The Abduction of Mary Rose (13 page)

"Well, you had the ground ripped out from under you pretty brutally, I know that. Are you sure you're not grasping at something to keep you grounded, I suppose, with all this dredging up of the past, as a way to survive?"

"Please don't psychoanalyze me, Frank." There was no edge to her words; it was a fair question. "Anyway, even if that's true, it's only a small part of it. I think you were more right than you realize when you said it was like Mary Rose willed herself to live long enough to give birth to me. I believe that somewhere deep in her subconscious she made herself hang on until she somehow knew I could be delivered safely. She gave me life, Frank. I owe her to try to find out who took hers. It's like a covenant. In lawyer-speak, a contract."

"I know what a covenant is." He grinned and sipped his Chinese tea from the black miniature cup embossed with a gold dragon. His shrewd lawyer's eyes studied her thoughtfully over its rim. She saw the sadness in their depths. He misses Mom too. They were dear friends long before I came on the scene. He's probably remembering their being in here together. She wished he could meet someone. Frank was too nice of a man to be alone.

Setting her plate to one side on the crisp white tablecloth, Naomi picked up her fortune cookie and cracked it open, and withdrew the strip of paper from within its shell.

"Good news, I hope," Frank said. "We could use a little."

She read it aloud: "The way of the trouble-maker is thorny."

They both laughed, and she heard the trace of unease in the sound. Still, it had been a very long time since she'd heard her own laughter, and it was strange in her ears.

* * *

On the drive home, Naomi thought over her discussion with Frank. As she had wanted to tell Sergeant Nelson about her dream of the eagle, so she wished she could have shared it with Frank. The eagle was at the heart of her quest. But Frank was a lawyer, and like the sergeant, thought in terms of tangible evidence. Thank God for Lisa who hadn't needed anything, but had taken her dream to heart without hesitation or question. It was in her nature to believe that just because a thing could not be proven doesn't mean it isn't real. Lisa had quoted Hamlet, smiling her warm, mysterious smile: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." With a self-conscious chuckle, she told Naomi she played a small part in the play in school, and remembered the line just now. Naomi thought Hamlet knew of what he spoke.

She wondered if the man would call again

Chapter Eighteen

"I need to report my husband missing."

The officer looked up from the John Grisham novel he'd been reading to see a thin woman with short, dark hair and anxious eyes looking down at him. He reached absently into the tray on the desk for a report form. "Yes, Ma'am. Name, please." Unaware, he ran a hand over his buzz-cut, which was still relatively new to him, and it made him feel naked, at the mercy of a stray draft.

"Norman Banks. I'm his wife, Debbie Banks."

"When was the last time you saw your husband, Ms. Banks?" He picked up a fat, maroon ballpoint, poising it to write.

"Yesterday morning. Before he went to work. He hasn't been home since. No phone call, nothing. I think something bad happened to him." Her voice broke. "I thought maybe an accident, but I've checked the hospitals … nothing. I called his work. He was there yesterday...."

The officer set the pen down, suppressing a grin. "Sorry, Ma'am. There's nothing I can do about a man who decides to stay out all night." He was thinking the guy was probably off on a toot somewhere, maybe shacked up with some little chippie, which was usually the case. It was his experience that he’d show up eventually, probably with nothing worse than a bad hangover and an explanation that, however weird, his wife would buy because she wanted to. "You, uh, maybe oughta be at home in case he phones. My guess is he'll likely be home by the time you...."

"No, you don't understand," she cut in, the intensity in her brown eyes willing him to listen. "It's not what you're thinking. Normie wouldn't do this. He's not that kind of man. We got three kids together. He's never stayed out before. Not once." Her eyes suddenly swam with tears. "But that's not the only reason. My husband's a diabetic and he needs his shots. He could go into a coma without them."

She had his attention now. Diabetes put a different spin on things. His brother's kid had diabetes and it was nothing to fool around with. He took down the missing man's description, and clipped the photo she'd brought with her to the form. "We'll call you as soon as we know anything, Ma'am. If he comes home in the meantime, please let us know."

"Please find my husband," she said.

As soon as she was gone, Officer Ramsay took the missing person's report into the sergeant. "Thought you'd probably get this one out to the public, Sarge," he said. "His wife says he's got diabetes and needs his shots. Might be lying in a ditch somewhere."

* * *

But it wasn't the police who found Norman Banks' body. Henry Wilkes found him. Henry was a homeless vet who'd been down by the wharves stumbling about, nursing a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag, headed for his favourite out-of-the-way shed where he intended to sleep. The stomach-wrenching smell hit him just seconds before he tripped over the body. A mouthful of the heavy sweet wine bubbled up from his gut, filling his mouth with the taste of vomit. He gagged and spat it off to one side on the ground as past horrors flooded Henry's mind, accompanied by the stench of fallen bodies halfway around the world in Vietnam. It took a few seconds to reorient his alcohol-fogged brain to the present. He flicked the head of a match with his thumbnail, and the flame caught the flatness in the dead man's eyes and the gaping slash across his throat.

He was out of breath and pretty much sober by the time he got to the phone booth near the main road and made the call.

He waited with the corpse till the cops showed up. 'Poor devil," he kept saying. "Poor son-of-a-bitch." His exact sentiments were noted in the report.

* * *

Poor devil indeed, Sergeant Nelson thought, glancing over the missing person's file that had just been brought to him, one he'd already read. Banks' wife's worries had been justified. Norman Banks didn't go into a diabetic coma, however, but he did come to a very bad end, with his throat slit from ear to ear.

There was no sign that he'd put up a fight or any resistance at all, and the consensus was that the killer came up behind him, surprising him. Why? And what the hell was he doing down there late at night, all by himself? He wasn't homeless like Wilkes. Not even a vet like Wilkes. He was, in fact, married with grown kids and operated a forklift for Harris Woodworking, a company run by a third generation of Harrises.

No smell of booze on him. Was he having some kind of secret rendezvous, a secret his wife wasn't in on? A lover? Drugs?

His wife didn't know yet that her husband was dead. She kept calling. He'd have to go out there and see her. Break the bad news. She probably already suspects, but doesn't want to believe it. They'd need her to make a positive I.D. on the body.

"That's it, then," he said to officers Drew Mullin and Jerry Knowles. Jerry didn't have all his colour back yet and his eyes looked glazed. He was a rookie and this was his first homicide. "You got nothing, no leads? Didn't come across the knife, by any remote chance?" A joke, of course.

"Nope," said Mullin, "just that article the vic had on him about that half-breed dame, all folded up in his pocket." Mullin was a big man, a Brian Dennehy lookalike, but without the actor's class or charm.

"Her name's Naomi Waters," Sergeant Nelson said coolly, not missing the look Jerry shot his senior partner's comment, though Mullin picked up on neither, "She's an audio book narrator."

Mullin looked blank on that one. "You think there might be a connection between her and the dead guy?" he asked.

Sergeant Nelson sighed.
You can't bitch at a zebra 'cause you don't like stripes.
"Maybe. Worth checking out." Was Norman Banks Naomi Waters' mysterious caller?" Nelson wondered.

"You want me to go see the vic's wife?" Mullins asked. "Break the bad news?"

Hell no.
"No. I'll take this one myself. I'm going out that way anyway," he lied, pocketing the tape Naomi Waters had brought him. Telling someone their loved one was dead, worse, murdered, was not a job he looked forward to, but better him than Mullin. Drew meant well, but he was old school, with some of the same bigotries as the old guard. He'd be retiring next year, and in his opinion, not a minute too soon. Not that all the older cops shared those negatives; they didn't, as he himself didn't. At least not that he was aware of.

A half hour later he was headed out to the Banks' house in Rollingdam, feeling heavy with the task before him. But better she hear it from him than through the media. If Banks' name wasn't already out there, give it an hour and it would be. Even if she already knew in some deep part of herself that her husband was gone, it would still come as a shock. The last shred of hope ripped away, she'd be left with a husband who presently lay on a slab in the morgue. Her life would be forever changed. That was the brutal reality.

Feeling the weight of the tape in his pocket, his thoughts turned to Naomi Waters. He envisioned her sitting across from him, all fired about seeking justice for the woman she'd just found out gave birth to her.

Was it possible that the murdered man was one of the two who abducted Mary Rose Francis that night, all those years ago? Would solving this cold case be that easy? Didn't seem likely. Banks probably had that article in his wallet for some other reason entirely.

Maybe he was just taken with the girl's story. Lots of people in town were. Although you don't usually cut a story out of the paper if it has no personal connection to you.

Well, he'd find out soon enough. Debbie Banks would certainly know her own husband's voice when she heard it. The tape in his pocket suddenly felt like a small, nasty animal.

Chapter Nineteen

Sergeant Nelson sat in Debbie Banks' neat, modestly furnished living room. The news he'd delivered minutes ago hung in the air like the silence following a terrible explosion. She sat across from him, folded in on herself, on the brown rust velvet-covered sofa, reminiscent of one his mother owned in the eighties, but newer. Her eyes were swimming with tears and she was shaking, but trying to hold it together. She didn't scream or cry out when he told her, just whimpered and put a hand over her mouth, her eyes begging him to tell her it wasn't true. But she knew; he'd seen the fear in her eyes when she opened the door and saw him standing there. Then she'd wept softly. He hadn't shared with her the gruesome details of her husband's murder. She would learn them soon enough.

Now she was mopping at her tears again with an already sodden wad of tissues, getting shakily to her feet, asking him if he'd like tea. Being hospitable was apparently important to her, no matter the circumstances. Just a part of who she was. Strange how in times of great suffering, we adhere to our basic natures, reverting to old tribal practices that allow us to go through the motions of civility. Or maybe she just felt a need to do something with her hands.

"No thanks," he said quickly, before she could disappear into the kitchen. She nodded and sank back down on the sofa.

"But I do need to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Banks," he said. "I can come back later if you prefer, I know this is hard for you. But the more answers I have, the faster we'll find your husband's killer. And we will find him, I promise."

More promises he may not be able to keep. Story of his life. It was why Jeannie left and took the kids. They were grown now. She was married again, to an insurance broker. A safe, predictable life. He couldn't fault her. And why was he wallowing in the past?