Lillooet Lill

the one the Mounties recovered

The Case of Lillooet Lill

If you came here from the gallery page, you may already know how this one ends. Read it anyway — Walter never minded telling a good story twice, and we see no reason to be stricter than he was.

Of all the outlaws who ever stood along the Jesmond road, Lill is the only one with a true crime story attached — because she is the only one who was actually stolen. She took up her post in 2008 and held it for about a week. Then one day the post stood empty. Somebody had pulled over, sized her up, loaded her, and driven off. Walter chalked it up as an occupational hazard for a wanted woman.

The story should end there, and for several months it did. Then the phone rang at the house in Coquitlam. Clinton RCMP. Was he Walter Lutz? He was. The detachment had lately cleared a quantity of stolen property off a local place, the officer explained, and one recovered item was proving difficult to file: a lady. Inquiries around Jesmond all pointed the same direction. Would Mr. Lutz care to come and claim her?

He would. In due course Walter presented himself at the Clinton detachment and signed for her. The officer who brought her out seemed genuinely relieved to be rid of her. “Glad to get that thing out of here,” he said. “It’s given us all a big scare, multiple times over the months.” It turned out that every so often, someone passing the lockup would catch sight of a figure standing silent and motionless in the cells — and know, for one cold second, that the detachment had a prisoner nobody had signed in.

So Walter carried Lill out of the Clinton lockup and back to freedom — the only fugitive in this gallery ever actually recovered by police, proving once again that the Mounties always get their man . . . nequin.

Walter’s own rating: **** (out of *****)

The transcription