The Suspect - L R Wright (8 page)

When he'd hung up the phone, he sat back with his feet up on the
desk and his hands behind his head.

His office was small, containing in addition to his desk and
swivel chair a filing cabinet, a large bulletin board, some
bookshelves, a deep black leather chair with an aluminum frame, and
next to it a small, scarred coffee table.

Maybe he'd try to get back out to Toronto later in the summer, to
see his parents, he thought. Maybe he could pry his daughters loose
from Calgary and take them with him.

He swung around in his chair to look at the photograph. He found
himself studying it intently.

They were young women in their late teens, standing in front of a
tall, smooth-trunked tree. Unsmiling, grave, they seemed to bend
slightly toward each other, like dancers. The girl with shorter hair
and larger eyes was deeply tanned; she stood behind her younger
sister, her right shoulder pressing lightly against Diana's left.
Diana, hair long and sleek, the color of taffy, faced the camera
almost straight on. Her head and neck and shoulders were aware of her
sister; she had an air of guarded protectiveness. They were
bare-armed, wearing dresses, and Janey's tan was very dark against
Diana's ivory skin. They looked straight out from the photograph,
straight into his eyes, and they weren't smiling. He had taken the
picture the summer before he left Kamloops. Had they broken into
laughter when the picture-taking was over? He couldn't remember. Or
had they turned their backs on him and walked away down a tree-arched
road into their own futures, abandoning him as he was about to
abandon them?. . .

He became aware of an unfamiliar scent and sniffed suspiciously,
his eyes darting around the office. In the middle of his small coffee
table stood a pot of white flowers. He got up quickly, picked up the
flowers, and strode out into the reception area, where he set the pot
down hard in the middle of Isabella's desk. She looked up at him,
annoyed. From the cage on the card table next to her desk, Carlyle
Burke's parrot shrieked at him.

"You startled him,” said Isabella disapprovingly.

"Keep your damn plants out of my office," said Alberg.
"And keep that damn bird quiet." He turned to leave and
then I came back. "What are they, anyway?"

"Stock," said Isabella. "Nice smell, eh?"

Alberg put his hands flat on her desk and gazed into her I eyes.
"Every week, Isabella, you clean my venetian blinds with
vinegar," he said. "Nobody asked you to do that. It's not
part of your job to do that. And I appreciate it. It's very nice to
have clean venetian blinds. Only, Isabella, my office smells like a
pickle jar. And when you add the smell from these flowers—they
combine in the air, and the result is nauseating."

He removed his hands from her desk and stood up.

"I never thought of that,” said Isabella. "The
question is, do you want clean blinds or nice fragrant flowers that
bring a whiff of summer into this joint?" She frowned,
pondering. Isabella Harbud was a tall, lumpy woman married to a
chiropractor. She had long thick hair, once brown, now becoming
unapologetically gray, and she wore it down, which Alberg thought
inappropriate in a woman of late middle age. Her front teeth
protruded, and she didn't care much about the way she dressed. She
was usually cold, even in summer, and had a selection of thick
sweaters which she grabbed from her closet without any apparent
consideration as to what she planned to wear underneath. Today the
sweater was turquoise, and partly obscured a red and black striped
dress. She had the most beautiful eyes Alberg had ever seen: gold,
flecked with brown; they were what he imagined a tiger's eyes must
look like.

"You want clean blinds," said Isabella, decisively.

"Right,” said Alberg, with gratitude.

"I'll bring you in one that doesn't have a smell.”

"I don't have any room in my office for any plant. No room.”

"Sure you do,” said Isabella comfortingly, going back to
her typing.

"When you go home," Alberg yelled as he went down the
hall, "make sure you cover up that damn cage."

Sokolowski appeared from somewhere and followed him into his
office. Alberg swung his feet back up onto the desk and linked his
hands behind his head. "What've we got, Sergeant? Fill me in.
Bring me up to date.” He tossed him the file. "Let's go over
the whole damn thing, one more time." Sokolowski settled himself
in the black chair and opened the file. His big thighs strained the
fabric of his dark blue uniform trousers, his legs were stolidly
apart, feet planted heavy on the floor. "Victim died between
eleven A.M. and two P.M. on Tuesday, june fifth, from a blow to the
head. Death was probably instantaneous. The coroner says the weapon
was a metal object, rounded, with some kind of rim. Very little
spattering. Probably some blood got on the perpetrator's clothes, but
not much. No forced entry into the house." He droned on,
shifting his feet a little. "Nothing missing as far as anybody
can tell."

"l know all this,” said Alberg, staring at the ceiling.

"Several neighbors saw the fish guy's truck, four of them saw
the fish guy." Sokolowski looked up.'"You want their names
and addresses?” Alberg shook his head, slowly. "Vehicle
described as an old VW van, couldn't pinpoint the year, just old,
painted silver, paint flaking off, orange paint underneath, they
think, but they aren't sure; van's got a big rainbow painted on each
side and some birds; rainbow's all colors, birds are blue. No sign of
the vehicle yet. I got on to the mainland, just in case it got by the
ferry types, which wouldn't be hard in my experience."

"Sid, Sid," Alberg chided, still staring at the ceiling.

"The fish seller," the sergeant went on, "he's a
guy about thirty-eight, forty, got a beard, wore a pair of jeans and
a light shirt and smelled like fish, which isn't surprising.
Soft-spoken kind of guy, say the citizens. One of them bought a
salmon from him, why not." Sokolowski shrugged. "He's not a
licensed peddler, so what else is new. " He looked up at Alberg,
exasperated. "The woods are full of them. Guys selling salmon,
crab, oysters, fruits, vegetables, you name it, not a license between
them."

"I know all this too," said Alberg. He sighed and sat
up. "Go on, Sid."

"The fish seller's our best lead. We're combing the bush for
him. Checked the town first, got on to Gibsons, but he's probably
camped up on Crown land someplace; we'll find him when one of the
lumber companies moves in someplace new with chain saws.”

Sid Sokolowski was a few years older than Alberg, a ponderous,
suspicious man, but thoughtful. He was comfortable only with other
police officers and with his family, which was large. He and his wife
had five children, all girls. The gender of his progeny was a source
of hurt and bewilderment to Sokolowski, who understood perfectly well
that it was his sperm or chromosomes or something which were
responsible for his situation. It gave him, he thought, something in
common with Alberg. He and his wife had decided not to have any more
children, but Sokolowski waffled about this confidentially to Alberg
every now and then, saying he'd like to try once more. Surely the
odds would be much more in his favor, he argued. But Alberg on these
occasions would reply that they had been more in his favor the last
time, too, and even the time before that. "You were a man meant
to have daughters, Sid," he would tell him. "Stop trying to
argue with fate.”

Alberg had a great fondness for the sergeant, but he wasn't
someone Alberg could confide in about personal things. Not that he'd
ever done much confiding anyway, he thought now, looking at Sid bent
over the Burke file; not even with his wife. And maybe that was a
more serious problem than he'd realized. He had wanted to have things
all figured out before talking about them with Maura. As a result, he
was always presenting her with
faits accomplis
. He had thought
he was saving her worry. But maybe he'd been wrong.

"Did the neighbors see anybody on the road that day," he
asked the sergeant, "besides the fish guy and George Wilcox?”
 
Sokolowski shook his head. "Nobody we haven't
accounted for. The fish seller we haven't found yet—he was there at
just about the right time, between eleven thirty and twelve thirty.

And Wilcox . . . well, actually we've got some disagreement
there.”

"What kind of disagreement?"

"Two witnesses, including the woman who lives across the
street from the victim, say they saw Wilcox go through the hedge into
Burke's front yard at about two fifteen, two thirty, somewhere in
there. And this checks with his call to us at two thirty-seven. But
one old fellow—Frank Erlandson, his name is—he says he saw the
same thing, only two hours earlier, at about twelve thirty." He
shrugged. "He seemed kind of confused. He's probably just
misremembering.” He tossed the file folder onto Alberg's desk.

"What about the seaward side of things?”

"Nothing. Nobody seen prowling the beaches, nobody out on the
water at the right time except for a couple of kids nine and ten in a
dinghy, and a guy fishing from a rowboat. We checked them out.”

"The old fellow who says he saw Wilcox at twelve thirty,"
said Alberg. "Let's talk to him again. Try to get that
straightened out.”

The sergeant was nodding. "Yeah, I think so too. Problem is
he's been in the hospital since Wednesday afternoon for some kind of
tests. He's supposed to be home Saturday. Tomorrow.”

"Okay. I'll do it myself, since I'll be seeing Wilcox later
on today." He got up and stretched. "Sid. I just talked to
Burke's sister, Mrs. Morris. She tells me Burke was once married to
George Wilcox's sister. She's dead now. Do you find that
interesting?"

"Kind of a remote connection, Staff," said Sokolowski
reluctantly. "Can't see anything in it, myself. Despite the
will.” He retrieved the file. "I looked into him," he
said, shuffling through the pages in the folder. "Here he is.
Wilcox. Not rich, but he's got money in the bank. House paid for. And
he gets a pretty good pension. Well spoken of by neighbors and
friends. According to them, he wasn't a special friend of the
victim.”

He closed the file. "It's a toughie. My money's on the salmon
seller." He looked up at Alberg. "Christ, it's been three
days. It's gotta be the salmon seller."

"Yeah, Sid, but why? He didn't take anything from the house.
What was the motive?"

"He went berserk," said Sokolowski promptly. He spread
his hands. "It happens, Karl. You know it happens.”

"Okay, but if he went berserk it must have been as soon as he
walked in the door," said Alberg dryly. "He'd been
to—what?—three houses before Burke's. And he wasn't berserk then.
He wasn't armed, either. What did he hit him with?"

"Maybe he found something in the house," said
Sokolowski, after a moment's thought. "And then took it away
with him. And Karl, it's kind of peculiar, isn't it, that he didn't
stop at anybody's place after Burke's? People up the road saw his van
drive by, but he didn't stop.”

"Maybe he ran out of fish.” Alberg sighed. "Yeah,
okay, I agree, he's our best bet. For the moment." He got his
suit jacket from the rack in the corner.

"Who'd you have lunch with?" said the sergeant,
grinning. Alberg looked at him coldly.

"It's a small town," said Sokolowski. "So who was
it?”

"A librarian," said Alberg, with dignity. He threw his
jacket over his shoulder. From the reception area, the parrot
squawked.

"Jesus,” said the staff sergeant.
 

CHAPTER 9

"
Is it always this busy in here?" There was
nobody in the library except Cassandra, and now him.

She turned quickly from the cart filled with books
ready for reshelving. "Oh, heavens, yes. We're a regular beehive
of activity. " She smiled, automatically. He wasn't at all sure
she was glad to see him.

"It's a very nice library,” said Alberg.

"
I get the feeling you haven't been in many.”

"Of course I have,” he said, irritated. "It's
not where I spend most of my time,' maybe, but I use the library,
just like anybody else." He wondered why he hadn't thought to go
there for a book about pruning.

She went back to putting books away. "This is
the slowest part of the day. The old people come in the morning,
usually. The kids come in after school. And working people come in
the evenings, or on Saturdays. I'm surprised to see you again so
soon. I thought you had a funeral to go to."

He watched her shelve a biography of Churchill. "I
did. I went. It's over. Doesn't anybody else work here?”

"
I've got a couple of volunteers. That's all.
But from two until four every day, I'm usually on my own. Whose
funeral was it?"

"
Carlyle Burke's. Did he come here in the
mornings?”

She looked puzzled.

"
You said the old people usually come to the
library in the mornings.” He took from the shelf a book entitled
The Life of Catherine the Great
and hefted it in his hand as if trying to determine its weight.

"
Oh. Yes." She reached down to get two more
books from the cart. "But not him. I don't remember ever seeing
him in here."

"
You didn't know him, then." He noticed
that as she shelved the books she pulled some slightly farther out
and pushed some farther in, to even them out, and then, unthinking,
ran her fingers along the spines as if playing a harp.

"No, I never met him," said Cassandra. "I
think my mother knew him, though. She knows everybody.”

"How about George Wilcox? Does he come in the
mornings?"