The Dead List (18 page)

Veronica opened the door to the room. She waited, with her hand on her hip, while Drake pulled his headphones off. “So I don’t win the prize for being the early-bird this morning?”

“Couldn’t sleep, something was bothering me.”

Just like Officer Sophie Peterson, Veronica had never bought into the quiet, reserved act that Drake presented every time he worked a shift. There were policemen around him all day long, but it was the station house receptionist who suspected he wasn’t what he seemed. Sophie and Veronica were the only ones who seemed to want to know more. Drake could feel it in the way they watched him.

She held a sheet of paper in her hand and shook her head. “You look terrible. You know, I have a cousin who you might really enjoy spending time with. She’s not from here either. I’ll bet you and your red, stressed-out face wouldn’t be here early in the morning if you met her. You’d still be at home, and she’d be,” Veronica leaned forward and smiled, “cooking you breakfast.”

The offer had been made before. That time it had been a niece, and he’d politely declined. Drake liked Veronica. She had a quiet efficiency and covered more miles in a day marching through the offices on her short little legs than many of the police officers. He smiled and strained his mouth to one side.

“You know, I don’t think I’m ready for that, Veronica.”

She smiled back at him. “Do you know when your friend Officer Couthillard will be in?”

“I don’t think he likes to be called that. He prefers Myron.”

“I know that.”

Drake shook his head at her. “I think Sergeant Ryberg asked him to do an administrative review of the Ident officer’s findings. So he may be out of the office on site somewhere today.”

“Ah, that would explain the scowls from Mr. Glasses Polisher yesterday afternoon.” She handed the piece of paper to him. “This was faxed to his attention; it’s from the Bank of Canada, something about Italy.”

Drake scanned the paper as soon as Veronica closed the door. Myron’s contact had listed the insurer on Frank Wilson’s settlement from his work injury as an Italian company that did not have an office in Canada but listed their representative as Joseph Giamatti with a contact email address and phone number. There were basic details of the policy and the payout. The last paragraph noted that the funds had been held at the request of the insurance company; it was part of their policy agreement to hold large payouts for up to sixty days. At the end of the transmission, the man had written that if Myron needed information on any of the company’s other active policies to let him know. Myron was certainly connected. He’d delivered, just like he said he would. Drake put the sheet of paper aside and started the recording again.

He listened to Wilson’s sharp answers and then switched to the files from the interview with Monica, the waitress. Then after listening to the exchange that ended with her asking to leave, he pulled out the report of the interview with Derek Rochfort. Slowly, he read over the summary he’d made. Finally, he spent some time going over the notes he’d made from the short interview with Trevor Middleton, the hairdresser who had been asked to leave the group of drinking friends. Drake had been a listener all these months – ever since he arrived in Hope. He listened and made sure no one knew who he was or where he’d come from. Had all that listening sharpened his skills, or was it making him paranoid? Was there really something they’d missed?

He reluctantly started up Wilson’s recording again. Tired of the man’s voice, he forwarded to the end of the interview. He had circled the words that sounded as though they were key – gay, friends, group, cabin. And then he heard it. As the man was telling the officers he was going to his cabin he mentioned something, unprompted – money. He said he didn’t need the money. Neither Drake nor Ryberg had asked him about money.

He scrunched up his eyes and quickly shook his head, trying to regain his focus. He clicked the mouse and closed Wilson’s audio file, then opened Monica’s again. He forwarded to the section and looked at his keywords. It was there again – money. She brought it up too. They hadn’t asked her either. He thought of the interview with Parker. Had he mentioned money? They’d spoken of Robinson’s income, and Ryberg had asked about his sales. Parker had seemed uncomfortable when finances were broached. Did that mean something? And Rochfort talked about the recession in the United States affecting the company’s sales. Those were normal comments that might be expected from businessmen, but why did Monica and Wilson both speak about money? Was that what tied the men together? Was it connected to Wilson’s other business – the business that Trevor Middleton had alluded to? It had sounded like they were more than just casual drinking acquaintances. Did they have some type of organization or business they were involved in?

He dropped the faxed sheet of paper from the bank on the desk that Myron had been using and checked the duty board. Nobody from the crime team was in the office. It was still too early. He thought of the different names from the list. Frank Wilson had fled to his cabin at Chilliwack Lake, Monica would be at home, probably not at the bar until later in the morning, and Rochfort would be in his office early, just like always. Should he pay a visit to Trailco and see Rochfort, or an early morning visit to Trevor Middleton at home? Had he spoken of money? He’d mentioned that business was good, but that hadn’t seemed like a strange thing to say. It sounded as though he was just making an observation.

The watch commander looked at him from over his newspaper. He opened his mouth to speak but then went back to his reading. Drake decided. He could talk to Ryberg about his suspicions when he came in, and he had to pick up Dave Parker from the car dealership anyway. He probably wouldn’t be in yet, but he could always take a look around the lot while he was waiting. Maybe the young receptionist would be there early – the one with the very short skirt. He began to smile at the thought, but then felt the full force of his hangover once again. Even after drinking multiple glasses of water his mouth still felt like a desert, and every time he turned his head a little man hammered from the inside. After signing out a patrol car, he swallowed an aspirin from the community bottle that was kept in the reception area.

Unfortunately, it was an unusually bright, sunny morning. The glare coming in the windshield wasn’t helping his headache. He’d almost reached the car dealership when he radioed Veronica and asked her to patch him through to Myron’s mobile number. The man sounded wide awake when he cheerily said, “Good morning.”

“I’m on my way to pick up Dave Parker. I wondered if you found anything about Frank Wilson last night.”

There was a chortle, then a quick drawing of breath. “Sorry, I inhaled my coffee the wrong way. Yes, yes, I came across a couple of things. At one point it became so intriguing that I asked the Chilliwack detachment to send an unmarked to discreetly check out his property. They were happy to oblige, and I’m glad I did. You’ll never guess what they found.”

Drake pulled into the dealership and parked in the staff parking area beside two other vehicles.

“Are you still there, Drake?”

“Yes, sorry, tell me, what did they find?”

“Well, the first thing the patrolman saw were two top-end ATVs being delivered to his cabin. They were being dropped off by the dealer just as he got there. The officer was sharp enough to wait for the truck out on the main road and ask the driver some questions. He told him they’d dropped off two of their deluxe models to Mr. Wilson. Judging by the invoice date and time, it sounds like he probably made the order right after you and Sergeant Ryberg interviewed him yesterday. Invoice price was in excess of fifty thousand dollars.”

Drake whistled. “For two of those little off-road machines?”

“Yes, these are high-end vehicles. Wilson must be feeling rich. I don’t know where he got the dough, but I feel like I need to take another look at his accounts. But that wasn’t the most surprising find. Apparently Frank Wilson has approximately one hundred cords of wood stacked along his driveway.”

Even Drake knew that was a lot of wood. “One hundred?”

“Yes, one hundred. So I thought that perhaps selling firewood might be his other business. No problem there, but to get one hundred cords he’d have to cut down a lot of trees.”

Myron was enjoying telling his tale. Drake couldn’t tell if the young receptionist was behind her counter, but there appeared to be a man sitting on a desk in the showroom. He wasn’t sure if the man could see him inside the patrol car or not. He just kept staring out the front window, perched on the edge of the desk.

He needed to hurry Myron along. The younger man continued speaking. “So I did a bit of digging. After a couple of informal phone interviews with his neighbors that produced very little, I called the Chamber of Commerce tourist bureau. By the way, at this time of year, this consists of one retired alderman who answers the phone twenty-four hours a day. His goal is to promote the town as much as he can all year long. I told him that I was a tour operator, and I was going to bring a busload of campers to a site on Chilliwack Lake Road in the spring and I was going to need an almost endless supply of firewood. He immediately told me about Frank Wilson. He said he consistently has up to, get this, two to three hundred cords of wood on hand. All the time.”

Myron was becoming more and more excited as he told his story, but Drake didn’t have time to allow him to finish. “Myron, I’m sorry, I need to get inside the showroom. Can you cut to the chase please?”

There was a pause. The younger but more senior officer was probably deciding how to react. It might not have been the first time in his life he’d been asked to get to the point. He wasn’t quite ready to give up his elaborate explanation though.

“Where would somebody get all that wood, Drake? I know there are lots of trees up there, but to be able to supply that much wood all the time doesn’t make sense. I began thinking about what else might be out there.”

Drake interrupted him. “There’s nothing else there, some recreational properties, some campgrounds, and a couple of prisons – there are two minimum-security prisons out by Chilliwack Lake.”

“You got it – two prisons. Kids caught smoking dope or when they get caught shoplifting too many times get sent out there for a few months.”

Drake’s eyes narrowed as he thought it out. “Whose jurisdiction is that?”

“Corrections Services. They police the prisons themselves. So I called them. I got nowhere from speaking to the administrative staff, so I kept searching online and managed to find a retired civil servant who’d been in charge of both of them until he pulled the pin last year.”

Drake had driven out to Chilliwack Lake Road on one of his days off and passed the rural facilities. They weren’t really prisons, just a series of cabins and log-built buildings surrounded by a low metal fence. “And he told you that they cut their own firewood, and it occasionally goes missing.”

“Yes, that’s one of the ways they keep those boys busy. The missing firewood was a mystery that he was never able to solve, and he says he had more important issues to deal with, so he never put much effort into finding out where it was going.”

“Wilson is stealing that firewood and reselling it. Those boys I talked with probably pick it up in their trucks and deliver it to his place.”

“Yes, and I’ll bet he has an arrangement with the staff at the facilities to look the other way. They weren’t interested in telling me a thing, so there may be a payoff situation happening.”

Drake let the details of the scam set in. There was silence from the other end of the transmission. Finally, Myron spoke. “I need to do more digging, but based on the way the man from the Chamber of Commerce spoke, you’re correct. Wilson is stealing and selling the firewood. And in hindsight, it seems to be the worst-kept secret in town. The only people who didn’t know about it were us.”

He was very careful as he answered the investigator, not wanting to hurt his feelings. “That’s good work, you did very well. I just don’t know if it’s connected to Robinson’s death. Maybe I was on the wrong track. I don’t see a link.”

The man didn’t take offense. He answered immediately. “I don’t either, but it was a gap and we filled it. It might take a while for all of the gaps to be filled in, but at least we know what his business is. Or, we think we know. Like Ryberg says, sometimes you need to answer all the little questions before you have the answer to the big one.”

It made sense. He thanked Myron again and was about to terminate the transmission when he remembered the fax. “Oh, your fax came from your contact at the Bank of Canada. Apparently the insurer was an Italian company. They automatically hold funds for up to sixty days when it’s a big payout. I left it on your desk.”

“Perfect, see, we just filled in another gap. Did he say anything else?”

“No. Only that if you wanted details on any of the company’s other policies to let him know.”

“Thanks, good luck with Parker.”

Drake hung up and stepped out of the car. He could see now that it was definitely a man sitting on the desk, but someone else was there too. There was movement toward the back of the building. Someone closed a door behind them very quickly just as Drake walked into the showroom.

One of the large glass doors was unlocked, and to Drake’s disappointment, the short-skirted receptionist was not hidden behind the front counter. His police uniform had no effect on the man sitting on the edge of the desk. Barely moving, he turned his head a fraction of an inch and gave Drake his best salesman smile. He looked as though he was about to speak, but just like the last time Drake had visited Menno’s Ford, someone came marching toward him from an office at the rear of the building.

“Officer Drake, welcome, please come in.”

The woman was older than the daytime receptionist, but just as attractive and she had a friendlier demeanor. Her warm smile never wavered as she walked toward him.

Her handshake was surprisingly strong. She held his hand firmly and placed her other hand around his. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m Jennifer Parker. It’s so comforting that you’re looking after us during this difficult time.” There was none of the salesperson’s insincerity. She seemed to mean what she said.