Ocean Drive, page 8
Liz tilted her glass and emptied it, and built another. “I should’ve told you before, Meg, but I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. Alexa and I had something of a falling out.”
“Over what?”
“I can’t say.” Liz drank and sighed in satisfaction. “I think, in some way, Alexa felt I was to blame for her parents’ misfortune.”
As Liz explained, the morning of the funeral Alexa had left the house early, borrowing Liz’s car.
The funeral was at one. Alexa didn’t return until quarter past twelve. When Liz mentioned that she might want to spend some time cleaning up, Alexa slammed the guest room door. She ignored her during the funeral, nodding sullenly to the expressions of condolences.
Liz had interpreted it as filial grief, though looking back she could see the girl had been troubled.
The next afternoon, Liz had knocked on her door and been told to go away. She’d pressed the issue, telling Alexa it was all right to have a full complement of feelings, some less than savoury. It was natural. She’d gone through the same when Roger died—
“You don’t give a shit about anyone,” Alexa had told her. “Definitely not Mom. She told me, y’know.”
Liz had no idea what the girl was talking about, and hadn’t replied.
“You ruined our lives,” Alexa had said. “You and your rich friends. Don’t pretend you have a fucking clue what I’m feeling.”
Liz had let the matter drop. The next day Alexa had moved out. She was supposed to fly home that night.
“If Emily was broke,” Liz said, “I would’ve helped her, no matter the circumstances. And Emily knew that. I’m sure she did.”
“So am I,” Meghan said. “Aside from Alexa’s emotional state, did you notice anything wrong with her—any signs of drug use?”
“Nothing,” Liz said. “I keep pot around the house, and sedatives. If some were missing, it wasn’t noticeable.”
“Nothing harder than that?”
Liz smiled. “You’re not serious.”
“Heroin and hydrocodone.”
Surprise registered on the widow’s face. “No, nothing like that.”
“All right,” Meghan said. “What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“A favour,” Liz said, happy for the change of topic. She adjusted one of the towels. “Your year-end report to city council is coming up on January 7th. Some of Roger’s friends and I are bringing a proposal for a gaming resort.”
“A casino?” Meghan asked.
Liz nodded. “We‘re seeking a partnership with the Semiahmoo Nation. We’re hoping to build where the band shell is now. We’d appreciate if you’d include an assessment in your report to council, independent of our proposal.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Meghan said.
“The median age of White Rock residents is fifty-nine. You and I are youngsters compared to most of our population. If this place is going to have a future, it can’t coast along on summer tourism. Wildfires are only getting worse. We must have an economic engine independent of weather and everything else.”
“Crime would go up,” Meghan said.
“Studies show drug offenses and property crimes take a slight upturn. But there’s no reason to think expansion would raise crime substantially, or affect our standard of living.”
If they were moving ahead with their pitch to city council in the new year, that didn’t leave Meghan a lot of time to consider her position. This was a request that should have come in six, eight months ahead of time. Why hadn’t it?
Maybe, she thought, Liz counted on their friendship.
Or maybe, like a lot of people, she’d had a shit year, and too much to deal with.
“No promises, but I’ll do what I can,” Meghan said.
“All I ask, darling,” the widow said.
* * *
Meghan bought a chicken torta from the new Mexican place on the beach, ate lunch at her desk while reading through the file on Cameron Shaw.
There was an incident report from the Surrey PD dated two weeks ago. An industrial accident involving Shaw and another man, Devin Reese. Shaw sustained a few deep lacerations. Reese lost an arm. It was unclear what was going on between them before the accident, but Reese was wearing a League of Nations T-shirt.
Neither would say why Reese was in the warehouse. Meghan could hazard a guess. A warehouse so close to the port, there was probably something being smuggled in. The ports around Vancouver handled millions of shipping containers each year, less than one percent of which were inspected. An open invitation for smugglers.
Her sandwich was long gone. Still hungry, Meghan picked at scraps of cabbage and globs of cheese left on the waxed paper. She couldn’t say if Cam deserved the benefit of the doubt. He was claiming partial amnesia for the episode. In any case, the kid seemed to attract trouble.
* * *
Amanpreet Brar had been acting slightly distant toward Meghan for the last few days, but when she knocked on Meghan’s office door, she was grinning broadly.
“Sukhi never went on vacation,” Amanpreet said.
She’d been at home the entire time. Amanpreet had stopped by to ask her parents if they knew the whereabouts of their son, Tequila. Sukhi had opened the door, then screamed, realizing her faux pas.
“She tried to tell me how her trip was cancelled,” Amanpreet said, standing at attention in front of Meghan’s desk. “That she’d only got back that morning. Her dress and mannerisms led me to believe that was a lie. I reiterated the importance of our getting in touch with her brother, and she assured me she didn’t know where he was. She’s waiting in the staff room.”
Sukhi was short, pretty, overly made up and tucked into an enormous Gore-Tex jacket, which hung over the arms of her chair. She looked up at Meghan with hostility.
“I don’t know shit about where my brother is, ’kay?”
Meghan smiled. “Okay.”
“Why’m I here? You always ask me about my brother and I never know. We’re not close or anything.”
“So why lie to us?”
“Because,” she said, her voice reaching a whine. “You always ask me and I’m tired of it.”
“We always do?” Meghan said.
“Cops. You think everyone’s got this super close family. One’s a criminal, we all got to be criminals, right?”
“Is your brother a criminal, Sukhi?”
“I don’t know anything.”
Meghan doubted that, but the girl’s tone was grating on her. Without any hard evidence to present her with, all they had was her deception.
“Where are your parents?” she asked.
“Wintering in Mexico.” The young woman smirked. “Where are yours?”
“Do you know Alexa Reed? Someone said she contacted you, maybe looking for drugs.”
“No way,” Sukhi said. She pointed at Amanpreet. “Like I told that one, I don’t know Tequila’s number. If she asked, I didn’t have anything to tell her.”
“So Alexa did ask?”
“I don’t remember.”
Lying. Meghan checked the clock: time for her to make the drive to Surrey.
“All right, you can go,” Meghan said.
The coat billowed upward. Meghan stopped Sukhi from rising out of her chair.
“Before you do, understand something. Your brother might know about the murder of Alexa Reed, a girl who’s not much older than you. Which means sooner or later we’ll be having words with him, and probably with you again.”
The girl’s feet kicked the legs of the chair petulantly. What a fucking brat, Meghan thought.
“If you want to save both of you some grief, tell him to get in touch. Understand?”
“Can I go now?”
Meghan shrugged and nodded at Amanpreet to drive her home.
* * *
She wasn’t in the best of moods for her meeting with Cameron Shaw. Added to the mysteries of Alexa’s death were why a girl who professed blind ignorance to her brother’s criminal connections would lie to the police; what Alexa had found out about her parents and Liz Garrick; and, off-topic but another piece on the shit pile, this business with the casino.
Being detachment commander was a Sisyphean shoveling at said shit pile, with negligible results. Isn’t that what Bob Sutter had always said?
The parole officer worked in a building a five-minute drive from King George Boulevard. Amazing how different Surrey was from White Rock. Colourless and industrial, clogged with traffic. Even the weather seemed worse. Greyer, somehow. Meghan had little cause to leave White Rock these days, and was thankful for it.
What impact would a casino have? Would it turn the town into a sleazy weekend jaunt for Seattleites? Who would live there?
The parole officer showed her into his office, a beige cubbyhole, and dropped Cam’s file in front of her. In the months he’d been out, Cam had found work at a warehouse and then as a day labourer. His employer described him as hard-working. He pissed clean consistently.
So, no drugs, work physically but not mentally demanding. What did Cam spend his time on?
“Do you prefer if I’m present?” the PO asked. “During your interview. As an added authority figure.”
Meghan told him she’d be fine.
Cam entered and sat down in the PO’s computer chair. He shook her hand. She noticed the scar on his face, a dark purple furrow down the cheek. Otherwise a nondescript white guy in his twenties, slightly baby-faced, only a few years older than her son. Cam kept his eye returning to the door.
“What happened there?” she asked, gesturing at the scar.
“Workplace accident.”
“I heard you were attacked.”
“From who?”
“You know why I’m here?” Meghan said.
“No.”
“Do you remember Alexa Reed?”
She watched his brow furrow, considering the name. “You mean like the Reeds that ran the gas station on Buena Vista?”
“Their daughter,” Meghan said.
“I probably saw her around.”
“When was this?”
“Back in the day.”
“Before you went to prison for killing Roger Garrick.”
Cam looked up at her, suddenly cagey. Studying her eyes the way she’d been studying his.
“That’s right,” he said. “Before that.”
“Were you aware Mrs. Reed and Mrs. Garrick were cousins?”
“Nope.”
“So in your mind there’s no connection between what happened to Roger Garrick and what happened to Alexa.”
“You haven’t told me what happened,” he said.
“Her parents’ house was set on fire. With her in it.”
“Really sucks,” he said. “But I didn’t know her.”
“It happened the week you got out of prison,” Meghan said. “Can you account for your whereabouts?”
“For the whole week?”
“That’s the cooperation I’m looking for, Cam.” Implying that failing to cooperate would be a strike against his parole—see how he holds up to that.
“Let me think,” he said. “I got a place, I went for some job interviews.”
“Were you in White Rock?”
“No.”
“Not even to visit your uncle?”
Cam said sheepishly, “For about twenty minutes. He wasn’t all that glad to see me.”
“You murdered his friend and client, hard to wonder why.”
“Manslaughter,” Cam said.
“Right. You slaughtered his friend and client.”
Cam sighed. His hands were clasped together, and he took a moment of staring at them before saying, “I’m aware what I did, ma’am.”
“Staff Sergeant Quick. Do you know where the Reeds live?”
“Not an address, but if I saw the place I might recognize it.”
“Have you been in there before?”
“I don’t know.”
“Recently?”
“No.”
“Did you purchase drugs for Alexa Reed?”
“No.”
“Did you break her neck, Cameron?”
“No.”
“Set her body on fire to cover up your crime?”
“No, I didn’t, Staff Sergeant Quick.”
“How well do you know the League of Nations?”
“I—no.”
That pause. Something there, she thought.
“Tell me about the warehouse attack,” Meghan said.
“Not much to say. I didn’t know the guy. He chased me. Climbed on the cage of the forklift. My memory’s still blurry.”
“Sure it is,” she said. Leaning forward, playing nice now. “If you got mixed up with something, maybe starting while you were inside—”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you’ve never heard of the League of Nations. Not coming from where you did.”
Cameron shrugged. “It’s like have I heard of the mafia or the Exiles? I mean, sure. But that doesn’t mean I know any.”
“You were imprisoned with some.”
“I saw some League crew inside, yeah, but so what? Not like we hung out. They keep to themselves.”
“And who do you keep to?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Cam, who have you been associating with since you got out?”
The question seemed to stump him. Meghan waited, letting him formulate whatever bullshit answer he felt like. The more elaborate, the easier it would be to disassemble when she came back at him. And she would come back. There’d definitely be a follow-up to this.
After at least a minute of thoughts and glances around the room, Cam said, “I’m mostly on my own these days.”
“Poor little murderer—sorry, manslaughterer.”
“You know who I see, Staff Sergeant Quick? People like you. People who don’t see people like me.”
“And what does that mean?”
Meghan stared at him. Cam’s words seemed familiar in some way. Maybe it was the sense of resentment. It somehow echoed Alexa’s post about the blindness of the people around her. Coming from Cam it seemed more of a challenge.
Her pocket shook. She removed her phone. A text from Denny Fong.
DP East Beach. Likely homicide. And following quickly after: Arson, looks like.
* * *
As she drove toward East Beach, Meghan’s stomach flared with indigestion. The idea that she was facing another unsolved—maybe unsolvable—homicide was unsettling. Her talk with Cam hadn’t improved things.
She parked and popped a Tums. Took a moment to compose herself. Then left the car, approaching the outcropping of beach where Denny and Greg Grewal were waiting.
Something lay covered in a green blanket behind them. A few gawkers stood in the grassy area between the parking lot and the beach, swiveling to take Meghan’s photo.
At the far end the beach turned to rock. Gravel first, then larger pieces, which Meghan carefully leapt across.
“It would have to be the start of high tide,” Grewal said, shaking his head.
“Means the techs better hurry. What do we have, Greg?”
“Nothing definite yet, but it’s consistent with an execution.”
Grewal pulled back the blanket like a magician unimpressed with his own trick. The body was curled in the same boxer’s pose. Skin a purplish black, face melted into a featureless mannequin’s mask. Looking down, Meghan could see what looked like the exit wound of a high-calibre bullet blooming from the trachea. The smell was sweet and excruciating. Thankfully the wind was blowing the worst of it down the beach.
“Shell casing, Sarge,” Denny pointed to a rock a couple metres behind the head. “Haven’t picked it up but looks like a .45 or maybe a .44 mag.”
“Shot and then burned,” she said. “Can we match the fuel?”
“Possibly, if it’s from the same container.”
The corpse’s shoes were worn, white, off-brand runners. A Kmart kid, Meghan thought. The body male, adult, yet something young about it. She reached into a pocket, found keys and something else. A nametag. Welcome to Price-Low. My name is Mike.
“Michael May,” she said.
* * *
The Mays lived up the hill and beyond the town centre. Here the properties were older, larger, less well maintained. The house had once backed onto a forest, but was now cut off by a row of townhouses. Mrs. May let Meghan in while her husband thumped up the stairs from the basement. He handed his wife a can of Old Milwaukee. The two sat down on the blasted sofa, Mr. May lighting a cigarette.
“What’s this about Michael?” he said.
These were people from an older White Rock, the community Meghan had grown up in. They probably didn’t get down to the beach much anymore, since the parking meters went in. Meghan had seen true, grim poverty, and this wasn’t that. Instead it was what used to be called “getting by.”
The million ways this job breaks your fucking heart, Meghan thought.
Bob Sutter had been good at delivering this kind of news, starting off folksy and banal, and feathering in to the catastrophe like a small plane landing in a deserted air field. Meghan found it more manageable to drop the load straight away.
“It’s bad news, I’m afraid. A body was found on the beach. We believe it’s Michael’s.”
“You’re dicking around with us,” Mrs. May said. “This is some sort of—no. You’re wrong.”
“We‘ll need a formal identification, but his nametag was found near his body.”
“Maybe he got robbed.”
“I’m afraid not, Mrs. May.”
Her husband made a sharp, high-pitched sound, summoned out of his fleshy abdomen. Meghan realized it was a sob. He leaned forward, his hands flying to his mouth as if to smother the sound.
