by Sky Curtis
I poked her in the arm. “Hey, girlie.” That should do it.
She turned her head and looked at me, a glint in her eyes. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I poked her again.
“Don’t call me ‘girlie.’ And don’t poke me.”
I imitated her. “Don’t poke me.” I punctuated each word with a poke.
“Fuck off.” She got up from the couch and said, “It looks like we’re good.” She walked over to me, arms wide to give me a hug, and leaned forward, lips puckered to give me a kiss. At the last moment, she stuck out her tongue and slurped all over my face. Then she ran up the stairs to get away, laughing her head off.
“I’ll get you for that,” I yelled. “You’re not getting away with that, no way.”
I hated germs and she knew it. I was not quite a germophobe like my brother Andrew, but pretty close, and flew into the kitchen to scrub my face. When I looked up, I saw through the kitchen window the two EMS workers carrying the body board out of the woods and over to the ambulance. On it lay a zipped-up body bag, the two ends lying completely flat and a hump in the middle.
“Hey Cindy, the ambulance guys are bringing the body out of the woods.”
“Nice try,” she called back.
“No, really, I mean it, quick! You’re the photographer with the better phone. Get some pictures.”
I heard her window open. “I’ll take some from up here.” A minute later, she ran down the stairs and out the porch door, phone in hand.
I grabbed a tea towel to dry my face and then held it up. Ironed. Who on earth did that? Probably Andrew. He probably ironed his underwear too. He was so pompous. Keeping up with the Joneses even at the cottage.
I watched through the kitchen window as a scene unfolded in front of me. Cindy trotted up to the EMS guys while behind them the branches around the bright orange piece of tape marking the trail started to shake. Out stumbled Andrechuk, carrying four or five plastic bags filled with the detritus surrounding the body. Dirt. Leaves. A few shiny things. The female officer hurried over to the running ambulance and gave the bags to the younger fellow, who in turn put them carefully into the back of the ambulance. He slammed the passenger door as the wheels spun out of the drive, kicking up gravel behind it. Boys.
And then the rest of the police burst out of the woods. Niemchuk, looking pale, and Kowalchuk, looking large, trudged to the cottage, swatting at their heads to keep the bugs at bay.
I sat back down on the couch and held Lucky by his collar so he wouldn’t turn into an attack dog when they came into the kitchen. I decided then and there I would keep my suspicions about the bear attack to myself. Lucky started licking the front of my shirt. Cheese.
13.
THERE WAS A PERFUNCTORY knock at the screen door and then a slam. They just barged in? How rude. I tried not to look accusatorily at Kowalchuk as he entered the living room, followed by a shaken and pale Niemchuk.
“Sorry to be so brash as to waltz right in,” said Kowalchuk, seeing my look, “but time is of the essence.”
No, no it wasn’t. The guy who’d lost his head wasn’t in a hurry. “No problem. Make yourself at home.” I plastered a pseudo-smile on my face so he would know I was displeased.
There was another slam and Andrechuk entered the room, followed by a giggling Cindy. I hadn’t seen Cindy giggle in years. In fact, in at least a decade. If ever. No, I don’t think I’d ever seen her giggle. She wasn’t the giggling kind. I looked at her quizzically. Yup, she was smitten. I didn’t know many women who giggled. None of my daughters did, I hoped. But my boss Shirley giggled. Shirley also tilted her head and looked through eyelashes manufactured in a sweatshop. But both Cindy and Shirley were tough as nails and could switch in and out of the helpless female role, it seemed, on a whim.
Everyone took a seat. Cindy parked next to me and beside a restrained Lucky on the couch. I liked sitting there, particularly in this situation. As long as I was positioned in front of the large picture window, I knew they wouldn’t be able to read my expressions clearly. I would be a black silhouette lit up from behind, especially now that the sun was beaming through on its slow descent toward the horizon. This was a small advantage considering that they had guns.
Andrechuk plopped into my father’s reading chair, slightly off in a corner, and the two other cops took a load off on the couch opposite Cindy and me. The settee looked like a teeter-totter, with Kowalchuk weighing down one end and bouncing thin Niemchuk high in the air. I didn’t laugh. But my stomach growled. Dinner should be soon, I thought and glanced at my watch. Four-thirty. Not soon enough. But the minute these yahoos were gone, I’d have some wine to go with some more sneakily wolfed down cheese.
Kowalchuk had caught my glance at my watch. “In a hurry? Going somewhere?”
He could see me better than I thought. But I wasn’t going to be bullied. “I understand you want statements from us? How would you like that to work?”
He heaved one gigantic leg over the other, trying to look casual. Niemchuk held on to the arm of the couch as the cushions rippled towards him. “Well.” It came out like a tornado blowing through town. “You tell us what happened, Andrechuk here writes it down, and then you sign what she’s written.”
He was being patronizing but it washed right over me. That Buddhist thing was working. For now.
I acted surprised. “No tape recording?”
Cindy held up her phone. “I’ll tape it, nonetheless.”
Kowalchuk exhaled, feigning patience. “Sure, go ahead.” He waved his hand in the air.
“I actually don’t need your permission,” she snapped.
One day she was going to land in hot water. Andrechuk cocked her head and gave it a tiny shake. Cindy didn’t see it, but I sure had. Had Cindy gone too far and jeopardized her chances with Andrechuk?
Andrechuk said, “I take very thorough notes, don’t worry.”
I had trouble reconciling her musical, tinkling voice with the woman who had stood her ground and shot rounds into a charging bear, feet spread. But now I knew what was behind that tiny shake of a head. She’d been insulted by Cindy. It wasn’t a warning to show more respect to her boss as I had first thought. I had better leap into the fray before anyone dug themselves into any deeper holes.
“I’ll begin. We were going for a walk in the woods…”
Kowalchuk interrupted. “Back up. Why were you up here in the first place?”
I lied. “It’s my cottage. I came up for a short holiday from my job.”
He smelled a rat. “You’re a journalist, right? Always after a story? Why are you really there?”
“To find ramps. As I told you earlier.” I didn’t like where he was going. And I didn’t like his attitude. He uncrossed his legs and spread them wide, leaning forward. Men are so transparent. Showing me his junk? What an asshole. But I wasn’t going to be intimidated. “We were going for a walk in the woods before doing our shopping for the week and literally stumbled across a jacket that was lying on the ground.”
He growled, “I’ll let it go for now, but we will revisit, yet again, why you just happen to be here later.”
I plowed on. “We looked at the jacket and decided to leave it there, in case whoever had left it was coming back. The bugs were pretty bad so we decided to head towards the lake and get out into the open.”
“It would have been faster to turn around and head back to your cottage.”
He was so suspicious.
I continued. “We also wanted to see if there was any ice left on the lake and what temperature the water was.” I made that up. “So, as I was saying, we headed for the lake with the plan that if the jacket was still lying on the ground on our way back, we would pick it up and hang it on a branch or something. That way, whoever lost it would be able to see it.”
Andrechuk sat forward. “So, you got to the lake, saw the
re was no ice, and felt the water. What temperature was it?” What was she doing? Trying to undermine my honesty?
Cindy and I said in unison, “Freezing.”
Kowalchuk looked over his shoulder at Andrechuk. “Kimberley, it’s best if you don’t interrupt.”
Her name was Kimberley? You would have thought with a name like Andrechuk her first name would have been Katya, or Natalia, or something that was in keeping with her background. But no, she was a Kimberley. From the corner of my eye, I could see Cindy taking this all in. I could also see that Kimberley wasn’t happy. First of all, she’d been disciplined in front of civilians, which was boorish, and secondly, those said civilians now knew her first name, which was so unprofessional.
I watched Andrechuk as she recovered from these little jibes at her self-confidence. Her interest in Cindy seemed to be ebbing like a retreating tide. Or maybe she felt her interest should subside because Cindy would no longer be interested in her. She’d been told off by her superior, diminished somehow. If this was the case, she didn’t know Cindy very well. To her, mistreating an employee was a red cape to a charging bull. But Cindy was sitting beside Lucky, acting as cool as a cucumber, her latent energy and power being, well, latent. She was taking in all the little missteps and warping of power. I knew there’d be reaction of some kind eventually.
Cindy shattered Kowalchuk’s attempt at decorum with, “Good question though, Kim. Shows you were questioning our story.”
“Kim” was it now?
Andrechuk’s face transformed as her generous lips stretched into a wide smile. All was not lost. But I worried. Maybe she was a bit young for Cindy. Kim’s foundation wasn’t that of a woman in her prime, unwavering and authentic, it was the formulating foundation of a forty-year-old, still flexible and yielding with the years of remaining youth. Cindy needed a wrecking ball of a gal to reach her inner workings. Was I a wrecking ball? I knew her really well. I’d think about that later. Not that Cindy ever had a flexible personality. Even at the age of three, I’m sure she was strong-willed and outspoken.
Kowalchuk’s head bounced like a ricocheting pinball from Andrechuk to Cindy to me. He rebounded from Cindy to me a couple of times. “You go on holidays much together?” he asked.
“Cindy and me?” I ventured innocently. “What does that have to do with a dead person in the woods?” I was getting feisty.
“Just fleshing out all the details, trying to picture the whole story here.”
Cindy answered by standing up. If anything even hinted at homophobia, she was gone. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming by.” It was a dismissal.
Kowalchuk didn’t move. “We can do this at the station,” he said.
He was right. He could easily ask us all to get in a squad car and go downtown to Huntsville’s police station. Cindy knew it and sat down, lips curled against her teeth, her smile resembling the fangs of a bobcat ready to pounce on a mouse. Andrechuk straightened the notebook on her lap and I continued the story. “After feeling the water, we walked back the way we had come. The jacket was still there. Cindy tried to pick it up out of the dirt, but it was lodged in the mud. So, I offered to help and we pulled on the collar together. There was this sort of sucking noise and then…” The white severed neck bone skittered across my mind. I could feel my eyes losing muscle control and rolling back into my head.
“We saw that there was a torso inside the jacket.” Cindy finished the sentence for me.
My phone, which had been clamped in my hand, suddenly vibrated and rang. I yelped. Electric shocks were coursing up my arm to zap my heart. I looked at the screen. Ralph. He said he’d check in when he was done his paperwork. “I have to take this,” I said to no one in particular. I stood up and walked into the kitchen and faced the screen door. I didn’t dare go outside with all the bugs, and there were no other rooms on the first floor. Hopefully, no one would listen in. Good luck with that. The cottage’s open-plan concept had its disadvantages.
“Hi Ralph,” I whispered. “I thought you were snowed under. You’re done early. How are you doing?”
“Yeah, done early for today. Just finished the last bits of today’s paperwork. I’m great. Lived through another shift.” He always joked about that. I didn’t think it was funny, him being a cop and all. “But you sound funny. Why are you whispering?”
“There are a bunch of police in my living room.”
“Police? Why? Are you okay?”
His concern was heartwarming, although for some reason my heart wasn’t warmed. We’d only been going out for about six months, okay eight, but he still had so much baggage. I couldn’t unpack it to reach who he was. Frankly, I was tired of trying. He had to either dump the little fortress he’d erected around himself or I was gone. Erected. Hmmm. He had his good points. Points. Hmmm. So to speak. Maybe I’d wait a little longer for him to be emotionally available.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just peachy. Found a dead guy in the woods today.”
“Ugh. That must have been pretty disgusting. Was the body still intact? Or had the animals got to him?”
“You might say that. An animal.”
“Pardon? You’re breaking up. I’m losing you.”
How perceptive. Maybe he was losing me. I walked closer to the window to get a better signal. The living room was silent. Were they listening in? “A bear. He was attacked.”
“I know. I can’t bear spotty cell coverage either. It is so tacky.”
“No,” I hissed. “Cindy and I found a guy who had been killed by a bear.”
“Cindy is unbearable? I could have told you that.” Cindy, being a crime reporter, was shunned by cops all over Toronto. “Why did you invite her up?”
“Creston!” I hissed again. “We found a guy who’d been killed by a bear.”
There was silence.
“I don’t think I heard you right. Did you say you’d found a guy who’d been killed by a bear?”
“Yes.” Finally, the news had been delivered.
“Naw. That’s impossible. Bears don’t kill. Not in Ontario anyway. Not those little brown bears.”
The image of that huge bear crashing through the undergrowth, his fur shiny in the sunlight, crossed my mind. “Little” was not the adjective I would have used. “That’s what I’m thinking. But it happened. And then Niemchuk got attacked.”
“I’m not a tacky numbskull.” He laughed, knowing he’d heard me wrong.
“Look, the cell service is impossible and I have to give a statement to the police here. I gotta go.”
“Who’s in charge up there?”
“Kowalchuk.”
“Bless you.”
“Kowalchuk.” I said louder.
“Oh him. Big guy, right?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“I went to school with that guy. We trained together.”
“Ralph?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Can you come up?”
Now why the hell did I say that? Two seconds ago I was thinking of breaking up with him, wasn’t I? God, I was so weak. A few hours away plus one dead guy and I needed my boyfriend like some pathetic damsel. So dependent.
“Oh sweetie, no, I’m so sorry. I can’t come up right now. Maybe in a few days I could take a long weekend.”
He sounded truly sorry. He really was sweet. Maybe I’d get through his crap to his centre after all.
“What are you working on?” I asked Ralph, ever the journalist.
“You know I can’t tell you that. But it’s almost over, and when it is, I’ll come right up. Okay?”
“Thanks. I’m a little freaked out by all this.”
“Kowalchuk is a good cop, if not a tad gruff. He’ll figure it out. Go give your statement and then have a drink.”
You betcha. Wait, was he enabling me? Were we codependent? I’d have to think about that,
too. How much did he drink anyway? I was so busy hiding my sneaky little gulps that I hadn’t noticed what he was doing. “Okay. Good plan. It will settle my nerves. I feel jangly all over my body.”
“It’ll be okay. Bye. Love you.”
I nearly fell over. Love you? Where had that come from? The L-word. Fuck. Did I have to say “love you” back? My throat did a funny gurgle thing and I hung up. I could blame it on the poor cell service. I stood in the kitchen for a second gathering my thoughts. Right. Focus. Statement. Police. Headless torso. Nothing to do with love.
I walked back into the living room. They’d found magazines and were leafing through them. Kimberley was paging through a Mechanix Illustrated from 1974. Interesting choice. Kowalchuk put down a Good Housekeeping from the eighties, and Niemchuk, whose colour had returned, was chuckling at the jokes in a Reader’s Digest.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Were you talking to Ralph Creston? I thought I heard you say “Creston.”
Kowalchuk had been eavesdropping. “Yes, he said he knew you, that you’d trained together.”
“Yeah, the Police Academy. Years and years ago. He’s a good cop. He’s your partner?”
“No.” God, no. No. No. No. Despite the L-word. “Just a casual boyfriend.”
He looked at Cindy and then back at me. I saw the wheels turn as he ascertained that we were not an item. He must be blind not to notice the frisky eyes she was making at Andrechuk. “Okay, let’s finish this up.”
I went through the whole story. The scattered bones. The barf in the bushes. The clipboard. The ring.
He went ballistic. “Wait, you found a ring? What ring? Where is it?”
Cindy stretched her legs out and leaned back so she could squeeze her hand into the front pocket of her very tight jeans. She wiggled her hand down to the bottom of the pocket and pulled out the ruby ring, leaned forward, and handed it to Kowalchuk. He took it from her and held it up to the light, inspecting the surface.