The detective chuckled. “I like to clean my own office. It gives me time to think. Most of the time there isn’t much else to do.”
“I thought the police were overworked.”
“Traffic is. We don’t get too many homicides out here in the suburbs.
Can I get you a coffee?”
Frank declined, his eyes still darting around the room as if he were looking for a quick getaway. The detective stepped out of the office into the hall and grabbed himself a cup of coffee. Sugar and cream were nonexistent. He was getting tired of drinking coffee black. He glanced in-to his office. Frank Gray was still fidgeting in his chair. Probably scared out of his mind, the detective thought.
“Let’s see what we have,” the detective said as he wheeled into his chair and looked down at his notes. “Did Ruth tell you anything about our conversation?”
“Some,” Frank responded, looking into his lap like a schoolboy who has forgotten to do his homework. “Didn’t make a lot of sense. Ruth was upset. She thinks I’m in some kind of trouble. You know the way women fret.”
The detective rubbed his chin with the end of his pen.
“I didn’t mean to upset your wife, Frank. But there are a lot of leads we have to follow up on and… Why don’t I give you a brief outline of the case.”
For several minutes the detective entertained Frank with the tale about a man dying on the corner of Bloor and Botfield and the police report on the fellow who had discovered him and how his name was the same as Frank’s. Frank listened attentively but said nothing. The detective waited. The two men looked at each other for some time.
“When did this happen?” Frank asked as he straightened up in his chair, leaning slightly forward.
The detective smiled uncomfortably for a minute and shook his head.
“Why would you ask that?” He tapped the end of his pen on the desk and then, noticing that Frank had become mesmerized by the pen, put it down. “That’s my problem. A fellow, we don’t know who he was, came into the Zig Zag last week and reported to the bartender that a man had just died on the sidewalk only a few yards from the front door of the tavern. We have no record of anyone dying on that corner that evening, or any evening that year. But we do have a record of someone dying on that corner thirty odd years before.”
Frank stared at the officer.
“This is a joke, right?” he cried.
Sam Kelly shook his head.
Frank took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring, his complexion growing red. “You have a guy dying on the sidewalk thirty years ago, and some guy who saw the incident reported it to a bartender a week ago. And someone with my name is mentioned in the case and you don’t think this is a colossal joke?”
“I don’t know what it is,” the detective confessed. “Do you know Joe Mackenzie?”
Frank, still agitated, moved about his chair like a caged animal.
“What do you mean you don’t know what it is? You upset my wife and dragged me all the way down to your office for this?” For several minutes Sam Kelly sat silently in his chair and let Frank blow off steam. Although he’d stopped ranting, Frank’s rage seemed to move inside, like a brush fire running under the forest canopy. Sweat ran down his forehead. His breathing grew shorter and labored. The detective left the room and returned a minute later with a paper cup of water.
Frank took a few swallows of water. When his breathing began to relax, Frank took a small container of pills from his shirt pocket and popped one in his mouth. He finished off the water. The detective offered to get him some more water but Frank declined.
“It’s almost gone,” Frank said wiping the sweat off his forehead and neck with some tissues he found in a box on the officer’s desk. “I’ll be all right now.”
“You sure?” the detective asked. “We could continue this some other time. I wasn’t trying to get you upset, Mr. Gray.”
“No, I’m all right. Sometimes I overreact to situations. Doctor tells me that I’ve got to monitor my rage. I know you’re just doing your duty, Officer. And you have your procedures. I was so laid-back when I was a kid. Can you believe it? People said I had ice water in my veins. But 103 now… I just can’t be sure that at any moment I might explode. I’m like a bomb.”
Frank chuckled as he continued to wipe the sweat off.
“Used to be as cool as a cucumber.”
The detective smiled politely and returned to his chair. God, he didn’t want someone dying in his office. He’d interrogated many prisoners, for minor offences in the main, but he’d never had someone implode right in front of him.
Frank leaned forward, and spoke to the detective in a whisper as if he were sharing a personal anecdote. “Are you afraid of dying, Detective?”
“I’d like to avoid it,” Sam said with a smile.
Frank did not. He was in earnest.
“I figure that when you die, you end up in a room. The room is empty.
No windows, no furniture, no door. And it’s dark. Not pitch black, but the darkness just before complete nightfall. Just enough light to see that you are alone in a room.”
“Like being buried alive?”
“Ya, in a way,” Frank said, nodding, “except you’re not horizontal and you don’t have trouble breathing, and you can walk around. But you’re in the room and you wait.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Frank gestured to the pack of cigarettes on the officer’s desk. Although the detective didn’t smoke himself, he found it helpful to have a pack around for interviews. It helped to loosen tongues.
Sam nodded. Frank grabbed the pack, removed a cigarette and the matches that were tucked inside, and lit up.
“Haven’t smoked in years,” Frank sighed, the smoke swirling out of his nostrils. “Doctor’s orders.”
The detective was about to suggest that Frank might want to put the cigarette out when Frank insisted that they continue the interview.
“Do you know Joe Mackenzie?”
Frank thought for a moment. “Didn’t he live in that old farmhouse in the hydro field near Echo Valley?”
“Still does.”
“I thought that place had been abandoned for years.” The detective leaned back in his chair for a few minutes. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a pad and scribbled something in it.
“You live around here all of your life, Frank?” he asked.
“Most of it. Lived in Windsor for a while. That’s where I met Ruth. At college.”
Frank stopped talking. The detective looked at Frank and waited.
“I had more hair then,” Frank said, running his hand through his thinning hair.
The detective smiled.
“Red hair if you can believe it. Ruth was a great beauty on campus.
Long black hair. People used to call us Sonny and Cher. After the singing duo. We sort of fell in love at first sight. Been together ever since. I was kind of a quiet kid. Didn’t have many girls. Ruth had a boyfriend when I saw her the first time. I don’t think I’m being of much help. I just don’t have much to say that amounts to anything.”
“I don’t know what’s helpful. Continue, Frank.” Sam knew that Frank had to talk. Perhaps it would reveal more than Kelly’s questions could elicit.
Frank smiled. “Her boyfriend gave me a nickname.”
“Red?” the detective asked.
Frank shook his head. “Puppy Dog. What a name, eh?”
“Well,” the detective smiled. “You got the girl so I guess the dog got the last bark.”
Frank laughed quietly.
“Did you know June Mackenzie, Joe’s wife?” Sam asked. “Her maiden name was Hare before she married.”
