“You do?”
“What sort of evidence do you have?” asked Steve.
I told him about the transpositions in the text of the essay and about the scene with Tom and Myrtle where he slapped her in company. Steve was muttering on the other end in agreement sounding noises.
“Well, we’ve got enough evidence gathered from Fort McMurray and from the crime scene to tie him to it. They’re off to pick him up now. Randy, the reason I am calling is personal. I don’t think there is too much likelihood, but I want to make sure you’re safe. Are you locked in at the House?”
I smiled in spite of myself. It was so nice being worried about. I promised that I would go and deadbolt the front door of the House as soon as I hung up the phone. Steve figured he wouldn’t be too much later than we’d originally planned, even with the paperwork and fielding the press that would ensue. I told him I’d expect him for ten p.m. at my place, and then after a smooch into the telephone receiver, I went down to check the lock on the front door.
Rod Devlin. Just as the statistics said, the most likely suspect was the spouse. The problem with that was, if he had killed Gwen, then someone else was in charge of all the rest of the stuff. Try as I might, I just couldn’t see Devlin defacing office doors, or inciting riots, or burning feminist magazines. He might have used the published letter as a way to cover his own tracks, but he was an opportunist, not a mastermind. A Malvolio, not a Machiavelli.
So, if we erased Gwen’s murder from the equation, who profited from all the events that had occurred? Someone who hated women, obviously. Or was that the common denominator at all? Maybe it was someone who stood to make a reputation from all of this. That let out Steve, since he’d been voluntarily taken off the case. I blinked, realizing that I’d actually had him on a mental list, even briefly. Well, Mark Paulson was making a name for himself reporting on all this. Both Grace’s reputation as a strong feminist and HYSTERICAL’s advertising potential had increased, but that was beyond contemplating. No one would set fire to her own office. A little voice whispered “insurance fraud” to me, and I realized that people do that particular stunt all the time. Leo and Arno and Julian were all still likely suspects, if Steve’s reasoning was anything to go by. Young men of a certain age being refused jobs or tenure because of employment equity considerations might come to a boiling point sooner or later. I doodled a bit more on my list of names, realizing that most of these people had fairly easy access to me, should they want to do me damage. The thought hovered like a darkling shadow for about two seconds, and then Jane’s voice cut through my fears. I wasn’t a victim, except of marking. If I was going to be home by ten I had better stop playing Trixie Belden and get back to it.
I’d got into a rhythm with the marking and was fairly sailing through the set. Every once in a while I’d click through the remaining pile on the left side of the desk to see how many more there were to go. I was almost through the first class and had dreams of getting a crack on the afternoon group before I pooped out. If that were possible, I might manage to see some of tomorrow afternoon if I started first thing in the morning.
I was just totaling up the marks on the third last paper of the first class when something made me look up. Nothing weird, just a noise, like a floorboard downstairs. The only thing that made it unusual was that I had been completely alone all afternoon. The House had been so still that even the slightest noise made the difference. I stopped for a moment to hear more. Maybe, from the sound of the footstep, I could tell who had come to their office. Nothing.
I looked at my watch. It was six-thirty, not the witching hour by a long chalk. I shrugged and rolled my shoulders once more. Old houses make noises, especially in the winter months.
Halfway through the second last exam, the lights went out. Since the sun had set at approximately four forty-five, the lights really went out. I hate to think what my red pen did to the paper it had been resting on. I backed my chair away from my desk, and stood up. I could see from the window that the street lights were still on, so the power loss was just isolated to the House. I would have to make my way downstairs in the dark to find the fuse box. It was on the kitchen wall behind the basement door. I’d made sure I knew where it was after I blew the fuses in my apartment one winter and had to feel my way around for mine. I’d eventually found it behind the clothes in my closet. Cleaning up after myself had taken an hour, so I now checked for fuse boxes the way Elvis probably looked for side exits.
For a split second I thought of calling Campus Security to get them to come and trip the fuse for me, but discarded the idea as embarrassing. I remembered Jane’s statement earlier in the day about there being no victim in my character. She was right, I guess, but although I wasn’t about to cower in my office while the rent-a-cop came to my rescue, it didn’t mean I wasn’t a little nerved up.
I felt about my desk for a weapon. Where are those handy Inuit sculptures when you really need them? I found the mug where I kept pens, stamps and Linda Hutcheon’s business card (she’d given it to me at a conference and I’d kept it as a talisman), and dumped the contents on the desk surface. Now that I was armed, I edged my way around the desk to my office door. I put my ear to the door, but could hear nothing. I turned the knob and made my way gingerly across the landing, holding out my free arm to find the standing banister.
How many stairs were there? I must have been up and down them a bazillion times and had never bothered to count. I could name you all seven Brothers for the Brides, every last one of Deerslayer’s names, and sing all the words to the “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” but useful trivia like the stair count was nowhere in my brain. I felt my way down, riser by riser, and still did that stupid thump step at the bottom.
This is the point in any good slasher flick where the teenaged girl rushes into her baby-doll pajamas and heads down the basement stairs. Well, I was fully clothed, and aiming only for the kitchen, but I felt just as stupid. I gave myself an internal chiding. It was just previous events that had me spooked. A stupid blown fuse wasn’t going to turn me into a sniveling wreck. Leo, if I ever felt the need for humiliation enough to tell him, would have a good laugh.
All the members of the House had tacitly agreed to keep the door to the basement closed since my “unfortunate incarceration” in the downstairs biffy, so I wasn’t worried about taking an unwarranted tumble. I reached the doorway to the kitchen and reached out an arm to feel for the wall that should lead to the fuse box. My instincts hadn’t been heightened any since my last sojourn in the dark, and I felt only empty space where there should have been seventeen layers of high gloss industrial paint. I took another step forward and was slightly off-balance to start with when I felt a thudding slam in the center of my back.
I used to have nightmares about falling down stairs. They’d begin with a flying dream, which everyone touts as such a liberating and glorious experience, but my flying dreams were always indoors, and I would usually be dogpaddling around the ceiling area trying to get away from someone. I’d find myself in a stairwell, and the task of flying downward would usually throw off my levitating abilities and my stomach would burble up the way it does on giant slides, toboggans, and moguls my skis weren’t prepared for, and I would find myself tumbling downward, but never quite landing.
The stomach bit was the same, but my uncompromising connection with the floor probably made up for all those missed dream sequence landings. At some point, mid-flight, it occurred to me that whoever had opened the basement door was probably the same person who had pushed me. Since my life didn’t pass in front of me on the way down, it was probably safe to pass out. So I did.
I’m not sure how long I lay at the bottom of the basement stairs. When I did wake up, it was because an inadvertent movement caused a searing pain to travel up my body from my toes to my shoulders. Trying not to move my lower body, I let my right hand feel downward, hoping not to find myself eviscerated. My clothes seemed intact, so I concentrated on my legs. Wiggling my le
ft toes was no problem. Even shifting to try to wiggle the matching set made me nauseous. I was pretty sure my leg was broken.
Normally some natural light might have found its way into the basement, but the snowdrifts against the tiny, grimy windows were so high and solid that it took quite a while before my night vision could kick in at all. I checked my wrist in a Pavlovian way, and managed to hit myself in the chest with the mug I was still clutching in my hand. At least I was pretty sure it was the mug, since I couldn’t really see it, or my stupid watch. Sure, a coffee mug can withstand a fall down the stairs, but not a bone encased in far more avoirdupois than really necessary. It made one wonder about the efficacy of all those engineering drop-the-egg contests. I set the mug on the floor beside me, and sighed. I had no idea how long I’d wasted lying in a heap, or when the cavalry would show up.
Thank goodness I had a ten o’clock date with Steve. Someone knew I was supposed to be somewhere. I thought of those little beeping necklaces they used to advertise during Coronation Street. The poor lady calling out, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” I laughed, which made my leg throb. I stopped laughing.
Visualizing my path to aid took some time. I could imagine myself hauling my screaming leg up the stairs, but had a hard time figuring out my plans from there. Was Rod Devlin up there waiting for me? Part of my remaining intellect told me that a murderer could just as easily have followed me down the stairs and finished the job, so I wasn’t as panicked as I might have been. For some reason, I didn’t think Rod Devlin had done this to me. For one thing, I was sure I’d have sensed a presence as big as his, even in a pitch black kitchen. Whoever had pushed me didn’t command that sort of field of energy. Whenever the pain ebbed enough, I could see this as akin to the graffiti and bathroom incidents. If Devlin was responsible for Gwen’s murder, then there were definitely two parties at work; I would have to tell Steve.
Steve. Just the thought of him looking for me and trying to find a way to get into the House made me tired. Or maybe it was the pain from my leg. I think I passed out a second time.
When I came to, I was thinking a bit clearer. I couldn’t hear anything happening upstairs, so I figured that the bad guy or guys were gone and that I’d be safe to appear in the kitchen if I could make it up the stairs.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” I realized with a shock that I’d spoken aloud. I also realized from the sound of my voice that I was crying. I gritted my teeth and pulled myself around toward the bottom step. I managed to haul myself up two risers before the pain took over. I waited, shivering from the cooling sweat pouring off my body, and then tried for two more steps.
I made it up seven steps before I could go no farther. Part of my loss of strength came from the sudden comprehension that making the kitchen wouldn’t help much, since the only phone in the House I could get to would be the one in my office, and I knew I didn’t have enough energy for another set of stairs. Besides, what if yanking a broken leg up seven steps had already done irreparable harm and I’d forever have to sport those same brown orthopedic shoes my mother had made me wear as a child to avoid knock knees?
I was shivering so much I could hear my teeth chattering.
“Well, it’s probably half shock and half being stuck in a chilly basement in a condemned house in the middle of December,” I said out loud.
I hooked an arm through the eighth step and tried to make myself comfortable. This thought made me laugh again, not a pretty sound. I was trying to tally up the current time, based on time I knew had elapsed. The lights had gone out at six-thirty; I’d probably made it to the kitchen by twenty to seven. Give or take a few seconds to tumble down the stairs, where did that leave me? Just how long had I been unconscious either time? How long did it take to get to this perch?
I figured it was either seven-thirty and I would die from shock, hypothermia, and internal hemorrhaging before anyone thought to look for me; or it was nearing ten and Steve would soon know I was missing. Either way, I should try to stay awake in order to shout when I heard any sign of rescue.
I should also try to stay awake in order not to fall and break the other leg.
Thank the Lord for Stephen Sondheim. I bounced right past trying to remember Shakespeare and started into musical theater. I’d managed to sing my way through West Side Story (noting that the enforced tremolo in my voice made “One Hand, One Heart” particularly moving) and was trying to belt out “If Mama Got Married” from Gypsy when I heard a lot of stomping upstairs from the vicinity of the front hall.
I kept singing, afraid that if I stopped my voice would dry up totally and I wouldn’t be able to let anyone know where I was. The footsteps came directly overhead. I prayed they were wearing police uniforms instead of Nixon masks, and yodeled “Let me Entertain You” in my best Baby June.
The lights came on, the basement door opened, and Steve rushed halfway down the stairs. If I hadn’t been linked onto the riser, he’d have probably sent me flying. I stopped singing as his hand reached down to wipe the moisture from my face. Tears and sweat; I was hoping against blood.
He was shouting for an ambulance, but didn’t leave me. Instead he hunkered down on the ninth riser until more stomping occurred. I drifted in and out, humming “You’ll Never Get Away from Me.” Steve moved to allow two guys with a stretcher to sidle down the stairs and attempt to strap me to it at a ninety-degree angle without allowing me to slide back down. I could hear them muttering at the awkwardness of it all, but didn’t feel particularly apologetic.
I saw Steve again as the kitchen came into view. After negotiating both the kitchen and front doorways, he walked beside the stretcher to the street, much taller than I remembered him until I noticed he’d been stomping on top of the snow pile next to the sidewalk. He climbed into the ambulance and sat beside me. No one argued, especially me.
I tried to smile.
“Everything’s Coming up Roses,” I warbled. And that’s all I remember.
44
AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING LIKE SERGEANT RENFREW from the Royal Canadian Air Farce, “when I regained consciousness,” I discovered that I’d been through surgery. Both bones in my ankle had snapped in the fall, and I was now the proud possessor of some hardware that should make airport and library portals buzz through eternity.
Steve was waiting for me as they wheeled me out of the recovery room and into a two-bed hospital room. Thank goodness there was no one in the other bed. I’m very picky about who is allowed to see me at my drooling, disoriented best. They transferred me gently to the bed, with Steve hovering, ready to arrest anyone who made me wince. Frankly, I think someone could have sat on my foot at that moment and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.
“You look like hell,” said my prince.
And to think he’d probably stayed up all night to tell me that. I tried to smile, which must have been a frightening thing, since he moved closer and took my hand.
“How are you feeling? The doctor says you should be able to move around in a couple of days.”
“Really?” Having never broken anything more serious than a fingernail previous to this, I was completely in the dark as to recovery rates. Curiosity made me look down the bed to my foot, which was encased in a large thing resembling an oven mitt with Velcro straps. Steve began to convey the information he’d probably coerced out of the surgeon.
“They figure you'll have to keep weight off it for about six weeks, but they’re happy with the way they’ve reset it. Some rest, some physio and you’ll eventually only notice the occasional twinge on rainy days.”
Maybe it was the reassurance that I’d be okay, or the thought of clomping about on crutches for six weeks, but I suddenly felt the first spurt of anger since I’d taken the godawful tumble.
“And?” I asked Steve.
He looked disconcerted.
“And what?”
“Any ideas about who pushed me? Or have you been just sitting here waiting to tell me how awful I looked?” It was unfair, bu
t I wasn’t feeling particularly beatific at the moment.
“Actually, I’ve been sitting here waiting to get a statement from you. All we got out of you last night was Broadway tunes.” He pulled his notebook out of his pocket. “You are sure you were pushed?”
“Positive.”
“Well, the only thing I am positive about is that it wasn’t Rod Devlin who pushed you. In a way, this is a relief, because it highlights what I’ve long thought, which is that Gwen Devlin’s death and the other events weren’t actually connected.”
While that was debatable in my mind, I told him as clearly as I could remember the events leading to my plummet. He quizzed me about anything I could recall of the other person in the darkened kitchen, but all that came back to me was the feel of a hard hand in the middle of my back.
“Don’t worry, the times help. We can narrow things down based on who was where when, and all that.” He flicked closed the ubiquitous notebook and metamorphosed back into concerned boyfriend.
“Get some sleep, kiddo. I’ll be back in to see you in the afternoon.”
I heard him conferring with the nurse outside the door, and something about a police guard, but I was too close to the land of Nod to care. I drifted back into a sea of Demerol.
45
THE NEXT TIME I SURFACED, DENISE AND LEO were keeping vigil at my bedside.
“How long have you guys been here?”
“Just a few minutes,” Denise answered, watching Leo arrange a bunch of Safeway flowers in my water jug.
“Yes, I was all for tweaking a toe, but Denise advised against it.” Leo smiled.
I felt much more myself this time, and for the first time also felt some pain from my leg. As I shifted on the pillow, I grimaced with the slight movement.
“Long enough to discover you snore, though,” continued Leo from the only chair in my area. Denise looked around and went to pull the other chair from the still unoccupied half over to the other side.
Sticks and Stones Page 20
