As the drinks continued, Pringle spoke about cases in progress and cases solved.
He seemed to be handling his liquor much better than Drake. Instead of slurred words he became more intense the more he drank. “My time is now. I’m tired of always being the bridesmaid. I want to lead an investigation. I’m forty-three years old. It’s time.”
Drake didn’t realize it had been a question until Pringle repeated himself. “It’s time, don’t you think it’s time.”
Drake readily agreed. “Yes, it is time. It’s high time that you led your own team, your own investigation.”
The pool players had gone, and there was one last man sitting at a table. When the barman flashed the dim lights of the bar on and off it came as a surprise to both Pringle and Drake. His booming voice could probably have been heard out in the parking lot. “Closing time. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Drake couldn’t believe he was still awake. It had been a very long day.
“Right across the road for me, Drake. Don’t forget that you’re picking up Parker in the morning and bringing him in.” The big man got to his feet and stumbled briefly, but then he smiled and looked as though he was fresh and ready for the day.
The alcohol combined with the lack of sleep had made Drake quite intoxicated. It had been a long time since he’d drunk so much. With great effort, he placed his palms on the table and pushed himself to his feet, then passed his truck keys to Pringle. “Watch the driver’s door. You have to lift it on the hinge to get it to close.”
There was a complicated exchange as Drake said he’d take a cab home and then walk to the office in the morning to pick up a patrol car before driving out and collecting Parker at the car lot.
Pringle mock-saluted him. “I’ll deliver your truck to the office in the morning.”
Pringle waited at the front of the pub while Drake slid into the back seat of a cab that had been opportunistically waiting. As the taxi drove toward his apartment building, Drake instructed the driver to take the long way through the older part of town.
It was late – even for Cobalt Street. Most of the lights were out in the houses, but in one window a lamp burned. Conspicuously out of place – a new-looking red car was parked directly in front of Tony Hempsill’s house.
To no one in particular he said, “It looks like Tony has company.”
The driver half-turned toward him, still keeping his eyes on the road. “Did you say something?”
As he spoke he could hear the slurring in his voice. It amused him, and he gave a little laugh. “That’s a new car, or almost new. It doesn’t quite fit on this street, does it?”
The driver slowed down and pretended not to look. “It’s none of my business.”
The curtains were drawn, and the light from the lamp in the living room, the same living room Drake had sat in the day before, was barely shining through the window.
Drake squinted as they passed and tried to read the license plate on the red car. The tighter he squeezed his eyes together the less he could see. There were now three license plates in his skewed vision. He gave up and laid his head against the back seat.
When he got to the lobby of his building, he pulled a note from his mail slot. He held it in front of him and after several attempts of peering and lifting it up to the light he finally managed to read that the laundry room was being painted. There was no other mail. With his whisky bravado he took the stairs and spoke out loud, once again to himself. “Let them come. I’m tired.”
Tonight he’d sleep in his bed.
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
In the dream, he’s in Ireland and then it’s Hope, and then he’s in Ireland again. The landscape keeps changing. The girl is there, barely clinging to life, her mouth slowly opening and closing as she tries to speak. The words come from the walls, the ceiling, the air. It’s her, just like always, but there’s someone else this time. Michael Robinson is there too – alive, speaking to him.
“Look what happened. Look at me.” The split in Robinson’s head opens up, and a river of blood runs down the sidewalk.
The dead man’s lips don’t move as he speaks. “I never had a chance to live. Never.”
The girl now – the beautiful Irish girl with the dark eyes and greasy hair. She says “soldier” in her little-girl voice, as though the word is foreign, and difficult to pronounce. “I didn’t live, soldier-man. You didn’t save me.”
He knows it isn’t real. But he can’t turn it off. He yells at them. Both of them. Loudly. Emphatically. His life depends on it. “I tried. I tried.”
They’re in concert; their images take up his vision. Their voices taunt him. They’re one – together. “You couldn’t; you didn’t.”
He tries to answer, but he can’t. He grips at the sheets, tearing at them. The words will not come.
There’s a thumping noise below him.
He awoke to another voice under him, the thumping coming from the apartment below. He sucked in a breath of air, and lay on his back, staring at the nothingness on the ceiling. The noise below him stopped after one solitary comment – a profane relief that the yelling from above had stopped. The digital readout on his alarm clock said 4:30a.m.; the sun had not yet risen. He threw the covers away from himself and looked at the uniform hanging in the open closet of his bedroom. This time the dream was different. It wasn’t only the girl – the Irish girl. Now there was another dead body he was responsible for.
<><><>
With no other business at that early hour, the taxi he’d called was waiting as soon as he reached the street. It was a different driver from the night before, and this man wanted to talk. In the seven-minute drive, he managed to tell him about the shift he’d almost finished working, his girlfriend, his boss, and an invention he was working on that was going to change his life and make him rich. There would be no more taxi-driving for him. The man did not wait for answers or comments. He just kept talking, his eyes glancing in the rearview mirror from time to time. Drake saw his own reflection staring back and looked down, hiding his red eyes and bleary face. It was a challenge to keep listening, but he knew that in his hungover state the short walk to the station would have felt like a marathon.
He could still taste the alcohol from the night before. It burned the roof of his mouth. Silently blaming it on the inferior Canadian whisky, he grabbed a large glass of water from the water station and tried to extinguish the flames in his throat. One of the night officers was leaning back in a chair, his eyes almost closed. He halfheartedly raised a hand in greeting as Drake walked in. The situation room was empty.
He commandeered one of the interview rooms off the main area and turned the computer screen toward himself. After fumbling around in the wrong folders, he found the correct files and opened the audio recordings of the interviews they’d conducted at the station. Frank Wilson’s name stared back at him. He opened the file folders he’d written on each interview subject and spread them in front of him too. Scanning his notes, he listened for a few minutes and then fast-forwarded, or paused the recording to replay an answer when it didn’t sound right. There was something there; he knew there was. He wrote key words on a blank sheet of paper – underlining them, tracing over them again and again. Wilson said Robinson seemed as though he needed a friend, yet he claimed to barely know him. He admitted he had forced Trevor to leave the group, but was reticent about Robinson’s opinion or involvement. Was he protecting Mike Robinson from something?
He struggled to figure out what was odd about the exchange. It was an uneasy feeling, and it kept coming back to him. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He’d felt it when they interviewed Wilson, the old logger, and Rochfort, the factory owner. And it was there when they spoke with Parker, the man’s employer, also. It was like one of the gaps Ryberg talked about, but he couldn’t even tell where the gap was.
Veronica opened the door to the room. She waited, with her hand on her hip, while Drak
e pulled his headphones off. “So I don’t win the prize for being the early-bird this morning?”
“Couldn’t sleep, something was bothering me.”
Just like Officer Sophie Peterson, Veronica had never bought into the quiet, reserved act that Drake presented every time he worked a shift. There were policemen around him all day long, but it was the station house receptionist who suspected he wasn’t what he seemed. Sophie and Veronica were the only ones who seemed to want to know more. Drake could feel it in the way they watched him.
She held a sheet of paper in her hand and shook her head. “You look terrible. You know, I have a cousin who you might really enjoy spending time with. She’s not from here either. I’ll bet you and your red, stressed-out face wouldn’t be here early in the morning if you met her. You’d still be at home, and she’d be,” Veronica leaned forward and smiled, “cooking you breakfast.”
The offer had been made before. That time it had been a niece, and he’d politely declined. Drake liked Veronica. She had a quiet efficiency and covered more miles in a day marching through the offices on her short little legs than many of the police officers. He smiled and strained his mouth to one side.
“You know, I don’t think I’m ready for that, Veronica.”
She smiled back at him. “Do you know when your friend Officer Couthillard will be in?”
“I don’t think he likes to be called that. He prefers Myron.”
“I know that.”
Drake shook his head at her. “I think Sergeant Ryberg asked him to do an administrative review of the Ident officer’s findings. So he may be out of the office on site somewhere today.”
“Ah, that would explain the scowls from Mr. Glasses Polisher yesterday afternoon.” She handed the piece of paper to him. “This was faxed to his attention; it’s from the Bank of Canada, something about Italy.”
Drake scanned the paper as soon as Veronica closed the door. Myron’s contact had listed the insurer on Frank Wilson’s settlement from his work injury as an Italian company that did not have an office in Canada but listed their representative as Joseph Giamatti with a contact email address and phone number. There were basic details of the policy and the payout. The last paragraph noted that the funds had been held at the request of the insurance company; it was part of their policy agreement to hold large payouts for up to sixty days. At the end of the transmission, the man had written that if Myron needed information on any of the company’s other active policies to let him know. Myron was certainly connected. He’d delivered, just like he said he would. Drake put the sheet of paper aside and started the recording again.
He listened to Wilson’s sharp answers and then switched to the files from the interview with Monica, the waitress. Then after listening to the exchange that ended with her asking to leave, he pulled out the report of the interview with Derek Rochfort. Slowly, he read over the summary he’d made. Finally, he spent some time going over the notes he’d made from the short interview with Trevor Middleton, the hairdresser who had been asked to leave the group of drinking friends. Drake had been a listener all these months – ever since he arrived in Hope. He listened and made sure no one knew who he was or where he’d come from. Had all that listening sharpened his skills, or was it making him paranoid? Was there really something they’d missed?
He reluctantly started up Wilson’s recording again. Tired of the man’s voice, he forwarded to the end of the interview. He had circled the words that sounded as though they were key – gay, friends, group, cabin. And then he heard it. As the man was telling the officers he was going to his cabin he mentioned something, unprompted – money. He said he didn’t need the money. Neither Drake nor Ryberg had asked him about money.
He scrunched up his eyes and quickly shook his head, trying to regain his focus. He clicked the mouse and closed Wilson’s audio file, then opened Monica’s again. He forwarded to the section and looked at his keywords. It was there again – money. She brought it up too. They hadn’t asked her either. He thought of the interview with Parker. Had he mentioned money? They’d spoken of Robinson’s income, and Ryberg had asked about his sales. Parker had seemed uncomfortable when finances were broached. Did that mean something? And Rochfort talked about the recession in the United States affecting the company’s sales. Those were normal comments that might be expected from businessmen, but why did Monica and Wilson both speak about money? Was that what tied the men together? Was it connected to Wilson’s other business – the business that Trevor Middleton had alluded to? It had sounded like they were more than just casual drinking acquaintances. Did they have some type of organization or business they were involved in?
He dropped the faxed sheet of paper from the bank on the desk that Myron had been using and checked the duty board. Nobody from the crime team was in the office. It was still too early. He thought of the different names from the list. Frank Wilson had fled to his cabin at Chilliwack Lake, Monica would be at home, probably not at the bar until later in the morning, and Rochfort would be in his office early, just like always. Should he pay a visit to Trailco and see Rochfort, or an early morning visit to Trevor Middleton at home? Had he spoken of money? He’d mentioned that business was good, but that hadn’t seemed like a strange thing to say. It sounded as though he was just making an observation.
The watch commander looked at him from over his newspaper. He opened his mouth to speak but then went back to his reading. Drake decided. He could talk to Ryberg about his suspicions when he came in, and he had to pick up Dave Parker from the car dealership anyway. He probably wouldn’t be in yet, but he could always take a look around the lot while he was waiting. Maybe the young receptionist would be there early – the one with the very short skirt. He began to smile at the thought, but then felt the full force of his hangover once again. Even after drinking multiple glasses of water his mouth still felt like a desert, and every time he turned his head a little man hammered from the inside. After signing out a patrol car, he swallowed an aspirin from the community bottle that was kept in the reception area.
<><><>
Unfortunately, it was an unusually bright, sunny morning. The glare coming in the windshield wasn’t helping his headache. He’d almost reached the car dealership when he radioed Veronica and asked her to patch him through to Myron’s mobile number. The man sounded wide awake when he cheerily said, “Good morning.”
“I’m on my way to pick up Dave Parker. I wondered if you found anything about Frank Wilson last night.”
There was a chortle, then a quick drawing of breath. “Sorry, I inhaled my coffee the wrong way. Yes, yes, I came across a couple of things. At one point it became so intriguing that I asked the Chilliwack detachment to send an unmarked to discreetly check out his property. They were happy to oblige, and I’m glad I did. You’ll never guess what they found.”
Drake pulled into the dealership and parked in the staff parking area beside two other vehicles.
“Are you still there, Drake?”
“Yes, sorry, tell me, what did they find?”
“Well, the first thing the patrolman saw were two top-end ATVs being delivered to his cabin. They were being dropped off by the dealer just as he got there. The officer was sharp enough to wait for the truck out on the main road and ask the driver some questions. He told him they’d dropped off two of their deluxe models to Mr. Wilson. Judging by the invoice date and time, it sounds like he probably made the order right after you and Sergeant Ryberg interviewed him yesterday. Invoice price was in excess of fifty thousand dollars.”
Drake whistled. “For two of those little off-road machines?”
“Yes, these are high-end vehicles. Wilson must be feeling rich. I don’t know where he got the dough, but I feel like I need to take another look at his accounts. But that wasn’t the most surprising find. Apparently Frank Wilson has approximately one hundred cords of wood stacked along his driveway.”
Even Drake knew that was a lot of wood. “One hundred?”
�
�Yes, one hundred. So I thought that perhaps selling firewood might be his other business. No problem there, but to get one hundred cords he’d have to cut down a lot of trees.”
Myron was enjoying telling his tale. Drake couldn’t tell if the young receptionist was behind her counter, but there appeared to be a man sitting on a desk in the showroom. He wasn’t sure if the man could see him inside the patrol car or not. He just kept staring out the front window, perched on the edge of the desk.
He needed to hurry Myron along. The younger man continued speaking. “So I did a bit of digging. After a couple of informal phone interviews with his neighbors that produced very little, I called the Chamber of Commerce tourist bureau. By the way, at this time of year, this consists of one retired alderman who answers the phone twenty-four hours a day. His goal is to promote the town as much as he can all year long. I told him that I was a tour operator, and I was going to bring a busload of campers to a site on Chilliwack Lake Road in the spring and I was going to need an almost endless supply of firewood. He immediately told me about Frank Wilson. He said he consistently has up to, get this, two to three hundred cords of wood on hand. All the time.”
Myron was becoming more and more excited as he told his story, but Drake didn’t have time to allow him to finish. “Myron, I’m sorry, I need to get inside the showroom. Can you cut to the chase please?”
There was a pause. The younger but more senior officer was probably deciding how to react. It might not have been the first time in his life he’d been asked to get to the point. He wasn’t quite ready to give up his elaborate explanation though.
“Where would somebody get all that wood, Drake? I know there are lots of trees up there, but to be able to supply that much wood all the time doesn’t make sense. I began thinking about what else might be out there.”
The Dead List Page 14