“Yes. Maybe.”
Miranda pulled the Jag up in front of a nondescript frame house, sliding roughly against the curb as she parked.
“Damn slush,” she said. “This is the address. There’s a patrol car down the street. A light in the upstairs window. What do you think? Doesn’t look like much.”
“This’ll be it.”
“Okay,” she said, getting out of the car. Despite the telltale light in the upper window, a book-cover cliche foreshadowing dread and doom, the place looked deserted and remarkably ordinary.
As Morgan clambered awkwardly from the low-slung car, he expounded. “Ontario country vernacular. Storey and a half, steep gable, central hall, symmetrical design; Georgian with early Victorian pretensions. God forgive the aluminum siding. It’s clapboard underneath.”
“You figure so?”
“Yeah.”
They dumped the dregs of their coffee out onto the icy snow but, without any place to leave them, held on to the cups. They knocked on the door and waited. Morgan scrutinized the blank wall overhead, trying to estimate where the arched transom would have been. As a practical concession to warmth, it was probably covered in about the same time as the surrounding farmland became housing tracts.
The door opened and a uniformed policewoman stood squarely in the middle, backlit by a dull glow from the kitchen.
“Yes?” she said. The woman did not seem intimidated by late-night callers at a murder scene.
There was a moment of awkwardness as she waited for an explanation, which Miranda found pleasing, knowing they were not automatically assumed to be police.
“Officer?” Miranda did not recognize her. “I’m Detective Sergeant Quin, this is Detective Morgan.”
The woman nodded without introducing herself. “You’re a sergeant too, I imagine,” she said, glancing at Morgan, then back to Miranda. “I wasn’t expecting anyone just yet. Are you coming in?”
“Please,” said Miranda.
The policewoman led them through refuse and rubble into the kitchen. The kitchen itself was bright and hospitable.
“I’ve got some coffee,” she said. “You might as well use your own cups. I’ve been letting it steep to counter the smell.”
“It doesn’t smell,” Morgan observed. “It’s just an old house. Smells like burnt coffee.”
“I’m surprised you’re alone,” said Miranda. “I’m surprised the stove’s working.”
The woman shrugged. “Wrecking crew left the power on. Most of the wiring’s been stripped, or at least the fixtures. Some rooms are dark, others not. Like a bad horror flick, without the music. They’re all bad, I guess.” She indicated the location of the desiccated lovers with an upward nod. Her features softened for a moment. “Those two aren’t very good company; they’re sort of into each other. If it wasn’t for the missing parts, they’d be kind of sweet.”
“Sweet?” Morgan said. “They’re dead.”
“The dead in one another’s arms, Detective.” He waited for her to finish her thought, but that seemed to be it. She gazed into his eyes without smiling.
The woman poured them coffee. Miranda liked her; she warmed to anyone who could serve coffee that smelled so rank without an apology. Morgan was wary; her confidence seemed almost a reprimand for assumptions about her uniformed status.
They sat at the grey Arborite table, sipping. The woman was young and, despite the androgynous uniform, attractive. The coffee was execrable.
“It’s not necessarily murder,” said Miranda. “It could be a third party honouring their dying wishes. A ghoulish accomplice; except what would he — or possibly she — have done with the heads?”
“Could have been separate acts,” said the policewoman. “They could have died embracing; then someone stole the heads for souvenirs and sealed the remaining remains in the wall.”
“‘The young in one another’s arms,’” said Morgan, delivering the phrase in quotation marks, catching up to her previous statement.
“Yeats. He wasn’t talking about dying, Morgan. He was talking about sex.” Miranda cast a conspiratorial glance at the young policewoman.
Morgan began compiling a list of doomed lovers in his mind, from Hero and Leander to Sean Penn and Madonna. Himself? No. Doomed elevated something that was simply sad.
The young woman seemed in no hurry to show off her charges, and for Miranda and Morgan it was a matter of pacing.
“So where’re you from?” Morgan asked.
The officer flushed with anger. Miranda blanched. In an immigrant society you never ask people of colour where they’re from. You either know, or it’s not your concern.
“I’d guess southwestern Ontario,” Morgan blithely continued. “Down past Waterloo County — that’s where Miranda’s from. Do you have a name?”
“Naismith. My family is from Halifax. Africville. Until they tore it down. I thought you were figuring maybe Jamaica. Dat girl, man, her come from de islands?”
The Caribbean cadence was derisive, but Morgan wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or herself. That was the point, thought Miranda.
“Africville? United Empire Loyalists.”
“Good stock, as they say in the people trade. We predate the Loyalists. Freed-men, before the Revolution, when Halifax was still called Chebucto by the Mi’kmaq. But I grew up within sight of Detroit; we’re not from Africville anymore.”
“And went to the University of Windsor,” said Morgan, trying to connect.
“The University of Western Ontario. Where I was rushed by the African Club, the Afro-American Student Coalition, the West-Indian Association, the Moorish-American Movement. La Societe Franco-Afrique, you name it.”
“Nothing Canadian?” said Morgan, unsure whether that was a good thing or bad. That is the point, thought Miranda. It was both.
“Nothing Canadian and black; they were mutually exclusive. I could be professionally black or honourary white. That was it! I was in demand socially by every white group on campus so they could pretend we were exactly the same.”
“Cursed by the colour-blind,” said Miranda.
“You’ve got it,” said the young woman. “If you think invisibility is a bitch, try being the object of tolerance.”
“So,” Morgan asked, carefully, “is Toronto — the most cosmopolitan city in the world, as they say — any better?” He was fascinated by how much attitude she revealed, and how little was shown of what she actually felt.
“Well, sir, here I’m an ethnic minority. Before I was just a minority. You tell me.”
Blowing steam across the top of his coffee, Morgan lapsed into personal reflection. He had never been invisible but he had certainly been isolated. By choice? Is it ever by choice?
Listening to the silence, Miranda realized that from the moment the front door opened she had been aware the young woman was black. She had admired her dark complexion, her gleaming hair, her bold face. Miranda was suddenly uncomfortable, knowing she would not have catalogued the features of a white officer unless the person was either extremely homely or outrageously beautiful.
Their eyes connected and for a brief moment each woman looked into the depths of the other, each at a loss as to what was revealed.
“What have you done for a toilet?” Miranda asked. “I see most of the plumbing is gone.”
“Haven’t had to. But I figure I’d just go outside.”
The two women pushed at the back door, ratcheting it open against the drifted snow, and Miranda stepped out. She was back before the officer had even poured herself a refill.
“That,” said Miranda, “was not pleasant.”
