Killers

by Laurence Gough

  Parker said, “What else, Bob?”

  “There’s a guard dog has the run of the outside premises as soon as the staff have gone home. Plus more than a dozen video cameras positioned throughout the complex. Plus we got fifteen heat-and-motion detecting devices strategically placed outside the perimeter.”

  “What breed’s the dog?”

  “German shepherd.” Kelly smiled. He had very thin lips and his teeth were a shade too large for his mouth. He said, “I got a pal, a cop on the dog squad. He told me get a shepherd, you can usually depend on them to bite and hold. Dobermans, on the other hand, they’re a little scarier but they got a weakness for subduing people and then munching away just for the hell of it. Because it’s fun. Like I said, shepherds got more self-control. So, even though Dobermans are a lot scarier looking, we don’t employ them, because of the risk of being sued.”

  Parker said, “Okay, your staff restrict themselves to the interior of the complex. The dog stays outside, patrols the grounds. Is that how it works?”

  “Waldo is restricted to outside work, yes.”

  Parker said, “Waldo?”

  Kelly bristled a little. “Yeah, Waldo.”

  Parker said, “There are also janitorial staff in the building at night?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And I suppose there must be times when members of the staff work late?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And groups of schoolchildren stay overnight as well, don’t they?”

  “Inside,” said Kelly. “By the beluga pool. Kids just love those belugas.”

  “So there’s quite a lot of traffic, then.”

  “Not really, no. The kids are restricted to the beluga’s viewing area — it’s kind of an open room down on the lower level. The cleaning staff are out of here by midnight. There’s always a guy in the control room, watching the monitors. The other two guys are supposed to endlessly patrol the building. We don’t have a checkpoint system but they’re in constant radio contact with the control room.”

  Kelly smiled at Parker. “I schedule a surprise visit every two or three weeks. I catch one of my men taking a snooze, I fire him on the spot.” He smiled again. “But, I have to admit, staying awake around here can be a real problem. Fish are a wonderful soporific. You got a problem with insomnia — buy yourself a nice fish.”

  Willows said, “Is there a camera on the whale pool?”

  “Three of them. Like I said, it’s considered a high-risk area. You got to watch out for pranksters, assassins, you name it. I already checked last night’s tape. There’s nothing unusual on it that I could see, except for the fact that I couldn’t see anything at all.”

  Willows didn’t let his irritation show. He said, “Why is that, Bob?”

  “Well, the pool area’s kept pretty dim at night, so Finna and Bjossa can sleep. Also, it seems three of the lights were burnt out. You could’ve dumped a whole truckload of bodies in there last night and it wouldn’t have showed up on the tape.”

  Parker said, “Bob, are you sure the lights were burnt out — not tampered with?”

  “Burnt out. Just like a couple of maintenance men I could mention, who’ve recently had a yard-wide strip tore off them.”

  Parker said, “Wait a minute. Something happened last night, whether it was taped or not. Where was the dog?”

  Kelly nervously ran his fingers through his hair. Parker noticed that his nails were bitten to the quick, and that a thin half-circle of blood followed the line of his thumbnail. He said, “Waldo is missing and has not yet been accounted for. It’s remotely possible that he’s running loose somewhere in the park. We just don’t know. We’ve looked everywhere, can’t spot him.”

  “Is he dangerous?” said Willows.

  “I’ve already suggested to your colleagues that he be shot on sight.”

  Kelly noticed his thumb. He sucked a little blood from the wound. Parker didn’t blame him — he looked as if he could use the nourishment.

  Willows said, “Tell us about Dr Roth. Did you know him very well?”

  “He was a little eccentric. Or you could say weird.”

  “Could you be a little more specific.”

  “He liked to swim in the nude.” Kelly turned to Parker. “Have you seen the big tank, the one with the black-tailed sharks?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Dr Roth’s ‘old swimmin’ hole’. He liked to take his lady friends there, goof around.”

  “With the sharks,” said Willows, wanting to make sure he had it right.

  “Yeah, in the nude, with the sharks.”

  “With his girlfriends?”

  “Right, right.”

  “How often did this occur?”

  “Sometimes he’d swim in the pool every night for a month. Or he might not get his feet wet for six months or more. It depended how things were going, know what I mean?”

  “Not really,” said Parker.

  Kelly hesitated. “Dr Roth was married, but I understand he and his wife split up a long time ago. And he took advantage of the situation, believe me. Whenever he had a new girlfriend he conned her into going for a swim in the tank. Nude. It was like a rite of passage.”

  “Was he aware that you knew what was going on?” said Willows.

  “Yeah, sure. If he had a heavy date lined up, he always warned me well in advance that he was conducting an important experiment and told me to keep my boys clear of the area. He’d tape a piece of paper over the lens of the security camera, too. Not that he didn’t trust me.”

  Parker said, “If Roth took all those precautions, how did you originally find out what was going on?”

  “I peeked.” Kelly sucked a little more blood from his thumb. “You have to understand that my primary responsibility is to the aquarium’s board of directors. Once I’d satisfied myself that Dr Roth wasn’t up to anything dangerous, I left him completely alone.”

  Parker said, “You don’t consider the shark tank dangerous?”

  “They’re bottom feeders. They won’t bother you, unless you stop swimming and walk around on the bottom of the tank.”

  “Was Dr Roth in the shark tank last night?”

  “Must’ve been, because the security camera in that area wasn’t working from about nine-thirty to midnight, due to an obstruction in front of the lens.”

  “Who did he have with him?”

  Kelly screwed up his face as he resumed nibbling at his thumb. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

  Willows said, “You don’t have any choice, Bob.”

  “No, what I mean is, I don’t know who he was with, or if he was with anyone at all. Maybe I forgot to mention it, but he often swam alone.”

  “Nude?”

  “Yeah, nude. But come to think of it, if he was by himself he didn’t care if we patrolled the area or if we had him on video. So he must’ve had company last night.”

  Willows said, “Dr Roth was an exhibitionist?”

  “You betcha.”

  “What happened to the tapes?”

  “Of him swimming alone with the sharks?”

  Willows nodded.

  “They were recycled. Listen, every member of my staff is a fully functioning heterosexual. I’m not saying they’re saints. I examine the previous night’s tapes each and every morning. If a tape was missing, heads would roll.”

  “What about copies?”

  “Well, sure. I guess it could happen.”

  Parker said, “So it’s possible someone had film of Roth in the pool, and tried to blackmail him?”

  “It would’ve been a hard way to make a dollar. I mean, Dr Roth was plenty circumspect when it came to his girlfriends, but when it came to flaunting his own slice of cheesecake he was a pretty uninhibited guy.”

  Parker said, “How did he get along with the rest of the staff?”

  “Everybody more or less loathed him.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Ask around.”

  “He was
unpopular?”

  “Believe me, it was a lot worse than that. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but when it came to women, Gerard was a totally selfish creep. You saw what he was wearing when we fished him out of the pool. Swim fins and a mask. But no wedding ring, right?”

  “But you said he was separated.”

  “But still married. To Iris, for something like a quarter of a century. Last year was their twenty-fifth anniversary. Sometime in the spring. There was a big bouquet of roses in his office, and a heart made out of little red flowers, and more flowers arranged into the number of years they’d been together. I assumed Roth had bought it to take home to Iris, but he laughed and told me it was the other way around. She’d sent it to his office. Pissed him off, too. He liked her to keep a low profile. Give himself room to move.”

  Kelly slid open the top drawer of his desk and withdrew a single sheet of paper. “We got a camera on the parking lot in front of the building. It’s got a wide-angle lens, scans the area. This is a list of the plate numbers of cars that were in the lot last night, and these figures in the right-hand column tell you when the car arrived and departed, within a five-minute span.”

  He handed the list to Willows, who saw that a dozen cars had parked in the lot during the course of the evening, from nine at night through five in the morning. It was a surprisingly large number, given the weather.

  Kelly said, “I can give you a copy of the tape, if you want.”

  Parker said, “I have to admit it, Bob. You’ve got a pretty impressive system. How much did it cost?”

  Kelly frowned. “The aquarium’s self-supporting. I don’t know if you were aware of that. We pay our own way, the operation doesn’t cost the taxpayer a dime.”

  And consequently the taxpayers didn’t have an awful lot of say in how the operation was run, either. The aquarium was a bad joke, an anachronism. Parker had viewed killer whales in the open ocean. She’d seen the way they could move, given room. Bjossa’s yard-long dorsal fin was bent over so that it lay almost flat across his body. The reason for this was unknown. One theory was that it was caused by the backwash of water from the pool pushed against the fin as the whale circled endlessly in a counter-clockwise direction. Well, maybe so. Or perhaps the bent fin indicated the state of Bjossa’s mental health.

  Either way, the whale had been disfigured by its claustrophobic environment.

  Kelly was watching Parker, smiling. “You’re no friend of the aquarium, are you, Detective?”

  Parker said, “Did anyone here dislike Roth enough to kill him?”

  Kelly pursed his lips, shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. The guy was a real dork, but I wouldn’t say he deserved to die. I mean, he manipulated women but as far as I know he never forced anyone to do anything she didn’t think she wanted to — even if she eventually realized she was wrong. If you follow me.”

  “Roth was badly battered,” Willows said. “Is it possible the whales would attack him, if he entered the pool?”

  “If you want an expert’s opinion, you’re talking to the wrong guy. Tony’s the resident authority. But yeah, they’d rip him apart, if they were in the mood. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they’d go after him because they were pissed off. They might figure he was some kind of new beach ball — a toy.”

  Willows turned to Parker. “We finished here?”

  She nodded.

  Kelly said, “Want me to give Tony a call?” He leaned forward, reached for his phone.

  Parker said, “That’s okay — he’s expecting us.”

  The phone on Kelly’s desk warbled. He hesitated, then turned and snatched up the receiver, identified himself. Parker saw his knuckles whiten as he clutched the receiver. He wiped a tear from his eye, visibly fought to bring himself under control. In a flat, calm voice that seemed to have been deliberately stripped of all emotion he said, “Okay, Travis. Thanks. Yeah, a hell of a way to die.”

  Kelly hung up in slow motion. He turned towards Parker. His plum-coloured face contorted in a horrible twisted smile.

  Parker said, “Maybe you better sit down, Bob.”

  Kelly collapsed into his swivel chair. He said, “Guess what — they found Waldo.”

  And burst into tears.

  Chapter 8

  Chris slept fitfully. He dreamed in vivid colour of the near-unbelievable events of the previous evening, his mind following the original script but hoping, as he tossed and turned, for a happier ending. A wind had sprung up, come at them from the west, passing over a stand of tall fir trees and the children’s zoo and miniature railway, dropping down the grassy slope and hitting the zoo. Somewhere high above them a peacock blared its discomfort. Without warning, the cloud cover began to break up. In minutes, the snow stopped falling and the air cleared and grew even colder. Here and there a star made a brief appearance and abruptly vanished.

  After about a quarter of an hour of this, it began to snow again.

  Robyn and Chris stayed right where they were, held each other for warmth and companionship as they huddled on the mock-sandstone wall beneath the scant shelter of a dwarf cedar’s low spreading branches. Chris couldn’t stop talking about what they’d seen — or what he believed they’d seen.

  Robyn knew what she believed. She believed there was something mixed up in the dope, some weird chemical, fertilizer or whatever, that had twisted their minds and made them hallucinate.

  Chris said, “That doesn’t make sense to me, Robyn. People don’t hallucinate in tandem. Why would we both share the same nightmare? — it doesn’t make sense.”

  Robyn had an answer for that one. “Because we’re so close to each other. You’re always telling me how close we are, and how we think so much alike. Remember last week when I asked if you wanted to go see a movie at the exact instant you asked me if I wanted to see a movie?”

  Chris nodded. It’d been two weeks ago, or maybe it was three. But it had happened. Coincidence. Mainly he talked about stuff like that — how much alike they were — when they were in bed.

  Robyn was more or less sitting in his lap. He kissed the back of her neck and she told him to cut it out. He kissed her again. She elbowed him in the ribs, hard enough to sting despite his bulky leather jacket.

  She said, “You’ve got a pretty strange attitude, for somebody who thinks he saw some poor guy get pushed into a pool, and drown.”

  “Death makes people sexually aroused. Sudden death arouses them instantly.”

  “How would you know?”

  Chris laughed, and gave her a hug. But he had to admit she was right about his mood. He wasn’t exactly stricken with grief. So, why was that? He stared down at the smooth, slick black surface of the pool. He’d heard the thump of the dolly’s hard rubber wheels and crackle of ice, and glanced up. Through the grey haze of marijuana smoke, the fog-like mist rising from the pool and the curtain of falling snow, he’d seen something slide off the dolly and on to the snow and then into the water.

  And behind the dolly a naked figure, turning away.

  He pictured the scene in his mind. Long blonde hair. Hips. Long pale legs with not much between them.

  A woman. Definitely a woman.

  She’d turned away from him and, in the space of two or three steps, vanished. His attention had been drawn back to the water. He’d kept waiting for the body to surface. Stared stupidly at the gleaming expanse of black water while his imagination ran amok, dipping him in a succession of macabre scenarios.

  He saw a splayed hand rise out of the water. He saw a sudden panicky splashing followed by a shrill scream and super-quick vanishing act. He saw the excruciatingly slow rising of the corpse’s upper body from the depths, saw the head loll face-down just beneath the surface. He saw the body roll over, black water stream from gaping eye sockets.

  But none of that had happened. He’d waited for a long time, for nothing. Then, finally, a whale surfaced without a fuss on the far side of the pool. The whale cruised around for the space of a minute or less, then su
bmerged.

  Chris squinted across the pool. He thought he saw two faint parallel tracks in the snow where the dolly had been. But he wasn’t sure. With each moment that passed, the falling snow obscured the evidence.

  The whale surfaced again, vented. It was business as usual, as if the brittle crunch of ice and the naked body sliding into the pool were nothing more substantial than a snowflake.

  Chris pictured himself making a statement to the cops. I saw a naked woman push a dolly down the amphitheatre stairs to the pool. There was a naked man on the dolly. The body was tilted into the pool and vanished. What was I doing at the whale pool? And who was I with? Uh…

  Suddenly he wasn’t at all sure what he’d seen, or even if he’d seen anything at all. He was just about to lean forward and whisper the good news into Robyn’s ear when, less than twenty feet away, the surface of the pool exploded in a white froth and the massive black head of a killer whale rose up before him, a naked corpse clamped firmly in its jaws.

  Robyn screamed.

  Writhing and twisting, the mammoth creature threw itself high into the air and then crashed down upon them. Chris tried to jump clear.

  He was tangled in the sheets, trapped. The back of his skull hit the edge of a cinderblock holding up the bookshelf next to the bed. Groaning, he rolled over and found himself staring into Robyn’s wide, terrified eyes.

  Very lightly, she touched his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  Tentatively, he probed his head with the tips of his fingers. A bump, but no blood. He’d live. He smiled at Robyn. “How’re you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah? Then why were you screaming?”

  She frowned, gave him a puzzled look. Finally said, “That wasn’t me — it was you.”

  Chris punched the pillow into shape, lay back and thought about it for a minute, realized she was right. His stomach did a slow roll.

  He said, “What time is it?”

  Robyn took his hand, rotated his wrist. “Quarter past seven.”