MURDER ON THE RUN A John Sanders Mystery Medora Sale

CONTENTS

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dedication

To Harry

sine quo nihil

Chapter 1

The girl walked slowly along the street, her feet in heavy hiking boots dragging slightly with every step or two. Her hands were jammed in the pockets of her jeans; her chin was tucked into her sweater against the cold March wind. As she walked, she thought bitterly about the afternoon ahead of her. “It wasn’t me,” she muttered, kicking a small rock viciously out of her path. “I didn’t make the agency go bankrupt.” And just when she was getting somewhere. Everyone had been impressed with her artwork for the supermarket campaign, really impressed. Robert, of course, said that she should have been able to figure out by then that Smith and Hines was going under and that she should find another job before it was too late. So it was her fault, as usual. And it would be her fault if she didn’t get this job, too. She considered going back to the apartment and looking over her portfolio one more time. Maybe there were too many pen-and-ink pieces in it. She could put in some zippier stuff—one of those really jazzy, sexy, geometric oil pastels, perhaps. She’d go home right now. No. There were four hours to get through before the interview and she needed to keep moving. Her pace picked up slightly as she pondered the technical problem of assembling her portfolio for maximum effect. But what if she didn’t get this job, either? She couldn’t go on living off Robert and listening to him sneer about people who slept in every day. Okay, she said to herself, if I don’t get this one, I’ll just go out and get a job. Any job. Polish up the typing, or whatever, and wait until things pick up. The effect of making the decision was magical. She took a deep breath of relief, straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin out of her sweater, and tossed her brown hair out of her eyes as she strode along.

Directly ahead of her a pleasant-looking, obviously baffled young man was blocking her way. He was leaning on the open door of his vehicle, a battered road map clutched in his hand. “Excuse me, miss,” he said, smiling politely, “but would you happen to know where Hawthorne Crescent is? I don’t seem to be able to find it here.” She stopped and looked at him, then bent her head over the map, her eyes squinting against the bright sun. The blow to her temple was so swift and hard that she felt nothing at all.

Less than two hours later Detective Inspector John Sanders found himself standing uneasily in the corridors of Toronto General Hospital. He had sent his working mate, Sergeant Ed Dubinsky, to find out what was new and to collect whatever the hospital had of interest. Compared to most of the world, Sanders was a tall man, and even lounging against the wall, he dwarfed the nurses and orderlies who rushed back and forth in front of him. In the midst of his calculations on the distance to the nearest coffee machine, Dubinsky loomed into view, filling the hall with his bulk, looking impassive as always. “Well?” Sanders asked irritably.

“Not much,” said Dubinsky. “She’s alive, out of surgery, unconscious, and probably won’t make it.”

“Can they tell what happened to her?”

“Pretty much. She appears to have been raped. There is”—he pulled out his notebook—“extensive injury to her face and to the cranium. That’s the head bones,” he added, by way of explanation.

“Yeah,” said Sanders, “I know.” A kaleidoscope of bloodied faces, smashed in and unrecognizable, rushed up from his memory, and his stomach lurched.

“Oh. Anyway, they’ve sealed up the evidence and sent it over to Forensic.”

“Do we know who she is?”

“Not yet. Did you see her when she came in?” Sanders shook his head. “The bastard had sliced most of her clothes off; she had nothing on but hiking boots, half a sweater, and some scraps of jeans or something. She looked pretty terrible. Anyway, she didn’t have any identification on her.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Sanders said abruptly. “Where did they find her?”

“Rosedale Ravine, beside a path.”

“Dammit,” he said, rubbing his hand over his head. “I suppose we’d better have a look.”

Five minutes later they were pulling into the city works department road at the bottom of the ravine. “Christ,” he said to Dubinsky, as they walked from the car down the frozen footpath into the bitter wind, “who would feel like raping someone in this weather? Any why in hell do these women go for nature walks in the middle of deserted ravines? You’d think by now they’d have heard it was unhealthy.”

“We don’t know she was walking in the ravine. He could have done it somewhere else and dumped her here when he was through. The snow looks pretty undisturbed.” They stood in silence and watched a small crew of men combing the area.

“Worthless exercise,” said Sanders. “They won’t find anything. Let’s go. Nothing to do here until some results come in. And I need some coffee.”

“Who found her?” asked Sanders, back at his desk, coffee in hand.

“Some kid from Leaside. Just a minute, I’ve got it all here.” Dubinsky pulled out his notebook. “Yeah. Gavin Ellis, age nineteen, was running to work down this path about 10:30 this morning and noticed a dog growling and sniffing around something. Said he’d stopped to tie his shoe, otherwise he wouldn’t have seen her or paid any attention to the dog. Those ravines are full of dogs.”

“Did he do it?”

“Naw. Not unless he did it in one hell of a hurry. His mother said he left for work in his running clothes at 10:15. She noticed the time because he was already late. He isn’t even much use as a witness, because he was plugged into one of those bloody radios as he ran, so he wouldn’t have heard anything that wasn’t pretty loud. Anyway, he ran over to Mount Pleasant and flagged down a patrol car at 10:35.”

“Still, this Ellis may have interrupted him.” Sanders twirled his pen around a couple of times, then started sketching outlines of bodies on the scratch pad in front of him. He added bushes behind one of them and drew in a tortuous path. “The others were dead when we found them.”

“Pity he didn’t interrupt him a little earlier, then.”

Sanders was drawing in rocks and gravel on the path. “That bastard has been bloody lucky.” He put down his pen. “He jumps strong healthy females in broad daylight. Not one of them screams or resists, as far as we can tell. They’re all attacked in the open, and no one sees it. Jesus. What does he do? Hypnotize them? And where in hell were the patrols? Those ravines are supposed to be patrolled night and day.” Dubinsky didn’t bother to answer. Sanders dropped his head on his hands and stared at his sketch. “Well, let’s look at the lot of them, and maybe something will connect this time.” He pulled a thick file toward him and started to flip through it. “The first one—as far as we know, anyway. January 16th, a Monday. Serena Gundy Park. Barbara Elizabeth Lash, age twenty-seven, married, two kids, housewife. Left the kids at her mother’s and went for a walk, trying to lose some weight after the holidays. Two o’clock in the afternoon, approximately. She was wearing”—he ran his finger down the page rapidly.