By the Time You Read This (10 page)

15

S
ERGEANT
M
ARY
F
LOWER CAME
into the squad room and sat on Delorme’s desk. That was what she did when she wanted you to drop everything and pay attention to her. Annoying but effective.

Delorme was on the phone with the coroner’s office, trying without success to determine the whereabouts of his evidence concerning a case of domestic murder that was coming to trial in two weeks. She put her hand over the phone and cocked an eyebrow at Flower.

“We got Mrs. Dorn outside, mad as hell,” she said. “She wants to speak to you, I don’t know why.”

“It turns out I know her daughter.”

“Good. She’s here too. I love that top, by the way, is that Gap?”

“Benetton. Tell them I’ll be right out.”

Delorme found them in the waiting area. A woman in her fifties was standing under the clock, arms folded across her chest, one foot tapping furiously as if she were counting every split second of justice delayed. Her daughter, Shelly, was seated in a chair behind her. Shelly was an amusing red-haired friend of Delorme’s from the health club. They often took treadmills next to each other and chatted to pass the time. Delorme liked her, but Shelly was married with two kids, and this was the first time Delorme had seen her outside the club. She stood up when she saw Delorme.

“Lise, I know we shouldn’t show up unannounced.”

“That’s all right,” Delorme said. “I’m so sorry about your brother. He was so young.”

“Yes, he was young,” the older woman said, and even in those first few words Delorme could hear the agony that was coming out as fury. “He was hardly more than a boy. He was still a student, a brilliant student. He was accepted at McGill, he had every reason to live, and he didn’t have to die.”

“Lise, this is my mother, Beverly Dorn.”

“Mrs. Dorn, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“But are you going to help us with it? That’s what I want to know. What are you going to do to help us right this terrible wrong? Perry was a smart person, a sensitive person, and now he’s dead and it didn’t have to happen. There should be an inquest, an investigation. We deserve answers.”

“Mom, Lise will do whatever she can. Just take it easy.”

“Why don’t you come with me,” Delorme said. She showed them into a room that was often used for families under stress. Unlike the other interview rooms, it had carpeting and an almost comfortable couch. There was a scratchy-looking artwork of a mother and child on one wall, a blackboard without chalk on the other. Delorme closed the door behind them.

“Won’t you sit down?” Delorme said.

“I don’t feel like sitting,” Mrs. Dorn said. “I’m too angry.”

“Mom, you don’t have any reason to be angry at Lise.”

“There was another officer in that laundromat with Perry. What about him? He was right there when it happened. He was there
before
it happened. Why did he not disarm him, can you tell me that? Why didn’t he
do
something?”

Delorme gestured once again toward the couch and waited until Mrs. Dorn sat beside her daughter. Her eyes were red and raw from the kind of crying that brings no relief, her hyper-agitation that of one whom sleep has abandoned.

Delorme sat across from them and spoke softly. “Yes, there was a police officer at the laundromat. He was in the coffee shop next door, off duty, when the man beside him saw your son entering the laundromat with a shotgun. After calling for backup, the officer followed your son inside.”

“Why didn’t he take the gun away from him? That’s what I want to know. Why didn’t he tear that gun right out of his hand? He just stood by and let it happen!”

“The officer’s first concern was the safety of everyone in the laundromat. There were other people there. He focused on getting them to safety as quickly as possible.”

“Perry has never been a danger to anyone but himself. It’s obvious when you look at him. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. That is literally true, by the way. He’ll go to enormous lengths to get an insect out of the house without injuring it.”

“The officer did not know your son. All he saw was a distraught man, armed, in a room full of people. He got the others out first, which was the appropriate action.”

“And he lets my obviously distraught son kill himself. Bravo. Give the man a medal.”

“Mom. Let her talk.” Shelly put a hand on her mother’s forearm, but Mrs. Dorn jerked it away.

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Nobody’s patronizing you. You asked a question, and Lise is answering it. Let her finish.”

“The officer then tried to—”

“The officer, the officer—does this person have a name? A badge number?”

“He does. And you’re welcome to that information, but it won’t change the facts. He tried to calm your son down. He spoke quietly with him and encouraged him to put the gun down. Your son refused.”

“He was just a boy! You have a trained police officer, and he can’t stop a boy from killing himself? Why didn’t he grab that gun!”

Delorme let the question—accusation, rather—hang there in the air for a minute.

“I think you know the answer to that question, Mrs. Dorn.”

Mrs. Dorn shook her head tightly.

“The officer did not want to upset Perry any more than he already was. And he didn’t want to get shot himself. I repeat, he was unarmed.”

“It’s a policeman’s job to take risks. He should have talked calmly to him, and got himself close enough to get that gun away from him.”

“And I’m sure he would have done so, had it been possible. He was trying to talk him down, to calm him, just as you say. They were talking, and then Perry suddenly turned the gun on himself and fired.”

“And nobody stopped him.”

“Mrs. Dorn, from the time your son was seen entering the laundromat to the time he pulled the trigger took less than eight minutes. It took three or four minutes to get the other people out. That gave the officer and your son at most about five minutes to work things out.”

“Time enough to save his life. Why didn’t he stop him? Dear God, why didn’t he stop him, he was just a boy!”

“He did his best, Mrs. Dorn. There simply wasn’t time.”

“Could I speak to this officer, please?”

“Mom—”

“He isn’t here today,” Delorme said. “The reason is, he’s devastated by what happened. No police officer enters into a situation like that without wanting the best possible outcome. At that moment, believe me, Mrs. Dorn, no one wanted your son to live more than that police officer. Had he succeeded in talking Perry out of it, he would be here today and he would be on top of the world. But he isn’t, he’s miserable.”

“Maybe because he feels guilty. Maybe that’s why he’s miserable. Maybe because he didn’t do his job.”

“I hope when you’re calmer you’ll see it differently.”

Mrs. Dorn sniffed. She looked at the picture on the wall, then back to her daughter.

“Well, we certainly plan to demand an investigation.”

“There’s no longer a Special Investigations officer up here, but I’ll give you their number in Toronto. If they feel it’s warranted, they’ll investigate.”

16

I
T WAS A RELIEF
to finally escape the office and hit the road on the child porn case. Poor Burke had not been able to save Perry Dorn, but Delorme was optimistic she could find this mystery girl and save her from further abuse.

She drove out to Trout Lake and parked in the small lot above Lakeside Marina. As she went down the wooden steps, a chill breeze was blowing off the water. The air alone at this time of year was worth the drive. Pure oxygen, with the first hint of frost. It made you want to do things, embark on new projects, solve crimes.

Delorme had taken swimming lessons here as a kid—not right here at the marina, but just a few hundred yards away at the Ministry of Natural Resources dock. The instructors would order their victims to plunge in off that dock when the water was barely fifty degrees and practise hauling each other around with various rescue holds. She had had to practise mouth-to-mouth on Maureen Stegg, and it still gave her a peculiar feeling in the pit of her stomach to think about it.

The fresh air was invaded by the dock smells of rope and creosote and gasoline. Most of the boats had already been hauled away for winter storage, but a couple of cabin cruisers lay anchored a little way from the wharf, rocking gently on the rippling water. Delorme’s heart gave a little kick when she saw the Cessna shining in the sun, the tail number the same as it was in the photograph of the girl.

“Can I help you?”

The man was wearing expensive sunglasses and a Lakeside Marina baseball cap. A hardy type apparently, dressed in shorts, although it was not by any means shorts weather.

“I’m wondering what it costs to rent space here.” Delorme had never owned a boat, and had no idea of the correct terminology. Probably should have said “to lease a berth” or some such thing.

“Depends what you need,” he said. Delorme saw his eyes angle down to her hand, looking for the wedding band that wasn’t there, and back up again.

“Need?”

“Well, if you’re going to be using power and lights and so on, that’s one thing. Also, size is a factor, obviously. You from around here?”

Delorme turned and pointed to the Cessna. “Out there by the plane. Right at the end of the dock. How much would it cost to dock there?”

“Not much turnover in those slots, I’m afraid. Those are the most desirable, the most expensive, and they’re rented by the same people year after year. Even when they move away—Sudbury, Sundridge, doesn’t matter—they hang on to those spots.”

“So that plane, for example—that’s always anchored in the same spot?”

“Oh yeah. Planes change even less than the boats. That guy’s been floating there for at least since I’ve owned the place, and that’s ten years now.”

“Really? Can you show me what’s so special about those slots at the end of the dock? The ones that look like they’re fenced off?”

The guy grinned, big white teeth in a face still tanned from the summer. He thinks he’s getting somewhere, Delorme saw. He was kind of cute with that curly blond hair and the big grin—ropy muscles, too—and he was probably used to girls on vacation paying some attention. He was certainly not the child molester—too young, hair the wrong colour and texture, and too thin.

He opened a gate and led her along the dock.

“These boats go for what?” Delorme said. “Forty grand?”

“Oh, you’re way low. More like seventy, eighty, even more. Here we go. You see here?” He rested his hand on a blue box attached to a light post. “This connects you to all the comforts of home. Electricity, cable TV, satellite, you name it.”

“Don’t all the docks have that?”

“No, no. Just these two. Couple of others will get you electricity, but that’s it. Plus these, as you can see, have extra security. We’ve got the lights overhead, the extra cameras. Anyone breaks in here is going to get caught.”

“And the other docks it’s open season?”

The guy looked hurt now. “All our docks are secure. I’m just saying you pay extra, you get extra.”

“And what’s the insurance situation?”

“Insurance, you’re on your own,” he told her. “Obviously we have our own fire and theft and so on. And massive liability. But if your boat gets stolen or vandalized, it’s your insurance going to pay, not ours.”

“I see. I’m Detective Delorme with Algonquin Bay Police Services.” She had her ID out, showing him. She could see the guy’s interest in her cooling drastically; it was always the way. Some men may be turned on by the idea of female cops, but in Delorme’s experience it wasn’t many, and it was never the right kind.

“Jeff Quigly,” he said, shaking her hand none too enthusiastically.

“I’m conducting an investigation into a couple of violations that may have taken place in the neighbourhood, and I need your help.”

“Oh, sure. Anything I can do.”

Anything I can do to get you off my dock and out of sight, he meant.

“I need to know who rents these slots from you.”

“What, both these docks?”

“That’s right. And not just now, but for the past ten years.”

“Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I have all that information.”

“You just said the tenants don’t change much.”

The guy had folded his arms across his chest. He was looking out across the lake now, no longer at Delorme.

“Look, I don’t think I can be giving out information on our renters. That’s not the way I do things. People have a right to their privacy.”

“You run a marina, not a hospital. It’s not privileged information.”

“No, but look. Suppose I give out the information that this slot is rented by so-and-so. And so-and-so’s boat just happens to be out. A thief might take that to mean so-and-so is on vacation, touring the Great Lakes somewhere. Cruising down to New York or something. And his house gets burgled. What does that make me?”

“Innocent. Mr. Quigly, I’m not a thief, I’m a police officer investigating a crime.”

“Yeah, well see that’s another thing. What are you investigating? Sure, people drink on their boats, they smoke dope, but it’s a weird time of year to be investigating that stuff, and I don’t think you should be asking me to compromise people’s privacy over some minor infraction.”

Delorme didn’t want to reveal the nature of the crime. Mention child molesting and the place would go wild with rumours. And she didn’t want her quarry to get even a whiff of the investigation before she was ready to put the cuffs on him.

“I have to count on your discretion,” Delorme said. “You can’t be mentioning this to anybody.”

“No, of course not.”

“I’m investigating an assault.”

“Really.” He shook his head. “Must’ve been minor or I’d have heard about it.”

“I can’t give you any more detail than that. Are you going to help me? I could go get a warrant, but that’s going to take at least a day and it’s just going to delay getting a criminal off the streets.”

Quigly took her into the marina office. It was a cluttered place with a detailed map of Trout Lake on one wall and a gigantic model of the
Bluenose
leaning up against the other. There were fishing photographs and enlarged cartoons of sailing jokes everywhere. He rooted through a file cabinet and came up with some manila folders.

“Rental slips going back ten years,” he said. “You’re not going to find them in any kind of order, though.”