City of Crime

by Warren Court

  The headquarters building is chaos. There are TV trucks from Hamilton, Brantford and Toronto setting up, as well as a couple from the national news network, the CBC.

  It’s a madhouse in the headquarters building. Hundreds of people are swirling around, coming in and out of a briefing room that’s about twice the size of Henderson’s conference room. I pull a hat out of my trunk, slap it on my head, and mix in with the crowd going in. It’s packed in there; I feel like Jack Ruby that Friday night in Dallas at Oswald’s press conference. I keep to the back, making sure my hat is pulled down low. I must look foolish in a suit with a ball cap and overcoat on. So what?

  Several police officers take a small raised dais. One of them takes charge and steps to a podium with microphones. He looks important. He starts off the press conference by introducing himself and the members on the dais. The reporters write their names down. The man speaking is the deputy chief of police for Brantford; behind him are two detectives.

  He starts explaining how they found a vehicle that they have confirmed belongs to the missing man, Christopher Waltz, but that Waltz’s body has not been found. They have no reason to suspect foul play at this time. The car is being examined by forensics. He gives the location in Milton. One of the men on the platform is from the Milton police, and he and his department are thanked by the deputy chief.

  Then the questions start, a whole flurry of them at once. These things are rarely televised in their entirety; the cameramen just want to get a sound bite and move on. The process takes a long time. The tiny room, packed to overflowing, starts to get hot really quickly.

  I recognize the man in front of me. He is the crime reporter from the Hamilton Spectator, the one I called and left a message for a couple of days ago. The one who so far has not followed up on the lead I gave him.

  There is a break in the questions and I lean up to the reporter. “What about his connection to Lent?” I ask him.

  “What?” the man says. He turns and gives me a funny look, then turns back to the front of the room.

  “Waltz worked for Midi,” I tell him. “The Lent woman in Burlington, the one they found strangled, was his boss.”

  The reporter furrows his brow, then puts up his hand and waits patiently. Reporters who are shouting questions out are being ignored, and eventually the deputy chief points at my new friend.

  “Chief, what about the connection between Christopher Waltz and the Lent woman who was found murdered in Burlington? They worked together.”

  The chief looks puzzled. “We are not sure if those two are connected, but we have been working with the Halton Regional Police on that matter.”

  “They found his shirt in her closet. They were having an affair,” I whisper. The reporter keeps going; he has the floor.

  “Isn’t it true that articles of clothing belonging to Christopher Waltz were found in the deceased’s home? Isn’t that indicative of some sort of relationship outside of the workplace?”

  The chief becomes visibly irritated. “I cannot comment on that investigation in Burlington. This press conference is to update you on the developments in the Waltz case. And may I remind you that Mr. Waltz is a member of this community, one who has a wife and young child at home, anxious for his safe return. Thank you. That concludes this press conference.”

  I slip through the crowd towards the exit as the reporters now press on, openly shouting questions about the connection between Waltz and Lent. I feel elated as I walk out towards my car. The fear I felt about walking into the police station has evaporated.

  I crank rock music on the drive back to Burlington and sing along. I have plenty of time until my appointment at four, the second one that Kevin gave me. Then I remember the chit that Laura handed me just before I left the office. I’m stopped at a light, and I retrieve it and call the number.

  “Hi, this is Stan Rogers, Henderson Moving.”

  “Oh yes, Stan,” says a woman’s voice. “I asked them to have you call me. I need you to come by right away.”

  “I am a little busy today, Miss…”

  “Olendorf. Jennifer Olendorf.”

  “Miss Olendorf, I have an appointment at four and I was going to be done for the day. Perhaps tomorrow?”

  “I don’t want to wait. I know how busy you guys are, but I want to book my truck. You moved my friend Denise last year. She says you’re the company to go with.”

  A booked move, a solid. Those are the best. “Okay, Miss Olendorf. What is your address?”

  She gives it to me and I explain I’m just coming back into Burlington; I can be there in twenty minutes. At the next red light, I phone the second card that Kevin gave me and bump it to Wednesday. It sounds like a three-quoter anyway.

  I arrive at Jennifer Olendorf’s house. It’s modest, nothing spectacular. There’s a BMW seven-series parked in the driveway. There’s no moving sign on the lawn; that’s odd. Maybe it got sold a while ago, the sign taken down, and now she realizes she can’t get her uncles and nephews to help her move her stuff anymore.

  A young woman answers the door. She is very confident and rather attractive, with blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. I sit down with her and start to go through my pitch. I’m done with Henderson, done with this job; I hate every word that comes out of my mouth. If she just wants to go ahead and book us, why bother with this crap? “Because it’s important,” Rick said one time when I asked him that very question.

  But the woman is nice and the house is nicely kept, outfitted with a mixture of antiques and modern stuff. I close my brochures and we start our walk-through. There’s a newspaper on the kitchen table spread out to an article on the Lent murder, with a photo of Gillian front and centre. I glance at it. Everywhere I go in the kitchen, Gillian Lent’s eyes follow me. I can’t stop looking at it.

  Jennifer Olendorf follows my gaze, goes over to the table and taps the photo. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” she says. “I knew her. She was getting a mover, too. You didn’t happen to go see her too, did you?”

  I cough. “Actually, yes, I did,” I say. I lace my voice with a tone that would suggest I don’t want to talk about it. Mover–client privilege or something like that.

  “Really? How long before they found her?”

  “Just a couple of days. It was a sad affair.” I finish checking things off in the kitchen in a flurry and head into another room. Olendorf follows me.

  “I bet the police wanted to talk to you,” she says. I ignore her.

  “Did they?” she asks again.

  “Did they what?”

  “Question you?”

  “It’s kind of a private matter.”

  “Oh, come on. You can tell me. Did they take you down to question you? I know someone who was murdered – my girlfriend back in high school. The police had me down there for hours. Good cop, bad cop – they really do that?”

  “I don’t know. It was just one guy. He was neither good nor bad.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That I met with the woman, booked her move and that was it.” I leave the room and feel her following me. She comes in close behind me.

  “You’re too good-looking to be a moving consultant. You ever thought of doing any acting?”

  I can smell her perfume, but somehow it doesn’t suit her. Something is wrong with this. I go upstairs and she is right there behind me the whole way up. I become self-conscious of her being so close to my ass as we climb the stairs.

  We go into one of the bedrooms and it’s decked out with scarves hanging from the four-poster bed. The room has mood lighting, and I see the cover of a porn mag sticking out from under one pillow.

  “Oops, pardon me,” she says, and moves to the pillow and pushed the mag under. Maybe it’s my imagination that it was porno; I only saw the top of the woman’s head. But why would she be embarrassed if it was Vogue? Do women peruse porno?

  She sits on the bed and looks up at me with eyes all aglow, big, warm brown eyes, but there’s something behind
them I don’t like. What is going on here? She clearly wants it. My god, I think, I have another Gillian Lent on my hands here. Did she talk to Gillian just before she died and hear about the young mover from Henderson Moving she banged? Would this woman get off on banging the last one to bang her friend? This is sick. My dick is like a limp windsock at an airport.

  She falls back on the bed and looks up at me.

  Sorry, no sale. I leave the room and rush through the next two, then hurry downstairs.

  She comes down with a simpering look on her face and we take a seat at the kitchen table. The one with the Lent article on it. I ignore it. She picks it up and starts reading again as I calculate the cost of the move. Just eyeball it, I tell myself. I put down twelve hours at one hundred and forty-two an hour and calculate it in my head. I know what twelve hours is without doing the math.

  I spin the estimate around to her and start to go through it. She pulls the paper down from her face and glances at it.

  “Not sure,” she says. “I’ll have to get back to you. Do you have a business card?” So much for this being a locked-in move. I put one of my cards on the table. She studies it. “This your cell number?”

  “Yes,” I say reluctantly. Christ, she is going to call me. I can feel it. She stands in the doorway as I head to my car. I hear, “Mr. Rogers.”

  I spin around. Detective Marco is standing there.

  TWENTY FIVE

  I see Marco has backup. Another detective, younger, almost my age, is with him but hanging back.

  “It’s a lovely day in the neighbourhood, isn’t it?” he says, and his partner laughs.

  “We’d like you to come down to police headquarters. We have some more questions.”

  “Couldn’t we do it at another time?” I say.

  “Nope. Has to be now. Please.” He motions to his car.

  “What about my car?”

  “Wally here will drive yours to the station, if that’s okay with you.”

  I flip Wally my keys, then I realize I’ve just given my car over to the police. Damn stupid thing to do.

  I expect to get in the rear seat, like a criminal, but Marco opens the front passenger door for me and I slide in. The car smells of vinyl and coffee. It is clean, spotless. There’s a police radio mounted to the dash but nothing else; no shotgun in a rack, no computer terminal like the ones I’ve seen in other cop cars. I feel like I’m riding with Kojak.

  Marco drives us over to Halton Police Headquarters. I easily restrain myself from speaking first. My mind isn’t racing. Surprisingly, an immense calm has come over me.

  About halfway to our destination Marco speaks. “Did you get the move?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Nice lady?”

  “Uh huh.” I won’t look at him, but out of my peripheral vision I see Marco grinning.

  We arrive and Marco leads me in. I pause at the door as he opens it for me and in its reflection, I see Wally pulling into the lot in my car. He puts it in the visitor area but doesn’t get out. I have no choice but to follow Marco in. Sure, I can make a big stink now, demand that Wally get out of my car, insist that I did not give consent for him to search it, but maybe I did by flipping him the keys. Who knows? Something a lawyer might be successful at arguing in court.

  But I say no, pick your battles. I’m confident there is nothing in my car. A warrant would be needed to collect any hair or blood samples that might be there. Then I shake my head. Don’t fool yourself, I think. I may have brought part of Waltz or Lent into my car inadvertently. It could be lying there, waiting for the white-suited forensic hounds to pick it up.

  Anyway, I follow Marco through the lift-up wooden barrier to go behind the front desk. The duty sergeant, same one as before, stops what he’s doing and looks over a pair of reading glasses at me as I pass.

  Marco puts me in the same interrogation room I was in before. I have no illusions now; this is what the room is used for. Breaking down of alibis and motives and a suspect’s will to resist. I’ve watched the video of Russell Williams, the Air Force colonel who killed two women. How innocently he went into the room with the seasoned detective, and how the detective started grilling away, slowly grinding down the man’s alibi and getting to the heart of the matter. The mistakes Williams made, including wearing the same boots he wore when he committed his crimes to the friendly chat with the detective. And how, when confronted with the evidence, the matching bootprints from the scene of the crime, he just slumped forward and studied them, and picked them up and put them down, picked them up and put them down, and how finally he confessed and, in effect, ended his own life as he knew it and put himself away for life and a half.

  Won’t be me, I think. I’ll lawyer up – is that the expression that suspects use? Everything I was wearing is in a bin somewhere, or maybe already picked over by the Salvation Army. A fear flashes through my mind: what if they were already on to me and seized the bin? Surely something of Waltz is on those clothes, even though I soaked them good. I should have driven them out to the country and burned them.

  Marco closes the door hard, with finality, and I take the same seat I was in before. He has more files already in there and he sits across from me. I try and look relaxed but not disrespectful; I’m holding my ammo back. Keeping my powder dry.

  “You said before that you went to Lent’s house only the one time. That you booked the move shortly thereafter.”

  “Yes.”

  “What time was that again?”

  “I can’t remember exactly, but I’d say before five. Mike usually closes up after that.”

  “Mike the dispatcher?”

  “Correct.”

  “He claims you entered the Lent move in his book the next day. I spoke with him. He has a keen memory of such things.”

  “Really?” I say, and look perplexed. “I’m sure I booked it that day. It was an easy move. She wanted to go with Henderson. Said she knew of our firm and just wanted it locked away. I went straight back to the office.”

  “So you’re calling Mike a liar?”

  “No, he’s just mistaken.”

  “Your itinerary – do you have it?”

  “It’s in my car.” I get up to go get it. Marco raises his hand.

  “I’ll have Wally retrieve it.”

  “Don’t you need a warrant for that?” I say and laugh, but it’s high-pitched and nervous. I’m losing control of my nerves this soon? He’s only asked me a half-dozen questions.

  “He’s just bringing in your briefcase. He won’t open it. Is there something you don’t want us to see? If so, then yes, we’ll wait here while we get a warrant.”

  “No, I was just kidding.”

  “Let’s not kid around about this, okay, Mr. Rogers? It’s a serious matter. I’ll be honest with you; I think you know more about the Lent killing than you’re letting on.”

  “I thought you were investigating Christopher Waltz, the guy she worked with.”

  “We’re looking at all suspects.”

  “And I’m one?”

  Marco nods slowly. He flips over the file folder. “Do you own a bicycle?”

  “No.”

  “Your neighbours say they saw you leaving your apartment last week with your bicycle over your shoulder, in the morning.”

  “Nope. Wasn’t me.”

  “They’re mistaken, just like Mike is mistaken?”

  “I guess so. I called in sick that day. Where would I be going on a bike?”

  Marco shrugs. There’s a knock at the door.

  “Come,” Marco says, and in walks Miss Olendorf. She’s changed her clothes. She’s now wearing a purple top and jeans, and she has a gun on her hip and a badge clipped next to it. She smiles at me and makes a clicking sound with her mouth and hands Marco something. It’s my day planner.

  “Thanks, Stacey,” he says, and looks at me. I keep my cool, but inside my blood is boiling. I knew there was something up about that sit. They were trying to
entrap me, get me to let something slip, provoke me into a sexual anger – what? Stacey leaves.

  “This your day planner?” I nod. “Mind if I flip through it?”

  “Not at all.”

  Marco doesn’t say anything. He opens it and flips it to the dates around the Lent visit. He studies it and then looks at other entries and back again at me.

  “You didn’t record here that you made the move,” he says. Damn, I knew he’d see that, but I’m glad I didn’t add anything.

  “No, I guess I was rushing to get back to the office to book it before Mike closed up. I do that sometimes.”

  He flips back through it, page after page. I realize he can, at a glance, see all the moves I booked and the ones I didn’t get. The latter being in the majority. He could, at some point, cross-reference this with Mike’s book, see how many times I booked a move but didn’t put follow-up notes in my day planner. I was pretty diligent about that. But is that proof I murdered her? It might be the first chink in my armour. Mike’s keen memory is going to be a problem too.

  “Can I use the bathroom, please?”

  “We’re talking here.”

  “I really have to go.”

  “It’s down the hall on the right. Don’t be too long.”

  I get up and leave the room. I’m not under arrest. What are they going to do – let me piss myself? I can’t make a run for it.

  I don’t t have to piss, but I find the washroom and go to the urinal anyway. There’s a uniform cop in there also pissing, and he gives me a once-over, realizes I’m not a cop and ignores me. When he leaves, I zip up and head into one of the stalls. I have my phone on me. If I had been arrested, I wouldn’t have this. I might still be charged, though, and then I’ll lose it. Better to play this card now.

  I send Rick the video of himself scrolling through kid porn. Then I email it to myself, a Yahoo account I barely use, the one I input whenever I want to avoid spam going to my main email. Then I delete the video from my phone. I know it is still probably on my phone and there’s traces of it elsewhere, but at least at a quick glance it is not there.