door on the far side of the kitchen. When I opened that, I saw steps leading down into the darkness. This time, someone had the sense to hang a flashlight from a nail in the wall.
“It’s such a terrible business,” she said. “I think I’ve always known it would come to a bad end.”
I stopped and looked at her for a moment, thinking about what she was saying. I couldn’t imagine which funeral she was getting dressed for. Maybe her own son’s death had somehow forced its way into her consciousness. She closed her eyes and started to rock back and forth in her chair.
“Okay, I need to get this fire going right now,” I said. I grabbed the flashlight and turned it on, saw the firewood stacked neatly, right at the bottom of the stairs. Beyond that was the dead oil burner. I went down to get as much as I could carry, getting another blast of that same old basement smell. When I had a few small logs on top of the paper, I took the book of matches that was sitting on top of the stove and got the fire going. Then I filled the teapot with water and put it on the stove.
“This will take a little while,” I said. “Are you okay, ma’am?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were still closed. I pulled a chair close to her and sat down.
“Mrs. DeMarco, can you hear me?”
She kept rocking back and forth. “What a time,” she finally said. “What a time.”
“What time are you talking about?”
“What a way to celebrate New Year’s.”
“The man next door,” I said. “Jean Reynaud. Is that who you’re talking about?”
She opened her eyes.
“What’s happening?” she said. “How did you get here?”
“It’s okay, Mrs. DeMarco.”
“You were here before.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve called for help.”
I showed her the tag. Then I noticed the receiver unit sitting on the kitchen counter. You press the button, the signal goes to the receiver… which was dead. Even if it had a battery, it probably connected right to a phone line. Which was also dead.
Alex, I thought, you are officially the biggest idiot who ever lived.
“Mrs. DeMarco,” I said, “someone will come to check on you, right? Your day nurse, maybe?”
“Yes,” she said. “Flo will come, eventually. Or the men from the town.”
“The fire will be hot soon. We’ll get you warmed up.”
She looked at me. She looked at my face, the bruises and the tape and the new blood smeared all over my neck.
“You’ve had some bad luck,” she said. “Either that or you don’t know how to stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m a little tired now,” she said. Her eyes were starting to lose their focus. I put my right arm around her and pulled her close to my body.
“We’ll be okay,” I said. “Just hold on.”
The fire burned. The wind blew. The old woman slept against my chest. The other woman, Natalie’s mother, she was back in the barn, beyond the reach of any warmth at all. Natalie herself… I had no idea where she was at that moment. That was a complete mystery.
“Where are you?” I said. “Where the hell are you?”
Chapter Sixteen
The truck came, slipping its way up the driveway. As I looked out the window, I saw an insignia on the front grill that read “North Channel EMT.” The nurse must have found some way to contact them. Two men got out and knocked on the front door. They were surprised to see me open it.
They took us all the way down to the General Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie. I sat in the front seat while one of the men attended to Mrs. DeMarco in the back. On the way, I told the driver to call the police and to tell them that there was a dead woman in the barn behind the Reynaud house and that Natalie Reynaud herself was missing. On top of all that, I had a stolen truck to report, too.
He looked at me, then back at his partner. Then he made the call.
By the time we got to the hospital, the Ontario Provincial Police were waiting for us. The EMTs took Mrs. DeMarco right into the emergency room, but the OPPs had different plans for me. I had to run through the whole story while the doctor examined me. An officer stayed with me while I got my X-ray. As the doctor sewed up the wound in my neck, he told me the gunmetal fragment had just missed a major artery, and that I should officially consider myself the luckiest human being on the planet.
“Yeah, take a picture of me,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll use that as the caption.”
“This other guy was aiming a shotgun at you,” the doctor said. “You’re telling me it exploded in his hands?”
“I think so.”
He shook his head. “I can’t imagine what he looks like right now.”
“How did he get away?” I said. “How come I blacked out but he didn’t?”
“I couldn’t help but notice your other scars,” the doctor said. “Not to mention the little souvenir in your anterior mediastinum when I saw the X-ray.”
“What about it?”
“When were you shot?”
“In 1984.”
“So you’ve been there before. I’ve never looked down a gun barrel myself, but if somebody pointed a shotgun at me right now and blasted away, I imagine I’d pass out. Even if I wasn’t hit.”
“It was a different state of mind for Grant, you’re saying.”
“The man who fired the weapon? Exactly. He wasn’t expecting it. It was a total surprise.”
“So how far could he get? I saw the blood on the ground.”
“Hard to say for sure,” the doctor said. “Only thing I do know is that he’d better be getting himself to a hospital.”
It was hard to imagine. I almost felt sorry for him.
When I was all taped up, the doctor told me I could leave if I wanted to. I didn’t have a truck, of course, but the police officers were more than happy to escort me from the hospital. In fact, they even had a place for me to stay for a while, instead of going all the way home. In their polite Canadian way they made it quite clear I had no choice in the matter.
Before I went with them, I asked if I could see Mrs. DeMarco. One officer took me up to the sixth floor and let me peek into the room. She was sleeping. She took up such a small space in the bed. I stood watching her for a while. Her mouth was open, her breathing so thin you could barely tell she was alive. I couldn’t imagine how her heart kept beating. Almost a century old, this tiny woman in the bed. How much sorrow had she seen in her lifetime? How many hard winter nights like this one?
We left the hospital then. I rode in the back of the OPP car, across town to the main station. There I was shown into an interview room and asked to tell my story again. When I was done they asked me, again very politely, if I wouldn’t mind sticking around a little while longer, as there was somebody important on his way down to see me. I had no idea who they were talking about.
They let me lie down on a couch while I waited. I looked at the white tiles on the ceiling for a while, then I closed my eyes. I saw the body on the floor of the barn. The long wooden handle. I saw the two barrels of the shotgun pointed at me.
A noise woke me. I sat up, my heart pounding, ready for the gun blast all over again. An officer had come into the room and switched on the light.
I laid my head down again. My heart rate slowed back down to normal. I closed my eyes again. This time I saw Michael Grant holding the shotgun. It had already exploded in his hands. He looked down at what was left of the barrels. As he dropped the gun his hands were on fire. He held flames with each hand and the smoke rose to
