The Ruinous Sweep

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “Who knows? It’s the kind of thing a creep like McGeary would have up his sleeve for causing maximum damage. And it sure helps to explain what happened. Rory came right back in that apartment, put down the television, and called Al a liar. Told him what he thought of him and all, but Al had his sword sharpened. ‘Of course I was sleeping with her before you two broke up,’ he said, ‘but not long enough for the child to be mine. Oh ho, what a shocker that was!’ Kali tried to drag Rory off. He wouldn’t move. He had murder in his eyes, she said. So if she couldn’t move him, she figured she’d try and get between them. Try to stop Al. She went over to him and told him to just let it go. What was he trying to do? Why couldn’t he for once in his miserable life just keep his ugly mouth shut, et cetera, et cetera. But Al didn’t even look at her. He just watched Rory, saw the storm building. ‘Of course, there was no way she was going to keep that baby of yours,’ said Al. ‘Here she was finally getting out from under Mr. Five-Second-Lover and she’s expected to saddle herself with his brat, for God’s sake? No way! Luckily, I was there to help her arrange to get rid of it. Eh, Rory? Think about that. You almost had yourself a child there and you never even knew it.’”

  “And he went ballistic,” said Bee. It wasn’t a question.

  Stills nodded, drained her coffee. “That’s Kali’s story. There was the bat Donovan had left just lying there, and Rory didn’t hesitate to pick it up and lay into Al.”

  Bee stared at her plate of toast. She hadn’t touched it. She picked up a slice and then returned it to the plate. “It’s so evil,” she said. “Not Rory. He’s just . . . just stupid. But what Al did.”

  “No,” said Stills. “It’s suicidal.”

  Bee stared at her. Stills shrugged. “Think about it. Sometimes a weak man like that who’s lost everything wants to end it but can’t really bring himself to do it. But if he happens to have a skill set like McGeary . . .”

  Something was bothering Bee. A lot was bothering her. The story was devastating. But something had occurred to her as she listened. What was it? Right!

  “And nobody heard any of this?”

  Stills shook her head. “That’s what I wanted to know, as well. We went back to double-check with the neighbor, Sayyid Shan. He was back and forth, down to the basement, doing his laundry, but he only heard and saw Donovan. I grilled Kali about that. She said Al never raised his voice. Not once. This place has paper-thin walls so any kind of shouting match becomes a matter of public record. Al kept it all quiet. Just sliding the knife in. No fuss, no muss.”

  “But what about Rory?”

  “According to Kali, he didn’t hardly say a word. He just picked up that bat and went to town. Probably knocked him out with the first strike so there’d be no shouting from the victim. And unlike the breaking of the bowl and the bottles and the glasses, a body doesn’t make a lot of noise when you pummel it.”

  Bee shuddered and wrapped her arms protectively around her chest.

  “Sorry,” said Stills.

  The scene was vivid before Bee’s eyes. And to her shock she found herself imagining what it must have been like for Kali. “She — Kali — didn’t she cry out? Try to stop it?”

  Stills tipped her head and raised her eyebrows. “In your own brief encounter with Mr. Tulk, did you try reasoning with the man? Did it seem a likely avenue for downgrading the situation?”

  Point taken. Bee closed her eyes and sighed. Then she opened her eyes again and stared at Stills. “Poor woman,” she said.

  And Stills, to her surprise, nodded.

  “So they . . . what? Just left?”

  “Yeah. They got out of there. Lucky for Tulk he’d been wearing his work gloves to carry the TV so no fingerprints on the bat — or on anything. I guess Kali did some quick thinking. They’d walked in on a scene of violence and only added to it, not created it. She checked the hallway, saw it was clear and then they booted it — didn’t run into a soul until they were out in the driveway. They were loading the truck, Kali looked up and — bam! — there was Donovan walking up the driveway toward the front door. They stared at each other — she and Donovan. She said she couldn’t bring herself to say anything but she watched Donovan take it all in: the clothes, the basket of bathroom stuff, the flat screen, which he knew was hers. He just nodded. ‘See you,’ he said apparently, but he couldn’t have known just how soon.”

  “That must have been when he saw the license plate number,” said Bee.

  “What do you mean?”

  Bee suddenly realized there was information she’d been withholding from Stills.

  Stills seemed to realize it, too. Her eyes narrowed. “When you saw that red Sierra, it wasn’t just the color or the lift job that let you know it was the vehicle in question, was it?” Bee shook her head. “I thought you’d seen the vehicle and taken down the license. But you recognized the number, as well.” Bee nodded and watched Stills’s face cloud over. “He told you the license number. Donovan. He said it in his coma or whatever state he was in.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know it.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t know it?” Stills was building up a head of steam. “I told you I wanted to see that journal of yours. If we’d had a license to go on that whole crazy scene out at Sugar Valley could have been avoided.” Bee got up and turned toward the hall. “Where are you going?” Bee didn’t answer.

  She came back a minute later with her bag and fished out the journal. She showed Stills the page of scribbled notes. Pointed at a passage:

  Are you . . . Then a bunch of stuff.

  See . . . More stuff.

  Oh . . .

  Stills took the journal from her and flipped to the next page, flipped back. “This is all you had?”

  Bee nodded. “He said it a bunch of times, but I had no idea it was a license plate number, and neither would you have.” Then she took back the journal and closed it. She rolled her lips inside her mouth. She flicked at her cold cinnamon toast for a moment, waiting for the lecture. When none came she looked up and Stills was eyeing her quizzically. “You want to know why I didn’t give it to you,” said Bee. Stills nodded. “Because if you just read the words he said, it sounded as if he might have killed his father, but I knew that’s not what he meant when he was talking.”

  “Jeez! How much did he actually say?”

  Bee pushed the Moleskine toward the detective. “There’s other stuff in there, personal stuff. Stuff that would have looked really incriminating.”

  Stills found the list and glanced through it but seemed to lose interest. She closed it, put the elastic ribbon over it, and handed it back without another word.

  “And so Donovan goes up to the apartment,” said Stills, “and walks in. And sees what happened . . .”

  She stopped and let Bee digest the scene all over again, from Donovan’s perspective. Bee remembered one time she’d been with him and he’d dropped off something at his dad’s while she waited in that same driveway where Tulk had parked, the drive that swung in from the westbound lane of Carling Avenue. When he came down that day he’d been angry about something. Something his father had said or done.

  “What are you thinking about?” said Stills.

  Bee looked up and told the inspector her memory. “We drove away but Turn — Donovan — was so edgy I pulled off into a restaurant parking lot and asked him what was up. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to walk. And so we left the car there and headed down to the river.

  “It’s weird,” Bee continued. “That part of Britannia is so soulless, but you’re, like, just a few blocks from the Ottawa and it’s so beautiful. The river is so wide there, and there’s a good pathway that goes for miles and miles. Parks and kids and bicyclists and in-line skaters and joggers and geese and . . . well, it was a good antidote and soon Donovan began to loosen up. There was a place he wanted to show me.

  “I guess he went down there often when he was visiting his father. There’s this kind of miraculous sculpture-like thing. Somebody ha
d piled stones on top of one another along the rocky shore and made them into columns that stood in the shallow water on a great wide shelf of granite. The stones were as big as shoe boxes or pizza boxes and as small as pocketbooks or fists. The columns were random in size, but there must have been twenty or more of them, rising out of the water like some prehistoric city. Found art. No plaque or explanation. Several afternoons of work, maybe, wading about and rearranging the earth a little to capture a passerby’s attention and make them smile.” Bee remembered watching Donovan’s face. He had looked happy.

  “You think that’s where he went?” said Stills. Bee gazed at her, impressed.

  “When he’d broken the glasses and all that?” said Bee. Stills nodded.

  “Yeah,” said Bee. “That’s what I figure. He headed off to the river and cooled himself down. Walked it off. Because he had to go back and have the talk, see. Had to finish what he had started. But first he needed to get himself to a place where he could bear to walk back into that horrible apartment — that trap. Because that’s what it had become to him. And that’s what it was that night.”

  She looked up at Stills. She was afraid she was going to cry, but she needed to hear the end of the story.

  “You want me to go on?”

  Bee nodded.

  “Okay, so O’Connor and Tulk followed him up to the apartment. Kali tried to talk to Donovan. She tried to tell him they hadn’t done it, they just found him like that. He didn’t believe it for a minute. He tried to leave and Tulk stopped him. There was a scuffle and Donovan got away, slamming the door behind him.”

  “And getting what’s-his-name — Shan’s — attention.”

  “Right. While Kali had the sense not to follow. Not right away. Rory was going to chase after Donovan, but she heard the door open down the hall, heard Shan call out to Donovan, yell at him. So they sat tight. Waited until the coast was clear. Then snuck out.”

  “And drove to Wilton Crescent to kill him, knowing he’d go home.”

  Stills nodded. “That about sums it up.”

  Bee stared at the table. Could feel the tears pricking her eyes. Feel the anger and sadness rising in her like opposing armies battling it out in her head, her heart, her gut. She looked up at Stills. “Might as well tell me everything,” she said.

  And Stills leaned back in her chair. “Well, yeah. I could. But she wants to tell you.”

  Bee’s eyes narrowed. “She who? Kali?” Stills nodded. “She wants to tell me how she killed my boyfriend? Is she some kind of sadist? Why does she think I’d ever want to see her face again?”

  Stills held up her hand. “I hear you,” she said. “And for the record, she said more or less the same as what you said just now. But she asked if she could see you, and I’m passing that on for you to consider.”

  Bee looked away, wiped her cheek. “She’s in jail, right?”

  “The Ottawa-Carleton Detention Center, for the time being. Out on Innes Road.”

  “I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want to be anywhere near her.”

  “She’d be behind glass. You’d be talking to her on a phone. Twenty minutes is the maximum time they allow.”

  “No,” said Bee.

  “Okay,” said Stills. “It’s not a straightforward thing, in any case. You’d have to fill out a visitor’s request form. There’d have to be a security check. I could expedite the process, but still —”

  Why was the inspector doing this? “Didn’t you hear me? I said no.”

  “I did hear you, Bee. I get it.”

  “Go in there so she can make up a story about how it wasn’t her fault?”

  Stills shrugged. “It’s totally your call. She’s signed a confession already. There’s no need for this to happen. As I said, I was just passing it on.” Bee nodded just once. A curt acknowledgment that she understood and none of her anger was aimed at Stills. “If it makes any difference, she’s made our job a whole lot easier,” said the detective. Then seeing the flash of rage in Bee’s eyes, she threw up her hands. “I know, I know. That doesn’t give her any rights. None. Except . . .”

  Bee waited. Watched as Stills lifted her empty coffee mug and then put it down again. “Except what?”

  “Except,” said Stills, “you said it yourself a while back: ‘Poor woman.’ Your words. Am I right?”

  Bee’s shoulders fell. This was the last of it. The last bit left of the mystery. Stills could tell her. Right now. She already knew; Bee could see it in her eyes. She could tell Bee the last tragic remnants of the story and then it would be over. Or would it? Would one last glimpse of him — of Donovan — help to bury him, help to give her some rest? Or would it backfire and only make her want to throttle his murderers? Would she become embittered for life? She didn’t want that. She wanted it all just to go away. She looked at Stills and saw something in her eyes she hadn’t seen yet: a glimpse into the whole strange and awful world that the detective lived in day in, day out. A world populated by evil and foulness, but also by blundering stupidity, wrong lifestyle choices, and horrendous mistakes in judgment. Split-second decision making that could have gone either way. Maybe not if you were one of the Rory Tulks of the world. But was there anything inherently wicked about Kali O’Connor? What was Stills saying to her by not saying? She didn’t know. And she didn’t know why she was even considering the question posed to her. She looked at the detective and the glimpse inside her head was shut down. The inspector’s face was perfectly neutral. She’d shut the door. And for some reason Bee hated that even more than what she’d been asked to do. She nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “What?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  She was dressed in orange just like on TV. Her face was makeup free; her red hair, looking anything but lustrous, was pulled back tight in an orange scrunchie, as if it were part of an inmate’s uniform. She looked haggard, a woman who’d gone from thirty-something to fifty-something in a week. Maybe murdering people did that to you. Her hands, Bee noticed, were ring free. All those rings confiscated. Why? Was it a suicide-watch thing, like not letting prisoners have belts or shoelaces? What were you supposed to do with a handful of costume jewelry — knock yourself out?

  She picked up the phone on her side of the glass. Bee picked up hers. “Thank you for doing this,” said Kali. Bee said nothing, did nothing, nor did Kali seem to expect a response from her. “I wanted you to know that I liked Donovan.” She paused. Bee’s head buzzed with terrible things to say, like, If this is what you do to people you like . . . et cetera. She held her tongue.

  “Did he ever say anything about me?” Kali asked. Bee’s eyes narrowed, her gaze set at just past incredulous and verging on piercing. “No, I guess not,” Kali added quickly. “I’m sorry.” Her head drooped — perhaps because Bee’s laser-beam eyes had melted the front half of her cerebral cortex.

  “This is harder than I thought it was going to be,” said Kali, fidgeting in her chair, her voice over the phone muffled, as if coming from a long way off. She didn’t look up. And then it was as if the line had gone dead, and yet there she was, only a plate of bulletproof glass away.

  Bee cleared her throat. Kali looked up. “You wanted to see me,” said Bee, her voice as steady and dispassionate as she could make it.

  Kali nodded. “I wanted you to know that I tried to stop Rory from . . . from doing what he did.”

  “Which thing?”

  Kali looked perplexed for a moment and then said, “I had nothing to do with what happened to Donovan.”

  “How would he have even known where Donovan lived if you hadn’t told him?”

  Kali’s shoulders sagged, defeated. “I know. Let me just tell you what happened and then it’s done and you’ll never have to see me again.”

  So she began. How they waited inside the door of Al’s apartment only long enough for the next-door neighbor to close his. Then they took off. Reaching the street, they saw Donovan a long way off, crossing the road, the median, making a dash to the south
side. They got in the pickup. Carling is divided into east and west lanes where the apartment is, and being on the north side they had to turn west and drive a ways, then make a U-turn at the first light they came to. It was raining. The roads were slick. The traffic was Friday-night busy. After a moment they caught sight of him still running, looking back now and then. He stuck out his thumb. Before they could reach him, a van stopped and picked him up. They followed the van all the way down Carling to Bronson, turned right, then down Fifth to Bank, then south. The guy dropped him at the corner of Wilton.

  “I jumped out of the truck,” said Kali. “I told Rory I’d handle it myself. He said he’d pick me up later and took off up Bank. I took after Donovan. He had his hands tucked in his jeans and his hood up, his head down, hunched over against the rain. I called to him. He didn’t turn. I ran to catch up to him.” She stopped and Bee saw the woman’s vision shift. She wasn’t in the visiting room any longer. She was there in the cold rain on Wilton Crescent.

  “‘What do you want?’ he said when I finally caught up to him. ‘We need to talk,’ I said. He shook his head. ‘What you saw back there at Al’s. You have to know what happened.’ ‘I know what happened,’ he said. ‘No you don’t,’ I told him. ‘You think we killed him, but it wasn’t like that. He killed himself.’ That got his attention. ‘With a baseball bat?’ he said. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean, yes, but he brought it on. You know how he does that.’”

  Then Kali told Bee what Inspector Stills had already told her: Kali’s signed statement about Jilly being pregnant with Rory’s child and aborting it and Al telling the story in a way that was guaranteed to make Rory go crazy.

  “He listened,” said Kali. “Dono listened. He didn’t stop walking, but he listened and nodded. He knew what I was talking about, all right, when I said Al brought it on himself. ‘It was like he wanted it to happen,’ I told him. ‘As if he was too weak to end his miserable life himself and so he farmed out the job.’ That’s when Donovan stopped. We were almost at his place. He looked at me with this . . . I don’t know . . . kind of sad look.”