Antonia was lying flat on her back but her eyes were open and staring up at her. “You came back,” she said and offered a toothless grin. Her dentures were resting in a glass of water on the bedside table.
“I came to make sure you’re feeling better.” Now that Lauren was standing a second time in this old woman’s bedroom, she began to feel foolish. What am I doing here snooping like a neurotic neighbour?
“I pretend to swallow pills.” Antonia’s eyes glinted, looking sly and secretive in the light from the gap in the curtains. “Boris can’t know.”
Lauren stepped closer. Without her teeth, Antonia’s words were slurred and wet with saliva. “Of course not. What kind of pills is he giving you?”
“To sleep. Punish me … but he’s wrong … nobody.”
“Wrong?”
“I watch her walk from your house. She wear blue coat and boots with heels. No hat. Red scarf.”
Lauren’s heartbeat quickened. “You watched Vivian leave on her walk that day? The day she was killed?”
“Went to put on my coat and boots. I run to catch sight of her again. Can’t tell who she is with. They at Portsmouth Street, walking fast.”
“Did she leave the house with the other person or meet them along the way.”
“Not see.”
“Was it a man or a woman?”
Antonia shook her head and her mouth settled into a stubborn line. She closed her eyes.
“What way did they turn on Portsmouth?”
“Left.”
They could have been going toward Sherwood Drive and the Rideau Trail. Lauren wanted to shake her and scream at her to keep talking. How could she have kept silent all this time about Vivian’s last moments alive? What else was Antonia hiding?
“Antonia, why is Boris giving you sleeping pills during the day?”
Silence.
“Is he your brother?”
“Boris.”
His name spoken without expression. Lauren was aware of the clock ticking and the cold in the room that made her shiver even through the down of her mother’s winter jacket. She looked desperately around the room and her gaze landed on the photo of the couple with the two children. She strode the short distance to the dresser and picked it up.
“Are these your children, Antonia? What happened to them?” She held the picture at chest level and moved closer to the bed.
Antonia reached out one shaky hand for the photo. Tears seeped out of the sides of her eyes and trickled down her cheeks onto the pillow. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she chanted. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? What happened to your family?”
“Cezar. I tell Boris you are in resistance and he … tell them. My fault. My fault.”
“Boris killed Cezar?”
Antonia snatched the photo from her hand and cradled it against her breasts. “My children. All gone. My fault.” She began rocking from side to side and moaning like a wounded animal. She lapsed into Romanian between guttural screeches that made the hair on Lauren’s arms and neck stand on end.
Lauren wanted to run out of the bedroom and out of the house but she couldn’t make her feet move. Antonia’s distress was rising in volume and she felt terribly responsible. She squatted down next to the bed and rubbed Antonia’s arm through her thin nightgown. “Everything’s okay,” she said. “Hush now. I’m leaving. I’m sorry to have brought back this pain. Hush. It’s going to be okay.”
Antonia turned her face to Lauren and gripped on to her wrist with claw-like fingers that dug into her flesh. “Didn’t know what I was doing. I thought was in Romania and she was taking my children. I took knife from back shed to stop her …” Antonia stopped and looked toward the door. Her eyes grew large and frightened. She half rose from her lying position. “Boris home. Quick! Hide! Can’t find you here.”
“Where?”
“In closet. Go!”
“But this is craz—” Lauren took another look at the terror on Antonia’s face and cut herself off. She skittered across the bedroom and into the closet, pushing aside shoes and bags to squeeze in under the clothes swinging on hangers. She listened for noises downstairs. Maybe she’s making it up, she thought. “I took the knife to stop her”? Zoe had been killed with a knife. Antonia followed Vivian and someone else the afternoon she went missing.
The dark claustrophobic closet and the smell of mothballs were making her lightheaded. Panic coursed through her and she felt as if she were suffocating. Frantic, she pushed the door open. She scanned the room before straightening from her crouched position and lurching out of her hiding place. Antonia was watching her from the bed, wide-eyed and silent. Lauren started toward the door but stopped when she heard footsteps crossing the floor in the downstairs hallway and then starting heavily up the stairs. Antonia hissed at her to hide.
Lauren dove back into the closet and pulled the door closed behind her.
Boris reached the doorway to his sister’s room and looked in. She was still sleeping, flat on her back, hands folded on top of the covers. The pills should keep her that way until suppertime and he’d make a tray to bring upstairs. She’d be groggy and it would be easier to feed her in her room than to negotiate the stairs supporting her with his one good arm.
He took a step into the room and watched her lying so peacefully and wondered how long he could carry this off before the police were back to talk to her. She was slipping into the past more and more now but maybe when he stopped feeding her sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medicine, she’d come back to herself. She’d insisted she hadn’t followed Vivian McKenna up the Rideau Trail, but her grasp on reality was not good at the best of times. He doubted if she’d remember killing this second one. She’d only admitted to Zoe Delgado because he’d found her washing the blood out of her clothes in their kitchen sink and even at that, she hadn’t fully understood what she’d done for several weeks. A psychotic break. She’d had one in Romania and he knew the signs. He hadn’t dared risk sending her back to the hospital in Kingston. Who knew what she would tell them? He couldn’t take the risk.
In a moment of weakness, several months after the murder, he’d told David that Antonia had killed the Delgado girl and regretted it ever after. It had been after David had confessed to him about moving her body. They’d both had secrets to conceal and agreed to keep silent unless the wrong person was charged because Antonia would have died trapped in another asylum. He’d convinced David of this and played on his goodness and compassion. David had helped to keep an eye on her all these years but she’d fooled them again when he’d gone into the hospital this last time. Boris had thought she was cured of the monsters in her head and that was his mistake.
He’d been wrong and now he had to find a way to keep her safe.
Her breathing looked strong and steady and he turned to leave, pausing when he heard a noise. He looked back into the semi-dark room. Antonia was rolling onto her side and the sheets rustled as she moved. He’d thought the noise had come from inside the wall but perhaps he’d heard a mouse. He’d have to check the traps later.
He kept walking down the hall, stopping for a piss in the bathroom before continuing on downstairs. He was in the kitchen filling the kettle for a cup of instant coffee when the phone rang. Caller ID gave the number as private and he let it go to voicemail. A few seconds later and the phone rang again with the same private ID. A telemarketer would not call back so soon. He picked up and listened. The caller greeted him in Romanian and with sick trepidation Boris said his name and returned the good afternoon. Then he listened without interrupting, thanking the voice on the other end before hanging up. He swore and staggered back a step, grabbing on to the counter to keep himself upright. He closed his eyes and inhaled deep breaths to steady his heart. Everyone pays the piper eventually. You are no different. A fatalistic calmness stole over him. His old contacts had come through even after all these years. Finishing the circle. Paying the last debt.
He stood motionless looking at the
paint cans where he’d left them on the floor while he let the caller’s words sink in. A surge of anger made him straighten his shoulders and slap his hand against the wall. War crimes, his contact had called them. What did this pampered generation know about surviving a brutal regime when a person was forced to do whatever it took to stay alive, including selling out their own sister’s husband?
I’ve paid my debt to you, Cezar. I saved Antonia from the mental institution and gave her a life. She forgave my betrayal of you.
He knew that he was lying to himself. If she’d known that he had sold her children while she was inside, she would never have come with him to Canada. She would have damned him to hell.
If there is a God, I am doomed.
He’d turn eighty on Saturday so he supposed this was as good a time as any for the truth to come crawling out of its hiding place. Yet he would not become one of the broken old men he’d seen on trial with stoic, resigned faces in front of television cameras and reporters, being condemned by people in middle-class houses with jobs and two cars in the garage and soft bellies. People who’d never had to choose between selling their soul to stay alive and eternal darkness. People who lived in freedom that they thought would last forever.
He supposed there was nothing for it but to end this quickly as he’d planned when the day came.
It is time for the screaming faces to stop haunting my dreams.
He climbed the basement stairs and entered his workshop, patting the roof of one of his birdhouses as he walked past. They’d have to do without red trim, but so be it. He pulled a chair over to the centre of the room and climbed up. The black PSM pistol was wrapped in the cloth tucked up in the rafters. When he was a trusted interrogator, he’d been given the Russian handgun for protection and smuggled it into Canada before all the airport security that would have made its transport impossible. He reached up and took down a package containing a round of spitzer-pointed high-velocity bullets. They were capable of penetrating forty-five layers of Kevlar soft body armour at close distances and he trusted they were up to this final task. He loaded the bullets into the eight-round magazine and walked wearily upstairs to the kitchen.
He thought about making a final meal for Antonia: baked salmon in white wine and herbs, small roast potatoes and turnip mixed with carrots as she liked to cook on special occasions, but what would be the point of prolonging the last moment? Besides, she had an uncanny intuitiveness and would know that he was up to something. He didn’t want to deal with her hysteria, or worse, whimpering. No, far easier to make a swift end now while he had the wherewithal to carry out what needed to be done. If he was lucky, she’d still be asleep.
When he reached Antonia’s bedroom, she was sitting up holding the photo of Cezar, Gabriela, and Iuliu in her hands resting on the blanket in front of her.
She knows what I am about to do, he thought.
“Remember how happy we were?” she asked. Her eyes were bright and a red flush in her cheeks made her look younger, like the woman she’d once been back in Romania before she’d lost Cezar and her children.
“Yes,” he lied because he couldn’t remember ever being truly happy. He kept the gun hidden behind his back and her eyes went to his arm and back to his face.
“I told the girl to go into the closet,” she said, switching to Romanian. She held up a hand and pointed. “It’s time for her to go home.”
Boris looked toward the closet. The door wasn’t completely closed and he knew it had been. He strode across the room and pulled the door open with his hand while still holding the pistol. The McKenna daughter was crouched in amongst the shoes looking up at him like a scared rabbit.
“Come out,” he ordered.
She looked at the gun in his hand and cowered back into the closet.
He softened his voice. “I won’t hurt you. You need to go home now.” It didn’t matter how she’d come to be in Antonia’s closet or why.
His words seemed to reassure her and she scrambled out to stand in front of him. “What are you going to do?” she asked. She looked like a child waif, her short white hair standing every which way, her eyes wide and scared.
“My dear, you do not need to concern yourself.” He kept the gun pointed at the floor.
“Let me take Antonia with me to visit my mother.” She begged him with her eyes.
“Antonia will be staying with me.”
The girl was hesitating and he respected her concern for his sister even when she had to know the risk of standing her ground. He loosened his grip on the gun and remembered that David had loved her the best. David had blamed himself for not standing up to Evelyn, as cold a mother as Boris had ever seen, and he had known some hardened women in his day.
“Antonia and I are old and not afraid of what is to come. You can tell your brother Tristan that she is sorry for letting the police think he killed his girlfriend and wife. She’s responsible and regrets not coming forward, but you must understand that she’s been ill. She has episodes. Psychotic breaks, the doctors call them. I’ve tried to protect her. Now, you must leave. Your father would not forgive me if I let any harm come to you.”
The girl took one last look toward the bed and back at him. “Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?” she whispered.
“Don’t concern yourself. This ending was set in motion many years ago and understand that this is for the best. Antonia and I are tired of suffering. We are both ready.”
He watched her leave the room, only glancing back once, and heard her footsteps running down the stairs. He could follow her and lock the door, but he had enough time to do what he had to do without locking anybody out.
He crossed to the bed and kissed Antonia on the forehead. She looked up at him, trusting and silent. He hoped that she forgave him. “I love you, my little sister,” he said. He lifted the gun from his side and shot her in the head so quickly that her mouth was still forming the words I love you back. Then he bent and kissed her bloody cheek before he lay down next to her with his head leaning against the headboard and his body resting against hers. He placed the pistol under his chin and welcomed the final darkness.
chapter thirty-five
Rouleau found a parking spot behind a police cruiser, rested his hands on the steering wheel, and turned his head to look at Stonechild. “Well, we got here in record time. Petran will have wasted a trip if this turns out to be true. Are you set?”
“As set as I’ll ever be.”
The street was choked with first-response vehicles: two ambulances, a firetruck with red lights flashing, police cars, and reporters and cameramen setting up across the road from the Orlovs’. Darkness had fallen and snowflakes tumbled to earth in the yellow glow of the streetlights. They met Bennett outside the house.
“What have we got?” asked Rouleau.
“Murder suicide. Boris Orlov shot his wife and then himself.”
“Antonia was his sister,” said Stonechild, “not his wife.”
“Who found them?” asked Rouleau.
“Lauren McKenna called it in. We haven’t taken her statement yet but she’s at her home next door waiting for one of us to go over. She said that Boris talked to her before he did this and she’s quite shaken up. Woodhouse and Gundersund are inside the Orlov house.”
“Did he leave a note?”
“Nothing.”
“I could speak with Lauren,” Stonechild offered. “I interviewed her before and we seemed to develop a rapport.”
Rouleau liked the idea but thought he should clear it with Woodhouse, since he was still the lead investigator. “Let’s have a look inside first.”
The house was constructed in the 1950s with furnishings from the ’70s: an old brown couch covered in a crocheted afghan, a fake leather recliner, round coiled rug in blue and white in the living room, yellow Formica table with chrome legs and four chairs covered in red dahlia print, and ancient white appliances in the kitchen. Dust had gathered in the corners of the rooms and on the stairs, which he
climbed with Stonechild right behind him. They met Woodhouse and Gundersund on the landing.
“It’s grisly,” said Woodhouse. “Looks like he shot her in the head first, lay down next to her and blew his own head off. The coroner and Forensics are in there now.”
“A hunting rifle?” asked Rouleau.
“Pistol. Russian make. Bloody powerful, so he wasn’t leaving anything to chance. We’ll wait here if you want to have a look.”
Rouleau and Stonechild continued to the bedroom but stayed near the doorway to let Forensics do their work unhindered. The smell of blood and death was strong and nauseating. They stood silently for a moment, taking in the scene.
“I’m going to stay and talk to the coroner. Why don’t you go see if Woodhouse wants you to interview Lauren? Tell him that I’d like him to handle the media.” Rouleau smiled at her. “That ought to make his delegation duties easier.”
The direction of her gaze left the bed and swept the room before meeting his. She agreed, but without enthusiasm. Rouleau was well aware that she didn’t like the idea of answering to Woodhouse, but knew that it was better for her to volunteer than for him to suggest, which Woodhouse would take as interfering.
After she’d gone, he surveyed the room again, taking in the details, getting a sense of Antonia in the simplicity of the furnishings and the unadorned walls, save for the religious art over her bed. The bedspread was an old quilt darned in places and faded so that the patchwork pattern looked washed out, except for the bright-red blood staining the top half. His eyes lifted to the heavy blood splatter on the headboard and wall before lowering to the bed and the position of their bodies and the tragedy of these old people with nobody left to grieve them. Brother and sister. Was Boris’s final act one of love or self-preservation? Rouleau thought about the timing.
Somebody got to him.
Rouleau waited for the coroner to look up. He walked closer when Clarence nodded in his direction. “Are you certain this was a murder suicide?”
Clarence said, “I’ll run some tests, but I’d say so. He was holding the gun and there’s no sign of a struggle. The woman looks almost peaceful. The man is harder to tell. His face is gone.” He held out a baggie. “She was holding this framed photograph when she was shot.”
Bleeding Darkness Page 24