AT A FEW MINUTES to seven in the morning, the sky was giving Constable Cal Dion mixed messages as he drove uphill to the crime scene. The clouds were an ominous dark grey, but tinged red where the blinding low-angled rays of the rising sun pierced through. The visor failed to block the worst of the glare, and he drove hunched forward and squinting. A squarish vehicle fluttered through the rays at the crest of the hill, became an ambulance and rolled past in silence.
The silence of the ambulance confirmed the radio chatter. Whatever lay ahead on this quiet road was going to be ugly.
After one last hairpin bend a bench of hillside stretched out, woods above, homes below. The road was clogged with vehicles. A fire crew was packing up to follow the ambulance downhill. Parked and empty were two marked cruisers, an unmarked SUV, a police van. Then there were the onlookers, half-a-dozen early risers standing on the sidelines and waiting for the show to begin.
Dion parked on the woodsy side of the road and was met by a brisk breeze as he left his car. Up here, separated from the harbour by altitude, there was more forest in the air than salt. Across the road a dip in the topography allowed for a fine view of the city below, then out across the brilliant sheen of strait waters to the distant mounds of the Gulf Islands. The homes in the area looked relatively modest, but with a view like this they’d be hot on the market. He checked his pockets for pen and notepad as he crossed the road to the subject address. In the driveway stood David Leith, lead investigator, newly promoted to corporal, talking on his cell.
Leith looked chilly, the fabric of his windbreaker flapping and his blond hair dancing. He had noticed Dion’s approach but was looking down at the brick-red, grey-roofed rancher at the low end of the lot. Or not directly at the house, but something that stood between, a parade of brightly painted cartoon characters planted on spikes in the lawn just inside the white picket fence. Dion couldn’t help but stare at them, too. The characters demanded attention like emergency flashers, with their gaudy colours and whirling legs. And arms. And wings.
With an effort he looked away from the gizmos to take in the scene. Slightly downslope from the fence was a gazebo, also painted glossy white, and near the gazebo a blue polypropylene tent was going up to protect what must be the victim against prying eyes.
And against bad weather, too. A light rain was starting to patter down, even as the sun bloomed into a cloud-shrouded corona. Dion zipped the black leather car coat he’d thrown on over suit and tie, shivering. It was the time of year when rain and sun took turns up-staging each other, and at the moment the sun was losing the battle.
Leith finished his call and turned to greet him. “Oh, hey. You’re part of my dream, too, are you?”
“It’s that bad?”
“No, Cal. It’s worse.”
“What are these things?”
In answer, Leith indicated a white sign screwed to the fence. Whirligigs and More was lettered in swirly red. Underneath, in swirly blue, was Follick’s Frollicks.
Dion looked up and down the road. The onlookers, with nothing to look at now that the tent was up, were starting to clear out. Constables stood idle, ready to guide cars past and keep them moving. “Not much traffic.”
“Small blessings,” Leith said. “Won’t last. Soon as the news is out they’ll come in droves. They’ll bring step-ladders, telephotos. Drones. Anyway, we’re going to be here a while. We’ll set up behind the gazebo, once the grass has been cleared.”
Set up a staging area, he meant. A second, larger tent where the team could change in and out of their protective clothing. Or sit down, rest up, make their calls, have a sandwich and coffee in relative peace.
“Deceased is Lawrence Follick,” Leith went on. “His wife and daughter are in the house. JD’s in there with them. Place is cleared, but I’m told the wife is in shock and refusing to leave, and the daughter won’t leave without her mom. I figure we’ll talk with the two of them there for starters. Follick works in a brewery over the bridge on Clark Drive. Clean record, far as I can see. The body was reported by a 911 caller about six a.m., by …” He flipped back a page in his notebook and corrected himself. “At five fifty-five a.m. Anonymous female made the call. Didn’t give an address, so first responders had a job finding the body, as he wasn’t lying out on the road like they expected. All the caller said was ‘A guy’s lying here on Paradise Road’ and hung up. Which about sums up what we know right now.”
“Was this anonymous caller old or young?” Dion asked. “Have we traced her?”
“I haven’t listened to the recording, so anonymous female is all I know. She made the call from a mobile, and we’ll track down whoever’s attached to the number pretty quick. I doubt she’s the killer, though, unless she’s a body builder. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean. No need to suit up, unless you want to get close. Which I guarantee you won’t.”
Their shadows stretched before them as they left the road and walked down the gravel driveway, keeping within a designated path. They stopped by perimeter tape pegged around the body, close enough to take in the details of the violence. Details that were about as shocking as Dion had seen in his ten years on the force, and Leith was right that whoever had killed the victim had to be bigger and stronger than average.
Lawrence Follick had been heavy-set, not tall. He looked to be in his midforties. He’d been left sprawled supine on the lawn, equidistant between gazebo and driveway and six or so metres downslope from the fence. Mouth open and arms outstretched, he gazed upward at the gently breathing tarpaulin while men and women in their protective suits worked around him, the back of his head resting in a seeping marsh of red ooze.
“Estimated time of death,” Leith said, “is between four a.m. and the 911 call at five fifty-five. The wife, Brenda, didn’t know anything had happened till the first sirens started arriving.”
Dion nodded, eyes fixed on the scene. What took it from shocking to surreal was the weapon itself, almost certainly the cause of death, spiked through the dead man’s throat. It was one of the whirligigs, a length of rebar topped like a cocktail garnish with one of the cutout cartoons. Porky Pig, tipping its top hat. Protected from the breeze by the tent, it wasn’t running anywhere, its legs at a standstill.
Done with the pig, Dion studied the dead man once more and the track of blood that had fountained to the side from the weapon’s point of entry. The fountain had guttered but the force of its arc was written across the lawn. Blood had flowed from the nostrils down either cheek, too, joining a river of what could only be drool and vomit.
The man’s clothing was casual. Slack green jogging pants. A grey-and-blue striped T-shirt rode up to show pale belly flesh. A brown cardigan had come off the shoulders. Mismatched socks on the feet, pale-blue leatherette moccasins knocked or kicked clean off. Dion saw the moccasins some distance away, thrown willy-nilly.
The scene shouted blitz attack, struggle. The last thing the victim expected.
Catching Leith’s attention, Dion pointed to an area of lawn just off the edge of the driveway. “The killer stood about there.” A blood spatter expert, if called in, would confirm it, but the spear’s angle told the story to anyone with eyes. The rebar, taking into account its length embedded in the victim and the lawn below, was maybe six feet end to end, and anybody wielding it would have likely lobbed or plunged it from there. “It looks spontaneous,” he added. “He’d have grabbed hold of the pig to pull it loose, so there’s a good chance he left prints. Glossy painted plywood, perfect.” He looked toward the fence and the five characters that remained there whirling merrily. A Popeye and a mouse in a sombrero, a Bugs Bunny, and two more that looked only vaguely familiar. “So, did this pig come from that group?”
“No doubt. There’s a fresh hole in the ground, end of the line, corner of the lot.”
“Where?”
“There.”
They stood in silence, looking at the comical parade. The rain pattered down more insistently, the sun having thrown in the towel. Leith’s hood went up. He said, “I hate to say it, but one motive that jumps out right away is the pig itself.”
Dion looked at him. “What d’you mean? A copyright issue?”
“No. I mean it’s ugly.”
Dion was thinking the scruffy blond beard Leith seemed to be cultivating was ugly. Leith was tall and rangy, in his midforties, and could lose some belly fat, but until the beard had come along he hadn’t been bad looking. The whirligigs, on the other hand, were skillfully done and in the right setting would be kind of cheerful, in his opinion. This for sure was not the right setting. “You don’t kill somebody ’cause something’s ugly,” he said.
“You could get into a fight about how ugly it is, and the fight could get out of hand,” said Leith with finality. “Anyway, like I said, it took muscle to pull out that pig. We’re looking for a big guy. Lotta muscle. Young.”
“Why out of the six does he go for the pig? Symbolic? It’s the farthest from the gate as well as farthest from the killing, so why not that duck, say?”
Leith gave a shrug that said he wasn’t into guesswork at the moment and struck off downslope toward the brick-red house, saying something about now for the fun part. Dion followed.
* * *
The rancher with double garage was maybe forty years old. A plaque on the door read The Follicks and another, Home Swede Home. The interior was smelly, and Dion thought he could separate out bacon, cinnamon, and the distinct whiff of petting zoo. The decor was a mishmash. Though mid-March, a faux Christmas tree blinked from a dark corner, and on the walls and ledges and tables were arts and crafts he supposed were made by whoever had created the whirligigs.
He arrived in the living room and saw that Leith was trying to corral a thin woman in her forties toward the dining room table. She wasn’t cooperating, preferring to pace and plead with some higher power to tell her why. A teenaged girl sat curled up on the sofa, face in hands, next to Serious Crimes Constable JD Temple in plainclothes. Somewhere a radio or TV played. Dion asked JD a silent question — just a glance — if she was getting any useful info from the girl. Her silent answer was no.
The pacing woman was no doubt the dead man’s wife, Brenda. Leith finally managed to get her to sit, and once they were at the table he went on calming her, bringing her into the moment, asking her to tell him what had happened this morning. Dion listened to her disjointed story. She told of being at the kitchen sink, and then of waking up. Larry was likely down in his workshop, so she thought. Except he wasn’t.
“I was at the kitchen sink,” she repeated, numbly. “I was pouring water into the coffee pot when I saw a fire truck drive by. Going up the hill. Then it drove downhill, more slowly. Then it came up again. And then it stopped on the road in front of our house. I called out for Larry to come see. I was sure he was downstairs. But he didn’t answer. I thought, Oh my god. And then I saw it on the grass, near the gazebo. It was still dark out, and it was a dead animal, I figured. Large, maybe a big dog or something. I didn’t know it was Larry. I didn’t!”
She really didn’t want to know what it was, she admitted. She had focused instead on getting breakfast ready. But when an ambulance joined the fire truck, she knew it was a human being on her lawn, and she’d shut the blinds because she didn’t want to know more. Neither did she want to tell Leith about what had happened next. All she wanted was for him to go away and leave her alone.
At the kitchen sink Dion used the wand to open the venetian blinds. He imagined himself standing here, running water, filling the coffee pot. From here he had a good view on the driveway, the lawn, the gazebo, and what was now a blue polypropylene tent. The neighbour’s house to the east was visible, the one to the west hidden by bushes.
He couldn’t imagine looking out, seeing the shape on the grass, seeing the commotion of emergency vehicles, and not heading out to learn what was going on. Even in darkness, even if he didn’t recognize it was his loved one lying there, spiked to the turf, he would have investigated. As would most people.
He left the window and took a chair at the table with Leith, watching Brenda for signs of guilt. Leith would be watching, too, wondering if the wife was somehow involved in the killing. Too slight to have done it herself, but didn’t mean she wasn’t complicit. Along with the daughter, possibly. What if they’d cooperated? Tasered Follick, hoisted the rebar, plunged it down, then worked up the crocodile tears.
Or what about a hired hit, Dion wondered, then scrapped the idea. If that was the work of a hitman, it was a hitman from another planet.
“How am I going to live without him?” Brenda was asking Leith.
Leith told her that he didn’t know how she’d carry on, but he knew she would. He went on in his best calming voice, speaking about the value of family and friends, about community support services, about how her daughter needed her to stay strong.
It was something Leith excelled at, Dion knew. Comforting people. People who were lost or frantic, whether victims of crime or detainees hauled in kicking, more often than not they’d surrender to Leith when he sat them down and spoke to them in a way that said he cared, that he had all the time in the world for them, that nothing mattered but how they were coping. Maybe it was strategy, because the workaday Leith was more grumpy than kind, more edgy than mellow. Or maybe it was real compassion shining through when he felt the person he was dealing with deserved it.
Dion wondered if the compassionate side of Leith would be there for him, too, if he ever ran up against chain-link with no exit.
Actually, it was when, not if.
Another of Leith’s skills was the segue, which he could do seamlessly, from sympathy to inquiry. “So no one you can think of who might have something against Larry?” he was asking Brenda, who now listened attentively. “Even something that might seem trivial to you. Friction with a co-worker, anything like that? Owes a debt to someone? Argument with a neighbour?”
Brenda shook her head to all three suggestions. “No.”
She sounded firm, but Dion thought she had hesitated on the last denial.
“You’re sure about that?” Leith asked. “Have there been any conversations with the neighbours? About anything? Complaints, say, about the display out front?”
Brenda fumbled in her pockets for something. Maybe a weapon, Dion considered. But more likely cigarettes. “Somebody tried to sabotage his lawn ornaments last week,” she finally admitted, still fumbling. “Put glue in there, in the hinges or joints or whatever, made them sticky so they didn’t spin. But Larry cleaned them up and they were okay again.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“Kids, probably.”
“Generally speaking, how’s your relationship with other people in the neighbourhood? Seems like a close-knit area, a get-to-know-you kind of road.”
“We get along fine with everyone.”
Again, Dion heard something in her voice akin to a lie.
Leith seemed to hear it, too. “The people in the houses next door, either side, d’you know their names?”
The cigarettes materialized, and Brenda asked if anyone minded, then lit one. Her hands trembled. Once she had inhaled deeply she shook her head. She didn’t know what their names were. The couple on that side were retired, Chinese, currently out of the country. The others, their name was something Italian, she thought.
Leith directed Brenda away from conflict and asked for some of her own family background, and Brenda spoke of a move from Haney to North Van last year, how they preferred Haney as it was more laid back, but were getting used to this place okay. Larry was happy anywhere he went, so long as he had his workshop and tools.
“Wherever Larry is happy, so am I,” she said, defying the past tense.
Dion had a feeling she would defy the past tense for as long as she could manage. But she knew. She’d have no choice as the days went by. Missing the aroma of fresh-sawn wood, the stink of paint, the sound of his voice as he joined her at the breakfast table, the weight of his arm across her shoulders. The reality was going to hit her, over and over. And just when she thought she’d accepted he was gone, she’d wake up with a jolt and blink into the darkness …
She gave in to tears, and Dion looked away. Leith reached to take the forgotten cigarette from her fingers and extinguished it in the ashtray. Over on the sofa the daughter was crying, too, but in a quiet and controlled way, knuckling her mouth, eyes squeezed shut.
“You know what,” Leith told Brenda, rising from his seat. “You just sit here and take it easy. I’ll ask Mosie a question or two, and then we’ll see about getting you into some comfortable accommodations.”
In the living room JD Temple stood up from the sofa next to Mosie, and Leith took her place. Dion stood beside JD, ready to take notes. Leith introduced himself to the girl, told her how sorry he was, and asked if there was anything she could tell him about what had happened this morning.
Mosie shook her head. “No. I woke up and it was all just craziness. Mom said Daddy’s dead. I don’t understand.”
“D’you know anybody who might want to hurt him? Looking back, anybody at all, even if it seems unlikely?”
Instead of shaking her head no, as Dion expected, Mosie thrust a stiff arm toward the front window. “That shithead,” she said. “He always wants to get in my pants, and him and Daddy got in a big fight about it. He killed my Daddy.”
Leith, Dion, and JD looked in the direction of the girl’s accusatory index finger, across the low fence that divided the two properties to the shadowy form of the house next door. Dion looked at JD, hoping for a bonding moment that might help to heal the rift between them. A solid lead like this one, right out of the gate, was a gift to the team and a reason to high-five, at least telepathically. But there was no high-fiving of any kind with JD lately.
Still, she was pleased, he could tell, that the killer could be placed under arrest within the hour. So was he. Only Leith seemed less than thrilled. But one way or another, trouble was definitely brewing for the possibly Italian neighbour.