there was great urgency for you to reach your home, why do you think you left the car behind, when it would have been much faster driving than running?”
“As I told you before,” replied Grant wearily, “I’m not sure myself. For some reason all I could think about was getting to the house to see if Lee was all right. The thought of going back to the car just seemed impossible at the time. I know it doesn’t make much sense. If I had to do it again, I’m sure I’d take the car. It certainly would have been faster, but I suppose I wasn’t thinking too clearly. Maybe I just panicked.” It was essentially the same reply he’d given before.
At the word panicked, Boisvert looked up sharply and stopped him.
“Panicked...you never used that word before, but you know, it makes me wonder. You told us someone nailed a chicken to your garage door a few weeks ago, did you panic then?”
“It certainly worried me,” said Grant, “but no, I didn’t panic.”
“In fact,” said Boisvert, “I believe you told me you didn’t even report it to police, other than your friend Constable Barr in an unofficial manner. No official report about the affair was ever filed with any police department. Why did that incident bother you so little, but a few weeks later, the same thing is done to your dog and you panic so badly you decide to run almost half a kilometre in the dark with your car sitting right there?”
As exhausted and dazed as he was, familiar alarm bells began to go off. Danger! He could hear his mother’s voice screaming. “Don’t lie to me Grant,” her face twisted and red with rage. “I can tell you’re lying to me,” her hand drawn back, ready to strike. Danger! Long ago, he had promised himself never again!
“Wait a minute,” said Grant; “I don’t have to put up with anymore of this crap. You can take a flying...”
Boisvert knew immediately there was nothing more to be learned here. He dropped the mask.
“To tell you the truth sir,” he snarled, “I don’t believe you are telling me everything. There’s something else going on around here. Something you’re holding back. I can feel it.” He waved off an attempted denial from Grant. “Listen, whatever it is you aren’t telling us, you can be certain I will find out. For your sake, I hope your refusal to tell me everything doesn’t place your daughter in more danger!” Jab, jab, cut and bruise. Blood on the face. English blood!
11:24 AM • DAY ONE
Despite his determination to stay awake, Grant had fallen into a fitful sleep, which was interrupted after less than two hours by one of Charron’s detectives shaking him violently, and shouting in broken English into his ear. “Madame Gratton, Monsieur Henri. Monsieur Henri, Madame Gratton; they got her okay.”
Grant bolted from the bed.
“What happened? Where is she? Is there any word of Lee? What about Lee? Can I talk with Therese? Does she know where Lee is?
“Unfortunately,” explained Charron calmly, as he entered the room, “the housekeeper knows very little. She was found wandering near the abandoned railway tracks east of Poisson Blanc only about an hour ago. She was pretty badly disoriented, but otherwise unhurt. I’m sorry to say,” sighed Charron, “she seems to know virtually nothing of what happened, either to her or your daughter. According to her...” He checked some notes. “Shortly before ten last night (she remembered that the CBC news was just starting), she responded to the doorbell and stepped outside when no one appeared to be there. Something, a bag or a large cloth or a blanket, was dropped over her head. She remembers a brief instant of a very strong smell but nothing more until awakening sometime this morning lying at the side of the railway tracks.”
He went on to explain that she was in hospital for observation but Inspector Boisvert, who had questioned her for some time, was confident she would be of no assistance in their investigation. She hadn’t seen anyone, nor heard a thing other than the doorbell.
Charron’s recital of events was interrupted by the ring of the phone, which sent a shot of adrenalin rushing up from the pit of Grant’s stomach. The kidnappers? No. Carol just arrived at the airport, a twenty-minute drive south of Ottawa. As reassuringly as he could, Grant explained that Lee still had not been found. “No,” he told her, “the kidnappers have not been heard from and yes, you are welcome to come and stay in the “chateau” for the time being.”
A moment later it was Jake on the phone.
“The chief gave me a twenty-minute lecture about not sticking my nose into someone else’s business and tacked on a two-week suspension,” he told Grant. “Hey don’t worry about it pal, I need the holiday, besides which, in good old public service style, the suspension is with pay. Not too shabby eh? Listen, I’m packing a few things. I’m coming up and I’m moving in. Any objections?” Before Grant had a chance to reply, Jake continued, “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you earlier, but whatever you do, don’t say anything to that little chicken faced bastard. He seems to believe we’ve got something to do with this, which indicates, along with everything else, he’s got the I.Q. of a gerbil. I hope you didn’t tell him about the recording you got.”
“No,” said Grant thoughtfully, “but the little bastard knows I’m holding something back. I don’t think he’s dumb at all.”
“Just ugly,” said Jake.
“No,” said Grant, “ugly and mean.”
12:00 Noon • DAY ONE
The house was strangely still. Charron had acquired use of the RCMP crime lab in Ottawa on the assumption that international terrorism might be involved. Both he and Boisvert were probably already at the lab with the evidence they had been able to collect; the licence plate, the blood-stained cloth, the badly mangled bullet, Niki’s body and Lee’s hair. They also had the photographs they had taken and the contents of the vacuum used in Lee’s bedroom. Grant was not aware of it, but they had also vacuumed and photographed the interior of his car.
The two detectives who remained were idly drinking coffee in the dining room, glancing from time to time towards a small battery of tape recorders and phones scattered along the floor. Wires ran everywhere in a tangle to the telephone box in the basement.
In the odd stillness, which had settled over the house, Grant found himself straining to hear Lee’s happy, excited voice. He almost expected to see her skipping through the kitchen door or down the stairs. Once, he had to stop himself from calling excitedly out to her when a partridge she had faithfully fed during the past two winters fluttered down to the base of the crab apple tree whose branches caressed the living room window on windy days.
For the past half hour he had wandered aimlessly through the house, absently opening doors, staring blindly into rooms. Alone in the bathroom, he was shocked by the drawn, weary face in the mirror, eyes puffy and red, older than he remembered. And frightened.
Without warning, he burst into uncontrollable sobs as the unspeakable grief and pain knifed into him. He stumbled into Lee’s room, numbed and disconsolate, peering with tear-filled eyes into a closet, the clothes ghostly suggestions of her on their hangers, the still rumpled bed with its sprinkling of teddy bears. Looking closely he imagined he could see the imprint of her body. He picked up the book she had been reading when he left for the studio yesterday. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Was it only last night that she had breathlessly confessed to him that she was falling desperately in love with Heathcliffe?
The room filled with a kind of thick and heavy darkness, dangerous and threatening. He was seized by an overwhelming urge to plunge down the stairs and escape into the bright sunlight, to run and run until exhausted. Charron though, had been insistent.
“You’ve got to stay in the house at all times. You can expect a phone call at any time from those who took your daughter. Whoever has done this terrible thing obviously knows the police will be here, and their conversations are being recorded, so you can expect them to disguise