The Frailty of Flesh (3 page)

Ashlyn exchanged a look with Tain as she reached for the door, pushed it shut and followed Christopher to their car.

It was a short drive around the head of the Burrard Inlet. The city of Port Moody embraced the tip of the fjord on the one side and nestled up against the foot of Eagle Mountain on the other. Port Moody, City of the Arts, was a nature lover’s playground. From where they’d found Jeffrey Reimer’s body at Rocky Point Park a network of trails and boardwalks formed an extensive walking path. With the proximity to Belcarra Regional Park it wasn’t unheard of for joggers and walkers to encounter bears. There had been problems in recent years with coyote packs living in the forest the walkways wove through, and there were even sporadic cougar sightings.

Traffic heading into Port Moody was light. Ashlyn had only a matter of minutes to compose herself before the next stage of the investigation. People always said stupid things, like practice makes perfect, but no matter how many times they handled notification it never got any easier.

Even Tain seemed unusually quiet, although she suspected that was because of their passenger. Tain’s usual brand of irreverent humor could draw criticism from seasoned cops, but she knew there was no way he’d shoot off his mouth in front of a child.

Tain slowed the car. “Is this the right address?”

Christopher exhaled. “Yeah,” he said.

Ashlyn thought over what Tain had said about his interview with Christopher, and what he’d left unsaid. Christopher had a reserved, cool demeanor, as though he was bored and inconvenienced by being detained by the police.

Trauma did strange things to people. She’d experienced it herself and in her mind’s eye could look back and see herself reacting to her fear, feeling as though she was looking at someone else. The intensity of her own reactions had surprised her, and she didn’t recognize that person. It was a side of herself she was uncomfortable being confronted with, but now keenly aware of. Emotionally, she liked to be in control. The experience of actually being in shock, and losing her sense of power over herself had been as difficult to deal with as the events that had put her in shock in the first place.

Still, she couldn’t put her finger on what it was, exactly, but Christopher’s reactions didn’t feel as though they were about shock. There was something else, and she was certain Tain shared her misgivings about their only witness.

As they got out of the car the front door to the house opened. A man appeared. He had black hair, cut short, and looked to be a bit below average height, in decent shape. One of those chiseled faces, dark eyes.

Ashlyn noted that in a split-second summary, but the scowl on his face as he marched toward them was what really stood out. “What’s he done?”

The words weren’t polite or born out of exasperation. They were laced with anger and accusations. Ashlyn and Christopher had walked around from the passenger side of the car, and the man she presumed was Richard Reimer walked right up between Tain and Ashlyn and grabbed the boy’s arm.

Christopher pulled back, and for a moment they were locked in a tug of war. Richard Reimer tried to grab his son’s other arm. Before Ashlyn could order him to stop, and identify herself as a police officer, Christopher swung. He planted a decent blow squarely on his father’s jaw. Richard let go of him and staggered back, mouth hanging open as he stared at his son. Then he clenched his jaw as his cheeks turned purple, and he raised his fist. He looked like he was going to strike back. Tain stepped forward.

“I’m Constable Tain and this is my partner, Constable Hart. Sir—”

Christopher let out a yelp and ran toward the house.

Ashlyn released her grip on her gun, dropped her hand and felt her jacket fall over her weapon. A woman had appeared on the doorstep. Presumably Mrs. Reimer, she appeared to be an older, well-used version of her living son. Pale cheeks and wavy brown hair, Tracy Reimer was what Ashlyn would call solid. Not heavy but not slight, she appeared to be as tall as her husband.

Christopher’s sudden display of emotion made an already difficult task that much harder. Ashlyn had expected him to flee into the house, but instead he remained on the front step, with his head lowered. He didn’t reach out to his mother for physical comfort but just stood there.

Ashlyn heard Richard Reimer mutter, “What the hell’s going on?” but he didn’t force the question. Tracy Reimer remained silent, as though there was nothing unusual about two plainclothes RCMP officers bringing her eleven-year-old son home, or the need to break up a physical confrontation between her husband and child on their front lawn.

From the corner of her eye Ashlyn saw Tain’s glance and could feel her eyebrows arch, even as she fought to keep her face blank.

Tain gestured at the door. “Perhaps it would be best if we spoke inside.”

Richard gaped at him for a few seconds before he turned and moved toward the house.

Ashlyn started to follow. She’d taken a few steps when Christopher said, “Jeffrey’s dead.” Then he ran inside, the sound of footsteps fading as he sprinted up the stairs, legs quickly disappearing from Ashlyn’s limited view inside the house.

Tracy Reimer just stood there, face blank and colorless. She looked from Ashlyn to Tain without so much as a shrug of her shoulders, a widening of her eyes or the tiniest hint of wrinkles on her brow.

Her husband walked up to her and said, “I’ll call the lawyer.”

Ashlyn saw Tain glance at her, and she gave a small shake of her head. Let Richard Reimer call. She wanted to know why he thought he needed a lawyer when he hadn’t even asked what had happened to his son.

Or where his daughter was.

She wanted to know if this was the usual level of drama maintained in the Reimer household.

They followed Tracy Reimer inside. The house was neat and what Ashlyn would call showy. Just off the landing there were double glass doors that opened up to a living room, the kind with sofas that looked stiff and uncomfortable, as though they’d been taken out of plastic wrap the day before, and shelves with thick volumes of books that didn’t have their spines cracked. There was no evidence of children in the room, not even family photos. The walls were a nondescript white, and there was no artwork to break the monotony. Ashlyn didn’t sit down. Neither did Tain.

Tracy Reimer perched on the edge of the love seat, back straight, hands folded neatly on her lap.

From the hall Ashlyn heard the brusque words as Richard ordered his lawyer to meet them at their house immediately. Everything after that was answered with a “yes” or “no,” so Ashlyn couldn’t get a sense of the context. At one point Richard added, “family emergency,” but that was followed by another “yes,” and then he hung up.

“Our lawyer’s on his way,” he said as he entered the living room, without looking up. He sat on a chair that was beside, but at a slight angle to, the love seat, with such force that his wife glared at him for a moment. He was either unaware or ignoring her.

Ashlyn saw Tain’s split-second glance but didn’t intervene.

“Mr. Reimer, may I ask why you felt you needed your lawyer?” he asked.

Richard looked up, his hand mechanically massaging his jaw. “You can’t question Christopher without a lawyer. He has rights.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Reimer, we aren’t here to question Christopher,” Ashlyn said. “We’re here to inform you that your son Jeffrey was found dead this morning at the water park at Rocky Point.”

Richard stopped rubbing his chin and lowered his hand. “You mean, you haven’t arrested Christopher?”

“Mr. Reimer, is there some reason why you’d assume Christopher would kill his brother?” Tain asked.

“Well…” He directed a wide-eyed stare at his wife, who quickly lowered her gaze, then held up his left hand, palm up, almost as though asking a question. “You brought him with you.”

Would you have preferred we leave him at the park to walk home by himself?
Ashlyn bit her bottom lip to keep from saying something she’d regret later.

“Christopher was found near the scene, and he identified Jeffrey. We—”

Tain was interrupted by a loud bang from upstairs. Richard and Tracy both sprang to their feet, but Ashlyn raised her hand and gestured for them to sit back down.

“Stay here,” she ordered them as she reached for her gun.

Tain led the way to the foyer. Their visual checks were instinctive as they scanned the staircase and what they could see of the upper hallway. She followed Tain to the second floor, both with guns drawn.

These were the moments that required extreme mental focus. You never knew what you’d face around the next bend or behind a bathroom door. You hoped for the best, expected the worst and had to be ready to deal with anything.

Ashlyn was only a few steps behind Tain as he moved down the hallway and approached the first door, but she could see that it was open. Carefully, he looked into the room from the side of the doorway, then lowered his gun and stepped inside.

She still approached with caution, but when she glanced inside she could see enough from a mirror above the dresser to know it was safe to enter.

A child’s room, obviously Jeffrey’s. Unlike the sterile living room below this was a space that resonated with warmth. A car mat was on the floor beside the bed and a table with a train track on it was between the mat and the wall. Buckets in bright primary colors were overflowing with toys. The green walls were filled with posters of frogs, dinosaurs, Spider-Man, crayon drawings of spaceships, a photo of Jeffrey and Shannon laughing and hugging each other. In the far corner, between the window and the bed, there was a hammock filled with stuffed animals, and below that a shelf that had picture books spilling off it. Beneath the window there was a child’s art desk and chair.

Christopher Reimer sat on the bed and held a string attached to a burst balloon. It was then that Ashlyn noticed the cluster of ribbons tied to the bedpost, one foil “happy birthday” balloon still bobbing in the air. The rest lay limp and lifeless in a pile on the floor.

The tear-stained cheeks were the only evidence of his earlier outburst. Christopher sat, slouched forward, gaze fixed on the floor, expressionless.

As Ashlyn reached back to holster her gun Tain said, “Wh—”

“Leave me alone!” Christopher sprang off the bed, ran out of the room, and seconds later they heard a door slam down the hall.

Tain looked at Ashlyn and shrugged. “That went well.”

She shook her head and followed him back to the stairs. Richard Reimer had entered the foyer below and was opening the door. A man entered. The Reimers’ lawyer had just arrived, and from their vantage point they could see enough to know who it was.

Byron Smythe.

A young lawyer who’d struck hard and fast with a high-profile case that had gotten him on speed dial with every criminal organization and lowlife with money in the Lower Mainland.

The kind of guy who never let his hair get a millimeter longer than he liked it, probably got a facial before every major court appearance, definitely invested in manicures, and the heaviest thing he’d ever lifted was his ego.

Ashlyn groaned. She’d made the mistake of thinking their morning couldn’t get much worse. With a lawyer like Smythe on speed dial one thing was certain: the Reimers had things to hide. No wonder Christopher was acting strange. One of his siblings was dead, the other missing, and the first thing his parents did was call their attorney.

Byron Smythe.

And that meant their job had just gotten a lot more difficult.

CHAPTER THREE

“Where the hell were you?”

The man was perched on the edge of Craig’s desk, one oversized butt cheek spilling over the side like too much batter put on a waffle iron. He was leafing through the papers and file folders Craig had stacked on his work space. Craig looked away from Sergeant Frank Zidani as he removed his jacked and tried to will the tension out of his face.

Zidani persisted. “I asked you a question.”

“Out.” Craig set the coat on a hook and turned.

The sergeant glared at him. He was a solid guy with black hair. Zidani looked like he knew how to use his fists, and he sported a nose that had definitely been broken, possibly several times. He tossed the papers he was holding back on the desk and turned to face Craig directly.

“You forgetting your daddy isn’t here to shield you anymore?”

Craig felt the rush of color coming up the back of his neck. “I never needed Sergeant Daly to protect me from anything.”

“Right. Never got your partner killed either, did you?” Zidani slid off the desk, straightened up, turned and walked toward the door, then stopped and looked back, holding up his index finger as though he’d just remembered something.

“I was hoping your new partner would last a bit longer. Guess if you leave him here all the time I’ll have nothing to worry about.”

Before Craig had a chance to respond Zidani was gone.

Craig’s new partner, Constable Luke Geller, stared at the papers on his desk just a little too hard to convince Craig that he found the contents riveting. Luke’s brown hair was cut too short to conceal his intense expression, or to allow him to sneak glances without being easily detected.

Craig pushed his own “beyond regulation length” hair out of his face and sat down at his desk, which faced Luke’s.

He’d been partnered with Luke Geller for a few months. A few quiet months. They were being fed vandalism complaints, the occasional domestic, and robbery. Nothing that would require them to work all hours of the day and night. Nothing high profile.

Nothing that would give them reason to draw their weapons.

Craig had bitten back his instinctive response when he was told he was going to be breaking in a rookie. With all the scandals in the news about the RCMP in recent years the bosses wanted him to take it “nice and easy” with the new boy.

Nice and easy with Luke Geller, bullshit. Craig knew what was going on. He was the one they were babying. For months his hands had been tied and he’d been kept from working on more serious cases.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Frank Zidani didn’t miss a chance to take a shot at Craig, reminding him his last partner was dead.

The fact that Craig had almost died didn’t seem to matter.

Acting sergeant, Craig reminded himself. A temporary fill-in. Until a final decision was made about whether Sergeant Daly would be returning to the Tri-Cities.

Since Craig had gone out to meet with Lisa Harrington, three messages had been left on his desk. He picked them up and skimmed the brief notes. One from Vish Dhaval, the boyfriend of Craig’s deceased partner. Craig pulled the lowest drawer of his desk open and tossed the slip of paper in with the stack of other messages Vish had left over the months. Craig knew he should really throw those messages out.

He glanced up at Luke, who was still pretending to read at his desk, and thought maybe it would be a better idea to burn them.

The second message was from Alison, his stepmother.
Call meat home.
He thought she was supposed to be in Saskatchewan, but guessed she’d come back early to get ready for Christmas. Craig crumpled that one into a ball and tossed it in the empty garbage can beside his desk, and reached for the third message.

Craig leaned back in his chair. First Lisa Harrington. Now the man incarcerated for killing Lisa’s daughter. Well, not the man himself, but his lawyer. Donny Lockridge’s lawyer.

Donny Lockridge’s sleazeball lawyer.

He could understand why Lisa Harrington had eventually been referred to Craig: His dad had worked the case, and his dad was currently out of the province. His dad’s partner was retired, Craig knew that much. He didn’t know what Ted Bicknell was doing these days. This time of year it was possible he was laying on a beach in Boca Raton.

Steve Daly didn’t talk about his former partner.

Craig had never consciously concluded that before, but the truth hit home as he thought about it. He knew the name of his dad’s former partner because of cop-shop talk, but he realized now he’d never heard Steve mention Ted Bicknell. Not even once.

“You want a soda, coffee or something?” he asked Luke as he stood and stuck the message in his pocket.

Luke didn’t look up. “Thanks, I’ll grab something later.”

It only took a few minutes for Craig to leave the building and climb in his Rodeo. Once he’d pulled the door shut he took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the number for the lawyer.

Out of the office. He left a message saying he was returning Byron Smythe’s call, and hung up. Then he dialed information.

“I’m looking for a number for Ted Bicknell. B-I-C-K-N-E-L-L.”

“Which city?” the operator asked.

“Can you check the whole province?”

A sigh, followed by the clack-clack sound of keystrokes. “I’m sorry. No listing for a Ted Bicknell. And before you ask, no T. Bicknell either. I checked.”

“In the entire province?” Craig asked.

The exhaled breath sounded less like a sigh and more like a huff this time. “I said I checked. If you have another name you’d like me to try…”

“No. Thanks.” Craig hung up partway through the “Have a nice day” spiel. There were a few options. Ted Bicknell could be in BC, but just use a cell phone. He could have moved somewhere warm, or had family elsewhere in Canada and moved out of the province.

For all Craig knew, Bicknell had passed away and was permanently unreachable. Did it really matter? Odds were, Donny Lockridge’s dirtbag lawyer was calling him as a last resort, for the same reason Lisa Harrington had. Because Smythe couldn’t track down Ted Bicknell either and some lazy RCMP officer had directed him to Craig when he asked for Steve Daly.

Not lazy, Craig. That’s not politically correct. You mean unmotivated.

But why would Lockridge’s lawyer want to talk to the arresting officers after all this time? Craig had nothing to do with the case. His only tie to Lockridge was through his dad.

The cell phone buzzed and lit up. Craig flipped it open.

“Craig Nolan.”

“Constable Craig Nolan?”

He didn’t recognize the voice. “That’s right.”

“This is Emma Fenton, with the
Vancouver Sun.
I’m doing an article on Hope Harrington’s mu—”

“No comment.”

“Mr. Nolan, you haven’t even heard—”

“I didn’t work that case, and I have no idea why you’re calling me.”

“Alison Daly.”

The name was blurted out in a rush, presumably as a way to keep him from hanging up. If that was Emma Fenton’s intention, she succeeded.

“Mr. Nolan, it was Alison Daly who gave me your phone number.”

The reporter paused. Craig could only assume she was hoping he’d say something, show some sign of curiosity, but instead he gripped the headrest of the front passenger seat with his free hand and bit his lip.

“I was hoping we could speak in person,” she said.

Craig closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened his eyes he still felt the skin on the back of his neck burn. “If you have a question, ask.”

He heard her draw a breath. “Fine. There’s a rumor of legal action over the wrongful conviction of Donny Lockridge for the murder of Hope Harrington ten years ago.”

And what does that have to do with me?
Things were starting to make sense. Lockridge’s lawyer, now a reporter…Had Lisa Harrington known something more before they met? Why hadn’t she said something?

“Mr. Nolan?”

He rubbed his brow with his thumb and forefinger. “That wasn’t a question, Ms. Fenton.”

“Emma.” She paused, but he didn’t respond, so she continued. “Really, Mr. Nolan, I’m just trying to get to the truth. We could meet for lunch, on the newspaper’s dime. All I want to do is get the facts straight.”

Craig glanced at his watch. 11:28
A.M.
“I’ve already eaten.” A lie, but there was no way in hell he was meeting her, or saying anything until he knew what was going on.

“Coffee then.”

“Ms. Fenton—”

“Emma.”

“Look…I have no comment. I didn’t work this case. I have no knowledge of any legal action.”

“So you deny being contacted by Donny Lockridge’s lawyer?”

Craig swore beneath his breath. Who could have told this reporter that Byron Smythe had tried to contact him? He hadn’t even known about that himself until less than half an hour ago.

“I have no comment.”

This time he lowered the phone and cut the call. Why the hell had his stepmother given a reporter his cell-phone number?

There was no time like the present to find out. He flipped the phone open and dialed.

Six rings later Craig snapped the phone closed. There was no answer.

“If it had just rained today. I never let the kids out in the rain. Shannon wanted to walk to school early, to meet friends…It’s the Lower Mainland, it’s December, it should be raining. Shouldn’t it be raining?” Mrs. Reimer looked up from where she stood on the front sidewalk, her dull eyes suddenly wide, as though she’d just had a sudden revelation, received a flash of insight. Her lawyer spoke in hushed tones as Mr. Reimer locked the front door to the house, then hurried down the steps. He took his wife’s arm, turning her away from Ashlyn and Tain.

Ashlyn knew grief did strange things to people. It derailed reason and made the mind latch on to the most trivial things. Like,
If only Bobby had let me give him one more hug, he wouldn’t have been running across the street at that second and been struck by that speeding car.
Or,
If I’d just let Sally take the jeep she never would have been walking to the bus stop…
And sometimes the mind obsessed on one key point the person couldn’t let go of. Some trivial detail about the crime, the events, or a ridiculous question born out of desperation and false hope. Her personal favorite:
Do you think he suffered?
The eyes pleading with you to tell them it was quick, that the victim likely didn’t even know what was happening.
No, ma’am. Being murdered didn’t hurt. Probably hardly noticed.

Today it was about blame.
If it had just rained today. I never let the kids out in the rain.
As though the weather were responsible. Your child goes out to play because it isn’t raining. Your child is murdered. If it had been raining your child wouldn’t have gone outside. They’d still be alive. Therefore, it was the weather’s fault. The mind’s weird way of trying to make sense of the senseless, to apply logic to madness.

It took more than a break in the rain to create a murderer. Ashlyn knew that. Even days of going stir crazy with cabin fever from being stuck inside because of the constant winter downpour didn’t make a person run outside and beat someone to death.

People tried to find something they could pin it on so that they assign blame without confronting anything too uncomfortable. Blame the weather or the hugs or a split-second decision, but don’t blame the killer. Don’t acknowledge that there are bad people in the world who aren’t guided by the same moral compass as the rest of us.

People who would kill a child.

Ashlyn wondered if this was the product of some twisted form of karmic logic. Put good out into the universe and it comes back to you, so if bad things happen you must have done something to deserve it so it must be your fault… right?

With her job it just wasn’t possible to buy into that. Crime could touch anyone. Some people were at risk, and the average person comforted himself with the thought that the victims had done something to deserve it, that it made sense they’d been raped, mugged or murdered because they shouldn’t have been in that part of town at night or been doing drugs or having a drink in that kind of bar.

Bringing reason into it to assume control. What they were really saying was
It couldn’t happen to me because
I
don’t live like that.
Using faulty logic to convince themselves they weren’t vulnerable when sometimes crime is as unpredictable as a tornado that reduces one home to a pile of rubble and leaves the house next door intact. Why one and not the other? Why this street and not the next?

In her relatively short time with the RCMP Ashlyn had learned one thing for certain: When it came to murder,
why
was usually pretty damn irrelevant. Oh, it mattered to her as a cop. It was a question she usually had to answer to solve a case. But knowing why wouldn’t bring back the dead, and sometimes the trivial reasons why one person would end another’s life left you feeling nothing but hollow. The reasons usually weren’t good enough to make sense of it.