The Suspect - L R Wright (17 page)

"
Finally," said Mrs. Harris, "I went
back into the living room. Where the rug is. I just ignored it this
time. Got firm with myself. Steeled myself, you might say. I shut my
eyes and thought hard and opened them again—and there it was. An
empty space where there didn't used to be one. It isn't important,
though, I suppose. It wasn't anything valuable."

"Tell me about the empty space," said
Alberg, studying his hands clasped on his desk.

"There used to be two things there, exactly the
same. Souvenirs, he said they were, from the war. He must have meant
World War Two. He couldn't have been in World War One. Well, I
guess—he was eighty-five, born in 1899—I guess he could have got
in on the last days of World War One. I would have thought he'd be
too old for World War Two, starting as it did in 1939 and going on to
1945. That makes him forty when it started and forty·six when it
ended. I would have thought that was too old. But anyway, they were
souvenirs of the war, that's what he said."

"What were they?" said Alberg.

"I don't have any idea."

"
What did they look like?" said Alberg,
patiently.

"
Oh, about this tall," she said, measuring
the air with her hands. "They stood about so tall, a foot,
maybe. Not too heavy, I remember. I had to lift them up to dust under
them. They were hollow. "

"How big across, would you say?" said
Alberg.

She measured again. "About like that.
Maybe—what, three inches? About like that."

"Would you recognize them if you saw them
again?"

"
Oh, yes, certainly," she said. "They
had a peculiar design on them: a big flower, something like that.
Ugly things they were, that's my opinion. It's funny they're gone,
isn't it?" She leaned forward. "Could they be valuable, do
you think?"

"I doubt it, Mrs. Harris,” said Alberg. "They
sound like shell casings. They were a dime a dozen around here, after
the war. Lots of people have them."

"
I've got a couple," said Sokolowski. "My
father got them. Had them made into bookends.”

Mrs. Harris sat back, disappointed. "Oh. Still,
it's odd they're gone, isn't it?"

"Maybe he got rid of them himself,” said
Sokolowski. "Just got sick of looking at them and pitched them
out. "

"
Oh," said Mrs. Harris. "Well. Anyway,
that's all that's missing, as far as I can tell, and who could tell
better. And I went through that house so concentrated I was shaking
when I came out."

Sokolowski saw her out and came back to Alberg's
office. "I think there's some Greek blood in her someplace,"
he said. He sat down. "So what did I tell you. He used something
he found in the house, right?"

"Yeah," said Alberg. "It looks like
it.”

"He bashes him, then takes the weapon away with
him.”

"And its mate, too," said Alberg. After a
minute he said, "How are we doing on that guy?"

"We've found lots of people up and down the
coast know him by sight, or his truck. People tell us he lives in the
bush, all right—he's an old hippie, they think. Name of Derek
something. You know these people, Karl. They hop from one thing to
another. They're always selling something, everything from handmade
pots to Okanagan apples to honey to fish. And they don't work
according to any schedule. Just whenever they've got something to
peddle. But we'll get him. No word from the mainland, so he's got to
be around here somewhere.”

Isabella appeared in the doorway. "Have you
called the vet?"

Alberg rubbed the Band-Aid on his right hand. "No,
I have not called the vet. I am not going to call the vet."

"
I'll call him," said Isabella, and
retreated.

"Jesus," said
Alberg. "I'm going out for lunch.”

* * *

He drove down the hill into the village, his arm out
the open window, preoccupied. He was trying to imagine Carlyle Burke
sitting in his rocking chair, looking out at the sea, while somebody
sneaked up behind him to bonk him on the head with one of his own
shell casings.

He tried to imagine the conversation that might have
preceded the attack.

He tried to imagine the attacker, to put a face on
him, to find his shape, his substance, and the nature of his fury.
 

CHAPTER 17

George Wilcox sat outside in his canvas chair until
it got dark.

He sat quietly, with his hands in his lap, and
watched the sun lower itself behind Vancouver Island. The sun was
much larger than the inch-high mountains on the horizon. For a while
it appeared that it was going to sit all night on the ground behind
them, letting most of itself continue to light up the sky. But then
it began to settle lower, and lower, and finally it was gone. George
looked straight above him and saw faint stars. He continued to sit,
wrapped in his gray cardigan, watching the western sky fade. The bees
had gone back to their hives for the night and most of the birds,
too, were still. Lights went on in the houses next to Georges. Quite
early they went out, in the house of one of his neighbors, but
continued to burn in the other house. George began to feel cool and
went inside to put on his pea jacket; he was already wearing his
gardening shoes, which had thick rubber soles and were old and
comfortable.

Finally his other neighbors put their lights out,
too. He hadn't gone to the hospital today, he realized. It was the
first Monday in six months that he hadn't gone to the hospital.
George got up from the canvas chair and went to his toolshed for a
spade and two burlap bags. He spread one of them on the lawn next to
his vegetable garden, carefully dug up the zucchini and moved it with
its root ball of heavy moist earth onto the burlap. He dug deeper and
unearthed the shell casings. He shook dirt from them and wiped more
away with his hands. He wrapped them in the second burlap bag, making
sure there was burlap between them so they wouldn't clank around.
Next he scooped some earth into the hole in his garden, and carefully
replanted the zucchini, brushing dirt from its leaves as he did so.
The light from his kitchen window shone upon him as he worked. He
shook the dirt from the first burlap bag into the garden, then put
the burlap-wrapped shell casings inside it and pulled taut the
strings. He went inside and filled a watering can and watered the
zucchini. Then he washed his hands and turned off the kitchen light
and went back outside, closed the door, and locked it.

George put his keys in his pocket, picked up the
burlap bag, and adjusted it over his right shoulder. He walked down
the  lawn to the beach and turned toward Carlyle's house.

The moon was full, and_it
caused the rocks on the beach to cast large shadows, which George
sometimes mistook for more rocks. He went slowly, frequently stopping
to shift the bag to his other shoulder. He didn't bother to look up
at the houses he passed, in some of which lights still bumed. If
somebody opened a door and called out to him, "Hey, who are you?
What are you doing out there?" he wouldn't stop but he'd say
loudly, "It's George Wilcox, and I'm going to throw Carlyle
Burke's shell casings into the drink." He didn't care. Christ.
He just couldn't have them contaminating his garden. Enough was
enough.

* * *

Alberg was in his living room. He had called the cat,
and gotten no response, but had automatically put fresh milk in its
bowl anyway. Now, restless and irritable, he was staring into the
fireplace, in which there was no fire.

He was thinking about the unknown assailant who had
killed Carlyle Burke, and about Cassandra, and about his daughters.
He wondered whether Cassandra was in the habit of opening her door to
strangers. He thought she probably was. She never locked her car, and
he had noticed when he drove her home last night that she'd just
opened her front door and walked right in. He couldn't believe it.
Surely what happened to Burke should have taught her that even in
Sechelt caution ought to be a way of life.

He got up to refill his glass. He'd been reading
lately about attacks on young women at the University of British
Columbia. There were special campus buses to take female students
from the library to brightly lit city bus stops. But even that wasn't
enough. Some "jerk shitrat," to quote Sokolowski, was
attacking women in the library now, right in the stacks.

Alberg sat down heavily, worrying about his
daughters. The campus at the University of Calgary was smaller; did
that make it safer? He had drilled it into them for years: Keep your
doors locked, always secure your car, carry your key ring with the
keys sticking out from between your fingers, walk in light, lock all
doors as soon as you're in your vehicle, run, scream .... Maybe
they'd like to get jobs in Vancouver for the summer. He would suggest
this. If they liked the idea, maybe he could help them find work.
Maybe they could spend weekends with him, and he could teach them how
to sail.

He wondered if they had boyfriends, serious ones, who
might screw up his plans. Should he write the girls directly? Or
should be contact their mother first, sound her out about their
situations?

He pulled from his pocket a letter he'd received that
day from his younger daughter, Diana, the one with long straight hair
and a grin like a meteor. His daughters were taking intersessional
courses; it worried him that they were trying to do too much, right
after completing a full winter session.

Dear Pop
, he read.
Life is frantic there days, frantic, but I've
only got one more exam and then it'll be all over until September.
Geology. The worst of them all. I was really glad when I got my
schedule that it came last. I'd have more time to study for it,
right? But now here I am, I've got to write the damn thing tomorrow
and of course I've put it off and tonight the only time I've got
left. It's not as important to me as the other two so I studied like
mad for them and now I'm not ready for I geology. It's not important
to me hut I've got to have it, and I'll just DIE if I fail it, I'll
he so FURIOUS if I have to take the damn stuff again next year. And
now here I am writing to you instead qf using the last hours
remaining to me. Sigh.

I with I could talk to you face to face, Pop. This
letter-writing stuff is the shits. When are you coming out here???
Don't you bave some perpetrator to chase across tbe Rockies?
Seriously, I hope you're happy and not bored in that place. I'm sure
its very pretty, though,
it looks like
it from tbe pictures you sent, and you must bave friends by now,
right?

I love you and miss you. Wish me luck in geology.
I know you would, if you were here, and you 'd give me a pep talk,
too. I probably never told you, but I used to like your pep talks.
Loves
Diana

P.S. Janey's only taking two courses in
intersession, and she sailed through her damn exams without a ripple
og fear. She keeps trying to give me advice. She calls it sisterly
love; I call it condescension.
P.P.S.
Mom is fine. We saw her last month, on the long weekend.

He wished he could hug her, and smooth the hair away
from her face, and study her face for signs of worry or weariness,
and find none, and send her back to her books with a kiss on the
cheek and words of faith and confidence—a "pep talk.” It was
good to know she liked his pep talks, though he wouldn't have
described them that way. The phrase implied a stalwart
self-confidence he had never felt when trying to help his daughters.

Her letter had been mailed the day of her exam; it
was over, now. He would call her tonight, to see how she'd done.

He tried to remember what he'd been doing while she
was writing it, hunched over her paper in the University of Calgary
gym. She had probably marched in there wearing an old pair of sweats,
he thought, smiling, no makeup, her hair tied back in a careless
ponytail, nails bitten to the quick, head swimming, filled with
irrelevancies. She would sit down, drop her huge denim bag on the
floor, and clutch her forehead. It would take several seconds for her
eyes to actually focus on the first question.

If she'd written it Friday moming—he got up and
went tothe kitchen to freshen his drink—that would have been, let's
see. . . He thought about it idly as he dropped ice cubes into his
glass. He was at the office on Friday, going through the paperwork on
the Burke homicide. There hadn't been much there, just the autopsy
report. Then he'd had lunch with Cassandra.

If Diana had written the exam in the afternoon, he
thought, adding a small amount of scotch to the ice in his glass,
then he had been at the funeral, or maybe in the library....

He went back into the living room and stood looking
out the window. It was dark, now, except for the splash of light near
his front gate, from the streetlamp.

Cassandra. She made him feel good. And she tasted
wonderful. He smiled, thinking about her ....

And after the library, he'd gone to George Wilcox's
house. That was late afternoon, but Diana could have been writing her
exam then, too, while he was in Wilcox's house ....