Reluctant Detective (7 page)

14

The gleam of a streetlight illuminated a startling tattoo extending
the entire length of Sean McGee's right arm. On it, a grinning skeleton rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Eagle wings spread from
the sides of the machine, and the road on which it sped transformed
from a pavement of aces and eights into the trunk of a rattlesnake which circled Sean's wrist and bared its fangs on the back of his hand. Sean turned his Chevy Super Sport north onto North River
Road, and suddenly the snake on his arm struck at the skinny frame of the passenger alongside him. Sean's backhand cracked across the side of Carson White's head.

“For crissake, man, what'd I do?” Carson cringed against the
door to get away from him. His hands grabbed the leather suitcase
between them and braced it as a shield from more blows. The big
ring on Sean's finger caught him on the temple. Carson could feel a welt rising.

“You dumb fuck! You dumb fuck! I told you to jimmy the doors, not
break windows. How much attention can one dumb fuck create?”
The Chevy's engine was roaring. Sean glanced at the speedometer. Then he quickly took his foot off the accelerator and slowed down.

“I saw a camera case in there and the door wouldn't give. I couldn't think of anything else to do.”

“You couldn't think… you couldn't fuckin' think! You don't make noise. That's what ya fuckin' do. You coulda popped doors for an
hour and no one woulda caught on.”

“Do ya think that guy saw us?” asked Carson, half afraid that his
query would draw another smack from Sean.

“He saw somethin'. That's why he hollered. And you can bet he called the cops.”

There was a long silence between them. Sean turned onto University Avenue and headed back toward the centre of town. University
Avenue was busy with traffic and bright with street lights and
fast-food storefronts. Carson was about to ask Sean why he decided
to take this busy street where people could see them, but he held his tongue.

As if he had read Carson's mind, Sean muttered, “If you sneak along
back streets, the cops take note of ya. Here…,” he said with a sweep
of his hand, “it looks like ya got nothin' t' hide.
That's
how ya think.”

Sean turned again off University Avenue toward Carson's house.
There was another long silence until Sean pulled along the curb half a block from the kid's house.

“And ya never got the camera from that last car.” It was a state
ment, not a question, and Carson felt a coldness in Sean's voice.

“No. The case was empty.”

“So ya took that suitcase instead.”

“Yeah. There could be lots of valuable stuff in there.”

“Well, I'll tell ya what I'm gonna to do, kid. I'm keepin' the stuff
in the trunk. You keep the suitcase. That's gonna be your cut. Then
tomorrow, maybe, you can impress your little girlfriends with the half-dozen used panties and the greasy lipsticks you're gonna find
in there. Or maybe you'll really hit the jackpot with some salesman's sample kit of floor tiles.”

“But…”

“Get out!” Sean reached over, but the kid already had opened the
door and one foot was on the ground. Sean shoved the suitcase, and it tumbled after him.

Sean hit the gas pedal. There was a short screech of rubber and his car sped off.

Carson's house was only five buildings away. Even in that short distance, though, Carson felt very conspicuous. A sixteen-year-old
toting a suitcase in the middle of the night. If there were eyes on the
street, then he was sure that they were staring suspiciously at him.
He kept alert for the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk, the rattle of
a doorknob, or the creak of a floorboard. But it was late. Likely, no
one was about.

Carson lived with his parents. They rented a small wood-frame home built in the '40s. Next to it was a small detached garage with
a sagging roof and a twist in one wall. Carson tugged on the door
handle, but it stuck. A hefty pull popped it open, and the switch
inside the door lit a 25-watt bulb in a socket dangling from a rafter.

It cast a dim light, but it was enough for Carson to see what lay inside the suitcase.

Anne Brown felt a headache growing between her temples and a queasiness knotting her stomach. Her thoughts had run dry, and now they began repeating one another in a convulsive loop. All this was getting her nowhere, she thought.

She started the car and drove off, dumbly following her headlight beams homeward along nearly empty city streets. Once home, she
knew she wouldn't be able to sleep, but she had nowhere else to go and no other leads to pursue.
It was a chance occurrence. Bad luck
, she could hear herself telling the client over the telephone, but somehow she could not imagine an understanding, patient
response. Nobody can shrug off a million-and-a-half dollars. Equally
bewildering, she could not put a face to the voice which had called
her on the phone so few hours ago and, when people can't put a face on their fears, imagination paints what it will.

He's going to be pissed,
she thought.
Maybe even violent.

Anne's thoughts turned to her daughter, Jacqueline, home in bed, perhaps dreaming of her last school day of the year. Ambient light
from a half-drawn shade drew out the soft textures of whites and
rose from the furnishings of her room. Her head alone peeked above a hand-stitched quilt and the snug cotton sheets covering her small
four-post bed. A vanity stood against a second wall. A CD player
lay nearby, a jumble of disks and cases scattered across the floor. A computer table and a lightly filled bookcase took up the third wall near the door, and posters of rock bands and pop singers squeezed
a collection of dolls and stuffed toys into corners of the room. In
her mind Anne could see Jacqueline's chest rise and fall, softly and easily and regularly, like gentle rollers sweeping across a windless
Northumberland Strait, and suddenly she missed Jacqueline very
much – too much to go home yet.

Anne's tires chirped as she hit the brakes, and they squealed noisily as she spun the wheel and swung her car into a U-turn. Anne's car intersected the Perimeter Road north of the city and in less than five minutes she had turned into the industrial park
where she was supposed to leave the suitcase full of cash. Then she
reached the empty lot where the truck trailers were staged, drove
her car between them, and turned off the headlights. She got out of
the car and pretended to put something between the rear wheels of
the middle trailer, just in case someone was spotting the drop-off.
Then she got into her car and drove off.

She took a circuitous route through the industrial park, looking for
cars or trucks where no vehicles should be this time of night. There
were none. Then two blocks away she pulled into the parking lot of a
call centre. The call centre ran a night shift, and the lot was half-full. Anne snatched the camera from her car and crept slowly among the
shadows between buildings. She hid herself in the darkness between the brick front of Kelly's Marine Engines and a squat, cinder-block
utility building. The truck trailers now stood forty yards away,
farther than she would have liked, but anything closer would have
given her no cover. Then she drew herself up into a ball, nearly
invisible, and waited.

June evenings cooled quickly. Often they were damp. And Anne
grew chilly as she waited. At 12:10 a white and green security car made its rounds. Its spotlight moved randomly here and there. As it did, Anne withdrew her pale face deeper beneath the dark hood of her sweatshirt and concealed the whiteness of her hands in her pockets. At 1:10 it made another pass. Exactly twenty minutes after
that, a Ford pick-up truck pulled between the truck trailers and stopped. A figure stepped out. He wore a ball cap, a lined sports jacket, work pants and sneakers, but the silvery light of the city's
night sky drained any colour from the scene, and any distinguishing features of his face dissolved in blends of grey.

Anne focussed the telephoto lens and snapped a shot.
Not good
, she thought. The rear of the pick-up and the side of the transport
trailer masked a clear view of the man. So she snapped a few more just for luck.

The man disappeared between the double tires looking for the valise. Then he checked futilely between the other tires. After a
few moments, he returned to his truck and drove away on a course which led west of town.

Grasping for straws
, she thought, as she put the car in gear and
headed home. That phrase ought to have reinforced disappointment within her, but strangely it didn't. In fact she felt a curious elation.

Maybe grasping at straws isn't such a bad thing
, she mused.
When you've got nothing between your fingers, grasping at straw feels… hopeful.

15

“And you're going in early… why?”

“I told you, Mom.”

“No… no you didn't, but humour me anyway. Tell me again.”

“Mrs. Higgins said that she would like some help setting up the gym. Me and Karalee and Margaret said we would help. She asked us when we could come in. We said, ‘whenever.' She said, ‘How
about a half-hour before the buses come in.' We said, ‘That sounds
great.' Then she said, ‘I really appreciate it, girls. Thanks.' And
that's what happened. You have dark circles. You should dab some
makeup on them. Looks kinda gross… and why is the window down… it's cold in here.”

Anne didn't know where to begin. So much had rankled her in so
few words. Should she challenge Jacqui on her slaughter of pronoun
usage? Should she take exception to her tone?
Is she not speaking to me like I'm a simpleton? And dark circles? One late sonofabitch of a night and I already look like Nettie's hag
, she thought. What
annoyed Anne the most, however, was Jacqui's perkiness. Especially
this morning, her perkiness took the shape of a personal affront, a revocation of her right to feel crotchety and tired and hungry
and coffee-less and disoriented. Where on earth should she begin? Nowhere, she finally decided. Anywhere else and she knew that she would regret it.

Instead, Anne struggled to prop a smile in front of her face and
said, “Well, we'll just have to get you there as soon as we can, won't we?”

Jacqui smiled and gave a little bounce in her seat as if that would speed her on her way.

Anne rolled up the driver's-side window. Only a grating, fractured
rim of glass crept above the window frame. The noise of it drew
Jacqui's attention from the radio.

“There. That's better now, isn't it?” Anne smiled cheerily. Jacqui's mouth opened as if to speak, but she stopped, faced front, and said
nothing more until the car pulled up to the school door. Then she got out and waved good-bye.

The medium coffee with double cream and sugar passed from the drive-thru window into Anne's hands. She pulled over into an empty parking space and slowly sipped it with her eyes closed. It was hot and sweet and humanizing. She would like to have kept her eyes closed for a few more hours. But that was impossible. Each sip of caffeine flipped on a light switch in her brain until there were no more dark cozy spaces in which to hide.

With half a cup of coffee in her stomach, Anne could better appreciate Jacqui's enthusiasm for the last day of school before summer. In spite of school being only half a day, most students would show
up to get back locker deposits, pick up report cards, play games,
munch candy, and just goof off with classmates they wouldn't see for a few months. It would be fun.

Then she wondered what the boys who had broken into her car were doing this morning. Surely, by now, they would know what they had gotten. It was a stunning amount of money. Would they take off somewhere? Go on a spending spree? They might if they
were stupid but, if they had brain enough between them, they'd lay low and, if they were students, they probably would come to school as usual and avoid drawing unwanted attention to themselves. That gave Anne an idea. It was a long shot, true, but it was worth the try.

Anne pulled out of the drive-thru and drove six blocks to the Central High School. It was eight o'clock. Only a trickle of early-
morning students had begun to arrive.

There were two entrances for students. The first was at the front of the building where the main doors opened into a foyer bordered
by administrative offices. Rural students who arrived by bus
disembarked there. The second entrance faced the side of the school
and led directly to gym and locker areas. Local urban students
arrived there on foot from neighbouring city streets. Students who drove also used the side entrance, but parked their cars in a distant student parking lot.

Anne backed her car up onto the pavement leading to the side
doors and edged it off to one side. Although a brick pumping station partially concealed it from afar, anyone about to go inside the school
could not avoid noticing it and, because this was a customary spot for commercial pick-ups and deliveries, it didn't seem out of place. Anne popped open her trunk and took out her camera case. She
slung the camera around her neck, set the empty case on the hood, and leaned casually against the front left fender of the car.

From that vantage point Anne could see every student approaching
this entrance. At the same time, no student could avoid noticing Anne, her car, the broken window, and the camera case. As she
waited, an old proverb rolled around in her mind: “Innocence walks
blindly into the future, but guilt stumbles over its past.” And she
hoped that the wisdom in it would hold true this morning.

By 8:15 the dribble of students grew into a stream. As students passed, Anne made eye contact with as many as she could. Some smiled in response; others looked blankly; a few were completely
absorbed in chatter; one girl stopped to ask if Anne's car had
broken down and left disappointed that she wasn't able to help. In
another fifteen minutes the stream of students heading to home
room through the side entrance dwindled into clusters, packets, and solitary stragglers.

One stray, a scrawny kid in jeans and an oversized hoodie, rounded
the pumping station and started up the driveway but, when he saw
Anne, he started. It was a subtle, minuscule reflex motion, but a self-conscious change in his pace followed, and he avoided eye contact.

Looks promising
, Anne mused.
Let's see how easily he spooks
.

She slowly raised the camera and caught him in the frame of
her lens. Then she heard a shout: “Hey! You can't take pictures of students! Put that camera away!”

Anne's head spun toward the voice behind her. The kid stopped.
Then he bolted. By the time Anne had turned back, the kid was
twenty yards away, crossing the student parking area, and headed for the fence separating the school grounds from nearby homes.

Anne was determined not to lose him, but he had a good start, and he leapt like a gazelle. She couldn't catch him on foot. So she jumped into the driver's seat. Her car door slammed at the same time as the
engine roared to life. She dropped the transmission in gear and the
wheels spun, fishtailing away, one of the tires on soft grass slinging
a stream of mud toward the sputtering teacher behind her.

The engine laboured under Anne's heavy pedal, and the car roared up the access road. It was not a direct path toward the kid's escape route but, once she had cleared the school grounds, she cut across
into the residential area and began a slow pattern sweep. Even if the boy went to ground, at least now she had a description. No
photograph, though. That teacher had interrupted that. An hour, two
at the most, would be the limit of the kid's patience. Then he would
surface again, and she would nail him.

The flashing rack of lights on a police cruiser brought Anne to the
curb. The cop took his time checking the registration and ownership
and insurance documents and, when he was finished, he came
alongside Anne's car.

“Teacher at the high school reported a woman chasing a student
across the campus. Know anything about that, Miss Brown?”

“See the window that's not there,” she said. “He did that last night.”

“Did you see him do it?”

“No.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“What's his name?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Another open-and-shut case,” he said.

Anne bit her tongue and stared stonily ahead.

“Look,” he said. “Maybe you're right.” Then he scratched his head. “Maybe you're not right. My point bein' you can't chase kids across town for no reason. My advice: go home… cool down… let it go. But
stay away from the high school… otherwise they say they'll bring trespass charges. Understand?” Anne nodded. “Then have a good
day.”

It took less than three minutes for Anne to return to the school and pull her car into the student parking lot. She took off her light jacket,
tossed it onto the front seat, and pulled her hair into a pony tail.
Then she walked through the main entrance and into the library.

“Closed,” said the librarian curtly.

“I just wanted to look over the yearbooks. Won't be a minute,” said Anne.

“Closed,” she repeated. Shouldn't you be in home room? Go.”

“I'm not a student. I'm a mother. What I mean to say is, my daughter will be starting high school here next year and she's mentioned
the names of a few older students who attend Central. I just wanted to check them out. Put a face to a name. You know. A parent can't be too careful these days.”

“My god, a parent who cares. We may have to preserve you under
a bell jar in the science lab with the other endangered species. And
you're how old?”

“Thirty-five.”

“Oh my! I'd kill for those genes.”

Hennie Lovebetter, the librarian, passed three volumes of
yearbooks over the counter and pointed Anne to a quiet sunny spot near the window. Anne started with grade eleven classes. After a few
pages they all began to look alike. Then she turned to the sections
showing trade classes, specifically automotive. She found a grinning shot of Carson White in a small group shot around a stripped-down V-8 engine. She compared it with one of his from an academic class
snapshot. Bingo! This was her guy.

Anne returned to Hennie's desk and slid the books toward her.

“Thanks.”

“Find what you needed?”

“Does the name Carson White ring a bell?”

“Like the old
Gong Show
. Oh I guess you wouldn't remember that.
Too young. Anyway, that's a bell that doesn't ring so sweetly,” she
said and rolled her eyes.

“Local boy?”

“Lives up around Filmore and Condon somewhere.”

“Tough guy?”

“He likes to think so. But he's no Bill Sikes. Errant perhaps. One of
Fagin's tenth-round draft picks, if you follow. The deeper you find
his hand in your pocket, the bigger the wad of remorse he can cough up. Think your daughter fancies him?”

“Over my dead body.”

“Atta girl.”