The Suspect - L R Wright (12 page)

He got up, and went back outside, and looked this
time at the flowers that grew in the bed against his house. He'd put
out his bedding plants more than three months ago, as if
subconsciously predicting the unusual warmth and dryness of the
spring. He had accepted the weather with pleasure and equanimity.
Perhaps it was his last summer; perhaps it was nature's final gift to
him. Except that he didn't deserve any gifts from nature. Not now.

It occurred to him, however, as he bent over his
marigolds, that a vengeful God might well give him a present for
getting rid of Carlyle.

George had to brace himself against the side of the
house for a minute, to catch his breath and let some dizziness pass.
And he closed his eyes, then, and thought of Audrey. A great surge of
relief swept through him that he could still remember her, holding an
armful of deep purple lilacs and laughing her pleasure. She had been
the real gardener in the family. It was only after her death that he
took it up, grimly at first, in deliberate homage and apology to her,
then gradually finding in it his own personal joy.

He remembered toiling in the vegetable garden in
California, after she died. He had dug up far too much of the lawn.
It was a gigantic garden. And of course he'd had no idea how quickly
things grew down there. Myra would come out to him, bringing him iced
tea or lemonade, never scolding him although she worried. She would
wipe his dripping forehead with a cloth carried from the kitchen and
put her arm around his shoulders and kiss him.

He shivered, leaning against his house, as the sea
breeze stroked the side of his face, and he thought how lucky he had
been to have had Audrey in his life, and then Myra, who had never
resented his devotion to his sister, even though he knew she had
never quite understood it.

George opened his eyes and shoved himself away from
the house. Marigolds smoldered at his feet, and sweet peas draped
themselves along his fence, and the rosebushes along the fence on the
other side of the yard were laden with blooms. The only blight upon
his entire life had been Carlyle. It I may have been a desperate,
bloody, brutal, and uncivilized thing to do, but at least he'd done
something, finally, about Carlyle. He decided he would row out into
the bay and dump the shell casings overboard. He would have to use
Carlyle's boat, since he had none of his own and didn't want to call
attention to himself by renting one; it was only fitting, he thought,
that Carlyle's boat, now his, should be the one he used.

But he couldn't do it during the day, and he knew he
wouldn't have the strength to do it that night, and the next night
was Sunday, which although he was not religious was still not
appropriate. He would do it on Monday. Yet he couldn't stand the
thought of those shell casings sitting in his house one more second.
He might be unrepentant about his act, but he wasn't proud of it, and
he didn't want to be reminded of it every time he went through his
own living room. He went inside to fetch them. He would bury them in
his garden until Monday night. It wouldn't hurt the zucchini to be
uprooted for a while. Not if he made sure to water it as soon as he
planted it again.

But when he got into his kitchen, his life in its
entirety was waiting for him, and it toppled upon him—he put up his
hands to ward it off, and stumbled to his leather chair to hide and
huddle there, but it swept implacably upon him, his entire life. It
was a lie, of course, that Carlyle was the only blight upon it; a lie
that Carlyle was his only guilt. With his face in his hands he sat,
rocking himself back and forth under the pain that stretched back
over so many years. All his attempts to make things right had failed;
worse, they had brought death, and more death, and finally this
death, Carlyle's, and all that was left for him now was his own.

George sat for a long time. When he finally lifted
his head, his face was dry again.

Had he misjudged his duty, throughout his life? Or
had he simply been unequal to it?

It was midafternoon when he finally dragged himself
from his chair and went to get the shell casings.
 

CHAPTER 13

"We should question the bird," said Freddie
Gainer that same morning as he peered into the cage. "Parrots
talk. Could be he saw something.”

"Good idea,” said Sokolowski. "Go ahead,
Freddie. You want to take him into an interview room, or what?"

"
He didn't see anything,” said Isabella, over
the clackety-clack of her typewriter. She worked Saturday mornings
and took Wednesday afternoons off. She said it suited her. She took
karate lessons in Gibsons on Wednesday afternoons. "How do you
know?" said Freddie.

"
He'd be upset. Disturbed. Something. He's a
feeling creature.”

The parrot sat silently on his perch. Alberg was over
at the duty corporal's counter, getting the name and address of the
man who'd said he'd seen George Wilcox enter Burke's front yard at
twelve thirty. He glanced at the bird uneasily.; He didn't like the
way it cocked its head at him, staring at him through eyes like tiny
black marbles.

"
Does it ever say anything interesting?"
said Gainer.

"
I think it's very interesting that he says
anything at all,” said Isabella. She whipped a sheet of paper from
her machine and inserted a clean one. "But I admit, his
vocabulary is limited.”

The parrot gave a sudden squawk. It was a loud,
shrill sound. '

"
There,” said Isabella proudly.

"
There what?" said Sokolowski. "What
did it say?”

"
He said 'Tom.' I think that must be his name.”

"Sid," said Alberg. "It you can drag
yourself away from that damn bird for a minute .... " He went
down the hall to his office.

The parrot was Isabella's latest self-assumed
responsibility. When Gainer had delivered it to the detachment office
Tuesday afternoon, Isabella had snatched the cage from his hand and
plunked it on her desk. She then picked up her purse and hurried off
to the pet supply store, where she had a conference with the owner
and purchased from him sufficient quantities of food and vitamin
supplements to last several weeks.

Next, in Alberg's-absence, she whisked away his
coffee table and spread upon it a white cloth she had picked up from
her house. She put the table next to her desk, and the cage on the
white cloth.

Alberg retrieved his coffee table that evening,
leaving the cage on the floor. The parrot shrieked when he did this,
even though the cage was covered.

Sometime Wednesday morning he ventured out into
Isabella's domain and saw that the cage was now sitting upon
Sokolowki's table. The sergeant kept his table against the wall next
to his desk in the main office, behind the counter, and used it as a
place to drop things he'd finished with but didn't want to put away
yet. It took him several hours to realize that the table was missing,
and he was piling things up on the floor.

"
Shit!” Alberg heard him cry. "Where's my
table?”

On Thursday he and Alberg found themselves going
shopping for a card table for the parrot. "Why the hell are we
doing this, Karl?" Sokolowski complained as they drove. "What's
that parrot doing here anyway? Why don't we just turn it over to the
S.P.C.A.?"

But they couldn't do that. The parrot was part of
Carlyle Burke's legacy to George Wilcox, and Wilcox refused to decide
what he wanted done with it, except that he didn't want it in his
house and he didn't Want it given to the S.RC.A., in case they took
it into their heads after a while to have it put away.

Now Sokolowski followed Alberg into his office, which
seemed to shrink as he came in, and sat down in the black chair. It
was getting hot in there, too. The sun shone in through the window
from late morning until midafternoon, which was nice most of the time
but not in the heat of summer, and the heat of summer had begun early
this year. Alberg's shirt was sticking to his back, and the waistline
of his pants dug into him uncomfortably. He thought with dismay that
he must have put on yet more weight.

He peered out through the slats of the venetian
blind. A couple of squad cars sat in the parking lot, glinting in the
sun. Alberg's Oldsmobile was out there, too, along with Isabella's
well-used Mercury—
doesn't she ever wash that
damn thing?
he thought irritably. The road
led off through scattered groups of houses and stands of fir·and
fields cleared for strawberries or orchards or kitchen gardens, then
down the hill into the village and straight to the sea.

"
No word yet on the fishmonger, I suppose,”
said Alberg moodily, trying to spot the roof of the library.

"
You'll be the first to hear, Staff," said
the sergeant. Alberg fiddled with the cord on the blind, lessening
the glare. Then he turned from the window. "I've got another
thing or two I want you to look after.”

"Yeah? What?"

"First, check old Carlyle out on the computer.”

"For what?"

"I'm just curious, that's all,” said Alberg.
"Why doesn't anybody seem to have liked him much, why didn't he
get married until he was fifty-five, why did he never get married
again—that sort of thing. You probably won't find anything. But
have a look, would you?”

"What, you think he was a fag?" said
Sokolowski, showing more interest.

"I don't know. I'm looking for anything,
anything at all."

"Those fags carry grudges, all right. Like I
told you, I worked in Vancouver for a while, before I joined the
force. In the West End"—he shuddered, fastidiously—"they're
worse than married people, those fags. The way they bash each other
around, cut each other up.” He sounded massively disapproving.

"
His wife's name was Audrey," said Alberg.
"Burke, née, of course, Wilcox. She died in a vehicle accident,
this was about twenty-five years ago. See if you can find out what
the circumstances were.”

"
Twenty-five years ago? Come on, Staff.”

"Give it a try, Sid, okay? It happened in or
around Vancouver. The records will be around somewhere."

Sokolowski was nodding thoughtfully. "I like the
fag angle." He stood up to leave. "Tell you one thing. It
it wasn't a fag thing, and it wasn't the fish seller, it must have
been a crazy or a shitrat or two.”

"
It wasn't messy enough for crazies or shitrats,
Sid."

"
There wasn't any profit in it—except for
Wilcox and the will, and you said that surprised the hell out of
him—so it wasn't a criminal, either.”

"
Let's find the fish man,” said Alberg, "and
go from there."

He got up, straightened
his tie, and put on a light jacket. "Meanwhile, I'm off to talk
to—” He consulted a small notebook. "To Mr. Frank Erlandson.
Gotta tie up all the loose ends, Sid. I'd sure hate to trip on a
loose end.”

* * *

Frank Erlandson sat on his porch on a cushioned
wicker chair. He was a tall man with long limbs, a slight potbelly,
and an open, freclded face. When he occasionally uncrossed his legs
and recrossed them, or lifted a hand to stroke his nonexistent hair,
he moved slowly and cautiously; Alberg thought he might be
anticipating pain. He looked older than George Wilcox and was
certainly not as strong.

His widowed sister, Molly Newell, lived with him in a
house across the street and two doors up from Carlyle Burke's. She
was knitting as they talked, her hands moving the needles slowly and
awkwardly; the knuckles of her fingers were swollen. But she was
younger and more robust than her brother. She had served them iced
tea and brought one of the dining room chairs onto the porch for
Alberg before settling into a wicker chair of her own. They had
discussed the weather, and Alberg had inquired politely about the
state of Mr. Erlandson's health, which was apparently not good.

"If you could just go through it for me once
more, Mr. Erlandson," Alberg said now, taking his notebook from
his jacket pocket.

"
As I told one of your men on Wednesday
morning," said Erlandson, "I'd hardly be likely to mistake
either the date or the time, given the circumstances." He
pointed to the laurel hedge across the road. "I saw George come
walking along there, from the direction of his own place, and I saw
him go through the gate into Carlyle's front yard, and it was just a
few minutes after twelve thirty P.M.”

"I'm going to be patient, here, Frank,"
said Molly Newell to her brother, "but I'm bound to tell you,
Sergeant, that we disagree on this matter, Frank and I.”

"Yes, I understand that," said Alberg. "I
wonder, though, if I could hear Mr. Erlandson's account first, and
then yours. People often see the same things and yet make different
observations. It's very common," he told her reassuringly. She
looked at him for a moment through gold-rimmed bifocals. Her long
gray hair was done up in a neat bun at the back of her head. Her blue
eyes were brilliant against her tan; she was not smiling, and he
could see delicate white lines in the wrinkles around her eyes.

"
I'm perfectly aware of that, Sergeant, "
she said. "However, that's not the kind of thing I have in mind.
Not at all." She  lifted a hand from her knitting—Alberg
thought it was a square meant for an afghan—and waved it at her
brother. "Go on, Frank. "