| |
Oakville, November 1
9:10 p.m.
After stalling much of the evening, I finally decide I’m not going home. I call instead.
There’s no answer on the home phone. I hang up as my recorded message begins telling me I have stepped away from the office.
Maybe Heidi has the girls in the tub. On a school night, she makes sure they’re in bed by nine thirty.
I dial her cell number. She answers on the fourth ring.
“Jacob,” she says.
I skip the formalities and say, “Let me speak to the girls.”
A long silence hangs over the line between us. In the background, I can hear the sounds of tires slapping through rain and the humming of a car engine.
“They’re both asleep,” Heidi says eventually.
“You in your car?”
She pauses. “Yes.”
“Where’re you going?”
She exhales through the receiver, doesn’t tell me. I already know anyhow. There’s only one place she would be going at this hour—her mother’s.
“The girls have school tomorrow,” I say.
“They can miss a couple days.”
“Why’d you leave?” I ask. “I thought you wanted to talk.”
“Where are you?”
“At a hotel.”
Another moment of silence. “The police are looking for you, Jacob.”
Her words bring me out of the chair. “What?”
“They showed up at our door tonight with a search warrant. They were pretty specific on what they were looking for.”
“What’d they take?”
“Your computer,” she tells me. “Some of your hiking poles. That roll of rope you had in the garage. They were also looking for your blue hoodie and Adidas sweatpants. I couldn’t find those for them. They even asked me if you owned a pair of Merrell hiking boots.”
A chill works up the back of my neck and across my face. I feel the strength flooding out of my legs.
“What did you do, Jacob?”
“So,” I say, “you never wanted to talk things over. You were trying to get me to go home because they were there.”
“They asked me to. What was I supposed to do?”
I close my eyes. “Did they tell you why they wanted that stuff?”
“Evidence.”
“For what?”
“They think you murdered someone.”
“Really? Who?”
“Kate,” she says. “Kate Saint-Pierre.”
Opening my eyes, I lick my lips. My mind is a whirring jumble of thoughts.
“That night you came home from Halifax,” Heidi says, “you called me her. You called me Kate.”
I find myself unable to speak.
“Who was she?” Heidi asks. “What happened?”
I shut off the light in the room and walk to the window. Peeling back the drapes, I look outside.
Heidi is still talking. Her voice sounds small and distant now, as if it’s coming from a mile away.
“Tell me it’s not true. Tell me this is all a big mistake.”
In the parking lot three stories below, I see a police car idling right behind my car. There’s a cop standing by my driver’s door, jabbing the beam of a flashlight through the window. A clear cover encases his cap to keep it dry, and his black raincoat is slick with rain.
“Jacob?”
The cop moves to the passenger window, shining the beam inside. He straightens up then returns to his own car.
“Jacob, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Tell me this is a mistake.”
Through the passenger window of the police car, I can see the soft glow from a swivel-mount laptop. The cop’s fingers are typing away on the keyboard.
“Jacob?”
“It’s not a mistake, Heidi.”
“What?”
“I killed her. I strangled her with a piece of that rope the cops took.”
A sharp intake of breath comes across the line.
“Good-bye, Heidi,” I say and hang up.
