Mister Puri rose stiffly with the assistance of his cane and stood in front of Jinnah, shaking a finger at him in front of the entire marketplace.
“Hakeem Jinnah, their faith and nationality do not matter! They are people who deserve to be treated with dignity! If anyone asks my opinion, I shall not be recommending your venture as either safe or honourable. Good day to you, sir!”
He limped off, huffing puffing. And blowing Jinnah’s hopes down.
Jinnah was left feeling sick and to top it off, he realized that Puri had stiffed him with the bill. Cursing his stupidity, he drove off towards the Marine Drive vacant lot where Sam Schuster had met his end. The day had started badly and become worse. He hoped things were about to pick up.
At first, things seemed to have progressed from worse to catastrophic. Jinnah parked his precious van at the side of Marine Drive and walked along the broad, unpaved shoulder to the narrow, dirt driveway that led down to the sawmill site. From this vantage point at the top of the bank above the river, Jinnah surveyed the crime scene and felt his raw, tender, red heart drop like stone into the churning acid-bath of his stomach. It was a mess. The car, of course, had been removed long ago. He could see the black, oily square that marked its spot. Emanating out from it were two deep, wide tracks: the signature of the huge flatbed truck the forensic guys had used to haul away the burned-out shell of the Caddy. Cutting across those tracks at an angle were a set of narrower ruts made by the ambulance. And all around the cross of treadmarks with the square, black head were footprints: hundreds of them, it seemed, all in crazy circular patterns radiating out from the spot where the car had once sat. It looked like something out of the Battle of the Somme. Jinnah very nearly turned around and left in disgust, but his pride wouldn’t let him. If he left now, he would have no story at all. As it was, there was only the most slender possibility of finding what he was looking for in the chaos below, but a slender chance was better than no byline at all.
Jinnah walked stoically down the drive, kicking up little clouds of dust into the warm, dry air. As they rose the particles danced and shimmered in the sun, but Jinnah was blind to their understated beauty. He had his eyes firmly on the ground. He followed one of the deep furrows plowed by the flatbed to the charred rectangle and avoided adding his own footprints to the confusion. The sun had dried the tracks made in the moist mud since the night of the fire and Jinnah was relieved: it preserved the evidence.
Heartened, he arrived at the edge of the fire-blackened area and paused, orienting himself. He stared at the footprints. Most of them were to his left. Ahead of him, to the south, was the river. To the north and behind him, Marine Drive. It was almost certain, therefore, that the car had been facing the river with its driver-side door to the left. He squatted down and stared hard, but there was no obvious outline to mark the spot where Sam Schuster’s body would have been. All indications of that had been obliterated by at least three sets of footprints. Two of them appeared to be of individuals wearing heavy boots — a firefighter and a paramedic, likely. Two of the cast of dozens who had responded to Kathy Chan’s 911 call and who had been all over the site, tromping in the soft, damp earth with their boots, fouling the trail. The third was a lighter shoe — possibly the cop first on scene or maybe even the forensic squad member who had helped pack up the car. All around and inside these depressions were bits of white paint stained by smoke, small pieces of glass and fragments of metal: the detritus of death, explosion, and fire. To the left, perhaps seven metres away, there was a convergence of all three sets of tracks in a muddy confusion, as well as some markings Jinnah assumed had been made by an ambulance gurney.
Taking out a cigarette, Jinnah lit up a smoke, sending a tiny blue cloud into the air. His knees were beginning to ache, but he continued squatting there, visualizing what had happened. Robert and Kathy Chan were at the top of the driveway when the car erupted into flames. Robert had managed to make it quite close to the vehicle and Sam Schuster before the gas tank ruptured and ignited, sending a second blast scorching over the flat. Certainly the long, scraggly grass and the dandelions all around where the car had been were blackened and withered. Chan was a brave man, whatever his wife might think. A little closer and he might have joined Schuster.
Jinnah straightened up and walked along the far edge of the black square. Here at the front of the stain there were more footprints still. He finished his cigarette and threw it to the ground, grinding it into the drying soil, frustrated. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. His smoke-deadened nose could still scent the growing warmth of the late-morning sun on the soil; the green of the trees and the bushes; the damp, sea smell of the river here close to its mouth. He could also smell the oily, pungent, lingering scent of gasoline. And something else? He opened his eyes and sniffed. Kerosene? No, creosote. He looked towards the river. There was a suggestion of a crumbling dock on the bank leading out into the river and beyond, rafts and rafts of log booms. That must be where the creosote smell was coming from, wafting up from the blackened pilings. Curious, Jinnah took a few steps towards the river. He had only gone a few feet when he almost stumbled and fell over with surprise. He righted himself just on time.
“Name of God!” he muttered and squatted down once more.
There in front of him was a single footprint pointing away from the fire scene and towards the river. Jinnah whirled around and looked at where Robert Chan would have been when he saw his shadowy figure. Jinnah was standing to Chan’s right — exactly where the so-called trick of the light would have been.
“Smoke and mirrors, eh?” he crowed aloud.
It was a large print, well-preserved by the drying weather and with a distinctive tread, but easily missed by investigators amidst the riot of indentations littering the scene. To Jinnah, it looked like it had been made by some sort of boot with rows of tiny spikes on the sole. It was deep, suggesting it had been made by someone running away from the scene of the fire. Jinnah followed the probable line taken by the boot’s wearer, but there were no other markings to guide him. He made an educated guess that he’d find more near muddy ground of the ruined dock and sure enough, he found them again after a few metres. They turned sharply left, forming a ragged line on soft, muddy bank, then disappeared entirely.
Jinnah looked up-river in the direction the prints had been headed. Here had once been the heart of the mill, long since dismantled. All that remained was a row of crumbling cedar shacks by the lip of the river, their shake roofs covered by thick, green moss. Jinnah frowned and walked towards them. Here there was a carpet of decaying bark, wood chips, and sawdust. There were no obvious tracks. But his inherent instincts were tingling and he had no doubt he was headed in the right direction. The right direction to find what hadn’t really formed in his mind yet. Evidence of some kind. He already had enough to call Graham and taunt him into giving him some sort of info, otherwise the tale of these footprints of a killer would be appearing under the banner of “an exclusive Tribune investigation.” There might be a discarded gas can in the shacks, or bits of rope of the type used to bind Sam Schuster. Jinnah certainly didn’t expect to find the killer waiting there to confess to him. There were three shacks, all of them on rotting log foundations, all leaning precariously close to the river’s brown-green current like an uneven row of teeth. Jinnah looked at them carefully. The first two had no doors and their window-frames were empty. A cursory glance showed there was nothing inside. The third had its door intact and there was plastic where the windows had once been. He was about to step inside when he saw something at the side of the shack that made him stop suddenly. There, laying on its side as if it had just been tossed there was a red, plastic Jerry can. The smell of gasoline was quite strong. He took a step towards it. Just then, a voice behind him nearly caused his heart to stop beating.
“What’cha doin’ there?” it barked.
For a terrifying instant, Jinnah thought he really had stumbled upon the killer. It happened on occasion that they came back to the scene of the crime, over and over again, to relive the thrill. But Jinnah’s common sense told him this was extremely unlikely and, in any event, he was not an obvious threat to anybody. How could this man know he was looking for Sam Schuster’s murderer? There were a dozen good reasons why he might be here. Jinnah turned around slowly and deliberately.
“Ah, my