Black Rock

by John McFetridge

  But Ruth said, “This could really be something.”

  “Really?”

  “I think Leslie Irvin also drove around a lot.” She looked at Dougherty and said, “He killed six people in Indiana. And I think Starkweather drove a lot, too.”

  Dougherty recognized the name Starkweather, pretty sure he was the guy with the teenage girlfriend, wanted to be James Dean, killed a few people, also in Indiana or someplace like that.

  Then Ruth said, “We’ve been looking at the strangulation and the breast mutilations, but maybe the driving is something, too.”

  Dougherty was amazed at the way she could talk about the murders so calmly, but then he figured that’s what people meant by “scientifically” — that kind of detached analysis. It was certainly more detached than what he’d seen from the homicide detectives. Some of those guys could really tear up, though they always tried to hide it, and then some of them got pretty colourful when they were talking about what they wanted to do to the murderers.

  Ruth was standing up then and saying, “This is interesting — I should make some notes.”

  Dougherty got out his wallet and motioned to the waiter, who was still reading the paper. He got up and came over and made a face as he was glancing at Ruth on her way out the door. “The lady is in a hurry.”

  “She’s a scientist,” Dougherty said and handed over ten bucks. The waiter put it in his pocket and said, “Like a Bunsen burner,” and Dougherty shook his head and walked out.

  Back at Ruth’s she pulled out a cardboard box full of papers. “This is just what I have at home, you should see what’s at the office.”

  “We believe the murderer is a young man, probably under thirty, good-looking, charming.”

  “Driving a Lincoln?”

  “Is that odd?”

  “One of the kids who saw it called it an old man’s car.”

  Ruth was sitting at her small kitchen table, writing all this down, and Dougherty said, “It’s not what I’d expect a young, good-looking, charming guy to be driving.”

  “What would he be driving?”

  “A sports car. A Camaro, Cougar, maybe a Corvette if he has the money.” Dougherty thought of his own car, the Mustang, but didn’t add it to the list. Then he said, “What makes you think the guy is young and good-looking?”

  “And charming.” Ruth stopped writing and looked at Dougherty, who was sitting on the edge of the couch in the living room a few feet from the kitchen table. “Well, for a few reasons. The most obvious is what the other women at the jewellery store had to say about him when he came to pick up Marielle Archambeault, that’s the way they described him. And then the way he was able to get into the other women’s apartments without breaking in.”

  “The files said something about sex, rough sex, or something.”

  Ruth said, “Yes, sexually deviant behaviour. We feel this fits with the triad.”

  “Oh yeah, the bed-wetting,” Dougherty said.

  “And the fire-starting and the cruelty to animals. The murderers with this kind of background often engage in sexually deviant murders.”

  Dougherty said, “Often?”

  “Well, yes. There isn’t a very big sample group, thank god, but the evidence is growing. This is another reason Dr. Pendleton hopes to be able to interview Charles Manson.”

  Dougherty said, “I saw that little twerp’s picture in the paper again — you’re not saying that guy’s charming?”

  “Not in a way you or I would call charming, but there’s certainly some evidence that the women in his so-called family find him attractive in some way.”

  “I thought that was the brainwashing?”

  “In order for the coercive persuasion to be effective there must be some emotional connection,” Ruth said, and then she looked at Dougherty and said, “Oh, you’re joking.”

  “Not completely, but a little, yeah.” And looking at Ruth, Dougherty could tell this was nowhere near the first time she’d taken a joke seriously. Then he said, “And some of the women were into this kind of crazy sex?”

  “Yes, it was consensual. ”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “The boyfriend of one of the victims said she was involved in rough sex with another man.”

  “So he says.”

  “And there were no struggles — they must have gone along with it.”

  “You sure?”

  Ruth said, “You saw the bodies, there were no marks.”

  “The bite marks on the breasts.”

  “They were post-mortem. And they didn’t all have them.”

  Dougherty said, “I think there was something else in the coroner’s report.”

  “I have a copy here.”

  “You do?” Dougherty watched Ruth go through the files in the cardboard box.

  “Here it is,” Ruth said, “the rapport médico-légal from the Institut de médecine legale et de police scientifique.” She flipped through some pages, read a little and frowned and then she said, “You’re right. It says here there were fibres found under Jean Way’s fingernails.”

  “What about the others?”

  Ruth looked through the files and said, “I don’t have them all, but here’s Brenda Webber’s.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Not much, but there was more bruising, could have been a struggle.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Brenda was probably buying drugs the night she went missing, so maybe she was buying them from Bill, maybe all the women were buying drugs.”

  “Maybe Shirley Audette — she was the one who’d been in the psychiatric hospital.”

  “The Douglas.”

  Then Ruth said, “There was also a longer gap between Brenda Webber and the other victims, quite a few months. That might be something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. We’re looking at everything.”

  “There were a few months between Sylvie Berubé and the next one, too,” Dougherty said.

  Ruth was writing it all down and nodding. “Could you check to see if there were many missing persons reports about other young women in these gaps?”

  Dougherty said, “That won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “We get people in the station all the time wanting to file missing persons reports on their kids but if they’re over eighteen, or even sixteen sometimes, we’re told to tell them to wait a few days.”

  “A few days?”

  “They always come back. They’ve been to Woodstock or whatever festival is going on and they met up with some other kids. We got a memo that said this year there are at least ten thousand kids hitch­hiking in this country on any day. And that doesn’t even count Americans coming here.”

  “But if they’re young, like Brenda Webber?”

  “Sure, I can check on that,” Dougherty said.

  Ruth said, “This is very interesting; we have some work to do now,” and Dougherty felt like he was being dismissed, so he stood up.

  Ruth walked him to the door. “If I need to talk to you, what would be a good time?”

  “Anytime, I guess. Just call Station Ten.” Then he had an idea. “Or you can call me at home.”

  Ruth said, “That’s a good idea, and look, you call me if there’s anything else. Anything.”

  Ruth wrote Dougherty’s phone number on one of the pieces of paper on her kitchen table and then tore off a small piece and wrote her own number on it and handed it to Dougherty.

  He left thinking this wasn’t really the way he wanted to see her again but feeling like he did really want to see her again.

  When he got home the phone was ringing. He picked it up thinking it might be Ruth already but it was his mother.

 
“Cheryl is gone. She run away.”

  chapter

  seventeen

  Dougherty managed to get his mother calmed down by asking her if Cheryl left a note or took her things, but his mother said she hadn’t.

  “But she never come home last night and she never come home today.”

  Dougherty said okay, trying to remember what day it was and coming up with Friday. “She’s eighteen, Mom. She’s not a runaway. She can leave if she wants,” and that started his mother off again, crying and saying he sounded just like his father. Dougherty said, “Wow, bet you never thought you’d say that.”

  “He say to just wait, she be back.”

  “He’s right. She’s probably at some friend’s house.”

  “But can’t you do something.”

  “Me? What can I do?”

  “The police, can’t you find her?”

  Dougherty said, “Ma, look, she’s going to come back today or tomorrow. Or she’ll be gone for the weekend, maybe, but there’s nothing we can do.”

  “But those girls. They were all kill.” Her French accent coming on a lot stronger than usual now.

  “That was different, Ma. They were killed in their apartments — they all had apartments.”

  “Not Brenda.”

  Dougherty said, “No, not Brenda. But she was younger, not as old as Cheryl,” and he was back in his conversation with Ruth, seeing all the differences.

  “So you can look for her.”

  “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  His mother was calm now, moving past her fear and anger and heading straight to helplessness, which Dougherty always found funny coming from her. She was about the last person he’d ever see as helpless, but she could play the card when she thought it would help.

  So he said, “Okay, I’ll go into the station and see what I can do. Have you called Franny’s mother?”

  “No, I don’t want them to know.”

  “To know what?”

  “That I don’t know where is Cheryl.”

  He wanted to laugh. “Okay, well you wait, I bet you Franny’s mother calls you.”

  “I’m worried.”

  “I know, I understand. Look, I’m off on Sunday. I’ll come out for dinner and if she’s not back by then I’ll ask around.”

  “Ask who?”

  “Her friends.”

  There was a pause and then a meek, “Okay,” and then Dougherty said, “It’ll be fine, Ma, you’ll see. She’ll be back as soon as she gets hungry.”

  “She’s not so helpless you know.” Dougherty knew that if his mother was defending Cheryl it meant she’d stopped worrying, or at least was less worried, and he could get off the phone.

  “Okay, I’ll see you Sunday.”

  “Okay.”

  Late Saturday night Cheryl called Dougherty crying and hysterical.

  He’d spent the day and most of the early evening hanging around in front of Jean Way’s apartment building, showing people the Lincoln pictures and getting a few maybes but mostly just shrugs. One guy said that in January there was a lot of snow and not much parking on the street and that gave Dougherty the idea to talk to the attendants working on the nearby parking lots. They looked at him like he was crazy, and one of them said, “It would be easier to tell you what kind of cars I haven’t seen.”

  So Dougherty had a late dinner at Mr. Steer on St. Catherine Street and walked home, feeling strangely anonymous in the crowd without his uniform.

  Now Cheryl was calming down and saying that she was at the police station. “Which one?”

  “I don’t know, it’s in Toronto.”

  “What are you doing in Toronto?”

  “We came to see the Festival Express. They got us buses, everybody who had a ticket. And we came here but there was a riot.”

  Dougherty tried to imagine what they’d call a riot in Toronto — a few hippies trying to cut in line? “Are you hurt?”

  “What? No.”

  “Okay, so what do you want?”

  Cheryl said, “Can you talk to them?”

  “Pig to pig, like we have a secret code?”

  She said, “Fu—,” but caught herself and Dougherty felt a little bad. Then she said, “Come on, Eddie, please,” so he said, “Okay. Put him on.”

  The Toronto cop said, “So, your sister’s name is Cheryl Dougherty?”

  “She’s got long hair, she’s wearing jeans and a jean jacket with patches all over them. She looks like all the rest. What did she do?”

  “Maybe she incited a riot or maybe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “If there’s a wrong place,” Dougherty said, “Cheryl will find it. Have you processed her?”

  “No, we’re just getting started.”

  “They crashed the gate?”

  “The place is a mess — we’re bringing some in so they don’t get hurt.”

  Dougherty said, “Well, if it helps, Cheryl’s harmless. She won’t shut up sometimes but she’s not real trouble.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the Toronto cop said. “She looks more scared than anything. And her friend, too. Look, if you can vouch for them, I’ll put them on a bus to Montreal.”

  “All right, man, thanks.”

  “Hey, I’d rather she be your problem. We’ve got plenty more.”

  Then Dougherty spoke to Cheryl, told her to be nice to the cop, he didn’t have to let her go, and for her and Franny to get on the midnight bus. They’d be in Montreal at six in the morning. Cheryl surprised him by speaking very softly and asking very nicely if he could meet them at the bus station in Montreal because the Métro wouldn’t be running that early, and he said, “Yeah, all right.”

  And after he hung up he realized Cheryl sounded just like their mother, putting on the helpless act when it helped her. He thought about telling her that when he picked her up, but when he saw her getting off the bus in the brand new terminal at Berri-de-Montigny she looked too pathetic.

  Still, he couldn’t help smiling and saying, “So, did you have a good time?”

  Cheryl didn’t say anything, she just walked past him towards the doors, but Franny smiled and said, “Thank you.” Dougherty looked them in the eye to see if they were still stoned or if they’d slept it off on the bus ride, but he couldn’t tell.

  Both girls sat in the cramped back seat of Dougherty’s Mustang and no one said anything until they pulled up in front of the Doughertys’ and Franny said thanks again.

  The girls got out of the car and both of them went in via the side door and, Dougherty figured, right into the basement.

  He was about to drive off when his little brother, Tommy, rode up on his bike. “There’s no Gazette on Sunday,” Dougherty said, and Tommy said, “Sunday Express.”

  “You going back to bed?”

  “No, I’m up now.”

  Dougherty looked at the house and said, “Mom and Dad up yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You want to get some breakfast, go to Pop’s?”

  Tommy said, “Yeah!” and Dougherty watched him put his bike in the backyard and jump excitedly into the passenger seat of the Mustang.

  The sign on the front of the restaurant said Pearl’s Coffee Shoppe, and Dougherty had no idea why everyone called it Pop’s. It was in an old red brick building on Churchill, next to a barber shop and a dry cleaners in a row of storefronts. Inside it could have been the ’50s — booths, a jukebox and a counter lined with stools.

  Dougherty ordered coffee and bacon and eggs over easy, and Tommy said, “Me, too.”

  “Maybe you want milk instead of coffee?”

  “Okay.”

  There were a few other people in the restaurant, a couple of guys at a booth who looked like they might have also b
een delivering the Sunday Express and a guy by himself who looked like he might have been up all night.

  When the food came, Dougherty asked Tommy how things were at home and Tommy shrugged. Dougherty said, “Mom and Cheryl fighting a lot?”

  “Just all the time.”

  “Well, it’ll be okay.”

  Tommy poured ketchup on his plate and said, “Cheryl is such a bitch.”

  “What did you say?”

  But Tommy could see that Dougherty was smiling a little and he smiled, too. Then he looked serious again and said, “She’s just mad all the time.”

  “Yeah, lots of people are.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dougherty looked around the restaurant and out the window to Churchill Boulevard that cut through Greenfield Park. A block farther down was City Hall, the police station and the fire station and behind them Empire Park, where Tommy played football, and an indoor arena, where he’d play hockey in the winter. Dougherty was thinking now it was a nice little town. “Do Mom and Dad fight much?”

  Tommy took a bite of some toast. “Not much.”

  Dougherty watched his little brother eat and thought, Yeah, tough times for everybody.

  They’d been in the house six years and either his father or his mother had been on strike at least once almost every year. Both worked for the phone company, The Bell, but in different unions, his father a lineman, driving one of those green vans with ladders on the roof, and his mother an operator. Dougherty had lived there four years and been on his own for two, but sometimes he felt like he’d never really lived on the South Shore, like he’d gone straight from the Point to his apartment downtown. Now he was starting to see how Greenfield Park was Tommy’s home. But what about Cheryl?

  Dougherty was thinking his sister could be somewhere in between Brenda Webber and Shirley Audette, a kid maybe buying hash off some guy on the street and a woman living downtown inviting “good-looking, charming” guys into her apartment. But really, what did he know about Cheryl?

  He looked at Tommy. “Hey, you want to go to an Expos game?”

  “Yeah, when?”

  “I’m working nights this week, and probably the next week, too, but I’ll get some tickets and we’ll go.”