by Warren Court
Dead Girl Found
Warren Court
For Tina and Katherine
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book without permission is theft of the author’s intellectual property.
Also by Warren Court
Out of Time (Armour Black Mystery Book One)
https://www.amazon.ca/Out-Time-Armour-Black-Mystery-ebook/dp/B07195HLR5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1535071232&sr=8-1&keywords=out+of+time+warren+court
The Last Dive
https://www.amazon.ca/Last-Dive-Vincent-Thriller-ebook/dp/B06XDVVDQT/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1535071287&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+dive+warren+court
Hog Town (John Temple Mystery Book One)
https://www.amazon.ca/Hog-Town-John-Temple-Mystery-ebook/dp/B07996DXJT/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1535071311&sr=8-1&keywords=hog+town+warren+court
Prologue
“To hell with them.” She slung the nap sack over her shoulder, the contents of which had been hastily thrown together; A pair of jeans and socks, an extra sweater. That was it. No tooth brush or hair brush. Her long brown hair was already a “rat’s nest”, that’s what her mother always called it. She pulled the baseball cap down tight around her head.
She scratched the bandage that covered the tattoo. Two more days and it could come off. Her father had tried to rip it off the night before in one of his rages. “You’re too young to get a tattoo, who do think you are? Only strippers and whores get tattoos.”
She had paid for the tattoo with cash she’d gotten from her mother’s emergency stash in the linen closet. The tattoo, a raven, had cost more than she thought it would, otherwise she would be in taxi to Darren’s place right now instead of hitch hiking. The twenty minute drive to Simcoe would now take hours of walking, if she didn’t get picked up that is.
She turned her head at approaching cars and stuck her thumb out. A transport truck blew its horn and sliced across the lane onto the shoulder sending up a shower of gravel and she jumped back. It was dangerous out here and she knew that if the cops came by they’d pick her up and drive her home. She and her friend Tammy had been caught hitching last summer. The young cop who had put them in the back of his patrol car had dropped Tammy off at home first.
On the way back to her own house the cop pulled over and propositioned her. For a blow job he would let her out of his car a block from her house. She could go home or anywhere else she wanted. She just had to come across. She’d said no and the cop had driven her right up to her house and marched her to the front door. Thankfully that night her dad had not been home. But he had tanned her hide good the next day. She didn’t tell her mom what the cop had offered, she wouldn’t have been believed. “Once a liar always a liar”, her mom was fond of saying.
It starred to rain and she had forgotten to bring a jacket. Her purple Western University sweater was getting soaked. There was a detour sign up ahead, the highway was under construction and the vehicular traffic was being diverted to a side road. At least the cars had to slow down here. Near the exit where the cars were being diverted were several constructions workers and heavy equipment. In front of all of these was a cop car, its lights blinking red and blue. The cop was next to it talking to a man in a hard hat and reflective vest. She panicked, then saw a foot path down the side of the highway to a field. She hopped over the metal barrier and went down the path, hopping across the drainage ditch at the bottom of it.
Cutting across the field she moved through a stand of trees and came out on a paved but narrow road. The sound of the construction work faded and the line of detouring cars could not be seen. She had no idea in which direction to walk but she couldn’t just stand there. It was still raining and instead of taking shelter under the clump of trees she shuffled off down the road, kicking rocks as she went.
She didn’t take notice when the paved road turned to gravel. She was pretty sure she was walking in the direction of Simcoe and sooner or later she’d come upon a farm house or a convenience store or something. She was confident she’d be able to beg someone for a ride to Simcoe. If it was a man she came upon, she could hint at sexual favours in exchange for a ride, and when she got to the Simcoe town limits she could hop out and flip the dude the bird. Tammy did that all the time. She never paid for taxi’s and never ever walked.
As she walked she thought of Darren. She had only recently lost her virginity to him, after a dance at the Port Dover High School that he and his friends had come in for. He had a really good scare when a month after that dance she still hadn’t gotten her period. She was afraid she was going to lose him and then her cycle had started and things had calmed down.
Darren lived with his dad who was cool. He didn’t talk about his mom. In her fantasy she was going to run into Darren’s arms and be welcomed in to his father’s house. They talked on the phone every day and he had taken his dad’s pickup to come see her twice already even though his beginners license required an adult to be in the truck with him.
She’d called him from a pay phone just before she’d started on the highway and left a message that she was coming to see him, that she had no where else to go. Unless she could get a ride it was going to be dark by the time she got to his house. She’d never been too it, but she had the address and knew that he lived two blocks from his school and she knew where that was because she’d gone to a football game there once.
There was the crunch of tires on gravel behind her and she turned, her thumb stuck out for a ride.
1
The surging of blood in his veins and the rush of adrenaline dragged Armour Black out of a deep sleep. He sat bolt upright, clutched his chest and breathed deeply. He had been dreaming of being down at the bottom of a deep swimming pool. He could see the shining waves above him and the blue sky. Try as he might he was incapable of launching himself off the bottom. It was as if he was wearing lead filled, deep-sea diving boots.
His pup tent was so small his head touched the top of it and he could feel the dampness in the fabric. He stretched his back and it popped and cracked. As vintage and period correct as the army cot he had slept on was, it was mighty uncomfortable.
Armour reached forward and undid the draw string and the flaps fell open to reveal an overcast and drizzly morning. His 1921 Model T was shrouded in fog, with only the headlights clearly visible. The fire pit, in between the car and the tent, was grey and smoking.
Even after several deep cleansing breaths Armour’s pulse was still racing. He reached in his nap sack and brought out the plastic bottle of pills. Little green things, smaller than a tic tac. As instructed by the pharmacist he placed one under his tongue and let it dissolve. There was a bitter taste in his mouth that would last for an hour, but the pills were effective.
He picked up a metal canteen cup and in the corner of the tent pushed his finger against the damp canvass breaking the surface tension. He held the cup under the steady stream of water that poured down. The flow of water subsided to drops and then stopped altogether giving Armour enough water to wash down the residue of the anti-anxiety pill.
The water tasted like bed clothes but it was cold. He laid back on his cot to rest. The doctor told him the pills would cause him to feel slightly drowsy and he knew that he could easily slip back into a deep sleep, one hopefully unencumbered by dreams of drowning. But no, he had work to do.
He sat up again, shook his head violently and rubbed his face hard. He smoothed down his hair, which had a crusty hard feeling from the Brylcreme he’d put on the day before when he left his house. He wouldn’t bother with that dandy stuff out here, he was roughing it.
The sun came out an
d things got steamy. His camp site was at the farthest end of the Turkey Point provincial park located on Lake Erie. He could see families farther down the road through the trees. Kids playing Frisbee, people sitting at picnic tables. They were paying him no attention. When he’d arrived the day before they’d all stopped and stared as he cruised by in his nearly hundred-year-old car.
Armour had chosen this site specifically from the map in the campground office as it was the most isolated. It would dissuade people from coming up to look at his Model T, asking why he was dressed this way, what the deal was with his old-fashioned tent, campaign chair, army cot, everything about it.
Armour had not been camping in a while and was flooded with nostalgia tinged with sadness. He’d always enjoyed the outdoors with his wife, Bess. Of course, when they went it was air mattresses and a polar explorer waterproof tent, Coleman stove with eight-ounce propane bottle. All that was from a different age that Armour had shunned when Bess had been taken from him. Now he preferred to live a simpler life, shielded from the realities of the modern world. Armour had taken to the 1920s and built a fantasy life on what he believed was a purer existence. For the most part it worked, he was left alone and modernity only punctured his bubble once in a while.
Armour took the logs out from under his car where he had put them to keep them dry. It had worked and he stirred the ashes of the fire and put one on. The cork cooler he had in the trunk of the Ford had kept the glass bottle of juice and the tin foil wrapped eggs and bacon sufficiently cold. He managed to fit all the food on the cast iron skillet where it sizzled over the reborn fire. He sat back in his campaign chair, the canteen cup filled half way with juice and read a detective story while breakfast cooked.
After breakfast Armour consulted his map. Marked on it with a grease pencil were three cemeteries. Old ones. Hard to find. Off the beaten path. The first one was right next to the campground, about a ten-minute walk from his location, Armour figured. That was another reason he’d chosen to bed down here last night. He hadn’t been able to get away from Hamilton early enough yesterday to find it before it got dark. But he was determined to do so before noon today and scratch one cemetery off the list.
Armour was on a quest to find his great-grandfather’s grave. He remembered his mother telling him that the old timer was buried out near Port Dover where he had worked as a fisherman but she didn’t know exactly where. Armour was trying to compile a history of his family with the help of his friend, Melanie Fabes. He was over to her place earlier in the week and she had pulled up on her computer a site called Ancestry Now and punched in what few details of his relatives Armour had. He had been amazed at what she had found. With just a bit of tapping and jabbing at her purple-coloured machine, she’d been able to print off for him birth, death certificates and marriage certificates on half of his great relatives. Though she had always helped him in the past, he was even further impressed by her and even more in her debt than he was capable of expressing. A place he liked to be, he had to admit.
Armour tidied his camp and doused the fire with the remainder of a pot of coffee. He had until noon to vacate the camp ground and the next two cemeteries were far enough away that he was going to have to get a hotel room tonight to maximize his search efforts. It was all good as Melanie frequently said. They were expecting heavy rain storms tonight anyway and Armour doubted that his vintage tent from the Great War could stand up to that.
Armour took his bearing with a compass and headed off in the direction of the first cemetery. He carried a walking stick, compass, a canteen on his hip and was dressed in his khaki campaign pants, a shirt and bow tie, a thin jacket and wore a poor boy newsy cap on his head. Melanie had said that he looked like something out of an LL Bean catalogue when he set off the day before.
***
Armour checked his pocket watch. It was 11 a.m. now and he’d walked for half an hour. So much for being ten minutes away. He found the entrance to the cemetery hidden by thick bushes. There was only one half of the gate still attached to its stone emplacement, the other half was off and lying on its side. The path into the cemetery was overgrown with tall field grass. He could see the tops of the tombstones sticking up above it.
After walking half an hour Armour had come to a disused road and then first ventured west for a hundred yards until he came to the steep banks of a stream. He and walked in the opposite direction until he spotted the entrance to the cemetery in amongst the maple bush and bramble. The cemetery was small, only about a quarter acre and surrounded by trees.
He was sweating and took a handkerchief and wiped his brow. The canteen was almost drained. He could refill it in that stream but he had to be back and pack his car by noon or else he might be charged the late fee. Armour had paid cash for the campsite and when they asked for a credit card he had paid even more cash for the security deposit. He didn’t want them keeping it – two hundred dollars was all he had left to pay for the next hotel room and gas there and back to his home on Hamilton escarpment.
He started to move among the gravestones. Damnit this was going to take too long. The first ones he looked at were so worn by rain and time that he could barely make out the names. He found that by tracing the worn lines on the stones with his finger he could figure out the letters but that meant he had to straddle the grave to do it, something he thought was disrespectful.
It was in this hunched over position, hidden from view by a rather tall family memorial that he heard the voices coming from the entrance to the graveyard.
“Dude it’s in here.”
Armour ignored it. He had work to do.
“Come on, Angie, this is stupid.”
“No seriously, it’s the freakiest thing.”
Armour looked up without standing upright and saw a teenage girl leading a teenage boy into the cemetery.
Great, distractions, just what Armour didn’t need.
“Angie this place is freaky.”
“Isn’t it? We should do a séance here. See if we can talk to any of these people.”
Unaware of Armour’s presence, the boy sat on one of the short squat tombstones. That’s it, thought Armour, angry now. He stood up straight.
“Excuse me,” he said.
The girl let out a scream and the boy jumped off the stone and spun around in a flash.
“Jesus.” The girl put her hand to her mouth and backed up.
“Whoa where’d you come from?” the boy said.
“You shouldn’t sit on gravestones,” Armour told him.
“Hey man, you shouldn’t go around scaring people like that.”
Armour took a step towards them. The boy was getting his confidence back; he was big like a football player and Armour saw his hands curl into fists but they were still by his side.
“Sorry, just didn’t want to see you disrespecting these grave sites. What are you kids doing here?”
“None of your–”
“We’re just looking.” The girl interrupted her friend. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“Like what?” Armour said. Damn them if he was going to explain himself.
“You look like something out of Boardwalk Empire,” the girl said.
“Yeah you look like a clown,” her friend added.
The girl said, “Wait a second. You’re not a ghost, are you?”
“A what?” Armour said.
“Jesus, Charlie, I think he’s a ghost. He came out of that grave.”
“Really, Angie, do ghosts talk?”
“Some do. Hey are you a ghost, Mister?”
Armour cocked his head, totally at a loss for words.
“Hey can I poke you? If you’re a ghost, my finger should go right through you.” The girl giggled nervously as she approached Armour. Her boyfriend grabbed her by the arm.
“Let me go,” Angie said.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. He’s just a creep.”
Armour stood there, anger now replacing his puzzlement. Damn this kid and his fists a
nd big shoulders. If attacked, Armour would show him a thing or two. But that’s the last thing he wanted, he had a purpose here.
“Seriously are you a ghost?”
“Yes I am,” Armour said. “That’s my grave.” Armour pointed back at the grave he had been reading.
“Oh my god.” The girl shrank back from him.
The girl ran off. Her boyfriend stood there and watched her go then turned to Armour. Looked at him funny.
“I don’t believe you are,” the boy said.
“Really?” Armour raised his hands menacingly and stepped toward the boy. “Arggg,” he growled and he saw all the bluster and strength drain out of the boy as he ran off after his girlfriend. Armour laughed. At least he’d gotten rid of them. Then he thought of something. If they ran into a cop, they might tell about the stranger in the strange clothes going around scaring children. Armour looked at the rest of the cemetery, it would take him over an hour to go through these graves. Damn it, all for nothing. He took off, not running but moving fast, almost as scared as the two young people he’d just sent on their way.
2
Despite being half an hour overdue, Armour got his security deposit back. The teenager behind the counter gave him a funny look but he shelled out the two hundred bucks. Armour figured he could visit the first cemetery another day, now that he knew exactly where it was. He might even be able to get his car right up to the entrance if he could find how to get onto that back road from the highway. That might be a little foolish. The model T had great low gear torque but the tires were not that good and he had no idea what the rest of the road leading to it would be like. It might be overgrown, blocked with fallen trees. Anyway, it was another part of this adventure.
Armour drove out to highway six and pulled over to the shoulder while he checked his map one more time then pulled back out into the light morning traffic. The next cemetery looked to be at least half an hour away as the Model T was only able to get up to eighty kilometres after a long time and that was on a flat or down slopping road. He could never drive his little car on the major highways that saw regular speeds of 120 kph, not without a red and yellow triangular caution sign hanging from the rear of his car and that idea was abhorrent to him.