Willows and Parker Box Set

by Laurence Gough

  Lister shrugged, his shoulders thin and bony under the checked shirt. His pale brown eyes strayed to the large wooden carving that hung over the fireplace and that dominated the room. Christ on the cross. Three feet high, carved out of yellow cedar. The forehead was wide, cheekbones prominent, nose large and forceful. Willows was sure the artist had been a native Indian, probably a Haida. This Christ wasn’t languishing on the stake, his eyes cast placidly towards Heaven. He was staring down, glaring at his tormentors, the heavy muscles of his arms and chest and thighs rigid and bulging with tension, his mouth wide open in a snarl of rage.

  “I really do think you ought to sit down for a minute,” Dickie said.

  “Okay,” said Lister. He lowered himself into one of the chairs facing the fireplace. “Tell me what happened,” he said. “Something bad has happened to her, hasn’t it?”

  “She’s dead,” said Dickie flatly. “She appears to have drowned.” As he spoke he was staring hard at Lister, watching for his reaction. All at once Willows understood what Rossiter didn’t like about him. The man didn’t know when to stop being a cop.

  “I have to tell you,” said Lister, “that I’m not in the least bit surprised.”

  “Why not?” said Dickie sharply.

  Lister didn’t seem to hear him. His gaze was focused on a ceramic rabbit hunkered down behind some plastic ivy. He pushed his hands deep into his overall pockets. His shoulders slumped.

  “We found her about fifteen miles north of here,” Dickie said. “In one of those little creeks up in the mountains. It looked as if she’d gone swimming, maybe hit her head on a rock.”

  Dickie waited for a response, but none came. He glanced at Rossiter. “There were tread marks from a four-wheel drive near where we found her,” he said to Lister. “Do you have any idea who might’ve driven up there with her?”

  “No,” said Lister in a quiet voice. He was still staring at the rabbit. Christ was still staring down at all of them.

  “Didn’t she have a boyfriend?” Dickie said.

  “Could have been anybody. Anybody in pants.”

  Dickie unbuttoned the breast pocket of his shirt. He held out the small black and white photograph of the boy with the pale eyes and wide smile. “You ever see him before, Bill?”

  Dickie held the photograph under Lister’s nose. Lister glanced at it, shook his head. “Who is he?”

  “We don’t know. You sure you don’t recognize him?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “When Naomi was still living here with you, was there anybody who came around in a four-wheel drive vehicle? Something with a short wheelbase, maybe a jeep?”

  “The bastards drove everything from bulldozers to tricycles.” Lister spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “What was I supposed to do with the girl, chain her to a tree?”

  Dickie nodded. “You mind if we take a look in her room?”

  “What for?”

  “We’d just like to take a look around.”

  Lister pushed himself to his feet. He glanced vaguely around the room, as if he had forgotten where he was. He gave Willows a polite, fleeting smile.

  “Was there anything you wanted to ask me?” Willows said.

  “What were you doing up the mountain?”

  “Fishing.”

  “You just stumbled across her by accident, is that it?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  “I see,” said Lister. He put his hands in his pockets. He took his hands out of his pockets. Then he started diagonally across the room towards an open door leading to a dim, empty hallway. Dickie started after him, and Rossiter followed.

  “I’ll be out on the porch,” Willows said to Rossiter as Rossiter walked by. Rossiter nodded, his face grim. Willows went outside. He took a deep breath, slowly let it out. Behind him, a miniature hydraulic device made the screen door wheeze shut. He started in on the begonia without thinking about what he was doing, tearing away the remaining dead leaves, roughly pruning the dying plant.

  After a few minutes Rossiter joined Willows on the porch.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What about Dickie?”

  “I’ll leave the car at the detachment. It’s only a couple of blocks. He can walk back.”

  Rossiter started down the steps. Willows hesitated, and then went after him.

  “You got a change of clothes in your car?” asked Rossiter.

  “No, why?”

  “You can shower and change at my place. We’re about the same size. You and me and Katie can go somewhere and grab something to eat. Have a few beers and a good time.” He grinned. “Fun, you know what I mean?”

  “Thanks anyway, but I think I’d like to get back to the city.”

  “When d’you last eat, Jack? Before you found the body, I bet. Sometime yesterday afternoon?”

  “About then.” Willows thought about the long drive through darkness, the empty apartment waiting for him at the end of the ride. “Dinner would be nice,” he said.

  “Good,” said Rossiter.

  On the far side of the valley, the mountains cut a jagged chunk out of the setting sun. At the foot of the porch steps, the lengthening shadows of the neglected fruit trees lay heavy on the grass; a complex and tangled web of twisted black lines that seemed to reach out to Willows as he walked towards the car.

  Chapter 11

  Mannie pushed the rewind button. The Hitachi VCR hummed and clicked. Videotape spun from the right wheel to the left. He turned on his TV. It made a crackling sound deep inside, like bacon frying. He turned the sound right down. He’d heard it all before. Nobody said anything. The VCR clicked again. The tape was fully rewound. Mannie pushed the play button. A fuzzy palette of colour coalesced into the face of a young woman with huge brown eyes, masses of auburn hair, a glossy red mouth. Mannie watched the movement of her lips as she read from a slip of paper on her desk.

  The camera moved in on the woman. She stopped talking. Her eyes glittered as she stared solemnly into the lens.

  On the screen, a free-form blob of polished silver metamorphosed into the radiator of the Econoline van. The camera pulled back, slowly panned the gleaming black flank of the van. It was parked in the lot where he had left it, but now it was cordoned off with lengths of bright yellow plastic tape, and guarded by a quartet of uniformed cops.

  The camera cut to a full shot of a thin woman in designer glasses and a pageboy haircut. She was wearing a ruffled grey blouse and a darker grey skirt. There was a wind coming in off the water and she held her microphone in one hand and kept her skirt in place with the other. A gust of wind fanned her hair across her forehead just as she opened her mouth to speak. She brushed the hair back into place with her free hand, and up came the skirt. Nice legs. A little flustered, the woman smiled into the lens. Mannie smiled right back at her. He knew a trouper when he saw one.

  The camera moved in on the woman until her glasses and mouth filled the screen. Blah blah blah. The camera pulled back. Inspector Homer Bradley stood to the woman’s left, Detective Orwell on her right.

  Blah blah blah. Mannie hit the fast forward button. The machine hummed and whirred and clicked. He hit the stop button, backed up a bit, hit play.

  The camera moved unsteadily in on the van. Under the powerful quartz television lights the Econoline was all sparkling chrome, reflected glare, impenetrable black shadows. The angle changed. Mannie guessed the cameraman was holding his unit over his head at arm’s length. He saw the lights reflected in the windscreen, a vague distorted human shape.

  And then he was inside. Red shag. Silver shards of broken mirror. Pools of black on the bed. Tooth marks on the back of the bucket seat.

  Mannie relived those moments when he had snatched quick glimpses of himself in the rearview mirror, his arm a blur, knife and teeth flashing through the red fog. The boy squirming under him, slippery as a fish. The shrill scream of his suit ripping. The jarring thud of steel on bone. Now the images his mind had photographe
d were interposed upon the flickering image on the screen. The past swallowed the present. The boy grunted. He cried out. He gasped and went limp.

  Mannie’s brain pushed stop. Rewind. Pause. Fast forward. Play. And the boy died again and again and again.

  Chapter 12

  Rossiter’s house was three miles out of town and half a mile in from the highway, in the middle of a clearing surrounded by a mix of hardwoods and fir and cedar trees. The house was small, hardly more than a cottage. It had a gently sloping shake roof and a wide front porch. The door and the trim around the mullioned windows was painted a bright, cheerful orange. As Willows got out of his car, the door opened and a tall slim woman wearing a loose grey T-shirt and white shorts stepped out on the porch.

  “Katie,” said Rossiter, “this is Jack Willows. Jack, I’d like you to meet my one true love.”

  Katie smiled. She had long black hair and lively green eyes, the kind of skin you saw more often in soap commercials than real life. Willows smiled back. The green eyes studied him for a moment, frankly appraising. Then Katie was turning away, leading them into the cool dimness of the house.

  As Willows’ eyes adjusted to the light, he found himself standing in the living-room. There was a patterned rug, pine floorboards that gleamed with wax and reflected the grey bulk of a big fieldstone fireplace. He followed Rossiter and Katie across the room, past a sagging chesterfield and a pair of frayed armchairs, a coffee table buried under untidy stacks of National Geographic. Rossiter excused himself and ducked through an open doorway into the house’s single bedroom. Willows noticed that the bed was made and that there were some yellow flowers in a vase on the bureau. He felt a pang of homesickness, short and sharp.

  The bathroom was at the rear of the house, separated from the kitchen by a narrow hallway. Katie handed Willows a stack of towels. “You’ve got about ten minutes, then you’re going to run out of water.”

  Willows thanked her, squeezed into the tiny bathroom and shut the door. There was an old-fashioned pedestal sink, a prefab shower made of plastic panels, and a wicker laundry basket. Willows was standing on the rest of the usable floor space. He balanced the towels on the rim of the sink, stripped, and turned on the shower. Adjusting the spray, he stepped inside. Water swirled around his feet. He yanked the shower curtain shut.

  The door swung open. “Clothes,” said Rossiter, and quickly shut the door.

  There was a bar of soap and a tube of shampoo on a rack built into the shower stall. Willows washed his hair and then used the soap to work up a thick lather. By the time he’d rinsed himself clean the water was starting to run cold. He turned off the taps and pushed back the shower curtain. On top of the laundry hamper Rossiter had left a pale blue shirt, faded jeans, and a pair of undershorts still in the sealed plastic package. Willows dried himself off and got dressed, padded barefoot into the kitchen.

  Rossiter was sitting at the table, peeling potatoes. There was an open bottle of beer in front of him. He used the potato peeler to point at the beer and then the refrigerator. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” Willows opened the fridge and took out a bottle of Kootenay Pale Ale, twisted off the cap.

  “You mind if we eat here instead of going into town?” said Rossiter.

  “No, not at all. Is there anything I can do to help with dinner?”

  “Not that I can think of. But if I’m wrong, Katie’ll let you know.”

  Willows pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He leaned back and sipped his beer, watched Rossiter hack at the potatoes. The back door swung open and Katie came in, her arms full of vegetables from the garden. She glanced quickly at Willows and said, “You look exhausted. Why don’t you go stretch out in the living-room?”

  Willows hesitated.

  “Or would you rather peel spuds?” said Rossiter.

  “It’s touch and go,” said Willows, “but I think I’ll take the couch.”

  He’d finished his beer and read most of a lengthy article on the fate of elephants in Kenya when Katie came into the room. “Dinner is served,” she said, and gave him a little bow and offered him her hand.

  They drank rough Italian red with potatoes baked in butter and lemon juice, a green salad, thick charbroiled steaks. The meat was dark and grainy. It wasn’t beef. Willows, his mouth full, looked up from his plate.

  Rossiter had been waiting. He held up his hands on either side of his head, spread his fingers wide. Antlers. Grinning, he pointed out the window towards the mountains.

  For dessert they had home-made huckleberry pie and vanilla ice-cream, washed down with stoneware mugs of fresh-ground coffee. When the coffee pot was empty Rossiter brought out a second bottle of wine. They took the wine and their glasses back into the living-room. Katie put a Mozart piano concerto on the turntable. They talked about music, and then Willows told them what he’d learned about elephants in Kenya. The conversation drifted, interspersed with periods of reflective silence that never seemed forced or awkward. Finally Rossiter brought up the shooting, Dickie’s deliberate wounding of the unarmed youth. Willows didn’t quite know what to say. It all seemed so obvious. Dickie had the law on his side but was morally out to lunch. There was nothing much Rossiter could do but keep a close eye on him. Or resign in protest from the Force.

  “You ever have to shoot anybody?” Rossiter asked. He was slurring his words. Willows realized he was drunk.

  “A couple of times.”

  “Twice?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Twice.”

  “I don’t know if I could do it,” said Rossiter. “It sounds weird, but I just don’t know.”

  “When the time comes, it isn’t something you think about. You just react.”

  “What if you make a mistake, blow somebody away who didn’t have it coming? Then what? You ever worry about that?”

  Willows smiled politely. “No, I worry about something else.”

  The level of wine in the bottle slowly dropped, the mullioned windows darkened. Willows yawned widely, and apologized.

  Katie went out of the room and came back carrying a pillow and sheets, a folded Hudson’s Bay blanket. Rossiter stood up, a little unsteady on his feet. He said goodnight and left the room. Katie leaned over and kissed Willows on the cheek, surprising both of them.

  Left to himself, Willows made up his bed on the chesterfield. He turned out the lights and undressed in darkness. In the kitchen he could hear dishes being washed, whispered conversation. Katie apparently didn’t think Rossiter should have asked Willows if he’d ever shot anybody. Willows couldn’t have agreed more.

  He closed his eyes, and immediately fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  He slept twelve hours, and when he woke up the house was empty. There was a message on the kitchen table. Katie was shopping in Squamish, Rossiter was on duty. Willows’ clothes were on the line. Willows turned the slip of paper over and wrote a short note of thanks. He went out into the back yard and retrieved his clothes, dressed hurriedly. He didn’t want to think about it, but for some reason he wanted to be on his way before Katie got back from her shopping.

  *

  He arrived back in the city late in the afternoon. The air in his apartment was warm and stale. He unlocked and slid open the glass door that led to the vestigial balcony. There was a faint breeze coming in from the ocean; he could smell fish and chips and sun-tan oil.

  In the kitchen he put the kettle on to boil, scooped enough coffee into the filter to make a full pot. There was a loaf of sliced white bread on the counter, the kind that was essentially tasteless but had a shelf-life measured in seasons. He rummaged through the fridge, found a rectangle of cheese and a dozen eggs. He couldn’t remember when he’d bought the eggs. The cheese looked all right, though, and there was margarine. He could make a sandwich. The kettle screamed at him. He took it off the burner and poured boiling water over the coffee grounds. He felt deeply depressed, emotionally adrift. Against his better judgement, knowing it was a stupid thing to do but d
oing it anyway, he went into the bedroom and called his wife.

  The phone rang nine times, and then Willows stopped counting. He conjured up a picture of her in the garden, cutting flowers for the Sunday table with an old pair of shears. It had been something her mother did, and now it was a ritual Sheila was trying to instil in their children. Hoping to give them a sense of the continuity of life, he supposed.

  When she finally answered, she sounded hurried and out of breath. He imagined her hearing the telephone, saw her drop the big scissors and a gathered handful of white carnations, run across the lawn and up the back porch steps, into the shade and coolness of the house.

  He said hello.

  There was a pause, a fraction of a moment’s silence. Then, “Jack, is that you? I didn’t think you were coming back until tomorrow.” A gratifying note of concern. “Are you all right?”

  “I decided to come back early, that’s all.” Another pause. “How are you, Sheila?”

  “I’m fine, just fine.”

  “Annie and Sean?”

  “Perfect. Listen, are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Positive. Never better. Tell me, Sheila, were you out in the garden just now?”

  “No, why?”

  “You’re huffing and puffing, that’s why.”

  Sheila laughed. A bit self-consciously, Willows thought.

  “I was in the den. Flat on my back in front of the television. Doing sit-ups. I rented a Jane Fonda tape, can you believe it?”

  “Everybody’s doing it,” said Willows. He almost added, it’s a fad, but stopped himself in time.

  “How was the fishing?”

  “Not as good as the beans.”

  “Work?”

  “It’s always the same. It never changes.” What had made him say that? It was like a declaration of war, a statement of intent, inflexible and unyielding.

  They talked about the garden for a little while, the annual proliferation of weeds. Willows was about to say his goodbyes when Sheila reminded him that the children were scheduled to spend the next weekend with him. Was that still on? He assured her that it was. She told him to take care of himself, her words widely spaced, as if deliberately letting him know that she had all the time in the world to ramble on. Willows said goodbye and hung up, gently cradling the receiver.