The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn

by Gail Bowen

  I looked at them both wearily. “What’s your point?”

  Officer Miner looked at me steadily. “Easy on there, Mrs. Kilbourn. There are no accusations being made here. This is an information session. We’re just letting you know that, no matter how you saw the relationship, Christy Sinclair apparently chose you to be the most important person in her life.”

  Unexpectedly, I felt my eyes fill with tears. “It’s too late now to do anything about that, isn’t it?”

  Officer Kequahtooway lowered his gaze and coughed. “Actually, Mrs. Kilbourn, it isn’t too late. There are a number of details that have to be attended to, funeral arrangements, that kind of thing. You have no legal responsibility. I should make that clear. But there are other kinds of responsibility.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “there are.”

  Officer Miner stood to leave, and Constable Kequahtooway and I followed her to the front door. But when she started down the front walk, he didn’t follow.

  Instead, he turned and said, “Mrs. Kilbourn, this is unofficial, but I think when we get the final reports from pathology, we’re going to find out that Christy Sinclair’s death was a suicide.”

  I leaned against the doorjamb. “I kept hoping it wouldn’t be,” I said. “That makes everything a thousand times worse.”

  “It always does,” Perry Kequahtooway said softly. Then he looked at me. “Sometimes people find comfort in searching out the truth about the life of a person who’s passed on.”

  “You mean investigating?” I said. “But you’ll be doing that.”

  Constable Kequahtooway shrugged. “That’s right, we will, but sometimes people like you can get to a different kind of truth than the police do. It’s just a thought, Mrs. Kilbourn. But I think, in the long run, it might comfort you and Peter to find out why you mattered so much to Christy Sinclair.”

  When he started down the steps, I touched his arm. “Constable, what does your last name mean? We had a friend years ago named Kequahtooway, and I know the name is significant.”

  He squinted into the sun, and then, unexpectedly, he grinned.

  “In Ojibway,” he said, “it means he who interprets. You know, the guy who tries to help people understand.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  On Victoria Day, when I went to the mailbox to get the morning paper, Regina Avenue was as empty as a street in a summer dream. I went in, made coffee and looked out at the backyard. Peter was in the pool swimming, and Sadie and Rose, our dogs, were sitting on the grass watching.

  I went out and knelt by the edge of the pool.

  “How’s it going this morning?” I asked.

  Peter swam to the edge of the water and looked up at me.

  “It’s been better,” he said, and I could hear his father in the weary bravado of his voice.

  “I know the feeling,” I said.

  His face was a mask. “I didn’t go after her, Mum. When she said she was going out on the lake, I was relieved. I was going to have a whole hour where I didn’t have to worry about her. So I didn’t go after her, and she died. How am I going to live with that?”

  “I don’t know, Peter,” I said. “But for starters, you can see that what you did was pretty normal. You thought about yourself. You wanted some breathing space, and when the chance came, you took it. Mother Teresa may not have done what you did, but most people, including me, would have. Look, I’m not saying that it was right to let Christy go when she was that upset, but we don’t carry a crystal ball around with us. You didn’t know what Christy was going to do, and you’re certainly not responsible for what she did.”

  “Mum, listen to yourself. You don’t even believe what you’re saying. You know I didn’t have to be in the boat with her. You know it’s not that simple because you’re the one who told me it’s never simple – that we’re always responsible for what we do and what we don’t do. You’ve been drumming that into me for nineteen years, you can’t expect me to just walk away now.”

  He pulled himself up on the side of the pool. His body, still pale from winter, was as graceful as his father’s had been.

  “I’m seeing Daddy everywhere in you today,” I said.

  He raked his hair with his fingers. “That’s not bad, is it?”

  “Not bad at all,” I said. “Come on inside, and I’ll get us some breakfast.”

  Taylor and Angus were already at the breakfast table having cereal. Taylor was unnaturally quiet. The night before when I had told her about Christy’s death she had listened attentively, then gone off to her room to draw. When I went in to say goodnight, she was asleep, and the bedspread was covered with pictures of swans.

  While Peter went upstairs to dry off and change, I poured us all juice and started batter for pancakes.

  “Anybody want to take the dogs for a walk after breakfast?” I asked.

  “Samantha’s mum is taking us for a ride on the bike path,” Taylor said.

  “Are you up for that, T.?” I asked. “You just started yesterday.”

  “Samantha’s mum has never ridden a bike in her life, but she says today’s the day.”

  “Good for her,” I said. “Angus, how about you?”

  He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’m playing arena ball as soon as I’m through here, then I’m coming home to make a cake.”

  “A cake,” I said, trying to keep the surprise out of my voice.

  “Alison next door made this cake, and it was great. She says it’s a real no-brainer.”

  “A no-brainer?” I asked.

  He looked at me kindly. “Easy? Any dummy can do it?”

  “Right,” I said.

  After breakfast, Peter and I put the dogs on their leashes and walked them downtown to Victoria Park. The walk to the park was a family tradition on the twenty-fourth of May weekend, one of those small ceremonies whose only justification was that we did it every year. My husband, Ian, used to say it was our way of making sure that Good Queen Vic, the fertility goddess, would smile on our garden.

  It was the first really hot day of the year, and the streets were coming to life with people riding bikes or jogging or pushing babies in strollers. There was a regatta on Wascana Lake, and from the bridge we could see the bright sails of the skiffs waiting for wind.

  Peter and I didn’t say much. We never did. We sat on the bench in front of the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald and listened to the chimes the multicultural community had donated to the park play “Edelweiss.” Four days earlier I had sat on this same bench with Mieka, reeling from the shock of the death of another young woman. It was not a pattern I was happy about repeating.

  Finally I said to Peter, “Do you remember Constable Kequahtooway? He was the first one there the night of the accident.”

  Peter nodded.

  “Well,” I went on, “he says that taking care of the details of Christy’s funeral and finding out more about her might help us accept what’s happened.”

  “Face it,” Peter said angrily. “Nothing’s going to help.”

  He leaned back on the bench and raised his face to the sun. The chimes finished “Edelweiss” and started on “The Blue Bells of Scotland.” When “Blue Bells” was finished, Peter leaned forward and looked across the park.

  “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do the right things for Christy,” he said. “But it’s not going to be easy. Sometimes I wonder if she ever told me the truth about anything.”

  “Maybe that’s what she wanted to tell me that last night,” I said.

  Peter shook his head. “You never give up, do you?”

  “That’s what your dad used to tell me. He didn’t see it as a particularly admirable trait.” I shrugged. “Anyway, the truth must be somewhere. I guess the place to start is Christy’s family. The Estevan angle doesn’t seem to be true, but she must have somebody. It’s terrible to think of her people out there not knowing. How would you feel about calling some of Chris’s friends in Saskatoon and seeing if she ever mentioned
anything about her family?” I looked at him. “Nothing’s come back to you, has it? I mean something she said that might help the police.”

  “Mum, she said so many things …” He leaned forward and put his arms around the neck of our golden retriever. The dogs had always been his consolation. In a minute he stood up.

  “We’d better get back,” he said. “I think what I’ll do is drive up to Saskatoon. If I leave now, I can be there after lunch. It’ll be easier for me to talk about Christy face to face. I’m hopeless on the phone.”

  “I know,” I said, picking up Rose’s leash. “I’ve talked to you on the phone for nineteen years.”

  As soon as we got to the house, Peter filled a Thermos with coffee and headed north. I was watching Angus line up the ingredients for his cake when the phone rang.

  The man’s voice was brusquely authoritative. “Joanne Kilbourn? This is the pathology department at Pasqua Hospital. We’re ready to release Christy Sinclair’s body and we need a signature.” He hesitated, and when he spoke again he sounded almost human. “You’d better make some arrangements for a pickup.”

  I watched Angus carefully break three eggs into a cup, then I went upstairs and opened my closet door. I looked at the bright cotton skirts and blouses and wondered what you were supposed to wear when you signed for a body. I picked the dress closest to me, a grey cotton shirtwaist. As I left the house I caught my reflection in the hall mirror. I looked a hundred years old, which was about half as old as I felt.

  What happened at the hospital was either Keystone Kops or cosmic justice working itself out. It began when I saw the picket line blocking the entrance. There was a nurses’ strike in our province. Under normal circumstances I would have walked twenty miles before I crossed a picket line, but these were not normal circumstances.

  A blonde woman, X-ray thin and carrying a picket sign, stood between me and the front steps of the hospital.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said to her, “but there’s been a death.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said and she lowered her sign. It said, “The Only Good Tory Is a Suppository.”

  The hospital was quiet. The administration had dismissed as many patients as possible before the strike. “To streamline the operation,” they had said. There was one harried-looking woman sitting in a reception area designed for four.

  “Pathology,” I said to her.

  “Top floor,” she said without looking at me.

  When I got off the elevator, I was struck by how pleasantly domestic the pathology department seemed. There were plants everywhere. To the left of the elevator was a floor-to-ceiling window that filled the area with warm spring sunshine; to the right there was an area that looked like a nursing station. On the counter a huge azalea bloomed unseen by anyone but me. The nursing station was empty.

  I walked to the window and looked out. Beneath me was Queensbury Downs, the racetrack, seductive as a sure thing in the May sunshine. Trainers were taking horses through their paces, and I could see the lines of the horses’ powerful muscles as they moved around the track. I felt myself relaxing.

  There was a cough behind me. When I turned, I saw a woman standing behind the counter. She was wearing street clothes, not a uniform, and she seemed as harried as the woman downstairs had been.

  “Well?” she said, and her voice was flat and uninterested.

  “Joanne Kilbourn for Christy Sinclair,” I said.

  “Right,” she said. She turned, took a file from a rack on the wall and placed it on the counter between us. The name “Sinclair” was written in bright green felt pen across the top of the folder.

  “Everything’s ready for your signature,” she said and opened the file. Behind her a phone rang. She answered it, looked even more harried, then ran down the hall. I picked up the form on the top. I thought I could sign it and have it ready when she came back. Cheerful as pathology was, I didn’t want to stick around.

  Underneath the release form was a typewritten report labelled “Autopsy Findings.” I pushed it away from me. Then I looked at the bulletin board behind the nurses’ station. Someone had tacked up a computer printout; the letters were large, mock-Gothic: “We speak for the dead to protect the living.”

  Good enough. I pulled the autopsy report toward me and began reading. The first page confirmed what Perry Kequahtooway said it would confirm: Christy Sinclair’s death was a result of a deadly combination of alcohol and tranquilizers. The drug names and the strength of the pills didn’t mean anything to me; obviously whatever Chris had taken had been enough to do the job. As I turned to the next page, I was surprised to see that my hands were shaking.

  I found what I was looking for on page three. The typewriter pathology used had a worn ribbon, and the report was dotted with vowels whose imprint was so vague their identity could only be guessed at. Moreover, the report was written in the language of medicine, and I was a layperson. But I had given birth to three children, and there were certain things I knew. I knew, for example, that any woman whose reproductive system had been as badly scarred by repeated non-clinical abortion procedures as Christy Sinclair’s had been was unlikely to sustain a pregnancy. I looked at that hard medical language again. No mention of a fetus, no mention of any physiological changes that would indicate pregnancy. There was no baby. I was flooded with relief and then, almost immediately, I was overcome by a sense of loss.

  I replaced the first page, and that’s when I saw it. About a third of the way down the page under the heading “Identifying Marks” was a single entry: “left buttock, tattoo, 3 cm, bear-shaped, not recent.”

  I felt my head swim. The harried woman came back. I signed the form and pushed it toward her without a word. I stood up and started to leave. She called after me. “You should make some arrangements to have her taken to a funeral home,” she said. “You can use my phone, if you like.”

  She was, I knew, trying to be kind, and I walked into the nursing station.

  “Just pick one and dial,” she said pointing to her desk pad. Under the plastic were the business cards of all the funeral homes in town. Easy reference. I picked the one nearest our house and made my call. The woman went through the doors marked “No Admittance.” I picked up the phone again and called long distance information.

  Constable Perry Kequahtooway didn’t sound surprised to hear from me, and he didn’t chide me for reading a confidential file. When I told him about the teddy bear tattoos on the buttocks of two girls dead within a week, he whistled softly. “Now I wonder what that means?” he said in his gentle voice.

  As I drove along the expressway, I repeated the question to myself. By the time I walked in the front door of my house, I still hadn’t come up with an answer.

  Taylor was sitting at the kitchen table eating cake. Her face was dirty except for the places where tears had run down her cheeks. A half-dozen Sesame Street Band-Aids were plastered on her knee. Angus was across from her.

  When Taylor saw me, she said, “I wiped out.”

  “So I see,” I said.

  “I put the Band-Aids on myself.”

  “Right,” I said. “Taylor, did you clean the cut out before you put on the Band-Aids?”

  “No time,” she said.

  “Finish your cake and we’ll make time,” I said.

  “I told you,” Angus said wearily.

  Cleaning Taylor’s knee and disinfecting it was a trauma for us both. When we were through, we collapsed on the couch in the family room. Taylor snuffled noisily beside me, and I pulled her close. I looked at the sun shimmering on the brilliant blue of the pool and tried to block out the ugliness of the medical profile the coroner’s words had drawn.

  Christy Sinclair had had so many abortions she was sterile. There had never been a baby. Beside me Taylor sang a tuneless song and finally drifted off to sleep. Not long afterwards, I followed her.

  When I woke up, Mieka was there with Greg.

  “Phone call from the uncle,” she said, “wanting to take
you out for dinner. I accepted for you. Greg and I will take the kids to McDonald’s and the movies so you can make a night of it.” She looked at me. “I think we all deserve a night off, Mummy.”

  I looked at them groggily. “I don’t think so, Miek. I’d be rotten company tonight.”

  Greg came and sat by me on the couch. “It’d do you good, Jo. You’ve had a hell of a time the last few days. We all have. Anyway, don’t decide right now. Let’s all have a swim. It’s gorgeous out there. If you don’t feel better after that, I’ll call my uncle and tell him Mieka the Matchmaker will go out for dinner with him, and you can come to McDonald’s with me and the kids.”

  By the time I came out of the pool, I’d decided against McDonald’s. The mindless rhythm of swimming had always relaxed me. By seven o’clock, my heart still felt leaden, but I was ready. Mieka had suggested I find something sensational to wear. I didn’t have anything sensational, but I did have a cotton dress that was the colour of cornflowers. Every time I wore it, good things happened.

  As I met Keith at the front door, I hoped good things were going to happen again.

  “No car?” I said.

  “This place is in walking distance,” he said. “Actually, it’s my house. Our housekeeper got some food together and left. The rest of the evening is going to be a clumsy seduction scene. You can bolt out the door whenever you want.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said.

  The streets were quiet, and the air was sweet with the scent of flowering trees: chokecherry, lilac, crabapple.

  At the corner of Albert Street there was a cherry tree in full bloom. We stopped under it and looked up into branches heavy with rosy blossoms, thin as silk.

  “I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a Chinese watercolour,” Keith said.

  Just then a gust of wind came and the cherry blossoms drifted down on us, pink and fragrant.