Seven Days Dead (18 page)

She was hoping he’d suggest it.

*   *   *

Coming away from the flurry of the market, the solitude of the trail feels all the more pronounced. Keen early risers have gone ahead, while others wait to have lunch before embarking on the trek, so in between those groups they have the path to themselves. They’ve studied trail maps and guidebooks, and know they will be led over the top of Seven Days Work, with its astral views of the Bay of Fundy. Rising straight from the sea, it can be scaled from its base by only the most skilled and daring of rock climbers, and only then with strategy and care. The sheer, towering rock face exhibits the geographic ages of the earth—the planet’s oldest exposed rock is present here—and from the top a stunning view. Then comes Ashburton Head, followed by the Bishop.

“Wait a minute,” Sandra stops to say, snagged by a thought. On her left, a peaceable meadow is lit by wildflowers and graced by a following breeze. To her right, the waters of the bay sparkle far below.

“What is it?”

“That murder took place along this trail.”

“No problem. The scene’s clean by now,” her husband assures her.

“Then it’s not the murder that’s made you keen to hike?”

Émile expresses mock alarm. “Sandra, since when are you so suspicious of me? Perish the thought, okay? We’ve talked about this trail once a week for the past three months. Besides, it’s a beautiful day and I’m keen to hike.”

“Okay. All right.” She doesn’t sound convinced.

“What do I care about a silly murder? Am I the investigating officer?”

“Not yet.”

“No
yet
about it. I’m not interested.” To drive his message home, he resorts to French.
“Pointe finale.”

She’s not swayed. “You protest a little too much maybe” is her final note.

Early along the trek, they encounter Pete Briscoe. Well off the trail, he spots them first, throws down a shovel, and literally gallops through the tall grasses to intercept them. He says he’s burying his dog in a spot he can find again in the future, thanks to a stand of nearby pines. They’re both inclined to leave him to his ceremony although he seems anxious to talk.

If they introduced themselves a day ago, their names are forgotten now, so each of them revisits the ritual.

“I’m glad to run into you again, Sandra,” Pete Briscoe says. “You, too, Émile.”

Cinq-Mars quashes a smile. The way he came across the meadow makes his phrase quite literal. “Why’s that?”

“To thank you! I don’t think I did. I was a wreck yesterday. But thank you. For finding Gadget, then caring enough to look for her owner. That was really great of you. Not many tourists would take the time out of their day to do something like that for a poor man like me. I was hoping to say a proper thanks.”

“We have animals ourselves, Pete. Dogs. Cats. Horses galore. We know that losing one is difficult.”

“I was drunk.”

Cinq-Mars doesn’t know if the man is trying to excuse himself or explain his grief, although either way there is no need. “I see.”

“Hungover when we met. The day before, drunk. At sea. In the storm. I admit it. That storm was all I needed. So me and a lot of the boats spent the night on the water, and some of us—I was one of them—partied the night away. Not much else to do. I don’t know how it happened, but it was my fault. I was drunk and I know better than to tie one on out on the water. How Gadget went over the side, I don’t know. A wild night, I should’ve made sure she stayed below or in the wheelhouse. I lost my best friend and it’s my fault. The truth is, I have to face that fact. I do. That misery. I wasn’t at my best yesterday. A man should say thank you for what you did and I plumb forgot. Not forgivable, but I hope you will anyway.”

Émile is feeling mildly embarrassed listening to the discourse. The more assurance he offers, the more Pete Briscoe protests. He gives up trying and accepts the other man’s supreme and eternal—apparently—thanks.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

“You should come up to the Whistle,” the fisherman suggests, an invitation.

“I’ve read about it. A lookout?”

“Walk or drive up to the top of Whistle Road. People get together at sunset, before and after. Have a few pops, you know.”

“I see.”

“But that’s not the whole point of it, the drinking. Only a part. There’s no bars on the island, see. We drink in our houses and we drink at the Whistle. Watch the whales swim by, watch the sun go down, tell a few stories. Oh, I tell a lie. We go through a lot more than a few stories. A ton! Our talk is better than what’s on the boob tube, that’s a home truth, so come by, the both of you, listen in. You’ll enjoy yourselves.”

“We might do that,” Cinq-Mars tells him. Sandra gives him a look, as he seems to be accepting every invitation that’s coming his way, not his usual nature.

“I gotta get back to burying my poor pup. It’s hard to find a place that’s not solid rock up here.”

Sandra speaks up for the first time. “I thought you buried Gadget yesterday.”

Pete Briscoe turns back, nods. “I planned to,” he concurs. He tightens his forehead in thought, which effectively binds his unibrow into a single line of fur. “Too upset. I couldn’t bury a penny yesterday if you dug the hole yourself and all I had to do was drop in a coin. So nope. Had to get a better hold of myself, you know? Do it the right way. Do what’s best for Gadget.”

“Why up here?” Émile inquires. Briscoe won’t notice, but Sandra detects the suspicion in his voice.

“Do you know a more beautiful place on earth? Wouldn’t mind my own ashes tossed off this cliff, when the time comes. When I’m out in the bay, what do I see but Seven Days Work? In fog, Seven Days Work comes up first on the radar. Now when I see this cliff, I’ll see Gadget. I’ll know she’s up here, having a romp. She loved the boat, but she loved running here the most. Rabbits! She never cared for fish, they scared her, but she loved chasing rabbits. Now she’s free to, all day and all night long.”

He seems set to blubber again.

“It is a beautiful resting place,” Sandra agrees.

“The oldest rock on earth, they say. Grand Manan was at the equator when the Americas, and Europe and Africa, were all one continent. Did you know that? Seven Days Work was at the middle of the earth at the dawn of time. Different planet then, hey? Now we’re flung off to nowhere. Gadget will lie here. At the middle of the old world, on the oldest rock in existence, with the best view a man or dog can see.”

A speech worthy of a funeral, a good point of departure. The couple voice their good-byes and carry on with their hike.

They are quiet along the trail for a distance before Émile compliments her. “Good question,” he remarks.

Sandra has no clue what he means but thinks about it for another forty yards before she mentions, “I didn’t ask any questions.”

“Even better.”

She thinks about that as they cross over a stony patch and pick up the worn trail again. “What do you mean, Émile?”

“Without actually framing it as a question,” he explains, “you asked how come he’s burying his dog today and not yesterday.”

Accustomed to her husband thinking things through on different levels, she tries to do the same, but nothing surfaces. “So?” She takes his hand. They walk side by side before the trail narrows once more.

“Anytime a man leaves where he is, to run over and speak to you when there’s really no need, that means he doesn’t want you to be where he was, he doesn’t want you to know what he was doing. Which is fine. People do private things. And yet, you saw him yesterday. He was distraught, but that motivated him to bury his dog yesterday, like he said he would do. The state he was in, nothing was going to prevent that. What or whom he’s burying today is beyond me. Not his dog though. Gadget’s in the ground already. Maybe up here. Or elsewhere. She’s already in the dirt.”

Sandra can’t help but look back over her shoulder, but the bluff where Pete Briscoe has been digging is out of sight due to the gentle contours of the land. “Should we go back? Spy on him?”

Émile laughs. “Listen to you. Detective Wife.”

“Well. It could be serious, no?”

“And none of our business. If somebody is reported missing, we’ll know where to look. I’ll suggest Pete to the authorities. But if someone is being buried, chances are, he or she is already dead. Nothing we can do. And yes, I’m kidding. If I thought for one second that he’s burying a person, I’d intervene. Still, you saw him yesterday, and today. He’s not the kind of man who hides his emotions or even tries. He’s nervous today. He doesn’t want us to know what he’s up to. Mischief, I’d say. Is he a man out burying his neighbor on a whim? Or even his neighbor’s goat? Not likely.”

“Then what? Best wild guess.”

“A picture of an old girlfriend, who left him ten years ago after an aging rock star got her pregnant and she wanted to keep the baby. He’s finally done with her emotionally. Your turn.”

“Hmm. A souvenir from a current love affair that he needs to keep secret because the woman is his mother’s best friend and twice his age.”

“More to his mood. You win.”

Sandra keeps thinking it through seriously. Often she chides her husband for his investigative instincts, but this stuff excites her, too. “He’s hiding something he stole, or a time capsule, or he’s digging for buried treasure, or concealing a secret. You’re right, though. Even if I don’t know any killers, to my knowledge, I’m pretty sure he’s not one. At least, he hasn’t killed anybody lately.”

“There you go. You could be the detective.”

“Hardly.”

They separate again in order to stroll in single file, and give themselves over to the sea breezes and the sun as they walk across the back of Seven Days Work and gain the promontory known as Ashburton Head. Émile switches his walking stick from hand to hand as he tromps along. The constant pace and the mesmerizing clarity of light and the newness of the experience, the terrain and the astonishing vista transport him through time. He may as easily be a wandering minstrel in Elizabethan days, or a shepherd on a Greek isle centuries ago, or a man hiking across the Holy Land on his way to pay taxes to the Romans some millennia back. Except that he walks on happily.

By a small creek, he stops. A mood, a thought, takes hold.

Sandra wonders what it might be.

He has to think it through himself, and ask, “Can we stay here a moment?”

She’s content to do so, as there’s much to see. They are not looking straight down at the water, but across a meadow and then through trees, yet the bay is visible to them and Sandra spots flashes of white moving in tandem, far off, which she takes to be whale spouts.

“What Pete said,” her husband remarks, and his tone is reflective, even reverential, in a way that he can be sometimes. For all his hard-core life as a big-city cop, he’s nurtured a spiritual side. “It might not be true to the nth degree, but close enough. This is old rock. Among the oldest on the planet. Not the whole island, but Seven Days Work. Upheavals, ice ages, tidal erosions, whole continents breaking apart and scattering, oceans both disappearing, then intruding. All that. This rock on which we’re standing has experienced
all that
. Eons and eons. We can look at great mountain peaks, yet they’re babes in time compared to this rock.”

“It’s something,” she agrees. It’s almost too much to take in, thinking of its survival through time, not dissimiliar to contemplating the lives of stars.

“And here the rock stands,” Cinq-Mars continues, “part of an island where people are dissecting a murder. After all this time,” he scoffs, “we’re infants. We haven’t learned to get along.”

“Sad. But what’s on your mind, Émile?”

“Sometimes I regret my career. A life devoted to chasing down the bad guys. Dealing with death and destruction day in, day out. There’s so much more to grapple with in the universe than just our human wasteland.”

Sandra wraps two arms around him and hugs, so that he’s supported by his two legs, his wife, and his mighty walking stick. “You did good, Émile. You did good.”

He concedes as much, although to a lesser degree than she might prefer, and they resume their march.

They leave Seven Days Work and cross the back of Ashburton Head.

Émile does not expect to identify the scene of the dreadful crime that has befallen the island. Had this been his handiwork, no sign of it would exist once he and his people concluded their investigation. Police, then, are less thorough here. The most telling evidence that they’ve landed at the minister’s last stand is a ribbon of yellow police tape knotted to the branch of a bush. Long strands of tape that previously sequestered the scene have been torn away and removed, but not untied, so telltale indicators remain. Sandra sees them, too, a second piece and a third small ribbon, and slows down to suit Émile’s shortened stride.

Émile Cinq-Mars can’t help it. He knows better than to tempt himself, and yet he has to look around.

Sandra is not cross. She expects no less, and doesn’t interfere with or admonish his embedded professional interest. This is her man, after all, and she is not about to change him. She permits him to peruse the crime scene on his own, letting him get his famous
feel
for the place beyond what’s visible. She sits while he wanders in a great circle, almost disappearing from her view back into the forest, and she knows that he’s done only when he returns to her side. She’s spread out part of their picnic to nosh on before continuing the hike. Émile sits on the grass with cheese and pear slices between them, and sips from the cup of red wine he’s offered. Before them, a stand of trees lines the edge of the cliff, and beyond that is the deep blue of the water below the lighter vast blue of the sky. If this place was not heaven before, it is now—now that an investigation occupies his mind.

“No secrets,” she instructs him. “Tell me what you see, Émile.”

“They missed it,” he says. “I’ll bet you anything they didn’t see what was right before their eyes.”

She knows what a brazen remark it is. That attitude often got him in hot water with colleagues. Not only is he claiming to be attuned to clues that other policemen didn’t notice, but he’s brash enough to surmise how they’ve conducted the investigation, what they’ve observed and concluded and missed. All this from taking a brief stroll around an empty meadow.