by Ted Wood
"Hey. Sherlock Holmes all the way." His laugh echoed on the line. "You want to bring it in?"
"Yeah, I'm just heading back to Toronto, so you can play detective while I'm gone."
"Good. I'd better come ashore and talk business. See you."
He hung up, and I picked up the box and the contents and put them into a plastic bag. Then I fastened the back door by driving a four-inch nail through it into the jamb and set off for the station, en route to Toronto.
SIXTEEN
George already had the dusting equipment out, and we worked over the box together. He got a good set of latents off it, two sets, in fact, one of which we soon discovered was my own. The other looked as if it'd been made by an index finger and thumb. From the way the box had been sitting in the drawer, I decided they were probably made by somebody's left hand. George gave them to me to deliver to Toronto, and I took them with me when I shipped out.
It was two by the time I left, and I beat the rush hour into town and dropped the fingerprints off with Irv Goldman in 52 Division detective office. That's not normal channels. I should have taken them to forensics and then waited the usual three days. Instead, Irv promised to follow through and have them processed as if they were part of an investigation of his. Time saved, although there were still no guarantees they would be useful to us. Only a few people ever get fingerprinted. Convicted criminals, policemen, and a few securitycompany people. That excludes about 95 percent of the population, most of whom would scream like stuck pigs if you asked them for a sample to compare with your evidence.
I left Irv's office and drove up to my sister's house. She wasn't home yet, but her kids are typical Toronto latchkey brats, and they were in the kitchen making peanut-butter sandwiches.
They dropped their makin's and hugged me to pieces when I arrived, complete with the candy bars I had picked up on the way. I kind of enjoy being an uncle and do my best to spoil the pair of them. Young Jack is ten, and he wanted to know whether Fred was going to join us.
"No, she's acting in a movie. She's out in Saskatchewan for a few weeks. I'm going out to see her on the weekend. I thought I'd come and see you all before I went, maybe ask you to take care of Sam for me while I'm gone. Could you do that?"
"Could we?" Little Lou is eight, with her mother's blue eyes, and her black hair in two tight plaits. She looks like the kind of little girl you used to see in cartoons twenty years ago. I hope that if Fred and I go into the baby business our youngsters will look like her.
"Sure. You just tell him, 'Heel,' and you can walk anywhere. He'll follow you; you won't need to say another word. He's like a shadow."
"Oh, Sam," she said, and sank down to kiss his head. He let it happen, blinking to show his embarrassment.
Louise bustled in at five-thirty. I gave her a quick brotherly peck of greeting, and she squeezed my arm. I guess we're closer than a lot of siblings. I paid for her education out of my Marine Corps earnings after our parents died, and she's always been grateful. I'm proud of her now. She's creative director at an advertising agency, and she looks great. She has our father's blue Limey eyes and our French Canadian mother's jet-black hair.
"Hi, stranger. Good to see you," she said. "You here to stay?"
"Better than that. I'm here to cook supper, as long as we barbecue."
"Sounds ideal to me," she said. "I'll fix a salad, you get the coals going."
Jack helped me, and I sent him back into the kitchen for a juice can with both ends cut out. I set it over the flames, and we had the coals going in a matter of ten minutes. That impressed him. "Elmer takes a lot longer," he said. "I'll have to tell him about using a chimney."
"Yes, makes the coals draw better. Now, why don't you ask your mom for the burgers and we'll get to work?"
He ran indoors for the meat, and I stood there nursing a beer and waiting for him to come back. When he wasn't with me within a few minutes, I ambled in after him to see if he'd been sidetracked by the TV. He hadn't. Elmer Svensen was standing in the kitchen with his partner. Louise was with them, looking shaken.
"Hi, what's up?" I asked, and Elmer looked at me and shook his head.
"Got a minute, Reid?"
"All the time you want, Elmer. What's on your mind?"
"Bad news," he said. He turned to Louise first. "This is messy, Lou. Could you take the kids outside, please?"
"Sure, if you think it's necessary." She took them by the hand and led them into the garden. When they'd gone. Elmer turned back to me.
"Norma Michaels has been found strangled."
"Strangled? That's the second homicide in that group in two days. First Michaels's girlfriend, now his wife. It's got to be tied in with this Freedom for Hire thing."
Elmer nodded, but he didn't comment the way I'd expected. Instead, he gave me the facts, his face grim. "They found the body about an hour ago. Her housekeeper found it. She lives in, but she'd been out since morning. It's her day off. She came back to pick something up. There was something broken in the hall, a vase, I guess, and she went through to check on her missus."
"To see if she was drunk?" I wasn't joking. He looked too serious.
"She didn't say that, but I guess, yeah," Elmer said. "Anyway, she went into the library and found her strangled."
Elmer's partner was looking at me very straight, weighing everything I said. I knew he was a novice at detective work, and I figured he was probably suspicious of me. At that stage in your career you're suspicious of everybody except your partner, but his look made me careful with my words.
"Strangled? Manually or with a ligament?"
Elmer cleared his throat. "Look, Reid, I don't believe this, but I have to tell you. She'd been strangled with a piece of cord which was broken. And in the corner of the room, under a china cabinet, we found a piece of metal."
"What kind of a piece? Had she been bludgeoned?"
"No." He composed himself carefully and then said, "It was a military dog tag. We've spent the afternoon checking it out, and we find it was a Marine Corps dog tag." My mouth must have fallen open because he nodded. "Yeah, this is the hard part. We found out that it was yours."
"Mine?" The news hit me like a punch in the gut. I'd been set up. "Mine? That explains it."
"Explains what?" His partner took over now that the news had been broken.
"My house at Murphy's Harbour was broken into some time overnight, I guess. I was back up there today and found it. Somebody broke in the back door and stole my dog tags."
"Yeah?" Elmer's partner spoke softly, the disbelieving voice of a copper who's seen it all. "What else'd they take?"
"Nothing. I reported the theft. George Horn, the guy who's minding the store up there, he printed the box I kept the tags and some other stuff in. Got a good set of prints; I turned them over to Irv Goldman in Fifty-two Division about an hour ago."
"Very convenient," the partner said.
Elmer held up his hand. "Easy on, Joe. I know Reid better'n you. He didn't do this, I know it."
"I sure as hell didn't."
"Have you ever met this woman? Been to her house?" The partner was persistent.
"Yes, I was there last night. I went there because the check I'd been given to rescue her son had been stopped payment. I went to collect my money from her."
"Did she pay you?" Elmer asked. He was my friend, but he was a policeman as well. He wanted all the facts.
"No, the payment was twenty-five grand, and she told me to go and see her husband. I went over to his girlfriend's place, and you know what happened there."
Elmer went to the fridge, opened it, and took out a jug of orange juice. He waved it at his partner. "Want some? We don't keep booze in the house. I used to hammer the stuff, and Lou doesn't buy any now we're together."
His partner waved him off, and he took a glass from the cupboard and poured himself a drink. "You likely brought some beer with you, eh, Reid?"
"Yeah, it's in a cooler outside."
"Not for me," his partner sa
id. He wasn't here to socialize. He was here to lock me up for the homicide, to get stars on his work even if it screwed up Elmer's romance with my sister. He wasn't going to kick back.
"Do I get the impression I'm a suspect?" I asked him.
"For Crissakes, Reid. I know you didn't do it. But we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't talk to you. It was your dog tag, and you're connected with the family. The papers would hang you and us together if we don't clear this up."
"For the second time," I said, and sat down. "I've been through this kind of crap once before, Elmer. I don't want any more suspicion. Check with Irv. He'll tell you about the prints."
"Yeah, I know." Elmer nursed his orange juice, cradling it in two hands. "I know you didn't do it. But the thing of it is, she was murdered last night, just after you'd been to see her. The housemaid gave us a description. Says you and the victim had an argument, you threw a glass at the wall and left. Then her boss got into the sauce, so she went up to her room and watched TV and was asleep by the time the news came on at ten."
"When was Mrs. Michaels killed?"
"The autopsy's still going on, but preliminary signs are that she died around two a.m. last night." He looked down at me, miserably. "Reid, I know this is bullshit, but do you have an alibi for last night?"
"Only for the time I was up at Prince Arthur Place. I went back to Fred's apartment after that and watched TV, went to bed."
"What time did you get there?" The partner was quick with the question. I looked up at him, seeing the glint in his eyes that meant he had me handcuffed and locked up already, the hell with me, the hell with Elmer.
"Around eleven. I phoned Fred, then watched TV. I caught the late news, including the local news around eleven-thirty."
The partner almost purred. "Then you had all night to slip back to the Michaels house, do what was done, and go home."
Elmer exploded. "Shut the fuck up. I'm telling you, I've known this guy longer than you've been out of Pampers."
"And you're bangin' his sister."
The line hung in the air like the silence between a lightning flash and the rumble of thunder, and in the silence I leaped to my feet and stuck a stiff finger on the end of his nose as if it were a bell push.
"Listen, snotrag. Any cracks out of you and I'll tear your head off and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine."
Elmer grabbed my arm. "Easy, Reid. He's just an asshole kid. My partner's on vacation. I'm stuck with this punk; ignore him."
The other detective was looking at me. The sneer had gone from his face, but it was superior as he spoke softly. "Pretty violent, aren't we, Mr. Bennett."
I sat down again. I didn't apologize. It would have done no good. Anyway, it wasn't his opinion that mattered. The way things looked, I was going to have to convince twelve of my peers that I had not strangled Norma Michaels.
Elmer drained his juice and turned to the sink to rinse the glass and gulp down a swallow of cold water. Then he set the glass down and turned back to me. "The thing is, Reid, there's more."
"More? Like what?"
"Well, when the death was reported to the husband, he told us he'd found some receipt you'd signed, a receipt for twenty-five grand, paid by the husband's girlfriend."
"I signed that in Michaels's office yesterday morning." I slapped my forehead with my palm. "I've been set up. He asked me to predate it to when his girlfriend was alive, said he wanted her name cleared, no mention made of the rubber check she gave me."
"But she was dead," the young cop said. I looked at him, seeing his future. He would have a long, safe career as a copper. He never deviated from the rules. He'd never get his ass in a sling over jumping to conclusions. Guilty people would get away, innocent people would be sent down, but he would be able to look himself in the eye every morning and know he had done his stinking job. In that flash of a glance I gave him, my own future swam before my eyes. Even if I didn't end up in jail, could I ever go back to police work?
"Yes, she was dead. I spent a lot of yesterday evening trying to kick start her heart."
"Damn, Reid. It was dumb to date that note that way," Elmer said. "The thing of it is, Michaels is saying that his girlfriend wanted his wife killed and that she paid you to do it."
"That money was to get his kid back from the Freedom for Hire people. Young George Horn helped me, and I gave him half this morning." Why does the truth sound like a tin trumpet?
"The thing is, he's made a case against you, and we have to investigate. I'm sorry." Elmer looked utterly miserable. He was going to have to explain all of this to Louise when he got off duty.
"You want me to go down to the station with you?"
"It'd save worrying Lou," he said.
"Okay, Elmer, I'll go tell her."
"You want me to come?" I could see the idea worried him. He was crazy about Louise. He'd have done anything to spare her any concern.
"Naah, relax a minute, I'll sort it out." I walked out into the garden. The barbecue was flaring, and Louise was shaking water out of a pop bottle to douse the flames. The burgers smelled good.
She looked up at me. She reminds me of my mother, and the concern in her face kicked me back through the years to some time I had come in late from fishing and Mom had worn the same expression. "What's going on?"
"This case I went up north on, it's taken another twist, and Elmer has asked me to help out for a while. I have to go with him."
She's nobody's fool. "If that was all of it, he wouldn't have looked like he does."
"You know how it is; he doesn't like involving family in his job. No policeman ever does."
"Are you going to arrest somebody?" Jack asked.
"Very soon," I told him. "Right now it's a game of cops and robbers, and I have to play."
He stretched up to his full four feet eight. "I'm going to be a detective when I grow up, like you and Elmer."
"Good idea," I said. "Listen, can you guys take care of Sam for me?"
"Sure." He dropped to his knees and fussed Sam, who was sitting as close to the barbecue as he could, looking hopeful. "Good boy, good old Sam."
Sam blinked and looked at me. I raised one finger to him, and he stiffened. "Stand up, Jack," I said, and he did, straight-backed as a soldier, alongside Sam. I pointed my finger at Sam. "Okay, Sam, go with Jack." It was my formula for handing over. From now until the process was reversed, he was Jack's dog and I was the stranger, pined for, maybe, like a lost friend, but not to be obeyed.
Jack turned immediately and ran to the corner of the yard, under the big oak tree that splits the fence. "Come on, Sam," he called, and Sam bounded away to him.
"I don't know how long this is going to take," I told Louise, "but make sure Sam gets walked and don't let the kids stuff him with burgers."
"You're making this sound serious," she said. "If it was just an investigation, you'd take Sam. What's going on, Reid?"
"I'll be in the office, and Sam's better off here. I'll see you tonight, but I'll ring before I come back. I'll probably be back when Elmer gets off work. See you then." I winked at her and tapped her on the arm lightly, then went back into the kitchen. Louise was going to follow me and speak to Elmer, but the barbecue flared again, and she stayed where she was, lifting off the burgers.
Elmer and his partner drove an unmarked police car so I didn't have to sit in the cage. In any case, Elmer insisted I sit in the front with him, sticking his partner in the back, where he sulked silently, arms folded, waiting for me to get mine.
The police station was busy. It was lunch hour for half the evening shift, and policemen in uniform were coming and going with lunch pails and boxes from the chicken place up the block. A few citizens were sitting around the front of the office, smoking and muttering and wishing they were somewhere else. Elmer led me past them, up to the detective inspector's office. "You remember Andy Burke? Used to be sergeant of detectives in Fifty-four Division," he told me. He was nervous, like a kid bringing his girlfriend home for the first tim
e, wondering what the family would think. I guess I wasn't helping. I said nothing.
Burke was a big man in a light summer suit with a beer belly that hung way out over the big belt he was wearing. I guessed he had his .38 at the exact center of the back of it. He was sitting forward in his chair, so I was probably right. And he was giving somebody hell on the phone.
"You know better than that," he growled. "If we don't get a warrant, we're dead. We must've arrested that sleaze a dozen times; he knows the law better than you do. You gotta go by the book or he walks. Do it by the goddamn book or don't do it."
He hung up and looked up at me. "Hey, Bennett, right? Used to be in Fifty-two?"
I knew him only slightly, and it was odds on that he didn't remember me, but he was abreast of Elmer's investigation and knew I would be coming in. He stood up and shook hands, but perfunctorily, not wanting me to assume any familiarity. "Siddown. Want some coffee?"
"No, thanks, Inspector. Just want to get this mess cleared up and go home."
"Yeah." He swung his feet up on the desk. There was a smear of dead chewing gum on his left sole, and I couldn't see his face until he parted his feet, like curtains, and peered out. "Fill me in," he said.
"It's complicated, and it's messy, but I'll tell you right off the top that I didn't touch that woman."
"Of course," he said heartily. It would have cheered me more if I hadn't heard a lot of policemen say the same kind of thing to a lot of rounders.
"So are you planning to arrest me or what?"
He pulled a package of Old Port cigars out of his jacket pocket and lit up before answering. "You reckon we should?"
"I heard about the dog tag," I said.
He lit his cigar and waved the match out, making it a gesture of dismissal. "Yeah, how'd that thing get there?"
"It was stolen from my house sometime overnight, sometime after three o'clock yesterday, which is when I was last at my place."
Smoke poured up around his feet, which he had closed together again. "You report the theft?"