Seaweed in the Soup (21 page)

“How do you know that?”

“Okay, I don't know for certain. But it's a fair assumption, because when Wondertits Leach drove me home later on, the car was already gone.”

“What kind of a car was it?”

Lightning was a thousand miles away. He pulled himself back and said, “What?”

“The car you ran into. What make was it?”

“Oh yeah,” Lightning sighed. “It was either a Lexus or it was a Mercedes. Late model, black.”

“Okay, you had an accident en route to the murder house, but there are still bits missing from your story.”

“What bits? What are you talking about?”

I remained silent. I thought it better to conceal police knowledge that cocaine had been found in Lightning's blue-and-white, and in his house. That Lightning's latent prints had been lifted from the inside of Cho's BMW.

I said, “Let's talk about Maggie.”

“I'm sorry she's dead, but it's been over between me and Maggie for years. We weren't even friends anymore. We didn't even talk politely to each other,” Lightning said sombrely. “That's it, it's all I've got to say. Thanks for the drink, Silas. You're a White man inside.”

“There's more. You can't go yet.”

“I've said all I'm going to say.”

“In that case, I have to take you in.”

Lightning shrugged, shook his head, and reached inside his jacket. I thought he'd bring out his cigarettes again. But Lightning was wearing a shoulder holster, and he brought out a 9mm Glock instead.

He winked with an effort that tilted his mouth and said, “Don't think I won't use it, Silas. My back is against the wall. If you try anything, I'll shoot.” He conjured up a thin smile. “But I know you won't shoot
me
. We've known each other too long. No way you'll shoot me, so there's no sense pushing it.” Lightning stood up. “In case it's bothering you, I'm not running away. I'll be back. Next time though, I'll bring my lawyer.”

Lightning went out. I didn't try to stop him. Moments later, I heard footsteps in the corridor outside. Lightning was already back. With one hand holding the doorknob, he poked his head inside. A ribald grin on his face, he said, “You and Cynthia have got something going, Silas, right? Now there's a nice piece of ass.”

I should have wrestled Lightning to the ground, stomped his lights out just on general principles, and then dragged him across to headquarters in handcuffs, but he still had the Glock in his hand, and besides, my brain felt tired.

I reached for the bottle to pour myself another drink but it was only a procrastinating reflex. I didn't need another drink. I needed to drive out to Collins Lane and do some snooping, except it was pouring down outside and I'd left my raincoat in the car.

Rain clouds covered the entire sky. People hurried past with their heads down, water streamed off their umbrellas. My head and shoulders were soaked by the time I got into the MG.

About halfway along Collins Lane, I reached a point on the road where a sharp bend coincided with a sudden incline. For a moment, my view of approaching traffic was partially obscured, and I took my foot off the accelerator. I kept going for another hundred yards. Then I parked in a pullout beneath the dripping trees. The bush in that location was dense and nearly impenetrable to everything except small animals and birds. I put my raincoat on, and hiked back to the bend in the road. Within five minutes, I found small pieces of shattered white plastic and white-enamelled metal lying scattered along the soft shoulder. This, it seemed likely, was the place where Lightning Bradley's Crown Royal had collided with a supposedly black Mercedes. After putting a few items in an evidence bag and storing them in the MG, I grabbed a shovel and poked along the road until I reached a footpath that led into the bush.

Indian kids learn early in life that what's important lies off the trail. Things such as berries, edible roots, a bird's nest, poison plants, dye plants. You have to get off the trail if you're a vision quester on a religious journey. Plenty of rain had fallen by then, and moisture was penetrating the overhead canopy. The damp ground was littered with fallen rotting trees covered with moss and freshly sprouted mushrooms, some but not all of which were safe to eat. It was very dark in places. Maria Alfred could have remained safely hidden in these woods for weeks, except for Nicky Nattrass and his tracker dogs.

It took me many minutes to reach the petroglyph site. The skeletal figure and the wolf were already obscured by more leaves, dirt and other debris, but this time I didn't brush them clean because I was more interested in finding out whether there was a cave nearby. Using the shovel, I dug around until I found a narrow cavelike opening. I crawled into an ancient, irregularly shaped sandstone tunnel, perhaps fifteen feet long and about a metre in diameter at its widest. The walls were daubed in red and black pictographs—human and animal figures made long ago by an artist who had used red ochre and carbon pigments instead of store-bought paints. A mummified male corpse lay on the dry earth. I knew he'd been buried alive, because if he'd been buried after death, he would have been interred in a box with his knees pulled up tight beneath his chin.

I'd seen enough, and crawled back out.

Back in my car, I phoned Bernie Tapp. I said, “Now we know how that Crown Royal ended up with a twisted frame.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Remember when Constable Ricketts found Mrs. Milton hysterical on the beach, Lightning was sitting in his Crown Royal on Echo Bay Road?”

“Of course I remember.”

“This is what appears to have happened. Ricketts called Lightning and told him about the dead man. When Bradley was driving to join Ricketts at the house, he was involved in an accident on Collins Drive. The other car was a late-model convertible, possibly a Lexus or a Mercedes. Lightning didn't report the accident because he panicked. It was a hit and run.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Lightning told me all about it a few hours ago.”

“He phoned?” Bernie asked me incredulously.

“No, he dropped by my office. Right now I'm on Collins Lane. I found a bunch of white plastic and metal lying beside the road. Smashed automobile parts, the remains of an accident. It shouldn't take us long to confirm what kind of a vehicle they came from.”

“Okay. Now I want to talk to Lightning. Put him on the blower.”

“I can't; Lightning is not here. I don't know where he is.”

Bernie sighed. I could imagine him, tearing his hair. He said angrily, “Let me get this straight. Lightning comes into your office for a little conversation. Then you shook hands and turned him loose?”

“No. Lightning pulled his Glock on me. He threatened to put a hole in me if I tried to arrest him.”

“Apart from that, you've had a quiet day?” Bernie hung up.

I drove across town to Ted's garage. Ted was out, but his foreman wasn't. I dumped the bits of white plastic and metal on a workbench and asked him if he could tell me what kind of a car the parts belonged to.

The foreman picked up one of the pieces. He pointed to symbols embossed on one of the larger parts. “I know exactly what kind of a car they came off, because we've had one in the shop a few times. It's a 2008 Nissan Infiniti 350Z Roadster. There's not too many of 'em around in Victoria yet.”

“Is your customer's a black convertible?”

“No, it's blue.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I was frying eggs for breakfast. The sun was shining, and I was thinking about a certain vehicle that I'd noticed recently. It had been parked under tarpaulins in Tomas Gonzales' yard. Who knows what make and colour it might have been? The phone rang. It was Bernie Tapp. He said, “What are you doing right now?”

“Having breakfast and taking care of a sick bird.”

“Felicity's ill?”

“No. The bird is a pine siskin. It has a damaged wing, but it's getting better every day.”

I held the phone away from my ear while Bernie enjoyed a coughing fit. When he finished, I said, “By the way. The car that Lightning ran into was a 350Z Nissan Infiniti Roadster.”

“Better put out a BOLO.”

“I've done that already.”

“Good lad. Now stay put, I'm on my way over, we're going for a drive.”

≈  ≈  ≈

Bernie showed up in an elderly Toyota Land Cruiser. A noisy, broken-down diesel that he had borrowed from the carpool. Its rear seats were separated from the front seats by an impermeable plastic security screen. With Bernie sweating and coughing beside me, we chugged out of Victoria and up into the mountains in low gears. Scorched air rising above the blacktop made the horizon shimmer. We turned off Highway 1 before we reached the Malahat summit and drove past Shawnigan Lake. An abundance of waterfowl, mainly Canada geese, flapped in the air and used the lake's unruffled surface as a landing pad. Summer cottages, a motel, a general store and a restaurant with a
Closed
sign in its window lay along the green forested road like splashes of white paint.

A few miles beyond Shawnigan Lake School, we ran out of blacktop. We bumped slowly west along narrow washboarded logging roads into the boonies. The whole area was rugged and remote, peppered with small lakes and dense forest interconnected by twisting narrow roads, and seldom visited except by hikers or off-roaders driving all-terrain vehicles.

I told Bernie about my visit to the house on Jinglepot Road, adding, “I sent Maria Alfred's stuff across to HQ. Maybe Forensics will find something useful.”

Bernie's grunt changed into another cough. As we travelled farther west, the heavens opened up. Rain fell unceasingly. Bernie locked the hubs, put the Land Cruiser into four-wheel-drive and drove on with sweat dripping down his face. He was holding the steering wheel like a running back holds a football and driving too fast, as usual. I bounced around on the Land Cruiser's deflated shotgun seat, hanging onto the overhead grab bars during the wild, bucking ride.

Creeks overflowed. Water, loose earth and small rocks cascaded down from deforested slopes, creating minor avalanches and transforming the road into a ribbon of liquid mud. It took us over an hour to traverse one five-mile stretch. The vehicle's noisy diesel, its busted muffler and the groaning springs made conversation impossible till Bernie stopped at a fork in the road. One fork led to an abandoned logging camp. After consulting an ordnance survey map and getting our bearings, we opted for a fork that ran alongside Sumatch Creek. On we went, with one or all of our wheels spinning without traction half the time, until we were forced to a stop by a red alder that had fallen across the road. Bernie locked the brakes and said, “Silas, I feel wrecked, a bit dizzy. Goddamn summer cold, so I'd better take it easy for a minute.”

I reached for the emergency axe and got out. Sweating, ankle-deep in liquid gumbo, I chopped the alder's bushy branches off, dumped them over a bank, and then wrapped a choker around the trunk of the tree and dragged it out of the way with the Land Cruiser's bumper-mounted winch. Soaked, my boots full of warm liquid mud, I got back in the car and we resumed our journey.

A couple of miles before it reached the sea, the creek widened into a small lake spanned by a single-lane bridge. Soon afterwards, a constable wearing yellow rain gear waved us down. We skidded to a halt. “If you go on for another couple of hundred yards, you'll see parked emergency vehicles,” the constable told us. “I suggest you leave your vehicle there and take the footpath down to the creek. Careful, gentlemen, the footpath is very slippery.”

The next thing we saw was an ambulance and other emergency vehicles blocking the road. Bernie and I got out of the Land Cruiser and slithered down steep muddy slopes to the creek's gravel-strewn bank. About fifty feet wide at that point, the creek flowed around a narrow canoe-shaped islet upon which a few spindly birches and cottonwoods had gained tenuous toeholds. The crime scene was farther downstream.

Sergeant Mollard, a uniform branch veteran, was waiting for us beneath a white plastic tent that had been erected on a stretch of matted grass.

Mollard pointed. “Yesterday, a sports fisherman noticed a floating object snagged up against the rocks over there. At first, the fisherman thought it was a chunk of driftwood. As he drew closer, he realized that he had found a dead man. The fisherman waited till this morning before calling us.”

Bernie raised his eyebrows.

“This creek is salmon-bearing, it's off limits year-round. There's a $5000 penalty for poaching,” Mollard explained. “This morning the fisherman's conscience got the better of him so he gave us a ring. Lucky the body's still here, it's a miracle it didn't wash out to sea in all this rain.”

“Where's the fisherman now?”

“Dunno, Bernie. He was cagey enough to call us from a public phone.”

The surging creek was heavy with suspended silt and organic debris. Underfoot, the creek's pebbly bottom was loose and shifting. Bernie stayed under the shelter, drinking coffee and popping Tylenol, while I waded through a tangle of bulrushes and reeds into deeper water.

The floater was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and cargo pants. One shoe was missing. His face was submerged; his thick shock of long black hair undulated in the current. A constable raised the floater's head for me to have a look at him. The corpse's face might have been a handsome object once, but immersion in that tumbling river had rendered it ghastly. He was about thirty and he looked familiar. It took four sturdy constables to lift the body from the water, put him on a gurney and wheel him into the tent.

“What do you think?” Bernie asked me, after looking at the corpse.

“I wouldn't swear to it, but it might be Larry Cooley. If it is Cooley, I saw him in Nanaimo's, with P.G. Mainwaring, shortly before it went up in flames.”

“Whoever he is, Hollywood can stop calling him now,” Mollard interjected unkindly.