"I don't know him at all. What is this leading to, Sergeant?"
His eyes were what she would have expected to see in a hired killer—blankly conscienceless. "You'd make things easier if you'd just answer the question," he said.
Easier for whom? she wanted to ask, but suddenly she was afraid of hearing him say, "Easier on yourself." Steady, she told herself. He hasn't said anything about thinking you did it. It's just the tone of his voice. Maybe Valerie was wrong.
"Sergeant," she said slowly, trying to remember that she had done nothing, trying not to let him make her feel guilty of something, "among my friends I happen to number a music producer by the name of Mel Ruff. He produces and manages several groups and individuals, among whom the most famous is the rock group Horse. I was introduced to them once, a year or so ago, after a recording session. I'm not sure I even got all their names. In any case, what possible connection have they with anything?"
He waited till she had finished speaking, then went on as if she hadn't said a word.
"Were you in contact with Guardino before your alleged kidnapping?"
Anger and fear sharpened her wits. "What alleged kidnapping?"
Sergeant Rice surveyed her from blank eyes, then flipped through his notebook. "On the tenth of this month, your father—"
"Sergeant Rice."
He stopped and looked up. She did not think she had met such an unimaginative human being in her life.
"For the tenth time," she said evenly. "I was not kidnapped. I was away with friends. Who they were and why I am keeping it a secret have no bearing on anything and are none of your business. But for your information I will tell you that Anthony Guardino is not my friend and was not a member of the sailing party."
"How are your relations with your father?" asked Sergeant Rice. He had heard nothing.
***
Smith paced through the empty rooms, swamped by fear, rage and impotent self-loathing. She shouldn't have told them anything. She wasn't a criminal; she wasn't required to talk to the police about her friends and activities. Why had she answered their questions? Why had she been such a coward?
Because there was a chink in her armour. Because she was trying to protect Johnny Winterhawk. And she had been afraid that if she stood on her citizen's rights she would make them angry enough that they might...they might what?
That's interesting, she thought mildly. I live in a country where an innocent citizen is afraid of the police, as though they have some power they shouldn't have....
When she had calmed down enough, she called Mel. Violet Ruff had been a college friend of Smith's, but it had been with her older brother that the real friendship had formed, and when Violet moved east Mel and Smith had maintained the friendship.
"Have the police been talking to you?" she asked without preamble. Mel was one friend she had been glad to hear from in the days after she got back.
"Not that I know of," said Mel, in his deep pleasant voice. "These days, of course, one can never be sure."
"They were asking me about Tone Guardino. They say he's been in prison?"
"He makes no secret of it. Two years less a day for possession."
"They seem to think he had something to do with my 'kidnapping,' Mel. I haven't the least idea why. Can you think of anything?"
"Oh ho." He drew out the vowel as though something had clicked.
"What?" she shrieked. "What?"
"Is it merely coincidence, do you suppose, that Tone Guardino was arrested and sentenced with a wild but interesting young man who styles himself Chief Crowfoot?"
"Good Lord," Smith said faintly.
"One does hear things, about the police mentality—"
She shuddered and wondered whether Sergeant Rice were questioning Chief Crowfoot today, and how. "Let's talk about something else, please."
"Certainly," responded Mel with alacrity. "I hear you've been cooping yourself up lately. What have you been doing?"
"Sleeping," she said. "Also reading a lot. And writing."
"Writing what? Not your memoirs?"
"No," she said, although in a way she had been. "Poems, actually." She laughed self-deprecatingly. "And songs. At least I hope they're songs."
"Well, well," he said approvingly. "So you're finally doing something about it."
She blinked. "Doing something about what, Mel?"
Mel laughed. "You've been saying for years you wanted to write."
"I...have I?"
"Quote, I used to want to write poetry/songs once, end of quote. Note of wistful longing. Every time Bradshaw came up with a winner."
Bradshaw was the member of Horse who wrote most of the group's lyrics. Smith had never realized before that she was envious of him, though it seemed Mel had. Envious because he wrote and because what he wrote moved people. She had attended or watched videotapes of the group's concerts and had been too moved afterward to speak.
It wasn't so much the music that got her—she had been too busy all her life to get caught up, as her friends had done, in rock music. It was the way the audience would suddenly scream out the lyric of a favourite song along with the group, just one line or two, without any advance warning, as though the same frenzy had hit them all at once. And the lyric was always one that Bradshaw had written. "Take me home with you, babe, take me home with yewwww." The shout would shake the hall, and a chill of excitement would shiver up Smith's spine and prickle her scalp. Was that when she turned to Mel and said. "I used to want to write"?
"You keep it up," said Mel.
"The police will probably be calling you," Smith warned him.
"My lips are sealed."
***
"I thought you'd called off your dogs," she said to her father on Sunday afternoon.
Her father frowned. "What dogs?"
"The police, Daddy."
"Oh," he grunted. Just the faintest expression of relief flickered across his face, and Shulamith frowned in surprise. "They aren't for me to call off."
"They would be if you told them you were hallucinating that night. Which you were."
"If you want to try to fool the police, my girl, you go right ahead. But you won't fool me. I have better faith in my memory. I've lived with it for fifty-three years. You were at home that night. You went to bed in your bed expecting to see me over breakfast in the morning. In the middle of the night a bunch of masked men got into my bedroom, and the next day you had disappeared. All of that is fact. None of it is imagination, and I intend to get to the bottom of it."
"The police intend to get to the bottom of it, too, Daddy, or something they can call the bottom of it. Don't underestimate them. Thanks no doubt to your insistence on your version of things, they have now decided that I conspired in my own kidnapping in order to extort something from you."
"What?" thundered her father.
"Yes," she said in a cool, light voice. "They may even decide I was trying to kill you. They've been questioning all my friends, Daddy. And me, of course. They don't call me Miss St. John anymore. Yesterday they wanted to know what our relationship was like—do I love you? Had I been aware that a deep shock would bring on another heart attack? Do I have connections with criminals and dope users? Et cetera."
Her father's face was white with rage. "Why, those..." he began. "You should have called me, girl! You should have told me!"
"I am telling you now. But having so insistently set this machine in motion, you shouldn't be surprised if I doubt that you can or want to stop it."
He stared at her in silence. "I can stop that stupid line of inquiry!" he snapped. "Hand me the phone! No—" he looked at her "—I'll talk to them later."
"Of course."
"Why the hell won't you tell me what happened? I only—''
"All right, Daddy, I'll tell you what happened: nothing happened. Nothing that is anyone's business but my own. But if you can stop this investigation, you'd better."
"Shulamith," he said, "I'm your father. Why can't you tell me?"
> And she looked at him across the yawning gulf of all her years of anger, hurt and rejection and saw that he knew nothing of it. To him she was no more than a hand's reach away. The anger in her urged her to tell him now of the decision she had come to during the long silent hours of the week just past, as though that way, better than any other, she could make him understand that he no longer held any power over her, that she no longer needed his love.
"When are you coming home?" she asked instead.
"Next week," her father said, a determination in his voice that told her he was arguing with his doctors over this. "Week after next at the latest."
"You'll miss testifying to the Cartier Commission?"
"They're coming here," said St. John.
"What?"
"They're convening a session here in my room next Thursday," he said.
She said dryly, "You're going to explain to them how good timbering will be for the wildlife of Cat Bite Valley?"
He looked at her sharply. "I paid good money for those timber rights. I've got a right to exercise them."
She couldn't help herself. "A very latter-day right!"
"What do you mean?" His voice was curt, as though he had not expected opposition from her and yet expected it from everyone.
"You think money gives you a right. What about the people who live on the land, have been living on it for centuries—millennia? What about their rights?"
His eyes narrowed. He was still, watching her. "What about them?"
"The land is their home, Daddy. Sovereignty over it was taken from them by trickery and fraud. Why should you be able to destroy the life-style of thousands of people because you've got money—and want more?"
The arguments, the emotions were all confused in her brain. She couldn't construct a logical argument; it was all too new and devastating.
"Where the hell did you get all this?" her father demanded.
"What does it matter where I got it? It's true, isn't it? You know it is. We're going to destroy hunting and fishing in that whole valley. There are two reserves in that valley. The people depend on hunting and fishing for their livelihood. What will we get out of it, Daddy? A little extra profit this year?"
He was looking at her as though she had transmogrified before his eyes, but what he said was, "More than a 'little profit,' girl. These are hard economic times. Not a few giants in the lumber business are tottering these days. Will Campbell went under the week before you got back from Europe, and Matt may not make it through the month." Will Campbell and Matt Hurtubise were colleagues of her father's in the business; she had entertained them often at home. Will was a small chip-barge operator who had held out against her father's buy-out attempt many years ago and thus gained his respect and friendship. She hadn't heard this news before and it saddened her. Matt ran Comox Paper Mills and was a big customer of St. John's Wood. If he was going under the industry was in a bad way indeed.
"Are you telling me the Cat Bite River timber is going to save us from ruin?"
"I'm telling you that last year housing starts in this country were the lowest in ten years," her father said grimly. "Don't ask me for a gesture, Shulamith. I can't afford one. I've got two thousand workers whose life-style depends on my staying solvent. How do their rights measure up against your new friends'?"
Smith was silent with shock. She had known things were bad, but she was taken by surprise by her father's grim acceptance of the fact that a bad economy could topple even him. And the concern in his voice for his workers was genuine.
"What's the name of the tribe on that land?" he asked her suddenly.
"The Chopa."
"You know a lot about it."
She was being a fool; she must recover. "I looked up the company file," she lied. "After all, somebody knew I was going to be away and took advantage of the fact—unless you invented the phone call."
He ignored the last part. "That's right," he said slowly. "That's right—somebody did."
Twenty-four
Smith sat in her favourite chair, a huge stuffed leather armchair, in her favourite posture, back propped in the niche between arm and wing, legs flung over the other arm. The patio doors stood open onto a warm evening and a small summer breeze.
She was reading the book of poems she had bought.
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will…
she read. She was filled with a sudden harsh longing for Johnny Winterhawk. Yes, she thought, yes, you leave a scar on me. The scar of knowledge—of what your body can do to mine….
As many nights endure
Without a moon or star
So will we endure
When one is gone...
Shulamith dropped her head back and shut her eyes. She wondered how Leonard Cohen meant that "endure." To last while the loves were apart? Or to live through the ordeal of knowing they would never be together again?
Being without Johnny Winterhawk was an ordeal. She might as well understand that the effects weren't going to wear off quickly. She had been without him over a week now, and each day had been harder, not easier, to get through. Now the thought of him was a leaden weight on her thighs, an empty ache in her mouth and breasts and hands.
Smith let her book drop to the floor, swung her feet off the chair arm and stood. The memory of him was an urgency in her, forcing her into motion like an excess of energy. She began to pace the length of the softly lighted room, her senses heightened, feeling the bunch and stretch of every muscle, the pull of the denim cloth of her jeans against each thigh.
Suddenly she could feel his presence like a physical thing, as though some sensory device in her brain had begun to glow. You're going mad. She was imagining things. Her need was trying to present her with a solution. But still she could not prevent herself from stopping at the open French doors to gaze out into the early twilight.
Johnny Winterhawk emerged from the bushes at the other end of the pool. With a small silent gasp Shulamith went still, watching as he swiftly skirted the pool and moved toward her.
He was wearing black, as though to blend in with the night that hadn't quite arrived. His feet were silent on the smooth patio stones. A hawk on wings could not have approached more smoothly and silently.
"Johnny," she breathed as he reached her. He took her in his arms and bent to kiss her, slowly, carefully, the way a starving man forces himself to pick up a knife and fork at a banquet.
Smith evaded his lips. She was filled with a sense of danger, drawing him back into the softly lighted room with her. She closed and locked the door, pulled the drapes.
"There are probably police around. How did you get here?" she whispered urgently. She established a distance between them, because her heart was clamouring with need. If he kissed her, touched her now, her reason would take flight.
"I drove and walked," said Johnny aloud, and his voice caressed her spine like a hand. "I parked at a country club about a mile down the mountain."
She sighed her relief. "That ought to do it," she said softly. She used a lowered tone instinctively, as though she were surrounded by enemies. "Thank God you've come," she said, backing away as he approached, trying to maintain a distance so that she could stop wanting to fall into his arms. "Everything is absolutely crazy. Thank God you've come. We've got to talk."
Johnny took two quick steps to reach her side. "Talk be damned," he said hoarsely, and pulling her into his arms he held her face and covered her mouth with his.
She was engulfed in a fog of need. At a stroke reason was blinded, while through the heady mist she felt her thighs against him, knew the comfort of her arms encircling his back and finding him flesh and blood. She was in a dreamworld, one she had inhabited every night since leaving him; but this was no dream. That, and desire, were all she knew.
Her hands clung and pressed and clung again. When his lips left hers to rest against her eyelids she kissed his che
ek, his chin, his throat, wherever she could reach. His hand pulled aside her shirt and claimed her breast with a heat that melted her, and her voice caught in her throat with a sob of gratitude. But when she moved to pull him down onto the long sofa behind her, Johnny forestalled her, picking her up to carry her through the room, out into the hall and up the broad elegant staircase to the top.
"Where?" he whispered, and briefly it seemed strange that this man who knew her so well should not be sure where she slept. She lifted one clinging arm from his neck and pointed to the left around the broad gallery, then dropped her hand back to his shoulder and nuzzled her face against the column of his throat.
He set her down on the soft, green coverlet of her own bed, and she felt the weight of his body with a distant sense of the perfect rightness of things and an immediacy of hungry need that nearly choked her.
Her naked breast found his hand, his mouth; urgently her nipple met the caress of his lips and tongue. She whimpered her bewilderment as his longed-for touch did not satisfy but only fuelled her need, body and spirit.
She sensed air and his hands on her thighs then, as Johnny stripped her hips and legs naked; then she was bereft for one long desperate moment as he stood over her and silently stripped off his own clothing, and then the blazing heat of him enveloped her. It was a scorching heat; too much, she knew, and yet it was not too much for her. Her own heat rose to match his, fire for fire, flame for flame. His mouth and his hands taught her again the torment she had learned on the beach, and her body remembered now, and moved to invite the rough stroke of passion that would destroy and create her all at once.
Her abandoned response shook him, carried him to breaking point. He could wait no longer to possess her, and his body moved into the waiting cradle of her hips, and she lifted herself for the stroke of union that would make her complete.
She looked up into his face in the deepening twilight then and felt the force of his unleashed passion, felt it stir her to frenzy on frenzy. She was no one; she was everyone; she was child, woman; mother, daughter; she was virgin and harlot. She was one with him, she was one with the universe; she was the universe.
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