"Matter of fact, Miss Cashman can't verify anything; we have separate rooms." The revelation did something for his eyes. It was almost imperceptible, but it was there. "At this stage, I imagine everyone is a suspect."
"Chambers Bay ain't much more than a grease spot in the road," Madden scoffed, "and most of the folks around these parts have known each other since the day they was born. That means they know each other pretty well. If I got me any suspects, they'll be outsiders; them's the ones you can't trust."
There was no malice in the big man's manner. I knew exactly where he was coming from. I also knew he had a deteriorating situation on his hands that he had no idea how to solve. He began to amble away from the scene of the atrocity down toward the water's edge. When he turned back to face me, his eyes were a giveaway. "I ain't much of a Constable, ain't had much trainin', and it's times like this that make me realize that."
I had a hunch Jake Madden, for reasons known only to him, had already written me off his suspect list. I nodded my head back toward the car containing the two bodies. "So, what happens now?"
Madden shrugged. "The Mounties take over. I handle little stuff; this is big stuff." He paused, looked out at the troubled water, then back at me again. "I know one thing for certain," he sighed. "This time they won't be writin' off the whole thing as some sort of animal attack. Ain't no damn animal I ever heard of that could take a scalpel and cut out a man's heart."
PART 3
I stayed with Madden till the Mounties arrived and watched in childlike fascination as their slick investigative team swarmed over the scene. They took my name despite Madden's assurances that I was above suspicion and gave me the standard "don't stray too far from here" admonition. Finally I shook free and went back to the motel to see if B.C. had crawled out of the sack yet. I glanced at my watch; it was only eight-thirty. At the present rate, it was going to be one helluva day.
Brenda was up. In fact, she had already showered (her hair was still damp) and had managed to get dressed. That is to say, she was wearing the same old pair of blue jeans with the hole in the knee and Reeboks that looked even saltier than mine. The blouse was different; this one looked like a military issue of some sort, and she had it knotted at the midriff. I didn't tell her, but I thought she looked more than just passingly appealing.
"Good morning," she chimed.
"Did you know you snore?" I asked flatly. I wasn't about to let her forget that I was a protege of the infamous Cosmo Leach. With those kinds of slammers for openers, she never would.
She gave me an easy smile, flipped her hair and leaned back on her bed. "How do you know? You weren't peeking, were you?" She knew she had me, but she was quick to let me off the hook. "Had your breakfast yet?"
"Been waiting for you," I admitted. I had already made up my mind not to say anything about the gory scene that was still unfolding behind the motel. That wasn't the sort of thing you hit someone with before they've had breakfast. "Are you ready?"
She bounced off the bed and fell into step beside me as we headed back for the diner. By the time we got there, the spoon-in-the-cup gang had departed. I suspected the word was out by now that Madden had something worse than a couple of crudely slaughtered animals on his hand.
With the exception of a lone trucker, we had the place to ourselves. The same waitress led us to the same table we had occupied the previous evening, and again Brenda took time to assess the mood of the bay. It was still choppy and gray, the same color as the sky, only now there was no way to distinguish between the two. They had become one, a somber, slate-gray brooding landscape. What earlier hope there had been for sunshine was continuing to diminish as the day wore on. "Doesn't look very friendly, does it?" she mused.
I had to agree with her. The winds were aggravating the pines, the waves were running a good six to eight feet, and the day was holding out damn little promise. B.C. shuddered, hunched her shoulders forward and seemed to withdraw into herself. I wondered if now was the time to tell her — and decided again to wait.
The mood prevailed right on into breakfast itself. Halfway through, she slumped back in the booth with both hands wrapped around her coffee cup. She had barely touched her food. "I'm not sure I'm ready to begin yet," she muttered.
"Begin what?"
"The research, or whatever it is that writers do when they go somewhere and start digging into things. I don't know. You tell me, you're the writer."
"It's already begun," I informed her. The time was now, I reasoned.
She gave me that quizzical moon child look which I interpreted as meaning, "Tell me more."
"I hope you're ready for this. Last night, while we were sleeping, all of our suspicions were confirmed. We're definitely on the right track; our 'thing' struck again."
"Another animal?"
"I'm afraid not, not this time. Our what-ever-it-is calmly carved up a teenage couple that was parked out on the point behind the motel."
The color slowly drained out of Brenda's face as she set her cup down. Her hands were shaking.
"Oh, my God," she managed, "what happened?"
I told her everything, starting from the point when she retired for the night, through the brief encounter with Kelto, and finally describing the scene on the rocky strip of land jutting out from the motel. Along the way I gave her my impressions of the sullen young motel clerk and the somewhat different perspective I now had of Jake Madden. Brenda was stone-faced through it all. I concluded with a list of things that I thought needed to be checked out. She listened as if in a coma. Finally I stopped. "Are you all right?"
The intense blue-green eyes blinked a couple of times, and she finally nodded. "Yeah, I guess so." The favorable assessment was obviously hesitant. "It's one thing to go to the library and read about something like this in a bunch of dusty old archives, but it's something else altogether to be caught up in the middle of it."
I reached into my pocket and took out a stack of three by five file cards (another old trick borrowed from Cosmo), filled with the hastily jotted notes made after my early morning encounter with Madden. He had mentioned that the reporters seemed to gravitate to Percy Kramer's drugstore, and I figured there had to be a reason. Maybe the old boy was a real talker and just maybe Brenda could learn something more than Jake had volunteered. I also figured that the old boy might be more inclined to spend his time with a pretty young lady than a bearded old coot like me — so Brenda got that assignment.
I had two things on my list. First, I wanted to call Lucy, who had access to the main computer in the school's research library. I wanted her to search for the similarities between the locations of the four previous incidents and Chambers Bay. Secondly, I wanted to have a second go-around with young Mister Kelto. In theory at least, he was the night clerk and should have been on duty when the young couple was killed. What had he seen? What had he heard? Was there anything at all unusual? The list went on.
With the typical E.G. Wages propensity for overestimating what could be accomplished within a certain time frame, I glanced at my watch and decided we could have everything done by lunchtime. After we walked back to the motel, I put Brenda in the tired old Z with the warning to keep her eyes open. As she pulled out onto the main road, I wondered which one was the real Brenda Cashman — street-smart or innocent; whichever it was, it was submerged for the moment under a heavy blanket of good old-fashioned anxiety. I had to hope she would keep her wits about her.