Читать книгу The Defilers - Deborah Gyapong - Страница 8

Chapter 6: The Body

At 4:17 a.m. I was delighted to discover a light snow falling. That meant weather conditions were similar to those the morning of the fire. I decided to put on my whole uniform – gun, bulletproof vest and all – so I wouldn’t violate Canada’s strict anti-gun laws. I would call it voluntary overtime since I was supposed to be off duty.

Big flakes drifted slowly down, swirling in the glow of my headlights as I pulled into the clearing where David Jordan’s house had once been. I drove behind the charred rubble to hide the Jeep from the road.

Tramping through the wet snow I made my way toward the wooded path from South Dare. The moonlight behind the clouds was bright enough for me to navigate without a flashlight. At the edge of the woods I stopped to survey what was left of the Jordans’ former home. If Alan Dare had been out inspecting his snares before dawn, could he have recognized David Jordan, or anyone else?

The burned shell of the house stood out like a dinosaur’s ribcage against the snow. I could make out the silhouette of a fir tree in the small meadow beside the former house, and could see the outline of the bushes where Will had found the baseball bat the previous day. A shadow flitted in the corner of my eye. I whirled around, feeling goosebumps creep up my sides, to see a fir branch waving in the wind. I turned back to the blackened ruins. I might have been able to make out the silhouette of a person in these conditions. Might. Maybe Will was right and Rex had cooked up the story about his eyewitness nephew. Besides, it would have been weird for Alan Dare to check his snares this early in the morning.

Heading back toward the house I played my flashlight on the fresh snow, searching for rabbit tracks and snares. Finally, I noticed some fresh rabbit tracks near the fir tree in the meadow and followed them to the edge of the clearing. The underbrush was thick. Would someone set snares in a tangle like that?

Suddenly, a roaring grinding noise came from the direction of the road. Heart hammering, I shut off the flashlight and rolled under a fir tree’s snowy boughs. The noise grew louder and bright lights lit up the sky on the other side of the house. What is that? When a huge eighteen-wheeler whizzed past, I felt silly. What did I expect, a spaceship? I shook off a sense of foreboding. When I could no longer hear the truck engine I emerged from under the trees, dusted the snow off my parka and hat, and turned on my flashlight.

With tense muscles and a jittery feeling, I continued searching, playing a beam of light into the brush, looking for signs of rabbit snares. Then I heard what sounded like the engine of a pickup truck, and a snapping rumbling sound as it bumped through the woods in the direction of South Dare. Shutting off my flashlight again I ducked behind a birch tree.

The truck’s headlights and a row of lights on top of the cab illuminated the woods separating the house and the settlement. The lights stayed on after the pickup stopped. Several minutes later the sharp crack of gunfire made me dive to the ground, my heart beating so fast and hard I could feel it pulsing in my head. After a terrorizing few seconds I realized the person or people in the truck probably weren’t aiming at me, but likely using the bright lights to stun deer. Will had told me deerjacking was a big problem when hunting season opened. A few more loud cracks broke the eerie stillness. The truck lights went off a few moments later.

I wanted to get closer to the deerjackers – if that’s what they were – without them seeing me. If I could make an arrest without endangering myself, fine. If not, I could at least try to identify them. Several paths led through the woods to South Dare. The truck headlights, now off, could easily illuminate the paths nearest the house, so I couldn’t risk taking one of them. Then I remembered David’s church and the path Cindy Dare had taken when she ran away from me. That path might allow me to circle around behind the illegal hunters. I wished I’d broken my pledge to never own a cellphone. Then I remembered Will saying they didn’t always work out here anyway.

The church occupied the corner where the road weaving up the mountain ran through the ramshackle settlement and met the back road from Cornwallis Cove. David’s house on the back road was separated from the church by a swampy patch of alders, now bare of leaves.

Staying under cover I ran to the road and used the eighteen-wheeler’s tracks to guide me to the church. Behind it I sprinted across the meadow to the path I’d seen Cindy take the previous day. I could see the deerjackers’ flashlights bobbing through the trees.

In the dim moonlight I stumbled along the wooded path. When I came within fifty yards and could hear the low rumble of their voices, I drew my gun. I assumed they were disembowelling the deer they’d just shot. My ears rang from adrenaline. A snow-covered fir bough brushed my face, nearly taking off my hat. I should call for backup. Or get out of here.

The truck’s lights came on again. They lit the scrubby woodlot in harsh white light making the stunted trees cast jagged shadows. I ducked, momentarily dazzled. I was right. The men dragged a deer carcass to the truck. The doors slammed. The headlights disappeared as the truck drove off. Then silence.

I snuck forward again, feeling my way in fits and starts, temporarily blinded by the light. They’re gone. Why not go back home now? Then my boot hit what felt like a tree root, only it had more give. I lurched forward, sprawling into the wet snow, hitting something that felt like a sandbag. I rolled slightly, and the smell hit me – the thick odour of blood and a sweet smell like rotten milk. I scrambled to my feet in revulsion, brushing myself off, a cold sweat trickling between my shoulder blades. It’s an abandoned deer carcass. Get a grip. I willed myself to calm down by focusing on my breathing, relaxing my shoulders, and emptying my mind of thoughts. Except for a slight rustle in the trees I heard nothing, so I turned on my flashlight.

The light revealed a carcass alright, but no deer. It was Rex Dare. He lay crumpled on his back, his body dusted with snow, his mouth gaping in an o of surprise, and his eyes half open.

Resisting the desire to bolt I doused the light. I listened for any signs Rex’s murderer was hiding nearby. The darkness grew eerie. Branches creaked in the wind. After a few minutes I squatted and turned the flashlight on to make a quick examination. My fall had knocked some of the snow off Rex’s body. Congealed blood covered his shirt and solidified into a frozen liver-like pile beside his ribcage. The odour made me retch. I steadied myself by putting my hand on the snowy ground.

Standing up, I backed away from the body, careful not to disturb more of the scene than I already had. My knees trembled, making me wobble as I tried to fit my feet back into my own footprints.

Keeping my flashlight low I raced through the woods to the church, aware I was making myself a moving target in a place where the residents hated strangers. I banged on the church’s back door, then kicked it open.

After I flicked on the lights my eyes took a moment to adjust. The chairs were neatly stacked against the side wall. In the kitchen I used the phone to call the detachment, but hung up when I realized no one would be there and my call would patch through to Yarmouth dispatch. Shaking, I hung up. I leaned against the wall to collect my thoughts. Will would be appalled I was in South Dare.

Fumbling with the phone book hanging underneath the phone I looked up Will’s name and dialled his number. A sleepy-sounding woman answered.

“Is Constable Bright there, please?” I tried to steady my voice.

“I think so. Hold on a minute.” Bed springs groaned and the woman yelled, “Will! Phone!”

His hoarse voice came on the line. I identified myself.

“Hey, what’s up?” The concern in his voice almost made me cry.

I swallowed, refusing to let him hear how vulnerable I felt. “Someone shot Rex Dare. I just found his body.” I made my voice flat, almost mechanical.

“No way! Where?”

“Behind the church in South Dare.”

“What are you doing out there?”

“Voluntary overtime,” I quipped. Then mustering a more businesslike tone I asked him to call the detachment’s NCO IC – noncommissioned officer in charge – so I could go back and secure the crime scene.

After securing the broken church door as well as I could I raced back to Rex’s body. The woods were silent so I holstered my gun and examined the corpse again, sheltering the flashlight beam with shaking hands. I had to turn off the light. I’d seen dozens of dead bodies before, so I had no idea why this one bothered me so much. I looked up at the dark grey sky. Snowflakes melted on my face and one landed on my eyelashes. A feeling of overwhelming loneliness swept over me.

I turned the flashlight on again. Frozen congealed blood covered Rex’s blue and green quilted work shirt. The fact he wore no coat and the extent of the body’s stiffness indicated he had probably been shot sometime the previous day, which had been much warmer. I expected we’d find footprints frozen in the mud under the snow. My hands and feet ached from the cold. What’s taking them so long?

Finally, lights from three police cars appeared through the trees near the church. I waved my flashlight so Will could find me. Two lights moved through the brush toward me.

“Over here!” I shouted.

“We see you!” a male voice rang out.

I shone the beam on the body as two officers trudged toward me. I knew from their voices Will wasn’t one of them.

“What’re you doing here, Donner?” A tall Mountie lifted his flashlight to make a light over our heads. Constable Bob Morin. With him was Constable Eddie Johnson.

I blinked in the light. “Securing the crime scene.”

Eddie squatted next to Rex’s body. “That’s not what he meant. You spend all your nights off roaming around in the woods?”

“South Dare’s a happening place. Sure I’d find you out here too.”

Will emerged from the dark carrying a video camera and a briefcase of forensic gear.

I played my flashlight on the corpse. “He’s pretty stiff. Been dead since yesterday.”

Not looking at me, Will set the briefcase off to the side. I cringed as his flashlight explored the outline my body had made in the snow when I’d fallen next to Rex.

Eddie guffawed. “Looks like Donner’s been getting cozy with the corpse.”

Will squatted next to the body. “IDENT will be kicking butt for all these footprints.”

He got up and fiddled with the video camera. “Bob, put up the tape. Eddie, get the debrief.”

Eddie nudged my arm with his elbow, his pen poised over his notebook. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“This is my file. I found the body.” I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth and stamped my feet.

“This is my file,” he mimicked in falsetto.

“You always act like a jerk?”

The sky was brightening and I could just make out the line of Eddie’s double chin as I told him what I’d seen.

He seemed especially interested in the deerjackers.

“These people accidentally kill several of their own every hunting season.”

“This was no hunting accident.”

Eddie nodded his egg-shaped head. “Look at what he was wearing. He should have been wearing hunter orange. He was a fool to go walking in the woods in clothes like that. Whoever shot him probably thinks they got the bear.”

I rolled my eyes. “Bear?”

Bob was stringing yellow tape across the path behind us. “A renegade black bear out here mauled a kid last summer.”

Eddie chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” I clasped my gloved hands tight to keep from backhanding him.

“Some people out here thought Rex could change into a bear,” Eddie said. “Maybe they shot the bear and it changed back into Rex!”

I glared at him. “You have a lot of contempt for the people out here, don’t you?”

“You will too when you’ve worked in Sterling County long enough. Listen, honey, just FYI, the staff sergeant isn’t too happy you’re out here. Karen wants you to report as soon as you’ve debriefed us. Why were you out here anyway?”

Eddie’s smirk made me livid. I paused several seconds until I could speak in a professional tone. Then I told him about Alan Dare and his rabbit snares.

“Just like Alice in Wonderland, following a rabbit.” Eddie scribbled in his notebook. He grinned, exposing lots of gum and a row of tiny teeth.

Will trudged toward us. “You notice anything? Footprints?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Karen is expecting you.” Will still wouldn’t look me in the eye. He pursed his wide mouth into a straight line.

“I heard.”

Will laid his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “You get your debrief?” When Eddie nodded Will finally glanced at me. “You better go now.”

Shaking from anger and the cold, I drove out toward the highway. The snow made the shacks and trailers of South Dare seem even more hopeless. A bare bulb shone through the frost-streaked window of a tarpaper shack. Smoke wafted from a stovepipe stuck through the shed roof. How fast would news travel that Rex was dead?

At the detachment I found Staff Sergeant Karen Ramsay standing by her gurgling coffee machine, holding a mug in her hands. She sized me up, then motioned for me to sit down. I shook the snowflakes off my cap. She offered coffee, but I said no. Then she stepped behind her desk and sat down, her uniform perfectly pressed, her frizzy curls escaping the combs she used to pin up her hair. I told her about Rex Dare’s apparent murder. She told me she might call on the General Investigation Section, or GIS, from Halifax.

My heart sank at the thought. GIS could end up taking control of the investigation, denying me the career opportunity I had always dreamed of.

“You’re not getting paid for this morning.” Karen continued to pore over the papers on her desk.

“That’s fine. Didn’t expect to be. But I’d like this to be my file.” I sat on the edge of the seat, my parka across my lap. My boots left little pools of melted snow on the tile floor.

“If GIS comes in, they’ll take the file.” Karen peered at me. “Otherwise I’ll give it to Will. He’s got more forensics and he’s familiar with South Dare. Right now I’d like you to go home and take your scheduled days off.”

“I’m being taken off this file?” I shouldn’t be disciplined for this! Karen was worse than any male staff sergeant I’d ever worked under. I’d applied to Sterling because I thought a female one would give me a fairer shake.

“Don’t be ridiculous. This detachment is too small for anyone to own a file.” She wagged her finger at me. “And another thing. You can’t go off half-cocked into dangerous areas without backup. If you’d been injured or killed, you might not have been discovered for days.”

“I understand. May I go back to South Dare today on my own time?”

“No.” Karen’s cell rang. She opened it and put it to her ear.

“Yes? Okay. Only a couple of members are here. One’s patrolling the town.”

She stood up and turned away with a sigh. “Okay, I’ll send them now.” She edged around her desk and closed her phone. “They need help with crowd control. You’re back on duty. But you’re off tomorrow and Sunday.” She had a warning look in her eyes that made me realize pushing back might land me in deeper trouble.

I rode back to South Dare with the constable who’d been patrolling the town of Sterling. When we arrived a sizeable crowd had gathered in the church parking lot. A dark van had pulled up to take the corpse to the morgue. Anxious relatives, some angry, others hysterical, tried to press through the police tape. The other constable and I had to shove people back behind the tape.

At about noon Corporal Randy Cohen from Halifax IDENT arrived. Sterling Corporal François Jacques, the NCO IC, introduced us. “Linda, can you take Randy to the scene?” François squeezed my arm in a friendly gesture. “Then I’d like you to accompany the body to the morgue in Sterling. The coroner says we need an autopsy. Plan on taking the body down to Halifax on Monday.”

“Thanks.” I was relieved to be back in the game. So far, in my two weeks on the job, François was the only male at the detachment who was friendly without sexual overtones. Maybe he was more sensitive to the discrimination I faced because his family originally came from Haiti. He was the only “visible minority” in the detachment and Karen and I were the only women, except for two civilians.

I guided Randy through the woods to Rex’s corpse. Randy set down his suitcase and shook Will’s hand. They obviously knew each other. When they made no effort to include me in the conversation I debated whether to barge in.

Finally, Randy turned to me. “We’ll need about an hour. Then have the body removal people come in.”

Randy took a little voice recorder out of his vest. He recorded his observations about the stiffness of the body, the wound, and the state of the congealed blood. He put on protective gloves and nudged the body in several places. Then he brushed some of the snow aside to examine the blood splatter patterns. Will took photographs. The two men worked closely, almost wordlessly. With a pair of tweezers Randy picked up a cigarette butt, slipped it into a plastic envelope, and handed it to Will.

After a few more minutes Randy stood up and pointed through a grove of alders.

“I’d say the shot came from that direction. Came in at this angle, from fairly close range.” Using his own body as an example he gestured to where the slug had hit Rex’s torso.

“Not a hunting accident,” I said.

“No. Whoever shot him had a pretty clear line of sight from over there.” Randy pointed in the direction he thought the bullet had come from, took a roll of yellow tape out of his briefcase, and asked me to tape off the area where the shooter had supposedly aimed at Rex.

I cut through the brush and found a parallel path less than twenty feet away. I taped off the area, being careful to stay off the path in case there were footprints or other evidence under the snow. After a few minutes of tough slogging through the bush I came to a clearing where Bob was keeping a dozen or so people from tromping on either path.

Behind police tape stood a shack the size of a garden shed, its door gaping open. I poked my head inside and saw a rusted wood stove, a mattress covered with dingy sheets and ratty-looking blankets, stacks of clothes and a metal pail. Clothes hung from several spikes jutting from the wall. Some of the clothes would fit a girl about six or seven.

I glanced at Bob who was unwrapping a peppermint LifeSaver.

“Who lives here?” I asked.

“Cindy Dare. Don’t touch anything.”

I squirmed through the brush back to Will and Randy who told me to tell the body removal people to come in. I jogged to the church where I met two attendants from a local funeral home. They followed me to the crime scene with a stretcher. As Randy zipped Rex’s corpse into a body bag I wrote my observations in my notebook.

The crowd at the church became increasingly agitated as the blue body bag strapped to the stretcher came into view. Using my shoulders and my baton to keep people away I made room for the attendants to load Rex’s corpse into the van. Inside, one of the attendants unzipped the bag. In my notebook I recorded the date, time, my name, and that the body was indeed Reginald “Rex” Dare. His gaping mouth, bloodstained yellow teeth, and dull half-closed eyes left a mental image long after the zipper closed over his face. I rode with the body to the morgue in the basement of Sterling Hospital.

Under the dim fluorescent lights of the small refrigerated room the attendants slid Rex’s body bag into one of the few metal drawers along the inside wall, locked him in, and gave me the only key. The room seemed to get darker. I shook off a sense of dread.

After leaving the hospital I stopped by the detachment, showered and changed, then filled out the paperwork. At the copier I made extra copies of my notebook pages and left them on Will’s desk for the Rex Dare file.

My trip to Halifax with the body would also include several interviews with people who could tell me more about David Jordan. I made several long distance calls to line things up.

Then I asked Debbie and Maureen, the civilians who handled the clerical work, to give me the number for Rex Dare’s sex abuse file. I found a box of files in the file room and signed it out for the weekend.

With the box on the front seat I drove down the hill toward Sterling’s waterfront commercial area and headed for the Crown prosecutor’s office. I left the blight of the strip malls surrounding the detachment for the white, yellow, and grey clapboard houses studding the hillside overlooking the harbour.

Old wooden buildings with grey weathered shingles lined the downtown business district along the waterfront. On the harbour side they sat on pilings over the water. Though some owners had renovated with vinyl siding or fake bricks, most of the street retained its historic charm. Bright green, red, and blue fishing boats bobbed along the public wharf, riding the high tide.

I parked in front of an office on the harbour side, walked in, and asked a chubby girl in her early twenties, who appeared to be the receptionist, for the Crown prosecutor, Michael Ross. A handsome large-headed man about my height came out to meet me. So this is Catherine’s ex-husband and Grace’s dad. I could see where Grace got her periwinkle blue eyes. I extended my hand and introduced myself.

He clasped my hand with both of his. “My daughter is quite smitten with you. The Mountie next door.”

I withdrew my hand. “I need to borrow the transcripts and files from the Rex Dare case.”

“You’re not trying to resurrect that mess, are you?”

“No. The mess is past resurrecting. Rex is dead.”

“I heard.” Michael shook his big head in mock seriousness. “The king is dead,” he smirked as if enjoying some secret irony. “Murder?”

“Looks like it. Someone shot him.”

“And I’ll no doubt have to prosecute the hero who did us the grand deed.” He smiled again, his blue eyes crinkling. “Just kidding. You didn’t hear me say that.”

While the receptionist gathered two generous cardboard boxes full of papers and a few videos I used her phone to call David Jordan. No answer at the church, so I tried Anne at the Cornwallis Cove parsonage. She told me David had left the previous afternoon to visit his children at his ex-wife’s. She gave me Barbara Jordan’s number in Halifax, and I asked her to have David call me at the detachment.

Arriving at my farmhouse with the boxes of evidence I retrieved the mail from the mailbox at the end of the laneway. When I got out of my Jeep by the back door the wind felt mild and damp and smelled of rotting leaves. Water dripped from the eavestroughs and the moon shone between patches of cloud. I glanced next door, but the lights were off at Catherine’s house.

Once inside my kitchen I leafed through the mail. Flyers. A few bills. A coral-coloured envelope addressed in familiar artsy handwriting. Veronica. The sight of my stepmother’s letter annoyed me. What could she possibly want now? I threw the mail unopened on the kitchen table. Dad had died a year ago. I no longer had to pretend to like her.

Because I’d missed my morning routine again, I changed into sweats and headed for the living room where the freshly sanded floors made an ideal workout surface. The room still had no furniture except for a reclining chair, a TV, and a set of free weights. I turned on the TV and began to stretch. My father had had a similar ritual. He used to work out early in the morning or before supper in our spare bedroom back in Boston.

Afterward I took a hot shower. Thanks to the new pump I’d installed the water beat against my skin so hard it stung. I let it massage my sore muscles. When I came downstairs in a clean pair of sweats the lights were still off at Catherine’s, so I fixed myself a ham and cheese on whole wheat. I fell asleep reading transcripts of Rex Dare’s trial.