by Jon Redfern
“Let me toss this in. Two boys are found hanging in the basement of the same house. The last kid mutilated. Satanic books and Miss Bird are all part of the picture. We had a case a few years ago in Vancouver. Four girls — all fifteen — were found over a nine-week period in a number of different garages in the neighbourhood of Marine Drive. Every one of them dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. A suicide pact? No. A serial killer. A substitute teacher posted around the city. He’d lured the girls, subdued them with chloroform, then turned on the cars and watched them die. My late partner on the city squad, Harry Stone, found the chloroform and the gas mask the killer had worn hidden in the suspect’s briefcase along with some of the students’ schoolwork.”
“So, Inspector, which one is more likely, do you think, in this case? The pact or the serial killer?”
“I don’t know, Barnes. I need to see this from any and every angle. Do you know of any cult groups in the city? A link between that kind of activity and the boys’ interest in Satanism might lead somewhere.”
“I don’t know, Inspector. I’ve not encountered cults here. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. But as you know, they hide underground. And most of their younger members tend to leave school and disappear onto the streets.”
“Right,” agreed Billy. “Come on, Barnes.”
Back in the office, Counsellor Barnes presented Billy with his card. Billy handed him a three-by-five lined note card with his cell phone number and the station’s e-mail address. “Thanks, Barnes. I’ll get a hold of you on Monday. Can we set up some more interviews?”
“You may not get many more, Inspector. I went through my files — I keep a copy of them at home on my laptop — and I couldn’t find any more names associated with Darren Riegert. His one best friend is already dead.”
“You ever counsel a young girl named Emily Bourne? Dark hair, spider tattoo on her neck.”
“Not that I remember. How is she involved here?”
“She says she was friends with Cody and Darren. I’m looking into her connection to them.”
Billy and Barnes shook hands. After he escorted the counsellor to the reception area, Billy walked down the corridor into Butch’s office. He sat at the computer, entered the password Butch had given him, and began to skim the files on Cody Schow and Sheree Lynn Bird. He jotted in his notebook information from the constables’ reports, the fingerprint data, the coroner’s analyses. After reading for an hour, he logged off. He placed his notebook on the table in front of him. Let impressions float for a time. How much was Sheree Lynn Bird involved? Billy opened his eyes. Now that’s interesting. Why would that question come up first, above all others? He shut his eyes again, leaned back in his chair. The hum of the office seeped into his meditation. Is this a case of Blayne Morton behaving like a lunatic because he is trying to smoke-screen a feeling of guilt? Billy placed his notebook into his suit pocket, next to his heart, walked into the coffee room, and found Dodd.
“Dodd, can you get me the Bird statement?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, listen, the junior high school will be closed, but get a hold of the principal and get this and last years’ yearbooks from their archives. I need pictures of Darren and Blayne Morton.”
Dodd was scribbling down the names on a piece of paper he’d grabbed from a pile by the mini-fridge.
“Also, get the principal to blow up a picture of Riegert and have it posted for when the students return for summer school. Print out a notice asking for anyone who might have known Darren or seen him in the past week. If you find a clear picture of Blayne Morton, get an identikit done and then take it to the city bus system today. Find out from their dispatch people who was driving the main routes up Ashmead and the street where the Mortons live.”
“No problem.”
“You got your notebook with you? Let’s walk and talk.”
Dodd fumbled in his pocket, pulled out his notebook, and followed Billy to the door. He flipped a few pages and read quickly.
“Okay, sir. I enquired of the neighbours of Woody Keeler and Sharon Riegert, on Friday night. At both addresses, Keeler’s and Riegert’s. No one had seen them. I drove to the beer outlet near the Riegert bungalow. The manager said he knew the man’s name — Woody — and that, yes, he had come in Friday night, as usual, and had purchased a two-four. The time was approximately six-thirty.”
“Okay.”
“The videotapes of Miss Bird and Professor Mucklowe were completed, as requested. Checked on Mucklowe and Miss Bird for whereabouts on Saturday night. No statements from landlord or neighbours since no one saw them. As requested today, went to the Schow household and asked of whereabouts for last night. Mrs. Schow was drunk and refused to allow questioning and shut the door.”
By now, Billy and Dodd were standing by the entrance to the lab. They had come down a flight of stairs and gone through two sets of swinging doors, Dodd reciting from his notebook in a steady, low voice.
“Afternoon, Johnson.”
The smell of disinfectant saturated the dry air. Billy and Dodd stepped into the brightly lit room, where Johnson was wearing an apron and gloves. A paper mask dangled from her neck.
“What’s our wrap-up on Darren Riegert?”
“First, the handwriting man at the horsemen’s headquarters took a quick look at the note from Riegert’s mouth and the writing on the Blayne Morton Polaroid you gave me.” Johnson handed back the picture of the Valentine box to Billy. “He said the printing was not similar, especially the formation of the capital letter E. The slant of the words was more pronounced in the message on the Polaroid.”
“What else?”
“The basement at Satan House had no significant markings, no prints on the overhead pipe or on the utility sink. Prints in the stairwell, on the back doorknobs, and on the washer and dryer had been touched and smudged so often there were no distinct specimens to analyze.” Finger-prints were only useful if they could be matched up with those from identifiable felons.
“The paper towel and the blood had obscured any skin oil or markings from the handlers. Same on the note found in the body’s mouth.”
“You get anything from the rope or the boom box?”
“All blood samples match. All are from the Riegert body.”
Billy stood by the table. He let his eyes roam over the objects in front of him. Dodd had paused a few moments by the door, gulping in a few deep breaths, before he came up beside him. “The smell in here gives me the jitters, Inspector,” Dodd said.
“I have a question for the two of you,” Billy said, looking first at Dodd and then at Johnson. “How do we establish that this boom box is actually Darren’s? For certain? These things don’t have serial numbers. This one could belong to me, for instance. Boom boxes of this brand and year all look alike. It may have been brought to the scene by someone as a gift. As a bribe. As part of the ritual.”
Dodd interrupted. “But only Darren’s prints were on it.”
“So we could suppose he carried it into the basement. Or that the murderer was wearing gloves since no other prints were found.”
Johnson hesitated. “I tried something earlier before you came down, sir. I placed the boy’s boots on top of the boom box. Hawkes removed them from the body after he was finished. Here, let me get them.”
Johnson walked to a cabinet and pulled out a large Ziploc containing the blood-spattered boots of Darren Riegert. She brought the boots to the table and placed them on top of the machine, side by side. “See?” Johnson was pointing to the splatter pattern on the boots and the edges of the boom box. “When I lift up the two boots, you can see that there is a clean area along the top of the box where the boots were placed. When I put the boots back, the splatter pattern is continuous from the toe sections over to the edges of the box.”
“The boy was standing on the box in his boots and was cut and bleeding.”
“It looks that way.”
“Which means what?” asked Dodd, who scratched his te
mple.
“Only this,” ventured Billy. “The kid was cut just before or while he was standing on the box. The blood spatters I saw this morning in the site photos also suggest he was cut while standing under the pipe, in the location of the noose. So whoever was with Darren may have had him stand on the boom box around the time the cutting of the wrists and chest took place. We have the knife. And we have the smudge of blood in Darren’s right hand. Was that smudge from holding the bloodied knife? Does the mark with the distinct line suggest the knife was dropped or placed by the boom box?”
Johnson tapped the boom box. “Sir, Darren could’ve cut himself, or the murderer could have forced him to stand and be cut, and then the knife was placed on the floor as. . . .”
Dodd shook his head. “The kid probably held the knife and then dropped it because he was in pain.”
“Possible,” said Billy. “Darren may have been forced to do so, but the palm smudge suggests he was holding the knife at some point while he was bleeding. But why was the box removed from the site? And why did the accomplice — we’ll call the person or persons that for now — go and bury the knife? The burial looked haphazard to me. As if the accomplice wanted us to find it. The box was hidden more carefully. Was the hiding of these objects done in a moment of panic? Or did the perpetrator think that by hiding the objects any clues to his or her identity would be removed from the scene?”
When Billy was finished his hypothesis, Dodd and Johnson looked at each other. Dodd got out his notebook and flipped a few pages. He listed the questions Billy had asked, and as the silence of the bright room gathered, Billy gazed once more at the boom box, the knife, and the rope. Johnson had lain out the rope full length next to the box. Billy had been right about the rope burn but not about the material the rope was made from. It was nylon and shredded in places, like a hemp rope might be, but since the nylon was of cheap stock and worn from use, its rough edges had apparently bruised the skin in the same manner as hemp.
“You find anything on that rope, Johnson?”
“Yes. Dog hair. Some traces of skin from Darren’s body.”
“What about the bag with the blood stain?”
“The blood was Darren’s. Nothing was in the bag — lint only, some nylon fibre from the rope.”
Billy picked up Darren Riegert’s book, the Thanatopsis. He wondered if Dodd or Johnson had flipped through it to examine the spells or if there might be something inside. The book was the one item left they had not analyzed. Billy shook and fluttered the pages. From its centre, a Polaroid dropped to the floor.
“Ah,” Billy said, his voice gently teasing the other two.
The picture was of a red Valentine box. Billy slipped the other two Polaroids out of his pocket and laid the three of them in a row in front of Dodd and Johnson.
“Who took these, sir?” asked Johnson.
“Two of them for sure were taken by Blayne Morton. The third, from the book. . . .”
“Has to be his,” chimed in Dodd. “It’s the same red candy box.”
“How did it get into the Thanatopsis? Is there writing on it?”
Johnson picked it up and turned it over. “Yes. In printing. ‘Meet me tonight, please. Please.’”
Billy looked more closely. The handwriting here and on the other Polaroid was similar. “Try to get a print off that, Johnson. I suspect it’ll be one of Blayne Morton’s. Now we have three pictures from Blayne to Darren, and one of them was at the murder site. Was it carried there, or was it in the book to begin with?”
“It’s still not conclusive enough, though, is it, sir?” asked Johnson.
“We need a hard piece of evidence that places Blayne at the site for certain.”
“You get anything on Woody Keeler?” Billy then asked.
Both Dodd and Johnson grinned. “Yes, sir. We’ve been saving the best for last.” Johnson removed her gloves and apron. Dodd reached the swinging doors first and shoved them open with a sigh of gratitude. He held the door for Billy.
The small computer room was two doors down the hall on the same floor. “This is our special-access computer, sir,” explained Johnson. She unlocked the door with a set of keys and held it open. “As Dodd showed you yesterday, there are files here and on-line connections to other units in the province we can call up. Security, mainly. Chief said he didn’t want his staff accessing what we’ve got here or they’d be playing all day at their desks.” Johnson tossed a mischievous glance at Dodd.
“Wait a second,” Dodd replied. He was about to go on, but Johnson sat down at the computer, keyed in her password, and took the mouse around the screen several times as Billy pulled up a chair and signalled to Dodd to do the same.
“Woody Keeler. Age thirty-four. Here’s the welfare profile, Inspector.”
Billy scanned the dates, the many changes of address, the file notations on jobs offered by the social agency, the one-line summaries of the job interviews given to Woody Keeler, and the reasons for rejections.
Johnson clicked the mouse; the screen reconfigured, and Woody Keeler’s police record came up.
“Two counts of drunk driving. One count for driving a stolen vehicle was later dropped. See the date, September 1996. Keeler provided his ownership papers. Claimed he’d mislain them. Fined for driving without proper documentation.”
“Go to the best part, Johnson,” Dodd said eagerly.
“Woody was arrested back in 1990 for assault causing bodily harm.”
Johnson led the cursor to Search, then Data File. A facsimile of a provincial RCMP report with Keeler’s name on it filled the screen. “The horsemen require a handwritten and a typewritten version of every crime report so that the officers involved concentrate on accuracy.”
“How’d you learn that, Johnson?” asked Dodd.
“They’ve been doing it since they came west, Dodd. It’s an old military procedure. We can look up any felon in RCMP files from the past fifty years. Except top-secret files connected with the Ministry of Defence.”
Billy read that Woody Keeler had been arraigned on suspicion of a beating that took place on the Peigan reserve, at Brocket. August 30, 1990. Keeler at the time was age twenty-six. On September 1, 1990, Keeler was charged with assaulting a juvenile, aged seventeen. The boy’s name was Ervin Born With a Tooth, hospitalized at St. Michael’s in Lethbridge with two broken teeth and a mild concussion. A witness to the beating testified that Keeler came out of a local Brocket hardware store carrying a bottle, bumped into the boy, and then started a fight. Later, members of the boy’s family testified that Ervin’s father, deceased, had been a school friend of Woody.
“The horsemen charged Keeler, and the court sentenced him to three months at the Lethbridge jail. But he was released on bail and signed up to do community work.”
“Show Billy the last item, Johnson,” said Dodd.
“I also found more on the boy, Ervin. On Saturday, September 16, 1990, two weeks after the assault, the horsemen filed another story. Classified under homicide. Unsolved. I thought you might like a hardcopy of this one.”
Johnson took a key from her pocket, opened a filing cabinet, and lifted out a blue folder. She handed a glossy photocopy sheet to Billy. It was a printout of a short file entry with the same format as the one on Woody Keeler. With it was a newspaper article, also photocopied, from the Lethbridge Herald with the same date as the RCMP report.
Billy read the headline of the Herald article: NATIVE BOY FOUND HANGED IN GYM.
The hanged body of a seventeen-year-old Peigan boy was found Thursday morning in the Brocket High School gymnasium in Brocket. Local RCMP constable, Walter Schmidt, was called to the gym earlier that morning by the principal, Allan Houk. The body was found suspended from a basketball hoop. Foul play is suspected, according to Schmidt. The body was identified by family members. Ervin Born With a Tooth died from the results of asphyxiation. “We have no leads as yet,” said Constable Schmidt. “We are concerned about the nature of the incident. The boy’s feet and hands
were tied with wire.”
“What was the follow-up?” queried Billy.
“I did a search on six, eight, then twelve months of consecutive Herald pieces. Only two appeared saying the police had no leads and were calling for witnesses. I can show you the horsemen’s files, here too, if you like. The police in Brocket and Fort Macleod found no leads or witnesses. The family was unable to give any help. Parole records on Woody Keeler’s whereabouts at the time were in order. He reported to the community centre, did his work, called in when he got back home. He was required to serve only fifteen days in detention, in early November 1990. The case was declared cold in 1992.”
Billy skimmed the article again.
“Tomorrow, Johnson, go to Brocket. You are in, I assume?”
“Yes, sir. I have a tee time at Henderson for 6:00 a.m., but I can be on the road by 9:00.”
“Talk to the constable. I know the affair was a long time ago. And I know the Peigan may choose not to talk to you. This whole effort could turn into a big goose chase. But it’s worth the chance.”
Johnson nodded.
Billy went on. “Talk to anyone you can in the Born With a Tooth family about Keeler. Focus on him. Does he still go out to the reserve? Does he still have friends there? What about Ervin’s mother? We need to see if there are any connections. Do we have a photo of Woody?”
“Don’t think so,” answered Dodd. “But I’ll check.”
“Brocket unit might have one, sir. On their arrest files,” said Johnson.
“Refresh everyone’s memory. We need to see if Woody Keeler has been leaving a trail. I’m not suggesting what we have now with Darren is related to the Ervin case. And Woody Keeler has no obvious motive for going after Darren. But we need to start somewhere.”
