It wasn’t possible to go any further with Zachary Taylor. He was completely distraught, refused to pay attention anymore, and sat with his head in his hands, moaning.
“He probably has questions himself that he wants answering,” I said. “Ask him if that’s the case.”
She did but he didn’t seem to take it in and ending up waving her hands away as if they were irritating insects. Ed and the constable came back into the room, and at his request, Mrs. Scott tried to communicate to Zach that we did have to question him again at a later date and he mustn’t leave town.
He refused to look at anybody and we decided to leave him alone. Ed made sure there was a constable assigned to keep an eye on him and we left him in the interview room with Mrs. Scott, who was valiantly persisting with her efforts.
Ed closed the door behind us.
“While you’re here, why don’t you come and meet Tiffany Nowland? She’s got some printouts on the licence plates. Do you want a coffee?”
“Machine?”
“No, I wouldn’t dare. There’s a kitchenette at the end of the hall. There’ll probably be a pot of more or less fresh coffee on the burner.”
Like hundreds of offices around the country, socializing occurred in the kitchen nook where both officers and civilians, as we call them, were taking a break. I don’t know who had ultimate responsibility for keeping the coffee on the go but this pot was good, hot and fresh. The three other constables eyed me curiously but Ed didn’t stop for introductions and, coffee in hand, I trotted after him down the hall to the central area, which like ours was divided into cubicles.
Tiffany Nowland was sitting at her computer station, staring at the screen. She was young, a bit on the plump side, and bespectacled in smart narrow trendy glasses. In the current fashion she wore a cardigan over a lacy camisole which revealed just enough cleavage to make the guys distracted. She made me feel a tad old and staid.
Ed introduced us and she thrust out her hand. “Glad to meet you, Ms. Morris. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
That’s always an awkward remark to handle. What’s the comeback? All good, I hope? From whom? I let it ride and returned her handshake.
Ed tapped my arm. “I’m going to leave you in Tiff’s capable hands. I’ve got some urgent paperwork I must do. I’ll be in my office when you’re done.”
Tiffany reached for a file folder in a lower drawer and I couldn’t help but notice his eyes strayed downward as he left.
“I’ve studied the case notes to date and I have arranged the lists in as logical an order as I could in accordance with the information as I have been g-given it.” She had a rapid delivery that made her occasionally stumble over her words. She swivelled in her chair and handed me the first printout from the thick file.
“I’ve tried to make things easier by making rainbow printouts. Each piece of information is on a different coloured sheet. First, the white sheet. These are times relating to cars only. So, we have our subject, a Deidre Larsen, entering the premises at 7:35. We don’t have her exiting but I understand that is because her car had a flat tire and she found some alternative method of leaving. Correct so far?”
She peered at me over the top of her glasses.
“That’s the way it’s looking at the moment.”
“Good. She was clocked exiting the building at 10:43 p.m. I allowed for between six and seven minutes for her to get to her car and discover the flat tire. I’ve given her another six minutes to have some kind of interface with a person or persons as yet unknown with whom she accepted a ride. It could have been less time than that, so to play it safe, I’m making the departure from the lower end of the lot 10:50 p.m., and from the upper end, say, 11:10 p.m. Now it is possible that she sat in somebody’s car for an undetermined length of time and could have left after our 11:10 parameter but I am going on information I received that she was trying to get to Memorial Park by eleven and would have wanted to leave as soon as possible. I am correct about that, am I not?”
“You are correct.”
There was something about Miss Nowland, young as she was, which made me speak in complete sentences.
“Obviously, I can pull up a lot more information but I thought it would be easier in the beginning to proceed as logically as we can. There was a concert that night and we’re looking at more than three thousand cars so the more we pare it down the better. Are you with me so far?”
I nodded. She reminded me of David but she was nicer.
“Good. Now, if you look at that blue spreadsheet, you can see I’ve organized it into columns. The first one on the left gives the time of exits from the lot between 10:50 and 11:10. Next column is the make of car, colour, year, and licence number; next the address, name of registrant for all of the said vehicles. The fourth column is the time that the car entered the lot. In brackets, I’ve put how long they stayed in the casino. I thought that might be helpful. The last column indicates any infractions such as unpaid parking tickets or fines that have been registered to that particular vehicle. I highlighted those in yellow for easier viewing. Of the seventy-five cars that exited during the designated time period, four had infractions, all in the form of unpaid parking tickets, except for one, a Mr. Adams, who is driving with his licence suspended.” Another pause for me to catch my breath. Miss Nowland was indeed awesome. “It might not be relevant to our enquiry but I’ve passed that information on to the duty sergeant.”
“That’s good thinking.”
She handed me a green printout. “Just working with these numbers alone I ran as many permutations and combinations as I could think of. This sheet puts the vehicles in order according to colour; you never know, if we get a sighting on red cars, for instance, this is helpful. I can arrange them in any other order as you require. Year and make of car, that sort of thing.”
I nodded in admiration. “Can you pull up any camper vans? Blue and white, older model?”
She swivelled around to her computer, tapped at warp speed. “I’ve got one here but it’s silver, last year’s model, and it exited at 9:36. Any good?”
“Probably not. But I’ll get back to you if necessary.”
She took another printout from her folder. “This sheet lists according to registered address starting with all those local to Orillia. That is to say, all those highlighted in blue are registered locally, brown indicates the surrounding areas within comfortable driving distance, red is other. By that I mean still Ontario but farther away. Black is out of province.”
She gave me another sheet, violet in colour. “These are arranged in order of elapsed time in the casino with shortest time first.” She beamed at me. “You never know what might be important, do you?”
I could only agree. I did a quick glance down the column. Not surprisingly, Sigmund was at the top. He’d been driving a red 2004 Mazda Miata six-cylinder. Nice car — expensive. He was clocked in at 8:11 and he exited at 8:47. That was quite consistent with his story and what we’d seen on the videotape. The conversation with Deidre hadn’t lasted long and he’d gone straight out of the building. The person at the bottom of the list, a Cal Shreyer, had stayed in the casino for sixteen hours!
“This is sheet four, beige. As I understand it, the time of death for our victim may have been as late as 2:00 a.m. Subtract half an hour of driving distance from the casino to Memorial Park, work backwards, and you have exit times from 10:45, which is tight, to 1:30 a.m.” She pursed her lips. “This last time would have our victim sitting in a car for at least four hours. Given the public nature of the parking lot, I thought it was not likely that she was killed while she was on casino premises but I suppose we cannot totally rule that out, can we?”
I considered it. The struggle with Deidre could have been short and violent, but as Tiffany said, the risk of being seen was a high one. Nevertheless, we’d have to cast a wide net in our call for witnesses. I said as much.
She continued in her neat precise way. “For simplicity of viewing, I have marked out the lists in the same way as the first sheet but this time in one-hour segments. I kept the pink highlighter for the infractions column as before and as you can see we picked up ten more, making a total of thirteen.”
“Are gamblers worse than the general population about not paying fines?” I asked.
She took my joke seriously. “I don’t have that statistic to hand. Would you like me to get it?”
“No, no. That’s fine.”
“Just as a double check, I correlated all vehicle entry times from our furthest parameter at the moment, 1:30 Wednesday morning to 10:00 the previous Tuesday morning, although I can go further back if you want me to.” Again she frowned. “There is a discrepancy of six cars. I show them entering but not exiting the casino. Those I have circled in yellow. If we remove our victim’s name from the list, we are left with five.”
“So? What does that mean?”
For the first time Tiffany’s ultra-efficient, “I have a computer for a brain” demeanour cracked and she actually turned pink. “There is a back way. My boyfriend, Simon, works at the casino and we went out that way one time because the lineup was so slow getting out of the main exits. There is a gate and a No Exit sign but you can move aside the gate easily enough. It used to be a service road and leads out onto back dirt roads but sometimes people go out that way on concert nights because it’s quicker.”
“As Simon did?”
“That’s right.” She chewed her lip. “I hope you don’t have to use his name. He would lose his job. The casino bosses are very strict.”
“Do all the employees know about this back way?”
“I doubt it. Just surveillance and security.” She shrugged. “But you know how things slip out; it would be impossible to determine who was in the know.”
“And you think the five cars unaccounted for might have gone via that exit?”
“There’s no other explanation. The camera has a picture of the licence plates even if they’re covered with mud. All of the ones in our frame were reading normally.” Another sheet, plain white, floated in my direction. “Here are the names of the, shall we call them,” she made quotation marks with her fingers, “‘missing’ cars, in alphabetical order of registrants. The entry times of four of them are consistent with shift times so they are most likely employees. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to confirm that with the casino.”
“What this means then is that Deidre could have left with somebody by the back exit at any time?”
“Yes, it does mean that. And frankly, I’d be willing to bet on it. She was a regular player and she’d know some employees by sight at least. In this day and age, a girl doesn’t accept a ride from a stranger.”
I wasn’t entirely sure of that. Deidre was in a hurry. Nevertheless Tiffany had a point, especially if this back exit was something of a company secret.
I glanced over the list. A Honda Civic registered to Benjamin Snake had entered the parking lot at 7:00 p.m. I was sure he’d said he wasn’t working Tuesday night. I’d better follow that up.
The other name really made me blink. A 1997 Chevrolet Nova, colour beige, was clocked in at 10:41. No exit time.
What gave me one heck of a jolt was that the car was registered in the name of Trudy and Sigmund Forgach!
“Tiffany, is this correct? We have a Sigmund Forgach on the first list as entering at 8:11 and exiting at 8:47.”
She checked the sheet. “Yes, that’s right. The cameras don’t lie. See, it’s a different car completely, different licence plate. Would it be his wife? Maybe she was looking for him.”
“Uh-uh. He’s not married. But you’re sure the Chevy didn’t exit by the regular gates?”
“Positive. There’s no way it could have been missed. No, Sergeant Morris, the car registered to Sigmund Forgach was recorded entering and exiting. The car registered to Trudy and Sigmund Forgach was only clocked in at the entrance.”
What the hell did that mean? It was just too much of a coincidence not to be relevant. The timing fit perfectly with Deidre’s leaving the casino. She would have had time to accept a ride in the Chevy. But who was driving? Was it the former Mrs. Forgach, or was it Sigmund come back in a different car? If so, why would he? And why hadn’t he said anything?
I went back to Tiffany. “Thanks so much for all your hard work.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, it wasn’t hard work at all. I just keyed in the data and…,” she snapped her fingers, “there you are. The computer does it all for us.”
“How on earth did we operate before computers?”
“I don’t know,” she said solemnly. “It’s terrifying to think about.”
I headed for the door, the file folder under my arm. I wish she had been able to highlight, perhaps in red, “the most likely murderer in descending order of probability.”