by Nancy Warren
"Gemma Andrea Hodgins."
"Excellent. What’s your date of birth, Gemma?"
“June 13, 1988.” He noted something. "Do you know what the season is?"
"Unless I've been hibernating, it's still winter." She looked at me, suddenly uncertain, "Isn't it?"
I nodded. She was doing so well. A complete recovery was almost more than I’d dared to hope. He asked her some more questions and made her follow his finger with her eyes. "Excellent,” he said, looking pleased. "Excellent.”
The water arrived in a plastic lidded cup with a straw, and the nurse helped Gemma sit up. There was an IV drip in her arm, that she glanced at with suspicion. She drank a few sips of water and then put a hand to her bruised throat. I could almost feel her memories coming back. She began to tremble. "I remember now. I was at the holiday market. Somebody attacked me. They tried to strangle me." She looked at me. "Didn't they?"
I didn't glance at the doctor because I didn't want to see if he shook his head. I was not going to lie to Gemma. If I was in her position, I’d want to know the truth. "Yes. Someone did attack you. Did you see who it was?"
She closed her eyes and I almost begged her not to. I was frightened she’d slip back into unconsciousness. But, after a few seconds, she opened them, slowly, then shook her head. “I couldn't see anything. She put a hand to her throat. "I thought I was going to die!"
I held onto her hand. "It's okay. You're safe."
She looked at me, her eyes wide and frightened in her pale face. The bruises on her neck were vivid blues, yellows, and purples. "Am I?"
Between the police and the vampires she was as safe as we could make her. I nodded.
She looked around the room and out of the open door into the corridor where an orderly was pushing a patient past in a wheelchair. It was an old man with wisps of white on his head, like scattered cloud. He was bent over in his blue hospital gown so his back barely touched the chair. Her eyes swept to the window, looking out on gray clouds." I don't feel safe. Where's my dad? Is he here?"
I had no idea what to say. I went with, "I'm not sure if he's been informed."
She seemed to be thinking. "Perhaps it's for the best."
A strange looking older guy wandered past the open door. He had straggly gray-brown curls brushing the collar of an old woolen jacket, an ancient pair of jeans that were too big and a woolen cap on his head. He glanced up and down the halls as though frightened of being discovered. He held a duffel bag against his chest as though it contained all his worldly possessions. My first thought was that a homeless man had somehow wandered in. Then, Gemma followed my gaze. “Dad?” She blinked a few times as though she didn’t trust her senses.
The man turned and came in. His blue eyes filled with tears as he came toward the bed, with eyes for no one but Gemma. “My baby,” he said. “What have they done to you?”
“Daddy!” she squeaked and held out her arms, wincing when she pulled on the IV.
He came forward and hugged her awkwardly, the tears running down his face now. So this was Martin Hodgins.
I let go of Gemma’s hand and prepared to leave father and daughter to their reunion, but Gemma stopped me. “Lucy, don’t go. I want you to meet my dad. Martin Hodgins, this is Lucy Swift. She’s been a good friend to me.”
He patted me around the duffel bag. “Thank you.”
Dr. Patek said he’d come back later and I said I would, too, but Gemma insisted I stay. “I need to tell you something,” she said. “I think I know who attacked me.”
Chapter 19
“What?” I cried.
“Of course you do,” her father agreed, making me stare at him. “Same evil viper who tried to kill me.”
“What?” I repeated. My voice grew more shrill with each outburst.
Gemma leaned back onto her pillows. She sipped more water.
“I put you in danger,” Martin Hodgins said. “I’ll never forgive myself. You’re all I have left, all I care about. What’s a book compared to that?”
She shook her head and I noticed her eyes were swimming now. “I put myself in danger. I didn’t think it through properly. I thought I could make him do the right thing. I told him I had proof.”
“Who?” I asked, though I suspected I knew.
“Sanderson, of course,” Martin answered.
Gemma nodded. “I phoned him, you see. I called Professor Sanderson and told him I had proof that Dad was the real author of the Chronicles of Pangnirtung.” She sighed and looked at me. “Lucy won’t understand what we’re talking about, but my father wrote the Chronicles. He and Sanderson were at school together, and—”
I was worried she was tiring herself out, so I interrupted. “I do know. You hinted at the story when we had dinner in the pub and, while you’ve been in hospital, I’ve been doing some research.”
Father and daughter both stared at me. “You have?” she asked.
“Why would you do that?” he wanted to know. He pulled the duffel bag closer to his chest. Poor man, after all these years I could see that his experience of being betrayed had led to near paranoia.
“Because Gemma and I are friends.” I paused. Why had I launched myself, yet again, into other people’s business? It was becoming a bad habit. “Because I can’t stand seeing injustice.”
He looked from me to Gemma. “You trust her? She could be—”
“I trust her, Dad. It wasn’t Lucy who attacked me. It was Sanderson.”
That dry, dusty professor didn’t look like a murderer, but I supposed when driven to desperation, he’d done what he believed he had to in order to keep his secrets safe.
However, I’d recently been grilled by Ian and I knew how important it was for the police to get accurate evidence. “Did you see Sanderson attack you?” I asked.
The both stared at me again. Then Gemma shook her head. “No. I didn’t. I was in the chalet, closing up. I heard something move behind me and when I tried to turn he grabbed me around the throat. I never saw him. But it was the same day I’d phoned Sanderson. Who else could it have been?”
“What about Darren? He kept hanging around, bothering you.” I had to remind her.
“Darren? You think he could have done this?” She touched her throat.
“I don’t know, but maybe we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Sanderson stole your father’s manuscript, but it happened forty years ago. Why would he suddenly turn murderous now?”
“Because I found the damned manuscript,” Martin Hodgins said.
For the third time, I said, “What?”
He looked sheepish. “I have to take you back to my days at college. I’d finished the trilogy. No one knew anything about it but Sanders. He’d read early drafts, encouraged me. He’d argue with me about key points and we’d drink and talk late into the night. Then, toward the end of that year, he began to act peculiar. He started calling it ‘our’ book. He’d certainly read parts of it and talked through some of the plot points, but it was always my series. I tinkered with it constantly. I even kept the pages in a cardboard box beside my bed.”
“You kept the only copy of the Chronicles of Pangnirtung in a box beside your bed?” I asked in a faint voice. I thought of all the things that could have happened to it. Fire, theft, water damage, a drunk undergrad could have thrown up on those precious pages.
He made a sound like a snort. “Didn’t know its value, then, did I?”
He glanced at the door as though expecting trouble. But there was no one there. “One day it went missing. Sanders said he’d borrowed it, wanted to give the whole series a read. He knew I was getting ready to send it to a publisher.”
“He stole it from under your nose?”
“Pretty much. Said he was giving it a final read and he’d give it back to me the following week. Don’t know why I didn’t believe him. But, I thought he was up to something. But, I’d been burning the candle at both ends, writing my final essay for our Old English class and working on the book. Hadn’t had enough sleep. Thought I was be
ing paranoid.”
“Did Sanderson offer to hand in your paper for you?” I asked.
He goggled at me. “How in blazes could you know that?”
“Because he obviously tampered with it, that’s why you were accused of plagiarism.”
He nodded. “You’re right, of course. The viper. I was so stunned about the charges, and here was he, pretending to be my friend, feeding me beer, telling me it would all be all right. I asked for the manuscript and he claimed he’d taken it to his parents’ home for the final read and left it there.” He shook his head. “I didn’t believe him, but my first priority was to fight the plagiarism charges. I know it’s hard to believe, looking back, but I cared more about my degree than the pile of manuscript pages. When I lost the appeal and got sent down, I didn’t handle it well. Started drinking.”
“So, once he’d discredited you, he felt safe in presenting the manuscript as his own.”
“He was devious. Clever. When I went to pick up my belongings from my lodgings, he’d gone through the place. I could tell. Every bit of scrap paper was missing. He’d emptied waste paper baskets, picked through my belongings. To the casual observer, the place looked exactly as I’d left it, but I knew he’d cleared out every hint of that manuscript.” His voice was bitter and low. I felt he was reliving the fierce burn of betrayal all over again.
But I’d seen manuscript pages in Gemma’s hotel room. And the way he was clutching that duffel bag I didn’t think it contained his washing. “But you had a copy, didn’t you?”
His eyes narrowed, briefly, on my face. Then he chuckled. “I’d made a copy for my dad to read. Never bothered to tell Sanders. Why would I?”
“So, there was a complete copy of the manuscript at your parents’ home?”
He closed his eyes as though he’d experienced a sharp pain. “Dad wasn’t a tidy man, you have to understand, but Mum was always tidying. She did a clean up of all his rubbish, as she called it and said she’d boxed everything up and put it in the attic. I couldn’t find the box. Wasn’t until they died that I found the manuscript in a box labeled Insurance.” He chuckled. “Apt in a way.”
“You mean that when you challenged Sanderson and said you’d written the books, you didn’t actually have the copy.”
“No.” He looked uncomfortable. “I thought I could shame him into admitting the truth, but the man’s shameless. If anyone had investigated properly, I could have shown my research, explained where I’d come up with the characters and the world. Sanderson couldn’t explain anything, because he hadn’t created it. But they treated me like a joke.” I could feel his hurt and had to remember that he’d been younger than I was when all this had happened. He’d believed justice would prevail.
Gemma didn’t know about the fire, or the body found in his house, so I didn’t know how to bring it up. Was it possible that Martin Hodgins had finally taken the law into his own hands and, knowing his daughter had been attacked, and got justice on his own terms?
He continued with his story. My wife always said she believed me, but I couldn’t let it rest. The betrayal was like a canker sore in my heart, always spilling poison into every aspect of my life. I tried to move on. I worked as a teacher, that’s how we met. But I drank too much, and after a time, she couldn’t take it anymore. I understood, of course, but once I lost my family, I lost all hope.
“Oh, Dad.”
“It wasn’t your mother’s fault. I know it was partly my own, but of course, the real villain was Sanderson. I’d go along and be all right, and then there’d be another movie of my story come out. Sanders would be on the telly talking about his books and I’d feel such a helpless rage that I’d bury myself in a bottle.”
He shook his head. “Not much of a role model, was I?”
“You did your best, Dad.”
“When my mum died and I went through all the papers, I found the box with my manuscript in it. I didn’t know what to do with it. Gemma’s mum was sick by that time, so I put it in a storage lock-up with some old furniture of my Mum and Dad’s.”
“What a good thing you did,” I said, thinking of his house fire.
He nodded. “After her mum died, Gemma and I spent more time together.” He looked at his daughter. “I didn’t want you to think your old dad was nothing but a worthless drunk.”
“I’d never think that.”
“I wanted you to know what I’d been capable of. Once.” He patted the duffel. “So, I took the first couple of chapters over and gave them to her.”
Gemma took up the story now. “When I realized that Dad had actual proof he was the author of the Chronicles, I was determined to get him the recognition he deserved.” She looked at me. “He’s got everything. The old books he used for his research, lists of Inuit words he drew from in naming his people and creatures. Old maps and diaries of fur traders in the north of Canada, in what’s now called Nunavut.”
She looked at her father. “When all you had was those books and source materials, it wasn’t enough, but with your manuscript, I was positive we could get someone to listen to us. I even talked to a journalist friend. But, since Dad had already been in the news and not been taken seriously, he didn’t think there was much he could do. I was so angry, I decided to go to Oxford myself. The craft market gave me a good excuse. Besides, I did need the money. But I chose Oxford so I could confront Sanderson with the proof of what he’d done. I wanted to force him to do the right thing.” She touched her throat. “Not a smart decision.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Yes. I phoned him. I told him I had the manuscript. He asked me to give him a couple of days.” She shut her eyes. “He sounded so harmless on the phone. He asked when and where we could meet and I told him I was working at the holiday market so it would have to be once the market was over.” She opened her eyes again but she glared up at the ceiling. “I was so stupid. All he had to do was kill me and take the manuscript.”
Her father reached for her hand. “He tried to kill me, too.”
“Oh, Dad, no. Whatever have I done? I was only trying to help you.”
Before they both wallowed in more self blame, I said, “How did Sanderson try to kill you, Mr. Hodgins?”
“The police had come to the door that morning to tell me Gemma was in the hospital.” He swallowed. “They told me she’d been attacked and I knew who’d done it.” His teeth snapped together. “I don’t care what happens to me. I’m old and broken down, but he was going to pay for what he’d done to my daughter.”
Oh, dear. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this part. Or that I wanted Gemma to, but I was powerless to stop him now he’d begun his tale. “I put all my source materials in the storage locker. I made another copy of the manuscript and stored that away safely, too.” He patted the duffel bag. “This is the original in here. All but the chapters Gemma has.” I didn’t correct him. There’d be time to explain later that Rafe actually had them safe.
“I’ve decided. I’m going to go public again with my claims. I’m older now, I don’t drink anymore, and I’ve got the manuscript. This time, they’ll listen to me. Nobody hurts my baby girl and gets away with it. I’ll take Sanderson down, if it’s the last thing I do. Why, losing his reputation, his job, all his money, and being exposed as the lying fraud he is? That will be a fate worse than death for my old friend Sanders. He’ll end up in jail. More of a broken man than I ever was.”
This was great, but I wanted to go back to the part where he thought Sanderson had tried to kill him. “How did the professor try to kill you?” There were no strangulation marks on his throat and he seemed to be uninjured.
“I was coming back to my place to pack a few clothes and head down here to the hospital. I was walking down the road and I heard some kind of explosion. Then I saw the flames. In my own house. I started forward and then saw him come running out. He’d set the fire. Tried to kill me. He got on his motorbike and rode away.”
Gemma put her hand in her father’s and they clu
tched each other, obviously both thinking of their lucky escapes.
“This man who got on the motorcycle, did you see his face?”
“No. He had a helmet on. But who but Sanderson would want me dead? And a fire would destroy any books or papers, wouldn’t it?”
“Was the motorcycle black?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that was Sanderson. I think the man you saw running away from the burning building was Gemma’s ex.”
They both stared at me. Gemma said, “Darren?”
“Yes. Darren told me he was going to see your father. He was very angry. And he rides a black motorbike.”
“But, but that’s impossible,” Gemma said.
A new voice spoke up from the doorway. “I’m happy to see that you’re awake, Gemma.”
It was Ian. They must have called to let him know Gemma was awake and talking. She looked at him, puzzled. “You’re a friend of Lucy’s, aren’t you?”
She’d only met him the once and had been rude about his purchase of the fortieth edition of the Chronicles. I hadn’t bothered to tell her he was a police officer. Now, I did. “Gemma, this is Detective Inspector Ian Chisholm.”
He walked into the room. He looked very official in a jacket and tie though, as usual, his wavy hair was unruly. It looked as though some woman had just run her hands through it. He said, “Gemma’s right. It is impossible that it was Darren you saw leaving your property, Mr. Hodgins. Darren’s charred body was found in the house.”
Chapter 20
“Darren’s dead?” Gemma asked in a whisper.
“I’m afraid so.”
It was my turn to say, “But that’s impossible.” I stared at Ian. “Have you forgotten that Darren tried to run me over?”
“From what I overheard, neither Mr. Hodgins, or you, saw the face of this motorcycle rider.”
I felt as though I’d just worked for days on one of those jigsaw puzzles with five gazillion little pieces, and the last few wouldn’t fit. “But, it was Darren’s bike. I told you, I recognized that decal.”