Salt Spring Island
december 5, 1972
up on the headland, Danek Rys watches as Nurse Pat O’Dwyer takes a few moments to compose herself. He has seen this kind of person many times before. A liar and a thief.
But he’s been lying, too. He’s come to Salt Spring Island on a mission. He is no better than the nurse.
Pat steps closer. “Jeanie suffered a traumatic accident at the age of seventeen. She was in the hospital for two years, and on heavy drugs. There are no memories in that daft, vacant head. Do you know what the papers called her? Wait, of course you do.”
Dan notices that Jeanie has come to an abrupt stop on the path to the house, thin shoulders bowed, as if she’s heard these hateful remarks.
His gaze returns to Pat. “You told police you saw Marko Kovacs last, heading for the back stairs of your hospital ward. Another man arrived soon after this, says he is Mr. Kovacs’s brother and runs down the hall after him.” Dan waits while Pat stares at him, obviously angry that he’s dared bring up the police report. It has been difficult tracking her down, but now that she’s standing in front of him, he waits for her to admit the truth.
“He didn’t run, but you could say he was in a hurry.” Pat folds her arms across her chest.
Dan hides a smile. Now he’s got her. “What does the man look like?”
“How should I know? A hat hid his features.” She frowns. “And it was many years ago.”
“Did he have an accent?”
“Like yours, you mean?” Pat narrows her eyes. “You know, Mr. Rys, maybe you’re in on it.” She takes a step toward him. “Maybe I should call the police.”
“Mr. Kovacs vanishes into thin air after this,” he presses her, watching those dark eyes for a hint of reaction. “His car is left in the parking lot. You have seen or heard something.”
Pat snorts with derision. “Kay and I saw nothing.”
Jeanie is inching back toward them, dejected and shivering, and he suffers a fractal image of dark figures hunched in a long line before him, snow blowing so hard they cannot see. He shakes his head to rid himself of the memory and focuses on the young woman. Before his visit to the island, he read several articles about Jeanie Esterhazy on the microfiche in the Vancouver library, about her dreadful accident and how she disappeared after an art show in 1966. Beyond that, there was only speculation as to her whereabouts.
“…and the baby,” Pat is saying. “Poor thing never stood a chance. Even a house cat possesses better sense and proper instinct than Jeanie did that night.”
He scratches this into his notebook: Baby? There was no mention of it in the articles. He feels a tentative hand on the sleeve of his coat, and he jolts, unaccustomed to touch. It’s the artist. Jeanie is obviously terrified of Pat, yet she’s managed to creep past her caregiver to stand next to him. Her long hair, the color of a raven’s wing, blows across her lower face. She smells of the wind and salt, she smells of the sea. He stares into her luminous green eyes. Intoxicated, he forces himself to look away, dropping his gaze to Jeanie’s hands. Her fingers, runnelled with scars, are strangely beautiful.
“Could you leave your card, Dan?” she says, her voice a whisper. “I’ll call you if I remember anything else.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Pat says loudly before Dan can respond.
He stands dumbly for a moment. He’s prepared for any eventuality but didn’t think of having a business card made. How bad he is at this. Dan quickly scribbles his telephone number on a blank page of his notebook then rips it free. Pat leaps forward to take it, but he deliberately hands it to Jeanie, who folds it in half and in half again.
Pat looks more furious than ever, and Dan is confused. Why would a caregiver be so uncaring? She’s turned to lead Jeanie down the path toward the driveway. He follows, intent on pressing Pat further.
When they near the house, she tells Jeanie, “Take a hot bath and get into your pajamas.”
Jeanie stubbornly shakes her head. “I won’t let you talk to him alone.”
With a tight smile, Pat slips an arm around her charge and steers her to the door. Jeanie resists. After a brief struggle she gives up and shuffles inside with a final glance back at Dan. He opens his mouth to say something, but unsure of what those words should be, he stops himself.
Pat turns and looks at Dan, her smile gone. “As you can see, she’s fragile,” she tells him. “You coming here, bringing up that traumatic time in her life—it’s devastating to her.”
He watches the nurse intently. “She would be dead now if I did not come.” He turns and gestures to the rope hanging from the tree.
“You think Jeanie would try to kill herself? That’s all performance! She’s gone mad. I have to hide anything sharp for my own safety.” Pat lifts her sleeve and shows him her bandaged arm for emphasis. “Even her craft scissors.”
He files this away, though he only feels sympathy for the artist. Any attack was undoubtedly the act of a broken-hearted woman with no other choice. “And yet you left enough rope for her to die.”
Pat’s eyes flare with indignation, and he knows he’s struck a chord. “Jeanie is a sick individual. Strong drugs have affected her mind.”
He’s silent for a moment. “She survived a terrible accident,” he says finally. “She is no coward.”
Pat laughs, as though she suddenly finds him amusing. “You’re foreign, aren’t you? What’s your name? What miserable country gave you those scars?”
“You don’t remember me?” he says, for she deserves to be put in her place. “I come from your nightmares.”
Pat rears back and glares at Dan, her eyes and tone sharp. “You’ll never show up here again to upset Jeanie.”
He glances up at the house and spots Jeanie’s lovely, pale face hovering in a window. She lights up when their eyes meet, but he tries to keep his expression neutral. He hasn’t had much experience with women, yet there’s something about this one that compels him. His eyes shift back to Pat. What is she hiding? “You are lucky to live here, in paradise.”
“Lucky?” Pat’s face contorts in anger, a hand to her hip. “This is not paradise. Far from it. You try taking care of Jeanie! Do you know Kay and I were her two vigil nurses? We held her close when her mother and aunt died in a car accident Jeanie’s second year in the hospital. Her father’s been out of the picture since she was a child.” She pauses, clearly agitated. “When Jeanie got out of the hospital, she was nineteen. She needed someone familiar with her care, the medication. She got me. And I’ve sacrificed more than she—” Pat clamps her mouth shut over these last words.
He gives her an appraising look, eyebrows raised. What else did she mean to say?
There is only a foot between them, but he steps closer to Nurse O’Dwyer and slips one hand into his pocket to caress the leather sheath that holds a knife he made long ago with a surgeon’s scalpel, the handle wrapped in a compress bandage and wound tight with an old shoelace. He’s kept this blade for one purpose—to sing across the neck of the one he’s been hunting with singular focus. Pat looks too smug, too sure of her place here. “What will happen to you if Jeanie is successful in…what do you call it? Performance?”
Pat stumbles back and he sees he’s scored a hit. “You seem a little too invested in this cold case,” she says. “Who was Marko Kovacs to you?”
Dan remains silent. Pat doesn’t need to know that he’s been obsessed with Marko for many years. He’s tracked his actions in Europe with the Fourteenth Division and with British Intelligence in England. When he finally traced Ivanets to Canada, he was surprised to learn that the man had changed his name to Kovacs, and he’d disappeared without a trace in 1959. Dan doesn’t believe it. He suspects there is something else behind Marko Kovacs’s disappearance. And he’s here to find out just what that is.
Pat is staring at him. “Show up here again and I’ll call the police.”
He turns and walks up the drive, Jeanie’s declaration, “Don’t you think you should have to fight?” ringing in his ears. What a question. He has never heard anyone put his own experience into words quite like this. During the war, he fought with everything in him to survive. Yet, parts of him are dead. His heart or his spirit? He still doesn’t know. Glancing over his shoulder, he can still see her woeful face in the window, like an animal in a cage, watching its only chance for escape leave forever.
It’s clear he’ll get nothing further out of Pat O’Dwyer. The nurse had claimed on the phone that she’d never heard of Marko Kovacs. She can’t be trusted. The police had questioned both nurses, the only ones who worked on the ward at the time Kovacs disappeared. They’d not questioned the patients. Jeanie is the true lead, the only one he’s got. He’ll use her to get to Pat, find out what she’s hiding.
But Jeanie has already been used.
He puts this away from him, surprised to feel a moment of pity, of attachment. Some part of him desperately wants to run back, grab Jeanie and take her away from this place.
Jeanie is the key—she has all the answers in her head. And he must get them out. Surely she will remember hearing something the night Marko Kovacs disappeared. And when she does, she’ll call and tell him why her old nurse lied. Or he’ll return and show Pat just how far he’s willing to go to find Marko Kovacs.