And On the Surface Die

by Lou Allin

  Footsteps sounded, and Mrs. Jenkins rushed into the room. She must have broken all speed records to get to Victoria, since the air ambulance wouldn’t have allowed her to travel with her son. Her thick braids were dishevelled, and she wore gum boots over her jeans. An old flannel shirt bore the stains and smells of canning salmon. She saw nothing but her son and went to his side, touching her forehead to his. “Billy. My god.” Then she began sobbing.

  Holly stepped forward. “Mrs. Jenkins, the doctor’s on her way in a few minutes.”

  The mother jumped at the sound as if she had just realized someone was in the room. “I don’t blame you for what happened. Billy told me that you were fair with him. I should have remembered that.”

  The situation was delicate, but the timeline had to be established. No longer was she taking anything at face value. “How did you find him? I know it’s hard to go over this, but if you could...” Her gaze met the dark pools of the woman’s deeply shadowed eyes.

  Mrs. Jenkins pulled a tissue from her leather shoulder bag and wiped her nose, the slender nostrils red and raw. She took a deep breath and placed a hand on her heaving chest. “Mike found him. See, last night Billy told him that he’d met a man at the town docks, a tourist, who offered him three hundred dollars for a morning’s fishing. Our big boat’s down, and all we have is a small dory. Can’t take anything but smooth weather, and seats only two, so we don’t make steady money. Billy was glad for the opportunity. He’s proud that he buys all his own clothes, and it was a new school year.”

  “Then what happened?” This was making less and less sense. Despite the nature of the marks, she had hoped for easy answers, a history of depression.

  “Mike came along around noon and found Billy in...in the boathouse.” She lowered her voice, stroking her son’s immobile arm, light walnut marble on the white sheet. “There was a note.”

  Holly’s expectations swung like a pendulum. When a suicide didn’t leave a note, police became suspicious. That omission alone was no guarantee that foul play was involved, but suicides often had been thinking of self-destruction for month or years. Only a very sick person or someone with no regard for mourners wouldn’t want to leave reasons for such a decision. “In the boathouse? What did it say? You kept it, didn’t...” At the woman’s stricken face, she retreated. “Forgive me. I’m asking too many questions. Please take your time.”

  The mother’s generous lips tightened. A small mole above her mouth twitched. “Not a note, exactly. Something scratched with a nail on the plywood wall.”

  Holly’s bullshit meter started ticking big time. “And it said?”

  The woman shivered. “Sorry. Just one word. Sorry. In big letters. ” She spread her thumb and forefinger to demonstrate.

  “And you’re sure it wasn’t scratched there earlier?” Succinct, efficient, phony?

  “No, it was freshly cut. I don’t know where the nail went.

  It’s a wet boathouse. Maybe it fell into the water.”

  “Did you recognize his writing?”

  The woman thought for a minute. “It was rough, crude. Like when you write on wood and the grain gets in the way.”

  Holly felt her fingers tracing round and round on her baton. “Something’s wrong here. He goes out on a job to make some good money, and then...or did he go at all?”

  The mother shrugged, her shoulders drooping. “I sent everyone off with a good breakfast, then I left early to help a sick friend in town. Mike was pitching in at the Tourist Bureau where his girlfriend works. So we don’t know if Billy went out.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “Work clothes and rubber boots. His slicker was in the boathouse. Usually it’s in the house. We had a small drizzle, more of a mist.”

  This was making less and less sense to Holly. Who put on rubber boots to hang himself? Who brought along rain clothes? “What about the boat?”

  “Tied at the dock. The loaded bait box was still in it. No sign of any fish being caught. Like guts or scales.”

  “Look at this.” Holly moved the sheet aside and pointed to Billy’s neck and the telltale marks.

  The woman had aged ten years since their last meeting. Her voice was on the edge of breaking. “My cousin committed suicide. Gunshot.” She touched the neck with gentle fingers, as if she could heal the welts. “Oh, Billy, my boy.” A moan from his lips riveted their attention, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  “I’m saying that the marks are more consistent with someone strangling him. From behind. Then making it look like a suicide attempt.” She thought about demonstrating with her own hands but decided against it. Mrs. Jenkins was upset enough.

  There was a sharp intake of breath. “You mean...” She wavered and reached for a chair. At that moment the doctor walked over. Mary Morrison, according to her nametag, had silvery blonde curls cut short. Stylish narrowed glasses were pushed back on her head. She stood over six feet with the presence of a Valkyrie.

  “Relatives only for now, please.” She gave Holly’s uniform a quizzical look.

  “Please, Doctor. What are my boy’s chances?” Mrs. Jenkins placed a shaky hand on her son’s moist forehead. “Could he—”

  Despite her cool professionalism, Mary’s Cape Breton voice assumed a warmth that spread over them like a soft quilt. “In a hanging where the person... lives, there can still be serious damage to the neck. Fractures to the cricoid and thyroid cartilages and the hyoid bone.” She pointed at her own neck. “Subintimal hematomas, that’s like a blood clot, in the carotid arteries. So much soft-tissue swelling. Sometimes we need to operate for clots.”

  “Operate? You mean the spine?” The mother asked a critical question. Brain damage aside, perhaps Billy would never walk again.

  The doctor shook her head as her mouth firmed. Sometime that day, she had taken the time to apply a light coat of pink lipstick. Any powder had vanished in the sweat of the job. “In judicial hangings of the past, spinal damage killed the person. The long drop. It’s calculated. In these...other cases, technical death results from strangulation.”

  “But my son’s still in a coma. What can we expect?” Mrs. Jenkins wobbled to one side and reached for the bed table.

  The doctor helped her to a chair and insisted that she drink some water from the carafe. Then she spoke slowly and clearly, without patronizing. “There are lot of myths about comas. They’re not always as bad as they sound. Let me explain. Cerebral hypoxia, that’s lack of oxygen to the brain, can cause neurologic problems. But poor nervous system function like we see here may not be a predictor of a poor outcome.”

  Poor outcome, Holly thought. A vegetative state. Billy was so young, so vital, so virile.

  The doctor added, “There is hope. So we’re going to do all we can.”

  “And the coma...” Holly understood the jargon, but she supposed that the mother filtered out the negative.

  The doctor’s slender hand waved a caution. “We judge comas on a scale of one to fifteen in three areas. For eye response, there are four grades. For verbal response, five. And for motor response, another six. “ All so cut and dried, like scoring on a test. Holly asked, though she dreaded the answer, “Where does Billy score now?”

  “He’s moaning, so he gets a two in that category.” The doctor pressed on the nail bed of his index finger. Billy’s eyes jumped open for a moment, then closed. “Eyes open in response to pain. Another two.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good,” the mother said, giving another sniff.

  “But look at this. Again, I’m not really hurting him.” Mary pressed again near his breastbone. One hand moved up above his clavicle. “That’s a five. So he’s at a nine. Nine to twelve is moderate to severe.”

  Holly added up the scores. Medicine had to quantify everything. Still, ‘moderate’ sounded hopeful. “So you’re saying that if he opened his eyes voluntarily...”

  The doctor smiled, more out of humanity than encouragement. “Or spoke a few words, he’d be close to what we c
all minor coma.”

  “So there’s a chance he’ll wake up?” Holly took a deep breath.

  “Soon?”

  The doctor nodded very slowly as if to qualify her answer. “Yes, but—”

  ”I see. He may not be able to...you mean...brain damage.” The mother’s voice trailed off as she tallied the unseen possibilities.

  As the roulette wheel turned on Billy’s chances, Holly was glad she hadn’t chosen a career in medicine, no matter how much satisfaction saving lives might have brought her. She couldn’t stand the failures any more than she could bear watching justice subverted.

  “Let’s stay optimistic. We’ve given him an MRI, and the response is normal. No damaged areas. If we’re lucky, every day will show us improvement. Though I practice conventional medicine, I never discount the power of prayer or any kind of positive energy.” The doctor squeezed the mother’s hand. “And keep talking to him. Bring in his favourite music. Stimulate his skin with different textures.”

  As the doctor left, Holly found a blanket and a more comfortable armchair for Mrs. Jenkins. She also brought her hot sugared tea from downstairs. Then she gave the woman a business card. “I know you’re not going to leave his side. When he wakes,” she stressed the word when, “anything he says might be very important. Call me.”

  Back at the detachment, Holly filled Chipper in on the developments concerning Billy. “We’ve never followed up on whether anyone saw Angie on the bike that night. If it turns out Billy was attacked, it might prove that something complicated was set in motion when she died. This phony fishing trip smells like a rotten halibut. Where’s the person, and where’s the money? A ghost. Go to Rennie and check the Tourist Bureau to see if anyone inquired about getting a guide. Then interview people who live on the way to Botanical Beach. As I recall, there were several cabins very close to the road.”

  “Most of them seemed closed up for the fall.”

  “That’s why going back is important. Someone’s on a hunting trip. Someone’s visiting relatives. It’s a tedious but necessary part of policework. Turning over the same rocks. Sometimes something new pops up.”

  Chipper wiggled his fingers. “Call me the salamander whisperer.”

  Eleven

  It was a gloomy Saturday, and the arrival of the paper at 5:15 a.m. always smacked Holly in the face as lights flashed into the driveway like a Hollywood premiere. Rain pattered on the skylights. October was supposed to begin the monsoons, but this was ridiculous. It had poured every day for the last three weeks, closing in on a record.

  An hour later, she collected a coffee in the kitchen and peeked around the corner. “Tell me the weather report. No, I’m not that much of a masochist.”

  “Paper says RATH.” Translation: “Rain, at times heavy.” In his dressing gown, Norman read in his recliner from the Times Colonist as she came down the stairs to the tiled solarium. With the bright sun in summer, the room was warm and inviting, but another month, and it would turn into a deep freeze without the propane wall stove. Norman refused to light it until January. “Poor kid. Is this what you told me about?” He held out a section of the paper to her.

  Wrapped in a cozy afghan, Holly sat on the blue leather sofa, sipped her coffee and read the article. “A Port Renfrew teenager is still in critical condition after being found hanging by a rope in his family’s boathouse. Doctors say that there is an excellent chance of his recovery. The next three days will make the difference. Police are looking for a person of interest who apparently left the scene just before the teen was found by a friend.”

  “A person of interest. Silly jargon. Even I know what that means,” Norman said. “Does the law have to tread that lightly?”

  “I guess we’re not allowed to use the word suspect any more. When did that happen?”

  “Says here the young man may recover. That’s good.”

  Holly remembered giving only bare-boned but optimistic facts to the reporter who had called the detachment. Were she right about the attack, the person of interest would know that he had not succeeded and that an unmasking might come with Billy’s awakening. Then again, Billy might not have seen his attacker. “Odds are in his favour. He’s getting the best help.” She made herself a note to call the hospital.

  Late nights for her and early beds for him had made them ships in the night recently. As the aroma of maple-smoked bacon filled the solarium, she watched him turn pages, always finishing with the personals column. A slender thread of faith led him to believe that he might find a message from Bonnie or someone who knew her. Every three months, he placed an ad asking for information, an indulgence foreign to his frugal nature. She’d seen it once or twice, nothing more than a simple notice: “If anyone knows the whereabouts of Bonnie Martin of Sooke, B.C., please contact 250-643-1496. Reward for information.” As far as she knew, no one had ever answered. He would have told her, wouldn’t he?

  She still felt awkward about hiding her recent trip to Camosun. He’d always been forthcoming. “We’ll work it out” had been his motto, whether or not such resolution was possible. The word “Dad” was forming on her lips when something caught her eye.

  He lifted a plastic bag from the floor and removed a strange apparatus of hooks and belts. “I wanted to show you this.”

  She examined the oddity. “What the heck is it? Are you going in for aerial window cleaning? Becoming a trapeze artist?”

  “A seat belt for Shogun from PetSmart. So he’ll be safe. I may take him to my office. With that intelligent mind, he shouldn’t be left alone all day. It’s cruel. And maybe we’ll go see those agility trials on the peninsula.”

  “Good idea. Dogs riding untied in pickup beds drive me up the wall. Don’t people care that in an accident their animal could become an unguided missile?” She paused. Through the patio doors and across the deck down to the street, the same seagull arrived every morning to pick worms from the road. Smart bird. His own supermarket. Then she steeled herself for the inevitable. “I visited Larry Gall.”

  “You what? My god, Holly, I didn’t want you to humour the poor deluded fellow. That’s the last thing he needs. Joining into his fantasy. People who go into the social sciences to supposedly help others need to cure themselves first.”

  He sounded as close to angry as he ever got. Judging from his conservative, almost prim façade, people felt he could never do violence, but she suspected that they hadn’t seen the side of him that was red in tooth and claw. Once a spurned boyfriend of hers had been spreading lies about her. She knew he was behind the ugly rumours, but there was no evidence to take to authorities. In tears, she had told her father. That night Norman confronted the boy leaving his job at a pizza shop. The harassment stopped. In fact, the boy did an about face every time he saw her. “What did you say to Rick?” she had asked, puzzled. Calmly, he pulled on his pipe, blew out concentric rings of cherry blend tobacco. “That if he ever bothered you again, I’d kill him.”

  She looked at her father’s mug. “Refill?”

  Coming back with two full mugs, she sat and looked at him. They were a reserved pair, not much kissing and hugging, but love underpinning all. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want me to go, but...”

  A heavy sadness settled onto his face, still pink from shaving. “Not a day goes by that I—”

  She touched his hand, counting more age spots. What had he been like in his teens? Had he ever enjoyed a wild and abandoned moment? His passion for popular culture seemed his only amusement. “If we really want to know...” she began, then stuttered to a stop.

  He swallowed hard and blinked. “Where she went, where she might...might be.” His voice was rich and quiet, one of his assets.

  “No matter what we might find, isn’t it better to know than to wonder? I hate the word closure, but there’s something to it,” she said.

  Why salt his wounds with the news about the planned divorce? Yet something in the back of her mind wondered if someone wouldn’t interpret that imminent blow as a motiv
e for murder. She had to tell herself that he hadn’t suspected that Bonnie was planning to leave him. He’d fasten to the best memories, Holly’s baby steps, first day at school, the rare laugh shared, the kind word, not the increasing arguments. “Remember her silver amulet, that raven?”

  He turned as if recalling an old friend. “Of course. She was never without it.”

  “Gall says he gave it to her.” She flashed a look at him, though she wanted to spare his pride.

  His thin shoulder drooped as if lashed. The weight of grief cast a pall of mourning over his voice. She couldn’t pursue this punishment much longer. “And your mother never took it off. Even when...” His voice faded out.

  Holly had no stomach for the intimate details, scenes in their former bedroom, now hers. Physicians shouldn’t minister to their own families. Emotions obstructed objectivity. What about a police officer? “Did you see it before she...disappeared? The week she went up island?”

  He looked far past the patio doors, out across the water. The strait was enveloped in fog, only the odd ghostly light, perhaps a trick of the eye. From far away, a fog horn moaned a lugubrious warning. “Like it was part of her. I wondered where it came from, her family perhaps. Raven figures in many Native American cultures, but I never asked.” He gave a self-deprecatory snort. “Why didn’t I pay more attention? People need that.”

  She finished the last gulp of coffee, bitter as memories best left unearthed. “This is awkward, but let’s try. The first cut is the deepest.”

  Pain was in his sea-blue eyes as he looked at her, absentmindedly rubbing his reading glasses. “Not knowing is the worst part. It torments the imagination.”

  Then the clouds parted for a brief encounter. She found herself momentarily blinded by the fierce sunlight suddenly streaming through the wall-to-ceiling windows. She plunged ahead to clear fog from their minds. If only it were that easy. “Gall says Mom was planning to ask you for a divorce. That they were planning to be married.”