The Kingfisher Secret

by AnonYMous

  “Do you think he is lonely?”

  Jana looked at Elena. “He has the dog.”

  Kristína, in boyish short pants and a T-shirt, was tramping along the river with Petr and his German pointer named Hektor. After three weeks in rural Czechoslovakia Kristína’s arms were covered in bug bites and her knees were scraped.

  “You’re not worried about him, Mom?”

  “Of course I am. He says things.”

  “What things?”

  “This is not our house, Elenka. Not really. They can hear us, you know that. Your father used to be disciplined. Now he’s risking everything.”

  “How? What does he say?”

  “That he should have fought for you. That he thinks you’re in some sort of American hell.” Jana looked around, as though someone might be listening. “He says things about Anthony, about Sergei.”

  “I’ll speak to him.”

  Her mother smiled, as though the problem was now solved. “Should we switch to beer? I could have a beer.”

  Elena went into the house for the beer. The sun shone in the kitchen, which was large enough for a staff to prepare meals for twelve. One of the Emperor Franz Joseph’s lawyers had built it as his retirement home, and it had remained in his family until the government had seized it, and Jana had decorated it with all of the opulence a well-connected family was allowed. In the communist system the house and land made no sense, but it was far enough away from both Prague and Mladá Boleslav that no one had denounced it as a symbol of aristocracy and greed. Besides, anyone who cared to know about the estate would understand it was granted to the Kliment family by forces that should not be questioned—at least in public.

  That evening, her last in Czechoslovakia this year, Elena strolled along the river with her father after Kristína was in bed. Petr had insisted on tucking her in and singing songs to her until she fell asleep. The two of them had a special connection; she spoke Czech with him and showed a genuine interest in his outdoor passions.

  “Mom says you’re spending most of your time alone.”

  He shrugged.

  “Is everything okay, tatínku? You seem sad.”

  The river moved gently around a corner, and an animal—maybe a muskrat—slipped into the water. Hektor sprinted after it and barked. The dog was so well trained that all Petr did was snap his fingers and he heeled, returning to his master’s side.

  “Sad is not quite the word.”

  “Is it Kristína? That you don’t see her enough?”

  “It is not how I imagined life as a grandfather.”

  “I’m sorry to be so far away.”

  “You’re sorry?” He took her hand in his and stopped her. While he was not yet sixty, there was something of the old man about him. His face was permanently tanned from being outside even in winter, and he was thin and muscular. “Sweetheart, I am the one who is sorry. Sorry beyond reckoning. This is my fault.”

  “What is?”

  “I let him come for you. I let him take you.”

  “There was no choice. The moment he arrived, this was inescapable.”

  “A man of courage fights for his children.”

  “You would be in prison, probably dead. Mom and I would still be suffering.”

  “I believe in the republic. I do.”

  “Dad…”

  “But look what they’ve done to you.”

  She laughed. “I live in a penthouse apartment in New York City. I lead the design team for a major car manufacturer.”

  Petr raised his eyebrows. “Elenka. I know who you are.”

  She took his hand and squeezed it. They continued walking.

  “My only job was to protect you, and I failed. I know you have spared me the worst of what they do to you. But I imagine it. I see it in sweet Kristína, the product of all this, and they will do it to her too. They own her just as they own all of us.”

  “I don’t know what you imagine, tati, but it is wrong. I love my daughter and I am challenged in my job. They do not ask much of me.”

  “What if you fail, if Anthony fails? What about your interests? The interests of Kristína? The more you love her, we love her…” He released Elena’s hand, took a tissue out of his pocket, and touched his eyes. “Elenka, they can take all of this away in an instant. They can make us all disappear if they think we are the faintest risk to them.” He stopped and turned to face her, his eyes a mess of tears. “It is unbearable, what I have allowed. When I close my eyes at night, I think of hunting him and killing him.”

  Elena shivered with fear. “Never say it out loud, please, tatínku.”

  “If we do not defeat these men, Elenka, they will defeat us. It is unbearable, unbearable.”

  She took his hand again. “Listen to me. They can’t be defeated. I am happy to bear it for us all. Please, not a word of this. Do you promise? Never again.”

  29

  MONTREAL, 2016

  Grace climbed the outdoor stairs to her second-floor apartment on Saint-Christophe and opened her door to the scent of natural gas. She could only smell the slow leak from her old stove when she returned from a few days away from the city, and for her a faint whiff of gas had come to represent Montreal, along with Québécois swear words, the cross on top of the hill they called a mountain, and the sweet dense bagels of her neighborhood.

  “Zip?” She dropped the box of her accumulated career on the kitchen table. “Kitty?”

  It was unlike her but Manon might have accidentally let Zip out on one of her feeding visits. Zip was an inside girl but Saint-Christophe was an unusually safe place for wandering cats. Even if Zip were to be outside for weeks, someone would feed her. Grace opened her back fire escape door and shook the vacuum pack of all-natural salmon treats she spent too much of her salary on.

  “Zip!”

  She waited to hear the familiar tingle of her bell collar before she called out again. One of her neighbors, a sculptor from Mali named Sekou, sat smoking on his fire escape next door. In French, Grace asked if Sekou had seen Zip.

  “This is the fat orange one?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will keep watch.”

  Grace closed the door, crossed the kitchen, and returned to the hall. At the front door she shook the bag of treats. “Zip!”

  Nothing. She texted Manon.

  When did you last feed Zip?

  Manon responded almost instantly.

  Two days ago? Yesterday? When did we chat on the phone?

  Why, is she even fatter now?

  Grace grabbed a broom from the kitchen closet and held it up like a staff. Her stomach had gone sour in Florida and it had turned worse in Steadman Coe’s office. Now it felt like she had eaten razor blades. Slowly she walked into her bedroom. Maybe Zip had gotten herself stuck somewhere? Manon had made her bed too, and had artfully arranged her pillows.

  No Zip.

  “Please, please, please, no,” Grace whispered.

  In the bathroom she went straight to the toilet. The seat was down. She lifted it and there were no gifts of stalker piss.

  Relieved, she turned to sit on the toilet and stopped herself. She never left the shower curtain closed over the bathtub. It made the room feel small. She counted the water dripping from the spout and twelve seconds elapsed between every drop. Manon had washed her dishes and she had made her bed but there was no way she had taken a bath.

  There was no other sound in the apartment but Grace was not sure she had secured both the front and back doors so now she locked the bathroom door. She lifted the broom in her right hand and with her left she grabbed an end of the waxy shower curtain and opened it. Her orange cat was floating on the surface.

  She climbed over the edge of the tub into the cold bath in her jeans and sweater. It was so full the water slopped over the side onto the wooden floor, but Grace did not care as she held Zip and told her what she always told her, that she was the best kitty, her best friend.

  The buzzer rang. Then it rang again.

&nb
sp; Grace stood up out of the bath and with Zip still in her arms she walked dripping to the front door, opened it and stood shivering in the entrance. As the wind had promised, the rain had turned to wet blobs of snow.

  William lowered his carry-on bag to the wooden platform at the top of the outdoor stairs, opened his arms to take her or Zip into them, and then he reconsidered and stepped around her and sprinted into the apartment. He slipped in a puddle, talked to her, talked to himself, and ran back with two towels. One he wrapped around Grace, who had not registered any of the words he had said. With the other towel he coaxed Zip out of her arms and wrapped the cat, stiff as a loaf of bread, and put her on the blue velvet footstool Grace had bought at the St-Michel Flea Market.

  Together they looked down at Zip. Then William ran out, dragged his bag inside, and closed the door. In the bathroom he drained the tub and, talking all the while, began filling it again. He used several other towels to sop up the water from the floors and then he led Grace into the bathroom, the window and mirrors steaming now, and directed her to remove her wet clothes. She let him help her.

  It wasn’t until Grace was in the hot bath that the sadness and frustration bloomed in her and she finally allowed herself to cry. Zip had been with her for six years, since she was a kitten.

  “It’s all because of my selfishness,” she sobbed.

  “What? No.”

  “They warned me. I didn’t listen.”

  “You think they did this?”

  “A cat does not drown itself, William. They already killed Katka and her father. They tried to kill me. They said it: everyone I love.”

  She could not bring Zip back to life. She also knew that three months’ severance pay would not last long. If she stopped writing the book, she would get her job back, protect her mother, protect Jason and his family, and sleep without worry. She could just send William away, save him from this, and turn it all off. Someone else would figure this out, a producer from 60 Minutes or Seymour Hersh, and Grace would read it and watch it and feel exactly the way she had felt since graduating university: that eventually, one day, she would get her chance.

  She wrapped herself in another towel and made her way into her bedroom. What would it take? She could write a note: “You win. I give up,” staple it to her front door, and crawl under the covers and sleep for a week.

  “Grace. Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  A minute passed, though she could tell William was still standing in the hall because the old hardwood creaked under his weight. Now and then, since her fortieth birthday, on the verge of sleep, it struck Grace that she had already made all her big choices. Though she always felt young enough to start over, as a lawyer or a schoolteacher or the CEO of a technology concern, that naïve and hopeful part of her life was over. Outside the movies, there was no such thing as reinvention. This was it! All she could do now was play in the box she had created for herself.

  There was a thin pair of boxing gloves next to her bed, from the women’s self-defense program at the YMCA. Grace had bought them in a glow of endorphins immediately after the final class of level one. Caught up in a wave of silly ambition, she hugged her fellow classmates, signed up for level two, and bought the gloves.

  William knocked gently on her door. “Would you like me to leave?”

  In the full-length IKEA mirror hanging on the inside of her closet door Grace looked as tired and defeated as she felt. Even now her instinct was to call Zip for a cuddle. She did not often look at herself naked—really look—and she avoided it now. Her sheets were soft flannel, worn in over many years, and she had splurged on the natural rubber mattress and the goose down duvet. In the crushing Montreal winter she was never too cold in this bed.

  She could say yes, sorry, go and crawl into the bed. No need for pajamas. This is what her body wanted. Instead she straightened her posture, lifted her chin. It was not as though she had lost the courage or the confidence of her youth. It had always been there, beneath the surface, waiting to be coaxed or called or forcibly dragged into the life she was actually living. It was the way some people dieted or stopped smoking: I’ll start next week, they told themselves. Next week forever. She was going to start now.

  William knocked again. “Can I come in?”

  “Just a minute.” She thought about the rest of their morning. “Can you go knock on the door of the apartment below? The superintendent lives there. His English isn’t terrible. Ask if you can borrow a shovel.”

  30

  MONTREAL, 2016

  On a beautiful autumn day there were hundreds of people in and around Parc La Fontaine. In an unwelcome snowstorm on the first of November it was deserted. Grace did not want to blemish the park in any way so she dug a hole in the sandy soil under some weeds along the pond, then lowered Zip into her grave and stood over her a while.

  “Did you want to say something?” said William.

  Grace shook her head. “Zip knew how I felt about her.” William took the shovel to bury Zip, and while he did, Grace imagined scenarios of revenge. One set of murderers had burned up in Florida but there were more men out there, more men without the capacity for empathy.

  It was a fifteen-minute walk to the Grande Bibliothèque, with a quick stop at Grace’s apartment to drop off the shovel. The wet, swirling snow made it difficult to see, and William had to remove and wipe his glasses every few blocks. Grace watched for any sign of the cat killers. Her own paring knife was not as good as the one in her Airbnb in Prague but it was plenty sharp and she hoped to see them.

  The Grande Bibliothèque was a striped monster of a building. Grace had been inside many times, for work and for fun, as it was on her way home from the office and a respite from both the hottest and the coldest evenings of the year. She read novels and magazines, attended lectures, and sometimes just stood in the beige of the place to stare out the window and daydream.

  On one of those evenings she had met Manon, who took singing lessons. She’d handed Grace a postcard invitation to a three-song concert she and some fellow students were giving in a small bistro on Rue Saint-Denis. After the concert, they had a drink and it turned out they had books, divorce, wine, and a lively middle-point between introversion and extroversion in common.

  The moment Manon spotted her, from behind her desk, her eyes opened wide and she hopped over the gate that separated the archivists from the people. She hugged Grace, and despite her headache from crying in the bath Grace cried some more.

  “They killed her.” She hid her sob in Manon’s turtleneck sweater.

  “Who? Killed who?”

  “Zip. My lovely Zip. I don’t know who did it but when I find them…”

  “Jesus, Grace, what does that mean? I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I, Manon, not really. The moment I can tell you, I will.”

  William handed Grace a clean white handkerchief and then he shook Manon’s hand. “William Kovály. London South Bank University. I’m working with Grace.”

  “On what, Monsieur Kovály?”

  “Call me William, please.”

  “Do you speak French?”

  “No, madame.”

  Normally, Manon would now make a number of comments, in French, about William’s age and height and relative handsomeness, local wisdom about what long noses can portend in the bedroom, his lack of a wedding ring. Only Zip was dead and Grace was still wiping her eyes.

  They told Manon who they were looking for and she led them to her small, orderly office where Grace read her email from Jean-Yves de Moulin and the newspaper interview with Elena about her husband. The request was easy enough: they needed all the marriage records from Greater Montreal between 1972 and 1977.

  Manon looked up Elena Klimentová, Elena de Moulin, and both Elena and Josef Straka. “Sorry. Nothing.”

  “But if Elena and Josef got married, it would be in your system?”

  “Absolutely. Unless someone took it away before we digitized it.”

  “To
ok it away?”

  Manon winked. “Let me check.”

  She picked up her phone and dialed a number. When someone answered, Manon launched into a friendly conversation in French.

  As they spoke, Grace turned to William. Like his nose, his feet seemed too large for his body. She recalled his arrival at her apartment, how he had dealt with her and with Zip. William had plenty of capacity for empathy. For a moment Grace was stricken with the desire to reach for him.

  Grace listened to Manon’s phone conversation. While he wiped his glasses again, William asked Grace to translate. She explained Manon was checking with the head office of civil records in a suburb of Quebec City.

  “There is a problem.” Manon put her hand over the receiver.

  “What sort?”

  “Another moment.” Then Manon said variations of yes, I understand, and how strange for a while, dished an Oh là là là là là là, and then thanked her colleague.

  When she hung up the phone her eyebrows were up.

  “What?”

  “There are empty files on all of those names you gave me. You can find plenty on Monsieur Straka in more recent years.” She looked at her notepad. “He was married in 1979 and again in 1985, divorced twice. Neither of the women was named Elena.”

  “And the empty files?”

  “Removed, mon chou.”

  “By whom?”

  Manon shook her head. “Almost no one has the power to remove a file.”

  “But someone did?”

  “The premier ministre might have the authority. God? A thief? A cat murderer? My God, Grace, who are you dealing with?”

  * * *

  —

  The snow continued to fall so they called an Uber to reach their next destination, the Montreal Herald. Out the back window of the car she tried to watch for anyone following them but there were only two car lengths of visibility.

  On the walk to Parc La Fontaine Grace had told William what had happened to the murderers in Florida. Now, in the back of the Uber, he whispered new questions. “Who are they working for, do you think?”