Blue Rubicon (12 page)

We made our way through getting our boarding passes and
checking our luggage—next was the security clearance point. It was a good thing
I’d left my gun in the trunk. Those men and women in airport security weren’t
messing around. Times were changing and what was once considered safe and
trusted could no longer be counted on.

Like police officers.

There was time to kill before boarding, a few more hours of
sitting around.

“Let’s look in the shops for a bit,” Kat said, walking with
white knuckles wrapped around Kasia’s little hand. My grip was only slightly
less tight on Link’s. I knew he was thinking he was too big for hand holding,
but he knew better than to argue it.

I looked at the little faces on either side of us, the poor
kids. If CAS—the Children’s Aid Society—had shown up and accused me of beating
them I wouldn’t have been surprised. They were exhausted, dark swollen bags
hanging under their red-rimmed eyes. My mind wandered back two summers ago,
playing ball with Link in the backyard when an errant throw caught him on the
cheek bone. He’d looked much the same then.

“Sure, maybe we can keep them awake until the flight.”

“Just what I was thinking.”

The stores were as they usually are in airports—full of the
same things from shop to shop, airport to airport, and all overpriced. Well,
almost everything was overpriced. I could have bought a carton of smokes and a
forty of rye for the same price it cost me to buy snacks and juice for the
kids, Cokes for Kat and I and two more magazines. The ones I’d bought Kat in
London hadn’t lasted half way to Toronto.

We wandered through high-end clothing stores, jewelry stores
offering expensive gifts for the traveling business people—the ‘I’m sorry the
conference lasted an extra week’ gifts—and shops selling a variety of expensive
art, generally Canadian themed. I could buy an
inukshuk
there for a few
hundred or I could make one four times the size for free at home from the rocks
in my garden. But that was me… once again too cheap to pay someone to do
something I could do myself.

It felt like we’d stumbled into a void in the time-space
continuum. I expected to look out and see the world moving ten times faster
than we were, but everything stayed the same. I wanted to get Kat and the kids
to safety, maybe that’s what made it drag. Or maybe it was the fact that the
sooner I got them to Poland, the sooner I could be back here.

There was work to be done.

* * *

Ten hours.

Six hundred minutes.

Would have been nice if it was a direct flight—instead we’d
have a connection in Frankfurt.
We left the tarmac at quarter
after ten. I sat in the uncomfortable and still fully upright chair doing the
math. Landing would be at quarter past eight, which would actually be… I had to
think about the time difference. 2:15 p.m.

If only I was capable of sleeping on
planes. It was going to be a very long day, probably over forty hours by the
time I finally got to sleep in Warsaw.

A flight attendant took us through the
safety precautions, something I couldn’t listen to with a straight face. Not
since seeing
Fight Club
. And since most of our flight was over the
Atlantic Ocean, Brad Pitt’s line about a water landing at several hundred
kilometres an hour kept replaying through my head. In a humourous way at least.
If the plane was to go down, there was nothing I could do about it.

The last thing I remember was being told we
could take our seatbelts off.

THE FIRE BURNS AROUND ME as I lie in bed unable to move. I
can hear screams, from down the hall, from below, from outside.

Everyone is screaming and I can do nothing.

A figure appears in my doorway, wrapped delicately in
dancing flames of orange and red, smoke billowing around his body. He walks
through fire that burns around him, as if it wasn’t there.

His face is covered, covered by a hood like a man about to
be executed. But he walks as though he can see, avoiding obstacles in his way,
dodging the beams that now fall from the ceiling, landing all around my bed.

My skin crawls, prickles from the heat all over my skin, the
sweat that seeps from every pore doesn’t soothe me at all. The flames creep in
and my discomfort turns to pain as the fire licks at my skin, searing me with
each touch.

His hand reaches out toward me, flames snaking around his
wrist. I shoot my hand out, through flames that singe the hairs on my arm and
latch on to his hand. It is cool to the touch and I feel my body cooling down,
immune now to the inferno raging around me. I am a ragdoll as he pulls me out
of the bed and to my feet beside him.

We walk hand in hand, as the house crumbles around us and
the fire burns stronger than ever. The screaming is louder now, my ears focus
in on the source. Multiple sources. They’re outside, all calling my name,
yelling for me.

They’re all safe.

He walks me down the stairs, stops me from stepping where
the fire has burned through the floor, keeps me from falling. There is no door
at the front of my house, only a solid wall of flames. Nothing is visible
beyond it, no matter how much the flames flicker. I start to walk forward, but
he pulls me back.

“This is as far as I can go,” he says through his hood.

“I can’t do it alone, the fire… it’s too strong.”

“Sorry, Lincoln, you’re on your own.”

He tries to pull his hand away from mine but I refuse to let
go, his is what keeps me safe, keeps the fire from swallowing me.

“I’ll help you where I can, but not here.”

He fades into the swirling inferno and the heat returns,
unbearable and inescapable. I have only one place to go, one way to escape.

I hold my breath and run head up through the blaze.

I WOKE UP TO LAND outside the window and the captain
advising we would be beginning our descent to Frankfurt in twenty minutes.
Other than a backache from the seat, I felt great, body and mind renewed.

But haunted. I hadn’t had a dream like that since… well,
since the dreams about my past. About my abduction, about Jefferies, about
killing him. It was so vivid, so real. I could see it like it had just happened
right in front of me, flames so bright they could not have been imagined. The
beads of sweat on my forehead were real, that much I knew. I wiped them away
with my sleeve and looked at Link, his face buried in a book, and Kasia,
staring out the window at the miniature mountains, lakes, rivers and buildings
far below.

Kat sat on the opposite side of the aisle, in the first of
the middle bank of seat. The difficulties of a family of four and rows of
three. She’d let me sit with kids, since I’d be seeing them less in the next
while. Of course she hadn’t expected me to sleep the flight away.

I leaned into the aisle, “Did you and the kids sleep at
all?”

“I got a couple of hours. Kasia slept for most of it, Link’s
been up off and on.” She looked into my eyes, concern, worry, fear. “You were
right out, Link had to climb over you to go to the bathroom. We couldn’t wake
you.”

“I… I was dreaming. Like before, but about the fire. And
someone saved me from it.”

“Who was it?”

“That’s the thing, he had a hood on. Like someone about to
be executed.”

She nodded. “Carter.”

I thought about it for a second, unsure why it hadn’t hit me
already. “You think so?”

“What did he say to you?”

“He stayed with me, through the house but when we got to the
door it was all flames. He told me I had to go it alone. Then he said he’d help
me where he could, but not there.”

Kat was deep in thought, and I could see the religious
wheels in her head turning.

“What are you thinking about?” I said, unsure I wanted to
get into the discussion.

“Nothing,” she said, then paused. A somber look crossed her
face before she spoke again. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“Go ahead, please.”

“Maybe you’ve got a guardian angel, someone watching out for
you now.”

“I could use one, that’s for sure. It’s a nice thought, I
just-”

“I know, Lincoln. You don’t believe it, it doesn’t fit your
rational thought process. Maybe you should think about opening your mind a
little.”

“Nothing good comes from an open mind, Kat. Accepting
everything, being open to it all? I choose an active mind, looking at
everything objectively, coming to a conclusion of my own.”

Kat nodded. We’d had the discussion before.

“Sometimes, I want to believe. I wish there was someone
watching out for me, some wonderful place I go after I die. But when I look at
it, when I think about the possibility of it, it just doesn’t work for me.”

“Maybe one day,” Kat said. Maybe one day.

It would be a miracle, but it was one she kept holding out
for.

It wasn’t long before we started descending, ready to land
at the Frankfurt Airport. This was, for me, always the most harrowing part of
the flight. Going up was easy, staying up was effortless, coming down was hard.
I wasn’t the only one to feel this way though, a fact made obvious by the
applause that always followed a safe and smooth landing.

This one was no different, but my applause was drowned out
once Kasia and Link got going. It was amazing how much noise they could make
with such tiny hands. We came to a stop and waited until it was time to get off
the plane and onto another one to do it all again.

The next flight was a lot shorter though and I doubted I’d
sleep again. It was a nice feeling though, knowing I’d slept through one of the
most boring experiences of my life. There was nothing fun about flying, nothing
remotely interesting except the window. And to Poland, it was mostly water. At
least driving I had the road to keep me focused, occupied, not bored to death.

They probably wouldn’t even have a movie on the next flight,
nothing to eat or drink (unless I wanted to pay through the nose for it) and
little to occupy the kids. The changeover was quick, our luggage handled for us
and before we knew it we were on the next plane.

It was much smaller, instead of the three-four-three seating
arrangement, it was a two-three-two. I had booked the window aisles for us,
with one of us seated behind the other. Kasia went with me, a little
daddy-daughter time I wasn’t going to turn down and Link and Kat sat in front
of us, the kids once again hogging the window seats.

Even my embarrassing tirade of ‘I want the window seat’
complete with fake tears hadn’t been enough to get the kids to give it up. They
were tough to crack—if public embarrassment wouldn’t work…

It was a short flight, not long after we reached cruising
altitude came the announcement—in English, German and Polish—that we were
descending. No more than an hour and a half had passed before we touched down
at Warsaw Chopin Airport—named after the famous composer.

We disembarked and went for our luggage. Every time I fly
it’s the same, my luggage is the last to come out. And this was no different.
We waited until almost everyone else was gone, hoping for a glance of our bags,
something that would tell us it wasn’t halfway to Azerbaijan by now. Eventually
that glimmer of hope came, in the form of a spiral of red and orange ribbons I
had tied around the handles—a marker that it was ours. The ugly ribbons had
long ago replaced the Canada flag luggage tags, ever since I realized
ninety-seven-point-three percent of Canadian travelers had them—and eighty
percent of statistics are made up on the spot.

Thirty minutes later we were on the road, a Fiat our small
yet comfortable car—perfectly designed for the narrower European roads. The
airport was in the
Włochy
district—one of eighteen such districts or boroughs in Warsaw. Kat’s parents
lived in the
Śródmieście
district not far from the historic area known as
Stare Miasto
—Old Town.

The apartment building they lived in was built
following the first World War and was a rarity in Warsaw—eighty percent of the
buildings in Warsaw were destroyed during World War II. It wasn’t a long drive,
but I always found it difficult. The traffic was heavy but not unbearable, it
was just a matter of driving in another country, one where I couldn’t read the
signs and, really, wasn’t sure where I was going. Kat was there to give
directions—I’m not sure why she didn’t just drive.

Poland astounded me. It was one of the few
places in Europe I had been, and like all European countries, it was a bastion
of history. Europe had a couple of thousand years on Canada by the time the
Americas were settled. Old Town was home to the oldest historical building in
Poland, the Royal Castle, built in the thirteenth century. It, along with the
rest of Old Town were now designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

I stopped the car outside of Kat’s family’s
apartment building and within seconds they were outside to greet us—an
advantage of windows facing the street. I was lost in a flurry of Polish as the
kids and Kat began talking at high speed with my in-laws. It gave me time to
get the luggage out of the car. Kat hadn’t told her parents about my affair,
and because of that I was still greeted as family. Kat’s mother (and the source
of Kasia’s middle name), Agnieska, came up and gave me a hug that I could feel
in my bones, and her father, Krzysztof, gave me a handshake that matched.

Agnes and Kris. They had come to prefer the
Anglicized short forms, or at least they had when we were visiting. The
apartment wasn’t huge, but typical of a culture that was not as wasteful as our
own. It was a two-floor apartment, with two bedrooms and one and a half
bathrooms—more than enough room for Kat growing up an only child, but tight
when we all came to visit. The second bedroom was reserved for Kat and I with a
pull-out couch on the first floor delegated to the kids.

We took our time getting unpacked and caught
up. Kat and the kids hadn’t been gone long so it fell on me to entertain Agnes
and Kris with the tales of my investigation into Saunders and my rediscovery of
what had happened in Algonquin. They listened intently to the story while Kasia
and Link watched TV—turned up loud enough to keep them from hearing the
disturbing details of the stories. Kat served as translator when terms or words
they were unfamiliar with popped up.

Kris kept prodding me for more details,
fascinated by a real-life serial killer investigation and capture and he was
quite interested in the details of the shooting and what had happened after.
Agnes, on the other hand, avoided talking about my killing of Saunders and
Jeffries, the sign of the cross and a prayer said in Polish her usual response
to a mention of death. Despite her beliefs though, she seemed to understand the
necessities of it all.

Dinnertime came faster than expected, the good
and the bad shared over a few cans of
Żywiec
(a well-known
Polish beer) made time pass quickly. Agnes had been preparing, and it showed.
Dinner was
kotlet schabowy
, a pork dish similar to
schnitzel
, in
which thin slices of meat are breaded and fried. She served it up with a number
of sides, fried potatoes, pierogies, fried mushrooms and coleslaw. We were all
starving and it was a good thing she always made enough to feed the 1
^st
Varsovian Armoured Brigade.

By the time dinner and another beer were
finished I was ready for bed, and I wasn’t the only one. None of us could keep
our eyes open, although the kids were more than willing to try.

Darkness hadn’t fully fallen by the time we
were all sound asleep.

* * *

I woke to my phone ringing and began searching
around for it, completely forgetting where I was. It hadn’t all been a bad
dream. I was in Poland and the bedroom I thought I was in no longer existed.
The phone was on its fourth and final ring when I answered it.

“Detective Munroe?”

“Yes,” I said, still waking up. The clock said
11:30p.m., half past five back home. It had only been a couple of hours since I
hit the pillow, and I felt worse than when I’d laid down.

“It’s Hank Collier.”

That was fast. I sat upright in bed and looked
around for something to write on. I dug through our luggage knowing I’d stashed
a pen somewhere. There.

“Thanks for getting back to me.”

“I ran the tests.”

He was suspiciously silent.

“And?”

“It’s good and bad.”

“I need both, you pick what comes first.”

“The DNA, male DNA, is on file—a
twenty-two-year-old cold case. Rape and murder. It was never solved though, so
we don’t have an ID.”

I was confused—was that the good news, the bad
news or both?

“Okay,” I said. He seemed to sense my
confusion.

“That was the good news. The bad news is the
victim.” I could hear him breathing. What could be so bad?

“Her name was Meredith Jameson.”

No. It couldn’t be.

“We don’t have many details on file, but it
does show her next of kin.” He stalled again, breathing heavily, bracing both
of us. “Kara Jameson.”

“I… I… um… okay, thanks.” I couldn’t speak, I
didn’t know what to say, and if I didn’t know what to say to Hank, there was no
way I would know what to say to Kara.

Hank hung up, the conversation was one neither
of us wanted to continue.

Kat was awake now and looking at me, an all
too familiar look of worry in her eyes.

“You okay? You’re so pale.”

“The man who torched our house, I had his
blood tested. He’s the same man that raped and killed Kara’s mother twenty-two
years ago.”

Kat went the same shade I must have been—well,
lighter obviously—but just as deprived of blood flow. We just stared at each
other, in absolute shock. Kat was first to speak.

“So, does that mean that her mother’s killer
is a cop?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe they paid
someone to do the job on our place. I can’t rule anything out.”

“How are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know, I just hope I can find the
words. I need to call her now.”

“You need to get back, Lincoln, solve this.
And help Kara. She helped you with your past.”

I nodded. “I promised the kids I’d stay for a
couple of days.”

“Stay another night. We can go out tomorrow,
maybe to the zoo and the observatory. Then fly out first thing the next
morning. With the time difference, you’d be in Toronto by noon.”

“Right,” I said. “Shit… how am I going to do
this?”

It was a question I’d soon know the answer to,
my fingers were already halfway through Kara’s number. Part of me hoped she
wouldn’t answer, that I would have some time to prepare a speech. All I had was
one ring.

“Link?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“How was the flight?”

“Um, good. I… we need to talk, Kara.”

The seriousness in my voice was impossible to
miss.

“Okay…” Apprehension.

“I just got a call from CFS, the blood work
came back to an unidentified male. The blood matched DNA on file from a
previous case.”