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The Laingford Police Station was perkier on Thursday than it had been on Sunday. Lots of people in uniforms scurried around looking busy, the phone was ringing pretty steadily, and the young female person in charge of the reception area was working at full capacity. When I entered the front door, she gave me one of those once-overs that you get from a tired waitress. A quick up-and-down “can this person wait?” evaluation, followed by a rapid sideways slide of the eyes to indicate extreme, about-to-explode tension. Three people sat on the bench in the waiting area, and there was a burly cop standing just behind the receptionist with his arms crossed. I could only see him from the waist up, (the reception desk took up the whole wall), but I would bet he was tapping his foot. She was talking on the phone and saying “yes, sir” a lot to the person on the other end. It could have been her mother and she could have been faking it, but I don’t think so. I decided not to be the one to tip her over into the red zone, so I sat down on the end of the bench to wait until she had a free moment. I was looking for Becker.
I had left “call me” messages on his home phone and his cell phone, and I had called the station a couple of times and had probably talked to the woman I was looking at now, but the recurring message was “he’s out”. What Herbert had confirmed about the Gootch/Watson connection was important enough for the police to know, and it wasn’t something I wanted to leave in a message.
“Yes, thank you, sir. Goodbye, sir,” the receptionist said and immediately spun round to face the policeman standing behind her. “Listen, Rogers,” she said, “those copies are in a file folder in your mail slot, and tapping your foot like that isn’t going to make me type out your damned report one moment quicker, so get lost.” Rogers, who may well have been playing the impatient police-guy for the benefit of those of us on the bench, went a little pale and backed away.
“Just checking, Helen. Sorry,” he said and disappeared into the back somewhere. The man next to me snickered.
“Now, who’s next? You,” she said, pointing a finger across the room at me, “what can I do for you?”
“Um, I think these people were here first,” I said, waving my hand at the bench.
“Think I don’t know that?” she said. “Do I look stupid or something? I know what they want. What do you want?” I approached her desk warily.
“Er, well, I was wondering if Detective Constable Mark Becker is here, please,” I said.
“You the one who’s been leaving messages for him all day? Jeez. You must be his girlfriend or something. Poor you,” Helen said.
“I did call a couple of times,” I said.
“Becker has not called in for his messages, Miz . . .” she shuffled a sheaf of pink message slips. “Ms. Deacon, is it?” I nodded. “He’s out at the hospital with Constable Lefevbre. Has been most of the day. Morrison’s just going off shift, though. You go around the side, maybe you can catch him.”
“The side door? Where the police cars are?”
“Yep. The escape hatch, we call it. Heh. Hey, wait, c’mere,” she said, urgently, as I made a move to go.
“Yes?” Helen leaned in close to me over the desk and looked me straight in the eye. “You are the girlfriend, aren’t you?”
“Well, I guess you could call . . .”
“You know his kid, Bryan?”
“Bryan? Yes, I . . .”
“Well, if you see Becker before I do, can you pass on a message to him? From the kid?”
“From Bryan? What? Is he okay?”
“Oh, the kid’s fine. But he called a couple of times today, and I’ve been too busy to chase down Becker. It’s not urgent, or the camp would have called. But Bryan’s not happy about something, and he really wants to talk to his dad. So tell him, okay?”
“Okay, I will. You sure that’s all it is?”
“Oh, yeah. I got an eight-year-old of my own. He’s got the camper’s blues, most likely. Lonely.”
“Thanks, Helen. I appreciate you telling me.”
“Well, somebody’s gotta look out for the kid. Becker doesn’t. Oh, jeez, I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t tell Becker, okay?”
“Not a word. Take it easy, eh?”
Helen leaned back to an upright position behind her counter and snorted. “Take it easy? In here? You gotta be kidding. Now, you! Mr. Brown. Get up here.”
Mr. Brown sprang up from the bench and scuttled over to Helen. I could hear her shouting at him all the way down the front steps of the building. Scary lady. She obviously ran the place.
I caught Morrison just as he was getting into his car, a big old sedan, wide as a pool table.
“Morrison! Hey!” I ran over, and he powered down the window.
“Polly. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Have not,” I said.
“Have so. Just because you’re going out with Becker doesn’t mean you can’t play a game of crib now and then. I’m over at the farm all the time seeing Eddie and your aunt. You never bother to come down and say hi, even.”
“Oh, Earlie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, you know. It’s just, I don’t know. Things have been busy lately, and . . .”
“No sweat. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot or anything. Just thought I’d play on your tender feelings a bit, that’s all.”
“Well, it worked. Now I feel like a total slime ball.”
“Listen, Goat-girl, you’re not a slime ball. Hey, what’sa matter?” To my shock, I found I was getting weepy. This was not like me at all. Normally, I only cry when I’m really angry, but at that moment, there wasn’t anything to be mad about.
“Fer heaven’s sakes, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Morrison said.
“It’s not that, dammit, Morrison. I’m just feeling a bit fragile, that’s all. Must be coming up to that time of the month.”
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” Morrison said. “You know how I just love the girlie stuff. Now, was there something you wanted me for? Take a message to your fella, maybe? Well, I can’t. I’m off shift and I’m going home.”
“I know you’re off. Helen told me. I wondered if we could talk.”
“What about?”
“The Watson thing. I have some stuff I just found out that you guys need to know.”
“What makes you think I’m still on the Watson thing?” Morrison said.
“You’re . . . what? You’re not on it any more?”
Morrison set his lips in a thin line and stared straight ahead. “Becker went and spoke to the sergeant yesterday. It’s been coming a long time, Polly. Me and him don’t see eye to eye on most things. Me and Becker, I mean.”
“I thought you guys made a great team. Good cop, bad cop. That kind of stuff.”
“And who would you be casting as the good cop?”
“Well, er, you know. The way you guys worked it.”
“We didn’t work it, Polly. I ended up being the ‘bad cop’ just about all the time, because Becker really hates it if people don’t like him. So I got the shit jobs and he got the glory, that’s all.”
“Oh, boy.”
“I’ll say, oh boy. Anyway, like I said, it’s been coming a long time. Becker told the sarge I wasn’t letting him in on the Watson case, which was true, I guess. He was on vacation and I didn’t want to waste my time trying to hunt him down and fill him in. So, next thing I know, the sarge yanks me off the case, puts Becker back in there with Lefevbre, of all people, and sticks me with Rogers.”
“Lefevbre? That’s Becker’s new partner? That girl?”
“Say that to her face and you’d be on the ground holding onto your gut, Polly.”
“She’d what? Slut me to death?”
“Polly Deacon!” He sounded shocked, but there was a grin splitting his face in two.
“I thought you had a little crush on her, anyway. The way she was hanging off the end of the desk like a piece of ripe fruit, waving her chest in your face. You certainly looked smitten on Sunday, big guy.”
“Maybe she was coming on to me a little. But I wasn’t interested.”
“Huh. Does she do this a lot—come on to the people she’s working with?”
“That’s the only reason you can think of for her coming on to me, you mean?” Morrison said, bristling.
“Of course that’s not what I mean.” Except it was. Morrison wasn’t exactly beefcake material. There was plenty that was attractive about him, but I didn’t think the pretty little constable would spot that right away.
“Listen, Polly,” Morrison said, “if you have stuff about the Watson case, you should be telling Becker, not me. I’m now officially working on a rash of cottage break-ins at Black Lake.” He shifted in his seat and turned the ignition key to start his car. I grabbed on to the driver’s door and leaned in a bit to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’d rather tell you,” I said. “Anyway, Becker’s still at the hospital with Lefevbre. What’s her first name, by the way? Mary?”
“Marie. You could go out there and find him.”
“Yeah, and have Becker and Miss Marie Lefevbre think I was doing the hysterical girlfriend bit. No thank you.”
“You trust him, don’t you?”
The fact that I didn’t answer right away made me feel hot all over. Didn’t I trust Becker? If not, why the hell had I been contemplating marrying him? What was I doing being involved with him in the first place? I made a mental note to think about that later, when I was alone.
“Of course I trust him,” I said. “But if he’s in the middle of interviewing people or whatever at the hospital, I can’t just barge in there and demand to speak to him. Although I do have a message for him from Bryan, now that I come to think of it.”
“Bryan. He’s out at that camp, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Kind of parked there, I think.”
“So what’s the message, in case I see Becker first?”
“The kid’s lonely, that’s all. Wants to talk to his dad. At least that’s what your receptionist said. She’s one brutal lady, isn’t she?”
“Helen? You bet. She’s my cousin, eh?”
“I should have guessed. Same blunt way of putting things. So, Earlie, what do you say? Can I bend your ear about this Watson stuff? Run it past you, anyway, and you can tell me if it’s worth passing on to Becker?”
Morrison thought for a moment and rubbed a hand over his forehead. Then he let out a big, exasperated sigh. “You’ve never been to my place, have you?” he said.
“I’ve never been invited,” I said, doing a little Marie Lefevbre wiggle on the car door.
“Cut that out. You driving?”
“I’ve got George’s truck,” I said.
“Okay, so follow me out to my place and I’ll give you a beer and you can talk my ear off for one hour. Then I got a baseball game to watch.”
“You’re on. I’ll be right behind you,” I said.
I felt curiously happy driving along behind Morrison’s oversized monster car. It would be great to sit down with him and lay out all the details that had kept me tossing and turning the night before. I remembered the first time we’d done that together—hashed over the “facts in the case”—back in the fall of the previous year, when my best friend Francy Travers had been a suspect in her husband’s murder. I’d hardly known Morrison then, and he was definitely playing the “bad cop” at the time. But when I had come to him with a bunch of stuff I’d written down, stuff that I couldn’t pass on to Becker for some reason that I can’t remember now, Morrison had been wonderful. We’d met at Tim Hortons, had a coffee and just, well, talked it over. He ended up coming with me to find Becker at the local biker bar. It was good having him beside me, then. Morrison was safe, like having a friendly bear as backup.
Morrison’s place was, as they say, in the boonies, on a gravel road that met the highway just past the turn-off for the Oxblood Falls. It was beautiful country. We passed a couple of original homestead farms, just clearings in the bush, really, with timber frame or log houses surrounded by the usual collection of dead cars that served as Kuskawa lawn ornaments. The forest was a mixture of old-growth pine and mature hardwood, soaring up to the sky and creating a canopy which cast a tender green light below. If you look deeply into those kind of woods, you can see for miles, because the undergrowth is rarely more than knee-high. I wondered how the trees had been allowed to get so big. Most of the old-growth forest in Kuskawa had been mown down by the lumber companies long ago. Still, the Oxblood area was right next to the Kuskawa Provincial Park, so perhaps it was protected.
I was peering off into the forest, thinking I’d seen a deer when I suddenly remembered I was driving. I looked up and almost slammed into the back of Morrison’s car, which had slowed down and was indicating a right turn. I could see Morrison’s eyes in his rearview for a moment. He was laughing.
The driveway was marked by two tall reflectors on steel posts (a common thing on rural roads where there are no streetlights) and a rusted and dented steel mailbox with “W. E. Morrison” painted on the side.
I followed Morrison’s car another kilometre or so through the bush and then caught my breath as we came into a clearing. There was a gorgeous meadow, thick with wildflowers, a large pond with a small rowboat pulled up on its bank, and a half-finished squared-log house beside it. Piled next to the house were dozens of massive logs, some squared off, some on trestles waiting to be worked on. The house, when it was done, would be a big one. Next to it, like a calf next to its mother, was a trailer. Morrison parked beside the trailer and got out.
“You’re supposed to keep your eyes on the road, ma’am,” he called as I pulled in beside him.
“I thought I saw a deer,” I said. “Sorry about that. Earlie, this is beautiful.”
He grinned in a shy kind of way. “It is, isn’t it?” he said. “I grew up here.”
“In the trailer?” I said.
“Naw. That’s temporary. Look over there.” He pointed to a spot beyond the log construction where a few blackened timbers could be seen, silhouetted against the sky. Beyond that was an old barn, small, but sturdy.
“Had a fire here a few years back. Family home burnt to the ground. Nobody was hurt, luckily. My Dad’s in a retirement complex now.”
“Was he living here when the fire happened?” I said.
“Yep. We both were. Mom died back in the eighties. Me and Dad got along fine, but he was getting forgetful, I guess. Let the woodstove get too hot one night while I was out on duty, and the whole place went up like a woodpile.” Morrison paused, and we both stared at the blackened remains. I imagined a dark winter’s night, flames shooting up, the roar of it, and the terror.
“If you have a fire out here, you pretty well have to write everything off,” Morrison said. “A neighbour a couple of clicks away saw the glow and called the fire department, but it was all gone by the time they got here. Dad was sitting in his truck with a bottle of whisky he’d grabbed before getting out, watching it go. First thing he says when I get there is ‘Got any marshmallows, son?’ ”
“Sounds like a funny guy,” I said.
“He is,” Morrison said. “You’d like him. After that, Dad swore it was time for him to go live in a condo, and off he went.”
“So you’re rebuilding. That’s great.”
“Well, it’s slow work. We didn’t have any kind of insurance, and Dad’s at that senior’s apartment place on the river, so that took care of the nest egg, but that’s okay. I’m doing it a little bit at a time.”
“It looks like it’s going to be amazing.”
“Yep. One day. In the meantime, the trailer’s home. Come on in.”
While we had been talking, and indeed from the moment we had stopped in the driveway, a dog had been barking like a mad thing inside the trailer. Morrison turned to me just before he opened the door.
“She’s a little excitable, but harmless. Her name’s Alice.” He opened the door and Alice broke free and started running excited circles around us both, yarping like the fluffy little poodle-thing she was. After performing the usual office that indoor dogs must perform when let out, she ran directly at Morrison, launched herself heroically and landed in his arms.
“I just have that effect on some females,” he said and led the way in.