Act of Evil (16 page)

The old man fell silent again. Hall watched and waited.

“Now his dad—my son—was quite different. Will never liked the outdoors at all. He was a good man, but I've no idea how he happened in this family. Nor what Mattie saw in him, if you want to know. But
Brian
 . . . it was as if everything that got left out of Will came back in the next generation. And where that really showed was on the water.

“His mum was real proud of him. She was no sailor, but she'd often watch through binoculars as Brian went out. Because of that, we know how his last day began. It was a Saturday morning. Five years ago last May. Brian was in his last year of high school. It was the end of exam week, so the first thing Brian needed was to get in the boat and—as we used to say—blow the stink off. His sister, Jennifer, was away, Con was in Vancouver. I was up-island at an ecology conference that turned out to be a lot of hot air. So Mattie was alone when Brian went off. After he left, Mattie kept busy in the kitchen, waiting for the
Orca
to appear from below. It didn't leave right away, but that's not unusual; there's always something to fix before a boat is ready to go. But finally there it was. Mattie watched the
Orca
sail off. There was a decent breeze, so she went out fast. The binoculars we've got are strong, Zhumell 20 x 80s that can see halfway to China. Mattie could still make out Brian's red cap when he was almost to the headland. But he didn't come about then as usual. The boat kept on into the Sansum Narrows, luffed around the point out of sight—and that was the last she saw it.”

“Until when?”

“Until
ever!
The
Orca
never returned. When I got home that night, Mattie was almost crazy with worry. The coast guard had been called and the police alerted. By Sunday we were all half out of our minds. Our only hope was that Brian had got stranded on some little island and was unable to let anyone know. But by Monday there was still no word. It was another twenty-four hours before we got a call from the
RCMP
. A boat matching the description of the
Orca
had been found, wrecked, on the rocks near Sooke.”

“
Sooke
? But that's . . .”

“Yeah, to hell and gone up the west coast of the Island. Half a day's sail for a small boat. But we checked it out, and it was her all right. How it got there we'll never know, because there was no trace of Brian. And only one clue as to what had happened: the boat's tiller was lashed.”

“Lashed?”

“Secured, so it could sail without someone at the helm. Apparently, while Brian was out in the strait, there was some kind of mishap. Maybe he just wanted to fetch a drink or take a leak, something stupid and simple. He secured the helm, went to do—whatever—but somehow tripped and fell overboard. It can happen. So the boat would have continued on by itself until it piled up on the Sooke rocks. Of course Brian would have been wearing a life jacket, but he'd have been carried out into the strait. If no one spotted him, eventually he'd have died of hypothermia. That's only theory, of course. But we had to believe something like that happened. Because the only trace ever found of my grandson—caught up in the wreck of the
Orca
—was his old red Cardinals cap.”

The view of Maple Bay had undergone a slow transformation, mirroring the dark narrative with its own somber trek toward the night. When the story ended, both men were very still. From the ocean came muted gull-sounds and the faint whine of a speedboat. After some time, Fitz said in a quite different tone, “You're
him
, aren't you?”

“Who?”

“The one who got away.”

“
What
?”

“The fella Mattie's been holding a torch for all these years.”

Hal did a double take, feeling his face redden like an adolescent's. “What makes you think that?”

“Just a guess,” Fitz said mildly, then grinned “Though by the way you look right now, I'd hazard it's a pretty fair one.”

Hal shrugged resignedly. His only option, if any dignity was to be retrieved from this situation, was to tell the truth. He said quietly, “I'd hoped it hadn't been as bad for her as that.”

“I wouldn't call it bad,” Fitz replied. “In fact, it may have been one of the things that's kept her going. I told you I didn't know what she saw in my son: he was a decent man, but not exactly . . . her sort of person, it seemed to me. And though she was always caring and loyal, I couldn't shake the feeling she married him on the rebound. After he died, she was properly devastated. But deep down . . . ? Brian, of course, was something else again. For all of us. But what Mattie's always had—long before any of the troubles came into our lives—is a sort of
alone
thing. In the last few days that's changed . . . and now maybe I see why.”

Hal stared. “You think because of
me
?”

“Nothing else has happened around here to perk up her spirits.”

“Christ!”

“Don't look so alarmed. I didn't say she expects to marry you. She's just happy you're here, is all. You've taken her mind off the past, my stupid carryings-on, and the life—I won't say lonely but maybe a bit dull—that she leads round here. That's all I'm talking about.”

“Okay—then—I'm glad.”

“Oh, there you are!” a cheerful voice said. Both turned as Mattie came through the door. “Goodness—I might have known.”

“Known—what?” Hal said nervously.

Mattie laughed. Fitz was right, Hal thought, she
did
look happier. “Why, that the first thing Fitz would do is bring you down to this stinky old boathouse.”

twenty-two

The café closed early, so Stephanie was able to get away sooner than expected. She was less tired than the last time she'd driven to her fiancé's place—the visit that had terminated in the horrific hanging scene—so the journey didn't seem so arduous. In fact, considering all that had happened lately, she was feeling remarkably upbeat. The stunt Trent had pulled, his so-called “acting,” had been spectacularly ill-conceived. Yet, as she'd tried to explain to Hal, a mistake as extreme as that probably had been necessary, if only to demonstrate just how much he'd let the notion of failure warp his thinking. And though he'd scared her badly, she didn't doubt he loved her. The breakup threat had been an overreaction, but some sort of ultimatum had definitely been in order. So it was a vast relief that the meeting with his brother had gone so well. Trent had already phoned her at work with his version of the good news, so there'd be no need to pretend surprise.

She arrived at her destination just before nine-thirty. As she drove down the steep drive, the sky to the west of Shawnigan Lake was showing the last hint of afterglow. The big house was lit up, but when she turned in the direction of the cottage she saw that the only light there was a dim glow from the kitchen. That was unusual, since Trent always left the porch lamp on when he knew she'd be late. A sour memory arose of her earlier visit, the house in darkness, and the chilling events that had followed. She resolutely pushed it aside. Nothing like that was ever going to happen again.

She parked beside Trent's Jeep, gave the usual toot on the horn to announce her arrival, and headed for the front door. The residual feeling from last time was strong enough that she half expected it to be locked, but the handle turned and it opened easily.

“Trent?”

She stopped, taking in the scene inside. The light in the living area was dim because it issued from just two sources: a small lamp near the fireplace and a laptop computer, open on the dining table. Sitting at the computer, very still, his profile illuminated by the ghostly monitor glow, sat Trent. He was staring at the screen, transfixed, a tableau broken only by the tiny, staccato clatter of keys.

“Trent—
hello
!”

Her fiancé's head twisted in her direction. He nodded a greeting and his right hand lifted from the keyboard, beckoning, yet somehow managing to command both patience and silence.

“But Trent—”

He made the gesture again, this time accompanied by a slight scowl, after which came a positive explosion of key clattering.

Stephanie's heart sank. God, what kind of game was he playing now? With a sigh, she closed the door. Pausing to switch on the overhead light—which at least had the effect of making the place feel more normal—she threw down her coat and bag and moved into the kitchen area, intending to fill the kettle. Whatever Trent was up to—she prayed it was not just some little charade to convince her that he was getting his mojo back—she'd give him a few minutes and then . . . well, then she'd see.

There were a few dirty dishes on the draining board. She piled them in the sink and began washing, completing the task as the kettle boiled. Its whistle made Trent glance up sharply. But instead of looking annoyed, he gave a big grin and snapped the laptop shut.

“Ah, tea!” he said cheerfully. “Just what we need to celebrate!”

≈  ≈  ≈

a while later, as they sat drinking tea, Stephanie said, “How did you find out about all this?”

Trent, who had a day's growth of beard and looked as if he hadn't showered in a while, was nonetheless in fine spirits and, considering the hour, bubbling with energy. “Simple enough,” he replied. “The information's all right there on the Web, for anyone who can put it together. Look, the biggest need in the world is energy, right? The recession we had hasn't changed that, just dampened the demand for, like, half a minute. And right here in Canada, in Northern Alberta, we have some of the biggest oil reserves in the world. Though it's trapped in the tar sands and expensive to get out—and the environmental lobby hates it—extraction methods are getting more efficient all the time; and—most important for the West, it's a safe source, free of all the political shit that's plaguing much of the world.”

“I can see that,” Stephanie interjected. “But what's that got to do—?”

Trent cut her off with the same silencing gesture that had greeted her arrival. “Give me time,” he snapped, then softened the moment with an apologetic smile. “
Please!
I'm getting there, okay?”

Mollified, she nodded.

“One of the things I was always good at,” Trent continued, “was speculating on futures: oil futures particularly. But, shit, who could have known that the world oil price would drop from a high of a hundred and fifty bucks a barrel to a quarter of that in less than a year. It's a historic fluke, but it killed me. If I'd only taken my own advice—like Terry Bathgate did—and got out when things started to slide in '08, I'd have been okay. But no, I just hung in—as the housing market nose-dived, banks teetered, and commodity prices tanked—thinking that this couldn't be happening. But it was, it did, and I was ruined. And after I'd been out here a while, living like a bum on Terry's handouts—the only thing making life bearable being
you
, incidentally—I came to see, finally, that I might be a real clever-ass—but I had this fatal flaw.”

“What?” Stephanie couldn't help interjecting.

Trent shook his head glumly. “That I'm too much of a gambler for the securities game. Which is why, though I've made heaps of money, I always lost out in the end. And why, since the last bust, I've been mooning around out here. You see, I knew if I returned to investing—got back on the horse, as Terry likes to say—the same old thing'd happen.”

“But now something's changed?”

“Yes! In
me!
I guess it's been coming a while, But meeting Hal again—after that first idiotic charade, or maybe
because
of it—sort of speeded up the process. I realized I didn't want to be a bum, trying to impress my brother and my girl with stupid tricks. I really
did
want to get back to work, but not as a gambler any more. So then I got to thinking about oil again—which has always fascinated me—but not futures: oil
production
. Specifically,
Canadian
production! With all that enormous potential in the tar sands, it's obvious that whoever figures out how to get the stuff out most efficiently is gonna clean up.
Someone's
got to be trying to do that, I thought. And, after an Internet search: science articles, news items, oil company reports, I came up with a candidate. This small outfit,
CANTSO
—Canadian Tar Sand Operations—has come up with a brand new process of extraction which is cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient than anything yet. They'd proved their method with a prototype plant and had a full scale plant built and ready to go into production when the poor buggers got slammed by the worldwide collapse. Their massive debt, which could have been easily handled with the proceeds of pending extraction, went sour when prices tanked.
CANTSO
was taken over for cents on the dollar and its patented process—which at anything over sixty bucks a barrel is like a licence to manufacture gold—has been languishing in a limbo of shock and inertia ever since. But now the recession is over and oil prices are climbing. Suddenly the
CANTSO
process is back on the radar. In the last few days I've been following the reports, the rumours and the numbers, in the States, in Europe, and the East. All the indications are that a lot of big hitters are getting ready to try to get control of the company that owns
CANTSO
. No one wants to show their hand too strongly yet: you can't make a big buy without waking everyone else up. But, believe me, this is going to happen. I've been watching all week, and every instinct I possess tells me that when the markets open on Monday the demand for
CANTSO
is going to explode!”