Tell Anna She's Safe (15 page)

“You bike to town?”

“Well, I haven't this year because I've had this sciatica bugging me, but, yeah, normally lots of times to work in the summer.” I hoped he wasn't going to make any more condescendingly appreciative remarks about my activeness.

“Did you ever bike to Lucy's?”

I looked at him but I was seeing Lucy in her garden as I wheeled my bike around to the back of her house. “Yes, actually. At least once. Why?”

“Was Brennan there?” He seemed excited.

“He came in later.” I spoke slowly, remembering how the three of us had eaten together and how Lucy had told Tim I'd biked all the way from Chelsea. “You think I gave him the
idea?
”

Quinn shrugged. “Could be.”

I tried to imagine Tim parking the car and taking a bike off the back. It seemed unlikely. “Maybe he had someone else drive with him in another car.”

“Still stuck on the accomplice theory, huh?”

“I'm not stuck on any—”

“Hey,” His voice was soft. “Ease up, girl. It's all theory at this point. But we've pretty well tracked his movements through that whole Saturday. His movements don't match his witness statement.”

“How did you track his movements? You mean talking to his friends?” I thought about Marnie. If she were involved, wouldn't she protect him? She'd have to, in order to protect herself.

“That and a lot more. You'd be surprised.” He ticked items off on the fingers of one hand. “Surveillance cameras at corner stores, bank machine statements that record the time of transaction, pay-per-view movie records. His alibi doesn't hold up.”

“Is it enough to prove him guilty?”

“Not on its own. We need the body. Fortunately Brennan needs the body too.”

“What d'you mean, he needs the body? Why?”

“In order to get control of Lucy's estate. You knew he was the sole beneficiary of her estate?”

“Oh God, no, I didn't.” The sole beneficiary. “
There's
a compelling motive for….”

Quinn was nodding. “Damn right it is. Everything is his. The house alone is worth a quarter million. But in order to get it all, he has to produce a body. To prove Lucy's dead. Otherwise he has to wait something like seven years. And I can guarantee you, Stupid isn't going to wait that long. He's already gone through over twenty thousand dollars of Lucy's money. And since she went missing he's been pawning off her office equipment.” He grinned. “He brings her fax machine and computer in the front door of a pawn shop and we're at the back door ready to take it.”

“
Twenty thousand
dollars?
I don't understand. How did he—”

“Twenty-two thousand, actually. He was defrauding her this whole last year. No doubt he was planning it from the moment she made contact in prison.”

I closed my eyes. For an instant I could feel Lucy's panic. What had her friend Kevin said? She prided herself on being financially secure. No wonder she'd been so negative last fall. God, it must have been a nightmare.

“How come she didn't go to the police?”

He shrugged. “He said he was going to pay it back. He'd met a guy in prison, Bill Torrence, who got out before him. Or after. I can't remember. They were going to go into business together. Cattle transport or something. That never happened. But then, suddenly, Torrence is going to give him a big fat loan. Going to wire the money. It was a big fat lie.”

I'm on the phone with my bank manager and it's taken me ages to get through.

“She was waiting for the money,” I said.
Right to the end
.

Quinn nodded.

“But I don't understand. How's Tim going to produce her body?”

“Ellen, Ellen, you disappoint me. You know how diligently he's been searching.”

I shook my head, but he didn't seem to notice. “One of these days, he's just going to ‘happen' across it.” He made quotation marks in the air. “And then….” He mimed the motion of hanging himself with a rope.

Hanging, strangling…. An involuntary shiver crackled the back of my neck. Lucy was so small.
I know how easily she can be hurt when we play-wrestle on the living room floor.

I turned to Quinn. “When I talked to Lucy the week before she went missing, she sounded terrible. She didn't explain why, but obviously—from what you say—she was upset about the money. But it sounded like something beyond—mental stress. Do you know, or have you guys any theories about what was going on that week? Do you know if Tim was….”

Quinn was looking at me.

I tried again. “Detective Godbout asked me if I knew if Lucy was being abused. I just said no automatically. I mean, I had never seen any evidence myself. But I hadn't seen her.”

Quinn's face was inscrutable in the shadows. But he was nodding. “Lundy and Roach have been talking to some of Lucy's friends. It appears she was being abused, that she was trying to get out.”

I closed my eyes. It would explain a lot. Lucy's becoming more and more negative after Tim moved in. The way she had sounded that day.
You may not need me, but I need you.
I wanted to cry.

“We are not,” said Quinn again, “having this conversation.”

I swallowed and made my voice casual. “What conversation?”

“Okay,” he said. “Now.” His tone had changed completely. “If I promise not to ask impertinent questions about your psychic abilities, will you come up for a coffee before you go home?”

The idea made my heart pound. “No. Thanks. I really should get home. The dogs—”

“Those damn' dogs.” The words were spoken in a low voice. It was a teasing voice. A tantalizing voice. A menacing voice. I had a sudden image of his hands on Belle and Beau. Violent hands. Getting the dogs out of the way. So he could get to me. Where was this
coming
from?

I squeezed my eyes shut to block the images. Opened them again and gripped the door handle. “I have to go.” My voice was near panic.

Quinn put a restraining hand on my arm. “Ellen, Ellen. What's the matter?”

“Nothing.” I was breathing hard. “I can't explain.”

He let me get out of the car, got out his own side and came around to me. I was afraid he was going to embrace me. There was a rigid band of steel around me. He couldn't fail to notice. But if he did, he made no sign. He faced me, his expression full of concern. His concern confused me. It made me want to take down the barrier. I wanted to trust him. I needed to go home.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

He put two fingers against my lips. Pressed them gently.

I couldn't move. His fingers held me as still as if he'd taken my head in a vice grip.

He took them away. “No, I'm the one who's sorry. It's my fault. I shouldn't have told you all that about Tim while you were alone with me here. Nor about Lucy. I know it's disturbing. And you don't know me.” He gave a rueful smile. “As much as I'd like you to. I should have been more sensitive. Call me when you get home. So I know you got there safe. Are you okay to drive?”

I nodded. I avoided his eyes. He put the car keys in my hand. I walked around to the driver's side, got in, started the engine. Pulled away from the curb. I think I remembered to wave.

Heading up the highway into the hills, I shook off the night-time traffic. But I couldn't shake off my thoughts. My brain turned around and around the theory Quinn had given me, trying to fit it with my own. It was an awkward fit at best. The cops' theory was so much more logical than the fragments I was piecing together from Lucy's suspect messages. So much less complicated. Also more disturbing. More violent. More calculated. Had Tim planned this all along? Had he been conning Lucy since the very beginning? The story in my visions made it an accident. Was that just because I wanted it to be an accident? Lucy's story—my story—was a much gentler, more forgiving version. Who was I kidding?

There's violence out there. Evil. Face it
. That's what Quinn was doing. Trying to get me to face it. Those visions of him with my dogs were just my paranoia. It was the situation that was violent; his work was
surrounded
by violence. But
he
wasn't violent. If I could just keep that straight.

I arrived in my own driveway with the heat still blasting out of the vents. I was still shivering. I took the steps to the lighted deck two at a time. Just short of the top, I felt a sharp twinge in my leg. Damn. I stopped to pick the house key out of the ring. I approached the door, rubbing my leg.

That's when I heard it. The faint droning of an outboard motor on the river.

I limped around to the front of the deck and looked out in the direction of the water. The night was so black there was no distinguishing trees from open water. The air was cold but still. The sound carried clearly. It grew louder until it seemed to be out in the middle of the river, straight out from the bay. But there was no light.

And, suddenly, no sound either. As if the motor had been killed.

I stood on the deck, straining my eyes and ears. Hugging myself to stop the shivering. Had I imagined the sound?

I forced myself to stand there in the chill of the night. Listening. But the silence continued. And in the dark, the images began to crowd my brain: Tim and his hands on Lucy, Quinn and his hands on me, a boat drifting on the water at night, doing God knew what. I ran for the safety of my lighted kitchen and my golden-furred dogs.

The ringing of the phone woke me up. I picked up the receiver with a groggy hello and some trepidation. There was no call display on the bedroom phone.

“I'm on my way over with the weekend papers and steaming cappuccinos,” said a familiar British voice. “Don't even think about going anywhere today.”

“Coffee and the crossword sound just about like heaven today.”

I dressed and walked the dogs up the hill to meet the car. In the bright sunshine, the motorboat incident, Steve Quinn's confusing energy, and my dreams seemed distant and unreal. What remained was a strong desire to see Quinn again. Which I was going to block out in about five minutes. I didn't want Mary Frances picking up any vibes. Vibes I shouldn't even have been having. Nor did I want us to go anywhere near the conversations Quinn and I weren't supposed to have been having in my car last night. I would tell her I didn't want to talk about Lucy. She wouldn't pry. The sight of the silver Cressida turning down the hill brought relief. A day off from fear and imaginings.

On Monday I went back to work and found I could concentrate. Life could go on.

*

THE GRABBA JAVA WAS HUMMING
with the chatter of patrons and clatter of dishes. Most mornings she loved it. She could tune it out while she wrote in her journal. But today her veins were humming with the caffeine of her second extra-large latte—the one she should never have consumed. She had come here, as she did every morning, to feed two habits—coffee and journal-writing. Today she had also come to escape the house. Not the emptiness, but the noise. The new tenant upstairs was, it turned out, very heavy-footed.

Be careful what you ask for, she wrote. With Curtis, and then the tenant, moving out, the silence had screamed at her. She had wanted signs of a heartbeat in the house again. She hadn't bargained on a foot-beat. And a world-weary foot-beat at that. How had she missed it during the interview—the darkness surrounding Denise? But now it was obvious. The unattractiveness of her face wasn't just the disfavour of Nature; it was her own dark spirit. It emanated now through the floorboards. How was she going to survive a year of that overhead? The
Landlord-Tenant's Act
didn't list “dark spirit” as grounds for eviction.

The Grabba Java was as wired as she was. She wasn't going to last much longer.

She was impatient with herself. Why could she never be satisfied with where she was? Was this a metaphor for her life? It always seemed to be just up ahead of her—just beyond reach—the life she envisioned. Why did she always find herself waiting? Waiting for Curtis to come back. Waiting for Curtis to go. Waiting for Tim to call. Waiting for Tim to get out of prison. Waiting for someone to come and participate in her life.

Why couldn't she just accept what was, this minute, right now? Sitting in this café, enjoying the coffee, hating the noise. She couldn't bring Curtis back. She couldn't get Tim out of prison. But she could leave the café.

So much for acceptance. She stuffed her journal in her purse and headed for home.

10.

T
HE NEXT DAY, THE NINTH
of May, the chiropractor's office called to remind me of my four o'clock appointment. I had forgotten. That was a good sign. It meant I was walking without pain. I could probably start running and biking again.

“There's no reason you can't,” said the chiropractor after she'd treated me. “Just don't go out and try to do a ten-k run tomorrow.”

There was no risk of that.

I took River Road home. It had been two weeks since I'd been down this way. My stomach muscles knotted on my approach to the construction zone. The embankment was almost finished. There was no yellow Sidekick parked by the side of the road.

I pulled off the road and parked my car where the Sidekick had been. I got out and locked the doors. I took my wallet and keys with me. Lucy had apparently taken her keys but not her wallet. Was that likely? I'd asked Tim if he had a second set of keys. What if the ones he had brought had been the only set? What if Lucy had been in no position to take anything with her. What if Lucy herself had never been here?

I looked all around the area where her car had been. And then I went for a walk down the railway tracks. I retraced the route Tim and I had taken in the dark. I felt a heightened sense of awareness. Not fear. I looked carefully in the pond water where he had shone his flashlight. The water was opaque with mud. The stumps and weeds sat benignly in the sun.

I found the rotting dock. I stood on the relatively solid bottom step. In the water the frayed rope end washed back and forth. Even in daylight it still looked uncannily like human hair. But I watched it with surprising detachment.

I strolled back up the tracks. I paused to look down at the river. I kept hearing Tim's voice in my head. “It's so shallow here. See how shallow it is?” Why had he kept saying that?

Back at the car I stood looking down the road past the construction zone. A forest-green half-ton pick-up appeared around the bend and cruised down the hill towards me. I stood calmly. Resolute. Waiting for Tim to stop and tell me why he was here.

But the driver didn't stop. And it wasn't Tim. It was a man I'd never seen before. And it wasn't a forest-green pick-up; it was a teal-green van.

I looked after the van after it passed me. I could see not only where it was going, but where it had come from as well. And who was lying in the back.

“Slow down, Ellen. Take it easy. I'm listening. Where are you? What happened?”

I leaned my forehead against the glass of the phone booth, trying to catch my breath. “I'm at the Tulip Valley restaurant. At a pay phone. I was up on River Road just now and I stopped to look around. I thought I saw Tim's truck coming towards me. But then suddenly it wasn't Tim's truck; it was a van. A different shade of green. But it wasn't real. Oh God, it wasn't a dream either. I was standing in the middle of the road in broad daylight. I—I think I had some kind of vision or something. I saw—I saw what happened to Lucy on Saturday night. God, this sounds loony—”

“Cut the commentary. Just tell me what you saw.”

The sharpness of Quinn's tone snapped me out of my embarrassment. I recounted what I had seen. “It wasn't Tim driving; it was someone else. A man. I didn't recognize him. But I could see inside the van as it went by. I could see Lucy. She was lying in the back, in a sleeping bag. I think that was the man-made material I got before. And, I can't explain this, but I knew where they had come from. It
was
down in Hunt Club. I got an image of them driving away from those burnt-out barns. I've been thinking about them. I meant to have us look—” I stopped myself; who knew who was listening in? “I mean, I meant to ask you to look there earlier, but I didn't see how they could have four walls and a roof. But now I'm wondering if there's another shed or something somewhere close by. I was wondering if you—if someone could check. Check for that candy-bar wrapper. God knows,” I added in a self-mocking tone, “you might even find one with an actual fingerprint on it.”

Quinn ignored that. “What else?”

“I saw where they were going. I saw the van drive to a bridge and stop and the man went around to the back and lifted Lucy out. He—” I stopped. It was sounding like the plot of a cheap thriller.

“He what?”

“He dropped her off the bridge—into the water. Oh God, I think I must be losing my mind.”

“You are not losing your mind, Ellen. You are in a highly emotional state. This whole experience has been traumatic.”

“You think I'm hallucinating.”

There was a slight pause. “I think you're in an extra-sensitive state. Anything can happen.”

I slumped back against the glass of the phone booth, holding my head in my hand. What Quinn really meant was that I was overwrought, imagining things. But on Saturday he had made it sound like he might even believe in this kind of phenomena. Words came out of his mouth and I didn't know what to make of them. I didn't know what to make of myself, either. Maybe I
had
been hallucinating. Maybe I was losing my mind altogether.

“Ellen. Are you still there?”

“I'm here.”

“Ellen, stop questioning yourself. There's something to what you're experiencing. No question. You're the sanest woman I know. And you said yourself, if there's a chance Lucy is still alive….”

My words repeated back to myself pulled me out of my confusion. So did Quinn's words:
you're the sanest woman I know
. Not that it mattered what he thought. It didn't matter what
I
thought. Whatever had just happened, I had to follow up on it.

“There's more,” I said in a wry tone.

“I'm listening.”

“It looked like he might have dropped something of hers on the bridge. I saw something fall but couldn't make out what it was. Maybe a shoe. Something like that.”

“Could you identify the bridge?”

“No, just that it was a bridge for cars—not the railway bridge. There's three up here that I can think of. Philemon Wright, Wakefield, and Farrellton.”

“I don't suppose….”

“What?”

“I don't suppose you got the licence plate number of that van.”

I couldn't tell if he was laughing at me—or at himself. But I found my sense of humour. “Sergeant Quinn, you know that would be too much to ask of a visionary. It wasn't like seeing a truck go by in the usual way. I was seeing right into the van.
Past
it.”

My voice must have sounded odd. “Are you alright?” His voice was sharp again. This time with concern.

“I'm alright. I'm going to go search those bridges.”

“No.”

“But I have to—”

“No. Not by yourself.”

His words were like melted butter seeping into my jittery veins. I drank in his concern, his insistence that I wasn't to go by myself. His caring. And if he was expressing that kind of concern, he must think there was something to this story. I thought about the possibility of meeting someone on the bridge. Some friend of Tim's. The melted butter congealed.

“I'm not trying to scare you,” he added. “I just think it's too risky. I'll send someone up. I'll come up myself. I'm off in half an hour.”

His words melted butter again. But automatically I protested. “Really, you don't have to. I don't think I'm going to meet anyone.
If
this really happened, I'm pretty sure it already happened. There was darkness all around the edges of the images. I don't think it had to do with the way I was seeing the images. I think it was supposed to be night. Saturday night, maybe.”

“You're not to go up there on your own.”

I drank in his orders. Without shame. Someone taking charge was exactly what I needed right now. “What about the barns?”

I heard Quinn let out a breath through his nose. I imagined him tapping his fingers against his mouth as he had done in the interrogation room the night we'd met. “Okay, here's the deal,” he said finally. “I'll go check out those barns when I leave here. And you go home and wait for me. It doesn't get dark 'til eight-thirty or nine these days. We have lots of time. I'll come and get you and we'll search those bridges this evening. And then….”

I was almost afraid to ask. “And then?”

“And then you'll feed me dinner.”

There it was again—that word, this time implied:
date.
I had to admit it. I wanted to have another meal with him. One less fraught. But I had no food in the house. And…. “I don't think I can—”

“You
can
,” said Quinn. “You will.” There was humour in his tone.

He was right. It was the least I could do. I lightened up. “Yes sir.”

His voice changed back to concern. “Are you okay now?”

“Yes. Thank you. I am.” It was only a half-lie. The jangling in my veins was settling down. I was starting to get an entirely different case of nerves. The anticipating kind.

“Good girl,” said Quinn. “I'll see you about seven or seven-thirty.” Neither of us mentioned our last contact. His comment on my “highly emotional state” when “anything can happen” had clearly been an allusion to it. He had understood. There was nothing more to say.

At home I dug my runners out of the back of my closet and pulled my windbreaker off the hook. There would be time for an inaugural run before he arrived.

I shut the front door behind me and stood for a moment with my hand on the handle. With Quinn coming up it felt alright to leave the door unlocked. Though he'd probably give me grief if he discovered it before I came back.

I was back well before seven. I wanted time for a shower. And a snack. There was a pizza in the freezer we could heat up later.

It was seven-forty when the black Integra pulled into the yard. I had forgotten to ask if he remembered the way. There had clearly been no need.

“There was a million years of debris in those buildings,” he said when we headed north on the 105. “Let's hope we have better luck on those bridges. Couldn't you have a vision of where she is now?”

I laughed, a bitter laugh. “It's not my fault there's a time lag. But I appreciate your humouring me.”

“For the last time, I am
not
humouring you.”

He looked anything but in good humour. I kept silent, except for directing him to the Farrellton Bridge, a few kilometres north of Wakefield. Quinn parked the car at the end of the bridge and we walked up one side and down the other. We didn't speak. I had my eyes on the ground, scanning for any item that might belong to Lucy. We found nothing.

In the middle of the Wakefield bridge I leaned over the railing. I looked into the water below. The current was fast but the water was deep. It made sense for her to be thrown off a bridge.

Here she would sink to the bottom. She wouldn't just wash ashore.

It came to me with a certainty that had nothing to do with any vision: the night I had walked with Tim along the tracks he
hadn't
put her in the river. But he had been thinking about it. He had, in fact, been thinking out loud. That was why he had kept saying, “It's so shallow here.” He was realizing she would simply wash ashore. But she wouldn't from the middle of a bridge.

I caught up to Quinn. Told him my theory. He made no comment. He seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. We drove in silence to the last bridge, Philemon Wright, the one closest to the Ontario border. This was the one with the most traffic. The least likely candidate. By the time we got back to the car I was frustrated. Angry.

“I'm sorry,” I said as Quinn pulled away from the shoulder.

He looked at me in surprise. “What are you sorry about now?”

I waved my hand in the air. “For wasting your time.”

Quinn smiled. “How could an evening stroll on three bridges in the lovely Gatineau Hills with you be a waste of time?”

My face coloured as if he had said I was the lovely one.

At the turn back onto the 105 highway, he turned south rather than north. “Where are you going? There aren't anymore bridges south of here—not over the Gatineau.”

“There's a little place I know in town,” said Quinn, not taking his eyes off the road.

“A restaurant?” But I knew the answer before he gave it.

“My place.”

My heart rate sped up.

“We took a bit of a risk down there at Hunt Club. I don't want to push it. You're going to be a witness when Lundy and Roach finally crack this case. I wouldn't want to give the defence any unnecessary ammunition.”

“
Are
they going to crack this case?”

“You bet those electrifying eyes of yours,” said Quinn. “But let's not talk about that right now.”