Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006
- Автор: Бетанкур Джон Грегори, Jr. William J. Carroll,
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
“Arson?”
“That’s the preliminary suspicion, but it’s not Bates’s department.” She glanced around the newsroom. “Pretty quiet, even for a Sunday.”
“The sports department has a poker game going till the American football games start at one.” It was already nearly noon.
She poked her head in and found four of them seated around the small conference table. The ceramic Christmas tree that decorated it the previous week had been shunted aside to the top of a filing cabinet. Rich LeFavre, the weekend sports anchor, was dealing a hand of stud poker, and she could see a cluster of five-dollar bills for the ante. “We’ve got room for a fifth, Beth,” Rich called out. “Always happy to take your money.”
“Too rich for my blood,” she told him. She’d mainly wanted to see who all was in there, and was a bit surprised that Hayes Merritt was one of them. Hayes was a big deal, the station’s evening news anchor. She’d never seen him at the station on a Sunday, to say nothing of Christmas weekend.
Walker glanced up as she returned to the desk she shared in the newsroom. “No room for an extra?”
“You think I’m going to sit in on a stud game with Hayes Merritt? I don’t see you in there.”
“Afraid to take his money, Beth? He earns more than the two of us put together. Way more.”
“And he’s here on a Sunday afternoon, Boxing Day, instead of home with his wife and kids.”
“We’re all waiting. You know that. If a story breaks he’ll be on camera for the evening news.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. It was like sitting around in a hospital waiting for an elderly uncle to die. Once they got the word, the newsroom would spring into action. Until then, there was stud poker and American football.
“Want to take Foxy and go over to Eaton Centre? Find out how people are spending Boxing Day?”
“Now there’s excitement.” She thought about it and suggested instead, “I should dig out the clips of the previous victims, just in case we need them.”
“I think Merritt already has them lined up, but you can check it.”
She typed in the name of the first victim on her computer. Norma Durban. The dates sprang up on the screen: 6/10/01, 12/27/01, 12/28/01, 12/29/01, and every day into the new year. Then there were a few skips that gradually lengthened into weeks, then months. December 27th would have been the day the body parts were identified through fingerprints. That had been Beth’s first Christmas in the city and she remembered the story all too well.
But she hadn’t been here yet on June 10th of that year and she wondered how the dead girl had made the news that day. She brought up the tape and saw a familiar face. It was Constable Bates, leading three young ladies into the Dundas Street police station during a brief crackdown on women cavorting topless in the City Hall fountain. Their names were given and the middle one, her top suitably covered for television, was Norma Durban. The topless movement had been short-lived in downtown Toronto, more or less settled by the establishment of a “clothing optional beach” at Hanlon’s Point on the west side of the Toronto Islands, near the small island airport. But Beth didn’t remember any mention of Norma Durban’s involvement in it.
She picked up the phone and dialed the cell phone number Bates had given her. “This is Beth,” she said when he answered. “I wanted to ask you—”
He cut her off. “I’m on my way to your place right now. I’ll be there in five minutes.” His voice was gruff, all business, and she wondered what was up.
From the sports department came the sound of the American football game, and Beth knew without checking her watch that it must be one o’clock. The poker game would be put aside now for football, while they all waited for the news everyone expected.
As soon as Bates came through the station door she asked, “Has there been another killing?”
“I hope not. I’m here about that yacht fire you were covering.”
It had almost slipped from her mind. “What about it?”
He slipped off his topcoat and draped it over a chair. “The arson investigators found something, a book of matches from this station.” He slipped a photograph out of an envelope he was carrying.
She stared at a charred matchbook with the station’s call letters clearly visible. “I never saw these and I’ve been here over three years. We don’t give out matches any more. Hardly any businesses do, with the smoking bans.”
“Who would know about them?”
She thought of the men in the other room. “Hayes Merritt, I suppose. He’s been here longer than me. I’ll get him.”
“He’s here on a Sunday?”
“It’s Boxing Day,” she reminded him, as if he’d forgotten. “I’ll get Hayes for you.”
The weeknight news anchor left the TV set with some reluctance and followed her out to the newsroom. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
Bates showed him the photo. “The arson boys found this at the scene of the yacht fire this morning.”
Hayes Merritt grunted. “We haven’t had any of those around for five years, maybe longer.”
“The arsonist might have dropped it, assuming it would be destroyed in the fire.”
“Anyone might have dropped it. Believe me, Sergeant, we’re not so desperate for news that we go around starting fires.”
“By the time I got there the fire was out anyway,” Beth said. “All we had was a talking head of me standing there.”
Bates was still studying the picture. “No chance there’s a box of these still around the station?”
“Not that I’ve seen in years.” He headed back to the sports department.
Sergeant Bates smiled as he heard the sounds from the next room. “What are they doing, watching American football?”
Beth shrugged. “I guess so.” Then she remembered her reason for phoning Bates. She showed him the film clip of the first Boxing Day victim after he’d arrested her.
“Yeah, I remember her. She told us at the time she’d come here to attend the university. It wasn’t till after she was killed that we found out she was a runaway, if you can call a nineteen year old a runaway. Legally we couldn’t force her to return to Thunder Bay.”
“What about these other girls?”
“They were legitimate students. It was just a crazy college stunt. Durban hung around with them for a while but never attended classes.”
“She must have been living somewhere, perhaps with her killer.”
“That’s what we thought, but we could never prove it. Then after the second killing we decided it wasn’t a sex thing at all. Larry Amsterdam was a two-bit hoodlum who served a year in prison for assault and robbery. You’ve probably got a tape of that too somewhere. I was in on the arrest.”
“What about last year’s victim? Wasn’t he a gay activist?”
“Earl Sydney? Nice guy. He had a gift shop down on Queens Quay and was president of the small business council. He wasn’t that much of an activist, though.”
“Was he living with someone?”
“No, he lived alone. All three of the victims did, near as we can tell.”
“Did you ever arrest him?”
Bates was puzzled by her question. “No. Why do you ask?”
“I hadn’t realized the first two victims were people you’d arrested. Could there be a pattern there?”
He laughed at the thought. “What sort of pattern would that be?”
Beth shrugged. “Enemies of society, in the eyes of the killer. A girl who went topless, an ex-convict, a gay man.”
But Bates wasn’t buying it. “Someone like that wouldn’t wait a year between victims.”
“There could be a copy-cat killer with his own motives.”
“All three were the work of the same killer. We never released details of the dismemberments, but they were all done the same way.”