ready soon as I get back to Edmonton to write it, but I’ll wager with a murder like this you boys will be playing host to a bit of city help. Guess they’ll read it first. Tell you everything you need to know.’ He stood up to go.
‘Sit down, doctor.’
He continued to stand.
‘Until we hear who will formally head this investigation, I’m the officer in charge and the sole officer to whom you make your report. There are plenty of facilities here for you to have your taped report transcribed and printed out before you leave. Now, I understand you must be tired, so if you like we can arrange for some hotel accommodation for you while we organize the paperwork.’
Brenner glared at Craig. ‘I was planning on getting back tonight, Staff Sergeant, if that’s okay with you.’
‘No, I’m afraid it’s not okay. Not until I know all the facts and can question you in detail about the autopsy. If that takes for the rest of the week then so be it.’
‘With all due respect, I work out of Edmonton. I’m not at your beck and call.’
‘In the time it takes you to get back to the city, doctor, our murderer could be hundreds of miles from here. Even worse, he could still be here ready to strike again. I’m sure as a senior member of the Edmonton forensics team you hardly need me to remind you that police work is a race against the clock. Now, can I organize that hotel for you while you give your tape to Holly?’
Brenner looked at Craig for a few seconds and smiled. ‘Very well, Staff Sergeant. I’ll just call my wife, then I’ll call my superior officer in Edmonton. Just to let him know what’s happening of course. May I use your phone?’
Craig waved a hand. Brenner came forward a pace and picked up the receiver and punched out the number.
‘By the way, I think you’ll find the murder weapon’s going to prove problematic.’
‘In what way?’
‘No traces to indicate any metal instrument whatsoever. There are usually tell-tale signs that can lead us to identify at least the nature of the weapon. You know, serrated or unserrated, steel or base metal and so on. Everything leaves minute particles behind. In this case, nothing. Yet the incisions were as fine as scalpel cuts … Barbara? It’s Larry.’
Craig waited expectantly, until Brenner put his hand over the receiver and turned to face him. ‘May I?’
‘Sure. Go ahead. I’ll be right outside.’
Craig McGee closed the door on his own hessian-lined office and poured himself a drink from the water cooler. From the other side of the door came the sound of Brenner laughing on the phone.
Craig McGee couldn’t phone home and laugh because there was no Mrs McGee any more to pick up the phone and smile at the sound of his voice. The phone would ring alone and unanswered on the blue painted table by the front door, secure in its secret plastic knowledge that Sylvia wasn’t ever going to come running out from the kitchen again, wiping her hands on a dishcloth and pick it up. Why phone home when your wife is dead? In fact if he didn’t have to feed her cats, Craig sometimes wondered why he went home at all. Everything there had her mark on it, her smell on it, her touch to it. Her absence mocked him, from the coffee jars full of shells she collected on holiday in Scotland, to the ridiculous carved magazine rack she bought at a heart foundation sale. Sometimes he woke in the night and stretched out to touch her neck, only to find the empty strip of bed as cold as marble.
He wondered if Brenner knew how lucky he was to be able to perform that simple but delicious act of phoning home.
Staff Sergeant McGee let his forehead rest against the wall above the cooler. He crushed the waxed paper cone in his hand and let it fall to the floor.
* * *
‘Don’t know why they don’t just send us out in a carton pulled by a sow. Be as much use as this heap of shit in the snow.’
Constable Sonny Morris was not enjoying trying to control the Ford Crown Victoria in the thickening blizzard, and his partner Dan Small made a nasal sound in agreement. Highway patrol was a joke in conditions like these. They’d be lucky to find anyone moving, never mind speeding.
‘You got to drive fast to keep control. I keep telling you. Drive fast.’
Sonny glanced sideways at Dan.
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Sure. It works. You see, the slower you go the more traction you lose. Tried it last winter in my wife’s Honda. Got the thing all the way up to Ledmore in one go. Three feet of fresh fall, and I made it in one go. You have to drive fast.’
The driver remained unimpressed, and maintained the stately twenty miles per hour that was taking them back to the detachment in Silver.
‘Like to have seen that.’
‘God’s truth. In one go.’
‘Nah. Not the driving bit. Just the fact you were in Moira’s Honda.’
Dan squirmed.
‘Hey come on. The pick-up was bust. I had to get to Calgary. What was I goin’ to do? Walk?’
‘Better than being in Moira’s Honda.’
Dan gave him the finger and was formulating a riposte when they saw the truck. Ahead, a tear in the white curtain of snow revealed an eighteen-wheeler sitting in the viewpoint parking bay. By the depth of the snow on it, and the fact that no tracks led from the highway to its current position, it had been there a long time.
Sonny brightened considerably, moving forward in his seat as though the action would turn the Crown Vic into a Land Cruiser.
‘Lookee here. Some rough-neck’s sure going to be glad to see us.’
They glided to a standstill behind the truck, and Sonny reached for his hat on the dash. Dan got on the radio. ‘Two Alpha Four Calgary. We’re ten-seven on the Trans-Canada, ’bout two miles west of Silver. Over.’
There was a crackle, a long pause and eventually a female voice. ‘Calgary Two Alpha Four. Read you. Over.’
Dan looked at Sonny.
‘Nice to know they care, huh?’
Sonny made a wide-eyed expression of horror. ‘Oh no! Could it be that here in Alberta we’re not as professional as the detachment you worked with in BC? Now I don’t think I’ve heard you mention that before.’
Dan grabbed his hat. ‘Yeah, well you’ll eat shit when you pull over a maniac one day and no one knows you’re out here or what the plate is. That’s all I’m saying. They should make you tell them. Run it through the computer. This could be a stolen truck. That’s all I’m saying.’
Sonny looked sardonically towards the Peterbilt. ‘You know you’re right, Dan. Guess we just don’t know the half of it way out here in the sticks. Never heard of a joy-rider stealing an eighteen-wheeler for kicks. Still, police work is a learning experience. Now shall I go fetch the poor stranded hauler, or do you think we’d better call for assistance? Could be a gang of Hispanic drug dealers using a twenty-ton trailer as cover.’
‘Fuck off, Morris.’
Sonny laughed and opened the car door to a flurry of huge snowflakes. Dan followed him from the passenger door, battling to open it against the wind.
There was little sign of life from the truck, which sported a two-foot crown of undisturbed snow. The blizzard whipped mini-storms under its belly, blowing the snow out between the axles in random but concentrated blasts.
Sonny approached the driver’s door and stepped up on the foot plate. The window was more ice than glass, impossible to see through. He shouted and tugged at the handle. Frozen. Dan walked round the front, kicking his way through a drift that had built up round the front wheels, while Sonny continued to tug uselessly at the handle.
Fishing