Part 20 (1/2)

I couldn't sleep. I stared at the fire for what seemed like hours, thinking about my husband and about the dancing ballerinas on the box that contained all that was left of Jenny Rybchuk's life. And I thought about Maureen Gault with her arm raised and her derisive smile. Finally, exhausted, I must have drifted off.

It was the cold air that awakened me. I'd been dreaming about the cabin, and the rifles on the wall, and a ballerina who came in and said Anton Chekhov believed that if there was a gun on the wall in Act I, it had to be fired by the end of Act III.

At first, when I opened my eyes and saw Gary Stephens standing in front of me, I thought I was still dreaming. He was wearing a wide-brimmed rancher's hat and a yellow slicker, and he looked like the kind of mythic figure who would appear in a dream. Then I saw the rifle in his hands, and I knew this was real. I looked at the place on the wall where the rifles were hanging. The rack where the small bush gun had been was empty. It took me a minute to put it all together, but when I did, I knew Act III had begun.

Gary was looking at me intently. ”Sylvie said the cops were over tonight asking questions. I thought I'd better get out here and make sure Tess was all right.”

”She's all right,” I said. ”Put down the gun, Gary. I don't think you're in much danger from two unarmed women.”

He lay the gun on the window sill beside him. It was still in easy reach, but at least it wasn't pointed at me. Gary moved closer. ”What did Tess tell you?”

”Everything,” I said.

”You've got to hear my side of it, babe.”

Suddenly I was furious. ”I think I've already figured out your side of it ... babe. I know what you've done. I just don't understand how you could do it.”

His voice was both seductive and pleading. ”Then listen to how it was for me. Please, Jo. Please.” He paused. ”For old times' sake.”

”All right, Gary,” I said. ”I'll listen. For old times' sake.”

He arranged his face into an expression of boyish sincerity. ”I appreciate the chance, Jo. I really do.” He took a deep breath. ”None of it would have happened if Sylvie and I had been able to have kids. I know how you love your family, so you must understand it was a pretty hard thing for me to accept.”

The narcissism grated. ”So you coped,” I said, ”by having s.e.x with every woman in sight, including your own sister-in-law, and by stealing a young woman's baby?”

He flinched. ”All right, all right,” he said. ”I was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but Sylvie was no prize. She wouldn't stop talking about my problem a it was my problem, you know. Anyway, Sylvie wouldn't stop discussing it. It was the same thing every night. Finally, I just stopped coming home. Then, heartbroken but brave, my wife threw herself into her photography. She went down to Chaplin and shot Prairiegirl. That pretty well f.u.c.ked up my political career. Then when she got tired of being the martyr, she decided our marriage was over, and she wanted a divorce.”

”My G.o.d, if you hated Sylvie that much, why did you want to stay with her?” I asked.

”Because as lousy it was, it was the only life I had. Jo, what else was I supposed to do? When I was in politics, I'd pretty much let my law practice slide. After my wife's book came out, I didn't have much future in politics. Sylvie had all that money. It didn't make much sense to walk away from it.” He shrugged. ”I don't know. Maybe I just didn't think it through. But it seemed possible that, if Sylvie had a baby, we could go on the way we had for years, leading separate lives.”

”But not lives paid for by separate cheques,” I said.

”No,” he said. ”There were no separate cheques.”

”So Jess was just an investment in your future.”

He looked down at his hands. ”Maybe, at first,” he said softly. ”But Jo, you've got to believe me. From the minute I saw Jess, everything changed. I held him when he was just seconds old. I think that was first moment in my life when I knew what people meant when they talked about loving someone. It was the best feeling I've ever known. But it didn't last.” His beautiful blue eyes clouded with pain. ”After Jenny pa.s.sed away, it was hard for me even to be in the same room with Jess. I know how things look, Jo, but I'm not a monster. Every time I looked at my son, I could see Jenny's face. I'd try to block out the memories by getting drunk or by s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g some broad I hardly knew, but no matter what I did, I couldn't forget that night. I've suffered, too, Jo. I love Jess so much, but I can't hold him in my arms without remembering ...”

As he always was when he talked about his son, Gary Stephens was transformed, and, for a moment, I felt myself responding to him. Then I remembered.

”Ian loved his children, too,” I said.

He looked at me defiantly. ”It wasn't my fault, Jo. Ian was the one who wouldn't leave it alone. That night at the party he told me he'd talked to Rybchuk, and he believed Rybchuk was telling the truth, that something had happened to Jenny. Ian said it didn't make sense that Jenny would say she was going to start a new life with her son, then disappear. I tried to tell him Jenny had probably just changed her mind, but he wouldn't listen. The old man had given him a picture of Jenny with Jess, and Ian was going to take it to the police.” For a beat, Gary was silent. Then, in a voice full of wonder, he said, ”Ian was always such a f.u.c.king boy scout.”

”And the only way to stop the boy scout was to pay Maureen Gault to kill him,” I said.

Gary recoiled as if I'd hit him. ”For chrissakes, Jo. He was my friend. I would never have asked anyone to murder him. All I did was tell Maureen Gault that Ian was going to be a problem. What happened later wasn't my fault.”

”The Becket defence,” I said.

Gary's handsome face was blank. ”I don't know what you're talking about.”

”Didn't you ever study the Becket defence in law school, Gary? It was on the ethics course.” I stood up and began moving towards him. ”Since you seem to have forgotten anything you ever knew about ethics, I'll help you out.

”It's an old case, and it explores the question of culpability. A king is having trouble with a priest who was once his friend but who's begun meddling in things the king doesn't want meddled with. The king calls in four of his most loyal knights and says 'Will no one rid me of that meddlesome priest?' You'll notice he's careful not to instruct them to do anything wrong, but the knights aren't stupid. They know what the king wants, so they kill the priest. The king, of course, is innocent. It's the knights who did the dirty work. They're the guilty ones. Or are they?” I stepped closer to him. ”What do you think, babe? Who's culpable here?”

Gary reached over and picked up his gun. ”I'm not guilty of Ian's murder, Jo. The others were just a waste of skin. They deserved to die. But Ian was my, my friend.”

On the couch, Tess was stirring.

I raised my voice to awaken her. ”Gary, when you told Maureen Gault, 'Ian is going to be a problem,' you knew what you were doing. How much did you have to pay her to get her to kill him?”

He laughed. ”You can't know much about Maureen Gault to ask a question like that. Killing was a pleasure for her. When I called her the night of the caucus party and told her Ian was going to the cops, she had a plan worked out before I hung up. All I had to do was drive her to Swift Current. She said she'd find Ian at the funeral, get a ride back to Regina with him, and talk him out of going to the police.”

I could feel the rage rising. ”Gary, you knew she wouldn't just talk to him. You were in this very room when Maureen Gault smashed her best friend's head in with a poker. You knew what she was capable of.”

He looked at me miserably. ”I didn't mean for her to kill him. Can't you believe me?”

”No,” I said, and my voice was thin with fury.

He took a step towards me. ”I loved Ian,” he said. ”You know that. I loved him.”

”No,” I said.

His face seemed to crumple. Finally, he whispered, ”Can you forgive me, Jo? You can, can't you?”

In the firelight, I could see the tears in his eyes, but I didn't pity him, and, for what seemed like a long time, I didn't answer him. When the words did come, they seemed to tear themselves from a part of me that was beyond reason.

”No!” I shouted. ”No! No! No!”

As the final no! hung in the air, a strange sort of calm filled the room. Gary's eyes stayed fixed on mine, then a smile started to form at the corners of his mouth. As slowly as a man moving in a dream, he swung the muzzle of the gun under his chin. For one crazed moment I wondered if the gun was loaded. Then Gary pulled the trigger, and the world exploded.

The next minutes are a jumble. Tess crawled towards the place where Gary had fallen, and I think I went to the phone to call for help. I'm not sure. What I remember are the smells: the hot metal smell of the gun and the smoky smell of the fire and the sweet, fetid smell of blood. And I remember looking down at the body to see if anything at all was left of Gary Stephens's perfect face.

Then the front door opened, and Alex Kequahtooway was there. So were a lot of other cops. The nightmare was over.

It was close to dawn when Alex and I left the cabin. Minutes after the police arrived, a squad car had taken Tess back to the city. Alex had asked if I wanted to go with her, but I hadn't. I'd waited six years, and I wanted to see this through to the end. The forensic specialists were there within an hour, and I sat by the window and watched as they measured and took photographs and put evidence into bags. When they were finished, they left, too. A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived to take Gary Stephens's body back to Regina. I stood at the door as the attendants lifted Gary's body onto the stretcher and carried him outside. As the ambulance pulled onto the grid road and started towards the highway, I turned to Alex. ”Is it over now?” I asked.

He nodded and picked up my jacket. I put it on, grabbed Peter's bookbag, and stepped onto the front porch. It was the morning of December 6, but it felt like a spring day. The air, cleansed by the winter rain, was warm on my face, and I could smell the earth.

I looked up towards the road. ”Where's Veronica?” I said.

”I had one of the guys drive her back,” he said. ”I thought maybe you'd rather be a pa.s.senger this time out.”

”Fair enough,” I said.