Corkscrew (Reid Bennett) Read online

  In the meantime, I would talk to the Levine party. I had high hopes for them. What I needed was a good description of the man in the boat. I was sure the body had been dumped from it and not from the other boats young Cy had seen around the narrows. Sam's nose had given me a lead that would otherwise have taken days to track down. If the kids could describe the man who'd been running the green cruiser they'd seen, I'd be halfway home.

  I put that thought aside. There were other things to do first. I wanted to talk to Spenser, preferably apart from his wife, to try and find if there was any reason why the boy would have taken photographs of the Corbett place. And whether there was any special meaning to the photographs and letter he'd been carrying.

  I drove over there and found the Spensers inside the cottage. The stepfather came to the door when I knocked, but his wife followed him when he said, "Hello, Officer."

  She stood without speaking. Her eyes were red with weeping and held the thousand-yard stare I've seen in combat-fatigued buddies in 'Nam.

  I took my hat off and said, "I'm sorry to have to intrude on you, but there are a few things I have to ask." Neither of them spoke, and I put the question as carefully as I could. "Perhaps if I could have a few words with each of you in private—would that be possible?"

  She said nothing, but her husband licked his lips quickly and said, "I suppose so. If it will help."

  I nodded at her and backed out. He followed me, and I walked slowly away from the cottage, down the slope over the thin grass and out on the rock that dropped off sheer into the black water.

  He walked beside me, half turning his head my way, not sure whether to speak. I stopped, out of earshot of the house, and turned to face him. He met my eyes for a moment, then looked away, out over the lake, shading his face with his hand.

  "I'm afraid that your stepson didn't drown," I said quietly.

  He dropped his hand, gaping at me, horrified. "Didn't drown? But we saw him. Are you saying there's been a mistake?"

  "Not a mistake in identity, but the doctor doesn't think he drowned. There are some marks on his face that indicate he was smothered."

  "God." He gasped it. "Are you saying he was murdered?"

  "It's starting to look that way, Mr. Spenser."

  He turned away from me, balling up his fists, curling his arms, the helpless contractions of a man at the end of his ability to cope. I waited without speaking, and when he turned back to me, I could see tears in his eyes. "That's unspeakable," he said, spending the word like it was a silver dollar. It rang phony, but the guy was a professor, I reminded myself, and people always sound rehearsed when they talk about crime. It's as if they're preparing to be quoted in the newspaper.

  I made a sympathetic gesture. "Yes, but I'm afraid it's true. And the doctor has asked that your son's body be sent to Toronto for an autopsy by the forensic specialists at the attorney general's department."

  He worked his mouth as if he wanted to find enough saliva to spit. At last he said, "I can't tell her all this. Can you do it?" I stood, wondering at the state of his marriage that he would think a stranger better able to break the news. Then I nodded.

  "I'll do it in a moment, but first I have a couple of questions to ask you, if you don't mind." He looked at me quickly, then away, the kind of look petty crooks give when you've locked them up for the umpteenth time. He was wary, and I wondered why. Had it been him in that boat at the narrows?

  "They're pretty much routine, nothing you have to worry about. The thing is, I found a couple of photographs in his pocket and wondered if you had any comments on them."

  He tried a hollow little laugh. "Photographs! He lived for his camera, that boy." Or perhaps died for it, I thought. We might know better if we found his camera with the new film in it. Maybe. Spenser held up his hands, palms toward me. "Anything I can do, I'll be glad to."

  "Good." I took out the pictures of himself and David and gave him the one of the boy first. "Would you happen to know who this is?"

  I was watching what I could see of his face, but he had pulled all his feelings inside and slammed the door. He looked at the picture without a flicker of feeling. "That's a boy called Reg something, a friend of Kennie's."

  "But the picture's signed 'David,'" I pointed out.

  He shrugged. "I know, but the boy's name is Reg. Kennie met him last year at camp. He was a counselor, I guess. He was also into photography, and the two of them struck up a friendship. They go—went, that is—on photo expeditions together."

  "A counselor? That would make him older than Kennie, wouldn't it?"

  "He's around sixteen, seventeen." Spenser shrugged. "Like I said, they were both into cameras. It was innocent enough."

  I frowned. "Of course I'd thought it was innocent. Why would you have thought anything else?"

  He almost roared the answer. "I didn't think anything else. It was two kids with cameras, plugging along together, taking pictures and developing them. Innocent. Of course it was." He shook his head as if the anger he was feeling could be spun loose, like water in your ear. "Christ, I only said that because you insinuated something about the age difference."

  "I didn't mean anything sinister," I said. I took the photo back and handed him the one of himself getting out of the car. "Is this your apartment?"

  He answered without looking at the shot. "We don't live in an apartment. We have a house, in North York." I didn't answer, and he glanced down at the photograph, and I saw the flicker in his eyes.

  I asked him, "Where was this taken? Do you remember?"

  He thrust it back at me angrily. "No, I don't remember anything about this shot. It's me, somewhere, in my car. Why Kennie would have taken a picture of me I don't know. Maybe he was doing some kind of kiddie investigative journalism, prying around getting candid shots. He picked me because I was a handy subject to follow."

  "But you were driving, and he's too young to drive, so he couldn't have followed you and then taken your shot from across the street. He had to be waiting. That's why I asked if it was your apartment." I kept my voice almost apologetic, wondering why he was reacting this way.

  "Look, he's—he was a teenager. You should know you can't keep tabs on teenagers. They're all over the place."

  "He was only just a teenager. Just thirteen. Tell me, what was he like? Was he difficult? Was he into drugs or trouble of some kind?"

  "Drugs." He looked me straight in the eye and spat the word out. "You're sick. That's the trouble with you cops. You live with garbage, and you expect nothing else anywhere."

  He was closer to the truth than I like, but I persisted, anyway. "Mr. Spenser, I don't know anything about your stepson except what I've learned today. If he had some secret or other, some friends or habits that were out of the ordinary, I need to know. If he didn't, then I hope you'll excuse my asking. It has to be done."

  He jammed his hands in his pockets angrily and pivoted away from me to look back at the cottage. It was the move of an angry, impotent man, pinned by something he couldn't handle. Finally he said, "You're right. I'm sorry. This is all very unsettling."

  "I know. I only have two more questions for you." He turned again, trying to calm himself. "Go ahead."

  "I found a letter he'd been writing. It was kind of a love letter, not addressed to anyone but obviously very sincere. Did he have a special girlfriend?"

  "Girlfriend." He snorted. "No, he didn't have a girlfriend." He dragged the word out, making it a slur. "Except for this buddy of his, he was a loner, never asked anyone home, never went anywhere without a camera in his hand." He sniffed and softened his tone. "It's not easy being a stepfather, you know. I did my best with him. When I saw what kind of kid he was turning into, a little hermit, I bought him a camera, something he could maybe make some contact with, something to get him out of his room and away from the science fiction he was forever reading."

  "Okay. Thank you for your help. Now, my last question. Did Kennie have anything to do with the Corbetts, across the lake, just north
of the narrows?"

  His headshake was genuine. "I don't think he knew anybody up here."

  "Well, thanks again. Now I'd like to talk to your wife and ask if I can look through Kennie's things. That okay?"

  He didn't answer. He looked down at the ground and scuffed one foot in the sand that showed through the grass like an old man's scalp through his hair. I paused and then moved away to the cottage. He followed me, walking slowly, like a truant being brought back to face the schoolteacher.

  Kennie's mother was standing just inside the door. I knocked, then took off my cap and went in to speak to her. I saw her looking at the bruise on my face, but she said nothing, and as gently as I knew how, I broke the news about Kennie's death.

  She gave a little shriek of horror, then gathered her strength and said, "Catch the man. Tell me you'll catch him and punish him."

  "I'll do my best, Mrs. Spenser, and a lot of people will be helping." Spenser had come in behind me, and he moved past me to stand next to his wife and put his hand on her arm. It looked like a gesture that would drain her strength rather than help, but it was well meant, and she reached out and clenched her other hand over his fingers.

  I took out the photograph signed "David" and showed it to her. "Do you recognize this boy? Kennie had this picture with him."

  She looked at it, then at me. "You don't think he did it, do you?"

  "I don't think anything. I'm just trying to tie up all the loose ends, that's all. If you know this boy, it will be something."

  She handed the picture back. "That's Reg Waters. He has a camera, and he and Kennie were friends."

  "But it's signed 'From David,'" I prodded.

  "That was a joke. Kennie took the picture last month, after Reggie won the tennis championship at his club. He was up against a much bigger and tougher boy, so they were calling the match the battle between David and Goliath. I remember Kennie telling me about it."

  "Thank you." I debated with myself whether to bring out the other photo, but I could see the tension in Spenser's face, and I didn't do it. She had enough on her plate already without my asking if she knew her husband was two-timing her, which was the most obvious reason for the way he was acting. Instead, I asked if I could look through her son's belongings. She led me to his bedroom. It was a typical rented bedroom, furnished with the least possible number of items.

  She watched without speaking, clutching her husband's hand as I went through the boy's few belongings. There was nothing to help me. A drugstore envelope from Parry Sound with another set of photographs in it, the same variety as he'd had on the reel that Carl had developed for me. There were no more letters or anything else that might be useful. I finished inside ten minutes and thanked her. There was no need to remove anything.

  "If you want to go home, it will be all right," I told them. "There's nothing more for you to do here. I'll contact you with any news as I get it."

  She nodded, and Spenser growled that they would leave in the morning, and I nodded and put my cap back on and left.

  I called the station and told Fred where I was going. She answered crisply in her normal voice. I wasn't sure if she was getting bored or just running out of accents. "Hi, Reid. Nothing new for you. A lot of people have called, but they were mostly just nosy, asking for particulars. I told them there was an investigation going on, like you suggested."

  "Thanks, Fred. I'm afraid this isn't the weekend you'd planned. We don't get busy often up here, and they had to pick today. I'm sorry."

  "Nothing's wasted," she promised. "After today I can audition for the Judy Holliday part in Bells Are Ringing."

  "Stay away from casting couches," I told her, and she laughed and signed off.

  I parked the cruiser by the marina and unlocked the little boathouse where we keep our beat-up old cedar-strip. The township had sprung for a new motor a couple of months earlier, a Mercury 25-horse that skipped the boat along at a good clip. It wouldn't take me too long to get up to Indian Island. Sam settled into the bow, and I backed out, past the cruisers where long, cool women were sipping long, cool drinks while their red-faced men talked routes and weather like hardened sailors. One or two of the women had that restless, bored look you see in singles bars. They looked me over with more interest than they were giving the conversations around them. I guess isolation will do that.

  The breeze was cool out on the water, and the few mosquitoes that had started to gather at dockside dropped away. It was the time of day I usually head out to fish for pike, and a couple of regular fishermen waved to me in a puzzled way when they saw I was still in uniform.

  The divers were working off Wolfgang's big inboard/outboard. It was flying the red/white "Diver below" flag, and in case anybody around hadn't learned what it meant, he had a big double-sided sign on the deck: "Keep Away. Diving."

  I slowed and waited about forty yards off his stern until he saw me and called me alongside, indicating the path he wanted me to take. I came up slowly, and he reached over and took the bow line and secured it. I tied my stern line to his rear mooring cleat and got into his boat.

  "Nothing yet," he said. "But they've only been in the water fifteen minutes. They're over there." He indicated a spot about halfway to the rock. A stream of bubbles was crinkling the surface of the water. They moved slowly ahead, toward the rock.

  "It's deep here, right?" I asked.

  "One of the deepest spots in the whole lake." He nodded. "If somebody put the boy here, they didn't expect him to be found for a while."

  "Fisherman's luck," I said.

  A powerboat came south through the narrows, pushing a three-foot bow wave as it raced toward us. The driver saw us and veered off, not slackening his speed, and we bounced on the wake.

  "Dumb bastard," Wolfgang said automatically. "Kids. They don't consider anybody."

  We stood looking at the stream of bubbles for a couple more minutes; then the stream split, one side turning toward the west. After a moment the second half of the stream turned after it.

  "They've seen something," Wolfgang said. "Look, they've stopped." We waited another thirty seconds, and then a small orange float popped up to the surface and bounced there.

  "That's it." He started the motor and pulled in the anchor rope; then we inched toward the buoy. As we approached, a head bobbed up next to it, black and slick, with the diving mask pushed up on top like the mouth of some strange aquatic mammal. He waved to us and pointed down. Wolfgang motored up close enough to talk, then put the engine in neutral and called down, "What've you got down there?"

  The man pointed down again. "I think this is what you're looking for. It's got yellow rope on it with a loop, about yea big." He made a circle of his middle finger and thumb, opened slightly. It looked as if the loop were about four inches in diameter.

  Wolfgang looked at me, and I nodded. "Could be it. What's it fastened to?"

  The man shook his head and pointed to the hood over his ears, then swam closer and clung to the side of the boat. I leaned down to him and asked him again. "What's the rope tied to?"

  "The guts of an old engine block. No pistons or sump or crankshaft, just the block."

  Wolfgang reached down and shook his hand. "Well done," he said heartily. I nodded, and Wolfgang glanced at me and grinned. "How about that, Chief. Good work, huh?"

  "Fantastic. Thanks," I said. "Can you bring it up for me?"

  Wolfgang turned to the diver again. "How heavy is the engine, roughly? Fifty kilos?"

  The diver nodded. "Yeah, a hundred pounds, I'd say." He waited while Wolfgang looked at me for guidance. "Great work," I told the diver. "Can you get a rope through it and we'll hoist it in?"

  "Gimme the rope," he said. Wolfgang stooped and unshackled the anchor rope, handing the end to him. "Tug when you're ready," he said.

  The diver held the rope in his left hand, adjusted the mask with his right, and then sank out of sight, trailing bubbles.

  Wolfgang looked at me. "I have a little brandy in the medicine chest for
when the divers come up. Would you like some?"

  I grinned. "That's my kind of first aid, Wolfie. But no thanks. I have to go and talk to some kids who were here at around the time it all happened. It wouldn't do to breathe firewater on anybody."

  "You decide." He turned back to the rope, feeling it carefully through finger and thumb, like a fisherman waiting for a rainbow trout to start mouthing the bait. Then it jumped in his hand, and he said, "So, let's pull."

  We worked together, feeling the strain even under the buoyancy of the water. "This thing weighs a ton," he said. Sweat was forming on his forehead in beads, and he dashed it away with his forearm.

  "Yeah, let's not scratch up your boat. I'll get in the police boat and take it. Okay?"

  "Yeah. I'll come with you." He supported the dead weight on the line while I climbed down into the cedar-strip. Then I took it and he joined me. Together we horsed the engine the rest of the way in, scraping it lightly against the side of the boat until I could lean down and hold it away from the hull while we struggled it in.

  "There," Wolfgang said. We sat each side of it, me in the stern, him in the middle seat, looking at it. "Looks like a Ford V8," he said. "Out of a truck, something."

  "Yeah," I said. "And it's in good shape. This is out of somebody's workshop. There's not a speck of rust in it."

  "See." Wolfgang waved his arms expansively. "Now you have a nice shiny new clue, maybe with fingerprints."

  "Good. I need one."

  He was triumphant, savoring the pleasure of finding the block so quickly. "Maybe this one will solve your homicide," he said, and grinned. I grinned back. I hadn't told him it was a homicide, but you didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that much for yourself.

  I asked him if his guys could spend a few more minutes checking around down there for the kid's camera. It was a long shot, I told him, and he agreed, getting technical on me. The weeds were bad, but they would do what they could.

  I thanked him, and he got back into his own boat. I changed my plan and headed back to the marina. The Levines would have to wait. I wanted to get this block under cover until it could be fingerprinted. It was the first real key to the case. Anyone could have used the Corbett boat to dump the body, but this block had to have come from somewhere. If I could identify its source, I would be a whole giant step ahead. It had come from a shop; otherwise, it would have been rusty. How many people would have had a V8 engine block handy? Not as many as know how to hot-wire a cruiser. I ran through a mental list of possibilities as I drove. It was a car or truck motor, not a marine engine. That narrowed my scan considerably.