Free Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) by Laurence Gough Page B

Billy let his mind focus on Nancy Crown, imagined her this way and that way, in all the poses he could remember from all the magazines he had ever read.
    He smoked the last of his cigarettes down to the filter and tossed the butt into the pool. Then he stood up and stared out across the harbour, miles and miles of cold black water.
    She was almost close enough to touch. There was nothing between them but half a dozen quick strides and a thin panel of glass.
    It drove him crazy, just thinking about it.

 
    Chapter 7
     
    A few flakes of snow — or maybe it was ash from a distant chimney — drifted down from a slate-gray sky.
    Inspector Homer Bradley leaned back in his dark green leather chair. He put his feet up on his desk, used the toe of a polished black loafer to nudge aside the carved cedar box in which he kept his expensive Cuban cigars. The three silver crowns on his right shoulder gleamed in the light from the fluorescents.
    He waved the Kenny Lee file at Willows. “Not a lot here, Jack. What else have you got?”
    “Not much,” said Willows. He glanced at Parker but she was looking out the window, peering over the top of the adjoining building, watching the snow fall into the harbour. Due to the influence of the ocean, the city’s climate was fairly mild. It rarely snowed more than two or three times during a winter, but this year the mountains on the North Shore were glistening and white.
    “You talked to Lee’s wife?” Bradley corrected himself, “I mean, his widow?”
    Willows nodded. “She couldn’t tell us a thing.”
    Bradley picked up the file, flipped it open and read briefly. “He disappeared when?”
    “January first,” said Parker. “Didn’t come home from work.”
    Bradley studied the top photograph in the open folder that lay on his desk. Lee had a narrow, unlined face. He was fifty-seven years old. Bradley would have guessed his age at about forty-five. He glanced out the window. The snow, if that’s what it was, was much thicker now, big fat raggedy flakes drifting straight down out of the sky. It deadened the sounds of traffic. The office was warm, the only sound a faint hissing from the overhead lights.
    Willows said, “It would help if we had someone on the case who spoke Cantonese.”
    “Andy Wah’s working traffic. I’ve asked for a reassignment.” Bradley swung his feet off the desk. He flipped open the lid of the carved cedar box and selected a cigar. He used a pair of tiny gold-plated clippers to delicately chop the end off of the cigar and said, “You come up with a cause of death yet?”
    “Maybe this time tomorrow. Kirkpatrick’s having a little trouble thawing out the body.”
    “But it was murder, you’re sure about that?”
    Parker said, “We found an eighteen-inch length of copper wire outside the gardens, on the boulevard. The wire had been tied in a figure-eight pattern. The knots were still intact — it had been cut. There was some blood. O positive. Lee’s type. We checked with his doctor.”
    “You did, huh.” Bradley fired up a big wooden kitchen match, waited until the flame had settled and then lit his cigar. He dropped the burning match in a used coffee cup, blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling, sighed contentedly.
    Parker continued. “Now that the ice is beginning to melt, it’s obvious that Lee has massive bruises and lacerations on his wrists and ankles that are consistent with his being tightly bound for an extended period of time.”
    “It’s almost certain,” said Willows, “that he was kidnapped. It could be the kidnappers communicated with his family. Even ordered Mrs Lee to tell Tommy Wilcox he’d come back home, was okay. The reason we didn’t get much out of her is because she has a heart condition and had been heavily sedated by the family doctor.”
    “Wonderful.”
    “Kirkpatrick thinks Lee was dead at least twenty-four hours before his body was dumped in the pond. But so far, there’s no way of knowing how soon he