In the fourth of six stories for summer, Peter Robinson follows the investigation of a brutal, apparently senseless murder.
“This is usually such a quiet neighbourhood,” mused Detective Sergeant Stephen Banco. “The worst you get is a few local high-school kids cutting loose on a Friday night after too many Mike’s Hard Lemonades. But an old lady, beaten to death in her home.…” He shook his head.
“Times are changing,” said the first officer on the scene.
Banco sighed. He was standing on a typical Toronto porch in a typical upmarket street. Inside the house, Mrs. Eleanor McClelland, widow, lay dead in her kitchen.
A parking enforcement car pulled up across the street. The driver got out and walked over to the porch. One of the police constables at the end of the path tried to stop him, but Banco waved him through. In his experience, parking officers could be useful sources of information.
The man strutted up the path, chest puffed out. He was short, Banco noticed, balding, and a little pudgy. “Can I be of any assistance?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Banco. “Can you?”
“My name’s Officer Whateley. Richard Whateley.” He thrust out his hand. “Call me Dick.”
We’ll see about that, Banco thought. He shook Whateley’s hand. Dead fish. “Seen anything unusual around here lately, Officer?”
Whateley scratched his head. “Just a lot of people parking where they shouldn’t when they shouldn’t. Come to think of it, though, I did spot a beat-up old Honda. A dirty yellow one. Most of the cars around here are in good condition, so you tend to notice things like that. Do you think it might have been someone casing the joint? Burglary, is it?”
“Murder,” said Banco. “This yellow Honda, I don’t suppose you got the number?”
Whateley smiled. “As a matter of fact, I did.” He touched his nose. “You get an instinct for these things in my job. I saw it parked around here a couple of times and thought it might be someone up to no good.”
“Can you give me the number?”
Whateley opened his notebook – not official issue, Banco noticed – and read out the number.
******* The Honda belonged to a Marvin Sloane. Banco recognized the Scarborough address – high-rise, high-density city housing – and it turned out that Mr. Sloane had a criminal record for aggravated assault.
When the police tracked down the Honda, it was speeding east along the 401. The patrol car pursued it until the officers were certain it belonged to their man, then they pulled it over, annoyed at being denied a high-speed chase with the siren blaring and lights flashing. Inside, they found one black male and one tattooed white male. The cloud of marijuana smoke that hit them when the driver rolled down the window almost had them seeing visions of the Elysian Fields.
“Geez, officers. Was I driving too fast?”
******* After two days of interrogation, Banco was close to 100-per-cent certain that Marvin Sloane and Chester Lyons were not his men. For a start, they would have stood out like penguins at a picnic in Eleanor McClelland’s neighbourhood, and nobody had reported seeing them. Also, they swore blind that they had been in Montreal on the dates in question, and their alibis checked out. Banco suspected they had been in Quebec doing a drug deal, but that wasn’t his business. He passed his suspicions on to the drug squad and cut the two loose. Short of a marijuana-possession charge, and numerous driving offences, they were guilty of nothing. The days of making sure the suspect fit the crime, and vice versa, were long gone, so it was back to the drawing board.
******* When Banco dropped by Mrs. McClelland’s local division to do a bit of asking around, he mentioned the lead he had got from Whateley, and a couple of the cops snickered.
“What’s so funny?” Banco asked.
“This Whateley,” said one of the officers. “He’s a wannabe.”
“Wannabe?” said the other. “He thinks he’s already one of us.”
“In fact,” the divisional sergeant added, “you might say that Officer Whateley is a pain in the butt.”
“Why’s that?” Banco asked.
“He’s overzealous,” the sergeant said. “I mean, it’s one thing enforcing the parking regulations, but quite another looking for obscure ones. It’s not even as if he puts in such a huge quota, either. He tends to be a bit more specific in his targets.”
“What do you mean?”
“We get complaints. A lot them.”
“Mind if I have a look at some of these complaints?”
“Be my guest,” said the sergeant.
******* It started with a brief exchange when Mrs. McClelland had been unloading some heavy cartons from her car outside her house, and Whateley had screeched to a halt, strutted over and told her she had five minutes or he’d tag her. Safety issue, he’d added. When she started to apologize and explain, he told her he had her number, and that was that.
Three tickets within 24 hours for being parked less than nine metres from the intersection. Banco had been a cop for 20 years, and he didn’t know you had to park more than nine metres from the intersection. He had even been to the street in question and checked; there were no signs. Three tickets for being parked in the same spot – with a legal permit – for more than seven days. This was when Mrs. McClelland had gone on a three-week cruise a couple of months ago. Banco hadn’t heard of that one, either.
Intimidation. Obsession. Harassment. Banco had come across people like Whateley before, abusers of power who got out of hand and were arrogant enough to think they could get away with it. They often did; that was the trouble. Put some people in a uniform and it warps their brains. Cross them once too often, and woe betide you.
Banco checked and found, as he suspected, that Mrs. McClelland’s complaint was the most recent of many, made only a week before her murder. Apparently, it was the last straw. Whateley had been called on the carpet in his supervisor’s office and given a dressing down of gargantuan proportions. His transfer to that area of Scarborough where Marvin Sloane and Chester Lyons lived was imminent. Afterward, he had raged to anyone who would listen about his supervisor and the miserable old bat who had dared to complain.
******* Mrs. McClelland’s house was still a crime scene. Officer Whateley was out on his rounds, but Banco was patient. He sat in the old lady’s Muskoka chair on her deck, enjoying the afternoon sunshine, the dappled light through the trees. He knew he wouldn’t have long to wait. Sure enough, he hadn’t been there more than half an hour when the parking-enforcement car pulled up across the street and Whateley walked toward him.
“Detective,” he said. “Good to see you again. I was just wondering if you got anywhere with that lead I gave you?”
Banco stood up slowly, walked over and put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “Yes,” he said. “In fact, I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” It wouldn’t have been at all difficult, he knew, for a parking enforcement officer like Whateley to drive around until he spotted a decrepit old car driven by a black man and use this to play on police prejudices. What on earth did he think Banco would do? Beat a confession out of Sloane?
Banco started walking down the path to his car, hand still firmly gripping Whateley’s shoulder. “Maybe we could go down to the station and have a nice little chat about it all, hey, Dick?”
Peter Robinson’s new novel, Before the Poison, will be published in October.
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