“I’m not leaving,” she said with difficulty as he set her down, her teeth chattering with the cold.
“That’s fine with me, detective. I just wanted to get you out of the rain and under a Kapton blanket. You’ve got a nasty laceration on your scalp—probably hit by something coming down the sewer. The paramedics will take care of it, but you’re gonna need a tetanus shot.”
She could see the ring of cops keeping Mercy’s staff, straggling students and worried neighbours away. Two members of the bomb squad rushed out of a black van in the parking lot and were met by a uniform who must have told them they’d missed the show. Disappointed, they removed their cumbersome gear and stowed it in the vehicle before walking over to the concrete pillbox to see the shaft.
A paramedic wrapped a foil blanket around her. Disregarding the cut to her head, Aziz stood up and started making her way toward MacNeice.
She’d only staggered a few feet when there was a menacing rumble in the distance, like something massive was being sucked from existence.
Those who weren’t engaged in saving the lives of Dylan and MacNeice turned in time to see the distant goal posts shudder and lurch before dropping from sight. Swallowed whole. A teen in a Mercy melton jacket shouted, “No fucking way!” as others about him gasped. Moments later, the entire goal line—from the posts to the bleachers—folded into the ground, leaving the bleachers’ steel supports hanging over an abyss. Dark grey water shot skyward, arced and then fell to fill the muddy gap. The field soon flooded to the thirty-yard line and a grey tide raced around the surrounding track.
“What the hell was that?” the firefighter shouted.
“The grenade,” Aziz said wearily. “I guess it shattered the sewer wall and the surge undermined the field.”
He turned to her. Blood was running freely from her temple to her chin, where it bled into the wet collar of her jacket. A plume of red spread along the grey threads. Taking her gently by the shoulders, he said, “Ma’am, why don’t you sit down. You’re bleeding.” Whatever she was going to say next was lost in violent sputtering and hacking. A paramedic had rolled MacNeice onto his side and he was purging himself of the water that had invaded his airways. In seconds, he was given oxygen tabs and one of the firefighters had draped a foil blanket over him and slid a makeshift pillow under his head. When he was finished coughing and spitting, he rolled onto his back and lay still.
Nearby, a paramedic had positioned defibrillators on Dylan’s bare chest. Shouting for clear, the paramedic hit the switch, sending an electrical charge through the boy. His body bucked violently. There was a sickening pause that seemed to deflate everyone, and then Dylan coughed, sending a ragged stream of grey water into the face of the paramedic holding the paddles.
The firefighters laughed in relief, and Dylan’s eyes opened wide with fear. He stared at the men and women around him and tried to sit up. One of the firefighters eased him back down so the paramedic could slip oxygen tabs in his nostrils. The firefighter covered him with another foil blanket and Aziz heard him say, “Stay on your side, son. You’ve still got some sewer in you.” He rolled Dylan over so he was facing MacNeice. He seemed shocked to see the detective lying on the grass, covered in tinfoil, looking back at him.
The firefighter holding Aziz asked her what she wanted to do.
“Take me to MacNeice,” she said. He nodded and put an arm around her waist and carried her forward, her feet dangling several inches off the ground.
MacNeice was staring skyward when she appeared above him. He blinked several times, then studied her face with a look of wonder. He smiled before letting his eyes close.
She turned to the firefighter, who still held her off the ground. “Lay me next to him, please. Can we keep the blanket?”
“Sure thing, but don’t get too comfortable. The paramedics will be taking the three of you away as soon as they get their gurneys out here.”
He put her down next to MacNeice, tucked her silver blanket around them both, then covered them with a heavy wool DFD blanket. MacNeice turned in her direction, scanning the details of her face. The tightness around his jaw, which had been there since the fire at Samantha Stewart’s, was gone. His eyes were watery, whether from tears or rain, she couldn’t tell. But his smile, when it came, was what she imagined she’d see if she ever woke up next to him. She smiled back.
He raised his hand and let it pass lightly and softly over her cheek. Somehow, he seemed to know the difference between a raindrop and a tear.
Chapter 41
After two days in the hospital MacNeice was sent home. Though he didn’t feel the need for any more rest, he was nonetheless happy to be out of the public eye, dodging the press conferences that had been taking up much of Wallace’s time since Coach Knox had exploded in the sewer.
He knew about those conferences, because on his first day home, he’d turned on the television to be confronted by school portraits of Alexander Knox, David Nicholson and Jennifer Grant—the same ones he had taped to the whiteboard. Wallace confirmed that the latest tragedy signalled the end of the investigation into the fatal bombing in Gage Park. After that, the network cut away to a reporter standing near the concrete sewer shaft. As the reporter spoke, the camera panned to the other end of Mercy’s football field, where two bulldozers were busy lifting broken sections of concrete and soil and sod from the wide gash. MacNeice turned the television off.
He took out a Nina Simone CD and slipped it in the player. He turned down the volume and waited for the satin chords of “I Put a Spell on You.” Until he’d met Kate, MacNeice had only known the song as sung by its creator, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. The original was more voodoo than love, more Halloween than bedroom. Simone’s take was the perfect fusion of sex and longing.
Crossing the room, he settled onto the sofa and lifted his eyes to the skeletal canopy of the pre-spring forest. He wasn’t prepared for the coyote that walked casually in front of the large window, pausing to put its snout toward a pane, sniffing as if a fine scent had betrayed the presence of the weary man inside.
Its coat was lush despite the winter, its eyes wise from several millennia of living rough. He sat up slowly and reached for the camera on the side table. The coyote turned, wary but not intimidated. It lifted a leg and calmly peed against the cottage wall. Before MacNeice could level his camera, it trotted casually across the patio and out of sight.
The chickadees, juncos and the pair of cardinals had remained frozen on their branches while the coyote was near. MacNeice watched them, each tilting an eye to the ground. Perhaps in their birdbrains they worried that the beast might be gifted with flight, and for birds maybe stranger things had happened. When they started hopping about again, calling to each other and dropping down for seeds that had fallen from the feeder, he knew the coyote was out of range.
Life and death appeared among the trees outside the cottage. Insects eaten by larger insects, or by birds, and birds by bigger birds—or by house cats. All hunted for opportunity, but none had the breadth of appetite of that coyote. On a good day, it dined on mice, rabbits, groundhogs, birds, eggs, kittens or lapdogs; on bad, it managed with frogs, toads, fish, turtles, salamanders, garter snakes, roadkill and garbage. Getting shot or trapped by cops or angry farmers, or being whacked on the highway, were the only things that kept coyotes from dying in bed surrounded by family. Did a robin or a cricket ever die of old age?
What happened to the three teachers from Our Lady of Mercy High School lacked all of the primal qualities MacNeice saw through this window. Their humanity had been reduced to zero, until all that remained was raw bone.
In the few hours that David Nicholson had had to reflect, bundled tightly onto a woody wagon, he knew there was little chance he’d be unwrapped safely. If he had been lucky, he might have had a moment to say what was tucked beneath his chin; instead he had a few seconds of easy breathing while he waited to die. He might also have assumed his real crime would have gone undetected until the sad little house was kn
ocked down for the development of another vineyard.
Accustomed to game plans, Sandy Knox had left what happened to Nicholson to chance, inadvertently setting his own bar for torture. He would have suffered the consequences if Nicholson had been rescued in Gage Park; he should have anticipated what had happened, when it wasn’t thugs but first responders who arrived to deal with the bundled man in the wagon.
In the quiet of the cottage, MacNeice wondered what triggered Knox to pick up the phone and call Tirelle. His best guess: Nicholson was a sadist. He’d planned a different punishment for Knox than the one he inflicted on Jennifer. Sandy’s would be slow and everlasting, and Dylan was the weapon. Nicholson allowed Knox to believe that the boy was his creation. When Dylan showed signs of becoming a phenomenon, Nicholson began pulling the rug from under Knox, who finally decided that a decade of pain was enough.
MacNeice was still grappling with the terrible journey Jennifer Grant had taken to her death. She must have known the moment she entered the house on Ryder Road that she wasn’t coming out, but it was unlikely she could have anticipated the horrors that awaited her there.
He hoped Dylan would survive in spite of the terrible tragedy of his parents. Would his dreams be defined by his mother’s death, by the shallow concrete grave, her soiled wedding dress? Would the twisted knot of his two fathers eventually unwind and be his own undoing? Under the weight of these thoughts, MacNeice closed his eyes and eventually began to drift.
A feeling of warmth touched his face. He opened his eyes to find the sun had broken through the cloud cover. A sparrow on a nearby branch took the opportunity to fluff its feathers. It reminded him of the way Tuscan women shake their duvets before draping them over the railings of narrow balconies to air for the day. He closed his eyes again, happy to wander once more through Tuscany with Kate at his side, both of them grateful to be alive.
By mid-April, apart from the occasional shower, the rain had finally stopped. Many described the rest of spring as the most beautiful in living memory. It seemed like nature had taken a deep breath, and in the exhaling it released an excess of colour, birdsong and intoxicating scents. Gardens sprung up overnight and, following almost three months of rain, farmers and fruit growers throughout the region—usually given to cautious predictions—spoke about the prospects of record harvests.
Driving past Samantha Stewart’s flat, MacNeice saw the For Sale sign planted in the narrow garden beside the door. She had moved to Toronto and wouldn’t be coming back other than to see her family. She wouldn’t be calling MacNeice and there weren’t going to be any tender letters exchanged between them. He understood why. So much of what had happened since the night he almost died in her flat was a blur. What remained in focus was the aftermath of pain and exhaustion and the cost to his relationship with Aziz.
He could recall how his chest ached as he ran toward the storm sewer, how weak his legs were as he lowered himself down the shaft. He remembered leaping across to Aziz, taking a deep breath and going under to grab hold of Dylan’s belt. It was like being caught beneath a terrible black surf. He was aware of his legs against hers; he remembered being reassured to feel her there, as if he’d survive being under as long as he could sense her body against his.
There was a moment when he felt the air being punched out of his chest, when he lost the strength to pull against the current. There was nothing he could do but hang on. If he were to die, he would do so holding on to the boy.
In the ambulance later, he’d asked where Aziz was. The paramedic who was attaching monitoring equipment to his chest looked up. “That woman who was lying next to you?”
“Yes.”
“She’s on her way to hospital too.”
“Will she be all right?”
“All I can say, sir, is that when she was lying next to you, she looked pretty happy.” That was something MacNeice would remember.
Initially, the death of Alexander Knox was considered a suicide. From her hospital bed, Aziz clarified that he was actually handing the grenade to MacNeice when the surge swept him away. He and the grenade had travelled over a hundred yards underwater. Knox was probably dead from drowning by the time it exploded.
It took two days before the city could drain the sewer: the collapsed concrete walls, soil, sod and gravel had effectively dammed the system. Subsequent surges were diverted west of Mercy, but it took another day to find Knox’s body. His torso and legs were intact, lodged against the grill at the bay end of the system. But that was all they found. A deadly combination of forces—the blast and the surge—had carried everything else through the exit.
Robert Grant no longer needed prompting to talk. He told Vertesi and Williams that his role was simply to get David Nicholson to come to a house that actually belonged to Knox, on the pretext that the family had several things of Jennifer’s that Dylan might be interested in having.
“Why?” Williams’s voice was low and grave.
Grant appeared puzzled by the question. Williams glanced up from his notebook and waited for him to answer. “I disliked David immensely. I thought he was lying about Jenn and I hated that he took Dylan from our family. It was as if we were the ones that had chased her away to California.”
Grant hadn’t known about the affair or the letter his sister had sent Knox about being pregnant with Dylan.
Knox had convinced his old friend that he just wanted to get Nicholson alone and persuade him to stop pretending to be a basketball coach and let Knox do what was necessary to groom Dylan’s talent. While Grant didn’t entirely believe him, he hadn’t noticed the wagon or the duct tape and, even if he had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to him.
“And the grenade?”
Knox knew Grant had been in the reserve. He had asked him about grenades, how they worked, how much time you had after pulling the pin—information he could easily have gotten from the Internet. Knox never told Grant that he had one, just said it was something he was curious about. The grocer was still incredulous: “Where did he get a grenade?”
At trial Grant was convicted as an accessory in the murder of David Nicholson and an accessory to manslaughter in the death of Constable Szabo. His lawyer wasn’t out of the courthouse before he announced there’d be an appeal.
Paul Zetter was convicted as an accessory in the murders of Anniken Kallevik and Duguald Langan. In his defence, Zetter claimed he had never told Jacko Mars Bishop to kill anyone, but he admitted that he’d asked him to solve the problem of Langan getting greedy. After Langan disappeared, Zetter moved in on his bookmaking clients, happy to remain ignorant of Bishop’s solution. Furthermore, when DS MacNeice came calling at Canada Coil and Wire, Zetter had told Bishop there was a homicide cop looking for him.
Zetter’s thugs were charged and convicted for assaulting Freddy Dewar. The Crown’s chief witness appeared in court in a navy blue blazer with two rows of merchant marine service decorations. Dewar had identified both men from separate lineups; additionally, before they stepped into the light, he’d described a ring on the third finger of one, and a tattoo on the right hand of the other.
Gloria Zetter was given a six-month suspended sentence. No hard evidence existed that connected her to her husband’s illegal activities. Melody Chapman and William Byrne were charged with and convicted for obstruction of justice and illegal gaming, but both were acquitted on the charges of accessory to murder.
Epilogue
February 23, the following year: the Regional Basketball Championships.
The Panthers were ahead of the Hawks by sixteen points in the dying minutes of the final game of Dylan Nicholson’s senior season. Interim Coach John Swetsky, who had taken a leave of absence to help the team, was on the sidelines. Dylan was next to him, a towel draped over his shoulders. Swetsky had pulled him from the game because it would have been unsportsmanlike to run up the score.
Keeping his promise, MacNeice was in the stands. Minutes before, he had watched Dylan on a breakaway, running down the court, then pivo
ting around a defender—his hair flying wildly—launching through the air and turning to dunk the ball behind him. He’d landed, looked up and smiled briefly at MacNeice, then ran the length of the court to block a shot.
Swetsky swung awkwardly around to scan the stands. Though he was moving without the cane, he was still unsteady. When he caught MacNeice’s eye, Swetsky threw both fists triumphantly in the air, then mimicked the elegant hand movements of a standing jumpshot.
MacNeice understood. Swetsky had finally taken his shot. By helping Dylan, Swetsky’s own fears had disappeared like raindrops in a fire. MacNeice swallowed the emotion rising in his throat and then he stood and applauded both man and boy.
Acknowledgements
My much-loved grandfather, Joseph MacIntosh might have said, had he read this book, “Auch, for the love of God, laddie—where do these stories come from?” His son Ian, a mountain of a man, gripped my hand as I left for art college and said, “Remember boy, the only culture in Ontario—is agriculture.”
Though both are long gone, I still remember what I learned from them. Tenderness from Granddad, strength from Uncle Ian—their DNA runs through MacNeice’s veins. For research, I’ve tapped several of my health science sources, doctors Dody Bienenstock, John Bienenstock, Rae Lake, Karel O’Brien and Gerry O’Leary. I’m grateful to Donna Wolfe for checking my transcription of a Clydeside dialect and John Michaluk, for an unforgettable tour of the waterfront and the remains of Hamilton’s Brightside. Similarly, I also want to thank Bill Gordon for his personal history of life at Stelco.
These stories emerge from dreams, a life of curiosity, observations of light and shadow, a profound love of beauty and a respect for blackness. They come to life with the help and generosity of my first readers. First among them is my partner in life, Shirley Blumberg Thornley. Without her, MacNeice would not have happened. I’m grateful also to Bruce Westwood, Chris Casuccio and Kristine Wookey of Westwood Creative Artists for their ongoing support.
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