The Dells (23 page)

“Joey and Marvin were friends, you said.”

“They were acquainted with each other,” Shoe said. “I don't know if they were friends. Joey was also in possession of a book and a chess set that belonged to Cartwright. He told me Cartwright gave them to him.”

“Is he telling the truth?”

“I think so.”

“I wish there was something I could tell you that would help, but I honestly can't think of anything more.”

“Does the name Ruth Braithwaite mean anything to you?”

“No. Who is she?”

“She and her two sisters are semi-recluses who live in an old house in the woods behind my parents' house. Cartwright and Ruth Braithwaite may have been friends, possibly even lovers.”

“Sorry. No. I don't recall the name. I have a difficult time imagining Marvin having a lover, though. From what I remember of his novels, I don't think he had much direct experience with sex, if any at all.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, eventually coming to a part of the creek that did not match his memories. Where once the creek had flowed more or less straight for twenty or thirty feet or so, it looped around a pair of automobile-sized boulders. Shoe paused and looked up the hillside. The path the boulders had taken when they'd tumbled down into the creek was barely evident, long since overgrown. It had obviously happened some years before, perhaps even decades.

“What is it?” Claudia Hahn asked.

“These two boulders used to be thirty feet up the hillside,” he said.

“Goodness,” Claudia said. “I do hope no one was
on the path when they fell.”

The footpath angled up the hillside, around and over the shoulder of the bigger of the two boulders. Shoe wondered if there was any evidence of Janey's little hide-away buried beneath the boulders — a rusting can of Irish stew, the remnants of an old sleeping bag.

“You told me that Mr. Gibson knew Cartwright,” Shoe said as they continued along the path on the other side of the boulders.

“As well as anyone did,” Claudia said, with a smile.

“Do you think he'd talk to me?”

“I'm sure he would,” she said.

The dry season was at its height and the creek was reduced in places to a mere trickle of water a few hand-breadths wide. The wet mud gave forth a dank, foul odour that evoked memories in Shoe of his youthful explorations. They came to a sharp bend, where once a big elm tree, roots undermined by erosion, had fallen to form a natural bridge, near which Elizabeth Kinney had been killed. The tree was gone, replaced by a pressure-treated timber footbridge, the wood greying with age. Shoe stopped at the approach to the footbridge.

“You're not lost, are you?” Claudia Hahn asked.

“When I was a boy, there was a path to the top of the ridge,” he said. To their right, the steep embankment was eroded and crumbling and no sign of the path remained. “Unless you're prepared for a nasty scramble, it looks like we're either going to have to go back the way we came or cross the bridge and take the long way round. If I remember, there's a place we can cross again a little farther upstream, then a path that will take us up to the old sewage treatment plant, if it still exists. From there we can pick up a path that will take us back to the top of the ridge.” That must have been the route Marvin Cartwright had taken to get from the parking lot to where he'd been killed; Shoe couldn't imagine a
seventy-five-year-old man scrambling up the hillside, especially if he'd been in poor health.

“Lay on then,” Claudia said.

Shoe started across the bridge, then stopped, looking over the side of the bridge along the weedy bank of the creek.

“What is it?” Claudia asked.

“Go back,” he said, but too late. She stood beside him, peered over the bridge railing.

“Oh, my.”

The body of a woman lay face down in the creek bed, legs in the shallow water, head and shoulders under the bridge. She was barefoot and dressed in jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, covered in mud and weeds. Shoe continued across the bridge and sidestepped down the embankment. Claudia Hahn followed, stood over him as he squatted in the muddy water by the body. Despite the smear of mud, Shoe could make out the spiderweb tattoo on the back of her shoulder. He leaned under the bridge and rolled her onto her side. He gently scraped weeds and grasses from her face with his fingers. Her eyes were partly open and filled with black mud. Dark slime oozed from between blackened lips.

Claudia inhaled sharply and said, “Didn't I see you talking to her in the park yesterday?”

“Yes,” Shoe said.

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Marty Elias.” He eased Marty's body back into its original position under the bridge and stood.

“Marty Elias? That was the name of the little girl who was attacked after I was.”

“Yes,” Shoe said.

“Bloody hell.”

He looked round. There were no signs of discarded personal effects or her shoes. He climbed the embankment
and took Claudia's hand as she climbed out after him. Her hand was like ice. She had a cellphone in her waist pack and called 911, but Shoe had to explain to the operator precisely where they were.

They waited for the police by the footbridge. A woman walking a brace of tiny Yorkshire terriers came along the path from the parking area. She was indignant when Shoe intercepted her before she could cross the bridge and politely suggested that she take another route. She started to argue, but his size and the grimness of his expression changed her mind. Muttering about reporting him to the park attendants, she dragged her dogs back the way she had come.

A fter taking her statement, the police sent Claudia Hahn to her friend's house in a scout car. Shoe was asked to wait at the scene for the detectives. Detective Sergeant Hannah Lewis and her partner arrived a few minutes later, walking from the parking lot, even though the first responders' scout cars and the Forensic Identification Services truck had driven across the grass, leaving deep ruts in the turf. Shoe and Hannah Lewis watched from a distance as the FIS officers cordoned off the site and began erecting the crime scene shelter over Marty's body. Timmons was on the footbridge, smoking and talking to a man in rumpled slacks and a sports jacket, the local coroner, who'd pronounced Marty officially dead. Marty's death saddened Shoe deeply. It was not his fault that she was dead, he knew, but he felt responsible nonetheless. If he'd seen her to her door the night before, or if he'd insisted that she come back with him to his parents' house after meeting with Joey, perhaps
she'd still be alive. If he'd called the police immediately upon returning to his parents' house and informed them of his and Marty's meeting with Joey, Lewis might have had Marty picked up, thereby also likely preventing her death. If he'd refused to go with Marty in the first place, called Lewis instead, told her where Marty was supposed to meet Joey, the police would have picked both Joey and Marty up, with the same result. If only …

“Crap,” Lewis said.

“Pardon me?”

She looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed and slightly bloodshot, the flesh around them pale and dry. “I said, ‘crap.'”

“I heard what you said,” Shoe said. “I was just curious why you said it.”

“How would you feel if someone you'd interviewed in the course of a homicide investigation turned up dead less than twenty-four hours later?”

“No worse than I'd feel finding the body of someone I'd been talking to less than twelve hours earlier, who was almost a second sister to me when I was growing up, and who I very much liked.”

“Yeah,” Lewis said. “Sorry.”

“Are you all right, sergeant?”

“Damnit,” she said. “I should've insisted on maintaining surveillance on her apartment.”

“Why didn't you?”

“I agreed with my boss that there probably wasn't any point. Noseworthy wouldn't have risked going back there. He would have assumed we were watching her.” She sighed. “We have to prioritize resources. Sometimes we prioritize wrong.” She looked at him. “I got your message this morning. What did you want?”

“You're not going to like it,” he said. “Tell me anyway. How much worse can my day get?”

“Marty and I met with Joey Noseworthy last night in Downsview Park,” Shoe said.

“Last night? Shit, and you're telling me this
now
? Goddamnit, if you'd told me last night — better yet, if you'd called before meeting Noseworthy — maybe Marty would still be alive.”

“I know that.”

Detective Constable Timmons, cigarette in his mouth, walked over to where Shoe and Lewis were standing.

“I could have you charged with obstructing a police investigation,” Lewis said.

Timmons raised an eyebrow.

“I know that too,” Shoe said.

“Jesus Christ,” Lewis said. She took two or three deep breaths in an effort to calm herself. An errant breeze blew smoke from Timmons's cigarette into her face. “Put that damned thing out,” she snapped.

“Sorry, boss.” Timmons dragged hard on his half-smoked cigarette, then flicked it into the creek, downstream of the crime scene.

Lewis wasn't done with him. “I've had it up to here with your smoking, constable. You get the goddamned patch or I'll put in a request for a new partner and recommend you for a desk job, where you'll be inside and not able to smoke at all. Understand?”

“Look, boss, I — ”

“
Understand?
”

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “I understand.”

“Stay here and keep an eye on things. You — ” She stabbed a finger at Shoe. “Come with me.”

“Boss,” Timmons said, “maybe I should —”

“Do what I say without bloody arguing for a change,” Lewis barked. She turned and strode up the footpath toward the parking lot. When they got to the Sebring, she yanked open the passenger side door, leaned in, and took a bottle of water off the seat. Twisting off the cap, she
poured water into her cupped palm and scrubbed her face with her hand. Her colour improved. She drank, then offered the bottle to Shoe.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the water bottle from his belt. “I've got my own.” He pulled out the spout, squeezed water into his mouth, and hooked the bottle back onto his belt.

Lewis leaned against the side of the car, took another sip of water, and said, “All right. This had better be good.”

Shoe told her about his and Marty's meeting with Joey, keeping it simple, but leaving out nothing.

“Describe her bike,” Lewis said, when he'd finished.

“It's an old two-cylinder Triumph Bonneville. Dark blue. Big saddlebags. Pretty beat up. It burns oil.”

“Did Noseworthy tell you the name of the bar he was thrown out of?”

“He thought it might have been a place called the Jane Street Bar and Grill. It's owned by a man named Douglas Hallam.”

“I know it. It's a dive. And Noseworthy claims he doesn't remember anything between getting thrown out of the bar at midnight and waking up on Marty's couch the following morning.”

“That's what he said. He may suffer from alcoholic blackouts.”

“When were you going to tell me about this? You
were
going to tell me, weren't you? Never mind. Don't answer that. I'll assume that's why you called. You could've called earlier, though. Has it occurred to you that Noseworthy may have killed her?”

“Yes,” Shoe said. He had accepted the possibility that Joey had changed his mind about running, or changed his mind about taking Marty with him, and had called her to meet him again, or gone to her place.

Perhaps they'd argued. Perhaps Joey's temper had got the better of him. Perhaps …

“But … ” Lewis said. “I don't believe he did.” He almost added that the reason he didn't believe Joey had killed Marty was because Joey loved her, but he knew that love, in one form or another, was all too often the motive for murder.

Timmons trudged up the path to the parking lot. He was breathing hard and perspiring heavily under his jacket. Shoe could almost feel the man's need for a cigarette.

“Ident says COD looks like manual strangulation,” he said. “Bruises on her neck. Too much mud on the body to tell if there's any petechial haemorrhaging or if she was sexually interfered with.”

“Okay,” Lewis said. She stood away from the car. She opened a back door. “Get in,” she said to Shoe. “We'll take you back to your parents' place. I want to talk to your sister.”

Fifteen minutes later, Lewis and Timmons waited in the living room of parents' house as Shoe went into the kitchen. Rachel was at the sink, washing dishes. Through the open window, Shoe could see his mother and father sitting in their lawn chairs, and hear his father's voice as he read the Sunday paper aloud in his usual wry style.

“The police would like a word with you,” Shoe said to Rachel.

“What about?” she asked, drying her hands with a dish towel as she followed Shoe into the living room. “Christ, is it Hal? Has something happened to Hal?”

“It's Marty,” Shoe said. There was no easy way to say it. “She's dead. Claudia Hahn and I found her body in the creek an hour and a half ago.”

Rachel slumped onto the sofa. “Oh, god.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Lewis asked.

Rachel looked at Shoe. “She came by early yesterday evening to talk to Joe.”

“Before that … ”

“When she left the park with you. Oh, god, was she raped?”

“We won't know for certain until after the post-mortem,” Lewis said. “You and she spent some time together yesterday.” Rachel nodded. “What did you talk about?”

“Mostly we reminisced about growing up.”

“Did she seem troubled, worried about anything, or anyone?”

“No. There was some problem with work, but otherwise she seemed fine.”