by Warren Court
“No Armour, no you don’t. Don’t go there.” Melanie leaned over and shook him. “Here.” She took the iPad away and Armour felt queasy. Melanie rushed into the kitchen and came back with a cold compress.
“Armour, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
She slapped him. Hard. Again, and again. “Armour stay with me.”
“Alright, stop slapping me. It’s not a spell. I need my coat.” He’d taken his coat off and it was hung over a chair. Melanie brought it over and he pulled the pill bottle out of it.
“Water, please,” he said.
Melanie watched him take a pill and swallow a good mouthful of water before tilting his head back and resting it on the couch.
He chuckled. “You pack quite a wallop. Remind me never to tick you off.”
“A wise policy.” She laughed too.
“It’s too bad,” he said. “I almost hoped it had been a spell.”
“That wasn’t my intention when I showed you those photos. Maybe I subconsciously wanted you to have one? But that’s a horrible thought.”
“How did you find that picture?”
“I just googled Sheila Truscott Scotch Line road and it came up. But you’re right, she was found in ’91. This picture is labelled ’94. Maybe it’s an error.”
“What about the name Sanders, did you find anything on that?”
“Oh my god, Armour, I completely forgot. Give me the iPad.”
Armour handed it to her and she blazed away. He sipped his water.
“I’m searching for Sanders Scotch Line road. 1994. Bingo! Here’s a site for her. They’re hoping somebody who reads it can help to find the murderer.”
Melanie moved closer to Armour on the couch and showed him the page. It was in black with roses framing it and a high school photo of a young girl. Underneath it said Katherine Sanders. 1977 – 1994. Armour looked at it only briefly.
“Now let’s compare.” She hit a tab at the top of the screen and showed Armour the picture of the dead girl in the ditch.
“See the resemblance?” she said. “That’s who’s in the car with you when you’re under one of your spells, don’t you think?”
Armour said nothing.
“I think whoever put that picture of the Sanders girl dead in the ditch thought it was Truscott and tagged it as such. Happens all the time. Oh, there’s something else. You said that a song comes on the car radio. I think I found the song too. Listen.”
Melanie had her smaller device, her phone and she tapped at it. Suddenly a song came on. It was familiar to Armour but he couldn’t place it.
“I don’t know.” Armour admitted.
“Wait,” Melanie said. The song got to the chorus. Armour sat straight forward like he’d been shot in the back and his face went flush red. He gripped the arm of the couch but did not go under.
“Melanie…”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” She wasn’t watching him.
“Yes. How’d you find it?”
“That station we were listening to played it again. It’s called the One Who Saved Me. I’ve heard it three times since. It’s from a band called The Sympatico’s. They were a one hit wonder.”
Armour said. “We’re no closer to finding the killer.”
“Is it Bill Powers in the car with you? It has to be.”
“I’m not sure. All I see are the windshield wipers. Part of a leg. I guess he could be wearing shorts. Do murderers wear shorts when they go around killing girls?”
“I don’t see why not, especially if it’s a spur of the moment thing.”
“Why would she get in a car with him? He’s rough, you know?”
“The website says she disappeared when she was fifteen. That was in ’92.”
“She’s found two years later. Where was she for two years?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bill Powers lives in a house on the shore of Lake Erie, right across from an oil refinery? Could he have had that girl in that house for two years.” Armour shuddered at the thought.
“Maybe he didn’t live there all that time?”
“I have to talk to somebody,” Armour said.
“About what? Who?”
“Best you don’t know.”
“Not that Johnny Pops again.”
“No. Not him. Thank you, Melanie. You’ve been a big help.”
29
Armour parked in front of the Muthukarma’s house, a hundred yards or so up the road from his own. Dr. Muthukarma’s car was in the driveway. An emergency room doctor, she worked long hours and it was rare to see her at home. Mr. Muthukarma was an engineer who was away a lot leaving their son Gim mostly on his own.
Armour approached the front door with trepidation. He had to handle this delicately. He sensed that Gim’s mom did not appreciate her son having a friend who was so much older than him and she probably found him odd. He remembered the suspicious looks she had given Armour the last time he had come to visit Gim. That visit had been harmless, he had found an old bicycle pump in his garage and fixed it and knew the Muthukarma boy rode his bike often. Armour had no use for it. Gim came by Armour’s house regularly on his bike. Usually he had a fishing pole with him so he let Gim fish on his property at a creek that ran over the side of the escarpment down into a gully. That was how they became friends.
He knocked and saw a shadow moving in the glass next to the door. Too short to be Gim, who was tall, near six feet.
The door opened. It was their cleaning lady. A Filipina, Armour guessed.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to see Gim, please. Is he home?”
“He is in the backyard.”
“Oh great.”
Armour went around the back. This might go better than he thought. He peeked over the wooden fence and saw Gim raking leaves.
“Hey Gim.” The boy saw him and came over.
“Come in, Mr. Black.” Armour reached over the fence and undid the latch.
“Is your mother around?”
“She’s inside.”
“I have to ask a favour of you.”
“What kind of favour?” Gim said as he took his rake back to the center of the lawn and pawed at a group of leaves pulling it into a larger pile. Armour wished the boy had not gone back there but stayed in the pathway to the side of the house – hidden. Armour reluctantly approached, fiddled with his cufflinks and looked around. He’d left his bowler in the car otherwise he would be fiddling with that too.
“I need some computer help. Those skills you have, you know what I’m talking about.” Armour had had Gim’s help before. He wasn’t entirely sure what the young Indo-Canadian computer whiz was able to do but somehow, he could extract data from almost any entity he wished. Last time it was the Hamilton police department. Now he wanted Gim to take it up a notch.
“Ministry of Transport,” Armour said. “I want the files on a license plate number. See what cars it was registered to.”
Gim leaned on his rake. “I can do that, should be easy. But I’m busy at the moment.”
“It can wait until after you’re done your chores.”
“No, that’s not what I mean, I have my system running another program. It’s quite intensive. Should be done by this evening though.”
“Any help you can give, Gim, I would be grateful.”
“What’s it for?”
“I’m trying to track down a murderer. I have a suspect and I want some proof to go to the police with.”
“Murderer. Sounds exciting. That could be fun.”
“What could be fun, Gim?” a woman said behind Armour and he spun around. Dr. Muthukarma was standing on their deck. A load of washing in her arms. Neither Gim nor Armour had seen her come through the open glass door at the back of their house.
“Hi, Dr. Muthukarma. Just wanted to stop in and say hi to Gim.”
“Really? I think that’s a bit unusual.”
“Well my friend here, he helps me when I need it. With computers.”
>
“I’m helping him set up a computer. At his house,” Gim said.
“Is that true, Mr. Black?”
“Yes, I am paying your son.”
“A hundred dollars,” Gim said. “I’ll put it towards university.”
“Of course,” Armour said.
Dr. Muthukarma started stringing the clothes on the line and cast that same suspicious eye over Armour.
“Gim. I should be going. Let me know when you have time to help me. I would really appreciate it.”
“No problem, Mr. Black, I’ll be in touch. What type of computer was it?”
“Huh?” Armour said.
“I have to look up the specs on it, maybe I can find a manual online. You said you had something written down.”
“Oh right.” Armour took his notepad out and showed Gim the six-digit license plate number.
“There it is. Got it?”
Gim nodded. “No problem, should be easy.”
“Thanks, Gim. Bye, Dr. Muthukarma.”
Gim’s mother said nothing but watched him leave. His cheeks were red hot now and he breathed in deeply when he got back in his car.
***
The next morning Armour was waxing his car when Gim cycled onto his property with a pleased look on his face. Armour straightened up.
“I found it,” Gim said.
“Really. That was fast.”
“The Ministry of Transport has even less security on their site than the Hamilton cops. It’s a joke really, they should hire someone like me to plug the holes.”
Armour looked around nervously in case anyone was listening, despite being at the very end of the Mountain Brow road away from everyone and everything. He knew that Gim was breaking a serious law on his behalf and guilt and shame were a large part of this equation. Armour was also aware that he himself was involved in the law breaking and that scared him. Maybe because it was such an unknown world to him – these computer gadgets and this invisible network out there that Gim played like a fiddle.
Sure, Armour broke laws, breaking into a school and taking property, the picture of Barbara Housen. Technically he didn’t actually do the breaking but the cops wouldn’t see it that way. To Armour that was a risk he could accept, it was tactile. This computer stuff was wizardry.
“I printed it out,” Gim said.
“This the only copy?” Armour asked.
“Yes of course. I know how to cover my tracks.”
Armour looked at the document – a full page from a dot matrix printer. There were six entries. Each one had Bill Powers name on it, his driver’s license age, sex, address. The bottom entry listed the address where he was living now. Powers had managed to keep that out of the phone book but not off the Ministry of Transport’s computers.
There were six vehicles listed in his name, all of them with the same license plate. He must have moved it from car to car. That explained the six digits instead of the common seven. Even Armour’s car had seven digits which were put in a few decades before. But back in the 70s and into the 80s, license plates only had six.
Each car was a few years older than the day it was registered as Powers bought them used. The entry at the top of the list was what Armour wanted to see. Bill Powers had been issued that license plate in 1984 and had it affixed first to a 1978 Thunderbird. Then in 1989 he switched it to a 1986 Toyota Corolla. He kept that car until 1992, a year after the Truscott girl was murdered. He got rid of the Corolla for a pickup truck.
He got rid of it. Maybe not right away but eventually. His little foreign car. Was there a way to tell if it was four doors or brown? There was no indication of the colour of the car in these entries. Was this sufficient proof?
“This is great, Gim. Thanks so much.”
“You’re welcome Mr. Black,” Gim said.
Armour folded the printout twice and stuck it in his pants pocket. Gim was still standing there. Armour raised his eye brows then clued in.
“How much?” Armour asked.
“One hundred,” Gim said.
“Not sure I have that on me. I don’t think we should put this down on a cheque.”
“Cash is king,” Gim said.
“Let me check in the house.”
Armour went back inside and couple of minutes later emerged with cash in his hand.
“I have forty-four dollars. Will that do?”
“Yes, of course. I can collect the balance at another time.”
“Right, of course,” Armour said grimly. How he hated to part with money. He was on a budget he told himself but he knew his wife and their friends had always called him cheap, sometimes jokingly other times not. The wanderer, that’s what his buddies down at the Spec had named him. When he asked why, they said because he had a habit of wandering off whenever the bill came.
“Thanks again, Gim. I’ll let you know if I need you again?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow for the rest of the money,” he said.
“No problem. If I’m not home, I’ll leave it in an envelope under that planter there.” Armour pointed at a planter of geraniums on his porch.
Armour went back into the house and smoothed the printout out. He read through the entries again. Was this any kind of proof? Burke had written down in his files that he’d gone out to see Powers, the man had a solid alibi. The twelve year-old boy that had seen Truscott and the Macintyre boy together could have been mistaken. Or it could have been another kind of car all together. Armour certainly didn’t know what the different types of cars were at that age other to differentiate between a pickup and a passenger car.
But why did Burke go out there in the first place? Unless the description matched a car that he already knew about. But Burke was gone. The files gave few details. But there was someone who might know what had gone on, even if he hadn’t been on the force. Kenny knew Burke, was there with him when Sanders was found only three years after the Truscott murder. Maybe he knew more than he was letting on.
30
Armour cruised down Port Dover’s main street on his way to the OPP detachment when he spotted a cop car outside a diner. He slowed down as he passed it and inside he saw his old friend Sergeant Kenny sitting at the counter. Armour pulled into an angled parking slot and crossed the street to the diner. His stomach was rumbling anyway and he anticipated being out here for a while. It might take some time to reacquire Powers even though he wasn’t sure what he was going to do when that happened.
Armour sidled up next to the sergeant at the counter. The man was sipping a coffee and had the remnants of toasted egg sandwich with ketchup on a plate in front of him.
“Buy you another cup of coffee?” Armour said when he sat down next to him.
“You again. You stalking me?”
“Stalking?”
“Yeah you got some sort of police fetish. Guys get that sometimes, cop wanna-be’s. You ever want to be a cop, Armour?”
“No, I was a journalist. That was exciting enough.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I handled all kinds of stories. Including murder.”
“Let me guess, including the Truscott one.”
“Yes, but not the Sanders murder.”
Armour raised his eyebrows at the woman behind the counter. She filled the empty cup in front of Armour and gave Kenny a refill.
“How’d you find out about that?” Kenny finally said.
“My friend found it with her computer. And I’ve found out more about Bill Powers.”
“Go on.”
“That Powers was the suspect that Burke went out to see and cleared. He worked at the Eastman Lake Steel plan. He had a small Toyota Corolla back at the time of Truscott. Whether it was brown or not I don’t know. I was hoping maybe you could help find out. What I would also like to know is why Burke even went out there in the first place. Based on an eye witness account of a car on the road? A twelve-year-old eye witness. What lead him to ELS?”
“I wouldn’t know why he went out,” Kenny said. “I wasn’t
even on the force then, you know that.”
“But you were on the force when Sanders turned up dead.”
Kenny turned towards him and looked through squinted eyes at the quirky former journalist-cum-private-detective.
“There’s a photo, of you and Burke standing over Sanders in that ditch. It’s on the internet.”
“That’s on the internet?”
“Yup.”
“That was my first dead body.” Kenny slowly sipped his coffee. “I was excited, you can imagine. When the call came in. I was working the front desk, call comes right into the detective’s desk, must have been routed through 911. Burke and the others, they ran out of there like the place was on fire. It wasn’t until about two hours later that everyone was called out. We blocked off roads, canvassed the farms. Combed through the fields looking for clues. Nothing.”
“She was found near that old farm house where Cathy and her husband live,” Armour said.
“Who?”
“Never mind, it’s not important.” As Armour said that a thought flashed through his mind, of the terrible violence that Cathy’s husband was capable of. He filed it away.
“Coroner said she died of neck compression, she hung herself. There was no evidence of direct foul play but obviously someone took her out there, dumped her. Threw her in that ditch like she was trash.” Kenny looked away from Armour for a second then turned back.
“She disappeared two years before she wound up dead,” Armour said. “Isn’t that odd?”
“We figured she was a runaway and turned to hooking.”
Armour looked puzzled.
“Prostitution, Armour. You carry that innocent rube thing a bit far, don’t you?”
Armour didn’t know what he was talking about as he sat there in his fine wool brown suit, his bowler hat on the counter beside him. His stomach rumbled loudly and Kenny smirked.
“You’re hungry, get the eggs here. Best in town.”
“She was a hooker. You know that for certain?”
“It matched up. There was evidence to that affect.” Kenny got up to leave.
“What kind of evidence?”