Enter, Night (31 page)

After Elliot had left
to drive Finn and Anne home, Thomson stared
thoughtfully at the hockey bag for a long moment. Then he put the plastic
gloves back on and reexamined the contents. The knives and the hammer
had obviously been used to achieve a violent end. If it hadn’t been for
the presence of the hammers, he might have considered the possibility
that they’d belonged to a hunter, and that the blood was animal’s blood,
not human blood. There was hair on the head of the hammer and thin
matted clumps of it where the base of the knife blade met the handle.

Thomson lifted the bound typescript from the bottom of the bag
and read the first few pages. It was obviously the document that Billy
Lightning had told them about, Professor Phenius Osborne’s translation
from the original French that he claimed had been stolen from his
father’s desk by Richard Weal after Weal had murdered him. Except it
couldn’t be Richard Weal, since Weal had apparently committed suicide
months before the murder, according to the Toronto police.

Which left Billy Lightning as the only link between the bag and its
contents and—very likely—the recent events in Gyles Point.

Whatever else was true, the fact that the bag had been found at Spirit
Rock meant that its owner had to be in the vicinity. Thomson sighed—
his gut told him that Billy Lightning was no murderer, and he tended to
trust his gut in cases like this. But facts were facts, and facts trumped gut
feelings when it came to him doing his job.

He considered calling Bill Lefferts, the senior officer over at the
Gyles Point detachment, to let him know what they’d found, but he told
himself that the situation was still unfolding and he had more questions
that needed answering before bringing anyone else into the mix.

Thomson reminded himself to commend McKitrick on having found
the bag—or, if not actually having found it, at least having identified and
brought it in. He had been checking out the area based on something
he’d seen, so if there was to be any credit given, it was rightfully Elliot’s.

As soon as Elliot was back from the Miller house, they’d take another
run out to the Gold Nugget to talk to Billy Lightning. Thomson hoped that
the professor would be cooperative, because under the circumstances, if
he wasn’t, it wasn’t going to go well for any of them, least of all for Billy
Lightning.

Night falls swiftly
in Parr’s Landing in late October. The sunlight is
there, then it’s gone.

It’s not that night comes unannounced, but rather that the
announcements themselves manifest in a rapid sequence of shifting
light and temperature fluctuations that might be missed by someone not
born and bred in the north country. By late afternoon, the sky is already
darkening to orange and pale violet, with bands of dark blue and black
hunkering down behind the line of trees and cliffs ringing Bradley Lake
and Spirit Rock, and the biting, hyperborean wind blowing in off Lake
Superior chills everything in its path.

At night, Parr’s Landing breathes in its population and doesn’t
exhale them until the morning.

Morgan Parr, who was used to Toronto’s perpetual neon twilight,
found the sudden darkness both intimidating and oddly enchanting.

She’d waited for Finn at lunch, and was surprised by how much she
missed him when he didn’t show up. After school was over, she walked
from Matthew Browning over to the primary school in the hopes of
finding Finn and walking home with him, but he wasn’t among the crowd
of kids milling about after the bell.

Disappointed, she walked home alone, aware of the change in the
light even at four-thirty in the afternoon.

At Parr House, she found the impossibly thin Parr’s Landing phone
book in a drawer of the marquetry cabinet in the foyer and looked up
Finn’s phone number. There was only one “Miller” in the book, an “H”
on Childs Drive. She copied down the address on the small yellow pad of
paper by the telephone and pocketed it, then went upstairs to do some
homework. By dinnertime, it was nearly full dark.

As she descended the staircase from the upper hallway, Morgan
noted that even with the night pressing against the other side, the
baronial stained glass windows in the foyer seemed to catch and hold
whatever light existed, seeming to burn with a singular lambency all
their own, even at night. At Parr House, it seemed to Morgan, even the
encroaching darkness was subject to the whims of Adeline Parr.

For once, dinner around the long dining table was more or less
civil. Adeline seemed sanguine, as though her excoriation of her son and
daughter-in-law the previous night had fed some ravenous private hunger,
filling her up and leaving her full and bloated. She asked perfunctory
questions of Morgan, easy-to-answer questions about school and how
she liked the town. Morgan noticed that Adeline didn’t raise the topic
of Finnegan Miller, nor did she ask if Morgan had met any new friends.
Morgan doubted this was accidental, but far from being disappointed
by her grandmother’s lack of curiosity about her social life, Morgan was
relieved by it. It meant at least one fight was not going to break out again
over dinner.

For his part, Jeremy seemed entirely lost in his thoughts. Judging
by his face, Morgan guessed they weren’t very happy thoughts. Morgan
worried about him. She wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to Jeremy
growing up here—the specifics had never been discussed with her, nor
did she have any indication that questions about his past at Parr House
would be welcomed by her uncle—but she sensed that they had not been
easy years.

Her mother, on the other hand, seemed to be in a genuinely good
mood for the first time in weeks, certainly since they’d arrived in town.
Christina smiled encouragingly at her daughter as she answered Adeline’s
questions about her day, adding a few comments of her own—comments
that Adeline, for once, neither disputed nor mocked. Morgan dared to
hope that the evening might well pass without any sort of incident, but
it was early yet.

“I met someone very interesting today,” Christina said brightly to
Jeremy. “At the Pear Tree. A professor, from Michigan.

“A professor? Really?” Jeremy brightened. “In Parr’s Landing? What
on earth was he doing here?”

“He didn’t say, really,” Christina said thoughtfully. “He mentioned
something about his father passing away. His father worked here some
years ago. He’s Native,” she added. “He knew all about the Landing and
the Wendigo legend. It was fascinating.”

“An
Indian
?” Adeline said. “An Indian
professor
?” Her mocking
laughter rang out from the head of the table. “Christina, you’re so gullible.
A man could tell you anything and you’d believe it, wouldn’t you. And
you met this . . . ‘professor’ at the café in town, did you? Why were you
speaking to strange men in cafés, Christina? I should think you’d know
better than that, considering.”

“What was his name?” Jeremy asked, desperate to keep the
conversation between his mother and his sister-in-law from going in the
direction it was most certainly headed. “Did he say where he taught?”

Christina smiled gratefully at Jeremy. Before Adeline could say
anything else, she said, “He said his name is William Lightning. He
teaches at Grantham University. It’s somewhere in Michigan. I think he
told me where, but I don’t remember.”

Both Christina and Jeremy expected another sharp rebuke from
Adeline—were braced for it, in fact. When she said nothing, they looked
to the head of the table. The colour had drained from Adeline’s face.

“Mother,” Jeremy said. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Jeremy,” Adeline said, her voice was faint. She fumbled
for her water glass, and then took a few sips before shakily putting it back
down. “Christina, what did you say his name was?”

Christina looked quizzically at Jeremy who returned her look blankly,
as if to say,
I have no idea
. “His name is William Lightning. Why?”

“You said his father passed away, did you?” Her studied casualness
seemed entirely at odds with her pallor. “Did he mention what his father’s
. . . what he taught?”

“I think he said his father was an anthropologist, too. His name was
something Osborne. He was part of some archaeological excavation here
in the fifties. As I said, Billy—Dr. Lightning—said his father just died.
Why, did you know him?”

“I believe we may have met when he was here in 1952 for his dig,”
Adeline said. Still deathly pale, Adeline seemed to have regained some of
her composure, though her voice sounded unusually brittle, even robotic.

Adeline placed her napkin on the table and pushed her chair away. “If
you’ll excuse me, I have some correspondence to attend to this evening.
Please don’t dawdle over dinner in my absence. It’s not helpful to Beatrice
when you make extra work for her by tarrying.”

Jeremy sighed. “For that matter, we wouldn’t want to risk enjoying
Beatrice’s cooking by ‘tarrying,’ much less endanger ourselves by
digesting it properly, Mother.”

Instead of lashing back as was her usual wont, Adeline got up from
the table without a word and walked out of the dining room. She looked
straight ahead. They heard the sound of her high heels on the marble
foyer and the sound of the door to Adeline’s study being shut. Then,
silence.

“What the hell was that?” Jeremy asked in complete mystification.
“What just happened? What did you say to her?”

“I have no idea,” Christina said, equally baffled. “Did I say something
that offended her? She just walked out.” Christina turned to Morgan.
“Honey, did you notice anything strange about your grandmother just
now? Did I say something weird?”

“I don’t know,” Morgan said. “It looked like something hurt her
feelings.”

“She doesn’t have ‘feelings,’ Morgan,” Jeremy said dryly. “And if you
offended her, Christina, good for you. I don’t know how you did it. For a
minute there, it was almost as if she had a heart. Which, as we all know,
is bullshit.”

“Mom,” Morgan said tentatively. “Would it be all right if I went out?
I mean, since Grandmother is . . . well, you know . . . not here for me to
ask permission?”

Christina raised her eyebrows. “Where do you want to go, honey?
It’s late, and it’s dark.”

“It’s not that late,” Morgan said. She showed her mother her watch.
“It’s just a little after seven. I want to go and see if Finn is all right. He
wasn’t at school today.”

“You don’t know the town very well yet, Morgan. It’s only been a few
days. Why don’t you go and see him tomorrow afternoon?”

“Mom, please! I’ll be back in an hour or so. I just want to make sure
he’s OK.”

“Do you even know where he lives?” Christina wasn’t sure if it
was the notion of Morgan wandering around Parr’s Landing at night
that bothered her, or the fact that she was going to see some local boy
Christina hadn’t even met yet.
You sound like Adeline right now,
Christina
chided herself.
It didn’t take you very long to start worrying about ‘townies,’
as though you weren’t one yourself.

“I looked up his address in the phone book when I got home today,”
Morgan said. “It’s not far from here.”

“Then why don’t you phone him?”

“Come
on,
Mom,” Morgan said, her voice brimming with teenage
scorn. “If I were going to the library to study, you wouldn’t be saying a
word. I walked around Toronto at night and you weren’t worried about
that. What do you think is going to happen to me here? I’ll only be gone
for an hour. I want to take a walk, anyway. I’ll just knock on his door, say
hi, and come right back.”

Jeremy said, “Do you want me to drive you, Morgan?”

“No thanks, Uncle Jeremy. I really want to take a walk. I’m fifteen,
you know,” she said. “I’m practically an adult.”

Christina sighed. “All right. But be back by nine, OK? And we won’t
tell your grandmother where you are, or what you’re doing.”
Now it was Morgan’s turn to sigh. “All I’m doing is going for a walk,
Mom,” she said. “It’s no big deal, really.” Morgan kissed her mother on
the cheek and practically danced out of the room.

“Take a sweater!” Christina called after her, but the front door had
already swung shut. Christina hoped Adeline hadn’t heard it. She didn’t
relish another lecture on propriety from her mother-in-law. But there
was no sound from Adeline’s study. If she’d heard Morgan leave, she gave
no indication of it.

“What do you want to do?” Jeremy said. “Shall we watch TV? Do you
want to go to O’Toole’s and have a drink? Or go for a drive?”
He seemed unsurprised by either Adeline’s departure, or Morgan’s,
as though vicious hostility and unexplained behaviour shifts were simply
a matter of family life.
Jesus,
Christina thought.
No wonder Jack wanted
out.

“Let’s go for a drive,” Christina said brightly. “Let’s go for a drive, all
the way back to Toronto.”

Finn was lying sprawled
across his bed rereading his
Tomb of Dracula
comics, trying to recapture some familiar joy in them, when his mother
knocked on his door and told him there was a girl downstairs in the living
room asking for him.

His cotton pillowcase was soaked and his eyes were red and sore.
He hadn’t been able to eat much at dinner, which was already a sombre
affair, since neither he nor his parents could forget that there was no
furry black presence lying in the doorway where the dining room met the
kitchen, front paws folded in front of her, head resting on paws, amber
eyes watching the table in case her master dropped any food.

Even the story about the visit to the police station to report the
discovery of the bag of knives failed to rouse much of a conversation.
When Finn’s father said that hunters probably left the bag, there seemed
to be a tacit, general agreement to let it go at that. No one wanted to talk
about blood and slaughter up at Bradley Lake with Sadie missing.