Before Sunrise

by Rick Mofina

  “No, no, it’s not your fault, no.”

  They held each other for as long as they’d let him.

  A few days later they’d held a small, private memorial service at their church. Later, Cathy took a sedative, got into bed, and hugged a stuffed polar bear that he’d bought to celebrate her pregnancy. While she slept, Fortin sat up alone, drinking and searching the night for answers.

  Chapter 13

  Southern Alberta

  Fortin’s search for answers was futile in the aftermath of those raw, aching days.

  He and Cathy were separated by darkness, each grieving in their own way. The school district had provided a therapist for Cathy, advising her to stay home and take as much time as she needed. She’d found that talking to the therapist about her loss had helped. So did her meetings with her priest.

  Fortin had isolated himself.

  He took a few days off, then went back to work. He’d kept busy but had withdrawn from the people around him. After each shift, he’d say little to Cathy over dinner. Afterward, he’d go outside, sit on the deck, and stare at the mountains, keeping everything inside, feeling it all build with volcanic tension as he drank one beer after another while he’d demanded God tell him why they had been subjected to so much pain.

  One night, before he’d stumbled into bed, he sensed an answer taking shape but before he could seize it, and understand it, it had slipped away, just as he was slipping away, bit by bit.

  For with each passing day, he feared he was losing his grip on his life, a fear hammered home the time he got a call for the old Dolan place.

  Someone had broken into the house and had stolen several items while the Jansen family had been away. When Fortin had first gotten the call he was apprehensive and reluctant to take it.

  “What about Timchuk? Can he take it?” he’d asked Control.

  “Negative, he’s got court duty in Pincher Creek.”

  “McKenzie?”

  “He’s assisting on that tractor trailer rollover near Coutts.”

  Fortin caught his bottom lip between his teeth then responded.

  “Ten four, I’ve got it.”

  Fortin adjusted his grip on the wheel and headed for the Big Diamond Farm. He hadn’t set foot on the property since that night and shuddered with a piercing, icy rush when he’d pulled into the driveway. Peter Jansen was waiting for him, standing on the porch, in the exact spot Lyle Dolan had stood when they’d fired upon each other. Instinctively, before he’d gotten out of his car, Fortin ensured that he could see both of Jansen’s hands and that no one else was standing near him.

  “Thanks for coming,” Jansen greeted him. “I’ll take you around the back of the house and show you how they got in.”

  It was a rear window on the main floor. The screen had been torn away. The frame was splintered where the window had been forced open.

  “They probably used a crowbar. Don’t you think?” Jansen said.

  Fortin took pictures with his camera and made notes on his clipboard.

  “It happened when we were in Lethbridge at the mall with the girls. No one was home and likely no one saw. After this, we’re going to get a dog and a security system. Let’s go inside.”

  Fortin had to work on dealing with the present while battling the memories that were dragging him back to that night. It’s not the same house, he told himself. He’d walked across the porch, the porch where Lyle, Billy, and Daisy Dolan had laid dead while little Lori had tugged at the bodies of her brother and sister.

  “Billy, wake up! Daisy, wake up!”

  Inside, the walls were a different color, the furniture was different. There was a rebirth here, there was hope. But Fortin was still struggling with his ghosts as they passed through the kitchen where he had found Lyle’s suicide note. Jansen led him through the living room where his girls were watching Mary Poppins on TV while eating cookies and drinking milk.

  They gave Fortin white-moustached smiles.

  “The thieves never took the television. I don’t know why,” Jansen pointed to a desk. “But they took our laptop. Thank God I had everything backed up online.”

  Papers, files, statements were scattered on the desk. A small steel file cabinet next to it had been rifled.

  “They were likely looking for cash and credit cards,” Jansen said. “We didn’t leave anything like that around.”

  Fortin made more notes and took more pictures.

  “In here,” Jansen said.

  Fortin hesitated.

  Jansen had gone into the main bedroom, the bedroom where Fortin had found Trudy Dolan on the blood-drenched bed, half of her head gone, splattered against the wall.

  We’ll talk to the bank. We’ll work it out. We’ll be fine.

  “In here,” Jansen repeated. “Most of what they took was in here.”

  Fortin followed him and saw Yvette Jansen sitting on the bed, searching through small cardboard boxes that were in larger ornate wooden and porcelain boxes and crying softly.

  “They took everything,” Yvette said, “my great-grandmother’s rings, my grandmother’s collection, my mother’s necklaces, my bracelets, rings, and earrings, everything.”

  Fortin took stock of the room. Nothing indicated the blood stains on the wall. The Jansens had put up new wallpaper, a dresser stood where the Dolans’ bed had been. Nothing indicated the horror that had played out in this home.

  “You’re insured for the contents?” Fortin asked.

  “Yes, but it’s not the same,” Yvette said. “They’re all family heirlooms, they’re all irreplaceable.”

  Fortin nodded, then they’d returned to the kitchen where he’d adjusted his clipboard and slid out standard forms that he’d passed to Peter and Yvette to complete, when suddenly there was a loud crash.

  Fortin’s hand flew to his holster.

  Instantly, he’d turned to the source of the noise: the youngest Jansen girl had dropped her milk glass while returning to the kitchen and it smashed to pieces on the floor.

  Paralyzed with fear she stared wide-eyed at Fortin, her attention shooting to his hand.

  He’d drawn his gun part way from his holster before freezing.

  “Hey!” Peter Jansen shouted at Fortin. “What’re you doing? She just broke a glass!”

  Fortin kept his hand on the grip of his gun and didn’t move. His heart was thundering, his pulse roaring in his ears. Peter moved in front of Fortin to shield his daughter; Yvette had moved to comfort her.

  All eyes were on Fortin, who slid his weapon back into his holster.

  In that instant he was back in the blood.

  In that instant he was a killer again.

  Chapter 14

  Southern Alberta

  The Jansens never reported what had happened, and Fortin had told no one about it, not even Cathy.

  The incident had ripped open his festering wounds. He drank alone that night, chastising himself.

  What’s happening to me? I was going to draw my gun on a child.

  At work Fortin had gone to his sergeant and requested that he assign the Jansen burglary case to another member of the detachment.

  “Sir, I just can’t go back out there again.”

  His sergeant stared long and hard at him.

  “I’ll take you off the Jansen case but if an operation dictates that we need you to respond to that property, you will respond, Will. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The following week Fortin’s sergeant passed him an official letter from K-Division headquarters.

  Fortin had failed in his effort to make Corporal. He would be able to apply again at another time, but for now, he would remain a constable at the Lone Tree detachment.

  Fortin tried to shake it off, telling himself that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t care. But he knew it was a lie.

  In the weeks that followed, he grew even more distant at home while Cathy was getting stronger. She’d gone to her counseling sessions faithfully. She went to churc
h regularly and prayed. She kept her medical appointments. She returned to school and drew strength from her students and her colleagues.

  By putting one foot in front of the other, she was healing.

  Then Cathy’s doctor had told her that, although there were risks for her to get pregnant and carry to term, they were relatively low. She and Will could try for another baby. She took it as a ray of hope, a promise that they could have a family, that they could have a normal life, if they both believed it.

  But when she told Will, he seemed cool to the news, which concerned her. She tried to get him to open up to her, but it was futile.

  “We have to talk. You can’t keep doing this, Will. You’re becoming a stranger to me. We can recover. We can start over, if we work at it together. We can still have a family. Don’t you want a family with me, Will?”

  Fortin said nothing.

  Cathy wept.

  He remained distant and isolated himself, staying up late drinking or taking long, solitary drives.

  Cathy grew angry.

  Whenever he did speak, they argued. She grew increasingly fearful and desperate until one night in a tearful exchange she begged him to talk to her.

  “You have to talk to me, Will. You have to tell me what’s going on with you, no matter how hard it is.”

  “You have to let me go,” he said.

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “Something’s happening to me.”

  “I can help, but you’ve got to let me in.”

  “No, I can’t. It’s too dark where I am.”

  “Will, please!”

  “No, it’s so dark.”

  “Will, you’re scaring me.”

  “You have to leave.”

  “Leave? What do you mean I have to leave? And go where? Will, the doctor said we can try again. That gives us hope. Will, don’t you see it?”

  “No, you have to leave me. We have to end it.”

  “End what? Will, I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You can’t tell me to leave you and not tell me why! Will, I deserve to know!”

  “I’m cursed, Cathy! I killed Billy and Daisy Dolan, a boy and a girl. We lost our twins, a boy and a girl, a life for a life and a life for a life!”

  “No, Will, you can’t believe that! What happened was just a terrible accident, it can’t be connected.”

  “It is connected, to me! That’s why you have to leave! We can’t stay married anymore!”

  “Please, Will! Maybe you could see the doctor again?”

  “No. I know why this is happening and I can’t drag you down with me. You have to leave because you deserve a better life, Cathy.”

  “Will, please.”

  “I’m sorry, Cathy. I’m so sorry, but it’s for the best.”

  Chapter 15

  Southern Alberta

  Fortin and his wife separated.

  The very next summer, after the school year had ended, Cathy moved to Calgary and lived with a friend. Then she got a teaching position. Eventually, she got a one-bedroom apartment and tried to rebuild her life without her husband.

  At that time, Fortin remained in Lone Tree, a haunted cop.

  On the date he’d signed the papers finalizing the divorce, he took a long drive and ended up at a beautiful expanse of rolling range land southeast of Medicine Hat that stretched for as far as you could see. Then he turned onto a narrow earthen road that wound to a stand of trees overlooking the distant and lonely Cypress Hills. A sign identified the spot as the Wild Rosewood Cemetery.

  He parked and made his way through the burial grounds, stopping at the headstone for Trudy, Daisy, and Billy Dolan. Trudy’s family had fought to have Porter, their family name, replace Dolan, on the stone, but couldn’t because it was a legal matter concerning the legal identities of the deceased.

  Fortin stood over the gravesite for five silent minutes.

  Then he lowered himself and placed a bouquet of flowers he’d bought at the Medicine Hat Mall at the base. He touched his fingers along the granite stone, then searched the eternal prairie.

  Chapter 16

  Ice Lake, Washington

  Some years after Fortin stood in the cemetery, Ren Carter rose from her swivel rocker to check on the apple pies baking in her oven.

  She loved watching the Ellen show but judging from the aroma, they should be ready. She bent down and looked through the glass, studying the crust edges and the filling bubbling under the slits she’d cut to let the steam escape. A few more minutes, she estimated, before starting her kettle.

  Tipper, her golden retriever, nuzzled her leg.

  “I know, I know.”

  Ren gave him a doggie treat from the cupboard and patted his head. Tipper was smart, loyal, gentle, and good company over the years she thought, rubbing his head and looking through her window at the mountains.

  Ren and Tipper lived in a small log house perched on a hill crowned by tall ponderosa pines on the shore of Ice Lake, about ten miles north of Jade Falls along Little Timber Road. She never tired of the North Cascades. They were always there, like old friends.

  “We may not be rich, but we’ve got a million-dollar view,” Chet, her husband, used to say.

  Ren smiled at the memory.

  Ten years since the good Lord took him from her and not a day went by that she didn’t miss him. She remembered the afternoon they’d met. She was waitressing at the Dawna-Ray’s Road House at Three Rock River. A Patsy Cline song, “I Fall to Pieces,” was playing on the radio when this trucker – “a big hunk of handsome,” she told her friend – started talking to her.

  Chet Carter.

  Oh boy, he was a real charmer – “Does heaven know it’s missing an angel?” – but always a gentleman. Not all hands, or vulgar, like the others. He talked to her, actually talked; asked about her family, her hopes, her dreams, even her favorite color.

  Robin-egg blue, she told him.

  She’d told him that her real name was Reneta, which she hated so everyone called her Ren. He’d said he’d grown tired of long hauls, from Miami to Anchorage, Bangor to San Diego, Seattle to Boston, and wanted to settle down in a pretty part of the country.

  “Like this place right here,” he winked over the brim of his coffee cup.

  Every time he stopped at Three Rock he looked for Ren.

  Until that day she was off. Chet insisted the other waitress get her to come into the diner – without telling her why.

  She hauled herself in, mystified at what the crisis could be, when they pointed to Chet sitting alone at his usual booth in the corner.

  “Ren, I just sold my rig. I bought a towing company down the road at Ice Lake. I’m ready to settle down,” his voice was a bit shaky when he said: “Ever think about getting hitched?”

  Then he opened a little box with a ring.

  Swear to God, that’s how it happened, she used to tell friends.

  Chapter 17

  Ice Lake, Washington

  Ren and Chet got married in the old pioneer church in the shadow of the mountains by Jade Falls.

  They drove to Nevada for a honeymoon in Las Vegas. They saw Wayne Newton, and Chet won nearly $18,000 playing blackjack. They used the money to buy two acres and built a beautiful log house.

  Ren helped him with his small towing business, taking calls, doing the books. The entire enterprise had its ups and downs. But they got by. Ren baked pies, made cakes and tarts, and sold them to the restaurants and diners in the area.

  Life was tough, but they were tough, too.

  They had one child, a son, Leland. They called him Lee.

  He was the spitting image of his father.

  Lee looked at her now from his framed boot camp grad photo atop the TV he’d bought her. Handsome in his dress blues, eyes intense under his white cap, sworn to defend the flag behind him, a proud Marine like his dad. Lee had served in Iraq. He’d come home safe and in one piece, and Ren thanked heaven for that. />
  Then she faced the heartbreaking event that changed her life forever.

  Chet was out on a call and late for supper. It was storming. Lee was visiting friends in Seattle. She’d made meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas and home-baked bread, Chet’s favorite. When he didn’t call, she called him. When she didn’t get through she thought nothing of it, at first. It wasn’t unusual for him to be out of reach, cell phone service could be spotty in the mountains.

  She kept his supper warm.

  But the hours rolled by with no word. She felt a ping of unease in a far corner of her mind. Something was wrong. When a Washington State Patrol car wheeled into her driveway, it felt as if a huge talon had suddenly clawed away her insides.

  Toby Price, a trooper she knew, was not much older than Lee. Toby’s father was a minister and like his dad, Toby had a comforting manner about him.

  Toby came to the door and when she opened it, he removed his hat, rotated it in his hands, his eyes glistened and Ren knew – knew with all her heart.

  “Mrs. Carter, I’m afraid I have some bad news …”

  Her knees buckled and Toby caught her.

  Chet had been changing a flat tire on his truck near Coulee City. A Freightliner hauling logs had swerved to miss a deer while coming out of a curve. The load shifted, the driver lost control, veered into the oncoming lane, then onto the shoulder where Chet was working on his truck.

  He never had a chance.

  Chapter 18

  Ice Lake, Washington

  Lee had rushed home from Seattle and took charge of arrangements.

  He’d seen a lot of death in Iraq but losing his father so suddenly was devastating. For Ren, much of that time was a blur. She kept telling herself Chet was not dead. It was a bad dream. She kept a vigil at the window, expecting to see his truck roll up the driveway. He’s just late, she whispered over and over while holding one of his shirts.