20

 

 

You need me to handle the investigation?" It wasn't really a question, I already knew the answer.

He nodded. "I really do, Reid. I know you've had one hell of a day but I've only got one man available, what with guys in the bush and Onyschuk in the hospital. I need Jackaman with me when I talk to Tettlinger, to play the usual games. My other guy is a rookie, I only hired him last spring. He couldn't handle a homicide." 

"Let's go." I stood up. I could see Alice standing beside the cash register at the bar, careful not to look at me. "Give me a minute." 

"The car's outside," he said, and left, not stopping to talk to any of the people who spoke to him.

I went over to Alice. She looked up nervously. "What's happened, Reid? It's something bad, I can tell it."

"It's Sallinon, the taxidermist. He's died suddenly. Gallagher wants me to handle the investigation for him while he gets on with the rest of the work that's piling up." 

Her hands were resting on top of the cash register and as I watched she clenched them into fists and squeezed until the knuckles whitened. "Where is it going to end?" she asked softly. 

"I think this is just a coincidence,” I lied. "But it's routine for the police to investigate. Should take a couple of hours, that's all." 

She unclasped her hands and laid them flat over all the keys on the register, making it a deliberate calming motion. "Reid, I get scared around you. Since you came we've had more trouble than this town has seen in its whole history." 

"It was coming anyway," I said. "It started when that guy was killed up on that island and Prudhomme changed places with him. All I've done is trudge around after him, picking up the pieces." She said nothing, just stood looking down at her fingers. I felt powerless. I knew she was suffering from the shock that women feel more deeply than men in the presence of violence. It's not that they are more afraid. Most times they're not. But they have an inner logic and rationality that men lack. They can't understand violence, it makes no sense. And that disturbs them. 

She looked up at last. "Will you be very late?"

Now I reached out and touched her hands, lightly. "I don't think so. It's a suicide. A couple of hours should take care of it and then I'll come back. Do you want to keep Sam with you while I'm away?" 

She shook her head. "No. I'll be fine," she said, and as her eyes locked on mine she added, "I'll still be here when you get back. Room four." 

I stooped and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned and left.

The police car was outside the door and I spoke quickly to Gallagher. "I have to bring Sam, he's in Alice's room." Gallagher growled something and I went and got Sam and put him in the back seat, then jumped in and Gallagher pulled away, a seasoned policeman's way. You don't see many veteran coppers laying rubber even for a killing. 

"Looks like suicide," he said as we drove. "I've cut him down and left my guy to guard the scene until you get there."

"How high off the ground was he?" It's a good starting question. Many suicides don't even take their feet off the ground, they tie the rope around their necks and loll against it. 

"He had an extension cord tied over one of the rafters and he'd stood on a toolbox and stepped off. He could have stepped back on again if he'd changed his mind." 

"No signs of a bang in the head, nothing?"

"Nothing." Gallagher was positive. "I took a careful look, he hasn't got a hair out of place." He turned onto Sallinon's street. There were four or five cars outside, and Gallagher swore. "Dammit. Looks like the whole goddamn ladies' aid is over cheering up the widow." 

"Good thing there's somebody with her. It'll keep her off our backs," I said, and Gallagher humphed and said nothing.

He pulled up behind a car as close as he could get to the house and we got out. "I better introduce you," he said. "As far as they're concerned, you're working with me because Prudhomme was involved in your jurisdiction. I phoned the pastor for her and he turned up before I came away. He's a good guy but a bit of a mother hen. He may get sticky about you talking to her, use whatever charm you haven't used up on Alice, otherwise you'll be out of there in two seconds." 

I let Sam out of the car and told him to stay, then walked behind Gallagher up to the front door. He tapped and entered and we were greeted at once by a pretty blond woman in her forties. Gallagher took his cap off. "Hi, Mrs. Andersen. I just wanted to introduce my deputy, Police Chief Reid Bennett. Can I have a quick word with Ida?" 

"She's through here," the blonde said. She was wearing a sleek blouse that looked a little dressy for this end of the world and her hair was swept back from her face with a carelessness that had taken hours. She looked at me the way my Marine recruiting sergeant weighed me up when I first walked into his office. "How do you do, Chief. My name is Gretchen Andersen." She extended her hand and smiled a formal little smile. 

I took her hand, which was cool and firm. "Reid Bennett, Mrs. Andersen. I wish we could have met under happier circumstances." Above her head I could see Gallagher doing his best to swallow a grin. I let go of her hand and she led us through to the sitting room out behind the original parlor Sallinon had used as his storefront. This place was no more lively. It was full of dark, heavy furniture with an enormous TV and plastic flowers. At a glance I could count eight stuffed birds and animals scattered around it. A big woman in a flowered dress was sitting on the couch with a gaunt young minister beside her and two other women sitting opposite in big chairs. 

The minister looked up. He nodded to Gallagher and then stood up and approached us. "Pastor Aalto," he said, not giving me his hand. 

Gallagher spoke to him first. "Good evening, padre. Thank you for coming over. I just stopped in to introduce my deputy." He turned and indicated me as if I didn't speak the language. "This is Police Chief Reid Bennett. He's a very senior investigator who happens to be in town and he volunteered to help me." 

Aalto nodded and looked at me out of oyster-colored eyes. "Are you a private detective or something?" He had a cool, resonant voice and he was proud of it. I figured he was something of a showboat and would be trouble if he didn't get stroked. 

I used the same formality Gallagher had, the military courtesy. "No, padre. I'm an accredited chief of police. I also happen to be a friend of Chief Gallagher's. I've been visiting with him and he's asked for my assistance. I'm only sorry that it's necessary." 

"So am I," Aalto said. "Arnold was a good, kind man. I cannot imagine what pain he must have been suffering." He turned back to the widow, who was looking up blankly. There were no tears. They would come later, perhaps a week later, when the neighbors stopped calling and the world rocked back onto its axis, without the bulk of the man in the garage. "Ida, I believe Mr. Bennett can help." 

She tried to smile at me, but it collapsed in a puckering of her cheeks and a nervous dropping of her head. I said, "I'm very sorry for your sadness, Mrs. Sallinon. I'll leave you with your friends for a while," nodded, and turned away with Gallagher close behind me. 

The blond bombshell followed us to the door. She touched me lightly on the shoulder as I paused to open it. "Ida is terribly distressed," she said, "but if there's anything at all I can do to help ..." She opened her eyes very wide. Lord, she was sincere! 

"I'll remember that, Gretchen," I said, and did my best to look like John Travolta. Sometimes police work calls for skills they don't ever teach at the Ontario Police Academy in Aylmer. 

I went out and Gallagher led me back around to the garage. "Don't feel too flattered," he growled quietly. "She's got the hottest pants in Olympia. Her husband's a salesman for the mill, he's away a lot, and I've seen her in more parked cars than you've had hot dinners." 

"Just doing my job," I told him cheerfully. "You want charm, I've got charm."

"I'd call it bullshit," he said, "but it seems to be working."

The door of the garage was closed and he swung it up. Inside, the light was on and a young uniformed constable was standing looking down at Sallinon's body, which lay on its back on the clear space to one side of the parked car, a 1983 Cadillac. 

I nodded to the constable and Gallagher said, "Bill, this is Chief Bennett, he's handled a lot of things like this. Help him anyway you can." 

The young guy stuck out his hand. "Glad 'a know you, Chief, I'm Bill Pigeon."

"Bill." I shook hands. "Ever had a suicide before?"

"No." He shook his head. "I've seen a few stiffs in traffic accidents, but this is my first suicide."

"Okay. There's no magic, just work, but a good trick is to stick your hands in your pockets, then you won't touch anything and change the scene at all." 

He said "Sure," and put both hands in his pants pockets.

I turned to Gallagher. "When did you get here?"

"Right after you took off from the station. Drove up, spent a couple of minutes at the house, then came out. Altogether, that was, say, twenty minutes ago—maybe seven-thirty." He crouched beside the body. "Like I said, it looks like a suicide. See for yourself." 

I stopped to check Sallinon's face. It was congested, but he had been flabby so it did not appear deformed. It had the pinpoint red marks that sometimes erupt on the skin during strangulation. There were also scratch marks on his neck, close to the cable, an indication that he had scrabbled to try and unfasten it before he lost consciousness. 

The white, plastic-covered extension cord he had used as a ligature was still in place around his neck. I checked the knot. It was a clumsy slipknot. The wire had been twisted twice and then pulled through itself, a casual knot for such a formal purpose. 

"If this guy worked sewing up skins, you'd think he'd know some fancier knots than this one," I said.

Gallagher nodded. "I noticed that. It sure looks amateur, doesn't it? But that doesn't mean somebody else did it, maybe he just wasn't figuring he'd be on display anywhere." 

I crouched there, staring at the knot and wondering why it seemed familiar to me, and then I understood. "Tell me, was this guy a fisherman?" I wondered. 

"Not to my knowledge," Gallagher said. "You can tell he didn't spend much time outdoors and I never heard him talk fishing at all." He turned to his constable. "Did you ever hear anything about him?" 

The constable shook his head silently and Gallagher turned back to me. "What makes you ask?"

"Well, that knot is exactly what I make when I'm tying on a new leader to a spinning line. It's the knot a real fisherman would make without thinking." I stood up and walked to the beam from which the end of the wire still hung, clipped with a pair of pliers Gallagher had found and dropped when he cut the body down. The wire went over it and down to a six-inch nail driven into the wall. It was tied around the nail in a clove hitch. I stood up on the hood of the car and examined the beam over which the wire had run. It was made of soft lumber, spruce by the look of it, and there was a groove lying under the wire for the whole width of the rafter. 

I jumped down and Gallagher asked, "What's up there?"

"Pressure marks on the beam. But not static, the way they would be if he'd hung himself. There's a groove sliced into the wood, the way it would be if somebody had hoisted him off his feet, pulling the wire back over the beam." I walked over to the nail in the wall. "And another thing, look at this knot. There's three feet of wire below it." 

"Okay, Sherlock, so what?" Gallagher wasn't mocking me, he was teasing, the way a father might have been with a bright son, happy to impress his constable with the smartness of the help he'd brought in. 

"So there's precisely enough wire on the business side of the nail to make a loop the right height from the floor. I think that means it was tied after the loop had been put over Sallinon's neck and the wire had been pulled tight enough to lift him off the ground." 

Gallagher frowned. "He could've planned it himself so it was just the right height," he argued, but I could see he didn't believe it. 

"Unlikely. He'd have been more likely to tie the wire to the nail with lots of slack, then take it up by making the noose higher in the wire." 

"Sonofabitch!" he said slowly. "I think you're right. I think he was murdered." He bent down and picked up the dead man's hands. "Look. His nails are all broken. He died trying to get that cord off o' his neck."