Gail Bowen - Burying Ariel

Fifteen minutes later, I was in bed. As a sop to my conscience, I took Political Perspectives with me. I was trying to make sense of the concept of sovereignty-association when the phone rang. A sixth sense told me the news would not be good, and the sixth sense was right.

Kevin Coyle’s voice was a breathy rasp. “Trouble’s brewing,” he said.

“Kevin, you’re starting to sound more and more like a character in a Sam Peckinpah movie.”

“You think you’re insulting me – implying I’m marginal and obsessed with the dark side – but Peckinpah knew things about the human psyche that you and I would do well to remember.”

“Such as…?”

“Such as the fact that violence doesn’t just pop up like a mushroom. It’s character-driven. If you don’t believe that, check out what Ann Vogel and her wild bunch are doing on Ariel’s Web page. There’s a fresh list of atrocities and new plans for retribution. Incidentally, there’s a reference to you that’s less than favourable. Apparently, you’re guilty of a sin of omission or commission that’s moved you from the circle of the elect to the circle of the damned.”

“Kevin, I’m so sick of this.”

“There’s more,” he said, but his tone was both gentle and apologetic. “There was someone sniffing around your office earlier tonight. When she saw me she ran.”

“Who was it?”

“I was down the hall but, unless I’m very much mistaken, it was our friend, Solange.”

“What was she doing?

“Sliding something under your door.”

“Swell,” I said.

“I’m sure Solange draws the line at letter bombs,” Kevin said.

Remembering the scene Charlie had described, I was silent.

“That was supposed to cheer you up,” Kevin said. “A Sam Peckinpah joke.”

“I think I’m beyond cheering,” I said.

There was a pause. “This gives me no pleasure. I hope you know that, Joanne.”

“I do. It’s hard for all of us. Now, I guess I’d better check out that Web site.”

“You’ll need fortification.”

I didn’t have to be told twice. I walked into Angus’s room with a glass containing two fingers of Crown Royal. When I saw the Web page I was glad I have broad fingers. Someone had managed to get the autopsy photographs of Ariel and had posted them on the site. Whether the thief had been bribed or had simply shared Ann Vogel’s monomania would be a question for the police to answer. All I knew was that the last private place in Ariel’s life had been invaded, and I was sick at heart.

Oddly, except for the fact that she was lying on a metal autopsy table, the photographs of Ariel were not disturbing. She was, of course, very pale, but otherwise unmarked. I remembered Rosalie quoting her ever-quotable Robert on the fact that Ariel had died from a surgically precise wound in the back. She hadn’t been mutilated; in death she was as lovely as ever. With her trailing hair, her perfect profile, and her translucent skin, she looked like a Maxfield Parrish illustration of Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the kiss from her prince.

But the additions the Friends of Red Riding Hood had made to Ariel’s Web page were not the stuff of fairy tales, and their statistics conjured up a world in which princes were in mighty short supply. One hundred women murdered each year in Canada by a male partner; 62 per cent of all women murdered, victims of domestic violence; a Canadian woman raped every seven minutes; 84 per cent of sexual assaults committed by someone known to the victims; almost half of all women with disabilities sexually abused as children; number of sexual assaults reported to Canadian police growing exponentially.

Horrifying as they were, the statistics were simply prologue. The real focus of the Web page was a letter addressed “TO ALL WHO SEEK JUSTICE.” It began: Some of you will question our decision to post autopsy photographs of Ariel Warren on this page. You want to remember Ariel as the vital, evolving woman she was, not as a corpse with a toe-tag. You will find the pictures disturbing. You will resent us for forcing you to confront images so stark and so real that to contemplate them is to feel the knife in one’s own back. Events in the past week have made it necessary for us to act. In the days before her death, Ariel attempted many times to leave her Intimate Partner. He refused to let her go. Now she is dead; her ex-lover walks the streets; one of her colleagues joins forces with her killer’s father; the police shrug. The Friends of Red Riding Hood refuse to abandon Ariel to the vagaries of a patriarchal law system, a system created by men to protect their own. Charlie Dowhanuik (a.k.a. Charlie D of CVOX radio) must be brought to justice. Hunt him down the way Ariel was hunted down. Phone him. E-mail him. Fax him.

A list of the numbers and addresses through which Charlie could be reached followed. The letter’s final paragraph was a call to arms. Jam the switchboard at his radio station with demands that he be fired. Phone him at home every hour on the hour. Make his life hell, the way he made her life hell. Join the Friends tomorrow night as we march to the house he shared with Ariel and demand answers to our questions. We will meet at 5:00 p.m. in front of the library where Ariel was murdered and march to the house on Manitoba Street that she tried so often to leave.

I dialled Howard’s cellphone. “Trouble,” I said. “I just checked the Internet. There’s an open letter there you should see. Do you have access to Charlie’s computer?”

“It wouldn’t do me any good. I don’t even know how to turn one on.”

“Get Charlie to do it.”

“He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Just out.”

“You’ve got to do better than that,” I said. “You have to stay with him.”

“Jo, you sound a little hysterical.”

“I am a little hysterical. Listen to this letter, Howard.” As I read, I tried to keep my tone flat, to defuse the words. It was impossible.

When I finished. Howard uttered an expletive that even he should have been ashamed of using. Then he muttered, “Lynch-mob mentality.”

“They’re grieving, and they believe they’ll never get justice. It’s a dangerous combination. I think Charlie should lie low for a while.”

“Stay at my place?” Howard said.

“You’re not exactly an unknown quantity yourself,” I said.

“Where then?”

I didn’t welcome the answer that presented itself. But Charlie was Marnie and Howard’s son and, whatever else he had done, I now believed he would have cut off his hand before he raised it against Ariel. “Charlie can stay with us,” I said. “There’s an extra bed in Eli’s room.”

“I’ll bring him over as soon as he gets back,” Howard said.

“I’ll leave the key under the planter on the front porch,” I said. “You may be late, and I’ve had enough today.”

“You and me both, kid,” Howard said. “I wonder if this is ever going to end.”

I slept fitfully, waiting for the sound of the key in the lock or of Charlie’s footstep. Neither came. The next morning when the alarm went off, I padded down to Eli’s room; the twin bed next to his was empty. Charlie hadn’t spent the night. In the pit of my stomach, I felt the stirrings of anxiety. When I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I remembered Duke Ellington’s famous response to someone who had commented on the bags under his eyes. “Those aren’t bags,” said Duke. “Those are stored-up virtue.”

It took a few passes with the concealer to mask my stored-up virtue, but by the time Taylor came in to show me her outfit, I wouldn’t have drawn attention in a crowd. Taylor, on the other hand, would have – for all the right reasons. On many days she was an eccentric dresser, but today she had obviously considered the solemnity of the occasion. She was wearing her Nova Scotia tartan kilt, matching cream turtleneck and tights, and the beaded barrettes Alex had bought her at last summer’s powwow at Standing Buffalo. The all-Canadian girl, and she was as excited as I could ever remember seeing her. I drove the two blocks to the Legislature with the Mouseland canvas, carefully wrapped and balanced against the back seat. Taylor and I carried it up the steps of the Legislature together.