ALL NOVEL 3. Alarm Bells
According to the files I was given, the missing councilman's car was being stored at a local towing company. The private company had a contract with the town and worked with the local detachment, they handled all the official city and police towing in the area.
The business was just west of town off Highway Twenty-Six. It didn't look like anything special, there was a small squat building next to an unpaved parking lot, then behind that was a large quonset hut that looked like it was their garage. Another lot next to that was surrounded by six-foot fencing, that served as the impound lot.
I parked out front next to the small office then made my way inside. There was no receptionist, but an older gentleman came out of an office just off the reception area and greeted me.
"Hello friend, what can I do for you?"
"I'm detective Collier," I replied as I showed him my badge. "Are you in charge here?"
He smiled, "You betcha. I'm Rick, welcome to Rick's towing. You must be here about Phil Duncan?"
Rick looked like he was in his sixties. I doubted he was out doing much towing himself these days, but my first impression was of an earnest hard-working guy who was proud of what he did. He stood about five-foot-ten, his short hair was mostly grey with a few darker strands remaining. He wore a slightly bushy charcoal-grey moustache, and was dressed in blue over-alls, an orange t-shirt, and he had work boots on his feet.
"That's right," I nodded. "I understand his vehicle is here? Can I have a look at it?"
Rick nodded, "Sure thing."
He stepped back into his office for a moment then emerged holding a large key-ring. He led me out through a back door and over to the impound lot. One of the keys was used to unlock a beefy padlock and chain, then he pulled the gate open to let the two of us through. The lot was big enough to hold about two dozen cars, but there were only eight here now.
I followed Rick over to the nearest one, a big silver luxury SUV.
"Here you go," the old man said. "I don't have keys for it, but the doors are unlocked."
I thanked him then asked "Do you know if the local police have already searched it?"
Rick shook his head, "Don't think so? I was called to collect it from that parking lot just east of Main."
That made me frown. I didn't want to get in and look it over if it hadn't been processed yet. "Was it unlocked when you picked it up?"
He shook his head again, "No sir. I did that to get in and straighten the wheels out and set the parking brake so we could pick it up safely."
"Ah," I sighed. If Rick or his people had been all over the thing then it was already compromised from that point of view.
I opened the drivers side door and slipped in behind the wheel. I checked the glove box, centre console, behind the sun visors, just generally looking for anything that seemed out of place.
As I did that I asked, "Do you know the councilman?"
Rick shrugged, "I knew him about as well as any other local politician. He was the kind of guy you either liked or hated, no middle ground with him. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including Mayor Ross. Some folks will be sorry Phil's gone, but I don't doubt some have already started celebrating."
"How about you?" I asked. "Did he ever rub you the wrong way?"
"Put it this way," he replied with a laugh. "I wasn't gonna vote for him. In my experience, folks get into local politics for two reasons. Either they love the town and want to make it a better place, or they're so full up of themselves that they think they know everything and want to fix it so the town does it their way. Phil Duncan was the second kind. If you agreed with him he was your best buddy, disagree and you were his worst enemy."
I stopped what I was doing and looked at the old guy as I commented, "You talk about him like you think he's not coming back."
He shrugged again, "If he did, he'd be the first."
"The first what?" I frowned.
Rick explained, "The first one to come back after abandoning his car in that lot. There's been quite a few over the years. Phil's the first local who's vanished there, that was a surprise. But I've had the towing contract with the town council for twenty-five years, and we've picked up a lot of abandoned vehicles from that lot in my time. Nobody's ever come back to claim them."
I found myself staring at him. I was hearing alarm bells in my head, telling me this thing with the councilman was just the tip of the iceberg. "How many would you say you've picked up there?"
"Oh, around about twenty?" he replied with a thoughtful look on his face. "I'd say we get about one a year. Always that parking lot. A few of my boys say the place is cursed, but I don't believe in that nonsense."
"You wouldn't happen to have any information about them would you?" I asked. "Make, model, that sort of thing?"
Rick smiled "You bet I do. You don't hang on to the council contract for a quarter century by doing a half-assed job, you know?"
I smiled back at him, "Good man. Can I have a look at that?"
"Sure thing detective."
There wasn't anything of interest in the SUV, I didn't want to say it but I had a feeling Rick's staff had already picked it clean. Either that or the councilman never had anything personal in there to begin with. The vehicle was new enough and fancy enough to have a GPS built in, I could probably get some details of the last week or so of activity from that, but right now I was more interested in what sounded like a much larger case.
Rick led me back to the office, pausing to lock up the impound lot on the way.
His records were all on paper, he never bothered to computerize things. But what he had was meticulous. And the notes I was interested in were kept in their own file folder.
I sat down at the receptionist desk and started looking through the file, and it was a treasure-trove. There were twenty-three pages, each one documented a vehicle abandoned in that parking lot. The first one dated from nineteen ninety-six, the latest was Phil Duncan's Buick.
"Do you have a photocopier?" I asked after a few minutes. "Could I get copies of these?"
"You betcha," Rick replied. He took the folder back and led me into a little room next to his office. The photocopier was a rickety old thing, it was slow but it worked. Rick stood there copying each page for me. He worked about as slowly as the copier but he was careful, he kept every sheet in order and put them back in the folder afterwards, while a growing stack of copies awaited me.
As he worked I asked, "So what do you think's going on? Where do you figure these people disappear to?"
He didn't take his eyes off what he was doing, but he smiled as he replied "Oh, I have my theories. Like I said, some of the boys claim it's a curse. I've heard people say it's fairies, whisking people away to other worlds. Or witches."
He paused to get the next sheet lined up on the machine then continued, "Personally I think they're fleeing the country. Oh I know we're not some big international port here? But that parking lot's only half a mile from two marinas. We get a fair bit of boat traffic through here you know? Tourists, fishing, loads of recreational stuff. You get the right boat, from one of our little marinas you get from Nottawasaga Bay out to Georgian Bay, then Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Loads of places you can go from there. Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin. Plenty of opportunity for folks to just up and disappear out of the country."
His voice took on a more sinister tone as he added, "Or if they are fixing to leave this world, that's a whole lot of water to hide in. Most insurance won't pay out on suicides, but if you're missing long enough they'll declare you dead, and I reckon your loved ones get the pay out in the end."
I didn't comment but I had my doubts about his theory. I knew the two marinas in question, and they both had parking lots closer to them than the lot in question. And while I had nothing more than a gut feel right now, something told me that occult shop was involved.
When he was finished with the copying, Rick handed me the stack of twenty-three pages.
"Thank you," I said as I accepted them. "You've been a great help, and if I need another look at that SUV I'll let you know."
He smiled, "No problem detective. You have yourself a good day."
After my frustrating encounters with Skye yesterday and Selene this morning, it was positively refreshing to deal with someone helpful and forthcoming.
I was eager to go through the records he'd given me, so I headed back to the hotel for now. I grabbed lunch at a drive thru on the way, and fifteen minutes later I was back at my room. Cleaning staff had already been through so I had to replace the towel over the mirror again, but after that I sat at my desk and started on my burger while I reviewed twenty-five years of abandoned vehicles.
Rick's notes were excellent. He had the date each one was hauled off the lot, the make and model, the serial numbers and licence plate numbers. Four were rental cars which were all eventually returned to the rental companies. All four originated from the international airport in Toronto. Of the remaining nineteen, eighteen were held for one year then auctioned off. The last one was Phil Duncan's Buick, which was towed on Saturday the eighteenth, the day after he vanished.
The four rental cars were probably people coming in by plane and renting cars to come up here before they disappeared. Of the other nineteen, eleven were registered in Ontario, five were from other provinces, and three were from the USA.
After I finished lunch I fired up my laptop and logged into the department VPN. I ignored Duncan's car since I already knew it was his, and ran the plates on the other ten Ontario vehicles. Then I ran the five other Canadian plates. I couldn't access the US ones without submitting a request, so I put those three aside for now.
When I was done I set up a spreadsheet and put down all the information I had. Date the vehicle was towed, make model and plate numbers, name and address of the registered owner.
It was an eclectic list and I couldn't see any obvious commonalities.
Out out twenty-three vehicles, I had full information for the sixteen that were non-rental Canadian-owned. Two were owned by women, the rest were men. Out of all twenty-three, seventeen were abandoned during 'tourist season' between May and October, but the other six were over the winter months.
Some of the vehicles were expensive like Phil Duncan's, others weren't. There was literally no common denominator with anything I saw.
Next I was back on the department VPN to run the names of the people with the Ontario plates. I already suspected it, but it still sent a chill up my spine to find nine out of eleven names came up on missing persons notices, spanning the last twenty years. And I actually recognized one of those names.
Back in spring of twenty-twelve there was a big organized-crime bust in Toronto. The ringleader was a guy in his fifties. He was suspected of two violent murders, but they hadn't been able to conclusively tie him to the killings. They did however have a really strong case against him for trafficking narcotics and overseeing the whole enterprise. Then in July of that year, he vanished without a trace. As far as I could remember the rest of his organization went down and most of them were probably still in jail today, but it was assumed he slipped out of the country.
Now I was looking at a note that indicated his Cadillac was towed from that parking lot on Saturday July fourteenth, twenty-twelve. That suggested he arrived in town and vanished off the face of the Earth on Friday the thirteenth.
I could almost hear the Twilight Zone theme music playing in my head as I looked at the other twenty-two pages again.
What the fuck was going on here?
