Oh, Christ, help me, Peter thinks. This is going to be a full-on interrogation with all the tricks and second-guessing. I should just come clean. Are you crazy?

  The questions come more or less in chronological order, and Peter lays it out just as Woodgate gave it to him. They’ve interviewed Marina, and he has only an outline of her version of events. He has no idea, for example, whether they’re actually aware of the personal relationship he’s had with Marina, but he assumes no, otherwise the jig would be up already. They’d get him for something. Maybe he’d end up on probation himself. This thought actually makes him smile for a moment just when Spurrier asks about Nolin’s dive out the window.

  The detective notes this expression and frowns. “Something funny?”

  “Ah, no, not at all,” Peter says, suddenly sombre as can be. “Have you ever been in a car accident?”

  “What?” Bergstrom chimes in, questioning Peter’s question.

  “Well, I was in an accident once, and it was something like that. It takes a few seconds, near death, when things can go either way. And afterward it’s hard to piece it all together, makes you wonder, and you have to laugh. Nothing funny about it, though, nothing at all.”

  Spurrier listens, maybe thinking this is suspect evasive bullshit. However, for whatever reason, as near as they are to a weeping confession, the detective doesn’t close in for the kill. He offers only a curt nod. “All right, that should do us.” He stands and swings his chair back to exactly where it was.

  “Ah, well, I’ve got one more question,” says Bergstrom, the fiery light of a budding detective in his eye. “Your personal vehicle, an ’89 Ford Bronco, was at the scene. At, what was it, 6:45, something like that. Is that common practice over at probation, using your own vehicle?”

  Peter views Bergstrom at a painful angle, and once again considers saying, No, your hunch is right. In fact, I was over there in bed with Ms. Faro and we lost track of time. That’s the truth, the basis of justice. Isn’t that what we’re all after?

  “I’ve covered that point with his supervisor,” Spurrier answers, steering his bulk out the doorway. “We’ve got that.”

  Bergstrom matches Peter’s stare for another moment, then nods on his way out. “I see, okay, we’ve got that covered.”

  For the first time in recent memory Peter craves a drink, two fingers of good Scotch over ice. Something to take his brain for a hike in the heather. But it seems he came through the police interview okay. There’s no guarantee they won’t be back on a new tack. But apparently higher powers are handling this, and no doubt for their own reasons are saving him from sacrifice.

  During the course of his stay in hospital, Peter receives cards and calls from family and friends, colleagues, and from other acquaintances, more than he would have anticipated, if he ever imagined himself tied in a metal bed for three weeks.

  One of the cards is from Karen, which surprises him most of all. Enclosed is a two-page letter. She heard via an unnamed friend that he was in the hospital, wishing him the best, and so on. Also, the real-estate agent called her and might have a buyer for the house. She was prepared to accept any reasonable offer. Danica, her partner, exhibited her work in San Francisco and apparently made quite a splash. They want to expand her studio, looked forward to doing the work themselves.

  Peter has no trouble imagining Karen organizing such a project. Whereas he wouldn’t trust himself to mix a bag of cement, she’ll be out there with a transit, skill saw, nail gun. Knocking off come sunset in California, and here comes Danica in her paint-splattered T-shirt, bearing Coronas and lime. For the first time in thirteen days, Peter feels a sexual stirring, which comes with great and almost humorous relief. As well, he’s deeply touched by Karen’s concern and the letter. His hope for her friendship rises from the dead.

  One day the nurse brings him a paper bag taped shut, saying a woman dropped it off for him at reception. Inside he finds three paperback novels by John le Carré, Elmore Leonard, and an author unknown to him. There’s also a postcard from a Rocky Mountain park, a photo of a waterfall, and on the flip side a note wishing him well from Sarah Moxey. Perhaps Karen got the news from her. The books are a godsend, and he thinks about Sarah a bit between chapters. Perhaps she and Karen are in touch. He doesn’t understand her apparent interest in him, partly because she’s quite attractive, in an earthy way, and surely not at a loss for companionship. But he must thank her for the books, especially intuiting his taste.

  A few other people from the probation office pop in for brief visits. It seems they might be taking turns, and he appreciates that also. After Karen left, Peter felt increasingly isolated, with few friends he could call his own. It’s reassuring that people know he’s alive. After two weeks, he loses count of the days and finds a curious security lying there day after day, absolutely sober apart from the clear, diminishing painkiller fed into him via a coiled tube and needle taped to his arm. Plenty of time to think.

  The centurion Mr. Raphael provides silent companionship throughout. Every morning the nurse elevates his bed, the old man takes his coffee black with three packets of sugar prepared by the nurse, and a few strips of bacon. Now there’s a diet to live on for a hundred years. A few times a day, with no one else around, Peter says something aloud. He no longer speaks directly to Raphael, because there’s never been any form of reply, just voices thoughts, to test reality or break the silence.

  For almost three weeks the old man follows the same Spartan daily routine, eyes open once in a while, taking in the weather, perhaps as he first did as a child by the river as his mother cleaned salmon and hung them on pine pole racks to dry. While Peter has had more visitors than he expected, the old man hasn’t had one until today. It’s mid-afternoon, and Peter is dozing himself when he hears someone speak in a very different tongue. Then there’s a hoarse reply from Raphael. Peter’s eyes and ears open, suddenly alert, and though he can’t see the person, nor understand the words of Secwepemc, the visitor’s voice is oddly familiar. The old man’s replies are slow and sparse, eerily different from English, yet somehow calming.

  When the tall frame of the visitor’s back falls within his view, Peter says, “Levi?”

  “Bail man? You look like you been dragged behind a horse.”

  “I pretty much feel it, too, but not as bad as I did a week ago. What brings you here?”

  “This man,” he says, gesturing at the old fellow, “my mother was his spirit sister.”

  “He’s your uncle?”

  “Close enough… for English.” Then he speaks Secwepemc to Raphael, who nods and slowly responds, but doesn’t shift his gaze. “Pleased to meet you, he says. He says you talk sometimes, but he doesn’t know English.”

  “Pleased to meet him also. Yes, it’s a bad habit I have, talking to myself.”

  The old man volunteers another whispered comment. Levi nods. “He says he sees a woman in your heart. Maybe you speak to her?”

  “What?” Peter asks, incredulous.

  “Some elders live a long time, some live to see what’s comin’, or speak with ancestors. Some, like Raphael, can see into a person’s heart.”

  “No kidding? That’s amazing.” He doesn’t wish to show skepticism or any disrespect. And, in fact, many of his waking hours have been spent thinking of Marina. Perhaps he’s even spoken her name. “Like you said that night at the rodeo grounds, Levi, there’s always a woman or two involved.”

  Levi repeats this for Raphael, and the three of them share a chuckle.

  Later on, deep in the sleepless night and the muted gloom of the hospital, after going over every possible reason and speculation, he finally must accept he hasn’t heard from Marina. No message, no call, no card.

  Her face won’t leave his mind, though, the ferocious look in her eyes when she first realized Nolin was in her home that terrible evening. No longer a victim, she found something stronger than fear inside herself.

  Initially, he thought or dreamed he could feel her thinking of him, but no longer. They broke rules, and perhaps only used each other in a way as life preservers when both were at risk of drowning. She must know that he does care for her, at least he hangs on to that hope. But she’s putting time and plenty of distance between them.

  chapter twenty-three

  On the morning of his release from the hospital, Peter stands outside on the curb in the sunshine and passing shade of afternoon clouds, awaiting his cab. He wears a neck brace, new clothes, and runners billed to his health care card, with a plastic bag holding his acquired toiletries over the past three weeks, the cards, magazines, and paperbacks. Off to the left is a woman in a wheelchair with a stainless-steel oxygen and medication stand connected to her via tubes and a mask, the mouthpiece pushed to one side so she can enjoy another cigarette. There’s a cluster of other worried family members huddled in discussion about someone else lying somewhere in a room upstairs. To his right is the ambulance bay, the grey asphalt parking lane and trolley access sidewalk marked in stark white lines.

  His entire body is stiff and aching, his face still swollen along the red seam of stitches along his jaw. During the time he was unconscious, they shaved his hair. Now grown out three weeks, it’s a rough, dark thatch with new hints of grey at his temples. A slight breeze carries the dry scents of summer, lawn clippings, and green apples. He’s glad to be out. But as if imprisoned for years, his circumstances now feel very unfamiliar. He doesn’t know exactly what to do with himself. The cab arrives, and Peter eases himself into the back seat.

  From her hideaway in California, via email and telephone, Karen managed the sale of their house. He should be more grateful, rescued from the sea of personal bankruptcy. The price isn’t bad. It will clear the mortgage, and after real-estate fees and bank penalties, leave them each with a few thousand dollars. A sad net worth at his age, but better than being in the hole.

  The manicured agent brings papers out one morning, lays them out at the kitchen table, clearly uneasy with Peter’s POW appearance. She smells like a mango tree. He wears a frayed green rugby shirt, khaki shorts, and bare feet. Then there’s the three-inch-thick white plastic neck collar, broken teeth, and the healing purple gash along his left jawbone. He’s made coffee, but she declines, wired enough anticipating her percentage on the deal. A last-minute request is occupancy within two weeks. The buyers are new to town, currently living in a motel, eager to take possession. Peter absorbs this information, lights a cigarette, and ponders the matter for a few minutes while sipping his coffee, taking a hit of satisfaction from the agent’s discomfort, letting her wonder for a minute or two. He really has no choice. On several pages, at each point flagged by a stick-on pink tab, he sees Karen’s assertive signature in the blue felt tip ink she’s always favoured, and beside these he scribbles his own in black ballpoint. It’s the last time their names will ever appear side by side, and it saddens him. The agent couldn’t be happier. She’s on her feet and snaps the document from his hands into her sharkskin briefcase.

  After she’s gone, the stove clock reads 11:22. He reaches into the cupboard over the fridge and brings out a half-full bottle of Stolichnaya and mixes a Greyhound, two fingers in a tall glass with ice and grapefruit juice. He takes the drink outside and sits on the step of the weathered back deck in the bold late-summer sunshine.

  The yard is overgrown, fringed by knee-high dandelions and thistles. A responsible seller would fire up the lawn mower. But Peter isn’t up to wrestling with the mower, and he rather likes the yard the way it is, for the next ten days or so. The house needs work, the windows cleaned, carpets, hell. Pay somebody later. He’s got to pack his belongings, which will take a day or two, and what then? Where? He’s got to figure out where he’ll move the boxes and furniture to. He’s got to find an apartment or a motel room.

  It’s a few days more before he’s limber enough to do much packing or to drive. Once he is, he takes a run through town and drives by Arbour Villa twice, where the curtains in unit 5 are open, the windows have been replaced, and the rooms look empty. He circles the block once more and finally pulls into the lot. Peter spots Fay Kubova at the back corner of the lawn, now eyeballing him. He walks in slow motion, glancing at door 5, stricken with flashbacks from his last visit, the beating, the gunfire. And the hour prior to that, upstairs in bed with Marina.

  “She isn’t here,” Mrs. Kubova informs him before he can open his mouth, waving the watering wand as if she might turn it on him.

  “I wondered if she maybe left a forwarding address?” he can’t help asking, though he knows it’s hopeless.

  “No!” the old woman barks. “And if she did, I wouldn’t give it to you. I don’t care what kind of officer you are.”

  “I’m here only as a friend.”

  “A friend?” She shakes her head. “Well, go now please. You’re no better than the other one. You have no friend and no business here.”

  He drives away, home to a house full of boxes.

  Peter gives some thought to Woodgate’s job offer. If he wants to leave this line of work, the service of justice and public safety, now seems the natural time. He’s escaped the past few months of insanity without criminal charges against himself, and his injuries will heal, his teeth will be replaced. He could go back to teaching, or maybe small-town journalism, documenting civic politics and bowling league standings. Or he can load up the Bronco and leave town. Nobody will miss him. Start afresh in Winnipeg or Yellowknife. Thing is, he misses the work already, as strange as that might seem to many people. Working with offenders isn’t a glorious profession. In fact, for the most part, it’s thankless, but for him it has a solid meaning.

  During the first days in the hospital, once he was conscious, no longer dreaming of iguanas, smoking fields, and rivulets of hot lava, as soon as he surfaced, he thought only of Marina. Her dark eyes, her face, her beautiful hair. He imagined her limbs, the deep blue dolphin tattoo on her hip, and her curious webbed toes. Her tender heart, his own heart weighed down by his sad mind. His desire for her has only brought her more grief. She’s a young woman, she’s had only a few lovers, and three of them have died violent deaths. Peter has played a hand, not entirely unwitting, in her tragedy.

  What hand he played in Nolin’s death is a less-anguished question, but more complex. Probation officers are trained in the management of risk, to document steps taken, and then, locking up the file drawers before they leave the office at five o’clock, they cross their fingers. One can’t personally take on the future offences by clients, because these are inevitable. It’s only fodder for nightmares. Every once in a while a file goes “sideways,” as they say, and sometimes requires an internal investigation. And on that scale the Nolin file is right off the map. He was a steroid gorilla, with all the wrong appetites of a psychopath. His life was a waste, and he lost the chance to change. That’s one thing that troubles Peter deeply and always will. Maybe the only real meaning in life is change, evolution in oneself. Probably if they knew the facts, many of his colleagues, maybe most anyone, would argue that out of sheer decency Peter Ellis should resign, never mind that it seems he’s escaped punishment, other than some facial disfigurement and an undetermined sense of guilt for the rest of his life.

  He locates a cabin to rent on a property bordering untended range with cattle and horses grazing in sight. The landlord seems easygoing. There’s a shed to store his skis and bike. In the dusty process of moving, lifting cardboard boxes into and out of the Bronco, Peter feels his life has been factored out, maybe not to the lowest denominator, but damn near. Less than one year ago he lived a modest dream, and Karen conceiving a child was foremost in their minds. Now he’s down to this. And he’s reminded of certain clients, offenders, not the run-of-the-mill but middle-class guys with no previous records, who make one bad mistake and it tips them into a nosedive. Everyone changes one way or the other.

  In the drugstore, Peter buys a package of stationery and envelopes, and sitting on the porch of his cabin, writes a series of thank-you notes to those who sent cards and flowers to the hospital. He labours longest over the note to Karen, discards his first draft, then fixes himself a drink. Peter makes the second as simple as he can bear. He’ll always love her, yet senses they might drift away into very different lives and one day lose touch. He doesn’t want that, can’t face the thought right now, and tries to avoid a gloomy tone while putting this into words.

  The cabin has no yard to speak of but is surrounded by brush and range grass, junipers, and a few craggy old pines. The place is barely insulated and heats up something fierce during the day. He spends the evening hours out on the porch, sipping cold beer. The cat flakes out under the wooden steps.

  When he’s sent off his thanks to everyone else, Peter realizes he has no address for Sarah Moxey, but she jotted her phone number on the card she left with the books. He did appreciate the loan of them. All his other principles may be in serious question, but he is still compelled to return books to their rightful owner. So one evening he calls her.

  “Ah, Peter Ellis calling. I wanted to thank you for the books and note…”

  “Oh, you’re welcome. I thought you’d need some reading material. You survived the hospital? Are you back at work?”

  “Yes… no,” he says.

  “What?”

  “I mean, I’m out of the hospital but will be off work for a while, I guess. I wanted to return the books but didn’t have your address.”

  “Well, that’s easy.” She laughs, recites her address, and adds, “Why don’t you come by for dinner tomorrow night and bring them with you?”

  Offhand he can think of no excuse, and it will seem rude to invent one, or to turn her down again. “All right, thank you, I will.”

 

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