Negative Image

by Vicki Delany

  This was most definitely not a normal Sunday evening.

  “May I come in?” she said.

  He stepped back. A bottle of beer was on the night table between the narrow twin beds. Another in the trash.

  “We can’t go on like this, John.”

  “It looks like we’re going to have to,” he said.

  “How long do you plan to stay here?”

  “In Trafalgar? As long as I have a job.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “In this room? I like it here, don’t have anyone nagging at me to pick up my socks.” She looked around. There were no socks on the floor. The place was probably neater than the maid left it.

  “Is that so?”

  “Paul Keller doesn’t want me having any contact with you while you’re under suspicion.”

  “You wouldn’t have agreed to that if you hadn’t wanted to,” she said, feeling a knot of anger rising in her chest. He hadn’t offered her a seat—which didn’t really matter as there weren’t any chairs and she was not going to perch on the end of a bed. “You are my husband, John, and I am your wife. I’ve been through hell this week and perhaps the worst part of it is realizing that I can’t count on you to believe in me. Instead, you actually think it’s possible I could cold-bloodily kill a man.”

  “I don’t believe that,” he said.

  “That makes me feel so much better. Now, I know it’s just that you’d rather live in this hovel than in our home, with me.”

  “I’ve my own problems with this, you know Eliza. The whispers behind my back, that fucking Madison and his smirks and insinuations.”

  He leaned across the bed to grab the bottle of beer and took a long drink.

  She raised one eyebrow.

  “What?” he growled. “It’s just a beer.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You don’t have to. Your face is so bloody expressive. Is that why they liked you when you were a whore?”

  She sucked in a breath. At last it was out. She’d been distraught, afraid she was watching her life falling into ruins around her, and so she’d told him most of what Rudy had said to her that night. She hadn’t stopped to consider that perhaps she was telling John too much.

  “I was never a prostitute.”

  “Whether money is involved or not doesn’t matter in the law. Exchanging sexual services for something is called prostitution.”

  “Don’t quote the law at me. You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “What did your pal Rudy say? Once a whore always a whore.”

  She hit him, hard across the face. He threw the bottle against the wall. It shattered and brown liquid sprayed across the floor.

  “You bastard,” she said, shocked at what she’d done. “You know nothing about it. I was young, I was innocent and naive, and I was living in a world where everyone, from my agent to my fiancé, was only interested in making sure I generated as much money as possible. You took me out of that. I’ve never, ever forgotten it. If you want to condemn me for things that happened thirty years ago, go ahead, but don’t expect me to hang around to hear it. I’d move into the condo in Vancouver except your colleague has ordered me not to leave town. He’s as judgmental as you.”

  His face was turning red, from the blow, from anger? Probably both.

  “If you want to be Mr. High and Mighty go ahead, but tell me first how everything you’ve done in your life has been noble and honorable. Tell me when you were young and randy all the time you didn’t ever try to take advantage of a girl. Or maybe you can tell me that you’re a man, so that makes it all right.”

  She turned and grabbed the door knob. Her hand was so soaked with sweat it couldn’t get purchase, and she had to use her other hand to help open it. She stepped outside, and took a deep breath.

  She turned again, slowly this time.

  “Oh, and John, none of this is about you. Get it? My past happened before I met you, and Rudy’s death doesn’t have anything to do with me, let alone you, although the police seem to want to make it so. You need to get over your hurt feelings, stop worrying that your friends are going to laugh at you as if you’re a twelve-year-old, and offer me the support I have a right to expect from my husband. If you can’t do that, I’d prefer you don’t come home.” She waved her hand at the shabby motel room. “You’ll be happier living here, drowning in self-pity.”

  She walked to her car without looking back.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  First thing Monday morning the warrant to investigate Dennis Jones’ financial records came though. Ray Lopez almost rubbed his hands together in glee. Conveniently, Jones kept his accounts in one bank. Lopez picked up the phone. He played poker with the branch manager occasionally.

  Copies of Jones’ financial records were on his computer before the hour was up. Lopez wasn’t a forensic accountant, but he could read a simple bank statement easily enough. And Jones’ was simple.

  A small amount of money came in.

  A large amount of money went out.

  The guy had three credit cards maxed out at twenty-five thousand dollars each and a line of credit worth another twenty thousand. He didn’t appear to own a home and drove a ten year old car. He had never been married and had no record of any children.

  Earlier, Lopez had found that Jones had been given a couple of speeding tickets over the past year. One by the RCMP detachment in Kelowna, another on highway 33, heading toward Kelowna. He also had been arrested for being involved in a fight in a Kelowna bar. Lopez checked the date of the tickets and the fight against cash withdrawals on the credit cards. Bingo.

  Jones was going to Kelowna, often, and taking a lot of money with him.

  What was in Kelowna that Jones might find so appealing? Off hand, Lopez could think of one thing—a casino.

  Passport records showed that Jones had taken a plane to Las Vegas twice in the past year. No doubt at all about what one would find appealing in Vegas.

  Dennis Jones had a gambling problem. A serious one by the look of it. He was almost maxed out on his legitimate sources of funding. What would he do if he couldn’t borrow from the credit card companies and the banks any longer?

  Give it up?

  Or find another source of cash? Like a rich brother.

  Lopez glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. He was supposed to be on a diet, but he deserved a treat after that round of inspired police work. Time to order something from Trafalgar Thai, walk down and pick it up, that would count as exercise, eat lunch at his desk while reviewing his notes, and be ready for the meeting with IHIT at one.

  ***

  He had spent most of the night drinking beer while staring at some bunk on the sports channel, and on the way into town John Winters’ mind kept calling up the fight with Eliza.

  Last week they’d had what he thought of as a perfect marriage. Now? What was this doing to them? She’d never hit him before, rarely even raised her voice. She was an expert at showing her anger though a well-placed glare and a tilt of the chin. A lift of the eyebrow was the most disapproving she ever got.

  She was right, and it hurt him to admit it. Somehow all of this, in his mind, had become about him, about his feelings, not about her and what she must be suffering. What had been his first thought on seeing the photograph of Eliza? He’d be a laughing stock at work.

  As for his youthful antics, he’d done things he wasn’t too proud of. There was that time in high school when he told the girl he was dating he wanted to marry her but first they needed to be sure they were sexually compatible. He’d bragged about his conquest to his buddies the next day.

  He wondered what that girl was doing now. He couldn’t even remember her name.

  Eliza, his wife, was on the verge of being arrested for murder, and he was mad because of something she’d done twenty-five years ago?

  Didn’t she have the right to expect him to support her?

  The Smith family had gathered in the wai
ting room outside the OR. Adam Tocek was with them, Molly’s small hand folded into his big one. Jane Reynolds, Lucky’s good friend, sat in a corner, knitting. A man Winters hadn’t met paced the room. Lucky was sitting in an armchair, an unopened book on her lap. The room smelled of sanitizer and furniture polish, the only sound the clicking of Jane’s needles.

  They all looked up as he entered. “John.” Lucky Smith got to her feet. “How nice of you to stop by.”

  “I wanted to wish you all the best,” he said. “Paul Keller sends his regards.”

  She took his hand and held it in hers. Her eyes were very wet and the moisture made them shine like jewels. “Thank you so much.”

  Never one for a display of emotion, John Winters was highly uncomfortable with his hand being held. “Take a seat,” Lucky said, releasing him at last. “I don’t think you’ve met my son, Sam.”

  After the introductions, Winters went to the couch beside Molly and Adam. They shifted over to make room.

  “How long’s it been?” he asked.

  “They started about half an hour ago,” she said. She was dressed in jeans and a loose blue T-shirt, which matched her eyes. Her feet were stuffed into well-used running shoes and the laces on the right one had come undone.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Jane’s needles continued to move, and a soft white cloud filled her lap. From the corridor outside they could hear the sound of a busy hospital, shoes tapping, people talking, carts clattering.

  Winters coughed. “Do you think your mother would mind if we talked shop for a few minutes, Molly? Someplace private.”

  He thought he’d kept his voice low, but Lucky heard. In a crisis in which she could do nothing, all her senses were on high. “Not at all. If we need you, we can find you.”

  They left the waiting room, Tocek following, went downstairs to the nearly empty cafeteria and sat at a long table in the back. No one wanted coffee. Winters and Tocek took the bench that put their backs against the wall. Smith faced them.

  “I read your report on your visit to the neighbor on Station Street,” Winters said.

  “The Spencer Family.” Molly smiled at Adam. “I was offered a baby to take home.”

  “That would constitute a bribe.”

  “More like a threat, I’d say.”

  They all laughed.

  “This person taking pictures?” Winters asked. “Did Spencer see him only the once?”

  “I think so. That’s all he mentioned, anyway. Do you think it’s important?”

  “Probably not. Just clutching at straws. We’ve had five B&Es over the last six weeks. I’m going to go back to Elm Street, the scene of the last one, and do the neighbors again. I don’t have much hope but maybe this guy with the camera was seen there as well.”

  ***

  They were all there and Barb had had to gather chairs from other offices. The outsiders from IHIT, the local Mounties, Ray Lopez, Paul Keller.

  John Winters’ absence was like a missing tooth in the face of a grinning hockey player.

  The mood in the Chief Constable’s office was solemn. No one chatted about the weather, last night’s game, about this and that. They stared at their notebooks and accepted the coffee Barb passed around. Before anyone said a word, Barb knew it was going to be rough.

  She sat down and opened the laptop computer on which she’d take the minutes.

  “I’m ready to bring Eliza Winters in,” Madison said, without preamble. He had a strange sort of half-smile on his face, and Barb didn’t trust him one bit.

  She glanced at the Chief. He looked stunned. “You’ve learned something since we last spoke?”

  “Nothing new, no. Just reinforcing my impressions.”

  “Then you’ve got fuck all,” Lopez said. “The idea is preposterous. You bring her down here, she’ll have a good case for laying a complaint.”

  “I’m with Ray,” Ron Gavin said. “You go to court with that you’ll be laughed out the door.”

  “You have a hunch, a suspicion, not a single thing that can stand up in court,” Keller grabbed a can of coke out of the fridge behind his desk. He hadn’t finished his coffee yet. “Yes, Mrs. Winters was in the deceased’s hotel room shortly before he was killed. So was the room service waiter, but I hope you’re not planning on arresting him too. You have no evidence. Nothing.”

  “I don’t need your approval, Chief Constable,” Madison said. “This is my investigation, and we’re not going to vote on it. However, as a professional courtesy,” his voice dripped with sarcasm, “I’m informing you. I intend to detain Eliza Winters, allow her to assist us with our inquiries. However, if it will make you feel better, I don’t believe she killed Rudolph Steiner.”

  ***

  “Frank Spencer is such an involved dad,” Smith said. Her face was on Winters but she was looking at Adam Tocek out of the corner of her eyes. “Guy looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. His wife works nights, here at the hospital, so I bet she comes home to a quiet house with the kiddies and the dog at day care and has a nice long sleep. And he gets them at night, after working all day.”

  “The dog goes to day care,” Adam said, “Really?”

  “Yeah, I…”

  “What?” Winters said. “You’ve thought of something, I can see it written all over your face.”

  “The dog. The house on Elm Street, the one that was broken into. They had a dog too. I didn’t see it, but I remember seeing a dog toy on the floor. They don’t have kids. Did you see a dog when you were there?”

  “No, no I didn’t.”

  “Maybe it was still at the kennel,” Adam said. “If they just got home they might not have picked it up yet.”

  “The first house we went to, they have a dog,” Winters said. “They’d put it in that kennel on the highway as you head out of town. Houses number two and three had a dog, because one of the first things we checked, looking for something they all had in common, was if they used the same kennel. They didn’t, and as I remember at least one of the families took the dog with them on vacation, so that line of inquiry closed.” His mind raced. The two young officers watched him.

  “This is the first I’ve heard of any dog day care,” he said at last.

  ***

  “You’re out of your mind,” the Chief yelled over the din. Barb could think of a thing or two to say to the man from IHIT but she kept her head down, and concentrated on typing.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ray Lopez said.

  “If you people can’t keep your emotions out of it then this meeting is over,” Madison said.

  “It’s over when I say it is,” Keller snapped back.

  “John Winters knew his wife was screwing around with her old flame. Hell, maybe she was thinking of getting back with him. We know the guy was dying, maybe he played the pity card.”

  “Maybe he played the idiot card,” Lopez muttered, so low only Barb could hear. She didn’t enter that into the minutes.

  “Winters went to the hotel after she left and shot him,” Madison continued.

  “Steiner wasn’t killed with a Glock,” Gavin said.

  “I don’t think for a minute Winters is stupid enough to use his own service weapon. I’ve run his passport and see he went to Florida a couple of weeks ago.”

  “His wife’s parents are in Florida,” Lopez almost shouted, seeing where this was going. “Half the old people in Canada go to Florida for the winter.”

  “The reason doesn’t matter. It was the opportunity for him to purchase an illegal weapon.”

  “My wife and I went on a tour to Russia last year,” Keller said. “Where I had the opportunity to purchase weapons grade plutonium on the black market. I did not.”

  “In my experience,” Madison said, “the sort of man who’s most likely to resort to violence at his wife’s infidelities is the one who’s screwing around himself. Winters is having an affair with Constable Smith.”

  She was so shocked, Barb stopped typing.

  Keller laugh
ed. “Now you’re right around the bend.”

  “I saw them together yesterday as it happens.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Lopez said. “Where?”

  “That coffee place around the corner. Looking quite intimate. It was most touching.”

  “Intimate at Big Eddie’s! Oh, yeah, if I was having a secret assignation, I’d conduct it at a place I could be sure most of my colleagues would pass through in any given day.”

  Everyone spoke at once, and Barb could tell the room was not behind Madison. Even the other member of the IHIT team looked unhappy.

  “If you pursue this,” Keller said. “I will make a formal complaint. I will state that I believe you have a personal vendetta against a member of this force and are exercising improper judgment. In light of the recent difficulties the RCMP is having with its public image, I don’t imagine your bosses will be too happy about that.”

  Madison stiffened. “I would have thought we’re all interested in seeing justice done no matter who’s the perpetrator.”

  “Now see here.” Keller began to stand up.

  “See justice done, exactly,” Ray Lopez raised his voice. “I’d like to talk about the brother, Dennis Jones.” Keller dropped back down. He drained his can of pop, and crushed it in his right hand.

  “We have motive and opportunity.” Lopez emphasized the points by counting them off on his fingers, “The killer had to be someone close to Steiner. You’re forgetting, Sergeant, that Steiner invited this person into his room, and went to the bathroom to be sick. Would he have turned his back on someone he didn’t trust?”

  ***

  “Molly, get back to everyone who’s had a B&E, confirm that they own a dog, and find out what they do with it during the day.” Winters remembered where he was and stopped issuing orders. “Sorry, forgot. You’re kind of busy right now.”