Chương 8: Chapter 8
Staff-Sergeant Anne McCauley sat at her desk and peered out at the rising sun. She should have been home hours ago. Her husband had called twice to check on her. She didn't want to leave this case incomplete. It involved one of their own so it needed to be done right.
She read over her notes of the interview with Leigh Dalrymple. They still didn't make any sense. The woman talked about voices escaping her head and shadows in the woods. It was clear that she'd been on the trails. Anne had gone to the home where the ax had been taken to look at the layout. The homeowner had been adamant that it was Leigh who had taken the ax and that she'd run after some teenagers into the woods. Anne walked the trail a little way. Prints covered the ground; too confused for Anne to figure out what they meant. The trees slowed the snow filling them up again. She'd had John taking pictures of all of them for reference. One set looked like the footprints at the crime scene at the school. They had the distinctive track of the traction aids that the pharmacy sold. Not conclusive, but it was something.
She looked at the pictures they'd taken of Mrs. Dalrymple when she'd been brought in. The poor woman's eyes looked haunted. The kind of eyes Anne could imagine voices tormenting. Bruises were beginning to show up, but there was no blood. Given how much splatter was at the scene, there should be blood on her clothes. So either she'd changed before the members picked her up, she'd been wearing something over her clothes, or she wasn't involved.
She had taken the ax. That was a definite; everything after was fuzzy.
"Carol, get one of the members on day shift to follow that trail further into the woods. We need to learn where she came out. It didn't look like she followed the same trail out."
"Sure thing, Staff. Should I get him to take the camera along?"
"Good idea."
Anne looked at the reports scattered on her desk. They'd made a tentative ID based on the wallet of the victim. He was Jack Tanist - a teacher and coach. He'd coached her son's hockey team. Not a person the town could afford to lose. They couldn't afford to lose anyone. Not this way.
She closed her door and went to the main room of the detachment.
"Rob," she said, "I'm going home. If something major breaks, call me. Otherwise I plan to sleep the rest of the day."
"OK, Staff," Rob covered the phone he was holding with his hand, "I'll keep an eye on things. Anything new that isn't urgent, I'll put on your desk for tonight."
Anne waved and went to the door. Bill waited for her in his truck.
"Rough night," Bill said. "Anything I can do?"
"I don't think so," Anne leaned her head back against the seat. "Nothing's official yet, not even the identity of the victim."
"Right, so I guess I just take you home and tuck you into bed." Bill put the truck in gear.
"Please."
***
She arrived at the detachment for the seven o'clock shift feeling much better for eight hours sleep.
"Well the identification is solid," Rob said as he walked her to her office. "The victim had a tattoo on his arm. The doctor remembered it particularly because it was recent."
"Why would a teacher get a new tattoo?"
"Doctor said Jack had just turned forty. It was a celebration of something."
"I guess," Anne hung her coat on the hook behind the door. "Anything else?"
"We lifted a good print off the ax handle. We've asked someone in Thompson to get prints from Mrs. Dalrymple for comparison."
"Good." Anne sat at the desk and looked at the reports. "Anything else?"
"Nothing yet."
"OK." she looked at the duty roster. Marie was off this shift. Anne made a note to talk to her when she was back on shift. She looked up and Rob was still waiting. "Sorry," she said, "Did you have something different to talk about?"
"What's Jim's status?" Rob asked.
"If he wants to work, he works, but keep him out in the reserve for now. I don't want him getting tempted. He's too good a cop to waste."
"All right then, I'll call him and let him know. He was asking."
"If he wants time off..."
"He said he wanted to work. The empty house was driving him crazy."
"Right," Anne said. "Call him in and send him out." Rob nodded and left.
The early part of the night was busy as the town reacted to the gruesome crime. No information was officially public yet, but she was sure everyone knew at least as much as she did. Just the fact Jack's black truck wasn't roaring up and down the streets would make it feel strange.
"Carol," Anne buzzed the officer at the desk, "Has Jack's truck been located?"
"No, Staff," she said, "It wasn't at his house, and it wasn't at the school."
"I think we should make finding that truck a priority."
"I'll put it out to the members in the field."
Anne started going through the reports on her desk. Someone had talked to the pharmacist. He had filled Leigh's prescription, but then she had returned only a short time later to say that the drugs had been stolen. He thought it odd that the police had never contacted him. He'd told Mrs. Dalrymple to talk to the police immediately.
"Carol, get Constable Dalrymple to call me." She sat back and thought hard. Why would she report the theft to the pharmacist and not the police? Her phone rang and she picked it up.
"You asked me to call, Staff?" Jim said.
"I have a report that Leigh told the pharmacist that her medications had been stolen."
"She didn't say anything to me," Jim said, "But Marie and I were talking on the way home. We wondered if someone was blackmailing Leigh into not taking her drugs. If they were stolen, then it would be easier than getting her to hand them over."
"Blackmail?" Anne made a note with a question mark.
"It's the only thing I can think of," Jim said, "Those medications were life and death to Leigh. There's no way I can imagine her just deciding not to take them. Something kept her quiet. It had to be some kind of threat."
"OK, thanks." Anne hung up. "Carol, we need to backtrack both Leigh Dalrymple and Jack Tanist."
"Just ask a few questions at the coffee shop at the mall. Everyone in town will know by the end of the day."
"Put it in the briefing for tomorrow morning."
She picked up the doctor's report on the victim. Dr. Diat had training as a coroner, so they didn't have to send bodies to Thompson. She shook her head as she read the report. Whoever killed Jack Tanist had a lot of rage. He'd died after the first blow, probably from behind, but whoever it was kept hitting the teacher.
How had the attacker managed that first blow? If Tanist was a blackmailer, she didn't think he'd let someone come up to him with an ax. If he saw the weapon, he'd have put up a fight.
Leigh had taken an ax and chased some kids into the woods. The path led toward the school. She flipped through the pile to find the report from the member who had followed the trail from where the ax was taken. There were a lot of prints. It looked like some kind of fight in a clearing, but then the prints with the traction aids continued toward the school. They vanished in the new snow as soon as they left the woods, but they showed that whoever was wearing those traction aids had headed for the school. Leigh would have been angry that Tanist was manipulating her, and the psychotic break made her an unknown. Tanist might have written her off as safe, especially if he didn't see the ax at first.
She went back and read the rest of the reports, but they didn't add anything new to the picture. Leigh Dalrymple might be the only person to know what actually happened. Too bad she wasn't sane enough to remember it. The only other interesting thing was Mr. Kwali found a puddle when he let John in to check on the room on the other side of the door. It was where Mr. Kwali stored trash before putting it out and had a few other bits and pieces of things lying around. He kept the door into the school locked, so someone would need his key or a master key to get in. The exit door was a crash bar, locked from the outside, but not from the inside. Maybe Tanist was meeting someone in the janitor's room and the murderer had come up from behind when he was trying to open the door.
Anne looked at the photos that Jim had taken of the footprints before the snow filled them in. They stopped well short of the door. It was impossible to tell more than that since the murderer had trampled the ground while beating Tanist.
She didn't like this kind of case, there were too many questions and too easy to miss something important.
Yet no matter how important it was, there was other police work to do. Reports of vandalism and damage done by children were on the rise. It was frustrating that there was so little they could do about it as police. The law just didn't apply to anyone under twelve. She'd already had several conversations with Mr. Henry about it, but he didn't hold out much hope of a solution there. Between the children who seemed to be out of control and the increasing presence of gangs in the town, the police had a lot of work to do. She set the reports aside and started going through the other files.
Anne had a day and a night off then was back on days. She hated the shifts, but they were short staffed and she didn't think it was fair to make her members work all the nights. Morale had gone up when she started taking some of the night shifts. Besides, it gave her lots of time to get her paperwork done. Now it felt like a nuisance; but she trusted Rob. He was a good Sergeant, and the other five members were all solid. It helped Jim was willing to work out at the reserve. That freed the rest to investigate in town.
Carol's suggestion paid off. Several people had seen Leigh leave the mall with her medications in hand. A few had seen her come back. It seems Jack stopped her in the mall then took her out to his truck. They'd driven away together. Anne couldn't imagine Jack Tanist being a threat to Leigh, but it connected them.
Mr. Ryckle from the school called. He'd reported Leigh and Jack had an argument in the staffroom the day before the Halloween Dance. He'd had to reprimand her sharply for language. It was another connection. Leigh had signed up at the last minute to work at the dance, then had gone home early.
Anne checked the time on the report of the ax being taken. It worked out, there was just enough time for Leigh to walk from the school to where she was accosted by the youths she chased into the woods. But that left a couple of hours before the murder. If she'd taken the ax and gone to kill Jack Tanist, what was she doing during the extra time?
It also didn't explain how she knew to find the victim at the school. He was killed well after the dance was finished and everyone had gone home.
It wasn't adding up, but it did look like there was a strong connection between the victim and the woman who sat in the psych ward in Thompson. All those connections were the kind that would make someone very angry.
"Carol," Anne said, "I want some more background on our Mr. Tanist. Whatever you can find out.
"Sure thing, Staff," Carol said. "I'll get right on it."
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