The Case Against Owen Williams (42 page)

“I'm not sure,” Clemens said. “As I said in court. I wasn't watching the time. Sometime around ten o'clock.”

“You weren't outside at the Salchers'?” Carvell asked. “Out back or anything like that? Nowhere you might have been able to see into the woods?”

“No,” Clemens said. “I just parked and went into the house. It was dark. And when I was leaving, I came out and got into the car.”

This time Dorkin did glance, as if casually, at Carvell. Carvell's face retained its look of deferential inquiry.

“That's too bad,” he said. “Maybe there wasn't any man. When things like this happen, people sometimes let their imaginations run away with them.”

“Yes,” Clemens said. “That's true.”

“When you were driving back,” Carvell said, “you didn't hap-pen to see any other cars on the road?”

“No,” Clemens said.

“When you were going around the corner where you saw Sarah and the man, there weren't any other cars going up or down the road? No one else who might have seen something in their headlights?”

“No,” Clemens said. “I didn't see anybody.”

“All dark?”

“Yes,” Clemens said.

When they were back in Carvell's office, Carvell had phoned Constable Hooper, and the three of them were now sitting around Carvell's desk.

“But the fact is that he lied,” Dorkin said.

“Yes, he lied,” Carvell said. “But it may not mean what you're trying to make it mean. Even if he were just roaming around in the woods looking at the girls, he wouldn't want to admit it. And for all we know, he may have been screwing one of those girls who pick up their pin money out there—in which case he certainly wouldn't be disposed to admit it.”

“And he may only have been out there spying on the dance hall the way he told Salcher,” Hooper said, “and didn't want to admit to that either.”

“I don't think so,” Dorkin said. “Something happened that night that scared him enough that he took away his outfit and never used it again.”

“But even if he didn't commit the murder,” Carvell said, “all the activity out there afterwards would have been enough to scare him off.”

It was now nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, and for over two hours they had been hammering it back and forth.

“He could have been lying about the cars, too,” Carvell said. “He had the wind up by that time. He didn't know what we were getting at, and he may have decided to say that there weren't any cars. Then if he had to, he could always pretend to remember later that there was a car. So there could have been a car, and he could have had light enough to see what he said he saw.”

“It is just possible that he could have seen her without the lights from another car,” Hooper said. “He knew her well enough that he wouldn't have had to see much.”

Dorkin walked across the office and looked out the window at the church across the street and the little nook where Maclean had waited for him.

Shit, he thought. It went round and round.

“Look,” he said, turning back to them, “he was out there that night, and the account he gave in court of what he did there was a lie. If he spent time roaming around in the woods, all that talk of what time it must have been when he left Salcher's place was just bullshit. He perjured himself. He had also been talking to Sarah that afternoon, and he never said anything about that until we bluffed it out of him.”

“Could you bring him in,” Carvell asked Hooper, “and tell him what we know from Salcher about his movements and ask him to make a new statement about what he did that night? If he is the one who murdered Sarah Coile, he's going to be pretty rattled after this afternoon, and it's possible he may go to pieces. And even if he didn't do it, the fact that his testimony in court was perjured would certainly ensure that Williams got a new trial. It can't just be let go now.”

Hooper looked at him unhappily.

“I shouldn't do anything without getting permission from Fredericton,” he said. “It isn't my investigation.”

“But it isn't anyone's investigation now,” Dorkin said. “Williams is in the jug. That investigation's over.”

“I don't know,” Hooper said.

“There's something else,” Dorkin said. “If Clemens did kill Sarah Coile, we've put Salcher in danger by what we told Clemens this afternoon. If he's a killer, he may also kill Salcher.”

“That would be pretty risky in the circumstances,” Hooper said.

“It would,” Dorkin said. “But Clemens doesn't know we talked to Salcher. We just said we'd heard a rumour about a man in the woods. He may think he's covering his tracks by getting rid of Salcher before we get to him. If he
is
the murderer, he's going to be desperate.”

“I tell you what,” Carvell said to Hooper. “If you get in hot water with Fredericton, tell them what Bernie and I did by going to Salcher and Clemens. Tell them that we're a couple of irresponsible assholes. It won't bother me if it doesn't bother Bernie. You were forced to act quickly because you were afraid for Salcher's safety. So you decided to talk to Clemens to get to the bottom of what really happened that night.”

“I shouldn't be doing it,” Hooper said. “Not without some authority.”

“But if Salcher is killed after what we've told you,” Dorkin said, “you'll be in even deeper shit.”

“Not if I check with Fredericton first,” Hooper said.

“Do you think you can explain all this stuff to them so they'll make a quick decision?” Dorkin asked. “They'll have to get hold of Grant and god only knows who else. It could take all night.”

“Probably,” Hooper said.

“And the truth is,” Carvell added, “that when you look at what we've got, it doesn't necessarily add up to all that much. Particularly to someone like Grant who doesn't want to believe it in the first place.”

“You're afraid that if I talk to Fredericton first,” Hooper said to Dorkin, “they're going to tell me to leave it alone.”

“Yes,” Dorkin said, “I am.”

“Okay,” Hooper said. “But I don't want to make it look like an official interrogation by bringing him in here. If it blows up on me, I'll be in less trouble if I talk to him out there without any formalities.”

“But I'd better have some kind of witness to what goes on,” he said to Carvell, “so I'd like you to come along. It'll also make it more difficult for him to shift his story around from what he told you.”

“I'm coming too,” Dorkin said.

Hooper hesitated, gathering himself to say no.

“I was the one who started all this,” Dorkin said. “I was the one who tracked all this down. I want to be there. I'll go in my own car.”

“Okay,” Hooper said. “But I'll ask the questions. I want you to stay out of it. I have the feeling that when this is over, I'm going to end up serving the rest of my career in the Northwest Territories.”

Clemens's Ford was still parked in the yard where it had been earlier in the day, and they drove in and parked side by side behind it, first Hooper and Carvell in the
RCMP
patrol car, then Dorkin in his staff car. It looked a little like a raid.

Once again, they rang the bell, once again waited, so long this time that they began to wonder if it was going to be answered at all. When eventually the door was opened, it was again by the daughter. She looked one after another at their three faces.

“There were just one or two more questions which we thought your father might be able to help us with,” Carvell said.

She stood with her hand on the door, looking past them at the cars in the drive, then above them, beyond the cars, at some-thing higher—the tops of the autumn trees, a passing bird, perhaps merely the sky—a trifling act of seeming inattention whose import Dorkin only came to understand when he remembered it later.

“My father has been having a nap,” she informed them. “If you want to come in, I'll tell him you're here.”

She stood aside by the open door, and they filed in. She ushered them once more into the parlour and with a small nod slipped away, closing the door quietly behind her.

They stood together awkwardly in the middle of the room. They looked at their shoes, at the furniture, at the pictures on the wall. Dorkin found himself studying the awful milksop Jesus. Except for their own breathing, and the shuffle of their feet, there wasn't a sound in the room, nor from beyond the closed door, seemingly anywhere in the house. Their wait stretched to five minutes, then ten, and still there was no sound of Clemens's oxlike tread in the hall.

The realization of what this silence might mean came abruptly to all of them at once, but it was Carvell who moved first. He flung the door open and strode down the hall to the kitchen at the back. It was empty.

A flight of very narrow stairs, as steep almost as a ladder, led up from beside the back door.

“Take the front ones,” Carvell said to Hooper.

He hurled himself up the stairs on all fours like an ungainly dog, and Dorkin followed. They met Hooper in the upstairs hall. There was a bathroom, a back bedroom, a storeroom, all empty. In the front bedroom behind drawn blinds, a small, grey-haired woman in a long-sleeved print dress was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. She looked up at them without surprise, as she might have looked at someone from the household who had happened to glance in at her while passing. Then she looked down again at her hands. She seemed so much older than Clemens that Dorkin thought for a moment that she must be his mother or some aging parishioner he had taken in.

“Mrs. Clemens,” Carvell said, “we wanted to have a word with your husband. Do you know where he's gone?”

“I was afraid,” she said without looking up.

“Your daughter,” Carvell said. “Do you know where your daughter and your husband have gone?”

“I have no daughter,” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “I had two sons.”

“Is she always like this?” Hooper whispered to Carvell.

“I don't think so,” Carvell said. “I've never heard anything about it.”

“Your daughter Elizabeth,” he said to her again. “She let us in. Do you know where she and your husband have gone? Have they gone to the church?”

“Yes,” she continued in the same abstracted tone of voice. “To the church. I was afraid, and they couldn't wait. We were going home. At last, we were going home.”

“There must be a path at the back,” Carvell said to Hooper. And then to Dorkin, “You'd better stay here with her. We'll see if they're at the church.”

At the door, he turned back to Mrs. Clemens.

“Mrs. Clemens,” he asked, “does your husband have a gun?”

“Yes,” she said without looking up. “Yes, we have a gun. There's always danger for us. Evil men.”

“Shit,” Carvell whispered to Hooper. “We should have got him to come back with us when we were here the first time. Come on.”

They pounded down the front stairs and out of the house. Mrs. Clemens continued to sit, oblivious to the noise of their departure, oblivious to the presence of Dorkin. He did not want to be there, dropped out of what was really his show. He looked at Mrs. Clemens. She wouldn't know whether he were there or not, and there must be neighbours who could be sent in.

He descended the stairs quietly so as not to arouse her from her reverie and went out the front door. Across the street, a white-haired man was raking leaves, or pretending to, while he watched the goings-on at Clemens's house. Dorkin sprinted across to him.

“There's an emergency,” he said. “Do you know the Clemenses?”

“Yes,” the man said. “Sort of. They're neighbours.”

“Mrs. Clemens is upstairs. Is there anyone—your wife or someone—you could send in to stay with her for a few minutes?”