Matt Lennox - The Carpenter

— So, do you still think you’ll retire next summer? said Stan.

— You better believe it. They won’t have any trouble getting me out the door.

— I was a few years past the thirty-five when I went. I lost money on my pension but I just didn’t know what I would do with myself. I still don’t.

— Is that what this is about? said Dick.

— What?

— We’ve known each other a long time, Stanley. I don’t know anything else that’s dogged your heels like the Lacroixes, and that was, Christ, I was a kid when that happened. Now this with Aurel’s daughter, you being the one to find her.

Stan rubbed at a knot in the dock planking with the heel of his boot and said: It wasn’t you on the investigation, was it.

— No, said Dick. It was Lenny Gleber.

— Look. I don’t know what I’m thinking, Dick. Maybe I just don’t have anything better to do.

— I don’t think you owe that family anything. I don’t think you ever did. Judy Lacroix was a pretty poor-off girl with her illness and all, anyhow.

— Did you get a look at the toxicology?

Dick took a folded paper out of his breast pocket. He held it out to Stan.

— You know what Frank would do, don’t you.

Stan took the paper and unfolded it. He was looking at a photocopy. The reporting toxicologist’s name was blotted out. Stan read the date of the test and the details. He looked at the drug notes, and he said: Look at this man’s handwriting. Okay, that’s carbon monoxide, just like how I found her. But, there’s this, amitrip … What’s this hen scratch here?

— Amitriptyline. I didn’t ask Gleber about it because I didn’t want word to get back to Frank. Gleber’s alright, but he’s a company man. So I rang up a pathologist I used to work with when I was down in the city. Anyhow it’s a drug for a girl like Judy. It would make her feel normal, if you can call it that. It-what did he say about it-it can make you feel nothing at all. He said it could get you into a kind of mood where you don’t give a fart if you’re hurting or sad or even if you live or die. Judy was on that for her illness.

— This is goddamn hard to read.

— Or you just need glasses, Stanley. But what you’re looking at is that she had close to four hundred milligrams of that stuff in her blood.

— She overdosed on it.

— No. It was the exhaust that killed her. Carbon monoxide. But four hundred milligrams of the amitriptyline is near three times the maximum dose for a full-grown man. With something like that, you might think all that work you had to do, putting the hose up from the tailpipe through the window, was just as easy as a Sunday drive.

— She left a note in the car, said Stan. I never got a chance to read it.

— There wasn’t much. She just told her sister she was sorry is all. But one thing Gleber did find out is that there was a boyfriend. You only asked about how the girl killed herself, but I thought you might like to know what else I found out.

— Yes, said Stan. Just for curiosity, let’s say.

Dick took out his notebook and flipped it open to a page he’d marked. He said: I knew I’d forget the boyfriend’s name so I wrote it down. Gilmore. Colin Gilmore. Seasonal worker, not too much on him. I guess Mr. Gilmore didn’t let on they were as serious as Judy thought they were. He said they’d stopped seeing each other a couple weeks before you found her.

— Maybe that had something to do with it?

— Maybe, said Dick. The gals that Judy worked with said she’d stopped showing up for work for a week or two. Her sister works at the National Trust downtown. She’d gotten Judy on with an after-hours cleaning crew.

Stan nodded. He drank his beer. Dick sat back in the lawn chair and rolled his cuffs up from his wrists. After a long moment, he said: People, when they take their own lives … You remember when we got called out to-What was his name?

— Templeton, said Stan. I knew him when I was a boy but I don’t remember his first name. But yes, I remember that call. You hadn’t been around real long.

— If he’d only had sense enough to put that.303 into his mouth instead of under his chin like he did. He must of lived forty-five minutes with his face like that. Between the two of us we could barely hold him in one place.

— Here’s a thing I’ll tell you about that call, said Stan. When we got back to the station that morning, Edna had left a message with the dispatcher. I was to go over to the butcher and pick up an order she’d put in before I came home. When I got to the butcher the order was a pound of ground beef. I took one look at it, and … Well, I made it outside around back before I was sick, but just. I just made it.

— That’s one you told me, Stanley. You weren’t sick at the scene. You didn’t even blink, but later when you got to the butcher.

— You’re lying. I never told anybody that.

— That’s one you told me a time or two. It was many years after that call, but you told me all the same.

— Well.

Dick was quiet for another moment. Then he said: I can see it, Stanley. I can see the flywheels working in your head. But the Lacroixes are all gone except for Judy’s sister. You don’t owe them anything.

— Another beer, Dick?

— Oh. I guess not. I better get back to town. I’ve got some stuff for that fat bastard of a J.P. to sign before the court closes.

Stan walked with Dick up to the patrol car in the turnaround. Cassius was sleeping nearby in a patch of sunlight.

— I appreciate it, said Stan.

— I know you do. But I don’t want you to work yourself too hard over questions that already got answers, sad as they are.

— It’s just something for me to think about. More than those eavestroughs up there, let’s put it that way.

— I’ll keep my ears open, said Dick.

The National Trust was on Confederation Avenue, south of the river, a few blocks up the hill from the lake. A little way up, on the other side of the street was the shabby face of the Shamrock Hotel. Woolworths was around the corner. Eleanor Lacroix had a photograph of her sister on her teller’s desk in the main room of the Trust. In the photograph, Judy was laughing, eyes closed. On Eleanor’s finger was an engagement ring.

At that hour the bank was not busy, so after Stan had asked her, Eleanor leaned over to one of her co-workers and said she’d be back in a minute. She came around and they went to some chairs by the front window. An old woman with a plastic kerchief over her hair was writing a cheque at a table close by and outside a fine rain was slanting through the air. Eleanor sat and composed herself.

— So, if this is about Judy, I don’t know why you haven’t received the full payment. I sent it last week.

— I’m sorry, I don’t understand.

— Aren’t you with the funeral home?

— No-

— Are you from the church? If you are, you can tell that priest that what he said about what happens when you take your own life, how nobody knows where Judy is now, how could anybody say that?

Stan could see that Eleanor was shaking, fighting to keep a quiet pitch to her voice.

— Miss Lacroix, I’m not here for the church or the funeral home or anything. I’m not here for anybody except myself.

— You said this was about my sister.

— That’s right. Maybe you’d go somewheres else to chat about this? If you’ve got a coffee break or when you’re done work?

— I already used up my break and I’ve got errands to run after work. I’ve got maybe five minutes to talk.

Stan looked around. The old woman had gone over to one of the tellers and there was no one immediately close to them.

— Well, I was the one who found your sister.

He could see how Eleanor was thinking about this. She sat back.