A pause, then normal volume. “Naw. That was a long time before computers. I’d write ’em and send ’em off — lots of times, the editors didn’t even get back to me, especially if they didn’t use the stuff. Probably just chucked ’em. End of story.” He chuckled. “Literally.”
“Yeah. Listen, Bert, any chance we could maybe have coffee and talk about The Depression a little?”
“After all this time?”
“It’s a long shot, I know, but her granddaughter is hoping to bring about some kind of closure to it, and —”
“Granddaughter?”
“Yes.”
Another pause, longer this time. I was beginning to think I’d lost him when he finally said, “Listen, I know if it was my grandkids, I’d want people to help any way they could. Why don’t you come over here tomorrow afternoon? I don’t get out much, so meeting you somewhere might be a little difficult.”
“That would be great. Can I bring anything?”
A pause. “How about a Peters’ Drive-In milkshake? I could do with one of those.”
“Done. What flavour?”
“Chocolate and orange mixed.”
“Got it.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be much help, but what the … the … what the heck, right? Always worth a chat.”
He gave me the address, and we ended the call.
I had just put my computer to sleep and was about to head back downstairs to the ground floor camera when my phone offered the first few bars of Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose.” I picked up, expecting to hear Jill telling me something she’d forgotten to say the night before. I was wrong.
“Just checking in,” Cobb’s baritone voice informed me. “Making sure you’re not lying in a ditch somewhere.”
“No ditch. Everything’s fine here, or at least as fine as terminal boredom can be.”
“I can imagine,” Cobb said. “Actually, I had a couple of reasons for calling. Wanted to keep you up to speed on our other case.”
“Ellie Foster.”
“Yeah. I called in some favours. I got the actual homicide file from the shootings and Ellie’s disappearance. What Monica Brill gave us was bits and pieces, a summary.”
The homicide file, I knew, was a comprehensive collection of witness statements, the reports of the investigating detectives, crime scene photos, forensics reports — in short, every piece of documentation pertaining to the homicide being investigated. I knew as well that some jurisdictions, particularly those in the States, called that collection the murder book. But the Calgary Police Service used the term homicide file, sometimes abbreviated to the file.
“Anything there?”
“I’ve given it only a cursory glance. I want to spend some time on it tonight. How about I stop by in the morning and we take a look at what we’ve got?”
“Human contact. What a concept. I’ll have the coffee on.” I didn’t bother telling him about my conversation with Bert Nichol — figured that could wait until morning.
Cobb laughed. “See you then.”
I stood up and took a quick look out the upstairs window. Nothing to see but a house and backyard at peace. I ran tapes for an hour, took one last look at the Unruh home from downstairs, then did the same thing upstairs with the murder house (the name I’d decided to give it to keep them straight in my mind).
A quick glance, then I was turning away to call it a night when something brought me back to the camera — a movement, or maybe just a shadow. I grabbed the binoculars and brought them to my eyes, and while most of my being was telling me it was nothing, I couldn’t control the racing of my heart.
“Come on,” I said out loud. “Kennedy’s been watching for years, but you’re going to stumble across the killer in a few hours? Give your head a shake.”
But I stayed in place for another half hour, watching … and seeing nothing. I ran the tape back and watched it three times. Something had moved in the alley behind the garage. I was sure of it. I was almost equally sure that what I’d seen was a dog or cat, or maybe a waving tree branch caught by a gust of wind.
Almost sure.
My eyes were aching and tired from the strain of trying to see something in the blackness of the alley. I wanted to go to bed, to sleep and dream about something pleasant.
But there was a part of me that wouldn’t let it go … couldn’t let it go. What if I’d had the chance to spot the killer, but ignored it, and he went on to kill again? And again. How would I live with that?
I decided to walk across the street and have a look around. Total darkness had long since settled on the street, and I took one last long look before I left the house. Earlier I’d noticed a flashlight on the windowsill next to the rifle, and now grabbed it. I hesitated and actually considered taking the .30-06. I shook my head at that insanity — just what the neighbourhood needed, a stranger wandering the back alley with a weapon. Yeah, that would hardly draw any attention at all to the house where the street’s recluse lived.
Instead I pulled on my jacket, tucked the flashlight into a pocket, and descended the stairs. I stopped in the kitchen long enough to take a nearly empty bottle of bread and butter pickles out of the fridge. A glass jar, surely a dying breed. I dropped the last couple of pickles onto a side plate, rinsed the long, skinny jar, and stuffed it under my jacket. Not as effective as a .30-06, but possibly useful in hand-to-hand combat. So did you take a knife, a hammer, brass knuckles? No, I opted for an empty pickle jar.
As prepared as I thought I could make myself, I slipped quietly out the front door. It was just after eleven, and the street was in the process of settling for the night. Several houses were already in darkness, including the one I was headed for.
I took a minute to look at the houses where it appeared that at least one person was still up. I looked at the windows, most with curtains pulled and muffled light behind them as residents read, watched TV, tapped away at computers, or got ready for bed. No one at any of the windows was looking out on the street as a stranger crept carefully along, flashlight now in hand.
I went the opposite way down the street, turned left at the corner, then left again at the alley. The house was seven in from the corner — I’d counted while I walked down the street. I hadn’t used the flashlight at first; there was sufficient light from the street lamps to allow me to navigate. But once in the alley, by the fourth house in, darkness had pretty well encircled me, and I flicked it on.
I slowed my pace as well, listening to my breathing and the crunch of the gravel beneath my runners as I walked — convinced that anyone within a two-block radius would be able to hear both. At house number six I stopped and pointed the flashlight first one way, then the other. Saw nothing, detected no movement. Heard nothing but the distant hum of an occasional vehicle.
I tried to determine where the movement I’d seen had been. Everything looked different once I was actually in the alley. I kept my hand over the flashlight, removing it periodically and letting the beam illuminate the alley for a few seconds at a time before covering the light again. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I moved again now, slowly and carefully inching forward until I was behind the garage on which the camera was trained. I looked across the way, and between houses I could see Kennedy’s house, knowing that I would now be on the tape. I bent down close to the ground and could no longer see the window of the Kennedy house. The back fence of the property blocked my view of the house from this angle. Which meant that the camera could not now see me. And that meant that something — or someone — creeping along close to the ground would likewise not be visible from Kennedy’s roost.
The significance of my discovery, it seemed to me, was minimal.