by Ted Wood
“In the delivery room. Maureen Cassidy's havin’ a baby. Bin in here all day,” he said, ignoring me.
“We're here to examine Mr. Ferris's body,” I said and he glanced at me as if surprised that I knew how to talk. He didn't answer but led us down to the basement where Ferris's body was installed in their tiny morgue, in one of their two cool compartments. The porter's eyes flickered when I pulled the sheet back off Ferris and unzipped the body bag. I could tell that this was the part of his job that he relished most. “Thank you, we can manage now,” I told him, but he didn't take the hint, so I reinforced the message. “If you don't mind, this is an investigation. It's confidential.”
He scowled at Walker, challenging him to overrule me, but when Walker said nothing he left. When he'd gone I laid out a couple of evidence bags on the table beside the body and began going through Ferris's pockets. Walker watched and made a list of contents. In the right top pocket I found Ferris's notebook and I called out what it was and then silently read through the most recent entries. They were routine and ended at the time he had last gone off duty the night before. He also had a pen and a couple of loose summons cards. I went to the other pockets. In the left top pocket was a letter from a small town in British Columbia. I opened it and read the first words. It began, “Dear Dad.” The signature was John. I flicked through the pages, getting the gist of it, which was all personal. Apparently Ferris had a couple of grandchildren out there. The letter made no reference to any other family members.
I noted the name and address in my book and put the letter in the evidence bag. Walker asked, “Who's it from?”
“A son in B.C. Did he have any other family?”
“Didn't know he had anybody.” Walker shrugged. “He didn't talk about any. Not that he talked much anyway.”
I checked his equipment. The holster was empty. His cuffs were there. Next I opened the side pockets. In one was a can of Copenhagen snuff and a wad of tissues, all clean. In the other there was a container of blue pills.
“Uppers,” Walker said.
“Looks like it. I'll have the doctor check them.”
That was it for the tunic. I dug into his pants pockets. He had his stick in the right back, the special long pocket all policemen used to have before the new two-handed sticks came into use. In the left rear he had a billfold, and I drew it out and opened it.
“Driver's license,” I said, checking the number. The last digits of the number give you the driver's date of birth. I saw that he was fifty-eight and that his first names were John Simon.
He also had his police ID, his social security card and a Visa, plus $438, all but the thirty-eight in fifties, which made me wonder if it had come from Loretta's stash. That was all. He had no photographs, none of the trivia that most other men carry with them.
I listed everything and went to the front pockets. In the left he had more tissues, used. In the right he had a pocket-knife, his pouch of spare shells and sixty-six cents in change. That was everything. I looked up at Walker. “Did you see his keys anywhere at the station?”
He looked surprised. “No. ‘Course, I wasn't looking. I was too shook up with finding him like I did.”
“We'll check after,” I said. “He sure hasn't got them with him now.”
The fact surprised me. Every cop carries keys, more so than an ordinary citizen. You have your handcuff key with you at all times on duty, plus the key to your locker and any other keys needed for the job. Usually you keep them all on the ring with your house and car keys.
To complete the search I made a quick check of the other places a man would hide anything. I looked in his shoes and his socks. He had nothing there and he was not wearing a money belt. Except for his wristwatch, which was what seemed to be a genuine Rolex Oyster, he had nothing else but his clothes.
“Pretty fancy watch,” Walker commented. “Hell, I've bought cars for less than he must've paid for that.”
“If it's real,” I said. “Okay, that wraps it up here. Let's go get his keys from the station and search his house.”
“What about the pills?” Walker asked.
“I'll leave them with a note for the doctor,” I said. “We'll check if he's out of the delivery room.”
He wasn't, and the only nurse on duty was in the delivery room with him, so I kept the pills and Ferris's gun, which I had brought with me. “We'll bring them back later. I don't want to leave anything with Frankenstein,” I said.
“He's all right,” Walker said. “Kind of creepy, but I guess working around dead people all the time'll do that to you.”
I didn't argue. I was a little angry with myself for not checking Ferris's locker while I was at the station. It was a routine kind of action I would have taken automatically if I hadn't been thrown off balance by the speed with which Harding had reinstated me.
Harding was not in the station when we returned. The door was locked and we found the radio adjusted to accept telephone calls. I assumed he had gone out on patrol to check the properties. Again, it was unprofessional. He should have given Walker the job and come with me. I dismissed the thought and checked Ferris's locker and found his keys. He had left the key in the padlock, which was hanging open on the hasp. I frowned when I saw it, trying to recreate what had happened before Ferris was shot. On impulse I turned to Walker, who was standing a pace behind me, and asked him, “Could I see your gun, please?”
“What the hell for?” His voice rose angrily and I smiled politely.
“No, I don't think you did it, but I'm in charge of the investigation. I'd do it to anyone.”
He pursed his lips bitterly but drew his weapon and broke it and handed it over. It was clean and smelled of gun oil. I glanced down the barrel, which was shiny bright and had two pits in it. Without being obvious about it I glanced at the tips of the rounds which were visible with the cylinder open. They were hollow points. “These are illegal rounds,” I said.
“We all carry hollow points. The chief gave permission,” Walker said angrily. “A car hit a bear on the road to the mine one time. It was madder'n a snake, dangerous—and the first guy on the scene put four rounds into it before it dropped. After that the chief said we should carry hollow points.”
“I see.” I handed his gun back and he flipped it shut with an angry snap.
I turned away and searched the locker. Ferris had another vial of the same kind of blue pills and a mickey of rye. Aside from that and his civilian clothes there was nothing. I closed the locker again and took Ferris's keys. “Now we come to the hard part,” I said. “Can you grab some more evidence bags, please?”
“Sure.” The word was almost a hiss. He was bitterly angry.
Before we went out to Ferris's house I made sure that his car was locked. I had to search that as well but wanted to do the job in daylight when I wouldn't miss anything. Then we drove out to his house, Walker taking out his anger on the car, driving too fast, cutting the corners, fishtailing once or twice on icy patches, generally acting like a teenager. I ignored the display, using the time to check Ferris's key ring. It held the keys to his cuffs, his house, his locker and his car. Nothing else. I had been half expecting a safety deposit box key and decided to be extra careful looking for one at his house.
Finally Walker squealed to a stop in Ferris's driveway. He made to open the door, but I sat still for a moment. It surprised him and he turned to look at me.
“Okay,” I said. “I know my promotion has got up your nose. I know you're teed off because I checked your weapon. Let's establish right now that I've been given a job to do and I want to do it right. Okay?”
“Yeah.” His tone was tight but then he got hold of himself. “Yeah,” he said again. “I'm sorry, sergeant.”
I could have told him to knock off the rank and use my name, but it would have looked condescending. So I just got out of the car and crunched over the uncleared snow to the front door.
Walker opened it and we went in. The layout was identical to the house I was living
in. Even the furniture was similar in age and style. The only differences were those a woman's presence would make. The few pictures in the place looked as if they had come from Woolworth's, bad prints of northern scenes that gave you the feeling they had been hung only to cover stains on the walls. And even though the house was tidy it had an air of neglect that lay like a film of dust over everything.
“This is going to take a while,” I told Walker. “Stick the coffeepot on, if you can find it.”
“Will do,” he said. He was speaking in a more normal voice now, over his tantrum, ready to bide his time and do as he was told. I heard him clanking in the kitchen as I looked first in the living room, checking for anything that might have served as a desk.
I found a sideboard with one drawer filled with papers. I lifted the drawer out and started going through the contents. They told me nothing. There were the obvious domestic papers, the lease for the house, insurance policies, a couple more letters from his son, bills and receipts. Nothing to point to any corruption. Even his bankbook was innocent. I checked and saw that he had deposited regular amounts every two weeks. They were always the same, always put in on paydays and no more than he could have afforded out of his pay. There was a big brown envelope and I opened that last. It contained photographs. I spread them on the table.
Looking at them made me sad about Ferris's death. They were the first indication that he had once been an ordinary guy. His wedding picture was there. He was in army uniform, with medal ribbons, something that's unusual in the Canadian or British service. He had the striped pair that indicated he had fought in Korea. His bride was a tiny, pretty girl, smiling into the camera as if the sunshine of the day would last forever.
Walker came in with the coffee as I was examining them. He set the cup down clear of the pictures and looked over my shoulder. “Nice-looking lady,” he said.
“You never met her?”
“No. He came here on his own, five, six years ago,” Walker said, slurping his coffee.
I shuffled through the photos, finding a couple with a child in them. Then I found a death certificate made out for a Joan Ferris, dated 1982. The cause of death was stated as cancer. That helped to explain Ferris's unpleasantness. Seeing your wife die from a painful disease would sour any man. He hadn't recovered. That was all the difference between him and other widowers I had known.
“Did he have any women friends in town?” I asked.
Walker pursed his lips thoughtfully. “None I ever heard about. Kind of funny when you think about it. There's a slew of widows his age.”
“Do you happen to know if he saw any of the hookers when they came to town?”
He shook his head. “I don't think so. I was on duty with him a couple of times up there. He used to close down the detail and move out as soon as the girls were through.”
I checked everything—the contents and then the bottoms of the drawers. There was no key anywhere, no stash of money. It was the same in his bedroom. There was a tin in one of the drawers and I opened it with excitement. Perhaps it held his stash of money. But it didn't. It had his personal treasures, the trifles you find in every home. There were his medals from Korea and his regimental cap badge. And in a little jeweler's box, the wedding ring and the engagement ring with the tiny stone that his wife had worn in the wedding photograph.
After checking the contents of the drawers and closets, we were able to wrap up the search in an hour. We found fishing tackle and a Remington hunting rifle in the basement but nothing else. There weren't even any books in the house.
At last I said, “Okay, I guess that's everything. Let's go back to the station.”
Walker nodded without speaking. He seemed depressed, but it was understandable. First Ferris's death, then my promotion over his head. It had been too much to handle. He opened the door and stood waiting while I looked around me one last time. That was when I noticed the kitchen calendar. It had come from a service station, and it featured a pinup dressed in a bikini and a nice shiny wrench. On impulse I walked over and glanced at it. There were a couple of notations written down for certain dates. On the fourth of the month he had a date with the garage to get tires rotated. On the fifth he had seen the dentist. And on the twentieth, two days from now, he had a simple X in red ink.
Walker watched me from the doorway. “Anything important?” he asked wearily.
I kept the news to myself, if it was news. “We know he died with his teeth in good shape. He was at the dentist this month.”
“That's good,” Walker said. “Where he's gone there's a whole lot of wailing and gnashing. He'll need teeth.”
I laughed with him, showing we were both tough cops. He drove me back to the station. Harding was there and I reported my findings, not mentioning the calendar, and he nodded. “What do you want to do next?” he asked.
I sat down opposite him and thought. “We might ask if anybody was in or around the station at the time it happened, if they heard or saw anything. But we can't do that until the morning.”
“Are you saying you don't think this was a clear-cut suicide?” He was quizzical, almost amused, one eyebrow raised slightly. It looked like a gesture he practiced while shaving.
I answered carefully. “It looks cut and dried, but that would wrap it up properly.”
He inclined his head doubtfully. “I guess so,” he said.
“Anyway, I'm going down to the hospital to get the doctor to look at the weapon and the pills I found. Then I'm going home. I'll be in at eight o'clock.”
“Good idea.” He yawned and stood up. “I'm going home too.” He reached for his hat and we walked out together. He stopped to tell Walker to take over and to hold off any calls from the media. Then we went out. As he approached his car, he asked, “Why are you taking the gun to the hospital?”
“The doctor is the only guy in town with any scientific training,” I said. “It looked to me as if it had been fired recently, but that was as much as I can tell.” I wasn't giving him the whole truth. There's more to it than that and he should have known. When a gun is fired into a body from close range it sucks some of the blood back into the barrel. I wanted the doctor to check the barrel and see if he could find any traces.
He got into his car, nodded once and drove off. I stood for a minute, breathing deeply, enjoying the cleanness of the cold air. Then I told myself, Okay, Bennett, hospital, then home.
I found the doctor sitting at the nurse's station. Both of them were drinking coffee, still wearing their operating-room greens. He looked up at me wearily when I came in. “Hi, what's happening at the station?”
“Nothing new, doc. How'd the woman make out with the baby?”
“Fine big boy, nearly six kilos,” he said. “No wonder it took her so long.”
“Good.” That was the formalities over. I recognized the nurse as the one who had been on duty the night I brought Mrs. Wilcox in. I nodded to her. “Busy night?” I said.
“Busy enough.” She was a cheerful type, around forty, running to fat but without the narrowness around the eyes that makes some chubby people look sly. “I hear you're the new sergeant,” she said.
I nodded. “Yeah, surprised me too.”
“Good thing,” she said. “I had you figured for a good guy when you brought Jean in here that night. Want some coffee?”
“No thanks. I just have to see the doctor, then I'm heading home. By the way, how's the woman from the trailer?”
“Still out,” the doctor said. “I'm keeping her body temperature low and maintaining her coma. It should help to minimize the chance of brain damage.”
“When do you expect her to be able to talk?”
“Forty-eight hours more, then we'll bring her out of it.” He yawned and stood up, setting down his cup. “Thanks, Rosie. I'll go talk to the officer, then go home myself.”
“Right.” She swallowed the last of her own coffee and took both cups off to wash them. The doctor looked at my packages.
“What's on your
mind?”
“I'd like to know if there are blood traces in the muzzle, hair, anything else that could have been pulled in there from the implosion after the gun fired.”
He hefted the gun in his hand. “You mean you don't think he did it himself?”
“Just eliminating alternatives. Can you do that here?”
“Blood, yes,” he said “I can even type it if we get any. What else?”
I handed him the bag with the pills in it “I found these in the sergeant's pocket. They look like uppers. I wondered if you could identify them for me?”
He yawned again “Will it do in the morning? The pharmacy's open then.”
“That would be fine. Thank you.”
He stood there with a bag in each hand, looking at me. “Glad to help,” he said. “I'm glad you're around, Mr. Bennett. It's time this town got some proper police protection.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence, doctor. I'll see you in the morning.”
He nodded and turned away and I went home, my mind racing around and around the facts. Freda was awake, and even though I didn't make any noise, she got up and came through to the kitchen where I was getting a glass of water. “Are you all right, dear?”
“I'll be a lot righter after a night in bed,” I said.
She took my hand and led me back to the bedroom.
SIXTEEN
I woke with a start and found Fred gone. The light was on in the kitchen and I padded out there, blinking at the light. She was standing at the stove and there was a good smell of coffee in the air. She looked pale and when I held her she seemed distracted. “It's seven-fifteen, but you were sleeping so peacefully I didn't want to wake you,” she said. “Can you handle a big breakfast?”
“Please. It's probably going to be a long day.”
She turned me around and gave me a gentle shove in the back. “Right. You shower and shave and I'll do my thing here.” I went through to the bathroom with Sam following like a shadow. I'd handed him over to Fred the night before, and he would have obeyed her ahead of me, but he's bonded to me over the five years we've been partners, and despite his training he feels lost unless I'm in charge.