Nowhere To Run (6 page)

A table to his right was occupied by two teenage girls and someone he pegged to be their father. Alex could sense the palpable aura of protectionism coming from the man. Getting up to use the washroom the man cautioned the girls not to move from the table, telling them he’d be right back.

“Oh my god,” Alex heard one of the girl’s drawl of signature adolescent disdain. “It’s not like someone’s going to kidnap us in the middle of a busy restaurant.”

“She wasn’t kidnapped,” the younger looking of two girls responded.

“You know what I mean. Attacked.” They were silent for a moment, processing the reality of what they were discussing.

“I guess Tommy will be fair play now,” the elder girl said after a pause. “I know it sounds tacky, but he is the best catch in town.” She lowered her voice slightly as she leaned across the table, and Alex strained to catch what she said. “I can think of at least five girls who will be circling. Including his own cousin,” her statement elicited squeals of disgust from her sister.

Alex’s eavesdropping was interrupted by the arrival of both the father to his table and the appearance of his own meal, a thick steak buried under sautéed onions and buttery mushrooms.

“At least this gets your attention,” his waitress teased, setting the heaped plate in front of him. “Looked like we had lost you to your daydreams. You must be still on holiday.” Shelley smiled down at him.

“Mm, that would be nice.” Alex smiled back at her, a slightly guilt-infused smile. They had dated casually for almost a year, an informal arrangement that had been enjoyable but never seemed to get further than what it was. Probably due to the job, he thought ruefully. Or something like that.

“I wouldn’t have said no to a couple of weeks on the beach,” Shelley rested her hip against Alex’s table. “Get a tan going before we hole up for winter.”

And who’s to say there’s anything wrong with casual, Alex thought, letting his eyes linger briefly on Shelley’s well exposed cleavage, before returning his attention to the conversation around him, and more importantly for the moment, the plate in front of him.

One bite into his steak, which was grilled to a melt in your mouth perfection, and his phone, set to vibrate, danced on the table. Alex sighed and patted his mouth with the napkin, stepping outside the buzz of the restaurant to take the call.

“O’Reilly,” he answered. Better be good, he thought to himself, surveying the Bay view from the pub’s side entrance. There was no wind today, and the water meeting the rocky shoreline was as smooth and untroubled as glass.

“Don Broadbent here,” a familiar voice sounded. “Something came to mind after you left yesterday, and I thought I better run it by you.”

“No problem, I’ll be right there,” Alex answered quickly. Anything that came up at this point in the investigation was the first priority.

Re-entering the restaurant he gestured to the waitress, watching wistfully as she packed up his meal to go. It wouldn’t reach quite the same level of enjoyment reheated in the station microwave.

Hopping into his jeep Alex opened the windows as he drove, letting the interior fill with the fresh autumn air. Let’s hope it’s not a ploy to find a further audience for his paintings, he brooded, heading north to the Broadbent place. The road was close to empty this time of day, and he reached his destination within minutes.

Don met him at the door, a pipe in his bearded mouth.

“It might be nothing of relevance, I hope I didn’t drag you away from anything important,” he said over his shoulder, leading Alex into the living room.

“Not at all,” the officer replied, taking a seat on the couch across from the man. “Anything could be relevant at this point.” He waited expectantly, pen and pad poised.

“I didn’t think to mention it because I didn’t see him the day in question, but I thought I should let you know that I’ve noticed a man sitting on the beach round about the same time the Harmon girl jogs by on occasion the past few weeks. I’ve seen the guy around, sort of a local musician type that frequents the beaches.” He paused to assess the Sergeant’s reaction to the information.

Alex rose and walked to the window that overlooked the waterfront. “He was on your property down there?” He gestured to the wooden stairway leading from his host’s patio doors down to the shelves of rock that stretched out to meet the Bay.

“No,” Mr. Broadbent joined him at the window. “He was over yonder, perched on a rock in front of the Lyon’s place like he was saluting the sun, some sort of hippy type. The Lyon’s are summer folk.” He turned back to the room and his seat by the electric fireplace. “They use the place mainly as a summer cottage.” Mr. Broadbent shifted his weight in the chair until he resumed his comfortable position. “Most of us along the water here don’t mind if folks walk the beach in front of us, as long as they don’t leave their garbage behind. I wouldn’t have thought twice about if it wasn’t for this business about the Harmon girl.”

“When did you say you first noticed him?” Alex questioned, remaining standing. Definitely worth interrupting lunch, he told himself, images of his abandoned steak no longer dancing through his mind.

“Hard to say,” Mr. Broadbent gave a laborious sigh. “I was working on the sunrise piece, so that would have been about three weeks ago. I’m putting together a time sequence series,” he told the Sergeant, “precisely the same location, painted in the different lighting of the time of day.”

A silence stretched for a few beats and Alex hoped the man wasn’t going to suggest he view the artwork.

“Did he seem to be watching out for Sarah in particular?” He volleyed the question before the invitation could be extended.

Mr. Broadbent considered his answer. “I wouldn’t say so,” he stroked his beard thoughtfully. “But then I wasn’t paying him too much attention. Let me think.” He sank into silence again while he apparently tried to recreate the scene in his mind.

“He appeared to be taking in the view. The Harmon girl would have passed in front of him to take the shortcut up to the Bluffs trail, but I didn’t notice any interaction. No that’s wrong,” he corrected himself. “I think I did see her give him a wave when she passed by on one of the later mornings. She didn’t stop, just a quick wave as she ran.”

The artist seemed to have paid closer attention to the girl and her morning runs than he might be willing to admit, Alex thought to himself. Just as quickly he dismissed the man as a likely perp. Don Broadbent would be hard-pressed to make it to the top of the cliff path with his cane to carry out the murder.

“Would you mind if I went down and had a look?” He asked now.

“No problem,” his host responded. “I’d come down and show you myself but the rocks aren’t easy with my legs.”

Don led Alex to the sliding door at the back of the house and stood at the window to watch the officer cross the small garden, descending the manmade steps to where they ended at the top of the rock beach. “Watch your footing there”, the man called after Alex, pointing with his cane towards the rock shelves that formed a natural set of stairs.

He wasn’t kidding, Alex thought to himself, cursing his soft soled shoes as he almost twisted his ankle on the uneven ground making his way to the large boulder his host had indicated, a few yards to his right.

Alex sat on the smooth surface of the rock when he reached it, surveying the view to either side. The water stretched out in front of him, seagulls and a lone fishing boat decorating its surface. To the right the white stone shoreline curved an eight odd kilometers towards the town’s harbour and the Lion’s Head cliffs farther on. To the left a similar shoreline led towards the nearby Georgian Bluffs.

The trail Sarah would have jogged on, reportedly viewed by both Mr. Broadbent and their mystery man, was clearly visible; a dirt path leading into the treed hills through which the Bruce Trail followed the cliffs. Alex turned to look over his shoulder, the glint of Mr. Broadbent’s window in the afternoon sun turning the man’s face to a featureless blur. The artist would have had no problem seeing a person seated on the rock, even in the late arriving morning light of fall.

Standing up he brushed the sand from the seat of his jeans and retraced his route up the stairs to the house.

“Could you say what direction the man was looking?” Alex asked Don when he was back inside his home.

Mr. Broadbent thought for a moment. “I’d say he was facing the Bluffs.” He indicated to their left, and Alex looked again at the trail disappearing into the trees.

“I appreciate you calling me,” he told the man, keeping to himself the question of why he hadn’t thought to volunteer this information earlier. “It may or may not be significant, but everything is worth looking into at this point. Would you be able point this man out if I showed you some pictures?”

“Yes,” Mr. Broadbent nodded assuredly, “I could point him out. Long hair, he had it pulled back in a ponytail like a girl. I know he’s a local, just don’t have a name to go with it.”

Shouldn’t be too hard to find him with that description, Alex thought to himself, thanking the man for his time. It looked like the steak would be dinner tonight by the time he got to it.

*

The poster on the clinic wall in front of her illustrated a full term baby inside its mother’s womb.

I wonder if they get dizzy, Sarah asked herself, suspended upside down while their mother goes about the routine of her day. Getting off and on buses, walking down supermarket aisles pondering cereal choices, standing at the stove cooking dinner. All while the baby floats unquestioningly, adrift and upside down in their mother’s stomach.

She checked her phone again. No message, but what message was she expecting? It’s not like it would make a difference to have someone here with her, it would probably just make things worse.

Putting her phone away, she closed her eyes against the poster in front her, and the slight rise of her stomach beneath her shirt, while the nurse watched her from behind the desk.

It would all be over soon.

Chapter 8

Alex closed his eyes and tilted his head back to better catch the warmth of the sun on his face. Far past its prime, but it still had the strength to momentarily wipe away the day’s long drive. He had been working close to round the clock since Sarah’s case began, and hadn’t been in to see his sister and the girls since before his holiday. He hated to be the absent uncle and brother in a family that was so small in numbers.

He knew he was present in body but not in mind at the moment. He usually had no problem leaving the job behind at the end of a shift, but that usually didn’t include a dead girl with no main suspect in sight. An image of the case as a ball of yarn unravelling into endless stray ends, each one further away from the centre than the one before it came to mind, and he felt his jaw clench.

Screwing his eyes up to better rid his mind of the image, he let the high-pitched chatter of the twins fade to a background hum, a hum interspersed with sudden squeals and giggles as the girls busied themselves with their mother’s rake. The squeals crescendoed into screams, and Alex cracked his eyelids open to see two curly headed girls rolling in a good sized pile of leaves.

“Sleeping on the job?” his sister held a cold beer bottle against his neck as she slid into the lawn chair beside him. Reconsidering, she took the bottle back from his outstretched hand and drank a mouthful before passing it to him.

Alex smiled at his sister, raising the beer in a cheers. “I’ve got in under control,” he winked. “I’ve organized the girls into a highly efficient landscaping service.”

Olivia laughed, reclining the lawn chair back further. “Doubtful,” she smiled, “More likely a two girl wrecking team.”

There was a silence as they watched the girls busily trying to bury each other in the leaves. Trying to stretch the peaceful moment out, Alex took a deep breath of the autumn air. “So how is Susan handling all of this?” Olivia broke into his reverie.

“Susan?” Alex glanced at his sister warily. “What makes you ask?”

Olivia chuckled, keeping her eyes closed against the sun, “I’m not prying into your private life, brother dearest. I was just thinking that there must be a lot pressure on her, being in charge of this case.” She shuddered and pulled her collar closer against her throat. “It’s just so awful.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “It is awful.”

“And I thought we’d see more of her after last Christmas. I liked her.”

Alex took a gardening glove from the armrest of his chair and threw it lightly at his sister. “Not prying, huh?”

Susan had joined them for Christmas Day the previous year. It had seemed like a good idea: his family was as casual as you can get short of wearing pajamas to dinner, and he knew Susan would be alone otherwise. She didn’t talk much about her private life, but he knew her mother died when she was young and her father was pretty well out of the picture. He and Olivia had lost their parents nine years earlier in a car accident, and he understood the feeling of being suddenly alone in the world; of the ties to what lay behind you being severed. He was lucky to have Olivia and her family. They kept a sense of tradition and continuity in his life he might otherwise have lost.

Susan had mentioned vague plans of taking a holiday somewhere warm when Alex first broached the subject, but when he pressed her she admitted she would be staying home. “Laying low,” she put it. “Some old movies and good wine, my slippers. Just what the doctor ordered”.

Alex had to admit it sounded like a pretty appealing way to spend the holiday, but not alone. So he had worked on her until she gave in, promising her that she was saving him from a penance of being the odd duck out amidst a cosy family of four.

It hadn’t gone well, likely due to the ambiguous nature of their relationship. What was strange about bringing a friend to a family dinner, he asked himself again now. Absolutely nothing. But one of the girls had asked Susan upon introduction if she was her uncle’s girlfriend, and from Susan’s stammered rebuttal and accompanying blush, two things he didn’t think were in her repertoire of physical reactions, there was an uncomfortable air about the day.

It didn’t help that Tony furthered the awkwardness with his attempt at suggestive jibes dropped throughout the afternoon. Tony, Alex shook his head, still nettled by the memory. What a guy. Her sister could have done worse, he’d seen his share of domestic violence and other assorted lowlifes on the job, but he was no first prize in Alex’s opinion.

Hard to believe his sister’s wedding would have been close to eight years ago now. Scary stuff. Alex had given his approval – with no parents around to do the job he had felt it his big brother duty, not that he’d had any problem doing it. And maybe he was being too hard on the guy now. But the laidback guy who used to be a laugh over dinner and drinks, who’d even passed some beer fuelled afternoons with him on the golf course, hitting the balls mostly on the wrong sides of the greens, had somehow turned into a stolid middle aged man who complained more than he joked. Maybe that was just the natural progression, Alex considered, of marriage, or time in general.

God forbid. Alex shook the grim bent of thoughts from his head. Fact is, there was something to be said about waking up to two coffee cups instead of one, planning what to have for dinner with someone besides the frozen aisle at the supermarket. Alex stood, taking the last swig of the beer and ruffling his sister’s hair affectionately. Stopping to elicit more giggles from his nieces with a feigned stagger through the leaf pile they were building, he walked towards his car. Time to head out before he officially turned into a maudlin middle aged bachelor, bemoaning a lack of companionship and a cosy home front.

*

Olivia took her brother’s place in the reclining lawn chair, and drank the last mouthful of the beer he had left behind as she watched her children playing in the leaves. She heard the crunch of tires on the gravel and turned her head to watch Alex’s jeep back out of the driveway, picking up speed as it turned onto the road.

She worried about him still, perhaps needlessly, but that was what big sisters do she guessed. He had seemed so unanchored in his early adult life, each new passion he encountered taking him headlong down a new route. There was a time when she had reason to be worried, before he had moved back to the area and begun his police training. What was planned as a couple months’ trip to visit a friend who had settled in Spain in his early twenties had turned into half a decade of drifting around the world. When he came back for his sporadic visits she had barely recognized him.

She had asked her brother what he did on his travels, how he made a living and how long he stayed in one place, but never got a straight answer. He would give his classic Alex smile, white teeth flashing in his usually tanned and stubbled face and say something glib, like that the world was there for exploring, and he was aiming to reach each corner.

His visits home would leave her feeling vaguely unsettled, like she didn’t really know who her brother was anymore. It may have been partly due to the fact that her life was simultaneously becoming more and more ingrained in the rooted details of family life that raised these feelings, but she couldn’t help but wonder what it was that drove Alex to keep moving, to never staying in one place long enough to forge any lasting relationships. There was something beyond the wolfish grin he would give her before messing her hair in the teasing way that had maddened her since their teenage years, something that hinted at a hunger or detachment that worried her.

Alex had returned home after their parents’ accident, and although he had told her his intent was to stay only as long as the funeral and its aftermath, he hadn’t ended up leaving at all, surprising her by enrolling in police college, something he’d never expressed an interest in as far as she knew.

It had turned out to suit him well, she thought now, having a job that he was passionate about had harnessed all of his energy in to one direction. Anyhow, Olivia reminded herself, she should focus on her own problems instead of her brother’s.

The two children playing happily in front of her caused her no worries beyond the typical scrapes and stresses of parenthood. Her marriage, on the other hand, she knew could use some work. It was hard to find time for a relationship separate from the demands of parenting, and there was no question that Tony was spending longer and longer hours at the office these days. It seemed churlish to complain when he was working to provide for his family; their home was comfortable and Olivia had taken a number of years off of work to care for the children. But she was aware in the brief moments she allowed herself, or had time to acknowledge, that she felt little connection to Tony these days, and couldn’t honestly say she believed his late evenings were all spent tied to the desk in the office.

The insistent call of “Mommy” cut into her thoughts and she stood up abruptly, brushing an errant leaf from her lap. “Snack time girls,” she said, corralling the twins towards the house.

*

Back at the station Alex whistled through his teeth as he pulled up Lee Daly’s record on his computer screen. He had had no trouble putting a man to the description Don Broadbent provided. This was one of the parts of police work he liked best, digging around in the dirt. Some bones you found had no relevance and you discarded them, while others helped make the whole animal when you put them together.

No great red flags waving in this case, but an arrest in the man’s twenties for being in possession of an amount of marijuana classified as beyond personal use had landed him one month in jail and two years’ probation. It pointed to a character that might find it easy to venture outside the lines of the law. To make the leap to murder might be a stretch, but paired with the possibility of the man watching Sarah in the weeks before her death it definitely merited a visit and a close check of the man’s whereabouts at the time of murder.

“Any luck with the footprints?” Susan asked Alex, reaching over his shoulder to pick up the large yellow envelope from beside his computer as she came up behind him. She leaned a hip on his desk as she rifled through the photographs he had retrieved from Ginny’s office earlier that day.

“Not much,” Alex replied, swivelling around to face her. “The downpour Monday night did a pretty good job of obliterating everything on the trail. We got a few of Sarah’s prints going in at the access point where the soil was looser; also the Everett girl’s the following afternoon before things get muddied with our show arriving. Day before the murder was Sunday, so there was a fair amount of prior foot traffic.” He angled the glossy photos to better examine them with the Inspector. “Leaves and pine needles close to the scene make it slim pickings.”

“Tire prints?” Susan questioned. “Looks like Janey lifted some clear ones from the trail access lot.”

“I was going to bring this to you,” Alex told her. “You have a minute?”

“Of course,” Susan grabbed an empty chair and pulled it close. “What do you have?”

“First off we’ve got a couple cars that were spotted driving in from the Bluff’s campsite early the morning of the murder, and we were able to match the prints. Two couples parked to go hiking. I spoke to them myself, they were fine with us matching their tires to Derek’s casts. They reported hiking as far in as the Smokey Head Provincial Park on the Monday, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

Susan looked up from the crime scene photos spread of in front of her. “Where are the hikers from?”

“One couple drove up from St. Catherines, the other from Mississauga. Apparently they meet here every fall, stay a couple nights at the Bluffs Campground, do some hiking.”

“Do any of them have any ties up here? Do they know anyone locally?”

“Nope,” Alex replied. “They pitch their tents, hike the cliffs, have a beer at the pub, and that’s the extent of their local interaction. I spoke to the campsite owner to confirm their booking history.”

He paused for a moment. “The other set of tire prints we got that we were able to match to vehicle sighting are from the night before the murder – they match Tony’s Mazda.”

“Tony?” Susan raised her eyebrows. “As in your brother in law Tony?”

“Yup,” Alex replied. “I wanted to clear it with you before bringing him in. You ok with me doing the interview?”

Susan looked at Alex and considered. “The tracks are from the night before, so it’s likely nothing relevant. Why don’t we have Ron and Emily do the interview, just to have our back covered. You can watch at the window, give your two cents when they’re done,” she added as an afterthought.

“Alright,” Susan looked back at the photos in front of her. “So if our perp didn’t drive to the access point closest to the body, they either parked at a different entrance to the trails, which would be,” she paused, leaning across Alex to help herself to his keyboard and bring up the Bruce Trail map on his screen, “about ten clicks away. Or,” she looked up at Alex, “it’s someone local who didn’t bring a car to the scene. Or,” she gave her forehead a vigorous rub, “like you suggested, the perp could have parked there the night before and camped up the cliffs, in which case we better have a look at those older tracks.”

She crossed her arms and studied Alex. “There’s no way this was random, is there? Tell me if I’m being too narrow scoped here, but this doesn’t ring true as an arbitrary act of violence, does it? An individual runs into a pretty girl on the trails, bashes her head in nearly beyond recognition?”