Corkscrew (28 page)

Andy shook his head. "I don't think so. They're violent. Smothering's not the kind of killing a biker would do."

"I think we're going to have to wait for the autopsy on the boy," Positano said. "That might tell us more."

"Maybe," I said, "but it won't explain why he was dumped in deep water. That had to be done by somebody who knows the lake pretty well."

"We have to talk to Corbett," Andy said. "He's heading back to Toronto. I'll put it on the wire. And I'll get the Toronto guys to wait for him at his apartment."

"Good." Positano stood up. "Meantime we'll sort out this mess the best we can."

Chapter Twenty-One

Andy went to the telephone and put out the word on Corbett, telling the OPP he was wanted on suspicion of first-degree murder but not to arrest him, to tell him his assistance was needed in our investigation of the trashing of his house. The man on the other end asked a few questions, but Andy told him, "Be charming. He may not want to come back. If he does, fine; if not, detain him and let us know. We'll send an officer down to interrogate him."

He hung up and rubbed his face with both hands wearily. He had positioned men on the highway, and they were picking up survivors of the Devil's Brigade as they clawed their way out of the bush, fly-bitten and scared. Another team of detectives, including Werner and Kennedy, were cataloging the belongings of all the bikers from their saddlebags and from the van that had been found parked on the far side of the Bardell house, a place I hadn't searched. They were finding drugs as well as unregistered guns and homemade weapons like maces with four-inch nails hammered through them. If any of us had needed convincing, the haul reminded us that bikers are bad people.

The noise level was rising, especially when rival gang members were brought within shouting distance of one another. It made things easy for the arresting officer to know which outfit a man belonged to, but the uproar in the station was way above my comfort zone. As I paused for coffee, I heard one man shouting, "How come that pretty little thing's not in here? Don't you trust me?" and the others all laughing.

"That'll be Reg Waters they're talking about. Better bring him out here," I said. "He's been hanging around with the Devil's Brigade. I guess he's scared witless of the Diamonds."

"Good, may get him talking," Positano said agreeably. He nodded to the uniformed man, and he led the boy through to us. He looked frightened.

"Sit down, Reggie, isn't it?" Positano said. "Did anybody offer you any coffee?"

The kid looked up, grateful for the kindness. "I'd like some, please."

Positano poured the coffee and then sat down next to the boy. "Right now I guess you know that you're in a lot of trouble, Reggie. You've been running with a bad crowd of people."

He paused for a moment, and Waters sipped his coffee, his hand trembling as he raised the cup. He lowered it and said, "I didn't do anything."

"You're an accomplice," Positano said patiently. "But you appreciate that I don't want to see you locked up, not with a bunch of guys like those out the back there. We both know what would happen if I did that. So I'm willing to do my best to get you off as lightly as possible, to keep you out of Millhaven."

"Millhaven?" The boy's voice quavered. His biker friends had told him what that place was like on the inside.

"That's where they put all the bikers," Positano said evenly. "And you're a biker as far as the court is concerned. But, like I said, I'll do my best to have the charges against you dropped. And in return you have to tell us what we want to know." He paused precisely the right length of time, then asked, "Deal?" and the kid nodded.

While he talked, the phone went a couple of times, and the uniformed man took messages, which he was obviously impatient to pass to Positano, but the detective just looked up and gave a tiny shake of his head as Waters told the whole story.

His involvement with the gang had started the year before, in Vancouver. He had been in some rock club and made a pickup. His partner was connected with the bikers, and before the kid really knew what was going on, they had him on videotape. He had already told his pickup that his grandfather was a hotel owner, so the Devil's Brigade didn't sell the tape along with the others they were making. They kept it until they were ready to move into Ontario. They figured it would give them some strength in their negotiations with Corbett. Once they had him hooked, they felt they would have credibility in Toronto. They could expand and set up in opposition to the local gangs.

"Where did this guy Spenser fit in?" Positano asked when the boy's story started getting too wrapped up in his own adventures.

"He was our contact with a supplier in the States. He would carry our tapes over there when he traveled on academic business. He always had tapes with him, anyway, and nobody questions a professor. It was a beautiful pipeline for our stuff." He sounded smug, and I noted the "our." No doubt about it, with or without his own Harley hog, he was a biker.

"Rough line of work for a professor to be in, wasn't it?" Positano suggested.

Waters shrugged. "He got favors in return."

"What kind of favors? Drugs, women, money, what?" Positano allowed his voice to become impatient, but the kid did not crack.

"Some drugs, some money," he said, and licked his lips but said no more. Had Spenser been another of his lovers? I wondered. Right now it didn't matter, so I didn't interrupt. We all sat there and heard him out, picking up a lot of information that tied ends of the case together. Yes, he had been good friends with young Kennie. No, it was not a sexual friendship, although the younger boy had hero-worshiped him to an embarrassing degree. Yes, Kennie had been angrily jealous of his stepfather, which accounted for the photograph and the angry letter. Spenser had been in the habit of picking up cocaine from Waters, once right at the door of Waters's apartment.

When he finally ran down, Positano glanced at the uniformed man. "You had a message, Rick?"

"Yeah, Sarge, I do. The Gravenhurst detachment has stopped that Mercedes and got the Corbett guy. They're bringing him back here. The constable says he swore but said he would come back. They've sent one man to ride with him so he doesn't take off."

"Good. How long ago did they get him?"

"Just when you started talking to the boy there, half an hour, say."

"Should be here soon," Positano said. "Good news. Maybe we can wrap all o' this up. Meantime, let's ship these guys somewhere they can be safe overnight."

He went out to the back of the station with a couple of his Task Force men. Andy and I sat where we were, not saying anything. I guess he was still coming down after the role he had played for so long, in constant fear of being found out. Me, I was flattened by the knowledge that I'd lost a good thing when I'd let Fred go. I was thinking about her when I should have been working on the case, and suddenly I was sick of the whole mess. So the bikers had been booked. I was still going to wake up alone in the morning. I've known a lot of women, but she was different. She mattered to me more than the others. I had been sad when she'd left before, able to understand her reasons but wishing we could have gone on as we had that month or so she had spent here with me. And now she had come back, and I'd blown it, scared her off again. I excused myself and walked out into the darkness, glad to hear the door close on the madness of the investigation, the nonstop shouting of the bikers, and the ringing of the telephone and the clatter of the typewriter.

Fred's Honda was sitting behind the station, hidden behind an OPP van. Impulsively I took out her key ring from my pocket and unlocked it, then sat behind the wheel, breathing deeply, trying to recreate her in my mind from the faint impression of her perfume that lingered there like music heard over a wall.

A voice said, "Are you going home now?" and I started and turned to see her leaning down over me.

"Fred? I thought you'd gone." I stood up and put my hands on her shoulders.

"I did. Then I found you still had my keys, including the key to your place, so I came back."

"It's safe to go now, if you want to." I let go of her and held out her key ring.

"Safe? You mean the bikers are locked up?"

"Yes, we're just tidying up, booking them, routine stuff."

"And I can go?" Her voice had a quizzical lilt.

"It's safe to hit the road. But I hope you won't."

"Why?"

"Do you need telling?"

She didn't speak for a moment; then she nodded. "Yes, I do need telling." She began to cry silently.

"So why the hell are you crying? I love you. Let's take it from there."

"Do you?" She turned her wet face up to me. Slowly she reached her arms up and put them around my neck, and we kissed without speaking. When we broke she said, "You're stuck with me now, for keeps."

"In that case, come back inside and I'll let everybody know we're going home."

We moved apart, but she clung to my hand. "I want that, but not now," she said softly. "You're in the middle of this case. The show must go on. I'll wait till you're through. Then we go home."

I gave her hand a squeeze, and we went back into the station. The young OPP man on the desk recognized her, and he did a double take, then glanced at me, wondering maybe if I was going to blush. Fred sat down on the pew in the front of the office and smiled at me. "Go get 'em," she said.

I went back through the counter and cornered Kennedy. He looked up at me and grinned. "Got your lady back. Good."

"Yeah. She says she'll wait until we've wrapped up here."

"Keep a hold of that one," he said. "You've got a winner. My old lady gave up understanding my job a long time ago."

"I was going to talk to you about this guy Corbett. I think he smothered the little boy. I know you've got your hands full, but this case comes top on my list. I don't want him to get away with it."

"What've we got on him?" He shoved his chair back and swung both feet onto the desk. "Okay, I'm the crown attorney. Convince me we should put the bastard away."

It was good discipline. I went over the case for him, logically. "First, Corbett was involved with both gangs of bikers. One of them had trashed the house to scare him and had hit the boy in the head. Then someone had smothered the boy and moved the body into the Corbett launch and dumped it into a deep part of the lake. Someone, the same someone, probably, had thrown flour over the floor."

"How'd you know the bikers didn't do that when they trashed the place?" Kennedy argued.

"Because there's only one footprint in it. They would have vandalized the place from the kitchen on in; that's the typical pattern. Start where you enter and keep on going. If they had scattered that flour, there would have been more footprints."

"Doesn't mean a lot," Kennedy said. "But if this Corbett was in there, then logically he'd have flour on his clothes."

"Doesn't seem to. He was in a good suit. Looked like he'd stepped out of a bandbox."

Kennedy shook his head. "No. It's not sticking. Where's the motive?"

I stood staring at him without seeing him, filling in the blank that had puzzled me. Why would the man do it? And then I remembered the conversation I'd had with him a million years ago, just after I'd been suspended. "How's this for size? He's trying to raise money for a resort out on the lake. He told me he's tied in with a church credit union. He said they weren't crazy about the fact that he was going to sell booze. They'd have dropped him like a hot rock if they knew he was tied in with bikers."

Kennedy's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. I went on. "It's my bet he killed the kid to keep the thing quiet. Only the Spenser boy knew he'd been vandalized by bikers."

"So?" Kennedy said. "They're ugly bastards. Could happen to anybody."

I shook my head. "No. Some reporter would have dug out the connection. And once that got out then Corbett would've been tarred with the same brush. The investigation would have led to his business, and he could kiss his finance plans good-bye. Nobody would have touched him then. He wouldn't have stood a chance. No." I shook my head. "Just putting his name in the same sentence with bikers would have started the church group asking questions."

Kennedy nodded. "And it wouldn't take long to dig out the fact that he's tied into soft-porn bars—strippers, table dancers, all of that good stuff."

"Exactly. And when that happened he'd lose not only his loan but all the money he's sunk into the project so far. It could break him."

Kennedy sucked his teeth thoughtfully. "He could've sweet-talked his way around it but I figure he just panicked and offed the kid."

"Right," I said, and Kennedy nodded again. "Okay, that gives us reasonable and probable grounds for arresting him. Only he'll get off sure as hell unless we can come up with something concrete."

"That engine block used to weigh down the kid's body—that probably came from the garage beside his place," I said. "His wife's got an old Ford station wagon."

"Still circumstantial," Kennedy said. "Whoever dumped the kid could have picked up the block. Won't wash."

I sat down on the edge of the desk. "That's the best I've got. You mean to say he's going to get off?"

"No proof," Kennedy said. "I can arrest him on suspicion, but it isn't going to stick without proof."

We sat there, staring at one another, and then some OPP men came back from searching the motorcycles, carrying another parcel of their findings. "Got the goods on this guy," one of them said happily. "Smack, needle, spoon, everything."

I stood up. "Is the needle used?"

"Yeah. Recently, I'd say. There's a bloodstain on it."

"I guess you've got it in a bag, haven't touched it?"

"Come on," he said sharply. "I know my job."

"Sorry, I wasn't getting cute. Thing is, the man who went over the rock into the lake may have been shot full of something. If that's his blood on the needle, we've got a case against the man who owned it. You get more brownie points for homicide than for possession, right?"