In Winter's Grip (25 page)

I moved cautiously closer, visions of Becky's body flooding back to me. I was a few hundred yards from the dark form when she lifted her head to look back at me. The relief I felt that this was not another dead body was equaled by trepidation. I moved closer, not taking my eyes off the round, pale face and grey strands of hair whipping across her forehead and plump cheeks. The eyes, when I got close enough, were older and faded, but they were the eyes of my childhood friend.

“Katherine,” I called across the distance that separated us. “Katherine Lingstrom! It's me, Maja Larson.”

I continued to step cautiously closer even as she turned her hooded head back towards her study of the lake. I was sure she'd heard me. I came alongside her and squatted on the ground, not certain how to approach her, matching my silence to hers. Katherine was sitting squarely on the snow, her long black parka protecting her from its coldness. Even still, she must be feeling the chill of the ground and the wind off the lake. I was close enough to smell her acrid sweat and unwashed hair. At last she stirred.

“I knew you'd find me,” she said, her eyes still on the horizon. It was Katherine's voice, but it was not. The youth and strength had gone.

“It's good to see you, Katherine.” I wanted to hug her but could see no indication that she would welcome my touch. Instead, I waited and kept my eyes also focused on the horizon. I felt her body shift as she turned to look at me.

“You came to visit Mother.”

“Yes. She said you were away on holiday.”

“That's what Mother would like to believe. Katherine's on a holiday somewhere warm and safe. It's easier than believing her daughter has gone mad.”

“Surely not, Katherine. We all struggle now and then. It's no sin.”

“The sin is what's behind the pain.”

I looked in her eyes and saw a raw emptiness that spoke of torment to which she'd surrendered. I said gently, “If I can help in any way, Katherine, I would do anything.”

She looked back toward the lake and was silent for a long time. When I'd almost given up that she would speak again, she began to talk. It was a toneless monologue that needed an audience and so I sat quietly next to her on the snowy beach and listened.

“Brent and I were never good from the beginning. I tried to act like a good wife, like I liked being married, but I was no good at it. We have two kids, two girls, and I never wanted them. I did everything I could to give them a good beginning, to act like I loved them, but I'm so damaged, Maja.” Her voice broke and she stopped talking. When she started again, her voice was dreamy. “I come here every day. Every day, I sit here and wait. I saw you that day you walked along the beach. I wanted to talk to you, but I was afraid then. It was too soon after...I had to figure out what to do. Mother wanted me to go away. I come here every day and I wait....” Her voice trailed away.

“What do you wait for, Katherine?”

“I didn't mean to kill your father.”

A shock travelled up my spine like an adrenaline rush. I closed my eyes and tried to will away the black dots blocking my vision. I was close to passing out and breathed deeply to still my heart. “What did you just say?” I whispered.

“I went to see him. To confront him. All those years ago, he ruined me. All through my teen years, when I should have been so innocent. He ruined my chance to be a wife to Brent.”

I bowed my head. “Oh my god, Katherine. I am so sorry.”

“I wanted to tell you, Maja. I felt so dirty every time it happened. But then, I'd see your father again and I...it would happen again. I wanted him. I hated him.”

The monster in our house was real.
I needed to get up and run. Run as far away from Katherine Lingstrom and what she was telling me as I could get. But I couldn't move.

“You did leave him though...eventually. You can be strong, Katherine.”

“I only left him because the guilt I felt for your mother was more than I could face.”

“But my mother wouldn't have known. He always made sure she didn't know.”

Katherine turned to look at me again. “She knew. We were in her bed when she came home early. The next day...she was dead.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god.” I wrapped my arms around my middle and rocked backwards and forwards.

“The afternoon she found us together, your father left with me. He didn't go back that night because he took me to a motel. I told my mother I was spending the night with a girlfriend. When your dad went back home the next morning, your mother had killed herself. Jonas found her hanging in the basement. I never slept with him again. I just left town and went to work in Duluth, where I met Brent. He was my chance to save myself, but I can't do it any more.”

“It wasn't your fault. You were too young to know, and my father was so manipulative.”

“I knew enough. I was thirteen the first time, but I could have stopped it. That night last week when I told him he'd destroyed me, you know what he did? He laughed. He laughed and said I was being ridiculous. Can you believe it, Maja? After all the years I'd lived hating myself? He couldn't have cared less.”

“I believe it, Katherine. I forgive you. You have to let this go.”

“I begged him not to sell his land for the new highway. They wouldn't pay for Mother's property, and it wouldn't be worth anything once word of the highway got out. She only wanted to spend her last years in quiet. That wasn't too much to ask, was it? Your father should never have laughed at me. He owed me that.”

“No, he should never have laughed at you, Katherine, but he wasn't a giving man. It wasn't in him to show compassion.”

“I told Mother that hiding what I did wouldn't work. I needed to tell you the truth. I can't do this any more.” Katherine had begun wringing her hands, red knuckles chafed from the cold. I covered them with my own.

“Katherine, I'll come with you to tell Tobias Olsen. He'll understand and make this easy. It was an accident.” I could understand why she would kill Becky too. She'd have known that they were sleeping together, and Becky would have been as tainted as my father. She might even have seen them together. Katherine was mentally ill, and that would certainly be a defense. I didn't dare leave her alone.

“I don't care any more, Maja. I'll talk to Tobias. Mother is going to be very angry that I told you, but it doesn't matter.”

“Let me help you, Katherine. I'll stay with you. I'll explain.”

I stood and tried to get the circulation back in my legs. The cold had seeped into my bones, and my knees creaked in pain. I bent down, took Katherine's arm and helped her to her feet. We huddled together and walked like two damaged women as we made our slow way through the icy snow and down the forest path to the road. We reached my car at last, and I kept one hand firmly grasped to her arm as I searched for the keys in my pocket with my other. Katherine stood motionless facing the deeper woods, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere over the car roof.

“You never told me what you were waiting for, sitting on the cold beach day after day,” I said, the wind snatching away my words so that I wasn't sure she'd heard me. I didn't expect an answer. Her behaviour had lost rational moorings long ago. “It probably doesn't matter,” I said to myself.

I unlocked her door and swung it open. I used both hands to guide Katherine toward the door. Before she sank into the cold interior, she leaned against me. She spoke into my ear, and strands of her hair whipped against my cheek. Her words were a breath of frost against my cold skin. She turned her vacant eyes toward me, and her desperate words held no emotion. “I was waiting for the ice to melt so I could walk into the lake and never come back.”

I drove Katherine to the police station, and the woman at the desk radioed a call to Tobias. He arrived with David Keating following in a separate car soon afterwards. I explained what had happened on the beach while Katherine sat zombie-like in the waiting area, still huddled in her black coat with the hood up. Tobias and David listened without comment until I finished all I had to say.

Tobias glanced over at Katherine and back to me. “Okay, Maja. David will take your statement and then we'll try to get Katherine's.”

“Please...well, she's not well, Tobias. I don't want her to suffer any more.”

“We'll go easy.” Tobias walked across the space toward Katherine. He knelt in front of her and took one of her hands in his.

David lingered in front of me. “You okay?” His eyes were concerned.

I nodded. “I'm glad to know the truth, but it's difficult.”

“Let's go into the back, and I'll get your statement. Shouldn't take long.”

“Okay.”

He took my arm and called to the officer at the desk, “Could you make some tea for Maja and Katherine? Milk and lots of sugar. They both need something to warm them up.”

Within an hour, David had typed up my statement, and I signed the two sheets of paper. He helped me into my parka.

“Will you be heading back to Ottawa soon?” he asked.

“I think tomorrow. I was going to stay for Becky's funeral, but I need to get home ,and it looks like I have the answers I came for.” I was suddenly very tired.

“Don't worry about Katherine. We'll see that she gets medical help. Off the record, she may never go to trial for the murders. She's obviously off-balance.”

“Has she confessed to both?”

David shrugged. “We have to go carefully. She's very confused. I'll be helping Tobias to sort it through.”

“This is all so sad. At least we have some answers though. Thanks for everything, David.” I reached out and shook his hand.

“No problem. You take care, Maja. My condolences again for your dad.”

I walked to the front door, meeting Chief Anders on my way. He was standing at the desk talking into the phone. He hung up the receiver and held out his hands to me. I extended mine. His eyes were sad and the lines on his face had deepened.

“I'm so sorry about all this, Maja. I had no idea.”

“It's okay,” I said quickly. “Nobody could have known.” I didn't want him to spell out what my father had done, the lives he had ruined. I felt a rush of guilt for ever thinking badly of Chief Anders and Tobias. It looked like the casino angle had been nothing but a red herring. I was glad I hadn't made any accusations that would come back to haunt me, and yet, greed might have been easier to deal with than my father's black soul.

“What will happen to Katherine now?”

“Well, we can't let her go free. I've asked her psychiatrist to admit her into the hospital in Duluth. She's spent some time there over the last few years, sad to say. I just spoke with her mother, and I'm sending someone to bring her here to stay with Katherine. The two have a strong connection, and Katherine needs all the support we can offer. I also want to find out what the mother knew. I suppose we'll let her go with Katherine to Duluth.”

“Good. I don't want Katherine to be alone through this.”

“No. I'll make sure she gets the best treatment. You take care too, now Maja. Put this behind you and Jonas. It's all you can do.”

“Easier said than done, but thanks, Chief Anders. We'll try.”

“I know you'll both make it through okay. We're here if there is anything we can do to help.”

TWENTY-FIVE

W
e ate a late dinner of herb and cheese omelets that Jonas prepared while Claire and I sat at the kitchen table drinking the red wine that I'd picked up on the way home from the police station. We were all in a state of shock and had spent the last hours together in the kitchen, while the fingers of sunlight deepened into dusk, trying to sort out the enigma that was our father and the broken people left in his wake. Claire, at first, had railed against what she'd called the slandering of our father, but she hadn't been able to hang onto her version of the truth for long. By the time we started into the second bottle of pinot noir, her disbelief had been replaced by anger at my father for all he had done: the lies, the betrayal and the seduction, for I had no doubt that he had seduced Claire too. I could see it in her eyes and in the depths of her revulsion once she accepted the truth. My sorrow for her wasn't as strong as it was for Katherine, Becky and my mother, but I still grieved for her, because she'd been a victim too.

Gunnar emerged from his bedroom to eat with us, grumbling about the lateness of the dinner hour. With his arrival, we all stopped talking about Katherine and my father and the sad events of the last few days. Claire was particularly quiet, studying Jonas when he wasn't looking. By the expression in her eyes, I realized that she was beginning to understand the broken part of him. The anger she'd held onto since I'd arrived had eased. Even the way she held herself had softened, and the lines in her forehead were less pronounced.

For once, Gunnar ate with enthusiasm. Earlier in the day, we'd told him of Katherine's arrest and the two people she had killed, and he'd shrugged without comment. Still, I thought I'd seen relief on his face, and his appetite reinforced my suspicion. Had he
believed
one of his parents capable of murder?

Meal over, Gunnar disappeared into his room again. I cleared the table and made tea while Claire sat and smoked. Jonas was restless.

“I'm going to the workshop for a bit,” he said at last after circling the kitchen for the tenth time.

“Sounds good,” Claire said. “Maybe I'll come see what you're working on after my tea.”

Jonas raised his head and looked at her.

She met his eyes and a smile played around her lips. “But only if you want me to,” she said.

He looked at her a moment more. “Okay.” He moved across the kitchen with his shoulders higher to pull his jacket off the hook by the door. He stepped into his boots and opened the back door. “See you in a bit then,” he said before clumping outside into the early darkness.