Acts of Murder

by L. R. Wright

  “Lattimer. Forget it, Cindi. He’s married. They’re both married,” said Eddie.

  And now they noticed her, just as they reached the table and started to sit down. For a moment they froze, half standing, half sitting, looking awkward and guilty, as if she’d caught them doing something they shouldn’t. Eddie grinned and tossed them a mock salute. They relaxed, grinned back, and sat down.

  “Everybody’s married,” said Cindi irritably.

  “Not everybody,” said Eddie, and she took another bite of her sandwich.

  “I don’t believe in going out with married guys,” said Cindi.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t believe in going out with anyone, though—isn’t that what you’ve been saying? Sorry,” said Eddie, swallowing, “I shouldn’t talk with my mouth full.”

  “I was asking for your opinion, is what I was doing,” said Cindi with dignity. She waved at the bartender and ordered another beer.

  “You want another one too, Sergeant?” he asked.

  Eddie shook her head. “Just a glass of water, please.” She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and finished her beer. “My opinion about what? About whether you should audition prospective husbands in bed?”

  Cindi started to protest. Then she turned around, resting her back against the bar. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah,” she said again. “It doesn’t sound good, the way you put it. But that’s it all right.”

  “I think you should, yes,” said Eddie. She sighed and pushed her plate away.

  “You aren’t going to eat the chips?” asked Cindi.

  “Help yourself,” said Eddie. “Check out other stuff first, though,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Cindi, nodding, munching on a chip. “That’s where I’ve gone wrong in the past. I mean, it’s the easiest thing to make sure of, right? So I jump right in there. And then if it’s halfway pleasurable—well, my eyes are dimmed to the rest of him, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do indeed,” said Eddie, looking at her watch.

  “Don’t go yet,” said Cindi quickly.

  The bartender delivered Cindi’s beer and a glass of ice water for Eddie. “Here you go, Sarge.”

  Eddie said, “Have you got a name, sir?”

  “It’s Paul.” He wiped his hand on his apron and extended it toward her.

  “Eddie,” she said, shaking hands.

  “Cindi,” said Cindi, with a peal of laughter, and the bartender shook her hand, too.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Are you done with this?”

  Eddie looked inquiringly at Cindi.

  “Yeah,” said the reporter with a sigh. She gestured dramatically. “Take it away.”

  “I’ve really got to go, Cindi,” said Eddie, watching the door close behind Lattimer and Turner. She’d been sitting here when they’d arrived, she was still here when they left, and she didn’t like the image this suggested.

  “Wait a minute,” said Cindi, placing a hand on Eddie’s arm. “You know this series I’m doing?”

  “About people’s jobs,” said Eddie. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Yeah. Well I—”

  “How did it go with my boss, by the way?”

  “Fine. Good. Terrific, in fact. He had lots of great stories.”

  “He did?” said Eddie, astonished.

  “Yeah. But listen, I also talked to that waitress at Earl’s, the one with the black hair and the attitude. Did you know he hired another one, Earl did, another waitress, sometime last fall? And she just up and disappeared?”

  She had leaned close to Eddie as she spoke, lowering her voice, and Eddie caught a flowery scent that reminded her of her mother. It was something made by Yardley, she thought. Bath powder, maybe. Or body lotion.

  “I’m not suggesting anything here,” Cindi said earnestly, keeping her voice down. She anchored her flyaway hair behind her ears again. “But what with that legal secretary you guys just found, and that poor teenager last year—”

  “Rebecca Granger,” Eddie responded mechanically. “She disappeared on Valentine’s Day. They found her body in August, on her birthday.”

  “I know,” said Cindi. She clasped her hands and rested them on the edge of the bar. “I’ve been trying to decide all evening whether to say anything about it. It could be coincidence, after all. It probably is.” She sat perfectly still, perfectly relaxed, her face tilted slightly, her eyes on Eddie, waiting.

  “Uh huh,” said Eddie. “And you’re speaking to me here—as what?”

  “Not as a friend,” said Cindi. “We don’t know each other well enough to be friends. Not as a reporter, either. It isn’t my story, although I wish it were, and I’m certainly not about to give anything to that rat-turd who is covering it.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m speaking as a citizen.”

  “Uh huh,” said Eddie.

  Cindi shifted on the bar stool. “It’s probably nothing. It’s probably coincidence.”

  “Probably,” said Eddie. But there was a fluttering in her stomach that threatened to prevent the easy digestion of her roast beef sandwich.

  Chapter 20 Wednesday, April 3

  MRS. O’HARA HAD found it hard to sleep. The night had brought a medium-sized wind, so the trees were restless and noisy and the cabin creaked more loudly than usual. Mrs. O’Hara tried to wait for daybreak but couldn’t: it was still dark when she climbed out of bed.

  She swallowed several aspirin and made herself some tea, then went to the door and opened it. By this time the sky had begun to lighten, although many stars were still visible. It was soothing to stand there in the doorway gazing at the wakening world. Mrs. O’Hara hadn’t looked at the clock yet or put on her wristwatch, and for the moment she cared nothing for the passage of time. Time seemed irrelevant. She thought it must be immensely liberating to live life without benefit of clock or wristwatch. When the day of her retirement arrived perhaps she would divest herself of such things and live the months that remained to her only according to the light in the sky.

  She couldn’t see the lake from here but imagined it, silvery in the burgeoning daylight, the surrounding grasses strong black paintbrush strokes, the trees bending toward the water, leaning toward it as if to see themselves reflected there. Mrs. O’Hara shivered suddenly in the coolness of the pearly blue morning, and closed the door, softly.

  She had no wish to dress, no wish to travel, no wish to clean houses or organize her last sweep. There were aches in her body and aches in her brain, and she was afraid that tiredness would never again leave her.

  Soon, however, these things wouldn’t matter. Soon the days—and nights—would belong only to her. She wondered what she would do with them.

  She had become a church-goer, for a while, shortly after her arrival in Sechelt. She used to drive up and down the peninsula a lot then, getting to know her territory, and a pretty white-painted chapel had caught her eye. It gleamed at her through the thicket of trees that surrounded it, white glints through the bright green of spring, the lush foliage of summer, the gold of autumn, the delicately skeletal bare branches in winter: it was the protective enclosure of the trees that had captured her fancy.

  One Sunday she searched her closet for a skirt, climbed into her van, and went to church.

  She attended sporadically for several months, gradually becoming acquainted with some of the parishioners—and with the pastor, a thin, stooped man with a durable smile.

  Eventually she had accepted the pastor as a client.

  One day, while she was cleaning his house, his fourteen-year-old daughter burst in: she had been with her father in the chapel, arranging flowers for services the following morning. Mrs. O’Hara speculated, later, that if she had been standing when the girl came in, things might not have unfolded as they did, for Mrs. O’Hara was a large, imposing woman, possibly even of frightening size. But at that moment she was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor, her face damp with perspiration, her hair coming loose from its bun, and she knew that her expression was o
ne of unthreatening surprise—quickly followed by concern, because the girl was so obviously distraught. “What is it?” asked Mrs. O’Hara. And the girl began to sob, her shoulders hunching, her hands covering her face. And pretty soon Mrs. O’Hara had heard the whole evil tale.

  Although she was not a mechanic, she knew a thing or two about cars. She also knew the pastor’s schedule, when he made his regular visits of condolence and support, and to whom.

  She drove to his house one winter morning before dawn, parked her van on the highway, crept into his yard, and made adjustments under the hood of his vehicle.

  The chance of her endangering the pastor’s daughter was remote, since the girl walked to and from school and avoided being alone with her father whenever possible.

  The pastor’s car went out of control on a rambling, graceful hill, spun off the road, and slammed into a Douglas fir, killing him almost instantly. Mrs. O’Hara hadn’t necessarily intended for him to die, but was prepared for this eventuality, and accepted it as his due.

  The girl, his daughter, went to live with an aunt and uncle in Nanaimo.

  As Mrs. O’Hara gazed around her comfortable cabin, a strange, hostile thought unfolded in her brain: when she died—how much time would pass before somebody thought to look for her? And found her body?

  ***

  “I can’t believe there’d be another one,” said Alberg to Eddie. “Three homicides? Jesus.” His frustration was growing, and so was his anger. “Check it out,” he said. “She probably didn’t disappear. She probably changed her mind about wanting to work for Earl. But check it out.” He turned to Frank Turner. “What did we get from the interviews in the area around the clearing?”

  “Nothing, Staff,” said Turner, a tall, lean redhead with a scarred forehead and right cheek. “It’s pretty isolated there. Nearest house is a couple of miles away. And you can’t see the clearing from the road. So the guys didn’t come up with much.”

  “Did they come up with anything at all?”

  “Sorry, Staff. No.”

  Alberg opened the center drawer of his desk and immediately slammed it closed. “Eddie?”

  She paged through her notebook. “The victims didn’t know each other. Rebecca was a high school student, Janet worked in a lawyer’s office—they don’t seem to have had anything in common. They didn’t go to the same hairdresser, or doctor, or dentist. Neither of them had any formal religious affiliation. Rebecca’s mother says she and her husband didn’t know Janet, or Andrew.” Eddie shrugged, almost apologetically.

  “And although Janet Maine had had an abortion,” said Alberg, “that doesn’t shed any light because Rebecca Granger was uh...a virgin, right?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “That’s refreshing,” Alberg grumbled. He sat back again, folding his arms. “And even though Janet’s husband was upset about the abortion, you don’t think he was upset enough to kill her.”

  “Right,” said Eddie. “And besides, his boss says he was working when she was killed.”

  “So.” Alberg looked from one of them to the other. “Does anybody think we’ve got a couple of random killings here?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Frank Turner, and Eddie nodded in agreement.

  “Okay. Why?” asked Alberg.

  “There’s no sexual assault,” said Turner.

  “And is sex the only possible explanation for a spontaneous homicide?” asked Alberg.

  Frank shrugged. “It could happen in the course of a robbery.”

  “But neither of these victims was robbed,” said Alberg.

  “Sex, or rage,” said Eddie. “And there’s no sign of rage here, either. Both killings were calculated.”

  “Okay. If you’re right, and we’re looking at deliberate homicides, there must be some damn connection between the victims.” Alberg stood up, walked to his office door, and opened it. “Find it,” he said, waving Eddie and Frank Turner into the hall.

  ***

  How did I get him into the trunk? Denise asked herself, sitting in the rocking chair.

  She hadn’t gone back to work. She had called to say that she still had the flu.

  How did I get him into the trunk?

  She received a foggy memory of a recalcitrant leg, dangling.

  She had folded it carefully at hip and knee, but it sprang awkwardly forward and draped itself over the lip of the trunk. Patiently, she pushed it back.

  Tears were very close to the insides of each of her eyelids. Tension wanted to squeeze them free, but they remained where they were.

  Ivan’s leg had trembled, slightly, as Denise closed the trunk.

  This, too, she remembered.

  It had been a small tremor—nothing more. She had thought it part of the dying process; a final shudder of protest, significant only of extinction.

  She had swaddled his head in a bath sheet and lain it gently on a pillow on a sheet of black plastic.

  And once she had removed Ivan from the scene, she had turned to the mess in the kitchen.

  She remembered pulling a stack of towels from the linen closet and dropping them into the blood. They soaked it up like the sponges they were. She was interested and relieved to see that the color of the blood changed slightly, became slightly paler, as it was absorbed by the towels.

  Denise fetched a broom from the landing on the basement staircase. When she opened the door, that cellar smell wafted upward, bringing to mind cardboard boxes of apples and potatoes, splintery shelves filled with glass jars containing pickles and peaches, chutneys and salmon. Denise’s basement held none of these treasures, but it smelled like it did, it smelled like the cellar in her grandparents’ house, years and years ago. They were both dead now, both of those grandparents.

  But they had died quietly, with dignity, spilling no blood upon their kitchen floor.

  Denise snatched the broom from the landing and pulled the chain that turned off the light.

  She pushed the towels around in the blood, using the handle of the broom, which frequently slipped off and skidded on the floor, collecting blood drops on the worn handle, drops that soaked into the wood where paint had flaked away, drops that crept into small slices in the handle that had been created by who knows what. Later she would try to scrub the handle clean, but couldn’t, could not get it clean. Could not.

  When the fluffy towels were soaked—which happened very rapidly—Denise picked them up by a corner and dropped them into plastic garbage bags. She didn’t fill the bags all the way because that would have made them too heavy to lift.

  Another stack of towels was pitched upon the floor, swirled through the blood, picked up, stowed away in garbage bags.

  She used every towel in the linen closet, and the ones hanging limp and soiled in the bathroom, too.

  She had to get down on her hands and knees, finally, and scrub the floor. Some of the remaining blood had dried by then.

  She remembered scrubbing vigorously at a curved line on the floor, dark red: a graceful line, wide and thick but with a pretty curve, its inner edge soft and yielding. She had wiped it into oblivion with a single confident swipe, even though the hand towel she was using was worn almost through in the middle, no longer thick and fluffy but thin, almost transparent...

  Denise sat in the rocking chair and reclaimed every single terrible memory of the night of Ivan’s “murder.”

  She was still sitting there, inert and silent, at lunchtime, when a car pulled up outside the house. She heard footsteps approaching and knew they were Ivan’s. They were firm, measured footsteps and Denise was filled with gratitude, because they were evidence of his continued existence.

  She waited for a knock on the door but there was none, only a faint scraping sound as an envelope was pushed through the space between the floor and the bottom of the door. Denise listened to more footsteps, retreating footsteps, and the sound of first one car, and then another, driving away. After a while she scooped up the envelope and unfolded the note that was inside.

&n
bsp; He wanted a divorce.

  Well, who could blame him?

  She looked outside and saw that his Cavalier was gone.

  ***

  “Who said she disappeared?” Naomi asked impatiently. “And are you gonna sit down and order, or just waste my time here?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Eddie, sliding onto a stool at the counter. “I’ll have a hamburger and fries. That reporter—Cindi Webster. She says you did, Naomi. She told me you said she disappeared.”

  “I said she didn’t show up for work, is what I said. Coffee?”

  “Thanks. But didn’t you think that was odd?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m busy, here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Naomi called over her shoulder, bustling out from behind the counter with the coffee pot.

  Eddie sighed.

  She scribbled for a while in her notebook, exchanged pleasantries with the people sitting on either side of her, ate the hamburger that Naomi eventually banged down in front of her, had a second cup of coffee, used the washroom...

  “Can you give me a minute now?” she asked finally.

  “Sure,” said Naomi, wiping the countertop. “What do you want?”

  “I need to know where she was staying. Where she’d come from. I want to know whatever you can tell me about her—starting with her name.”

  Naomi looked at her curiously. “You think somebody did her in, maybe? Like those other two?”

  “I don’t think anything yet,” Eddie responded patiently. “Okay? Can you help me?”

  “I can tell you a few things. You’ll need Earl for the rest.” She turned to face the swinging door that led into the kitchen. “Earl!” she shouted. “I’ll get him,” she said to Eddie. “Earl!”

  Chapter 21 Thursday, April 4

  ALBERG WOKE EARLY, according to plan. But he almost didn’t get up right away. Cassandra, sleeping, her legs pulled up, her back curved, facing away from him, smelled too damn good. He wanted to press his early morning erection against her butt, and spread his hand inside her panties, over her warm damp bush, inserting his fingers there... Jesus.