Scare the Light Away (30 page)

He was making wild demands, a helicopter, a flight to Cuba. Money. Jim McKenzie.

Unexpectedly he handed the phone to me.

“Hello?”

“Inspector Eriksson here, Ms. McKenzie. Are you people all right?”

“For the time being.”

Kyle snatched the phone out of my hands and threw it across the room. “Don’t want to talk to her no more, anyway.”

“But how will they tell you when your helicopter arrives?” Jason asked, his voice so small Kyle didn’t even hear the question.

“The cop said my father’s out there,” Kyle said. “Do you see my dad?”

I looked. “No.”

Kyle sat back down again. He checked his watch.

“Do you see your brother?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Do you see your brother?” A scream.

“No.”

“Then it’s time. Who wants to go first?” He pointed the gun at each of us in turn. Three terrified middle-aged women huddling together on the couch in a century-old farmhouse.

“No mister, don’t,” Jason cried out, his sweet little face convulsed with horror. He leapt to his feet and started across the room. Kyle turned his head at the sound, his gun arm followed automatically. Kimmy was closest and with a speed that mocked her considerable bulk, she flew across the room and shoved Jason to the floor.

A shot rang out. The air burned and our ears screamed in protest.

Kimmy’s eyes opened wide. She looked down to watch a red stain spreading across her chest, the fresh blood mingling with that of my dog, already drying.

Aileen screamed and pulled the knife out from under her sweater. She charged Kyle like the mad woman she no doubt was at that moment. He was still sitting down, as stunned by the shooting as the rest of us. Aileen leapt on him and the chair fell backward, taking Kyle, Aileen, and the flashing knife with it.

“Run, Jason,” I screamed. “Run. Don’t look back.” The struggling bodies lay between me and the fireplace. No chance to reach the poker. I scooped an ornate iron candelabrum off the side table without a thought. I heard the door opening, feet pounding on the wooden deck, Jason yelling, men shouting. Aileen and Kyle were spread across the floor, a tumble of twisting bodies amid the scraps of the broken chair. Aileen lay across his legs, her knife buried into his fleshy side. Painful but not likely to keep him immobilized. Her fists beat into his face, every blow echoing her relentless screams as she pounded her terror and rage and anger into his ugly mug. But he still clutched the gun, struggling to get his arm out from under Aileen and into firing position.

I lifted my arms high overhead, gathered all the strength of which I was capable, and brought the candelabrum down on his head. Kyle’s face was twisted with hate, battered by the force of Aileen’s rage, his nose pouring blood, the delicate skin around the right eye already swelling, but he still managed to release a stream of profanities at me. His right arm came free, the gun swung upward. I hit him again. He lay still. I held the candelabrum high overhead, waiting for another movement, convinced it was a trick.

Strong arms pulled Aileen off the limp body; a black uniform crouched beside me. “You can put that down, Ms. McKenzie. We’ll take it from here.” Rigoloni. I handed her the candelabrum.

My legs wouldn’t work. I crawled across the room on my hands and knees. By the time I reached Kimmy the paramedics were there.

“Is she okay?” I whispered.

“We’ll get her to the hospital right away, ma’am,” a shiny-faced young man told me. His partner crouched over Kimmy, her competent fingers opening a big bag at her side.

“Come, Rebecca. Let them do their work.” Rigoloni lifted me to my feet. “Let’s get out of their way.”

My legs buckled, and the constable supported me. The room was suddenly full, and in all the confusion I couldn’t quite make out what was happening. Police officers were piling into the room, some carrying guns and rifles; people shouted code words into radios; paramedics worked hard over Kimmy’s still body. They looked so young that I hoped they knew how to do their jobs. Eriksson and Reynolds brushed past us, shouting orders.

Rigoloni led me outside. The rain had stopped and a weak spring sun was trying to come out. I turned my face up to feel the caress of its gentle rays.

“Jason? Where’s Jason?”

“He’s fine. Look over there, to your right. See, there he is.”

I couldn’t quite see Jason, but it was easy to figure out where he was. His parents formed a tight circle around him, while Shirley and Al made a second circle around them. Everyone was crying, sobbing uncontrollably.

Jimmy stepped in front of me. Chrissie from Aileen’s store gripped his arm so tightly that her fingers were turning white. Without much thought Aileen had invited her assistant to come for lunch. But she arrived late—lucky Chrissie, luckier than Kimmy, who arrived on time for a simple lunch date, the offer extended grudgingly.

“Becky, where’s Aileen?” Jimmy’s voice brimmed with panic; his gaze darted back and forth. Then, like the sun coming out after a month of Vancouver rain, they cleared, and I looked behind me. Two men were supporting Aileen, half-carrying her out of the house. Streaks of red blood covered her dress; her hair had fallen out of its pins to tumble around her shoulders like an abandoned bird’s nest after a winter storm. Jimmy rushed forward and gathered her into his arms. The police stepped back. Chrissie burst into tears.

“Thank God.” My father stood beside me. “Thank God. You gave us a few bad minutes there, my girl.”

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, Dad. Let’s find out where they’ve taken Sampson and then I need to lie down.”

“Not quite yet, Ms. McKenzie,” Rigoloni said with an apologetic smile. A hostage-taking, charging the culprit, guiding the victims to safety. Yet her hair remained immaculate. Not a strand escaped from the long French braid. “They’re waiting for you at the hospital.”

“I’m fine, thank you. I need to go and find my dog now.”

“The doctors would like to check you out first. You’ve had quite a shock.”

Another smiling young man in a blue paramedic’s uniform stepped up and lightly touched my arm. “Come this way please, ma’am.”

I pulled back. “No. I want my dog.”

“You go to the hospital, Becky,” Dad said. “I’ll check on Sampson.”

“I’ll help your father, Rebecca,” Chrissie said. “We’ll make sure she’s looked after. You go along now.”

“Okay.” It was easier to agree than to argue. I allowed the young man to lead me to an ambulance. I wanted to sit in the front, I wasn’t hurt, no need to go in the back. But, as he explained with a shrug of his shoulders, those were the rules. He opened the doors and I started to clamber up.

The atmosphere around me changed, nothing definite, nothing I could put my finger on, but everyone shifted, their attention diverted. We watched as a stretcher was carried out of the farmhouse, a paramedic and a police officer at either end. A body lay on it, perfectly still. The female paramedic walked beside, holding an IV line high. They moved quickly, their movements smooth and efficient, not wasting a second. The stretcher was loaded into the back of another ambulance. The paramedic with the IV clambered in, and the doors slammed shut. The police officer pounded on the side and the ambulance pulled away, lights flashing, sirens blaring. A police car preceded it, cutting a path through the crowds of the hard-working and the merely curious.

“Is that Kimmy?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Will she be okay?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. They’ll tell you more at the hospital.”

“I hate it when people call me ma’am.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Chapter 49

They said that this was the biggest funeral held in Hope River in living memory. People came from all over the district and some a great deal further than that. They packed the tiny church to the rafters and beyond. Outside, there was standing room only on the neatly trimmed emerald green lawn, in the warm spring sunshine, among the blooming crocuses and white and yellow daffodils and the emerging tulips. My family sat close to the front, directly behind the family. All except for me. I had a special place right at the back. Sampson had been invited on the condition that she be taken outside immediately if she presented a problem. She wouldn’t. She looked rather odd, shaved all down one hip, exposing the jagged scar that ran across her right haunch to disappear under her belly. Her head was wrapped in a giant plastic cone to stop her from ripping out the stitches. I sat by the aisle and she sat beside me, her soft, warm body a solid, comforting presence against my leg.

Everyone was seated, and the minister stood at the lectern. But before he could open his mouth a murmur started outside and spread up the aisle, like an ice-choked river cracking apart at break-up. Wrapped in heavy black, a remnant of another age, Mrs. Taylor walked down the aisle, her head held high and her son at her side. Ryan gripped his mother’s arm, but his own head drooped self-consciously. His suit hung in loose folds on his lean frame; clearly it belonged to someone else. The packed crowd of mourners murmured their approval and shifted in their seats. Two more places were found.

My father sat at the front, his only son and eldest daughter on either side of him and then their spouses, children and grandchildren. Jason’s shoulders, confined in the funeral suit that had recently seen too much wear, shook with steady sobs. The rip in the trousers had been hastily repaired. His grandmother, my sister, wrapped an arm around him and held him close.

The minister took his place. “Friends,” he said, his voice as deep and solemn as his office, and the occasion, warranted. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Kimberly Wright Michaels.”

***

They served tea in the church hall after the interment. Kimmy’s children wandered about the big room, lost and confused, while the entire district pressed sandwiches and tea and heartfelt condolences on them. Mrs. Wright, close to the age of my own late mother, sat at the front of the hall, under the basketball net, on an uncomfortable fold-away auditorium chair. She was in a state of such profound shock that it was unlikely she felt the hard seat under her scrawny bottom or tasted the overly sweet tea in her cup. She had made a brief, near heroic, attempt to organize the funeral reception but collapsed under the weight of her grief. The women of the church calmly stepped in, guided Mrs. Wright to one side, and took over.

I ate a tuna sandwich, beautifully prepared on thin, snow-white bread with the crusts cut off, without tasting a thing. Sampson was out in Aileen’s car, hopefully napping. She’d been an angel throughout the service, but the presence of food would certainly be her undoing. It had been Kimmy’s son, the rebellious Clint, who insisted on the dog being allowed to attend the service.

Driven by nothing but curiosity, Clint had gathered on the hill, among the rest of the sensation seekers, with a pair of powerful binoculars to watch the goings on down at the big house. He had taken a swallow of beer and tossed a joke to his friends when he saw his mother walk out of the house, covered with blood, stumbling under the weight of the big dog whose life she was in the process of saving. And then, to his unbelieving horror, she went back inside, as she had promised. Clint visited Sampson in the animal hospital every day, and he fought against convention like the grief-maddened thing he was to ensure that the big dog came to his mother’s funeral.

“Ms. McKenzie.” Inspector Eriksson greeted me. She was dressed in a different, but almost identical suit to the one she wore when we first met: lifeless brown but well cut out of good wool. Perhaps she had them tailored ugly, especially for her.

“Inspector. Nice of you to attend. But don’t you people only come to funerals when the murderer has yet to be found? Hoping he will return to the scene of the crime, so to speak?”

“Mrs. Michaels was a lovely woman. I know her mother and am here in my private capacity.”

I flushed. “My apologies. That was insensitive of me.”

“Don’t apologize, please. The more I hear of what went on in that house, the more impressed I am with all of you. And young Jason there…” We stopped talking to watch him rush by, a wicked smile on his face as he chased his squealing cousin Jessica past the refreshment table. His father reached out one hand and collared him. Jessica stuck out her tongue and disappeared into the crowd. “…not least of all.”

“I’m glad Mrs. Taylor came. And Ryan with her. It was brave of the both of them.”

“It was. You may not have heard, but Mr. Taylor has vacated the matrimonial home. Until the strain of the trial is over. Or so he says publicly.”

To no one’s surprise Mrs. Taylor and Ryan didn’t attend the reception. Kyle was being held without bail, charged with the murders of Jennifer Taylor and Kimberley Michaels. No one had seen Mr. Taylor since the arrest of his son.

“Afternoon, Inspector. Ready to go, Becky?” Jimmy appeared at my side.

“I’ve probably drunk all the tea and eaten all the tasteless sandwiches I can handle for one day. Nice talking to you, Inspector. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”

Eriksson burst into shouts of laughter. She had a deep, rolling laugh that had me grinning along, although my comment wasn’t all that funny.

Conversation paused and heads turned toward us. I glanced around, and for the first time I noticed that Jack Jackson was here, standing in a dark corner by himself tossing back the delicate sandwiches and beautiful pastries by the handful, and not watching me. No sign of his buddy Pete.

Jimmy collected Dad and we made our way to the door. Aileen hadn’t come. She was resting at home under her doctor’s orders, attended by Maggie so that Jimmy could come to the funeral.

I almost made it out the door before being cornered by Norma Fitzgerald “what was.” The high-school acquaintance I’d last seen tagging along in Kimmy’s wake at my mother’s funeral. Norma threw her arms around me and wept copious tears into my shoulder. I managed to disengage myself, murmuring about needing to take my father home to rest. Norma swore that we must keep in touch, sobbing all the while into a shred of tissue so thin it might flutter into the winds at any moment.

I climbed into the back of the car beside Sampson and gathered her onto my lap. The cone made the hug awkward, and she glared at me in reproach. But a rub of the tummy and all was forgiven.

Twilight was falling into what promised to be a lovely night.

“Feel like coming for a stroll down to the lake after dark?” I asked, scratching at Sampson’s favorite spot. She waved one leg in contentment. “One last chance to look at the stars in all their glory.”

“What, you don’t get stars in Vancouver?” Jimmy chuckled as he switched on the engine.

“Sure we do. Lots of them. But they’re hidden by the city lights, that’s all. We know they’re there.”

“Nine o’clock late enough?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Dad and I piled out of the car, and I helped Sampson jump down.

Jimmy continued on up the road, with a wave and a promise to meet me at the lake at nine.

“I have a few last-minute things to pack up, Dad,” I said. “Then I’ll join you in a drink, if you like.”

“Sounds good.” He pulled off his shoes and settled in front of the TV. Sampson curled up at his feet, trying to rest her head despite the invader-from-outer-space getup in which she was trapped. She wasn’t well enough to travel, the vet had told me. Flying was exceedingly stressful for dogs at the best of times, and in her condition… She left me to fill in the rest of the sentence. My boss had been wonderful about all the time I’d missed—and now another week tacked on for Kimmy’s funeral—but he’d reach the end of his sympathy mighty quick if I told him I had to stay in Ontario a bit longer because my dog wasn’t well enough to fly. So Sampson would remain behind with Dad for a month, then I would come back for her. It would be a tough month for us both. Me most of all.