The River Killers (23 page)

“Bette is potentially a very valuable resource,” I pointed out. “You need to convince yourselves that we can trust her. What do we know that would provide a litmus test for her?”

“One of the few concrete facts we have is the call that Crowley placed to the lab. I'll ask her about incoming calls on the morning of April 9. If she doesn't respond straight up on that, we'll know we can't trust her. If she does respond straight up, we can maybe trust her.”

My unease deepened. They were talking about a person I knew and liked and had faith in, a person who had done nothing that would make her suspect. Yet suspect she was, until she proved herself reliable. A cop's world was a strange and scary place. I took a deep breath. “All right, I'm going to head over there. My first question, or request, is going to be the personnel records from 1996. I want to know who was working there then who might have been involved in Project Chimera. Second question, what else can you tell us about the lab's projects during that period? If you guys feel comfortable about her after that, and after Louise talks to her, we'll get into decoding the journal and the computer files. And there's no reason why you should feel uncomfortable about her. She's a good person.” I took the very stale doughnut and nibbled a crumb. “I hate to take the last one. Any chance of fresh ones this month?”

“Next Monday is budget day. We'll know then if we can afford doughnuts and coffee for the troops. In the meantime, we like to keep our guests happy. Fill your boots.”

“I would but I don't want to lacerate my feet. I did my penance in Ottawa.” I threw the doughnut in the tin waste bucket and it rang like a solid Little League hit. “Will you guys lend me a cop car or do I have to call a taxi?”

Thirty seconds later, I was in the reception area waiting for a cab that Louise had been kind enough to call for me. Twenty minutes later, I was being chauffeured through the incongruous rain-forest-in-a-city that is Stanley Park. And then I was passing over the incongruous ribbon-above-the-ocean that is the Lions Gate Bridge. The passage over a quarter-mile-long bridge suspended by a couple of cables is impressive: Strait of Georgia to the west, the skyscrapers of Vancouver to the east, and churning ocean directly beneath. The bridge is one of man's supreme accomplishments, and yet it barely merits mention with one of God's trivialities: the narrow strait that it spans.

When the cab dropped me at the West Vancouver lab, I stood for a moment and looked around. This place, this building, and its surroundings, were the scene, I was convinced, of a murder that had led to two other murders. And the first of those killings had taken away a friend of mine, sucked him into oblivion, and left only pain as a marker of his life.

I circled the building, noting the dock at the rear and two outbuildings that were not sufficient to contain decades' worth of project gear—floats, tanks, ropes, anchors, and assorted aluminum assemblages. When I returned to the front of the building, I looked up at the imposing edifice, symbol of knowledgeable authority and commitment to responsible management. I felt sad we'd never lived up to that, angry at the idiots who had prevented it, and a bit scared that some of those idiots might be feeling threatened. A cornered idiot was at least as dangerous as a cornered weasel. And what if they weren't idiots?

When I walked into Bette's office on the second floor, she rose from her desk to hug me. “Wow, you're all tanned and healthy-looking. Office people always look so pale and sick compared to field people. I'm jealous.”

I held her at arm's length and gave her an exaggerated up-and-down. “You look okay to me, kiddo.”

“Why thank you, Danny. Flattery is a girl's best friend. Or a guy's. I forget.”

Bette didn't do coquettishness very well and I couldn't flirt sober, so I went for the direct approach.

“The last time we talked, I asked you some pretty general questions about possibly illegal research that was going on here in the 1980s. Since then, I've come across information that indicates a friend of mine was killed because of that dodgy research. Two more people, one of whom was Alistair Crowley, were killed to cover up that initial murder. This is beyond supposition. It's now a police investigation. We, that is the police and I, need to know as much as possible about what was going on here back then. The fact that you are now operations manager should facilitate that. We hope.”

Bette would feel some pressure to protect the department, but I hoped her considerable bureaucratic intelligence would align with her basic morality and tell her to cooperate with us unreservedly.

“Jesus, Danny. Thanks for complicating my new job. Murder? Here? We do science here. We don't kill people. But you know that. Our whole rationale is about discovering the truth, and I won't be part of any cover-up.”

“I knew you'd say that. Complication. Some higher level people might be involved, people like Fleming Griffith. At this point it's better if they don't know about the investigation. That puts pressure on you, but you're protected if you can say you were dealing with a simple police investigation. So forget the background I gave you.”

She stared straight ahead as she computed the ramifications of this. “I can play dumb for awhile, but I didn't get this job by being dumb and people know that. At some point, I'm going to have to take responsibility for the fallout, even if it's fallout from ancient history. Good management practitioners are supposed to contain bad news. Or at least put the right spin on it.”

Good management practitioners? Contain? Spin? Bette was speaking a language I hadn't heard her use before. It was a language, to be fair, that was commensurate with her new position. But did it signal a fundamental change in her thinking? I tried to reassure her.

“I'll do everything I can to spin it as ‘valiant
DFO
staff do everything they can to help solve old mystery.'” I told her. “Beleaguered heroes don't get fired.”

“I didn't sign up to be a beleaguered hero,” she said, “but you play the cards you're dealt, I guess.”

I got specific. “Okay, the first thing I need is the personnel files for 1996. Somebody was here working with Crowley and that somebody is a murderer. Oh yeah, and that person is probably still working here, so we need your current staff list as well.”

Bette picked up her phone and dialed a four-digit number I took to be an internal extension. “Hi Bernice, it's Bette. We've got a pain-in-the-ass query from Revenue Canada. Something about pension deductions from staff. Can you dig up our payroll files from 1996 to now?”

“Wow, that's good cover,” I said after she'd hung up. “I'm raising both eyebrows in admiration. When did you learn to obfuscate so effectively?”

“An abundance of career models.”

“So, here's the big question. What research was being conducted here in the eighties, and up to '96? You told me a little bit about Project Chimera, and how you were asked to delete a bunch of those files. Can you add anything to that? You must have looked at some of those files. Did you see anything that in today's world would be a career wrecker?”

“God, let me think. There was lots of growth data on various salmon species under differing treatment regimes. I saw a couple of project proposals for transgenic work on salmonids, but nothing to indicate those projects were approved and carried out.”

“Who wrote those proposals?”

“Alistair Crowley, definitely. He was the senior scientist. I can't remember anyone else.”

“Fleming Griffith?”

“Not that I remember.”

“But you would remember if you had seen Fleming's name? He's not exactly an unknown.”

“You're right. If I'd seen his name, it would have stood out.”

“Any names of other people working on Project Chimera?”

“No.”

“Project description? Budget? Reports?”

“I remember a memo from Crowley asking for more money. They'd gone way over budget on supplies from some company, like triple. I'll try to remember the company's name.”

At five minutes before eleven Bette's phone rang and she answered.

“All right,” she said. “I'll come down and get her.”

I knew Louise had arrived.

Bette stood up to leave and then paused a minute. “Whose side are you on here, Danny?”

“The side of trying to find a murderer. You're on the same side.” She left me alone to stare out the window at the gently rolling waters of Burrard Inlet. I could see a few shrimpers heading out to the Strait of Georgia, their single poles cocked forward like jouster's lances. I wondered if one of them was Cousin Ollie on the
Ryu II
.

Bette led Louise into the room and I stood and imagined embracing her. We all sat and the two unpolice deferred to la policerina.

“Thanks for taking the time to see me,” Louise began. “I know you've just taken over this position and I understand how busy you must be.” She paused, but Bette only nodded in acquiescence. “I assume Mr. Swanson has given you the background, and you must appreciate the seriousness of the situation. We're going to solve this crime and nothing can be allowed to interfere with the investigation. Having said that, we will make an effort to avoid, for lack of a better word, collateral damage.” She crossed her legs and waited.

Bette didn't rush her reply. She leaned forward, elbows on her desk, and rested her chin on her interlaced fingers. “I would obviously prefer that this investigation wasn't happening, at least not now. But I'm not going to snivel in the face of reality. You will have our full cooperation, and let the chips fall, hopefully, not into the delicate machinery of my worn and damaged department.”

I felt like a spectator as two skilled heavyweights jabbed and circled.

Louise smiled. “That's very encouraging. Mr. Swanson assured me you'd be helpful, but I needed to hear it from you.” Hook to the ribs.

“At
DFO
, we like to think our work is important. But we realize other agencies have other priorities.” Right uppercut.

“Justifiable priorities . . .” I had to interrupt before bureaucratic blood was spilled.

“There's a key question we need help with.” I waited for Louise to jump in. She didn't so much as flex her knees. “Early on the morning of April 9, Alistair Crowley placed a call to the main switchboard here. We need to know if someone took that call, or if it was routed to voicemail or an extension number.”

“I'll find out and let you know
ASAP
.”

“It would be preferable,” Louise said, “from the evidential point of view, if you told us who to talk to and we made the enquiries.”

“Of course. Our main desk receptionist's name is, uh, Tina, no . . . Tanya Something-ova. Tanya Serenkova. I'll tell her you want to talk to her. Please don't tell her more than you need to. But of course you won't.” She stood a fraction before Louise did and extended her hand.

“Thank you again, Ms Connelly. If Ms Serenkova is on duty now, I'd like to talk to her immediately.”

“I'll inform her that you're on your way down and wish to speak with her.”

“I appreciate your time. I'm sure we'll talk again.”

Louise left Bette's office, and I made a point of lingering for a minute. I did my best to hide my discomfiture. There was figurative blood on the floor, but who cared? We weren't figurines. “Thanks, pal. I'll be back. There's more stuff we need help with.” She stared at me expressionlessly and I forced a grin.

Downstairs in the lobby, Louise was speaking to a competent-looking woman at the main desk. I left them to it and wandered outside to stand in the weak spring sunshine. I looked around and tried to imagine the scene eight years earlier when my friend Billy had pulled into the parking lot in his battered Camaro. He'd arrived here just after four-thirty. We knew that because we knew he'd caught the three o'clock ferry from Departure Bay. So the building would have been officially closed, but not long. There might have been people a bit late in leaving, some keeners. Someone must have seen Billy. Actually, we knew someone had. But had any innocents seen him?

Louise strode toward me, a frown on her face. “Another dead end. We played the voicemail files for April 9. Nothing from Crowley. So someone must have answered the call in person.”

“At twelve-thirty in the morning? Maybe, but let's say Crowley left a message knowing that our bad guy would hear it before anyone else. Because he always gets in early. So the bad guy hears the message and deletes it. So that's a dead end.”

Louise patted my shoulder. “Don't worry. Investigations are mostly dead ends. But one of these leads, it could be anything, will be the key to solving the puzzle.”

I gave her a cheerful grin. “It's okay. I've just about got this case solved. As soon as we get the personnel records, we look for someone who's been employed from 1996 until now, and who gets to work early. I'll let you make the arrest.”

“That's great, Danny. Let's take the rest of the day off.”

“On the slight chance that doesn't work, we'll have to give Crowley's computer and his notebook to Bette.” There ensued an uneasy silence.

“I'd really feel more comfortable if we could get someone else to look at it. Bette is involved in this case, if only peripherally, and it's not good procedure to hand potentially key evidence to someone who's not guaranteed stone-cold neutral.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. And stared off into the distance, just so she'd be in no doubt that I was upset. Somehow she missed all the signs. Women could be so insensitive.

“Let's head back inside. They should have pulled those personnel records together by now.” The receptionist handed Louise a large, three-inch-thick manila envelope. We walked back to the car and headed for
HQ
. In the car, I gave her the silent treatment until she must have been quivering inside. Then, not wanting to be cruel, I let her off the hook. “I can understand your reluctance to give evidence to Bette, but really, she's the only one I know who can decipher that stuff.”