something else to do with your time, Detective.”
“The man we’re looking for has a limp, and probably a prosthetic hand.”
The regal facade faltered. Alison Durie’s slender, ringless hand levitated toward her throat, pale fingers touching her collar. “Even if he was the murderous creature you take him for, why would he do these things? How could he? Why? Many people limp, and my brother has no connection to these women.” She started to close the door.
“Ms. Durie, wait. Did he ever talk to you about what took place up north? At the drift station?”
“Karson would never kill anyone. And if you think he would ever harm a woman, you’re grotesquely mistaken. When he first came here after his release from prison, our mother was living out the last months of her life. He could not have been more attentive, more tender. Even two decades in prison had failed to destroy that. In any case, I haven’t seen him for at least two months now, and I’ve no idea where he is.”
“I think you do. Tell me where to find him. If he’s innocent, that shouldn’t be hard to prove.”
“How dare you say that? We have no reason whatsoever to trust the justice system. My brother served eighteen years and was denied parole repeatedly. Repeatedly. Well, now he’s out, he’s a free man, and it’s nobody’s business-not yours, not anybody’s-where he might be.”
“He was denied parole because he showed no remorse.”
“He showed no remorse because he was innocent. He was innocent then and he’s innocent now.”
She closed the door and Cardinal stood there staring at it. He reached into his jacket and took out a business card and put it through the mail slot.
When she woke up again, Hayley had the idea that she was somewhere near a place that sold motorcycles. Every ten minutes or so, from somewhere in the distance, there would come that ragged, ripping sound of an inadequately muffled engine.
She was lying on her back on a sofa, too tired and dazed to move. She tried to turn her head, but a rush of nausea stopped her. The ceiling, country pine, was awash with light. It was light of a very particular softness combined with brightness, and it took her a while to register what it reminded her of. The ski chalet at Collingwood. The light was coming from snow. The motorcycles must be snowmobiles. She must be somewhere up north, perhaps near a lake, with the sunlight bouncing off the snow and filling this room.
The terror came back as the drug, whatever it was, wore off. She could turn her head now. The man limped by her, shirtless, with a makeshift bandage around his rib cage. He sat down with a grunt of pain. After a while his breathing became heavy and slow. Sleeping.
Her wrists, underneath her, were fastened together. Ankles too. The moment she worked at the bonds, a bolt of pain shot through her. Her wrists were already torn from trying to escape. She remembered the truck. She remembered the needle. Then nothing.
The man woke up and rose from his chair with a gasp. Had he been shot? Could that have happened without her being aware of it? She listened to him moving about the house, or cottage. A fridge opening. A cupboard. Running water. And then the smell of toast, the clack of the toaster, the rasp of a knife spreading butter or jam. She had the feeling he knew his way around this cottage, this house.
Hayley wasn’t sure if he could see her from wherever he stood at the moment. She worked at the gag with her tongue, strained her neck to stretch the fabric, worked at it again. It was the only thing that felt any looser.
Sound of a chair scraping. Something falling to the floor. A curse. Then footsteps and the sound of a bathroom cabinet opening. The rattle of a pill bottle, then water running.
She strained at the gag, lifted her head and turned her neck from side to side, forcing down nausea. Working at the fabric with her tongue, her chin, her jaw, she managed to get the gag out of her mouth. It was now tight against her lower lip. She would be able to scream.
A scream would likely go unheard. It would also bring what? The needle-or perhaps worse. She raised her head to look around. Large chalet-type room. Books everywhere. A baby grand piano.
The man came back, limping, slow. He came close, looking down at her. His eyes catching her gaze, moving to the gag. He leaned toward her, reaching for it.
Hayley shook her head. “Please. No.”
His eyes assessing her, the short chain of her potential moves, his face hawkish, weathered. A professor, perhaps. A judge. The eyes closed and the face paled, a hand clutching at the bandage. His limp worse as he moved to an armchair and sat down again, this time silently.
Hayley gave it a few seconds. Then, “Is this your house?”
The words hung in the air, a neon sign with no connection to the human relationship in this room: victim and murderer. They might have been here for social reasons, two strangers at a party. Hayley kept her eyes on the ceiling. He might be looking at her, he might be asleep.
“So many books. I’m wondering if they’re all yours, but a lot of them look old. I’m thinking maybe they belonged to your family, your parents, I don’t know.”
There was no response from across the room. A faint rustle as he changed his position, perhaps turned his head to look at her, or out the window. She was still afraid to look. A direct gaze might be too much, the shout that triggers the avalanche.
“Books have always been important to me. I may be the last person to avoid the social media sink. It’s a problem for me sometimes. Students want you to be on Facebook, Twitter, but e-mail’s enough. It’s too much, in fact. Half my students seem to have no concept of a private world, and that seems sad to me, but maybe I’m just an introvert.”
Hayley held her breath. If he was as intelligent as he looked, he would realize what she was trying to do. Poor little girl trying to make herself into a person, something harder to kill than a creature you know nothing about. But persons, people, full human beings, were exactly what this man had made it his business to kill.
She forced herself to turn her head and look at him. He was seated in an armchair across the room, at an angle to her. His hands gripped the arms of the chair and he sat erect, something Egyptian about the posture. His eyes were open-she saw him blink-but he wasn’t looking at her. The expression on the sharp features-if it was in fact expression and not its absence-was one of incalculable weariness.
“I don’t know anything about you-and maybe it’ll sound like dime-store psychology or obvious self-interest-but it seems clear that something terrible has happened to you. Maybe recently? Maybe a long time ago, I don’t know, but something terrible.” She thought of a creature on the edge of extinction, the last T. rex on earth, gasping out its final breaths in a jungle sheathed in ice.
No response.
“My parents had a lot of books too-still do. My father, anyway. He’s a scientist, but he never seemed to want me to be one, really. He always encouraged me to do artsy things. I used to write the most terrible poems and he would pin them up-even the depressing ones when I got into a Sylvia Plath phase, which is pretty funny when you think of it.
“Poetry is so powerful you’d think you could tell from someone’s face if they read it or not. Respond to it. But I look at you and I have no clue. Do you read poetry? Have you ever?”
He turned his face toward the window, sharp features outlined against that brightness.
Hayley lifted her ankles and swung herself up into a seated position. The room tilted and lurched and the urge to vomit was strong.
Her moving got his attention, but he didn’t get up.
“I read poetry,” Hayley continued. “I have a father. I was a little girl at one time, then a teenager. Now I’m a teacher. In other words, you could say, I’m nothing special. But that’s the thing about being human, right? You’re not required to be special. You’re only required to be human.”
She talked on. The thought took hold that she would not die as long as she was talking. It was a common myth: the dancer who must keep dancing, the storyteller who must keep spinning tales, to keep fate at bay.
“I read poetry,” she said again. “I tried to write it. I try to teach it, or at least the appreciation of it. I want to be a professor. I’d like to get married someday. At this moment, of course, all I want is to stay alive. Will you tell me your name?”
He sighed, and shifted his weight a little in his chair, but did not look at her.
“May I know who has imprisoned me, and why? No? I want to write a book. I’d like to write about Leonard Cohen. I would talk about Catullus and Villon, the Book of Psalms, poetry as song. But scholarly circles aren’t so big
