him to go fuck himself. Then she said, “I’ll cook something for you. Because you’re like a lost boy and I feel sorry for you.”
She went to the fridge for the steak, flipped the burners on as she passed the stove. From behind the slide, she watched as he slouched into his favourite booth. He dug around in his packsack until he found what he was looking for. He sensed she was watching and turned so she couldn’t see.
She fried onions and mushrooms, reheated some country potatoes from breakfast. She brought the meal and beer to the table, turned up the radio in passing, a slow tune, an old Rodney Crowell — “Till I gain control again.” She sighed, settled back into the seat opposite him, took a pull on her beer, and watched him closely. He gobbled his food, hardly chewing it.
“You going to get mad if I ask you something?”
He put down his knife and fork too slowly, too carefully. He focussed on her, his small eyes jet-hard.
“What?”
His voice was as flat as the top of the table. She was used to dealing with suspicious and dangerous men. She had, after all, two ex-husbands not too different in temperament from the man sitting across from her — experience, no substitute for it. She kept things light.
“I didn’t see anything, Johnny boy. I just know you got something more than steak and Bonnie on your mind tonight.”
When she saw him relax a little, she said, “I keep my mouth shut. You know you can trust me. I never ask usually.”
“Damn right.”
“You piss me off sometimes.”
“I know.”
That was as close to an apology as she’d ever got from him. He cut up more steak, put down the knife, stabbed the meat and loaded up his fork.
“I got to get in touch with Bill. There’s something I want to talk to him about.”
“I thought you worked for him.”
“With him sometimes, not for him — and not lately.”
He talked with his mouth full. She waited, knowing she’d probably wish he hadn’t wanted to confide in her, but needing something beyond her café — the Zuider Zee. Finally, he said,
“There’s weird shit happening.”
“I don’t want anything to do with my brother, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
He looked at her like a poker player searching for an opponent’s tell.
“You got no choice.”
“I always got a choice, Johnny boy.”
He laughed, shook his head. He reached past her, took one of her cigarettes from the pack she’d left on the table and lit it. He stared at their reflections in the black mirror of the window awhile. She looked too. She saw him and her — a wiry little man, hunkered down, framed by the backwards lettering and herself, a worn out Vietnamese immigrant with red-dyed hair who still looked good if the li
ght was right, which it sure as hell wasn’t right then. She fussed her hair back with her hand, waited for him to say something. The wind pushed at the birches at the edge of the parking lot; the rain slashed hard against the windows.
He reached out and grabbed her arm. He was surprisingly strong for a small man and his fingers bit hard into her flesh. She tried to pull away and he squeezed harder.
“So?” he said.
“Why do you have to be this way? I always do what you want.”
He eased up a little, and she wriggled her arm away.
“You get hold of Bill. I need to talk to him soon. Tell him it’s to his benefit.”
That worried her too. Going to Bill meant trouble, especially if it was to his benefit.
“I wish we could stay away from that bastard.”
“Not this time, Bon.”
She nodded, agreed to make the call and he relaxed a little. She looked at her arm, saw that he’d left marks. She shook her head angrily, said, “Shit,” turned her arm and showed him.
“You asshole — look what you’ve done.”
He didn’t seem to notice, just went on with the line he’d started.
“This is important.”
“So — what is it then?”
He put up a hand, cocked his head like he was listening for something. Then he got up and checked to make sure the front door was locked. When he came back to his seat, he pulled the packsack to him and opened it. He pulled out an old purple Crown Royal sack and rooted around inside it, finally producing two gold coins the size of silver dollars. He set them down on the table, one beside the other, coins but not coins, more like medallions with stars on them. He anticipated her question.
“They’re Brother Eli coins,” he said.
She looked at the coins and then at him, like she was expecting him to tell her that he was joking. He didn’t.
“Did you steal them?”
He shook his head, pushed the coins with the tip of his finger and then dropped the empty whisky bag over them.
“Nick found them when he was diving. At least, I figure he did. I was up in the boat all day and he was below working abalone. He left one of his gloves in my boat and I found it when I was home cleaning up. The coins were in this little pocket he had sewn into the gauntlet cuff.”
“Did you ask Nick about them?”
“Nobody’s asking Nick about nothing anymore.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s back at his shop with his throat cut.”
She took a few minutes to let that sink in, said, “Fuck”, and slumped back in her seat.
She looked across at him, saw something in his face, sorrow maybe, or pain.
“Jesus, John. How did that happen?”
“I don’t know.”
They sat quiet for a minute or two, him looking out to the window, out somewhere beyond the sound of wind and rain, her looking at him, wondering. He read the suspicion in her eyes before she could hide it.
“I didn’t kill Nick, Bonnie.”
No anger in the voice like she would have expected.
“I don’t know if I believe you.”
He nodded, said, “Your prerogative.”
“Did Bill do it?”
“I don’t know.”
That worried her.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got to talk to him.”
“Jesus.”
“You going to help me on this?”
She nodded.
“What about the cops? Won’t they be thinking that maybe you killed Nick?”
“Likely.”
She picked at the label on an empty beer bottle with a long fingernail, its red varnish chipped and broken. He watched her, waiting. She looked him in the eye.
“How much do you think?”
“Who knows — a lot. This is big.”
She stopped picking at the label, sat back and folded her arms across her chest.
“Jesus.”
“The cops will come to talk to you for sure.”
“What’ll I say?”
“Nothing beyond the fact that you never seen me. That’s the point — you can’t let on you seen me, Bonnie. Not to anybody.”
“I understand, John.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
He put his hand to his forehead and leaned into it. She waited for him to make a move, watching him, feeling something for him. He got up, pulled his shoulders back, walked towards the hallway that led to her bungalow. Whatever the danger, he had put the thought of it out of his head. She took the plates to the slide. He looked back at her; shot her a lost little boy half-smile. She ‘tcched’ through her teeth, massaged her upper arm until the circulation returned and then she followed him into the bedroom.
CHAPTER 6
Archie watched as the pathologist finished the autopsy on Nick’s body, now laid out on a stainless steel table. Archie’s questions resulted in explanations more detailed, more long-winded than they needed to be and he wondered if Roger Chu was giving him the gears. And he hated that Roger probably sensed his squeamishness. He had had to fight nausea and the weird light-headed feeling that threatened to embarrass him. When it had passed, he took in and evaluated what the examiner was telling him. Chu was an old-timer, but he seemed fascinated with his work and seemed to take a childlike delight in it.
It was no surprise that Nick hadn’t survived his throat being cut. He also had been hit twice on the head with a weapon with a thick, dull edge, hard enough to incapacitate him. He had a 9mm bullet lodged in his chest. Also somebody had mashed two of his fingers, his left arm had multiple bruises and the left shoulder had been dislocated. Archie noted each of these things as they were pointed out to him. He said nothing about what he had already observed at the crime scene. He needed to know the order of events. That was what was important.
The gunshot wound was new to him. The 9mm parabellum bullet had made a small hole underneath Nick’s arm. There were no powder burns. No one had had seen the bullet hole before because of clotted blood on the torso from the neck wound and densely matted hair.
When Archie asked, Chu pointed out the exit wound. The bullet had ripped through the skin of the throat, the damage obscured by the greater wound. Archie tried to imagine the position of the shooter, below Nick, arm straight out — then the shot. Nick had knocked the person down — Nick with his arm raised to strike. Maybe. He hadn’t gone easily. That was certain. Archie had other questions.
“How long between when he got hit and when he got shot?”
“That’s the interesting thing,” Chu said. “I’d guess probably an hour or two.”
“Was he hit twice — like once and then, sometime later, hit again?
“The crusty blood near the eyebrow where the skin was torn back from the parietal bone.” Chu said. “That will tell you.”
Chu glanced at Archie maybe hoping for a reaction. He seemed slightly disappointed that none of what he said or did seemed to make Archie faint or retreat from the autopsy theater but Archie was past the point where that could happen. All he saw now were facts, objects, parts of the puzzle he needed to solve.
“The blood on the head had started to scab,” Archie said. “So there was a time lag.”
“You got it.”
“It looks like he tried to wipe it away at some point.”
“You’re very observant, detective. He did, or somebody else did.”
“He was hit again but how long after?”
“The second time was, maybe, twenty minutes. The blow probably knocked him out.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The location of the blow and its severity — he would have seen stars, certainly, and likely lost consciousness.”
Chu had stopped playing around, stopped trying to get Archie to pass out. He was completely serious now and he got right to the point.
“You see the mashed fingers?”
“I see them.”
&nbs
p; “I’d say that that happened while he was still alive. Somebody smashed them with a blunt instrument, maybe the same weapon that killed him, but you’ll have to figure out that part. This man was tortured, detective.”
Archie nodded. It was obvious now that Nick had been punished or interrogated, or maybe both. He asked about Nick’s dislocated shoulder. What Chu said had at least partially confirmed what he’d been thinking. He would need to know what forensics had found and, maybe, ask them to look again at the safe. He also had to find the wetsuit Nick had been wearing. A drysuit was hanging in the locker room, but it wasn’t damp and, anyway, Archie had found a tear in the skin of it that made the suit unusable. He was certain that Nick had used a wetsuit on the day he died and that was missing. He wondered if Nick had told the killers what they had wanted to know.
He thanked Chu, asked for a copy of the report to be delivered to him. Then he left the lab and drove to the station. He parked in his usual spot and went in the back door. He avoided the coffee room and anywhere else he might run into people and have to talk. He had asked Thomas Lee to meet him at his office and he knew Lee would be punctual. He fell into his desk chair, not bothering to take off his jacket. He threw his cap on his desk, leaned back, and tried to rub out the knot that had been building above his eyes. The nub of his problem was that he had, as yet, no motive for the torture and murder of Nick Donaldson. He had nothing really, beyond some wild guesses.
CHAPTER 7
Thomas Lee walked into Archie’s office, brushed off the seat of the chair and sat down. Archie had sent him to interview some of Robbie’s associates and had hopes that Lee had learned something, maybe even found something that might pass for the missing motive. Lee read the question in his expression and shook his head.
“No certainty about where Robbie is or what he’s been up to but we do have something to go on. I took a black and white with me out to his place on the Premier Forest cut block. His boat and trailer weren’t there and there was no sign that he had been home — if in fact he had, so I contacted the ferries and the airport to check their CC cameras and their parking lots. Eventually we found Robbie’s pickup, boat, and trailer in a ferry long-term parking lot run by the Salish out on the peninsula. It’s been there awhile so he could have been on the nine o’clock ferry yesterday, or even Monday night. He’s likely on the mainland somewhere.”
