Jenny gazed into Kim’s blinking eyes. Then, in a spasm of guilt, she remembered the syringe and what she’d been about to do with it. She took an abrupt step back from the bed, as if repulsed, her eyes searching for the syringe.
“I disposed of it,” the nurse said. At the door she paused and said, “I would have done the same thing.” Then she went out.
Remarkably, Jenny’s guilt fell away. There’d be time enough later to worry about what might have happened. Or maybe, God help her, she’d be able to just let it go.
When a spark of recognition flickered in Kim’s eyes, Jenny knew that she could.
* * *
Jack spent the next two weeks in the infirmary, ostensibly recovering from the beating he’d taken in the day room. That stubby fucker with the spade jaw had dinged a couple of his ribs with a lucky kick, but apart from that they hadn’t really hurt him. Cuts and bruises, mostly. Just enough to debunk the rumors about his martial arts abilities and make his jailers relax a little, perhaps even sympathize. After all, was a man not innocent until proven guilty?
Gradually, as summer gave way to autumn and the preliminary hearing—tentatively set for the end of September—approached, certain members of the staff succumbed to Jack’s subtle charm. Small privileges were extended, the unexpected connections that make the world small were discovered—most of them relating to Jack’s hospital practice—and slowly, doubts were insinuated into the minds of the guards. Before long Jack was on a first-name basis with many of them, having animated chats with them about their families, doling out free medical advice and sharing his considerable knowledge of firearms. He could actually see them going to sleep.
There were many kinds of anesthesia, and Jack was a master of all of them.
* * *
Richard sat on a blunt hill overlooking the manor, the same one he’d sat on a lifetime ago, daydreaming about one day owning the place. The odd thing was, now that it was his, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. What mattered now, what made it special, was the fact that Jenny had agreed to share it with him.
“My life’s in a whirl right now, Richard,” she told him when he made the invitation. That had been two weeks ago, July 5, the day following Kim’s emergence from coma. “There’s still so much unsettled. The police told me I don’t have to be involved in Jack’s trial, but I’d like it behind me before I start thinking about the future. And Kim. I don’t know how it’s going to go for her yet. It’s too soon...but, if you don’t mind taking it one day at a time, I’d be delighted to stay with you.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Richard said.
He stood now, stretching the kinks out, and started down the hill. The movers would be arriving soon with Jenny and Kim’s stuff and he didn’t want to miss them.
24
September 30
KIM ROUSTED THEM AT DAWN, first Richard, then her mom. “Come on, you guys, get up. We’re going fishing.”
So far September had been a series of drab days marked by slate skies and an incessant cold drizzle; but this morning, the last of the month, broke like a sack of gems. The sun came up in a ball of fire, setting the autumn forest ablaze, and the cobalt sky rose high and unblemished. By eight o’clock, as the trio completed the first leg of the half mile trek through the woods to the lake, it was already too warm for the light windbreakers they were wearing.
Kim led the way, trudging boldly along the overgrown path, her backpack flopping with her uneven stride. Her left side was still uncoordinated, much like that of a stroke victim, but she was quickly learning to compensate, her gait sort of broad-based and rolling, allowing her to slog along at a solid, if unsteady clip. She stumbled occasionally, her draggy left foot catching on hillocks or protruding roots, but generally managed to keep her balance. If she did fall, Jenny and Richard knew enough to let her get up on her own. There had been some displays of anger over this in the early days of her recovery, anger that was abrupt and startlingly fierce. They’d been warned to expect this sort of thing, and witnessed it for themselves later on, as Kim plugged doggedly through her physio sessions.
“She’s the same person,” Dr. Sanders told Jenny the first time she saw Kim lose her temper. Kim was hauling herself along the parallel bars and lost her grip, pitching to the floor in a red-faced heap. When the physiotherapist tried to help her up Kim bit the woman on the arm, cursing her so furiously Jenny thought her possessed. “But she’s a different person, too. Uninhibited in many ways. We often see this sort of behavior following global brain injury, the habitual restraints stripped away. It can be quite alarming. But there can be a bright side, too. I’ve seen folks who’ve spent their entire lives all bottled up inside suddenly able to show their emotions. Exactly how changed an individual will be and in what ways...it’s a wait-and-see proposition.”
As she hiked along the path, Kim yakked over her shoulder to Richard, constantly teasing, and Richard gave it right back. Jenny was amazed at how naturally they’d taken to one another. It was tense at first: Kim wondering why this stranger was there instead of her father, Jenny trying to evade the question in the hope of delaying any further trauma. But again Kim surprised her. In the middle of her second week out of intensive care, unable to defeat the insomnia that plagued her even now, Kim had wheeled herself into the TV lounge. She spent only an hour there, in front of the small, ceiling-mounted screen, but it was enough.
“I...saw ’im,” she told Jenny the next morning. Her language abilities were somewhat deranged in the early weeks, and if she spoke at all it was in halting, abbreviated bursts.
“Saw who, sweetheart?”
“Dad. On...TV.”
Jenny had thought, Oh, no. It hadn’t occurred to her that Kim might find out about Jack in this way. “I’m sorry, honey. I wanted to tell you myself, but the doctors said I should wait.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I cried, but...it’s okay.”
Jenny held her for a long time that morning, giving her all the details. After that, they hadn’t spoken of Jack again until just recently, when Kim asked her why she and Richard slept in different rooms.
“It’s too soon,” Jenny told her. “I care very much for Richard, but it’s...complicated.”
Kim smiled openly. She’d lost almost fifty pounds on what she called her coma diet, and the smile, minus the braces, removed during her stay in ICU, made her look quite pretty.
“No it’s not, Mom,” she said. “He loves you, that’s plain. More than Dad ever did. I just hope you’re not stalling ’cause of me. I think he’s great. In fact,” —she winked lecherously at this point— “if you don’t sleep with him soon, maybe I will.”
Jenny was stunned by this conversation, half wishing Dr. Sanders could have been there to see just how ‘changed’ her little girl was. This had to be one for the textbooks.
They began to see hints of the lake through the trees now, deep, sun-dappled patches of blue. Kim picked up her pace a little. “Almost there,” she said. “I can see the shack.”
A few days following Kim’s August first discharge from the hospital, Richard had hired a local carpenter to build a storage shed by the lake. He’d stocked it with all sorts of camping, boating and fishing supplies.
“Shack,” Richard said now, as they broke out of the bush onto a grassy rise overlooking the lake; the surface was dead calm, reflecting the explosion of color ringing its banks with mirror-like precision. “Damn thing cost me almost as much as the house.”
Kim said, “Like you can’t afford it,” and Richard looked at Jenny, showing his dimples. “Where’d you find this kid?” he said.
Jenny said, “You’re a perfect match, the two of you.”
Kim and Richard swapped smiles, as if truer words had never been spoken.
Jenny sat on a stump and watched them, giggling and rough-housing, having a shoving match over who was going to unpadlock the shed door. It made her feel warm inside. Whole, somehow, as if her entire life had been a journey, with this stump and this fine day
and these two dear people as her destination.
Kim said, “Oh, look, a bald eagle,” and when Richard turned to look she snatched the key from his hand. “Psyche.” Then she had the door open and Richard was helping her dig out the fishing gear.
Jenny got an Indian blanket out of her knapsack, spread it open on a patch of grass and stretched herself out, her head shading a paperback novel.
“’Bye, Mom,” Kim called from the shoreline. There was an aluminum fishing boat moored next to her in the sand. “We’re gonna go catch dinner.”
Jenny waved, watching as they launched the boat. She read for awhile after that, then set the book aside and rested her head on her folded arms, feeling the sun sink into her back like a drug.
Soon, she was fast asleep.
* * *
Jack’s preliminary inquiry began on September twenty-sixth. On the afternoon of the thirtieth, Sam Shorthouse and Jim Blaylock, the officers assigned to the case, led him up the short flight of stairs from his holding cell to the courtroom. Earlier, it had come out in conversation that Jack had anesthetized a colleague of theirs following a gunshot wound, and the men resumed talking about it as they clattered up the metal steps.
“Y’know, Jack,” Sam said, pausing outside the prisoner’s entrance to the courtroom. “Now that I think of it, I may’ve even met you when Brian was in the intensive care. Yep, I believe I did.”
“Brian was one tough old boy,” Jack said.
“You got that right,” Blaylock said.
Without being asked, Jack faced the wall. Sam removed his shackles and handcuffs, then opened the door and led him to the Plexiglas prisoner’s booth, a distance of about twelve feet. The courtroom was packed again today, the victims’ families occupying the first several rows, the public and press crammed into whatever space was left. A number of detectives were also present, including Wes Fransen, seated next to the Crown.
Dressed in slacks and a white shirt, Jack made the short trek with his head erect, impervious to the glares and muttered profanities from the crowd. He took his seat quietly, staring calmly ahead while Sam secured the booth and the judge took his place at the bench.
For the next hour and forty minutes the prosecutor argued points of law. Before the first hour had passed, heads had begun to nod and impatient rustlings could be heard throughout the courtroom. Even the judge, the picture of intentness at the outset, sagged visibly in his seat. When the prosecutor finally sat down, the judge glanced at his watch and ordered a ten minute recess.
Sam Shorthouse and Jim Blaylock rose stiffly from their chairs next to the prisoner’s booth and Sam unlocked the door. When Jack stepped out, Sam took his left arm and Jim reached for his right.
With predatory swiftness Jack seized Sam’s wrist and threw his weight back, whipping Sam into his wide-eyed partner. Their foreheads met with a pistol crack and the two men crumpled to the floor. Jack stepped over them, grabbed the nearest member of the audience and hauled him over the balustrade. Before he could open his mouth to scream, Art Doogan—a skinny kid of twenty whose older brother Dan was blown apart by a high pressure surge in a Med Center OR—lay dead at Jack’s feet, his spinal cord severed at the base of his skull.
In the few seconds that had passed, the stunned paralysis of the onlookers broke into a bright sizzle of panic. Startled screams rose, and the spectators in the seats nearest Jack leaned away from him like reeds before a hurricane. Jack reached into them and pulled out a girl of seven, Roxanne West, Bad Brad’s big sister. The girl’s father made a grab for her and Jack struck him in the throat, knocking him into the row of seats behind him.
Now he held the child to his chest, turning to face the guards, their weapons finally drawn. Jack clutched the child’s windpipe.
“Don’t—move,” Jack said, freezing the assemblage. He looked at the judge. “Touch that panic button, your honor, I’ll kill the girl. And before I walk out of here, I’ll do the same to you.” He turned to the guards. “Boys, you put those popguns down.” When they hesitated, Jack raised the girl’s chin with his knuckles. “What’s your name, sweetheart,” he said, shifting his body, using the child as a shield. He relaxed his grip on her throat. “Go ahead. Tell everyone your name.”
“Roxanne,” the girl said, sobbing. Her pink dress was hiked up in front, revealing the stitched crotch of her clean white tights. Her feet dangled doll-like in the air.
“Do you want to die, Roxanne?”
Roxanne shook her head. Tears streamed from her wide green eyes.
Jack returned his attention to the guards. “Put them down.”
The guards dropped their guns and stepped away.
Then Jack was bolting for the exit, the child still clutched to his chest. The guards bent to retrieve their weapons, but by then Jack had dropped a passing officer in the hall, snatched his sidearm and turned to pump a round into each of the advancing guards. Roxanne, weightless in his grasp, clapped her hands over her ears and let out a shrill scream. Jack swung the weapon in a menacing arc over the crowd, watching with amusement as they scattered like rats.
Then he fled through the main exit, press cameras flashing, Fred and Lorna West’s only surviving child dangling from his arms. At the foot of the concrete steps he vaulted a low hedge and crossed the courthouse lawn, stuffing the 9mm Sig-Sauer into his belt as he ran.
At the curb a young man was helping an elderly woman into an idling Bronco. Jack rounded the hood and got in on the driver’s side, shoving the terrified girl ahead of him. The young man barely had time to pull the old woman out of the way before Jack gunned the vehicle into the street.
An instant later a half dozen officers rushed out of the courthouse with their weapons drawn, but by then Jack was away, whizzing over the Pretoria Street Bridge, then bearing west along the Rideau Canal.
* * *
Within minutes of Jack’s bold escape a priority one call went out to every available agency, lighting up computer screens and mobile digital terminals all over the city. The first sirens rose in the courthouse parking lot, but soon, dozens more could be heard, converging on the area from all directions. Roadblocks were established at all points of egress from the city and agents were dispatched to all centers of public transport. A massive net was spread over the city in the hope that Jack Fallon might blunder into one of its strands.
But Detective Wes Fransen didn’t much share that hope. Before his eyes the body count had taken a savage escalation. And if it hadn’t been clear before, it was abundantly so now. They were dealing with a vicious deviant, without conscience or fear.
And it had a hostage.
Wheezing, Fransen piled into a squad car and joined the chase.
* * *
Jack left the canal at Bronson Avenue and proceeded south to the Carleton University campus. Here he slowed to the posted limit and glanced at his tiny hostage. She sat rigid on the seat beside him, one knee showing through her tights, torn during the sudden violence and confusion. Her oval face was wet with tears, but she made no sound.
“You know,” Jack said, “a big girl like you should be wearing a seat belt.”
Silently, Roxanne obliged.
“That’s better. Now tell me, Roxanne. May I call you Roxanne?” The child nodded. “Okay, then.” Jack pulled into a huge parking lot and began gliding through the rows of vehicles. It was 2:05 PM. “Where do you live, sweetheart?”
Roxanne buried her chin in her chest and sniffed. “Mister Fallon, are you going to hurt me?”
“Of course not, peanut. I’m going to take you home. But I can’t do that unless you tell me where you live.”
Roxanne looked up at him. “Did you kill my baby brother?”
“No, honey.” He pulled into a reserved space between a Caddy and a burgundy university service van, switched off the ignition and faced the trembling girl. “Your brother died because someone tampered with his medications. But it wasn’t me. I’m just an actor. You saw all those cameras when we left the courthouse?” Roxan
ne nodded, perplexed but listening intently. “Well, all that was for TV. You and I are going to be in a movie. Won’t that be cool? They haven’t caught the real bad guy yet.”
“A movie?”
“Sure.” Jack ruffled her hair. “You’re gonna be famous.”
“You mean it?”
“I swear. Now, sit tight a sec. We need a new set of wheels.”
As Jack climbed out Roxanne said, “I live on Holmwood Avenue. Two seventy-one and a half.”
Fifteen minutes later Jack dropped Roxanne off in front of her house, the left-hand third of a plain brick triplex a mile from the university. At first the child was reluctant to get out. “Nobody’s home,” she told him. “Can you wait till someone comes home?” Jack smiled and told her to sit on the porch, her folks would be along any minute. Roxanne thanked him and promised to watch TV that night, so she could see herself and her new friend, Jack.
Waving, Jack pulled away in the burgundy service van.
* * *“
“Oh. I think I’ve got something.”
Kim’s bobber twitched, then submerged in a spiral of bubbles. Her rod whipped over almost double.
“Okay,” Richard said. “Don’t panic. Give him some slack.”
Kim let the fish run for several seconds, then jerked the rod hard and began reeling in her catch. She couldn’t believe the fight in this mysterious creature. She could feel its power in her shoulders.
Now the fish broke the surface, arcing up, shivering against the hook in its mouth, beads of lake water dazzling around it.
“Oh, Richard, look at him. He’s beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Richard said, “he’s a beaute. Play him, sweetie.” He grabbed the net and positioned himself by the gunwale “Almost got him...”
The fish appeared at the end of Kim’s taut line, rising hard and full of fight from the depths, and Kim thought of her own rise from darkness, her own determined fight. Oddly, she felt no kinship with the fish, only understanding. There was no fear in this creature, just a pure and furious determination to be free.
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