by R. E. Donald
In spite of the heat, Hunter shivered. He reached for his radio, and cranked up the dial.
When El was finished at the office, she left her pickup parked behind the warehouse and fired up the old Hino that Wally did local pickups and deliveries with when there was less than a trailer load involved. She'd bought an extra sandwich from the lunch truck, so she munched on it as she drove. She had the foresight to buy the cheese and lettuce, so although the lettuce was limp, the bread wasn't soggy. The worst of rush hour was over, but it was still bumper-to-bumper from Brunette Avenue to the Port Mann Bridge. Once she was past 200th Street, it was clear sailing all the way out to Chillwack and Fraser's Dock pub.
The bar manager was so happy to get rid of Greg Williams' equipment that he helped her carry it out to the truck. El scribbled out a waybill for him and signed it off, then, tempted by the smell of freshly cooked french fries, decided to have dinner in the pub before heading back down the highway. It was pretty quiet in the pub, being Monday night, so the waitress took her order right away, then returned with a glass of Coke. She set it down, but remained beside the table, resting one hand on the back of a chair.
"So you picked up Greg's stuff, huh?" the waitress said.
"Yeah," said El, paying close attention to the young woman for the first time. She was blond and curly, with round red cheeks that looked out of keeping with the heavy eye makeup she wore. Corn fed, and bored with life in the country. "You knew him?"
The girl nodded, her mouth drooping mournfully.
"You like him?" El asked.
"I guess," the girl said with a little shrug. "Did you take the tapes and stuff?"
"What tapes?"
"His tapes. You know, with his songs on them."
"Yeah, I'd better take them, too. Where are they?"
The girl came back a couple of minutes later with a large manila envelope. She handed it to El, then said, "He said I could have one."
El was already busy looking inside the envelope. She pulled out a stack of photographs, eight by twelve glossies of Greg Williams in three different poses: one a close up of his head and shoulders, one of him seated with a guitar and looking past the camera, one of him with the guitar and his eyes looking down. You could call him handsome, she supposed, but he was a little too close to pretty for El's tastes.
"Greg said I could have one," the girl repeated.
"Huh? Oh, here." El handed her a few of the glossies. She noticed the bartender heading toward them with a frown on his face. "Take your pick."
"And a tape, too. He said I could have a tape."
"Melissa…" said the bartender, a note of warning in his voice. He grabbed the glossies from the girl. "What do you want with these? You’d better not be mooning over that little prick. I told you, the only way I'd let you work in the bar was if you didn't get friendly with anybody."
"You want your waitresses to be unfriendly with the customers? What the hell kind of stupid idea is that?" El couldn't help herself.
He scowled at her. "I don't mean that kind of friendly." He turned back to the girl, grabbed her by the arm. "And that goes double for scumbag musicians like him. You hear me?"
"Hold on there," said El. "No boss has a right..."
"Stay out of this." He must have realized he was talking to a paying customer, because he added, "I'm not talkin' as her boss, I'm talkin' as her big brother."
El's mouth made an O. So maybe that gave him a right to get personal with the girl, but he was still an asshole.
"Especially this scumbag," the bartender said to his sister, slapping the glossies hard against the back of the chair.
"Ow. Let go. You're hurting me." The girl glared at him. "And don't talk about him like that. Greg wasn't a scumbag."
"He was a fuckin' scumbag," he said, ripping the glossies in half, then in half again, and throwing the pieces to the floor. "Now, you leave this lady alone and get back to work. Go."
It was almost enough to make El lose her appetite. Almost. When the girl showed up with her burger and fries, El slid one of the cassette tapes across the table under a napkin. "Here," she said. "Just don't let your brother see it." They both looked toward the bar, and were relieved to see him busy with a couple of customers.
"He can be such a jerk sometimes," said the girl.
"Why didn't your brother like Greg?" El asked, picking up the biggest french fry on her plate. She blew on it, then nibbled off the end. It was still hot enough to burn her mouth.
"He's just jealous. He's jealous of anybody that girls like better 'n him."
"The girls liked Greg, huh?"
"Well, yeah. Who wouldn't?" She looked over her shoulder and saw that her brother was watching again. When he turned his attention back to the beer glass he was filling, she scooped the tape up off the table and slipped it into her pocket. "Thanks, eh?"
El shook vinegar and salt on her fries, then dug into the meal. She wished she could've asked the waitress a few more questions, but whenever the girl got close to El's table, the bartender watched her like a hawk. When she finished eating, El left the girl a two-buck tip and went to settle her bill at the bar.
"How come you didn't like Williams?" she asked him as he opened the till for her change. "Was it something about him in particular, or you just don't like musicians?"
"The guy was a scumbag," he said, slapping her change down on the counter. He turned his back to her, which El took as a sign that he didn't intend to continue the conversation.
"Thanks," she said, lowering her voice to add, "... asshole."
There was no tape player in the Hino, and by the time she got home, got the dogs walked and fed, she wasn't in any shape to listen to a tape of a dead guy, scumbag or not, singing. Hell, she wasn't in any shape to listen to anybody sing, not even Phil Collins.
She threw the manila envelope on the kitchen counter and went to bed.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Before leaving the house on Tuesday morning, El slipped one of Greg Williams' tapes into her shirt pocket, planning to listen to it at some point during the day. She wished she could listen to it on her way in to work, but she'd driven the Hino straight home from Fraser's Dock, and it had no tape player. The old truck did have a radio, so she flipped it on to catch the six o'clock news.
After two or three hot political items, the newscaster turned to crime. "The RCMP revealed that they've located the car belonging to a Burnaby man found dead in Southern California last week," he said. "The car, found yesterday in a restaurant parking lot in Mount Vernon, Washington, is being towed to Vancouver for forensic examination."
"Jesus!" said El. "I wonder if Hunter knows about that yet." She knew he would check in with her sometime during the day, and she was already looking forward to the call so she could tell him about her visit to Fraser's Dock. She wondered what the victim's car being abandoned in the U.S. meant to the case against Ray and Sharon. How could he have gotten into their trailer in Mount Vernon? And why?
When she arrived at the office, she backed the Hino up against the chain-link fence. It wasn't going to be used today, and she decided she'd pick a time to unload Greg Williams' equipment when she could be sure no one would walk in on her. She took the tape out of her pocket and examined it in the daylight as she walked to the office. There was a telephone number on the insert, presumably where the singer could be reached for a booking or to inquire about purchasing another tape. Would it be the studio? She put on a pot of coffee, unlocked the warehouse door, and looked through the night's curled up faxes before she tried the number. As she suspected, there was no answer, but she reached a voice mail box.
The male voice on the recorded message was smooth and could pass for sexy. "Thanks for calling Whistlestop Studios. This is Greg Williams. I'm not able to take your call right now, but if you'll leave a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible."
"Yeah. Sure you will," she said, and hung up.
Sharon woke to a humming. It was rhythmic but tunel
ess, growing in intensity. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was, just until she opened her eyes. Across the cell, her cellmate's naked foot, long knobby toes with yellowed pads, hung over the side of her bed, twitching in time to the buzz from her throat. The woman caught Sharon's eye, and with a leer threw back the sheet. Her hand worked between her legs as her pasty buttocks slacked and stiffened. "Oooooh. Watch me, Princess. Watch me. I'm coming."
Sharon gagged and hid her head under her pillow. "Please, God. Get me out of here. Please, God. Show me the way. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please."
"Alora Magee. A-lor-a Ma-gee." Russell reread the message slip, frowning. According to the note, she'd called just five minutes before he walked in the door. The name was familiar, but... Of course. Alora Magee was Sharon Nillson's lawyer. As soon as he reached his desk, he picked up the telephone and punched in her number.
The woman got right to the point. "What can I do to get Sharon moved into a different cell? It appears that her cellmate is a thoroughly unpleasant individual and is making prison life very difficult for her. Sharon's under a great deal of stress and I'm worried about her mental health." The voice was competent and assertive.
"Not my department," Russell told her. "I'm a detective, not the warden." He'd always suspected that women who made an effort to sound competent and assertive were doing so to mask their incompetence and insecurity. "If your client wanted to bunk with a member of the PTA, she shouldn't have murdered her dope dealer."
There were a few seconds of silence, then the lawyer said, "What? What do you mean?"
"Prison inmates aren't known for their pleasant personalities and social skills..."
"No. What do you mean, she shouldn't have murdered her dope dealer?"
Russell smiled. Gotcha, he thought. Suddenly Ms. Clever Lawyer's not nearly so sure of herself. "Just what I said. Appears that the Iceman, before he became an Iceman, was Sharon Nillson's snow man, or at least, the two of them evidently had a long lasting, secretive relationship of some kind, which led her coworkers to assume he was selling her cocaine."
"Sharon knew the victim?"
"She didn't tell you? I thought you and Feldman were hotshot lawyers. How come I know more about your clients than you do?" There was another period of silence which Russell liked to imagine expressed the female lawyer's stunned disbelief. He leaned back in his chair, stroked his tie. "Ray's hick brother from Minnesota has a better fix on your client than you do, and he's never even met her. But then, I guess you defense lawyer types can't afford to be good judges of character. You probably sleep better when you delude yourself into believing your clients are innocent."
"I just do my job. Guilt or innocence is for the jury to decide." The voice was back to being competent and assertive. "Getting a guilty client off - not that I'm aware of ever having done so - would affect my conscience a lot less than putting an innocent man in jail."
"Don't get huffy, Ms. Magee. Or have you forgotten that you called to ask me for a favor?"
"That was a mistake, obviously a result of me being a poor judge of character. Or should I say, a bad judge of poor character?" The phone clicked in Russell's ear.
"Ha!" he said, getting up from his desk. "Sanctimonious bitch. Thank God I got out of law before it was too late." He tossed his empty coffee mug in the air and caught it behind his back, headed for the coffee machine.
"Is there anything you want to tell me?" Alora had dropped everything and told her secretary to reschedule her morning appointments, pleaded an emergency and managed to get in to see Sharon on short notice. If anyone had asked her why it was so important that she talk to her client this morning, she wouldn't have been able to give a rational reason. She didn't know herself.
"Have you got those cigarettes?" Sharon looked even worse than yesterday, but Alora had no sympathy for her today.
"No," she said, staring stonily across the table at her client.
Sharon seemed to realize that something had changed. Her mouth dropped open as she studied Alora's face, then opened and closed several times before she said. "What? What is it that I'm supposed to tell you?"
"The truth."
"You won't believe the truth." Sharon dropped her eyes. The fingers of one hand plucked repeatedly at the limp strings of her hair.
"Try me."
"Ray and me had nothing to do with that man's death."
"With whose death?"
"Who... ?" Sharon glanced up, then dropped her eyes again. "You know who. That man the police say was in our trailer."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know who..."
"That's bullshit!" Alora exploded, slamming the table with an open hand.
Sharon's head jerked upright, as if she'd been hit.
"You did know him, and the police know that you knew him. I've been honest with you, it's time you did the same for me." That was exactly it, Alora knew, the reason she felt hurt and angry enough to march straight down here this morning. She had dropped her guard, confided in this woman, this stranger from somewhere a thousand miles and million life experiences away, and this stranger had mocked her, not by betraying her confidence, but by refusing to entrust Alora with her own. Looking steadily into her client's eyes, Alora continued, her words cold and clipped. “Say it. You knew the dead man. You knew Greg Williams. The people you used to work with have told the police that you and he knew each other, knew each other very well. It's time you told me, Sharon...”
Alora leaned forward, sliding her hand, palm down, until it rested in the middle of the table. "Tell me, Sharon. How did that same Greg Williams end up dead in your trailer?"
Sharon felt as if her stomach had just dropped to the floor. She closed her eyes and struggled against a wave of nausea and heat that worked its way up through her chest to her throat. She clutched at the table, afraid that she would slide off her chair. How could this be happening? How could her life with Ray have gone so suddenly and so horribly wrong?
"Talk to me, Sharon."
The lawyer's voice held no trace of compassion. Ray was right. Lawyers, cops, they were all the same. Sharon said nothing.
"The more you lie, the weaker your case becomes. There's no reason for an innocent person to lie. Doesn't that make sense to you?"
"You already think I'm guilty."
The lawyer took a deep breath. Her mouth twitched a little before she spoke, as if she were trying to keep a strong emotion under control. Sharon realized with a start that it was anger. Why was the lawyer so angry? "You're innocent until proven guilty. I'm your lawyer. It's my job to present evidence of your innocence to the court, evidence that I'll have a hard time finding without your cooperation." She paused. Her stare made Sharon uncomfortable. "If you want someone else to be your lawyer, just say so. I'm no pit bull. I'll let you go."
Sharon shook her head. Yesterday she had begun to believe Alora Magee could be her friend, and now the woman had turned against her. If only she could talk to Ray, just for a minute. He said not to say anything to anybody. Would he be angry with her if she trusted this woman? She was so confused and frightened and tired of being under siege, right this minute all she wanted was to put her head down on the table and cry like a child. Her eyes began to sting.
"I have half a mind to walk out on you," said the lawyer, her voice now weary. "Why won't you tell me what really happened? Why won't you help me to help you?"
"I need to talk to Ray," said Sharon, and lay her head on her arms. She felt the tears start, felt their heat on the skin of her arm. "Please," she said into the table. "Please."
"If you, or Ray, locked Greg Williams in your trailer, you must have had a good reason. Did he threaten you? Or was it an accident? You just wanted to scare him. You didn't know he would freeze to death. Is that it?"
Sharon raised her tear stained faced from the table. "Ray and me never knew there was anybody in our trailer. We never hurt anybody."
When she didn't say anything else, the lawyer spoke again. "Is that a
ll you have to say?"
Sharon nodded.
The lawyer looked disgusted, took a deep breath and shook her head.
"Help me," said Sharon. "Please."
After spending his obligatory eight hours off the road at the truck stop in Yoncalla, Oregon, Hunter stopped for a late breakfast near Grants Pass. He called El's 800 number from the restaurant. "Just checkin' in," he said.
"They found Greg Williams' car," El told him, "in Mount Vernon."
Hunter frowned, puzzled. "Any idea how long it had been there?"
"They don't tell you stuff like that on the news," she said.
"You got some kind of log on Ray and Sharon?"
`"You mean, when they might've passed through there?"
She put the phone down while she looked, and he could hear her thump something heavy on the desk and riffle through pages. Then he heard her phone buzz, and found himself on hold, listening to Garth Brooks singing about friends in low places. A couple of drivers walked past on their way out of the restaurant, arguing.
"He's got every right," one of them said, settling a baseball cap on his head.
"The hell he does. He got a responsibility. He expects her to be there when he gets home, then he got a responsibility..."
El came back on the line. "That's about half way to Seattle, so it looks to me like they would've been passing through Mount Vernon at about six o'clock on Friday night."