to put her own wishes first.” Solange shook her head furiously. “So female and so destructive. But she found her strength on our hike at Mount Assiniboine. There were just the two of us. It was tough. There was a blizzard. There were places where the ascent was straight up the mountain. Once the path under her feet just gave way, but she held on.” Solange stared at the photograph. “All her life she’d had fears, but by the time we got to Lake Magog, she knew she’d never go back to being the compliant little girl. She had found her power.” Solange’s voice broke. “Then some bastard kills her as if she were an animal.” For a beat Solange herself seemed torn apart by the violence that ended her friend’s life; then she turned to steel. “He won’t get away with it.”
I followed her as she strode down the hall. There were three people in the main office: Detective Robert Hallam was watching Rosalie search the drawer of the cabinet where we kept personnel files, and Livia Brook was hovering between them like a duenna.
Solange paid them no heed. A counter separated the reception area from the office. When Solange set the photograph on it, Livia came over immediately. She picked up the picture, glanced at it quickly, then thrust it at Solange. “It’s too much,” she said. “We don’t need a reminder of what we’ve lost.”
“You’re wrong.” Solange’s tone was coldly furious. “We do need a reminder. We all need to be reminded every minute of every day that what that monster took from us was beyond price. Otherwise, there will never be justice.” Solange returned the photograph to the counter, but her fingers lingered, caressing the curve of the frame. “When I was young,” she said, “I was prepared for confirmation by a Spanish priest – a fat, useless old man, peddling cruel patriarchal dogma, but one of his lessons stayed with me. He told me there was a Spanish proverb I should remember whenever I had to make a choice in life.” Her voice deepened into a parody of the old priest, and she wagged her finger theatrically. “God says, ‘Take what you want. Take it, and pay for it .’ ” She turned to face me. “The man who killed Ariel took the best, Joanne, and if God won’t make him pay for it, I will.”
CHAPTER
2
After her diatribe, Solange seemed on the verge of shock. The carapace of the warrior had shattered. She was hugging herself, but as strong as her arms were, they seemed incapable of holding the pieces together, and her tawny green-flecked eyes were unblinking and wary. I reached out to her, but Livia stepped between us and slid her arm around Solange’s waist. “She needs to be alone for a while. She has to find the place inside herself that will enable her to accept this.”
Robert Hallam raised an eyebrow. “When she finds that place I’ll want to talk to her. Meanwhile,” he said, turning to Livia, “I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time.”
“Of course,” Livia said. “Just let me get Solange settled.”
Rosalie removed her pale yellow jacket, hung it carefully on the back of her chair, filled a glass at the water cooler, picked up a box of tissues, and followed Livia and Solange into the inner office. Too exhausted to move, I stared at the closed door, hoping against hope that somewhere in Livia’s endless store of New Age baloney, there was a mantra that could fix everything. I wasn’t optimistic.
Rosalie was back almost immediately, but Livia stayed with Solange for several minutes. By the time she emerged, Robert had his notebook and pencil at the ready, and his foot was tapping. “Let’s get to the questions, Dr. Brook,” he said. “I haven’t got all day, and there are a lot of people to see.” I took that as my cue to leave.
When I got back to my office, Howard was waiting for me. He was standing at the window, looking out at the campus. The early-afternoon sun poured in on him, softening his angular features, changing him from a wary old eagle into someone kindly and avuncular. The metamorphosis was more apparent than real. He gazed at me through hooded eyes.
“Is it my imagination or is the number of dumb fucks in the world increasing?”
“I take it your question isn’t rhetorical,” I said.
“You tell me.” Howard ran a gnarled hand over his head. “The young cop they sent to interview me had a pronunciation problem. Every time he said the word ‘deceased,’ it came out ‘diseased.’ ”
I bit my lip to keep from smiling. “As in ‘How well did you know the diseased?’ ” I said.
“Exactly. Jesus, Jo. That kid must use the word ‘deceased’ a hundred times a week. You’d think somebody would have told him, wouldn’t you? Then, after he left, I tried Charlie’s house. No answer, so I called the radio station. They’ve got the Queen of the Coneheads answering the phones there. She refused to put me through to Charlie directly. Told me it was station policy to screen all calls. I told her my call was important. She said every phone call CVOX gets is important. I told her it was an emergency. She said if I considered myself suicidal, she’d redirect my call to a crisis line; if not, I could leave my name and number like everybody else.”
“Did you tell her you were Charlie’s father?”
Howard looked abashed. “It didn’t occur to me,” he said quietly. “Talk about dumb fucks. I’m going to call a cab and go over there.”
“Forget the cab,” I said. “I’ll take you.”
“Have the police talked to you yet?”
“Nope, but they know where I live.”
Howard frowned. “You don’t have to do this.”
I picked up my sweater. “True, and you didn’t have to stay up with me all night when Ian died or spend hours convincing me the world hadn’t come to an end when Mieka dropped out of university or come to the hospital with me when Angus got that concussion playing football… Shall I continue?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Let’s hit the road.”
As soon as I turned the key in the ignition, Howard reached for the radio dial and punched in CVOX. It was 2:30 – time for Charlie’s show.
Howard turned to face the window on the passenger side. His voice was a gravel whisper. “Do you think he’s found out yet?”
“You’ll be able to tell when you hear him,” I said. “He doesn’t hold much back on that show.” It was true. I wasn’t a fan of open-line radio, and CVOX was all talk all the time, but whenever I’d caught “Heroes” I’d been impressed. Charlie’s subject was relationships, and he treated his callers’ problems with intelligence and a wild, subversive wit. He had taken the show’s name from Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the reference was significant. Many would have dismissed Charlie’s callers as malcontents or as charter members of the tribe of the terminally confused. But to Charlie they were heroes engaged in the hero’s journey to find answers that would make sense of their lives. His advice to them was a potent mix of eclectic allusion and dark insight that suggested their problems went beyond the classroom or the trailer court, and his audience, comprised largely of the desirable seventeen-to-thirty demographic was huge and loyal.
When the drummer from Dave Matthews Band counted the band into Charlie’s theme music, “Ants Marching,” Howard stiffened. So did I, but as the music faded and Charlie began his intro, his dark-honey voice sounded as it always did, intense and intimate.
“It’s 2:30 on CVOX, Voice Radio, and this is Charlie D, kicking off the first weekend of summer. Hot sun, cold beer, new friends, old loves – a time for revelry. But there are some among us who just can’t seem to celebrate the cosmically embedded self. No matter what you do for them, it’s never enough. This show is about them, or it’s about you if you’re one of them. “Some people,
No matter what you give them
Still want the moon. “The bread,
The salt,
White meat and dark,
Still hungry. “The marriage bed
And the cradle,
Still empty arms.”
Howard turned to me furiously. “What the hell’s he doing?”
