Out with the Sunset Page 2

  “Not lucky enough to have a video of the actual murder,” Margie posited. “That would be too much to expect.”

  Smith shrugged. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

  Margie looked around at the ground for anything that was out of place. “Is the knife still in him? If not, did you take a look around for it?”

  “Not in him. I kept my eyes open while we were deciding how much area to rope off. I was hoping it might have been dropped close by. But we didn’t see anything. We can take another look, now that it’s daylight. It was still pretty dark when we got here.”

  Sunrise had been around seven o’clock the last few days, Margie knew. Of course there had been runners and dog walkers out before that. People trying to get their workouts in before heading to office or retail jobs starting at eight or nine.

  So when was their victim killed? During the small hours of the morning before opening? Or late at night when he shouldn’t have even been in the park? She hoped they would be able to narrow it down quickly.

  “Did you get all of the contact information for the dog walker who found him? And what about him, did he touch the body?”

  “Dog might have contaminated it. Owner kept his distance after bringing the dog under control. We got everything we needed from him, down to the dog’s name and morning routine. You can give him a call and talk to him or request an interview any time today. He’s eager to help.”

  “Great. Thanks. Do we have an identity for our victim yet?”

  “Haven’t searched him. He’s fully dressed—you know, not for running or something—so he probably has a wallet on him, unless it was a robbery. We figured we’d let the techies do that part.”

  Margie nodded. It was a good call. They might even have a missing person report on him already if he had a family and should have been home the night before.

  She looked around some more without moving her feet, but couldn’t see any other clues and didn’t want to be guilty of contaminating the scene any further. She looked toward the crime scene investigators and nodded to them.

  “Let’s get out of the way and let them do their thing,” she advised Smith, raising her voice a little for everyone within the cordoned-off area.

  Chapter Three

  While Margie got out of the way to allow the crime scene techs to do their job, she wandered casually toward the bystanders. She wasn’t wearing a uniform but, of course, it would be apparent to everyone there that she was a police detective. They wouldn’t have allowed just anyone to get that close to the body. But no one peeled abruptly away from the group or attracted her attention.

  “My name is Detective Marguerite Patenaude,” she told the onlookers in a friendly, pleasant tone. “I wonder if anyone here happened to see anything this morning? Not necessarily him,” she motioned back toward the body, “but anything that’s out of the ordinary for the park. Most of you probably walk or run here several times a week?”

  Most of them nodded automatically. A few looked away. Maybe they had just been called by their friends to come to see what was going on, in hopes of being able to see something brag-worthy.

  “So? Anything unusual? People or activities that you don’t normally see? A strange noise or smell? Anything that made you take notice?”

  No one stepped forward to offer anything. Most shook their heads and made negative noises. Margie hadn’t actually expected to get anything from them. More than likely, the murder had happened many hours before, and the people who walked the park in the morning were not the same ones who walked it in the evening.

  “Anybody want my card? In case you think of something or hear anything from someone else?” Margie pulled a stack of business cards out of her pocket and held them out, offering them to each person. A couple people took one. Maybe hoping she’d be able to help them out of a speeding ticket at some point. No one met her eyes or gave her the impression that they would call her later when they could speak to her without witnesses. “All right. Thank you. You can move along, you can’t see much from here, and we’ll be around for a while. You might as well finish your workouts.”

  Most of them moved on. Only a few lingered. None of them did anything to make her think that they might know what had happened. No one started asking her questions about the murder. There was no one who appeared to be from the press, though she was sure they would be there within the hour. Even if there were nothing to report, they still had to get some shots at the scene and report that there was nothing to report.

  Before long, a couple of the other homicide detectives from Margie’s team made it to the site. Margie tried to remember their names and what she knew about them. She’d only had one brief meeting with the team so far, when she had been introduced to them and read in on all of the usual policies and procedures. She had filled out her tax forms and been assigned a desk and told when she would be on duty. Even though she had known she would be on duty on Christina’s first day, she had made arrangements not to be at the office until later in the day once she got Christina settled at the school. None of them had anticipated that they would be called to a homicide early that morning. That was just the way that it went. You couldn’t plan.

  Detective Cruz would have played a good Hispanic cop on TV. Olive skin, hair turning to salt and pepper, a short mustache now hidden behind a mask, and a bit of a paunch. But he’d made it clear when they met that he was Filipino, not Hispanic. Margie had been surprised to find such a large Filipino community in Calgary. She had thought Calgary’s demographics would skew a lot more white—and redneck—but there was a surprisingly multicultural population. Half of the people in her neighborhood seemed to be either Asian or Polynesian. Cruz was an older cop, probably ready for retirement before too long. Homicide was not an easy job. People didn’t stay there for more than two or three years, and Cruz had been there at least four.

  Riding with Cruz was Detective Kaitlyn Jones. Margie had been happy to discover that she would not to be the sole woman on the homicide team. She could hold her own; she’d always been able to fit in as “one of the guys,” but it was still a relief to know that there was another woman there who would have her back in case of any sexist or harassing behavior. Boys would be boys, but she was not going to put up with any garbage.

  Margie filled them in on her arrival on the scene and everything they had done before Cruz and Jones arrived.

  “The victim did have a wallet. It gives his name as Jerry Robinson, and his face matches the picture on his ID.” She read off the address from his driver’s license. “I guess that’s not far from here?”

  “Deer Run,” Cruz said with a nod. “Not far at all. Might have walked in.”

  “The CO’s haven’t seen any abandoned vehicles, anything left overnight, so he probably did.”

  “Any background on him yet?” Jones asked. Her blond hair was pulled back into a bun, and despite the blue mask over her face, Margie could still tell by the cheer in her voice and the fan of laugh lines around her eyes she was smiling. “Wedding ring? Business card? Family pictures?”

  Margie laid out what they had. “Union card; apparently he is a welder. Don’t know about family or kids yet; his phone is locked. No wedding ring, but that might just be so he doesn’t injure himself on a job site. We’ll have to do some background and find out if he has a family, make a death notification to the next of kin. I haven’t checked social media yet, but that might be a good place to start.”

  “So it wasn’t robbery,” Cruz mused. “Everything appeared to be in his wallet? Cash? Plastic? Jewelry wasn’t stolen?”

  “Doesn’t look like robbery. He could have had a watch or necklace or something of value, but we won’t know that until we talk to people who knew him. There’s no mark on his finger showing that he typically wears a ring, but he could still have one and only wear it some of the time. Cash and credit cards in his wallet. Not a lot, but if the motive had been robbery, I would have expected at least the cash to disappear.”

  “Okay. M
akes sense. Any sign he’s been in a fight?”

  “We’ll have to wait for the ME’s report, but nothing obvious. Hands are scarred from working. No split knuckles or broken nose.”

  “Then what happened?” Jones asked, shaking her head. “Usually, it’s pretty obvious. Robbery, fight, drug or gang connection. In a park like this, at night, it could be drugs, but…?”

  But Margie hadn’t mentioned anything that would give them that idea. “Nothing that I could see. The body certainly doesn’t scream drug dealer or addict.”

  Chapter Four

  Investigating even a major crime like homicide, there was a lot of ‘hurry up and wait.’ They would have to wait for the video surveillance. For the medical examiner’s report. For the techs to crack the code on Robinson’s phone if he didn’t have a family member who knew it.

  By the time they got to the duty room, it was already midafternoon. Phones rang, people banged away at their keyboards and chatted with each other in voices that were a little too loud for Margie to concentrate. Her desk was out in the bullpen, not behind a closed door, and she found it a little distracting.

  And she had promised Christina that she would get home early.

  “It’s my daughter’s first day of school,” Margie told Jones, hoping she would be the most sympathetic. “Would you mind screening Robinson to see if we have anything on him or if you can find him on social media, and I’ll check in with you later? I’d like to pick her up at school or at least take her out for a burger once she gets home. I had promised to go in with her this morning and then I couldn’t.”

  “Sure,” Jones agreed. “How old is your daughter?”

  “She’s fifteen—a terrible age to uproot her and come to Calgary, her first year in high school. I mean, she was in high school last year, but grade nine was high school in Winnipeg, and the high school here starts at grade ten. So even though she had her first year of high school in Winnipeg last year, she’s the little fish again this year. In a new school. In a new city.”

  “That’s tough,” Jones agreed. “Which school?”

  “Forest Lawn High.”

  “Oh.”

  Margie tried to interpret Jones’s reaction. She didn’t immediately tell Margie what a great school it was, even though the principal had really talked up the school and its programs. But it wasn’t like she had badmouthed it either. Maybe she or a friend had gone there for high school.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t in Calgary during high school. Ft. McMurray.”

  Northern Alberta. Where the tar sands were. Margie nodded. “Cold there?”

  Jones shuddered. “Oh yes, it was. No Chinooks there.”

  “I’m looking forward to experiencing a Chinook wind. We don’t get them in Winnipeg. Once it gets cold there, it stays cold all winter.”

  “One of the best things about Calgary,” Jones agreed. “Though it wreaks havoc with the roads. And sometimes the trees, if they think it is spring before it is. And migraine headaches.”

  Margie nodded, her attention no longer on the subject. She gathered her things. “You have my cell number in case you need to reach me? Sorry to be ducking out early on my first homicide, but I’ll be in bright and early in the morning, and you can reach me tonight if you need me.”

  “Go take care of your daughter. We’ll be fine.”

  Margie didn’t quite make it in time to pick Christina up from school, so she hurried back to the house instead to beat her there and try to smooth things out for when she arrived. She let Stella out to run in the yard for a few minutes, tidied up the living room and kitchen, and tried to decide what they would do for supper. She didn’t call or text Christina while she was on the bus, which would probably just irritate her. And she didn’t want to inundate her daughter with questions as soon as she got in the door. But she also didn’t want to look like she had just been home relaxing while Christina dealt with school and the bus ride home.

  Eventually, Christina got home. Later than Margie had expected. Maybe she should have gone to the school to pick her up after all. Christina pushed the door open with a loud bang, then stepped in and slammed it behind her. She ripped off her mask.

  Margie kept her temper. Of course Christina was tired and irritable after a long day at school, and she wanted to show her displeasure with her mother for letting her down. Margie forced a welcoming smile. “Hi, honey. How was it?”

  If looks could kill, she would have had to arrest her own daughter for murder. Or one of the other homicide detectives would have to, since Margie herself would have been dead. Christina dropped her backpack on the floor and flounced down onto the couch.

  “Was it that bad? I’m so sorry. Tell me all about it.”

  “We should have stayed in the Peg. I don’t understand why we had to come here. Your job there was just fine, and I had friends and knew my way around the school and the bus system and everything else there. We should have just stayed. Couldn’t we have stayed until I was done school? Three more years? Would that have been so bad? Then you could go wherever you wanted to, and I could go to university or start working. Why did we have to come here?”

  Christina was one of the reasons that Margie had wanted to move away from Winnipeg. Yes, Christina had friends there and knew her way around, but that was part of the problem. Margie hadn’t liked Christina’s friends, and there was a lot of violence and drug culture in Winnipeg. As a cop, Margie knew the statistics about murdered or missing Indigenous women in the Peg. She hadn’t wanted Christina to become another statistic.

  “What happened?” she persisted. “Did something bad happen, or is it just because it is difficult getting used to a new place?”

  “I hate it. Why did you move us to the hood? We had a nice place in Winnipeg. Here, we’re in the ghetto!” She kicked at her schoolbag with a thud.

  “Ghetto? Calgary doesn’t have a ghetto or a hood. This is a nice area. Lots of families and retired couples that have been here for years.”

  “It’s the hood. That’s what the kids at school say. Forest Lawn is the hood, and everybody who goes to the school is in a gang.”

  “We aren’t in Forest Lawn. We’re in Southview. And I checked out the crime statistics before we came. It isn’t bad. There is crime all over; you can’t escape that. There isn’t a lot of gang activity at the school. Maybe some kids there are in gangs, but that was true in Winnipeg too. The crime rate there was much higher than here. I don’t think you need to worry that you’ve been dumped into the middle of a war zone.”

  Christina shook her head irritably. “I should have known you wouldn’t listen.”

  “I am listening.” Margie tried to tone it down. Christina needed to know she was being heard; she didn’t need her mother arguing statistics. “Tell me more about it. I’ll try to keep my mouth shut and just listen to you. I didn’t mean to argue. Did you make any friends? Meet anyone interesting?”

  “At home, everybody was First Nations or Métis. It’s different here. Everybody is white. Or Asian. Or Black. There aren’t that many Indigenous kids.”

  Margie nodded. “I know. The demographics are a bit different. Calgary has lots of immigrants.”

  “So I’m, like, I stand out. I look Cree, so everyone thinks that I’m… I don’t know. Just there for a free ride, or drugs, or to steal their stuff. They look at me like I’m…” Christina shook her head, at a loss for words. “I don’t know. Like I’m dirty or a criminal.”

  Christina threw her head back against the back of the couch in frustration.

  “Oh, honey.” Margie hoped that Christina was just overreacting and being dramatic. She had found so far that Calgarians treated her pretty well. But she was an adult with tough skin and a badge. Not a sensitive teenager. “I’m sorry you felt so much like an outsider.”

  Christina nodded vigorously. “Exactly. Like an outsider. I hate it. I just want to go home.”

  “Is there any way I can help? We’re not moving back to Winnipeg,
but is there anything else I can do to help make it better?”

  “The school is huge. I’m so lost. And everybody already has friends. I don’t have anybody.”

  “Give it a few days. I’m sure other people are new, and people who are looking for new friends. They’ll be coming from all different junior highs, so everyone will have to meet new people, and friendships will be changing. Maybe we could look at some clubs or after-school activities that will help you get in with a group sooner.”

  “I don’t want to do sports or photography or any other stupid hobbies. I want to… hang out with friends like I did in Winnipeg.”

  One of the things that Margie hadn’t liked in Winnipeg was how much unsupervised time Christina and her friends had for hanging around, looking for new ways to get in trouble.

  “I’m going to be connecting with the Métis community here. I’m sure you’ll be able to make some friends through the Métis Nation or Friendship Center so you won’t feel so different.”

  Christina shrugged. It wasn’t an objection, so it felt like a win—score one for Mom.

  “And when we visit Moushoom, we can see if he has some other suggestions. There are probably cousins we don’t even know about here. Not as many as at home—in Winnipeg—but you might be able to connect with someone.”

  Christina’s head went up. “When are we going to go see Moushoom? That’s one of the reasons you said we should move here. Well, we’re here, so when are we going to go see him?”

  Margie didn’t even have all of their boxes unpacked. But she was glad that Christina wanted to see her great-grandfather. Other kids might roll their eyes and say they didn’t want to visit some old person in a nursing home. Though it wasn’t a nursing home. It was an independent living facility. Margie and some of the cousins had been worried about his still living on his own. It was hard to tell from so far away whether he still had all of his faculties or whether he should have more care and supervision. Someone looking after him and making sure he took his pills and ate what he should.