Death Spiral (11 page)

It didn’t matter. He had to stay.

He had to watch Carole for as long as he could.

* * *

As soon as Wilf came through the front door of the office the next morning Carole stopped typing.

That’s an improvement, Wilf thought.

“You’re late,” she said.

“How do you know you’re not early?”

“Because I can tell time.”

Wilf sat down on the chair by the door and struggled to take off his galoshes. Despite her tone of voice he could see she was smiling to herself. “I think we should go out Saturday. What do you think?”

“This Saturday?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Where?”

“Well, we could go to a dance.”

“Oh?” Carole tried not to look too surprised. Or alarmed.

“We could go up to Preston. Andy says they have dances up there every Saturday night. He and Linda go up there all the time.” Wilf took off his coat. “What do you say? Want to cut a rug?”

“Okay.” Carole tried to do a fast calculation. When was the last time she’d been to a dance? Nineteen forty-one.

“They play all the big band music up there. Miller. Dorsey.” Wilf limped toward her. “You’ll be all right.”

Carole, looking slightly alarmed, glanced toward his father’s office as if to warn him.

Wilf could see his father looking over some papers through the open office door. His dark hair was peppered with grey now and he was beginning to stoop just a little but nevertheless, Wilf thought with some pride, he still radiated the same precise and scholarly vigour he always had. Wilf walked into the hall.

“Good morning,” he said, leaning through the doorway.

“Is it still morning?” Clarence McLauchlin replied. “Why don’t you move into Grandpa’s office?”

“You keep asking me that. It doesn’t make any sense, I’ll be leaving soon.”

“But until you do. I don’t like you sitting out in front. You’re not a clerk.”

“Carole doesn’t like me sitting out there, either.”

“Carole’s got good sense.”

“Anyway, I just came in to say that I think I’ll work up at the house today. I want to call Admissions again and I need to track down some people I know and figure out where I’m going to be staying.”

“Isn’t it too late for this semester?”

“No, it’s not. I told you that. You know I told you that.”

“Did you?” Clarence sat down at his desk and put aside the papers he’d been examining. “I guess you did. But I’ve been thinking, Wilf, maybe a little more rest wouldn’t be the worst idea. It’s been great to have you back and there’s no need to push things, is there?”

“I’ve been resting for a year and a half.”

“Why don’t you start in the fall? Makes a lot more sense. Besides you’ve got all that nastiness in court coming up this summer. We should start talking about that.”

“It’s okay. I’ll just be one of a dozen witnesses. I know what I’m going to do.”

Clarence leaned back in his armchair. “What?”

“Give my testimony as clearly and simply as I can and get back to Toronto.”

“Adrienne O’Dell’s lawyer might have a few thoughts about your ‘clear and simple and getting back to Toronto’ plan.”

“Dad, they confessed. It’s over.”

“Is it? It’s never that simple, Wilf.” His expression looked a little pained. “Anyway, whatever you think is best. I mean, about going off to Toronto.”

“I’ll keep thinking about it,” Wilf said and forced a smile. “I’ll see you up at the house.”

The rest of that day and the following day Wilf busied himself organizing his move. On Friday morning he dropped in to the police station to ask Andy if he and Linda were going up to that Saturday’s dance. Sergeant Creighton was working days now.

“Having trouble getting a babysitter.” Andy was sitting at his desk entering something in a ledger, “My mother’s refusing to come over since Davey swore at her.”

Wilf sat down at Ted Bolton’s empty desk. “How about Linda’s parents?”

“They’re going away. Why? Do you want to babysit?”

“No. Carole and I thought we’d go up to the dance.”

Andy’s face broke into a grin. “Carole Birley?”

“Anything wrong with that?”

“No. That’s great. Carole Birley. She has a nice way about her. Terrific legs.”

“Oh?”

Wilf and Andy looked toward the doors. A clatter of boots was coming down the hall stairs. Two boys pushed through the swinging office doors, came up to the counter and peered over it. Their winter hats were on crooked, their faces flushed, sweat was trickling down their cheeks, snot bubbling out of their noses.

“What’s the matter, boys?” Andy said. “Somebody trying to give you a bath?”

The two boys stared back at him.

“Is there a bear chasing you? Did you hold up a bank?”

“Cline’s bush,” the taller one finally blurted out.

“What about it?”

“We found something.”

“Annie got sick,” the other boy chimed in. He looked a little sick himself.

“His sister puked. Because of all the blood.”

Something jarred, came loose in Wilf’s chest. He pushed out of the chair.

“Is she hurt?” Andy asked. “Is that the problem?”

The boys shook their heads. “There’s a man out there. He’s in Cline’s bush.”

“Well, who the hell is it?”

“He’s under the snow,” the taller one said.

“Is he dead?” Wilf heard himself ask.

“Yes,” the boy said.

Andy hurried across the street to inform Constable Bolton, who was eating lunch at The Palms, that he was taking the one and only cruiser out to Cline’s bush to do some investigating. Meanwhile Wilf stayed with the boys.

“Are you fellows from around here?” he asked.

The two boys were perched on wooden chairs now, fidgeting around and looking uncomfortable. They nodded.

“From out in the country or from here in town?”

“Town,” the taller one said, eyeing Wilf’s trussed-up arm, his bad leg.

“This man you found, you said he was lying under the snow?”

They nodded in unison.

“Could you see his face?”

“No,” the taller one said.

Wilf rode beside Andy. The two boys sat in the back. It had occurred to Wilf that he could have refused to go. In fact Andy hadn’t even asked him. He’d left it open. It was Wilf’s decision. And once again, just the same as with Adrienne O’Dell, he’d felt compelled to go.

They drove toward the sun, passed by a snow-filled gravel pit and turned on to a narrow side road that looked more like a frozen stream as it wound its way through high banks of snow. Once over a slight rise it straightened out and shimmered off into the distance.

Andy inched along toward a dark block of trees. A few youngsters were standing in a tight cluster in the distance. “Want to stay in the car? The snow will be deep here.”

Wilf shook his head.

The cruiser slid to a stop. Wilf opened the passenger door and got out. A sharp wind, unnoticed in town, was blowing across the fields. It caught Wilf and skidded him back against the car. The young girl and two boys standing at the side of the road looked half-frozen. The only thing they seemed able to move were their frightened eyes.

“Okay,” Andy’s voice went flying away in the wind, “I only want one person to show me where this man is. And that person will be you.” He pointed to the taller of the two boys who’d been sitting in the cruiser. The other children didn’t look too disappointed.

“Are you okay?” Wilf asked the girl. Though she was shivering, she set her little jaw and nodded yes. “The kids should sit in the car. It’s warmer,” Wilf called out to Andy, who was already wading through the snow toward the edge of the woods.

“As long as they don’t break anything,” Andy shouted back.

Wilf opened the back door and the youngsters piled in. “We won’t be long,” he said.

Despite the bright sun, the air seemed gloomy once Wilf was in amongst the trees. He struggled to catch up, following Andy’s and the boy’s tracks, blundering into branches and bushes, stumbling over hidden logs. After a short distance he had to sit down on a snow-covered stump to rest.

Treetops creaked high above his head. Empty corridors were leading off in various directions. An abandoned house, Wilf thought. Windowless and roofless. He looked up through the tossing branches into a high blue sky. It looked familiar.

Wilf walked on, circling around a large brush pile, half rolling himself over a massive log, breathing hard again. He could see the boy a short distance off, and then he could see Andy, too. They were standing motionless on top of a little rise.

Wilf worked his way closer. The snowy slope looked like it was speckled with red paint. He walked past branches jewelled with drops of frozen blood. He could hear Andy telling the boy to wait at the cruiser. The boy walked by without a word and then began to run.

Andy was standing in the centre of a dark crimson circle. He was staring down at a protruding hand. “The snow’s not that deep here.” He seemed puzzled.

Wilf didn’t reply.

“They were trying to bury him, I guess.” Andy knelt down and pushed the frozen hand with his gloved hand. The surrounding red crust heaved and cracked a little. He took it by the wrist. A detached arm came up out of the snow.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Andy said, standing up quickly but keeping his grip.

A piece of frozen red muscle and white sinews hung stiffly out of the severed end, the rest of the arm was wrapped in a dirty coat sleeve.

“I shouldn’t have picked it up. Shit! Where the hell’s the rest of him?”

Andy began to peer through the trees as if he expected to see a one-armed man looking back at him. There was no one in sight. He crouched back down and laid the arm as carefully as he could back into its outline in the snow.

“That’s two,” Wilf said.

“Two what?”

“Homicides.”

“We don’t know that yet. Do we? Back up, for chrissake, you’re making a mess.”

Wilf backed up a little, though he wasn’t the one making the mess.

Andy began to circle around the rise. “Look at this,” he called out. He was standing near a deep trough through the snow. It looked like a wide red ribbon winding its way through the trees. There were boot tracks in the middle of it.

Wilf pointed his cane off to the side. “Two more sets of tracks over there.”

Andy hurried along the trough’s edge like he thought he might catch up, running through the brush and the trees. Wilf limped along behind. After a while he could see that Andy had come to a stop. He walked up to him.

A man was curled up asleep, at least that’s how it looked to Wilf. His overcoat was pulled up around his ears and the small hollow he was lying in seemed to be a perfect fit. Andy crouched down and lifted his head a little. The face, grey and covered with crystals of frost, sparkled up at them.

“Never seen him before,” Andy said.

He looked about thirty to Wilf, a small man, almost tiny. The stump of his right arm was hidden beneath his chest.

“Not much blood around here,” Andy said.

“He didn’t have much left.”

“Split lip. Nose flattened, too. One eyelid swollen. Whoever they were, they laid one hell of a beating on him.” He looked up at Wilf and grinned. “I guess that would have been before they chopped off his arm. A bit redundant, afterward.” He turned back to the little man. “Jesus, another homicide. Can you believe this? When did it snow last?”

Wilf could hear the trees creaking high over his head again. A familiar panic was flying around, flying around. “Two nights ago. It snowed the night Carole and I went to the movies.”

“There’s no snow on this guy, though.”

“No.”

“But his arm was under the snow. I mean, his other arm.”

“Because of the blood. It was warm. It melted the snow. The arm sank down, the blood froze over it.”

“Yeah, right,” Andy said.

There I go again, Wilf thought to himself. It seemed the most obvious observation in the world to make and as soon as he’d made it, he began to feel calmer.

Andy eased the man’s head back down in its place. “Don’t mess anything up,” he said.

He had to report to the Chief of Police. The Chief, in turn, would be calling in the Ontario Provincial Police. Once again.

Wilf said he’d wait until Andy drove all the kids into town and then returned with Ted Bolton to cordon off that part of the woods. The crime scene. “I’ll be standing guard somewhere between the body and the arm.”

Andy looked at him. Wilf smiled. Andy disappeared through the trees.

Wilf turned and stared down at the little man. He looked even more deeply asleep than he had before.Was he already dead when he was dragged to this spot, Wilf wondered to himself, or did it take some time for him to die? Quivering all alone here like a leaf in a wind. Looking up to the sky?