Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

For a few moments she knelt with her back to me watching the snow, then the voices on the computer entered her consciousness and she turned to face me. “What’s that you’re listening to?”

“An MP3 file that Charlie sent me of his interviews with the people in Too Much Hope.”

Taylor settled with her back against the window, her legs crossed in front of her. When a female voice began to describe how, within weeks, she had gone from model child to truant, sexual predator, and druggie, Taylor wedged her hands between her thighs and leaned towards me. “That’s Olivia Quinn, the one who got raped.” Taylor’s lips were tight. “She tried to tell her mother, but her mother didn’t believe her.”

I walked over to my computer and turned off the interview. “Taylor, you know you can tell me anything, don’t you?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I know.”

I sat beside her on the window seat. “Is something wrong?”

She was still for a moment, tense with indecision. Then she leapt to her feet. “There’s something I need to show you.” She came back with the padded envelope I’d taken from our mailbox. It had been opened. I reached inside and took out Soul-fire: A Hero’s Life, Part IV . Like its predecessors, Part IV opened in the grey world of alienation and nihilism. Finally, shunned and miserable, the hero takes the pentangle from its secret place in the crypt, drapes the emblem around his neck, and is transported into the brilliantly coloured world of Soul-fire. The enemies Soul-fire encountered were familiar to me from his earlier exploits, but this time, he was not alone. On this quest, he was joined by Chloe, a light-boned young girl with huge brown eyes and fashionably hacked dark hair. The comic ended with Soul-fire and Chloe hand in hand on a verdant sanctuary called the Island of Celestial Light. Behind them, the city was burning.

Taylor was watching my face. “What do you think?”

“Ethan’s very talented,” I said carefully.

“What do you think about Chloe?”

“I think Chloe’s you.”

Taylor’s voice was small. “That’s what I think too,” she said.

“If this is too much for you, I could talk to Ethan – or maybe to his mother.”

“No! That would just make things worse. I can handle it.”

“Okay,” I said. I slid my arm around her. “When I saw it was snowing, I brought up the new boots we bought you last spring at Aldo.”

In one of those quicksilver mood shifts that signal the onset of adolescence, Taylor was suddenly ecstatic. “The orange ones? Sweeeet. I love those boots. This is going to be the best day.”

I wasn’t so confident. Soul-fire: A Hero’s Life might have moved off Taylor’s personal screen, but Ethan’s disturbing portrait of the artist as a young man had stayed on mine. I was reading through A Hero’s Life seeking reassurance when Zack called.

“Finally,” he said. “I’ve tried this number about forty times. I thought you were stuck in a snowbank somewhere.”

“Sorry. I forgot to turn my cell on. Did you try our land line?”

“Yep, and it was busy forty times.”

“Taylor must have left it off the hook,” I said.

“As long as you’re safe,” Zack said.

“I am – I’m sitting here reading a comic.”

“The Adventures of Pentangle Boy?”

“Right,” I said. “How are you doing?”

“Lousy. It’s snowing like a son of a bitch, which means my chair is probably going to get stuck and my car is going to get stuck and I’m going to get stuck.”

“ ‘Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm / Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.’ ”

Zack chuckled. “What the hell was that?”

“The last stanza of Ezra Pound’s ‘Ancient Music.’ Anyway, it made you laugh. Anything wrong apart from the weather?”

“I’m facing a jury trial – that always makes my stomach churn.”

“After all these years?”

“After all these years. Jo, every lawyer is edgy before a jury trial. People are unpredictable – hammering out a settlement with the other side is a lot easier than taking a case to a jury. Of course, it’s also less fun. Actually, I was explaining all this to your younger son five minutes ago.”

“You were talking to Angus?”

“He phoned to wish me luck.”

“Lawyer to lawyer,” I said.

Zack chuckled. “Something like that. I haven’t heard so much legal lingo since I was in my first year at law school.”

“Did he make any sense?”

“Not a bit, but it was fun listening to him. He loves what he’s doing, Jo.”

“That’s what he tells me, but Angus has a way of channelling only good news my way.”

“Well, relax, because he’s happy in his work. As am I. I love my work, and I love my woman,” Zack said. “I’m a lucky guy. But it’s time to make tracks.”

“In that case,” I said, “I will see you in court. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” he said. “And, Jo, try to keep things in perspective. I’m going to do everything I can to get Sam off, but whatever happens, when the trial’s over, I’ll be coming home.”

“So I should relax.”

“You’ve got it,” he said. “Just relax and enjoy the show.”

On the courthouse stairs, I ran into Ed Mariani. The collar of his winter jacket was up, the ear-flaps on his Irish walking cap were down, and his cheeks were pink. He beamed when he saw me.

“Come to see your boyfriend in action?”

“No, actually, I’m Canada Tonight’s eye on the Sam Parker trial.”

Ed’s smile faded. “Nice gig,” he said, stamping the snow off his feet. “I wouldn’t have minded getting it.”

“At this moment, I imagine Jill is wishing she’d offered you the job.”

Ed removed his hat and brushed away the snow. “Why?”

“Jill is concerned about my bias.”

“Because of the boyfriend.”

“No, because I find what Kathryn Morrissey did in her book morally repugnant.”

“That could be a problem.”

“Maybe I’ll just stick with safe topics. Maybe tonight I should lead with the inside info on that mural over there.”

“Look out, Peter Mansbridge.”

“Peter Mansbridge was never a parent-helper on four separate tours of this courthouse. Did you know that the mural is a mosaic of 125,000 pieces of Florentine glass? Did you know that the gent holding aloft the arms of the balance of right and wrong is a symbolic God of Laws? Did you know that the females flanking him represent Truth and Justice? Do you want me to continue?”

“God, yes. If you’re that boring tonight, your job is mine.” The mirth disappeared from Ed’s face. “Talking about truth and justice won’t be easy in this one, Jo.”

The Sam Parker trial was taking place in Courtroom C, the largest of the building’s courtrooms. Those of us with media passes were directed to two rows that had been reserved for us. As we filed into our places, there was only one topic of conversation: the weather. No one had arrived in Regina prepared for winter. Smart fall suits and expensive footwear had been wrecked by the snow, and journalists were not amused.

I was wedged between a slender, trendily dressed young woman whose increasingly frequent bylines on increasingly more important stories suggested she was on her way up in the world of print journalism, and a square-jawed, deeply tanned, ex-anchor who was clearly on his way down. The young woman’s name was Brette Sinclair; the ex-anchor, who was a foot shorter than I’d imagined him to be in his anchor-desk days, was Kevin Powers. As soon as he was seated, he leaned across me to confide in Brette. “This suit is pure worsted wool, and it’s totally fucking ruined. I had it made in Hong Kong – cost me the equivalent of $785 U.S.”