Mind Games (36 page)

I’m glad we were able to air out that hotel-room happening without being hobbled by a tape recorder – no need to tuck it away in the file with the rest of my psychobiography. Freud put it well: in therapeutic relationships, one owes discretion even to oneself.

“Do you think it’s best if I refer you elsewhere, under the circumstances?” A ridiculous question. I won’t have you throwing me to the wolves because of an unguarded moment. Relax, Allis, there were no consequences other than some awkwardness. All regrets will pass with time. Soon we will be laughing at ourselves.

Disease fattens on stress, so it was good that you were able to unload your marital concerns (my prescription: take his offer of the house, mortgage free, forget the squabbles over money). Your temperature actually went down after the unburdening; the virus seems to be retreating to the nose for a last-ditch stand.

And don’t worry about me – I never catch colds or flus. To summarize: You should be getting out more, exercising. Vitamin C, Vitamin E, echinacea, don’t be afraid of garlic on your breath: it’s the smell of health.

But I’m afraid much of my advice was lost on you – it came with a false note of bravado from one who seems incapable of freeing himself from the web of love and need and hurt. Sally is back from Japan. I found her message on my machine when I returned from Jackson Cove, congratulating me for being the second-fastest doctor in the West. Did I hear a tremor of misgiving, a hint of disappointment about the Japan trip? About Cousineau?

Victoria was not amused by my adventures in Jackson Cove, my false encounter with consanguinity, my arrest. She scolded me for my foolishness. I described Huff’s paraphiliac obsession in the hope it might cheer her up as she waits, pessimistically, for Judge Lafferty to render her decision, but she found the whole matter disgusting.

John Brovak, however, was keenly interested in Huffs pretend love life, and whisked over to Granville Island, persuading James to slip him in between a Dependant Personality Disorder and a Social Phobic. He goggled at the pictures that Walker gave me, insisted on pocketing them for “safekeeping.”

I reminded him he hadn’t billed me for the Vivian Lalonde case. He clapped me on the shoulder, demanded instead that I make a donation to my favourite charity. “Professional courtesy,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get back a little noblesse oblige. I got a real bitch coming up, a junkie so hooked on smack he didn’t realize he was firing a gun.”

As for Grundy and Lyall, it now seems clear they made their way across one of the bridges to the mountains. A couple of nights ago, a break-in occurred at a small store in Lynn Valley. Only food was taken, frozen steaks, eggs, bread, about thirty kilos of canned goods. Police are going door to door on Grouse and Seymour mountains, checking ski cabins and chalets, quizzing hikers and skiers enjoying the year’s first snow.

I’ve not heard from Vivian. No calls. No visits. No skulking shadows in the night. Doubtless, she’s getting over me, though I still can’t understand why I deserved her mindless infatuation.
On the other hand, Celestine Post and I have become, if not thick as thieves, conspiratorial buddies. I can’t deny I’m getting a kick out of her latest amatory scam. She’s been insinuating herself into Sally and Cousineau’s social scene, turning twosomes into threesomes in restaurants and on country drives.

Last night, knowing Sally was a presenter at an arts ceremony, she inveigled Cousineau to come to the gallery opening of “Virgins No More,” erotic works by Celestine and a few of her friends. I couldn’t be there last night, but wandered in today – a cramped feminist gallery. A large canvas by Celestine featured wild swipes of exploding colour that drew the eye into a black tunnel thickly edged with red pigment; in case the point was lost, it was tided
Orgasm Number Six
. A price tag for eight hundred dollars, a red dot, proof of sale.

Ellery Cousineau is now the proud owner of this piece of Celestine Post-Modernism. “I made him a deal: half-price plus he goes down on me.” She showed me her tongue, a mock, catlike lick. “He’s coming by the loft tonight.”

I was shocked, though I knew that Celestine, with her bent for hyperbole, had given me a coloured version of the bargain reached. Which is this: Cousineau has promised to bring a cheque tonight and perhaps enjoy a glass of wine, and there’s no reason Sally has to know, because he intends the painting as a gift to her. I suggested Celestine wear a dress from Toddlers for the occasion.

I suspect Cousineau will be less resolute than I in resisting Celestine’s charms. I picture her in the throes of artistic creation: Orgasm Number Seven. I feel no guilt: I didn’t counsel or encourage her scheme, and I will proclaim my innocence if Sally learns she took on a false lover.
When
Sally learns …

It is Thursday. Hope has risen from the ashes of marital loneliness, I must grab it, hug it to my breast, and pray. Ellery Cousineau has met his undoing!

For this, I must give thanks to Celestine, for her schizotypal impudence and her inability to stop rummaging in others’ lives. I met with her today over a martini lunch at the Granville Island Hotel, where she jauntily described how Sally had popped into her loft this morning for their regular exchange of gossipy tidbits. Sally found Celestine and Cousineau sitting over coffee, hungover, she in baby-doll pyjamas and he in more modest but incongruous attire: shirt and socks and sweater, but pantless, a green wraparound skirt stretched around his middle.

Ellery tried to explain he’d come by this morning to claim his painting – see his tight smile, hear his cracked, laugh-it-off voice: I intended it as a secret gift for you, my darling! You see, there it is, leaning by the door! And, damn it, he’d ever-so-carelessly jostled his cup, spilled hot coffee on his jeans, soaking them through to his undershorts. As proof: these garments were in Celestine’s washer. The skirt was all he could find to wear.

But Celestine couldn’t lie to her long-time best friend, and chided Cousineau for assuming Sally was gullible enough to believe him. (The truth, Celestine explained to me, was that a semen spill occurred early in the evening’s festivities. “Real impetuous guy, didn’t have his pants off, and he went off like a rocket on his first try”)

Cousineau did, in fact, get coffee on him, including grounds, when pot and filter were dumped on him. As well, Sally hit him on the head with Orgasm Number Six, then threw it against the wall, and stomped out.

“I did it for you,” Celestine said to me. “No great sacrifice. He was a tiger in bed when he got his motor restarted. And he looked divine in a green skirt. Spent a few minutes in the closet before he chose it.”

I played with that image: Cousineau in the closet. Maybe I’d misconceived his proneness to stare at women – was he merely admiring their attire? In my dream, he was searching
through a trunk of dresses, stockings, and unmentionables – seeking something that would fit
him?

Misled by jealousy, I’d defamed Cousineau. Sally had thrown me over not for a pedophile but a prematurely ejaculating cross-dresser.

Ah, but these were merely caprices of the vengeful mind. It is wrong to gloat, I must rise above spite.

I waited for Sally’s call, which came mid-afternoon. She was still furious, insisted on blaming Celestine and me jointly, we were in cahoots. I defended myself and offered sympathy but couldn’t hide my glee very well, and she hung up on me.

It’s late on Friday, when I would usually be in your consulting room, so I hope James reached you in time to cancel me. Briefly, the situation is this: the search for Grundy and Lyall has just turned frantic. A Los Angeles family seems to be missing in the North Shore mountains, a mother and two teen daughters. They’d come up here a few days ago on a post-divorce holiday.

Yesterday, Gladys Moore called L.A. and left a message on her father’s answering machine, saying she and the girls had the use of a ski chalet. No location given, presumably the North Shore. Gladys Moore’s father tried several times to reach her on her cellphone. No response. Last night, he called the North Vancouver RCMP.

We’ve since learned, through her friends in California, that Gladys Moore received the keys to the chalet from a friend retired in North Vancouver, a ski enthusiast. It’s an architect-designed log building on Grouse Mountain, he told police, and is off any beaten track.

Our fear is that Grundy and Lyall scouted the chalet, found it deserted, and that Gladys Moore and her daughters walked into it blindly and found the two fugitives hiding there.

Churko and a team are on the way, and have asked me to stand by my phone.

At midnight, I’m numbly listening to my pounding heart, reliving the horrors of the night, worse than all my nightmares.

There is no good starting point, Allis, so I’ll begin where I left off: the beginning of the November night …

I was on the office balcony with James, sipping tea and watching the city light up. The phone rang. “Inspector Churko,” said James. “He wants you to haul ass to Grouse Mountain
immediatement.”

Churko’s urgent barks over a balky connection made for a distorted picture: “Who’s got a flashlight? I’m in snow up to my asshole.” Indistinct words, shouts, then he returned to the phone. “They turned the lights out, can’t see a fucking thing from down here. I don’t know what they done to them, maybe nothing, we hope. You read me?”

Was he talking to me? No – I’d been patched into a call to headquarters. An answering voice: “Okay, Inspector, we read. We have Dr. Dare.”

I announced myself, asked Churko to back up and slow down. His briefing was peppered with disruptions.

“We got a crisis, Doc … Get a light on the house, see if anyone’s moving … They got hostages, Mrs. Moore, her kids. They got a gun, and they ain’t afraid to fire it, a warning shot, when one of the guys tried to go up there … Where are those jokers from E-Response? I only got five people up here, it’s a trek in … What about the chopper?”

“No chance with this weather. We got a mobile unit on its way on a snowcat from the ski lodge. Dr. Dare, there’s a driver coming for you – can you meet him outside?”

Seconds later, I was in a squad car, on a light-flashing, siren-sounding dash across Lion’s Gate to North Vancouver.

The woman detective who was my escort told me that Churko’s squad had arrived at the chalet an hour ago, by commandeered Ski-Doos. No lights were on, but a porch window was broken, and smoke was coming from the chimney. An attempt to approach was deterred by the warning shot and a shouted threat from Grundy: “Back off! Or no one’s coming out of here alive! “That’s when Churko was patched in to me.

After a long climb up Capilano Road, my driver pulled into the parking area below the gondola. Police were scrambling about, hauling equipment. The glow from lamps on the lift towers traced a route up into the distant gloom. Members of the SWAT team, in their Darth Vader outfits, scrambled onto a car and rose into the darkness.

I hadn’t given any thought to the final stages of this journey. The prospect of entering one of those closed cages added more fuel to my anxiety about the three hostages, about the role Churko intended me to play.

My escort pulled me by the elbow. “For Christ’s sake, let’s
go.”

I took her arm. “Little nervous about heights.”

Soon after we boarded the next carriage, the earth disappeared and we were swallowed in mist and whipping snowflakes. A tower approached, but its light illumined only a dense white blur. Finally, we rose above the fog, and the lodge came into view, lights blazing, figures moving about. I stepped off the platform
and gracelessly slid down an embankment. Vancouver was somewhere below us, glowing from beneath the clouds.

Soon, I
was grasping my chauffeur about her waist, on a Ski-Doo, racing up the twists of a trail in the conifer forest. We pulled in among other such vehicles, a snowcat, a melee of law enforcers, video cameras, a grunting generator, spotlights shining on a substantial home set precariously on a ledge: wide decks, two storeys and a loft. The lights raking the building didn’t penetrate heavy curtains, no persons were in view within.

Churko, smoking furiously, told me that shouted communications had continued with Grundy, who had devised a plan to escape with Lyall by helicopter. The three hostages would accompany them, at gunpoint. They would transfer to a small plane equipped with parachutes. This scheme was “non-negotiable.”

While Churko and Grundy were talking, an officer had made his way behind the house, keeping a cautious distance. Equipped with a night-vision scope, he made unobstructed sightings through a tall uncurtained window, saw human shapes on the main floor, two sitting, one standing, two others by the railing of the loft.

Churko had obtained the house plans from the owner, and I asked to see them: the building was an aerie, the only entrance by the deck on the second floor, the living area. From there, one staircase led to the loft, windowless but with an interior balcony, another to bedrooms on the ground level, which sat on a rock dropping fifty metres along a sheer face.

“Got any ideas, Doc?”

“I’m going to try to get in.”

I felt nothing else would work: I would have to get close to the two men, close enough to smell their desperation, assess their resolve, use whatever skills hadn’t deserted me. I had to get face to face – my last conversation with Grundy had been adjourned too quickly, and I hadn’t spent all my ammunition.

“Fat chance of that,” Churko said.

“If there’s anyone Grundy wants up close and unarmed, it’s me.”
You ‘re next. I know where you live
. I ventured closer to the house. “Bob, Lyall – can you hear me? This is Timothy Dare.”

Grundy called back: “Too late for crisis counselling, Doc. It’s gone beyond talk.” A pause. “Right?”

This was directed to Lyall, who responded faintly: “That’s right.” I picked up the clearing of a constricted throat.