The Suspect - L R Wright (3 page)

"Are you sure he's dead, Mr. Wilcox? Do you want
an ambulance?”

"What? What? His head's bashed in, man, am I
sure he's dead? This is no natural causes you've got here, somebody's
bashed the man's head in!"

They took some information and asked him to wait
there, and he did. But he couldn't go back into the living room and
sit around near the body. He went outside, but the front yard was
partly in shade now and his teeth were still clattering in his mouth.

When the police arrived about ten minutes later, two
of them, they found him in Carlyle's small back yard, hunched over on
a bench, his hands between his knees, looking out at the sea.

"It was too cold in there," he said when he
saw them. One of them sat down next to him. "We're going to have
a few questions, Mr. Wilcox," he said, quite gently. "If
you don't mind.”

"
Don't mind at all," said George. "Not
a bit."
 

CHAPTER 4

Karl Alberg was attacking his back yard with a pair
of hedge clippers. All pretensions to cultivation, to horticulture,
had been abandoned. It had come down to simple assault, of the armed
variety.

He hadn't intended this. He had bought a book, just
the day before, determined to do it right. He had rejected several
he'd seen in the Sechelt bookstore; they had titles like
The
Art of Pruning and Pruning for Bigger and Better Blooms
.
Then, on a rack in a Gibsons grocery store, he saw exactly what he
needed. It had lots of photographs and explanatory drawings, it was
written in simple language, and it was bracketed by
All
About Meatloaf
and
How
to Knit
. Alberg took heart from this. He
himself made an excellent meatloaf and had been taught how to knit
when he was eight, by his taciturn grandfather, an Ontario farmer. So
he bought the book, which was called
All About
Pruning
. Last night he'd sat in his living
room with his feet up, a glass of scotch at his elbow, and studied.
He went to bed confident that by the end of the next day, which he
had off this week, his yard would be tamed.

He should have known better. It was amazing how naive
a forty-four-year-old man could be.

Poking among the rose canes in search of
"outward-facing nodes," he managed only to get his hands
and face and arms seared with scratches.

Peering into the massive hydrangea bushes looking for
the "main branches," he only succeeded in making the bees
angry. Climbing clumsily, saw in hand, up into the cherry tree was
all to no avail because once in the middle of the tree he could no
longer see the skyward-shooting "water sprouts" he was up
there to eliminate.

He decided to hire somebody to look after the trees.
But he was damned if he was going to let the rest of the yard defeat
him. So from a pile of rusty tools in the unused garage at the bottom
of the yard he hauled out a pair of hedge clippers, oiled them, and
attempted to sharpen them, and then, weapon in hand, he charged the
foliage which he was convinced endangered the structural stability of
his small house.

He had begun this Tuesday in a state of calm. It was
one of his good days. He knew right away that he wasn't going to
spend any of it brooding over his mistakes or considering his
loneliness.

Clad in cutoffs, a short-sleeved T-shirt and
sneakers, he had stood before his bedroom mirror and not been
displeased with what he saw. He was tall and broad enough, he
decided, that the extra ten pounds didn't really show. Nor did the
gray in his blond hair. He pulled in his stomach and turned sideways
to the full-length mirror; not bad. He let himself sag and looked
again. Not good. He tightened his muscles and pounded his diaphragm
with a fist. Hard as a rock, he told himself. But there was no doubt
about it, he was definitely getting thick and somewhat flabby around
the waist. He would have to start working out again.

He peered critically into the mirror and ran his
fingers over his just-shaven jaw. He didn't like his face much. It
was too smooth, and it looked a lot younger than the rest of him.
Only when he was extremely tired did it assume any character. You
needed lines and hollows, he thought, for character.

He stood back and took one last look: the legs were
pretty good, anyway. Then he had strolled out to work in his garden.
It was now afternoon. The first attack on the roses had hours before
sent him retreating indoors to change his clothes. He was greasy with
sweat, the knees of his jeans were grass stained, and there was at
least one rip in his long-sleeved shirt. He didn't remember ever
seeing his ex-wife in this condition, after a day in the garden.

He stood in the middle of the back yard and looked
around at the chaos he had created. The small lawn was buried under a
mountain of debris. It hadn't occurred to him that when he had done
his pruning, the greenery would still exist. There seemed far too
much of it to get rid of in any usual way. And he hadn't even started
on the front yard yet. He wondered if he could just leave the stuff
there, to wither and turn brown and shrink into a more manageable
heap.

'
Jesus, boss," said a voice behind him.

Alberg turned to see Freddie Gainer on the walk that
led from the front of the house. He looked startlingly clean. "I've
been gardening," said Alberg wearily. He wiped his forehead on
his sleeve. "I am now quitting. And don't call me 'boss."

"You look like you've been in a war,” said
Gainer.

Clean, tireless, and young, thought Alberg, staring
at him. Also—and this was illusory—authoritative, in his peaked
hat, short blue jacket, and navy pants with the wide yellow stripe.

"What the hell do you want?" said Alberg.
"I want a beer.”

He tossed the hedge clippers to the ground and headed
for his back door.

Gainer picked them up and followed him. He put the
clippers on the floor inside the door. In the kitchen, he took off
his hat.

Alberg got a beer from the fridge and opened it. He
leaned against the counter and took a swallow. "Ah. That feels
good. A shower, and I'll be human again." He glanced at the
constable, then looked at him more sharply. "What the hell have
you done to your hair?" It clung to his head in tight, coppery
curls.

Gainer's face reddened. "I got it permed."

'
Jesus Christ," said Alberg. He wondered if
there was anything in Rules and Regulations yet about permanents. He
resolved not to find out. "Your damned hat's not going to stay
on, with all that fluff underneath it.”

"Yeah, it does," said Gainer, and showed
him. "You can't even hardly notice it now, right?" He
whipped off the hat. "What do you think, Staff? Women'll love
it. I'm guaranteed."

"
Then what do you care what I think?" said
Alberg, irritated. "Did you get that done around here?" he
said, as an afterthought.

"
Yeah, in Sechelt. There's this girl I met,
she's a hairdresser. She says they get as many guys as girls going in
for this. It's supposed to last three months, she says. At least."

Alberg drank some more of his beer. His scratches
stung. His head ached. He could already tell where he would be stiff
and sore the next day. "You use different muscles," he
said, feeling old, "attacking plants."

"Listen, Staff, the reason I'm here. We've got
us a homicide, and the sarge said you'd want to handle it.”

Alberg stared at him. "Why the hell didn't you
use the telephone?”

"I did, but there wasn't any answer. I guess you
couldn't hear it outside.”

Alberg dumped the rest of his beer into the sink and
went down the hall to the bathroom, stripping off his shirt. "Fill
me in while I get dressed.”

It would be a domestic disturbance, he thought,
splashing his face with cool water. Some guy crying and hugging his
wife while she bled to death from sixteen stab wounds and the knife
lying right next to him, his prints all over it. He splashed more
water under his arms, over his chest, across the top of his back. Or
a brawl at a beer parlor down the highway, two good-time buddies
slashing at one another with broken bottles, one a little faster, a
little angrier, than the other. In his twenty years on the force,
Alberg had worked on fewer than a dozen homicides which hadn't solved
themselves at the scene or within twenty-four hours.

No suspicious deaths of any kind had occurred in
Sechelt since he'd arrived, eighteen months earlier.

He was rubbing his face and arms dry when he realized
what Gainer was telling him.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror over the
sink. He looked scrubbed and healthy and not at all tired, any more.
Gainer, waiting in the hall, wondered hopefully if Alberg would
decide that the occasion called for the uniform. Hell, he thought,
he's probably forgotten where he put it.
 

CHAPTER 5

When they arrived at the house there were two
blue-and-white patrol cars parked on the shoulder. Theirs made three.
There was also an ambulance. Two white-coated attendants waited,
leaning against the hood, for instructions.

Alberg saw an elderly couple watching from the end of
the driveway which led into the yard next door. Across the street, a
woman looked out from a window. A small boy cycled past, slowing to
get a better look at what was going on.

Alberg and Gainer went through a gate in a tall
laurel hedge and down a crushed gravel path to the front of the
house. A constable was stationed at the door. Sid Sokolowski was
giving instructions to a dark-haired, blue-eyed corporal when he saw
them approaching. "Okay, Sanducci," he said, "get at
it,” and the corporal went off purposefully toward the far side of
the house. Alberg was convinced on little evidence that Sanducci was
far more impressed with his own good looks than he ought to have
been. He found the young corporal irritating.

Sergeant Sokolowski came up to him, a massive,
muscular man whose notebook looked tiny clutched in his large paw.

"
It happened within the last few hours, Staff.
The guy's name was Carlyle Burke. He was eighty-five. Guy who found
him isn't a hell of a lot younger—George Wilcox. He was a friend of
the victim, lives down the road a ways. Dropped in to say hello and
found a corpse."

"Where's Wilcox now?"

"Around back. Redding's with him.”

"
Okay. Go 0n."

"
The victim was struck on the head. No sign of a
struggle, no sign of a break-in or a weapon. This Wilcox called in at
two thirty-seven. Sanducci and Gainer got here in eight minutes. It's
Sanducci's Italian blood. He oughta be a race-car driver." The
sergeant was fond of categorizing people by blood. Mediterranean
types were notoriously fast-moving and quick-tempered; Englishmen
were cold and logical; the French couldn't tell the truth to save
their lives; and then, of course, there was the lusty Slav....

"What else?" said Alberg.

Sokolowski checked his notebook. "I've sent
Sanducci out to start looking for the weapon. Called the detachment,
got more guys coming to help him and talk to the neighbors. Next
I was figuring to get on the blower to Vancouver."

It was a small but rambling house, comfortably
sprawled upon a large lot. The laurel which hedged the property on
three sides was eight feet tall and about six feet thick. The yard
and the house were sleek, well maintained.

"
Yeah,” said Alberg. "Get on to
Vancouver. But all we want is an ident man. If he moves his tail, he
can make the four thirty ferry. Anything else?"

"The old fellow who found the body says the
victim had a habit of leaving his doors open.” Sokolowski was
sweating in the afternoon sun. "We oughta get him to take a look
around, see if anything's missing. Doesn't look like it to me, but
you never know.”

They heard a car pull up with a squeal of brakes.
It's going to look like the detachment parking lot out there, thought
Alberg.

"Okay," he said. "Sounds good. Get the
reinforcements to work fast. We want the weapon, and we want
something from the neighbors—an individual, a vehicle, sounds from
the victim's house—whatever we can get."

Three constables and a corporal arrived through the
gate in the hedge and stood nearby, waiting to be dispatched.

"I'll talk to Wilcox," Alberg went on. "Get
Redding to call the district coroner's office. Gainer, go tell those
ambulance guys not to hold their breath out there. Get the place
roped off and sealed,” he said to the sergeant. "And Sid, when
the guys check the neighborhood, don't let them forget the beach.
Anybody wandering around out there, any boats close to shore."
Sokolowski nodded. "There's one thing," he said. "A
salmon in the kitchen sink. ln a plastic bag. Looks like he bought it
today, or somebody gave it to him, and he never got around to putting
it in the fridge."

"Did Wilcox bring it?"

"He says no.”

"Okay. Good." Alberg grinned. "So
we've got something specific to ask the civilians: Any salmon
peddlers around today?"