The Case Against Owen Williams (27 page)

It was early afternoon when Dorkin arrived at Louie's yard. The big double doors in the fence were closed, but to one side there was a smaller door, like a house door, and Dorkin let himself in. The doors to the big warehouse were also closed, and there was a general air of desertedness. Dorkin picked his way among the rain-filled potholes in the yard, tried the door of the office and, finding it locked, went across the yard and around to the back of the warehouse. In the far corner of the yard, almost up against the fence, there was a small shack.

When he was still a dozen paces from the shack, the door opened, and Cat Polchis stood watching him.

“I'd like to talk to you about Louie,” Dorkin said.

Cat continued to stand, as if he hadn't heard him. His eyes were so black that there was no sense of there being an iris and a pupil, only blackness, uniform, opaque, impenetrable. After an uncomfortably long pause, he stepped back, holding open the door.

“Okay,” he said.

Except for a cubicle in one corner, presumably the bathroom, the shack was one big room. There was a black cookstove for heat as well as cooking, a pine table, some pine chairs, a big pine cupboard with pans and dishes, a single bed, and an old Morris chair, the kind of thing that Louie might have picked up somewhere. On the wall above the table, there were two pictures of baseball teams and one of Cat by himself in a baseball uniform. Everything was very neat, very clean, with an almost military orderliness.

Dorkin sat down at the table.

“You want to be more comfortable?” Cat asked, motioning towards the Morris chair.

“This is fine,” Dorkin said.

Cat sat down opposite him.

“You heard that somebody shot out Louie's tire?” Dorkin said.

“Yes,” Cat said. “I heard. It's all over town.”

“You didn't hear anything about who might have done it?”

“No.”

“Any idea?”

“No,” Cat said. “Not yet.”

“Do you think somebody might have been waiting for him?”

“Could be. I don't know.”

“Do you know if anybody phoned him this morning?” Dorkin asked. “Do you know if somebody might have set it up?”

“No,” Cat said. “I was over in the warehouse. I don't know who he talked to.”

“Did he say where he was going when he left?”

“Across the river to a couple of places. After that, I don't know. Might not have been set up anyway. Somebody might just have been out with a gun and seen him comin' and took a shot.”

“Just for the hell of it?”

“Maybe. Maybe for some reason.”

“Such as?”

Cat shrugged.

“The talk around town is that you think it may have been Dan Coile himself who killed his daughter and that you were out here questionin' Louie. Louie fired Toady a couple of days after you were here. He probably spread it around.”

“I talked to a lot of people,” Dorkin said, suddenly turning defence lawyer on his own behalf, trying to deflect the accusation against himself that he himself had already made. “Why should someone pick on Louie?”

“Because he knew stuff,” Cat said.

“He didn't tell me anything that I couldn't have found out from almost anyone,” Dorkin said.

“I know that,” Cat said. “But Dan Coile and his pals didn't know that.”

“I don't understand,” Dorkin said.

“Louie knew that Coile was messing around with his daughters,” Cat said. “A couple of years ago, he was driving into the Coile place, and he saw Dan and the sister of the one who got killed coming out of the barn. Louie could tell that something funny was going on, so he pretended he hadn't seen them and kept on going and parked up by the house, but he could tell from the way Coile acted afterwards that he knew Louie had seen him and the girl.”

In the doorway, as Dorkin was leaving, Cat said, “You should have left Louie out of it. It didn't have nothin' to do with him.”

Outside the window, the rain poured down, sweeping along the street in gusts, bringing down with it cascades of sodden leaves. In spite of the rain, Dorkin had walked from the armoury to the
RCMP
office, and his raincoat now hung on the rack by the door, dripping water onto the floor.

Carvell was sitting in his chair against the wall. Hooper was manning the desk with the phone and the typewriter. Drost was seated behind the desk where they did business with their assorted visitors, willing and otherwise. Dorkin stood in the middle of the room. Except at a distance, he had not seen Drost since the day he had gone through the boxes of evidence. He had not liked Drost from the day he had first seen him in court, and he sensed clearly enough that Drost did not like him.

“Whoever did it,” Hooper said, “was ahead of him up the road on the left-hand side. The bullet went in just by the corner of the tread and then hit the back of the wheel. If he'd waited until the truck was a little closer, it would have gone out the other side, and we'd probably never have known it wasn't just a flat tire.”

“You've no idea who it was?” Dorkin asked.

“No,” Drost said.

“I doubt if whoever it was intended to kill him,” Carvell said. “It was just Louie's bad luck that it happened on a wet day and he went off the road where he did. Someone could have been out with a gun and just decided to play games.”

“A dangerous game,” Dorkin said.

“Yes,” Carvell said. “But it isn't the first time somebody's shot a tire out just for the hell of it.”

“You don't think that it might have been someone who had something against Louie?” Dorkin asked.

“Could be,” Carvell said. “Louie could be pretty sharp when it came to dealing with people. I imagine he'd made his share of enemies. But I still doubt if anyone intended to kill him.”

“You said that you had some information that you wanted to give us,” Drost said.

“Yes,” Dorkin said. “I don't think it was just a prank. I've found out that Dan Coile was molesting his daughters, and Louie knew it. He caught Coile and the older daughter coming out of the barn a couple of years ago.”

“So Coile shot his tire out?” Drost asked.

“I think it's worth looking into,” Dorkin said. “I think it's worth finding out where Coile was this morning.”

“Have you ever heard anything like that about Coile?” Drost asked Carvell.

“Not about the daughters,” Carvell said. “But he was in trouble over a young girl out there a few years ago. A neighbour's kid. But it blew over, and he was never brought to court or anything like that.”

“Who told you about the daughters?” Drost asked. “That's a pretty serious accusation.”

“I'd rather not say,” Dorkin said, “but it was from someone reliable.”

“Louie?” Drost asked.

“No,” Dorkin said, “not Louie.”

“But it was Louie who told you about him seeing them coming out of the barn.”

“No,” Dorkin said. “That wasn't Louie either. In fact, he deliberately didn't tell me about it when I was talking to him about Coile. It was Cat Polchis who told me about it this afternoon after Louie was killed.”

“Bernie,” Carvell said, “let me tell you something.”

It was the first time Carvell had ever called him by his first name, let alone this nickname, which he had always hated, and the effect was paternal, at once affectionate and superior.

“I know that Louie was a likeable guy,” Carvell said, “but he was a storyteller. He was full of them. Some of them were true, but a lot of them weren't. He liked to talk. He liked to weave tales. And most of the time he never expected people to believe half of what he was saying.”

“But he didn't talk this one around,” Dorkin said, irritated by Carvell's manner. “The only person he told was Cat, and so far as I know the only person Cat has told is me. Louie may have told tales around town for the fun of it, but this wasn't one of them. He didn't spread it around because he was afraid of Coile.”

“But even if it's true,” Drost said, “why should Coile all of a sudden two or three years afterwards decide that he's going to shoot up Louie's truck? And how would he even know that Louie was going to be there?”

“He could have phoned and set it up,” Dorkin said.

“I'm sorry,” Drost said, “but I can't see it. He was going away from the Coile place, not towards it. Do you think that Coile got him to come out to his place and then when he'd left got a gun and ran through the woods faster than Louie could drive in his truck and waited for him?”

“Coile has relatives by the dozens,” Dorkin said. “He could have worked it out with one of them. Or more than one. They could have staked out the road and waited. When they shot his tire out, they may not have intended to kill him, but I think they certainly intended it as a warning.”

“But why all of a sudden now?” Drost asked. “Even if what Louie said is true, why all of a sudden after two or three years?”

“Because,” Dorkin said, “whatever reason he may have given to anyone he had help him, he had another reason of his own.”

“Oh?” Drost said. “What was that?”

“I think that he was the one who killed Sarah, not Williams,” Dorkin said. “I think that he was the father of the child that she was carrying, and I think that he waylaid her that night and killed her and left her body in the gravel pit.”

Carvell whistled softly.

“Do you have any evidence to support this?” Drost asked.

“Not court evidence,” Dorkin said. “Not yet anyway. But I know that Williams could not possibly have got Sarah pregnant, and I know that he didn't kill her. I know that whoever got Sarah pregnant was someone she couldn't marry. I know that Coile had been messing around with her and that he had also been messing around with the older sister before that. I know that Coile knew that Louie had seen him in compromising circumstances with the older girl. I know that Coile knew that I had been talking to Louie. And this was now dangerous stuff for him if he had killed Sarah.”

There was a long silence. Drost looked down at his desk. Carvell looked thoughtfully at Dorkin.

“Did you ever check on what Daniel Coile was doing the night of the murder?” Dorkin asked Drost.

“No,” Drost said. “I had no reason to. But we checked everyone who was in or around the dance hall. Hooper spent almost a week doing nothing else.”

“But you didn't check Daniel Coile.”

“The town is full of people we didn't check,” Drost said. “We checked everyone who was on the road that night.”

“But Daniel Coile isn't just anyone in town,” Dorkin said. “Most people who are murdered are murdered by their own relatives, as you well know.”

“Or by their boyfriends,” Drost said.

“Do you think that Williams was the father of Sarah's child?” Dorkin asked.

“I don't know,” Drost said.

“Did you ever find any evidence that Williams had ever had anything to do with Sarah Coile before that night?” Dorkin asked.

“I don't see that we needed to,” Drost said. “We weren't trying to find out who knocked her up, we were trying to find out who killed her. I don't think there has to be any connection. She could have been screwing everyone in town. She probably was.”

“You have no evidence for that,” Dorkin said. “The truth is that once you decided that Williams was guilty, you ignored everything else and simply concentrated on assembling a case against him.”

Drost flushed.

“Why are you telling me all this?” he said. “Tell it in court.”

“I intend to,” Dorkin said. “But I'm telling you now because I want you to do two things. I want you to find out where Daniel Coile was the night of the murder. And I want you to find out where he was when Louie's tire was shot out.”

“I can't just haul people in off the street for questioning,” Drost said.

“There are ways if you want to use them,” Dorkin said. “What you're worried about is that you may get heat from Grant if you start interfering with his case against Williams and perhaps spoil his record for having solved a murder in six hours.”

“I don't have to listen to this,” Drost said. “You have no authority to order me around. You have no right even to be in this office. If you have a case, go make it in court.”

“I've got a case,” Dorkin said. “Unlike the prosecution, what I don't have is a police force at my disposal to collect the evidence. I can understand the pressures you may be under, but I think you should also consider what will happen if it turns out that you've been a party to hanging the wrong guy in spite of everything I've told you.”

“I don't hang anyone,” Drost said. “The judge and the jury do.”

“That's bullshit,” Dorkin said.

Drost pushed his chair back angrily and stalked across the room. He stood looking out the window at the rain. There was a long silence.