The Killing Circle

“I’m out of it now,” I say.

“Going into a new line of work, are you?”

“Not decided on that yet.”

“Would’ve thought the writing life would be close to ideal. No boss, set your own hours. Just making things up. Not work at all, really.”

“You make it sound easier than it is.”

“What’s the hard part?”

“All of it. Especially the making things up.”

“It’s a lot like lying, I imagine.”

He steps over to the bookshelf, nodding at the titles but seemingly recognizing none of them.

“I’m a pretty avid reader myself,” he says. “Just crime novels, really. Can’t be bothered with all that Meaning of Life stuff.” Detective Ramsay turns to look at me. His face folds into a disapproving frown. “Can I ask what you find so funny?”

“You’re a detective who only reads detective novels.”

“So?”

“It’s ironic, I guess.”

“It is?”

“Perhaps not.”

He returns his attention to the shelves until he pulls out my book.

“What is it?” he says.

“I’m sorry?”

“What kind of book is it?”

“I’m never quite sure what to say to that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s tricky to categorize.”

Detective Ramsay opens the back cover to look at the author’s photo. Me, looking grumpy, contemplative, air-brushed.

“That title’s quite a coincidence,” he says.

“Yes?”

“The Sandman killings a few years ago. I was the lead investigator on that one.”

“Really.”

“Small world, isn’t it?”

“I suppose, on some level, the title was inspired by those events.”

“Inspired?”

“Not that what the murderer did was inspirational. I mean it only in the sense that it gave me the idea.”

“What idea?”

“The title. That’s all I was talking about.”

His eyes move down and at first I wonder if there’s a stain on my shirt. Then I realize he’s looking at my hands. I resist the reflex to slip both of them in my pockets.

Ramsay brings his eyes up again. Repeatedly lifting and lowering my book as though judging its merits based on weight alone.

“Mind if I borrow this?”

“Keep it. There’s plenty more in the basement.”

“Oh? What else have you got down there?”

It’s only the laugh he allows himself after a moment that indicates he’s joking. In fact, everything he says in his half-submerged brogue could be taken as a dry joke. But now I’m not sure any of it is.

“I need to run through your day with Ms Dunn,” he says, putting my book down on a side table and producing a notebook from his jacket pocket.

“It wasn’t a day. I was with her for twenty minutes at most.”

“Your twenty minutes then. Let’s start with those.”

I tell him how Petra left a message with me the night before, asking to speak in person. The next morning I returned her call, and we arranged to meet at her house at five o’clock. On my way out of the subway she was there, wearing running attire and a Yankees cap. Reluctant to go to her house, she guided me into the ravine. She told me of her concerns about a man who seemed to be following her, someone she’d spotted outside her house at night. She was frightened, and wanted to know if I had noticed a shadow after me as well.

“And have you?” Detective Ramsay says.

There is a point in the telling of every story where the author becomes his own editor. Not everything is included in an accounting of events, no record the complete record. Even the adulterer who cannot live with his conscience excludes the smell of his mistress’ perfume from his confession. Nations at war provide casualty numbers, but not a tally of missing arms versus legs. Deception, in the active sense of distorting the facts, may not be the cause of these absences. Most of the time it is a matter of providing the gist without inflicting undue pain. It’s how one can be truthful and keep secrets at the same time.

This is how I later came to justify my telling Detective Ramsay, No, I haven’t been followed, don’t know what Petra was talking about in the ravine at all. Even as I take this path I’m aware it may be the wrong one. The police could be the only ones to keep me and Sam safe at this point. But there is something that makes me certain that such disclosure would only make me next. If I am being watched by the Sandman as closely as it feels I am, then I have every intention to play by his rules, not the law’s.

Not to mention that I’m starting to get the feeling I may be a suspect in Petra’s murder. Trust me on this: one’s instinct, in such cases, is to withhold first, and figure out if this was a good idea later.

“So why’d she call you?”

“I suppose it was because of the writing circle we were in together. Years ago. She was trying to draw a connection between us, my book, the concerns she had about a stalker. It was rather vague.”

“Vague,” he says, pausing to reflect on the word. “Tell me about this circle.”

So I do. Give him all the names, the little contact information I have. Again, I decide to leave a couple things out. My meeting with Angela, for instance.

“Just want to confirm the sequence of events with you,” he says. “You met with Ms Dunn around five o’clock. Is that right?”

“A couple minutes before five, yes.”

“And you left her in the ravine twenty minutes later.”

“Give or take.”

“You walked home after this?”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk to anyone? Stop anywhere?”

“I had a drink in Kensington Market.”

“Where, exactly?”

“The Fukhouse. It’s a punk bar.”

“You don’t look the part.”

“It happened to be on my way.”

“Would anyone recognize you from The Fukhouse?”

“The bartender might. Like you say, I don’t look the part.”

“When did you arrive home?”

“It was evening. Some time after nine, I guess.”

“That’s when you called over to the neighbour’s to check on your son.”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any particular reason to be concerned for your son’s safety?”

He was standing in my window.

“I’m a widower, Detective. Sam is the only family left to me. I’m never not concerned for his safety.”