I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel by William Deverell Page B

angle showed a pair of panties snagged on a rootlet. Then a close-up of them dangling from tweezers, and finally they were shown spread on a sheet of wrapping paper beside a twelve-inch ruler. Silk-like fabric, flared at the leg openings, which were trimmed with lace and ribbons.
    As Jettles and Borachuk got up to hover and watch, Kneppcarried on in his excruciatingly helpful way. “Size medium, no label. Make out of it what you want, Artie, but I don’t think they had a lady up there with them. That white splotch on the right cheek looks like bird shit.”
    Borachuk winked at me, sharing a conspiratorial joke about Knepp’s apparent expertise in fecal forensics.
    â€œThey found some clotted white stuff on the crotch,” Knepp added.
    â€œDefinitely looks like pecker tracks,” Jettles said, demonstrating his own scientific specialty.
    If this female undergarment were to analyze for semen discharge, I wouldn’t be sure what to make of it, other than that Knepp and Jettles would have more ammunition for their graceless innuendos.
Roscoe asked me if they was acting perverted, like them homos
.
    â€œOkay, next item,” said Knepp. “It’s my duty here to honestly disclose what we just got from the print examiners. Maybe you want to sit down.”
    I blanched as he showed me the report. Several matches for Gabriel’s thumbs and fingers on the plastic panes in Mulligan’s wallet. A thumbprint on the face of the watch. I did sit down.
    My head was buzzing as Knepp carried on about how the fingerprints put Gabriel “right smack dab” at the murder scene. Surely there was an explanation for this. But why had Gabriel kept it from me?
    Knepp was grinning – he could tell I was shaken. I tried to pull myself together as he opened the exhibits locker. Mulligan’s fishing gear and clothes: jacket, shirt, undershirt, trousers, boots, hip waders. Assuming his lower undergarment was accounted for, all that was missing were socks. Mulligan wouldn’t have gone sockless in those country boots.
    The wallet was of worn leather, soft, like deerskin. Behind one plastic pane, a Kodacolor of Irene with shoulder-length auburn hair, smiling in an appealing way. On the back, this notation:
June 12, ’57
. The year they married.
    Knepp pointed to a 30-30 rifle, Gabriel’s. “Oh, I forgot – ident also found a couple of 30-30 cartridges there. They test fired this baby and they’re checking to see if we got a good match.”
    â€œThey were found three days ago?” My voice cracked. “Where?”
    He showed photographs, one shell lodged in weeds in a crack in a rock, the other beneath some ferns. They’d been planted there – that was my immediate assumption. I felt my chances for acquittal slipping away.
    I said nothing more, tried to focus. Also seized from Gabriel were odds and sods of trifling significance: a chess set; a dented brass sports trophy; books, some from the Squamish library. Salary records, a pad with addresses, various handwritten notes. But also something unexpected – a carbon copy of Mulligan’s unfinished memoir.
    A greater volume of paper had been taken from Mulligan’s cottage – the contents of his desk, I assumed – even his Remington upright. Among those bundled sheaves must be the original pages of his memoir. All too much to absorb right then. I was thinking about a stiff drink, thinking hard about it.
    â€œI’d like to spend tomorrow looking through the papers.”
    â€œBe our guest. You want copies, we have a duplicator. You staying the night somewhere?”
    â€œI’m camping.”
    â€œKeep your boots dry, pardner.”

    On returning, full of beer, to my tent I found my air mattress sitting in three inches of water. I looked balefully at a lean-to where dry split alder and hemlock were stacked. A brilliant woodsman might light a fire in this rain, but not a city lawyer with a