The Killing Circle

He blinks.

“That’s a long walk,” he says. “Even with a couple of drinks.”

“I like to take my time.”

“You might be interested to know that Mrs Dunn disappeared some time between your meeting with her and eight o’clock. Two and a half hours or so.”

“Disappeared? I thought you said she was murdered.”

“I said that’s what we believe.”

How could I have gotten this guy so wrong? The combination of Ramsay’s leftover Scots accent and droll demeanour had me thinking that if they really suspected that I could have done whatever was done to Petra, they would have sent over one of their hard cases. But now I see that Ramsay is a hard case.

“Do you know of anyone who would have a motive to do this to your friend?” he asks absently. “Aside from her shadow?”

“I’m not her friend. Wasn’t. I barely knew her.”

“’Not friend’,” he says, scribbling.

“As for motive, I have no idea. I mean, she mentioned her divorce, and how she was seeing her ex-husband’s business partner. It seemed like a delicate situation.”

“This is during your twenty minutes in the ravine?”

“It wasn’t much more than a name.”

“And what name would that be?”

“Roman. The boyfriend. Roman somebody. Petra was concerned that if her relationship with him came to her ex’s attention, it would cause her some inconvenience.”

“Roman Gaborek.”

“That’s him.”

“Did your friend mention that Mr Gaborek and Mr Dunn are both leaders among the local organized crime community?”

“She alluded to it.”

“Alluded. She alluded to it.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a funny thing,” he says, flipping his notebook closed. “Most of the time, people who hear about something like what you’ve just heard about ask how it was likely done. But you haven’t asked me a thing.”

“I don’t have much of a stomach for violence.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t ask me then. Because Ms Dunn, she met with considerable violence.”

“I thought there was no body.”

“But what the body left behind—well, it was indicative of certain techniques. Reminded me of four years ago. Remember?”

If one were to enter this room right now, one might mistake Detective Ramsay’s expression as showing how much he enjoys moments like these. But I can see that it’s not pleasure so much as rage. An anger he’s managed to disguise, over the years, as something near its opposite.

“Well, that’s it,” he says. I rise and offer a hand to be shaken, and when he finally takes it, the grip is ruthless.

“Hope I was of some help.”

“If you weren’t, you might yet be.”

Ramsay goes to the door to let himself out and I follow, suddenly desperate to hear the click of the bolt closing behind him.

“One last thing. The cap you say Ms Dunn was wearing when she met you…”

“Yes?”

“What team was it again?”

“The Yankees. Why?”

“Nothing. They just never found a cap, Yankees or otherwise.”

He opens the door and steps outside. Before he closes it, he shows me a smile. One he’s saved right for the end.

The morning brings a funny thought: I’m about to be famous all over again. Whenever they come for me and I make the shackled walk from police cruiser to courtroom, cameras whirring, reporters begging for a quip from the Creep of the Day for the suppertime news.

Then the clock radio clicks on. And I have the same thought all over again.

It’s the morning news telling the city that Petra Dunn, forty-five, was abducted yesterday in the Rosedale ravine. Evidence at the scene strongly supports foul play. Police are currently questioning a number of “persons of interest” in connection to the crime.

Person of interest, that’s me. Yesterday morning I got out of bed an unemployed pseudo-novelist, and just twenty-four hours later I’m facing a new day as the prime suspect in a probable homicide. But it doesn’t stop there. Because if Detective Ian Ramsay thinks I did in poor Petra Dunn, it follows that I did in Carol Ulrich, Ronald Pevencey and Jane Whirter four years ago too.

Angela may have been right. The Sandman’s come back. And as far as best guesses go, it’s me.

“Dad?”

Sam standing in my bedroom doorway.

“Just had a bad dream,” I say.

“But you’re awake.”

He’s right. I’m awake.

The first thing I do, once I’ve showered and shaved, is take Sam to stay with Stacey, Tamara’s sister in St Catharines. On the hour’s drive there I do my best to explain why a policeman came to talk with me last night, and why it’s best if the two of us are separated for a while. I tell him how sometimes people get caught up in things they have nothing to do with, but that they must nevertheless endure questions about.

“Process of elimination,” Sam says.

“Kind of, yeah.”

“But I thought it was ‘innocent until proven guilty’.”

“That’s only in courtrooms.”

“Does this have to do with your book?”

“Indirectly, yes.”

“I never liked your book.”

Of course he’s read it. Although forbidden to do so, how was he not going to read his father’s one and only contribution to the bookshelf? I can’t know how much of it he’s able to understand—a gifted reader, but still only eight years old—yet it appears he’s gathered the main point. The Sandman of The Sandman is real.

Once home, I leave a message on Angela’s machine, asking her to get back to me as soon as possible.

Waiting for her return call, I consider how many in the circle have already been in contact with each other. After the night at Grossman’s, I just assumed all of us went our separate ways. But there may have been relationships formed I had no inkling of at the time. Lovers, rivals, artists and their muses. The sort of passions that have been known to give rise to the most horrific actions.

To kill the time, I check back on the Comment page at www.patrick.rush.com. Once more, it mostly shows the same obsessives debating the finer points of The Sandman’s plotlines, unearthing inconsistencies, along with differing personal impressions of the author (“He signed my book and asked if I was a