Deadly Decisions_ A Novel Part 17

Kate took a bite of burger then wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.

"Brenda was working that day. I think she cleaned motel rooms. According to her statement, when she returned at five the house was empty. She didn't begin to worry until it got dark and Savannah didn't call or show up. By midnight Mama was panicked and reported her daughter missing."

She drained her c.o.ke.

"Brenda was cooperative for about two days, then did a complete reversal and decided her daughter had taken off with friends. From then on it was like talking to a frozen pork roast. It was the Shallotte PD that contacted us and eventually got the NCIC info from Savannah's doctors and dentist. That's normally the job of the parent or guardian."

"Why the about-face?"

"Dwayne probably threatened her."

"What happened to him?"

"About five years after Savannah disappeared Dwayne must have developed a yearning for the mountains. He drove all the way up to Chimney Rock to celebrate July Fourth by camping and drinking with his buddies. On his second night there he made a beer run into town and Yankee Doodle Dandied himself right off the highway and into Hickory Nut Gorge. He was thrown out and the car rolled over him. I understand that when they found him the diame-ter of Dwayne's head exceeded that of the spare tire."

Kate bunched up her wrappers, centered them on her tray, and pushed back from the table.

"The investigation pretty much died with Dwayne," she said as she slid everything into a waste container.

We emerged from the restaurant and onto a small patio where an ancient black man in a Yankees cap greeted us with the standard "Hey." He was watering flowers with a garden hose, and the scent of wet earth and petunias mingled with the odor of cooking grease.

Afternoon sun glared off cement and warmed my head and shoulders as we crossed the parking lot to Kate's car. When we were buckled in I asked, "Do you think he did it?"

There was a silence before she answered.

"I don't know, Tempe. Some things didn't add up."

I waited as she sorted through her thoughts.

"Dwayne Osprey had a drinking problem and was mean as a snake, but the fact that he lived in Shallotte meant some village was deprived of its rightful idiot. I mean this guy was stupid. I never thought he could kill his child and transport her body to another city, then cover his tracks completely. He just didn't have the neurons. Besides, a lot was going on that week."

"Such as?"

"Every year in mid-May there's a huge motorcycle rally in Myrtle Beach. It's a mandatory run for h.e.l.ls Angels chapters in the South, and a lot of Pagans usually show up, as well. The place was crawling with bikers that week, everything from outlaw to Rubbie."

"Rubbie?" She couldn't mean it in the Montreal sense, where the term was slang for wino.

"Rich Urban Bikers. Anyway, that's how I ended up on the case. My boss thought there might be a gang connection."

"Was there?"

"We never found one."

"What do you think?"

"h.e.l.l, Tempe, I don't know. Shallotte is right on Highway 17 en route to Myrtle Beach and there are dozens of motels and fast-food joints along there. With all the traffic heading to and from South Carolina that week she could have just b.u.mped into some psychopath pulling off the highway for chicken and biscuits."

"But why murder her?" I knew it was stupid as soon as I asked it.

"People are shot for driving too close, for wearing red where the blue gang hangs, for getting product from the wrong supplier. Maybe someone killed her just for wearing gla.s.ses."

Or for no reason at all, like Emily Anne Toussaint.

Back at the SBI lab we spread out the dossier and began examining doc.u.ments. Medical records. Dental records. Phone records. Arrest records. Transcripts of interviews. Reports of neighborhood canva.s.sing. Handwritten notes taken on stakeouts.

The SBI and Shallotte investigators had pursued every lead. Even the neighbors had pitched in. Parties searched ponds, rivers, and woods. All to no avail. Savannah Osprey had left her house and disappeared.

Nine months after Savannah's disappearance, remains were found in Myrtle Beach. Suspecting a link to the Osprey case the Horry County coroner contacted North Carolina authorities and sent the bones to Chapel Hill. The medical examiner's report noted consistency, but concluded that positive identification of the skeleton was not possible. Officially, no trace of Savannah was ever found.

The last entry in the file was dated July 10, 1989. Following Dwayne Osprey's death his wife had again been questioned. Brenda held to the story that her daughter had run away.

We finished with the file after seven. My eyes burned and my back screamed from hours of bending over small print and bad handwriting. I was tired, discouraged, and I'd missed my flight. And I'd learned almost nothing. A sigh from Kate told me she was on the same page.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Now let's get you a place to stay, have a nice dinner, and figure where to go from here."

Seemed like a plan.

I reserved a room at a Red Roof Inn on I-40 and booked a morning flight. Then I tried Kit but got no answer. Surprised, I left a message and the number for my cell phone. When I'd finished, Kate and I packed our respective bones and drove up Garner Road to her office.

The structure housing the SBI stood in stark contrast to its ultramodern crime laboratory. While the latter is high-rise cement, all sterile and efficient, the headquarters building is only two stories, a genteel redbrick affair with cream-colored trim. Surrounded by manicured grounds and approached by an entrance lane of stately oaks, the complex blends better with the tiny antiques store it faces than with the megalith down the road.

We parked on the main avenue, retrieved our packages, and headed toward the building. To the right lay a circular hedge with border plantings of marigolds and pansies. Three poles rose from the garden's center, like the masts on a square rigger. I could hear the flap of fabric and the clink of metal as a uniformed officer lowered the last of the flags. He was backlit by a partial sun dropping below the roof of the Highway Patrol Training Center.

We pa.s.sed through the gla.s.s door with its North Carolina Department of Justice, State Bureau of Investigation crest, cleared security, and climbed to the second floor. Once again we secured the bones, this time in a locked cabinet in Kate's small office.

"What would you like to eat?"

"Meat," I said without hesitating. "Red meat marbled with real fat."

"We had cheeseburgers for lunch."

"True. But I just read a theory about the evolution of Neanderthals into modern human beings. Seems the key to the transition was increased fat in the diet. Maybe a pair of big prime ribs will help our thought processes."

"I'm convinced."

The beef turned out to be a good idea. Or maybe it was just the break from blurry print on photocopied doc.u.ments. By the time our cobbler arrived we'd focused on the central question.

The bones in Montreal were without a doubt Savannah's. For the bones found here the jury was still out. Did a sickly sixteen-year-old girl with bad eyesight and a timid personality travel fifteen hundred miles north of her home to another country and die there? Or did some, but not all, of the bones belonging to a dead girl get taken from the Carolinas to Montreal and buried there?

If death occurred in Montreal, the Myrtle Beach bones were not were not Savannah's. Savannah's.

Though Kate didn't buy this theory, she did admit to its possibility.

If the Myrtle Beach bones were were Savannah's, part of the skeleton had been moved. Savannah's, part of the skeleton had been moved.

I'd studied the scene photos and found nothing disturbing. The decomposition appeared consistent with a period of nine months, and a postmortem interval that tallied with the date of Savannah's disappearance. Unlike the pit at the Vipers' clubhouse, this scene gave no indication of a secondary burial.

This a.s.sumption presented several possibilities.

Savannah died in Myrtle Beach.

Savannah died elsewhere, then her body was brought to Myrtle Beach.

Savannah's body was dismembered, parts either brought to or left in Myrtle Beach, then the skull and leg bones separated and transported to Canada.

But if the body had been deliberately separated, why were there no cut marks on any of the bones?

The key question remained: How did Savannah, either in whole or part, alive or dead, end up in Quebec?

"Do you think they'll reopen the case?" I asked as we waited for the bill.

"It's doubtful. Everyone was pretty well convinced Dwayne did it. The investigation had stalled long before his accident, but his death really capped it."

I handed the waiter my Visa card, ignoring Kate's protests.

"What now?"

"Here's my thinking," she said. "First of all, that was a sneak play on the check."

Yeah. Yeah. I urged her on with a hand gesture.

"Savannah's skull was found on biker property in Quebec."

She enumerated points by raising fingers.

"The Vipers are a puppet club for the h.e.l.ls Angels, correct?"

I nodded.

"The Angels were gathering just down the highway from Savannah's hometown the week she disappeared."

A third finger joined the other two.

"Her skeleton turned up in Myrtle Beach State Park, a stone's throw from the party venue."

Her eyes met mine.

"Seems worth looking into."

"But you did that."

"We didn't have the Quebec link."

"What do you propose?"

"The early eighties were a wild ride for Carolina bikers. Let's pull out my gang files and see what we can see."

"They go back that far?"

"The gathering of historic information is one of my mandates. Predicate acts are often important in RICO investigations, especially old homicides."

She referred to the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act signed by Nixon in 1970. The statute was often used in the prosecution of organized crime.

"Also, gang members often s.h.i.+ft between chapters and it's helpful to know who was at what location at what time when you're looking for witnesses. I have tons of information, including photos and videos."

"I've got all night," I said, spreading my hands.

"Let's go look at bikers."

And that's what we did until my cell phone rang at 5:23 A.M. A.M. The call was from Montreal. The call was from Montreal.

19.

LES A APPARTEMENTS DU S SOLEIL WERE ANYTHING BUT BUT SUNNY SUNNY, contrary to their name. But naming the place after its actual attributes would have been bad marketing. The building was dark and cheerless, its windows clouded by grime and painted shut by decades of careless maintenance. The tiny balconies jutting from each of its three floors were wrapped in turquoise siding and packed with rusted grills and cheap lawn chairs, plastic garbage cans, and a.s.sorted types of athletic equipment. One or two had flowerpots, the contents brown and withered from seasons past.

But no one could fault the heating system. In the day I'd been gone in North Carolina spring had finally made it to Quebec, and I touched down to a report of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. It was above that now, but the Soleil's radiators soldiered on, raising the temperature inside to well over eighty. The heat and the odor of putrefaction combined to make one queasy and inclined toward shallow breathing.

From where I stood I could see into each of the rooms that made up the squalid little flat. The kitchen lay to my left, the living room to my right, the bedroom and bath straight ahead. The place looked as if its occupant had been holding a garage sale, though the filth and stench would have discouraged even the most ardent bargain hunter.

Every elevated surface was heaped with tools, magazines, paper-back books, bottles and broken appliances, and the floor was crammed with camping equipment, automobile and motorcycle parts, tires, cardboard boxes, hockey sticks, and plastic bags tied with metal twisters. A pyramid of beer cans rose almost to the ceiling at the far end of the living room, with torn and curling posters tacked to the wall on either side. The poster on the right advertised a Grateful Dead concert. July 17, 1983. Below it a White Power fist advocated Aryan purity.

On the top left a poster ent.i.tled Le Hot Rod Le Hot Rod showed a p.e.n.i.s in Ray-Bans, a smoking cigarette tucked between it and its companion genitalia. The image below featured an upright phallus, the words showed a p.e.n.i.s in Ray-Bans, a smoking cigarette tucked between it and its companion genitalia. The image below featured an upright phallus, the words Astro-c.o.c.k Astro-c.o.c.k in bold letters across the top. The organ was circled by the symbols of the Zodiac, a message of wisdom under each. I took a pa.s.s on consulting my sign. in bold letters across the top. The organ was circled by the symbols of the Zodiac, a message of wisdom under each. I took a pa.s.s on consulting my sign.

As far as I could see, the only furniture available for practical use consisted of a Formica table and single chair in the kitchen, a twin bed in the bedroom, and an armchair in the living room. A body now occupied the armchair, its head a distorted red ma.s.s above a blackened torso and limbs. Embedded in the flesh I could see a shattered skull and facial bones, a partial nostril with mustache skirt, and one complete eye. The lower jaw hung slack but intact, showing a purpled tongue and rotten teeth stained brown.

Someone had collected shards of bone and brain pudding and sealed them in a Ziploc bag. The plastic sack lay in the man's lap, as though he'd been put in charge of watching over his own brain. A large flap of skin clung to the edge of the chair, smooth and s.h.i.+ny as the belly of a perch.

The deceased sat opposite a small TV on which a coat hanger had been rigged to replace the broken antenna. One twisted end projected toward his head, like the finger of an eyewitness pointing to its find. No one had bothered to turn the set off and I could hear Montel talking with women whose mothers had stolen their lovers. I wondered what the discussants would think of their grisly viewer.

A member of the Ident section dusted the bedroom for latent prints, while another did the same in the kitchen. A third worked a camcorder, slowly sweeping each room, then zooming in for close-ups of the jumbles of junk. Before I'd gotten there, she'd shot dozens of stills of the victim and his gloomy surroundings.

LaManche had been and gone. Since the body wasn't badly burned and decomposition was only moderate I wasn't really needed, but that hadn't been clear in the early stages. Initial reports described a body and a fire, so I'd been called and transport arrangements had been made. By the time the scene was a.s.sessed, I was in transit from Raleigh and the simplest thing was to follow through with the original plan. Quickwater had picked me up at the airport and brought me here.

Les Appartements du Soleil were located southwest of Centre-ville, on a small street running east from rue Charlevoix. The neighborhood, known as Pointe-St-Charles, was on the island of Montreal, so the murder fell to the c.u.m.

Michel Charbonneau stood across the room, his face the color of Pepto-Bismol, his hair projecting in clammy spikes. He was jacketless, his collar soaked with sweat, his tie hanging below the open top b.u.t.ton of his s.h.i.+rt. Even loosened it was much too short. I watched him pull a hankie from his pocket and wipe it across his forehead.