Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) (6 page)

There were two cars inside the garage: a bronze Mercedes and Nancy’s shiny black BMW cabriolet. The Mercedes had a vanity licence plate that read, HIS TOY. A third car, another bronze Merc, same year and model, was parked at a careless angle in the driveway. The plate read, HER TOY.

The forecourt — what Billy thought of as the front yard — was paved with interlocking pink brick. There were a number of small trees and shrubs in oversized clay pots, each plant individually lit by a cleverly sited spotlight.

The house was low, very modern. Stained wood siding and small aluminium windows. Billy thought it must be pretty dark in there, and that it was weird they had so few windows in the house when the whole damn garage was glass. As if the cars had a need to look outside but the people didn’t. Or, taking a minute to think about it… The people who owned the cars wanted to show them off but didn’t want anybody to know who owned them… Then what was the fucking point? Billy shrugged, giving it up.

The front door was sunk deeply into the house, in a kind of alcove about fifteen feet wide. A fancy double iron gate prevented anyone from getting to the door. The wattage put out by the security floods was bright enough to read a goddamn comic book, had Billy thought to bring one along.

Billy stepped up to a small window on the right-hand side of the house. The blinds were drawn. All he could see was a faint reflection of his own face.

He followed a concrete path around the side of the house. No windows, not even one. Security spots placed under the eaves laid overlapping pools of light on the pathway. But the neighbouring house had no side windows either. It was crazy. He was right out there in the open but there was no way anyone could see him because of the lack of windows and the fact that the hedge and concrete wall hid him from the street.

The path sloped steeply downhill. The house loomed above him. It was a hell of a lot bigger than it looked from the front. He placed the palm of his hand, fingers splayed wide, against the wooden siding. He felt, or at least thought he felt, a barely perceptible vibration — as if the house was a huge sleeping beast.

He continued down the path, found himself in the backyard. There was a weird effect down at the far end. Steven Spielberg stuff. Pale mist, a soft, curling vapour. Lights dancing in the air. He paused, giving his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. It was a swimming pool. A goddamn heated swimming pool and the dancing lights were the subterranean lights of the pool reflected in a fence made of glass panels.

Billy raised his eyes, looked beyond the pool. There was nothing out there. No more houses. Just a huge inky black expanse of nothingness and then, miles and miles away, a sweep of tiny glittering lights. He realized the blackness he was staring at was the ocean. Nancy Crown lived right on the water. Jesus! Billy’s mind raced. He tried to calculate how much money it would cost to own a great big slab-sided house on the water. To own
waterfront
. And a glass garage and a matched pair of Mercedes Benzes and a fat black BMW ragtop. And Christ knows what else. Millions, probably. And he’d dinged her for eighteen bucks and a handful of loose change. With his back to the house, he hunched his shoulders and lit a cigarette. Then he moved past the steaming pool, across thirty feet of electrically-heated slate flagstones to the wind-break of glass at the far end of the yard. The lights of the city, bright and glittering, were off to his right. He pulled hard on the cigarette, sucked smoke deep into his lungs, exhaled slowly. And then glanced down.

His stomach lurched. The ocean was forty or maybe fifty feet below him, and it was a sheer drop.

Billy had a thing about heights. Turned his legs to jelly. He moved away from the glass wall, squatted down on his haunches and fought to get his breathing under control.

The house was three stories high, each level set back from the one below it. There were balconies on all three levels, and through the rising mist from the pool Billy could see matching sets of ghostly white patio furniture on each balcony. Except for the concrete posts and beams that supported the structure, the back of the house was made entirely of huge sheets of plate glass.

No curtains had been pulled. It looked to Billy as if every light in the joint was burning. The house had an open floor plan, to take advantage of the view. From where he was sitting at the back of the yard, Billy could see most of the ground floor, about half of the second floor and a little bit of the top floor. There was no sign of life anywhere inside the house. No movement and not a sound.

Despite the three cars parked out front, he had a hunch nobody was home. He tilted his watch towards the house, studied the luminous dials. Almost four o’clock in the morning, all the fucking lights blazing away… Maybe something went wrong with the gas stove and she was in there lying on the kitchen floor, half-dead, dying…

Billy pictured himself doing a B&E. Picking up one of the wrought-iron chairs over by the pool and tossing it through a window. Finding her lying there with her skirt up around her hips… Yeah, sure. He flicked the cigarette butt over the glass wall and into the ocean. A car sped past on the road out front, tires whining on the asphalt. Billy tried to imagine the view on a sunny day. Like something out of a magazine.

Maybe she was alone, maybe there was no one else in the house. Her husband had to be a pretty heavy guy, to afford a place like that. Probably had to do a lot of travelling. He could be anywhere. Toronto or New York or Hong Kong. That’d explain the lights. Nancy was nervous, frightened of being alone. Billy stood up. He walked around the pool and sat down in one of the webbed deck chairs. The metal frame was bitterly cold, but the chair was more comfortable than it looked, and the night air was warmed by the steaming water. He lit another cigarette, stretched out his legs, thought about what he should do.

Assume the house had a security system.

Not outside, because down here by the beach they’d get all sorts of birds, raccoons… The alarm would be going off every ten seconds. But inside, there’d be something real sophisticated. Expensive stuff, top of the line. Motion detectors. Infrared. Maybe a direct line to a security company. Shit Billy knew existed, from talking to a guy he knew who did a little burgling, and also from watching TV. Stuff he’d have to watch out for, if he went inside, but, really, he had no idea how to handle.

Sitting there by the pool, the steam falling on his jacket and turning to frost, Billy smoked the cigarette down to his fingers and then flipped the butt into the pool.

Case the joint, that’s what he’d have to do. Case the joint. Figure a way in and a way out.

The top floor was where he wanted to go. Because that’s where the bedrooms would be.

Billy imagined Nancy Crown lying on her back on white silk sheets, mirrors all around, her naked body reflected from a thousand different angles.

He wondered what her husband was like, what kind of guy he’d be. A what, stockbroker? Some fat, sweaty jerk who was always shooting off his mouth, always needed a clean shirt and a shave.

Billy lit a fresh cigarette.

An accountant. Accountants handled other people’s money and some of it stuck to their fingers. They knew how to make money make money. He pictured a skinny guy with wire-frame glasses, pink cheeks.

But what if he was, say, a crook? Not corporate, white-collar crime, either. Maybe a big dope dealer or somebody who was into gambling. Heavy. Well connected. The kind of guy who’d have Billy killed and the next morning not even remember doing it?

Nah, that was bullshit.

But the point was, Nancy Crown’s husband could be anybody. A gun nut, packed a .45 around the house and was just itching to blow somebody away.

All Billy knew for sure was that to own a house like that, you had to be rich. And if you were rich, chances were pretty good that the money you owned had belonged to a whole lot of other people, and you had taken it away from them, one way or the other.

So he was probably in over his head and he ought to get out of there. Right now, right this minute. Before the rich, powerful, ruthless son of a bitch who was Nancy Crown’s husband hauled his ass out of bed to take a whiz and happened to look out the window.

Billy pushed himself out of the metal chair. He went over to the lip of the pool and knelt down and trailed his fingers across the surface of the water. So warm, so soft.

What he needed to do was distance himself. Clear his head so he could think straight, work out all the angles, possibilities.

He stared at the house and thought about how she might look. Baby-doll pyjamas? Or was she naked between the sheets? He imagined her lying on her side, the curve of her hip, the sweeter curve of her ass. Mist rose from the pool and vanished in the freezing night air and Billy let his mind focus on Nancy Crown, imagined her this way and that way, in all the poses he could remember from all the magazines he had ever read.

He smoked the last of his cigarettes down to the filter and tossed the butt into the pool. Then he stood up and stared out across the harbour, miles and miles of cold black water.

She was almost close enough to touch. There was nothing between them but half a dozen quick strides and a thin panel of glass.

It drove him crazy, just thinking about it.

Chapter 7

A few flakes of snow — or maybe it was ash from a distant chimney — drifted down from a slate-gray sky.

Inspector Homer Bradley leaned back in his dark green leather chair. He put his feet up on his desk, used the toe of a polished black loafer to nudge aside the carved cedar box in which he kept his expensive Cuban cigars. The three silver crowns on his right shoulder gleamed in the light from the fluorescents.

He waved the Kenny Lee file at Willows. “Not a lot here, Jack. What else have you got?”

“Not much,” said Willows. He glanced at Parker but she was looking out the window, peering over the top of the adjoining building, watching the snow fall into the harbour. Due to the influence of the ocean, the city’s climate was fairly mild. It rarely snowed more than two or three times during a winter, but this year the mountains on the North Shore were glistening and white.

“You talked to Lee’s wife?” Bradley corrected himself, “I mean, his widow?”

Willows nodded. “She couldn’t tell us a thing.”

Bradley picked up the file, flipped it open and read briefly. “He disappeared when?”

“January first,” said Parker. “Didn’t come home from work.”

Bradley studied the top photograph in the open folder that lay on his desk. Lee had a narrow, unlined face. He was fifty-seven years old. Bradley would have guessed his age at about forty-five. He glanced out the window. The snow, if that’s what it was, was much thicker now, big fat raggedy flakes drifting straight down out of the sky. It deadened the sounds of traffic. The office was warm, the only sound a faint hissing from the overhead lights.

Willows said, “It would help if we had someone on the case who spoke Cantonese.”

“Andy Wah’s working traffic. I’ve asked for a reassignment.” Bradley swung his feet off the desk. He flipped open the lid of the carved cedar box and selected a cigar. He used a pair of tiny gold-plated clippers to delicately chop the end off of the cigar and said, “You come up with a cause of death yet?”

“Maybe this time tomorrow. Kirkpatrick’s having a little trouble thawing out the body.”

“But it was murder, you’re sure about that?”

Parker said, “We found an eighteen-inch length of copper wire outside the gardens, on the boulevard. The wire had been tied in a figure-eight pattern. The knots were still intact — it had been cut. There was some blood. O positive. Lee’s type. We checked with his doctor.”

“You did, huh.” Bradley fired up a big wooden kitchen match, waited until the flame had settled and then lit his cigar. He dropped the burning match in a used coffee cup, blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling, sighed contentedly.

Parker continued. “Now that the ice is beginning to melt, it’s obvious that Lee has massive bruises and lacerations on his wrists and ankles that are consistent with his being tightly bound for an extended period of time.”

“It’s almost certain,” said Willows, “that he was kidnapped. It could be the kidnappers communicated with his family. Even ordered Mrs Lee to tell Tommy Wilcox he’d come back home, was okay. The reason we didn’t get much out of her is because she has a heart condition and had been heavily sedated by the family doctor.”

“Wonderful.”

“Kirkpatrick thinks Lee was dead at least twenty-four hours before his body was dumped in the pond. But so far, there’s no way of knowing how soon he died after he was snatched.”

Bradley studied the texture and density of the ash on the end of his cigar. “You interviewed the people Lee worked with?”

“Some of them.”

“Did he have any business partners?”

“He was the paper’s sole owner. His father started the business in nineteen-thirteen.”

“Father still alive?”

Willows shook his head. “He died five years ago. But according to the staff, Lee was running things long before then.”

“Who inherits?”

“The wife, his son and daughter.”

“Figure any of them might’ve bumped him off?”

Parker said, “I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“The daughter’s thirteen years old. The son’s at Harvard. Now that his father’s dead, he’ll probably have to come home.” Bradley said, “And the grieving widow would probably have a heart attack if she tried to waste him, so the whole damn family’s in the clear.” He tipped ash into the coffee cup. “Did Lee have any pressing gambling debts?”

“Not that we know of.”

“The kid in Boston, he might know something.”

Willows nodded. “He’s flying out for the funeral. We’ll talk to him.”

“Be nice to get this one solved, Jack. You touch base with the Asian Crimes Squad?”

“Claire talked to Sergeant Montecino.”

“And?”

Parker said, “Except for that case about five years ago, the gangs have stayed away from kidnapping. Nobody knows why. Extortion, yes. But body-snatching, no.”

Bradley tipped about a dollar’s worth of cigar ash into his ashtray. There were four men of Chinese descent on the Vancouver police force. None of them had worked undercover. The Chinese community was too tightly-knit, and the work too dangerous. The Asian gangs were hitting the front pages at least once a week. Worried parents were sending their kids across town to West Side schools to stop the gangs from recruiting their children. Bradley had several unsolved gang-related murders on his hands, one of them almost two years old. Community relations, never good, were rapidly deteriorating. Another dead-end case and the chief would be after his ass.

“Know what this cigar cost?”

“No idea,” said Parker.

“Jack?”

“A nickel?”

Bradley snorted, spewing smoke. “Seven dollars. Can you believe it! I first started smoking the things five, maybe six years ago. At the time, you could buy ’em in that cigar store down in Gastown for two bucks apiece, six for ten dollars. I was a staff sergeant, married and supporting a family. In the course of a day, I’d smoke three of the suckers, never even think about it. And I’d
enjoy
them, because I could
afford
them. Now the cigars are three times as expensive, but I can still afford them because I got promoted and I make more money.” He waved the cigar in the air, making thin donuts of smoke. “But I’m not enjoying this particular cigar one little bit. Know why?”

“Why?” said Parker.

“Because there’s a killer out there, some wise-ass with a garden hose who thinks he’s real cute. And I’m not going to enjoy anything very much until we nail his ass to the courthouse wall.” Bradley gave them a hard look. “Got it?”

“We’re motivated as hell, Inspector.”

“Good.”

*

“What’d you think of Bradley’s pep talk?” Parker said as she and Willows hurried across the alley behind 312 Main, picked their way through rutted, grease-streaked slush and into the reverberating depths of the police parking lot.

“I’ve heard better.”

Willows had pulled an unmarked Ford Fairlane from the motor pool. The car was parked two floors beneath ground level. They walked side by side down the concrete ramp. A patrol car squealed around the corner behind them. The car swung wide, and the uniformed cop behind the wheel leaned on the horn. Willows grabbed Parker by the elbow and pulled her out of the way. The cop winked at them as the car shot past. It was a game, like it or not, that everybody played.

The Fairlane was parked at the far end of the third level. Willows unlocked Parker’s door and then walked around to the far side of the car, climbed in. Parker fastened her safety belt as Willows turned the key. The engine kicked over and the exhaust vented blue smoke.

Vice busted drug dealers and confiscated their shiny new Porsches, BMWs and Corvettes, but the city in its wisdom auctioned the cars off, instead of letting the department keep the vehicles for its own use. Sometimes Willows contemplated a move to Miami Beach, where it never snowed and hardly ever rained, and homicide dicks wore thousand-dollar silk suits and rode in style.

He put the Ford in gear and started up the concrete incline towards ground level.

“Where we headed, Jack?”

“Starlite Films.” Willows braked at the alley. He checked to make sure there was no oncoming traffic and made a left turn. “With your looks, haven’t you ever thought about being a movie star?”

Parker rolled down her window. A blast of cold wet air rushed through the car.

“Hey, what’re you doing!”

“Getting a breath of fresh air, Jack.”

Starlite Films was located in a squat brick building directly across the street from the Sun Yat-Sen Gardens. There was metered parking on the street, a parking lot next to the building. There were seven spaces but only three of them were occupied. Willows parked the Ford next to a shiny black Jeep Wagoneer, flipped down the sun visor so the plasticized white and black card reading POLICE VEHICLE was clearly visible. He and Parker got out of the car, locked it, and walked across the lot and into the building. There was no elevator. Stairs led to a receptionist’s desk on the second floor.

The receptionist was in her early twenties, a slim redhead with bright green eyes, maybe just a bit too much makeup. She was wearing a pleated black skirt, white blouse. Her lipstick was dark red, and matched her nail polish. Her nails were very long.

There was a matt-black Olivetti on her desk. Parker had a hard time imagining her risking those nails on the typewriter keys.

Willows introduced himself and Parker, gave her a quick look at his shield.

She said, “I’m Cynthia Woodward. I take it you’re here to enquire about the body that was found in the pond yesterday morning?”

Willows nodded.

“Well, what can I do for you?” The woman spoke to Willows, ignored Parker.

“We think the body was put in the pond late Sunday night, or maybe early Monday morning…”

“Why?”

The question caught Willows by surprise. He hesitated, and then said, “There are indications the body had been on the ice about six to eight hours before it was discovered.”

“We were open Saturday until four o’clock. Four in the afternoon. I was the last one out of the building, I locked up.”

“So, from four o’clock on, there was no one here?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You don’t employ a night watchman?”

“No, we never have.”

“What about the janitorial service?”

“They do a weekly clean-up. On Sundays. I believe they start at ten in the morning.”

Willows went over to the window and looked out. Even from the second floor, he could see over the wall of the gardens. The pond, or at least most of it, was clearly visible.

“The top two floors. What’s up there?”

“Mr McGuinn and Mr Sandlack have offices directly above us. The fourth floor is used as a storage area.”

“I’d like to talk to them. Would you mind letting them know we’re here, please.”

“Mr McGuinn is in Los Angeles.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“Since Wednesday.”

“And Mr Sandlack?”

Cynthia Woodward picked up a telephone, delicately tapped a button. The diamond on the third finger of her left hand flashed in the light. She said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Sandlack, but there’s a policeman here who’d like to talk to you.” A pause. “About the body that was found in the gardens.” She listened for a moment, nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll send them right up.”

Willows started towards the stairs. The secretary frowned after him.

Parker said, “That’s a lovely perfume you’re wearing. Would you mind telling me what it is?”

“
Fabergé
.” The woman smiled. “Mr Sandlack’s office is the first door on your left.”

All five foot six inches and one hundred and twenty pounds of Eugene Sandlack was waiting for them in the corridor. He was wearing a gray silk suit, an off-white shirt and a dark gray silk tie, shiny black slip-ons. Sandlack expertly shot his cuff as he offered his hand, flashing a gold Rolex and half a pound of eighteen-karat gold chain. No wonder Cynthia Woodward hadn’t seemed too impressed when Willows showed her his tin. Sandlack’s teeth were very white. His short, curly hair was gelled and glistening, with a sprinkling of silvery-gray at the temples. He had a Palm Springs tan and there were pouches under his dark brown eyes. He shook hands with Willows first, and then Parker.

“What can I do for you, Officers?”

“We’re enquiring about the body that was found in the pond across the street on Monday morning.”

“Kenny Lee, wasn’t it?”

“You knew him?”

“Never met the guy. Heard about it on the radio as I was driving to work. And, of course, when I arrived at the office, I couldn’t help noticing that there were cops all over the place. Lucky thing I heard the report on the news. Otherwise, I’d have figured some bastard was shooting a movie in my backyard, and I already got enough problems with my ulcer.” Sandlack indicated the open door leading to his office. “Come on in, make yourself at home.”