Murder in Focus

by Medora Sale

  “Of course,” she said. “I thought you knew that. It’s a conference on Charlemagne. I’ll call around and see if I can find out exactly what it’s called and where it is. And then we can wander out there and see if we recognize anyone.”

  By the time Sanders put down the phone and looked at his watch, the first session was about to end. He bypassed the lecture room and headed straight for the cafeteria; their little group was crowding around the counter, picking up coffee. As he reached for his change, the constable from Halifax thumped him on the back. “Hey, fellas, look what just turned up. Shit, do you look rough!” The constable guffawed and hit him again. Sanders stiffened angrily. “Jesus, you should see yourself. What have you been up to? When he said go sightseeing you really took him up on it, didn’t you? Whaddya find, eh?” The constable leered.

  Sanders grabbed his coffee and glowered repressively at the man. It had no discernible effect.

  The constable showed serious signs of following him to a table. “Just kidding,” he said, with another snort of laughter. “When we got here this morning we had a little bet on, trying to guess who wouldn’t make it in. Never figured it’d be the big in-spec-tor from Toronto, though,” he said, drawing out the term. “But you’re not the only one,” he added, lowering his voice confidentially, as he walked along beside Sanders. “You know that bastard Higgs didn’t show this morning. Sent some prick in with a stupid movie. Oh, Jesus, there he is,” the constable muttered. “I wonder if he heard me.”

  Higgs was stalking across the room, coming straight for them. “Inspector Sanders,” he said. “I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

  “Well lah-di-dah,” whispered the young man. “Pardon us.”

  “Would you excuse us, Constable?” Higgs said stiffly.

  “Certainly, sir,” said that rising diplomat, all politeness and deference, and headed for a more congenial group.

  “About that picture we were discussing yesterday,” said Higgs quietly as he sat down at an empty table. “The one with the man who is wanted for questioning, whom you say you also saw in a bar in Brockville—”

  “Coffee shop outside Brockville,” said Sanders. He sat down, his interest aroused at least temporarily, and leaned back.

  “Whatever,” Higgs said impatiently. “Do you have it yet?”

  “I said it was going to take a few days, didn’t I?” asked Sanders.

  “You also made it very clear that you hadn’t actually taken it or delivered it for processing. We were concerned that it be delivered directly to the superintendent’s office. Not to the local police. Do the Ottawa police have that picture?”

  “Why?” asked Sanders, yawning. “Does it matter who gets it? Anyway, I thought you said, or someone said, that it wasn’t your case.”

  Higgs dropped his voice slightly. “We have a strong interest in assuring discretion where that investigation is concerned.”

  “Why?” asked Sanders again, idly balancing his spoon on the salt shaker. He didn’t feel particularly helpful anymore, and he wished Higgs would get the hell out of there. He was too distracted to be interested in someone else’s little games for long. He touched his bruised lips with his tongue. Was it that obvious what he had been doing? Or had that brat just made a lucky guess? Probably. At that age you think of sex twenty hours a day and assume that everyone else does, too. He made an effort to pull himself back to his surroundings. Higgs was taking his question seriously.

  “. . . found in the secure area around the perimeter of a site being used for the conference. This is highly classified information, of course. We are trying to pursue our own investigation without alerting local police or the press. I was asked to get the photograph from you as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. Do you have it on you?”

  “What’s that?” Sanders said. His attention had slipped again. “Do I have the picture? No, I don’t. Sorry.”

  “Did you hand it over to some other police jurisdiction?’ asked Higgs, with slow emphasis. “This is important,” he said. “We need to know where it is. Who has it affects how we proceed from now on.”

  “As far as I know, no other jurisdiction has it at the moment,” said Sanders cautiously.

  “Oh,” said Higgs, and paused. “Have you discussed the existence of the picture with anyone else?” he asked casually. “Besides the person who took it.”

  “Me? No.” Sanders didn’t care for what was going on. Cautious bastards like Higgs don’t just drop classified information into your lap—not without some reason, at least. And he couldn’t quite imagine what innocent reason he would have for doing it.

  “I assume the woman—Harriet Jeffries, the photographer, isn’t that who she is? anyway, the woman who was waiting for you in the car—I assume she’s the one who actually took the picture,” Higgs added. He looked at his watch. “Excuse me,” he said. “Just one small thing to attend to before the session begins.” He stood up, his face frozen into its usual blankly hostile expression, and walked out of the room. Sanders watched Higgs’s rigid back as it progressed. His euphoria was rapidly being chased out by a sense of restless uneasiness.

  Harriet walked slowly out of the offices of the Ottawa Citizen and paused on the sidewalk before heading toward her car. She looked at her watch and began nibbling her lower lip. One o’clock. If she forgot about lunch she would have plenty of time to get out to Carleton University and nose around before meeting John. Except that she was going to have to go back to the motel and change into something slightly more respectable than her working jeans. There’d still be time, though, to do that and get out to the Charlemagne conference before the two o’clock sessions. If she hurried. She snatched her car keys out of her pocket and dodged her way through the passing pedestrians and over to the curb.

  She pulled into the almost empty parking lot and parked in front of the door leading to the second floor of the motel. As soon as she stepped out of the car, the wind tossed a handful of dust into her face and she sneezed. The area was deserted except for one laundry cart, overflowing with dirty linen, left unattended beside the door. A stale smell of sweat and vomit hit her as she walked past it, and she was momentarily consumed with loathing—for herself, for mankind, for the drunken, incontinent oafs who made themselves at home in godforsaken heaps of concrete rubble like this one. Oafs she felt at one with as she walked down the windy passageway to John Sanders’s room.

  The chambermaid had drawn back the curtains; the hard spring sunshine poured into the room, lighting up all the corners. Harriet stood in the open doorway and stared. Every square inch of floor, bed, and countertop was covered with a jumble of things, tumbled, confused, unidentifiable things. The drawers had been yanked out and overturned, the suitcases were open and spread-eagled upside down on the beds. There was underwear—male and female—tossed on the pillows and draped over the mirror, where it had apparently caught when it was flung in the direction of the wall. She pushed aside two drawers with her foot and stepped into the room, closing the door after her.

  The view from inside was even more devastating. The lock on her aluminum camera case had been smashed or wrenched open; the floor on the far side of the beds was littered with bits of camera equipment. Several thousand dollars’ worth of lenses lay, smashed, at her feet, and in the middle of them was her OM-3. It looked as if someone had taken a heavy mallet to it. She reached down and picked it up. It had resisted destruction as best it could, but that twisted body told her that it was beyond repair. She glanced into the bathroom; nothing had been left untouched, not even the toothpaste. She dropped her mutilated camera on the bed and turned toward the telephone. Her finger was poised to enter the last digit in the emergency number when she paused, put down the receiver, and walked out of the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

  Once in the car she plunged through downtown traffic, pushed by a feverish, reckless sense of haste over to the west of the canal
, where she had grown up and learned to drive, the area where she knew the crazy-quilt pattern of one-way streets the way she knew her own darkroom. As she moved, she kept one eye on the road and one eye on her rearview mirror. She darted back and forth, zigzagging across Bank Street, making sudden and unheralded left-hand turns. Finally, she decided that no one could possibly be following her, pulled back to the drive along the canal, and moved sedately downtown. She headed slowly in the direction of the motel once again, saw no familiar car behind her, made a sudden right turn, and was in the huge downtown parking garage. She pulled into an empty space and waited. Nothing. If anyone had followed her here, he evidently knew what she was going to do even before she herself decided to do it. Perhaps he did. Perhaps when she pulled open the door leading into the huge downtown mall he would be waiting for her. Whoever he was. “For chrissake, Harriet, don’t be an ass,” she said aloud, and felt even more foolish. She got out of the car, set out across the gray concrete floor, and headed calmly and deliberately in the direction of Ogilvy’s department store.

  An hour later she pushed her way into the crowded ladies’ room with an armload of paper bags. She walked up to the vanity counter in front of the mirror, smiled sweetly but firmly at the three people who were standing there fiddling with their hair and makeup, and piled up her things on the counter. “Well! Excuse me,” said the one nearest Harriet as she snatched her purse, compact, and mascara out of range. Harriet paid no attention. Out of the largest of her bags she pulled a soft nylon carryall, which she unzipped, detagged, and began to fill. Two bags of new underwear went in first, as they were; next she tilted a bag filled with panty hose in, extracting one pair as she went and clutching it firmly between her knees. She crumpled up the bag and pitched it in the direction of the wastepaper disposal. She missed. Another woman glared at her. From a larger bag she extracted a full beige skirt, a matching blouse, and a bright pink jacket. She draped these over her arm, pitched the bag away—successfully this time—stuffed the remaining bags into the carryall, and marched into a cubicle. A few minutes later she emerged, in her stocking feet, dressed in the skirt, blouse, and jacket and clutching her jeans, sweatshirt, and running shoes.

  “Not much room to change in there,” she remarked to the girl who was still trying to get her mascara on, and thumped her bag back on the counter beside her. The wand jumped and a blob of black goo landed under the woman’s eyebrow in the middle of her elaborately drawn eye shadow. Harriet dropped her running shoes on the floor, slipped her feet into them, and stuffed her remaining clothes in the bag. “’Bye,” she said to the young woman, who was now engaged in stripping mascara and three shades of eye shadow from her lids with a combination of tissues and tears. Once out of the room, Harriet bent down to tie up her laces and set herself to finding suitable shoes.

  Harriet was standing in the bright afternoon sun, her old Canon F-1 dangling from a strap wrapped tightly around her left wrist, her tiny Olympus grasped possessively in her right hand. The nylon holdall was sitting at her feet, which were now encased in elegant little shoes that matched the new blue purse hanging from her left shoulder. It was exactly 4:30. She had been pacing restlessly through the shops for the last thirty minutes, unable to wait at the corner and too nervous and distracted to do anything useful. Now she stood looking at the information kiosk, memorizing the dates and times of events and exhibitions of absolutely no interest to her.

  Suddenly an arm encircled her shoulders and a voice said in her ear, “You made it.”

  “I thought I might as well show up,” she said casually, and felt herself turning pink.

  “Good,” he said simply, but he tightened his grip on her shoulder. “Anyway, let’s get a drink before I collapse from dehydration.” He gave her a sharp look. “Is anything wrong?” he added.

  She shook her head. “A drink sounds fine.”

  “Then why are you carrying luggage around with you?” he asked, pointing at the bag. “And two cameras?”

  “I bought some new things, since you wouldn’t let me go back to my apartment,” she said accusingly, “and I needed something to carry them in.”

  “My God,” he said. “When you shop, you really shop.” He took the bag from her, stepped back, and looked at her again. “Hey, pretty nice.” His tone was judicial. “I like pink.” He looked at her critically. “Good colour,” he added. “Is that all new? But I’m afraid you’ve gone overboard.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked, annoyed.

  “An inspector’s wife would never be that extravagant.” She aimed a blow at his ear. He put his arm up to protect himself, grabbed her wrist, and started pulling her down the street. “Let me put the bag in the car so you don’t have to cart it around with you.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Afterward. Right now I have a few things to tell you. In there,” she added, pointing at the pub.

  “I’m waiting,” said Sanders, after they had ordered. “What’s all this mystery?”

  “Well, first, I got the dope on the conference. I have a friend from the old days who’s working as a news photographer on the Citizen, and this morning I camped on his doorstep while he tracked everything down for me. I’ve got it here,” she said, patting her handbag. “It’s at Carleton University, and we have plenty of time after this beer to get to the cocktail hour. Apparently the Charlemagne conference—can you believe that? What do you suppose they talk about for three days? Anyway, apparently it created all sorts of problems because it had been booked a year before the trade conference was even thought of and the organizers refused to give up their time. I gather the security types don’t like having too much going on at once in one city. Scott—that’s the photographer, Scott O’Reilly—says he might come over as well and take a few jolly old human interest shots.” Her voice oozed sarcasm for a second before returning to normal.

  “Did you tell him why we wanted the information?” asked Sanders. He felt a stab of possessive pain thinking about this anonymous lout—who probably used to sleep with her—to whom she would confide her troubles, and then a sharper pain when he remembered he had no right even to inquire about things like that.

  Harriet had a faint smile on her face. “How stupid do you think I am? Of course I didn’t tell him why. I mean, I gave him a reason he’d be likely to believe, but not the real why. And don’t look at me like that. He isn’t interested in girls, but he takes a kindly interest in the love lives of his friends. I’ll explain all that later,” she added hastily. “Anyway, I decided that instead of going shopping, I’d nip over to Carleton and see if I could lay eyes on one or other of those two guys.”

  “Jesus, I thought we’d agreed you’d lie low—”

  “Would you let me finish for once?” she interrupted. “I went back to the motel to change and someone had torn the room apart.” Her voice was flat and expressionless. “Clothes, everything, scattered everywhere, and my equipment all smashed. Everything but these cameras,” she said, and patted the Canon F-1 on the table. “They were in the car. I didn’t want to leave them there,” she added defensively.

  “What did you do?”

  “I looked at it all very carefully, backed out of the room, got the hell out of the place, and went shopping to buy some clothes to go out to Carleton in. I didn’t want to stay there, and I didn’t feel like going back to the apartment, either. I started to call the police and didn’t, because I wasn’t sure what was going on. I figured you’d have some bright ideas about what to do. Oh, and I drove around for a while to see if anyone was following me, but I’m pretty sure that no one was. Or if they were, I lost them.”

  Sanders didn’t comment. In silence he traced a complex pattern in a few drops of spilled liquid on the table. “What’s wrong?” asked Harriet, frowning. “Pretty stupid to react the way I did, I suppose.”

  He looked up at her. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “Well, it is, of course, but probably not the way yo
u mean.” He took her hand. “Except that I’m not very pleased about what just happened.”

  “Well, of course not,” she said. “But you looked, I don’t know, unhappy about something.”

  “I did? Nothing could be further from the truth. Worried, but not unhappy. Not now. I was thinking about something odd, that’s all.”

  “Besides the motel room?” He nodded. “What?”

  “Well, that useless, tight-assed, unimaginative bastard Higgs—who would be the last candidate on my list for a job that needed brains or discretion—was asking me questions about your picture, and, incidentally, about you. I don’t like it. If he’s in Security, what’s he doing running this idiotic seminar? This week, when the city is stiff with top-level foreigners, with more about to arrive. And if he’s what he looks like—a nobody—why does he know you’re a photographer? And why should he care? Look, Harriet, I know this sounds like a stupid question, but are you famous?”

  “Famous?” she said, putting down her beer and spluttering slightly.

  “Yeah, famous. Has your picture been in the papers and magazines, only I’m a slob and never noticed it? Would a hell of a lot of people take one look at you and say, ‘Oh, look, Mabel, there’s Harriet Jeffries, the photographer, let’s get her autograph’?”