No banter now.
She said she was looking forward to a midnight swim and rang off quickly. She didn’t want to be here in the city when Ted got back and have to go through the parting scene again Saturday.
Her father made his living by counselling and could be expected to be sensitive to fine shades in voices, but she was supposed to be a performer, and it irritated her that she hadn’t been able to sound more upbeat for the space of a brief phone call. Her tea bag was already in the recycling bin, but not touching anything gross. She wiped it off and popped it into a mug she knew would fit in the holder by the driver’s seat of her car. Wine for her dad? She opened the fridge and found a bottle of Sauvignon blanc to stuff into her knapsack between the underwear and her toilet case. As soon as the kettle was back at the boil, she was ready to go, knapsack on her back and tea mug in her hand. She pulled the front door to and tested it. Firmly locked.
Gas? No, she’d filled the tank Tuesday at Meryl’s gas bar, and topping it up at one of the highway service centres would give her an excuse to break up the trip. She’d taken less than an hour at home on the turnaround, so she’d be at the cottage by eleven or a little after. The tea was starting to perk her up, and perhaps even more so the feel of the steering wheel in her grip. Karin liked driving. It was absorbing, with life and limb dependent on how you performed, but the demands—unless you were a NASCAR or F1 race driver—were looser than in the world of classical music. Karin believed her driving was “good enough for jazz,” and jazz was fun.
When she pulled onto the northbound 400, she called the cottage again and left a report of her progress on Markus’s machine.
An hour later, she was yawning her way through a bumper-to-bumper stretch of highway and having much less fun. Impatient drivers were cutting in front of her with millimetres to spare, while the four-by-four behind her was practically climbing her little Honda’s sloping hatch. She began to think of car seats, wondering how often they had to be changed as an infant grew into a toddler. There’d be the home to childproof too. Before long, she and Ted would be stuffing protectors in every electrical outlet and fencing off the heads of the stairs. Fine, every danger would be provided against in time—no need to work herself up right now. Except . . .
Except that the suspicion was also beginning to gnaw at her that she had left something undone at home tonight. Not something inconsequential either. She had locked the door, and every last window as Ted had asked, and turned down the air conditioning, even though the house would be stifling when he got home. She had turned off the water in the shower and hadn’t left the toilet running. What else could it be? Her eyes dropped down to her empty tea mug. That was it. She might not have turned off the element on the stove top after the second boiling. She’d lifted off the kettle, poured and placed it to cool on the unused small back element. But she had no memory of reaching over to switch off the heat in the large one. She looked across the median. The southbound traffic was light. If she could get across, she’d be home by ten fifteen. She could call Markus again and take him up on his suggestion that she drive up tomorrow. She could spend one more night with Ted. Was she just looking for an excuse?
It wasn’t like her to worry this way. She believed she had a good memory for the things that mattered. Then again, Markus liked to twit her on little duties neglected, and there was always the possibility—when she was tired as she was tonight—that she’d forget something not so little.
If she had left the element on, she wasn’t just wasting electricity. There was a kitchen cupboard above that element. The heat could cause the paint to blister and perhaps fall off onto the red-hot metal. Flames would shoot up. The wood would get dryer and hotter, until their house would be on fire. Maybe she had turned the element off and didn’t remember it. Yes, that was more likely. She was ninety-five per cent certain. But no, she couldn’t take the chance. Just ahead, a bridge carried a county road across the highway. An exit lane was opening up to Karin’s right; she committed to it.
Chapter 2
The conference was being held in the various lecture halls of University College, but the panel discussion was to take place across King’s College Circle in the seventeen-hundred-seat Convocation Hall. It was routinely used now for first-year psychology lectures as well as for graduation ceremonies, and the enclosed circular space could be almost as hot and humid at this time of year as the inside of a clothes dryer.
Ted dropped by the athletic centre for a swim and a shower in the late afternoon before heading over to the hall. He’d brought a freshly pressed golf shirt to change into, leisure wear that had become the work uniform of everyone from burger flippers and supermarket checkers to library technicians and massage therapists, and would—he hoped—be accepted as suitable for an unpretentious academic as well. In keeping with the folksy tone, Ted and the panellists sat at their places, chatting pleasantly as members of the public filed in. By 7:05, the hall was a quarter full. As it was little more so by 7:10, Ted tapped his mike and got proceedings underway. After a few standard remarks, he asked the first speaker to introduce herself and her position on the question, “Is Canada soft on crime?”
In appearance, Rose Cesario suggested a beach ball, short and round, with a lack of neck, a surplus of chins and a gleam of sunlight in her brown cap of hair. A well-fitted pale grey summer suit nudged her back in the direction of seriousness. Her eyes were outlined severely in black. And any hint of frivolity was forgotten when she began to speak.
“As councillor for one of Toronto’s western wards, I have worked tirelessly to get more police officers on the streets and to cut down on response times to 911 calls. Much as I’ve been able to accomplish, however, the real power to fight crime is in Ottawa, and that is why I will be running in the next federal election as the Conservative candidate in Etobicoke Southwest.”
She proceeded to deliver a harangue stuffed with the sort of statistics that make listeners’ eyes cross. The number of felons on day parole that commit fresh acts of violence, the number on full parole, the number on statutory release. Eventually she got on to something a little easier to connect with, the so-called “Truth in Sentencing” issue. Up to a point, Ted sympathized with her: the state was attempting to implement advanced concepts of penology while posing as guardian of the old-time religion of punishment—and the disguise had become transparent. Of course, the populist politician expressed herself somewhat differently.
“The state,” proclaimed Rose Cesario, “implements trendy new ways to coddle criminals while pretending to uphold time-tested standards of justice. What a hoax!
“The Criminal Code section 235(1) says in black and white: ‘Everyone who commits first degree murder or second degree murder is guilty of an indictable offence and shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life.’ Imprisonment for life—what could be clearer? But then our Correctional Service tells us that someone that commits first or second degree murder can get out on parole and still be serving a life sentence. That person is serving his or her sentence ‘in the community.’ ” The speaker reinforced her disdain for the phrase by drawing quotation marks in the air. “Well, I don’t want Clifford Olson or Paul Bernardo serving his sentence in my community, thank you very much. A sentence served in the community is not a sentence of imprisonment. The community is not a prison. It’s where we live. So let’s stop fooling ourselves. Let Parliament say nothing about life imprisonment unless they mean it. Let judges say when passing sentence for second degree murder, ‘You will spend a minimum of ten years behind bars and then be granted parole if you are found deserving of it.’
“One final proof that we are soft on crime in this country is the practice of passing concurrent sentences. Commit one murder or a dozen, the sentence will likely be the same. Multiple killers get a volume discount: only the first victim’s pain is given any weight by the justice system. A serial predator can be punished for several rapes simultaneously and be back on the streets in no more time than if he had offended only once. If we don’t want to be soft on crime, let the criminals pay for each one of their crimes, and serve consecutive sentences rather than concurrent ones.
“When I look around this room, I see people whose hearts would I’m sure go out to the victims of crime. Let’s be