by Amy Stuart
“You found her,” Clare says. “So why not just bring her to the station?”
“Because it’s not Sally I’m after,” he says.
“If you’re after me, just let her go.”
“Women. You always think you’re one step ahead.” Rourke removes his gun again and firms his hold on it, straightening his arm to point it right at Clare. “I’m sure you understand why I can’t do that.”
Sally eases closer to Clare and lists into her, whimpering. Clare scrambles for what to say.
“Just call Somers now and tell her you got a tip and you found Sally. This”—Clare gestures to the boat, to the zip ties on their wrists—“Somers doesn’t need to know. Sally is so far gone. She’s not lucid. When she comes to, trust me. She won’t even remember—”
“Somers reported me. I was put on leave yesterday afternoon. Unpaid fucking leave. She’s officious, that woman. And she doesn’t think I’m the sharpest tool in the shed. But I’m not as dumb as she thinks. I had this hunch. You know what I’m talking about, Sally?”
Sally blinks, moaning. Clare shushes her. Their hands intertwine on their laps, tied wrists pressing together.
“I charted it,” Rourke says. “Let’s say two women were out on a mission. Let’s imagine these lovely ladies out there where Raylene’s ex-husband’s car was found, and they needed to get back to High River. Now, what route might they take?”
Clare breathes to steady herself. Rourke watches her as though he expects an answer. He taps the gun against his chest.
“No answers, ladies? None?”
“What does this—”
Rourke interrupts her. “What if they were in a car? But that seemed unlikely. What if they weren’t? I called the bus depot and got this bored security guard on the line. At that point I figured I was just looking for Raylene. One woman on a mission. But the security guard e-mails me some footage of these two women buying one-way tickets to the city. Funny luck. He’d remembered them.” Rourke points to Sally. “Because one of them couldn’t stop crying. That stuck with him. And he goes deep into the tape and finds them for me, because what else does a lonely security guard have to do on an overnight shift? And lo and behold, it’s not just Raylene, but our friend Sally here too. Sometimes in police work, you just get lucky. Somers, I know she thinks I didn’t catch on at the briefing . . .”
“Rourke!” Clare says, her voice desperate. “Then just turn Sally in! Why are you doing this?”
Rourke ignores the question. “I’m doing good police work here. Solving murders, finding missing persons. And as I’m packing up my desk yesterday . . . Did you know they give you two minutes to pack up your desk when you’re put on leave? With some junior beat cop breathing over you to make sure you don’t take any case files or steal a stapler? Yeah, so I’m packing up and I’m thinking of Malcolm. And I’m thinking about how he takes every single thing. Takes every single thing away from me. First, my father’s job. That destroyed my family. Then he takes Zoe too. Right out from under me. And even when that’s not going his way anymore, he can’t leave it alone. And here I am, trying to do good work, I’m trying to solve these cases and bring him to the justice he deserves, but no. He takes my job too. If that’s not enough to send a guy over the—”
“Please,” Clare says. “This isn’t—”
“I know what Malcolm sees in you,” Rourke says. “You’re smart. Figuring out where I was, where Sally was. That took smarts. I was trying to figure out how to get you here, lure you, if you will, but you’re one step ahead. So smart. You remind me of Zoe too.”
Clare thinks of the photograph from Rourke’s file, Malcolm and Zoe arm in arm. She’d seen it too, the resemblance between her and Malcolm’s wife.
“Just tell me what you want,” Clare whispers.
“I want you,” Rourke says. “No. Sorry. That doesn’t sound right. That sounds creepy. I want Malcolm.”
“You had him,” Clare says. “You could have had him. He was here.”
“No,” Rourke says. “I couldn’t. Because he sent you instead. He stays underground. It’s hard to smoke him out.”
Clare feels Sally’s fingers grip her arm. She is crying, eyes closed.
“He won’t come,” Clare says. “He’s gone.”
“Is he, though? Because I think he probably loves you. Or something like that. I know how he works. He doesn’t easily let go of women he loves. He doesn’t let go of anything. We have that in common.”
“You said yesterday that Zoe was presumed dead.”
“Presumed.” Rourke smiles. “They never found a body.”
She’s sending me messages, Malcolm had said of Zoe yesterday. She was always good at keeping terrible secrets.
“Listen,” Clare pleads. “Just let Sally off the boat. You have me now. You don’t need her. She won’t remember this. It’s between us.”
“Hey,” he says, waving the gun to Sally. “Do you still want to die? Remember what you told me last night, Sally? Your son’s dead. You killed a man. You said you wanted to die.”
Sally’s eyes are wide, panicked. There is a strange cadence to Rourke’s voice. Clare has witnessed this many times before. An angry man losing his grip.
“No,” Clare says, placing her tethered hands on Sally’s pregnant belly. “Tell him. You don’t want to die.”
“Please,” Sally says, her voice small, cracking. “No.”
“Rourke,” Clare says, meeting his gaze head-on. “You’re a police officer. You’re not a killer. Whatever is between you and Malcolm, I can help. I can work with you. We can search for him together. Bring him in. Bring him to justice. For whatever he’s done to you—”
“Yeah,” Rourke says. “I’ve read your file. I know all about you. I even talked to your husband. Jason’s his name? He’s got plenty to say about you.”
Clare feels it, the quiet rage at his name. Jason. The rot in the pit of her stomach.
“Bottom line is, I can’t trust you, Clare. No one can.”
Clare stands, her legs surprisingly firm beneath her. Rourke takes hold of his gun and points it at her chest.
“Sit,” he commands.
“Do you hear that?” Clare asks.
Sirens. Rourke frowns, ears piqued.
“Ginny Haines?” Clare says. “She’s the smart one, Rourke. She figured out exactly where you were. You left a trail of crumbs and Ginny collected them. She and Helen called Somers. That siren? That’s the squad car. And a dead body is bad news for you at this point. Two dead bodies, even more so. So put the gun down and let us off the boat.”
Rourke cocks his head, as if Clare is playing a game and he’s enjoying it. The siren drones in the background. He swings the gun side to side, aimed at her, then Sally, then her again.
“If you move,” Rourke says, “I’ll kill you. If you scream, I’ll kill you both.”
Then Rourke is out the door, climbing to the deck. An engine turns over. Through the small cabin window Clare can see him on the dock. He yanks at the ropes, untying them, tossing them onto the boat. Clare sits again. Think.
“He’s going to kill us,” Sally says over the noise of the engine.
Clare closes her eyes. I’ll kill you. How many times did Jason utter those words to her? No, Clare thinks. No. She falls into Sally as the boat shifts position.
“Listen to me right now,” Clare says. “We are going to get out of here.”
Sally nods. Clare twists away, her back to Sally.
“See behind me?” she says. “Look at my back, Sally. Lift up my shirt. See the gun? Give it to me. Lift it out carefully and set it down beside you.”
Sally does as she’s told. Clare turns and lifts the gun, fumbling to get a proper grip with her hands tied.
“Hurry,” Sally whispers.
“You stay in here,” Clare says. “I need you to get up and open the door.”
“Okay.”
The calm. The calm of her movements. Clare adjusts the gun in the space between her tied ha
nds so that one finger can rest on the trigger. She unlatches the safety with her thumb and aims the gun at the doorway. Sally unlocks the door and stands aside for Clare to pass. Don’t think, Clare’s father used to say when she’d hesitate after aiming at her target.
Never think. Just aim. Shoot.
As she climbs the stairs to the deck, Clare must squint against the bright sun shimmering off the water. One eye closed, she spies Rourke down the barrel of her gun. Her wrists scream, the ties cutting into her skin. His back is to her as he fumbles with the final rope. He cannot hear her. The boat’s engine is too loud.
I’ll kill you.
No, Clare thinks, bracing herself by wedging a knee against the boat’s railing, gun aimed at his skull. No. You won’t.
A squad car pulls up in the parking lot. Rourke jolts and turns. His hand swings down to its holster, but before he can raise the gun, Clare has already fired. The bullet strikes Rourke in the shoulder, the exact spot where Clare took her own bullet weeks ago. He falls to his knees then on his side, crouched in fetal position, clutching his arm. Clare rushes to him and kicks his gun from his reach. Then she takes several steps back, aiming at him again.
“Don’t,” he says, shielding himself. “Don’t.”
Somers has emerged from the squad car. She runs to them. Over the engine Clare hears Sally wailing in the cabin. Rourke looks up at her. What is his expression? Shock. Fear. Anger. Clare lets her finger hover over the trigger, surprised by the steadiness in her hands.
SATURDAY
Last night the rain came to lift the heat, the grass now wet with early morning dew. A pigeon hops along the water’s edge, pecking at litter. Across the pond is the bench where Clare sat with Malcolm only days ago. She thinks of him then, the frown, the distracted way he fiddled with his phone, the effort it must have taken not to fill her in. Malcolm, a cracked dam trying not to breach. Clare sighs and pulls out her phone to check the time. Somers is late.
Only six days ago, she’d woken in the room in High River, Raylene asleep beside her, all the unknowns of that place and its people before her. And again, she’s done it. She’s solved the case. It might be, Clare thinks as she watches the joggers along the path, ever scanning their faces, that she is good at this job, that her senses are tuned for it. That she was meant to do this work.
I can’t run forever, Clare thinks. I can’t. She takes her cell phone from her pocket again and enters the code to block her number. Then she dials home. As it rings, she cannot compute the time difference, whether it’s later or earlier for Jason, time and place strange muddles to her now. After three rings he answers with a blunt hello. Clare waits without a word, the phone held to her lips so that he might at least hear her breathing.
“Clare,” he says, a whisper.
Though she opens her mouth, no sound comes out.
“Clare? I know it’s you.” His voice is pleading. “Come on. A blocked number? I know it’s you.”
“It’s me.”
“God,” he cries. “My Clare. Clare! Please. Please don’t hang up.”
“I’m not coming back.”
A pause. Clare’s heart bangs against her ribs.
“Please,” Jason says again. “I loved you. I love you still. I tried. Am I really that bad?”
His face comes to her in perfect clarity, the angles of his jawline, that slight and beautiful smile as he sat next to her at the kitchen table, taking her hand to make amends, tracing a finger along the ache of her jaw. Am I really that bad?
“We remember things differently,” Clare says.
“I guess we do.” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry we do.”
His answers are so lucid. There is such ease in his voice.
“I’m not coming back,” Clare says. “I just wanted you to know that.”
“Come on. That’s not why you called.”
Suddenly Jason laughs, sharp and uproarious, and Clare can imagine his head thrown back as he stands in their kitchen, one hand on the counter to steady himself.
“Jason.” His name sounds foreign on her tongue. “You won’t ever see me again.”
“Now you’re just rubbing it in. You called to rub it in.”
“I’m calling you because I want this to end. I saw Grace. She told me you’re trying to move on. She said you knew I’d be here. I don’t know how you knew that. But I’m tired. I’m done. I want you to move on. I need you to let it go.”
And then, despite the vast distance between them, Clare feels it, the heat of his wrath through the phone.
“Now you know I can’t do that, Clare. Because I promised you. You promised me. ’Til death, right?” He breathes hard into the receiver. “I know you’ve got yourself a little bevy of men out there to keep you company. I know you’re not exactly lonely. That cop guy called me. Told me all about the fun you’re having. You and that Malcolm. That you’re getting around. But me? I’m lonely. Grace, she tries. She tries to be a friend. But I need you. I need you back.”
Somers emerges over a rise across the pond and scans until she spots Clare. She lifts the two coffees she holds, a kind of wave. Clare is immobile, her phone hot to her cheek. Silent.
“Clare? Don’t you hang up. Clare!”
There is something in Somers’s gait, the ease of her stride. A strength, a poise. A lack of fear. Clare drops the phone to her side without hanging up. She can hear Jason’s voice, distant, barking her name.
“Clare! I swear, if you—”
“Jason?” A pause. “Listen to me. I’m done. This is over. If you come after me, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me? Come after me and you’re dead.”
“Don’t you—”
Fuck you. Clare can’t be certain whether she says the words aloud before ending the call with the press of her thumb. She looks down at the phone in her hand, its screen reflecting the rising sun. Then she tosses it into the pond.
“Jesus,” Somers says, handing Clare one of the coffees. “Who was that?”
“No one.”
“No one, huh? Tell that to your phone.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Clare shifts to make room for Somers on the bench.
“I’ve got a lot to say to you,” Somers says.
“I know.”
“I could lose my job, cutting you loose like that. They’ll want you for more questioning. They’re going to wonder where you’ve gone.”
“I know,” Clare says. “Thank you.”
“Rourke came out of surgery early this morning. Looks like he’ll pull through. Jesus. I’ve heard of dirty cops, but he takes it to a whole new level. He hasn’t been questioned yet. Today, hopefully. I don’t expect they’ll get any reasonable answers from him. He’s clearly not driven by reason.”
Clare takes a sip of her coffee. It burns her tongue.
“Sally confessed,” Somers says. “She admitted what happened with her son. The whole thing.”
But not what happened with Raylene’s husband, Clare thinks. She could tell Somers now. The whole truth, return the favor, solve another case on Somers’s behalf. But she thinks of Sally below that boat deck, the grief and terror mingling within her. She will keep it to herself.
“Can she go to jail for not taking him to the hospital?” Clare asks.
“Unlikely. Rebecca’s taken full responsibility, believe it or not. She told us she was the one who convinced Sally not to take her son to see a doctor, that she believed her alternative therapies would work. She’ll be charged. Criminal negligence. And Markus, what he did with the body, throwing it into the river like that. More than stupid. I’m sure he’ll see the inside of a cell for that.”
He doesn’t think, Helen had said yesterday. Markus isn’t a smart man. That is no excuse, Clare thinks.
“Anyway,” Somers says. “Social services has been called in. They have the little girl. I’d like to see a family member take on guardianship for now. We’ll see.”
“What about Helen?”
“That’s a tough one,” Som
ers says, thoughtful. “Do you punish someone for trying to do good, even if they bend the law from time to time? I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll leave it to my superiors to decide.” Somers lifts the lid from her own coffee, swirling its contents. She shifts on the bench. “Where are you hiding?”
“I’m at a motel,” Clare says. “Not far from here. I won’t stay in town much longer. I need to leave.”
Somers pulls a thumb drive from the inside pocket of her blazer and hands it to Clare.
“What’s this?” Clare asks.
“Anything I could dig up on this Malcolm Boon guy. Malcolm Hayes, actually. To be honest, there wasn’t much on him. Lots on his wife, though.”
“Like what?”
“Her father was a business mogul of the very shady variety. About five years ago, her father was shot in the head while finishing his tiramisu at a restaurant. I remember that case because it was such a goddamn embarrassment for the cops. Couldn’t get anyone to talk. Not even Zoe. And she and Rourke? Turns out they go way back. A couple all through high school. All kinds of mess. It’s all on that drive.”
“Thank you,” Clare says.
“Also,” Somers says. “Whatever he had on your husband. On you. It’s all in there.”
“I’m grateful. Really. Thank you.”
“Tit for tat. I’m a little mortified by how much legwork you did on this Proulx case. You cracked it. You’re a natural at this, you know.”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s an easier job to do from the inside.”
“Could be.” Somers draws a circle in the grass with her heel. “You going after this Malcolm guy?”
“I have to,” Clare says. “I need to find him.”
Somers nods.
“He helped me,” Clare says. “Gave me this job. At first I thought . . . he was crazy. But now, it seems to fit. Like I was meant to be doing it. Then we were together for three weeks in between jobs. I’d been shot and he didn’t abandon me there. I wanted to hate him, but I can’t. It’s hard to explain. And Rourke. I don’t know what the full story is, but I need to find out.”
“You’ve got the bug,” Somers says. “You solve one case, and it infects you.”
