Killers

by Laurence Gough

  The billed address was 808 East 8th Avenue.

  *

  Robyn had been up all night, worrying. She’d called all of Chris’s crazy actor friends, and then half a dozen emergency wards. Maybe he’d spent the night in the drunk tank — wouldn’t that be nice?

  She was angry when she answered the door, ready to give him hell for losing his keys and whatever other stupid things he’d done. But it wasn’t Chris who stood there in the hall, it was a clean-cut but somehow kind of hard-edged couple that looked as if they’d been standing there forever. The last thing she needed was a high-powered doom and gloom religious pitch. She tried to shut the door, and the guy in the bomber jacket stuck out his foot. Robyn looked down. The guy was wearing oxblood brogues, size ten and a half or eleven. Same as Chris.

  Robyn looked up.

  The woman had a badge. Correction. They both had badges.

  Cops.

  Robyn suddenly knew that Chris had lost a lot more than just his keys. She stepped back, leaned against the wall. The woman reached for her but missed. She slumped to the carpet. The cops knelt beside her. The woman had a weakness for expensive perfume; her partner was chewing on a mint.

  Robyn took a deep breath. She said, “What happened to Chris?”

  “He’s missing,” said Willows. “That’s all we know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Parker said, “No, really.” She introduced herself, and Willows.

  Robyn tried to stand up. Her knees were a little wobbly. Parker steadied her.

  Willows said, “Do you own a white ninety-two Subaru Justy?”

  Robyn nodded. She bit her lip, hard.

  “We’re looking for Chris.”

  “He isn’t here, obviously.”

  Willows smiled. “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Willows wandered through the apartment, letting his eyes do the work, find what they may. There was a framed picture in the hall of Robyn and someone he assumed was Christopher Rand Spacy, basking in sunlight on a white sand beach.

  The kitchen was a mess.

  The bedroom was worse. Clothing, male and female, was strewn everywhere.

  A tap dripped in the bathroom. The tub was half-full of cold, soapy water. A washcloth floated like a blank white face.

  In the living room, Willows loitered quietly while Parker told Robyn what little they knew: that her Subaru had been found abandoned by the lake and that it appeared someone who was bleeding heavily had been dragged down to the water.

  Robyn told Parker she didn’t see what that had to do with her.

  Parker asked Robyn if Chris had driven the Subaru the previous night. She asked Robyn when she had last seen Chris. She wondered what Chris was doing at Trout Lake. She asked Robyn if Chris owned a gun.

  Robyn wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember, had no idea, doubted it.

  Parker kept asking questions. She was infinitely patient.

  Robyn went into the kitchen and wiped clean the counter. She asked Parker if she wanted coffee and then neglected to make it. She came back into the living room, straightened a cushion on the sofa. Chris had left a wine glass on the windowsill. She picked up the glass and held it as he had held it, covering his hand with her own.

  The male cop was staring out the window. What was he looking at? She followed his gaze. The dead pigeon still clung to the power line in the alley. Its body and widespread wings were glazed in snow and droplets of ice. The bird glittered and sparkled as it swung stiffly in the erratic, gusting wind. It was so lovely that it might have been an angel come to grief.

  Like Chris.

  Robyn sat down. Parker held her hand. Willows took notes as Robyn confessed to a disjointed, weepy tale of base opportunism, sudden greed, foolhardy naivety.

  When Robyn had finished talking and dried her eyes, Parker said, “You’re sure it was Susan Carter that Chris tried to blackmail?”

  “He had proof she was having an affair with the man we saw pushed into the whale pool.”

  “Gerard Roth.”

  Robyn nodded.

  Willows said, “What kind of proof?”

  Robyn shrugged.

  “You didn’t ask?”

  Had Chris collected the twenty-five thousand and then abandoned her? Robyn wanted to believe it. He was impetuous and sometimes he was weak. It was possible… She felt hollowed out, empty. Desolate. Awash in grief. The cop in the brogues had knelt down in front of her. What was he saying? He looked so sincere, but the tears had begun to flow again, and she couldn’t understand a word he said.

  Willows used the phone in the bedroom to dial Susan Carter’s home number. He counted a dozen rings, hung up and dialled again. No answer. He tried the aquarium. Susan was apparently still sick. She hadn’t called in.

  He hung up, went back into the living room. Robyn had managed to bring herself under control. He waited while Parker explained the functions of the Victim and Witnesses Service Unit, asked Robyn if she would like someone to give her a call.

  Robyn said she’d think about it.

  Parker asked her if she had any relatives in the city. Robyn shrugged and said no.

  “Friends?” said Willows.

  “No one I want to talk to.”

  Parker and Willows exchanged a glance. Parker went over to the phone and dialled the VWSU. She was told to expect a counsellor in half an hour or less.

  Willows went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea.

  *

  An hour later, Willows parked in the alley behind Susan Carter’s apartment block. There was no answer when he buzzed her. He rang the super. A woman who would only identify herself as Esmerelda told him she had no idea where her drunken lout of a husband was, that he’d been missing since mid-afternoon of the previous day.

  Willows told her that was quite a coincidence, since Susan Carter had been missing for roughly the same period of time. He and Parker stamped their feet against the cold while they waited for Esmerelda to let them in. The super’s wife was in her mid-fifties, wore a charcoal-grey cardigan and brown slacks, bifocals in hot-pink plastic frames. Esmerelda wasn’t wearing lipstick or any other makeup, but Parker was certain her hair had recently been tinted and permed. Her eyes behind the glasses were red and swollen. In silence, the two detectives and their escort rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor.

  Willows used Esmerelda’s master key to unlock the apartment door. He draped a handkerchief over the knob, delicately turned it until he could push open the door. It was a straight run down the entrance hall to the living room. The apartment was dark. He could see from the open doorway that the living room curtains had been pulled.

  He used the handkerchief again as he snapped on an overhead light.

  Parker told Esmerelda to wait in the hall, and she and Willows entered the apartment. The smell of blood hit them and Parker immediately turned and shut the door in Esmerelda’s bleached, tear-stained face.

  They found Mr Mohawk exactly as Chris had left him. Willows turned off the shower, knelt and searched for a pulse. Mr Mohawk’s eyes flicked open. He showed his teeth. Parker hurried off in search of a phone. Willows told Mr Mohawk to take it easy, assured him he was going to be all right. Mr Mohawk swung wildly, and sank a number eight Phillips screwdriver deep into Willows’ forearm.

  Willows fell back. Mr Mohawk fainted dead away. The screwdriver clattered in the tub.

  Parker appeared in the bathroom doorway. She said, “An ambulance is on its way.”

  “Great.” Willows stood up. A stream of blood ran down his wrist, splattered on the bloody floor. Parker’s face was white. He managed a shaky grin.

  Parker said, “Christ, Jack.”

  “I’m okay — it’s nothing.”

  “What happened?”

  “He woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” Parker helped Willows ease out of his jacket, gingerly rolled up his bloody shirt sleeve. The neat round hole in his arm was about a quarter-inch in diameter. She remembered the small-
calibre splash pattern in the snow at the lake.

  As Parker rinsed his wound under the cold water tap, Willows tried unsuccessfully to recall when he’d had his last tetanus shot. Long, long ago. He asked Parker if she had any aspirin.

  Of course she did.

  *

  The paramedics stabilized Mr Mohawk, then dealt with Willows’ relatively minor injury. Parker wanted to drive him to emergency, but he’d been on the hunt too long to give it up.

  *

  By the time Parker pulled up in front of Gerard Roth’s expensive False Creek apartment Willows’ arm was so badly swollen and painful that he had to ask her to loosen the pressure bandage hurriedly applied by the paramedics.

  His mood improved slightly when he saw that Roth’s door was off the latch. Parker knocked and loudly called out Susan’s name. There was no response. Willows drew his revolver. Parker called out again, and then she and Willows entered the apartment.

  The leather couch and loveseat had been slashed to ribbons. A chair had shattered the heart-shaped mirrored-glass coffee table. Dozens of framed photographs had been torn from the wall and stomped to pieces. Willows made his way down the hall, checked first the bedroom and then the bathroom. Gerard Roth’s expensive False Creek apartment had been violently but methodically ripped to shreds.

  Parker dialled Iris Roth’s number.

  Busy. She dialled ‘0’, gave the operator her badge number and asked for an intercept. Iris’s phone was off the hook. With a mounting sense of urgency, Parker made a call to the West Vancouver police. The duty sergeant told her he had a major backlog but assured her he’d send a unit to check on Iris Roth as soon as possible. Parker insisted on knowing roughly how much time that was likely to take. Pressed, he told her the switchboard had logged two 911 calls from a residence on Blink Bonnie Road, out on Batchelor Point. An unidentified, extremely distraught female had reported a break and enter in progress and the presence of three bodies on the beach in front of the residence. Every available unit was en route, and likely to be tied up for quite some time. Parker said, “How far is Batchelor Point from Eagle Island?”

  “Half a mile, maybe a little more.”

  “And there were three bodies on the beach?”

  “Yeah, three of ’em.”

  Parker thanked him and hung up.

  Willows said, “I’ll drive.”

  Chapter 28

  Feeling housebound, old man Sinclair had decided to spend an hour or two on the beach, spin-casting for whatever was dumb enough to climb aboard his hook. He had no real hope of catching anything, given the tide and his general lack of enthusiasm. But he’d learned early on in his retirement that carrying a fishing rod gave him license to poke around on the beach for as long as he wanted, no questions asked.

  He’d barely wet his line when he saw Fireball and Mr Jigs. The two dogs lay on the beach by the high tide line, entangled in a lacy shroud of green nylon fishnet. He rested his rod against a log and hurried towards them. He noticed right away that neither dog was wearing his studded collar. As he drew closer he saw that their fur was matted and their weirdly bulging eyes had a dull, glazed look.

  A stranger coming upon the two bodies might have thought they were cheap stuffed toys, but Sinclair recognized the dogs immediately. The feisty little buggers had escaped from the Roth household whenever they could, ever since they were pups. Many was the time he’d looked out the window and seen them scampering through the trees towards him, looking for a little affection, table scraps.

  He poked Mr Jigs and then Fireball with a stick. The dogs were at least as dead as they looked, which was about as dead as it was possible to get.

  Now that he’d had time to get over the initial shock he was able to see the dogs more clearly. It was obvious they’d been on the beach for a day or so; Mr Jigs had dried sand in his eyes and Fireball’s open mouth was choked with hoar frost. Both bodies were badly mutilated; chopped up as if by a propeller. He remembered seeing that sad asshole Gerard trying to train them to piss on a scarecrow he’d set up in the backyard. What a dope.

  If there was a doggie heaven, the Saint Bernard at the front door sure as hell wouldn’t let Gerard inside.

  Knees creaking, the old man crouched behind a log to escape the wind that swept in off the harbour. He stuffed and lit his pipe. The rotten weather had kept just about everyone indoors. Except for the dogs, he was alone.

  He glanced behind him, at the dark, empty windows of the multi-million-dollar oceanfront homes that lined the beach. He couldn’t walk away and leave Fireball and Mr Jigs lying there, but knew he lacked the strength to carry or even drag them to his car. What he needed was a little bit of help. He showed the wind his strong yellow teeth. He couldn’t see himself asking some millionaire’s wife to give him a hand with a couple of deader-than-hell dogs.

  It was a goddamned quandary, wasn’t it?

  He could call the pound though, couldn’t he? Let professionals deal with the problem. He tried to think where the nearest payphone was, puffed strongly on his pipe and was a little astonished to find it had gone out. His Zippo was in his pants pocket. He had to stand up to get at it. He was thumbing the lighter’s wheel when he saw the third corpse. His first thought was that it was a seal, but then he saw it was a human being, probably a woman.

  A wave struck the body in a welter of foam. Well, he knew what to do now, didn’t he? He turned his back on the body and walked stiffly up the beach, towards the nearest million-dollar home.

  The house’s mahogany front door had a miniature porthole sunk into it. Cute. He peered through the glass, then pressed the doorbell. Behind him, a seagull flared its wings as it passed over the body, wheeled gracefully and settled lightly on the sand. Prepared to eat it or beat it, the bird approached the corpse with a peculiar sideways gait.

  The old man pressed the doorbell again. He tried the door. It was unlocked. The entrance hall was lit by a massive, glittering chandelier. The floor was pink marble and the walls panelled in bleached oak. A garish Mickey Mouse telephone stood on an inlaid table. He was pleased to find that he much preferred his own modest dwelling to this one. He called out, then walked inside and shut the door behind him, went over to the table and picked up the phone.

  The line was already occupied. A woman’s voice said, “Bob, is that you?”

  Old man Sinclair identified himself. He explained that he was a neighbour, almost.

  The woman screamed.

  A man with an Italian accent excitedly advised the woman to hang up and lock the bedroom door. He told her to be quick, shouted that he would call the police.

  Old man Sinclair said that was a very good idea. He tried to explain about the bodies. The Italian swore vociferously. Upstairs, a door slammed shut.

  He went back outside, took a deep breath of cold, salty air. The gull had vanished, but the woman’s body still lay on the beach at the tide line. A wave rolled over it, roughly pushed and pulled it across the gravel. It was wrong to leave her there, but he’d done what he could. He’d seen more than enough corpses for one day. It made no sense to stick around and be arrested for trespass, or much worse. He retrieved his fishing rod and started towards the path that meandered through the fringe of woods skirting the golf course. It would take him to Marine Drive where he’d parked his Studebaker.

  Half an hour later, as he sat at his kitchen window mulling over the wisdom of dropping by the Roth house to see if Hot Stuff was okay, he happened to spot the young couple on the pier.

  *

  Willows and Parker stepped on board the nearest of the little ferries. The boat rocked gently as Willows made his way to the stern. He checked to ensure that the motor was in neutral, adjusted the choke and pulled the starter cord. The motor sputtered. His wounded arm throbbed. He pulled again. The motor caught, faltered, and then held steady. He eased in the choke. Parker cast off the lightweight galvanized chains securing them to the dock. Willows put the engine in reverse, backed slowly out of the slip. His arm had
started bleeding again; red drops splattered on the aluminium deck. He pointed the bow towards the island, shifted into forward and goosed it.

  *

  Old man Sinclair watched Iris Roth’s boat speed across the narrow channel of slate-grey water separating the island from the mainland. The young fella at the tiller was going much too fast. Sinclair knew for a fact that most people who didn’t know boats treated them as if they were nothing but floating automobiles. This was not a good idea. Boats were like horses — if you didn’t tie them up, nine times out of ten they’d wander off first chance they got. He watched as Willows eased the ferry up to the small floating dock that serviced the island.

  *

  Parker fastened her detective’s shield to the lapel of her overcoat. There was a lot that Willows wanted to say to her, but since he’d said most of it many times before, he didn’t see much point in saying it again. As for the rest of it, well, that could wait. He reached out and gave her badge a yank, satisfied himself that the spring clip held it firmly in place. Claire smiled up at him. She checked the load in her revolver.

  They walked in single file along the dark, narrow path that led through the woods to the Roth house. The porch light was on but there was no other sign of life.

  Willows climbed the steps. Knocked. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He pushed it open a crack, called out Iris’s name.

  Parker said, “I’m going around to the front, to take a look through the french doors.”

  Willows nodded. He almost told her to be careful, but caught himself in time. He waited, giving her time to get into position, then pushed the door hard enough to make it bang against the kitchen wall. He loudly identified himself, entered, and shut the door behind him.

  The cottage was overheated, the air hot and stuffy. Willows used his left hand to unbutton his jacket. He was all eyes, but saw nothing but the linoleum floor, which gleamed painfully bright beneath a bank of florescent ceiling lights. He was all ears, but heard nothing but the hum of the refrigerator. He smelled ceiling wax, wood-smoke. The overhead lights flickered as the furnace kicked in. A gush of hot air assaulted him from a vent in the floor. As he moved towards the doorway that led to the cottage’s living room, his eye was caught by a small movement on the kitchen counter. He turned and saw his reflected image, distorted and shrunken, stare back at him from the polished chrome flank of an old-fashioned toaster.