Still Waters

by John Moss

  I remember the victims, she thought. I try to remember the victims.

  Miranda had known the names of all fourteen young women who were shot to death at École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989. But then they began to slip away, and she jumbled first names with last, distorting their identities, and was ashamed. And she was angry that she couldn’t forget their killer’s name.

  She recalled reading about Kitty Genovese who had died in New York in the 1960s while witnesses had looked out their windows and watched her being stabbed, then watched again when her assailant returned a half-hour later and stabbed her some more until she was dead. She remembered Mary Jo Kopechne at Chap-paquiddick, Massachusetts, who may have been implicated in her own demise, or maybe not.

  She remembered she had never been to Europe.

  Envisioning her subterranean prison of stone and plastered brick and old timbers, she summoned images of European timelessness, the walls of medieval towns weaving through cities, and these pictures gave way to visions of utter depravity, the mounds of human corpses she had witnessed with fascinated horror in old newsreels, trying to pick out among the twisted limbs and torsos and gaping misshapen heads whole figures, somehow as if she could restore dignity to a few of them if only she could recognize individuals, not a jumble of parts.

  She thought of Safiya Husaini, the woman in Nigeria condemned to be buried to the waist and stoned to death with rocks of a prescribed size because she had submitted to forced sex with an elderly relative. This was her fate under the jurisdiction of sharia, proclaimed by some as the fundamental laws of God. Sometimes Miranda felt sorry for God. To her horror she couldn’t recall whether or not the execution had been carried out. She didn’t know whether Safiya Husaini was alive or dead.

  In Ontario sharia was accepted as law. Was it? Her eyes burned without tears to wash away pain.

  If she walked through a slave market, should she stifle her outrage because it was custom, or tear off the manacles, even of slaves who found comfort in slavery?

  Fadime — that was the name of the young Kurdish woman in Sweden who was killed by her father for loving a Swede. Honour killings in Canada. Surely dishonour.

  A poem by Margaret Atwood came to her in precise, cruel images; there was no beauty in them. The poem was called “Women’s Issue,” or it should have been, but that was close enough. Nameless women give birth to the men who arrange to have stakes driven between other women’s legs and their vaginas sewn up, and to the men who line up for a turn at the same used prostitute, adding their semen to the spilled waste of the world. She couldn’t sort out the poem’s grisly imagery from her own memories of brutalized women, nameless, blood-drenched, in ditches and bedrooms and cars, and splayed out on stainless-steel trays at the morgue.

  When did political correctness become moral compromise? That was her last, pellucid thought, which she associated with burkas, with cultural brutality, with the infinite pain of bearing and not bearing children, with tolerance for death.

  Miranda’s whole system was shutting down. She could feel her guts shrivel, could identify each organ by its unique tremulations of pain as she did a ghoulish inventory. Her heart beat like a fist clenched over nothing, expanding and contracting in exhaustion; her breath grated against her throat, her lungs were in flames.

  Thinking was suddenly unbearable. One minute she was filled with ideas, the next almost vacant. Except she knew something. She knew she had been the victim of a crime, of rape, and of consequences fast approaching closure. Not through her death. Through the revelation of suffering.

  She groped with her hands until they found each other over her stomach. Then she let her elbows drop and her forearms settle against the bed by her thighs. She gave a mighty heave and swung herself forward through a muffled scream so that her legs draped over the side, pulling her upright, and a dry sob emerged from deep in her chest. She felt her feet scrape against the floor as she struggled to get them under her weight, and slowly she rose to her full height.

  Miranda stood, wavering, getting her bearings. She brought words up through the raw flesh of her throat to whisper into the darkness.

  “My name is Miranda Quin!”

  Her lips cracked open and bled as she spoke, and her throat seized so that she clutched it with her hands, pressing hard against the pain until she could breathe. She edged her way along the wall between the bed and the door. Stopping, she pressed the fingertips of her right hand against the rough concrete.

  In violent movements she ripped skin from her fingers until she felt warm blood flow back over her wrist. She turned and shuffled slowly across to the far wall, which she knew was already streaked with her blood. Steadying herself against the wall with her extended left hand, she began to inscribe with fresh blood, using her right hand. Her message was simple: “I am Miranda Quin.”

  Her fingers had lost all feeling when she finished, and she felt a strange sense of ease as she sank to the stone floor. After unmeasurable time, she crawled to the bed, hauled herself up onto it, and stretched herself out, reconciled now to her imminent death.

  14

  Kohaku

  Another bright autumn day greeted Morgan as he hurried down the steps of his Victorian postmodern condo. It was cool, almost crisp, anticipating the onset of the interminable stretch from the end of October through early December before winter set in. He resisted calling Miranda at home. When he checked in with headquarters, he only asked as an incidental question if she had been around. On his way to Robert Griffin’s house, he picked up two coffees at the Robber Barons.

  There was no sign of her. The doors were locked. He sat on the edge of the pool and drank his coffee. He was just finishing hers, as well, when Eugene Nishimura strode down the steps through the walkway and into the dappled sunlight like a man entirely at home in his setting.

  “Good morning, Mr. Nishimura.”

  “Good morning, Detective Morgan. How are my koi doing today?”

  “Fine. Our koi are doing just fine.”

  “Fed them yet?”

  “No.”

  Nishimura walked over and scooped out a small canister of feed from the bin by the door. He sprayed it out across the closest end of the pool, then sat beside Morgan on the retaining wall to watch the flurry of colour as the koi crowded the surface to eat.

  “I’ve heard from my people in Japan. It’s Wednesday there now. They’ve been making discreet inquiries, Mr. Morgan. We weren’t sure what we were getting involved in, and I thought it best not to make it seem like a police matter.”

  “No, of course. And?”

  “And there’s no report that the Champion of Champions is missing. The breeder was approached. He said, ‘Oh, yes, she was in the big pond, the soil was just right —’”

  “The soil?”

  “That’s what they call the combination of clay, natural waters, and the micro-climate that determines the worth of the fish.”

  “Like Chateau Margaux is valued higher than its neighbour, Chateau D’Issan, and D’Issan is valued higher than the chateau next to that.”

  “Just so, Detective Morgan,” said Nishimura. Drawing the conversation back to the matter at hand, he continued. “Only their skill in choosing what’s best from tens of thousands of fingerlings is more important. The owner of this breathtaking Kohaku whose simplicity is infinitely complex, who has the shape of perfection —”

  “Mr. Nishimura,” said Morgan, “the name of the breeder?”

  “His entire business is based on this fish. She is thriving, he assured my informant, in the opaque waters of his largest pond, high in the hills of Niigata. He can’t afford to acknowledge otherwise.”

  “Do you think he knows she’s in Toronto?”

  “Yes, he does. Otherwise he would have claimed insurance, either that or a national outpouring of sympathy. He knows exactly what’s in his ponds. But he doesn’t need her anymore.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “Likely the breeder has a fix on her line.
With a few generations of her offspring selected, she was no longer essential for his breeding program, so he sold her to someone with no need to broadcast his divine acquisition.”

  “An ignominious outcome for the Champion of Champions.”

  “I doubt she cares.”

  “And you think Robert Griffin bought her legally?”

  “More or less. It would be preferable for the breed-er’s reputation if the koi world assumed she was still in Niigata. Mr. Griffin was the ideal customer because he was discreet to the point of obsession.”

  Morgan was fascinated by the contradictory notion of keeping a treasure concealed. He tried to connect the compulsive hoarding of beauty with the psyche of a rapacious voyeur.

  “I doubt very much that he declared her true worth when she was processed through customs,” Nishimura continued. “I would say she came in with some of the lesser Kohaku. He probably brought some of these other prizewinners in the same way.”

  Humility made Morgan uneasy: these were the Kohaku he and Miranda had proclaimed the best of the lot. “Do you think he was wheeling and dealing?”

  “Selling for a profit? No. An unequivocal no. Otherwise I would have heard about him. I know the koi world. I would have known if he had sold even one really good fish. This man had money, so why bother with crime? He was an obsessive, reclusive collector. I mean, this guy was clinical. He was pathological.”

  “I think you’re right, though I’m not sure we’ll ever know the full extent of his pathology.”

  Morgan realized Nishimura had no idea about Griffin’s deviant behavior. He knew him only as a dead recluse found floating among fish of astonishing worth. The Japanese koi expert shrugged and asked to be let into the house.

  “My partner has the keys,” Morgan felt compelled to explain. The house was open. Then he asked as they walked through the French doors, “Have you heard from her, Eugene? I haven’t been able to track her down for a couple of days.”

  “She should be here right now. I told her I’d report back on my clandestine, um, inquiry.”

  Now that wasn’t a word people used in real life, Morgan thought. He realized Nishimura was enjoying his part in a police investigation, especially one that combined murder with koi. Clandestine implied furtive. Appropriate perhaps, but it also suggested treachery. He should have said covert if he wanted to raise the level of intrigue.

  “When did you talk to her?” Morgan asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Saturday morning. I’ve got to clean out the vortex filters. I’ll let you know if she calls. I have my cell phone.”

  Nishimura walked off toward the cellars, and Morgan settled into in his wingback chair. Why wasn’t Miranda carrying her cell phone? The green Jaguar was parked in the garage. Perhaps her phone was in the car.

  He walked through the stone passageway past the wine cellar door to the garage. The car was locked. He peered through the windows. From the passenger side he could see a small corner of her handbag protruding from under the driver’s seat. The convertible top must have been lowered and then raised again, or she would have stashed it in the well behind her.

  Even though he had been looking for the bag, he was disconcerted to find it. She suddenly seemed more vulnerable. He hoped she had her semi-automatic Glock with her, that she hadn’t turned it in while on leave, that it wasn’t locked in this car. With her wallet and phone! The bag had been there at least since Saturday. Reason struggled against panic, asserting that this was a spare and she was carrying another bag wherever she was.

  It struck him that if the convertible top had been down since he had last seen her she would have been in a playful mood and distracted. It had to be Jill Bray. He guessed they had driven around together. Morgan knew Miranda was going over to Wychwood Park on Friday after dropping him off. He wished he had his own cell phone. He could at least call her number and see if hers was inside the car.

  Morgan didn’t want to break in. That would seem irrationally preemptive, especially when she turned up safe and sound. If she was with the girl, with Jill, she was all right. If she had entered a sanctuary, a refuge of some sort, a secular retreat, or a spa … Maybe it didn’t seem necessary to let him know where she was. She was only his work partner and was officially on leave. It worried him that he fretted so much, as if his anxiety might cause bad things to happen.

  Walking up the ramp and around the side of the house, he treaded a fine line between petulance and fear as he went back inside and called Molly Bray’s number. Victoria answered. He introduced himself and asked if Jill was home for lunch.

  “She didn’t go to school yesterday or today, Detective,” Victoria explained, pleased to have the opportunity to speak to an adult. “I think her momma’s death has finally sunk in. She’s worse after talking to Miss Quin than before. She mostly just stays in her room, mostly sleeping, I guess. She keeps the door locked. I have a key, but I don’t want to disturb her grieving. Sometimes it’s better to grieve by yourself, even when you’re only fourteen.”

  “You’ve seen my partner then?”

  “She was here on Friday. And she was here again Saturday morning.”

  “Saturday?” Morgan knew what Victoria would say next.

  “Yes, sir. She and Jill went off together. Miss Bray without a proper jacket — these kids will catch their death of cold — and she came back around three.”

  “Miranda and Jill?”

  “No, sir, just Jill. She said Miss Quin dropped her off up the way, by the gates.”

  “Could I speak to Jill?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I don’t think she’s talking to nobody right now. She’s so distressed.”

  After what seemed like an interminable delay, a girl’s voice whispered, “Hello?”

  “Jill?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m David Morgan. I’m a detective, a friend of Detective Quin. We met —”

  “I know. I remember.”

  “Have you seen Ms. Quin?”

  “She said I’m supposed to call her Miranda.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Saturday.”

  “In the afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where, what time? Can you tell me about it?”

  “She came here.”

  “Did you go to Robert Griffin’s house?”

  “Where?”

  “Your mother’s associate. Did you go to his house? That’s where I’m calling from.”

  “Yes.” She paused. “Miranda wanted me to see it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I came home by myself.”

  “Didn’t you tell your housekeeper she dropped you off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she?”

  “No.”

  “Jill, how did you get home?”

  “I left Miranda downstairs at Mr. Griffin’s house, then I walked up to St. Clair and came home by streetcar.”

  “Why did you tell Victoria you got a ride home?”

  “Because she worries.”

  “Does she always worry?”

  “Yes. But more now because she thinks I’m really upset.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  Morgan was thrown. When he met her at the morgue, the girl had seemed eerily strong, her voice modulated with an inflection of constrained hysteria but firmly under control. Now it was faltering despite her attempt to cover by being exceptionally terse. “You left Miranda here?”

  “At Mr. Griffin’s … yes.”

  “But I would have thought —”

  “We parked the car in the garage. I think she was going to walk home, so I said I would, too. It seemed logical.”

  “Logical?”

  “I left her there. That’s the last I saw of her.”

  “Jill, if you hear from Miranda, will you have her call this number? And I’ll give you my number at police headquarters. If you tell them it’s very important, they’ll know how to
reach me.”

  “Okay. I left her there downstairs.”

  “Write this down.”

  “I am.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  Morgan got off the phone, suspecting that Jill’s staccato responses concealed more than they revealed. For now his concern was Miranda, but Jill’s obvious pain resonated with the anguish of the girl he knew Miranda had been, the young woman Miranda had kept like a prisoner locked deep in some darkness inside.

  From his perspective slouched in the wingback chair, Morgan surveyed the beautifully modulated subversions in the antique Kurdish runner. The woman who had tied these knots had challenged death with modest flourishes. Within the rigid parameters of tradition she had affixed an elusive signature, writing in symbols only she could remember. This rough rug, in Morgan’s eyes, was as exquisite as all the formal carpets he had ever seen.

  Disturbing his reverie, Eugene Nishimura emerged through the corridor, carrying a bucket of sludge. “Too mucky to go down the drain,” he explained as he ambled across the Kurdish runner. Morgan flinched. “It’s from the skimmer pump filter.” He walked out. Nothing had slopped over.

  By the time Nishimura returned, having dumped the muck over the embankment into the ravine, Morgan had rolled up the runner and placed it behind the sofa. Nishimura strolled through without speaking, leaving a spoor of mud bits behind him.

  Reseating himself, Morgan spied at eye level another of Griffin’s notes. It was barely visible, poking out from the top of a book. A little reluctantly he got up, retrieved the note, and sat down again. This one was written as if it were part of a larger narrative: “I write so beautifully it breaks my heart, rereading what I have written and knowing that no one will decipher my words. Writing and reading are utterly separable. Rongorongo is a code. It conveys messages in the absence of meaning.”

  Very enigmatic, thought Morgan. One of the messages of Rongorongo might be that a rich and reclusive degenerate could bury whole lives in a basement hideaway. More followed: “If critics are incapable of grasping what I do, it is not their fault but my own for being out of their reach. They cannot comprehend what they miss.”