The Dells

by Michael Blair

  “You’re not lost, are you?” Claudia Hahn asked.

  “When I was a boy, there was a path to the top of the ridge,” he said. To their right, the steep embankment was eroded and crumbling and no sign of the path remained. “Unless you’re prepared for a nasty scramble, it looks like we’re either going to have to go back the way we came or cross the bridge and take the long way round. If I remember, there’s a place we can cross again a little farther upstream, then a path that will take us up to the old sewage treatment plant, if it still exists. From there we can pick up a path that will take us back to the top of the ridge.” That must have been the route Marvin Cartwright had taken to get from the parking lot to where he’d been killed; Shoe couldn’t imagine a seventy-five-year-old man scrambling up the hillside, especially if he’d been in poor health.

  “Lay on then,” Claudia said.

  Shoe started across the bridge, then stopped, looking over the side of the bridge along the weedy bank of the creek.

  “What is it?” Claudia asked.

  “Go back,” he said, but too late. She stood beside him, peered over the bridge railing.

  “Oh, my.”

  The body of a woman lay face down in the creek bed, legs in the shallow water, head and shoulders under the bridge. She was barefoot and dressed in jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, covered in mud and weeds. Shoe continued across the bridge and sidestepped down the embankment. Claudia Hahn followed, stood over him as he squatted in the muddy water by the body. Despite the smear of mud, Shoe could make out the spiderweb tattoo on the back of her shoulder. He leaned under the bridge and rolled her onto her side. He gently scraped weeds and grasses from her face with his fingers. Her eyes were partly open and filled with black mud. Dark slime oozed from between blackened lips.

  Claudia inhaled sharply and said, “Didn’t I see you talking to her in the park yesterday?”

  “Yes,” Shoe said.

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Marty Elias.” He eased Marty’s body back into its original position under the bridge and stood.

  “Marty Elias? That was the name of the little girl who was attacked after I was.”

  “Yes,” Shoe said.

  “Bloody hell.”

  He looked round. There were no signs of discarded personal effects or her shoes. He climbed the embankment and took Claudia’s hand as she climbed out after him. Her hand was like ice. She had a cellphone in her waist pack and called 911, but Shoe had to explain to the operator precisely where they were.

  They waited for the police by the footbridge. A woman walking a brace of tiny Yorkshire terriers came along the path from the parking area. She was indignant when Shoe intercepted her before she could cross the bridge and politely suggested that she take another route. She started to argue, but his size and the grimness of his expression changed her mind. Muttering about reporting him to the park attendants, she dragged her dogs back the way she had come.

  chapter thirty

  A fter taking her statement, the police sent Claudia Hahn to her friend’s house in a scout car. Shoe was asked to wait at the scene for the detectives. Detective Sergeant Hannah Lewis and her partner arrived a few minutes later, walking from the parking lot, even though the first responders’ scout cars and the Forensic Identification Services truck had driven across the grass, leaving deep ruts in the turf. Shoe and Hannah Lewis watched from a distance as the FIS officers cordoned off the site and began erecting the crime scene shelter over Marty’s body. Timmons was on the footbridge, smoking and talking to a man in rumpled slacks and a sports jacket, the local coroner, who’d pronounced Marty officially dead. Marty’s death saddened Shoe deeply. It was not his fault that she was dead, he knew, but he felt responsible nonetheless. If he’d seen her to her door the night before, or if he’d insisted that she come back with him to his parents’ house after meeting with Joey, perhaps she’d still be alive. If he’d called the police immediately upon returning to his parents’ house and informed them of his and Marty’s meeting with Joey, Lewis might have had Marty picked up, thereby also likely preventing her death. If he’d refused to go with Marty in the first place, called Lewis instead, told her where Marty was supposed to meet Joey, the police would have picked both Joey and Marty up, with the same result. If only …

  “Crap,” Lewis said.

  “Pardon me?”

  She looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed and slightly bloodshot, the flesh around them pale and dry. “I said, ‘crap.’”

  “I heard what you said,” Shoe said. “I was just curious why you said it.”

  “How would you feel if someone you’d interviewed in the course of a homicide investigation turned up dead less than twenty-four hours later?”

  “No worse than I’d feel finding the body of someone I’d been talking to less than twelve hours earlier, who was almost a second sister to me when I was growing up, and who I very much liked.”

  “Yeah,” Lewis said. “Sorry.”

  “Are you all right, sergeant?”

  “Damnit,” she said. “I should’ve insisted on maintaining surveillance on her apartment.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I agreed with my boss that there probably wasn’t any point. Noseworthy wouldn’t have risked going back there. He would have assumed we were watching her.” She sighed. “We have to prioritize resources. Sometimes we prioritize wrong.” She looked at him. “I got your message this morning. What did you want?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” he said. “Tell me anyway. How much worse can my day get?”

  “Marty and I met with Joey Noseworthy last night in Downsview Park,” Shoe said.

  “Last night? Shit, and you’re telling me this now? Goddamnit, if you’d told me last night — better yet, if you’d called before meeting Noseworthy — maybe Marty would still be alive.”

  “I know that.”

  Detective Constable Timmons, cigarette in his mouth, walked over to where Shoe and Lewis were standing.

  “I could have you charged with obstructing a police investigation,” Lewis said.

  Timmons raised an eyebrow.

  “I know that too,” Shoe said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lewis said. She took two or three deep breaths in an effort to calm herself. An errant breeze blew smoke from Timmons’s cigarette into her face. “Put that damned thing out,” she snapped.

  “Sorry, boss.” Timmons dragged hard on his half-smoked cigarette, then flicked it into the creek, downstream of the crime scene.

  Lewis wasn’t done with him. “I’ve had it up to here with your smoking, constable. You get the goddamned patch or I’ll put in a request for a new partner and recommend you for a desk job, where you’ll be inside and not able to smoke at all. Understand?”

  “Look, boss, I — ”

  “Understand?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled. “I understand.”

  “Stay here and keep an eye on things. You — ” She stabbed a finger at Shoe. “Come with me.”

  “Boss,” Timmons said, “maybe I should —”

  “Do what I say without bloody arguing for a change,” Lewis barked. She turned and strode up the footpath toward the parking lot. When they got to the Sebring, she yanked open the passenger side door, leaned in, and took a bottle of water off the seat. Twisting off the cap, she poured water into her cupped palm and scrubbed her face with her hand. Her colour improved. She drank, then offered the bottle to Shoe.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the water bottle from his belt. “I’ve got my own.” He pulled out the spout, squeezed water into his mouth, and hooked the bottle back onto his belt.

  Lewis leaned against the side of the car, took another sip of water, and said, “All right. This had better be good.”

  Shoe told her about his and Marty’s meeting with Joey, keeping it simple, but leaving out nothing.

  “Describe her bike,” Lewis said, when he’d finished.

  “It’s an old two-cylinder Triumph Bon
neville. Dark blue. Big saddlebags. Pretty beat up. It burns oil.”

  “Did Noseworthy tell you the name of the bar he was thrown out of?”

  “He thought it might have been a place called the Jane Street Bar and Grill. It’s owned by a man named Douglas Hallam.”

  “I know it. It’s a dive. And Noseworthy claims he doesn’t remember anything between getting thrown out of the bar at midnight and waking up on Marty’s couch the following morning.”

  “That’s what he said. He may suffer from alcoholic blackouts.”

  “When were you going to tell me about this? You were going to tell me, weren’t you? Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’ll assume that’s why you called. You could’ve called earlier, though. Has it occurred to you that Noseworthy may have killed her?”

  “Yes,” Shoe said. He had accepted the possibility that Joey had changed his mind about running, or changed his mind about taking Marty with him, and had called her to meet him again, or gone to her place.

  Perhaps they’d argued. Perhaps Joey’s temper had got the better of him. Perhaps …

  “But … ” Lewis said. “I don’t believe he did.” He almost added that the reason he didn’t believe Joey had killed Marty was because Joey loved her, but he knew that love, in one form or another, was all too often the motive for murder.

  Timmons trudged up the path to the parking lot. He was breathing hard and perspiring heavily under his jacket. Shoe could almost feel the man’s need for a cigarette.

  “Ident says COD looks like manual strangulation,” he said. “Bruises on her neck. Too much mud on the body to tell if there’s any petechial haemorrhaging or if she was sexually interfered with.”

  “Okay,” Lewis said. She stood away from the car. She opened a back door. “Get in,” she said to Shoe. “We’ll take you back to your parents’ place. I want to talk to your sister.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Lewis and Timmons waited in the living room of parents’ house as Shoe went into the kitchen. Rachel was at the sink, washing dishes. Through the open window, Shoe could see his mother and father sitting in their lawn chairs, and hear his father’s voice as he read the Sunday paper aloud in his usual wry style.

  “The police would like a word with you,” Shoe said to Rachel.

  “What about?” she asked, drying her hands with a dish towel as she followed Shoe into the living room. “Christ, is it Hal? Has something happened to Hal?”

  “It’s Marty,” Shoe said. There was no easy way to say it. “She’s dead. Claudia Hahn and I found her body in the creek an hour and a half ago.”

  Rachel slumped onto the sofa. “Oh, god.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Lewis asked.

  Rachel looked at Shoe. “She came by early yesterday evening to talk to Joe.”

  “Before that … ”

  “When she left the park with you. Oh, god, was she raped?”

  “We won’t know for certain until after the post-mortem,” Lewis said. “You and she spent some time together yesterday.” Rachel nodded. “What did you talk about?”

  “Mostly we reminisced about growing up.”

  “Did she seem troubled, worried about anything, or anyone?”

  “No. There was some problem with work, but otherwise she seemed fine.”

  Lewis nodded and scribbled in her notebook. “What sort of problem?”

  “She didn’t say, but I think it had something to do with how her boss, Tim Dutton, runs the business.”

  “He owns a hardware and building supply company, is that right?”

  “His father started it more than forty years ago. Tim runs it now, but the family still owns it. I don’t think they’re doing very well. There’s a lot of competition from the big chains nowadays. Marty’s father was a general contractor, so she knows — knew the business, in some ways probably better than Tim. Tim isn’t the kind who takes advice very well, though. Especially from a woman. Um … ” Rachel hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I think she was having an affair with him, too.”

  “Dutton?” Rachel nodded. Lewis thanked her for her help, then she and Timmons left.

  “I’ve got to get over to the park,” Rachel said. She collected her file box and computer from the dining room table. “You know where I’ll be if you need me. Despite what Hal thinks, Mum and Dad will be okay on their own if you have better things to do than hang around here.” She stood in the doorway, holding her boxes. “Jesus Christ, Joe,” she said, eyes glistening with tears. “Poor Marty.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be okay,” she said. She was lost in thought for a moment, then focused and said, “What are the chances there’s a connection between Marvin Cartwright’s murder and Marty’s?”

  “Too good,” Shoe replied.

  chapter thirty-one

  When Hal regained consciousness — you couldn’t call it waking up; it was much too painful — he had no idea where he was. He barely knew who he was. His head was splitting, an almost unbearable stabbing pain behind his eyeballs and down the back of his neck. When he tried to sit up, he broke into a cold sweat and nausea clawed at his guts. He fell back with a moan, then stiffened as pain lanced through his head. Was he having a stroke? he wondered. If he was, he wished it would kill him and get it the hell over with.

  He lay as still as possible, breathing shallowly through his mouth, trying to control the nausea and the pain. When both had subsided a little, he dared slowly crack open his eyes and look around. He was in a motel or a hotel, but where it was located was anyone’s guess. He closed his eyes again.

  Thirst finally drove him to get out of bed and stagger half blind with pain into the bathroom where, unable to find a glass or a cup, he drank handful after handful of tepid, bitter-tasting water from the faucet. He’d have traded his soul for a bottle of Tylenol.

  He raised his head and stared at himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked even worse than he felt, as if he’d been dead for a week and only recently dug up. His skin was pasty and oily and his eyes were bloodshot, red-rimmed and crusted. There was what looked — and smelled — like dried vomit in his hair. He was wearing only his underwear. He didn’t know where his clothes were.

  Gritting his teeth, he removed his underwear and wristwatch and started the water in the bath. There was no shower curtain, just hooks. “Screw it,” he muttered, and pulled the knob that diverted the water to the shower head. The spray was weak and uneven, and the temperature kept changing, but he stood under it for a long time before unwrapping the tiny bar of soap and washing himself from head to toe. He dried himself with a towel that was coarse and smelled of bleach.

  Christ, where was he anyway? More to the point, how had he got here, wherever the hell here was?

  He trudged into the bed-sitting room. His clothes were in a heap on the floor beside the rumpled bed. His wallet was in his pants’ pocket and he seemed to have all his credit and debit cards. There was no cash, even though he remembered withdrawing $200 from an ATM after leaving the office on Saturday. He went to the window and parted the curtain to squint out on an unfamiliar commercial street a storey below, awash in brilliant sunshine. He looked at his watch. It was 12:35. Sunday? God, he hoped so.

  He sat on the edge of the bed to dress. Each movement brought a fresh wave of nausea. Between struggling into his shirt, damp and smelling of beer and vomit, and pulling on his equally soiled trousers, he tried to recall how he’d come to be there. He didn’t remember arriving or checking in. In fact, he didn’t remember much of anything after leaving his parents’ house in a huff because everyone thought he’d had too much to drink — he hadn’t then, but he’d obviously had more later — and meeting Dougie Hallam at his bar. He supposed he was suffering from some form of retrograde amnesia from drink.

  Dressed, he sat on the side of the bed, breathing hard and fighting off the nausea, concentrating on the carpet beneath his feet. When it passed, he went into the bathroom an
d drank some more water. He urinated, left arm braced against the wall over the toilet. His bowels churned and he knew he was in for a bout of diarrhea, which was his usual punishment for drinking too much.

  Returning to the main room, he sat down again on the edge of the bed to catch his breath. He noted for the first time that there were a dozen or more empty beer bottles scattered about, as well as an empty Canadian Club bottle on the coffee table. There were also a dozen butts of his brand of cigarettes in the ashtray beside the bed. Some of them were ringed with dark red lipstick. Then he saw the empty blue foil condom packet on the floor under the edge of the bed. There were two more on the floor by the easy chair.

  “Oh, god,” he moaned aloud, as he remembered the blonde woman squatting over the great spill of his gut, heavy breasts bouncing and breathing hard as she pumped up and down on thick thighs, muttering, “Come on, you fat bastard, come on.” He barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up into the toilet.

  Other disjointed fragments of memory surfaced as he hunched over the sink, rinsing and spitting: making another withdrawal from an ATM while Dougie and the blonde waited in Maureen’s car; Dougie slumped in the easy chair in the motel room, trousers around his ankles, the blonde crouched between his knees, his big hands clamped on either side of her head; and another woman, this one with dark hair and a garish tattoo at the base of her spine, performing oral sex on the blonde while Dougie Hallam knelt over them on the bed, masturbating.

  Hal’s stomach heaved and he retched into the sink. Acid burned in his throat with each painful spasm. Slumping to the floor, he curled into a ball, arms wrapped around his head, moaning. He squeezed his eyes closed until red sparks flashed, but he could not eradicate the image of Dougie Hallam, Canadian Club bottle in one hand, erect penis in the other.

  He curled tighter, moaning aloud again as he remembered Dougie Hallam slapping him, cursing him, while he whimpered and moaned on the bed. “Come on, you fat fuck. Get your ass in gear. Shit! Well, you’re on your own, lard boy.” And his relief when Dougie finally left him alone.