Left

by Theanna Bischoff

  What does dying feel like?

  Falling asleep, maybe, a simple letting go—awake and alive one moment, then a light switch just turns off.

  Or do you sense it in those moments right before it happens, the permanence of what’s coming, like a bad taste in the mouth?

  Does the body fight it, like before surgery, when an anesthesia mask closes in? This happened when I had my C-section, when Summer’s heartbeat started plummeting and the anesthesiologist said, “Count backwards from ten,” and then he pressed the mask against my face, and my heart squeezed, and my brain screamed, I’m not ready! but it didn’t matter, because it happened anyway—the gas filled my nose, swam into my lungs, and then I was gone. Is that what dying feels like?

  You died without reaching your goal to read fifty books in a year; without putting the load of wet gym clothes into the dryer; without changing the colour of polish on your toes even though your pedicure was half grown out; without hanging the new watercolour you’d just had framed; without finishing the loaf of rye that eventually turned mouldy on your counter.

  I know you are dead. I would much prefer that you took off to Mexico or something to start a new life, bailed on your old life, even if it meant bailing on me and Summer. Even if it meant you abandoned me on purpose. Even if it was my fault you left in the first place.

  And that’s a shitty thing to wish for.

  GREG

  GREG PINCHES THE SKIN JUST ABOVE LARKIN’S SHOULDER blades and inserts the needle, depresses the syringe. Larkin has nowhere to hide in Greg’s condo. Not like Natasha’s house, now Abby’s house, filled with crawlspaces, like the undeveloped basement with exposed insulation, or the shadowy three-inch gap between the carpet and the couch. Greg’s bed anchors directly to the floor, a mattress resting on a set of built-in drawers. In the living room sits an individual Ikea chair and a futon too low to the ground for Larkin to slip under. He hasn’t even put up blinds.

  Greg’s condo gives the appearance of student housing, despite the fact that he finally finished his Ph.D. several years ago after a nineteen-month absence. If he didn’t defend his dissertation when he did, he would have gotten kicked out of the program, and then how would he have made a living? His mother would love for him to move back in, but she would force him to talk about it. All the time. And she would cry. All the time. He needs to be alone as much as possible. His salary covers the basics, and his loan payments, and allows him to save a little each month, but that’s about it. What is he saving for, anyway? He doesn’t know.

  Greg lets go of Larkin and she slinks off to her food dish. The vet told him she has diabetes and he has to give her twice-daily insulin injections and feed her a specialized kibble. Because of the diabetes, she developed neuropathy in her back legs, so she tends to slide around on the hardwood. Greg has laid down a large textured rug in the living room that gives her some traction.

  Larkin grazes for a moment, then saunters off to her safe spot, an orange towel folded into an empty shoebox. She doesn’t quite fit inside the box; when she flops sideways, she looks square shaped. She likes the compression, sleeps with her hind leg tucked up by her face.

  Greg would never know this was the same cat that prowled unnoticed at Natasha’s. But then, Tash only had her for two years and Greg has now owned her for six. In those first few weeks after he brought her home, she cowered in his hall closet behind the metal filing cabinet where he kept the articles for his dissertation. But now she will sit on his lap, and he will stroke her bony skull like a worry stone, her little eyes in slits, her paws and half-tail folded up underneath herself, leaving fine grey hairs along his T-shirts, his navy housecoat.

  Tash’s dad and stepmom had suggested surrendering Larkin to the SPCA, arguing that Abby had a new baby and couldn’t possibly take on a feeble feline, too. One night, after one of the searches wrapped up, Greg had enticed Larkin into her carrier by lacing it with catnip and taken her home, and he had tried not to think about someone enticing Natasha to follow, about someone taking her away, against her will.

  Now, after attempting to mark three essays on energy flow in terrestrial communities, Greg could fall asleep right there on the futon with his laptop open and papers spread around him. Teaching summer classes increases his cash flow and keeps him occupied. The year after Natasha went missing, Greg stayed awake for days at a time, eventually crashing into reckless dreams. Then his brain would suddenly turn on, like fluorescent overhead lights, and he would wake, sweating, gasping, strands of dreams like fingers, reaching, remembering slow dancing in the school gymnasium; wrestling for ownership of the remote; sugar and saliva on a swapped straw sharing soda at the movie theatre; Natasha’s name lighting up his call display; a door slamming; a bee sting during a Banff hike; the rain; pink shoelaces.

  If he could see her one more time, from a distance even, he would then gladly remove his eyeballs from their sockets. If he could hear the trill of her laugh, he would then willingly puncture both eardrums. If he could only touch her again, run a single finger along the curve of her jawline or drape one arm casually over her shoulder, he would readily press his palm onto a hot stove, singe the skin red and raw, melt his fingerprints away.

  Now, he takes Ativan every night, but not until nine p.m.; the Ativan blots out his dreams. The more he sleeps, the less of his life he has to live.

  If he goes to sleep too early, he will be at the mercy of his insomnia, and he will wake too early, alone in the dark, and be unable to get back to sleep. At first, when this happened, he would simply lie immobilized, helpless, realization rotting him from the inside out. Now, he avoids these black hours as much as possible, and when they do happen, he finds Larkin and settles her onto his chest, where the pain rots the worst, and her purring dulls the ache.

  After the breakup, he’d sometimes sketched his way through sleepless nights, painstakingly pencilling individual veins onto individual petals onto individual flowers onto individual bushes that took up whole pages. But he has not drawn since Natasha went missing. Maybe a documentary will keep him awake and deaden the flashbacks. He steps into a pair of pajama bottoms, gathers his students’ papers and moves them off the futon, curls himself into a fetal position, then points the remote at the TV. Greg’s dissertation supervisor had urged him to consider a career path as a professor following the positive evaluations he’d received as a TA. Greg had originally wanted to consult to the sustainability department of an oil and gas company. But after his year-and-a-half break from the field, his supervisor had slotted Greg in for a dissertation defense date and told him to finish, just finish, just put one word in front of the other, and if he finished in time, he could be considered for the new assistant professor position opening in the department. After his committee had passed him—out of pity? Greg wondered, since his dissertation was probably total shit—he’d bit into the white department store cake in the student lounge, the now severed word CONGRA surrounded by gritty sugared too-sweet blue icing and thought, she’s dead, and knew in his blood she was.

  Greg’s supervisor had advocated hard, Greg knew, in spite of the controversy, the fact that many people in Calgary viewed him as a suspect in a disappearance—maybe even a murder. He’d read the message boards on Josie’s blog, those who claimed that Natasha had been afraid of him, those who insisted that his anger after the breakup had simmered for a year until it had exploded. Posters theorized that he’d strangled Natasha with his bare hands and buried her in a shallow grave, that he’d beaten her to death and burned her body in the firepit in his parents’ backyard. His parents didn’t even have a firepit in their backyard, but that image had literally made him vomit. He’d made himself stop checking.

  Greg had completed his dissertation under his middle name, Thomas, the name under which he now taught Introduction to Ecology and Evolution and Organic Chemistry. His undergraduate students filed in daily, reminding him of Abby at that age—fresh, raw, naive. Had any of them put two and two together that Thomas Morgan was technical
ly Greg Morgan, “person of interest” in the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, despite his new name and new beard?

  Greg didn’t know if the Calgary police had ever officially considered him a suspect, but in all those hours of circular questioning, he’d certainly felt like one. And Tash’s family had come out and said they suspected him—to more than one media source. Why? Because of the statistics? Hadn’t they seen him interacting with Natasha for years? Didn’t they know he would never ever hurt her? They’d never accused him to his face. Never given him the opportunity to defend himself. Now that they’d found the watch—Abby had told him she was sure it was Tash’s, but DNA on the hair was pending—he’d be cleared, right? He’d never once set foot in a grey pickup, let alone driven one.

  Ah, there, a documentary about the food industry. Greg has lost almost twenty pounds in the last six years, most of it in the beginning, but weight has continued to slip off. Clothing his mother bought him at Christmas fits looser now. At his last physical, his GP insisted he add twice daily cans of Ensure meal replacement to his diet. Greg sucks his Ensures slowly, trying not to taste them. Sometimes he uses them to toss back his daily Zolofts and his nightly Ativan, though he takes so many pills now, he could swallow meds dry if he wanted to. His GP will probably admonish him again at his annual physical, try to get him to give grief counselling another shot. He wouldn’t go back, except that he has to, to get his prescriptions refilled.

  Greg always liked how Natasha, despite how health conscious she was, would still devour a cheeseburger and fries on occasion while they watched a hockey game; the fact that she once won a contest amongst their friends to see who could consume the most “Gut Incinerator” hot wings; the fact that, while cooking, she measured by feel and laughed at herself if her concoctions did not turn out as planned. “Everything in moderation,” she used to tell him.

  Greg’s cellphone rings. It’s Reuben. It’s 9:30 on a Sunday night. What the hell is Reuben calling him about?

  “Hey,” Reuben says, as if they are old friends, as if this is just a casual call. “I’m going to need you to come back into the station tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”

  If he doesn’t mind? Greg feels dizzy. He already went in last week, after they found the watch, talked to Reuben for two-and-a-half hours. Reuben has a beard these days, too. It looks like hell. Greg’s beard probably looks like hell, too. Hopefully the only thing they have in common.

  “Why do you want me to come in again?” Greg says. He’s never asked why before. He’s always just said sure. Sure, ransack my apartment. Call me all hours of the day. Ask me the same questions over and over. Go door to door bothering my neighbours. Ask my mother whether I ever tortured the family pets. Call my colleagues, ask if I ever hurt her. If I ever cheated on her.

  “Why?” Reuben repeats, and his tone sharpens, sarcastic. “Uh, I dunno, Greg, why don’t you tell me?”

  REUBEN

  REUBEN HAS WATCHED THE TAPES OF THE VIC’S EX-boyfriend being interrogated weekly since the day he first answered the radio call. Since the post accusing Greg of domestic violence popped up on the message board, he’s watched the tapes over and over, pausing and rewinding. He doesn’t have tapes of the first two interrogations because he’d conducted them in homes—the vic’s, that first morning, and then the perp’s, to see if he could spot anything suspicious in the vicinity.

  The ex played it smart, though. Voluntarily allowed Reuben in his home, let him conduct an informal search of the premises, let him look inside his car. And he never changed his story. Didn’t mean it was true, though. He probably killed her and dumped her somewhere remote. Reuben doesn’t have a warrant to search for fingerprints or DNA, but even if he did, the vic’s DNA would be all over the perp’s house and car, anyway. Easy argument for a defense—they dated for so long, kept in touch afterwards.

  Reuben had started with basic information gathering, rapport building. If a suspect likes a cop, feels they have some camaraderie, he’ll find it harder to lie. Reuben always tries to find some common interests. But what the hell does he have in common with a guy with a Ph.D. in plants or some shit? Who does he think he is, David Suzuki? At the condo, when the perp went to use the bathroom, Reuben flipped through some paperwork and notebooks sitting out and found a book full of sketches. Page after page of the same thing—trees, flowers, bushes, leaves, branches. Reuben paused on a single page and peered more closely at the details. Was he imagining things? Or were there tiny eyes embedded in the bark of the tree? All of them, staring at him? He heard a toilet flush; closed the book.

  In retrospect, Reuben probably should have brought the perp down to the station from the get go because he could record the sessions, and also because it would have given him home team advantage. The interrogation room is set up specifically to lure a confession. Small and soundproof, no decoration, uncomfortable seating—all designed to make a perp feel isolated, uncomfortable, crowded. Now, Reuben only has notes from those first two sessions, and he wasn’t paying that much attention to body language at the time. Serves him right for assuming the case would be open ’n shut.

  He’d asked everyone about domestic violence. But this vic had her secrets, like the antidepressants—just because no one had seen any bruises didn’t mean she didn’t cover them up. Her best friend had alluded to some pretty bad fights, though she’d said to her knowledge they’d never gotten physical. Clearly things were going on behind closed doors. Whoever this colleague of the vic’s was, she isn’t coming forward. Still scared, likely. The post came in anonymously, and the guys in IT could only track the IP address to a public library with no video surveillance.

  Reuben had assumed the case would be his big break. His senior partner, Grainger, would have told him to let the street cops handle it. Would have made him stay at the precinct to catch up on paperwork. But Grainger had been in the Kootenays with his second wife at the time.

  Normally, the General Investigation Unit doesn’t go in on cases like this until twenty-four hours have passed, but something felt off about this one. Reuben had heard the call come through, heard one of the street cops, Pendleton, pick it up. He’d stacked his paperwork to finish later, grabbed his keys. The teenaged, pregnant sister was the kicker. This was GIS material. He could use the novelty, and a case like this had the potential to turn into extra hours, overtime, especially with Grainger dicking around in BC. Reuben just hadn’t expected the case to stretch as long as it had.

  After rapport building, step two was to ease into more serious questioning. Reuben had tried asking the same questions in different ways, trying to trip the guy up on details. In the videos, the perp fidgets like he needs some serious Ritalin. In the first couple interviews, the ones not on tape, he did the same thing—got up and down from his chair, went back and forth to the bathroom or to get a class of water or a Kleenex. Maybe trying to emphasize the flu angle as part of his alibi. In the tapes, he keeps changing position in the metal folding chair, crossing and uncrossing his ankles, jiggling one leg up and down, leaning back, putting his elbows on the table. Licking his lips, cracking his knuckles, looking up at the ceiling. Like he’s got guilt crawling around under his skin.

  At one point, tape number four, 72:13, he finally asked for a drink, and Reuben thought, good. Reuben needed to piss. He’d been drinking shitty vending machine Cokes without offering the perp anything for a good hour. Tryin’ to make him thirsty, uncomfortable. The fact that it took this guy over an hour for a drink makes Reuben more convinced this guy is a planner. Some people kill on impulse—heat of the moment. Then they wig out, dump the bodies. Those shitsacks usually get caught because they leave their DNA everywhere or they don’t hide their tracks. But with this vic, Reuben’s got nothing. No body. No crime scene. Obviously the perp covered his tracks well, just like he covered up the DV. If Reuben had to profile this guy, he’d pay attention to his intelligence, his delay gratification, his ability to keep secrets. He waited a year after the split to off his ex, for Christ’s
sake. Had to get all his ducks in a row. Serve her right for breaking things off.

  Aside from needing to pee, Reuben had also needed to stretch his legs, clear his head. Reuben couldn’t grill the guy too hard—they both knew that he could walk out at any moment. Pressuring him could backfire—make him stop cooperating. Maybe the guy needed a moment to himself, a smallish glass of lukewarm tap water. If he wet his lips a little bit, maybe he’d be ready to go another round again. Plus, leaving a suspect alone behind a one-way mirror sometimes yields good info.

  Watching the video, Reuben recalls how, at first, after he left the room, the guy just put his head down on the table like he was frickin’ exhausted. The videotape stays on him the whole time—each time Reuben watches it, it’s like reliving the questioning all over again. The perp didn’t show much emotion except for during the one interview at his place, when Reuben pressed him about whether the vic was seeing anyone else. He had a hunch—beautiful, single, late twenties vic—in all likelihood, she’d re-entered the dating game and her ex had found out about it. Perfect motive. Only when the subject of a possible new fling had come up did the perp start to cry. Pretty telling. He probably beat the shit out of her for trying to move on.

  Reuben remembers how, standing outside the one-way mirror, he couldn’t wait any more, his bladder was about to burst. He asked another detective to just watch for a sec while he peed, got the perp his water. Let the video capture anything he missed. His colleague had smirked, stood up from his desk and sauntered over, taking his sweet time. “Sure thing, Tuesday.”

  Alone inside the bathroom stall, Reuben stood in front of the urinal and unzipped his fly. Ruby Tuesday. Fuck. He’d once told Grainger that his mother had named him after her sister, his aunt, Ruby. You have to walk a fine line with partners—tell them enough so that they have your back, but keep your guard up at the same time. Grainger, a big Rolling Stones fan, had come up with the nickname. This was the thing about Grainger, always needing the upper hand. But then, what do ya know, Grainger had gone off to BC and a hell of a case had just landed in Reuben’s lap. His perfect chance to prove himself. Level the playing field a bit.