The Suicide Murders (12 page)

NINETEEN

The light comes into the office on a slant through the dusty windows. Somehow it bugged me, and I didn’t like being bugged by things I couldn’t do anything about. The window cleaners came twice a year; for the other three hundred and sixty-three days, the windows were filthy. I couldn’t keep my bottom on the chair; I couldn’t concentrate. I went out, thinking vaguely of getting a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes, when I got an idea. In another three minutes, I was in the Olds and driving along the Power Gorge Road. Traffic was light, and the sun licked at the curves of the creek on my left all the way. I passed Zekerman’s mailbox and took the next turn to the left, which took me down into the creek valley. I crossed the creek and turned the car around in the next driveway.

I stopped the car on the Red Bridge across the Eleven Mile Creek. It wasn’t red any longer, but it had been when I was a kid and used to watch the fast gray water moving under its timbers. From where I stood with the motor idling evenly, I could see up to Pelham Road, where at one end Myrna Yates’ father used to run a car wrecker’s, and at the other I could make out the elaborate ranch-style shape of Dr. Zekerman’s place. I could see the aluminum shed where we had met so explosively and down by the water was a smaller wooden shed—the potting shed. I’d been thinking a lot about that potting shed since my last conversation with Harrington. If I was going to try my hand at extortion or blackmail, I think I’d like a nice quiet potting shed to keep my dirt in.

As I got nearer I could see the shed more clearly. It was made of plywood, with a small gable roof. A bunch of red letters screamed at me “Beware of the Dog.” I’d seen the tired old Irish wolf-hound last weekend, and wasn’t impressed. The door faced away from the creek. It was a Yale lock, which gave fairly easily after nicking the corner off a credit card. Inside, I was looking at the creek through an iron mesh safety shutter and the kind of glass that imprisons chicken wire. It was a potting shed, all right. The place was liberally supplied with clay flower pots of all sizes and shapes. It smelled of dead leaves. A pair of gardening gloves caught the light on a counter that stood waist high against one wall. On it lay all of the implements you would expect to find, but which I wasn’t looking for. The drawers under the counter showed more of what I wasn’t looking for. The walls showed no cupboards, the floor no trapdoors.

It was small, so I didn’t have to do much searching when I’d lifted up the last of the pressed paper starter boxes. Under the window, a bunch of geraniums were languishing, like the once back at my office. Mine were in a bad way because they badly needed to be transplanted, but these stood in a large square bin of moist potting soil. I tested the bottom with a green bamboo tomato stake. The bottom was less than three inches from the surface. It began to look more interesting. I examined the edges of the bin and found small holes on the insides near the corners. I looked around me for something to go into the holes, and at the same time began to get the feeling that I might not be left undisturbed for very much longer. In one corner I found a set of wires ending in hooks, attached at the other end to a nylon rope. I flipped the yellow strand over a two-by-four above the bin, set the hooks in place, and pulled on the slack end of the rope. The bin lifted clean out of its setting, and when I got it up a few feet I tied off the rope and took a look. What I saw was a rather rusty well-type filing cabinet. It just fit the hiding place, with enough room for the lid to clear when I opened it up.

With all the care Zekerman had taken in preparing this surprise for me, he might have hidden a fortune in gold, or the missing Russian Crown Jewels or something. What I knew I could expect were the sordid secrets from the lives that Zekerman leeched from. I rifled through the red files. There was one marked Vernon Harrington. What had he done? Nothing more than a hushed-up hit-and-run charge. A black eye for a politician and for the cop who put the lid on it. The next file told the story of a drunk-driving charge that had been kept quiet so that another leading citizen could go on with important civic work. I wondered whether they were all sleeping better since the good doctor had permanently ceased practising. In the file marked Chester Yates, I found the original of the Xeroxed clipping sent through the mail. Then I hit pay-dirt: a file marked
William Allen Ward
. A great big birthday present. But right away somebody spilled chocolate milk all over the tablecloth. I heard a car stop on the near side of the bridge. I grabbed something from the file. My feet were already moving me to the door.

Once outside, I beat a retreat to the bushes along the creek. A muskrat frowned at me from the waterline, but didn’t advertise my presence. The bushes smelled of decaying leaves and the water of garbage. The clay of the bank was rubbed smooth by the bellies of the animals going in and out of the water. I could hear voices, but the shed itself masked my view of the path. The voices reached the shed and stopped. After a few hour-like minutes on damp knees with the sound of the creek almost as loud as the thumping inside my jacket, I heard the voices again, retreating. At the same time, I could make out smoke curling around one wall. I heard a sudden popping noise, and flames could be seen on both sides of the shed. I was far enough away so that I knew I was safe from the fire, but it had come so unexpectedly, I felt like I was still inside. It burned quickly, like a burning school-house firework. When I heard the other car start and drive off, I began moving along the creek towards the bridge where I’d left mine.

It felt good to hear the motor catch. Through the rearview mirror, I saw the flames had found every draughty cranny of the shed and forced their destructive way through. There was nothing to do but press my foot firmly on the gas.

When I pulled into a gas station not far from my office, I took my eye off the spinning meter long enough to examine the handful of paper I’d saved from the fire. At first glance it looked like any old piece of newspaper, only it was in German. The name at the top read “Zuricher Zeitung.” The date was 26 January 1976. At the bottom of one of the pages, two nearly identical cartoons appeared. My German was good enough to guess that you were supposed to discover the minute differences between them. I was nearly tempted to return this fascinating document to the shed on the creek, when I saw the picture. A group of men and women dressed in the very best skiing togs was standing chatting near a chair-lift. The caption identified the group. One of the couples named was
Herr William Allen Ward und frau von Kanada.
I looked up at the picture again.
Und frau
was Myrna Yates.

As I opened the door of my office the phone rang. It was Pete. I asked him to tell me the latest news.

“Harrow told me that they have Ward’s name in Zekerman’s handwriting a couple of times. They also have about six or seven dozen other names, so they aren’t going to pick up Ward right away, if it’s all right with you. They also have a full list of patients treated by Zekerman during the last five years. Ward is there too along with Yates and a hundred other names, including some of our first citizens.”

“Could I see the list?”

“I’ll drop an illegal Xerox off to you. Hell, no! I can’t do that. Benny, I keep forgetting you aren’t with the firm. Join the cop shop and see the world.” I could picture him, shutting his eyes while he thought. “Can you come by my office right away? I think I can arrange for it to be sitting some place conspicuous when you come in. I may not be there. They’ve detailed me to look into that quarry skeleton some kids dug up out by the escarpment. I can see that this case is going to be a feather in the coroner’s hat. Most of the work will be done out of town at the Forensic Centre. If I see you, I’ll say hello.”

“Not if I see you first. Be talking to you.”

I got my car out and drove as directly as the one way street pattern would let me to the parking lot behind the Regional Police Building. I was stopped by the door with push-buttons on it, but not for long. I went in as a constable came out. He even held the door open for me. I walked right by the desk as though I knew my way around and had urgent business, but was hauled back before I’d gone many yards down the corridor. When I said that Staziak had asked me to wait in his office, the sergeant look at me, trying to see if he recognized either my front or side view, and finally showed me where Pete’s door stood open. I sat in the chair at Pete’s metal desk and looked down at an open file. The open page was a print-out from a computer, containing about a hundred names and Medicare numbers. Most of the names I didn’t know. A few of them I’d seen in the paper. Harrington was there, so were Yates and Ward. I didn’t have time to write them down. Nor was I a whiz at the memory game.

I dropped my eyes from name to name, trying to imagine the hold Zekerman held over each of them. And each one, a possible murderer. When I’d scanned all the way to the bottom I was none the wiser. I now had double confirmation that Ward was a patient and I knew that he had been the subject of oblique questions aimed at Vern Harrington. I was happy with that. But I knew that a law court wouldn’t find one name any more attractive than the last. So, I was going to have to find out a little more about William Allen Ward. I think I already knew enough about him to make it a very interesting conversation.

That should have been a very satisfying thought. But my mind was somehow distracted from it. There was something in the list that had failed to register on my first look at it. I looked down the row on row of names once more. Then, about a third of the way down, hidden, innocent-looking, there it was:

Hilda Blake

the sister of the girl who’d been killed by the overdose of drugs back in 1964. The other girl in that photograph, maybe. Probably. So she was getting squeezed by Dr. Zekerman too. He had his needle into everybody. Bad enough losing a sister to a suicidal overdose, but now having to dish out hard-earned money to the greedy doctor. It didn’t seem fair. I hadn’t thought of her as being still in the area. I’d try to look her up as soon as I had both hands untied.

I turned out the desk lamp on Pete’s desk and let myself out. There was no switch to turn out the overhead fluorescent fixture. Probably needed an Act of Parliament.

TWENTY

Martha hadn’t got around to fixing the broken second step leading to her chipped green porch. I notice this with the satisfaction of a non-property owner. Maybe, when all of this was over, I thought, I’ll fix it for her. I wasn’t really a handyman, but I had generous impulses. She opened the screen door wearing a chenille housecoat and holding a glass of beer in her right hand. I went in, the screen door slapped back into place, and I followed Martha into her kitchen at the back of the house.

“Sit down, Cooperman. Take a load off your feet. Do you want the coffee I promised or would you prefer a cold beer?” I smiled.

“I get gas from beer. Thanks just the same.” I was brought up to believe that beer was the people’s drink and that I was cut above the people. A few years ago I went home for Friday night dinner at my parents after a few drafts in the Harding House with Ned Evans—Ned was trying to get me involved in a production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
to be staged under the stars in Monte-cello Park. To hear my mother talk, you would have thought a brewery had come through the door. “A drunk and his family are soon parted,” my mother observed, while my father shook his head from side to side. To him, to them both, my taking a drink was only a final confirmation of the fears they had when they found me eating bacon with the O’Reillys when I was four.”

“I’ll have coffee, Martha.”

“It’s instant,” she challenged.

“There’s another kind?” I guess she saw me looking at her as she crossed to the counter, piled high with dirty dishes, to plug in the chromium kettle. She looked at me, then at her housecoat.

“Don’t get any ideas; I’ve got trousers on underneath. Say, while the kettle’s boiling, I’ll show you Liz Tilford’s room. I never cleaned it out when she left. Thought I might get my rent if I left things as they were. But I don’t think she’ll show her dimples around here again. She’s moved on to bigger game, if you ask me.” She led me to a small, bright room at the back of the house. Through the window came a clear view of a water-soaked lawn struggling to become green again. It had reached the dirty straw stage. There was a black maple silhouetted against the sky, with the cut of the railway line on the other side of a ragged wire fence.

In the room stood a bed—neat and businesslike—and a small table and chair. What pictures there were looked like they came out of a Sunday Supplement. The place had a barracks-like feel. On the bedside end of the table, held together by wooden bookends, stood half a dozen books in paper bindings. She’d been dipping into Plutarch’s
Lives
, the plays of Corneille, speeches of Cicero, a biography of Charlotte Corday, and Rousseau’s
Social Contract
, in English translation I was relieved to discover. What would a fellow like Bill Ward have seen in a serious girl like this? I couldn’t imagine Liz Tilford knocking back one-liners in front of the TV on hockey night.

Martha was standing behind me with a cup outstretched. I took it and shook my head at the books.

“Funny, eh?” she asked. “And she didn’t read magazines or the papers either. Don’t blame her there, really. There’s nothing in them these days. I told you she didn’t go out unless it was with Ward. And he didn’t call more than a couple of times a week. As far as I know, Liz didn’t write to anyone, or call anyone. She didn’t hear from anybody either. As a room-mate for me, she was next door to living alone. I always suspected that when Bill Ward took her out to eat in a restaurant, if he didn’t pay attention, he’d order for one.”

“But, Martha, you said she was a knock-out: long legs, red hair, a good body. She didn’t have to tell jokes or make with the clever chatter, all she had to do was be there.”

“Yeah. Some people have it rough,” she said with a sigh mixed with a mock come-hither look then disappeared back towards the kitchen. I glanced again at the books. None of them was old. They all looked as though they’d been picked up on the same expedition. She hadn’t written anything in any of them. When I gave one a hefty shake, a sales slip tumbled out. It told me that she had bought five of the books for sixteen dollars and fifty cents on March third of last year, at the Basic Bookstore, 986 Queen Street West in Toronto. I pocketed the slip and shook the other books too. Nothing. I went to the closet. Not very much here: a well-worn raincoat—time she bought a new one. A couple of pairs of summer shoes lay strewn about the floor of the closet like dead puppies, and a wool skirt hung from a hook on the back of the door. The pockets of both skirt and coat yielded nothing. I looked at the labels. Nothing distinctive, except a Toronto name on the skirt.

I was just turning away, disgusted with myself for not being able to pull Nero Wolfe out of one pocket and Phillip Marlowe out of the other, when my beady eye spied something in a dusty corner, half-hidden by a shoe. It was a laundry ticket with a South End address on it. Now I didn’t feel so empty-handed. I had two clues. With any luck, they might lead me into interesting dead ends.

I sipped at my neglected coffee and returned to Martha in the kitchen.

“Find anything useful?”

“Could be. Won’t know until later. I wonder if you’d mind my helping myself to these books for a few days? They might help me to get to know her better.”

“Help yourself. No skin off my shin if you don’t give them back.”

“I won’t forget to return them. Remember, you may never get that back rent. Tell me, Martha, is there anything else about her you haven’t already told me.”

“She was the last person to talk about herself. I think I got the idea she went to university. But it wasn’t from anything she said, it was just the crests on the book ends she has in there. She wasn’t a Niagara of information. More coffee?”

“Nope. Gotta run.” Martha walked me to the door, tried to keep a yellow cat out with her leg as she opened the screen door for me. I angled out, leaving the cat pouting on the porch.

“So long, Cooperman. If you find that tramp, tell her to remember her friend and to hell with the back rent.” That came through the screen at me as I reached the car door.

From a pay-phone in a candy store the size of a three-hole outhouse, I phoned the hospital. Frank Bushmill had been discharged. Then instead of driving back to my office by way of the high-level bridge, I went down the hill to the canal. To my right, as I approached the bridge, somewhere up in the gloom, stood the mansion erected by the canal’s builder. I guess he could stand outside on his widow’s walk at the top of the Victorian turret above the main entrance and count the profits lock in and out of the system, a bit like my father sitting behind the cash register watching the customers pull out the suits and dresses from the racks.

On the other side of the road, and on a street parallel to it, I could make out several good frame houses dating from the last century. They’d been built for the nobs of yesteryear who wanted to watch their goods move up and down the canal. Now they were full of three and four families each. They were the sort of houses you pay admission to get into at one of those pioneer villages in the States. Someday they’d be flushed out and made comfortable for the nobs again. The car went clunk, clunk, clunk over the bridge; the black water ran dark and close underneath, sliding away toward the lake. It was dark now and the night air was heavy with suphur; white froth from the papermills glowed on the surface of the water tempting the authorities to lay a legal action against the polluters. The road began to climb now, under the dark girders of the high-level bridge, circling around at the top and joining St. Andrew Street where Ontario Street made a large well-posted intersection.

At the United, the counter was clear. One of the girls was perched on a stool, her knees bracing a folded newspaper. She frowned at a crossword puzzle.

“What’s a six-letter word for Spanish wine?” she asked.

“Port,” I suggested.

“Can’t count. You going to have your usual?” I bought a paper, flipped through it, but found nothing new on any of the far-flung fronts I was trying to cover all at once. I turned to the back of the paper and began scanning the want ads. Under “Position wanted” I had begun to notice that the
Beacon
had started letting in the sort of ad that it would have discouraged a few years ago. I wondered whether the decent family papers were starting to get corrupted by the intellectual papers with the wild ads I’d heard about. One ad read:

It sounded lewd to me. Maybe it’s my dirty mind.

That reminded me of Dr. Andrew Zekerman and his money-making schemes. What did he hold over Chester and Ward? What did he have on Hilda Blake? Was it connected with the death of her sister and the chemistry hot shot, Corso? I patted my pocket with the laundry ticket in it. It was the master key that was going to unlock all the hidden doors.

I paid my check and got into the car. It was early enough so the parking on the street was limited. I turned off into the lane which separated my building from the former home of a dead bank. It has been a long time since a bank went under, or belly up, as they now describe it, but the shock of seeing huge square stone letters spell out the name of a bank that can’t measure its assets in paperclips makes a fellow think. My headlights picked out other letters on the fieldstone front of the factory: “Rutledge Textiles.” The letters were large, old-fashioned and wooden, gilded and unilluminated except by the lights of my car. Above the door a plaque had been fixed into the stonework reading “Established 1868.” A dark, fortress-like place, it had been built so far from the street in order to take advantage of the hydraulic power which first ran the machines inside. Yellow light seeped from the heavily-grilled windows. I turned off the lights, got out and locked the door. The papermills were heavy on the night air even here, about twenty feet above the canal. I could hear the low rumble of whatever was going on inside the factory, as I turned and started to walk up to street level.

I’d taken only a half dozen steps from my car, when I saw two heavy figures walking toward me. I knew they were big because with each step they took, they blocked out more of the streetlight coming from behind them. As they got closer it was becoming a very dark alley. I didn’t like the way they were closing on me; black unfriendly silhouettes. I turned back, thinking to make for the wooden stairs that led down to the front entrance of Rutledge’s. The steps were better lit than the alley, I thought I might do better in the light. Coming up the wooden steps at about the same speed as the two palookas were walking toward me, but with a big unfriendly grin on his kisser, was another out of the same package. He was wearing a light ski-jacket and his muscles made the cloth stretch tight in far too many places. He was looking right at me, coming up steadily. I thought of getting back into my car. Even if I couldn’t get it backed up and out of there, I could at least lock the windows and doors. Not a very good idea. Not only were these three not very respectful of private property, from the looks of them, but I could see on the ground a dozen or so ways to break a car window open. Besides, I knew I wouldn’t even have time to get my keys out before they had me. My only chance of escaping them seemed to be the well-lit front door of Rutledge’s. Once inside, I thought, I would be safe. But I couldn’t head there directly. The guy on the steps would be waiting for me having caught his breath from running down only a dozen steps. No, I had to allow him to get to the top before I made my move.

I walked past my car, slowly, as though I hadn’t anything better to do than to examine the back of my office building. I looked over my shoulder, casually, I hoped. The two from the alley had turned after me. The one in the ski-jacket was about three steps from the top of the stairs.

To my right, the bank sloped away down the factory and the canal. To my left, stood the haggle-toothed backs of the stores of St. Andrew Street, some longer than others, some with their back ends supported by steel girders. Everywhere I looked I saw the black metal of fire escapes hanging just out of reach. Ahead of me the path narrowed. I had about a hundred yards to go before my way was finally blocked by two large bulk loaders. I saw what I would have to do. I would continue to walk slowly until I got to the loaders, then cut down the bank where I would try to lose myself in the bushes and stunted trees. When my way was clear, I’d head towards the front door of the factory. Not a great plan, but my own. Once behind the door of the factory, I would be safe enough. There would be people, a telephone, maybe even a few security men.

I had already begun to think I was sitting pretty, when I was sapped by the sudden thought that the front door might not be open at this hour. I could hear the low murmur of the machines. There had to be a good chance that the door would not be locked. I tried praying, like the time I tried to rescue my Saturday allowance, which had fallen through a grating, with a wad of gum on the end of a piece of string. On that occasion, now that I thought of it, a passing stranger asked what the trouble was and when I told him, gave me the money from his wallet. I didn’t see him standing near the door of Rutledge Textiles.

I made my move suddenly. I leapt from the packed earth of the path over the edge of the embankment and soon I was rolling among the empty wine bottles, broken glass, damp cardboard and other garbage of the slope. I came to rest against a tree trunk, and nearly lost an eye trying to climb through the thicket of fresh shoots that grew out of a nearby stump. The ground was all give, with no sure bottom to it. Sticks, stones and mulching leaves were hard going. There was nothing sure to get my feet on. Every step was its own hard-luck story of scraped ankles, twisted knees, ripped trousers and gouged eyes.

Behind me I could hear them shouting to one another, and smashing through the scrub. I heard curses, and I hoped they’d fallen into a tiger trap I’d overlooked. One of them let out a yell, and I could tell he had found a new home for some discarded broken glass. I heard my name called, but I was moving more surely now. My eyes were getting used to the hazards, my feet expected very little. I didn’t look back.