Long Gone Man

by Phyllis Smallman

  “I didn’t kill Johnny,” Singer said. She brushed the hair from her face. “And you’re right, if I’d asked Johnny about what happened in Taos, he would have killed me.”

  “But you were going to do it anyway?” He lowered his head. “God, this is awful.” He looked at Lauren and said, “I need a drink.”

  Lauren jumped to her feet.

  Singer said, “Don’t. We’re all going to stay together in this room until the cops arrive.”

  Lauren sank back onto the couch.

  “Safer that way.” Singer lowered herself onto the couch beside Lauren. They stayed there, each locked in their own thoughts, and waited silently until the lights of a car, swinging around the garden at the front of the house, shone on the windows and swept the room.

  Lauren rose, but Singer barked out, “No.”

  Forty-nine

  Constable Eagon, who was on duty that night, was called out to an accident coming off the ferry, and he was still at the wharf when Lauren’s call was patched through to him. He agreed with the dispatcher that there would be no time to check out a dead dog until morning, but when Eagon heard who had made the complaint he called Sgt. Wilmot. Wilmot surprised himself and called Corporal Duncan to see if she wanted to ride along with him.

  She was waiting for him in front of a raised ranch from the seventies. Even in the dim porch light, Wilmot could see the house’s multiple shades of blue paint, starting with the darkest at the bottom and lightening as the color moved up the clapboard.

  Duncan slipped silently into the passenger seat.

  “Interesting paint job.”

  “My uncle likes color.”

  “Well, at least it’s all one color and not a rainbow.”

  “That would be my other uncle’s house.”

  Wilmot glanced at her. She sat perfectly straight with her hands folded on her lap. Damn, he thought. I can never tell when she’s joking. He pulled onto the road before he began the little speech he’d prepared. “I know you think I’ve hijacked your file, but this case is a really big one. You don’t have the experience for this kind of situation. I do.”

  “Which is fortunate as you’re the one who wants to leave the island,” Duncan said.

  “And you don’t? Would you really turn down a chance at Major Crime?”

  She blew out a lungful of air. “No.”

  “All right then, this case is a chance for both of us. We rise or fall together. So let’s get it right.”

  “Inspirational words.” Duncan lowered the window and added, “I can barely keep from cheering.”

  As soon as Wilmot entered the sitting room, he knew these three people, who were supposed to have little history together, faced him as a united front. And Wilmot sensed a new attitude towards Singer. Their eyes sought hers before they answered a question; they deferred to her and waited to see what she would say or do before offering anything up.

  But the biggest change was in Steven David. In the few hours since Wilmot interviewed him, Steven had crumbled into a whipped and defeated shadow of a man. Trauma victims acted this way. People who survived a natural disaster carried themselves just like this. More than an animal had died here tonight.

  They said nothing beyond the simple details of finding Lauren’s pet hanging on a hook in the backyard. Horrifying and shocking, true, but none of them was as angry or outraged as he expected. Some bigger shock had overshadowed their fear and revulsion, and he wanted to know what it might be.

  After sending Duncan to check out the dog, he turned to Singer. “Ms. Brown,” he began, “this all seems to have started with you coming here.”

  “Leave her alone,” Lauren cut in. “She was with me the whole time. She has nothing to do with Missy’s death.”

  “It’s fine, Lauren,” Singer said.

  Lauren went to the fire and poked at the logs, keeping her rigid back firmly towards Wilmot.

  “Who do you think killed the dog, Ms. Brown?” He spoke to Singer but watched Lauren.

  Singer said, “I have no idea. I don’t know anyone on Glenphiddie Island, so I can’t tell you who’s capable of this.”

  Wilmot swung to Steven David. The man didn’t seem to even be following their conversation. His thoughts were turned inward to something far from events in this room.

  “Was anyone else here tonight?”

  Lauren answered, “Ian Pye was here. He wanted to hear Singer’s music.” Lauren poked at the fire, sending sparks shooting up the chimney. “I think he was pretty upset with me when I asked him to leave.” She drew the steel curtain across the fire. “And Foster Utt.” She looked up at Wilmot. “I hired him to keep reporters from coming up to the house.”

  Corporal Duncan came to the door. “Sergeant.” She motioned Wilmot to her as she stepped back into the hall.

  Fifty

  “Excuse me,” Wilmot said. They barely noted his departure.

  He stepped through the door and put his finger to his lips as Corporal Duncan began to speak. He leaned towards the doorway to listen.

  At first the people in the room stayed silent, locked in their own islands of misery. Finally Lauren said, “Stay here tonight, Steven. I don’t want you to go home alone. You can have Janna’s room.”

  They couldn’t hear Steven David’s reply.

  Then Lauren said, “Do you want a drink, Steven?” There was the sound of movement.

  “God, yes.”

  “How about you, Singer?”

  “I’ll have coffee if you’re making it.”

  Wilmot motioned to Duncan and crossed the hall to the living room. He closed the door behind them.

  “What is it?”

  “There were some footprints around the base of the tree, pretty clear, a large print, probably a man’s.”

  “Take a cast. I want everything by the book on this one, no loose ends for a defense lawyer to get hold of.”

  She nodded and asked, “Do you think this is related to Vibald’s murder?”

  “I don’t know. For now, let’s just treat it like a new crime and collect all the evidence and see where it takes us.”

  “I think the hook normally hangs in the bed at the front of the house. I saw a plant hanging there today while I was waiting. The plant was taken off the hook and dropped in the flower bed. What I don’t get is why not just leave the dog there, hanging at the front of the house? Why move it to the fig tree?”

  “Hanging just outside the kitchen window, you couldn’t miss it. It was a warning of some kind, a message.”

  “Who was the message for?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “He took a chance though, Sergeant, didn’t he? The lights are on motion detectors. They would have come on while he was hanging the dog, and if anyone came out into the kitchen while he was there he’d be caught in the lights.”

  Wilmot nodded. “Maybe he knew they were in another part of the house. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

  “Foster Utt,” Duncan said.

  “What?”

  “If you want someone who doesn’t think too clearly, your best bet is Foster. My guess, he had a bottle out there to keep him warm. He has two DUIs already and he isn’t anywhere near the genius category.” She thought for a moment. “Ian Pye, on the other hand, might do this, but he’d be damn sure we couldn’t charge him with it. There’d be no footprints to give him away.”

  “You mean he’d make it appear to be Foster Utt?”

  Singer’s story came out slowly. When she’d finished telling Wilmot about Taos, he said, “Hard to believe someone would kill a man for a piece of music.”

  “A piece of music that was worth millions.”

  “So you had a reason to kill John Vibald.”

  “She was with me, remember,” Lauren said.

  Both Wilmot and Singer ignored her. Singe
r said, “I wanted to know about Michael.”

  Wilmot worried the inside of his cheek. “And after he told you, what then?”

  She gave a soft shrug.

  Forty minutes later they went to the Pye household. Aaron Pye was not pleased to see them and told them so. Ian wasn’t there. His parents had no idea where he’d gone, and the family sedan was not in the driveway.

  When they left the house, Duncan said, “You didn’t ask about Taos.”

  “I want to get all the facts before I go off on that tangent.”

  Duncan opened the door of the sedan but didn’t get in. “Pye said there was a roadie with the band in Taos. Doesn’t that confirm Singer Brown’s story?”

  “We aren’t investigating the death in Taos. It may well have led to John Vibald’s killing, but we can’t focus on only one part of the investigation. We have to focus on the here and now. But tomorrow I want you to get in touch with the police in Taos and get everything they have.”

  He got into the car and slammed the door behind him. “This investigation is moving too fast and in too many directions. We’ve lost control.”

  “We never had control,” Duncan said as she started the car.

  At the Utt home, Marion Utt opened the door wearing a washed-out flannel housecoat that emphasized her thinness. It was easy to see she’d been a beautiful woman once, but now the worry lines were permanent and deep and the outer corners of her eyelids hung down in heavy folds.

  She didn’t seem surprised to see two Mounties on her front step late at night nor was she alarmed when they asked to speak to her son. She crossed her arms over her flattened chest and said, “Can’t it wait ’til morning? He has to be at work at six.”

  “I’m afraid it can’t,” Wilmot responded, stepping over the threshold, which led directly into the shabby living room.

  Marion Utt only conceded two steps. After that, if he wanted her to move, he would have to physically push her aside. They stared at each other.

  Finally she gave a dry, weary sigh and lifted her hand, a hand as large as any man’s, and motioned to the furniture lumped together along the far wall. Then she left the room to get her son.

  Wilmot took in the small living area. Sad was the word that came to his mind. The structure had been built as a cottage and put together as cheap as possible. Kitchen, dining area, and living room were all one space, and years of fried food had burnished an odor deep into the seams and grooves of the wood-paneled walls.

  He went to the green and yellow plaid couch shoved up against the wall and sank down. He rested his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes. Within seconds, he was drifting on the edge of sleep.

  Corporal Duncan clasped her hands behind her back and stayed where she was by the door. When Foster Utt emerged from the hall, she said, “Sir.”

  Wilmot fought through the fog of sleep and opened his eyes. He swallowed several times while he studied Foster Utt.

  Foster’s larded face, ravaged by weather and alcohol, had the petulant features of a man growing old without growing up. His eyebrows formed a straight, dark line above hazel eyes and a lumpy, swollen nose. Barefoot and wearing a stained gray tracksuit, his annoyance at being pulled from his bed was obvious.

  “What d’you want?” he asked and fell back onto an armchair. Their arrival didn’t worry him. He was just angry at being woken.

  “Just a few questions.” Wilmot began going over Foster’s evening, asking questions and nodding at Foster’s answers. Wilmot came at last to the death of the dog.

  Foster said, “I don’t know nothing ’bout that.” His attitude was belligerent and put upon, the normal Foster response, but other than that he showed no signs of worry or unease. “I chased off a couple of guys and got out of there as quick as I could.”

  “You didn’t stay?” Wilmot frowned. “I understood Mrs. Vibald expected you to stay until midnight.”

  “Why? Who was going to hassle her? Nope, I just told them to get and then I did too, came right home.” His tight sweatshirt rode up, exposing the pale roundness of his stomach. “Isn’t that right, Ma?”

  His mother nodded without expression, and Foster grinned in satisfaction.

  Wilmot was watching the mother. Marion Utt didn’t appear shocked to hear why they were questioning her son, just tired and worn down, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest, resigned to whatever was coming.

  Her eyes were dead. It came to Wilmot that she knew what her son had done. Had he told her? Not likely, even Foster Utt wasn’t that big of an idiot. Then how had she known? If not from something he said, then how? His clothes. What had she seen? Blood on his clothes? It was only in the forties, cold and threatening rain. Foster would have been wearing a heavy coat. Even Foster Utt was smart enough to put a coat on when it was cold, and he wouldn’t go out on a night like this in jogging pants.

  Wilmot had worked enough cold shifts, waiting in cars, to know that cotton did nothing to keep out the cold.

  Wilmot said, “May we see the shoes you were wearing this evening please?”

  “Why?” Foster asked.

  “There were footprints left at the scene.”

  Foster shrugged. “Don’t mean nothing. I work up there. My footsteps are all over the place.” He grinned, pleased with his answer.

  “What about your coat?” Duncan asked.

  Foster’s eyes gave him away. “I ain’t goin’ to say nothing ’til I talk to a lawyer. You ain’t got no right to come here and start asking me for stuff.”

  Wilmot drew in air and let it out in a loud sigh. “Fine, we’ll take you and your mother into custody for questioning. In the meantime, we’ll get a court order to search your home.”

  Foster turned to his mother. “Ma?” He was begging her for help, wanting to be rescued the way his mother had always saved him before.

  Mrs. Utt’s shoulders slumped even further and she sighed. “You’re a fool, Foster.” From her tone of voice, she might as well have been telling him his dinner was going cold. “Never did have the sense God gave a goose.” She pulled her robe tighter around her. “Missy was a lovely little thing, never hurt a soul.” She turned away and went to the kitchen.

  Corporal Duncan looked to Wilmot. He nodded. Duncan followed the mother through the kitchen to a small, closed-in back porch, where various coats hung on pegs on the wall with a tumble of shoes below.

  Marion Utt lifted down a man’s coat, clasped it to her, and stroked it, before she held it out to Corporal Duncan.

  Corporal Duncan took the heavy coat, being careful to keep it well away from her body by holding it under the collar with one finger. “And the shoes? We might as well take them too and save coming back.”

  Mrs. Utt bent over and picked up two worn running shoes from the pile.

  Corporal Duncan touched her gently on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry.” Then she took the shoes from Foster’s mother.

  Mrs. Utt’s thin lips tightened in a grimace. She nodded and blinked back tears, then dug in her pocket for a tissue and blew her nose. “Nothin’ I did seemed to help Foster.”

  Duncan nodded. “Let’s take this back, shall we?” Duncan led the way.

  In the florescent light of the kitchen, even the camouflage pattern couldn’t hide the stains on the arm of the jacket. Corporal Duncan walked into the living room and raised the jacket for Sgt. Wilmot to see.

  He rose to his feet and went to the door and opened it for her so she wouldn’t have to put her trophies down.

  When Foster Utt was in the back of the squad car, Wilmot drew Corporal Duncan aside.

  “I’ll take him into town,” Wilmot said. “I want you to stay here and make sure she doesn’t take anything out of the house until we’re able to get a search warrant. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  Corporal Duncan said, “What am I missing, w
hat would she try to take away?”

  “A gun,” Wilmot said quietly.

  “Oh.”

  A judge on Vancouver Island had to be awakened and given the facts on the file, and then a search warrant for the Utt premises had to be issued and faxed to Glenphiddie Island. It was an hour and a half before Constable Towes arrived with the warrant and another hour before the same officer found a gun, wrapped in an old flannel shirt, stuffed behind a pile of wood in an outbuilding.

  Fifty-one

  Chris Ruston kept Wilmot waiting. Wilmot didn’t mind. He hadn’t had time to sit back and take a broad overview of the crime, so he was happy to sit quietly in the well-appointed waiting room and go over it in his mind.

  What was he missing? Yes, they had a strong case against Utt, but it was all wrong. It was impossible to believe that the handyman had killed Vibald in a fit of anger. And why didn’t he get rid of the gun? Why hide it in his own woodshed instead of dropping it off the ferry in the Strait of Georgia? True, he hadn’t destroyed his bloody clothes and shoes either, but then he’d been drunk when he killed the dog. He was still drunk when Wilmot and Duncan had come for him, the reek of alcohol seeping from his pores.

  Foster Utt admitted to killing the dog. It was the kind of crime Wilmot would expect Utt to commit. Perhaps Utt hadn’t expected anyone to care about the dog, in Foster Utt’s world they wouldn’t, but murder? True, Vibald had fired Utt, but killing a man didn’t seem to fit Foster Utt, especially a man like John Vibald, a man who would terrify a weakling like Utt. And what did Utt gain from the murder? It was all wrong.

  Wilmot had only four hours sleep the night before. He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. He noticed his socks didn’t match, lowered his head, and closed his eyes. On the edge of sleep, something danced just on the periphery of his awareness. There was something he should have followed up on. A radio was playing softly in the background. His breathing slowed and his chin settled down lower.