Death Spiral (13 page)

“I was worried.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I was going to call your house. I thought you might be up there all by yourself.”

“It was just a body, Carole.”

“Anyway, Nancy says that the OPP are in town again. No one can believe it. Everyone’s upset.”

“What’s the solicitor doing?”

“He’s not here. He’s in Brantford. He went off to lunch with some clients. I don’t think he knows yet.”

“I really appreciate the fact that you were going to call the house. I appreciate that very much, Carole.”

“I saw you through the window. Earlier. Remember? When you waved. You looked, I don’t know, just a little bit in shock. Anyway. . .” Carole trailed off.

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good.” Carole smiled.

It was her unguarded and unskeptical warm smile, the one Wilf had been wanting to see all morning. “You know that Displaced Persons camp out along the railway?”

“Yes?”

“Do you see those men in town very often? I mean, do they wander around much? I don’t remember seeing any of them but I must have.”

“They hang out around the mills. They’re looking for work. Our church has been giving them food and clothes all year. I don’t know how they survive out there.”

“It’s been cold.”

“I know.”

“And they’ve been out there for a while and there’s quite a few of them. They must pop up in the oddest places and at the strangest times. For instance, would it be exceptional to see one of them standing in your backyard?”

Carole gave him a long look. “Yes, it would.”

“How about a boy? Have you ever seen a boy, say about twelve years old, who looks like he might live out there? Maybe you’ve seen him walking along with one of those men?”

Carole shook her head.

“It doesn’t really matter.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“I know something, at least I think I do but I haven’t told Andy yet.”

Carole resisted the bait for as long as she could. She looked away. Her unruly lock of hair began to slide down her forehead. She pushed it back up. “What?” she finally said.

“Did Nancy tell you that it was three men who murdered that man in the bush?”

“No.” Carole sat up even straighter than usual and stared out the window. “I don’t want to know anything about it. I don’t want to get drawn in again. All right? One murder was more than enough for me. And if I were you I wouldn’t try to get involved in another one, either.”

“I’d like to tell you at least one thing.”

“Why?”

It sounded more like a cry than a question but Wilf couldn’t stop himself. “Because there’s no one else I feel close enough to tell.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but now that he had, it at least had the virtue of being more honestly felt than anything else he might have said. He knew it wasn’t a measure of their closeness though—they’d only gone out to one movie, kissed once. It was more a measure of his dislocation.

Carole’s vagrant lock of hair began to fall down.

She has a lovely forehead, Wilf thought. If he’d been his old self he would have gone over and kissed it, and kissed both her cheeks. Her lips. He was positive she would have kissed him back.

“I feel close to you, too,” Carole said. Her eyes began to shine. “For some reason.”

Kiss her, Wilf thought to himself, go over there and kiss her. But instead he said, “We could see by the tracks in the snow that three men had led him into the woods. Only one of them did all the work, though. The other two just watched from the sidelines. But there was something wrong.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“As soon as Andy went back into town I took a closer look. The one who’d used the axe…”

Carole got up quickly and walked back to the filing cabinets.

“He’d left tracks that were almost smooth except for a circle of small indentations. Hobnails, I thought, on an old pair of workboots. Another one was rippled with tread marks and a thick heel like a new pair of rubber boots. And the third was featureless, almost perfectly smooth like a worn-out pair of galoshes. But the thing was, Carole, they were all approximately the same size and the distance between each stride was the same, and the way each man lifted his feet and left drag marks in the snow were all the same. It was just one man, the same man, and once it was all over he’d walked through the woods twice again.”

“Thank you,” Carole said. She began to look aimlessly through some unfiled papers. “That makes it worse somehow. That one man could be so crazy as to do that. It makes it worse. Have you told Andy what you’ve figured out?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m sure the OPP can tell the same thing. If it’s right there in the snow.”

“Yes,” Wilf said. Right there in the snow. As plain as day. And what had he done when he’d seen that boy standing in the trees? He’d turned away in a panic. That’s what he’d done. He’d crawled, blundered blindly away.

Wilf got up and moved toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Dad’s car’s outside. I think I’ll drive up to the house.”

“What’s your father supposed to do without a car?”

Wilf was already pushing through the wooden gate. “I’ll come back for him. And if I don’t tell him to call a cab.”

The outside door slammed shut.

Carole didn’t bother to watch Wilf hurry away down the walk; she could see him vividly enough in her mind. She stood there in the empty office and tried to sort out her feelings.

She knew what she felt. The same thing she’d felt when she’d looked up earlier that morning and he was waving at her from outside the window.

She felt unnerved. Frightened.

* * *

The sun was lower now and hanging right over Cline’s bush as Wilf drove his father’s car along. He could see two OPP cruisers and an OPP truck parked by the edge of the trees. He drove by them slowly on the icy road. There was no one in sight. He continued on until he came to the place where the three tracks had left the woods. And his own track too, the easiest one for the OPP to sort out, the only one whose owner was punching holes in the snow with a cane.

Wilf pulled the car up and got out. The wind had died down; the trees were silent now. He peered into the shadows. It wouldn’t be difficult to find the spot where he’d first seen that boy. All he had to do was backtrack to the clearing.

He could hear voices coming from deep in the woods. He’d had an excuse to be there earlier in the day but what could he say now? That he had to find some boy’s tracks from the DP camp? And that if he could see them right there in the snow plain as day, then nothing else would matter? Everything else would be gloriously all right?

Wilf worked his way up the slope, hoping the officers would stay at the crime scene, busy with the body, with the arm. The farther he went into the trees, the louder their voices became. They were shouting about something, calling back and forth. He hurried into the clearing. He could see where he’d knelt down to examine the three tracks more closely. He could see his own single set of tracks leading away. He followed along until he came to the spot where he’d lost his footing and fell.

Wilf walked slowly toward where he’d last seen the boy, and everywhere he searched the snow was as smooth and untouched as the day it had fallen. Specked here and there with tiny bits of bark and rusty cedar leaves. Everything hushed and pristine.

The men seemed closer now, their voices filled the air.

Wilf backed up and began to push his way through the brush toward the road again. He got turned around, and blundering on through a wall of thickets, came out some distance behind his father’s car. Something round and dazzling was shining in front of him. As he came closer, it began to look as if a large crystal plate had been left on the side of the road. And now he could see that it was an impression that something had left in the ice, something that had been circular and heavy enough to melt into the surface a little. Two letters in the centre glinted up at him. A reversed
F
and a
J
.

Wilf looked up the road. A man was walking toward him, the sun blazing behind him, his elongated shadow as black as spilt ink. Wilf put up his hand to shade his eyes. Joe, the Head Man from the camp, came into view.

Wilf couldn’t think of anything to say. They looked at each other for a moment and then Joe turned and peered into the trees. He glanced at Wilf again and then moved away, crossing the road and beginning to wade through the snow in the ditch. Wilf could see the railway line glinting far below and a grey wisp of smoke rising up from the camp. Joe continued on toward it down the long slope.

Wilf began to hurry toward the car. He snatched the tire iron out of the trunk and scurried back down the road, went down on his good knee and began to chip away. Ice flew, his arm ached, his hand slipped and cramped, and finally the plate of ice reluctantly began to lift off the gravel road. He tipped it up on its edge and tried to stuff it inside his coat. It was too cumbersome. He braced it against his chest, hobbled back to the car and eased it inside the trunk. He slid back to get the tire iron and his cane.

A police officer, toting a canvas bag over his shoulder, was coming out of the trees some distance away, heading toward the OPP truck.

Wilf got back to the car, only half closed the door so he wouldn’t make any noise and started up the motor. He looked in the rear-view mirror. The police officer was standing in the middle of the road watching him.

Wilf began to drive away.

He glanced down at the sleeve of his overcoat. It was covered with chips of ice. His hand was wet with melting ice. He could feel chips of ice melting all over his face.

I’m mad as a hatter, Wilf thought to himself.

* * *

Wilf wandered around the empty house waiting for his father to arrive. He could feel his heart racing.

The boy had left no tracks.

A severed arm. The bin overflowing. Experiments and murders.

Perhaps Adrienne and her boyfriend were innocent after all. Perhaps a mad man was loose in town thumbing through Nuremberg transcripts and committing homicides in some kind of macabre matching game.

Wilf pressed his forehead against the cold glass in an upstairs window. He had to stop. He had to calm down.

Maybe he should tell Andy about the tracks after all. He’d told Carole. For some reason he didn’t feel vulnerable around Carole. But he had to be very careful. How could he tell anyone about all the things that were happening? What would they think? They’d think about calling men in white coats, that’s what they’d think. He had to be very cautious, discreet.

Wilf came downstairs and decided, since it was the part-time cook’s night off, that he’d make supper for his father as a kind of unspoken apology for not returning the car to the office. Pork chops, mashed potatoes, canned gravy and canned peas.

It was dark by the time Clarence climbed out of a cab and came into the house.

Wilf thought he looked tired, but after his customary two rye and waters he seemed to perk up. He began to ask Wilf about the man he’d found in the woods. Wilf answered all his questions in a calm and detailed way while occasionally flipping the chops.

“What did you want the car for, anyway?” Clarence finally asked.

“I went for a drive. Not that I was bothered by what I’d seen out there. Just restless, I guess. Once you’ve gotten used to flying at four hundred miles an hour it’s tough to stand still.” Wilf smiled in his father’s direction.

“Right,” Clarence said, “So the thinking seems to be that three men from the DP camp killed one of their own.”

“That’s Andy’s thinking, anyway.”

“It’s the talk downtown, too. Seems to be the OPP’s slant on things.”

“Is it?”

“Seems to be. As a matter of fact I ran into the lead detective an hour ago, which wasn’t too difficult because he came into the office looking for you.”

“Wanted to know what my tracks were doing out there, I suppose?”

“Andy had already explained that part. But he needs a statement.”

“It won’t be any different than Andy’s statement. But anyway I’m not hard to find. For now.”

“Until you head off to Toronto you mean?”

“Moving has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with getting on with my life.”

“I was just thinking that you could use a little more time. But then again, seeing a man with his arm chopped off and blood all over the place is not particularly restful.”

“Not particularly.”

“Who’d ever have thought we’d be facing another homicide.”

“No one.”

“Anyway, you’re probably right. Keep on with your plans. The bustle of the big city, the camaraderie on campus, compared to what’s happening around here I’m sure it will all seem like a breath of fresh air.”

“I think that’s what I need,” Wilf said.

Wilf and Clarence shared a quiet supper and afterwards Clarence went into the study to do some work. Wilf followed him in and began to read the evening paper. Everything began to feel surprisingly familiar. After a while Wilf closed his eyes and listened to his father turning over pages, the scratch of his fountain pen. This was how it used to be, he thought to himself, me sitting on one of the leather chairs, my feet hardly touching the floor, reading a book or playing with something and listening to my father working away.