by Ted Wood
It was deliberately formal but I guessed the other woman was part of some activist group or other and would be well primed about the best ways to make trouble. The first thing to do is holler "Rape." That muddies up the water so you can get away with anything less than murder.
I spoke to the woman in the green skirt next, again making it deliberately formal. "Until your name is revealed, I am calling you Jane Doe." There was no answer so I rhymed off the caution and the new Charter of Rights routine.
She didn't answer. Instead she crossed her arms and stared at the floor as if waiting for the firing squad. Before I could ask her anything, the door behind me burst open and a man of about sixty came in with a woman ten or fifteen years younger right behind him.
"What's going on?" He spoke hoarsely and his face was veal-white, drained of blood. I wondered if he had a heart problem.
"Are you Mr. Carmichael?"
He didn't get a chance to answer. His wife did it for him. I'd heard the local gossip that said she was once an actress. Whatever the truth, she was in charge of this scene. "Look at this, for sweet Christ's sake," she shouted. "The only cop in this hole in the ground and he's standing around in here with two broads and an open rye bottle." She swung her expensively blonde-dyed head to me and demanded, "Why aren't you out looking for our daughter?"
"Our," I noticed. She must be the girl's stepmother, overcompensating for some hidden hatreds. "I'm conducting an investigation in here. If you want to shout, wait outside."
She opened her mouth to crank up the volume a little higher but her husband touched her arm. "Easy, Dot." It was the tone of voice I would have used with Sam. She stopped and looked at him, ready to spring into action again if he didn't make something happen at once. He came further into the room and sat down. His hand was shaking as he adjusted his chair.
"I'm Frank Carmichael. It's my daughter who vanished out there."
"Where have you been since?" It's a policeman's question—shocking, but fair. He waved it aside with a thin hand. It wouldn't be too long before his blonde wife was spending the insurance money, it seemed to me.
"I have angina. I'm afraid the shock was a bit much for me. My wife was administering my medication. We were in the cloakroom."
His wife had picked the bones out of my question and she suddenly roared again. "Are you suggesting we had something to do with what happened?"
I ignored her. "I'd prefer to talk to you somewhere private, but there isn't anywhere else." Mr. Carmichael nodded again and moved his jaw forward, rolling his nitro pill around under his tongue, I imagined. I filled him in on my theory that his daughter had gone voluntarily, which indicated to me that this was some kind of practical joke she was playing and not a real abduction. His wife objected again.
"Are you accusing …"
"Please be quiet. You're upsetting your husband." I guess nobody had spoken to her that way since she left the chorus line. She almost bit her tongue.
"I am about to check the license number of the getaway vehicle. Give me one minute on the phone." I picked up the receiver, hoping that the snow hadn't brought the lines down.
I was lucky. A minute later I'd learned that the Toyota had been stolen late that afternoon from a ski resort south of here. If I'd been back to my office within the last couple of hours I would have seen the number on the teletype. I filled in the operator on what had happened and gave him a description of Nancy. I looked up at her mother. "What kind of coat did she have on?"
"She came here in a calf-length raccoon," she said.
"Check if it's still in the cloakroom, please."
She looked surprised at being asked to run errands and her husband said, "You can identify it, dear. These people couldn't."
It was quieter without her. I asked Carmichael, "Have you ever seen this woman before? Is she a friend of your daughter's?"
"If she is, she's a stranger to me." He was calmer now. The nitro had taken hold and the hoarseness was leaving his voice as the pain receded. I studied him as I spoke. He had the lean, city look of big business, but there was a toughness under it. He had been a soldier once, I'd learned that in local gossip. After the war he had come back and studied geology on a veteran's grant and had made a big strike in the late forties. From there he had gone into business in Toronto. His clothes told me that much, but his face looked rugged and there was a white crease in the hairline above his ear, the kind of gouge a bullet makes. He had come closer than this to death a long time ago.
"I think your daughter has set up this disappearance as a joke," I explained again. "Is she a high-spirited girl, would she do that kind of thing?" Meaning, is she a spoiled kid who enjoys making monkeys out of everybody.
He shrugged. "She's never done anything like that before."
I straightened up. "All right. Don't worry. I'm going to try to find out where she is. It will be difficult, so please be patient. In the meantime, I don't think she's in any danger." I was talking as much for the prisoner's benefit as for his, but she kept her face tilted down and if I'd hit the bull's eye she would never have let me know.
His wife came back into the room empty-handed.
"Her coat's gone. That's a three-thousand-dollar raccoon. Somebody must have stolen it."
"She was probably wearing it when she left," I said.
This made her turn and flare at me. "What the hell are you talking about? What kind of a cop are you, anyway? You're nothing but a goddamn meter maid, working in this place."
Walter Puckrin chimed in now. "This man's the best policeman you've ever met. He took on three guys last summer, smart guys with guns, and killed the lot of them."
The prisoner looked up in terror. Nobody had given her my pedigree when they suggested Murphy's Harbour as the site of their caper. But it didn't fizz on Mrs. Carmichael.
"Well, get off your arse and kill somebody else, before our daughter freezes to death."
"You're not helping, Mrs. Carmichael. I'm sure your daughter is safe. I think this is some kind of prank. Just relax."
Her husband had taken her hand and was patting it. When she spoke again the respect was showing through her tone, like a fingertip through a torn glove.
"You really think that?"
I nodded. "Val, will you stay here with the prisoner? Walter, you get on with business. I've got an idea."
I went out into the hall. Sam was still waiting by the stage. I nodded, and he joined me as I went to the Legionnaire at the door, still sitting with his cash box and his beer, a fresh one.
"How many people bought tickets at the door?"
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "None, I guess. All my sales is liquor and beer. Everybody had a ticket they bought ahead of time."
"Thanks. I need your box of stubs." I took the box and headed for the microphone. I knew what I had to do. It would be a painstaking job, but you don't get the chance to do any hundred-yard dashes at the start of an investigation. You have to find the facts. It's like picking fly dirt out of pepper.
I called on the women who had been in charge of selling tickets. They confirmed what I knew. The tickets were in three parts. The initial stub had a name and address written on it by the seller. It was put in the box for a draw for a pair of snowshoes. In addition, the guy at the door tore the remaining part of the ticket in half. They went in the box as well, so that people actually attending the dance had a double chance to win. It was typical small-town fussing, but it gave me a lead.
Moving quickly, I read out the numbers on the stubs in the box I'd picked up. As I did, the owner of the ticket went to one side of the hall. When I came to the ticket of a missing person I would know they had left with the girl.
I was halfway through the box before it happened. Ticket number 204. I called Val on the microphone and she checked the purse of the girl I'd arrested. She had no ticket of her own. "She ate it when you started calling numbers," Val told me, and the crowd laughed.
Behind me the wives of the Chamber of Commerce people were riff
ling through the names and addresses. They came up with number 204 and brought it to me.
It was made out to a Ms. Pankhurst and the address was a place in Toronto. I thought back to my days as a Toronto policeman and realized that it was the address of one of the police stations. I had been outsmarted by the buyer.
"Did you sell this ticket yourself?"
The woman shook her head. "No, that's not my writing, Chief. Let me think. I did give out a couple to other people to sell. Lee Chong at the restaurant got a book. So did Fred Wales at the Muskellunge Motel."
We both stared at the writing, which was square and neat. The name of the street in Toronto had been misspelled.
"That's Fred Wales," I guessed, and she agreed. "Must be. I can't hardly read Lee's writing, so this can't be his."
We were talking away from the microphone, me crouching at the side of the stage looking down at her. She was fiftyish and serious. "Don't tell a soul about this. It's important," I told her.
She nodded. "If you say, Chief." She would help me, for now. Tomorrow this would be her war story and she would bore the Ladies' Aid with it from here on.
I collected Val Summers from Puckrin's office, leaving Sam on guard over the girl. Walter was happy to lend me his Blazer again. The door to his office was open, and the dancers were staring in as they passed, envying him his share of the limelight. He had built a deep, dark drink and was ready to sit there all evening if he had to, counting cash and trying to get Jane Doe to say something.
The girl was getting restless. She had expected more interest than this. For her few moments she had been a star and she had liked it. Now she was a nobody and it rankled. I was glad to see it. She would be talkative next time I questioned her, anxious to prove how important she had been in the plan. For now I left her in Sam's care.
The snow hit us like a club when we left the hall. Already four inches had come down, and it had drifted a yard deep in the lee of the pines along the side of the road to the highway, thumping under my tires, obscuring even the marks I had made a few minutes earlier. Driving was difficult. The roadbed was anybody's guess. Twice in the mile to the highway I slipped off the pavement onto the shoulder, but the four-wheel drive dug in and hung on, holding us safe.
"The motel's just north of the corner. There's a chance they've been dumb enough to head right back there. If they have, we've got them. If they haven't—well, at least we'll get a description, maybe even a license number from Fred Wales. They must have bought the tickets there, maybe tonight."
"If all they want is publicity for this C.L.A.W. outfit, maybe they'll head there and sit tight," Val said. Her voice was the only warmth in the night and her perfume was a promise of springtime.
I had put our date out of my mind. For now I was a policeman earning the small amount of pay I got by solving the biggest problem to hit Murphy's Harbour in six months. Later, when the hassle was over, I looked forward to my weekend with Val. I reached out and squeezed her knee. She covered my hand with hers and we drove out to the highway in comfortable silence.
The drift at the road junction was deeper now, but Walter's vehicle made it on the second try and I headed north, the way the getaway car had been pointing. I was a little angry with myself for not pushing on earlier in hot pursuit. But I'd had nothing to go on then—any parked car at roadside would have made me stop to investigate. I would have gotten nowhere. Now I was feeling confident again.
We reached the Muskellunge Motel and pulled in. It's the typical northern Ontario stop-over, a row of cabins with the office-cum-coffee-shop-cum-living quarters for the owner at one end. I parked outside the coffee shop and sent Val inside to drum up Fred Wales while I took a quick walk along the line of cabins. There were cars parked in front of most of them, but the one I wanted was outside number six. It was a big Ford station wagon and the hood was still warm enough that the new snow was melting where it fell, leaving only the outline of the bracing members under the hood. I guessed it had been in its place for about half an hour. The timing was right.
There were lights on in the cabin but I backed away without knocking. If the kidnappers were less dumb than they looked at this moment, they would have parked in front of the wrong cabin, giving themselves time to escape when the big slow copper came banging on someone else's door. I would check first.
Fred Wales was pouring coffee for Val, excited at the presence of a good-looking woman on a night when only truck drivers would normally come in. He's a tall thin Englishman who's been here since the war but has never lost his accent. He thinks his slang makes him sound North American. Most of it comes from late movies.
"Hi," he said. "Long time no see."
"Official business, Fred." I sat down and sipped my coffee, but kept my hat on and my parka zipped so he would know this was not a social call. "What can you tell me about the party in number six?"
"Hang on, I'll check." He beamed at Val again and went out through the back door. Val grinned at me. I winked back.
"Here it is." He returned with a sheaf of cards in his hand. "A woman, Ms. Ann Gree."
I snorted. "Not trying very hard to fool us, are they?"
Val laughed. "Ann Gree, with a Ms. She's sure teed off with you male chauvs, that's certain."
I took the card from Wales. It was filled out in a clear, literate hand, a schoolteacher's script.
"Can I see the others, Fred? I'm looking for women on their own, pairs of girls, maybe even three together."
Wales handed over the cards and rubbed his chin. "No, everybody else was couples, except for one trucker and a guy, said he was on his own."
One of the cards read: George Nighswander. The address was the one I'd seen on Nighswander's license at the Tavern. "You sure he was alone? I think he's gay."
Wales shrugged. "I don't go out to check. The window was snowed up at the office. He said he was alone." He was losing interest in us. Most likely Casablanca was on TV from Parry Sound. He was hoping we would clear out and leave him alone to get on with being snowed in.
"When I saw him he had a couple of other guys with him, looked light."
"I didn't see anybody," Wales said patiently. "An' what the eye don't see, the heart don't grieve over."
"Thanks anyway. One last thing. When did you sell your book of tickets for the dance?"
"Tickets? Why?"
"Just checking. Can you remember?"
He rubbed his chin with one finger, making a rasping sound I could hear above the Muzak. "Last Saturday. A woman came in an' bought all ten. Just like that."
"Thanks." I wondered if we had ten people working against us tonight. "I'll just go call on Ms. Gree."
Wales was alarmed. "Hey, go easy, Chief. There's no law against her giving a phony name."
There is, but it's never enforced. I pulled down the flaps around my hat. It looks silly, but it saves your ears from frostbite and that's not silly. "Don't worry. I don't care about any Smiths you get in here, just her."
That bothered him. His accent lost thirty years and became bitingly British. "I run a respectable place."
"I know. They get their share of Smiths in the Royal York in Toronto. But this girl could be important."
Val was standing, buttoning her coat. "She could be involved in a kidnapping at the Legion," she offered, and Wales gasped.
He gave us the key with no more argument and we walked to cabin six. We stood there perhaps thirty seconds, listening hard, but could make out nothing over the rush of the wind and the white-sound hiss of the snow against our collars and faces.
Finally I turned to Val and shrugged, then knocked at the door. There was no answer and I waited another twenty seconds, taking a few steps to each side of the cabin, making sure no one was coming out of the sides or the back.
I opened the door and a gust of warm air enveloped me.
I took one sniff and told Val, "Wait by the door, something's wrong." She didn't understand me but did as I said anyway. I stuck my right hand deep in my parka pocket,
holding my gun ready for trouble.
The bedroom was empty. The bed was rumpled as if someone had sat on it. It looked as if the cabin was empty but I knew better. The place smelled of death.
I pulled my gun and slammed the bathroom door open with a kick, trying to shock whoever was hiding there.
It was too late. The girl who was hanging from the shower rail had been dead for at least fifteen minutes.
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5
The face was bloated and inhuman, but I could tell that the body was not Nancy Carmichael's. This was another girl, as close to thirty as she was ever going to get. She was naked and her sphincter had failed her. I knew she was dead but I'm not a doctor, not qualified to make judgments like that. I took out my clasp knife and cut her down. I spent a fruitless couple of minutes breathing into her lungs and pounding her chest but I was too late. Val came in on tiptoe, frightened, saw the corpse, and vomited into the bathtub. "Don't touch anything," I told her. She tore some tissues from the container, not touching the metal, and wiped her mouth.
"Go back to the office and wait. Watch to make sure nobody leaves. If they do, check their car number and come and tell me right away. Can you do that? Please?"
She nodded and left. I stood up, leaving the girl lying face up on the floor, my eyes checking everything in the room. Nothing was disturbed. The pile of towels was untouched, the paper flag was across the toilet seat, there were no signs of any struggle. It could have meant that she had rented the room and simply walked in and committed suicide. But I didn't think so.
I bent and examined the mark on the throat. It was as I had guessed. There were two marks. One had been made by something broader than the thin cord of pantyhose used as a ligament for the hanging. To my eye it seemed as if the neck had been crushed by a blow, possibly a classic karate chop. Then, before the body was completely past the point of no return, it had been hung from the shower rail. I was dealing with a murder.