by Eric Wright
“Delivered? That’s just about what it would cost you to ship it to them. I’ll take it away for nothing. Some of it.”
Harlan laughed. “Can’t do that, Mel. It is Mel, isn’t it? No, I couldn’t do that. Got to be fair to myself. Tell you what. Let’s take a run out there now, take a look. Then we’ll know what we’re talking about.”
Harlan guided them by a slightly different route, along a farm road full of potholes.
“Where does this road come out.”
“Nowhere. Or rather, it comes out here. It’s just a service road. It leads into the other concession road that runs into town.”
“That’s the one I was on before.”
They pulled up by the shed and looked at it from the car. “I’ll take it off your hands before it gets you into trouble.” Pickett offered.
Harlan laughed. “Sure.” He looked the shed over. Some of the boards were already drooping from a single nail and there were several gaps in the roof. “Come on. What’ll you give me for it?”
Pickett shook his head, repeating what Charlotte had told him. “That place isn’t safe. You realize that if one of those roof timbers fell on someone, you’d be responsible. If I were you, I’d burn it down, quick.”
Harlan smiled. “Never mind my problems. How many planks you need?”
“I’d like two walls. That’d do me.”
“Tell you what. Now you’ve told me about the terrible risks I’m running, I won’t be able to sleep. You find someone to dismantle the whole place, at your risk, mind, and you can have two walls as your fee. How’s that? And the rest has to be neatly stacked.”
Pickett was fairly sure that Nykoruk could take this shed down in a day, with his help. “It’s a deal.”
They left the car and Harlan led the way around to the end of the shed, where the double doors stood wide open. Harlan scratched his head and walked inside. “Careful,” he said. “Somebody’s been sleeping in my bed, looks like.”
Inside the empty shed was a late-model car with just enough dust and bird droppings to show it had been there for a few days.
“Leave it alone,” Pickett said immediately, as Harlan went to open a door.
Harlan said, “It’s one of the cottagers, getting free parking.”
“I don’t think so,” Pickett said.
“You think it’s connected with the fella who got shot?”
“I think it’s likely. Close the doors. I’ll phone Wilkie.”
The car, it turned out, had been rented from an agency in Dumpy Lake. It had been signed out to a man in Jacob’s Creek. When they checked on the driver, he told them that he had not rented the car, but that the identification was his, taken from a wallet stolen from him some weeks before. When Wilkie searched the car he found a sports bag in the trunk with a label identifying it as the property of T. Marlow of Larch River.
“You still think Siggurdson did it?” Pickett asked Wilkie.
“That’s who I’ve got in the cells,” Wilkie said.
“Even without the bag in the trunk, there’s got to be more to it than that. A stranger wouldn’t know about that shed. Would Marlow steal a car to meet Siggurdson?”
“So what do we think now? Marlow went to Dumpy Lake and shaved his beard off to match the false ID, which, by the way, he probably bought off Siggy. Clean-shaven, he looks a bit more like the picture. Okay?” Wilkie thought for a while. “Then he drove back here and holed up in the bush, waiting for his rendezvous. Did he smoke? We’ve got clear signs that someone was sitting in ambush up there—the guy left some cigarette butts behind. Store-bought by the way, which is another little mystery, though I think Siggy might clear it up if he was inclined.” He started again. “So Marlow rents a car, drives up here …” But now Wilkie had run out of ideas.
“You think he shaved just to fit the picture on the ID?”
“Why else?”
Pickett offered him a fragment of Caxton’s theory. “Could be he didn’t want to be recognized as he drove through town.”
“We don’t know, do we? It’ll all come clear soon, I wouldn’t doubt.”
“It’s a lot of trouble just to kill Siggurdson.”
“You think so?” Wilkie had had time to think. “If Siggy was found dead, then one of the people we’d want to talk to would be Marlow, right? So Marlow put together this fancy alibi. But Siggy might have been waiting for Marlow to try something like that. I think it holds together. I think I know what I’m doing.”
Siggurdson was charged with manslaughter the next day. Wilkie had what he considered a partial confession in Siggurdson’s admission that he had robbed the body; it was easy enough to construct a motive of blackmail, based on Siggurdson’s admission that he had watched Marlow and Pat Dakin having sex. The gun was missing, but it was obviously at the bottom of a gully somewhere in the bush. They had enough of a case to proceed to trial.
Siggurdson, of course, had no money for lawyers, and was appointed a legal aid defender. When Pickett heard that Siggurdson had been charged, he accepted that Wilkie knew what he was doing and forgot about it. It was difficult, anyway, to sympathize with a Siggy, a Peeping Tom who robbed the body of his dead crony, and easy to believe he had done the ultimate deed.
Besides, Pickett was more concerned with his own problems, specifically with his relationship with Charlotte, which now had to move forward or go back. Winter was coming and with it the assumption that he would close up the cabin and return to Toronto until April. But Larch River was Charlotte’s home. Could he drive up every Sunday all winter just for dinner, etc.? Would she let him? Would she want him to? As far as Larch River was concerned, it would be a declaration of sorts, and the world would wait for the next step, or announcement. Was Charlotte, even now, waiting?
At their age, such a step seemed to require more guarantees than it used to. The young could get blithely spliced for life in the hope that it might work, but he, and presumably Charlotte, had experienced and could foresee all the bumps in the road ahead.
Give her up, then. He tried that one in his head and rejected it immediately, absolutely refusing to take responsibility for making himself unhappy. So he would ask her. But there were real consequences. Where would they live? Between them they had three homes, counting the cabin. Which would they retain? He didn’t want to live in Toronto on his own, but he didn’t want to spend twelve months of the year in Larch River, either. They ought to settle these questions first. If they turned out to be insuperable, then that would have been the test. They shouldn’t get hitched.
Back and forth he went, making little progress, until it was almost a relief to find Mrs. Siggurdson on his doorstep, asking for help.
Part Three
CHAPTER 16
He watched her walk up the track from the gravel road at the end of his lot: a huge, dirty-looking woman in elephantine black pants, a greasy blue-and-gray man’s windbreaker, and a beret jammed on her head, holding some of her lank black hair off her face. On her feet were a pair of old running shoes. Pickett wondered where she had walked from. There had been no sound of a car, so she must have traveled at least the mile from town on foot. As she approached he saw that her cheeks and nose were covered in bright red veins. She seemed to be about sixty, but it was hard to tell, so weathered and dirty was her face.
He stood back from the window and watched her climb the steps up to the porch and bang on the door. He guessed she was a beggar of some sort, perhaps a rural bum, a derelict. He opened the door, wondering what to give her that would satisfy his desire to be charitable but would not have her coming back repeatedly. A sandwich, maybe, and a cup of coffee. She looked at the piece of paper in her hand. “This the Pickett place?”
He liked the sound of that. “The Pickett place” made it seem like a landmark, as if he belonged here. “I’m Mel Pickett,” he said.
She looked at him, waiting, as if she had done her share. It was his move. Then, “You don’t know me.”
But now he did have a faint me
mory of her, seen occasionally in the town. She was some kind of neighbor, then, needing help. “I’ve seen you around, I think.”
“I ain’t seen you that I know of. I’m Evie Siggurdson.”
At first he leaped to the absurd assumption that she was Siggurdson’s wife, but she was surely twenty years too old for that. And then he remembered Caxton saying that Siggurdson lived with his mother.
It was time to let her in. He picked up Willis, who was watching her warily, and stepped back. At first she stood just inside the doorway, until Pickett pushed a chair in place, and she sat down on the edge, looking round at the cabin. Pickett sat opposite her.
“Fixed up nice,” she said appraisingly. “You bin here a couple of years, Siggy says. Never came around before.”
Didn’t Siggy have a first name, he wondered, not even to his mother? Pickett realized that she was probably trying to be sociable, but did not have the habit or the vocabulary to manage routine courtesies. “What’s the problem?” he asked when she lapsed back into silence.
“You’re a copper,” she said.
“I was.”
“You bin involved with my Siggy.”
“Not involved. I know what’s been happening. I heard about it. It’s the OPP and Lyman Caxton you want.”
“I don’t want that cocksucker. He’s in with that bitch in the bake shop. I went to the bakeshop but she wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t open the door. Fella in the beer parlor said you was friends to the OPP.”
“I know them.”
“Tell them Siggy didn’t do it. They’d listen to youse.”
“I doubt it. Why should they?”
“I’m telling youse. My Siggy din’t shoot Timmy Marlow. They’re just arrestin’ him to save trouble. Same with that lawyer they got.”
Now Pickett took the first step. “They’ve got a lot of evidence against him.”
“He din’t do it. They made it up.”
“What do you have to go on?”
“He told me he din’t do it. I know Siggy. He din’t do it. They bin on at him steady since they picked him up. Soon he’ll git tired and tell ’em anything they want. And that lawyer they got for him, he’ll put him up to it. He’s on their side.”
Pickett felt a small breath of apprehension. Like everyone familiar with the legal system, he knew enough lawyers who made a nice living from legal aid by getting their clients to plead guilty to a reduced charge. Plea bargaining. It saved a lot of trouble for both sides and enabled the lawyer to take a much bigger caseload. Some of these lawyers were known in the trade as “dump trucks” because they hauled away all the detritus of the legal system that nobody else wanted to deal with. Pickett knew of several in Toronto. What she seemed to be saying was that they had found one for her son. But then, she would be bound to regard any lawyer, including the local civil rights lawyer, who advised her son to plead guilty, as working for the police.
“What’s his name, this lawyer?”
“I don’t know”
He could find out. “You want a cup of coffee? Or a beer?”
She looked at him as if it was a tricky choice, even a test he was setting her. “I’ll take a beer,” she said, finally.
He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly lunchtime. Want a sandwich?”
She nodded immediately and unzipped her windbreaker.
Pickett found enough liverwurst for two sandwiches, gave her one, and poured them each a beer. She sniffed the sandwich, took a bite, and filled up her mouth with beer and mixed it all together. She had only three teeth and seemed to chew with the back of her throat, keeping her mouth open. Small pieces of the sandwich tumbled over her lips and onto her bosom.
Pickett watched, fascinated. He did not think he had ever seen anyone so dirty in his life, apart from street people. All the seams and veins of her hands, the creases of her face and neck, were blackened as if marked with crayon, all except, now, the moist area around her mouth, which became clean when she wiped her sleeve over it. And now he caught the smell of her and made an excuse of getting some paper towels from the kitchen, returning to open the door, commenting on the fine day, and shifting his chair to the side and back.
When she had eaten the sandwich and drunk most of the beer, Pickett said, “I don’t think I can do anything.” He tried to think of some advice, but the only suggestions he could think of, like hiring another lawyer, or, if she thought it was worthwhile, getting a detective, were useless. She didn’t have the money to create a real response to the charges against Siggy.
“Seems like nobody can,” she said. Her face twitched and quivered as if from a toothache and Pickett realized that she was in the distress that made other women cry. He hoped this wouldn’t happen to her.
“Let’s go over it,” he said. “Siggy—what’s his first name, by the way?”
“Ulro. Nobody calls him that, though. Not even me. He don’t like it.”
“All right. Way I heard it was that after Siggy realized that he might be in big trouble, then he admitted he stumbled over Marlow’s body and robbed it. That’s enough for a couple of years, right there. He says he didn’t kill Marlow, but there’s no evidence that anyone else was around that night. Fact is, someone shot Marlow just about the time Siggy says he robbed him. You can’t blame the OPP for seeing it different.”
“Siggy didn’t ever own a gun.”
“They haven’t found the weapon yet. See, even if it was Marlow’s gun and they had a struggle and Siggy got the gun and it went off accidentally, then Siggy should have come back and told the police.”
“He would’ve, if that’s what’d happened. My Siggy’s a fuck-up, but he wouldn’t take on Timmy Marlow.”
“Not even if he thought Marlow was going to kill him?”
“Siggy’s no good in a fight.”
Pickett tried another route. “Did he ask you to come to me?”
“I told you. He’s about whipped. He just says he din’t kill him, and that’s all he says except not to worry. But I don’t want him to go to the penitentiary. He coo’n’t handle that.” Once again she seemed about to cry.
Pickett got up and opened another beer for her. “What do you think I can do?”
“You’re in with those guys. You see if you think my Siggy done it. If he din’t, tell them.”
Be a friend at court.
“I couldn’t pay you much,” she said. “Maybe a little at a time. Afterward.”
Pickett thought, You don’t have a choice, because she doesn’t, either. Okay. I doubt if I can do anything, but I won’t charge you for trying.” After all, old teachers helped out at literacy centers. Maybe this was something old cops could do. “I’ll do it like you say. I’ll ask them, and if I don’t think Siggy did it, I’ll tell them, and tell you, too. You take it from there.” He tried to think of some way of communicating that what he was undertaking was only a futile gesture, because he could see from the relaxation in her stance that she had got what she came for; her troubles were over. But he was doing it because he had never met anyone less likely to generate the sympathy of his fellow beings than Siggy, from what he’d heard of him, or his mother; for that reason he felt sorry for her. No one should be that destitute of support.
He couldn’t say any of this to Mrs. Siggurdson. “I have to tell you, though, that right now it looks bad.”
“You think he done it?” She stiffened slightly.
“At this stage, it looks likely.”
“He din’t do it.”
“I’ll ask the police, see if I can find out what the case is like. They probably won’t tell me.”
“Sure, they will. You’re in with them. When can I comeback?”
“Oh no. No. I’ll ask and I’ll make up my mind, and then I’ll come and find you. Where do you live?”
She gave him directions to the Siggurdson place, a house on a concession road, a home that Pickett remembered hearing Caxton describe as “badly in need of redevelopment, like, someone should put a match to it,”
and wiped some crumbs off her front. “Siggy din’t do it. He was home Friday night with me.”
“Did anyone else see him?”
“No. He was home, though. He wasn’t home Thursday ’cause we had a fight in the morning and I throwed him out. But he came back Friday.”
“What time?”
“About nine.”
“I think that gives him enough time.”
“If he’d killed Marlow, I’d’ve knowed. But he din’t act up like that. He acted ordinary.”
She was convincing about her own conviction, at least. “Did he stay home all the time after that?”
“No way. He just come and went like always. And he was surprised at the news like I was. He din’t kill Timmy Marlow.”
He watched her trudge down the track to the road, wondering what he had taken on, wondering where he would start. He knew why he had said yes, but after she had disappeared from sight, it occurred to Pickett, in time to prevent him from congratulating himself at his charity in responding to her plea, that if she had been any other woman he would also have offered her a lift back to town. It hadn’t occurred to him. Poor old broad.
CHAPTER 17
The first thing, he decided, was to tell Wilkie what he had agreed to do. That might be the end of it, as long as he was satisfied that there was no reasonable doubt. He needed to get his chain saw sharpened, too, a service that Nykoruk didn’t offer, so he washed the dishes, microwaved a cup of old coffee, and drove into Sweetwater an hour later.
He found Wilkie in his office and told him what he had undertaken. Wilkie hardly reacted at all. “Private eye, eh, Mel? Like all you old farts who retire from the metro force.”“Just this once, Abraham, my boy. Pickett’s Last Case. Then I’ll close the agency.” Pickett had been wary of Wilkie’s reaction to what he might have seen as meddling, and although he was encouraged by the mildness of Wilkie’s response, he stuck to the jocular tone he had decided on. It was probably good if Wilkie didn’t take him seriously.
