“And she mentioned Solange by name?”
“Not by name,” he said, “but who else could it be?”
Howard pounded his fist into his palm. “Why the hell didn’t you mention this before?”
Charlie looked at his father in amazement. “How anxious would you be to revisit the worst day of your life?”
They left early, not much past eight o’clock. Charlie insisted on staying at the home he and Ariel had shared, and Howard insisted on not leaving his son alone. I watched their cab pull away, then went upstairs to check on the kids.
Taylor was already in bed, eyes squeezed shut, courting sleep, but when she heard my step, she bolted upright. “I’m so excited,” she said. “Are you?”
“Very,” I said. “Now, I want to take a closer look at Mouseland. The light wasn’t very good outside, and we were all a little distracted.”
“By that boy,” she said.
“By that man,” I said, correcting her. “Charlie’s twenty-seven years old. The same age as Mieka.”
Taylor took in the information. “He seemed more like a kid.” She shrugged. “Let’s look at the picture. You didn’t even notice that I put you and me in there.”
I picked up Mouseland and carried it over to the bed. It really was a terrific piece: the Legislature was Crayola-bright and surreal, but Taylor had drawn the duly elected mice and the sulky displaced cats with a cartoonist’s eye for detail. At the top of the marble steps leading into the Legislature, a matronly mouse in sensible shoes raised her paws in delight as a shining-eyed young mouse with braids twirled on one toe.
I pointed the figures out to Taylor. “Us?” I asked.
She nodded happily. “This is going to be so fun, Jo.”
“You bet,” I said. Then I leaned across her and turned out the light.
Eli’s door was closed, but when I knocked, he invited me in.
“I just wanted to thank you for helping Charlie tonight.” I said.
“I didn’t do anything special.”
“You were there,” I said, “and that was what he needed.”
Eli matched the fingertips of his hands and flexed them thoughtfully. “My uncle used to tell me this was a spider doing push-ups on a mirror,” he said.
“Funny guy, your uncle.” I said.
Eli smiled. “I wish he was here.”
“Me, too,” I said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Even your uncle couldn’t have done a better job than you did tonight.”
For a moment, I stood outside Eli’s doorway thinking about all the things I should do: phone Ed Mariani and ask him if there had been any problems with the mid-term; take the dishes out of the dishwasher; mark some of the essays that seemed to breed in my briefcase; iron a blouse to wear to the Legislature the next morning. There was no shortage of worthy projects awaiting my attention. I rejected them all in favour of a hot shower and clean pyjamas.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in bed. As a sop to my conscience, I took Political Perspectives with me. I was trying to make sense of the concept of sovereignty-association when the phone rang. A sixth sense told me the news would not be good, and the sixth sense was right.
Kevin Coyle’s voice was a breathy rasp. “Trouble’s brewing,” he said.
“Kevin, you’re starting to sound more and more like a character in a Sam Peckinpah movie.”
“You think you’re insulting me – implying I’m marginal and obsessed with the dark side – but Peckinpah knew things about the human psyche that you and I would do well to remember.”
“Such as…?”
“Such as the fact that violence doesn’t just pop up like a mushroom. It’s character-driven. If you don’t believe that, check out what Ann Vogel and her wild bunch are doing on Ariel’s Web page. There’s a fresh list of atrocities and new plans for retribution. Incidentally, there’s a reference to you that’s less than favourable. Apparently, you’re guilty of a sin of omission or commission that’s moved you from the circle of the elect to the circle of the damned.”
“Kevin, I’m so sick of this.”
“There’s more,” he said, but his tone was both gentle and apologetic. “There was someone sniffing around your office earlier tonight. When she saw me she ran.”
“Who was it?”
“I was down the hall but, unless I’m very much mistaken, it was our friend, Solange.”
“What was she doing?
“Sliding something under your door.”
“Swell,” I said.
“I’m sure Solange draws the line at letter bombs,” Kevin said.
Remembering the scene Charlie had described, I was silent.
“That was supposed to cheer you up,” Kevin said. “A Sam Peckinpah joke.”
“I think I’m beyond cheering,” I said.
There was a pause. “This gives me no pleasure. I hope you know that, Joanne.”
“I do. It’s hard for all of us. Now, I guess I’d better check out that Web site.”
“You’ll need fortification.”
I didn’t have to be told twice. I walked into Angus’s room with a glass containing two fingers of Crown Royal. When I saw the Web page I was glad I have broad fingers. Someone had managed to get the autopsy photographs of Ariel and had posted them on the site. Whether the thief had been bribed or had simply shared Ann Vogel’s monomania would be a question for the police to answer. All I knew was that the last private place in Ariel’s life had been invaded, and I was sick at heart.
Oddly, except for the fact that she was lying on a metal autopsy table, the photographs of Ariel were not disturbing. She was, of course, very pale, but otherwise unmarked. I remembered Rosalie quoting her ever- quotable Robert on the fact that Ariel had died from a surgically precise wound in the back. She hadn’t been mutilated; in death she was as lovely as ever. With her trailing hair, her perfect profile, and her translucent skin, she looked like a Maxfield Parrish illustration of Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the kiss from her prince.
But the additions the Friends of Red Riding Hood had made to Ariel’s Web page were not the stuff of fairy tales, and their statistics conjured up a world in which princes were in mighty short supply. One hundred women murdered each year in Canada by a male partner; 62 per cent of all women murdered, victims of domestic violence; a Canadian woman raped every seven minutes; 84 per cent of sexual assaults committed by someone known to the victims; almost half of all women with disabilities sexually abused as children; number of sexual assaults reported to Canadian police growing exponentially.
Horrifying as they were, the statistics were simply prologue. The real focus of the Web page was a letter addressed “TO ALL WHO SEEK JUSTICE.” It began: Some of you will question our decision to post autopsy photographs of Ariel Warren on this page. You want to remember Ariel as the vital, evolving woman she was, not as a corpse with a toe-tag. You will find the pictures disturbing. You will resent us for forcing you to confront images so stark and so real that to contemplate them is to feel the knife in one’s own back. Events in the past week have made it necessary for us to act. In the days before her death, Ariel attempted many times to leave her Intimate Partner. He refused to let her go. Now she is dead; her ex-lover walks the streets; one of her colleagues joins forces with her killer’s father; the police shrug. The Friends of Red Riding Hood refuse to abandon Ariel to the vagaries of a patriarchal law system, a system created by men to protect their own. Charlie Dowhanuik (a.k.a. Charlie D of CVOX radio) must be brought to justice. Hunt him down the way Ariel was hunted down. Phone him. E-mail him. Fax him.
A list of the numbers and addresses through which Charlie could be reached followed. The letter’s final paragraph was a call to arms. Jam the switchboard at his radio station with demands that he be fired. Phone him at home every hour on the hour. Make his life hell, the way he made her life hell. Join the Friends tomorrow night as we march to the house he shared with Ariel and demand answers to our questions. We will meet at 5:00 p.m. in front of the library where Ariel was murdered and march to the house on Manitoba Street that she tried so often to leave.
