The Goldfish Bowl (4 page)

“Why is that?” said Bradley.

“Because every once in a while she brought one home.”

“A different guy every time,” said Atkinson. “Never the same one twice.”

“Or so Hooper says,” added Franklin.

“If she was picking up strange guys all the time,” said Atkinson, “that would account for the pack of rubbers we found in her purse.” He glanced over at Parker, as if he expected a request for an explanation.

Franklin pushed his glasses back up on his nose, lit a cigarette and turned the page. “Okay, as mentioned previously, the victim was shot with a rifle, calibre .460 Magnum. There were plenty of copper and lead alloy fragments in the body, but unfortunately we were unable to come up with the bullet.”

“Why not?” Bradley again, a little impatient.

“Two shots were fired. The first went in one side of the bus and out the other. The second, ditto, except it also went through the victim. Judging from the angle of fire, both rounds went straight up Alder Street, maybe for a mile or more. But we took the spent cartridges down to the armory and showed them to Bernie Sparrows. Bernie wasn’t positive, but he doubted if it was standard factory issue ammunition.”

“You mean it was hand-loaded?”

“Bernie took the cartridges over to forensics first thing this morning. Goldstein told him he’d be able to tell if they were hand-loaded by analysing the powder residue and the crimp marks. But it’s going to take him a day or two.”

“As always.”

“Anyway,” said Franklin, “whatever results Goldstein comes up with, I think we can assume that we’re butting heads with somebody who really knows his oats. The weird gun, the way the whole thing was set up …”

“The ground where the car was parked,” said Atkinson, “was just as wet as everywhere else in the alley. That means the car couldn’t have been there more than a few minutes. The shooter knew Alice Palm’s schedule right down to the last second. He knew exactly where to be and when to be there. He had her wired.”

“What about the other passengers on the bus, you get anything out of them?”

“Names and addresses, not much more. One of them saw the muzzle flash, thought somebody was in there with a butane lighter, some kid fooling around. Otherwise, zilch.”

Bradley lifted an eyebrow. “Nothing?”

“So far,” said Franklin apologetically. He shut his notebook, removed his glasses, and vigorously massaged his nose.

“Wait a minute,” said Willows. “What about the guy who took a hike?”

“What guy?” said Bradley.

“The skinny blond guy wearing a black leather jacket, baseball cap, and orange running shoes.”

Franklin and Atkinson exchanged a quick look. They had talked it over at length and Atkinson had finally convinced Franklin to forget about the missing witness, reasoning that it was a loose end they would never track down and that what Bradley didn’t know couldn’t hurt them. Now Atkinson glared angrily at Willows, wondering where he had picked up his information. “As a matter of fact,” Atkinson said to Bradley, “George and I aren’t all that sure there was somebody else on the bus. At least, not at the actual time of the shooting. There was a lot of confusion — no one was willing to say exactly when he got off.”

“But he might have been on board when the shots were fired, right?”

“It’s a possibility,” admitted Franklin after a pause. “That’s why we’ve arranged for the driver and passengers to come down and take a walk through the mug books.”

“When?”

“Well, we haven’t worked out specific times just yet,” said Franklin lamely.

“I’ll just bet,” said Bradley.

Atkinson tried to pick up the slack. “If they can’t find him in the mug books, we’ll get together with Steve Bozak and see if we can come up with a decent composite drawing. But to tell you the truth, Inspector, neither George nor I expect much to come of it.”

“Why not?”

“Because the five people who claim they saw him can’t agree on anything they say about him, except for his hair colour and the fact that he was wearing a baseball cap. They can’t even agree on the colour of his eyes, for Christ’s sake. Three of them swear they were green, the other two are positive they were blue.”

“Maybe he’s got one of each colour,” said Bradley. “Like Fritz, my ex sister-in-law’s cat.” He noticed that his cigar had gone out, re-lit it with another kitchen match, flicked a speck of tobacco off his thumbnail. He knew damn well that if Willows hadn’t mentioned the lost witness, he’d never have found out about him. He also knew that Franklin and Atkinson had no intention of hauling out the mug books or calling on Bozak. They were both experienced cops; they’d decided that the missing blond was a dead end and not worth pursuing. Bradley couldn’t fault their judgement but he didn’t like the fact that they’d tried to slip one past him. Well, it was all bullshit. When he’d accepted his promotion and the desk that had gone with it, he’d traded in his gun for a shovel. “What about the car?” he said through a cloud of cigar smoke.

“We took casts of the tyre tracks in the mud behind the garage,” said Atkinson. “And we measured the wheel span as indicated by the ruts. Goldstein is pretty sure the tyres were twelve-inch radials and that the car was probably a Honda Civic. Based on the tread wear, Goldstein estimates the car has forty or maybe fifty thousand miles on it.”

“Which would make it what, three or four years old?”

“Somewhere in there.”

“Any idea how many three or four year-old Honda Civics there are registered in the city?”

“Not yet. We’re working on it.”

“In the hundreds?”

“Or more.” Atkinson smiled at Parker. “The car is real popular with the ladies, because it’s so small, and easy to park.”

“I suppose,” Parker shot back, “that those same characteristics could account for your own success with the fairer sex.” Willows laughed out loud, and Atkinson gave him a look of pure malice.

Wearily, Bradley massaged his temples. “Okay,” he said. “Dave, you and George are convinced that Alice Palm is dead because somebody wanted her dead, am I right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“I tend to agree with you,” said Bradley. “But Jack has another theory. Kind of an interesting one. He thinks the victim died as a result of a random shooting, and that the killer is going to hit again, that we’ve got a serial murderer on our hands.”

“Wait a minute,” said Atkinson. “There were half a dozen people on that bus. If it was a random shooting, why did the killer fire twice at the same person?”

“Because he missed the first time,” said Willows. He had been looking out of the window but now he turned to Atkinson and said, “I’d have thought that was fairly obvious, Dave.”

“It’s crap, that’s what it is. You and your cute new partner are reaching, trying to grab a piece of my case.”

“I thought we were all part of the same team,” said Willows, smiling.

“No question about it,” said Bradley. “Dave, you and George concentrate on the ammunition. Where did it come from? Who sold it and who bought it?” Bradley turned to Willows. “Jack, the first thing I want you to do is track down the missing baseball fan.”

“Fine by me,” said Willows.

Much to Bradley’s surprise.

“What about the Honda?” said Parker.

“We’ll take care of it,” said Atkinson quickly.

Bradley mashed the remains of his cigar in his ashtray and emptied the ashtray into his wastebasket. “Anybody have any questions?”

Willows started for the door. Atkinson shook his head, no. He and Franklin had been given the hottest lead in the case. Willows and Parker, on the other hand, had been sent after a witness they might never bring to earth and who was almost certainly of no importance anyway. Atkinson would have preferred it if Willows had been kicked right out of the office, but the way it’d worked out wasn’t too bad. When Atkinson nailed the shooter, it would be nice to rub it in Willows’ face.

Bradley swivelled his chair around to face the window, putting his back to all of them, the whole feisty and snarling crew. He wondered what his new wall would be like. Concrete, no doubt. A flat and featureless slab of grey. Nervously twisting the ruby ring on the little finger of his left hand, he leaned back in his chair.

He hadn’t thought it politic to mention it at the time, but Bradley agreed completely with Willows’ pessimistic view of the case. The malevolent decision to use the powerful and brutally destructive .460 Magnum had not been made by the kind of man who would be satisfied with a single death. Bradley knew, his policeman’s instinct promised him, that although Alice Palm had been the first victim, she wasn’t going to be the last.

IV

THE GENTLY CURVING street was flanked on both sides by mature plane trees, the interlaced branches heavy with accumulated rain and thick with pale green buds. Willows was slouched silently in the passenger seat of the cream Ford, his brogues up on the dashboard. Parker was behind the wheel.

They were driving through the heart of Shaughnessy, one of the city’s oldest and most prestigious neighbourhoods. The massive Victorian houses on their quarter-acre lots had once belonged only to the very rich, but now most of them had been subdivided into half a dozen or more small apartments, scaled to the comparatively modest requirements of the very middle class.

“Fantastic architecture,” said Parker as they drove past a particularly large and imposing structure.

Willows grunted monosyllabically.

“I always liked looking at buildings. Maybe I should have been an architect.”

“Could be,” said Willows, obviously disinterested.

The overhanging branches of the plane trees screened out so much of the rain that the windshield wipers weren’t able to work properly. The rubber blades shuddered in the middle of each arc, smearing the scattered drops of rain across the glass as if they were exotic little insects — soft and fragile creatures of liquid crystal. Parker concentrated on her driving for a few minutes and then said, “The missing baseball player, Shelley Rice. How did you get his name?”

“He phoned 312 Main and gave it to the duty officer. The duty officer gave it to me.”

“Why you, instead of Franklin or Atkinson. Didn’t he know it was their case?”

“He knew, all right. But he owed me a favour, and now he doesn’t.”

Willows’ feet were still up on the dashboard. Parker noticed that although both his socks were dark blue, they didn’t quite match. “Another thing,” she said. “When Bradley was handing out the assignments, why didn’t you tell him you already had Rice’s name and address?”

“Because then he would’ve come up with some other way of wasting our time.”

“What do you mean?” said Parker.

“Rice doesn’t know anything about the murder. How could he? The only reason we’re going to bother talking to him is so we can say we’ve done it.”

“I don’t understand. Why would Bradley deliberately give you something useless to do, why would he want to waste your time?”

“He thinks I’m emotionally distraught. He wants to keep me busy because it’s his idea of therapy. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to give me anything important to do because he doesn’t want me screwing up the case.”

“How could you do that?”

“Believe me, there are a million ways.”

“What are we going to do after we finish with Rice?”

“We’ll think of something,” said Willows. “Turn left at the next corner.”

“Whatever you say.”

Parker braced herself, spun the wheel hard and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The back tyres whined and slithered on the wet asphalt, and the rear end of the Ford broke free, drifting sideways. Willows clutched wildly at the dashboard. The heel of his shoe left a black streak across the windscreen. Parker steered expertly into the skid. When they were around the corner and the Ford had straightened she reached across the seat and jabbed Willows in the arm.

“Look, I heard about your partner, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry he’s got cancer and I’m sorry it’s killing him. I know this must be very hard on you.”

“I don’t want to talk about Norm,” said Willows.

“That’s right, and I don’t like your attitude. Listen, I think it’d be great if a miracle happened, so the two of you could go live happily ever after in some cute little gingerbread house in the woods.”

“What?” said Willows.

“But if it doesn’t work out that way, and you end up getting stuck with me, try to remember something, will you? It isn’t my fault.”

“You finished?” said Willows.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On you,” said Parker.

*

Shelley Rice’s house was brick, three storeys high, with a lot of leaded glass windows and a brand new cedar shake roof. The house stood squarely in the middle of a hundred-foot lot, and was surrounded by a low ornamental wall, also of brick. Parker pulled the Ford neatly up to the curb. Willows was out of the car before she’d killed the engine, slamming his door and moving purposefully towards the house. Parker locked her door, dropped the keys in her purse and followed Willows across the lush, manicured grass of the boulevard towards a black wrought-iron gate.

Willows fiddled with the latch, which was stiff with a fresh coat of paint. Parker caught up with him as he pushed the gate open. They walked side by side towards the house, along a path that wandered pointlessly across the lawn. As they climbed the steps towards the wide front porch, Willows discreetly loosened the snubnose Smith & Wesson in the clamshell holster clipped to his belt.

There was a brass knocker screwed to the door, an art nouveau likeness of a young girl’s face. There was an air about her of dissipation and neglect. The once-clean and graceful lines of her face had been blurred and pitted by the passage of time. Her cheeks were badly corroded, her lips faded and slack. A greenish residue clogged her long and artfully tangled hair, stained the corners of her eyes. Willows hesitated, and then rapped his fist on the white-painted wood of the door.

Water dripped in a steady stream from a broken drainpipe to the porch railing, splattered across a rusting ten-speed bicycle.

Shelley Rice opened the door.

Willows estimated Rice’s age at about twenty-five, his height at six foot even and his weight at roughly a hundred and seventy pounds. Rice had medium-length hair, a friendly, open face. He was wearing a black T-shirt, grey corduroy pants. Looking for the orange running shoes, Willows saw that his feet were bare. But like Fritz the cat, Rice had one eye of blue and one of green.

Rice ignored Willows. Smiling easily at Parker, he said, “It’s the cops, am I right?”

“So far,” said Willows.

Rice gave Parker another chance to admire his teeth. “Come on in, don’t just stand there looking gorgeous.”

Willows took a quick step towards Rice. As Rice automatically began to back away, Willows put the palm of his hand against Rice’s chest and gave him a gentle push. Caught off-balance, Rice staggered back into the house. Inexplicably, he was still smiling.

Willows brushed past Rice and walked down a short hallway, turned left through a pair of French window’s into the living room. There were Persian carpets on the oak floor. An overstuffed Chesterfield and two matching chairs were clustered around a massive fieldstone fireplace. A pink marble lamp stood on an antique Chinese endtable.

Willows went through a curved archway into the dining room. There was twelve feet of mahogany table, eight matching chairs. A pine sideboard from eighteenth-century Quebec and a tea trolley just like the one his grandmother used to have. He moved down the length of the gleaming table to the huge floor-to-ceiling leaded glass windows that flooded the room with light. Standing at the windows, he could see all the way across the city and the harbour to the scattering of pastel highrises along the West Vancouver waterfront.

He didn’t have to take a deep breath to smell it, the house reeked of money. He wondered who owned it. Not Shelley Rice, with his black T-shirt and bright orange shoes. Rice would toss the Persian carpets in the garbage and buy a couple of hundred yards of purple shag.

Willows heard the front door slam shut, and went back into the living room. Rice and Parker came through the French window. Rice still hadn’t abandoned his smile. He looked directly at Willows and said, “Would anyone care for a drink?”

“Up against the wall,” said Willows. “Hands in the air and legs spread wide.”

Rice’s smile faded. He stood there, looking dumb.

Willows pulled his revolver and pointed it at Rice’s chest. “Move it, kid.”

Rice swallowed noisily. He started to say something and then thought better of it and went over to the nearest wall and leaned into it. His left hand smeared the glass on a framed Toni Onley watercolour. He glanced up, made a small sound of dismay, and shuffled sideways.

“Frisk him,” Willows said to Parker.

Parker moved in on Rice.

“Jesus,” said Rice weakly. “Is this legal?”

“I doubt it,” said Willows. “Probably that’s why we’re all having so much fun.”

Parker searched Rice quickly and efficiently, and then stepped away from him, out of the line of fire. With the look on Willows’ face, she believed he was ready to shoot. “He’s clean,” she said.

“Sure he is. He’s so fucking clean, he squeaks.”

“Can I turn around now?” said Rice.

“If you’re sure you want to.”

Rice slowly lowered his arms. He turned around, his eyes avoiding Parker. He stared at the weapon dangling loosely from Willows’ hand, the short barrel pointing at the oak floor. “You don’t need that,” he said. “I called you, remember?”

Willows studied Rice indifferently for a moment, and then put away the gun. “The question is, why did you do it?”

“Because I’m a good citizen.” Nobody laughed. Rice shrugged. “You must’ve dusted down every last square inch of that bus, right?”

“Got a prior, Shelley?”

“You guessed it.”

“What?”

“The worst. Took a shot at a guy.”

“Hit him?”

“In the kneecap.”

“What kind of gun you use?”

“A .22, a Hi-Standard automatic.”

“When was that, Shelley?”

“Two years ago. I did fourteen months, I’m still on parole.” He paused, and then added, “I wasn’t even trying to hit the guy, just scare him a little.”

“Why?”

Rice hesitated. “We had a business disagreement, I guess you could say.”

“Drugs?”

“Soft drugs. Nothing heavy.”

“Anything else?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Convictions.”

“No, nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. You don’t believe me, go ahead and check.”

“Who owns the house?”

“My dad. He’s in Hawaii, on vacation.”

“So that’s why you turned yourself in, because we had your prints and you knew we’d get to you sooner or later, so why not do it now, because this way your old man never finds out about it.”

“You’re way ahead of me,” said Rice.

Parker stood quietly to the side, watching Willows ply his trade. She wondered what he was getting at. Rice seemed to know — the armpits of his T-shirt were dark with sweat.

“How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty-six.”

“You working?”

“No, I’m unemployed. But who isn’t, right?”

“What were you doing on the bus?”

“My car broke down. I was on my way home.”

“The Jaguar in the carport around by the side of the house, is that yours?”

Rice nodded.

“Expensive car. What went wrong?”

“It was nothing, a dead battery. I left my lights on.”

“Okay,” said Willows, “let’s see if I follow you so far. You wanted to get home but your car wouldn’t start because the battery was dead. So you grabbed a bus.”

Rice frowned, nodded hesitantly. He looked, thought Parker, like a man trying to follow a vitally important conversation conducted in a foreign language.

“Kind of taking the long way around, weren’t you? Heading east instead of south.”

“I’m not all that familiar with the public transit system, to tell you the truth.”

“When did you get the battery charged?”

“First thing this morning.”

“What did you do, call a tow truck?”

“No, a friend of mine drove me back downtown. We used his jumper cables.”

“What’s the friend’s name?”

Rice glanced at Parker, almost as if he hoped she might prompt him, now that the questions were getting tough.

“Come on now,” said Willows. “You really expect me to shovel such low-grade shit? Your thirty-thousand-dollar car breaks down and instead of spending ten bucks on a taxi, you stand around in the rain waiting for a bus that’s headed in the wrong direction?”

Willows moved rapidly towards Rice. His arm shot out. Rice flinched. Willows straightened the Toni Onley hanging crookedly on the wall, giving the painting all his attention. Rice sagged with relief.

“I’m with homicide,” said Willows. “Not narcotics. But if you don’t tell me what you were doing on that bus, I’m going to phone downtown for the wrecking crew and the dogs. Your daddy’s going to get back from the beach and find his house in pieces.”

Rice paled. “Even if I was dealing, you think I’d be stupid enough to stash anything here?”

“Stupid enough or smart enough.”

Rice studied the carpet beneath his feet, almost as if he thought he might find the solution to his problems woven into the pattern of muted colours.