Flashback (14 page)

He almost fell for it. 'Phil, he said and then stopped, angry at himself. 'You've got it down there, John Doe.'

'Right, Phil. How did you come into town tonight?'

'I'm not saying. I was here, OK?'

'Dumb,' I said cheerfully. 'If you'd stayed out of town I might never have found you. You'd have been free to swarm more places, kill a couple of more dogs maybe.'
 

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Listen, son. You're in deep trouble. Right now you're thinking that if you get out of here you can run away and I'll never find you. But here's a hot flash. I'm not letting you out until I know who you are and where you're from. So all you're doing is making your parents even angrier at you than they are now.'
 

'You don't know anything,' he said. 'In the morning you have to deliver me to a court somewhere. When you do I'll be bailed out and you're left holding a bag of fresh air.'
 

'So your daddy's a lawyer, is he?'

That silenced him. It didn't break him down but he was starting to realize that he'd lost.

'You could get away with this still, you know. Or most of it. I know that Hanson set you up. Did he give you the car you came here in this afternoon?'
 

'I don't know any Hanson.'

'Fine. I'll ask you again later. Right now you're going in the cells.' I stood up, leaving the half-completed form in the typewriter. 'Let's go.'
 

He stood up. I could see that his confidence was evaporating. There was no audience for his bravery. It was just him and me, and Sam, a solemn, silent presence. He needed somebody there to appreciate what he was doing, otherwise he was going to lose confidence in himself entirely. I figured he'd be ready to talk to me in about an hour's time. It would seem like an eternity to him.
 

I put him in the cell furthest from the door, the most isolated-seeming in the place, clanked the door shut and locked it. Then I did the hardest thing yet. I left him, without finding out where he had found the Jeffries' car, and walked out of the back door, locking the deadbolt behind me.
 

I got back in the car and drove into town again, trying to work out where the kid could have come from. I was surprised by the fact that he had not been carrying a driver's licence or any other ID. Probably he was under nineteen and had left his wallet in the car that brought him, not wanting to be embarrassed if he was asked for proof of age. It also meant that one of the vehicles in town was his. Maybe, if luck was on my side, it would be the Jeffries' Magic Wagon.
 

But I couldn't see it anywhere in town, so I took a slow drive up and around my whole patch, checking the cars parked at every cottage and the guest houses and our few lodges. It took me an hour and a half, counting a ten-minute stop at home to feed Sam and heat myself a cup of day-old coffee in the microwave I'd put in since marrying Fred.
 

At close to ten I was back in town again, shaking the door handles on all the lock-up premises. Everything was secure and I walked Sam back to the car just as a new Subaru four-wheel-drive pulled up. It stopped beside me and George Horn stuck his hand out of the window. 'Hi, Reid.'
 

We shook hands. 'Hi, George. Good to see you. Been home yet?'

'Yeah. My mom's pretty shaken up. The new puppy helped, thanks for the tip.'

'Welcome. She'll be glad to hear I've got the kid in the cells.'

'Good. What's his name?' He got out of the car, a slim tall man, neat in his dark city suit.

'He won't say but his first name is Phil.'

George was thoughtful. 'You'll have to release him tomorrow after a bail hearing.'

'Not if I don't get a name and address. He can't win.'

'Who did he call when you let him use the phone?'

I told him about the bravado and George shook his head. 'Watching too much TV.'

'Yeah. I wish he'd open up. When he came to town and hassled your mother he was driving a car belonging to the husband of the dead woman, Carolyn Jeffries. We've had another murder in town and I want that car badly. I want to trace Jeffries or Waites' wife. I think they're together and they left town in that car.'
 

'And the kid won't talk?'

'Not a word. Figures he's a hard man.'

George pursed his mouth, as angry as I've seen him. 'He's a little prick, killing poor old Muskie like that.'

'Well, I'm not about to give him the third degree but I want to crack him open. I plan on trying him again when I get back in.'
 

'Leave it with me,' George said. 'Give me fifteen minutes and I'll be at the station.'

'I can't let you take him apart, George, much as you'd like to.'

'I won't.' He looked at me very straight. In the harsh street light his face looked chiselled. 'You trust me, don't you?'

'You know that. You saved my ass last summer. I still owe you for that one.'

'Trust me,' he said. 'I won't do anything illegal, I promise. Borderline unethical but nothing that will get me thrown out of law. I don't want to end up back on the pumps at the Marina.'
 

'What are you going to do?'

'You'll see,' he said. 'And afterwards I'll come in and tell you what we found out in Toronto.'

He got back into his car and drove down over the bridge to the hotel where he parked and went into the phone-box. Then I put Sam in my car and drove back to the station.
 

This time I went in through the front door and spent a minute or so checking the teletype and generally advertising my presence. When I was sure my prisoner knew I was back I went through to the cells, carrying a pop can as if I was just enjoying a cold drink.
 

He was standing against the bars of his cell and he spoke at once. 'I want that phone call now.'

'You refused your chance.'

'I was confused, you didn't explain it to me properly.' He was tense but still acting tough. He would be an unpleasant adult, I figured, a bullying boss and a bastard around women.
 

'If you want to tell me your name and answer a few questions I'm prepared to let you make a call, even though I don't have to,' I said.
 

He slammed the bars with his hand. 'You go shove it,' he said. 'I've waited this long. I can wait all night.'

'Suit yourself.' I shut the door and returned to my desk where I sat and read the teletypes. Nothing on it was new to me. The OPP had reissued the description of Jeffries and Moira Waites and the Magic Wagon, specifying they were wanted in connection with a homicide, but there was nothing else of interest on the list. I finished it and waited a few minutes more until George came in.
 

He came the front way and called out 'Good evening, Chief,' loud enough that the prisoner could hear out back.

'Good evening, sir, what can I do for you?'

He winked at me and pushed a nine by ten envelope across the desk. 'Your info,' he mouthed. Then he said out loud. 'I'm visiting in the neighbourhood and I saw you arresting a man at the Murphy's Arms Hotel earlier.'
 

'Yes. I did.'

George's face was perfectly straight. He said, 'I happen to be an attorney and as you don't have one in this village of yours, I thought perhaps he might need one.'
 

'I've heard of lawyers chasing ambulances but this is a new low, if you ask me.'

'Nobody asked you, Chief. Please keep your opinions to yourself and ask your prisoner if he wants to talk to a lawyer.'

I went to the back door and opened it with a slam. 'You, kid. There's a lawyer in town. He's asking if you want to talk to him.'
 

He had heard every word of our conversation and he was standing at the bars grinning a mile wide. 'Yeah. I do. Bring him in. Like I can't come out there, right?'
 

I turned and called George. 'He'll see you.'

George came through and I got a chance to see him move. He's about six feet tall, and lean. In his suit and white shirt he looked like authority on the move. He came in and pulled out a card which he handed to the boy. Then he turned to me. 'Please leave us alone and shut the door.' His tone was snooty and I glared at him for the kid's benefit but did it, slamming the door.
 

They were out there five minutes while I looked at the information George had brought me. It contained brief biographies of Marcia Tracy, Waites and Hanson. I read Tracy's first.
 

She was thirty-eight, formerly married to the banker Dalton, from whom she had inherited the cottage, then to Waites. That ended in divorce one year before. She had been arrested once, for impaired driving but had gotten off. Waites had defended her. She had been born in Toronto and had taken the television course at Ryerson, the big polytechnical institute in Toronto, and worked at a number of jobs before founding her own production company on the death of her first husband. A bracketed note said that his death had been investigated but eventually the inquest had declared it accidental. In George's neat handwriting was the note. 'I have more, will tell you.' At that point she had inherited his insurance and estate and used the money to open her business. She had married Waites six months after her husband's death. For five years she had struggled to keep her company afloat but had then had a couple of successes,
Family Pride
and
Bugaboo.

Her divorce from Waites had been uncontested and there had been no division of family property.

At this point in my reading George came back to the doorway and spoke to me in the same loud voice, not his normal tone. 'Did you realize that my client is a juvenile?'
 

'I didn't realize he was your client?'

'Well, he is. And he is also seventeen years old and you've got him locked into an adult facility.'

'He's alone, in no danger.'

'At the moment, no. But if you get busy and these cells are filled, who knows what terrible things could happen. I want him released immediately into my charge.'
 

'I'm not letting him go until I have his name and address. I have to notify his parents and I want to make sure he returns here for a preliminary hearing tomorrow at noon.'
 

'I'll give you the name. That will have to be enough. I'll take responsibility for him after that.'

'I don't know you from a hole in the ground. How do I even know you're a lawyer, not some other rounder from that gang of his?'
 

'My card,' he said and handed it to me with the shadow of a wink. I read it. John Noble, insurance broker.

'OK, then. I'll have to let him go. Once I know his name.'

'Phillip Freund.' he spelt it for me. The name tickled my memory but nothing caught.

'And you'll have him back here tomorrow?'

'Yes. I'm going to drive him to where he's staying and I'll pick him up and deliver him back for a hearing. When will that be?'
 

'I can get the magistrate here for noon.'

'Right. Let him out.'

I took out the key and unlocked the cell. Even with George working whatever he was doing I hated to let the kid go. He thanked my by saying, 'Still feel like a big-shot? Eh, copper?'
 

'This isn't over yet, Phil,' I told him. 'Wait for the last laugh.'

 

 

 

CHAPTER 8

 

 

The kid couldn't resist giving me the finger as he reached the door. I ignored him and sat down, wondering just how George was planning to smarten him up. For a moment I almost went out after them and brought the boy back, but reason won. If I held him and got an investigation team down from Parry Sound the boy would just toughen up. He would know that the bigger the police department the less chance there was that anything physical would happen to him. And if they succeeded in opening him up by sweet talk, they would probably have their findings thrown out of court later. The lawyer his parents could afford to retain for him would argue that we hadn't observed the boy's rights.
 

I shook my head and hoped that George had seen a way around it all. It would be clean, even if the legality was a little rocky. I was confident of that. George had come a long way from the Reserve. He wouldn't blow it all. His personal loss would be unbearable, but even worse would be the way all his doubters would shake their heads and mutter about not being able to trust an Indian even when he'd been to college.
 

Slowly I sat down again and opened Waites' file. It didn't tell me a lot that was useful. He was a high profile guy, for a man in his early thirties. He had a way of swaying juries and had built a reputation for making the police look foolish, which delighted the newspapers but didn't endear him to me. It's always easy for a lawyer, with the advantages of hindsight and unlimited time, to examine an investigation and find some petty thing that a cop didn't consider in the half-second in which he had to decide before pulling his gun or breaking down a door. I'm not a vigilante but I'm more concerned with justice than law. In my view, lawyers mostly don't care about justice, they use the law as a fine-tooth comb to try to drag their clients out of trouble.
 

Waites' personal file was slim. He had graduated from Osgoode Hall, Canada's foremost law school, the one George Horn had aced, articled at his father's firm although Waites senior had been dead by that time. He had been admitted to the bar in '79. According to George's notes, the firm's best defence lawyer had suffered a stroke the following year and Waites had been moved into the second spot, taking over as the firm's top criminal man in '86, the year after he'd lost to me over Kershaw. Since then he had won a number of shaky cases and had a good circle of satisfied clients, including a Colombian cocaine dealer and a couple of murderers, all of whom probably felt they owed him a lot more than the money he'd cost them. George had noted that he was known as a womanizer and had been married twice, the first time to Marcia Tracy.