by Lou Allin
“When I tried to have it tested, I couldn’t get authorization from Inspector Crew. He said that thousands weren’t going to be spent on a simple groping. Not with budget cuts and backlog. Maybe if …” As she reined in her opinions, her voice trailed off.
Ed put his hands in his pockets. “They’re not lying. It’s a real logjam, especially in times of cutbacks. One death took a year to be labelled a homicide. Several cases have been tossed out of court because of the unreasonable delay. But I want that paper. I’ll send a man to your detachment to get it as soon as you’re back.”
Boone held up a hand like a traffic cop. “Wait, wait, wait, my friends. Remember what I said about assumptions. Eliminate all the long shots. What about someone in the group doing this? You got to them first. What’s your gut say, Holly?” That Boone used those words without a patronizing smile made her an equal, which pleased her.
Holly told him about what Mike had admitted about giving Lindsay too much to drink. “With all the time that passed before I got here, there could be alibis all around. But these kids are part of a drama cast. It’s hardly a scene for wild sex.” Though she wouldn’t have discounted what happened in the privacy of the tents.
“I’m convinced by the strangulation. This is the same person,” Ed said. “With the rape, there may be conclusive evidence, unless our guy’s as smart as he seems to be.”
“We’ll get the word from the M.E. on whether there was an ejaculation. Left here like a piece of garbage. It bloody well makes me sick. Anything else about the scene, corporal?” Boone asked. He tucked the pipe in his hip pocket, its amber stem scored with bite marks.
Holly ran over the last few hours like a mental Mobius strip. Boone had come to hear the most important witness. A silent scream, he called it. Tell her story so that others might live safely. Holly related what she had learned from Mike and the others.
“One more thing. I took a nail scraping,” Boone said, and eyebrows went up. “Unless I’m crazy, we got something under there. Course it could be her own tissue from clawing at that line. We’ll get samples from the rest of the group for elimination.”
“The women too?” Holly asked.
“Death is an equal-opportunity employer,” Boone said with his usual wryness. “And just to make things interesting, someone still drunk could be easily overtaken with a wire like that. She was on the small side. For all we know, she was poaching on another girl’s boyfriend and paid the price. Stranger things, and all that.”
Boone began packing up. Ed moved off to the side to converse with Chris. Holly pictured Megan and Britt. As killers? Impossible. “Even with our advances, criminals are getting smarter.” Holly adjusted her cap. “Next they’ll be wearing protective suits and latex gloves.”
“Too much television. Didn’t used to be that way before DNA. Secretors, non-secretors. Blood type didn’t narrow it down that much.” Boone rubbed his knee as he hobbled by. “Damn. I’ve got to start the ball rolling on getting a replacement. Just don’t want to be out of commish for six months. Anyway, one thing’s certain. Traffic’s going to be way down on the trail once this hits the papers.”
“The attack at French is easier to understand. The sites were clean around the road.” Holly said to Ed with a sweep of her arm. “Here the terrain is wicked. I’m still wondering about the other groups down the beach. Good luck checking them out if they’ve already hiked west.”
“It’s opportunistic, all right. Like someone waited to get her as far away from the tents as possible.” Chris seemed to have come to himself and offered an opinion.
Ed set his jaw with a slight narrowing of the eyes. “Bare-hand strangling is one of the coldest ways to kill and one of the hardest to prosecute. Imagine looking at a face that close. Hearing the gasps for air. Squeezing the neck, tighter, tighter.”
As he talked, Holly’s imagination was working. It was becoming harder to breathe. To snap herself out of it, she spoke. “There’s something I don’t get, Boone.”
“Don’t feel bad. Admitting that you don’t know can move you forward.”
“The wire. Is the assailant wearing gloves? Wouldn’t this hurt his hands or fingers?”
Ed spoke up. “A garrotte. Wooden pegs or something to turn on the ends. Make them take the pressure.”
“Could be.” Boone adjusted one suspender that had twisted his belly. “I’d vote for thick gloves. Gardening ones.”
Holly’s heart sank. “You can get those anywhere. But wouldn’t they be too clumsy? The fine motor movements would be impeded.”
He met her gaze with his wise old oyster eyes, pouches below from years in the trenches. “Maybe one will turn up in the site search. The wire, the gloves, what we find at the autopsy. With just two out of three, we’ll be halfway to an arrest.”
“Only halfway? That’s depressing.” In dramas, cases passed from beginning to end within an hour on screen. But she knew that weeks or months could go by. Normally the accused headed to another state on day one. And when he or she was brought in, the interrogations were almost comical. Holly loved the way the detectives told the killers to “man up,” using the stereotype against them. Women seemed to do better at this kind of soft persuasion. Tears would flow down the faces of young criminals in Miami, Nashville, or Dallas.
“Cases like this where the victim probably doesn’t know the killer are a bitch to solve. If you want justice every time, stick to crime novels.” Ed had gone back to his notes and been finishing up a page as he stood nearby. He looked at his watch with a world-weary expression. “You’re free and clear to go back to business as usual, corporal. A late lunch is better than none. Sometimes I miss those good old days when I went home and waved goodbye to work at five on the dot,” said Ed.
Holly walked out behind Boone. He hadn’t been this incapacitated since they’d met. He’d be in a lot of pain tonight, but he needed the money. Regular cheques from his small cocktail of pensions went to his late wife’s extended family in India. When he turned sixty-five soon he’d be eligible for another five hundred a month for the Old Age Security. “A girl had to die. That’s a sad way to force action on that paper fragment,” she said as they walked back down the path slowly at a slug’s pace.
“It’s a real long shot. And you know something else, too, don’t you?” His voice left little doubt in the possibilities.
“You mean that it might happen again? And soon?”
“Exactly. You’re starting to think like me. The first time was a quirky assault. This time, it’s goodnight, nurse. The papers will be full of it. It’s going to be a rare woman who goes out on her own until there’s an arrest.” He put a hand on her shoulder in a fatherly way. That he’d never mentioned having kids didn’t mean he had none. Many men were like that. Women couldn’t wait to tell you about their brood.
“I don’t want to think that we’ll meet again over this … or worse.”
“Small thin piece of paper, you say? How big?”
She picked up a piece of debris from the path. A fragment of peat or shard of wood about the size of a quarter of her small fingernail. “Like this.”
Boone gave her a cautious smile and winced as he navigated a rock in the path. “Cases have been solved with less.”
As they passed Lindsay’s tent, she stopped, something she hadn’t been able to do on arriving. It was a weighty old canvas model. The boys had probably helped Lindsay lug it to the beach, showing off their muscles. Had it had been for decades in the Nanaimo family, part of happy outings? They’d probably process it on the long-shot notion that Lindsay might have been initially assaulted there. She knelt on the rough boards of the platform like a suppliant, opened the flap and peered in. As Mike had said, it looked like someone had merely stepped out for a moment. Laid out were a sleeping bag, pillow, pile of clothes, jacket, a candy bar and chips, bottle of water, presumed barf bag clumsily folded, and a lop-eared stuffed pink rabbit. A peppermint smell from an empty bottle of schnapps made her nauseous. The reek of vo
mit was strong. She gave a slight cough.
“It’s pretty foul,” Mike said, coming up behind her.
“The team will do what it needs to do.”
“That rabbit,” he said. “It plays ‘Easter Parade.’ Andy, she calls it. Her good luck charm. She always brought it to class and left it on the desk during tests.”
Luck ran out, Holly thought with a tug on her heart. Funny how college students were little kids inside. To her horror, he reached for it and pushed a lever. “In your Easter bonnet,” a fluty voice sang.
“Put that down, please,” she asked as heads turned their way.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As they finally pulled out of the parking lot, Holly turned to Ashley. “I almost forgot. What is that thing under the seat?” She’d placed it in the passenger wheel well.
A cat-in-the-cream look sneaked across Ashley’s face, and her tones were matter of fact. “Don’t you have one of these? It’s a sound-wave lie detector.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing.” Was the woman completely mad or merely immature? The Rube Goldberg device was made of metal, oblong, and had an opening with a flap and a small antenna. Homemade? Or an old eight-track player duded up?
“That’s what you think. We used them all the time in the interior. It’s activated by this cool buzzer.” From her pocket she pulled a small electronic device. “When we’re questioning someone and think he’s lying, we press this button and …” A BRRRRTTTT sound filled the car. Ashley laughed. “When he asks what the noise is, we tell him about our little pal. You can’t imagine how many fools fold and ’fess up. Do you want to borrow it?”
“Oh my god,” Holly said. “I’m going to pretend I never heard this. And don’t let me see it again.”
Back at the office, Holly made sure that Ed’s constable got the scrap of paper. He promised to feed it into the crime machine as quickly as possible. At least Ashley hadn’t embarrassed them, as far as she knew. She promised to fax her notes on the vehicles in the lot to Ed as well. She’d also turned back a dozen cars, according to Harold. “That little girl’s a keeper,” he’d told Holly. “She’s gonna make a damn fine officer.” Ashley had seemed almost subdued at the rare praise. But she’d taken in every word Holly had told her on the way back to the detachment and even asked a few intelligent questions.
In hours Sombrio Beach would return to its quiet peace. Everyone would have to be interviewed, perhaps more than once in Mike’s case since he’d admitted a fondness for Lindsay. She’s been so surprised years ago to learn the mind-blowing fact that witnesses could lie. Even in the innocent, the instinct for self-protection was powerful. And what of the other sets of campers down the beach? That was Ed’s problem now. Problem was, there were just too few people around. The miracle witness was not going to save the day.
Her father wasn’t home yet due to Shogun’s first agility lesson in Saanich. He was joining a group of twelve rookies, probably nearly all women. At least the dog had distracted him from his consuming passion for popular culture. A living interest was healthy. She never wanted to see him as downcast as he had been after her mother had vanished. Once or twice coming home for a weekend, she checked his medicine cabinet in case it contained anything that might tempt him to end to his pain. He’d confessed that he had tried a round of anti-depressants, but they’d made him sleepy. Even a year or two later, the bottle of little blue amitriptyline pills had the same three-quarter level as before.
Just before her father was due to arrive, she followed the instructions he had left for hamburger steak, mashed potatoes, and canned peas. He had the meat nicely mixed with chopped onion, parsley, and the miracle ingredient, ketchup. She almost turned to an easy package of gravy mix but knew he would have suspected the travesty, so she grabbed a couple of cubes of bouillon. Surely they had that in the thirties.
From downstairs in the crawlspace wine cellar, she selected a bottle of tank-car red and poured herself a healthy glass after setting out Shogun’s chow. To stave off her own pangs, she peeled a banana but left it half-finished. The idea of eating was more attractive than the reality, and the banana reminded her of Maddie. How was she doing?
Then she heard her father crunch up the drive in his toy car. He’d survived another harrowing trip on that highway to hell or Victoria, whichever came first.
His attaché case hit the floor by the closet as Shogun followed at his heels and rushed to his food bowl. Hanging up his overcoat and coming into the kitchen, Norman wore a more casual outfit more for golfing. Plus fours, knickers, and a shirt and sweater vest with a bow tie. Much of his wardrobe came from Value Village downtown, which appealed to his frugal nature as much as his demand for period clothes. How many other men ironed white handkerchiefs once a week and put on garters for their socks?
“Smells great. I taught you well. Pardon me while I change. Shogun was the star of his class, but that teeter looks like it will be tough. And I have more good news.”
About Chipper? She realized that she hadn’t thought of him once since she’d left Sombrio Beach. Mulling over the murder had taken all her attention. “Dad, wait, I …”
But he was already up the circular staircase and the squealing plumbing announced his entrance into the shower. Ever the food hound, Shogun was polishing his bowl with his tongue and pushing it around the kitchen.
After lighting the wall fireplace, Holly sat with the wine in the solarium, a glass for her dad on the coffee table. She had hit the CD, one compromise for him. Vinyl 78s were not only in short supply, they skipped and had to be changed every three minutes. Needles were difficult to source, too. Irving Berlin’s “Say it Isn’t So” seemed an emblematic title for the day.
She sipped slowly. Either he was getting better at winemaking or she was losing her taste buds. Then, as “What a Diff’rence a Day Made” came on, Norman strutted down the stairs. “Little girl of mine, Leo Buckstaff and his daughter Samantha aren’t going to be causing any trouble anymore for anyone.” He struck a dramatic pose. His elocution style brought spectators to his classes for key events like the evacuation of Dunkirk or Kennedy’s assassination.
He patted her head and cupped her chin in his hand, looking for a reaction. Her eyes were pooling with tears, and she turned away, but a sniff gave her up.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t you hear me? Are those tears of joy, I hope? I haven’t even given you the lovely specifics. It’s very juicy.”
She’d been waiting for this moment, when Chipper would be exonerated. Why not let the man tell her the good news? “It’s not Chipper, but something else. You go first.”
He drank deeply of the grapey purple wine, in another life a fine dye, and smacked his lips. Then he brushed a dust mote from his smoking jacket with velvet lapels. “Your old man has come to your rescue. I can get a signed affidavit from another faculty member of little Sam lying through her teeth to secure As in his English course. He knows someone in drama who says the same thing. With luck and a quick hearing, she will be out before Christmas for academic misconduct, perhaps even attempted blackmail, and have to continue her education in a third-world country. As for her scoundrel of a father, we are stuck with him. With that bloated administrator’s salary and the hide of a buffalo, he’ll probably never retire.”
She nodded, firming up a smile. A grim tableaux of Lindsay and her Easter bunny kept forcing its way across her mental screen. “I’m proud of you, Dad. This looks like the break we’ve been waiting for. When will you know for sure?”
“The assistant professor is in Edmonton, but he’ll be back next week. His office mate told me all about Samantha. Is that fast work on my part or is it not?” He beamed at her and smoothed back his hair. Did he take a picture of Leslie Howard with him to Barb’s Barber Shop every month?
The glass doors of the fireplace were reflecting a cosy blaze. He wasn’t even complaining that she had lit the propane earlier than January. Maybe he was mellowing. “I wish my news were good. I had a very
bad day.”
She told him about the murder, and a palpable gloom came over the room.
Norman was not an overly demonstrative man, but he shook his head and a furrow appeared between his patrician eyebrows. “I see why you’re upset, then. Very tragic and unexpected. Completely senseless. I couldn’t do your job in a thousand years. But as you say, someone has to.”
She exhaled long and low. “I’m not staging a pity party for myself. I realized when I signed on that there would be times like this. Memories I wouldn’t want to take home. But aside from a child dying, I can’t imagine anything worse. And if the two park incidents are connected, you know what that means for this area.”
“But you’re not on the case, as it were. You told me that as a …”
“As a corporal, yes. Small potatoes in a big stew. Do you see that my limitations make me all the more frustrated? I’m not an inspector. So no matter what happens, I have to stand by and…. At least I got them to look at a scrap I picked up from that attack at French.” She gave him the details.
“No kidding! You have your mother’s eagle eye, all right.” He drained the glass and reached for the bottle. “Then we must hope that the upper echelon does its duty as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, let’s drown our sorrows in a beaker or two. What do you think of this colour, then? Rubiate, I’d say. Is that a word?”
Hangovers were bad enough, she thought, but this was a wine that warned you to stop at one. “Sure, pops. Tell me one of your Joe Miller jokes. The one about the parrots and the rosary.”
He began, and was getting to the part where one parrot said, “Throw away your beads, Harry.”
The phone rang, and Holly got up to answer it. A robotic notification to her father from the Vancouver Island Regional Library that the one copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People had arrived. Dale Carnegie’s Depression bestseller was still in print. As she hung up, she noticed that the answering machine was blinking. With all that was going on, she hadn’t even checked. She hit the play button, which sent the message across the kitchen into the solarium.
