by Jon Redfern
“As a matter of fact, sir, there was a small bit of urine over on the wall by the dryer. The dog must have been marking its territory.”
“You sure it’s dog piss?”
“No, sir. But it’s just a few drops. I took a sample and bagged it so we can run a lab check.”
“Well, it makes sense the animal got in here; it would probably stake a claim.”
“Understandable that it might also bark at a dead body.”
“You need to look around the room, Billy?”
“I’ll wait until you are done, Tommy. Any temperature reading yet for time of death?”
“I’m getting there, sir. Can you figure this black paint on the genitals and the chest?”
“Is it paint for certain?”
“Yes, sir. Johnson found the can in the other room.”
“It’s the same black paint used last week, sir. On the pentacle on the wall there. Whoever daubed it on the genitals was careful. There are few spill spots on the floor here, beneath the noose, where this new pentacle was painted.”
“No candles or books this time, Johnson?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you make of the torn shirt? And the shorts and underwear pulled down to the ankles?”
“Seems the shirt was cut with a knife rather than torn. Not much left, by the looks of it.”
“Two pieces were found to the left of the body, sir. I’ve tagged and bagged them already.”
“Any blood on the shirt?”
“No, sir.”
“There is hardly any blood, Inspector. Except for the lip cut, which had congealed, there is no cutting or bleeding evident on the body.”
“And the neck bruise? The ligature mark?”
“Well, Inspector. If this cadaver was hanged and asphyxiated, then it wasn’t by this binder twine. From what I can gather here, the bruising is minimal, and the spotting at the neck leads me to guess the body may have been dead before it was strung up.”
“Jesus! What are we getting into here? This town’s going crazy with. . . .”
“Don’t jump ahead, Butch. Let’s go up to the back porch and garden. Johnson, you come with me. You’re done with the dusting?”
“Yes, sir. In one second.”
“Dodd, get out to the neighbours.”
“It’s done. Bolling’s knocking on doors already.”
“Then I want you to do a slow thorough walk-through in the garden. Comb the grass, the back fence, and the bushes near that garage. Look up on the garage roof and inside it. No one here has mentioned a knife or a weapon, but last time we found a bread cutter shoved into the mud by the fence. Also, where is the paintbrush that made the pentacle and decorated the kid’s genitals? We need to find it, if it’s still on site.”
Billy found a space in the room where there was no one dusting or putting up tape or chalking and leaned his back against the rough surface of the whitewashed concrete wall. A pen hung suspended in his right hand, and he looked through the small window at the grass and the hot light of the Satan House backyard. To his side lay the cadaver, paint-smeared, bruised, its clothes half on, half off. Tommy, the medic, was kneeling by the buttocks and inserting a thermometer into the anus to determine body temperature and a possible time of death. Billy had watched Tommy take swabs of this area, the penis, the mouth, and fingers for any signs of body fluids other than blood, the assumption being that perhaps the body might have been sexually molested given the state of the torn and pulled clothing. And, of course, the painted genitals. Billy was shocked at the state of the body and its odd slumped posture. Satan House had been invaded once again. A door kicked in. The padlock smashed. And now a second victim. How much of a connection did it have with the hanging of Darren Riegert seven days before?
Billy was wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and brown loafers. He’d been in the garden early, digging holes for the new trees, stopping occasionally to glance at the changing sky patterns. Granpa Naughton had once said that clouds and light were the prairie man’s scenery. When Butch had called telling Billy another young man had been found in Satan House, Billy had left his shovel on the porch, knowing immediately that this presaged a turn for the worse, a veering towards a greater evil.
Now he pondered the myriad facts of the case and the new questions the scene in front of him would raise. Butch had been right. They were similar crimes — the room, the pipe, the pentacles, and the nudity. But so much didn’t add up. Why would a body be strung up after death, if what Tommy had said was true about the ligature bruising? And the painted genitals? Also, Justin Moore was older than the others. How much does Sheree Lynn Bird know of this already? If at first glance there were too many contradictions, Billy always knew he was in for some difficult work.
“We’re lifting him now, sir. Bagging him for Hawkes.”
Billy turned and watched Tommy and Johnson, their hands sheathed in grey skin-tight rubber gloves, place the body into a plastic body bag. The legs were first, and then the arms and head were manipulated until the plastic zipper could be closed to cover the contorted face. Just as the zipper slid over the upper portion of Justin Moore’s face, Billy took a last glance at his pale skin.
When the body had been carried up the stairs, and Butch and Dodd had gone to scout the garden, Billy took a few minutes alone to examine the empty room. As he had done a week before, when inspecting the site of Darren Riegert’s hanging, Billy stood at attention. He placed his hands behind his back and whispered under his breath: “Observe all, make no assumptions.” Although his mind had been racing and forming all kinds of suppositions, Billy decided to let the room “speak” to him, to let himself stand immobile and silent to allow the space to enter into his mind. Out came his notebook. He lifted up his right hand and the pen he had been holding. The floor had been painted with a crude pentacle in the same black paint found on the body’s genitals. Mud and mouse droppings crunched under Billy’s loafers. He went to the sink, bent down, and smelled the drain. He knelt and swept his eyes over the floor. The intense light of the morning brought out the white in the brick walls. Daubs of black paint ran in a thin necklace from the pentacle in the centre of the room to the edge, suggesting to Billy where the paint can had been placed by the perpetrator. A small shred of the cheap cotton binder twine that had been tied around the cadaver’s wrists and neck lay on the floor like a wisp of grass. Billy wrote a few notes, pulled in a deep breath, and went upstairs into the kitchen.
Johnson was waiting for him. Billy looked out the window to the garden, where Butch and Dodd were slowly walking along the fence, their heads held down towards broken stalks, stone, and mud.
“Let’s you and I walk over to that gate, Johnson. The woman next door claimed she saw two men come into the yard from there. You have your kit?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bolling hasn’t come back from questioning the neighbours?”
“Not yet.”
At the back door, Billy pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and took a handful of Ziplocs from Johnson’s kit. The two of them stood for a moment on the threshold, with Billy bending close to the broken padlock. Splinters from the screws that once held the padlock and its metal arm were scattered by the door and on the top outside wooden step. “Looks as if the lock was struck by a rock. Maybe one of those greys from the garden there.”
Johnson stepped down to the area beside the back wall of the house. Overgrown with weeds, the mound of stones was composed of flat field rocks, potato-shaped grey boulders, and large lichen-spotted slabs of granite brought in from the quarries in the Crowsnest Pass.
“The gate is straight ahead, twenty yards. The two men walked or strolled from there to here. It’s been dry for the most part, Johnson, so I don’t expect we’ll find any footprints. But you never know.”
Billy headed for the gate, walking a foot or so to the left of the path he assumed was taken by the men. He watched Johnson keeping her head down, examining the grass. At the gate separating the Moore property and that of Sat
an House, Billy saw that the garage in the Moore yard butted up flush to the fence. A small, rain-spattered window faced out from the Moore garage and gave onto the backyard of Satan House. The glass in the window was so smudged it looked as if it had been painted with a light beige undercoat.
Passing through the gate, Billy noted trampled grass leading into the Satan House yard. He bent down, looked closely, then stood up. The Moore yard was small; the house was large, with a square open-air back porch made of concrete. Stairs led up to the back door on both sides of the porch, giving access to the backyard as well as the street beyond. The garage was built of wood, covered with faded red paint. Its old swinging doors had glass panes as dirty as the one in the back wall. The roof sagged in the middle, and there was a smell of car oil and dust and rotting timber. The right swinging door was ajar. Billy gazed into the shadowy interior.
“Someone’s left a light on in there,” he said to Johnson.
An Oldsmobile was parked close to the left wall.
Billy also saw bags of soil, a workbench, clay garden pots, a row of garden tools neatly arranged on a phalanx of hooks that ran parallel to the right side of the car. “We’ll have to get permission to search in here. I wonder why that light is on, though? Unless the Moores leave it on all night for security reasons.”
Billy walked to the back porch steps.
“We’d better call on Mrs. Moore, now, Johnson. This will not be easy.”
Grabbing the metal railing, Billy suddenly stopped. He looked at the small flower patch ranged at the foot of the steps. White sweet alyssum grew in precisely spaced mounds. The ones nearest the steps had been trampled flat. “Hold it, Johnson.” Kneeling down, Billy examined the soil. He then let his eyes roam past the step and towards the cut grass bordering the cement foundation of the house. He got up, moved to the foundation, and knelt again. “What do you think this is, Johnson?” Johnson climbed on the step above Billy, opened her kit, and pulled out a pair of tweezers and a Ziploc. She leaned close to Billy’s face. In the grass were tiny shards of a shiny white material. Broken glass from a lightbulb? Billy raised his head and looked at the light fixture over the door. A round clear cut-glass globe sheltered a standard opaque white lightbulb. Johnson lifted a number of the pieces and placed them into the Ziploc, then held the bag up to the sun.
“Beats me, sir. It could be glass or shale. . . .”
“There is a lot of it right here, around the step, small bits, as if someone had broken a teacup or a lightbulb. And look, the pieces are light enough to sit atop the blades of grass. Get as many as you can, Johnson, and we’ll run them through the lab.”
From inside the house, a sharp-pitched barking erupted. Suddenly, through a small hinged square flap cut into the bottom quarter of the wooden back door, a white terrier burst out onto the concrete porch, barking and wagging its tail.
“Spencer?” Johnson slowly reached out her hand to the dog’s face. The terrier barked and shook its body, then out of curiosity sidled up to Johnson and quickly sniffed. “Spencer?” Johnson said. “Good boy.” The dog’s tail began to wag furiously. Then it pricked up its two shaggy ears, froze, suddenly, as if hearing a distant whistle, and dashed back through the swinging flap into the house.
Billy climbed the steps, yanking off his rubber gloves and putting them into his pants pocket. He rang the doorbell. Footsteps gradually grew louder, and when the door opened, a tall woman in a white quilted housecoat stood in the doorway, glowering into the sunlight.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Billy said, holding up a badge Butch had lent him. Johnson pulled out hers, too. “My name is Billy Yamamoto, detective inspector with the city police force. This is Constable Gloria Johnson.”
The woman took a second to register what was being said. Billy thought she must have just climbed from bed. She spoke in a slow, sleepy manner.
“Is there something wrong, officers? I’m sorry. . . .”
“Are you Mrs. Aileen Moore?” asked Billy, placing the badge into his pocket.
“Yes. Ah, do you need to come in? Has something happened?” Aileen Moore rubbed her face quickly with her right hand and seemed at that moment to waken. Her demeanour changed to one of alert fear. “I’m afraid I was ill last night and took a sleeping pill, officers. I just woke up. Has something happened?”
Billy looked first at Johnson, then to Aileen Moore.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Moore. I have some bad news.”
Butch led a weeping Aileen Moore to his cruiser as Dodd was reporting to Billy that he had found no knife or paintbrush hidden in the Satan House backyard. Billy then instructed Dodd to do alibi checks on Blayne Morton and a young woman whose name he’d been given by Aileen Moore. “She’s a girlfriend, name of Karen Kreutz.”
Bolling was stretching yellow tape across the entrance to the Moore driveway as Billy came down the back porch steps. The young sergeant dropped the end of the tape, pulled out his notebook, and strode over to Billy.
“What did you find out, Bolling?”
“Seems the whole neighbourhood’s on summer holidays, Inspector. I checked at all the houses bordering these yards and on Baroness Street. I looked in a few garages, too. No cars, no one answering either front or back doorbells. One woman said she saw at least four of the families on the street packing up their vans and station wagons on Friday evening with groceries and suitcases. A lot of people around here have cabins down at St. Mary’s and in Waterton Park.”
“Did she mention hearing a dog bark?”
“I asked. She said no.”
“Did anyone see a van or a car or any unfamiliar vehicle on the street at any time?”
“I asked that, too. No again. Two of the neighbours on the south side were out late and came home about midnight, but neither one could remember seeing anything.”
“How many taxi cab companies do we have in the city?”
“Pardon me, sir? How many?”
“Get the names of all the night drivers. Check their logs and receipts and ask them if they saw any activity on the street.” Billy felt restless; time was forcing his hand. “See if a driver was in this vicinity around midnight or later. Surely a single old woman wasn’t the only person to spot two drunks strolling into Satan House. Dodd, drive to Randy Mucklowe’s and Sheree’s. Tell them what’s happened, and bring Randy to the station. We need names — and alibis — of all those on the dig.”
“Right away, sir.”
“Ask Sheree, too, if she received a phone call. Remember last time? Someone called her to alert her about Darren’s death. There might be a pattern.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Spencer was barking as Billy and Johnson said goodbye to Dodd. Bolling finished taping outside the doors of the Moore garage as Billy walked towards it and stood in the doorway. Something felt odd. He looked at the wall of garden tools arranged neatly in a row on a series of hooks. One of the tools was missing. He glanced at the wall and the floor beneath the row, then scanned the broader floor of the garage. Underneath the Oldsmobile, the tip of a wooden handle protruded. Billy went towards it and saw it was a hoe. “Johnson, dust this.”
Johnson brought over her kit, pulled out a small brush, some tissue paper, and a canister of fine white powder. With gloves on, she slid the hoe out from under the Oldsmobile. She daubed the brush and began lightly dusting the handle.
“You may only find smudges, Johnson, but I wonder why the hoe was left like that under the car.”
Billy left her to finish. Meanwhile, he clasped his hands behind his back and moved over to the workbench. A forty-watt bulb hung over an area strewn with clay pots, jars full of pencils, and seed packets. Beside the bench leaned a large metal garbage can. Billy pulled on his rubber gloves. He began sorting through the papers and broken twigs in the garbage.
“Come over here, Johnson. I think I’ve found something.”
A few moments later, Johnson and Billy were examining three pairs of soiled cotton underpants, a soil-stained T-sh
irt, a pair of khaki climbing shorts, and a blue plastic shaving kit. “Now who do these belong to?”
Johnson fingered the T-shirt. “The colour of the soil stain is similar to the red shale mud we found on the stairs in the basement.”
“Can we assume for the moment these are Justin Moore’s?”
A small flake of white luminous material fell out of the fold of the T-shirt as Johnson was laying it down on the surface of the bench.
“You have a Sherlock with you in that kit, Johnson?”
“A what, sir?”
“Magnifying glass.”
Johnson laughed. She rummaged around in a side pocket of her kit and pulled out a two-inch glass. When she handed it to Billy, the light from the forty-watt bulb caught on the convex surface and sent out a brief flash of white. Billy lay the flake on the bench top. He held up the glass and leaned close. “Looks to me like a fragment of polished bone or shell. Here, take a look, Johnson.”
“Yes, sir, it does.” Johnson then scanned the top of the bench. Pulling tweezers out of her upper right shirt pocket, she placed the tweezers’ pointed tips into a small crack in the grained rough wood of the bench surface. “Here’s another piece, sir.”
Billy took the magnifying glass from Johnson and had her hold up the tweezers close to the lightbulb. “Well, light passes through this little shard. Bag these, and we’ll see, maybe, if they match those we found on the grass outside.”
The two of them spent five minutes bagging the clothes and the shaving kit and the shards, and then they did one last walk-around of the garage before strolling out into the mid-morning sun. Billy walked past the tape barrier to the curb on Baroness. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but sometimes, when a person is in the heated state of committing a crime, things get overlooked, objects get dropped or misplaced. He walked across the street and gazed at the front of the Moore house and then came back and joined Johnson, who was closing the kit and shutting the door of the garage, sealing it with a section of yellow barrier tape. From inside the Moore house, Spencer barked again. Billy saw the dog at the kitchen window, its shaggy head pressed against the glass. Billy looked down at the square entrance flap of the back door. Was it now bolted from the inside, so that Spencer couldn’t get out? The sky above was clear, and the cottonwoods fluttered in the gentle heat, and Billy wondered how all these small pieces would ever fit into a meaningful picture.
