The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (22 page)

“It’s Eve, Jo. Eve Boychuk. Oh, Jo, they say I killed him.” Her voice was rising with hysteria.

“Eve, stay calm. Where are you?”

“At the police station in the city. They came and got me this morning. I hadn’t even … Oh, God, Jo. I can’t deal with this.” She was almost incoherent.

“Eve, do you know where you are? Ask someone if you’re on Smith Street.”

I could hear the muffled noise that happens when someone has a hand over the receiver, then she was back on the line. “Yes, Smith Street. Oh, Jo, please.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” When I hung up I noticed how badly I was shaking. Not a good day to drive. I called a cab. Five minutes later, as I slid into the back seat of the taxi, I could hear my dogs barking in the house, still angry.

The new police station was all glass and concrete – “state-of-the-art,” as our local paper invariably said. I had been there with Angus’s class in the spring, not long after it opened. A nice young constable had shown us around, fingerprinted the kids and talked to them sensibly about drugs and never being afraid of the police and always trusting them when they were in trouble.

Well, I was in trouble now. At the front desk a woman with a round face and granny glasses was waiting for me. Her identification card said “Special Constable Doris Ironstar.” She filled out a temporary identification card for me and led me down a corridor and into a small room. There, sitting alone at a square metal table, was Eve. She looked almost catatonic, but as soon as she saw me, she ran across the room and embraced me. She was covered in blood, and the smell was so strong I almost retched. I turned and looked at Constable Ironstar.

“My God, what have you done to her?”

“I’ll get the inspector,” she said and left.

Eve was sobbing and embracing me. She was a strong woman and it took me a minute to pry myself loose. She was wearing the unbleached cotton dress she had worn the day Andy died, and she was barelegged. Her dress and her legs and hands were caked with blood, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from.

“Eve, where are you hurt?”

But the only answer she gave was a low guttural sound. She crooned my name and said the words “no” and “oh” over and over.

Finally my old friend Inspector Millar Millard came in.

“Can’t you at least get her a doctor?” I said. “She could be bleeding to death.”

The inspector looked at me wearily. “There’s a doctor on her way from City Hospital, but the blood isn’t coming from Mrs. Boychuk; it came from him.”

Now I could feel the hysteria rising in my throat. “Is everyone here crazy? Andy’s been dead for a month. How can that be his blood?”

When he bent to calm me, I saw that the good Inspector Millard, the one who gave me tea and biscuits, was back. His voice was weary but kind. “Mrs. Kilbourn, the blood didn’t come from Mrs. Boychuk’s husband. It seems we have another murder here.”

I looked up. Millar Millard was watching me, waiting.

“Mrs. Kilbourn, that blood on your friend came from a man named Soren Eames. Mrs. Boychuk is being held in connection with his murder.”

I felt as if I had turned to ice. The inspector continued.

“We had a call this morning from” – he checked the notes on his clipboard – “from a girl named Kelly Evanson …”

“Lori Evanson.” I corrected automatically.

He smiled and pencilled in the change on his report. “Early this morning Lori Evanson found Soren Eames dead in his office at Wolf River Bible College. Someone had beaten him rather savagely with an axe. We have the weapon. We’re checking it out, of course, but it seems to be pretty standard issue, the kind of axe kids use in Boy Scouts. You have children, Mrs. Kilbourn. I’ll bet you’ve had an axe just like it in your house at one time or another. Not that I’m suggesting a connection there,” he said, tapping his cigarette package on the corner of the table. He looked again at his notes. “When Lori Evanson walked into the office this morning, Mrs. Boychuk was standing over the body with the axe in her hands.”

All on their own, my legs had begun to tremble uncontrollably. I looked down at them. Somewhere in the distance the inspector’s voice, patient and gravelly, was talking about physical evidence.

A tiny young woman in a trenchcoat came in carrying a medical bag. She went not to Eve, but to me. She slid her fingers around my wrist, positioned her face close to mine.

“Shock,” she said, still holding my wrist in her hand. Then there was a swab and a pinprick sensation at the crease of my elbow, and I felt warm and weary. “You’ll be all right now. You’re Joanne Kilbourn, aren’t you? Well, Joanne, someone will get you some tea. Plenty of sugar,” she said over her shoulder. “Hang in there, Joanne,” and then, smooth as silk, she moved along. “Now, Eve, what you need is a hot bath and a chance to get all this muck off. The inspector tells me there is a shower here, and some fresh clothes, but just let me give you a little something to bring you down a bit. There. Now that should keep the bad stuff away for a while.” She motioned to Constable Ironstar. “I think it’s time we took Eve to the shower; we can sit outside and talk to her as the water runs. Come on, Eve, let’s go.” She took Eve’s hand in hers, and the two of them walked out of the room as coolly as if they were at a pyjama party.

Constable Ironstar picked up the medical bag and followed them. She looked edgy. Tranquillized or not, Eve was an unknown quantity. As soon as Constable Ironstar shut the door behind her, the inspector leaned forward in his seat.

“Are you all right now, Mrs. Kilbourn?”

“Yes, I think so. I’m sorry, it was …”

“A shock. I know. It always is – especially the smell. We would have given Eve a chance to clean up if things had worked out. We’ve had personnel problems here today, a death.”

A piece slid in place. A staff sergeant had been killed earlier in the week. I’d read in the paper that the funeral was this morning. “I’m sorry about your colleague, Inspector,” I said.

Unexpectedly, he smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Kilbourn. That’s a kind thought. Now.” He sighed regretfully. “I guess we have to concentrate on this other matter. Mrs. Boychuk needs a lawyer. Normally, people make the call themselves or give us a name and we make the call for them. But Mrs. Boychuk couldn’t seem to get much beyond you this morning. I wonder if you could suggest someone.”

“Craig Evanson,” I said, then wondered where that suggestion came from.

“Is he in the book?”

“Yes, his office is on Broad Street. Just be sure to tell him what it’s about. He’ll come.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Kilbourn. I’ll call him myself.” He stood up. “I’ll have someone bring you some tea.” He closed the door behind him.

In a few minutes Doris Ironstar came with a pot of tea and some cookies on a plate. The cookies looked homemade.

“Police issue?” I said.

“Out of my lunchbox,” she said. “My boyfriend made them. They’re good. You look as if you could use a little nourishment.”

I felt tears come to my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I seem to be right on the edge this morning.”

“Drink the tea and eat the cookies,” said Special Constable Ironstar, and she gave me a small smile as she went out the door.

Then Craig Evanson stuck his head in. “I’ll be back. I’m just going to see about Eve,” he said, and was gone.

I drank my tea and ate my cookies, gingersnaps with lots of molasses. Constable Ironstar’s boyfriend was no slouch. I felt better.

In a few minutes a little party trooped down the hall past my door – the inspector, the doctor from the hospital, Craig Evanson, Eve. When she saw me, Eve started into the room toward me. She was clean and dressed in what appeared to be pyjamas. Her hair was damp but neatly combed and she had a grey army blanket around her shoulders. She had the slightly punchy look of an exhausted child. Craig and the young doctor guided her into the hallway and down the corridor, and Eve gave me a little wave.

The inspector came in and sat down with me. “Mr. Evanson wants to talk to his client privately. We’ll be taking her to the correctional centre later. You can leave any time. If you wait a little, I’ll have someone drive you.” As if on cue, a dozen policemen in dress uniform marched by the door.

“I feel as if I’m in a Fellini movie,” I said.

The inspector smiled and said, “I often have that feeling myself. Anyway, you can walk out of this movie whenever you’re ready.”

I looked at him. I felt as tired and sad as he sounded.

“No, Inspector, I’m afraid you’re wrong. I don’t think I can walk out of this movie. I think there are some things I have to tell you.”

Two hours later, a police car delivered me to the house on Eastlake Avenue. When I went to stand up after my interview with Millar Millard, my legs had turned to rubber. I’d been glad of the ride.

When I walked in the front door, Peter and Angus were home for lunch. They were sitting in front of the
TV
eating Kraft Dinner. The news of Soren Eames’s murder had become public. When I sat on the floor beside them, the television was showing Eve and me walking across the parking lot of the hospital the morning we drove to Wolf River. I hadn’t realized the network had filmed us, but there we
were. Eve, tall and elegant, and me, short and matronly. Mutt and Jeff. There were other pieces of file footage: the funeral, of course, and the dedication of the Charlie Appleby Prayer Centre. There was Soren Eames, wired with excitement, talking passionately and sensitively about the design of the building, then a sweeping shot of the dignitaries sitting in chairs on the hard-packed dirt in front of the centre. The premier was there, looking, as always, boyishly hyperactive (too much sugar, Angus once said knowledge-ably), and Lane Appleby, sitting not far from Eve and Andy, then a quick shot of Andy and Soren Eames together at the microphone: two handsome men in young middle age, squinting in the pale, cold sun of an April morning. When everything came out, that shot of Soren and Andy would be on the front page of every newspaper in Canada.

Then pictures of the body being taken out of the
CAP
Centre and loaded into an ambulance. Suddenly, I couldn’t handle it: Soren, blinking in the sunlight, talking about form and function in architecture, and Soren, an anonymous bulk under a red blanket, wrapped in darkness forever. My knees began to tremble again, and I turned off the television, went to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Hennessey’s. I poured myself a generous shot and walked into the kitchen.

As I took the first sip, the phone rang. It was Howard Dowhanuik calling from Toronto. His news was grim. Already the Toronto media were having a field day with Soren’s murder. They’d dug up the Lorscott case, and one of the city
TV
stations had sent a crew to Port Durham to get Eve’s father’s response to the charges against his daughter. The old man had smashed in the television cameras and chased the reporters off his property. Apparently, Eve was going to be spared nothing.

Howard’s assessment was brutal: “Thanksgiving came early for the shitheads of the press this year. They aren’t going
to have to scramble for this one. No, this one is going to jump into their word processors all by itself.”

It seemed as good a time as any to ask my question. “Howard, there’s more here and I think you must know about it.”

“What kind of more, Jo?” His voice on the other end of the line was suddenly wary.

“Andy was a homosexual. He and Soren Eames were lovers.”

There was a sigh. “Jesus, no. I didn’t know that. Not about Andy and Eames.”

I pressed him. “But you did know about Andy.”

Silence.

“You knew, didn’t you? Answer me.” I could hear my voice, shrill and demanding.

Then Howard’s voice, defeated. “Yeah. I knew, Jo.”

“How long? When did you find out?”

“From the beginning, at least from the political beginning. Andy told me the first time I asked him to run for us.”

“Damn it, Howard, why didn’t you tell me?”

There was anger in his voice. “Because, Jo, there was no Goddamn reason in the world for you to know. Because it wasn’t any of your Goddamn business, any more than it was Andy’s business how often you and Ian got it off in bed. Andy did the right thing by telling me, but it was nobody’s business but his and mine.”

“And Eve’s,” I said meanly.

“Yes, and Eve’s.”

“Howard, did you know any of the men?”

There was a beat of hesitation. “No, I didn’t – not for sure. There was one I saw just for a second, that first year Andy was elected.”

“What was he like?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Jo, it’s been almost twenty years … Tall
and thin, I think. I just saw him for a second and he was …”

“He was what, Howard?”

“Naked. He was naked, Joanne. We were in Toronto for a conference. I went to Andy’s hotel room early. While we were talking at the door, the other guy came out of the bathroom. I guess he didn’t hear me at the door.”

“And what happened?”

“I gave Andy hell for not being careful and for balling around, and he said it wasn’t like that – that this guy was ‘the one and only.’ Funny choice of words, but that’s what he said … Jo, I’m sorry I barked at you. This is a hell of a mess. Look, do you want me to come out there? Does Eve have a lawyer?”

“I suggested they call Craig Evanson. He’ll be good with her – gentle. Howard, I’d love for you to come, but really, there’s nothing you could do but hold my hand.”

“Not the worst fate I can think of.”

“The big city’s turning you into a smooth talker.”

“I mean it, Jo.”

“I know you do. You’re a good soul, Howard. Look, I’ll call you if I need you.”

“Don’t wait for that – just call.”

“Okay. Hey, take care of yourself. Stay away from the painted ladies down there.”

“Oh, Jo, I miss you,” and then “shit,” and he hung up. I sat there for a minute wondering. Then I went into the kitchen and ate some of the boys’ leftover Kraft Dinner while I sipped my Hennessey’s. It’s not a bad combination on a day when the world falls apart.

When the phone rang again, I was in the granny flat sorting through files, looking for places where Andy and Soren might have been together or, more to the point, might have
been seen together. The voice on the line was male, young and tentative.