by L. R. Wright
She scrutinized him disapprovingly and glanced around his small office. Clearly, she would like to have asked to see his superior.
"He's the boss here, like I told you, Mrs. Harris,” said Sokolowski. "Go on. Tell him about when you went into the house. Sit down, why don't you?”
She sat in the black chair. She was wearing brown shoes with laces, and brown polyester slacks, and a brightly embroidered white short-sleeved sweater. . "This gentleman accompanied me,” she said, indicating Sokolowski. "and a good thing, too. I'm not one of nervous spirit. But a man met death in there, death by misadventure. There's no way you could have persuaded me to enter that house alone, even though the sun was shining and it looked as peaceful as ever.”
She took a deep breath. "The parrot was gone. I noticed that. But then this gentleman informed me he'd been taken off to police headquarters? She settled herself more comfortably in the chair, adjusting her large handbag in her lap.
"Was anything missing, Mrs. Harris?" said Alberg.
"At first everything looked exactly the same, except for the rug." She shuddered.
"I walked through the whole house,” she said, "concentrating, concentrating. Before I went. into a room I'd stop outside the door and squeeze my eyes shut and picture it in my mind, all the furniture and the doodads and the drapes and what-have-you, then I'd march in there and have a look round and it all looked just the same as always.”
Alberg glanced at Sokolowski, who was standing next to Mrs. Harris, impassive.
"Finally," said Mrs. Harris, "I went back into the living room. Where the rug is. I just ignored it this time. Got firm with myself. Steeled myself, you might say. I shut my eyes and thought hard and opened them again—and there it was. An empty space where there didn't used to be one. It isn't important, though, I suppose. It wasn't anything valuable."
"Tell me about the empty space," said Alberg, studying his hands clasped on his desk.
"There used to be two things there, exactly the same. Souvenirs, he said they were, from the war. He must have meant World War Two. He couldn't have been in World War One. Well, I guess—he was eighty-five, born in 1899—I guess he could have got in on the last days of World War One. I would have thought he'd be too old for World War Two, starting as it did in 1939 and going on to 1945. That makes him forty when it started and forty·six when it ended. I would have thought that was too old. But anyway, they were souvenirs of the war, that's what he said."
"What were they?" said Alberg.
"I don't have any idea."
"What did they look like?" said Alberg, patiently.
"Oh, about this tall," she said, measuring the air with her hands. "They stood about so tall, a foot, maybe. Not too heavy, I remember. I had to lift them up to dust under them. They were hollow. "
"How big across, would you say?" said Alberg.
She measured again. "About like that. Maybe—what, three inches? About like that."
"Would you recognize them if you saw them again?"
"Oh, yes, certainly," she said. "They had a peculiar design on them: a big flower, something like that. Ugly things they were, that's my opinion. It's funny they're gone, isn't it?" She leaned forward. "Could they be valuable, do you think?"
"I doubt it, Mrs. Harris,” said Alberg. "They sound like shell casings. They were a dime a dozen around here, after the war. Lots of people have them."
"I've got a couple," said Sokolowski. "My father got them. Had them made into bookends.”
Mrs. Harris sat back, disappointed. "Oh. Still, it's odd they're gone, isn't it?"
"Maybe he got rid of them himself,” said Sokolowski. "Just got sick of looking at them and pitched them out. "
"Oh," said Mrs. Harris. "Well. Anyway, that's all that's missing, as far as I can tell, and who could tell better. And I went through that house so concentrated I was shaking when I came out."
Sokolowski saw her out and came back to Alberg's office. "I think there's some Greek blood in her someplace," he said. He sat down. "So what did I tell you. He used something he found in the house, right?"
"Yeah," said Alberg. "It looks like it.”
"He bashes him, then takes the weapon away with him.”
"And its mate, too," said Alberg. After a minute he said, "How are we doing on that guy?"
"We've found lots of people up and down the coast know him by sight, or his truck. People tell us he lives in the bush, all right—he's an old hippie, they think. Name of Derek something. You know these people, Karl. They hop from one thing to another. They're always selling something, everything from handmade pots to Okanagan apples to honey to fish. And they don't work according to any schedule. Just whenever they've got something to peddle. But we'll get him. No word from the mainland, so he's got to be around here somewhere.”
Isabella appeared in the doorway. "Have you called the vet?"
Alberg rubbed the Band-Aid on his right hand. "No, I have not called the vet. I am not going to call the vet."
"I'll call him," said Isabella, and retreated.
"Jesus," said Alberg. "I'm going out for lunch.”
* * *
He drove down the hill into the village, his arm out the open window, preoccupied. He was trying to imagine Carlyle Burke sitting in his rocking chair, looking out at the sea, while somebody sneaked up behind him to bonk him on the head with one of his own shell casings.
He tried to imagine the conversation that might have preceded the attack.
He tried to imagine the attacker, to put a face on him, to find his shape, his substance, and the nature of his fury.
CHAPTER 17
George Wilcox sat outside in his canvas chair until it got dark.
He sat quietly, with his hands in his lap, and watched the sun lower itself behind Vancouver Island. The sun was much larger than the inch-high mountains on the horizon. For a while it appeared that it was going to sit all night on the ground behind them, letting most of itself continue to light up the sky. But then it began to settle lower, and lower, and finally it was gone. George looked straight above him and saw faint stars. He continued to sit, wrapped in his gray cardigan, watching the western sky fade. The bees had gone back to their hives for the night and most of the birds, too, were still. Lights went on in the houses next to Georges. Quite early they went out, in the house of one of his neighbors, but continued to burn in the other house. George began to feel cool and went inside to put on his pea jacket; he was already wearing his gardening shoes, which had thick rubber soles and were old and comfortable.
Finally his other neighbors put their lights out, too. He hadn't gone to the hospital today, he realized. It was the first Monday in six months that he hadn't gone to the hospital. George got up from the canvas chair and went to his toolshed for a spade and two burlap bags. He spread one of them on the lawn next to his vegetable garden, carefully dug up the zucchini and moved it with its root ball of heavy moist earth onto the burlap. He dug deeper and unearthed the shell casings. He shook dirt from them and wiped more away with his hands. He wrapped them in the second burlap bag, making sure there was burlap between them so they wouldn't clank around. Next he scooped some earth into the hole in his garden, and carefully replanted the zucchini, brushing dirt from its leaves as he did so. The light from his kitchen window shone upon him as he worked. He shook the dirt from the first burlap bag into the garden, then put the burlap-wrapped shell casings inside it and pulled taut the strings. He went inside and filled a watering can and watered the zucchini. Then he washed his hands and turned off the kitchen light and went back outside, closed the door, and locked it.
George put his keys in his pocket, picked up the burlap bag, and adjusted it over his right shoulder. He walked down the lawn to the beach and turned toward Carlyle's house.
The moon was full, and_it caused the rocks on the beach to cast large shadows, which George sometimes mistook for more rocks. He went slowly, frequently stopping to shift the bag to his other shoulder. He didn't bother to look up at t
he houses he passed, in some of which lights still bumed. If somebody opened a door and called out to him, "Hey, who are you? What are you doing out there?" he wouldn't stop but he'd say loudly, "It's George Wilcox, and I'm going to throw Carlyle Burke's shell casings into the drink." He didn't care. Christ. He just couldn't have them contaminating his garden. Enough was enough.
* * *
Alberg was in his living room. He had called the cat, and gotten no response, but had automatically put fresh milk in its bowl anyway. Now, restless and irritable, he was staring into the fireplace, in which there was no fire.
He was thinking about the unknown assailant who had killed Carlyle Burke, and about Cassandra, and about his daughters. He wondered whether Cassandra was in the habit of opening her door to strangers. He thought she probably was. She never locked her car, and he had noticed when he drove her home last night that she'd just opened her front door and walked right in. He couldn't believe it. Surely what happened to Burke should have taught her that even in Sechelt caution ought to be a way of life.
He got up to refill his glass. He'd been reading lately about attacks on young women at the University of British Columbia. There were special campus buses to take female students from the library to brightly lit city bus stops. But even that wasn't enough. Some "jerk shitrat," to quote Sokolowski, was attacking women in the library now, right in the stacks.
Alberg sat down heavily, worrying about his daughters. The campus at the University of Calgary was smaller; did that make it safer? He had drilled it into them for years: Keep your doors locked, always secure your car, carry your key ring with the keys sticking out from between your fingers, walk in light, lock all doors as soon as you're in your vehicle, run, scream .... Maybe they'd like to get jobs in Vancouver for the summer. He would suggest this. If they liked the idea, maybe he could help them find work. Maybe they could spend weekends with him, and he could teach them how to sail.
He wondered if they had boyfriends, serious ones, who might screw up his plans. Should he write the girls directly? Or should be contact their mother first, sound her out about their situations?
He pulled from his pocket a letter he'd received that day from his younger daughter, Diana, the one with long straight hair and a grin like a meteor. His daughters were taking intersessional courses; it worried him that they were trying to do too much, right after completing a full winter session.
Dear Pop, he read.
Life is frantic there days, frantic, but I've only got one more exam and then it'll be all over until September. Geology. The worst of them all. I was really glad when I got my schedule that it came last. I'd have more time to study for it, right? But now here I am, I've got to write the damn thing tomorrow and of course I've put it off and tonight the only time I've got left. It's not as important to me as the other two so I studied like mad for them and now I'm not ready for I geology. It's not important to me hut I've got to have it, and I'll just DIE if I fail it, I'll he so FURIOUS if I have to take the damn stuff again next year. And now here I am writing to you instead qf using the last hours remaining to me. Sigh.
I with I could talk to you face to face, Pop. This letter-writing stuff is the shits. When are you coming out here??? Don't you bave some perpetrator to chase across tbe Rockies? Seriously, I hope you're happy and not bored in that place. I'm sure its very pretty, though,
it looks like it from tbe pictures you sent, and you must bave friends by now, right?
I love you and miss you. Wish me luck in geology. I know you would, if you were here, and you 'd give me a pep talk, too. I probably never told you, but I used to like your pep talks.
Loves
Diana
P.S. Janey's only taking two courses in intersession, and she sailed through her damn exams without a ripple og fear. She keeps trying to give me advice. She calls it sisterly love; I call it condescension.
P.P.S. Mom is fine. We saw her last month, on the long weekend.
He wished he could hug her, and smooth the hair away from her face, and study her face for signs of worry or weariness, and find none, and send her back to her books with a kiss on the cheek and words of faith and confidence—a "pep talk.” It was good to know she liked his pep talks, though he wouldn't have described them that way. The phrase implied a stalwart self-confidence he had never felt when trying to help his daughters.
Her letter had been mailed the day of her exam; it was over, now. He would call her tonight, to see how she'd done.
He tried to remember what he'd been doing while she was writing it, hunched over her paper in the University of Calgary gym. She had probably marched in there wearing an old pair of sweats, he thought, smiling, no makeup, her hair tied back in a careless ponytail, nails bitten to the quick, head swimming, filled with irrelevancies. She would sit down, drop her huge denim bag on the floor, and clutch her forehead. It would take several seconds for her eyes to actually focus on the first question.
If she'd written it Friday moming—he got up and went tothe kitchen to freshen his drink—that would have been, let's see. . . He thought about it idly as he dropped ice cubes into his glass. He was at the office on Friday, going through the paperwork on the Burke homicide. There hadn't been much there, just the autopsy report. Then he'd had lunch with Cassandra.
If Diana had written the exam in the afternoon, he thought, adding a small amount of scotch to the ice in his glass, then he had been at the funeral, or maybe in the library....
He went back into the living room and stood looking out the window. It was dark, now, except for the splash of light near his front gate, from the streetlamp.
Cassandra. She made him feel good. And she tasted wonderful. He smiled, thinking about her ....
And after the library, he'd gone to George Wilcox's house. That was late afternoon, but Diana could have been writing her exam then, too, while he was in Wilcox's house ....
Alberg stood very still.
He thought about going through the door and looking around the living room, automatically filing things away. He did it all the time, everywhere he went; it was instinct, by now; he imagined his brain filled with little slots, each crammed with observations, some useful, some not.
He fixed his concentration, his drink forgotten.
And he remembered.
He had stood in the doorway again just last night and had looked around, puzzled. And now he knew why. Now he knew what had been different about George Wilcox's· living room. He put his glass down carefully on the table next to the wingback chair. He struggled hard against leaping to conclusions.
But he got his jacket from the hall closet, pulled the living room curtains closed, turned on the porch light, and left the house.
CHAPTER 18
George was spooked by the place.
He felt when he arrived at Carlyle's beach as though he'd skulked his way there, although he hadn't. He had walked upright—as upright as the weight over hisshoulder would permit—and hadn't tried to crunch quietly across the rocks, and hadn't hastened crablike and stealthy when he'd had to walk past a lighted·up house. But now, arriving on Carlyle's quiet silver beach, he felt furtive, all right. His heart thumped in his chest, irregular beats of alarm. He had to stop to rest. He sat on Carlyle's silver lawn with his back against a tree, the burlap bag beside him. He felt rough bark against his shoulders and the back of his head. In a circle beneath the tree a permanent layer of needles had killed the grass. It was a thin cushion for him to sit upon. From the branches above came the scent of pine.
He stayed there for several minutes, looking across the lawn at the high laurel hedge that grew all the way down to the beach, taking occasional uneasy peeks at the house. It was out of range of the moonlight but it had a slight glow anyway, it seemed to George, but he knew that was just the whiteness of its paint against the blackness which surrounded it. He waited until he felt somewhat restored, then got up and carried the burlap bag over to the rowboat. He dragged it off its four-inch wooden blocks without grea
t difficulty. The oars which were stored beneath the seats clanked, and clanked again when he tipped the boat over.
The tide was high, but there were some sharp-looking rocks on the strip of sand between the lawn and the water's edge. George cleared these away, put the burlap bag in the bottom of the boat, and set to work dragging it, bow first, down the gentle slope of lawn and into the water. He took it slowly, sometimes no more than a few inches at a time. He was making some noise, all right, but he didn't think it was enough to be heard by anyone living in the houses above the beach. Of course, somebody could be standing at an upstairs window this very minute, gazing out at the moonlit sea before closing his bedroom curtains and climbing into bed. It it happens, it happens, thought George; but he couldn't prevent himself from glancing up. And of course it was Carlyle's house which looked back at him, still and curious; he tried not to imagine malevolence.
It was about ten feet long, Carlyle's aluminum rowboat, and looked to be in good shape even though it must have been a couple of years since George had seen him use it. Carlyle used to go out fishing in it. Sometimes while George was in his garden he'd see him rowing away out there. Sometimes he'd plant himself in the sea right off George's garden and sit there, puffing on his goddamn pipe, wearing a big straw hat, holding that stupid fishing line over the edge of his boat.
George stopped and leaned against the rowboat, mopping his forehead with his big handkerchief. He took off his pea jacket and tossed it into the boat and rested for a minute. Then he began again, pushing at the stern, then trudging around to pull for a while at the rope attached to the bow. Eventually he felt hard wet sand beneath his feet and looked over his shoulder to see the ocean reaching for his shoes. He went back around to the stern and pushed hard three times, stopping to rest between pushes, and felt the bow become suddenly weightless.
He got hold of the rope, threw it inside, and cautiously gave two more pushes. Then he clambered in from the stem and sat on one of the rowboat's two seats. He fumbled for an oar, stood up and pushed himself off, then sat down quickly and got the other oar, fixed them both in the locks, and began to row.
