Flashback (24 page)

'He didn't have to,' Dupuy said. 'He's about the same size as Waites. Maybe that's why he stole the suitcase when he killed the guy. Gave him a whole new wardrobe. Yet the woman had clothes. She was expecting to be away from home for a while, he wasn't. Maybe she knew something he didn't when they left.'
 

'The woman who was abducted isn't his wife. His wife was killed in that drowned car. This woman is Moira Waites. She was away from home when she left Waites,' I explained. 'Waites told me that she took everything when she left in his car, the one her friend was found dead in.'
 

'Is this everything she took?' Dupuy asked? 'One suitcase?'

'No, I don't think it is. She's a painter. She would have had cavases, paints, all that stuff, but it's not here.'

'Must be in her car,' he said.

'But there's no car. And the owner of this place says she came on foot.'

'I wonder if she left it up at the Jeffries place?'

'I didn't notice it yesterday but it's worth looking at again. And it's also worth watching the house, see if she heads back there.'
 

'It's a long shot but I'll get Holland on to that,' Dupuy said, and scratched his head wearily. 'I can't find any pattern at all in this. Three people who know one another, including a husband and wife, all killed, and clues left all over the goddamn province. Waites' golf clubs up near Honey Harbour. Waites' suitcase here. Waites' car used in the first woman's death. And this guy—' he flipped a hand at the corpse—'flitting around out of sight for two days, then turning up dead in a motel with Waites' widow. What's goin' down?'
 

'I can't work it out. But there's more to it than that, even. The Tracy woman and the Hanson kid are all part of the same daisy chain. She was married to Waites. The actor was working for her, or trying to. She gets beaten up, says Hanson did it. Hanson disappears.'
 

'Is there something we're missing there?' Dupuy asked. He was tired and out of his depth. Although he had been a cop longer than I and held a good rank, he didn't have the same experience with homicide and was wary about making moves that might look dumb.
 

I wasn't out to carve him so I said, 'Don't forget Kershaw. Waites was his lawyer. I still figure that Waites sprung him to kill his wife. And on top of that, it's Kershaw's son who ended up in the gang that Hanson put together. This isn't just random. There's a pattern OK, even if we don't see it.'
 

'I think I'll have Holland go talk to this Tracy woman in hospital. Maybe she can tell us something new.'

'Good idea. You want me to go ahead in here while you call?'

'Yeah, sure.' Dupuy nodded and walked out. I worked on for another five minutes before he came back. 'Caught him at the station, he's going over there now,' he said, then added, 'She couldn't have done this, she's in hospital.'
 

'No, she didn't do it, Inspector. But she crops up everywhere we look.'

'You're right. We'll finish up here.' Dupuy waved his hand at the half-unpacked suitcase. 'There's not much more and I'll bring the cases with me when I come back to the station.'
 

We went back to the suitcases, sorting through the woman's case first. It had nothing useful in it, just a variety of simple but colourful clothing that reminded me of Waites' description of his wife's wardrobe. An arty type.
 

We took everything out and searched all the internal pockets and compartments but there was nothing there. An innocent piece of luggage that had belonged to a woman with nothing to hide. It gave us no clue.
 

We repacked the case and checked the dresses hanging in the closet. There was nothing in them but the labels from some womens' store in Toronto. I folded them into the suitcase and we searched the body. It proved once and for all that he had killed Waites. In the pockets we found ID in the names of Jeffries along with six hundred and eighty dollars cash and then, in another pocket, all Waites' credit cards. We looked at one another without speaking when we pulled these out. Waites' murder was solved, but I wasn't going to quit looking until I found Moira Waites and knew who had driven Carolyn Jeffries off the rock into the lake.
 

In the bottom of his right-hand pocket we found the suitcase key and we opened it up. It had an immediate bonus for us, a neat little zippered briefcase inside on top of the clothes. Dupuy took it out and looked at me knowingly. 'Maybe now we'll have something.'
 

I was anxious to examine it but he played the senior officer, opening it and taking out a manilla folder. He frowned at the cover. 'Street boy,' he read. 'What the hell does that mean?'
 

'It's likely the name of Ms Tracy's movie.'

He looked at me disbelievingly and opened the file. I was trying to read over his shoulder and he tilted the paper towards me a fraction to make it easier. I saw that the top sheet was a financial statement of some kind, columns of figures and names.
 

'Breakdown of projected costs,' Dupuy said. 'Jesus, how much does it cost to make a movie?'

I wanted him to hurry up. Maybe he knew more about figures than I did, most people do, but I was deeper into the case than he was, I would see something important faster than he. But he read it through with painful thoroughness, then passed it to me. I sat on the bed and re-read it. The various cost projections were itemized. Script, lead actors, a million dollars allotted there, no wonder Hanson had been so anxious to get the part, balance of cast, location costs, wardrobe and on and on. Nothing useful. A total cost of 6.3 million.
 

Then Dupuy handed me the second page. This was a summary of the fund-raising efforts. She had assembled only five million dollars, including a promise from the Canadian Film Development Corporation, which had a question-mark pencilled against it. There was also a pencilled note at the bottom. '1 mill, possible on delivery.'
 

'What's that mean?' Dupuy asked.

'Beats me. Maybe it's a film term of some kind, or maybe it means she has to deliver something to get the million.' I was baffled, as he was. None of the people or companies listed had any significance to me. 'I'd just say that if she can't find another one million three hundred thousand dollars, the project's off.'
 

Dupuy had spent his career in small towns but he was not a dull man. 'They raise this kind of money routinely, don't they?'

'My wife's the expert. She says it's always a struggle and Ms Tracy told me she's having problems with the production. That means money, I guess.'
 

'Still doesn't tell us anything,' he said. 'This is just business, this guy Waites was a lawyer, it figures he would have business stuff with him.'
 

'What are the other papers?'

He leafed through them. 'Names, presumably of people she plans to hit up for the money. List of actors. Then there's some kind of story, says "treatment" on it.'
 

He took his time reading through the papers, passing them to me very slowly. None of the names rang a bell. They were mostly individual names, together with their companies which were again simply collections of names, no indication what the companies did, although I could tell from the addresses in Toronto's Bay and King Streets business area that they were all prestigious outfits.
 

Then he handed me the next sheet, a production summary. It had a listing which began with the director and the technical people and most of these slots had names inked in. Then came the cast and the first inked in name was Eric Hanson.
 

'This doesn't gibe with what she told me in hospital today,' I said. 'Hanson's name is inked in. She said he wasn't getting the part and that's why he attacked her.'
 

'She could have changed her mind,' Dupuy said tentatively.

'Sure, she could. But when you figure he's been acting out the part of bad boy in my jurisdiction, you wonder whether he was paying her off for the part.'
 

'Does that make sense?' Dupuy shook his head. 'Do guys go to that kind of length to get parts in movies?'

'Anything short of killing, if the part's big enough.'

'Well—' he breathed a long sigh—'your wife's the actress, not mine. Maybe you know. Anyway, read this.'

He handed me the last item, the treatment. I read it through quickly. It involved a teenager who got tangled up in a gang, starting with a disaffected group of kids in a high school. They carried out swarmings and a couple of beatings and then graduated to drug sales. The boy started having second thoughts and when he was told to commit a murder he tried to get out. With the gang after him, he hid out in an apartment belonging to a woman in her thirties. She and he have an affair and she straightens him out and he moves in with her.
 

'Pretty kinky stuff,' Dupuy said.

'It could appeal to women without a guy in their lives.'

'Are there enough of them to make a picture sell?' His small town background was showing now.

'Toronto is down by the head with single women. It's a good idea, they can enjoy watching someone their age end up with a young stud with a heart of gold. I figure this Tracy woman is pretty smart.'
 

'If she's so smart, how come she hasn't raised the money she needs?'

'Beats the hell out of me,' I admitted. 'But it's routine as far as I know. What interests me more is that the plot kind of matches up with the actor, Eric Hanson, and the way he moved in on Ms Tracy. That much is true to the script.'
 

'You think he killed this guy?' he flipped his hand at the body that we had been walking around as if it were some piece of furniture.
 

'My bet is Kershaw, but Hanson is big enough.'

'I'll call Holland and get him to ask Tracy about all this,' Dupuy said. 'And I'll have them collect the body, then we can finish looking at this stuff and close up until the morning.'
 

'Right. You want me to go on looking through the case?'

'May's well.' He left with the folder and I crouched by the case and dug deeper into it. It was full of clothes, all of them casual but expensive, but I remembered the cocaine we had found in Waites' room and I shook out each item to make sure it didn't have a package concealed inside it. None of them did and I got to the bottom of the case without finding anything.
 

I crouched there for a while longer, looking at the case blankly. Nothing useful, except maybe the file on Tracy's movie. And yet I had a feeling that there was more. There had to be. A man had been killed for this case. It had to contain something important. There was only one angle we hadn't checked, and one quick way to find out if I was right.
 

I went outside and called Sam. He bounded over to me and I fussed him, then calmed him and led him into the room. He looked over at the body but gave no reaction and I played the last card I had. I've trained him to be a one-man police department. Even though I don't get many drug cases I worked with the OPP dog trainer on developing his nose for drugs. Normally he doesn't react to anything he's not told to, but now I gave him his cue.
 

'It has to be a good solid hint,' the trainer had advised me. 'Like, normally we put a different collar on a dog when he's sniffing drugs, that alerts him. But you can do it with a command word. But make it unusual. Don't say anything ordinary.' So I held up one finger to Sam and used the code word, a memory of my own past. 'Mei Kong.'
 

He stiffened and turned away, searching. He sniffed the body on the floor, then left it and turned his attention to the pile of clothing, beginning to growl low in his throat. Finally he reached the suitcase and began to bark, furious now, scratching at the bottom of the case with his front feet as if he were trying to dig a hole through it.
 

Behind me I heard the door open and I turned to see Dupuy in the doorway. 'What the hell's going on here?' he shouted angrily.

'A new twist,' I told him. 'My dog has just shown me there's a stash of drugs hidden in this suitcase.'

 

 

 

CHAPTER 14

 

 

I told Sam 'Easy' and bent down to rub his head and let him know I was proud of him. It had been months since I'd tested his drug-sniffing skills, but he had performed as if he did it every day and given us something new to go on.

Dupuy was unconvinced. 'You sure about this?' He was examining the case. 'This thing looks perfectly normal.'

'Must be a hidden compartment,' I told him. 'It needs examining by the drug squad.'

He picked the case up and shook it, holding it up by his ear, an instinctive, useless test. 'Doesn't look like it,' he said again. I took out my pocket knife and probed the bottom of the case. It was lined with a paisley cloth and the surface underneath was firm, aluminium probably. 'Want me to cut it?'
 

'Why not? The owner won't complain.'

I put the case on the floor and pressed on the tip of the knife blade. It gave, easing through the thin metal. I started sawing back on it, cutting a slit on the inside of the lid. White powder leaked through the crack. 'Here it is.' I showed him and he shook his head in disbelief.
 

'How in hell did they pack that thing? It looks like it went in there when the case was made.'

'Maybe it did. I don't know. But it's there. What do you want to do now?'

'I figure we wrap up here and I'll take this back to the station.'

'We should watch this place tonight,' I said. 'The guy who killed Jeffries may come back to get this.'

'I know,' Dupuy said impatiently. 'I'm going to leave a man here. Can you hold on until he arrives?'

'Sure. Soon's the body's gone I'll lock up, turn out the lights and sit out of sight somewhere, watching.'