Corkscrew (16 page)

They all moved away, and I stood there angrily. "What about the bikers?" I asked.

Werner turned back. "We got enough on our plates without getting mixed up with a hairy bunch of troublemakers. Why'nt you go on home? We'll drop by later when we're done at the funeral parlor."

"Okay, if that's what you want. But can you round up somebody to take care of the widow? A friend of mine is with her right now."

"We'll try," Kennedy said. And that was that.

I stood watching them, knowing how they felt. To them this wasn't the murder of a little boy. This was another chunk of duty added to a day that had gone on too long already. They were taking it the way I would have done, I reasoned with myself. What was past was past. They would enter the investigation at their point of contact, at the death of Spenser senior. If it led them back to the boy's death, they would pick up the threads of the investigation there; otherwise, they were as objective about this case as they would have been about any other. They would do the job their way. Examine the dead, question the living. That was the pattern.

After a moment I walked over to the cottage, Sam at my heels like a patient shadow. We went in. Werner was in the kitchen talking to Mrs. Wilson. I could see the weariness in his stoop-shouldered stance, but his tone was as bright as ever. I motioned to Fred with my head, and she came over.

"Has anybody lined up a replacement for you here?"

"Nobody's said a word so far, but somebody's got to stay here, and the neighbor doesn't want to," she whispered.

"Talk to Werner when he's through with Mrs. Wilson. I have a call to make, and then I'll be back, maybe half an hour. That okay with you?"

"Sure," she said, with no trace of annoyance. Maybe actors are more patient than the rest of us. They can wait two hours to deliver their line, then melt back behind the scenery so the show can go on. Maybe. I knew Fred pretty well from the months we'd spent together. We had become close then, had been close since, and now this spontaneous arrival of hers made me hope she wanted it to happen again.

I winked at her, and she winked back and turned her face up to me. I kissed her and left, Sam half a step behind me.

Kowalchuk was doing good work at the roadside. Most of the crowd had dispersed, heading up or down the road in knots, gossiping. The cars were filling up as well, and I had to wait for a chance to back up into a driveway and turn around before heading back to town.

I stopped outside the beer parlor. It's the Murphy's Arms Hotel, different from the real hotel, the Lakeside Tavern. It's the local watering hole, with a cocktail bar, frequented by the wealthier locals, and a beverage room, a beer hall, where most of the people in town do any serious drinking they have in mind.

The bikes were still parked outside. I left my car behind them and went in through the delivery door. It's big, covered with sheet iron to discourage shopbreaking. There hasn't been much crime since I took over here, but nobody was going to change a door for that reason.

I came in past the store area, with its mesh fence surrounding dozens of cases of beer, waiting to be whisked into the big cooler behind the bar, and walked down the short corridor.

Nick, the barkeep, was filling glasses, fitting them under the never-ending beer tap without pausing to turn it off. He looked at me and grinned and made to offer me a glass, but I shook my head, and he went on loading the aluminum tray in front of him.

I looked over his shoulder. The bar was a lot emptier than it is most summer Saturday nights. The music was as loud as ever, mindless rock from the local station interspersed with commercials for used cars and swell dinners at some hotel in Parry Sound. In one corner of the room the bikers were sitting at three tables they had pulled together and filled with glasses. I counted the men quickly. There were eleven, and no empty seats.

"Any problem with the bikers?" I asked Nick.

"Nah." He shook his head and went on filling glasses. "They're sure putting the beer away, but they ain't said a word outa line."

"Have they been here long?"

The waiter answered for me as he scooped up his tray and turned to leave. "About eight beers each, Chief. You figurin' to bust 'em for impaired driving?"

"Me and whose army?" I asked, and we all three smiled. If either one of them had heard I was suspended, they didn't comment. I'd cleaned up a few fights here that could have cost them money, or teeth. They liked me.

"Did they all come at the same time?" I asked Nick as he paused for a drag on the cigarette he had resting on the edge of the counter.

"That four at this end came in last," he said, nodding at the nearest table. "Oh, yeah, an' that guy with the red hair, he came in last of all, maybe half an hour ago."

I waited a minute longer, making sure I would be able to recognize the redheaded man later, wondering if it had been his motorcycle that had left the Spenser place earlier. When I'd made a mental picture of his appearance, including his bone structure in case he decided to shave off his beard, I nodded to Nick and left.

I stood outside for a few seconds, listening to the night sounds. Noisy music drifted out of the screened window of the bar, but under it I could hear the crickets and the repetitions of a whippoorwill and under that again the growly croaking of the bullfrogs in the reeds along the water's edge. A typical peaceful night except for the two unexplained deaths I had to solve. I corrected that one—the two deaths that had happened. Courtesy of that friend of Jas, I was off the job. Nothing to solve except a way of getting Freda back to my place. Only I couldn't content myself with doing nothing.

I got into the car and drove north, toward my house, then past it, up the side of the water to a spot about two hundred yards below the town dump. I parked on the side of the road and took out my flashlight from the glove compartment, then called Sam out with a hiss. After that I shut the door quietly and walked on up toward the dump.

Sam shadowed me, and I kept to the road for most of the way, then moved off into the sparse bush that crowds the roadside. I had a plan, and I wanted to put it into action, silently if possible.

It took me five careful minutes to make the last hundred yards to the back of the dump; then I worked around it to the back of the field where the bikers were camping. I pointed my finger at Sam, and he sank into a sit, still as a statue in the faint moonlight.

I crouched and looked at the tents in the field. There were three of them, two big ones, the kind Boy Scouts set up as mess tents, and one small one. I guessed they had established a dormitory in one of the big ones, perhaps their mess arrangements in the second. The third was a private tent for the leader of the pack. I thought back over the faces I had seen in the beverage room. No, he hadn't been there. He was probably back here with the woman from the van he had been driving when he came into town. I thought about it for a moment, then sank to my belly and began the crawl to the tents, about forty yards away.

It took me a couple of minutes, moving more and more carefully as I got closer to the tents and to the fire that still glowed, burned down now from its earlier blaze. Mosquitoes swarmed on my face and bare hands, and I let them bite, not wanting to risk the noise that moving them would make. Blinking kept them out of my eyes, and I moved my face muscles constantly, trying to shed them, the way a horse might flick its skin.

I was five yards from the nearest tent when I heard the voice and froze. The words didn't register as quickly as the tone. It was playful. "Hey, c'm'ere." The kind of voice a relaxed man might use to his girlfriend on an intimate evening.

There was an answer, high and light, pitched too soft for me to understand. Then the original voice growled again, gurgling over its playful laughter. "Aw, c'mon."

I inched closer, against the side of one of the big tents. And this time I heard the second voice clearly. It was coming from in front of the same tent, close to the fire. "You're terrible, you know that?" it said brightly, and my hair prickled on my neck. It wasn't the voice of a woman. It was a young man's voice.

The other man was still amused, but the words were sterner. "Now don' go playin' hard'a'get or I'm gonna have to wail the tar outa ya."

"Not again," the boy's voice said mockingly, and then the man laughed, and I saw a shadow grow on the tent wall in front of me as the boy by the fire stood up and moved away to my right, toward the small tent. I could make out his blond hair.

I waited until I heard the sound of canvas brushing over his back. He had gone into the small tent. Good. He would be there for a few minutes, most likely. I had a chance to look around.

I crawled around to the front of the tent I had reached and swore silently. It was the mess tent. The other lay to my left, away from the gang leader, who was laughing playfully now. I rose into a crouch and darted over to the other tent. It was sealed in front to keep the mosquitoes out, and I worked quickly to unfasten the net and slip inside.

Here it was almost totally black. The dim moon didn't penetrate the canvas, and except for some flickerings at the open front, the firelight didn't reach, either. I took my flashlight from the pocket of my windbreaker and covered the glass with my left hand, letting only a splinter of light come out between my slightly parted fingers.

In its glow I could see that groundsheets had been laid out all around the tent. There was no bedding, but that didn't surprise me. Bikers, along with Shriners and every other male group at a convention, pride themselves on staying awake for the whole session. They would drink until they dropped. But I wondered about the groundsheets. If they weren't going to sleep, why would they need groundsheets? There were no women here, no apparent reason for comfort.

There were saddlebags, however, and I went to each one in turn, checking the contents, looking for a boot with a heel that matched the mark I had seen in the Corbetts' cottage. My heart was racing as I worked. The gang could swing into the field at any moment. If they did, I was in trouble.

I didn't find any boots, just clothes and oddments, until I came to the last bag. This one didn't have boots, either, but it had a TV camera, a Panasonic with another machine with switches and dials. It held the tape, I guessed. I squatted, frowning. Why would they have it with them? To take pictures of their weekend to screen at the clubhouse on the long winter evenings? That was doubtful. Puzzled, I dug deeper and came up with a videotape cassette, VHS format.

Not quite sure why, I slipped the tape into the pocket of my windbreaker and repacked the bag.

I switched off the light and went to the mouth of the tent. It was still quiet outside, but I wasn't sure the man and boy in the other tent hadn't come back outside. I slithered out, keeping low to the deck. Nobody shouted. Nothing moved that I could hear. I was still safe. I began fastening the flap of the tent just as the sound of motorcycles hit me. The gang was coming back.

I fastened the last of the ties and ducked around the back of the tent, not bothering to check around me. It was too late for much stealth. Keeping on tiptoe, I ran for the cover of the bush as the headlights of the approaching bikes pulled around the last corner south of the camp. I rolled the last three yards into the undergrowth and lay for a moment, heart pounding, watching the play of the lights over the tents behind me. Then, one by one, the motors died, and voices took over, noisy half-drunk voices. And then I heard the other voices mixed in, quieter but shrill. Women. They had women with them. Maybe that was what they had been waiting for at the beer parlor. Their van had gone somewhere to pick up their womenfolk. Now they were ready to party. It was time to get away.

I sat up and hissed to Sam. He came to me, staying perfectly silent, looking at me, then back to the tents, wondering what work I had for him next. I rubbed his neck softly, then stood up and made my way back around the dump and down to the road.

My car was still in place, with all four tires inflated. The gang hadn't been feeling playful. They hadn't slashed or scratched it. I got back into it with Sam beside me and started up as quietly as I could, then turned and headed back toward my own place. But as I drove I realized I would have to take one more step in my illegal procedure. To complete the circle of investigation I had to look at the cassette I'd captured. It might bring me a step closer to the solution to the boy's murder.

By now it was after ten o'clock, early by city standards but past the bedtime of most cottagers and even of most of our locals in the Harbour. That left me wondering who might still be up and would also have a video player to lend me.

The answer was Jack Wales. Ever since his wife ran off with some salesman, Jack has lived for his TV. He was the first person around to get a dish aerial installed, and I guessed he also had a VCR of some kind.

I drove down the side road, through town, and out to the highway. The motel had its "Vacancy" light still shining in the front office, although most of the units already had their lights out.

I rang the bell and waited, and after a minute Jack appeared, surprised to see me. "Hi, Chief. What brings you up here so late?"

"I've got a favor to ask, Jack. I've got a videotape to view. It's evidence."

"Oh, sure, come on in." He ushered me through the office to his living quarters behind. They were like the rooms of a million other single men, including me. Tidy, because tidy is easier than dirty in the long run, and sparely furnished. His TV was playing some rock video. He apologized for it. "I was just watching a movie on the machine. Here, I'll take the tape out for you."

I watched him as he fiddled with his machine, happy as only the real gadget lover ever gets. He laid his tape on top of the TV set and held out his hand. I gave him the biker's tape, and he put it in. Then I told him, "This may be rough, Jack. Maybe you shouldn't see it."

"Rough?" He laughed shortly. "You should see some of the films these days."

"Yeah, but this is evidence. Maybe for your own sake you should step outside for a moment while I take a quick look."