by Warren Court
“Move it,” Powers said.
“You can’t kill me. Too many people know. If I go missing…”
“Save it.”
Sergeant Kenny he knows. Armour almost said something about Melanie knowing but he decided to leave her out of it. But Kenny… he would become suspicious if Armour suddenly stopped snooping around town. Or would he?
Armour was propelled into the darkness. Powers knew the plant well even in the dark and he pushed his captive deeper into it. There was a large cleared space and beams of moonlight shot down like streamers. There was a doorway at the end and without coming from around back, Powers kicked it open and then suddenly they were outside. Armour’s single light of his car played off the dual lights of Powers’ pickup. They moved out into the parking lot towards the vehicles.
“You’re a blackmailer,” Armour said. “But you’re not the killer. That’s all we want. The name. Who is it?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not a killer.”
“Oh no.” Powers tripped on something, a piece of rebar perhaps and Armour saw his chance. He rounded on Powers and grabbed his arm. Powers fired into the ground. The shot was short and loud and the smell of cordite stung at Armour’s nostrils.
Armour struggled, put all his weight into the man. His left arm free, he swung at Powers and connected on his jaw. It wasn’t his leading arm, Armour was no south paw but the blow was good. Another one for good measure and Armour heard the gun thud on the ground. Armour kicked at it and, in a cloud of dust, sent it flying away.
“Who is it? The killer? This ends tonight, tell me who it is,” Armour hissed.
Nothing from Powers.
“Why did Burke come to see you? How did he know about you?” Armour had a dozen questions, but Powers was giving none of it up. How far would Armour go?
The answer was not far at all. He intended to put Powers in his car and drive him into town and to the cops. He swung the still dazed Powers around. There was blood coming from his mouth. Two-gun shots rang out and Armour actually felt them hit Powers’ back. Powers was propelled forward. The security guard landed on Armour. He pushed him off and got to his knees in time to see a vehicle – a third one that had no lights on – roar backwards up the service lane. Armour looked down at Powers who was quite dead.
“Jesus, no,” Armour shouted. He stood up and looked up the road but the murderer’s fleeing car had disappeared.
34
Armour eased out of his brown jacket which was hopelessly torn at the shoulder where that conduit had caught him. But it had probably saved his life. His pants were torn at the thigh. Cathy took them away, leaving him there in his socks and underpants.
The unforgiving environment of an old steel plant at night had left a deep and nasty gash on his thigh. His shoulder was lacerated, but the wound had sealed and the blood had dried. Cathy went to cleaning his wounds with warm water, the jug had been placed near the fire. Armour grimaced.
“Sorry,” she said. “I should clean this with iodine or alcohol. That’ll really sting. You should get stitches.”
Armour looked down at the wound courtesy of the Eastman Lake Steel plant. He figured he got off easy compared to the now rapidly cooling Bill Powers. What to do, what to do? So much for not getting anyone killed this time around. Had it been his fault though? Of course, if he hadn’t gone down that road to the plant and interfered with Powers’ blackmailing scheme, the security guard would still be alive.
“Where’s your husband?” Armour asked. Cathy momentarily paused tending to him then went back at it with extra vigor and Armour supressed another wince.
“He won’t be home. He’s gone.”
“When? Where?”
She rinsed the now bloody cloth out into the bowl.
“I’ll get a dressing you can put on it.”
“I have no mercurochrome,” she said, applying the white field dressing. Armour’s eyebrows went up. He thought he was the only one who still used that old-fashioned antiseptic for cuts and bruises.
As she was doing the dressing over his shoulder he laid his head into her stomach and she momentarily stopped and rubbed his hair.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” he said.
“No.”
The wounds on her face had healed remarkably fast and if she applied a little makeup they would vanish all together. Armour thought about Cathy’s husband. There was no picture of him in the small house, nothing for him to gauge a sense of the man. All he had to go on was that he was frequently away, and prone to violence. Then he remembered the dead girl, within sight of this house. And one further down the road. Where was he? Where had he been tonight?
Armour sensed that the man had a separate life, perhaps multiple lives. Women stashed here and there. Maybe kids. He shuddered again. Then he remembered the hobo code carved into the fence post. He had looked it up back at his house. It warned would be travellers and other hobos that a dangerous man lived in this house. That they should pass on by and not stop for a hand out or place to sleep. But that code had been done ages ago. He doubted it was used much anymore if at all, hobos having gone the way of the carburetor and other old stuff that Armour cherished.
“You’ll spend the night,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “I should go to the police but I’ll go tomorrow.” Then he thought of Bill Powers lying out there prone in the darkness all night. Would animals get at him? Would he incur more suspicion, rage from Sergeant Kenny and his colleagues for not going straight to them?
He looked at Cathy’s face, the longing there, the hunger and he decided it could keep till the morning. Besides he didn’t relish a return trip to that ghostly steel plant in the dead of night. Even if he was in the company of Kenny.
He got in Cathy’s bed. She puttered around while he turned on his side and tried to sleep. He couldn’t. His mind was racing, replaying the encounter over and over. Would Powers have killed him? If so who shot him? The real killer that Powers had been blackmailing all these years had saved his life. But now the link was broken. How would he possibly pick up the trail of this new suspect? Then he thought of Cathy’s husband again and that encounter with the person who’d put a gun to Cathy’s head. Rest on it, there would be plenty of time to figure it out. For now, there was bed. And Cathy.
35
The next morning Armour went out to inspect the headlight on his Ford. There was no sign of the bullet, it had shattered the bulb but that was all. Armour had spares back at his house. He’d bought a parts car years before and stripped it of everything useful. The bits were in boxes on shelves in his garage. The motor and transmission were wrapped in oil rags and tucked under his work bench.
That was one of the reasons he had not driven home after the shootout at the steel plant, he didn’t want to get pulled over because of a burnt-out light. It would have led to questions he couldn’t answer, especially when the cop saw his torn suit and wounded shoulder and thigh. Now he was in his pants and shirt only, Cathy had sewn both of those but said the jacket was a write off, would never look right. He flexed his shoulder and winced. It was sore but would heal. He figured he didn’t need stitches and Armour was never opposed to getting a good deserved scar here or there. Never tattoos, those were abhorrent to him. Only sailors or convicts got tattoos. But a good scar had a story and this one certainly did.
Armour came back in the house to find Cathy cleaning up after breakfast. Though he had ate heartily his stomach still rumbled.
“Cathy, I have to get going,” he said. She didn’t look at him, just kept putting dishes in the basin.
“Cathy?” There was no reply so he left it. This was always the way when leaving her. He couldn’t tell if it was anger, or disdain or complete disenchantment, disinterest. But yet he kept coming back. Armour shrugged and left her house. He looked in his rear-view mirror at the tiny farm house the whole way down the Scotch Line road, half expecting Cathy’s errant husband to come pe
eling into her driveway. But the house just disappeared in a cloud of dust and then was gone behind a rise and dip in the road.
***
Armour finished fitting the new headlight, checked it and was happy with the result. He doubted he could get glass to replace the broken lens but the unit itself would be kept. Put in the same box he had retrieved the spare from and he put that inside his car, he would bring it to the OPP detachment as proof of the encounter. After that work he went inside his house and phoned Melanie.
She said, “I went by your house last night.”
“I was in Port Dover.” There was no way he was going to tell her about Powers and the deadly encounter at the steel plant.
“At a hotel?”
“No,” Armour said.
“Oh. I have something to tell you. That song. I don’t know how you have it in your dream or spell or whatever you call them. But it couldn’t have been from the Sanders girl’s abduction.”
“How so?”
“Because it was released after her body was discovered. Nine months actually. I looked it up on line.”
“That is interesting.”
“So, what do you think it means?”
Armour sighed. “I have no idea at this point. Something happened last night, something awful. I have to go back there. To the cops.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“No,” Armour said. “You don’t need to get involved in this anymore than you already are.”
“I see.”
“Take care, Melanie. I mean that.”
“Is there something you want to tell me, Armour?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Armour walked into the Port Dover OPP Detachment, his confidence and resolve seeping out of him with each step. He had been so sure of himself on the drive out. Go in there and just tell them everything. He hadn’t killed anyone; the gun and body should prove that. He knew there were tests to see if he fired a gun. Bring them on. There would be tire tracks too, to back up his claim.
A female cop behind the counter told him to take a seat while she checked on Sergeant Kenny in the back. He couldn’t sit, he was too wired. Instead he wandered over to the bulletin board and saw the flyer for the wounded officer benefit, the Rickover girl notice sticking out behind it. He lifted the benefit leaflet and studied the Rickover girl’s face. He went back to the desk. The woman had returned.
“He’s out,” she said. “Not expected back for some time. You can leave a message for him.”
Armour took a note pad on the desk and wrote. He tore the sheet off, folded it in half and wrote ‘for Sergeant Kenny’ on it. He handed it to her, the implication obvious; for Kenny’s eyes only.
36
Armour waited at the top of the road to the Eastman Lake Steel plant for two hours. He was about to call it quits, Kenny could come to Hamilton for a change. Armour was getting weary of driving out here. Then he saw a squad car come around the cut off on highway six. Kenny at the wheel.
Kenny stopped and got out. Armour, who had been leaning on the front fender of his Ford, pushed himself off and met the sergeant half way.
“He’s down there.” Armour pointed down the road to the plant.
“Who is?”
“Powers. Bill powers. His body is…”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes. He was shot, last night.”
“Get in,” Kenny said. Armour made to get in the front passenger seat of the cop car.
“No, the back,” Kenny said and opened the door for him. Armour got in and Kenny slammed the door closed. Armour realized he had no way to get out. No door handles on the inside. Of course, made sense, it was a squad car after call. Used for hauling suspects off to jail. And he had walked right into it. At least he wasn’t cuffed. Not yet.
The back seat was covered in warm sticky vinyl. To facilitate the cleaning up of vomit and blood, Armour surmised. Nice.
Kenny drove slowly down to the plant. He came into the clearing and there stood the plant, rusting away. It looked smaller in the daylight than it had seemed last night. It had been a big and scary dark mansion then. A castle. Now it was just a pathetic little steel plant, playing second fiddle to the big plants in Hamilton and Nanticoke. The faded and rusting dreams of second rate industrialists.
Armour looked around and noticed the problem immediately. Powers’ truck was nowhere to be seen. Kenny stopped and got out and walked around a bit, kicked at the dirt then came back. He opened the squad car rear door and Armour got out.
“This some kind of joke?”
“Sergeant Kenny I swear. I was here last night with Powers and someone shot him.”
“Not you,” Kenny said. “You didn’t shoot him.”
“No of course not. He was blackmailing the killer, the one for Truscott and Sanders and probably the others.”
Kenny gave him a queer look.
“Barbara Housen, and that other girl, what’s her name?” Armour’s mind was racing and he struggled to pull it all together. It came to him. “The Rickover girl, Natalie Rickover disappeared in 1998.”
“How’d you know about that?”
“It’s on the notice board in the station. It was covered up by something else. How do you expect people to come forward with information if you cover the notices?”
“That’s been up there for years. We don’t have the heart to take it down, we all know the Rickovers.”
Armour walked to where he thought Powers had lain the night before. Kenny made no move to stop him. The ground where he had lain seemed somewhat disturbed, it was a bed of broken and crushed gravel with bits of soil showing through. There were no obvious signs of blood. He went over to where the pickup had been and saw a swirl of car tracks. He thought he recognized those of his own Model T.
“He was right here. I followed him and he shot at me.”
“Who did?”
“Powers.”
“So, he had a gun.”
“Yes, he shot at me, he was going to kill me.”
Kenny stood motionless.
“Then someone, the person he’s been blackmailing shot him. Saved your life,” Kenny said his voice full of sarcasm.
“Yes, he did.” Armour insisted.
“Well I can’t waste any more time on this. I’ll go by Powers’ house. See if he’s there.”
“No way he can be.”
“So, you say.”
“Let me ask you. What about the house on the Scotch Line road? Have you investigated the husband for these murders?”
“Who?”
“That farm house on the Scotch Line road, right where the Sanders girl was found.”
“That was twenty years ago. Don’t know what you’re talking about or who. What’s the name?”
Armour realized he didn’t know and shrugged. All he knew was Cathy. Not even her last name.
“I’m gone. You can walk back up to your car, right?” Kenny said.
“Yeah sure.” Armour watched Kenny depart, turned and a wind caught him. He was chilled standing there without his jacket, it was back at Cathy’s place. He looked one last time at the rusting plant and a shiver went up his spine.
***
“Get out!” Cathy screamed at him.
“I just want to know where your husband is. Hell, I’d be satisfied if you just told me his name.”
Cathy came from the darkness of the bedroom where she had stood since Armour came in. He saw the bruising on her face. It was in different spots than the last time. They were fresh.
“My god!” He took a step towards her. She had a knife and held it up to her and shrank back against the wall.
“Don’t come near me.”
He put his hands up. “Cathy, it’s me, Armour.”
“Get away,” she screamed.
“I want to help you. If your husband is beating you, then I want to help.”
“Get away. I won’t let you hit me again. Not over m
y dead body.”
“Cathy.”
“Get out!” She slashed at the air with the knife. Something fell off the banister and she jumped and slashed in that direction.
“Cathy, please. I’m your friend.”
“I didn’t sleep with him. You’re crazy,” she said.
“What?”
“I didn’t. It’s all in your head. You’re drunk.”
“She slashed again and was crying. Don’t hit me.”
Armour with his hands up backed slowly out of the house. When he was outside, the door was slammed shut and things got awfully quiet. He waited in his car up the road from the farm house. Waiting for the husband to come back. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Just get a good look at him. Take him down with a right cross. Lay a beating on him to rival that on his wife’s face. After a while he started his car and left.
Armour was driving through Nanticoke Hamlet, past where Powers lived. There were no squad cars, no press vehicles. Kenny may have checked on the missing Powers? Maybe not.
He followed along the lake shore road into Port Dover and swung by the high school. The bell hadn’t rung yet but a few kids were milling around outside. They stopped what they were doing to watch the vintage Ford pull up. He parked and went in. He saw the sign at the front of the school; “Please start your visit to our school by going to the office”. Instead of turning left to the office as he should have, he turned right.
The hallways had a dozen kids mingling around. A classroom door was open and he walked by and saw a woman in jeans and a t-shirt at the front of the class, a complex mathematical problem on the board. The kids in the class looked bored. More than one had a phone up to their face.
Armour came around a bend and saw the glass case from which he had taken the picture of Barbara Housen. There was still a blank spot in the cork board where the photo had been but the glass had been replaced. Glued to the glass case at the top of it were letters cut out in coloured paper. They said: “Celebrating Our 50th Year!” Armour hadn’t seen that last time, it had been too dark.