Murder on the Run

by Medora Sale

  He stepped out of the shower and scrubbed himself dry. Sitting in the drawer were one last clean shirt, one last clean set of underwear, saved for this particular occasion. He shaved with particular care, avoiding the wounds on his face, and then gently patted some beige liquid from an old bottle that Ginny had left behind over the scratches. The odd scent of the make-up stirred him with excitement. Not bad, he thought. It would look all right under street lights. His hair was getting a little long, but still looked respectable enough. With new jeans and a matching jacket he looked believable enough as an emergency troubleshooter—maybe from Hydro or the phone company. Confidence surged back through his veins. Those last three misses were just temporary setbacks. That was it. Every good campaigner has to expect setbacks; the great ones don’t let them distract them from their larger plans of action. It was time to get started. He straightened his back, squared his shoulders; and started down the stairs to the garage.

  Adrienne Wilcox looked at her watch and frowned. If Paul wanted her to give up her evening to look after his hush-hush business for the riding, he could damn well keep up his end of things. She loathed making plausible excuses for him to agitated constituents and backroom boys, and the only reason he was so casual about appointments, she knew, was because he could trust her to be good at it. She sat back in the pale green velvet chesterfield, a languorous French doll in exquisite harmony with her surroundings. Every piece of furniture in this room had been selected and arranged with the same rigor as her simple silk dress and perfect make-up. From eleven in the morning until the last guest left the last rally or reception at night she was prepared to be flawless. And Paul appreciated that. She knew he did, as much as he appreciated her money and her connections. So where in hell was he now? Out with some cheap, messy whore. This was the first time he had not turned up at all when there were documents to be handed over—but it didn’t surprise her. He had been getting more and more careless lately. It was time to terrify him a little again. She hadn’t had to do that for years—not since just after Sarah was born. Poor shy, awkward Sarah, upstairs studying furiously for some test or other. How had she managed to produce an inept little swat with a lot of shy, bookish friends? Time for a drink. No—better save it until she had placated the people coming for that material. Probably something for a speech that had to be delivered at noon tomorrow; they would be absolutely furious. She stood up, wavering between the drinks cabinet and the telephone, when the discreet front-door chime dragged her out of the room. She muttered a brief string of surprisingly forceful crudities as she went. Her daughter was already halfway down the stairs. “I’ll get it, dear. These people are here to see Daddy on business, and you aren’t going to make much of an impression in that outfit.” Her smile failed to take the sting out of her words. Sarah turned abruptly and fled.

  “Do come in, gentlemen, please,” she said gaily, propelling them in the direction of the small room she had just left. “Do let me get you a drink, please. I was just about to get one for myself. And let me explain. Poor Paul has been held up again. There was a reception tonight, as you probably know, but one of his staffers took terribly ill and he had to go with him to the hospital. He called me from there and said that he should be along soon—he just has to return to Queen’s Park and pick up that material for you. It’s ready.” Her smile and air of calmness masked the frenetic quality of her chatter. “Now—Scotch? Or there is wine, of course, and anything else you care to mention, I hope. We’re always pretty well stocked here.” Her smile became conspiratorial, inviting them into her little private world of political privilege.

  Sanders nodded amiably at the suggestion of Scotch, shook his head at water, and accepted his drink. He settled into a comfortable chair and looked at his admirable hostess. There was no doubt that she took them for the mob, here to collect their copies of the tenders, and it obviously didn’t disturb her at all to be entertaining such men in her pretty sitting room.

  “Your husband must have to be out late a great deal,” he essayed, to keep up the conversational flow.

  “It’s not as bad as it might sound,” she said, smiling a sweet Pollyanna smile. “Most of the evening engagements are social as well as business, and I can usually find the time to go with him. It’s hard on the children, though. Some weeks they only see him on Sunday.” She laughed, a sweet, tinkling laugh, as she turned her head to catch sounds from the driveway.

  “Not even at breakfast?” asked Sanders. “Isn’t that when kids see their fathers?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, beginning to look distracted. “Half the time, though, he’s off for a run, and they just get a glimpse of him coming in, covered with sweat, on his way to the shower. I think that’s him now,” she said, walking quickly to the window. “Good heavens.” She drew back abruptly. “There’s a policeman out there, standing by your car. I hope that you—that they haven’t. . . .” Her voice trailed away in alarm.

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Sanders. “He’s with us. We should have introduced ourselves when we first came in, but you really didn’t give us a chance.” He flashed his identification under her nose. “We would like to speak to your husband. He isn’t home?” She shook her head dully. “When exactly did he telephone you?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “He didn’t,” she said in a flat voice. “I thought you were here for some stuff he promised one of his constituents. He’s just late, that’s all. It’s not unusual. He gets sidetracked. If it’s important I’ll have him call you.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Sanders. “We may see you later, Mrs. Wilcox. Good evening.” He picked up his coat.

  Sanders walked into the office with weary deliberation. The bored constable discreetly parked around the corner from Wilcox’s house could do as much as Sanders could out there. This day had already gone on for a very long time and there didn’t seem to be any end in sight. “Anything come in yet on Wilcox?” he asked Dubinsky while he picked up the new messages from his desk.

  Dubinsky gave him that how-the-hell-should-I-know look but only muttered, “Just a minute. I’ll check,” as he picked up the phone. His “Nothing so far,” however, had minimal impact. Sanders was standing with a slip of paper in his hand and a curious expression on his face.

  “Listen to this,” he said. “It’s a message from a Mr. Smith. ‘If you receive delivery of the consignment we were discussing earlier, you are welcome to it. We have withdrawn our claim since the goods no longer fulfil our requirements.’ Those bastards have their nerve, don’t they? And so much for Wilcox. I suppose he called them from somewhere and told them what happened, and they’re dumping him as fast as possible.”

  “And that means he doesn’t know anything of any interest to anybody,” grunted Dubinsky. “Or they wouldn’t let him go so easily.”

  “Probably. I suppose his contact was Fielding—he won’t know anyone else. Anyway, I can call the guard dogs off Eleanor now,” he said, and made the call. As he hung up, he decided that Eleanor had probably been too groggy to be reassured; but her mother, at least, had been relieved to hear that the siege was over. The thought of Eleanor sleeping peacefully distracted him powerfully; his foggy brain and aching body wanted nothing more than to sink into oblivion beside her.

  He was running down a long dark path that was arched with overgrown bushes. Each one that he passed turned into a running man, and then dissolved into a shadow behind another bush. As he grabbed out, an irritating voice penetrated his dream. “Excuse me, sir, but—” He shook himself awake again. “Sir? I think we may have something here.”

  McNeil was standing over him, clutching a sheet of paper in his hand, waiting patiently for Sanders to wake up. “Yes? What is it? Don’t just stand there.”

  “A woman called in about noon, apparently. Her baby’s been sick and she only just looked at the paper. She said she thought the picture looked a little like her neighbour. She’s not sure about the van, though. She said th
ey had a blue Chevy but he sometimes drove a van. She thinks maybe he borrows the van sometimes.” Sanders looked up at him with weary lack of interest. “But when I checked out the reports on light brown vans there is one registered to a Glenn Morrison on the same street.”

  “What did the report say?” asked Sanders irritably. “I thought all those local registrations had been checked out.”

  “No one home,” said McNeil. “And nothing suspicious-looking about the van.” He put the report down in front of Sanders. “Morrison’s brother-in-law was home and let him in, showed him the van. Do you want me to check it out?”

  “Yes, I do. Of course, you’d better check it out. Send someone back there. And put out that license number just in case.” Sanders yawned and reached over to pick up the little green notebook still sitting where he had left it on his desk.

  The first page had been ruled off to accommodate a week and was covered with familiar neat handwriting; it was headed “January 1984,” and there was a date sitting precisely in the upper left-hand corner of each segment. It had all been done by hand. Sunday the first had one entry; “20 degrees, cloudy, 4-1/2 miles.” January 2, in addition to weather and mileage, had a note: “Paul, 4:30.” Each page followed that pattern. Some appointments were identified merely by initials; many were with Paul, although those became less frequent as February progressed into March. Once or twice a week there would be a “J.” and a time. In the back of the book were pages of names and addresses, two letters of the alphabet per page. “It looks like Conway’s missing address book,” said Sanders. “Why would Wilcox be hanging on to it?”

  “So we wouldn’t, I suppose,” said Dubinsky sleepily.

  “And when did he get it? And how?” As he talked, Sanders pulled a folded note from a pocket in the back cover. A small silver key dropped out with a clatter on the desk. “What does that look like to you, Ed?” he said, staring down at it.

  Dubinsky yawned. “A safety deposit box key. Can’t do much about it until tomorrow morning when the banks open, though. Unless you want to start dragging bankers out of bed.” There was a slightly plaintive note in his last remark. “What’s on the paper?”

  “It’s from Betty, thanking her for the lovely towels.”

  A harsh jangle interrupted them. Dubinsky leaned over and plucked the ringing phone off its cradle. He made a few indecipherable noises into the receiver and turned to Sanders with the ghost of a smile on his face. “They got Wilcox at the airport with a suitcase full of cash. They’re bringing him right down. Does this mean we can get some sleep tonight?”

  Constables Joe Williams and Andy Pelletier were sitting morosely in their car, guarding the approach to Highway 401. They were parked in Hogg’s Hollow, just to the south of York Mills Road, within smelling distance of a cheerful roadhouse. Pelletier sneezed for the fifth time and blew his streaming nose pathetically. “Christ, but I’ll be glad,” he was saying, when news suddenly came through that the search was over.

  “Great,” said Williams. “I could use some coffee right now.” He started the engine and pulled out onto Yonge Street, heading north.

  “Hey,” said Pelletier. “Whereya’ going? Let’s go down to the Northern.” Andy was currently in pursuit of a girl who was temporarily employed at that place. Williams patiently turned right onto York Mills in order to turn around.

  “It’s okay with me,” he said, “but I hope she’s working tonight. Their coffee is lousy and the doughnuts are stale.”

  Pelletier was raising his head gratefully from his handkerchief to answer when he noticed it. “Whaddya know?” he said. “Another brown van. I’ve been seeing those goddamn things in my sleep.” He looked more closely. Even dulled by a cold, Pelletier’s eyesight and memory were enviable. “Wait a second,” he breathed to Williams. “That’s the license number that just came through.” The van was parked halfway up the hill, facing the main street, between the subway exit and the first large houses, beside a park. Its engine was running, its parking lights were on, and it looked quite unremarkable. The police car was a couple of hundred yards away, about to make a U-turn. Pelletier nodded at Williams, and began to report their find as he accelerated into a sweep up the hill and in front of the van. The ensuing events were a trifle confused. As Williams started to brake, the van slipped into gear and surged forward. They met on an angle, demonstrating an interesting problem in physics for those who enjoy such things. The accelerating van spun the police car around and sent it limping up on the sidewalk facing the way it came, but the effort required flipped the van over on its side, where it lay, wheels spinning helplessly. Pelletier and Williams were out and running before their car came to a halt. The distant wail of sirens mingled with the sound of the van’s blaring horn.

  Fifteen minutes later, the partners stood in meditative silence and watched the ambulance driver and his mate carefully deposit the unconscious Glenn Morrison into the back of their vehicle and speed off. “So that’s that,” said Williams. “I wonder if he’s the right guy?” Pelletier shrugged. Right now he didn’t care. “Did someone call for the tow truck for this thing?”

  “Yeah,” said Pelletier, and sneezed. “One of the guys over there.” He pointed at a patrol car that was preparing to leave.

  “We’d better have a look inside, you know,” said Williams, who had been visited by an unpleasant thought. “There could be something—or somebody—in there.”

  Pelletier scowled, walked over to the toppled van, leaned over the roof, reached in with a martyred sigh and took the keys out of the ignition. “Come on,” he said. “The truck’ll be here in a minute.” He walked around, tried one key in the back door, then another. The second one turned smoothly. “Come on, Joe,” he complained. “Give me a hand to hold this door up.” Williams lifted up the top door as Pelletier reached down and freed the latch on the bottom one, then shone his flashlight inside.

  “Jesus,” said Williams. “Look at that! The whole goddamn thing is lined with broadloom, even the ceiling. Gold, with brown patterns.” Then he looked again.

  “That’s not a pattern,” said Pelletier, turning even paler. The floor and sides of the insulated, padded, carpeted interior were soaked in dark splashes of dried blood.

  Sanders’ head had scarcely hit his pillow when something jerked him back to consciousness again. He groaned as the light of real morning stabbed his tentatively opened eyes. To hell with it. He wasn’t getting up yet. But his tired muscles twitched and quivered as he tried to compose them for sleep again. It was hopeless. Until he took care of whatever was keeping him awake, he could kiss sleep goodbye. It was the good old Puritan mentality he had inherited from a long line of conscientious forebears. What in hell was bothering him? He dragged himself out of bed and into the shower, hoping for inspiration from the pounding of water on his head.

  At 7:15 he was opening the door to Grant Keswick’s apartment. He had already been into the file and stared at Cassidy and Rheaume’s neat list, but couldn’t decide whether it was comprehensive or merely contained items they had considered interesting. More likely the latter, since it would have taken them days and reams of paper to do an inventory of the possessions of a well-heeled cocky bastard like that. There was everything in the living room that he would have expected—flashy audio equipment, white and beige furniture and rugs, plants, paintings and wall hangings lending splashes of discreet and irritatingly trendy colour. The kitchen was the same. Plants, blond wood, copper and red enamel pots. It had a static and unused quality; if anyone had done more than fry an egg in here he’d be very surprised. The bedroom had almost as much closet space as floor space—king-sized bed, everything else modular or built-in, a cosy chocolate rug with a vaguely South-East Asian pattern. He went carefully through the drawers, the closets, the bathroom cabinets, the contents of the clothes hamper. Somehow the pattern of Grant Keswick as anything but a small-time operator didn’t add up to anything he was happy with.

/>   He brooded over his coffee and raisin roll at the small French café on the edges of Rosedale while he waited until it would be a reasonable hour to ring the expensive doorbell at Wilcox’s solidly impressive house. Nothing trendy there—just old money, well spent. At least now he knew what he was looking for. He glanced impatiently at his watch for the fifth time, put the morning paper back on the rack unread, and tried to inject a note of cordiality into his goodbye to the girl behind the cash.

  Adrienne Wilcox had been dragged reluctantly from her bed by her daughter, and if she was surprised by Sanders’ desire to inspect her husband’s clothes, she concealed the emotion expertly. Sanders concluded that it was more likely that her apathy came with the hour. This was probably the earliest she had been out of bed in years. She left him alone to plow through closets, drawers, and laundry hampers once again. This time he emerged with his eyes glittering in satisfaction. Mrs. Wilcox had disappeared, no doubt back to her bed, apparently unperturbed by her husband’s predicament. He said his farewells to the maid who was vacuuming the front hall, the only sign of life in the dark, cold house.

  By the time he got downtown again, the working day had begun in earnest. Dubinsky had surfaced, looking repellently undisturbed by lack of sleep. “I located the safety deposit box,” he said. “It’s in the Bank of Nova Scotia on Adelaide. The manager said he’d open up as soon as we got there. Where in hell have you been? No point in coming in until the banks opened, eh?”

  Sanders glowered. “I’ve been working. Since 6:30 this morning. So cut the crap and drive us to the bank.”

  Opening up a safety deposit box obviously caused the bank manager something akin to physical pain. Their possession of the key, their identification, and a hastily acquired court order were not enough to stem the flow of muttering. “Most unusual—we don’t do this sort of thing you know—absolute privacy—our customers don’t like to think—” He was clearly intent on getting rid of them as quickly as possible before anyone figured out that the police could get into someone’s box. Sanders wrote out and signed the receipt as slowly as he could, enjoying the man’s agonized dance of despair. He was damned if he was going to slink about because some bank manager didn’t like the look of him. Still, eventually they did depart, carrying a plastic bag which contained a small bundle of letters. Extravagant girl—hiring a safety deposit box to hold such a modest cache.