Day Into Night (26 page)

For a long time, there’s no answer at Linda Hess’s door. But her minivan is in the driveway and so I keep pressing the doorbell. I can hear the muffled buzz from deep within the house — if there’s anyone home they’ve probably called the cops by now. I’m about to give up when the door rattles. Getrude Hess glares at me through the glass of the storm door.

“I’m sorry to wake you like this but I need to speak with Linda.”

Gertrude is bleary-eyed, stands holding herself in a floral print nightgown. A wedge of light from deeper within the house lights her hair from behind, projecting a frizzy halo. This is Linda Hess in 20 years; she should enjoy her youth.

“It’s two o’clock in the bloody morning.”

“I know — I’m sorry — but I need to talk to your daughter.”

“Linda is sleeping.” Her voice has a coarse, halting rasp, the timbre of a serious career smoker. It doesn’t make her any more friendly. “She took a pill and she’s sleeping. I think you should go home.” Her hand is on the edge of the door, already closing. I’ve got about two seconds to present my argument. It may be all I need.

“Ronny’s death might not have been an accident.”

The door doesn’t stay closed for long. Gertrude looks at me like a grizzly trying to decide if I’m edible — it’s enough to make you want to play dead. We stare at each other for a moment through the imaginary safety of the storm door. “You want to run that by me again?”

I pick my words carefully. “There’s a possibility it may have been more than accident.”

“A possibility? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

I don’t want to elaborate too much, standing on her doorstep. I want to talk to Linda. But security around here is tougher than at an English airport. “I’ve been looking into a few things. Some of them just don’t make sense. If I could just —”

She takes a step forward, pointing at me. “You gotta hell of a nerve, mister.”

I raise my hands — a defensive manoeuvre recommended against attacking bears and cougars; better they get your arms than your throat. “Maybe I should come back in the morning.”

“Now you want to come back in the morning. Isn’t that lovely.”

Maybe I won’t come back at all. “Once again, I apologize —”

I’m turning away, heading down the steps, when she calls after me.

“It’s hard enough already,” she says. “Linda doesn’t need this.”

I agree but hesitate, caught in mid-flight. Her anger is fading, replaced by a desperate sort of curiosity. Like me, she has to know. She stands on the concrete top step, the door half open, like a woman talking to a salesman. I wait. She bites her lower lip, glances inside, looks at me again. “Just a minute,” she says quietly. “I’ll see if she’ll talk to you.”

A minute later she’s back. She holds open the door. “Come in.”

As I pass her, I smell the fabric softener in her gown, the nicotine in her sweat.

“Stay right here.”

Gertrude heads down a hall, nightgown rustling behind her. I stand on the little plastic mat just inside the door. In the filtered light coming from the kitchen the room looks different, and it takes me a minute to see why. The furniture has been rearranged, the couch moved to the opposite wall, the recliner closer to the fireplace. Grief management through redecoration — maybe I should have tried that instead of the bottle. It helps to have the furniture to rearrange. A few long minutes are filled with the tick of an invisible clock. A door opens. Someone coughs. Linda shuffles into the kitchen and a chair drags on the floor.

Linda’s mother calls to me. “Take off your boots Mr. Cassel.”

I leave my boots, still coated with ash, on the floor mat, walk across the carpet. Moisture soaks through my socks; they’ve been steam-cleaning recently. Linda is seated at the big oak table. She’s wearing a blue terry housecoat. Beneath the table I see pale legs and a pair of slippers shaped like big bear’s paws. Her hair is a mess and she looks zonked out, staring at nothing. Her eyes track across the kitchen and come slowly to rest on me. I feel a twinge of guilt at rousting her from her bed. But it’s too late now.

“I’m sorry to wake you Mrs. Hess —”

“Just ask her what you need to know.”

Linda’s mother stands behind her like a presidential bodyguard. The kitchen smells of pine-scented cleaner and the chrome faucets gleam like jewels. Linda pivots her head and looks at me. I pause, rub my hands, pull out a chair and sit down so I’m not so threatening. Linda watches, expressionless.

“Linda, I need to know if Ronald had any enemies at work.”

She blinks. Her expression doesn’t change.

“Was there anyone he didn’t get along with? Anyone he disagreed with?”

Linda glances up at her mother, who puts a hand on her shoulder, gives her a grim but encouraging nod. Still, it takes her a minute to answer: a delay like a conversation from deep space. “No,” she says, almost whispering. “I don’t think so, not that I knew of anyway. He didn’t like to talk about his work. I told them that. The police — I told them everything.”

I shift uncomfortably in my chair, wonder what I’m doing here at this time of night. She’s so tired and doped up it’s a miracle she can talk. I tell myself that if I can solve this, it’ll help her like it’ll help me — a leap of faith for us both. I try to make eye contact but her gaze drifts away and she stares at the table like a reluctant little girl in trouble. “Linda, I know you’ve been through all of this before, but I believe someone Ronny worked with might be involved.”

Linda frowns, still staring at the table: a sleeping frown, a bad dream frown. Her mother stares at me, concerned. Under her concern is a harder look, a vindictive desire for revenge that twists down the corners of her mouth. “Why do you say that?” she asks quickly. “Is there something new?”

I’m not sure how much to tell them because I’m not sure how much of it means something. I don’t want to create expectations. “I don’t know anything for sure,” I say carefully, “but someone at the mill feels uncomfortable enough to be tampering with their records.”

“Tampering?” Gertrude’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“It may be nothing, but there were some inconsistencies.”

“At two in the morning Mr. Cassel, it had better be something.”

“A mechanic,” I say. “His employment record was manipulated.”

Gertrude takes a seat next to her daughter, holds Linda’s hand but it’s me she’s watching. “So what does this mean Mr. Cassel? Why would someone manipulate these records?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I wanted to talk to your daughter.”

Gertrude turns her attention to Linda, strokes her daughter’s arm. “Think about it honey.” Her tone is soothing, like she’s talking to a four-year old. “Did Ronny ever have a disagreement with a mechanic? Is there anything that he said? Anything you’ve forgotten until now?”

Linda looks at her mother, then reluctantly at me. She clutches with a pale hand at the front of her gown as if it might open. She’s fighting depression, exhaustion and sleeping pills. For a long moment the three of us sit together in silence, then she sighs, shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so. He never talked about any mechanics. We’ve only been here a few months. We didn’t really know anybody ...”

Her head begins to bob. She’s drifting again.

“Linda, how were things going for Ronny on the new job?”

It takes her a moment to lift her head and when she does, her eyelids flutter against the light and her hand slips away from the front of her gown, rests on the table like a pale, wilted flower. I’m running out of time. “Things were going okay,” she says faintly. “He was taking correspondence. He wanted to become an engineer. He liked to build things.”

“So he wasn’t going to make a career out of this?”

“He had trouble with the math,” she says, like a parent reporting after teacher interviews. “Polynomials confused him. But he was trying. We talked about a tutor —”

“Polynomials confuse everyone. What about his job? How did he like that?”

“He got frustrated, sometimes.”

“What frustrated him?” Her eyes are closing again. “Linda — what frustrated him?”

“So many people got hurt ...” Her head sinks as though in prayer.

“Who got hurt Linda?”

Her mother puts an arm around her.“Just a few more minutes, honey. Then I’ll put you to bed. Just try to think about it. What did Ronny say about people getting hurt?”

Linda looks at me, dreamy, as if in a trance. “Just people,” she says, raising a limp hand. “A finger here, a thumb there. I saw them at the hospital, in the Emergency. So many injuries ...”

“Did Ronny ever talk to anyone about this?”

She frowns. “He just called them barbarians.”

“He didn’t try to bring this to anyone’s attention?”

“I wanted him to give it up but he said we needed the money. But we didn’t need the money. We could have made out ...” Linda’s face begins to crumple and she wails. “I tried to tell him and now he’s gone —”

“That’s okay baby —” Her mother leans over, holds her tight, rocking her like a child. She glances over at me, her expression worried but capable.

“I’m terribly sorry.” I can’t think of anything better to say. “If there’s anything —”

“Good night Mr. Cassel.”

I pull on cold boots, close the door. I hear her sobbing long after I leave.

20

I don’t sleep much the rest of the night. My circadian rhythm demands I go to bed early to get a good night’s sleep or I toss and turn, can’t stop thinking and have weird dreams. Last night was worse than usual. I finally fall into a trance-like half-sleep around five o’clock. At seven the alarm does its best at dragging me back to the real, no less confusing world. I hit snooze by yanking the clock radio out by the cord and tossing it under the bed. A half-hour later its owner subs in, shaking me and rummaging around the room.

“Time to get up Porter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Have you seen the alarm clock?”

I pull the blankets over my head. “What alarm clock?”

But Carl can’t be set to snooze and ten minutes later I’m in the kitchen, feeling like a Picasso — nothing in quite the right place. I think my body is rejecting itself. “You look like shit,” he says. He’s in uniform, seated at the table and eating a grapefruit. “You go to the bar with Kermicki?”

Kermicki must have a death wish. “I went for a walk.”

“Maybe you should have gone to the bar.”

I look in the fridge for the source of the grapefruits. Carl is a binge shopper — there have to be 40 or 50 grapefruits in there, piled like cannon balls. Or some school is having a fundraising drive and an enterprising student caught Carl at the office. I grab a grapefruit, cut it in half, take a seat across from Carl.“How much did McPherson take off you last night?” he asks.

“About 40 bucks. Which is most of my retirement savings.”

Carl chuckles. “Yeah, he’s a shark. So where’d you go? You see Christina?”

“No, she wasn’t home.”

“She lives here in town?”

“She’s just visiting. Carl, what do you know about Curtain River Forest Products?”

“Not much to know.” He squeezes grapefruit juice into a bowl. “They’ve been around for about eight years. Whitlaw came up from Texas and bought the old mill along the river, spent a few years running that. Then he put a proposal in to the government for a bigger timber area and when he got it, they built the new mill.”

I gouge out a piece of grapefruit. It sprays juice all over my shirt, into my eye. You need goggles to eat these things. I squint, look through blurred eyes for the emergency eyewash station. There isn’t one — Carl’s kitchen isn’t up to Workers’ Compensation standards.I may have to file a claim. “When was that?”I ask, dabbing with my shirt cuff.

“The new mill?”Carl looks thoughtful. “About fours years ago.”

“They have any problems?”

“What kind of problems?”

“Well, this is kind of a sensitive area to cut timber isn’t it?”

“You mean environmentally? Yeah, it’s sensitive. Since day one, the environmental groups have been all over the company about the expansion. They lobbied the government against giving Whitlaw the larger area, staged protests, even took him to court.

But he got his way, just like every other big project.”

“What about safety problems? People getting hurt?”

“It happens. It’s a dangerous business, Porter. Lots of machines. Steep slopes. Inexperienced operators. They used to have one of those signs by the mill, the type that lists how many days they’ve been accident free. But they took it down.”

“They took it down?”

Carl slurps juice from his bowl. “Yeah. Probably got tired of starting at zero.”

I ponder this while Carl makes himself half a dozen sandwiches for lunch. “I need you to do a tower service up north,” he says over his shoulder. “A fly-in job. The grocery order has to be picked up. There’s no rain in the forecast so you’ll have to bring plenty of drinking water.”

The phone rings while I’m in the bathroom. Carl hollers that it’s for me.

“Yeah?” I hold the spindle of the earpiece with a damp hand.

“Is this Porter Cassel?”

“Sometimes. The mirror doesn’t always agree.”

“This is Porter Cassel, right?” A deep, coarse voice — annoyed and more than a little anxious. But I still recognize it. I picture his face just as he tells me his name. “This is Zeke Petrovich. The mechanic. I need to talk to you.”

I hesitate, wonder why he would call me. I doubt he wants to discuss his resumé or the finer points of dynamite usage. Maybe he’s just run out of people to pulverize and I’ve come up in the rotation again. “Is this the Zeke Petrovich who drives that piece of shit old truck?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s me —”

“And whose boot print is still tattooed on my cheek?”

“Oh, right.” A forced chuckle. “Sorry about that.”

I’m silent for a minute. Why would he mention that he’s a mechanic?

“You still there?”

“What do you want, Petrovich?”

“Like I said, I need to talk to you.”

“See that thing in your hand?”

“What —”

“That’s a phone Petrovich. So start talking.”

“Very funny. Look — I can’t talk on the phone.”

“Why not?”

“It’s kinda complicated.”

I can’t imagine him doing anything complicated. That he’s a mechanic is frightening enough. “So you want to meet me somewhere?”

“Yeah.” He sounds relieved. “That’d be good.”

“Okay.” This might be an opportunity to clear up a few things. “When and where?”

“Now, at my place.” There’s a pause, a half-beat long. “You know where it is.”

“I’m a little busy this morning —”

“I got to talk to you now.”

I look over at Carl, who’s still making sandwiches. “This can’t wait until tonight?”

“No. This can’t wait.”

I consider for a moment. “I’ll be there in a half-hour.”

“Come by yourself,” he says. It’s almost a whisper. “I don’t trust nobody.”

The line goes dead. I replace the mouthpiece, wondering why he trusts me after what’s happened. Maybe it’s easier to trust someone you can beat to a pulp. Maybe he thinks we’ve bonded.

Either way, I’m taking no chances. “Carl, can I borrow your

shotgun?”

“What?” He’s puzzled. “You don’t need one for tower service.”

“It’s not for tower service.”

He sets aside his sandwiches, gives me a worried look. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, I hope. I need an hour or two off this morning. Can the service wait?”

“What’s going on, Porter?”

I’m not sure I want to involve him further. “It’s probably nothing.”

“A 12-gauge nothing?” He isn’t going to let this go.

“You remember Zeke Petrovich?”

“Sure — guy that redecorated your face.”

“That was him on the phone.”

“What did he want?”

“He didn’t say, but I think he may be the Lorax. Or I did. Now I’m not so sure.”

Carl frowns. “What makes you think he could be the Lorax?”

I tell him about my second visit to Curtain River Forest Products, finding the resumé — how Petrovich worked at all the bombing locations. Or at least that’s the way it was supposed to look. Carl’s frown deepens when I tell him what the Mounties had on file for Petrovich.

“This is a set-up,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”

“I’m not sure about any of this, Carl. I didn’t want to bother you.”

He points a finger at me. “You didn’t want to bother me? Porter, you’re here because I wanted to help you — I got you this job because I knew you couldn’t leave this thing alone. I wanted to be here for you. But what do you do? You get yourself into trouble, then ask to borrow my shotgun, telling me it’s probably nothing.”

I don’t know why he’s so worked up about this. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me —”

“Yeah — right.” He waves it off.

“And your concern, Carl. But let’s not blow this out of proportion —”

He turns away in disgust, paces into the living room where I can’t see him. I stay in the kitchen, give him a minute to calm down. This is a little odd — Carl is usually so laid back. I’ve never seen him this agitated. Maybe he still feels responsible for getting me involved because he called me after the bombing. I hear him breathing heavy in the other room. The grandfather clock says

7:40. I’ve got to get going. “Look, Carl. I didn’t know this meant so much to you.” A few more minutes pass before Carl comes back into the kitchen. When he does, he’s rubbing his forehead and frowning. “I’m just trying to be a friend here, Porter. Trying to give you a little bit of support. If the situation were reversed, I’d hope you’d do the same.”

“Of course —”

“But quite frankly, Porter, it seems like you don’t want my help.”

He chews his lip, staring at the floor. I try to sound conciliatory. “That’s not it. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I know it was tough to call me after the bombing but I appreciate that you did. I need to get this out of my system — to see this end — but I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for you to become too deeply involved. The cops are already giving me a hard time and you have to live in this community. You’ve got a job here. I don’t want you to jeopardize that.”

“That’s it?” he asks, looking me in the eye. “That’s the only reason?”

“Yeah, that’s it. I’m trying to be a good friend too.”

He seems to relax a bit. “So you’re going to meet this guy?”

I nod.

“You still think he might be the Lorax?”

“I don’t know.” I can’t help a frustrated sigh. “He’s involved, somehow.”

“Then I should come to back you up.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

For a minute we look at each other. “You’re sure?” he says. “I wouldn’t mind —”

“I’ll be back by ten for the tower service.”

There’s a pause. I’m sure he’s going to insist but he nods, not looking at me. “Okay. I’ll have someone pick up the groceries and fill the water pails. If you can make it back by ten, that would be fine. The shotgun is in the closet by the back door. Shells are on the top shelf.”

I find the gun — a short, police model with a long magazine in the pump. It takes seven shells. Carl stands at the top of a short flight of stairs, watches me load. His narrow face is creased and unhappy but he doesn’t say anything. I fill my coat pockets with extra shells.

We part silently.