Killers

by Laurence Gough

  Orwell had seven hours of Q & A on tape, but nobody was any wiser than when they’d begun.

  Dan Oikawa, who happened to be passing by, jerked his thumb at Spears. “He okay?”

  “Righteous exhaustion,” said Orwell. “You could nail a smoke alarm to his head and light him on fire, he’d sleep right through it.”

  Oikawa said, “I got ten bucks says you’re wrong.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And I’ll even supply the materials. But you do the carpentry work.”

  “You’re on,” said Orwell. Winking at Willows, he said, “Where’s Parker?”

  “She’s around.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Willows.

  Orwell said, “The thing is, Vladimir shows all the classic signs of genuine remorse. I think he really loved the broad.”

  “If you say so, Eddy.”

  “I do say so.” Orwell stared down at the largest of the photographs of himself, his wife and child that cluttered his desk. “See, I’ve been in love, so I know how to recognize the symptoms.” Parker entered the squad room. Orwell smiled broadly. “Morning, Claire.”

  Parker nodded tersely as she made her way to her grey-painted metal desk. She shrugged out of her coat, sat down and rifled energetically through her message slips.

  Orwell said, “You’re looking good this morning.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well rested,” said Orwell. “Rarin’ to go.”

  Parker looked up from her messages, met and held Willows’ eye, then turned to Spears.

  “What’s his problem?”

  “Heart attack,” said Orwell. “We got a pool going on when his wife’ll phone to find out why he’s late for dinner.” He smiled. “Care to pick a month?”

  Parker straightened some papers on her desk. She said, “You look awful, Jack. Have a problem getting to sleep last night?”

  “As a matter of fact, I slept like a baby.”

  “Just make sure we don’t catch you sleeping with a baby,” said Orwell.

  Willows said, “You’re a sick puppy, Eddy.”

  “Arf!” said Orwell. He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth and let his fat pink tongue hang out. Breathing heavily, panting, he stared bright-eyed at Parker as if waiting for her to take him for a walk.

  “Down boy,” said Oikawa, continuing on his way.

  “Arf!” said Eddy.

  Inspector Homer Bradley stood at his office door, his arms folded across his chest. He caught Orwell’s eye. “What’s Farley’s situation?”

  “He’s been up all night, Inspector.”

  Bradley said, “Wake him up and send him home.” He disappeared into his office.

  Orwell rapped his knuckles against Spears’ temple as if he was knocking on a door. Spears’ eyes popped open. He sat bolt upright. In a perfectly clear voice he said, “I guess we can scratch the smoke alarm as a fundraiser.”

  Orwell nodded. “Maybe so. But I bet if we put our heads together we can think of some other reason to light you on fire.”

  Spears said, “I’d like that, Eddy.”

  Orwell shot Spears a sly look. He winked, gave Parker a sideways glance and said, “Know who I’d really love to set on fire?”

  Willows said, “No, Eddy. Who?”

  “Vladimir,” said Orwell, a little too promptly. He snatched up his giant-size bottle of Windex and grabbed one of the dozen gun-metal framed photographs of his wife and child that littered his desk. He triggered a fine spray of blue liquid, industriously wiped the glass clean with his handkerchief. “Want to know something, Farley?”

  “Probably not,” said Spears.

  Orwell put the picture down and picked up another. Judith smiled lovingly up at him from the head of their dining room table. Orwell fired away. A jet of Windex hit her right between the eyes. He said, “Sometimes I wish this stuff was Mace, or even that new pepper spray we got. But Mace would be better.”

  “C’mon, Eddy. That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s true. I admit being married has certain advantages. But there are times lately when I feel like a trapped animal.”

  “I’m sure I speak for all of us,” said Willows, “when I say that comes as no surprise.”

  “Yeah?” Orwell looked pleased. He tugged at an earlobe. “Thanks, Jack.”

  Inspector Bradley reappeared in his doorway. He pointed at Willows and Parker, motioned them towards his office.

  Parker pushed her chair away from her desk. She stood up.

  Orwell said, “Hey now, don’t go away mad.”

  Bradley waited until the two detectives were in his office and then shut the door.

  Willows said, “What’s up, Inspector?”

  “I just got a call from a guy named Tony Sweeting. Ring a bell?”

  Parker shook her head, no.

  Willows waited.

  Bradley said, “Mr Sweeting’s the director of the Vancouver Public Aquarium. He phoned to tell us that a member of his staff has just discovered a body floating in the killer whale pool.”

  Parker said, “What kind of body?”

  “The body of a naked male Caucasian. Possibly a staff member, although no positive identification has yet been made due to the fact that the guy’s floating face down and nobody wants to touch him.”

  “If the body’s floating face down, how can this guy Sweeting be so sure it’s a male?”

  “Hairy legs. Bald head.” Bradley grinned. “Come to think of it, it’s a lucky thing I’m standing here talking to you. Because otherwise it could be me.”

  Bradley opened a desk drawer and pulled out a box of wooden kitchen matches, lit one with his thumbnail. The match flared hot and bright. Bradley huffed and puffed. The flame was extinguished. The air stank of sulphur. Bradley waved the smoking match at Willows and Parker. “It’s your case, kids. From what I understand, there’s more than enough of the guy for the two of you.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Have fun!”

  *

  Willows checked a brown Ford out of the car pool. The car had blackwall tires, mini-hubcaps, four doors and a whip antennae. They called them unmarked cars, but he wasn’t sure why. He drove against the flow of traffic down the one-way alley that ran behind the Public Safety Building, turned left on Cordova, made a right on Main and another left on Powell.

  Parker sat quietly in the passenger seat, staring straight out the windshield.

  Willows said, “Homer was in a pretty strange mood, wasn’t he?”

  Parker nodded, not looking at him.

  Willows said, “Look, Claire…”

  “What?”

  Despite the heavy downtown traffic there was still plenty of snow on the roads and in places the surface was slick with ice. Willows eased his foot off the gas as brake lights flashed in front of him.

  Parker said, “Have you made up your mind what you’re going to do?”

  Willows said, “It isn’t that easy…”

  “No? Well, that’s too bad. But if that’s how it is, I don’t want to talk about it. Because it’s your problem, not mine.”

  Willows nodded.

  There was only one road to the aquarium, and so, once they hit the park, Willows inadvertently followed the route Chris and Robyn had taken over twelve hours earlier.

  Despite the early hour and inclement weather, there were a dozen or more cars in the parking lot and several groups and individuals wandering around the zoo area, bundled up against the cold and somehow looking pathetic and lost.

  The aquarium’s director, Anthony Sweeting, had suggested to Bradley that the investigating officers use the staff entrance at the north end of the aquarium — door number five. Willows and Parker walked in and found themselves in a spacious reception area. Willows identified himself and said Tony Sweeting was expecting them.

  “Anthony Sweeting,” said the secretary, correcting him.

  Willows nodded. “Sorry.”

  The secretary’s lon
g chestnut hair was swept up in a french twist. She was wearing too much lipstick on too much mouth, and the lenses on her oversized glasses made her eyes look small and close-set, myopic. She tossed a yellow wooden pencil in a ceramic mug, smiled at Parker. “He’s out by the whale pool, I’ll show you how to get there.” She was wearing a thick patchwork quilt of a sweater with a maple-leaf design, and tight black Levis. Willows tactfully admired the way the Levis label sewed to the back pocket of her jeans fluttered like a little red flag when she walked. She caught him peeking and gave him a look that reduced him to nine parts pathetic and one part immature.

  They walked down a long, windowless, carpeted hallway and then through a door marked ‘emergency exit’ and down another hallway that connected unexpectedly to a wall of glass. The whale pool looked as if it were full of oil, slow-moving and glossy black. A heavyset man in a dark blue suit was crouched at the water’s edge with his back to them. The secretary unlocked a glass door and pushed it open. The cold hit Willows, nipped his ears and pinched at the corners of his eyes.

  The door sighed shut. Parker heard the click of the automatic lock. The whale pool was about fifty yards away. There were open concrete bleachers on the near side and an iron railing all the way around the pool. A diving board projected over the water on the far side. Parker supposed that’s where the trainers stood when it was feeding time. She’d seen them on television, leaning far out over the water and pouring big metal buckets full of small silvery fish into the whales’ gaping maws. And she remembered wondering what it was like, making the big adjustment from hunting and killing and eating everything from salmon to sea lions to minke whales to opening wide on cue for a bucketful of dead herring.

  Willows had lived on the coast within sight and smell of the Pacific ocean almost his entire life, but had spent hardly any time at all in or on the sea. He knew several people who owned sail boats. Most of them went for a sail on the Labor Day weekend at the end of the summer, and that was about it. In the meantime they were forever grouching that a boat was nothing but a bottomless hole in the water into which they were forever pouring their money. Yet they seemed without exception to take pleasure in the grim reality of it all.

  Willows slipped and nearly fell on a patch of ice. His arms wind-milled as he fought to regain his balance. His mind had been wandering. The point he’d been about to make to himself was that he knew very little about killer whales. Were orcas known to attack humans? Had a whale killed the victim? Willows fervently hoped so. Death by misadventure sounded exactly right. His plate was already overflowing, thanks to Sheila. The last thing he needed was a high-profile, time-consuming murder investigation.

  Anthony Sweeting heard the crunch of ice behind him and turned, already raising a hand to shoo away the uninvited.

  Sweeting was what people were calling vertically challenged, but what Willows simply thought of as short. He seemed determined to compensate for his lack of height by occupying a maximum amount of horizontal space. He was wearing an expensive dark blue suit, an orange silk shirt under a puce cardigan, a fish-shaped tie complete with a plastic eye that moved when he did, solid gold starfish cufflinks and the only patent-leather brogues Willows had ever seen.

  Willows showed him his badge case. The director stared up at it, squinting. Despite the cold, his pale skin was pebbled with sweat. Willows could smell the mousse.

  After a moment Sweeting said, “Cops?”

  Willows nodded, introduced himself and Parker.

  “It’s about time you got here. This is Dr Gerard Roth. He was one of our employees.”

  Parker said, “Who found his body?”

  “Me. I did.” Sweeting hesitated. He gnawed at his pendulous lower lip for a moment, obviously mulling it over, and then added, “What I mean is, I found most of it. Everything but the leg. Bob found the leg.”

  Parker said, “Bob?”

  “Robert Kelly. Head of security.” Sweeting’s knees creaked as he stood up. “Bob found the leg down there, in the holding tank.” At the far end of the pool a narrow channel led to a second, much smaller pool.

  Parker said, “That’s where you put a whale if you want to segregate it from the others?”

  “Whales or dolphins.”

  “Do the whales usually have access to the holding tank?”

  “Yes, of course. Unless it’s in use, they can come and go as they please.”

  Within the confines of the pool, thought Parker.

  Willows said, “How big is the pool, Mr Sweeting?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. About a hundred-twenty feet long by eighty wide. Somewhere in there. It was designed as an extremely irregular shape, so it looks natural. There’s about nine hundred thousand gallons of water in there — more than the average person drinks in a lifetime.”

  Willows nodded politely. He and Annie and Sean had spent a week on the West Coast of Vancouver Island a few years previously. They’d taken a ‘whale watch’ cruise from the overly picturesque and pricey village of Tofino. High seas combined with thick fog had kept them close to shore. They hadn’t seen any whales. But Willows remembered a bit of what the guide, who’d been a genuine enthusiast, had told them. Bulls grew to thirty-two feet in length and weighed as much as seven tons. They often journeyed ninety miles or more in a 24-hour period, and were capable of sustained speeds as high as fifteen miles per hour.

  Orcas emitted complex sonar-like clicks in bursts of up to several hundred beats per second, both as a navigational aid and to locate prey. To communicate, they produced more than five dozen distinct sounds. Their sonar was effective up to six miles. Their natural lifespan was as long as sixty years.

  In the aquarium, that sixty-year lifespan was reduced to a maximum of twenty years.

  No wonder.

  Parker said, “Let’s take a look at the body.”

  The aquarium had been closed to the public, but parts of the complex were visible from the surrounding park. Bob Kelly had thoughtfully shielded the corpse from the public’s prying eyes with a large blue tarpaulin.

  Willows knelt and lifted a corner of the tarp. Dr Roth’s left leg had been yanked off at the knee. Bob Kelly had placed the leg beside the body in the correct position, as if Roth’s corpse was an exceedingly simple puzzle that had been successfully reassembled.

  Willows said, “When you found the body, was there much blood in the water?”

  Sweeting shrugged. “None that I could see. Was he recently killed, is that what you mean? There’s no way of knowing. The entire contents of the pool are filtered every ninety minutes. It’s an exceedingly expensive and very thorough procedure. I can show you the filtration system, if you like.”

  Parker said, “Do you have any idea what Dr Roth was doing in the pool?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Just out for a swim, was he?”

  “It’s possible. It isn’t something we approve of, but there’s no point in denying that from time to time staff succumb to the temptation of an unauthorized dip in one of the tanks.”

  “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

  “Yes, I should think so. Finna and Bjossa aren’t accustomed to having people in the water with them. If someone was to enter the pool I’d expect them to become quite agitated.”

  “Angry?” said Parker.

  “Not necessarily. Playful, perhaps.”

  Willows lifted the tarp a little higher. There were deep conical bite marks — what appeared to be bite marks — on Roth’s torso and thighs. He said, “Are you suggesting Finna and Bjossa playfully ripped off Dr Roth’s leg?”

  A starfish cufflink glittered as Anthony Sweeting ran stubby fingers through his heavily moussed hair. He said, “The truth is, vigorous physical interaction is quite common among whales. If you take a look at the belugas you’ll notice tooth marks on every single one of them. It’s partly a domination thing; they’re constantly rearranging the pecking order. And it’s sexual as well, of course. But I think I see what you mean. ‘Playfully ripped
his leg off’ sounds a bit callous, doesn’t it?”

  Parker said, “Let’s not make any assumptions. We don’t know how or when Dr Roth died. He may have been killed before he went into the pool.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  Parker shrugged. “It’s conceivable he slipped on the ice beside the pool, fell and fractured his skull. He may have died instantaneously, or lost consciousness for no more than a few seconds. Either way, he slides into the pool and the whales start playing volleyball.”

  “You think that’s what happened?” said Sweeting anxiously.

  Parker said, “That’s just the point. We have no idea how he died. Our purpose here is to try to find out.”

  Sweeting said, “You’re homicide detectives. Does that mean you suspect foul play?”

  “No,” said Parker. “It doesn’t mean that at all. We’re here to investigate the circumstances of Roth’s death, make a preliminary decision as to how he died. If it begins to look as if he expired as a consequence of someone else’s actions…” Parker smiled. “Let’s take it one step at a time, okay?”

  “Fine,” said Sweeting. “Whatever you say.”

  Willows let the tarp drop. He moved closer to the lip of the pool and trailed his fingers in the water. It was very cold. He became aware of a huge dark mass rising towards him. Before he could react, the larger of the orcas, Bjossa, surfaced near him and vented a blast of spray from its blowhole. Willows turned away, but too late to avoid a shower.

  Sweeting said, “They tend to do that quite often. I don’t know if anyone’s done any research into whale humour, but it seems a likely candidate for a thesis, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Willows saw himself pulled effortlessly beneath the surface, emptying his lungs in a mute scream. He wiped his face dry with his coat sleeve. The whale rested quietly on the surface. Willows looked into its dark and solemn eye. A worm of fear wriggled through his heart. The whale sounded as best it could, given that the pool wasn’t much deeper than its overall length.

  Parker said, “He was checking you out, Jack.” Then her attention was caught by something and she looked past him and Willows turned and saw Mel Dutton bustling towards him, moving pretty fast considering he had fifty-odd pounds of equipment strapped to him.