Death Spiral (9 page)

“Test them for fingerprints.”

“We don’t do that kind of thing here.”

“Then who does? Where would you take them?”

“Nowhere. That’s where. If this was a legal investigation, and I emphasize the word
legal
, this so-called evidence of yours would be transported into Hamilton. They have a lab there. Not the municipal cops. The Ontario Provincial Police. That’s where everyone around here goes with their forensic work.”

“Could you?”

“Are you kidding? The way you acquired that pill bottle?”

“There’s no way to do it then?”

“Look Wilf, I’m just a constable.”

“Constable First Class.”

“An ordinary everyday flatfoot. It’s not what I do.”

“Okay.”

“I could lose my job.”

“I don’t want you to lose your job. You have to think of Linda and the kids. You have a family. Responsibili-ties.”

“We have certain rules around here.”

Wilf smiled. “Sounds like the Air Force.”

“Yeah well, I was never in the Air Force.”

Wilf nodded sympathetically.

“Not that I didn’t want to be.”

Wilf nodded again. And sat there and waited.

Andy took a deep pull on his cigarette. “There’s someone I know. He works in the lab but he lives in Brantford. I don’t know what shift he works.”

“Right,” Wilf said.

“I guess, maybe, I could find out.”

Wilf kept his expression neutral.

“He was just a guy I knew at police college. He ended up going with the OPP.”

“I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”

Andy grinned. It was the first time he’d felt the least bit adventurous in years.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “Welcome home, asshole.”

* * *

Wilf pulled his father’s car into a service station that was closed for the night, circled around the gas pumps and came to a stop. Across the road the butcher shop and the two-storey brick house it was part of looked isolated and lonely sitting on its corner. A street light, leaning over a little, cast a faint light on the walls. Someone had built a wooden extension on at the back with an open staircase leading to a door on the second floor. A large window by this door was lit up. All the other windows were dark.

Wilf sat in the car and stared up at the window. A shadow moved behind the blind and disappeared. After a while two shadows appeared and disappeared. Wilf smiled to himself and thought of Carole. Everything felt just right. Everyone was where they were supposed to be. Andy in his office trying to make a connection with his friend in the lab. Cruikshank lying in the dark in the basement of the hospital feeling like the world’s biggest fool, no doubt. And Adrienne and her boyfriend pacing the floor at two in the morning haunted by desperate remembered images and by dark premonitions of disaster.

Wilf opened the car door and pushed himself out into the frigid air. The sensible thing would have been to go straight home after talking to Andy. Try to get some sleep. He needed sleep. But he was too wound up. High on something.

He limped along the snowy road past the butcher shop, turned at the corner and followed this street toward a series of wooden planks that crossed a double set of railway tracks. He walked up onto the crossing and looked toward Old Man Cruikshank’s house. He could almost see Adrienne walking along the path beside the tracks. All it would take was a turn to the left, a short climb up out of the ravine, slip past the fruit trees and in through the side door. For half a year. Or a year. And who in all the sleeping town would have been the wiser?

The road Wilf was standing on continued down a steep hill into a river valley. A line of street lights far below were blinking back at him. Carole was asleep down there somewhere according to the telephone operator. And now he could almost see her body stretched out long and skinny under a fluffy pink quilt, a frown creasing her brow, her mouth a bit skeptical as it always seemed to be.

Wilf had to smile to himself. Despite her small-town conservatism and at some cost to her peace of mind she was trying to help.

She was helping him.

Wilf looked over the town and suddenly he felt like an alien standing there in the dark. A refugee from far lands and foreign disasters. The air felt ten degrees colder. A sharp pain rippled down his left side, lingered for a second.

He turned back to the car and as he trudged along he could see that the light in the window was off. Retreated to their bed, exhausted from discussing all possibilities, rehearsing every response, Wilf thought to himself. Adrienne with all the answers, the sailor following along. And now two pairs of eyes staring into the dark. Sleep impossible.

Wilf opened the car door, eased himself in and was about to turn the ignition on when he caught sight of a shadow passing quickly in front of him. The passenger door opened and Adrienne slid in.

She closed the door. The interior light went off again. They sat there together staring ahead for a moment as if they were hesitating before embarking on a long-planned trip.

“Hello,” Adrienne finally said.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes you are. You’re watching me.”

Wilf turned to look at her, her face floating in some faint reflected light. “Is that what you’re thinking? No. I have a difficult time sleeping, that’s all, so I drive around.”

“I know who you are.”

“I introduced myself the other day. When I bought that sweater. Is that what you mean?” Wilf waited. “Or do you mean, you know who my father is?”

There was no discernible reaction.

“I’m not blind.” Adrienne turned toward him. Her eyes were hidden in two dark whirls of shadows. She looked blind.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you watching in the hotel.”

Wilf glanced toward the extension across the street. The blind had been pushed aside, a pale face was pressed up against the shadowy window.

“And now here you are again,” Adrienne said.

“I guess I’m not as inconspicuous as I thought.”

“Are you curious? Is that what it is?”

“Curious?”

“Yes. Curious. About me?”

Yes, Wilf thought, Jesus Christ, yes.

Adrienne turned her small body toward him. She’d only taken the time to throw her coat loosely over her shoulders and as she moved it pulled open a little. In the dark there was no telling what she had on. Or didn’t have on. “Is it true?” she said.

“Is what true?”

“About that crazy will. Did Sam actually give that will to your father?”

It was all Wilf could do, to keep his eyes on her face. “Yes.”

“But I thought it was a joke. It was supposed to be a joke. I told him to throw it away.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want anything!”

“You don’t?”

“No! That’s what his son was going on about, too. He’d gotten the idea from somewhere that Sam had left everything to me. He was really being nasty about it. And then you came in pretending to be interested in buying a sweater.”

“And that’s when you knew it had to be true.”

“That stupid will! I couldn’t believe it. I just thought it was another one of his jokes!”

Wilf looked up at the window again. Her boyfriend was still there. “Was that the first time you’d heard he’d died, Adrienne? When Frank Cruikshank came into the store? You were putting on a brave face.”

“You were the one who found him. Weren’t you? You were putting on a brave face, too.”

“So I suppose you don’t want to be the beneficiary of his will?” Her eyes were still hidden. His hand ached to slip inside her coat.

“Can I refuse to accept it?”

“You could sign everything back to his family, I suppose. Probably there’d have to be an exchange with some kind of reasonable value. Otherwise you’d be contravening his last will and testament.”

Adrienne smiled her quiet smile. “You’ve become obsessed about something. Do you want to tell me what it is?”

“It seems an exceptional will, that’s all. You’re not a relative. And it’s a large estate.”

“Is there something wrong with it, I mean legally, besides that it’s going to an O’Dell? Is there anything else wrong?”

“It’s not wrong. That it’s going to an O’Dell.”

“Do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think that you, Wilf McLauchlin, have a dirty mind. It’s all in your filthy dirty mind, what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Yes, I do.”

Adrienne pulled back from him a little, her eyes moving out from the shadows now. Wilf was surprised to see that they were red and swollen. She looked like she’d been crying for days.

“I’ll tell you what it was since you’re so curious. And then maybe you’ll stop following me. He was kind. That’s all. Like a father. More than my own father ever was. And I ran errands for him and I did all the little things I could think of just to make his days easier and happier. Because he actually cared for me. And that was all there was. There was nothing else. There was nothing wrong! Have you ever heard of Christian love? Pureness and sweetness and thankfulness? Have you ever heard of that?”

The light flashed on as Adrienne pushed the door open, the door slammed shut and she was gone.

Wilf watched her run across the road holding her coat tightly against her small body.

He looked up at the window.

The face had disappeared.

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was no light on in the study. Wilf left it that way, felt for another bottle of rye he knew was in the liquor cabinet, tucked it under his arm and made his way up the stairs.

He sat down on the edge of his bed, snapped the light on, opened the bottle and took a drink. He looked around the room. He took another drink.

This was the real world. Maybe he should try to stay in it. Cling to it with all his might. Two chairs. The dresser. The outside wall. It was three bricks thick. His father had told him that a long time ago. To keep the cold wind out. The elements. They seemed to be clawing outside right now.

Wilf took another drink.

It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Adrienne was innocent. Maybe the old man had asked her to make a copy of his key for reasons of his own and she was going up to Galt anyway, it was just another errand to run. Another one of her Christian errands. That was all it was.

Wilf thought about his sleeping pills. They were waiting for him, sitting inside the bathroom cabinet. Maybe he’d try three.

She could hardly have stopped the old man from making a will, if that’s what he’d wanted to do.

Wilf began to pull off his clothes, struggling one-handed out of everything until the only thing he had left on was the sling that supported his arm.

He could see Adrienne’s eyes, fresh tears shining.

Dirty filthy mind, she’d said. He should be ashamed.

He did feel ashamed.

Wilf stood in the yellowish light from his lamp and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He unbuttoned his sling, his arm dropped limply to his side. His left shoulder and his left hip and leg were rippled with scars. Some places were shiny as silk, some veined and scaled and faintly blue.

“Hello, monster,” Wilf said.

* * *

“Wake the hell up. Come on!” Andy seemed to be pleading. He seemed to be pushing Wilf on his shoulder. “Jesus, you must have tied a good one on last night.”

Wilf opened his eyes a little. The morning light hurt. His head hurt.

Andy looked to have a suit on under his overcoat. Wilf could see a multicoloured tie dangling down inches from his face. He could see the half-empty rye bottle nestled on the pillow beside him.

“Mmmm,” Wilf said and struggled to sit up. He held his arm against his chest so Andy wouldn’t have to see it flopping around.

“I knocked. I yelled. Nothing worked,” Andy was saying, looking a little embarrassed now. Or shocked. He walked over to the bedroom window and peered out as if he’d just remembered that something of extremely compelling interest was going on outside.

Wilf dragged his legs over the edge of the bed.

“I came to tell you about that pill bottle,” Andy said.

“What time is it?”

“Almost noon.”

“Why are you dressed up?”

“Well, there’s lots of excitement. Some bigwigs are in town.” Andy couldn’t contain himself, he turned back to Wilf. “Jesus, don’t you want to know about that pill bottle, for chrissake?”

Wilf reached for his underwear. It was lying on the floor.

“Wilf, you were right. They found prints on it that matched up with her prints on the glass. She had to be there that night. She was there!”

Andy’s face had gone bright red. Wilf hadn’t seen him look so excited since grade school.

“It only proves she was in the house.” Wilf’s throat felt raw. “It doesn’t prove anything else.” He tried to measure his own feelings but he couldn’t reach them.

“Wilf, after she went to work this morning the OPP picked up her boyfriend. He’s already crying his eyes out. He says she made him do it. It was all her idea.” Andy headed for the door. “I just had to tell you. You’re a hero, Wilf. I’m a hero, too. The Chief wants me downtown to take part in everything.”

“What about Adrienne?”

“She doesn’t know anything yet.” Andy disappeared into the hall.

Wilf sat there and listened to him clumping down the stairs.

There goes a happy man, he thought to himself.

* * *

Adrienne was looking after a customer when Wilf came into the shop. She glanced his way, actually smiled a little and then went back to talking to a very large woman who was asking about a winter sale.

“We’ve already had our sale,” Adrienne was telling her.

“But it’s still January,” the woman countered.

Wilf circled the racks of clothes. He had to push through to make any headway. A sea of women’s dresses and skirts, slacks and jackets. The warm smell of perfume. He could see Adrienne keeping an eye on him. She was telling the woman that she should come back the next day and talk to the owner. She was almost certain something could be done about the price of a certain winter coat.

The woman finally seemed satisfied. She left the shop. The bell over the door tinkled behind her.

“Hello again,” Wilf said. All he could see of Adrienne was her face and her shoulders. She looked frozen there, marooned, standing among the racks of clothes.

“Hi,” she said.

“I just came to apologize for last night.”

“That’s all right.”

“I just wanted to see you again.” And now he knew what he felt about her and about what she’d done because the feeling was familiar to him. The same feeling he had felt himself after a victorious sortie. An engagement. A kill.

Despair.

Adrienne looked at him more closely. He was making her uneasy. She glanced toward the door. “I’m working,” she said.

She knew something was wrong. Wilf could see it in her eyes. Something had gone terribly wrong.

“I’ll get out of your way.” That was all Wilf could think to say. He pushed himself back through the clothes and went out the door. He walked along Main Street. The air felt warmer than it had for some time. A real January thaw. Rows of icicles swayed precariously down from the eaves above the stores. Water was dripping everywhere.

He could see an OPP cruiser sitting in front of the town hall. The Chief of Police and two men he didn’t recognize appeared out of a lane that led back toward the police station. They began to cross the street.

Wilf cut across the street, too, going the other way. He made himself wait until he’d reached the far side before he turned around. The Chief was opening the front door of the dress shop. The three men disappeared inside.

Wilf had to lean against a wall to steady himself.

Some young man was sauntering down the sidewalk toward him, dishevelled-looking, workboots toed out, his hair a wild auburn mop. He grinned at Wilf as he walked by just as if he knew him.

Wilf looked back across the street.

The dress shop and the stores to either side seemed to rise up off the ground and move in a gentle, undulating wave.

And all of Main Street swam in his eyes.