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MADELINE DEERSTALKER

 

When Emily Tannen went over Niagara Falls without a barrel, it was a tragedy; but not one I ever expected would intrude on my life.

 

My Life was actually going very well at the time, thank you. I had just been appointed director of the Deerstalker Security Agency. Madeline Deerstalker, the owner, had made her modest fortune from the firm and had gone into semi-retirement, raising horses and racing them at nearby Fort Erie.

 

You have to hand it to Madeline, she was the first to notice that, while all hotels and motels have problems, of the hundreds of hotels and motels in Niagara Falls, only a handful were large enough to afford their own security personnel. And so, the Deerstalker Security Agency was born to fill the void, enrich Madeline and provide me with gainful employment.

 

Not that I was necessarily earning my keep that early May morning, sipping my orange juice, admiring my elegant new office and listening to the radio reporting on the unidentified woman who had failed to become the first adult to survive a trip over the falls without a barrel--but I was about to.

 

My involvement in the demise of Emily Tannen came about somewhat indirectly in the form of a phone call from Peter Druker, manager of the Grand Torrent Hotel: waterbeds, heart-shaped jaccuzis, special rates for honeymoon couples and no questions asked. Not one of your classier places.

 

"MacKenzie? I got a problem in one of my rooms. A baby's been crying all night in 227 and annoying the guests next door." Ah, the glamour of hotel security work. Crying babies, loud arguments and rowdy Lions club conventions is about as exciting as it gets. "Housekeeping tried to get in to see what was the matter, but no one answers. And they got the door bolted. Maybe the mother had a stroke or something. You free to come out and handle this?"

 

I shook my head in disbelief. "I think you have a medical emergency on your hands, Peter. Better give 911 a call."

"Okay, no problem. But they'll probably send the cops too. You know how it is whenever anything happens to a guest at a motel. So I still need you to come out." I could hear the panic in his voice. The idea of actually inviting the police to come look over the Grand Torrent, was low on Druker's list of priorities.

 

Part of my job is being liaison between the hotels and the police. Being an ex Sergeant in the Ontario Provincial Police I'm supposed to know how to talk to the local coppers, tone down their well known penchant for needlessly disrupting the guests and destroying the reputation of places like the Grand Torrent.

 

I sighed. "Well, I've got a meeting with Ms. Deerstalker in an hour. I can come over until then. You give 911 a call and I'll be right there."

 

X X X

 

The Grand Torrent was an old two story motel located just up Beacon Hill from the Falls. As I got out of my car I could see the mist from the Falls roaring into the sky above the newer motel with the better view across the street. In the distance, two small helicopters shuttled the latest in an unending flow of tourists toward the mist, on a ride they'd never forget. The helicopters vied with each other for the best view of the gorge, a practise that had resulted in a spectacular crash only two years before. At the Falls we see the tourists get what they want, even if it kills them.

 

As I entered the motel I was surprised to find Sargent Guerra in the walk-in closet they called a lobby. It usually took a lot more than a crying baby to dislodge Guerra from his office uptown. He was a big, patient, observant guy who knew how things went down. His rumpled clothing looked out of place beside the neat uniforms of the two young officers flanking him. Ever since taking over responsibility for his own laundry and dry cleaning a few months ago, Guerra's appearance had gradually, but relentlessly, declined. A slow smile crawled across his face when he saw me.

 

"Well Alex, how's life in the private sector?" He asked.

 

"Be a lot nicer if I wasn't dragged out of my expensive new office at 9:30 in the morning to come down here." I shook my head. "How's the wife?"

 

Guerra sighed. "Not much change. Her mother's down now. Moved in with us last week to look after her. Cancer's a real bitch."

 

I nodded an understanding he knew I felt. We went back a way and he knew if there was anything I could do, he had only to ask.

 

"So what have we got here?"

 

Guerra's eyes refocused on me and took stock for a moment. "Maybe nothing more than it seems. Then again, maybe a lot more."

 

"So,how does it seem?" I asked, looking around the small lobby for Druker.

 

Guerra frowned. "It seems a lonely woman from Rochester came to town determined to make a very public and colourful exit. Did you see that video the tourist shot of her going over the edge? Such a peaceful look on her face. No horror, no second thoughts. An instant later she was dead. So, suicide, that's how it seems."

 

I was puzzled. "I'm sorry, you lost me there. Are you talking about the woman who went over the falls this morning? "

 

"Yeah, this is where she was staying. Why, you here for some other reason?"

 

"Druker was complaining about a baby crying all night. They can't seem to rouse the mother to answer the door."

 

I could see some connections clicking into place behind Guerra's calm brown eyes as he realized we were talking at cross purposes and that those purposes could in some tragic way be related.

 

I told him about Druker's phone call as the wail of a distant siren began to grow in the back ground.

 

"What room did Druker say the baby was in?" he asked.

 

"227" I told him. The expression on his face showed the room number meant something to him.

 

"Damn!" he growled.

 

Leaving one of the uniformed officers to wait for the ambulance, we headed up the stairs next to the desk and turned right, down the long corridor beside the clanking ice machine. After pushing through the second set of chipped and battered fire doors, we saw Druker and two housekeepers standing uncomfortably outside one of the rooms. The older of the housekeepers was holding a box of diapers and a baby bottle in her hand. All three looked as if they'd been in a hard battle with life, and life had won at every turn.

 

There was no sound of a baby crying and for an instant we all stood letting the possible implications of that silence settle in.

 

Druker was about as run down and nondescript as his hotel. He was virtually quivering with impatience. "Jeeze, did you have to bring the whole police force with you," he complained.

 

I gave him a sour look and introduced him to Guerra. The two housekeepers backed away from us toward their laundry cart, as if association with the police could somehow contaminate them. I gave the two women a reassuring nod and motioned for them to stay.

 

Druker turned toward Guerra. "The mother in there must be ill or worse. We've been trying to rouse her for hours. The baby only stopped crying half-an-hour ago."

 

"If the mother's name is Emily Tannen," Guerra's deep voice rumbled. "You're going to have to knock a lot harder, she died last night down at the falls."

 

Druker looked pale. He was probably calculating the depressing effect on business of the Grand Torrent showing up in newspaper headlines connected to a police investigation. "But she has to be, or at least someone old enough to lock the door from the inside, has to be in the room. Ms. Tannen's baby is only a couple of months old."

 

"Couldn't the mother have locked the baby in when she left."

 

Druker shook his head. "The door has three locks," he explained. "The door lock, that's the key the guests get. The dead bolt, which can only be thrown from inside--but we can open or close from outside with our key. And this night catch which doesn't operate by any key." He indicated the mechanism just visible through the slightly open door. It consisted of a tapering slotted bar, attached to the door frame, that was currently fitted over a bulbous prong attached to the door. When the door was closed the slot on the bar fit over the bulb on the prong; but if the bar wasn't removed before an attempt was made to open the door, the bulb slid on the slot until it caught, preventing the door from being opened more than an inch or so. "It can only be locked, or unlocked, from inside the room."

 

Guerra surveyed the solid metal devise. Then he gave the door a shove, but the catch held firmly in place. He put his shoulder to it with the same result. He reached in with his fingers to try to slip the bar off the prong with an equal lack of success. Although his efforts made considerable noise, the room stayed silent.

 

He turned to the officer who'd come with us. "Conner, you better get the bolt cutters out of the cruiser. Fast."

 

The ambulance attendants came hurrying along the hall , as the officer left. They came bearing bags of medical equipment and an heir of professional competence. The shorter, stockier attendant began to smile at the sight of the younger housekeeper. I saw her frown a warning and his smile vanished. I wondered about that as Guerra marched down the hall to greet them, his deep voice rumbling an explanation. He ended with a question I couldn't make out but the older paramedic's answer was sharp and clear. "In a twelve hour period there'd be no chance of a healthy baby starving to death," he said. "I'd be more concerned about dehydration. Be a heck of a diaper rash. No the real worry would be of the child falling off the bed or something, or getting tangled in blankets and smothering."

 

Guerra muttered an oath.

 

When he returned, I walked Guerra down the hall the other way for a private talk. "Sam, you said it 'seemed' like Emily Tannen committed suicide. Is there something that makes you think she didn't?"

 

Guerra considered for a moment before he answered. "There was a gash on the side of her face. Shows up clearly on the video. Now maybe her head hit a rock in the rapids before she reached the falls. When I look at those rapids at the top of the falls, I wonder how anyone ever lives long enough to reach the final drop."

 

"Or else she was hit first and then went for her swim?" I suggested, catching up with his reasoning. I couldn't help looking over his shoulder, past the forlorn group gathered outside the stubbornly locked door of the room, to the fire door Conner would be returning through in a few minutes. No sign of Conner returning yet.

 

"Yeah,and it wasn't a look of peace on her face, she was semi-comatose and didn't know what was happening." Guerra shook his head. I couldn't help wondering if his own wife's battle to live, made it difficult for him to accept a young healthy woman just throwing her life away.

 

"If that's the case, for her sake, I hope she stayed that way until it was over. Be a hell of a thing to come to half way down the edge of the falls."

 

Druker cleared his throat and called down to us. He was still impatient and obviously didn't like being left out of the conversation. "Whoever bolted that door has to still be in there," he said. "Unless you're only an inch wide you can't get out without undoing that catch."

 

"The windows don't open?" I asked, as we walked back toward them.

 

Druker shook his head. "If you have windows that open, people just screw up the air conditioning in the summer and the heat in the winter. There's no percentage in having windows that open on a unit."

 

"Any connecting doors to the next room?"

 

"No nothing, this is it."

 

"Was anyone with Mrs. Tannen when she checked in?" Guerra asked.

 

"Just her and the baby," Druker looked to the housekeepers for support.

 

"Helen and me never saw her," The younger one replied nervously, chewing on a small stick of gum and still studiously avoiding the younger paramedic. "She must have checked in last night. There was some older couple here for a few days before that."

 

"The night manager told us the people on both sides of the room were complaining all night about the noise." Helen, the other housekeeper, added, putting the packet of diapers down on the laundry cart. "He tried phoning the room but got no answer, and the crying stopped after that. It started up again just after Josie and I started work. Mr. Druker asked me to see to it. So I knocked on the door and when I couldn't get a response, I tried getting in with the master key. But the door was on that safety catch." She looked at Josie. "That poor baby. Crying all night, and its mamma dead."

 

"Who do you suppose she could have left it with? "Josie asked. "And what could have happened to them?"

 

I know Guerra had some ideas about that, but this wasn't the time for speculation. I know what I thought: murder -suicide. If Ms. Tannen really had committed suicide, then, statistically speaking, the baby's father was the most likely other person behind the door. Emily Tannen had left him for dead, maybe following some domestic dispute, and then, horrified by what she'd done, took her plunge over the falls. But he couldn't have died, at least right away. After she left he'd had enough strength to bolt the door to prevent her coming back to finish off the job. Of course, it didn't have to be the father, it could have been a lover, or the baby's grandmother, or an older child of Ms. Tannen's. Whoever it was, was likely also dead by now.

 

The fire door at the end of the corridor slammed open and Conner finally returned with the bolt cutters. Guerra nodded his permission and the man slid the head of the large bolt cutters through the gap in the door. He strained against the handles and the blades slid through the metal, closing together with a vicious snap.

 

As the door swung open the air in the corridor filled with a putrid odour that stopped us all in our tracks.

 

"Keep everyone here," Guerra ordered Conner. The officer turned to block the doorway, the heavy bolt cutters hanging loosely by his side. Considering the stench, he needn't have bothered. The rest of us were quite happy staying right where we were. I noticed Helen's eyes were beginning to water. Beside her, Druker was looking on with a kind of adolescent excitement. Josie backed up a step, the juicy snapping of the gum in her mouth was the only sound in the hall. The paramedics stood closest to Conner, alert and ready to respond.

 

Over the officer's shoulder I could see Guerra turn right into the bathroom that was immediately inside the front door. He was out again in seconds shaking his head and disappeared deeper into the small motel room.

 

A piercing shriek, made us all jump. Then everyone started talking because it meant the baby was still alive. Moments later Guerra came out holding the screaming baby at arms length. Its tiny face was red and wet with tears--and, Lord, I suddenly knew exactly where that smell had been coming from.

 

"Do you have an empty room nearby?" Guerra shouted at Druker.

 

Helen answered, wiping her eyes. "230's free."

 

Druker looked at the diapers and bottle she was holding. "I'm glad someone was thinking." He said. He gave her the baby. "Give us all a break and get the baby changed quickly. You'd better get it fed too." He looked at the paramedics from the ambulance . "Go with her and check the baby over. And Conner, you better get in touch with Children's Services."

 

"What about who ever else was in there, shouldn't one of us check them over too." The shorter and stockier of the two ambulance attendants asked, giving Josie a quick glance before picking his equipment up off the floor.

 

Guerra shook his head. "There is no one else in the room," he announced awkwardly. "Just the babe."

 

(C) B.E. Fraser, 1994 No copying of this material without the expressed permission of the author is permitted.

 

FOR Madeline Deerstalker PART 2 CLICK HERE

 

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