Kaleidoscope (37 page)

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know about it myself until last Christmas, after Mieka and I became involved,” he said. “When Sage found out I was seeing Mieka, she was furious. She told me about the history between our two families and said any relationship between us and the Kilbourns was impossible.”

“But you didn’t agree.”

“No. I told my sister I wasn’t having a relationship with the Kilbourns, I was having a relationship with Mieka, and what happened thirty years ago didn’t have anything to do with us. Sage didn’t see it that way. We haven’t spoken since. Sage’s choice, not mine.” He rubbed his eyes. “I had no idea that she was this obsessed with the past.”

“You’re not responsible for what your sister does,” I said. “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

Riel’s complexion was the colour of burnished copper, but as I told him that his sister was about to be arrested for the murder of Leland Hunter, the colour leached from his skin. By the time I’d finished explaining that to ensure his credibility as the voice of North Central and guarantee the future of the Racette-Hunter Centre, he had to show publicly that he and Sage were not allies, Riel looked ill and jaundiced. When I proposed that he urge Sage to turn herself in, he winced, but he didn’t argue.

When I was through, Riel leaned towards me. “I’m having trouble believing this,” he said. “I know Sage hated your
family and she was furious about my relationship with Mieka, but she’s always believed in the law. She was a cop. She’s a lawyer. She’s not a killer.” Riel’s eyes searched my face, seeking a sign that the charges against Sage were a terrible mistake. He found nothing to comfort him, and his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Riel, it may be too late to save your sister, but it’s not too late to save North Central.”

Riel nodded. “My Grandmother Mackenzie raised Sage and me. We lived in a little bungalow on a corner lot on Osler Street. My grandmother came to that house as a bride. In her day, everyone in the district had a job, everyone had a garden, and everyone knew everybody else. She watched as the neighbourhood changed. At the end, she couldn’t even sit on our front porch after supper. Our house was robbed, my grandmother was mugged, my sister was regularly harassed, and I was beaten more times than I can count. North Central went from being a good place to start a life to being the neighbourhood of last resort.

“My grandmother used to sit and watch the street through the front window. Whenever she witnessed some fresh horror, she would say, ‘Somebody has to break the cycle.’ ” Riel’s eyes were miserable. “I guess I’m it,” he said.

After Riel left, I sat down and tried to bring coherence to my swirling thoughts. Sage had set Louise up. That much was certain. She’d planted the first seed with her phone call to Leland the night we went to Magoo’s. Louise’s disintegrating mental state made Sage’s story that Louise hired a thug to intimidate an enemy plausible. And knowing I’d remember Louise’s first intrusion, it must have been Sage who stole into our condo and rearranged the Fafard sculptures. Suddenly, it had seemed that Louise was capable of anything. We were prepared to believe Sage’s story about seeing a large amount
of cash in Louise’s negligee drawer and to accept the possibility that Louise had hired someone to kill Leland. But it was Sage who did the killing.

That was the part that didn’t make sense to me. There was no reason for Sage to risk everything to bring about Leland Hunter’s death. I opened the file that contained the records of Sage and Riel’s childhood and began leafing through the pages. When I came to the picture of a female officer taking ten-year-old Sage from Tom Delorme’s house the night of the murders, I stopped. Sage’s face was contorted with fury.

The night of her party, Linda Fritz said that Sage’s anger management problem was so severe that she’d had difficulty carrying out her duties as a police officer. Linda’s explanation for Sage’s anger was simple and sensible: growing up in North Central, Sage had simply seen too much. And that was true. Sage
had
seen too much, and experienced too much, but her anger had taken root earlier, on the night she saw her father murder her mother and her mother’s lover.

According to the newspaper accounts, Sage had picked up her baby brother and run outside crying for help. Even then, North Central was not a neighbourhood where a child’s cries for help were answered. The newspaper quoted an outraged social worker as saying that Sage must have stood on the sidewalk crying for at least thirty minutes before a neighbour called the police.

At ten, Sage had been old enough to read the newspaper accounts of her father’s trial. She clipped out and saved every picture and article. She wanted to make certain that she would never forget the tragedy of her parents’ lives and of their deaths. But it seemed Sage also wanted to make sure that she would never forget who was responsible for those twin tragedies.

I turned back to the picture of Ian and me on the election
night when we did the impossible and won it all. I stared at our young faces. We had all the answers. We would make the world a better place. We would never forget that
Security for any one of us, lies in greater abundance for all of us
.

But we had forgotten, and Leland paid the price. His death had been an accident – collateral damage. I had been the one Sage targeted for death. Leland’s concern for me had saved my life and taken his.

When I picked up the phone and dialled Inspector Debbie Haczkewicz’s number, my heart was pounding, but my hand was steady.

CHAPTER
20

Sage’s confession to the murder of Arden Raeburn was a punishing blow to Debbie Haczkewicz. For more than twenty-five years, Debbie had been a dedicated member of the Regina Police Force, and Arden Raeburn had been a good cop. Arden’s death at the hands of a woman who had once been a colleague shook Debbie to the core. She was a professional who was secure in her judgments, but the fact that she had not been able to spot a rogue cop in her own midst was a burden she would carry with her. The morning she came to Halifax Street to fill us in on Sage’s actions, it was clear Debbie’s confidence had been eroded.

The rain had been steady since the early hours and showed no signs of letting up. After I’d taken Debbie’s raincoat, Zack led us into the living room. On sunny days, the space was washed with light, but that morning the only breaks in the gloom were small islands of light from the table lamps.

When Debbie turned down my offer of coffee, I motioned to the reading chairs. Too tense to relax, she balanced on the edge of the chair closest to her. “It’s difficult to know where
to begin,” she said. “But there are two salient facts: Sage loves her brother, and she hates you and your family, Joanne. Everything Sage did – and I’m still trying to get my head around what she did – was motivated by either love or hate.

“We had no trouble getting her to confess. She was eager to set the record straight. She arranged for the bombing of your house. She murdered Arden Raeburn, and after the member of Red Rage she’d hired to kill Joanne backed out, Sage took on the task herself.”

For a moment, I felt light-headed. Zack reached over, took my hand, and then turned back to Debbie. “And Sage killed Arden because Arden suspected that Sage had lifted the damaging material about Riel,” he said.

“It’s more complex than that,” Debbie said. “Riel’s file was just the beginning, but it gave Sage an idea. She approached Red Rage and offered to remove incriminating evidence from the files of their members in return for future favours. She was selective, and careful, so her activities weren’t detected.”

“Then Cronus came to police headquarters and started asking questions,” Zack said.

“And Arden had the rotten luck to be the officer Cronus approached,” Debbie said. “Arden and Sage were friendly and when Arden mentioned her concern about the missing material, Sage offered to help her track it down. Sage said she didn’t want material damaging to her brother to fall into the wrong hands.”

“And Arden bought that?” Zack said.

“Sage was a colleague and a friend. When they found nothing, Sage convinced Arden the search was a waste of time, so she abandoned it.” For a beat, Debbie seemed to lose her train of thought.

“But that wasn’t the end of the story,” Zack said.

“No. As a lawyer, Sage was clearly on her way up in the police force, but she and Arden continued to get together every so often for a drink or dinner. Everything was fine. And then one day, Arden was interviewing a member of Red Rage who’d been arrested for stealing an Oldsmobile. According to Sage, the boy proposed a deal. If he was treated with leniency, he’d name a cop who’d been known to lift incriminating material from the files of gang members. Apparently, Arden was skeptical, but cops are funny about loose ends, so she played along. When the boy identified Sage Mackenzie as the bad cop, Arden didn’t believe him. After all, Sage had turned her back on a law career to come back to police work.”

“But Arden must have been at least suspicious,” I said. “Cronus’s charge that someone had removed damning evidence against Riel had never been resolved, and Sage was Riel’s sister. That must have raised some red flags.”

“It did,” Debbie said. “And Arden was thorough. She called Sage and told her about the accusations. Sage dismissed them as mudslinging by a gang member settling an old score. Arden seemed to accept the explanation, but Sage says she couldn’t afford to take a chance.”

“So she killed Arden,” Zack said. He inched his chair closer to Debbie. “Did Sage know about the rough sex?”

“She knew,” Debbie said, and her voice was thick with anger. “And she knew that the date with Cronus was always on a Saturday night. Arden was just going off duty when Sage called to ask if she could drop by Arden’s apartment for a drink after Cronus left. Apparently, Arden was often depressed after her dates with Cronus, and Sage had come by several times to cheer her up.”

Debbie walked to the window and stood with her back to us, staring at the rainy city. “This whole thing makes me sick,” she said finally.

“I know the feeling,” I said. “Why don’t we give it a rest? You can send another officer to talk to us later.”

Debbie turned to face me. She was grey with exhaustion. “This is my case,” she said. “I’ll do the interview.”

“Okay,” I said. “But at least let me make us coffee.”

When I came back with the coffee, Zack was telling Debbie about the delivery man’s convenient arrival the night Sage attempted to seduce him.

Debbie heard him out. “Sounds like the delivery man was planning a photo shoot,” she said. Her eyes moved from Zack to me. “Blackmail?”

I set the coffee tray on the table between the reading chairs. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think Sage planned to make sure I saw those pictures. She really does hate me, Deb.”

Debbie took a mug of coffee from the tray. “You and your family are an obsession with her. She hated Ian Kilbourn because he’d prosecuted Bryce Mackenzie to the full extent of the law – showing no mercy for her father’s mental illness. When your late husband died, Sage’s obsession moved to you, Joanne. She blames you for everything that’s gone wrong in her life: her rages, her inability to sustain a relationship, her estrangement from her brother, her chronic insomnia.”

“I don’t even know her,” I said.

“But she knows you,” Debbie said. “More accurately, she knows a lot about you. For years, she watched you from a distance, but since Christmas you’ve been, to quote Sage, ‘in her face.’ When she started at Falconer Shreve in January, she discovered that you were married to Zack. And that was just about the time that Riel told her about his relationship with Mieka. After that, as far as Sage was concerned, everything went from bad to worse.”

“Is that why she blew up our house?” I said.

Debbie shrugged. “Sage was bent on revenge, and according to her, the explosion that killed Danny Racette provided
a model. Her informants in Red Rage told Sage that Danny Racette’s death showed the community that the penalties for people who co-operated with Peyben would be quick and deadly. She called in her markers from Red Rage, and they set up the explosion in your garage—”

“But we were at the lake, so she didn’t kill us,” Zack finished.

“We had to change the way we lived our lives,” I said. “Why wasn’t that enough?”

“Because Sage felt her world was under attack. Leland Hunter had co-opted Riel. Even worse, Riel had found a place in your family.”

“So Sage hired someone to kill me.”

“His name is Jimmy Raven, and when he backed out, Sage’s house of cards came tumbling down. There were rumours that Raven had been involved in Leland Hunter’s murder. We called him in for questioning, and when he realized that Sage wouldn’t be doing any more favours for him and his pals, he fingered her. After that, it was just a question of putting together enough evidence to arrest her. Joanne, Raven made it clear you had been the intended target all along. And Sage underscored the point in her statement by repeating three times that the bullet that killed Leland had been intended for you.”

“She wanted to make sure I’d always carry that knowledge with me,” I said. “And I will.”

Riel called at mid-morning and asked if he could come over on his lunch hour. When I opened the door to him, I was shocked. It seemed he’d aged fifteen years in the last two days. His skin still had the grey tinge I’d noticed when I showed him Sage’s file and his eyes were dull and deeply shadowed.

When I stood aside to let him come in, Riel hesitated. “I didn’t know if you’d see me,” he said. “Mieka wanted to come,
but she’s been through enough. I thought we should talk about this alone.”

Zack came up behind me. “Come in and sit down, Riel,” he said. “The past couple of weeks have been tough for all of us.”

Riel didn’t move. “It’s not going to get any better,” he said. “Sage is my sister. I hate what she did, but I love her, and I’m not going to abandon her.”

“You can appreciate why that decision might be difficult for Joanne and me,” Zack said.

Riel nodded. “I can, but I thought you should know.”