The Killing Circle

window?

He sees me coming and stays where he is. Watches me slide the key in and open the door.

The front hallway is dark. He hadn’t turned the lights on, hadn’t needed to. He knew where he wanted to go.

I round the corner of the dining room where the front window looks on to the street. The room is empty. Nothing to hide behind. From here I step back into the hallway to check the rear of the house. The kitchen drawers closed, nothing unsettled on the counters. And the living room as it was left as well.

I’m about to make my way upstairs when a lick of breeze turns my attention to the sliding doors. Open. What I’d seen at first as glass now revealed as the intruder’s means of entry.

But it doesn’t mean he left by the same route. It doesn’t mean he’s not in the house.

“Sam?”

I take the stairs three at a time. Slapping at the wall as my feet skid out on the landing. My shoulder crashing into my son’s bedroom door.

“Sam!”

Even before I look to see if he’s in his bed, I check the window. Blood tattooed on the curtains. But it’s closed, the curtains untouched. His bed made, just as he’d left it this morning.

Then I remember. He’s over at his friend Joseph’s across the street. A birthday party. Sam’s not here because he’s not supposed to be here.

I cross the hall and grab the phone. Joseph’s mother answers.

“I just…the back door…could you please put Sam on?”

Half a minute passes. Something is wrong. All that’s left is for Joseph’s mother to come back on the line and say, That’s funny. He was here with the other kids the last time I checked.

“Dad?”

“Sam?”

“What’s going on?”

“Are you inside?”

“That’s where the phone is.”

“Right.”

“Where are you?”

“At home. There was…I forgot to…Oh, Jesus…”

“Can I go now?”

“I’ll come pick you up when the party’s over, okay?”

“I’m across the street.”

“I’ll pick you up anyway.”

“Sure.”

“Bye, then.”

“Bye.”

Whoever was standing in the window had got the right house this time. But it was the wrong night.

Luck. Who’d have thought there’d be any left for me, after all my undeserved laurels, my devil deals? Yet Sam is alive. Eating cake and horsing around in my neighbour’s basement.

It’s time, however, to get some help. Not of the psychiatric variety (although this seems increasingly inevitable) but the law. There’s no more room to wonder if the Sandman is real or not. There was someone in my house. And now it’s time to bring in the guys with badges and guns.

But before I can pick up the phone, it starts to ring.

I look up to see that my bedroom curtains are drawn open. Left that way from this morning when I’d pulled them wide to let the light in. But now, at night and with the bedside lamp on, I would be visible to anyone on the street.

The phone keeps ringing.

If I’m about to speak to the terrible man who does terrible things, I can’t help wondering what words he wants to share with me.

“Hello?”

“Mr Rush?”

Some sort of accent.

“If this is about your goddamn manuscript, I can’t help you. Now if you don’t mind stuffing your precious —”

“I’ve got some bad news for you, Mr Rush.”

“Who is this? Because I know he’s safe, alright? So if you’re—”

“I think there’s some confusion here—”

“—trying to threaten me, I’ll call the police. You hearing me?”

“Mr Rush—Patrick—please. This is Detective Ian Ramsay, Toronto Police Services. I’m calling about your friend, Petra Dunn.”

A Scottish lilt. The giveaway of an immigrant who’s been here for the better part of his life but still hasn’t wholly lost the accent of the homeland. It distracts me for a moment, so that when he speaks his next words, I’m still trying to guess whether he’d more likely be from the Edinburgh or Glasgow side of things.

“We believe she’s been murdered, Mr Rush,” he says.

21

The police, when they arrive, take the form of a single man, a tall plainclothesman with bright green eyes that suggest one needn’t take him too seriously. A moustache that seems an afterthought, an obligatory accessory he’d be more comfortable without. I’ve never been around a real detective before, and I try to prepare myself to be at once cautious and relaxed. And yet his open features, along with finding myself a couple inches wider than he (I’d expected a broad slab of recrimination), instantly make me feel that no real harm can come from this man.

“I’m here about the murder,” he says, with practiced regret, as someone in coveralls might arrive at the door to say I’m here about the cockroaches.

I extend my arm to invite him in and he brushes past, makes his way directly into the living room. It’s the sort of familiar entrance an old friend might make, one comfortable enough to go straight for the bar and not say hello until the first gulp is down.

When I follow him in, however, Detective Ramsay hasn’t helped himself to a drink, but is standing in the centre of the room, hands clasped behind his back. He gestures for me to sit—I take the arm of a ratty recliner— while remaining standing himself. Even being half-seated, however, concedes the weight advantage I’d briefly held. For what might be a minute, it seems I’m of little interest to him. He looks around the room as though every magazine and mantelpiece knickknack were communicating directly to him, and he wants to give each of them the chance to speak.

“Are you a married man, Mr Rush?”

“My wife passed away seven years ago.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yourself?”

He raises his hand to show the gold band around his ring finger. “Twenty years in. I tell my wife a fellow does less time for manslaughter these days.”

I try at a smile, but it doesn’t seem that he’s expecting one.

“Someone told me you’re a writer.”