Twilight Is Not Good for Maidens (10 page)

“After a life in the classroom, I’ve seen pretty much everything. Professors are rather tame, but every now and then … We’ve had a few who tippled or crossed the line on dating female students. Complaints come with the territory. Take the eternal carping about grades. A C used to be average.” Norman shook his head.

Holly forced a smile, unable to see her father committing any of those crimes. Nor was he an easy marker. He knew students often took popular culture because they thought it was a bird course. Then they found themselves with a fifteen-page essay exam and never-ending term papers with every footnote eyeballed. “You’ve been to a few grade appeals, I know, but …”

“And never lost one yet. My records are sterling.” He paused to brush his hand over his Brylcreemed hair in a mild preening gesture. “Not that professors don’t get involved. There’s so much temptation from those nubile young girls who idolize you, especially in the humanities. All that poetry, art, and music attracts the dreamers.”

“But surely you …” She gave him a fresh assessment. An attractive man, he was still no George Clooney. Imagining one’s parents as sex objects had to be the last thing on any normal person’s mind. She cast her thoughts back to her own university days. What about that law professor with the curly hair and chocolate brown eyes? His Irish accent could undress any woman without body armour and, acting many roles, he’d spun dramatic courtroom scenes that mesmerized them. Once, in innocence she was sure, he had put his hand on her shoulder as she wrote an exam and said …

Holly looked up.

“I’m the old man to you, but don’t be naive. There are a few who are out to make trouble. Think of the odds.” He spun out points on his fingers. “Hundreds of students passing each year through your classes. You’re going to hit a bad one every now and then. One girl threatened to tell the dean that I propositioned her unless I gave her an A.”

Holly stopped short of snorting wine out her nose. The batch was beginning to taste good. “Really? I mean, of course.” Her mother, frustrated over the years by her husband and the trivia he worshipped, had finally found a soul mate in a social work instructor at nearby Camosun College. Once Holly got to university, the divorce would have proceeded. This shocking fact she had realized only after returning to the island. Norman claimed that he had had no idea and was the one at fault in any case.

Intrigued, she’d gone to meet the man, surprisingly a decade younger than Bonnie. Ordinary next to her father. But he’d had something Norman didn’t. A passion to help others. Planning to hate him on sight, she found that the striking pastel portrait of Bonnie on his office wall nearly brought her to tears. He was an honourable man. Her mother would have had none other. He had a rock-solid alibi for the time Bonnie disappeared. He grieved as much as they did.

“So what did you do? It must have been complicated.” Could his advice help Chipper or the detachment?

He swept his hand in a grand gesture, narrowly missing the oil and vinegar carafes. “I told the little baggage to take it to the bank. I had always kept my door wide open, despite the lack of privacy. Male professors know that much. I bluffed her plain and simple like she was bluffing me. Little Miss Evil turned on her wicked heels and dropped the course that afternoon. I asked around and found that she’d tried the same thing on three other men in the last year. They’d capitulated. I went to the chairman post haste and put a letter into her permanent file. Game, set, and match.” He crossed his silverware on his empty plate and let his serviette drop in a gesture worthy of Clifton Webb.

“Nice going. I had no idea. But this is different. It happened out in the middle of nowhere. No witnesses. It’s going to be a case of ‘he said, she said.’ The way Chipper described her, I wouldn’t put it past her to give herself bruises.” She found herself surprised at the hostility she felt towards a girl she had never met.

“What happened to that union you talked about a while ago? Is there no one to speak for you?”

“We have the right to form one, according to a recent court decision, but you know how long it takes for wheels to turn and the organization to be built. According to the RCMP Act, the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, as cumbersome as a woolly mammoth, should be handling Chipper’s situation. Very in-house. That’s why the average person thinks that we close ranks to protect ourselves.”

She told him what she had learned about the process. The stats weren’t that bad, even though the press could sensationalize any event. Among twenty thousand officers across the country, there were fifty to sixty formal disciplinary cases a year. Four constables were asked to resign. They had uttered threats, improperly used a police vehicle, had sex while on duty, or committed sexual assault. That put Chipper in a very rare category. Lesser charges involved loss of pay and simple reprimands followed using bad language or viewing pornography at the office. One officer was suspended for taking small change from the desk of another. Sacrificing a career for seventy bucks?

“I see. And since the protocol’s being fast-tracked, you’re thinking that Chipper …”

“May not get a fair hearing. And worse yet, he might have to face civil charges for sexual assault.” She forked into the hash, realizing that it was nearly cold. “And even if he’s cleared, the suspicions will remain. Everyone jokes about getting sent to Atlin up on the gold-rush trail. Just when I have us all working as a team.”

“What about the girl? What kind of connections does she have to carry this so far? Is she related to the Governor General? The prime minister?”

She gave a self-critical bark of a laugh. “That’s what I forgot to tell you. Her father is Leo Buckstaff.”

“Aha. The thick plottens.” He drew his slender fingers along his chin in contemplation. A mischievous gleam came into his eyes. “I know the old bastard. Pardon my language. The word suits him.”

A breath caught in her throat. “Tell me everything.” Karma was coming up roses for a change.

He started to clear the table. “Leo’s been a thorn in my side at the faculty senate for years.”

Holly barely noticed the Neapolitan ice cream he brought. The major three flavours in a block. Exotic for the time. The Toll House cookies redeemed the meal. “How long have you known him?”

He spooned up a mouthful. “He and I came in the same year. Pompous ass. Graduated from Yale like Dubya and thinks he rules the world. I’ve been on several committees with him. He hogs the floor and crushes any opposition. Hates foreigners, as he calls them, even though he came up from the States himself. He tried to deny tenure to Jerry Chan. The man nearly won a Nobel Prize for his work in chemistry. Almost succeeded until the entire department came down on him.”

“So he’s a bigot. That could be good or bad for us. It sure does explain his daughter’s attitudes.”

“He disguises his prejudice in ambiguous words. Scratch his skin, and you’ll find a holocaust denier too careful to be caught. We’ve made jokes about his wife washing his sheets with eyeholes in them. She’s another royal pain. Butter wouldn’t melt and all that. Heads up some charity but she’d run over a street person with her BMW and ask the victim to wipe off the bumper.”

“Surely not the klan in Canada.” The mother sounded like as much trouble as the father. Chipper would have the wrath of an entire family.

“He’s from South Carolina. His accent gets thicker every year. Calls the Civil War the War of the Northern Oppression. Or Aggression. Whatever.” Norman got up to bring cups of decaf.

“So you think he can be taken down?”

Norman gave a cautious whistle at her insinuation. “He’s a VP now. Wields plenty of power around the university in his little kingdom. Wants to be president, but that’s against protocol. We always fill that position from outside, even out of province if possible. Less cronyism. It’s significant that he thinks that he can get away with that breech. 101 percent ego.”

Holly felt more cheerful at this inside information. That accent wouldn’t help him up here. It might even alienate people. She felt her appetite returning and was sorry that she had seen the rest of her plate go to Shogun, who was now snoring on a sheepskin down in the solarium. “And his daughter?”

“Samantha? She who can do no wrong? Got into the university at sixteen. Thinks she’s the queen of every class. Obnoxious little prig. But brains don’t equal common sense.”

“So in temperament she’s like the old man.”

“That’s the word. But I haven’t had any contact with her, thank God. I think she’s majoring in psychology. Everyone who needs help does that.” He tapped his temple for effect.

She finished her dish of ice cream and called Shogun to lick the bowl. “I have a favour to ask.”

“From me? I’d give you the world on a string.”

“Wrong period, Dad; 1922.” He’d done his best to spoil her despite her mother’s influence as the tough cop. “Find out whatever you can about Samantha. She may have used this tactic before. Ask your colleagues but only the discreet ones.”

He smiled enigmatically and blotted his mouth demurely. “Discretion is my middle name. Do you have to deputize me?”

Ann had the CPC
website on her screen when Holly arrived, including the four-page online form for making complaints. “This is such crap even if it is an improvement over the last one,” Ann said. “Look at the timeline. Complaints as well as the request for materials are acknowledged within a few days, but it can take up to six months for a report to be delivered to the complainant.”

“Six months is a lifetime when a career is at stake,” Holly added.

With her brain honed sharp as a straight razor, Ann provided an executive summary as she read. The most frequent complaint from the public was member attitude, a highly subjective situation which could include dismissive, rude, non-responsive, or biased behaviour. After that came the quality of criminal investigation. Typically an interim report was sent to the commissioner of the RCMP and the Minister of Public Safety. The commissioner was to prepare a response and then would come a final report. Timeliness was important to maintain the credibility of the force, and efforts were constantly being made to speed the process. When months and years went by, a case was severely compromised.

“I’m not sure this fast-tracking is better,” Holly said. “We could have a witch hunt.”

“A few years ago, before the latest scandals, this situation might have been dismissed, not that you or I would want that were the accusation true. The worst thing is that there is nothing we can do now to help him,” Ann said. “The idea about replacing us all with a provincial force is not an idle threat. One more huge scandal could start the process in earnest. It’s looking as if the only factor preventing it is the cost, which could run into the hundreds of millions in an otherwise bleak economic period So much for our proud history.” She snapped her fingers in a derisory gesture.

Holly looked at Chipper’s neat desk, where three pencils with perfectly sharpened points sat in a “Welcome to SuperNatural B.C.” coffee mug along with three pens, red, black, and blue, next to a tattered pocket dictionary. His computer screensaver played a series of scenes, one for each province. The Saskatchewan wheat fields gave way to the majesty of the Rockies. Imagine them someday without the RCMP. It could happen.

“I’m hoping my father will find something, but quietly. We don’t want this backfiring.” Holly told Ann what he’d said.

Ann pooched out her lower lip and nodded. “That’s the first good news we’ve had. I knew this girl was a psychopath in training. She had to leave a slime trail somewhere.”

“Have you heard from Chipper? There’s nothing on the answering machine. We asked him to keep us posted.”

“He could have called us at home, too, if he wanted to stay off the record.”

“It may be a question of his pride. Let’s stop brooding and get back to work on the French Beach assault case. He’d want to know that we’re tending to business, not despairing about his chances. The show must go on, as they say in the movies. I could use a bit of Ethel Merman’s energy right now.”

“Your dad sounds like a lot of fun. Mine was in business. Rarely home even on the weekends. And my mother demonstrates the phrase ‘only the good die young.’” Ann crossed herself for luck.

With Ann’s direction, Holly checked the records back ten years to when the detachment had been opened. Given the burgeoning population, the decision to expand west beyond Sooke had been amazingly proactive for an organization that resisted change.

Hours later, they compared notes. Aside from a few domestics and drunk and disorderly, no women had been assaulted, and certainly not in any of the parks.

“I’m no profiler, but we have a rogue male here. Chances are, under thirty.”

Ann chuckled. “That’s what the stats say, but keep an open mind for the anomaly.”

“That Paul Reid character. If he hadn’t come by …” She kept remembering the Bible. Was she misjudging the man? Condemning him for an innocent act on the level of a repressed Victorian thumbing through the ladies’ underwear pages in the 1897 Sears Catalogue that her father had shown her?

Ann’s unplucked eyebrows formed a question arch. “I’ve been wondering about him. You said he lived alone. Sort of a recluse? You do see where I’m going.”

“Around here, there’s one on every corner. That’s hardly a crime.” The area was full of harmless eccentrics. Long before the draft dodgers arrived, artists, conservationists, gadflies of all varieties found homes on the island. If you were content with a mossy trailer, you could live on minimal pensions.

The phone rang with another noise nuisance call. Bread and butter of the small detachment, but Holly disliked it more than traffic duty. People felt that they lived “in the country,” where dogs could run free and bark their guts out. No one wanted to put up expensive fences for half an acre. Rover might be fine in the yard, but the next moment he was off chasing cars or deer. Dr. Joe and the crew at the vet hospital made strong suggestions about neutering, but people often ignored them, especially those with pit bulls. The worst “dropped off” their kittens and puppies so that they could have a “happy home” in the wild. More and more roosters were arriving from Victorian “city farmers.”

“Ouch,” Ann said, moving with obvious care.

“What’s wrong?”

“Damn. I reached the wrong way under the sink last night.”

“Take care of yourself. We may be short-staffed for a while.”

“It’s a muscle strain. Not my damn discs. Give me credit for knowing the difference.”

“Okay. You’re the boss on that subject.” Holly spread her hands in surrender mode.

Shortly before Holly came, Ann had tackled a robber on a crime spree and could have retired on a disability from her back injury. Through the force’s policy on accommodation, she had been allowed to stay on at a desk job. Holly had been told by Ann’s former boss never to call her after dinner when she might be into the sauce and adding a few painkillers. Their first few weeks had been prickly when Holly took the place Ann had earned, but common goals had brought mutual respect.

Remembering what Chipper had said about the sexual assaults in Langford, Holly called West Shore Detachment to check their crime stats. West Shore had over seventy employees with four teams of six investigators and not only a Major Crimes unit, but one for street crimes, fraud, and firearms. The integrated unit downtown was developed to assist small detachments and devote heavy resources to the first few days. They also handled police dog services and a provincial general investigative unit for mid-level crimes like extortion and grand theft as well as gangs, crisis intervention, and child exploitation. Only if they failed to get their man could a lowly corporal become involved in the process re-inspecting a pot on the back burner in her spare time. In those few unsolved cases, Holly liked to think of their detachment as the “Court of Last Resort.”

She was routed through to Inspector Lee Skeffington. “With our increased population, our stats are way up in every category,” he said.

“Sexual assaults?”

“Unfortunately. Most of them have centred around a few hotspot bars like the Logger. But there was an attack in the park the other night. Right at the Five Points.” At this confluence, the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway bisected five streets and a park.

Holly’s radar perked up. There were plenty of streetlights around, and the detachment was across the street. Quite the nerve. “An arrest?”

“I wish. The guy got away. He was one fast mo-fo. Maybe he ran track. Ripped the blouse off a grandmother coming home from a movie on her bike. Then he grabbed her shoulder bag.”

“Then it’s not the same M.O. as the other man who’s been after young girls. My constable lives in Colwood, and he told me about your mugger.”

“I’d say not. This woman was quite hefty, not a little one like the others.”

“Do you think he lives in the area? He could have walked, or had a car nearby.”

“We sent a cruiser after him. He disappeared into Mill Hill Park. Game over in the dark.”

“Maybe he’s even camping in there.”

“That was our thought. Damn new laws are handcuffing us.” The extensive urban park covered over seventy hectares, much of it on steep slopes up a hill with nooks and niches impossible to patrol. It was a haven for wildflowers and homeless. The view from the top was spectacular, if you could overlook Costco.

A recent B.C. high court decision allowed people to camp in public parks as long as they were packed up and out between seven a.m. and nine p.m. Pandora Street downtown now had a regular army of tents, and the waste situation was getting out of control. Still, what were people to do without a bathroom? “Any descriptions we can use? I’m pretty sure we aren’t talking about the same person. French Beach is twenty-five clicks from you.”

“Just a sec.” A minute later she heard a rustle of papers. “Tall guy. Mid twenties. Good condition. Works out, maybe. It was dark, and she was going pretty slow. That’s how he was able to pull her off the bike.”

“How about his face?”

“Long-billed baseball cap pulled down. Too bad he wasn’t stupid enough to have it turned around.”

“Was the woman hurt?”

“The fall bruised her legs. Scratched up her bike.” He paused. “Luckily a guy walking his dog pack came along through the park and the barking scared off the assailant. The man called us from his cell.”

“Did she say anything else? What about voice?” In the dark, that might be another feature.

He paused. “Low and sinister. Kind of disguised. Just yanked her off the bike and pushed her into the bushes. It’s funny. Islanders pride themselves on being fit, using cars less, public transportation more, and then look what happens.”

“Sounds like he was just after the bag. Send me a copy of that report for our files,” she asked, remembering what Maddie had said about the voice of her assailant. “We’ve only had the one incident. Not enough to see a pattern.”

“It could happen again,” he said. “Guys like this get off on terrorizing women. That’s half the fun, the sick pukes.”

When she got back, Ann had a cream-lapping look on her face. “You’re not going to guess what I turned up,” she said, peering around into Holly’s office.

“Don’t leave me hanging. I need some good news,” said Holly, following Ann back to the foyer and pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“That name Paul Reid rang a bell, so I checked the records. It happened the year before Chipper came. Just Reg and me.” She eased herself down into her chair, took out a bottle of coated aspirin, and swallowed three with a slurp of water.

“What happened?” Reg Wilkinson had been a one-man detachment for a few years. He was the product of high everything but IQ, he joked, and was living in retirement in Chemainus up the east coast. A triple bypass had been the last event levering him from his beloved post. “Doing a run to Rennie to check on a rockslide after one of our deluges, I caught Paul taking a leak down at Jordan River. Around the back of that take-out hamburger joint that closed down.”

“If he was exposing himself, there’s a connection,” Holly said.

“Like serial killers practising on animals. Or peeping Toms graduating to rape.”

“Tell me more. I’m guessing he was charged with public indecency.”

Ann shook her head and a frown crept over her wide brow. “Out here? No way. His back was turned to the road. No one was around when I drove by. I was pissed. Pardon the pun. I took his name, made the report, and went back to HQ. Reg laughed me out of the office. I nearly clocked him. The big, soft-hearted jerk.”

Holly gave it some thought, recalling how harmless Paul had seemed. “It could have happened that way. Guys are casual and careless about their plumbing. The rest of us end up peeing on our shoes.”

“So should we follow up? I’m thinking yes.”

“Why don’t you give Reg a call and refresh your memory? Maybe something else will occur to him.”

Holly set out to check on the dog complaint, grabbing a copy of the Capital Regional District bylaws. The statutes were fairly liberal about barking as long as it wasn’t between key hours. If only they could regulate noisy geese. When she returned, Ann was still on the phone. She held up two fingers, and Holly went to her office.

On the wall were pictures of her German shepherds. One fading Polaroid showed her mother and father in their early twenties, long locks for her father and braids for Mom, tie-dyed shirt and a soft deerskin dress. Fate was a strange animal. If they hadn’t met in university, would her mother be around today? She herself wouldn’t be, but that would hardly matter. Holly tried to relax her shoulders, where a knot was forming. Thinking like that was plain nuts. But she didn’t believe that everything happened for a purpose.

She should have started her search for her mother when she had been posted up north near Port McNeil, but a full-time job left little time off. She thought over the facts, something she did like a mental tune-up.

That last weekend, Bonnie had called from a motel in Campbell River, then headed into the interior. It was wild country, pierced with twisting fjords and tiny enclaves on the uninhabited west coast. Why had she taken that old Bronco into the bush in the fall when the weather was so unpredictable? Because she had promised the small community that she would come. “Promises are to be kept, little Freckle Pelt,” she’d told her daughter, referencing a common lichen whose name amused them both.

Recently, Great Aunt Stella Rice had given Holly a lead from Bonnie’s shoebox of work records left at her farm in Youbou up in Cowichan. The trail wasn’t only cold after ten years, it was icy. If only she had the time and resources. Was she taking one step back with each two forward or the reverse?

A receipt from Otter Aviation. Cryptic notes on a pad. This information had caused her to try to contact her second cousin in nearby Sidney. Any day he’d be back from a fishing trip in the remote part of Yukon. What could he tell her about that mysterious flight to Williams Lake on the mainland that Bonnie had booked but never taken?

It was all as frustrating as this case at French Beach. She looked glumly at the envelope on the desk. A scrap of paper. Sometimes the smallest of clues led to an arrest. Police had caught the Son of Sam killer decades ago because he had received a parking ticket on the street where the murder went down.