I was locked in that closet for two days, smelling my mother’s body rotting in the summer heat, hearing the flies buzz. Finally someone from the restaurant where my mom worked came looking for her, found the body, and called the police. By then I was nearly catatonic.
“My mom wouldn’t have put me in the closet if it wasn’t him,” I told Doug.
“Are you sure? Did you hear her fighting on the phone or anything in the days leading up to that?”
I thought back. A memory kicked in: Mom on the phone, urgent and angry, telling someone it was over.
“Yeah, but I thought it was my father.”
“He was supposed to be in the logging camp at the time.”
“There are camp phones. He might have heard something about what she was doing.”
“Do you remember much about this Mark guy?”
“I didn’t like him, but I didn’t like my mom being with anyone.” I’d read the reports. He was also a logger, and also married. He’d cried at the funeral, saying he knew my father had a temper but never thought it would come to this. He’d supposedly broken off his affair with my mother that week to go back to his wife.
“I thought you might want to have a talk with him,” Doug said.
“Damn, I’m dealing with this case right now.”
“Let me know if you need any help.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the phone, my mind thundering with thoughts that crashed into one another. I seized on one, seeing it from a different angle. Where was my father?
Ally got up from the table and took her dish of SpaghettiOs to the sink.
“Can we play dress-up?” We played dress-up, then house, then watched cartoons. I’d made sure all the doors were locked and was doing some periodic checks, but all seemed quiet. Moose, the family French bulldog, was pacing in the kitchen, then standing by the back sliding glass door. I knew the signs. The dog had to pee.
Ally ran upstairs to grab one of her dolls. I turned off the alarm and slowly opened the sliding glass door, glancing around the perimeter. All clear.
I said, “Okay, Moose. Do your business.”
He zipped out the door and ran around the side of the house. I stepped outside to keep a better eye on him. That’s when I felt a blow to my left shoulder, hard enough to throw me to the ground. I managed to draw my gun and flip around, catching a brief glimpse of a large man just before his fist connected with the side of my head and knocked me unconscious.
The next thing I remembered was waking up with a couple of police officers standing around me.
“Hang tight,” one of them said. “We’ve got help coming.”
My head was pounding, ears ringing. My body felt like it had been hit by a dump truck. I reached up, touched a trickle of blood under my nose.
“Where’s Ally?”
“He got her.”
“Shit!” I tried to sit up, but everything started spinning. I collapsed back onto the ground, trying to catch my breath. After a moment I said, “Where’s her mother? What’s happening?”
The officer said, “Looks like she arrived home, found you hurt—and Ally missing. The constable who had been following Sara from the hospital came in moments later. While he was attending to you, Sara took off. We think John left some sort of message, maybe a note.”
I tried to push myself up again. The world squeezed down to a black dot. The next thing I knew, I was lying on a stretcher, looking up at the ceiling of an ambulance.
I was trying to call Billy over and over from my hospital room when Jeff showed up—the RCMP had flown him in from the mainland. He’s older than me, in his late forties, but he doesn’t look his age. His hair is still blond, bleached from the sun like mine, and he has a dark tan. We spend a lot of time outdoors together. We became friends before we were lovers, kayaking together on the weekends. I respected him for his no-bullshit attitude, loved him for the fact that he was willing to put up with my crap.
“What’s going on?” I felt frantic. “Where’s Billy?”
“With the task force. They’re trying to find Ally and Sara.”
My eyes filled with tears that I angrily wiped away.
“I screwed up, Jeff. Big-time.”
“No, you didn’t. You drew your gun. He was just too big and fast.”
“I shouldn’t have turned off the alarm or—”
“He’d have come in one way or another.”
“Is Hoffman okay?” He’d been posted at the end of the driveway.
“He’s fine, just pissed at himself. Someone, probably John, had set a fire down at the end of the road and he went to check it out. Billy says it looks like John made his way through everyone’s backyards and was planning on breaking into the house when you opened the back door.”
I thought of Ally, how much Sara loved her. What would she do to save her daughter?
“When can I get out of here?”
“They want to keep you for observation.”
“Dammit.” I felt so helpless. I wanted to be out there, doing something.
“Doug called. He heard what happened. I told him you were okay.”
“Thanks.”
The way Jeff seemed to be waiting for me to say something else told me they’d probably talked about more than my concussion. I was right.
“He told me about the guy in Kelowna,” he finally said. “Want me to talk to him?”
“I want to find Ally and Sara.”
He paused, and I thought he was going to push me harder, but he just said, “I could see if I can get hold of anyone on the task force, if you like.”
“Yeah, please.”
He left to make the calls. I stared up at the ceiling, wondering where Sara and Ally were and what John might be doing. I didn’t let myself think about the fact that my mother’s real killer might be sitting in a jail in Kelowna. Or that I had no idea where my father might be.
The next morning they called the doctor in because I was nauseous. He did some routine checks and said it
