Flashback (10 page)

The bedroom window from which it hung was open wide. All the others were open part way with a fly screen in the open section. That meant that somebody had come down the rope. I guess I should have gone around to the front desk and asked whose room it was but I didn't take the time. Calling on old boot-camp skills, I grabbed the rope and walked myself up the wall to the room above. At window-sill level I paused, raising my head cautiously to look inside. Nothing seemed out of place but the bed had not been slept in. I grabbed the window-sill and heaved myself inside.
 

From the window I could see that the closet door was open and there was a man's suit was lying on the floor next to it, the pockets inside out. I took out my gun and advanced towards the door of the bathroom which was ajar.
 

The door opened at a push of my toe and I saw, in the mirror facing me that there was nobody hiding behind it. Still with the gun in my hand I moved into the bathroom, looking down around the door to check nobody was crouched there. Nobody was. But John Waites was lying face down in the empty tub, still dressed in the clothes he had worn to the funeral parlour. And spreading out beneath him was the rusting stain of day-old blood.
 

I holstered my gun and felt his throat automatically for a pulse. There was none and the body was already stiff.

The security chain was in place on the door so I unhooked it, then, carefully not touching anything else, I went back to the window and slipped back down the rope. A couple of kids were walking by towards the beach and one of them said, 'Hey. Neat-oh. I'm gonna do that.'
 

He headed towards me but I told him, 'Stay down, please. That's dangerous.' And as a safeguard I told Sam 'Keep' and left him there while I ran back to the deck and up into the lodge.
 

Holland had just arrived. He was talking to Mrs James and he looked up in surprise. 'Hell, Reid. I figured you'd still be in bed, you were up all night.'
 

'Waites is dead,' I said.

Mrs James gasped but Holland made to go out the way I had entered. 'No, he's up in his room. Somebody got out down the fire-escape rope. I climbed up to check and he's dead.'
 

'The key, please.' Holland held out his hand to Mrs James, who pulled a key from the pocket of her skirt.

'This is the master. What are you going to do?'

'We're going to check. Then I'll need to talk to your staff. Don't let any of them go anywhere before I've done that, please.' Holland was polite even in his urgency. 'Which room is it?'
 

'Two-oh-six. Come on.' I led the way and we ran upstairs and Holland unlocked the door.

'Did you take the chain off?'

'Yes. Whoever it was went down the rope.'

We went into the bathroom and looked at the body. Holland didn't even touch it. 'The blood's good and dry. I'd say he was killed last night sometime.'
 

'Looks right to me,' I said. 'How'd you want to handle this? There's a doctor in town but he's not a forensics expert. You want to call your own people?'
 

'This is your turf.' He was grinning. 'Like, fair's fair, huh? I wanted to talk to this guy but Murphy's Harbour isn't my jurisdiction.'
 

'Fair trade. You took the Jeffries woman off my hands yesterday. I'll take care of this one. But I could use some help.'

'OK. Compromise.' He straightened up and looked at me. 'I'll help you for a while, call our crime scene guy in, then you take over.'
 

I guess it was ironic, two cops more or less tossing a coin to see who investigated a homicide, but places like Murphy's Harbour fall between the cracks of the police system. I'm fine with most things but a homicide investigation takes a team and there was just Sam and me. If we were going to find whoever had killed Waites, I'd need support.
 

We started by calling for help, Holland phoned his office to send the crime-scene team. They're a small detatchment and their team consisted of one man, a jack of all trades. He would take the photographs, then dust for prints and, if necessary, vacuum the room for samples of lint that might have come from the murderer's clothing, although that would be hard to prove in court. Hotel rooms have so many people through them that a good lawyer can usually sway a jury on peripheral evidence like that.
 

To fill in the time until he arrived, we interviewed the staff. Nobody had seen or heard anything unusual but we established that Waites had ordered room service, an unusual request in such a small establishment at Pickerel Point Lodge. That had been at nine-thirty. He had ordered a bottle of Scotch, asking for Glenfiddich, but had settled for their bar brand, J. & B. The dining-room waitress who had taken the bottle and ice up was off duty until noon but Mrs James called her house. She was out but would come in to work as soon as she returned.
 

The Scotch order made me think, on two counts. To start with, Glenfiddich was Hanson's drink. Second, there had been no bottle in sight in the room. Perhaps the murderer had taken it with him. That suggested Kershaw as the murderer. He was on the run, cautious about going into public places like a liquor store, even if he had money. He would have taken the whisky without thinking.
 

After we'd talked to the staff we canvassed the other guests. The guy who had the room on one side of Waites was out fishing but the man the other side had heard nothing. He had gone up to his room and hit the sack early, around ten. Maybe by that time Waites was already dead.
 

And that was as far as we could go on a first sweep. Mrs James said she would have the other man call me when he came in from fishing, and that was it.
 

We went back up to the room and looked around, without touching anything, while we waited for the crime-scene expert. Two glasses had been used but the bottle of Scotch was gone. 'Should be some prints on these glasses anyway,' Holland said with satisfaction. 'Might be able to name the guy right off.'
 

'It could be this Kershaw who skipped on his day pass in Toronto,' I said. 'I found out this morning that Waites was his lawyer when he was sent up.'
 

'Getting even for the lousy defence?' Holland laughed.

'It's not that simple. If he'd been looking for Waites he would have stayed in Toronto, not come here. And if someone in Toronto had told him where Waites had gone, how did he know which room? Yet nobody downstairs saw anybody strange in here last night.'
 

Holland frowned, creasing his solid, single eyebrow. He looked like a puzzled chimpanzee. 'I thought his wife might've gone back home. If she had, she could have told the killer, but I've got the Toronto police checking his address. She didn't come back overnight, I know that.'
 

We stood there, looking at one another blankly, trying to see if there was some connection we'd missed. My own early theory had died with Waites. I had seen a possibility that he had set up his wife to be murdered. The man had seemed angry enough for it. And then the man who did the job had gotten the wrong woman. The idea made sense right up until somebody knifed Waites. But there was a second possibility.
 

'How about this? Waites set somebody up to kill his wife. My guess is it's this Kershaw. As a lawyer, Waites could have known in advance when Kershaw would be getting a day pass. He arranged to set him up with a car parked somewhere close to the ballpark in Toronto. So Kershaw, or whoever it was, comes up here and kills the wrong woman. Then the guy turns up here to collect whatever Waites had promised to pay him. Waites gets angry and tells him he's killed the wrong woman and he's not going to pay. So the guy knifes him.'
 

Holland unfurled his eyebrow and nodded. 'Some kind of sense in that. We'll know for sure when Dave Stinson gets down here and fingerprints those glasses.'
 

'Guy like Kershaw would know enough to wipe the glass,' I said and Holland shrugged. 'For now, I like your idea. I'm going to get it on the air, see if we can round the sonofabitch up. He oughta be inside anyway.'
 

'OK. I'll wait here while you go use the phone.' He left and I stood at the door, looking over the room. There was a dent on the neatly made bed, as if someone had sat there with his back to the headboard, and the only chair in the room was facing it. Aside from that the only thing out of place was the suit on the floor with the pockets inside out. That didn't make sense to me. A professional criminal, even a bank robber, wouldn't have turned the pockets inside out. You do that only if somebody is wearing the pants. With a suit on a hanger you could check the pockets by scrunching up the fabric in one hand.
 

I checked the closet, pushing the door open wider with the back of my fingernails to avoid putting extra prints on it. It was empty except for a pair of golf shoes with trees in them. Waites had obviously been a perfectionist.
 

The missing clothes made me wonder more about the suit. If the killer had taken everything else, why had he left this? Maybe he'd been rushed and had grabbed the bag and left, or maybe it was a red-herring, that he wanted to show us that he'd gone through the pockets. Or maybe the suit was intended to lead us off track some way.
 

I was standing there when Holland appeared at the doorway, he was out of breath. 'Listen, they told me on the radio. You've got a problem in town. Somebody called in. There's a bunch of kids swarming the grocery.'
 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 6

 

 

He offered to come with me but that would have meant a delay while he sealed the room. I didn't need him anyway, not with Sam. I ran down and out the front door, whistling for Sam who bounded around the corner of the building and leapt into the front seat.
 

I spun away towards the lock, knowing I'd be too late but that somebody would probably have got the number of the car they'd left in. After yesterday's incident the kids around Main Street would have their eyes wide open.
 

I was right. The kids had all gathered at the door of the store. I wheeled up alongside. 'Did anybody get the number of their car?'
 

Two of them had taken it, and a description. This one was different, a newer car, a Chrysler Magic Wagon. Mommy's car for one of the little darlings, I guessed. 'Which way did they go?'
 

They had headed out straight along the side road to the south entrance to the highway. It figured from that they would be heading south, back to the anonymity of their own communities. 'Phone the OPP in Parry Sound and give them the car number. OK?'
 

'Right.' One of the girls dug into her shoulder-bag for a quarter and I spurted away down the highway.

The Magic Wagon was gone. I pushed the police car to the limit but there was no sign of them. By the time I was ten miles south I knew they had pulled off down one of the little side roads that led to enclaves of cottages on the beach. They would park there and giggle, maybe smoke up a while, then come out later in the day when the heat was off and they could get home without being stopped. By that time the local police would have called on the owner of the car and been told what a good boy little Johnny was and that he couldn't possibly have been mixed up in a swarming. We would be too late to do anything about it. The kids would disperse and the owner's son would have an alibi that put him fifty miles from the Harbour at the time.
 

Discouraged, I turned and drove back to Murphy's Harbour. The crowd had started to break down into little groups and they watched me as I went into the grocery. Mrs Horn, George's mother, was sitting on a hard chair at the entrance. She's a handsome, dignified woman and she was composed as she always is, but quietly angry. Behind her, the store owner was working along the shelves, picking things up and putting them back in place. When he saw me and pointed to Mrs Horn, I touched my cap to her. 'Hello, Jean. Were you here when it happened?'
 

'They killed my dog,' she said quietly.

'Where is he?'

'Jack put him in the back of my truck. I was just coming out of the store with my bags and they got out of their van and walked over and one of them hit Muskie on the head with a baseball bat. I tried to grab the boy but he pushed me over and they ran in here. Before I could do anything they were out and gone.'
 

'Did you see which of them killed Muskie?'

'Yes. I'll know him next time.'

'Good. We have the licence number, we'll have him arrested.' It was fine for me, an open and shut case, but it was a tragedy for her. That old hound of theirs had been a fixture in her life.
 

'Why would they do that, Reid?' She looked up at me, calm but angry, the way a lot of Indians have been with a lot of white men for a long time.
 

'I'm sorry it happened,' I said. 'It's some kind of initiation stunt they pull. To get into the gang a kid has to do something illegal. A lot of the time they go for dogs. One of them tried to bait Sam last night.'
 

'You'll get him, Reid.' It wasn't a question.

I had two homicides and an escaped con to worry about but this one was personal. 'I'll get him,' I promised.

She stood up slowly. 'Thank you.'

'Can you describe the kid who did it?'

'He was about eighteen, I think, dark hair, a little rat tail at the back. 'Bout three inches taller than me.' Five-nine, I registered. It sounded like the kid I'd picked out the day before as the number two in the gang.
 

'What was he wearing?'

'A T-shirt and jeans. On his T-shirt it said "Hermann's Gym." It was spelt with two ens.'

'Thank you. Would you like a cup of tea at the restaurant before you go home.'