Valley of the Lost (5 page)

“Who were her friends?”

“I don’t know that she had any.”

“There must have been one or two women in particular she talked to. Mothers always seem to hang out together.”

Lucky thought of the packs of young women, dressed in long skirts or baggy cargo pants, pushing strollers through town. Laughing women. Laughing children. Fresh faces, shiny hair, colorful clothes.

“I never saw Ashley with anyone. She always arrived alone. She kept to the back of the class, and she left alone, usually early. I try to take each group shopping with me at least once—some of them don’t know their way around the supermarket. But I don’t think Ashley ever came. I can’t recall her even talking to any of the other moms. I tried to talk to her a few times. I ticked Miller under the chin and pretended I wanted a cuddle so I could unfold his blanket to check for signs of neglect or abuse. But the baby was plump and, well loud, if not quite cheerful, color good and eyes bright. The mother was polite, but not interested in making conversation.” Lucky let out a lungful of air. “I should have tried harder, shouldn’t I?”

“Regrets,” Winters said. “If we eat enough regrets we don’t need food. You think I don’t regret that I didn’t follow up on those stolen bikes more aggressively?”

Lucky lifted her eyes from the pile of chocolate chip cookie crumbs she’d been assembling on her plate. She’d never thought for a moment that John Winters would be sensitive enough to understand what effect last month’s mountain bike theft case had truly had on Moonlight. Apparently he did.

They watched as Sylvester stretched luxuriously and strolled to his water bowl. The big dog drank with noisy enthusiasm.

“Did you see Ashley on Thursday,” he asked. “During the day?”

Lucky thought. “No. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen her for several days. Not since…” Her voice dropped away, and she stared at the pile of cookie crumbs.

“Since?” He prompted.

She looked up. Horrified to realize that she’d completely forgotten the details of her last conversation with the dead woman. “Since she told me she’d seen someone from her past and he’d help her.”

“What did you think of that?”

“So little I didn’t even remember it until now.” Lucky shook her head. Those girls, the lost ones, the young mothers with their babies and no one else, often had some mythical man about to swoop in and rescue them. It wasn’t Lucky’s role to disabuse them of that notion. Although she sometimes wished she could.

“Are you sure she said it was a he?”

“Definitely. It’s always a man, and if it hadn’t been it would have had more impact on me.”

“Did she say anything about him?”

“No. Just someone from her past. I thought she was making it sound all dark and mysterious to make herself seem important. I paid her no mind. I’m sorry, John. That was foolish of me.”

“Don’t let it bother you. We don’t usually hang on to a person’s every word, thinking that we’ll be questioned by the police later.”

She gave him a soft smile. Grateful for the kind words, but knowing that her failure to dig deeper would bother her a great deal.

“When was that?”

Lucky let out a heavy breath. “Four or five days ago, maybe? Not a week. I just know that I didn’t see her again, not until I found her….” Her cookie rose in her chest, and she stopped talking.

“Thank you for your time, Lucky,” he said, getting to his feet. “If you remember anything, anything at all Ashley might have said, that last time or any other. Anyone who seemed to be friends with her…”

“I know where to find you.” She held her hands to her stomach and began to stand up. “Alice?” she said.

“Oh, right.” He raised his voice. “Ready, Alice?”

The nurse came out of the living room, so quickly Lucky suspected she’d been listening at the door. Miller was asleep in the nurse’s arms.

Alice laid the sleeping baby into his pram and carefully tucked the blanket around him. “Such a cutie pie,” she said. She looked at John Winters and gave him a shake of the head that Lucky suspected she wasn’t supposed to see.

Winters sighed and let out a well-suppressed aura of tension. And Lucky realized that Alice wasn’t here to check up on her baby care.

She felt tears in the corner of her eyes at the ugliness of the world.

Chapter Five

The bars closed at 2:00 a.m. Spilling into an area of about three city blocks, several hundred people, many of them feeling no pain, staggered out onto the streets.

Constable Smith rolled her shoulders and shifted the considerable weight of her gun belt. Late in the afternoon, when she’d passed the big sign outside the drug store that displayed the time and temperature, it had said it was 42 degrees Celsius, 107 Fahrenheit. Although it was now early hours of the morning, the temperature didn’t seem to have dropped much. She suspected that if she were so inclined, she could fry an egg underneath the Kevlar vest, in the gap between her breasts.

“You okay, Molly?” Dave Evans said. “I mean after that hit you got yesterday. Nasty, eh?”

“Open heart surgery was required,” she said, through clenched teeth. She’d saved Evan’s hide from a fire-bomb not long ago, and about all he could offer in thanks was one condescending remark after another. “But, I’m happy to say,” she continued, “I survived the ordeal, and here I am in fighting form. No need to worry, Dave, your back’s safe.”

He shifted in his size-twelve boots, and wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand.

People began coming out of the bars, moving into the streets. Women laughed, at a pitch high enough to have ravens falling from the trees; young men strutted their stuff. A few people shied away from the watching police officers but most smiled and nodded.

A man left the bar, taking swigs from an open can of beer. Evans walked up to him, and ordered him to pour it into the gutter.

Smith put her hands on her belt. Her bra itched against the skin of her chest. She wanted to dig inside, root around, find the source of the itch and scratch it out.

Which would not be a very professional thing to do.

“Hey, sweet thing. Wanna have some fun?”

Sure
, Smith thought,
after I blow my brains out
. The man standing in front of her was young, his black hair cut almost to the scalp. His body formed the perfect male triangle of strong shoulders, compact stomach, thin hips. She’d never seen him before.

He held a homemade cigarette between his fingers. “Nice bruise you got there. Like it rough, do you? What a coincidence, so do I.” He lifted his right hand to his mouth, and blew smoke into her face.

Coffee and skunk.

“Are you trying to provoke me?”

“Perish the thought. Aren’t you just the cutest thing? Whatca doin’ after work?”

Another puff of fragrant smoke.

She grabbed his arm. “Get rid of that, fast.”

He drew a deep breath on his cigarette. “No way, sweet thing.”

“Let’s see some ID.”

His eyes opened wide. “What?”

“ID. Now. Move it.” She grabbed the cigarette out of his hand.

“What the hell? Back off, lady. That belongs to me.”

She pinched off the burning end and put the cigarette into her shirt pocket. “You can’t produce identification, then I’m taking you in. What’s your name?”

“Okay, okay.” He dug through his pockets. Pulling out an Illinois driver’s license he held it in front of her face. She grabbed it and read the information into the radio at her shoulder.

“Thank you, Mr. McIntyre. We’ll continue this conversation down at the station.” She took hold of his arm.

“What the hell?”

She spoke into the radio. “Trafalgar five-one. Outside The Bishop. I need a pickup.” Dispatch cracked affirmation. “I’m taking you in for possession of an illegal narcotic. I strongly advise you not to resist.”

Evans turned from watching the crowd leaving the bar. “You need some help, Constable Smith?” This time she didn’t take offense at his offer of assistance. She would have done the same for him.

The curious were beginning to gather. Two men, also strong and fit with shaved heads, watched but said nothing.

“Can you believe this shit?” McIntyre said to them.

“You going to come nicely, or add to the charges?” Smith said, watching the friends out of the corner of her eye.

They shrugged and looked away, melting into the crowd beginning to gather. Smith saw her old enemy, Meredith Morgenstern, watching them.

“Damn it,” McIntyre said.

“We’re good here, Constable Evans,” Smith said.

A marked car pulled up, and McIntyre, still protesting, but offering no physical resistance, was briefly searched, handcuffed, and loaded into the back. Smith got in the passenger seat, and they drove the few blocks to the station.

Smith did the paperwork. McIntyre had no record, no outstanding warrants, so was released with orders to return tomorrow.

He spat on the floor, barely missing the toe of Smith’s boot. “Fascist police state,” he said. “I’ll tell everyone back home what Canada’s really like. I thought you were supposed to be so goddamned liberal.”

Ingrid, the night dispatcher, laughed as the door slammed. “B.C. tourism’ll be after you, Molly.”

“I might set up my own tour company: jails of the Kootenays.” She took advantage of the stop at the station to use the washroom before going back onto the streets. Trafalgar had the reputation of being lenient on minor marijuana infractions, but the police didn’t take too well to having it flaunted in their faces.

On her way to the door, she walked behind Ingrid’s desk to have a look at the monitors watching the cells downstairs. Number three was empty.

“Hey,” she said. “Where’s my guy?”

“Just left,” Ingrid said. “You let him go.”

“Not him. The guy in three.” Smith pointed to her lip. “The one who bopped me.”

“No one there when I got here.”

Smith ran to check the files. Brian Atkins had been released first thing this morning. Case dropped. No further action to be taken. She swore with passion. The guy had attacked a cop, assault PO, and was released without even a fine. Sometimes she wondered why they bothered at all.

***

“How’d it go?” John Winters asked his wife.

“Well, I think. But you know how it is. You think you bombed and they can’t wait to have you, and you think you’re a star and they won’t return your calls.”

“I’ll always return your calls.”

She laughed, and handed him the newspaper.

“Seriously, it’s a heavy money gig. They’re prepared to shell out big, big bucks for this campaign.”

“Thus they can afford you.”

She ignored that. “But…”

Winters looked up from the paper. The headline and half the front page dealt with a woman’s body found in the woods in Trafalgar. Below the fold, preparations for the visit of a federal cabinet minister took up the space.

“But what?”

She turned her back and fussed with bread, the toaster oven, butter, and a pot of jam. He admired her rear end wrapped in snug beige shorts. “I don’t know if they offer me the job if I want to be on their side of this issue.”

He pulled his eyes away from her lovely rump. “Sit down and tell me what’s happening.”

She sat. “M&C Developments, right? After the M, Reginald Montgomery, died, the C, Frank Clemmins, found another partner. Pretty darn quick, too. An investor from the States, Seattle I think, name of Steve Blacklock. Steve brought in new money, new ideas, and they’re going after serious players to invest in their resort.”

“And you have a problem with it?”

“I think I do. There was this bunch of protesters standing outside when I drove up. The usual stuff, homemade placards, pictures of grizzly bears, intense people. I stopped to talk to them.” She raised one hand. “Yeah, yeah, big mistake. They told me if the resort goes ahead it will destroy the Grizzly habitat, as well as do all sorts of other nasty stuff. I don’t know if I want the contract, John.”

“So refuse it. We’ll move into a homeless shelter, eat out of garbage cans, and I’ll have to sell my body on the street. But hey, we can do it.”

Eliza didn’t laugh. Her eyes burned with a green fire. “There are people who sacrifice a lot for their principles, you know, dear.”

He felt like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the church collection box. “I do.”

“All I’m saying is that I might have to decide.”

His cell phone rang, and Winters flipped it open. Eliza glared at him before reaching into the fridge for a strawberry yogurt. She carried it into the living room.

“Good morning, John,” Doctor Shirley Lee said. “Hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Always a pleasure, doc. Surprised to hear from you on a Saturday. What’s up?”

“Not much I can talk about on the phone,” she said. “I’ll have my prelim report ready on Monday. But there is one thing you should know ASAP.”

“Shoot.”

“Constable Smith said something to Russ before I began the autopsy. I barely registered it at the time. But when I was writing up my report, I remembered.”

“What?”

“She told Russ that the woman’s baby had been found in the woods, close to the body.”

“The baby’s fine. He’s in care while we try to locate the family. Why are you asking?”

“The woman you’re calling Ashley Doe has never given birth.”

***

“Sergeant wants to see you, Molly. Said to go to his office soon as you arrive.”

“Why?”

“I forgot to ask. Do you want to wait here while I interrupt whatever he’s doing to check?”

“Who pissed in your cheerios?”

“The grandkids are visiting. Haven’t slept for three days.”

“Good thing you work here then, Jim, lots of chances to get some shut eye.” Constable Dawn Solway came out of the lunchroom, wiping her hands on a paper towel.

“If I wasn’t so amused, I’d laugh,” Denton said.

Smith went down the corridor to the GIS office. The door was open and Winters was at his desk, typing fast with two fingers.

“Jim says you want to see me?”

“Come on in.”

She pulled up a chair. “Ray’s violets are looking great.”

“Please, don’t remind me. I’m sure he’s going to carve ‘plant killer’ into my tombstone.

“I have an appointment at three-thirty to go around to Ashley’s apartment and look through her things. I would’ve liked to have done it earlier, but the roommate was insistent that she needs her sleep before going to work at five. But, as it’s now three and you’re on duty, you can come with me.”

“Okay.” Smith tried not to look pleased. Her shift was from three to three, and it could be pretty boring out on the streets in the late afternoon. And any chance to be involved in GIS work would do her in good stead, she hoped, if she were to make detective some day. But—she poured cold water on her ambition—she needed to graduate from probationary Constable first.

“This girl, Ashley, is proving to be as elusive as a puff of smoke. Dawn says she doesn’t know much about her. She showed up in town six weeks or so ago, baby on her hip. No big deal: many girls here have babies. She didn’t go out at night, hang around the bars or street corners. I’m checking with all the guys to see if anyone ever stopped her and asked for ID, but so far no one has. I’ve had photocopies made from a pic taken at the autopsy, the best they could do considering the circumstances, and we’ll be asking around. I’m hoping that a bar somewhere will have carded her.”

“She looked very young. Might be underage,” Smith said. “Maybe she went somewhere else looking for fun.”

“Her roommate says she didn’t have a car. No reason that means she didn’t have access to one, of course. But without a name, it’s going to be hard to find out.”

Winters glanced at his watch. “We’ve just enough time to get a coffee at Eddies.” He stood up and put on a light jacket. Smith stood also.

“How’s Christa?” he asked.

Smith did not want to talk about it. Christa Thompson, her best friend, her former best friend, had recently been badly beaten by a stalker. “Doing good, although she’s anxious about the trial.” Smith only knew that because Christa had spoken to Lucky. She hung up the phone if Molly tried to talk to her.

“She shouldn’t be worried. We’ve got him good.”

They clambered down the steps of the police station. Christa was not, in fact, doing good at all. She was a mess, afraid to go out, not starting on the new term’s university courses. Just sitting around her apartment all day, blaming Molly Smith for all her troubles. As Smith blamed herself. Lucky told her that Christa needed time to heal, mentally even more than physically, and when Charlie’s trial was over, she’d be better equipped to deal with her trauma.

Smith doubted it.

She’d eaten before leaving home, so refused Winters’ offer of a drink. He drank his coffee on the two block walk to Ashley Doe’s apartment, and tossed the half-finished cup into a garbage can outside the door.

***

Joan Jones had to be the most boring name in the entire world. As soon as she escaped from the stifling environment of the parental home in Winnipeg, she’d given herself the name she’d been born to have. Now she was Marigold. And Marigold was not pleased to have the cops around again.

Dead or not, Ashley deserved the privacy she guarded so carefully. And Marigold intended to respect that.

She opened the door to Ashley’s bedroom and stood aside to let in the pretty uniformed woman and the older man in casual clothes. The room was small, but neat. The single bed was made, covered with a tattered beige candlewick bedspread. The only other furniture was an old dresser, the front of one drawer hanging off, another missing altogether. The walls were papered with posters, not of rock stars, but scientists. Albert Einstein, with his big halo of white hair. Marigold thought she recognized Isaac Newton because the dude was holding an apple and looking up into a tree. She didn’t know the other old guys in long robes surrounded by stars or primitive scientific instruments.

“She was into the history of science,” the female cop said, “that’s interesting.”

“Oh, those,” Marigold’s lips tightened in distaste. “The previous girl left those. I told you she was psycho.”

Smith, the cop, looked through the things on the top of the dresser. A hairbrush, a stick of deodorant, almost finished, a scattering of colorful elastic bands, three baby bottles, clean. A tin of formula and a blue pacifier.

It was all Marigold could do not to shove the cop’s nosy hands aside. These were Ashley’s things. She didn’t have much, but it all deserved to be treated with respect. Smith opened the dresser drawers while her boss watched. Marigold wondered why a woman not much older than she would be working as a cop. Dressed like a storm trooper, doing what a bunch of old guys told her to do. She felt that Constable Smith was judging her, and Ashley as well, by the way she picked through Ashley’s few things.