by John Farrow
She looked very directly at him. ‘Why do you think I told you my story?’
‘Why did you?’
‘Because you’re gonna get there anyway. You’ll pull it together. Stitch it up. You along with others will think maybe it was me. But this is where I have a say: Maybe it wasn’t me. I’m owning up to some things, letting you know that, yeah, it could be me. Only it wasn’t. It isn’t. Give me cred for that, that’s what I ask for here, what I hope from you. A little cred.’
‘I see. Tell me about Paul Lagarde. He involved?’
She was mulling over whether she should admit to even knowing him. That she took too long to decide occurred to her.
‘Maybe not as much as he should be,’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Means what it means.’ She had crossed a few lines in their discussion. This one was prohibitive enough to go no further. She was stepping away. ‘You got to remember,’ she warned. ‘I’m not taking sides in here. Not as far as anybody can ever see.’
‘Appreciate the talk, Temple,’ Cinq-Mars admitted. ‘I’ll keep your cooperation in mind. Now, let’s do the maps.’
She drew them up as he suspected, with her and the other larger woman, Malka, doing the laundry.
‘You were together the whole time?’
Perhaps the easy-going atmosphere had caused her to be too relaxed. She lifted a shoulder absently, then acknowledged, ‘More or less.’
Or perhaps her comment was intentional. If others were willing to consider her as the killer, and say so out loud to him, then she might permit a suspicion of her own to slip past her lips. Either to put him on the wrong track, to divert him from herself, or to put him on a track she considered significant.
Perhaps the right one.
Malka.
ROZLYNN
i
A declarative nod of his chin directed the guard to decamp. Before doing so, she challenged him with an acerbic facial expression, then her shoulders slumped in annoyance. The prisoner had arrived that very minute, why should she, the only guard in the room, leave now? Cinq-Mars jerked his chin again. The corrections officer got the message and grumpily departed, leaving him alone with Rozlynn.
Rather than sit, the woman paced. Decidedly uncomfortable.
He let her walk off her tensions, forward and back before the table, forward and back. When she showed no inclination to slow down, he returned to reading a folder of documents until she did.
After she finally stopped pacing, he said, ‘You’re allowed to sit.’
She neither acknowledged the invitation nor declined it. Three minutes later, she sat.
‘You did a good job,’ he told her.
Roz was baffled.
‘With the fight,’ Cinq-Mars explained. ‘Pulling people off the pile. Good job. Were you hurt at all?’
She shrugged, which seemed to convey that she was sore.
‘Are you always the peacemaker around here?’
She appeared to be mulling that over, which concluded with a shrug of indeterminate meaning.
‘I know that you’re a quiet person, Rozlynn, but I do have to ask that you answer my questions. Thanks. So. Are you a peacekeeper, do you think?’
Rozlynn thought about it some more, then said, ‘I dunno. Yesterday maybe.’
‘You did a good job, being a peacekeeper. That doesn’t exactly square with the crime that put you here. Murdering your dad. That was not keeping the peace.’
‘Maybe not,’ she said. Defiant.
‘Maybe not? Do you think it might? Were you keeping the peace at the time?’
Once again, she reverted to a shrug.
‘It’s possible,’ Cinq-Mars ruminated. ‘I mean, I can see where that could be the case. The court documents, for instance, mentioned a few things about your father and your relationship.’
‘What documents?’ As softly as she spoke, an underlying antagonism was present.
‘He took you hunting in the woods, it says. That meant you had to sleep beside him—’
‘Not like that!’ Rozlynn burst out. ‘Not that way!’
He had never heard her so animated. A pent-up emotion let loose.
‘I didn’t think so,’ he said.
He waited. She was calming down as best she could. Not ridding herself of her emotional impetus but concealing it from the only other person in the room. ‘What did you say?’ she asked.
‘Only my opinion, but it seems perfectly natural to me. The way the lawyers were talking, and the social workers in the courtroom, sleeping beside your father while you’re out hunting ducks – they made it sound abnormal. What did they expect? That your dad would sleep in the blind and you would … what? Sleep in the lake?’
She laughed, just a little.
‘They were crazy,’ she said.
‘The lawyers?’
‘Them, yeah.’
‘I thought so,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘If your dad abused you, you never said so. Their assumption could have been correct, but it was based on nothing. Unprofessional. I could use other words. Anyway, how was your relationship with your dad? You killed him. I don’t imagine it was great. Or were you crazy on drugs or something? Or did an argument get out of hand? What happened?’
He gave her time once more, respecting her pace. It seemed necessary. Others he might press for a quicker response, but he was crossing a divide with Rozlynn. Several divides. Racial, gender, historical laments and betrayals. She needed to find her way through this and took time to gaze across the table at him, to study him.
‘I killed him,’ she said.
‘You’ve been honest about that, right from the start. It’s appreciated.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ she said.
Cinq-Mars took that in. ‘That’s something you never told the courts.’
‘I didn’t know it was him.’
Cinq-Mars needed time, and Rozlynn gave it to him.
‘That’s news,’ he said eventually. ‘Who did you think it was if not your father?’
‘I thought it was my uncle coming for me. He said he would. My dad’s brother. I don’t like him. For years he said he’d come after me, get me on my birthday when I turned eighteen.’
‘Get you?’
‘He told me that the first time I was ten. I didn’t know what he meant, not back then. I learned. He wanted to throw me on the grass. Do it to me on the grass like an animal. He said that. He was only waiting for the right time.’
‘When you turned eighteen.’
‘Because I was family. If I wasn’t family, he wouldn’t wait. With other girls he didn’t wait. With me, I was family. So he waited. He is not a good man.’
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Cinq-Mars stated flatly. ‘An accommodation should have been made. Reduced sentence at least.’ He believed her to a fault. She had a flat, monotone speech pattern that rarely changed, but somehow, he could decipher when she was repeating what people expected her to say and when she spoke from a depth.
‘I can’t get out of this place,’ she said. ‘I’m stuck here.’
‘Not saying it’s easy. No way can it be quick. We could begin a process. Give you a chance to state the real facts, tell the courts what really happened. I’d be in your corner. You never know, people can be influenced sometimes. Worst case, we’d be ready for the parole board and nail it the first time in. What would you do if you got out, Roz? Where would you go?’
‘Go home. Find my uncle. Kill him next.’
Cinq-Mars mulled that over, trying to decide if she was merely serious or dead serious. ‘Yeah,’ he decided in the end, ‘maybe you should stay here.’
She laughed a little. He wasn’t sure if she was having him on or not.
‘Maybe I won’t now,’ she said.
‘What’s changed? Are you more mature? No longer seeking revenge?’
He could tell that she was wrestling with her answer. For some reason this was harder on her than her response about the death of her father. He�
�d soon surmise that, as the first question was about the past, about everything said and done, it was less of a hardship than trying to discern what was yet to come. His second question concerned the future, and that was a time difficult to fathom.
‘Rozlynn, why not?’ he asked again quietly.
‘Abigail says you’re all right.’ Another of her prolonged silences. ‘Thinks you’re decent. You know, for a cop.’
‘She should know. I put her in jail.’
‘Yeah. She told me that.’
‘If I put her in jail and she still thinks I’m all right, you’re thinking that maybe you can talk to me. Abigail thinks you should?’
‘She thinks that, yeah.’
From what he could determine from her appearance, from how she put herself together, from the clothes she wore, she remained nostalgic for the life she’d left behind. First Nations women did not fare well in prison. Did anyone? he asked himself. Still, First Nations women when among their own were sunk by old problems and perpetual bad habits. Drugs. Alcohol. Wretched stories. Among a broader prison population they were ostracized, kept on the fringe, lacking any cultural connection to the lives of white or black women. An abject loneliness did many in. Rozlynn was a handsome young woman, she exhibited a physical prowess to her deportment, but he could feel the over-arching, aching, naked loneliness rampant in her. He imagined that Abigail had noticed that, too. That in befriending her, Abi had made herself indispensable.
‘The two of you are close,’ Cinq-Mars stated. ‘It’s hard for you to trust anyone. Especially a white male police officer. I get that. A lot of history there that nobody wants to talk about. But here’s something worth thinking about. Abigail is willing to be friends with you. Even anxious to be your friend. She’s close to you. She also can’t trust many people in this world. Not in prison, not on the outside, either. Mainly on account of what she’s done. If she can trust you, and if she can trust me, then who knows? Maybe you and me can trust each other. Is that possible?’
She wasn’t going to answer that question. A step too far.
Cinq-Mars worked from a different angle after that. ‘Why did you confess to killing your dad when you didn’t know it was your dad you were killing?’
That shrug. ‘Because I did it. He was dead. I killed him.’
‘I wish all criminals were as straightforward as you. Except I’m not sure it’s done you much good.’
She shrugged.
‘Why were you pulling women off Abi during the fight? Why get in there like that when you might get hurt?’
‘Abi’s my friend.’ The question felt absurd to her. Of course she’d peel bodies off Abigail’s back in that situation.
‘That’s what I thought. Do you know what I think? That Abi, in a way, wants to peel bodies off your back, too. Help you out that way, the same as you would do for her. Difference is, the bodies on your back are invisible. They’re hard for anyone to see. But Abi can see them. Because she’s like that.’
If she wanted to ask if Cinq-Mars could see them also, she didn’t.
‘Everybody wants something from Abi,’ Rozlynn said, which for her was a veritable speech.
‘What do you want from her?’
‘Nothing. I’m the only one who doesn’t want nothing.’
‘You see? That’s one very good reason why she’s close friends with you. You’re a rare and special person to her. She can count on you not to be out to get her. What does she want back from you, do you think?’
He was expecting her to say ‘friendship’, or something even simpler, such as ‘someone to talk to.’ Instead she responded with a more complicated reply. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Roz said.
‘Because you don’t know, or because you do?’
A non-committal shrug.
‘Now you have to,’ he argued back. ‘After showing me that carrot, you have to let me have a bite, no?’
‘No,’ she said. Then she was quiet, and he hoped that she was mulling through her options. He dared not interfere with those internal deliberations.
ii
A different tack.
‘Rozlynn, do you think Abigail’s life is in danger? This is pretty important, so I hope you don’t just shrug it off. Think about it. Is her life in danger? You talk to her a lot. Does Abigail think her life is in danger?’
Cinq-Mars was under the impression that Roz was dwelling on his question in a serious manner, except that her answer dispelled that notion. ‘Her life is not in danger,’ she said. ‘She’s safer than anybody.’
He pursed his lips in a way that betrayed his disappointment with her response. ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ he opined.
‘Abi is sure,’ Roz said.
That response interested him. ‘Why say that?’
‘Abi says it.’
‘Why is Abi so sure?’
The question provoked her, got her out of her chair. Rozlynn paced again. She settled after about a minute and returned to her seat. While she normally sat as still as stone, this time she tapped the chair’s arms with her fists lightly curled, and not with any discernible rhythm. Intrigued, Cinq-Mars leaned forward.
‘Why,’ he asked again, ‘is Abi so sure she’s safe here?’
‘People want her money,’ Roz answered.
‘No surprise, but it’s not really her money.’
‘They want it anyway. So nobody wants her dead. If she dies, her money’s gone. Nobody will ever know where it is. Anybody who kills her is in big trouble because of that. Abi thinks so, too. She says so.’
Perfect sense. Abi knew well that she was under threat, that she walked a thin line with dangerous and dedicated bad actors. Connections with those adversarial forces undoubtedly traveled throughout the prison system, high and low, and that worried him, and undoubtedly it worried her. At the same time, as long as people followed orders, she was not going to be killed. Still, how could Abi’s issues connect to the deaths of Isaure Dabrezil or the much-disliked Florence? Perhaps Flo was physically confronting Abigail, scaring her, pressing her to reveal her secrets. In which case, Abi may have taken the matter into her own hands and fought back.
Abigail.
iii
‘Have you ever discussed getting out of here with Abi?’
Back to shrugging as her primary response.
‘Let’s say, hypothetically— Sorry, do you know that word?’
Rozlynn shrugged again, yet added, ‘Course I do.’
‘Yeah. Sorry. You probably speak English better than me.’
‘You speak it good. With an accent. Like me. Different accent.’
‘There you go. Hypothetically, your uncle vanishes off the face of the earth. He walks off into the sunset, let’s say. And you happen to get released. Then what? What would you do? Go home? Behave yourself this time? Or do you want to kill a bunch of people?’
‘I’d like to kill my cousins, but I won’t.’
This time he knew she was playing with him, and he laughed. She joined in. ‘You don’t like your cousins. But would you go home, anyway?’
‘Nowhere else to go. Abi, she can go anywhere. Maybe she comes to Manitoba, lives there.’
This was a line of demarcation he hadn’t expected. Abigail might very well want something from Rozlynn after all. A place to run to. A place to hide. Out in the wilderness, until people forgot she existed. She feared for her life sufficiently to disappear among bugs, bears, trees and moose. She’d probably build a cabin and keep a rifle above the door. Not an easy existence. Perhaps a necessary one. Do time in the wilderness until people forgot about her. If they’d ever forget.
‘Would you like that? I guess you’d be helping Abi out.’
‘Could be all right,’ she said.
‘It’s a thought,’ Cinq-Mars agreed.
If the two women had discussed life after Lady Jail, they may have plotted Abi’s rescue in other ways, too. Not beyond the realm of possibility that, jointly, they had dealt with Flo. Rozlynn may have taken Flo off A
bigail’s back, just as she had hauled others off her back in the yard fight. Permanently, in Flo’s case. She had the strength. She’d been a hunter from childhood. Mistaken identity, but she thought she was killing her uncle who intended to do her harm. Cinq-Mars considered that perhaps he’d been too kind, too conciliatory with her. He may have misjudged her, and he should not rule her out as the killer. Given her alliance with Abigail, who possessed an innate ability to fool people, she had to be considered a candidate.
Rozlynn.
SANDRA
i
Running late, he hadn’t felt this nervous in a decade. Émile Cinq-Mars had started packing that morning but didn’t finish before leaving for the penitentiary. The solution was to book for another night and switch from the highway motel to the only downtown hotel in Joliette at the end of his workday. The department could pay for one, he’d chip in for the other. In the office, the motel clerk passed a folded note across the counter to him. Constable Dubroc, reporting in. The arranged meeting with the bikers had not transpired. Dubroc had waited through the day and been stood up.
‘Damn,’ the detective muttered under his breath. The bikers adding one more irritant – not entirely unexpected – maddened him. In retaliation he’d stick spikes in the spokes of their Harleys – he briefly reveled in that consoling fantasy.
Émile Cinq-Mars finished his arrangements with the clerk and, back in his room, pressed for time, he stuffed his suitcase in a rush. He did take his time with the papers and notes strewn around the room, rearranging them into a semblance of order.
Finally, he was done. He experienced a lurch within himself. A bit like tumbling off a spinning log into a cold dark lake: He hadn’t heard from Sandra. He expected her to be waiting downtown, perhaps anxious that he might never show. Wild horses, and he was familiar with the beasts if not the sensations coursing through him, could not drag him away. Super excited to see her again. Yet he had to face it: He was also super terrified to see her again.
Was he right? Was she the one? Or had he concocted a ludicrous notion in his head from the safety of distance? Love had never drawn a simple trajectory for him, the road ahead usually appeared potholed with sharp twists. The priest in him, in part – was he meant for marriage? And Sandra was nineteen years younger! A mature woman of thirty-one, that was true, but – yikes. She operated a horse farm. In another country. She was American. She was an atheist amused by his religious bent. How could this be broached, except as a short-term affair? Yet the notion of short-term explicitly saddened him. He felt ruptured when any thought of the two of them added up to nothing more than a fleeting encounter. Ships passing in the night, that sort of thing. Or colliding. When reality strikes, and sooner or later reality will clobber any couple, how would he absorb the blow? How would she? Would they hit the ground running and feel the pain or happily keep falling into eternity together?