Murder At Midnight Read online

  MURDER

  AT MIDNIGHT

  Karen Lewis

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  Kindle Edition

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  Copyright 2014 Karen Lewis

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental.

  Knightsbridge Books

  Chapter One

  The young woman walked briskly through deserted streets. Her footsteps drummed a staccato on the sidewalks. She cut a striking figure with her long auburn hair, and swirling green cloak.

  A frosty moon rode high in the fitful sky, and a train whistle wailed in the distance. She glanced nervously around her, as she approached the eerie darkness of Roanoke Park.

  Silent rows of evergreens loomed overhead; their bristly arms reached out like tendrils to ensnare her. She quickened her pace, head bent low against the wind.

  The sudden cry of a screech owl startled the nervous girl, and she broke into a run, racing past the isolated park as the moon slipped behind the clouds. Her breath froze on the frigid air, and the urgent tempo of her footsteps echoed through the silent midnight.

  But then another sound, far more sinister, grew gradually louder, the menacing beat of another pair of footsteps, heavier than her own and gaining on her with alarming rapidity.

  The terrified girl, though now only a couple of blocks from the safety of her home, was destined never to reach it. She ran across the road, in a desperate bid to escape. Her pursuer grabbed her roughly from behind. Her petrified screams were cut short by a hand clamped over her mouth. She kicked and struggled as she was dragged into the hovering darkness of the waiting park.

  A neighbour out walking his dog discovered her body the next morning.

  * * * *

  “So what do you think?” Lieutenant Neil Slater switched off the projector and invited everyone to help themselves to coffee. “This, as you know, was a dramatic re-enactment of an unsolved murder. The Vancouver Homicide Squad hopes to interest the media in publicising it.”

  “I remember the case well.” Scott Preston wore a Morning Herald crime reporter badge. If you only knew how well, you’d be shocked, he admitted silently. “The victim’s name is Lisa Craig, and she was murdered twenty years ago.”

  “That’s right,” Slater nodded. “You wrote an update on the case a couple of years ago.”

  “It didn’t produce any new evidence though, which was disappointing.”

  Scott recalled that the murdered woman had been only twenty-three years old, when she met her killer on that freezing midnight in Roanoke Park. A receptionist for Mitford Realty, she lived with her mother and aunt.

  He should know. My God he’d absorbed every detail of the tragedy for years. Lisa Craig obsessed him. The re-enactment of her murder shook him to the core. Scott excused himself and went to the men’s room. His mirror image looked tense; anxious blue eyes, fair beard and an earring. He washed his hands and tried to compose himself.

  When he returned to Slater’s office he said,“The boyfriend was the prime suspect.”

  Slater nodded and reached across his desk for a stapler. “His name is Garrick Boyd, and they worked at the same place.” He gave a quick rundown of the details, which Scott already knew by heart. Lisa and Boyd dated outside the office for several months, before that fateful night that would end one life, and change many others forever. They went to a movie and were having a late snack afterwards in the Peach Tree Inn. That is when the argument began.

  According to eyewitnesses the disagreement escalated and culminated in Lisa leaving the restaurant abruptly and alone.

  “We’re through, I never want to see you again,” she cried angrily. A few minutes later a furious looking Boyd followed her, after throwing some money down on the table, not even waiting for the check.

  Lisa boarded a westbound bus, the last one of the night, while Boyd screamed out of the parking lot in his sports car, and headed in the opposite direction.

  She was last seen alive when she left the bus about twenty minutes later. Her home lay just a couple of blocks past Roanoke Park.

  “Boyd was a nasty piece of work with a bad temper.” Slater stirred his coffee. “But unfortunately, we didn’t have a shred of physical evidence to link him to the crime scene.”

  Scott nodded. The official cause of death had been a blow to her left temple, but the murder weapon had never been found. “Do you think he did it?”

  “I only worked briefly on the case. But it wasn’t one of those cut and dried affairs, and I can recall having some doubt…”

  Slater went on to explain that Len Barthrop, the officer in charge of the investigation, retired a few years ago.

  “How did he feel about Boyd?”

  “He was convinced of his guilt.”

  “I’ll run it past the editor,” Scott promised. “If I get the green light, I’ll do a full page article on the murder to coincide with the anniversary of the crime.”

  * * * *

  “It seems to me that we’ve done this case to death already.” Senior Editor, Greg Mowatt looked grim. “No pun intended.” He fixed Scott with an icy stare. “I mean, you would have to come up with something new. Snoop around, see what you can find out, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “What can I do that the police haven’t done already?” Scott demanded. “After twenty years even the hottest trail grows cold. I am not Sherlock Holmes.”

  Scott knew that Greg didn’t want to run the article. He didn’t have an ounce of community spirit, and would rather squeeze more advertisements in. This was his way of wiggling out of it.

  He went to stand by the window, watching the snow fall. He could sense rather than see the North Shore Mountains shrouded by mist in the distance. Foghorns boomed out from the harbour.

  Greg foraged around on his cluttered desk, sending the overflow onto the floor. “The cops are a bunch of overpaid incompetents,” he retorted. “Only those who can’t hack it in the private sector end up on the public payroll.”

  “Well we can hardly privatise the police department,” Scott replied wearily. He had heard all this before, and knew what was coming next.

  “I don’t see why not,” Greg obliged. “Pinkertons did a damned good job.”

  Scott grimaced. Greg conveniently ignored the fact that Pinkerton’s methods were controversial even in nineteenth century America.

  Meg Bryant, a pretty girl with cropped blonde hair, dropped some mail on the credenza and left. But not before she gave Scott the usual “come hither” look. He followed her out.

  “Come over for dinner tonight,” she invited. When Scott hesitated, added with a wink, “Mom’s away visiting.”

  Gawd, if only we didn’t work together, he thought unhappily, and reluctantly declined, for he never mixed business with pleasure. But her invitation fired him up, so on the way home he stopped by Zrinka’s massage parlour for the full treatment. The massages weren’t the best, but the hand-job that went with them was superlative.

  * * * *

  Scott lived in a small apartment at Lonsdale Quay, with a jungle of houseplants and a hefty striped tomcat named Flynn. “Hey, I’ve missed you too guy, give me a hug.” He scooped up the purring feline.

  From his window he enjoyed an unobstructed view of the Vancouver skyline, on the other side of the harbour. Now par
tly shrouded in fog, it rose up in ghostly splendour like a mysterious fortress in the clouds.

  After a light supper, which he shared with Flynn, he settled back on the couch with the Lisa Craig file. While delving into it previously, the beautiful girl and her tragic end fascinated and ensnared him. Almost as if some sort of psychic bond lay between them, although Scott wasn’t sure if he believed in all of that.

  “You should by golly, you’re Celtic,” his Aunt Violet often scolded. A firm believer in séances and the supernatural, Violet owned an antique shop, had been married at least three times, and was the most significant person in Scott’s life. They were kindred spirits. She had always been there for him through thick and thin.

  Scott had been affected deeply by the Police Department’s dramatisation of Lisa Craig’s murder. It brought back all the old emotions that had plagued him when he worked on the story before. Her long red hair and flowing green cloak were etched on his memory indelibly.

  * * * *

  Roanoke Park glittered under the cheerful face of a wintry sun. Snow still lay around in patches on the grass, but the pathways were clear and full of joggers, and mothers pushing baby carriages.

  A far cry, Scott decided, from the dark and moody midnight of almost twenty years ago, when Lisa Craig met her untimely fate.

  Her body had been found behind an azara bush, beside one of the trails. The old Humpback Bridge crouched nearby. Now, as Scott pinpointed the exact location, he shivered despite the brightness of the day.

  From where he stood he could hear the rustling of the wind in the trees, and the gentle gurgling sound of the river.

  What a place to meet ones end, he thought unhappily, with no one to hear your final screams but the nesting birds and the small furry creatures burrowing in their dens.

  There had been no sign of any kind of protracted struggle at the murder scene. So her attacker either overpowered Lisa almost immediately, or she had been too petrified to fight.

  Ironically, although this spot seemed utterly secluded, it lay only about a hundred yards from Wycliffe Road, a fairly busy thoroughfare with houses, a church and school.

  However, no one had either heard or seen, anything unusual on that ill-fated night.

  “But you know what happened, don’t you?” Scott murmured, to the lofty rows of hemlock and spruce that crowded around the clearing in a hushed and listening attitude.

  * * * *

  That night he dreamt he was lost in the park and pursued by an unknown assailant. Dark and bitterly cold, the tall trees loomed everywhere, boxing him in, making escape impossible.

  He tried to run, to make his numb legs move, but they wouldn’t work for him. In the distance he could see the Humpback Bridge illuminated by a ghostly moon, which slid behind the clouds then reappeared again.

  A figure stood on the bridge. It began to slowly turn. It was Lisa.

  When he awoke, a cold sweat glistened on his skin, and could feel the grey stealth of dawn before he saw it; poking its chilly fingers through the window blinds.

  * * * *

  The Regal Cinema, where Lisa Craig and Garrick Boyd went on that ill-starred evening was no longer there. In its place stood a high-rise office tower with a row of expensive boutiques on the main floor.

  Testimony taken from eyewitnesses at the time, an usher and cashier, as well as several patrons, who came forward later, all maintained that the couple appeared completely normal and seemed to be enjoying the movie. Which ironically, had been a suspense thriller about the murder of a young woman.

  Scott retraced their footsteps; driving the four short blocks from the site where the Cinema once stood, to their next stop, the Peach Tree Inn. It had been here, in the stylish coffee shop with its Japanese lanterns and lacquered wall panels, that Lisa and Garrick argued volubly enough to concern other patrons and management alike.

  They were sitting in a booth in the far corner of the room, which might explain why no one could give a detailed account of what the argument was about. The waitress who served them, overhead the name “Ronnie” mentioned in the dispute.

  Boyd always maintained it started when Lisa, whom he claimed was excessively jealous, imagined he had been flirting with a woman sitting at another table.

  After Lisa left the restaurant in a fury, she crossed the road to wait for a bus, the 42 Upper Wycliffe. On its last run of the night, it only carried a few passengers. The driver and an elderly woman sitting at the back remembered Lisa. They watched her leave the bus; her long red hair tossed by a sudden gust of wind, the green cloak swirling skittishly around her. Less than fifteen minutes later she was dead.

  As the last two people to see Lisa alive, these witnesses, Scott decided, were of the utmost importance. When he interviewed them before, they stuck to their original stories. But he hoped that a tiny fragment of something forgotten might suddenly be fanned into life.

  “You know, I get a call from the press every year at this time,” Jerry Beamish, now retired from the Coast Mountain Bus Company, told him. “I remember you from a couple of years ago. But I can only tell you what I’ve repeated dozens of times before. All I saw was the girl leaving the bus, before I turned my attention back to my driving.”

  Beamish lived in a cramped old duplex, a stone’s throw away from the bus depot. “I just couldn’t tear myself away,” he joked. “I worked for the company for thirty years!”

  He offered Scott a can of beer, and zipped one open for himself.

  “So you saw nobody else on the street when Lisa got off the bus,” Scott persisted. “No cars cruising around, nothing at all suspicious?”

  “Nope, and I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” Beamish sounded completely confident in his denial. “Believe me, I wish that I could. I often think of that poor girl and how her killer got away scot-free. It’s just not friggin fair.”

  Marjorie Rawlins, the other eyewitness on the bus, lived in a retirement home in Abbotsford, about thirty miles away. She had been a visitor to the area at the time of the murder.

  Scott manoeuvred his car around a traffic snarl on the Trans Canada Highway, and cut up a less used secondary road. He could feel snow in the air, and an icy wind whipped in from the northeast. This was the Fraser Valley, an uneasy hodgepodge of suburbs and cities that had sprouted up like toadstools in the shadow of the great metropolis.

  The Briar Lynn Retirement Lodge sat on several acres of well-kept parkland, with a golf course and lawn bowling. A piano concert played in the lounge.

  “Lovely isn’t it?” Marjorie said, inclining her head in the direction of the music. “It’s Schumann’s Scenes of Childhood.”

  “I’m sorry about disturbing you like this,” Scott apologised, but she cut in and assured him that she welcomed visitors, no matter what their mission.

  “I don’t see many of my old friends anymore,” she said regretfully. “They just find it too far to come, way out here.”

  Scott steered her towards a window alcove with two armchairs.

  Tea was being served from wooden trolleys. Scott fetched them a cup, along with a plate of biscuits.

  Marjorie could not add any more about what she had seen on the night of the crime. She took cautious sips of the hot tea, and repeated what she had said so many times before.

  “The bus was almost empty and there was something about the girl…Lisa, that drew me to her. A certain vulnerability, and that great mass of curly red hair, so like my own daughter’s at that age.”

  “So there were no strange characters lurking about, or suspicious cars? You just watched Lisa get off the bus and that was the end of it?”

  Marjorie nodded and brushed a cookie crumb from her skirt.

  So that’s that, Scott thought, disappointed. He had hoped for something more. But what that “more” might be, he had absolutely no idea.

  They chatted for a while after that, mostly small talk, until an early twilight began to descend on a frozen world.

  “I think it’s going to snow before t
he night’s out,” Marjorie predicted, walking with him to the door. “I’ll never forget her though,” she vowed, shaking his hand with a great deal more vigour than he expected. “ I can still see her, just as clearly as if it were yesterday; walking along beside the bus, her hair and cloak flying in the wind.”

  “Did you have any sense of foreboding?” he asked impulsively, noticing the almost spiritual expression on Marjorie’s face.

  “I think perhaps I did,” she replied thoughtfully. “Otherwise, why would I turn my head around to look at her before she faded out of sight.”

  “So what was your very last impression of the girl? I mean the very last moment that you saw her.”

  Marjorie gazed directly into his eyes and answered without hesitation. “The paleness of her sad little face in the midst of all that inky darkness closing in around her.”

  * * * *

  Scott was half way back to the city, crawling along in rush hour traffic that reminded him of a monstrous metal centipede, before the significance of Marjorie’s words hit him.

  “Good Christ,” he muttered, veering off the highway at the first opportunity, and speeding back the way he had come.

  He caught up with Marjorie on her way into the dining room.” Now let me get this absolutely straight,” he said excitedly. “According to my notes, you said that Lisa was walking along beside the bus, and that you turned your head around to look at her.”

  “That’s correct,” she nodded. “I must have given that same statement, hundreds of times over the years.”

  “I know, you said the exact same thing to me a couple of years ago.”

  “Then I don’t understand…”

  “It’s what you said next that is so important,” Scott explained.

  “You mean about seeing her face peering out from the darkness?”

  “That’s it exactly,” he enthused, resisting the urge to slap his thigh in triumph.

  “But, I don’t quite see…”

  “Well, it’s so obvious,” Scott, rattled on, his face flushed with enthusiasm. “If you could see Lisa’s face, when you turned around to look at her, it means that she was walking towards you!”