by Ritu Sethi
Inside, she dropped the bags on the now clean Persian. They took the same seats as last time.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Her eyes blazed with a glare designed to intimidate lesser men, but he didn’t flinch.
“Why have you come?”
“You identified the body as not belonging to your husband.”
“That man was not Norman. You think I don’t know what my husband looks like? Do you honestly claim to have a better conjugal knowledge of his body than I do?”
Her life experiences were rooted in hardship, like his, but their approaches could not be more different. “You’re lying,” he said. “And protecting a killer.”
Her eyes bored into his. “I will not be pushed around by anyone, anymore.”
“No one’s trying... “
“Not even you,” she said. “Not even you.”
Gray moved to the window, his back to Gabi. The children still played across the street, the boy firing an imaginary pistol with one eye closed and a face scrunched in concentration, and his sister keeling over while clutching her blotchy red pullover. Even after she fell, the brother continued to shoot.
“We both know you’re lying about your husband’s body.”
“Prove it, mon cheri.”
A difficult decision had to be made, and he made it. But was there any doubt he would? Even as he hated to do it, he turned towards her and spoke.
“After your identification, I looked into police records, which in your case go back a long way. In the bowels of the SPVM, a two-page report documents the mysterious death of your neighbor in St-Henri, John Burrows. He was the father of your childhood friend. The police interviewed you at the age of ten, alongside his daughter.”
“So what?” Her lower lip quivered. A bad taste came up into his mouth. He didn’t want to continue, but she’d left him no choice. Murder tainted everyone in its wake. Including him.
“The daughter claimed her father abused her. She also said you spent a great deal of time at her house...with her father.”
Gabi began to shake, first her hands, then her entire body. His instincts hadn’t been off. She’d been involved, either directly or indirectly, in the incident. And here finally was the bombshell. “John Burrows died the day after your younger sister passed away,” Gray said.
Electricity charged between them. Her eyes flashed a bottomless pit of rage, but instead of speaking, she sprung up with the suppleness of a schoolgirl and fled the room.
***
Gabi took her time in the kitchen. She didn’t rush.
She ground the fresh French beans, frothed the milk, choose her favorite cups – again, the ones with small lavender flowers over a sturdy white porcelain – and placed it all on a gleaming silver tray. Beside each cup, she laid a small biscotti on the saucer. That was a nice touch, she decided. Yes, a nice touch.
Carrying the tray, her leaden feet seemed to stick to the hardwood with each step. Each click of her heels sounded abnormally loud, as if broadcast over a loudspeaker or sounding through a tiled tunnel.
He didn’t know, couldn’t know the truth. It was all a bluff, and anyway, she’d been a child at the time. What could he possibly do about it now?
But the weight of the past lay heavy upon her heart. Forty years hadn’t lessened its vile grip. It only made her yearn to confide, to share untold horrors and seek absolution, not for John Burrows’ death, but for the inexorable chain of events that had preceded it. And it was a child’s yearning for comfort she felt, not a woman’s.
In her living room ahead sat a magnetic man with an irresistible pull. She’d never met anyone so self-contained, so calm. At least, that’s how she’d seen him before today, before he’d ruthlessly decided to bring up the horrid past.
Even that fact didn’t lessen her need to confide, to give into those meditative green eyes, looking so much like polished emeralds. Something had left him transcendent of ordinary human turmoil and uncertainties, but what? Something had made him what he was.
She entered the salon, the aroma of the coffee intoxicating, soothing. Gray accepted his cup gracefully, almost enthusiastically.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Sorry? Even if Gabi could no longer be charged formally for murder, she couldn’t escape her past. Everything she’d built – her home, reputation, status in society – would dissolve with one spoken slur. She’d become a pariah to the neighbors. The local country club would ask her to resign her membership. A messy past was about as pardonable in her circles as poverty – or weakness.
The Inspector sat stock still. How old was he, maybe forty? Such focused concentration must come in handy in his job, and absurdly, she found herself imagining him as a lover, imagining that scarred hand with the long fingers caressing her stomach, in between her thighs.
Gabi shook her head and pulled herself out of it. “All of this,” she gestured around the room, “is very different from my roots in St-Henri.” She described the old apartment, reeking of fried food, dirty laundry, and mildew... her mother weeping after her dad died... how they’d been left penniless. Then, she talked about Chloe, only seven at the time, and Chloe’s asthma attacks. Gabi had never spoken of her sister to anyone, not even to her two husbands.
“Chloe’s breathing echoed through the place,” Gabi said, describing that last day. Her sister’s blue lips and translucent skin flashed through her mind. “She sat in the living room wheezing – a delicate doll who couldn’t breathe.
He–lp...Gabi..
Where is it? Where is that damn puffer?
Not in the stack of old magazines. Maybe in Mom’s purse... tampons... two worn down lipsticks, a travel-sized vodka bottle, several cards with telephone numbers on the backs, a dusty, hair-ridden old comb...
Ga–bi...
Found it. In the left-hand pocket of Mom’s coat.
Open your mouth, Chloe. Yes, one spray, two.
Now hold your breath. Yes, just like that. It should work soon. You’ll be okay soon, I promise. And I never lie to you. Mom lies, and Dad used to; I never do.
But the sprays aren’t working, and I don’t understand why. Can’t call 911 because the phone’s disconnected. What do I do? God – what do I do?
“I tried to take her to the get help,” Gabi said to Gray. “I helped her with her coat, wrapped her scarf around her neck and took her hand. I had two bus tokens to get us to the nearest hospital. We stepped out of our apartment.”
“What happened?” Gray asked.
Her friend’s father had come out of the neighboring apartment.
I can’t. We have to go. My sister can’t breathe. Don’t you understand? We have to go.
Chloe, wait for me inside. He won’t let us go. You wait inside, and I’ll be back really really soon, as soon as I can.... As soon as I can...
I’m back.
Chloe. Open your eyes. Why won’t you open your eyes?
Chloe?
Baby?
“My mother was drunk and unconscious on the couch, and Chloe lay on the cracked parquet floor, huddled into a ball.”
Gabi fell silent and stared ahead. Her mom was now rotting in a home for the aged. Gabi never went to see her.
The Inspector lowered his eyes and put down his cup. “I’m sorry.”
And here lay the temptation, the need to share after so many hollow years of torment – years no amount of wealth could salve. She yearned to reveal that she kept her sister’s red satin scarf tucked inside her bedside drawer. That she placed it over her face and breathed in and out on nights when she couldn’t sleep.
Gray’s kind intelligence threatened to seduce her into talking. Maybe, stripped of the power of secrecy, the daily remembrances would go away. Maybe, she and her sister could finally rest in peace.
Gabi lifted her cup; some of the coffee spilled on her hand. “There were other things.”
“Your neighbor, John Burrows?”
“Yes.” She took a sip. “He threatened
to turn to Chloe if I didn’t cooperate.”
At once, she felt transported to that room, the smell and stink, ghost images of the moldy room with that shadeless single bulb at the center of the ceiling, always making her squint and leaving dark halos in her vision.
Gray’s voice sounded far away, so gentle and reassuring. “Then your sister died. And you had nothing left to lose.”
The bubble burst. He must be psychic to use those exact words. Someone with nothing left to lose – that’s what she’d thought of the figure stalking her house. And look where that had led – to a plum-sized bruise on her forehead.
Gabi looked at Gray more closely: the chiseled good looks, the emerald eyes, not to mention that silky-smooth voice. Tall, dark, handsome – and lethal.
What the hell was she doing? A policeman sat before her. Nothing more. How stupid to have forgotten.
Gabi pressed her lips together, all discussion about her childhood neighbor at an end.
She didn’t tell Gray about that last night all those years ago when she’d made her neighbor’s tea afterward as she always did. The walls of the microwave, caked with burnt food, had smelled of the TV dinner on his mouth.
She didn’t mention the box of rat poison by the garbage in his kitchen.
Didn’t describe how she’d heated the water, milk, and tea bag in the microwave, taking care to add extra sugar, lots of it... to mask the taste.
She hadn’t stayed to watch. Afterward, when the police had finished, her friend left with a social worker. Their eyes connected in the hallway – and Gabi knew she’d gotten away with it. After all, who would ever suspect a ten-year-old?
Most of all, Gabi didn’t tell Gray the thing he most wanted to know.
Gray sliced through her reverie. “Your neighbor died of arsenic poisoning.”
“So?” Gabi shrugged. “I was a kid. I don’t remember the interview, and I never saw my friend again.”
Gray stood up and paced the room. His head lowered, he stood by the window but didn’t look out. After a minute, he turned and sat back down. “I’m not going to push you, or dig up old crimes.”
“It feels like you’re pushing me.”
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving the perfect dark tresses disheveled. The urge to reach out and smooth the defiant strands coursed through her, and she forcibly kept her hands pinned to her sides.
“I can’t let these killings go on, Gabi. Someone else could die. In my gut, I know someone will die. And Jimmy died of arsenic poisoning.”
“You suspect my son of murder. I know you do. I have nothing more to say.”
He didn’t answer. He looked so worried, so harassed. Many a woman must have fallen for that immeasurable charm. Women without her wisdom and experience. Gabi had lost everything in her life, once. No way would that happen again.
She rested her chin on her hand and waited. He sighed and looked down at his feet. He’d dredged it all up for nothing, and it would cost him. As far as she was concerned, tall, dark, and handsome was on his own.
CHAPTER 19
April 4, 1 am
ETIENNE HOVERED AT the edge of sleep, hearing the Inspector’s kind words from a distance. Call me, and I will come.
It must be the middle of the night. Noise in the room roused him, but he didn’t want to open his eyes, the sounds becoming more distinct.
First, a squeak, maybe his door, and then a shuffle. Heavy, drawn curtains to his left muffled the low howling of the wind.
He lay still, and even turning his head to look at the bedside clock felt dangerous, as though it would tempt imaginary ghosts to show their faces, open their mouth wide, and swallow him whole. Half-weighted by the dregs of slumber and painkillers, he stayed frozen, dreading the inevitable.
The Inspector’s alarm sat in the drawer by the bed. The nurse had made Étienne take it off during his bath, and he’d forgotten to put it back on. He swallowed, careful no sound escaped his throat and cracked open his eyes.
A timid light shined from under the door to his right leading to the corridor. The rest of the room lay shrouded in darkness. Then a shadow skirted across the path, so fast it could be a phantom.
He stiffened under the cotton sheets. An ambulance siren sounded from outside, and he nearly swung around. Mon Dieu. Not again.
But was this imagination? A nightmare fueled by his night at the river or by Carl’s attack? Or was it a delusion after all?
He whined and quickly clamped his lips tight. Mustn't let the ghost know he was awake. He must reach the Inspector’s alarm – jump up, open the side drawer and press the button – if only he could get his muscles to work, if only he could get his heart to stop hammering.
A shadow to the left pounced on him and blocked the light. Dead hands with no nails, white and domed in plastic, shoved down his shoulders – not gray claws like before but smooth and alien.
The sac-covered head breathed down heavily. Étienne plunged towards the drawer, but the plastic hands grabbed him and pinned his arms. And the sack lowered, now inches from his face and smelling like damp cloth and rotting potatoes.
Étienne was breathing hard, and all his bruises hurt, especially his belly where Carl had kicked and kicked. And now the ghost would kick him. Why did this keep happening?
His whimpers gave way to soft moans and weeping. One of the plastic hands covered his mouth. His tummy was covered in bruises, and the gasping and shaking hurt so much, but he couldn’t stop himself from sobbing into the cold rubber until it felt damp and hot. The ghost grip loosened a fraction before clamping down again.
Seconds ticked by, which turned into a minute. The eyes weren’t visible in the dark, but he could imagine them – red, scary globes that watched, assessed, and Étienne prayed, mumbling and mimicking half-remembered words of the priest who sometimes came to the Institute.
‘Je crois en Dieu, le Pčre tout-puissant, créateur du ciel et de la terre.... Donne-nous aujourd'hui notre pain quotidien... Pardonne-nous nos offenses comme nous pardonnons aussi ŕ ceux qui nous ont offensés.’
The grip loosened. The ghost spoke. The interrogation began.
CHAPTER 20
April 4, 10 am
GABI STEPPED OUT of HealSo’s board room. She had taken Norman’s place on the Board for the two-hour discussion about the company’s sale to Juva Pharma. The three Investors came out wearing mixed expressions, not knowing what had hit them: Holly.
Holly had told the Board of the death caused by PAS and offered a life raft: an asset sale where Juva buys the Intellectual Property from HealSo and leaves the company behind. No shares would change hands; no options would be vested. Gabi and the others would continue as the directors and owners of HealSo, without it being operational.
“Forever,” Simon said, storming out of the room, glaring at Holly’s departing back and turned to Gabi. “We’ll be carrying its liabilities for the rest of our lives.”
“But still selling the company. With hundreds of millions at stake, we’d be idiots to pass it up. The alternative is nothing. Nothing!”
Simon stood, feet wide apart, stroking that ridiculous beard. Always her troublesome little boy. “Remember,” Gabi said, “the VPs at Juva have been selling this deal to their CEO nonstop for months. They have a lot invested in making it happen and won’t want to walk.”
He shook his head and strode to his office. Gabi followed.
Voices suddenly rose outside. Through the glass wall, Gabi saw the Administrative Assistant arguing with a woman who pushed her away through towards them. Gabi’s heart lurched in her chest. A second later, Kate stormed in and faced Simon. “You killed him.”
“What?” Simon said. “You can’t just barge in here.”
“Unless you want the whole office to hear what I’ve got to say, I suggest you shut the door.”
Simon reassured his assistant. “It’s okay. I’ll speak to Miss Grant alone.” The door closed, leaving the three of them in the room.
Fists planted on his desk
, Kate leaned into Simon. “Why did you do it?”
“How dare you?”
Gabi fought to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Whatever she said could make the situation worse. Whichever way she turned, a minefield awaited. If they knew what she’d done, all hell would break loose. But it wasn’t her fault, was it? Some people asked for violence through their self-absorption and immaturity. Jimmy was one of those people.
“He told me,” Kate said to Simon. “About everything that happened at HealSo, a secret you all forced him to keep. He said someone died. Is that why you killed him? So you could protect your stupid company? Jimmy was worth a hundred of you. A fucking thousand.”
Simon shook his head. “No...no.”
“Jimmy also told me about the blood in the server room. How your bloody CEO planned to clean it up, but you two killed him before he had the chance.”
Simon yelled and slammed the desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me. Jimmy told me.”
“Told you what? Shut up.”
“Simon,” Gabi said.
“Stay out of this, Mother.”
Kate said, “You’re a murderer. And a stupid one at that. Holly couldn’t have done it from the hospital. And the police think Norman’s dead, so who else is there?” The cords in her neck flexed. Gabi noticed the sharp edges of her teeth.
Gabi’s heart lurched, slamming inside her chest. What was Simon going to say? God, please don’t let him say anything.
“My stepfather is not dead.”
Kate said, “He’s a faceless corpse on a slab. Deal with it.”
“Get out of here before I call the police,” Simon shouted. All eyes in the central office glared in their direction.
Gabi had to do something. Her son’s future was at stake. She pushed between them. “Stop now, both of you.”
“Maybe you poisoned Jimmy,” Simon said to Kate. “Isn’t it usually the partner in these cases? The police are going to come after you, not me.”
“I’m onto you,” Kate replied. She turned and left as precipitously as she’d arrived. Gabi watched her run out and let go the twisting in her gut long enough to see Simon slumped in his chair.
