The Boy Must Die (7 page)

“Done.”

Johnson waved and headed off down the sidewalk in the direction of the police station. She turned suddenly.

“Chief? I left the keys to our cruiser on the hall table in there. I can pick up another at the station.”

Butch nodded and waved.

As they approached the house, Butch did some explaining. Billy moved beside him, listening and looking around at the dirt yard, the broken tree stump, the general dereliction.

“The spitting this morning was the second time something has happened.”

“Oh?”

“Cody Schow’s mother shoved Sheree at her son’s funeral. Called her a demon.”

“What had she done?”

“Nothing except threaten the mother with removal of her kid to a foster home. Cody Schow, like Darren Riegert, was underage — legally. Still classed as a child by Children’s Aid. Schow’s mother was a drunk. Claimed Miss Bird was putting a cross on her son’s coffin. A devil jewel, she called it.”

The shadow of the house fell over them as they climbed the steps.

“Here we go,” Butch said. He reached for the handle of the broken screen door. Billy looked up at the twin dormers. Only the stucco, stippled with thousands of sharp peaks, had defied time and neglect. The doorbell rang with a muffled jangle. Butch pressed it one more time, as a gesture of courtesy, then entered into the fetid, bare-floored front hall. Billy suddenly imagined a ghostly Marion Bartlett standing there, her sad voice imploring them to leave, the oak staircase behind her rising into mournful shadow.

A door opened. Behind it, there was a room painted orange with furniture draped in madras cloth. A woman appeared holding a lit cigarette in her left hand. She cocked her head. Billy couldn’t help but notice her smooth white skin and her almond-shaped green eyes. No wonder Dodd had blushed. She was lithe, like a dancer. Her breasts pressed firmly against the folds of her white muslin gown. Her feet were bare; her neck was decorated with silver and wooden beads. Flowing chestnut hair framed her high cheekbones and small chin. Sheree Lynn Bird was no more than twenty-four. Billy resisted the desire to run his eyes again over her body and face.

“Please come in,” she said. “Why have you kept me waiting so long?” Her voice quivered, and Billy caught in it a dark sensual sound. “Your constable has been keeping me company. He complimented me on my new dress.” Billy approached her. She followed him with her eyes. A
shudder of fear crossed her face.

The attending constable rose. The room harboured an oak dining table-and-chair set, and by the fireplace sat a small television. Butch nodded to the constable to leave as Sheree Lynn Bird settled at the table, a cup of coffee in front of her. She drew an ashtray full of butts up to her right elbow. Through the bay window, Billy noted a sagging wooden garage with leaning doorframes and a row of shattered glass panes. Light from the June afternoon stretched across the floor now. It promised to be a long day of dry heat.

“Miss Bird, please meet Detective Inspector Billy Yamamoto.”

“Can you call me Sheree, please? You make it sound like I’m on trial or something.”

Billy sat down across from Sheree and pulled out his ballpoint and his new notebook. He laid the notebook flat on the table and wrote the date and time in the top left corner of the first page.

“I don’t use this room much, Inspector. I got a deal on this place. The bank leased it to me for next to nothing.” Sheree retrieved her cigarette and relit it with a blue plastic lighter. “Mainly I stayed upstairs. The boys used this room. To chill as they would. . . .”

Sheree Lynn Bird bent her head forward and covered her eyes with her left hand. Billy reached into his pocket. But he’d forgotten to put tissues there this morning. In the old days in Vancouver, he always put tissues in his pocket. Sheree lifted her cigarette to her lips and took a long drag.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sheree, I have to ask you some questions.” Billy broke into a polite smile. Sheree Lynn beamed back at him. Billy read this gesture as one of panic. Here was a woman still in shock, he reminded himself, a woman who may be a suspect. Yet her fear, he saw, did not overcome her need to show off her beauty.

“I really want out of all this, Inspector. You don’t know what it’s been like here.” Sheree breathed in. “You’re Japanese. At least your last name is.”

“Yes.”

“Your family from here?”

“Yes. My father lived here most of his life.”

“What about your mom?”

“She died when I was an infant. I never knew her.”

“Seems like I keep meeting a lot of abandoned boys. I’m sorry. You don’t find me rude, do you?” Sheree Lynn moved her eyes over Billy’s face.

“No, Sheree. Not at all.”

“Good,” she said. She shifted her upper body, glancing briefly at Butch.

“Tell me about yourself, Sheree,” Billy said. “How did you meet Cody and Darren?”

Sheree Lynn’s face looked pale, and as she began again, her voice lost its coquettish tone.

“I was a youth care worker at family services. Chief Bochansky probably told you that already. Two years. I got the job right out of community college. I met Darren and Cody on referral, and mainly did their paperwork. It hurts to talk about those boys. I can’t believe this has happened. I always hated the name Cody gave to this house. And the way those reporters made it sound so evil. It’s like a curse on me.” Sheree Lynn took a breath and waited. She looked up at Billy and brushed back her hair from her face.

“Go on.”

Sheree smiled. She relaxed her shoulders and butted out her cigarette.

“Marilyn, our psychologist, did the interviews for the boys. I filed the reports, but I got to talk to them about their parents. I got to help them fill out the forms and take their pictures. Marilyn let me escort them home — that’s where I met Sharon Riegert and Cody’s mom. I tried to be understanding. Marilyn told me not to say anything, but I felt I, well, never mind. The boys and I got along.”

“How do you mean?”

“We talked. They liked me. Everything was fine until I got downsized.”

“When was that?”

She looked at Bochansky. “You didn’t tell him?”

Butch blinked and sat forward.

Billy said, “I’d like to hear it from you, Sheree.”

“Last October.”

“Budget cuts? Reduced caseloads?”

“That’s what they told me.” She broke into a nervous laugh. “Sure!”

“You didn’t believe them?”

“I had no choice, did I, Billy? May I call you that?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“Look at me. People like me. I do a good job.”

Sheree shook her head and rubbed her hands together.

“I was hurt. Very hurt, believe me.”

“You’ve been unemployed for over six months by now. How do you pay the rent for this place? And buy groceries?”

“Randy, my boyfriend, helps out, and I have some savings.”

“Butch told me you took in these two boys, is that right?”

“They stayed here once in a while. Yes.” Her voice began to quiver. “I gave them meals. Why?”

“You did this all for free?”

“Yes. Is that against the law? I am a very giving person, Inspector. Cody and Darren begged me to help them. To let them come here and talk and hang out.”

“Weren’t you supposed to keep professional distance from clients?”

“But they weren’t my clients anymore. Not after I left. I felt they needed me as a friend and not just a case worker who cross-examines them and then lets them go home to get beaten up.”

“Cody was into drugs and Satan worship. Did your psychologist guide you in matters of counselling and giving advice?”

“I knew Cody had a problem. I helped him down once from a bad acid trip. They liked me, Inspector. That means a lot to a person, to share and feel comfort. I admit they were difficult, sometimes. I wanted
to try soft love on them rather than tough love, which is the only thing the service ever tries. Those boys needed me. I wanted to prove I could help them. I have the right to show people that I am not a useless person.”

Sheree was almost in tears. She lit a cigarette and sat back in her chair.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Billy continued after a pause, “these boys were using you? Taking advantage? Staying here so they could take drugs and not be disciplined?”

“I didn’t allow drugs here. None.”

“Did they ever steal from you?”

“No. Never.”

Sheree refused to look at Billy or at Butch. She sat slumped down, and her mouth had formed into a pout.

“How was it both these boys ended up in your basement?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yet you said you were friends. You liked them, and they liked you. You didn’t see any signs, any indication, that they might be depressed? Surely this was the first thing you should have noticed.”

“I felt they needed a mother, Inspector, not a policeman.” Sheree’s voice was shaking with passion. “I had a lot of sympathy for Cody and Darren,” she went on. “I latched on to them is the best way to put it. When they came to me and asked if I’d still see them, talk to them, I couldn’t say no. I did what I could to help Cody. I never imagined he would hang himself. Maybe that’s my fault.”

She stopped suddenly. Billy looked at her in silence.

“You must think I’m irresponsible, Inspector,” she said before Billy could frame another question. “I assure you I intended only the best for those boys.”

Billy met her candour with his own: “But they both fooled you, didn’t they, Sheree? You never suspected Cody would try suicide? But you knew he took drugs and had an abusive home life. And Darren? You sympathized with him, but why didn’t you act? You knew about his
mother and Woody.”

Sheree’s eyes flashed hot. “Are you accusing me of negligence? After all I did?”

“From what I’ve seen, adolescents often hide and distort the truth, very often the truth of how they feel. Isn’t this a typical problem of boys in this age group?”

“It can be. I always probed them. Always tried to make them open up more. Do you know, Inspector, how hard it is to fight against a wall of fear and pain?”

“Sheree, you and I are in this to find out why Darren was murdered. Why don’t we look at that right now?” Sheree’s back straightened, and her breathing calmed down. Billy decided to take a different line. “You must have been really shocked this morning when you saw the body.”

“Randy saw it. I didn’t. I refused. I couldn’t.”

“You stayed at Randy’s last night?”

“Yes, Inspector. Randy and I came back here at eight or so this morning. When we arrived, the back door was open. The light was on in the basement.”

“You said earlier you got a call, Sheree,” Butch said, interrupting.

“That’s what really scared me.”

“When did you get this call?” Billy asked.

“I guess it was around seven. Randy and I were still in bed. This crazy voice — a boy’s, maybe fifteen or so — says to me ‘Did they do it? Did Darren go?’ Call display gave the number as unknown. Maybe it was from a phone booth. At first, I thought it was a prank from one of the kids I used to know at family services.”

“Did they do it?”

“Yes, Inspector. That’s what was said.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“What do you mean?” Her chest rose; colour flushed her cheeks.

“That it wasn’t a joke.”

Sheree Lynn’s voice broke. “A feeling . . . a hunch. Randy thought I was crazy. But I said something’s wrong. I remembered finding Cody
in . . . I prayed Darren hadn’t done the same thing. I begged Randy to drive over here to check it out.”

“Why didn’t you call Darren’s mother right away to check things out?”

“I never got a straight or caring answer from her. Why would I wake her up to have her abuse me over the phone?”

“But you did call her later. Once you and Randy got over here.”

“Yes. I felt I had no choice then.”

Sheree Lynn Bird retreated to silence, her head bent slightly down.

Butch shot Billy a quick glance. Billy wrote a few quick notes, then continued.

“Did you ever see any evidence of Satanic rituals or cult activities with either of these boys?”

“They read that damn book,
Thanatopsis
. It was like a bible to them, said it gave them a sense of power.”

Billy examined her face more closely as she said the words, looking for any sign of remorse. He saw only fatigue, but discerned a defeat as palpable as the smell of her cigarettes. “In your opinion, Sheree, why are boys this age so fascinated with death and evil?”

“It thrills them. Gives them a sense of the mystery of the universe. At least, that’s what Cody and Darren told me.”

“You and Randy were here in this house with those boys quite frequently, were you not?”

“What are you getting at, Inspector?”

“I want to know about everyone who knew Darren or had contact with him.”

“Randy didn’t like Cody and Darren that much. Though he didn’t say so. He was polite to them. When they’d appear at the door, or be here when we got home, Randy usually went up to our bedroom to work.”

“The back door was always left unlocked, even after Cody’s suicide?”

“Yes.”

“How many people knew of this unlocked door?”

“Only Randy and me and the boys. They may have told their friends.
I can’t think right now of anyone they knew who might have come here.”

Sheree’s answers were short now, spoken in a flat voice.

“Can you think of anyone who wanted to hurt Darren?”

Sheree sighed. She rubbed her eyes. “Other than his horrible mother? Not at the moment. I know he didn’t have many friends. Still, I feel sad for Sharon Riegert. She must be in a pretty bad state.”

Sheree Lynn asked to go to the bathroom. When she returned, she had washed her face and brushed her hair and seemed to Billy much more relaxed. It was as if talking to him had removed a burden.

“I will need you to come down to the station this afternoon, Sheree.”

“For the video camera?” She smiled.

“I have a personal question for you, Sheree. I don’t know how it relates to the case right now. But why do you and Randy live in two places? You lease this old house, and he lives across the river.”

“Randy loves me, Billy. He appreciates me. But he is possessive. He can be very demanding. I have to be myself and have a space I can call my own.”