The Boy Must Die (30 page)

“Seems on the level,” Butch replied. “We have nothing else to go on, mind you. So we might as well ride with this confession, if you want to call it that. That poor kid is a screwup for sure.”

With his head aching, Billy walked into the lounge and wrote down the salient points of Blayne’s story.
So Perry Hill was connected. Was there a circle of adults abusing this child? No wonder these boys were frightened.
Butch came in, sat down beside him, and yawned. He looked furtively at his wristwatch.

“You know, Butch, you’ll have to keep Blayne on ice for at least another twenty-four hours.”

“I’ll call Dodd before we go.”

“And now we’ve got another angle on Perry Hill,” Billy said. “We’ll have to get after him tomorrow no matter what.”

Billy slept until 9:30. His knee was aching badly, so he spent a few minutes on stretches and light massage. Following instructions brought home from the hospital, he then changed his gauze and dabbed his head wound with antiseptic. After coffee, he dressed in a dark suit and tie. Butch arrived in the Pontiac, and the two drove to the Zabusky Brothers Funeral Chapel in Lethbridge to join Dodd at Darren Riegert’s memorial service. It was a package deal — plastic flowers, a Unitarian minister, a closed pine coffin on a rolling bier with large rubber wheels. Only Sharon Riegert stood in the front row. Behind her was Mr. Barnes, the counsellor from Darren’s junior high school. Billy had asked Sheree Lynn Bird not to attend. Sharon Riegert had made it clear she never wanted to set eyes on the “witch woman” again. Butch and Billy stood in the back row, the chief looking at the fake ceiling beams and the blood-red aisle carpet. Billy kept thinking about Blayne Morton’s confession, particularly the part about the man in the green half-ton, the man Billy believed was Perry Hill. Now they had to establish Hill’s whereabouts between Friday night and Saturday morning. Was it possible Woody’s friend was at Satan House? Was Hill what Madelaine Van Meer might call a “tin-pot dictator”? And what about Woody Keeler? Why hadn’t he shown up for Darren’s funeral? After the last words were spoken by the minister, Billy went outside and phoned Johnson. He told her to drive over first to the Riegert house to see if anything was amiss. Was Keeler drunk? Was he even at home? She would then proceed to contact Perry Hill, if the warrants had turned up anything related to Darren.

It was past one when Billy stood aside to watch Sharon Riegert follow
her only son’s coffin out of the chapel. A blue velveteen cloth hung over the sides, and two attendants from the funeral home solemnly wheeled the bier into the acrid sunlight. Sharon stood shivering by the hearse, her eyes shaded by her right hand. She was wearing old jeans and a pink polyester jacket. Her hair was tightly curled from her recent perm. She avoided Billy’s gaze as she passed, but he could see her eyes were half shut as if she were sleepwalking, the pall of despair a familiar one. The hearse drove away, and Billy followed Butch’s cruiser to the station.

There Billy was told Johnson had called in. The Riegert house was closed, and Woody Keeler was out. The stained blanket from the bed of Perry Hill’s truck had been seized and sent to the lab. Hill’s house had been searched, but there was no evidence of Darren’s clothes.

Butch brought in coffees. Billy’s head throbbed.

“You think this Perry Hill is pulling something?” Butch asked.

“He’s been on a bender, but his place is clean. Blayne’s confession implicates him, although you and I know it could be circumstantial.”

“Point taken. I don’t know if you’re up to this, but we’ve got a visitor here from Brocket, an old horseman. I’ve known Clive for twenty years. He doesn’t often come to me for favours since he’s strictly by-the-book
RCMP
. He arrived this morning as I was heading out to Darren’s funeral. Clive said he’d wait until we got back.”

“He got something on the Darren Riegert case?”

“I’m sure you noted boyfriend Woody’s absence this morning?” Butch’s face brightened with a grin that Billy read as one of vindication. “Well, Clive just told me Woody Keeler was arraigned by the horsemen as of ten this morning.”

“Which explains the closed front door at the Riegert house.”

“Pending charge is assault causing grievous bodily harm. A Peigan girl of sixteen had the unfortunate delight of meeting up with Keeler. Clive has the full tale. He wants us, here at the city force, to help him with a lineup since he’s got a feeling his case may be tied to Riegert’s. Clive’s next door in the records and dead-file room. I’ll check on our booking schedule. Why don’t you go on in and introduce yourself.”

Billy stood up, held his stance for a second while the pounding in his temple subsided, then removed his suit jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. He was already sweating from being out in the parking lot, and for some reason the usual cool air in Butch’s office had not kicked in. Billy went out and through a door that led into a dimly lit, stifling room. He looked up at the ceiling where the air-conditioning vent had been pulled off by a repairman, then at a small round fan busily whirring back and forth on a metal table.

“Cooler in here, once you sit down.”

The strained, heat-tired voice came from a man with small, washed-out green eyes, facial skin the colour of raw hamburger, and jowls pitted from adolescent acne. Blue veins crisscrossed the man’s large nose and puffy chin. His girth seemed all the more enormous since he was perched on the edge of a large oak chair, huge arms folded over his chest, and pudgy hands, the colour of lard, resting on the swell of a firm but massively rounded belly. Looking into the flushed cheeks, Billy hoped the man would open things up, make the last few days’ events come together in a way he was fearing they may never.

Clive Erdmann introduced himself. He spoke in a low drawl, and the pace of his speech was as leisurely as if he were sitting by a river casting for rainbow trout. He was a longtime
RCMP
constable stationed on the Peigan reserve, fifty minutes from the city. He’d been a constable for thirty-six years, and he figured he’d spent all of those years dealing with the Natives. Erdmann shook Billy’s hand with a hard, callused grip, letting go only when he sat back down. He talked without pause, as if he were in a doctor’s office explaining a symptom, telling Billy he was a man with two grown-up sons and a dead wife buried in the cemetery at Fort Macleod.

“They call me Straight Eyes at Brocket. That’s a compliment, by the way. The Peigan think I’m fair-minded. I say with pride I’m not one for violence. I seen it, though, over the years. Family beatings and gun-crazy boys wild on liquor and dope spoilin’ to shoot the nostrils off any white man within thirty yards of a Winchester barrel.”

Butch came into the room.

“Clive, you still stewing in here? I’ve got. . . .”

“No matter, Eddy. I’m sittin’ easy with your detective inspector. I still didn’t catch your name.”

“Billy. Billy Yamamoto.”

“Your folks from Raymond area, the sugar beet people? Worked at that factory before the war? A lot of Orientals around there, Japanese people.”

“My father was sent here in 1942. As a political prisoner.”

“I am sorry to hear that. Good folks they were, all hard workers. Bad done by, some of them. Your mother was white?”

“Scottish. A Naughton. She was a nurse — a
VON
— for the city’s health unit back then.”

“They both passed on?”

“Yes.”

Clive lifted his right hand and wiped sweat from his upper lip.

“Billy, I don’t mean to take your time this afternoon.”

“Quite all right, Clive.”

“My problem is simple. One of our sergeants plays golf with one of yours, a gal named Johnson. Johnson was tellin’ Sergeant Blacker about her case. A boy hanged in a basement. She told Blacker about a lead — a long shot — a man named Hill. Drives a green Chevy halfton with a long bed. I need to get a hold of Hill, and I come to you now to locate him. He is a man I want to question about Miss Mary Running Rabbit.” Clive shook his head. “Poor gal got beat up pretty bad.”

“How is he connected with Woody Keeler?”

“Monday, young Wilson Running Rabbit come to my door lookin’ like he stepped on a nest of rattlers. He come with a bad story, the poor Christer. Friday night he’s lyin’ at home with his mom, Lil, and his sister, Mary, when two drunk white men come a’poundin’ late on the front door. Wilson said it was real late, ’bout eleven, and these devils come in and slam old Lil and take Mary out for a joyride in a green Chevy half-ton. I get on over the next day to Steve Little Plume and find out from
him about Woody Keeler and his buddy, Hill. Steve likes to drink with Keeler, and he was the one sent the two devils to Mary’s house in the first place. I reckon this is the same Hill who was out gallivantin’ and causing bodily harm with Mr. Keeler. Keeler wears a ponytail, and Wilson said he had on a red baseball cap with a crow feather stuck to it. Them two devils took Miss Mary and beat her up bad, raped her bad, too. She crawled home by herself. Mary ain’t no nun, on my word, but she’s no more deservin’ of a rape and a beatin’ like these two white scum give her.”

“You have a warrant out on Hill?” asked Butch.

“Only an arraignment. I need Lil to look at him and Keeler in a lineup. If she and Wilson point the finger at ’em, I can persuade Miss Mary to testify in court. Steve Little Plume owes me a favour. Keeler, you may know, has left behind a bad smell in Brocket. From that case years back, the Born With a Tooth boy gettin’ beat up. Somebody told me Hill and Ervin’s mom were runnin’ together for a time. So I’d appreciate some help, Eddy, if you can oblige.”

“Johnson was with Hill earlier today. She claimed he was too sick to talk,” Billy said. “He’s in for a surprise.”

The afternoon air was thick with the smell of damp foliage and rising heat as Billy and Butch agreed to follow Clive Erdmann over to the
RCMP
headquarters. Once Clive had picked up a deputy, a short man armed with a .45 and wearing a flat brown rimmed hat, the two cars headed south through streets shaded by willows and cottonwoods. Clive got out at the top of Perry Hill’s street and told Butch he and the deputy would go in the front if Butch and Billy would drive down the alley behind the house and cover the back in case Hill made a run for it.

Billy drove slowly down the muddy alley, the puddles splashing up goo on the tires. Ahead, the green Chevy half-ton was still parked by Hill’s back fence. Billy cut the engine. He took out a pair of handcuffs Dodd had given him at the station. Butch wiped sweat off his neck and forehead, and the two of them waited until Clive Erdmann made his way ponderously up the steps to Perry Hill’s front door. Billy and Butch opened their doors, checked the fence in front of them, then got out of
the Pontiac. They crouched down, moved quickly up the alley to the corner of Hill’s back fence. From behind a large honeysuckle, they could see Clive ringing the Hill doorbell. Then he pounded his massive fist on the door. His deputy, his hand grasping his holster, went around to each of the windows knocking on them and calling out Perry Hill’s name. The leaves on the honeysuckle hung motionless with the moist heat. Billy watched a white cat dash from under Hill’s green half-ton. He felt Butch nudge him with his elbow.

Perry Hill’s mother was hiding under a lilac, its boughs and brown-faded blossoms shading her frail figure and camouflaging her. The lilac tree straddled the back fence between her house and Perry Hill’s. How the hell did she get out here? Billy wondered. Had she seen the cruiser pull up at the top of the street? But that would mean she had warned her son. Bette Rae waved her right arm in a gathering motion. A thin unshaven man grabbed hold of the top of the wooden fence beside her. He hauled himself up and slid over, his T-shirt catching on the wood splinters. His mouth formed an O as he toppled to the ground next to her. An ugly fresh scrape appeared on his exposed chest. He lay there, writhing, wanting to howl while Bette Rae slapped her hand over his mouth. Blood lay streaked in a jagged line along the length of his T-shirt.

“Meet Perry Hill,” whispered Billy. “Come on.”

Billy and Butch cleared the six yards from the honeysuckle to the back fence in a few quick steps and burst through the broken gate into the shade of the lilac and the astonished shock of Perry Hill and his now-shrieking mother. Hill’s head looked up, his face haggard, and his thin right wrist was suddenly clamped with a ring of steel. Butch crossed Hill’s left arm behind his back. “Got him here, Clive,” Billy yelled, as Butch connected the cuffs with a loud metallic snap. Bette Rae started beating her fists against Butch’s shoulders. Billy moved in and managed to pry her away. Just then the deputy and a huffing Clive Erdmann entered from the front yard. Clive held a notice of arraignment in his left hand.

It felt odd, witnessing an arrest again after seven months away from
active service. Once routine, now the locking of an individual into wrist irons seemed suddenly bizarre and extreme. Billy knelt and scanned the area under the lilac tree, looking for coins or keys from Perry’s pockets. Butch handed Perry over to Clive, who read the arraignment and at the same time apologized for the handcuffing. Perry was too hungover and hurt to speak.

“He’s done nuthin’!” his mother screamed.

When Perry Hill walked off with the deputy, his mother covered her face with her hands. Clive Erdmann folded the arraignment paper and put it into his right pants pocket. “I’ll need a statement from you, ma’am,” he said. “I won’t need to trouble you much.” Bette Rae walked towards the front yard with Clive, her head hung low.

Billy went down the alley and walked to the green half-ton and pulled back the tarp to see if he and Johnson had missed anything. When he went over to the
RCMP
cruiser, Perry Hill was sitting slouched behind a steel mesh partition separating the prisoner zone from the front of the cruiser. His hands were cuffed behind him, making him sit up straight. Billy thanked the deputy, who glanced at Hill. With a sneer in his voice he said, “Nasty!” and tipped the rim of his brown hat.