The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (41 page)

I felt my stomach lurch. At the Faculty Club that afternoon, Ed’s graceful party had seemed to banish the ugliness of Reed’s last hours in the rooming house on Scarth Street, but now the horror rushed back. All the show tunes and fond memories in the world couldn’t negate the fact that Reed Gallagher had died a terrifying and humiliating death.

Alex put down his coffee cup. As if he’d read my mind, he said, “It’s a hell of a way to die.” Then he shrugged. “But that is the way it happened. Case closed.”

“Alex, you just said this doesn’t feel right to you. How can the case be closed?”

“I’ve told you, Jo. Because there’s no evidence to suggest that Gallagher’s death didn’t happen exactly the way Zimbardo said it did, and the book says you can never prove a positive with negative evidence.”

I thought of Kellee Savage. In police parlance, the fact that she hadn’t shown up for Reed’s memorial service would be negative evidence, but for me it was another piece in an increasingly unsettling puzzle.

“Alex, do you remember telling me that you were going to check out the last twenty-four hours in Reed Gallagher’s life?”

“Sure. It’s standard procedure. The report’s in the file downtown.”

“Would it be breaking any rules to let me see it?”

“No. The case is closed. There’s public access, and you’re part of the public.” He raised an eyebrow. “Are you checking up on me?”

“No, I’m still trying to figure out what connection Kellee Savage, that student I told you about, had with all this. I was just curious about whether Reed Gallagher talked to her the day he died.”

“Her name wasn’t in the report, but Gallagher’s secretary did say he had a meeting with a student that afternoon.”

“Then the student’s name should be in Reed’s appointment book.”

There was an edge of exasperation in Alex’s voice. “Give me a little credit, Jo. I did ask. The secretary said Gallagher told her the meeting was private – the only reason he mentioned it at all was because he was leaving the office.”

“Could I look at the report?”

He stretched lazily. “Sure, I’ll make you a copy on Monday.”

“Alex, could I get a copy tonight? I understand what you said about negative evidence, but there must be times when negative evidence points towards something being seriously wrong.”

“You think this is one of those times …?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that the last time I saw her, Kellee was miserable, but she also said something like, ‘I should have known it was too good to last.’ When I tried to get her to tell me what she meant, she wouldn’t, but I’ve found out since that Reed Gallagher chose her for the top internship the School of Journalism gives out. She’s an ambitious young woman. If she knew she was in line for that placement, there’s no way she’d be jeopardizing it by missing classes for a week. And there’s no way she wouldn’t have shown up at her benefactor’s memorial service. Even if she didn’t have feelings for him, there were a lot of important people there.”

Alex looked hard at me. “Jo, why are you getting so involved in this now?”

“Maybe because I didn’t get involved when I should have.”

For a moment he was silent. Then he said wearily, “Bingo! Not getting involved when you should have is the one explanation I’m open to right now.”

“Are things worse with your nephew?”

“Yeah,” he said. He leaned forward and blew out the candles, but not before I saw the anger in his eyes.

The light was fading as Alex and I walked down towards the Albert Street bridge, but the night was mild, and the hot-shots who drive up and down Albert Street on weekend nights were out in force. When we got to the middle of the bridge, I leaned over the railing to check the ice on the lake. It hadn’t started to break up yet, but there were dark patches, and the orange rectangles that warned of thin ice had been placed along the shoreline.

“Look,” I said. “Signs of spring.”

When Alex and I walked into the police station, some uniformed cops greeted him, but he didn’t introduce me, and as we walked down the hall together, I tried to look innocent or at least bailable. I’d been in Alex’s office only twice before; both times I had been there on official business, and my mind had not been on the decor. That night as I looked around, I thought how much it was like his apartment: neat, spare, and impersonal. Among the standard-issue furnishings, there were only three personal items. Taped to the inside of the door was a computer-printed sign: “Don’t Complain. Expect Nothing. Do Something.” A
CD
player and a case filled with classical discs were within easy reach on the shelf behind the desk, and on the wall facing the desk was a medicine wheel. An elder told me once that the medicine wheel is a mirror that helps a person see what cannot be seen with the eyes. I remembered Alex’s anger when he spoke about his nephew, and I wondered what he’d been seeing in this mirror lately.

It didn’t take long for Alex to bring Reed Gallagher’s file up on his computer. I stood behind him as he hit the print key, and when the machine began printing, I leaned over and embraced him.

Alex put his hands over mine. “One of the first things they teach us at police college is to build defences against the appeal of attractive women.”

“You’re not on duty right now, are you?”

“No,” he said, “I’m not.” He stood up and kissed me. “And I’m glad I’m not.”

While Alex checked through a stack of papers on his desk, I looked through his CDs: Mozart, Beethoven chamber music, Ravel, Bartok.

“I like your music,” I said, “and I like your office. You seem to have figured out how to hang on to what matters and leave the rest behind.”

Alex scrawled his initials on the last of the papers in the pile, then he looked up at me. “You’re not often wrong, Jo, but you’re wrong about this. I don’t leave anything behind. And I don’t know what matters. All I know is that if I can keep the externals of my life uncomplicated, I can function.” He walked over to the coat hook and handed me my jacket. “Time to go,” he said. Then he reached behind me and flicked the wall switch.

The wind had come up, bringing with it one of those sudden shifts in the weather that, despite precedent, always seem to come as a surprise. By the time we had walked from downtown to the Albert Street bridge, I was shivering.

“I’m always yelling at the kids about rushing the season,” I said. “But I wish I’d worn a heavier jacket. I’m freezing.”

Alex put his arm around me. “Better?”

“Much,” I said. We were almost across the bridge when a half-ton, travelling in the same direction as we were, slowed down. The window was unrolled, and a beefy man in a ball cap leaned out and shouted something at us.

I felt Alex’s arm stiffen.

“Is that somebody you know?” I asked. “I didn’t hear what he said.”

Alex didn’t answer me, but when the light changed and we started across the street, he tightened his grip on my shoulder. The half-ton had stopped for the light, and as we crossed in front of it, the driver yelled again. The words were
ugly and racist, but Alex wasn’t his target. I was. “Hey, babe,” he shouted, “when you’re through fucking the chief, maybe you’d like to try it with a couple of white guys.”

My reaction was immediate and atavistic. I broke away from Alex’s hold and ran across to the sidewalk. In a heartbeat it was over. The light changed; the man in the truck cheered and yelled, “We’ll be back for you, baby,” and the truck drove off.

When Alex came to me, his eyes were filled with concern, but he didn’t touch me. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” I laughed shakily. “Wow! As Mother Theresa would say, ‘what a scumbag.’ ”

Alex didn’t smile. I reached for his hand, but he drew away. “Alex, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “It was just a reflex. Getting out of the line of fire is instinctive.”

“You wouldn’t have done it.”

He smiled sadly. “I couldn’t have done it.”

“Because you’re not a coward.”

“No,” he said gently, “because I’m not white. That closes off a lot of options. Now, come on. You’d better get back.”

He walked me to my door. “Come inside,” I said. “I’ve got a few minutes before I have to get Taylor. I don’t want to talk out here.”

He came in and I closed the door and went to him.

“Alex, I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I did that. I don’t care what some idiot in a truck yells at me.”

He took me in his arms and kissed me and, for a few moments, I thought I was home-free. Then he stepped away from me.

“That was just the first time,” he said. “After a while, you’ll care, Jo. Take my word for it. You’ll care.”

CHAPTER

8

My grandmother’s maxim, “Morning is wiser than evening,” has helped me through many troubled nights, but that Saturday morning daybreak didn’t bring perspective. When the sun came up, I still didn’t understand why I had run from Alex on the bridge, and I still had no idea how I was going to make things right between us again.

As the dogs and I started on our morning run, I ached with remorse and regret. The cold wind of the night before had disappeared as suddenly as it had come; the air was mild and the sky was luminous. Once, on a morning like this, Rose and Sadie would have been straining at the leash, but we were all growing older, less anxious to seize the day. As we started across Albert Street, I noticed shards of broken beer bottles at the spot where the half-ton had stopped the night before. I pulled the dogs out of the way, kicked the glass into the gutter, and headed for the lake. “Life’s full of symbols,” I said, and Rose, our golden retriever, looked up at me worriedly.

As we ran along the shoreline, I worked hard at thinking about nothing, but nature abhors a vacuum, and out of nowhere my mind was filled with images of my first-year
Greek class: chalk dust lambent in the late-afternoon sun, muted sounds of traffic on Bloor Street, and a professor’s voice, infinitely sad, “Antitheses are always instructive. Take, for example, the pairing of ‘symbol,’ literally, ‘to put together,’ and ‘diabol,’ the root of our word ‘diabolic,’ ‘to throw apart.’ Symbol suggests the highest uses of our language and thought; diabol their uttermost degeneration.”

The amazing thing was that the diabolical hadn’t happened sooner. Alex and I had been going out together since late November; we lived in a city in which racism was a fact of life, and yet this was the first time that a stranger had felt compelled to hurl words at us. November to mid-March. We had, I suddenly realized, been saved by a northern winter. Most of our time together had been spent indoors: at my place, talking, watching movies or playing games with the kids; later, when we became lovers, at his apartment listening to music, making love. When we did go out, for a run with the dogs or to cross-country ski or toboggan with the kids, we were bundled in the layers of Canadian winter clothing that mask distinctions of race, gender, and faith.

Julie and Reed’s wedding had been our first real event as a couple, and it had been, in my mind at least, a disaster. For reasons that I would never understand, Julie had decided to make Alex her trophy. She introduced him all around, stumbling over his name, dimpling in mock-confusion and laughter. “Well, it’s one of those wonderful native names, but you’ll just have to say it yourself, Alex.” She’d paraded him through the wedding reception, telling everyone that he was on the police force, cooing over how commendable it was that he was giving his people a role model, someone to look up to. I had been livid, but Alex had been sanguine. “She has to start somewhere, Jo. Maybe knowing me can make the new Mrs. Gallagher more open to the possibilities in the future.”

But it hadn’t happened that way. In public, Julie may have fawned over an aboriginal police inspector, but in private, when she had needed the services of a cop, she had made it painfully obvious that her personal officer of the law had to be white.

With her smiles and her oh-so-subtle double standards, Julie was the poster girl for polite bigotry, but as comforting as it was to demonize her or dismiss the cretin who had yelled at me the night before as a bottom feeder, they weren’t the problem, and I knew it. I had lived in Regina all of my adult life and, to paraphrase Pogo, I had seen the enemy and he was us. I knew the language, and I knew the code: a whisper about the problems in the city’s “North Central” area meant native crime; “the people,” said knowingly, meant native people. I’d never used the code; in fact, I had prided myself on doing all the right things. Years ago, when an aboriginal couple had wanted to buy a house in our area, a petition had been circulated to keep them out, and I’d gone door to door urging my neighbours not to sign; when racist jokes were told, I walked out of the room; when my kids came home from school talking about “wagonburners” and “skins,” I sat them down and talked to them about how words can wound. But until the night before, I had been drawing from a shallow well of liberal decency. In my entire life, I had never once been on the receiving end of prejudice, and the experience had been as annihilating as a fist in the face from a stranger. Alex was forty-one years old. That morning, for the first time, I found myself trying to imagine how it felt to withstand forty-one years of such blows.

When I got back to the house, it was 6:25. I dialled Alex’s number. There was no answer, and I didn’t leave a message. There was nothing to do but take refuge in my Saturday ritual. I plugged in the coffee, showered, dressed, made pancake batter, brought in the morning paper, and tried to
concentrate on the politics of the day. At 7:30, I tried Alex’s number again. He picked up the phone on the first ring.

“I was just about to call you,” he said.

“Synchronicity,” I said. “That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?”

He didn’t answer, so I hurtled on. “Alex, I’m sorry about last night. I’m more than sorry, I’m ashamed. I don’t know what made me run like that.”

I could hear fatigue in his voice. “You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s what I was trying to tell you last night. There’s no reason to blame yourself. You were in a lousy spot, and you reacted.”

“But I reacted badly.”