Double usage

by Christine Bols

  David looked at him puzzled. ‘Fitzpatrick? The one from the library? Wasn’t she in Florida?’ Tim saw a glimpse of interest in David’s eyes.

  ‘We found her body at the Willamette yesterday. You know the sandy path where the two rivers join.’

  ‘Not so good then.’

  His interest was fading away again and he had sunk back into a state of lethargy. ‘We’ll talk later David, when you feel a bit better. I’ll let you rest now.’

  David didn’t react and had his eyes closed. Tim silently put the chair back against the wall and left the room.

  ‘Thanks for the visit,’ he heard.

  Jude stretched and sighed, a smile on her face. She could hear Sarah in the kitchen, busy making breakfast and looked at her watch. Obviously she had needed her sleep. It was nine o’clock. Quickly she put on her dressing gown. The aroma of fresh made coffee met her on the stairs. The two bedrooms gave out on a little corridor with the bathroom at the end of it. Sarah had bought the duplex flat very cheaply because the owner needed the money very quickly. It was completely furnished and step by step Sarah had made it her own. She had replaced the dark curtains with light ones. The settees were filled with cushions in different colors.

  ‘Hi there sis’, Jude said when she entered the kitchen. The table was nicely set with brown place mats and matching cups and plates.

  ‘Hi, you had a good night’s sleep?’

  ‘Hm yes, fantastic. But the aroma was irresistible, otherwise I would still have been in bed’, she smiled. Sarah put fresh made orange juice on the table and poured the coffee. There was a basket with fresh croissants and ham, cheese and jam. Jude normally didn’t care a lot for breakfast and skipped it on a regular basis but this looked delicious.

  ‘I can see you put a lot of work in this’, Jude said.

  Sarah smiled. ‘I don’t have my big sister visit me every week.’

  Jude looked at her with guilt on her face. She knew they didn’t see each other often enough. ‘There is nothing to stop you visiting me in Springfield you know, ‘Jude smiled.

  Sarah looked doubtful, but seriously again she said: ‘You know I hate Springfield. You know I’d rather not go there.’

  ‘I know, but you have to put it behind you sis. You have a nice job, a superb flat, and maybe…. even a good-looking boyfriend?’ she tried carefully. She knew having a relationship was difficult for Sarah. Jude cursed her father for what he had done to his youngest daughter. She would never forgive him for that, not even on his death bed. It was almost ten years ago now that she had left with Sarah, but the scars were still there. Jude sighed. Like all the victims of child abuse Sarah had felt guilty all these years. With the help of a therapist she slowly got out of the deep cave and her feelings of guilt had been replaced with rage and exasperation. Even after her graduation and finding a suitable job she couldn’t be enthusiastic about it. She had started looking for a flat in Crescent right away, but even then it was all so subdued. Jude feared that Sarah would never burst out in laughter or hit a night on the town with friends. Jude sipped her coffee and looked at her sister. A faint smile was visible around her mouth. ‘No you nosey parker’, she said playfully, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend and I really don’t want one either.’

  ‘We are the odd couple, aren’t we?’ Jude giggled. ‘You don’t want a man because he would disturb your perfect life, and I don’t have one because I haven’t got the time to go looking for one.’

  ‘So, if I got it right, you do want a man disturbing your orderly life.’

  ‘My orderly life?’ she laughed, ‘let’s just say I haven’t found Mister Right yet.’

  ‘Same for me’, Sarah said and then hesitated for a while. ‘But…. I did find my Miss Right though.’ She held her head down and was frantically buttering a croissant. Jude assumed she had misunderstood.

  ‘Sarah…. do you mean…..?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I mean’, she said all defensively. ‘Something wrong with that?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Jude said startled. ‘It’s just…..’

  ‘It’s just what?’

  ‘I never knew you preferred women, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I can’t blame you. I only just found out myself. Although, deep inside of me I felt it a few years ago already, but I never wanted to give in to it. But Jude, you can’t imagine how it is. Unbelievably soft and tender.’

  Jude felt odd when she asked: ‘And when do I get to see her?’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Not for a while. I want to see how things will evolve.’

  ‘So, maybe not Miss Right yet.’ She tried to be casual about it, but her heart wept because maybe Sarah had made this choice for the wrong reasons.

  ‘She is, at least I think so’, she said her mouth filled with croissant. ‘These things take time.’ She smiled at Jude. ‘Maybe you should try it sometime.’

  ‘No, thank you very much,’ Jude said smiling. All of a sudden the atmosphere got much lighter.

  ‘How do you feel about an afternoon in town? A little walk in the park, coffee on a terrace and then shop on Pacific Avenue until our arms drop off? Or maybe the beach?’

  ‘Coffee and shopping look fine to me. I haven’t done that in months.’ ‘By the way, how are things in Corvallis? Can you get used to it? And your colleague? Good looking? Married?’

  ‘Wow, so many questions at once’, Jude laughed. ‘ To answer your first two questions – a yes. To the last one – I don’t know. And even if he is not married, I don’t think he is interested in me. I think he can’t even stand me.’

  ‘Well, all men react like that when they see a beautiful woman.’

  ‘And who made you an expert in men? I must have missed that award ceremony.’ Both girls laughed.

  The afternoon in town went very well and was relaxed. They ate a giant ice-cream and found all kinds of nice clothes in the plethora of shops. It was an attack on her bank account, but it was worth it. As usual Sarah went for the sober colored things, Jude chose the more radiant ones. It was a puzzle how two sisters could be so different. After that they went to Preston Island, but it was so crowded they left straight away. Neither of them were fond of the bustle and the masses. Jude successfully avoided talking about her work. Sarah didn’t ask any more questions. That evening they settled on the couch with a glass of white wine and a good DVD. Jude couldn’t shake off the bad feeling of Sarah and women, but decided not to bring it up again. They enjoyed Richard Gere and Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was a beautiful morning, the sun high in the sky, no clouds, but she couldn’t enjoy it. She had hoped to get a phone call from Tim during the weekend, but it hadn’t come. It slowly dawned on her that he wouldn’t even try to get her back. Maybe she would have done better not to leave him, but the moment she found the ankle chain in their bed, that was it. She felt betrayed and angry. Maybe she should have confronted him with it, face to face. Maybe this….maybe that. She didn’t know anymore. She could understand his reaction to Sean’s visit, but the chain…. No, that had been too much.

  ‘Enjoying the view’, she heard the voice behind her say.

  She turned away from the window and saw her colleague Nat bring in two steaming cups of coffee and put one on each side of the desk. Cameron felt a throbbing headache coming up but tried to produce a faint smile.

  ‘Well, what you call a view. A few grey office buildings and a park hardly worth the name.’

  Nat shrugged her shoulders. ‘Albany is not a metropolis. Would you have preferred sky scrapers? Then you should have started a business in Salem or Portland, and by the way, I don’t think it’s that which is bothering you right now.’ Cameron sipped from the coffee but didn’t say anything.

  ‘He isn’t worth it Cam’, Nat continued. ‘You know that. He had another woman in your bed when you were gone, don’t forget that.’

  ‘I didn’t even give him a chance to explain Nat’, Cam said defensively.

  Nat
burst out laughing. ‘Now you are doubting a perfect decision. You did the right thing, you can’t let him muck you around and last but not least, he could have called you if he wanted to explain.’

  ‘I asked him not to, but you’re probably right with that clear-headed reasoning of yours’, she said while skimming through the article in front of her. Sometimes Nat assumed she was all wisdom, that everybody wanted to hear her opinion and good advice on things, regardless if it was wanted or not.

  ‘I hope you approve of the article. I really don’t feel like rewriting it’, Nat said as she left the office to go to her own, a bit further down the hallway. Nat usually did the interviews with the artists, while she herself looked up background information and did the reviews. A few weeks ago she went to San Francisco herself for the interviews because Nat had the flu. Tim took advantage of that by getting another woman in his bed. Nat was right. He didn’t deserve her, but…. she loved him. The first days apart she had stayed in a hotel in town, but had soon found a furnished bungalow for rent in the area. Sean had phoned her a few times. He felt guilty for their break up. She hadn’t told him about Tim’s betrayal and covered herself in the warm blanket of his sympathy. She sighed deeply and started reading again. The words didn’t seem to penetrate and she had to start over again. The deadline for the printer was tomorrow at ten.

  Tim had sent Connely and Haynes to pick up the tapes of the surveillance cameras. He had called the clubs first to tell them they were on their way. They didn’t have any objection at all. Good, otherwise he would have had to go to the judge again for a search warrant. He looked at his watch. Quarter past nine and Jude still hadn’t arrived. Just as he decided to give her a call, she walked in the door, her face completely wet from the rain and with blonde curls stuck to her head. She looked like a drowned chicken.

  ‘Sorry boss’, she said apologizing, ‘overslept and no umbrella.’

  ‘The last thing is the least of my concerns lady’, he said upset, ‘and I don’t know how things work in Springfield, but here we start in time and that was seventy five minutes ago.’

  ‘Sorry’, she repeated as she sat down on her chair and fired up her PC. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘For your sake, I hope it won’t.’ They both went silent. After a while Tim said: ‘I hope we find something on these tapes. The lab will have to sweat over them.’

  ‘Aren’t we looking at them ourselves?’ Jude asked surprised.

  ‘You want to spent a few days looking at the screen all the time?’ he asked. ‘I won’t stop you.’ His voice sounded harsher than he had intended to. A bit calmer he said: ‘The lab people know what they have to look for. The minute there is a white van on the screen they will call me. They start with May 27. The most likely day we will see her as well as her murderer.’

  Jude shrugged her shoulders. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘We have far more important things to do like trying to find out what these watches mean. If we know that, we will be a lot further on.’

  ‘It could be a religious fanatic. The time of the alarm could indicate quotes from the Bible.’

  ‘You’ve watched too many movies Jude. To me it’s more logical that a time on a watch indicates just that, a time.’

  ‘But what time? The exact moment he strangled them? Why would he want us to know that? Doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘No idea, but it must mean something’, Tim said in frustration. ‘He wants to make something clear to us, that’s a fact.’

  ‘I’ll take a look at the Bible anyway.’ She started pressing some keys and gazed at the screen. ‘Here’, she said. ‘ John 9:4-5 : There is one who has sent me. I must do his work while it is still daylight. Night is coming. Then it will be too dark to work. As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.’

  ‘Doesn’t make sense’, Tim said abruptly.

  ‘And here, Mark 9:47: And if thine eye cause thee to fall, pluck it out. It is better for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.’

  ‘Well, it mentions an eye, but its 47 not 45. He wouldn’t have made that mistake.’

  ‘John 13:5’ she went on: After that He poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.’

  ‘Doesn’t make sense either. No, we have to look elsewhere,’ he said.

  Jude scrolled a bit further, but then closed the website with a sigh. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t get us any closer.’

  ‘Good, what do we have so far? A white van and a watch with an alarm at two different times.’ He paused for a while. ‘And what do the victims have in common?’

  ‘They both lived by themselves, took the train home every weekend and neither of them had a boyfriend we know about.’

  Tim reflected on her enumeration. All of a sudden he got an idea and pulled Amtrak’s website on the screen. Since he couldn’t search for a connection in the past, he typed in Saturday June 26. Departure station: Albany, Oregon; destination: Salem. Then he waited. The travel schedules appeared on the screen. The first one was 9:45. He felt his blood flow faster. He then returned to the start screen and put in the same date. As departure he again typed Albany, Oregon. For destination he typed Eugene. Again the travel schedules appeared. The second one in the scheme was 13:05. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. All excited he grabbed his jacket from his chair and pulled Jude’s sleeve to indicate she had to come along.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, her brows raised.

  ‘I think I know what the alarms on the watches mean’, he said agitated. They hurried to the car. Tim fired up the engine and raced out of the parking lot onto the busy street.

  Jude leant back heavily against her seat and sighed. ‘Could you please tell me what flight we are on?’ He slowed down a little.

  ‘Albany station’. He glanced at her shortly. ‘The alarms were set to match the departure time of the trains they took on Saturdays.’

  Jude looked at him baffled. ‘And you shook that out of your sleeve just like that’, she said snapping her fingers. ‘Does that mean our guy works at the station?’

  ‘It sure looks like it. These trains have been bothering me right from the start. Think about it. He didn’t just stop the watch at the departure time, he set the alarm. He wanted to make sure we wouldn’t miss it. No matter when she would be found, the alarm would beep every day at the same time.’

  ‘But how could he possibly know the watches would still work after a few weeks in a damp environment and on a dead body?’

  ‘I wondered about that too, but these days batteries last for a long time in all kinds of circumstances. But I agree with you, I think he wanted them found quicker.’

  She shook her head. ‘I still don’t understand why he didn’t dump them in a more public place, or somewhere they would be found easily. I don’t know Corvallis very well, but such places must exist, no?’

  ‘First, lets see what we can find out at the station, and we’ll go from there.’

  He parked the car on the square with the clock tower. The building was separated into two parts with a small corridor in between them. Probably one public part, the other for administration. They could access the platforms directly from the parking lot. There were a few travelers sat on wooden benches. The digital board announced the 11:57 train to Everett on platform one. The administration building looked bare and felt cool. There were three metal benches. In the corner an automat with snacks and drinks with a label ‘out of order’. The window was closed, but through a crevice in the blinds they saw a man in his forties with a mouth full of food, reading a news paper. Tim knocked on the window. No reaction. A second knock didn’t do the trick either. Quick as a flash Jude’s arm went to the window. She knocked so loudly Tim thought the glass would break. Suddenly they heard a stumble and the blinds went up with a clacking noise. A face like a full moon looked at them with pig’s eyes, wiping a stain of mayonnaise f
rom his upper lip. When the man saw the police badges dangling in front of his eyes, he calmed down and shoved the window to one side. His dark blue polo shirt was two sizes too small. On his right upper arm a tattooed dragon, of which the head disappeared underneath the short sleeve. With raised eyebrows he looked at them without saying a word.

  ‘Corvallis police’, Tim said curtly. ‘We would like a word with your boss.’

  The man pointed at the clock on the wall behind him. ‘Lunch break.’

  ‘Then maybe you could give him a call?’ Tim started to lose his patience.

  The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Can’t disturb anyone between twelve and one.’

  Tim raised his voice. ‘Dammit man, pick up that phone and call your boss.’ Moon face went back to his desk, clearly very indignant and dialed a number. After a few seconds he put the receiver back. ‘He’ll be here in a minute.’ Then he slammed the window closed. The blinds smacked down.

  ‘Well, did you ever….’, Tim said angrily. ‘What an asshole.’

  Jude nodded. ‘Clearly someone who loves his job to death. He reminds me of John Goodman.’

  ‘Who the hell is John Goodman?’

  ‘You never saw Roseanne?’

  Tim shook his head. ‘A void in my culture no doubt.’

  Just as they went to sit down on one of the benches, the side door of the office opened. A man in a spotless dark blue uniform came out. He was tall and slender with dark hair in a neat cut. He had a very thin mustache which gave him an almost aristocratic look.

  ‘Philip Tomasson, stationmaster’, he said while putting out his hand to Tim.

  ‘Detectives Sackley and McCool, Corvallis police’, Tim said pointing at Jude.

  ‘And how can I help you?’ he asked in a drawling and nasal voice.

  ‘Maybe we better talk in your office’, Tim said. Tomasson led them to the end of the corridor. In the middle of the room stood a green metal table, covered with all kinds of colorful folders, a telephone and a printer, next to the printer a half empty cup of coffee and an opened aluminium foil packet with two sandwiches. The metal cupboards were piled up with cardboard boxes.