Beach Strip (10 page)

I followed him. He had my flashlight, after all, and I felt safer with him than standing alone on the bridge.

“Watch yourself,” he said, and he shone the light on the ground ahead of us. I stayed well back from the edge of the canal, following a few steps behind the bridge operator. When we reached the opening in the chain-link fence, he shook his head and made the same “Tch, tch, tch” sound my grandmother used to make when reading about disasters in the newspaper.

He knelt and shone the light through the opening in the wire fence and toward the bridge supports until it reflected back from the soles of the man’s shoes. “Hey, Charlie,” the operator called. Did this mean he knew the man’s name? “Hey, asshole. Get up and get moving. The cops are on their way. I warned you about this, damn it.” Bent from the waist, he duck-walked through the opening in the fence. As he stood erect on the other side of the fence, he winced and placed a hand at the small of his back before raising the light again. “You okay?” he said. His voice had lost its commanding tone. “Have you … holy shit.”

He was standing between me and the man on the rubble, so I moved to one side to see whatever it was that made him respond that way. By the time I did, he had swung the light from the man to the bridge supports, each made of square concrete as wide and high as a refrigerator and topped with thick steel pads. The light climbed up the support directly in front of the man’s body. Unlike the others alongside it, this one was shiny and red, the blood thicker and congealed among matter at the top, where the weight of the lift bridge rested on it, and I was just understanding what this was, or what it had been, when he swung the light back to the body. This time it wasn’t the shadows, or the angle, or the
thick rubble the light illuminated. This time it was clear to me and to the bridge operator, and eventually to the police, whose sirens announced their arrival on the lift bridge above us, that the man was not only dead but headless.

“O
kay, okay, okay.” I kept repeating the words like a wind-up doll, although nothing was okay. Everything was crazy. Everything was out of control. A man who had spoken to me less than an hour ago was dead, his head crushed into a thin film of jelly beneath hundreds of tons of steel when the bridge descended. I needed time for my brain to catch up with the rest of the world.

I was in the back seat of a police car, my hands fluttering in front of my face. Tom Grychuk, for that was the name of the bridge operator, sat next to me, staring at the lake, his chin on his hand. Flashing red, yellow and blue lights from a dozen or so cars, ambulances and trucks crowding the parking lot next to the lift bridge lit up the area like a misguided bush party.

In the front passenger seat of the car, a detective waited for me to finish stuttering. He had introduced himself as Sergeant Harold Hayashida. I remembered Gabe mentioning his name. Gabe thought he was one of the better detectives. When Hayashida arrived ten minutes ago, he looked as though nothing much would excite him, and when he returned from inspecting the body beneath the bridge, he looked more sombre but still not surprised. Beside him, a uniformed patrolman sat at the wheel, writing on a wire-bound pad.

“Okay,” I said one more time. “You’re telling me that this guy, this man under the bridge, you think he committed suicide? By
sticking his head on top of that piece of concrete and waiting for the bridge to come down and crush it like an egg?”

“I’m not saying that’s what he did,” Hayashida said. “I’m saying that’s what it
looks
like he did.”

“How …” I shook my head and started again. “How crazy does somebody have to be to do that?”

“You’d be surprised.” It was the patrolman behind the wheel. All I had seen of him so far was the back of his neck. “Last month, out near Grimsby? Had a guy lie on the railroad track, right in front of the wheel of a boxcar on a freight train waiting for a signal to change.” He twisted to look at me. The back of his neck was his best feature. “Lot of people who live near the tracks, they saw this guy. Couple of them ran out to stop him. Pulled on his legs and everything, but he hung on. Other people tried running up to warn the engineers, but the train was half a mile long, and before they could get there the thing started moving. Took his head off clean as a butcher’s knife.” He turned back to his report.

“I talked to him,” I said. “Or at least, he talked to me. Just before he did it.”

“Did you see him?” Hayashida said. “The man you spoke to?”

“No,” I replied. “I told you I didn’t.”

“So it might have been someone else.” Hayashida turned to Tom Grychuk. “How often are you here?”

Grychuk sounded as though it were an effort to speak. “Six nights a week. Six to midnight, every night except Sunday.”

“You’re sure the man under the bridge is the one you’ve been warning away the last few days?”

Grychuk answered without taking his eyes from the lake or his hand from his chin. “Looked like him. I mean, same shirt, I recognized that. Same size. Not a big guy.”

“You called him Charlie,” I said to Grychuk.

“Called who Charlie?” the detective asked.

“The man. Under the bridge. He called him Charlie. Did you know him?”

Grychuk looked at me as though I had revealed some personal secret about him. “I knew him to see him, that’s all.”

“But you called him Charlie.”

“That’s what I do when I’m pissed off at somebody and I don’t know their name. I call them Charlie.” He looked at Hayashida. “I don’t know his name.”

“What is his name?” I asked the detective. “Who is he?”

Hayashida thought that over for a moment before looking down at his notebook. “The ID in his wallet says he was Wayne Weaver Honeysett. Shows an address on Hutchings Lane—”

“That’s near here,” I said. “Down the beach strip, near Tuffy’s, isn’t it?”

Hayashida nodded. “Somebody’s there now, searching for next of kin.” He looked at Grychuk. “How old would you say this man was, the one you kept chasing away from the bridge support?”

Grychuk shrugged. “Maybe fifty. Around there.”

“Height?”

“Five five, five six.”

“Weight?”

“He was skinny. I’d guess 130 pounds. Maybe less.”

Hayashida nodded. “It fits.” He looked at me. “Does that sound like anyone you know?”

“No,” I answered.

“But he knew you. You said he knew your name, and that he knew what happened to your husband.”

“Maybe he knew who killed Gabe.”

“What happened was, Gabe killed himself.” It was the thick-necked cop.

“That’s what you people think,” I said.

“I’ve seen the report, Mrs. Marshall,” Hayashida said. “In fact, I worked on it myself, the forensics and all. It looks pretty clear.”

“You knew Gabe.”

“Yes, I did. We didn’t work together, but—”

“Do you think he could kill himself like that?”

Hayashida took a deep breath, scratched his head, and smiled without humour. “One thing you get used to in this job is surprise. You get so used to it that after a while, nothing surprises you, if that makes sense.” He looked at me, the smile gone. “But you’re right. Gabe Marshall was maybe the last guy I could imagine killing himself.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for that. Now how about this. You’re saying you believe my husband killed himself less than a week ago, and now this poor man under the bridge, who told me that he knew what
really
happened to Gabe, because he saw it all, you’re saying he killed himself too?”

“You don’t know it’s him.” It was the uniformed cop behind the wheel, watching me in the rear-view mirror. “You talked to some guy, but you never saw him. Doesn’t mean it’s the one who put his head under the bridge, let it come down on him.”

“Hey,” I said, “I know it was him, and I know he damn well didn’t kill himself. And neither did my husband.”

That was too much for the cop, who had the bulk and attitude of a bear, and he turned and pointed a finger at me as though it were a weapon. “Look, lady,” he said, “you’re gonna have to stop jumping to conclusions and shooting your mouth off about things you know nothing about—”

Hayashida set a hand on the cop’s arm, but not before I exploded at him. “
You arrogant bastard!
You didn’t see my husband dead on a blanket, you didn’t talk to the guy under the bridge, and you didn’t stumble over a headless body, either. I’ll jump to any conclusion I damn well want to, and I’m not a lady, you prick—
I am Gabe Marshall’s widow!
”

I demanded that Hayashida open the door for me. I needed to breathe fresh air. Once he did, I walked quickly away from the
car, my hands clenched into fists. The cop was saying something to Hayashida about getting me back in the car, but nobody was getting me back into that car, and nobody was going to talk to me that way.

“Mrs. Marshall.” Hayashida had followed me. “I think we’ve got all we need now. Would you like a ride home?”

“No,” I said. “But maybe you can walk with me. It’s only two blocks.”

“YOU LIKE LIVING DOWN HERE?”
Hayashida was beside me, walking past the parking lot that had been the amusement park. Flames from the steel companies flared across the bay, and the transport trucks kept rumbling on the high bridges over our heads.

“I love it,” I said. “Gabe loved it too.”

“Some of us couldn’t believe it, about your husband. Cops have been known to do that. What Gabe did, I mean. But it’s usually uniformed guys, younger cops who start drinking too much or let the job get to them. Or older guys who’ve got nothing more to look forward to than a skinny pension. But not a guy like Gabe Marshall.”

“Why not a guy like Gabe Marshall?”

“Because he always seemed, I don’t know. Too grounded, I guess. Relaxed, contented. Liked his work, liked his life. That’s who he was at work. What was he like at home?”

“He was relaxed, contented, liked his work, and liked his life. That’s why he didn’t kill himself.”

“But he did.”

“Bullshit.” I started to cross Beach Boulevard.

“He did, Mrs. Marshall.”

“You can believe it.” Hayashida had fallen behind, and now he was walking briskly to catch up. “The whole damn police force can believe it, but I don’t, and I never will.”

“Mrs. Marshall—”

I had picked up my pace. Hayashida was still behind me. “That man, back there under the bridge, was going to tell me something. I know it. His words scared me so damn much I came home, and when I went back not thirty minutes later, he was dead. And you’re telling me that he killed himself too?”

I was at the foot of the steps leading to the front door. I began looking for my keys.

Hayashida stopped at the end of my walk and called my name again.

“What?” I turned to look at him, the key in my hand.

“Somebody will probably want to talk to you tomorrow. It won’t be me. Is there anything I can do for you now?”

“Yeah, there is.” I pushed the key in the lock and twisted it. “Walk through my house and make sure there’s no man inside, would you?”

“I HELPED PREPARE THE REPORT.”
Hayashida was sitting across from me at the kitchen table, both hands around a cup of black coffee. “About Gabe.”

“The one that says he committed suicide.”

“And the forensics report too, the lab tests. They all fit.” He stared into the coffee as he spoke. “He’s alone, some witnesses arrive within minutes of hearing the shot, the gun is there, recently fired, the coroner did a paraffin test and found gunshot residue on Gabe’s hand, and the bullet … forensics confirms it came from his gun.”

“How do they know that?”

“You compare the one that … the one that killed Gabe …”

“The one they dug out of his brain.”

“Yes. Look, we worked on the forensics, Mel Holiday and I. We took the sample here, completed the form, sent it off to the lab
in Toronto—and those guys are good, by the way. They compare both projectiles, put them under a microscope—”

“And match up the rifling marks. I know all that stuff. I watched
Law & Order.
But nobody explained how a guy, and I mean Gabe, winds up with his gun in his hand and naked, out on the beach.”

Hayashida looked embarrassed. “There have been some ideas kicked around about him being naked there.”

“Because he was waiting for me to show up and get naked with him. Do you want pictures, or will a simple Anglo-Saxon word do?”

“That’s not important.”

“Yes, it is. Who waits on a blanket in the bushes for his wife, his girlfriend, his lover, whoever, to come along, with a loaded gun in his hand—a gun that Gabe wouldn’t even put together in the house? Gabe would take the damn thing apart in the car and carry it into the house like that, and put the ammunition clip back when he was in the car again. He hated carrying a loaded weapon, on duty or off. And he never carried one off duty.”

“I know, I know.” Hayashida nodded his head in sympathy. “But you heard Sadowsky back there—”

“Who?”

“Constable Sadowsky. Serge Sadowsky. We were sitting in his patrol car. You heard him say that people who are determined to do what Gabe did, they’re unpredictable. They become obsessive, they change their patterns of behaviour.” He glanced at his watch, took a long swallow of coffee, and stood up. “It’s tough, I know,” he said, looking at me. “I’ve never gone through it, having somebody close to me kill themselves. But I’ve been there when we told their wives or husbands or kids or whoever, ‘Hey, your mom or your dad or your kid committed suicide,’ and they usually don’t believe it. How can they? You know what they say? They say the same things you’re saying. ‘He didn’t do it, he couldn’t do that, he seemed so happy.’ That’s what they say.
Eventually they come around, because they spot the pattern or see the clues they hadn’t recognized before.”

I stood up and followed him out of the kitchen toward the front door. “Thanks,” I said. “For checking out the house for me. Did you look under the bed upstairs?”

Hayashida grew serious. “No.” He began to climb the stairs, rather eagerly, it seemed to me. “You want me to?”

“Forget it,” I said. “There’s so much dust that anybody hiding there would’ve choked to death by now. And thanks for talking about Gabe. I’m the only person who doesn’t believe he committed suicide, and it’s taking me a while to accept it.”

Hayashida took a step toward the front door, then looked back at me. “Actually, you’re not the only one.”

“Who else?”

He looked away, considering the question. Then, “You know Mel Holiday?”

“Of course I know Mel.” Of course I screwed Mel, was how the words echoed in my head.

“He’s starting to feel like you do. He’s telling some of the guys at Central that maybe Gabe didn’t kill himself, that maybe we’re not looking hard enough to prove he didn’t. He thinks Gabe was killed by somebody Gabe was investigating, or maybe somebody Gabe had put away or had charged. Keeps saying we’ve gotta keep digging. He says we’re overlooking something, somebody, that Gabe had been investigating on his own. A drug dealer they found shot in an alley, a couple of guys running a car theft ring, maybe Mike what’s his name, he’s with the Mafia. He’s telling Walter Freeman, you know Walter? He’s telling Walter to start looking at that.”

“And nobody believes him?” I leaned against the stair railing. “Mel’s trying to get you guys to listen to him, and nobody believes him?”

“It’s like …” Hayashida began. Then, “It’s not impossible, I guess, but there has to be proof, and so far there’s nothing. Just
his opinion and yours. But I’ll hand it to Mel, he keeps digging. He’s following the forensics, asking for more tests, and pissing off Walter Freeman. You okay?”

I told him I was okay.

He pointed to the deadbolt. “Make sure that’s in place.”

“HELLO?”

It had taken six rings, but I was damned if I was going to sleep without talking to him. “Mel?”

He paused as though trying to decide if that was his name. “Josie?”

“Yeah.” I wanted to hear his voice. “You know a detective named Hayashida?”

“What about him? Jesus, Josie, it’s nearly three o’clock.”