Murder in Focus

by Medora Sale

  Sanders shrugged. “Two or three days, I imagine. I think it’s off being processed right now. You know these places. They mail them off to God knows where and pray that they get back sometime. I’ll call you when I hear. I wouldn’t have thought you really needed it that much. You probably have a good description, don’t you? Just take off the scar and there he is.” He stood up as well. “If you don’t need me, I’ll be off then.”

  “Would you like a ride anywhere?” said MacMillan. “I’m heading back into town in a minute or two.”

  Sanders shook his head. “Thanks, but I have a ride. Good night, gentlemen.”

  Sanders strode rapidly down the pathway by the river. The briskness of the pace was beginning to purge his residual irritation, and he felt buoyed up with new energy. At every bend in the path he glanced around, expecting to see the park that Harriet had promised; that half mile was becoming a very long one. At last it occurred to him that even if he found the park, no one in her right mind would have waited, dinnerless, this long for him to turn up. The river concurred with a melancholy roar, and once more his old bleak loneliness enveloped him. He plunged his hands into his pockets, slowed down to a depressed saunter, and stared gloomily at the ground beneath his feet while he followed the curve of the path.

  The voice came out of nowhere and hit him in the belly with a shock of pleasure. “You bloody well took your time, didn’t you? Don’t you ever get hungry?” Harriet was sitting on the iron railings, wedged against a concrete pillar, focusing her little camera in the direction of a particularly interesting swirl in the rough and tumble of the water. He stopped in front of her. A sudden desperation made him reach out his arms. She jumped down, allowing his hands to encircle her waist briefly and smiling demurely. “Why, thank you, sir,” she said. “But I do believe I could have managed that on my own. What happened at the Bastille over there? Or have you been dodging around trying to prevent them from finding me?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He was convinced that his violent and irrational mood swings of the last five minutes were stamped across his face, and he tried to avoid her quizzical eye. “Nothing much. Anything these bastards touch turns into a ridiculously time-consuming exercise, even when it means nothing. They had to check out everyone’s story, that’s all. Including mine. It takes forever. Most of the time I was just sitting there reading old issues of Maclean’s.” He glanced back to where she was standing looking gravely at him. “Where’s the car?” he asked.

  “Up the path—or actually it’s down the path, isn’t it?—a piece. I got bored and started walking up to meet you.”

  “Good,” he said. “I feel like walking.” He started, paused to let her catch up, and then shortened his stride somewhat to match hers. “Tell me,” he said, and his voice came out more fiercely than he had intended, “how did you end up as a photographer?”

  “Oh, that. That’s simple. I did German in university and went off after I graduated to study in Germany.”

  “That seems logical,” said Sanders. “But I don’t see how—”

  “Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Harriet. “I met a man. A student. He was learning photography, and I decided that there was no point in an English-speaking Canadian trying to compete with a lot of German-speaking students in studying German literature. And so I decided to learn photography along with Martin. As he went along in his course, so to speak, so did I.” She looked dreamily off across the river. “He was thin, dark, and poetic-looking.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “My visa ran out and I began to get serious about being a photographer. That meant I had to go somewhere where I could work legally.” She flashed a small, rueful smile at him. “I came back here. Anyway, his father ran a nice little business in Hamburg and I think Martin wanted to go back home and live the good life after all.”

  “In spite of being poetic-looking?”

  “In spite of being poetic-looking. Art was not enough, apparently. But he taught me a lot. I’m grateful to him. Ah,” she said, “the car. It’s late and I’m famished. Aren’t you?”

  * * *

  1 “That’s all I needed right now.”

  Chapter 6

  Cassidy stood in the middle of the living room in Steve Collins’s apartment and stared, depressed, at the wall of books. He had been through the bedroom, inch by careful inch, and more rapidly through the small, neat kitchen. All he had discovered so far was that Steve was an obsessively tidy person with—apparently—no great fondness for mementos of the past. Except for a thin bundle of letters from Betty, written while he was on vacation last year, hidden in the back of his sock drawer. Those letters were still bothering Cassidy. First, he supposed, because they were witness to the fact that the affair had been going on for at least a year without anyone knowing about it, and that irritated his professional pride. Then, because he had read them purely in the line of duty, so to speak, and hated himself because he realized he had enjoyed reading them. They were literate, witty, amusing, and filled with passionate longing. Christ! They made poor Samantha seem as exciting as yesterday’s porridge, he had thought as he slipped them into his jacket pocket. He had found himself envying Steve the possession of all that intelligence and good humor. And passion, he had to admit. They also almost made him forget why he was here, pawing through Steve’s things. There was nothing in those letters that could have anything to do with Steve’s death—Cassidy was sure of that—but maybe he would keep them a while, just in case, and return them to Betty quietly. Or was that really why he was keeping them? Was there any possible reason why he shouldn’t either leave them here or return them right away? If he left them here, of course, someone else would find them, some slimy, snickering bastard who would probably read out the juicy parts to anyone who would sit and listen. He was surprised his colleagues at CSIS hadn’t searched the apartment already. Or perhaps they had, and had laughed over the letters before leaving them behind as unimportant. With a slight start, he realized he was beginning to think of the letters as his, and was jealous of them; he couldn’t cope with this. He turned his mind back to the question of the books.

  If there was anything hidden here, it would be somewhere in all those books, of course. He pulled up a stool and took one off the shelf. It was a thin volume of poetry. He looked at the title page in surprise, riffled the pages for enclosures, and found himself reading one of the poems, then another. His view of Steve—the shy country boy who liked hiking and hockey games—was being violently wrenched askew. Of course, Steve’s ready ability to take on and shed accents and personalities never had fitted his image as a bumbling rustic, but that had been accepted as a peculiar, but useful, aberration. Cassidy was having real trouble envisaging his colleague as the ardent and—if the letters were accurate—inventive lover, the collector of recently published poetry. What else was Steve up to that the boys in Intelligence were unaware of? After all, if Cassidy knew that little about him, then maybe . . . “For chrissake, Andrew,” he said aloud. “You are going off the edge.” His voice echoed in the empty apartment, and he reached for another book.

  The answering voice hit him with a thrust of pure terror. “I thought I’d find you here, but I didn’t expect you to be talking to yourself.”

  Cassidy dropped the book in his hand and whirled around on the stool. “How in hell did you get in?” he snapped.

  Betty Ferris was standing in the doorway, her face an unreadable mask. She had changed into a pair of jeans and a large sweater, and the effect of the casually heavy clothing was to make her appear even more fragile. She stared at him as if she needed an enormous amount of time to decide what to say. When it did come, it was not particularly remarkable. “I have a key,” she said mildly. “I have some right to be here. How did you get in?”

  “I signed out his keys. This is, uh, sort of official,” said Cassidy. There didn’t seem to be anything to add that wouldn’t
sound offensive. “Did you want—” he started and couldn’t finish. “Was there anything—” Unfortunately he thought of the letters in his pocket and reddened. “Why are you here?” he said at last.

  “We shared this apartment on weekends,” she said simply. “That’s when Stacy is with her father. Or if she was with me, she came, too. They got on together.” She paused and drew in a ragged breath. “I cleared out all my stuff as soon as I heard about . . . when they told me he was dead. I tried to leave everything tidy. I knew you bastards would be in here. But I just realized I left some things behind and I was hoping to get here before you did. I guess I didn’t quite make it.”

  “So that’s why the place looked like it did,” said Cassidy in relief. “I couldn’t believe that Steve was that fussy about how he lived. And these must be your books, then.” He ran his finger along the spines of the books in front of him, as if happy to clear his old comrade of the charge of reading literature.

  “How in hell do you know what Steve was like?” she said. Her voice was low and vehement, and her cheeks were scarlet with anger. “As a matter of fact, they are his books. I hadn’t even heard of a lot of them until I met him. But not a single one of you arrogant, stupid, illiterate sons of bitches would ever have taken five minutes to find out what he was interested in, to talk to him about anything except what you wanted to talk about. He used to think you guys were funny, but I never did. That’s why no one knew about us, no one. Except my five-year-old daughter, and she’d had to learn the hard way to be careful about what you say to people.” Tears began to pour down her cheeks, and she brushed them away with nervous, contemptuous fingers. “He knew what you guys would say. He said that he wouldn’t mind, except that you’d be saying it about me, really, not him. And he couldn’t stand that. He still used to like you bastards, too.”

  “Listen, Betty, I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “You wouldn’t,” she interrupted bitterly.

  “—but we all liked Steve. Everyone did. Jesus, can’t you see how upset everyone is? Everyone who worked with him. For chrissake, what can I say?” He whirled around on the stool, away from those accusing eyes, and reached into his pocket. “I think this must be what you came for,” he said, holding out the packet of letters.

  “You read them, didn’t you?” she said dully, taking them and putting them in the pocket of her sweater. “Of course you did.”

  “Hey, Betty. Don’t be unreasonable. He would have read them, too, if my girlfriend had written them to me and he found them after I’d been killed while working on something. Just in case there was something in them that told him what was going on. That’s what he did for a living. That’s what we all do for a living.”

  She held out her hand again and he stared down at her thin wrist. It emerged from the sagging, folded-over cuff of the sweater, a cuff that had been stretched by arms much sturdier than hers, and he realized what was bothering him. He remembered that sweater; he could see Steve disappearing off into the bush wearing it one Thanksgiving weekend they had all spent at Ian MacMillan’s chalet. Back in the good old days, before politics and policies had split them apart. “The diary,” said Betty, her hand still outstretched.

  “Diary?” The shock of the sudden memory made his eyes prickle with sorrow, and he turned away, embarrassed and angry. “What diary?”

  “Steve’s diary. The letters were tucked inside it. Come off it, Andy. If you found the letters, you found the goddamn diary. There’s nothing in it for ghouls like you. It was personal and I want it.” Her hand trembled. “Did you take all of them, you bastard?” She walked over to the other end of the wall unit that held his books and knelt down in front of a pair of doors in the bottom section. She peered closely at the small lock, shook her head, took a key out of her pocket, and opened the doors. “Goddamn you!” she shrieked and went very still. “You took them all. All of them.” She slammed the door shut and knelt there, her hands over her face, her shoulders heaving with sobs.

  “Betty.” He knelt beside her. “Betty.” He touched her shoulder. “I swear I didn’t take any diaries. I didn’t even know he kept a diary. Someone else—” He got up resolutely and went over to the phone, dialed, spoke, and waited. And waited. He murmured again, too softly for Betty to hear, and waited again. At last he said, “Well, thanks anyway,” and hung up. “Look, Betty,” he said, walking back over to where she knelt on the floor, “we haven’t got them. Are you sure they were here?” She nodded. “Can I see that lock?’

  “It’s been forced,” she said hoarsely. “But you can look at it if you want.” She got up and moved away.

  He stared at the pattern of scratch marks on the shiny white finish. Someone had been messing around recently with the lock. He opened the doors. Faint dust marks showed him the shape and size of what was missing from the cabinet. He stood up at last and walked over to Betty, awkward and miserable in the face of her misery. He patted her mechanically on the shoulder, and then in a wave of some indefinable emotion, gathered her into his arms and held her tightly. For an instant she fell into his embrace, then she stiffened and tore herself loose.

  “Let go of me,” she hissed. “He hasn’t bloody well been dead that long, Andy Cassidy. I don’t need any of your comforting. What in hell do you think I am? Who in hell do you think you are? Trying to jump into his bed as soon as it’s empty. Let me tell you, you’d never make it. Never!” She turned and began running for the door.

  “Betty, I’m sorry,” he called after her. “Betty! Goddammit! Come back here. You’ve got to tell me what—” The footsteps slowed, and he followed her into the hall.

  “Tell you what?” She was standing with her hand on the door, looking back at him.

  “What he was working on. I have to know what else he was working on. Just in case.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked. “Does any of this whole stupid business matter?”

  “If it’s what got him killed it does. At least to me it does,” he answered softly.

  Betty stared at him for a long time. At last she shook her head. “You ask a lot,” she said. “Wanting me to get mixed up in this. I have Stacy to think of. She counts on me. And anyway, I don’t really know anything. Not facts, not names, just what little he told me.” She paused, rubbed her foot over a dirty mark on the floor, and stared intently at the effect. “I suppose if you want that, you can have it,” she said, raising her head again.

  Andy Cassidy looked at her, puzzled, and nodded.

  Betty walked back into the living room and looked around. “Is this room clean?” she asked suddenly.

  “As far as I know,” said Cassidy. “You want me to check?”

  Betty shook her head. “Let’s go get some coffee. Just in case.”

  “How about a drink?”

  “I’m not ready for that yet,” she said. “I need to keep my wits about me.”

  Betty Ferris stirred the whipped cream into her cup of cappuccino with an intensity that seemed to preclude speech. When she broke the silence, Andy Cassidy jumped slightly, startled. “I take it you already know about this last official thing he was doing,” she said. “I mean, that was assigned, standard stuff, I guess.” Cassidy nodded. “So you want to know what else he was up to.”

  “If he was up to anything else.”

  “Well, he was, of course. Something he brought with him from the RCMP.” Cassidy opened his mouth to interrupt and she held up a hand for silence. “I know what I’m talking about. It had to do with an incident from when he was on the organized crime unit in Montreal. One of his old pals was shot. Someone he had put away once, a guy who turned informer for him a couple of times after he got out. It wasn’t the shooting that he was working on—his guy was shot by a drug dealer whose territory he moved into—”

  “Maurice Charbonneau,” said Cassidy. “His snitch. I remember.”

  “Was that his name? I don’
t think he ever said. Probably. Anyway, Maurice—we’ll call him that for now—Maurice told Steve when he was dying that someone—a cop—had taken fifty thou to let a shipment get by nice and quietly. Anyway, not only had the cop hung on to the fifty thou, but he’d also stolen the shipment. Half a million worth of heroin. Anyway, Steve’s been—was”—she amended hastily—“chasing whoever it was. I did a lot of searching through files for him. That was how we got to know each other. Working late on this thing.”

  “Did he ever find out?” asked Cassidy casually.

  Betty looked across the table and then shook her head. “I don’t think so. He was close, though. He’d eliminated a hell of a lot of people.”

  “Like who?”

  “Anyone on the Montreal police. Or the Quebec provincial police.”

  “And that leaves . . .”

  “You guys. After all, he called it Royal Twist. That was his kind of joke.” Her eyes filled with tears suddenly. “He must have known he was looking for someone who had been in the RCMP.”

  “And still is?”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t know. For all I know, Andy Cassidy, it could be you, couldn’t it? You were RCMP before you went to CSIS.”

  He laughed uneasily. “If I had half a million bucks, would I still be working for the goddamn government?”

  “I don’t know,” said Betty. “I really don’t know.”