A Chill Rain in January

by LR Wright

  “Karl,” said Sokolowski, reaching for the phone. “How’d you get hold of those exercise books, anyway?”

  “Not sure,” said Alberg, shrugging into his jacket. “I think maybe from Ramona.”

  The sergeant’s mouth fell open. “Oh, hey, Ramona?” he protested, incredulous. “Ramona?”

  “Ramona,” said Alberg. “Via Sandy McAllister.”

  Chapter 46

  SHE was filled with anger again, after all this time. She was afraid to look in a mirror again, after all this time: afraid she would see that her eyes were bulging, pushed from her head by the fury that was jammed in there. She felt like a child again, helpless in the grip of rage.

  She struggled with it for a long time.

  Then she looked around for the boy, but he’d disappeared.

  He’s gone, she thought, and flew down the hall. She threw open the door to his room and flicked on the overhead light. He was in his pajamas, in bed; maybe he’d been asleep.

  “I have to think,” she said aloud, and pressed the heels of her hands against her temples.

  She went downstairs to her workroom, turned on the light, and shut herself inside. She brushed paint remover on the surface of the sideboard and sat back to wait.

  She tapped her feet on the cement floor, first one, then the other.

  She heard the clicking of her leather soles on the floor, and, bewildered, she lifted her arms and stared down at herself. Why was she not wearing her worn sneakers? Why was she still wearing the good wool slacks and the white silk shirt she’d put on in the morning? Why hadn’t she changed into her old jeans and a baggy old sweatshirt and an old pair of sneakers before coming down here?

  She had to lean over awkwardly now, while she worked, so as to keep her clothes clean.

  Carefully she maneuvered the scraper across the wood, scraping up a long strip of puckered brown paint; but she hadn’t let it sit long enough, and paint still clung stubbornly to the wood. She scraped harder and faster, and suddenly the scraper slipped and struck the side of her hand, which began to bleed.

  Zoe grabbed a roll of paper towels from a shelf and pressed some against her hand. But blood had already spattered her slacks and her silk shirt.

  Wearily, she looked around her workroom. The sideboard was the last piece left to do. The walls were lined with pieces of furniture she had meticulously refinished. There were rows and rows of them. It was time to empty the place again. She would rent a truck, as soon as this business with the wretched boy was out of the way, and take the finished pieces out to the dump. Then she would set about assembling another batch, from antique and used-furniture shops up and down the Coast and on the Lower Mainland.

  Her hand was throbbing. Cautiously, she peeked under the wadded-up paper toweling. The bleeding seemed to be slowing down. She turned off the light and climbed the stairs, aching and disconsolate.

  But at least the anger had gone.

  In the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom she cleaned her injured hand and bandaged it. She took off her slacks and shirt and stuffed them into the wastebasket in her bedroom. She put on jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers, ran a comb through her hair, took two aspirin, and went down the hall to the boy’s room.

  She opened the door and told him to come to the living room.

  “Until today,” she said to him, when they were sitting down, she in her leather chair, he, wearing his pajamas, in the chair by the doorway, “I had thought you might not know where my scribblers are. But today I know that you do.”

  She felt her heartbeat quicken and turned slightly, so she could look away from the boy. She must not permit herself to become angry again. And it was this proximity to the child that was doing it. Her brain became distressed and heedless in the presence of this child.

  He sat there looking thin and anxious, and then he began to cry.

  “We’re going to the house,” she said. “You and I.”

  “The house?” His voice was scratchy. He cleared his throat. “My house?”

  “And you’re going to help me find my scribblers.”

  “But—but you already looked there. You already looked in my house.”

  “They cannot be anywhere else,” said Zoe. “They were not in his pockets, they were not in his car,” she said, ticking off on her fingers, “and the policeman as much as told me they are not in his safe-deposit box. Therefore they have to be in his office or in the house.” She looked vaguely around her. “I’m quite sure they’re not in his office. Therefore they must be in the house.”

  “I don’t know where they are. It’s true. It’s true.”

  Zoe stood up and clasped her hands tightly together. “Really, this weeping, it isn’t advisable. I don’t think you fully comprehend your situation. Really.”

  He sniveled and snorted, and swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. He was a weak, scraggly, scrawny piece of humanity, every bit as useless as his father.

  “You’d better get your jacket,” she said coldly, and watched as he slithered reluctantly down the hall.

  She went to the closet for her raincoat, and returned to the living room. She sat down and switched on the television, flipping from channel to channel. She couldn’t understand what anybody was saying. It was as though they were speaking in various incomprehensible languages.

  Finally, growing impatient, she looked at her watch. With a shock, she saw that it was midnight. She had missed the last ferry.

  Slowly, her eyes blank, Zoe stood up. Tremors rippled through her shoulder muscles. Her hands were clenched into fists. She battled savagely to control herself…and she might have won, she might have prevailed, if she hadn’t gone down the hall to tell the boy he could go back to sleep; if she hadn’t opened his door, and seen his empty bed, and the open window.

  Chapter 47

  THAT NIGHT, fog had again crept in from the sea, and down from the hilltops.

  It enveloped Zoe Strachan’s house, and the cottage where Ramona Orlitzki watched television and sipped her gin and wondered whether the police had rescued the boy yet.

  Cassandra Mitchell looked from her kitchen window and couldn’t see the ocean, or the Indian graveyard, or even the highway that passed fifty yards from her front door. But she saw lights, blurred and distant, and for a moment imagined that she was in a ship, gazing through fog at the lights of an unfamiliar country.

  Karl Alberg got restless, waiting for the phone to ring, and decided to pace around the block a couple of times. He walked outside unprepared for fog and there it was, damp fingers in his hair, a moist palm pressed lightly against his face. He changed his mind about going for a walk. He wondered if the fog would be even thicker, denser, when it was time to go back to Zoe Strachan’s house. It wasn’t that he minded it, he told himself. It just made driving unpleasant. He hated it when the fog was so thick that his headlights made yellow dents in it but couldn’t cut through it. He hated it when he rolled down his window and stuck his head out, to see better, and felt the oily caress of the fog against his face, and imagined it slithering into his lungs; he tried not to breathe then. He found he wasn’t breathing now, standing outside the detachment. So he went indoors again.

  Just after midnight, Zoe Strachan closed and locked Kenny’s window. Then she tied her raincoat tight around her and emerged from her house into the fog, brandishing a flashlight.

  Ramona thought she heard somebody tapping at the door. At first she ignored it, trying not to be frightened. Then she got up and opened the door, and the boy was there, and she let him in, and the fog swirled around the cottage and drifted among the branches of the fir trees.

  Chapter 48

  THE FOG surged around her, and Zoe imagined the boy hiding in it, peeking around it and through it; seeing her when she couldn’t see him. It hurt her eyes because it wouldn’t hold still; it fluttered and throbbed, advanced and retreated, and sometimes she had to close her eyes against it—but not for long; she was too close to the rocks, to the sea.

  Sh
e circled her house, shining the flashlight beam across the patio, bending over to try to focus it down into the nooks and crannies of the rocky beach, but there was only whiteness down there, sometimes impenetrable, sometimes wispy, with black water moving restlessly behind it. The cold ocean breezes were pushing more and more fog onto the land, piling it up, like stricken clouds, upon her property. How would she explain it if the boy ended up dead, broken on the rocks or drowned in the Pacific? She wouldn’t need to explain it, she told herself. If the child is stupid enough to wander outside in the middle of the night, in the middle of a bank of fog, then he deserves to smash himself against the rocks, or perish in the sea. She didn’t want to find him dead. She wanted to find him alive. It was just possible if she could get hold of him before he found his way to the damned policeman or a damned pay phone, she would drive them straight to Langdale, and they’d wait in the car for the six o’clock ferry…

  If she could just get the damned scribblers.

  She was shaking with rage. She stopped, rested, took several deep breaths, tried desperately to relax…but the thought of that wretched child was enough to send her blood pressure skyrocketing.

  Stop it, Zoe, she said. Stop it.

  Think.

  She’d circled the house, checked the beach, as much as that was possible. She had heard no whimperings, no whinings, no sounds except sea sounds, wind sounds, and her own labored breathing.

  Surely he would have fled along the driveway, she thought. Not in the middle of it but to one side.

  He’d be running, not walking, and he had a head start. And Zoe, rational again, got into her car and began driving toward the highway.

  The headlights caused the fog to dance and flutter. Zoe was peering intently out the window, and driving very slowly, but she couldn’t see anything, because of the fog, and the glare of the headlights. She switched the lights off; the car crunched blindly down the driveway but she was going so slowly she wasn’t worried about accidents, collisions; she’d driven along here so often she knew exactly where she was, even in the fog. When she got to the highway she’d turn the headlights back on and drive toward Sechelt.

  But what if he was already there, at the police station, or calling his damned friend Roddy? But he couldn’t be there yet, she thought, he hadn’t had time to get to Sechelt yet—and then off to the left she saw a wink of light, right where the cottage ought to be.

  The cottage. The cottage. That damned brat is in my cottage.

  Chapter 49

  “SHIT,” said Alberg, banging down the phone.

  “No luck?” said Sokolowski.

  “No luck. Jesus. You’d think with all the computers in the world…”

  “Oh, well, computers,” said the sergeant, with contempt.

  “I don’t want to wait any longer, Sid.”

  “Well, yeah, I know what you mean. We got the warrants. Frieda’s sitting out there, ready to go. But, Karl, kids make things up. If it turns out she made it all up…”

  Alberg’s phone rang, and he grabbed it eagerly, but it turned out to be Cassandra.

  “I tried your house,” she said. “You’re working awfully late, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I am. Cassandra, listen—”

  Sokolowski lumbered to his feet. “You talk to her, Karl. Relax for a minute.”

  “You’re busy,” said Cassandra. “I won’t keep you.”

  Sokolowski gave Alberg a reassuring nod. “Five minutes,” he said. “Give them another five minutes.” He backed out of Alberg’s office, closing the door behind him.

  “I’ve got five minutes,” said Alberg into the phone. “How are you? How’s your mom?”

  “Fine. We’re both fine. I wanted to say, why don’t you stop by for coffee, or a drink, on your way home?”

  “I’m going to be pretty late, Cassandra.”

  “That’s okay. Really.” She sounded wistful. Subdued.

  “If I can,” said Alberg softly.

  “What’s going on down there anyway? How come you’re still at work?”

  “I’ll tell you after.”

  “After what?”

  “After it’s all over.”

  Sokolowski knocked, and stuck his head in. “We got it, Karl.”

  “I’ve gotta go, Cassandra.” He said goodbye and hung up. “Did they call?” he said to Sokolowski.

  “Yeah. It happened, Karl. Just like she wrote it down.”

  A siren sounded, starting small, building loud and clamorous, summoning members of the volunteer fire department.

  Alberg went to the window and pulled up the blind. “I can’t see a thing in this damn fog.”

  They hurried down the hall to the reception area, where Frieda Listad waited. The duty officer was just hanging up the phone. “Staff?” he said. “The fire. It’s down at the Strachan place.”

  Alberg and Sokolowski stared at one another.

  “Let’s go, Sid,” said Alberg quietly.

  Chapter 50

  THE COTTAGE had two doors. The back door led directly into the kitchen. There was a tiny hall closet between the front door and the bedroom. When Ramona let the boy in, he was so frightened that to soothe him she barricaded both the doors. With his help she wrestled a tall chest of drawers from the bedroom into the hall and wedged it up against the front door. There wasn’t much they could do in the kitchen except put the table in the way of the door, so that’s what they did.

  The boy said his name was Kenny.

  She forgot at first that she knew him.

  “What did you do with them?” he said urgently, looking around the cottage, once they’d done the barricading.

  “With what?” she said.

  “It—with the thing I gave you. You know. The brown envelope.”

  She gazed at him, uncomprehending.

  “I gave it to you,” he said, beginning to cry. “This morning.”

  “Are you sure it was me?” she said, feeling panicky.

  “I gave it to you. In the fog,” said Kenny, sobbing “I did.”

  “Oh my goodness,” she said. “Oh yes. I’m sorry. I remember now.” She gave him a hug. “Don’t you worry, they’re in good hands. I got them delivered straight to the police.”

  “I—you mean you opened it up? You read them?”

  “Of course I did,” said Ramona. She leaned close to him. “I don’t blame you one bit for being scared. I was scared, too, reading that stuff.”

  “What’ll happen now?” said Kenny.

  “First I’m going to make you something hot to eat,” said Ramona. She got one of the fancy packages of chicken noodle soup down from the cupboard. “Too bad I don’t have any milk. I’ll have to make it with water.”

  “And then what?” said the boy, and Ramona told him that just as soon as it was light enough, she would take him out of the cottage and down the driveway and along the beach to the first of the houses there, and they would call the police and tell them where to come and get him.

  After he’d eaten, they sat on the bed and watched late-night TV.

  “Did you hear something?” he said, for the third time since he’d gotten there.

  Dutifully, Ramona turned the sound down on the television and listened. “No.”

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “I don’t think so.” She smoothed some hair away from his forehead. It was like having her own children back—she’d always liked Horace and Martha, when they were children.

  Ramona turned the sound back up. “Just as soon as it’s light, we’ll skedaddle on out of here.”

  “Yeah. Good.”

  “Can you bring me some fruit, do you think?”

  “You mean, afterwards?” said Kenny.

  “Yes. Before you go home.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Sure I will. You’re gonna stay here, then, right?”

  “For a little while longer, anyway. Until the people come back.”

  He looked at her quizzically, and was about to say something, but changed his
mind.

  A commercial break interrupted the movie, and Ramona, chuckling with pleasure, triumphantly used the remote control device to turn off the sound.

  “Shhh!” said the boy. “I heard something,” he whispered. He shuffled himself over closer to Ramona, who put her bony arm around his shoulder and strained to hear whatever he had heard.

  Suddenly a great pounding began. It took Ramona a minute to figure out that it was coming from the front door.

  “It’s her!” said the boy, and he shot out of bed, looking around him wildly.

  The noise was thunderous, implacable.

  “My lord,” said Ramona, thrusting her bare feet into slippers. She grabbed the boy and hustled him into the kitchen.

  The hammering stopped, they heard quick footsteps at the side of the house, and it started again, this time at the back door, bang! bang! bang! rhythmic and horrifying.

  “Who are you! What do you want!” Ramona shouted. She pushed the boy behind her.

  “Get out of my house!” bellowed a female voice.

  Ramona shook her head and leaned against the fridge. She was intensely agitated. She couldn’t remember what she’d done with the remote control device. She kept clicking it and clicking it, but there was nothing in her hand: she could see that it was empty.

  “What are we gonna do!” cried the boy.

  Ramona turned around to stare at him. The pounding on the kitchen door continued. It was apparently real sound—the door was shuddering on its hinges…

  Ramona said calmly to the boy, “She’s going to get tired of banging like that. She’s just doing it to scare us. Pretty soon she’s going to break that window there, that kitchen window, or maybe the one in the living room, and climb right in here.”

  She hurried into the living room and picked up the poker from beside the Franklin stove. “Turn off that lamp in the bedroom. Turn off the TV, too,” she said to him. “Go on! Do it!” And he did.

  Ramona crouched by the kitchen window, just beside it, and sure enough, the banging on the door stopped. For a moment nothing happened. “Please God please God,” said Ramona, over and over again, and then the window glass crashed into the kitchen. Ramona screamed and shut her eyes as the glass showered around and upon her. Then she lashed out with the poker, and heard a shriek of pain.