Corkscrew (8 page)

"Is one of them a cruiser with a canvas cover?" I was looking at them with him but could see only red. The angle was wrong for me.

"One is," he said. "It would be green in the positive." I said nothing, and he turned to me. "Does that mean anything?"

"It could," I said. "What else is there?"

"Let me see . . . more boats, a chipmunk eating peanuts. He must have used a long lens for this one; the little rascal is full frame. Then there's that miserable dog of Walter Puckrin's. See, a good composition, head hanging out of his doghouse. He looks like an old French trollop in her bedroom window."

"Could you pull me a quick print of these, please? I can't read negatives the way you can."

"Right away." He fiddled with his other machine. "I'll do straight contacts. They're small, but it's faster."

"Good." I nodded. "I appreciate it."

He went to work with his other machine and was absorbed for a moment or two, then asked over his shoulder, "What happened? Was he drowned?"

"No," I said, and he looked up in genuine surprise.

"I assumed . . ." he said, and trailed off.

"So will most people. His body was recovered off Indian Island, but the doctor thinks he was smothered, and he'd been hit in the head first."

"Good God," he said angrily. "That's sick."

"It's murder. And whoever did it wanted the evidence hidden. The body was dropped into the deep hole off Indian Island."

He straightened up from his machine and looked at me. "Doesn't that tell you that whoever did it knows the lake very well?" he asked.

"Yes. That's what I think. That's why I want this film. I think he may have known the man who killed him. Maybe there's a photo on the film."

"I hope so," Carl said savagely. "I hope to God there is."

He worked silently for another five minutes before pulling out the contact sheets from the drier and handing them to me. I looked at each in turn. Nothing jumped out and spoke to me. The girls at the tavern were laughing and pointing at the camera as if it were a joke. Beckie Vanderheyden was one of them, and her pretty young face was no kinder than any of the others. Then there were animal pictures, a couple of the chipmunk, one of Walter's old shepherd dog, another of a tortoiseshell cat. And then there were boats.

I studied these more slowly. Carl had a magnifying glass on a little stand, and he handed it to me, pulling down a high-intensity lamp for me to use. The pictures were arty, made up of the curves and shapes of boats, several boats in each picture. Some were from low level, taken as he lay full-length on a dock somewhere, I guessed, looking for the effect he wanted. Others were high shots, from where? Up a tree possibly. Or! The thought came to me like a bolt of lightning. From the second-story balcony of some cottage set above the water. Which meant they had been taken from one of only about a dozen places around the lake.

I pointed out one of the pictures for Carl. "When would you say this was taken, morning or evening?"

He moved the glass away from me and examined the shot carefully. "The light is yellowish. The shadows are getting long. I'd say this was taken around seven in the evening."

I took the glass and contact sheets back from him and studied the shadows. "In that case, looking at the run of that dock against the sun, it was taken on this side of the waterway, from a balcony. And that means it could be the Corbetts' place."

He looked at me and nodded. "Right. I covered a party there once, a twenty-fifth anniversary. The balcony is about, oh, say, fifteen feet above the dock. The angle's right."

I straightened up, tapping the contact sheets together so they were square. Carl found an envelope for me. I shoved them into it, and he opened the door.

He switched off the light as we left, and I walked through his living room to the front door.

"Thanks, Carl. Keep the negatives, please. If something comes up later, I might need an enlargement or two."

"Will do," he said, and then added impulsively, "Catch the bastard, Reid. It's a terrible thing, and it means more to me than anybody else in town. The tongues will be wagging, and the trouble will pile up against my door."

"I know. If anything should start, call the station. I've got someone at the telephone, and I'll get back to you."

"Thank you," he said firmly. "I will. You're a good policeman, Reid."

There was nothing to say but Aw shucks, so I just nodded and went out onto the step. Sam was lying there, and I let him sniff the boy's sweatshirt again and set him seeking. He ran to the door, then out to the road, directly opposite the door, then trotted off northward. Carl was watching from the step, and he said, "Does that mean he went that way?"

"It could. I'm going to follow Sam's nose. Stay in touch if there's any trouble."

He nodded grimly and shut the door.

I let Sam lead me up the roadway, keeping behind him in the scout car. He jogged on, nose to the ground, once taking a side trip toward a tree. I waited while he sniffed around the base, noticing that it had a grotesque bump on one side. Maybe the boy had stopped to photograph it. But Sam soon resumed his trot up the road, staying on the left-hand side. The kid had walked safely, facing the oncoming traffic. I was assuming that this trail had been laid after the boy left Carl's house. He might have gone back, but his time had been running out. He must have been killed soon after leaving Carl's house. And he must have left there alive. This trail was proof.

The road to the Corbett's cottage took me past the dump. I slowed as I passed and looked out at the bikers who were setting up on the flat field. They had their bikes in a line and were drinking beer and setting up a couple of big tents, laughing and swearing together. One of them stopped and pointed at me, and the others laughed. Then another one held up a bottle of beer invitingly. I waved and drove on, their laughter drifting after me.

Sam led me another quarter mile, straight to the Corbett place. It's right on the water, down a slight slope from the roadway, almost hidden in a stand of poplars planted years ago when the cottage was built. I got out of the car and followed him down to the back door, where he stopped and sniffed. I watched him and waited, glancing up at the cottage. It's more than a cottage, a grand summer residence, really. Mrs. Corbett's parents owned it. Now they're dead, and she comes up here alone through the week in the summer months. Her husband commutes from his business in Toronto and its surroundings. He runs a number of hotels, and I had heard the local gossip that he was trying to open a big marina hotel near here, out on the shore of Georgian Bay, where he can cater to the summer boat traffic.

After a minute or so Sam moved away from the door, out to the side of the cottage and down to the dock. There was a cruiser tied to the dock. It was green, with a canvas hood, the same kind the Levine boy had seen. Sam followed the boy's trail right into it, but tentatively at first, nosing the air more than the ground. But when he reached the side of the cruiser, he didn't hesitate. He dived right into it and snuffled around the center, not on the seats but on the bottom of the boat, what I'd have called the deck if I'd still been in the marines.

I followed him down and checked the boat myself. It was empty, and there were no obvious new scratches or bloodstains to guide or to confuse me. The first fact I picked up was that the rope at bow and stern was the same common yellow plastic that the boy had been tied with. I checked both lines closely. The one at the bow had been sealed with heat, the way most nylon lines are sealed after being cut, either with an electric heater at the store or with a match if the owner cuts and reseals it. The stern line was cut, unsealed, and was beginning to unravel slightly. There was about a yard of slack, and I cut the end of the line off, making a knot in the original cut end. If we did find the object the boy had been tied to, the crime laboratory in Toronto would compare the ends of it with this cut. Often plastic material shows the marks of the machine that formed it. Perhaps we would have further evidence to tie this boat to the dead boy.

My next observation was that the boat had been hot-wired. A bird's nest of wiring was hanging down under the dash, and when I checked further, I found that the wires to the ignition lock had been torn away.

I stood up again and thought through it all. My next move was fingerprinting. The best way was to impound the boat and take it down to the police station, where I kept my kit. But that meant getting a trailer, and if I did, I might smudge the prints, if any. I decided to spare the ten minutes necessary to fetch my gear. This place was private enough to do my printing, and if I found anything, I could cover it with clear tape before moving the boat. I brought Sam to heel and fussed him, thanking him for his work. He wagged his tail and lolled his tongue out happily. Then I went back up the dock, taking out my notebook, where I keep a couple of found property tags. I wrote on one, "Do not touch the cruiser at the dock. Will be back in a few minutes, Chief Bennett," and went to the door, where I tied it on the handle.

The knob was loose in my hand, so I took out my handkerchief and turned the handle gently. The door swung open, and I walked in.

I called, "Police here. Anybody home?" but nobody answered. It was dark behind the closed drapes over the window, but after a moment I got enough night vision to look around. And what I saw stopped me from moving further. The place had been vandalized. Flour was dusted everywhere. Plates and cups were broken underfoot, and ketchup and mustard and jam had been hurled against the walls. Instinctively I glanced down at the flour all over the floor. I was right. There was a footprint in the flour, and I stooped to look at it more closely. It was the mark of a boot, with a horseshoe-shaped steel cleat around the heel. A biker's boot.

Chapter Seven

I felt like a cat in a basement full of mice. No murder I'd ever investigated had thrown so many clues at me so fast. I didn't know what to do first. Obviously, I had to print the cruiser. The boy had been in it at some time over the last couple of days, and he hadn't sat down on the seat. He had been on the deck, which probably meant he had been in it today, already dead. That meant his killer's fingerprints might be on it, too, along with those of the Corbetts and whoever else had used it.

But the debris in the cottage was another lead. Somebody had vandalized the place. It looked like bikers, judging from that heelprint. And if it had been, the chances were excellent that the kid had been here with them and that one of them had killed him. I had no proof, but when facts pile up this high around you, any policeman has to believe they're connected.

I stood for a moment, thinking hard. There was nothing else for it. I had to call in the OPP Criminal Investigation branch. They come to the aid of places like Murphy's Harbour when the load of investigation gets too heavy for the staff of the local department to handle. A couple of years ago I would have resisted calling them. But the people in town knew I was doing a good job. I had nothing to fear anymore from some councilor arguing that the OPP should take over the town's police coverage completely.

I went outside, backing up carefully so that I stepped in my own bootprints going out, not disturbing anything more. Sam was waiting for me, wagging his tail, anticipating more work. I patted him and sat in the front of the cruiser, calling in on the radio.

Fred answered at once, in a thick German accent. I told her, "Hi, it's Reid. Will you patch me through to the OPP, quickly, please."

"Vait, I vill," she said, staying in character.

I heard the phone ring, and then the OPP corporal answered.

"Hello, Corporal, this is Chief Bennett of Murphy's Harbour. I have a homicide investigation going on, and I need some help from the C.I.B. people. Can you scare them up for me, please?"

"Hold on, Chief, I'll connect you."

There was a pause, and I got the C.I.B. office, Sergeant Landy. I knew him, and that helped get through the formalities, but then he gave me the bad news. There had been a blazing crash on the highway outside Gravenhurst, and the boys were down there with the coroner. They wouldn't be free until ten o'clock at the earliest, and they'd been on duty since morning.

I asked him to give them the message and have them call me first chance they got. Then I hung up and thought some more. I was going to have to proceed alone.

The first thing I did was take the flashlight from the glove compartment and go back into the cottage. I crouched a pace inside the door and memorized the outlines of the bootprint. To guide me further, I sketched it in my notebook, taking rough measurements overall and marking in the prominent features I could make out. It was rough, but it would have to do for now. If I came up lucky with my next move, I wouldn't need anything any more fancy.

I closed the door and hung a tag on it. "Investigation in progress. Do not enter. Call the police station," and signed it. Then I put Sam in the car and called the station on the radio.

This time a Cockney answered. I told her, "Hi, Fred, it's your nemesis. I'm at the site of a break-in that may be important. I'm expecting a call from a family, name of Corbett. If they ring, have them come to the station and wait for me. Tell them not to touch their house, or the boat out back."

She switched to a normal voice to answer. "Sounds heavy, Reid. You sure that's all I can do for you?"

"Over the radio it is," I said, and she laughed and I hung up.

I thought about my next move for a couple of minutes, trying to find something smarter to do than stick my head in the lion's mouth. But finally I faced the fact. I had to do this and I had to do it now, before anybody got time to leave. So I went ahead, psyching myself up for the confrontation.

I drove down to the dump site and very slowly pulled the car in onto the field. The bikers had lit a fire and were standing around it with beers in their hands. The leader was in the center, holding court. Most of the others were listening, paying attention. It reminded me again of the marines.