Innocent Murderer (15 page)

I sat and waited — for her to get me, or for the expe
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dition guys to realize I was gone and come rescue me. I wondered what had happened to the young constable and shuddered. I wouldn't want to die here, I thought, hugging my knees in fear. And then I saw her, fifteen feet from the shack, looking back at me. I could see the cubs some distance away and thought about the power of every female's dedication to her offspring. It's scary how violent and vicious it can be.

Suddenly a gunshot reverberated off the cliffs and the polar bear began loping towards her cubs. I looked behind me and saw three men up on the whaleback — all wearing crew uniforms. I felt devoid of emotion. Almost as if it were an anticlimax to still be alive. It was a weird and ugly feeling. I wondered if this was what Terry and Sally had felt.

I waited on the roof until they came, afraid the bear would double back. As they approached I could see that they were handling their guns casually as if there was no longer any threat. I slowly crawled down the roof as Peter came around the corner, the shock on his face vis
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ible even through the beard. He seemed to be struggling with finding the right thing to say to me.

Finally, he said, “You were lucky you weren't killed.” He was wrestling with the ladder, finally leaning it up against the roof. I climbed down just as the other two men arrived. “How did you manage to miss the rendez
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vous time?” His voice wasn't giving anything away.

“I fell asleep.”

He looked out to sea. “Where?”

I pointed to the group of boulders. He followed my arm and then looked at the two men at his side.

One of them shifted his gun and said, “I checked the boulders.”

“Yourself?” asked Peter.

The man took the cap off his head and ruffled his dark brown hair. “Well, not exactly” he said.

“What, exactly?”

“There was someone in a grey parka over in the area so I yelled at them to check for anyone in among the boulders.” He put his cap back on. “I didn't see any harm in it. I guess they missed this lady though.”

“Evidently they did,” said Peter. I looked down at my bright orange jacket and shivered.

My last night on board turned into a repeat of my first night as the sea whipped itself into a frenzy and the ship struggled toward Nanisivik. Even Martha didn't come calling and I wondered if maybe she had finally suc
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cumbed. I spent a fitful night and was wakened by Jason, who came on over the PA system to announce that we had docked at Nanisivik and disembarkation would com
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mence in an hour. I looked out the porthole and the sea had calmed down quite a bit, but my stomach wouldn't follow its lead. I spent a miserable half hour packing my things. Just as I was finishing there was a knock on the door and in flew Martha.

“All set to go?” She stood in my door with little bits of luggage hanging from every conceivable spot. Defi
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nitely had not succumbed. Duncan was right behind her, carrying more than his own luggage, judging by the pink flight bag in his massive paw.

“Looking forward to dry land?” he asked. It was a question unworthy of an answer judging by the green tinge I saw in my face when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Half an hour later we disembarked down the gangway into Nanisivik, a desolate mining town on the shores of the Hall Peninsula, Baffin Island. When I first touched land with my feet, as barren and cold as it was, I felt like I'd won the lottery by regaining owner
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ship of my stomach. Or so I thought. The flight back was long and bumpy — their definition — mine would have touched on words like major turbulence and jaw-drop
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ping altitude changes. I spent the time dreaming about my polar bear and wondering how someone could have missed my bright orange jacket.

Ottawa International Airport was a tangled mess of people trying to get where they were not allowed to go because some diplomat had arrived in town and security took priority over the rest of us. I scanned the crowd, hoping to see Patrick, but why would he be there? I'd driven myself to the airport and tonight was the night he usually taught a course at the university. All the same, it was disappointing. We hadn't seen each other in nearly three weeks. I guess I'd have to wait until tomorrow.

We'd arrived during rush hour. It took me more than half an hour to get to the Champlain Bridge and cross over into Quebec. I live under the eye of the Eardley Escarpment, in a lovely corner of rural West Quebec. It's a bit of a commute into work every day, but worth it. I came over the rise in Highway 148 and the Ottawa River lay below me, the setting sun spreading a red orange sheen down its length. Eventually I turned right, onto the dirt road that leads to my log cabin.

August. Glorious August, with the fields full of rip
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ening hay and the dairy cows out to pasture in the back forty. My brother Ryan and his wife, Rose, live in the old farmhouse. My cabin is further down the lane, beyond the barns. I pulled my car up by the barn, behind Ryan's car, and got out. As I was about to go inside to look for him, a voice floated out at me from underneath the car. “Welcome back, Sis.”

I turned and watched as Ryan came gliding out from underneath the car on a little trolley, all six feet of him. I didn't even bother to ask how he knew it was me — he could identify the sound of any car he'd ever worked on and even ones he hadn't. His red-blond hair was all askelter, as usual, and there were a few dabs of oil trying to obscure the thousand freckles on his face.

“How'd it go?” he asked before he'd even looked at me. He eyed me critically. “You look like you've been through hell.”

I laughed and began to fill him in when he stopped me. “Go get settled. Come for dinner, 7:30.”

I wondered why he was trying to get rid of me. I looked at my watch. Only 5:30 and I did feel like having a shower. “Sounds good,” I said and took my leave.

My little log cabin, hidden in the woods on three sides, with a view from the front over the endless fields of hay, looked friendly and cozy. The curtains were open and I figured Ryan or Rose had come in and opened things up for me. I took my bag out of the car and went up the stairs to the wraparound porch — my prize pos
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session. I'd spent all of one summer building it and now, in the summer months, it was the space I used most often.

I'd even screened in a section of it so that I could enjoy the nighttime without the bugs enjoying me.

I dumped my bag in order to unlock the natural oak front door. I walked in, breathing in the wood smell of the logs and scent of fresh flowers. Without warning something suddenly whipped around my chest and held me tight. Visions of Balaclava darted through my mind. I squirmed around to face the intruder and brought up my knee with a vicious jerk as I looked up at my attacker, and felt the blood drain from my face. Patrick. I couldn't stop the momentum of my leg in time. The roar of pain that came out of his mouth felt like a physical blow. He was doubled over and twirling in little circles, then he suddenly slumped to the floor and writhed on the ground. I didn't quite know what to do. Fortunately, after about five agonizing minutes the writhing slowly abated and he gasped. “Jesus Christ, Cordi!”

That wasn't very informative. Or maybe it was. But what else should I have done under the circumstances? I couldn't think of any other route that my reflexes could have taken.

I made little mumbly noises and tried to put a pillow under his head, but he pushed it away and got up on all fours, his head down so I couldn't see his face. What a homecoming, I thought. He just stayed that way for a long time. He wouldn't let me help him get up, but when he did he stood there, bent over, hands on his knees. I said nothing, just listened to the crickets and the robin that used one of my trees to blast out its song. When Patrick finally straightened up, sort of, his face was pale and wincing.

“Remind me never to surprise you again.” His voice was stiff and guttural. I put my arm around his shoul
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ders and he put both arms around mine and kissed me. But when I moved against him he quickly pulled away. “Sorry, Cordi. I think I have to lie down.”

I helped him to the sofa and went and got an icepack.

That's when I knew it was really bad because he wouldn't let me help him with it. I got him a painkiller and cov
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ered him with a blanket and then began to unpack. This was not quite how I'd envisioned my first night back with Patrick. I felt like an idiot and I kind of wanted to cry at having messed up his plans. In racing around to find him a painkiller and blanket I saw that he had set the dining room table and there was a single red rose in a vase as the centrepiece. In the kitchen there were some half unpacked bags of groceries and when I looked in the fridge I saw two T-bone steaks. Patrick was asleep when I went back to check on him and I puttered around, glad to be home, but angry at myself for letting my imagina
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tion knee Patrick in the groin. I mean, what was that? I was home. I was safe.

Chapter Twelve

T
he next morning I woke to the song of a cardinal, intermingled with the sweet gurgle of a bobolink. I tried to imagine what the notes would look like on a sono
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gram — a magical musical sheet of paper where the musical notes of birds are translated. Some of my current research was working with bird song and how it devel
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oped. My thoughts came back to Patrick. The sun was flooding through my bedroom window and flinging itself across my bed, across Patrick's face. His thick blond hair had flopped over his left eye and he was breathing deeply. All the pain lines from the night before were gone. I snug
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gled up against him and he shuffled the covers and sud
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denly opened his eyes and smiled at me.

“How are you?” I asked as I draped my arm across his chest.

He grimaced. “I'm not about to hit any homeruns any time soon.”

I giggled, tightened my grip, and plunked my head on his shoulder. We lay there for a while, listening to the birds and the distant mooing of the cows, until he gently shifted me off him and gingerly swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

I lay there, listening to the shower pinging against the plastic of my awful molded shower stall. I had always meant to tear it out and put something nice in, tiled, but I never seemed to get around to it. The shower went on forever and ever until I figured he'd drained my well. Finally I got up, and staggered. My legs were still at sea, my mind convincing them that the land was a swirling mass of waves. It calmed down, coming in spurts, and I got dressed and padded down to the kitchen to scare something up for breakfast. I was glad the trip had ended on a Saturday so that I had a full day to recover.

Somebody had bought eggs, bread, bacon, and milk, and dumped them in the fridge, still in the bag. Couldn't have been Rose, I thought, so it was Ryan or Patrick. I dragged the bag out of the fridge and began making break
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fast. By the time I had the bacon sizzling, Patrick had appeared in the door and leaned up against the doorjamb to watch me. It was silly but I felt like a little kid having to give a presentation in class, and when he came over and took me in his arms my knees went another kind of wobbly.

The bacon got burned, but that was okay because Patrick was back! I cracked the first and second egg and watched their little sunny eyes looking up at me, wrapped in a little cocoon of happiness, until Patrick raised the topic that neither of us wanted to talk about. “I'm going to London on Wednesday for the job interview.”

All I really remember immediately after hearing that statement was how quiet it was and how loud my heart
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beat sounded crashing against my chest. The third egg, which I had cracked as he told me, now lay on the floor between us like an accusatory finger. Wasn't love sup
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posed to be all-powerful? How can people truly be in love if one can choose to leave for the lifespan of a job? Love endures even that?

Patrick went over to the kitchen sink, picked up the dishrag and came back. I didn't meet his eyes. I just stared at the stupid egg as he began to mop it up.

“I have to go, Cordi. It's a big chance for me. Two years working with a great parasitologist.”

I rallied then, mumbling some inane idiocies about our being able to survive two years. That's all it would be. I mean what were two years in a lifetime? A lot, I thought. By my calculations two years might mean, if we were lucky, six visits a year — three each. Very lucky. I wasn't even sure our budgets would stretch that high. Would we survive? My thoughts started travelling down a lane where I didn't want to go.

“Tell me about your trip. How did it go?” Patrick was way too eager to change the topic too.

“Well, apart from the two dead bodies I found, the three attempts on my life, the twenty-four/seven seasick
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ness, the rampaging polar bear, and a dysfunctional writ
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ing class, it was great.”

Patrick laughed. “Oh, Cordi, that's why I love you so much. You have such a fantastic sense of humour.”

Ooops. I stared at him with an expression that must have said “I hear you and are you ever wrong” because his laughter dissolved. “You're kidding, right?”

I slowly shook my head.

“Two dead bodies?”

I slowly nodded my head.

“Two seagulls? Two polar bears?”

I slowly shook my head. “Although, there was that one polar bear, but it was very much alive.”

Patrick suddenly reached out his hand, grabbed the spatula, and expertly whipped the two solid white eggs off the burner onto our plates. Then he pointed the spat
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ula at me, gun fashion. “Okay, O'Callaghan, spill it.”

I laughed despite myself and began telling him about the bodies because that's what he would want to hear first. That's what anyone would want to hear first.