(2012) Cross-Border Murder (2 page)

“Yeah, I remember the case. The evidence was circumstantial but solid.”

“Absolute?”

“No. But solid. Very solid. We were really pissed off when the charges were dropped.”

“His daughter believes he was innocent.”

“So? Nothing unusual there. Daughters are like that. Hitler’s daughter probably believed he was innocent too.”

“Hitler didn’t have a daughter.”

He chuckled. “Neither do I.” There was a pause. “Since Josie left, I don’t even have a wife. But so what. None of that changes the facts in the Montini case.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“Oh, I was. And to the job too. And you?”

“No. I never married.”

“Jesus,” he laughed. “I don’t believe this conversation.”

I laughed too. It felt like old times. I tried to imagine what he looked like now. He had begun to lose his hair and put on weight the last time I saw him.

“What makes you think the daughter’s way off base?” I asked.

“Ok, so I was wrong about Hitler’s daughter, but I’m right about daughters in general. In the cases I’ve seen, and I’ve seen plenty as a policeman, most daughters persist in loving their fathers no matter what they’ve done.”

“I guess they couldn’t afford therapy.”

“Therapy?”

“Studies show that most daughters who go into therapy come out pretty critical of their parents, particularly their fathers.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. I guess fathers aren’t popular these days. So, hey, have you been to see the Expos yet?” He asked suddenly.

“No. Not this year. I mean, given last year’s strike and the kind of trades they’ve made, who really cares?” But I did admit I had listened to a few games on the radio. And they had started off well.

“Just remember you’ve heard it here first. Despite everything they’re still going to win the pennant this year.”

“Despite having traded away, Grissom, Walker, Hill and Wetteland? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“You’ve got to have faith. So why don’t we take in a game? Or are you too busy at that paper these days?”

“I’m semi-retired.”

“You too? In a way I’m fully retired, but because of the severance package I got I have to agree for a year to do some work for them if they need me.”

“In my case, I also had to agree not to work for a competitor for a couple of years. So why not? Let’s take in a game.”

“Good. I’ll get the tickets. I’ve got contacts. The Florida Marlins are in town this weekend. Why don’t I get tickets for Friday night?”

“Can you get three?”

“Sure. No problem. Who do you want to bring?”

“Frank Montini’s daughter.”

There was a long pause. “You serious?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s she like?”

“Young. Pretty. Determined. Smart, I think. By the way refresh my memory. Why was the case against Montini dropped?”

There was another long pause. He grunted. “I guess I don’t owe the system anymore.” Still, he hesitated as if he was breaking an old code. He sighed. “It was political interference, and from pretty high up I suspect.”

“How high?”

“Who knows?” Another pause but much shorter this time. “The rumors were that Ottawa was jerked around by Washington. But no one in the media asked the right questions. So now you owe me one.”

“For what?”

“I’ve just given you a lead. A place to start.”

There was an awkward pause as we both thought of what to say. I heard a sad intake of breath. “And I think I know what I want.”

I waited.

I could hear him letting out a long breath. “I want to know why I don’t believe in the system anymore. Why the system puts fifty year old inspectors out to pasture because efficiency experts who know squat about crime and justice play with human lives on their goddam computers. Think about that for awhile, will you? See if you can come up with something.” He gave a sad chuckle. “And while you’re at it tell me why my wife walked out on me because my work was fifty percent of my life. I’ll call you Friday about the tickets.”

He hung up before I could say anything meaningless. For that I felt grateful. I stared out the window at the tree in the yard. I watched two birds land and leave the empty plastic feeder which I had thoughtfully hung on a clothesline out of the reach of the local cats. Another job half done, I thought. What good did the bird feeder serve if I kept forgetting to put food into it?

Yesterday, I thought I had my life all sized up. A journeyman reporter who had done nothing in thirty years to warrant distinction. I had filing cabinets full of work to prove it. Yet today two people had asked me to do things for them that were way out of my league. Ironic I thought. Pitiful even. Were we all desperate people ground down by desperate times? It’s been a lousy century, I thought, as I watched the birds circle the empty feeder. Many ups. Massive technological leaps. But the downside had shattered all our complacencies.

When Gina Montini returned later that day we wandered down to the nearby chicken Bar-B-Q restaurant for supper. She placed the backpack on the bench beside her. The waitress plunked down two glasses of water. We placed our orders. Along with the food, I ordered my usual half-liter of red wine. Gina Montini ordered milk. The waitress brought the milk and the wine. While we were waiting for the food I told her what I had done.

Her eyebrows rose. “So you will help me.” She seemed surprised.

I sipped my wine and nodded. “For what it’s worth.”

“For what it’s worth? Are you planning to charge me?” She fidgeted with her water glass. I tried to look appropriately offended.

“No. Of course not. I’m not a private detective. I’m not for hire. Eventually I may write something and I’ll bill the newspaper.”

“I have some money left from my father’s insurance,” she said defiantly.

“Enough to have hired a qualified detective?”

She stared at me. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. But a detective was not what I wanted. I felt that most of the people we would have to talk to would talk more readily to a journalist.”

“Why? I mean what gave you that silly idea?”

She shrugged. “I did my degree in communications. Most people subconsciously want the media on their side. And most people don’t want to trust the police, or even private detectives.” There was an elitist assurance in her voice. Having a degree in communications will do that.

I said nothing.

“Did you do your degree in journalism?” She asked.

“No. Such things didn’t exist in my day.”

“Oh.”

I did my major in philosophy.”

“A philosopher!”

“No.”

“But did you ever want to become one?”

I hesitated. Then I smiled. “I started out wanting answers. Modern philosophy has none.”

“And so you turned to journalism.”

I shrugged. But I wondered to what extent my cynicism, my wish to be just an observer, my habit of despondent introspection was due to the influence of my philosophy professors over thirty years ago. Surely, life was not that simple. While the waitress slid our plates of chicken, fries, sauce and coleslaw in front of us, Gina Montini removed a large photograph from her backpack. She handed it to me. It was a picture of seven people, all smiling, with their arms around each other. I recognized her father. He was thin and short. Some of the other faces were vaguely familiar.

“There are four in particular who were, supposedly, close friends of his. I mean they all formed a group on campus who hung together. But they all avoided him when he needed them. I think they shunned him because whoever was the real murderer kept the doubts about his guilt alive even after the charges were dropped.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s my mother who thinks that. But she couldn’t be more specific.”

“Maybe it was just an enemy, not the murderer who kept those doubts about him alive.”

“True. But it’s still a starting point. We have to start somewhere. We’ll find out what we find out.”

I wondered how she would react if she found out that her father was as guilty as hell. I decided it was time to see how emotionally brittle she was.

“Maybe his friends continued to shun him because he had had an affair with the murdered man’s wife.” That affair had been one of the reasons he had been arrested.

Her eyes blinked open. There was the hint of anger in them, but she controlled it well. “Back in those days,” she flung at me, “fooling around seems to have been the rule rather than the exception.”

“Back in those days?” The implication of a generation gap made me smile. “Does your generation really behave so much differently than mine?”

“Yeah, probably.” There was still the flash of battle in her eyes. “But that’s beside the point. Unless you can say you behaved better than my father did, I’m not going to let you cast stones at him.”

“That was not my intention.”

“It was there in your tone, Mr. Webster. You know. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Maybe he deserved his fate because he got caught with his shorts down. It’s bullshit and you know it.”

Emotionally brittle? Maybe. But when she took a hit, she could hit back. I don’t remember her father being like that. Maybe she had her mother’s genes.

“After his trial was squashed, life for your family must have been difficult. You were what? Thirteen?”

“Fourteen. Worse for my parents than it was for me.” She picked at her french fries. “Everyone treated me sympathetically. Besides, I had still had a future to look forward to. They didn’t.”

I was tempted to suggest that her parents could have faced the future differently. But it would have been presumptuous. And besides I knew better. At some point the damp rot of the past just weighs too heavily. Hope smoulders out. She handed me a sheet of paper with the names, current addresses and phone numbers of the people in the photo.

“Have you tried to contact any of them yet?”

She hesitated. “No. I haven’t quite summoned the nerve to do that.”

“Good.”

“Why is that good?”

“If your father was innocent then one of them might consider that your snooping around poses a danger to them.”

She ate a small piece of chicken before replying. “I’m not a fool. I would have taken the appropriate precautions.”

“That’s not the issue.”

There was gender resentment in her voice. “Yes it is. You’re being condescending.”

“I was not being condescending.”

She smiled down at her plate. I wondered if she was testing me. “Are you sure? You know. Big, experienced, Mr. Webster will be okay because he’s male. He can recognize danger and handle it. But I’m a bit on the petite side. Too innocent or inexperienced to deal with real danger.”

I began to wonder what I was getting myself into. There was a trace of annoyance in my voice when I spoke. “That’s not what I meant at all. I may be old enough to remember when someone like you would have been treated condescendingly, but I’ve worked beside women, even petite women, who were tougher than I was. I’m in less danger because I’m a reporter. It’s that simple. Hurt a reporter and half the country’s media will be shoving their mikes down your throat before you can rustle up an alibi. Even sociopaths think twice before touching a reporter or a policemen. We have institutions behind us. A simple individual like you doesn’t.”

She gave me a smile. A private smile. There was something hidden behind it. But what? I decided to change the subject again. “So how did you track down their addresses and telephone numbers?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For being antagonistic. It’s important that we get along. That we trust each other. And so I should tell you that what I said earlier is not quite accurate. I haven’t tried to contact any of those people personally. But when I was going through my father’s things prior to the funeral, I came across some very short letters he had written to all of them asking them to help clear his name. But he never mailed the letters. I phoned the university and found out that Professor Gooden and Professor Hendricks were still at Winston. I mailed those letters from Oregon. I guess I thought I might set a cat loose among the pigeons.”

I did not know what to say. I had the feeling that Gina Montini would prove a constant surprise to me.

“I got the addresses and phone numbers,” she went on, staring at the food that remained on her plate, “through the university registrar. He had known my father. I told him I wanted to let my father’s former friends know about his death.”

“And he believed you?”

“Why not?” She gave me a crooked smile. “But he looked a little doubtful when I asked if he had Naomi Monaghan’s address and telephone number.”

“The wife of the murdered professor.”

“And the woman my father had had the affair with,” she said. “But I got lucky. One of his elderly female assistants had kept in touch with Naomi Monaghan. Good thing too because she’s gone back to her maiden name of Bronson. The woman seemed hesitant, at first, but she finally gave me an address and a telephone number.”

I glanced down the list and noticed that the address was in the east end of Montreal. A district almost exclusively French speaking. I finished my wine. “I told you I spoke to the policeman who handled the case. I doubt if many people are going to be very co-operative. He, for example, is still convinced your father was guilty.”

“He didn’t know my father.”

There was not much I could say to that. Who knows a father best? A cynical policeman? Or a loving daughter?

CHAPTER TWO
 

The next morning, I decided to walk over to the campus of Winston University. I felt a need to revisit the scene of the crime, to try to recapture something of what I had felt back then. Walking one of the corridors of the engineering department I passed a door with Dean Peter Gooden’s name on it. He had been the youngest of the seven people in the photo Gina had left with me. On instinct I walked into his outer office. I handed his secretary my card. On it I wrote two names: that of Gina’s father and that of the murdered professor. I asked her to take it in to the Dean. She studied the card. She wore no make-up. Her hair was soft and blow-dried. She was wearing a jean jacket with an expensive designer’s label on it. I figured she was five years younger than Gina.