The River Killers

by Bruce Burrows

  “The coroner’s report says that both postmortem rigour and stomach contents put TOD at about 5:00 AM, April 13. That ties in with the time of the presumed killer’s visit to Crowley, which we know from the plotter.”

  “You followed up on the ownership of the Kelp, and met a dead-end. What about the previous owner?”

  “We tracked Mac McPherson to his daughter’s place in Gibsons Landing. He remembers the buyer’s first name as Trevor, which we know is phony, and he described him as tall, wore glasses, pallid complexion, sort of a city slicker.”

  Alarm bells went off in my brain, figuratively speaking of course. I’d had my alarm bells removed my second year in Ottawa. Louise and Tommy saw the same problem I did. Louise spoke hesitantly. “Mac McPherson is the only person who can ID the guy who bought the Kelp, who we presume is a multiple killer. Do we need to protect Mac?”

  “He should be safe because he was difficult to trace after he left Bella Bella,” Tommy said. “We had to use ‘official channels.’ Still, I wouldn’t feel right if we didn’t give him some level of protection. I suggest we get your guys in Gibsons to talk to Mac, warn him to contact us if he runs into the so-called Trevor, and also keep an eye on him.” Louise and I nodded. He went on. “These electronic plotters, was there one on Crowley’s boat?”

  This guy was good. I hadn’t thought of that. But Louise had. “I had it removed and brought it down with me. We need to give it to someone with the same level of expertise as Mr. Angastouri.”

  “Great. Now Crowley presumably contacted the killer after his conversation with Mr. Angastouri relating to the earlier disappearance of Billy Bradley. Living in that isolated place, how did he do that?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. He could have gone into Bella Bella or Shearwater and used a landline, but the log of the Jessie Isle makes no mention of it. He probably used the VHF on the Jessie Isle to access the Telus radio network. In which case they might have a record of the call with the phone number he called.”

  Tommy scribbled in his notebook. “I’ll get onto Telus about their radio phone records. What else needs to be done?”

  “Before I forget, here’s another of Crowley’s journals. It was under some stuff in my bottom drawer.” I forged ahead before anyone queried this bit of lameness. “Also, we need to talk to Crowley’s buddy, Dr. James O’Rourke. Then we need a top-notch computer geek to decipher the stuff on Crowley’s computer. The same person should have a look at the stuff in that last journal I gave you. It looks like computer printouts. I have someone in mind if you don’t have anyone. And we need to micro-examine the logbook of the Jessie Isle.”

  “I think you and I should talk to the doctor,” Louise said, nodding. “I’ll set it up. Tommy, you must have some knowledgeable computer people. Can you get that computer into the right hands?”

  “Sure, and if they don’t come up with anything, Danny can give it to his people. Anything else? No? All right, let’s get going.” Louise stood up and Tommy and I followed suit. I shook hands with Tommy and followed Louise down the hall. “They’ve given me the use of an office. This way.”

  As soon as she shut the door to her office, I reached for her. She was already turning and we pulled each other into an embrace. She looked up at me and I kissed her. She put both hands on the back of my head and tried to pull me closer to her. That would have violated an important law of physics so she contented herself with running her fingertips over the back of my skull and down my neck to my shoulder blades. We were leaning together, forehead to forehead, when the phone rang and we jumped apart.

  “Karavchuk. Yes . . . yes. Okay, maybe I should get an outside expert. All right, will do.” She hung up, looked at me, drew a deep breath, and was silent for a minute. “I’m not used to kissing people at work. It might take me a moment to recover. How about you?”

  “I don’t think I’ve recovered yet.”

  She waited another second. “That was our electronics lab. I gave them the plotter off the Jessie Isle and asked them to look at it. They don’t really feel comfortable with it. They deal mostly with cameras and audio stuff. I think we should get Mark to look at it.”

  “He’d be happy to.”

  She nodded and picked up a phone book. “Next step.” After flipping through a couple of pages she noted a number in her book and dialed it. “Good morning. This is Staff Sergeant Louise Karavchuk, RCMP. We believe that Dr. O’Rourke may have some information that could be pertinent to an investigation we’re conducting. Is there a time today when it would be convenient to see him? Yes, I understand he’s busy. Lunchtime or after office hours would be fine. Noon? Fine, we’ll be there.” She hung up and pushed her chair back. “Let’s roll, partner.”

  “One sec, I’ll phone Mark.” I dialed the Canadian Fishing Company office number and asked for Mark Angastouri. When he came on I asked him how long he would be there. He said he was in no hurry to get home to his place in White Rock, about forty-five minutes out of the city. I remembered the feeling of having no one to go home to.

  “We might stop by and see you later,” I told him. “Louise has got the plotter off the Jessie Isle. We’d like you to take a look at it.”

  I hung up and started out of the office. Louise was right behind me and she pinched my left buttock. I squealed and leapt slightly. She slapped my shoulder and by the time we were in public view we had wiped the stupid grins off our faces. On the drive over in an unmarked police sedan, Louise looked at me seriously. “Hey you, are you still holding out on me?”

  “In more ways than one, sweetie.” I gave her my most charming leer. “Actually, you have pillaged me of all material evidence. All I have left are my tawdry thoughts, which I’m glad to share with you.” She gave me a coolly tough look. “Another thing. The person I had in mind to check out Crowley’s computer is an old friend of mine who’s probably DFO’s top computer whiz, and coincidentally she’s just been appointed operations director of the West Vancouver lab.”

  “Name?”

  “Bette Connelly.”

  “Old friend?”

  “Friend, as in colleague, working buddy, shipmate sort of thing.”

  “I’m not the jealous type, Danny. I just like to know things.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’ll fill you in on my sordid past love life when you’ve got twenty or thirty seconds.”

  The drive to Dr. O’Rourke’s clinic on East Hastings was like going from the first world to the third. Chic matrons walking their dogs near the police station on Cambie gave way to disheveled street people pushing shopping carts laden with what the chic matrons had probably thrown away. Junkies nodded out on the garbage-strewn sidewalks. Drunks argued and some people screamed curses at the air. The few residents who answered to none of the above scurried down the streets looking vaguely surprised at finding themselves there.

  The clinic was a single-story building next to the Native Friendship Centre. On the other side was a parking lot. Most of the cars had been turned into residences. The sidewalk in front of the building had been swept and the windows were clean. I admired the spirit of whoever was responsible, even if they accomplished nothing more than fifty feet of condom-free sidewalk and windows you could see through.

  We entered and the woman at the reception desk stiffened when she saw Louise. This would have been a good time for plain clothes. But Louise put her at ease, explaining that she was the one who had phoned earlier. The woman nodded and asked us to take a seat. There were two patients waiting and they used a lot of energy ignoring us. I had gone through three Reader’s Digest s, laughed at the “Humour in Uniform,” sighed at the “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” and been fascinated by “I Am Joe’s Penis” by the time it was twelve-thirty and the last of the patients had tottered out the door. A man in a doctor outfit appeared, said “Hello,” and beckoned us through the door to the inner sanctum.

  The doctor’s red hair was thinning and his face was lined and tired. But for all that, he was a good-looking guy
and I could see where Melissa had got at least some of her remarkably attractive features.

  “I’m Jimmy O’Rourke and I think I know why you’re here. Melissa phoned last week and said Alistair had shot himself.”

  “Yes, sir, we’re here about Alistair Crowley,” Louise explained. “However, we’re almost certain he didn’t commit suicide. We believe it was murder.”

  While he considered that, I butted in. “I knew of Crowley when he worked for DFO. We always wondered where he’d got to, so I was surprised to find out he was hanging around in the vicinity of Bella Bella. Before I got a chance to ask him what he was doing there he was killed. By chance I ran into Melissa, and she told me you and Crowley were friends, that he had actually come to Bella Bella to see you. I thought you might have some idea as to why he ended up there.”

  “We were friends. Were. We were pre-med together at UBC and we sacrificed many a bottle of scotch on the altar of youthful dreams. But Alistair never really liked people. Fortunately, he had the wit to recognize that and wisely decided not to become a doctor of medicine.”

  “That’s how he ended up at DFO?” I asked.

  “Eventually, I guess he decided to turn his intelligence to animal biology.”

  “I understand it was a considerable intelligence,” I prompted.

  “He was extremely intelligent,” Dr. Jimmy said. “Sometimes alarmingly so. When he went to work for DFO, I thought he was wasting himself and told him so. That caused a bit of a rift, but after I got posted to Bella Bella, we still kept in touch.”

  Louise had taken out a notebook and was scribbling things, trying not to impede the flow of Dr. Jimmy’s reminiscences. Still, there was a bit of a silence before he carried on. “Then, in the early eighties, he visited me in Bella Bella.” A note of regret had crept into his voice.

  “Something was different on that visit?” I asked.

  “Alistair had always been an intense individual, but it seemed that his intensity had increased by an order of magnitude. He was supposed to be on holiday but he couldn’t relax. One night we broke out a bottle of scotch and sat up late, drinking and talking, just like the old days. He started to tell me about the transgenic experiments they were doing, often without the proper clearances. I know enough biology that I could see the dangers and I told him he was being reckless.”

  “How did he feel about that?” I asked.

  “He didn’t like it. He got angry and said I had become middle-class cautious and conservative. There could be no progress without risk, he said. And anyway, he knew exactly what he was doing. He was really wound up by then and he finished by yelling that he didn’t care if his experiments did get out of control. Any data was good data.”

  Louise had stopped writing but her head remained bowed. I knew she was concentrating intently on the doctor’s words, letting an image form of the man Alistair Crowley had been, trying to infer his role and influence in the murders of three other men.

  “And he stayed in Bella Bella after that? In the area?”

  “No. He left the next day and we never spoke again. Although to give the man credit, the Alistair Crowley who showed up in Bella Bella in 1996 sounds like a mellower man than the one who was frothing at the mouth the last time I saw him. I understand he was helping Rose Wilson with her record keeping at the health center. I’m sorry he’s dead. I think he’s a man who wandered down the wrong path and was trying to find his way back when he was killed.”

  “That’s very helpful, sir,” Louise said. “It’s the sort of background information that helps us to understand a case.”

  We all stood up and shook hands. O’Rourke looked at me. “And your interest in the case is . . . ? Protecting DFO interests?”

  “Far from it. I believe Alistair was inadvertently involved in the death of a friend of mine, and that led to his death. It’s a long story.”

  “And a sad story, no doubt. There are so many sad stories.” The nurse knocked on the door. Dr. O’Rourke’s lunch break was over. Louise and I walked back to the car in silence.

  As Louise drove down Hastings Street, I looked north across Burrard Inlet to the mountains beyond. It was cleaner out there and simpler, the forces more elemental than the half-hidden influences that disrupted the affairs of men. I gazed at Louise until my gloomy thoughts dissipated. “The doctor’s story doesn’t really advance things at all, but it reinforces my theory that bad things were going on at the West Van lab and that’s the crux of this whole case.”

  She nodded. “I’m starting to worry about the political fallout on this. I just know there’s a whole bunch of people who don’t want this story to come out and they’re going to try to keep a lid on it. My outfit is not immune to political pressure, but we’re probably less vulnerable than a civilian line agency like, say, DFO.”

  “You’ve got that right.” I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “I want you to know that my career means less than nothing to me if it interferes with getting at the truth of this.”

  “That’s good to know.” She put her hand on my knee. “We’ll settle this affair and then think about other affairs.”

  “Let’s go see Mark.”

  “One brilliant idea after another. I’m going to have to keep you around for awhile.”

  Rush hour was starting to build so it took us a while to get to the Canadian Fishing Company dock at the foot of Gore Street. The Coastal Provider was floating high and empty, like a duck on a pond. Six other boats were tied ahead of her but they were low in the water, scuppers awash, obviously still full of herring. A seventh boat was alongside the pump float, heeled way over as her starboard tank was emptied with her port tank still full. Louise removed the Jessie Isle’s plotter from the trunk and we set off down the ramp to the floats. Mark came out on to the deck to greet us, and Louise handed him the plotter before clambering over the rail.

  “Afternoon, all,” Mark hailed us. “How has your day been?”

  “Progress is being made,” I said as we followed Mark into the wheelhouse. “I’ll fill you in while you hook up this little baby.” He plugged the plotter into a twelve-volt outlet and turned it on.

  “This is a much older model,” he said. “It doesn’t have automatic track record. It might not tell us much.”

  “I just want to compare it to the trips recorded in the logbook. I’m guessing Alistair wouldn’t lie to his logbook, but you never know. Let’s start six months back.” I took out my copy of the logbook. “November 3, 2003, Alistair took the boat out to Idol Point. Does the plotter show that?”

  “You know what? This thing doesn’t even display by date. It does show a trip to Idol Point but it won’t tell you when.”

  “Okay, let’s just flip through all the trip records just to see if there’s any trips that Alistair didn’t record in the log.” I looked over Mark’s shoulder while he put the plotter through various displays. Fifteen minutes later, we had seen tracks of every trip that had been recorded on the plotter. None of them had not been recorded in the log, although there were trips in the log that weren’t recorded on the plotter, presumably because they were straightforward trips for which Crowley had not needed the navigational aid of the plotter. “So the logbook is accurate. That’s pretty much what I expected. Still, we had to check.”

  “It doesn’t appear to tell us much, but we don’t really know what’s relevant,” Louise said. “The Crown might need it to demonstrate some point during the trial.” She paused and looked at her watch. “Jeez, it’s five-thirty. Why don’t I take you two gentlemen to dinner?”

  Mark raised his hand. “Because A, we’re not gentlemen, and B, I’m buying. I’m a rich herring fisherman and I want to celebrate. What shall it be? Chinese, Japanese, Thai, French, Italian, German?”

  We both looked at Louise. “You know what? Since I moved to the coast, I’ve become a sushi addict. But I need to change my clothes. Maybe I can meet you guys at the restaurant.”

  Mark suggested Kanata’s, and I agreed. �
�It’s on the same street as your hotel, two blocks west. We might as well all go in your car and you can leave it in the hotel parking lot.”

  Mark unplugged the plotter and handed it to Louise. He locked the boat after us and we walked up the dock. Back at the Hotel Georgia, I offered to come up and help Louise change, but she demurred. As Mark and I ambled toward the restaurant, he observed that Louise and I “seemed sort of close.”

  “Yeah, there’s definitely an attraction between us, and maybe more than that. But we’re taking it slow and careful.”

  “Well, I hope it works out, Danny. You deserve somebody to be close to.” I showed my appreciation for Mark’s empathy and support with an affirming silence.

  It was Wednesday night so Kanata’s wasn’t completely full. The waitress showed us to a table, and I explained that we were waiting for a third but that alcohol would reduce our separation anxiety. I ordered the usual vodka and grapefruit juice and Mark had a pint of draft Granville Island Ale. I updated Mark on the day’s work while he sipped his beer.

  “The Telus records could provide a lead,” Mark said, “but I’m cynical enough to doubt it. However, I’ve realized that we did get one break. If Alistair hadn’t lent me his journals, the murderer would have got them and we’d have nothing. We have to decipher that first journal, the undated one, as well as all that stuff on his computer. This Bette Connelly, can we trust her?”

  The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. “Absolutely. She had the dubious judgement to turn me down when I offered myself to her, but in spite of that she’s an intelligent woman.”

  “She’s climbed the ladder pretty fast. Does she owe anyone anything?”

  “You’re cynical beyond your years. It is possible to advance within DFO just by being smart. It’s a rare occurrence, but it happens.”

  Mark contemplated this and I gazed idly around the room. I glanced over at the reception area and saw our waitress gesture in our direction, and then my attention was seized by a vision of feminine grace that emptied my mind of all else. It was the first time I’d seen Louise in a dress. Her tanned arms were bare and glowed in the subdued lighting. The dress was, I guessed, patterned silk, and I thought she looked almost as good in it as she would in nothing.