The Dead List Read online

  He didn’t hear about the pilgrimage until he’d been in town for a couple of months. If he’d known, it might have altered the initial feeling of relief he experienced when he first sat by the river. He was trying to stay invisible and fit in at the same time. One of his fellow officers told him about the annual springtime event. A famous actor had shot a movie in Hope twenty years ago, and every year since then, for one week, fans from all over the world descended on the little town, revisiting the settings where scenes from the movie had been filmed. They visited the site where the gas station was blown up, the wooded area where the disgruntled Vietnam veteran, who was the main character, ran away to, and the place where the old courthouse from the movie – the actual courthouse of the town – still stood. Each year there was a rumor that Sylvester Stallone, the actor who played the main character, would attend the gathering. He never came, but the rumors always surfaced, and fans were sure this would be the year. Movie buffs from Sweden, Australia, Great Britain, and across the border from the United States all visited, and that’s what concerned Drake. It wasn’t just the strangeness of the whole subculture of fans; he could deal with that. There were too many of them. He’d moved to Hope to hide, not to be confronted by someone who might remember.

  There were two different groups of fans. The more civilized of the two camps spent time posing in front of the movie’s landmarks while talking to each other about their favorite scenes. They could often be overheard reciting dialogue they’d memorized or attending screenings at the local theater where the film was played almost continuously. The less-civilized of the two groups were there to get drunk. Some would wait until the evening, but for others the drinking took place all day long.

  The pilgrimage was a boom to the local economy, and there was often pressure on the police officers to overlook certain incidents. Public drunkenness was deemed acceptable during the one-week period unless it got out of hand. On occasion some of the men reenacted fight scenes from the film, and it sometimes ended in arrests and a trip to the small hospital. Once when a couple of combatants had seriously injured each other, they had to be air-lifted out to the neighboring town’s hospital for emergency surgery. The first time Drake was called out to deal with some of the troublemakers, he discovered how passionate the participants really were.

  He hadn’t been there long. After attending Depot, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Training Academy in Regina, Saskatchewan, in the middle of Canada, he was assigned, with the assistance of the relocation team, to serve on the West Coast. He went from the frozen flatlands of Regina to the rainforests of British Columbia. It was the end of May, and his uniform still looked like it was straight out of the box. With military precision and a hot iron, he’d managed to keep the creases in his pants and shirt firm and straight. He’d been sent out as backup to Memorial Park, right in the center of town, to assist with a disturbance. When he arrived he saw Banman, one of the general duty officers, and another officer whose name he couldn’t remember, standing beside a group of men. They were watching two fighters circle each other, swinging drunkenly at the air between them and occasionally landing a blow.

  Their backs were to Drake, but he recognized their attire. They wore shirts that had the sleeves torn off and frayed blue jeans with holes in their knees. And they sported bandannas tied haphazardly around their foreheads. These were their badges of honor, modeled after the character from the movie.

  When Drake moved toward the melee, Banman motioned for him to grab the combatant closest to him – a particularly burly looking fighter. He stepped forward and grabbed the person from behind, expecting Banman and the other policeman to hold on to the other fighter. Drake put his hands on the combatant’s arms and pulled back. When he heard the cursing he knew he’d made a mistake. He dropped his arms and stepped back.

  The voice he heard was significantly higher-pitched than he’d expected. Both fighters turned on him. It was only when he saw that one of them had her long hair tucked below the collar of her shirt and noticed the feminine features on their faces he realized he was dealing with two women.

  They were angry with each other and happy to beat away until one went down, but they were even angrier that a man got in the middle of their conflict. The shock at realizing that it was women fighting stunned him. The two fighters cursed at him and instantly seemed to sober up. Silently, they joined forces and ran at him, ramming their heads into his chest like a pair of deranged television wrestlers. Drake went down, winded and humiliated.

  Banman laughed as he and the other officer pulled the cursing women off Drake. Drake leaned onto one side to catch his wind, and when he looked up Banman was standing over him.

  “Welcome to Hope, Drake.” It was the first time he’d seen Banman laugh. He always seemed disinterested in his job and everyone around him. After serving all over Canada, he was winding down his career, back in his hometown. Drake gave him his noncommittal look. He stared up at the man, silently informing him that the situation could go one way or the other. This might have worked on a regular rookie right out of the training academy, but Drake didn’t just get here. He waited until Banman’s smile faded and then took another long moment before accepting the offer of a hand up.

  Banman teetered on his heels as he helped the larger man to his feet. He stood a safe distance away from Drake as he spoke. Drake wasn’t sure if he was trying to be friendly or condescending. “Don’t worry, that’s as bad as it gets here.”

  The fighting was over, and Banman, being the senior officer, decided no charges would be laid. The women ended up leaving the scene with their arms around each other while they bragged about downing the big, tough police officer. The only negative comments came from the men who had gathered around and had been enjoying watching the women fight. They wanted more and Drake had ended their fun.

  It wasn’t home, but it felt like Hope was a town where a man could hide. It was less anonymous than he originally thought, but it was where he had ended up. The town reminded him of nothing and nowhere, and that was what he needed.

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  The older investigator from the Major Crime Unit agreed with Sergeant Thiessen that Drake should be present during his initial inspection of the crime scene. He even requested that he stand by his side while he examined the body. He wanted to know everything that Drake had noted when he first got to Cobalt Street. The man had a wrinkled complexion bordered by unusually dark hair and two bushy eyebrows that joined together when he screwed up his face. With each answer Drake gave, the investigator pondered while his eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead as though they too were contemplating what had been said. Thiessen stood off to one side with Rose, while Rempel sat steaming in the ambulance, impatiently waiting to deliver the body to the morgue.

  He spoke with a slight accent – Scandinavian perhaps. “Your impression was that the injury to the head wasn’t concurrent with an unassisted fall, correct?”

  “It didn’t look right.”

  “Instinct or fact? What are you basing it on? Other bodies you’ve seen or just a feeling?”

  It was three a.m.; he’d been on duty since noon the previous day. He’d been back and forth to the station and endured long stares from Thiessen and Rempel. A member of the Major Crime Unit had taped off the body, a photographer had taken pictures, and another investigator had recorded measurements. They had located a doctor and awarded him the duties of temporary medical examiner. He had performed his initial examination and was sitting in the ambulance with Rempel waiting for the body to be released. It had been a long day. And he was wet. The rain kept falling.

  He let out a little bit of one of his secrets. “Fact. Definite fact.”

  The investigator nodded immediately. “I agree. Let’s alert the coroner that this is a homicide investigation.”

  Drake resisted the urge to look at his sergeant, but he did notice a smile on Rose’s lips. It quickly faded as her partner stormed toward them.

  Ten minutes later the officers
were crowded under a small canopy that had been erected. Along with the tent, a portable table was procured from the trunk of the crime team’s vehicle, and the contents of the dead man’s pockets were placed on it. The team from Vancouver had been in situations like this before and it showed. One of the officers hung a light under the canopy. It illuminated the table, making the policemen’s shadows dance when the poles of the tent were jostled.

  The older officer – Sergeant Matt Ryberg – introduced the rest of the team to Drake and Sergeant Thiessen. There were two other plain-clothes investigators. They were both corporals, and senior to Drake’s lowly constable ranking. The officer who had re-interviewed the young men who found the body was Pringle, a large man with short-cropped red hair. He was in his mid-forties and had a hard, dour expression. The photographer and measurer was introduced as Myron. He was younger, in his late twenties, and in contrast to Pringle, he was short and stocky with a barrel chest. He rarely looked up as he studiously wrote in his notepad. Drake didn’t know if Pringle and Myron were their first or last names, but standing on a damp, rainy night it didn’t seem to matter.

  Ryberg observed the men in front of him with a stern expression. He spoke slowly as if he were talking about them, and not to them, making sure they understood exactly what he was saying.

  “Constable Drake, you’re going to stick with us for today and possibly tomorrow too. Do you know the area?” He waited until Drake answered in the affirmative before continuing. “Good. Chances are this incident is going to turn out to be very simple, but until that has been established we will make no assumptions. We are going to assemble the jigsaw puzzle that is Michael Robinson’s life. We will start at the end and trace back toward the beginning as far as we need to. We’ll find gaps from time to time, and fill them when we can. If we have to, we’ll skip over those gaps and come back to them later. We need to keep moving backward, putting the pieces together. Sometimes, it’s important to go backward in order to move forward.” He looked around the group while the officer he’d introduced as Myron continued taking notes and Pringle spoke into a portable phone. “Does everyone understand? The most important thing is to deal with facts. There is a place for instinct, and we will utilize that, but facts are what we convict on, facts are what make the world go around.” Myron and Pringle stopped what they were doing and mumbled the last sentence along with Ryberg. The old sergeant’s eyes flickered, but he did not look at them.

  Drake would look back on Ryberg’s speech as being the most useful information he’d yet to receive when it came to solving a crime. He’d revisit the sergeant’s words and retrain himself every time he felt like he was making a mistake. He was a general duty officer. In his twelve months on the job the only infractions he’d been involved in were break and enters or trying to determine who assaulted whom. Sometimes he solved the cases and sometimes he didn’t. When he didn’t, he tried to make it more difficult for the perpetrator to commit the same crime again. That’s what police work had been like until then. After Ryberg’s speech something shifted; everything felt different.

  “Contents of Mr. Robinson’s pockets included a driver’s license and some business cards, but did not include a wallet, cash, or credit cards, and there were no coins or car keys in his pockets, correct?”

  Pringle, the investigator who had been on the phone, was wearing a long, brown corduroy sports jacket. He looked like a large, imposing insurance salesman. He smoothed out the jacket with the palms of his hands as though he were very proud of it, and answered Ryberg. “That’s correct, Sarge. I found out a bit from his identification. Mr. Robinson was unmarried. Next of kin is his mother and she lives locally, a house on Coquihalla Road. I’m waiting to hear if he has any criminal history as a juvenile, but his adult records are clean, other than an excessive amount of speeding tickets. This man liked to drive fast.”

  “Good, let’s visit the mother personally and break the news. Myron, you do it. Take a uniform with you, and try to locate a grief counselor too. If you can’t find one to attend this late, make sure they’re at her door first thing in the morning after you’ve spoken to her.”

  Myron looked up from his notebook and checked his watch.

  “I know; it’s morning already. I know that.” Ryberg looked out from the tent at the rain as though he was silently willing the sun to appear. “Now, the body had not been touched when we arrived, is that also correct?”

  Drake explained that he’d found the man in a curled position at the edge of the sidewalk, facing away from the road, just like the investigator had seen.

  “It’s strange that there was nothing else in his pockets – not even car keys or a house key. Where are the two lads who found him? Are they brothers?”

  Brandon Van Dyke had initially interviewed the two men and then disappeared; Drake assumed he was running around trying to find a bathroom. Sergeant Thiessen was standing in the background, arms folded in front of him. “My officer interviewed them, and then your man took another statement and sent them home. They live at the end of this street…no I’m wrong; it’s the next street over.” He looked around for one of the local policemen to confirm while he gave the information. Then he raised his eyes to the sky, rolling them in the same manner that small-town people have closed their minds for years. “And no, they’re not brothers; they’re just friends – close friends.”

  “Okay, that’s good.” Ryberg turned and addressed Pringle again. “Let’s run a bureau on the deceased and find out if he owns any credit cards and whether they’ve been used tonight. It doesn’t make sense that he wasn’t carrying any cards with him.” He waved the officer off before he could reply. “I know, it might take a while before some of the charges come in, but let’s ask anyway. And while you’re at it run a credit check on him – bank accounts, assets, whatever they’ll give us without a warrant.” He paused a moment and then exclaimed loudly as though the thought had just come to him. “And a car – where is his vehicle? This man sells cars, he likes speeding down our roads, yet he’s out walking? I don’t get it. I know this is a small town, but it’s not that small. Somebody find out where his car is.”

  Ryberg scanned the small crowd of officers. “And what about forensics, is Ident on site yet?”

  The younger investigator, Myron, looked up. “They’re en route. I’ve done what I can; I measured and took some photos.”

  Ryberg grimaced.

  “I know. It’s not ideal, but the Ident team was delayed. The lead officer coached me over the phone. He assures me they’ll be here shortly.”

  Ryberg nodded, accepting. The efficiency of the man energized the small group of policemen, and the officers began to move and work at various tasks. Within a few minutes he had opened up some possibilities and given them direction. Shaking his head, he looked out from the little tent they were standing under. “Investigator Pringle, I need the address of the boys who found the body please, and Drake, you’re coming with me. We’re going to go and get wet.”

  Pringle copied the address onto a small card and handed it to his superior. As Drake stepped out into the night he nudged one of the poles at the side of the tent. The light swung back and forth, and a small river of cold water ran off the roof onto his cap and down the back of his neck.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  The sergeant seemed to know what he was doing, so Drake resisted the urge to remind him that it would be the third time the two young men had been interviewed. There was no need for sirens or the flashing red and blues. He hit the alley lights and illuminated the numbers on the houses. They drove in silence, the moving car giving the night a ghostly feel as it passed the darkened houses. He was familiar with streets like these from back home. The old houses they passed looked even more depressing in the dark and rain than they usually did; it was a street nobody cared about. Most sat on large, square lots with faded grey or black wood siding barely holding the walls together. The gardens in front of them were untended, and a few had assorted pil
es of junk or even old cars sitting in the middle of their lawns as though it were the most normal thing in the world.

  Ryberg read the address out to Drake as he drove. When they parked outside the house he screwed up his face and his accent seemed even more pronounced. “Why is it always raining in this town?”

  Drake kept a straight face. “I hear it rains in the city sometimes too, sir.”

  The investigator ignored him. “Have you ever attended a call here?”

  “I don’t think so. The two of them looked familiar, but nothing comes to mind. If you give me their names I can run a check if you like.”

  “No matter, I’m pretty sure I’ll get what I’m looking for.”

  A faint light from a lamp or low-wattage bulb was extinguished from the basement window. Ryberg opened his door. “Aha, now we know where we’re going.”

  Ryberg knocked on the bottom door of the house, and continued to knock. Drake was surprised at the strength in the older man’s arms. After thirty seconds of continuous hammering, the door opened and one of the men from earlier stood in front of them.

  He lazily yawned and squinted at the policemen. In the background the other man leaned against the wall with his arms folded. The two young men were dressed in colorful long pajama pants and white T-shirts. The man at the door had a cigarette in his hand. He blew smoke out the door while he complained to the officers.

  “Now you want to wake us up? How many times do we have to talk to you losers?”

  The sound of a short snicker came from the other man who still stood back. Drake recognized his laugh from earlier when he’d first been called to the scene.