Fool's Gold (9 page)

First I had to sit through half a dozen hearings of vagrancy. In each case Gallagher gave the same evidence. He had found the men panhandling in town. He had driven them all to the city limits and give them five dollars and told them to head back down the highway, there weren't any jobs vacant in Olympia and there was no room for beggars. All of them had come back into town and taken up panhandling again. He had arrested them, given them a night's shelter in the cells and a solid breakfast, and brought them to court. In each case the magistrate cautioned the men, told them they would get thirty days next time, and advised them to leave town for keeps. They had all agreed to do so. Two of them had stopped on their way out of court to shake hands with Gallagher and thank him. He brushed it off, but it increased my respect for the man. He was a good copper and a kind man.
 

I didn't get a chance to talk about the attack. The town lawyer was there on behalf of the two men, Tettlinger and Gervais. He asked for a one-month remand, telling the magistrate that his clients had suffered a severe beating, frowning at me as if he expected me to go red. I didn't. My initial horror was over. These two were bad news. They deserved a jail term. I would do what I must to see they got one. In the meantime, thanks to the Bail Reform Act, they were freed on their own recognizance and told to return a month later for the hearing.
 

There was only one florist in town, but he had yellow roses. I bought seven of them, then went to the grocery and picked up an empty carton to hide them in. It had previously held somebody's toilet tissue, but I didn't figure that was too outlandish to carry into a motel.
 

Alice Graham was at the desk, looking as perky as ever. She had some miner type with her, checking out, so I set the box down carefully and waited. She glanced at me over his head as he bent to sign the credit card form, and winked. "A little early for deliveries," she said.
 

"They told me this was an emergency," I said, and waited until he had gone.

Suddenly, without his presence, she was a little shy. I didn't let it cool me but lifted the box up onto the counter. "Never judge a carton by its cover," I told her.
 

She looked at me, her eyes wide, face still neutral, and opened the lid. She peeked in and closed it down immediately, bowing her head. Then she opened it again. "This is good-bye, isn't it?" she said quietly.
 

"How about
au revoir
?" I asked. "I have to drive to Thunder Bay this afternoon and I won't be back until midnight."
 

She pulled the roses out of the box and sniffed them. "You know where I live," she said. And then the phone rang and she was all business again.
 

I waved and left. It was noon and Thunder Bay was four hours of driving away, at least. Sam was glad to be moving. He sat up next to me for the first fifty miles until we reached the restaurant where I'd expected to eat the night before. I pulled off and had fish and chips, having to specify no gravy on the fries. By then it was one o'clock and I settled back for the rest of the journey.
 

The weather was perfect. The sky was brilliant and all the hardwoods were changing color. Right in that section, the Trans-Canada highway has to be one of the most beautiful roads in the world. There are little mountains peeking out of the endless trees, sheer cliffs, and the occasional view to the shores of Lake Superior. I knew that in one month there would be snow up to the hubcaps, but on an afternoon like this I could envy the lonely people who live there. Each of the scenic lookouts had cars at them, mostly carrying American license plates. Moms and pops were snapping their Instamatics at their Oldsmobiles with the view in the background. I stopped at a lookout about an hour from Thunder Bay to let Sam stretch and to get my mind away from Alice Graham and back to the case. I've known my share of women, but this one was a rare delight in a town like Olympia. She was intelligent and spirited and almost beautiful. I found it hard to get her out of my thoughts.
 

But I concentrated, and when I got back in the car I had worked out what I would do. It was simple. I would pick Eleanor up and drive her into town for a quiet drink, perhaps dinner. I'd take her through the story enough times to be sure she'd got the date right. Then I would thank her and take the photograph back to Olympia and let Gallagher see it for himself. From there on, he could take over the investigation and I would do any legwork he suggested. And in the evenings, I would spend what time I could with Alice.
 

As I came up the slight slope from the east, I could see a Winnebago at the foot of the Terry Fox monument. There were a couple of other cars parked there. One, I noticed, had Michigan plates; the other was Ontario. People were standing around the monument, reading the words at the base, taking photographs.
 

I pulled in next to the Winnebago against the low wall that surrounds the scenic lookout. Eleanor wasn't in the driver's seat, but that didn't surprise me. Her vehicle was a home. She was probably relaxing in the back, maybe making herself a cup of coffee on the propane stove. It occurred to me that she might be carrying through on the reward sequence she had sketched for me the night I fought Carl Tettlinger. Maybe she was back there in a housecoat, waiting to show her gratitude in the most obvious way she could think of.
 

I grinned at the thought. I'm no prude, but I didn't need the gesture. I'd rather be her friend than just another John. I tapped on the door and waited. Nothing happened. I tried it, but it was locked, I went around to the other side where the main entrance door was located. I knocked again but there was still no answer. A pulse in my throat started to kick. This wasn't right. You don't have to beat the door down to be heard in a motor home. If she was inside she was in no shape to answer. And I wondered why. I turned the handle and found the door was open.
 

That was unusual. It's not smart to leave a recreational vehicle open. Kids could swarm through it and rip off everything that wasn't screwed down. It could happen, even here in the true north, strong and law-abiding.
 

I stuck my head in and called "Eleanor." My voice echoed. Slowly I climbed the first step and called again. Still no answer. The interior was tidy. The double bed was made, covered with a silk bedspread as close to scarlet as I've ever seen. It had been ruffled, as if someone had lain on it and got up hurriedly, but there was no sign of her. I glanced around. The only inside door led to the head. It was shut. I tapped politely and called again, "Eleanor." All I got was silence. Working now on a policeman's instinct, I opened it.
 

Her body fell out with a slithering rush and sprawled at my feet. She had been shot, at close range, through both eyes.

 

 

 

8

 

 

The next six hours were a replay of a dozen homicides I've dealt with in my time. I got the couple in the next car to call the police. They came, a couple of uniformed patrolmen. I showed them my Murphy's Harbour ID and filled them in. They called the detectives. The detectives called their homicide guy, just one for the peaceable folks of Thunder Bay. He came. So did the CID people with their fingerprint gear and their cameras. And then the ambulance, picking its way through the crowd that had swarmed there: sightseers, reporters, cameramen, gum-chewers. By nine o'clock I was in the police station, drinking bad coffee and making a statement.
 

They started off suspicious but slowly thawed out. One of the detectives called Olympia and spoke to Gallagher, who told them I was kosher. Then they went over all the contents of the Winnebago, pulling out everything—from the milk in the little fridge to the working girl's wardrobe of garter-belts and fancy lingerie they found in the drawers under the bed. There was the usual amount of sniggering over all of that stuff, especially from the uniformed coppers who were still young enough to think that everybody's sexuality except their own was a scream.
 

They uncovered her camera, hidden behind what looked like a smoked-glass pelmet over the window facing the main entry door. It had no film in it. There were no photographs of any kind in the camper.
 

The detective, a big Nordic blonde by the name of Pedersen, sipped his coffee with distaste and asked me, "Who all would've killed her?"
 

"No idea. I only met her two nights ago, like I told you. I was coming here to see her about some customer she'd had that looked like a man I'm after."
 

He sipped again and looked at me as if I smelled bad. "So it's likely your fault she's dead," he said in a growl. "That shooting through the eyes, that's somebody's way of saying she'd seen too much."
 

"That's the feeling I got. But I don't know who could've done it. It could've been some trick she was blackmailing. She didn't strike me as the type, what I saw of her, but I don't know any more about her than you do."
 

"Less, probably," he said, crumpling his coffee cup. "I was in high school with her." He stood very straight and scrubbed his tired face with the heels of his hands. "Bright as a goddamn dollar. Some asshole tourist knocked her up and her family kicked her out. She couldn't get a job that paid enough to support the kid so she took to hooking. And now this." He looked at me for any sign of smugness. I didn't show any. Women like Eleanor don't make me feel superior. They make me feel fortunate to have been born male. We don't get landed with her kind of trouble. The bad ones among us cause it, the rest of us mostly blunder through our lives without having to touch the sides.
 

Pedersen must have sensed sympathy in my silence. "She was fifteen when it happened. Grade ten. Her folks ran a campground, lived out there all summer. She stayed there, picking up paper, working the kitchen, all the chores a kid would do to help around the place. That was my last year. Grade thirteen. She was in ten, so I guess that makes her thirty." He corrected himself, "Made her thirty, when she was still alive."
 

I said nothing. There isn't anything to add to that kind of story. A lot of social workers would have you believe all the women on the street get started that same way. It's not true. Some of them are lazy, some of them hate men and take out their resentment by accommodating them, enjoying the power they hold over them for the time it takes. Others are just unlucky, like Eleanor. My mother, rest her soul, would have said a Hail Mary for her. I don't say prayers much, since Nam, but I felt for Eleanor.
 

After an hour or two they secured the scene. Her camper had already been towed into the police car pound and they had sent four uniformed men scrambling down the escarpment in front of the lookout, one of them with a metal detector, searching for the murder weapon. It hadn't shown up by midnight, although they must have turned up fifty bucks' worth of beer cans, so they called two of the guys off and left the others to guard the scene against souvenir hunters until daybreak. Me they let go, with a warning to stand by to be recalled for the inquest.
 

I drove back down the dark highway, boring through the blackness with my lights on high beam, going thirty miles at a stretch without seeing a house or another car. In one spot a truck had hit a moose and a pickup full of Indians had appeared from nowhere to butcher the carcass. They looked up at me over the big bloodstain in the road, eyes gleaming red in my headlights as I barrelled through.
 

I made Olympia at five a.m. and drove down to Alice Graham's house. It was in darkness, but the door opened almost as soon as I turned off the engine. I paused to let Sam out, leaving him in the predawn chill as I slipped in past Alice, who was shuddering in the cold, wearing a nylon nightdress that Eleanor might have been proud of. I picked her up under the elbows and kissed her on the forehead. "Sorry I'm late. I ran into trouble."
 

"It was on the radio," she said softly. "They said a local woman had been murdered in her Winnebago at the monument and police were questioning a man." She tilted her face to kiss me quickly on the chin. "I put two and two together."
 

She closed the door and stood a foot away from me in the darkness. "You want to talk about it?"

"Nothing to say. She had some information for me. I went to pick it up and she'd been killed and the evidence was gone. It looks as if somebody learned about it and beat me to it."
 

Now she reached out and turned on a low reading lamp. Her house looked dim and comfortable, like a stage set for a romance, only I didn't feel romantic. I felt dirty and hungry and disappointed. "And that's all it meant to you?" she asked soberly. That somebody beat you to it?"
 

"No, it meant the end of a remarkable women. It makes me sad and it makes me angry and I'd like to catch the sonofabitch who did it and break his arms and legs," I said, suddenly angry. "I'm not a machine, Alice. I like people, I want them to stay healthy. I liked what I'd seen of that woman and now she's dead."
 

She shivered quickly, then reached out and hooked a coat off the peg by the door. It was a red mackinaw jacket, barely long enough to cover her hips. Frothy white nylon spilled out underneath, transparent against the low light. "I'm sorry. You just seemed so matter-of-fact about it. Would you like some coffee, a drink, what?"
 

My empty stomach rolled and I reached out and stroked her cheek. She caught my hand and held it against her face, then quickly let it go as if her mother might come in and see her playing with the boys. "Have you had anything to eat?"
 

"Not since one o'clock yesterday, and I want to be in Chief Gallagher's office as soon as he gets there."

"Then you need bacon and eggs," she said. "I'll put some on." She went over behind the counter and opened the fridge. I had half expected her to go for a housecoat, but she didn't, she moved around in her crazy half-sexy, half-practical outfit as if I wasn't there. For the first time in three mostly lonely years I felt like a married man.