“What the hell are you doing, Camilla? I whirled. “Merv. I didn't hear you come in.”
“I guess not.” In one leggy move he reached the sofa.
“Lindsay's telling me what happened the night Benning died.”
“It's time for you to hit the road, Camilla. Lindsay's been through enough.”
“We're almost done.”
“No, you are done.”
“Merv, it's me now or the police in fifteen minutes.” In twenty years, I've never seen him look at me like that. “Go ahead, Lindsay. Where did you meet him?”
“In the park by the Rideau River in Sandy Hill.”
“What?” said Merv.
“Shut up, Merv,” I said.
“Listen, Camilla…”
“Why there?”
“Strathcona Park. We used to spend time there in the summer. Stroll along the river. Watch the swans.”
“Thirty below. And you met him outside.”
“I had no choice. I had to convince him to get to a hospital. I thought if I told the media he was afraid the police would kill him that would be enough to keep him safe. In protective custody.”
“Go on.”
“I parked the car in that lot at the end of Mann Avenue and I ran along to the area between the upper and lower park. No one can see you there.”
“You weren't afraid?”
“In a deserted area on the coldest night of the year, I didn't expect to find many bad guys.” One of her tiny smiles flickered.
I felt like saying there'd been at least two bad guys. Benning and whoever killed him.
“The path was trampled down a bit. I thought I'd see him.”
She started to cry.
“He wasn't there?”
“No.”
“No one was there?”
“No.”
“There was a lot of blood on the snow. A lot. Frozen. I shouldn't have touched the area. But I thought he might be under it, so I started digging. A lot of the bloody snow got on my sweater.”
“Your sweater? You weren't wearing a coat? It was thirty below.”
“I was, of course, but it wasn't zippered. I left in such a hurry. I was in a state and my medication didn't help my thinking.”
“At least that would make some sense. So you dug through the snow. And you didn't find anything?”
“Nothing. I made sure. I looked everywhere. I checked the bushes by the side of the river, and I called his name. I was half out of my mind.”
“How long were you there?”
“A long time. I was ready to pass out from the cold.”
“And did you call the police?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, let me recap. You left us zonked, passed two police cars, with sleeping occupants, and drove in the middle of the night to meet the man who'd threatened your life, shot a police officer, bit off someone's nose and beat his wife to death while she was under protective custody That it?”
Merv was whiter than a snow bank.
“Yes,” she said in a small voice.
“Okay. And then you found what you thought was his blood, and you got some of it on you.”
“It was crazy.”
“Sure was crazy. Lucky for you, Ralph Benning would have been long dead when he called you.”
“What?”
“He was already dead.”
“He…couldn't have been dead.”
“He was.”
“Take it easy, Camilla,” Merv said.
I was taking it easy. I didn't say Benning would have been nine-tenths of the way frozen by the time Lindsay's cellphone had even rung.
“He talked to me.”
“Someone talked to you.”
“But…no, it was Ralph. It must have been. No one else knew about our spot.”
“He was dead, Lindsay. We know that.”
“I don't understand.”
“You said his voice seemed different, and you attributed it to his injuries and perhaps the cold.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe his voice was different because it was someone else pretending to be Ralph. You took a lot of medication that day, and you were under serious stress. Someone was banking on it.”
“But why?”
“Most likely to implicate you in the crime. Getting the blood on yourself was a good start. You may have left footprints.”
Merv towered over me. “She doesn't need this conversation.”
“Oh yes, she does, Merv. She needed to have it before. Elaine is going to be prosecuted, and she didn't do it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Elaine wants to be in the media spotlight. She has a political agenda, and you know it.”
“That's not the point. Someone killed Benning. Not a woman trying to protect herself from him. Not self-defence, but what looks like cold-blooded murder. Planned. Executed with a certain flair.”
“You're not going to badger Lindsay anymore.”
“Take a hike, Merv. Or sit here and keep quiet. Because Lindsay talks to me or I call McCracken.”
“No.”
“The choice is not yours. Lindsay. What will it be?”
“Merv, maybe you could get us some coffee or tea. I knew I would have to talk about this. I prefer Camilla, even though…”
I thought I heard Merv say “even though she's one cold bitch” as he stomped toward the kitchen.
“Okay, we have to work on the voice, Lindsay.”
She was back to twisting her hands. “Not just the voice. It was the words he used.”
“Like what?”
“My special name and expressions. No one else knew them. Even the place. It was ours.” I kept my mouth shut. “He wouldn't tell anyone.”
“Someone must have found out and used it to entrap you. Look, this is hard. Let's get through it. Then I can leave you alone.”
“I'll do my best.”
I tried not to react to her look of defeat. “You arrived there, you found the blood.”
“Snow, bloody snow.”
“Okay, you dug through the snow and you got it on your clothes.”
“I thought he might be under it. I was digging with my bare hands, and it got on my sweater. Some splattered on my coat, but it's red and it didn't show the same way. I was able to clean it off. Then I took it to the cleaners.”
Of course. The red coat that I'd noticed at the funeral. It had been hanging in a different spot on the morning after Benning's death. I'd missed that detail. What else had I missed? “But the sweater? That wasn't here when the police came the next day.”
“No.”
“Where was it?”
“In the car, I turned on the heater and the snow started to melt on my sweater and stain it…”
Red.
“I couldn't stand it. I took it off, I stuffed it in a plastic bag. The leggings were stained too. I threw them in a garbage can on the way home.”
“Okay. And that's why they weren't here.”
“Yes.”
“Somebody set you up.”
Merv slid back on the sofa with a tray of coffee cups.
“It must have been someone who knew your secrets and Ralph's and knew how you would behave. That someone tipped the police.”
Lindsay choked out her next sentence. “Little Girl He always called me Little Girl. He wouldn't tell anyone that. He couldn't.”
Merv said, “Maybe he didn't mean to.”
“How…?”
“Drugs can make you say things you don't want to. Maybe he'd been drugged by his killer. How else would he have been vulnerable?”
“Sure,” I said. Lindsay wanted to delude herself about the man she'd loved. But I knew there had been no good in Benning. He wouldn't have needed to be drugged to share intimate details with a confederate. Or another lover. Whichever Randy Cousins turned out to be. “There could be many reasons. The point is you were fooled. You were intended to be fooled. The killer set you up. An excellent diversion.”
“Yes,” she said. “I see that.”
Good. “If Elaine hadn't confessed in full view of the world, the police would have received another phone call telling them to check your clothing for bloodstains.”
“Maybe the killer will still try to implicate me.”
“I don't think so. This tells me the killer didn't have it in for you in particular, otherwise the call would have come already.”
She didn't seem to be paying attention. She frowned. “There was something wrong about that place.”
“What?”
“Well, it was the way the snow was crushed.”
“Crushed?”
“Yes, near the river. The little spot where we used to meet.” Her voice broke. “A special place. The snow was broken down to the edge of the river where we used to go. Like something had been dragged.”
I kept quiet. What could I say to make this any less painful for her? I could tell Lindsay was making an effort to steel herself.
“Something heavy,” she said.
I nodded. I was beginning to figure out what might have happened to Benning.
“Perhaps a body.” Her lip trembled. I gave her hand a squeeze. “It looked like someone dragged him to the river and dumped him.”
“That would explain a lot.”
“You mean how he froze so quickly?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God. I cant think about it.”
“Okay, were almost done. Okay. You saw tracks in the snow.”
“Yes. But they'll be gone. The snow's melted.”
“There may be something underneath. Can you show me where it was?”
“Yes.”
“We'll have to call the police about this.”
“I know.”
“You could have a problem about messing with the evidence at a crime site and not calling the police. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“I can't deal with it.”
“You're going to have to deal with it soon. But let's go back to the voice. It wasn't Ralph's. Could it have been someone else you knew?”
“No. It didn't sound familiar.”
“Okay. Could it have been a woman?”
“A woman? No. How could it be a woman?”
“A woman with a low voice, pretending to be an injured man.”
The silence was louder than anything we'd heard all afternoon. Finally she spoke. “No, it was Ralph.”
I waited a minute. I didn't suggest Ralph could have called another woman Little Girl, could have taken her to the same secret romantic spots, could have had the same sick relationship with her.
Merv loomed behind me at the door. His jaw was knotted, his knuckles white. The sound of Lindsay sobbing echoed in the marble foyer.
“You're turning into a real little shit, Camilla.”
“Nice to see you too, Merv,” I said as I left.
My cellphone rang before I reached the office. McCracken, working late. He said. “I checked what you wanted. You were right. There's a small hole, by the driver's lock. No question about it.”
“Great. Keep that under your hat until we need it.”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “That'll happen.”
“And listen, Conn. When you find the van that the killer used to move Benning, check it for drill holes too.” I had nothing to worry about. McCracken wasn't going to broadcast the news of the telltale sign of the drillbit bandit right on Elaine's SUV. That perpetrator had been apprehended months earlier, and the case was before the courts. He would have already checked the records and discovered that there was no record of Elaine's vehicle being robbed. McCracken would be scratching his head over what that little hole actually meant.
I was left with two big questions. I hoped Alvin's next round of research would reveal Randy Cousins had been the arresting officer in the drillbit bandit case. Plus, since Randy was supposed to be so active in the war against domestic violence, I was betting she knew our favourite activist at WAVE. I just needed to prove Elaine had been in touch with Randy Cousins on her way over to Lindsay's place on the night that changed her life.
I hightailed it back to Lindsay's. It took ten minutes of arguing at the door with Merv before I heard Lindsay's voice and Merv stepped back to let me in.
Lindsay looked worse every time I saw her.
“I won't keep you long. I just need to know if Elaine's SUV was still parked in front when you left the house to meet Benning.”
“I don't know. I wasn't looking for it.”
“This is important. Think back. Relive it in your mind.”
She closed her eyes.
I said, “You drove up out of the garage in your neighbour's car on your way to find Benning. You saw the police officers were sleeping. What else did you see?”
Her eyes opened. “It wasn't. It wasn't there. You were all inside asleep. Elaine too. She was snoring. Her SUV was gone.”
“Holy shit. Who the hell could have taken it?” Merv said.
I had my own ideas about that. “A lady with a lot of connections.”