Highway 61 (5 page)

“I hope you will be most comfortable,” he said.

*   *   *

Everything in room 34 was clean, neat, and in its place. The bed was impeccably made; the towels hung just so in the bathroom; the wastebaskets were empty. Yet the air seemed heavy and thick with the coppery scent of blood. I knew that it was just my imagination, but it took a few minutes before I could breathe normally just the same. I set my overnight bag on the table in front of the window—the same table and window that Jason Truhler had described. I didn’t even remove my coat before I opened the bag and pulled out a large envelope. Inside the envelope was a copy of the photo that Truhler had downloaded onto my computer. I had printed it out in glorious color on photo-quality paper and put it into the envelope without looking at it. Now I was looking, tilting the photograph this way and that, using it to align myself in the room until I was standing approximately where the photographer must have stood when he snapped it. There was the table and chairs, the credenza and TV, the chipped light fixture, the king-sized bed with Truhler lying on top, his head turned so that he was facing the camera and clearly identifiable. Beneath him on the floor was the girl. She was also facing the camera. My eyes went from the photo to the floor, and for a moment I thought I actually saw the girl lying there, her lifeless eyes staring at nothing, her naked body surrounded by a dark red stain spreading across the green carpet.

I closed my own eyes and tried to imagine the girl facing her killer as he moved toward her. I guessed that it had to be someone she knew, someone she would have allowed to get close enough to slash her throat. The killer would have had to come through the door. Would it have been locked? I turned to face it. There was no spy hole. If someone knocked, the girl would have had to open the door to see who it was. There was a door guard and chain with a chrome-plated finish that would have caused an intruder some trouble—if it had been set. I turned the knob, swung the door open, and then let go of the knob. Once open it did not close on itself the way many motel room doors do, yet once it was shut it locked automatically, which meant the girl had probably opened the door to her killer. Assuming she had been killed. More likely, I thought, she had an accomplice or two in the room with her all the time, helping set the stage for Truhler, snapping photographs until they got the shot they wanted.

I leaned against the door, staring at the spot at the corner of the bed where the girl had fallen, and considered the possibilities. The blue carpet was well scrubbed and—

“Wait a minute,” I said.

I went to the spot and knelt, running my hand over the carpet. I looked at the photo and then the carpet and then set the photo on the carpet and looked at them both together. For an instant I felt a thrill of fear electrify my body. Up until that moment I was convinced that Jason Truhler had allowed himself to be victimized by a variation of the old badger game, and I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved it more. Now I wasn’t so sure.

The carpet was green in the photo,
my inner voice told me.
Now it’s blue.

*   *   *

Daniel was sitting behind the counter and watching his TV when I entered the office. He switched it off and stood just as he had before.

“Yes, Mr. McKenzie?” he asked.

“I would like to talk about the room.”

“You are not comfortable?”

I leaned against the counter and smiled. The smile was from uneasiness. I was about to make some serious allegations, felt I had to make them, even though I knew that I was probably full of crap.

“You replaced the carpet,” I said.

“Yes,” Daniel said. The word came out slowly, like air from a tire.

“It used to be green. Now it’s blue.”

“You have stayed in room thirty-four before? I do not remember—”

“When did you replace it?”

“Why do you—”

“Was it after the Fourth of July weekend? Following the blues festival?”

“Yes, but—”

“Did you change the carpet in all the other rooms?”

“No. I—”

“How many rooms did you replace the carpet in?”

“Why do you ask these questions?”

“Why did you replace the carpet?”

“No more. I do not know why you ask these questions. You must tell me why you ask them.”

“I have a friend who stayed in room thirty-four during the blues festival.”

“Who is this friend?”

“You tell me.”

“I do not understand.”

“The person who rented room thirty-four during the blues festival, was it a man or was it a woman?”

Daniel moved quickly to a file box. For a moment, I thought I had him, but he hesitated.

“It is against policy to reveal such information,” he said. “Why do you ask for such information?”

“I have evidence that a murder was committed in that room.”

“Murder?”

A man walked into the office, a black bag slung over his shoulder. He was about thirty-five with deep brown eyes, an unkempt brown mustache and beard, and a brown ponytail streaked with gray. His grin suggested that we weren’t saying anything that he hadn’t heard before.

“Did you commit the murder, Daniel?”

“Outrageous.”

“Why are you covering it up?”

“You say these things—outrageous.”

“If you just answer my question—”

“Outrageous. I answer no questions. You will leave. You will leave my motel.”

The man’s grin broadened into a smile. He crossed his arms over his chest, revealing the beginnings of a tattoo that started at his wrist and disappeared under the sleeve of his leather jacket. His eyes flicked from me to Daniel and back to me again.

“You are making this much harder than it needs to be,” I said.

“You will leave immediately,” Daniel said.

“Listen—”

“You will leave or I will call the police.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll call them myself.”

“Did I come at a bad time?” the bearded man asked.

I ignored the question and brushed past him through the door, slamming it behind me. The door slam was just for dramatic effect. I wanted Daniel to think I was angry and indignant instead of what I really was, embarrassed.

I went to my Cherokee. Once inside and with the engine running, I fished my iPhone from my pocket and used the maps application to locate the Thunder Bay Police Service—it was on Balmoral Street, about six miles away. I put the vehicle in gear and drove off. I could see Daniel dealing with the ponytailed customer through the office window as I passed.

“You could have handled that better,” I told myself.

FOUR

I was expecting a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman wearing a red coat and a nifty hat. After much rigmarole I was passed off to a woman wearing a brown pantsuit and a white turtleneck sweater. Her eyes were blue, her hair was blond, and she was tall and trim enough to make me feel both small and out of shape. I had to look up at her when she rose from the chair behind her desk and offered her hand.

“Detective Constable Aire Wojtowick,” she said.

I shook her hand and told her who I was.

“Wojtowick, is that Polish?” I asked.

She motioned me to a chair next to the desk.

“Slovakian,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

I flashed on the Kashmiri motel owner.

“You have quite a melting pot up here,” I said.

“Every ethnicity that you have in the States you’ll find in Canada.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because Americans rarely think beyond their own borders. You are an American, right?”

I balanced the envelope on my knee.

“Yes,” I said.

“I guessed as much when the sergeant downstairs said you were making a nuisance of yourself.”

“I didn’t mean to. I’m just looking for information.”

“Such as?”

“To start with, I’d like to look at your missing persons reports.”

“That information is not generally available to the public.”

“Will it help that I was on the job for eleven and a half years with the St. Paul Police Department in Minnesota?”

Wojtowick held her thumb and index fingers about an inch apart.

“It impresses me that much,” she said.

“I occasionally work as an unlicensed investigator.”

She closed the distance between her thumb and finger to about a quarter inch.

“I’m trying to solve a murder,” I said.

“Whose murder?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. McKenzie, I am the most junior member of the Criminal Investigation Branch of the Thunder Bay Police Service. It took me many years to achieve this position, and I was forced to vault many hurdles that less gifted but more masculine colleagues were not. I’d hate to jeopardize it now by squandering time and resources listening to lunatics. It would behoove you, sir, to tell me—and tell me quickly—why I should not throw you out of here.”

“Do you know Bobby Dunston?”

“Who?”

“He has the rank of commander in the Major Crimes and Investigations Division of the St. Paul Police Department. He used to be a lieutenant, but they don’t have lieutenants anymore, and it used to be called the homicide unit, but apparently they don’t have homicides anymore, either. Anyway, you’d like him. He’d like you. You both sound very much alike.”

“Mr. McKenzie.”

“I’ll tell you what I would tell him—think how much fun it would be to solve a murder that your superiors didn’t even know you had.”

Whatever bluster I had quickly evaporated while Wojtowick sat straight in her chair and glared down at me, the fingers of her right hand drumming a monotonous rhythm on the desktop. She was a powerful woman, older but not pining for her youth, and without a hint of conflict or doubt in her eyes. She stared at me for what seemed like a long time.

“Here’s what you do,” she said. “When you leave this place, take a left out of the parking lot, then take another left on Central Avenue. Follow Central to Memorial Avenue and take another left. Keep at it until Memorial becomes Algoma Street. After a couple of miles you’ll see a large building surrounded by a huge lawn. That’s the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital. Check yourself in. We’ll call your friend Bobby. He can come and visit.”

“Yeah. Well, listen, Detective, I’m about to piss you off.”

“It’s Detective Constable, and you’ve already done that.”

I opened the envelope, slid out the photograph, and dropped it on the desk in front of her. Wojtowick looked closely without touching it, then fixed her eyes on me.

“Tell me this is Photoshopped,” she said.

“The man on the bed says it’s not.”

“Start talking, McKenzie, and I mean right now.”

I withheld nothing except Truhler’s name. Wojtowick didn’t like that at all.

“This is Canada,” she said. “Not the United States. You don’t get to make that decision here. If you prefer, I’ll confiscate your passport and incarcerate you as a material witness. You can remain in jail until—”

“Jason Truhler,” I said.

“What?”

I repeated the name and gave Detective Constable Wojtowick his address and phone number. She seemed genuinely surprised that I gave him up so easily and said so. I shrugged it off. I had promised I wouldn’t reveal Truhler’s secrets to Erica and Nina. I said nothing about the Thunder Bay Police Service. I figured I had done my bit by holding out as long as I had under Wojtowick’s relentless interrogation. My conscience was clear, and if Truhler didn’t like it, he could go entertain himself.

Wojtowick said, “You spoke to the owner of the motel?”

“Daniel Khawaja.”

“What did Mr. Khawaja have to say?”

“Nothing. I botched the interview.”

Wojtowick raised an eyebrow.

“Most men I know don’t admit to their mistakes,” she said.

“What can I say? I’m a helluva guy.”

“A motel room eighteen weeks after the fact, I’d doubt that there’d be much for the scenes of crime unit to look at.”

“Scenes of crime unit?”

“You’ve been conditioned by American TV to call it CSI. I hate TV. Except for
Ghost Whisperer.
I love that show.”

“I’ve always been partial to
Sons of Anarchy
myself.”

“Why am I not surprised? Come with me.”

I followed Wojtowick out of her office, she didn’t bother to close the door, and together we made our way down the corridor. She walked with purpose, her stride long, firm, and quick—I had to hurry to keep up with her. She may not have been a Mountie, yet I had no doubt that she always got whatever man she went looking for.

Wojtowick led me to a large room filled with computer terminals. Several officers were sitting at the computers, but we found an idle unit in the corner. After logging on, Wojtowick called up a list of missing persons reports. It was in alphabetical order and distressingly long. Instead of going through them one at a time, Wojtowick started loading preferences into the search engine, starting with female. That eliminated only about a third of the names. I thought it would get rid of at least half, and I said so.

“How long were you on the job again?” Wojtowick asked.

Next came race—Caucasian; age—eighteen to twenty; weight—one hundred ten pounds, hair—blond; eyes …

“What color were her eyes?” Wojtowick asked.

“Brown.”

Finally the date—July 5 to the present.

There was one match, an eighteen-year-old who went missing in Greater Sudbury in October, but she wasn’t our girl. Wojtowick eliminated the date from the search preferences and increased the age from sixteen to twenty-four and came up with seven more possibilities that we quickly dismissed. Next she eliminated hair color. That produced eleven additional candidates that we checked one after another. None of them matched the girl in the photograph, either.

“These are all the reported missing persons in Canada,” Wojtowick said. “Could she have been an American?”

“She could have been Portuguese for all I know.”

“That’s not helpful, McKenzie.”

“Yes, of course she could have been an American. If it’s just an elaborate scam like I suspect, it probably originated in Minnesota.”

“Based on what you told me, your Mr. Truhler claims it didn’t.”