Cabal (6 page)

Decker drew a gun from the inside of his jacket.

‘They armed me,’ he said. ‘In case you lost control.’

His hand trembled, but at such a distance he could scarcely miss. In moments it would all be over. The bullet would fly and he’d be dead, with so many mysteries unsolved. The wound; Midian; Decker. So many questions that he’d never answer.

There was no other moment but now. Flinging the cloth he still held at Decker, he threw himself aside behind it. Decker fired, the shot filling the room with sound and light. By the time the cloth hit the ground Boone was at the door. As he came within a yard of it the gun’s light came again. And an instant after, the sound. And with the sound a blow to Boone’s back that threw him forward, out through the door and onto the stoop.

Decker’s shout came with him.

‘He’s armed!’

Boone heard the shadows prepare to bring him down. He raised his arms in sign of surrender; opened his mouth to protest his innocence.

The men gathered behind their cars saw only his bloodied hands; guilt enough. They fired.

Boone heard the bullets coming his way – two from the left, three from the right, and one from straight ahead, aimed at his heart. He had time to wonder at how slow they were, and how musical. Then they struck him: upper thigh, groin, spleen, shoulder, cheek and heart. He stood upright for several seconds; then somebody fired again, and nervous trigger fingers unleashed a second volley. Two of these shots went wide. The rest hit home: abdomen, knee, two to the chest, one to the temple. This time he fell.

As he hit the ground he felt the wound Peloquin had given him convulse like a second heart, its presence curiously comforting in his dwindling moments.

Somewhere nearby he heard Decker’s voice, and his footsteps approaching as he emerged from the house to peruse the body.

‘Got the bastard,’ somebody said.

‘He’s dead,’ Decker said.

‘No I’m not,’ Boone thought.

Then thought no more.

‘The miraculous too is born, has its season, and dies …’

Carmel Sands
Orthodoxies

K
nowing Boone was gone from her was bad enough, but what came after was so much worse. First, of course, there’d been that telephone call. She’d met Philip Decker only once, and didn’t recognize his voice until he identified himself.

‘I’ve got some bad news I’m afraid.’

‘You’ve found Boone.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s hurt?’

There was a pause. She knew before the silence was broken what came next.

‘I’m afraid he’s dead, Lori.’

There it was, the news she’d half known was coming, because she’d been too happy, and it couldn’t last. Boone had changed her life out of all recognition. His death would do the same.

She thanked the doctor for the kindness of telling her himself, rather than leaving the duty to the police. Then she put the phone down, and waited to believe it.

There were those amongst her peers who said she’d never have been courted by a man like Boone if he’d been sane, meaning not that his illness made him choose blindly but that a face like his, which inspired such fawning in those susceptible to faces, would have been in the company of like beauty had the mind behind it not been unbalanced. These remarks bit deep, because in her heart of hearts she thought them true. Boone had little by way of possessions, but his face was his glory, demanding a devotion to its study that embarrassed and discomfited him. It gave him no pleasure to be stared at. Indeed Lori had more than once feared he’d scar himself in the hope of spoiling whatever drew attention to him, an urge rehearsed in his total lack of interest in his appearance. She’d known him go days without showering, weeks without shaving, half a year without a hair cut. It did little to dissuade the devotees. He haunted them because
he
in his turn was haunted; simple as that.

She didn’t waste time trying to persuade her friends of the fact. Indeed she kept conversation about him to the minimum, particularly when talk turned to sex. She’d slept with Boone three times only, each occasion a disaster. She knew what the gossips would make of that. But his tender, eager way with her suggested his overtures were more than dutiful. He simply couldn’t carry them through, which fact made him rage, and fall into such depression she’d come to hold herself back, cooling their exchanges so as not to invite further failure.

She dreamt of him often though; scenarios that were unequivocally sexual. No symbolism here. Just she and Boone in bare rooms, fucking. Sometimes there were people beating on the doors to get in and see, but they never did. He belonged to her completely; in all his beauty and his wretchedness.

But only in dreams. Now more than ever, only in dreams.

Their story together was over. There’d be no more dark days, when his conversation was a circle of defeat, no moments of sudden sunshine because she’d chanced upon some phrase that gave him hope. She’d not been unprepared for an abrupt end. But nothing like this. Not Boone unmasked as a killer and shot down in a town she’d never heard of. This was the wrong ending.

But bad as it was, there was worse to follow.

After the telephone call there’d been the inevitable cross questioning by the police: had she ever suspected him of criminal activities? had he ever been violent in his dealings with her? She told them a dozen times he’d never touched her except in love, and then only with coaxing. They seemed to find an unspoken confirmation in her account of his tentativeness, exchanging knowing looks as she made a blushing account of their lovemaking. When they’d finished with their questions they asked her if she would identify the body. She agreed to the duty. Though she’d been warned it would be unpleasant, she wanted a goodbye.

It was then that the times, which had got strange of late, got stranger still.

Boone’s body had disappeared.

At first nobody would tell her why the identification process was being delayed; she was fobbed off with excuses that didn’t quite ring true. Finally, however, they had no option but to tell her the truth. The corpse, which had been left in the police mortuary overnight, had simply vanished. Nobody knew how it had been stolen – the mortuary had been locked up, and there was no sign of forced entry – or indeed why. A search was under way but to judge by the harassed faces that delivered this news there didn’t seem to be much hope held out of finding the body snatchers. The inquest on Aaron Boone would have to proceed without a corpse.

That he might never now be laid to rest tormented her. The thought of his body as some pervert’s plaything, or worse some terrible icon, haunted her night and day. She shocked herself with her power to imagine what uses his poor flesh might be put to, her mind set on a downward spiral of morbidity which made her fearful – for the first time in her life – of her own mental processes.

Boone had been a mystery in life, his affection a miracle which gave her a sense of herself she’d never had. Now, in death, that mystery deepened. It seemed she’d not known him at all, even in those moments of traumatic lucidity between them, when he’d been ready to break his skull open till she coaxed the distress from him; even then he’d been hiding a secret life of murder from her.

It scarcely seemed possible. When she pictured him now, making idiot faces at her, or weeping in her lap, the thought that she’d never known him properly was like a physical hurt. Somehow, she had to heal that hurt, or be prepared to bear the wound of his betrayal for ever. She had to know
why
his other life had taken him off to the back of beyond. Maybe the best solution was to go looking where he’d been found: in Midian. Perhaps there she’d find the mystery answered.

The police had instructed her not to leave Calgary until after the inquest, but she was a creature of impulse like her mother. She’d woken at three in the morning with the idea of going to Midian. She was packing by five, and was heading north on Highway 2 an hour after dawn.

Things went well at first. It was good to be away from the office – where she’d be missed, but what the hell? – and the apartment, with all its reminders of her time with Boone. She wasn’t quite driving blind, but as near as damn it; no map she’d been able to lay hands on marked any town called Midian. She’d heard mention of other towns, however, in exchanges between the police. Shere Neck was one, she remembered – and that
was
marked on the maps. She made that her target.

She knew little or nothing about the landscape she was crossing. Her family had come from Toronto – the civilized east as her mother had called it to the day she died, resenting her husband for the move that had taken them into the hinterland. The prejudice had rubbed off. The sight of wheat fields stretching as far as the eye could see had never done much for Lori’s imagination and nothing she saw as she drove changed her mind. The grain was being left to grow, its planters and reapers about other business. The sheer monotony of it wearied her more than she’d anticipated. She broke her journey at McLennan, an hour’s drive short of Peace River, and slept a full night undisturbed on a motel bed, to be up good and early the next morning, and off again. She’d make Shere Neck by noon, she estimated.

Things didn’t quite work out that way, however. Somewhere east of Peace River she lost her bearings, and had to drive forty miles in what she suspected was the wrong direction till she found a gas station, and someone to help her on her way.

There were twin boys playing with plastic armies in the dirt of the station office step. Their father, whose blond hair they shared, ground a cigarette out amongst the battalions and crossed to the car.

‘What can I get you?’

‘Gas, please. And some information?’

‘It’ll cost you,’ he said, not smiling.

‘I’m looking for a town called Shere Neck. Do you know it?’

The war games had escalated behind him. He turned on the children.

‘Will you shut up?’ he said.

The boys threw each other sideways glances, and fell silent, until he turned back to Lori. Too many years of working outdoors in the summer sun had aged him prematurely.

‘What do you want Shere Neck for?’ he said.

‘I’m trying … to track somebody.’

‘That so?’ he replied, plainly intrigued. He offered her a grin designed for better teeth. ‘Anyone I know?’ he said. ‘We don’t get too many strangers through here.’

There was no harm in asking, she supposed. She reached back into the car and fetched a photograph from her bag.

‘You didn’t ever see this man I suppose?’

Armageddon was looming at the step. Before looking at Boone’s photograph he turned on the children.

‘I told you to
shut the fuck up
!’ he said, then turned back to study the picture. His response was immediate. ‘You know who this guy is?’

Lori hesitated. The raw face before her was scowling. It was too late to claim ignorance, however.

‘Yes,’ she said, trying not to sound offensive. ‘I know who it is.’

‘And you know what he did?’ The man’s lip curled as he spoke. ‘There were pictures of him. I saw them.’ Again, he turned on the children. ‘Will you
shut up
?’

‘It wasn’t me,’ one of the pair protested.

‘I don’t give a fuck who it was!’ came the reply.

He moved towards them, arm raised. They were out from his shadow in seconds, forsaking the armies in fear of him. His rage at the children and his disgust at the picture were welded into one revulsion now.

‘A fucking animal,’ he said, turning to Lori. ‘That’s what he was. A fucking animal.’

He thrust the tainted photograph back at her.

‘Damn good thing they took him out. What you wanna do, go bless the spot?’

She claimed the photograph from his oily fingers without replying, but he read her expression well enough. Unbowed he continued his tirade.

‘Man like that should be put down like a
dog
, lady. Like a fucking dog.’

She retreated before his vehemence, her hands trembling so much she could barely open the car door.

‘Don’t you want no gas?’ he suddenly said.

‘Go to hell,’ she replied.

He looked bewildered.

‘What’s your problem?’ he spat back.

She turned the ignition, muttering a prayer that the car would not play dead. She was in luck. Driving away at speed she glanced in her mirror to see the man shouting after her through the dust she’d kicked up.

She didn’t know where his anger had come from, but she knew where it would go: to the children. No use to fret about it. The world was full of brutal fathers and tyrannical mothers; and come to that, cruel and uncaring children. It was the way of things. She couldn’t police the species.

Relief at her escape kept any other response at bay for ten minutes, but then it ran out, and a trembling overtook her, so violent she had to stop at the first sign of civilization and find somewhere to calm herself down. There was a small diner amongst the dozen or so stores, where she ordered coffee and a sugar fix of pie, then retired to the rest room to splash some cold water on her flushed cheeks. Solitude, albeit snatched, was the only cue her tears needed. Staring at her blotchy, agitated features in the cracked mirror she began to sob so insistently, nothing – not even the entrance of another customer – could shame her into stopping.