Death Spiral (22 page)

“Not around here. Her husband did, but I think Sylvia had a falling out with them a few years ago, just after she got the news that Kyle had been killed. She was never the same. She just kind of let everything go. She had a good job in the general office at Parson’s and then one day she just up and quit, and after that she stayed to herself. She wasn’t an easy person to get along with.”

“Maybe she was just angry about the war, what had happened.”

“Not so much angry though. More just, not really there. It was hard to have a conversation with Sylvia, you were never sure if she was actually listening. And she could be abrupt.”

“I think you said she’d been drinking when she asked if Bradley could stay over?”

Cathy nodded. “I heard there was a bottle on the kitchen table too. I suppose you saw it.”

Wilf tried to remember. He could see Sylvia slumped over, her face barely discernible. He could see the gaping stove. Hear it hissing. Could feel his lungs on fire.

“I think I missed seeing the bottle,” Wilf said.

“And a full ashtray, Ted Bolton was telling everyone. She was a chain smoker. It’s a wonder she didn’t blow up the place. Maybe that would have been better. If the gas had blown up right away, maybe Bradley would have survived somehow.” Her eyes were looking puffy again. “I’ll never forgive myself for saying no.”

“That’s the strangest part, isn’t it? Not that she’d go through with killing herself, but that she’d turn on the gas when she knew her son was in the house.”

“Because she was too drunk by that time. And depressed. I think she must have been depressed for a long while but she covered it up with that ‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude of hers. And maybe she thought the gas wouldn’t reach him because he was upstairs. There was one of those old-fashioned grates in her kitchen ceiling, she must have forgotten about that.”

“How could she have forgotten that?”

“I don’t know, but she must have. My husband hates her now. He didn’t have much good to say about her before but now he really hates her. I can’t talk to him about any of this. He’s really upset. Because of Bradley.” Cathy examined the end of her cigarette. Tears were balancing themselves on the rim of her eyes. “After Bradley lost his father, Ivan kind of took his place. He said it was the only decent thing to do. They were quite the pair. He was a nice kid, lots of fun, one of those kids everyone likes. Ivan treated him just the same as Tommy. Even better than Tommy sometimes, if you ask me. God help me if I ever said anything about it though.” One of the tears tipped over and began to slide down her freckled cheek. “Ivan was always over there.”

“I thought you said he didn’t like Sylvia?”

“He did, and he didn’t, I guess.” Cathy was kneading her one hand and twirling her wedding ring around and around.

Wilf made a little square in the mud with the tip of his cane. He felt surprisingly calm now. As light as the sun-filled light in the park itself. A romantic entanglement, then, was that it? That ended badly?

“Ivan will kill me if I tell you.” She was looking back toward her two children. Tommy had gotten tired of running in circles and had jumped on the merry-go-round himself. Both children were lying on their backs looking up at the bluest sky.

“Tell me what?”

“I saw someone that night.”

“Who?”

“Some man I’ve never seen before. I don’t think I have, anyway. Marsha was crying out in her sleep and I picked her up and I was standing by the window and he came hurrying along from the direction of Sylvia’s house. There was this fancy white car parked around the corner. I hadn’t noticed it before. He got in and drove away.”

“It could have been anyone though,” Wilf said, “doing anything.”

“That’s what Ivan says. And that I should mind my own damn business. But it was three o’clock in the morning. And the man was in such a hurry.” Her face froze.

A man in workman’s coveralls was walking into the park.

“That’s my husband,” she said.

He strode by the swings and picked Marsha up off the merry-go-round. He was a small man. His face was so dark, covered with a few days’ growth of beard, that Wilf could hardly make out his expression. He held his child in his arms and stayed where he was halfway across the park, boots dug into the wet ground.

Tommy got off the merry-go-round and stood a little apart from his father.

“I’ve got to go,” Cathy said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Duncan hadn’t really planned it out. It just happened. The judge said there’d be a fifteen-minute recess, maybe he had to take a leak or something, and he got up and left the court. His own lawyer walked over from the table he’d been sitting at and said he had to go and make a phone call. He went out another door.

Duncan had noticed that there were three doors in all, the one the judge had come in, the one at the back behind the empty spectator benches that his lawyer had just used, and the one the young policeman had led him through from his cell down the hall.

There were three people left, too, the lawyer for the Crown who had been saying bad things about him, a woman who sat below the judge and had been writing everything down, and the policeman. After a moment the lawyer for the Crown walked past the spectator benches and out of the courtroom.

Duncan remained sitting in the prisoner’s dock. He had chains on his wrists but they’d taken his leg irons off the day before, just as soon as he’d arrived in Brantford from Hamilton. He snuck a look at the policeman. He was reading the funny pages. The older woman was still writing in her notepad. Duncan got up and walked out.

He heard the policeman yell something just as he went through the same door the lawyers had used. He was free now and moving just as quickly as he had the night he’d dived through his own kitchen window, racing down a hall, turning a corner and banging out a door marked Fire Exit. He came out on a rusty iron platform. A pair of wooden warehouses were listing against each other across a muddy lane. He swung down a ladder that didn’t even reach as far as the ground, jumped the rest of the way and made a run for the narrow gap between the buildings.

Duncan could hear the creak of the fire-escape door opening just as he plunged into the dark space. He had to maneuver sideways now, his face up against one of the buildings, shuffling over bits of wooden crates and pieces of rusting eavestroughs, stumbling over odorous mounds of soft and miscellaneous debris. The ground pitched downwards. He began to see massive posts, rotten-looking and mouldy, trying to hold the whole building up. Light began to stream into the narrow alleyway.

He came out the back into the sun and stood there blinking down a steep bank to the same river that ran through his own town. The familiar dank smell of it filled his nose. It was in flood, rampaging along in a wide, muddy boil.

Duncan slid down through melting snow and thick brush. When he reached the water’s edge he looked back up expecting to see the young policeman standing at the top of the slope. All he could see were the roofs of the two warehouses. He began to make his way up the river. Sometimes, where the bank was low, he had to wade into a waist-high and ice-cold swirl of water. Other times he had to crawl along on his hands and knees through almost impenetrable thickets, his chain dragging along underneath him, hanging up on jagged pieces of ice sometimes and throwing him down hard on the sopping ground. He could hear his own breathing now, high and harsh, over the rushing sound of the river. He could feel his chest heaving under his thin shirt.

He came to a place where he had to sneak past the backs of brick buildings. He could see fire escapes and trucks parked behind a row of stores. He could see some people walking along a sidewalk. Luckily they were paying no attention. Soon he was screened behind the tall winter-seared grass again.

He bumped against the rusting hulk of a car. He parted the grass and peered inside. The seats were bright green with slime and they had holes so big he could see rusty coils of wire. He stood there for a moment thinking about forcing the door open and hiding inside, but the old car seemed unsatisfactory somehow, the first place that that young policeman would look.

He continued on following the river upstream until he stumbled into a clearing beneath a railway bridge. He scrambled up to the top of a concrete abutment and wedged himself under some iron struts. He couldn’t find any comfortable way to rest there though. The concrete was harder than anything he’d ever laid on in his whole life and his wet clothes were pressing his skin and felt as cold as winter. A train rumbled across. He could see the gaps between the freight cars flickering right over his face. Everything shook; bits of rust and live cinders showered down on his bald head, the noise hurt his ears.

Duncan waited for the train to pass and then slid down off the abutment and moved on. He walked into a cluster of pine trees and noticed a large wooden box sitting on the far edge of a shadowy ravine. He had to wade across a cascading stream to get to it. The top was covered with leaves and moss and when he lifted it he could see a pump sitting at the bottom of a shallow hole. It was crusted with orange rust. Duncan could tell at a glance that it hadn’t pumped anything for a long while.

He walked along the ravine and began to break off pine boughs in what he hoped were places the policeman wouldn’t notice. He carried them back and stuffed them down the hole, weaving them around the pump and then over it. It took him three trips before he had the box filled close to the top. He hauled his huge bulk inside, sunk down in the boughs and lowered the lid.

This was a perfect place, the kind of place he’d always manage to locate when he was a boy. It wasn’t that dark, either, once he got used to it because of the cracks between the boards. When he put his eye to one of them he could see the river just down the slope from where he sat. He could hear it too, slipping along like the sound of a giant snake moving through dry grass. Duncan curled up as best he could and for the first time since he’d been arrested he felt peaceful. His old self.

Except he knew it had been a lot longer than that since he’d felt his old self. A long time ago. From before Basil first knocked on the shop door looking for work. He’d pronounced it “wirz,” standing there in oversized hand-me-downs like a boy dressed up in his father’s clothes. It took Duncan some time to figure out what he was saying. “Wirz pliz,” he’d said, in the strangest accent Duncan had ever heard.

He felt at peace now though. Finally. For one thing he knew his mother was close by somewhere. She always was. Somewhere.

He decided he’d wait until it grew dark. He knew there was a busy car bridge ahead of him, he’d seen it at the same time he’d seen the box. It had appeared so low it looked to be resting on the flooding river itself. He hoped that there’d still be room enough to crawl underneath. And then he should be close to the edge of the city. It seemed like he’d been travelling for a long time.

Duncan imagined the river valley would get broader once he was out in the countryside. More thickly wooded, too. He’d continue to follow along the shore, the water roiling by in the moonlight. And even if there wasn’t any moonlight, it wouldn’t matter. He was used to making his way through the dark. It was one of his most favourite things to do. And as he moved, he’d just keep telling himself that each step brought him that much closer to where he had to go. Soon he’d hear Babe whinnying a welcome. And Dandy stamping his feet and banging up against the stall the same way as always. And he’d run up to the stable and lift up the latch and push inside and they’d be standing right there smiling back at him as always, ears up, eyes bright and soft.

And he’d rest his face on Dandy’s nose. And on Babe’s nose. And feel their breath, sweet with hay.

And he’d be home.

* * *

More fortunate townspeople were standing at the edge of the smaller of the two rivers watching the water creep over other people’s lawns and cascade into basements. It did this almost every spring. Filled to its brim and unable to enter the larger river at a quick enough rate, it would invariably back up a hundred yards and then overflow.

Wilf limped along the edge of the flood. He could feel people shifting their gaze away from the muddy water as he passed by, watching him with a mixture of fascination and fear.

Wherever he went, there was death.

He wondered if Carole had arranged for the cottage yet. He wondered if her family’s basement was getting wet. She lived about three blocks farther along but at a higher elevation. He wondered whether Cathy Shepherd, seeing her husband coming into the park, had changed her story at the last moment.

It was too horrible to tell the truth. How could she have found the words? “I saw my husband hurrying home from Sylvia Young’s house that night.” And then what? “I think he murdered her.”

“Why?”

And she would have shaken her head. Shaken it. She wouldn’t have been able to find the words. Was that it?

She’d almost told him and then at the last moment she’d made up a story about a man in a fancy white car.

Wilf climbed up to the top of a bank that was managing to stay dry and looked across the river. There was a park for children on the other side, a much larger park than the one he’d just been sitting in with Cathy. It was under water too.

Cathy hadn’t really said anything about her husband though. Had she? Wilf stood there for a long time watching the river race by. Everything in his life seemed to be racing by. He turned away and started the long walk up the front hill.

It was past noon by the time he came back in through the side door. Clarence had moved from the study where he’d been working earlier in the morning. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a kind of half-bemused, half-startled look on his face.

“The river’s flooding,” Wilf said as he pried his muddy galoshes off.

“I just had the strangest visit.”

Wilf took off his coat and climbed into the kitchen. “With who?”

“Millie Telfer.”

Wilf walked past his father, crossed the hall into the study, picked up a half bottle of rye that was left from the previous night and carried it back into the kitchen.

“It’s only past noon,” his father said.

Wilf opened the bottle with his teeth, took down a glass from the cupboard and poured himself a shot. “Want one?”

“If you insist.”

Wilf got down another glass.

“This whole town’s going nuts,” Clarence said.

Wilf filled his father’s glass to the one-third mark and turned on the cold water. Clarence was a rye and water man. Wilf liked his rye neat. “Why do you think that?”

“It’s all these deaths the last couple of months. People don’t know what to think, so they’re thinking the stupidest, wildest things that could ever enter into their heads.”

“About me, you mean?”

Clarence looked genuinely shocked. “No. Not you.”

“Who then?”

“I mean Millie. What she said. What she’s thinking.”

Wilf handed the glass to his father, took a drink from his own and thought of his sleeping pills. His supply was dwindling. He’d have to go see Doc Robinson soon, not an encounter he was particularly looking forward to.

“She thinks Scarfe is having an affair. Jesus Christ, can you imagine that?”

Wilf couldn’t imagine that. Another affair. Just like Cathy Shepherd’s husband. Affairs all over the town.

“Is there a man on this earth less likely to be having an affair than Scarfe Telfer?”

The half-bemused, half-surprised expression settled back on Clarence’s face. “All he’s ever done is work all his life and go to church every other Sunday.”

Wilf took another sip and thought about taking an afternoon nap. One more glass of rye, complain that his hip was hurting, climb up the stairs and swallow the last two or three sleeping pills.

“It gets worse,” Clarence said, “much worse.”

He could lay there in a semi-haze. He could think of Cathy Shepherd’s husband standing there in the park like a dark hole in the world.

“She didn’t have anywhere else to turn,” Clarence was going on. “‘You’re an old friend, you know the law,’ she said to me.”

It was obvious that Cathy was afraid of her husband. Of course she was.

“She thinks he’s trying to poison her.”

Wilf looked at his father.

“Isn’t that the goddamn limit?” Clarence said. He got up from the table, drink in hand, and crossed over to look out the window into the backyard. “Wilf, what made you say people would be thinking about you?”

“Just my curious association with all these deaths. Haven’t you wondered?”

“No.” Clarence didn’t turn to look at him though. “They’re just coincidence.”

“Right.”

“And that’s my point. Everyone’s getting so goddamn jumpy in this town, they can’t accept coincidences. Scarfe was away on business the other night. Millie called, he wasn’t registered at the hotel he was supposed to be in and she noticed that half her sleeping pills were missing. Ergo, Scarfe is having an affair and is planning on slipping some pills into her nightcap and smothering her to death with her own pillow.”

“Is Scarfe still the secretary-treasurer at Parson’s?” Wilf asked.

“Sure.”

“Then he works in the general office.”

“That’s right.” Clarence turned to look at Wilf now.

Wilf didn’t notice. What he was seeing was Sylvia Young’s house. The gaping windows. The front door ajar. “What night did Millie call?”

“What?”

“The hotel.”

“I think she said Wednesday.”

“Of this week?”

“What’s it matter? Yes, I guess so.”