by Muriel Gray
She shrugged, smiled and wrung out the cloth. “Then it will be the head only.”
He lay back, relieved, letting the woman continue pressing and dabbing at his forehead and then noticed that the boy’s attention had returned to something he had stuffed down his beaded belt and was now retrieving surreptitiously. It was his crucifix, the beautiful mahogany-and-ivory gift that his father had given him on his graduation day.
“You like?” He gestured weakly to the object in the boy’s hand.
Walks Alone registered alarm at being caught and looked to his mother for reproach or defense. She offered neither, dropping the cloth back into the cooling water to administer more attention to the pale man.
The boy looked back at Henderson and nodded.
“It is son of… it is Great Spirit. He come here and we live because He die.”
Walks Alone stared at Henderson’s mouth as he said this, trying to make sense of the words, and failed. He looked back at the figure of Christ as if it would speak more clearly, and when it did not, to his mother. Her interests were elsewhere.
“Does the balsam water soothe your fever?”
Henderson looked into her black, almond-shaped eyes. Although it stung the skin, making it tingle, it was soothing his brow, there was little doubt. Somehow he felt more calm now, his thoughts beginning to recover from their turbulence. “Yes. Thank you.”
She shrugged in reply as though his thanks were of no consequence. The boy still clutched his precious crucifix. Henderson very much wanted to bring this young soul to Christ, but the base human in him wanted his keepsake back. He could read the child like a book, the face waiting to be told he could have the trinket, but Henderson could not bear to lose it. He held his hand out for the cross and slowly the boy gave it up into his big pale palm.
The minister’s fears were creeping on his flesh again. This strange couple would not be with him forever. And then what? What would come with the night, and with his dreams?
James Henderson’s fingers closed around the wood and he held it tightly to his breast. He expected the boy to have a tantrum now. He could be no more than eight or nine years old.
Instead, those large dark eyes fixed on James with an expression that was adult and wise, an unmistakable expression of compassion. He put his small brown hand out and laid it on top of the man’s fingers that held the cross, then put the other hand to his own heart.
Henderson felt a phantom sun on his face. He could smell the delicate scent of heather blowing on the hill above his uncle’s farm. Sweet, like honey, filling his nostrils and his lungs.
“A shaman child,” he said in English as he drifted away, and Walks Alone smiled at his mother.
32
“Relax those for me, would you?”
Sam’s toes twitched under the doctor’s hands and he looked over at Katie to see if she was smiling at the ludicrous spectacle of her husband having his feet tickled.
She was not. Katie Hunt was sitting low in a red plastic chair, gazing at the frosted-glass window as though there were a view to see. Her arms were crossed, the hands clutching their opposite shoulders in a hug that was more defensive than relaxed.
But then, why should she be relaxed? It was a shitty day.
This morning, breakfast had been an ordeal. That first meal and meeting of the day for the Hunt family had always been a lot of laughs. Sam usually held Billy’s Pop-Tarts between a thumb and forefinger and pinched his nose with the other hand in a gesture of disgust as he dropped them into the toaster with a retching noise. That never failed to make Billy laugh. And Billy and Jess loved moving those dumb refrigerator magnets around, and their parents would laugh dutifully when the Mr. Fruity magnet was shifted to stand on his head on top of some innocent human posing seriously on a postcard.
Not this morning. This morning Billy hadn’t come down for breakfast at all. Bart came down, all right, hungry and looking for his pound and a half of chuck steak. But no Billy. When Katie had called upstairs again, she’d glimpsed him sitting fully dressed on the landing. She was about to call up at him to get his butt down here, when she saw the look on that little face, framed between the white wooden spindles of the banister. He was frightened. She’d gone upstairs to him then, and gently put an arm around his shoulders.
“What’s up, Billy Boy? Not coming down for something to eat?”
And he’d looked up at her and said, “Has Dad gone yet?”
A simple, innocent question. So why did it strike a terror into Katie’s heart that made her hold her breath? “No, lamb, he’s still here. You can see him before he goes to work.”
Billy had leaped to his feet and yelled “No!” before running back into his room and slamming the door. She’d heard him sobbing behind that wooden door, and had stood looking dumbly at the wooden barrier between them, with its poster of Sonic the Hedgehog grinning malevolently back at her with a two-fingered salute.
Sam had looked concerned when Katie returned to the kitchen, but accepted her explanation that Billy wanted to be left alone.
Would he have accepted that a month ago? Or would he have been up there poking his son in the ribs and asking what was up? Sam had looked like he was someplace other than the kitchen, so she’d let it be, battling back her darkest fears and misery as she watched her coffee go cold. And the three of them, Katie, Sam and Jess, had sat in a silence broken only by Jess’s occasional babbling, until Sam had left the house.
Billy had heard the door close and had crept carefully and tentatively into the kitchen. It made her freeze, to see her son so desperate to avoid his father. The same boy who would fight to accompany Sam to the bathroom if he let him. Could a dream be so real? And what had happened in that dream?
Katie Hunt was adrift, and it felt bad. Today, Sam was like a stranger trying to be her husband. He said the same stuff he usually did, smiled at her from time to time with those white even teeth and kissed her when she came to pick him up and drive him to the doctor. But it wasn’t Sam. Or more accurately, she wished it wasn’t. Her Sam didn’t lie, or frighten their son, or look hunted and dark when he thought he was unobserved.
She could feel him now, trying to catch her eye in this small, beige doctor’s office, and yet she couldn’t turn to meet his gaze.
“OK, I’m just gonna prick the sole of your foot here. Just relax.”
Sam braced himself. Dr. Alan Harris did the business, made an uh-huh sound, and put Sam’s foot gently back down on the vinyl bed he was lying on. “OK, Mr. Hunt, you can put your shoes back on. What I’m going to say is that I want you to get checked out by Neurology in Calgary.”
Katie sat up and lost interest in the opaque window. She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward. Her action had the effect of making the doctor turn to address her, as though Sam were a child in her care.
“I can’t find anything wrong with Mr. Hunt’s reflexes, and there’s no immediate evidence of epilepsy. But blackouts of the severity you’re describing need more investigation, and I think all three of us here would be a lot happier if we just get the possibilities of any blockages on the brain cleared up.”
Sam swung his feet off the vinyl bed, catching the white human-length piece of tissue paper that covered it with a heel and tearing it.
“How soon will they see me?” he asked, recapturing Harris’s attention, and peeling the white paper from his foot.
“I’ll get on it this afternoon, and I’m going to ask that they see you within the week.”
The doctor crossed the room to wash his hands, and the running water from the chrome-hooped tap accentuated the silence between the people in the room.
Katie looked at Sam then, and the sight of his face creased with defeat woke her from her torpor of self-pity. He might be sick. Her darling Sam. What if it were a tumor? It wasn’t just her life falling apart. It was his. Katie was awash with guilt and she smiled across at her husband with a heat they both recognized. Sam kept the smile as he bent to put on his socks and boots.
Harris wiped his hands and motioned to the door with his head. “OK. If you want to sort yourself out through there, Mr. Hunt, I’m just going to check Mrs. Hunt on a few points. Just in case we got a virus here.”
Sam nodded, picked up his remaining boot and headed out the door. Katie looked puzzled, but as Harris sat down with that searching look in his eyes, she started to get worried. There were no points to check on. He was going to tell her something that Sam wasn’t to hear. She knew it.
“Your husband doesn’t drink, does he, Mrs. Hunt?”
“That’s right.”
“I have to ask you this, but it’s for medical reasons and it’s purely confidential.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Does he use any abusive substances?”
“You mean like Kraft TV dinners?”
Not funny. The doctor ignored it.
“Does your husband take drugs?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“You’re aware that unlike alcohol abuse, which is impossible to conceal, drug abuse can remain a secret even from those closest to the abuser.”
“The abused always becomes the abuser”—God. Get that dumb thought out of your head, Katie.
“You’re saying this because he’s Kinchuinick, right?”
Alan Harris looked at her like a stone with eyes. “Yes. That’s one reason I’m saying it.”
“He doesn’t take drugs. Believe me. I’d know.”
Another pause and the doctor sat back in his chair.
“I’m sorry if you’re offended. I’m also sure you’d rather be offended than be a widow through wrong diagnoses.”
That hit home. Sure, she could live with offense. She could never live without Sam. She nodded, and Harris continued.
“It’s just that, as I’m sure you know, the Kinchuinicks use a great variety of drugs in their religion and ceremonies, most of which are hallucinogenic and extremely dangerous. You know also that their purpose is to bring about the kind of blackouts your husband is experiencing in order to allow communion with the spirits.”
“You’re teaching your grandma to spit tobacco here, Doctor. I write about this stuff at the museum. Remember?”
“So we can rule drug abuse out.”
“Yes.”
“His behavior hasn’t been erratic, secretive or out of character?”
She touched her nose lightly.
“No.”
Harris studied her for a second, then tapped the tabletop with a finger. “OK. I’ll call you with the appointment when I hook up with Calgary. Everything else OK with the family?”
“Yeah. We just want Sam better.”
“Sure.”
He stood and showed her out the door. Sam was in the outer room, both boots on, his hands clasped between his legs as he waited innocently for the conspirators. Katie took his wide brown hand, and unlike the way they came in, they left together like lovers. She was a weakling to doubt him. There would be an explanation for Billy’s behavior. An explanation for Sam’s blackouts. An explanation for the police watching him like wolves smelling an elk. As they left the building down snowy steps, and saw the plainclothes RCs in the brown car start their engine, she hoped the explanations would start coming soon.
It was still dark when Craig woke. He lay there in the blackness letting the sharp pain of being alone that always hit him first thing subside into a dull ache. It was hard to get up this morning. He knew what was waiting for him. Nothing. Becker and his team would be milling around, making statements to the press and trying to find reasons to arrest Sam Hunt. Meanwhile, he would be expected to get on with the important business of making sure ski theft was stamped out in Silver.
He was a quiet, methodical policeman and he wanted to solve this systematically and officially. He wanted to answer the riddles, but most of all, he wanted the killing to stop.
This was the best time to think. The dark and the warmth, and that soft bridge between consciousness and sleep, was a safe place to look at hard things. Thoughts were like runny syrup in this cocoon of heat, dark and quiet. Must buy cat food; Sylvia; is it still snowing?; that dumb TV show about a news crew; what’s it called? ENC? blond woman camera operator, my ass; Sylvia; haven’t bought any clothes for about six months; Daniel Hawk should be more than a constable; mouth ulcer again, just under my tongue; Sylvia; that kid.
That kid.
His thoughts were focused involuntarily.
What, apart from a blade the size of a sword, could have chopped half his head off so cleanly? How the hell did a man escape without leaving foot or ski prints in that thigh-deep snow? The animals couldn’t do it. There were deer prints all around the carcass like they’d come sniffing around to see what all the mess was, but not a single mark from a human foot. He’d gotten the trees checked out. No broken branches, and the snow was found to be undisturbed on all the branches. Any aerial escape, any monkey-like acrobatics would have left a trail in the trees that would have been easier to see than prints on the ground. And the brains and the blood. Jesus. So much blood.
In other words, the atrocity was impossible. It couldn’t have happened without breaking the laws of physics. It made him feel cold as he admitted it to himself for the first time. Just like Joe’s death. Impossible.
There was no such thing as an impossible crime. He tried to sleep some more on that thought, but sleep was tricky with both your eyes wide open and staring.
“… And the proper name is prism.” Miss Root scratched the word on the board behind her and stood back to admire it. “OK? So light of all colors travels at the same speed, but just as there are big waves and little ripples in the sea, so light of different colors comes in waves of varying size.”
Billy stared at the back of Andy Weiss’s head.
“Can anyone name the colors of the rainbow and put them in order?”
Tony pushed his spectacles up on his squat nose and cleared his throat. “Uh, red, yellow, orange, green, purple, blue… uh… that’s it. I think.”
“All right. Good. But you missed one and this is the order they appear in when we see them in the rainbow. Write it down with me.”
She turned to the board and started to scrawl the words below her drawing of a triangular prism. Heads in front of Billy bent to their task of copying the names of the colors in their notepads. Billy kept staring at Andy Weiss’s neck.
Miss Root turned again to watch her class write down the colors. Only one head was up. Billy Hunt’s. “Billy? Want to write these down, please?”
He continued to stare.
“Did you hear me, Billy? Write these down, please.”
A few heads looked up this time, their faces expectant, hoping for a confrontation. Billy continued looking at that neck.
Agnes Root walked to Billy’s table and bent down to his level. “Are you feeling all right, Billy?”
Billy nodded, not looking at his teacher.
“Well, do you want to write down what I’ve put on the board then, please?”
Billy just stared. The young woman scanned his face for a few seconds, searching for any mischievous defiance, and saw none.
“Are you ill?”
No response.
A child by the window sniggered and Miss Root turned and threw the culprit a look that stopped the laugh like a bell jar on a candle. She turned back to the small boy and spoke softly this time. “Aren’t you going to speak to me, Billy? I’m asking you a question.”
Billy turned his head and looked at his teacher. His liquid black eyes held the expression of a much older person and they had a bruised quality that dismayed Agnes Root. He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. This was not a rude and naughty child. This was a disturbed one. Billy Hunt was normally a lively, funny, spunky little guy. She didn’t like to think about what might be wrong. But she’d deal with it later. His teacher put a hand out and laid it on his shoulder. �
��It’s OK. You chill out for a minute.”
She stood up and returned to her board, facing the class with a forced jollity to cover Billy’s distress. “Alrighty, then. Let’s see if we can paint some pictures on the theme of prisms. Think of rainbows and all those bright colors, and let’s see what we come up with. Paint monitors, please.”
Little bodies sprang up and got busy with the hardware of making paintings. Before they turned the neat pile of painting equipment into chaos, Miss Root rescued a piece of paper, a white plastic palette with big circular indentations, and a wide soft brush and carried them over to Billy.
“Do you think you could do a picture, sweetheart? Huh?”
Billy slid the paper toward him silently and nodded.
“Good. Go get some lovely colors for your palette, then, Billy.” She ruffled his hair and left him to it. She had a class to watch, and if she didn’t watch them closely they’d paint the walls, their faces and every flat surface in the room. Her watch said there wasn’t much more of this, and she sat down at her desk to dream of her boyfriend’s mouth.
33
The RCMP incident trailer, sitting there in the middle of the ski parking lot, ought to have kept the public a million miles away from this resort. But the parking lot was full and Eric Sindon was watching three of his guys trying to squeeze more cars in behind the shop loading bay. So they liked to ski with the scent of blood in their nostrils, did they? Or was the fact that news crews were nearly outnumbering skiers providing the big attraction?
But this wouldn’t last. It was the day after a death hysteria. And if the cops didn’t catch this guy soon, or if he killed again, Silver would be as empty as a kids’ party at Michael Jackson’s.
Eric thought the cops were wrong to let them open for business immediately, but Pasqual had argued that they always carried on after any death on the mountain. Company policy. The time that guy from Norway had wiped himself out at forty-five miles-per-hour straight into the pylon in front of the whole quad-line, the resort hadn’t even blinked. The bits were scraped off, loaded into the meat wagon and taken away before the screaming had stopped. Surely murder was different? When people said skiing was dangerous, they didn’t mean you had to watch your back for a psycho who’d slice your head in two.