Authors: Carolyn Davidson
Stripping down and stepping into the welcome warmth of the shower, Susan gave an audible sigh as she felt the water’s heat pulse into her shoulders, and forced the events of the day from her mind for a few short moments of relaxation.
The welcome home gift on her doorstep was something that would have alarmed her early in her career, but she was able to compartmentalize it fairly easily now. It came with the territory of the job that sometimes you angered people, specifically the type of people who didn’t react reasonably when they were angered. She had the dull ache in her left knee first thing most mornings, care of a perp bent on revenge, if ever she were to forget it.
Early in her career in the city she’d been a beat cop headed on a fast track from Constable to Sergeant, with what she could now acknowledge in retrospect as an embarrassing pride in her conviction numbers. There had been a spike in violent crimes in her district, and their Staff Sergeant had been impressing upon them the importance of keeping the numbers down.
Susan had had her eye for some time on a dealer who had stationed himself on one of their corners, and appeared to have a good number of the local street kids running for him. She had taken it upon herself to keep tabs on him. She wasn’t working narcotics, but a high percentage of violent crimes spiralled out of the drug trade, and she knew if she watched him closely chances were there’d be something she could pick him up for.
After checking with a colleague in the narcotics department that they had nothing going on him, she had kept a low profile watch on the guy. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before she picked him up for petty theft after witnessing him casually lift the wallet from the jacket pocket of an unsuspecting passerby. Owing to past infringements he’d got nine months in the slammer, and Susan got a pat on the back. She felt more satisfaction from seeing a slight decrease in the crime numbers with the guy off the corner.
Not too long after he was back on the street Susan was working a night shift and happened by him on one of the less desirable areas in her district. He apparently remembered her face from taking him down and held a personal grudge, coming at her with a metal pipe before she could react.
Ten stitches and a few sessions of physiotherapy and she wasn’t much the worse, save a newly developed sense of awareness that nothing happens in a bubble, the satisfaction of taking the bad guys down had to be tempered with an awareness of the danger that came with it. It wasn’t something she lost sleep over.
“It was never an actual thing,” Alex said, frustrated. “I spoke with her about police work. She was looking at it as career choice, making decisions for college.”
“So it was a guidance counsellor role,” Susan said sarcastically.
“Yeah, like that,” Alex leaned back in his seat. They were sitting in Susan’s car. She had stopped by his place and asked him to come for a drive, but so far they hadn’t left the driveway.
“So nothing sexual between you,” she asked again.
“No,” Alex replied, stone faced. “Like I told you.”
“Okay,” Susan said casually. “So we can take this to the station, but I wanted to ask you as a friend first. The thing is, I nosed around a bit and there’s one of Sarah’s friends saying you had a thing with this girl. In her words she saw you ‘making out.”
Alex groaned, rubbing his forehead with his hands.
“I can deal with you lying about a relationship,” Susan continued, “You have no reason to tell me about your private life. But what I can’t deal with is you lying about your relationship with a witness, not to mention a witness who’s barely out of high school.”
She stared at him coldly. “It doesn’t look good on the force, and it’s messing with the case. What else do you know that you’re not sharing with us?”
“Meaning what?” Alex stared at her incredulously.
“Meaning, if you were dating one of Sarah’s friends you might know more about what was going on with Sarah than you’ve let on.”
“Hold up,” Alex turned to her angrily, “this is getting out of hand. You’re actually suspecting me of hiding information relevant to the case?”
“Everything’s relevant Alex,” Susan threw back at him. “Remember, you’re supposed to be a cop.”
Alex opened the door of the car to get out, and then changed his mind, sitting back in the car seat and slamming the door shut. Turning to face Susan, he spoke with contained anger.
“I appreciate your high opinion of me,” he said through tight teeth. “So here’s the story, and your Inspector’s skills can tell me if any of this is relevant.” He took a deep breath and continued. “I was at the high school in January giving our Career Day spiel. The one we do every year,” he looked at her waiting for acknowledgment. “I drew the short straw this year and got stuck with it.”
When Susan didn’t respond he continued. “A couple kids stayed on after I finished to ask questions, Jolene was one of them. She told me she was considering a career in the force.”
Susan restrained herself from the ready snide comments, reminding herself this was an interview. It was always best not to interrupt the momentum when the subject was talking.
“She developed a sort of crush on me, followed me around a bit. Asked if she could come to my place to talk about her ‘career’ but I said no. She ran into me a few times when I was in town, maybe I wasn’t forceful enough in telling her to back off.”
He waited for Susan to comment. When there was silence save the shrill squawk of a red squirrel outside the window, he continued. “I let her come in the car one time when she approached me in town. It was stupid, she said she wanted to see the inside of a police car, get the feel of it. I was grabbing a coffee, I let her sit inside with me for a minute.”
“And?” Susan asked when Alex hesitated.
“She leaned over and kissed me, caught me by surprise. I told her to get out, told her it wasn’t going to happen, that I’m way too old for her.”
“She’s a kid,” he said after a pause. “Nothing happened, nothing would happen, I was just stupid to let her develop a crush or whatever it was. I should have stayed away from her.”
“Huh,” Susan responded noncommittally. “So did you have any contact with Sarah during any of this?”
“No,” Alex’s eyebrows knitted in frustration. “I told you at the beginning of the case I never met her.”
“And did Jolene ever mention Sarah to you?”
“No,” Alex responded again. “I would have logged it if anything relating to Sarah had ever come up. She asked about a career in the force, that was all. I didn’t even know she was a friend of Sarah’s until she came into the station the other day.”
“Yeah, what was that about?” Susan questioned, feeling herself relax slightly against her will. The verdict was still out, she reminded herself. “It looked pretty emotional.”
“She just came in to talk about Sarah, she was upset. She wanted to know if she could do anything to help.”
“And could she?” Susan inquired, not letting on that she had read the interview notes.
“Not really. She gave a list of people that Sarah would know, it was nothing we didn’t already have.”
“Okay,” Susan drummed her fingers on the wheel of the SUV.
“Okay?” Alex repeated incredulously. “What does that mean? I’m absolved, I’m no longer under suspicion?”
“Okay, maybe I overreacted,” Susan allowed. “But it wouldn’t have happened if you mentioned this earlier. Besides,” she added, trying for a lighter voice, “I’m starting to wonder if there’s anyone in this town you haven’t slept with.”
The joke fell flat and Alex stepped out of the car, looking in at Susan for a moment before he shut the door. “See you at the station,” he said when nothing appropriate came to mind, and the door closed with a thud.
Driving back down Alex’s drive to the main road Susan forced herself to let it go. She had been right to question Alex, that was all there was to it. A face from the past flashed through her mind unwanted, and she cursed her subconsciousness for throwing it at her.
She’d never been great at relationships, never found it easy getting close to people. While colleagues and acquaintances close to her age were settling into more serious relationships, marriages and disappearing on maternity leaves, relationships in Susan’s experience tended to peter out around the six month stage. She’d develop a gradual reluctance to answer the phone when their number came up, a feeling of irritation rather than excitement when her day off was pre-booked for an afternoon spent strolling hand in hand through markets, or museums, or whatever couples tended to do. She didn’t blame herself entirely for this lack of intimacy, putting it down to a consuming job she was dedicated to, paired with the excuse of a childhood that lacked a positive example of marriage to emulate.
The most serious, or intimate relationship had been with an EMS worker, back when she was on the Toronto force. Dan Timoko. Memory was a double edged sword she thought to herself, opening the car’s window as she drove towards Wiarton. Nice to remember the good things, nasty to uncover the things we’d rather forget. It hadn’t been a bad relationship and they’d had a lot of good times. What had started as a convenient meet up, with her running into him pretty regularly working the same area of the city, had quickly fallen into a comfortable pattern; back at his place at the end of a shift, each understanding the strange hours they worked and the baggage the job could bring with it at the end of the day.
Susan’s mind delivered her the image of Dan in the sheets at his apartment, muscled arms dark against the white cotton, blue green tattoos wrapping his biceps, and she felt a momentary pang of regret. There had been a couple of years of simple dinners put together in the kitchen, served over candlelight and then hastily eaten before they made their way to bed. Bike rides along the maze of city trails, stopping to relax in the parks that linked them.
But no bringing each other home to the family, and no announcing themselves as a couple to their colleagues. Susan still cringed as she remembered the relationship’s end, the frustration on Dan’s usually good natured features. “We’re not kids Susan,” he had complained during one of their last arguments, this one over her reluctance to join him for a barbeque with his work mates. “This isn’t just a booty call.”
Susan flicked the radio on and replaced the images in her mind with the information they had drawn together during the station meeting. I’m the one in charge here, she reminded herself.
Turning down the road that led from the harbour to the main street, Susan slowed as she noticed a number of vehicles parked at the side of the road. This stretch was a common hangout for teenagers looking for a spot to socialize in town. The possibility of teenage alcohol consumption was not her problem at the moment, as she was officially off duty, but she was pretty sure she recognized Tommy Logan’s truck parked in their midst.
As she pulled up behind the parked vehicles she felt the music’s base strong enough to cause the steering wheel to vibrate beneath her fingers. She had been right, she saw as she got out of her SUV, it was Tommy Logan’s vehicle. And there was Tommy himself, leaning against the closed front door of his truck, the girl beside him standing close enough that her leg, exposed in a short skirt in spite of the evening’s chill, pressed against Tommy’s jeaned one.
Interesting, she thought to herself, giving a nod as she approached the group.
“Evening kids,” she announced, pretending not to notice the panicked expressions as a few of them tucked cans behind their backs.
“Mind if I talk with you a minute?” she asked Tommy rhetorically. The boy followed her dutifully down the street, far enough that the music’s reverberations faded to a background hum. Susan gave the boy a once over as she turned to face him. His eyes were reddened and his face flushed, and he seemed to be having trouble meeting her eyes.
“So how are you doing, Tommy?” she asked him casually.
“I’m okay,” he stammered, eyes on the road in front of him. “I mean, you know, not so good.”
“Been drinking much?” she asked him, giving a nod to his group of friends that were currently in the process of disbanding their gathering.
“No,” he shook his head. “I had one beer. I don’t like to drink much.”
Susan paused and waited for anything further he had to offer. She was considering whether she would give him a breathalyser test to shake him up, in spite of believing what he said when he continued.
“Do you know people are saying she cheated on me?” he asked her fiercely. “That she was even pregnant with a baby she got rid of?” He wiped tears angrily from his eyes with the back of his hand. “I feel like I didn’t even know who she was.”
That’s a part of growing up, Susan thought to herself, but refrained from voicing. You tend to find that you don’t know people as well as you think you do.
“Okay, Tommy,” she said instead. “Why don’t you call it a night and head home.”
*
Olivia decided to take the direct route. After trying out varying scenarios where she had a reason to look in the cigar box in her husband’s office, nothing sounded plausible besides the truth. Well, half-truth anyway.
“I know we haven’t had a lot of time to spend together recently when we’re not both exhausted,” she told him over a pasta dinner she had prepared for the two of them, reminding him both that morning and the previous evening to make it home in time for a later dinner with her. A relaxing dinner with the girls in bed, wine and candles, she had promised him. Well she hadn’t been able to find the candles, but two out of three wasn’t bad, and they were enjoying their Fettuccini Alfredo with chilled white wine on the glassed-in rear sun room, a view of the stars above them.
“And I was looking for a gift to get you to remind you of more relaxed times,” she continued, “So I checked your cigar box to see if you were getting low.”
Tony put his fork down, the tines clanging against the plate sharply. “So,” her husband said, wiping his mouth with the cloth napkin she’d put out in place of the paper towels she’d fallen into the habit of using.
“Am I getting low?”
“Pardon?” Olivia asked him, confused.
“You said you were checking to see if I needed more cigars. Do I?”
“You have a couple left,” Olivia responded, trying to keep the conversation on track. “But there was something else in the box.”
“What was it?” Tony asked casually, picking his fork up again to twirl some noodles neatly around it. “Have the girls been playing around down there?”
“The girls?” Olivia asked incredulously. “They can’t reach that high.”
“What is it then, Olivia?” he asked in an irritated voice.
“There’s a necklace,” she told him, her own temper rising. “There’s a necklace in the box with your cigars.”
“Oh yeah,” Tony said, shrugging. “I forgot about that. I found it the other day, someone must have dropped it. I meant to turn it in to a local lost and found.”
“Where did you find it?” Olivia asked him.
“Just in the dirt,” Tony told his wife, the irritation creeping back into his voice. “What are you doing snooping around in my things anyhow?”
Olivia felt the food she’d eaten heavy in her stomach as she looked across the table at her husband.
“Sorry, Ollie” he said, using his old pet name for her when he saw her expression. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Leaning across the table he put his hand over hers and stroked her fingers. “You know I have nothing to hide from you. It’s sweet you were thinking to get me some cigars. And,” he said, leaning forward to plant a light kiss on her nose before returning to his pasta, “You make a mean Fettuccini Alfredo.”
*
Trudy was lying in her bed when she heard the rocks on her window, neither asleep nor fully awake, slide shots of the day passing in front of her open eyes. The handful of pebbles scattered against the window pane caused her to jump up, thinking for a moment that it was morning and her alarm clock had gone off.