Giles Blunt - Until the Night

Hayley gave it a few seconds. Then, “Is this your house?”

The words hung in the air, a neon sign with no connection to the human relationship in this room: victim and murderer. They might have been here for social reasons, two strangers at a party. Hayley kept her eyes on the ceiling. He might be looking at her, he might be asleep.

“So many books. I’m wondering if they’re all yours, but a lot of them look old. I’m thinking maybe they belonged to your family, your parents, I don’t know.”

There was no response from across the room. A faint rustle as he changed his position, perhaps turned his head to look at her, or out the window. She was still afraid to look. A direct gaze might be too much, the shout that triggers the avalanche.

“Books have always been important to me. I may be the last person to avoid the social media sink. It’s a problem for me sometimes. Students want you to be on Facebook, Twitter, but e-mail’s enough. It’s too much, in fact. Half my students seem to have no concept of a private world, and that seems sad to me, but maybe I’m just an introvert.”

Hayley held her breath. If he was as intelligent as he looked, he would realize what she was trying to do. Poor little girl trying to make herself into a person, something harder to kill than a creature you know nothing about. But persons, people, full human beings, were exactly what this man had made it his business to kill.

She forced herself to turn her head and look at him. He was seated in an armchair across the room, at an angle to her. His hands gripped the arms of the chair and he sat erect, something Egyptian about the posture. His eyes were open-she saw him blink-but he wasn’t looking at her. The expression on the sharp features-if it was in fact expression and not its absence-was one of incalculable weariness.

“I don’t know anything about you-and maybe it’ll sound like dime-store psychology or obvious self-interest-but it seems clear that something terrible has happened to you. Maybe recently? Maybe a long time ago, I don’t know, but something terrible.” She thought of a creature on the edge of extinction, the last T. rex on earth, gasping out its final breaths in a jungle sheathed in ice.

No response.

“My parents had a lot of books too-still do. My father, anyway. He’s a scientist, but he never seemed to want me to be one, really. He always encouraged me to do artsy things. I used to write the most terrible poems and he would pin them up-even the depressing ones when I got into a Sylvia Plath phase, which is pretty funny when you think of it.

“Poetry is so powerful you’d think you could tell from someone’s face if they read it or not. Respond to it. But I look at you and I have no clue. Do you read poetry? Have you ever?”

He turned his face toward the window, sharp features outlined against that brightness.

Hayley lifted her ankles and swung herself up into a seated position. The room tilted and lurched and the urge to vomit was strong.

Her moving got his attention, but he didn’t get up.

“I read poetry,” Hayley continued. “I have a father. I was a little girl at one time, then a teenager. Now I’m a teacher. In other words, you could say, I’m nothing special. But that’s the thing about being human, right? You’re not required to be special. You’re only required to be human.”

She talked on. The thought took hold that she would not die as long as she was talking. It was a common myth: the dancer who must keep dancing, the storyteller who must keep spinning tales, to keep fate at bay.

“I read poetry,” she said again. “I tried to write it. I try to teach it, or at least the appreciation of it. I want to be a professor. I’d like to get married someday. At this moment, of course, all I want is to stay alive. Will you tell me your name?”

He sighed, and shifted his weight a little in his chair, but did not look at her.

“May I know who has imprisoned me, and why? No? I want to write a book. I’d like to write about Leonard Cohen. I would talk about Catullus and Villon, the Book of Psalms, poetry as song. But scholarly circles aren’t so big on him. He’s too easy and too popular. Atwood would be better. She’s kind of one of them, one of us, an academic even, though she’s not at a university. Of course, if I write about either of them, every English department in the United States will shut their doors on me forever after. Canadian literature is not a hot topic in New York or Chicago. But what can I do, I love poetry, and it’s the only thing I know anything about.

“Except now I know how it feels to be terrified.”

The man remained in his chair like an empty garment. Maybe begging was the best gambit, maybe get down on my knees and promise whatever sex or money or worship he wants. She could never have guessed, before this moment, the magnitude of her desire to live. It shrieked and shrieked in the room and yet the man did not hear it, seemed unaware of it-in no particular rush to harm, yet free of any desire to spare her little life. She was nothing more than any mosquito she’d ever swatted, any spider she’d ever drowned, tiny legs frantic as it circled the drain.

A sob escaped her. The last thing she wanted.

When his voice came, it was as dry as wind, wind through dry grass. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “Poetry. No. I don’t read poetry…”

Hayley choked back her sobs, caught her breath, held it.

“… but I knew someone. A long time ago. Someone who did.”

Things happened relatively fast once Delorme got back to Algonquin Bay. Loach was on the phone when she walked into the station, but he hung up right away and pointed at her. “You! I want to talk to you right now.”

“Good idea,” Delorme said. “Why don’t we go in here.” She reached in and switched on the lights in the meeting room. “I’ll be right back.”

She went and tapped on Chouinard’s door and he followed her across the squad room, baying the whole way. Delorme said nothing. She held the meeting room door open for him and closed it behind him, and then there were two of them baying at her. She held up a DVD, and they both quieted down as she inserted it into the player and switched on the TV monitor.

“What the hell are you up to?” Loach wanted to know. “I’m trying to run a major investigation and you go totally AWOL.”

Delorme spoke to Chouinard. “I’m sorry, D.S. I know I called in sick, but I was actually working on the investigation. In Toronto.”

“And who told you to go down to Toronto?”

“Cardinal,” Loach said. “I know what’s going on. I have eyes.”

“It’s ears you need right now,” Delorme said. “You have to listen closely.”

The image came up on the screen. The crowded pub, and one inebriated detective climbing up on a stool.

“That’s Chuck Rakov,” Loach said. “What the hell are you doing with a video of Chuck Rakov?”

“Who the hell is he?” Chouinard said.

“One of the worst cops I ever worked with. Took a while, but I finally managed to get that bastard gone.”

Delorme had paused the video. “May I go on?”

Chouinard nodded. She hit Play, and Rakov went into his Loach impersonation.

“Hilarious,” Loach said, “but I don’t have time for this shit.” He got up and reached for the monitor.

“Let it play,” Chouinard said.

“Are you serious? Chuck Rakov is and was a total drunk.”

“That’s not the good part,” Delorme said. “The good part’s coming up.”

On screen, Rakov went into his French-Canadian accent. Even drunk, he had mastered the mimic’s art of instant transformation. The Toronto cop’s body was possessed by the spirit-and accent-of a thorough Quebecois.