by Robin Spano
“You would have found another job. And just because my father used to be soulful doesn’t mean he gets to manipulate me now.” Clare remembered being a little kid — four or five — peering into an old Chevy engine with her father. He explained how all the parts worked separately, how they needed each other to work together so the car would run. But that man had died a long time ago.
“Okay, at least you’re here. How’s work going?”
Clare frowned. “I just got off a case. I guess it went well.”
“You nab your man?”
“Yeah. And as of half an hour ago, we have a confession.”
“So what’s still nagging?” Roberta eased off the gas slightly.
Snow had begun to fall almost to whiteout proportions. They could barely see three car lengths in front of them, even with the wipers on full blast. Roberta turned north onto Highway 400.
“The killer was following instructions — but we don’t know whose. I told my boss what I know, and he’ll get the right people to pursue it. But it’s frustrating not being the detective. I don’t get to wrap it all up, tie the loose ends.”
“Would you rather be a detective?”
“No. I like what I do. I should probably just not get so invested, so I can let the case go when my part is finished.”
As Roberta drove past Canada’s Wonderland, the landmark that unofficially meant they were leaving urban sprawl and entering their northern home territory, Clare felt her body tense. She wasn’t sure she was ready to see what was waiting in the hospital.
EIGHTY-FOUR
WADE
Wade sat across from Norris. Lucy — Clare — had called from the Toronto airport to say that Norris had confessed to both murders. She asked Wade to get more information, if he could. In exchange for Wade’s money laundering being forgiven, she said. Wade doubted Clare had jurisdiction to offer that kind of deal, but he trusted that she’d try.
“We done?” Norris said. Like he wanted to get back to his cell or somewhere more exciting. They’d been sitting silently for two full minutes. “I can feel your hate burning a hole through my skin. But thanks for coming.”
“Was murder your only fucking option?”
“At the time, I clearly thought it was.” Norris’ eyebrows flickered. “You bring me anything? Cigarettes? Booze?”
Wade handed over his travel mug full of vodka, which he’d snuck past the guards without incident. “You can share my coffee.”
Norris gulped. He didn’t pass the mug back.
“How come you rolled over so fast, confessed to the murders?” Wade wanted to shake his friend, make the truth fall out.
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong.” Norris’ shoulders slumped. “I would never have killed Sacha if . . .”
“If what?” Part of Wade wanted to strangle Norris, to kick him in the balls, to tie him to his car and drive down the highway with Norris screaming as the road burned through his clothes and eroded his flesh. But another part saw the guy who had kept the band’s finances on track when Chopper and Wade had been too drunk or too stoned — or too busy with women — to care. Norris hadn’t complained — he was happy to take the responsible role. To keep things in order.
“If I hadn’t have been lured by the so-called DEA’S promise to make me a hero. I believed them when they told me that once our operation was over — once they told the RCMP how helpful I’d been, nailing a big-time criminal enterprise — I’d be able to write my own career ticket on either side of the border.” Norris grabbed at his short hair and tugged. He looked like he was enjoying the pain. “I wanted to see Zoe grow up. To watch her play in a big American Philharmonic one day.”
“You haven’t been sentenced yet.” Wade was amazed that Norris hadn’t once expressed remorse about Sacha’s death — about Wade’s loss, and Martha Westlake’s. And Richie’s family. But Wade was here for his own selfish reasons, too: to get the information for Clare, to maybe save his own ass. He said gently, “I think there’s a good chance you’ll see Zoe play cello one day.”
“She won’t want me there. I’ll be her fuck-up dad, the mercenary murderer.”
“Even if she knows you thought you were acting on the side of the law?”
Norris shrugged. “I guess I kind of knew it wasn’t DEA, by that time. They wouldn’t have had Sacha killed — maybe just warned, or relocated.”
Several beats passed as the two men stared at each other. Amazing how a friendship that took years to build could disintegrate so damn quickly.
“I lied to Clare,” Norris said.
“About what?”
“I didn’t actually lie, but I gave her incomplete information.”
“Why?”
“To screw her up. Make her look like an idiot when she got back to New York and started pursuing a false lead. I wanted her to lose her job, lose face.”
“Why bother?”
“Because she’s responsible for my new home.” Norris spread his arms around the suburban Vancouver holding center. “If Clare had never come to Whistler, I’d be leaving for Argentina in the morning.”
“But you’re not.”
“No. I’m not.” They sat quietly for a moment before Norris spoke again. “I told her I traced a phone call back to Governor Kearnes’ campaign. Which was true. But when I called the number back the next day, I got a confused response from a guy I’d never spoken to.”
“I’m missing something,” Wade said.
“Whoever pretended to be calling from the DEA also falsified their caller ID, I think to frame Geoffrey Kearnes.”
Wade had no idea what to make of this. Or why it mattered.
“Just tell Clare,” Norris said. “My lawyer says it will be easier to get my charges reduced if we can find out who was pulling the strings.”
Wade looked covetously at his coffee cup in Norris’ hand. He wanted to reach for it, but didn’t. Maybe he should take Chopper’s and Georgia’s advice, go to rehab.
Maybe there was no fucking point.
EIGHTY-FIVE
CLARE
Clare’s father lay in the hospital bed. His arms were blotchy, sticking out like twigs from his pale green hospital gown. Tubes and wires connected his wrists and chest to an IV machine and monitors above his bed. Clare wished she could turn around, have Roberta drive her straight back to the airport, but the nurse had already announced Clare’s arrival — in a chipper voice like she thought it was a good thing.
Her dad lifted his head and winced. His face was thinner than before. His dark brown hair was almost entirely gray. People used to say they looked alike, Clare and her dad. She hoped that wasn’t still true.
“I’m alone,” Clare said. “There’s no one here who believes your martyr act.”
He frowned. “I understand your anger.”
“You say that whenever I get mad at you.”
“You get mad for good reasons.”
Clare felt her shoulders trembling. “You’re only saying that to make me less angry.” To make me weak, Clare didn’t say.
“I’m glad you came.”
“I came because Roberta says you’re dying.” Clare stared at the heart rate monitor. Eighty-six, whatever that meant.
Her dad wheezed. “Well, I appreciate that. I know you’re busy.”
Clare waited for the next line, the inevitable guilt trip. Or maybe that was supposed to have been implied.
“How are you enjoying Brooklyn?”
“Manhattan. I haven’t been home for a few weeks.”
“Clarissa the Brave.” Her dad rolled over and faced the window. “Why don’t you move your chair to this side? It’s brighter.”
Clare moved her chair, but slowly. Her mind had fired on something her dad had said.
“You look deep in thought.”
“I am.” Clare couldn’t
look at the hospital bed, so she stood up and looked out the window, at the flat parking lot she knew so well from so many other visits there. None, though, had had this finality.
Clarissa the Brave . . . the name played over in her head. Norris had called Sacha “Alexandra the Great.” Was that her real childhood nickname? And if so, how did Norris know it?
“You used to get that look when you were a kid. Watching something, learning something new.”
The soft sound of air whooshing filled the room. Clare turned back around to see the blood pressure machine pumping itself up around her father’s skinny arm. She was almost worried that it would snap his arm off, but then the pressure abated, the arm bands deflated. Clare looked at the monitor, which showed that his heart rate was higher than on the last measure. No doubt that was her fault. She met her father’s eye. “I think you’ve twigged something for me — for the case I’ve just finished.”
Her dad’s eyebrows lifted — slowly, like even that was so damn painful.
It didn’t work, though, if her hunch was right — it didn’t work that the person pulling strings could be someone from the Kearnes campaign. Or did it? Sacha had grown up around politics — someone from the Kearnes camp could have known her as a kid. And Geoffrey Kearnes was Sacha’s biological father — though a posthumous paternity test had yet to confirm it.
Alexandra the Great. Could have been Norris’ own nickname for her. But if it was also her childhood nickname, if Norris had heard it from the voice on the phone, Clare would put money on the person prodding Norris being someone who knew Sacha very, very well.
But there was still nothing Clare could do — just pass the idea to Bert and let him do what he liked with it.
In her pocket, Clare felt her phone vibrate. She pulled it out and saw that the call was from Wade.
“I have to take this,” she told her dad. He grumbled, so Clare said, “It’s work, Dad. It’s important.”
Clare moved to the window as she pressed Accept to the call. In the parking lot, she saw Roberta in her blue truck, drinking coffee and moving her head to some music — probably country. It made Clare homesick — she was glad she was coming back soon for a real visit.
As Wade ran through his conversation with Norris, Clare felt a small laugh bubble up to her surface.
“What’s so funny?” Wade said.
“That Norris lied to me. It’s awesome.”
“Oh.”
“It throws the possibilities wide open, unfortunately, but it helps because what he said wasn’t sitting right. Thanks, Wade. I’ll make sure I let my bosses know you dug that out for me. Seriously hope it can help you in return.”
Clare hung up with Wade and turned back to face her father. He looked even more shriveled now, like he was shrinking into death with each passing moment. Which Clare supposed everyone was doing, every second of their life, but maybe not quite this visibly.
“I have to go,” she said.
“You just got here.”
“There’s a lead I have to follow.”
“Another agent can’t do that? I’m dying, Clare. You could at least stay the night.”
Clare pictured the trailer: heaters blasting, her mom drinking and crying with one or more neighbors there drinking, too, all of them trying to rope Clare into the whole stupid sad cycle of grief. If she stayed, she would be pulled back into the headspace of an angry adolescent, raging against the futility — the banality — of the life her parents chose to live. She would also start smoking again.
She would come back, but with Noah beside her for strength.
“I need to make a phone call, fast. I need a friend to ask a suspect a question. And I can’t afford to miss my plane back to New York. But really, Dad, thanks for your help. You totally got my mind working in a new direction. I’ll come back up north as soon as I can.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
Clare rolled her eyes.
“Can I at least have a hug? I might not be here when you get back. Though I’m sure your mother will appreciate the company with the funeral arrangements.”
Clare cringed. She hated touching her father. He smelled — and felt — like disease.
“Am I that bad?”
She pulled at the thin, tattered blanket that covered her father’s legs. “Are you cold?”
“No.”
Clare chewed her lower lip. “I’ll be back in a few days. Don’t die without me.”
“You put on these airs,” her dad said. “Like you’re too good for us now. We made you. You can never escape us.”
“I love Orillia. What I hate is watching you cut off all your lifelines just to feed your addiction for one more fucking day.”
“Clare. Language.”
“I could say worse.”
Her father sighed. “Have you ever tried to quit smoking?”
“I quit yesterday.”
“Yeah.” Her father snorted. “I can tell by your mood. Good luck staying quit.”
EIGHTY-SIX
MARTHA
Martha felt like she was walking in one of those dreams where you can only go extremely slowly, like the air is really water, or maybe Jell-O, but only for you — everyone else can move at their regular, air-walking pace.
She walked like this the entire half block to Broadway, where she turned north to go to Starbucks. A man with a microphone approached, but her Secret Service guys said something to him and he backed off. Martha flashed a smile to the reporter to be on the safe side, but she was glad the guards had snubbed him; she didn’t trust herself to talk to the press through Jell-O.
As she waited in Starbucks for the chai latte that she didn’t even know if she wanted, she saw the blogger from the airport push open the door.
Martha pointed at him and his eyes shot wide open. He didn’t bolt, though, like she would have expected. He froze in place and stared back at her.
“You,” she said, feeling for her voice, like she wasn’t sure where she’d left it. “You are not Lorenzo.”
The blogger moved toward her but he was blocked by Secret Service, who patted him down.
Martha picked up her latte at the end of the counter. She peered around her protectors and said to the blogger, “I guess we could sit down.”
The blogger typed something into his phone and followed Martha to a corner table, as far from the windows as possible. The Secret Service guys said something to a man with a computer on the adjacent table. The man nodded at Martha in recognition before picking up his computer and taking a window counter seat. The guards took his table.
“So who the hell are you?” Martha said.
The blogger pointed to his phone. “I’m waiting for permission to tell you.”
Martha’s eyebrows arched. Sacha used to tell her she looked like the Queen of Hearts when she did that — smug and mean.
“In the meantime, though, I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Did Sacha have a nickname as a kid? Something only you or your husband might have called her?”
Martha took a sip of the latte, as if maybe the answer was somewhere in the foam. “Alexandra the Great,” she said finally.
The blogger’s phone chimed. He glanced at his new message and said, “My name is Noah. I’m with the FBI.”
Martha didn’t know why this made her feel let down. Maybe she’d liked the idea that some righteous blogger was out tilting at windmills to vindicate Sacha’s murder. Even if she’d known it wasn’t really Lorenzo.
Noah met her eyes kindly. In another life, she would have thought that she’d like to introduce the young man to Sacha.
“I’m confused,” Martha said. “The case is closed, right?”
“The murder is solved — we have a confession and a man in jail. But the killer wasn’t acting alone. Are you flying anywhere to
night or tomorrow morning?”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No. But we might need your help.”
“I fly to Phoenix in the morning, and L.A. in the afternoon to tape Bill Maher.”
“Can you postpone Phoenix?”
“I can postpone both, if you’ll tell me why.” Martha’s chai latte tasted off. Not like the milk was curdled, but like the chai itself was different. Not a pleasant taste at all.
“I’ll get you more information as soon as I can. Thanks for your cooperation.”
Martha stood up, walked to the counter, and ordered her usual: a tall, black bold. As she moved toward the trash and held the nearly full chai latte over the hole to dump it in, she felt closer to tears than she had in two weeks. They wouldn’t come yet, but at least they were on the way.
She sipped the black coffee. Delicious.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
CLARE
Clare’s computer cast a blue glow around the kitchen. Her sink still had dirty dishes from before she’d left town. These four hundred square feet ate up most of Clare’s salary, but it was worth every penny to live alone in the East Village.
Her brain was beginning to melt from not enough sleep, but the pot of coffee that she was midway through was keeping her eyes open and her fingers alert on her keyboard.
She was going through the video clips from the bear camera. There were other agents watching them officially — both in the FBI and the RCMP — but Clare had asked to see the footage, too, and though her role was officially over, no one had objected to her slogging through footage for answers.
Sacha had brought Jules into Chopper’s woodshed, which he’d decked out as a pretty awesome chemistry lair. Sacha would have made an excellent investigative reporter. Her questions had Chopper basically guiding viewers through the how-to-make-LSD process.
Sacha and Jules had visited Richie at his apartment, hung out on his couch and watched some local dealers come and go. Richie seemed to be the town wholesaler. The young kids seemed to fear him, though he never raised his voice or even threatened them.