Killers

by Laurence Gough

  After lunch, they’d walk a couple of blocks down Hastings to the Army & Navy. His mother never bought anything except bathroom and kitchen supplies, but she’d let him wander around the sports department, check out the guns and the fishing tackle. Huge salmon, fish as big as he was, had been stuffed and mounted and hung on the walls…

  What a ritual it had been. It just about knocked him out, remembering the child he’d left behind.

  Well, those happy carefree times were dead and gone. It’d been years since he’d counted on his mother to take him by the hand.

  But now, instead of his mother, he had Robyn.

  He continued along Hastings to Georgia, and then followed the same route he and Robyn had taken the previous night, past Lost Lagoon and into the park. He’d read somewhere that it had once been a tidal pool. Hence the name. Whatever, the lagoon was frozen solid except for a smallish patch of open water near the causeway. Hundreds of assorted ducks and inbred Canada geese were milling around in the water, their feathery little faces pinched and worried. Or was he projecting?

  Bright yellow ‘No skating’ signs had been placed on the ice. If it was thick enough for a city employee to walk out on so he could put up the signs, why wasn’t it safe to skate on?

  Chris drove past the Robbie Burns statue. A large stuffed toy dog hung by the neck from one of the famous dead poet’s benevolently extended arms. A crowd of people stood on the snowy slope, looking up. Was that a television camera?

  Behind him, a horn blared loud and long. He frowned into his rear-view mirror, saw the twinkling bar of red and white and blue that straddled the patrol car’s roof. He moved over, into the curb lane. The police car sped past. Chris saw that it was headed towards the aquarium. He followed, turning left up a slight gradient, the parking lot suddenly coming into view. There was another patrol car already in the lot, plus a couple more cars Chris suspected were unmarked units.

  He noticed the ghoul patrol’s drab brown station wagon with its curtained windows and whip antennae, was wondering what it was when he was distracted by a burst of dopey music on the radio. It was time for the noon news.

  Chris pulled into a parking space near the aquarium complex. He put the transmission in ‘Park’ and turned the radio’s volume up a little. The lead item on the local news concerned an apparent death by drowning at the city aquarium. Chris leaned back and closed his eyes.

  An employee, Dr Gerard Roth, had been discovered in the whale pool early that morning by a senior member of the staff. An ambulance had been called, and Dr Roth was pronounced dead at the scene. A homicide detective named Jack Willows had declined comment.

  Next came an item about three bodies discovered in a parked car on the city’s east side. All three deaths had resulted from an overdose of heroin…

  Chris didn’t hear a word. All he could think of was that he’d been right — he had seen what he had seen.

  He switched off the ignition and got out of the car, dropped the keys in his pocket. He walked about fifty yards to a ticket dispenser, fed two quarters and in exchange received a ticket valid for one hour’s parking. He went back to the car and laid the ticket in plain view on the dashboard and locked the door.

  The cold seeped into his bones. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his Levis, walked down a pathway that led past the low-slung building that held the zoo’s collection of exotic, if somewhat bedraggled and morose, birds.

  The central zoo area was deserted except for a few elderly men and several determined-looking mothers towing small, unhappy children.

  Chris walked towards the aquarium. He had reached the foot of the steps when he saw that the complex was closed.

  A uniformed cop stood by the door, watching him. He jogged up the steps and asked the cop if the aquarium was closed because of the guy who’d drowned.

  The cop stared at him for just a heartbeat too long, then nodded tersely.

  Chris asked when the aquarium would reopen. Was it worth waiting around?

  The cop removed his hat. He ran his fingers through his hair. He put the hat back on. Finally, he shrugged.

  Not far from the monkey house there was an antique fire-engine: a red wagon with big wood-spoked wheels, that had been converted into a popcorn stand. Chris bought a brown paper bag of fresh popcorn. He asked for extra salt and an extra squirt of butter and then took three napkins, because the bag was so greasy. The popcorn guy apparently considered three napkins a bit excessive. He gave Chris a mildly disapproving look.

  Chris wandered off eating popcorn and licking his fingers. He’d have liked a cup of coffee or maybe a hot chocolate, but the concession stand was closed for the winter. He sat down on a wooden bench and stared at the granite and green-glass wall of the aquarium.

  What did the cops think — that it was an accident? He knew better. He remembered the snow falling silently down out of the black sky and the sound of the dolly as the wheels thumped on the concrete steps. He remembered the body — Dr Gerard Roth’s body — sliding silently into the pool. He wondered if he’d be able to identify the killer, if he saw her again.

  Chris sat there on the bench and imagined tracking the killer down. Think of the publicity! He fantasized selling film rights, starring in the lead role…

  Susan Carter pushed the glass door open. The cop hitched up his belt and gave her a hopeful but hopeless smile.

  The popcorn guy stomped his feet against the cold, rubbed his hands up close to the hissing propane lantern that warmed his fare. He admired Susan’s long blonde hair, the movement of her hips beneath the heavy winter coat. Full of juice, she was. You could see it just looking at her.

  Meanwhile, Chris sat there on his bench with his bag of double-buttered popcorn in his lap, dreaming of wealth and dreaming of fame.

  Oblivious to Susan, as she walked briskly past.

  Chapter 11

  They went back down to the pool again. The whales were still there, but the body had been removed and the techs had come and gone. Crouching, Willows used a borrowed tape to measure the span of the parallel ruts in the snow and ice, that led all the way from the main building down past the outdoor viewing area to the pool.

  Parker said, “You’re starting to think Roth’s swim was involuntary, aren’t you?”

  Willows nodded. Twenty inches, approximately. The tape was old and rusty. He had to gently encourage it back into its dispenser.

  Parker said, “I’ll give Kirkpatrick a call, see if I can get him to put a rush on the autopsy.”

  “Tell him you’re particularly interested in comparing the water in Roth’s lungs to the water samples we took from the pool.”

  “He was dead when he was dumped in the whale pool, is that your theory?”

  “He might’ve been unconscious, but alive. I hope he wasn’t, though, because if he was alive the fluids would match.” A knee creaked as Willows stood up. “Let’s go find that dolly.”

  The aquarium’s public viewing area was all fresh paint and gleaming terrazzo floors, polished acrylic and glass panels, bright information signs in primary colours.

  Below decks it was a completely different situation.

  A warren of narrow corridors led to various offices and storage areas and unexpected dead ends. Each of the larger display tanks had a dedicated filtration system, and the sound of the complex state-of-the-art machinery was muted but pervasive. Willows tried an unmarked door and found that it was locked. He and Parker made their way down a narrow corridor past a churning pool of water. They turned a corner and came upon a stack of 25-kilogram bags of fine white powder.

  Parker said, “If they’ve got ‘Product of Colombia’ stamped on them we’re going to be famous.”

  Willows indicated a hopper attached to one of the filtration units. “It must be part of the purification system.”

  They continued their search. In ten minutes they’d found three dollies, all of them identical, with wheel spans measuring twenty inches.

  Willows said, “That’s
three out of how many? We could wander around down here for the rest of the week and still not see everything.”

  Parker nodded in agreement. They’d explored less than a third of the basement level, and had already come across a dozen locked doors. She said, “We need a master key, and somebody who knows the terrain.”

  “A guide dog. But even if we had one, we’d have to wait for a positive autopsy report before Homer’d let us spend any more time on this.”

  “We could hand the search over to a uniform. Get him some help from Sweeting, tell him to round up every dolly he can find, hogtie them with crime scene tape. Explain that we might want to dust the damn things for prints.”

  Willows nodded his agreement. Except for the small matter of the unexplained wheel marks left by the dolly in the snow, they had no reason to suspect that Roth’s death was anything but accidental. There wasn’t an awful lot more they could do at the aquarium. The staff was so large that questioning them all simply wasn’t practical.

  Parker said, “I skipped breakfast. Want to take a break, grab something to eat?”

  “We could drive over the bridge into West Van, have lunch and then drop in on Roth’s wife.”

  “Widow, Jack.”

  “Want to give Homer a call?”

  “And tell him what, that we’d like to have lunch in West Van, at a nice restaurant by the sea?”

  “Tell him about the wheel marks. Tell him we think Roth might’ve been dumped in the pool. That’s plenty of reason to talk to his wife.”

  Willows’ conversation with the aquarium’s director took considerably longer than Parker’s call to Inspector Bradley. By the time he eased into the passenger seat of their unmarked Ford the interior of the car was cosy and warm. He said, “Homer give us a green light to cross the border?”

  Parker nodded. “A Victim Services Unit has already paid Mrs Roth a visit, so we’re clear to talk to her, see what she has to say. Tony going to cooperate?”

  “Yeah, he said he’d get somebody to show the uniform around, and arrange a locked room to store the dollies.” Willows shrugged out of his overcoat and tossed it in the backseat. He turned the heater down a notch.

  Parker backed the car out of the parking space. They drove down a curving, gently sloping hill towards the one-way road that followed the seawall around the park. The swimming pool that Willows had frolicked in as a child had long ago been filled with sand and topped off with asphalt. It was called a waterpark now. The Parks Board claimed maintenance costs were considerably lower.

  Willows believed it.

  Their car picked up speed as they drove past Lumberman’s Arch — a massive cedar log spanning a pathway through the park. The inner harbour was on their right; a steep green wall of vegetation on the left. After a mile or so the road curved away from the water and then forked. Parker turned left. A couple of hundred yards further on a narrow branch road connected with the three-lane causeway that bisected the park on its way northwards over the Lion’s Gate Bridge and into the suburbs of North and West Vancouver. A system of lights controlled the traffic flow; the causeway’s middle lane was dedicated to north or southbound traffic according to need. Parker checked and saw that the light above the centre lane was red. She waited impatiently for a break in the single lane of northbound traffic.

  Willows checked his watch again.

  Parker said, “What’re you going to do, time me and then race me back?”

  A yellow van shot past. She hit the gas, cut in between the van and an accelerating grey Mercedes.

  The Mercedes’ driver flashed his lights, leaned on the horn.

  Parker glanced in her rear-view mirror. “If he was any closer, he’d be in the trunk.”

  Willows rolled down his window.

  She said, “What are you going to do?”

  “Shoot him right between the eyes.” Willows unclamped the portable magnetic gumball, stuck it out the window and hit the on/off switch. Red light splashed across the Mercedes’ windshield. The shiny grey car fell back.

  Willows rolled up his window, switched off the light.

  They hit the apex of the bridge, and the white-clad mountain peaks suddenly seemed to jump out at them. A freighter passing beneath the bridge on its way to the inner harbour pushed through the quiet water. Beyond the freighter the sea gradually darkened from grey to black.

  Sometimes, due to a trick of the light, Vancouver Island rose up out of the horizon so it seemed only a few miles away, rather than twenty-five. But not today — the clouds were too thick, too low.

  Parker said, “Think it’s going to snow?”

  Willows managed a shrug.

  Parker almost asked him what he was thinking about, but caught herself in time. The kids — what else? They were approaching the roundabout at the end of the bridge. Below them and to the right, mobile homes on concrete pads occupied a narrow strip of land between the bridge and the Capilano river. You could buy cheap cigarettes down there. No taxes — it was reservation land. Parker braked slightly. The road widened to two lanes and the Mercedes took full advantage, passing them on the inside at a pace the Ford couldn’t possibly match.

  Parker said, “What a jerk.”

  “Yeah, but a rich jerk.”

  “It’s probably a lease.”

  “He wasn’t worried about getting a ticket. How’d he figure out we weren’t West Van cops?”

  “Your clothes, probably.”

  They rolled over the old metal-girdered bridge that spanned the river, then past a hotel and a gas station and a monstrous, sprawling shopping centre. A small park appeared on their right, and then the police station, at the head of a retail strip several blocks long.

  Willows pointed out a McDonald’s.

  Parker kept driving.

  Willows watched the McDonald’s go by. He said, “Do you know something I don’t know?”

  “Just worked that out, did you?”

  A few minutes later Parker turned off Marine Drive. The Ford bumped across a set of railway tracks and then they pulled up beside a long, low red-painted wood frame building.

  “Alonzo’s?”

  “Relax, Jack. The food and the view are both great. Best of all, they’ve got a liquor licence.”

  In front of the restaurant a wooden pier thrust a hundred feet or more into the harbour. In the shelter of a small gazebo at the very end of the pier an elderly man with a shock of white hair and a close-cropped white beard sat with his back to the wind, smoking a pipe and reading a paperback. The man wore a bulky, bright red jacket and a green scarf and matching mittens. He was wearing wire-rim glasses, and his nose and cheeks were red with cold.

  Willows said, “Getting close to Christmas, isn’t it?”

  Parker smiled.

  The restaurant was built on two levels with most of the window tables at the front, on the lower level. The bar was upstairs, at the rear. About half the tables on each level were occupied.

  A waitress hurried towards them, menus in hand.

  Parker said, “Where would you like to sit, Jack?”

  Willows asked if it was possible to have a table by the window, and the waitress smiled and said she thought it was extremely possible, and led them to a corner table for two.

  Parker knew exactly what she wanted; bouillabaisse, with a spinach salad to start, and a Perrier to wash it all down. Willows ordered halibut and chips and a bottle of Granville Island Lager.

  Out on the pier a gust of wind tore at the old man’s beard, ruffled the pages of his book, made his red jacket billow like a spinnaker. He sat up a little straighter, looked out to sea as if to gauge the weather. Smoke and a flurry of sparks billowed from his pipe. He bent his head and went back to his book.

  The waitress arrived with their drinks, Parker’s salad and a wicker basket of bread.

  Willows said, “The two clocks over the bar — one of them is running a little slow, isn’t it?”

  The waitress laughed. “That’s the time in Bagheria. Do you know where
that is?”

  Willows shook his head as he poured a little beer into his glass.

  “Have you ever been to Sicily?”

  “Only in the movies.”

  Smiling, the waitress moved away.

  Parker said, “She thinks you’re cute.”

  “She’s right.”

  “Cute, but old.”

  “Very old,” said Willows, “but very cute.” He drank some beer. It tasted fine. It was Laphroaig weather but since he was on duty he’d settle for a beer. But beer was alright. No, it was more than that, it was very good. Wonderfully good. He tried the bread and found it moist and a bit yeasty, with a fine crust. He sipped the beer and looked out the window at the old man fighting the weather on the end of the pier. He could have been Hemingway. Yes, it was possible. Why not? Elvis was alive. Why not Ernest?

  He watched Parker devour her salad. Such a ladylike attack, ruthless yet delicate. She wiped her mouth and it seemed as if her napkin was bleeding. Lust hit him a body blow so fierce he almost dropped his glass in his lap. Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.

  Parker smiled across the table at him. She said, “What did you think of Susan Carter?”

  “Cute. Very cute. Not as cute as me, though.”

  Parker’s bouillabaisse arrived, and Willows’ fish and chips. He reached across the table and speared a scallop from Parker’s bowl. There was a small west coast fishery but for reasons he didn’t understand, restaurant scallops always came from the east coast, three thousand-odd miles away. You could buy west coast scallops at fish stores. Why not restaurants?

  He asked Parker. She said, “Fish stores sell them fresh. Restaurants prefer a frozen product. There’s a lot less waste, and they’re probably cheaper to begin with.”

  Willows helped himself to a chunk of red snapper and then another scallop. Parker stabbed him lightly in the wrist with her fork. “Be a good boy. Stay on your own side of the table.”

  The waitress drifted past. Willows ordered another beer, by way of compensation. He tore into his halibut.