In the Shadow of the Glacier (33 page)

Winters didn’t wait to see if she knocked on the CC’s door. She would either confess, or not. If she ran from this, her career would be finished. And that was up to her. Stupid thing to do, let the press get to her, but she was young and very green.

He settled down to read incident reports. He’d also asked for reports from the Mounties and other towns in the Kootenays. It didn’t take long to see that in the last four months the number of bike thefts in Trafalgar was sky high compared to a year before, and compared to other towns nearby. He sifted through the reports, looking for something, anything, to focus on. There was nothing obvious—bikes were snatched pretty much any day of the week, any time of day. Almost always from the downtown streets, though, very few from the newer residential areas higher up the mountain. He picked up the phone. “Jim, is Molly still in the station?”

“No. She was in with the boss for about twenty minutes, then left for her shift. You gonna tell me what that was about?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Ask her to drop in next time she passes this way, will you.”

“Sure.”

Winters turned back to the reports. Detective Lopez had worked hard on this file, but bike theft was notoriously hard to solve. Bicycles were easily transportable, easy to hide, and there was an eager market for the stolen goods in Vancouver.

“You wanted to see me, John.”

He looked up. Smith stood in the doorway. Her face was pale and her eyes tinged with red. People would think she had a slight cold. “Your bike was stolen the other night. Tell me about it.”

She wasn’t expecting to have been called in off the street for that. “Why?”

“I’ve been staring at the damned computer for too long. My head hurts.” He rubbed his eyes. It was getting increasingly hard to read small print if the light was poor, and the computer monitor was giving him headaches. He feared that he was going to need reading glasses soon: reading glasses, and before you knew it, it was a walker and spilling soup down your shirt front. “Let’s go pick up a coffee. My treat. We can talk on the way.” He stood up, trying to ignore the slight twinge in his lower back. “I’ve read the report on the loss of your bike, Molly, but I’m wondering if there’s anything more you can add.”

The equipment on her belt jingled as she walked. “It was gone, that’s all, the cable lock cut right through. If you don’t mind my saying so, John, as much as I’d like to get it back, I can’t see why you’ve been called away from the Montgomery murder to worry about my bike.”

He explained about Rosemary Fitzgerald and his search for the person who’d stolen her bike close to the time Montgomery was murdered.

There were no customers at Big Eddie’s. Eddie was behind the counter, reading the newspaper. Winters ordered a large coffee, strong. Smith asked for a hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. They carried their drinks outside. Cars drove by, but there were few pedestrians on the streets. It was the dinner hour for those with regular jobs.

“You saw a bike in the process of being pinched,” Winters said, “from the Tourist Info Center.”

“Yeah. Arrogant bastard. I can’t believe he didn’t see me in that alley.”

Winters stopped walking. “What did you say?”

She licked at the tower of whipped cream. “He was so cool, he didn’t even bother to look around to see if anyone was watching. Just broke the lock and took off.”

“When you found Montgomery, you were on your regular rounds, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you normally check out that alley?”

“Of course.”

“Round about the same time, every shift?”

“You can’t set your watch by the time I’m at the corner of Elm and Front. But I’ll usually go down that way sometime between eight thirty and nine thirty, if it’s a quiet night.”

“Goddamn it. You’re the common denominator, Smith.”

Comprehension dawned, her blue eyes opened wide and her pretty face settled into angry lines. She threw up her hands. Chocolate splashed over the rim of her cup. “Hey! I’m not pinching bikes. Ask Solway, she saw me chasing the guy.”

“I’m not accusing you of stealing them, Molly. Just of being in the vicinity when it happens. Look, we know of three bikes being stolen in the past week. One—Rosemary Fitzgerald’s around the time you could be expected to pass by on your rounds. Two—your own bike. And three—when you saw the guy in action.” He threw his half-finished coffee into a trash can. “I want to see your shift records for the past six months, and check them against the bike theft reports. And while I’m at it, we’ll look at other minor crimes. Stuff stolen from unlocked cars, for example. See if there’s a spike when you’re working.”

“Please, no,” she said. “You don’t think I’m in enough trouble without creating my own private crime wave.”

“You’re creating nothing, Molly. But if I’m right, someone’s watching you.”

□□□

Smith and Winters watched the program in the chief’s office. It was not quite as bad as they’d feared.

“Makes Ashcroft look like a bully,” Jim Denton said, giving Smith a smile that was meant to be encouraging.

“Makes me look like a storm trooper,” she said.

“The bully impression isn’t doing us, or Molly, any good,” Winters said. “It implies that the big bad wolf is bullying sweet little red riding hood who happens to be a female officer.”

Keller pressed the remote and the TV went black. “Not a wolf, nor a storm trooper.” He leaned his elbows on his desk and folded his fingers into a pyramid. “But a public relations disaster no matter how you look at it.”

“I’m sorry, sir,”

“Never apologize, Molly,” Keller said. “I’d have thought that your mother would have drilled that into you as you lay in your cradle. ‘Never apologize. Never explain. Get the job done and let them howl.’ I think the quote goes something like that.”

John Winters looked out the window. The blinds were drawn but one of the slats had not met with its neighbor and there was a good-sized gap. A laughing crowd passed under the streetlights.

“It might not be as bad as you think, Paul,” Winters said. “Ashcroft looks unhinged to me. First he’s trying to get Molly to speak against the garden, and thus by implication her mother, and when that doesn’t work, he tried to rile her up by insulting her parents. He doesn’t show the baiting, but the way in which his interview flies from one point on the compass to another makes him look like a man desperate to get whatever angle he can.”

“His fans won’t see it that way,” Keller said.

“I don’t imagine there’s anything that could make them see the situation any other way than how he intends them to see it.”

“Probably not. Good of you to stay, Jim. Molly. A couple of minutes of your time, John.”

The office door clicked shut behind Smith and Denton.

“When’s Lopez back?” Keller asked.

“Next week.”

“You getting anywhere with Montgomery?”

“No.” Winters decided to keep his suspicions about the bike thief and his apparent relations with Molly Smith to himself for now. They’d found a correlation between the times she was on the beat and the stealing of bicycles from the downtown area. Unfortunately, not only did that not bring him any closer to finding the thief, there was no guarantee that even if they found the guy, he’d know anything about the Montgomery murder.

“I have to ask the Yellow Stripes for help with this park business, John,” the Chief said. He picked a pen off his desk and ran it between his fingers like a baton twirler. “People have been arriving all day, taking one side or the other. There’s likely to be serious trouble on Wednesday when the damned fool we have for a deputy mayor announces the council’s decision. And as long as I’m asking for the Horsemen’s help, I’m going to ask them to send someone from IHIT as well. We need fresh eyes on the Montgomery case, John.”

“I agree,” he said. Although it burned him, deep inside, to say so. He was supposed to be the hotshot homicide detective from the big city. Blessing the minuscule Trafalgar City Police with his presence. And he couldn’t solve the first murder that had happened in this backwoods town all year. He’d come here to escape from the memory of his own failure. And now he’d failed again.

□□□

The wheel of the shopping cart caught in a rut in the parking lot. Lucky wrenched it free with a curse. When she looked up a man was standing beside her car, arms crossed, watching her. Her heart leapt into her throat. It was a midweek afternoon; the parking lot was full, people were coming and going with their groceries. A red-faced woman dragged a little boy by the hand. He was screaming and trying to fall down. She swatted him on the bottom.

Lucky stopped walking.

“Mrs. Smith,” the man said.

“Yes?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do, you’re Brian Harris. Come to Trafalgar to make trouble.”

“The way I see it, Mrs. Smith, you’re the one making trouble. You and that ridiculous committee.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk,” he said with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. He wore a blue baseball cap and the corner of his left eye twitched.

“We have nothing to talk about. I have to get these groceries home before the ice cream melts.” She tried to calm her breathing. Surely Harris wouldn’t attack her? In the middle of town in the middle of the day. He stepped toward her. She gripped the handles of her shopping cart and made sure it was between them: the shield of a twenty-first century warrior.

“No one wants trouble, Mrs. Smith.”

“Then go away and leave us alone. This is our town.”

“You’re part of a larger world. Although you peaceniks don’t seem to be able to see the big picture. Peacenik—isn’t that what they called you back in the day, Mrs. Smith?”

“And we were proud, still are, to be on the side of peace.” She felt some confidence returning. It had scared her, badly, to see him watching her, arrogance written all over his pinched face, letting her know that he could find her any time he wanted. But she was on her own ground, and he was just a young punk who thought he was tough because he didn’t know the meaning of the word.

“Get to the point, please.”

“The point, Mrs. Smith, is that you’ve lost. My contact on the town council tells me that they’ve voted to end the project outright and return the property to O’Reilly’s estate. What happens to it then will make a lot of lawyers rich.”

She tried not to let her dismay show. Could she believe him? He might have someone on his side in the town council, just as Barry had been anonymously warned about the meeting last night. “We’ll await the formal announcement,” she said.

He grabbed the front of her shopping cart and leaned forward. Shocked, Lucky stepped back; he moved in tandem. She was aware that the toddler was no longer screaming, that traffic in and out of the parking lot had stopped, that no one was chatting to their friends or talking on cell phones. In all the world, there might only be Lucky Smith and Brian Harris. Facing each other across a cart piled high with a week’s worth of groceries.

“Now that I’ve got your attention,” he said with a laugh, releasing the cart. “As I said, no one wants trouble. You’ve lost, so give up before someone gets hurt.”

“
I’m
not about to hurt anyone.”

“Dangerous job, a cop. Should be left to men and women who look like men. Not pretty girls with delicate bone structure and long blond hair.”

“Are you threatening my daughter?”

“Just making an observation. In anticipation of tomorrow’s announcement by the town council, we’ll be gathering tonight to express our support. Better if you and your bunch aren’t there. Because I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Remember this, that uniform is designed to make the wearer stand out in a crowd.” He winked at her, shoved the shopping cart toward her, hard, and walked away.

Lucky’s knees buckled. Surely the bastards weren’t going to harm Moonlight? She was a police officer; if anyone came after Moonlight, they’d have every cop in the British Columbia Interior, in the whole province, to deal with.

Her hand shook as she fumbled in her purse for her cell phone and punched up the number. Voice mail answered. “Barry, it’s Lucky. There’s going to be trouble tonight at the site of the garden. Call me.”

She hung up. She looked at her hands. She was gripping a shopping cart. It was not a shield.

Who was she kidding?

Chapter Twenty-seven

Why anyone would think that a name like The Potato Famine would attract bar patrons, Molly Smith couldn’t imagine. But everything Irish was fashionable in the world of imitation pubs.

A group of men tumbled out of The Potato Famine, a cheap bar at the far end of town. One of them caught sight of her, and shouted to his friends. They whistled and made obscene gestures. She stuck her thumbs through her gun belt and stared them down. They carried on up the road, leaning on each other for support, shouting drinking songs into the night. She let out a puff of breath and her fingers loosened their grip on her belt.

The radio at her shoulder crackled. “Report of a disturbance on Primrose Street,” the night dispatcher said. “Constable Smith, report your location.”

“Outside the Potato Famine on East Street.”

“Wait there. A car will be around to pick you up.”

She didn’t have to wait long. A marked SUV pulled up beside her. Dave Evans was driving. She jumped in. “Trouble?”

“Looks like it. Saw you on TV, Molly. You shouldn’t let them get to you.”

“I’m sure you’d have handled being ambushed by the press much better, Dave.”

“Natch,” he said, flicking the switch to bring on lights and sirens.