The Boy Must Die (33 page)

“Darren Riegert. What a pity. Sheree did work with him and his mother. Unfortunately, unless I contact Ms. Riegert and get her permission to open the files, I cannot help you. You could, of course, ask the courts for access to our archives.” Marilyn Black’s voice remained steady, cool, aloof. Billy noted how her well-manicured hands sat folded as she spoke. She looked up as she went on, glancing towards the open door to her office, where she could see her secretary working at a computer. Her eye movements betrayed impatience, and Billy could feel her reluctance to spend more than three minutes in his company.

“My problem is justice, Ms. Black. Someone is running around this city who may know about this killing. We need all the help we can get at this point. All the delay and paperwork would hamper the investigation. As each day goes by, whoever did the deed has that much more time to leave the city.”

“I’m fully aware, Inspector, of the seriousness of a crime investigation.” Marilyn Black’s expression was cold. “But I’m entrusted with people’s lives and welfare as much as the police. And I cannot speed up due process based on flimsy evidence.”

Marilyn Black pushed back her swivel chair, stood quickly, and brushed down the creases in her navy blue suit coat. “About the other matter,” she began, her voice measurably tighter and sharper, “the business of Sheree Lynn Bird. What you called a personality profile. She was efficient and kept clear records. We hired her right out of community college, and I’m not so sure that was the best idea. She was probably too young. Most of the time she was respected by her clients and colleagues.”

“Most of the time?” Billy leaned forward.

“There were minor complaints about her attitude.”

Marilyn Black allowed her professional face to soften and relax. Here
was the social services worker coming out, Billy thought. The woman trained to listen rather than act the bureaucrat. “I do know Sheree had a tough childhood herself. I won’t go into details. Most of us in the office also knew she had some nervous problems while at college. A doctor prescribed tranquillizers. That’s all I can say, really.”

“She was downsized for a misdemeanour, wasn’t she?”

“I cannot officially answer you on that, Inspector.”

“It wasn’t a matter of budget or cutbacks. In fact, it was more than a personnel matter, wasn’t it?”

Marilyn Black rubbed her hands together. She glanced at the open door. She lowered her voice.

“I like Sheree. I trusted her even though at times she could be overly emotional. Sadly enough, she made snap judgements she later regretted. Worse, Inspector, she might have crossed the line of decency, went beyond professional lenience in a case that was, frankly, one she should never have been assigned. Because of this, she was let go.”

Pulling back, Marilyn avoided looking into Billy’s eyes.

“Were there ever complaints of a sexual nature about her? Any of the boys come to you. . . .”

“None. Absolutely not. I know she’s a vain girl, but all Sheree Lynn wants is attention. Nothing more than that.” Marilyn Black walked around the desk and put out her hand. “If you don’t mind, Inspector, I must now insist we finish up here.” She waited awkwardly by Billy’s chair. “If I think of anything else that could help you and Chief Bochansky, I’ll phone right away.”

The bureaucrat resurfaced, Billy thought. He shook Marilyn Black’s cool hand. The secretary glanced up at him as he entered the reception area, and she turned her head back towards Marilyn Black, who was shutting her door.

“Wait a second, Inspector. I heard you in there.”

The secretary opened a filing cabinet drawer. She noted a number and replaced a file: a smooth, furtive act perpetrated with eyes fixed on Marilyn Black’s office.

“Here’s a woman who can tell you about Sheree’s downsizing. I know it’s not quite legal. But maybe she can help.”

The name on the piece of paper read Debby Fast.

Billy took Burdett Avenue over to Magrath Drive, got to the Dairy Queen in ten minutes, waited for Debbie Fast to start her mid-afternoon shift, and spent the time eating a barbecued hot dog and a soft ice cream with chocolate dip. Ten minutes after she was supposed to arrive, Billy was still waiting and wondering if he’d been stood up. He was about to go to the manager’s office when a tall woman with a broad smile came up to his booth. She was wearing an apron and a white uniform, and a hairnet was cupped under the long hair she had braided at the back of her head.

“Howdy,” she smiled. “I’m Debby.”

Debby Fast’s voice was clear and rich. She was over thirty, and her heavy makeup could not cover the myriad tiny lines around her mouth and green eyes.

“Thanks, Debby. Can you spare some time to. . . .”

“We’re slow right now. Mr.?”

“I’m a detective with the city force, Billy Yamamoto.”

“Yes, sir.”

Billy explained the Darren Riegert case, the problems with the investigation, his need to find leads, and his belief that, sometimes, it was necessary to talk to all sorts of people about those who were directly involved in the investigation — like Sheree Lynn Bird.

“I see,” Debby smiled cheerfully.

She had practised her manner, Billy thought. He then asked her to tell him what she knew about Sheree.

At first, Debby hesitated, but she went on to tell the history of her own problems with an abusive husband and a small baby. And about Sheree’s subsequent care in helping her out.

“I hated her at first, to tell the truth. I thought she was a young know-it-all and had a lot of cheek telling me how I should be thinking, telling me my husband was a jerk. I was the jerk!”

“So Sheree was able to help you?”

“She sure did.”

“Are you aware, Debby, that she lost her job because of her dealings with you?”

“What?” Debby’s face fell. Her practised smile shut into a flat, tightly held mouth. “You’re lying,” she said. Gone was the singer’s voice. Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”

“What happened, Debby? Why would Sheree Lynn lose her job over what she did?”

Debby Fast’s eyes filled with tears. She grabbed the wet napkin and daubed her eyelashes.

“Oh, shit,” she said. She composed herself. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. She said it was her first real job, too.”

“Was she unfair to you? Did she harm you in any way?”

“Just the opposite.” Debby moved her eyes towards the window and gazed out at the light bouncing off the asphalt of the parking lot.

“Debby, I’m looking for the murderer of a fourteen-year-old boy,” Billy said quietly. “I don’t know where to go from here.”

“No way Sheree would do something like that, believe me, Inspector. She made a big mistake with me. No way she’d harm a living soul. That’s her problem really.”

“Tell me.”

“I was hitting Troy. He was only four at the time. I was hitting him to get back at my husband, who was kicking the shit out of me. Sheree noticed the bruises on Troy and had to report them. But we became friends, of a sort, over the few months I worked with her. She got me into a rehab program and a support group. She went out of her way for me. One night, I got drunk. I slapped Troy around a little too hard, and he had to go to the hospital for stitches. When I brought him home that night, I phoned Sheree. I told her I wanted to kill myself for what I’d done. She came right away, she comforted me and Troy. He’s such a brave boy. I begged her not to tell. She and me kept it a secret. Troy turned out okay. But the hospital phoned the agency eventually, they
have to, I guess, and that bitch Marilyn Black hauled Sheree on the carpet for covering up what I did. Troy was taken from me then for a whole year.”

“That was the only time she lied about you?”

“Yes, sir. She was a good-hearted person. Too good sometimes. I always said to her, ‘You know your heart’s going to lead you into some bad scrapes if you’re not careful.’”

With clouds forming a canopy of pure white tufts, Billy drove slowly through the city, stopping to admire the huge weeping willows along Courtland Street, the sweeping boughs reminding him of mountain waterfalls. Reluctantly, he parked in the station lot and sauntered into reception, leaving behind the late-afternoon verdant heat. His head wound was healing. His ability to reason, though, was still in turmoil. Even the trust he placed in his intuition flagged.

In Butch’s office, he sat down at the computer and called up statements made by Sheree Lynn Bird during the past seven months. He printed the documents and relaxed to the buzz and swish of the machine as each page slid out onto a plastic holding tray. He then gathered up the papers, turned off the equipment, and on his way out told the desk he was planning to stay home the next morning and to tell Butch he could call him at the ranch after ten.

That evening, after supper, Billy watched coyotes by the buttes of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. He sat low in the prairie grass, hoppers jigging about him in crazy arcs as the light faded behind a wing of cloud. In two hours, he spotted seven singles, one a bitch heavy with a late litter. Back home, he sat up late with a cold McNally ale and read through the statements he’d printed. The silence eased his worries about the case, despite his wounds and aching joints. He was determined to cherish the good things he had. The pain of his father’s death was mellowing, becoming a part of his inner life in the way that it should.

Reading Sheree’s words again, he hoped to come across something he hadn’t noticed before. A pattern of thought, perhaps. He worked slowly,
finishing his beer in small sips. Pulling the papers together, he lay back. What words surfaced? One simple phrase. One that repeated itself in every statement. It always came at the beginning, as she spoke about each of the boys she’d tried to help. “I wanted to protect them, to shelter them.”

As a mother might, Billy thought. As she had protected Debby Fast, by lying, even at the peril of trusting a battering mother not to hurt her little son.
Who is she protecting now? Or lying about in order to shelter?

Billy placed the papers into a folder. He rose and walked around the creaking floors, the darkness of the plain outside the window lit only by starlight. The deep black of the prairie sky gave him a sense of safety. He locked the kitchen door. In the bedroom, he slipped off his robe and climbed under the sheet. For a second, he imagined Cynthia lying there, her arm over her eyes: a sudden sense of joy mixed with loss. The answer to his
koan
would come eventually. Harmony would be restored. At least for the living.

The revolving red lights from the fire engine and the police cruiser flashed across the doilies and stripes of the elderly woman’s living room. Outside, the air was warm with morning sun, and cedar waxwings flitted in and out of the cottonwoods. Billy sat across from the woman and listened patiently as she told him how she’d recognized the broad-shouldered man who’d appeared at her front door, a worn desperate quality in his voice. She had shaken Chief Bochansky’s hand and asked him and Billy why they had come. “When I learned your names,” she explained, “I realized there was trouble.” A body had been found. Perhaps murdered. The woman sat up straight in her pleated skirt and wool sweater. She spoke slowly and clearly, in a gentle manner.

“Really, there’s not much more to tell, Inspector. I heard Spencer barking. He’s a dear doggie. Except Aileen lets him out at night, and he barks at any living thing. What did I see? It looked like two men coming through the back gate, the one that joins Marion Bartlett’s old place with the Moores’. I couldn’t see their faces clearly because my glasses were downstairs on the hall table. I could tell, though, that one of them seemed drunk. He was holding on to . . . no, his arm was draped over the other fellow’s shoulder. They were moving in the direction of the back door. Poor Miss Sheree. I didn’t know her well. I’d heard she was taking no-counts into that house. None of my business, certainly. After that, I got up. Actually, I fell to sleep, then I got up because of Spencer barking again. I took the situation in hand. I walked through my hedge to the back door of Marion’s house. The drunks had broken down the door. I wondered if Miss Sheree was safe. Little Spencer came bounding
up the stairs from the basement. That was when I really felt afraid. I thought I smelled smoke.”

“You’ve been a great help to us.”

“Oh, yes, Inspector. Something else struck me as odd.”

“In what way?”

“Odd to me, at least. Even without my glasses, I could tell the men had bare legs. Now I know it’s summer, but would you be wearing shorts at night?”

“Was either one of them wearing a hat or. . . .”

“No. I’m certain of that. And come to think of it, they were awfully quiet for a pair of drunks. Usually, men like that are howling away or singing, but they were so quiet, as if they didn’t want to wake anyone.”

“When you saw the little white dog, you said you knew whose it was right away.”

“To be sure. There’s only one white terrier like that in this neighbourhood.”

“Who does Spencer belong to?”

“Justin Moore, Inspector. Aileen’s son.”

As Butch led the way down the basement steps in Satan House, Billy resisted a sudden
déjà vu
. It was about this time last Saturday he had come down these same dusty stairs, alone, into the dank small room where Darren Riegert had been found. Butch pointed to a small lump of dirt lying on the edge of the bottom step.

“Careful, buddy. Dodd, did you get any of these mud samples earlier on the walk-around?”

“Yes, Chief. They’re upstairs, bagged, on the kitchen counter.”

“Was the scene tampered with by the firemen?”

“Not that I know of. The captain who called dispatch was in shock. He just told it like he saw it. The fireboys did tramp in mud from the garden, but there was also this other-coloured stuff on the steps, like shale or red dust. I figured we should get a sample.”

Butch moved aside and let Billy enter first. The window above the
dryer framed sun from the garden and made a bright hazy square on the soiled floor.

“Morning, Billy.”

“Morning, Johnson. Morning, Tommy.”