“There wasn’t much,” came Quinn’s voice above me. “A skull, a few bones, some flesh hanging off them. Some clothing. What got Bryn was the clump of hair on the wood pile.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I was on my feet in an instant. I stared at him in horror. “Her hair?” I whispered.
Quinn was nodding. “Her hair.” Then he saw my face. “Oh God, I’m such an insensitive idiot. I thought you already knew all this.”
“No. I didn’t.” I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking. “It’s okay. Can you—could you leave me here—for a few minutes?”
“Are you sure? You’ll be alright?” His eyes looked normal again. Not cobalt blue. Just worried.
“Yes. Please.” Then I looked around. “Wait—I’m not sure how to find my way out.”
Quinn pointed to a gap in the trees. “Through there. You can see the beginnings of a trail. It’s a well worn path. You can’t go wrong. That will take you straight to the circle where that big white pine is. I brought you in the long way—the way Brennan brought Bryn in. After they spotted Lucy’s remains, they decided to take pictures, and went back to the car for the camera. She said he led her out this way. It’s a much more direct route. But how would he know that? Unless he’d been here before. Of course, bringing her in this way would have been too obvious. But Stupid fucked up, going out and returning by the more direct route. More damning evidence.”
He touched my shoulder and his voice lost its edge. “I’ll bring the car to the circle and wait for you there. You’re sure you’ll be okay?”
I nodded and thanked him. And watched him go.
Then I sat down on the pine-carpeted forest floor, trying to keep the images of Lucy’s remains at bay. A life had ended here. A will—a life—had been choked off. An exuberant life. It had come down to a few bits of flesh and bone and hair. I let the horror work its way through me. Gradually, it ebbed. And was replaced by … nothing. I wanted to feel grief, sadness for Lucy. Understanding. But there was nothing. As if this place had nothing to do with her.
I sat with a blank mind and an empty heart. I wanted a flash of understanding. A vision. Anything but this emptiness at the end of my too-long-postponed pilgrimage.
I sat until my legs went numb. Then I stood up. The numbness ebbed, both from my legs and from my brain. I turned slowly and then I could see it—the hair on the wood pile. But the hair wasn’t dark. It was blonde. Strawberry blonde. Strawberry blonde hair cascading over a raised bed in a meadow. A raised bed that could have been a wood pile…. The dream from last summer slowly came back: Lucy floating on water, but my finding her on dry land.
But I hadn’t found her at all. Anywhere.
Emotion finally crept in: it should have been grief. It was apprehension, and fear.
I turned again. In slow motion. To the place we had come in. To where we had stood. The colours of the woods had changed. They were the intense colours of a dream.
I am facing Tim. He is speaking. I am replying. But I can’t hear the words. I can only feel the terror in both of us.
Hands reach for my throat. Only it’s not my throat. I am not me.
My arms, arms that aren’t mine, reach out. Not to defend. They pull him in. They hold him. My voice, a voice that isn’t mine, speaks. Comforting words that hold no comfort.
The fear releases. But no relief replaces it.
I let him go. I step back. I look in his eyes. I am me, looking in his eyes.
And they are cobalt blue.
The colours of the pine grove returned to their muted sunlight-deprived tones. I stood rooted to the spot. Not daring to move, but turning my head in every direction. Had Quinn come back into the grove? Was he right now hiding behind a tree? Watching? Why?
Reason answered: Steve Quinn did not bring you here to kill you.
Saying the words—almost out loud—made me see how ridiculous they were.
I made myself sit down again, my back against Lucy’s tree, knowing now that it would forever be Lucy’s tree. I made my breathing slow down, and as it slowed my pulse slowed too. I closed my eyes and let rise up what was under the surface tension and confusion. It wasn’t anything I was expecting. But there it was: A steely resolution.
Bright sunlight hit my eyes, and I paused at the edge of the woods to let them adjust. Quinn was leaning against the trunk of the car beside the huge white pine in the circle, facing the direction we had hiked in. Looking relaxed. A lit cigarette in his hand. I had never seen him smoke before. There was a lot about him I had never seen before.
At the sound of my boots crunching on the gravel, he turned his head, pushed himself away from the car and tossed the butt. He came toward me, and the relaxed stance shifted to attention. To concern.
“There you are. I was about to come looking for you. I was worried you’d got lost.”
I made myself meet the eyes from my vision. “I’m not lost.”
He looked at me for a long moment and opened his mouth to say something. Then he shook his head. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
In the driveway, Quinn turned off the ignition. “You’re pretty quiet.”
I turned to face him. I had my story ready. “I think I just saw what happened to Lucy. You—the police—were right. I had another vision, or whatever you want to call it. Tim’s hands reached out to choke me—only it wasn’t me. It must have been—”
“Oh God,” said Quinn. “Bryn.”
“Bryn?” I stared at him.
“I wasn’t going to tell you that part while we were in the woods.”
I waited for him to continue. My heart was pounding again.
Quinn exhaled. “Just after they spotted Lucy, Bryn said Brennan got this odd look on his face, like he suddenly was thinking he’d made a mistake bringing her there. She was suddenly afraid for her life. He actually started to reach for her neck and she made the spontaneous decision to pull him to her in a huge bear hug, pretending to be shocked and sorry for him. It probably saved her life. It snapped him out of it.”
I took in and let out a long, slow breath. Absorbing what he had just said. Absorbing what I had just seen. I had got it. I had got it all. All of it and more.
Quinn looked at me as if he had seen a ghost. “I should never have taken you there.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m glad you did. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure? I think I should stay with you for awhile.” The dictatorial tone was gone. He seemed unsure of himself. Hesitant.
“No.” This was not a man I wanted with me. This was not a man I wanted in my life. I made him go home.
The water was completely open, the current steady. It sent tiny ice flows on their way downstream, unperturbed. The breeze was from the south.
I stood on the point, holding my face to the warm wind, taking it deep into my lungs.
Finally, I saw it—the violence hovering around Quinn. He had tried, all along, to hide the truth: saying things he thought I wanted to hear, playing the protector, trying to gain my trust. Needing to be in control.
My vision had given me a glimpse—a glimpse in the strange, safe way of my visions—of the lengths he was capable of to ensure that control. In his eyes I had seen his own fear of those capabilities. It was that fear that, day by day, kept them in check.
Finally, I understood all the contradictory feelings and responses in me. I had capabilities too. It was time to stop denying them.
I watched the tiny ice flows bobbing past the point. Before they reached the dam down at Chelsea, they would have melted into the water.
The river was ready for Belle’s ashes. There was someone who would want to be part of that ritual. I headed back up to the house to make a phone call.
24.
I SAT OUTSIDE COURTROOM 32. I had a response rehearsed for Sergeant Qu
inn. I would be cool, polite. I wouldn’t get drawn into conversation, or flirting, or whatever approach he tried. As for Mr. Blair….
The sound of heels clicking on the granite floor brought me out of my thoughts. The Assistant Crown Attorney, Deanne Fortier, was coming toward me, her sympathetic smile at the ready.
She sat down beside me and spoke sotto voce in her slight accent. “I am not supposed to be talking to you, but I just wanted to tell you not to worry. You were fine on Friday. Are you alright?”
I nodded my lie.
Deanne stood up and looked down the hall. “There’s Sergeant Lundy. I will leave you to him, then.” She smiled again. “Don’t let Mr. Blair unravel you.”
I looked down the hall. Sergeant Lundy was strolling toward us. I hadn’t seen him since the memorial service, months ago. I wondered if his coming here today meant….
Deanne paused long enough to speak a few words to Lundy, then she flashed one more smile my way and went back to her office.
Lundy eased himself into the seat beside me. He never quite smiled, but the natural expression on his face was kind. “Ellen,” he nodded, by way of greeting.
“Hi, Sergeant Lundy.”
“Al,” he said and suddenly grinned. It was a full-on grin. One eye-tooth was chipped. For a moment the tough guy was gone.
I took the hand he offered. It was the size and texture of a leather work glove. “Are you taking over witness hand-holding today?”
Lundy dropped my hand. “Yeah, and general slave to the Crown. Quinn called in sick this morning.”
“Oh,” I said. Intense relief.
“Yeah, so they fished me out of my bed.” Lundy heaved a sigh that made his belly balloon out and in. He shrugged.
“Naive of me to think they’d let me sleep. Even if there’s been a bit of a lull lately. The murderers in town have killed everyone they want to. And those we haven’t caught seem to have gone on vacation.” He winked. “The wife wanted to go on vacation too. She was kind of reluctant to let me out of bed this morning.” He spoke without a trace of self-consciousness.
I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think I’d like to be a cop’s wife. When you’re never home.” When you might not come home.
He shrugged again. “She knew what she was getting in for when she signed up. We went through a rough patch last year, when we were trying to gather evidence on Brennan. Seemed like me and the Roach were on the case twenty-four hours a day—no rest for the wicked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He sucked in the words in quick succession. “Had to have a talk with the wife.”
I suppressed a smile at the thought of Al Lundy being a communicator in a relationship. But what did I know?
“Must have been tough,” I said.
He shrugged. “She’s young, she’ll heal.”
And he was young too. The realization was something of a shock. Beyond the extra weight and standard haggard cop look, he was probably not much more than forty-five. The same age as Lucy.
I watched the lawyers file past us into the courtroom. The Senior Assistant Crown Attorney nodded at me solemnly, respectfully, from behind his owl glasses.
“Technically,” Lundy was saying, “I should be here every day—me or the Roach. But before all the town murderers went on holiday it was pretty busy for us, and Quinn was familiar enough with the case.” He nodded at me. “You had some dealings with him one night, I recall. That’s what got him in on it in the first place.” He seemed not to notice the sudden colour on my face.
“Doesn’t he have his own cases?” I tried for a casual tone.
“Naw—not our Quinn. Not now anyway.”
“Ms. McGinn.”
I jumped.
The court attendant was standing at the door.
I drew in and let out a deep breath and stood up. “Well, at least there are no high-school students today.”
“Oh, they’ll be in after the break.”
He held the door for me. “Roach’ll probably be by later. If you’re done by noon, we’ll take you to lunch.”
I couldn’t imagine ever being done.
The judge was nodding at me as I came up the aisle. “Good morning, Ms. McGinn. I hope you had a good weekend.” Her friendliness took me aback.
“Oh, yes.” I couldn’t help the wry tone.
“You haven’t been sworn in yet, Ms. McGinn, but we still like to hear the truth.”
I laughed in spite of myself and took my seat in the witness box. Appreciating her attempt to help me relax.
The judge turned to the clerk. “I think we’d better swear in Ms. McGinn as soon as possible,” she joked.
The Crown’s side of the court was all smiles. The defence looked disapproving. I glanced over at Tim Brennan in his glass box. He sat without expression. Gone was the sympathetic innocent. Quinn had called him evil. Was he? Today he just looked sullen and guilty.
Mr. Blair stood up. He put on his glasses and peered at his notes. Then he took off his glasses and aimed volley number one my way.
“Ms. McGinn, I understand from what you’ve told us that you don’t consider yourself to be a close friend of Lucy.”
I took a deep breath. Answer only the question asked, Ellen. “That’s correct,” I said.
“But you had gone through at least a period of time where she would confide in you.”
“That’s correct,” I said again.
“And confided to the extent that you were familiar with her relationship with Tim Brennan.”
“I was familiar with his past. I wasn’t familiar…. After Tim got out of prison and moved in with her, I didn’t hear very much about their relationship from that point on.”
“Alright,” said Blair. “But you did speak to her from time to time.”
“I did, yes.”
“Okay. And you were specifically, I think, asked by Agent Godbout, who took your statement I think on the twenty-fifth of April, about whether you knew of any problems in their relationship, and specifically I think you were asked to address whether she had problems with him. Do you recall that?”
“I do recall that, yes.” Here we go.
“Okay. And you told him that as far as you knew they never had any big fights.” He put on his glasses and quoted from my statement. “‘I never saw any marks on her as if he’d beaten her, nor did she ever hint that it was an abusive relationship.’”
He looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “And that was indeed your best recollection and best information you could give Agent Godbout at that time.”
“That’s right.” I wanted to say more—I wanted to qualify it—but I barely had time to gather my thoughts. Blair was on to the next question.
“You also told the court how Lucy spoke to you about having anxiety attacks and panic attacks.”
“That’s correct.” Was I going to spend the whole session agreeing with his statements? I seemed to have no choice. I didn’t dare look at Deanne.
“And at times couldn’t leave her home.”
“Well, she told me she would sometimes be out and have to come home.”
“And you say that she went for massage, and … reiki, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if the massage and reiki treatments were related to the anxiety attacks and panic attacks?”
“I think she would have—I’m speculating here—I think she would have had the massage and reiki treatments as a healing treatment.” I wasn’t speculating. But I couldn’t reveal that I knew.
“Was she someone who seemed to have a lot of complaints about life and about things, her state of health and so forth?”
I had not been expecting these questions about Lucy. It hit me with a jolt of realization: Lucy was on trial too. But who was representing her? The answer hit me with
another jolt.
“Well, about her state of health, yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t say she had a lot of complaints about life, because I saw her as somebody who felt that this was just all part of it and tried to tackle her problems.” I had not known this with such certainty until this moment.
“Did she tend to perhaps dwell on physical ailments, physical problems a bit?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“In the sense of being maybe somewhat of a neurotic?”
“No.”
“Hypochondriac?”
“No.”
“Or anything like that?”
“No, not in that way, no.”
“You didn’t feel that.”
“No.” It was another unknown truth coming out of my mouth .
“You told the court that in late fall of ninety-four, I think you said, you decided to shut down your friendship with her because she had got mad at you for being happy—something to that effect.”
“Yes.”
“Can you expand on what you meant?”
“She was angry with me because I told her I was doing fine. And she said something like ‘Well, I don’t know how you’ve managed to escape it. Everyone I know is going through something right now.’”
“Okay. She seemed to be, then, sort of genuinely of the view that it was some kind of bad time, that everybody should be having a bad time.”
“Yes—I don’t know for sure, but she may well have thought there was something in the air that was causing people to go through a bad time. Everyone who was sensitive to it,” I added.
“Does that not suggest that perhaps she was a little neurotic about things?”
“No, I don’t think so.” I considered. “Neurotic. Can you define neurotic for me?”
Blair shrugged. “Someone who sees a lot of problems where there may not necessarily be problems. That’s not a clinical definition, but….”
I nodded. “No, I don’t think with that definition that I would describe her as neurotic.”
“Okay.” He sounded mildly impatient. “Is there any definition of the word that you understand that might fit her?”
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