Enter, Night

serious inklings that they were not as welcome in this house as her mother and uncle had initially led her to believe. Her eyes travelled to the far wall of the dining room. She noticed two more formal oil portraits, this time two boys: her father, immediately recognizable, and her uncle, fairer and frailer, more delicate even then. She tried to read the expression in their eyes, looking for some clue to help her understand better what was going on, but she was too far away. She promised herself that she would examine them when she had more time, perhaps after school.

Adeline laid her napkin on the table. She pushed herself away from the dining room table and rose to her feet in one languorous, elegant movement. “How nice to have our first meal under this roof as a family,” she said. “I shall expect to see you all at dinner. Six-thirty on the dot, mind.” And just like that, she was gone, leaving a faint trace of Bulgarian rose perfume in her wake like a contrail.

Elliot McKitrick was in the back office of the station looking for a file when he heard the bell above the door tinkle again. He grimaced. If it was that goddamn pushy Indian again, he swore he wasn’t going to be as nice this time. He closed the file cabinet with an audible bang and marched into the main room of the station expecting to see Billy Lightning looking down at him from his fancy-mouthed height, but it was Dave Thomson, his sergeant, looking none too pleased, and paler than a goddamn albino underneath his permanent ruddy windburn.

“Hey, Sarge, you’re back,” Elliot said. “How were things in Gyles Point?”

“Not good,” Thomson replied. “Get me a glass of water, would you? Make sure it’s cold.”

Elliot went into the back room again and took a glass from the cupboard above the sink. Then he let the tap run until the water was like ice before filling the glass. He brought it back into the main office. Thomson sat at his desk looking through some papers. Elliot handed him the glass. He took it without a word and drank it down in one long, deep draught.

“What’s going on, Sarge? What happened over in Gyles? You look… well, what’s up?”

“Murder, maybe. Fella by the name of Carstairs, from out by North Bay. Has a fishing cabin outside of Gyles. A neighbour saw lights on in there last night and went over this morning early, thinking the man might’ve come up. First time in years, apparently, since his wife died. The neighbour found the place empty but said it smelled like something had turned. There’s blood all over the upstairs bedroom, but no body anywhere, and no car. He called the RCMP, and Gill Styles called me in as local backup. The neighbour was right. It smelled like a meat locker. Styles’s men are trying to locate Mr. Carstairs, but so far no luck.”

Thomson paused, his eyes dark-rimmed. “Not the sort of thing we’re used to up here at all. No, not one bit.”

“Jesus,” Elliot said. He cleared his throat. “Sarge?”

“What is it, McKitrick?”

“Sarge, we had a visitor earlier. Sort of weird, really. An Indian. Came by asking all sorts of strange questions about whether or not we’d hand any break-ins or anything weird in the last few days. It didn’t seem like he was, you know… right in the head. Also, he was real uppity. Pushy. Not like the ones we have around here.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Fancy leather jacket. Jeans. Shirt. Had a real snooty way about him, like he was looking down on us. On me.” Elliot looked outraged. Thomson raised his eyebrows and smiled faintly at Elliot’s entirely out-of-place indignation, considering the circumstances. Insecurity had never been one of Elliot McKitrick’s problems. Thomson had known him since he was a kid-he hadn’t been lacking in self-esteem, or female attention-since he first sprouted pubes, maybe even before. Every town had its golden boy, and in Parr’s Landing, Elliot was it. In high school, he’d been a big, strong, handsome kid, star forward on the Parr’s Landing Predators hockey team, and star teenage swordsman in private, if the gossip down at the Legion hall-enthusiastically confirmed by Bill McKitrick, Elliot’s father-was to be believed.

This Indian must have really gotten under the kid’s skin, Thomson thought. If he hadn’t just visited what was very likely a murder scene before breakfast, and if the stink of copper wasn’t clinging to the inside of his nostrils and, he imagined, his clothes, he might smile. He might even take a bit of piss out of the kid. But he didn’t feel like smiling, and he didn’t feel like teasing.

“Did he give a name?”

“Yeah, let me see. He wrote it down.” Elliot went to his desk and retrieved the piece of paper. “William Lightning,” he read. Elliot omitted the title “Dr.” out of spite, then thought better of it, just in case it might be important. “Dr. William Lightning, if you can dig that. Medicine man, more likely.”

Thomson sat upright. “What did you say? William Lightning? Billy Lightning?”

“You know him, Sarge?” Elliot frowned. This wasn’t the reaction he’d been counting on.

Thomson paused. “Not sure. There was a Billy Lightning here some years ago. This guy was a young fella, though. He was here with his father-some sort of archaeologist from a university down in the States or something. They were here doing some kind of dig out by Bradley. Something to do with the Indian village from the olden days that used to be here. They got old lady Parr’s permission to dig and everything, I heard. They had to leave. Something to do with one of the students they had with them. He got sick or something. They had to shut the whole thing down.”

“And this Lightning was there? You sure? What happened?”

“I don’t remember,” Thomson said. “It was just before I transferred out here from Sault Ste. Marie and I never got all the details. It was all finished and done with by the time I took over in ’58.” Thomson paused.

“I wonder what he’s doing back here? And why he’d show up right about now?”

“You think he might’ve done it, Sarge? Those questions he was asking seemed really, really strange.”

“Did he say where he was staying?”

“He’s at the Nugget. He said to phone him after twelve noon.” Now Thomson did laugh. “Did he, indeed? Well, that’s interesting. I’m thinking it might be worth a drive out to see Mr.-excuse me, Dr. Lightning. Maybe we won’t phone him first. Maybe we’ll just pay him a surprise visit and see who’s who and what’s what. What do you say, Elliot?”

“Sounds good to me, Sarge,” Elliot replied. Privately he hoped that the Indian would put up a fight. He was itching to use his nightstick on him, and this seemed like it might be as good a time as any to break some bones.

CHAPTER TEN

It is a curious paradox about small towns: although there is less distance to traverse, from one end to another, than in cities, almost no one walks anywhere. Unlike cities, where there are never any shortage of cars and trucks belting exhaust, people all seem to be from somewhere else. In cities, pedestrians walk to their destinations. In small towns like Parr’s Landing, on the other hand, the average citizen would be as unlikely to walk to the store around the corner to get a quart of milk as they would be to do without altogether.

It was therefore entirely in keeping with small town tradition-even poetic, though perhaps only to Jeremy Parr himself-that he and Elliot McKitrick should each get the first glimpse of each other in ten years through the windows of two cars going in opposite directions down a wet country road littered with fallen leaves in deepest October.

Jeremy, who had been expecting something of this sort today, was still taken aback to see Elliot, much less behind the wheel of a cop car. He recognized him immediately, even though Elliot was wearing aviator shades. The square jaw, the perfectly formed brow, and the close-cropped dark crew cut was unmistakably that of Elliot McKitrick, as were the powerful shoulders and arms beneath the blue uniform jacket.

Yes, it was Elliot-his Elliot. Changed, but still somehow exactly the same.

Something flared somewhere in the region of his chest. Not pain exactly, definitely not joy, and certainly nothing as cliched as his “heart stopping.” But he was suddenly acutely aware of a profound absence and loss, the sharpness of which shocked him.

“Was that him?” Christina asked as the cars passed each other. “It was, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jeremy said, not trusting himself to say anything further, or perhaps simply incapable of it. “Just drive, Christina.” He hunched down in his seat, eyes straight ahead. “Move it, for God’s sake.”