Damaged (4 page)

She pushed open the front door. The swollen wood stuck and then released suddenly. She pitched forward into the hallway. “Fuck!”

Alaska ran through to the kitchen, leaving muddy footprints and trailing his leash behind him. She caught a glance of herself in the antique hallway mirror. Her eyes, ringed with smudged mascara, stared back at her. She headed into the kitchen.

Alaska paced by his food bowl. He gave an expectant whine. She snatched his water dish from the floor. Water sloshed onto her fingers. “Fuck!” She banged the water dish onto the counter. Water splattered her T-shirt. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Her fingers were shaking. She leaned against the counter, head down, breathing deeply until the anger leached from her body. So much for celebrating her new case.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Alaska watching her by his food bowl. “Sorry, boy,” she said wearily. “You’ve been way too patient with me. I won’t do this again.”

She grabbed the bag of Kibbles ’n Bits from the cupboard, shame at her outburst overriding her anger at Ethan. She poured extra food into Alaska’s bowl. He lunged forward and gobbled it hungrily.

She had no appetite, but she knew she should eat something. She needed protein for her run tomorrow morning. Not only that, the bottle of wine on the counter beckoned her, and if she drank on an empty stomach she’d end up on the kitchen floor.

She popped a frozen lasagna in the microwave. It was the last one. She needed to get to the grocery store. The thought of it exhausted her. She needed to get to bed. As soon as she ate, she’d have a hot bath and go to sleep.

Alaska gave his food bowl one last lick and began to
circle in front of the kitchen door. She let him out, watching the husky trot across the back porch down to the yard. He loved nosing around the overgrown shrubs, chasing the cats that slinked along the tattered garden bed. She turned from the door and poured a glass of wine.

The microwave beeped. She pulled her dinner from the oven. The pasta was limp under the unnaturally red sauce. The cheese looked stringy, not brown and bubbly.

A high-pitched howl split the air.

She started, tipping the tray. The lasagna slid over the plastic edge and fell to the floor.

“Fuck!”

There was another howl.

“Alaska?” The only sound she’d ever heard him make was whining.

A shiver snaked up her spine. She stepped around the splattered pasta and opened the back door.

Alaska crouched under the porch light, tiny drops of rain electrifying his fur. A low growl rumbled through bared teeth. His ears were erect, quivering.

She followed his intent gaze. And froze.

A hooded figure slipped out of her yard.

She ran across the back porch. A rotting board groaned under her weight. Alaska followed at her heels. When her stocking feet hit the steps, slick with rain and moss, she slipped and stumbled to her knees. By the time she scrambled to her feet, sanity returned. What was she doing? She shouldn’t be chasing this guy. That was a job for the police. It was too late, anyway—the intruder had disappeared.

“Damn it.” She stood panting in her yard. The street was empty. Quiet. Dark. Rain fell, washing away any footsteps that might have revealed themselves. She wrapped her arms around her middle.

Alaska nosed her thigh and she patted him. “Good dog.” She walked slowly around the side of her house, glad for Alaska’s presence, though she had to admit he wasn’t attack-dog material.

She wished she had an alarm system but she wouldn’t be able to afford one for at least another year, if then. The leaky roof and even leakier kitchen pipes had taken precedence. She stepped back inside. Alaska rushed by her straight to the lasagna. Within seconds it was gone. She couldn’t eat, anyway. Fear constricted her stomach into a tiny ball.

Ethan. He was probably at home. She could call him and he would be at her house in five minutes. The cop in him would make sure she was safe.

Safe, but not forgiven.

She swallowed and reached for the phone.

The 911 operator answered on the first ring.

“I’d like to report an intruder,” Kate said.

Monday, April 30, 6:21 a.m.

K
ate watched Alaska trot across the dew-soaked grass of Point Pleasant Park. The ocean lapped its edges, funneling on one side into the Halifax Harbour, narrowing into the Northwest Arm on the other. By summer, the long blue arm of water would be dotted with dinghies, yachts and tour boats, people admiring the beautifully terraced properties of Halifax’s finest homes.

She picked up her pace. God, it was hard today. Her body just didn’t want to do it. But she needed to. She needed to get Ethan out of her head. She had woken on Saturday with a throbbing headache. Memories of chasing the intruder and giving the police a statement were like a bad hangover fueled by her confrontation with Ethan. For the first time in months she had skipped her Saturday morning run. Her run on Sunday morning didn’t help dislodge the sluggishness in her limbs. She could barely concentrate on the TransTissue file. She had to force herself to sort through the facts and draft a memo to make John Lyons take note. The effort came with a price. Here it was, Monday morning, 6:21 a.m., and she felt completely drained.

Knowing that she had to go to LMB in less than two hours and prove her legal mind was as good—or better—than all the other first-year associates made her resent Ethan’s unannounced visit even more. He had distracted her from the biggest file of her career. He had dragged her back to a place she had no desire to be.

He wouldn’t let it go. He claimed he had come for answers, but she had seen his eyes. He wanted more than that. He wanted to make her pay for what had happened on New Year’s Eve.

Her feet pounded in a punishing rhythm on the path. They had run together, their strides in sync. He loved running as much as she did. She had been used to doing it alone, letting her thoughts fly around her, but she had found herself enjoying his company. She’d think about the night before. How he’d seduced her with his reverential touch on her body. And then she’d feel the power in her body as she ran with him side by side.

How could she take one of those fairy-tale moments with him and ruin it with the sordid details of her past? Her past was something she kept locked in a very dark, deep box. Putting voice to it made it real again.

It had scared her. Terrified her. Admitting what she’d done to this man she loved so desperately. Ethan saw life in black-and-white. The only thing she saw in black-and-white was death. Everything else was shades in between.

In the gray of the early morning, the massive anchor of the sailors’ memorial loomed a shade darker than the colorless water. Alaska skirted around it, then bounded across the wide stretch of grass toward the old stone fort. The fort had been one of the first lines of defense for Halifax during the two World Wars. It was crumbling now, overgrown
with hillocks. Yet it retained a sober dignity, a memorial to long-ago trauma.

The fort was disintegrating. Just like the barriers she’d spent her adult life molding around her heart. They were suddenly becoming thin, porous, easily breached. It wasn’t just Ethan. Although he’d given it a good hammering on Friday. The breach had started before that. When she realized she could never outrun her past. When she looked at the calendar and saw that the date was finally arriving.

The fifteenth anniversary of her sister’s death. It gave her life a special symmetry. She had had fifteen years of being loved by her sister, and then had spent fifteen years living with the knowledge that she had killed the one who had loved her most.

A wind brushed her cheeks, damp and chill, pulling her out of her reverie. She glanced toward the horizon. Sure enough, a fog bank crept under the rising sun. Its edges smudged the dark band of fir trees on MacNab’s Island. Within an hour it would billow over the water, blanketing the navigational buoys, concealing the treacherous Hen and Chickens Shoal off the end of the park that still caught yachts in its teeth. Then the low groan of the foghorns would fill the air. She usually liked the sound of them: deep, unearthly. So different from the shrill noises of modern technology.

But she was glad they weren’t sounding today. She didn’t need the mournful warning that the fog of her childhood was about to descend on her. That the ghost of her sister was running right on her heels.

She couldn’t shake her. Nor could she shake the feeling that she was letting down another fifteen-year-old girl. One whom she hadn’t met, but who appeared to be going down a road that Kate had glimpsed before. On the night of Imogen’s death. When she found her fifteen-year-old
sister in the back porch of a house party, with a mirror, a razor blade and a mound of white powder. She’d tried taking Imogen away.

And killed her instead.

She reached the fork at the end of the trail. Both paths were grueling uphill runs. She chose the one on the left. Serpentine Hill stretched out in front of her. It was steep. It was punishing. It was just what she needed. Alaska slowed down, angling into the woods to check out the squirrels. She pounded up the winding hill mercilessly. Just when she thought she could breathe no longer, the path leveled off, letting her heart catch up to the relentless pace her legs had set.

That was how she lived her life. Fast paced. Striving for success.

Because if you were successful, you’d be respected. No one could hurt you. No one could take that success away from you.

That had been her mantra for the past fifteen years. If she didn’t have that, she didn’t have anything.

LMB was her ticket to the kind of career she wanted. Thanks to the TransTissue case, she could sense success just around the corner. The easiest—and most prudent—thing would be to concentrate on that case. She’d done the groundwork over the weekend. She had a strong analysis to present to John Lyons this morning. She should forget about Marian MacAdam. After all, her client’s last words to Kate were that she would find proof of Lisa’s drug use herself.

But how could a seventy-year-old grandmother who lived a life of privilege know how to find proof of a teenager’s illicit drug use?

She still didn’t have the answer to that question when she ran through the park gates, Alaska trotting by her side.
Sweat left a damp patch on her back. To hell with it. As soon as she got to the office, she’d hand in her memo on the TransTissue defense to John Lyons. Then she’d call Marian MacAdam. She’d tell her that if she was really concerned about Lisa’s well-being, they needed to contact the authorities right away.

To hell with Randall Barrett. He was the one who’d sent her the client. He’d have to live with it, too.

Her office phone rang. It was 8:55 a.m. Kate snatched up the receiver. She’d just called Marian MacAdam, but there’d been no answer. Maybe her client had been in the bathroom.

“Hello?”

“Kate, it’s Mark.”
Mark Boynton
. From the labor law practice. She straightened.

He cleared his throat. “I realize it’s short notice, but I need someone to assist on a hearing today. Are you free?”

Her heart leaped. “Yes, of course.”

“Great. Meet me in my office ASAP. I want to go over a couple of things before the hearing starts.”

She put the receiver down, grabbed her briefcase and trench coat and hurried from her office.

As she walked down the hallway, doing her best to not swing her briefcase in excitement, she suddenly remembered her call to Marian MacAdam.

The hearing had gone well. Really well. Mark, a year away from partnership, had been pleased.

“You think fast on your feet,” he’d said over a sub during the lunch break.

“These feet will run with anything you give me,” she’d said, hoping he’d be impressed enough to throw her a lifeline out of the ghetto.

When she returned to her office just before 6:00 p.m., she checked her voice mail, then scanned the e-mails from her assistant. No message from Marian MacAdam.

In a way, she was relieved. She was tired; she wanted to get home at a decent hour for once—before Alaska peed on the floor.

And besides, what difference would a day make? The wheels of justice ground slowly.

It could wait until tomorrow.

Tuesday, May 1, 2:00 a.m.

H
e circled the silver sedan around the long building before rolling to a gentle stop beside the rear entrance.

No one was about. Nor should they be; it was the middle of the night. But you never knew.

He glanced upward through the windshield again. Yes. The grain elevators were a vacant shell. Cranes stood in the distance, frozen under the floodlights like Jurassic dinosaurs. A white fuzziness softened the hard metal edges. He frowned. The light was very bright. Too bright. It made things blurry in contrast.

He slid out of the car, easing the door shut, and padded around to the trunk. His pulse quickened.

Then froze. He heard a scuffling noise. His eyes scanned the long dingy building above. There was no light in the windows. Was someone up there? Watching him in the dark? He stared into the black recesses where the floodlights didn’t reach. White fringed his vision. He squinted. There it was again. A movement. A scurrying.

His shoulders relaxed. A smile twisted his lips. He
should have recognized that sound. After all, hadn’t he waited many nights for his prey in this very spot?

The rat strolled unhurriedly across the doorway and out of sight. Rats had brought him so much joy. How well he knew this species. Inside and out.

A rattle startled him. He glanced around quickly. Just the rat running into the garbage bin next to the building. He let his breathing slow.

Time to focus. He opened the car trunk. A faint light showed his prize.

He was good. Much better than he got credit for.

He reached into the trunk. His gloved hands glowed fuzzily against the darkness of his cuffs. He blinked. The blurriness remained. He ignored it. This was the moment. The culmination of his painstaking efforts. Nothing would ruin it.

He unzipped the plastic bag, so silently he felt—rather than heard—the vibration of the teeth yawning open. His hands slid under her. One hand behind the neck. The other at her groin.

She was easy to lift out of the bag, her body fitting compactly in his arms. He glanced around once more. There were houses and apartment buildings surrounding the granary. Ironic that such a noisy, rat-infested spot should be in such an expensive neighborhood, but that was geography. The granary was by the water. So were the houses.

The buildings were silent. It was if they knew he was coming and made sure their occupants were not straying. He hunched over his prize and walked quickly to the rear door of the granary. Blood spattered behind his shoes, gleaming in four little trails behind him.

Perfect. No one could miss her.

He laid her carefully on the ground and studied her one last time.

Her eyes stared at the black sky. They were empty. The drugs had taken care of the fear; his hands had done the rest.

Those hands had once been impotent. Futile. Unable to defend himself.

No. Don’t think of it now. Don’t ruin it.
He clenched his fingers to stop the memory from taunting him.

Not now!
His fingers dug into his palms. The effort, he knew, was in vain. His brain always overruled his body.

He was wrestling. Furiously. His eight-year-old self shrank under the blows of the fifteen-year-old.

“You are such a wimp,” his brother panted, shoving him.

He fell at his brother’s feet.

“Don’t you ever take my stuff again,” Tim snarled, dangling the prize in front of his eyes. He closed them. It was too much. It wasn’t fair. He always gave Tim his space. Never entered his lair. But when his brother had shown him the pocket knife he’d won at a school science fair, he couldn’t help himself. It was everything he’d ever wanted. And would never be given. Pain warred with envy. He wanted it badly. So badly. The neat, tiny instruments that folded with utter certainty into impossibly narrow slots. He wanted that knife. He wanted to
be
the knife. To be able to fold into himself. And then pop out to dazzle everyone with his daring and precision.

He rolled away from his brother’s legs and curled into a ball. He would prove himself one day. He would.

And he had. He had proven his mother wrong. And had shown it was not just his older brother who had talent.

A deep rumbling filled the air. A train sped by on the overpass. He ignored it and smoothed the skunk stripe in her dyed black hair. Then he stood and admired his handiwork.

It was flawless. How easily her limbs had separated from her body. There were no jagged edges. No hanging
threads of muscle, no torn tendons. They had all been precisely detached. All that was left was smooth bone under even edges of flesh.

He nodded, pleased. She was perfectly straight. The nipples on her small breasts made a symmetrical triangle with the dark V of her groin. That was why he enjoyed the younger ones so much more. Their bodies were not misshapen from aging. Fewer surprises under the skin, too. The muscles were firm, the bones strong.

Her shoulder and hip sockets gleamed wetly in the dark. Pools of coagulating blood beneath the sockets made dark memories of her limbs.

He pushed his excitement down. How long would it take for the medical examiner to notice the little message he’d inscribed in her glenoid cavity?