The Last Witness (30 page)

What happened in Turkey in 2029 with the Islamists massacring all those Christians in the streets was the barometer. That’s what the Cobra said. It could,
it would
, happen again.

There weren’t many blacks in Wellington County, which was fine with Brett. It was one reason why he wanted to raise his family in Kitchener and not a big city, and while there were some Orientals in town, at least they kept to their own. But Jews, despite their small numbers, always seemed to have their hand in things. And to make matters worse, they were white.

Don’t just think – intervene!
That’s what the Cobra said. It was his call to action. Brett read him all the time. He also read
The Great Hoax
, a powerful argument that showed how six million Jews dying at the hands of Nazi Germany a hundred years ago couldn’t possibly have happened.

He knew what Christine Fisher looked like from the 3DEs she sent her students, and after getting her schedule from Stephanie, he found out what time her classes finished. He picked a day when he was off work, so he could show up at Williamsburg Senior Public School and set the record straight. And that was what he did. With the book in his hand, he planted himself in the hallway outside Christine’s last class of the afternoon. The door opened and the kids poured out, including Stephanie.

“Daddy, what are you doing here?” she said.

“Go home,” was all he said.

But where was the teacher? When the kids dispersed, he peaked through the door and there she was, still at her desk at the front of the class. Reading. Brett stuck his head in and cleared his throat.

“Can I help you?” Christine said.

With his lanky frame, he ambled in and then stopped. “I’m Brett Krust. Stephanie’s Dad,” he said.

He saw how her jaw dropped when he mentioned his name.

“Oh,” was all she said, and then, “I met your wife.”

He walked into the room and looked around. He had never been here before. Not once. There were posters on the walls. Indians with headdresses. Fur traders in canoes. Soldiers with guns slung over their shoulders.

“So this is where Steph gets her history, huh?” he said.

She didn’t say anything. He looked around some more. The desks were set up in rows, everything neat and tidy, and on a table under the window were piles of discs and kindles and mini-kindles. Then Christine saw a book under his arm.

“I think you better read this,” Brett said.

“What is it?”

He came closer and showed it to her. Christine grimaced when she saw the title. The book was against everything she stood for. A sad and hopeless disguise of the truth.

“I am familiar with that book,” she said.

“Steph told me it’s on the list for your course but you don’t use it. Why not?”

She shook her head. “No that’s not correct. That book isn’t suitable for Grade 8. The one they put on the reading list is a children’s version but that’s not suitable for my kids either.”

“Why not?” he said again.

She felt like spitting. That would have been appropriate. And if not on the book, right on him. But she held back. She had to think of his daughter.

“Because just like that one in your hand …”

He waited for her to finish the sentence.

“What?” he said.

“I find it offensive. It insults my intelligence as a history teacher but even more as a human being.”

Brett smirked. “You think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you?” he said. “You think you’re smart but you’re not. All you’re doing is confusing these kids with all this garbage you teach them.”

“Garbage?”

“That’s right. About this Jewish holocaust business. You’re supposed to teach history and you don’t even do what the school tells you to do. Someone like you shouldn’t be teaching at all.”

“I think you better leave.”

“I’m not going to leave.”

Christine knew about this man and the kind of man he was. But she didn’t know if she should be afraid. “What do you want?” she said, and he held up the book.

“I bet you haven’t even read it, have you?” he said.

“I don’t have to read it.”

“It’s all here in these pages. Empirical evidence that what you claim isn’t true.”

She saw how proud he was at using such a word.

“This is real,” Brett said. “It’s real but what you teach them isn’t. It’s only what you think. What kind of teacher would do something like that? I’m gonna get you expelled.”

She almost laughed. “Teachers can’t be expelled,” Christine said. “They can be suspended but only in extreme situations.”

“
This
is an extreme situation.”

He was pathetic.

“I’m gonna leave this book with you and I want you to read it from cover to cover,” he said. “Then maybe you’ll understand about all the harm you’re doin’ to these kids.”

That was enough to put Christine over the edge. She could only take so much. She got to her feet and walked across the front of the classroom to him. Nose to nose.

“You’re telling me about all the harm
I’m
doing to these kids?” She forgot just then about being afraid and let the words roll. They just came out. “Let me tell you something,
Mr. Krust
. You have a lot of nerve coming to
my
school …
my
classroom … trying to lecture
me
. You worthless piece of shit who beats his wife and kids and tries to keep them as ignorant as you are.”

He stood there frozen, his mouth ajar, the color rising through his face. If a man ever spoke to him like that, he would pay. Big time. But a woman? Jen could be difficult, but she wouldn’t have the guts to say such things. Not to him. He moved the book from one hand to the other. One of his fists was clenched.

“What are you going to do?” Christine said. “Hit me? You’re good at that, aren’t you? Hitting women. Try it and I’ll lay a charge against you and you’ll never put on your firefighter uniform again. And I don’t care how many cops you go drinking with.”

Christine felt good. Relieved. She had never talked to anyone like that before, let alone a stranger, but he wasn’t really a stranger, was he? She knew exactly who he was and, not only that, what he was. This man standing in front of her was none other than the Enemy.

Brett felt like hitting her. He did. He could feel the rage boiling inside him. All bottled up. Ready to explode.

Christine went back to her desk, sat down, and resumed her reading. But nothing would register in her brain. Not a word. At first she tried pretending that he just wasn’t there. Ignoring
him would be the ultimate degradation. She let the seconds pass, but they were slow seconds. Deathly slow.

He still had the book in his hands and she wondered if he would throw it at her or maybe throw it through the window. Vandalism was in tune with his makeup. It wouldn’t be the first time. He was the kind of man who did things and thought about his actions later. If he thought about them at all.

He started walking over to her desk. Methodically. And with every step he took her heart picked up a beat. What if she had to defend herself? But no. When he was standing directly over her, her chest pounding and ready for anything he might muster, he dropped the book onto her desk, turned around and left. Just like that.

She would never see him again.

The Lie sat there soiling the surface of her desk, polluting the air in this place of learning, and Christine got an idea. She grabbed the book and her bag with her portable e-book reader. There were hundreds of titles in it. Then she left her class and rushed through the hall of her school to the parking lot. She was in a frenzy. She climbed into her car and threw everything into the seat beside her. She had charged the power cell that morning with just enough mileage for this trip. Christine was always frugal that way. Never one to waste. She got behind the wheel and waited for the onboard computer to recognize her.

‘Hello Christine. Driving conditions are ideal today.’

The car started itself and she was off. She took Regional Road 22 out of town, crossed the Conestoga River and headed north through the rolling hills and farmers’ fields, the silos and barns, the signs advertising fresh maple syrup and the lonely cows on either side of the road. The hills soon gave way to flat open land and she liked the fact she could get lost in the country in
fifteen minutes flat. Up a bit more and the image of a deer appeared on the screen of her dashboard. The voice of her computer came on again.

‘
Be careful. It’s not far off the roadway, about two kilometers up number 22.’

Sure enough, a moment later the deer appeared at the side of the road, but one glimpse of the car and it ran off, disappearing through the grasses. Christine watched and then there was that familiar sign – ‘Christ died for the ungodly’ – and further up the road another sign. It marked the boundary of the town of Salem, or as it more accurately noted, the Historic Hamlet of Salem. A few minutes longer and she pulled into the next town.

Elora.

42

“She must have FT’d the message,” Hodgson said. “That is the only possible explanation.”

“What’s that?” said Jack.

“What’s what?”

“What you said.
Eff-tee?
”

“She Future-Timed it. You can do that.”

Jack had no idea what Hodgson was talking about.

“Look. She wants to send you a 3DE. Even a series of 3DEs. So she shoots herself …”

“She shoots herself?”

“You know what I mean. She records herself digitally. Video and audio. It’s all 3D. She sends you a message right away and the next one she sends whenever she wants. She can set it up so it comes at two in the afternoon the next day or in the middle of the night. She can send you ten 3DEs and have them arrive at the same time every day for the next ten days or at different times. They can arrive whenever she wants them to arrive. In a week. A month. Whatever.”

“But I got it after she …”

“I know. She must have set it that way. I guess she had her reasons.”

Hodgson had joined Jack in the lounge at the Greenwich Village Seniors Center. He was on edge today.

“Jack, I didn’t come here this morning to tell you how to FT a 3DE. I came to tell you that we found something. About Christine.”

“What?”

“You were right,” Hodgson said. “She didn’t jump.”

“I told you. So it was an accident.”

“No.”

Hodgson looked even bigger now. Bigger than before. His tie hung loose around his neck, the flesh bulging from inside his shirt collar. His jacket was crumpled. He had been up half the night speaking to the Canadian police in Kitchener.

“But if it wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t an accident then what was it?” said Jack.

Hodgson put his head down. “She was murdered,” he said.

“What!”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I know this is hard. But she was murdered. Someone pushed her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Jack, when Christine went to the Elora Gorge that day she was just like that little girl who wanted to see what it would be like up on the ledge. That little girl who always wondered about it. And she did it. She climbed up on the ledge.”

Jack’s mouth was open, his eyes staring wildly at Hodgson.

“But someone came behind her and pushed her. She was murdered.”

“Murdered?” was all Jack could say and it was only a whisper. He brought his hand to his mouth.

“There was a witness. A ten-year-old girl was in the park and she saw Christine. She saw her throw a book into the gorge and then she saw her standing there by the railing. She watched her get up on the ledge.”

“She really did it?”

“Yes,” said Hodgson. “But she didn’t jump. The girl saw a man come behind her and push her. Into the gorge.”

“Oh my God!”

“I’m sorry. I know how hard this is for you.”

“But who? Why?”

Hodgson put his hand on Jack’s arm and gave him a friendly tap. Once. Twice. Three times.

“We pretty well ruled out foul play from the beginning because it looked like a suicide or an accident. One or the other. But then they found this girl. She gave the police a description of what she saw.”

“But who would want to kill Christine?”

This wasn’t the first time Hodgson had to tell someone about the murder of a loved one, but never a one-hundred-year-old man. He planted his size fifteen shoes in front of him and leaned over so his face was only inches from Jack. He watched how Jack was breathing.

“Are you all right?” Hodgson said.

Jack nodded his head. “Tell me what you know.”

Hodgson said that before going to the gorge that day, Christine had stopped at the Elora Mill Inn to eat. In the dining room. It was called the Gorge Lounge. He even told him what she had – a salad, a dish of tomatoes with chickpeas and spinach, a glass of wine. He said she left in a hurry and had a book with her.
The Great Hoax
.

Jack was shaking his head from side to side. “They made her put a children’s version of that thing on her reading list,” he said.

Hodgson told him that the local police went to see the waiter who had served Christine in the dining room at the inn. The waiter saw the book on the table.

“There was some conversation between the two of them and he asked her what she was reading and she showed him. She told him she was going to throw it into the Elora Gorge. From there she walked to the park and went straight to the gorge. Right over to the railing. Lover’s Leap Lookout?”

“Lover’s Leap Lookout,” said Jack.

“She threw the book into the gorge. They found what was left of it and there wasn’t much and then she climbed on the ledge. She stood there with her arms at her sides and that’s when this character came behind her … and pushed her.”

“Who was it?”

Hodgson leaned back into his chair. This type of thing was never easy.

“His name is Brett Krust. He has a 13-year-old daughter. The girl was in Christine’s history class at Williamsburg Senior Public School.”

“What!”

“He’s a firefighter. Apparently there was a lot of trouble in the household over what Christine was teaching his daughter. He went to the school to see the principal and made a scene. Later his wife … the mother … Jennifer Krust … met with Christine. She asked Christine to stop teaching the course the way she was teaching it. You know. About the holocaust.”