Dead in the Water (5 page)

I took the corner of the sheet and pulled it down from the face. I had already turned the head so she saw the unbroken temple. "Is this the man you knew as Charles Murray?"

She nodded. "That's Mr. Murray," she said resolutely. I flipped the sheet back over the dead gray face and took her more firmly by the elbow. "Thank you, Miss Masters. Now I'm going to take you back to your motel, where you can rest up."

"Thank you," she said in a diminishing voice.

"There are a few more things I have to do first," I told her. "If you'd be kind enough to wait here. Mr. McKenney will get you a glass of water if you'd like one." I wanted him out of the way while I talked to Murph. You might as well take an ad in the local paper as try to carry out a private investigation in small town. Gossip is the currency, and as far as I could tell McKenney was a regular customer for it.

He trotted off obediently for water and I took Murphy back inside, wheeling the corpse with me. "Couple more things, Murph. Who found him?"

"Jack Collins at the lock. He would've come over here but somebody has to stay on duty."

"Okay, I'll stop by later and get a statement. Also, the doctor; when's he coming back?"

"Around three." Murphy was tightening up on me. The mystery of Ross Winslow took priority over this body.

McKenney came back, clearing his throat discreetly, a little birdy kind of noise. "What about the deceased, Reid? What I do about him?"

"Nothing yet. Don't do anything rash like burying him; the next of kin may have other plans."

McKenney humphed, a civil servant's sound of displeasure. I said to Murph, "First thing, call his head office and give them the glad tidings. Second, search him thoroughly. See what all he's carrying and find out why he's carrying it."

"I brought some property envelopes from the station," Murphy said. He was rolling a cigarette as we talked, moving like a Hollywood cowboy, doing it all with his one good hand. When he finished and stuck the ragged smoke between his lips I struck a match for him. He inhaled greedily, sucking down the smoke in a great puff that burned up a quarter inch of his cigarette. "Thanks," he said shortly.

"Try and find out what he was doing up here. It could be he was just playing cowboys and Indians with that goddamn gun."

"Doubt it," Murphy said, closing one eye to avoid the drift of his smoke. "If it's their gun I'll bet he had to check it when he was off duty."

"You do in the police department," I said automatically. Murphy and McKenney both looked at me, wondering if I was going to open up about the bikies, but I changed the subject. "I think we ought to contact the scuba club. If he was in the boat when the Sullivan kid hit it, there's a chance we can expect two more bodies to wash down."

"I already phoned them," Murphy said carefully.

I reached out and bumped him on the shoulder, the way I might have patted Sam. "Hang loose, Murph; Ross Winslow is alive and well somewhere."

"Maybe," he said.

I ignored McKenney, handing Murphy the only crumb of hope I had. "I didn't tell you, did I? The Winslow boat had been put out of action. The fuel lines were cut. I figure it must have been drifting before Sullivan's kid hit it."

Murphy took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked at the end as if the answer might be written there. "What in hell is going on?" he asked at last, not looking up.

I felt sorry for him. He'd had thirty years of pain and limitation as a result of the war and now the only guy who understood him or remembered the action was missing, maybe drowned. His thin old shoulders were rounded with the weight of it. "I'm going to take this woman back to her place, then go upstream and see if I can find out where Ross has gone. I'll check some cottages. Some of the people who fish up further might have seen him, or this guy Pardoe." He didn't answer and I asked him, "You going to be okay, with the search and the phone calls?"

He dropped his cigarette end and put his good foot on it. McKenney gave a little hiss of disgust at this abuse of his tiles. "I'll be fine, as long as nothing else comes up," Murphy said.

"Like what?"

"Well, there's that gang of bikies, they could pull in any time for a reunion with you."

"They won't," I told him, but he only looked at me out of narrow blue eyes.

"I couldn't handle them without help," he admitted.

"So okay. I'll leave Sam with you. He could take on the entire gang on his own."

Now he relaxed, his face falling into the creases of an old in. "I b'lieve I'd rather have him than a company of infantry."

"Done." I stooped and patted Sam, looking into his eyes. "Good dog. Stay with Murph!"

I straightened up and Murphy said, "Come, Sam." Sam trotted to him and he said, "Good boy, sit." Sam sat ignoring me.

I went out, past the girl sitting there, dry eyed, holding her lass of water. "Come on, Miss Masters," I said. "I'll take you back to your motel."

The crowd was still waiting outside, and they had gotten louder. I figured somebody had made a trip to the liquor store for a couple of mickies of rye. I walked up and took the radio out of the hand of a kid who was dancing to it, a big corn-fed boy with a summer tan and too much softness around the face and shoulders. I pressed the off switch.

"That's better," I said cheerfully. "There's nothing to see here. Please get on about your business. It's too nice a day to hang around funeral parlors." The kid started to bluster, but I looked through his eyes, into the back of his skull, and smiled.

He'd heard about my battles. They all had. He dropped his eyes and turned away. "Okay, killer," he said over his shoulder.

I said nothing. I stood there, airing my smile until they all went away, still in a group, down toward the dock of the marina. They would soon disperse. It was hot and the water as more inviting than the dusty main street where nothing as happening anymore.

I got into the car. The girl was sitting in the passenger side with all the windows up. It was hot and there was a faint aroma of her perfume and unemptied ashtrays. I wound down my window and asked her, "Where to?"

"The Canadiana, up on the highway."

I knew the place. It specialized in the hot pillow trade, except in midsummer when genuine moms and pops kept the rooms full. "It ain't fancy, but it's home," I said. She began to laugh. It started out as a little squeak of amusement but it turned into giggles and then into sobbing. I looked sideways at her. Her shoulders were heaving and I knew she needed more help than I could give her with chitchat. I drove off, past the gang of kids who had just left the funeral parlor. One or two of the bolder ones called things out at us. "Way to go, killer" was the one that stood out. I noticed the kid who said it and scored him in my mind for the next time he wanted to park illegally. It was hard enough to live down what I'd done, even without the wisecracks.

When I reached the police office, I stopped the car. "Wait here," I told her. She took no notice. Her head was bowed, blond hair spilling into her lap as her shoulders shook. I let myself into the office and unlocked the evidence cupboard. I let as back outside in thirty seconds, holding a bottle of scotch the brown paper bag the Ontario Liquor Commission uses for gift wrapping.

I drove away from the office fast, doing it on purpose to jolt her physically out of her misery. It worked. She began the organic business of survival, looking up first, then grabbing hold of the dash with one hand as I pulled the car around the bends of our side road.

She still hadn't spoken when we pulled up to the tacky sign the Canadiana, but I knew she was at least capable of it. I heeled in front of the office and slowed. "Which unit?"

"Four," she said nervously. She was back in control of herself. I thought my job might almost be easy.

I pulled up in front of unit four. It was a prefab cabin, looking more like a B-movie set than a piece of real accommodation. "We're home," I said, and she got out of the car without a word. I picked up the brown paper bag and followed, hoping that Mike Higgins, who ran the place, was out back somewhere. Policemen don't customarily take good-looking blondes to motels at high noon, not holding bottles they don't, not in a small town.

I stood in the doorway and checked the interior. There was nothing to help me. One double bed, rumpled. Lime-green nylon nightgown. Two suitcases. One pale blue, open. One tan, closed. His and hers. Only he hadn't been here last night.

The girl watched me as if I were a magician at her birthday party.

"Sit down," I suggested. And when she was slow to move, Please." She sat. I went into the bathroom, collected two thick old tumblers, and slipped the scotch out of the bag. It as an expensive brand, the bottle almost full. I'd caught the driver before he'd even finished his seduction.

She looked up at me when I reentered the bedroom, her eyes narrowing a little. I wondered if she thought I was bush enough to make a pass at her. I poured a stiff one and closed the bottle. "Drink it," I said.

"Like that?" There was a world of experience in her voice. A lot of men had poured her a lot of drinks, I figured.

"Want some water with it?"

"Please." She was almost back to normal, still in shock enough to take the drink, but not so fragile as she had been.

I brought water in the other glass and mixed her drink until she nodded, as mindlessly as if we were children playing dolly's tea parties. I handed it to her and she did a little automatic smile, the kind that women give when they sit down sideways on a couch and pat the empty spot beside them. Her name may have been Angela, but she was no angel.

She sipped the drink and I put on my getting-down-to-business voice. "This whole thing is getting too complicated for me and you to play games anymore."

"How do you mean?" She still fenced with me, looking into me from those still, green eyes.

"Murray had been belted in the head. It may even be a murder."

She took another rapid sip of her drink, a longer one this time.

"Derek said it might get rough."

"Is that why he didn't take you with him, when he went in the boat?"

She lowered her glass, and her eyes, staring down into the glass as if all the answers were inside. Maybe they were, for her. "He told me not to say anything to anybody."

I stood up, straddling a little, acting red necked and tough. "I'm not
anybody
. I'm the law enforcement officer of this area and somebody's dead and I want to know why."

I saw her cheeks pucker as she tightened her mouth. Then she shook her head, decisively.

"Is he in some kind of trouble? Why did he hire a security man?"

She set down the glass. "He said to say nothing."

I tried another tack. I sat down on the edge of the bed and took off my hat. "Right this minute, my assistant is calling Bonded Security. They'll tell me what their guy was up to, so I'll have most of the story. I only want you to fill in a few details. Is that too much to ask?" She said nothing and I dug into my memory, back to the lecture they gave me once on Parris Island. Me and a hundred other shave-headed recruits, as change from marching up and down in that goddamn sand. "There's a thing you should know about information," I said. She looked up at that. "The trick is, you tell people only what they need to know. Okay?"

She said, "You sound more like a soldier than a policeman."

"I've been both." She looked through me again. It was as if her eyes were turned off, like a TV set, cold and empty. I went on. "Right now I need to know what your friend is doing up here. And why he needs a baby-sitter with a gun. And why the baby-sitter is dead, with his head laid open."

"I don't know," she said, barely moving her lips.

"Is Pardoe some kind of big shot?"

"Big shot?" She laughed. "If only you knew."

"Try me."

The drink had worked a little. She turned her head to one side, a sudden flirtatious flick of long gold hair. Her voice was alive again. "Are you a chemist?"

I nodded. "Sure. See the shoulder flash, p-o-l-i-c-e spells chemist, right?"

That stopped her. She shook her head. "Sorry, I wasn't trying to be cute. So many of our friends are chemists."

"Not me."

She sat up very straight on the bed, tracing the pattern of the spread with her little finger. I noticed it was free of polish, short and unbitten. She was not neurotic about her hands anyway. She said, almost to herself, "He's a good chemist. He should be doing pure research but the money dried up." I just listened. Maybe now she was going to spill something useful, not just what Superman did for a living.

"Where does he work?" I tried.

"Straiton Chemicals, in New York."

They were the people who were getting their recruiters kicked off campuses in the sixties. They were making the napalm that the cavalry bailed me out with at least once. I felt less resentful than the average arts graduate who had never seen a shot fired in anger. "They make weapons," I said.

She flipped her hands impatiently. "Among a thousand or so other things, yes."

Gunpowder or face powder, it was all the same to her. She probably knew them both by their full chemical names.

"How long has he worked there?"

"Around four years."

"And what's his title, his position?"

"Research chemist." Either the scotch had loosened her up she was on an information jag. I quietly thanked whichever spirit was responsible.

"I guess I don't understand. You said he should be doing pure research."

She snorted, not looking up, and traced one square on the spread with her nail, digging in so deep the line stayed, even when she was finished. "At Straiton you work in an area about this big. They don't want pure research, they want practical research." She made "practical" sound like a four-letter word.

"Cheaper methods, better techniques?"

She looked up, half surprised. "Exactly. Not knowledge for knowledge's sake, knowledge for the sake of the dollar."

"And Doctor Pardoe was up here because he was frustrated in his work?" I assumed that he would be a doctor; it seemed I as right, she accepted the title without batting an eye.