Memory Lane

by Laurence Gough

  “Probably.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, not that I know of.” Willows was bone-weary, chilled to the marrow. He put the car in reverse gear, and held his free hand up to the hot air gushing forcefully from a dashboard vent as he backed away from the looming shadow of the dumpster. He braked, and shifted into drive. They accelerated down the alley, the car chasing its headlights into the gloom.

  Parker fastened her seatbelt. Willows had phoned Popeye Rowland and called in his markers. The M.E. had promised to do his best, but even so, it was unlikely that Donald E. Mooney would be autopsied for another twenty-four hours. They had a reasonably solid description of the boyfriend, but no name. The rubber gloves were promising, but they had a nubbly outer surface and a coarse fabric liner that Willows doubted would hold a fingerprint. He checked his watch, and groaned.

  Parker said, “What?”

  “I should’ve phoned, to say we wouldn’t be home for dinner.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Jack. I talked to Annie at a few minutes past five. She was going to try her hand at a Denver omelette. Sean was out. I should’ve told you I called. I just forgot, that’s all.”

  “No problem.” Willows braked hard, shifted into reverse and gunned it back up the alley to the dumpster.

  “Now what?” said Parker

  “I just thought of something.” Willows got out of the car. He climbed up the rungs welded to the flank of the dumpster, lifted the hinged steel lid and let it drop. The clang of steel on steel echoed up and down the alley. He jumped lightly to the ground.

  As he got back into the car Parker said, “What was that all about?”

  “Noise.”

  Parker nodded, getting it. “That’s what Graham heard, when he thought he heard a shot.”

  “Maybe. We don’t have any evidence that a shot was fired.” Willows sat there for a moment, thinking. “Back in a minute.” He got out of the car, shut the door against the chill and trotted across the scraggly spring grass towards the front of the apartment building.

  Parker rested her head against the side window. She shut her eyes and was immediately confronted by a vision of Donald E. Mooney in his duct-tape suit. What had gone through his mind, as the plastic tube was shoved down his throat, as he gagged on the constant trickle of water, was filled to bursting drop by drop. Drowned, drop by drop.

  Willows knuckled the windshield. Parker jerked upright, startled. He’d locked his door. She reached across and opened it for him. He said, “Taking a little nap, were we?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Willows buckled up, got rolling. “Hungry?”

  “I should be, but I’m not. Want to stop somewhere, grab a bite?”

  “Maybe later.” Willows yawned broadly. He covered his mouth with a fist. “Excuse me.”

  “We’re both ready for a little sack time,” said Parker. Willows smiled, but kept his eyes on the traffic as he braked at the mouth of the alley. She said, “I wonder how many private security companies there are in the city?”

  “It’s a growth industry. Something I might get involved in, when I retire.”

  “Really?” Parker couldn’t imagine Willows quitting. Two blocks away, the lights of an ambulance strobed brightly. Willows cut into the curb lane across the blunt nose of a Volvo, made a sharp right. Twenty minutes later he pulled into an empty slot in the police garage around the corner from 312 Main, and ten minutes after that Parker was sitting at her third-floor desk, while he made coffee down at the far end of the squad room.

  Parker hauled a tattered copy of the Yellow Pages out of a bottom drawer. She thumped the book down on her desk.

  “If you’re looking up security-guard and patrol services, there’s thirty-nine of ’em,” said Bobby Dundas as he let himself into the squad room. He strolled towards Parker with his hands in his pockets and a cocky smile on his freshly shaved face. “Plus there’s a couple of government-approved training facilities. I wrote it all down, names and addresses, phone numbers. Made a copy just for you.” He placed a folded sheet of paper squarely on Parker’s desk. “Can you make out my handwriting, Claire?”

  “Just barely.”

  “I’ll take the top fifteen and you take the bottom fourteen, okay?” He smiled. “You don’t mind if I’m on top, do you?”

  Parker gave him an icy look. Bobby kept smiling. He glanced up, as Willows started towards them carrying two thick mugs of steaming coffee. He gave Parker a conspiratorial wink. “Okay, fine. You can be on top.”

  Willows’ phone rang as he reached his desk. He handed Parker a mug, picked up.

  “Jack, it’s Ray Waddington. You’re working the Mooney case, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve got a witness, guy gave us a solid description of a possible suspect. He’s willing to come down, sit in a chair. I told him it could happen sometime tonight, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Make it an hour, maybe a little less.”

  “Looking forward to it, Ray.”

  Willows disconnected. He dialled Graham Aubert’s number. His witness answered on the eleventh ring. A television blared in the background. Willows heard a siren, shouting, a flurry of shots. He identified himself. “You okay, Graham?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, sure. I was watching Dirty Harry. The Eastwood film? It’s a classic, absolutely timeless. One of my all-time favourites. Nobody squints like Clint.”

  “If I send a car over to pick you up, say in about half an hour, would that be okay?”

  “To do the sketch?”

  Willows said, “That’s right, Graham. To do the sketch.”

  “You and your partner going to be there?”

  “Claire and I will definitely be there,” said Willows. He rolled his eyes at Parker. “What d’you say, Graham? Can you make it?”

  “I said I’d do it, didn’t I? Half an hour. You want me to wait outside, on the sidewalk in front of the apartment?”

  “No, that’s okay. The officer will come to your door. We appreciate this, Graham. See you when you get here.” Willows disconnected, lifted his blotter and consulted a list of telephone numbers, dialled. “This’s Jack Willows. Third floor, three-twelve Main. Yeah, that’s me. Steamed rice, broccoli with beef, something with chicken…”

  *

  Ray Waddington arrived as Willows chased down the last slippery piece of boneless pork. Waddington was exactly six feet tall, but he was so thin, and stood so erect, that he looked a good deal taller. His thick, longish black hair was combed straight back from a high forehead. His prescription glasses had a pale orange tint. A thin moustache lay like a dark shadow on his upper lip. Ray was a cop. He was also an artist. Willows had never seen him wear any colour other than black when he was out of uniform.

  “Jack, how’ve you been?”

  “Not bad. Hungry?”

  “Just ate, thanks.” Waddington smiled at Parker. “Hey, Claire. Haven’t seen you for quite some time. How’s the shoulder?”

  “Fine, Ray.”

  Waddington glanced around the empty squad room. “Everybody else went home, did they?”

  “Fired for reasons of gross incompetence,” said Willows.

  “About time, from what I’ve heard.”

  Parker said, “How’re the kids?”

  “Shirley’s flunking French. Again. Toby’s got a bad case of chicken pox. He’s at the itchy stage. My mother-in-law suggested an oatmeal bath. It didn’t work worth a damn, and now the upstairs drain’s plugged.”

  Willows’ phone warbled. Graham Aubert had arrived. Willows told the duty sergeant to send him up. He cradled the phone and pushed away from his desk. “Our witness is a guy named Graham Aubert. He’s a little weird, Ray, so watch your step.”

  “A little weird? That’ll make a nice change. Okay if I use Eddy’s desk?”

  “Better use mine,” said Willows.

  The elevator was located opposite the squad room door. It hummed softly as it ascended. Parker said, “I be
tter grab him before he wanders off and gets lost.”

  Willows shuffled a stack of canvass reports together and shoved them into the top drawer of his desk. He heard the elevator doors slide open. Parker led their witness into the squad room. She introduced Aubert to Ray Waddington.

  Waddington shook hands enthusiastically. He told Aubert that he was an upstanding citizen and that it was an honour to meet him, offered him a chair and advised him to relax, take his time, enjoy the experience. He dragged Orwell’s chair over and sat down, fired up his portable computer. “Ever do any drawing, Graham?”

  “Not really.”

  “I bet I’ve made a thousand sketches. Mostly perps, the odd victim. I graduated in criminology at Simon Fraser a few years back, but before that I was an art-school student. Man, those were the days. Live models. Totally naked babes.” He shrugged. “The stuff I do now, half the time even the faces are fully clothed — beards and masks…” He smiled. “Heard the one about the Greek bank robber? Still can’t figure out how the teller identified him, since he was wearing a balaclava when he did the crime…”

  It had taken the computer a few minutes to boot, but as Waddington finished his little spiel, a row of icons blossomed on the screen.

  “Okay, let’s start with the shape of the face. By that I mean, is it oval, or heart-shaped, or…”

  “Almost rectangular,” said Aubert. “Like I told Detective Parker, he had a face shaped like a brick.”

  Waddington moved an electronic arrow to one of the icons. He clicked on the icon and five sub-icons appeared on the screen. He clicked on one of these and a rectangle appeared in the centre of the screen. Smiling, he said, “We don’t actually have a brick shape, but how’s that?”

  “Pretty close.”

  “I can fiddle with it. Like this.” He positioned the arrow on a vertical line, clicked a button on the mouse and ‘dragged’ the line, altering its shape.

  “No, more like it was. For now, anyway. Can we change it later?”

  “Any time you want, Graham.” Waddington used the mouse to return the rectangle to its original shape.

  “Hair?”

  “Blond. Very short.”

  “We’re talkin’ crewcut?”

  “Sort of, but longer. Spiky. Kind of punk.”

  “Yeah, okay. Punk it is.” Waddington clicked on another icon, and then a sub-icon. He laid the hair on the bald scalp as if it were an expensive wig. “How’s the hairline look to you? Too high, too low? Just right?”

  “Too high. He’s showing too much forehead.”

  Waddington used the mouse to slowly lower the hairline. According to Aubert, the suspect had a slight widow’s peak. He thickened the hair and made it stand on end, then cut and shaped it with the mouse. Finished, he examined his work with a critical eye. “How’s that?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Stand aside, Rembrandt.” Waddington glanced at Willows and Parker. In Ray’s professional opinion, the suspect’s haircut made him look an awful lot like Bart Simpson. But, maybe the guy did look like Bart Simpson. Hell, maybe his name was Bart Simpson, and he’d had his hair specially dyed and cut so he’d look a little bit like the cartoon character. He had no idea why anyone in his right mind would do anything like that. But then, he was an artist, not a shrink.

  “Okay, let’s move on to the eyebrows. Here, let me show you a few…”

  Aubert pointed. “Those ones, the arched ones.” He hesitated, and then said, “But they were black.”

  “Black?”

  “Yeah, black.”

  “You’re sure?” Waddington changed the colour of the eyebrows to jet black. “How’s that?”

  “The shape’s right, but they weren’t as heavy.”

  “Thinner?”

  Aubert nodded. He looked like he was enjoying himself. Waddington shaved the eyebrows.

  “That better?”

  “Perfect. It’s perfect.”

  “Good. But something’s missing. Did the guy have a nose, Graham?”

  Aubert nodded, half-smiled.

  “Let’s give him a nose.” Waddington glanced at his watch. They’d been going at it almost twenty minutes. Aubert was sweating, starting to show the strain. Waddington clicked on an icon and then on a sub-icon that stood slightly apart from the others. The cruelly hooked beak of a bald eagle materialized on the suspect’s face.

  Aubert’s mouth fell open. “What’s that supposed to be?”

  “My sense of humour,” said Waddington.

  Aubert frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  Waddington gave Aubert a pained look. “I was just trying to lighten things up, that’s all.” His face was red. He cleared his throat. “So, how’re you doing? Want to take a break?”

  “No, let’s get this over with.”

  Slowly, line by line, the face took shape. Waddington added the final touch, a Robert Mitchum-type cleft to the chin. “Okay, that’s it. What d’you think?”

  Graham Aubert said, “That’s him, all right.”

  “Nothing you want to add?”

  “Not really.”

  Waddington hit the save key. He said, “Okay, I’m going to plug this beast into a printer and run off a copy for you to take home. I’m also going to give you a small gift, a VPD fridge magnet, so you can stick the drawing on your Moffat.”

  “Westinghouse.”

  “Okay, fine. Westinghouse. Take a look at the sketch every time you grab a beer. It doesn’t look quite right, something starts to bother you, some detail, I don’t care how small, pick up the phone and give me a call. Okay?” Waddington fished out his wallet, withdrew a card. “That’s got my name and work number on it. I’m going to give you my home number too, so you can get in touch with me if I’m off-duty.” He borrowed a Bic pen from Parker and jotted down his number, handed the card to Aubert.

  Aubert stuck the card in his shirt pocket.

  “Don’t throw it away.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Because anybody could find it, call me at home in the middle of the night, talk dirty to my wife…”

  “I wouldn’t do anything like that!”

  Ray Waddington rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.

  Aubert said, “You’re kidding me again, aren’t you?”

  Waddington nodded. He said, “I was kidding about the fridge magnet, too, Graham.”

  “You were?”

  “I could give you a lapel pin, or a tie clip…”

  “What about a hat?”

  “A baseball cap, is that what you want, a VPD baseball cap?” Ray ran his fingers through his hair, tugged at an earlobe. He said, “I don’t know, those hats are pretty hard to come by. How about a slightly crashed motorcycle, or maybe an old revolver or a surplus Kevlar vest?”

  “Let’s get him a cap,” said Parker.

  “Yeah? Really? A cap?”

  Parker nodded. She tilted her head for a better look at the computer’s colour screen. The hair was kind of weird. Straw yellow, bolt upright, spiky. Cartoonish. Like a grown-up Bart Simpson…

  Chapter 13

  He’d been dreaming. His parole officer, George Hoffman, had been chasing him through a field. Hoffman had been riding a horse, wielding a sword, whooping maniacally. He’d flushed Ross from his hidey-hole in a blackberry thicket, thundered down on him and was just about to slice off his head when Ross had been awakened by some small, unfamiliar sound.

  He lay there, his heart thumping. The room was cold, and the blankets had slipped off him, or he’d pushed the bedding away in his nocturnal struggles. He sat up. There was someone else in the room, breathing harshly. He sat up a little straighten “Who is it? Who’s there?”

  A beam of light dazzled him, and then swung sharply towards the ceiling. Shannon’s face was illuminated from below. She bared her teeth, making of her face a mask of horror. The beam of light wandered over him, head to toe. He scrambled to cover himself. She said, “Is that a prison thing, to sleep naked?”

  “I forgo
t to pack my pyjamas.” Ross bent a leg. He struggled with the blankets. “What time is it?”

  “Late. I couldn’t sleep. Kelly woke me up, singing in the shower. He works nights, different shifts.” She adjusted the beam of the flashlight, widening the focus so the room was lit by concentric rings of suffused light. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here, standing at the foot of your bed in the middle of the night?”

  Ross mulled it over. Finally he said, “It’s your place. I guess you can be wherever you want to.”

  “Damn right,” said Shannon mildly. She added. “You were dreaming. Or maybe I should call it a nightmare.” As she spoke, she drifted languorously around to the side of the bed, and sat down. She tossed the flashlight on the bed. “Garret used to sleep in this room, when he first started coming around, but before we started sleeping together.”

  Ross ached for a cigarette.

  She said, “I fell in love with him just like that, the moment I first saw him. I don’t know what it was. Chemistry… I was bouncing off the walls, could hardly keep my hands off him. But I was terrified that I might frighten him away, if I was too aggressive.”

  “How did you meet him?” Ross had heard Garret tell the story so many times that he’d lost count. The lovebirds had stumbled across each other at one of the clubs on Richards Street. Garret had stolen and strip-mined her purse, showed up on her doorstep that same night claiming he’d found it in the men’s washroom.

  She said, “I was at a club on Richards, with a couple of friends from work. It was a Saturday night. We were going to go to a movie, but…”

  Ross yawned. His jaw creaked.

  “We were sitting at a table by the dance floor. It was early, and the band hadn’t showed up, but there was recorded music… We’d been there for an hour or so, drinking. I noticed him standing at the bar. He was wearing a jacket and tie. I thought he was really good-looking, clean-cut and everything. He saw me looking at him, and smiled. I smiled back, and he came over and introduced himself, asked me if I’d like to dance. So we danced and then he came back to the table with me, and sat down.