Authors: Carolyn Davidson
“Mrs. Sanderson?” she called in a distracted voice, and a middle aged woman stood up in response.
“That’s me,” the woman responded, clutching her purse, and Emily led her into the interview room, still wondering what the Sergeant wanted to talk to her witness about.
*
In the second interview room the man who sat across from Alex was looking decidedly less composed than the one the constables had interviewed minutes before.
“I told them everything I know,” Lee Daly told Alex. “I came in here voluntarily, I’m done.”
He added, unsure as he said it, “you can’t keep me here.”
“I’ll only take a few more minutes of your time,” Alex assured him. “I just have a couple more questions for you.”
He paused for a moment, and Lee shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking at the clock above the policeman’s head.
“Did you watch Sarah run often?” Alex asked him suddenly.
Lee swivelled his full attention to the Sergeant and protested, his face screwed up in confusion.
“What are you talking about?” he asked angrily.
“We know you spend some time on the east side of the shore early in the morning,” Alex paused, “around the same time that Sarah had a habit of running up the Bluffs trail. Which means you would have seen her, right?” He questioned Daly.
Lee groaned and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “This is what I get for coming to you with information of my own good will. This is why people don’t trust the coppers.”
“Stop the theatrics, Lee,” Alex told him impatiently. “I would have had you in here today regardless of you coming in.” He allowed the man a moment to fume before asking casually, “So where were you Monday morning, around seven o’clock, eight o’clock?”
“Sleeping.” Lee replied angrily. “At home in my bed.”
“No job to get up for?” Alex questioned.
“I told your friends,” Lee gestured to the interview room door, “I’m not working right now. I’m a musician.”
“And yet I have a witness placing you regularly down at the shore front, bright and early.” Alex countered.
“Sometimes I can’t sleep,” Lee told the Sergeant grudgingly. “I go down the rocks, watch the sun come up. I write music, it helps the ideas flow.”
“But I wasn’t down there Monday,” he said. “I haven’t been there since last week. You can ask anyone.”
“Who can we ask?” Alex inquired. “Do you live with anyone?”
“No,” Lee responded slowly. “But no one will say I was at the beach that morning unless they’re lying. I was home in bed.”
“Okay,” Alex told him, thinking as he did that first thing on his list of to-dos was speaking to Mr. Daly’s neighbours. “You’re free to go. We’ll give you a shout if we have any more questions.”
The witness stood up quickly and left the room, his cool look decidedly shaken.
It felt a bit like progress, Alex thought, scrawling a note on the pad in front of him. Whether their guy was Lee Daly or not he could feel that they’d soon find him.
Susan collected her exercise gear from her dresser and peeled off her bath towel, leaving it strewn across the floor as she pulled the sports bra over her head.
She rode her bike more out of necessity more than recreation, considering it to be part of her job to keep fit. She had no patience for members of the force who seemed to work at matching the stereotype the media often propagated, of buttoned stomachs bulging over the belted trousers of the uniform of the policeman in the doughnut shop. One day she’d get around to adding some gym equipment to the spare room, but for now a challenging bike ride, fit at least three times a week into her schedule, did the job. The fact that she was using it as her transportation to the station this morning made it more viable in a schedule she didn’t want to fill with personal things until the Harmon case was in the bag.
Susan retrieved her Trek mountain bike from the shed and started down the lane, noticing as she reached its end that the children from the neighbouring lot were waiting for the early morning school bus in their front yard, filling their time with an elaborate game that seemed to involve the younger boy following his older sister in a circuitous path around their lawn. “Freeze” the girl’s voice rang out as the boy bumped into his sister, the two children toppling to a heap on the grass in fits of laughter.
Under the radar, Susan thought to herself as she passed their home unnoticed, following the road’s bend that curved around the bay. The boy had an endless interest in police work, and always had a barrage of questions ready on topics ranging from how fast police cars could go, how many criminals she had caught, to why she carried a gun. He was a bright kid, brimming with curiosity about the world, but she never felt she knew the right thing to say to children.
She had attempted it once, crouching down beside the boy to answer his queries, but she had found herself examining the inconceivable smoothness of skin rosy with the flush of childhood energy pulsing beneath it, his eyes shining with curiosity, and she found herself wordless. Not one worry line, not a hint of cynicism behind the clear hazel of his irises. How do you explain to that unbroken body of optimism and faith that all is fair in the world that you carry a gun, because sometimes people do really bad things, and sometimes in order to stop them, you have to resort to violence?
The children’s voices faded behind her and Susan settled into a comfortable pace, letting the events of the past forty-eight hours, and the facts of the case, sift through her mind. Once the kink in her left leg had worked itself out, an injury obtained in her early days in the police force care of a drug infused perp, she found biking calming. The even rhythm of the activity was something that cleared her mind of unnecessary noise, and she had often found the disparate pieces of a case click into place as she pedalled.
Anytime, she told herself now as she relaxed into the bike ride. She was meeting O’Reilly at the Wiarton Marina at his request en route to work. It would be good to have an overdue talk with her Sergeant and see what he had uncovered, and if they could come up with anything new when they put their heads together. Alex had brushed aside her suggestion to meet at the office when he texted her late the previous night. Some fresh air will be good for us, he had responded, might give a new perspective.
“I’ve got a couple things that look interesting.” Alex filled Susan in fifty minutes later, with the choppy grey waves and out of tune cries of seagulls behind the Inspector. He was glad of his insistence to pry Susan away from the office; she did look brighter now, the offshore breeze tousled her blonde hair and her bike ride had put vitalizing colour in her cheeks. He smiled in spite of the topic at hand. It was good to look at her without the muddy green of the station walls as backdrop.
“Looks like she had a dark streak, our Sarah,” Alex told Susan. “I don’t know how relevant it is, but I had a look at her borrowing history at the library. She didn’t take much out this past year besides bestsellers, but have a look at two, three years ago.” He gave the library print out to Susan. “
Peace After Abortion
,
Religious Views on Abortion
,
Abortion and Capital Punishment
,
The Fifth Greater Sin
...on it goes. Not light reading.”
Susan looked thoughtfully at the paper. “Looks like this fixation began around the time she had an abortion, according to Aldershot’s report. Let’s have a look at the clinics that do the procedure, see if we can find a record of Sarah being there. Might turn something up.”
“I’m on it,” Alex told her. “I’ve also got a local guy I’m taking a look at, looks like he might have frequented the area Sarah ran. I’ll have a dig into his alibi, we’ll see what his story is.”
“You have been hard at work,” Susan told the Sergeant appreciatively, giving him a side long once over, “contrary to all appearances. Did you get a chance to look into suspicious deaths in the region?”
“Guess I’m working for brownie points with the boss,” Alex replied, giving her a wink. “I came up with three open cases in the past year, all of them male victims: one shooting, a stabbing and an incident in Malvern where a car was set on fire with the driver in it.”
“Lovely,” Susan said, shaking her head to rid herself of the image. “Nothing that sounds relevant to Sarah’s case then.”
“Nope,” said Alex, “so I extended the search parameters a bit wider. The computer came up with this.” He handed Susan a printed image of a young girl. She had light brown hair that fell across a serious oval face, and a full mouth that was curved into the hint of a smile.
“What’s her story?” Susan questioned.
“Angie Davies, sixteen year old girl went missing a year ago, MacEllern way. Small town four hours north wes,t” he elaborated when Susan looked blank. “She was missing three weeks, they did the Amber Alert province wide. Ended up finding her body just outside of town in a forest bordering the National Park.”
“What was cause of death?” Susan asked, feeling the hairs on her arms stand on end.
“Trauma to the head, they never found the weapon. Never found the perp, either.”
There was a silence save the lapping of the waves as both parties considered.
“The coroner found evidence of sexual assault before she was murdered. One year and four hundred kilometers away, and different M.O., so this is likely a completely different animal, but I didn’t want to leave it unchecked.”
“Yeah,” Susan responded abstractly. “Good work. We better take a closer look, see if there are any further commonalities.”
Alex hesitated, and then added. “On the topic of potentially unrelated, I should mention MacEllern is a solid Angels’ base. OPP up there have been keeping a watch on them for black market tobacco smuggling. They have an undercover planted more than a year, and guess whose name has come up in his findings.”
“I’m no good at guessing,” Susan prodded him. “Tell me.”
“Your friend John Thibeault.”
Susan leaned back and whistled through her teeth. A moment passed before she spoke. “If we’re talking coincidences I ran into his boy Eddie not long ago, fresh out of jail.”
“I heard he got out,” Alex replied, watching Susan’s face. “Three years, sentenced as a juvi, he got off pretty lucky.”
When Susan didn’t elaborate he raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Did the system turn him hard core or scare him straight?”
“I don’t know,” Susan answered honestly.
She had literally run into him in the aisle of the hardware store, not looking behind her as she hoisted a forty pound bag of birdseed onto her shoulder. Turning to apologize she had come face to face with Eddie. Face to chest to be exact; Susan was a solid five seven, but Eddie towered over her now; a far cry from the scrawny kid she’d picked up three years ago, making serious pocket change stealing from his neighbours. His eyes were unchanged though, the chipped arctic blue ice he’d inherited from his father. Susan saw recognition hit the boy and he had stepped back as if he’d bumped into a hot poker.
Giving him a subtle inspection, Susan had been able to see the time spent inside on him. Roughly etched tattoos reaching from under the cuffs of his plaid shirt to the backs of his hands, his shirt filled out by muscles that must have been gained from hours with the weights. And the wary expression on his face, jaw tight with a tension that wasn’t likely easy to let go of. But he’d looked clean cut, more nervousness than animosity in his eyes when he’d recognized her, and at first guess Susan would have said he was on the straight track. She had nodded at him as if exchanging a greeting with an old acquaintance and he had nodded back, standing aside to let her pass.
“So what’s the connection over there to John Thibeault?” she enquired now, snapping back to the present. “Are we talking the tobacco smuggling or the girl?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Alex responded. “I know a guy on the Parry Sound force, and he’s looking into it for me. The tobacco thing is going gangbusters at the moment, they’re hoping to bring it down this month with the help of their plant. Looks like our John has been taking care of Eastern distribution. As far as Angie, there was some talk of Angels’ involvement, apparently key witnesses were intimidated out of testifying, case fell apart before it began.”
The engine of a boat starting cut through their conversation and the officers paused to watch it make its way out of the harbour, fish nets standing tall in hopes of a good catch.
“Nothing solid on Thibeault,” Alex concluded when the boat had left the mouth of the wharf. “But when a familiar name crops up it bears mentioning.”
“That it does,” Susan said thoughtfully. “Maybe we should head over to MacEllern and have a closer look. We can contact Neil, take the police boat over.”
“Let me know when and I’ll give him a call,” Alex offered.
“This was a good idea,” Susan surveyed the choppy water in front of them. She glanced at Alex, the smile lines at the corners of his eyes deepening as he squinted into the sun, his dark hair curling over the uniform collar. Standing up, she hitched her shoulders against the wind. “But we better get back to it.”
*
“We’re pretty straight up here,” Commissioner Andrews had told her not long after she’d transferred North. “Do your job, do it well, and no one will look sideways at you.”
It had taken a while to get used to the pace, both of the station and the town. Her first big case after the move had involved an offender who had taken up a regular habit of breaking into storage units in the vicinity. He’d had a good run, helping himself to everything from snowmobiles, chainsaws, kitchen appliances, to rider mowers.
They’d had an idea at the station of who the culprit might be, mostly due to reports of untagged equipment turning up at neighbouring towns’ farmers’ markets, but nothing they could stick, and due to the perp’s practise of knocking out the video cameras before approaching the storage facilities there was no excuse to bring him in. Susan was pretty sure that it didn’t help that their leading suspect was the son of a known Hell’s Angels family. No one was keen on volunteering information, even if they saw a tool that looked familiar being bartered at a market with its serial number scratched off.
They finally had a break when one of the storage unit owners, tired of having his lock ups broken into, set up a secondary video camera hidden in the trees. It didn’t catch much, the thief wore a hood and balaclava, but it picked up the colour and make of the van parked in the shadows, even if the license was mudded over.
There was still nothing solid to pin on the perp, but Susan had seen the kid around town. Something about the slouch of his posture and the drawl of his gait was too close to the hooded figure caught on the video to dismiss; she couldn’t shake the feeling that not only was he their guy, but he was flaunting the ability of the police to do anything about it.
One night she and her partner at the time, Constable Barry Dunlop, were keeping an eye on the perp’s house. They were parked on the side road at the end of his driveway, lights out. She’d talked Barry into it. In spite of nothing doing at the station she knew full well he would rather be chin wagging with the other coppers in the comfort of the office. She’d worked him over with the promise of a stop off at Rachel’s café for coffee and pastries on the way.
A couple hours had passed with no action and Dunlop had started grumbling. They were a half hour from clocking off, and the biggest excitement so far was seeing the kid’s mother preparing dinner at the kitchen window. Susan had given in, heading back to the station, but after dropping her partner at his car she hadn’t felt like going straight home. Nothing unfinished on her office desk, and nothing waiting at home except a TV with not much on it.
Telling herself it wasn’t so far out of her way, Susan had headed back to the Thibeault kid’s place for a last look. And lo and behold, there was young Eddie, packing up his Citroen van with a loading ramp and a dolly. She had picked up her radio, about to call it in, but then realized she was off the clock. Not a problem, but she didn’t want to look like a fool if it turned out there was nothing to report.
Playing it cautious, she took off and turned around in the drive of a neighbour three lots down. Waiting at the lane’s end, she pulled out when she saw lights leaving the Thibeault’s place and followed the van, careful to leave a good distance between them. Sure enough, he headed south, a thirty minute drive that took them directly to the Dyer’s Bay Store-N-Save.