Valley of the Lost (10 page)

Winters let out a long breath as he watched her pick her way across the street. “God, but that was sad. How do you know her, Molly?”

“Amy? Believe it or not, she’s only a few years younger than me, though she looks like a kid. When I was in high school, she was in a special program, and I helped out for extra credit.” She shrugged, and the right corner of her mouth turned up. “And because my mom made me. Amy’s moderately functioning, able to get along on her own, with assistance. Some asshole knocked her up, and skipped out on her. By the time Clark knew she was pregnant it was too late to do anything about it.”

“Who’s Clark?”

“Her brother. The knocker-upper was singing falsetto for a while, I heard. Clark looks after Amy and Robbie. Their parents were bad druggies when the kids were growing up, the sort who had no concerns about letting the kiddies enjoy the stuff too. Family values, you know. No loss to anyone; they died in a car accident a few years ago. Clark works as a bouncer at The Bishop and Nun. He’s a good guy. He makes sure Amy takes the baby to the support center.”

“She was hungry, Molly.”

“Clark does what he can. I’ll talk to my mom later. Ask her what can be done to help out.” A cloud moved behind the constable’s blue eyes. “Sometimes, try as you want, you just can’t make things right.”

Winters blew out a lungful of air. “You should be on the street.”

“You’d better tell the Sarge why I’m not.”

“This Armstrong. What Amy told us? What do you think, Molly?” Smith was only a probationary constable. As wet behind the ears as one of the ducklings swimming down the Upper Kootenay River. But she knew these people, and he didn’t. He wanted to hear what she thought.

She looked around. Officers were coming and going. Jim Denton was sitting at the console, watching them. Barb came out of her office carrying a gigantic handbag, and bid everyone a good night.

“My office,” Winters said.

He pulled up his desk chair, and Smith stood by the door, arms crossed over her chest,.

“I don’t know Julian very well. I meet him a few times before he left for Vancouver, about, oh six or seven years ago, when I worked at the homeless shelter, the summer before I went away to University. My mom was involved with him on some project or other. And that’s all I know. I don’t know why he left town, and I don’t know why he’s come back.”

“I need to talk to this guy. You know where we can find him?”

“No. But if he’s helping out at the support center, even unofficially, they’ll have him on file.”

“Call them. Hopefully they’ll have his number. Then phone Mr. Armstrong and tell him we’d like a few minutes of his time. ASAP.”

Someone from her past. That was the second time that phrase had been mentioned regarding Ashley. Hadn’t she told Lucky the same thing—she’d run into someone from her past and he’d take care of her.

Winters swung his chair back to face the computer.

Smith shifted her feet and her equipment rattled.

“Is there a problem, Molly?” He wiggled the mouse to get rid of the official Trafalgar City Police screen saver and bring up his unfinished report on the grow-op bust.

“I am supposed to be on the street, John.”

“Sorry. I’ll clear it with Al.” He reached for the phone, and heard Smith’s boots tramping down the hall.

Peterson was not pleased at having one of his constables reassigned at the last minute. Smith was needed on the beat, he told Winters. Winters reminded him that it was a Monday night.

Peterson reminded Winters that convoys of RVers from all across the Western United States were arriving for their annual gathering this weekend.

Winters rolled his eyes at Lopez’s African violets. Hell’s Angles, the RV bunch were not. “Any trouble, I’ll send her back right away.”

Peterson grumbled something and hung up.

Peterson was right, of course. Smith should be out on the beat. Patrolling the streets of Trafalgar. She was a probationary constable, not a detective. But he was lost in this small town. Only ten thousand people, everyone of them connected to everyone else by a myriad of invisible threads.

He should be using Ray Lopez for this sort of thing. But Lopez was working all out on another file, and anyway, today he was off. Winters had no compunction at all about asking his people to work on their days off. They weren’t bankers.

But in this case, he figured that Molly Smith’s local contacts would be of more use to him than Ray Lopez’s. Ray had been in Trafalgar for more than ten years, but he didn’t have the family roots that threw out even more of those invisible threads.

Chapter Eleven

Julian Armstrong rented a studio apartment in the basement of a house high above town. The views from the road and the driveway were spectacular, but from Armstrong’s windows all that could be seen was bush and the bottoms of trees. A sofa bed, unmade, sheets and pillows tossed half onto the floor, filled most of the room. A desk and a computer were pushed up against a wall. The computer was switched off although the cup of coffee beside it let off a gentle plume of steam. Smith had obtained his number easily enough from the support center. She’d called, and found him at home. He’d sounded helpful, a concerned citizen, unfortunately not able to see the police at this time due to pressures of work. His tone changed when she insisted. He tried not to let his annoyance show, but it had. Not that she particularly cared.

There was no place for the police to sit in the main room, other than on the unmade bed. Armstrong had had plenty of time to tidy up for visitors. That he hadn’t spoke volumes about the attitude he was going to take.

He dropped into the office chair in front of his computer, and swiveled around to face Smith and Winters. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you coffee, Moonlight, Sergeant Winters. But I have an appointment in half an hour so let’s get right down to it, shall we? I’ll help any way I can, without breaking client confidentiality, of course.”

His words were friendly, but his attitude was not. Smith hadn’t told him on the phone why they were coming over. Did he have some reason to be concerned about their visit?

“You worked in Vancouver?” Winters had taken the only other chair in the apartment, a ripped vinyl thing pulled up to the scratched Formica table in what tried to pass as a kitchen.

“Yes.”

“What did you do there?”

“Substance abuse counseling, mostly. Relationship abuse as well. Women in trouble, you know the scene.”

“Work the Downtown Eastside?”

“Some of the time.”

“I didn’t know you. And I would have, if you’d been in the area when you say you were. I was on the Vancouver force until recently. Working mostly the Eastside.”

Armstrong flushed. He glanced at Smith, seeking support, and then looked away. “Okay, you got me. A little white lie. Not the Eastside. My practice was in West Vancouver. Spoiled rich bitches with too much money and a hubby who was enjoying something tasty on the side.”

“You were quick enough to lie to me about your work experience? Did you lie to the people in Trafalgar as well?”

Armstrong wiped beads of sweat off his forehead. The room was warm, but not hot. He kept glancing at Smith out of the corner of his eyes, although she was doing nothing but leaning up against the wall, holding her hat in her hands.

“Help me out here, Moonlight,” he said at last. “You studied to be a social worker. You know what it’s like in this business.”

She blinked. Surprised he’d known what she’d been up to a few years ago, and not knowing if she should answer him or not. She was only here to lean against the wall and remind Armstrong that this was an official matter. “I…”

“Are you addressing Constable Smith?” Winters asked. “If so, I’d suggest that you talk to me instead.”

Armstrong rubbed his forehead, keeping his eyes hidden. Seconds passed in silence before his hands moved down to massage his cheeks. “Sorry if I stepped out of line, but I was only looking for confirmation that there are some things you have to have on your resume to be taken seriously. It’s nothing to do with the police,”

“I’ll decide what’s police business and what isn’t,” Winters snapped.

Unusual for Winters to break his cool. Armstrong was getting under the Sergeant’s crocodile-tough hide.

“This won’t get back to your mother, will it?” Armstrong asked Smith.

“Goddamn small towns,” Winters said. “Constable Smith does not gossip about police business around the breakfast table. Spit it out, man.” Smith hoped she wasn’t blushing. At least once she had, completely against rules and ethics, gossiped to her mother around the breakfast table about police business.

Armstrong swiveled his chair a quarter turn so he was looking out the window at the expanse of green. A starling looked back at him. And then, not interested, it flew away.

“It sounds better, in some circles, certainly in Trafalgar circles, to say you’ve tried to help women who’re in desperate conditions, rather than idle rich women with anxieties as big as their husbands’ bank accounts. That’s all.”

Smith was amazed that he’d try to get away with fudging his credentials. Surely anyone could find out soon enough where he’d been practicing. But maybe no one here bothered to follow up. A lot of people in Trafalgar, people like her own mother, took things on face value. Honest, well meaning to a fault, they assumed that everyone else was as sincere as they.

“What brought you back to the Kootenays?” Winters asked.

Armstrong mumbled something to the window about love of the area, the fresh air, hiking in the mountains, nice people.

“Look at me when you’re talking to me,” Winters said.

Armstrong turned, slowly. He made an attempt to hold Winters’ eyes, but broke off to study the worn carpet at his feet.

Winters looked around the room. “Not terribly nice accommodation for a professional such as yourself,” he said.

“It’s temporary, okay. And I don’t give a flying fig if it doesn’t meet with your approval.”

“Merely making an observation. Tell me about Ashley. You knew her?”

“I saw her a few times at the support center. I didn’t have much to do with her.”

“I’ve been told she liked you.”

Armstrong shrugged. He’d stopped trying to catch Smith’s eye. “I’m glad to hear that, but I have to say I probably wouldn’t even remember her if she hadn’t died. Just another sad, lonely young girl, forced to grow up too fast.”

Winters said nothing. Armstrong moved some papers on the floor with his feet. Smith shifted from one foot to another and looked out the window.

Somewhere on the property above them an electric lawn mower started up.

Armstrong was a social worker—a counselor. He should be comfortable with long meaningful pauses. But he broke first. “If there’s nothing more, Sergeant?” He checked his watch as if the audience in the upper balcony needed to see him doing so.

Winters wasn’t interested in the play. “She told people you were important in her life. Why do you think she’d say that?”

Armstrong flushed. “I don’t have the slightest idea. I told you I barely knew her. She was just one of the young women who came to the center. I haven’t been back in town for long, but I’m trying to get my practice up and running. It helps if I do volunteer work. Make contacts. I thought I could offer some of these girls substance abuse counseling, if that’s what they need. I also have experience with homeless issues. But Ashley didn’t want my assistance. We don’t make them take help, you know.” He pointed at Smith. “Her mother knew the girl better than me. Ask Lucky these questions.”

Winters stood up, so suddenly he caught Smith by surprise. “I’ll be in touch, Mr. Armstrong.”

***

“Call Rose Benoit in Vancouver,” Winters said as Smith maneuvered the van down the steep residential street toward town. Benoit and Winters had been partners for a long time; she was now the inspector in charge of commercial crime. “Tell her I need to talk to someone who can fill me in on this Julian Armstrong.”

“You think he has a police record?”

“Won’t know until I ask, will I? I can check, easily enough from my own desk, but there seems to be more here than a record search will tell. He left Vancouver in a hurry, something to do with ‘rich bitches’, I’ll venture to guess. You may have noticed that he doesn’t have a respectful attitude toward his clients.”

“Still, I don’t see what you’re looking for, John. So Ashley told her friend she liked him. It’s his job to be friends with these kids. He likes to think he’s a local, but he’s not. Not any more. He doesn’t know what’s wrong and so he’s trying too hard.” She coughed. “Well, that’s my take anyway.”

“Ashley told Amy that he was quote, the key to her future, unquote.”

“Perhaps to her he was. Even though she might not have gone to him for help yet, in her mind he might be the one who’d help her unlock the solution to her problems.”

“I asked you to contact Rose for me. I didn’t ask you to analyze my reasons. But you may remember that, according to Amy, Ashley knew Armstrong in Vancouver. Note that he didn’t mention that.”

Chapter Twelve

When Winters got back to his desk the coroner’s report on Ashley Doe was ready.

Killed, he already knew, by an overdose of heroin. Restraint marks on wrists and ankles, but no other signs of recent trauma. Then, with as much emotion as a butcher’s order, came a lengthy list of previously broken bones. Left arm twice, collarbone once, cracked cheekbone. Old wounds on a pre-pubescent body.

“Shit,” Winters said to the empty room. He rubbed his hands over his eyes. Hard to interpret this report as anything other than sustained abuse when the girl was only a child.

In light of that evidence, it was a good possibility Ashley’d been on the run. He’d met plenty of girls in Vancouver for whom life on the streets was preferable to what they got at home. For many of them life on the streets soon turned into a death sentence. One way or another.

Ashley might have been on the run from a bad family life.

Understandable.

But why did she have a baby—who wasn’t hers—with her?

They’d put the question out, but so far hadn’t heard any reports of a white male newborn kidnapped over the last couple of months anywhere in Canada. Reports from the States would take longer to come in. Europe longer still.

His phone rang. Eliza’s cell. He answered with a smile.

“Lunch,” she said.

“Work,” he said.

“I’m standing on the pavement outside of the station. It’s very hot. A young man is walking up the hill toward me. He’s not wearing a shirt, and his long, burnished hair is flowing around his shoulders. He looks like Daniel Day-Lewis in
the
Last of the Mohicans
. I wonder if he’d care for some nourishment.”

Winters laughed. “I’ve only been on duty three hours.”

“And I’ve been in discussions with Barney and the Grizzly Resort people for what feels like weeks.”

Barney was Bernadette McLaughlin, Eliza’s long time agent. Now approaching seventy, she’d celebrated her sixtieth birthday by giving up her habitual pack of smokes a day, and the sixty-fifth by jettisoning the single malt whiskey. As tough as they came, Winters wished Barney’d join the police.

“He’s almost here, John, what do I tell Daniel Day-Lewis?”

“Tell him he’s out of luck. I’ll be right there.”

“Love you,” she purred, as the call disconnected.

His friends had warned him against taking up with Eliza. Woman like her, they’d said, beautiful, indulged, wouldn’t last a year as wife of a cop. But Eliza had proved them wrong. She was a great police officer’s wife. If he’d said he wasn’t free for lunch, she would have laughed and let it go.

He put a light jacket on and left his office.

They ate at a trendy, pocket-sized bistro on Front Street. The patio extended into the road and took up a lane of parking spaces. It was surrounded by a white picket fence draped with boxes overflowing with white geraniums and purple lobelia. Umbrellas that could have been chosen to match the purple flowers shaded them from the sun. The street was heavy with summer traffic. Next door a guitarist sat outside the bank, playing Beatles tunes and collecting coins in his guitar case. Koola Glacier loomed over the town, snow shining in the sun.

“Barney’s mad for me to take this job,” Eliza said, as the waiter brought her glass of white wine. Winters was having a Coke, heavy on the ice. “At my age it’s becoming harder and harder for her to find me good jobs.”

“You’re going to take it then?”

“I still haven’t decided, John. It pays well, close to home.”

“Is, uh, José still around?” Ice cubs clinked in his glass.

“He’s signed. Now they’re waiting for me to decide. Barney says they won’t wait long. She thinks they have someone else in mind if I keep stalling.”

“Just a negotiating ploy. They want you.”

“You’re always so loyal. But let’s face it, John, there are hundreds of women out there, thousands, every bit as good as me, all anxious for work because we’re too old for most stuff.”

He snorted.

“There’s an abandoned building on the property. They’re doing it up inside to look like a finished suite, something to show prospective investors who don’t want to put their money down on nothing but a set of blueprints. Frank and Steve want to use it for the photographs. They’ll do the shoot in the faux-condo, relaxing in front of the fireplace, sitting on the balcony admiring the view. Laughing over drinks beside the roaring log fire. All the usual poses. They’ve planted grass and flowers and built a path that goes nowhere to provide a backdrop, but I think the river and the mountains should be all the backdrop they need.”

“Tell me again what’s bothering you about it.”

She wrapped cold soba noodles around her fork and took a bite. “Um, good. I like it here, in Trafalgar. If I take this job, I’m taking sides in the argument over the resort. And I don’t know if we can fit in once my airbrushed face is trying to seduce people into buying a condo at Grizzly resort.”

“This is a passionate town,” he said, picking up a ketchup-drenched French fry. “Look at that demonstration last month over the Garden. Half the town was on one side, half on the other.”

“Yes, people like your Constable Smith’s mother. People who’ve lived here for most, if not all, of their lives. But we’re newcomers. I wonder if that will make the difference.”

Newcomers. Ashley Doe was a newcomer. And, according to Marigold, she’d been interested in the Grizzly resort.

What did he know about Ashley, other than she was dead from a heroin overdose, apparently not self-inflicted? That she was opposed to the Grizzly resort. As Eliza pointed out, lots of people were. That she thought Julian Armstrong was the key to her life. Did Armstrong have a connection to the resort? He’d better find out.

“John.”

He blinked. Eliza was looking at him. The fine lines radiating from her green eyes and pink mouth crinkled into a gentle smile. “Like a TV show when it breaks for commercials, I know when you’re back on the job.”

He grabbed another fry, and stood up. “Sorry.”

She sipped at her wine. “Oh, look. Here comes Daniel Day-Lewis, perhaps he’d like a half-eaten burger.”

Winters kissed her firmly on the mouth, and went back to work.

***

Molly Smith was dreaming about Graham. They were on the beach at Tofino. They were lying on the sand, white moonlight washing over naked bodies, surf pounding the shore. She was settling into his embrace, preparing her body to accept his when she realized it wasn’t Graham above her, but the man she’d almost slept with earlier in the summer. Norman, Adam Tocek’s police dog, was barking, barking frantically, trying to push the man off her, but Molly’s legs were wrapped around his hips, holding him tight.

Her eyes opened, and she exhaled, heavily. The sound was not the Mountie’s dog, but the screaming baby. For once she couldn’t be too angry at Miller. Waking up after, she looked at the clock, two hours’ sleep was better than living through that dream.

Again.

Her bedroom windows were open, and a cool early morning breeze stirred the lace curtains. She went downstairs in search of coffee.

Her mother was sitting in the kitchen, rocking the pram with one foot. Her hair was a mass of unwashed and uncombed red and grey curls. Puffy black circles that hadn’t been there last week turned her eyes into slits. Lucky usually opened all the windows and lifted the blinds after sunset, to let the cool night air into the house to act as air conditioning the next day. But last night she hadn’t, and even this early the air in the kitchen was heavy with impending heat.

Smith looked toward the hook by the door—not yet seven, but her dad’s car keys were gone. Even Sylvester, who loved Lucky above all, was nowhere to be seen. Smith poured herself a cup of coffee, and added a splash of cream.

“When do they stop crying?”

“With luck, by the time they go to Police College.”

Smith briefly considered telling her mother that she’d mind Miller for a while so Lucky could get some sleep. But the impulse didn’t last. Lucky would have to deal with her own problem.

“This is putting me off having kids of my own.”

She’d meant it as a joke, a match to her mother’s crack about Police College. Instead, Lucky’s face settled into angry lines. “Babies cry, Moonlight. That’s what they do. Better you find out now before it’s too late to send it back.”

“If you want me, I’ll be on the computer, checking out the apartment-for-rent ads.”

It was supposed to be her day off. But the last thing Smith felt like was hanging around this house. She thought of Adam Tocek and his offer to go hiking. A good tough hike, deep into the old growth forest would do her a world of good. She considered trying to get a call through to him, ask if the offer was still open. Maybe they could camp overnight—in separate sleeping bags, of course. But the image of him, his soft brown eyes downcast, his ears pink with embarrassment, digging patterns into the dust with his boot, burst into her mind. Better not to go there. Instead, she’d head upstairs and check out places for rent. She had to get out of this house before her parents drove her mad. Never mind the cost. If she lived in town she could get a ride to work every day, so she wouldn’t need a car.

Half way up the stairs she changed her mind. It was too early to phone about apartments. Maybe Rose Benoit had returned her call. It wouldn’t take long to pop into the station and check. An Inspector working commercial crime was bound to be at work early.