One of the rescuers, a big husky man in a black raincoat, was evidently on the way to a camping site, for he dragged an army cot slowly down the slope.
A young, nimble woman, who traversed the wet ground with the sure-footedness of a mountain goat, wore a sleeping bag like a backpack, which they immediately used to carefully wrap and warm their casualty.
Someone else produced a first aid kit with supplies to replace the shirt and tie. Bungee cords and luggage straps magically appeared, so gentle hands could strap the injured woman to the cot.
Somebody gave Terry a sweatshirt, which he gratefully pulled over his head to stop the shivering. Although he had been unaware shock waves had begun to zing through his nervous system, the loud chattering of his teeth alerted everyone else.
Slowly, the group began to clamber up the hill with the cot sandwiched between them. Rock by rock, weed over weed, mud squishing under their feet, the little team inched its way along the incline. Luckily, the rain held off.
The group became eagerly invested in the wellbeing of the silent, wounded bird in their midst. Every one of them drove their RVs, campers, trucks and cars in a caravan to the hospital.
Someone else drove Terry's car while he sat by the injured woman's side in the back of a huge trailer. Though he felt like an invader, he looked in her wallet, and found her license. Emily Taylor. Her address was somewhere in Vancouver. She didn't have the usual detritus in her purse, the way his wife did. In fact, it was rather Spartan.
Terry would always remember that pale, perfect face, the battered body and the tiny "mew" she made when they pulled up at the hospital's emergency doors, as though she recognized she might live. That sound, a brave, willful puff of breath, somehow told him she wanted to survive, that she might be someone whose life was not supposed to end in a muddy, mountainside ditch.
Chapter 13
November 1980
Siobhan Taylor ran her hand over her daughter's stiff, dry hair, touched Emily's face tenderly. "I remember when you were born, Emily. They put the mirror up so I could see. There was so much pain, you know, then suddenly there you were. All covered in stuff, your little face so intense and red, just bursting into your new world. I never saw anything so amazing in my whole life."
Siobhan would always recall the moments in the darkness, rocking in a chair beside the crib, holding her first baby to her breast, the moonlight dancing on the wisps of downy blondness. Emily's hand always rested gently on her other breast, or curled around her mother's finger, as she stared up into Siobhan's eyes. Even then she was an observer.
Siobhan had always worried about Emily, such a serious little girl born to a couple of wandering gypsies. Intelligent, quiet, thoughtful, her daughter was friendly and open, but only with a trusted few.
Sean, on the other hand, plowed into life. He was gutsy, pragmatic and adventurous. Every time they took the children to a new school, Sean leapt out of the car or ran from Siobhan's side with the joy that came from experiencing new things and new people.
Emily always entered an unfamiliar classroom tentatively, observing everything and everyone. Her teachers invariably remarked on her intelligence, but complained in the first few months that she would not participate. By the second term, if the family stayed that long, the teachers were trying to keep Emily quiet.
When they finally settled in Langford for a longer period of time than the children had ever known, Emily blossomed. She was designed as a homebody, a teacher, a mom, a wife, someone who thrived on stability.
Although Siobhan never worked once she married Grant, she volunteered for charity organizations and art galleries and hospitals. A free spirit, a gregarious, enthusiastic person, Siobhan enjoyed life from its potential. She embraced her life as a nomad and rejoiced in every new experience.
Her female child, however, was nothing like her and did not resemble her father, either. Emily's DNA had been formed in some ancestral cell, Siobhan often thought, a throwback to the days when people stayed in one geographic location and enjoyed life from that one perspective. Someone who lived in the moment, loving life as it was, not as it would or could be.
Siobhan admired that aspect of Emily's character, sometimes wished she had even an ounce of that capacity.
Siobhan was worried about Emily when she married Bill Thompson. In her opinion, Emily and Bill were too dependent upon one another. They lived in their own little world, which Siobhan had always felt was riskier than having no roots at all.
Now, as she washed her child's limp, heavy limbs, Siobhan stared down at the wounded young woman, so pale even against the white hospital sheets.
Sorrow filled the room, beating relentlessly along with the machines that kept her daughter alive. Poor Emily, her body torn apart by the accident, her heart about to be torn apart as she awakened.
Despite the polite suggestions from the hospital staff that she wasn't really needed, Siobhan stayed in Abbotsford for months. She learned how to wash, turn and exercise her daughter's coma-induced body.
She was there when Emily moaned, when they treated a bedsore, when they lifted her legs in a semblance of walking.
She would be there when Emily awoke, brought slowly back to an unforgiving world. A world that wouldn't allow a gentle soul like Emily's to live without hurt. As she whispered into her daughter's ear, Siobhan was filled with both anger and a desire to wrap her child up and whisk her away, spare her the truth.
For Emily, the sensations came in small snippets, old and damaged photos taken through a fuzzy lens. Pain, a pouring of her life from inside, draining her. Cold, hot. A voice.
Her mother's tender hand brushing damp hair from her forehead. The darkness that held only echoes and shadows.
The day Emily blinked into consciousness, the light stabbed her eyes. The terrible dryness of her throat sent tremors through her body. Her hand jerked in response as someone shifted toward her.
Siobhan's face appeared, at first hazy and unclear, then laboriously focused. Tears flowing silently, her mother patted Emily's parched lips with a wet cloth, then tenderly held a straw up to her.
Emily sipped slowly, some of the luscious liquid seeping down her chin. Her throat expanded with the water. The muscles in her arms and legs twitched fitfully.
Several other people appeared in her peripheral vision. Emily slowly shifted her eyes to take them in.
A tall, dark-haired man in a white uniform, the stethoscope signalling he may be a doctor, smiled down at her.
At her left, a stout middle-aged woman with startling red hair adjusted some dials on a tube attached to Emily's arm.
The doctor spoke first, in a soft voice tinged with a puzzling triumph.
"Emily, I'm Dr. Wayne Singleton. You have been in a deep sleep, a coma, which we induced. It's experimental, something not used too often, and only in extreme cases. I'm telling you all of this so you won't be too shocked by the passage of time. Plus because it's new to us, we will be hovering around you a great deal, bringing you through the challenges you still have to face. But I want you to know you are in the best hands and all your vitals are looking very good. You have healed amazingly well. Now the test will be getting your muscles and body back to normal."
Emily looked at her mother, who continued to weep silently. Siobhan tried at first to staunch the tears, but soon gave up, simply kept a tissue clutched in her fingers.
Emily tried to reach out, but felt as though an extremely heavy blanket lay on top of her, preventing her from moving.
She pursed her lips and forced questions from her throat, but the sound was a muffled, unintelligible cry. Will…?
"It's a very good sign you are trying to ask questions," the doctor intoned, as though he'd given her the gift of speech in the first place. "But be patient. It will be very difficult at first and I'm sure any of the staff can answer your queries."
Stupid man. Siobhan considered the doctor a bit of a pompous ass. He was determined Emily's case would bring him out of the obscurity of a sma
ll city hospital into the medical limelight. However, she had to admit that so far, Emily was responding in the ways he'd predicted.
Typically, he assumed "Will" had been the start of a question about his medical prowess. Little did he know, Emily was asking for the one person closest to her, the one person whose hand should be stroking hers right now.
How would Siobhan tell Emily that William Thompson was Vancouver's most notorious convicted killer? After a ridiculously short trial, he now spent every day in solitary confinement in a bleak prison cell. If he were released into the general population, he would be raped and beaten to death. He was considered a child killer by the other prisoners.
What would happen when Emily discovered that most people believed her husband was a monster, who had desecrated, tortured and murdered the city's Princess?
How would she describe the changes in him? Bill Thompson had gone from a handsome, gregarious, warm person to a pale, silent shadow of himself.
How was Siobhan going to tell her loving, gentle daughter that their baby had died and her capacity to birth children had been lost too?
Ignoring the phalanx of doctors hovering in the background, Siobhan snuggled into the bed next to Emily and took her daughter in her arms.
Chapter 14
December 2008
Charlie was sitting at his easel in the sunroom when the phone call came. Somehow he wasn't surprised. He just wondered why it had taken so long.
The light that poured in through the screened windows was perfect. Spring sunshine, not too bold or too hot, highlighted the colours but didn't overheat his old bones.
It was classic Vancouver weather. Spring came early and was soft and warm. Blossoms dotted the landscape like the colours on Charlie's canvas. The backyard was already green and lush.
Charlie would be eighty years old next month. Though his round face made most people overlook the wrinkles, his life-lined hands showed his age, and the tremor was increasingly annoying.
In his retirement, he had indulged his artistic whims with fierce determination, fuelled by a sense of remorse. He had never expected anyone to understand his paintings, but in a world filled with sorrow, yet moved by optimism, his particular viewpoint had touched an amazing number of people. His art business had flourished.
It had been a few years since he'd participated in a show or a sale in person. His daughter Grace had taken over the business and did very well. She knew how to design websites, how to talk to gallery owners, and how to promote her dad's talent.
Now that he was too sick to go out much, he'd even become a bit of a mystery man, which only increased the lure toward his art. Charlie often laughed at the irony.
Joan brought the telephone out to him, along with a cold bottle of beer. She gave him a quick smile and a kiss on the forehead.
Still slim and lively at seventy-five, Joan had always supported his artist's ambition.
Mostly because his "hobby" kept him from getting in her way, Charlie thought.
"It's Tom." She went back to her gardening or cleaning or puttering or whatever it was she did all day.
Tom Fairburn was also retired from the Vancouver Police Department, though more recently than Charlie. He and his wife Betty had moved to Salt Spring Island this past fall, but Charlie didn't get the impression Tom was happy living close to the land.
Receiving a call from him, however, was fairly unusual. E-mail was cheaper and faster and the two men had taken to it with alacrity when it was introduced years ago in the department.
"Hey, Tom, how are ya?"
Charlie took a long, grateful sip of the cold beer and looked out past the easel into their pristine, organized backyard.
He pictured Tom inside his small log cabin or perhaps stretched out on a chaise lounge in the chaotic garden Betty cultivated on their property.
"Good, good." Tom sounded somewhat breathless. "I…how are you?"
An afterthought, as if recovering his manners, or remembering his friend was ill.
"I'm fine," Charlie lied. "What's up?"
"Did you hear about the Thompson appeal?"
Charlie sipped his beer, somehow eerily calm now that it was happening.
"An appeal?"
"Yah, they're finally taking it to the BC Minister of Justice."
"The appeal they were set to do years ago?"
"The very one. After all these years, they're gonna do it."
Tom's wife had been the Deputy Mayor of Vancouver for a number of years and still had a myriad of connections with the current council. Charlie assumed she was the source of this information.
"What does Betty think the appeal involves? Does she think they'll ask us to testify or something?"
"I don't know. It depends on the Minister, apparently. Betty says he could treat it like a new appeal or even order a whole new trial. Or he could just declare Thompson innocent."
"I wonder why they left it so long. They're lucky I have a memory left."
Tom laughed. "You have the memory of an elephant, my friend."
They talked a little about other inconsequential things, then rang off. Charlie sat very still, listening to the buzz of insects, feeling a few beads of sweat run down his back.
Of course he had never forgotten the Thompson case. Tom was right about his memory, but in the matter of William Thompson, Charlie Haynes had many reasons for not forgetting.
He could think of only one other person who would be interested in discussing the ramifications of this news. Charlie picked up the telephone again and dialled.
Chapter 15
March 2009
I fought against the idea for a long time. I argued our physical presence wasn't necessary to the review. Computers, Skype, cell phones were all at our fingertips. We could use the technology instead. Back in British Columbia, the BC Association for the Wrongly Convicted flicked on the switch we had disengaged years ago. Thanks to May and Alain's generosity, we hired a phalanx of lawyers and a renowned private investigator.
I threw everything I had into the debate. Let the professionals do the work. There was nothing we could add or say or do we hadn't already added, said or done over the years. Cate and Carly couldn't, shouldn't, be without us.
In the end, I gave up or gave in, I can't remember which. Although I don't think I ever fully agreed, I found myself on a private jet to British Columbia just as spring was drying up the land in Ontario. Jacob Finch, PI Montgomery Cardwell, my husband and I plunged through skies that had burst into yellow and blue, sailing toward Vancouver. A beautiful, mountain-kissed city, previously beloved, it existed for me only as the site of my agony. The place I'd sworn I would never, ever set eyes on again.
Langford and I were putting everything on the line to pursue vindication. Already, just by telling our community, we had opened the gates. Our lives were about to change—had already changed, in fact.
Though a close-knit and loving group, the neighbours were compelled to tell a friend, who told a friend, and like the ad about some shampoo years ago, the word was soon out there.
People spread bad news like a virus. Even before we left Burchill, a reporter from The Ottawa Citizen called the house.
Like a couple of rash poker players, we had gone all in with our chips. Will's new identity and our cover were exposed. Soon he would step into the limelight again, on the very soil where attention had first been paid. At least I would be there with him this time.
When I was almost killed in a car accident near Vancouver, even the hospital staff was unaware of my connection to William Thompson. All my identification stated "Emily Taylor" and my family, wisely, kept it that way.
It was unusual in 1980 for a woman to retain her maiden name, but my insistence on doing so had been providential. I was never discovered, never harassed by reporters.
I lost our baby in the accident, along with my capacity to ever have children in the future.
My memory of the hours before the crash disappeared. The police could not establish why I wa
s on the road to Agassiz in the first place, and I was unable to give them the answer.
On the long journey of recovery, remembering a car accident in the rain on a mountain road seemed insignificant. My rescuer had apparently spied a truck speeding away from the scene, but the police never found the offending vehicle. Compared to the ordeal my husband was going through, I didn't even care about this mystery.
The rumour mill while I languished in the hospital in Abbotsford was free to bubble. Most gossips told the story that Mrs. Thompson had left her husband as soon as the charges were laid.
And who could blame her? Who would want to be married to a monster?
Even the police officers involved in the case weren't told of my location.
The law officials were, in fact, quite thrilled the only witness to claim William Thompson was home at the time of the murder had disappeared into a coma from which she might never recover. The prosecution was happy to oblige in keeping my name out of the case entirely.
Our lawyer watched my progress, knew the coma was induced, but agreed by the time I recovered that my in-person testimony was moot. They had my written statement from before the accident, but that had not gone well either.
As it turned out, Phillip Shaw was right about my worthiness as a witness. My memories were sketchy and unreliable. My story would have easily been torn apart by the Crown attorneys.
The enthusiasm for the ghastly case of Linda Courtnell's murder never abated in Vancouver. Understandably, and even admirably, her parents kept their daughter's memory alive through a variety of charities. Conversely, however, William Thompson suffered under the relentless public reminders.
Despite a Supreme Court review years later that opined Will's case was a "miscarriage of justice," he had not been proclaimed innocent. The judges did not go the distance. They reported that William Thompson had not proven his "factual innocence." His lawyers would have to appeal to the Minister of Justice in British Columbia for a review. He was, however, released from prison.
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