Fanatics (26 page)

“Don’t move,” I croaked.

Gasping and groaning, he crawled toward the bag.

“I said stop.”

Still he fought his way across the bare ground, his fingers scratching at the soil. I raised the shovel and slammed the rounded side of the blade down on the back of his head. There was the clang of a frying pan hitting a stovetop. The terrorist collapsed and lay still.

I stood beside him, panting, searching for balance. Threw aside the tool and fell to my knees. Pressed my fingers against his neck. Found a pulse. Crawled clumsily across the dirt, blood dripping off my cheek, leaving a trail. Unzipped the gym bag and pulled it open. A machine pistol similar to the one in his photo lay on a bed of full bullet clips, a cluster of grenades at each end.

I staggered back to him as if struggling through thigh-deep water, my legs continually swept from under me by the roar of surf in my ears. I leaned close, caught the faint rasp of his breathing. Heard playful music in the distance, and crashing waves. Zipped up the bag, dragged it to a tree, and dropped it behind the trunk, desperate to hide it from him. Slogged back toward the cabin platform. Lowered myself to the planks to rest, just for a minute. No. Can’t rest. Gotta find Raphaella. But I couldn’t get up. I teetered on the edge of the deck, then toppled into the waves. Plunged beneath the water and down, the tiger-striped green bottom of the lake shimmering, lit by bursts of coloured light.

I
WAS STARING
into the face of a monster.

Dark hair, spiky and dishevelled. A shaved patch across the skull from the right temple past the ear, a vivid stitched-up slash not quite hidden by a bloodstained bandage. A black eye swollen shut, puffed cheeks bruised and discoloured. Fresh scabs on nose, left cheek, and chin, bright red against pale skin.

I handed the mirror back to the nurse. “Call Hollywood,” I croaked. “Tell them to hold off on the screen test.”

I didn’t remember much more of my semi-conscious ride in the ambulance than the banging of doors, being lifted and lowered, prodded and jabbed, but I recalled waking up briefly to tsunamis of pain rolling through my skull. Later—hours? days?—brain fogged by dope, I saw light in a window. My hands had sprouted needles attached to tubes leading aloft to plastic bladders of liquid—one
clear, one dark red—suspended from a rack. A tall nurse stood beside my bed, unclipping wires from my head, removing sticky patches, pushing a machine out the door, coming back with a little white paper cup.

“Take these,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”

“Raphaella,” I mumbled.

Something squeezed my upper arm. I heard my father’s voice beside me.

“She’s fine. No one was hurt,” he soothed. “Thanks to you.”

Later, pain-wracked, I floated in a dream-like state. A small black-robed man drifted past. The odours of earth and moss wafted from the shore. Gunfire crackled in the distance. Something thick and wet was smeared on my face around my eye and over my nose and chin and cheek. Gentle fingers smoothed warm paste on my skin.

A commanding voice in the background. “Here! Who are you? What do you think you’re doing!”

A face in the dark above me—the features, I would have sworn, of Raphaella’s mother.

Now things seemed normal—almost.

“You’ll be your regular, handsome self in no time,” the nurse announced merrily, returning the mirror to the drawer in the nightstand beside the bed. “Let me prop you up a little straighter. You’re drooping.”

A motor hummed, then the nurse bashed enthusiastically at the pillows behind my head for a few seconds. “Comfy?” Without waiting for an answer she headed out the door.

“You have visitors,” she called over her shoulder.

I had been in Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital for two nights, and this morning I was beginning to feel almost normal,
although the mirror had hinted otherwise. My head, still aching a little, had cleared. I was hungry. I guessed that was a good sign.

Raphaella came through the door first, a vision more healing than any medicine, wearing a fire engine red T-shirt and black jeans. My parents trailed behind her, smiling, wearing that parental expression that said “We’re not worried about you; we just look like we are.”

Raphaella leaned over me. I could smell her hair and her skin, and I felt tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.

“I want to kiss you,” she said. “Where’s your mouth?”

A
S THE MORNING PASSED
and we waited for the hospital’s grinding bureaucracy to release me officially, Mom, Dad, and Raphaella brought me up to date.

“They got the guy,” Mom began. She related that in response to her call the cops had employed a silent approach—meaning no sirens—as they descended on Geneva Park. The Rama First Nation officers got there first, finding two unconscious men lying in the dirt. They had cuffed both of us before more cops charged onto the scene in a cloud of dust. The bag holding the gun and ammo was discovered minutes later. By the time the ambulances arrived police had sorted out the good guy from the bad guy and I was on my way to the hospital. Where they took the terrorist, no one knew.

“You have a concussion,” Mom went on, “and a bad cut on your head. Twenty-one stitches. You’ll have headaches for a few days, but the doctor assured us you’re all right.”

“That shiner is a doozy, but all in all, no worries,” Dad added. But his expression said “We were scared to death.”

“None of us in the auditorium had a clue what was going on outside,” Raphaella told me. “The show was a huge hit—the kids loved it—and with the music and the roars of laughter and the applause, it was mayhem in the auditorium. After the final curtain calls I went outside looking for you, and there was no hint that something serious had happened, that we had all been within an inch of our lives. Then I noticed a lot of cops moving around, a few hanging yellow
DO NOT CROSS
tape across the pathway to the cabins, and I realized something was going on. I still can’t get my head around it. We could all be dead right now.”

“We tried to call Raphaella to warn her,” Mom went on. “But you had her phone, remember? I sent you the photo?”

“There’s a publication ban on the details connected with the incident, ordered by a judge,” Dad said. “The official story is that a man with a history of mental illness was arrested at Geneva Park. That’s it. Your mom has been helping the police a little, and you’ll have to give a statement in a few days, when you’re feeling up to it.”

“And after you’ve talked things over with our lawyer,” Mom added. “We can discuss all that when you’re home. I just hope the police don’t find the cellphone with the terrorist’s picture in it. That could cause us problems.”

“The phone’s safe,” I said. “During the fight, it fell between the boards of the deck at the cottage door. I erased the image.”

“And now, Annie,” Dad said, “I think you and I should go to the cafeteria and have a cup of their horrible tea.”

After the door had hissed shut behind my parents, Raphaella sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand.

“Your dad says you should get a medal. You’re a hero.”

“I’m no such thing.”

I told her everything that had taken place after I left her in the auditorium.

“When I finally worked out who he was and what he intended to do, I was petrified. All I could think about was that huge room full of kids—and you—and pictures I’ve seen on the
TV
news when somebody goes into a school or someplace with a gun. I didn’t know
what
to do. I said something stupid to him, and he turned around and hurled the shovel and hell broke loose. It was a fluke, the way it turned out. It could just as easily have gone the other way.”

“Maybe your dad thinks you’re brave because of what you didn’t do.”

“What’s that?”

“Run away.”

I
HAD BEEN HOME
a couple of days when the cops telephoned and asked me to come in to make a statement and answer some questions. By then my constant headache, the jungle drum beating in the background, had faded, although my face still looked as if I’d stayed in the boxing ring one round too many.

My parents were having their five o’clock glass of wine together on the patio when I got off the phone, and when I told them about the upcoming interview they exchanged
glances. My dad was up to speed on everything by that point. Mom had been in a bad mood lately. I didn’t blame her. A judge had clapped a total ban on publication of any aspect of the story. Mom’s exclusive—at least for the time being—had gone out the window. So much for freedom of the press.

“We’d better go over this together,” Mom cautioned. “When are you due at the cop shop?”

“Day after tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.”

“I’ll call Mabel Ayers and see if you can get in to see her tomorrow,” Dad said, getting up and going into the kitchen.

“Do I really need to talk to a lawyer?” I asked my mother.

“I can’t believe you asked that,” Mom replied.

Long experience as an investigative reporter had left her with a schizophrenic attitude toward police forces in general. She respected cops, knew their jobs were difficult in ways the public did not understand, agreed we needed them. “They’re unappreciated,” she would say. But she had also seen cops fudge evidence to get a conviction and even lie in court, under oath. She had, within the walls of our house, renamed the
RCMP
the
RCLC
—Royal Canadian Lies and Coverups.

“You have to be prepared for what they’re going to ask you, that’s all,” she said, putting down her wine glass. “They may try to trick you. And Mabel will be helpful.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
she and I drove to the city and met with Mabel Ayers, a chubby middle-aged woman with a small, messy office and a phone that rang constantly. The morning after that, I drove over to the
OPP
headquarters and met with three inspectors who represented, together, eleven letters of the alphabet—
CSIS
,
RCMP
, and
OPP
. The
Rama First Nation cops who had arrested the paintball terrorist weren’t represented.

I was nervous. The two males wore dark blue suits, one with a red tie and one with a red-and-blue tie. They were clean-shaven, their hair clipped short. The woman—
OPP
—had on a dark grey pantsuit and wore her sand-coloured hair short. They sat across a big table from me, each with a newish file folder and a pad and ballpoint pen. It seemed more like a business meeting than an interrogation. Mom had warned me to keep my wits sharp. I jumped right in with the question Mabel had told me to ask first.

“Are you recording this interview on audio or video?”

RCMP
frowned, then exchanged glances with the others. “This isn’t a formal interview, Garnet. And no, we’re not recording you.”

“On video
or
audio,”
CSIS
added. “Now, Garnet—”

“So I’m not under investigation?”

A look of irritation crossed
CSIS
’s face.

Mom had warned me that they’d call me by my first name, and she had been right. It was a technique to make me feel at ease so I’d trust them, and at the same time it emphasized that they were in control. They had introduced themselves using surnames only, but I was Garnet.

OPP
tried her luck. “Garnet, this is just a chat. A conversation. We think you can help us fill in a few blanks, that’s all. Okay?”

I nodded.

Under questioning, I related that I had taken a walk around the grounds of Geneva Park, waiting for the show to start, when I noticed a man in a groundskeeper’s uniform emerging from the woods with a shovel in one hand and a
duffle bag in the other. When I asked him what he had been doing in the woods he attacked me.

“I was just being nosy, I guess. I didn’t expect him to clobber me.”

From the time he bonked me with the shovel I didn’t remember much, I told them, except that I was mad and wanted to hit him back. I answered their questions truthfully but volunteered nothing. They didn’t ask me if I’d ever seen the guy before. Why would they?

“Is he hurt bad?” I asked.

“He’ll live. Do you remember opening the duffle bag?” the woman enquired.

“No.”

“Or putting it behind a tree?” one of the men—
CSIS
—asked.

“No.”

“So,”
RCMP
summed up, “you had no idea that you had saved the lives of a couple of hundred people?”

“No.”

I had been afraid they’d grill me about Mom’s phone call to the cops, the one weak spot in my story. But she had said in her formal statement that she deduced the youth summit had been the terrorists’ target all along, and with the show opening that evening—which she knew about because her son’s girlfriend was stage manager—she alerted police out of caution. Her version of events sounded pretty thin to me, but she emphasized that we had to stick with it. I guessed it had satisfied them because my interview came to an end with no hint that they were sceptical of Mom’s version. In unison the three inspectors got to their feet, and when I followed suit they thanked me for coming and wished me a speedy recovery from my injuries.

Just as I turned toward the interview room door the
CSIS
inspector said, “It’s quite a coincidence, though, isn’t it?”

I almost laughed. How often had I seen this same ploy in detective movies? The bad guy thinks he’s fooled the detective with his lies. The polite cop thanks him and is about to leave when he stops, as if a stray thought has struck him. He turns and says to the suspect, “Oh, one more thing. It’s not important, but …” Then the bad guy, his guard down, spills the beans.

But I hadn’t told any lies. I turned back toward the three suits, stood silent and waited.

“Your mother is an investigative reporter,”
CSIS
went on. “She’s the one who broke the story about the Severn Ten. She appears to have a lot of information about them.”