The Suicide Murders

NINETEEN

The light comes into the office on a slant through the dusty windows. Somehow it bugged me, and I didn’t like being bugged by things I couldn’t do anything about. The window cleaners came twice a year; for the other three hundred and sixty-three days, the windows were filthy. I couldn’t keep my bottom on the chair; I couldn’t concentrate. I went out, thinking vaguely of getting a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes, when I got an idea. In another three minutes, I was in the Olds and driving along the Power Gorge Road. Traffic was light, and the sun licked at the curves of the creek on my left all the way. I passed Zekerman’s mailbox and took the next turn to the left, which took me down into the creek valley. I crossed the creek and turned the car around in the next driveway.

I stopped the car on the Red Bridge across the Eleven Mile Creek. It wasn’t red any longer, but it had been when I was a kid and used to watch the fast gray water moving under its timbers. From where I stood with the motor idling evenly, I could see up to Pelham Road, where at one end Myrna Yates’ father used to run a car wrecker’s, and at the other I could make out the elaborate ranch-style shape of Dr. Zekerman’s place. I could see the aluminum shed where we had met so explosively and down by the water was a smaller wooden shed-the potting shed. I’d been thinking a lot about that potting shed since my last conversation with Harrington. If I was going to try my hand at extortion or blackmail, I think I’d like a nice quiet potting shed to keep my dirt in.

As I got nearer I could see the shed more clearly. It was made of plywood, with a small gable roof. A bunch of red letters screamed at me “Beware of the Dog.” I’d seen the tired old Irish wolf-hound last weekend, and wasn’t impressed. The door faced away from the creek. It was a Yale lock, which gave fairly easily after nicking the corner off a credit card. Inside, I was looking at the creek through an iron mesh safety shutter and the kind of glass that imprisons chicken wire. It was a potting shed, all right. The place was liberally supplied with clay flower pots of all sizes and shapes. It smelled of dead leaves. A pair of gardening gloves caught the light on a counter that stood waist high against one wall. On it lay all of the implements you would expect to find, but which I wasn’t looking for. The drawers under the counter showed more of what I wasn’t looking for. The walls showed no cupboards, the floor no trapdoors.

It was small, so I didn’t have to do much searching when I’d lifted up the last of the pressed paper starter boxes. Under the window, a bunch of geraniums were languishing, like the once back at my office. Mine were in a bad way because they badly needed to be transplanted, but these stood in a large square bin of moist potting soil. I tested the bottom with a green bamboo tomato stake. The bottom was less than three inches from the surface. It began to look more interesting. I examined the edges of the bin and found small holes on the insides near the corners. I looked around me for something to go into the holes, and at the same time began to get the feeling that I might not be left undisturbed for very much longer. In one corner I found a set of wires ending in hooks, attached at the other end to a nylon rope. I flipped the yellow strand over a two-by-four above the bin, set the hooks in place, and pulled on the slack end of the rope. The bin lifted clean out of its setting, and when I got it up a few feet I tied off the rope and took a look. What I saw was a rather rusty well-type filing cabinet. It just fit the hiding place, with enough room for the lid to clear when I opened it up.

With all the care Zekerman had taken in preparing this surprise for me, he might have hidden a fortune in gold, or the missing Russian Crown Jewels or something. What I knew I could expect were the sordid secrets from the lives that Zekerman leeched from. I rifled through the red files. There was one marked Vernon Harrington. What had he done? Nothing more than a hushed-up hit-and-run charge. A black eye for a politician and for the cop who put the lid on it. The next file told the story of a drunk-driving charge that had been kept quiet so that another leading citizen could go on with important civic work. I wondered whether they were all sleeping better since the good doctor had permanently ceased practising. In the file marked Chester Yates, I found the original of the Xeroxed clipping sent through the mail. Then I hit pay-dirt: a file marked William Allen Ward. A great big birthday present. But right away somebody spilled chocolate milk all over the tablecloth. I heard a car stop on the near side of the bridge. I grabbed something from the file. My feet were already moving me to the door.

Once outside, I beat a retreat to the bushes along the creek. A muskrat frowned at me from the waterline, but didn’t advertise my presence. The bushes smelled of decaying leaves and the water of garbage. The clay of the bank was rubbed smooth by the bellies of the animals going in and out of the water. I could hear voices, but the shed itself masked my view of the path. The voices reached the shed and stopped. After a few hour-like minutes on damp knees with the sound of the creek almost as loud as the thumping inside my jacket, I heard the voices again, retreating. At the same time, I could make out smoke curling around one wall. I heard a sudden popping noise, and flames could be seen on both sides of the shed. I was far enough away so that I knew I was safe from the fire, but it had come so unexpectedly, I felt like I was still inside. It burned quickly, like a burning school-house firework. When I heard the other car start and drive off, I began moving along the creek towards the bridge where I’d left mine.

It felt good to hear the motor catch. Through the rearview mirror, I saw the flames had found every draughty cranny of the shed and forced their destructive way through. There was nothing to do but press my foot firmly on the gas.

When I pulled into a gas station not far from my office, I took my eye off the spinning meter long enough to examine the handful of paper I’d saved from the fire. At first glance it looked like any old piece of newspaper, only it was in German. The name at the top read “Zuricher Zeitung.” The date was 26 January 1976. At the bottom of one of the pages, two nearly identical cartoons appeared. My German was good enough to guess that you were supposed to discover the minute differences between them. I was nearly tempted to return this fascinating document to the shed on the creek, when I saw the picture. A group of men and women dressed in the very best skiing togs was standing chatting near a chair-lift. The caption identified the group. One of the couples named was Herr William Allen Ward und frau von Kanada. I looked up at the picture again. Und frau was Myrna Yates.

As I opened the door of my office the phone rang. It was Pete. I asked him to tell me the latest news.

“Harrow told me that they have Ward’s name in Zekerman’s handwriting a couple of times. They also have about six or seven dozen other names, so they aren’t going to pick up Ward right away, if it’s all right with you. They also have a full list of patients treated by Zekerman during the last five years. Ward is there too along with Yates and a hundred other names, including some of our first citizens.”

“Could I see the list?”

“I’ll drop an illegal Xerox off to you. Hell, no! I can’t do that. Benny, I keep forgetting you aren’t with the firm. Join the cop shop and see the world.” I could picture him, shutting his eyes while he thought. “Can you come by my office right away? I think I can arrange for it to be sitting some place conspicuous when you come in. I may not be there. They’ve detailed me to look into that quarry skeleton some kids dug up out by the escarpment. I can see that this case is going to be a feather in the coroner’s hat. Most of the work will be done out of town at the Forensic Centre. If I see you, I’ll say hello.”

“Not if I see you first. Be talking to you.”

I got my car out and drove as directly as the one way street pattern would let me to the parking lot behind the Regional Police Building. I was stopped by the door with push-buttons on it, but not for long. I went in as a constable came out. He even held the door open for me. I walked right by the desk as though I knew my way around and had urgent business, but was hauled back before I’d gone many yards down the corridor. When I said that Staziak had asked me to wait in his office, the sergeant look at me, trying to see if he recognized either my front or side view, and finally showed me where Pete’s door stood open. I sat in the chair at Pete’s metal desk and looked down at an open file. The open page was a print-out from a computer, containing about a hundred names and Medicare numbers. Most of the names I didn’t know. A few of them I’d seen in the paper. Harrington was there, so were Yates and Ward. I didn’t have time to write them down. Nor was I a whiz at the memory game.

I dropped my eyes from name to name, trying to imagine the hold Zekerman held over each of them. And each one, a possible murderer. When I’d scanned all the way to the bottom I was none the wiser. I now had double confirmation that Ward was a patient and I knew that he had been the subject of oblique questions aimed at Vern Harrington. I was happy with that. But I knew that a law court wouldn’t find one name any more attractive than the last. So, I was going to have to find out a little more about William Allen Ward. I think I already knew enough about him to make it a very interesting conversation.

That should have been a very satisfying thought. But my mind was somehow distracted from it. There was something in the list that had failed to register on my first look at it. I looked down the row on row of names once more. Then, about a third of the way down, hidden, innocent-looking, there it was:

Hilda Blake

the sister of the girl who’d been killed by the overdose of drugs back in 1964. The other girl in that photograph, maybe. Probably. So she was getting squeezed by Dr. Zekerman too. He had his needle into everybody. Bad enough losing a sister to a suicidal overdose, but now having to dish out hard-earned money to the greedy doctor. It didn’t seem fair. I hadn’t thought of her as being still in the area. I’d try to look her up as soon as I had both hands untied.

I turned out the desk lamp on Pete’s desk and let myself out. There was no switch to turn out the overhead fluorescent fixture. Probably needed an Act of Parliament.