Full Fathom Five - The Homicide Files (A Lincoln Munroe Novella, #1)

to a halt. Chang piloted the OPP boat right next to the back of what I really wanted to consider my boat.

  The thing was gorgeous.

  A couple of knuckle rubs to the sternum were enough to bring Walter back to consciousness. He strained at first, trying hard to pull his hands around to the front but gave up. Those cuffs weren’t going anywhere. He didn’t say a word, not even when I formally arrested him for the murder of his father, nor when I read him his rights and caution. All he did was nod that he understood.

  “You’re under arrest for the first degree murder of Lester Earles.”

  Nod.

  “You have the right to call a lawyer…”

  Nod.

  “Do you wish to say anything in answer to the charge?”

  Shake.

  “You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say may be given in evidence.”

  Nod.

  It took a little bit of work to get both of us back onto the OPP boat—it was easy for me but a little harder for Walter without the use of his hands. With a little bit of pushing from me and some pulling from the Captain, we eventually got him on board. Chang climbed aboard and took my place on the much nicer vessel before I jumped back over to a clearly worried Kara.

  Captain Dunlop came up and gave me a slap on the back. “That’s one hell of a salty dip for you.” I just stared at him, waiting for the English version. “Sorry, too many years in the Navy. But you know, it’s like the fish story, every time you tell it it’s going to get bigger and better. Good work.” He flashed a toothy smile, a nice one actually. Dental care on board ships had come a long way since they realized vitamin-C would fight scurvy.

  I thanked him before he made his way to the helm to bring us around and back to shore.

  “Oh, and Detective, a Jack is a young sailor trying to act experienced. And Oscar, that’s what we call the dummy we use in overboard drills.” He gave a deep, raspy laugh before starting the engines.

  I took a seat at the back with Walter between Kara and me. She kept looking at me, shaking her head. I knew I’d get an earful for my brash actions once we weren’t within earshot of a criminal.

  Chang got the fun job. He got to pilot a boat, probably worth more than his detachment’s annual budget, back to Wiarton. We had to sit in silence with a bleeding man accused of murder. The bleeding had slowed, almost stopped, but he’d refused any of our attempts to dress the wound. And if he refused we had to obey, unless he fell unconscious—then consent was implied.

  Maybe I should’ve patched him up somewhat before waking him.

  Hindsight, as they say.

   

   

  The boats all slowed as they approached the docks, but we stood up and readied ourselves. The rest of our day would be far from slow, far from easy.

  Walter continued to refuse medical attention, ignoring our suggestions we take him to the nearest hospital for stitches. The wound by this point had stopped bleeding and a dry crust had formed, cascading down in lines thick and thin, straight and angled. His leg looked like the map of a city designed by a drunk, red roads crossing over each other, running alongside, then intersecting at every opportunity.

  We brought him through and had him officially booked into the detachment’s cells. He was given his rights and caution again and this time found the energy to answer with only a simple yes or no. Everything about him screamed guilt, from his avoidance of eye contact to his morose and laconic mannerisms. He never spoke more than he had to, never gave anything beyond a straight forward, simple answer.

  “Name?”

  “Walter Jared Earles.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “May 29th, 1979.” Thirty years old as of only a couple of weeks ago. He’d be fifty-five by the time he saw the light of day once more. If he got ‘life’—twenty-five years before his first shot at parole—his sentence would start from the time of his arrest, not his conviction.

  “Any medical conditions?”

  “Asthma.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  And so it went, the sergeant having to pull each and every word out of Walter.

  Anytime he turned my way, anytime I saw his eyes, I knew what was behind them: truth. And it was a frightening truth, one that even he wasn’t ready to accept. When we’d faced each other on the boat, ready to throw down, mano a mano, there’d been a glimmer in his eyes that nobody could have missed. It was a glimmer of hope, of a freedom that was only one man and three boats away. But when that freedom was dashed, Pandora’s Box was opened and hope had escaped. Now there was nothing left but an empty shell.

  Booked in, and on the phone with a lawyer, Walter was now out of our way and out of range of our voices.

  “Don’t even start with me on my little stunt,” I said to Kara, just as her finger came up in front of her face, her features tensed and both her tongue and finger prepared to wag. “You would’ve done the same if you had to.”

  She thought for a minute. I felt as though I could see the wheels turning, turning the way mine would have back when I was the rookie detective. Was this a test? Do I say yes? Or am I supposed to be the calm, rational one?

  “Probably not. We’d have gotten him eventually.”

  “Not before all four of us ran out of gas and they had to helicopter us out, or bring in the Coast Guard.”

  “Whatever. It was a stupid decision,” she said. She looked down at her feet before adding, “with all due respect, Sir.”

  I laughed and put my hand on her shoulder. “We did good, all of us. And now’s your chance to break him. Get a confession.”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d want me to. First case and all. But you know all of the technical stuff, the diving and that.”

  I nodded. “You won’t need it.”

  “Are you sure? And, I mean, I wouldn’t mind seeing you in action.”

  “I’m not the one being evaluated here. I need to make sure, here and now, that I don’t have to go looking for a new partner.”

  A look of mock fear appeared on Kara’s face. “The way the first couple of days went, go ahead.”

  I smiled at her. “Yeah, it’s not normally like this.” I thought about it for a while. “Nope, it’s never like this.”

  “Alright, let’s go then. Is he off the phone?”

  I peered around the corner to the soundproof room Walter was sitting in. The phone was back on the wall. A quick word to the sergeant, then Walter, Kara and I were walking down the hall to an interview room, set up the same as in Tobermory—the same everywhere really.

  I sat in the viewing room while Kara and Walter took their seats. Walter rubbed the red indents in his wrists that the handcuffs had left behind.

  “Not very comfortable, are they?”

  “No,” he said rubbing with vigour, Lady MacBeth trying to wipe away the trace of her crime.

  “They’ll stay off as long as you don’t give me a reason to put them back on you. Give me a reason, and you won’t even know what happened.”

  Walter looked at Kara and even though she was young, pretty and petite, there was a look of genuine concern on his face—his bruised face. That last punch had been a good one. He’d have a hell of a shiner by the evening.

  Kara went through the rights and caution once more, covering her ass so that his lawyer couldn’t pull some allegation that Walter’s Charter Rights were breached.

  Kara started slowly, asking the usual introductory questions—name, age, marital status, employment history, hobbies, friends, family. Every question was opened, there could be no ‘yes’ or ‘no’. She was establishing a baseline, seeing his body language as he responded truthfully to simple questions. She was learning about him, gaining ammunition she could use later. And she was putting him at ease, making him think that his life was of interest to her.

  And it was. At least until the confession was obtained.

  It didn’t take long for Kara to make the first strike. Wal
ter’s blood was boiling as Kara asked him about the argument with his father, the one that knocked him from playboy to poor boy.

  “It’s not fair,” he said, a fist coming down on his knee.

  “You’re right, it’s not.”

  He looked up at her, waited.

  “It’s not fair at all,” she said. “Your father worked his entire life to build that company, to amass his fortune, and what, you just figured it was yours by birthright?”

  Walter leaned back in his chair. “I worked there, too. It was always going to be mine.”

  “Worked? I hear you didn’t really do a whole hell of a lot, that is, when you were even there.”

  “All I needed to know was how to run the place, everyone else could do the work. But then that dumb bitch came along.”

  “Stefanie? She sounded nice to me.”

  “She’s fucking younger than me. Just turned twenty-seven for fuck’s sake and now she’s going to inherit everything. You think that’s fair?”

  “No, I don’t. But I don’t think you living as a leech was fair either.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “You think you know me.”

  “You know what, Walter, I think I do.”

  He shook his head, never looked up.

  Kara continued. “Everything was given to you as a kid. That wasn’t your fault, it was just the way it was. You grew up thinking that was normal, not much was expected of you, but now, now he takes that all away and expects you to make it on your own—expects the world of you. He trained you to be who you are and now that he’s decided he doesn’t like that, he’s sending you to the pound.

  “And maybe Stefanie has something to do with it.