by Ted Wood
The Vanderheydens' daughter, Beckie, was waiting table, flirting happily. She's a good-looking blonde of sixteen and like all smalltown girls she's waiting for someone from Hollywood to drive into town and discover her. But she has her Dutch parents' level-headedness and when she saw me she excused herself from the table and bustled over.
'Hi, Chief. Congratulations on the baby.'
'Thank you, Beckie. How's things with you?'
'Good,' she said, then put her hand on my arm, which surprised me, she's not forward. 'Chief, you know those kids who ripped off the grocery today?'
'I wish I did. I'm looking for them.'
'I saw one of them a while back. Mom sent me to the store for some Parmesan cheese and I saw the biggest one, he was on his own and I think he was going into the Murphy's Arms.'
'That's the kid with the dark hair, around five-nine?'
'That's the one. I heard tell that he killed some Indian lady's dog. He's got some nerve, coming back to town after that.'
'He sure has. Thanks very much, Beckie.' I nodded to her mother and left the place quickly, getting back in my car for the short ride to the town's other hotel. It's below the lock, a standard beer joint with draught beer and no food facilities, the place our locals do their drinking.
Again I went in through the back door. No kitchen here, just a corridor with the beer storeroom to one side behind a solid steel door. I came out behind the bar where Eddie the barkeep was running the beer tap full steam, moving one glass after another under the spout without turning it off. He looked at me and made an offering gesture with a glass but I shook my head. 'Maybe later, thanks, Eddie. I'm looking for a kid in here.'
Eddie completed his order and turned off the tap, wiping his hands on his apron as his waiter strode away. 'Under age, is he?'
'No sweat. That's not why I want him.' I looked around, recognizing most of the crowd. And then I saw the boy. He was sitting alone with a beer in front of him, smoking a cigarette. He had the pack stuck in the sleeve of his T-shirt, the same T-shirt he had worn when he killed the Horns' dog. I studied him for almost a minute. He seemed nervous, probably because he was under age but also because he was out of his element. These were real people around him, guys who worked hard and came home tired. He didn't. I could tell that from this distance. He had to buy his muscles at Hermann's Gym.
He was watching the door, and that worked in my favour as I moved towards him between the tables. I was half way there before he saw me and bolted for the door. I didn't give chase. Instead I told Sam 'Track' and he bounded after him, grabbing the heel of his right shoe so that he tripped and sprawled headlong. Before he could sit up Sam was over him, snarling an inch from his face.
Then noise in the bar stopped as if someone had switched off the sound on a TV. Then ony guy shouted, 'Go get 'im, Sam,' and everyone cheered and I knew they were on my side, Sam's at least, and that was just as good.
I've taken the same psychology courses as any policeman these days and I even took a couple at college when I came out of the Marines. So I knew the worst punishment for this kid was to hurt his pride.
I did it by pulling his arms behind him and snapping the cuffs on his wrists. He went scarlet with shame but I was glad. He'd caused a lot of distress for the Horns. Now it was his turn.
'You're under arrest for malicious damage, assault on a woman and for causing undue pain and suffering to an animal,' I told him. Then I pulled out the card from my notebook and read him the formal caution and the rest of the Charter of Rights ritual. I did it loudly enough that the beer drinkers all heard and the kid's eyes filled with tears of frustration. Then I eased him up on his feet and bent to fuss Sam and tell him he was a good dog. He does a lot of my work for me and earns me the biggest chunk of the respect our locals have for their law enforcement system. A couple of them cheered, and one of them, bolder than the others, dared to reach out and pat Sam's head.
'This the guy who killed that man at Pickerel Point?' he asked and I just smiled like the cat who swallowed the canary. 'He's in custody, I'm taking him in, if you'd get the door, please.'
'Yeah, sure.' He bustled ahead of me and I touched the boy between the shoulder-blades and sent him ahead. The crowd followed as I put him into the police car and drove off. I checked them in my mirror to see if they were going to follow down to the station but they just broke up again and went back in for another beer. Good. I didn't need an audience.
At the station I went in the back way, confronting my prisoner with the reality of law-breaking. The place isn't shocking, unless you're in handcuffs. There are four one-man cells along the back wall. Each one has solid walls and a cage front. They contain a bare plank platform, a toilet and a hand basin. That's it.
In the space in front of the cells there's a wooden desk and a chair. I unlocked the handcuffs and said, 'Sit.'
He sat, rubbing his wrists, not looking at me. His flush had gone now and he was pale under his tan.
'Turn your pockets inside out, lay all your possessions on the table.'
He sat there and said, 'I want to see a lawyer.'
'You'll get one phone call when we're through here.'
He didn't move. His face had drawn itself into a pout. He was frightened but proud.
I opened the top drawer of the desk and took out the arrests book and a pen. 'I'm just going to say this once more. Empty your pockets.'
'Or what? You gonna kick the shit out of me?' Even scared, his voice was schooled. He didn't say 'outa'.
I hissed at Sam and he snarled and thrust his muzzle an inch from the boy's knees. The kid licked his lips. 'I'm telling my lawyer you did this to me,' he said, but he was fumbling in his pockets as he spoke.
'Easy, boy,' I told Sam and he sat on his haunches while the kid stood up and turned his pockets inside out. All he had was a clasp knife and money, a few coins and a bundle of bills. I patted him down and checked there was nothing hidden in his socks or back pocket. 'Cigarettes too,' I said.
Angrily he took the pack from his sleeve and tossed them on the desk. 'Now take off your belt and shoelaces. And your watch, that goes with your other stuff.'
'Why are you taking my belt and laces?' he asked as he did it.
'So you won't hang yourself with them.'
'Why would I do that?'
'Happens all the time. What's your name?'
He looked at me and then away. 'I don't have to tell you.'
'It's all the same to me. Suit yourself.' I counted his money. 'You have twenty-eight dollars and fourteen cents. One Buck clasp knife. One yellow-metal wristwatch, Rolex on dial. One pack of Export A cigarettes.' I made the entry in my arrest book. John Doe, 17-19 years old, 5ft 9ins., black hair, brown eyes. Wearing Levi jeans, Reebok running shoes. Charged with ... I wrote in the charges and looked up, putting the top on the pen, looking as satisfied as I could manage. I wanted him cracked. 'Right. Now you wanted a phone call. Come with me.'
In the front of the office I sat him on a stool and picked up the phone. 'What number do you want to call.'
His mouth was working as he weighed his alternatives. No doubt he knew a little law, knew that he could wait until I called a bail hearing and then leave town. That would give him a chance to explain his problems to his parents face to face, to cut down on the shock they were going to experience if he rang them now. 'You got a pizza place in this town?' he asked.
'No. Is that the only call you want to make?'
'Yeah.' His decision made he was tough again. 'Yeah. So stick me in your slammer. See if I care.'
'First I'm going to get a statement from you,' I said easily. 'Sit down there.' I indicated the chair beside the desk.
He sat down, crossing his legs, folding his arms, a closed book.
I ignored him and pulled out an occurrence form and started typing. He watched me, breathing very shallow.
'Right, now.' I lifted the top of the paper and read to him. 'John Doe, you are arrested on the following charges. You have been given t
he caution and advised of your rights under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Now I'm going to ask you to make a statement. Name?'
He almost fell for it. 'Phil, he said and then stopped, angry at himself. 'You've got it down there, John Doe.'
'Right, Phil. How did you come into town tonight?'
'I'm not saying. I was here, OK?'
'Dumb,' I said cheerfully. 'If you'd stayed out of town I might never have found you. You'd have been free to swarm more places, kill a couple of more dogs maybe.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Listen, son. You're in deep trouble. Right now you're thinking that if you get out of here you can run away and I'll never find you. But here's a hot flash. I'm not letting you out until I know who you are and where you're from. So all you're doing is making your parents even angrier at you than they are now.'
'You don't know anything,' he said. 'In the morning you have to deliver me to a court somewhere. When you do I'll be bailed out and you're left holding a bag of fresh air.'
'So your daddy's a lawyer, is he?'
That silenced him. It didn't break him down but he was starting to realize that he'd lost.
'You could get away with this still, you know. Or most of it. I know that Hanson set you up. Did he give you the car you came here in this afternoon?'
'I don't know any Hanson.'
'Fine. I'll ask you again later. Right now you're going in the cells.' I stood up, leaving the half-completed form in the typewriter. 'Let's go.'
He stood up. I could see that his confidence was evaporating. There was no audience for his bravery. It was just him and me, and Sam, a solemn, silent presence. He needed somebody there to appreciate what he was doing, otherwise he was going to lose confidence in himself entirely. I figured he'd be ready to talk to me in about an hour's time. It would seem like an eternity to him.
I put him in the cell furthest from the door, the most isolated-seeming in the place, clanked the door shut and locked it. Then I did the hardest thing yet. I left him, without finding out where he had found the Jeffries' car, and walked out of the back door, locking the deadbolt behind me.
I got back in the car and drove into town again, trying to work out where the kid could have come from. I was surprised by the fact that he had not been carrying a driver's licence or any other ID. Probably he was under nineteen and had left his wallet in the car that brought him, not wanting to be embarrassed if he was asked for proof of age. It also meant that one of the vehicles in town was his. Maybe, if luck was on my side, it would be the Jeffries' Magic Wagon.
But I couldn't see it anywhere in town, so I took a slow drive up and around my whole patch, checking the cars parked at every cottage and the guest houses and our few lodges. It took me an hour and a half, counting a ten-minute stop at home to feed Sam and heat myself a cup of day-old coffee in the microwave I'd put in since marrying Fred.
At close to ten I was back in town again, shaking the door handles on all the lock-up premises. Everything was secure and I walked Sam back to the car just as a new Subaru four-wheel-drive pulled up. It stopped beside me and George Horn stuck his hand out of the window. 'Hi, Reid.'
We shook hands. 'Hi, George. Good to see you. Been home yet?'
'Yeah. My mom's pretty shaken up. The new puppy helped, thanks for the tip.'
'Welcome. She'll be glad to hear I've got the kid in the cells.'
'Good. What's his name?' He got out of the car, a slim tall man, neat in his dark city suit.
'He won't say but his first name is Phil.'
George was thoughtful. 'You'll have to release him tomorrow after a bail hearing.'
'Not if I don't get a name and address. He can't win.'
'Who did he call when you let him use the phone?'
I told him about the bravado and George shook his head. 'Watching too much TV.'
'Yeah. I wish he'd open up. When he came to town and hassled your mother he was driving a car belonging to the husband of the dead woman, Carolyn Jeffries. We've had another murder in town and I want that car badly. I want to trace Jeffries or Waites' wife. I think they're together and they left town in that car.'
'And the kid won't talk?'
'Not a word. Figures he's a hard man.'
George pursed his mouth, as angry as I've seen him. 'He's a little prick, killing poor old Muskie like that.'
'Well, I'm not about to give him the third degree but I want to crack him open. I plan on trying him again when I get back in.'
'Leave it with me,' George said. 'Give me fifteen minutes and I'll be at the station.'
'I can't let you take him apart, George, much as you'd like to.'
'I won't.' He looked at me very straight. In the harsh street light his face looked chiselled. 'You trust me, don't you?'
'You know that. You saved my ass last summer. I still owe you for that one.'
'Trust me,' he said. 'I won't do anything illegal, I promise. Borderline unethical but nothing that will get me thrown out of law. I don't want to end up back on the pumps at the Marina.'
'What are you going to do?'
'You'll see,' he said. 'And afterwards I'll come in and tell you what we found out in Toronto.'
He got back into his car and drove down over the bridge to the hotel where he parked and went into the phone-box. Then I put Sam in my car and drove back to the station.
This time I went in through the front door and spent a minute or so checking the teletype and generally advertising my presence. When I was sure my prisoner knew I was back I went through to the cells, carrying a pop can as if I was just enjoying a cold drink.
He was standing against the bars of his cell and he spoke at once. 'I want that phone call now.'
'You refused your chance.'
'I was confused, you didn't explain it to me properly.' He was tense but still acting tough. He would be an unpleasant adult, I figured, a bullying boss and a bastard around women.
'If you want to tell me your name and answer a few questions I'm prepared to let you make a call, even though I don't have to,' I said.
He slammed the bars with his hand. 'You go shove it,' he said. 'I've waited this long. I can wait all night.'
'Suit yourself.' I shut the door and returned to my desk where I sat and read the teletypes. Nothing on it was new to me. The OPP had reissued the description of Jeffries and Moira Waites and the Magic Wagon, specifying they were wanted in connection with a homicide, but there was nothing else of interest on the list. I finished it and waited a few minutes more until George came in.
He came the front way and called out 'Good evening, Chief,' loud enough that the prisoner could hear out back.
'Good evening, sir, what can I do for you?'
He winked at me and pushed a nine by ten envelope across the desk. 'Your info,' he mouthed. Then he said out loud. 'I'm visiting in the neighbourhood and I saw you arresting a man at the Murphy's Arms Hotel earlier.'
'Yes. I did.'
George's face was perfectly straight. He said, 'I happen to be an attorney and as you don't have one in this village of yours, I thought perhaps he might need one.'
'I've heard of lawyers chasing ambulances but this is a new low, if you ask me.'
'Nobody asked you, Chief. Please keep your opinions to yourself and ask your prisoner if he wants to talk to a lawyer.'
I went to the back door and opened it with a slam. 'You, kid. There's a lawyer in town. He's asking if you want to talk to him.'
He had heard every word of our conversation and he was standing at the bars grinning a mile wide. 'Yeah. I do. Bring him in. Like I can't come out there, right?'
I turned and called George. 'He'll see you.'
George came through and I got a chance to see him move. He's about six feet tall, and lean. In his suit and white shirt he looked like authority on the move. He came in and pulled out a card which he handed to the boy. Then he turned to me. 'Please leave us alone and shut the door.' His tone was snooty and I glared at
him for the kid's benefit but did it, slamming the door.
They were out there five minutes while I looked at the information George had brought me. It contained brief biographies of Marcia Tracy, Waites and Hanson. I read Tracy's first.
She was thirty-eight, formerly married to the banker Dalton, from whom she had inherited the cottage, then to Waites. That ended in divorce one year before. She had been arrested once, for impaired driving but had gotten off. Waites had defended her. She had been born in Toronto and had taken the television course at Ryerson, the big polytechnical institute in Toronto, and worked at a number of jobs before founding her own production company on the death of her first husband. A bracketed note said that his death had been investigated but eventually the inquest had declared it accidental. In George's neat handwriting was the note. 'I have more, will tell you.' At that point she had inherited his insurance and estate and used the money to open her business. She had married Waites six months after her husband's death. For five years she had struggled to keep her company afloat but had then had a couple of successes, Family Pride and Bugaboo.
Her divorce from Waites had been uncontested and there had been no division of family property.
At this point in my reading George came back to the doorway and spoke to me in the same loud voice, not his normal tone. 'Did you realize that my client is a juvenile?'
'I didn't realize he was your client?'
'Well, he is. And he is also seventeen years old and you've got him locked into an adult facility.'
'He's alone, in no danger.'
'At the moment, no. But if you get busy and these cells are filled, who knows what terrible things could happen. I want him released immediately into my charge.'
'I'm not letting him go until I have his name and address. I have to notify his parents and I want to make sure he returns here for a preliminary hearing tomorrow at noon.'
