Crazy Dead (A Cordi O'Callaghan Mystery)

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  He moved closer to me and made me momentarily forget what we were talking about.

  “Did it help you? Even if you don’t remember?” he asked gently.

  I shook my head and then nodded it, then shook it again, alternating the two motions, making him laugh.

  It was my turn to query him.

  “What do alcoholics do if they are not religious?”

  “You don’t mince words.”

  “It’s just a continuation of what you said in CBT.” I was fishing but I wasn’t sure for what. Or why.

  He stared at me, his gaze strong and unwavering. “They don’t go to AA,” he said simply.

  When I didn’t respond to that, he added, “What can I say? I’m not religious. I will not turn myself ‘over to the care of God’ or ‘believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,’ quote unquote. I will not submit to a myth.”

  “How does an atheist alcoholic get help, then?”

  “This atheist alcoholic has a good doctor and a good CBT program and supportive friends. It seems to be working.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. Was it his wishful thinking or was it really working? Why did I think his answers were too pat — as if he had rehearsed them?

  “What’s your poison?” I asked abruptly.

  Jacques hesitated. “Scotch,” he finally said.

  I glanced down the hall and saw that the lineup was shortening, but neither of us made any effort to join it.

  “I overheard Ella and another nurse talking about Mavis,” I said. I filled Jacques in on what I had overheard — the scarf, shock, others.

  Jacques homed in on the same thing I had. “What did she mean by ‘others’?”

  “I don’t know, but my imagination says it can’t be good.”

  Jacques looked at me shrewdly. “You think there’ve been other murders?”

  I nodded.

  “You have quite an imagination,” he said.

  But he didn’t refute it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Because Ella wasn’t on duty I took my meds. I was beginning to doubt myself where she was concerned. There had been no further attempts on my life and no telling glances in my direction. I put her out of my mind.

  Most people had drifted off to bed when I went to the common room to snag a juice and some toast. I was waiting for the toast to pop up when Leo sidled into the room and nodded at me. He picked up a juice and then looked at the toaster. I could almost see the wheels of his mind turning and knew he wanted the toaster and wished I wasn’t there. The way the shadows played across his face made him seem ghoulish in a Dickensian sort of way, the bags under his eyes drooping down his cheeks, his chin drooping into his neck. He reached across me to get a piece of bread, his long skeletal fingers an extension of his gangly arms and tall spaghetti-thin frame. My toast popped up and I took it and placed it on my plate. In a flash he had his piece in the toaster and was reaching to press down the lever.

  I was desperately trying to find a way to start a conversation with him to see what he knew about Mavis and blurted, “Were you and Mavis friends?”

  His hand froze above the lever and his entire body tensed as if I had tasered him. In a preternaturally quiet and controlled voice he said, “Please don’t talk about her.”

  I should have listened, but I was so intent on ferreting out clues that I failed to heed his distress. “You must have known her,” I said. “You were here before I came and so was she.”

  He turned to look at me and I almost jumped away from him. For a moment his eyes registered wild panic, but then he turned away from me and left abruptly, leaving his untoasted bread behind. That was the moment Ella came into the room. She turned to watch Leo shuffling hurriedly down the hall, then looked at me.

  “What did you say to him?” she asked. The implication was clear. It was my fault Leo was upset.

  “I asked him if he and Mavis were friends.” Ella closed her eyes momentarily, as if gathering her patience.

  “He doesn’t like to talk about Mavis,” she said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  She smiled and shook her head. “You know we can’t talk about patients.”

  Yeah, I knew, and it was frustrating as hell.

  Morning came quickly. I would be spending the night at home, and it felt good not to be dreading it. I was actually looking forward to my own space. I didn’t tell Ryan. I didn’t want him to worry about me or, worse, feel obligated to invite me to stay with him and his family again. I loved his family, but his kids, little Davey and Annie, if she was there, would be too much for me for a while yet. I didn’t want them catching me in an unguarded moment of sadness or despair and I knew I wasn’t strong enough yet to put up a front for so many hours. At the hospital it was different. I could be depressed without anyone trying to cheer me up. I could be myself, knowing that the doctors and nurses were there to rescue me if things got too bad.

  All my good intentions to leave after lunch got waylaid when I fell asleep and woke up to find the sun had already set. I was doing a lot of sleeping. I knew that. And it altered my sense of time so that occasionally I wasn’t immediately sure what time of day it was or even what day. On top of that, the ward life had a way of blurring time for me even further, with one day merging into the next.

  Fifteen minutes later I found myself on the subway again. I could have taken a taxi, but I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I wanted to be anonymous. Besides, it was snowing hard and the streets were slippery. Traffic would be a bitch. I stood well back from the platform edge as I waited for the train. It was full and I had to squeeze myself in for five stops before the train spat me out and I caught the bus.

  The falling snow coated everything, making it difficult to see more than twenty feet ahead and muffling all sound. I got off the bus at its most distant stop and then had a ten-minute walk home past Chorley Park with its black naked trees partially lit by strategically placed street lamps. I reached Governor’s Bridge and, as I always do, I stopped and looked down the snow-covered street to the far side. It always made me feel lonely, this bridge spanning a wooded ravine. The place was eerie. Timeless. Especially at night with the old-fashioned street lights casting their glow in the darkness.

  The railings bracketing the bridge and the sidewalks were actually shoulder-high walls of cement a foot thick and into which thousands upon thousands of pebbles had been pressed, making it feel like some giant’s sandpaper. The walls were pierced every three inches by narrow slits the shape of cathedral windows, which allowed children and shorter people to peer through to the tree-covered ravine sixty feet below. Taller people could peer over the top of the wall, and stupidly adventurous people could even sit on it.

  Looking down that bridge, partially obscured by the swirling snow, made me feel as though I were living in another century, when the streetlights were gas lamps and the vehicles we drove were powered by horses. It was deserted. No one had driven down the bridge for a while, as there were no tire tracks. The sidewalk was pristine, too. I started to cross the bridge. It was so soft and quiet I could have been the last person on earth.

  Except I wasn’t.

  Suddenly someone grabbed me from behind, lifted me up, and threw me over the bridge.

  Chapter fourteen

  I tried to save myself, reaching wildly out into space, searching for the solid comfort of the wall. I hadn’t had time to even realize it wasn’t there before I felt something grabbing at my coat from a dozen different directions, the sharp jabs almost penetrating my coat. The noise they made was the sharp crack of frozen wood.

  The tree stood just a few feet shy of the height of the bridge and its branches slowed my descent, until they finally stopped me momentarily, leaving me dangling precariously on a branch that was too small to hold my weight for long. I gasped as it gave way.

  I fel
l down through the tree, breaking more and bigger branches as I went, all the while wildly reaching out to grab hold of something, anything. And finally I did. A branch as thick as my wrist took my weight as it bent toward the ground, which I did not dare look at, for fear the motion might make me lose my grip.

  The branch let me down ever so gently onto a good solid limb, which I immediately straddled and then hugged like a long-lost friend. As soon as I knew I was safe I turned to look up at the bridge and froze.

  There was a hooded figure looking down at me, silhouetted by the light of the street lamp. I panicked. Whoever it was knew I was alive, and I was a sitting duck. I had to get down before my assailant got to me. It was so snowy that there was no depth perception, but I could see where the dark bark of the tree trunk disappeared beneath the snow, or at least I thought I could. For all I knew the snow I saw was swirling snow and air, not sitting on hard ground. Panicked as I was, I didn’t want to cripple myself in a fall, for then I’d have no chance to escape. But I had so little time. Even now my attacker would be running along the bridge to the edge and then down the steep embankment of the ravine.

  I was wearing my bulky calf-length coat and as I tried to climb down to the next limb, it caught my legs and I almost fell. I was going to have to jump if I had any hope of escaping my would-be killer. I straddled the limb again and quickly took off my coat, holding on to the limb with one hand and sort of shaking out of it. I was thankful I at least had a sweater on, but the wind went right through it and I knew I had to be quick. I had to be smart, too. I rolled the coat into a ball and tied it together with its hood ties. Then I dropped the coat in a spot that appeared to have the fewest branches from where I was sitting and watched it, holding my breath, praying it would land, and not get caught by a branch.

  It didn’t get caught and now it lay on the ground, a visual reference for how high up I was.

  Maybe ten feet.

  I could jump that.

  So I did and landed in knee-deep snow. I pitched forward into a roll and then stood up and whipped my head around to look at the ravine embankment a hundred feet away. The dark figure was floundering down the slope, skidding and slipping through the snow, but making good time. I turned and started running toward the other end of the bridge, the other side of the ravine, although my movement could not exactly be called “running.” The heavy mashed-potato snow sucked at my legs with every step and too soon my legs began to burn with the effort. I kept turning to look back, even though I knew that slowed me down. My attacker kept gaining on me and I was getting a bit light-headed from the panic that threatened to throttle me. I wondered if my legs would hold out or betray me.

  By the time I got to the embankment my attacker was fifty feet back and closing. I realized with dismay that I was breaking trail for whomever it was. The embankment was steep and I kept slipping, but I clawed my way up that hill until my legs were screaming. I came out through someone’s back yard, at the edge of the bridge, and saw a couple not too far away walking their dog. I was too winded to cry out, but I forced my wobbly legs into a staggering run until I was twenty feet from the couple.

  I looked behind me again. I could see my pursuer, a shadowy hooded figure, standing now on the road to the bridge, silently watching me. I had almost caught up with the couple, and when I turned one last time, I could see my would-be killer walking away from me back over the bridge, just a shape, really, moving on the sidewalk under the streetlamps. I stood and watched until the figure was out of sight. I stared at the bridge. It looked exactly the same as it always had. Nothing had changed. It still looked eerie and timeless, and endlessly indifferent.

  It wasn’t a long walk through the falling snow to my home at Governor’s Manor, but it was long enough for my sweat to cool and my body to chill. Governor’s Manor was exactly what it said it was, a manor, but it had been renovated into a row of condominium townhomes. The manor looked like a long, two-storey, stately home with a white-stucco exterior, crisscrossed with black wooden trim, multiple peaked roofs, and in the summer a lush garden on either side of a circular drive. My place was a two-bedroom overlooking the driveway. I walked through the alcove to my front door and could barely make my frozen fingers insert the key into the lock and open the door.

  I kicked off my wet boots and started peeling off my clothes as I walked through my open-concept living room to the master bedroom and bathroom beyond. I ran a hot bath and lay there soaking up the warmth. My mind, however, remained cold and numb.

  Someone had almost killed me. Again. Would have, save for the tree. I tried to think back, to review the sequence of events, but there was nothing to indicate who had done this to me. No indication that it had been Ella. No indication that it hadn’t been. I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, if I called the police, what could they do? There was no evidence to be found. On the other hand, if it was my assailant’s second attempt, there was no reason not to believe that there would be a third, and maybe final, attempt. Final for me, that is. So I called the police.

  It was no longer an emergency situation, since I was safely home, so they didn’t arrive on my doorstep for at least an hour. Two big burly men, one at the end of his career and one just starting, both covered in snow. As I let them in I saw that another two inches of snow had already fallen and obliterated my footprints that ran up to the alcove that led to my front door. They took my statement, listening intently and asking a few questions here and there to clarify events.

  “So someone just picked you up and threw you over?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t get a good look at them.”

  “I didn’t get any look at them. He or she came from behind. And they were wearing a hood.”

  “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to do that to you?”

  I hesitated. “It’s not the first time.”

  They both looked at me expectantly. I told them about the subway and I told them about Ella and Mavis.

  “So Ella’s a nurse on a psychiatric ward?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And how do you know her?”

  The question flustered me and I answered without thinking. “She looks after me.”

  The two men exchanged a glance.

  “You mean you’re a patient on the ward?”

  “Yes.” I caught the younger officer rolling his eyes. This was not going well.

  “Why would this Ella want you dead?” he said in a softer, almost condescending voice.

  I hesitated again and then I lied, although it wasn’t really a lie. “I don’t know.” Because why would they believe me now?

  By the time they left it was 7:00 p.m., and I felt like being with someone. I called my brother, because he was my go-to guy. Ryan was pleased and excited that I was out “on leave” and he invited me for dinner, as I knew he would. I said yes, because suddenly I needed to be with family, whether I could handle it or not. Despite my protestations that I’d take a cab, he came and got me, giving me a bear hug in the front hall of my apartment. I grabbed my coat from the closet, but as I did so something jarred in my mind, but it was gone before I had a chance to think about it.

  Ryan lived in a small three-bedroom apartment in the Annex near the University of Toronto. It was as close as the family could get to the Hospital for Sick Children, where Annie’s doctor worked.

  I played with my little nephew, Davey, for a while, while Annie looked on. She was pale and wan and wore a scarf to cover her bald head. The change in her, from an active curious child to this living ghost of a girl, was devastating. It was also mentally exhausting trying to act as if nothing was wrong — with either her or with me — and I finally, reluctantly, had to beg off for a nap before dinner.

  When I awoke I could hear the voices of my brother and his wife, Rose, but there was a third familiar voice: my lab tech, Martha. I walked out of the bedroom and down the
short hall into the living room. Martha and I hadn’t seen each other since before I was hospitalized, and she held me literally at arm’s length, scrutinizing my face, which I tried to mould into an affable grin. And then she gave me a bear hug.

  “Lookin’ pretty good, girl,” she said. I expected her to add, “all things considered,” but she didn’t. I wondered why Duncan wasn’t with her. The three of us had solved three different murders over the years, and Martha and Duncan had become a couple. She was looking as Martha as ever. Plump, round, and cheerful, her shoulder-length dark curly hair springing every which way, framing the roundest face you ever saw, but one with delicately pretty features.

  We chatted about family and friends and all the other things that good friends talk about, before Ryan called us to dinner. Their dining room was a postage stamp with just enough room for a table and six chairs. There were only four place settings, and I realized that the kids had been put to bed already.

  We all sat down to dinner and I was surprised at how easy it was to fall back in with my family and friend, as though nothing had happened to me. To be sitting here talking about new recipes and where to find the best fruits and vegetables, all the minutiae of life that had eluded me for months. But it was all false bon-homie. How could it be otherwise with their Annie’s illness hanging over our heads?

  “Penny for your thoughts?” I’d fallen silent, and Martha was looking at me uncertainly.

  “Surely inflation has brought that up to a toonie?” I answered lightheartedly, not wanting to break the magic by bringing up Annie’s illness, the elephant in the room.

  She smiled and waited for me to say more.