Murder At Midnight Page 2

  “Well yes, she was. She was walking in the same direction as the bus. But I still can’t see why you’re so over-the-moon about that?”

  “Did you ever mention this to anyone else?” he asked, with a fair degree of mounting tension.

  She looked puzzled for a moment and then thoughtful. “Well you know I don’t believe which direction the girl was walking in ever came up. I just assumed that everyone knew that, and besides no-one ever asked me before.”

  * * * *

  “Marjorie Rawlins is ninety-three years old,” Slater stated flatly. Scott had never seen the dark, enigmatic detective look more determined. “You’re placing way too much credibility on the memory of a woman that age.”

  They were in his office, which overlooked the courtyard fountain. Rimed with frost, and still decorated with Christmas lights.

  “I have to disagree with that,” Scott protested. “Marjorie Rawlins is brighter and sharper than many people half her age. She makes an excellent witness, and I believe that what she says is totally accurate.”

  “But we’re talking about an incident that occurred almost twenty years ago,” Slater argued. “A girl leaving a bus. And Mrs.Rawlins had no way of knowing at the time how significant that moment would be.” He toyed with a paper clip, his dark eyes brooding. “I mean, if she’d actually witnessed the murder, that would certainly be etched forever in her mind’s eye, but as it is…” He shrugged meaningfully while eyeing the ceiling.

  Scott felt both surprised and irritated by Slater’s attitude. Here he was offering him a vital new piece of evidence, only to have it downplayed. No wonder this case, and many others like it, remained unsolved.

  “Well if I had been investigating the Craig case,” he volunteered, quite aware of how irksome this would be to Slater. “I would have suggested hypnotism for both Beamish and Marjorie. They were, after all, the last people to see Lisa alive.”

  “But you weren’t,” Slater retorted predictably. “Now please don’t get like that editor of yours, and start attacking our methods, instead of assisting us.”

  * * * *

  “He’s just cheesed off because we’ve come up with new and vitally important evidence,” Greg Mowatt declared, searching around for a file on his cluttered desk. “Which the police missed.”

  Scott had checked the police reports carefully. Marjorie Rawlins stated that she saw Lisa Craig leave the bus. That was all. So certainly she couldn’t have been queried further at the time, as to what route Lisa had taken.

  “They just assumed that the Craig girl was headed straight home,” Greg added. “No wonder Slater is trying to downplay the whole thing.”

  “I’ve read all the updates we’ve published on the case since it happened,” Scott said. “In one, from about six years ago, Marjorie mentions looking at Lisa as she walked beside the bus. Of course, everyone took it for granted that the doomed girl was walking in the opposite direction from the bus. That is, towards her home, not away from it. While Marjorie herself, unfamiliar with the area at the time, would have no idea of the significance of this.”

  “That’s right,” Greg replied gleefully. “The cops screwed up badly on this one, and we’ll give that angle the full treatment on the fourth.”

  * * * *

  But where was Lisa going, as she headed in the opposite direction from her home on what was destined to be the last night of her life? The murdered girl’s destination on that ill-starred evening was of paramount importance. Find that out, Scott felt convinced, and the motive and murderer would be revealed. But would this be possible twenty years after the crime had been committed?

  * * * *

  Located in the exclusive Ambleside area of West Vancouver, “Granny’s Attic” was a veritable treasure trove of a store. Here one could find a wide selection of merchandise, ranging from truly valuable antiques, to just plain junk, nuzzled together in a state of uneasy wedlock. When Scott wasn’t plying his journalistic skills for the Herald, he spent much of his free time there, helping his Aunt Violet create some sort of order, out of an almost perpetual state of chaos.

  “Why don’t we clear out the basement, and move all the gimcrack down there?” he suggested for the umpteenth time. We could call it Aladdin’s Cellar or some such thing, and it would leave the main floor clear for the really good stuff.”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about doing just that,” Violet agreed, while polishing a small table. Her mass of unruly white hair reminded Scott of a reluctant halo.

  With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, business picked up in the afternoon, as customers browsed for that special gift.

  Scott helped an indecisive young man pick out a garnet ring for his fiancée; pure Victoriana, with an ornate setting. “She’ll adore it,” he assured him, while thinking to himself. You’re almost guaranteed to get lucky.

  After the store closed for the day he took Violet’s dog, a friendly German Shepherd named Gemma, for a walk in nearby Blair Park.

  The uncertain sun, absent most of the day, struggled through the clouds to make a late appearance.

  “Go get it girl,” he called, tossing the ball.

  The Craig case was never far from his mind. Lisa, with her mass of auburn hair and beguiling green cloak haunted his dreams. So young and pretty to end up murdered in that way. He wondered what she’d been like in bed? Redheads––natural ones that is––were supposed to be really hot. Could this side of her nature have played a part in her murder?

  * * * *

  Slater stared moodily out his office window, oblivious to the children frolicking around the fountain, in the courtyard below. Although he did notice that the Christmas lights had been taken down. He was glad of that he disliked the season. The Craig case lay as heavily on his mind, as it did on Scott’s. The dog-eared file sat on his desk between a recent crime investigation and a bag of donuts.

  How Len Barthrop, the officer in charge of the case, could have missed something as important as the direction in which Lisa was headed on the night of her death simply defeated him. A detail like that might seem trivial to the layman, but in police work the golden rule is never to take anything, no matter how obvious it might seem, for granted.

  He thumbed his way through the file with impatient fingers. Yet he had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that the oversight was an understandable one. When a girl gets off the last bus of the night, just a few blocks from her home, one would certainly expect that that is where she is headed for…directly! Especially when her body is found the next morning in that same direction.

  Slater leaned back wearily in his chair, his arms folded behind his head. The press would have a field day with the story, and he could visualise the sensational headlines. “Reporter finds out in a couple of days, what the entire police department has failed to do in twenty years.”

  Of course, this would be followed by the inevitable charges of police incompetence and bureaucratic bungling. He almost wished that they’d never reopened the damned case.

  Because the truth was, although he would never admit it to anyone outside the department, Len Barthrop had been struggling with alcoholism and a marriage break-up at the time. So who could say, that these pressures did not result in a less than efficient investigation?

  Scott was right, hypnosis should have been considered for both the bus driver, and the passenger. They were the only two witnesses to the last few minutes of Lisa Craig’s life.

  He decided to ask the Morning Herald not to print the story, although he knew that the chances of succeeding were slim to non-existent. Now Scott might listen to reason, but that damned editor of his…well the truth was he couldn’t stand the man.

  “I’m only asking that you temporarily, refrain from publishing that one particular detail,” he told Greg Mowatt, trying to keep his voice reasonable and calm. “The fact that Lisa may have been walking away from her home, instead of towards it, adds a new dimension to the case.” He took a deep breath. “To release such information now,
might compromise the ongoing investigation.”

  “I didn’t know there was one,” Greg answered caustically. “You’re just spouting a pile of bullshit.”

  “Now look here,” Slater snapped back angrily. “There is a valid reason for not divulging any new and possibly important evidence prematurely.”

  “Prematurely?” Greg retorted derisively. “My God man, it’s been twenty years, and thanks to your crowd, the murderer of that poor girl is still running free.”

  Slater couldn’t make up his mind who he was angrier at? Greg Mowatt for being such a son-of-a-bitch, or himself, for being foolish enough to approach him on this?

  The story ran in its entirety on the morning of February fourth, with Lisa’s smiling face looking confidently into a camera lens from over two decades before. There was also a shot of the azara bush in Roanoke Park where her body had been found, with the small Humpback Bridge rising up moodily in the distance.

  “So do you think this article will produce any new witnesses or testimony?” Marjorie Rawlins sounded hopeful. She telephoned Scott as soon as she read it.

  “We can only hope that it will,” he replied cautiously. “But after twenty years, the trail is very cold indeed.”

  “You know I feel in a way responsible for the failure of the police to arrest the murderer,” she confided. “If only I’d been familiar with the area, I would have been aware of the significance of what I saw. You know, Lisa walking along beside the bus and not in the opposite direction.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for that. You were obviously never interviewed properly at the time, or that would have come out, as it did when I spoke to you recently.”

  On the sad anniversary of Lisa’s murder, there were mostly good reviews about the controversial article. By mid afternoon, the switchboard logged about half-a-dozen or so an hour. “Imagine the cops overlooking something as important as this,” one reader commented angrily. “What the hell do they think we’re paying them for?”

  Greg looked like the cat that stole the cream, with a buoyed up air of excitement that was out of character. “I have a little party planned for tonight,” he confided to Scott when they met at the coffee machine. “Be in my office at five o’clock sharp.” Then he turned on his heel and disappeared down the corridor, cloaked in an air of exaggerated secrecy.

  * * * *

  “I don’t like it,” Scott replied forcefully, when Greg revealed the mysterious plan. He felt tempted to add. It’s theatrical to a fault; in poor taste; and is just the type of high jinks that gives the press a bad name. But mindful that discretion is the better part of valour decided against it.

  “Oh don’t you now?” Greg scowled, his face heavy with anger. ”Well frankly I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think.”

  Scott exchanged a meaningful glance with Ben and Meg, who looked uncertain whether to laugh or cry.

  “But what do you hope to gain by it?” Scott asked, in a kind of defeated exasperation, although he knew the answer even as he voiced the question.

  “That should be obvious. I’ll use any tactic I can to boost the sale of newspapers. We owe it to the stockholders. Just in case no one has noticed, we’re lagging behind the Clarion again.”

  A telephone buzzed in the outer office, with all the persistence of an angry bee, until someone finally picked it up.

  “Okay now folks,” Greg continued in a voice that brooked no argument. “You are already aware of the little escapade we have planned for tonight. But I’m going to run through it one more time, so there can be no slip-ups.” He fixed the assembled company with a warning stare that promised dire consequences should they fail.

  “This is the twentieth anniversary of Lisa Craig’s murder, and I propose to stage a re-enactment of the events leading up to the crime. Meg will take the part of Lisa,” he continued matter-of-factly. “And will even be outfitted to make this replay of the murder night more authentic.”

  Ben Hyslop, the Morning Herald’s leading photographer, leaned further back in his chair with a look of amused derision.

  “I want lots of pictures,” Greg instructed sternly, annoyed at his attitude. “And they better be of good quality.”

  “Shouldn’t our little masquerade begin at the site of the old Regal Cinema?” Ben’s asked flippantly. “After all, if we’re aiming for authenticity, shouldn’t we go the whole hog?”

  “Let’s not get ridiculous about this,” Greg spat, anger glinting like dagger tips from his eyes. “Your assignment will begin at the Peach Tree Inn at precisely 11:15 p.m.”

  “But what if we should decide not to take it?” Ben muttered as they filed out.

  “Then we’ll all be fired,” Meg giggled and winked conspiratorially at Scott.

  * * * *

  Scott arrived at the designated meeting place early and parked his car as close to the entrance as he could get. He turned up his collar against the ravages of a biting wind and cursed Greg Mowatt for forcing him out on a fool’s errand on such an inhospitable night.

  The coffee shop was almost deserted, and as he settled himself in the corner booth where Lisa and Boyd had sat exactly twenty years ago to the hour, he felt a faint twinge of uneasiness behind his present state of annoyance.

  Apart from a few minor changes in the décor, the restaurant remained the same as it had been then. The Japanese lanterns still hung from the rafters, and the wall panels with frosted panes and ebony trim still graced the room.

  Scott ordered coffee, and tried to relax as he waited for Ben and Meg to arrive. But an ominous sense of foreboding, difficult to shake off, hounded him.

  Ben arrived first, with a hefty looking camera bag slung over his shoulder. “So who’s going to take the part of Boyd,” he joked. “You or I?”

  As he glanced over the menu, he mimicked Greg.

  “Yeah, and I bet he’s curled up comfortably in a warm bed right now,” Scott said in disgust. He drank his coffee slowly while keeping a wary eye on the time.

  “Come on there Meg/Lisa or you’ll be late for your own murder,” Ben muttered, bolting down a piece of apple pie.

  A dish suddenly clattered to the floor in the nether regions of the restaurant, momentarily distracting Scott and Ben from their door watching vigil. When they looked back again, they gasped in a sort of amazed unison at what they saw.

  “Lisa,” Scott uttered the name in an almost trance like state, as the graceful figure glided slowly towards them. Long red hair tumbled down her back, and a stylish green cloak billowed gently as she walked.

  “Hi guys, sorry I’m late,” the vision spoke at last, and broke the spell that held them transfixed for many mystical moments. This then was not the ghost of the tragic Lisa, who floated so ethereally towards them, but the very much alive and exuberant Meg, wearing a wig and rented cloak for the occasion.

  “You know this is getting a bit too spooky for my liking.” Ben looked paler than usual beneath the glow of a lantern.

  Meg laughed and cuffed him playfully, her pretty face bright with mischief “Do we shout and scream at each other, or just pretend that we have?” she asked impishly.

  “There’s no time for that,” Scott stated abruptly. “You better get cracking for that bus stop right away, or you’ll miss the last bus.”

  Ben took a couple of quick shots of “Lisa” sitting in the booth, looking beguiling and painfully nostalgic in the light of what fate held in store for her. Then Meg made a mad dash for the door, only too well aware of what Greg’s reaction would be if she didn’t take that ill-starred bus ride.

  In Scott’s car, Ben lit a cigarette, tossing the spent match out the window. They watched as Meg boarded the bus. Her long hair and cloak flowed out behind her, with all the élan of a princess’s train.

  “Okay, let’s go.” Scott swung his car out of the parking lot and stayed doggedly behind the bus, the same bus, (or at least one exactly like it) which had left at the same time, on that other terrible night exactly twenty years ago.

&nb
sp; Light teasing snowflakes hurled themselves like lemmings against the windscreen then melted to rain. The bus emptied out fast as it completed this last trip of the night; lumbering slowly through streets of deserted shops, then picking up speed and rumbling past rows of sleeping houses.

  “A few more stops and we’re there,” Scott remarked, while Ben loaded film into his camera.

  The bus now zoomed along at high speed and soared through an amber light, leaving Scott no choice but to whip right after it, through a red one. He couldn’t afford to be held up waiting for the light to change, and besides it was late and there was no one else around. Or so he thought.

  Still following in close procession with the speeding bus, it took a couple of seconds for the unwelcome sound of a police siren, in hot pursuit, to jolt him out of his sense of mission and false feeling of immunity.

  “Oh no…” he exclaimed miserably, as the police cruiser pulled him over. This would cause a great deal more delay, than stopping at the red light would have done.

  “Just tell him we’re on a vitally important assignment for the Morning Herald,” Ben suggested cynically. “That we’re in the midst of re-enacting an unsolved murder of twenty years ago. And if we don’t follow through according to plan, we ourselves will be murdered by the editor.”

  * * * *

  “What do you mean you’ve lost her?” Greg roared into the telephone. “How can even a pair of prize idiots like you, lose a girl who is riding on a bus right in front of you?”

  It took Scott several tension fraught minutes to explain how they had been stopped for running a red light, and when they continued on the bus route afterwards were unable to find Meg.

  “I don’t believe this, somebody please wake me up,” Greg snapped. “Have you ever thought that she just got fed up waiting for you losers, and went home?”

  “We spoke to her mother, and she isn’t there yet.” Scott braced himself for the next onslaught. His ear still rang from the last one, and he held his cell phone as far away from it as he could.