Gail Bowen: Burying Ariel

Howard looked abashed. “It didn’t occur to me,” he said quietly. “Talk about dumb fucks. I’m going to call a cab and go over there.”

“Forget the cab,” I said. “I’ll take you.”

“Have the police talked to you yet?”

“Nope, but they know where I live.”

Howard frowned. “You don’t have to do this.”

I picked up my sweater. “True, and you didn’t have to stay up with me all night when Ian died or spend hours convincing me the world hadn’t come to an end when Mieka dropped out of university or come to the hospital with me when Angus got that concussion playing football… Shall I continue?”

He grinned sheepishly. “Let’s hit the road.”

As soon as I turned the key in the ignition, Howard reached for the radio dial and punched in CVOX. It was 2:30 – time for Charlie’s show.

Howard turned to face the window on the passenger side. His voice was a gravel whisper. “Do you think he’s found out yet?”

“You’ll be able to tell when you hear him,” I said. “He doesn’t hold much back on that show.” It was true. I wasn’t a fan of open-line radio, and CVOX was all talk all the time, but whenever I’d caught “Heroes” I’d been impressed. Charlie’s subject was relationships, and he treated his callers’ problems with intelligence and a wild, subversive wit. He had taken the show’s name from Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the reference was significant. Many would have dismissed Charlie’s callers as malcontents or as charter members of the tribe of the terminally confused. But to Charlie they were heroes engaged in the hero’s journey to find answers that would make sense of their lives. His advice to them was a potent mix of eclectic allusion and dark insight that suggested their problems went beyond the classroom or the trailer court, and his audience, comprised largely of the desirable seventeen-to-thirty demographic was huge and loyal.

When the drummer from Dave Matthews Band counted the band into Charlie’s theme music, “Ants Marching,” Howard stiffened. So did I, but as the music faded and Charlie began his intro, his dark-honey voice sounded as it always did, intense and intimate.

“It’s 2:30 on CVOX, Voice Radio, and this is Charlie D, kicking off the first weekend of summer. Hot sun, cold beer, new friends, old loves – a time for revelry. But there are some among us who just can’t seem to celebrate the cosmically embedded self. No matter what you do for them, it’s never enough. This show is about them, or it’s about you if you’re one of them. “Some people,

No matter what you give them

Still want the moon. “The bread,

The salt,

White meat and dark,

Still hungry. “The marriage bed

And the cradle,

Still empty arms.”

Howard turned to me furiously. “What the hell’s he doing?”

I raised my hand in a hushing gesture. “Listen.”

Charlie’s voice was a seeping wound. He was close to the breaking point, but he was also a professional. He didn’t falter. “You give them land,

Their own earth under their feet,

And still they take to the roads. “And water: dig them the deepest well,

Still it’s not deep enough

To drink the moon from.

“This show is about them… the ones who, even after you’ve dug them the deepest well, say it’s not deep enough, because it doesn’t let them drink the moon…”

Howard glared at me. “Well?”

“It’s called ‘Adam’s Complaint.’ Denise Levertov wrote it. Charlie uses poetry on his show all the time.”

“Maybe to you it’s just poetry. But to a cop it’s going to sound like a confession. In cases like this, the boyfriend’s always a suspect.” Howard picked up my cellphone. “Charlie needs a lawyer.”

“You’re a lawyer,” I said.

Howard replaced the phone in the well between our seats. “Do you think he’d let me act for him?”

“Why not?” I said. “You’re the best, and you’ll come cheap.”

CVOX was a concrete and glass box surrounded by larger concrete and glass boxes that sold such commodities as discounted designer fashions, end-of-the-roll carpeting, and furniture that could dazzle your friends for a year before you had to cough up a single dime. The station was indistinguishable from its neighbours, except for the oversized call letters on its roof. The “ O ” in CVOX was an open, red-lipped mouth with a lascivious Mick Jagger tongue. Spectacular as the sign was, Howard didn’t even give it a passing glance. He leaped out of the car before I came to a full stop.

I walked through the double glass doors at the front of the building just as the Queen of the Coneheads was running to block Howard’s entrance to the corridor that presumably led to the radio studios. Howard was a big man, six-foot-three and powerfully built, but he was no match for this tiny young woman with three-inch platform shoes and attitude as spiky as her hair.

“No way,” she said. “Nobody goes in there unless I say they go in there.”

Howard gazed at me beseechingly. He had never found it easy dealing with women.

I walked over and stepped between them. The young woman gave me a quick up and down, decided I was harmless, and relaxed. “This is Charlie Dowhanuik’s father,” I said. She stared at me uncomprehendingly. I corrected myself. “Charlie D’s father,” I said.

She nodded sagely. “Right.”

“There’s been a death,” I said. “In the family.”

Her small features rearranged themselves into an expression of sympathy. “Bummer,” she said. She looked up into Howard’s face. “Just give me a second, Mr. D, then I can take you down to the studio.” She went back to her desk, called for a back-up gatekeeper, then came over to Howard and took him gently by the arm. “This way,” she said. “Incidentally, I’m Esme.”

When we were almost at the end of the hall, Esme steered us to the right, down a short corridor, and into a control room. We stood awkwardly while she whispered something to a woman in a black turtleneck, who turned from the array of equipment in front of her, glanced our way, then swivelled her chair to face the glass that separated the control room from the studio. Through the glass I could see Charlie. I had known his mother well, and Charlie was unmistakably her son: black hair, sleepy hazel eyes, aquiline nose, generous mouth. But unlike her son, Marnie Dowhanuik’s beauty had been without flaw.

When the woman in the black turtleneck murmured into her microphone, Charlie looked up. He was wearing headphones. She turned to Howard. “You can talk to him now. I’ll go to a commercial. Tell him I’m bringing somebody in to finish the show.”

In seconds, Howard appeared in Charlie’s studio. He sat down in the chair next to his son’s, leaned over, swung one of his massive arms around Charlie’s slender shoulders and put his mouth to Charlie’s ear. For a beat, Charlie listened, then his face crumpled. He had adjusted his headphones so he could hear his father; now he ripped them off and covered his face with his hands.

Viewed through glass, the silent tableau of discovery and grief had the surreal intensity of life inside an aquarium. Instinctively, both the woman in the turtleneck and I looked away. She picked up the phone and summoned someone named Troy to Studio D, then turned to me. “I’m Kendra Gaede,” she said. “You’re welcome to stay here till they decide how they want to handle this.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d like to be here in case Howard needs me.”

He didn’t. In a beat, Charlie picked up his headphones and slipped them back on.

“Troy’s going to finish for you,” Kendra said.

Charlie nodded, then punched a button in front of him. We could hear his voice. “I have to explain why Troy’s taking over. Otherwise, the switchboard will be jammed.”