Seven Days Dead (20 page)

Something happens on the way back to his squad car. At first, he’s not convinced that what he’s feeling will amount to anything. That it’s merely another dose of whatever has been ailing him on this day. He’s less certain as a wave swamps him. His right knee buckles, he almost goes down, as if he’s been shot. Then he feels remarkably dizzy. He’s not eaten all day, but that shouldn’t be enough to do this to him. He makes it to his vehicle and puts his sandwich bag on the roof of the car and stands there, tenuously upright, both hands against the roof, as though he’s being frisked. He stays that way awhile, as if under arrest. He knows he has to open the door but that doesn’t feel possible at the moment. He has to get into the car and drive away even though it feels out of the question. He has to interrogate some people, but he has no clue what questions to ask. He’s afraid to get into the car. He’s scared to death to drive. He thinks he’ll drive straight into the sea. Off a bridge or some such. He stares at the steering wheel and fears getting into the car more and more every second. A wave is coming over him again and this time it won’t disperse. He has to do it though. He has to open the door and get in. He must overcome his condition. He
has
overcome his condition, why is it back on him now?

Corporal Louwagie puts his hand on the door latch.

Holds it there awhile.

He hears another door slam behind him.

Checks over his shoulder.

It’s Margaret. “Are you sick?” she asks. He can’t reply. He can’t speak.

He has to get in the car first.

He opens the door.

He looks in the car. He just looks in. He can’t imagine sitting in there. And then he topples over.

He’s on the ground and he’s ashamed of himself and he knows he can’t let this defeat him, but he panics. He fears that he’s already finished, beaten by this disease, and the girl, Margaret, is by his side and he would like that, to kiss her in the back room, but he can no more tell her that than he can get in his car, and he struggles as she paws him, tries to stand while she tries to get him to stay down, to relax, to stop fighting as he claws at the car to help get himself back on his feet, and he wants to say,
I’m having an episode,
as if that will explain everything when the phrase has never explained anything, but that’s what the doctors say, and he tells her, “I’m having an episode,” and just saying that, getting the words out, admitting it, helps so much.

It’s miraculous how much it helps. His breathing relaxes.

“What can I do?” she begs. “What can I do?”

He wants to kiss her.

He has his wits about him though. He knows better than to say what he really wants. “Help me stand up straight. Don’t let people see me. I don’t want anyone to see me.”

Together they get him properly on his feet. He hangs on to the open door.

“Now what?” she pleads. “Oh my God oh my God, what’s wrong?”

“Please. I don’t want anyone to see.”

“Cars are coming, but.”

“The back room,” he says.

“What?”

“Take me in there. Can you?” He doesn’t say, You don’t have to kiss me, but he wants to say just that. He says, “I need time,” which makes more sense.

They start off. “Oh my God,” she says along the way. “Oh my God. What happened to you?”

“Don’t let anybody see me.”

“Nobody’s going to see you!” She suspects that a few people will.

Margaret guides him up the stairs and into the store. What she calls the back room is all the way forward, really just in the rear of the older front section. It’s a private space for employees to hang out and for the storage of surplus supplies like cigarettes and coffee and candy. He’s able to sit and accepts a sip of water from a paper cup that she hands to him. She stands over him.

“Can you … go back … and close … the door?”

“The door?”

“The car door.”

“Oh. Yes. Sure. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

They both know that he’s not going anywhere.

While she’s gone, his head spins less. His feet feel far away, and when he looks at them, he contracts the toes inside his boots as though he’s squeezing mush. He squeezes them just to experience the odd sensation. He breathes heavily now but more evenly and senses that he’s coming back to some sort of equilibrium. Out the corner of his eye he spots a door ajar. He knows that he should not look, but he does. He sees the edge of a toilet in the enclosure. Seeing that toilet in that small room causes him to reel and he panics, and when the girl comes back he is on the floor, moaning and clutching his chest, and she rocks him where he lies, and when another girl comes in she screams at her to take care of the store, “Take care of the store! I got this!”

She’s got this.

She rocks him. Back to life, in a way. She knows when tears are on his cheeks that he’s probably getting better, so rocks him less. She’ll let him come out of this in a way of his own choosing. Keep his stupid male pride intact. He comes to his knees, then props himself up onto the chair again, and sits there, silently wringing his hands.

After a while, she whispers, “What happened?”

“I had an episode.”

And she says, “I don’t mean now. I mean, what, what happened to you?”

He wants to kiss her. Maybe that’s what happened this time, the make-believe suggestion of a kiss. He says, “Do you mind—I’m sorry. This is crazy. Do you mind closing that door over there?”

“The toilet?”

“Yes. The john.”

“Sure. Why?”

He doesn’t want to say. Then thinks that he should. “It’s a memory.” Then he says, “Somebody else saw me.”

“No biggie. I’ll tell her to keep her mouth shut. And she will. Just like I will. If she doesn’t do what I say I’ll kill her, and that’ll keep her quiet for sure.”

She’s always joking, this woman. He can’t keep up.

She goes over and shuts the door and comes back and sits opposite the policeman. That’s when he tells her about the child’s head in the toilet bowl and what that did to him, how it wrecked him for life and that’s why he got shuffled off to Grand Manan, to recover.

“But today, you saw something just as bad.”

Even though he recoiled initially, and his stomach heaved and he was paralyzed by dread, her statement helps him understand what has laid him low. A delayed reaction. A whiplash effect.

“What I saw on the ridge,” he admits, as though he has something to confess, “was nearly as bad. A reminder anyway. But it wasn’t the worst.”

“What was the worst?”

“Looking at the photographs they took afterward. I don’t know why.”

She leans into him, speaks quietly. “You have to sit here and take care of yourself, Officer Louwagie.”

“Wade,” he tells her.

“Okay. Wade. Nobody’s going to know. Okay? It’s our secret.”

He holds so many secrets so tightly to his bones. He feels a certain ease in having one that at last he can share.

SEVENTEEN

Returned to the sanctuary of their summer cabin, Émile and Sandra Cinq-Mars enjoyed a peaceful late-afternoon nap. The timbre of birdsong lulled them to sleep, and as they awaken, the scent of sea air wafts through the open windows, a magical stimulation of the senses. Rising with some minor muscle soreness brought on by their long trek, Émile reconfirms that he’s glad not to be on the job. Glad also not to be running down the murder that’s presented itself locally, like some kind of devilish, or at least impish, temptation.

He wants no part of it.

This is so much better than that. Just lying around.

Besides, the time has come for drinks.

The high that routed the storm brought with it warmer temperatures, and the day progressively heated up. They choose to occupy the shady side of the porch to imbibe. To combat the heat, Émile opts for a long vodka tonic, while Sandra fixes her favorite cranberry cosmopolitan. A few salty snacks and mixed nuts come out. Sandra tucks her legs in under her on a comfy wicker divan and opens her newly acquired, nearly antique book on numerology, while Émile is content to stare out at the grasses and the bay beyond, observing a dalliance of warblers and thrush, goldfinch and pine siskin. Way off to the right a dog romps freely, literally bounding into the air as though its abundant happiness is all but impossible to contain.

Sandra observes, “We’ve had quite a day, Émile.”

Although she contends that he always has some other level to achieve in any talk, Émile has detected a pattern that’s similar in her. Whenever she utters what might sound to be nothing more than a casual observation, a way of breaking a silence, such thoughts with Sandra inevitably instigate the onset of a trail worth traveling, as if her life is perpetually littered by bread crumbs. Émile conveys a soft utterance and waits for her to say more, then smiles to himself when she does so.

“Taking care of horses … putting in a hard day’s work is satisfying, you know? Get all the chores done, the animals exercised, watered, fed, brushed, put to bed. And yet the prize for that long day’s work—which
is
hard, and you can never ask the horses for a weekend off—the prize is always to get up in the morning and realize that you have to do it all over again.”

“Whereas here, we don’t know what tomorrow brings.”

“My sentiment exactly. I like this. I love it. I could get used to it in a hurry.”

“Mmm,” he concurs, although vaguely.

“Horses are demanding,” she imparts from long experience. “Seven days’ work and the next week begins. Only it never ends.”

He agrees again, yet with only a slight grunt.

For her part, she knows that he is thinking of something and so delays speaking, hoping that he’ll come out with it. He doesn’t always. Émile prefers to keep contrary thoughts to himself.

This time though, he declares his position. “Ironic, in a way. Today I bitched about devoting my life to criminals. Chasing them down really means being tied to them by a kind of umbilical cord. I wasn’t complaining exactly, and you’re not either, but I was reflecting on what a shame it is to devote one’s life to criminals. You have a similar thought—namely, that the care of horses takes up the bulk of your life. Both the better part of your day and ultimately, let’s face it, the better part of your life. You’ll notice a similar theme running through here.”

She does. “Careers are demanding, no matter what they are. Even though we’ve been lucky enough to choose ours, and to have enjoyed them, a career can still have a shelf life. Comes a time to move on.”

No grunt this time, which she extrapolates to mean that he’s not quite ready either to agree or disagree, but he’s taking her ideas deeper into his consideration.

“So, individually,” he begins, “our lives have been changing, right? Yours and mine. Maybe I’m just being hopeful here, but perhaps our couple troubles stem from that, when really we should count ourselves fortunate. We’re both seeking a change. The trick might be to find out what we’re looking for and track it down together.”

A different prong to the discussion altogether, and Sandra muses that she may have been apprehended by her husband’s famous penchant for speaking at cross purposes to help foil a culprit’s gambit. Yet she puts that notion aside. He’s right, of course. They have to talk about this, get down to the root of the matter.

“I’m not sure about anything being a trick, Émile. I take your meaning. I take your intention. But we can’t be facile if this is going to be real.”

“Expressed poorly, then. But … you do take my meaning?”

“We need to go over what we do next. No criminals for you. No horses for me. Is either possible? If so, what else is there? Dogs and cats?”

He laughs, and sips his vodka tonic. “Why not? Go save wildlife. A zebra in Africa one week, some kind of lizard in Brazil the next. Then off to the Rockies to rescue Bigfoot from an avalanche. Exciting, no?”

“Haven’t you had enough excitement for one life?”

He surprises her. “What I’m feeling right now, with this view and this drink and the company of my lovely wife, is as relaxed as I’ve ever been. I’m skeptical that this is real, but I like it. As the kids used to say, I can dig it.”

“Speaking of digging,” Sandra asks, “what
was
that fisherman up to this morning with his shovel?”

He laughs again. “Maybe you should do the detective work from now on, San, and I’ll take care of creatures. The change might do us both good. I could become a bird-watcher maybe.”

“Okay, now, here’s a subject!” She springs this on him, and her sauciness is evident before she explains a thing. “Speaking of what suits us both. Old story, but we’ve noted that your libido is not what it used to be.”

“Now what?” He isn’t really perturbed, knowing that she’s always delicate around the subject.

“Hear me out. It’s understandable. You’re older. But I was thinking. Why wait for nightfall, when you’re tired, to try? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? I know you want to meet me halfway on this.”

“All the way, I’d say, is what I
want,
” he teases.

“So then, I was thinking. You know what some people call ‘nooners.’ We could have … cocktailers. No pun intended. It’s just a suggestion. No pressure whatsoever. But a drink, a romp in the hay, a sleep, then dinner, then a quiet evening. We could try it, Émile. Not now. That’s pressure and unfair. But we could try it. You might like it. The way our life is set up here, by the sea, could be the ticket.”

The idea has merit, although he’s not sure about one thing and says so. “Why not now?”

She smiles in return, and something might develop, but the sunny disposition of their day is clouded by the sound of a car, not a vehicle in the best running order, pulling up in front of the cottage. Sandra goes down to the end of the back porch and peers around the side wall. A tall, astonishingly long-legged woman uncurls from an older Porsche. The visitor neglects to turn the engine off at first, and leans back inside the small frame to eject her keys. When she stands upright again, she catches sight of Sandra around the corner of the house and smiles. A perfunctory greeting, the smile fading immediately upon being summoned. Sandra notices that the young woman appears under duress.