Unreasonable Doubt (23 page)
Read Unreasonable Doubt Online
Authors: Vicki Delany
Walter Desmond sat on the Stanley Park sea wall and watched people. Walkers, runners, skaters, bikers. Some faces were impassive, revealing nothing of the person within, some were crunched in concentration and effort, maybe even pain, and many were full of the sheer joy of being beside the ocean on a sunny day.
He'd been to the aquarium earlier and then bought an ice cream cone to eat while he walked. What joy the day had been.
In prison every day was the same; the view was the same; the people, whether inmates or guards, were, if not the same, of the same sort. Day after day after day, as the years passed.
A few feet from him a child crashed her bike into the wall. She tumbled to the ground and began to cry. A man, dressed in tight jogging shorts and a yellow spandex shirt, ran up to her. He checked her over, made cooing noises, and then righted the bike. “No harm done, sweetie. Let's go, Mom's waiting.” Fear and tears forgotten, the girl hopped onto the bike and pedaled away. The man saw Walt watching and gave him a rueful grin that seemed to say, “Kids. You know how it is?” before jogging after his daughter.
No, Walt didn't know how it was. But that didn't matter. He was happy just sitting here.
The
Trafalgar Gazette
, which had been ready to see him strung up from a lamppost only a few days ago, had called him a hero. He was, of course, no more a hero than he was the monster everyone had earlier believed him to be. He'd wanted to say good-bye to Lucky Smith and thank her for her kindness, and he'd arrived at the right moment to be able to help her.
He'd been taken down to the police station, in the front seat of the cruiser, and put in a pleasant room with nice furniture, a pretty painting on the wall, silk flowers, and even a box of tissues. The detective with red hair and freckles and a Mexican name had been very polite with his questions. He didn't ask about Walt's motives, or question his integrity; he only wanted to know exactly what had happened when Walt arrived at Lucky's store. No more and no less.
The police chief had arrived later, and Walt had been surprised when he'd offered to pay Walt's expenses out of his own pocket. Only later had he learned that the chief was Lucky Smith's partner. A patrol car dropped him at the nicest hotel in Trafalgar, and a taxi was arranged to take him to the Castlegar airport in the morning for a flight to Vancouver.
Chief Keller had called him in the morning, before he went downstairs to meet the taxi. “Thought you'd want to know that the guy who was arrested last night had read about you in the paper. He thought he'd be very clever and throw suspicion onto you with the attack on the woman at the B&B and later on Mrs. Smith because of her knownâ¦uh⦠friendship with some members of the Trafalgar police. He wasn't, so he says, aware that Mrs. Winters was an officer's wife at the time of that attack.”
“Thanks, Chief. For everything.”
“Good-bye, Walt.”
The first thing Walt had done on getting to Vancouver was buy himself a cell phone. It seemed as though everyone had one these days. Now, he took it out of his pocket, along with a scrap of paper. A seagull swooped in from the water, heading for a family group enjoying a picnic on the grass. The father jumped up and chased the bird away with much yelling and waving of hands. Walt studied the phone for a long time. Then he unfolded the paper and punched numbers into the tiny keypad that seemed too small for his fingers.
The phone rang several times.
This was a bad idea
. He was about to hang up when a soft voice said, “Hello?”
“Carolanne. It's Walt.”
“Walt,” she said with a contented sigh. “Oh, Walt.”
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