Murder At Lake Ontario Page 2

  Chapter 3

  A glimmer of light snuck through a crack in the drawn shades. Eckhart heard a buzzing sound and saw her purse jumping madly on the night table. She reached over a glass to snag the cell when her hand knocked the remote to the floor with a crash, sailing it across the room. The volume button caught the side of an armchair, and an automobile chase down the streets of San Francisco blasted from the television.

  “Ah, shit. Go figure.” She slid off the bed and jammed at the toggle, prepared to hurl it out the window. Silence, at last.

  “Eckhart.”

  “There’s been a murder,” Cooper said.

  “Where?”

  “Lawsons Lane.”

  “I’m on my way.” She hung up and dialed the inspector.

  “Gibson.”

  “It’s me. There’s been a murder.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll come get you.”

  “Okay. I’m at Just Roasted Cafe. Do you know the coffee shop on Lakeshore?”

  “Yeah. Won’t be long.”

  Eckhart stepped outside to a white light that washed the sky of its blue. Dawn had abandoned its coolness to the sustained warmth from the day before. A blistering sun beat down without mercy. Birds holed up in still foliage sounded random trills in revolt. She fired up the truck praying the vents would bring relief from the stifling air. Her sunglasses dropped to the floor as she wrestled with the overhead compartment. She picked them up. One of the lenses had cracked.

  “Shit. It’s going to be one of those days.” She tossed the sunglasses into the centre console.

  Her skin glistened, and the nape of her neck was already damp. She mopped at a bead of perspiration on her forehead and headed out of Port Dalhousie. The waterfront neighborhood was undergoing rapid gentrification. Fifties houses fought in a battle with new multi-storey condominiums. Vivid greens, pinks and yellows splashed storefront buildings. Developers were the big winners.

  Eckhart zipped across the bridge that spanned Martindale Pond. The powder-blue water paralleled the colourless sky. Since 1903 the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta had called this pond their home. She had enjoyed viewing the race, and the rowers’ muscular calves and sculpted arms. She pulled around the intersection and hopped the curb. Gibson darted out of the café and jumped into the passenger seat.

  “What a nightmare.” She leaned in and whiffed a scent of musk aftershave.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just got the call.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “It was last night. I didn’t have my phone on.” Her sultry gaze flitted to Gibson and down to his hand, a white mark where his ring should have been.

  He looked away from the subtlety of her remark, a blush rising behind his collar.

  Bright sunlight reflected off the road, causing a feathery haze that wavered in her eyes. Eckhart drove down Lakeshore Road through the suburbs to a vertical-lift bridge over the Welland Canal. The man-made forty-three-kilometre shipping lane traversed the Niagara Peninsula from Port Weller to Port Colborne connecting Lakes Ontario and Erie. It was a bypass of the Falls providing ships passage through the Great Lakes system by its eight locks. Gibson gazed down the canal as they passed over, the tires singing on the crisscross steel grate. A black bow rose high in the air, giving the sense it would spill onto the roadway. He cringed at its colossal size. In the other direction, a ribbon of water glimmered in the sunlight along the flat landscape.

  Eckhart proceeded on past the East-West Road, flying by a few vineyards and fire lanes. The Expedition bounded over the uneven roads without any problems. As she rounded the next corner, the Jacobs Landing sign cropped up in the distance. The yellow and red board was pinned to a steel pole adjacent to the street. In the bottom right-hand corner, it read Since 1945. She turned left onto Lawsons Lane and sped toward the waterfront.

  DC Jones leaned on a post wiping the glow from his brow with his shirttail, although fresh beads developed immediately. He stabbed out his tongue and panted. Eckhart spun to a stop metres away, corkscrewing dust into his face.

  “Sorry,” she shouted and lifted her hands in surrender. A smirk pulled up a lip at the corner.

  Jones shrugged it off, brushing at his pants. Gibson stepped out into the absolute heat. A light burst of refreshing air surged past him off the lake below, not salty like his beloved Pacific Ocean, but cooling.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. It’s a bit of relief,” Jones agreed.

  Eckhart dipped her chin and accompanied Gibson down the shaky stairs. The detectives leaped off the final step. Yellow tape surrounded an indentation in the dark-stained sand. Cooper hunkered in the shade of shrubbery against the bank. He scrambled over to stand with the bosses. The scorched sand shimmered silvery diamonds. Gibson placed his hand on his forehead to ward off the glare and gazed across the wind-ruffled water, keeping his face up to detect the puffs of air. It was a wrestle between the sunlight and the breeze. He longed for the balmy temperate weather of the coast. Here it was thirty-three degrees and climbing. He wiped his brow again.

  “So, what happened here?” Eckhart asked.

  “There was a firework display on the property at the top of the stairs. On the left. A couple came down after the party for a stroll on the beach.” He looked at his notes. “The guy phoned it in, but he wasn’t the person who found the body. That was a Gregory Cunningham.”

  “Who is the victim?”

  “Elsie Webber. She runs the store at Jacobs Landing along with her husband, Todd.” He pressed his lips together.

  “Anything else you can tell us?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay. We’ll head over to the morgue.” She could sense that Cooper wanted to ask her something by the way he was fidgeting. She wasn’t going to tell him why her cellphone wasn’t on.

  “Should Jones and I head back to the station? There’s nothing left for us to do here. All the evidence was taken to the lab.”

  “Has Todd been notified?”

  “Yeah. He was here last night.”

  “Here. Like at the party?”

  “No. On the beach.”

  She nodded and turned to walk away.

  The cooling breeze had died. The buzz of flies around the blood in the sand grew louder.

  Chapter 4

  A lazy breeze fluttered the curtains, and a spicy fragrance of the honeysuckle on the trellis drifted in through the open window. David rubbed his tired eyes and raked his fingers through his unruly hair. The sun had barely risen. He sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on his thighs, hands held in prayer at his mouth. The flaming sphere breached the horizon and shattered the blues of the night. Streaks of sunlight zinged through the glass. The brilliance clawed at his face, his eyelids flickered. Not a cloud in the sky to check it. He pulled himself up and trotted across the scarred wooden floor, arms crisscrossed over his barrel of a trunk.

  An indistinct movement and the hint of a squeak made Jackie stir from an edgy rest. She opened her eyes lethargically inhaling the dread of the night before. A flat but regular breathing emanated from the bed where Savannah took cover under a scattering of sheets. Her cheeks puffed with each rise and fall of her rib cage. Jackie let the blanket she had clung onto for security all night slide to the ground. One final look and she tiptoed out of the bedroom.

  “Hi.” She stretched her arms to shake off the tiredness that lingered.

  “Should we go?” David looked down at his dusty toes. He uncrossed his arms and reached for her arm, stopping midway. “Are you all right?”

  What a dumb question. None of them were okay. They gathered their meagre belongings and stepped out the door, the heat forcing into them like an unwanted visitor.

  “Uber?”

  “Let’s hope so. We should have driven ourselves.”

  David dialed from his phone app. He crossed his fingers. Thank goodness someone answered. They waited fifteen minutes in the shade of
the store veranda, one that may never open again. A white Acura SUV glided into the parking lot. A youthful fellow rolled down the window.

  “Hi, hop in.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Where to?”

  “Denver Court. Do you know it?”

  “Yup.” The driver glanced in the rear. “I heard about the murder on the radio this morning. An acquaintance of yours?”

  “Yeah,” Jackie answered, her swollen eyes testament to her grief.

  The driver was stunned at her reply and remained quiet. He managed a U-turn in the lane and veered right at the stop sign heading toward town.

  Jackie glanced over to David, but he was slumped back into his seat with his eyes closed. She looked out the window. They pushed past Grantham Avenue with a mall on three of its corners and took a left on Niagara Road with its row of plane trees, a memorial to the First World War veterans. They sailed by a neighbourhood of deep-rooted money, estates that had passed down to an insolent generation. Tall stone screens and black iron fences hid lush lawns and massive mansions. A line of trees overhung the road making a tunnel of coolness. The leaves swooshed with a wisp of air. Almost home. They rounded the last intersection to the familiar dwelling. The Uber guy dropped them off unceremoniously and reeled out of the cul-de-sac to his next client. They slogged up the driveway. Jackie’s mom stared through the screen, a somber expression on her face. Death lurked around the corner.

  “Your father’s downstairs.” Mrs. Abigail Cunningham locked the hotness outside to torment someone else. She fled to the kitchen where she had started the day.

  “Hey.” Jackie bolted down the steps. Her dad’s thick hair was jet black with a smidgen of gray encroaching at the temples, the only notable change in the last decade. The laugh lines, the affectionate grin and soft face provided evidence of his jovial personality.

  “How could this happen? Who would have done such a thing? To Elsie? What did she ever do to anybody? Boy-oh-boy,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She leaned in close. Their foreheads touched. “I’ll go help mom.”

  David eased into an orange recliner. Mr. Jonnie Cunningham slumped on the couch, a beer belly overhanging his sweatpants. A sports channel trumpeted in the background.

  “Do you fish?” David asked.

  “I would like to. Never got around to it. You know, work, kids...” Regret hid behind the older man’s laughing eyes.

  But David loved the sport so he chattered about his great times hauling in the big one. Anything to keep focused elsewhere and push the harsh reality aside. He listed off his favourite flies: Woolly bugger, Royal Wulff and Adam’s Parachute.

  “Really. That’s a hell of a thing,” Jonnie commented. He coughed, inducing his breathing to become erratic.

  “Are you okay?” The episode alarmed David.

  “It’ll pass. I think I’ll go lie down for a while.”

  Upstairs the ladies were at odds, bordering on an argument. The usual conversation with her mother.

  “When are you going back to college?”

  “Mom.”

  “You can’t be a teacher’s helper for the rest of your life. You’re smart. You could be a real teacher.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  The babble went on and on. Jackie stared out the wide window at the evergreen hedge surrounding the backyard. It was beautifully sculpted. Had her dad done that? Surely not.

  “You were an honour student, for crying out loud.”

  “I have to freshen up. I parked in an armchair all night,” Jackie said and left the kitchen unable to process anything after what had happened to her friend last night. Was there a killer on the loose? It was a disturbing thought.

  David heard Jackie in the washroom and took the chance to sneak away for a few minutes. He slipped out the side door and walked quickly down the street and around the corner. With a glance backwards, he figured the coast was clear. He fumbled in his pocket, yanked out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. It was a bad habit from school that he hadn’t quite conquered, and resorted to when he felt stressed like he did now. Should he have told someone what he had seen? Who? Jackie? Todd? The police? Now in the bright daylight and looking back to last night, it made him question himself. He wasn’t even sure what he saw. David tossed his smoke on the asphalt pulverizing it out with the toe of his shoe and walked back.

  Chapter 5

  “The morgue is across town. Should we stop for lunch first?” Eckhart asked. “I think we should.” She wavered on whether it was better to eat before or after their little visit.

  “Okay,” Gibson agreed.

  She drove down Lakeshore to Niagara Street and onto the overpass of the Queen Elizabeth Highway. Gibson looked down at the vehicles heading from Toronto to the States. It was a constant stream of bumper to bumper traffic at 120 kph.

  When they reached downtown, Eckhart had to do a loop to get to St. Paul Street because it was a one-way street. Stupid planning. The main thoroughfare had the expected array of original and contemporary architectures. A revitalization program had recently attracted the hordes fleeing from mundane shopping malls. She hauled into a spot in front of the Mansion Pub. Built in 1806, it was the oldest licensed establishment in Canada. The interior had antique timber beams, wainscoting and parquet floors. Everything wooden with an old-world charm. They sat at the bar on swivel stools, touching elbows—he felt the energy.

  Gibson had a New York cheddar and bacon burger, and Eckhart munched on a Reuben sandwich with a side of fries. They passed the time with restrained chatter preferring not to speculate too far ahead of any facts. He read through the notes Cooper had given them—an updated summary of the incident and everybody’s name and contact numbers. When they wound up their lunch and strode outside, the sun was more intense.

  They headed to the hospital on Fourth Avenue. The morgue was fittingly tucked into the bowels of the building. Eckhart peeped through the small window in the entry door. The glaring overhead lights washed out the green of the walls, which was probably a good thing. Dr. Barrie Staples wore a long white coat over polyester pants, his dark hair was covered with a net. He bustled around his domain, rearranging utensils and flushing the blood-speckled sink. She shuddered and entered, hoping for a quick in and out, so as to reduce her intake of moribund air. Gibson followed.

  “Hi. This is Gibson, the detective from BC,” Eckhart said.

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Same here. Heard you came out to help set up the Task Force.”

  “Yeah, here I am.” Gibson threw his quirky smile and passed his palm through sweat-saturated hair.

  “I guess this isn’t quite what you planned.” The ME tried to maintain a straight face, but it didn’t work. He was an upbeat fellow used to the horror of his trade. He chortled and was greeted with silence.

  “Okay. I just finished up here. So, let me explain what I encountered.” He opened a massive gate on the far wall and hoisted out a stainless-steel tray with Elsie laid out upon it. A toe tag and a white sheet were all she had left. He tugged on the covering to expose her right arm. The purple and yellow marks were dramatic. He pointed to the edges of the bruise that wrapped around her upper arm.

  “Here and here. Someone grabbed her first.” He pointed to a circle shape with a thumb mark on one side and finger pads on the other.

  The detectives nodded.

  The ME drew the blanket to her neck and slanted her head to the side, pushing away a lock of hair.

  “The head wound is extensive. It’s hard to determine the force that was used, but the cut is deep. She got a considerable crack to the temple. Several, actually. The bones of the skull are fractured in two places.”

  Eckhart gawked at the gash ingrained with sand.

  “The initial impact would have killed her. The second one was...”

  “Geesh,” Eckhart said.

  “Sorry.” Barrie pushed Elsie back into the refrigerated container.

  After thanking the ME, they slipped out of t
he room and toddled down the passageway, not much to say. Someone had ticketed Eckhart’s truck. She snorted a mirthless laugh and tossed it in the back with a few others that had been abandoned in similar circumstances. Gibson wanted to laugh out loud, but he felt a sadness after seeing Elsie. He didn’t think he would ever get used to seeing a person laid out like a slab of meat. It wasn’t a physical repulsion. It was something more. A loathing of the killer. Like, how dare you extinguish this life?

  Eckhart drove back to the station by a different route, one that Gibson didn’t know. She remained quiet for the remainder of the ride. Maybe she was thinking the same thing he was.

  She fumbled with her card at the door. The lock clacked loudly as it released. They entered an empty building, an eerie stillness. The first room they passed was in disarray with filing cabinets against one wall, their empty drawers hauled out. Folders were showered on the floor with each stack stamped a specific colour, for a particular type of crime. Murder. Kidnapping. Rape.

  “That’s Cooper’s office.” A slight smile unfurled across her face, enhancing the cleft below her nose. No teeth showing, just plump pink lips.

  The next office was smaller and orderly. Most folders had found their way into the filing cabinet. A bookshelf lined with self-help paperbacks was tucked behind a small writing table.

  “Jones is a better housekeeper.” She didn’t laugh.

  Gibson grunted.

  “Everyone must be in the lab,” Eckhart said.

  They walked down the long corridor to the lab technician’s department in a rightfully subdued mood.

  * * *

  Eckhart opened the solid entry with her electronic key, and they entered a windowless space. A hum of machinery purred in the background. Unpacked boxes covered a substantial chunk of the counters. Flasks, beakers, microscopes and homogenizers were assembled ready for action. The two DCs, Cooper and Jones, stood in a semi-circle with the lab technician.