by Giles Blunt
She tried to get control of her breathing, her heart rate. No one knows I’m here. Whatever’s going on, it’ll be over soon. They’ll leave, I’ll leave. Life will be normal and no one will be dead. Not me, at least.
None of this slowed her heart rate. Blood thundered in her ears.
She eased herself out from under the bed. There were two windows side by side, one with an air conditioner fixed into it. Outside, moonlight on snow. She turned the lock on the other one and lifted. It didn’t move. Her heart jacked itself up even more. It was all she could do not to scream.
This is panic. Heaving up on the window grips, pushing on the sash, nothing moving. Thinking, this is panic, get back under that bed.
Grabbing the chair. To this moment still having made no sound.
I do this and there’s no going back. It’s one chance and no more. I should get back under that bed.
She swung the chair with all her strength, spinning her weight into it. The noise was terrifying.
One knee over the sill and onto the slight ledge outside. Hands on the sill and glass slicing into her in many places at once. She pushed herself off, coat ripping, and hit the ground hard, knees and hands. Then up and running, and bullets spitting snow in front of her before she even heard the first shot.
She made straight for the darkness of the trees, thinking, my tracks in fresh snow saying shoot me. She dropped down behind an outcropping of granite and looked back. Someone had turned on the bedroom light, but there was no shadow in the window. Think, she said. To her left, the platinum lake, the ice still too thin for anyone heavier than a cat. There’s only two ways back to the car, one on either side of the drive and then the road. He saw me come this way. He’s going to bust out that front door and head for this side and he’s going to hear me even if he can’t see me and then I’m dead and I really do not want to die.
The open ground between her and the house looked like the worst place in the world. She left the rocks and ran right back through it, keeping close to the rear of the house, and then into the woods on the other side. Every instinct told her to run all out. I’m fast, she said, but I’m not Loreena Moon and I’m not about to outrun bullets. The trick is not to run fast but to run silent.
She tried to remember all of the tracking lessons her father had given her. How to move in on your prey without being detected. Keep your steps to the rocks, right on them or close by. Ease your weight by grabbing low branches close to the trunk. Don’t step on twigs. Great bit of Indian lore there, Dad. I’d never have thought of that. Being a good tracker was not the same as being good, meaning living, prey.
When she was well past the front of the house, she crouched amid a stand of pine and listened. She could see the drive, could hear the man crashing through the woods on the far side. How dumb was this person likely to be, was the question. How long would it take him to see that there were no tracks over there, no footprints in the night’s thin layer of snow. Then he would either wait or head down to the back of the house and see her trail doubling back.
He came out of the woods and turned slowly, conning the snow, the woods. Sam reached into her pocket for her cellphone. Not there. She felt her other pockets. The man moved back toward the house, the gun long in his hand. Sam took off again. A few moments later the road was in sight through the trees. Her car was down the road a little toward town. To avoid crossing the open driveway, she would have to get to the far side of the road and into the woods, which climbed a steep hill, or risk the open road.
The man was crashing through the brush behind her. Sam broke for the road and ran for it. If he saw her, he would have trouble getting a shot, and by the time he reached the road, she would be at her car. A bee whizzed by her face and then the following crack told her everything she needed to know. She got to the hydro utility road and her car parked maybe fifty feet in from the road.
If he’s made it to the road, the noise of me starting this thing up is going to tell him where I am.
She kept the lights off. The Honda started first try. She took it slow on the service road; the slight rise would have been enough to render those bald tires useless. As she rolled up to Island Road, she saw him coming and gunned it, back tires spinning but drifting up onto the road. It was agony to ease off on the pedal, but it was the only way the tires were going to grip. A bullet slammed into the back end, and the man was yelling, running toward her in the rear-view.
The tires caught and she eased her foot down, keeping low in the seat. Another bullet slammed into the trunk. She rounded a curve and breathed a little easier. He couldn’t get a shot and he wasn’t going to catch her on foot. His best move now would be getting into the car she’d seen shadowed in the driveway and coming after her all Terminator. She had the advantage of knowing Island Road, which had some serious twists and turns, and he couldn’t be sure if she was headed to town or farther north.
A car coming the other way blasted its horn and flashed its lights. She put her headlights on and kept it fast, the Honda fishtailing on the hills and curves. Nothing in the rear-view, but then you could only see back to the last curve. Up ahead, the Chinook Tavern on the right and beyond that the highway.
The Chinook parking lot was busy for a Thursday night. People outside, huddled over their cigarettes. A guy was poised to pull out on his Harley, but there was no way she was going to let him. She blasted by and totally ignored the stop sign at the intersection. He yelled something-hurling his outrage into the night.
Then the smooth road and the lights of town in the distance. She patted her pockets again for her cell. Definitely gone. She must have lost it when she jumped. Moonlight on the flat white surface of Trout Lake, the road itself in the deep shadows of trees and hills. The speed limit was 80 kilometres, but she pegged it at 120. You couldn’t go faster on these curves. It was a perfect speed trap, of course. The cops often staked it out, hoping to lasso the drunks weaving back to town from the Chinook.
The steering wheel was sticky with blood. Her knee was hurting, and not in a way that was going to fade any time soon. The blood had soaked down nearly to the cuff of her jeans. That was probably going to need stitches. You are in trouble ten different ways, she said, and if you’ve got some plan for getting out of it, I’d really like to hear it right now-preferably before Mr. Murder decides to come after me.
2
When she got home, Sam parked the car in the garage and inspected the damage to the rear end. The left signal light was shattered and there was a bullet hole in the trunk. Three inches higher and her brain would have been all over the windshield.
She went into the house and removed her coat and boots in the dark. Her mother always slept with her bedroom door open. Sam had to be silent moving down the hall and into the bathroom. The right leg of her jeans was stiff with blood below the tear in the knee. She opened the cabinet above the sink and found a bottle of Tylenol with codeine left over from a tooth extraction. She shook two into her palm and swallowed them, scooping water from the faucet to wash them down.
Her left hand was cut, a two-inch gash at the base of her palm. It wasn’t bleeding too badly now. She got some gauze and tape and an old face cloth from the closet by the toilet, then had to go back for the rubbing alcohol. Tremors shook her thighs as she got into the tub. She peeled her jeans down halfway and sat on the edge of the tub to extract her left leg.
She took a few deep breaths and held the last one and rolled her jeans off the cut in her knee. Tears sprang to her eyes and she started to sob but managed to keep it quiet. She pulled her jeans off the rest of the way and rolled them up. Blood welled from her knee. She ran water over it and watched the red and pink swirl into the drain. She washed her cuts with soap and water and dried them with the old face cloth. The alcohol was cold and it stung, but it felt clean.
The cut in her knee needed stitches, but there was nothing she could do about that. A trip to the emergency room would require an explanation, and she might run into someone who had been shot
or had done the shooting. She dried her feet and went back to the linen closet and dug around and found an ancient box of Kotex that her mother had got a couple of years ago for some medical reason she hadn’t cared to discuss with her children. Sam taped one tight to her knee.
It took some effort to clean up the mess and she kept expecting her mother to tap on the door the whole time, but she didn’t. Sam turned off the bathroom light and limped past her brother’s bedroom door into her own room and shut the door. She hid her rolled-up jeans and the box of Kotex under the bed. She switched on her bedside lamp and sat on the edge of the bed with her left leg stretched out straight. Pootkin was curled up on the end of the bed. She raised her black head and blinked and went back to sleep.
The top of the bandage was already showing red. Every time Sam bent her knee, that cut was going to open.
The tremors had subsided, the codeine beginning to work a little. It’s going to take a roomful of scientists, she thought, to calculate exactly how much trouble I’m in. If Mr. Gun saw the licence plate on my car, it’s probably game over. But it was dark, he was far back and he was trying to shoot me, so maybe he didn’t catch it. Presumably, when you’re shooting people, you have other things on your mind than licence plates.
And you don’t know, she told herself, you don’t know for a certainty anyway, that the man shot anybody at all. Uh-huh-then why was he trying to annihilate you?
Sam’s bedroom was tiny. She could reach her desk from the bed. She got her laptop and opened it and checked a couple of news sites, ABdaily. com and algonquinlode. com. Of course, it was too soon. They had stories about the fur auction and the winter carnival and nothing about any shootings.
She looked at her alarm clock. Call him now, she thought, wake his wife, catch him off guard, and you can kiss him goodbye. The earliest she could call would be after eight in the morning. He said his wife was at her office from eight until six every day. Randall didn’t have to be in until ten.
Lights from a passing car swept over her bedroom wall and she held her breath until they passed. She switched out the light and moved the cat over so she could lie down. Her knee throbbed. When she closed her eyes, she was right back at the Trout Lake house, crashing to the snowy ground, running through the woods. What are the chances of him finding that phone? He’s running through the dark with a gun, is he really going to notice it-probably buried in the snow? She opened her laptop again and lay on her side, checking the Web for articles on what to do if you lose your phone. There were some phones you could sync up to your computer so you could wipe out the information the moment a thief tried to access the Web with it. Not a feature that came with Sam’s. She had never even set up the password. Calm down, Sam, she said, he didn’t find it. Which means the police probably will.
The codeine was really taking hold now. She was thinking of what to say to the police and couldn’t seem to keep it straight in her mind.
–
Sam woke up in the morning with her laptop on the bed beside her. Her alarm clock said 8:30. Her mother and brother would have just left. She called Randall on their house phone. He did not sound happy that it was her, but she ignored that and spilled out the whole story.
“Randall, I’ve never been this scared in my life. I never knew what terrified meant until now. I really thought I was going to be dead, and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be dead people in that house.”
“You didn’t see him actually shoot anybody, though.”
“No, but he came after me, and he tried to kill me, and why would he do that unless he’d just killed them?”
“I’m just saying it’s not like you can report a murder. All you could say was that you heard shots.”
“And that some bastard tried to kill me. There are bullet holes in my car.”
“And you said he was talking real estate? He was trying to sell them on the house?”
“He was showing them the bathroom and talking about the view.”
“That makes no sense at all. I’m the only agent on that property.”
“I wanted to call the cops soon as I got home, but I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Hold on, Sam-you can’t be telling the police I was out there. Do you realize what that would do to me? How am I going to explain to Larry what I was doing on that property with an Indian girl in the middle of the night?” Larry was Lawrence Carnwright, owner operator of Carnwright Real Estate.
“Indian girl?”
“First Nations. Stay out of it, Sam. You’re talking about the destruction of my career and my marriage.”
“I can’t just not report it. What if there’s someone wounded out there? Someone slowly bleeding to death? What kind of person would that make me?”
“It makes you reasonable. Cool under fire. Literally. If he shot people, they’re shot and there’s nothing you can do about it, Sam. But you’ve got to think of my situation here. How are you going to explain why you were in that house? How would you even know about that house without bringing me into it? And once my name comes out, that’s it. It’s the kind of damage, once you do it, you can’t undo it.”
Sam thought about that. She ran a hand through her hair and encountered a V of pine needles. “I could just call them anonymously. I could call from a pay phone.”
“And tell them what, Sam?”
“I was out in the area and I heard shots fired and thought I should report it.”
“And you think they’re going to go out there ten hours later on the chance that someone may still be firing a gun on the tip of Island Road? They’re not going to do anything with information like that. You’d have to tell them what you told me-that you heard a couple of people and then there were shots and you’re pretty sure they’re dead. That’ll get ’em out there. And they’re gonna know, what with the isolation of the house and everything, that you were actually there in the house, and they are going to turn over every piece of evidence known to man in order to find you. They’re going to find our fingerprints, they’re going to find who knows what-all out there. You can’t do it, Sam.”
“I don’t have a criminal record and neither do you-fingerprints aren’t going to lead them anywhere.”
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“If there’s been an actual murder out there, they’re going to be questioning me anyway. I have a key to the place. I told you, Sam, I’m not a good liar.”
“You could tell them the truth. You were out there some other day. You wanted to check the house for some reason, and that’s it-you didn’t see or hear anything suspicious. And that’s the truth, so you wouldn’t have to be nervous. You don’t have to mention me.”
“Sam, don’t call the cops. Do not phone them. I can’t be brought into this. Neither can you. I gotta go. I gotta think about this. Don’t do anything, Sam.”
“I lost my cellphone, and what if he has it? What if he saw my licence plate? What if he thinks I can identify him and he comes after me?”
“If he was that desperate to get you, he could have done it last night. He could have chased you in his car, right? But he didn’t. Because he knows you can’t identify a damn thing.”
“What if he tries to kill me to play it safe? Can you even believe I’m saying that? This is for real, Randall.”
“I gotta go. Don’t call me. If the police start checking phone records, everything’s gonna go to hell. And we better not see each other for a while.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“Just to be safe-we don’t want to ruin what we have, do we? This precious thing that we have together?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. I’ll call you soon.”
“I love you, Randall. I need to see you.”
“Me too. So much. I gotta go.”
3
After dinner, John Cardinal sat at the kitchen table and only realized after some time that he’d been staring at his own reflection in the window. He got up and turned off the light
and sat back down. His apartment building was on a ridge overlooking the north bay of Lake Nipissing and now, with the lights off, the frozen surface of the lake took form in the glass. The moon, not quite full, was bright enough to wash out most of the stars and lit a wide off-white track across the snow to Cardinal’s window. The tops of trees that lined the beach waved in the breeze, but he couldn’t hear them through the double glazing.
Mealtimes were still difficult. For the first six months after Catherine died, Cardinal had eaten in front of the television. He didn’t like television, but it was better than simply staring at the empty place where Catherine used to sit chatting to him about her students or her latest photography project. Finally he had come to find it intolerable, and he put the little house by Trout Lake up for sale-the house he had lived in with Catherine and his daughter for nearly twenty years. For some reason he had decided that an apartment would suit him better at this broken place in his life. An apartment was un-Catherine. It was un-Cardinal, come to that. At one time he might have thought of himself as an urban type, back when he was living in Toronto decades ago, but not anymore. Now he was just a man whose wife had died and who had trouble seeing much value in his leftover life.
He turned the light back on and reached for the top file of a stack of manila folders foxed and acidic with age. Under the rubber band that held the folder together was a memo from the chief exhorting the investigations department to dig deep in their efforts to clear cold cases. There was nothing like clearing up an ancient mystery or bringing an elusive criminal to justice to restore the public’s faith in their local police. They were to seek especially opportunities to apply technologies, databases and techniques that had been unknown or unavailable to the original investigation. Whenever he was seeking to provoke enthusiasm where none existed, which was often, Chief R. J. Kendall was prone to oratory. We must see ourselves as visitors from the future, travelling back to help our stymied colleagues in the past.