Acts of Murder

by L. R. Wright

  “Tom?”

  He drove on.

  Chapter 6 Saturday, August 19

  “OF COURSE IT’S hard, it’s very hard, it’s damn near impossible, sometimes,” said Paula Granger to the reporter.

  She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, her feet together, her hands twisting in her lap. She blinked frequently, in an exaggerated fashion, and it looked to the reporter deliberately, as if she were deciding to blink and then doing it. The reporter, whose name was Cindi Webster, thought this must be distracting for her, if not actually painful.

  “But you go on. You do the things you have to do,” said Paula, “you make meals and do the laundry and vacuum the rugs and have baths…” The reporter was nodding sympathetically but she wasn’t writing anything down. There was a stenographer’s notebook in her lap and a ballpoint pen in her hand, but she wasn’t writing anything down. Sometimes she tucked her hair behind her ears and when she lifted her hand Paula would think, now she’s going to take a note. But she never did, she just listened, and nodded. Paula didn’t understand this. Was nothing she was saying worth writing down? What was the girl doing here, if not to put Paula’s pain in her notebook?

  “You have other children,” said Cindi. “Where are they this afternoon?”

  Paula frowned. “Why do you ask me that?”

  Cindi blushed. A wave of redness crept up from her cleavage to claim her throat, chin, cheeks, and then forehead. Paula watched this, pleased. Then she relented.

  “The boys are out with their father,” she said.

  “I’d like to talk to them, too, if—”

  “No no. No. They don’t want to talk to you. Neither does my husband.”

  “But they must miss her—”

  “Of course they miss her. That doesn’t mean they want to talk about her all the time. Only I want to talk about her all the time. It’s only me who’s afraid—” She felt tears spilling from her eyes, and, boy, she thought, it’s a marvel, the way the body cannot use them all up, just keeps on making more and more tears. She blamed her body for the state she was in. If it would just stop making the damn tears, Paula would stop crying. And then what? she thought. Would Rebecca come home, if Paula stopped crying for her?

  “Excuse me,” she said, and left the room, went into the bathroom to rinse her face, blow her nose, and take a couple of good, big breaths.

  When she returned to the living room, Cindi was looking at photographs hanging on the wall. “This is so nice,” she said, pointing. In the picture, Rebecca sat on a tree stump in the Grangers’ backyard, laughing, her arm flung around a German shepherd who was sitting next to her and who also seemed to be laughing. “He must miss her, too,” said Cindi. “The dog.”

  “He’s dead,” said Paula flatly. She looked more closely at the photograph, reaching out with her index finger to touch the glass. “Poor Hannibal.”

  “I’m sorry,” murmured the reporter.

  “It was an accident,” said Paula. She put her hand over her mouth and shook her head, still looking at the photo. “She put the car in the wrong gear.” She turned to Cindi, her eyes so bright with tears she looked demented, and Cindi felt a sudden flush of fear. “He didn’t move. And when he did move, it was too late.” Tears spilled again, glistening on her cheeks. “It’s time for you to go now,” she said abruptly.

  “I’m sorry,” Cindi said again, awkward and miserable.

  “This wasn’t a good idea.” Paula opened the front door. She watched the girl try to argue with her, but didn’t hear anything she said; she just waited. I’m good at that, she said to herself, I’ve gotten good at waiting.

  Cindi looked bewildered. Paula knew she had thought she had a fine story here, a nice little feature, a six-month update, with maybe some pictures to complement the one of Rebecca the paper had on file. Paula had made her leave her camera in her car, though. The girl walked slowly toward the door, then outside onto the front steps.

  She stretched out her hand. It was strong and unlined, the fingernails manicured but not polished. Paula took it. “I’m very sorry,” said Cindi. “I hope very much that you hear from her soon.”

  Paula heard a cry. It might have come from a small animal caught in a trap. But it had come from her.

  Cindi put her arms around her. “I’m so sorry.”

  Paula let herself be held. She permitted herself for those seconds to let go of something, and realized when she did so the extent of her exhaustion.

  She withdrew from the young woman’s embrace, her head averted, and saw crimson petals from the dahlias disappearing on the wind.

  Paula went into the house and closed the door.

  An hour later, Larry came home with the boys, who turned on the television and flopped down on the living room floor.

  In the kitchen Larry saw the birthday cake sitting on the counter. He knew there were gifts, too, in Rebecca’s room, on the bed. He wondered if things would be easier once this day, Rebecca’s seventeenth birthday, was over. But no. There’d be Thanksgiving in a couple of months, and then Christmas, and then, god help them, Valentine’s Day.

  He wanted to embrace his wife, but knew that she would be rigid in his arms. He didn’t want to feel that again, not today. He had to be strong indeed to embrace Paula now, strong enough to accept her rejection of him.

  He went down the hall into their bedroom and lay on the bed. His pain had become part of him, it had saturated his blood and his marrow—he thought of it as a kind of cancer that was killing him, and Paula, too. He knew about the five stages of coping with death. Paula was still in the first stage: denial. Larry was in the fourth stage: depression. Did this mean that he loved Rebecca less?

  “We’ve done all we can,” he’d shouted at Paula last night, holding her tightly by the arms, forcing her to look at him, or at least to see him…

  The bedroom door opened, and Paula was standing there. Larry took one look at her face and he was on his feet. “What?”

  She said, hoarsely, “There’s a police car.”

  Larry put his arm around her, gripping her shoulder.

  They went into the living room and faced the front door.

  The boys glanced over their shoulders at their parents, then scrambled up. Timothy looked out the window, then quickly at his mother and father.

  “What’s the matter?” said Simon, in a small, timorous voice.

  With his arm still around Paula’s shoulders, Larry went to the door and opened it. He searched Sid Sokolowski’s face, wanting to know, to learn, without hearing it.

  The sergeant took off his cap and put it under his arm. “I am very sorry to inform you,” he said, “that we have found what we believe to be the body of your daughter.”

  Larry Granger crumpled against the edge of the door. “No,” he said. “No. No.”

  The boys began to cry.

  “I’m afraid,” said Sokolowski miserably to Paula, “that we’ll need you to identify some objects.”

  Paula looked beyond him at the brown grass, the cedar trees that encircled the house, the hot blue sky. Objects. Red suspenders? The narrow red ribbon from her hair?

  “I knew it,” she said dully to Sid Sokolowski, “when I saw the dahlia petals. Flying.”

  1996 SECHELT, B.C.

  Chapter 7 Sunday, March 24

  IT WAS AS warm as a summer day. Cassandra picked up her mother at Shady Acres in the late morning and brought her to the house, where the three of them were to spend the afternoon packing.

  Cassandra kept a sharp eye on Helen, who tired quickly these days, and they hadn’t been working long when she said to her, “Let’s get a glass of fizzy water and sit outside for a while.”

  Helen put down the book she’d been about to add to a box that was almost full. “Put some lemon in mine, please.”

  At Cassandra’s insistence Helen took the chaise, even though she complained that she had to struggle to get out of it. She fished prescription sunglasses and a package of pocket Kleenex from her handbag, an
d put the tissues next to her glass, on the white plastic table that sat between the chaise and Cassandra’s deck chair.

  The warmth of the day was deep and strange. To Cassandra, fanning herself with her hand, it suggested bougainvillaea and hibiscus, instead of the daffodils that were sunning themselves against the fence. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt hastily dragged from a carton marked “SUMMER CLOTHES” and the whiteness of her bare legs was blinding.

  Cassandra’s mind wandered frequently to her inheritance. It had provided her with a new and unexpected confidence. But what did this say about her, that it had taken money to bolster her confidence? She tried not to dwell on it.

  But the will hadn’t explained why her uncle had made her his beneficiary, and until Cassandra had figured this out, she thought she probably wouldn’t be able to bring herself to actually spend any of the money anyway.

  “I barely remember him,” she had said to her mother, when she got the news.

  “I guess he remembered you,” her mother had replied dryly.

  “Uncle Barry reminded me of Fred Astaire,” she said to Helen now. She recalled him as a man constructed of angles. In her mind he stood with arms lifted at the elbows, and legs bent sideways at the knees, his head lolling to one side: she remembered him as a puppet, slack at one moment, springing jerkily to life at the next.

  “Ridiculous,” said Helen. Cassandra noticed that she flushed as she scoffed.

  “Well, you tell me, then,” she said. “Tell me how you remember him.”

  Helen hunted in her handbag until she found a small black and white photo, which she handed to Cassandra.

  He was looking directly at the camera with an air of tolerance. Much younger than Cassandra had ever known him. Wearing a shirt with the top button undone. Short dark hair, ears that stuck out, a funny little smile. “Hmmm,” said Cassandra.

  “I took that,” said her mother. “In 1937.”

  Cassandra heard this, idly, like she heard the car passing along the street in front of the house, and the breeze that rustled in the leaves of the lilac…but then she focused on it. “Before you were married,” she said.

  “Of course,” said her mother. “We were neighbors. His family lived down the street from us. You knew this, Cassandra. I’d known them both, Barry and your father, for years.”

  “I always thought he was gay,” said Cassandra, gazing at the photo.

  Her mother looked shocked. Then she laughed.

  “Well?” said Cassandra.

  “Well what?” Helen turned her sunglasses toward her daughter. “No,” she said finally. “He wasn’t gay.”

  “But he never got married.”

  “I think he was married, once. For a while. Not for long.”

  “Mother. Do I sense a certain smugness in your tone?”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  Cassandra felt light dawning. “Mother. Was my Uncle Barry in love with you?”

  Helen sipped her mineral water. “That, my dear, is none of your business.”

  Cassandra put down the photo and sat back in the deck chair, studying her mother cautiously. “Mom, is there something you ought to be telling me?”

  “If there were,” said Helen, sliding the photograph back into her purse, “I would. If there is,” she said quickly, cutting into Cassandra’s protest, “if there is,” she repeated, leaning slightly closer to her daughter, “I will.”

  Cassandra nodded, slowly.

  “Now,” said Helen briskly. “Tell me what you’re going to do with your newfound riches.”

  Cassandra sighed and picked up her glass. “Oh. I haven’t made up my mind yet.” She took a long drink and looked at what was left in the glass, wanting more, but not wanting to get up to go get it.

  “You’ve had the money for six months now,” said her mother. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Oh, it’s complicated,” said Cassandra halfheartedly. “Very complicated. It feels complicated, anyway.”

  “Hey,” said Alberg, from the sunporch. “Have you two packed it in for the day, or what?”

  “Come on out here, Karl,” said Helen. “Tell me what Cassandra’s going to do with her money.”

  He reached behind him for the can of beer he’d just opened and went outside, letting the screen door bang shut behind him. He sat on an ancient lawn chair that squeaked a protest. “I don’t know what she’s going to do with it.” He glanced at Cassandra, sprawled in her chair. “She says maybe she’ll quit the library and start a business.”

  Cassandra felt like smiling every time she looked at him. It really did make a difference, being legitimately wedded to a person. She wanted to smooth his slightly rumpled fair hair, touch the planes of his face, and close his eyelids with her fingertips. He’d lost weight, she noticed with ridiculous pride, and she loved the way he moved, with a lumbering assurance.

  “I’m not going to start one,” said Cassandra. “I’m thinking about buying one that’s already started.” And she giggled.

  “Earl’s, maybe,” said Alberg to Helen. “Earl’s threatening to sell.”

  “Earl’s,” Helen repeated, with aversion. Then, “At least if Cassandra ran that place,” she said, “it would be clean.”

  “Or else the bookstore,” said Alberg. “She’s heard that the Olivettis want to retire.”

  “The bookstore,” said Helen. “Of course. Excellent.” She looked approvingly at Alberg, as if it had been his idea.

  Cassandra giggled again. Her mother shot her an irritated look. “It’s because I’m nervous,” Cassandra explained. She sat up. “It’s a big responsibility,” she said solemnly, “having all that money.”

  “Give me a break,” said Alberg, drinking his beer.

  Chapter 8 Monday, March 25

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Alberg gazed across his desk at Sid Sokolowski’s replacement. He had been shorthanded for three months. Yet it was with mixed feelings that he regarded his new sergeant, who had an open, friendly smile and was apparently relaxed, sitting there with legs crossed, looking around his office with unconcealed interest now that they’d gone through the preliminaries: Alberg had described the community and the detachment; outlined the duties of his second-in-command; and brought the sergeant up to date on current cases.

  “You found a place to live, did you?” he asked pleasantly. His office window was pushed open as far as it would go, and he heard birds outside. It seemed an incongruous sound.

  “Yes, thank you, Staff. Came up a month or so ago and looked at houses, and got moved in last weekend.”

  She was called Edwina Henderson. The joker at the Puzzle Palace who had first brought up her name referred to her as Eddie, and talked his way carefully through their conversation, so as never to have to use a pronoun. Then her sheet arrived. Six feet one inch tall, one hundred and fifty pounds, thirteen years on the force, unmarried, female. The joker would have enjoyed this moment, Alberg had thought, experiencing the shock the joker had anticipated.

  He had nothing against female sergeants. He just hadn’t expected to get one. He had nothing against female staff sergeants, for that matter. Inspectors. Superintendents. Whatever. He appreciated fully the unique attributes of members like Norah Gibbons. Constable Gibbons would make a good sergeant someday, he thought, eyeing Eddie Henderson.

  She had wide blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, a generous mouth, and a single thick braid of yellow hair that fell to the collar of her shirt.

  Alberg felt slightly muddled. He looked down at her file. An excellent record, including two commendations. She came to Sechelt from Burnaby, which was an urban posting, part of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. It was a promotion. Next thing—eventually—she’d probably have her own detachment. Unless she wanted a GIS posting somewhere—the detective side of things. How old was she? Thirty-five.

  Jesus, thought Alberg. I’ve been around too long…but it wasn’t a thought, really. More like a nostalgic feeling that drifted, unbidden, into his head as he looked
at this woman, bright, gorgeous. He’d bet that she possessed a great deal of completely realizable ambition.

  “You were going to tell me about open cases,” she reminded him.

  “There’s really only one,” said Alberg. “There are some we haven’t closed, but we know who we’re after. But there’s this homicide. We haven’t made a goddamn bit of headway. And it’s a year old now.”

  Alberg felt that he shouldn’t have left town, once Rebecca Granger’s parents had reported her missing. At the time, she had been considered more truant than missing. But she hadn’t turned up for work that morning, and this was uncharacteristic. And Alberg couldn’t help but reflect that if he’d stayed on the job instead of buggering off on his honeymoon, things might have turned out differently. Which he knew was not only arrogant, but illogical.

  “Rebecca Granger,” he said dispassionately to his new sergeant. “That was the victim’s name. She was sixteen years old. She left her house at 8:30 on the morning of Tuesday, February 14, last year. And that was it.”

  He had been over and over the investigation undertaken at the time and could find no fault with the way Sid Sokolowski had handled it: the search was meticulous, the interviews as thorough as Alberg could have wished. He knew he couldn’t have done any better.

  “Her body was found six months later,” he said. “Buried in a clearing north of here. Between the highway and the sea.”

  Still, it rankled. It continued to rankle. It was the only homicide still on the books, and it bugged the hell out of him.

  “Do you mind if I take a look at the file?” asked Eddie.

  “Mind? I expect you to take a look at it, of course. And every other file in the place as well.” He looked across the desk at her and smiled. “Let’s go introduce you to the troops.”

  They stood up, and yeah, he thought, she was six one, all right. When he looked at her he looked straight across, not a whisker of an inch down.