Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  She stared at him. She had lost the power to think.

  "This sense of abandonment would be followed by a growing sense of identification with the hostage-takers' cause. A feeling that because of society's refusal to right the wrongs it has committed, the kidnappers have a right to the course of action they are pursuing."

  He paused. She said nothing. The sound of a page flipping in his notebook punctuated the silence.

  "Often a female hostage becomes the sexual victim of one or more of her kidnappers. Sometimes willingly, as a result of her identification with their cause. Sometimes she is repeatedly raped first, and the sense of identification with her abductors may then arise as a form of self-defence. The woman shouldn't be blamed for this. Psychiatrists say a hostage shouldn't fight against the mutual emotional attachment because it operates as a form of protection. Since the hostage-taker also feels an emotional attachment to his victim, he is reluctant to harm her or kill her."

  Smith sat in silence, getting back to her mental feet, marshalling her forces. Podborski was looking at her as though he expected her to burst into tears, as though this sudden revelation would cause the scales to fall from her eyes. Yet she felt not the faintest sense of relief, nor any touch of a desire to weep in his presence. What she felt was that she was looking at a deadlier enemy than any she had met so far.

  "My father's been talking to you, right?" she asked coldly.

  "Not to me, ma'am," he said apologetically.

  "To your colonel," she said.

  He looked at her. "Everybody hates the police," he observed mildly; but she thought that underneath he was angry, that whatever bored cynicism he felt for his work did not extend to his status. "But we're only trying to help you. This Stockholm Syndrome will wear off sometime," he pointed out reasonably, "and then you're going to be pretty angry at yourself if it's too late for us to complete an investigation." He paused, but she said nothing. He shook his head. "You should take us on faith," he said. "Your father, anyway. He's the one who knows you aren't acting normal. He's the one who knows about this sudden interest in Indian land claims."

  "Look," she said. "My father has a bee in his bonnet. I don't know what happened to him, and I don't know why. But I do know this: I was not kidnapped. I was on a holiday with a friend. You are wasting time, money and manpower on pursuing this."

  She stood up to end the interview, and Staff Sergeant Podborski followed suit.

  "Would you be willing to be interviewed by a psychiatrist?" he asked.

  She breathed in exasperation. "The one who fed you all that information?" she asked dryly. She saw that in spite of his intelligence, the staff sergeant had the same limitations as Sergeant Rice. He was more cynical, which made him seem less rigid, but he shared a lack of imagination. She wondered if it was the training.

  "No. I would not be willing to see a psychiatrist," she replied levelly. "Nor am I willing to be interviewed by any more police officers. In the future, if you want to talk to me, you will have to arrest me."

  She showed him to the door and locked it after him. She felt calm and in control for the first time in days. What Staff Sergeant Podborski had said was wrong: even if she was a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, and even if it wore off, and even though she didn't really love him, she would never regret not having sent Johnny Winterhawk to prison.

  That's that, she thought, wiping Staff Sergeant Podborski from her field of consciousness. She looked at her watch. Just before seven. Time for a couple of phone calls before she went to visit her father at the hospital. The courage that had failed her before was with her now.

  "Rolly?" she said. "I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I wanted you to know that I'm quitting. I won't be coming into the office anymore, except to clear up a few things and clean out my desk. Sorry to drop it on you like this." After a year abroad she had scarcely made herself indispensable in the short time she'd been back, and although Rolly was considerably taken aback he did not try to change her mind.

  "You've been saying for years that he pushes her too hard," said Valerie when he had hung up. "It's about time she broke."

  But Smith didn't know about that conversation. Her ears weren't even burning. She was too busy on the phone.

  "Mel?" she said. "Smith. Listen, Mel, I've got a song, a good song, I think. Would you have a look at it for me and tell me what you think?"

  ***

  "Well, at last!" exclaimed Valerie the next day, enveloping her in an embrace that was a little too bony to be maternal. Valerie was long, thin and chic, and she had worn pregnancy rather like an unusual fashion that only she knew how to wear. "Let me look at you," she commanded now, stepping back to arm's length and giving Smith a searching look.

  Valerie had been one of Canada's leading models at the age of nineteen. At twenty she had gone to New York. When she was twenty-one she and the famous photographer who was her lover produced a nude art calendar of her that left the world breathless. In the next ten years she made her name and her fortune, and after a failed attempt at movie-making she had retired in Vancouver, her hometown. She had met Rolly there.

  Now the faint lines forming around the beautiful, pale green eyes that searched Smith's face only seemed to enhance their beauty. "The secret of Valerie's beauty," the photographer-lover had said on the calendar, "is that it is not attached to her ego. She offers you her beauty in the same way an art connoisseur might show you a great work of art he is lucky enough to have hanging in his home." And, "Valerie is the only beautiful woman I have known whose beauty has not impoverished her personality."

  The subject of that essay drew in a breath through the small, perfect O her lips formed and let it out on an enlightened sigh.

  "My God, where were you?" she demanded with a knowing smile, as though Smith might just have been in utopia.

  "On a b—"

  "Or should I have asked, who with?" she interrupted gaily.

  "Why?" Smith was feeling the strangest urge to laugh, as though truly she did have a delightful secret to share.

  "You know, I told Rolly it wasn't true. I was sure you hadn't been with friends. I thought you'd been kidnapped."

  "No."

  Valerie took her hand and led her to a seat in the comfortable sitting room. "All right, now, tell me all about it."

  She did not like lying to Valerie. "Well, it was a nice holiday, we had good weather... " she began.

  "I'll just bet you did—if you noticed it," Valerie put in dryly. "Come on, Smith, you can't fool me. You've fallen in love, and it's about time, and I want to know who he is!"

  If her jaw fell any farther it would be in China. Smith goggled helplessly at her friend and groped for recovery. "I…what makes you think that?" she asked weakly.

  "Isn't it true?"

  "No...no. At least...I...."

  "Oh, my God, Smith, he's not married?" Valerie said with all the dismay of someone who has suddenly added two and two. "Oh, don't do it, honey, don't get involved." The sudden switch in her tone from gaiety to deep concern shook Smith deeply. She realized how desperately she wanted to confide in Valerie. Impossible. She reached for her handbag and groped blindly in it.

  "I've never given you the present I got you in Zurich," she said brightly. "I've been carrying it around with me all this time!" Her fingers closed gratefully around the little jeweller's box, and she passed it over. Valerie took it in a long elegant hand and did her best to forget what had just passed.

  "I borrowed it last week," Smith smiled. "I needed it. I hope you don't mind."

  "Of course I don't—oh, Smith, how lovely. Oh, it's so delicate! Look at the workmanship—it's gorgeous!"

  If I'd ever wondered why you're my best friend, Smith thought gratefully, I'd have my answer now.

  Valerie fastened the bracelet on her wrist as if the previous minute hadn't happened and lifted it for inspection. Valerie collected bracelets, ancient and modern, from all over the world. She had begun the collection during her days as a model, when she had tra
velled literally everywhere, and now she had over a hundred. Each one had its own story and memories, and Valerie wore them in combinations only she could have carried off.

  This one had memories and a story, too, one Valerie would never know. It was the first time Smith had looked at the gold bracelet since her wedding day, and her throat constricted unbearably. She had been so happy that day. It had been the most serenely happy day of her life since early childhood. What had possessed her? Was it Stockholm Syndrome, the thing that had made her believe she was so deeply in love with Johnny Winterhawk?

  ***

  We didn't wait to fall in love

  We loved and then we met

  No promises

  No thought of time

  And no room for regret

  I feel you watch me in my sleep

  It's time for you to go

  Already you're a memory

  No one will ever know

  So wake me up to say goodbye 'cause now it's over

  I feel it in my heart and in your eyes....

  "It's a winner," Mel Ruff said, as Smith's scratchy voice sang through to the end and faded on the last note. "'Wake Me Up to Say Goodbye.' Yeah, we can go places with this. Are you happy with your own music?"

  Shulamith had sketched out a sort of a melody as she sang, but it would need an expert to make it real, and she was no composer.

  "I thought you might know someone," she said.

  "Sure. I've got someone good right here in town, if you think you'd like to collaborate in the process. Or I can send it to a pal in L.A."

  "The someone here in town wouldn't mind collaborating with a beginner?"

  "Let's just see," he said, picking up the phone.

  Mel dialled a number and spoke to a man named Lew. "I've got a hot new lyricist with me, name of Shulamith and..." he broke off and laughed. "You got it. We've got a song and some idea of a melody..." After some discussion Mel looked at Smith. "Are you free to go tonight, Lew wants to know?"

  Her heart hammering with excitement, Smith could only nod. When he hung up, Mel scribbled an address on the back of his own business card and slid it across the desk to her.

  "Lew's good," he said, and named two songs by a hot Canadian artist that even she recognized. "I think you'll be a good fit, but if it doesn't work we'll find someone else."

  "Okay," Smith whispered.

  "Don't give me that wide-eyed babe-in-the-woods face," Mel laughed. "You've been hanging around this office every spare moment you had for years. You know all about it. I've missed you this past year, but if it took a year in Europe to wake you up, I'm glad you went."

  It wasn't the year in Europe, but she certainly had finally wakened up. Smith clutched the card with Lew's address on it as though it were a lifeline and stood to go.

  "Thanks, Mel."

  "You'll like Lew. Call me. Let me know how it goes," he said.

  It was raining when she came out. Smith slid Mel's card into the back pocket of her jeans and settled herself behind the wheel of her car.

  "Can I buy a red car, with my hair?" she had laughingly asked Valerie, and Valerie had said, "You can do anything as long as you can carry it off." Whether she could carry it off or not, Smith had wanted red, a bright, fire-engine red, and that was what she had bought. And it did her lots of favours, as now, when she was negotiating the heavy rush-hour traffic near the hospital, because male drivers usually let her in for the pleasure of watching the low-slung, growly sports car go by.

  She was nervous about telling her father of her decision to quit. It had been hard enough telling Rolly, and Rolly hadn't spent his whole life grooming her to take over. And she had something else to tell her father, too—she was going to look for a place of her own. She had meant to tell him last night, right after talking to Rolly, but she hadn't found the right moment. Today she would make the right moment.

  Smith walked along the hall to her father's room, screwing up her courage. The worst of it was, her reasons were a confused jumble in her mind, and incoherence would look to her father like indecision. He would see that as weakness and try to make her change her mind.

  She squared her shoulders and opened the door to her father's room. He was sitting upright in the bed, holding a few sheets of typed paper in his left hand. His right, on the white sheet, was clenched till the knuckles were nearly as white.

  There was a bald man standing beside him, a stranger whose face was somehow familiar.

  Her father looked toward her with a hard steady gaze as she entered. He lifted the papers fractionally. "All right," he said. "Maybe you'll tell me now. Who the hell is John Winterhawk?"

  Twenty-six

  She could not have said how long she stood there, staring at her father, her mind numbed by shock. Then her gaze moved to the familiar stranger. Was he a policeman? Had someone talked? Had they arrested Johnny?

  She gave a strange little laugh. Today was the day Johnny had been due to testify before the Cartier Commission. What an awful irony it would be if, in spite of everything, he missed it.

  "Suppose you tell me," she said at last. "Who is he?"

  Her eyes moved to the papers her father held, and then to the bald man. Suddenly she knew why he had looked familiar: she had seen him before. Outrage flooded her and she strode across to the bed and lifted the papers from her father's hand.

  "5:00 a.m.: left the premises by the back entrance and proceeded on foot to the parking lot of Mountainview Country Club. He entered a black, late-model..."

  Her hand shook as she dropped the private investigator's report contemptuously onto the bed. Her heart was pounding its response to danger in her temples and stomach so strongly she felt she might throw up.

  "Well, Dad—" her voice was coming out tight and high, but there was nothing she could do about that except inject as much sarcasm as she could into it "—surely you weren't entertaining hopes of my being a virgin at my age?"

  Her tone made it sound cheap, even in her own ears. She could not have blamed the detective or her father if they had assumed from that that she was used to letting in a different man every night by the back door.

  "He's an Indian!" her father was nearly shouting. "The man's a Chopa Indian!"

  "And what are you?" she asked sweetly. "A racist?"

  Her father spat his exasperation. "Race has nothing to do with it, girl, and you know it!" He picked up the report again and pointed to it. "He's a Chopa! He testified before the goddamned Cartier Commission this afternoon! Don't tell me you didn't know that!"

  She had known. The thought had been with her all day. She had been wishing him luck all day in the back of her mind, even if she only knew it now.

  "And how did he do?" she asked the bald detective, who looked as though he sat in on embarrassing family scenes every day and had learned the fine art of being deaf and invisible.

  "Sorry?" he asked. He had an English accent.

  "Was his submission effective?"

  "I couldn't—"

  "What I want to know," said her father, in a cold deadly voice, "is what kind of hold he's got over you."

  Sexual. Purely sexual, a voice said inside her head. Shulamith closed her eyes and took a deep calming breath. It was impossible, she thought. She was standing in a brightly lighted hospital room surrounded by danger and the smell of antiseptic, yet the longing for Johnny was suddenly tearing at her, ripping her stomach hollow, making her breasts ache.

  "He has no hold over me!" Smith exploded, channelling desire through wrath. "Certainly not Stockholm Syndrome, and why you set the Mounties on me with that half-baked theory I'll never know!"

  "I—

  "Now you listen to me, Father! I want you to call off your detectives and call off the cops and get the hell out of my life! All right? And I'm telling you if you don't leave this alone now you are going to end up looking like a fool in front of everybody!

  "I have some other things to tell you, too, but I'd hate to put your friend here to the trouble of writing the
m up in a report, so I'll tell you when we can be private. Good night." Smith turned on her heel and strode to the door.

  "I am going to give this man's name to the police." Her father's voice was harsh behind her.

  She stopped, her hand on the door. "Be sure to tell them you think we're lovers," she said without turning. "Staff Sergeant Podborski is very big on the sexual exploitation aspects of Stockholm Syndrome."

  She went out.

  ***

  With her hair hidden under a denim cap, and her eyes behind sunglasses, Smith sat on the cockpit seat of the Outcast and watched as Johnny Winterhawk, unaware, approached her along the dock.

  He was wearing a rumpled linen suit and a tie, and he was pulling at the tie as he walked. And though his stride was long and swift she had never seen such fatigue in him. Even when he had been telling her, "I've been up fifty hours straight and I'm seeing double," he hadn't looked like this. It wrenched at her heart, and she thought of all the times his presence had comforted her and suddenly, desperately, she wanted the power to comfort him.

  Johnny Winterhawk checked his stride momentarily and looked around, and then his black gaze swept down the length of the dock to where she sat—hidden almost completely from his view by the boats between them. But he knew she was there as surely as she had known his presence in her garden.

  She saw from his change of stride how much he needed her, and she understood that she did have the power to comfort him. He stood on the dock beside the boat, just looking at her, and as she returned his gaze, there were tears in her eyes.

  He dropped his briefcase on a seat, threw his tie after it and leapt down into the cockpit as she stood.

  "Thank you," said Johnny hoarsely, and wrapped her in his arms.

  He held her for a long time without speaking, and she felt him take comfort from her with something like joy. Then they went below, talking quietly. Johnny changed his loafers for canvas deck shoes and Shulamith moved around pouring their drinks.