The Boy Must Die (35 page)

Butch led a weeping Aileen Moore to his cruiser as Dodd was reporting to Billy that he had found no knife or paintbrush hidden in the Satan House backyard. Billy then instructed Dodd to do alibi checks on Blayne Morton and a young woman whose name he’d been given by Aileen Moore. “She’s a girlfriend, name of Karen Kreutz.”

Bolling was stretching yellow tape across the entrance to the Moore driveway as Billy came down the back porch steps. The young sergeant dropped the end of the tape, pulled out his notebook, and strode over to Billy.

“What did you find out, Bolling?”

“Seems the whole neighbourhood’s on summer holidays, Inspector. I checked at all the houses bordering these yards and on Baroness Street. I looked in a few garages, too. No cars, no one answering either front or back doorbells. One woman said she saw at least four of the families on the street packing up their vans and station wagons on Friday evening with groceries and suitcases. A lot of people around here have cabins down at St. Mary’s and in Waterton Park.”

“Did she mention hearing a dog bark?”

“I asked. She said no.”

“Did anyone see a van or a car or any unfamiliar vehicle on the street at any time?”

“I asked that, too. No again. Two of the neighbours on the south side were out late and came home about midnight, but neither one could remember seeing anything.”

“How many taxi cab companies do we have in the city?”

“Pardon me, sir? How many?”

“Get the names of all the night drivers. Check their logs and receipts and ask them if they saw any activity on the street.” Billy felt restless; time was forcing his hand. “See if a driver was in this vicinity around midnight or later. Surely a single old woman wasn’t the only person to spot two drunks strolling into Satan House. Dodd, drive to Randy Mucklowe’s and Sheree’s. Tell them what’s happened, and bring Randy to the station. We need names — and alibis — of all those on the dig.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Ask Sheree, too, if she received a phone call. Remember last time? Someone called her to alert her about Darren’s death. There might be a pattern.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Spencer was barking as Billy and Johnson said goodbye to Dodd. Bolling finished taping outside the doors of the Moore garage as Billy walked towards it and stood in the doorway. Something felt odd. He looked at the wall of garden tools arranged neatly in a row on a series of hooks. One of the tools was missing. He glanced at the wall and the floor beneath the row, then scanned the broader floor of the garage. Underneath the Oldsmobile, the tip of a wooden handle protruded. Billy went towards it and saw it was a hoe. “Johnson, dust this.”

Johnson brought over her kit, pulled out a small brush, some tissue paper, and a canister of fine white powder. With gloves on, she slid the hoe out from under the Oldsmobile. She daubed the brush and began lightly dusting the handle.

“You may only find smudges, Johnson, but I wonder why the hoe was left like that under the car.”

Billy left her to finish. Meanwhile, he clasped his hands behind his back and moved over to the workbench. A forty-watt bulb hung over an area strewn with clay pots, jars full of pencils, and seed packets. Beside the bench leaned a large metal garbage can. Billy pulled on his rubber gloves. He began sorting through the papers and broken twigs in the garbage.

“Come over here, Johnson. I think I’ve found something.”

A few moments later, Johnson and Billy were examining three pairs of soiled cotton underpants, a soil-stained T-shirt, a pair of khaki climbing shorts, and a blue plastic shaving kit. “Now who do these belong to?”

Johnson fingered the T-shirt. “The colour of the soil stain is similar to the red shale mud we found on the stairs in the basement.”

“Can we assume for the moment these are Justin Moore’s?”

A small flake of white luminous material fell out of the fold of the T-shirt as Johnson was laying it down on the surface of the bench.

“You have a Sherlock with you in that kit, Johnson?”

“A what, sir?”

“Magnifying glass.”

Johnson laughed. She rummaged around in a side pocket of her kit and pulled out a two-inch glass. When she handed it to Billy, the light from the forty-watt bulb caught on the convex surface and sent out a brief flash of white. Billy lay the flake on the bench top. He held up the glass and leaned close. “Looks to me like a fragment of polished bone or shell. Here, take a look, Johnson.”

“Yes, sir, it does.” Johnson then scanned the top of the bench. Pulling tweezers out of her upper right shirt pocket, she placed the tweezers’ pointed tips into a small crack in the grained rough wood of the bench surface. “Here’s another piece, sir.”

Billy took the magnifying glass from Johnson and had her hold up the tweezers close to the lightbulb. “Well, light passes through this little shard. Bag these, and we’ll see, maybe, if they match those we found on the grass outside.”

The two of them spent five minutes bagging the clothes and the
shaving kit and the shards, and then they did one last walk-around of the garage before strolling out into the mid-morning sun. Billy walked past the tape barrier to the curb on Baroness. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but sometimes, when a person is in the heated state of committing a crime, things get overlooked, objects get dropped or misplaced. He walked across the street and gazed at the front of the Moore house and then came back and joined Johnson, who was closing the kit and shutting the door of the garage, sealing it with a section of yellow barrier tape. From inside the Moore house, Spencer barked again. Billy saw the dog at the kitchen window, its shaggy head pressed against the glass. Billy looked down at the square entrance flap of the back door. Was it now bolted from the inside, so that Spencer couldn’t get out? The sky above was clear, and the cottonwoods fluttered in the gentle heat, and Billy wondered how all these small pieces would ever fit into a meaningful picture.

“Johnson, did you pick up that sheet on the table in Aileen Moore’s kitchen? The one with Cara Simonds’s address on it?”

Johnson handed it to Billy.

“I’ll go and pay her a visit. Call in Hawkes for the autopsy. Butch and I need it
ASAP
.”

“Of course. I’ll run these fragments through the lab, too. And do some prints on the shaving kit.”

“When you see Butch, tell him I’ll call from the Simonds place.”

“It was. . . .” Cara Simonds’s voice was harsh from crying, though not loud.

Billy thought:
She never expected to be speaking the words she is now painfully sharing with me
. Behind her in the quiet kitchen stood her mother, who had a look of frozen astonishment on her face.

“Tell me, Cara,” Billy said. “Try again to tell me.”

“It was. . . .” Again her voice trailed off. It was as if the two words themselves were forming a barrier to her story.

Billy waited patiently. Cara sat up, and her mother broke in: “He was
her boyfriend, Inspector. I think they had just started going together on this dig.”

“Is that true, Cara?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Cara.”

Cara spoke again. But now her voice had become wooden, disembodied. “It’s all Yianni’s fault. Yianni Pappas. He was after Justin. Justin was so afraid of him. He owed him money. A lot of money. Yianni came to Waterton and threatened Justin. Then Justin said, on the last night we were together, he said he wasn’t sure he could trust anyone anymore. Even Professor Mucklowe. Randy has no cash. And half the time he was drunk or stoned with his Native friend. I didn’t like Sam. He was always pushing Randy around. He once pushed Justin, too, on the last morning of the dig. Justin was unloading the van and dropped a shovel near Sam’s foot, and Sam went ballistic. Swearing and shouting about how Justin showed him no respect. Randy had to come between them. I think . . . I know Justin was hoping Patsy Hanson — she was one of his profs — could lend him the cash. But he was never sure he could trust her either.”

Cara stopped and stared at the floor. Billy jotted down names and details in his notebook. Again Cara began to speak, paused, then resumed her story in her lost distant voice.

“I knew . . . I knew he was desperate. I didn’t think Patsy or anybody else would really help him. I don’t know what happened next. But on Thursday night, we were up late, and I was coming back from the bathroom, and I noticed this black plastic bag sticking out from under a sofa. Justin and I found all these beautiful gold masks inside, all wrapped in plastic. Justin wondered where they’d come from. They were beautiful. Small and gold and made of shell or something, I don’t know. He said to me, ‘I bet these are worth a lot. A lot of money.’ I said, ‘But why has Randy hidden them? Why hasn’t he got them up on the walls?’ Randy’s cabin had a lot of stuff like that. Old Indian beads, antlers hung everywhere. But then Justin said they were probably fakes. Plastic toys that Randy had bought and stored away. Why else would they be stuffed
into those bags? Then on Friday, we went to the dig for the last day, and we worked, and I. . . .” Cara’s voice softened. She was looking pale and very tired, despite the rosy tan she had from working in the mountains.

“When was the last time you saw Justin, Cara?”

Cara’s mother stepped forward and placed her hands gently on Cara’s shoulders.

“Friday night, late. About eleven, I think. I drove him and David Home to the city. We all wanted to get back quickly because Sam was getting drunk again, and Randy told us he didn’t need us for cleanup, and we could get our stipends at the university office on Monday morning. I dropped David off first, then Justin asked me to drive him to Patsy’s house on Parkside Drive. He said he’d try one last time. He’d been calling her on his cell but getting no answer. I last saw him walking up to her door, and he waved me off. He said he’d call me after he saw her. He never did, and I remember when I held him before he got out of the car his hands were so cold.”

Cara bent over in the chair. Her mother moved in front of Billy. She helped her daughter stand and led her into the living room. There she lay Cara down on the sofa and pulled a wool blanket up to her chin. Billy stood as Mrs. Simonds re-entered the kitchen. He thanked her and told her that Cara would have to go to the station to make a formal statement. If she needed help, or care, Mrs. Simonds was to call Butch at the number Billy had written on one of his cards.

Half an hour later, Butch and Billy met on Parkside Drive, in front of Patsy Hanson’s house. Butch had brought Billy a coffee from the police canteen. He was wearing a white shirt and blue tie and looking like he’d not slept for days.

“She taking it badly, the girl?”

“Deep shock. As far as I can tell, she’s lucid. That often happens right after bad news. The memory is razor sharp.”

The sun was heating the grass and the flagstones of Patsy’s front walk as Billy and Butch made their way to the oak door and pressed the chime. Billy had called Butch from the Simondses’ house to get the
address and phone number and then called to see if the woman was at home. A neighbour had answered the call.

Now that neighbour, a well-groomed woman with lacquered brown hair and expensive makeup, stood in Patsy Hanson’s open doorway.

“I’m Dodie. Come in, please, gentlemen.”

Dodie explained that Patsy was ill but that she would see them shortly. In the living room, Dodie sat down, and Billy began asking her a few questions about the last twenty-four hours, what she had seen and done, why she was now tending to Patsy. Dodie told Billy about seeing a young man pounding on the door of Patsy’s house late Friday, that there had been shouting. “I almost called the police. But, you know, to be frank, Patsy often has young men drop by late. I let it go. He didn’t stay long. He left and went around the back, and then he came out front again and began walking west past my front door. I couldn’t really recognize him. It was dark. But he looked like he was wearing hiking shorts and a T-shirt and was carrying a backpack. Young, he was, by the way he walked. Patsy likes her men young.” Dodie wiped the edges of her perfectly red lips with the tips of her right thumb and forefinger.

Butch then asked what time she had come over to Hanson’s this morning. Dodie said she’d had a call, around 1:00 or so in the morning. Patsy had been raving drunk and sounded like she could hardly walk and talk at the same time. Then, this morning, early, Patsy had called again. She’d sounded upset and said she needed to talk to someone right away. When Dodie did come over, it was around 8:30, maybe 8:45. The front door was unlocked, and Patsy was in bed, fully dressed in a pair of tight jeans and a sports bra. Surrounding her on her pillow, her sheets, and her bedspread was a huge number of crumpled hundred-dollar bills.

“It was about an hour or so later that you called, Chief. I made coffee and tried to get Patsy to have some, but she was not well.”

A voice was heard from one of the inner rooms of the house. It sounded like a moan or a faint call for help. Dodie stood up and smoothed down the front of her navy jogging shorts. “Patsy will see you
now.” Dodie led Butch and Billy through a series of spacious rooms covered with white broadloom into a large bedroom. The curtains were drawn. Patsy Hanson lay in a silk housecoat on the top of her bed. She was holding a glass full of a brown liquid. Pulled close to the bed were two pink-cushioned chairs. Patsy gestured with her free hand for Butch and Billy to come and sit.

Billy began the questioning. Patsy told the story of her arrangement with Justin Moore, the bills she had brought home from the bank, the champagne she had chilled for their Friday-night get-together. “But then I got cold feet,” she said. “I felt he wouldn’t come at all, even though I figured he was desperate for the cash.” So, she told them, she started drinking and passed out. The last thing she remembered was waking up early, the bed mussed, her hair in her eyes, and thousands of dollars scattered everywhere. “That’s it; that’s what happened. So why are you here? Has something happened to Justin?”

Billy told her of the body in Satan House.

Patsy Hanson dropped her glass onto the carpet and raised her hands over her eyes.