Murder in Focus

by Medora Sale

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, what it means is that these buildings aren’t going to come out with wide bottoms and tiny roofs. I usually do this sort of work with a four-by-five view camera—you know, one of those big things with the photographer hunched under a viewing cloth?—but it was too cumbersome to bring along. This works on the same principle and I can carry the entire outfit by myself,” she said, pointing to her modest array of equipment. “Now, why don’t you just shut up and stand there while I fiddle?” She pulled a small notebook out of a pocket and checked something in it; then she made a couple of adjustments to the lens, jotted down some notes in the book, and stood back. By now an admiring crowd of five people had stopped to look. Harriet was wearing her usual jeans and a khaki jacket that came down to her knees. The jacket had at least seven pockets that Sanders could count from where he was, most of them bulging. Out of one she extracted a cable release that, frowning in concentration, she affixed to the camera. “There,” she said, “that was quick, wasn’t it?”

  “Not when you were expecting someone just to point the camera and take a few pictures,” said Sanders.

  “Don’t be silly,” she murmured. “No one does that. What do you think I am? Nancy Newshound, girl photographer?” Suddenly she stepped back and looked up at the western sky. “Shit! The sun’s gone.”

  “Isn’t it bright enough to take a picture?”

  “It’s not that. The whole purpose of waiting until five and putting up with all this pedestrian traffic is to get the contrast in the details. And you need sun at the proper angle for that. I want to get all that carving and stuff.” She looked back up. “All is not lost. There’s a break coming in the cloud mass—I’ll get it then.”

  Then, with her eye more on the suddenly cloud-filled sky than on her building, she waited until the sun had broken through. She smiled, looked once more through the viewfinder, and squeezed the shutter release. There was a gentle whir as the film advanced automatically. “There,” she said happily.

  “Now where?” asked Sanders, his natural impatience overcoming his curiosity to see her work.

  “Nowhere,” she said. “Not for a minute. I just have to stop down a bit. I always bracket my shots.” She bent over the lens once more, made an adjustment, checked the viewfinder, and stepped back.

  “What do you mean?” asked Sanders.

  “Mean about what?”

  “Whatever that was you said.”

  “Just a minute.” She glanced up at the sky and squeezed the shutter release. “Just one more,” she said, “and it’s on to the Department of Justice.” She repeated the same procedure, straightened up again, and looked at the sky. The sun had ducked once more behind a scrap of cloud.

  “I still don’t see . . .” said Sanders, bending over her to look down at the camera.

  “What?” said Harriet, and jumped. There was a click and a whir as the film moved forward once again. “Christ! There’s a wasted shot. That’s the last time I bring you along,” she said. “You rattle me.” She looked up. Cloud had taken over the western quadrant of the sky completely. “I wonder if it’s worth waiting.”

  “A friend of yours?” asked Sanders curiously, pointing at a slender figure, probably male, who seemed to be rushing across the lawn in their direction.

  “Hmm? That guy? Don’t think so,” she said, still looking skyward. “What the hell. Let’s go get a beer. Any one of those shots ought to do.”

  Superintendent Deschenes parked his car in front of a small grocery store and headed for the grubby-looking restaurant next door. It seemed to be as good a place as any for a clandestine meeting; a dog dozing on the porch of the house next door to the restaurant was the only sign of life in the village. Frank Carpenter was sitting in a booth, almost unrecognizable in jeans and a sweatshirt, chatting up the waitress. He waved cheerfully at Deschenes as he walked in. “Over here.”

  When his coffee had been slapped down in front of him, Deschenes turned to his sergeant. “You blend in well. Any luck?”

  “Well, you said you didn’t want me to look as if I’d just come off parade,” he said. “And yes, no problems. They were pretty easygoing about letting us have everything. We have—or they have—several descriptions of him. And they’re remarkably uniform. He’s between five-eleven and six-one, medium to slender build, has black straight hair, deep tan, dark brown eyes, and a scar that runs from his eyelid—or maybe his eyebrow—all the way to his upper temple. A man fitting that description rented the Toyota from Avis Rent-a-Car at ten o’clock Monday morning. Paid in cash in advance for a twenty-four-hour rental, identified himself with an Ontario driver’s license issued to Richard Jarvis of Toronto—I have the number here; it’s being checked at the moment—and dropped the car off again outside the agency, forfeiting his deposit. By the time Ottawa police got there, the car had been efficiently polished up, no prints. Same guy in the same car turned up in Brockville dressed as a construction worker at the office of the company working on the secure area, flashed identification as some sort of inspector to the woman on the desk. She wasn’t sure what kind, just that he was ‘real polite and knew what he was talking about, and they’re always being harassed by government inspectors so how was she to know.’” He paused and Deschenes nodded. “And she sent him to the motel because she knew that was where they’d be having lunch. Apparently he got there just as the two crews were going in, and behaved as if he belonged to one of the crews. Anyway, they’re easygoing guys, and probably would have asked him to join them even if he’d walked in by himself. They said he seemed to be a great guy, quiet, bought a couple of rounds, and took Steve, uh, Bartholomew off their hands. The guys on his crew said they were grateful, because he was getting plastered.”

  “Was he?”

  Carpenter shook his head, worried-looking. “It doesn’t seem possible. I can’t imagine him getting drunk, not under the circumstances.”

  “And what do you make of the rest of it?”

  “The description? Except for the height and weight, maybe, it could have been faked. Hair, scar, even eye colour.” Carpenter shrugged. “But we’ll keep an eye on the case. It’s going to leave me pretty shorthanded out there, though, if I divert anyone over to it,” he said, worried.

  “Administration is giving us extra people,” said Deschenes. “In the meantime, do what you can.”

  The pub was, if anything, even darker than it had been the day before. Sanders rushed over to grab a table close to one of the dim wall lights and almost crashed into their waitress from yesterday and her full tray of drinks. She paused, recognized them, and grinned with excessive cheer. “Hey, guys. Welcome back,” she cried, as though they were her oldest and most valued customers. “You want the same? Two pints of Smith’s?”

  “Sure,” said Sanders. Harriet was too busy stowing her equipment safely into the corner to concern herself with such questions.

  “What a phenomenal memory,” said Sanders, “Do you think she knows what everyone has, or are we particularly memorable?”

  “It’s good for tips,” said Harriet, her head in her knapsack and her voice muffled. “And she has bloody little else to think about. You ever work as a waiter?”

  He waited until her back began to straighten, and shook his head. “I have one question about all this,” said Sanders when her head emerged up above table level once again.

  “All right. What is it?” asked Harriet, smiling politely at the waitress as she swept their beer down in front of them with a flourish.

  “Who carries your equipment and guards the camera case when you haven’t managed to pick up a footloose police officer?”

  “Ah,” Harriet said. “That’s a very sad story.” And she took a healthy mouthful of beer. “I had an assistant, wonderful girl, named Jane, good eye, tall, strong, very clever. Gesture hysterically and she knew exactly what you wanted. She was getting pretty good in the dar
kroom, too.” Harriet looked up mournfully, her dark hair hanging down over one green eye.

  “What happened to her?” asked Sanders.

  “She fell in love with a painter, a bad painter, and went all broody on me. Then she discovered she was pregnant and moved to Montreal to be with the infant’s father. And thus was one of the world’s best photographic assistants destroyed.” She flipped the hair back out of her eye. “I sometimes even hope that she’ll become fed up with his horrible paintings and come back to me, infant and all.”

  “Did she live with you?” asked Sanders casually.

  Harriet raised an eyebrow at him and then shook her head. “No, that isn’t the reason why I yearn for her to come back. She’s more a work object than a love object as far as I’m concerned. Although, of course, one grows fond of a good assistant—the way you grow fond of a good camera.” She sighed. “Then, since my life was totally disrupted anyway, I decided to come back to Ottawa. I’d had this project in mind for a while, and I scurried around and found a few paying assignments in the city to keep me going until the book is finished. So here I am. Sublet my Toronto apartment, rented out my studio space, and drove up in February. I was thinking of settling here permanently—this is where I grew up, and I like it—but I’m not sure there’s enough of my kind of work to keep me going here full-time.”

  “So you’ve decided to move back to Toronto?”

  “Well, decided is too strong a word. I’ll probably go back. Sometime.” She shook her head. “Who can predict what anybody’s going to be doing in six months’ time? Or six minutes’ time? Look at that guy over there—not literally, my friend the inquisitive police officer—he’ll think I’m talking about him.”

  “But you are.”

  “Of course I am. You know what I mean.” Amusement crinkled the corners of her eyes. “He’s sitting in a bar, surrounded by noise and jollification, and what’s he doing? Flipping through a trashy novel, pretending to read it. Did he anticipate at lunchtime that he was going to be sitting here—”

  “How do you know it’s trashy?” interrupted Sanders.

  “Did you know you were a very irritating person? Let us assume for the sake of discussion that it is trashy. Why sit in a bar drinking overpriced draft beer in order to read trash? Or not read it? He seems to have trouble concentrating. I’ll bet that pint cost him more than the book.”

  “He’s probably meeting someone,” said Sanders. “And experience has taught him that she’s always late.”

  “Then why does he never glance at the door in passionate anticipation? The only direction he’s been looking in so far is over here, at us.”

  “Well, try this one. He’s one of your devoted admirers,” said Sanders. “And he’s hoping you’ll get rid of me so he can pick you up.”

  “Idiot,” said Harriet. “He doesn’t have much of a chance, anyway. I can’t stand pale, weedy redheads. You want to go with me while I drop the film off at the lab? That’s something else Jane would have done.”

  “Don’t you develop it yourself? I’m disillusioned,” said Sanders. “What about those movies with photographers up to their elbows in chemicals in the darkroom? While sinister portraits of gruesome murders being committed gradually emerge from the blank paper. You know the kind.”

  “Not Ektachrome,” she said. “Colour,” she added when she saw his blank look. “Positive colour—you know, slides. Labs just throw it in a machine and it’s ready in three hours. I’m not a big enough outfit to run my own colour lab. If you like, I’ll take you to my darkroom one of these days and show you some black-and-white developing, though, just to prove that I’m genuine.”

  “That’s an intriguing possibility,” said Sanders cautiously.

  “Actually,” she said, drawing out the word and then hesitating. “I have a more intriguing possibility. Do you like music?”

  “Is this a test question?”

  “No, of course not.” She paused. “Well, I suppose it is. Before you answer, I’ll give you a clue to what you’re getting into. Anna Maria Strelitsch, the violinist, is playing at the Arts Centre tonight—Mozart and some moderns, I think—and I have two tickets. Good tickets. But I’m not going to take you if you’re going to hate it. I refuse to have my evening spoiled by someone squirming in agony—or falling asleep—beside me.”

  “Hey, what makes you assume I’d squirm?” he said defensively. “I like music. It sounds wonderful. And I only fall asleep if I’ve been up all night. What about you? Are you going in those disreputable jeans and that peculiar jacket?”

  “No call to throw rocks at my working clothes. I wouldn’t be much use scrambling around the landscape in a tight skirt and high heels with no place to store my bits and pieces. But don’t worry, I’ll get dressed up. You won’t recognize me.”

  “Fine,” he said. “How about dinner first?” he asked casually.

  She picked up her beer and put it down again. “It would be wasted on me,” she said at last. “I hate eating in a rush. It puts me in such a foul mood I can’t even taste what I’m eating. I’ll go and get dressed and meet you in front of the Arts Centre at twenty to eight. We can eat later. That way you’re sure not to fall asleep.”

  “Well, all right,” he said. “Don’t you want me to pick you up?”

  “No need,” she said. Her voice was cold. “I’m a big girl. I can find my way around the city by myself.” A slight smile failed to remove the sting in voice and words.

  “Right,” he said abruptly. He stood up, irritated, grabbed his raincoat, and then waited with heavy politeness while she rescued all her bits and pieces from the floor. “I’ll see you in front of the Arts Centre at twenty to eight.”

  “If you insist on being gallant,” she said, “you can carry the tripod and camera case back to the car.” This time the smile was close to looking real. “And I thought you were coming with me to drop the film off.”

  Sanders scooped up the two items and followed Harriet out of the pub. As they were leaving, the man with the novel snapped it shut, losing his place, slipped it into his pocket, picked up his own coat, and followed them out.

  He paused in the door to look around, then strolled nonchalantly after them in the direction of the parking garage where Harriet had left her car. Just as he was about to cross the road a tour bus pulled up to the curb and forty-four camera-carrying tourists spewed onto the pavement around him. By sheer numerical force they carried him back a good ten feet in the direction he had come from. By the time he fought his way out from the center of the throng, Harriet and Sanders were nowhere in sight.

  Andrew Cassidy looked at his watch and began restoring the material on his desk to the folders he had taken it from. 6:05. He should be able to work his way through the rest of Steve Collins’s files now without the irritating necessity of explaining his presence to every clerk and junior word-processing assistant in the entire intelligence service. Not that what he was doing was any of their business, of course, but that didn’t seem to stop anyone.

  He walked down the empty corridor until he reached Steve’s office, pulled the key out of his pocket, and walked boldly in. Last night he had stayed late enough to inventory file names. Tonight he was going to have to see if they contained anything of interest.

  At 7:15 he heard a noise in the corridor and looked up, yawning and unworried. Right now, he would have welcomed an armed robbery to relieve the tedium of reading through these files. The noises stopped. Probably the cleaning staff, thought Cassidy, and turned back to his reading. Just as he began to work up a new sense of speed, however, the door was flung open. “What in hell are you doing in Steve’s office?” said a hostile voice. It was Betty Ferris, who spent most of her days in the duplicating room.

  “Hi, Betty,” he said. “Sorry about this. I’m just clearing things up in here. We’ve got to check out what he’d been working on recently. In case there are things that h
aven’t been finished up.” He shook his head impatiently. “For God’s sake, don’t look at me like that. I was asked. I’m not just snooping. And what are you doing here this late?”

  “I often work late,” she said. Her voice had little expression. “I got in the habit. It sort of makes up for the mornings I can’t get in on time because of Stacy. Anyway, I saw a light on in here, and I wondered who was pawing around in Steve’s stuff.”

  A new light on Steve presented itself to Cassidy. And quickly formed itself into a comprehensible picture. He leaned back and examined the woman more closely. Maybe not everyone’s ideal, but now that he looked, palely beautiful and certainly intelligent. Underemployed at the moment, running errands, making coffee, and doing everyone’s photocopying. Mother of a small child, as well, he remembered. Losing Steve must have been a blow. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m trying not to paw, as you put it, but it’s the only way we’ll find out what in hell is going on—why someone killed him. And why might tell us who.” She still stood where she was, looking angry and suspicious. “Look, Betty, an awful lot of this seems to be out-of-date reports and stupid memos. You wouldn’t know where he kept his current files, would you?”

  Betty shrugged. “In with the rest of the stuff in there, I suppose,” she said. “I don’t know where else they’d be. You want some coffee? I’ve got it ready in my office.” He shook his head and watched her as she slipped quietly out of the room.

  The last note of the Mozart Violin Concerto died slowly away, and the violinist lowered her hands to her sides, bow and violin forming a delicate frame around her. She bowed, head down, and a river of blonde hair cascaded over the front of her white dress. Applause surged up through the hall. She straightened up, flipped her hair off her face with her bow hand, and smiled broadly. She raised both arms high above her head, gestured to draw her accompanist into the general enthusiasm, and skipped off the stage to a startled burst of laughter.