Flashback (15 page)

Hanson's file had some surprises although nothing was helpful in the case. His real name was Eric Kowalski. His father was a garbageman in Toronto. He had appeared in a number of plays around Toronto and had studied with a woman called Poirier whom George described as the high priestess of The Method. His reviews had been good and he had appeared in a number of TV commercials. On two occasions he had worked for Marcia Tracy but according to George's notes, had been only an extra with no speaking part. He was twenty-eight years old and lived with a woman fifteen years his senior. She was a sound engineer for CBC, our national TV network. Her name was Hanson and no doubt he had taken it as his own because it sounded less ethnic.
 

I closed the file and was sitting with my feet on my desk, thinking about it when a car drove up outside. I swung my feet down and waited. A moment later the car drove away and the front door of the office opened. George came in, smiling. 'Can you believe it?' he asked cheerfully. 'I stopped at Kinski's gas station on the highway, left the kid inside while I went in to buy some pop and some sonofabitch stole my car, with the kid in it.'
 

I played the game by his rules. 'Any idea who it was?'
 

'No. The guy on the pump said there were three Indian-looking guys in a pickup truck. Two of them got out and got into my car and drove off, just like that.'
 

'Where's the kid?'
 

'That's the funny part. They took him with them.'
 

'They're not going to punch him out, are they?'
 

'No,' he said sincerely. 'They're Indian. They won't touch him.'
 

'I just hope the hell you know what you're doing, George. You want me to report your car missing?'

He looked at his watch and yawned. 'A bit late tonight,' he said. 'Why don't you make a note of it and we'll look for it when you drop me off at home. You know what Indians are like. They've probably gone back to the Reserve.'
 

'Does your mom know what you're doing?'

'She's too busy making a fuss of her new dog. I got her a German short-hair. Pretty little guy but it'll grow big enough that kids with baseball bats won't take after it like they did with Muskie.'
 

'And your dad can train it for hunting. Good idea.' I wanted to talk about Freund, wanted to know where the Jeffries' Magic Wagon was, but that wasn't going to happen tonight. Instead of pushing it I asked him about the information he'd brought me.
 

'You made a note on the Tracy file, something about her first husband's death.'

'Yeah.' He sat down the other side of the desk and I put my feet back up. Like most North Americans I'm more comfortable that way. Like every Indian, he isn't. He sat back in his chair and said, 'One of the guys at the office remembered the case. It seems there was talk that his wife, this Marcia Tracy, was running around a lot, screwing actors and the owner of the production house where she was working. According to my source, there was some kind of scandal brewing and Dalton, that's the husband, had hired a private detective to follow her. Then one night he died. Just like that. The coroner said he'd had a couple of Scotches before going to bed and had taken sleeping pills. Seems his heart was a little touchy and the combination finished him.'
 

'You think she knocked him off?'

'The inquest ruled it accidental. There were some who thought it might have been a suicide, or even murder. According to the transcript, the housekeeper said there had been bad blood between the two of them and Dalton had been talking divorce to her, that's the housekeeper.'
 

'I guess Marcia would have been out on her ear if the old guy had divorced her.'

George shook his head. 'Not entirely. That was after the Family Law Reform Act. She was entitled to half the house and so on, but it wouldn't have been cut and dried. And the way it ended she got a cool half-mill in life insurance, on top of everything else.'
 

'Sounds to me like a hell of a good motive for feeding him a few drinks and some extra pills.'

'The jury didn't buy it. She came across as the grieving, misunderstood widow. She was young, by their standards anyway, around thirty, a career woman. The way the guy at the office remembers, that went over big with the jury, there were a couple of what he calls bra-burners on it. Anyway, they found it accidental and the whole thing was dropped.'
 

'And six months later she marries Waites.'

He nodded. 'Yeah. Then they divorce, he remarries, all three of them come up here and the wife vanishes and he winds up dead. You've got to wonder if something from the past didn't crop up.' He paused, 'Oh, one thing more, from the present. I learned that she's got money troubles. She had a couple of big successes but her last few movies have been crap. Now she's trying to raise money for the next one and nobody's coming forward.'
 

'So she's strapped. That's interesting. And we already have the feeling that she killed her husband for money. I wonder how this ties together with what's happening here?'
 

George shrugged. 'Unless she's got insurance on the dead woman, I don't see how it can help her.'

'There must be something,' I said, 'but we won't know until we've got more. I have to talk to Moira Waites and her boyfriend. I guess he's her boyfriend, this guy Jeffries whose wife ended up dead in the lake.'
 

'You'll get your chance in the morning. The kid'll be back and he'll talk up a storm.'

'Nobody's going to rough him up, George? You know I can't sit still for that.'

'Nor can I.' He stood up. 'You may not want to hear it but the case I'm working on right now in Toronto is about a policeman who hammered some wife-beater. Good old frontier justice, right? Except that the reason the wife was being beaten up was because she was having an affair with the same copper. He's looking at five years and I'm going to see he gets it.'
 

'That's the only way to play it. Right down the middle.'

He paid me a compliment. 'If every cop worked the same as you, Reid, life would be a lot nicer.'

I swung my feet down. 'So I guess the sweet talk is so you can get a ride home.'

"Preciate it, please.'

'OK. Come on, Sam.' I switched the lights off, except for the blue light over the door outside, and led Sam and George out to the police car.
 

It was after eleven by now and the Reserve was in darkness. George invited me in but I refused. I planned to spin down the highway a few miles each way, looking for the Magic Wagon. Then I'd take one last pass around the Harbour and hit the sack.
 

I did it all and found nothing and after midnight I pulled in at my house and let Sam out of the car to seek. He found nobody but he showed a lot of interest in the space around my house, so I went around it with him, flashing my light everywhere to see if someone had broken in. It looked intact so I opened the front door and let him go first. Again he found nothing and I fed him and let him out for a minute, then cleaned my teeth and went to bed.
 

The phone rang at four-thirty. I grabbed it on the first ring. 'Police, Murphy's Harbour.'

It was George. 'Sorry to drag you out so early, Reid. Our neighbour, Jim Buck, he says he was fishing last night up at Loon Lake. Says there's a car on the road looks like mine. Didn't get the number. I wondered if you wanted to give me a ride up, see if we could find it, scratch it off your stolen list.'
 

'I'll be over there in fifteen.' I hung up and went to the bathroom for the world's quickest shower and shave. Then I took Sam and drove to George's place. Everyone was up and his mother came to the door to see George off. She stood there under the porch light with the puppy under her arm and she waved at me and held the puppy up. I called out hi and drove away with George.
 

'I guess Jim Buck is resting up,' I said easily. 'His lights weren't on.'

'I guess. He's been up all night fishing,' George said. 'Got some nice pickerel, couple around four pound.'

'Was he with the kid all night?'

'He was fishing, but his brother's still up there,' George said.

'What happened?'

'I'm not sure. Why don't you ask Freund? My guess is he'll be talkative.' George flopped his head sideways, sleeping or pretending to.
 

Loon Lake is on a side-road to begin with and then a further eight or nine miles into the bush on an overgrown logging road. At night, on foot, you would never find your way down there unless you were born here and knew every tree. I made no comment and a few miles in we came to a fork. My headlights played over George's car, covered with dew.
 

'Good as new,' he said happily. 'Isn't that lucky?'

I looked at him. 'Now I wonder which of these roads a man might try first, looking for the kid?'

'That one looks good.' George pointed.

'Did anybody stay with the boy?'

'Don't know what you mean,' he said, getting out. 'But, come to think of it, Jim said that his brother Jack wasn't home yet.'

'I'll call you later.' I drove off up the logging trail until a deadfall blocked it completely, then got out and turned Sam loose to seek. It was still dark and I carried a flashlight with me but didn't turn it on, letting my night vision develop on its own. It would be light within another hour and I could manage until then.
 

Sam ran in and out of the bush all the way, then he checked and looked up before bounding away again. It was jackpine here, low to the ground and tangled, second growth. I didn't try to penetrate it, knowing that the boy wouldn't have gone into the bush here, he must have blundered off the trail further up where the trees were better spaced and he lost the trail in the darkness. I went on, looking for a likely spot.
 

I found one, a couple of hundred yards further on and turned off in the direction Sam had taken. A moment later I heard his bark, about a quarter of a mile ahead among the trees. They were thicker here so I made sure to blaze myself a trail I could follow out, snapping off branches and leaving them hanging at eye level. It made more noise than I liked but I didn't think the boy would notice. The only thing he was hearing was Sam, who would be standing in front of him, giving tongue the way he's trained to. It would sound to a kid as if Sam were out for blood.
 

I reached him a few minutes later. He was up in a tree, sitting with his knees drawn up uncomfortably. I shone my light on him and saw his face was scratched with branches and he had been crying.
 

'Easy,' I told Sam. Then to the kid: 'What the hell happened to you?'

'Keep him away,' he sobbed.

'He's the one who found you. You ought to be grateful. Come on down, he won't bite.'

I kept my light on him, watching as he made a quick attempt to dry his eyes on the front of his T-shirt, then turned and shinned clumsily down. Most kids would have hung from a branch and dropped but he hadn't worked things out that far. He climbed all the way down and came over to me.
 

'Thank you,' he said and tried to shake my hand.

I didn't shake. 'What happened?'

'A bunch of Indians stole the car, They put me out here.'

'Here?' I played dumb. 'How in hell did they drive here?'

'Close,' he said. 'There was a trail. They were talking Indian. I couldn't understand. Then they opened the car door and shoved me out. I was lost. It was dark. And the mosquitoes. Oh my God.'
 

'No sweat. I found the car. This is a popular fishing spot, I've found stolen cars before up here. And I figured I'd take a look for you, in case you'd wandered off and got lost.'
 

'I heard a bear,' he said. 'There's bears here.'

'Yeah. Lots of them. Well, I can take you out now, or I can leave my dog keeping you up that tree and go away. Which would you like?'
 

'Take me out,' he said. 'You wouldn't leave me, would you?'

'Why should I help you? You haven't helped me.'

'I will. I promise I will.' He was almost wetting himself with fear.

'I'll think about it.' I sat down on a log, keeping my light on his face. 'Depends on you. Now tell me where you found the car you came to the Harbour in yesterday.'
 

'On a side-road, you know, off the highway. We were down there in that old heap of Eric's an' we knew you would recognize it if we came back. So we were looking for another car and we found one.'
 

'Unlocked with the keys in it?'

'No. It was locked. But Cy, that's one of the kids, he's done things with cars before. He said guys sometimes leave cars with the key hidden somewhere. It was up the tailpipe.'
 

That meant the car had been left for a second user.

'Could you show me the place where you found this car?'

'It was on Ellis Lane. I remember a signboard when we came out again.'

'And you left the car there?'

'No. Cy drove it away. He knew where he could sell it, he said.'

He continued to talk but I was thinking. I'd seen the car after supper at the motel where I'd found Hanson.

'What time did you find the car? The wagon?'

'Around noon. We used it to come back to your town for the swarming.'

I was working it out. Perhaps this Cy had been in cahoots with Hanson, had been another plant, maybe another actor. He had taken the car to get away from the gang and return it to Hanson. After all, I had seen the car at the motel late at night. In fact, maybe Cy knew in advance where the Magic Wagon would be hidden, knew that the keys would be with it. Which meant I had to find him and talk to him.
 

Freund was anxious to come clean. It was a good sign and I was still learning from him, so I let him continue.

'And Cy had gone by then?'