Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  A faux pas. Leith watched her for blushing and shame, but Mercy only became whiter and smaller. He said, “I heard Charlie made a demo CD. We haven’t found any evidence of one, either physically or on the studio equipment, and Frank says he knows nothing about it. Were you part of that?”

  The CD looked like news to Mercy, and a dark annoyance seemed to spark from her eyes. “No, I apparently was not. Who did you hear that from?”

  “I also hear she wanted to follow a different path, and Frank only helped her out because he felt it was the right thing to do.”

  Her sour expression said otherwise. “She could have been something. They all could have. See what happens when everyone works against each other, each wanting to get their own way, instead of pulling together? Charlie’s nowhere, and Fling is history. It’s a lose-lose situation. I guess I’m the lucky one in all this mess. Now, I’m sorry, Officer, but I’m not going to cry over spilled milk any longer. Your five minutes are up. If you need anything else, please call and I’ll willingly come to the station.”

  They walked down the hall, past the kitchen, to the small foyer, and he glanced into the living room again, and he smelled the rubble, saw the haze of dust, saw a wall stripped down to its antiquated bones. “Lathe and plaster,” he remarked, recalling renovations from his own pre-RCMP days, when he’d worked for a salvage company back in Saskatoon. “You’re not seriously thinking of replacing all this with Gyproc, are you?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You’ll have to hire professionals,” he said, sticking his nose officiously where it didn’t belong. “Believe me, every problem you fix will uncover four more.”

  “I’ll be hiring muscle,” she said with a wry smile. “Promise.” She went to open the door for him, but he was zipping up his jacket and still looking through the arched entrance leading to the living room, at the mess, the furniture draped in painters’ cloth, at a series of photographs visible along one undamaged wall.

  “Is that Joe Forte and his gang?” he asked, looking at the closest shot. “And that’s you there with them. May I?”

  Take a closer look, he meant, and even as she tightly smiled her permission, he saw that unmistakable No, get the fuck out of my house glint in her eyes, a look he’d seen often enough over the course of his career. He walked over and studied the photograph of a much younger Mercy standing in a group of two guys and two girls. The wildly bearded Joe Forte had his arm across her shoulder, and both looked happy. He said, “You’d still be working with them now, if he hadn’t died, I guess.”

  “Oh yes, things would have turned out a whole lot differently.”

  He looked at the other photographs, four altogether, and recognized one he’d seen quite recently, in passing. On TV, or a magazine, or online maybe. It showed a popular bunch of musicians called the Midlanders, the one Mercy said she’d had to give up for medical reasons. A recent nomination and the upcoming Junos had put them in the news. In this framed photograph Mercy stood smiling at the camera next to Jerry and his all-male band, out in somebody’s backyard, by the looks of it, a casual but formal shot with all faces forward.

  From Leith’s recall of this particular group shot, he didn’t recall any woman being in there. He looked closer. Behind him, Mercy said with a dry laugh, “Okay, I confess. It’s Photoshopped. It’s a case of a dozen pictures taken, I look great in one, they look great in another, let’s put ’em together. Cut, paste, blend, and presto. You’ve just reinvented history. It was done for nobody’s benefit but my own. I just wanted a nice picture of us all together.”

  “Ah,” Leith said. Nose to the photo again, he said, “Right. The lighting looks a little funny. Otherwise you’d never guess.”

  “It’s done more often than you’d think, in show biz,” she said.

  The word “fraudulent” crossed Leith’s mind, and then in another brilliant flash he believed he had solved one more mystery in this thickening file. He glanced at Mercy as he was transported back some days to the New Hazelton detachment, to the earnest, middle-aged waitress from the Catalina seated across from him, telling him Kiera had called Mercy a frog.

  It might have been funny, but it wasn’t. It was all part of an ongoing tragedy. He said, “Did Kiera see this photograph? Did she catch you out? Is that what she was accusing you of, at the Catalina? Fraud?”

  Mercy was not shaken. “Maybe that’s what it was,” she said. “I don’t recall much of that conversation.” She stood looking lost in this ravaged room, lit but unwarmed by the slow-blooming light of morning. Something banged on metal somewhere on the property, a rhythmic tinny thudding, water melting off the eaves.

  Leith thought about Kiera’s ranting on that Saturday morning as she battered Frank with her fists. Where had that sprung from? It was no evolution of discontent, but a spark. Something had set her off. He put it to Mercy in his kind but firm no-point-in-denying-it voice. “Kiera came by here, early on Saturday, before she went to Kispiox.”

  Mercy denied it. “Of course not. I’d have told you if she had, wouldn’t I?”

  He said, “She told Frank she had proof of something he’d done behind her back, and I can only think of a few things that would upset her that badly. Did you tell her something to set her off? Did you show her proof? A contract that excluded her? You wanted her gone. That would do it, wouldn’t it?”

  He was giving her the eye that worked best with people like her, borderline criminals, educated and for the most part decent, those who just needed a nudge to walk out from the lies and into the light. He told her with that gaze that there would be proof somewhere, and sooner or later it would be found, and she might as well cut the crap and tell him now. She stared at him, and to his surprise, a tear ran down her stony face, first from one eye, then the other. Like Constable Dion, she was too numbed by misery to realize she was crying.

  She said, “I was just making a point. I wasn’t trying to fool her. How could I? Frank would tell her there was no contract, that it was all a lie. But she took it for face value, like it was written in stone. I didn’t know it would end like this. I just wanted them to see what was best.”

  “You wanted them to split.”

  “If that’s what it took.”

  “Show me the document.”

  “I burned it.”

  “You faked Frank’s signature?”

  She nodded. “It was a whim. I had it done up in advance, expecting they would finally get it, that this was the only workable arrangement, put Frank up front, Kiera on backup vocals, or leave. She’s really not born to sing lead, you know. Her voice, it’s nothing special. In the perfect world I would get that prodigy Charlie up on stage, but she’s too damn shy. And dumpy. She’d need to get herself in shape, work on appearance, projection, style. But we could handle it, we could make it perfect, if they’d all just …”

  Leith watched her fade, her eyes down on her hands now, all her great ideas turning to dust. She said, “I didn’t know they’d fight, that Kiera would die.” Her eyes shifted toward him, widening. “Do you even know for sure she’s dead? Maybe she’s still out there. Maybe she’s lying in wait.”

  “Lying in wait for what?”

  “For me,” Mercy whispered.

  She was no longer crying, the tears smudged away with the back of her hand. Now she was back to square one, cold and miserable, and by the sounds of it a little cracked. The sunrays angled in to light her face, showing her age, not the mid-thirties as Leith had thought at their first meeting, but closer to fifty.

  He said, “I think it would be a good idea if you sit down, have some tea, and let me take a look around.”

  She shook her head briskly. She’d found a Kleenex and was pressing it against her nostrils, tidying up the mess, pulling herself together. “I can’t allow that. I’m sorry.”

  After all her admissions, he had expected meek acquiescence. What more did she h
ave to hide, then? More bullshit, probably. False certificates on her wall, a hard drive full of malfeasance. He said, “I can get a warrant within the hour, ma’am.”

  “I’ve done nothing criminal.”

  He wasn’t so sure about that, at this point. Especially with this shift of demeanour, a wall of defensiveness that seemed to spring from nowhere. He pulled out his cellphone, and she said sharply, “Go ahead, then. Take my computer. Just take it.”

  There was haste in those words, heightened anxiety. He looked into her steady grey eyes, and a chill went through him. He looked toward the office, and she stepped that way too as though to usher him along. Yes, get the computer, she was saying with body language, which was foolish of her. She stopped when he didn’t move and followed his eyes back to the living room, ripped apart in such haphazard fashion. He looked at the wooden floors. They had been highly polished once upon a time but were sanded down by decades of neglect. On the floor in front of the woodstove he saw dark stains, and he walked over, crouched down, had a closer look. He was aware of Mercy walking around behind him, from his right to his left. He watched her where she stood now, backlit. Behind her were windows and a door leading out to an enclosed porch.

  “My dog was struck by a vehicle,” she said, tense and angry. “He was bleeding. A man brought him in for me, laid him down, and the blood seeped through the blanket. I tried cleaning it off, but it stained the wood. These floors are going to be redone, so I just left it. I want you to leave, right now, or I’m going to call 911.”

  Leith rose to his full height, only interested in one thing now. Why was she guarding the door at her back? What did she so badly not want him to find? He pulled out his BlackBerry and made the call for backup. He put his phone away and moved toward her, to push past her, to get to that door, and to hell with warrants. The blood gave him reasonable cause, didn’t it?

  She grabbed his arm as it reached for the knob, so he snapped it free and grasped her by the upper arm, pressing her backward, telling her the only smart thing for her to do right now was stand back and be quiet, because for all he knew, Kiera was out there, held captive on the porch or an outbuilding, and he didn’t have time for niceties.

  Still gripping her arm, he opened the door and pulled her out with him onto the porch. “Where is she?” he asked, roughly. “It’s over. Tell me.”

  The porch was bright and frigid cold. Hardly airtight, with bits of card flapping where panes had fallen out, fabric shifting and something thudding rhythmically when the wind gusted. At the end of the verandah he saw a large chest freezer, and the disappointment he felt was like a jab to the heart.

  “You need a warrant for this,” Mercy said, grasping at him so they were both hanging on to each other. She pulled one way, he pulled another. She said, “Go and get your fucking warrant.”

  He no longer cared to keep custody of her, however unsafe it might be. He undid her grip with force and started toward the freezer, and as he brushed past her she hissed at him, “This is ricin spray. You’re dead.”

  Her arm was outstretched, and she blasted something at his face.

  He released her in a panic to bring his arms to his face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth closed, but he was enveloped in the mist and could taste it on his tongue, smell it, feel it burning up his nostrils. He stumbled back, crashed into the freezer, managed to stay upright.

  He coughed, hacked, spat out the poison. His throat was cinching. He doubled forward and coughed violently, like a barking dog, wheezing on the inhalations. He opened his eyes to slits and they were watering so badly he could barely see. Mercy was gone. He peered down at his hands and thought of Alison, of Izzy. He said, “Fuck.” One eye too painful to keep open, the other nearly blind, he turned to the freezer, hooked a finger at one end of the latch, not to disturb whatever prints would eventually be dusted off the thing, and pulled the top open, and squinted in. He saw bags of frozen peas, lots of them.

  Too many frozen peas for any sane person to keep on hand. His lungs were shutting down. The pain was unbearable, spearing at his tender organs, spreading fast into his bowels and up his spinal cord, into his brain, numbing him. The numbness coursed down his arms, turned his fingers into useless sausages. He began to shiver.

  He flexed his stiffening hand till it cooperated, enough that he could pull aside frozen peas, pawing through the bags to find crinkly orange tarpaulin fabric. He found the edge, a rusty grommet, peeled the tarp back, and found the contours of flesh, skin, a nose in profile, a face twisted at an unlikely angle in her fetal curl. Her face was turned in three-quarter profile, and her visible eye was open and rolled up toward him, a pinpoint of light within a muddy iris, returning his one-eyed stare. Brown hair was matted in a stiff river against her cheek. Her skin was a pale, silvery grey.

  In the tumult of Leith’s emotions, he didn’t see her as dead. He saw her as sick but alive. He reached down to touch her cheek with affection, because at least he’d done this. He’d saved the Rockabilly Princess.

  The sounds of the outdoors came through the verandah as easily as the wind, and he heard a vehicle scud away, off toward the Kispiox Mountain, Mercy making her getaway. A second later he heard distant sirens coming from the other direction. He pulled out his phone to text a message to Alison, I love you, but realized it was a bad idea. She would freak out, getting a mysterious dead-end text like that. Anyway, his hands were shot. He sank to the floorboards, back against the freezer, and waited for the end.

  * * *

  He went bravely, with Constables Thackray and Ecton, to the hospital. Still able to walk on his own, still half blind, still gasping and hacking, he attended emergency and stripped down, as instructed, and gave the nurse his particulars, and tried to get out his phone to call Alison, but the nurse wouldn’t let him. “That’ll wait,” she said, though he told her quite loudly, between coughs, that actually it wouldn’t. She gave him an eyewash, took his vitals, listened to his horror story, and called the doctor. The doctor came, and Leith repeated his story, that he’d been sprayed with ricin, had breathed in god knew how much, couldn’t breathe, had no feeling in his extremities.

  “Yeah?” the doctor said, a young guy with a pink, bristly face. “How long ago?”

  Leith peered at his watch, weakly. “Forty-five minutes, I guess.”

  “Hm,” the doctor said. “You’re sure it was ricin? How do you know it was ricin?”

  Leith knew it was ricin because a madwoman, a witch with a dead woman in her freezer, had told him so. “I was told so,” he croaked. “She sprayed it right in my face. I also drank some pretty weird-tasting tea. Shouldn’t you be running tests? Flushing me out? Do something. Please.”

  “You seem to be breathing okay,” the doctor said, stethoscope wandering around Leith’s chest, then his back. “Blood pressure’s fine. Your temperature’s a little high. Feel this?”

  “No,” Leith said as the soles of his feet were poked here and there with something sharpish. “Yes,” he revised.

  The doctor sat back. “You sure it wasn’t pepper spray?”

  It had never occurred to Leith that it was pepper spray. His thoughts went scrambling back to his own experiences with the stuff, back in training depot. Was it the same taste, smell, sensation? Hope began to pound at his temples, more like a headache than relief. He realized he actually did have feeling in his extremities, that he could breathe quite well, that the pains in his torso could be from violent and prolonged coughing.

  “You look like you got pepper-sprayed,” the doctor said. “Looks like you avoided a full-on attack, though. Doubt you’d be upright and functioning if you got the works. How far away was she?”

  “She was right next to me. Must have had the stuff in her robe. What kind of person runs around with ricin spray in their pocket?”

  The doctor looked a touch exasperated. “I really doubt it’s ricin spray. Probably an expired can of mace or pepper
spray, and you only got a bit on you. You’ll be fine pretty quick.”

  “Well, that would be great, wouldn’t it? But what if it is ricin?”

  “I think by now you’d be feeling far more alarming effects. Sit tight. We’ll monitor you for a while.”

  Leith had a few sarcastic things to say about sitting tight and waiting to die, but the doctor was gone. Just like that, gone. He began to feel better. He sat on the bed and thumbed a message to Alison on his phone, going through the various stages of embarrassment. Denial, anger, and finally happiness. He didn’t tell Alison in his text that he’d just gone to hell and back in a virtual body bag. He only said he loved her.

  She texted back “Me too.” And moments later, because she was a worrier, “U ok?”

  To which he replied, “Fantastic, Y?”

  Which he was, absolutely. He pulled in a deep, cleansing breath, felt no numbness in the extremities or pain in the plumbing, wriggled fingers and toes, and smirked at himself for believing for a second that he’d actually been in danger. Pepper spray, the lying bitch.

  He made other calls, harassing the office, asking if they’d caught Blackwood yet. He feared the worst, another viper slipping away into the shadows. Finally he got word they had her. Her BMW had gone off the road, and she’d been on foot, racing down the road in her bathrobe and gumboots, due north.

  * * *

  A lot happened over the next five hours as Leith remained under observation in hospital, though by hour three he insisted he was okay to leave. A prisoner now of his own paranoia, he made all his calls from the patient’s lounge, getting updates about the search of Mercy Blackwood’s house, recovery of the long-lost body of Kiera Rilkoff, the media frenzy, journalists converging from every corner of the province to get the scoop. What time he didn’t spend on the phone being updated he spent on the phone arguing with his higher-ups for the right to be the one to interrogate the prisoner as soon as he got out.